September 2006 Archives

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/29 Altra Holdings Inc. (Quincy, MA) $172.5
Is a leading global designer, producer and marketer of a wide
range of mechanical power transmission.
09/28 Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Yokneam, ) $86.2
Is a leading supplier of semiconductor-based, high-
performance interconnect products.
09/28 AeroVironment Inc. (Monrovia, CA) $115.0
Designs, develops, produces and supports a technologically-
advanced portfolio of small unmanned aircraft systems.
09/27 Switch & Data Inc. (Tampa, FL) $150.0
Is a leading provider of network neutral interconnection and
colocation services.
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
Wacoal Holdings Annual Report to Shareholders, 'Transition to a Course of Growth'. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Tokyo, Japan, Sep 29, 2006 (JCN Newswire via COMTEX) --Wacoal Holdings (TSE:3591; NQ: WACLY) has published its Annual Report to Shareholders for the year ended March 31, 2006. The Company reported an increase in consolidated net sales of 2.0% year on year, to JPY 164.1 billion. Operating and net income decreased due to the recording of extraordinary factors, however excluding these factors, operating income was up 57.0% year on year.



Wacoal laid the foundations for new medium-to-long-term growth through initiatives such as the transition to a holding company system and the introduction of a special voluntary retirement scheme. To raise business value by stepping up the pace of growth, the Company vigorously enhanced the operations of existing businesses, expanded its share of Japan's innerwear market, continued to rebuild and strengthen overseas operations, and developed peripheral businesses.

To download the Wacoal Holdings 2006 Annual Report, please visit the Company IR website at http://www.wacoal.co.jp/w-holdings/aboutcom_e/ir/index_e.html

Wacoal Holdings Annual Report to Shareholders, 'Transition to a Course of Growth'

Yoshikata Tsukamoto, Wacoal Representative Director, speaks about the launch of the Holding Company system, strategies for the future, corporate governance and his outlook for the Company in his 2006 Address to Shareholders.

"In October 2005, the Company changed its name from Wacoal Corp. to Wacoal Holdings Corp., which became the parent company of subsidiaries in the Wacoal Group. Under the holding company system, the roles of Wacoal Holdings and such Group operating subsidiaries as Wacoal are clearly defined. The holding company manages the Group and oversees operating subsidiaries, while the operating subsidiaries implement operations. This system enables the holding company to target growth and deploy resources on a Groupwide basis. Also, the delegation of authority and responsibility to the operating subsidiaries enhances the efficiency and dynamism of operational implementation. Moreover, because it facilitates reorganization by business type or function, the holding company system is the most suited to pursuing business tie-ups and mergers and acquisitions aimed at achieving corporate structural reform to reflect the times.

Medium-to-Long-Term Strategies

"At present, Wacoal Holdings and its operating subsidiaries are taking steps based on the Corporate Activation Project 21 (CAP21), which sets out medium-to-long-term strategies for enhancing business value. CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies) formulates new business strategies that will enable the Company to make a fresh start and step up the pace of growth. Our transition to the holding company system resulted from the implementation of one such strategy. Guided by CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies), we are reorganizing and strengthening existing businesses. Those efforts focus on rigorously heightening the efficiency of management systems and operational processes to bolster competitiveness and create an unshakable platform for growth. Further, not limiting ourselves to independent business development, we are cultivating businesses in areas that promise growth through the active pursuit of mergers and acquisitions, strategic operational tie-ups, capital tie-ups, and OEM. For example, in June 2006 the Company entered into an operational and capital tie-up with Peach John Co., Ltd., which mainly conducts mail-order sales of innerwear. Very popular among women in their teens and 20s, Peach John has grown rapidly in recent years.

The Company's overriding management goal is to benefit society at large by enabling women the world over to express their beauty. Also, in our business and management activities we seek to create value and establish a reputation befitting an international brand. Mindful of those management goals, we will implement the strategies of CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies), aiming to surpass consolidated net sales of JPY 200 billion, ROE of 6%, and an operating income margin of 9% by the year ending March 2011. To meet those targets, we will implement a strategy of actively investing in businesses to realize new operational expansion. We aim to increase sales in markets in Japan, the United States, China, and Europe. Moreover, we will mull forays into markets in new regions.

Business Review

"In fiscal 2006, consolidated net sales increased 2.0% year on year, to JPY 164.1 billion, operating income was down 88.7%, to JPY 1.3 billion, and net income decreased 58.5%, to JPY 2.8 billion. The decline in operating income was mainly due to the recording of a government subsidy of JPY 7.1 billion in the previous fiscal year and the November 2005 recording of JPY 6.9 billion associated with special retirement related expenses.

Excluding such temporary increases and decreases in income due to the recording of extraordinary factors, operating income was up 57.0% year on year. The main contributions to higher net sales came from brisk sales of Wacoal-brand Hip Walker and Wing-brand Style Up Pants. Also-a focus of our promotional efforts in winter-sales of innerwear products designed for cold weather were favorable, centered on the Kaiteki NAVI lineup, which we launched in response to the Japanese government's "Warmbiz" environmental initiative to encourage the wearing of thermal business apparel to minimize the use of heaters in winter. On the other hand, net sales growth was held back by generally sluggish sales of mainstay brassieres and continuing weak mail-order catalog sales. Overseas, business grew favorably, with the exception of operations in France, where consumer spending remained flat. Wacoal America, Inc., posted particularly strong growth, with sales up more than 15% year on year.

Corporate Governance

"The basic corporate governance policy of Wacoal Holdings is to continue heightening enterprise value by enhancing the efficiency and transparency of management from the perspective of all of the Company's stakeholders. In 2003, we established the Disclosure Committee to strengthen corporate governance and ensure the reliability of financial and other information that we issue. That committee checks the propriety of internal controls and-pursuant to Section 302 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act-the propriety of disclosure with respect to annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the accuracy of disclosed information.

In 2005, due to the discovery of potential defects in certain products sold, the Company provided replacements or refunds. In addition, there was a leakage of the personal info-rmation of certain customers of Wacoal's Internet shopping service. To restore customer confidence, we strengthened our quality control system through stringent implementation of an ISO quality management system and other measures. Further, aiming to deal with overall management risks, we changed our Crisis Management Committee to the Risk Management Committee, under which we established a subcommittee responsible for measures relating to accidents and disasters. Also, we created a system to counteract information security risks based on the establishment of a new department that is dedicated to addressing such risks.

In addition, by introducing the holding company system we clearly separated the role of the holding company, which undertakes Group management and oversees operating subsidiaries, and the role of the operating subsidiaries, which implement operations. We plan further development of systems for oversight and operational implementation.

Returns to Shareholders

"Our basic policy for returns to shareholders is to continue steady cash dividend payments, invest actively to enhance earnings and business value, and increase earnings per share. The Company intends to invest retained earnings to increase profit, raise business value, and enhance future returns to shareholders. Those activities will concentrate on the creation of new sales areas through the development of SPA shops, the development of new points of contact with customers, aggressive investment in overseas operations, and investment in new businesses.

Despite a significant decrease in earnings associated with such factors as the recording of special retirement related expenses, in the fiscal year under review we maintained cash dividends per ADR at the previous fiscal year's level of JPY 100.

Outlook

"In Japan, the women's fashion apparel industry promises robust growth as economic recovery bolsters consumer confidence. As the second year of the government's "Coolbiz" environmental initiative, 2006 will likely see stepped-up efforts to encourage the wearing of light business apparel to curb the use of air conditioners in summer. Amid those business conditions, the Company will redouble efforts to develop products that earn customer endorsement by fortifying new strategic product categories, such as Style Science lineups. At the same time, we will decisively implement measures aimed at expanding SPA operations and increasing new points of contact with customers. And, we will accelerate growth by implementing the strategies of CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies).

In the current fiscal year, ending March 31, 2007, we project increases of 2% in consolidated net sales, to JPY 168.0 billion; 9.5 times in operating income, to JPY 12.6 billion; and 2.8 times in net income, to JPY 8.0 billion. The main factors contributing to the significant increase in operating income will be: improved return on sales through the reduction of such items as selling, general and administrative expenses; the absence of the JPY 6.9 billion special retirement related expenses, which was temporarily incurred due to the October 2005 implementation of the special voluntary retirement scheme; the absence of a JPY 0.6 billion additional retirement benefit expense that was recorded in the year under review stemming from the dissolution of Fukushima Wacoal Sewing Corp.; and lower personnel costs resulting from special voluntary retirement."

(Excerpts from the 2006 Wacoal Annual Report to Shareholders)

To download the Wacoal Holdings 2006 Annual Report, please visit the Company IR website at http://www.wacoal.co.jp/w-holdings/aboutcom_e/ir/index_e.html or the JCN Network Annual Report Gallery at http://www.japancorp.net/reports.asp

About Wacoal Corporation

Wacoal (TSE:3591; NQ: WACLY) has led the Japanese market for women's innerwear since its establishment in 1949. Still holding a dominant share of the home market, the Company is steadily growing sales in North America, Europe, and Asia. In October 2005, the Company changed its name from Wacoal Corp. to Wacoal Holdings Corp., which became the parent company of subsidiaries in the Wacoal Group. For more information, please visit www.wacoal.co.jp.

Contact:

Wacoal Holdings Corp.
Tadahiro Kondo
Tel: +81-75-682-1028
Fax: +81-75-672-3219
Email: [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Japan Corporate News Network K.K.

**********************************************************************

As of Tuesday, 09-26-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated an UPTREND on
11-22-2005 for WACLY @ $68.83.

For more information on Comtex SmarTrend Alert, contact your market data
provider or go to CSTADirect.com

SmarTrend is a registered trademark of Comtex News Network, Inc.
Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.
Kaine says Va. poised for bright economic future: For the state to realize its potential, the governor said, it must first settle its transportation problems.. Check it out:
(Roanoke Times, The (Roanoke, VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--Gov. Tim Kaine disclosed his administration's economic development strategy Friday in Roanoke, saying Virginia has a highly rated business climate with strong air and sea connections to other countries.



Those strengths were not helped by the General Assembly's transportation special session, which "came to a very ignominious end" Thursday in Richmond, Kaine told the Virginia Economic Developers Association meeting in Roanoke.

Lawmakers failed to adopt a transportation funding plan during the three-day session.

Still, Kaine said he was optimistic about Virginia's economic potential 10 to 20 years from now.

"I believe we are in a very powerful position here in Virginia," Kaine said, because of opportunities in global trade.

Virginia was formed, he pointed out, with English investors backing the Jamestown colony 400 years ago.

Today, some Virginia communities that have lost textile and other manufacturing jobs have reason to fear global competition, Kaine said, but companies on other continents are willing to invest in any American states that compete for them.

"We have to embrace that competition and win," Kaine said.

That could mean an attractive incentives package for a select few types of businesses, Kaine said. Virginia can't afford the dollars some states put into incentives, he said, but the right prospect might be worth a generous package.

Virginia's business climate was endorsed this year by Forbes magazine's first rating of states for their business climate. No other state "was even a close second" to Virginia's No. 1 ranking, Kaine said.

Two things in Virginia's favor are Dulles International Airport and the ports of Virginia, he said.

Dulles has direct flights to every continent, and few states can match that, Kaine said. The problem that keeps Dulles from reaching its potential, Kaine said, is congestion on the roads leading to it.

Virginia's ports already are the second-busiest on the East Coast, and can surpass New York because Virginia's bays can be dredged to accommodate ever-larger ships.

New York Harbor has a rock bottom, and making it deeper would be difficult, Kaine said.

Virginia needs better highway and rail connections with the ports, Kaine said.

"I look at the power of our education system and the connections we have in transportation that other states don't have," Kaine said.

But there are some "flies in the ointment," he said, and a major one is that the legislature, after nine months of talking about transportation, has "ended up with very little to show for it."

A compromise plan that was developed over the summer by Republican legislators from Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads was shot down Tuesday, the first day of the special session, Kaine said.

"On the critical issue of investing dollars in what we need, there has been zero progress," he said.

Kaine said the transportation issue isn't settled yet.

"I don't have any doubt we will deal with it in the course of my term," he said. But the delay means inflation will reduce what Virginia can afford for a solution, Kaine said.

His presentation in Roanoke also attracted a protest.

A newly formed group called Free Enterprise Watch, headed by Michael Reynold in Richmond, posted a mockup of a Trojan horse near the Hotel Roanoke, where Kaine spoke.

The group said Kaine favors organized labor because he received 10 times more campaign contributions from labor groups that did his predecessor, Gov. Mark Warner.

Free Enterprise Watch also noted Kaine appointed two people from labor groups to his administration: former AFL-CIO president Daniel LeBlanc to be his senior work force adviser; and Jean Bankos, former president of the Virginia Education Association teachers' group, as his senior adviser for education projects.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Roanoke Times, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Former executives get 6 to 8 years: Baptist Foundation pair maintain their innocence. Check it out:
(Tribune, The (Mesa, AZ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--Two former executives of the bankrupt Baptist Foundation of Arizona maintained their innocence Friday as a judge gave them eight- and sixyear prison terms for their roles in one of the largest collapses of a non-profit organization ever.



Former president William Crotts, 61, and former general counsel Thomas Grabinski, 46, said they always believed they were following the letter and spirit of the law in structuring the foundation's finances and they never tried to steal anyone's investments.

"There's no pot of gold hidden away," Grabinski said, addressing Judge Kenneth Fields of Maricopa County Superior Court, who imposed upon him a six-year prison term.

Fields, the prosecutor and defense attorneys agreed that the case was unusual as far as fraud cases go because there was no intent to steal, and many of the victims came to the defense of the defendants.

A jury convicted them in July on three counts of fraud and one count of knowingly conducting an illegal enterprise, but acquitted them of 23 counts of theft.

Fields gave them harsher penalties than what the law typically calls for, saying the circumstances calling for a tougher sentence outweighed those for a lighter one by a "small degree."

Fields said some of the reasons for the tougher sentence were the high number of victims -- most of them elderly -- the emotional and financial harm they endured, and the two former executives exploited their religious beliefs for many years to get them to invest.

"I thought it was a fair judgment," said Katy Moss, 81, of Scottsdale, who invested $250,000 before recouping about 53 percent of her loss in the bankruptcy proceedings.

Grabinski's father, Dale Grabinski, said his son refused to take a plea deal like five other defendants did because any admission to committing a crime would have been a lie.

The foundation, which was formed in 1948 to raise money for Baptist causes, declared bankruptcy in November 1999, owing 11,000 to 13,000 investors between $500 million to $600 million.

Investors were able to regain up to 70 percent of their money after the sale of assets and lawsuit settlements.

Prosecutor Donald Conrad said the foundation continued to seek investors even as Crotts and Grabinski knew it was sinking financially, telling them it was financially sound.

Conrad said the men misled investors by hiding the foundation's losses in associated companies.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
University doctors' offices sprouting in the northwest. Check it out:
(Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--Construction is under way on a 15,000-square-foot one-level medical office building on the northwest corner of Smiley Lane and Oakland Gravel Road for a University Physicians Family Medicine Clinic slated to open in about a year.



The property is near Lange Middle School and the Springdale Estates subdivision. Bruce and Elizabeth Odle purchased the land in April from Drew Properties LLC, according to county records.

The sprouting medical complex is a project of the Odle family's Trittenbach Development LLC.

Officials at the University of Missouri-Columbia approached the Odles and pitched a deal to lease the entire building to house the clinic, Nathan Odle said. The deal is a classic win-win, he said.

"It's going to be really good for that area because it is going to be family medicine," Odle said. "It's a good use for that corner."

The Odles develop commercial and residential property and have forged a niche in medical office buildings near Columbia Regional Hospital. Construction is under way on their four-level, 60,000-square-foot 303 N. Keene St. medical building, part of their Columbia Medical Plaza.

The sprouting complex, expected to open at the end of this year, will feature covered parking, high-speed elevators, a private workout facility and outdoor patios.

GODAS GRACIOUS

Lakeview Mall, a 27,000-square-foot retail center north of Interstate 70 just off the Lake of the Woods exit, recently bagged a store expansion and a new tenant.

La Acapulquena Supermarket, which opened this month in a 1,700-square-foot leasehold, will expand 3,300 square feet to stock more goods and launch a taqueria, a small eatery for shoppers to take a break and have a snack, co-owner Brandie Garay said.

The Garay family enterprise sells fresh fruits and vegetables and canned goods. Fresh meat is coming soon. Plans for the additional space include a Mexican bread shop and a sports store specializing in soccer clothing and gear.

The expanded area is expected to open early next year.

And Chris Daly of Cape Girardeau plans to open a gardening store called Let it Grow in a 1,700-square-foot leasehold. The store will sell indoor and outdoor gardening products and supplies.

Lakeview Mall is owned by local businessman and real estate developer George Godas. Leasing agent John John of Re/Max Boone Realty said about 12,000 square feet remains available for lease.

WE'LL SEE

Here's more on what's happening along the burgeoning Range Line Street, aka Highway 763, corridor.

A Commerce Bank branch at the southeast corner of Range Line and Brown School Road is under construction and slated to open by the end of the year, said Teresa Maledy, the bank's president and market manager for the Central Missouri Region.

Across the street is a planned phase of the commercial and residential Auburn Hills development, owned by a group that includes local developer Rob Wolverton.

Last year, a local company linked with the Grindstone Parkway Wal-Mart Supercenter bought an option to buy land in the development, fueling speculation that the land would someday sprout a Supercenter. Mum is still the word on that deal.

On Brown School Road just east of Range Line, a UMB Bank branch and a 20,000-square-foot retail center is planned, or so says a sign posted on the property.

Brian Neuner, president of UMB's three Columbia branches, said it might be time to take that sign down. He said the bank has taken a "wait-and-see" attitude about the location and could end up selling its 1-acre parcel.

"We're waiting to see what's going to happen up there," Neuner said. "There are so many factors that we can't control," he said.

A PEnOS BY ANY OTHER NAME

Would you buy a house on a street named Point Penos?

That street name in the sprouting 102-lot Monterey Hills residential subdivision was changed to "San Mateo," Planning and Development Director Tim Teddy told the city's Planning and Zoning Commission last week.

The development, off Stadium Boulevard just north of Interstate 70, is named after the Monterey Bay area of California with street names that include Cannery Row Court, Spanish Bay Drive, Carmello Rock Drive and the like.

The name change notice from Teddy drew muted laughter and shoulder bobs from Commissioners David Brodsky and Glenn Rice, who likely thought the obvious -- add a Missouri drawl and the name could be trouble.

Teddy let out a polite chuckle this week when he heard about the heehaw going on over the name. Maintaining proper decorum, Teddy chose the higher ground and stuck to the official explanation: The street name was changed to avoid having two streets in the development that start with "Point."

MORE GRAF

The Mexico City Council recently approved $800,000 in Chapter 100 industrial development bonds to build a new 23,000-square-foot distribution and customer service facility for homegrown Graf & Sons, a manufacturer of reloading products and accessories for the sport shooting industry, according to a news release.

Company officials said the planned expansion, expected to open in the spring, will create 20 new jobs, or a 50 percent increase from the current payroll of 40 employees.

Bond proceeds will be used by the city to buy the land and build the facility. The company leases the property from the city, and the lease payments are used to repay the bonds.

Arnold Graf and sons Bob and Howard founded the company in 1957.

QUICKIES

Local franchise owner Mark Telken wrote to say that the name of his upcoming seafood restaurant at the Shoppes at Stadium has changed to Joey's Seafood & Grill. The restaurant is expected to open in November. Veteran local travel agent Dan Stookey has left Summit Travel and teamed up with Great Southern Tiger Travel, a subsidiary of Springfield-based Great Southern Bank that has bought two local travel agencies during the past year. Last year, Summit Travel owner Jerry Price bought Cooper Travel Service from Stookey. ... Jefferson City-based Premier Bank, founded by Bruce Wiley in 1995, has reached the $1 billion in assets milestone, according to a news release. To celebrate, the bank plans to give away a vacation to Napa Valley, Calif.

Copyright (c) 2006, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Congress repeals Wright: Love flights anywhere allowed when bill signed as early as next week. Check it out:
(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--WASHINGTON -- Congress approved legislation late Friday to repeal the Wright amendment, potentially resolving a decades-old battle over the role of Dallas Love Field.

The bill to phase out flight restrictions at the Dallas airport cleared the House overwhelmingly in a late-night vote before lawmakers departed for a pre-election recess.

The legislation won passage in the Senate earlier Friday after months of pressure by Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to win over a final detractor, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

President Bush is expected to sign the measure as early as next week.

"It's a great relief to have a final solution," said Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, whose district includes Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. "The fact that none of the parties are completely happy, and all of the parties are relieved to have it over, should be a sign that it's a good agreement."



Still, lawmakers acknowledged that the Wright battle may not be over. North Texas residents and groups that opposed the deal are expected to challenge the legislation in court.

The Wright legislation stalled this summer under criticism over its treatment of federal antitrust laws, and supporters in Congress fought hard for language to help shield the deal from a long court fight.

The legislation will repeal Wright in 2014, implementing a June agreement by the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and D/FW Airport.

It would immediately allow flights anywhere from Love Field, as long as they first stopped inside the nine-state Wright perimeter.

The agreement would also cut the number of available gates at Love from 32 to 20, part of a plan to compensate for an expected increase in noise, pollution and congestion. Nineteen gates are in use now.

On Congress' last day, the House turned out to be the greatest source of contention over repealing the Wright law.

House members planned to clear their bill under suspension of normal rules, a procedure often used for uncontroversial measures that would prevent lawmakers from offering amendments.

Suspension bills often pass without recorded votes, but objections to the Wright legislation forced proponents to corral the support of two-thirds of those present.

A heated evening debate had opponents sparring over the antitrust issue, while also arguing that residents outside the existing Wright perimeter would be saddled with higher airfares as a result of the deal.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said the bill "will continue vestiges of the Wright amendment" until 2025, when gate arrangements expire under the deal.

In a departure from many congressional debates, supporters and opponents of the Wright agreement weren't split by party affiliation or geography.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, argued against a frequent ally, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, whose district includes Love Field.

Bumper sticker

Mr. Sensenbrenner, recalling the "Don't Mess with Texas" bumper stickers in the House garage, said, "Tonight is one of the nights where we ought to mess with Texas.

"This is the most anti-consumer, anti-free-enterprise bill that has come before this House in a long time," he said.

The debate on the House floor was not expected a day earlier. North Texas lawmakers positioned the legislation to allow it to pass easily.

A tougher fight had been expected in the Senate, where rules and traditions allow a single member the power to block legislation.

By early Thursday afternoon, after House members from North Texas had forged a path for their bill to reach the House floor, the pressure had grown on Ms. Hutchison and Mr. Cornyn.

Efforts in recent weeks to find language that was acceptable to Mr. Leahy and the North Texas parties had failed, even after changing the antitrust language from an explicit to implicit exemption to win over the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Word came from the Texas senators' staffs later Thursday afternoon that Mr. Leahy could come to an agreement for bringing the Wright bill up under unanimous consent, a procedure used for noncontroversial measures.

The senators and their staffs started working on statements to be read on the Senate floor.

Ms. Hutchison reached out to House members about her progress, e-mailing and talking with Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, past midnight and into Friday morning, to ask her to wait for a Senate bill to come to the House to prevent further procedural delays.

By Friday morning, Ms. Hutchison was sitting in a cloakroom off the Senate floor working out how the bill would come up under unanimous consent.

Mr. Leahy had been pushing a wilderness bill to move under unanimous consent, a measure that largely affected Vermont and New Hampshire.

Asked later if she was holding up his bill, Ms. Hutchison smiled. "Why would someone do that?

"Let's just say that we came to an agreement to pass both bills," she said.

The bill passed the Senate in less than a minute just before 1 p.m. Dallas time.

Then Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Leahy engaged in a colloquy, a discussion on the Senate floor that allows lawmakers to share their thinking for the record.

The dialogue does not offer the force of law but gives judges an opportunity to glean congressional intent in a court challenge over the antitrust issue

"Senator Cornyn and I share a concern about providing antitrust immunity to agreements involving private parties," Mr. Leahy said. "While I would prefer greater clarity on this point in the bill, I am pleased that Senator Cornyn and I agree that this is an entirely unique situation, which should not be repeated."

Mr. Cornyn agreed that "the legislation contemplated here should not be a model for any future arrangement.

"In no way can I imagine a situation arising with a set of facts remotely similar to that created in Dallas by the passage of the Wright Amendment," he said.

Mr. Cornyn, who serves on the judiciary committee with Mr. Leahy, said later that ending the impasse was a matter of talking through the details of the Wright law and the uniqueness of the situation.

"We had to explain to him that actually this increased competition rather than decreased competition," Mr. Cornyn said. "That was one of the hard things for people to understand because of the unique nature of the Wright amendment."

Ms. Hutchison, who urged North Texas officials early in the year to come up with a solution, said the Wright legislation took "an inordinate amount of time for a bill that shouldn't have been this complicated."

"I have to say that in my 12 years in the Senate, the hardest thing that I've ever had to explain was the Wright amendment to outside people," she said.

Miller euphoric

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller was euphoric Friday afternoon. She'd feared the Senate would be the bigger obstacle.

Ms. Miller said she was confident the terms of the bill would protect Dallas from losing a court challenge, due to a dedicated North Texas delegation and attorneys who worked around the clock.

"Without the language crafted in the Senate ... we would have a huge problem," Ms. Miller said.

Friday's actions followed a nearly two-year fight over the Wright amendment and Love Field.

In November 2004, Southwest Airlines announced that it would lobby Congress to lift the flight restrictions.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, introduced legislation the following May to repeal Wright completely, spurring lawmakers nationwide to pick up the cause to win cheaper flights to and from North Texas.

But Mr. Hensarling decided not to back the compromise agreement, saying he could not support the nation's only congressional mandate on the number of gates at a local airport.

He sat quietly in the back row of the House on Friday evening to watch the debate. He planned to vote against the bill but did not fight the compromise agreement.

Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, who co-sponsored the original Wright repeal legislation with Mr. Hensarling, said the compromise was "not perfect" but still an agreement worthy of support.

Staff writer Emily Ramshaw in Dallas contributed to this report.

E-mail [email protected]

HOW THE WRIGHT AMENDMENT WOUND UP ON ITS FINAL DESCENT

Key events in the history of the Wright amendment:

1979

In an effort to protect a young Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport from competition at Dallas Love Field, Congress approves the Wright amendment, named for U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth. The law, which took effect the following year, limits flights from Love Field to airports in Texas and its adjoining four states, but allows commuter planes with 56 seats or fewer to fly farther.

1997

Congress approves the Shelby amendment, adding Alabama, Kansas and Mississippi to the Wright territory.

2000

April: Legend Airlines starts service from its own terminal at Love to Los Angeles and Washington with modified 56-seat jets. Continental Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also launch Love service.

December: Legend declares bankruptcy and stops all service. Eventually, American and Delta pull out of Love. Continental remained.

2004

September: Delta announces it will close its D/FW hub, reducing its daily schedule here from 254 nonstop flights to 21.

November: Southwest CEO Gary Kelly says the carrier considered filling some of Delta's void at D/FW, but decided against it. Instead, Mr. Kelly calls for repeal of the Wright law.

D/FW and American express strong support for continuing the Wright limits.

2005

May: U.S. Reps. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, and Sam Johnson, R-Plano, introduce legislation in the House that would fully repeal Wright.

July: Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign introduces a similar bill in the Senate.

November: Missouri becomes the ninth state outside of Texas that can be served from Love Field, when Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., tacks his state onto the Wright perimeter in a transportation-spending bill.

December: Southwest launches new service to St. Louis and Kansas City from Love.

2006

February: Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn urge airline and government leaders in North Texas to come up with a compromise to settle the Wright fight.

March: American returns to Love, with service to St. Louis and Kansas City, as well as to Austin and San Antonio.

June: The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, along with D/FW, Southwest and American, announce a compromise that would allow for immediate through-ticketing and full repeal in 2014.

July: House and Senate committees approve legislation to enact the agreement. But a lobbying effort from the owners of the former Legend terminal, set to be demolished under the deal, draws detractors in Congress. The bills stall over antitrust exemptions.

September: The Senate approves legislation reflecting the North Texas compromise. A vote was set for late Friday in the House.

REPEALING WRIGHT

Once signed into law, legislation approved in the House and Senate on Friday would:

--Immediately allow commercial travel anywhere from Dallas Love Field if planes first stop at an airport in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma or Texas.

--Permit commercial flights to travel nonstop to any destination in the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia, beginning eight years after enactment.

--Direct the city of Dallas to reduce and cap the number of gates at Love Field at no more than 20; the airport now has 32 gates, 19 of which are in use.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Football: William Hill's decision to close US operation ironic. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Despite the advertising campaign for their self-styled 'Gods of Poker' being a bit on the naff side, I like the William Hill poker website. The company has embraced the game by offering decent sign-up bonuses and $1 million prize pools every week. It sponsors a raft of professionals, has a good online poker school and a poker show broadcast on Sky each Wednesday.



Now, William Hill are not doing all of this because they're nice guys - although I'm sure they are - the company is involved in poker and other gaming activities because it wants to make a profit. Few people would contest their absolute right to do so.

The company do not force anyone to play and take a responsible approach towards gaming, so I was disappointed when they became the umpteenth company to effectively close down their US operations earlier this week.

There is a certain irony about internet poker and other gaming activities being actively discouraged in parts of the US.

America was built on free enterprise and its citizens remain justifiably suspicious of politicians and others who pursue actions in the name of the public good. Yet the world's richest, most entrepreneuri ally-focused nation insists on trying to behave like King Canute and prevent people from playing poker and participating in other forms of online gaming.

According to Hill's head honcho, Tom Singer, the fear of arrest prompted the company's decision to abandon the US market following the arrest and subsequent release of executives at Sportingbet and Bet On Sports earlier this year. Peter Dicks, the former chairman of Sportingbet, said he suspected that arrest warrants had been issued for a number of senior executives at companies involved in online poker and gaming.

In view of this, William Hill's decision was entirely understandable. As Mr Singer said: "Why do I need to live with the risk [of arrest] as a William Hill director?" He's absolutely right, yet there is evidence to suggest that the American crackdown on internet betting is set to move up a gear.

America's anti-poker crusade is being led by prosecutors in Louisiana, one of seven states that expressly outlaws online gaming. There is speculation within the gaming industry that the state has 58 arrest warrants ready to be issued should senior executives at internet gambling firms set foot on US soil.

There is further irony in the state of Louisiana's actions. The USA remains home to the world's largest gambling centre. Las Vegas, where the World Series of Poker is contested amid every conceivable gaming activity, contributes billions of tax dollars to the federal government.

But there is an even greater irony in Louisiana law-enforcers trying to prevent people playing poker. The game is a direct descendent of a French game called Poque, a name derived from the French verb pocher, to bluff. The modern form of draw poker originated in the US during the 19th century and became popular on Mississippi steamboats leaving French-speaking New Orleans. That's right: New Orleans in the state of Louisiana.

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
FOOD& DRINK: Cafe's a lifestyle choice. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) It is a typical Kings Heath street. Rabbit hutches are piled up outside a pet shop, several sofas peek out of a furniture store and a couple are enjoying a fry up at a greasy spoon across the road.



But there is a hidden gem among these standard array of shops and it has got residents excited.

For those who have bemoaned the rise in charity shops and for the council, which is thinking up a strategy to make Kings Heath "more like Moseley" with a better class of shop, they may be pleasantly surprised that there is hope on the horizon.

Behind some smart iron gates and through a little alleyway off York Road lies Kitchen Garden Cafe - an enterprise set up by two passionate environmentalists keen to add something to this diverse community.

"People seek us out when they come in and tell us this is exactly what Kings Heath needs," says owner Brett Rehling, who gave up his job as an IT manager for Cadbury's to create this cafe and garden shop.

"Within two weeks of opening we were getting 60 to 70 covers and that was without a single bit of advertising. The great thing about Kings Heath and Moseley is that people speak to each other and our business has come from word of mouth," he adds.

Brett, who met his wife Tracey Fletcher while volunteering at Birmingham Friends of the Earth, greets me with a wide smile, keen to show off the huge renovation of this former hardware shop.

He now works at the cafe full time, with Tracey chipping in whenever possible in between working for WWF and caring for their two-year-old son, Sacha.

"This was the old hardware store," he says pointing at the shiny new kitchen where a cheery chef is busy dishing out breakfasts. "And this was an old greenhouse full of rubbish," he says as we walk among the wooden tables. "And over here was Kings Heath's former blacksmiths. When we came, it had been used as a saw mill and was knee deep in sawdust."

It is clear the couple's passion to make such a venture work is reflected in the way they have renovated this old building.

The original brick walls and Victorian windows have been restored, and blue bricks from the former blacksmith's have been used to create a Mediterranean style patio and courtyard.

Chunky wooden tables have been created from scaffolding boards and the chairs and cabinets have been bought from local auctions.

Work from local artists adorn the walls and in the corner a mum and toddler enjoy a quiet moment in the specially created children's play area.

As Brett shows off the building work, Tracey bounds in, keen to explain why the pair decided to embark on this ambitious project.

Both are so enthused, it is soon clear their business is more about creating a sustainable community than it is about making money.

"We want it to be attractive to everyone," says Tracey. "It is a cool place for young people and a nice environment for families."

"When you go to Spain you get restaurants which are like meeting places for families, there is a real mixed bunch of people," Brett chips in.

"Now we have got a child we know what people with young children want - they want to go somewhere other than a Wacky Warehouse," adds Tracey.

The pair are desperate to move away from the chunky cardigan, sandal wearing image an organic cafe might attract and hope the diverse community of Kings Heath will find something here for them.

"It would be the end of the world if the fact we were organic meant we only attracted posh, rich people," says Tracey.

"The cafe dispels two common misconceptions: first, that organic food is an exclusive, over-priced niche market' and second, that organic is boring, all lentil loaves and curd cheese. We wanted to give our customers the opportunity to experience the creativity that is possible with organic, seasonal and local food, at prices they can afford."

But the pair find it difficult to cover costs and overheads without pushing up their prices.

"We are not breaking even yet, and people seem surprised when we tell them that," Tracey explains.

"But we are confident we will get there," Brett adds, as he sets out a vision for evening events from cabaret acts to cheese and wine tasting.

"We are not in the city centre or in Brighton or London - this is Kings Heath and people are not going to spend a lot on lunch. So we have to be very resourceful," he adds.

It is 11am and the cafe is gearing up for what they hope will be a busy lunch. An aroma of tomato soup and marrow fritters flows from the kitchen while a chef's assistant slices thick chunks of fresh organic bread.

The marrow has been taken off a plant grown in the garden, where a variety of plants from olive trees to courgettes are up for sale.

"I always liked food and being a host.

"We used to have a lot of parties, and so we were used to doing it for nothing," says Brett as he explains what made him give up his job for this new competitive world of hospitality.

For Tracey, it was a desire to do more for her local community which prompted the move.

"I started working for WWF eight-and-a-half years ago, which was really fulfilling, but for the last few years it has not been enough for me - I wanted to do something really practical.

"We were doing a regional strategy for WWF, but I wanted to look at what is actually happening in the community - getting real results. I had lots of ambition to have a real sustainable community, have a central meeting point where people can come and relax."

As well as the cafe, the couple have created a small shop and deli selling local foods, such as Fowlers' cheese from Warwickshire and yoghurt from the Dairy House in Herefordshire.

There is also an array of organic veg from a Malvern farm, packs of Tyrrells Crisps, ice-cream from September Dairies in Herefordshire and Frank's hand-made biscuits, also from Herefordshire.

Tracey coaxes me into the garden shop, where everything related to organics can be found.

"I was just fed up of going into garden centres and seeing such a pathetic section on organic gardening," she says.

Everything from bird boxes to organic fertilisers can be found, with both organic and non organic plants scattered around the entrance.

"We wanted to link growing and eating organically," she says.

"We are going to have an apple day soon and next year we hope to stock lots of seeds for the allotment holders around here," she adds.

Their vision had been to find a venue where they could create a community one stop shop, a space for a creche, restaurant and, at one stage, a launderette.

To some it may seem like another, if not attractive looking, cafe. But to them it is a lifestyle they want to share with the rest of Kings Heath.

"We want it to be a community place. In some areas mums meet up in these grim community centres because there is no where else to go," says Tracey. "I hope we have created somewhere attractive for all sorts of people within the community."

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/29 Altra Holdings Inc. (Quincy, MA) $172.5
Is a leading global designer, producer and marketer of a wide
range of mechanical power transmission.
09/28 Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Yokneam, ) $86.2
Is a leading supplier of semiconductor-based, high-
performance interconnect products.
09/28 AeroVironment Inc. (Monrovia, CA) $115.0
Designs, develops, produces and supports a technologically-
advanced portfolio of small unmanned aircraft systems.
09/27 Switch & Data Inc. (Tampa, FL) $150.0
Is a leading provider of network neutral interconnection and
colocation services.
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
Wacoal Holdings Annual Report to Shareholders, 'Transition to a Course of Growth'. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Tokyo, Japan, Sep 29, 2006 (JCN Newswire via COMTEX) --Wacoal Holdings (TSE:3591; NQ: WACLY) has published its Annual Report to Shareholders for the year ended March 31, 2006. The Company reported an increase in consolidated net sales of 2.0% year on year, to JPY 164.1 billion. Operating and net income decreased due to the recording of extraordinary factors, however excluding these factors, operating income was up 57.0% year on year.



Wacoal laid the foundations for new medium-to-long-term growth through initiatives such as the transition to a holding company system and the introduction of a special voluntary retirement scheme. To raise business value by stepping up the pace of growth, the Company vigorously enhanced the operations of existing businesses, expanded its share of Japan's innerwear market, continued to rebuild and strengthen overseas operations, and developed peripheral businesses.

To download the Wacoal Holdings 2006 Annual Report, please visit the Company IR website at http://www.wacoal.co.jp/w-holdings/aboutcom_e/ir/index_e.html

Wacoal Holdings Annual Report to Shareholders, 'Transition to a Course of Growth'

Yoshikata Tsukamoto, Wacoal Representative Director, speaks about the launch of the Holding Company system, strategies for the future, corporate governance and his outlook for the Company in his 2006 Address to Shareholders.

"In October 2005, the Company changed its name from Wacoal Corp. to Wacoal Holdings Corp., which became the parent company of subsidiaries in the Wacoal Group. Under the holding company system, the roles of Wacoal Holdings and such Group operating subsidiaries as Wacoal are clearly defined. The holding company manages the Group and oversees operating subsidiaries, while the operating subsidiaries implement operations. This system enables the holding company to target growth and deploy resources on a Groupwide basis. Also, the delegation of authority and responsibility to the operating subsidiaries enhances the efficiency and dynamism of operational implementation. Moreover, because it facilitates reorganization by business type or function, the holding company system is the most suited to pursuing business tie-ups and mergers and acquisitions aimed at achieving corporate structural reform to reflect the times.

Medium-to-Long-Term Strategies

"At present, Wacoal Holdings and its operating subsidiaries are taking steps based on the Corporate Activation Project 21 (CAP21), which sets out medium-to-long-term strategies for enhancing business value. CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies) formulates new business strategies that will enable the Company to make a fresh start and step up the pace of growth. Our transition to the holding company system resulted from the implementation of one such strategy. Guided by CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies), we are reorganizing and strengthening existing businesses. Those efforts focus on rigorously heightening the efficiency of management systems and operational processes to bolster competitiveness and create an unshakable platform for growth. Further, not limiting ourselves to independent business development, we are cultivating businesses in areas that promise growth through the active pursuit of mergers and acquisitions, strategic operational tie-ups, capital tie-ups, and OEM. For example, in June 2006 the Company entered into an operational and capital tie-up with Peach John Co., Ltd., which mainly conducts mail-order sales of innerwear. Very popular among women in their teens and 20s, Peach John has grown rapidly in recent years.

The Company's overriding management goal is to benefit society at large by enabling women the world over to express their beauty. Also, in our business and management activities we seek to create value and establish a reputation befitting an international brand. Mindful of those management goals, we will implement the strategies of CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies), aiming to surpass consolidated net sales of JPY 200 billion, ROE of 6%, and an operating income margin of 9% by the year ending March 2011. To meet those targets, we will implement a strategy of actively investing in businesses to realize new operational expansion. We aim to increase sales in markets in Japan, the United States, China, and Europe. Moreover, we will mull forays into markets in new regions.

Business Review

"In fiscal 2006, consolidated net sales increased 2.0% year on year, to JPY 164.1 billion, operating income was down 88.7%, to JPY 1.3 billion, and net income decreased 58.5%, to JPY 2.8 billion. The decline in operating income was mainly due to the recording of a government subsidy of JPY 7.1 billion in the previous fiscal year and the November 2005 recording of JPY 6.9 billion associated with special retirement related expenses.

Excluding such temporary increases and decreases in income due to the recording of extraordinary factors, operating income was up 57.0% year on year. The main contributions to higher net sales came from brisk sales of Wacoal-brand Hip Walker and Wing-brand Style Up Pants. Also-a focus of our promotional efforts in winter-sales of innerwear products designed for cold weather were favorable, centered on the Kaiteki NAVI lineup, which we launched in response to the Japanese government's "Warmbiz" environmental initiative to encourage the wearing of thermal business apparel to minimize the use of heaters in winter. On the other hand, net sales growth was held back by generally sluggish sales of mainstay brassieres and continuing weak mail-order catalog sales. Overseas, business grew favorably, with the exception of operations in France, where consumer spending remained flat. Wacoal America, Inc., posted particularly strong growth, with sales up more than 15% year on year.

Corporate Governance

"The basic corporate governance policy of Wacoal Holdings is to continue heightening enterprise value by enhancing the efficiency and transparency of management from the perspective of all of the Company's stakeholders. In 2003, we established the Disclosure Committee to strengthen corporate governance and ensure the reliability of financial and other information that we issue. That committee checks the propriety of internal controls and-pursuant to Section 302 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act-the propriety of disclosure with respect to annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the accuracy of disclosed information.

In 2005, due to the discovery of potential defects in certain products sold, the Company provided replacements or refunds. In addition, there was a leakage of the personal info-rmation of certain customers of Wacoal's Internet shopping service. To restore customer confidence, we strengthened our quality control system through stringent implementation of an ISO quality management system and other measures. Further, aiming to deal with overall management risks, we changed our Crisis Management Committee to the Risk Management Committee, under which we established a subcommittee responsible for measures relating to accidents and disasters. Also, we created a system to counteract information security risks based on the establishment of a new department that is dedicated to addressing such risks.

In addition, by introducing the holding company system we clearly separated the role of the holding company, which undertakes Group management and oversees operating subsidiaries, and the role of the operating subsidiaries, which implement operations. We plan further development of systems for oversight and operational implementation.

Returns to Shareholders

"Our basic policy for returns to shareholders is to continue steady cash dividend payments, invest actively to enhance earnings and business value, and increase earnings per share. The Company intends to invest retained earnings to increase profit, raise business value, and enhance future returns to shareholders. Those activities will concentrate on the creation of new sales areas through the development of SPA shops, the development of new points of contact with customers, aggressive investment in overseas operations, and investment in new businesses.

Despite a significant decrease in earnings associated with such factors as the recording of special retirement related expenses, in the fiscal year under review we maintained cash dividends per ADR at the previous fiscal year's level of JPY 100.

Outlook

"In Japan, the women's fashion apparel industry promises robust growth as economic recovery bolsters consumer confidence. As the second year of the government's "Coolbiz" environmental initiative, 2006 will likely see stepped-up efforts to encourage the wearing of light business apparel to curb the use of air conditioners in summer. Amid those business conditions, the Company will redouble efforts to develop products that earn customer endorsement by fortifying new strategic product categories, such as Style Science lineups. At the same time, we will decisively implement measures aimed at expanding SPA operations and increasing new points of contact with customers. And, we will accelerate growth by implementing the strategies of CAP21 (Medium-to-Long-Term Growth Strategies).

In the current fiscal year, ending March 31, 2007, we project increases of 2% in consolidated net sales, to JPY 168.0 billion; 9.5 times in operating income, to JPY 12.6 billion; and 2.8 times in net income, to JPY 8.0 billion. The main factors contributing to the significant increase in operating income will be: improved return on sales through the reduction of such items as selling, general and administrative expenses; the absence of the JPY 6.9 billion special retirement related expenses, which was temporarily incurred due to the October 2005 implementation of the special voluntary retirement scheme; the absence of a JPY 0.6 billion additional retirement benefit expense that was recorded in the year under review stemming from the dissolution of Fukushima Wacoal Sewing Corp.; and lower personnel costs resulting from special voluntary retirement."

(Excerpts from the 2006 Wacoal Annual Report to Shareholders)

To download the Wacoal Holdings 2006 Annual Report, please visit the Company IR website at http://www.wacoal.co.jp/w-holdings/aboutcom_e/ir/index_e.html or the JCN Network Annual Report Gallery at http://www.japancorp.net/reports.asp

About Wacoal Corporation

Wacoal (TSE:3591; NQ: WACLY) has led the Japanese market for women's innerwear since its establishment in 1949. Still holding a dominant share of the home market, the Company is steadily growing sales in North America, Europe, and Asia. In October 2005, the Company changed its name from Wacoal Corp. to Wacoal Holdings Corp., which became the parent company of subsidiaries in the Wacoal Group. For more information, please visit www.wacoal.co.jp.

Contact:

Wacoal Holdings Corp.
Tadahiro Kondo
Tel: +81-75-682-1028
Fax: +81-75-672-3219
Email: [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Japan Corporate News Network K.K.

**********************************************************************

As of Tuesday, 09-26-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated an UPTREND on
11-22-2005 for WACLY @ $68.83.

For more information on Comtex SmarTrend Alert, contact your market data
provider or go to CSTADirect.com

SmarTrend is a registered trademark of Comtex News Network, Inc.
Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.
Fitch affirms ProCredit Bank Ukraine at 'BB-'. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MOSCOW. Sept 28 (Interfax) - Fitch Ratings on Thursday affirmed ProCredit Bank Ukraine's ("ProCredit Ukraine") ratings at foreign currency Issuer Default 'BB-' (BB minus), Short-term foreign currency 'B', local currency Issuer Default 'BB', Short-term local currency 'B', Individual 'D', and Support '3', the ratings agency said in a release.



The Outlooks on the Issuer Default ratings ("IDR") are Stable. The national rating is affirmed at 'AAA(ukr)'.

The IDRs, Short-term and Support ratings of ProCredit
Ukraine are
based on Fitch's view of the potential support from its
owners,particularly ProCredit Holding AG ("PCH"; rated 'BBB-' (BBB minus)), its 60% owner, in case of need. However, the 'BB-' (BB minus) Country Ceiling of Ukraine limits the extent to which support can be factored into the IDRs. The ratings also take into account PCH's centralized control and risk management and ProCredit Ukraine's high degree of integration within the ProCredit group. The Stable Outlook on ProCredit Ukraine's IDRs reflects that of Ukraine's IDRs.

Fitch notes that any movement in the Country Ceiling for Ukraine would have implications for ProCredit Ukraine's IDRs. Downward movement in the Country Ceiling would also result in a change to the bank's Support rating.

"Upside potential for the Individual rating is currently limited by ProCredit Ukraine's small size," says Tomasz Walkowicz, an analyst at Fitch's Financial Institutions Group. "A significant deterioration in asset quality, capitalization and liquidity leading to a need for support would contribute to a downgrade."

ProCredit Ukraine is the 35th largest bank by total assets in Ukraine. In addition to PCH, its other shareholders include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Western NIS Enterprise Fund (a U.S. body), which have a 20% stake each.

PCH was set up as an equity investment company in 1998 by Frankfurt-based Internationale Projekt Consult GmbH to invest in the global network of ProCredit banks, which provide financing to micro-and small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. At end-May 2006, the group consisted of 19 banks in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, while the group's total assets were around EUR2.5 billion. PCH is responsible for group administration, strategy, risk management controls and supervision. PCH is not regulated as a banking group, but the ProCredit banks are regulated in their home countries.

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

The mothers of re-invention

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The mothers of re-invention. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Before China started its reforms and opened up to the outside world, many foreigners had the notion that Chinese women enjoyed unprecedented independence from men and high participation in the public sphere. This liberation for women, however, worked as a double-edged sword. Very often, it forced them to juggle jobs and families with great difficulty. Things are different today in a market economy in which masculinity is measured by the amount of money a man makes. A husband's higher income has taken the pressure off many working wives. Urban Chinese women, particularly in the middle-class, now have more options on how to spend their time. Some women feel their social identity is no longer contingent on them staying in the workforce. Instead, they see family as the primary commitment, and are proud to play a supporting role to the husband. Although it is a relatively recent phenomenon, it is no longer uncommon to see a small number of "full-time wives" (quan zhi tai tai) in Chinese cities, particularly within the rich and privileged echelon. The reasons behind this new phenomenon are many and diverse. Some believe such a trend has become possible simply because a growing number of families can afford not to have two incomes. Others point out that their lifestyle and choices owe not only to the economic boom but also to increasing social stratification, with the availability of migrant and laid-off workers as home-making helpers.



Meng Baili, a manager in an IT company in Beijing, is still looking for "Mrs Right," and in the meantime has his apartment cleaned by a local Beijing woman, a former factory worker who lost her job due to enterprise restructuring. Would he want his future wife to work? Meng said he was happy either way. "She does not have to work, as my salary is good enough to support her. But if she wants to work, it's her choice. As long as she fulfils her duties as a wife, I have no objection," he said.

When asked how he preferred to see his wife spending her time, Meng replied: "She can do community or charity work or work out in the gym to stay slim and fit but she shouldn't do housework. That's the maid's job." Indeed, very few full-time wives quit jobs to do housework. Hua Ruiling is in her late 30s and has two children, 15 and 3. Her husband is a real estate developer, and the family live at an expensive address in Haidian District, Beijing. Hua employs two full-time domestic helpers; one cooks while the other works as a nanny. Hua said that her husband was often away on business, sometimes abroad, but she had her own network of friends. She attends adult education classes and yoga classes, and drives her children to school and childcare. Currently she is attending an adult education course designed for women like herself. Offered by a prestigious university at a price which labourers and migrant workers would find astronomical more than 30,000 yuan (US$3,700) for one participant the course covered a wide range of subjects including literature, history, home science, and child development.

"There is a lot of useful knowledge and information out there. I feel that I can become a more cultivated person. I also meet a lot of new friends by going to these activities," Hua said.

Pros and cons Feminists debate the pros and cons of women returning home to become full-time mothers and wives. Some see this move as socially regressive because women run the risk of losing their independence and becoming socially disempowered. Others see it as a positive change for women, as they now have the option of not working, thus having more autonomy to follow their own dreams.

"Some women decide to quit man's world so that they can pursue their own idea of work. Stopping working for money doesn't mean that they disappear from public sphere. For instance, doing volunteer work, charity work, and running parents' groups online is also an important way of making contribution to society," said Wang Gan, an anthropologist who has written extensively on the topic of work and motherhood. While some women decide to become full-time wives because they bring clout and "face" to their husband, some men consider it a status symbol to keep their wives at home. Other women have decided to leave the workforce because they see fit to adjust their priorities in the face of changed domestic circumstances. This shift tends to happen when a couple is starting a family. Jiang, who declined to give her full name, worked as an accountant in a German-owned company in Beijing but stopped working after giving birth to her son. However, she stressed this may be an interim plan and she may not want to stay away from work permanently. "I read many books on parenting, and most of them point to the importance of bringing your child up on your own instead of using a nanny, especially during the first couple of years. So for the sake of my child's future, I am happy to stop working for a year or two," Jiang said.

In spite of the glamour of the "full-time wife," to most middle-class urban women, it is more desirable to have a foot in both worlds. In constructing a profile of the archetype "Vogue" woman, Liu Dan, from Conde Nast, which produces the Chinese Vogue magazine, said: "The archetypical Vogue woman is not a full-time wife, nor is she stressed out with work. She balances work and family, successfully and effortlessly." Xia Jun, 31, HR consultant with a trans-national corporation in Beijing, had a baby boy six months ago, and is currently still on unpaid maternity leave. With the help of a full-time live-in maid, Xia divides her maternity leave between her baby and trying to finish a research project for her Master's thesis. She will go back to work in eight-months. "It never occurred to me to become a full-time mother. It's important to have my own social life, to be exposed to smart people and exciting things," Xia said.

Xia also believed it was risky for a woman to build her sense of security around a man, especially considering the growing infamy of married rich men betraying their wife and taking on lovers and mistresses. "During the last few months since I had the child and stayed at home, I noticed I have become emotionally more dependent on my husband, more demanding of his attention and understanding, and more insecure about his feelings for me," Xia said. "This is because he has a whole world outside home, and I have nothing else to talk about apart from home. When I was working, I was not like this," she said. Although pleased with the time off during her maternity leave, Xia fears she can't afford to stay away from work for too long. "Things change fast, and organizational cultures and structure changes fast too. If you don't keep up, you may not be able to cope with the change," Xia added. "In my company, organizational structures are altered every half a year. I also know that if I stay away for too long, say for two or three years, there will be new people coming in, younger and with more credentials." From what Xia can see, the full-time wife phenomenon is a symptom of a patriarchal society. "It never occurs to my husband that he could quit work and look after the child. That's almost unheard of in China. I know it's quite common with Westerners. At work, I have quite a few European female colleagues whose husbands are here to look after children. But that's almost unheard of among Chinese men," she said. Both the birth of the "full-time wife" and the emergence of the "vogue woman" have taken place in Chinese cities not in spite of, but precisely because of, growing social and economic stratification over the last couple of decades. Social stratification To be sure, urban middle-class women can afford to choose between working and not working, but they cannot do it without cheap labour provided by rural women and laid-off factory workers who work as their domestic helpers. The latter are not blessed with these options. While some women in the cities are thinking of quitting jobs or cutting down work hours to spend time with their family, more and more rural women are leaving home and their families in order to work in cities as domestic workers. Currently there are at least 200,000 domestic workers in Beijing, and another 200,000 vacancies waiting to be filled. Xie Hong is one of the thousands of women in Beijing who leave her children behind in the village in order to make money working as a baomu. A young woman from Sichuan and in her late 20s, she works as a part-time domestic cleaner. Xie said she missed her own children badly and talked to them on the phone whenever she could. "City kids are so spoilt and live like princes and princesses. Each time I look at them, especially those who are at a similar age to my own children, I get upset. I am also a mother, but why can't I cuddle my children and buy them their favourite treats every day?" Xie said. "I know I am doing this for my kids, but I am also missing out on so much by being away. Last time I went home to see my kids, they looked at me as if I was a stranger and wouldn't come close to me," Xie added, her eyes filled with tears. Because of migrant women such as Xie, and thanks to the growing trend of outsourcing domestic work in urban China, middle-class urban women across the board are increasingly able to tailor their lifestyles and work patterns to suit their individual needs, thereby freely negotiating between working and not working, between full-time and part-time work, or between working for money and working to fulfil one's dreams. For many single professional women, life without a man is just fine, as long as she has the help of a maid. Similarly, for married women, their lifestyle either as a full-time wife or professional is hardly sustainable without the availability of paid domestic work.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Live from Comdex, it's Enable

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Live from Comdex, it's Enable. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COMDEX is the premier showcase of the latest breakthroughs and innovations in the IT marketplace. Many leading companies use COMDEX to launch their newest and next flagship products. In the IT arena, COMDEX is the place to see and be seen.



COMDEX is also where you will come in contact with the next big thing before it actually becomes the next big thing. For example, today the buzz is all about Tablet PCs. Yet, I saw the first Tablets at COMDEX two years ago. The same is true for smart phones and WIFI.

The next edition of Enable will be coming at you live from COMDEX and will let you in on the next big things. Until then, the COMDEX web site is chock full of added value and today's Enable looks at two such added value sections Research and White Papers.

Research Reports For Free

COMDEX is committed to providing the IT community with FREE quality research on the most important technology and business segments to help buyers and sellers make crucial decisions. The COMDEX Reports series includes market studies on technologies such as IT security, development environments and wireless, as well as buyer segments such as enterprise businesses and women in technology. To access the reports, just provide an email address when prompted. You should also check back often as new FREE reports are posted regularly.

The following are highlights of a few of the reports: COMDEX Report on Small Business - Home Office vs. Commercial Office Workers One of the key findings of the COMDEX Research Panel Small Business study is that small business respondents who work from home are very different from respondents who work at an office outside the home. This paper will develop an in-depth profile of these two groups and help foster an understanding of the differences between home office workers and those who work in an office outside the home.

COMDEX Report on Women Technology Buyers COMDEX, in partnership with WITI (Women In Technology International), commissioned a study on the involvement of women in purchasing technology for their businesses and organizations. This study explored the role of women in IT, technology products women purchase and the amount they are authorized to spend.

COMDEX/FORTUNE 1000 Technology Decision Maker Study The COMDEX/FORTUNE 1000 Technology Decision-Maker Survey was conducted to provide a snapshot of how technology influencers in the largest US companies feel about the economy, the prospects of a turnaround, and how the current downturn has affected budgets and decision-making processes within their companies. In addition, the study examines the importance of a range of business issues to companies today, and how these companies have fared in dealing with these important issues.

COMDEX Report on Biometrics Biometrics is one of the newest security technologies available. While clearly an immature market, biometric technologies are sure to become more widely used in the future as costs decrease and companies'

Wireless Technology: The Big Picture COMDEX panelists are involved users and evaluators of wireless technology. The COMDEX Panel survey on Wireless Technology found significant differences between how companies of different sizes are using and implementing wireless technology.

Small Business: Online vs. Non-online Businesses Among small businesses, those that consider themselves online businesses have a distinct profile from those who do not. The COMDEX Research Panel Small Business study seeks to develop a profile of online businesses and understand the key differences between online and non-online small companies.

Security Information security is one of the most important issues facing businesses today. The COMDEX Panel study on security aims to explore what security measures companies are taking and how panelists feel about the trade-off between privacy and security. This study found that while security is important to all panelists, companies of different sizes face different challenges when implementing security measures.

White Papers

COMDEX prides itself on community, content and commerce. In the White Paper section of the website you can search for in-depth information from the leading technology vendors and analyst groups. The White Papers are free, but you will have to pay for the Analyst reports.

White Paper topics include: Hardware Electronic Commerce Enterprise Applications IT Management Networking Software Development Telecommunications

Take advantage of the information provided by COMDEX. It is for the most part free and provides you with a wealth of information.

Next week we are LIVE from Las Vegas at COMDEX

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Invest In The Hiring Process

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Invest In The Hiring Process. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As we continue with our roadmap for success, we move on to the issue of hiring employees for your new enterprise. Hiring new employees is another example of a critical situation facing startups that if not handled correctly from the onset - will probably never be rectifiable. In today's Internet paced world, time is everything. Many new companies simply do not have the time or the personnel to properly hire new employees. Yet, a proper investment of your time during the hiring process will save you a lot if time in the future, and more importantly will prevent major headaches and even catastrophes for you and your company. Today's Enable provides you with some tips that will help you hire the right person for the job. The key is to invest a little time now - to save a lot of time later on.



What Is The Cover Letter Like?

Most companies try to weed out candidates as quickly as possible. A good method for doing this is via the cover letter. Does it show that the candidate investigated the firm in any way? Are there spelling or grammar mistakes? If it was faxed, was it sent from the potential employees current place of business (check the header of the fax)? Is there some kind of a statement that stands out and demonstrates that this candidate is serious? Is the cover letter a little too haughty? No cover letter at all could be an indication of either laziness or lack of experience. A very well done, professional cover letter is an excellent indication that the candidate is serious.

Resumes Are Sometimes Wish Lists

It is very easy for almost anyone to put together an impressive looking resume. As you review a potential employee's resume, take nothing for granted. You must check each and every "fact" very carefully because many items may be exaggerated or even a figment of the potential employees imagination. A friend of mine once told me that his rule for drafting a resume was - "if it could have been true, I put it in."

Check References!!

One of the most important, yet often ignored ways of insuring that you hire the best person for the job is to check their references. Use the telephone and email to contact each and every reference and try to learn as much as you can about the prospective employee. Other than simply checking to make sure everything on the resume is true, you should also ask questions like: What is the candidate's greatest asset? How did the candidate add value to the company? How did the candidate interact with co-workers? Is there anything negative you can say about the candidate? Why did the candidate leave?

The most important question you must ask is: "Can you give me names of other people at your company, or outside of the company (like clients or suppliers), whom I can speak with?". This will help you learn more and will enable you to deal with "cherry picked" references.

The Turndown - Be Professional

It is highly professional to send out "rejection" letters to all candidates that sent you their resumes. Most companies, especially those in Israel fail to do this. Business is all marketing. The candidates that you have decided not to hire - for whatever reason will all most likely find jobs at other companies in your industry. Do not use obvious form letters and the like. If you do not have time for a professional letter, at least send an email. Israel is a very small country, and your paths will cross with many of the candidates. Your reputation is very important and a professional turndown can pay off in the future.

Next week we will deal with executive search firms and with using the Internet to find potential employees.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 10, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Those Who Do - Should Teach

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Those Who Do - Should Teach. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) When I was in law school, my favorite courses were taught by lawyers who were not professors but who simply like to teach. They typically taught at night and most of the time gave us all kinds of war stories. They lived it and were giving us real examples from the real world. They talked about everything we wanted to do - and they were doing it!



Today's Enable incorporates this concept via Joe Hadzima, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Director and General Counsel to the MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc., and Managing Director of Main Street Partners LLC, a venture investing and technology commercialization firm located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a former partner and founder of the High Tech/ New Ventures Group and Sullivan & Worcester LLP, a major Boston-based law firm.

Hadzima writes a column called Starting Up for the Boston Business Journal. The column is written about real life problems and experiences faced by new and emerging companies in the New England area - but the topics covered are relevant to startups around the globe. The column, like my favorite law school professors, provides practical information to entrepreneurs.

Enable has reviewed the column, including the archives. Today we'll see how Hadzima deals with a crucial issue - the Board of Directors.

Don't Bore the Board of Directors - How To Use A Board Effectively tells you how to get the most out of your Board and how to ensure you don't waste their time. The ins and outs include:

Board Size Size and the resulting group dynamics will dictate much of how you deal with the Board. Most entrepreneurial private companies have Boards comprised of 3 to 5 Directors. Some have advisory boards (e.g. a Science Advisory Board) which are larger but the legal Board usually does not exceed 5 in number and rarely is greater than 7. Larger public companies usually have larger Boards, partly because of the need to have specialized committees (e.g., Audit Committee, Compensation Committee).

Outside of the Board Meeting In recruiting a Director you should have worked out the Director's level of activity and attention both in terms of the number of Board Meetings expected and, if the "job description" includes it, interactions outside of the Board room. These outside interactions with individual Directors are your opportunity to obtain individual advice and assistance. Establish a format which works for the individual Director and for you- a weekly breakfast, a monthly lunch, twice a week telephone call, frequent email, a tennis match followed by a half hour discussion by the juice bar-whatever works.

The Board Meeting The strength of the Board of Directors system comes from the collective action of experienced and informed people. It follows that the Board Meeting has to be a combination of information transfer processes and resulting decision making. Board Meetings rarely last all day unless some major event is being considered such as an acquisition. For a normal Board Meeting plan on a minimum of 12 to 2 hours, more typically 3 to 4 hours.

Information Because time is limited, you should "offload" as much of the background information transfer process as possible so that the Meeting can focus more on decision making. The "Board Package" is the main method of off-line information transfer and should be distributed to the Board with enough time for the Directors to be able to read and digest the material but not so far in advance that the information is out of date. Plan on getting the materials to the Directors about 3 days before the Meeting. A typical package will contain the following: An Agenda, Draft Minutes of the Last Meeting, Financial Reports with Management Commentary, Other Relevant Information. Be sure to keep the Directors informed of general developments between meetings- e.g., include the Directors on press release lists, product mailings etc. It can be very annoying to a Director to find out something about the Company from a source outside of the Company.

Knowledge@Wharton Revisited

As promised, we now return to Knowledge@Wharton to finish our overview of this excellent site. As mentioned last week, this is an online resource that offers the latest business insights, information and research from a variety of sources, including an in-depth searchable database.

In completing our look at this site, we move to the section entitled: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Here, you will find an excellent piece called Uncertainty, Technological Turbulence, Competition - What's a Manager to Do? Thrive on It, that teaches the concept of "habitual entrepreneurs." Habitual entrepreneurs have made careers out of starting businesses either within existing firms or independently. You will learn that they passionately seek new opportunities and pursue them with enormous discipline. Furthermore, they pursue only the best opportunities, and avoid exhausting themselves and their organizations by chasing every option. They focus on execution and change direction if necessary. And they engage the energies of everyone who works with them. You will also be provided with a detailed plan, based on these qualities, for you to apply to your own company.

In the same section you will also find an article entitled: Mercenaries vs. Missionaries: John Doerr Sees Two Kinds of Internet Entrepreneurs. John Doerr is a legend in the venture capital industry and you should pay very close attention to what he has to stay.

Doerr believes that as the new economy develops, several trends are emerging. Among his forecasts for the future: IP, or internet protocol, will be as important as the car or television. The web will become the standard communications platform in healthcare. Charter schools, and educational portals for the home and school, will transform education. Bandwidth will be crucial. Despite current skepticism about business-to-consumer e-commerce, it will remain a big trend, as will business-to-business e-commerce. Wireless information appliances will be big in the future. "That's how a billion Chinese will get onto the Internet," Doerr says. Genomics will be "fabulous" after 2005, as the human genome is fully mapped.

Doerr also predicts that the Internet will evolve into what he calls "the Evernet," which is "always on, high speed, ubiquitous and available in multiple formats." These formats will include a "voiceweb" for voice communications, a "handweb" for hand-held devices, a "PC web" for PCs, a "videoweb" for video and an "e-web" in which machines will communicate with machines. These changes will consolidate the foundations of the new economy.

Read the entire section and learn from one of the leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on September 26, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Wireless For Everyone

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Wireless For Everyone. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As we continue our focus on added value wireless related sites, Enable takes a look at www.wirelessdata.org. This site has something for everyone - from novice to expert.

Beginners will benefit from the site's wireless data primer. Developers will glean a lot of value from the developers green house section, and virtually anyone interested in the industry will be able to benefit from the free market research available on the site.



These and other features are described in detail below. This description is followed by a brief look at the organization behind the site - The Wireless Data Forum.

Wireless Data Primer

The last twenty years have seen an explosion in wireless communications and computer technology. The last five years have seen the explosion of the Internet. Standing at the center of this convergence is the wireless data industry. The primer provides a general overview of the industry and its key components.

The primer is in beta version, and is still not searchable. When I used it, the primer was bug free. However, be aware that some of the information is not exactly up to date.

Developers Greenhouse

This section is for those that want to join the Wireless Revolution. It provides a slew of resources to help you successfully develop applications for Wireless Data. This includes: Ardis Wireless Software Developers Program CDMA Online GSM World, the web home of the GSM Association, features the GSM Data Window. The RIM Developer Zone Sierra Wireless Developers Toolkit WAP Forum (Wireless Application Protocol) WAP.NET Wireless Developer Wireless Developer Network

Market Research

In the section called Market Index, you can look up over 100 reports, forecasts, and articles about Wireless Data. You can search by categories like new applications, international, enterprise, or consumer - or simply by keyword.

You only receive short blurbs, but the information contained in the blurb provides you with enough background to get a general idea of the particular market, product, etc, that you searched for.

For example, when I searched the word "palm", the following (among others) came up:

"Future of Palm VII dim. [6/9/99]"

"Analysts at the Wheaton, Md.-based consultancy Herschel Shosteck Associates aren't so sure and say the future is not bright for Palm VII. They predict sales of 100,000 units in the first year, a mere fraction of the projected 3.9 million personal digital assistants that will be sold in the United..."

"IBM Makes Wireless Deal; Suggested: Wireless devices to outnumber PCs on Internet, IBM expects [1/24/00]"

"IBM will design, build and run a global wireless Internet portal for Vodafone AirTouch PLC, the world's largest mobile phone operator, the companies announced earlier this month. The portal, which will be launched in July in Europe, North America and Australia, is based on software from..."

When I clicked on the above link, this is what I got:

"Summary: IBM will design, build and run a global wireless Internet portal for Vodafone AirTouch PLC, the world's largest mobile phone operator, the companies announced earlier this month. The portal, which will be launched in July in Europe, North America and Australia, is based on software from the Sun-Netscape Alliance and InfoSpace.com Inc. It will give users of mobile phone and handheld devices from Nokia Corp., Ericsson Inc. and Palm Computing Inc. access to messaging and calendaring functions, in addition to travel information and financial services."

The Wireless Data Forum

The Wireless Data Forum is a new organization with a new focus. Dedicated to publicizing successful wireless data applications and customer communities, the WDF is composed of network service providers, wireless device and infrastructure equipment manufacturers and vendors, computer software and hardware developers, and information services content providers. New members are actively being recruited from the wireless telecommunications, mobile computing, and Internet industries. The Wireless Data Forum's leadership is committed to being an industry-building mechanism. The Wireless Data Forum's work will focus on consensus building and promoting the entire wireless data industry.

It seems that the Forum means well and its current site does provide added value. Enable will continue to check on any updates and will keep you posted on the progress of this site, especially the Primer.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on June 20, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

A Developer's Dream

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(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Today's Enable is dedicated to developers. You guys and gals don't get the credit you deserve and are typically blamed for product bugs and problems. Are these product faults really your fault?



You are being pushed from all sides. You need prototypes, beta sites, etc. Your marketing "friends" are pushing you to get the product to market in record time. You feel the pressure every day - but where can you turn for help? Can the Internet help you like it seems to be helping everyone else?

If you are a wireless developer, you're in luck. AnywhereYouGo.com provides you with online tools and other information to help you develop applications that work without bugs and other problems - fast.

The solutions AnywhereYouGo.com provides are crucial because, according to the IGI group, by the year 2003 more people will access the Internet via a mobile phone than via PC. This will drive mobile e-commerce, which Strategy Analytics forecasts will reach a total 14 billion transactions in 2005 for a total market of $200 billion. The challenge is for today's wireless developers to build applications for multiple technologies, devices, and country standards.

AnywhereYouGo.com is the largest independent community of wireless application developers. The AnywhereYouGo.com web site provides industry and product news, developer tools and resources, industry reports, online application testing, directories of developers and applications, training and tutorials, and discussion groups covering wireless application development:

The entire site is excellent - especially the newsletters which I subscribe to personally. But today is dedicated to developers only, and as such Enable only focuses on the developer tools and application testing sections.

Five Steps To WAP Development

Anywhereyougo.com provides developers with a five step process for WAP development.

The steps are summarized below: Step 1 - Understand WAP: Step 2 - Get The Tools You Need Step 3 - Write Your First Application Step 4 - Write advanced applications Step 5 - Test Your Application

Online WAP Testing Tool

This section is specifically designed to ensure that your WAP users seeing the application you wrote, the way you intended. You can test your existing WAP applications using the online utility for code errors, common mistakes, and valid links.

You can choose from the following tests to run against your site: Check the document's content type header Validate the document against the DTD declared in it Check the document for formatting tags that are not commonly supported Check the compiled size of the document Follow links that lead off of your site to other sites?

Developer's Notebook

The site also has a very detailed developer's notebook which contains articles submitted by members of the community - people who are working in the trenches to make wireless work around the world.

Some sample articles include:

Real-Time Debugging Highly Integrated Embedded Wireless Devices by David Ruimy Gonzales In this installment of the Developer's Notebook, Motorola's David Gonzales examines the trend toward reducing the number of components in these systems as it relates to cost, overall power consumption and manufacturing complexity.

Dual Core Architecture for Cellular Handsets by David Ruimy Gonzales The exponential growth of the wireless communications industry has created a multitude of new products with advanced features that allow users to stay in touch with every aspect of their lives wherever they may be. These new products are quite diverse, require more system performance with no exceptions to power conservation and have short product life cycles.

Introduction to Location Services and Location-Based Services by John Davies AnywhereYouGo.com community member John Davies provides part one in a three-part series on location and location-based services.

Seven Steps to Success in the Mobile Wireless Enterprise by Tanya Candia In a Developer's Notebook white paper, F-Secure VP Tanya Candia explains why companies who are looking to make it in the m-commerce space have to make changes in the way they do business.

All of the above are only brief highlights of what the site has to offer. Take the time to go to AnywhereYouGo.com and check it out thoroughly. Enable guarantees that you will return - again and again.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on September 5, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Now is a good time to "Buy"

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Now is a good time to "Buy". Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) We have ample experience in the local stock market and listen carefully to the opinions of local analysts. We don't doubt that foreign investment banking firms may have superior analyst abilities. However, their direct contacts with the managements of local companies are minimal. The local analyst may find that he knows several heads of companies as they are his buddies in his reserve unit. The local grapevine is an invaluable supply of information. Some even went to school together.



The local daily press, available in English, is a good source of information. The daily newspapers have Internet web sites that publish the most important news that appears in the printed newspaper.

We believe that now is a good time to invest in Israel and would like to review various avenues open to the investor.

The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange has several hundred securities listed for trading. The Exchange has a web site (http://www.tase.co.il); prices are posted daily and in near-real time. We favor companies whose activities are international and whose products are internationally recognized.

Most Israel interested investors have heard off Check Point, Converse and Teva but how many know about Aladdin? Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALDN) is recognized as the worldwide leader in Software Digital Rights Management (DRM) and USB-based authentication solutions. The company, is an innovator in enterprise secure content management (Enterprise Security). Its shares are traded on Nasdaq and the company has just reported record quarterly earnings of $3.59 million for the second quarter. This represents a 73.4 percent growth year-over-year and revenues of $20.06 million, representing 21.4 percent growth year-over-year.

AudioCodes Ltd. (Nasdaq: AUDC:) whose shares are traded on Nasdaq, designs, develops, and markets enabling technologies and system products for the transmission of voice, data, and fax over packet networks. The company's products are unique and its sales are growing as the Voice over the Internet. However, it should be kept in mind that AudioCodes sales are only at the $100m. level and profits are under 3%. The shares are favorably priced at $10 and appear to have good support at that level and upside potential. In the second quarter revenues Increase to $28.5 Million, Up 6% Sequentially and 49% year-over-year. Net Income was$3.1m, or $0.07 per share.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:ORA) is a vertically integrated company primarily engaged in the geothermal and recovered energy power business. It designs, develops, builds, owns and operates geothermal power plants. Additionally, the company designs, manufactures and sells geothermal and recovered energy power units and provides related services. More than 70 patents cover Ormat products and systems. Ormat currently has operations in the United States, Israel, the Philippines, Guatemala, Kenya, and Nicaragua. The company was founded by the Bronickis, husband and wife, and has been managed by them since its inception in 1965.

NICE-Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE:NICE) is a vehicle that enables the investor to participate in the burgeoning security industry. NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, is a leader of multimedia digital recording solutions, applications and related professional services for business interaction management. NICE products and solutions are used in contact centers, trading floors, air traffic control (ATC) sites, CCTV (closed circuit television) security installations and government markets.

NICE's subsidiaries and local offices are based in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Hong Kong. The company operates in more than 100 countries through a network of partners and distributors.

Other interesting companies, worthy of investment consideration, include CheckPoint (CHKP: Nasdaq) leader in computer protection software, Comverse (CMVT: Nasdaq) messaging, Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA:Nasdaq), world's largest generic drug manufacturer and Retalix (RTLX: Nasdaq) computerization at the check out counter.

None of the companies described above are "cheap". Most have p/e ratios of more than 30. However, they are in active in highly exciting technology fields. We were not able to pinpoint neither any biotechnology companies nor those in the medical instrumentation field. Most of the participants in these industries are young companies that have as yet to prove their investment worthiness.

For investors who are prepared to undertake the risks in private equity there are venture capital funds that are prepared to accept investments of $100,000 or more. However, for the greater part, and partially due to the dot.com debacle these have not, for the greater part, outstanding track records.

We believe that a portfolio of the above-described companies would yield above average results.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on October 6, 2005

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Israeli VCs miss the mark

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Israeli VCs miss the mark. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Venture capital provides a source of funds through investment, usually for companies or projects that are un the start-up or at a very early stage of product development. These projects and organizations generally would not attract sources of finance such as loans and could not raise money in the major public stock markets.



The role of venture capital in enterprise development in developing countries is critical. The collateral of emerging enterprises is not incorporated in fixed tangible assets like plant and machinery, but more on elements like market access, human capital, intellectual property and goodwill. Manpower and financial needs in new companies are generally focused on research, development and introduction of a product into the marketplace, production and manufacturing. This results in initial low or negative cash flows and the need to finance these companies rests on potential future earnings rather than current profits. These factors make it difficult for new and emerging companies to obtain traditional financing.

We believe that in the area of financing start-ups the Israeli venture capital industry is lagging sadly behind its overseas counterparts. According to a recent IVC Center Research report Israeli venture capital companies thirteen seed companies attracted $34 million, 10 percent of the total amount raised in Q3. During the first three quarters of the year, seed companies attracted eight percent of the total funds, compared with six percent in Q1-Q3 2004.

By contrast American seed and early stage companies accounted for 36.8% of all companies funded in the second quarter, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/Thomson Venture Economics/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Survey. These figure indicate that the Israeli venture capital financing industry is far from being venturesome and that it underperforms in the area, which is basic to its tenets. There is a yawning chasm between its funding of local start ups as compared with the American industry.

Notwithstanding the industry has badgered the Government for preferential conditions for foreign investors. Perhaps most damning are the poor returns that the industry provides for its investors. Many of the venture capital companies are still stuck with the unprofitable investments from the dot.com era. Had the rate of investments in start ups been higher in previous years we would see a parade of initial public offerings in a period when the stock markets are absorbing them so successfully.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on February 15, 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

When money grew on trees

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When money grew on trees. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Bonsai growing is the art of dwarfing trees or plants and developing them into an aesthetically appealing shape by growing, pruning and training them in containers. True Bonsai take years to grow... and are usually priced accordingly, and there's the rub.



Israelis by nature are impatient, and it would never occur to them to initiate an enterprise that might take several years before achieving a saleable product. They love flowers, and will travel to greenhouses to buy flowers and seedlings for their gardens.

The Israeli bonsai industry (and mind you, at one time there was a bonsai industry in this country), is now defunct. I remember seeing no fewer than one million bonsai plants in various forms and shapes, sitting neatly on shelves at a growing area just outside of Tel-Aviv.

Their elegant shapes were beautiful. They were being prepared for shipment to Britain to be sold at Marks & Spencer. No further proof of the industry's existence was needed.

The origin of the Israeli bonsai industry goes back to the period when a demobbed Israeli soldier decided to take a post army service trip to the Far East. In Japan he worked at various jobs, mostly physical labor. His life took a major turn when he came across a bonsai farm. The one time soldier was taken back to his childhood days when he lived on a kibbutz farm. He loved trees and flowers. By then he knew some Japanese and asked whether he could be hired. It was there that he learned the art of bonsai growing. He also fell in love with a Japanese girl who agreed to move with him to Israel.

Back in Israel, a friend, on hearing the story, and having some idea of the value of bonsais, suggested that they establish a bonsai growing farm.

It was a miracle of modern Israel. The seedlings grew to bonsai plants in a matter of weeks. Father time had been conquered and only a few insiders knew how it was done. The shaping, the twisting of the roots were done quite openly in the daytime. However, only a few were aware that the Israelis were taking advantage of modern science and technology to enhance the growing progress.

The height of a bonsai plant can range from six inches to approximately 36 inches. To reach the appropriate size in record time, the grower turned to the Agricultural Research Institute of a major Israel university. They were happy to comply and told him which accelerator he must spray on the seedling to set it on its way to adulthood. But that was not all. When the plant reached its desired height, the growing process had to be arrested. The scientists at the Agricultural Research Institute were happy to comply. They supplied a growth retardant and with the help of these two substances one million bonsai came into being in record time

However, the business partner of the enterprise walked away with a major money investment, spelling the death of the bonsai enterprise.

What further proof was needed to show how modern agricultural science with its accelerators and growth suppressants could help Mother Nature and enhance the ancient art of bonsai growing?

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 28, 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

A shortcut to insight

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A shortcut to insight. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A new trend among informative websites: less is more. This is a welcome change from the early days of the Internet where every site wanted to be the next Amazon.com and tried to provide as much information on a particular subject as their website could hold. I for one stop going to sites where I was inundated with way too much information. I now look for sites that provide quality - not simply quantity.



Today's Enable looks at such a site. It is called CIObriefcase and it provides CIOs as well as businesspersons with valuable information in a short and sweet format. While the site stresses topics for CIOs, it is worth it for anyone in business to check this site out. As demonstrated by the examples below, you will not have to spend a lot of time to glean critical information.

What's Hot

The site begins with a section called what's hot. Currently you will see three topics:

Security: Shared knowledge is key to security success Outsourcing: Five classic outsourcing blunders Systems Integration: The hidden costs of data integration

The key feature here is that you simply choose a topic and then you only get the five most valuable news stories, white papers and peer discussion groups for that topic. You probably do not need any more information on the particular topic and if you are a typical business person - you definitely do not have time to read more.

The site is your filter - choosing the most relevant information for you.

In Depth Archive

Another nice feature of the site is its archive. Here you will find new stories and white papers on topics ranging from Security, Outsourcing and Systems Integration to Web Services, CRM and Storage Area Management.

Click on any of the topics and you are provided with links to five news stories and five white papers on the particular topic.

I did a search of Business Continuity and came up with the following stories and white papers:

Stories

The ABCs of disaster recovery Security enters disaster-recovery maze Sept. 11 attacks prompt decentralization moves Skilled for business continuity

White Papers

A guide to business continuity planning: Protection and recovery services Netsourcing: There's no upside to downtime Cyberterrorism: Take effective action while you still can Business continuity for today's manufacturing enterprise Ensuring e-business continuity for financial services

Take advantage of CIObriefcase's brevity - it saves you time by providing your with short and sweet information in areas critical to your ongoing success.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on 26 March 2002

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

How Israeli High-Tech Happened

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How Israeli High-Tech Happened. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Israel became a high-tech hothouse because she had to. True, she enjoys favorable conditions for the growth of high-tech industries; chief among them, well-educated, inventive, enterprising people. Relative to the size of her population, Israel has more engineers, and sees more scientific articles published, than any other country in the world (Israel has 135 engineers per 10,000 people; the US has 85). However, the stimulus for the industry's growth has been national survival, both military and economic.



David among Goliaths

As a small country in a hostile neighborhood, Israel must strive to maintain a qualitative military edge over her potential enemies. Experience in a series of wars has taught Israel that she needs to develop that edge independently as far as she can. In large part, Israel's high-tech industries are a spin-off from that process.

Israel fought the 1967 Six Day War largely with French weaponry. When President de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo after that war, Israel turned to the United States, and to herself. The commercial consequences can be seen today. Blades Technology, for example, a company originally set up to manufacture engine parts for the Israel Air Force's Mirage aircraft, now has annual sales of $90 million, and joint ventures with Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was surprised by the technological capabilities of her enemies, and also experienced difficulty in obtaining vital materiel from her foreign suppliers, spurring efforts for technological supremacy and self-sufficiency. The Kfir jet fighter, based on the French mirage, was one of the first large-scale projects in this effort.

Lavi grounded, high tech takes off

The effort for military self-sufficiency reached its limits in the 1980s, when Israel tried to develop the Lavi jet fighter. The cost proved beyond her and the project was abandoned, but this meant that, in the mid-eighties, hundreds of engineers with experience at the cutting edge ofaerodynamics, avionics, computers and electronics were released onto the market. The Lavi project's demise has been described as one of the greatest ever boosts to Israeli high-tech industry.

Since the Lavi, Israeli defense industries have focused more on components, electronics, avionics and other systems that are installed on American or other platforms. Israel has arranged many reciprocal procurement agreements with leading aerospace and military manufacturers, which help sustain high-tech industries. The development of these auxiliary systems has also given Israeli high-tech industries an edge in civilian spin-offs in security, electronics, computers, software and the burgeoning Internet sectors.

Into space

The military imperative has not disappeared. Even in the era of the peace process, Israel must keep up her guard. In response to the Iraqi Scuds that hit Tel Aviv in the 1991 Gulf War Israel began development of the Arrow anti-missile missile. The Arrow program began as part of the US SDI (Star Wars) program, requiring considerable advances in electronics, computers and ballistics. The Arrow will soon be ready for operational deployment. In general, the search for better systems in the areas of weapons, intelligence gathering, and command and control, goes on apace.

In the 1990s, Israel became only the eighth country in the world to develop and launch satellites, beginning with the Amos civilian communications satellite, followed by the Ofek military satellites and the Eros civilian photo-reconnaissance satellite. Israel now partners with NASA, the ESA and the Russian space program, building component and complete satellites for scientific and civilian uses.

In 2002, two of Israel's six largest industrial companies by turnover were high-tech companies: Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), Intel Electronics, as well as pharmaceutical company Teva (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE:TEVA). The largest exporters in terms of sales included high-tech companies Teva, IAI, Intel Electronics, and Vishay Intertechnology (Israel), with over $1 billion in exports each.

Economic imperative

In part, the economic necessity derives from the military one. Israel's defense budget is inadequate for her to maintain her military advantage. One solution is export. Israel is both a highly successful defense and civilian high-tech exporter.

However, the global defense market is shrinking. Civilian applications of the skills in software, communications, imaging, process control, etc., derived from military industries, have therefore become increasingly important. For example, the need for better night-vision equipment led to local engineers becoming trained in the field of image processing, and to the establishment of two trailblazing Israeli high-tech companies: Scitex (Nasdaq: SCIX; TASE:SCIX), and Elscint. Because Israel is such a small market, export is essential for civilian products too, providing a further incentive to maintain technological excellence, particularly in certain niche markets - network security, for example, where Check Point (Nasdaq: CHKP) is a world leader; Mercury Interactive Corporation (Nasdaq: MERQ) is a leader in enterprise testing and performance management solutions; and Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) is a leader in customer relations management, billing and order management solutions.

Pharmaceuticals

In the 1990s, pharmaceuticals and medical devices became a rising high-tech sector. Teva has become a leading global generic drug maker, followed by Taro Pharmaceutical Industries (Nasdaq: TARO) and Agis Industries (TASE:AGIS). Medical device company Given Imaging (Nasdaq: GIVN) and biopharmaceutical companies such as Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:SVNT) are becoming prominent players, listed on Nasdaq and European bourses.

Immigration

The wave of immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s provided an influx of skilled scientists and engineers. The government's technology incubator program was largely a response to the need to provide these newcomers with employment, and harness their talents to the needs of industry. The immigrants helped fuel Israel's phenomenal growth rate between 1991 and 1994, and helped man the high-tech boom after 1998. In the late 1990s, Israeli high-tech began suffering from a shortage of skilled manpower. The government and industry have been expanding educational and vocational programs to meet the demand. The high-tech slump since late 2000 has slowed demand for trained personnel, but not ended the shortage altogether.

Liberalization

Israel has few natural resources. The aspiration of her population for a Western standard of living can only be satisfied through integration into the global market. Israel's transition from a State-dominated, centralized, protectionist economy to a free market means that traditional industries such as textiles are disappearing, losing out to low-cost overseas competition. How far and how fast this transition should go is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt that high-tech, where Israel enjoys a relative advantage, will be a mainstay of Israel's economic future. As Israel's economy restructures from traditional industries for the local market to export-oriented high-tech, high-tech exports as a percentage of total exports has been steadily increasing, rising from 45% in 1995 to 57% in 2000.

Exports of electronics communications components, electronic components, medical equipment and software and IT products soared to over $13 billion 2000. Although the onset of the high-tech crisis in late 2000 caused a sharp contraction in exports and production,electronics, communications, monitoring and control equipment, and avionics are still key exports. Pharmaceuticals and medical devices and equipment are also becoming increasingly important. High-tech is still the key growth engine for the Israeli economy and a mark of its integration into the global economy.

Foreign investment

An important aspect of Israel's integration into the world economy has been increasing inward investment, particularly in the high-tech industry. Companies like Cisco Systems, Motorola, Intel, IBM, Nortel, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Deutsche Telekom, aviation and space companies, to mention just a few, have recognized that Israel is a fount of high-tech innovation they cannot afford to ignore. They have set up subsidiaries and research centers here, invested in Israeli companies, technology incubators, and venture capital funds, or found Israeli strategic partners.

Annual foreign investment in Israel grew from $400 million in 1992, to peak at $5.0 billion in 2000. Foreign investment subsequently contracted, due to the high-tech crisis, the global economic slowdown and political tensions in the Middle East, but is still substantial. Foreign venture capital investment grew apace, rising from $587 million in 1998, peaking at $3.1 billion in 2000, before falling to $982 million in 2002, still higher than the level of five years previously. Investment by Israeli venture capital funds followed the same pattern: peaking at $1.27 billion in 2000, but totaling only $481 million in 2002, including $62 million in foreign companies. (Sources: MonetyTree and IVC). The Bank of Israel reported that total foreign investment in Israel amounted to $2.6 billion in 2002, including $1.2 billion in direct foreign investment.

Start-up country

With 3,000 start-ups, the Global Competitiveness Report 2000 ranked Israel second behind the US in the number of start-ups and first relative to population. The weight of start-ups of GDP was 3% in 2000, compared with 0.4% in 1997. The comparable figures for the US was 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively. Israel was was highly ranked in terms of the number of engineers and education, but poorly in terms of physical infrastructure, a situation the government is trying to remedy.

Israel was ranked second in civilian R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, rising from 2.7% in 1994 to 4.2% in 1999. Total R&D expenditure in 2000 was $4.2 billion and NIS 23.9 billion in 2001. State expenditure on civilian R&D has been rising faster than GDP through the 1990s, mostly being invested in high-tech, but also agriculture, manufacturing and biotechnology.

Next steps

In any discussion of the future of Israeli high-tech, the following points tend to emerge:

The limiting factor on the sector's growth is a shortage of engineers and managers. Although training programs at universities, colleges and government and industry sponsored retraining courses have been expanding, plus attempts to expand the labor pool by tapping haredi (ultra-orthodox) and other communities, demand continues to outstrip supply, even in the wake of the cutbacks due to the high-tech crisis since mid-2000. Demand to allow the entry of foreign skilled engineers and programmers for the high-tech sector have abated, the issue may re-emerge when the industry recovers and if the Israeli labor pool remains insufficient.

The industry needs to consolidate through company mergers.

The government's role needs to be reviewed. Many argue that government support for civilian R&D is not sufficiently discriminating, resulting in financial and human resources becoming too thinly spread.

Tax reform to ease mergers and acquisitions, better reward employees, and encourage foreign investment. Although progress has been made on these issues, stumbling blocks remain.

New directions: Biotechnology and medical devices are seen as coming fields. While Israel is well placed to exploit it, with outstanding life sciences and medical research institutions, this will mean a departure from the military-industrial symbiosis which has done so much to sustain high-tech development up to now. Nevertheless, Israel has a number of outstanding and growing start-ups and companies in these fields, including many new listings on Nasdaq and European exchanges. Israel is ranked third in the world in biotechnology start-ups.

In 2000 there were 160 biotechnology and 400 medical device companies in Israel, compared with 25 in 1988, employing 4,000 people and generating $800 million in turnover. 20 companies are publicly traded, half in the US and half in Europe. Investment in biotechnology has been growing steadily, reaching totaled $1.7 billion in 2000, including about $200 million in venture capital. There are 15 life sciences venture capital funds operating in Israel.

Some figures

In 2000, exports of high-tech products accounted for 55% of all exports, up from 23% in 1991. Exports of electronics communications components, electronic components, medical equipment and software and IT products peaked at over $13 billion, before the onset of the high-tech crisis in late 2000 caused a sharp contraction in exports and production.

In 2000, 195,000 people were employed in the various high-tech sectors, compared with 148,870 people a decade earlier. Demand for engineers and technicians is estimated at 2,000-3,000 a year. The various academic institutions currently supply 1,000-1,300.

National expenditure on civilian R&D amounted to NIS 23.9 billion (over $5 billion) in 2001, 4.2% of GDP. Spending on civilian R&D has remained stable despite the recession since 2000, although the focus on research has been shifting from Internet and software to new fields such as biotechnology, nanotechnology. Chemical and chemical products, electronic components, communications components, supervision, monitoring, and medical equipment accounted for 87% of industrial R&D expenditure in 2001.

Israel issues the largest number of companies in the US after the US itself and Canada. According to the Bank of Israel, investment by foreign residents totaled $9.4 billion in 2000, up from $3 billion in 1995. Israeli companies raised $4.2 billion overseas in 2000, mostly on Nasdaq, but also including $800 million raised on European exchanges. The 2000 figure is 13 times the amount raised only five years earlier, in 1995, reflecting the immense growth by Israeli high tech and its emergence as a global player. Foreign investment and the raising of capital by Israeli companies overseas has since fallen to a fraction of the 2000 figure.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Technology Incubators

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Technology Incubators. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) On this page: Background Incubator Directory

1. Background

The incubator program aims to turn technological ideas into commercial successes. It operates under the aegis of the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The incubators provide fledgling enterprises with a supportive framework, including administrative back-up and consulting services, while the Office of the Chief Scientist provides finance. An enterprise can generally remain within an incubator for two years, within which time it is expected to complete development of its product and find independent sources of finance.



An incubator may be independent, or backed by an investor, or part of an established company. Government support is given on different terms in each case.

Most of the incubators are located outside the central Tel Aviv-Gush Dan area.

There are about 200 projects in the independent incubators. The main R&D fields are chemical and electrochemical, mechanical and electromechanical, software, electronics, biotechnology, and computers. The applications for the technologies being developed are predominantly in industrial and control processes, medicine and cosmetics, and transport and communications, with agriculture also a significant beneficiary.

The incubator program began as a response to the influx of scientists and engineers from the countries of the former Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, when immigration from those countries was at its height. Immigration has since abated, and the effectiveness of the scheme, and of other aspects of government support for R&D, is now being questioned, though the Office of the Chief Scientist claims a high success rate for incubator enterprises, and the scheme has been held up internationally as a model of its kind.

For further details, see Investment Incentives. The Office of the Chief Scientist site provides a full guide to the incubator scheme and to the incubators themselves, plus a project database . The site does not include incubators that operate within companies.

2. Incubator Directory

Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) Rotem Industrial Park, Mishor Yemin, 206 Oron Road Arava, 86800 Tel: 972 8 655 8796 Fax: 972 8 655 6106 E-mail: [email protected]

Am-Shav Technological Applied Development Center Midreshet Sde-Boker 84990 Tel: 972 8 653 2726; Fax: 972 8 653 2266; E-mail: amshav

Ashkelon Technological Industries (ATI) 7 Haofa Street, South Industrial Zone POB 7284 Ashkelon 78172 Tel: 972 8 671 1852/3/4 Fax: 972 8 671 1855 E-mail: ati

DIMOTECH at the Technion

HiTEC Technology Enterpreneurship Center Har Hotzvim POB 45010 Jerusalem, 91450 Tel. 972 2 587 0710 Fax 972 2 581 2386 E-mail: [email protected]

Incentive Technological Incubator PO Box 3, Ariel 44837 Tel: 972-3-936-4754, Fax: 972-3-936-6873 E-mail: Info

The Initiative Center of the Negev 15 Yehoshua Hatzoref St. Beersheva 84106 POB 844 Tel: 972 8 623 1212 Fax: 972 8 623 1246 E-mail: ceo

Incubator for Technological Entrepreneurhsip (ITEK) Kiryat Weizmann Science Park, Bldg.13A, Ness Ziona 70400 Tel: 972-8-940-9086 Fax: 972-8-940-8085 E-mail: [email protected] J.C. Technologies 21 Havaad Haleumi St. PO Box 16120, Jerusalem 91160 Tel: 972-2-675-1123 Fax: 972-2-675-1195 E-mail: info

Kinarot Jordan Valley Technology Incubator Zemach, Jordan Valley 15132 Tel: 972 4 670 9018, Fax: 972 4 670 9014 E-mail: kinarot

Lab-One Innovations Formerly Nitzanim Initiative Center. Affiliated with StageOne Ventures 6 HaNehoshet St., Ramat Hahayal, Tel Aviv 69710 Tel: 972-3-6475788 Fax: 972-3-6473819 E-mail: Lab-One

Jerusalem Software Incubator POB 45125 Jerusalem, 91450 Tel: 972 2 587 0012 Fax: 972 2 587 0015 E-mail: ceo

Maayan Technology Ventures 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower, 42nd Floor, Tel Aviv 67023 Tel. 972-54-4555219 4 HaNachtom St., PO Box 844, Beltec Building, Beer-Sheva 84106 Tel. 972-8-6231212 Fax: 972-8-6231246 E-mail: info

Magnet Program Ministry of Industry and Trade Office of the Chief Scientist.

MATAM Advanced Technology Center, Haifa Haifa 31905 Tel: 972 4 855 0066 / Ext. 126 Fax: 972 4 855 0888 E-mail: [email protected]

Not itself an incubator, MATAM is an industrial park that provides services to tenants.

Meytag Technology Incubator Katzrin Industrial Zone POB 12 Katzrin 12900 Tel: 972 4 696 2561 Fax: 972 4 696 2564

Meytav - Technological Enterprises Initiation Center POB 408, Kiryat Shmona10200 Tel: 972 4 681 8800 Fax: 972 4 681 8806 E-mail: meytav

Misgav Carmiel Incubator MP Misgav 20179 Tel: 972 4 999 1991 Fax: 972 4 999 1901 E-mail: misgavtc

Mofet B'Yehuda - Technology and Business Incubator POB 80, Kiryat Arba 90100 Tel: 972 2 996 3880 Fax: 972 2 996 1571 E-mail:info

Mofet also manages an enviromental division: GreenTech that focuses on start-up entrepreneurs and investors interested in meeting the growing global demand for new ecological and environmental technologies.

New Generation Technology (NGT) Nazareth Industrial Area, P.O. Box 2252, Nazareth 16000 Tel: 972-4-656-4118, Fx: 972-4-656-4129, E-mail: Sharon Dvir, CEO

A high-tech incubator founded by a group of Israeli Arab and Jewish businesspeople.

Naiot Technological Center Affiliated with Ofer Brothers. POB 732 Nazareth Illit 17106 Tel: 972 4 650 0764/564-092 Fax: 972 4 656 6735 E-mail: info

Ofek LaOleh Jezre'el Valley Initiative Center POB 73, Migdal Ha'emek 23100 Tel: 972 4 654 3081 Fax: 972 4 654 3082 E-mail: Avraham Maoz

Ofakim Innovative Technologies (O.I.T.) 7 Betsalel St., POB 633, Ofakim 80300 Tel: 972 8 992 5580 Fax 972 8 992 6581 E-mail: oitech

Orit Technological R&D Center Affiliated with the Ofer Brothers Group P.O. Box 3 Ariel 44837 Tel: 972-3-936-4754 Fax: 972-3-936-6873 E-mail: orit

Patir R&D Center Incubator 21 Havaad Haleumi St. PO Box 16120, Jerusalem 91160 Tel: 972-2 675 1123 Fax: 972 2 675 1195 E-mail: [email protected]

Rad-Ramot 2a Katzir Street, Tel Hashomer Ramat Gan 52656 Telefax: 972 3 531 2600 E-mail: info

Rad-Ramot is a joint venture of Rad Data Communication Ltd. and Ramot, the commercial arm of Tel Aviv University. It focuses on bio-medical and life-science projects.

Targetech Innovation Center Poleg Industrial Area, POBox 8027, Netanya, 42101 Tel: 972-9-885-1116 Fax: 972-9-885-1090 E-mail: Azriel Kadim

Targetech Innovation Center Poleg Industrial Area, POB 8027, Netanya 42101 Tel: 972 9 885 1116; Fax: 972 9 885 1090 E-mail: info

TEIC, The Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Company Science Park Technion, Nesher, POB 212 Nesher 36601 Tel: 972 4 830 8333 Fax: 972 4 821 0531 E-mail: info

Western Negev Initiative Center POB 321 Neve Dekalim, 79779 Tel: 972 8 684 2983 Fax: 972 8 684 6457 E-mail: dov

Xenia Ventures Technology Incubator Gat High Tech Center (Matmag) Kiryat-Gat New Industrial Zone 1 Leshem St., Kiryat Gat 82000 Tel: 972-8-6811761/2 Fax: 972-8-6811763 E-mail: Hagay

YEDA Research and Development of the Weizmann Institute of Science Incubator for Technological Entrepreneurship - Kiryat Weizmann Ltd. Building No. 3, Kiryat Weizmann Science Park, Ness Ziona 70400 Tel: 972 8 940 9086 Fax: 972 8 940 8085

Yozmot - Granot Initiative Center Mobile Post Hefer 38100 Tel: 972 6 632 1390-1, Fax: 972 6 632 1392 E-mail: [email protected]

Yozmot Ha'Emek Ofek La'Oleh Technological Incubator PO Box 73, Migdal Ha'Emek 23100 Israel Tel: 972-4-6544800 Fax: 972-4-6543082 E-mail: Avraham (Avri) Maoz, Managing Director

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Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Investment Incentives

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Investment Incentives. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) On this page: Government Incentives - Overview Approved Enterprises Other Government Incentives Research and Development Incubators Free Trade Agreements International R&D Funds Free Trade and Free Processing Zones Further Information



1. Government Incentives - Overview

The Israeli government provides various incentives to encourage economic development, and overseas investors may benefit from these. Indeed, incentives are enhanced for projects in which there is foreign involvement. There are generally no restrictions on the extent of foreign ownership in an enterprise, except in the security sector.

Incentives take the form of cash grants, loan guarantees, and tax benefits. Research and development attracts special assistance. There is also an technology incubator scheme which nurtures new ideas, providing practical as well as financial aid to entrepreneurs.

2. Approved Enterprises

The main incentives are set out in the Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, 1959. Assistance provided under this law is administered by the Investment Center, which is part of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The Investment Center Ministry of Industry and Trade 30, Agron St. Jerusalem. Tel: 972-2-6220373/4/5 Fax: 972-2-6250442

Most assistance relates to projects awarded "approved enterprise" status by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In general, projects that will help to develop the economy, generate employment, or improve the balance of payments, qualify for such status. An additional criterion is that projects must have paid-up capital amounting to 30% of the total investment required.

An approved enterprise may be owned by a foreign company.

Types of assistance available

Note:

Enterprises must select an assistance track at the outset. It is not possible to change from one type of assistance to another.

In some circumstances, assistance may be available to expand an existing enterprise as well as start a new one.

Cash grant

Grants are available for investment in tangible fixed assets. The rate of grant varies according to the enterprise's location. Outlying areas attract higher rates; the central area no grant at all. The current (1998) range is 10-20% for those areas that qualify for grants.

Loan guarantee

The State guarantees loans from Israeli banks at regulated interest rates covering up to two-thirds of project outlays.

Tax holiday

A total exemption from company tax on undistributed profits for between four and ten years, depending on location.

Composite assistance - grant and loan guarantee

Enterprises may elect to receive a reduced rate of grant topped up by State guaranteed loans. The total amount of grant plus loan may be up to two-thirds of the outlays on fixed assets and working capital.

Composite assistance - tax holiday and loan guarantee

A company that elects to take a tax holiday may also obtain a State guaranteed loan, but the period of tax exemption is then reduced.

Tax Benefits

Approved enterprises that do not choose a tax holiday nevertheless enjoy a reduced rate of company tax for a period of seven years. Approved enterprises may also claim accelerated depreciation rates on fixed assets and buildings for the first five years of their use.

Foreign Investors' Companies (at least 25% foreign owned) benefit from reduced company tax rates for a period of ten years. Moreover, the higher the level of foreign ownership, the greater the reduction in the rate.

Companies that do choose a tax holiday receive the general tax benefit between the end of the holiday and the end of the applicable tax benefit period if the tax holiday expires first.

3. Other Israel Government Incentives

"Industrial Enterprises"

A project that does not qualify for approved enterprise status may nevertheless come within the definition of an "industrial enterprise" for the purposes of the Law for the Encouragement of Industry (Taxes) 1969, in which case it can claim special depreciation and amortisation rates on tangible and intangible fixed assets.

Small Business Loan Fund

The fund provides loans and guarantees for the establishment or expansion of enterprises employing up to 75 people. Projects receiving other forms of government support are not eligible for assistance from the fund.

Exporters

Exporters can obtain a range of benefits, including relief on import duties on materials incorporated into exported products, accelerated VAT refunds, support for offering credit to overseas customers, and insurance covering various kinds of overseas trading risk.

Special Incentive for Overseas Investors - "Capital Intensive Companies"

This incentive applies only to companies in which share ownership is restricted to non-residents.

Under the Law for the Encouragement of Investments (Capital Intensive Companies) 1990, companies awarded capital intensive company status by the Minister of Finance benefit from a 25% corporate tax rate on retained profit, and their shareholders are exempt from capital gains tax upon sale of their shares. These benefits apply for 30 years.

A company may benefit from capital intensive company and approved enterprise status at the same time.

Besides being foreign owned, to receive capital intensive company status a company must have paid-up capital of at least $30 million, 75% of which must be invested in qualifying activities. Qualifying activities include, inter alia, the establishment or expansion of an enterprise dealing in communications infrastructure or computers, or engaging in R&D in these fields.

4. Research and Development

Grant Aid

The Office of the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and Trade administers various forms of grant aid to encourage innovation all the way from pre-industrial academic research to beta-site testing of new products. Rates of grant range from 20% to 66%. The definition of approved expenditure attracting grant aid is reasonably wide.

If an R&D program results in a commercial product, the grant becomes repayable by way of a royalty payment. Other conditions include a stipulation that products resulting from government supported R&D be manufactured in Israel, and restrictions on the transfer of know-how to third parties.

R&D Tax Benefits

Accelerated amortisation rates apply to R&D expenditure.

5. Incubators

Incubators provide a supportive framework for entrepreneurs with ideas but without the necessary resources or business experience to develop them. The assistance goes beyond grants, and includes practical help - administrative back-up, business planning, finding sources of finance, and so on. In essence, the incubator scheme give enterprises two years in which to develop a marketable product and become self-sustaining.

An incubator may have backing from an established company or an investor, or it may be independent. Incubator projects attract especially high levels of grant aid from the Office of the Chief Scientist for two years. After that, they may obtain aid under the regular R&D grant system mentioned above.

The assistance available includes a market feasibility study carried out by the Office of the Chief Scientist, or a grant towards a privately conducted study. Projects in incubators with industrial or investor may obtain a grant of 66% of R&D costs. For projects in independent incubators, the grant available is 100% of labour costs and 75% of other approved costs. There is a grant ceiling in each case. Independent incubators themselves receive up to 100% grants towards establishment and operating costs.

In most cases, the same payback rules apply to incubator projects as apply to R&D assistance in general.

See also Technology Incubators

International Aspects

6. Free Trade Agreements

Israel enjoys the unique advantage of having free trade agreements with the US, the European Union, and EFTA. Apart from the direct benefits this confers, it also means that Israel can act as an efficient bridging country between these markets. For example, components may be imported into Israel from the US tariff-free, and incorporated into products sold, again tariff free, to EU countries.

Israel has General System of Preferences status for developing countries in Australia, Canada, and Japan, giving Israeli exports to those countries customs duty reductions. Israel also enjoys most-favoured-nation status in the Chinese market.

7. R&D Funds

R&D Funds are discussed here in terms of the State financing available through them. For a more complete guide to agencies promoting international R&D cooperation, see Research and Development.

Israel has agreements with several countries for joint R&D financing.

The Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (known as BIRD F) promotes partnerships between Israeli and US companies. This typically means a US company utilising or distributing an Israeli company's innovative technology. BIRD F is administered by the Chief Scientist in conjunction with the US Standards Institute. It will contribute up to 50% of the cost of R&D projects over one to three years. The grant becomes repayable if the project succeeds. Projects cannot obtain BIRD F funding and Office of the Chief Scientists support at the same time.

The Canada-Israel Industrial Research & Development Foundation (CIIRDF) operates on similar lines. Israel also operates bilateral funds with Germany (GICT) and Singapore (SIIRD).

In addition, Israel has signed memoranda of understanding on R&D co-operation with several countries. The Office of the Chief Scientist site provides a complete list.

R&D Co-operation with European Union

Israel is a member of the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme of scientific research and technical development. Israel also has a Public Procurement Agreement with the EU, which provides, among other things, that the EU will not apply preferences to EU companies against Israeli companies in telecommunications tenders, and that the Israeli government act similarly vis-a-vis EU companies.

For further information, see the Delegation of the European Commission to the State of Israel and CORDIS sites.

8. Free Trade and Free Processing Zones

The city of Eilat, on the Red Sea at the point where Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt meet, is a free port and free trade area. Enterprises in Eilat enjoy company tax concessions, and most goods imported into Eilat, and transactions within the Eilat free trade area, are exempt from import taxes and VAT. Most goods purchased from elsewhere in Israel are zero-rated for VAT.

Recent legislation provides for the setting up of Free Processing Zones. Enterprises in these zones will enjoy certain tax benefits, and most transactions within the zones will be zero-rated for VAT.

9. Further information

The Ministry of Finance site (International Division) gives up-to-date information on the investment incentives available.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Start-up Reviews - Computing, Internet. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Click company name to obtain Arena's write-up. Links automatically open a new browser window. You may need to scroll down the new window to find the article on the company you are looking for.



Computing, Internet

AbirNet SessionWall-3, network security and employee monitoring (April '98) EXIT: Acquired by Memco Software in 1998.

Acceloop Internet traffic control software (October 2001)

Actimize Software for server load-balancing (July 2001)

Adyoron Intelligence Systems Video compression and streaming technology on Texas Instruments DSP chips (January 2001)

Aliroo User-friendly encryption systems (November '98)

Appilog Monitoring and control software for electronic systems (June 2001)

AudioCodes Voice compression chips and boards for Internet Protocol telephony (February '99) EXIT: Nasdaq and TASE IPOs in 1999.

Balisoft Technologies Software products to support Internet trading and customer services (June '98) EXIT: Balisoft merged with ServiceSoft Corporation to form Servicesoft Technologies Inc., which was I acquired by Broadbase Software now Kana (Nasdaq:KANA) in December 2000.

Bridges for Islands Enterprise integration software (December '99) EXIT: Accquired by Attunity (Nasdaq:ATTU) in February 2000.

BroadLight Technology for 3G passive optical access communications networks (June 2001)

BuildCom Electronic Commerce International electronic market place for the A/E/C industry (May 2000)

Bug-Life Animation technology for various platforms (April 2001)

Business Layers Enterprise digital resources & services management (October '99) EXIT: Acquired by Netegrity (NETE) DEcember 2003.

cSafe Technology preventing pictures from being copied from the Internet. (Demo99 March '99) EXIT: Renamed Alchemedia Technologies, and acquired by Finjan Technologies in January 2003.

Informative Inc. (formerly Cahoots) Live web-wide communications network (May 2000)

CommerceMind Infrastructures for directory services and e-commerce (March 2002)

Congruency Server system to centralize Internet-based communications applications for small businesses (January '99) EXIT: Telrad Tenecs to merge with Congruency (March 2002)

Cobrador Enterprise security system based on both software and hardware (February 2002)

Corigin Still in the mainframe (February 2003)

Correlate Technologies (US start-up) Project management software (May '99)

Cyber-Ark Comprehensive information security solution (June 2001)

Cydoor Desktop Media Server-Client system for displaying ads on Internet (January '99)

Cyota Secure online purchases system (November 2001)

Digital Fuel Technologies Enterprise sourcing relationship management software solutions.

Doc Witness Anti-piracy device for CDs. (June 2002)

DVDemand Technologies Engine for assembling a multimedia DVD online (October 2000)

Enbaya 3D compression and streaming technology (June 2001)

eplication Content delivery system (May 2001)

Extent Technologies Applications-on-demand technology (June 2001)

GlobaLoop Internet access solution for high concentration of users (May '99)

Firebit.net Next generation Internet network service platforms (October 2000)

Hello Tech Technologies Voice operated m-commerce systems (March 2002)

Hotbar.com Internet infrastructure utility (December '99)

ibetcha.com Internet betting site (April 2000) EXIT: Acquired by Uproar in August 2000.

idcide.com Browser add-on that displays the attempts of visited sites to track the user and blocks such attempts. (May 2000)

Idium Systems e-commerce security software (January 2002)

i-Labs Internet traffic analysis and forecasting (May '98)

InfoCyclone High-speed information retrieval (April 2001)

ClearForest (formerly Instinct Software) Advanced text information retrieval (March 1999)

Intellipen Electronic pen (February 2002)

AlwaysOn.com (formerly LightPC.com) Application service provider (May 2000)

Mango DSP Multiprocessor DSP development environment software and hardware solutions. (April '99)

MaxBill Telecom billing systems (January 2001)

Mercado Software E-commerce catalog integration (July 2000)

Midbar Tech Copyright protection solutions (January 2001) EXIT: Acquired by Macrovision (Nasdaq:MVSN) in November 2002.

Monosphere Software for managing storage networks (June 2001)

Identity Software (formerly MuTek Solutions) (August software black-box tool (June 1999)

Oblicore A service level management solution for ASPs (April 2001)

P-Cube IP service management and provisioning platform (April 2001) Exit: Acquired by Cisco Systems for $200 million in August 2004

ProActivity E-processing solutions for enterprise systems (August 2000)

Quiver Human powered web directory (March 2000) EXIT: Acquired by Inktomi in July 2002 for $12 million. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in March 2003.

RichFX Compression of high-quality video for quicker downloading (July 2000)

Riverhead Networks Denial of attack (November 2002) EXIT: Acquired by Cisco Systems for $40 million in March 2003.

Sanctum (Formerly Perfecto) Application-level security software for e-business companies (September '99) Acquired by Watchfire in July 2004

Sanrad IP-based Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions (February2002)

Security-7 Security software systems (August '98) EXIT: Acquired by Computer Associates (NYSE:CA) in June 1999.

SoftWatch Internet customer relationship management (June '99)

Shopping.com (formely DealTime) E-commerce price comparison website (March 1999).

TopTier Software Making relational databases & Internet compatible (September '98) EXIT: Acquired by SAP (NYSE; LSE: SAP; XETRA:SAPG) in 2001.

Trivnet Digital payment system (June 2000)

Unicorn Connectivity software (June 2001)

VisionTech MPEG-2 method video compression encoder (March '98) EXIT: Broadcom buys VisionTech for $800 mln in shares (November 2000)

Whale Communications Internal network security via physical Internet disconnection (May 2001)

XACCT Technologies Infrastructure product for network service providers (January 2000) EXIT:Acquired by Amdocs in 2003.

Xpert IP infrastructure solutions and consultancy and implementation services (April 2001)

Zend Technologies PHP development tools (February 2002)

Zoomix Data conversion technology for information systems (November 2001)

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms G-J

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Venture Capital Firms G-J. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Galram POB 14, Haifa 31000 Tel: 972-4-877-1117 Fax: 972-4-879-4415 E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliated with Rafael Development Corporation.

Gemini Israel Funds 11 Galgalei Haplada St., POB 12548, Herzliya 46733 Tel: 972-9-958-3596 Fax: 972-9-958-4842 E-mail: [email protected]

Gemini Israel Fund; Gemini Israel II Gemini focuses on early stage Israeli companies in enterprise software, Internet and e-commerce, communications, semiconductor and industrial equipment, and medical technology.

Genesis Partners P.O.B. 23722 Tel-Aviv 61231 Tel: 972-3-526-2644 Fax: 972-3-526-2696 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Genesis I & II. Investment focus: Communications and wireless, Internet infrastructure, enterprise software, Internet software and other industries.



Gilbridge Holdings 4 Maskit St., PO Box 12853 Herzliya 46733 Tel.: 972-9-956-7040 Fax: 972-9-956-7010 E-mail: Michelle Mayan Investment focus: Seed stage therapeutics, medical devices and telecom companies.

Giza Venture Capital Ramat Aviv Tower - 12th floor, 40 Einstein St., POB 17672, Tel Aviv 61172 Tel: 972-3-640-2323 Fax: 972-3-640-2300 Email: [email protected] Giza GE Venture Fund III. The ABS GE Capital Giza Fund (BT Alex. Brown and GE Capital Corporation) and First Israel Fund are fully invested. Investment focus: Early stage communications, Internet-enabling, software and healthcare.

GlenRock Israel 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Business Park,Tower G, 8th Floor Tel: 972-9-9701800 Fax: 972-9-9701866 E-mail: info A private equity investment company affiliated with the GlenRock Group making investments in life sciences and high-tech companies, and makes buyouts. It has also invested in the Maayan Technology Ventures incubator.

Global Catalyst Partners A US incorporated fund. Israel office: 1 Eliahu House, 2 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel Aviv 64077 Tel: 972-3-696-8224 Fax: 972-3-695-6847 E-mail: Eliezer Manor, or Janice Rebibo Investment focus: Seed and start-up investments in IT, telecommunicatIons and Internet companies. Investment focus: Israeli biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare services companies expanding into the US.

Hadar Weitzman Management Group 68 Ahuza St., Eliav Center, Ra'anana 43212 Tel.: 972-9-745-1010 Fax: 972-9-745-2030 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Israeli and Israeli related telecommunications, data communications and semiconductor companies.

HB Investments 32 Magal St., Savyon Tel.: 972-3-645-9609 Fax: 972-3-534-2698 E-mail: Zohar Heiblum Investment focus: All high-tech telecom, industrial technology, semiconductor, medical technology biotechnology sectors.

HK Catalyst Portview Communications Partners 10 Hayetsira St. POB 2197 Ra'anana 43650 Tel: 972 9 741 3140 Fax: 972 9 741 3240 E-mail: Robin Hacke or Julie Kunstler Investment focus: Early stage Internet infrastructure and communications software, wireless, broadband companies. Honeycomb Ventures c/o AsiaGate, 12 Yehuda Hamaccabi St., PO Box 4029 Herzliya 46140 Tel.: 972-9-956-6885 Fax: 972-9-955-1345E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Investment focus: M&A strategic partnerships in IT, telecom, Internet and service companies.

Hyperion Israel Advisors 11 Ha'amal St., Afek Park, Rosh Ha'ayin 48092 Tel.: 972-3-903-9988 Fax: 972-3-903-6688 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed and later stage investments in Israeli wireless communications, telecommunications and Internet companies.

InnoMed Ventures Globus Communication Center, Suite 220, Neve Ilan 90850 Tel: 972-2-5332808 Fax: 972-2-5702352 E-mail: Dr. Dalia Megiddo Investment focus: Seed through mezzanine investments in life sciences companies in cardiology, diabetes, neurological disorders, orthopedics, women's care, geriatrics and other medical sectors.

Incutech 12 Zvi St., Ramat Gan 52504 Tel.: 972-3-752-5216 Fax: 972-3-752-5120 E-mail: Nehemiah Kaben Investment focus: Incubation and early stage financing for Israeli biotechnology, medical devices, agrotechnology, healthcare and applied materials companies.

Infineon Ventures Germany: St.-Martin-Str. 53, 81541, Munich Tel: +49 89-234-26359 Fax: +49 89-234-27483 E-mail: [email protected] USA: 1730 North First St., San Jose, CA 95112 Pre-IPO investments in pace-setting technologies or establish new applications in areas where microelectronics is or will be a key enabling technology. Innomed E-mail: [email protected] Innomed is managed by Jerusalem Global Ventures, focusing on medical device companies.

Intel Capital In Israel: Har Hotzvim Park, PO Box 3173, Jerusalem Tel.: 972-2-589-7111 or 972-3-607-4701 Fax: 972-2-589-7712 E-mail: Shlomo Caine or Uri Arazy Investment focus: Internet economy companies.

Israel Cleantech Ventures E-mail: info

Israel Healtchare Ventures (IHVC) 32 Habarzel St., Ramat Hahayal, Tel Aviv 69710 Tel.: 972-3-648-8566 Fax: 972-3-648-8474 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Medical devices, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical-related IT.

Israel Infinity Fund 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower, 42nd fl., Tel Aviv 67023 Tel: 972-3-607-5456 Fax: 972-3-607-5455 E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Israel Infinity Fund is in association with Clal, and Banque Nationale du Paris (BNP). It focuses on early-stage IT, medical and other high-technology products companies.

Integrated Technologies of Israel Ltd Aviv Towers Tower A, 46 Petach Tikva Rd., Tel Aviv 66184 Tel: 972 3 639 7850 Fax: 972 3 639 7851

Jointly owned by Israel Aircraft Industries and a group of Israeli and US entrepreneurs, bankers and industrialists.

Inventech Investment Company Shalom Mayer Tower, 9 Ahad Haam Street, Tel Aviv Tel: 972 3 517 5273 Fax: 972 3 517 5275 E-mail: [email protected] A private venture capital company investing in high-tech start ups.

Israel R&D Corporation 4 Weizmann St., Tel Aviv 61336 Tel: 972 3 697 2857 Fax: 972 3 695 3177

Israel Seed Partners 64 Emek Refaim St., Jerusalem Tel: 972 2 561 2090 Fax: 972 2 561 1955 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed stage Internet, e-commerce, enterprise software, communications, semiconductor and electronics and life sciences start-ups. Isratech; Reico Ventures is Isratech's Israeli branch. 11 Cross Keys Close, London W1M 5FY, England Tel: 44 171 935 2070 Fax: 44 171 935 2680 40 Einstein St. Ramat Aviv 69101 Tel: 972-3-643-9986 Fax: 972-3-643 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Astra, First Isratech, Millennium I & II Life sciences, biotechnology, medical devices, Internet and software.

JAFCO Investments (Asia Pacific) JAFCO Investments (Asia Pacific) is part of JAFCO Co. Ltd. of Japan, which is a member of Nomura Securities Ltd. 6 Battery Rd. #42-01, Singapore 049909 Tel: 65-224-6383 Fax: 65-221-3690 E-mail: [email protected] Byron Askin Investment focus: Assist Israeli companies to penetrate Asian markets and/or find Asian strategic partners.

Janney Montgomery Scott 1801 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Tel. 215-665-6180 Fax 215-665-6197 Investment focus: Internet, IT and business services, telecommunications and broadband, medical technology, life sciences and biotechnology, and other manufacturing, retail and financial, consumer services and utilities fields.

JC Technologies JC Technologies is affiliated with Patir high-tech incubator. 21 Havaad Haleumi St., PO Box 16120 Jerusalem 91160 Tel.: 972-2-675-1123 Fax: 972-2-675-1195 E-mail: Jay Kalish Investment focus: Incubation, seed and early stage financing for Israeli start-ups.

Jerusalem Capital Partners E-mail: Managing partner Jacob Ner-David Tel. 972-54-480-7334 E-mail: Principle Michael Brous Tel. 972-54-797-1071 Investment focus: Jerusalem-based technology-driven companies.

Jerusalem Global Ventures Jerusalem Technology Park, Building 98, P.O. Box 82, Malcha, Jerusalem 96951 Tel: 972-2-649-0750 Fax: 972-2-649-0740 Email: [email protected] Jerusalem Global Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in early stage Israeli related companies developing technology solutions for the consumer, enterprise, service provider, and government markets. Jerusalem Venture Partners Jerusalem Tech Park, Bldg. 1, Malha, Jerusalem 91487 Tel: 972 2 679 7270 Fax: 972 2 679 7273 E-mail: [email protected] Jerusalem Pacific Ventures; Jerusalem Venture Partners LP JVP invests in early-stage companies in five core areas: Optical communications, data communications, wireless communications, e-commerce infrastructure and service infrastructure.

Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation Corporate venture arm of Johnson & Johnson Israel address: Kibbutz Shefayim 60990 Tel.: 972-9-959-1176 Fax: 972-9-951-9797 E-mail: Zeev Zehavi Investment focus: Biotechnology, medical devices, drug discovery and pharmaceuticals companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms A-C

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Venture Capital Firms A-C. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Accel Partners 428 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301 Tel: (650) 614-4800 Fax: (650) 614-4880 Investment focus: communications; Internet/Intranet

Accelerate Technology & Business 33 Jabotinsky St. Ramat Gan 52511 Tel.: 972-3-575-1575 Fax: 972-3-2770 E-mail: [email protected] A start-up accelerator focusing on supporting early stage high-tech companies in the semiconductor, new materials, electronics and opto-electronics and IC equipment fields. ADC Ventures The investment arm of ADC Telecommunications P.O. Box 1101, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1101 Tel: (612) 946-3333 Fax: (612) 946-3292 Contact: Robert Switz, ADC Sr. Vice President, CFO and Head, Business Development Investment focus: Next generation broadband technologies.



AG-Tech Fund Managed by Nessuah Zannex 3 Abba Hillel St., Ramat Gan 52522 Tel: 972-3-753-2020 Fax: 972-3-753-2022 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Biotechnology, e-health, healthcare and medical devices.

Agilent Ventures The venture capital arm of US-based Agilent Technologies. Israel office: Agilent Technologies Israel, Azorim Business Park, 94 Em Hamoshavot Rd., Petah Tikva 49527 Tel.: 972-3-928-8555 fax: 972-3-928-8501 Contact: E-mail: Noam Zahav Investment focus: Telecommunications, biotechnology, informationa technology, test equipment, and semiconductors

AIG-Orion Venture Capital Advisors 3 Hayetzira St., Ramat Gan Tel: 972-3-753-8890 Fax: 972-3-753-8895 E-mail: [email protected] AIG Orion invests in Internet software and information technology.

Alice Ventures Tel Aviv office: Ziv Towers, Building D, 24 Raoul Wallenberg St., Tel Aviv 69719 Tel.: 972-3-766-6547 Fax: 972-3-766-6559 E-mail: Hillel Milo A multinational venture capital fund based in Milan and Tel Aviv. Investment focus: Early stage communications, software and life science companies. Alon Technology Ventures Jointly managed by Gaon Asset management owned by B. Gaon Holdings and the Jupiter Group of the UK and CAIB Bank of Austria. Gibor Bldg. 14th fl., 6 Kaufman St. Tel Aviv 68012 Tel: 972-3-795-4121 Fax: 795-4122 E-mail: [email protected] or E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: High-tech

See: Arena Feature -Alon Technology Ventures: The European investor is more trustworthy

Amanet Technologies Business, Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship Division 34 Habarzel St., Tel Aviv 69710 Tel: 972-3-765-9555/02 Fax: 972-3-644-0125 E-mail: [email protected] Incubation, seed and start-up investment in IT, telecommunications, Internet and software companies. Ampal-American Israel Corporation (Bank Hapoalim group) 111 Arlozorov St. Tel Aviv 62098 Tel.: 972-3-608-0100 Fax: 972-3-608-101

Anschutz Investment Company US: 555 17th St., Suite 2400, Denver, CO 80202 Tel: (303)298-1000 Fax: (303) 299-8881 Europe: Polarisavenue 53, PO Box 2030, 2130 GE Hoofdorp, The Netherlands Tel: +31 (0)23 568 59 70 Fax: +31 (0)23 568 59 74 Investment focus: High-tech, telecommunications, Internet and software services companies.

Apax Partners(Israel) 2 Maskit St. P.O. Box 2034 Herzilya 46120 Tel: 972-9-958-6330 Fax: 972-9-958-8366E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Apax Israel II; Israel Growth Fund Invests in privately-held Israel affiliated companies in Internet and information technology, telecommunications, services, healthcare and life sciences and management buyouts.

Apropos IT Ventures Jerusalem Technology Park, Malcha, Building 1, Entrance B, 1st Floor P.O. Box 48180, Jerusalem 91481 Tel: 972-2-648-2350 fax: 972-2-679-9931 US eFax: (775)-993-3039 E-mail: Business plans Investment focus: Internet and information technology companies with Israel Talent.

Arba Finance Company America House, 3rd fl., 35 Shaul Hamelech Blvd., P.O. Box 33406 Tel Aviv 61333 Tel.: 972-3-696-4420 Fax: 972-3-695-0029 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Incubation, seed stage, start-up, mezzanine and bridging financing for telecommunications, Internet, software, robotics, medical technology and other high-tech companies.

Aria Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O.Box 12245, Herzliya 46733 Tel: 972-9-956-7484 Fax: 972-9-951-4152 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed stage companies in the IT, enterprise hardware and software, communications infrastructure and applications, Internet &intranet, telecommunications technologies, software products and applications.

Ascend Technology Ventures 14a Ahimeir Street, Ramat Gan 52587 Tel: 972 3 751 3707 Fax: 972 3 751 3706 E-mail: [email protected]

Ascend invests in communications, internet and internet infrastructure, software, semiconductors and medical devices.

Asiagate Herzliya Business Park P.O.Box 4029, Herzliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-970-1886 Fax: 972-9-970-1887 E-mail: [email protected] A spin-off of Jerusalem Global Ltd. for Asian and Japanese entities wishing to establish connects with Israeli high-tech companies and for Israeli companies seeking to enter Far Eastern markets.

Astra Technological Investvestments Atidim Tower, Kiryat Atidim P.O.B 58177, Tel Aviv 61580 Tel.: 972-3-649-1990 fax: 972-3-649-1992 Contact: E-mail: CEO Gil Klopman Investment focus: Acquiring minority interests in Israeli or US high-tech start-ups with a strong biotechnology or biomedical focus.

Atara Technology Ventures Atara is the venture capital investment arm of Israel Phoenix Assurance Company. 30 Levontin St., Tel Aviv 65116 Tel.: 972-3-7141-793 Fax: +972-3-7141-165 E-mail: David Furst Investment focus: Early stage, seed and start-up financing for Internet, IT, telecommunications and software companies.

Aviv Venture Capital Aviv Building, 49th floor 7 Jabotinsky St., Ramat Gan 52520 Telephone: 972-3-6114050 fax: 972-3-6114051 E-mail: info Investment focus: Early and mid-stage Israeli related companies.

AxcessNet AxcessNet is the Israeli affiliate of Broadview. P.O. Box 3587, Ramat Hasharon 45930 Tel: 972-9-743-4710 Fax: 972-9-742-3889 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] A facilitator of the Israeli IT and the global industry and the exclusive representative of Broadview for transactions with Israeli companies.

Azritech Ventures A subsidiary of the Azrieli Group. Azrieli Center 1, Tel Aviv, 67021 Tel: 972-3-608-1300 Fax: 972-3-608-1380 E-mail: Zeev Zeevi Investment focus: Seed through third-stage start-ups in telecommunications, IT and medical equipment companies.

BCS Investment Company 3 Daniel Frisch St., Tel Aviv 64731 Tel.: 972-3-696-3221 Fax: 972-3-696-8828 E-mail: Yariv Caspi Investment focus: high-tech, media and communications companies from seed capital to mezzanine stage.

Benchmark Capital 9 Hamanofim St. Herzliya Pituach 46725 Tel.: 972-9-9617600 Fax: 972-9-9617601 E-mail: [email protected] Focus: Early-stage high-technology

Biomedical Investments Golda House, 23 Shaul Hamelech St., Tel Aviv 64367 Tel: 972 3 696 6557 Fax: 972 609 5322 E-mail: [email protected]

Investment areas: Medical equipment, biotechnology

See: Arena Feature - Pay n Tell

Biocom VC 40 Einstein St., Ramat Aviv Tower, Tel Aviv Tel.: 972-3-643.8890; fax: 972-3-643-6662 E-mail: David Schlachet Investment focus: Biotechnology, enabling platform technologies, biopharmaceutical and medical device companies.

Boticelli Venture Funds 28 Bezalel St. Gibor Sport Building (15th floor), Ramat Gan 52521 Tel.: 972-3-575-3222 Fax 972-3-575-3666 E-mail: Judith Investment focus: Advertising, interactive and media enabling technologies.

BRM Capital Israel Office: Akerstein Towers, 11 Hamenofim St., Herzliya Pituach 46725 Tel.: 972-9-954-9555 Fax: 972-9-954-9557 Email: [email protected]

Britech Israel office: Gibor Sport Tower, 28 Betzalel St., Ramat Gan 52521 Tel.: 972-3-754-9581 Fax: 972-3-754-9582 E-mail: [email protected] The Britain-Israel Technology Foundation fosters collaborative R&D links between British and Israeli companies.

Canada-Israel Opportunity Funds 1090 Don Mills Rd., Toronto, Ontario M3C 3R6 Tel: (416) 444-6660 E-mail: [email protected] The Funds participate in direct investments with entities in the Shrem Fudim Kelner Group and the Polaris II Fund. Investment focus: Israeli high-tech companies.

Carmel Ventures Delta House, 16 Hagalim Avenue, Herzeliya 46725 Tel: 972-9-959-4894 Fax: 972-9-959-4898 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: post-seed, companies developing software platforms and applications for the digital economy.

Catalyst Fund 3 Daniel Frish St., Tel Aviv 64731 Tel: 972-3-695-0666 Fax: 972-3-695-0222 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Late-stage Israeli companies in the IT, software, telecommunications, semiconductor, biotechnology and medical devices sectors.

Cedar Fund 9 Keren Hayesod St., POB 505, Herzliya 46105 Tel: 972 9 957 7227 Fax: 972 9 957 7228 E-mail: [email protected] The Challenge Fund Etgar 1 Hashikma St., P.O. Box 55 Savyon 56530 Tel: 972-3-562-8555 Fax: 972-3-562-1999 E-mail: [email protected] Two funds for early-stage high-tech and non-high-tech companies.

Clal Industrial Investments 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower 45th fl. Tel Aviv 67023 Tel.: 972-3-6075777 Fax: 972-3-607-5778 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Venture Capital Fund focuses on IT, telecommunications, software and life sciences (biotechnology and medical devices); Israel Infinity Fund focuses on early-stage high-tech telecommunications, IT and healthcare; Millennium Materials Technologies Fund specializes in the development and commercialization of novel advanced materials and industrial processes; Clalit Venture Capital Fund focuses on diversified mezzanine investment opportunities in Israel and Israeli related technology companies; the Harvest Fund (with Evergreen) is a secondary venture capital fund; IJT Technologies (with Evergreen) focuses on high-tech; Peace Technology Fund, jointly managed with Virginia-based International Capital Advisors, to invest in the Palestinian economy and encourage Israeli-Palestinian cooperation; Israelseed III; Periscope I (with Evergreen) focuses on high-tech.

Clal Biotechnology Industries 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower 45th fl. Tel Aviv 67023 Tel.: 972-3-6075733 Fax: 972-3-607-5734 E-mail: Ophir Shahaf or David Haselkorn Tel: 972 3 765 0306 Fax: 972 3 765 0329

Clalit Capital & Investments 5 Druyanov St., Tel Aviv Tel: 972 3 526 3370 Fax: 972 3 528 0769 E-mail: [email protected]

Clalit Capital Fund

Comverse Investments Efrat-Comverse House, 23 Habarzel St., Ramat Hachayal, Tel Aviv 69710. Tel: 972 3 645 4910 Fax: 972 3 645 4916 E-mail: [email protected]

ComSor Investment Fund

Columbine Ventures Top Tower, 22nd fl., 50 Dizengoff St. Tel Aviv 64332 Tel.: 972-3-620-9010 Fax: 972-3620-9011 E-mail: Carine Wiener Investment focus: Early stage financing for Israel and Israel-related biotechnology, therapeutics, medical devices, bioinformatics and diagnostic technology companies.

Concord Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O.Box 4011, Herzeliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-960-2020 Fax: 972-9-960-2022 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: datacom and telecommunications, Software applications and Internet infrastructure, medical technologies and biotechnology.

Coral Ventures Main office: 60 South Sixth St., Suite 3510, Minneapolis, MN 55402 Tel: (612) 335-8666 Fax: (612) 335-8668 A private venture capital company focusing on technology (communications, Internet, software, information and systems) and healthcare (biotechnology, medical devices and diagnostics) industries.

Investment focus: Healthcare and high-tech.

Corex Industries Management Corex Building, Maskit St., Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972 9 957 2777 Fax: 972 9 957 2772 E-mail [email protected] Investment focus: Expansion, mezzanine and bridging investments in IT, telecommunicaitons, Internet, electronics and software companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms P-T

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Venture Capital Firms P-T. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pamot Rehovot Advisors Weizmann Institute Campus, POB 2439, Rehovot 76123 Tel: 972 8 936 5431 Fax: 972 8 946 0484 E-mail: [email protected]

Pamot has a first right of refusal on investment in projects being developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science

Partech International Israel office: 39 Derech Haganim. PO Box 9129, Kfar Shmaryahu 46910 Tel: 972-9-951-4189 Fax: 972-9-951-5782 E-mail: Ami AMir Investment focus: Communications

Peregrine Ventures 6 Yoni Netanyahu St. Or Yehuda 60376 Tel: 972-3-6349990 Fax: 972-3-6349910 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Part venture fund and part technology incubator for communications, e-commerce, software and medical equipment start-ups.



Persys Investment 7 Ha'marpe St., Har Hotzvim, P.O.Box 45036, Jerusalem 91450 Tel: 972-2-5322-779 Fax: 972-2-5322-673 E-mail: [email protected] Yaron Kimchi or, E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed-stage investments in advanced technology start-ups in healthcare, testing technologies, wireless communications and IT companies. Pitango Venture Capital Formerly Polaris Venture Capital 11 HaMenofim St., Building B, Herzliya 46725 Tel: 972-9-971-8100 Fax: 972-9-971-8102 E-mail: [email protected] Pitango has offices in Menlo Park, California and London Investment focus: Communications, Internet infrastructure and related technologies, software, medical devices and biotechnology. Platinum Neurone Ventures Israel office: 21 Ha'arba'ah St., 15th Floor, Tel Aviv 64739 Tel.: 972-3-684-5700 Fax: 972-3-686-9535 E-mail: Asi Investment focus: First and second round investments in enterprise software, communications, IT and semiconductor companies.

Plenus Technologies Delta House, 16 Hagalim Ave., Herzeliya 46725 Tel.: 972 9-957-4944 Fax: 972-9-957-8770 E-mail: [email protected] Bridge loans to late emerging high-tech companies. POC Technostart Azrieli Center #1, Tel Aviv 67021 Tel.: 972-3-608-1616 Fax: 972-3-608-1617 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Post seed-stage investment in early-stage communications and Internet companies.

Polar Investments Formely Poalim Investments, and a member of the Shrem Fudim Kelner Group. 21 Ha'arba'ah St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-6845666 Fax: 972-3-6850857 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Software, robotics, biotechnology and agro-technology.

Potalium Ventures EDS Building, second floor, 7 Sapir St., Herzliya Pituach, 46852 Tel: 972-9-970-8158 Fax: 972-9-958-0897 E-mail: Portalium Investment focus: Portalium provides services for European and other venture capital and private equity funds seeking to invest in Israel, including locating, screening and compiling suitable high-tech investment opportunities.

Portview Communications Partners See HK Catalyst ProSeed Venture Capital Fund 10 Planut St. Sciecen Bldg. #1, Rehovot 76122 Tel.: 972-8-948-4966 Fax: 972-8-948-4967 E-mail: [email protected]

ProSeed Venture Capital calls itself "the angels' venture capital fund". Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related seed and early stage medical devices and IT companies

ProSeed Capital Holdings CVA Israel office: A' Aviv Tower, 48 Petach-Tikva Rd., Tel Aviv 66184 Tel.: 972-3-537-1173 Fax: 972-3-548-8069 E-mail: Ori Shilo

ProSeed Capital Holdings focuses on early stage high-tech startups in Israel, Europe, the US, Canada and India.

Rafael Development Corporation (RDC) Ltd. Ramat Aviv Tower, 5th floor, 40 Einstein St. P.O. Box 15, Tel Aviv 61172 Tel: 972-3-643-9912 Fax: 972-3-643-9916 bldg 7, New Indusrial Park, P.O. Box 258, Yokne'am 20692 Tel: 972-4-959-9511 Fax: 972-4-959-0720 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Start-up, seed and incubator investment in software, telecommunications, data communication, semiconductors, healthcare and medical devices.

Samurai Web Ventures Israel office: 1 Korazin St., Givataim 53583 Tel: 972-3-571-0222 Fax: 972-3-571-0225 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Initiate and manage start-up companies in the areas of Internet and Information Technology.

Sequoia Capital Seed Fund Israel contact: Tel: 972-9-957-9440 Fax: 972-9-957-9443 E-mail: Hagit Avneri Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related companies in the communications and Internet sectors. Shalom Equity Fund Israel office: Shalom Tower, 9 Ahad Ha'am St., Tel Aviv 65251 Tel.: 972-3-510-8581 Fax: 972-3-516-3413 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech and Internet companies.

Shamrock Holdings Israel & Europe office: 28 Grosvenor St., London W1K 4QR, UK Tel: 44 (20) 7917-9755 Fax: 44 (20) 7917-9654 E-mail: [email protected] Michael Geiger Investment focus: Media, technology and communications.

Shirat Enterprises Ltd. Eliahu House, 2 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel Aviv 64077 Tel: 972 3 696 8224 Fax: 972 3 695 3847 E-mail: [email protected]

Shrem Fudim Kelner 21 Haarbah St. Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-684-5555 Fax: 972-3-684-5554 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Canada Israel Opportunity Fund; CMS/DS Israel Fund; Dovrat, Shrem Skies '92 Fund; Dovrat, Shrem Founders Group; Dovrat Shrem Rainbow Fund; Horizon Fund. Investment focus: Venture Capital management, Finance, investments in High-Tech & Telecommunications, and long-term investments in traditional industries.

Siemens Venture Capital Siemens Venture Capital invests in Israel through Carmel Ventures, Millennium Materials Management Fund, Portview Communications Partners, Rama Partners and SVM Star Ventures Capital Management. Israeli operations director: Asriel Eisinger Tel: +49 89 636 41084 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed, early, and mezzanine stages in the fields of IT, telecommunications, medical engineering, automation and microelectronics.

StageOne Ventures Levinstein Tower, 29th fl., 23 Petach Tikva Rd. Tel Aviv 66182 Tel.: 972-3-710-0140 Fax: 972-3-710-0150 E-mail: [email protected] StageOne is sponsored by Bezeq and Discount Capital Markets. Investment focus: Very early stage communications technology companies.

Star Ventures A Munich-based venture capital fund with a branch in Israel. 11 Galgaley Haplada St., P.O. Box 12600, Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972-9-951-2888 Fax: 972-9-951-2889 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech companies in the communications, Internet, software and medical devices fields.

Steps Investments in Technology Midgal Shalom, 26th fl., P.O. Box 29161, Tel Aviv 61291 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage telecommunications, software and semiconductor start-ups.

STI Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Pituach 46851 Tel: 972-9-971-0710 Fax: 972-9-971-0711 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Partnerships in wireless and communications technologies, Internet infrastructure, and enterprise software start-ups.

Syntek Capital Israel branch: E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: European, Israeli and US start-ups in the IT, software, telecom and media fields.

Tamar Technology Ventures Israel office: 50 Ramat Yam St., Herzliya Pituach 46851 Tel: 972-9-954-3555 Fax: 972-9-954-3423 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: start-up, early stage and mezzanine financing in IT, data communications, telecommunications, Internet &intranet, electronics, software, multimedia, semiconductors, medical devices, biotechnology and healthcare companies.

Tamir Fishman Ventures Alrov Tower,46 Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv 66883 Tel: 972-3-7148444 Fax: 972-3-5605010 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Eucalyptus Ventures (fully invested) and Tamir Fishman Ventures II Investment focus: Early-stage communications. Internet and software companies focusing on B2B services and infrastructure solutions.

TDA Capital Partners Formerly: Templeton Direct Advisors Israel office: 19 St., Ramot Zahala, Tel-Aviv 69358 Tel: 972-3-649-9817 Fax: 972-3-649-9827 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed, early-stage and mezzanine financing in IT, telecommunications, Internet & intranet, semiconductor and medical device companies. Tecc-IS plc Levinstein Tower, 23 Petah Tikva Rd. Tel Aviv 66182 Tel.: 972-3-566-4464 fax: 972-3-566-4465 E-mail: Simon Larah Investment focus: Seed and early stage investments in Israeli telecom, Internet and software technology companies.

Technolplus Ventures Ziv Towers, 24 Raoul Wallenberg St., Tel-Aviv 69719 Tel: 972-3-766-6555 Fax: 972-3-766-6556 E-mail: [email protected] A Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed company (TASE: TNPV), infrastructure and enabling technologies, data communications and enterprise software.

Technorov Holdings 46 Rothschild Blvd.. Alrov Tower Tel Aviv 66883 Tel: 972-3-714-7770 Fax: 972-3-714-7772 E-mail: [email protected]

Al-Rov Technologies (1983) Ltd; Technorov Holdings (1993) Ltd

TeleSoft Partners Israel office: 14 Shenkar St., Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel.: 972-9- 954-0828 Fax: 972-9- 958-9695 E-mail: Avi Mazor or Ron Hiram Investment focus: Early, development/expansion, bootstrapped/later stage next generation communications services, software, and Internet companies.

Teuza Management and Development 49 Hahistadrut Boulevard, POB 25266 Haifa 31250 Tel: 972 4 872 8788 Fax: 972 4 872 9393 E-mail: [email protected] A Fairchild Technology Venture Ltd Early-stage seed companies in the communications, advanced manufacturing equipment, semiconductors, software and biotechnology and healthcare sectors.

Trinet Investment in High Tech Ltd Tel: 972-3-751-3707 Fax: 972-3-751-3706. Investment focus: Early-stage, seed and start-up capital for IT, telecommunications, Internet & intranet, multimedia, software, semiconductors, biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare companies.

TopNotch Capital Vered Tower, 20th Floor, 53 Hashalom Rd., Givatayim 53454 Tel: 972-3-732-6616 Fax: 972-3-731-3340 E-mail: info Investment focus: An investment banking boutique specializing in early stage life science companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
To sustain rate, push reforms, core sector. Check it out:
(Indian Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With GDP growth of 8.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2006-07, the Indian economy continues to do well. While manufacturing and services kept their momentum of growth, the high growth in agriculture at 3.4 per cent helped attain the nearly 9 per cent growth. While the news is great, the first question that most people ask is whether the country will be able to sustain this rate of growth. The rapid upswing witnessed in recent years has been a combination of a higher trend and the high of a business cycle. In the last few years, the economy has seen an increase in the trend growth rate to about 6.25 per cent. This trend has had a cycle around it so that the growth rate moved in a band of around -2 and +2 percentage points. In other words, the rate has ranged from 4.5 to 8.5 per cent. The GDP growth rate of this quarter is an improvement on this. When the economy is at the high of a business cycle, it is natural to be concerned about a downturn. But while the cycle can turn down due to a number of factors - both domestic and international - there is reason to be optimistic about the higher trend growth path. This is a consequence not of the government setting a target and investing and producing more. It is, in fact, the result of the taking away the restrictions that the government had put on private enterprise for nearly 30 years, from the 60s to the early 90s. By slapping various restrictions, licences and controls, the government had constrained individual initiative and prevented higher growth. Now that it is trying to create a supportive environment with better infrastructure and facilities for private initiative, every individual who does better for himself does better for the country, too. Indeed, this is India's main strength in contrast to China's, where there is an attempt to develop private enterprise. This is not to say that the we can take high growth rate for granted. There will be a need to focus on two things. One is to remove the remaining restrictions on movement of goods and on factors of production - labour, capital and land - so that they can move freely across uses and be available for use in the most efficient and productive way. This will mean bringing changes in land use policies, exit policies, labour laws and the financial sector. The second is improving infrastructure. The first can be attained by the stroke of a pen, though it needs political consensus which may take a little time to come about. It is building infrastructure that will take time and resources. But as and when it gets done, and sooner or later it will, the world can bet on India for even faster growth than it has seen this quarter.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Purdue-Indiana University Team Selected as National Cancer Institute Proteomics Center. Check it out:
(Ascribe Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Sept. 29 (AScribe Newswire) -- Purdue and Indiana universities' proteomics team has been selected as one of five national centers for cancer research.

The National Cancer Institute announced Wednesday (Sept. 27) its selection of the Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team for inclusion in a new consortium to assess proteomic technology and its applications for diagnosis and treatment of cancer.



The NCI awarded a $7 million grant to the Purdue-IU team, which pairs Purdue's experts in mass spectrometry and proteomics technology with the expert clinical team of cancer researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine. Together they will focus on technology to diagnose breast and prostate cancer through blood samples.

This is the future of cancer detection in America, said Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and principal investigator for the team. Proteomics, the study of proteins, holds great promise for more precise diagnosis and tailored cancer therapies through the identification of proteins specific to cancer and other diseases, called 'biomarkers.'

However, more work needs to be done to establish protocols for these approaches and the technology used. The NCI program creates a consortium for this purpose and is a great advancement for the field. Remarkably, all five centers included breast cancer as an area of study, which will allow for incredible scientific collaboration and evaluation of data from patients nationwide.

The consortium will receive $35.5 million in awards and is one of three components of the NCI's $104 million five-year clinical proteomic technologies initiative for cancer national program.

This program is a critical component of NCI's strategy for leveraging the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of proteomics for cancer patients, said NCI deputy director Anna D. Barker. I am confident that the complementary proteomic expertise of the awardees, and their commitment to interinstitutional collaboration and real- time data sharing, will enable the development of biomarkers to contribute to a new generation of molecularly based interventions to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer.

The team, based at Purdue's Bindley Bioscience Center at Discovery Park, will develop protocols and standards for mass spectrometry- based cancer proteomics relating to breast and prostate cancer. The endeavor will involve close cooperation between Purdue and Indiana University experts in proteomics, informatics and cancer biology and treatment.

This is a perfect example of how great things will happen in Indiana when IU, Purdue and the private sector collaborate on life sciences research, said Dr. D. Craig Brater, dean of the IU School of Medicine and vice president of IU with responsibility for life sciences.

Four hundred clinical samples will be collected for breast cancer analysis by the Hoosier Oncology Group, an Indiana statewide network of cancer physicians chaired by Christopher Sweeney, an oncologist and associate director of clinical research at the IU Cancer Center. Prostate cancer samples also will be collected from the NCI-sponsored Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group trial.

As co-principal investigators, Sweeney and Harikrishna Nakshatri, the Marian J. Morrison Investigator in Breast Cancer Research in the IU Department of Surgery, and others will conduct cancer biology research. Discovery Park's Oncological Sciences Center played a key role in connecting clinical and basic science researchers in the project.

The goals of the program are to define existing technologies and identify emerging technologies that will enable precise and reproducible measurement of biomarkers in cancer, said Jiri Adamec, a Purdue research assistant professor and lead scientist at Bindley Bioscience Center and co-principal investigator. Other Purdue team members include research assistant professor Xiang Zhang and chemistry professor Scott McLuckey.

The team will employ both electrospray ionization and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry platforms.

Mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches have the advantage of excellent sensitivity and high analytical precision, Adamec said. Our team will focus on the use of this technology in providing insight into breast and prostate cancer biomarkers. These biomarkers will have dramatic impact for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

The team will use the emerging bioCD technology invented at Purdue and commercialized by QuadraSpec, a Purdue Research Park company, to expand the detection and quantification of specific candidate cancer protein biomarkers. The technology enables evaluation of hundreds of proteins of interest from hundreds of samples in minutes by incorporating specific antibodies on a microfabricated optical disk that is read by spinning disc inferometry, said Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center.

In Bloomington, the startup company Predictive Physiology and Medicine will work with David E. Clemmer, the firm's scientific co- founder and chairman of the IU Department of Chemistry, and Clemmer's team at IU Bloomington to provide ion mobility spectrometry evaluation. This proprietary technology greatly broadens the range for cancer biomarker proteomics studies, Buck said.

In Indianapolis, proteomics work will be conducted by the Protein Analysis and Research Center, the academic service component of the Indiana Centers for Applied Protein Sciences (INCAPS), said Mu Wang, director of PARC and an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the IU School of Medicine. That work will include planning and execution of the projects to identify and validate targeted biomarkers for breast and prostate cancers.

Statistical analysis and processing of the data will be overseen by Jake Chen, assistant professor of informatics at IU and co-principal investigator.

For a large NCI program such as this, data is going to be generated and collected from clinical laboratories, individual research labs at Purdue, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, IU School of Medicine, IU Bloomington, and various contracting companies across the state, Chen said. Therefore, it's essential for a team of computational scientists to work together, linking data, storing them, and analyzing them using computational and statistical tools. The work ahead will be very exciting.

The team will take advantage of Purdue's discovery pipeline for high- complexity data handling to deal with the challenge of data collection, management, and analysis. This discovery pipeline was developed from cooperation among the Bindley Bioscience, e-Enterprise and Cyber centers at Discovery Park.

The NCI's Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer awardees were chosen based, in part, on the broad expertise of their proteomic research teams and their familiarity with and regular use of a wide range of proteomic technologies. The five teams define a cross-institutional and multidisciplinary network of assessment centers that will evaluate and compare different commercially available proteomic platforms and analysis software packages in the context of their potential applicability to cancer. They will also work together to develop a comprehensive approach to assess intra- platform and inter-laboratory variability in these measurement technologies.

CPTAC is one of three major Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative program components integrated by the National Institutes of Health NCI to address the fundamental scientific requirements that must be met in order to realize the promise of proteomics for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Together, they have been charged with providing the scientific community with an assessment of current proteomic technologies, developing and assessing novel technologies and computational methods, and creating a central repository of the resources needed to use these proteomic tools.

RELATED WEB SITES:

Bindley Bioscience Center: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal/ Bioscience

Discovery Park: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal

Purdue University: http://www.purdue.edu

Indiana University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.iu.edu

Indiana University: http://www.Indiana.edu

Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer and the Clinical Proteomic Technologies Assessment for Cancer awards: http:// proteomics.cancer.gov

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov

- - - -

CONTACTS:

Sources - Fred Regnier, 765-494-3878, [email protected]

Jiri Adamec, [email protected]

Charles Buck, 765-494-2208, [email protected]

Christopher Sweeney, 317-274-3515, [email protected]

Jake Chen, 317-278-7604, [email protected]

Writers - Elizabeth Gardner, 765-494-2081, [email protected]

Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, [email protected]

Eric Schoch, 317-274-8205, [email protected]

AUDIO: Audio clips from Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center, and publication-quality photos are available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html3month/ 2006/060928RegnierNCI.html

PHOTO: A publication-quality photo is available at http:// news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2006/regnier-proteomics.jpg

PHOTO CAPTION: Jiri Adamec, from left, a research assistant professor, discusses the results of an experiment with Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, in the Bindley Bioscience Center's Proteomics Lab. The Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team, led by Regnier, has been approved as a national center in the National Cancer Institute's Consortium for Proteomics Technology Assessment for Cancer. The team studies the detection and prediction of cancer through analysis of blood samples. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Copyright 2006 AScribe inc.
'Roadmap' aims to make county better. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A NEW 'roadmap' for Yorkshire and Humber's economic growth, the Regional Economic Strategy 2006-2015 (RES), has just been launched by Yorkshire Forward.

The RES provides a ten year outline of what the region needs to do to grow its GBP75 billion economy. The overall aim is to make Yorkshire and Humber a better place to live, work and invest.

To outline how this can be achieved, the document offers a straightforward guide to economic development and investment - unique to the region and its circumstances, diversity and places. It also specifies who needs to take responsibility for delivering each action and calls on the public, private, voluntary and community sectors to pool their efforts.



The strategy highlights three key areas as being essential to Yorkshire and Humber's future economy: business, people and the environment.

Business objectives outline that the region needs 'more businesses that last', placing emphasis on the need to encourage enterprise in groups to drive productivity, while 'more competitive businesses' highlights that innovation activity is core to economic growth.

People objectives focus on 'skilled people - benefiting business and individuals' as this drives productivity and has knock-on benefits on quality of life, while 'connecting people to good jobs' will tackle worklessness and remove barriers to work.

Environment objectives consider 'transport, infrastructure and the environment', looking at transport schemes of economic priority, the role of the private sector in utilities and infrastructure, plus activity to enhance and utilise the environment and natural resources. A final objective stresses a drive for 'stronger towns and cities' and the role of their renaissance in driving the economy.

Underpinning all six objectives are three themes which aim to achieve quality of delivery. 'Sustainable development' aims to grow business via a long term approach that benefits the environment and enhances quality of life, 'diversity' aims to ensure all people and businesses realise their potential, while 'leadership and ambition' acknowledges that the region needs to raise its sights and promote a culture where people, businesses and agencies aim high, drive change and make the most of their abilities.

Produced by Yorkshire Forward on behalf of the region, the new strategy is the second to be launched by the RDA since its inception. It is the product of the ideas of more than 5,000 people, from three rounds of extensive and inclusive consultation.

Yorkshire Forward chairman Terry Hodgkinson said: "Our region has come a long way since the launch of the first Regional Economic Strategy in 2000, and as a result our economic landscape has changed. This new RES recognises these changes and has refocused our priorities accordingly.

"If people are looking to start or expand a business, want to achieve their potential or transform the place in which they live, then this strategy exists to make this possible." Copies of the RES are available at www.yorkshire-forward.com or by telephoning Yorkshire Forward on 0113 3949600.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Do you deserve to win a prestigious Queen's Award?. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE Queen's Awards for Enterprise are the UK's most prestigious awards for business performance.

They recognise and reward outstanding achievement by UK companies. They are presented in three separate categories: l International Trade - recognising companies that have demonstrated growth in overseas earnings.

l Innovation - recognising companies that have demonstrated commercial success through innovative products or services.

l Sustainable Development - recognising companies that have integrated environmental, social, economic and management aspects of sustainable development into their business.

The awards are made each year by The Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister, who is assisted by an Advisory Committee that includes representatives of Government, industry and commerce, and the trade unions. Outstanding businesses from all sectors are currently being invited to apply for the 2007 awards. The deadline for this year's awards is October 31.



In 2006, 145 companies - large and small - won a Queen's Award. The main benefits of winning are recognition, publicity, staff motivation and use of The Queen's Award Emblem for five years - and, impressively, 92 per cent of the 137 award winners last year said they thought winning a Queen's Award had brought added commercial value to their firm, with 22 per cent noticing a significant increase in new business since winning the award.

"This is a chance for a company to be recognised as a leader in its market and one of the top businesses in the UK," says Stephen Brice, secretary to The Queen's Awards office.

"There is no limit to the number of awards available each year - if a company's achievements are deemed truly outstanding for its sector, then it stands a good chance of winning an award." Over the next few months, officials from The Queen's Awards office will be touring the country to promote the awards, supported by talks and presentations. They will also be inviting nominations for The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion - an award for individuals helping and inspiring tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

Judging is thorough, so apply only if you can answer a definite 'yes' to these questions: l Does your business have a UK base? l Does your business employ at least two full-time workers (or part-time equivalent)? l Do you believe your business is one of the best? l Can you demonstrate commercial success? For details visit: www.queensawards.org.uk.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Hat maker a top ten business hero. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A WETHERBY woman who turned her life from tragedy to triumph has been crowned one of Britain's top ten business heroes by setting-up her own hat-making enterprise.

Milliner Woody Whittick, who set up She's All That a year ago, was presented with her winner's trophy by GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips at a glittering gala dinner in London on Wednesday.

The hat maker beat off fierce competition from hundreds of applicants, to finish as a finalist in the Barclays Trading Places Awards, launched this year to people who have overcome personal adversity to positively change their lives by setting up a thriving business.



Woody has fought a battle with ill health since suffering from ME in her teens. She suffered a paralysing spine injury at only 30, and was made redundant during her recovery when her employer went bankrupt.

But after a change of direction she found her calling.

Since opening She's All That last Summer, Woody has designed hats for hundreds of women, including celebrities and catwalk models, featured at Royal Ascot, designed the crown for Miss York 2006 and been elected vice-chair of the British Hat Guild.

Barclay's John Davis said: "The quality of entries made judging extremely difficult but all the judges felt She's All That shone out as a real-life example of an outstanding business that has thrived despite what seemed like impossible odds.

"We congratulate Woody Whittick on being crowned a 2006 National Finalist."

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

Inside Business Pink

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Inside Business Pink. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WELCOME to the September edition of our 12-page Business Pink supplement, which contains a wealth of business stories, features with members of the business community, appointments, opinions and advice.



Business Pink is published every two months with each title in the Harrogate Advertiser Series and focuses on businesses and individuals throughout the districts of Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough, Wetherby, Nidderdale and Northallerton.

This supplement also features a four-page On Location section, brought to you in conjunction with Harrogate Borough Council, which provides infomation to help businesses develop and succeed within the district.

If you have any stories or information which you think may be appropriate for the next issue of Business Pink, due out in November, please contact business editor Katie Moulds on 01423 707509 or by emailing [email protected].

For the On Location section, please contact Harrogate Borough Council's Economic Development Unit on 01423 556077 or by email to [email protected].

Page 2 - HARROGATE-based Avenir properties has reaped more than one reward from its recent development of land at Cardale Park. State-of-the-art offices making up the Greengate site have proved so successful that the company is now planning on replicating the project elsewhere in Yorkshire.

Page 3 - THE Oscars of the food and drink industry saw dozens of companies from the Harrogate district pick up presitigious awards. Among them was Masham firm Rosebud Preserves, which was crowned Yorkshire champion.

Page 4 - MARK Leather had no idea how much the internet would benefit his business until he was persuaded by website design company Extreme Creations to develop his website into an online shop. Now selling 1,500 natural food products online, Mark says the website has played a major part in his company's 100 per cent rise in turnover in less than two years.

Page 5 - THE first page of the On Location section takes a closer look at a council-led scheme which aims to help businesses comply with new EU regulations on food. Since January this year, all food businesses are required by law to put in place documented food safety management procedures - but many companies are still unaware of or ignoring the regulations.

Page 6 - RECOGNISING and rewarding outstanding achievement by UK companies is the aim of the prestigious Queen's Awards for Enterprise. Outstanding businesses from all sectors are being invited to apply for the 2007 awards - find out how you can take part.

Page 7 - LOOKING for hassle-free office space in Harrogate? On Location tells you what's on offer with regards to serviced office accommodation in the town, from rooms in traditional, converted buildings to modern, newly-built flexible offices.

Page 8 - ARE you prepared for the worst? What would you do if your business was affected by flood, fire or even terrorism? We tell you why a business continuity plan is so important, and explain what it should contain, how to test it - and how to prevent a disaster happening in the first place.

Page 9 - FOLLOWING the success of last year's inaugural Ackrill Media Group Business Awards, the event has now become an annual celebration of the best that businesses have to offer in our district. We begin a three-page look at the launch of this year's awards by introducing the categories and the criteria and, of course, giving you details on how to enter.

Page 10 - MEET the sponsors of the Ackrill Media Group Business Awards. Find out who is sponsoring which award, and learn what they are looking for in their winner.

Page 11 - THE second page introducing you to the category sponsors of the Ackrill Media Group Business Awards.

Page 12 - LOOKING back at ten years in the notoriously difficult Harrogate nightlife industry, Jason Smith, below, admits there have been some tough times. But the owner of Monteys Rock Cafe credits consistency and determination as the secrets of his business survival, as well as, of course, maintaining a good bar.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

Women's group success

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Women's group success. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE inaugural meeting of a new Harrogate-based business networking group for women has proved a huge success.

Around 40 members of WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) attended this week's event at Evans Easyspace Ltd on Hartwith Way, Harrogate.

WiRE is a national business club for women operating in rural areas, offering a dynamic package of practical services and assistance.

The Harrogate group, one of a number of regional networks, aims to provide localised support for members and increase their business activities across the region.

Members will meet once a month to enjoy talks from expert speakers and the chance to chat and discuss business opportunities.

Group co-ordinator Sarah Manby, of Mango Mutt, said: "It's great that so many WiRE members are supporting a local network - the response clearly shows there is the need for one.

"We are looking forward to getting to know each other and helping each other succeed in our various enterprises. We're all women trying to run businesses in rural areas, so we have a shared bond in understanding how difficult this can sometimes be." All members of WiRE are welcome to attend the meetings, but places must be booked in advance.



For more information contact Sarah Manby on 01423 545787 or email [email protected].

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

The Denver Post Al Lewis column

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The Denver Post Al Lewis column. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--After losing her job and getting dragged into a congressional inquiry, Hewlett-Packard's deposed chairwoman Patricia Dunn can't make up her mind.

Is it OK to impersonate people and steal their phone records -- or not?

"I still do not understand whether it is legal or not, as opinions vary," Dunn told Congress on Thursday.

Even Silicon Valley lawyer Larry Sonsini's opinions vary. Acting as HP's outside counsel, Sonsini had advised that this practice, known as pretexting, is "not generally unlawful." On Thursday before Congress, though, Sonsini said pretexting is probably illegal but that there ought to be a new law to make this clear.



Wouldn't disbarment or a legal-malpractice lawsuit also make this clear?

And what about existing laws against deceptive trade practices, criminal impersonation, identity theft or wire fraud?

Don't they provide clarity?

Could Dunn and Sonsini really be this dumb? Do they really think the people watching their charades are dumb, too?

What's not ostensibly clear to Dunn and Sonsini seemed abundantly clear to HP general counsel Ann Baskins.

Hours before Baskins was scheduled to testify, she resigned from her 24-year career at HP and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination.

Also taking the Fifth were a host of others involved in HP's cloak-and-dagger investigation of boardroom leaks to reporters. They included Ronald DeLia, who runs the detective firm that HP used; Anthony R. Gentilucci, who managed HP's global investigations unit in Boston; and Kevin T. Hunsaker, HP's former chief ethics officer, who was fired apparently for a lack of ethics in this matter.

Then there's HP chief executive Mark Hurd, who did not take the Fifth. Congress cut Hurd way too much slack Thursday, allowing him to testify alone, without his suspicious-looking colleagues at his side.

Everybody seems to love Hurd because HP stock has soared since he became CEO last year. And at least Hurd was apologetic about HP's misadventure, describing it as a "rogue investigation that violated HP's own principles and values." But Hurd also did a fine job of playing dumb. He told Congress he had had discussions about the investigation but was not involved in it and did not know the details. Maybe he didn't know because he didn't want to know.

"I understand there is also a written report of the investigation addressed to me and others, but unfortunately I did not read it," Hurd said in prepared testimony. "I could have, and I should have." But somehow, he just didn't.

How dumb is that?

So everyone involved in HP's investigation either took the Fifth, said they didn't know or said they were assured that what went on was legal.

Dunn, I think, explained it most eloquently: "Reliance on representations from trusted sources is a bedrock concept in board governance." Here's another "bedrock concept" if you ever want to run a complex enterprise like HP: Question everything. But don't try to look smart when prosecutors are watching your every facial twitch on C-SPAN. Better to play dumb.

Like Bryan Wagner of Littleton, who once worked for Action Research Group.

Wagner, 29, is the nephew of private investigator James Rapp, who pleaded guilty in 1999 after selling information about Los Angeles organized-crime detectives to the Israeli mafia.

Denver Post reporter Kimberly Johnson approached Wagner on Wednesday outside his apartment as he waited for a shuttle to take him to the airport for his flight to Washington. "Action (Research Group) has lawyers to make sure that we're doing everything legally," he told Johnson. "I never thought I was doing anything wrong." Wagner, however, took the Fifth on Thursday before Congress. And well before that, he reportedly took a hammer to his computer.

"I'm not going to say any more about the computer," he said. "I'm afraid I'll be charged with destruction of evidence."

OK, so I'll take it back. Wagner may be the one guy in the HP affair who is not playing dumb. Everyone else -- please!

Al Lewis' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-954-1967 or [email protected].

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
PurdueIndiana University Team Selected as National Cancer Institute Proteomics Center. Check it out:
(Ascribe Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Purdue and Indiana universities' proteomics team has been selected as one of five national centers for cancer research.

The National Cancer Institute announced Wednesday (Sept. 27) its selection of the Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team for inclusion in a new consortium to assess proteomic technology and its applications for diagnosis and treatment of cancer.



The NCI awarded a $7 million grant to the Purdue-IU team, which pairs Purdue's experts in mass spectrometry and proteomics technology with the expert clinical team of cancer researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine. Together they will focus on technology to diagnose breast and prostate cancer through blood samples.

"This is the future of cancer detection in America," said Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and principal investigator for the team. "Proteomics, the study of proteins, holds great promise for more precise diagnosis and tailored cancer therapies through the identification of proteins specific to cancer and other diseases, called 'biomarkers.'"

"However, more work needs to be done to establish protocols for these approaches and the technology used. The NCI program creates a consortium for this purpose and is a great advancement for the field. Remarkably, all five centers included breast cancer as an area of study, which will allow for incredible scientific collaboration and evaluation of data from patients nationwide."

The consortium will receive $35.5 million in awards and is one of three components of the NCI's $104 million five-year clinical proteomic technologies initiative for cancer national program.

"This program is a critical component of NCI's strategy for leveraging the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of proteomics for cancer patients, " said NCI deputy director Anna D. Barker. "I am confident that the complementary proteomic expertise of the awardees, and their commitment to interinstitutional collaboration and real- time data sharing, will enable the development of biomarkers to contribute to a new generation of molecularly based interventions to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer."

The team, based at Purdue's Bindley Bioscience Center at Discovery Park, will develop protocols and standards for mass spectrometry- based cancer proteomics relating to breast and prostate cancer. The endeavor will involve close cooperation between Purdue and Indiana University experts in proteomics, informatics and cancer biology and treatment.

"This is a perfect example of how great things will happen in Indiana when IU, Purdue and the private sector collaborate on life sciences research," said Dr. D. Craig Brater, dean of the IU School of Medicine and vice president of IU with responsibility for life sciences.

Four hundred clinical samples will be collected for breast cancer analysis by the Hoosier Oncology Group, an Indiana statewide network of cancer physicians chaired by Christopher Sweeney, an oncologist and associate director of clinical research at the IU Cancer Center. Prostate cancer samples also will be collected from the NCI-sponsored Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group trial.

As co-principal investigators, Sweeney and Harikrishna Nakshatri, the Marian J. Morrison Investigator in Breast Cancer Research in the IU Department of Surgery, and others will conduct cancer biology research. Discovery Park's Oncological Sciences Center played a key role in connecting clinical and basic science researchers in the project.

The goals of the program are to define existing technologies and identify emerging technologies that will enable precise and reproducible measurement of biomarkers in cancer, said Jiri Adamec, a Purdue research assistant professor and lead scientist at Bindley Bioscience Center and co-principal investigator. Other Purdue team members include research assistant professor Xiang Zhang and chemistry professor Scott McLuckey.

The team will employ both electrospray ionization and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry platforms.

"Mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches have the advantage of excellent sensitivity and high analytical precision," Adamec said. "Our team will focus on the use of this technology in providing insight into breast and prostate cancer biomarkers. These biomarkers will have dramatic impact for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics."

The team will use the emerging "bioCD" technology invented at Purdue and commercialized by QuadraSpec, a Purdue Research Park company, to expand the detection and quantification of specific candidate cancer protein biomarkers. The technology enables evaluation of hundreds of proteins of interest from hundreds of samples in minutes by incorporating specific antibodies on a microfabricated optical disk that is read by spinning disc inferometry, said Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center.

In Bloomington, the startup company Predictive Physiology and Medicine will work with David E. Clemmer, the firm's scientific co- founder and chairman of the IU Department of Chemistry, and Clemmer's team at IU Bloomington to provide ion mobility spectrometry evaluation. This proprietary technology greatly broadens the range for cancer biomarker proteomics studies, Buck said.

In Indianapolis, proteomics work will be conducted by the Protein Analysis and Research Center, the academic service component of the Indiana Centers for Applied Protein Sciences (INCAPS), said Mu Wang, director of PARC and an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the IU School of Medicine. That work will include planning and execution of the projects to identify and validate targeted biomarkers for breast and prostate cancers.

Statistical analysis and processing of the data will be overseen by Jake Chen, assistant professor of informatics at IU and co-principal investigator.

"For a large NCI program such as this, data is going to be generated and collected from clinical laboratories, individual research labs at Purdue, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, IU School of Medicine, IU Bloomington, and various contracting companies across the state," Chen said. "Therefore, it's essential for a team of computational scientists to work together, linking data, storing them, and analyzing them using computational and statistical tools. The work ahead will be very exciting."

The team will take advantage of Purdue's discovery pipeline for high- complexity data handling to deal with the challenge of data collection, management, and analysis. This discovery pipeline was developed from cooperation among the Bindley Bioscience, e-Enterprise and Cyber centers at Discovery Park.

The NCI's Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer awardees were chosen based, in part, on the broad expertise of their proteomic research teams and their familiarity with and regular use of a wide range of proteomic technologies. The five teams define a cross-institutional and multidisciplinary network of assessment centers that will evaluate and compare different commercially available proteomic platforms and analysis software packages in the context of their potential applicability to cancer. They will also work together to develop a comprehensive approach to assess intra- platform and inter-laboratory variability in these measurement technologies.

CPTAC is one of three major Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative program components integrated by the National Institutes of Health NCI to address the fundamental scientific requirements that must be met in order to realize the promise of proteomics for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Together, they have been charged with providing the scientific community with an assessment of current proteomic technologies, developing and assessing novel technologies and computational methods, and creating a central repository of the resources needed to use these proteomic tools.

RELATED WEB SITES:

Bindley Bioscience Center: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal/ Bioscience

Discovery Park: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal

Purdue University: http://www.purdue.edu

Indiana University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.iu.edu

Indiana University: http://www.Indiana.edu

Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer and the Clinical Proteomic Technologies Assessment for Cancer awards: http:// proteomics.cancer.gov

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov

- - - -

CONTACTS:

Sources - Fred Regnier, 765-494-3878, [email protected]

Jiri Adamec, [email protected]

Charles Buck, 765-494-2208, [email protected]

Christopher Sweeney, 317-274-3515, [email protected]

Jake Chen, 317-278-7604, [email protected]

Writers - Elizabeth Gardner, 765-494-2081, [email protected]

Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, [email protected]

Eric Schoch, 317-274-8205, [email protected]

AUDIO: Audio clips from Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center, and publication-quality photos are available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html3month/ 2006/060928RegnierNCI.html

PHOTO: A publication-quality photo is available at http:// news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2006/regnier-proteomics.jpg

PHOTO CAPTION: Jiri Adamec, from left, a research assistant professor, discusses the results of an experiment with Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, in the Bindley Bioscience Center's Proteomics Lab. The Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team, led by Regnier, has been approved as a national center in the National Cancer Institute's Consortium for Proteomics Technology Assessment for Cancer. The team studies the detection and prediction of cancer through analysis of blood samples. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

((AScribe - The Public Interest Newswire / http://www.ascribe.org))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Health, energy issues discussed at Illinois chamber of commerce briefing. Check it out:
(News-Gazette, The (Champaign-Urbana, IL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--CHAMPAIGN -- There's no consensus among Illinois employers about what government should do to make health care more affordable, the president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce says.



Some employers want government-provided health care. Others are seeking a solution from free enterprise. Still others aren't providing health insurance at all.

"There's not a clear answer to what the state can and should be doing," chamber President Douglas Whitley told 35 business people at a briefing in Champaign that tied in with the chamber's endorsement of Republican Judy Myers for the 52nd Senate District seat.

Myers faces Democrat Mike Frerichs and Socialist Equality candidate Joe Parnarauskis in the Nov. 7 general election. The winner will succeed Republican Sen. Rick Winkel.

At the chamber's briefing at the Hawthorn Suites Hotel, audience member Carol Timms asked what the state could do to help small businesses with mounting health insurance costs.

Myers said a tax credit could help to some extent. Whitley said employers would be helped if the state made fewer mandates for health care coverage.

He said the state has 26 different health insurance mandates, and the chamber believes insurance decisions "ought to be more like a smorgasbord. You ought to be able to pick and choose."

Whitley, who grew up in Atwood, said the state chamber has also endorsed Republican Judy Baar Topinka over Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Whitley chided Blagojevich for "very anti-business policies," namely imposing new taxes on business.

Whitley claimed the Blagojevich administration thinks it is "OK to increase the costs of doing business" because employers have "deep pockets" that can absorb taxes.

Specifically, Whitley assailed the state's delay of payments to medical providers and its failure to meet public employee pension obligations. He said some Illinois doctors are fleeing to Indiana and Wisconsin to avoid the high costs of doing business here.

Audience member Andrew Timms asked Myers how the state's budget problems could be solved if taxes are cut, as she advocates.

"If you have a strong business community and an attractive business climate, then the revenue will come," Myers said.

Earlier, Whitley sounded the same theme, saying "the only way out of (the state's budget woes) is to grow the economy. The current administration does not do this."

Whitley did credit Blagojevich with realizing the importance of energy to Illinois, specifically with regard to the $1 billion FutureGen project to demonstrate clean-coal technology.

A private-public partnership is trying to decide whether the FutureGen plant should be built in Illinois at either Mattoon or Tuscola or at one of two sites in Texas.

Responding to a question from real estate developer Brett Benso about the plant's eventual location, Whitley said the "only issue" appears to be what position, if any, President Bush takes on the matter.

Bush is a Texan, and Whitley said public officials leaving office sometimes steer federal projects to their home states. Whitley called the practice "the Lyndon Johnson syndrome."

He said Texas wound up with the superconducting supercollider project during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, after fierce competition with Illinois.

"FutureGen is research, and whether that (project) goes to Illinois or goes to Texas, the research done there will benefit Illinois coal," he said.

With regard to economic development, Whitley said the state must move away from government-controlled solutions and toward more public-private partnerships.

"In Illinois, we've had a top-down economic development focus the last 30 years ... Some years we've had genuine success, but for the most part, it's been muddling," he said.

To see more of The News-Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.news-gazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Unless you're creating and editing high-resolution video, NAS might be all you need.. Check it out:
(www.enterprisestorageforum.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Streaming data technology has become ubiquitous in recent years. Just about everyone from CNN.com to your local cable company uses it. On demand video, music, news broadcasts and security cameras are just a few examples of streaming data.



Since you're likely to run into the technology at some point, it's probably worth a closer look. Let's say you want to set up a streaming server; what are the issues you'll face, and how do you go about determining what to buy and how to configure it?

Once again, we'll begin with the issue of requirements. The requirements for gaining an understanding of streaming data (video or audio) can be complex or simple, depending on a number of factors:

The number of simultaneous users; The required data rate to the users compared to caching for example, MS Windows Media Player and RealPlayer both cache the stream and do not begin playing until enough data is cached to begin playback; Is the data stream real-time, cached or both real-time data might require less of some system resources and more of others than playing back already captured data, and vice versa; Will the playback be sequential for non-real-time data, this will definitely affect storage and file system performance. We can divide much of the common streaming applications into two separate and distinct categories:

High-performance playback and editing, which is used for high-definition streams. This is very uncommon and an example of this type of work is the animation done by the movie industry, especially for animation; and Low-resolution playback or capture the most common type of streaming application, with one of the new areas needed for data capture being security cameras. High-Performance Streaming Architecture

High-performance streaming is much harder to develop an architecture for since the requirements are much greater. The data rates needed for streaming I/O can exceed 30 MB/sec, and multiple streams are active simultaneously. Shared file systems are often used, which require even more complex architectural analysis since multiple systems are accessing the storage system. A number of shared file systems were actually developed in the late 1990s specifically for editing streaming video.

Even with 4Gb Fibre Channel and high-performance storage, the problem is still complex and requires careful attention to file system allocation and tuning, RAID tuning and a myriad of other data path tuning issues.

Luckily for most sites, requirements such as these are uncommon, and people working on this type of problem have years of experience in this area. These environments are often made even more complex because of the need to have massive amounts of data that is maintained by a hierarchical storage management system ( HSM ).

If this is your type of environment, you have a great deal of hard work ahead of you to ensure that your environment can meet the performance requirements. Nothing on the storage horizon is going to make it any easier in the near future, given that file systems and storage devices cannot communicate topological information about the location of the data and file system metadata. This can severely limit the performance of the environment, especially if many large files (most systems of this type only write large files) are being written at the same time, given the inherent file system fragmentation.

The only good news for this type of architecture is that it is not that common except in places like Hollywood and other high-resolution visual environments. Personally, I think working on these types of systems is a lot of fun given the complexity of the problems and the large amount of hardware and specialized software needed to meet the operational requirements.

Lower-Performance Architecture

Creating or developing an architecture for lower-performance/resolution environments is much easier for a number of reasons: the data rates are much lower; most of the applications cache the data, so real-time streaming is not that important; and network latency is very high and the relative performance is low.

Lower rates: For these environments, data rates tend to be in kilobytes rather than in megabytes. When the required data rate is three orders of magnitude less, this simplifies the architecture enormously.

Applications : The applications in these environments are often products like Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. These applications measure the income data rate and cache the data before beginning playback. If the network performance changes, these products stop and wait for the data rate to catch up and begin playback again.

Network latency and performance: In most of these environments, it is all about network latency and bandwidth. If you are streaming video from sites such as Yahoo, CNN and the like, the local bandwidth and latency at these sites is far greater than what you have at home with high-speed cable. The fastest common home network connection I have seen is 5 Mbits/sec. This far exceeds the rate needed to play most visual video streams, but the latency between you and the video stream can be high, especially if what you want to look at is a hot news or sports item. The latency is caused by contention for the video stream and a lack of bandwidth to the outside world from where the data is stored.

Choosing the Right Architecture

Obviously, since high- and low-performance streaming environments are so different, different architectures are needed for each. Using an HPC architecture for a low-performance environment would be overkill, unless the low-performance architecture was so large that an HPC architecture might make sense.

HPC Architecture

For the high-performance architecture, I would be looking at a 4Gb Fibre Channel environment, high-speed RAID controllers, PCI Express -based HBAs , a server with a great deal of memory bandwidth, and a-high performance file system with HSM capabilities.

A number of vendors develop solutions specifically for these types of environments. In the 1990s, both Apple and SGI dominated this market segment, but their domination has waned given the commoditization of everything. Some companies will still pay big bucks to ensure that they can meet their requirements because not getting a movie out on time can cost a lot of money.

Today, companies such as Quantum/ADIC, Sun and a myriad of others provide solutions in this market space. It's not a big market, but it is prestigious.

Low-Performance Architecture

For low performance needs, the first thing I would consider is NAS . Since the problem is all about low-resolution video data, NAS is often the best solution because it is easy to use, configure, maintain and manage. A number of vendors have optimized systems for exactly this type of application, such as Isilon, NetApp and others.

Managing content delivery of streaming data is not that difficult, given the latency, applications and file sizes, because the applications have addressed the network latency. Streaming I/O is not that big a deal over the Internet, and is often a function not of the storage system, but the interface to the Internet. Most NAS devices can handle the requirement without much architectural work, and this is true even for delivery of content within an intranet. The streams just are not that demanding of bandwidth and can be addressed by NAS technology.

On the other hand, editing and creating content is not that easy and requires careful attention to architectural planning and usually high-performance hardware and file systems. All of this might change over time as hardware gets faster and software gets more efficient, but for the time being, that's the way it is.

Henry Newman, a regular Enterprise Storage Forum contributor, is an industry consultant with 26 years experience in high-performance computing and storage. See more articles by Henry Newman .

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The ServerWatch newsletter for Friday, September 29, 2006. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
*********************************** ServerWatch Newsletter upt_http://www.serverwatch.com/ Friday, September 29, 2006 **********************************

---------------------- New on ServerWatch ----------------------

1. Virtually Speaking: Management Is the Key September 29, 2006 When it comes to virtualization, bad planning and poor management will merely replace a headache with a toothache.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3634966

------------------------------------------------------------ 2. The Hows and Whys of Server Virtualization September 28, 2006 How does virtualization work, and why is now a good time to check it out?

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3634911

------------------------------------------------------------ 3. SMB Space Gets High-End Feature Boost September 28, 2006 There's nothing small about virtualization for the SMB space. Dell's newest systems aim to serve this and other high-end features to the SMB market.



http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3634861

------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Getting Back to Business September 27, 2006 Security and advanced tools are cool, but day-to-day routines have an even bigger impact on server security and reliability.

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3634671

------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Enterprise Unix Roundup: Unix Buzz Defies Prognosis September 27, 2006 The research firms may be reading the end of Unix in their tea leaves, but word on the street says otherwise.

http://www.serverwatch.com/eur/article.php/3634546

------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Linux Developers Reject GPL 3 September 26, 2006 Top Linux kernel developers, Torvalds included, vote version 3 of the GPL a no-go.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3634131

------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Tip of the Trade: DTrace September 26, 2006 DTrace is considered by many to be one of the best features in Solaris 10. The troubleshooting tool is a powerful dynamic tracing utility for observing, debugging and tuning system behavior. The one downside? Its complexity.

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3634126

------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Hardware Today: Building an Uninterruptible Data Center September 25, 2006 In the next five years, power failures and power availability limitations may halt data center operations in more than 90 percent of companies. A UPS and a strategy for reducing power output is one way to be in the other 10 percent.

http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3634071

------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Squid Internet Object Cache vs. InterGate September 25, 2006 Non-Windows proxy servers are a rare breed. Here are two to get you started on your search.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/313890_Ext

------------------------------------------------------------ 10. IBM Takes Tape Storage Into Overdrive September 22, 2006 Big Blue adds long-distance disaster recovery and grid tools to its enterprise-class tape system.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3633771

------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------- Server Updates ---------------------------------

Updated Mailtraq, a 4 star Mail server, to version 2.9.0.2082. - Sep 29, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/17171

Updated Axigen Mail Server, a 4 star Mail server, to version 1.2.6. - Sep 29, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/17187

Updated Merak Mail Server, a 5 star Mail server, to version 8.5.0-8. - Sep 25, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/16181

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Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.
Congress repeals Wright: Love flights anywhere allowed when bill signed as early as next week. Check it out:
(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--WASHINGTON -- Congress approved legislation late Friday to repeal the Wright amendment, potentially resolving a decades-old battle over the role of Dallas Love Field.

The bill to phase out flight restrictions at the Dallas airport cleared the House overwhelmingly in a late-night vote before lawmakers departed for a pre-election recess.

The legislation won passage in the Senate earlier Friday after months of pressure by Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to win over a final detractor, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

President Bush is expected to sign the measure as early as next week.

"It's a great relief to have a final solution," said Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, whose district includes Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. "The fact that none of the parties are completely happy, and all of the parties are relieved to have it over, should be a sign that it's a good agreement."



Still, lawmakers acknowledged that the Wright battle may not be over. North Texas residents and groups that opposed the deal are expected to challenge the legislation in court.

The Wright legislation stalled this summer under criticism over its treatment of federal antitrust laws, and supporters in Congress fought hard for language to help shield the deal from a long court fight.

The legislation will repeal Wright in 2014, implementing a June agreement by the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and D/FW Airport.

It would immediately allow flights anywhere from Love Field, as long as they first stopped inside the nine-state Wright perimeter.

The agreement would also cut the number of available gates at Love from 32 to 20, part of a plan to compensate for an expected increase in noise, pollution and congestion. Nineteen gates are in use now.

On Congress' last day, the House turned out to be the greatest source of contention over repealing the Wright law.

House members planned to clear their bill under suspension of normal rules, a procedure often used for uncontroversial measures that would prevent lawmakers from offering amendments.

Suspension bills often pass without recorded votes, but objections to the Wright legislation forced proponents to corral the support of two-thirds of those present.

A heated evening debate had opponents sparring over the antitrust issue, while also arguing that residents outside the existing Wright perimeter would be saddled with higher airfares as a result of the deal.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said the bill "will continue vestiges of the Wright amendment" until 2025, when gate arrangements expire under the deal.

In a departure from many congressional debates, supporters and opponents of the Wright agreement weren't split by party affiliation or geography.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, argued against a frequent ally, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, whose district includes Love Field.

Bumper sticker

Mr. Sensenbrenner, recalling the "Don't Mess with Texas" bumper stickers in the House garage, said, "Tonight is one of the nights where we ought to mess with Texas.

"This is the most anti-consumer, anti-free-enterprise bill that has come before this House in a long time," he said.

The debate on the House floor was not expected a day earlier. North Texas lawmakers positioned the legislation to allow it to pass easily.

A tougher fight had been expected in the Senate, where rules and traditions allow a single member the power to block legislation.

By early Thursday afternoon, after House members from North Texas had forged a path for their bill to reach the House floor, the pressure had grown on Ms. Hutchison and Mr. Cornyn.

Efforts in recent weeks to find language that was acceptable to Mr. Leahy and the North Texas parties had failed, even after changing the antitrust language from an explicit to implicit exemption to win over the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Word came from the Texas senators' staffs later Thursday afternoon that Mr. Leahy could come to an agreement for bringing the Wright bill up under unanimous consent, a procedure used for noncontroversial measures.

The senators and their staffs started working on statements to be read on the Senate floor.

Ms. Hutchison reached out to House members about her progress, e-mailing and talking with Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, past midnight and into Friday morning, to ask her to wait for a Senate bill to come to the House to prevent further procedural delays.

By Friday morning, Ms. Hutchison was sitting in a cloakroom off the Senate floor working out how the bill would come up under unanimous consent.

Mr. Leahy had been pushing a wilderness bill to move under unanimous consent, a measure that largely affected Vermont and New Hampshire.

Asked later if she was holding up his bill, Ms. Hutchison smiled. "Why would someone do that?

"Let's just say that we came to an agreement to pass both bills," she said.

The bill passed the Senate in less than a minute just before 1 p.m. Dallas time.

Then Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Leahy engaged in a colloquy, a discussion on the Senate floor that allows lawmakers to share their thinking for the record.

The dialogue does not offer the force of law but gives judges an opportunity to glean congressional intent in a court challenge over the antitrust issue

"Senator Cornyn and I share a concern about providing antitrust immunity to agreements involving private parties," Mr. Leahy said. "While I would prefer greater clarity on this point in the bill, I am pleased that Senator Cornyn and I agree that this is an entirely unique situation, which should not be repeated."

Mr. Cornyn agreed that "the legislation contemplated here should not be a model for any future arrangement.

"In no way can I imagine a situation arising with a set of facts remotely similar to that created in Dallas by the passage of the Wright Amendment," he said.

Mr. Cornyn, who serves on the judiciary committee with Mr. Leahy, said later that ending the impasse was a matter of talking through the details of the Wright law and the uniqueness of the situation.

"We had to explain to him that actually this increased competition rather than decreased competition," Mr. Cornyn said. "That was one of the hard things for people to understand because of the unique nature of the Wright amendment."

Ms. Hutchison, who urged North Texas officials early in the year to come up with a solution, said the Wright legislation took "an inordinate amount of time for a bill that shouldn't have been this complicated."

"I have to say that in my 12 years in the Senate, the hardest thing that I've ever had to explain was the Wright amendment to outside people," she said.

Miller euphoric

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller was euphoric Friday afternoon. She'd feared the Senate would be the bigger obstacle.

Ms. Miller said she was confident the terms of the bill would protect Dallas from losing a court challenge, due to a dedicated North Texas delegation and attorneys who worked around the clock.

"Without the language crafted in the Senate ... we would have a huge problem," Ms. Miller said.

Friday's actions followed a nearly two-year fight over the Wright amendment and Love Field.

In November 2004, Southwest Airlines announced that it would lobby Congress to lift the flight restrictions.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, introduced legislation the following May to repeal Wright completely, spurring lawmakers nationwide to pick up the cause to win cheaper flights to and from North Texas.

But Mr. Hensarling decided not to back the compromise agreement, saying he could not support the nation's only congressional mandate on the number of gates at a local airport.

He sat quietly in the back row of the House on Friday evening to watch the debate. He planned to vote against the bill but did not fight the compromise agreement.

Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, who co-sponsored the original Wright repeal legislation with Mr. Hensarling, said the compromise was "not perfect" but still an agreement worthy of support.

Staff writer Emily Ramshaw in Dallas contributed to this report.

E-mail [email protected]

HOW THE WRIGHT AMENDMENT WOUND UP ON ITS FINAL DESCENT

Key events in the history of the Wright amendment:

1979

In an effort to protect a young Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport from competition at Dallas Love Field, Congress approves the Wright amendment, named for U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth. The law, which took effect the following year, limits flights from Love Field to airports in Texas and its adjoining four states, but allows commuter planes with 56 seats or fewer to fly farther.

1997

Congress approves the Shelby amendment, adding Alabama, Kansas and Mississippi to the Wright territory.

2000

April: Legend Airlines starts service from its own terminal at Love to Los Angeles and Washington with modified 56-seat jets. Continental Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also launch Love service.

December: Legend declares bankruptcy and stops all service. Eventually, American and Delta pull out of Love. Continental remained.

2004

September: Delta announces it will close its D/FW hub, reducing its daily schedule here from 254 nonstop flights to 21.

November: Southwest CEO Gary Kelly says the carrier considered filling some of Delta's void at D/FW, but decided against it. Instead, Mr. Kelly calls for repeal of the Wright law.

D/FW and American express strong support for continuing the Wright limits.

2005

May: U.S. Reps. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, and Sam Johnson, R-Plano, introduce legislation in the House that would fully repeal Wright.

July: Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign introduces a similar bill in the Senate.

November: Missouri becomes the ninth state outside of Texas that can be served from Love Field, when Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., tacks his state onto the Wright perimeter in a transportation-spending bill.

December: Southwest launches new service to St. Louis and Kansas City from Love.

2006

February: Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn urge airline and government leaders in North Texas to come up with a compromise to settle the Wright fight.

March: American returns to Love, with service to St. Louis and Kansas City, as well as to Austin and San Antonio.

June: The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, along with D/FW, Southwest and American, announce a compromise that would allow for immediate through-ticketing and full repeal in 2014.

July: House and Senate committees approve legislation to enact the agreement. But a lobbying effort from the owners of the former Legend terminal, set to be demolished under the deal, draws detractors in Congress. The bills stall over antitrust exemptions.

September: The Senate approves legislation reflecting the North Texas compromise. A vote was set for late Friday in the House.

REPEALING WRIGHT

Once signed into law, legislation approved in the House and Senate on Friday would:

--Immediately allow commercial travel anywhere from Dallas Love Field if planes first stop at an airport in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma or Texas.

--Permit commercial flights to travel nonstop to any destination in the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia, beginning eight years after enactment.

--Direct the city of Dallas to reduce and cap the number of gates at Love Field at no more than 20; the airport now has 32 gates, 19 of which are in use.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Football: William Hill's decision to close US operation ironic. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Despite the advertising campaign for their self-styled 'Gods of Poker' being a bit on the naff side, I like the William Hill poker website. The company has embraced the game by offering decent sign-up bonuses and $1 million prize pools every week. It sponsors a raft of professionals, has a good online poker school and a poker show broadcast on Sky each Wednesday.



Now, William Hill are not doing all of this because they're nice guys - although I'm sure they are - the company is involved in poker and other gaming activities because it wants to make a profit. Few people would contest their absolute right to do so.

The company do not force anyone to play and take a responsible approach towards gaming, so I was disappointed when they became the umpteenth company to effectively close down their US operations earlier this week.

There is a certain irony about internet poker and other gaming activities being actively discouraged in parts of the US.

America was built on free enterprise and its citizens remain justifiably suspicious of politicians and others who pursue actions in the name of the public good. Yet the world's richest, most entrepreneuri ally-focused nation insists on trying to behave like King Canute and prevent people from playing poker and participating in other forms of online gaming.

According to Hill's head honcho, Tom Singer, the fear of arrest prompted the company's decision to abandon the US market following the arrest and subsequent release of executives at Sportingbet and Bet On Sports earlier this year. Peter Dicks, the former chairman of Sportingbet, said he suspected that arrest warrants had been issued for a number of senior executives at companies involved in online poker and gaming.

In view of this, William Hill's decision was entirely understandable. As Mr Singer said: "Why do I need to live with the risk [of arrest] as a William Hill director?" He's absolutely right, yet there is evidence to suggest that the American crackdown on internet betting is set to move up a gear.

America's anti-poker crusade is being led by prosecutors in Louisiana, one of seven states that expressly outlaws online gaming. There is speculation within the gaming industry that the state has 58 arrest warrants ready to be issued should senior executives at internet gambling firms set foot on US soil.

There is further irony in the state of Louisiana's actions. The USA remains home to the world's largest gambling centre. Las Vegas, where the World Series of Poker is contested amid every conceivable gaming activity, contributes billions of tax dollars to the federal government.

But there is an even greater irony in Louisiana law-enforcers trying to prevent people playing poker. The game is a direct descendent of a French game called Poque, a name derived from the French verb pocher, to bluff. The modern form of draw poker originated in the US during the 19th century and became popular on Mississippi steamboats leaving French-speaking New Orleans. That's right: New Orleans in the state of Louisiana.

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
FOOD& DRINK: Cafe's a lifestyle choice. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) It is a typical Kings Heath street. Rabbit hutches are piled up outside a pet shop, several sofas peek out of a furniture store and a couple are enjoying a fry up at a greasy spoon across the road.



But there is a hidden gem among these standard array of shops and it has got residents excited.

For those who have bemoaned the rise in charity shops and for the council, which is thinking up a strategy to make Kings Heath "more like Moseley" with a better class of shop, they may be pleasantly surprised that there is hope on the horizon.

Behind some smart iron gates and through a little alleyway off York Road lies Kitchen Garden Cafe - an enterprise set up by two passionate environmentalists keen to add something to this diverse community.

"People seek us out when they come in and tell us this is exactly what Kings Heath needs," says owner Brett Rehling, who gave up his job as an IT manager for Cadbury's to create this cafe and garden shop.

"Within two weeks of opening we were getting 60 to 70 covers and that was without a single bit of advertising. The great thing about Kings Heath and Moseley is that people speak to each other and our business has come from word of mouth," he adds.

Brett, who met his wife Tracey Fletcher while volunteering at Birmingham Friends of the Earth, greets me with a wide smile, keen to show off the huge renovation of this former hardware shop.

He now works at the cafe full time, with Tracey chipping in whenever possible in between working for WWF and caring for their two-year-old son, Sacha.

"This was the old hardware store," he says pointing at the shiny new kitchen where a cheery chef is busy dishing out breakfasts. "And this was an old greenhouse full of rubbish," he says as we walk among the wooden tables. "And over here was Kings Heath's former blacksmiths. When we came, it had been used as a saw mill and was knee deep in sawdust."

It is clear the couple's passion to make such a venture work is reflected in the way they have renovated this old building.

The original brick walls and Victorian windows have been restored, and blue bricks from the former blacksmith's have been used to create a Mediterranean style patio and courtyard.

Chunky wooden tables have been created from scaffolding boards and the chairs and cabinets have been bought from local auctions.

Work from local artists adorn the walls and in the corner a mum and toddler enjoy a quiet moment in the specially created children's play area.

As Brett shows off the building work, Tracey bounds in, keen to explain why the pair decided to embark on this ambitious project.

Both are so enthused, it is soon clear their business is more about creating a sustainable community than it is about making money.

"We want it to be attractive to everyone," says Tracey. "It is a cool place for young people and a nice environment for families."

"When you go to Spain you get restaurants which are like meeting places for families, there is a real mixed bunch of people," Brett chips in.

"Now we have got a child we know what people with young children want - they want to go somewhere other than a Wacky Warehouse," adds Tracey.

The pair are desperate to move away from the chunky cardigan, sandal wearing image an organic cafe might attract and hope the diverse community of Kings Heath will find something here for them.

"It would be the end of the world if the fact we were organic meant we only attracted posh, rich people," says Tracey.

"The cafe dispels two common misconceptions: first, that organic food is an exclusive, over-priced niche market' and second, that organic is boring, all lentil loaves and curd cheese. We wanted to give our customers the opportunity to experience the creativity that is possible with organic, seasonal and local food, at prices they can afford."

But the pair find it difficult to cover costs and overheads without pushing up their prices.

"We are not breaking even yet, and people seem surprised when we tell them that," Tracey explains.

"But we are confident we will get there," Brett adds, as he sets out a vision for evening events from cabaret acts to cheese and wine tasting.

"We are not in the city centre or in Brighton or London - this is Kings Heath and people are not going to spend a lot on lunch. So we have to be very resourceful," he adds.

It is 11am and the cafe is gearing up for what they hope will be a busy lunch. An aroma of tomato soup and marrow fritters flows from the kitchen while a chef's assistant slices thick chunks of fresh organic bread.

The marrow has been taken off a plant grown in the garden, where a variety of plants from olive trees to courgettes are up for sale.

"I always liked food and being a host.

"We used to have a lot of parties, and so we were used to doing it for nothing," says Brett as he explains what made him give up his job for this new competitive world of hospitality.

For Tracey, it was a desire to do more for her local community which prompted the move.

"I started working for WWF eight-and-a-half years ago, which was really fulfilling, but for the last few years it has not been enough for me - I wanted to do something really practical.

"We were doing a regional strategy for WWF, but I wanted to look at what is actually happening in the community - getting real results. I had lots of ambition to have a real sustainable community, have a central meeting point where people can come and relax."

As well as the cafe, the couple have created a small shop and deli selling local foods, such as Fowlers' cheese from Warwickshire and yoghurt from the Dairy House in Herefordshire.

There is also an array of organic veg from a Malvern farm, packs of Tyrrells Crisps, ice-cream from September Dairies in Herefordshire and Frank's hand-made biscuits, also from Herefordshire.

Tracey coaxes me into the garden shop, where everything related to organics can be found.

"I was just fed up of going into garden centres and seeing such a pathetic section on organic gardening," she says.

Everything from bird boxes to organic fertilisers can be found, with both organic and non organic plants scattered around the entrance.

"We wanted to link growing and eating organically," she says.

"We are going to have an apple day soon and next year we hope to stock lots of seeds for the allotment holders around here," she adds.

Their vision had been to find a venue where they could create a community one stop shop, a space for a creche, restaurant and, at one stage, a launderette.

To some it may seem like another, if not attractive looking, cafe. But to them it is a lifestyle they want to share with the rest of Kings Heath.

"We want it to be a community place. In some areas mums meet up in these grim community centres because there is no where else to go," says Tracey. "I hope we have created somewhere attractive for all sorts of people within the community."

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
Determina Announces Immediate Availability of Protection from Critical Microsoft Zero-Day Vulnerability. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Determina(R) Inc. today announced that it is making a free VPS Shield available for the latest Microsoft zero-day vulnerability announced on September 28, 2006. This vulnerability does not have a vendor patch available, potentially exposing customers to attacks that exploit this zero-day vulnerability.



The previous VPS Shield that Determina produced for the WMF vulnerability was a huge success. Thousands of individuals and enterprises downloaded and deployed the Shield, which can be installed directly onto an affected system without any modifications to critical Windows files, configuration, or functionality. Once the patch is available and the user deploys it on their system, Determina VPS automatically detects the patch and no longer applies the Shield. Determina intends to continue to deliver free shields when there are critical zero-day outbreaks for which there are no patches available.

Determina customers who have the Vulnerability Protection Suite (VPS) are not threatened by these vulnerabilities and have true "zero-day" threat protection from any attacks.

Third-party patches -- yes, there is a difference

Unlike other so called "third-party patches" available from other vendors and researchers, Determina's Shields do not modify any system files or configuration of a system, and do not disable any critical system functionality on the affected system. In some cases, "patches" from other vendors can result in permanent modification to the system, making it hard or impossible to revert back to the original system configuration when the "patch" is removed.

Determina's Shields are also based on the vulnerability itself, and not on any specific attack vector. Therefore, any malware that utilizes these vulnerabilities to infect a system will be stopped, even if the attacker changes the attack. Unlike other attack-oriented security products from other vendors, Determina VPS is the only system that provides customers with true "vulnerability protection" that directly fixes the vulnerability in the code itself.

"Users remain vulnerable to these zero-day vulnerabilities until Microsoft releases a patch. Today's anti-virus and anti-spyware products are already known to be ineffective in preventing attackers from compromising systems using "drive-by" and other techniques -- the signatures simply cannot keep up with the large number of malware variants," said Sandy Wilbourn, VP of Engineering and Customer Support, Determina.

Free downloadable fix available

As reported in a Sept. 28, 2006 Determina Security Advisory, a remote code execution vulnerability exists in the Internet Explorer WebViewFolderIcon ActiveX control that could allow remote attackers to hijack an affected system to execute malicious code or install spyware. Determina's VPS Memory Firewall, by default, protects users against code execution that may result from exploitation of the memory corruption based vulnerabilities reported in this advisory. The full advisory is available at http://www.determina.com/security_center/security_advisories/ securityadvisory_0day_09282.asp. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Determina has also released a free, downloadable Shield to the general public. This standalone Shield for Internet Explorer will prevent this critical vulnerability from being exploited until Microsoft is able to issue a patch. Desktop users without proactive protection against vulnerability exploits may consider installing this Shield if they believe they might have exposure to web-based attacks.

The Shield can be downloaded from Determina's Security Research website at http://www.determina.com/security.research/. The Shield applies to all currently known affected versions of Windows. The Shield fixes the flawed code in memory when a vulnerable version of the ActiveX control in Internet Explorer is running, without affecting the installation of the web browser on disk or disabling any browser functionality. It should also not interfere with the installation of a Microsoft patch when one becomes available.

Determina Vulnerability Protection Suite (VPS): Real-Time Vulnerability Protection

Determina VPS' unique ability to protect against 100 percent of critical Windows vulnerabilities has earned positive reviews in leading publications, including InfoWorld, PC Magazine, and Secure Enterprise. The company also received the InfoWorld 2005 Innovators Award for its pioneer work in mitigating critical Windows vulnerabilities.

Unlike attack-oriented security technologies, vulnerability protection offers customers the ability to comprehensively address the security and operational issues around security and patching. The Determina VPS suite offers comprehensive vulnerability protection though its two products: Memory Firewall(TM), which provides proactive, zero-day protection for the most dangerous class of vulnerabilities, and LiveShield(TM), which provides precise vulnerability protection in real-time.

Further product information is available at www.determina.com, and requests for evaluation of Determina VPS may be made at www.determina.com/sales/request_info.html.

About Determina

Determina(R) is a leading provider of proactive host intrusion prevention solutions (HIPS) for servers and desktops based on breakthrough technology developed at M.I.T. Determina Vulnerability Protection Suite(TM) (VPS(TM)) is the only solution to address the root cause of attacks -- the software vulnerabilities themselves. Through this unique approach, it is the only solution for continuous protection from the latest worms, malicious code, and directed attacks, eliminating the need for reactive security patching. VPS consists of two products providing complimentary vulnerability coverage: Memory Firewall(R), which provides proactive, zero-day protection for the most dangerous class of vulnerabilities without the need for updates, and LiveShield(R), which provides precise vulnerability protection in real-time.

Determina is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with development offices in Cambridge, MA. Determina VPS has been rapidly and broadly deployed by enterprise customers in industries demanding the highest level of security and availability.

Oracle joins Itanium Alliance.

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Oracle joins Itanium Alliance.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ten years ago, Unix was all about proprietary chipsets and Unix flavors. Since then, HP, SGI and IBM have ditched their homegrown chips and Unix in favor of the Itanium processor from Intel and Linux.

This migration has picked up steam, with Itanium now accounting for 11.2% of all non-x86 server revenue, according to IDC.

Here at the Intel Developer Forum, the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) held its first Itanium Solutions Summit this week to discuss the growth of Itanium 2-based solutions. There are now 10,000 Itanium applications, doubling the number in the past year.



The newest supporter of the ISA is Oracle . The database software giant announced it will work with the Alliance to certify Oracle software on Itanium platforms. Oracle said it will certify the next major releases of its database and Oracle Fusion middleware across a range of operating systems for Itanium.

For applications that haven't made the move, Transitive has announced QuickTransit, which lets applications native to different operating systems run on Itanium-based systems. The demo at the show featured Solaris applications running natively on an Itanium-based computer.

With Itanium sales in the first half of 2005 up 40 percent over the first half of 2005, Itanium appears to be finding a home after a bumpy start. That was due to misperceptions of what the Itanium was for, said ISA members.

"There was this misconception that the Itanium would be a volume chip and would displace x86 CPUs and that's not the case," said Stephen Howard, director of Enterprise Solution Alliances at HP .

HP recently refreshed its Itanium server offerings with the new dual core Itanium2 9000 chips, which came out in July .

"Although mission critical computing doesn't put out the volume of mass market CPUs, mission critical servers make up more than half the revenue for the total market," added Tony DeVarco, senior manager for global technology partnerships at SGI .

Itanium is finding a home with HP customers who bought SuperDome servers as well as old DEC Alpha customers, a legacy platform that HP inherited with its acquisition of Compaq. SGI, which recently expanded its offerings to include Intel Xeon-based systems, also has a strong Itanium portfolio for customers of its older MIPS-based Origin servers

As part of this migration, HP and SGI offered up parts of their respective Unixes, HP-UX and IRIX, to the open source community. This included real-time support, SGI's XFS file system and numerous other tools and core Unix services.

Internet.com Corp.

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Qenos Selects UNIPOL APC+(TM) for Its Alkatuff Plant. Check it out:
HOUSTON --(Business Wire)-- Qenos Pty Ltd has selected Univation Technologies' Advanced Process Control software (APC+) for use at its Alkatuff plant in Botany, Sydney, Australia.

APC+, a tool specifically engineered for the UNIPOL(R) PE Process, has been proven to improve plant performance by limiting process variability, reducing unplanned downtime, and increasing aim-grade production while maximizing throughput.



"We selected APC+ for implementation in our UNIPOL PE reactor because it's a cost-effective way to significantly improve plant performance while working within our already-existing facility constraints. We expect to start realizing immediate payback when the software becomes operational sometime in the first quarter 2007," said Rod Campbell, Qenos Product Technology Manager.

Univation APC+ software runs on a Microsoft(R) Windows platform for easy integration into already-existing third-party technologies and enterprise resource planning systems. Having already been implemented at many other UNIPOL commercial operations worldwide, the software has been shown to increase production rates by as much as 9%, improve transition efficiency by as much as 35%, and raise on-stream time by up to 2 percentage points. These improvements can translate into millions of dollars in savings yearly.

The Alkatuff plant produces 120 kta of primarily LLDPE for domestic Australian consumption and has been operational since 1992.

Univation Technologies, LLC is the world leader in licensing gas phase polyethylene technology. Univation has comprehensive technology programs focused on the UNIPOL(R) PE gas-phase process, conventional catalysts (UCAT(R) catalysts), and metallocene catalysts (XCAT(R) catalysts and PRODIGY(R) catalysts).

Visit Univation's website for more information at www.univation.com.
Intel layoffs to hit 159 Folsom, Calif., workers. Check it out:
(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Intel Corp. will lay off 159 workers from its Folsom campus over the next several months, a fraction of roughly 7,000 employees worldwide expected to be let go in the first phase of a major restructuring the company announced last month.



With this wave of layoffs, Intel has accomplished about 70 percent of its goal of paring more than 10,000 people from its global work force by the middle of 2007, said Intel spokeswoman Teri Munger.

Locally, the largest contingent of laid-off workers, 117, comes from Intel's Folsom-based information technology department, which handles the company's internal network operations.

In a letter sent to Folsom and Sacramento County officials Wednesday, Intel human resources manager Matthew Smith said the company has already started informing workers of their fate, but the bulk of the cuts will come Oct. 26.

It's not clear if most of the job cuts in Folsom will come during this phase, or in the first half of 2007, when the remainder of the job reductions are planned.

In the letter, Smith told government officials that the workers can volunteer for immediate separation from the company or look for other work at Intel. But it's uncertain how successful those job searches would be given the company's downsizing efforts.

Those who depart immediately will receive two months of salary, plus additional weeks based on years of service. They also will receive a lump sum to pay for four months of health coverage.

Workers who elect to search for other Intel jobs can receive two months of salary and benefits during their job hunt. If they don't find work in two months, they will be terminated and receive additional weeks of pay based on years of service.

Those positions -- which range from hourly workers to management -- pay between $45,000 and $120,000 a year, said Peter Finn, who left Intel in August to form his own IT consulting firm, Gold Rush Media.

Finn said he expected many of the workers would have to leave the region to find comparable work. "There's really only 10 or 15 decent (IT) jobs that open up here every month," he said. "One of the reasons I left Intel early is that I didn't want to be in a pool competing for a finite number of jobs."

Oleg Kaganovich, chief executive of the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance, said he expected the most skilled Intel workers will be able to land jobs in the area.

"There are a lot of companies that are always looking for good people," he said. "If they see someone they can add to their staff that will bring immediate value, there's no reason not to bring them on board."

While IT operations take the biggest hit, others are affected, too.

Folsom's digital enterprise group will shed 31 jobs between now and October 2007. Its technology and manufacturing group will cut 10 jobs late next month. Intel Capital, which invests in technology companies, will cut one job on Oct. 13.

The number of cuts is smaller than some had anticipated after Intel's announcement during the summer that it planned to trim 10 percent of its worldwide work force as it sought to reverse disappointing financial results and fight off challenges from Silicon Valley rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

"Any reduction is an important issue, and we feel for the workers and their families," said Joe Luchi, Folsom's economic development director. "Fortunately the number isn't bigger."

While the most recent cuts are the largest Intel has announced, they aren't the only jobs that have been eliminated from Folsom this year.

In July the company laid off 1,000 managers worldwide including an estimated 77 in Folsom. In late June it sold a division that makes chips for cellular phones to Marvell Technology Group of Santa Clara for $600 million. Intel would not disclose the number of Folsom employees in that unit, but it's estimated to be more than 100. Marvell was expected to keep the majority of those workers in a new office it is opening in the region.

And earlier this month it sold a piece of its optical networking division that employed 125 workers, including an undisclosed number in Folsom.

To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Bank targets Hispanic customers

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Bank targets Hispanic customers. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--ASHEBORO -- "Bienvenidos al Primero Banco de Asheboro" is what customers may hear when First Bank's first Hispanic branch opens.

First Bank Executive Vice President Anna Hollers is in charge of planning the new bank. Hollers said bank officials are converting documentation and procedures into Spanish and finding the right people to place in positions. The Hispanic bank will be the first in Asheboro and the second in the state. People's Bank opened the first all-Spanish speaking branch in Charlotte. First Bank also is slated to open another Hispanic branch in Montgomery County at the same time as the Asheboro branch.



"We've been talking about it all this year," Hollers said. The new branch will be staffed by people who speak Spanish. Those employed will be able to speak English as well. Randolph Community College Small Business Center Director Victor Dau said the bank is an ideal opportunity not just for the Hispanic community, but for everyone.

"We all need to work together. We are one community with smaller units," Dau said.

According to Hollers, the growth of the Latino/Hispanic population in recent years will continue and prompted First Bank to open the new branches.

"The bank will serve the Hispanic population and perhaps make them more 'bankable,'" Dau said, adding the community can use the banking services and help Hispanic businesses financially. "We felt it would be a natural fit. There is already (Hispanic) industry and community in the area," Hollers said.

The bank will be on N. Fayetteville Street in Asheboro in an existing building. There are Hispanic tiendas, or stores, and churches near the location. Educational and cultural training seminars will be provided to First Bank staff prior to the bank's opening, which will be sometime at the end of this year.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Mingkwanwill be hard act to follow: MCOT shares down 28.75% since coup. Check it out:
(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--The successor to Mingkwan Saengsuwan, the former president of the SET-listed broadcaster MCOT Plc, will be under pressure to restore investor and employee confidence in the company, analysts say.



Mr Mingkwan and the MCOT board members announced their resignations on Tuesday. They acted in order to accept responsibility for the airing of a state of emergency declaration by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on MCOT's Channel 9, hours before he was ousted by the military on Sept 19.

On Tuesday, MCOT shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand dropped 4.3 percent to 33.50 baht, as reports of the resignations spread. They plunged a further 11.9 percent on Wednesday before steadying yesterday to close unchanged at 29.50 baht, in trade worth 523.5 million baht. The shares had been at 40 baht the day of the coup and had traded in a range of 37.75 to 40.50 baht since the start of August.

The analysts said it was clear that in investors' minds, Mr Mingkwan had a strong influence over MCOT.

He left Toyota (Thailand) in 2002 to take the top position at the state-run organisation, where he proceeded to make dramatic and successful changes.

In Mr Mingkwan's first four-year term (2002-05), he successfully privatised MCOT, listing it on the stock exchange in late 2004. He also transformed Channel 9 into Modern 9 TV, as well as adopting a niche market strategy for a knowledge-based society.

Television revenue increased by 145 percent and radio revenue by 71 percent. At the same time, the company's total revenue grew by 86 percent and net profit by 48 percent.

An analyst from SCB Securities said Mr Mingkwan was unlikely to return to his job in the future as MCOT was the only channel that had broadcast Mr Thaksin's announcement on the night of the coup.

They agreed that his resignation would have a short-term impact on the company and may affect its business strategy. However, thanks to its strong business foundations, MCOT would not suffer in the long run.

"In the long term, if the new president of MCOT continues with existing business policy, there will be no effects," an analyst at KGI Securities said in a report.

An analyst at Sicco Securities Plc said Mr Mingkwan had a strong leadership image at MCOT and his successor would have to work hard to make the same impression. But the new president should not throw away the current business model laid down by Mr Mingkwan, because it worked well, said analysts.

Patchara Sarapimpa, the president of the state enterprise labour union of MCOT, accepted that the former president's working performance was outstanding. The successor was expected to be as good as Mr Mingkwan.

"As employees, we will not be involved in the selection process of the new president. But we would love to see that our leader is a competent and honest person. As a communication organisation, good communication is important because we have a responsibility to the public," said Mr Patchara.

He explained it would likely take two or three months to appoint a new president.

As a state enterprise under the Office of the Prime Minister, the newly appointed board will be in charge of the selection process, unfortunately, it has to wait until the country has an interim government.

Wasin Teyateeti, president of Media Intelligence Co, a media agency, was still wondering whether the new president would be able to run MCOT as well as Mr Mingkwan. Channel 9 had become more popular among audiences thanks to his skilful management, he added.

Analysts were also concerned that the station's revenue would drop in line with advertising spending by government departments, a major source of MCOT's revenue for years, accounting for 30-35 percent of total revenue.

Analysts said the interim government was unlikely to spend much on advertising.

According to Nielsen Media Research, among the six free TV stations, government departments spent the most advertising money through Channel 9, at 547 million baht in the first eight months of the year, followed by Channel 5 at 339 million and Channel 11 at 219 million baht.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
CAT bid procedure questioned: Relaxed terms could favour Huawei. Check it out:
(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--CAT Telecom has called bids for three transmission infrastructure projects worth a total of 3.3 billion baht without setting conditions of past performance.

A source at the state enterprise said CAT had hastily sold terms of reference documents to bidders on Wednesday for fibre-optic networks linking all regions of the country and worth 2.2 billion baht, an automatic switching optical network worth 606 million, and a next-generation network (NGN) project worth 500 million baht.



The documents did not call for past performance records, such as in SDH transmission and fibre-optic projects, as a requirement for bidders, which has been standard procedure in the past.

Some bidders interpreted the move as an attempt by CAT to allow the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to enter the bids.

Huawei was the only bidder that did not have SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) or fibre-optic project experience in Thailand, the source said.

The Chinese company last year won the contract to build a nationwide CDMA mobile phone network for CAT, involving 1,600 base stations, with a bid of 7.2 billion baht bid through an electronic auction.

Rival bidders at the time questioned the technical specifications and low price, which was almost half the amount quoted in earlier bids that were later annulled.

The source said that if Huawei won new bids by cutting prices, or if the terms was later amended to avoid fines for late completion, it would only damage CAT's reputation further.

Hutchison CAT Multi Media, the 75:25 joint venture of Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom and CAT Telecom that provides the Hutch mobile-phone service, is currently being investigated by the Office of the Auditor-General.

Another source said that CAT's new board, chaired by Kraisorn Pornsuthee, the permanent secretary of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, had agreed to waive fines for Huawei's late delivery of 800 base stations in Phase 1 of the CDMA project.

The contract terms allow CAT to fine the company 90 million baht a day for late delivery.

Huawei delivered 800 base stations 42 days after the Jan 26, 2006 deadline. It cited flooding in several northern provinces, as well as unrest in the South as reasons. CAT board members reportedly disagree over whether Huawei should be fined. However, the latest meeting concluded not to impose fines, the source said.

The source said that Huawei had established strong connections with the former Thaksin government because it had constructed Advanced Info Service's mobile-phone prepaid-service network. It also offered to create the network first and bill later in accordance with the number of users.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Australian independent forges new link with Indonesia. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AN ALLIANCE between two privately owned freight forwarders for door-to-door services between Australia and Indonesia has been welcomed by shipowning, port and rail companies.

Independent Australian enterprise Northline has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitra Intertrans Forwarding, a subsidiary of Pelayaran Meratus (Meratus Line) in Surabaya.

The alliance hopes to create a A$30m ($20m) market for end-to-end freight forwarding using Darwin and Surabaya as the main ports which will eventually take in points further north in Asia.

It aims to carry project cargo for the mining and energy sectors northward and provide just-in-time transport for Indonesian manufactured exports south.

Northline chief operating officer Phillip Taylor said: 'Many of our existing clients require an end-to-end service throughout Asia, so now Northline can provide that single-supplier service.

'Our focus will be on expediting the freight process between Indonesia and Darwin, then using our national freight network to transport goods throughout Australia.

'This overrides the delays and warehousing costs of shipping through Sydney or Melbourne.'

Though a test run has not been made, Northline head of strategic development Paul Booth told Lloyd's List that times posted by other companies doing a similar job indicated a saving of 10-14 days.

Port of Darwin trade development manager Garry Scanlan said the port was very happy with the development and would do anything it could to help it succeed.

Shipowner Swire, the only other line that serves Darwin, would not comment until meeting the alliance.

Shipping services from southeast Asia to Darwin now take in Singapore (Swire) or Dili (Perkins). Sources familiar with the deal said Meratus was unlikely to be able to spare its own container and breakbulk tonnage due to weight of work on its existing routes.



'We have already started giving quotes and we are talking to a shipping line at the moment about frequency of service,' Mr Booth said.

'A lot of it is dependent on volume coming through. As volumes increase we hope to gain the frequency and more of a direct service between Darwin and Surabaya.'

Though Northline recently retreated from rail, now carrying only 10% of its goods by train, rail company Freight- Link was keen to see the alliance succeed.

Freightlink chief executive John Fullerton said the partners should be congratulated on being the first to make this long-talked about move.

Mr Booth said: 'We have met with FreightLink... and been assured that we will be offered some good rates for full container load cargo straight through on the rail.'

Northline said it expected opportunities for the international freight forwarding alliance to include:

- A mining and resources supply base in Darwin to service mines in Indonesia and beyond.

- A reliable import hub for products manufactured in Indonesia, with onward distribution to all Australian markets on a 'just in time' basis.

- Reverse logistics, especially for equipment maintenance and repairs from Indonesian mines.

Northline is completing construction of a A$4m, 4,000 sq m distribution centre in Darwin in addition to its existing 10,000 sq m of contract logistics warehousing.

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Foundation investors speak on sentencing of execs: Ex-president, ex-counsel were convicted of fraud. Check it out:
(Tribune, The (Mesa, AZ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--The investors of the bankrupt Baptist Foundation of Arizona all suffered financial losses, but on Thursday, they were divided by the sentiments they had for the men convicted of defrauding them.



The victims of the scandal came from all over Arizona to a downtown Phoenix auditorium to tell Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Fields of the impact the loss had on their lives and to recommend a sentence for William Crotts, the foundation's former president, and Thomas Grabinski, its former general counsel.

"These men have damaged a lot of lives and ruined a lot of lives," said Patricia Srader of Sonoita, who invested more than $1 million into the foundation.

Srader and her husband eventually got back 70 percent of their loss, as did most of the 13,000 investors who lost an estimated $500 million to $600 million when the foundation collapsed in November 1999.

Crotts, 61, and Grabinski, 46, sat at the front of the auditorium, where about 100 investors -- most of them elderly--could see the live feed of the proceedings on three giant screens suspended from the ceiling.

Mesa resident Clara Jo Ziervogel, a former foundation employee who was fired, said she lost a nominal amount of money, but she once believed in the organization and had persuaded friends and family to invest significant amounts.

"I have had to overcome a significant amount of guilt," Ziervogel said.

But Barbara Secrest, a friend of the defendants who invested about $50,000 in the foundation, said it would be a waste of taxpayer money to incarcerate the men, who are facing prison terms of six to 86 years.

"We feel we're a victim of the state of Arizona," she said.

She believes that if the state hadn't shut down the organization, then all of investors would have all of their money today.

By lunch recess, 21 of the 34 investors -- including family members of the defendants -- had taken the podium.

The nonprofit Baptist Foundation of Arizona was founded in 1948 to raise money for Southern Baptist causes, such as building churches.

Prosecutor Donald Conrad alleged in court that the group's sales pitch was based on religious faith, and investors were told the nonprofit was solvent, even though Crotts and Grabinski knew it was losing millions of dollars.

In July, a jury found each man guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of knowingly conducting an illegal enterprise, but acquitted each of 23 counts of theft.

Fields is expected to impose sentences today.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
OnLine Distribution and Symbol Technologies celebrate four years of partnership. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Symbol Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:SBL), the enterprise mobility company, and its value added networking distributor, Online Distribution, have registered substantial business success in the region and will continue to work together to offer end to end networking solutions across the Middle East.



The Symbol distributorship agreement enables Online to be a Symbol channel partner that qualifies to provide complete value-added services to resellers. These services include finance, logistics, sales, marketing, configuration, technical support and professional services in support of Symbol products.

"We are proud of what we have achieved with Online Distribution in the region over the past four years," said Tarek Hassaniyeh, sales manager, Symbol Technologies Middle East and Africa. "This demonstrates our shared commitment to improving our partner relationships, and to creating a market opportunity through partner collaboration. We believe in a value driven channel strategy and Online Distribution shares our corporate vision." As a result of a successful partnership in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Symbol extended the agreement to cover the Indian Sub-Continent (ISC) countries of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal in March this year.

"The relationship with Symbol is a critical part of Onlines future," explained Keith G Rich, managing director, Online Distribution. "Symbol is the brand leader in enterprise mobility, and we look forward to leveraging their experience and skills in delivering world class solutions to our resellers." About Online Distribution: OnLine Distribution Ltd. is a value-added distributor for data networking products and services covering the Middle East, Western Asia and North Africa. It is a subsidiary of Datatec, an international networking and IT services group.

Based in the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone of Dubai, the company has stocking locations and offices in both Jebel Ali and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It provides its partners with technical expertise, network design solutions, logistics and sales support for all its vendors, as well as their large inventory of products.

About Symbol: Symbol Technologies, Inc., The Enterprise Mobility Company, is a recognized worldwide leader in enterprise mobility, delivering products and solutions that capture, move and manage information in real time to and from the point of business activity. Symbol enterprise mobility solutions integrate advanced data capture products, radio frequency identification technology, mobile computing platforms, wireless infrastructure, mobility software and world-class services programs under the Symbol Enterprise Mobility Services brand. Symbol enterprise mobility products and solutions are proven to increase workforce productivity, reduce operating costs, drive operational efficiencies and realize competitive advantages for the world's leading companies.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Satyam stages first cross-border country outage and business continuity operation in Singapore. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE:SAY), the leading global consulting and information technology services company, has completed what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind, cross-border country outage recovery.



Satyam simulated a nationwide outage in India, and revived business operations from its Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Center in Singapore. The exercise showcased Satyams ability to ensure seamless business continuity for its customers, as well as its disaster recovery capabilities. It also highlighted the complex processes involved in an event of such magnitude.

On the morning of September 25, Satyam initiated a three-day mock drill, a simulation of a national disaster that disrupted Satyams business. Network control and command resumed almost instantaneously from Satyams Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery site in Singapore.

Additionally, in less than 24 hours, Satyam deployed more than 30 mission-critical engineers to Singapore. The entire exercise was facilitated by the Singaporean Government, which provided pre-approved employment passes for the engineers who were flown in on Singapore Airlines.

"This landmark event is further proof of Satyams commitment to our global customers and their business continuity," said B. Ramalinga Raju, Satyams founder and chairman, who witnessed the drill from Singapore. "It ensures that their businesses will never stop for any issues related to the services that Satyam, as an organisation is providing to them." Raju added: "This initiative and investment are extremely strategic for Satyam. Our demonstration today enables the organisation to leverage the Singapore facility as a new, global offshoring centre outside India. It also places Singapore in an important position with respect to our global operations. We are deeply grateful for the support shown by the Singapore authorities over the last few years to enable this expansion." Upon arriving at the Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Centre (in the Overseas Union Bank Centre) in downtown Singapore, Satyams Hyderabad-based business continuity team connected to the customers network and commenced business via an enhanced bandwidth. The engineers also ensured Satyams capabilities to monitor its network, network security, and exchange and enterprise applications servers. They also assured immediate availability of a secondary monitoring capability, availability of a global help desk, replication of mission-critical associates email boxes, automatic forwarding of transactions to the new server, and availability of business data.

Satyams Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Centre, the only facility of its kind outside India, is validated by the Disaster Recovery Institute of Asia, and enables replication between servers in Hyderabad and Singapore. Data stored within both servers is synchronised every four hours.

"We are very pleased with the support and proactive engagement of the Singaporean government," said Virender Aggarwal, senior vice president and director at Satyam.

"The Economic Development Board, especially, has been a driving force and constant source of support. Singapore is ideally positioned to benefit from the shift we perceive will take place in the back offices of major global multinational and financial corporations, and Satyam is determined to support and benefit from that shift." As Asia Pacific gains momentum as the global innovation hub in the coming years and hence becomes a critical component and one of the main focus areas in Satyams global growth plan, Singapore gains strategic value. Its quality infrastructure, economic and political stability and security make it an ideal hub that can double as a secondary command and control centre for controlling global network operations and ensuring that Satyams customers are serviced seamlessly, in case of business disruption.

About Satyam Computer ServicesSatyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE: SAY) is a global IT consulting and services provider, offering a range of expertise aimed at helping customers reengineer and reinvent their businesses to compete successfully in an ever-changing marketplace. More than 28,000* highly skilled professionals in Satyam work onsite, offsite, offshore, and near shore, to provide customized IT solutions for companies in several industries. Satyams ideas and products have resulted in technology-intensive transformations that have met the most stringent international quality standards. Satyam has Development Centers in the USA, the UK, the UAE, Canada, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China, Japan, and Australia. These centers serve 469* global companies, of which 156* are Fortune Global 500 and Fortune US 500 corporations. Satyams presence spans 53 countries, across six continents.

*As of March 31, 2006 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.

TMCnet's SIP Week in Review

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TMCnet's SIP Week in Review. Check it out:
September is coming to an end, but no need to be sad. October is inching closer, and you know what that means-- time for IT Expo West! INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, the leading VoIP Expo, will be held October 10-13, 2006, in San Diego- this is an event you won't want to miss.


 
This week in SIP news, Patton Electronics and Corp. announced SIPxNano, a new IP-PBX (News - Alert) for businesses with fewer than 30 extensions and designed to bring enterprise quality SIP-based VoIP to SMBs.
 
According to a report by TMCnet's Patrick Barnard, the new services now available via the SIPxNano are a combination of "Patton's NanoServ ultra-compact server technology with a tailored version of Pingtel's (News - Alert) SIPxchange ECS software."
 
CounterPath, provider of SIP-based telephony software solutions, was highlighted this week in an article by TMCnet's Mae Kowalke. Mae spoke with Donovan Jones, the company's President and Chief Operations Officer about Counterpath's happenings over this past year. The conversation covered topics like their headquarters move, their marketing focus shift, recent contracts, and even discussed X-Lite, the company's free SIP softphone. This is what Jones had to say about X-Lite during the conversation: 
 
"This phone is what we consider to be a feature core version because it doesn’t have the ability to brand the interface in terms of changing the look and feel."
 
To read more about what Counterpath is working on and has accomplished CLICK here for the full article.
 
TMC President and Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani wrote an interesting article on SIP this week titled, "Quality SIP Trunking Comes to VoIP" In the article, Rich discusses SIP trunking's move to VoIP and details how SIP has changed telephony and added flexibility for IP based operations across the world.
 
Commenting on the enhancements and improvements being made in the SIP trunking world, Rich wrote:
 
"But are we at the point where businesses should start adopting SIP? According to Conrad Allenbach and Chris Dunk. They have cracked the SIP trunking quality problem. The two work for Bandtel as Channel Manager and President respectively and in a recent meeting about their service were beaming with more enthusiasm than a parent with a newborn baby. Although they didn’t pass out any cigars they were generous about telling me why their platform is so great."
 
To find out more, read the full article here.
 
Other SIP related news was brought to this week by Samsung and Avaya, who announced the completion of interoperability testing for integrated data, voice and security solutions, products and services targeted at mid-sized enterprises. TMCnet's Anuradha Shukla  reported, "The companies have created an intelligent business solution for mid-sized enterprises by combining Samsung's Ubigate iBG and the Avaya (News - Alert) Session Initiation Protocol-based IP telephony infrastructure."
 
Using the new combination, companies are able to gain mobility and utilize messaging applications to deliver "a simple and secure high performance solution to the mid-market."
 
"Implementation of the Ubigate iBG series combines with Avaya SIP Enablement Service and Avaya Communications Manager telephony software will allow businesses to gain competitive advantage and keep costs under control," reported Anuradha.
 
Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) also made SIP-related news this week when they announced their new IP-based predictive dialer, Interaction Dialer.
 
The solution is for contact centers, teleservices firms and collection operations. TMCnet's Susan Campbell wrote, "Now based on the SIP standard, this latest release of Interaction Dialer can operate in an all-software, all-VoIP environment in order to help reduce costs and simplify management. The release includes an all new SIP gateway called Interaction Gateway (News - Alert) which is an application connecting legacy phone trunks (T1s) to VoIP networks."
 
For more from Interactive Intelligence be sure to visit TMCnet's VoIP Contact Center Channel and Contact Center Research.
 
SIP's not just in the news this week either, check out the latest SIP-related Blogging happening on TMCnet:
 
 
That's all for this week. More next week as IT Expo nears, and SIP news keeps on coming.
 
Want SIP at IT Expo?
Attend the SIP Workshop to see what all the buzz is about!
 
More SIP:
 
-----
 
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.

Economy: American contagion?

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Economy: American contagion?. Check it out:
(Business Asia Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) South Koreas economy is more vulnerable than it appears to a US slowdown

South Koreas relations with the US have been looking increasingly fraught recently, what with differences of opinion over how to handle North Korea, planned changes in military procedures and the difficulties of negotiating a bilateral free-trade agreement. But the prospect of a sharp slowdown in the US economy next year also deserves to be a concern for Seoul, especially since South Korea is in some ways less well equipped to take such an event in its stride than neighbouring Japan, with which it competes directly in many major export sectors.



The Economist Intelligence Unit recently lowered its forecast for US GDP growth in 2007, to 2.1% (from 2.2% in our previous forecast). This will constitute a considerable weakening in US growth compared with our forecast for 2006, when we expect the US economy to expand by an average of 3.4% despite an expected slowdown in the second half of the year.

At first glance, South Korea has little to worry about. In headline terms, the country is becoming less exposed to the US economy. Although the US remains a key market for South Korean exports, it has been overtaken by China and is now only the second-largest buyer of South Korean goods. Over the past five years, the USs share of South Koreas total exports has steadily declined, to 13.6% in mid-2006 from around 21% in 2001. Meanwhile Chinas share has increased, from 12% in 2001 to 21% today. Indeed, perhaps no other countrys export sector has benefited as directly from Chinas rapid GDP growth as has South Koreas. Chinas booming economy, which is generating enormous import demand, therefore insulates South Koreas export sector to some extent from any fluctuations in US demand. As our core forecast scenario envisages China continuing to grow very rapidly next yearby about 10%, after expected growth of almost 11% in 2006there are convincing reasons to believe that South Koreas supposed immunity to a US slowdown ought to continue.

However, the picture is not quite so simple. Although South Korea sells relatively more of its exports to China and less to the US than does Japanand therefore ought to be more resilient to a US slowdownit is fundamentally less able than Japan to withstand any sort of slowdown in external demand, no matter what the source.

There are several reasons for this. The first is that South Korea currently cannot expect domestic demand to take up the slack in the event of a shock to the external sector. For the past three years domestic demand in the country has grown considerably more slowly than GDP, meaning that the economy in essence has relied on exports to make up the difference. This is quite unlike Japan, where the domestic economy is looking more robust than it has done for many years. As a result, the gap between domestic demand growth and GDP growth in Japan is much smaller than in South Korea, implying that exports are less crucial. (Indeed, exports in Japan, though indirectly playing an important role in stimulating the domestic economy, directly account for only around 14% of GDP, compared to well over 40% for South Korea.) In 2007, just as the US slows, Japanese domestic demand is actually forecast to grow slightly more rapidly than headline GDP; thereafter both should grow at almost identical rates until 2010.

SME wobbles

Why does South Koreas domestic sector look more vulnerable than Japans? One of the key reasons is the difference between the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sectors in the two countries. Although both countries are better known overseas for high-profile large manufacturers like Hyundai, Samsung Electronics, Toyota and Sony, SMEs play a pivotal role, for example providing the bulk of employment. Yet whereas Japans economic recovery now looks to be filtering through successfully to the SME sector, South Korean SMEs have been less adept at restructuring. For an illustration of the anaemic condition of South Korean SMEs, consider industrial production: in overall terms this has been rising strongly, often at double-digit rates, for the past year, but industrial production by SMEs alone has not matched this performance, with growth generally limping along at 2% year on year or less.

Weakness in the SME sector, in turn, is likely to have a big negative impact on consumer sentimentparticularly given SMEs importance for employment. The latest national consumer sentiment survey, published by the Korea National Statistical Office, shows that confidence declined for the seventh month in a row in August. The uncertain domestic political situation and security fears in the wake of North Koreas missile launches in July are also likely to have damaged sentiment.

Currency divergence

All this would be less worrying if it werent for the fact that there are also clouds over South Koreas export sector. One of the main concerns for South Korean exporters is the decoupling of the won and the yen. South Korea and Japan compete directly in a number of key export sectors, cars and electronics being just two examples. But whereas the two currencies often move somewhat in sync with each other relative to the US dollar, in the past couple of years there has been a divergence in their trajectories, with the won appreciating sharply against the US dollar as the yen has weakened. This, obviously has made it far more difficult for South Korean exporters to compete with their Japanese counterparts on price. So, for example, Hyundai Motor, South Koreas largest carmaker, reported a 37% drop in second-quarter net profit, partly because of strikes that hit production but also because of the stronger won. Japans Toyota, in contrast, reported a 39% rise in net profit.

None of this disastrous just yet, and the severity of South Koreas difficulties should not be overstated. Our core forecast still envisages domestic demand growth of 3.1% next year and GDP growth of just under 4%considerably higher than in Japan, in fact. Moreover, the country is lucky to be able to continue to rely on strong Chinese demand for its exports. However, were China suddenly to experience some economic upheaval that slowed GDP growth sharply and reduced its appetite for imported goods, then the picture would quickly look much gloomier.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Mobile Content and Media Expert, D.P. Venkatesh, to Lead Panel at TiE-DC Event ``In the Crystal Ball: Beyond the Ringtones (Future of Media and Wireless)''. Check it out:
VIENNA, Va. --(Business Wire)-- mPortal CEO and Founder, D.P. Venkatesh, will lead a panel of all-stars to examine the space and determine what the mobile and media world might look like in the future, on October 3, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. at the Sheraton Premier at Tysons Corner. "In the Crystal Ball: Beyond the Ringtones," sponsored by TiE-DC, will assemble executives from Sprint Nextel, Core Capital Partners and other media companies to discuss current and future trends.



With mobile phone penetration reaching two billion people per year, mobile phone technology and its potential have become a hot topic for IT entrepreneurs. But beyond just being cool, how does one make money off of it? And who makes that money? If video killed the radio star, the Internet killed the video star, will wireless kill the Internet star? This is latest in the successful series of forward-looking opportunities for entrepreneurs that examine the unique wireless space: where content is king, distribution is queen, and the interrelationship between the two will provide the keys to the kingdom.

As CEO and Founder of mPortal, a leading enabler of mobile content and applications, Mr. Venkatesh is a well-recognized expert and thought leader on mobile content, wireless operator execution and enhancing the mobile user experience. With more than seventeen years of experience in the telecommunications industry across Wireless, Internet and Media sectors, his roles have varied from executive management to strategic planning and business development.

For more information on or to register for the event, visit: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=2579da2b-214f-4318- 9804-9efa25e58830 (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists).

About mPortal

mPortal Inc., founded in 2000, enables mobile content and applications for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), Content Providers and Enterprises. mPortal's products and services assist its customers to create, launch, manage, and monetize mobile content and applications across multiple mobile devices and networks. As a total solution provider and strategic partner, mPortal eliminates the complexities involved in launching mobile content and applications. mPortal has offices in the US and India and serves a variety of global customers. mPortal's customers include top tier mobile operators, leading MVNOs, content providers, and Fortune 500 enterprise customers such as Alltel, AOL, Disney Mobile, Mobile ESPN, Reliance Infocomm, TV Guide, Verizon Wireless, and XEROX. For more information, please visit www.mportal.com.
Sweden: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: State's role in the economy will be reduced. Sale of government's stakes in Scandinavian Airlines, Nordea, TeliaSonera and OMX are planned. Product markets (such as healthcare and education) opened up to private-sector competition.



2009-11: Further moves to liberalise areas of the economy under state control. Greater competition between private and public companies to provide local goods and services.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: Increased drive to attract more foreign investment and to prevent the relocation of company headquarters abroad.

2009-11: Sweden will continue to promote itself as an important hub in the dynamic Baltic Sea region.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Reform of EU common agricultural policy (CAP), with agricultural subsidies decoupled from food production. Imports of Chinese textile products to be fully liberalised from 2008.

2009-11: Agricultural protection will continue, but may diminish slightly as a result of reforms to the CAP.

Taxes

2007-08: Skr37bn (US$5bn) package of income tax cuts for low-income earners. Employers' payroll tax to be halved for employees aged 20-25 and abolished for employees aged under 20. Abolition of wealth tax likely. Reform of property tax.

2009-11: Further reform and possible abolition of property tax, to be replaced with local tax and rise in capital gains tax.

Financing

2007-08: Alliance to introduce measures to encourage venture capital and private-equity industries. Swedish institutions will continue to be a driving force in the consolidation of the region's financial markets.

2009-11: Crossborder consolidation continues. Stockmarket expected to gain in importance as a source of capital.

The labour market

2007-08: Reduction in employers' payroll tax to encourage hiring, particularly of younger workers. Abolition of payroll tax in parts of service sector. Cuts in unemployment benefit. Rise in individual contributions to social insurance schemes.

2009-11: Trade unions will continue to oppose any major reforms to Sweden's traditionally restrictive labour laws. Lower spending on government-funded labour market schemes.

Infrastructure

2007-08: Investment in high-quality infrastructure, especially for information technology (IT) and broadband capability.

2009-11: Government investment in research and development to maintain and even increase the lead in IT infrastructure.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Argentina: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Contract renegotiations with privatised utilities make slow progress. Further state interventionism through price controls and wage renegotiations. Incentives for investment and subsidised credit lines for local investors.

2008-10: Distortions from interventionist policies impair efforts to restore confidence in institutions and propertyrights.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Welcoming of foreign investment, tempered by encouragement of increased domestic ownership.

2008-10: As foreign direct investment (FDI) will be critical to long-term growth, policy will focus on broadening inflows.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Targeting of an unofficial exchange rate weaker than Ps3:US$1. Trade policy will be occasionally used as an anti-inflationary tool. Occasional resort to protectionism against Brazil. Control on short-term capital inflows.

2008-10: Emphasis on improving export finance and infrastructure; deepening of subregional integration within the Mercado Comun del Sur (Mercosur, the Southern Cone customs union).

Taxes

2006-07: The system to remain complex. Financial transactions tax and export levies will persist, but rates may be reduced.

2008-10: An increased likelihood that the rates of temporary taxes could be reduced. Although a comprehensive tax reform is unlikely, the government will attempt to change the tax structure towards a major share of direct taxes in tax revenue.



Financing

2006-07: Although lending will recover, the availability of investment finance will be limited.

2008-10: Availability of long-term credit will continue to increase gradually from a low base, but lingering distortions in financial markets will restrain expansion. Slow progress in improving the lending practices of state-owned banks.

The labour market

2006-07: Union influence will inhibit government attempts to curb wage rises, but informal-sector wages to remain low.

2008-10: Dollar cost of labour rises. Possible re-examination of severance costs and payroll taxes. Some skills shortages.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Demand management and state intervention to avert energy shortages. Interim tariff deals struck with utilities.

2008-10: New investments set to improve energy supply and to upgrade export infrastructure.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
South Korea: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: The ruling Uri Party pushes for chaebol (conglomerate) reform, but the weakness of its parliamentary position may make it difficult for the party to achieve radical change. The privatisation of banks is completed.

2009-11: Privatisation of utilities, now shelved, may resume.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: A backlash against perceived foreign dominance in the financial sector may lead to non-Korean bidders being disadvantaged in future privatisations in this sector, at least temporarily.

2009-11: Foreign capital will increasingly be accepted as a normal part of economic life.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Free-trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with the US, but differences remain over agriculture in particular; FTA negotiations with Japan continue to struggle, and may even be shelved.

2009-11: Pressure from the US and the EU to remove lingering quasi-subsidies and non-tariff barriers will intensify. China will wield anti-dumping suits.

Taxes

2007-08: Tax breaks are used to assist small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups, in particular to encourage job creation. Social security contributions from employers may be raised to fund social welfare programmes.

2009-11: A rapidly ageing society will require increased contributions to the national pension system. Taxes may also have to be raised to fund the urgent upgrading of North Korea's infrastructure and capital stock.

Financing

2007-08: Lending to consumers recovers as the credit-card crunch eases and a wider range of products (such as mortgages) is introduced. SMEs continue to struggle to obtain loans. The chaebol increasingly raise funds overseas.

2009-11: Consolidation and mergers in both banking and non-bank areas will grow. Private-equity funds will emerge as sources of corporate finance. A more sophisticated range of savings vehicles, pensions and insurance will be offered.

The labour market

2007-08: Militant trade unions lose influence but retain their ability to disrupt. Greater protection is afforded to irregular workers, but elsewhere more flexibility in hiring is sought. The five-day working week spreads.

2009-11: A five-day week will become the norm. More women will join and remain in the workforce. Efforts will be made to tackle youth unemployment. The growing availability of North Korean labour will reduce costs for some SMEs.

Infrastructure

2007-08: If the nuclear issue is settled, South Korean firms will become involved in upgrading North Korean infrastructure to galvanise the North's economy and build a transport network for the North-east Asian economic region.

2009-11: Work may begin on the new administrative capital in South Chungcheong province.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
MultiChoice deal to be built on broad-based shareholder base. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MultiChoice deal to be built on broad-based shareholder base NASPERS has carried out a black economic empowerment deal through MultiChoice. SA's biggest media group has agreed to sell a 15% stake in the lucrative pay-TV unit to black investors for R2,25bn.



Last night Face to Face's spoke to Gavin Joubert from Coronation Fund Managers and to Koos Bekker from Naspers about the new deal.

Gavin, you're a big fan of Naspers what do you make of this deal? It seems fairly straightforward, and an important step Yes, I think it's a reality of doing business in SA that every big corporate will get a black economic empowerment (BEE) deal done. From the BEE participant's point of view I think the R15bn effective valuation of MultiChoice SA is a very good price. Obviously, for shareholders there is some dilution that would be below what we would value MultiChoice SA at. But we were expecting it, and it's not too far off the dilution that we were expecting. Therefore it doesn't change our view on the company and the share. What do you value MultiChoice SA at? Our valuation for MultiChoice SA, which is where the deal has been done, is just over R22bn or quite substantially ahead of the R15bn. The R15bn includes about 29% of M-Net Supersport and 100% of M-Web SA; but the bulk of that R15bn would be MultiChoice SA so that's about R22bn compared to R15bn. They gave an enterprise value of about R17,5bn as well. Naspers has been very busy with a big deal in Brazil recently, and there have been a few other things besides do you think they are going in the right direction? Yes, their stated strategy is to invest within their core competencies pay-TV, print media and internet within the Bricsa countries that include Brazil, Russia, India, China and sub-Saharan Africa. In those countries typically gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates are far above what you would see in most countries round the world typically with a GDP of about 5%-7% as opposed to about 2%-3% in the developed markets. Advertising spend is growing at a much faster rate in those countries, employment is growing at a faster rate, and so is disposable income. So I think those are good countries to have media exposure to. The key is valuations. With their most recent acquisition in Brazil the valuation was reasonable. I think the strategy of investing in high-growth countries at reasonable multiples will serve shareholders well in the years ahead. Koos, can you tell us a little bit more about the mechanics of the MultiChoice deal? Yes. We have in mind to create a broad-based scheme. We don't want a single mogul but a broad spread of teachers, clerks and ordinary people and hopefully in the tens of thousands. We've set aside 15% of MultiChoice, which was announced today, and hopefully tomorrow you'll hear a similar announcement for Media24. At this stage we intend to sell 15% of all the South African companies. The idea is that we will fund 80% of it by way of preference shares, with the participants funding 20%. So it's going to have a dilutionary effect? Yes, definitely. There is no way you can avoid it. I've just been speaking to Gavin Joubert. He values MultiChoice at R22bn whereas you value it at R15bn with an enterprise value of R17,5bn why the discrepancy? Gavin is more optimistic. He is a highly respected and very experienced commentator, so I ought to be careful. We got Investec to value the companies. Clearly, we want to reach a fair value, one which is fair to the participants entering the deal, but which is also fair to the current investors. Their decision was R15bn which I think is just about fair. If it were too expensive, no one would participate, and if it were too cheap we would be eroding our current investors. Can you tell us about the choice of partner? We want ordinary people as partners, and the happy circumstance in both MultiChoice and what you'll hear tomorrow at Media24 is that both companies are profitable, so we can pay dividends. The idea is that we will pay dividends from day one. We have run three schemes so far the Phuthuma scheme in M-Net in 1995, another one in 1998, and now we have the Welkom scheme in Naspers. All of them closed out in the money, and all of them made, I think, a very good return. One problem we've always experienced is that when you do a scheme and five years elapse at the end of it you find some people have divorced, some have moved and some have died and you've lost contact. So the idea with paying dividends which is quite a novelty is to keep contact with people every year. We have to pay an amount into their accounts, and consequently we need to trace them and connect to their physical address. New entrants have been proposed for the pay-TV arena in SA would you welcome the new competition or would that be a threat? Although MultiChoice has always been fairly competitive, it is not something you need to have because one can see a movie either in a cinema, get it from a video rental shop, or one could wait for free TV. We slot into a distribution chain where we compete against the other members so the competition will be more direct, but it will not really change the architecture of the industry we're in. Gavin, Koos seemed fairly sanguine about competition. Do you think there could be a player who could take a chunk of the subscribers? I think it would be very difficult for a competitor to come in and take a decent chunk. There is room for a second player, but MultiChoice owns the content so it depends on how much regulatory interference there is. The Naspers N shares closed at R122 today, up 1,3%. Do we stay long or should we add here? We would be adding. Summit TV is broadcast each weekday from 7pm to 11pm.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

DA seeks 'one-stop' business aid

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DA seeks 'one-stop' business aid. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) DA seeks 'one-stop' business aid Political Correspondent CAPE TOWN A one-stop shop for enterprise development with a national branch network would go a long way to addressing the institutional duplication and confusion in government services among small businesses, Democratic Alliance (DA) deputy trade and industry spokesman Les Labuschagne said yesterday.



He was speaking on the release of the DA's Helping Small Business policy document which proposes the consolidation of the plethora of existing institutions and services into a single, focused entity.

Small business development is not on track in SA, Labuschagne said at a media briefing. There is a multitude of small business development agencies with limited geographical coverage and mandates that complicate small business development rather than promote it. Institutions operating in this field included the microfinance Apex Fund, Khula Enterprise, the National Empowerment Fund, the Industrial Development Corporation and the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda), the only one with an extensive, national footprint.

The problem with government's response is not the range of services it has sought to provide but its lack of success in implementing them, Labus-chagne said. The vast array of small business development institutions out there is daunting. There is no sense that government seeks to co-ordinate, or promote co-operation or proper communication among the various small business development agencies, he said. While the coverage in terms of product or service offerings seem to be fairly comprehensive, they often do not seem to be accessible to people living outside main metropolitan areas and people who do not have access to the internet.

There is room for simplification of the process, for co- ordination and integration, he said.

Government established Seda in an attempt to overcome problems of duplication but this was not the answer. Its offices were often not accessible and it did not appear to offer printed information pamphlets or walk-in services to potential entrepreneurs without an appointment.

Labuschagne said a one-stop shop for enterprise development with broad geographical representation could contribute to small business development and the fight against unemployment.

Small businesses were estimated to generate 40% of all new jobs compared with only 10% by the large, established businesses.

The aim of the one-stop shop would be to provide guidance and mentoring, he said. It would recruit potential entrepreneurs to establish small businesses and provide support to them; provide potential entrepreneurs with access to enterprise development services in an integrated manner; and broker access to, and facilitate surety for, enterprise development services, products, and assistance packages.

Labuschagne said the branches should be staffed by trained and qualified enterprise development consultants.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Area is truck country

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Area is truck country. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--A cooling housing market and soaring gasoline prices took their toll on one of the automotive industry's most profitable branches this year, analysts say.

But sales of pickup trucks, while down this year, have bounced back recently in the Inland region, dealers say, largely because of the recent decline in gas prices.

Marshall Gordon, general sales manager at Toyota of Riverside, said sales of the full-size Tundra pickup truck were off by about 40 percent over the summer compared with the year before.

"But now with the lower gas prices and the incentives we've been offering, sales have picked back up," Gordon said.

Average gas prices nationwide hit record highs in the spring and summer, but since then have fallen about 23 percent, according to the American Automobile Association.

Some analysts blame the fall in pickup sales on the softening housing market, which slowed construction work throughout the country. Nationally, sales of big trucks are down 14 percent this year.

Big trucks account for about 25 percent of all sales at General Motors, 27 percent at Ford and 17 percent at DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler. For Toyota, big trucks make up about 4.6 percent of total sales.

A recent report by an analyst at Credit Suisse in New York found that the strength of nation's home-resale market moves in step with full-size pickup sales. Home resales account for about 85 percent of all residential sales in the country, and when those sales rise, pickups sales rise as well, analyst Chris Ceraso wrote.



Home resales dropped nearly 13 percent last month compared with August 2005, the National Association of Realtors said this week, and the Commerce Department reported new-home sales in the Western states were down 17 percent.

Over the past three months, trucks in Southern California sold at the same rate as those in the rest of the country, said Tom Libby, an analyst with J.D. Power & Associates' Power Information Network. The group tracks how long a vehicle sits on a dealership lot before being purchased. In Southern California, the average was three months.

Still, Inland dealers say the region is different.

"The Inland Empire has been a little bit resilient to the real estate slowdown," said Nick DePasquale, general manager at Fairview Ford in San Bernardino. He said the region tends to lead the country in truck sales.

"This is a big truck community, so a lot of people bought trucks in spite of the gas prices," he said.

DePasquale said during the peak gas prices, pickup sales were off about 25 percent from the previous year. However, he said fleet sales remained the same.

"Some of the big clients don't have any choice -- they have to buy work trucks," he said.

Bill Hatfield, owner of Hatfield Buick and GMC Truck in Redlands, said pickup sales remained steady despite the higher summer gas prices.

"There is a love affair with trucks in California," he said.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Boeing bolsters India operations

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Boeing bolsters India operations. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Looking at the fast expanding Indian market, Boeing has decided to strengthen its presence by appointing two additional senior executives here. The company announced the appointments of two senior executives to a newly expanded enterprise-wide management team to be based in Boeing's New Delhi office. "The responsibility of this team would be to manage Boeing's current industry partnerships, strengthen its ability to pursue new business opportunities, and establish closer ties with government and industry groups here. India is a priority market for Boeing," said Boeing chairman, president and CEO Jim McNerney. Larry Coughlin has been named managing director of India Operations, Boeing Commercial Airplanes and will be responsible for coordinating and integrating in-country operations to strengthen the growing partnership between Boeing and India's civil aviation industry. Mike Devers has been appointed vice-president India Operations, Integrated Defence Systems. He will report to Mark Kronenberg, vice-president, Asia-Pacific, Integrated Defence Systems. He will be responsible for overseeing India strategy and business development activities. "The people we selected to lead our presence in India and drive our business are talented professionals with proven track records for generating results," McNerney said adding, "We have a solid business plan and a long-term view of the market. With this approach we are going to create even greater value for Boeing and our customers and partners in India." Apart from these, Anil Shrikhande, vice-president of Boeing International and president of Boeing India, will continue to be responsible for coordinating the company's enterprise-wide business strategy and in-country Boeing activities, according to an official release. Boeing is the world's leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft. The company also manufactures rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles and advanced information and communication systems.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
What About Selling Real Estate at Auction?. Check it out:
From 2004 to 2005, residential real estate auction sales grew 8.4 percent

(EMAILWIRE.COM, September 29, 2006 ) By Frank T. Pietrzak -- Pleasant Valley, NY -- Property owners have many decisions to make when planning to sell their assets. One option more sellers are choosing these days is the auction method. In fact, according to an ongoing MORPACE International study commissioned by the National Auctioneers Association, revenue increases in all three primary real estate auction categories were reported for last year.



From 2004 to 2005, residential real estate auction sales grew 8.4 percent, land and agricultural auctions grew 7.0 percent, and commercial and industrial auctions grew 4.9 percent. Residential real estate is still on the rise, increasing 4.4 percent for the first half of 2006, with no signs of a slowdown.

As a result of this steady growth, real estate has become a sizeable source of revenue for the auctioneering industry. According to the MORPACE study, between 2003 and 2005, real estate auctions comprised 22.3 percent of total revenue, second only to automobile auctions, which comprised 37.8 percent of total revenue. According to Susan A. Doyle, principle broker of Absolute Auctions and Realty, Inc. (AAR) of Pleasant Valley, New York, which brokers the largest number of real estate auctions in New York State each year, I see this percentage rising even more in the near future. Our offices have received an increasing number of phone calls over the past few months from property owners looking to sell via the auction method. These people are informed, prepared, and motivated to sell.

What is it about the auction method that attracts so many sellers? The most obvious benefit is the no commission guarantee offered by many auctioneers. By earning their profit on the buyer side of the transaction via a buyers premium, the auctioneer is able to offer their client a no-commission sale. A buyers premium is a percentage of the high bid (often 10%) that is added onto the high bid once the bidding ends. The high bid plus the buyers premium then becomes the official sale price of the property.

The other highly attractive feature for sellers is the no-contingencies contract. Both the seller and the buyer execute the contract immediately after the auction. This, coupled with the fact that the buyer has already posted a first downpayment with the Auctioneer during registration and will fund a second downpayment within 48 hours of the auction, gives the seller peace of mind that the sale will proceed efficiently, free from the last-minute negotiations that typically delay a sale. Conversely, the buyer is guaranteed a property free of liens and encumbrances at closing. Once the contract is executed, the closing process is the same for auction as it is for private-treaty brokering, except that the auction closing timeframe is considerably shorter, usually 60 days or less. What differs most between auction and private-treaty is the method of arriving at the purchase price.

This difference in methodology emphasizes a benefit unique to the auction processthe opportunity to have all interested players competing at the same time. The average real estate auction takes about six minutesits pretty hard to beat that level of intensity, notes Robert A. Doyle, AARs principle auctioneer. Its also mutually beneficial for sellers and buyers. Sellers know their property will sell on a specific date at a specific time, and buyers dont have to guess at how much to offer. They simply bid one increment higher than the last person, and once the bidding stops, the highest bidder has arrived at the fair market value for that property on that day. Its really the purest form of free enterprise.

Once a property owner has decided to sell at auction, he or she usually chooses one of two formats: a subject to confirmation auction, in which the seller sets a reserve to establish a minimum selling price, or an absolute auction, in which the property is offered to the highest bidder regardless of price. Though it seems an absolute auction would be disadvantageous to a seller, Susan Doyle explains, In reality, it tends to draw a large crowd looking for a steal. Thats an ideal atmosphere for our client, because bidders compete more enthusiastically when a property is selling absolute. At the end of the day, the seriously interested buyers who have done their homework will always ensure market value is reached.

The best candidates for real estate auction are motivated sellers who owe less on their property than what the current market is expected to pay. Of course, condition, location and amenities are also significant factors. On the other side of the transaction, the ideal buyer is one who prequalifies for financing, reviews all of the property information provided by the auctioneer, has all third-party testing done prior to auction, and is prepared to fund the downpayments in accordance with the terms of the auction.

In the end, real estate at auction is appealing because it is a win-win opportunity for sellers and buyers. The condensed timeframe, the no-contingencies contract and the assurance of fair market value create an environment of temporal and financial efficiency that benefits everyone involved.

Published by ASMarketingCenter.com a division of http://www.auctionservices.com and the http://www.nationalauctionlist.com.

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Strategies for Nigerian SMEs to Grow Economy - Prof. Chibundu. Check it out:
(Vanguard (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Director NISER and Chairman Consultancy Committee, Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME), Sir (Prof.) Enmmanuel Chibundu in this interview with Vanguard identified why Nigerian SMEs are not engine of growth as in other economies, and proffer solutions which he thinks if addressed properly will make Nigerian SMEs catalysts of growth and development.



Excerpts:

On constraints of the Nigerian SMEs:

The role of Small and Medium-Scale Enterprise (SMEs) in the national economy cannot be underestimated. These enterprises are being given increasing policy attention in recent years, particularly in third world countries partly because of growing disappointment with results of development strategies focusing on large scale capital intensive and high import dependent industrial plants. The impact of SMEs is felt in the following ways: Greater utilisation of local raw materials, employment generation, encouragement of rural development, development of entrepreneurship, mobilisation of local savings, linkages with bigger industries, provision of regional balance by spreading investments more evenly, provision of avenue for self-employment and provision of opportunity for training managers and semi-skilled workers.

On the challenges encountered by Nigerian SMEs

He said: "The fact that has emerged from the appraisal of the various past and policy initiatives on the promotion of SMEs in Nigeria is that although finance is a major constraint to the development of SMEs in Nigeria, it is by no means the only or most important constraint. The effective utilisation of substantial financial resources provided under the various past programmes, was constrained by such factors as lack of adequate entrepreneurship and managerial skills as well as absence of the enabling environment for investment in small and medium scale industries."

On constrained access to money and capital markets

The banking sector tends to be lukewarm in meeting the credit requirements of SMEs. This is because project proposals are poorly prepared, financial documentation and inadequate collateral are not provided, as well as the inability of the promoters of SME projects to raise the required equity contribution.

Moreover, the banks regard many SMEs as high risk ventures because of absence of succession plan in the event of the death of the proprietor. As a result, working capital is still a major constraint on production, as most SMEs are restricted to funds from family members and friends and are therefore unable to respond to unanticipated challenges in a timely manner. More worrisome is SMEs' inability to adequately tap available finance from the capital market. This had been attributed to by their aversion to disclosure and ownership dilution, although many SMEs blamed this phenomenon on the cumbersome requirements and procedures for listing on the Stock Exchange. The establishment of the second-tier security markets of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which was expected to solve this problem, has been shunned by most of the SMEs.

On high rate of enterprise mortality

The incidence of inadequate working capital, which constrains productive capacities of the SMEs as well as absence of succession plan in the event of the death of the proprietor, leads in many cases to frequent early demise of SMEs. Moreover, the persistence of unstable macro-economic environment, arising mainly from fiscal policy excesses has often smothered many SMEs.

Shortage of skilled manpower

Inadequate financial resources, as well as desire to operate with limited openness on the part of proprietors lead many SMEs to employ semi-skilled labour. This of course, affect productivity, restrains expansion and hinders competitiveness.

Financial indiscipline: Some SME proprietors deliberately divert loans obtained for project support to ostentatious, expenditure. Others refuse to pay back as and when due, the interest and the principal, because of political involvement and the misconceived notion of sharing the so-called national cake.

There are however, genuine cases of loan defaults arising from operational difficulties and macro-economic shocks.

Lack of infrastructural facilities: Inadequate provision of essential services such as telecommunication, access roads, electricity water supply constitutes one of the greatest constrains to SME development. Most SMEs resort to private provisioning of these at great expense. A World Bank Study (1989) estimated that such cost accounted for 15-20 per cent of the cost of establishing a manufacturing enterprise in Nigeria. Contemporary evidence has shown that the relative burden of the private provisioning of infrastructural facilities is much heavier on SMEs than on large-scale enterprise.

Poor implementation of policies: The poor implementation of policies including administration of incentives and measures aimed at facilitating SMEs growth and development have had unintended effects on the sub-sector. This had resulted for instance, into confusion and uncertainty in business decisions and planning as well as weakened the confidence by the SMEs on government's capacity to execute faithfully its programme.

Poor management practices and low entrepreneurial skill: Many SMEs do not keep proper accounts of transaction. This hinders effective control and planning. Moreover, lack of relevant educational background and thorough business exposure constrains their ability to seize business opportunities that may lead to growth and expansion.

Restricted market access: Insufficient demand for the products of the SMEs also imposes constraint on their growth. Although many SMEs produce some inputs for larger industrial enterprises, the non-standardisation of their products, the problem of quality assurance as well as weak purchasing power, arising from consumers' dwindling real incomes, effectively restrict their market access. This is further compounded by the absence of knowledge about the existence of fringe markets by SMEs.

Overbearing regulatory and operational environment: The plethora of regulatory agencies, multiple taxes cumbersome importation procedure, and high port charges have continued to exert pressures on the industrial sector in general and SMEs in particular.

On the strategies for survival of Nigerian SMEs:

Over the years, the Federal Government has taken various steps, including monetary, fiscal and industrial policy measures to promote the development of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, the government has been active in the following areas:

*Funding and setting up of industrial estates to reduce overhead costs.

*Establishing specialised financial institutions, including the Small Scale Industry Credit Scheme (SSICSs), Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (NIDB), Nigerian Bank for Commerce and Industry (NBCI) to provide long-term credit;

*Facilitating and guaranteeing external finance by the World Bank, African Development Bank and other international financial institutions;

*Facilitating the establishment of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), which also initiated the setting up of new SMEs;

*Establishment of the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) to provide medium to long-term local and foreign loans for small, and medium scale businesses, particularly those located in the rural areas; and

*Provision of technical training and advisory services through the Industrial Development Centres.

*Small and Medium Industry Equity Investment Scheme (SMIEIS)

What is SMIEIS?

The scheme requires all banks in Nigeria to set 10 per cent of their profit before tax (PBT) for equity investment and promotion of small and medium industries.

What are the activities covered by the scheme?

The range of activities in respect of which funds shall be applied are those in the real sector of the economy as listed below with the exclusion of trading, agro-allied, information technology, telecommunication, manufacturing, educational establishments, services, tourism and leisure, solid minerals, construction, any activity as may be determined from time to time by the Banker's Committee.

SME promoters and private sector effort to ensure survival of SMEs.

It is unfortunate that in Nigeria the full potential of SMEs is not being fully realized. This is partly related to harsh operating environment. But the major reasons inhibiting the growth and competitiveness of Nigeria SMEs according to extensive studies in NISER is managerial incompetence.

This incompetence is brought about by low quality of skills critically needed for successful business operations. Also discussions with top officials of the Banking and Financial Sector have revealed that part of the reasons for not financing some SME project is because of high risk and failure rate associated with low managerial know-how.

On proposed contents of survival core management principles for SMEs

Prof. Chibundu recommended the following policy stategy: Developing sound financial/accounting system, cost control measures i.e identifying key success factors for effective cost control, iInventory/working capital management, marketing management,the marketing environment, marketing strategies for SMEs (penetrating local and export market).

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.

Mkts open in green, subdued

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Mkts open in green, subdued. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The market opened in the green on Friday with the BSE benchmark index--Sensex gaining further by over 44 points in early morning on the back of sustained buying by funds in blue-chip shares. However, the trading was subdued as the participants adopted a cautious stance.



At 11.00 am, the Sensex was trading 35 pts up, at 12,412 while, Nifty was up 9.70 pts, at 3581.

The major indices opened in the green, marginally up but the metal stocks stole a march over others, up 2.20 per cent.

Amongst the individual stocks major gainers on the BSE were Tata Steel up 2.30 per cent at 530.90, Hindalco up 1.65 per cent, at 173 and Tata Motors up 1.55 per cent, at 855.55. Maruti also opened well after being in the negative the whole day on Thursday at 954.85 up 1.32 per cent.

On the NSE, the top gainers were SAIL up 2.92 per cent at 77.55, VSNL at 401 up 2.48 per cent and Tata Steel at 530.50 up 2.21 per cent.

Some of the losers on the BSE in the morning trade were ICICI Bank down 1.23 per cent at 699.70 and Hero Honda down almost 2 per cent at 780.60.

Auto stocks were trading higher, with Maruti, Punjab Tractors, Tata Motors and TVS Motor all up leading the pack of gainers. M&M, will be acquiring a 67.9 per cent stake in Jeco Holding AG, a German forging company, at an enterprise value of Rs 8.3 billion. The company will be acquired through the Mauritius subsidiary of M&M and will be subsequently integrated with Mahindra Automotive Steels Limited (MASL).The stock was trading higher by 1 per cent.

The US markets closed higher on Thursday evening, with the Dow Jones clocking its second-highest close ever. In fact, during the course of the day's trade, the Dow actually surpassed its record closing high of 11,723 hit on January 14, 2000 amid optimism that falling oil prices and the hope that that will help the United States avoid a sharp slowdown.

The Asian indices were currently trading mixed. The Asian markets struggled to match gains on the Wall Street. The Nikkei was up 0.4 per cent at the mid session break, after touching its highest level since September 8 in the morning session.

Oil fell around half a percent, as swelling U.S. inventories outweighed concerns producer cartel OPEC may cut output to defend prices that have fallen around 20 percent over the past two months. NYMEX crude fell 33 cents to $62.43 a barrel. Gold, tracking oil prices in recent weeks, eased to around $599.80 an ounce.

Share markets in Seoul and Taiwan were flat, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.3 per cent but Singapore's Straits Times STI fell by the same amount.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Fitch affirms ProCredit Bank Ukraine at 'BB-'. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MOSCOW. Sept 28 (Interfax) - Fitch Ratings on Thursday affirmed ProCredit Bank Ukraine's ("ProCredit Ukraine") ratings at foreign currency Issuer Default 'BB-' (BB minus), Short-term foreign currency 'B', local currency Issuer Default 'BB', Short-term local currency 'B', Individual 'D', and Support '3', the ratings agency said in a release.



The Outlooks on the Issuer Default ratings ("IDR") are Stable. The national rating is affirmed at 'AAA(ukr)'.

The IDRs, Short-term and Support ratings of ProCredit
Ukraine are
based on Fitch's view of the potential support from its
owners,particularly ProCredit Holding AG ("PCH"; rated 'BBB-' (BBB minus)), its 60% owner, in case of need. However, the 'BB-' (BB minus) Country Ceiling of Ukraine limits the extent to which support can be factored into the IDRs. The ratings also take into account PCH's centralized control and risk management and ProCredit Ukraine's high degree of integration within the ProCredit group. The Stable Outlook on ProCredit Ukraine's IDRs reflects that of Ukraine's IDRs.

Fitch notes that any movement in the Country Ceiling for Ukraine would have implications for ProCredit Ukraine's IDRs. Downward movement in the Country Ceiling would also result in a change to the bank's Support rating.

"Upside potential for the Individual rating is currently limited by ProCredit Ukraine's small size," says Tomasz Walkowicz, an analyst at Fitch's Financial Institutions Group. "A significant deterioration in asset quality, capitalization and liquidity leading to a need for support would contribute to a downgrade."

ProCredit Ukraine is the 35th largest bank by total assets in Ukraine. In addition to PCH, its other shareholders include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Western NIS Enterprise Fund (a U.S. body), which have a 20% stake each.

PCH was set up as an equity investment company in 1998 by Frankfurt-based Internationale Projekt Consult GmbH to invest in the global network of ProCredit banks, which provide financing to micro-and small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. At end-May 2006, the group consisted of 19 banks in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, while the group's total assets were around EUR2.5 billion. PCH is responsible for group administration, strategy, risk management controls and supervision. PCH is not regulated as a banking group, but the ProCredit banks are regulated in their home countries.

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

The mothers of re-invention

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(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Before China started its reforms and opened up to the outside world, many foreigners had the notion that Chinese women enjoyed unprecedented independence from men and high participation in the public sphere. This liberation for women, however, worked as a double-edged sword. Very often, it forced them to juggle jobs and families with great difficulty. Things are different today in a market economy in which masculinity is measured by the amount of money a man makes. A husband's higher income has taken the pressure off many working wives. Urban Chinese women, particularly in the middle-class, now have more options on how to spend their time. Some women feel their social identity is no longer contingent on them staying in the workforce. Instead, they see family as the primary commitment, and are proud to play a supporting role to the husband. Although it is a relatively recent phenomenon, it is no longer uncommon to see a small number of "full-time wives" (quan zhi tai tai) in Chinese cities, particularly within the rich and privileged echelon. The reasons behind this new phenomenon are many and diverse. Some believe such a trend has become possible simply because a growing number of families can afford not to have two incomes. Others point out that their lifestyle and choices owe not only to the economic boom but also to increasing social stratification, with the availability of migrant and laid-off workers as home-making helpers.



Meng Baili, a manager in an IT company in Beijing, is still looking for "Mrs Right," and in the meantime has his apartment cleaned by a local Beijing woman, a former factory worker who lost her job due to enterprise restructuring. Would he want his future wife to work? Meng said he was happy either way. "She does not have to work, as my salary is good enough to support her. But if she wants to work, it's her choice. As long as she fulfils her duties as a wife, I have no objection," he said.

When asked how he preferred to see his wife spending her time, Meng replied: "She can do community or charity work or work out in the gym to stay slim and fit but she shouldn't do housework. That's the maid's job." Indeed, very few full-time wives quit jobs to do housework. Hua Ruiling is in her late 30s and has two children, 15 and 3. Her husband is a real estate developer, and the family live at an expensive address in Haidian District, Beijing. Hua employs two full-time domestic helpers; one cooks while the other works as a nanny. Hua said that her husband was often away on business, sometimes abroad, but she had her own network of friends. She attends adult education classes and yoga classes, and drives her children to school and childcare. Currently she is attending an adult education course designed for women like herself. Offered by a prestigious university at a price which labourers and migrant workers would find astronomical more than 30,000 yuan (US$3,700) for one participant the course covered a wide range of subjects including literature, history, home science, and child development.

"There is a lot of useful knowledge and information out there. I feel that I can become a more cultivated person. I also meet a lot of new friends by going to these activities," Hua said.

Pros and cons Feminists debate the pros and cons of women returning home to become full-time mothers and wives. Some see this move as socially regressive because women run the risk of losing their independence and becoming socially disempowered. Others see it as a positive change for women, as they now have the option of not working, thus having more autonomy to follow their own dreams.

"Some women decide to quit man's world so that they can pursue their own idea of work. Stopping working for money doesn't mean that they disappear from public sphere. For instance, doing volunteer work, charity work, and running parents' groups online is also an important way of making contribution to society," said Wang Gan, an anthropologist who has written extensively on the topic of work and motherhood. While some women decide to become full-time wives because they bring clout and "face" to their husband, some men consider it a status symbol to keep their wives at home. Other women have decided to leave the workforce because they see fit to adjust their priorities in the face of changed domestic circumstances. This shift tends to happen when a couple is starting a family. Jiang, who declined to give her full name, worked as an accountant in a German-owned company in Beijing but stopped working after giving birth to her son. However, she stressed this may be an interim plan and she may not want to stay away from work permanently. "I read many books on parenting, and most of them point to the importance of bringing your child up on your own instead of using a nanny, especially during the first couple of years. So for the sake of my child's future, I am happy to stop working for a year or two," Jiang said.

In spite of the glamour of the "full-time wife," to most middle-class urban women, it is more desirable to have a foot in both worlds. In constructing a profile of the archetype "Vogue" woman, Liu Dan, from Conde Nast, which produces the Chinese Vogue magazine, said: "The archetypical Vogue woman is not a full-time wife, nor is she stressed out with work. She balances work and family, successfully and effortlessly." Xia Jun, 31, HR consultant with a trans-national corporation in Beijing, had a baby boy six months ago, and is currently still on unpaid maternity leave. With the help of a full-time live-in maid, Xia divides her maternity leave between her baby and trying to finish a research project for her Master's thesis. She will go back to work in eight-months. "It never occurred to me to become a full-time mother. It's important to have my own social life, to be exposed to smart people and exciting things," Xia said.

Xia also believed it was risky for a woman to build her sense of security around a man, especially considering the growing infamy of married rich men betraying their wife and taking on lovers and mistresses. "During the last few months since I had the child and stayed at home, I noticed I have become emotionally more dependent on my husband, more demanding of his attention and understanding, and more insecure about his feelings for me," Xia said. "This is because he has a whole world outside home, and I have nothing else to talk about apart from home. When I was working, I was not like this," she said. Although pleased with the time off during her maternity leave, Xia fears she can't afford to stay away from work for too long. "Things change fast, and organizational cultures and structure changes fast too. If you don't keep up, you may not be able to cope with the change," Xia added. "In my company, organizational structures are altered every half a year. I also know that if I stay away for too long, say for two or three years, there will be new people coming in, younger and with more credentials." From what Xia can see, the full-time wife phenomenon is a symptom of a patriarchal society. "It never occurs to my husband that he could quit work and look after the child. That's almost unheard of in China. I know it's quite common with Westerners. At work, I have quite a few European female colleagues whose husbands are here to look after children. But that's almost unheard of among Chinese men," she said. Both the birth of the "full-time wife" and the emergence of the "vogue woman" have taken place in Chinese cities not in spite of, but precisely because of, growing social and economic stratification over the last couple of decades. Social stratification To be sure, urban middle-class women can afford to choose between working and not working, but they cannot do it without cheap labour provided by rural women and laid-off factory workers who work as their domestic helpers. The latter are not blessed with these options. While some women in the cities are thinking of quitting jobs or cutting down work hours to spend time with their family, more and more rural women are leaving home and their families in order to work in cities as domestic workers. Currently there are at least 200,000 domestic workers in Beijing, and another 200,000 vacancies waiting to be filled. Xie Hong is one of the thousands of women in Beijing who leave her children behind in the village in order to make money working as a baomu. A young woman from Sichuan and in her late 20s, she works as a part-time domestic cleaner. Xie said she missed her own children badly and talked to them on the phone whenever she could. "City kids are so spoilt and live like princes and princesses. Each time I look at them, especially those who are at a similar age to my own children, I get upset. I am also a mother, but why can't I cuddle my children and buy them their favourite treats every day?" Xie said. "I know I am doing this for my kids, but I am also missing out on so much by being away. Last time I went home to see my kids, they looked at me as if I was a stranger and wouldn't come close to me," Xie added, her eyes filled with tears. Because of migrant women such as Xie, and thanks to the growing trend of outsourcing domestic work in urban China, middle-class urban women across the board are increasingly able to tailor their lifestyles and work patterns to suit their individual needs, thereby freely negotiating between working and not working, between full-time and part-time work, or between working for money and working to fulfil one's dreams. For many single professional women, life without a man is just fine, as long as she has the help of a maid. Similarly, for married women, their lifestyle either as a full-time wife or professional is hardly sustainable without the availability of paid domestic work.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Live from Comdex, it's Enable

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Live from Comdex, it's Enable. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COMDEX is the premier showcase of the latest breakthroughs and innovations in the IT marketplace. Many leading companies use COMDEX to launch their newest and next flagship products. In the IT arena, COMDEX is the place to see and be seen.



COMDEX is also where you will come in contact with the next big thing before it actually becomes the next big thing. For example, today the buzz is all about Tablet PCs. Yet, I saw the first Tablets at COMDEX two years ago. The same is true for smart phones and WIFI.

The next edition of Enable will be coming at you live from COMDEX and will let you in on the next big things. Until then, the COMDEX web site is chock full of added value and today's Enable looks at two such added value sections Research and White Papers.

Research Reports For Free

COMDEX is committed to providing the IT community with FREE quality research on the most important technology and business segments to help buyers and sellers make crucial decisions. The COMDEX Reports series includes market studies on technologies such as IT security, development environments and wireless, as well as buyer segments such as enterprise businesses and women in technology. To access the reports, just provide an email address when prompted. You should also check back often as new FREE reports are posted regularly.

The following are highlights of a few of the reports: COMDEX Report on Small Business - Home Office vs. Commercial Office Workers One of the key findings of the COMDEX Research Panel Small Business study is that small business respondents who work from home are very different from respondents who work at an office outside the home. This paper will develop an in-depth profile of these two groups and help foster an understanding of the differences between home office workers and those who work in an office outside the home.

COMDEX Report on Women Technology Buyers COMDEX, in partnership with WITI (Women In Technology International), commissioned a study on the involvement of women in purchasing technology for their businesses and organizations. This study explored the role of women in IT, technology products women purchase and the amount they are authorized to spend.

COMDEX/FORTUNE 1000 Technology Decision Maker Study The COMDEX/FORTUNE 1000 Technology Decision-Maker Survey was conducted to provide a snapshot of how technology influencers in the largest US companies feel about the economy, the prospects of a turnaround, and how the current downturn has affected budgets and decision-making processes within their companies. In addition, the study examines the importance of a range of business issues to companies today, and how these companies have fared in dealing with these important issues.

COMDEX Report on Biometrics Biometrics is one of the newest security technologies available. While clearly an immature market, biometric technologies are sure to become more widely used in the future as costs decrease and companies'

Wireless Technology: The Big Picture COMDEX panelists are involved users and evaluators of wireless technology. The COMDEX Panel survey on Wireless Technology found significant differences between how companies of different sizes are using and implementing wireless technology.

Small Business: Online vs. Non-online Businesses Among small businesses, those that consider themselves online businesses have a distinct profile from those who do not. The COMDEX Research Panel Small Business study seeks to develop a profile of online businesses and understand the key differences between online and non-online small companies.

Security Information security is one of the most important issues facing businesses today. The COMDEX Panel study on security aims to explore what security measures companies are taking and how panelists feel about the trade-off between privacy and security. This study found that while security is important to all panelists, companies of different sizes face different challenges when implementing security measures.

White Papers

COMDEX prides itself on community, content and commerce. In the White Paper section of the website you can search for in-depth information from the leading technology vendors and analyst groups. The White Papers are free, but you will have to pay for the Analyst reports.

White Paper topics include: Hardware Electronic Commerce Enterprise Applications IT Management Networking Software Development Telecommunications

Take advantage of the information provided by COMDEX. It is for the most part free and provides you with a wealth of information.

Next week we are LIVE from Las Vegas at COMDEX

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Invest In The Hiring Process

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Invest In The Hiring Process. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As we continue with our roadmap for success, we move on to the issue of hiring employees for your new enterprise. Hiring new employees is another example of a critical situation facing startups that if not handled correctly from the onset - will probably never be rectifiable. In today's Internet paced world, time is everything. Many new companies simply do not have the time or the personnel to properly hire new employees. Yet, a proper investment of your time during the hiring process will save you a lot if time in the future, and more importantly will prevent major headaches and even catastrophes for you and your company. Today's Enable provides you with some tips that will help you hire the right person for the job. The key is to invest a little time now - to save a lot of time later on.



What Is The Cover Letter Like?

Most companies try to weed out candidates as quickly as possible. A good method for doing this is via the cover letter. Does it show that the candidate investigated the firm in any way? Are there spelling or grammar mistakes? If it was faxed, was it sent from the potential employees current place of business (check the header of the fax)? Is there some kind of a statement that stands out and demonstrates that this candidate is serious? Is the cover letter a little too haughty? No cover letter at all could be an indication of either laziness or lack of experience. A very well done, professional cover letter is an excellent indication that the candidate is serious.

Resumes Are Sometimes Wish Lists

It is very easy for almost anyone to put together an impressive looking resume. As you review a potential employee's resume, take nothing for granted. You must check each and every "fact" very carefully because many items may be exaggerated or even a figment of the potential employees imagination. A friend of mine once told me that his rule for drafting a resume was - "if it could have been true, I put it in."

Check References!!

One of the most important, yet often ignored ways of insuring that you hire the best person for the job is to check their references. Use the telephone and email to contact each and every reference and try to learn as much as you can about the prospective employee. Other than simply checking to make sure everything on the resume is true, you should also ask questions like: What is the candidate's greatest asset? How did the candidate add value to the company? How did the candidate interact with co-workers? Is there anything negative you can say about the candidate? Why did the candidate leave?

The most important question you must ask is: "Can you give me names of other people at your company, or outside of the company (like clients or suppliers), whom I can speak with?". This will help you learn more and will enable you to deal with "cherry picked" references.

The Turndown - Be Professional

It is highly professional to send out "rejection" letters to all candidates that sent you their resumes. Most companies, especially those in Israel fail to do this. Business is all marketing. The candidates that you have decided not to hire - for whatever reason will all most likely find jobs at other companies in your industry. Do not use obvious form letters and the like. If you do not have time for a professional letter, at least send an email. Israel is a very small country, and your paths will cross with many of the candidates. Your reputation is very important and a professional turndown can pay off in the future.

Next week we will deal with executive search firms and with using the Internet to find potential employees.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 10, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Those Who Do - Should Teach

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Those Who Do - Should Teach. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) When I was in law school, my favorite courses were taught by lawyers who were not professors but who simply like to teach. They typically taught at night and most of the time gave us all kinds of war stories. They lived it and were giving us real examples from the real world. They talked about everything we wanted to do - and they were doing it!



Today's Enable incorporates this concept via Joe Hadzima, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Director and General Counsel to the MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc., and Managing Director of Main Street Partners LLC, a venture investing and technology commercialization firm located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a former partner and founder of the High Tech/ New Ventures Group and Sullivan & Worcester LLP, a major Boston-based law firm.

Hadzima writes a column called Starting Up for the Boston Business Journal. The column is written about real life problems and experiences faced by new and emerging companies in the New England area - but the topics covered are relevant to startups around the globe. The column, like my favorite law school professors, provides practical information to entrepreneurs.

Enable has reviewed the column, including the archives. Today we'll see how Hadzima deals with a crucial issue - the Board of Directors.

Don't Bore the Board of Directors - How To Use A Board Effectively tells you how to get the most out of your Board and how to ensure you don't waste their time. The ins and outs include:

Board Size Size and the resulting group dynamics will dictate much of how you deal with the Board. Most entrepreneurial private companies have Boards comprised of 3 to 5 Directors. Some have advisory boards (e.g. a Science Advisory Board) which are larger but the legal Board usually does not exceed 5 in number and rarely is greater than 7. Larger public companies usually have larger Boards, partly because of the need to have specialized committees (e.g., Audit Committee, Compensation Committee).

Outside of the Board Meeting In recruiting a Director you should have worked out the Director's level of activity and attention both in terms of the number of Board Meetings expected and, if the "job description" includes it, interactions outside of the Board room. These outside interactions with individual Directors are your opportunity to obtain individual advice and assistance. Establish a format which works for the individual Director and for you- a weekly breakfast, a monthly lunch, twice a week telephone call, frequent email, a tennis match followed by a half hour discussion by the juice bar-whatever works.

The Board Meeting The strength of the Board of Directors system comes from the collective action of experienced and informed people. It follows that the Board Meeting has to be a combination of information transfer processes and resulting decision making. Board Meetings rarely last all day unless some major event is being considered such as an acquisition. For a normal Board Meeting plan on a minimum of 12 to 2 hours, more typically 3 to 4 hours.

Information Because time is limited, you should "offload" as much of the background information transfer process as possible so that the Meeting can focus more on decision making. The "Board Package" is the main method of off-line information transfer and should be distributed to the Board with enough time for the Directors to be able to read and digest the material but not so far in advance that the information is out of date. Plan on getting the materials to the Directors about 3 days before the Meeting. A typical package will contain the following: An Agenda, Draft Minutes of the Last Meeting, Financial Reports with Management Commentary, Other Relevant Information. Be sure to keep the Directors informed of general developments between meetings- e.g., include the Directors on press release lists, product mailings etc. It can be very annoying to a Director to find out something about the Company from a source outside of the Company.

Knowledge@Wharton Revisited

As promised, we now return to Knowledge@Wharton to finish our overview of this excellent site. As mentioned last week, this is an online resource that offers the latest business insights, information and research from a variety of sources, including an in-depth searchable database.

In completing our look at this site, we move to the section entitled: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Here, you will find an excellent piece called Uncertainty, Technological Turbulence, Competition - What's a Manager to Do? Thrive on It, that teaches the concept of "habitual entrepreneurs." Habitual entrepreneurs have made careers out of starting businesses either within existing firms or independently. You will learn that they passionately seek new opportunities and pursue them with enormous discipline. Furthermore, they pursue only the best opportunities, and avoid exhausting themselves and their organizations by chasing every option. They focus on execution and change direction if necessary. And they engage the energies of everyone who works with them. You will also be provided with a detailed plan, based on these qualities, for you to apply to your own company.

In the same section you will also find an article entitled: Mercenaries vs. Missionaries: John Doerr Sees Two Kinds of Internet Entrepreneurs. John Doerr is a legend in the venture capital industry and you should pay very close attention to what he has to stay.

Doerr believes that as the new economy develops, several trends are emerging. Among his forecasts for the future: IP, or internet protocol, will be as important as the car or television. The web will become the standard communications platform in healthcare. Charter schools, and educational portals for the home and school, will transform education. Bandwidth will be crucial. Despite current skepticism about business-to-consumer e-commerce, it will remain a big trend, as will business-to-business e-commerce. Wireless information appliances will be big in the future. "That's how a billion Chinese will get onto the Internet," Doerr says. Genomics will be "fabulous" after 2005, as the human genome is fully mapped.

Doerr also predicts that the Internet will evolve into what he calls "the Evernet," which is "always on, high speed, ubiquitous and available in multiple formats." These formats will include a "voiceweb" for voice communications, a "handweb" for hand-held devices, a "PC web" for PCs, a "videoweb" for video and an "e-web" in which machines will communicate with machines. These changes will consolidate the foundations of the new economy.

Read the entire section and learn from one of the leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on September 26, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Wireless For Everyone

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Wireless For Everyone. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As we continue our focus on added value wireless related sites, Enable takes a look at www.wirelessdata.org. This site has something for everyone - from novice to expert.

Beginners will benefit from the site's wireless data primer. Developers will glean a lot of value from the developers green house section, and virtually anyone interested in the industry will be able to benefit from the free market research available on the site.



These and other features are described in detail below. This description is followed by a brief look at the organization behind the site - The Wireless Data Forum.

Wireless Data Primer

The last twenty years have seen an explosion in wireless communications and computer technology. The last five years have seen the explosion of the Internet. Standing at the center of this convergence is the wireless data industry. The primer provides a general overview of the industry and its key components.

The primer is in beta version, and is still not searchable. When I used it, the primer was bug free. However, be aware that some of the information is not exactly up to date.

Developers Greenhouse

This section is for those that want to join the Wireless Revolution. It provides a slew of resources to help you successfully develop applications for Wireless Data. This includes: Ardis Wireless Software Developers Program CDMA Online GSM World, the web home of the GSM Association, features the GSM Data Window. The RIM Developer Zone Sierra Wireless Developers Toolkit WAP Forum (Wireless Application Protocol) WAP.NET Wireless Developer Wireless Developer Network

Market Research

In the section called Market Index, you can look up over 100 reports, forecasts, and articles about Wireless Data. You can search by categories like new applications, international, enterprise, or consumer - or simply by keyword.

You only receive short blurbs, but the information contained in the blurb provides you with enough background to get a general idea of the particular market, product, etc, that you searched for.

For example, when I searched the word "palm", the following (among others) came up:

"Future of Palm VII dim. [6/9/99]"

"Analysts at the Wheaton, Md.-based consultancy Herschel Shosteck Associates aren't so sure and say the future is not bright for Palm VII. They predict sales of 100,000 units in the first year, a mere fraction of the projected 3.9 million personal digital assistants that will be sold in the United..."

"IBM Makes Wireless Deal; Suggested: Wireless devices to outnumber PCs on Internet, IBM expects [1/24/00]"

"IBM will design, build and run a global wireless Internet portal for Vodafone AirTouch PLC, the world's largest mobile phone operator, the companies announced earlier this month. The portal, which will be launched in July in Europe, North America and Australia, is based on software from..."

When I clicked on the above link, this is what I got:

"Summary: IBM will design, build and run a global wireless Internet portal for Vodafone AirTouch PLC, the world's largest mobile phone operator, the companies announced earlier this month. The portal, which will be launched in July in Europe, North America and Australia, is based on software from the Sun-Netscape Alliance and InfoSpace.com Inc. It will give users of mobile phone and handheld devices from Nokia Corp., Ericsson Inc. and Palm Computing Inc. access to messaging and calendaring functions, in addition to travel information and financial services."

The Wireless Data Forum

The Wireless Data Forum is a new organization with a new focus. Dedicated to publicizing successful wireless data applications and customer communities, the WDF is composed of network service providers, wireless device and infrastructure equipment manufacturers and vendors, computer software and hardware developers, and information services content providers. New members are actively being recruited from the wireless telecommunications, mobile computing, and Internet industries. The Wireless Data Forum's leadership is committed to being an industry-building mechanism. The Wireless Data Forum's work will focus on consensus building and promoting the entire wireless data industry.

It seems that the Forum means well and its current site does provide added value. Enable will continue to check on any updates and will keep you posted on the progress of this site, especially the Primer.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on June 20, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

A Developer's Dream

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A Developer's Dream. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Today's Enable is dedicated to developers. You guys and gals don't get the credit you deserve and are typically blamed for product bugs and problems. Are these product faults really your fault?



You are being pushed from all sides. You need prototypes, beta sites, etc. Your marketing "friends" are pushing you to get the product to market in record time. You feel the pressure every day - but where can you turn for help? Can the Internet help you like it seems to be helping everyone else?

If you are a wireless developer, you're in luck. AnywhereYouGo.com provides you with online tools and other information to help you develop applications that work without bugs and other problems - fast.

The solutions AnywhereYouGo.com provides are crucial because, according to the IGI group, by the year 2003 more people will access the Internet via a mobile phone than via PC. This will drive mobile e-commerce, which Strategy Analytics forecasts will reach a total 14 billion transactions in 2005 for a total market of $200 billion. The challenge is for today's wireless developers to build applications for multiple technologies, devices, and country standards.

AnywhereYouGo.com is the largest independent community of wireless application developers. The AnywhereYouGo.com web site provides industry and product news, developer tools and resources, industry reports, online application testing, directories of developers and applications, training and tutorials, and discussion groups covering wireless application development:

The entire site is excellent - especially the newsletters which I subscribe to personally. But today is dedicated to developers only, and as such Enable only focuses on the developer tools and application testing sections.

Five Steps To WAP Development

Anywhereyougo.com provides developers with a five step process for WAP development.

The steps are summarized below: Step 1 - Understand WAP: Step 2 - Get The Tools You Need Step 3 - Write Your First Application Step 4 - Write advanced applications Step 5 - Test Your Application

Online WAP Testing Tool

This section is specifically designed to ensure that your WAP users seeing the application you wrote, the way you intended. You can test your existing WAP applications using the online utility for code errors, common mistakes, and valid links.

You can choose from the following tests to run against your site: Check the document's content type header Validate the document against the DTD declared in it Check the document for formatting tags that are not commonly supported Check the compiled size of the document Follow links that lead off of your site to other sites?

Developer's Notebook

The site also has a very detailed developer's notebook which contains articles submitted by members of the community - people who are working in the trenches to make wireless work around the world.

Some sample articles include:

Real-Time Debugging Highly Integrated Embedded Wireless Devices by David Ruimy Gonzales In this installment of the Developer's Notebook, Motorola's David Gonzales examines the trend toward reducing the number of components in these systems as it relates to cost, overall power consumption and manufacturing complexity.

Dual Core Architecture for Cellular Handsets by David Ruimy Gonzales The exponential growth of the wireless communications industry has created a multitude of new products with advanced features that allow users to stay in touch with every aspect of their lives wherever they may be. These new products are quite diverse, require more system performance with no exceptions to power conservation and have short product life cycles.

Introduction to Location Services and Location-Based Services by John Davies AnywhereYouGo.com community member John Davies provides part one in a three-part series on location and location-based services.

Seven Steps to Success in the Mobile Wireless Enterprise by Tanya Candia In a Developer's Notebook white paper, F-Secure VP Tanya Candia explains why companies who are looking to make it in the m-commerce space have to make changes in the way they do business.

All of the above are only brief highlights of what the site has to offer. Take the time to go to AnywhereYouGo.com and check it out thoroughly. Enable guarantees that you will return - again and again.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on September 5, 2000.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Now is a good time to "Buy"

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Now is a good time to "Buy". Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) We have ample experience in the local stock market and listen carefully to the opinions of local analysts. We don't doubt that foreign investment banking firms may have superior analyst abilities. However, their direct contacts with the managements of local companies are minimal. The local analyst may find that he knows several heads of companies as they are his buddies in his reserve unit. The local grapevine is an invaluable supply of information. Some even went to school together.



The local daily press, available in English, is a good source of information. The daily newspapers have Internet web sites that publish the most important news that appears in the printed newspaper.

We believe that now is a good time to invest in Israel and would like to review various avenues open to the investor.

The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange has several hundred securities listed for trading. The Exchange has a web site (http://www.tase.co.il); prices are posted daily and in near-real time. We favor companies whose activities are international and whose products are internationally recognized.

Most Israel interested investors have heard off Check Point, Converse and Teva but how many know about Aladdin? Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALDN) is recognized as the worldwide leader in Software Digital Rights Management (DRM) and USB-based authentication solutions. The company, is an innovator in enterprise secure content management (Enterprise Security). Its shares are traded on Nasdaq and the company has just reported record quarterly earnings of $3.59 million for the second quarter. This represents a 73.4 percent growth year-over-year and revenues of $20.06 million, representing 21.4 percent growth year-over-year.

AudioCodes Ltd. (Nasdaq: AUDC:) whose shares are traded on Nasdaq, designs, develops, and markets enabling technologies and system products for the transmission of voice, data, and fax over packet networks. The company's products are unique and its sales are growing as the Voice over the Internet. However, it should be kept in mind that AudioCodes sales are only at the $100m. level and profits are under 3%. The shares are favorably priced at $10 and appear to have good support at that level and upside potential. In the second quarter revenues Increase to $28.5 Million, Up 6% Sequentially and 49% year-over-year. Net Income was$3.1m, or $0.07 per share.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:ORA) is a vertically integrated company primarily engaged in the geothermal and recovered energy power business. It designs, develops, builds, owns and operates geothermal power plants. Additionally, the company designs, manufactures and sells geothermal and recovered energy power units and provides related services. More than 70 patents cover Ormat products and systems. Ormat currently has operations in the United States, Israel, the Philippines, Guatemala, Kenya, and Nicaragua. The company was founded by the Bronickis, husband and wife, and has been managed by them since its inception in 1965.

NICE-Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE:NICE) is a vehicle that enables the investor to participate in the burgeoning security industry. NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, is a leader of multimedia digital recording solutions, applications and related professional services for business interaction management. NICE products and solutions are used in contact centers, trading floors, air traffic control (ATC) sites, CCTV (closed circuit television) security installations and government markets.

NICE's subsidiaries and local offices are based in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Hong Kong. The company operates in more than 100 countries through a network of partners and distributors.

Other interesting companies, worthy of investment consideration, include CheckPoint (CHKP: Nasdaq) leader in computer protection software, Comverse (CMVT: Nasdaq) messaging, Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA:Nasdaq), world's largest generic drug manufacturer and Retalix (RTLX: Nasdaq) computerization at the check out counter.

None of the companies described above are "cheap". Most have p/e ratios of more than 30. However, they are in active in highly exciting technology fields. We were not able to pinpoint neither any biotechnology companies nor those in the medical instrumentation field. Most of the participants in these industries are young companies that have as yet to prove their investment worthiness.

For investors who are prepared to undertake the risks in private equity there are venture capital funds that are prepared to accept investments of $100,000 or more. However, for the greater part, and partially due to the dot.com debacle these have not, for the greater part, outstanding track records.

We believe that a portfolio of the above-described companies would yield above average results.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on October 6, 2005

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Israeli VCs miss the mark

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Israeli VCs miss the mark. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Venture capital provides a source of funds through investment, usually for companies or projects that are un the start-up or at a very early stage of product development. These projects and organizations generally would not attract sources of finance such as loans and could not raise money in the major public stock markets.



The role of venture capital in enterprise development in developing countries is critical. The collateral of emerging enterprises is not incorporated in fixed tangible assets like plant and machinery, but more on elements like market access, human capital, intellectual property and goodwill. Manpower and financial needs in new companies are generally focused on research, development and introduction of a product into the marketplace, production and manufacturing. This results in initial low or negative cash flows and the need to finance these companies rests on potential future earnings rather than current profits. These factors make it difficult for new and emerging companies to obtain traditional financing.

We believe that in the area of financing start-ups the Israeli venture capital industry is lagging sadly behind its overseas counterparts. According to a recent IVC Center Research report Israeli venture capital companies thirteen seed companies attracted $34 million, 10 percent of the total amount raised in Q3. During the first three quarters of the year, seed companies attracted eight percent of the total funds, compared with six percent in Q1-Q3 2004.

By contrast American seed and early stage companies accounted for 36.8% of all companies funded in the second quarter, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/Thomson Venture Economics/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Survey. These figure indicate that the Israeli venture capital financing industry is far from being venturesome and that it underperforms in the area, which is basic to its tenets. There is a yawning chasm between its funding of local start ups as compared with the American industry.

Notwithstanding the industry has badgered the Government for preferential conditions for foreign investors. Perhaps most damning are the poor returns that the industry provides for its investors. Many of the venture capital companies are still stuck with the unprofitable investments from the dot.com era. Had the rate of investments in start ups been higher in previous years we would see a parade of initial public offerings in a period when the stock markets are absorbing them so successfully.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on February 15, 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

When money grew on trees

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When money grew on trees. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Bonsai growing is the art of dwarfing trees or plants and developing them into an aesthetically appealing shape by growing, pruning and training them in containers. True Bonsai take years to grow... and are usually priced accordingly, and there's the rub.



Israelis by nature are impatient, and it would never occur to them to initiate an enterprise that might take several years before achieving a saleable product. They love flowers, and will travel to greenhouses to buy flowers and seedlings for their gardens.

The Israeli bonsai industry (and mind you, at one time there was a bonsai industry in this country), is now defunct. I remember seeing no fewer than one million bonsai plants in various forms and shapes, sitting neatly on shelves at a growing area just outside of Tel-Aviv.

Their elegant shapes were beautiful. They were being prepared for shipment to Britain to be sold at Marks & Spencer. No further proof of the industry's existence was needed.

The origin of the Israeli bonsai industry goes back to the period when a demobbed Israeli soldier decided to take a post army service trip to the Far East. In Japan he worked at various jobs, mostly physical labor. His life took a major turn when he came across a bonsai farm. The one time soldier was taken back to his childhood days when he lived on a kibbutz farm. He loved trees and flowers. By then he knew some Japanese and asked whether he could be hired. It was there that he learned the art of bonsai growing. He also fell in love with a Japanese girl who agreed to move with him to Israel.

Back in Israel, a friend, on hearing the story, and having some idea of the value of bonsais, suggested that they establish a bonsai growing farm.

It was a miracle of modern Israel. The seedlings grew to bonsai plants in a matter of weeks. Father time had been conquered and only a few insiders knew how it was done. The shaping, the twisting of the roots were done quite openly in the daytime. However, only a few were aware that the Israelis were taking advantage of modern science and technology to enhance the growing progress.

The height of a bonsai plant can range from six inches to approximately 36 inches. To reach the appropriate size in record time, the grower turned to the Agricultural Research Institute of a major Israel university. They were happy to comply and told him which accelerator he must spray on the seedling to set it on its way to adulthood. But that was not all. When the plant reached its desired height, the growing process had to be arrested. The scientists at the Agricultural Research Institute were happy to comply. They supplied a growth retardant and with the help of these two substances one million bonsai came into being in record time

However, the business partner of the enterprise walked away with a major money investment, spelling the death of the bonsai enterprise.

What further proof was needed to show how modern agricultural science with its accelerators and growth suppressants could help Mother Nature and enhance the ancient art of bonsai growing?

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 28, 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

A shortcut to insight

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A shortcut to insight. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A new trend among informative websites: less is more. This is a welcome change from the early days of the Internet where every site wanted to be the next Amazon.com and tried to provide as much information on a particular subject as their website could hold. I for one stop going to sites where I was inundated with way too much information. I now look for sites that provide quality - not simply quantity.



Today's Enable looks at such a site. It is called CIObriefcase and it provides CIOs as well as businesspersons with valuable information in a short and sweet format. While the site stresses topics for CIOs, it is worth it for anyone in business to check this site out. As demonstrated by the examples below, you will not have to spend a lot of time to glean critical information.

What's Hot

The site begins with a section called what's hot. Currently you will see three topics:

Security: Shared knowledge is key to security success Outsourcing: Five classic outsourcing blunders Systems Integration: The hidden costs of data integration

The key feature here is that you simply choose a topic and then you only get the five most valuable news stories, white papers and peer discussion groups for that topic. You probably do not need any more information on the particular topic and if you are a typical business person - you definitely do not have time to read more.

The site is your filter - choosing the most relevant information for you.

In Depth Archive

Another nice feature of the site is its archive. Here you will find new stories and white papers on topics ranging from Security, Outsourcing and Systems Integration to Web Services, CRM and Storage Area Management.

Click on any of the topics and you are provided with links to five news stories and five white papers on the particular topic.

I did a search of Business Continuity and came up with the following stories and white papers:

Stories

The ABCs of disaster recovery Security enters disaster-recovery maze Sept. 11 attacks prompt decentralization moves Skilled for business continuity

White Papers

A guide to business continuity planning: Protection and recovery services Netsourcing: There's no upside to downtime Cyberterrorism: Take effective action while you still can Business continuity for today's manufacturing enterprise Ensuring e-business continuity for financial services

Take advantage of CIObriefcase's brevity - it saves you time by providing your with short and sweet information in areas critical to your ongoing success.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on 26 March 2002

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

How Israeli High-Tech Happened

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How Israeli High-Tech Happened. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Israel became a high-tech hothouse because she had to. True, she enjoys favorable conditions for the growth of high-tech industries; chief among them, well-educated, inventive, enterprising people. Relative to the size of her population, Israel has more engineers, and sees more scientific articles published, than any other country in the world (Israel has 135 engineers per 10,000 people; the US has 85). However, the stimulus for the industry's growth has been national survival, both military and economic.



David among Goliaths

As a small country in a hostile neighborhood, Israel must strive to maintain a qualitative military edge over her potential enemies. Experience in a series of wars has taught Israel that she needs to develop that edge independently as far as she can. In large part, Israel's high-tech industries are a spin-off from that process.

Israel fought the 1967 Six Day War largely with French weaponry. When President de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo after that war, Israel turned to the United States, and to herself. The commercial consequences can be seen today. Blades Technology, for example, a company originally set up to manufacture engine parts for the Israel Air Force's Mirage aircraft, now has annual sales of $90 million, and joint ventures with Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was surprised by the technological capabilities of her enemies, and also experienced difficulty in obtaining vital materiel from her foreign suppliers, spurring efforts for technological supremacy and self-sufficiency. The Kfir jet fighter, based on the French mirage, was one of the first large-scale projects in this effort.

Lavi grounded, high tech takes off

The effort for military self-sufficiency reached its limits in the 1980s, when Israel tried to develop the Lavi jet fighter. The cost proved beyond her and the project was abandoned, but this meant that, in the mid-eighties, hundreds of engineers with experience at the cutting edge ofaerodynamics, avionics, computers and electronics were released onto the market. The Lavi project's demise has been described as one of the greatest ever boosts to Israeli high-tech industry.

Since the Lavi, Israeli defense industries have focused more on components, electronics, avionics and other systems that are installed on American or other platforms. Israel has arranged many reciprocal procurement agreements with leading aerospace and military manufacturers, which help sustain high-tech industries. The development of these auxiliary systems has also given Israeli high-tech industries an edge in civilian spin-offs in security, electronics, computers, software and the burgeoning Internet sectors.

Into space

The military imperative has not disappeared. Even in the era of the peace process, Israel must keep up her guard. In response to the Iraqi Scuds that hit Tel Aviv in the 1991 Gulf War Israel began development of the Arrow anti-missile missile. The Arrow program began as part of the US SDI (Star Wars) program, requiring considerable advances in electronics, computers and ballistics. The Arrow will soon be ready for operational deployment. In general, the search for better systems in the areas of weapons, intelligence gathering, and command and control, goes on apace.

In the 1990s, Israel became only the eighth country in the world to develop and launch satellites, beginning with the Amos civilian communications satellite, followed by the Ofek military satellites and the Eros civilian photo-reconnaissance satellite. Israel now partners with NASA, the ESA and the Russian space program, building component and complete satellites for scientific and civilian uses.

In 2002, two of Israel's six largest industrial companies by turnover were high-tech companies: Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), Intel Electronics, as well as pharmaceutical company Teva (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE:TEVA). The largest exporters in terms of sales included high-tech companies Teva, IAI, Intel Electronics, and Vishay Intertechnology (Israel), with over $1 billion in exports each.

Economic imperative

In part, the economic necessity derives from the military one. Israel's defense budget is inadequate for her to maintain her military advantage. One solution is export. Israel is both a highly successful defense and civilian high-tech exporter.

However, the global defense market is shrinking. Civilian applications of the skills in software, communications, imaging, process control, etc., derived from military industries, have therefore become increasingly important. For example, the need for better night-vision equipment led to local engineers becoming trained in the field of image processing, and to the establishment of two trailblazing Israeli high-tech companies: Scitex (Nasdaq: SCIX; TASE:SCIX), and Elscint. Because Israel is such a small market, export is essential for civilian products too, providing a further incentive to maintain technological excellence, particularly in certain niche markets - network security, for example, where Check Point (Nasdaq: CHKP) is a world leader; Mercury Interactive Corporation (Nasdaq: MERQ) is a leader in enterprise testing and performance management solutions; and Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) is a leader in customer relations management, billing and order management solutions.

Pharmaceuticals

In the 1990s, pharmaceuticals and medical devices became a rising high-tech sector. Teva has become a leading global generic drug maker, followed by Taro Pharmaceutical Industries (Nasdaq: TARO) and Agis Industries (TASE:AGIS). Medical device company Given Imaging (Nasdaq: GIVN) and biopharmaceutical companies such as Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:SVNT) are becoming prominent players, listed on Nasdaq and European bourses.

Immigration

The wave of immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s provided an influx of skilled scientists and engineers. The government's technology incubator program was largely a response to the need to provide these newcomers with employment, and harness their talents to the needs of industry. The immigrants helped fuel Israel's phenomenal growth rate between 1991 and 1994, and helped man the high-tech boom after 1998. In the late 1990s, Israeli high-tech began suffering from a shortage of skilled manpower. The government and industry have been expanding educational and vocational programs to meet the demand. The high-tech slump since late 2000 has slowed demand for trained personnel, but not ended the shortage altogether.

Liberalization

Israel has few natural resources. The aspiration of her population for a Western standard of living can only be satisfied through integration into the global market. Israel's transition from a State-dominated, centralized, protectionist economy to a free market means that traditional industries such as textiles are disappearing, losing out to low-cost overseas competition. How far and how fast this transition should go is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt that high-tech, where Israel enjoys a relative advantage, will be a mainstay of Israel's economic future. As Israel's economy restructures from traditional industries for the local market to export-oriented high-tech, high-tech exports as a percentage of total exports has been steadily increasing, rising from 45% in 1995 to 57% in 2000.

Exports of electronics communications components, electronic components, medical equipment and software and IT products soared to over $13 billion 2000. Although the onset of the high-tech crisis in late 2000 caused a sharp contraction in exports and production,electronics, communications, monitoring and control equipment, and avionics are still key exports. Pharmaceuticals and medical devices and equipment are also becoming increasingly important. High-tech is still the key growth engine for the Israeli economy and a mark of its integration into the global economy.

Foreign investment

An important aspect of Israel's integration into the world economy has been increasing inward investment, particularly in the high-tech industry. Companies like Cisco Systems, Motorola, Intel, IBM, Nortel, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Deutsche Telekom, aviation and space companies, to mention just a few, have recognized that Israel is a fount of high-tech innovation they cannot afford to ignore. They have set up subsidiaries and research centers here, invested in Israeli companies, technology incubators, and venture capital funds, or found Israeli strategic partners.

Annual foreign investment in Israel grew from $400 million in 1992, to peak at $5.0 billion in 2000. Foreign investment subsequently contracted, due to the high-tech crisis, the global economic slowdown and political tensions in the Middle East, but is still substantial. Foreign venture capital investment grew apace, rising from $587 million in 1998, peaking at $3.1 billion in 2000, before falling to $982 million in 2002, still higher than the level of five years previously. Investment by Israeli venture capital funds followed the same pattern: peaking at $1.27 billion in 2000, but totaling only $481 million in 2002, including $62 million in foreign companies. (Sources: MonetyTree and IVC). The Bank of Israel reported that total foreign investment in Israel amounted to $2.6 billion in 2002, including $1.2 billion in direct foreign investment.

Start-up country

With 3,000 start-ups, the Global Competitiveness Report 2000 ranked Israel second behind the US in the number of start-ups and first relative to population. The weight of start-ups of GDP was 3% in 2000, compared with 0.4% in 1997. The comparable figures for the US was 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively. Israel was was highly ranked in terms of the number of engineers and education, but poorly in terms of physical infrastructure, a situation the government is trying to remedy.

Israel was ranked second in civilian R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, rising from 2.7% in 1994 to 4.2% in 1999. Total R&D expenditure in 2000 was $4.2 billion and NIS 23.9 billion in 2001. State expenditure on civilian R&D has been rising faster than GDP through the 1990s, mostly being invested in high-tech, but also agriculture, manufacturing and biotechnology.

Next steps

In any discussion of the future of Israeli high-tech, the following points tend to emerge:

The limiting factor on the sector's growth is a shortage of engineers and managers. Although training programs at universities, colleges and government and industry sponsored retraining courses have been expanding, plus attempts to expand the labor pool by tapping haredi (ultra-orthodox) and other communities, demand continues to outstrip supply, even in the wake of the cutbacks due to the high-tech crisis since mid-2000. Demand to allow the entry of foreign skilled engineers and programmers for the high-tech sector have abated, the issue may re-emerge when the industry recovers and if the Israeli labor pool remains insufficient.

The industry needs to consolidate through company mergers.

The government's role needs to be reviewed. Many argue that government support for civilian R&D is not sufficiently discriminating, resulting in financial and human resources becoming too thinly spread.

Tax reform to ease mergers and acquisitions, better reward employees, and encourage foreign investment. Although progress has been made on these issues, stumbling blocks remain.

New directions: Biotechnology and medical devices are seen as coming fields. While Israel is well placed to exploit it, with outstanding life sciences and medical research institutions, this will mean a departure from the military-industrial symbiosis which has done so much to sustain high-tech development up to now. Nevertheless, Israel has a number of outstanding and growing start-ups and companies in these fields, including many new listings on Nasdaq and European exchanges. Israel is ranked third in the world in biotechnology start-ups.

In 2000 there were 160 biotechnology and 400 medical device companies in Israel, compared with 25 in 1988, employing 4,000 people and generating $800 million in turnover. 20 companies are publicly traded, half in the US and half in Europe. Investment in biotechnology has been growing steadily, reaching totaled $1.7 billion in 2000, including about $200 million in venture capital. There are 15 life sciences venture capital funds operating in Israel.

Some figures

In 2000, exports of high-tech products accounted for 55% of all exports, up from 23% in 1991. Exports of electronics communications components, electronic components, medical equipment and software and IT products peaked at over $13 billion, before the onset of the high-tech crisis in late 2000 caused a sharp contraction in exports and production.

In 2000, 195,000 people were employed in the various high-tech sectors, compared with 148,870 people a decade earlier. Demand for engineers and technicians is estimated at 2,000-3,000 a year. The various academic institutions currently supply 1,000-1,300.

National expenditure on civilian R&D amounted to NIS 23.9 billion (over $5 billion) in 2001, 4.2% of GDP. Spending on civilian R&D has remained stable despite the recession since 2000, although the focus on research has been shifting from Internet and software to new fields such as biotechnology, nanotechnology. Chemical and chemical products, electronic components, communications components, supervision, monitoring, and medical equipment accounted for 87% of industrial R&D expenditure in 2001.

Israel issues the largest number of companies in the US after the US itself and Canada. According to the Bank of Israel, investment by foreign residents totaled $9.4 billion in 2000, up from $3 billion in 1995. Israeli companies raised $4.2 billion overseas in 2000, mostly on Nasdaq, but also including $800 million raised on European exchanges. The 2000 figure is 13 times the amount raised only five years earlier, in 1995, reflecting the immense growth by Israeli high tech and its emergence as a global player. Foreign investment and the raising of capital by Israeli companies overseas has since fallen to a fraction of the 2000 figure.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Technology Incubators

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Technology Incubators. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) On this page: Background Incubator Directory

1. Background

The incubator program aims to turn technological ideas into commercial successes. It operates under the aegis of the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The incubators provide fledgling enterprises with a supportive framework, including administrative back-up and consulting services, while the Office of the Chief Scientist provides finance. An enterprise can generally remain within an incubator for two years, within which time it is expected to complete development of its product and find independent sources of finance.



An incubator may be independent, or backed by an investor, or part of an established company. Government support is given on different terms in each case.

Most of the incubators are located outside the central Tel Aviv-Gush Dan area.

There are about 200 projects in the independent incubators. The main R&D fields are chemical and electrochemical, mechanical and electromechanical, software, electronics, biotechnology, and computers. The applications for the technologies being developed are predominantly in industrial and control processes, medicine and cosmetics, and transport and communications, with agriculture also a significant beneficiary.

The incubator program began as a response to the influx of scientists and engineers from the countries of the former Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, when immigration from those countries was at its height. Immigration has since abated, and the effectiveness of the scheme, and of other aspects of government support for R&D, is now being questioned, though the Office of the Chief Scientist claims a high success rate for incubator enterprises, and the scheme has been held up internationally as a model of its kind.

For further details, see Investment Incentives. The Office of the Chief Scientist site provides a full guide to the incubator scheme and to the incubators themselves, plus a project database . The site does not include incubators that operate within companies.

2. Incubator Directory

Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) Rotem Industrial Park, Mishor Yemin, 206 Oron Road Arava, 86800 Tel: 972 8 655 8796 Fax: 972 8 655 6106 E-mail: [email protected]

Am-Shav Technological Applied Development Center Midreshet Sde-Boker 84990 Tel: 972 8 653 2726; Fax: 972 8 653 2266; E-mail: amshav

Ashkelon Technological Industries (ATI) 7 Haofa Street, South Industrial Zone POB 7284 Ashkelon 78172 Tel: 972 8 671 1852/3/4 Fax: 972 8 671 1855 E-mail: ati

DIMOTECH at the Technion

HiTEC Technology Enterpreneurship Center Har Hotzvim POB 45010 Jerusalem, 91450 Tel. 972 2 587 0710 Fax 972 2 581 2386 E-mail: [email protected]

Incentive Technological Incubator PO Box 3, Ariel 44837 Tel: 972-3-936-4754, Fax: 972-3-936-6873 E-mail: Info

The Initiative Center of the Negev 15 Yehoshua Hatzoref St. Beersheva 84106 POB 844 Tel: 972 8 623 1212 Fax: 972 8 623 1246 E-mail: ceo

Incubator for Technological Entrepreneurhsip (ITEK) Kiryat Weizmann Science Park, Bldg.13A, Ness Ziona 70400 Tel: 972-8-940-9086 Fax: 972-8-940-8085 E-mail: [email protected] J.C. Technologies 21 Havaad Haleumi St. PO Box 16120, Jerusalem 91160 Tel: 972-2-675-1123 Fax: 972-2-675-1195 E-mail: info

Kinarot Jordan Valley Technology Incubator Zemach, Jordan Valley 15132 Tel: 972 4 670 9018, Fax: 972 4 670 9014 E-mail: kinarot

Lab-One Innovations Formerly Nitzanim Initiative Center. Affiliated with StageOne Ventures 6 HaNehoshet St., Ramat Hahayal, Tel Aviv 69710 Tel: 972-3-6475788 Fax: 972-3-6473819 E-mail: Lab-One

Jerusalem Software Incubator POB 45125 Jerusalem, 91450 Tel: 972 2 587 0012 Fax: 972 2 587 0015 E-mail: ceo

Maayan Technology Ventures 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower, 42nd Floor, Tel Aviv 67023 Tel. 972-54-4555219 4 HaNachtom St., PO Box 844, Beltec Building, Beer-Sheva 84106 Tel. 972-8-6231212 Fax: 972-8-6231246 E-mail: info

Magnet Program Ministry of Industry and Trade Office of the Chief Scientist.

MATAM Advanced Technology Center, Haifa Haifa 31905 Tel: 972 4 855 0066 / Ext. 126 Fax: 972 4 855 0888 E-mail: [email protected]

Not itself an incubator, MATAM is an industrial park that provides services to tenants.

Meytag Technology Incubator Katzrin Industrial Zone POB 12 Katzrin 12900 Tel: 972 4 696 2561 Fax: 972 4 696 2564

Meytav - Technological Enterprises Initiation Center POB 408, Kiryat Shmona10200 Tel: 972 4 681 8800 Fax: 972 4 681 8806 E-mail: meytav

Misgav Carmiel Incubator MP Misgav 20179 Tel: 972 4 999 1991 Fax: 972 4 999 1901 E-mail: misgavtc

Mofet B'Yehuda - Technology and Business Incubator POB 80, Kiryat Arba 90100 Tel: 972 2 996 3880 Fax: 972 2 996 1571 E-mail:info

Mofet also manages an enviromental division: GreenTech that focuses on start-up entrepreneurs and investors interested in meeting the growing global demand for new ecological and environmental technologies.

New Generation Technology (NGT) Nazareth Industrial Area, P.O. Box 2252, Nazareth 16000 Tel: 972-4-656-4118, Fx: 972-4-656-4129, E-mail: Sharon Dvir, CEO

A high-tech incubator founded by a group of Israeli Arab and Jewish businesspeople.

Naiot Technological Center Affiliated with Ofer Brothers. POB 732 Nazareth Illit 17106 Tel: 972 4 650 0764/564-092 Fax: 972 4 656 6735 E-mail: info

Ofek LaOleh Jezre'el Valley Initiative Center POB 73, Migdal Ha'emek 23100 Tel: 972 4 654 3081 Fax: 972 4 654 3082 E-mail: Avraham Maoz

Ofakim Innovative Technologies (O.I.T.) 7 Betsalel St., POB 633, Ofakim 80300 Tel: 972 8 992 5580 Fax 972 8 992 6581 E-mail: oitech

Orit Technological R&D Center Affiliated with the Ofer Brothers Group P.O. Box 3 Ariel 44837 Tel: 972-3-936-4754 Fax: 972-3-936-6873 E-mail: orit

Patir R&D Center Incubator 21 Havaad Haleumi St. PO Box 16120, Jerusalem 91160 Tel: 972-2 675 1123 Fax: 972 2 675 1195 E-mail: [email protected]

Rad-Ramot 2a Katzir Street, Tel Hashomer Ramat Gan 52656 Telefax: 972 3 531 2600 E-mail: info

Rad-Ramot is a joint venture of Rad Data Communication Ltd. and Ramot, the commercial arm of Tel Aviv University. It focuses on bio-medical and life-science projects.

Targetech Innovation Center Poleg Industrial Area, POBox 8027, Netanya, 42101 Tel: 972-9-885-1116 Fax: 972-9-885-1090 E-mail: Azriel Kadim

Targetech Innovation Center Poleg Industrial Area, POB 8027, Netanya 42101 Tel: 972 9 885 1116; Fax: 972 9 885 1090 E-mail: info

TEIC, The Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Company Science Park Technion, Nesher, POB 212 Nesher 36601 Tel: 972 4 830 8333 Fax: 972 4 821 0531 E-mail: info

Western Negev Initiative Center POB 321 Neve Dekalim, 79779 Tel: 972 8 684 2983 Fax: 972 8 684 6457 E-mail: dov

Xenia Ventures Technology Incubator Gat High Tech Center (Matmag) Kiryat-Gat New Industrial Zone 1 Leshem St., Kiryat Gat 82000 Tel: 972-8-6811761/2 Fax: 972-8-6811763 E-mail: Hagay

YEDA Research and Development of the Weizmann Institute of Science Incubator for Technological Entrepreneurship - Kiryat Weizmann Ltd. Building No. 3, Kiryat Weizmann Science Park, Ness Ziona 70400 Tel: 972 8 940 9086 Fax: 972 8 940 8085

Yozmot - Granot Initiative Center Mobile Post Hefer 38100 Tel: 972 6 632 1390-1, Fax: 972 6 632 1392 E-mail: [email protected]

Yozmot Ha'Emek Ofek La'Oleh Technological Incubator PO Box 73, Migdal Ha'Emek 23100 Israel Tel: 972-4-6544800 Fax: 972-4-6543082 E-mail: Avraham (Avri) Maoz, Managing Director

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Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Investment Incentives

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Investment Incentives. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) On this page: Government Incentives - Overview Approved Enterprises Other Government Incentives Research and Development Incubators Free Trade Agreements International R&D Funds Free Trade and Free Processing Zones Further Information



1. Government Incentives - Overview

The Israeli government provides various incentives to encourage economic development, and overseas investors may benefit from these. Indeed, incentives are enhanced for projects in which there is foreign involvement. There are generally no restrictions on the extent of foreign ownership in an enterprise, except in the security sector.

Incentives take the form of cash grants, loan guarantees, and tax benefits. Research and development attracts special assistance. There is also an technology incubator scheme which nurtures new ideas, providing practical as well as financial aid to entrepreneurs.

2. Approved Enterprises

The main incentives are set out in the Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, 1959. Assistance provided under this law is administered by the Investment Center, which is part of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The Investment Center Ministry of Industry and Trade 30, Agron St. Jerusalem. Tel: 972-2-6220373/4/5 Fax: 972-2-6250442

Most assistance relates to projects awarded "approved enterprise" status by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In general, projects that will help to develop the economy, generate employment, or improve the balance of payments, qualify for such status. An additional criterion is that projects must have paid-up capital amounting to 30% of the total investment required.

An approved enterprise may be owned by a foreign company.

Types of assistance available

Note:

Enterprises must select an assistance track at the outset. It is not possible to change from one type of assistance to another.

In some circumstances, assistance may be available to expand an existing enterprise as well as start a new one.

Cash grant

Grants are available for investment in tangible fixed assets. The rate of grant varies according to the enterprise's location. Outlying areas attract higher rates; the central area no grant at all. The current (1998) range is 10-20% for those areas that qualify for grants.

Loan guarantee

The State guarantees loans from Israeli banks at regulated interest rates covering up to two-thirds of project outlays.

Tax holiday

A total exemption from company tax on undistributed profits for between four and ten years, depending on location.

Composite assistance - grant and loan guarantee

Enterprises may elect to receive a reduced rate of grant topped up by State guaranteed loans. The total amount of grant plus loan may be up to two-thirds of the outlays on fixed assets and working capital.

Composite assistance - tax holiday and loan guarantee

A company that elects to take a tax holiday may also obtain a State guaranteed loan, but the period of tax exemption is then reduced.

Tax Benefits

Approved enterprises that do not choose a tax holiday nevertheless enjoy a reduced rate of company tax for a period of seven years. Approved enterprises may also claim accelerated depreciation rates on fixed assets and buildings for the first five years of their use.

Foreign Investors' Companies (at least 25% foreign owned) benefit from reduced company tax rates for a period of ten years. Moreover, the higher the level of foreign ownership, the greater the reduction in the rate.

Companies that do choose a tax holiday receive the general tax benefit between the end of the holiday and the end of the applicable tax benefit period if the tax holiday expires first.

3. Other Israel Government Incentives

"Industrial Enterprises"

A project that does not qualify for approved enterprise status may nevertheless come within the definition of an "industrial enterprise" for the purposes of the Law for the Encouragement of Industry (Taxes) 1969, in which case it can claim special depreciation and amortisation rates on tangible and intangible fixed assets.

Small Business Loan Fund

The fund provides loans and guarantees for the establishment or expansion of enterprises employing up to 75 people. Projects receiving other forms of government support are not eligible for assistance from the fund.

Exporters

Exporters can obtain a range of benefits, including relief on import duties on materials incorporated into exported products, accelerated VAT refunds, support for offering credit to overseas customers, and insurance covering various kinds of overseas trading risk.

Special Incentive for Overseas Investors - "Capital Intensive Companies"

This incentive applies only to companies in which share ownership is restricted to non-residents.

Under the Law for the Encouragement of Investments (Capital Intensive Companies) 1990, companies awarded capital intensive company status by the Minister of Finance benefit from a 25% corporate tax rate on retained profit, and their shareholders are exempt from capital gains tax upon sale of their shares. These benefits apply for 30 years.

A company may benefit from capital intensive company and approved enterprise status at the same time.

Besides being foreign owned, to receive capital intensive company status a company must have paid-up capital of at least $30 million, 75% of which must be invested in qualifying activities. Qualifying activities include, inter alia, the establishment or expansion of an enterprise dealing in communications infrastructure or computers, or engaging in R&D in these fields.

4. Research and Development

Grant Aid

The Office of the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and Trade administers various forms of grant aid to encourage innovation all the way from pre-industrial academic research to beta-site testing of new products. Rates of grant range from 20% to 66%. The definition of approved expenditure attracting grant aid is reasonably wide.

If an R&D program results in a commercial product, the grant becomes repayable by way of a royalty payment. Other conditions include a stipulation that products resulting from government supported R&D be manufactured in Israel, and restrictions on the transfer of know-how to third parties.

R&D Tax Benefits

Accelerated amortisation rates apply to R&D expenditure.

5. Incubators

Incubators provide a supportive framework for entrepreneurs with ideas but without the necessary resources or business experience to develop them. The assistance goes beyond grants, and includes practical help - administrative back-up, business planning, finding sources of finance, and so on. In essence, the incubator scheme give enterprises two years in which to develop a marketable product and become self-sustaining.

An incubator may have backing from an established company or an investor, or it may be independent. Incubator projects attract especially high levels of grant aid from the Office of the Chief Scientist for two years. After that, they may obtain aid under the regular R&D grant system mentioned above.

The assistance available includes a market feasibility study carried out by the Office of the Chief Scientist, or a grant towards a privately conducted study. Projects in incubators with industrial or investor may obtain a grant of 66% of R&D costs. For projects in independent incubators, the grant available is 100% of labour costs and 75% of other approved costs. There is a grant ceiling in each case. Independent incubators themselves receive up to 100% grants towards establishment and operating costs.

In most cases, the same payback rules apply to incubator projects as apply to R&D assistance in general.

See also Technology Incubators

International Aspects

6. Free Trade Agreements

Israel enjoys the unique advantage of having free trade agreements with the US, the European Union, and EFTA. Apart from the direct benefits this confers, it also means that Israel can act as an efficient bridging country between these markets. For example, components may be imported into Israel from the US tariff-free, and incorporated into products sold, again tariff free, to EU countries.

Israel has General System of Preferences status for developing countries in Australia, Canada, and Japan, giving Israeli exports to those countries customs duty reductions. Israel also enjoys most-favoured-nation status in the Chinese market.

7. R&D Funds

R&D Funds are discussed here in terms of the State financing available through them. For a more complete guide to agencies promoting international R&D cooperation, see Research and Development.

Israel has agreements with several countries for joint R&D financing.

The Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (known as BIRD F) promotes partnerships between Israeli and US companies. This typically means a US company utilising or distributing an Israeli company's innovative technology. BIRD F is administered by the Chief Scientist in conjunction with the US Standards Institute. It will contribute up to 50% of the cost of R&D projects over one to three years. The grant becomes repayable if the project succeeds. Projects cannot obtain BIRD F funding and Office of the Chief Scientists support at the same time.

The Canada-Israel Industrial Research & Development Foundation (CIIRDF) operates on similar lines. Israel also operates bilateral funds with Germany (GICT) and Singapore (SIIRD).

In addition, Israel has signed memoranda of understanding on R&D co-operation with several countries. The Office of the Chief Scientist site provides a complete list.

R&D Co-operation with European Union

Israel is a member of the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme of scientific research and technical development. Israel also has a Public Procurement Agreement with the EU, which provides, among other things, that the EU will not apply preferences to EU companies against Israeli companies in telecommunications tenders, and that the Israeli government act similarly vis-a-vis EU companies.

For further information, see the Delegation of the European Commission to the State of Israel and CORDIS sites.

8. Free Trade and Free Processing Zones

The city of Eilat, on the Red Sea at the point where Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt meet, is a free port and free trade area. Enterprises in Eilat enjoy company tax concessions, and most goods imported into Eilat, and transactions within the Eilat free trade area, are exempt from import taxes and VAT. Most goods purchased from elsewhere in Israel are zero-rated for VAT.

Recent legislation provides for the setting up of Free Processing Zones. Enterprises in these zones will enjoy certain tax benefits, and most transactions within the zones will be zero-rated for VAT.

9. Further information

The Ministry of Finance site (International Division) gives up-to-date information on the investment incentives available.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Start-up Reviews - Computing, Internet. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Click company name to obtain Arena's write-up. Links automatically open a new browser window. You may need to scroll down the new window to find the article on the company you are looking for.



Computing, Internet

AbirNet SessionWall-3, network security and employee monitoring (April '98) EXIT: Acquired by Memco Software in 1998.

Acceloop Internet traffic control software (October 2001)

Actimize Software for server load-balancing (July 2001)

Adyoron Intelligence Systems Video compression and streaming technology on Texas Instruments DSP chips (January 2001)

Aliroo User-friendly encryption systems (November '98)

Appilog Monitoring and control software for electronic systems (June 2001)

AudioCodes Voice compression chips and boards for Internet Protocol telephony (February '99) EXIT: Nasdaq and TASE IPOs in 1999.

Balisoft Technologies Software products to support Internet trading and customer services (June '98) EXIT: Balisoft merged with ServiceSoft Corporation to form Servicesoft Technologies Inc., which was I acquired by Broadbase Software now Kana (Nasdaq:KANA) in December 2000.

Bridges for Islands Enterprise integration software (December '99) EXIT: Accquired by Attunity (Nasdaq:ATTU) in February 2000.

BroadLight Technology for 3G passive optical access communications networks (June 2001)

BuildCom Electronic Commerce International electronic market place for the A/E/C industry (May 2000)

Bug-Life Animation technology for various platforms (April 2001)

Business Layers Enterprise digital resources & services management (October '99) EXIT: Acquired by Netegrity (NETE) DEcember 2003.

cSafe Technology preventing pictures from being copied from the Internet. (Demo99 March '99) EXIT: Renamed Alchemedia Technologies, and acquired by Finjan Technologies in January 2003.

Informative Inc. (formerly Cahoots) Live web-wide communications network (May 2000)

CommerceMind Infrastructures for directory services and e-commerce (March 2002)

Congruency Server system to centralize Internet-based communications applications for small businesses (January '99) EXIT: Telrad Tenecs to merge with Congruency (March 2002)

Cobrador Enterprise security system based on both software and hardware (February 2002)

Corigin Still in the mainframe (February 2003)

Correlate Technologies (US start-up) Project management software (May '99)

Cyber-Ark Comprehensive information security solution (June 2001)

Cydoor Desktop Media Server-Client system for displaying ads on Internet (January '99)

Cyota Secure online purchases system (November 2001)

Digital Fuel Technologies Enterprise sourcing relationship management software solutions.

Doc Witness Anti-piracy device for CDs. (June 2002)

DVDemand Technologies Engine for assembling a multimedia DVD online (October 2000)

Enbaya 3D compression and streaming technology (June 2001)

eplication Content delivery system (May 2001)

Extent Technologies Applications-on-demand technology (June 2001)

GlobaLoop Internet access solution for high concentration of users (May '99)

Firebit.net Next generation Internet network service platforms (October 2000)

Hello Tech Technologies Voice operated m-commerce systems (March 2002)

Hotbar.com Internet infrastructure utility (December '99)

ibetcha.com Internet betting site (April 2000) EXIT: Acquired by Uproar in August 2000.

idcide.com Browser add-on that displays the attempts of visited sites to track the user and blocks such attempts. (May 2000)

Idium Systems e-commerce security software (January 2002)

i-Labs Internet traffic analysis and forecasting (May '98)

InfoCyclone High-speed information retrieval (April 2001)

ClearForest (formerly Instinct Software) Advanced text information retrieval (March 1999)

Intellipen Electronic pen (February 2002)

AlwaysOn.com (formerly LightPC.com) Application service provider (May 2000)

Mango DSP Multiprocessor DSP development environment software and hardware solutions. (April '99)

MaxBill Telecom billing systems (January 2001)

Mercado Software E-commerce catalog integration (July 2000)

Midbar Tech Copyright protection solutions (January 2001) EXIT: Acquired by Macrovision (Nasdaq:MVSN) in November 2002.

Monosphere Software for managing storage networks (June 2001)

Identity Software (formerly MuTek Solutions) (August software black-box tool (June 1999)

Oblicore A service level management solution for ASPs (April 2001)

P-Cube IP service management and provisioning platform (April 2001) Exit: Acquired by Cisco Systems for $200 million in August 2004

ProActivity E-processing solutions for enterprise systems (August 2000)

Quiver Human powered web directory (March 2000) EXIT: Acquired by Inktomi in July 2002 for $12 million. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in March 2003.

RichFX Compression of high-quality video for quicker downloading (July 2000)

Riverhead Networks Denial of attack (November 2002) EXIT: Acquired by Cisco Systems for $40 million in March 2003.

Sanctum (Formerly Perfecto) Application-level security software for e-business companies (September '99) Acquired by Watchfire in July 2004

Sanrad IP-based Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions (February2002)

Security-7 Security software systems (August '98) EXIT: Acquired by Computer Associates (NYSE:CA) in June 1999.

SoftWatch Internet customer relationship management (June '99)

Shopping.com (formely DealTime) E-commerce price comparison website (March 1999).

TopTier Software Making relational databases & Internet compatible (September '98) EXIT: Acquired by SAP (NYSE; LSE: SAP; XETRA:SAPG) in 2001.

Trivnet Digital payment system (June 2000)

Unicorn Connectivity software (June 2001)

VisionTech MPEG-2 method video compression encoder (March '98) EXIT: Broadcom buys VisionTech for $800 mln in shares (November 2000)

Whale Communications Internal network security via physical Internet disconnection (May 2001)

XACCT Technologies Infrastructure product for network service providers (January 2000) EXIT:Acquired by Amdocs in 2003.

Xpert IP infrastructure solutions and consultancy and implementation services (April 2001)

Zend Technologies PHP development tools (February 2002)

Zoomix Data conversion technology for information systems (November 2001)

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms G-J

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Venture Capital Firms G-J. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Galram POB 14, Haifa 31000 Tel: 972-4-877-1117 Fax: 972-4-879-4415 E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliated with Rafael Development Corporation.

Gemini Israel Funds 11 Galgalei Haplada St., POB 12548, Herzliya 46733 Tel: 972-9-958-3596 Fax: 972-9-958-4842 E-mail: [email protected]

Gemini Israel Fund; Gemini Israel II Gemini focuses on early stage Israeli companies in enterprise software, Internet and e-commerce, communications, semiconductor and industrial equipment, and medical technology.

Genesis Partners P.O.B. 23722 Tel-Aviv 61231 Tel: 972-3-526-2644 Fax: 972-3-526-2696 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Genesis I & II. Investment focus: Communications and wireless, Internet infrastructure, enterprise software, Internet software and other industries.



Gilbridge Holdings 4 Maskit St., PO Box 12853 Herzliya 46733 Tel.: 972-9-956-7040 Fax: 972-9-956-7010 E-mail: Michelle Mayan Investment focus: Seed stage therapeutics, medical devices and telecom companies.

Giza Venture Capital Ramat Aviv Tower - 12th floor, 40 Einstein St., POB 17672, Tel Aviv 61172 Tel: 972-3-640-2323 Fax: 972-3-640-2300 Email: [email protected] Giza GE Venture Fund III. The ABS GE Capital Giza Fund (BT Alex. Brown and GE Capital Corporation) and First Israel Fund are fully invested. Investment focus: Early stage communications, Internet-enabling, software and healthcare.

GlenRock Israel 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Business Park,Tower G, 8th Floor Tel: 972-9-9701800 Fax: 972-9-9701866 E-mail: info A private equity investment company affiliated with the GlenRock Group making investments in life sciences and high-tech companies, and makes buyouts. It has also invested in the Maayan Technology Ventures incubator.

Global Catalyst Partners A US incorporated fund. Israel office: 1 Eliahu House, 2 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel Aviv 64077 Tel: 972-3-696-8224 Fax: 972-3-695-6847 E-mail: Eliezer Manor, or Janice Rebibo Investment focus: Seed and start-up investments in IT, telecommunicatIons and Internet companies. Investment focus: Israeli biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare services companies expanding into the US.

Hadar Weitzman Management Group 68 Ahuza St., Eliav Center, Ra'anana 43212 Tel.: 972-9-745-1010 Fax: 972-9-745-2030 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Israeli and Israeli related telecommunications, data communications and semiconductor companies.

HB Investments 32 Magal St., Savyon Tel.: 972-3-645-9609 Fax: 972-3-534-2698 E-mail: Zohar Heiblum Investment focus: All high-tech telecom, industrial technology, semiconductor, medical technology biotechnology sectors.

HK Catalyst Portview Communications Partners 10 Hayetsira St. POB 2197 Ra'anana 43650 Tel: 972 9 741 3140 Fax: 972 9 741 3240 E-mail: Robin Hacke or Julie Kunstler Investment focus: Early stage Internet infrastructure and communications software, wireless, broadband companies. Honeycomb Ventures c/o AsiaGate, 12 Yehuda Hamaccabi St., PO Box 4029 Herzliya 46140 Tel.: 972-9-956-6885 Fax: 972-9-955-1345E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Investment focus: M&A strategic partnerships in IT, telecom, Internet and service companies.

Hyperion Israel Advisors 11 Ha'amal St., Afek Park, Rosh Ha'ayin 48092 Tel.: 972-3-903-9988 Fax: 972-3-903-6688 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed and later stage investments in Israeli wireless communications, telecommunications and Internet companies.

InnoMed Ventures Globus Communication Center, Suite 220, Neve Ilan 90850 Tel: 972-2-5332808 Fax: 972-2-5702352 E-mail: Dr. Dalia Megiddo Investment focus: Seed through mezzanine investments in life sciences companies in cardiology, diabetes, neurological disorders, orthopedics, women's care, geriatrics and other medical sectors.

Incutech 12 Zvi St., Ramat Gan 52504 Tel.: 972-3-752-5216 Fax: 972-3-752-5120 E-mail: Nehemiah Kaben Investment focus: Incubation and early stage financing for Israeli biotechnology, medical devices, agrotechnology, healthcare and applied materials companies.

Infineon Ventures Germany: St.-Martin-Str. 53, 81541, Munich Tel: +49 89-234-26359 Fax: +49 89-234-27483 E-mail: [email protected] USA: 1730 North First St., San Jose, CA 95112 Pre-IPO investments in pace-setting technologies or establish new applications in areas where microelectronics is or will be a key enabling technology. Innomed E-mail: [email protected] Innomed is managed by Jerusalem Global Ventures, focusing on medical device companies.

Intel Capital In Israel: Har Hotzvim Park, PO Box 3173, Jerusalem Tel.: 972-2-589-7111 or 972-3-607-4701 Fax: 972-2-589-7712 E-mail: Shlomo Caine or Uri Arazy Investment focus: Internet economy companies.

Israel Cleantech Ventures E-mail: info

Israel Healtchare Ventures (IHVC) 32 Habarzel St., Ramat Hahayal, Tel Aviv 69710 Tel.: 972-3-648-8566 Fax: 972-3-648-8474 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Medical devices, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical-related IT.

Israel Infinity Fund 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower, 42nd fl., Tel Aviv 67023 Tel: 972-3-607-5456 Fax: 972-3-607-5455 E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Israel Infinity Fund is in association with Clal, and Banque Nationale du Paris (BNP). It focuses on early-stage IT, medical and other high-technology products companies.

Integrated Technologies of Israel Ltd Aviv Towers Tower A, 46 Petach Tikva Rd., Tel Aviv 66184 Tel: 972 3 639 7850 Fax: 972 3 639 7851

Jointly owned by Israel Aircraft Industries and a group of Israeli and US entrepreneurs, bankers and industrialists.

Inventech Investment Company Shalom Mayer Tower, 9 Ahad Haam Street, Tel Aviv Tel: 972 3 517 5273 Fax: 972 3 517 5275 E-mail: [email protected] A private venture capital company investing in high-tech start ups.

Israel R&D Corporation 4 Weizmann St., Tel Aviv 61336 Tel: 972 3 697 2857 Fax: 972 3 695 3177

Israel Seed Partners 64 Emek Refaim St., Jerusalem Tel: 972 2 561 2090 Fax: 972 2 561 1955 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed stage Internet, e-commerce, enterprise software, communications, semiconductor and electronics and life sciences start-ups. Isratech; Reico Ventures is Isratech's Israeli branch. 11 Cross Keys Close, London W1M 5FY, England Tel: 44 171 935 2070 Fax: 44 171 935 2680 40 Einstein St. Ramat Aviv 69101 Tel: 972-3-643-9986 Fax: 972-3-643 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Astra, First Isratech, Millennium I & II Life sciences, biotechnology, medical devices, Internet and software.

JAFCO Investments (Asia Pacific) JAFCO Investments (Asia Pacific) is part of JAFCO Co. Ltd. of Japan, which is a member of Nomura Securities Ltd. 6 Battery Rd. #42-01, Singapore 049909 Tel: 65-224-6383 Fax: 65-221-3690 E-mail: [email protected] Byron Askin Investment focus: Assist Israeli companies to penetrate Asian markets and/or find Asian strategic partners.

Janney Montgomery Scott 1801 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Tel. 215-665-6180 Fax 215-665-6197 Investment focus: Internet, IT and business services, telecommunications and broadband, medical technology, life sciences and biotechnology, and other manufacturing, retail and financial, consumer services and utilities fields.

JC Technologies JC Technologies is affiliated with Patir high-tech incubator. 21 Havaad Haleumi St., PO Box 16120 Jerusalem 91160 Tel.: 972-2-675-1123 Fax: 972-2-675-1195 E-mail: Jay Kalish Investment focus: Incubation, seed and early stage financing for Israeli start-ups.

Jerusalem Capital Partners E-mail: Managing partner Jacob Ner-David Tel. 972-54-480-7334 E-mail: Principle Michael Brous Tel. 972-54-797-1071 Investment focus: Jerusalem-based technology-driven companies.

Jerusalem Global Ventures Jerusalem Technology Park, Building 98, P.O. Box 82, Malcha, Jerusalem 96951 Tel: 972-2-649-0750 Fax: 972-2-649-0740 Email: [email protected] Jerusalem Global Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in early stage Israeli related companies developing technology solutions for the consumer, enterprise, service provider, and government markets. Jerusalem Venture Partners Jerusalem Tech Park, Bldg. 1, Malha, Jerusalem 91487 Tel: 972 2 679 7270 Fax: 972 2 679 7273 E-mail: [email protected] Jerusalem Pacific Ventures; Jerusalem Venture Partners LP JVP invests in early-stage companies in five core areas: Optical communications, data communications, wireless communications, e-commerce infrastructure and service infrastructure.

Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation Corporate venture arm of Johnson & Johnson Israel address: Kibbutz Shefayim 60990 Tel.: 972-9-959-1176 Fax: 972-9-951-9797 E-mail: Zeev Zehavi Investment focus: Biotechnology, medical devices, drug discovery and pharmaceuticals companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms A-C

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Venture Capital Firms A-C. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Accel Partners 428 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301 Tel: (650) 614-4800 Fax: (650) 614-4880 Investment focus: communications; Internet/Intranet

Accelerate Technology & Business 33 Jabotinsky St. Ramat Gan 52511 Tel.: 972-3-575-1575 Fax: 972-3-2770 E-mail: [email protected] A start-up accelerator focusing on supporting early stage high-tech companies in the semiconductor, new materials, electronics and opto-electronics and IC equipment fields. ADC Ventures The investment arm of ADC Telecommunications P.O. Box 1101, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1101 Tel: (612) 946-3333 Fax: (612) 946-3292 Contact: Robert Switz, ADC Sr. Vice President, CFO and Head, Business Development Investment focus: Next generation broadband technologies.



AG-Tech Fund Managed by Nessuah Zannex 3 Abba Hillel St., Ramat Gan 52522 Tel: 972-3-753-2020 Fax: 972-3-753-2022 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Biotechnology, e-health, healthcare and medical devices.

Agilent Ventures The venture capital arm of US-based Agilent Technologies. Israel office: Agilent Technologies Israel, Azorim Business Park, 94 Em Hamoshavot Rd., Petah Tikva 49527 Tel.: 972-3-928-8555 fax: 972-3-928-8501 Contact: E-mail: Noam Zahav Investment focus: Telecommunications, biotechnology, informationa technology, test equipment, and semiconductors

AIG-Orion Venture Capital Advisors 3 Hayetzira St., Ramat Gan Tel: 972-3-753-8890 Fax: 972-3-753-8895 E-mail: [email protected] AIG Orion invests in Internet software and information technology.

Alice Ventures Tel Aviv office: Ziv Towers, Building D, 24 Raoul Wallenberg St., Tel Aviv 69719 Tel.: 972-3-766-6547 Fax: 972-3-766-6559 E-mail: Hillel Milo A multinational venture capital fund based in Milan and Tel Aviv. Investment focus: Early stage communications, software and life science companies. Alon Technology Ventures Jointly managed by Gaon Asset management owned by B. Gaon Holdings and the Jupiter Group of the UK and CAIB Bank of Austria. Gibor Bldg. 14th fl., 6 Kaufman St. Tel Aviv 68012 Tel: 972-3-795-4121 Fax: 795-4122 E-mail: [email protected] or E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: High-tech

See: Arena Feature -Alon Technology Ventures: The European investor is more trustworthy

Amanet Technologies Business, Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship Division 34 Habarzel St., Tel Aviv 69710 Tel: 972-3-765-9555/02 Fax: 972-3-644-0125 E-mail: [email protected] Incubation, seed and start-up investment in IT, telecommunications, Internet and software companies. Ampal-American Israel Corporation (Bank Hapoalim group) 111 Arlozorov St. Tel Aviv 62098 Tel.: 972-3-608-0100 Fax: 972-3-608-101

Anschutz Investment Company US: 555 17th St., Suite 2400, Denver, CO 80202 Tel: (303)298-1000 Fax: (303) 299-8881 Europe: Polarisavenue 53, PO Box 2030, 2130 GE Hoofdorp, The Netherlands Tel: +31 (0)23 568 59 70 Fax: +31 (0)23 568 59 74 Investment focus: High-tech, telecommunications, Internet and software services companies.

Apax Partners(Israel) 2 Maskit St. P.O. Box 2034 Herzilya 46120 Tel: 972-9-958-6330 Fax: 972-9-958-8366E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Apax Israel II; Israel Growth Fund Invests in privately-held Israel affiliated companies in Internet and information technology, telecommunications, services, healthcare and life sciences and management buyouts.

Apropos IT Ventures Jerusalem Technology Park, Malcha, Building 1, Entrance B, 1st Floor P.O. Box 48180, Jerusalem 91481 Tel: 972-2-648-2350 fax: 972-2-679-9931 US eFax: (775)-993-3039 E-mail: Business plans Investment focus: Internet and information technology companies with Israel Talent.

Arba Finance Company America House, 3rd fl., 35 Shaul Hamelech Blvd., P.O. Box 33406 Tel Aviv 61333 Tel.: 972-3-696-4420 Fax: 972-3-695-0029 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Incubation, seed stage, start-up, mezzanine and bridging financing for telecommunications, Internet, software, robotics, medical technology and other high-tech companies.

Aria Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O.Box 12245, Herzliya 46733 Tel: 972-9-956-7484 Fax: 972-9-951-4152 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed stage companies in the IT, enterprise hardware and software, communications infrastructure and applications, Internet &intranet, telecommunications technologies, software products and applications.

Ascend Technology Ventures 14a Ahimeir Street, Ramat Gan 52587 Tel: 972 3 751 3707 Fax: 972 3 751 3706 E-mail: [email protected]

Ascend invests in communications, internet and internet infrastructure, software, semiconductors and medical devices.

Asiagate Herzliya Business Park P.O.Box 4029, Herzliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-970-1886 Fax: 972-9-970-1887 E-mail: [email protected] A spin-off of Jerusalem Global Ltd. for Asian and Japanese entities wishing to establish connects with Israeli high-tech companies and for Israeli companies seeking to enter Far Eastern markets.

Astra Technological Investvestments Atidim Tower, Kiryat Atidim P.O.B 58177, Tel Aviv 61580 Tel.: 972-3-649-1990 fax: 972-3-649-1992 Contact: E-mail: CEO Gil Klopman Investment focus: Acquiring minority interests in Israeli or US high-tech start-ups with a strong biotechnology or biomedical focus.

Atara Technology Ventures Atara is the venture capital investment arm of Israel Phoenix Assurance Company. 30 Levontin St., Tel Aviv 65116 Tel.: 972-3-7141-793 Fax: +972-3-7141-165 E-mail: David Furst Investment focus: Early stage, seed and start-up financing for Internet, IT, telecommunications and software companies.

Aviv Venture Capital Aviv Building, 49th floor 7 Jabotinsky St., Ramat Gan 52520 Telephone: 972-3-6114050 fax: 972-3-6114051 E-mail: info Investment focus: Early and mid-stage Israeli related companies.

AxcessNet AxcessNet is the Israeli affiliate of Broadview. P.O. Box 3587, Ramat Hasharon 45930 Tel: 972-9-743-4710 Fax: 972-9-742-3889 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] A facilitator of the Israeli IT and the global industry and the exclusive representative of Broadview for transactions with Israeli companies.

Azritech Ventures A subsidiary of the Azrieli Group. Azrieli Center 1, Tel Aviv, 67021 Tel: 972-3-608-1300 Fax: 972-3-608-1380 E-mail: Zeev Zeevi Investment focus: Seed through third-stage start-ups in telecommunications, IT and medical equipment companies.

BCS Investment Company 3 Daniel Frisch St., Tel Aviv 64731 Tel.: 972-3-696-3221 Fax: 972-3-696-8828 E-mail: Yariv Caspi Investment focus: high-tech, media and communications companies from seed capital to mezzanine stage.

Benchmark Capital 9 Hamanofim St. Herzliya Pituach 46725 Tel.: 972-9-9617600 Fax: 972-9-9617601 E-mail: [email protected] Focus: Early-stage high-technology

Biomedical Investments Golda House, 23 Shaul Hamelech St., Tel Aviv 64367 Tel: 972 3 696 6557 Fax: 972 609 5322 E-mail: [email protected]

Investment areas: Medical equipment, biotechnology

See: Arena Feature - Pay n Tell

Biocom VC 40 Einstein St., Ramat Aviv Tower, Tel Aviv Tel.: 972-3-643.8890; fax: 972-3-643-6662 E-mail: David Schlachet Investment focus: Biotechnology, enabling platform technologies, biopharmaceutical and medical device companies.

Boticelli Venture Funds 28 Bezalel St. Gibor Sport Building (15th floor), Ramat Gan 52521 Tel.: 972-3-575-3222 Fax 972-3-575-3666 E-mail: Judith Investment focus: Advertising, interactive and media enabling technologies.

BRM Capital Israel Office: Akerstein Towers, 11 Hamenofim St., Herzliya Pituach 46725 Tel.: 972-9-954-9555 Fax: 972-9-954-9557 Email: [email protected]

Britech Israel office: Gibor Sport Tower, 28 Betzalel St., Ramat Gan 52521 Tel.: 972-3-754-9581 Fax: 972-3-754-9582 E-mail: [email protected] The Britain-Israel Technology Foundation fosters collaborative R&D links between British and Israeli companies.

Canada-Israel Opportunity Funds 1090 Don Mills Rd., Toronto, Ontario M3C 3R6 Tel: (416) 444-6660 E-mail: [email protected] The Funds participate in direct investments with entities in the Shrem Fudim Kelner Group and the Polaris II Fund. Investment focus: Israeli high-tech companies.

Carmel Ventures Delta House, 16 Hagalim Avenue, Herzeliya 46725 Tel: 972-9-959-4894 Fax: 972-9-959-4898 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: post-seed, companies developing software platforms and applications for the digital economy.

Catalyst Fund 3 Daniel Frish St., Tel Aviv 64731 Tel: 972-3-695-0666 Fax: 972-3-695-0222 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Late-stage Israeli companies in the IT, software, telecommunications, semiconductor, biotechnology and medical devices sectors.

Cedar Fund 9 Keren Hayesod St., POB 505, Herzliya 46105 Tel: 972 9 957 7227 Fax: 972 9 957 7228 E-mail: [email protected] The Challenge Fund Etgar 1 Hashikma St., P.O. Box 55 Savyon 56530 Tel: 972-3-562-8555 Fax: 972-3-562-1999 E-mail: [email protected] Two funds for early-stage high-tech and non-high-tech companies.

Clal Industrial Investments 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower 45th fl. Tel Aviv 67023 Tel.: 972-3-6075777 Fax: 972-3-607-5778 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Venture Capital Fund focuses on IT, telecommunications, software and life sciences (biotechnology and medical devices); Israel Infinity Fund focuses on early-stage high-tech telecommunications, IT and healthcare; Millennium Materials Technologies Fund specializes in the development and commercialization of novel advanced materials and industrial processes; Clalit Venture Capital Fund focuses on diversified mezzanine investment opportunities in Israel and Israeli related technology companies; the Harvest Fund (with Evergreen) is a secondary venture capital fund; IJT Technologies (with Evergreen) focuses on high-tech; Peace Technology Fund, jointly managed with Virginia-based International Capital Advisors, to invest in the Palestinian economy and encourage Israeli-Palestinian cooperation; Israelseed III; Periscope I (with Evergreen) focuses on high-tech.

Clal Biotechnology Industries 3 Azrieli Center, Triangle Tower 45th fl. Tel Aviv 67023 Tel.: 972-3-6075733 Fax: 972-3-607-5734 E-mail: Ophir Shahaf or David Haselkorn Tel: 972 3 765 0306 Fax: 972 3 765 0329

Clalit Capital & Investments 5 Druyanov St., Tel Aviv Tel: 972 3 526 3370 Fax: 972 3 528 0769 E-mail: [email protected]

Clalit Capital Fund

Comverse Investments Efrat-Comverse House, 23 Habarzel St., Ramat Hachayal, Tel Aviv 69710. Tel: 972 3 645 4910 Fax: 972 3 645 4916 E-mail: [email protected]

ComSor Investment Fund

Columbine Ventures Top Tower, 22nd fl., 50 Dizengoff St. Tel Aviv 64332 Tel.: 972-3-620-9010 Fax: 972-3620-9011 E-mail: Carine Wiener Investment focus: Early stage financing for Israel and Israel-related biotechnology, therapeutics, medical devices, bioinformatics and diagnostic technology companies.

Concord Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O.Box 4011, Herzeliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-960-2020 Fax: 972-9-960-2022 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: datacom and telecommunications, Software applications and Internet infrastructure, medical technologies and biotechnology.

Coral Ventures Main office: 60 South Sixth St., Suite 3510, Minneapolis, MN 55402 Tel: (612) 335-8666 Fax: (612) 335-8668 A private venture capital company focusing on technology (communications, Internet, software, information and systems) and healthcare (biotechnology, medical devices and diagnostics) industries.

Investment focus: Healthcare and high-tech.

Corex Industries Management Corex Building, Maskit St., Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972 9 957 2777 Fax: 972 9 957 2772 E-mail [email protected] Investment focus: Expansion, mezzanine and bridging investments in IT, telecommunicaitons, Internet, electronics and software companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Venture Capital Firms P-T

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Venture Capital Firms P-T. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pamot Rehovot Advisors Weizmann Institute Campus, POB 2439, Rehovot 76123 Tel: 972 8 936 5431 Fax: 972 8 946 0484 E-mail: [email protected]

Pamot has a first right of refusal on investment in projects being developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science

Partech International Israel office: 39 Derech Haganim. PO Box 9129, Kfar Shmaryahu 46910 Tel: 972-9-951-4189 Fax: 972-9-951-5782 E-mail: Ami AMir Investment focus: Communications

Peregrine Ventures 6 Yoni Netanyahu St. Or Yehuda 60376 Tel: 972-3-6349990 Fax: 972-3-6349910 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Part venture fund and part technology incubator for communications, e-commerce, software and medical equipment start-ups.



Persys Investment 7 Ha'marpe St., Har Hotzvim, P.O.Box 45036, Jerusalem 91450 Tel: 972-2-5322-779 Fax: 972-2-5322-673 E-mail: [email protected] Yaron Kimchi or, E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed-stage investments in advanced technology start-ups in healthcare, testing technologies, wireless communications and IT companies. Pitango Venture Capital Formerly Polaris Venture Capital 11 HaMenofim St., Building B, Herzliya 46725 Tel: 972-9-971-8100 Fax: 972-9-971-8102 E-mail: [email protected] Pitango has offices in Menlo Park, California and London Investment focus: Communications, Internet infrastructure and related technologies, software, medical devices and biotechnology. Platinum Neurone Ventures Israel office: 21 Ha'arba'ah St., 15th Floor, Tel Aviv 64739 Tel.: 972-3-684-5700 Fax: 972-3-686-9535 E-mail: Asi Investment focus: First and second round investments in enterprise software, communications, IT and semiconductor companies.

Plenus Technologies Delta House, 16 Hagalim Ave., Herzeliya 46725 Tel.: 972 9-957-4944 Fax: 972-9-957-8770 E-mail: [email protected] Bridge loans to late emerging high-tech companies. POC Technostart Azrieli Center #1, Tel Aviv 67021 Tel.: 972-3-608-1616 Fax: 972-3-608-1617 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Post seed-stage investment in early-stage communications and Internet companies.

Polar Investments Formely Poalim Investments, and a member of the Shrem Fudim Kelner Group. 21 Ha'arba'ah St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-6845666 Fax: 972-3-6850857 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Software, robotics, biotechnology and agro-technology.

Potalium Ventures EDS Building, second floor, 7 Sapir St., Herzliya Pituach, 46852 Tel: 972-9-970-8158 Fax: 972-9-958-0897 E-mail: Portalium Investment focus: Portalium provides services for European and other venture capital and private equity funds seeking to invest in Israel, including locating, screening and compiling suitable high-tech investment opportunities.

Portview Communications Partners See HK Catalyst ProSeed Venture Capital Fund 10 Planut St. Sciecen Bldg. #1, Rehovot 76122 Tel.: 972-8-948-4966 Fax: 972-8-948-4967 E-mail: [email protected]

ProSeed Venture Capital calls itself "the angels' venture capital fund". Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related seed and early stage medical devices and IT companies

ProSeed Capital Holdings CVA Israel office: A' Aviv Tower, 48 Petach-Tikva Rd., Tel Aviv 66184 Tel.: 972-3-537-1173 Fax: 972-3-548-8069 E-mail: Ori Shilo

ProSeed Capital Holdings focuses on early stage high-tech startups in Israel, Europe, the US, Canada and India.

Rafael Development Corporation (RDC) Ltd. Ramat Aviv Tower, 5th floor, 40 Einstein St. P.O. Box 15, Tel Aviv 61172 Tel: 972-3-643-9912 Fax: 972-3-643-9916 bldg 7, New Indusrial Park, P.O. Box 258, Yokne'am 20692 Tel: 972-4-959-9511 Fax: 972-4-959-0720 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Start-up, seed and incubator investment in software, telecommunications, data communication, semiconductors, healthcare and medical devices.

Samurai Web Ventures Israel office: 1 Korazin St., Givataim 53583 Tel: 972-3-571-0222 Fax: 972-3-571-0225 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Initiate and manage start-up companies in the areas of Internet and Information Technology.

Sequoia Capital Seed Fund Israel contact: Tel: 972-9-957-9440 Fax: 972-9-957-9443 E-mail: Hagit Avneri Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related companies in the communications and Internet sectors. Shalom Equity Fund Israel office: Shalom Tower, 9 Ahad Ha'am St., Tel Aviv 65251 Tel.: 972-3-510-8581 Fax: 972-3-516-3413 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech and Internet companies.

Shamrock Holdings Israel & Europe office: 28 Grosvenor St., London W1K 4QR, UK Tel: 44 (20) 7917-9755 Fax: 44 (20) 7917-9654 E-mail: [email protected] Michael Geiger Investment focus: Media, technology and communications.

Shirat Enterprises Ltd. Eliahu House, 2 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel Aviv 64077 Tel: 972 3 696 8224 Fax: 972 3 695 3847 E-mail: [email protected]

Shrem Fudim Kelner 21 Haarbah St. Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-684-5555 Fax: 972-3-684-5554 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Canada Israel Opportunity Fund; CMS/DS Israel Fund; Dovrat, Shrem Skies '92 Fund; Dovrat, Shrem Founders Group; Dovrat Shrem Rainbow Fund; Horizon Fund. Investment focus: Venture Capital management, Finance, investments in High-Tech & Telecommunications, and long-term investments in traditional industries.

Siemens Venture Capital Siemens Venture Capital invests in Israel through Carmel Ventures, Millennium Materials Management Fund, Portview Communications Partners, Rama Partners and SVM Star Ventures Capital Management. Israeli operations director: Asriel Eisinger Tel: +49 89 636 41084 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed, early, and mezzanine stages in the fields of IT, telecommunications, medical engineering, automation and microelectronics.

StageOne Ventures Levinstein Tower, 29th fl., 23 Petach Tikva Rd. Tel Aviv 66182 Tel.: 972-3-710-0140 Fax: 972-3-710-0150 E-mail: [email protected] StageOne is sponsored by Bezeq and Discount Capital Markets. Investment focus: Very early stage communications technology companies.

Star Ventures A Munich-based venture capital fund with a branch in Israel. 11 Galgaley Haplada St., P.O. Box 12600, Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972-9-951-2888 Fax: 972-9-951-2889 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech companies in the communications, Internet, software and medical devices fields.

Steps Investments in Technology Midgal Shalom, 26th fl., P.O. Box 29161, Tel Aviv 61291 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage telecommunications, software and semiconductor start-ups.

STI Ventures 85 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Pituach 46851 Tel: 972-9-971-0710 Fax: 972-9-971-0711 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Partnerships in wireless and communications technologies, Internet infrastructure, and enterprise software start-ups.

Syntek Capital Israel branch: E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: European, Israeli and US start-ups in the IT, software, telecom and media fields.

Tamar Technology Ventures Israel office: 50 Ramat Yam St., Herzliya Pituach 46851 Tel: 972-9-954-3555 Fax: 972-9-954-3423 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: start-up, early stage and mezzanine financing in IT, data communications, telecommunications, Internet &intranet, electronics, software, multimedia, semiconductors, medical devices, biotechnology and healthcare companies.

Tamir Fishman Ventures Alrov Tower,46 Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv 66883 Tel: 972-3-7148444 Fax: 972-3-5605010 E-mail: [email protected] Funds: Eucalyptus Ventures (fully invested) and Tamir Fishman Ventures II Investment focus: Early-stage communications. Internet and software companies focusing on B2B services and infrastructure solutions.

TDA Capital Partners Formerly: Templeton Direct Advisors Israel office: 19 St., Ramot Zahala, Tel-Aviv 69358 Tel: 972-3-649-9817 Fax: 972-3-649-9827 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Seed, early-stage and mezzanine financing in IT, telecommunications, Internet & intranet, semiconductor and medical device companies. Tecc-IS plc Levinstein Tower, 23 Petah Tikva Rd. Tel Aviv 66182 Tel.: 972-3-566-4464 fax: 972-3-566-4465 E-mail: Simon Larah Investment focus: Seed and early stage investments in Israeli telecom, Internet and software technology companies.

Technolplus Ventures Ziv Towers, 24 Raoul Wallenberg St., Tel-Aviv 69719 Tel: 972-3-766-6555 Fax: 972-3-766-6556 E-mail: [email protected] A Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed company (TASE: TNPV), infrastructure and enabling technologies, data communications and enterprise software.

Technorov Holdings 46 Rothschild Blvd.. Alrov Tower Tel Aviv 66883 Tel: 972-3-714-7770 Fax: 972-3-714-7772 E-mail: [email protected]

Al-Rov Technologies (1983) Ltd; Technorov Holdings (1993) Ltd

TeleSoft Partners Israel office: 14 Shenkar St., Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel.: 972-9- 954-0828 Fax: 972-9- 958-9695 E-mail: Avi Mazor or Ron Hiram Investment focus: Early, development/expansion, bootstrapped/later stage next generation communications services, software, and Internet companies.

Teuza Management and Development 49 Hahistadrut Boulevard, POB 25266 Haifa 31250 Tel: 972 4 872 8788 Fax: 972 4 872 9393 E-mail: [email protected] A Fairchild Technology Venture Ltd Early-stage seed companies in the communications, advanced manufacturing equipment, semiconductors, software and biotechnology and healthcare sectors.

Trinet Investment in High Tech Ltd Tel: 972-3-751-3707 Fax: 972-3-751-3706. Investment focus: Early-stage, seed and start-up capital for IT, telecommunications, Internet & intranet, multimedia, software, semiconductors, biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare companies.

TopNotch Capital Vered Tower, 20th Floor, 53 Hashalom Rd., Givatayim 53454 Tel: 972-3-732-6616 Fax: 972-3-731-3340 E-mail: info Investment focus: An investment banking boutique specializing in early stage life science companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
To sustain rate, push reforms, core sector. Check it out:
(Indian Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With GDP growth of 8.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2006-07, the Indian economy continues to do well. While manufacturing and services kept their momentum of growth, the high growth in agriculture at 3.4 per cent helped attain the nearly 9 per cent growth. While the news is great, the first question that most people ask is whether the country will be able to sustain this rate of growth. The rapid upswing witnessed in recent years has been a combination of a higher trend and the high of a business cycle. In the last few years, the economy has seen an increase in the trend growth rate to about 6.25 per cent. This trend has had a cycle around it so that the growth rate moved in a band of around -2 and +2 percentage points. In other words, the rate has ranged from 4.5 to 8.5 per cent. The GDP growth rate of this quarter is an improvement on this. When the economy is at the high of a business cycle, it is natural to be concerned about a downturn. But while the cycle can turn down due to a number of factors - both domestic and international - there is reason to be optimistic about the higher trend growth path. This is a consequence not of the government setting a target and investing and producing more. It is, in fact, the result of the taking away the restrictions that the government had put on private enterprise for nearly 30 years, from the 60s to the early 90s. By slapping various restrictions, licences and controls, the government had constrained individual initiative and prevented higher growth. Now that it is trying to create a supportive environment with better infrastructure and facilities for private initiative, every individual who does better for himself does better for the country, too. Indeed, this is India's main strength in contrast to China's, where there is an attempt to develop private enterprise. This is not to say that the we can take high growth rate for granted. There will be a need to focus on two things. One is to remove the remaining restrictions on movement of goods and on factors of production - labour, capital and land - so that they can move freely across uses and be available for use in the most efficient and productive way. This will mean bringing changes in land use policies, exit policies, labour laws and the financial sector. The second is improving infrastructure. The first can be attained by the stroke of a pen, though it needs political consensus which may take a little time to come about. It is building infrastructure that will take time and resources. But as and when it gets done, and sooner or later it will, the world can bet on India for even faster growth than it has seen this quarter.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Purdue-Indiana University Team Selected as National Cancer Institute Proteomics Center. Check it out:
(Ascribe Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Sept. 29 (AScribe Newswire) -- Purdue and Indiana universities' proteomics team has been selected as one of five national centers for cancer research.

The National Cancer Institute announced Wednesday (Sept. 27) its selection of the Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team for inclusion in a new consortium to assess proteomic technology and its applications for diagnosis and treatment of cancer.



The NCI awarded a $7 million grant to the Purdue-IU team, which pairs Purdue's experts in mass spectrometry and proteomics technology with the expert clinical team of cancer researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine. Together they will focus on technology to diagnose breast and prostate cancer through blood samples.

This is the future of cancer detection in America, said Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and principal investigator for the team. Proteomics, the study of proteins, holds great promise for more precise diagnosis and tailored cancer therapies through the identification of proteins specific to cancer and other diseases, called 'biomarkers.'

However, more work needs to be done to establish protocols for these approaches and the technology used. The NCI program creates a consortium for this purpose and is a great advancement for the field. Remarkably, all five centers included breast cancer as an area of study, which will allow for incredible scientific collaboration and evaluation of data from patients nationwide.

The consortium will receive $35.5 million in awards and is one of three components of the NCI's $104 million five-year clinical proteomic technologies initiative for cancer national program.

This program is a critical component of NCI's strategy for leveraging the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of proteomics for cancer patients, said NCI deputy director Anna D. Barker. I am confident that the complementary proteomic expertise of the awardees, and their commitment to interinstitutional collaboration and real- time data sharing, will enable the development of biomarkers to contribute to a new generation of molecularly based interventions to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer.

The team, based at Purdue's Bindley Bioscience Center at Discovery Park, will develop protocols and standards for mass spectrometry- based cancer proteomics relating to breast and prostate cancer. The endeavor will involve close cooperation between Purdue and Indiana University experts in proteomics, informatics and cancer biology and treatment.

This is a perfect example of how great things will happen in Indiana when IU, Purdue and the private sector collaborate on life sciences research, said Dr. D. Craig Brater, dean of the IU School of Medicine and vice president of IU with responsibility for life sciences.

Four hundred clinical samples will be collected for breast cancer analysis by the Hoosier Oncology Group, an Indiana statewide network of cancer physicians chaired by Christopher Sweeney, an oncologist and associate director of clinical research at the IU Cancer Center. Prostate cancer samples also will be collected from the NCI-sponsored Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group trial.

As co-principal investigators, Sweeney and Harikrishna Nakshatri, the Marian J. Morrison Investigator in Breast Cancer Research in the IU Department of Surgery, and others will conduct cancer biology research. Discovery Park's Oncological Sciences Center played a key role in connecting clinical and basic science researchers in the project.

The goals of the program are to define existing technologies and identify emerging technologies that will enable precise and reproducible measurement of biomarkers in cancer, said Jiri Adamec, a Purdue research assistant professor and lead scientist at Bindley Bioscience Center and co-principal investigator. Other Purdue team members include research assistant professor Xiang Zhang and chemistry professor Scott McLuckey.

The team will employ both electrospray ionization and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry platforms.

Mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches have the advantage of excellent sensitivity and high analytical precision, Adamec said. Our team will focus on the use of this technology in providing insight into breast and prostate cancer biomarkers. These biomarkers will have dramatic impact for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

The team will use the emerging bioCD technology invented at Purdue and commercialized by QuadraSpec, a Purdue Research Park company, to expand the detection and quantification of specific candidate cancer protein biomarkers. The technology enables evaluation of hundreds of proteins of interest from hundreds of samples in minutes by incorporating specific antibodies on a microfabricated optical disk that is read by spinning disc inferometry, said Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center.

In Bloomington, the startup company Predictive Physiology and Medicine will work with David E. Clemmer, the firm's scientific co- founder and chairman of the IU Department of Chemistry, and Clemmer's team at IU Bloomington to provide ion mobility spectrometry evaluation. This proprietary technology greatly broadens the range for cancer biomarker proteomics studies, Buck said.

In Indianapolis, proteomics work will be conducted by the Protein Analysis and Research Center, the academic service component of the Indiana Centers for Applied Protein Sciences (INCAPS), said Mu Wang, director of PARC and an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the IU School of Medicine. That work will include planning and execution of the projects to identify and validate targeted biomarkers for breast and prostate cancers.

Statistical analysis and processing of the data will be overseen by Jake Chen, assistant professor of informatics at IU and co-principal investigator.

For a large NCI program such as this, data is going to be generated and collected from clinical laboratories, individual research labs at Purdue, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, IU School of Medicine, IU Bloomington, and various contracting companies across the state, Chen said. Therefore, it's essential for a team of computational scientists to work together, linking data, storing them, and analyzing them using computational and statistical tools. The work ahead will be very exciting.

The team will take advantage of Purdue's discovery pipeline for high- complexity data handling to deal with the challenge of data collection, management, and analysis. This discovery pipeline was developed from cooperation among the Bindley Bioscience, e-Enterprise and Cyber centers at Discovery Park.

The NCI's Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer awardees were chosen based, in part, on the broad expertise of their proteomic research teams and their familiarity with and regular use of a wide range of proteomic technologies. The five teams define a cross-institutional and multidisciplinary network of assessment centers that will evaluate and compare different commercially available proteomic platforms and analysis software packages in the context of their potential applicability to cancer. They will also work together to develop a comprehensive approach to assess intra- platform and inter-laboratory variability in these measurement technologies.

CPTAC is one of three major Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative program components integrated by the National Institutes of Health NCI to address the fundamental scientific requirements that must be met in order to realize the promise of proteomics for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Together, they have been charged with providing the scientific community with an assessment of current proteomic technologies, developing and assessing novel technologies and computational methods, and creating a central repository of the resources needed to use these proteomic tools.

RELATED WEB SITES:

Bindley Bioscience Center: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal/ Bioscience

Discovery Park: http://discoverypark.purdue.edu/wps/portal

Purdue University: http://www.purdue.edu

Indiana University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.iu.edu

Indiana University: http://www.Indiana.edu

Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer and the Clinical Proteomic Technologies Assessment for Cancer awards: http:// proteomics.cancer.gov

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov

- - - -

CONTACTS:

Sources - Fred Regnier, 765-494-3878, [email protected]

Jiri Adamec, [email protected]

Charles Buck, 765-494-2208, [email protected]

Christopher Sweeney, 317-274-3515, [email protected]

Jake Chen, 317-278-7604, [email protected]

Writers - Elizabeth Gardner, 765-494-2081, [email protected]

Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, [email protected]

Eric Schoch, 317-274-8205, [email protected]

AUDIO: Audio clips from Charles Buck, director of operations for Bindley Bioscience Center, and publication-quality photos are available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html3month/ 2006/060928RegnierNCI.html

PHOTO: A publication-quality photo is available at http:// news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2006/regnier-proteomics.jpg

PHOTO CAPTION: Jiri Adamec, from left, a research assistant professor, discusses the results of an experiment with Fred Regnier, Purdue's John H. Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, in the Bindley Bioscience Center's Proteomics Lab. The Purdue-IU Analytical Proteomics Team, led by Regnier, has been approved as a national center in the National Cancer Institute's Consortium for Proteomics Technology Assessment for Cancer. The team studies the detection and prediction of cancer through analysis of blood samples. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Copyright 2006 AScribe inc.
'Roadmap' aims to make county better. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A NEW 'roadmap' for Yorkshire and Humber's economic growth, the Regional Economic Strategy 2006-2015 (RES), has just been launched by Yorkshire Forward.

The RES provides a ten year outline of what the region needs to do to grow its GBP75 billion economy. The overall aim is to make Yorkshire and Humber a better place to live, work and invest.

To outline how this can be achieved, the document offers a straightforward guide to economic development and investment - unique to the region and its circumstances, diversity and places. It also specifies who needs to take responsibility for delivering each action and calls on the public, private, voluntary and community sectors to pool their efforts.



The strategy highlights three key areas as being essential to Yorkshire and Humber's future economy: business, people and the environment.

Business objectives outline that the region needs 'more businesses that last', placing emphasis on the need to encourage enterprise in groups to drive productivity, while 'more competitive businesses' highlights that innovation activity is core to economic growth.

People objectives focus on 'skilled people - benefiting business and individuals' as this drives productivity and has knock-on benefits on quality of life, while 'connecting people to good jobs' will tackle worklessness and remove barriers to work.

Environment objectives consider 'transport, infrastructure and the environment', looking at transport schemes of economic priority, the role of the private sector in utilities and infrastructure, plus activity to enhance and utilise the environment and natural resources. A final objective stresses a drive for 'stronger towns and cities' and the role of their renaissance in driving the economy.

Underpinning all six objectives are three themes which aim to achieve quality of delivery. 'Sustainable development' aims to grow business via a long term approach that benefits the environment and enhances quality of life, 'diversity' aims to ensure all people and businesses realise their potential, while 'leadership and ambition' acknowledges that the region needs to raise its sights and promote a culture where people, businesses and agencies aim high, drive change and make the most of their abilities.

Produced by Yorkshire Forward on behalf of the region, the new strategy is the second to be launched by the RDA since its inception. It is the product of the ideas of more than 5,000 people, from three rounds of extensive and inclusive consultation.

Yorkshire Forward chairman Terry Hodgkinson said: "Our region has come a long way since the launch of the first Regional Economic Strategy in 2000, and as a result our economic landscape has changed. This new RES recognises these changes and has refocused our priorities accordingly.

"If people are looking to start or expand a business, want to achieve their potential or transform the place in which they live, then this strategy exists to make this possible." Copies of the RES are available at www.yorkshire-forward.com or by telephoning Yorkshire Forward on 0113 3949600.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Do you deserve to win a prestigious Queen's Award?. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE Queen's Awards for Enterprise are the UK's most prestigious awards for business performance.

They recognise and reward outstanding achievement by UK companies. They are presented in three separate categories: l International Trade - recognising companies that have demonstrated growth in overseas earnings.

l Innovation - recognising companies that have demonstrated commercial success through innovative products or services.

l Sustainable Development - recognising companies that have integrated environmental, social, economic and management aspects of sustainable development into their business.

The awards are made each year by The Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister, who is assisted by an Advisory Committee that includes representatives of Government, industry and commerce, and the trade unions. Outstanding businesses from all sectors are currently being invited to apply for the 2007 awards. The deadline for this year's awards is October 31.



In 2006, 145 companies - large and small - won a Queen's Award. The main benefits of winning are recognition, publicity, staff motivation and use of The Queen's Award Emblem for five years - and, impressively, 92 per cent of the 137 award winners last year said they thought winning a Queen's Award had brought added commercial value to their firm, with 22 per cent noticing a significant increase in new business since winning the award.

"This is a chance for a company to be recognised as a leader in its market and one of the top businesses in the UK," says Stephen Brice, secretary to The Queen's Awards office.

"There is no limit to the number of awards available each year - if a company's achievements are deemed truly outstanding for its sector, then it stands a good chance of winning an award." Over the next few months, officials from The Queen's Awards office will be touring the country to promote the awards, supported by talks and presentations. They will also be inviting nominations for The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion - an award for individuals helping and inspiring tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

Judging is thorough, so apply only if you can answer a definite 'yes' to these questions: l Does your business have a UK base? l Does your business employ at least two full-time workers (or part-time equivalent)? l Do you believe your business is one of the best? l Can you demonstrate commercial success? For details visit: www.queensawards.org.uk.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Hat maker a top ten business hero. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A WETHERBY woman who turned her life from tragedy to triumph has been crowned one of Britain's top ten business heroes by setting-up her own hat-making enterprise.

Milliner Woody Whittick, who set up She's All That a year ago, was presented with her winner's trophy by GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips at a glittering gala dinner in London on Wednesday.

The hat maker beat off fierce competition from hundreds of applicants, to finish as a finalist in the Barclays Trading Places Awards, launched this year to people who have overcome personal adversity to positively change their lives by setting up a thriving business.



Woody has fought a battle with ill health since suffering from ME in her teens. She suffered a paralysing spine injury at only 30, and was made redundant during her recovery when her employer went bankrupt.

But after a change of direction she found her calling.

Since opening She's All That last Summer, Woody has designed hats for hundreds of women, including celebrities and catwalk models, featured at Royal Ascot, designed the crown for Miss York 2006 and been elected vice-chair of the British Hat Guild.

Barclay's John Davis said: "The quality of entries made judging extremely difficult but all the judges felt She's All That shone out as a real-life example of an outstanding business that has thrived despite what seemed like impossible odds.

"We congratulate Woody Whittick on being crowned a 2006 National Finalist."

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

Inside Business Pink

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Inside Business Pink. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WELCOME to the September edition of our 12-page Business Pink supplement, which contains a wealth of business stories, features with members of the business community, appointments, opinions and advice.



Business Pink is published every two months with each title in the Harrogate Advertiser Series and focuses on businesses and individuals throughout the districts of Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough, Wetherby, Nidderdale and Northallerton.

This supplement also features a four-page On Location section, brought to you in conjunction with Harrogate Borough Council, which provides infomation to help businesses develop and succeed within the district.

If you have any stories or information which you think may be appropriate for the next issue of Business Pink, due out in November, please contact business editor Katie Moulds on 01423 707509 or by emailing [email protected].

For the On Location section, please contact Harrogate Borough Council's Economic Development Unit on 01423 556077 or by email to [email protected].

Page 2 - HARROGATE-based Avenir properties has reaped more than one reward from its recent development of land at Cardale Park. State-of-the-art offices making up the Greengate site have proved so successful that the company is now planning on replicating the project elsewhere in Yorkshire.

Page 3 - THE Oscars of the food and drink industry saw dozens of companies from the Harrogate district pick up presitigious awards. Among them was Masham firm Rosebud Preserves, which was crowned Yorkshire champion.

Page 4 - MARK Leather had no idea how much the internet would benefit his business until he was persuaded by website design company Extreme Creations to develop his website into an online shop. Now selling 1,500 natural food products online, Mark says the website has played a major part in his company's 100 per cent rise in turnover in less than two years.

Page 5 - THE first page of the On Location section takes a closer look at a council-led scheme which aims to help businesses comply with new EU regulations on food. Since January this year, all food businesses are required by law to put in place documented food safety management procedures - but many companies are still unaware of or ignoring the regulations.

Page 6 - RECOGNISING and rewarding outstanding achievement by UK companies is the aim of the prestigious Queen's Awards for Enterprise. Outstanding businesses from all sectors are being invited to apply for the 2007 awards - find out how you can take part.

Page 7 - LOOKING for hassle-free office space in Harrogate? On Location tells you what's on offer with regards to serviced office accommodation in the town, from rooms in traditional, converted buildings to modern, newly-built flexible offices.

Page 8 - ARE you prepared for the worst? What would you do if your business was affected by flood, fire or even terrorism? We tell you why a business continuity plan is so important, and explain what it should contain, how to test it - and how to prevent a disaster happening in the first place.

Page 9 - FOLLOWING the success of last year's inaugural Ackrill Media Group Business Awards, the event has now become an annual celebration of the best that businesses have to offer in our district. We begin a three-page look at the launch of this year's awards by introducing the categories and the criteria and, of course, giving you details on how to enter.

Page 10 - MEET the sponsors of the Ackrill Media Group Business Awards. Find out who is sponsoring which award, and learn what they are looking for in their winner.

Page 11 - THE second page introducing you to the category sponsors of the Ackrill Media Group Business Awards.

Page 12 - LOOKING back at ten years in the notoriously difficult Harrogate nightlife industry, Jason Smith, below, admits there have been some tough times. But the owner of Monteys Rock Cafe credits consistency and determination as the secrets of his business survival, as well as, of course, maintaining a good bar.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

Women's group success

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Women's group success. Check it out:
(Harrogate Advertiser Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE inaugural meeting of a new Harrogate-based business networking group for women has proved a huge success.

Around 40 members of WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) attended this week's event at Evans Easyspace Ltd on Hartwith Way, Harrogate.

WiRE is a national business club for women operating in rural areas, offering a dynamic package of practical services and assistance.

The Harrogate group, one of a number of regional networks, aims to provide localised support for members and increase their business activities across the region.

Members will meet once a month to enjoy talks from expert speakers and the chance to chat and discuss business opportunities.

Group co-ordinator Sarah Manby, of Mango Mutt, said: "It's great that so many WiRE members are supporting a local network - the response clearly shows there is the need for one.

"We are looking forward to getting to know each other and helping each other succeed in our various enterprises. We're all women trying to run businesses in rural areas, so we have a shared bond in understanding how difficult this can sometimes be." All members of WiRE are welcome to attend the meetings, but places must be booked in advance.



For more information contact Sarah Manby on 01423 545787 or email [email protected].

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited

The Denver Post Al Lewis column

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The Denver Post Al Lewis column. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--After losing her job and getting dragged into a congressional inquiry, Hewlett-Packard's deposed chairwoman Patricia Dunn can't make up her mind.

Is it OK to impersonate people and steal their phone records -- or not?

"I still do not understand whether it is legal or not, as opinions vary," Dunn told Congress on Thursday.

Even Silicon Valley lawyer Larry Sonsini's opinions vary. Acting as HP's outside counsel, Sonsini had advised that this practice, known as pretexting, is "not generally unlawful." On Thursday before Congress, though, Sonsini said pretexting is probably illegal but that there ought to be a new law to make this clear.



Wouldn't disbarment or a legal-malpractice lawsuit also make this clear?

And what about existing laws against deceptive trade practices, criminal impersonation, identity theft or wire fraud?

Don't they provide clarity?

Could Dunn and Sonsini really be this dumb? Do they really think the people watching their charades are dumb, too?

What's not ostensibly clear to Dunn and Sonsini seemed abundantly clear to HP general counsel Ann Baskins.

Hours before Baskins was scheduled to testify, she resigned from her 24-year career at HP and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination.

Also taking the Fifth were a host of others involved in HP's cloak-and-dagger investigation of boardroom leaks to reporters. They included Ronald DeLia, who runs the detective firm that HP used; Anthony R. Gentilucci, who managed HP's global investigations unit in Boston; and Kevin T. Hunsaker, HP's former chief ethics officer, who was fired apparently for a lack of ethics in this matter.

Then there's HP chief executive Mark Hurd, who did not take the Fifth. Congress cut Hurd way too much slack Thursday, allowing him to testify alone, without his suspicious-looking colleagues at his side.

Everybody seems to love Hurd because HP stock has soared since he became CEO last year. And at least Hurd was apologetic about HP's misadventure, describing it as a "rogue investigation that violated HP's own principles and values." But Hurd also did a fine job of playing dumb. He told Congress he had had discussions about the investigation but was not involved in it and did not know the details. Maybe he didn't know because he didn't want to know.

"I understand there is also a written report of the investigation addressed to me and others, but unfortunately I did not read it," Hurd said in prepared testimony. "I could have, and I should have." But somehow, he just didn't.

How dumb is that?

So everyone involved in HP's investigation either took the Fifth, said they didn't know or said they were assured that what went on was legal.

Dunn, I think, explained it most eloquently: "Reliance on representations from trusted sources is a bedrock concept in board governance." Here's another "bedrock concept" if you ever want to run a complex enterprise like HP: Question everything. But don't try to look smart when prosecutors are watching your every facial twitch on C-SPAN. Better to play dumb.

Like Bryan Wagner of Littleton, who once worked for Action Research Group.

Wagner, 29, is the nephew of private investigator James Rapp, who pleaded guilty in 1999 after selling information about Los Angeles organized-crime detectives to the Israeli mafia.

Denver Post reporter Kimberly Johnson approached Wagner on Wednesday outside his apartment as he waited for a shuttle to take him to the airport for his flight to Washington. "Action (Research Group) has lawyers to make sure that we're doing everything legally," he told Johnson. "I never thought I was doing anything wrong." Wagner, however, took the Fifth on Thursday before Congress. And well before that, he reportedly took a hammer to his computer.

"I'm not going to say any more about the computer," he said. "I'm afraid I'll be charged with destruction of evidence."

OK, so I'll take it back. Wagner may be the one guy in the HP affair who is not playing dumb. Everyone else -- please!

Al Lewis' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-954-1967 or [email protected].

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
8x8 Chairman & CEO to Deliver Keynote Address at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 29 -- 8x8, Inc. , provider of Packet8 residential, business and video Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services, today announced that Chairman and CEO Bryan R. Martin will deliver the opening Keynote Address at the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo, October 10-13, 2006 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.



Mr. Martin's presentation will take place on Tuesday, October 10 at 11:30 a.m. PDT. His address will summarize the tremendous progress that has been made in the first decade of the IP communications revolution and offer insight into how the VoIP industry can expand the boundaries of innovation in applications and services that were never realized in the legacy, copper networks of the "Ma Bell" era. Mr. Martin was recently named one of the "Top 100 Voices" in IP Communications, as selected by the editorial team of Internet Telephony magazine. More information about the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo can be found at http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/ .

About 8x8, Inc.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service provider 8x8, Inc. offers internet-based telephony solutions (http://www.packet8.net/ ) for individual residential and business users as well as small- to medium-sized business organizations. In addition to regular Packet8 VoIP service plans priced as low as $19.99 per month for unlimited anytime calling to the U.S. and Canada, 8x8 offers the Packet8 DV 326 VideoPhone, the industry's first stand-alone broadband consumer videophone, and accompanying monthly service plans also priced at $19.99 per month. Packet8 Virtual Office, 8x8's VoIP system for small- to medium-sized businesses, is a hosted PBX solution comprised of powerful business class features. Companies subscribing to Virtual Office pay just $39.99 per month per extension for enterprise class PBX functionality along with unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and Canada. Packet8 Softalk(TM), 8x8's PC-based soft phone client, offers high quality voice and video in-network calling as well as outbound calling to the PSTN. For additional company information, visit 8x8's web site at http://www.8x8.com/ .

NOTE: 8x8, the 8x8 logo, Packet8, the Packet8 logo and Packet8 Virtual Office are trademarks of 8x8, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

8x8, Inc.

CONTACT: Joan Citelli of 8x8, Inc., +1-408-687-4320, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.packet8.net/http://www.8x8.com/
Portellus Makes Web-Based Correspondent Transaction Management Solution Available. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Portellus Inc., a leading provider of technology solutions for the financial services industry, announced that its correspondent origination and investor transaction management solution is now commercially available for general market evaluation and licensing. The solution enables correspondents or conduits to offer a seller-facing portal that enables secondary market participants to electronically submit data on flow, bulk and mini-bulk delivery. Additionally, the platform also provides more robust modules for managing forward and master commitments.



Portellus' correspondent transaction management solution works in conjunction with its enterprise rules management (ERM) system to deliver instant product eligibility; best-ex pricing; automated underwriting approvals complete with stips and conditions; rate locking and extensions; exceptions management; and up-to-date pipeline visibility and status. The solution streamlines the e-delivery of loans with common attributes, improves the consistency and accuracy of investor due diligence, and accelerates the processing and acquisition of loans by secondary market investors/participants.

The solution is currently in use by Clayton Services, one of the largest providers of mortgage-based due diligence, who engaged and collaborated with Portellus in October of 2005 to use the system to enhance its conduit services technology business. It is also in production with a tier one Wall Street firm and a top five mortgage banker.

"The complex automation this solution offers is changing the way buyers and sellers do business on the secondary market," said John N. Le, chairman and CEO of Portellus. "Investor and lender profits are being pinched, and now more than ever sustainability is about data quality, compliance and due diligence. Portellus' correspondent solution offers the respective clients of secondary market investors an alternative to the capital intensive business of delivering in bulk and mini-bulk. Conversely, these same investors are now afforded an opportunity to service a broader market of small-to-midsize sellers with a higher margin market opportunity in the flow business. Because our solution is already in use by several of the industry's biggest names, it is tried, tested and trued."

Driving the intelligence behind Portellus' correspondent solution is the company's ERM system, which houses investor-specific underwriting guidelines to govern loan quality and return instant decisioning to sellers via the portal. The back-end system empowers non-technical business users with the ability to maintain changes to products, pricing and underwriting guidelines in plain English via a simple user interface.

Officials at Portellus say the solution creates ease of deal structuring, facilitates seller-investor trust and establishes a new medium to reach more sellers and buyers. As a result, loan quality is controlled for investors and the funding process is dramatically accelerated for sellers.

About Portellus

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Portellus Inc. is a leading provider of next-generation technology solutions for the financial services and insurance industries. The company's Decision Management, Enterprise Rules Management (ERM), Loan Origination and Portal solutions utilize a service-oriented approach to deliver loosely coupled applications and flexible solutions, enabling clients to gain competitive advantages, reduce costs, mitigate risk, increase profitability, comply with regulatory requirements and swiftly respond to changing marketplace conditions. For more information, visit www.portellus.com or call 949-250-9600.

Portellus will be offering demonstrations of its correspondent solution at the 93rd Mortgage Bankers Association Exposition and Conference in Chicago, October 22 - 24, in its private meeting room. Contact the company to arrange a discussion time at 949.250.9600, ext. 2250 or e-mail them at [email protected].
China's M-Commerce Generates CNY5.8bn Output Value in 2005. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Mobile commerce is leading the tide of Internet and enterprise management and becomes a shining sector of IT market growth, along with the increasing need for mobile office and real-time management and communication.



CCID Consulting, a leading IT market researcher in China, says in a report that excluding hardware, the mobile commerce industry generated total output value of CNY 5.85 billion (USD 1 = CNY 8.00) in 2005, increasing 19.4% from a year earlier.

The growing speed is lower than other sectors of mobile telecom industry and the mobile telecom carriers' revenue made up 69.3% of the total output value. The other parts in the chain of mobile commerce have not fully realized their value.

When the 3G era comes, the advanced technologies will facilitate the development of mobile commerce, which just includes four parts at present: short messaging service, mobile payment, mobile e-mail, and mobile searching service.

From eNet, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Minister scolds laggardly financiers. Check it out:
(The Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SCOTTISH financiers came under fire from the man in charge of official efforts to improve Scotland's anaemic growth rate for allegedly not doing their bit to boost the economy.

Nicol Stephen, minister for enterprise, said private sector funders were hampering the drive to improve the number of successful start-ups by starving companies of the kind of risk capital that could make a vital difference to early-stage ventures.



He used an address to the globalscot conference of successful Scots to reopen the debate about the adequacy of private support for Scotland's hopefuls.

Small business lobbyists have complained about an "equity gap" affecting small firms that slipped beneath the radar of venture capitalists, which they say are focusing on big deals.

Some specialists in areas like technology say they have plenty of money to invest in small fry with the potential to achieve rapid growth but can not find enough good firms to back.

However, noting that the Scottish Executive had committed public sector funds to leverage in private sector money through the Scottish Coinvestment Fund, Stephen said: "Lots of people will tell you there's a shortage of good ideas and good management teams; I disagree with that.

"Some of our companies struggle to achieve that initial venture capital investment."

Highlighting the fact that on some measures investment by Scottish businesses in research and development that may be essential to improving productivity lagged well beyond more successful areas, he pointed the finger again. "In Scotland it tends to be . . . that R&D is often an area you want to be able to put a red line through. That is very dangerous and shortsighted and ultimately damaging for the economy."

The criticisms got short shrift from the venture capital industry. "As an industry we invest in every sector of the economy across all regions. In 2005, in Scotland we invested GBP114m in 96 companies, " said the British Venture Capital Association. "We are always looking to make a good investment. If the opportunity is there we will take it."

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
SNP plans to cut rates for small businesses. Check it out:
(The Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE SNP yesterday announced plans to cut rates for small businesses, and the party's enterprise spokesman, Jim Mather, told parliament the small business bonus scheme would make the Scottish economy more competitive.



He told MSPs that red tape would also be reduced, with small businesses only having to apply for this on a fiveyearly basis to coincide with revaluation.

"Scotland can grow, Scotland can move forward. People are coming to that conclusion right, left and centre, " he said.

Mather added that Scottish Enterprise chairman John Ward had recently claimed that a 3.5-per cent rate of growth is required. He said: "That requires radical change.

"Our proposals are putting that radical change in place and we are persuading more and more people that we can end an era of relative decline which has lasted all my business lifetime.

"We are entering an era where we can have perpetual improvement and the personal and national economic cakes get progressively bigger."

He said this was in line with the success which Ireland has seen in recent years. "We can match what Ireland's doing because we are starting from a better place. We've got better infrastructure. We've got better and more universities, we've got stronger industry sectors and we've got fantastic natural resources, " he said.

A key objective for an SNP administration would be to become one of the top 15 most competitive countries in the western world and matching the 4-per cent per annum growth of small European nations, he added.

The SNP claims that its new small business bonus scheme will abolish business rates for 120,000 companies across the country.

Under the plans, business rates for firms with a rateable value of GBP8000 a year or less would be abolished.

Businesses with a rateable value of GBP8000 to GBP10,000 a year would get rates relief of 50-per cent while those with a rateable value of between GBP10,000 and GBP15,000 would have their bills cut by 25-per cent.

Mather also said that reducing the application for the scheme to once every five years, it would save the sector GBP10m.

Deputy Enterprise Minister Allan Wilson told the chamber that 98-per cent of Scottish firms fell into the small business category.

He claimed that the Scottish economy has performed well, with a GDP growth over the year to the first quarter of 2006 of 1.9-per cent.

He said: "This is above our long-term annual average and our most recent quarterly growth rate of 0.5-per cent is the strongest first-quarter performance for the Scottish economy since 2001.

"The Scottish labour market continues to perform exceptionally well, with over 160,000 Scots having entered employment since the creation of the Scottish parliament.

"Employment levels are at their highest since quarterly records began."

The minister added that 40-per cent of all private sector jobs were in small businesses.

Scottish corporate statistics show that the number of small businesses has risen from 226,510 in 1999 to 264,660 in 2004.

Total employment in small businesses is now 759,500.

He said: "That's real progress. That's real people in real, growing small businesses here in Scotland.

"Those businesses have an encouraging turnover of some GBP52bn here in Scotland and those are all positive aspects of our support for Scottish businesses."

Since 2003, about 70-per cent of nondomestic subjects in Scotland have benefited from a rates reduction of up to 50-per cent, the minister added, through the small business rates relief scheme.

"I believe that we have devised a scheme which significantly assists those small businesses who need help with paying their rates bill, " he said.

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
CNSIC and Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Invest in Salt Chemical Base. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Zhenjiang Salt and Chemical Co. Ltd of China National Salt Industry Corporation (CNSIC), which is the largest salt production and sales enterprise in Asia, Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co., Ltd, the leading company in China's chlor-alkali industry, and Dantu District People's Government have reached an Agreement on Salt and Alkali Integration Project, to invest CNY 2.8 billion in establishing the largest salt chemical base in domestic China.



This project can be divided into two phases. Phase I project includes installation of vacuum salt making plant, brine mining and transportation project, diaphragmatic alkali plant, thermal power plant and corresponding wharf and utility facility. Phase II project includes ion membrane caustic soda plant and propylene oxide plant.

From stocknews.com.cn, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Leading Industry Visionaries and Global Customers to Deliver Real-World Best Practices at Plateau's 11th Annual User Conference. Check it out:
ARLINGTON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Plateau Systems, a leading provider of software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational skills and talent, today announced its 11th annual user conference, Insights 2006. The conference, themed "Building a High Performance Workforce," will be held October 15-18 at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Orlando, and will feature an extensive customer-focused agenda with an impressive line-up of industry visionaries, customer presenters as well as hands-on educational tracks.



More than 200 customers are expected to attend the invitation-only conference which will also include the presentation of Plateau's annual Customer Excellence Awards. The company announced that it has received a record number of entries for the prestigious awards, which will be announced at the Insights Gala, sponsored by Deloitte at Disney's Animal Kingdom(R). Deloitte again heads an impressive list of Plateau partners scheduled to participate and exhibit, including WeLocalize, WebEx, Adobe and Thomson NETg.

Keynote Speakers

Featured keynote speaker Claire Schooley, senior analyst in Forrester's Information Delivery Research Group, will discuss the challenges of a dynamic workforce and the critical role learning, performance management, and succession planning play in addressing these challenges. Plateau executives including Paul Sparta, chairman and chief executive officer; Ed Cohen, chief technology officer; Joe Herman, senior vice president of product management and alliances; and Shelly Heiden, senior vice president of Plateau Global Services, will deliver keynote presentations focusing on Plateau's vision, product roadmap and customer innovation. Industry thought leaders and Plateau customers from pioneering global organizations including GE and The Walt Disney Company, and leading government agencies including NASA and the U.S. Air Force, will present case studies and best practices that focus on how Plateau is helping them create a high performance workplace.

-- Claire Schooley, Senior Analyst in Forrester's Information Delivery Research Group, will deliver a keynote entitled "Preparing for Future Workforce Transformation" focused on how effective learning, performance management, and succession planning strategies can help organizations address the challenges surrounding their changing workforce.

-- Colonel Thomas Giattino, U.S. Air Force, Chief, Aircrew Training & Standardization Division for AETC, will discuss best practices for leveraging Plateau's flexible software delivery options to deploy large-scale global training programs to service personnel worldwide.

-- Jill Honerlaw from GE will present "The Value of Integrated Learning and Performance" which will highlight the integrative advantages and cost/time savings benefits of deploying a unified learning and performance management solution that leverages a single data repository for both applications.

-- Barbara Howes, vice president, Enterprise Learning Strategy, The Walt Disney Company, will deliver a presentation titled, "Enterprise Learning Vision & Best Practices at Disney," highlighting lessons from Disney's recently launched enterprise-wide learning management system and discussing how it has enabled the company to align employee career development with the company's strategic initiatives."

-- Jason Averbrook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion, will present "Market Trends in Talent Management," which will explore the necessity for and benefits of aligning strategic corporate goals with individual results, with an emphasis on how a holistic view of people, processes, technology can enable organizations to achieve organizational success.

Attendees will enjoy access to more than 30 additional presentations focused on various aspects of Talent Management, including learning, performance, talent management, competencies and development, training, technology integration (including SCORM, AICC, hosting and infrastructure design, software validation and implementation). Conference sessions are aligned across three tracks - Learning, Performance, and Products & Services and will feature real-world customer case studies presented by HR and learning practitioners as well as developer and consultant-led product education sessions. To view the full conference agenda, visit http://www.plateau.com/insights/agenda.htm

Sessions will include the following topics:

-- Performance Management Trends and Systems

-- On-Demand Talent Management Suites

-- Integrated Learning and Performance

-- Competency-Based Talent Management Systems

-- Best Practices for leveraging Learning and Performance

-- Learning Management in Federal and Local Law Enforcement

-- Next Generation Content Integration

-- Skills and Competency Development for the Real-World

Sponsors & Partners

Plateau consistently leverages its alliances with leading business partners to deliver best-in-class solutions to its customers. Throughout the conference, attendees will have access to the Insights Partner Expo, featuring the latest in learning and IT solutions from Plateau's alliance partners. For a complete list of Insights sponsors and exhibitors, please visit http://www.plateau.com/insights/expo.htm

For complete event details and registration information, please visit the Plateau Insights 2006 Web site at http://plateau.com/insights

About Plateau

Plateau is a leading provider of adaptable Web-based software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational skills and talent to increase workforce productivity and business operations performance. Plateau's software is being used by some of the world's largest, most successful enterprises, including the American Red Cross, General Electric, Internal Revenue Service, and Wendy's International. Industry analysts, including Forrester Research and Bersin & Associates, have rated Plateau a leader in functionality, technology, and customer satisfaction. The company is headquartered in Arlington, Va. For more information, please visit www.plateau.com
Kyodo economic news summary -6-+. Check it out:
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO, Sept. 29_(Kyodo) _ ---------- Mitsui Chemicals to buy Daiichi Sankyo's pesticide unit

TOKYO - Mitsui Chemicals Inc. said Friday it will buy Daiichi Sankyo Co.'s pesticide manufacturing unit Sankyo Agro Co. with the aim of strengthening its agrichemical business.

Mitsui Chemicals said it has reached an agreement with the Daiichi Sankyo group to purchase all outstanding shares in Sankyo Agro, with the stock transfer scheduled for March 30 next year. The company declined to reveal the acquisition cost.



---------- Japan's housing starts up 1.8% in Aug., 1st rise in 2 months

TOKYO - Japanese housing starts in August rose 1.8 percent from a year earlier to 111,187 units for the first increase in two months, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Friday.

The ministry attributed the rebound to increases in starts of both owner-occupied houses and homes for sale, which outweighed the effects of a decline in starts of homes for rent.

---------- Takefuji to stop having borrowers' lives insured

TOKYO - Consumer loan firm Takefuji Corp. said Friday it will stop on Sunday the practice of having borrowers' lives insured, and will not purchase such policies for new lending contracts as of Nov. 1.

The announcement came after consumer loan companies were criticized for using borrowers' lives to recover loans. The firms have bought group life insurance contracts upon lending to borrowers in a bid to recover loans in the form of insurance money when borrowers die before completing repayments.

---------- Japan stays out of currency markets in Sept. for 30th month

TOKYO - Japan's currency authorities did not intervene in foreign exchange markets in September for the 30th straight month, the Finance Ministry said Friday.

The ministry said it conducted no market intervention via the Bank of Japan from Aug. 30 to Sept. 27, extending the intervention-free period since March 17, 2004.

---------- Mitarai, 3 others named for key gov't economic panel

TOKYO - Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said Friday the government has picked Japan Business Federation Chairman Fujio Mitarai and three others as new private-sector representatives at its powerful Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.

The other three are Uichiro Niwa, chairman of trading house Itochu Corp., Takatoshi Ito, professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Economics, and Naohiro Yashiro, professor of economics at the International Christian University.

---------- Toshiba to recall 830,000 Sony-made batteries for computers

TOKYO - Toshiba Corp. said Friday it will recall about 830,000 lithium-ion batteries made by Sony Corp. for its notebook personal computers on a global basis.

Toshiba's move, the first among Japanese computer makers, will deal another blow to Sony and is likely to prompt other laptop manufacturers to recall some of their products on concerns over possible overheating.

---------- Japan needs to amend negative views on foreign labor: experts

TOKYO - Experts including a former Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau chief agreed Friday in a symposium that more Japanese need to have a positive image toward foreign workers.

"Japanese people need to welcome" foreign workers as we "receive them as helpers" for solving issues related to Japan's declining population, Hidenori Sakanaka, who retired from the Justice Ministry last year, said at the symposium held in Tokyo.

---------- Yoshinoya lowers interim earnings estimate

TOKYO - Restaurant chain operator Yoshinoya D&C Co. said Friday it will book smaller-than-expected sales for the just-ended first half of the current business year due to the effects of preparations to put "gyudon" beef-on-rice dishes back on its menu.

Yoshinoya, once Japan's No. 1 provider of gyudon dishes, said it expects to register group sales of 62.24 billion yen for the March-August period, down from its projection of 63.40 billion in April.

---------- METI eyes loans, consultation to give small firms 'second chance'

TOKYO - The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees policies to support small businesses, is seeking a new loan system and consultation services to give failed entrepreneurs a "second chance," ministry officials said Friday.

The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency under METI has urged the government to create a special loan and credit guarantee system to encourage those who once failed in their businesses to make a fresh try, they said.

---------- Gov't plans tax waivers to help turn around Skymark Airlines

TOKYO - The transport ministry said Friday it has decided to help turn around the struggling business of Skymark Airlines Co. by invoking special industrial revival legislation.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will take advantage of the law, which took effect in 1999 amid a prolonged recession, to grant the carrier tax wavers worth some 8.4 million yen on its new share issuance over the next three years, ministry officials said.

Copyright 2006 Kyodo News International, Inc.

Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai

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Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Piper Jaffray & Co., the principal operating subsidiary of the America-based investment bank Piper Jaffray Companies (PJC), set up its third overseas branch in Shanghai on September 26 after the branches in London and Bombay.



Andrew Duff, the CEO of the bank revealed the move in Shanghai is a key part of the comprehensive development strategy of the bank, which would enhance its strength in the international medium-size investment and security market.

The bank, established in 1895 in Minneapolis, US, specializes in serving medium enterprises, investment groups, institutions, non-profit-making associations and institutional investors.

Since 2000, it had tapped into Asian financial markets and undertaken the first public placement of the Chinese enterprise UTStarcom in US.

From China Securities, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Market Set to Transform as Product Focus and Functionality Broaden. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42880) has announced the addition of Corporate Performance Management 2006 to their offering.

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions today focus on finance: Financial Consolidation, Budgeting and Planning, and Scorecards and Dashboards. This is understandable. Finance Departments need to handle the pressures for better and faster business performance numbers for regulatory compliance, transparency with stakeholders, and for business management. However, the CPM world is all set for radical change.



Enlightened CPM suppliers are re-positioning their offerings away from "only finance" and are embracing "enterprise performance management". These solutions model and measure not only the effects of actions across all enterprise departments, but also the underlying root causes and drivers using management methodologies like Balanced Scorecard. Performance Management software is set to become a means to provide business agility, alignment and accountability, not just finance metrics alone. OK, the vendors have talked about this for sometime - but the reality is that customers did not "buy into" the promise. Now the time is right as the business drivers and the technology readiness are aligned.

This report "Corporate Performance Management" introduces a fresh new way of looking at emerging customer requirements for CPM and profiles the solutions of the top 21 CPM technology providers. Using the graphic visualisation of our unique Bullseye(TM) diagrams, the author provides insight into how the vendors position their products and services in the marketplace - and how they compare in 10 different areas - be they implementation, support, or value for money for example. This report will prove to be an invaluable guide for end users evaluating suppliers' CPM offerings. The CPM report complements the Research report on Business Intelligence http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?r=339696 published in June 2006.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42880
Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc. Secures $9 Million in Series a Funding from Ignition Partners, Core Capital Partners and Chart Venture Partners. Check it out:
SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc., a leading software company that designs and builds IP-based group communications software, today announced it has closed its first round of venture capital funding, receiving $9 million from an investment group syndicate co-led by Ignition Partners and Core Capital Partners, and to include Chart Venture Partners. This investment will be used to accelerate the company's rapid growth through an extended focus on sales, marketing and partner development, as well as further advancement of its core WAVE technology.



"This investment allows us to accelerate our response to the incredible demand we are seeing from our partners and end customers, powering additional products, services and solutions with our core software technology," said Tom Guthrie, President and CEO of Twisted Pair Solutions. "Ignition, Core and Chart bring a wealth of experience that allows us to significantly increase the breadth of market-specific solutions as well as the depth of software components and development tools for our worldwide partners."

"The global communications environment has become increasingly complicated with new technologies and standards which are constantly evolving," said Adrian Smith, Principal at Ignition Partners. "We see a significant opportunity for a company like Twisted Pair that has the technical competence and experience to make these technologies work together to allow people to seamlessly communicate in any situation.

"Twisted Pair's solution has been tried and tested in some of the most demanding, mission-critical communications environments in the military and government. We believe that they are ideally positioned to solve communication interoperability challenges in many commercial segments."

Started in 1999, the WAVE software technology has been broadly accepted as the leading solution of choice for enabling and managing group communications and achieving interoperability. Thousands of customers in defense, public safety, finance, and utilities leverage the advantages of WAVE to connect people using disparate and often incompatible communications technologies into a single, interoperable and manageable communications system. WAVE specializes in managing and configuring group communications to meet an organization's needs while avoiding a fork-lift upgrade of existing communications equipment. Today, WAVE software technology is sold worldwide as bundled product suites through Twisted Pair's systems integration partners as well as OEM partners who build their own products and services using the WAVE Software Development Kit.

"Interest in WAVE software technology is at an all time high and increasing with each deployment," said Rene Grossrieder, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Twisted Pair. "Our ability to harness this growth and establish aligned business processes with crisp execution is significantly enhanced with this round of funding. New marketing, sales and business development initiatives are already underway and will be a driving force in achieving previously unattainable levels of growth, profitability and partner development."

"Twisted Pair represents the perfect convergence of technology and the needs of homeland security and public safety," commented Tom Wheeler, Managing Director at Core Capital. "The WAVE technology, which is now deployed with our forces in Iraq to help them communicate, can do the same for fire fighters, police, hospitals and other emergency service providers. Gone is the tragedy of September 11, when fire fighters and police could not communicate with each other, the WAVE platform allows all radios, cell phones, and laptops to communicate with each other regardless of the technology used or frequency on which they operate."

In addition, Ted Hobart from Chart Venture Partners added, "Twisted Pair's WAVE technology addresses an immediate and pressing need for interoperability among military communications networks, particularly for units deployed in theater, which is among the most challenging markets and operating environments. We believe the Company's leading technology can also be leveraged more broadly for civilian and military communications programs, as well as large commercial markets and that the team is well positioned to execute its strategy for growth."

The new board will be comprised of Tom Guthrie, President and CEO of Twisted Pair Solutions, Shaun Botha, Chief Technology Officer of Twisted Pair Solutions, Tom Wheeler, Partner of Core Capital and Adrian Smith, Principal of Ignition Partners.

About Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc.

Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc. designs and builds enterprise software solutions that enable interoperable group communications. Our WAVE software manages real-time, secure, group communications over the IP network, linking in people and devices. The application suite serves an unlimited variety of devices including radios, personal computers, cell phones, and IP phones and allows previously incompatible systems to work together seamlessly. In addition, Twisted Pair's management server capabilities enable robust device and user management leveraging IP as the protocol of choice for open, reliable and highly scaleable communications. Twisted Pair Solutions is headquartered in Seattle, Washington USA with offices in the Netherlands, UK and Australia. Visit us at www.twistpair.com

About Ignition Partners

Ignition Partners, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is a premier venture capital firm dedicated to helping the best entrepreneurs seize opportunity - from turning their early stage idea into a business, to hiring the right team, providing the right industry and functional insight and connections, and growing their business strategically, globally, and financially to realize the best ultimate outcome. Ignition invests in emerging and future leaders in communications, Internet, software, and services across business and consumer targets. Ignition brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, technical expertise, and global operational experience. Ignition's partners are proven business leaders who have built some of the world's most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows and Office, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, and Starbucks. www.ignitionpartners.com

About Core Capital Partners

Core Capital is a Washington, DC-based venture fund with over $370 million under management. The firm invests in a wide range of disruptive technologies, with a particular focus on telecommunications hardware and software, wireless applications, enterprise software, network security, ecommerce, and web and communications services. Core invests in both early-stage and later-stage companies. Sample portfolio companies include InPhonic, Sourcefire, NexTone Communications, buySafe, RoundBox, Trust Digital, Trinity Convergence, and IXI. www.core-capital.com

About Chart Venture Partners

Chart Venture Partners concentrates its investments in the homeland defense and security markets, with an emphasis on dual-use technologies (government and commercial). Through an exclusive Strategic Partner Agreement with InSitech, Inc., the sole Partnership Intermediary for US Army's Picatinny Arsenal/ARDEC (Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center), Chart Venture Partners has unique access to research facilities and potential customers in the military and homeland security arenas. www.chartventures.com
Wave to Present at The New York Society of Security Analysts' ''Small Cap Innovators'' Conference, Thurs., October 5th at 3:50 p.m.. Check it out:
LEE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Wave Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: WAVX) (www.wave.com) announced today that Wave CFO, Gerard T. Feeney, will be presenting at The New York Society of Security Analysts' Small Cap Innovators Conference on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 in New York City. Wave's presentation is scheduled for 3:50 p.m. EDT and will made available for replay on the NYSSA website (www.nyssa.org) a few days following the presentation. The conference will take place in New York City at The New York Society of Security Analysts, 1177 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor (between 45th & 46th Streets)



New York Society of Security Analysts

Since 1937, The New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) has educated and informed investment professionals, providing them with a vibrant forum for the exchange of ideas and information. NYSSA promotes awareness and understanding of securities analysis, investing, and the operation of the securities markets. For more information, visit www.nyssa.org or contact them at (212) 541-4530.

About Wave Systems

Wave Systems solves the most critical security problems for enterprises and government with software solutions that are trustworthy, reliable, easy to use, and offer a speedy return on investment. Wave's trusted computing software solutions include strong authentication, data protection, advanced password management and enterprise-wide trust management services. For more information about Wave, visit http://www.wave.com.

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PHILIP MORRIS KUBAN'S H1 NET PROFITS SIX TIMES UP TO 87,862,000 RUBLES. Check it out:
(Tobacco Briefing Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The enterprise has declined to comment on the reasons behind
this growth in net profits. A press release by Philip Morris
notes that this year the enterprise plans introducing a new
tobacco drying technology.

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Does virtualization drive the future?. Check it out:
(EDN Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Over the 50 years since the first tabloid issue of
Electrical Design News
, underlying forces
have driven the evolution of the electronics industry. Since manufacturers
first fabricated transistors using photolithography, the inexorable shrinking
that process enabled has changed the world. Since it first became viable to put
a stored-program computer on a few chips, the shift of functions from hardware
to software has changed the world, as well.

These forces have been obviouswith obvious results. But consider
a more abstract and less obvious driving force that has, arguably, also been
important, and in the future may unleash a revolution as great as those of the
IC and microprocessor.

You could call that underlying trend "virtualization." The word is not
susceptible to a one-line definition, so let's digress for a moment. When you
use electrical quantities to perform physical work or release light, you say
the system is electrical. When you use the same quantitiescharge,
current, or voltageto convey information rather than merely to do work,
you say that the system is electronic. Virtualization is, in this sense, a step
beyond electronics. A systembe it a physical process, an object in the
real world, or an imaginary personis virtualized when it has undergone
three key steps. First, a boundary must isolate the system from its
environment. Second, designers identify the inputs and outputs that cross the
boundary, along with the transforms that produce the outputs, thus modeling the
system. Third, designers produce a functionally equivalent blockone
that accepts the same inputs and produces the same outputs under the same
circumstanceswith an electronic system.

From at least the mid-1960s, engineers have used electronic systems to
virtualize physical thingseither components of the electronic system
itself or objects in the outside worldand incorporate those models in
place of the real objects. This virtualization has made it possible for
electronic systems to behave as if they had hardware that they did not have. It
has also allowed systems to behave as if they were interacting with a world
from which they were isolatedeither by distance or by the fact that
that world didn't exist. These capabilities have accelerated the growth of
electronics and in the future are likely to lend electronic systems
capabilities that in the past were the province of humans alone.

In the beginningOne of the earliest exercises in virtualization waslike many a
breakthrough that later became standard practice in computer
architecturean advance in the IBM (
www.ibm.com
) 360 mainframe family. Before that
time, machine-code instructions in computers referenced memory through physical
addressesnumbers representing physical locations on the surface of a
drum or, after the development of magnetic cores, physical locations within the
array of small ferrite cores.

The development of virtual memory rested on the idea that the addresses
that machine instructions created needn't be the last word. If arithmetic
hardware were fast enough, it could translate addresses from the computer
program on the fly into physical addresses using some prearranged mapping. This
feature allowed a program that was assembled to run at one location in physical
memory to execute in another locationeven if the programmer had not
made all the memory references relative to the contents of a base register.
More important, it also meant that programs could run on a machine whose
physical memory was many times smaller than the virtual-address range the
program used. A portion of the operating systema well-developed concept
by this timecould allocate portions of the physical memory as necessary
for the immediate needs of the program, swapping blocks of information onto and
off of disk drives as necessary. By extension, this ability meant that a
modest-sized machine could concurrently run a number of large programs,
convincing each of them that it had access to all the physical memory it wanted
when in fact it was borrowing small blocks of memory on an as-needed basis.
Severing the link between the program's address spacewhich now became
virtualand the physical-address space was a huge and vital step in the
creation of modern data processing. But it was far from the last one.

At first glance, it might appear that this scenario has little to do
with the definition of "virtualization." However, the process executes all of
the steps in virtualization. IBM's designers isolated physical memory from the
rest of the mainframe system. They identified the inputsaddresses and
write dataand the outputstiming signals and read
datathat characterized the system. And they constructed a combination
of hardware, which would become a memory-management unit, and software, which
would become the virtual-memory manager that created a virtual main memory.

Virtualizing the IT worldRich Lechner, vice president of IBM Virtualization (
www-03.ibm.com/systems/ virtualization
), defines
the term as "the logical representation of resources not constrained by
physical devices." He points out that, when you use virtualization in this way,
it can "either treat one physical resource as if it were many or treat many,
possibly dissimilar, resources as if they were one." Lechner traces the
beginnings of virtualization to the 360 family's virtual-memory-system debut 40
years ago. But he says the practice has become far broader today than simply
virtualization of memory, which is now a common practice even in
microprocessors. "At one level, we can gather all of the storage assets
available to a network into a single pool of storage," Lechner says. In this
way, any program executing in the environment has access to all of the storage
assets of the network through a single interface.

But if you are not careful, you will face chaos. The location of stored
data does make a differencein access time, cost, persistence, and
coherence. So, for storage, virtualization has come to mean more than just
providing a mapping from a single mass-storage API (application-programming
interface) to a diverse set of storage devices. "The next level involves the
routine cleansing and deduplicating of the storage system," Lechner explains.
The virtualization system must make sure to remove stale copies of data,
propagate updates, eliminate duplicate data sets, and keep data in a place that
is most convenient to its clients. "This all by itself is a significant
benefit," Lechner says. "Our field studies indicated that, before
virtualization, the average midsized enterprise stores the same data in at
least 20 places around the network."

The process does not stop with storage systems. In just the same way,
system programmers can identify the computing resources in a network, give them
wrappers that present a common API, and hence virtualize them. In this way, the
computing power available to an application becomes a slice of the entire
computing community on the network, not simply the power of the machine on
which the application happens to be running.

The next step in this process is even a bit more abstract. You can
virtualize storage devices and servers, but what about applications? In exactly
the same way, system programmers can draw a wrapper around each application,
provide it with a set of APIs, and make it available to the network as a
virtual applicationsay, a virtual database. Thus, when an application
program executes in the network, it may be interacting with virtual-storage
devices on a number of storage networks, running on a virtual processor when
parts of the code are executing on a half-dozen servers around the network, and
calling virtual applications that may be data-bases from different vendors with
different organizations.

IT to embedded computingAll this virtualization might seem to be irrelevant to anything outside
the IT (information-technology) world. But if you think of a multicore embedded
systembased on the IBM Cell processor, for exampleas a
heterogeneous collection of computing resources, storage assets, and
interconnects, perhaps the relevance becomes more clear. As has so often been
the case, the IT solution of today is the SOC (system-on-chip) solution of
tomorrow. Virtualization may be the concept that makes SOCs with diverse
computing sites usable in real applications.

In fact, we are already seeing indications that this is the case. At
IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center,
www.imec.be
) in Leuven, Belgium, researchers
have created a virtual model of a runtime-configurable, multicore-computing
system for software-defined radio. Antoine Dejonghe, a principal scientist at
IMEC, describes the situation: "IMEC's M4 project is creating a radio system
that can be agile in real time across wireless protocols and media types," he
says. "We believe that technology scaling by itself won't be enough to bridge
the energy gap between what our configurable architecture requires and what
batteries will be able to provide. So, the viability of the system depends on
being able to model the entire system, from analog front end through the
media-access-controller software, in terms of its energy consumption. We will
use this model to establish the optimum trade-off between energy and quality of
user experience at runtimeperhaps as often as every 10 msec."

Today, the models are under constructionusing the same sequence
of stepsto create a virtual software-defined radio. Designers have
theoretically modeled the analog front end, for instance, with approximately 11
control bits as inputs, along with theoretically calculating output power,
distortion, and energy consumption. The designers are now calibrating these
models against actual silicon measurements. They will construct similar models
to predict the performance and energy consumption of the configurations of
IMEC's ADRES (architecture-for-dynamically
reconfigurable-embedded-system)-computing cores in the radio project.

The result will be a virtualization of the radio that should execute in
software, consuming less than 5% of an ARM9 and continually optimizing the
radio for current traffic, link quality, and application variables (Figure 1
). This process, Dejonghe believes, can bridge
the gap between what batteries can deliver and what battery life users will
demand.

Creating a virtual worldIMEC's work creates a virtualization of a physical system. However,
designers are virtualizing larger and more complex systems. Another easy place
to find excitement in virtualization is in the world of electronic games.
Traditionally, that virtualization did not exist. Most video games today have a
lot more in common structurally with a Walt Disney cartoon than with a
simulation of the physical world. Games, like cartoons, have story lines. The
choices of the player do not directly interact with the world of the game;
players merely choose story lines, and the game proceeds down one of the paths
the scriptwriters designed for it.

This scenario is true even at the macro level. When you slip around the
corner and level the four-eyed alien from the planet Grr
with your super halitosis blaster, you unleash a
sequence of animation frames, in which the Grrien satisfyingly rips open,
tumbles through the air, and lands as a puddle of unfamiliar proteins. This
sequence is almost the reverse of motion estimation in video-compression
algorithms: It begins with a set of key frames and animates incremental motions
of objects against a relatively fixed back ground. To the player, the result is
much the same no matter which way he triggers the sequence, unless he
misses.

As games become richer and players become more sophisticated, this
situation causes a problem, according to Manju Hegde, chief executive officer
and chairman of gaming "physics-engine" developer Ageia. He has a vested
interest in this problem because Ageia supplies software and hardware
accelerators for performing the dynamic computations necessary for eliminating
the animation sequences and computing the trajectories of the spinning Grrien
bits.

No oneleast of all, the animatorswould dispute that it
is better to do a dynamics-based simulation of the objects in the game world
than to rely on animation sequences. However, the greatest benefit would be to
the game architects. Because of the labor involved in producing animation
sequences from key frames, a game can have only a limited number of animation
sequences. So, architects must confine the action of the game so that only a
limited number of outcomes are possible at any time. The art of game design
today is to make the game feel rich and unscripted without causing an
exponential explosion in the number of key frames that developers must
prepare.

Hegde illustrates with a rather less violent example: a basketball game.
"If you want a realistic slam-dunk sequence in your game, you start out by
rigging lights all over your star player and then you record him doing some
dramatic dunks," Hegde explains. "Then, back in the lab, you extract from the
recording key frames and interpolate the movement of the image edges to produce
animation. This animation can look natural on the screen, but, any time you
push the slam-dunk button in the right context, you are going to see the same
sequence."

The alternative approach is to build a physics-based model of our
herothat is, to virtualize him. "We create a physics-based model of the
body," Hegde says. "Today, it can be as detailed as having approximately 200
bones connected by six kinds of joints. We then model each of these bones and
joints according to the laws of physics. You apply forces to them, and they
respond. Now, the dunk becomes the dynamics of the individual bones and joints
in the model person. If you view a game from a distance during fast action, a
game might use just 20 bones to reduce the calculations, but it looks 'right.'"
Hegde thus describes a scenario that fits this article's definition of
virtualizationin this case, of a basketball forward.

This virtualization has so many advantages over conventional animation
that manufacturers wouldexcept for a couple of issuesproduce
all games in this way. One of these issues goes back to scripting. If the
outcome of the player's input depends on both physics and the game script, the
sequence of play can quickly become unmanageable. What if physics dictates that
the player breaks his wrist on the rim of the basket and leaves the court
writhing in pain? Game architects who employ physics-based models often
intervene in the simulation to direct it to allowable outcomes, so that the
game stays within its script. This delicate business blends physical simulation
and animation.

A more brutal problem is the amount of computing requirements. "Today,
an AMD FX-62 dual-core CPU running at 2.8 GHz may be able to handle a couple of
characters with extensive bone models," Hegde says. "But you couldn't do
physics-based simulation with a large number of characters on the screen at
once. The bursts of computation necessary to support a number of characters all
running, for instance, would overwhelm the processors."

Microsoft's Robotics Studio (
www.microsoft.com/robotics
) is developing a
similar application, also using Ageia's technology. Rather than playing games,
the Microsoft group provides a virtual-development environment for the
programmingand, eventually, the designof robots. Tandy Trower,
general manager of the group, says that the need for such an environment is
obvious across the spectrumfrom industry to education. On one end, with
a KUKA (Keller und Knappich Augsburg) Robotics (
www.kuka.com
) robotic arm selling for more than
$100,000, industrial developers need a low-cost environment in which to develop
and test programs. At the other extreme, robotics has proved to be one of the
few endeavors that can attract US students to engineering and mathematics. Even
simple robots, however, are far beyond the reach of most secondary schools,
even though students have proved capable of programmingand even
designingthem. So an affordable virtualization of a robot and its
surroundings would be a big win, and Microsoft is attempting to achieve that
goal.

Building a virtual world behind the Direct-X graphics environment, the
company has provided libraries of models for popular robots; primitives for
constructing physical objects, machines, and other robots; and a physics-driven
simulation engine to animate them. "There are two ways of creating entities,"
Trower explains. "Developers can write them directly as codein C,
Visual Basic, Python, and the likethrough a managed code interface or
assemble them from basic geometric shapes and assign them physical
characteristics, such as mass, hardness, and so on" (Figure 2
). Once you set them in motion, the robots,
which are themselves entities, can interact with other entities, including
other robots, in a world that physical laws govern.

Trower points out that, although Microsoft's work in this area is on one
level similar to the physics-based modeling that is starting to appear in
games, it differs dramatically at another level. "Games take place in a
well-defined environment," he says. "Robot simulation does not. You have to
work out everything that happens based on physics, because there is no script."
Trower says that the virtualization technology could move from the development
tool into the robots themselves. For example, you can blend the simulation with
real-world sensor data. A robot that can include an optionaland
expensivelaser range finder, for example, might instead have a
virtualized range finder; fusing other sensor inputs to generate the range
data. In the future, you may see the next step: robots virtualizing the world
around them, a scenario that Brooke Williams, DSP-automotive-vision-marketing
manager at Texas Instruments (
www.ti.com
), sees before his own eyes.

"We are starting to see automobile-safety systems fusing sensor data to
create a virtual model of the car's surroundings," Williams says. "This model
can either be presented to the driver as warning information, or it can be used
to take control of the vehicle." For example, TI is combining radar, a good
tool for detection and ranging but poor for forming images, with machine-vision
systems, which are great at finding edges and bearings but poor at ranging or
detection. This combination of tools will allow the creation of virtual models
of the objects surrounding a car. "The object is to predict a crash; prepare
the vehicle by tightening seat belts, arming air bags, and closing the windows,
for instance; and attempting to take evasive action," Williams says.

But to achieve this goal, simple proximity warning is insufficient. The
tools must identify objects from their surroundings and track and categorize
them; the insurance industry must know that the system can distinguish between
pedestrians and shrubbery, for instance. You want to neither turn away in panic
from a car that can't physically reach your trajectory nor mow down a
pedestrian to avoid destroying a hedge. "Manufacturers are even talking about
external air bags that could deploy to protect pedestrians in collisions,"
Williams says. Such decisions require not just a measurement, but also an
understanding of the car's surroundings.

Therein lies a possible endpoint for the trend of virtualization:
electronic systems that can not only sense, but also model and predict their
environment. Such systems exhibit artificial intelligence and also express
virtualization. These systems, protecting drivers from their own folly,
exploring the otherwise-inaccessible reaches of the physical world, and using
their virtual models to reason about their surroundings, represent another
major expansion in the role of electronics.

You can reach Executive Editor Ron Wilson at 1-408-345-4427 and
[email protected].

Software I/O, virtual I/O, or software-assisted I/O?By David Fotland, Ubicom IncTypical microprocessor families have dedicated hardware for each I/O

function. This difference leads to families of chips with the same CPU but
different I/O mixes. Cost is higher because the semiconductor company must make
many chip versions, and mask costs are high in state-of-the-art process
technology. The alternative is to create an SOC (system on chip) with all of
the I/O hardware on the same chip. This approach also leads to higher cost,
because the customer is paying for silicon to implement I/O that he won't use
in his application.

The solution to this problem is software I/O. Some 8-bit
microcontrollers use this technique, called "bit-banged" I/O. If the
microcontroller has on-chip memory and deterministic execution, the software
can directly control I/O pins to implement the I/O protocol. A simple example
is a UART. The start bit causes an interrupt, and software reads the input pin
to receive the data. While the data is arriving, the CPU cannot do anything
else, so this technique is useful only for I/O that is infrequent or
intermittent. The interrupt-response time limits the use of this technique to
low-speed I/O.

Some 32-bit processors, such as those from ARM (
www.arm.com
) or MIPS (
www.mips.com
), can't use software I/O because
code execution is far from deterministic. Pipeline hazards and cache misses
make it impossible to use instructions for accurately timed external events.
Operating systems such as Linux turn off interrupts for milliseconds at a time,
making real-time I/O response impossible.

Ubicom (
www.ubicom.com
) has the only 32-bit CPU that
uses software I/O. The multithreaded CPU has a hardware scheduler that can
select a thread for execution during every clock. Real-time threads have a
fixed schedule and deterministic execution, even if other threads have
mispredicted branches or cache misses. The unit has 10 threads, so it can
allocate one real-time thread to each I/O port to manage that port.

The instruction set supports software I/O and packet processing. An
instruction can move data between memory and I/O. MIPS and ARM CPUs, in
comparison, need two instructions: a load and a store. Single instructions can
set, clear, or test any I/O bit. Interrupt-response time from an I/O event to
scheduling instructions in the managing thread takes only a few CPU clocks.
When an I/O port is idle, it suspends its managing thread, using no CPU
resources.

The high-performance, 32-bit CPU can use software-I/O for functions
more complex than a UART. Ubicom has implemented a full PCI bus at 27 MHz, MPEG
Transport Stream, IDE, and Utopia in software. It has also implemented MII
(media-independent interface) for 10/100-Mbps Ethernet, USB, SPI, GPSI
(graphics-processor software interface), and other serial interfaces with a
combination of hardware and software. By spending 10 to 20% of the CPU
throughput on software I/O, the company dramatically reduced the die area
necessary for I/O, resulting in a flexible single chip to cover a wide range of
applications.

Author's biographyDavid Fotland is chief technology officer of
Ubicom, where he led the architecture of the Ubicom multithreaded processor for
packet processing and software I/O. He is responsible for all aspects of
architecture and definition of processors and solutions.

Previously, Fotland spent 21 years at
Hewlett-Packard Co (
www.hp.com
) as lead engineer, project manager,
and system architect. He was a key participant in the PA-RISC instruction-set
definition and was lead designer of the first PA-RISC processor and system. He
was a leader in the development of the HP-Intel (
www.intel.com
) Itanium instruction
set.

Immersed in engineering, advanced 3-D visualization promotes
insightBy Jeff Brum, Fakespace SystemsAs electronics speed into an era in which manufacturers fabricate not

just circuits, but also physical structures themselves in nanoscale geometries,
the role of computer-based simulation as a design tool is increasingly
important. Correspondingly, the benefits of visualization in the review and
analysis of simulations play a growing role. Looking to the future, immersive
stereoscopic display tools will amplify the power of visualization.

The adoption of immersive visualization in electronics design revolves
around several factors. Atomic-scale phenomena, which are major concerns as the
semiconductor road map extends beyond the 65-nm-process node, have been major
players in advanced visualization techniques. Scientists at NIST (National
Institute for Standards and Technology,
www.nist.gov
), for example, use a stereoscopic
displaytwo walls and a floorto gain insight into the molecular
bonding of "smart-gel" polymers (Figure A and Reference A).

Similarly, researchers at LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory,
www.lanl.gov
) use a range of immersive
environmentsfrom wall-sized to a 43-million-pixel, five-walled
projected roomto view terascale data sets (Figure B). Bob Green,
visualization specialist at LANL, notes that the researchers "are viewing
simulations based on computations that generate more data than is contained in
the entire print collection of the Library of Congress in one calculation."

In engineering, visualization has had its largest impact to date in
macroscale CAD programs, such as automotive and aerospace design, and the
evaluation of complex structures for interferences that are not readily
apparent in simpler graphical representations. As simulation and visualization
data accumulate in MEMS (microelectromechanical-system) design, this type of
modeling and simulation will grow in importance. The ability to visualize and
"fly through" transistor-scale structures and even large segments of a complex
microcircuit design will also benefit from advanced 3-D visualization that
blends multiple streams of data, including device characteristics,
interconnects, and material behavior.

Wall- or even room-sized immersive displays support a more
collaborative, more intuitive, style of work than do graphics processors. A
major benefit in the review of complex structures is the ability to "move"
freely along all three axes of an image and still maintain the visual acuity of
high-resolution desktop processors. (Today's projectors support resolution of
14001050 pixels or higher.) Viewing nanoscale design can feel like
taking a helicopter tour over a dense city center with the ability to identify
and zoom into landmarks. Improved insight and collaboration lead to faster and
better decisions, speeding time to market and reducing development costs.

Although researchers are just beginning to measure the benefits of
immersive visualization (Reference B), they generally agree that they bring new
levels of insight to engineers and scientists. In immersive visualizations,
groups of users can view the inner workings of devices and gain deeper
understanding of electromagnetic effects and the relationships between elements
of a design. With the availability of dual PC clusters and advanced graphics
cards, these types of virtual environments no longer require specialized
graphics supercomputers. The increased accessibility of immersive visualization
makes its addition to the tool kit of electronic engineers practical and
inevitable.

References"Recipe for a Shake Gel," National Institute for Standards and
Technology, Aug 27, 2003,
www.nist.gov/public_affairs/newsfromnist_smartgels.htm
.

Kraak, Menno Jan, "Beyond Geovisualization,"
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
,
May/June 2006, Volume 26, No 3, pg 6.

Author's biographyJeff Brum is a vice president at Fakespace
Systems (www.fakespace.com), a division of Mechdyne Corp with a 15-year history
of developing and supporting advanced systems for immersive visualization in
science, engineering, and public-exhibition applications.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
Motorola Set for $3.9B Symbol Purchase. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In a move that brings together a shared vision of a digital, mobile world for enterprises, http://www.motorola.com/Motorola Inc. is set to acquire all outstanding shares of enterprise mobility technology provider Symbol Technologies Inc http://www.symbol.com/.



Under terms of the agreement, Motorola will pay $15 per share in cash, for a total equity value of approximately $3.9 billion on a fully-diluted basis the companies noted.

As of June 30, Symbol had approximately $200 million of net cash.

Upon completion of the transaction, Symbol will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola and will be the cornerstone of Motorola's networks and enterprise business.

Motorola said it intends to maintain Symbol's Holtsville, N.Y. headquarters, which will be the new core of Motorola's global enterprise mobility business.

Symbol designs, develops, manufactures and services products and systems used in end-to-end enterprise mobility solutions featuring rugged mobile computing, advanced data capture, radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless infrastructure and mobility management.

"Motorola and Symbol share the same vision of a digital, mobile world for enterprises that matches the world people enjoy at home and at play," Motorola's chairman and CEO, Ed Zander, said in a statement.

The transaction is expected to be accretive to Motorola's earnings per share in the first year following closing, excluding certain non-cash charges relating to amortization associated with acquired intangibles and other one- time accounting and transaction-related costs.

The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approval and the approval of Symbol's stockholders, and is expected to be completed late this year or early next year.

Motorola said the acquisition of Symbol will not affect the pace of its share repurchase activity http://www.edn.com/article/CA6355665.html.

In July, the company completed the $4 billion share buyback program that it first announced in May 2005, which had authorized the buyback of up $4.5 billion of its outstanding shares of common stock over the next 36 months.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

AMD Opens Socket Specs

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AMD Opens Socket Specs. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Advanced Micro Devices http://www.amd.com/us-en/ is ready to open up. This week, the microprocessor provider unveiled the Torrenza Innovation Socket Initiative for many of their current and future server platforms.



This approach is expected to allow OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, and allow third-party silicon makers to create their own socket-compatible chips for AMD's x86 base.

While AMD did not specify the terms of future licensing contributions, its newest specification is approaching an open industry standard: OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation socket specification and associated design documentation.

This weeks debut is the latest addition to AMDs Torrenza initiative http://www.edn.com/article/CA6340364.html, which provides a way for others to connect their technology directly to AMD chips through the company's HyperTransport interface. At its debut in June, the Torrenza initiative opened up AMDs processors by letting companies plug in their coprocessors via an external connection called "HTX."

Previously, a separate design was typical in coprocessors; with AMD's approach, the time and cost of taking the coprocessor route can potentially be reduced.

The new program already has a serious fan base. Server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza initiative, including Cray http://www.cray.com/, Fujitsu Siemens Computers http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/, HP http://www.hp.com/, IBM http://www.ibm.com/, Dell http://www.dell.com/ and Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com/, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.

The chip maker is anticipating the latest Torrenza development to make a big splash. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms, Marty Seyer, senior VP of AMDs commercial segment, said in a statement.

Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, he added.

The finance world is recognizing AMDs progress as well. AMDs latest moves have bolstered its profile in the enterprise, Wall Street watcher Lehman Brothers said in a statement and the firm expects to see AMD trending solidly for Q3.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

An Individualistic Island

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An Individualistic Island. Check it out:
(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) An Individualistic Island

Tony O'Reilly

In the concluding part of the interview, Sir Anthony O'Reilly tells Constantin Gurdgiev about his views on the future of Ireland, the influence of the EU, our regulatory climate and competitiveness.

CONSTANTIN GURDGIEV: You've mentioned ComReg. Some would say that, so far, ComReg has been mostly a conduit for EU regulation implementation in Ireland rather than an original player in the marketplace. What is your feeling about this spread of Brussels's remit over local regulation?



TONY O'REILLY: There are very few regulators who would go 100% against what Brussels wants. There is a degree of flexibility in the overall remit from Brussels that can be interpreted at the regional level by individual regulators, but I think all of them are moving in the same direction, and I think Comreg latterly has done a good job for the industry and the consumer against this criterion.

Fundamentally, the word that dominated Irish political thinking for many years has been sovereignty - the abstract idea that ruled our State for some 70 years. But what does it mean?

In relation to Brussels we substantially reduced our sovereignty to act unilaterally. That has been the price that we've paid, so that now 70% of all laws and regulations are not being set by the Dail, they are made by Europe. When we joined Europe, I don't think we fully understood what this menu really contained, nor do we fully understand it today.

But because our joining of the EU was lubricated by substantial transfers of assets and money, we ate prepared to accept it almost categorically.

There is certainly a case for questioning this - and I am sure in time there will be a party in Ireland that will do so. There is a view that the European Union was launched on the basis of a number of ideas, among them that it will be able to control economic activity and that French farmers, for example, would never be exposed to world competition.

CCS: There is a third dimension of trade - trade in services - that also crashed at the walls of Europe. The initial rejection of the Services Directive and subsequent watering down of its provisions - this was also driven by France.

TOR: Well, the French are very clever, very centralist.

They will always look after their own interest.

The CAP was set up basically to favour French farmers interests and it will continue to be shaped along these lines. All international trade movements, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the rest of the market reforms will collide with the rock of the agricultural subsidies in Europe. Globalisation will affect everything that is industrial, but it will not change agriculture substantially.

I always believed that Europe will be run in the German image, but it will be Franco-centric in its policies - de Gaulle's famous "Europe Des Patrie". This is fair - we know who we are playing against and what the rules of the game are, and our civil servants in Dublin and Brussels are very astute, but Brussels is not a collection of jolly people sitting around the table and thinking - "how can we integrate with the world economically?"

It is a collection of jolly people sitting around the table and thinking - "how can we protect France or how can we improve Germany?"

Yet, I still think that despite these problems, there are many areas where the main thrust of Brussels is positive. And we are the beneficiaries of it in Ireland.

Flight path for Aer Lingus

CG: You spoke earlier about capital mobility and the threats this presents if we were to fail to assure fair return on imported capital. Are you optimistic about the possibility for the successful sale of Aer Lingus, given the conditions of partial privatisation - the share retained by the unions and the State?

TOR: The Esot played a pivotal - and under the leadership of Con Scanlon - a very constructive part in the Eircom story, and the Esot will pay a very important part in the attractiveness of Aer Lingus going to market.

I am conscious that there are enormously important intrusions by some governments in the process of private ownership of companies.

Take South Africa, where the government now demands that 25% of all companies must be owned by black investors or employees. While socially laudable, this does have an effect on foreign investment there.

In the case of Aer Lingus, people will look at the prospectus and they will ask themselves what rate of return on capital can they get over the next 10 years by investing in an Irish airline and what kind of risks do these returns contain.

Ryanair probably will give them a sense of encouragement because it was able to do something that no one else could.

I think Ryanair is a poster-child for Irish private capitalism and they have done a remarkable job and I think Michael O'Leary is a remarkable leader. So I feel that people will look at Aer Lingus from a pure return on capital point of view, risk adjusted for the share ownership structure and for the growth prospects of the airline.

The unions are not the key to everything. When you look at foreign investment in Ireland, multinational companies sidelined the issue of the unions and built on this.

In the case of Eircom, the injection of money into Esot did help us to reduce the size of the workforce from around 10,700 to some 7,000 employees.

We paid a big price for this, but I believe that this is yet another form of risk that one has to deal with.

International capital lessons

CG: Going back to the Eircom story - after the IPO, you stayed on as chairman, even though you were neither a majority shareholder nor were you earning an exceptional salary from this. If investing in State-owned enterprises is all about return on the capital, why did you choose to make such a decision?

TOR: I felt a strong sense of responsibility to the new board of directors and the incoming shareholders. I had made money out of Eircom through my investment in the Valentia consortium and there was, at the time, talk about venture capitalists coming in, making money and getting out, with the accusation that they somehow left an underfunded and a weakened company behind.

This was not so - just look at the subsequent stock performance relative to the broader telecom markets. I think it was very important that there was an orderly return of Eircom to the market and it was equally important that as chairman I should act as an entirely impartial party.

At Valentia, the challenge was allocating resources, and all of the partners - Providence Capital, George Soros and Goldman Sachs - brought precise discipline to the whole process of capital allocation and cost management. And I think we proved our point - we satisfied the demands of the shareholders, built a leaner and more efficient company and refloated it, and the people who bought it from us recently sold on to Babcock & Brown and made 62% in 18 months.

And as I said two weeks ago, only airlines - Ryanair and I might add Aer Lingus - have reduced their prices over the last seven years.

Everything else - gas, electricity, road tolls, food, etc - has gone up in price during that period.

So it was not the case of venture capitalists deciding to take everything out of the company and squeeze the assets.

It has been a really successful process for both consumers and the investors. But most importantly, it's been a progressive process for the watching international financial community who now have that little bit more confidence in investing in Irish assets than they had some years ago.

Competitive advantage

CG; In your view, then, Eircom is part of the story of the important drivers of Irish growth - privatisations, development of the markets, inflow of capital and improvements in the way global financial markets view Ireland. Taxation is yet another factor. After years of success, with other countries - most significantly those of eastern Europe - moving fast into our space, do we still hold a competitive edge?

TOR: I think our competitive advantage is seriously threatened today and I feel that Ireland must be made aware that the current prosperity can obscure for us the fact that everyone in the new Europe has woken up to the anatomy of the Irish miracle.

These new countries set out to replicate our success and they know full well that it was largely founded on the basis of low taxes. I am trying to articulate the need for reproducing the low-tax regime found in the Republic of Ireland and bringing it to Northern Ireland. I recently met Gordon Brown to advance this argument and said that the introduction of a standard rate of tax across the island at 12.5% would make investment on this island location-indifferent.

In fact every party in Northern Ireland agrees on this point - a low-tax regime in Northern Ireland can bring about a huge spurt of economic activity. So the answer is that it is going to get tougher and tougher for Ireland because new European countries are going to strive for lower tax rates than us.

Again, if you can make a product, say Dell computers, and you are indifferent in your business to things like the language spoken by the workers, then look at Estonia - it gives you productive young workers at no tax at all. There will be pressure on the companies operating in Ireland today to go east. But an additional problem is that, with the rising cost of doing business here and shortages of labour, we are actually losing our competitiveness vis-a-vis the old European states.

Models for growth?

CG: There is a penchant in Ireland to compare ourselves to the two main models -the Nordic and the US. Yet another model that is almost never mentioned in Ireland is that of Hong Kong. Like Ireland, it is a small, open economy adjoining a giant one. From your point of view, would you rather see Ireland moving closer to Hong Kong or to Stockholm?

TOR: I think if you visit Hong Kong, you must be excited by how energetic the place really is. You cannot but notice also how just beyond the perimeter, there is that great country called China. There is a pulsating appetite from the mainland for everything produced in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, there are many social problems, such as uncontrolled immigration and the fact that it is a somewhat artificial world, along the lines of Malaysia and Singapore.

I don't think that these are viable models for us - they lack the same sense of individualism that we have, they are more centralised, and the state, ideologically, not welfare-wise, plays a far more central role there.

Ireland is a very individualistic country, we take a more competitive approach to running our business and we are more personal in the way we run our own lives. Chinese and Asian cultures in general are more docile, so a "strong man" approach to management can work there on a larger scale than it can in Ireland.

I do like the Swedish model in terms of the welfare it provides, but I dislike it in terms of taxation. I think it is very interesting to see that the big Swedish companies now primarily operate outside Sweden, and the country's growth must inevitably have been impacted over recent years.

What is important is that Ireland should not take its new prosperity for granted, for it might become a very shortterm thing unless we find new innovative ways to support it.

The only way we really can galvanise the economy for the next 25 years is to attract more and more international capital - both human and financial - into Ireland. That is why I think the issues of immigration and capital should be central to how we think about the future of this country.

Immigration

CG: On immigration, just few weeks ago Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte repeated his comments about the danger of an "open doors" immigration policy toward eastern European workers. Do you share his concerns?

TOR: Ask yourself: what made America grow? Immigration is the answer. The skills of the world came to America, seized new opportunities and even today the debate about Mexican workers recognises this. It is unavoidable that we are going to have immigration as long as we have new physical and financial capital coming into the country. This is the main benefit of being a member of the common market.

So what Pat Rabbitte is really saying is that the unions are hugely challenged by this, by events like the Irish Ferries dispute. We can slam shut the doors on immigration the way the French did with their Polish plumber campaign.

There are certain countries in Europe that do hold a different view of immigration than we do. But your question is whether we can sustain our open door policy.

My view is that yes, we should be able to sustain our policy on immigration. But this does not apply to everyone. For example, where do secularism and religion come into it? It is an entirely new debate, which Ireland, inevitably, will have to face.

CG: Yet the Irish Ferries dispute taught us also about the lack of proper policy debate in Ireland. In the majority of western democracies, the debate is quite often being driven by business leaders, openly speaking about their views on Government policies, as well as by intellectuals.

In Ireland, it is virtually unheard of that a businessperson would stimulate a debate about policies. We seem to be more comfortable with sponsoring festivals and golf events than with sponsoring research into social policies and promoting alternative views and ideas. Do you feel that, as we become more comfortable with our newly acquired wealth, we will see the emergence of more policy-conscious and more proactive business leaders?

Think tanks

TOR: When you asked the question about why I stayed at Eircom, I answered it by saying that I wanted to be a champion of the capacity of Ireland to build real public ownership of companies through the marketplace. This was a statement of my belief in that debate and certainly the wider audience, the City of London or US capital markets for example, will have no doubt now that it is possible to get a fair deal in Ireland.

Of course in the US, for example, you have the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institute and many other think tanks that span the whole political spectrum. These are very important catalysts for the way the American political system works. We don't have these here. We should have them. I think the ESRI is a fine starting point.

We need centres for catalysing the debate - not just the employers or Ibec's views or the unions' views, but think tanks and our business schools expressing trenchant views of our society and structures. So far we have a rather simplistic adversarial relationship between, say, the trade unions and the employers.

Yet, when you ask Irish people, "What do you class yourself as?", the vast majority of the people believe that they are "middle class." I often wonder who represents them at the partnership table?

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Glanbia Ploughs Global Fields

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Glanbia Ploughs Global Fields. Check it out:
(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Glanbia Ploughs Global Fields

As EU agricultural subsidies disappear, the domestic market gets more challenging.

Glanbia's John Moloney explains its strategies to John Walsh.

Glanbia is one of those companies that offers a good insight into the changing face of Irish society. Born out of the merger of Waterford and Avonmore Co-ops, it is steeped in the dairy industry that once dominated the Irish economic landscape. In the days before the current boom, farmers were seen - rightly or wrongly - as being one of the few economically advantaged groups in society. How times have changed.



Developments in the domestic economy put the agri-sector in perspective. And the changing dynamics of the global trade environment have forced significant changes on Irish farming.

The level of subsidies handed down to Irish farmers as part of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was the subject of much heated debate during the 1980s and the early part of the 19905. But as soon as the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement was hammered out in 1994, it set in motion a chain of events that would eventually open up European markets to much cheaper produce from developing countries.

And in tandem with open trade policies, European farmers had to learn how to survive without the generous support funding that had helped prop up many areas within the agri-sector.

Inevitably, there was a huge backlash from farmers' organisations. The wholesale demise of Irish farming was seen as inescapable reality. And if the ground was shifting under Irish farmers, then that meant that companies like Glanbia also faced increasing uncertainty.

After all, a secure supply of dairy produce is needed to be a successful dairy processor and food manufacturer. Over the past decade, spiralling property prices have lured many farmers away from agri-pursuits.

The complexion of the farming sector once this speculative boom dies down is causing widespread concern.

Glanbia group managing director John Moloney acknowledges these difficulties: "The ingredients business is challenging currently because we have reforms of the dairy sector across Europe, where the support prices are being reduced by the order of 25% over a three-year period. That is through '04, '05 and '06 and a partial one in '07. So I think the big issue in the first half of this year has been that we have seen two parts of that come together.

Effectively last year's impact was defrayed because you had high international prices for dairy products. They have come off a bit - not dramatically. But it did mean that you had to catch up from last year's reform and this year's coming together in one year, and that has led to an impact on ingredients in Ireland in terms of dairy market returns. At the same time, you have costs moving in the other direction."

Moloney argues that the reform period is coming to an end and that from now on there will be a period of adjustment at both farm level and processing level. But it is this period of adjustment that has prompted some speculation that there will be a supply shock if too many farmers quit the dairy sector.

"If you take any of the studies that have been done, Ireland has 25,000 dairy farmers currently and if you look at AgriVision 2015 report done by the Department of Agriculture based on Teagasc economic forecasts, you could get down to 12,000 dairy farmers who would have scaled up - producing the quota or close to it and would be compensating for the price effect through increased scale and efficiency and that or some level of that is going to happen.

It is important that you bear in mind as well that there are significant differences in efficiency between the top 20% and the bottom 20% - of the order of 45 cents per gallon. That far exceeds the level of milk price reduction that is being implemented in the industry to date."

Moloney points to the quota exchange set up by the Department of Agriculture as a step in the right direction and a move that Glanbia had lobbied for to ensure a smooth transition and prevent a supply shock. "Historically farmers who wish to expand have had the resources in terms of land and capital but are constrained by their ability to get quota at reasonable value.

We hope that the exchange mechanism when the first one is introduced in December will begin to contribute to that."

Moloney expects a smooth transition. He says it will be very difficult for families that have been lifelong dairy farmers to jettison their livelihoods. "But I think you also have to see it in the context that Ireland is also different.

There are far greater opportunities. Land values have generally kept pace with the property market which is an important backdrop in terms of the farm balance sheet," he adds.

Glanbia has been running workshops for every 18-20 suppliers from across its supply base in order to provide assistance and support while the trading environment remains challenging.

Glanbia comprises a plc and a co-op. The co-op has a 54% holding in the plc. And in a move to cushion the removal of support prices, the dividend from the plc accruing to co-op shareholders is used to compensate for loss of earnings. Even though it is only on an anecdotal level, Business & Finance has sounded out a number of dairy farmers about the future of the sector in Ireland. They were much more pessimistic than the Teagasc report. They argue that new nitrate and waste water management directives coming from Brussels will put too much burden on farmers to make it tenable in the longer term.

Moreover, they claim that there will be big problems with succession issues as the next generation of farmers are taking up much more lucrative positions outside the industry.

Government dig-out

The Government has chipped in with a plan to help smooth over the transition to the post-CAP environment by announcing a EUR300m-aid package for the industry. Although Moloney points out that only EUR100m will come from the Government's coffers - which will be run jointly by the Department of Agriculture and Enterprise Ireland - with the remaining EUR200m coming from the industry.

"But it does give us a chance to invest and diversify. So Glanbia as well as other operators in the sector are looking to options around new product development and around rationalisation.

We'll also be happy once we complete that part of the exercise to talk to other parties. If there are joint projects that it makes more sense to do, we'll keep an open mind about that. We will come to a view about that in October.

"I think on balance we may end up with a mix of internal projects and maybe some joint projects and they'll be across the area of cheeses and specific protein derivatives from milk for export."

That potentially includes building a new milk-drying and filtration plant, adds Moloney.

Milking overseas opportunities

The latest set of Glanbia's interim results was a bit of an anomaly in the Irish corporate earnings season. As most other companies posted double-digit growth, Glanbia stood still with pretax profits roughly unchanged at EUR30.2m compared with the same period in 2005, operating e profits were down 5% at EUR36.4m and revenues down marginally at EUR922.8m compared with EUR926.1m for the year earlier period.

The company attributed much of the poor performance to the sluggish Irish ingredients business.

Similar to Kerry Group and other companies in that sector, future growth hinges on carving out markets abroad.

"We've had an international presence for some time. We have a significant business in the US. We have expanded that with a joint venture in New Mexico. That will make us the largest producer of cheddar-type cheese in the US when we get to full capacity in New Mexico by the middle of next year.

"So when you look at the Glanbia profit and loss sheet going forward, you will see the returns from the wholly owned subsidiaries, but the share from the associates line will also become much more important.

In a similar vein, we have set up a joint venture in Nigeria with Cussons. That business is currently annualising $100m.

So if you look at growth, you have $100m there, and New Mexico has $350m. And with the acquisition [Glanbia forked out $105m for US nutritional business Seltzer on September 7th] we will grow the nutritionals group to over $150m.

So you are looking at close to $600m in new business over the next two-to-three years."

Glanbia has also opened a sales and marketing office in China. Moloney says the company is linking China with the ingredients business: "and indeed to the acquisition we announced [Seltzer] in terms of infant formula etc in Asia".

And even though Glanbia is limited to a sales and marketing presence in China as it stands, the company is likely to build rather than buy if that policy changes in the future, he adds.

After a hectic few years on the mergers and acquisitions trail around the globe, Moloney says that it is time to consolidate on its recent acquisitions. That will include adapting the plants in New Mexico to meet extra demands if needed, he adds.

"We have room to make some modest acquisitions in 2007, and it is important to keep that pipeline going because there is a lead time in starting these things up."

Watergate?

Moloney says there is no outcome yet to the investigation in allegations that farmers in the Kilmeaden area ("Watered-down milk?" Business & Finance, July 27th) inflated milk supplies by adding water. "That [investigation] is ongoing. Obviously that is a fraud on the company rather than an issue for our consumer so far as it costs the company more to extract water. Obviously a very serious view is taken on that."

Some of Glanbia's milk suppliers that Business & Finance has spoken to claim there is not enough dialogue between the company and dairy farmers in terms of international markets.

One farmer says there is not enough emphasis on the different types of nutrients that can be used to produce high-quality milk which, in turn, can be used to manufacture high-quality products.

That is a pattern that is happening throughout Europe, he claims. Geraldine Kearney, a spokeswoman for Glanbia, to extract water. Obviously a very serious view is taken on that."

Some of Glanbia's milk suppliers that Business & Finance has spoken to claim there is not enough dialogue between the company and dairy farmers in terms of international markets.

One farmer says there is not enough emphasis on the different types of nutrients that can be used to produce high-quality milk which, in turn, can be used to manufacture high-quality products.

That is a pattern that is happening throughout Europe, he claims.

Geraldine Kearney, a spokeswoman for Glanbia, says Glanbia has always been very progressive in opening up channels of communication with its milk suppliers. She cites the company's various workshops as well as its regional committee structure, which are aimed at keeping on top of industry developments.

"There will always be more work to be done, but we are engaging with our suppliers at a number of different levels," she says.

One other area of concern for some shareholders is that the members of the board of the plc comprise the board of the co-op. Moloney argues the value of the co-op and the level of the dividend each year is determined by the growth of the plc. "Therefore everybody is aligned in growing the value of the plc.

That has become clear to shareholders over the past year. So there are no plans to change that [the structure of the plc and co-op] currently."

What about the relationship between the plc and the co-op changing some time in the future?

"I suppose you can never say never - you can't rule it out at any point in time - but not today."

Glanbia has always been very progressive in opening up channels of communication with its milk suppliers. She cites the company's various workshops as well as its regional committee structure, which are aimed at keeping on top of industry developments. "There will always be more work to be done, but we are engaging with our suppliers at a number of different levels," she says.

One other area of concern for some shareholders is that the members of the board of the plc comprise the board of the co-op. Moloney argues the value of the co-op and the level of the dividend each year is determined by the growth of the plc. "Therefore everybody is aligned in growing the value of the plc.

That has become clear to shareholders over the past year.

So there are no plans to change that [the structure of the plc and co-op] currently."

What about the relationship between the plc and the co-op changing some time in the future?

"I suppose you can never say never - you can't rule it out at any point in time - but not today."

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

What's Hot ?

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What's Hot ?. Check it out:
(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) What's Hot ?

Up and coming countries such as South Africa and Brazil are being watched keenly by potential Irish investors, writes Stephen Tormey.

Despite a frustrating and difficult year in 2005, Pakistan is one country that is coming to the attention of foreign investors. Foreign direct investment in Pakistan increased from $484.7m in 2001 to $1.5bn in 2005, but the earthquake last October was a sever shock to the economy.



However, nobody disagreed with prime minister Shaukat Aziz when he said that "the earthquake may have a slight effect in the short-term, but will not rock the economy in the long-term."

In the shorter term, the challenges facing Pakistan are inflation and interest rates, but with a population of almost 166 million, the opportunities for foreign investment continue to attract attention.

Another upcoming investment hotspot is South Africa. Since its successful transition to democracy in 1994, there have been many positive economic indicators.

"Inflation is under control, foreign exchange reserves have increased tenfold, positive real GDP growth has been recorded for nine years in succession, and strong growth has occurred in fixed capital formation, to name but a few," says Colin Beggs, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers in South Africa.

The Irish economy has come a long way in the past three decades. Attracting some of the world's top multinational corporations, and fostering a strong indigenous entrepreneurial culture has been a prime objective of successive governments.

This positive attitude has developed Ireland into one of the world's leading economies. According to Kim Iskyan, head of research at MDM Bank in Moscow, "Ireland is one of the world's wealthiest countries, since its economy has grown nearly five-fold since 1973. It boasts one of the world's highest levels of GDP per capita, some 20% above the European average, while 30 years ago it was 35% poorer than the average."

This has created a cloister of entrepreneurs with a mass of wealth, looking to exploit business opportunities as they arise.

Indeed, Ireland has seen even middle-income earners transform themselves into investors, as attractive investment opportunities overseas lure them into the entrepreneurial arena.

There are a number of investment hotspots around the world where investors are focusing their attention, and this has as much to do with favourable tax regimes as prime real estate opportunities.

Infrastructure, low energy costs, a diversified economy along with sound fiscal and monetary policies. While the World Development Report of the World Bank showed that costs of unreliable electricity and fragile infrastructure are serious deterrents to foreign investment, Risk Map 2005, released by Control Risks Group in London, describes South Africa's business environment as positive, with "low political and security risk."

Another country that is held back by serious deficiencies but is nonetheless - emerging as a world economic player is Brazil.

Enterprise Ireland has hailed Brazil as the second most important market in Latin America after Mexico, and with prime investment opportunities & in the agri-food sector alongside potential in other sectors from telecoms to generic pharmaceuticals, Brazil could become a very real challenge for the world's top economies.

Over the past decade, the country has emerged from a vicious cycle of booms and busts, and finally seems to have controlled inflation, down from an astronomical 2,491% in 1993 to a modest 7.6% in 2004, according to Enterprise Ireland.

The 'new' Brazil is also meeting its IMF targets, is starting to come to grips with corruption, and has stronger democratic institutions as a result.

Interestingly, in a survey released by the UN in September in 2005, multinational companies rated Brazil the fifth most attractive business location worldwide, lagging behind only China, India, the US and Russia, so potential Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors.

It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold. While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors. It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold.

While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the potential to become significant players in the global investment market potential to become significant players in the global investment market occurred in fixed capital formation, to name but a few," says Colin Beggs, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers in South Africa.

Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors.

It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold.

While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the potential to become significant players in the global investment market.

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
RigNet Deploys Nimsoft's NimBUS for Effective Network Monitoring on Offshore and Remote Oil Rigs; Nimsoft's Scalability and Reliability Gives Managed Service Provider Global Reach and Best Uptime in Industry. Check it out:
Case study is posted at:
http://www.nimsoft.com/company/case-studies/Case-Study--RigNet.pdf

Industry
Managed Communications Service Provider for the upstream oil and gas industry

Challenge
To utilize customer Service Level Agreements (SLA) to deliver essential real-time data to oil and gas rigs in extreme remote offshore and land locations worldwide under conditions frequently outside the provider's control.

Solution
Using Nimsoft's NimBUS to:
·Detect any remote communications service problems within the provider's control before users are impacted
·Identify any problems that are outside its control and exclude immediately such downtime from SLA performance calculations
·Deliver real-time SLA performance information to customers

Results
·NimBUS provides RigNet with comprehensive, flexible and reliable drill platform application SLA performance monitoring and reporting capabilities for 8 teleports serving over 500 sites
·NimBUS has decreased RigNet customers' costs by greatly reducing the need for expensive telecommunications equipment or technical support at remote locations
·Nimsoft's solution helps RigNet to protect their service quality reputation

With communications systems installed throughout 20 countries and 6 continents, Houston-based RigNet relies on leading satellite and networking technologies to provide high-quality IP-based voice, data and video managed services worldwide for the upstream oil and gas industry. The company installs, manages and supports the systems, providing powerful, reliable and cost-effective managed communications services for their customers' offshore drilling and production rigs, as well as land rigs. Most of these rigs are located in very remote locations throughout the world. By adhering to stringent standards for network performance, RigNet reliably and efficiently meets the established terms of Service Level Agreements (SLA) with its customers. The company is thus able to commit to providing the highest system uptime, application response and transaction speed and to ensuring end-to-end management of IT performance for business results.



To do this, RigNet must be able to analyze performance data coming from multiple points and be able to exclude performance information from factors beyond its control, from typical heavy thunderstorms that sometimes cause brief rain fade, to extreme severe storms that take down satellite dishes on offshore rigs. In the oil business, SLA "excludes" are frequently required, a common cause being extreme weather. Several examples of such excludes were cited by Morten Hagland Hansen, RigNet's Global IP Engineering Manager: "We had a customer rig get lost in the sea - it was a total loss. We lost two after Hurricane Katrina, and with Hurricane Rita the damage was more on the shore side, where we lost satellite communication to the shore base where all the logistics are handled. There was flooding, and the equipment in those buildings was destroyed. These become excludes in SLAs."

Not all excludes come from acts of nature, as further explained by Hansen: "In the oil and gas business, if the connectivity to a rig is down, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a problem, it could be also be 'radio silence' to protect personnel from instances where explosives are placed down in the hole where they are drilling. In this case, all communications devices that issue radio signals must be shut down so that the signals will not ignite the explosives while workers are placing them. This is one of many instances where we need to explain that downtime was not due to a problem with the system but was instead intentional."

With tremendous communications challenges already inherent to a business with multiple far-flung locations, the addition of uncontrollable variables makes it quite challenging to fulfill top service level management requirements. To meet the performance expectations of its customers, RigNet selected cutting-edge monitoring technology from Nimsoft. RigNet implemented the NimBUS solution for SLA monitoring and reporting for comprehensive, flexible and reliable drill platform application performance monitoring capabilities.

"Nimsoft's flexibility and amazing breadth of capabilities allowed us to start with a small installation and add to it as we grew and our functional requirements changed, " explained Hansen

To provide background, there are three "parties" using the communications network on any given drilling rig: (1) the drilling contractor, which owns and leases out the rig, such as Noble Drilling and ENSCO; (2) the operator, or oil company (e.g., ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, etc.) which is the primary party on the rig, and finances the drilling of the well; (3) and the service company, like Schlumberger or Halliburton, who supports the drilling operation. The applications used on the system are IP-based voice, fax, Internet and real-time data transmission. The real-time data includes all technical information related to the drilling (e.g., depth, temperature, pressure, drilling speeds, drilling torque, formations, etc.) For an offshore rig, even rig positioning and weather data is transmitted. All of this information is transmitted back in real-time to the oil company office for analysis.

Most of RigNets land-based and offshore customers use satellite-based systems. There are options for both. The options land-based rigs have are cellular and regular land-line, where a telephone line is actually strung from the nearest pole to the land rig site. That can get very expensive. Cellular coverage can be very spotty, and not provide a clear signal. Sometimes, satellite is the only option. For offshore, there are microwave networks, where communications ride on a terrestrial network (most of the time, mounted on production rigs that don't move) that is linked back to land via 20 to 30 repeater hops away in a daisy-chain fashion. When one of the repeaters goes down, most of the entire network goes down. That's why satellite is sometimes a more attractive solution, especially in more remote locations where microwave networks aren't available.

The equipment and systems that RigNet monitors on any given rig (offshore or land) include routers, switches and wireless bridges connecting the equipment systems and signals, along with the satellite signal itself. Rignet uses the NimBUS Enterprise Console to build graphical service dashboards. Each dashboard has a health status indicator by individual oil rig. Network communications are monitored between land-based and satellite-based systems. At a glance the operator can see all the oil rigs he or she has responsibility for and determine which ones require intervention. The operator can then drill down and to investigate the discrete infrastructure elements to diagnose and resolve potential or actual problems. When an individual rig is displayed on the NimBUS system, four colors are used to indicate status: green, yellow, orange and red. Green means everything is running properly. Yellow signifies a minor equipment problem, such as a wireless bridge isn't working correctly. Orange represents a major equipment problem, usually involving a router or switch. Red denotes the system is down and is not responding, which could be caused by a problem with the router or switches, or the satellite signal itself.

"The extreme ease of implementation from Nimsoft especially impressed us. Additionally, Nimsoft was very flexible in accommodating our needs, and continuously made modifications and enhancements based on our requirements. We've been especially pleased with Nimsoft's end-to-end infrastructure monitoring capabilities, and with how quickly they could develop solutions for our ever-changing needs," remarked Hansen.


About Nimsoft
Nimsoft's mission is to deliver business-focused Service Level Management solutions that customers can easily deploy and use. Nimsoft solutions are used by hundreds of companies across diverse industries to manage complex networked systems and meet service level agreement targets. Nimsoft solutions combine advanced SLM functionality and broad platform coverage with unprecedented ease of implementation, deployment, and use. For more information, visit www.nimsoft.com.

NimBUS, Nimsoft and the Nimsoft logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nimsoft Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

© 2006 Nimsoft Inc, all rights reserved.

North America and Rest of World
National Toll Free:
877 SLA MGMT (752.6468)
Phone: 650.570.5401
[email protected]

Europe, Middle East & Africa

UK & Rest of EMEA
+44 (0) 845 456 7091

Norway & Northern Europe
+47 22 62 71 60

Spain
+34 91 623 9177

Germany
+49 89 93 086 100
infoUSA to Include Coverage of UK's Small Business Market. Check it out:
OneSource, an infoUSA company, and provider of comprehensive, global business information has announced coverage of an additional two million small to medium sized UK companies and four million of their executives.



This additional coverage will strengthen the breadth of OneSource’s company profiles. The enhanced content is now available within OneSource’s UK Business Browser.

Customers can now gain access to 1.4 million actively trading companies and over 500,000 new businesses yet to file accounts as part of the UK data expansion of Business Browser.

Information such as director profiles, 3 years of financials, gazette codes, mortgage, auditor and banking data will help companies to evaluate new business partners, customers and suppliers.

A recent research from the Department of Trade and Industry shows that the Small to Medium Sized Enterprise market employs 58.5% of the UK workforce and generates over half of the sales of all companies in the country.

OneSource has identified this as a market opportunity, and is helping UK businesses target prospects in this growing market.

“The increased coverage of OneSource’s UK company information is a reflection of our commitment to providing customers with comprehensive global business information,” said President of OneSource Information Services, Inc., Phil Garlick in a press release.

“As a result we are pleased to provide our customers access to a significant UK market segment,” he added.

OneSource is headquartered in Concord, MA, and delivers products and services to support a company’s sales and marketing efforts.

For more information, visit infoUSA.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
Castell Howell's pounds 4.4m jobs recipe. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Wales' largest independent food wholesaler is investing pounds 4.4m in a new distribution centre in Carmarthenshire. Castell Howell Foods will operate from a purpose-designed 50,000 sq ft facility at Cross Hands Food Park, Carmarthenshire. During the next three years, 50 new jobs are expected to be created. The company has so far bought a seven- acre site at the food park and has an option to acquire a further five acres for future expansion.



When completed, in March 2007, the new facility will house Castell Howell's head office functions and will be its central distribution hub servicing satellite depots in Wales and England.

Its existing Pensarn site will be retained as a cash and carry centre and butchery.

The 45-acre food park was developed by the former Welsh Development Agency and Carmarthenshire County Council.

The expansion project has been supported by the Welsh Assembly Government with a property development grant and regional selective assistance with funding from the EU Objective One programme.

Castell Howell finance director, Nigel Williams, said the new facility would double the company's warehousing capacity.

He said, 'Warehousing space is critical for our future growth and the new facility will enable us to continue to expand and provide a high-quality service to all our customers.

'The support of the Welsh Assembly Government has been pivotal in enabling us to go ahead with this major expansion.'

In 1998 the business employed 50 people and had an pounds 11m turnover - it now employs 240 people with an anticipated turnover this year in the region of pounds 42m.

Castell Howell Foods remains a family- run business, started by Brian and Elizabeth Jones in the mid-1980s when they operated from a small unit on their dairy farm before moving to their present site in Pensarn in 1990.

The company has depots in Gloucester, Oswestry, Merthyr and Bristol and acquired the Cegin Cymru and Pan Aroma distribution businesses in 2004. It is a partner and sole distributor for Celtic Pride, the premium Welsh beef scheme. The company also produces cooked meats at its unit in Fforestfach, Swansea, and now stocks more than 8,000 catering products.

It recently won a three-year contract to supply meat to the NHS in South and Mid Wales and supplies Asda with all its Welsh produce. Its distribution service covers Mid and South Wales and parts of South West England.

Andrew Davies, pictured above, Assembly Government Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, said the agri-food sector was vitally important for the rural economy and the food park had been developed to help bring 'added value' to products.

He said, 'The agricultural sector in Wales employs some 57,000 people and contributes pounds 1.1bn to the economy while the food and drink industry employs nearly 23,000 people and is worth more t han pounds 2bn to the Welsh economy.

'Castell Howell Foods is a significant employer and its expansion plans are excellent news for the rural economy as well as an important boost for the Food Park. Its rapidly expanding distribution service is an important link in the food supply chain and provides a key service for Welsh food producers enabling them to reach wider markets.' Carmarthenshire County Council's executive board member for regeneration, Clive Scourfield, said, 'This is an exciting development for Castell Howell, the food park and the agri-food sector. It will be fantastic to see the project come to fruition.'

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
CommVault Extends Support for VMware in QiNetix 6.1 Unified Data Management Suite. Check it out:
Key Functionality Supports Enterprises as They Turn to Virtualization to Consolidate Systems and Strengthen DR Initiatives

OCEANPORT, N.J., Sept. 29 / -- (Nasdaq: CVLT) -- As enterprises turn to virtualization to consolidate servers and strengthen Disaster Recovery capability, data protection for virtual machines becomes a business-critical issue. CommVault(R), a leading provider of Unified Data Management(TM) solutions, today announced that it has increased its support for customers using virtualization, completing certification with VMware ESX 3.0 and extending its support for the VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) feature in the CommVault QiNetix 6.1 Unified Data Management Suite. With this new capability customers gain greater support for enterprise virtualization and backup consolidation and robust disaster recovery at reduced costs.



New VMware Advancements Strengthen and Simplify Disaster Recovery Efforts
CommVault VMware VCB support uses CommVault's easy, "point-and-click" recovery process in which protected data is associated with the client system, and can be restored in a single step. The process makes it easy to run and manage VMware clients with "real" clients in mixed deployments. CommVault's extended support for VMware systems includes protection of the VMware physical system and capture of crash-consistent disk file images, significantly strengthening customers' disaster recovery support.

These advancements have been especially helpful to companies like Ricoh Corporation, a diversified office automation equipment and electronics provider, which recently began testing CommVault's new capability.

"Ricoh has been a CommVault customer for four years, and has trusted CommVault to backup more than 200 servers in our distributed systems environment, which includes many VMware systems. As we harden our DR plan, we are looking to take advantage of the benefits of an integrated VMware and CommVault solution," said Dave Caporaso, manager, Technical Services, Ricoh Corporation. "CommVault's products together with their DR best practice recommendations will allow us to maintain a competitive advantage as we move to consolidate backups and streamline operations using VCB."

"VMware implementations are booming, with one of the few things holding back production rollouts being the ability to have tightly integrated backup and recovery capabilities of virtual machines, no matter where they are or where they move to," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "CommVault support for VMware goes far beyond just backup and puts disaster recovery right into the hands of the VMware administrator -- enabling them to bring up a virtual machine anywhere and keep all the associated data instantly recoverable. It's really smart stuff."

Advanced VMware support highlights include:

-- CommVault integration with VMware enables unified, point-and-click management of virtual machines and physical systems
-- LAN-free backup capabilities deliver simple restores
-- Certification with VMware ESX Server 3.0
-- Integrated support for VMware VCB to support consolidated backups in virtualized environments
-- Robust Disaster Recovery support by protecting the VMware physical system and capture of crash-consistent disk file images
-- Support for VMotion, which provides continual recovery of data, allowing administrators to move virtual servers among physical servers, speeding upgrades and enabling automatic load balancing in a server farm
-- CommVault ProxyHost links VCB backups to client virtual machines and includes easy point-and-click restores of VCBs

"CommVault's tight integration with VMware and VCB is designed to make LAN-free backup and solid disaster recovery support a reality," said David West, vice president of marketing and business development, CommVault. "These enhancements make it clear that CommVault provides a smarter, simple path to ensure data is easily managed and recoverable in enterprise environments."

For more information about CommVault's support for VMware, listen to the CommVault-VMware webinar at http://www.commvault.com , or visit the VMware solutions page at http://www.commvault.com/solutions/vmware .
GMI Ranks # 4 on the Pacific Northwest's Fastest-Growing Companies in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Program. Check it out:
SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) today announced it ranks # 4 on Deloitte's prestigious Technology Fast 50 Program for the Pacific Northwest, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies in Washington, Oregon and Idaho by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, one of the nation's leading professional services organizations. Rankings are based on the percentage revenue growth over five years, from 2001 to 2005.



GMI's founder, chairman of the board and CEO Robert W. Monster attributes the company's 2008% percent revenue growth over five years to the rapid global expansion of the company, both organically via the addition of new local offices and the acquisitions of three companies in 2005, including NetReflector (USA), MI Pro (Norway) and Insight/Sunrise (China). In addition, GMI's growth was boosted by the successful delivery of global market intelligence solutions, including software, global respondent panels and services.

"This is an honor for GMI to receive such recognition from its peers," explains Monster, who founded the company in 1999. "I would like to dedicate this award to our loyal customers, our hard-working employees and our strategic partners all over the world, who together have contributed to such an effort. With over 100 new job openings available worldwide, GMI's is poised to continue on its growth path. We look forward to making the Fast 50 list again in 2007."

"Sustaining high revenue growth for five years is an exceptional accomplishment," said Larry Hile, a partner in Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry practice based in Seattle. "We commend GMI for making the commitment to technology and delivering on the promise of market longevity. We are proud to honor GMI as a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winner."

To qualify for the Technology Fast 50, companies must have had operating revenues of at least $50,000 in 2001 and $5,000,000 in 2005, be headquartered in North America, and be a company that owns proprietary technology or proprietary intellectual property that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operating revenues; or devotes a significant proportion of revenues to the research and development of technology. Using other companies' technology or intellectual property in a unique way does not qualify.

Winners of the 16 regional Technology Fast 50 programs in the United States and Canada are automatically entered in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks North America's top 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies. For more information on Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 or Technology Fast 500 programs, visit www.fast500.com.

About GMI

GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) is the only company that provides comprehensive integrated solutions for global market intelligence for both market research firms and corporate market research departments at Global 2000 companies. Solutions include Net-MR, a suite of software tools to manage and automate research throughout the project lifecycle, desktop analysis tools, 24/7 service bureau capabilities, and one of the world's largest, highly profiled, double opt-in managed panels, spanning across 200 countries. In addition, GMI offers high-value, real-time enterprise feedback solutions for customer, partner and employee programs. Founded in 1999 with world headquarters in Seattle, Wash., GMI has operations on five continents. More information is available at www.gmi-mr.com or email us at [email protected].

About Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein, its member firms and their respective subsidiaries and affiliates. As a Swiss Verein (association), neither Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu nor any of its member firms has any liability for each other's acts or omissions. Each of the member firms is a separate and independent legal entity operating under the names "Deloitte", "Deloitte & Touche", "Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu" or other related names. Services are provided by the member firms or their subsidiaries or affiliates and not by the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Verein.

Deloitte & Touche USA LLP is the U.S. member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. In the U.S., services are provided by the subsidiaries of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP (Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, Deloitte Tax LLP and their subsidiaries), and not by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP.
IBM, Intel Introduce Popular PCI Express Computing Standard. Check it out:
In a bid to fulfill the performance requirements of latest usage models, such as visualization and extensible markup language (XML), IBM (News - Alert) and Intel Corporation have teamed up to develop a proposal to improve PCI Express technology.



According to a press release, the proposal codenamed “Geneseo” defines improvements facilitating faster connectivity between the processor and application accelerators. Geneseo aims to enhance the range of design options for hardware developers.

Visualization, such as complex weather modeling, math and physics, such as data intensive financial applications, and content processing, such as the encryption and decryption of communications infrastructure data will surely get benefit from the proposal.

Tom Bradicich, IBM fellow and chief technology officer, System x and BladeCenter Servers, says the new architecture “defines a standards-based approach for improving general purpose server accessibility within new and emerging application areas, such as encryption, visualization, XML and complex mathematical modeling.”

“Geneseo is the next step in this vision and will address new requirements and opportunities that come with next-generation platforms,” said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president, general manager, Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.

IBM and Intel offer the proposal in collaboration with other companies such as Emulex Corporation, HP, Integrated Device Technology Inc., Lecroy Corporation, Linux Networx, LSI Logic, Mellanox Technologies, Adaptec (News - Alert) Inc., AGEIA Technologies Inc., Altera Corporation, Broadcom (News - Alert) Corporation, Celoxica, Sun Microsystems, Synopsys, Tektronix, Xambala Inc., Xilinx Inc., Xtreme Data, Dell (News - Alert), EMC (News - Alert) Corporation, , Myricom, NetEffect, Novell, NVIDIA, PLX Technology, PMC-Sierra, Qlogic etc.

PCI Express technology was first conceptualized in 2004. The technology helps transition of computing platform I/O from the parallel bus model.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com.

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Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.
Hyperion Continues Revenue Leadership of Worldwide Business Performance Management Market. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management software, today announced it has once again been recognized as the clear market share leader of the worldwide business performance management (BPM) software market, according to a new market report issued this week by IDC. The IDC Market Analysis report, Worldwide Business Performance Management Applications 2006-2010 Forecast and 2005 Vendor Shares (September 2006, #203414), shows that Hyperion owns a 19.3 percent share of the global BPM applications market, more than twice the share of its closest competitor. Hyperion has been the revenue leader in the global BPM market since 1999. This market is comprised of financial planning/budgeting, consolidation, costing/profitability, and scorecarding analytic applications.



"Hyperion continues to command the BPM market," said Kathleen Wilhide, research director for compliance and business performance management solutions at IDC, and author of the IDC Market Analysis. "Hyperion is expanding its BPM solutions suite and further integrating it with strategies such as the Hyperion System 9 Foundation Services, which supports data sharing, synchronization, and security. Because the issue of data integration, consistency, and quality is a stumbling block to success for many BPM projects, the additions of Hyperion System 9 Financial Data Quality Management and Hyperion Master Data Management to its suite reflect the company's increased focus on data quality and the ability to synchronize data across its solution set. These are needed tactical capabilities that have a strategic impact, considering current market pressures such as increased scrutiny on financial reporting."

The report also pinpoints how Hyperion is helping to drive trends that will shape the BPM market for the remainder of the decade. In particular, IDC notes that "the BPM market is poised to move from 'measuring performance' to 'managing performance,' which is only possible when integrated with operational information and processes."

Hyperion led this trend with the 2005 launch of Hyperion System 9, the industry's only BPM solution to integrate financial management and analysis applications with a business intelligence (BI) platform. Hyperion System 9 provides a unified system aimed at enabling organizations to improve their financial and operational performance.

"Two truths are immediately clear from IDC's latest market forecast: Hyperion is unquestionably the dominant market force in BPM, and Hyperion System 9 typifies the kind of integrated BPM and BI platform that customers want and need," said Godfrey Sullivan, president and CEO of Hyperion. "As the IDC report shows, the future of BPM will be charted by vendors who bring financial and operational data together in a unified platform that helps enterprises derive faster, more accurate insights from their business performance. With Hyperion System 9, Hyperion is making that future happen today."

About Hyperion

Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL) is the global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than 12,000 customers in 90 countries rely on Hyperion both for insight into current business performance and to drive performance improvement. With Hyperion software, businesses collect, analyze and share data across the organization, linking strategies to plans and monitoring execution against goals. Hyperion integrates financial management applications with a business intelligence platform into a single management system for the global enterprise. For more information, visit www.hyperion.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements concerning anticipated product offerings and the potential market opportunities for business performance management software. Such statements constitute anticipated outcomes and do not assure results. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including, but not limited to the company's ability to retain and attract key employees, the successful and timely development of new products, the impact of competitive products and pricing, customer demand, and technological shifts. For a more detailed discussion of factors that could affect the company's performance and cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, interested parties should review the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Report on Form 10-K filed on September 1, 2006. The company does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

"Hyperion" and Hyperion's product names are trademarks of Hyperion. References to other companies and their products use trademarks owned by the respective companies and are for reference purpose only.
AssurX's CATSWeb OnDemand Solution for Global Quality Management System is Selected by Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.. Check it out:
MORGAN HILL, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- AssurX, Inc., today announced that Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. has selected CATSWeb OnDemand Solutions. Mercury is the leading provider of high-performance embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing solutions. Mercury's solutions play a critical role in a wide range of applications, transforming sensor data to information for analysis and interpretation. CATSWeb OnDemand replaces the existing solution and will be used in 15 locations globally by a thousand users to manage process issues, audit findings (internal and external), supplier CAR, vendor CAR, product quality issues, customer complaints and continuous improvement projects.



According to Tom Perkins, Quality Systems Engineer and Audit Program Manager, "After looking at numerous vendors, AssurX was the only company that provided an OnDemand offering. Our selection criteria included security, responsiveness and availability -- meaning the system should work on any browser and operating system. We also needed the system to be highly configurable without having to write code. After evaluating the alternatives, it was clear that CATSWeb was far superior to other products in all of these aspects."

"With CATSWeb OnDemand, customers are able to 'go live' very quickly eliminating the cost of purchasing and maintain hardware, installing software, performing backups and maintenance. We also allow a company to bring the solution in-house at any time which provides the best of both worlds," said Sal Lucido, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions.

About Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRCY) is the leading provider of high-performance embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing solutions. Mercury's solutions play a critical role in a wide range of applications, transforming sensor data to information for analysis and interpretation. In military reconnaissance and surveillance platforms the Company's systems process real-time radar, sonar, and signals intelligence data. Mercury's systems are also used in state-of-the-art medical diagnostic imaging devices including MRI, PET, and digital X-ray, and in semiconductor imaging applications including photomask generation and wafer inspection. Mercury provides advanced 3D image processing and visualization software and optimized systems to diverse end markets including life sciences, geosciences, and simulation. The Company also provides radio frequency (RF) products for enhanced communications capabilities in military and commercial applications.

Based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Mercury serves customers in North America, Europe and Asia through its direct sales force and a network of subsidiaries and distributors. Visit Mercury on the web at www.mc.com.

About AssurX, Inc.

AssurX, Inc. provides manufacturers with enterprise-wide solutions for their quality management and regulatory compliance needs. CATSWeb is a proven leader as the industry's enterprise system of choice at FDA-regulated and ISO/QS 9000 certified companies around the world. CATSWeb is a zero-client application that can be accessed from any computer, running any operating system, with any Web browser, anywhere and anytime that an Internet or intranet connection is available. FDA-regulated companies around the world, including Alcon Labs, Bausch & Lomb, and Guidant Corporation use CATSWeb. AssurX is headquartered in Morgan Hill, CA. More information about CATSWeb and AssurX can be found at www.assurx.com or by calling 1-408-778-1376.
Thailand: New MOCT Plc president will have hard act to follow. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Corporate News - The successor to Mingkwan Saengsuwan, the former president of the SET-listed broadcaster MCOT Plc, will be under pressure to restore investor and employee confidence in the company, analysts say, the Bangkok Post reports.



Mr Mingkwan and the MCOT board members announced their resignations on Tuesday. They acted in order to accept responsibility for the airing of a state of emergency declaration by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on MCOT's Channel 9, hours before he was ousted by the military on Sept 19.

On Tuesday, MCOT shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand dropped 4.3% to 33.50 baht, as reports of the resignations spread. They plunged a further 11.9% on Wednesday before steadying yesterday to close unchanged at 29.50 baht, in trade worth 523.5 million baht. The shares had been at 40 baht the day of the coup and had traded in a range of 37.75 to 40.50 baht since the start of August.

The analysts said it was clear that in investors' minds, Mr Mingkwan had a strong influence over MCOT.

He left Toyota (Thailand) in 2002 to take the top position at the state-run organisation, where he proceeded to make dramatic and successful changes.

In Mr Mingkwan's first four-year term (2002-05), he successfully privatised MCOT, listing it on the stock exchange in late 2004. He also transformed Channel 9 into Modern 9 TV, as well as adopting a niche market strategy for a knowledge-based society.

Television revenue increased by 145% and radio revenue by 71%. At the same time, the company's total revenue grew by 86% and net profit by 48%.

An analyst from SCB Securities said Mr Mingkwan was unlikely to return to his job in the future as MCOT was the only channel that had broadcast Mr Thaksin's announcement on the night of the coup.

They agreed that his resignation would have a short-term impact on the company and may affect its business strategy. However, thanks to its strong business foundations, MCOT would not suffer in the long run.

''In the long term, if the new president of MCOT continues with existing business policy, there will be no effects,'' an analyst at KGI Securities said in a report.

An analyst at Sicco Securities Plc said Mr Mingkwan had a strong leadership image at MCOT and his successor would have to work hard to make the same impression. But the new president should not throw away the current business model laid down by Mr Mingkwan, because it worked well, said analysts.

Patchara Sarapimpa, the president of the state enterprise labour union of MCOT, accepted that the former president's working performance was outstanding. The successor was expected to be as good as Mr Mingkwan.

''As employees, we will not be involved in the selection process of the new president. But we would love to see that our leader is a competent and honest person. As a communication organisation, good communication is important because we have a responsibility to the public,'' said Mr Patchara.

He explained it would likely take two or three months to appoint a new president. As a state enterprise under the Office of the Prime Minister, the newly appointed board will be in charge of the selection process, unfortunately, it has to wait until the country has an interim government.

Wasin Teyateeti, president of Media Intelligence Co, a media agency, was still wondering whether the new president would be able to run MCOT as well as Mr Mingkwan. Channel 9 had become more popular among audiences thanks to his skilful management, he added.

Analysts were also concerned that the station's revenue would drop in line with advertising spending by government departments, a major source of MCOT's revenue for years, accounting for 30-35% of total revenue.

Analysts said the interim government was unlikely to spend much on advertising.

According to Nielsen Media Research, among the six free TV stations, government departments spent the most advertising money through Channel 9, at 547 million baht in the first eight months of the year, followed by Channel 5 at 339 million and Channel 11 at 219 million baht.

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Thailand: CAT Telecom Plc calls for bids on transmission infrastructure projects. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Corporate News - CAT Telecom Plc has called bids for three transmission infrastructure projects worth a total of 3.3 billion baht without setting conditions of past performance, the Bangkok Post reports.



A source at the state enterprise said CAT had hastily sold terms of reference documents to bidders on Wednesday for fibre-optic networks linking all regions of the country and worth 2.2 billion baht, an automatic switching optical network worth 606 million, and a next-generation network (NGN) project worth 500 million baht.

The documents did not call for past performance records, such as in SDH transmission and fibre-optic projects, as a requirement for bidders, which has been standard procedure in the past.

Some bidders interpreted the move as an attempt by CAT to allow the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to enter the bids.

Huawei was the only bidder that did not have SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) or fibre-optic project experience in Thailand, the source said.

The Chinese company last year won the contract to build a nationwide CDMA mobile phone network for CAT, involving 1,600 base stations, with a bid of 7.2 billion baht bid through an electronic auction.

Rival bidders at the time questioned the technical specifications and low price, which was almost half the amount quoted in earlier bids that were later annulled.

The source said that if Huawei won new bids by cutting prices, or if the terms was later amended to avoid fines for late completion, it would only damage CAT's reputation further.

Hutchison CAT Multi Media, the 75:25 joint venture of Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom and CAT Telecom that provides the Hutch mobile-phone service, is currently being investigated by the Office of the Auditor-General.

Another source said that CAT's new board, chaired by Kraisorn Pornsuthee, the permanent secretary of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, had agreed to waive fines for Huawei's late delivery of 800 base stations in Phase 1 of the CDMA project.

The contract terms allow CAT to fine the company 90 million baht a day for late delivery.

Huawei delivered 800 base stations 42 days after the Jan 26, 2006 deadline. It cited flooding in several northern provinces, as well as unrest in the South as reasons. CAT board members reportedly disagree over whether Huawei should be fined. However, the latest meeting concluded not to impose fines, the source said.

The source said that Huawei had established strong connections with the former Thaksin government because it had constructed Advanced Info Service's mobile-phone prepaid-service network. It also offered to create the network first and bill later in accordance with the number of users.

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Thailand: International call service in year 2006 worth THB12 Billion, VoIP to be monitored. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Research - The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) recently granted a type-three license to AIS International Network Co., Ltd. to operate an international call service. Therefore, there are now three players in the market providing an international gateway service, including the existing operators, CAT Telecom Pcl. and TOT Pcl. Many other telecom operators, particularly mobile phone service providers, already having their own customer bases, are expected to jump on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, the licensing of PC-to-PC phone service to internet service providers is also likely to intensify the heated competition in the international internet gateway market. Against the backdrop of an increasing number of operators in this market, this is another step toward liberalization in the telecom industry, where the international call service had long been monopolized by a state enterprise. In the midst of greater rivalry among a rising number of operators, international calling rates are set to come down, with improved services, which will end up benefiting end-users.



The use of sophisticated Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology for international calls made via mobile and fixed-line telephones has resulted in a steady reduction in overseas calling rates, and rising call traffic. In 2005, international calling volume reached 171 million calls, up 9.32 percent from the year earlier. In terms of value, however, the market turnover totaled some THB14 billion, down 6 percent from 2004. Kasikorn Research Center (KResearch) estimates that market turnover is set to drop further, to some THB12 billion this year, declining by 15 percent from 2005. The slowdown can be attributed to a slump in international calling rates in an environment of increasing communications alternatives, i.e., e-mail, PC-to-PC phone service, etc.

Though international calling rates are falling, the fact that market turnover remains higher than THB10 billion has caused many operators to be interested in offering the service. In addition, the NTC has granted more new operation licenses, both a Phone-to-Phone license to one more operator, and PC-to-Phone service, which is offered by 7-8 operators at present. Moreover, the NTC also permits internet service providers to offer PC-to-PC internal calls without having to ask for a new license, which intensifies the competition even further. Also, the development of new technologies has made market access for such services easier than before.

In 2006, the international call business has started to show a change in direction, with more new entrepreneurs offering service alternatives for end-users. This has introduced an environment of competition, as this service had previously been monopolized by a state enterprise. Concerning the next phase of the international call business, KResearch is of the opinion that calling rates are likely to drop steadily, while the number of telecom providers is expected to rise - but by what amount still depends on the decisions of the NTC, which has the direct authority to grant licenses to entrepreneurs who want to offer the service. Previously, many operators had expressed their intent to offer international call service, because they feel that this business is growing steadily and has a high value, while the related technology will be developed further, particularly with the introduction of Voice over Internet Protocol or IP telephony.

However, the current situation shows that international call service usage is still concentrated in large operators in the market who possess a stronger business network, including a larger service network, overseas circuit connection network and group of business allies. Therefore, it is necessary to speed adjustments to support the constantly intensifying competition, as more operators, i.e., the group that already has service networks and customer bases, e.g., mobile phone and internet customers, are being granted licenses to offer international call service. Apart from them, there are also telecom operators from overseas that can offer global connections and convenient service through the internet, which means that the competition is not only limited to other operators in this country, but has expanded to an international level.

(Kasikorn Research Center: 29 September 2006)

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Service Desks Get Boost from StreamFoundry/IBM/Vaultus Partnership. Check it out:
IBM System z customers are about to receive the world’s first IT Service Management (ITSM) solution. StreamFoundry (SF), IBM (News - Alert) Tivoli and Vaultus Mobile Technologies have joined forces to create the solution coined ITSM for System z.. For accessibility through Web and mobile devices, the solution combines SF’s best-of-breed Web-based problem, incident, change and request management applications with IBM Tivoli’s top-selling OMEGAMON and NetView performance tools.


 
This partnership was established to provide System z enterprises with the best of SF and IBM’s System z tools in an integrated package and to make these tools available through three different access points:
 
  • The IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP), which is a Web-based dashboard front-end ideal for managers looking for high-level reports;
  • SF’s CMS Web-interface for end-users managing problems and changes;
  • Vaultus’ Tivoli Pocket Portal for field technicians and mobile workers.
 
StreamFoundry CEO Doug Shute noted that SF is thrilled to not only integrate, but also sell the System z assets of IBM Tivoli with its own. Collectively, the two companies offer enterprises the most comprehensive System z offering for service desk environments. To extend this environment beyond the service desk through Vaultus’ Tivoli Pocket Portal is an additional bonus.

Beyond the System z tools, IBM has also provided SF with the ability to resell its Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) application. The design of the CCMDB is intended to deliver a federated approach to an enterprise’s existing configuration databases.

Shute added that the CCMDB fits well into SF’s strategy of service desk centralization. When the SF is combined with the Tivoli System z tools for service support and service delivery with the ability to interface to a centralized configuration management system, the result is greater accountability and quality of service.

To create a more flexible, adaptable service desk, the ITSM for System z takes the years of process and workflow know-how stored within an enterprise’s core mainframe systems empowering Web and mobile applications. The service desk is them freed from the limitations of a distributed architecture and able to meet the demands of an ever-changing IT environment at a fraction of the cost to maintain and operate. This is considered the ITSM for System z approach.

This partnership has incorporated some powerful names in the industry that will most definitely contribute to strong demand for the System z solutions throughout numerous enterprises.

The solution also addresses the needs of the service desk by not only incorporating data, but also enabling the data to be accessible via mobile devices and the Web, at a lower cost. The demand to be mobile is increasing as the ability to deliver a high level of customer service is displayed through on-site response. By offering corporations this ability, they will be able to help drive revenues through service deliverables while also reducing the drain on capital so commonly associated with the division. What more could the service desk want?

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Peninsula Hotels, NEC blaze VoIP trail. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NEC CORP., ONE OF THE worlds leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions, and The Peninsula Hotels have unveiled an Internet-backed voice and data networksomething no other hotel chain can claim to have.



The network was built on NECs IP-PBX, a private branch exchange (PBX) system which uses Internet protocol (IP) to manage voice calls and data services both through the hotel chains private network and through the Intranet, which is accessed by the public worldwide.

The move is expected to provide huge savings and boost efficiency between The Peninsula Hotels 14 branches and offices in Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, New York, Chicago and Beverly Hills.

For starters, communications among employees would be improved with standardized telephone numbering for all locations and assignment of individual phone numbers to each employee.

The system also provides caller number display even for overseas calls and supports a centralized call center in Hong Kong that manages calls from worldwide hotel operators, 24/7.

The Peninsula Hotels has been working to curb the cost of international calls since communication among its hotels worldwide has become more frequent as a result of global expansion, said Shane Izaks, general manager for information technology of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., which owns and operates the hotel chain.

The new network system was built in response to this, and it will expand along with the establishment of new hotels.

This implementation of VoIP network for The Peninsula Hotels has shown that NECs broadband solutions for the hospitality industry is very attractive to industry players, especially in Japan and Asia Pacific, said a statement from Kazuo Tsuzuki, associate senior vice president of NEC.

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group, a Solutions Provider, is Established to Serve the Multi-Billion dollar Risk and Information Analytics Industry. Check it out:
BOCA RATON, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- The LexisNexis(R) Risk & Information Analytics Group, a solutions provider, is established to serve business professionals who seek solutions for confident decisioning. The LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group is a natural extension of the core competencies and technologies proven in the LexisNexis products from the past 30 years and builds on the LexisNexis tradition as a trusted provider and custodian of quality information. This group is an extension of its predecessor, the LexisNexis Risk Management business unit, and leverages new cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics. The LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group is specifically designed to serve the multi-billion dollar risk information industry which is comprised of organizations such as government agencies, law enforcement, financial services firms, collection agencies, insurance and health care providers, human resources, and other organizations that need to make faster and more effective decisions.



"We established the LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group to better serve our commercial and government customers who need integrated next-generation information solutions to make better decisions faster," said Jim Peck chief executive officer of the LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group. "After listening to customers about their needs, we've designed solutions to specifically integrate into their technology and workflow."

For commercial customers, the LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group offers four solutions to help its customers build and manage the customer lifecycle, while assessing risk in key points of that customer lifecycle. The LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group offers solutions that maximize ROI by delivering relevant information and analytics at the point of need. The four solutions lines are:

-- Customer Acquisition & Retention solutions help build profitable revenue streams by finding and qualifying customers for all types of businesses.

-- Authentication & Screening solutions help organizations mitigate identity-fraud and accelerate lending and hiring decisions by instantly authenticating the identity of individuals and businesses.

-- Fraud Prevention solutions help customers mitigate exposure to fraud, credit risk and money laundering to better manage customer relationships throughout the customer lifecycle and protect revenue. Fraud assessment and scoring products help to flag possible fraudulent applications and higher risk credit card/lending transactions.

-- Collections Management solutions help customers increase profitability and recover more revenue by increasing right party contacts, minimizing manual skip tracing, prioritizing efforts on most profitable accounts and limiting legal liability.

For law enforcement and Federal customers, The LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group offers Advanced Government Solutions to help customers transform data into decisions. LexisNexis Advanced Government Solutions provides access to three distinct solution sets:

-- Intelligence Analysis solutions: enable intelligence analysts to anticipate and detect threats to national security by pinpointing critical information contained within massive volumes of data.

-- Investigative solutions: enable investigators to effectively locate suspects, find missing children and solve cases quicker by providing instant access to critical information that would normally take days to gather using traditional investigative methods.

-- Screening and Identity Verification solutions: enable government agencies to secure and protect access to critical systems and facilities and mitigate the problems associated with entitlements fraud and improper payments.

These three solution lines can be tailored to support the unique missions of government professionals in defense and intelligence, homeland security, law enforcement, revenue, health and human services and regulatory agencies. LexisNexis Advanced Government Solutions can be delivered via secure access through the Web or deployed within the government enterprise for integration with internal systems and agency-specific data sets.

About LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group

LexisNexis(R) Risk & Information Analytics Group is a natural extension of the core competencies and technologies proven in the LexisNexis online products from the past 30 years. The LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group builds on the LexisNexis tradition as a trusted provider and custodian of quality information, and leverages new cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics to create advanced decision-making efficiencies, at the point of need. This group is specifically designed to serve the multi-billion risk information industry which is comprised of professionals and organizations such as government agencies, law enforcement, financial services firms, collection agencies, insurance and health care providers, hiring managers, and other professionals. Customers include almost every federal government agency, the top 100 law firms, and Fortune 500 companies in the fields of national security, financial services, collection and recovery, insurance, telecommunications, e-commerce and retail. The LexisNexis companies in the group include LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group Inc. and Seisint, Inc.

About LexisNexis

LexisNexis(R) (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis(R) and Nexis(R) research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK) (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide.
After blockbuster start, Google scrambles for staying power. Check it out:
(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MOUNTAINVIEW, Calif. _ With its heft, power and sizzle among everyone from term-paper researchers to Wall Street financiers, Google Inc. has made an astonishing ascent from little-known start-up to Internet icon.



But even with its stratospheric market value of $123 billion, Google finds itself in an odd position these days: always looking over its shoulder for the next threatening rival.

A rare extended look inside the company's Googleplex headquarters strips away the recent mythologizing of Google to reveal a different side: the manic scramble to invent breakthrough technologies, or risk becoming the latest dot-com also-ran.

In the conference room where Google executive Marissa Mayer holds court, time is precious as she considers ideas to refashion the famous, minimalist look of Google's search pages. Indeed, a large digital clock on the wall ruthlessly counts down the seconds.

"You should have a giant `Click Me' button. You need something that screams `Please, Click Me,'" she says at one point. To another proposal: "We have one shot." Then, "Next."

Fast action like that has helped Google stay atop the frenzied world of the Internet while feeding an appetite for expansion nearly as vast as the Web itself. Just eight years after two Stanford University graduate students created the strikingly fast and comprehensive search engine, Google wants every move on the Internet to go through its disarmingly simple home page, period.

But Google is finding it impossible to stay on top of everything, everywhere. In fact, it isn't the leader in the latest rush for Internet gold: video over the Internet. In that lucrative domain, a tiny company called YouTube rules.

Google's poor showing in video highlights an often-ignored fact: While the company started with a run of blockbuster hits _ search, maps and Gmail _ it hasn't had one since.

"The sense that Google can do everything well has been tarnished," said Joe Kraus, who co-founded and then sold Excite.com, which pioneered computer searches in the early 1990s. "They've made people say, `Wait a second, not everything coming out of Google is amazing.'"

The trouble is, Google's phenomenal stock price, topping $400 a share, is based on an assumption that the company will continue to amaze.

Google's struggle to catch up was center stage this summer when a design team crowded together in a Googleplex conference room to upgrade the firm's video service. The designers tried to keep their eyes focused on Google, but every decision inevitably turned to YouTube.

One engineer wanted a new "Play" page to pop up when users return to Google Video. "That was one thing YouTube didn't do," he said brightly.

But they couldn't escape a nagging concern. "We look just like YouTube," said a leader of the team, Peter Chane, group product manager of Google Video. "We're a cleaner, more thoughtful YouTube, (only) with less features."

Internet video started as the outpouring of made-from-scratch creativity by citizens with video cameras. Now, though, the race between YouTube and Google is getting increasingly commercial.

YouTube in late June inked a pact with NBC to feature previews of the network's programs on YouTube, while NBC promised to promote YouTube on popular NBC shows such as "The Office." And it signed a deal this month to show videos from Warner Music and share in the advertising revenues the videos generate.

Google recently has cut deals with some of the hippest names in media, including MySpace and MTV. In the MySpace agreement, Google is paying the social-networking site up to $900 million to place its search page on MySpace, which many young music lovers use to view videos of their favorite garage bands.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, 27, a University of Illinois graduate, relishes watching Google try to catch up. He thinks YouTube has one key advantage.

"Every person that we're hiring, every person we're bringing on the team, is focused on video," said Chen.

When fellow grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, they vowed to let data drive every decision. One key edict requires that, across the enterprise, people spend 70 percent of their time on Google's core search and advertising businesses, 20 percent on other existing products and just 10 percent on new initiatives.

The 70-20-10 rule reflects the Google founders' understanding that search is their key franchise. But in the course of Google's meteoric growth, from its start as an unproven search engine in 1998 to last year's $6.1 billion in revenues, the company's idiosyncratic orthodoxies are proving hard to enforce.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, requested an audit of employees' actual work habits recently, and found they were spending only 60 percent of their time on Google's core business. Even more worrisome to Schmidt: Google had no idea it had veered so far off course.

"It was quite alarming to find that we were below the 70 percent without knowing it," said Schmidt, a Sun Microsystems veteran recruited by Page and Brin in 2001. "It's a real crisis, in the sense that we are not fully deploying people on the right things."

Schmidt said he ordered up new internal audits to monitor how employees spend their work time, and the company has since corrected that flaw.

At the heart of Google's business is something most people learned, and quickly forgot, in high school: a mathematical algorithm. Google's algorithm is the series of instructions that provides the electronic flowchart needed to tell the synapses in Google's brain how to work.

Central to the algorithm is PageRank, a patented formula that helps order results based largely on popularity. If many sites with high PageRank link to a Web page, then it, too, receives a high PageRank.

Google co-founder Page put it this way: "You're important if other people think you're important."

The system also examines about 200 other signals, ranging from how often keywords appear on a page to their proximity to each other. "John F. Kennedy" appearing next to "biography" has a different value than a document where those two phrases are paragraphs apart.

Google deploys automated programs called Googlebots to scan the Web for everything it can find and compile the results into an index. Google claims its index contains three times as many documents stored as any competitors, although there is no way to independently verify that.

The size of Google's index makes it particularly good at delivering results for obscure queries. But competitors say that's not what really matters.

"If you have a rare query, go to Google," said Steve Berkowitz, who left a job as CEO of the search engine Ask.com to become Microsoft's senior vice president of online services. "They can have that 3 percent, and I'll take the other 97 percent."

At Yahoo, meanwhile, software engineers regularly test sets of tens of thousands of randomly selected query terms. After those queries are run, editors mark up what results are useful or not. Then Yahoo's programmers write commands that help its search engine reflect the judgment of the editors.

Yahoo believes its approach delivers better "perceived comprehensiveness," even though its index is smaller than Google's.

When Hurricane Katrina was driving toward the Gulf Coast last September, a "Katrina" query on Google turned up a Web designer's site, Katrina.com, that had nothing to do with the storm. Yahoo programmers already had manually inserted a fix that drove users to information about the impending disaster.

"We think that (the human touch) definitely adds to the product, as opposed to the kind of a purist view that you have to have an algorithm that necessarily does these things," said Jan Pedersen, Yahoo's chief scientist for search and marketplace.

Still, success doesn't last forever in Silicon Valley. The Googleplex itself is testament to that.

The glimmering glass-and-steel complex wasn't built by Google. A company called Silicon Graphics built it _ then went bust.

___

(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

_____

PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): CPT-GOOGLE

GRAPHICS (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064): CPT-GOOGLE

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Copyright 2006 Chicago Tribune
Communications Veteran Tom Weigman Joins AirCell as Senior Vice President, Wireless Services. Check it out:
LOUISVILLE, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- AirCell is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas E. Weigman to the position of Senior Vice President, Wireless Services.

A highly experienced marketing and business executive, Tom is responsible for driving the service design, marketing programs and customer care capabilities for AirCell's new broadband service. His activities will make AirCell's initial service a reality by early 2008, and also build a path for providing affordable in-flight cellular data, along with interactive information and entertainment services on a national basis in the future. In this position, he will be based at AirCell's new Chicago facility.



"We're delighted to welcome Tom to our history-making team," said Jack Blumenstein, AirCell President and CEO. "His vast experience in fixed and wireless communications and in consumer marketing will be an invaluable resource as we create an outstanding range of broadband experiences for the nation's airlines, business aircraft, and passengers."

Tom's distinguished career is highlighted by his years in senior leadership positions with Sprint, including his appointment as the company's first-ever Chief Marketing Officer. His effort involved initiatives in the company's Consumer, Enterprise, International and Wholesale markets, requiring immersion in the management and development of both voice and data communications products. He was asked to lead Sprint's initial forays into the world of multimedia, and was actively involved in the emergence and integration of Sprint's PCS business. He was named President of Sprint's $3 billion Consumer Long Distance Division, which he drove to record subscriber counts and profitability behind advertising copy featuring Candice Bergen and her immortal "Dime Lady," the restoration of Sprint's "Pin Drop," and a substantial and persistent focus on new products and product improvements.

Earlier in his career, Tom held marketing and sales roles at such noteworthy consumer packaged goods companies as Procter and Gamble and Mars, Inc. He also spent seven years at the Marketing Corporation of America, building a substantial consulting franchise with clientele that included Quaker Oats, Kraft and Nabisco, and gaining extensive experience in top-level business and marketing strategy, brand positioning, and innovative approaches to distribution.

Most recently, with the Riverstone Group and MCAworks consulting firms, Tom provided strategic marketing direction to consumer-oriented technology and communications services companies involved in wireless, broadband and video-focused markets.

Tom received a B.S. in Engineering from Lehigh University and an M.B.A. - with distinction - from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

About AirCell Broadband

After winning the exclusive FCC broadband frequency license at auction earlier this year, AirCell is making rapid progress in its effort to bring affordable wireless broadband service to domestic airlines and their passengers. At initial launch, AirCell's broadband service will include robust Wi-Fi hotspots that allow airline passengers to surf the Internet, use e-mail, and log on to their corporate VPNs using their personal 802.11b/g-equipped Wi-Fi data devices. The system will offer voice service for airline operational communications and provide a path to a wealth of future cabin services including cellular data, integration of live and on-board content delivery, premium content, and additional airline features such as operational/crew data applications and security.

About AirCell, Inc.

AirCell designs, manufactures, markets and supports a full line of airborne telecommunication systems for the Business Aviation, General Aviation, Government and Air Transport markets. A single-source, turn-key provider of equipment, service, and technical support, AirCell simplifies airborne communications and keeps you In Touch, In Flight(R).

AirCell products are offered as standard or optional equipment by virtually every fixed- and rotor-wing airframe manufacturer in business aviation, and are installed aboard the world's three largest fractional ownership fleets - NetJets, Flight Options, and CitationShares.

The winner of the exclusive broadband license in the FCC's recent frequency auction, AirCell is developing a new, air-to-ground broadband system for North America that will debut in early 2008. AirCell (www.aircell.com) is headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, USA.
Awards ceremony highlights work of local heroes. Check it out:
(Liverpool Echo Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A COMMUNITY champion honoured local heroes at a ceremony last night.

Hope Street-based voluntary organisation Comtechsa was set up 27 years ago to provide architectural and technical services to community groups.

Its annual awards event at Newsham Park's Academy of St Francis of Assisi recognised some of the projects they have assisted, themed on green issues.

Liverpool Lord Mayor Cllr Joan Lang was among 200 guests.

The outstanding new build project award was presented to Aintree Playing Fields, Aintree Village' outstanding tenant to Irish Community Care Mersey-side in Duke Street' outstanding refurbishment project to Toxteth community centre The Belvedere' and outstanding Comtechsa member organisations to the Muslim Enterprise Development service and Knowsley Domestic Violence support service.



Jonathan Brown of Merseyside Civic Society won the community aActivist award' Siw Jones won the committee recognition award' and John Wood the staff recognition award.

Copyright 2006 Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Ltd
Call Center Administrators Gain Greater Control with Solutions from Panasonic. Check it out:
Call centers using the Panasonic PBX (News - Alert) systems are about to have access to increased functionality as Panasonic has introduced the new KX-NVC200 ACD Report Server in coordination with the simultaneous announcement of the new KX-TDA6000 Hybrid IP-PBX business phone. 



Current users of the KX-TDA6000 and the previously introduced KX-TDA 100/200 systems stand to benefit from the additional functionality. The NCV200 provides functions such as monitoring and call center performance reports, agent log-in, in addition to advanced efficient message management. Panasonic intends to create an efficient and cost-effective solution by combining these separate functions into one system.

According to Larry White, marketing manager for Panasonic, the company knows business customers are best serviced by reliable communication. The KX-NCV200 provides just that for large and small businesses. With Panasonic’s ACD Report Server, customers can not only manage calls but also monitor call volume, agent performance and overall system status.

To assist in the management of the system, the number of incoming and outgoing calls and all accumulated call data monitored by the ACD Report Client can be viewed in graph form. The creation of custom graphs enables managers to allocate resources and make adjustments depending on the volume and individual activity. This can all be done one the go, as conditions change.

White went on to add that as good as Panasonic’s IP-PBX equipment is, Panasonic knows the human factor is what makes a company successful. This is why the KX-NCV200 enables administrators track each phone agent’s activity, from log-in through each call. Many systems only allow an administrator to track an extension, but with Panasonic’s NCV200, each agent logs in individually, which means more accurate performance reports.

With ACD Report Server, users are provided with advanced voicemail features, such as e-mail notification when a caller leaves a message, the ability to attach voice messages to e-mail messages, easier operation using the LCD on the proprietary telephones, automated attendant and automatic call routing. Panasonic is positioning these voicemail functions as delivering new levels of communications ease and efficiency that can enable any business to be more productive.

The KX-NCV200 will be available in late August 2006.

Panasonic has done well to recognize that call centers are demanding not just better phone systems, but also better functionality in total operations. Managers are charged with monitoring and tracking multiple processes within the call center to determine not only performance levels, but also areas for improvement. The ability to track complete call activity will provide for not only easier monitoring, but also better information for training and coaching of call center agents to provide customer with a better experience overall.

Special Attractions
 
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
 
Grisham's insurance agency honored as city's Minority Business of the Year. Check it out:
(Chattanooga Times (Free Press, TN) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--Dorothy Grisham's a big Boy Scouts of America supporter, but she was anything but prepared for what happened to her Thursday.

Her Allstate insurance agency was named the Carolyn G. Jones Minority Business of the Year at the Minority Enterprise Development Week luncheon at The Chattanoogan hotel.

"It was a total surprise," said Mrs. Grisham, 54, who just marked her 30th anniversary with Allstate. The other nominees for the award were Bentco Office Solutions and Dr. Thomas Rumph.

Charles Payne, the event's chairman, said he doesn't know anyone who "does more in terms of giving back" than Mrs. Grisham.

"I don't think she's got the word 'no' in her mouth or heart," Mr. Payne said. "She provides people with products, but gives back personally as well."

One of the ways Mrs. Grisham gives back is by supporting the Boy Scouts as chairwoman in Chattanooga for its Scoutreach initiative. According to the BSA's Web site, Scoutreach "gives special leadership and emphasis to urban and rural scouting programs."



She said a main reason she got involved with the Boy Scouts is the core values the organization teaches.

"A core value system is what gets a young person to the next level of adulthood," she said. "Surveys say those boys are not into drugs. Surveys say these boys graduate from high school... because they've got a value system."

Mrs. Grisham said young black males are in particular need of that value system.

"Television offers false hope," she said. "Young black males look at TV and think they can be Michael Jordan, or some other athlete, or some movie star.

"That's one in a million. Our boys need a fundamental value system that will help them get through life," Mrs. Grisham said.

As for the MED Week award, she said, "Maybe this is a kind of payoff for me. Maybe this happened because people looked at me and saw not who I am, but what I've tried to do."

Launched in 1983 by then-President Ronald Reagan, MED Week is designed to honor minority businesses and the financial institutions that support those businesses. Mr. Payne said the free MED Week Business Expo is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 10, at Eastgate Town Center.

E-mail Bob Gary at [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
GE Security unveils Facility Commander Wnx platform. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Details of the forthcoming Facility Commander Wnx platform have been unveiled by GE Security Inc, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company (NYSE:GE).

GE Security said the solution integrates and unifies mission-critical physical security applications, incorporating access control, intrusion detection, photo ID, video surveillance and alarm monitoring into a single system. It claimed customers can use the system to deploy security throughout an organisation, providing a single interface for all operations, with end-to-end security management, feature-rich capabilities and expandable architecture.



According to GE Security, system administration, monitoring and video surveillance can be conducted from any workstation on the network, with operators able to manage security from one application. The Facility Commander Wnx platform is built on standard Microsoft technology and provides immediate access to information, increasing the effectiveness of responses and reducing reaction time.

The platform offers a GUI, multitasking capabilities, open database and API, can be integrated with existing infrastructures and enables an operator to view more real time data, assess event relevance and execute responses.

The Facility Commander Wnx platform will be available in three scalable configurations - Professional, Enterprise and Global - from early in 2007.

No pricing information was given.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Determina Announces Immediate Availability of Protection from Critical Microsoft Zero-Day Vulnerability. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Determina(R) Inc. today announced that it is making a free VPS Shield available for the latest Microsoft zero-day vulnerability announced on September 28, 2006. This vulnerability does not have a vendor patch available, potentially exposing customers to attacks that exploit this zero-day vulnerability.



The previous VPS Shield that Determina produced for the WMF vulnerability was a huge success. Thousands of individuals and enterprises downloaded and deployed the Shield, which can be installed directly onto an affected system without any modifications to critical Windows files, configuration, or functionality. Once the patch is available and the user deploys it on their system, Determina VPS automatically detects the patch and no longer applies the Shield. Determina intends to continue to deliver free shields when there are critical zero-day outbreaks for which there are no patches available.

Determina customers who have the Vulnerability Protection Suite (VPS) are not threatened by these vulnerabilities and have true "zero-day" threat protection from any attacks.

Third-party patches -- yes, there is a difference

Unlike other so called "third-party patches" available from other vendors and researchers, Determina's Shields do not modify any system files or configuration of a system, and do not disable any critical system functionality on the affected system. In some cases, "patches" from other vendors can result in permanent modification to the system, making it hard or impossible to revert back to the original system configuration when the "patch" is removed.

Determina's Shields are also based on the vulnerability itself, and not on any specific attack vector. Therefore, any malware that utilizes these vulnerabilities to infect a system will be stopped, even if the attacker changes the attack. Unlike other attack-oriented security products from other vendors, Determina VPS is the only system that provides customers with true "vulnerability protection" that directly fixes the vulnerability in the code itself.

"Users remain vulnerable to these zero-day vulnerabilities until Microsoft releases a patch. Today's anti-virus and anti-spyware products are already known to be ineffective in preventing attackers from compromising systems using "drive-by" and other techniques -- the signatures simply cannot keep up with the large number of malware variants," said Sandy Wilbourn, VP of Engineering and Customer Support, Determina.

Free downloadable fix available

As reported in a Sept. 28, 2006 Determina Security Advisory, a remote code execution vulnerability exists in the Internet Explorer WebViewFolderIcon ActiveX control that could allow remote attackers to hijack an affected system to execute malicious code or install spyware. Determina's VPS Memory Firewall, by default, protects users against code execution that may result from exploitation of the memory corruption based vulnerabilities reported in this advisory. The full advisory is available at http://www.determina.com/security_center/security_advisories/ securityadvisory_0day_09282.asp. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Determina has also released a free, downloadable Shield to the general public. This standalone Shield for Internet Explorer will prevent this critical vulnerability from being exploited until Microsoft is able to issue a patch. Desktop users without proactive protection against vulnerability exploits may consider installing this Shield if they believe they might have exposure to web-based attacks.

The Shield can be downloaded from Determina's Security Research website at http://www.determina.com/security.research/. The Shield applies to all currently known affected versions of Windows. The Shield fixes the flawed code in memory when a vulnerable version of the ActiveX control in Internet Explorer is running, without affecting the installation of the web browser on disk or disabling any browser functionality. It should also not interfere with the installation of a Microsoft patch when one becomes available.

Determina Vulnerability Protection Suite (VPS): Real-Time Vulnerability Protection

Determina VPS' unique ability to protect against 100 percent of critical Windows vulnerabilities has earned positive reviews in leading publications, including InfoWorld, PC Magazine, and Secure Enterprise. The company also received the InfoWorld 2005 Innovators Award for its pioneer work in mitigating critical Windows vulnerabilities.

Unlike attack-oriented security technologies, vulnerability protection offers customers the ability to comprehensively address the security and operational issues around security and patching. The Determina VPS suite offers comprehensive vulnerability protection though its two products: Memory Firewall(TM), which provides proactive, zero-day protection for the most dangerous class of vulnerabilities, and LiveShield(TM), which provides precise vulnerability protection in real-time.

Further product information is available at www.determina.com, and requests for evaluation of Determina VPS may be made at www.determina.com/sales/request_info.html.

About Determina

Determina(R) is a leading provider of proactive host intrusion prevention solutions (HIPS) for servers and desktops based on breakthrough technology developed at M.I.T. Determina Vulnerability Protection Suite(TM) (VPS(TM)) is the only solution to address the root cause of attacks -- the software vulnerabilities themselves. Through this unique approach, it is the only solution for continuous protection from the latest worms, malicious code, and directed attacks, eliminating the need for reactive security patching. VPS consists of two products providing complimentary vulnerability coverage: Memory Firewall(R), which provides proactive, zero-day protection for the most dangerous class of vulnerabilities without the need for updates, and LiveShield(R), which provides precise vulnerability protection in real-time.

Determina is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with development offices in Cambridge, MA. Determina VPS has been rapidly and broadly deployed by enterprise customers in industries demanding the highest level of security and availability.

Oracle joins Itanium Alliance.

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Oracle joins Itanium Alliance.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ten years ago, Unix was all about proprietary chipsets and Unix flavors. Since then, HP, SGI and IBM have ditched their homegrown chips and Unix in favor of the Itanium processor from Intel and Linux.

This migration has picked up steam, with Itanium now accounting for 11.2% of all non-x86 server revenue, according to IDC.

Here at the Intel Developer Forum, the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) held its first Itanium Solutions Summit this week to discuss the growth of Itanium 2-based solutions. There are now 10,000 Itanium applications, doubling the number in the past year.



The newest supporter of the ISA is Oracle . The database software giant announced it will work with the Alliance to certify Oracle software on Itanium platforms. Oracle said it will certify the next major releases of its database and Oracle Fusion middleware across a range of operating systems for Itanium.

For applications that haven't made the move, Transitive has announced QuickTransit, which lets applications native to different operating systems run on Itanium-based systems. The demo at the show featured Solaris applications running natively on an Itanium-based computer.

With Itanium sales in the first half of 2005 up 40 percent over the first half of 2005, Itanium appears to be finding a home after a bumpy start. That was due to misperceptions of what the Itanium was for, said ISA members.

"There was this misconception that the Itanium would be a volume chip and would displace x86 CPUs and that's not the case," said Stephen Howard, director of Enterprise Solution Alliances at HP .

HP recently refreshed its Itanium server offerings with the new dual core Itanium2 9000 chips, which came out in July .

"Although mission critical computing doesn't put out the volume of mass market CPUs, mission critical servers make up more than half the revenue for the total market," added Tony DeVarco, senior manager for global technology partnerships at SGI .

Itanium is finding a home with HP customers who bought SuperDome servers as well as old DEC Alpha customers, a legacy platform that HP inherited with its acquisition of Compaq. SGI, which recently expanded its offerings to include Intel Xeon-based systems, also has a strong Itanium portfolio for customers of its older MIPS-based Origin servers

As part of this migration, HP and SGI offered up parts of their respective Unixes, HP-UX and IRIX, to the open source community. This included real-time support, SGI's XFS file system and numerous other tools and core Unix services.

Internet.com Corp.

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Qenos Selects UNIPOL APC+(TM) for Its Alkatuff Plant. Check it out:
HOUSTON --(Business Wire)-- Qenos Pty Ltd has selected Univation Technologies' Advanced Process Control software (APC+) for use at its Alkatuff plant in Botany, Sydney, Australia.

APC+, a tool specifically engineered for the UNIPOL(R) PE Process, has been proven to improve plant performance by limiting process variability, reducing unplanned downtime, and increasing aim-grade production while maximizing throughput.



"We selected APC+ for implementation in our UNIPOL PE reactor because it's a cost-effective way to significantly improve plant performance while working within our already-existing facility constraints. We expect to start realizing immediate payback when the software becomes operational sometime in the first quarter 2007," said Rod Campbell, Qenos Product Technology Manager.

Univation APC+ software runs on a Microsoft(R) Windows platform for easy integration into already-existing third-party technologies and enterprise resource planning systems. Having already been implemented at many other UNIPOL commercial operations worldwide, the software has been shown to increase production rates by as much as 9%, improve transition efficiency by as much as 35%, and raise on-stream time by up to 2 percentage points. These improvements can translate into millions of dollars in savings yearly.

The Alkatuff plant produces 120 kta of primarily LLDPE for domestic Australian consumption and has been operational since 1992.

Univation Technologies, LLC is the world leader in licensing gas phase polyethylene technology. Univation has comprehensive technology programs focused on the UNIPOL(R) PE gas-phase process, conventional catalysts (UCAT(R) catalysts), and metallocene catalysts (XCAT(R) catalysts and PRODIGY(R) catalysts).

Visit Univation's website for more information at www.univation.com.
Intel layoffs to hit 159 Folsom, Calif., workers. Check it out:
(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Intel Corp. will lay off 159 workers from its Folsom campus over the next several months, a fraction of roughly 7,000 employees worldwide expected to be let go in the first phase of a major restructuring the company announced last month.



With this wave of layoffs, Intel has accomplished about 70 percent of its goal of paring more than 10,000 people from its global work force by the middle of 2007, said Intel spokeswoman Teri Munger.

Locally, the largest contingent of laid-off workers, 117, comes from Intel's Folsom-based information technology department, which handles the company's internal network operations.

In a letter sent to Folsom and Sacramento County officials Wednesday, Intel human resources manager Matthew Smith said the company has already started informing workers of their fate, but the bulk of the cuts will come Oct. 26.

It's not clear if most of the job cuts in Folsom will come during this phase, or in the first half of 2007, when the remainder of the job reductions are planned.

In the letter, Smith told government officials that the workers can volunteer for immediate separation from the company or look for other work at Intel. But it's uncertain how successful those job searches would be given the company's downsizing efforts.

Those who depart immediately will receive two months of salary, plus additional weeks based on years of service. They also will receive a lump sum to pay for four months of health coverage.

Workers who elect to search for other Intel jobs can receive two months of salary and benefits during their job hunt. If they don't find work in two months, they will be terminated and receive additional weeks of pay based on years of service.

Those positions -- which range from hourly workers to management -- pay between $45,000 and $120,000 a year, said Peter Finn, who left Intel in August to form his own IT consulting firm, Gold Rush Media.

Finn said he expected many of the workers would have to leave the region to find comparable work. "There's really only 10 or 15 decent (IT) jobs that open up here every month," he said. "One of the reasons I left Intel early is that I didn't want to be in a pool competing for a finite number of jobs."

Oleg Kaganovich, chief executive of the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance, said he expected the most skilled Intel workers will be able to land jobs in the area.

"There are a lot of companies that are always looking for good people," he said. "If they see someone they can add to their staff that will bring immediate value, there's no reason not to bring them on board."

While IT operations take the biggest hit, others are affected, too.

Folsom's digital enterprise group will shed 31 jobs between now and October 2007. Its technology and manufacturing group will cut 10 jobs late next month. Intel Capital, which invests in technology companies, will cut one job on Oct. 13.

The number of cuts is smaller than some had anticipated after Intel's announcement during the summer that it planned to trim 10 percent of its worldwide work force as it sought to reverse disappointing financial results and fight off challenges from Silicon Valley rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

"Any reduction is an important issue, and we feel for the workers and their families," said Joe Luchi, Folsom's economic development director. "Fortunately the number isn't bigger."

While the most recent cuts are the largest Intel has announced, they aren't the only jobs that have been eliminated from Folsom this year.

In July the company laid off 1,000 managers worldwide including an estimated 77 in Folsom. In late June it sold a division that makes chips for cellular phones to Marvell Technology Group of Santa Clara for $600 million. Intel would not disclose the number of Folsom employees in that unit, but it's estimated to be more than 100. Marvell was expected to keep the majority of those workers in a new office it is opening in the region.

And earlier this month it sold a piece of its optical networking division that employed 125 workers, including an undisclosed number in Folsom.

To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Bank targets Hispanic customers

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Bank targets Hispanic customers. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--ASHEBORO -- "Bienvenidos al Primero Banco de Asheboro" is what customers may hear when First Bank's first Hispanic branch opens.

First Bank Executive Vice President Anna Hollers is in charge of planning the new bank. Hollers said bank officials are converting documentation and procedures into Spanish and finding the right people to place in positions. The Hispanic bank will be the first in Asheboro and the second in the state. People's Bank opened the first all-Spanish speaking branch in Charlotte. First Bank also is slated to open another Hispanic branch in Montgomery County at the same time as the Asheboro branch.



"We've been talking about it all this year," Hollers said. The new branch will be staffed by people who speak Spanish. Those employed will be able to speak English as well. Randolph Community College Small Business Center Director Victor Dau said the bank is an ideal opportunity not just for the Hispanic community, but for everyone.

"We all need to work together. We are one community with smaller units," Dau said.

According to Hollers, the growth of the Latino/Hispanic population in recent years will continue and prompted First Bank to open the new branches.

"The bank will serve the Hispanic population and perhaps make them more 'bankable,'" Dau said, adding the community can use the banking services and help Hispanic businesses financially. "We felt it would be a natural fit. There is already (Hispanic) industry and community in the area," Hollers said.

The bank will be on N. Fayetteville Street in Asheboro in an existing building. There are Hispanic tiendas, or stores, and churches near the location. Educational and cultural training seminars will be provided to First Bank staff prior to the bank's opening, which will be sometime at the end of this year.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Mingkwanwill be hard act to follow: MCOT shares down 28.75% since coup. Check it out:
(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--The successor to Mingkwan Saengsuwan, the former president of the SET-listed broadcaster MCOT Plc, will be under pressure to restore investor and employee confidence in the company, analysts say.



Mr Mingkwan and the MCOT board members announced their resignations on Tuesday. They acted in order to accept responsibility for the airing of a state of emergency declaration by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on MCOT's Channel 9, hours before he was ousted by the military on Sept 19.

On Tuesday, MCOT shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand dropped 4.3 percent to 33.50 baht, as reports of the resignations spread. They plunged a further 11.9 percent on Wednesday before steadying yesterday to close unchanged at 29.50 baht, in trade worth 523.5 million baht. The shares had been at 40 baht the day of the coup and had traded in a range of 37.75 to 40.50 baht since the start of August.

The analysts said it was clear that in investors' minds, Mr Mingkwan had a strong influence over MCOT.

He left Toyota (Thailand) in 2002 to take the top position at the state-run organisation, where he proceeded to make dramatic and successful changes.

In Mr Mingkwan's first four-year term (2002-05), he successfully privatised MCOT, listing it on the stock exchange in late 2004. He also transformed Channel 9 into Modern 9 TV, as well as adopting a niche market strategy for a knowledge-based society.

Television revenue increased by 145 percent and radio revenue by 71 percent. At the same time, the company's total revenue grew by 86 percent and net profit by 48 percent.

An analyst from SCB Securities said Mr Mingkwan was unlikely to return to his job in the future as MCOT was the only channel that had broadcast Mr Thaksin's announcement on the night of the coup.

They agreed that his resignation would have a short-term impact on the company and may affect its business strategy. However, thanks to its strong business foundations, MCOT would not suffer in the long run.

"In the long term, if the new president of MCOT continues with existing business policy, there will be no effects," an analyst at KGI Securities said in a report.

An analyst at Sicco Securities Plc said Mr Mingkwan had a strong leadership image at MCOT and his successor would have to work hard to make the same impression. But the new president should not throw away the current business model laid down by Mr Mingkwan, because it worked well, said analysts.

Patchara Sarapimpa, the president of the state enterprise labour union of MCOT, accepted that the former president's working performance was outstanding. The successor was expected to be as good as Mr Mingkwan.

"As employees, we will not be involved in the selection process of the new president. But we would love to see that our leader is a competent and honest person. As a communication organisation, good communication is important because we have a responsibility to the public," said Mr Patchara.

He explained it would likely take two or three months to appoint a new president.

As a state enterprise under the Office of the Prime Minister, the newly appointed board will be in charge of the selection process, unfortunately, it has to wait until the country has an interim government.

Wasin Teyateeti, president of Media Intelligence Co, a media agency, was still wondering whether the new president would be able to run MCOT as well as Mr Mingkwan. Channel 9 had become more popular among audiences thanks to his skilful management, he added.

Analysts were also concerned that the station's revenue would drop in line with advertising spending by government departments, a major source of MCOT's revenue for years, accounting for 30-35 percent of total revenue.

Analysts said the interim government was unlikely to spend much on advertising.

According to Nielsen Media Research, among the six free TV stations, government departments spent the most advertising money through Channel 9, at 547 million baht in the first eight months of the year, followed by Channel 5 at 339 million and Channel 11 at 219 million baht.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
CAT bid procedure questioned: Relaxed terms could favour Huawei. Check it out:
(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--CAT Telecom has called bids for three transmission infrastructure projects worth a total of 3.3 billion baht without setting conditions of past performance.

A source at the state enterprise said CAT had hastily sold terms of reference documents to bidders on Wednesday for fibre-optic networks linking all regions of the country and worth 2.2 billion baht, an automatic switching optical network worth 606 million, and a next-generation network (NGN) project worth 500 million baht.



The documents did not call for past performance records, such as in SDH transmission and fibre-optic projects, as a requirement for bidders, which has been standard procedure in the past.

Some bidders interpreted the move as an attempt by CAT to allow the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to enter the bids.

Huawei was the only bidder that did not have SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) or fibre-optic project experience in Thailand, the source said.

The Chinese company last year won the contract to build a nationwide CDMA mobile phone network for CAT, involving 1,600 base stations, with a bid of 7.2 billion baht bid through an electronic auction.

Rival bidders at the time questioned the technical specifications and low price, which was almost half the amount quoted in earlier bids that were later annulled.

The source said that if Huawei won new bids by cutting prices, or if the terms was later amended to avoid fines for late completion, it would only damage CAT's reputation further.

Hutchison CAT Multi Media, the 75:25 joint venture of Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom and CAT Telecom that provides the Hutch mobile-phone service, is currently being investigated by the Office of the Auditor-General.

Another source said that CAT's new board, chaired by Kraisorn Pornsuthee, the permanent secretary of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, had agreed to waive fines for Huawei's late delivery of 800 base stations in Phase 1 of the CDMA project.

The contract terms allow CAT to fine the company 90 million baht a day for late delivery.

Huawei delivered 800 base stations 42 days after the Jan 26, 2006 deadline. It cited flooding in several northern provinces, as well as unrest in the South as reasons. CAT board members reportedly disagree over whether Huawei should be fined. However, the latest meeting concluded not to impose fines, the source said.

The source said that Huawei had established strong connections with the former Thaksin government because it had constructed Advanced Info Service's mobile-phone prepaid-service network. It also offered to create the network first and bill later in accordance with the number of users.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Australian independent forges new link with Indonesia. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AN ALLIANCE between two privately owned freight forwarders for door-to-door services between Australia and Indonesia has been welcomed by shipowning, port and rail companies.

Independent Australian enterprise Northline has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitra Intertrans Forwarding, a subsidiary of Pelayaran Meratus (Meratus Line) in Surabaya.

The alliance hopes to create a A$30m ($20m) market for end-to-end freight forwarding using Darwin and Surabaya as the main ports which will eventually take in points further north in Asia.

It aims to carry project cargo for the mining and energy sectors northward and provide just-in-time transport for Indonesian manufactured exports south.

Northline chief operating officer Phillip Taylor said: 'Many of our existing clients require an end-to-end service throughout Asia, so now Northline can provide that single-supplier service.

'Our focus will be on expediting the freight process between Indonesia and Darwin, then using our national freight network to transport goods throughout Australia.

'This overrides the delays and warehousing costs of shipping through Sydney or Melbourne.'

Though a test run has not been made, Northline head of strategic development Paul Booth told Lloyd's List that times posted by other companies doing a similar job indicated a saving of 10-14 days.

Port of Darwin trade development manager Garry Scanlan said the port was very happy with the development and would do anything it could to help it succeed.

Shipowner Swire, the only other line that serves Darwin, would not comment until meeting the alliance.

Shipping services from southeast Asia to Darwin now take in Singapore (Swire) or Dili (Perkins). Sources familiar with the deal said Meratus was unlikely to be able to spare its own container and breakbulk tonnage due to weight of work on its existing routes.



'We have already started giving quotes and we are talking to a shipping line at the moment about frequency of service,' Mr Booth said.

'A lot of it is dependent on volume coming through. As volumes increase we hope to gain the frequency and more of a direct service between Darwin and Surabaya.'

Though Northline recently retreated from rail, now carrying only 10% of its goods by train, rail company Freight- Link was keen to see the alliance succeed.

Freightlink chief executive John Fullerton said the partners should be congratulated on being the first to make this long-talked about move.

Mr Booth said: 'We have met with FreightLink... and been assured that we will be offered some good rates for full container load cargo straight through on the rail.'

Northline said it expected opportunities for the international freight forwarding alliance to include:

- A mining and resources supply base in Darwin to service mines in Indonesia and beyond.

- A reliable import hub for products manufactured in Indonesia, with onward distribution to all Australian markets on a 'just in time' basis.

- Reverse logistics, especially for equipment maintenance and repairs from Indonesian mines.

Northline is completing construction of a A$4m, 4,000 sq m distribution centre in Darwin in addition to its existing 10,000 sq m of contract logistics warehousing.

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Foundation investors speak on sentencing of execs: Ex-president, ex-counsel were convicted of fraud. Check it out:
(Tribune, The (Mesa, AZ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--The investors of the bankrupt Baptist Foundation of Arizona all suffered financial losses, but on Thursday, they were divided by the sentiments they had for the men convicted of defrauding them.



The victims of the scandal came from all over Arizona to a downtown Phoenix auditorium to tell Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Fields of the impact the loss had on their lives and to recommend a sentence for William Crotts, the foundation's former president, and Thomas Grabinski, its former general counsel.

"These men have damaged a lot of lives and ruined a lot of lives," said Patricia Srader of Sonoita, who invested more than $1 million into the foundation.

Srader and her husband eventually got back 70 percent of their loss, as did most of the 13,000 investors who lost an estimated $500 million to $600 million when the foundation collapsed in November 1999.

Crotts, 61, and Grabinski, 46, sat at the front of the auditorium, where about 100 investors -- most of them elderly--could see the live feed of the proceedings on three giant screens suspended from the ceiling.

Mesa resident Clara Jo Ziervogel, a former foundation employee who was fired, said she lost a nominal amount of money, but she once believed in the organization and had persuaded friends and family to invest significant amounts.

"I have had to overcome a significant amount of guilt," Ziervogel said.

But Barbara Secrest, a friend of the defendants who invested about $50,000 in the foundation, said it would be a waste of taxpayer money to incarcerate the men, who are facing prison terms of six to 86 years.

"We feel we're a victim of the state of Arizona," she said.

She believes that if the state hadn't shut down the organization, then all of investors would have all of their money today.

By lunch recess, 21 of the 34 investors -- including family members of the defendants -- had taken the podium.

The nonprofit Baptist Foundation of Arizona was founded in 1948 to raise money for Southern Baptist causes, such as building churches.

Prosecutor Donald Conrad alleged in court that the group's sales pitch was based on religious faith, and investors were told the nonprofit was solvent, even though Crotts and Grabinski knew it was losing millions of dollars.

In July, a jury found each man guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of knowingly conducting an illegal enterprise, but acquitted each of 23 counts of theft.

Fields is expected to impose sentences today.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
OnLine Distribution and Symbol Technologies celebrate four years of partnership. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Symbol Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:SBL), the enterprise mobility company, and its value added networking distributor, Online Distribution, have registered substantial business success in the region and will continue to work together to offer end to end networking solutions across the Middle East.



The Symbol distributorship agreement enables Online to be a Symbol channel partner that qualifies to provide complete value-added services to resellers. These services include finance, logistics, sales, marketing, configuration, technical support and professional services in support of Symbol products.

"We are proud of what we have achieved with Online Distribution in the region over the past four years," said Tarek Hassaniyeh, sales manager, Symbol Technologies Middle East and Africa. "This demonstrates our shared commitment to improving our partner relationships, and to creating a market opportunity through partner collaboration. We believe in a value driven channel strategy and Online Distribution shares our corporate vision." As a result of a successful partnership in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Symbol extended the agreement to cover the Indian Sub-Continent (ISC) countries of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal in March this year.

"The relationship with Symbol is a critical part of Onlines future," explained Keith G Rich, managing director, Online Distribution. "Symbol is the brand leader in enterprise mobility, and we look forward to leveraging their experience and skills in delivering world class solutions to our resellers." About Online Distribution: OnLine Distribution Ltd. is a value-added distributor for data networking products and services covering the Middle East, Western Asia and North Africa. It is a subsidiary of Datatec, an international networking and IT services group.

Based in the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone of Dubai, the company has stocking locations and offices in both Jebel Ali and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It provides its partners with technical expertise, network design solutions, logistics and sales support for all its vendors, as well as their large inventory of products.

About Symbol: Symbol Technologies, Inc., The Enterprise Mobility Company, is a recognized worldwide leader in enterprise mobility, delivering products and solutions that capture, move and manage information in real time to and from the point of business activity. Symbol enterprise mobility solutions integrate advanced data capture products, radio frequency identification technology, mobile computing platforms, wireless infrastructure, mobility software and world-class services programs under the Symbol Enterprise Mobility Services brand. Symbol enterprise mobility products and solutions are proven to increase workforce productivity, reduce operating costs, drive operational efficiencies and realize competitive advantages for the world's leading companies.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Satyam stages first cross-border country outage and business continuity operation in Singapore. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE:SAY), the leading global consulting and information technology services company, has completed what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind, cross-border country outage recovery.



Satyam simulated a nationwide outage in India, and revived business operations from its Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Center in Singapore. The exercise showcased Satyams ability to ensure seamless business continuity for its customers, as well as its disaster recovery capabilities. It also highlighted the complex processes involved in an event of such magnitude.

On the morning of September 25, Satyam initiated a three-day mock drill, a simulation of a national disaster that disrupted Satyams business. Network control and command resumed almost instantaneously from Satyams Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery site in Singapore.

Additionally, in less than 24 hours, Satyam deployed more than 30 mission-critical engineers to Singapore. The entire exercise was facilitated by the Singaporean Government, which provided pre-approved employment passes for the engineers who were flown in on Singapore Airlines.

"This landmark event is further proof of Satyams commitment to our global customers and their business continuity," said B. Ramalinga Raju, Satyams founder and chairman, who witnessed the drill from Singapore. "It ensures that their businesses will never stop for any issues related to the services that Satyam, as an organisation is providing to them." Raju added: "This initiative and investment are extremely strategic for Satyam. Our demonstration today enables the organisation to leverage the Singapore facility as a new, global offshoring centre outside India. It also places Singapore in an important position with respect to our global operations. We are deeply grateful for the support shown by the Singapore authorities over the last few years to enable this expansion." Upon arriving at the Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Centre (in the Overseas Union Bank Centre) in downtown Singapore, Satyams Hyderabad-based business continuity team connected to the customers network and commenced business via an enhanced bandwidth. The engineers also ensured Satyams capabilities to monitor its network, network security, and exchange and enterprise applications servers. They also assured immediate availability of a secondary monitoring capability, availability of a global help desk, replication of mission-critical associates email boxes, automatic forwarding of transactions to the new server, and availability of business data.

Satyams Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Centre, the only facility of its kind outside India, is validated by the Disaster Recovery Institute of Asia, and enables replication between servers in Hyderabad and Singapore. Data stored within both servers is synchronised every four hours.

"We are very pleased with the support and proactive engagement of the Singaporean government," said Virender Aggarwal, senior vice president and director at Satyam.

"The Economic Development Board, especially, has been a driving force and constant source of support. Singapore is ideally positioned to benefit from the shift we perceive will take place in the back offices of major global multinational and financial corporations, and Satyam is determined to support and benefit from that shift." As Asia Pacific gains momentum as the global innovation hub in the coming years and hence becomes a critical component and one of the main focus areas in Satyams global growth plan, Singapore gains strategic value. Its quality infrastructure, economic and political stability and security make it an ideal hub that can double as a secondary command and control centre for controlling global network operations and ensuring that Satyams customers are serviced seamlessly, in case of business disruption.

About Satyam Computer ServicesSatyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE: SAY) is a global IT consulting and services provider, offering a range of expertise aimed at helping customers reengineer and reinvent their businesses to compete successfully in an ever-changing marketplace. More than 28,000* highly skilled professionals in Satyam work onsite, offsite, offshore, and near shore, to provide customized IT solutions for companies in several industries. Satyams ideas and products have resulted in technology-intensive transformations that have met the most stringent international quality standards. Satyam has Development Centers in the USA, the UK, the UAE, Canada, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China, Japan, and Australia. These centers serve 469* global companies, of which 156* are Fortune Global 500 and Fortune US 500 corporations. Satyams presence spans 53 countries, across six continents.

*As of March 31, 2006 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.

Interim Results

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Interim Results. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CENTROM GROUP plc Interim results for six months ended 30 June 2006 Chairman and COO Statement Centrom Group plc (AIM:CEN), a supplier of a broad range of innovative IT solutions, with an emphasis on sales to the healthcare and financial services sectors, reports an EBITDA loss for the first six months ended 30 June 2006 of GBP390,000 on revenues of GBP1.8m. In response to rapidly changing market conditions and declining profit margins in Centrom's traditional hardware sales market, identified in the first quarter of 2006, the board and management embarked on a restructuring aiReutersat eliminating loss making and low margin activity and reducing costs. With restructuring complete Centrom will focus on growing high margin business and improving cash flow management with the objective of establishing sustainable profitability. The first quarter to 31 March 2006 was particularly disappointing, with revenues of GBP681,000 and an EBITDA loss of GBP265,000. Restructuring began towards the end of the quarter. On 28 April 2006 Paul Ryder, the CEO and Michael McNamara, the Company Secretary resigned from the Board. Paul Ryder's duties were assuReutersby Mike Boseley, the Chief Operating Officer, and Secretarial Solutions Limited has since assuReutersthe role of Company Secretary. Headcount was reduced from 34 to 27. To consolidate its position the company raised GBP300,000 by way of placing 30m shares at a price of 1p per share. The board is grateful to those investors who provided financial support at an important moment for Centrom. The turnaround strategy of eliminating low margin stand alone hardware sales and reducing costs was in place by mid April. In the second quarter the benefits of restructuring, which gave rise to an exceptional charge of GBP110,000, became immediately apparent. Revenues to 30 June 2006 increased to GBP1,148,000 compared with GBP681,000 in quarter one. EBITDA losses were reduced to GBP15,000 before restructuring costs compared with GBP265,000 in the first quarter. Centrom now has three core activities: Consultancy; Managed Services (Data Centres) and Technical Services (Hardware, Software, installation and maintenance), but only when supplied as part of a wider consultancy solution. In the second quarter the Consultancy sales were GBP242,000, a 25% increase on the first quarter showing a profit margin of 30% and representing 24% of turnover. Managed Services second quarter sales were GBP377,000 an increase of 19% on the first quarter, showing a profit margin of 25% and representing 38% of turnover. Technical Services sales were GBP604,534 an increase of 35% on the first quarter, showing a profit margin of 25% and representing 38% of turnover. In the second quarter significant new projects have been won including Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, in partnership with Bull; BG Group; Alea (Insurance); Wagamama and Arch Insurance in partnership with TAH - The Accounting House. In total these contracts have a value of approximately GBP400,000. Sales prospects for the second half are strong and the Board is confident that the improving trend in sales and the higher margins established in the second quarter will be, at least, maintained. Centrom is involved in providing key IT solutions to a number of significant organisations particularly, in the healthcare and financial sectors. Since April 2006 we have established a platform for the growth of Centrom. Gerald Malone Mike Boseley Chairman COO 29 September 2006 Centrom Group plc Group Profit and Loss Account for the six months ended 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | Notes | | | Period ended | | | | 6 months ended | | 31 December | | | | 30 June 2006 | | 2005 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | GBP | | GBP | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Group turnover | | 1,829,889 | | 1,080,614 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Cost of sales | | 1,350,928 | | 1,468,227 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Gross profit/(loss) | | 478,961 | | (387,613) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Administrative | 2 | 990,236 | | 860,115 | | expenses | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Exceptional item | 3 | 110,122 | | - | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Other operating | | 750 | | 2,463 | | income | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Operating loss | | (620,647) | | (1,245,265) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Interest receivable | | 1,025 | | 2,899 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Interest payable and | | (1,335) | | (2,483) | | similar charges | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities before | | | | | | taxation | | (620,957) | | (1,244,849) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Tax on loss on | | - | | (284,150) | | ordinary activities | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities after | | | | | | taxation | | (620,957) | | (960,699) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Minority interest | | - | | 2,381 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities after | | | | | | taxation | | GBP(620,957) | | GBP(958,318) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Basic loss per share | 4 | 0.33p | | 0.59p | | (pence) | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Diluted loss per | 4 | 0.33p | | 0.59p | | share (pence) | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Consolidated Balance Sheet at 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | | | | | 31 | | | | | | | December | | | 30 June 2006 | | 30 June 2005 | | 2005 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | (Unaudited) | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | GBP | | GBP | | GBP | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Fixed assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Intangible | 7,547,460 | | 6,549,911 | | 7,731,727 | | assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Tangible | 168,780 | | 223,158 | | 209,437 | | assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | 7,716,240 | | 6,773,069 | | 7,941,164 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Current assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Stocks & WIP | 10,203 | | - | | 16,600 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Debtors | 1,073,280 | | 1,159,836 | | 901,482 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Cash at bank | - | | 760,035 | | 492,989 | | and in hand | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | 1,083,483 | | 1,919,871 | | 1,411,071 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Creditors: | | | | | | | amounts | | | | | | | falling due | | | | | | | within one | | | | | | | year | 1,687,432 | | 1,308,954 | | 1,918,987 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Net current | (603,949) | | 610,917 | | (507,916) | | liabilities | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Creditors: | | | | | | | amounts | | | | | | | falling due | | | | | | | after one year | - | | 200,038 | | - | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | | Net assets | GBP7,112,291 | | GBP7,183,948 | | GBP7,433,248 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Capital and | | | | | | | reserves | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Called-up | 2,087,838 | | 1,524,130 | | 1,787,838 | | equity share | | | | | | | capital | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Share premium | 6,462,411 | | 5,659,818 | | 6,462,411 | | account | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Profit and | (1,579,275) | | - | | (958,318) | | loss account | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Equity | 6,970,974 | | 7,183,948 | | 7,291,931 | | shareholders' | | | | | | | funds | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Minority | 141,317 | | | | 141,317 | | interests | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | | Capital | | | | | | | employed | GBP7,112,291 | | GBP7,183,948 | | GBP7,433,248 | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Group Cash Flow Statement the six months ended 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | Notes | 6 months | | Period | | | | ended 30 June | | ended 31 | | | | 2006 | | December | | | | | | 2005 | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | GBP | | GBP | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Net cash outflow from | 7 | (888,245) | | (1,574) | | operating activities | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Returns on investments | | (310) | | 416 | | and servicing of finance | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Taxation | | - | | (18,110) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Capital expenditure and | | (5,054) | | (222,405) | | financial investment | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Acquisitions and | | - | | 660,169 | | disposals | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Cash outflow before | | (893,609) | | 418,496 | | financing | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Financing | | 300,000 | | (2,892) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | | (Decrease)/increase in | | | | | | cash | | (593,609) | | 415,604 | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Notes to the financial information 1. Basis of preparation The financial information set out in this report does not constitute full accounts for the purposes of Section 240 of the Companies Act 1985. The interim accounts for the six months ended 30 June 2006 and the figures for 30 June 2005 are unaudited. The figures for the period ended 31 December 2005 have been extracted from the audited accounts for that period. The accounts for the period ended 31 December 2005 contained an unqualified auditors' report and have been filed with the Registrar of Companies. The interim accounts have been prepared on the basis of the accounting policies set out in the report and accounts for the period ended 31 December 2005. The taxation charge has been calculated using the Directors' best estimate. In view of the losses incurred no provision has been made for taxation or for tax recoverable during the period. Centrom Group plc was incorporated on 14 March 2005 and on 9 June 2005 acquired the whole of the issued share capital of Centrom Limited in a share for share transaction. Prior to the share for share transaction the group had not traded. The Directors consider that trading results in the period from 9 June 2005 to 30 June 2005 are not significant. The Company has not extracted these details nor produced a Consolidated Profit and Loss Account or Cash Flow Statement for this period. The interim accounts were approved by the Directors on 29 September 2006. 2. Administrative expenses Administrative expenses include an amount of GBP184,267 (2005 - GBP168,091) in respect of goodwill written off. 3. Exceptional item The exceptional item relates to restructuring costs arising on the closure of the Enterprise division supplying stand alone hardware and software products. Hardware and software products are only supplied as part of an overall solution where services are also provided. 4. Earnings per share Earnings per share have been calculated on the net basis on the loss on ordinary activities before taxation of GBP620,957 (2005 - GBP958,318) using the average number of 1p ordinary shares in issue of 188,397,060 (2005 - 160,948,099). The diluted earnings per share is based on a loss for the six months of GBP620,957 (2005 - GBP958,318) using the average number of 1p ordinary shares of 188,397,060 (2005 - 161,836,988) after adjusting for diluting options. 5. Dividends No interim dividend is proposed. 6. Loss per share The calculation of loss per share is based on the loss for the period and on the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue set out below. At 30 June 2006 there were 208,783,400 ordinary shares in issue. 6 months ended 30 Period ended 31 June 2006 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) Loss for the period GBP(620,957) GBP(958,318) Weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 160,948,099 Diluted loss per share is based on the loss for the period and on the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue set out below. 6 months ended 30 June Period ended 31 2006 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) Loss for the period GBP(620,957) GBP(958,318) Weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 160,948,099 Dilutive effect of share options - 888,889 Fully diluted weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 161,836,988 7. Reconciliation of operating loss to net cash inflow 6 months ended Period ended 30 June 2006 31 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) GBP GBP Operating loss (620,647) (1,245,265) Amortisation 184,267 168,091 Depreciation 45,711 78,540 Loss on disposal of fixed assets - 709 Decrease/(increase) in stocks 6,397 (16,600) (Increase)/decrease in debtors (171,798) 673,037 (Decrease)/increase in creditors (332,175) 339,914 Net cash outflow from operating (888,245) (1,574) activities 8. Issue of equity On 4 May 2006 the Company issued 30,000,000 ordinary shares for cash at a price of 1p per ordinary share. Copies of this interim report will be sent to shareholders and may be obtained from the Company's registered office, Centrom House, 16 Church Road, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 3RH. ---END OF MESSAGE---



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
NTT Announces Successful Demonstration of World's Largest Capabcity 14 Tbps Transmission Over Single Optical Fiber. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Tokyo, Japan, Sep 29, 2006 (JCN Newswire via COMTEX) --Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation has successfully demonstrated the ultra-large capacity optical transmission of 14 Tera bits per second (Tera is one trillion) over a single 160 km long optical fiber. The value of 14 Tbps (111 Gbps x 140 ch) greatly exceeds the current record of about 10 Tbps and so claims the record of the world's largest transmission capacity.



This result was reported as a post deadline paper in the European conference on optical communication (ECOC) that was held in Cannes, France from September 24 to 28.

The present core optical network is an optical transport network with about 1 Tbps capacity. Based on the wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) of signals with the channel capacity of 10 Gbps, it uses optical amplifiers with the bandwidth of about 4THz. The data traffic has been doubling every year due to the rapid spread of broadband access. We must lower the cost and raise the capacity of the core network while maintaining its reliability as the dominant communication infrastructure.

10 Tbps transmission over a single optical fiber has been achieved in the laboratory. However, it was necessary to use linear amplifiers that covered two or three amplification bands because of the limited range of existing amplifiers, and this multi-band configuration is not cost-effective. To increase the transmission capacity, we had to achieve two goals simultaneously: WDM transmission with high spectral efficiency and optical amplifiers with greatly enlarged bandwidth.

Outline of Experiment

Our experiment used the carrier suppressed return-to-zero differential quadrature phase shift keying (CSRZ-DQPSK)*1 format and ultra-wide-bandwidth amplifiers. 70 wavelengths with 100-GHz spacing were modulated at 111 Gbps using the CSRZ-DQPSK format and then multiplexed and amplified in the bandwidth of 7 THz. In addition, each 111 Gbps signal was polarization-division-multiplexed so the number of channels was doubled to 140. This yielded the total capacity of 14 Tbps. 160-km transmission was successfully achieved by amplifying these signals in newly developed optical amplifiers.

NTT demonstrated in this experiment, for the first time, that it is possible to transmit 100 Gbps signal with forward error correction*2 bytes and management overhead bytes of the OTN*3 frame over long distances allowing the construction of large capacity optical networks that offer 10 Tbps or more.

Core Technologies

(1) CSRZ-DQPSK modulation format and high-speed optoelectronic device technologies

These technologies make it possible to generate dense WDM signals with bit rates of 100 Gbps and beyond per channel and transmit them over long distances. DQPSK is a phase modulation format with four phase states. Its benefits include its high spectral efficiency and excellent receiver sensitivity; both superior to those offered by the conventional binary intensity modulation (ON-OFF-keying) format. The combination of this format with pulse modulation (CSRZ), developed by NTT, enhances the sensitivity, and enables dense WDM long-distance transmission. To realize a CSRZ-DQPSK signals at 100 Gbps or above, we had to overcome the problems of the complicated configuration of the transmitter block and the difficulty of raising the modulation speed. The Mach-Zehnder interference type, lithium niobate (LN) modulator has been used as a binary intensity or phase modulator in high-speed transmitters, but there is a trade-off between driving voltage and bandwidth and it was considered to be virtually impossible to raise the operation speed to at least 100 Gbps.

To overcome these problems, NTT newly developed a hybrid integration technology that yields silica-based planar lightwave circuits and LN lightwave circuits*4. Both devices simplify the configuration and support the fast modulation speed of 111 Gbps.

While the conventional binary intensity modulation format uses a photodiode in the receiver, the DQPSK receiver needs a pair of balanced photodetectors, usually realized by integrating two high-speed photodiodes, making it difficult to achieve high-speed operation, high sensitivity, and uniform conversion efficiency, simultaneously. NTT improved the structure of the photodetector with the result that the new balanced receiver offers high-speed operation at over 50 GHz as well as high sensitivity.

InP ICs, which can be operated at over 50 GHz were used in multiplex and demultiplex circuits and the waveform shaping part to generate high-quality 111 Gbps DQPSK signals.

(2) Ultra-wide-band inline optical amplification technology

It is necessary to expand the bandwidths of the optical amplifiers in order to amplify the 10 Tbps or more signal in one optical fiber. While most fibers have bandwidths in excess of 10 THz, conventional amplifiers have bandwidths of approximately 4 THz. This means that it was necessary to divide the channels into two bands (C and L band) or three bands (S, C, and L band) *5, amplify each band separately, and then remultiplex the bands.

NTT succeeded in extending the bandwidth of an L-band amplifier so that it was 1.75 (7 THz) larger than that of convention amplifiers. By improving the amplification medium and configuration of the amplifier, NTT was able to achieve a low noise characteristic.

Future Schedule

NTT aims to construct a 10 Tbps-class large capacity core optical network that excels in terms of its economy and quality; it will promote the realization of a long-distance transmission system that supports 100 Gbps high-speed channels.

Terminology

*1: CSRZ-DQPSK

Abbreviation of Carrier Suppressed Return to Zero Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying. Modulation format in which CSRZ pulse modulation is added to differential quadrature phase modulation; it is appropriate for high-density WDM long-distance transmission.

*2: Forward error correction code

Code to detect an error caused during transmission and to correct it in the receiver by adding redundant arithmetic data to the transmitted signal. The international standard ITU-T G.709 recommendation adopts the Reed-Solomon (255,239) code as an error correction code for high-quality transmission.

*3: OTN

Abbreviation of Optical Transport Network. The international standard for optical network using WDM system (ITU-T G.709 recommendation).

*4: Silica PLC

Planer lightwave circuit formed on fused silica that includes an optical waveguide. This technology can integrate complex passive optical devices into small areas and is used to realize multiplex and demuliplex devices for WDM systems, Mach-Zehnder type optical switches and so on.

*5: C band, L band and S band

Wavelength band classification for optical communication standardized in ITU-T. C (Common) band is from 1530 to 1565 nm, L (Long) band is from 1565 to 1625 nm, and S (Short) band is from 1460 to 1530 nm. The current practicable bandwidth in the L-band is 35 nm (about 4THz) centered on about 1590 nm.

About NTT

NTT is a holding company of the Global Information Sharing Enterprise Group and NTT group, which consists more than 430 companies.

One of the important missions of NTT group is to contribute the achievement of a Ubiquitous Broadband society. NTT group concentrates on integrating the group on expanding Broadband Service on Photonic Access, Third Generation Cellular Phone, Wireless LAN, are provided for Access means, promoting the structure of distributing the contents of Movies and music, and enhance the providing contents.

In November 2002, the Vision for a new optical generation is announced.

Contact:

NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group
Planning Department, Attn: Tamechika
Tel: 046-240-5152
http://www.ntt.co.jp/sclab/contact_e/

Copyright (C) 2006 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Japan Corporate News Network K.K.

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an automated pattern recognition system, indicated a DOWNTREND on
09-22-2006 for NTT @ $23.96.

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Paradial Receives a 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. Check it out:
RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy Honored For Deliverin Exceptional VoIP/IP Telephony Solutions

Oslo, Norway 28. October 2006 Paradial announced today that Technology Marketing Corporations (TMC) INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine (www.itmag.com) has named RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy as a recipient of a 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been a VoIP Authority since 1998.



The RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy is a complete solution for companies that want to deploy a corporate SIP Firewall/NAT solution, handling SIP phones and legacy voice and video systems. There are no other solutions in the market that provides connectivity and security on all deployed corporate network infrastructures without any reconfiguration required, says Christian Testman, Chief Operating Officer at Paradial. Our partnership with HP for both hardware and hosting enable Paradial to provide the RealTunnel SIP Enterprise Server solution globally towards medium to large companies.

The editorial staff of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine is proud to announce the winners of the second annual INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Awards. These companies are as varied as the products that fit under the IP telephony umbrella, but they have all achieved delivering winning solutions for their customers needs, indicated Rich Tehrani, Editor-in-Chief of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

The winners of the second annual INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award are leaders in VoIP. Taking risks to advance VoIP technology and provide real solutions has earned Paradial recognition from the editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY. The Tunnel Enterprise Proxy has excelled in the VoIP/IP Telephony industry, and most importantly, its customers are willing to offer their testaments of support, said Greg Galitzine, Editorial Director of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

Since the first issue in February of 1998, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been providing unbiased views of the complicated converged communications space. INTERNET TELEPHONY offers rich content from solutions-focused editorial content to reviews on products and services from TMC Labs and Minacom. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has a circulation of 55,000.

The 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award winners will be published in the October 2006 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine, www.itmag.com, or can be found directly online at http://www.tmcnet.com/awards/it-excellence-award-winners-2006.htm.

For more information, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

Recent IPO Filings

| | Comments (0)
Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/28 DataPath Inc. (Duluth, GA) $346.1
Is a leading provider of satellite communications networks.
09/28 AeroVironment Inc. (Monrovia, CA) $115.0
Designs, develops, produces and supports a technologically-
advanced portfolio of small unmanned aircraft systems.
09/28 Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Yokneam, ) $86.2
Is a leading supplier of semiconductor-based, high-
performance interconnect products.
09/27 Switch & Data Inc. (Tampa, FL) $150.0
Is a leading provider of network neutral interconnection and
colocation services.
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
CRM Case Study On Orbitz: How to Insult, Irritate, Patronize, Stress And Lose Customers; Open Solutions. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elton John's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy:

Open Solutions Inc. has announced that Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank, with $473 million in assets, has selected its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Banking Solution, and other Open Solutions' complementary applications.



The second largest bankers' bank in the United States in terms of assets under management, PCBB provides correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country.

Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and internationally. In September 2005, Open Solutions announced an agreement with PCBB to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB's cash letter settlement service.

Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB, said his company's primary focus was "finding an open architecture application that would allow the CBC to interface in a dynamic environment." They were also looking for a core platform "that could change as we grow, not only in assets but also in customers, products and services. We evaluated numerous vendors and focused on identifying the best solution to interface our in-house applications with the core database."

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, PCBB will implement Open Solutions' Financial Accounting Suite -- general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets -- and cView MyVision and Report Wizard.

Evans said the cView report writer would be used to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others.


The ongoing Orbitz live CRM case study has been completed, and I'm sorry to report that through some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced, they've destroyed whatever possibilities for customer loyalty may have existed with us.

Basically, my family of five is flying from Istanbul to Washington, D.C. round-trip for Thanksgiving. We went online to look for tickets, and we'd had good experiences, both in price and customer service, with both Expedia and Travelocity, so we figured Orbitz was kind of like those guys.

We booked tickets, and went on Orbitz's site to pick out the seats, a feature they offer which we like. It's booked through Alitalia but a few legs are operated by Delta, we have Istanbul-Milan, Milan-Boston, Boston-Washington going, and Washington-Atlanta, Atlanta-Milan, Milan-Istanbul coming. We filled in seat requests for all six flights, Orbitz charged our card for just north of $3,100, we figured the matter closed.

Then we noticed that the seats for the Washington-Atlanta and Atlanta-Milan legs were "pending," not confirmed. We sent an e-mail to the Orbitz customer service address promising "We try to answer all queries in three hours," or something like that, saying hey, what's going on here, we've paid and these seats are unconfirmed? Visions of being stranded at the D.C. airport danced through our heads.

My wife wrote to them and I did too.

Let's review: In CRM, the first priority is to make a good first impression on a customer. Orbitz failed there. Not the end of the world -- as I wrote on the first installment, the problem isn't the problem. How you handle the problem is much more important.

Customer loyalty is frequently won for good in the resolution of a problem. It's like a relationship that hasn't had any fights: You don't know what'll happen when a real problem comes up. When you have a fight and get over it you have a stronger relationship, right? Same with customers.

Look, nobody's going to provide perfect service. Not Orbitz, not Southwest, Nordstrom's, Amazon.com, Ritz-Carlton, Rolls-Royce, nobody. We customers don't expect perfect customer service. We expect problems to be handled the right way, and we'll give an amazing amount of loyalty to a company who does so.

So Orbitz's response to our problem was no response. Not even an autoresponder saying "We've received your e-mail." We sent another e-mail saying look, we're getting concerned that we've paid you and we can't get seats confirmed on these two flights. Orbitz couldn't be bothered to answer that one either. Not a concern, evidently, they had their $3,100, what did they care about our personal problems?

So yesterday I sent them a fourth e-mail telling them I'd contacted our credit card bank and was requesting them to cancel the payment and that we'd rebook with someone else.

And I did, that wasn't an empty threat. I sent an e-mail to my bank instructing them to do that. And -- this is the honest 100% truth -- three or four minutes later I got a phone text message from my wife saying "Seats confirmed on all flights."

I called her back and it turns out this thing about Orbitz not giving us confirmed seats was stressing her out to the point where she took time off work to go to the Delta office here in Istanbul and personally get the confirmations. Oh, and Orbitz finally decided we were worth their precious time. Got an e-mail:

"Dear Orbitz Customer, Thank you for contacting Orbitz. In reviewing our contact history, I show that this is your first correspondence via e-mail and phone under the e-mail address '[email protected]'. It is possible that you may have corresponded using another e-mail address."

Well, bull, seeing as how I had sent that e-mail using the exact same system we'd used to send the first three. CRM Rule #1: Lying to your customers isn't a good move.

"In reviewing our reservation system, I show that the online seat assignment for the flight segment 'Istanbul to Milan' on Alitalia 707 and flight segment 'Milan to Istanbul' on Alitalia 706 has been restricted by the airlines."

Gee, thanks for telling us that when we tried to use your system for getting seat assignments on the site. And for not telling us that the first three times we asked.

"Please note that most airlines hold some seats for airport check-in only. However, you can be assured that you will always get your seat assignment at the gate or check-in counter on the day of departure.

Sorry, but seeing that Orbitz is perfectly willing to lie to me I don't take much faith in their reassurances that if I just trust them I'll get my seat assignments.

I wrote back saying they were damn lucky my wife wasted a day doing their legwork for them, and that the seat assignment confirmations were easily enough obtained from Delta since she had just gotten them, and their aside that our seats were probably just being held for airport check-in only was sheer misdirection. See CRM Rule #1 above.

Then we got another e-mail from them saying they had, for reasons known only to God, reassigned the seats we'd chosen -- which were confirmed by the airline and weren't ever disputed -- on the Boston-Washington leg. We hadn't asked them to do that, and didn't want them to. But I guess they have to punish mouthy customers somehow.

They they wrote "also, Alitalia Airlines does not have online seat selection capabilities. This means that only the airline is able to assign these seats. We are also unable to view the seat map of the flight type the airline will be assigning you these seats and you will see your seat assignments at the airport on the date of departure."

Well, look, stupid, Alitalia isn't operating the flights in question, that's why my wife went to the DELTA office, wasting time doing the work we had paid you to do, where she picked up the confirmations you claimed didn't exist.

So there's your CRM case study: How to Insult, Irritate, Patronize, Stress And Lose Customers, by Orbitz. Honestly. It makes me quiver that I ever entrusted my travel to them in the first place.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
CRM Vendor Open Solutions Picked By PCBB. Check it out:

CRM vendor Open Solutions Inc. has announced that Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank, with $473 million in assets, has selected its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Banking Solution, and other Open Solutions' complementary applications.



The second largest bankers' bank in the United States in terms of assets under management, PCBB provides correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country.

Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and internationally. In September 2005, Open Solutions announced an agreement with PCBB to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB's cash letter settlement service.

Last week Open Solutions announced a partnership with Rosetta Technologies Corporation, a Tampa-based vendor of secure enterprise printing products. The partnership will provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.

With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing lineup, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs.

"This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint products in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president of Rosetta Technologies.

Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB, said his company's primary focus was "finding an open architecture application that would allow the CBC to interface in a dynamic environment." They were also looking for a core platform "that could change as we grow, not only in assets but also in customers, products and services. We evaluated numerous vendors and focused on identifying the best solution to interface our in-house applications with the core database."

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, PCBB will implement Open Solutions' Financial Accounting Suite -- general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets -- and cView MyVision and Report Wizard.

Evans said the cView report writer would be used to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

China.com's New Expectation on Sales. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --China.com, the company under the aegis of CDC Corporation, has issued an updated advisory to shareholders about the impact that Chinese telecom regulations issued in July will have on its financial results.



The new policies include requiring subscribers to provide double confirmations for orders and MVAS providers to send billing reminders to subscribers, and have resulted in China.com having fewer new subscribers for its services and higher cancellation rates. In addition, costs to acquire new users have increased.

China.com says it anticipates that both the revenue and net profit of its MVAS business unit will be significantly affected this quarter. The following table sets out the unaudited revenue for the Company's MVAS business unit for the months of July and August 2006 as compared with the same months in 2005.

The company says to further reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies it initiated a headcount reduction program in August, reducing the workforce of its mobile value- added services business unit by approximately 30 per cent.

China.com achieved quarterly revenue levels and its 22nd consecutive quarter of profits with total revenues of HKD 108 million, up 24 percent when compared to Q2 2005.

The company says its online games initiative continues to achieve strong growth, the portal continues to hit key operational matrices, and the MVAS business has undergone three sequential quarters of double-digit percentage revenue growth and has progressively diversified away from SMS revenues to a point where revenues from advanced mobile products such as MMS and WAP represent 60 percent of total MVAS revenue.

China.com has established a wholly-owned subsidiary, CDC Games Limited, to hold all current and future online game business assets and investments. With strong growth expected in China's online gaming market as well as with the company's online game offering, China.com plans to focus more resources to this fast-growing sector.

The company's mobile value-added services (MVAS) business continued to show healthy growth in the third quarter of 2005 with a 15 percent increase in total revenue over Q2 2005.

Sequential quarterly revenue increases from Advanced Mobile Products amounted to the following: Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) - up 80percent, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) - up 61percent, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) - up 27percent.

The company's MVAS marketing strategy focused on cross- selling its products and services toward niche consumer groups across various platforms. The strategy resulted in meaningful ranking increases of some of the company's key WAP products on China Mobile's WAP product listings.

China.com is a mobile applications, Internet services and online game company in China. Its principle business areas are Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), online entertainment, and Internet services that target users in China.

CDC Corporation is focused on enterprise software, mobile applications and online games. As part of its strategic review, the company has reorganized into two primary operating business units, CDC Software and China.com Inc.

Its principle business areas are Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), online entertainment, and Internet services that target users in China. In the MVAS arena, China.com provides products and services on various platforms, including Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The Company also offers online games and a broad range of online products and services via its portal network (www.china.com; www.hongkong.com).

From Nanfang Daily, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast LLC. All rights reserved

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As of Monday, 09-25-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated an UPTREND on
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Stereophonic football: Radio station satisfies fans of two teams by broadcasting one game in each speaker. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--LIBERTY -- So you can't make the trip to Dayton tonight, when your undefeated Lumberton Raiders take on the Broncos in their District 22-4A opener.

The next best thing is to turn on your car stereo and move the dial to 99.9 FM, which broadcasts Dayton games. You're listening for Larry Wadzeck, who handles play-by-play duties for the Broncos. But there's this other voice. This guy is talking right over Wadzeck. He won't go away, and he's driving you bonkers. Is it a bad signal? Bad production? What in the name of Brad Sham is going on here?



Ease up. You are not losing your mind. The voices are not in your head; there are, indeed, two sets of voices yakking away at the same time, on the same channel. In the right speaker is Wadzeck, who's at the Dayton game. In the left speaker is Bill Buchanan -- play-by-play announcer for Liberty games, president/general manager of KSHN, and the imaginative (perhaps deranged) man who decided to broadcast two football games at once.

This is "Shine All Nine," the small-market station that has become an institution in Liberty and Dayton -- and perhaps the most convincing proof that high school football is king in Texas.

"You've got two local teams and one local station?" asks Buchanan, a chatty, charming fellow who bought the station in 1977. "You want to treat both of'em fairly, so you put both of 'em on. We call it 'Split-Channel Sports.' ... I guess it's proof I'm crazy."

When Buchanan bought the station all those years ago, it was a 250-watt AM station called KPXE -- and unless you lived across the street from the tower, your chances of hearing KPXE were about 50-50. If you tuned in at night, your chances were even less. As in zero. The FCC made the station power down at sunset.

With those obstacles, Buchanan had no way of broadcasting high school football games live. His only option was to put them on the air the following Saturday afternoon, on a tape-delay basis.

Some years later, the FCC changed the standards by which frequencies were turned, opening opportunities for smaller stations. On Aug. 29, 1991, KPXE-AM became KSHN-FM, 99.9 on your radio dial. "Shine All Nine" was born.

Buchanan's staff chose the call letters because he wanted the station to sound bright and cheery, like an old friend down the street. Basically, being a small-market station, that's what it had to be.

Buchanan didn't want KSHN to be categorized, either. Its format still is in that gray area, somewhere between adult contemporary, oldies and classic rock (without the rough edges).

First and foremost, Buchanan wanted his station to be known as local through and through. It's why local and statewide news updates are on the air every hour, and it's why KPXE began broadcasting high school football in the first place.

Once KSHN could go live at night, one of its problems was solved: It could air one high school game live, as it happened. So for most of the '91 season, Buchanan tried his best to split the difference between Liberty and Dayton, the two hometown schools. One week, he'd broadcast a Liberty game live, followed by a tape-delayed account of the Dayton game. The next week, it was vice versa.

But Buchanan wasn't quite satisfied. He couldn't turn his brain off.

"I kept saying to myself, 'There's got to be a better way to do this,'" he recalls.

Buchanan knew he had good equipment at the station, so he started brainstorming the best way to use it. He asked one engineer, and another and another: Could we split these signals into two broadcasts?

In theory, they told him, you could.

Think about it this way: When a tower distributes a song to your radio, the song arrives as two different signals -- half of it on the left, the other half on the right.

The trick, then, was for KSHN to split those signals into two different broadcasts.

"So we cut the wire," Buchanan said. "We used alligator clips and re-routed the wire to the production room. We asked our audience to listen one night -- we were going to play a game and test something out. 'Would you guys listen in to both speakers, then the left one, then the right one? Then would you tell us how it sounds?'"

A dozen or so listeners called in, giving mixed results. Sometimes, each signal was as clear as a bell. Sometimes, one signal would "bleed" onto the other signal, producing two voices in one speaker.

Still, Buchanan was encouraged enough to try it out.

"When he told me what he was doing, I said OK," recalled Wadzeck, a longtime teacher at Dayton who currently serves as interim superintendent for Devers Independent School District.

"I told Bill, 'Well, you're the technician. You know what you're doing, I guess.' "

Buchanan didn't, really. But at the end of the '91 season, "Split-Channel Sports" was born.

The station explained its concept almost around the clock. Announcers told their audiences to turn the balance-control dial all the way left for Liberty, all the way to the right for Dayton, or keep it in the middle if you were really deranged and wanted to keep track of both games at once.

"The weird part was that at first, I'd get a lot of feed from Bill's broadcast," Wadzeck recalled. "I'd hear him calling the other game, (and) I'm trying to concentrate on mine ... that was surprising, to say the least."

The experiment stuck. It went full-time in 1992, and KSHN has broadcast two games at once, every Friday night, for nearly 15 years now.

Results have improved, too. The alligator clips have been replaced by a switch, and the in-house producer lets listeners know when Split-Channel Sports is about to begin. And while the broadcasts don't bleed over as much as they used to, producers still keep their ears open. They adjust the balance whenever Buchanan gets excited over a big play, so as not to disrupt the sanctity of Wadzeck's play-by-play, and vice versa.

"We still explain it quite a bit," Buchanan said, "but not nearly as much as we did those first two years."

The FCC does not keep track of how many stations produce split-speaker broadcasts, but Buchanan said he's received more than 100 phone calls from curious station managers over the years.

His message to them: If you're a perfectionist, hang up the phone and don't bother with the experiment. If you can deal with imperfection for 10 Friday nights, go for it.

KSHN now broadcasts online as well, which creates a whole new set of instructions.

In fact, with new technology and opportunities on the Web, Buchanan thought about doing away with the split-channel format a few years ago. He asked his KSHN audience for their thoughts.

Is this really still worthwhile? Or are we even crazier than we were before?

"We got 164 responses," Buchanan said. "Four people said we should go back to normal radio. Four out of 164. I don't know about you, but I call that a mandate."

No matter which speaker it's coming from.

[email protected]

(409) 880-0742

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Kingdee Posted Growth

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Kingdee Posted Growth. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHENZHEN, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --Kingdee International Software Group Co., Ltd. (SEHK: 0268), a leading enterprise resources planning (ERP) software vendor in China, released its interim report recently.



For the first half ended on June 30, the company's operating revenues hit CNY 287 million, jumping 17 percent from a year ago. Its software sales climbed 7.8 percent year on year to CNY 213 million.

Kingdee's software solution service reached CNY 39.75 million, hiking 73.9 percent compared with last year. And its net profit margin rose 1 percent to 10.6 percent.

In the period, the software vendor, headquartered in Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China, has gained a good performance in the high-end market. This is attributive to EAS, a high-end product by Kingdee.

For the first half, EAS has grown 64 percent, which is strategically significant to the company's expansion in the high-end market, Xu Shaochun, Kingdee's chairman and chief executive officer, said at an interview.

The product, competitive in technologies, has helped enlarge the company's market share and now is serving big groups like China's leading real estate firm China Vanke Co., Ltd., suggesting more market reception for the product.

Big clients are expected to bring more customers in their sectors to the software vendor, and further drive up the sales of its medium-end products. They have pushed the company's medium-end products sales by about 10 percent in the first half, increasing 7 to 8 percent from the previous year, and the percentage is estimated to continue to rise in coming days.

In addition, Kingdee's major rivals' high-end products account for 15 percent of their total, a fall from 23 percent for 2005, according to their interim reports.

Kingdee's service has been another fuel for its financial growth. Now the company is offering a variety of service tailored for its over 400,000 customers. From January to June, its income from service has increased 52 percent, and the number is expected to climb up further, said the chairman.

Its 2005 fiscal report showed that its business earnings reached CNY 530 million in 2005, an increase of 19 percent compared with the same period of the previous year. And its net profit increased by 40 percent year on year.

This May Kingdee took over a Shenzhen-based ERP manufacturer Godline for CNY 10 million and absorb Godline's brand. Xu Shaochun claimed that they would increase acquisitions of medium- and small-sized ERP manufacturers both at home and abroad to become a leader in the ERP market in the Asia Pacific region.

Founded in 1997, Godline is specialized at the development, promotion and service of ERP products for manufacturing industries. Now its business has covered six manufacturing segments, electric and electronic products assembly, hardware machinery, plastic & electronic, light source and lights, gifts and toys, cables and wires.

ERP software developers such as Kingdee and UFIDA are also facing another difficulty, higher costs resulting from huge investment in research and development.

In such case, some Chinese ERP software developers have quit their research and development and even were kicked out of the ERP sector to become resellers of foreign brands in China.

Industry analysts said that the only way out for Chinese ERP software developers is the ownership of core technologies in the long term.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.96)

From Nanfang Daily, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast LLC. All rights reserved
NetSuite's PRM Gets Another Sign-Up. Check it out:

CRM vendor NetSuite, Inc. has announced that ViewSonic Corp., a vendor of visual display products, has implemented NetSuite for complete partner relationship management, creating a portal which give partners 24/7 self-service access.



Channel partners account for more than 90 percent of ViewSonic's multi-billion dollar sales, its officials say, and provide the company with an understanding of the systems required to enhance partner communications.

ViewSonic has standardized its partner relationship management on NetSuite, allowing the company's partners to access a centralized self-service portal for all their channel sales needs.

Launched in February 2003, NetSuite's PRM capabilities are in their third generation of product development.

In fact yesterday NetSuite announced the "wide usage" of NetSuite for Partner Relationship Management (PRM), by such companies as Opal Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc and key UK resellers.

NetSuite deserves some kudos for this, for being one of the few high-profile CRM vendors also trying to keep a high profile in the significantly smaller PRM market.

Partner Relationship Management is basically CRM for businesses dealing with each other, it lets partners to do things like jointly manage leads and customers with their parent organization -- including lead registration, opportunity management, order management (entering orders, invoicing and billing).

Tools like NetSuite's have such features as Market Direct Fund (MDF) management, e-mail campaigns and customer service inquiries through a Dashboard with business intelligence and publishing capabilities.

There really aren't many other vendors in this space -- that well-known industry observer, CBRO's Staff Writer, has reported recently that the just-acquired PRM vendor Click Commerce "has grown, but remains a small player overall, with revenue of $59 million last year."

Acquisition by a manufacturer (Click Commerce was bought out by Illinois Tool Works) instead of a fellow software vendor, is "a mark of the depth of the problems vendors in the sector are facing as the market for independent supply chain management (SCM) and partner relationship management (PRM) solutions dries up," faithful scribe Staff Writer observes correctly.

NetSuite PRM+ includes a new Incentive Management tool for partners which can handle multi-level channel sales compensation plans and provide motivation to partner reps by allowing revenue share visibility.

The cornerstone of NetSuite's PRM products, company officials say, is "the collaborative web of processes for end-to-end business management that it enables inside the company."

In other words, NetSuite's PRM capabilities extend those processes to provide a platform for collaboration among the extended enterprise of partner channels. Companies get visibility into partner pipelines and forecasts because the opportunities are managed directly in the same system as their other sales, marketing, service and finance operations.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

LU alum, biz whiz speaks at university. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--Jack M. Gill spent about nine years in college earning degrees in chemistry, engineering and organic chemistry and today runs a $500 million venture capital firm and teaches entrepreneurship at Ivy League schools.



But the Lamar University alumnus never set foot in a business class, and as he told scores of young entrepreneurial hopefuls packed into the Galloway Business Building's Landes Auditorium on Thursday: They don't have to, either.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur has as much to do with a person's leadership qualities and interpersonal skills as with formal business education said Gill, the featured speaker for the Lamar Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies Executive Lecture Series.

"It's usually the people who are really bright but just a few notches below the highest guys in the class," Gill said. "It's not just native, raw intelligence that's going to get you there, it's a whole lot of things."

Studying successful business, political and cultural leaders throughout world history, Gill said education level is not the primary source of success for many of them.

All of those leaders, however, do share qualities such as confidence to take risks, the ability to attract and motivate people and, most of all, determination and what Gill termed "street savvy," which comes from life experiences.

Gill cited media mogul Oprah Winfrey, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and college dropouts Bill Gates of Microsoft and Michael Dell of Dell Computers as examples.

They, similar to many leaders who have excelled, have a "unique mix" of several different qualities other than intelligence, he said.

Allen Perkins, a junior music business major, said Gill's emphasis on leadership energized him.

"I actually own a book that describes exactly what he's talking about," said Perkins, 22. "Now I plan to put that book into action."

Perkins said he plans to apply Gill's lesson of listening to people who have expertise in areas Perkins might not be familiar with to accomplish his personal business goals.

"Now I have more confidence that I can use my ideas," Perkins said.

Lamar's next business lecture will be in November, College of Business dean Henry Venta said.

Rick Neal, Lamar alumnus and chief financial officer for McCoys Building Supply, will be the featured speaker for the ExxonMobil Executive in Residence Series, Venta said.

[email protected]

(409) 880-0736

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
ISC2(R) Supports National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Check it out:
PALM HARBOR, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, Inc. ((ISC)2(R)), the non-profit global leader in educating and certifying information security professionals throughout their careers, today announced its support of National Cyber Security Awareness Month in October. This initiative is supported by the U.S. Congress and coordinated by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) to heighten public awareness of the critical role each citizen plays in protecting information assets. This year's theme is "Cyber Security. Make It a Habit."



"(ISC)2 is supporting National Cyber Security Awareness Month by asking our members to conduct a Cyber Security Awareness Day at their places of business to instill better cyber security habits throughout the enterprise that can be practiced throughout the year," said Pat Myers, CISSP-ISSMP, chairperson, board of directors, (ISC)2. "While it's been the conventional wisdom for years among cyber security professionals, it's become increasingly clear to the public-at-large in recent months that people inside an organization are often the most vulnerable link in securing information assets."

The official (ISC)2 kick-off for National Cyber Security Awareness Month is at the Secure DC event in Bethesda, Md. on Oct. 3 with opening remarks from (ISC)2 and NCSA executives. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about how to heighten awareness and implement online safety programs at work, home and school through fact sheets, DVDs and brochures that they can take with them, as well as attend sessions to gain insight into the latest information security issues, trends, threats and best practices.

In addition, (ISC)2 is offering its members printed and downloadable posters and online banners that can be used at conferences, workshops and other events, places of business, schools and other public venues to promote online safety. Members and others can access these tools at www.isc2.org/awareness.

"Protecting information assets is a top priority for business, government and individuals, and National Cyber Security Awareness Month is an effective avenue for (ISC)2 members to spread the message as to how their communities, organizations and employees can protect themselves from online threats and vulnerabilities," said Ron Teixeira, executive director of NSCA. "The active support and participation of people such as (ISC)2 members will greatly expand our efforts to increase public awareness of cyber safety."

For more information on National Cyber Security Awareness month, please visit www.staysafeonline.org.

About (ISC)2

The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, Inc. ((ISC)2(R)) is the internationally recognized Gold Standard for certifying information security professionals. Founded in 1989, (ISC)2 has certified over 45,000 information security professionals in more than 120 countries. Based in Palm Harbor, Florida, USA, with offices in Vienna, Virginia, USA, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo, (ISC)2 issues the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP(R)) and related concentrations, Certification and Accreditation Professional (CAP(CM)), and Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP(R)) credentials to those meeting necessary competency requirements. The CISSP, CISSP-ISSEP(R) and SSCP are among the first information technology credentials to meet the stringent requirements of ANSI/ISO/IEC Standard 17024, a global benchmark for assessing and certifying personnel. (ISC)2 also offers a portfolio of education products and services based upon (ISC)2's CBK(R), a taxonomy of information security topics, and is responsible for the annual (ISC)2 Global Information Security Workforce Study. More information is available at www.isc2.org.

(C) 2006, (ISC)2 Inc. (ISC)2, CISSP, ISSEP, SSCP and CBK are registered certification marks and CAP is a service mark of (ISC)2, Inc.
CRM News for 29 September: Infusion Doing Well, Selectica Shaking Things Up. Check it out:

CRM news announced recently:

Selectica (News - Alert), Inc. a vendor whose sales execution and contract management products "provide a critical link between CRM and ERP to accelerate sales configuration," according to company officials, has shaken up its hierarchy.



Bill Roeschlein is the new Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Terry Nicholson the new Chief Operating Officer of Contract Management Solutions and Steven Goldner the new Vice President, Engineering.

Stephen Bennion, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said Roeschlein will be helping "further streamline our operations and develop a cost structure that is better aligned with our level of business activity." Goldner is charged with "optimizing our engineering operations and continuing to drive innovation in our enterprise and on-demand" products, and Nicholson will "oversee the continued development of our contract management business."

Selectica has also announced that John Fisher and Thomas Neustaetter have resigned from the Board of Directors, effective immediately. Both Mr. Fisher and Mr. Neustaetter indicated that they must end their board service in order to devote more time to the management of their respective venture capital firms.

Not much in the way of news, more like checking in, but officials of Infusion Software, a vendor of on-demand CRM solutions for "true" small businesses, would like you to know that its software Infusion CRM, a web-based sales and marketing solution, "continues to gain significant momentum with the small business market, resulting in recent increases."

Evidently, during the last 90 days, over 100 small businesses have selected Infusion CRM software to "better manage their sales leads, automate their contact management and business processes."

And as part of "heightened customer demand," Infusion has increased its workforce in the last 90 days by 10 percent, "adding five new employees to the Customer Loyalty, Technology, and Marketing and Sales departments."

"The company's growth indicates that we're gaining traction among our core customers of small businesses, those organizations doing $25 million and less in revenue," said Clate Mask, president of Infusion Software.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

 

METI eyes loans, consultation to give small firms 'second chance'+. Check it out:
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO, Sept. 29_(Kyodo) _ The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees policies to support small businesses, is seeking a new loan system and consultation services to give failed entrepreneurs a "second chance," ministry officials said Friday.



The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency under METI has urged the government to create a special loan and credit guarantee system to encourage those who once failed in their businesses to make a fresh try, they said.

The agency has also made a budgetary request of 1.4 billion yen for fiscal 2007 to offer consulting services at 280 places across Japan. Registered lawyers, accountants and tax experts will give advice to troubled small business operators, according to the officials.

The policies are in line with a pledge by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to realize a society in which struggling people can have second chances.

Compared with the United States, the percentage of those who go on to start another business after going bankrupt is smaller in Japan, due mainly to difficulties in raising funds to make a fresh try, the officials said.

Copyright 2006 Kyodo News International, Inc.
Contact Center News for 29 September: Cistera, Integrated, Matrix.. Check it out:

Contact center news announced recently:

Cistera Networks (News - Alert), Inc., a vendor of IP phone platforms and application engines in the Enterprise VoIP Telephony environment, has announced that four more local and state government agencies have selected Cistera ConvergenceServers.



The new customers include the Florida Senate, Alabama Department of Public Health, San Mateo, California Transit Authority and Wayne Township, Indiana Fire Department.

Company officials believe more government agencies are choosing Cistera's solutions because "they solve real-world problems for public safety, transit authorities, legislatures and first responders."

Cistera has already installed their products for 20 city, county and state government entities. The District of Squamish in British Columbia, Canada, where you might have your summer house, was the first to use Cistera's LandMobileRadioConnect to integrate two-way radios into a Cisco IP Telephony deployment.

And the City of Georgetown, Texas, where you assuredly do not have your summer house, uses RapidBroadcast to send pre-recorded and live broadcasts and text alerts to IP phones in its city offices, police and fire departments.

Integrated Software Development Ltd., a vendor of enterprise software aimed at small- and medium-sized enterprises, has announced that Matrix IT Integration and Infrastructure Ltd., an Israeli IT company, has pre-purchased a pilot project for Benefit's CRM module.

 

Shimon Biton, Head of Services and Integration at Matrix, said the company is initiating a pilot of the Benefit Mobile module" to enable all the company's project and contract managers, and company engineers who are out of the office, to receive task and work-related data in real time directly on the cellular phones."

Using this system, work-related data, including work hours, travel time, expenses, items for delivery, and other information, are automatically updated in real time.

This "allows us to shift our operations from our desktop computers to our cellular phones, which we use as computers for all intents and purposes. We hope this will be a genuine revolution in the way we do work and will bring us a giant step forward in customer relationship management," Biton said.

Matrix plans to commence a pilot program including 50 office-based users and 150 cellular-phone based users. The system also automatically updates the company's financial system, which Matrix developed in-house.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

StreamFoundry Signs Reseller Agreements with IBM Tivoli and Vaultus Mobile Technologies. Check it out:
NEWTON, Mass., Sept. 29 -- StreamFoundry (SF), IBM Tivoli and Vaultus Mobile Technologies have gone to great lengths to build the world's first IT Service Management (ITSM) solution for IBM System z(TM) customers. Coined ITSM for System z(TM) (http://www.itsm-for-z.com/), the solution combines SF's best-of-breed web-based problem, incident, change, and request management applications with IBM Tivoli's top-selling OMEGAMON(R) and NetView(R) performance tools accessible through web and mobile devices.



This partnership serves two purposes. It provides System z(TM) enterprises with the best of SF and IBM's System z(TM) tools in an integrated package, and makes these tools available through three different access points:

-- The IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP) - a web-based dashboard
front-end ideal for managers looking for high-level reports
-- SF's CMS web-interface for end-users managing problems and changes
-- Vaultus' Tivoli Pocket Portal for field technicians and mobile
workers

"We are thrilled to not only integrate, but also sell the System z(TM) assets of IBM Tivoli with our own. Collectively, we offer enterprises the most comprehensive System z(TM) offering for service desk environments," StreamFoundry CEO Doug Shute said. "To extend this environment beyond the service desk through Vaultus' Tivoli Pocket Portal is an added bonus."

In addition to the System z(TM) tools, IBM has also provided StreamFoundry with the ability to resell its Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) application. The CCMDB delivers a federated approach to an enterprise's existing configuration databases.

"The CCMDB fits well with our strategy of service desk centralization," Shute said. "When you combine the SF and Tivoli System z(TM) tools for service support and service delivery with the ability to interface to a centralized configuration management system, the result is greater accountability and quality of service."

ITSM for System z(TM) takes the years of process and workflow know-how stored within an enterprise's core mainframe systems empowering web and mobile applications. The result is a much more flexible, adaptable service desk freed from the limitations of a distributed architecture and able to meet the demands of an ever-changing IT environment at a fraction of the cost to maintain and operate. This is the ITSM for System z(TM) approach.

About StreamFoundry
Advanced IBM Business Partner StreamFoundry (http://www.streamfoundry.com/) enables On Demand and ITIL with a portfolio of web-based software and services that manage and optimize mainframe enabled problem, change, incident, request and customized "vertical" applications and processes. The world's largest bank calls StreamFoundry's CMS the fastest, most reliable and scalable IT service management suite in the industry.

About Vaultus Mobile Technologies
Vaultus is a mobile software company that enables companies and software providers to leverage the benefits of BlackBerry, Treo, and Windows Mobile devices - beyond email. Vaultus' award-winning Mobile Application Platform enables workers to have instant access to their sales/CRM, reports, help desk, and other applications and portals. "Enterprise mobility. Simple and Secure."

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business.

IBM, Tivoli, OMEGAMON and NetView are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.

To learn more about any of the above solutions, please contact:

Marc Heimlich
800-220-5778 Ext. 1103
[email protected]

This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com/.

StreamFoundry, Inc.

CONTACT: Marc Heimlich of StreamFoundry, Inc., 1-800-220-5778 Ext. 1103,or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.streamfoundry.com/http://www.itsm-for-z.com/
Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions Adds New Rural Housing Processing Features to RealProperty PLUS. Check it out:
CINCINNATI --(Business Wire)-- Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions(TM), a leading provider of advanced property management software and services for the property management industry, today announced the addition of new Rural Housing Processing features to its RealProperty PLUS solution, formerly known as PMAS. The new features are designed to provide RealProperty PLUS customers with full compliance of USDA, Rural Housing Service and MINC guidelines set to be enforced next month.



With the addition of new and updated features, RealProperty PLUS allows property managers to produce forms and reports that comply with the newly unveiled guidelines. Specifically, RealProperty PLUS now allows property managers to easily generate and store form letters for 30/60/90/120 day notices notifying subsidy tenants of their annual recertification date. In addition, updated features include reports with renamed fields that comply with government guidelines. For a full list of detailed feature updates, go to www.pmas.com.

"Through consistent and timely product updates, Domin-8 proves its commitment to listening to the needs of its customers and meeting compliance requirements for new and revised government guidelines," said Denis Clark, vice president of marketing for Domin-8. "We are pleased to announce a significant number of enhancements to the RealProperty PLUS solution, providing comprehensive capabilities not found in competitive solutions."

About Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions

Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions is a leading provider of integrated software and services for the property management industry. Domin-8 offers a portfolio of advanced solutions for all types and sizes of property management companies - market rate and affordable (Tax credit, HUD, HOME Bond and Rural); student, senior and military; commercial and retail. Domin-8 also delivers a full suite of tightly integrated Value-Added Services such as background screening, renters insurance, electronic payments and resident mail, giving owners and managers a single point of control for every aspect of property management. In 2006 Domin-8 has acquired American Computer Software, PMAS and Logicbuilt. Domin-8 offers a complete portfolio of training, implementation and support services. For more information, go to www.domin-8.com.

(C) Copyright DOMIN-8 Enterprise Solutions. All rights reserved.
Halo Technology Holdings to Host Fourth Quarter 2006 Conference Call. Check it out:
GREENWICH, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- HALO Technology Holdings (OTCBB: HALO) today announced that it will release financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2006 before the markets open on Thursday, October 12, 2006. HALO will also host a conference call at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. During the call, Ron Bienvenu, chairman and chief executive officer, and Mark Finkel, president and chief financial officer, will discuss the Company's quarterly and annual performance and financial results. The telephone number for the conference call is (706) 643-0996.



A live webcast of the call will also be available on the company's website www.haloholdings.com. To listen to the live call online, please visit the site at least 10 minutes early to register, download and install any necessary audio software. The webcast will be archived on the site, and a telephone replay of the call will be available for seven days beginning at 2:00 PM Eastern time, October 12, at 706-645-9291, using conference ID #7539027.

About HALO Technology Holdings HALO Technology Holdings, Inc. is a global provider of a diversified range of standards-based enterprise software applications and on-demand solutions. HALO's strategy is to acquire and operate private and public enterprise software companies with a commitment to sustainable growth. HALO portfolio companies focus on customer service, product quality and profitability to build long term customer relationships and ensure customer satisfaction today and into the future. Everyday, leading corporations and institutions, including companies like IBM, Phillip Morris, John Deere, Merck, Boeing, Bacardi, Motorola, The Home Depot, Southern Company and thousands more, rely on our portfolio companies to deliver high quality, enterprise class software and services on a global basis. For more information, please see our website at www.haloholdings.com.
FrontRange Wins 2006 TMC(TM) Labs Innovation Award. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- GoldMine(R) IP Voice Suite from FrontRange Solutions has received a 2006 TMC(TM) Labs Innovation Award presented by Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC.) In bestowing the honor, Tom Keating, Chief Technology Officer of TMC and Executive Technology Editor of TMC Labs, wrote: "GoldMine IP Voice Suite is a unique customer interaction solution that combines IP telephony and CRM into a single, comprehensive solution."



According to Keating: "The TMC Labs Innovation Award's sole purpose is to distinguish products and services that have unique features and that often help to carve out a new market niche or start a trend. This award is also about recognizing products and services with creative and ground-breaking features their competitors' solutions often lack."

GoldMine IP Voice Suite delivers an enterprise-class VoIP telephony application that includes full integration to GoldMine(R) Corporate Edition CRM to help companies elevate the quality of interactions with their customers, which in turn boosts sales, increases customer loyalty and raises the productivity of service teams. The product includes an advanced, software-based IP telephony system (FrontRange(TM) IP Office) with Unified Messaging, Auto Attendant, inbound and outbound productivity applications, as well as easy to use management tools.

"Our solutions aim to enable companies to boost revenue by increasing their close ratio on sales," said Kevin Smith, FrontRange Vice President of Products. "By bringing together the two most powerful business tools for customer contact into one solution, GoldMine IP Voice Suite helps deliver on that promise."

The Innovation Award is the second such honor for GoldMine IP Voice Suite in as many months. In August, the solution received the 2006 IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award presented by Technology Marketing Corporation's Customer Inter@ction Solutions(R) magazine (http://www.cismag.com/).

The TMC Labs Innovation Award winners are featured in the September 2006 issue of Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine and online at http://www.tmcnet.com/call-center/0906/labs-innovation-awards-0906.htm .

About FrontRange Solutions

FrontRange Solutions develops award-winning software and solutions used by more than 130,000 companies and over 1.7 million seats worldwide to manage a wide variety of business relationships and provide exceptional service. FrontRange product families are designed to optimize customer investment by their interoperability, specifically for small-to-medium-enterprise (SME) and distributed enterprise organizations.

Solution families are defined by three customer-centric market areas: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) including GoldMine(R); IT Service Management including the HEAT(R), ITSM and Infrastructure Management product lines; and Communication Interaction Management, including IP Office, GoldMine(R) IP Voice Suite and IP Contact Center. This comprehensive product set provides a unique customer service and support scenario, unrivaled in the market today.

Customers representing 44 percent of the Fortune 100 and 76 percent of the FTSE 100, include Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, Prudential Securities, Electricite de France, Mack Trucks, Campbell Soup, Avaya, Bechtel Corp, Bank of America, and Turner News Network. For more information, call (800) 776-7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.

GoldMine, HEAT and other FrontRange Solutions products, brands and trademarks are property of FrontRange Solutions USA Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Other products, brands and trademarks are property of their respective owners/companies.
Mahindra & Mahindra acquires controlling stake in Jeco (Inder steigen bei deutschem Zulieferer ein). Check it out:
(Financial Times Deutschland Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), the Indian conglomerate, is acquiring a controlling stake in Jeco, the German automotive component manufacturer. It is acquiring a 67.9 per cent stake at an enterprise value of around 140m euros.



The acquisition is expected to boost the Indian company's range of automotive components.

Abstracted from Financial Times Deutschland

Copyright 2006 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved.
8x8 Chairman & CEO to Deliver Keynote Address at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 29 -- 8x8, Inc. , provider of Packet8 residential, business and video Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services, today announced that Chairman and CEO Bryan R. Martin will deliver the opening Keynote Address at the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo, October 10-13, 2006 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.



Mr. Martin's presentation will take place on Tuesday, October 10 at 11:30 a.m. PDT. His address will summarize the tremendous progress that has been made in the first decade of the IP communications revolution and offer insight into how the VoIP industry can expand the boundaries of innovation in applications and services that were never realized in the legacy, copper networks of the "Ma Bell" era. Mr. Martin was recently named one of the "Top 100 Voices" in IP Communications, as selected by the editorial team of Internet Telephony magazine. More information about the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo can be found at http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/ .

About 8x8, Inc.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service provider 8x8, Inc. offers internet-based telephony solutions (http://www.packet8.net/ ) for individual residential and business users as well as small- to medium-sized business organizations. In addition to regular Packet8 VoIP service plans priced as low as $19.99 per month for unlimited anytime calling to the U.S. and Canada, 8x8 offers the Packet8 DV 326 VideoPhone, the industry's first stand-alone broadband consumer videophone, and accompanying monthly service plans also priced at $19.99 per month. Packet8 Virtual Office, 8x8's VoIP system for small- to medium-sized businesses, is a hosted PBX solution comprised of powerful business class features. Companies subscribing to Virtual Office pay just $39.99 per month per extension for enterprise class PBX functionality along with unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and Canada. Packet8 Softalk(TM), 8x8's PC-based soft phone client, offers high quality voice and video in-network calling as well as outbound calling to the PSTN. For additional company information, visit 8x8's web site at http://www.8x8.com/ .

NOTE: 8x8, the 8x8 logo, Packet8, the Packet8 logo and Packet8 Virtual Office are trademarks of 8x8, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

8x8, Inc.

CONTACT: Joan Citelli of 8x8, Inc., +1-408-687-4320, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.packet8.net/http://www.8x8.com/
Portellus Makes Web-Based Correspondent Transaction Management Solution Available. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Portellus Inc., a leading provider of technology solutions for the financial services industry, announced that its correspondent origination and investor transaction management solution is now commercially available for general market evaluation and licensing. The solution enables correspondents or conduits to offer a seller-facing portal that enables secondary market participants to electronically submit data on flow, bulk and mini-bulk delivery. Additionally, the platform also provides more robust modules for managing forward and master commitments.



Portellus' correspondent transaction management solution works in conjunction with its enterprise rules management (ERM) system to deliver instant product eligibility; best-ex pricing; automated underwriting approvals complete with stips and conditions; rate locking and extensions; exceptions management; and up-to-date pipeline visibility and status. The solution streamlines the e-delivery of loans with common attributes, improves the consistency and accuracy of investor due diligence, and accelerates the processing and acquisition of loans by secondary market investors/participants.

The solution is currently in use by Clayton Services, one of the largest providers of mortgage-based due diligence, who engaged and collaborated with Portellus in October of 2005 to use the system to enhance its conduit services technology business. It is also in production with a tier one Wall Street firm and a top five mortgage banker.

"The complex automation this solution offers is changing the way buyers and sellers do business on the secondary market," said John N. Le, chairman and CEO of Portellus. "Investor and lender profits are being pinched, and now more than ever sustainability is about data quality, compliance and due diligence. Portellus' correspondent solution offers the respective clients of secondary market investors an alternative to the capital intensive business of delivering in bulk and mini-bulk. Conversely, these same investors are now afforded an opportunity to service a broader market of small-to-midsize sellers with a higher margin market opportunity in the flow business. Because our solution is already in use by several of the industry's biggest names, it is tried, tested and trued."

Driving the intelligence behind Portellus' correspondent solution is the company's ERM system, which houses investor-specific underwriting guidelines to govern loan quality and return instant decisioning to sellers via the portal. The back-end system empowers non-technical business users with the ability to maintain changes to products, pricing and underwriting guidelines in plain English via a simple user interface.

Officials at Portellus say the solution creates ease of deal structuring, facilitates seller-investor trust and establishes a new medium to reach more sellers and buyers. As a result, loan quality is controlled for investors and the funding process is dramatically accelerated for sellers.

About Portellus

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Portellus Inc. is a leading provider of next-generation technology solutions for the financial services and insurance industries. The company's Decision Management, Enterprise Rules Management (ERM), Loan Origination and Portal solutions utilize a service-oriented approach to deliver loosely coupled applications and flexible solutions, enabling clients to gain competitive advantages, reduce costs, mitigate risk, increase profitability, comply with regulatory requirements and swiftly respond to changing marketplace conditions. For more information, visit www.portellus.com or call 949-250-9600.

Portellus will be offering demonstrations of its correspondent solution at the 93rd Mortgage Bankers Association Exposition and Conference in Chicago, October 22 - 24, in its private meeting room. Contact the company to arrange a discussion time at 949.250.9600, ext. 2250 or e-mail them at [email protected].
China's M-Commerce Generates CNY5.8bn Output Value in 2005. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Mobile commerce is leading the tide of Internet and enterprise management and becomes a shining sector of IT market growth, along with the increasing need for mobile office and real-time management and communication.



CCID Consulting, a leading IT market researcher in China, says in a report that excluding hardware, the mobile commerce industry generated total output value of CNY 5.85 billion (USD 1 = CNY 8.00) in 2005, increasing 19.4% from a year earlier.

The growing speed is lower than other sectors of mobile telecom industry and the mobile telecom carriers' revenue made up 69.3% of the total output value. The other parts in the chain of mobile commerce have not fully realized their value.

When the 3G era comes, the advanced technologies will facilitate the development of mobile commerce, which just includes four parts at present: short messaging service, mobile payment, mobile e-mail, and mobile searching service.

From eNet, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Minister scolds laggardly financiers. Check it out:
(The Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SCOTTISH financiers came under fire from the man in charge of official efforts to improve Scotland's anaemic growth rate for allegedly not doing their bit to boost the economy.

Nicol Stephen, minister for enterprise, said private sector funders were hampering the drive to improve the number of successful start-ups by starving companies of the kind of risk capital that could make a vital difference to early-stage ventures.



He used an address to the globalscot conference of successful Scots to reopen the debate about the adequacy of private support for Scotland's hopefuls.

Small business lobbyists have complained about an "equity gap" affecting small firms that slipped beneath the radar of venture capitalists, which they say are focusing on big deals.

Some specialists in areas like technology say they have plenty of money to invest in small fry with the potential to achieve rapid growth but can not find enough good firms to back.

However, noting that the Scottish Executive had committed public sector funds to leverage in private sector money through the Scottish Coinvestment Fund, Stephen said: "Lots of people will tell you there's a shortage of good ideas and good management teams; I disagree with that.

"Some of our companies struggle to achieve that initial venture capital investment."

Highlighting the fact that on some measures investment by Scottish businesses in research and development that may be essential to improving productivity lagged well beyond more successful areas, he pointed the finger again. "In Scotland it tends to be . . . that R&D is often an area you want to be able to put a red line through. That is very dangerous and shortsighted and ultimately damaging for the economy."

The criticisms got short shrift from the venture capital industry. "As an industry we invest in every sector of the economy across all regions. In 2005, in Scotland we invested GBP114m in 96 companies, " said the British Venture Capital Association. "We are always looking to make a good investment. If the opportunity is there we will take it."

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
SNP plans to cut rates for small businesses. Check it out:
(The Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE SNP yesterday announced plans to cut rates for small businesses, and the party's enterprise spokesman, Jim Mather, told parliament the small business bonus scheme would make the Scottish economy more competitive.



He told MSPs that red tape would also be reduced, with small businesses only having to apply for this on a fiveyearly basis to coincide with revaluation.

"Scotland can grow, Scotland can move forward. People are coming to that conclusion right, left and centre, " he said.

Mather added that Scottish Enterprise chairman John Ward had recently claimed that a 3.5-per cent rate of growth is required. He said: "That requires radical change.

"Our proposals are putting that radical change in place and we are persuading more and more people that we can end an era of relative decline which has lasted all my business lifetime.

"We are entering an era where we can have perpetual improvement and the personal and national economic cakes get progressively bigger."

He said this was in line with the success which Ireland has seen in recent years. "We can match what Ireland's doing because we are starting from a better place. We've got better infrastructure. We've got better and more universities, we've got stronger industry sectors and we've got fantastic natural resources, " he said.

A key objective for an SNP administration would be to become one of the top 15 most competitive countries in the western world and matching the 4-per cent per annum growth of small European nations, he added.

The SNP claims that its new small business bonus scheme will abolish business rates for 120,000 companies across the country.

Under the plans, business rates for firms with a rateable value of GBP8000 a year or less would be abolished.

Businesses with a rateable value of GBP8000 to GBP10,000 a year would get rates relief of 50-per cent while those with a rateable value of between GBP10,000 and GBP15,000 would have their bills cut by 25-per cent.

Mather also said that reducing the application for the scheme to once every five years, it would save the sector GBP10m.

Deputy Enterprise Minister Allan Wilson told the chamber that 98-per cent of Scottish firms fell into the small business category.

He claimed that the Scottish economy has performed well, with a GDP growth over the year to the first quarter of 2006 of 1.9-per cent.

He said: "This is above our long-term annual average and our most recent quarterly growth rate of 0.5-per cent is the strongest first-quarter performance for the Scottish economy since 2001.

"The Scottish labour market continues to perform exceptionally well, with over 160,000 Scots having entered employment since the creation of the Scottish parliament.

"Employment levels are at their highest since quarterly records began."

The minister added that 40-per cent of all private sector jobs were in small businesses.

Scottish corporate statistics show that the number of small businesses has risen from 226,510 in 1999 to 264,660 in 2004.

Total employment in small businesses is now 759,500.

He said: "That's real progress. That's real people in real, growing small businesses here in Scotland.

"Those businesses have an encouraging turnover of some GBP52bn here in Scotland and those are all positive aspects of our support for Scottish businesses."

Since 2003, about 70-per cent of nondomestic subjects in Scotland have benefited from a rates reduction of up to 50-per cent, the minister added, through the small business rates relief scheme.

"I believe that we have devised a scheme which significantly assists those small businesses who need help with paying their rates bill, " he said.

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
CNSIC and Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Invest in Salt Chemical Base. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Zhenjiang Salt and Chemical Co. Ltd of China National Salt Industry Corporation (CNSIC), which is the largest salt production and sales enterprise in Asia, Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co., Ltd, the leading company in China's chlor-alkali industry, and Dantu District People's Government have reached an Agreement on Salt and Alkali Integration Project, to invest CNY 2.8 billion in establishing the largest salt chemical base in domestic China.



This project can be divided into two phases. Phase I project includes installation of vacuum salt making plant, brine mining and transportation project, diaphragmatic alkali plant, thermal power plant and corresponding wharf and utility facility. Phase II project includes ion membrane caustic soda plant and propylene oxide plant.

From stocknews.com.cn, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Leading Industry Visionaries and Global Customers to Deliver Real-World Best Practices at Plateau's 11th Annual User Conference. Check it out:
ARLINGTON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Plateau Systems, a leading provider of software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational skills and talent, today announced its 11th annual user conference, Insights 2006. The conference, themed "Building a High Performance Workforce," will be held October 15-18 at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Orlando, and will feature an extensive customer-focused agenda with an impressive line-up of industry visionaries, customer presenters as well as hands-on educational tracks.



More than 200 customers are expected to attend the invitation-only conference which will also include the presentation of Plateau's annual Customer Excellence Awards. The company announced that it has received a record number of entries for the prestigious awards, which will be announced at the Insights Gala, sponsored by Deloitte at Disney's Animal Kingdom(R). Deloitte again heads an impressive list of Plateau partners scheduled to participate and exhibit, including WeLocalize, WebEx, Adobe and Thomson NETg.

Keynote Speakers

Featured keynote speaker Claire Schooley, senior analyst in Forrester's Information Delivery Research Group, will discuss the challenges of a dynamic workforce and the critical role learning, performance management, and succession planning play in addressing these challenges. Plateau executives including Paul Sparta, chairman and chief executive officer; Ed Cohen, chief technology officer; Joe Herman, senior vice president of product management and alliances; and Shelly Heiden, senior vice president of Plateau Global Services, will deliver keynote presentations focusing on Plateau's vision, product roadmap and customer innovation. Industry thought leaders and Plateau customers from pioneering global organizations including GE and The Walt Disney Company, and leading government agencies including NASA and the U.S. Air Force, will present case studies and best practices that focus on how Plateau is helping them create a high performance workplace.

-- Claire Schooley, Senior Analyst in Forrester's Information Delivery Research Group, will deliver a keynote entitled "Preparing for Future Workforce Transformation" focused on how effective learning, performance management, and succession planning strategies can help organizations address the challenges surrounding their changing workforce.

-- Colonel Thomas Giattino, U.S. Air Force, Chief, Aircrew Training & Standardization Division for AETC, will discuss best practices for leveraging Plateau's flexible software delivery options to deploy large-scale global training programs to service personnel worldwide.

-- Jill Honerlaw from GE will present "The Value of Integrated Learning and Performance" which will highlight the integrative advantages and cost/time savings benefits of deploying a unified learning and performance management solution that leverages a single data repository for both applications.

-- Barbara Howes, vice president, Enterprise Learning Strategy, The Walt Disney Company, will deliver a presentation titled, "Enterprise Learning Vision & Best Practices at Disney," highlighting lessons from Disney's recently launched enterprise-wide learning management system and discussing how it has enabled the company to align employee career development with the company's strategic initiatives."

-- Jason Averbrook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion, will present "Market Trends in Talent Management," which will explore the necessity for and benefits of aligning strategic corporate goals with individual results, with an emphasis on how a holistic view of people, processes, technology can enable organizations to achieve organizational success.

Attendees will enjoy access to more than 30 additional presentations focused on various aspects of Talent Management, including learning, performance, talent management, competencies and development, training, technology integration (including SCORM, AICC, hosting and infrastructure design, software validation and implementation). Conference sessions are aligned across three tracks - Learning, Performance, and Products & Services and will feature real-world customer case studies presented by HR and learning practitioners as well as developer and consultant-led product education sessions. To view the full conference agenda, visit http://www.plateau.com/insights/agenda.htm

Sessions will include the following topics:

-- Performance Management Trends and Systems

-- On-Demand Talent Management Suites

-- Integrated Learning and Performance

-- Competency-Based Talent Management Systems

-- Best Practices for leveraging Learning and Performance

-- Learning Management in Federal and Local Law Enforcement

-- Next Generation Content Integration

-- Skills and Competency Development for the Real-World

Sponsors & Partners

Plateau consistently leverages its alliances with leading business partners to deliver best-in-class solutions to its customers. Throughout the conference, attendees will have access to the Insights Partner Expo, featuring the latest in learning and IT solutions from Plateau's alliance partners. For a complete list of Insights sponsors and exhibitors, please visit http://www.plateau.com/insights/expo.htm

For complete event details and registration information, please visit the Plateau Insights 2006 Web site at http://plateau.com/insights

About Plateau

Plateau is a leading provider of adaptable Web-based software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational skills and talent to increase workforce productivity and business operations performance. Plateau's software is being used by some of the world's largest, most successful enterprises, including the American Red Cross, General Electric, Internal Revenue Service, and Wendy's International. Industry analysts, including Forrester Research and Bersin & Associates, have rated Plateau a leader in functionality, technology, and customer satisfaction. The company is headquartered in Arlington, Va. For more information, please visit www.plateau.com

Kyodo economic news summary -6-+

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Kyodo economic news summary -6-+. Check it out:
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO, Sept. 29_(Kyodo) _ ---------- Mitsui Chemicals to buy Daiichi Sankyo's pesticide unit

TOKYO - Mitsui Chemicals Inc. said Friday it will buy Daiichi Sankyo Co.'s pesticide manufacturing unit Sankyo Agro Co. with the aim of strengthening its agrichemical business.

Mitsui Chemicals said it has reached an agreement with the Daiichi Sankyo group to purchase all outstanding shares in Sankyo Agro, with the stock transfer scheduled for March 30 next year. The company declined to reveal the acquisition cost.



---------- Japan's housing starts up 1.8% in Aug., 1st rise in 2 months

TOKYO - Japanese housing starts in August rose 1.8 percent from a year earlier to 111,187 units for the first increase in two months, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Friday.

The ministry attributed the rebound to increases in starts of both owner-occupied houses and homes for sale, which outweighed the effects of a decline in starts of homes for rent.

---------- Takefuji to stop having borrowers' lives insured

TOKYO - Consumer loan firm Takefuji Corp. said Friday it will stop on Sunday the practice of having borrowers' lives insured, and will not purchase such policies for new lending contracts as of Nov. 1.

The announcement came after consumer loan companies were criticized for using borrowers' lives to recover loans. The firms have bought group life insurance contracts upon lending to borrowers in a bid to recover loans in the form of insurance money when borrowers die before completing repayments.

---------- Japan stays out of currency markets in Sept. for 30th month

TOKYO - Japan's currency authorities did not intervene in foreign exchange markets in September for the 30th straight month, the Finance Ministry said Friday.

The ministry said it conducted no market intervention via the Bank of Japan from Aug. 30 to Sept. 27, extending the intervention-free period since March 17, 2004.

---------- Mitarai, 3 others named for key gov't economic panel

TOKYO - Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said Friday the government has picked Japan Business Federation Chairman Fujio Mitarai and three others as new private-sector representatives at its powerful Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.

The other three are Uichiro Niwa, chairman of trading house Itochu Corp., Takatoshi Ito, professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Economics, and Naohiro Yashiro, professor of economics at the International Christian University.

---------- Toshiba to recall 830,000 Sony-made batteries for computers

TOKYO - Toshiba Corp. said Friday it will recall about 830,000 lithium-ion batteries made by Sony Corp. for its notebook personal computers on a global basis.

Toshiba's move, the first among Japanese computer makers, will deal another blow to Sony and is likely to prompt other laptop manufacturers to recall some of their products on concerns over possible overheating.

---------- Japan needs to amend negative views on foreign labor: experts

TOKYO - Experts including a former Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau chief agreed Friday in a symposium that more Japanese need to have a positive image toward foreign workers.

"Japanese people need to welcome" foreign workers as we "receive them as helpers" for solving issues related to Japan's declining population, Hidenori Sakanaka, who retired from the Justice Ministry last year, said at the symposium held in Tokyo.

---------- Yoshinoya lowers interim earnings estimate

TOKYO - Restaurant chain operator Yoshinoya D&C Co. said Friday it will book smaller-than-expected sales for the just-ended first half of the current business year due to the effects of preparations to put "gyudon" beef-on-rice dishes back on its menu.

Yoshinoya, once Japan's No. 1 provider of gyudon dishes, said it expects to register group sales of 62.24 billion yen for the March-August period, down from its projection of 63.40 billion in April.

---------- METI eyes loans, consultation to give small firms 'second chance'

TOKYO - The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees policies to support small businesses, is seeking a new loan system and consultation services to give failed entrepreneurs a "second chance," ministry officials said Friday.

The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency under METI has urged the government to create a special loan and credit guarantee system to encourage those who once failed in their businesses to make a fresh try, they said.

---------- Gov't plans tax waivers to help turn around Skymark Airlines

TOKYO - The transport ministry said Friday it has decided to help turn around the struggling business of Skymark Airlines Co. by invoking special industrial revival legislation.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will take advantage of the law, which took effect in 1999 amid a prolonged recession, to grant the carrier tax wavers worth some 8.4 million yen on its new share issuance over the next three years, ministry officials said.

Copyright 2006 Kyodo News International, Inc.

Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai

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Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, Sep 29, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Piper Jaffray & Co., the principal operating subsidiary of the America-based investment bank Piper Jaffray Companies (PJC), set up its third overseas branch in Shanghai on September 26 after the branches in London and Bombay.



Andrew Duff, the CEO of the bank revealed the move in Shanghai is a key part of the comprehensive development strategy of the bank, which would enhance its strength in the international medium-size investment and security market.

The bank, established in 1895 in Minneapolis, US, specializes in serving medium enterprises, investment groups, institutions, non-profit-making associations and institutional investors.

Since 2000, it had tapped into Asian financial markets and undertaken the first public placement of the Chinese enterprise UTStarcom in US.

From China Securities, Page 1, Thursday, September 28, 2006
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Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Market Set to Transform as Product Focus and Functionality Broaden. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42880) has announced the addition of Corporate Performance Management 2006 to their offering.

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions today focus on finance: Financial Consolidation, Budgeting and Planning, and Scorecards and Dashboards. This is understandable. Finance Departments need to handle the pressures for better and faster business performance numbers for regulatory compliance, transparency with stakeholders, and for business management. However, the CPM world is all set for radical change.



Enlightened CPM suppliers are re-positioning their offerings away from "only finance" and are embracing "enterprise performance management". These solutions model and measure not only the effects of actions across all enterprise departments, but also the underlying root causes and drivers using management methodologies like Balanced Scorecard. Performance Management software is set to become a means to provide business agility, alignment and accountability, not just finance metrics alone. OK, the vendors have talked about this for sometime - but the reality is that customers did not "buy into" the promise. Now the time is right as the business drivers and the technology readiness are aligned.

This report "Corporate Performance Management" introduces a fresh new way of looking at emerging customer requirements for CPM and profiles the solutions of the top 21 CPM technology providers. Using the graphic visualisation of our unique Bullseye(TM) diagrams, the author provides insight into how the vendors position their products and services in the marketplace - and how they compare in 10 different areas - be they implementation, support, or value for money for example. This report will prove to be an invaluable guide for end users evaluating suppliers' CPM offerings. The CPM report complements the Research report on Business Intelligence http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?r=339696 published in June 2006.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42880
Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc. Secures $9 Million in Series a Funding from Ignition Partners, Core Capital Partners and Chart Venture Partners. Check it out:
SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc., a leading software company that designs and builds IP-based group communications software, today announced it has closed its first round of venture capital funding, receiving $9 million from an investment group syndicate co-led by Ignition Partners and Core Capital Partners, and to include Chart Venture Partners. This investment will be used to accelerate the company's rapid growth through an extended focus on sales, marketing and partner development, as well as further advancement of its core WAVE technology.



"This investment allows us to accelerate our response to the incredible demand we are seeing from our partners and end customers, powering additional products, services and solutions with our core software technology," said Tom Guthrie, President and CEO of Twisted Pair Solutions. "Ignition, Core and Chart bring a wealth of experience that allows us to significantly increase the breadth of market-specific solutions as well as the depth of software components and development tools for our worldwide partners."

"The global communications environment has become increasingly complicated with new technologies and standards which are constantly evolving," said Adrian Smith, Principal at Ignition Partners. "We see a significant opportunity for a company like Twisted Pair that has the technical competence and experience to make these technologies work together to allow people to seamlessly communicate in any situation.

"Twisted Pair's solution has been tried and tested in some of the most demanding, mission-critical communications environments in the military and government. We believe that they are ideally positioned to solve communication interoperability challenges in many commercial segments."

Started in 1999, the WAVE software technology has been broadly accepted as the leading solution of choice for enabling and managing group communications and achieving interoperability. Thousands of customers in defense, public safety, finance, and utilities leverage the advantages of WAVE to connect people using disparate and often incompatible communications technologies into a single, interoperable and manageable communications system. WAVE specializes in managing and configuring group communications to meet an organization's needs while avoiding a fork-lift upgrade of existing communications equipment. Today, WAVE software technology is sold worldwide as bundled product suites through Twisted Pair's systems integration partners as well as OEM partners who build their own products and services using the WAVE Software Development Kit.

"Interest in WAVE software technology is at an all time high and increasing with each deployment," said Rene Grossrieder, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Twisted Pair. "Our ability to harness this growth and establish aligned business processes with crisp execution is significantly enhanced with this round of funding. New marketing, sales and business development initiatives are already underway and will be a driving force in achieving previously unattainable levels of growth, profitability and partner development."

"Twisted Pair represents the perfect convergence of technology and the needs of homeland security and public safety," commented Tom Wheeler, Managing Director at Core Capital. "The WAVE technology, which is now deployed with our forces in Iraq to help them communicate, can do the same for fire fighters, police, hospitals and other emergency service providers. Gone is the tragedy of September 11, when fire fighters and police could not communicate with each other, the WAVE platform allows all radios, cell phones, and laptops to communicate with each other regardless of the technology used or frequency on which they operate."

In addition, Ted Hobart from Chart Venture Partners added, "Twisted Pair's WAVE technology addresses an immediate and pressing need for interoperability among military communications networks, particularly for units deployed in theater, which is among the most challenging markets and operating environments. We believe the Company's leading technology can also be leveraged more broadly for civilian and military communications programs, as well as large commercial markets and that the team is well positioned to execute its strategy for growth."

The new board will be comprised of Tom Guthrie, President and CEO of Twisted Pair Solutions, Shaun Botha, Chief Technology Officer of Twisted Pair Solutions, Tom Wheeler, Partner of Core Capital and Adrian Smith, Principal of Ignition Partners.

About Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc.

Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc. designs and builds enterprise software solutions that enable interoperable group communications. Our WAVE software manages real-time, secure, group communications over the IP network, linking in people and devices. The application suite serves an unlimited variety of devices including radios, personal computers, cell phones, and IP phones and allows previously incompatible systems to work together seamlessly. In addition, Twisted Pair's management server capabilities enable robust device and user management leveraging IP as the protocol of choice for open, reliable and highly scaleable communications. Twisted Pair Solutions is headquartered in Seattle, Washington USA with offices in the Netherlands, UK and Australia. Visit us at www.twistpair.com

About Ignition Partners

Ignition Partners, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is a premier venture capital firm dedicated to helping the best entrepreneurs seize opportunity - from turning their early stage idea into a business, to hiring the right team, providing the right industry and functional insight and connections, and growing their business strategically, globally, and financially to realize the best ultimate outcome. Ignition invests in emerging and future leaders in communications, Internet, software, and services across business and consumer targets. Ignition brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, technical expertise, and global operational experience. Ignition's partners are proven business leaders who have built some of the world's most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows and Office, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, and Starbucks. www.ignitionpartners.com

About Core Capital Partners

Core Capital is a Washington, DC-based venture fund with over $370 million under management. The firm invests in a wide range of disruptive technologies, with a particular focus on telecommunications hardware and software, wireless applications, enterprise software, network security, ecommerce, and web and communications services. Core invests in both early-stage and later-stage companies. Sample portfolio companies include InPhonic, Sourcefire, NexTone Communications, buySafe, RoundBox, Trust Digital, Trinity Convergence, and IXI. www.core-capital.com

About Chart Venture Partners

Chart Venture Partners concentrates its investments in the homeland defense and security markets, with an emphasis on dual-use technologies (government and commercial). Through an exclusive Strategic Partner Agreement with InSitech, Inc., the sole Partnership Intermediary for US Army's Picatinny Arsenal/ARDEC (Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center), Chart Venture Partners has unique access to research facilities and potential customers in the military and homeland security arenas. www.chartventures.com
Wave to Present at The New York Society of Security Analysts' ''Small Cap Innovators'' Conference, Thurs., October 5th at 3:50 p.m.. Check it out:
LEE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Wave Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: WAVX) (www.wave.com) announced today that Wave CFO, Gerard T. Feeney, will be presenting at The New York Society of Security Analysts' Small Cap Innovators Conference on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 in New York City. Wave's presentation is scheduled for 3:50 p.m. EDT and will made available for replay on the NYSSA website (www.nyssa.org) a few days following the presentation. The conference will take place in New York City at The New York Society of Security Analysts, 1177 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor (between 45th & 46th Streets)



New York Society of Security Analysts

Since 1937, The New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) has educated and informed investment professionals, providing them with a vibrant forum for the exchange of ideas and information. NYSSA promotes awareness and understanding of securities analysis, investing, and the operation of the securities markets. For more information, visit www.nyssa.org or contact them at (212) 541-4530.

About Wave Systems

Wave Systems solves the most critical security problems for enterprises and government with software solutions that are trustworthy, reliable, easy to use, and offer a speedy return on investment. Wave's trusted computing software solutions include strong authentication, data protection, advanced password management and enterprise-wide trust management services. For more information about Wave, visit http://www.wave.com.

All brands are the property of their respective owners.
PHILIP MORRIS KUBAN'S H1 NET PROFITS SIX TIMES UP TO 87,862,000 RUBLES. Check it out:
(Tobacco Briefing Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The enterprise has declined to comment on the reasons behind
this growth in net profits. A press release by Philip Morris
notes that this year the enterprise plans introducing a new
tobacco drying technology.

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Does virtualization drive the future?. Check it out:
(EDN Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Over the 50 years since the first tabloid issue of
Electrical Design News
, underlying forces
have driven the evolution of the electronics industry. Since manufacturers
first fabricated transistors using photolithography, the inexorable shrinking
that process enabled has changed the world. Since it first became viable to put
a stored-program computer on a few chips, the shift of functions from hardware
to software has changed the world, as well.

These forces have been obviouswith obvious results. But consider
a more abstract and less obvious driving force that has, arguably, also been
important, and in the future may unleash a revolution as great as those of the
IC and microprocessor.

You could call that underlying trend "virtualization." The word is not
susceptible to a one-line definition, so let's digress for a moment. When you
use electrical quantities to perform physical work or release light, you say
the system is electrical. When you use the same quantitiescharge,
current, or voltageto convey information rather than merely to do work,
you say that the system is electronic. Virtualization is, in this sense, a step
beyond electronics. A systembe it a physical process, an object in the
real world, or an imaginary personis virtualized when it has undergone
three key steps. First, a boundary must isolate the system from its
environment. Second, designers identify the inputs and outputs that cross the
boundary, along with the transforms that produce the outputs, thus modeling the
system. Third, designers produce a functionally equivalent blockone
that accepts the same inputs and produces the same outputs under the same
circumstanceswith an electronic system.

From at least the mid-1960s, engineers have used electronic systems to
virtualize physical thingseither components of the electronic system
itself or objects in the outside worldand incorporate those models in
place of the real objects. This virtualization has made it possible for
electronic systems to behave as if they had hardware that they did not have. It
has also allowed systems to behave as if they were interacting with a world
from which they were isolatedeither by distance or by the fact that
that world didn't exist. These capabilities have accelerated the growth of
electronics and in the future are likely to lend electronic systems
capabilities that in the past were the province of humans alone.

In the beginningOne of the earliest exercises in virtualization waslike many a
breakthrough that later became standard practice in computer
architecturean advance in the IBM (
www.ibm.com
) 360 mainframe family. Before that
time, machine-code instructions in computers referenced memory through physical
addressesnumbers representing physical locations on the surface of a
drum or, after the development of magnetic cores, physical locations within the
array of small ferrite cores.

The development of virtual memory rested on the idea that the addresses
that machine instructions created needn't be the last word. If arithmetic
hardware were fast enough, it could translate addresses from the computer
program on the fly into physical addresses using some prearranged mapping. This
feature allowed a program that was assembled to run at one location in physical
memory to execute in another locationeven if the programmer had not
made all the memory references relative to the contents of a base register.
More important, it also meant that programs could run on a machine whose
physical memory was many times smaller than the virtual-address range the
program used. A portion of the operating systema well-developed concept
by this timecould allocate portions of the physical memory as necessary
for the immediate needs of the program, swapping blocks of information onto and
off of disk drives as necessary. By extension, this ability meant that a
modest-sized machine could concurrently run a number of large programs,
convincing each of them that it had access to all the physical memory it wanted
when in fact it was borrowing small blocks of memory on an as-needed basis.
Severing the link between the program's address spacewhich now became
virtualand the physical-address space was a huge and vital step in the
creation of modern data processing. But it was far from the last one.

At first glance, it might appear that this scenario has little to do
with the definition of "virtualization." However, the process executes all of
the steps in virtualization. IBM's designers isolated physical memory from the
rest of the mainframe system. They identified the inputsaddresses and
write dataand the outputstiming signals and read
datathat characterized the system. And they constructed a combination
of hardware, which would become a memory-management unit, and software, which
would become the virtual-memory manager that created a virtual main memory.

Virtualizing the IT worldRich Lechner, vice president of IBM Virtualization (
www-03.ibm.com/systems/ virtualization
), defines
the term as "the logical representation of resources not constrained by
physical devices." He points out that, when you use virtualization in this way,
it can "either treat one physical resource as if it were many or treat many,
possibly dissimilar, resources as if they were one." Lechner traces the
beginnings of virtualization to the 360 family's virtual-memory-system debut 40
years ago. But he says the practice has become far broader today than simply
virtualization of memory, which is now a common practice even in
microprocessors. "At one level, we can gather all of the storage assets
available to a network into a single pool of storage," Lechner says. In this
way, any program executing in the environment has access to all of the storage
assets of the network through a single interface.

But if you are not careful, you will face chaos. The location of stored
data does make a differencein access time, cost, persistence, and
coherence. So, for storage, virtualization has come to mean more than just
providing a mapping from a single mass-storage API (application-programming
interface) to a diverse set of storage devices. "The next level involves the
routine cleansing and deduplicating of the storage system," Lechner explains.
The virtualization system must make sure to remove stale copies of data,
propagate updates, eliminate duplicate data sets, and keep data in a place that
is most convenient to its clients. "This all by itself is a significant
benefit," Lechner says. "Our field studies indicated that, before
virtualization, the average midsized enterprise stores the same data in at
least 20 places around the network."

The process does not stop with storage systems. In just the same way,
system programmers can identify the computing resources in a network, give them
wrappers that present a common API, and hence virtualize them. In this way, the
computing power available to an application becomes a slice of the entire
computing community on the network, not simply the power of the machine on
which the application happens to be running.

The next step in this process is even a bit more abstract. You can
virtualize storage devices and servers, but what about applications? In exactly
the same way, system programmers can draw a wrapper around each application,
provide it with a set of APIs, and make it available to the network as a
virtual applicationsay, a virtual database. Thus, when an application
program executes in the network, it may be interacting with virtual-storage
devices on a number of storage networks, running on a virtual processor when
parts of the code are executing on a half-dozen servers around the network, and
calling virtual applications that may be data-bases from different vendors with
different organizations.

IT to embedded computingAll this virtualization might seem to be irrelevant to anything outside
the IT (information-technology) world. But if you think of a multicore embedded
systembased on the IBM Cell processor, for exampleas a
heterogeneous collection of computing resources, storage assets, and
interconnects, perhaps the relevance becomes more clear. As has so often been
the case, the IT solution of today is the SOC (system-on-chip) solution of
tomorrow. Virtualization may be the concept that makes SOCs with diverse
computing sites usable in real applications.

In fact, we are already seeing indications that this is the case. At
IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center,
www.imec.be
) in Leuven, Belgium, researchers
have created a virtual model of a runtime-configurable, multicore-computing
system for software-defined radio. Antoine Dejonghe, a principal scientist at
IMEC, describes the situation: "IMEC's M4 project is creating a radio system
that can be agile in real time across wireless protocols and media types," he
says. "We believe that technology scaling by itself won't be enough to bridge
the energy gap between what our configurable architecture requires and what
batteries will be able to provide. So, the viability of the system depends on
being able to model the entire system, from analog front end through the
media-access-controller software, in terms of its energy consumption. We will
use this model to establish the optimum trade-off between energy and quality of
user experience at runtimeperhaps as often as every 10 msec."

Today, the models are under constructionusing the same sequence
of stepsto create a virtual software-defined radio. Designers have
theoretically modeled the analog front end, for instance, with approximately 11
control bits as inputs, along with theoretically calculating output power,
distortion, and energy consumption. The designers are now calibrating these
models against actual silicon measurements. They will construct similar models
to predict the performance and energy consumption of the configurations of
IMEC's ADRES (architecture-for-dynamically
reconfigurable-embedded-system)-computing cores in the radio project.

The result will be a virtualization of the radio that should execute in
software, consuming less than 5% of an ARM9 and continually optimizing the
radio for current traffic, link quality, and application variables (Figure 1
). This process, Dejonghe believes, can bridge
the gap between what batteries can deliver and what battery life users will
demand.

Creating a virtual worldIMEC's work creates a virtualization of a physical system. However,
designers are virtualizing larger and more complex systems. Another easy place
to find excitement in virtualization is in the world of electronic games.
Traditionally, that virtualization did not exist. Most video games today have a
lot more in common structurally with a Walt Disney cartoon than with a
simulation of the physical world. Games, like cartoons, have story lines. The
choices of the player do not directly interact with the world of the game;
players merely choose story lines, and the game proceeds down one of the paths
the scriptwriters designed for it.

This scenario is true even at the macro level. When you slip around the
corner and level the four-eyed alien from the planet Grr
with your super halitosis blaster, you unleash a
sequence of animation frames, in which the Grrien satisfyingly rips open,
tumbles through the air, and lands as a puddle of unfamiliar proteins. This
sequence is almost the reverse of motion estimation in video-compression
algorithms: It begins with a set of key frames and animates incremental motions
of objects against a relatively fixed back ground. To the player, the result is
much the same no matter which way he triggers the sequence, unless he
misses.

As games become richer and players become more sophisticated, this
situation causes a problem, according to Manju Hegde, chief executive officer
and chairman of gaming "physics-engine" developer Ageia. He has a vested
interest in this problem because Ageia supplies software and hardware
accelerators for performing the dynamic computations necessary for eliminating
the animation sequences and computing the trajectories of the spinning Grrien
bits.

No oneleast of all, the animatorswould dispute that it
is better to do a dynamics-based simulation of the objects in the game world
than to rely on animation sequences. However, the greatest benefit would be to
the game architects. Because of the labor involved in producing animation
sequences from key frames, a game can have only a limited number of animation
sequences. So, architects must confine the action of the game so that only a
limited number of outcomes are possible at any time. The art of game design
today is to make the game feel rich and unscripted without causing an
exponential explosion in the number of key frames that developers must
prepare.

Hegde illustrates with a rather less violent example: a basketball game.
"If you want a realistic slam-dunk sequence in your game, you start out by
rigging lights all over your star player and then you record him doing some
dramatic dunks," Hegde explains. "Then, back in the lab, you extract from the
recording key frames and interpolate the movement of the image edges to produce
animation. This animation can look natural on the screen, but, any time you
push the slam-dunk button in the right context, you are going to see the same
sequence."

The alternative approach is to build a physics-based model of our
herothat is, to virtualize him. "We create a physics-based model of the
body," Hegde says. "Today, it can be as detailed as having approximately 200
bones connected by six kinds of joints. We then model each of these bones and
joints according to the laws of physics. You apply forces to them, and they
respond. Now, the dunk becomes the dynamics of the individual bones and joints
in the model person. If you view a game from a distance during fast action, a
game might use just 20 bones to reduce the calculations, but it looks 'right.'"
Hegde thus describes a scenario that fits this article's definition of
virtualizationin this case, of a basketball forward.

This virtualization has so many advantages over conventional animation
that manufacturers wouldexcept for a couple of issuesproduce
all games in this way. One of these issues goes back to scripting. If the
outcome of the player's input depends on both physics and the game script, the
sequence of play can quickly become unmanageable. What if physics dictates that
the player breaks his wrist on the rim of the basket and leaves the court
writhing in pain? Game architects who employ physics-based models often
intervene in the simulation to direct it to allowable outcomes, so that the
game stays within its script. This delicate business blends physical simulation
and animation.

A more brutal problem is the amount of computing requirements. "Today,
an AMD FX-62 dual-core CPU running at 2.8 GHz may be able to handle a couple of
characters with extensive bone models," Hegde says. "But you couldn't do
physics-based simulation with a large number of characters on the screen at
once. The bursts of computation necessary to support a number of characters all
running, for instance, would overwhelm the processors."

Microsoft's Robotics Studio (
www.microsoft.com/robotics
) is developing a
similar application, also using Ageia's technology. Rather than playing games,
the Microsoft group provides a virtual-development environment for the
programmingand, eventually, the designof robots. Tandy Trower,
general manager of the group, says that the need for such an environment is
obvious across the spectrumfrom industry to education. On one end, with
a KUKA (Keller und Knappich Augsburg) Robotics (
www.kuka.com
) robotic arm selling for more than
$100,000, industrial developers need a low-cost environment in which to develop
and test programs. At the other extreme, robotics has proved to be one of the
few endeavors that can attract US students to engineering and mathematics. Even
simple robots, however, are far beyond the reach of most secondary schools,
even though students have proved capable of programmingand even
designingthem. So an affordable virtualization of a robot and its
surroundings would be a big win, and Microsoft is attempting to achieve that
goal.

Building a virtual world behind the Direct-X graphics environment, the
company has provided libraries of models for popular robots; primitives for
constructing physical objects, machines, and other robots; and a physics-driven
simulation engine to animate them. "There are two ways of creating entities,"
Trower explains. "Developers can write them directly as codein C,
Visual Basic, Python, and the likethrough a managed code interface or
assemble them from basic geometric shapes and assign them physical
characteristics, such as mass, hardness, and so on" (Figure 2
). Once you set them in motion, the robots,
which are themselves entities, can interact with other entities, including
other robots, in a world that physical laws govern.

Trower points out that, although Microsoft's work in this area is on one
level similar to the physics-based modeling that is starting to appear in
games, it differs dramatically at another level. "Games take place in a
well-defined environment," he says. "Robot simulation does not. You have to
work out everything that happens based on physics, because there is no script."
Trower says that the virtualization technology could move from the development
tool into the robots themselves. For example, you can blend the simulation with
real-world sensor data. A robot that can include an optionaland
expensivelaser range finder, for example, might instead have a
virtualized range finder; fusing other sensor inputs to generate the range
data. In the future, you may see the next step: robots virtualizing the world
around them, a scenario that Brooke Williams, DSP-automotive-vision-marketing
manager at Texas Instruments (
www.ti.com
), sees before his own eyes.

"We are starting to see automobile-safety systems fusing sensor data to
create a virtual model of the car's surroundings," Williams says. "This model
can either be presented to the driver as warning information, or it can be used
to take control of the vehicle." For example, TI is combining radar, a good
tool for detection and ranging but poor for forming images, with machine-vision
systems, which are great at finding edges and bearings but poor at ranging or
detection. This combination of tools will allow the creation of virtual models
of the objects surrounding a car. "The object is to predict a crash; prepare
the vehicle by tightening seat belts, arming air bags, and closing the windows,
for instance; and attempting to take evasive action," Williams says.

But to achieve this goal, simple proximity warning is insufficient. The
tools must identify objects from their surroundings and track and categorize
them; the insurance industry must know that the system can distinguish between
pedestrians and shrubbery, for instance. You want to neither turn away in panic
from a car that can't physically reach your trajectory nor mow down a
pedestrian to avoid destroying a hedge. "Manufacturers are even talking about
external air bags that could deploy to protect pedestrians in collisions,"
Williams says. Such decisions require not just a measurement, but also an
understanding of the car's surroundings.

Therein lies a possible endpoint for the trend of virtualization:
electronic systems that can not only sense, but also model and predict their
environment. Such systems exhibit artificial intelligence and also express
virtualization. These systems, protecting drivers from their own folly,
exploring the otherwise-inaccessible reaches of the physical world, and using
their virtual models to reason about their surroundings, represent another
major expansion in the role of electronics.

You can reach Executive Editor Ron Wilson at 1-408-345-4427 and
[email protected].

Software I/O, virtual I/O, or software-assisted I/O?By David Fotland, Ubicom IncTypical microprocessor families have dedicated hardware for each I/O

function. This difference leads to families of chips with the same CPU but
different I/O mixes. Cost is higher because the semiconductor company must make
many chip versions, and mask costs are high in state-of-the-art process
technology. The alternative is to create an SOC (system on chip) with all of
the I/O hardware on the same chip. This approach also leads to higher cost,
because the customer is paying for silicon to implement I/O that he won't use
in his application.

The solution to this problem is software I/O. Some 8-bit
microcontrollers use this technique, called "bit-banged" I/O. If the
microcontroller has on-chip memory and deterministic execution, the software
can directly control I/O pins to implement the I/O protocol. A simple example
is a UART. The start bit causes an interrupt, and software reads the input pin
to receive the data. While the data is arriving, the CPU cannot do anything
else, so this technique is useful only for I/O that is infrequent or
intermittent. The interrupt-response time limits the use of this technique to
low-speed I/O.

Some 32-bit processors, such as those from ARM (
www.arm.com
) or MIPS (
www.mips.com
), can't use software I/O because
code execution is far from deterministic. Pipeline hazards and cache misses
make it impossible to use instructions for accurately timed external events.
Operating systems such as Linux turn off interrupts for milliseconds at a time,
making real-time I/O response impossible.

Ubicom (
www.ubicom.com
) has the only 32-bit CPU that
uses software I/O. The multithreaded CPU has a hardware scheduler that can
select a thread for execution during every clock. Real-time threads have a
fixed schedule and deterministic execution, even if other threads have
mispredicted branches or cache misses. The unit has 10 threads, so it can
allocate one real-time thread to each I/O port to manage that port.

The instruction set supports software I/O and packet processing. An
instruction can move data between memory and I/O. MIPS and ARM CPUs, in
comparison, need two instructions: a load and a store. Single instructions can
set, clear, or test any I/O bit. Interrupt-response time from an I/O event to
scheduling instructions in the managing thread takes only a few CPU clocks.
When an I/O port is idle, it suspends its managing thread, using no CPU
resources.

The high-performance, 32-bit CPU can use software-I/O for functions
more complex than a UART. Ubicom has implemented a full PCI bus at 27 MHz, MPEG
Transport Stream, IDE, and Utopia in software. It has also implemented MII
(media-independent interface) for 10/100-Mbps Ethernet, USB, SPI, GPSI
(graphics-processor software interface), and other serial interfaces with a
combination of hardware and software. By spending 10 to 20% of the CPU
throughput on software I/O, the company dramatically reduced the die area
necessary for I/O, resulting in a flexible single chip to cover a wide range of
applications.

Author's biographyDavid Fotland is chief technology officer of
Ubicom, where he led the architecture of the Ubicom multithreaded processor for
packet processing and software I/O. He is responsible for all aspects of
architecture and definition of processors and solutions.

Previously, Fotland spent 21 years at
Hewlett-Packard Co (
www.hp.com
) as lead engineer, project manager,
and system architect. He was a key participant in the PA-RISC instruction-set
definition and was lead designer of the first PA-RISC processor and system. He
was a leader in the development of the HP-Intel (
www.intel.com
) Itanium instruction
set.

Immersed in engineering, advanced 3-D visualization promotes
insightBy Jeff Brum, Fakespace SystemsAs electronics speed into an era in which manufacturers fabricate not

just circuits, but also physical structures themselves in nanoscale geometries,
the role of computer-based simulation as a design tool is increasingly
important. Correspondingly, the benefits of visualization in the review and
analysis of simulations play a growing role. Looking to the future, immersive
stereoscopic display tools will amplify the power of visualization.

The adoption of immersive visualization in electronics design revolves
around several factors. Atomic-scale phenomena, which are major concerns as the
semiconductor road map extends beyond the 65-nm-process node, have been major
players in advanced visualization techniques. Scientists at NIST (National
Institute for Standards and Technology,
www.nist.gov
), for example, use a stereoscopic
displaytwo walls and a floorto gain insight into the molecular
bonding of "smart-gel" polymers (Figure A and Reference A).

Similarly, researchers at LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory,
www.lanl.gov
) use a range of immersive
environmentsfrom wall-sized to a 43-million-pixel, five-walled
projected roomto view terascale data sets (Figure B). Bob Green,
visualization specialist at LANL, notes that the researchers "are viewing
simulations based on computations that generate more data than is contained in
the entire print collection of the Library of Congress in one calculation."

In engineering, visualization has had its largest impact to date in
macroscale CAD programs, such as automotive and aerospace design, and the
evaluation of complex structures for interferences that are not readily
apparent in simpler graphical representations. As simulation and visualization
data accumulate in MEMS (microelectromechanical-system) design, this type of
modeling and simulation will grow in importance. The ability to visualize and
"fly through" transistor-scale structures and even large segments of a complex
microcircuit design will also benefit from advanced 3-D visualization that
blends multiple streams of data, including device characteristics,
interconnects, and material behavior.

Wall- or even room-sized immersive displays support a more
collaborative, more intuitive, style of work than do graphics processors. A
major benefit in the review of complex structures is the ability to "move"
freely along all three axes of an image and still maintain the visual acuity of
high-resolution desktop processors. (Today's projectors support resolution of
14001050 pixels or higher.) Viewing nanoscale design can feel like
taking a helicopter tour over a dense city center with the ability to identify
and zoom into landmarks. Improved insight and collaboration lead to faster and
better decisions, speeding time to market and reducing development costs.

Although researchers are just beginning to measure the benefits of
immersive visualization (Reference B), they generally agree that they bring new
levels of insight to engineers and scientists. In immersive visualizations,
groups of users can view the inner workings of devices and gain deeper
understanding of electromagnetic effects and the relationships between elements
of a design. With the availability of dual PC clusters and advanced graphics
cards, these types of virtual environments no longer require specialized
graphics supercomputers. The increased accessibility of immersive visualization
makes its addition to the tool kit of electronic engineers practical and
inevitable.

References"Recipe for a Shake Gel," National Institute for Standards and
Technology, Aug 27, 2003,
www.nist.gov/public_affairs/newsfromnist_smartgels.htm
.

Kraak, Menno Jan, "Beyond Geovisualization,"
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
,
May/June 2006, Volume 26, No 3, pg 6.

Author's biographyJeff Brum is a vice president at Fakespace
Systems (www.fakespace.com), a division of Mechdyne Corp with a 15-year history
of developing and supporting advanced systems for immersive visualization in
science, engineering, and public-exhibition applications.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
Motorola Set for $3.9B Symbol Purchase. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In a move that brings together a shared vision of a digital, mobile world for enterprises, http://www.motorola.com/Motorola Inc. is set to acquire all outstanding shares of enterprise mobility technology provider Symbol Technologies Inc http://www.symbol.com/.



Under terms of the agreement, Motorola will pay $15 per share in cash, for a total equity value of approximately $3.9 billion on a fully-diluted basis the companies noted.

As of June 30, Symbol had approximately $200 million of net cash.

Upon completion of the transaction, Symbol will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola and will be the cornerstone of Motorola's networks and enterprise business.

Motorola said it intends to maintain Symbol's Holtsville, N.Y. headquarters, which will be the new core of Motorola's global enterprise mobility business.

Symbol designs, develops, manufactures and services products and systems used in end-to-end enterprise mobility solutions featuring rugged mobile computing, advanced data capture, radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless infrastructure and mobility management.

"Motorola and Symbol share the same vision of a digital, mobile world for enterprises that matches the world people enjoy at home and at play," Motorola's chairman and CEO, Ed Zander, said in a statement.

The transaction is expected to be accretive to Motorola's earnings per share in the first year following closing, excluding certain non-cash charges relating to amortization associated with acquired intangibles and other one- time accounting and transaction-related costs.

The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approval and the approval of Symbol's stockholders, and is expected to be completed late this year or early next year.

Motorola said the acquisition of Symbol will not affect the pace of its share repurchase activity http://www.edn.com/article/CA6355665.html.

In July, the company completed the $4 billion share buyback program that it first announced in May 2005, which had authorized the buyback of up $4.5 billion of its outstanding shares of common stock over the next 36 months.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

AMD Opens Socket Specs

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(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Advanced Micro Devices http://www.amd.com/us-en/ is ready to open up. This week, the microprocessor provider unveiled the Torrenza Innovation Socket Initiative for many of their current and future server platforms.



This approach is expected to allow OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, and allow third-party silicon makers to create their own socket-compatible chips for AMD's x86 base.

While AMD did not specify the terms of future licensing contributions, its newest specification is approaching an open industry standard: OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation socket specification and associated design documentation.

This weeks debut is the latest addition to AMDs Torrenza initiative http://www.edn.com/article/CA6340364.html, which provides a way for others to connect their technology directly to AMD chips through the company's HyperTransport interface. At its debut in June, the Torrenza initiative opened up AMDs processors by letting companies plug in their coprocessors via an external connection called "HTX."

Previously, a separate design was typical in coprocessors; with AMD's approach, the time and cost of taking the coprocessor route can potentially be reduced.

The new program already has a serious fan base. Server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza initiative, including Cray http://www.cray.com/, Fujitsu Siemens Computers http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/, HP http://www.hp.com/, IBM http://www.ibm.com/, Dell http://www.dell.com/ and Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com/, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.

The chip maker is anticipating the latest Torrenza development to make a big splash. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms, Marty Seyer, senior VP of AMDs commercial segment, said in a statement.

Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, he added.

The finance world is recognizing AMDs progress as well. AMDs latest moves have bolstered its profile in the enterprise, Wall Street watcher Lehman Brothers said in a statement and the firm expects to see AMD trending solidly for Q3.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

An Individualistic Island

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(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) An Individualistic Island

Tony O'Reilly

In the concluding part of the interview, Sir Anthony O'Reilly tells Constantin Gurdgiev about his views on the future of Ireland, the influence of the EU, our regulatory climate and competitiveness.

CONSTANTIN GURDGIEV: You've mentioned ComReg. Some would say that, so far, ComReg has been mostly a conduit for EU regulation implementation in Ireland rather than an original player in the marketplace. What is your feeling about this spread of Brussels's remit over local regulation?



TONY O'REILLY: There are very few regulators who would go 100% against what Brussels wants. There is a degree of flexibility in the overall remit from Brussels that can be interpreted at the regional level by individual regulators, but I think all of them are moving in the same direction, and I think Comreg latterly has done a good job for the industry and the consumer against this criterion.

Fundamentally, the word that dominated Irish political thinking for many years has been sovereignty - the abstract idea that ruled our State for some 70 years. But what does it mean?

In relation to Brussels we substantially reduced our sovereignty to act unilaterally. That has been the price that we've paid, so that now 70% of all laws and regulations are not being set by the Dail, they are made by Europe. When we joined Europe, I don't think we fully understood what this menu really contained, nor do we fully understand it today.

But because our joining of the EU was lubricated by substantial transfers of assets and money, we ate prepared to accept it almost categorically.

There is certainly a case for questioning this - and I am sure in time there will be a party in Ireland that will do so. There is a view that the European Union was launched on the basis of a number of ideas, among them that it will be able to control economic activity and that French farmers, for example, would never be exposed to world competition.

CCS: There is a third dimension of trade - trade in services - that also crashed at the walls of Europe. The initial rejection of the Services Directive and subsequent watering down of its provisions - this was also driven by France.

TOR: Well, the French are very clever, very centralist.

They will always look after their own interest.

The CAP was set up basically to favour French farmers interests and it will continue to be shaped along these lines. All international trade movements, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the rest of the market reforms will collide with the rock of the agricultural subsidies in Europe. Globalisation will affect everything that is industrial, but it will not change agriculture substantially.

I always believed that Europe will be run in the German image, but it will be Franco-centric in its policies - de Gaulle's famous "Europe Des Patrie". This is fair - we know who we are playing against and what the rules of the game are, and our civil servants in Dublin and Brussels are very astute, but Brussels is not a collection of jolly people sitting around the table and thinking - "how can we integrate with the world economically?"

It is a collection of jolly people sitting around the table and thinking - "how can we protect France or how can we improve Germany?"

Yet, I still think that despite these problems, there are many areas where the main thrust of Brussels is positive. And we are the beneficiaries of it in Ireland.

Flight path for Aer Lingus

CG: You spoke earlier about capital mobility and the threats this presents if we were to fail to assure fair return on imported capital. Are you optimistic about the possibility for the successful sale of Aer Lingus, given the conditions of partial privatisation - the share retained by the unions and the State?

TOR: The Esot played a pivotal - and under the leadership of Con Scanlon - a very constructive part in the Eircom story, and the Esot will pay a very important part in the attractiveness of Aer Lingus going to market.

I am conscious that there are enormously important intrusions by some governments in the process of private ownership of companies.

Take South Africa, where the government now demands that 25% of all companies must be owned by black investors or employees. While socially laudable, this does have an effect on foreign investment there.

In the case of Aer Lingus, people will look at the prospectus and they will ask themselves what rate of return on capital can they get over the next 10 years by investing in an Irish airline and what kind of risks do these returns contain.

Ryanair probably will give them a sense of encouragement because it was able to do something that no one else could.

I think Ryanair is a poster-child for Irish private capitalism and they have done a remarkable job and I think Michael O'Leary is a remarkable leader. So I feel that people will look at Aer Lingus from a pure return on capital point of view, risk adjusted for the share ownership structure and for the growth prospects of the airline.

The unions are not the key to everything. When you look at foreign investment in Ireland, multinational companies sidelined the issue of the unions and built on this.

In the case of Eircom, the injection of money into Esot did help us to reduce the size of the workforce from around 10,700 to some 7,000 employees.

We paid a big price for this, but I believe that this is yet another form of risk that one has to deal with.

International capital lessons

CG: Going back to the Eircom story - after the IPO, you stayed on as chairman, even though you were neither a majority shareholder nor were you earning an exceptional salary from this. If investing in State-owned enterprises is all about return on the capital, why did you choose to make such a decision?

TOR: I felt a strong sense of responsibility to the new board of directors and the incoming shareholders. I had made money out of Eircom through my investment in the Valentia consortium and there was, at the time, talk about venture capitalists coming in, making money and getting out, with the accusation that they somehow left an underfunded and a weakened company behind.

This was not so - just look at the subsequent stock performance relative to the broader telecom markets. I think it was very important that there was an orderly return of Eircom to the market and it was equally important that as chairman I should act as an entirely impartial party.

At Valentia, the challenge was allocating resources, and all of the partners - Providence Capital, George Soros and Goldman Sachs - brought precise discipline to the whole process of capital allocation and cost management. And I think we proved our point - we satisfied the demands of the shareholders, built a leaner and more efficient company and refloated it, and the people who bought it from us recently sold on to Babcock & Brown and made 62% in 18 months.

And as I said two weeks ago, only airlines - Ryanair and I might add Aer Lingus - have reduced their prices over the last seven years.

Everything else - gas, electricity, road tolls, food, etc - has gone up in price during that period.

So it was not the case of venture capitalists deciding to take everything out of the company and squeeze the assets.

It has been a really successful process for both consumers and the investors. But most importantly, it's been a progressive process for the watching international financial community who now have that little bit more confidence in investing in Irish assets than they had some years ago.

Competitive advantage

CG; In your view, then, Eircom is part of the story of the important drivers of Irish growth - privatisations, development of the markets, inflow of capital and improvements in the way global financial markets view Ireland. Taxation is yet another factor. After years of success, with other countries - most significantly those of eastern Europe - moving fast into our space, do we still hold a competitive edge?

TOR: I think our competitive advantage is seriously threatened today and I feel that Ireland must be made aware that the current prosperity can obscure for us the fact that everyone in the new Europe has woken up to the anatomy of the Irish miracle.

These new countries set out to replicate our success and they know full well that it was largely founded on the basis of low taxes. I am trying to articulate the need for reproducing the low-tax regime found in the Republic of Ireland and bringing it to Northern Ireland. I recently met Gordon Brown to advance this argument and said that the introduction of a standard rate of tax across the island at 12.5% would make investment on this island location-indifferent.

In fact every party in Northern Ireland agrees on this point - a low-tax regime in Northern Ireland can bring about a huge spurt of economic activity. So the answer is that it is going to get tougher and tougher for Ireland because new European countries are going to strive for lower tax rates than us.

Again, if you can make a product, say Dell computers, and you are indifferent in your business to things like the language spoken by the workers, then look at Estonia - it gives you productive young workers at no tax at all. There will be pressure on the companies operating in Ireland today to go east. But an additional problem is that, with the rising cost of doing business here and shortages of labour, we are actually losing our competitiveness vis-a-vis the old European states.

Models for growth?

CG: There is a penchant in Ireland to compare ourselves to the two main models -the Nordic and the US. Yet another model that is almost never mentioned in Ireland is that of Hong Kong. Like Ireland, it is a small, open economy adjoining a giant one. From your point of view, would you rather see Ireland moving closer to Hong Kong or to Stockholm?

TOR: I think if you visit Hong Kong, you must be excited by how energetic the place really is. You cannot but notice also how just beyond the perimeter, there is that great country called China. There is a pulsating appetite from the mainland for everything produced in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, there are many social problems, such as uncontrolled immigration and the fact that it is a somewhat artificial world, along the lines of Malaysia and Singapore.

I don't think that these are viable models for us - they lack the same sense of individualism that we have, they are more centralised, and the state, ideologically, not welfare-wise, plays a far more central role there.

Ireland is a very individualistic country, we take a more competitive approach to running our business and we are more personal in the way we run our own lives. Chinese and Asian cultures in general are more docile, so a "strong man" approach to management can work there on a larger scale than it can in Ireland.

I do like the Swedish model in terms of the welfare it provides, but I dislike it in terms of taxation. I think it is very interesting to see that the big Swedish companies now primarily operate outside Sweden, and the country's growth must inevitably have been impacted over recent years.

What is important is that Ireland should not take its new prosperity for granted, for it might become a very shortterm thing unless we find new innovative ways to support it.

The only way we really can galvanise the economy for the next 25 years is to attract more and more international capital - both human and financial - into Ireland. That is why I think the issues of immigration and capital should be central to how we think about the future of this country.

Immigration

CG: On immigration, just few weeks ago Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte repeated his comments about the danger of an "open doors" immigration policy toward eastern European workers. Do you share his concerns?

TOR: Ask yourself: what made America grow? Immigration is the answer. The skills of the world came to America, seized new opportunities and even today the debate about Mexican workers recognises this. It is unavoidable that we are going to have immigration as long as we have new physical and financial capital coming into the country. This is the main benefit of being a member of the common market.

So what Pat Rabbitte is really saying is that the unions are hugely challenged by this, by events like the Irish Ferries dispute. We can slam shut the doors on immigration the way the French did with their Polish plumber campaign.

There are certain countries in Europe that do hold a different view of immigration than we do. But your question is whether we can sustain our open door policy.

My view is that yes, we should be able to sustain our policy on immigration. But this does not apply to everyone. For example, where do secularism and religion come into it? It is an entirely new debate, which Ireland, inevitably, will have to face.

CG: Yet the Irish Ferries dispute taught us also about the lack of proper policy debate in Ireland. In the majority of western democracies, the debate is quite often being driven by business leaders, openly speaking about their views on Government policies, as well as by intellectuals.

In Ireland, it is virtually unheard of that a businessperson would stimulate a debate about policies. We seem to be more comfortable with sponsoring festivals and golf events than with sponsoring research into social policies and promoting alternative views and ideas. Do you feel that, as we become more comfortable with our newly acquired wealth, we will see the emergence of more policy-conscious and more proactive business leaders?

Think tanks

TOR: When you asked the question about why I stayed at Eircom, I answered it by saying that I wanted to be a champion of the capacity of Ireland to build real public ownership of companies through the marketplace. This was a statement of my belief in that debate and certainly the wider audience, the City of London or US capital markets for example, will have no doubt now that it is possible to get a fair deal in Ireland.

Of course in the US, for example, you have the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institute and many other think tanks that span the whole political spectrum. These are very important catalysts for the way the American political system works. We don't have these here. We should have them. I think the ESRI is a fine starting point.

We need centres for catalysing the debate - not just the employers or Ibec's views or the unions' views, but think tanks and our business schools expressing trenchant views of our society and structures. So far we have a rather simplistic adversarial relationship between, say, the trade unions and the employers.

Yet, when you ask Irish people, "What do you class yourself as?", the vast majority of the people believe that they are "middle class." I often wonder who represents them at the partnership table?

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Glanbia Ploughs Global Fields

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(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Glanbia Ploughs Global Fields

As EU agricultural subsidies disappear, the domestic market gets more challenging.

Glanbia's John Moloney explains its strategies to John Walsh.

Glanbia is one of those companies that offers a good insight into the changing face of Irish society. Born out of the merger of Waterford and Avonmore Co-ops, it is steeped in the dairy industry that once dominated the Irish economic landscape. In the days before the current boom, farmers were seen - rightly or wrongly - as being one of the few economically advantaged groups in society. How times have changed.



Developments in the domestic economy put the agri-sector in perspective. And the changing dynamics of the global trade environment have forced significant changes on Irish farming.

The level of subsidies handed down to Irish farmers as part of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was the subject of much heated debate during the 1980s and the early part of the 19905. But as soon as the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement was hammered out in 1994, it set in motion a chain of events that would eventually open up European markets to much cheaper produce from developing countries.

And in tandem with open trade policies, European farmers had to learn how to survive without the generous support funding that had helped prop up many areas within the agri-sector.

Inevitably, there was a huge backlash from farmers' organisations. The wholesale demise of Irish farming was seen as inescapable reality. And if the ground was shifting under Irish farmers, then that meant that companies like Glanbia also faced increasing uncertainty.

After all, a secure supply of dairy produce is needed to be a successful dairy processor and food manufacturer. Over the past decade, spiralling property prices have lured many farmers away from agri-pursuits.

The complexion of the farming sector once this speculative boom dies down is causing widespread concern.

Glanbia group managing director John Moloney acknowledges these difficulties: "The ingredients business is challenging currently because we have reforms of the dairy sector across Europe, where the support prices are being reduced by the order of 25% over a three-year period. That is through '04, '05 and '06 and a partial one in '07. So I think the big issue in the first half of this year has been that we have seen two parts of that come together.

Effectively last year's impact was defrayed because you had high international prices for dairy products. They have come off a bit - not dramatically. But it did mean that you had to catch up from last year's reform and this year's coming together in one year, and that has led to an impact on ingredients in Ireland in terms of dairy market returns. At the same time, you have costs moving in the other direction."

Moloney argues that the reform period is coming to an end and that from now on there will be a period of adjustment at both farm level and processing level. But it is this period of adjustment that has prompted some speculation that there will be a supply shock if too many farmers quit the dairy sector.

"If you take any of the studies that have been done, Ireland has 25,000 dairy farmers currently and if you look at AgriVision 2015 report done by the Department of Agriculture based on Teagasc economic forecasts, you could get down to 12,000 dairy farmers who would have scaled up - producing the quota or close to it and would be compensating for the price effect through increased scale and efficiency and that or some level of that is going to happen.

It is important that you bear in mind as well that there are significant differences in efficiency between the top 20% and the bottom 20% - of the order of 45 cents per gallon. That far exceeds the level of milk price reduction that is being implemented in the industry to date."

Moloney points to the quota exchange set up by the Department of Agriculture as a step in the right direction and a move that Glanbia had lobbied for to ensure a smooth transition and prevent a supply shock. "Historically farmers who wish to expand have had the resources in terms of land and capital but are constrained by their ability to get quota at reasonable value.

We hope that the exchange mechanism when the first one is introduced in December will begin to contribute to that."

Moloney expects a smooth transition. He says it will be very difficult for families that have been lifelong dairy farmers to jettison their livelihoods. "But I think you also have to see it in the context that Ireland is also different.

There are far greater opportunities. Land values have generally kept pace with the property market which is an important backdrop in terms of the farm balance sheet," he adds.

Glanbia has been running workshops for every 18-20 suppliers from across its supply base in order to provide assistance and support while the trading environment remains challenging.

Glanbia comprises a plc and a co-op. The co-op has a 54% holding in the plc. And in a move to cushion the removal of support prices, the dividend from the plc accruing to co-op shareholders is used to compensate for loss of earnings. Even though it is only on an anecdotal level, Business & Finance has sounded out a number of dairy farmers about the future of the sector in Ireland. They were much more pessimistic than the Teagasc report. They argue that new nitrate and waste water management directives coming from Brussels will put too much burden on farmers to make it tenable in the longer term.

Moreover, they claim that there will be big problems with succession issues as the next generation of farmers are taking up much more lucrative positions outside the industry.

Government dig-out

The Government has chipped in with a plan to help smooth over the transition to the post-CAP environment by announcing a EUR300m-aid package for the industry. Although Moloney points out that only EUR100m will come from the Government's coffers - which will be run jointly by the Department of Agriculture and Enterprise Ireland - with the remaining EUR200m coming from the industry.

"But it does give us a chance to invest and diversify. So Glanbia as well as other operators in the sector are looking to options around new product development and around rationalisation.

We'll also be happy once we complete that part of the exercise to talk to other parties. If there are joint projects that it makes more sense to do, we'll keep an open mind about that. We will come to a view about that in October.

"I think on balance we may end up with a mix of internal projects and maybe some joint projects and they'll be across the area of cheeses and specific protein derivatives from milk for export."

That potentially includes building a new milk-drying and filtration plant, adds Moloney.

Milking overseas opportunities

The latest set of Glanbia's interim results was a bit of an anomaly in the Irish corporate earnings season. As most other companies posted double-digit growth, Glanbia stood still with pretax profits roughly unchanged at EUR30.2m compared with the same period in 2005, operating e profits were down 5% at EUR36.4m and revenues down marginally at EUR922.8m compared with EUR926.1m for the year earlier period.

The company attributed much of the poor performance to the sluggish Irish ingredients business.

Similar to Kerry Group and other companies in that sector, future growth hinges on carving out markets abroad.

"We've had an international presence for some time. We have a significant business in the US. We have expanded that with a joint venture in New Mexico. That will make us the largest producer of cheddar-type cheese in the US when we get to full capacity in New Mexico by the middle of next year.

"So when you look at the Glanbia profit and loss sheet going forward, you will see the returns from the wholly owned subsidiaries, but the share from the associates line will also become much more important.

In a similar vein, we have set up a joint venture in Nigeria with Cussons. That business is currently annualising $100m.

So if you look at growth, you have $100m there, and New Mexico has $350m. And with the acquisition [Glanbia forked out $105m for US nutritional business Seltzer on September 7th] we will grow the nutritionals group to over $150m.

So you are looking at close to $600m in new business over the next two-to-three years."

Glanbia has also opened a sales and marketing office in China. Moloney says the company is linking China with the ingredients business: "and indeed to the acquisition we announced [Seltzer] in terms of infant formula etc in Asia".

And even though Glanbia is limited to a sales and marketing presence in China as it stands, the company is likely to build rather than buy if that policy changes in the future, he adds.

After a hectic few years on the mergers and acquisitions trail around the globe, Moloney says that it is time to consolidate on its recent acquisitions. That will include adapting the plants in New Mexico to meet extra demands if needed, he adds.

"We have room to make some modest acquisitions in 2007, and it is important to keep that pipeline going because there is a lead time in starting these things up."

Watergate?

Moloney says there is no outcome yet to the investigation in allegations that farmers in the Kilmeaden area ("Watered-down milk?" Business & Finance, July 27th) inflated milk supplies by adding water. "That [investigation] is ongoing. Obviously that is a fraud on the company rather than an issue for our consumer so far as it costs the company more to extract water. Obviously a very serious view is taken on that."

Some of Glanbia's milk suppliers that Business & Finance has spoken to claim there is not enough dialogue between the company and dairy farmers in terms of international markets.

One farmer says there is not enough emphasis on the different types of nutrients that can be used to produce high-quality milk which, in turn, can be used to manufacture high-quality products.

That is a pattern that is happening throughout Europe, he claims. Geraldine Kearney, a spokeswoman for Glanbia, to extract water. Obviously a very serious view is taken on that."

Some of Glanbia's milk suppliers that Business & Finance has spoken to claim there is not enough dialogue between the company and dairy farmers in terms of international markets.

One farmer says there is not enough emphasis on the different types of nutrients that can be used to produce high-quality milk which, in turn, can be used to manufacture high-quality products.

That is a pattern that is happening throughout Europe, he claims.

Geraldine Kearney, a spokeswoman for Glanbia, says Glanbia has always been very progressive in opening up channels of communication with its milk suppliers. She cites the company's various workshops as well as its regional committee structure, which are aimed at keeping on top of industry developments.

"There will always be more work to be done, but we are engaging with our suppliers at a number of different levels," she says.

One other area of concern for some shareholders is that the members of the board of the plc comprise the board of the co-op. Moloney argues the value of the co-op and the level of the dividend each year is determined by the growth of the plc. "Therefore everybody is aligned in growing the value of the plc.

That has become clear to shareholders over the past year. So there are no plans to change that [the structure of the plc and co-op] currently."

What about the relationship between the plc and the co-op changing some time in the future?

"I suppose you can never say never - you can't rule it out at any point in time - but not today."

Glanbia has always been very progressive in opening up channels of communication with its milk suppliers. She cites the company's various workshops as well as its regional committee structure, which are aimed at keeping on top of industry developments. "There will always be more work to be done, but we are engaging with our suppliers at a number of different levels," she says.

One other area of concern for some shareholders is that the members of the board of the plc comprise the board of the co-op. Moloney argues the value of the co-op and the level of the dividend each year is determined by the growth of the plc. "Therefore everybody is aligned in growing the value of the plc.

That has become clear to shareholders over the past year.

So there are no plans to change that [the structure of the plc and co-op] currently."

What about the relationship between the plc and the co-op changing some time in the future?

"I suppose you can never say never - you can't rule it out at any point in time - but not today."

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

What's Hot ?

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(Business & Finance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) What's Hot ?

Up and coming countries such as South Africa and Brazil are being watched keenly by potential Irish investors, writes Stephen Tormey.

Despite a frustrating and difficult year in 2005, Pakistan is one country that is coming to the attention of foreign investors. Foreign direct investment in Pakistan increased from $484.7m in 2001 to $1.5bn in 2005, but the earthquake last October was a sever shock to the economy.



However, nobody disagreed with prime minister Shaukat Aziz when he said that "the earthquake may have a slight effect in the short-term, but will not rock the economy in the long-term."

In the shorter term, the challenges facing Pakistan are inflation and interest rates, but with a population of almost 166 million, the opportunities for foreign investment continue to attract attention.

Another upcoming investment hotspot is South Africa. Since its successful transition to democracy in 1994, there have been many positive economic indicators.

"Inflation is under control, foreign exchange reserves have increased tenfold, positive real GDP growth has been recorded for nine years in succession, and strong growth has occurred in fixed capital formation, to name but a few," says Colin Beggs, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers in South Africa.

The Irish economy has come a long way in the past three decades. Attracting some of the world's top multinational corporations, and fostering a strong indigenous entrepreneurial culture has been a prime objective of successive governments.

This positive attitude has developed Ireland into one of the world's leading economies. According to Kim Iskyan, head of research at MDM Bank in Moscow, "Ireland is one of the world's wealthiest countries, since its economy has grown nearly five-fold since 1973. It boasts one of the world's highest levels of GDP per capita, some 20% above the European average, while 30 years ago it was 35% poorer than the average."

This has created a cloister of entrepreneurs with a mass of wealth, looking to exploit business opportunities as they arise.

Indeed, Ireland has seen even middle-income earners transform themselves into investors, as attractive investment opportunities overseas lure them into the entrepreneurial arena.

There are a number of investment hotspots around the world where investors are focusing their attention, and this has as much to do with favourable tax regimes as prime real estate opportunities.

Infrastructure, low energy costs, a diversified economy along with sound fiscal and monetary policies. While the World Development Report of the World Bank showed that costs of unreliable electricity and fragile infrastructure are serious deterrents to foreign investment, Risk Map 2005, released by Control Risks Group in London, describes South Africa's business environment as positive, with "low political and security risk."

Another country that is held back by serious deficiencies but is nonetheless - emerging as a world economic player is Brazil.

Enterprise Ireland has hailed Brazil as the second most important market in Latin America after Mexico, and with prime investment opportunities & in the agri-food sector alongside potential in other sectors from telecoms to generic pharmaceuticals, Brazil could become a very real challenge for the world's top economies.

Over the past decade, the country has emerged from a vicious cycle of booms and busts, and finally seems to have controlled inflation, down from an astronomical 2,491% in 1993 to a modest 7.6% in 2004, according to Enterprise Ireland.

The 'new' Brazil is also meeting its IMF targets, is starting to come to grips with corruption, and has stronger democratic institutions as a result.

Interestingly, in a survey released by the UN in September in 2005, multinational companies rated Brazil the fifth most attractive business location worldwide, lagging behind only China, India, the US and Russia, so potential Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors.

It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold. While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors. It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold.

While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the potential to become significant players in the global investment market potential to become significant players in the global investment market occurred in fixed capital formation, to name but a few," says Colin Beggs, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers in South Africa.

Irish investors would do well to watch this space.

While economies like India and China surge ahead, these less-hyped investment areas are offering attractive investment opportunities across a range of sectors.

It is easy to be attracted to huge investment hubs, but all that glitters is not gold.

While these hives of economic activity have assisted some companies expanding at phenomenal rates, less developed areas such as South Africa and Brazil have the potential to become significant players in the global investment market.

Copyright 2006 Belenos Publications Ltd Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
RigNet Deploys Nimsoft's NimBUS for Effective Network Monitoring on Offshore and Remote Oil Rigs; Nimsoft's Scalability and Reliability Gives Managed Service Provider Global Reach and Best Uptime in Industry. Check it out:
Case study is posted at:
http://www.nimsoft.com/company/case-studies/Case-Study--RigNet.pdf

Industry
Managed Communications Service Provider for the upstream oil and gas industry

Challenge
To utilize customer Service Level Agreements (SLA) to deliver essential real-time data to oil and gas rigs in extreme remote offshore and land locations worldwide under conditions frequently outside the provider's control.

Solution
Using Nimsoft's NimBUS to:
·Detect any remote communications service problems within the provider's control before users are impacted
·Identify any problems that are outside its control and exclude immediately such downtime from SLA performance calculations
·Deliver real-time SLA performance information to customers

Results
·NimBUS provides RigNet with comprehensive, flexible and reliable drill platform application SLA performance monitoring and reporting capabilities for 8 teleports serving over 500 sites
·NimBUS has decreased RigNet customers' costs by greatly reducing the need for expensive telecommunications equipment or technical support at remote locations
·Nimsoft's solution helps RigNet to protect their service quality reputation

With communications systems installed throughout 20 countries and 6 continents, Houston-based RigNet relies on leading satellite and networking technologies to provide high-quality IP-based voice, data and video managed services worldwide for the upstream oil and gas industry. The company installs, manages and supports the systems, providing powerful, reliable and cost-effective managed communications services for their customers' offshore drilling and production rigs, as well as land rigs. Most of these rigs are located in very remote locations throughout the world. By adhering to stringent standards for network performance, RigNet reliably and efficiently meets the established terms of Service Level Agreements (SLA) with its customers. The company is thus able to commit to providing the highest system uptime, application response and transaction speed and to ensuring end-to-end management of IT performance for business results.



To do this, RigNet must be able to analyze performance data coming from multiple points and be able to exclude performance information from factors beyond its control, from typical heavy thunderstorms that sometimes cause brief rain fade, to extreme severe storms that take down satellite dishes on offshore rigs. In the oil business, SLA "excludes" are frequently required, a common cause being extreme weather. Several examples of such excludes were cited by Morten Hagland Hansen, RigNet's Global IP Engineering Manager: "We had a customer rig get lost in the sea - it was a total loss. We lost two after Hurricane Katrina, and with Hurricane Rita the damage was more on the shore side, where we lost satellite communication to the shore base where all the logistics are handled. There was flooding, and the equipment in those buildings was destroyed. These become excludes in SLAs."

Not all excludes come from acts of nature, as further explained by Hansen: "In the oil and gas business, if the connectivity to a rig is down, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a problem, it could be also be 'radio silence' to protect personnel from instances where explosives are placed down in the hole where they are drilling. In this case, all communications devices that issue radio signals must be shut down so that the signals will not ignite the explosives while workers are placing them. This is one of many instances where we need to explain that downtime was not due to a problem with the system but was instead intentional."

With tremendous communications challenges already inherent to a business with multiple far-flung locations, the addition of uncontrollable variables makes it quite challenging to fulfill top service level management requirements. To meet the performance expectations of its customers, RigNet selected cutting-edge monitoring technology from Nimsoft. RigNet implemented the NimBUS solution for SLA monitoring and reporting for comprehensive, flexible and reliable drill platform application performance monitoring capabilities.

"Nimsoft's flexibility and amazing breadth of capabilities allowed us to start with a small installation and add to it as we grew and our functional requirements changed, " explained Hansen

To provide background, there are three "parties" using the communications network on any given drilling rig: (1) the drilling contractor, which owns and leases out the rig, such as Noble Drilling and ENSCO; (2) the operator, or oil company (e.g., ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, etc.) which is the primary party on the rig, and finances the drilling of the well; (3) and the service company, like Schlumberger or Halliburton, who supports the drilling operation. The applications used on the system are IP-based voice, fax, Internet and real-time data transmission. The real-time data includes all technical information related to the drilling (e.g., depth, temperature, pressure, drilling speeds, drilling torque, formations, etc.) For an offshore rig, even rig positioning and weather data is transmitted. All of this information is transmitted back in real-time to the oil company office for analysis.

Most of RigNets land-based and offshore customers use satellite-based systems. There are options for both. The options land-based rigs have are cellular and regular land-line, where a telephone line is actually strung from the nearest pole to the land rig site. That can get very expensive. Cellular coverage can be very spotty, and not provide a clear signal. Sometimes, satellite is the only option. For offshore, there are microwave networks, where communications ride on a terrestrial network (most of the time, mounted on production rigs that don't move) that is linked back to land via 20 to 30 repeater hops away in a daisy-chain fashion. When one of the repeaters goes down, most of the entire network goes down. That's why satellite is sometimes a more attractive solution, especially in more remote locations where microwave networks aren't available.

The equipment and systems that RigNet monitors on any given rig (offshore or land) include routers, switches and wireless bridges connecting the equipment systems and signals, along with the satellite signal itself. Rignet uses the NimBUS Enterprise Console to build graphical service dashboards. Each dashboard has a health status indicator by individual oil rig. Network communications are monitored between land-based and satellite-based systems. At a glance the operator can see all the oil rigs he or she has responsibility for and determine which ones require intervention. The operator can then drill down and to investigate the discrete infrastructure elements to diagnose and resolve potential or actual problems. When an individual rig is displayed on the NimBUS system, four colors are used to indicate status: green, yellow, orange and red. Green means everything is running properly. Yellow signifies a minor equipment problem, such as a wireless bridge isn't working correctly. Orange represents a major equipment problem, usually involving a router or switch. Red denotes the system is down and is not responding, which could be caused by a problem with the router or switches, or the satellite signal itself.

"The extreme ease of implementation from Nimsoft especially impressed us. Additionally, Nimsoft was very flexible in accommodating our needs, and continuously made modifications and enhancements based on our requirements. We've been especially pleased with Nimsoft's end-to-end infrastructure monitoring capabilities, and with how quickly they could develop solutions for our ever-changing needs," remarked Hansen.


About Nimsoft
Nimsoft's mission is to deliver business-focused Service Level Management solutions that customers can easily deploy and use. Nimsoft solutions are used by hundreds of companies across diverse industries to manage complex networked systems and meet service level agreement targets. Nimsoft solutions combine advanced SLM functionality and broad platform coverage with unprecedented ease of implementation, deployment, and use. For more information, visit www.nimsoft.com.

NimBUS, Nimsoft and the Nimsoft logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nimsoft Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

© 2006 Nimsoft Inc, all rights reserved.

North America and Rest of World
National Toll Free:
877 SLA MGMT (752.6468)
Phone: 650.570.5401
[email protected]

Europe, Middle East & Africa

UK & Rest of EMEA
+44 (0) 845 456 7091

Norway & Northern Europe
+47 22 62 71 60

Spain
+34 91 623 9177

Germany
+49 89 93 086 100
infoUSA to Include Coverage of UK's Small Business Market. Check it out:
OneSource, an infoUSA company, and provider of comprehensive, global business information has announced coverage of an additional two million small to medium sized UK companies and four million of their executives.



This additional coverage will strengthen the breadth of OneSource’s company profiles. The enhanced content is now available within OneSource’s UK Business Browser.

Customers can now gain access to 1.4 million actively trading companies and over 500,000 new businesses yet to file accounts as part of the UK data expansion of Business Browser.

Information such as director profiles, 3 years of financials, gazette codes, mortgage, auditor and banking data will help companies to evaluate new business partners, customers and suppliers.

A recent research from the Department of Trade and Industry shows that the Small to Medium Sized Enterprise market employs 58.5% of the UK workforce and generates over half of the sales of all companies in the country.

OneSource has identified this as a market opportunity, and is helping UK businesses target prospects in this growing market.

“The increased coverage of OneSource’s UK company information is a reflection of our commitment to providing customers with comprehensive global business information,” said President of OneSource Information Services, Inc., Phil Garlick in a press release.

“As a result we are pleased to provide our customers access to a significant UK market segment,” he added.

OneSource is headquartered in Concord, MA, and delivers products and services to support a company’s sales and marketing efforts.

For more information, visit infoUSA.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
Castell Howell's pounds 4.4m jobs recipe. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Wales' largest independent food wholesaler is investing pounds 4.4m in a new distribution centre in Carmarthenshire. Castell Howell Foods will operate from a purpose-designed 50,000 sq ft facility at Cross Hands Food Park, Carmarthenshire. During the next three years, 50 new jobs are expected to be created. The company has so far bought a seven- acre site at the food park and has an option to acquire a further five acres for future expansion.



When completed, in March 2007, the new facility will house Castell Howell's head office functions and will be its central distribution hub servicing satellite depots in Wales and England.

Its existing Pensarn site will be retained as a cash and carry centre and butchery.

The 45-acre food park was developed by the former Welsh Development Agency and Carmarthenshire County Council.

The expansion project has been supported by the Welsh Assembly Government with a property development grant and regional selective assistance with funding from the EU Objective One programme.

Castell Howell finance director, Nigel Williams, said the new facility would double the company's warehousing capacity.

He said, 'Warehousing space is critical for our future growth and the new facility will enable us to continue to expand and provide a high-quality service to all our customers.

'The support of the Welsh Assembly Government has been pivotal in enabling us to go ahead with this major expansion.'

In 1998 the business employed 50 people and had an pounds 11m turnover - it now employs 240 people with an anticipated turnover this year in the region of pounds 42m.

Castell Howell Foods remains a family- run business, started by Brian and Elizabeth Jones in the mid-1980s when they operated from a small unit on their dairy farm before moving to their present site in Pensarn in 1990.

The company has depots in Gloucester, Oswestry, Merthyr and Bristol and acquired the Cegin Cymru and Pan Aroma distribution businesses in 2004. It is a partner and sole distributor for Celtic Pride, the premium Welsh beef scheme. The company also produces cooked meats at its unit in Fforestfach, Swansea, and now stocks more than 8,000 catering products.

It recently won a three-year contract to supply meat to the NHS in South and Mid Wales and supplies Asda with all its Welsh produce. Its distribution service covers Mid and South Wales and parts of South West England.

Andrew Davies, pictured above, Assembly Government Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, said the agri-food sector was vitally important for the rural economy and the food park had been developed to help bring 'added value' to products.

He said, 'The agricultural sector in Wales employs some 57,000 people and contributes pounds 1.1bn to the economy while the food and drink industry employs nearly 23,000 people and is worth more t han pounds 2bn to the Welsh economy.

'Castell Howell Foods is a significant employer and its expansion plans are excellent news for the rural economy as well as an important boost for the Food Park. Its rapidly expanding distribution service is an important link in the food supply chain and provides a key service for Welsh food producers enabling them to reach wider markets.' Carmarthenshire County Council's executive board member for regeneration, Clive Scourfield, said, 'This is an exciting development for Castell Howell, the food park and the agri-food sector. It will be fantastic to see the project come to fruition.'

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
GMI Ranks # 4 on the Pacific Northwest's Fastest-Growing Companies in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Program. Check it out:
SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) today announced it ranks # 4 on Deloitte's prestigious Technology Fast 50 Program for the Pacific Northwest, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies in Washington, Oregon and Idaho by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, one of the nation's leading professional services organizations. Rankings are based on the percentage revenue growth over five years, from 2001 to 2005.



GMI's founder, chairman of the board and CEO Robert W. Monster attributes the company's 2008% percent revenue growth over five years to the rapid global expansion of the company, both organically via the addition of new local offices and the acquisitions of three companies in 2005, including NetReflector (USA), MI Pro (Norway) and Insight/Sunrise (China). In addition, GMI's growth was boosted by the successful delivery of global market intelligence solutions, including software, global respondent panels and services.

"This is an honor for GMI to receive such recognition from its peers," explains Monster, who founded the company in 1999. "I would like to dedicate this award to our loyal customers, our hard-working employees and our strategic partners all over the world, who together have contributed to such an effort. With over 100 new job openings available worldwide, GMI's is poised to continue on its growth path. We look forward to making the Fast 50 list again in 2007."

"Sustaining high revenue growth for five years is an exceptional accomplishment," said Larry Hile, a partner in Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry practice based in Seattle. "We commend GMI for making the commitment to technology and delivering on the promise of market longevity. We are proud to honor GMI as a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winner."

To qualify for the Technology Fast 50, companies must have had operating revenues of at least $50,000 in 2001 and $5,000,000 in 2005, be headquartered in North America, and be a company that owns proprietary technology or proprietary intellectual property that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operating revenues; or devotes a significant proportion of revenues to the research and development of technology. Using other companies' technology or intellectual property in a unique way does not qualify.

Winners of the 16 regional Technology Fast 50 programs in the United States and Canada are automatically entered in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks North America's top 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies. For more information on Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 or Technology Fast 500 programs, visit www.fast500.com.

About GMI

GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) is the only company that provides comprehensive integrated solutions for global market intelligence for both market research firms and corporate market research departments at Global 2000 companies. Solutions include Net-MR, a suite of software tools to manage and automate research throughout the project lifecycle, desktop analysis tools, 24/7 service bureau capabilities, and one of the world's largest, highly profiled, double opt-in managed panels, spanning across 200 countries. In addition, GMI offers high-value, real-time enterprise feedback solutions for customer, partner and employee programs. Founded in 1999 with world headquarters in Seattle, Wash., GMI has operations on five continents. More information is available at www.gmi-mr.com or email us at [email protected].

About Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein, its member firms and their respective subsidiaries and affiliates. As a Swiss Verein (association), neither Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu nor any of its member firms has any liability for each other's acts or omissions. Each of the member firms is a separate and independent legal entity operating under the names "Deloitte", "Deloitte & Touche", "Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu" or other related names. Services are provided by the member firms or their subsidiaries or affiliates and not by the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Verein.

Deloitte & Touche USA LLP is the U.S. member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. In the U.S., services are provided by the subsidiaries of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP (Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, Deloitte Tax LLP and their subsidiaries), and not by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP.
According to a report from the CBC, Nortel’s CEO Mike Zafirovsky is positively bullish on his company’s future, pointing to the fact that Nortel is once again in hiring mode in Ottawa.
 
“We stopped for awhile. Now we’re back at it,” said Zafirovski at a breakfast put on by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation.
 
Zafirovski pointed to the recent unified communications pact that Nortel struck with Microsoft as proof that the company is in the throes of a resurgence.
 
“We’re putting the foundation in place. And again, that’s all going to drive toward having innovation to be the fuel that’s going to put Nortel where it needs to be and recreate a great company,” he said

Venture Capital Firms K-O

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Venture Capital Firms K-O. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Kardan Technologies A subsidiary of Kardan 85, Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O. Box 4012, Business Park, Herzliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-960-2000 Fax: 972-9-960-2001 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Creating global high-tech and e-commerce companies. Kardan is also invested in Nitzanim and Concord I and II funds.



Koonras Technologies A subsidiary of Polar Investments 21 Ha'arba'a St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel.: 972-3-684-5794 Fax: 972-3-684-5713 E-mail: Avi Shachar A technology investment company focusing on start-up and early stage financing in Israeli and Israel related software, robotics, automated inspection, biotechnology and agrotechnology companies.

Koor Corporate Venture Capital The investment arm of Koor Industries Platinum House, 21 Ha'arba'ah St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel. 972-3-6238 410 Investment focus: Telecommunications technology, internet infrastructure, enterprise software and life sciences.

LEAP Capital 14 Shenkar St., Suite 110, PO Box 12226, Herzliya 46733 Tel.: 972-9-951-4434 Fax: 972-9-951-4435 E-mail: General inquiries Investment focus: Raising capital for, and providing advice to, growth and technology companies.

LINK Technologies Israel contact: Tel: 972-9-951-8489 Fax: 972-9-958-3692 E-mail: Galit Fuhrer A joint Israeli-Japanese team linking portfolio companies to Japan and the Far East. Its focus is software, Internet and e-commerce, communication, electronics, agro-technology, medical devices and biotechnology.

Azrieli Center 1, 35th fl., Tel Aviv 67021 Tel: 972-3-696-7285 Fax: 972-3-695-5960 E-mail: [email protected] Modi Rosen, managing director Investment focus: Communication related areas including data and IP communication, Internet, e-Commerce, communication software, wireless, as well as new models for communication services.

Maoz Everest Fund Management 21 Ha'arba'a Street, Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-685-5855 Fax: 972-3-685-8557 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Maoz Everest manages two funds - the Everest Fund LP focuses on Israeli and Israel-related investments; Everest Special Situations LP invests in distressed companies.

Marathon Venture Capital Fund Yahalom Tower, 3A Jabotinsky Rd., Ramat Gan 52520 Tel: 972 3 613 4010 Fax: 972 3 613 4011 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech companies in the data communications, Internet and intranet, electronics, robotics and automated inspection, semiconductors, biotechnology and medical devices fields.

MATI High-Tech 3 Tel Hai St., Ra'anana 45403 Tel: 972 9 760 2716 Fax:972 9 760 2245 E-mail: [email protected]

MayTree Management Group Ackerstein Bldg., 103 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Pituah Tel.: 972-9-950-5456 Fax: 972-9-950-5461 E-mail: Rafi Zitvar MayTree is a strategic partnership between Israeli financial institution Meitav, and SunTree. Investment focus: IT, telecommunications, semiconductors, robotics, energy and environment.

Medica Venture Partners Ackerstein Towers, Bldg. B, 10th Floor, 11 Hamanofim St., Herzliya Pituah 46725 POB 2206,Herzliya Pituah 46120 Tel.: 972-9-960-1900 Fax: 972-9-954-2266 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and life sciences companies at all investment stages.

Medica Investments (US & Israel) Incubation, seed and early stage financing in healthcare, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and agro-technology.

Medmax Ventures City Gate II, 22B Ben Gurion St., Herzliya 46785 Tel: 972 9 951 1990 Fax: 972 9 951 1992 Email: [email protected] Incubation, seed and early-stage financing in healthcare, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

MG Equity Partners SHAP Tower, 19 Tuval St., Diamond Exchange District, Ramat Ran Tel: 972-3-7538900 fax: 972-3-7538903 E-mail: info Investment focus: Investment banking, equity research, cross border M&A's and private equity capital to issuing clients, specializing on the LSE, AIM, and OFEX.

Millennium Materials Technologies Fund LP 40/13 Eistein St. Ramat Aviv 69101 Tel: 972-3-643-9986 Fax: 972-3-643-9987 E-mail: [email protected] Two funds, focusing on new materials and industrial process.

Mofet Technology Fund Management 11 Galgalei Haplada St. P.O. Box 12896 Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972-9-956-1290 Fax: 972-9-956-1293 E-mail: Elie Barr Investment focus: Early stage investments in the IT, Internet and intranet, data communications, electronics, software, semiconductor and medical devices fields.

Myriad Partners 13 Ramban St, Jerusalem 92422 Tel.: 972-2-567-1345 Fax: 972-2-567-1346 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Telecom, wireless technology and Internet.

Ness Ventures The investment arm of Ness Technologies Ness Tower, Atidim, Bldg. 4, P.O.Box 58152, Tel-Aviv 61580 Tel: 972-3-7666800 Fax: 972-3-7666809 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: IT start-ups.

Nokia Venture Partners Israel office: Ackerstein Towers, 11 Hamenofim St. Herzlia Pituach 46120. Tel: 972-9-951-4884 Investment focus: Mobile and IP communications start-ups.

Ofer Brothers Hi-Tech A part of the Ofer Brothers Group Ramat Aviv Towers, 11th Floor, 40 Einstein St., Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv E-mail: [email protected] Tel: 972-3-643-8890 Fax: 972-3-643-6662

OphirTech A subsidiary of Polar Investments 3 Daniel Frisch St., 13th fl. Tel Aviv Tel.: 972-3-691-1911 Fax: 972-3-609-5851 E-mail: Yermi Kaplan Investment focus: Seed and early stage financing in software, telecom and wireless communications, software and data communications.

Opus Capital 2730 Sand Hill Road, Suite 150, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: 1-650-543-2900 Fax: 1-650-561-9570 Investment focus: Seed and early-stage investments in technology companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Rate the company, not the stock

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Rate the company, not the stock. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Anyone wishing to follow the semiconductor sector on a regular basis, especially the flash market, knows that there is one key figure whose opinions are well worth noting: Citigroup analyst Craig Ellis. However, in the past year, he has been joined by another analyst who is also gaining a reputation as a sector expert: WR Hambrecht & Co. analyst Daniel Amir. While one could hardly compare the two investment houses in terms of size or experience of their analysts, the fact that Ellis and Amir are now classed in the same category is quite definitely an impressive achievement for the Israeli analyst, who joined WR Hambrecht in 2004, and has already become renowned worldwide for his expertise. These are some of Amir's latest recommendations:



1. DSP Group (Nasdaq: DSPG)

Recommendation - Buy

Target Price - $33; premium - 45%

Line of business: DSP Group is a fabless semiconductor company that offers chipset solutions applications for digital telephony, European digital enhanced cordless telecommunications telephony, and Bluetooth systems for voice, data, and video communication in residential, as well as small-office home-office, and small to medium enterprise environment.

DSPG should opt, in future, for large acquisitions, rather the small ones it has made up till now.

Amir: DSP Group focuses on the wireless handset niche and it has a big advantage because it controls 70% of the US market and 10% of the European market, which it entered a year and a half ago. It is a highly profitable company operating in a market that is large enough for one company to succeed, but too small for the big competitors. This field is not growing as fast as cellular handsets. DSP Group has a handsome $353 million in cash, and it generates $15 million revenue a quarter from current operations.

Globes: DSP Group predicts revenue of $227-236 million and growth of 21-26% for 2006. What do you think about this rate? DSG Group's problem is that its sector is not growing rapidly. Revenue rose handsomely, but it's rather hard to get institutions excited about the growth rate, or about the fact that the company works with cordless telephones. All in all, this is nevertheless a wonderful company, with excellent management. The way Wall Street looks at it is not their fault. In any event, I believe that DSP Group should use its cash to expand.

What kind of acquisitions?

I'm not talking about buying small technologies as it has done until now, but buying large companies with revenue, for example in wireless communications or networking, video and image processing. Things that are close to it. If the company learns how to diversify properly, I believe that this will generate more interest in it. DSP Group's share was a great disappointment this year, even though its business was pretty good. Therefore, my target price constitutes a significant premium on the current share price.

Saifun's investors know next year will be critical

2. Saifun Semiconductors Ltd. (Nasdaq:SFUN)

Recommendation: Buy

Target Price - $38; premium - 30%

Line of business: Saifun provides intellectual property solutions for the nonvolatile semiconductor memory market. Its nitride-read-only memory (NROM) technology enables semiconductor manufacturers to double and even quadruple the amount of memory that can be stored on a given area of a processor.

What's the basis for your target price for Saifun?

People investing the company today expect the company to shortly sign a large contract with a data company. If this doesn't happen, investors might be disappointed in the long term, but it's premature to talk about this. I predict that the company will have $100 million in sales next year, and I see no reason for them not to achieve this. My hope is that they'll announce a new licensing agreement with a data company during the coming quarter, as they promised would happen by year-end. I also hope that Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN) will continue to expand its collaboration with it, and that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) (HKSE: 0981) will reach the tape-out stage and make progress towards a product. Investors in Saifun know that 2007 will be critical for the company and that 2006 is a transition year.

What's critical? What does the company have to prove?

Spansion bought code licenses from Saifun, as did most other customers. Saifun has to prove that large companies are buying licenses from it in the data field too, otherwise its NROM technology will remain a niche technology. This will be proof that the technology Saifun is talking about works, because meanwhile, there's no large-scale proof. If data companies don't go in the direction Saifun expects, it will be in trouble. Meanwhile, it's very successful and innovative, and its model of selling intellectual property is very profitable and works for it.

PowerDsine should be a division of a large company. It will succeed better that way.

3. PowerDsine Ltd. (Nasdaq: PDSN)

Recommendation: Buy

Target Price - $8.50; premium - 7%

Line of business: PowerDsine designs, develops, and supplies integrated circuits, modules, and systems that enable the implementation of power-over-Ethernet (PoE) in local area networks (LANs).

In recent weeks, PowerDsine's share has skyrocketed on assessments that it is an acquisition target, or is at least in negotiations to be acquired, after it hired Citigroup (NYSE:C). Names mentioned as possible buyers include Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE:FSL), but Freescale was itself acquired by Blackstone Group LP and other private equity funds for $17.6 billion.

Amir says, I assume that Freescale is busy with internal matters, so it's no longer relevant, but I shouldn't be surprised if companies such as Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq:BRCM) or Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN) aren't interested in such a deal.

Why is an acquisition logical at all? Wouldn't it be better for PowerDsone to continue on its independent path?

With sales of $35-40 million a year, it's better for PowerDsine to be a division of a large company. It will succeed much better that way. This isn't a recommendation for every company; DSP Group or Saifun aren't right for sale, but it's true for PowerDsine. My target price of $8.50 is more or less where the share is now.

At what price could a deal be struck?

I assume that if an acquisition takes place, it will be at around $11.50 per share, not less than the IPO price. It should be borne in mind that General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) investment in PowerDsine was made at $11.20 per share, and with a 23.7% stake in the company, I don't believe that it would sell for less.

In my opinion, investors making investments now are doing so because they think the company will be sold. However, if there is no deal, in my opinion PowerDsine is definitely worth its current share price, but not more. The rumors are strong, and after I saw the response by CEO Igal Rotem, I believe that a sale is only a matter of price, and not a question of whether or not they agree to be sold. Igal doesn't conceal the fact that he's prepared to sell if the right buyer comes along.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 28, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
M&M bags German forging firm Jeco. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has struck a deal to buy out German forging company Jeco Holdings in the largest overseas deal in the auto component space so far.

M&M, through its component arm Mahindra Systems and Automotive Technologies, now rechristened Systech, acquired a 67.9% stake in German forging company Jeco Holdings, one of Germany's top five forgings companies, for an undisclosed amount. The enterprise value of the firm has been estimated at about e140m (Rs 830 crore), making it the largest outbound deal.



Jeco Holdings has three plants in Germany with a total capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum and a turnover of e180m. However, there is no clarity on how much M&M is paying for its 67.9% share of Jeco's total equity. Kotak Investment Banking was the principal advisor to M&M on this deal.

M&M plans to integrate this company with its subsidiary Mahindra Automotive Steels (MASPL) at a later date and is currently in discussions with the Indian regulators to chart out a course of action for the same. MASPL holds M&M other forgings interests like the Chakan unit acquired from Amforge in '05.

"Jeco is a profitable company with a strong customer base and good capabilities for innovation so this is a sound investment in terms of returns to our shareholders. Jeco's presence in the European forgings market will help us build a global business in the forgings market," said Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of M&M.

Mr Hemant Luthra, president of Systech added that "Jeco's assets, in terms of machinery is perfectly complimentary to what we have in Amforge and Stokes, giving us a global platform in Germany, UK and India to meet customer demands."

Jeco manufactures forgings for gear boxes, engine and axle parts, hubs, gears and piston heads and its activities are concentrated on the truck, bus and trailer market. Its main customers include DaimlerChrysler Group, ZF Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt.

"The cost scenario for our business is difficult in Europe so we were looking for a strategic partner to tie-up with. We see immense potential in our alliance with M&M as it is a technologically competent company with a strong base in India," said Mr Oliver Scholz, member, supervisory board of JECO Holdings.

"M&M's strategy for Jeco seems fairly straight forward. It will use Jeco for all the high-end work as European clients tend to be picky about where their critical parts are engineered. It may move some of the back-end and low-technology business to India to rationalise costs," said an industry analyst.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
HP, Dell, Sun Microsystems and Oracle traverse the country to hob knob with New York press and analysts. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Reporter's Notebook: Remember, remember the month of September.

That could be the theme for high-tech events in New York City in 2006, as officials from HP, Sun Microsystems, Dell and Oracle all traveled to New York to tout new wares and curry the favor of east coast press and analysts.

HP unveiled new PCs and a new family of storage servers at separate press events in Manhattan.

The events moved like clockwork, with HP officials portraying the company's strengths in making enterprise-class computers and storage servers.

Unfortunately, the company's boardroom shenanigans overshadowed its technological accomplishments by a long shot.

But that's a whole other story.

Dell's D-Day

Dell's technology day on Sept. 12 proved to be far more noteworthy because of the company's recent financial woes and earnings delay .

And then there are things that make reporters cringe. Not many things but enough.

I witnessed one at this Dell tech event, where company officials debuted new PCs.

Check out this exchange between Michael Dell and a reporter during a Q&A session following Dell's keynote.

Reporter: "In your last quarterly report, your revenue earnings had fallen 51 percent."

Dell: "Our revenues did not fall 51 percent."

Reporter: "Your revenue earnings had fallen."

Dell: "Our revenues did not fall. Our earnings fell."

Reporter: "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Dell then made light of the gaffe, bailing the poor guy out from an embarrassing mistake. He said something to the effect that it was hard to keep the revenues and earnings straight.

Kudos to board chairman Michael Dell for his handling of the situation. He could have ripped the guy for the misstep. But he took the high road.

He sure wasn't rewarded though.

Another reporter asked Dell to comment on the job Kevin Rollins is doing as CEO. That was the second time of the day Dell had to deal with that line of questioning.

Seems there is a lot of anti-Rollins sentiment floating around after the company missed some financial targets.

Dell again handled the tough question with grace and aplomb: "I think my comments earlier about Kevin were quite clear and I don't plan to repeat them because I haven't changed my mind since this morning."

Earlier that morning, Dell staunchly defended Rollins, noting that he disagrees with press and analyst comments that Rollins isn't the right man to lead Dell. He even called Rollins and "excellent executive."

Dell noted that the board has Rollins' back, as well, adding: "I'm the biggest shareholder so you can do the math."

Will Dell and the board can Rollins? Dell, point blank: "It's not going to happen."

Sounds like Rollins' and Dell's fates are tied together for the time being. But one wonders if Dell will sing a different tune if things don't improve.

Viva La Ponytail!

A week later, I took in the tech news at Sun Microsystems' event at Chelsea Piers, the third consecutive year Sun has schlepped to New York in September to hold a quarterly news briefing with press and analysts.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, sporting the coolest ponytail in high-tech, regaled the audience with tales of how Web 2.0 is harboring a lot of convergence and that we as a society are moving from a static, passive information age to one of active participation.



That was the message peppered in and around the hard news about a few new servers and storage devices. But the real fireworks took to the sky in the Q&A.

Someone in the audience asked Schwartz for more details about Sun's relationship with Apple. The interrogator was subtly referring to the rumors that Apple might acquire Sun.

"We've consistently partnered with Apple," Schwartz said. "Certainly we feel that customers want choice. As for specifics of what else we're working on, stay tuned."

Later, Schwartz provided an object lesson in jabbing at the competition by ignoring them.

An analyst asked what effect the pending Opteron server offerings from IBM, HP and Dell will have on Sun's ability to grow its Opteron server business going forward.

"I'll leave the Opteron-specific question for John Executive Vice President John Fowler and just tell you how thrilled I am that we're seeing such an aggressive uptake of Solaris on HP, Dell and IBM."

In the past, you could count on former CEO Scott McNealy to answer such questions about competitors by roasting Dell and HP with acerbic wit.

Schwartz' approach is much more subtle. Where McNealy's words were sharp jabs, Schwartz projects a sunny, "can't we all just get along" aura. But don't be fooled.

The new CEO's digs are just as vicious, albeit in a subtler fashion.

Check these Schwartz nuggets out:

"We're not anti-vendor. We're not here to bash anybody. Every single business we're in must be multi-platform if it's going to be successful. When I'm selling the hardware we're talking about, I'm going to be thrilled to talk to the Linux community about running Ubuntu on Niagara. When I'm talking about Solaris I'm going to be thrilled to talk to you about HP and Dell. They are no longer competitors in my mind. They are now channel partners."

Go ask IBM, HP or Sun if they feel like they're Sun channel partners.

To his credit, Schwartz let an opportunity for a barb pass by. When an audience member asked Schwartz what he thought about Dell and HP's recent struggles, Schwartz wouldn't bite.

Instead, he said Sun is not focused on Dell or HP, but on customers.

I doubt McNealy would have passed on the chance to take a bite of that whopper of a question.

Oracle Locks Up Your Datacenter

For a company firing on all cylinders, see Oracle in the high-tech dictionary.

Fresh off a solid first-quarter revenue bump, Oracle President Chuck Phillips and several other executives came to New York this week to outline the company's past, present and future security strategy.

Phillips stressed breaking out of the silos of security products, eschewing point products for integrated suites.

"Most companies use a very fragmented set of solutions, and that's the way the industry grew up -- specific companies addressing specific threats with no thought of how this all fits together," Phillips said.

"One of the things we bring to the table is thinking about security holistically from the application down to the disk through the network."

Company officials demonstrated how to lock down the network at the event by detecting off "orphan" or "ghost" access privileges of former employees, to how to block a corporate insider from accessing sensitive data.

We hear about such technologies all of the time, but it was nice to see them in action.

Moreover, the interfaces made sense to me; it looked like I could grant a new employee highly specific access privileges on an HR application throughout a company's network without fouling it up.

Oracle is going to try to fine-tune its software to put IBM, Sun and others even farther in the rearview mirror.

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The San Diego Supercomputer Center is making available more than 400 TB of disk space and even more archival tape space for academic and scientific data in search of a good home.. Check it out:
(www.enterprisestorageforum.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The San Diego Supercomputer Center ( SDSC ) is making available more than 400 TB of disk space and even more archival tape space for academic and scientific data in search of a good home. With 18 PB of archival storage, it just didn't seem nice not to share (for a modest fee, of course).



SDSC was founded in 1985 with a $170 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Since then, SDSC has served the supercomputing needs of more than 10,000 researchers at 300 academic, government and industrial institutions in the United States and around the world.

Today, operating out of the University of California, San Diego, SDSC continues to be a strategic resource to science, industry, and academia and provides a vast array of tools and expertise to the communities it serves.

Among the new services SDSC is offering the academic, scientific and digital preservation communities is the ability to store terabytes of data experiments, collections, and more at SDSC's Data Central storage repository.

Long-Term Storage

Richard Moore, SDSC's division director for Production Systems, notes that SDSC "has been one of the primary NSF-funded supercomputer centers for 20 years. Over our lifetime, we've always had a focus on data-intensive applications, applications that require a lot of memory or require large IO as part of their code. As a result, we built a pretty powerful data infrastructure with a large amount of disk and a large amount of archival systems. The primary reason we built those systems was to support the users of our supercomputers, to support their storage needs."

But soon Moore and his team saw a new need emerging, a need for long-term reliable storage of data collections, collections that might require 10 or 20 or 40 terabytes of archival storage space.

"We saw that we had an infrastructure that could be adapted to fill what we viewed as an emerging need to store particularly large-scale, long-term digital collections," says Moore. And the thought of being able to host and store digital collections was an exciting one to Moore and his SDSC colleagues. "It's a different kind of service than we were originally chartered for by the NSF, but it's leveraging a lot of the expertise and infrastructure that we already have."

And the community was asking for help, adds Moore. "We are already working with the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library and the National Archives and Records Administration," he reports. "And these organizations have a very critical need for long-term preservation. We want to support them, and we see long-term preservation storage as an important area."

Indeed, SDSC has been doubling its volume of stored archival data every 14 months, as the need to store data long term has increased. As a result, SDSC has more than tripled its archival storage capacity, from six petabytes to more than 18 petabytes, with about five times more bandwidth.

Data Central

SDSC's newest storage initiative is Data Central and the Data Allocations program. Total capacity for storage at SDSC is 2 PB of raw disk storage space with 18 PB of archival tape storage. Of that space, SDSC has reserved 400 TB of disk space and a significant fraction of its archival tape storage for members of the U.S. academic research community wishing to participate in the Data Allocations program.

And why should institutions consider storing their valuable data collections at SDSC?

"In terms of some of the advantages, we have a large production-level infrastructure that a group can leverage," says Moore. "We have a 24/7 staff that monitors the system, people that are on call. So there's this whole infrastructure that's in place that can be leveraged. That's one big advantage. We're also at scale to be able to host large collections and do it over a long period of time."

Another key advantage is that SDSC can easily handle data migration.

"When individuals need to store data now, they have to go and buy equipment to store that data," says Moore. "And then they have to hire somebody to administer that equipment. And they have to find a machine room where they can put all this stuff. And they have to get redundant power into that machine room, and cooling. And then three or four years from now, they're going to have to figure out how to migrate to the next generation."

Or they can just send their data to SDSC's Data Central, where an expert staff will maintain and migrate data as needed, 24/7, in a safe, reliable storage environment where they can still have 24/7 access to it.

Storing a TB at SDSC

"It's one thing to call up your local vendor and say, how much does a terabyte of disk space cost? Or how much would some sort of archival system cost?" says Moore. "It's another to face some of the longer-term and associated costs that aren't so obvious," what consultants and solution providers call the total cost of ownership (TCO).

"One of the things that we're doing in our cost structure is looking at annualized costs," explains Moore. "We're not going to say you can store a terabyte here for X dollars. We're going to say you can store a terabyte here for a year for X dollars. And the reason for looking at annualized costs is that we intend for this to be a sustainable effort, and there are ongoing costs, including media migration," that need to be factored in.

Data Central Data/Storage Resources

With a capacity of more than 20 petabytes of tape and disk storage, SDSC offers a wide variety of storage resources specially designed for high-performance users.

Disk Resources SATA & SAN/Fibre Channel Disk

Capacity: 400 TB (available for allocations)

Software: SRB, GridFTP, a variety of RDBMS, SSH, HTTP

Tape Resources Capacity: 18 PB (total)

Hardware: 6 STK Powderhorn silos, 64 IBM 3592B tape drives, and two IBM P690 nodes

Software: SRB, GridFTP, HSI

Archival System The centralized, long-term data storage system at SDSC is the High Performance Storage System (HPSS). SDSC manages one of the world's largest productions of HPSS, which has the capacity to store 18 PB of data on archival tape. HPSS transparently uses an associated 100 TB disk cache to accelerate read and write operations.

SRB SRB (Storage Resource Broker) is a data management software produced at SDSC. The software provides easy access to SDSC's disk and tape resources and presents them as a single file hierarchy. SRB can also be used for remote data management and access.

"In our field, media migrations every few years are not unusual at all, whether that's tape or disk," says Moore. And there are many elements involved, which can add up over a year or many years.

"It takes labor to run these systems," he says. "It takes servers to drive the disks and allow people to access their data . It takes networks. It takes a machine room. It takes utilities. It takes maintenance on all those systems. It takes media. So there are a number of elements that are rolled into our costs.

"Right now the best available cost estimate, when we look at our total cost of ownership for storing on disk, which is accessible all the time, is about $1,500 per terabyte per year," says Moore. The cost for archival tape is considerably less, about $500 per terabyte per year, with retrieval time (or latency) in minutes.

Still, given the cost of arrays and the personnel to manage them, $500 to $1,500 a terabyte seems cheap by comparison; SDSC only charges enough to cover its costs. And Moore anticipates that the annual cost of both disk and tape will drop substantially as the density of media increases. "I'm very hopeful that these fixed costs that constitute the rest of the total cost of ownership will also scale down ," he says.

Shared Storage

SDSC is already storing data and hosting digital collections for a number of academic and institutional customers and is in talks with many more about helping them with their long-term storage needs. (To see a list of collections SDSC currently hosts, click here .)

This past summer, SDSC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Center for Atmospheric Research to make available 100 TB of archival storage at each facility for replication of each other's data. And that storage space is scheduled to increase each year by 50 TB, reaching 300 TB by 2010. By having data stored offsite in a safe location, both institutions are helping to ensure the preservation of their digital assets for future generations.

Whether SDSC will have enough storage to satisfy its institutional customers' needs or customers willing to pay the price doesn't concern Moore. "We are not a commercial venture," he states. "Our focus is on large-scale collections and nonprofit university scientific researchers as well as the digital preservation community."

As SDSC opens up its Data Allocations program to the greater academic and digital preservation communities this fall, Moore and his team will find out how great the need for outsourced or shared storage is, and what price institutions are willing to pay to store their data offsite long term. That could also provide useful information for storage service providers. Stay tuned...

For more storage features, visit Enterprise Storage Forum Special Reports

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Intel's future Centrino Duo Mobile chipsets promise interoperability with the latest routers, and will include new wireless connectivity types (HSDPA and WiMax).. Check it out:
(www.wi-fiplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The Centrino brand name Intel slapped on its embedded Wi-Fi support in laptops arguably made wireless networks the household word they are today. This week, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chip giant revealed its plans for the future of what was once code-named "Santa Rosa." It will couple draft 802.11n specification Wi-Fi with Intel's own Core 2 Duo mobile processor -- and there are future add-ons to anticipate as well, including HSDPA.



To stave off potential problems in working with other Draft-N products, Intel says it has created an 802.11n interoperability program to make sure the new Centrino laptops work with access points from vendors like Buffalo Technology, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear (the top four sellers of Wi-Fi products in the U.S. consumer market). Intel's belief is that the consumer market will snap up these products first, and that testing for enterprise use will follow once the standard is actually finished.

Interoperability testing is usually the purview of the Wi-Fi Alliance , and in fact, the Alliance said last month it will begin testing Draft-N products in 2007, long before 802.11n becomes a ratified standard (that's expected in 2008). That timeframe could be too late for Intel, which wants to have the new Centrinos on the market early next year.

"This testing is meant to supplement what the Alliance does," says Intel spokesperson Amy Martin.

Even if Intel's Santa Rosa plans were delayed and the Alliance were to begin testing first, Martin thinks Intel would still do its own interoperability check, likely to take place in an actual retro-fitted home with multiple floors to get a real-world feel, rather than the clinical lab tests run by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

"We'll still be part of their testing," Martin says.

The Intel Core 2 Duo processor part of the new Centrino package will have new power saving capabilities, a must on Wi-Fi equipment that tends to eat up batteries fast.

Centrino will also include features of Intel vPro, another marketing initiative from Intel that targets business customers. The features include an active management feature to let enterprises better track assets and check system security, and a Flash memory accelerator that will allow for faster resume from hibernation state. They're even revamping the integrated graphics core.

Intel also said a new low-power chipset would be available for the Ultra Mobile PC platform.

Intel announced separately with Nokia that the two companies will be bringing HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) connectivity to Centrino users. Nokia has made a module that supports the 3G tech, and Intel will provide it to interested notebook OEMs. (The Wall Street Journal said shares for Novatel Wireless and Sierra Wireless, companies that make modems and modules to support tech like HSDPA and EV-DO in laptops, dropped when this news was announced, indicating the power of the partnership.)

Martin says they chose to work with Nokia due to the company's strong 3G/HSDPA knowledge and product line.

Of course, Intel's real goal is integrating WiMax. While nothing official was announced today, Martin confirms that Intel will offer a mobile WiMax mini-PCI card eventually. Even that is a stopgap to the ultimate goal of a combination of WiMax and Wi-Fi on the same embedded card used on Centrino-branded laptops.

Intel has also jumped on the ultrawideband (UWB) bandwagon today by saying it will release Intel Wireless UWB Link 1480 MAC (media access controller) silicon and reference designs for vendors looking to create products supporting the specification created by the WiMedia Alliance . The first customer will be Belkin , which plans to build the 1480 (using a PHY from Alereon ) into a Certified Wireless USB adapter to come out in the first quarter of next year.

Belkin had previously planned wireless USB products with chips from Freescale, but that company's exit from UWB forced Belkin to delay products. Earlier this week, the company said it would be making a 4-port wireless USB hub with chips from WiQuest Communications .

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There's nothing small about virtualization for the SMB space. Dell's newest systems aim to serve this and other high-end features to the SMB market.. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Like kids following in their big brothers' footsteps, smaller enterprises often take IT spending cues from their larger brethren.

Dell is no exception to this. On Wednesday, the OEM introduced five new servers in the hope of capturing a larger share of the small and midsize business (SMB) market. The new systems offer a number of capabilities more frequently found in enterprise-oriented products, such as server virtualization.



Jay Parker, director of Dell PowerEdge servers, said SMBs can use virtualization to consolidate multiple applications on a single server, thus saving themselves money and, just as importantly, a considerable amount of space.

During a press conference, Dell detailed the PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers, all of which feature dual-core Intel Xeon processors.

Parker said the new servers offer dramatic increases in performance, scalability and power efficiency.

9th generation family Source: Dell

For example, according to Parker, the PowerEdge 1900 provides more than twice the performance of a PowerEdge 1800.

Parker also predicted that new products will hit the market in the next 12 to 24 months with "hardware capabilities targeting virtualized environments and SMBs simultaneously."

"You'll see us cater more to the SMB market over time," he added.

Dell is shipping the servers with versions of Microsoft Small Business Server software preinstalled.

The PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers are priced at $1,399, $749, $949, respectively, while the PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are priced at $1,049 and $599, respectively.

Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell's U.S. small business division, noted Dell is lowering price points to help small businesses adopt technologies used by larger companies, including virtualization.

"We're seeing an increasing rate of adoption of these technologies," he said during a conference call Wednesday morning.

Laurie McCabe, an analyst with consultant AMI-Partners, was more restrained.

"The term virtualization itself is confusing to small business owners," she told internetnews.com .

But she said agreed that they would be interested once they learn about it "in plain English," and companies with more than 100 employees are primed to adopt it.

Muehleman said the Round Rock, Texas computer maker has increased its share of the SMB market in unit terms from 10 percent in 2000 to 30 percent today.

That's not insignificant, as those businesses will spend $98 billion on IT products and services this year, according to AMI-Partners.

This article was originally published on internetnews .

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How does virtualization work, and why is now a good time to check it out?. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Each year brings a fresh whirl of tech buzzwords. Terms like "proactive," "360-degree view" and "information life cycle management" have all been in vogue in recent history. This year, the technology de jour is "virtualization," a topic that has more than just hype behind it and has broken through into the mainstream.



The concept behind server virtualization is not new, however. IBM has been creating virtual machines on its mainframes since the 1960s.

So what is it? Virtualization breaks the link between the hardware and the applications that run on it. This includes virtual storage, virtual networking, application virtualization and, the focus of this tutorial, server virtualization. It requires the installation of a software layer that allows more than one server to operate on the same piece of hardware. There are two basic approaches to this: Read more articles about virtualization

1. The one popularized by VMware (now part of EMC Hopkinton, Mass.) runs a virtualization layer (called a hypervisor) between the hardware and the operating system. With this method, several operating systems can run on the same set of hardware. The drawback is that each virtual server requires its own operating system, which adds to licensing costs and system overhead.

2. Sun Microsystems, of Santa Clara, Calif., takes the opposite approach. It installs its Solaris operating system directly on the hardware. Different applications run in isolated areas called "containers," but they all share the same operating system instance. Shares of the physical server resources are then assigned to each of the containers on a permanent or dynamic basis.

Why Virtualize?

There are many reasons for adopting server virtualization. A popular one is better resource utilization. It is not uncommon to see servers running at 10 percent or less of their capacity, at different points in the day. By letting several virtual servers share a single set of hardware, a much higher average utilization rate is achieved, and hardware and support costs are lowered.

Virtualization also makes it easier to provision and reallocate servers. Instead of having to manually set up a server, the virtualization software can set up a server using a pre-existing template and shift server images from one physical server to another to balance workloads or improve efficiency. It can also automatically set up a new virtual server on a different machine when there is a hardware malfunction. Each application is isolated from the others, which provides greater security.

Why Now?

In practice, virtualization requires much more than just a simple hypervisor layer. In fact, virtualization has broken through as a technology largely because all the necessary components (i.e., processors, utilities and management tools) for a completely virtual ecosystem are now in place.

AMD and Intel have both included virtualization support in their chips. In AMD's case, this involves taking some of the commands that normally would be handled by the Virtual Machine Manager and including them in the chips' instruction sets. Similarly, Intel has released its Intel Virtualization Technology (IVT) for desktops, Xeon server and Itanium server CPUs.

Utilities, too, are starting to support virtual servers. Backing up virtual servers, for example, poses a series of unique challenges. One of the biggest challenges involves server consolidation. The advantage of server consolidation is that all the virtual servers share the same set of hardware, which works out great when all servers are running at low levels. But backup is a resource intensive activity in terms of disk I/Os, processor utilization and traffic through the network interface card. Backup vendors, therefore, have developed a number of techniques for backing up virtual servers. CommVault Systems offers customers the option of backing up the entire virtual server into a single large file, and Syncsort's Backup Express can either backup each virtual server individually or backup the entire physical server.

In addition, management tool vendors are including virtual server support in their products. TeamQuest Corporation of Clear Lake, Iowa, for example, supports virtualization throughout its product line. It has a set of five collection agents for VMware ESX Server 2.0, which gather information both on the performance of the virtual machines (e.g., CPU, disk, memory and NIC) and on the ESX service console (e.g., disk space, process-workload and system log messages). Reports and alarms can be set up on each of the individual virtual servers or on the physical server. TeamQuest's capacity planning software can model each virtual machine as an individual workload as well as determine the impact of running several virtual machines on a physical server.

How to Virtualize

The primary action in setting up a virtual server is selecting and installing the virtualization layer. Here are some of the more popular options. Xen 3.0: Xen is a lightweight open source hypervisor (less than 50,000 lines of code) which runs on Intel or AMD x86 and 64-bit processors, with or without virtualization technologies. It supports up to 32-way SMP (Simultaneous Multi Processing) and requires a modification of the client operating system, which means it will run Linux but not Windows clients. Although the original Xen hypervisor works only with Linux clients, XenSource, the company behind the Xen project, released XenEnterprise, a version that supports Windows Server and Solaris guests as well.

Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2: Microsoft initially charged for its virtualization technology, and it was limited to Windows servers. With Windows Server 2003R2, customers can run up to four operating systems on a physical server. On April 3, Microsoft announced it was making Virtual Server a free download, and it extended support to clients running nine versions of Red Hat and SUSE Linux.

VMware Server: VMware (EMC) is by far the largest vendor of virtualization technology for x86 platforms. In early 2006, the company released VMware Server, a replacement for GSX Server, which is a single server virtualization platform for Linux and Windows. More than 100,000 downloads of this free product were made in the first week alone. VMware Server has all the features of the GSX Server, and adds support for virtual SMP, Intel Virtualization Technology and 64-bit guest operating systems.

VMware ESX Server: Although its entry-level product is now free, VMware still charges for its enterprise-class ESX Server. ESX server runs on x86-based servers and supports Linux (Red Hat and SUSE), Windows (Server and XP), Novell NetWare and FreeBSD 4.9 clients.

Virtual Iron: Virtual Iron is another company offering Xen-based products. It has four products: two free single server versions, an enterprise version and one for clusters. In addition to the Xen hypervisor, Virtual Iron also includes management tools and an administrative interface.

IBM Virtualization Engine Platform: This platform encompasses the entire line of IBM servers. As well as the usual hypervisor for server partitioning, it includes virtual I/O and virtual Ethernet, a workload manager and management console.

SWSoft Virtuozzo: Virtuozzo takes an approach similar to that of Solaris. It runs above, rather than below, the operating systems. It has two versions &#151 one for Windows and another for Linux &#151 and customers can create virtual servers on top of these. One particular application is for running "Virtual Private Servers (VPS)" or a hosting facility. With Virtuozzo, a single physical server can run up to 5,000 VPSes.

By and large, these ISVs make it easy to dabble in virtualization. To get your feet wet, simply download a free version of the software from the above vendors to gain familiarity and see how it works in your environment.

Although the basic concept of virtualization is likely to be around for quite a while, it is not clear whether virtualization software will always be a separate product. IBM, EMC, Microsoft, AMD, Intel and others are incorporating greater features into their product line, and this trend will continue. Overall, though, virtualization appears to be moving toward being the default method of server operation, rather than being just for a specific niche. Eventually, this may make discrete hypervisors a thing of the past.

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Time to enter the county showdown. Check it out:
(The Gazette (Blackpool) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The hunt is on to find the cream of Lancashire's businesses.

The BIBAs - Be Inspired Business Awards - 2007, are launched.

The competition is organised by Business Link Lancashire and the North and Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce and supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

Now in their ninth year, the BIBAs put companies in the spotlight for their achievements.

Clive Memmott, chief executive of Business Link Lancashire, said: "The competition has gone from strength to strength, recognising and celebrating the success of the business community in Lancashire.

"It is now firmly fixed as a key date on Lancashire's business calendar and competition to win one of the 13 fabulous BIBAs is sure to be stiff." Once again, the BIBAs will be held at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool on March 16. More than 500 entries were received last year. This year's categories are: * The Northwest Regional Development Agency New Business of the Year Award.



* The UK Trade & Investment International Trade Award.

* The Lancaster University Management School Leadership Team of the Year Award..

* The Orbit Internet Award for Best Use of E-business.

* The University of Central Lancashire Award for Business Innovation.

* The Westinghouse Springfields Award for Performance through People.

* The SELNET Social Enterprise of the Year Award.

* The Harris Walker Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

* The Write Angle and Design Force Marketing with Impact Award.

* The Royal Bank of Scotland Lancashire Business of the Year Award.

Three categories introduced this year will celebrate achievements of individuals in business: * The Napthens Business Person of the Year Award.

* The HSBC Business Woman of the Year.

* The Park Hall Hotel Employee of the Year.

Babs Murphy, chief executive of the North & Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, added: "The success of local businesses is vital to Lancashire's economy and the business awards play an important part in rewarding those companies that strive for excellence.

"We are eager to celebrate not only achievements but business values, vision, strength, and a will to build lasting success." The closing date for the competition is November 17.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Govt guidesre-registration for foreign enterprises. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A decree guiding the implementation of the Common Investment Law and the Unified Enterprise Law has just been issued by the Government.

Decree 101/2006/ND-CP, which gives detailed guidance for re-registration of foreign-invested enterprises that were licensed under the old Foreign Investment Law, is applicable to foreign-invested joint ventures, 100% foreign-owned companies, foreign-invested joint-stock companies and projects under the business cooperation contract.



Under the decree, joint ventures and 100% foreign-owned companies with more than two owners must register for conversion into limited liability companies. 100% foreign-owned companies owned by a foreign organization must also re-register into a one-member limited liability company. Joint-stock companies with foreign investment have to re-register into joint-stock companies.

Licensing authorities must examine and issue certificates within 15 days; otherwise they must notify the investors concerned in writing.

The decree also allows joint ventures and 100% foreign-owned companies to convert into one-member limited liability companies. The conversion process can start either after foreign-invested enterprises re-register or can be simultaneously carried out.

Licensing authorities must examine and reply within 30 days from the date of receiving complete documents for conversion.

More stock investors join the market

Two Korean companies have been licensed by the State Securities Commission to open rep offices to trade stocks in Vietnam, joining the trend of increasing international interest in the local stock market.

Tong Yang Investment Bank and Korea Investment Trust Management will open their offices in HCM City with an operational term of five years. Korea Investment Trust Management has set up two investment funds to invest in Vietnams stock market and potential shareholding companies. The Vietnam Growth Fund, capitalized at US$25 million, is for institutional investors, and the Worldwide Vietnam Fund, at US$75 million, is for individual investors.

Earlier, three foreign stock companies have also been licensed for opening rep offices in Vietnam, including Nomura International Limited (Hong Kong), Blackhorse Asset Management (Singapore) and Mirae Asset Maps Investment Management (South Korea).

Last week, Citigroup also organized a two-day trip to Vietnam for a delegation of more than 20 senior leaders from the worlds leading investment funds. The investors met representatives of the Government, experts, economists, bankers and business people in Hanoi and HCM City. Charly Madan, general manger of Citigroup in Vietnam, said the visit aimed to help global investors study attractive opportunities in Vietnam stock market.

Vietnams stock market is rated as one of the most attractive market in Asia, with the stock index expected to increase 66% this year. There are 49 stocks with total market value of US$3.1 billion listed on the HCM City Securities Trading Center. Vietnam expects the stock markets share of the GDP to increase from the current 6% to 30% by 2010.

The number of stocks is expected to increase strongly with Vietnams accession to the WTO, which will attract more foreign companies to the country.

Big port complex in Vung Taugets nod

The Government has approved the development of a complex of port and oil and gas services in Ben Dinh-Sao Mai in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

PetroVietnam and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) have been allowed to cooperate in developing this project. The two companies have signed a cooperation agreement to develop Ben Dinh-Sao Mai port into a complex supplying oil and gas services, shipyards, container handling services and a petroleum depot.

Ben Dinh-Sao Mai is one of the 30 key national projects planned for development in the 2006-2010 period. According to the master plan for seaports prepared by the Ministry of Communications and Transport, the project will require US$637 million in investment and is designed to handle 25-50 million tons of cargo a year.

September FDI surpasses US$1 billion

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in September surpassed US$1 billion, including US$886 million of 154 newly licensed projects and US$206 million in added capital of 112 operational projects.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investments foreign investment agency, the figure has brought the total FDI inflow in the first nine months to US$5.15 billion, up 25.9% from the same period last year. Newly licensed projects make up US$3.7 billion.

The ministry hopes that with this strong growth, the FDI target of US$6.5 billion for this year is achievable. It is evaluating many big FDI projects; among them are iron ore mining in Thach Khe of Ha Tinh Province (US$1.9 billion) by S.H.T Iron & Steel, shopping mall chain development (US$500 million) by Lotte Vina Shopping and a horserace track in Vinh Phuc Province (US$700 million).

In the first nine months, the realized capital of FDI projects amounted to US$2.78 billion, 8.8% higher than the same period last year. FDI enterprises reported sales of US$3.3 billion in September, bringing their total sales in the first nine months to US$21.6 billion, up 28.7% year-on-year.

To attract more FDI into Vietnam, the ministry plans to hold the Vietnam Investment Conference 2006 in Hanoi and HCM City in mid-October. At the conference, officials will introduce Vietnams investment environment and latest policies as well as investment opportunities in various sectors.

First trade plaza to open in Vung Tau

A luxury shopping and entertainment center will be opened for business late this year in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

The center, the first of its kind in the southern coastal province, is part of the Imperial Plaza and Hotel Complex in Vung Tau City. According to Richard Leech, director of retail service at CB Richard Ellis Vietnam (CBRE Vietnam), construction of the four-level shopping and entertainment center has been completed and it will officially open for business on December 25. Retailers are invited to join the center, which will have more than 50 shops and kiosks.

CBRE Vietnam has been appointed by Lac Viet Corporation, the owner of the Imperial Plaza Complex, the retail consultant and marketing agent for the center.

The VND246-bilion Imperial Plaza and Hotel Complex will include shopping and entertainment facilities, and a five-star hotel of 150 rooms and 60 luxury apartments. It is expected to become a popular shopping and entertainment destination for business people, local residents and tourists. The designer of the project is Graham Taylor Designs, a well known architecture company.

New oilfield to start production soon

The Government has approved a report on the potential reserves and exploration of the Ca Ngu Vang (Golden tuna) oilfield off the southern coast.

The approval will pave the way for the Hoan Vu Joint Operating Company to carry out further test drilling at the newly discovered oilfield. The company has estimated reserves of nearly 222 million barrels of crude oil and more than 11 billion cubic meters of gas at Block 09-2 where the oilfield is located.

The oilfield in the Cuu Long Basin, which was discovered in 2002 and test drillings last year seem to indicate substantial oil reserves, is expected to begin commercial production next year with an annual output of 70,000 barrels per day.

Ca Ngu Vang is jointly exploited by PetroVietnam, which holds a 50% stake, Britains Soco International and Thailands PTTEP, which hold a 25% stake each.

Export maintains robust growth

Vietnams export in the first nine months maintained momentum, with a year-on-year rise of 24.2%.

Figures from the General Statistics Office show that the total export revenue in the period reached US$29.4 billion, or nearly 78% of the years target. The foreign investment sector gained strong growth, with revenue up by 32.6% to US$10 billion. The domestic sector earned US$12.3 billion, up 20.7%, and crude oil contributed US$6.5 billion.

Key export items remained traditional commodities like crude oil, garments (US$2.6 billion), footwear (US$2.6 billion) and seafood (US$2.3 billon).

In the period, imports rose 19.3% year-on-year to US$32.75 billion, accounting for 77% of the years target. Main import commodities are machinery (US$4.7 billion), steel (4.3 million tons) and fertilizers (2.4 million tons).

Cheap Chinese steelthreatens local producers

Vietnams steel market is being hit hard by the inflow of cheap Chinese steel, which is threatening the local steel industry.

According to the Vietnam Steel Association, local steel consumption in August was only 177,000 tons, much lower than the monthly average of 250,000 tons, due to inflow of cheap Chinese steel, especially rolled steel. The steel is sold at a price that is the same as that of steel ingots, making it hard for local steel producers to compete. It is estimated that Chinese steel now holds a 30% of the local market.

Anti-dumping lawyers say under its own law, Vietnam can sue China for steel dumping although the country has yet to become a WTO member. Vietnam Steel Association has worked with the Ministry of Trades Competition Management Department on the possibility of taking legal action.

Vietnams demand for construction steel is about four million tons a year, while the domestic steel industry can produce seven million tons.

Lam Dong invites investment in industry

Lam Dong Province is calling local and foreign investors to join projects in the industrial sector.

At a promotion seminar held in HCM City last week, provincial officials introduced advantages of the sector to potential investors and invited them to build factories in 11 industrial sites and parks. Hoang Si Son, vice chairman of Lam Dong, said the province would prioritize investment that utilizes local resources and materials and employs large labor, such as bauxite mining, agro-product processing and textile and garment production.

Lam Dong is a center of agro products like coffee, tea, mulberries, rubber and vegetables, so investors can take advantage of the abundant supplies to expand business.

According to Lam Dong Industrial Zone Authority, the rate of leasing land in industrial parks in the province is lower than elsewhere. For example, the land rent is only US$0.12-0.15 a square meter as compared with US$0.5 in Dong Nai Province and US$0.34 in Tay Ninh Province. Investors can also enjoy support in site clearance and infrastructure construction.

By August, Lam Dong had 267 investment projects with total capital of VND12.5 trillion licensed, of which 48 were operational and 83 under construction.

Kumho gets license for US$380-milliontire project

The leading South Korean auto tire manufacturer Kumho Tires has received a license to invest in an auto tire factory in Binh Duong Province.

With an investment of US$380 million, it has become the biggest foreign-invested project in the southern province. Kumho Tires has signed a 50-year land lease contract for the project with Becamex IDC Corp., the developer of My Phuoc Industrial Park. Jongsun Sun, general director of Kumho Tires (Vietnam), said the company would invest US$155 million in the first phase of the project, which is due to start next month.

Beginning in 2008, the factory will produce 3.15 million radial auto tires a year for local sale and export. The company will also build a rubber processing factory in Binh Duong, home of vast rubber plantations, to supply raw materials for its operations.

The project in Vietnam is part of Kumhos expansion plan aimed to make it become the fifth biggest tire manufacturer in the world.

Tourist information center opens

The Tourist Information Center was officially opened in the city last week, with more centers around the country in the pipeline.

The center at the corner of Le Loi and Nguyen Hue streets in District 1 offers a variety of services to tourists, such as ATM, foreign currency exchange, airline and travel, tour bookings, visa arrangement and handicraft promotion. Tourists can enjoy some free services like Internet access, drinking water and tourist maps.

The center collaborates with partners to provide some services for tourists, such as foreign currency exchange by HSBC, travel services by Asiana Travel Mate and spa services by Qi Spa. Geeshah Perry, the centers director, says the center targets not only international visitors but also locals and foreigners living in HCM City. It welcomes 300 visitors a day, and 60% of them buy its services. He plans to open four centers next year in Hanoi, Phan Thiet, Danang and Hoi An.

HCM City tourism authorities have plans to establish a tourist information center in September 23 Park near Ben Thanh Market in the future.

City welcomes more touristsdespite low season

International visitors to HCM City are rising, with nearly 1.5 million coming in the first eight months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 9%.

HCM City Tourism Department says although tourism is in the low season, the city welcome 178,000 visitors last month, most of them from the U.S. and Japan. Visitors from South Korea, China, Malaysia, Australia and Singapore also increased strongly.

Le Nhut Tan, deputy director of the department, says to attract more tourists, the city is promoting standard service shops and restaurants in the media and improving foreign language and professional skills for tourist security staff. The tourism department has selected 50 shopping venues and 10 eateries meeting tourist service standards.

The department will also step up efforts to promote the citys tourism overseas and organize tourism events in the city. It will launch 200,000 tourist maps in English and Japanese and guidebooks for foreign tourists and establish more tourist information booths in the city.

HCM City expects to welcome 2.3 million international visitors this year, up 15% on 2005, and 3.5 million local tourists, up 15%. Tourism revenue should increase 20% on last year to VND16 trillion (US$1 billion).

Banks urged to find ways to boost lending

Experts have urged commercial banks in HCM City to find ways to ease capital glut, as the banks have mobilized more funds but their lending is still stagnant.

According to a banker seminar recently, banks in the city mobilized VND238.9 trillion (nearly US$15 billion) in the first eight months, posting an annualized growth rate of 26.5%. Meanwhile, their lending growth was much slower, growing only 17.5% in the period to VND205.7 trillion.

Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), Sacombank and Eximbank are the most successful in fund mobilization. In July alone, ACB raised nearly VND1.5 trillion, followed by Eximbank with VND1.45 trillion and Sacombank with VND937 billion. The hike in interest rates is seen as the main driver for the surge in these banks mobilized funds. Upheavals on the gold and stock markets also lend a part in boosting mobilization.

One more underground car park approved

HCM City authorities have recently approved the construction of an underground car park at the football field of Phu Nhuan District.

With the approval, the city now has nine underground car park projects in the pipeline. Three projects on Nguyen Hue Boulevard, on Nguyen Du Street and at the Phu Nhuan football field are calling for investment. Six others are under preparation. They include car parks at Lam Son Square by Indochina Corporation, Chi Lang Park by Hoa Binh Construction Corporation, Bach Tung Diep Park by Electronics, Informatics and Chemicals Company, Le Van Tam Park by Underground Space Investment and Development Company Hoa Lu Stadium by Indochina Corporation and Tao Dan Football Field by T.T.C.

The city government has just approved the Department of Communications and Public Works proposal to exempt land rent for the developer of the underground car park on Nguyen Hue Boulevard and to call for investment in the project in the build-operate-transfer form.

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

The Needfor Stamina

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The Needfor Stamina. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As living standards are on the rise, a recent survey has found that durability is the most important factor to consumers when purchasing goods

[QQ] A recent survey has revealed that products durability and use are the most important qualities to consumers when purchasing goods, a shift from years before when price was always the most important factor. The survey indicates that Vietnamese consumers are more conscious of the future than ever before. Not only do they want products that will last, but they are increasing their savings for the future. And while the commercially-powerful younger generation may not have the buying experience of the older crowd, they are set to make more highly informed decisions thanks to modern tools such as the Internet.



The survey on consumer behavior was conducted by the HCM City Consumer and Enterprise Research Center early this year, covering 660 consumers over 18 years of age in HCM City (48% of those surveyed), Hanoi (29%), and the Mekong Delta (23%).

Compared with previous surveys the center conducted, this survey shows many changes which can be explained by the improvement in living standard as Vietnams economy has grown quite fast recently. According to a survey conducted in 2000, there were up to 14 factors impacting consumer satisfaction. Of those, the three main factors were dealing with invoice, price and time of delivery. These were all concerns in a less-sophisticated society without solid infrastructure. With higher production quality and consumer standards now, people want their products to work well and last long.

The new survey shows that while the durability of products is the most important factor now, people often base much on their own experience to choose products. When buying a vehicle or an electric product, people often look for information from their friends and relatives while their main information source when buying secondary products is from their own experience.

However, as global trade penetrates into Vietnam, there are a variety of scientific and technological means blitzing peoples lives. The new generation (people from 18-30 years of age) in Vietnam seems to assimilate into this modern international society quite well. They are the ones who most often look for product information on the Internet. Thus, the ratio of using the Internet to look for products is increasing.

Looking towardsthe future

According to the survey, most of the people asked said they spend most of their money on food. Spending of single people on food accounts for 23.5% while that of household is 28.9%, said Vu Tien Dung, head of the survey. Their second spending is usually on such utility services as Internet, water supply, phone, electric service, while savings is also high on the list.

If income increases, they will increase their savings for future investment. Cash is their main savings form which they keep home, accounting for 62% of total people asked. Only 37% said they have deposits in banks. Dung also noted that the reason of this tendency is due to a lack of confidence in banks.

The survey also shows that the majority of people reduce their spending on food when they have the opportunity to save in that category. When having more money, consumers first priority is often to increase savings, followed by investing in their children, taking care of family, travel, and study. As to health care and life insurance, consumers said they will pay more for this only when and if their income increases.

Asked what they planned to spend in the next six months, more than 30% of consumers with lower income and 40% with middle income said they will spend on travel compared with 52.1% of those with higher income. Jewelry also has a high ratio with 27%, equivalent to that of electronic products, mobile phones, and health care.

Market force

Vietnam has a young population with people from 18 to 45 years of age as the main market force. The survey shows that people belonging to 18-30 years old group are those who favor new products. They are also more easily changeable than previous generations.

They are first consumers to buy new products and they, more than anyone else, set trends and their buying habit is the most significant factor forming the nations consumption tendency. Products are one of their means of self-assertion. Information they get mostly comes from the Internet.

However, the age range of 30 to 45 provides a very significant market impact, accounting for more than 50% of all sales. They are not the first customers to buy new products but are those who generally form a products market. This group accounts for more than half of the market force; thus, they are the main target of most enterprises, Dung added.

The poor tend to be more quality conscious than the rich. People in the Mekong Delta are the ones who were most concerned with quality while those in HCM City, a region with a higher human development index than others, showed their interests in promotional programs, said Dung.

According to the survey, product brand-name, design, service quality, price and promotion are all important factors for consumers while shopping. People of higher income care more for product design, and service quality plays a more important role in the choosing process of people in Hanoi. x

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
SPECIAL REPORT (Tabloid format): JOURNAL FOR ENTREPRENEURS (Creativity). Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In this period of harsh economic times when people are doing their best to cut down on costs, luxury items are often the first slashed on the budget list. Still, some businesses manage to prove that it is possible for a business to thrive even in a difficult and price-sensitive environment.



Ma. Yolanda Capistrano-Sevilla, chief executive officer of The Leather Collection, Inc., maker of well-crafted and high-quality leather gift items, is very proud of how the business managed not only to keep afloat but also to grow and become the market leader. Creativity played a huge part in the company's success and she has this one strong advice for entrepreneurs - recreate or perish.

"(Creativity is) critical both to survival and growth. When one ceases to be creative, one first atrophies, then dies," Mrs. Sevilla said.

The entrepreneur really has something to be proud of. Since it formally started in 1991, The Leather Collection's roster of clients has included big corporate names such as Coca-Cola, Toyota, San Miguel, Nokia, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Shakey's, Del Monte, Shell, Mitsubishi, Citibank, to name a few.

The company, which is positioned as a corporate gifts specialist that caters specifically to the institutional market for corporate gifts and accessories, has served the gift and giveaway requirements of over 500 of the Top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines.

Mrs. Sevilla greatly acknowledges that she achieved this feat together with one important person in her life - her husband who has been the originator of their businesses. Prior to setting up The Leather Collection, she was a direct marketing consultant of companies in various fields such as insurance, book distribution and retail. In fact, she is one of the pioneers of the country's direct marketing industry and was founding president of the Direct Marketing Association of the Philippines.

While working as chief executive officer of the direct marketing arm of the Manilabankers and Seaboard Eastern Insurance, she met Federico S. Sevilla, Jr., the company's printer who would turn out to be her husband and work mate.

"We started out our relationship working together. My story as an entrepreneur is the story of our marriage," Mrs. Sevilla narrated.

The Leather Collection is the grandchild of Insta Print - the enterprise Mr. Sevilla set up to provide for the family when they got married in 1981. In 1983, Insta Print gave birth to Creative Art Techniques, a creative and design boutique serving the advertising industry. Eventually, it designed and produced paper products such as the Manila, Cebu and Baguio Landmark Maps, Niji and Fedrigoni Stationery and Gift Boxes, and the Yellow Board.

One of the products developed by Creative Art Techniques was The Asian Manager (Triax Organizer Planner System), a planner encased in a leather binder that was launched in cooperation with the Asian Institute of Management for one of the school's alumni homecoming gatherings in 1988.

The company tried to source the binders from leathergoods manufacturers both here and abroad but none of the local suppliers met its quality standards. This prompted the firm to partner with a German craftsman and his wife to form an in-house unit to handle the production of leather binders in 1990.

The new division started off with the planner and eventually produced a small collection of business accessories that included card cases, wallets, pen cases and key holders. In 1991, the company's leathergoods division was spun off and the new company was called The Leather Collection.

Mrs. Sevilla admitted that The Leather Collection encountered several challenges when it was just starting. Aside from organizing the manufacturing facility, it also found promoting the brand to their target market - the corporate gifts segment - a hard task. The company also said it experienced difficulty during the financial crisis in the late 1990s when companies were cutting down on budgets for advertising and promotions.

Although the company was able to weather tough times, there are still obstacles that it finds it must overcome. On the product side, the incessant challenge is to always innovate and respond to the challenges in the marketplace.

"The profile of the gift buyer of today is very different from the gift buyer 15 years ago. To begin with, it's a new generation of buyers, the Nokia generation as it were, accustomed to continuous product innovation, beneficiaries of the China syndrome - Louis Vuitton at Divisoria prices, or LV at Divi - with access to global suppliers," Mrs. Sevilla said.

On the marketing and promotions side, she said the continuing challenge is "to capture the minds and hearts and pocketbooks of today's buyer, to position one as the brand of choice, to choose to compete with product and service quality, rather than price, as the differentiator."

Today, The Leather Collection is a brand recognized for its product and service excellence, competence and reliability. Its main strengths are anchored in three aspects: product innovation and customization, where it designs exclusive gift collections for clients aside from its house products; craftsmanship, where the firm manufactures its products to global specifications and quality standards; and service where it assists clients in selecting the appropriate gift, premium or incentive.

The Leather Collection's product and service quality is manifested not just through its handcrafted leather accessory but also through its gift packaging. It also provides other services such as product design and customization, marketing and promotions planning, which differentiates it from traders of China-made novelties.

"Our customers also prefer collaborating with us because of our competence and reliability as corporate gifts specialists. We can turn around sample requirements in 24 hours, rush orders in a little over a week," Mrs. Sevilla added.

Mrs. Sevilla has always had an entrepreneurial spirit in her ever since she was young.

"I remember setting up a 'store' with the candies my Lolo had given me as pasalubong and selling these to my siblings who were always what I needed them to be in our games - in this case my customer," she fondly remembered.

While saying that her particular competence is in planning and organizing, Mrs. Sevilla also had a streak of creativity in her. During the first few years of The Leather Collection, Mrs. Sevilla created several lines for the products such as the travel collection, business collection, desk accessories and ladies' handbags.

When it comes to creativity, the entrepreneur is proud to say that the business merits an "A" because it continues to re-invent itself as an organic enterprise in an ever-changing environment.

"Our bottom line objective is hanap buhay, not just in terms of earning the money to pay for basic necessities, but being able to fulfill the potential and to use, hone and develop skills. We are craftsmen at heart. We are constantly searching for a better way, where pwede na is not enough," she said in a previous interview with BusinessWorld.

Mrs. Sevilla, who is scheduled to graduate next month from AIM's Master in Entrepreneurship course, learned that there are many layers of creativity.

"There's the creativity required for product and service innovation. There's also the creativity required for meeting the day-to-day challenges of managing an enterprise - whether that's organizing a new venture or re- engineering an existing one; acquiring a new customer or retaining a suki," she said.

For her, creativity means "thinking out of the proverbial sandbox. It's inventing and re-inventing. It's destroying to rebuild. It's both the totally new or a new combination of elements."

Now 15 years in the business, The Leather Collection plans to further expand its market. The company recently expanded to the Middle East market for corporate gifts and giveaways and now has a showroom and sales office in Dubai.

The company is also strengthening its design capability and is currently organizing Etnico, a product innovation firm being spearheaded by her husband.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Wumart to upgrade information systems with SAP. Check it out:
(Digital Media Asia Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) DMASIA-28 September 2006-Wumart to upgrade information systems with SAP (C)2006 Digitalmediaasia.com (http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/) & DMA Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wumart Group, a private supermarket chain in China, has selected MySAP ERP and SAP for Retail to upgrade the company's information systems. With the selection of SAP, Wumart reportedly becomes the first Chinese supermarket chain to implement an international enterprise resource planning (ERP) and retail package from a global enterprise software provider.



SAP will enable Wumart to roll out an ERP and retail system that connects its headquarters with more than 500 outlets to enhance management control, optimise business operations and support corporate core business processes, including category management, internal supply chain management, commodity planning and chain store management.

The first phase of the project includes SAP for Retail at the Wumart headquarters and Tianjin branch, a logistics system for the distribution centres in Beijing and an interface to Wumart's point-of-sale (POS) system and the SAP retail outlet system. The overall implementation will take approximately one year.

(Distributed for Digitalmediaasia.com via M2 Communications Ltd (www.m2.com))

Copyright 2006 Financial Times Ltd.
MBL: Macquarie Bank Participates in a Consortium to Acquire GATX Air. Check it out:
(Aspect Huntley's ComNews Digest Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Macquarie Bank announced it was a member of a consortium that had entered into a sale and purchase agreement to acquire GATX Air, the aircraft leasing business of GATX Corporation, for an enterprise value of approximately US$1.46bn including all closing costs. The consortium includes affiliated investment funds of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Macquarie Bank. Macquarie Bank will initially contribute US$150m to the consortium for a minority stake. Completion is expected in the fourth quarter of 2006.



Copyright 2006 Aspect Financial Pty. Limited (AFPL). All rights reserved.
BEA CTO: Open-source projects out of sync with users. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The open-source community doesn't always deliver software that customers want, according to Rob Levy, executive vice president and chief technology officer of BEA Systems Inc.

"The community builds what it thinks is good, but it is not always the same as what the customer thinks is good, Levy said this week in Bangalore, India, where he visited BEA's R&D (research and development) center.

The Apache Tomcat servlet container, for example, is not strong on management, because management features weren't seen as very important by the community, although BEA customers wanted it, Levy said. So BEA had to build a Tomcat management console for its WebLogic Java server platform, he said.



BEA has adopted what it calls a "blended strategy" on open source. It has put products in open source, to take advantage of the innovation that comes from community development, and also supports open-source technologies like Spring and Hibernate on its own products, Levy said.

BEA announced earlier this year that it will put in open source a significant portion of BEA Kodo, its persistence engine, under the name Open JPA. BEA acquired Kodo after purchasing SolarMetric Inc. last November. Open JPA is a set of Java persistence APIs (application programming interfaces) that are based on the Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 (EJB 3) standard. "We pushed Kodo out in open source and we now have 2,000 people working on it, as against 50 people when we bought the company," Levy said.

But there are other products that BEA will not release as open source so that it can retain full control over their development, Levy said. "The reality of life, specially businesses, is that you have to be a good corporate citizen, you want to know where a piece of code came from, because if you dont control it, how do you know there is nothing malicious in it," he added.

BEA has bet the farm on SOA (service-oriented architecture) because it will be fundamental to the way businesses are run, Levy said.

Industry and users can easily get taken in by the hype that SOA is going to halve IT costs, Levy said. There are some cost savings in deploying SOA, but the technology's real benefit is the agility and competitive advantage it gives companies to think up and add business services quickly, he added.

Without SOA, adding a service involved a time-consuming process to integrate it with the company's existing services, Levy said. With SOA, a company can add a service without making any system changes, Levy said.

Deploying SOA will also free company resources to focus on business processes, rather than the underlying IT infrastructure. "If you look at the total effort that is being used from business needs to applications and production, today it is very skewed towards IT," Levy said.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
SAP hires external candidate as CIO. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SAP AG has brought in outside talent Uwe Herold as its chief information officer (CIO), filling a post vacant since the previous incumbent left the company earlier this year.

The business applications vendor confirmed Thursday that Herold joins SAP Oct. 1. He will also hold a position on the company's board of directors in the area of human resources, processes and production and report to Claus Heinrich, one of SAP's executive board members. SAP operates a two-tier board system with a board of directors and an executive board. Herold will be based at SAP's headquarters in Walldorf, Germany.



Most recently CIO at German automotive supplier Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH & Co., Herold has 15 years of experience in business process engineering and IT management. While at Brose, he worked on SAP implementations and so can also bring an SAP user perspective to his new employer. Before joining Brose in 1999, Herold headed up process engineering and organizational development efforts at fluid technology company Hydac Filtertechnik GmbH.

"Like any other enterprise that places value on developing and harnessing internal talent, SAP always considers internal applicants for vacant roles," an SAP spokeswoman in Germany wrote in response to an e-mail for comment on why the company chose an outsider as the CIO. "At the same time, it is also important for us to bring in fresh ideas and different expertise from time to time. In this case, Herold was the ideal candidate for this role and we are confident that with his wealth of experience he will be an asset to SAP."

Herold replaces Carol Wilson who left the company after three years in the job earlier this year. Wilson joined Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. in April as its implementation director charged with the development and delivery of the Indian outsourcing and consulting firm's IT services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Sun to shine on AJAX

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Sun to shine on AJAX. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sun Microsystems will shine more light on accommodations for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in the Java realm at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. next week.

Featured on Sun's agenda are details on Project jMaki and Project Phobos as well as an update on Sun's JSF (JavaServer Faces) component model for Web application development, said Sun's Greg Murray, AJAX architect with the company and the project lead for jMaki. Phobos, jMaki and Phobos are all open source projects.



Sun's AJAX efforts focus on making JavaScript more available to Java developers, Murray said. "The problem is, people are afraid of JavaScript," he said.

"If we want to keep Java relevant, we have to support this newer programming model [scripting]," Murray said. Web 2.0 and AJAX are very important to Sun, Murray said. The next version of Java, Java Standard Edition 6, will support JavaScript and is expected some time in 2007.

Sun's accommodations with JavaScript will make AJAX simpler, said analyst Rikki Kirzner, CEO of Centennial Global Research. "You should be able to make AJAX simpler than it is," she said. AJAX currently lacks accommodations with Java, according to Kirzner. "AJAX is a way to add richness to 3GL code, to any code, and Java doesn't readily embrace it," Kirzner said.

The jMaki project enables Java developers to use JavaScript in Java applications as either a JSP (Java Server Pages) tag library or a JSF component. "It's a way of wrapping some of the existing JavaScript frameworks out there and exposing them to Java developers," Murray said. Developers can access Dojo and other frameworks.

A Dojo widget could be included in a page, for example. "Basically, jMaki will generate all the JavaScript, everything necessary to put that in the page for you," Murray said. A beta release of jMaki is planned for release in November. "We've been working away just to polish the edges," said Murray. A general release is expected in January or February 2007.

Phobos is a way to script server-side code in JavaScript, rather than write a JSP page or a servlet, Murray said. The technology is planned for release early next year.

Sun anticipates making jMaki and Phobos add-ons to the Java Enterprise Edition 5 platform.

The future of JSF, meanwhile, involves an upgrade being called Project Dynamic Faces or JSF 2.0. This version will extend the component model for server-side components to better support AJAX, Murray said. This release is driven by feedback from users who seek AJAX functionality but want a strict programming model for the server, which JSF provides, Murray said.

Dynamic Faces has been available in an early access release since the May timeframe.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Open-source firm enters Web content management. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Alfresco Software is readying the final piece of its open-source enterprise content management (ECM) software suite with the unveiling of a preview of its Web content management product.

The startup plans to release its Web Content Management Preview by early next week with a final first release of the offering due by year-end, according to Ian Howells, Alfresco's chief marketing officer.

Since its founding last year, Alfresco has developed software to handle the management of collaborative documents, records and images as well as e-mail archiving. The company began work on thelast piece of its ECM suite, Web content management (WCM), about a year ago, but the effort accelerated in May when Alfresco hired a group of developers formerly at Interwoven, Howells said. Interwoven and Vignette are the market leaders in the WCM market and likely competitors for Alfresco in the future.



Alfresco's new WCM software uses the same repository as the company's other ECM components. The product is based on open-source components including JavaServer Faces (JSF), Spring and Hibernate. The WCM offering includes a virtualization server so users can preview what changes to their Web sites might look like online and a compliance server to audit all alterations to the site.

One of the early testers of Alfresco's WCM software is Virgin Money, Virgin Group's financial services arm, in Norwich, U.K.

The company is looking to move away from its largely static Web sites to make its online presence tailor to individual customers, according to David Scarisbrick, technical program manager at Virgin Money.

"We have had good experience with other open-source products and development frameworks and it made sense to go open source if possible for WCM," he wrote in an e-mail. "Alfresco offers theadvantages of open source, open architecture and standards, but also includes a good support model making it a robust enterprise-level solution at low cost." When coming up with a list of suitable WCM tools, Alfresco was the only one that made Virgin Money's short list, Scarisbrick added.

Virgin Money isn't using Alfresco's other software, but once it's finished the rollout of WCM, the company may consider implementing the rest of the startup's ECM suite, he wrote.

As a financial services company, compliance is very important to Virgin Money. Alfresco WCM provides the ability for Web designers and applications developers to work collaboratively in a version controlled environment, Scarisbrick wrote. Virgin Money's compliance team can also use the software to review its Web site and look at any previous versions of the site and roll back to a particular day's version if necessary.

To date, the majority of Alfresco's users are enterprise-level financial services and publishing companies and governments, Howells said. The company currently has 60 paid-support contracts with organizations. In the overall ECM market, the start-up competes against Microsoft's SharePoint and more established ECM players IBM, FileNet, and EMC. IBM is in the process ofacquiring FileNet.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Acquisitions boost YGL growth

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Acquisitions boost YGL growth. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ACCOUNTING software maker YGL Convergence Bhd expects double-digit revenue and net profit growth next year, following a string of acquisitions since listing on the Mesdaq market of Bursa Malaysia in July last year.



The Penang-based firm, whose software also helps firms to organise inventory and customer data, is still eyeing more acquisitions and joint ventures in the Asian market, said chief executive officer Yeap Kong Chean.

"That will be our second phase of growth. We have received interesting offers. But in order to acquire, we need to look at the synergies and value that we can bring to each other," he told reporters after signing an agreement to buy a Shanghai-based rival, Computer Processing Services Ltd (CPSL), in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Its first phase of expansion was on acquisitions. YGL had allocated RM4.13 million from its initial public offering funds for that.

Of this, it will use RM1.289 million to buy a 60 per cent stake in CPSL, which will result in YGL indirectly owning King's System (Shanghai) Co Ltd. The remaining stake is held by To King, who is currently heading King's System.

The acquisition proposal on King's System includes a profit guarantee of some RM661,500, cumulatively for two financial years ending 2007 and 2008.

King's System has been operating for more than 10 years and its clients include multinationals and listed companies such as Yu Chai, Kelon and Xerox (Shanghai).

The purchase is expected to be finalised by the first quarter of next year.

The firm has also used RM1.3 million to buy a 60 per cent stake in Singapore-based rival, Elitus Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, last December and another RM456,000 to purchase Hong Kong-based rival, SCS Information Technology (HK) Ltd, four months ago. With that, YGL is now one of the largest Asia-based Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) solutions providers in Asia. It is also the largest player in Baan/LN, a popular ERP product used particularly in manufacturing companies, in Asia.

YGL employs over 100 technology professionals around the region, with more than 100 Tier 1 customer base. It now has regional offices covering Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and China.

For the first half of the year ended June 30 2006, its net profit rose more than four fold to RM1.48 million from RM320,000 a year ago.

Revenue was 31 per cent higher at RM3.5 million compared with RM2.67 million before.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
BHARTI GETS ENTERPRISING, TARGETS BANKS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FIRMS (has networked more than 1,000 branches of the Bank of India in a contract worth Rs64 crore). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Bharti Airtel is strengthening and expanding its enterprise services business division, which was made a separate business unit in Mar 2006.

The enterprise services division will focus on 7 key verticals as it begins to cash in on the telecommunication needs of large enterprises like banks, business processes outsourcing (BPO) units and financial services.

Real estate, insurance, retail, information technology (IT) and information technology enabled service (ITES) are the other verticals of the unit. Airtel has networked more than 1,000 branches of the Bank of India in a contract worth Rs64 crore.



It now proposes to connect Indian branches of banks as well as international branches.

It will use its undersea cable infrastructure for international connectivity.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
DLF, HILTON INK JOINT VENTURE ON HOTEL CHAINS (DLF will hold 74% of the stake in the enterprise and Hilton will hold 26%). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The DLF group of Gurgaon and Hilton has entered into a deal to establish a chain of hotels in India at a cost of Rs10,000-12,000 crore.

DLF will hold 74 percent stake in the joint venture and Hilton will hold 26 percent. Hilton will have the option of increasing its stake to 49 percent later. This joint venture will help DLF utilise its vast land bank better.

For Hilton, it will be a gain from the ready availability of prime land across India.

DLF will carry out the construction work and develop the hotel while Hilton will manage the daily operations.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Enterprise award goes to woman for first time. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Businesswoman Ann Heraty, who set up recruitment group CPL Resources in 1989, has won the top prize in the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Ms Heraty was named overall Entrepreneur of the Year last night at a ceremony in Dublin after she won the International Entrepreneur of the Year category of the competition.



From Ballinalee, Co Longford, Ms Heraty is the ninth winner of the competition, held in association with The Irish Times .

The first woman to win the competition on her own, she will represent Ireland at the World Entrepreneur of the Year competition in Monte Carlo next June.

Ms Heraty said she was absolutely humbled to receive the award. "I can't believe it to be honest," she said. "It's genuinely unexpected I have to say because the competition was based on such a broad range of business."

CPL provides specialist recruitment and workforce management services. Its focus is on sectors such as IT and pharmaceuticals.

With 12 offices in Ireland, Britain and Poland, the company is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London.

It has an internal workforce of 250 and offers short- and long-term work to more than 15,000 people each year.

Ms Heraty paid tribute to her team and her husband, Paul Carroll, whom she described as "her best hire ever".

She said she was committed to growing the company even further. "We have a long way to go yet," she said.

One of the two other category awards went to Richard Barrett, co-founder of property group Treasury Holdings, who was named Industrial Entrepreneur of the Year.

Established by Mr Barrett and his business partner John Ronan in 1989, Treasury has current assets of 2.2 billion and an international retail investment portfolio worth 2.4 billion.

Mr Barrett paid tribute to the Government for its help in getting the company's Shanghai EcoCity project under way, particularly Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment MIcheal Martin, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. "I know he's taking a battering in the news but he really put his neck out for us," Mr Barrett said.

He also praised Irish diplomats, whom he described as Ireland's "secret weapon" in internaitonal business.

The other category prize went to Alan Scroope, co-founder of Tralee-based inventory asset management group FreeFlow, who took the Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year prize. FreeFlow's technology enables customers to promote their inventory to clients, auction it to liquidators and reprocess it to recyclers.

Mr Scroope set up the company in a bedroom in his mother-in-law's house. Now, three of his 15 staff are based in California.

The entrepreneurs behind 24 companies that were finalists in the competition attended the presentation of the awards by Mr Martin and businessman Denis O'Brien, who was chairman of the judging panel.

Mr O'Brien said that competition for the prize was "extremely hot" and that judges agonised as to who should be the overall winner.

"In the end Ann was selected for her incredible feel in building an extremely successful business from modest beginnings. I hope that this year's winner will encourage more and more women to engage in enterprise," he said.

Former GAA president Sean Kelly was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year, a special award granted in recognition of his contribution to the development of GAA sports.

"In a long line of outstanding presidents of the GAA, Sean Kelly is one of the finest examples of social entrepreneurships in Ireland," Mr O'Brien said.

Enda Kelly, the Ernst & Young partner in charge of the competition, said the programme provided valuable role models whose experience can teach both Ireland's existing and future business people.

"Ann Heraty is testament to this and her business success can be partly attributed to her ability to grow entrepreneurialism from within her organisation.

"She has implemented an innovative and successful business model."

Ulster Bank corporate markets chief executive Robert Gallagher congratulated Ms Heraty and the other finalists.

"All of those involved in this year's programme have shown tremendous commitment and vision and we wish them every success in the future," he said.

The 24 finalists were chosen from more than 150 entries.

The judging panel, which includes former recipients of the overall prize, looks at criteria including growth in turnover and employment, and factors such as the founder's vision for the business.

The panel assesses the degree of innovation and creativity in production and marketing. It also looks at the company's performance in local and international markets.

In his speech, Mr Martin said indigenous companies and the people that run them play a central role in the economy. He paid tribute to the winners and the finalists.

"During 2005, Ireland had the highest rate of new business start-ups in the European Union and was ranked fifth in entrepeneurial activity across OECD countries," he said.

"These companies make invaluable contributions to many local economies by providing high quality employment, sourcing products and services in the local economy, and by delivering new and innovative products to customers both at home and abroad.

"Irish companies make an outstanding contribution to the Irish economy spending over 16 billion annually on payroll, Irish-sourced goods and services.

"Their ambition, creativity and the contribution they make to the lives of Irish people throughout the country should not be underestimated," said the Minister.

Mr Martin said the vibrancy of the small business sector was critical to Ireland's future economic success. It was crucial to ensure that everything possible was done to support the growth and development of small businesses, he said.

"Ninety-seven per cent of all businesses in Ireland are classified as small, although they employ almost 800,000 people... Small businesses are important at a national level, for a number of reasons," he said. "They provide regionally distributed employment around the country. They also deliver a range of local services to the economic, social and cultural life of the entire population. They form an essential part of the supply chain for larger firms and, in particular, are part of the support infrastructure needed to attract and retain foreign investment."

He said entrepreneurship was of critical importance in increasing Irish competitiveness and went on to say that embracing international trade and harnessing opportunities in world markets was key to continued expansion of the economy.

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Opening the books on legal services. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With an open-plan office, more opportunities for young lawyers and a transparent stance on fee incomes, Mason Hayes + Curran is taking an alternative approach, writes Una McCaffrey.

It is hard to round a corner in Dublin's south docklands these days without tripping over a lawyer. So fashionable has the area become that, over the next few years, almost all of the city's top-tier commercial firms will relocate to fancy new offices in its previously-deserted core.



Some will even dare to move beyond the riverbank, choosing to position themselves just outside the most popular drag and see what advantages this might bring.

One firm taking this route, both in its choice of office location and in its general attitude to the market, is Mason Hayes + Curran (MHC).

The company, which has been based in its new Barrow Street offices since Easter, has long been biting at the heels of the so-called "big five" law firms - Arthur Cox, A&L Goodbody, McCann FitzGerald, William Fry and Matheson Ormbsy Prentice - but also seems content to stay just outside their ranks.

Declan Moylan, MHC's managing partner, claims to be "indifferent" to moving up in the size rankings, being happy to remain "just tucked outside". Many clients prefer this, he says, adding that it can be better for staff too.

MHC has, according to Moylan, a "slightly alternative approach" that is reflected in everything from open-plan offices (his own desk is the same as everybody else's) to the plus sign the firm uses instead of an ampersand in its name.

For the lawyers, the difference comes in more direct ways, such as being "allowed" to enter the market themselves to see clients at junior levels and to take a more entrepreneurial approach generally.

He also says that MHC has a tradition of promoting associates to partner level at a younger age than other firms, also elevating more women.

The shape of the company is no accident. The partners sat down four or five years ago to decide exactly where it should be going.

The options were simple enough - either it could remain as a boutique law firm that was expert in a fairly small number of areas, or it could transform itself into a full-service business.

The latter option was chosen, although the firm only did so after examining economic trends and trying to work out which areas would grow strongly.

The result was an increased focus on construction (especially public projects), sophisticated financial services and life sciences, including pharmaceuticals.

The result of all of this development has been to create what he likes to call a "virtual" full-service firm that can grow nimbly.

So does that mean MHC will not be following rival firms down the route of consolidation?

"I don't think we have the need to do that," he says, suggesting that the two Dublin firms that have entered into such arrangements over the past year "must have a different market perception".

The implication is that what these firms need for growth, MHC can achieve on its own.

"It would be counter-productive," Moylan adds. He says it just would not make sense for the firm to pin its colours to one international firm when it has connections with so many already.

So will MHC ever break into the ranks of the bigger boys?

"It might happen but if it happens it won't be because we've gone on some sort of run for volume or run for size," says Moylan.

The issue of women reaching partnership level has been a thorny one in high-level legal circles because of an unwritten (and oft-denied) "rule" that pregnancies could only come after the partnership level had been reached. The corollary was that if babies came before partnership, then partnership didn't come at all.

Moylan categorically rejects this in the case of MHC, saying it is "just not the case". He also says the firm's female partners can expect to take the full 22 weeks of paid maternity leave that are available, with unpaid leave a further option after this.

Again, it has been typical in the legal world for maternity leave to be limited, with some larger firms still allowing only 12 weeks to their partners.

MHC is, according to Moylan, a more "modern" enterprise than some of its competitors. However, it seems to be working out.

Snazzy new offices aside, the firm is proving itself on the fee income side too.

Moylan reckons that revenues will rise from about 23 million last year to 27 million this year. He says corporate business such as merger and acquisition deals and stock exchange listings have delivered most growth in 2006, helped by "big-ticket" business such as advice to the Employee Share Ownership Trust at Eircom.

Intriguingly, he says the move to the new office has resulted in more productivity, with billable hours up by no less than 20 per cent. He believes the open-plan layout is at the root of this, with other delights such as the funky staff cafe, staff gym or gleaming atrium sculpture also presumably doing their bit for morale.

The reasons for the uplift are, however, perhaps less interesting in this tight Dublin market than Moylan's readiness to talk about it at all.

Irish lawyers are notoriously shy when it comes to discussing their finances and Moylan's decision to break this mould last year created something of a flurry in pin-striped suit circles.

Moylan argues, rightly, that many solicitors around town are keen on the idea of limited liability partnerships, the model now expected in markets such as the US.

These structures allow for the continuation of the traditional partnership, while offering the partners some protection in the case of the firm running into financial problems. The reasoning is that financial details, including profits per partner, become public, a step that seems to be anathema to the majority of the main players.

"Why would I want to annoy them?" asks Moylan about his rival managing partners. He says he just does not think "lawyers should be ashamed of making a good living".

He points out that unlike most other European capitals, Dublin does not house branches of major international business law firms such as Allen & Overy or Clifford Chance. This offers evidence, in his eyes, of the strength of the domestic service.

"I don't apologise for that," he says, acknowledging that with this kind of prosperity comes lots of hard work, with many of MHC's lawyers "living a deal" for as long as it lasts.

The firm has almost 70 lawyers at the moment, 26 are partners. About half of these partners hold equity.

This suggests a revenue per lawyer (the standard industry measure) of 385,000 for this year, or a revenue per equity partner of slightly more than 1 million.

Moylan will not go so far as to talk about profits, but an analysis performed by respected London-based publication The Lawyer last year suggested an Irish profit margin of about 35 per cent.

A hop and a skip along these lines points towards after-tax profits of 9.5 million at MHC this year, although this is clearly not a scientific calculation.

It is hard to blame Moylan for keeping MHC's profits to himself, given none of the other firms have yet gone as far as him on the fee income side. He hints that he would be prepared to go further if anybody decided to play this kind of legal strip poker but, for the moment, professes himself content to be "perched outside by ourselves".

Factfile

Name: Declan Moylan

Age: 56

Job: Managing partner of Mason Hayes + Curran

Hobbies/interests: visual arts

Why he is in the news: Mason Hayes + Curran is a rapidly growing busines law firm which recently moved to open plan accomodation in Dublin's south Docklands and is reporting vibrant growth in turnover and lawyer number

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Interim Results

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Interim Results. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CENTROM GROUP plc Interim results for six months ended 30 June 2006 Chairman and COO Statement Centrom Group plc (AIM:CEN), a supplier of a broad range of innovative IT solutions, with an emphasis on sales to the healthcare and financial services sectors, reports an EBITDA loss for the first six months ended 30 June 2006 of GBP390,000 on revenues of GBP1.8m. In response to rapidly changing market conditions and declining profit margins in Centrom's traditional hardware sales market, identified in the first quarter of 2006, the board and management embarked on a restructuring aiReutersat eliminating loss making and low margin activity and reducing costs. With restructuring complete Centrom will focus on growing high margin business and improving cash flow management with the objective of establishing sustainable profitability. The first quarter to 31 March 2006 was particularly disappointing, with revenues of GBP681,000 and an EBITDA loss of GBP265,000. Restructuring began towards the end of the quarter. On 28 April 2006 Paul Ryder, the CEO and Michael McNamara, the Company Secretary resigned from the Board. Paul Ryder's duties were assuReutersby Mike Boseley, the Chief Operating Officer, and Secretarial Solutions Limited has since assuReutersthe role of Company Secretary. Headcount was reduced from 34 to 27. To consolidate its position the company raised GBP300,000 by way of placing 30m shares at a price of 1p per share. The board is grateful to those investors who provided financial support at an important moment for Centrom. The turnaround strategy of eliminating low margin stand alone hardware sales and reducing costs was in place by mid April. In the second quarter the benefits of restructuring, which gave rise to an exceptional charge of GBP110,000, became immediately apparent. Revenues to 30 June 2006 increased to GBP1,148,000 compared with GBP681,000 in quarter one. EBITDA losses were reduced to GBP15,000 before restructuring costs compared with GBP265,000 in the first quarter. Centrom now has three core activities: Consultancy; Managed Services (Data Centres) and Technical Services (Hardware, Software, installation and maintenance), but only when supplied as part of a wider consultancy solution. In the second quarter the Consultancy sales were GBP242,000, a 25% increase on the first quarter showing a profit margin of 30% and representing 24% of turnover. Managed Services second quarter sales were GBP377,000 an increase of 19% on the first quarter, showing a profit margin of 25% and representing 38% of turnover. Technical Services sales were GBP604,534 an increase of 35% on the first quarter, showing a profit margin of 25% and representing 38% of turnover. In the second quarter significant new projects have been won including Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, in partnership with Bull; BG Group; Alea (Insurance); Wagamama and Arch Insurance in partnership with TAH - The Accounting House. In total these contracts have a value of approximately GBP400,000. Sales prospects for the second half are strong and the Board is confident that the improving trend in sales and the higher margins established in the second quarter will be, at least, maintained. Centrom is involved in providing key IT solutions to a number of significant organisations particularly, in the healthcare and financial sectors. Since April 2006 we have established a platform for the growth of Centrom. Gerald Malone Mike Boseley Chairman COO 29 September 2006 Centrom Group plc Group Profit and Loss Account for the six months ended 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | Notes | | | Period ended | | | | 6 months ended | | 31 December | | | | 30 June 2006 | | 2005 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | GBP | | GBP | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Group turnover | | 1,829,889 | | 1,080,614 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Cost of sales | | 1,350,928 | | 1,468,227 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Gross profit/(loss) | | 478,961 | | (387,613) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Administrative | 2 | 990,236 | | 860,115 | | expenses | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Exceptional item | 3 | 110,122 | | - | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Other operating | | 750 | | 2,463 | | income | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Operating loss | | (620,647) | | (1,245,265) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Interest receivable | | 1,025 | | 2,899 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Interest payable and | | (1,335) | | (2,483) | | similar charges | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities before | | | | | | taxation | | (620,957) | | (1,244,849) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Tax on loss on | | - | | (284,150) | | ordinary activities | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities after | | | | | | taxation | | (620,957) | | (960,699) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Minority interest | | - | | 2,381 | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | | Loss on ordinary | | | | | | activities after | | | | | | taxation | | GBP(620,957) | | GBP(958,318) | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Basic loss per share | 4 | 0.33p | | 0.59p | | (pence) | | | | | |-----------------------+-------+----------------+---+------------- -| | Diluted loss per | 4 | 0.33p | | 0.59p | | share (pence) | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Consolidated Balance Sheet at 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | | | | | 31 | | | | | | | December | | | 30 June 2006 | | 30 June 2005 | | 2005 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | (Unaudited) | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | GBP | | GBP | | GBP | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Fixed assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Intangible | 7,547,460 | | 6,549,911 | | 7,731,727 | | assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Tangible | 168,780 | | 223,158 | | 209,437 | | assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | 7,716,240 | | 6,773,069 | | 7,941,164 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Current assets | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Stocks & WIP | 10,203 | | - | | 16,600 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Debtors | 1,073,280 | | 1,159,836 | | 901,482 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Cash at bank | - | | 760,035 | | 492,989 | | and in hand | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | 1,083,483 | | 1,919,871 | | 1,411,071 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Creditors: | | | | | | | amounts | | | | | | | falling due | | | | | | | within one | | | | | | | year | 1,687,432 | | 1,308,954 | | 1,918,987 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Net current | (603,949) | | 610,917 | | (507,916) | | liabilities | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Creditors: | | | | | | | amounts | | | | | | | falling due | | | | | | | after one year | - | | 200,038 | | - | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | | Net assets | GBP7,112,291 | | GBP7,183,948 | | GBP7,433,248 | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Capital and | | | | | | | reserves | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Called-up | 2,087,838 | | 1,524,130 | | 1,787,838 | | equity share | | | | | | | capital | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Share premium | 6,462,411 | | 5,659,818 | | 6,462,411 | | account | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Profit and | (1,579,275) | | - | | (958,318) | | loss account | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Equity | 6,970,974 | | 7,183,948 | | 7,291,931 | | shareholders' | | | | | | | funds | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | Minority | 141,317 | | | | 141,317 | | interests | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | |----------------+--------------+---+--------------+---+----------- -| | | | | | | | | Capital | | | | | | | employed | GBP7,112,291 | | GBP7,183,948 | | GBP7,433,248 | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Group Cash Flow Statement the six months ended 30 June 2006 +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ | | Notes | 6 months | | Period | | | | ended 30 June | | ended 31 | | | | 2006 | | December | | | | | | 2005 | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | (Unaudited) | | (Audited) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | GBP | | GBP | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Net cash outflow from | 7 | (888,245) | | (1,574) | | operating activities | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Returns on investments | | (310) | | 416 | | and servicing of finance | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Taxation | | - | | (18,110) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Capital expenditure and | | (5,054) | | (222,405) | | financial investment | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Acquisitions and | | - | | 660,169 | | disposals | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Cash outflow before | | (893,609) | | 418,496 | | financing | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | Financing | | 300,000 | | (2,892) | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | | (Decrease)/increase in | | | | | | cash | | (593,609) | | 415,604 | |---------------------------+-------+---------------+---+---------- -| | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------ -+ Centrom Group plc Notes to the financial information 1. Basis of preparation The financial information set out in this report does not constitute full accounts for the purposes of Section 240 of the Companies Act 1985. The interim accounts for the six months ended 30 June 2006 and the figures for 30 June 2005 are unaudited. The figures for the period ended 31 December 2005 have been extracted from the audited accounts for that period. The accounts for the period ended 31 December 2005 contained an unqualified auditors' report and have been filed with the Registrar of Companies. The interim accounts have been prepared on the basis of the accounting policies set out in the report and accounts for the period ended 31 December 2005. The taxation charge has been calculated using the Directors' best estimate. In view of the losses incurred no provision has been made for taxation or for tax recoverable during the period. Centrom Group plc was incorporated on 14 March 2005 and on 9 June 2005 acquired the whole of the issued share capital of Centrom Limited in a share for share transaction. Prior to the share for share transaction the group had not traded. The Directors consider that trading results in the period from 9 June 2005 to 30 June 2005 are not significant. The Company has not extracted these details nor produced a Consolidated Profit and Loss Account or Cash Flow Statement for this period. The interim accounts were approved by the Directors on 29 September 2006. 2. Administrative expenses Administrative expenses include an amount of GBP184,267 (2005 - GBP168,091) in respect of goodwill written off. 3. Exceptional item The exceptional item relates to restructuring costs arising on the closure of the Enterprise division supplying stand alone hardware and software products. Hardware and software products are only supplied as part of an overall solution where services are also provided. 4. Earnings per share Earnings per share have been calculated on the net basis on the loss on ordinary activities before taxation of GBP620,957 (2005 - GBP958,318) using the average number of 1p ordinary shares in issue of 188,397,060 (2005 - 160,948,099). The diluted earnings per share is based on a loss for the six months of GBP620,957 (2005 - GBP958,318) using the average number of 1p ordinary shares of 188,397,060 (2005 - 161,836,988) after adjusting for diluting options. 5. Dividends No interim dividend is proposed. 6. Loss per share The calculation of loss per share is based on the loss for the period and on the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue set out below. At 30 June 2006 there were 208,783,400 ordinary shares in issue. 6 months ended 30 Period ended 31 June 2006 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) Loss for the period GBP(620,957) GBP(958,318) Weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 160,948,099 Diluted loss per share is based on the loss for the period and on the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue set out below. 6 months ended 30 June Period ended 31 2006 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) Loss for the period GBP(620,957) GBP(958,318) Weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 160,948,099 Dilutive effect of share options - 888,889 Fully diluted weighted average number of shares in issue 188,397,060 161,836,988 7. Reconciliation of operating loss to net cash inflow 6 months ended Period ended 30 June 2006 31 December 2005 (Unaudited) (Audited) GBP GBP Operating loss (620,647) (1,245,265) Amortisation 184,267 168,091 Depreciation 45,711 78,540 Loss on disposal of fixed assets - 709 Decrease/(increase) in stocks 6,397 (16,600) (Increase)/decrease in debtors (171,798) 673,037 (Decrease)/increase in creditors (332,175) 339,914 Net cash outflow from operating (888,245) (1,574) activities 8. Issue of equity On 4 May 2006 the Company issued 30,000,000 ordinary shares for cash at a price of 1p per ordinary share. Copies of this interim report will be sent to shareholders and may be obtained from the Company's registered office, Centrom House, 16 Church Road, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 3RH. ---END OF MESSAGE---



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
NTT Announces Successful Demonstration of World's Largest Capabcity 14 Tbps Transmission Over Single Optical Fiber. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Tokyo, Japan, Sep 29, 2006 (JCN Newswire via COMTEX) --Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation has successfully demonstrated the ultra-large capacity optical transmission of 14 Tera bits per second (Tera is one trillion) over a single 160 km long optical fiber. The value of 14 Tbps (111 Gbps x 140 ch) greatly exceeds the current record of about 10 Tbps and so claims the record of the world's largest transmission capacity.



This result was reported as a post deadline paper in the European conference on optical communication (ECOC) that was held in Cannes, France from September 24 to 28.

The present core optical network is an optical transport network with about 1 Tbps capacity. Based on the wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) of signals with the channel capacity of 10 Gbps, it uses optical amplifiers with the bandwidth of about 4THz. The data traffic has been doubling every year due to the rapid spread of broadband access. We must lower the cost and raise the capacity of the core network while maintaining its reliability as the dominant communication infrastructure.

10 Tbps transmission over a single optical fiber has been achieved in the laboratory. However, it was necessary to use linear amplifiers that covered two or three amplification bands because of the limited range of existing amplifiers, and this multi-band configuration is not cost-effective. To increase the transmission capacity, we had to achieve two goals simultaneously: WDM transmission with high spectral efficiency and optical amplifiers with greatly enlarged bandwidth.

Outline of Experiment

Our experiment used the carrier suppressed return-to-zero differential quadrature phase shift keying (CSRZ-DQPSK)*1 format and ultra-wide-bandwidth amplifiers. 70 wavelengths with 100-GHz spacing were modulated at 111 Gbps using the CSRZ-DQPSK format and then multiplexed and amplified in the bandwidth of 7 THz. In addition, each 111 Gbps signal was polarization-division-multiplexed so the number of channels was doubled to 140. This yielded the total capacity of 14 Tbps. 160-km transmission was successfully achieved by amplifying these signals in newly developed optical amplifiers.

NTT demonstrated in this experiment, for the first time, that it is possible to transmit 100 Gbps signal with forward error correction*2 bytes and management overhead bytes of the OTN*3 frame over long distances allowing the construction of large capacity optical networks that offer 10 Tbps or more.

Core Technologies

(1) CSRZ-DQPSK modulation format and high-speed optoelectronic device technologies

These technologies make it possible to generate dense WDM signals with bit rates of 100 Gbps and beyond per channel and transmit them over long distances. DQPSK is a phase modulation format with four phase states. Its benefits include its high spectral efficiency and excellent receiver sensitivity; both superior to those offered by the conventional binary intensity modulation (ON-OFF-keying) format. The combination of this format with pulse modulation (CSRZ), developed by NTT, enhances the sensitivity, and enables dense WDM long-distance transmission. To realize a CSRZ-DQPSK signals at 100 Gbps or above, we had to overcome the problems of the complicated configuration of the transmitter block and the difficulty of raising the modulation speed. The Mach-Zehnder interference type, lithium niobate (LN) modulator has been used as a binary intensity or phase modulator in high-speed transmitters, but there is a trade-off between driving voltage and bandwidth and it was considered to be virtually impossible to raise the operation speed to at least 100 Gbps.

To overcome these problems, NTT newly developed a hybrid integration technology that yields silica-based planar lightwave circuits and LN lightwave circuits*4. Both devices simplify the configuration and support the fast modulation speed of 111 Gbps.

While the conventional binary intensity modulation format uses a photodiode in the receiver, the DQPSK receiver needs a pair of balanced photodetectors, usually realized by integrating two high-speed photodiodes, making it difficult to achieve high-speed operation, high sensitivity, and uniform conversion efficiency, simultaneously. NTT improved the structure of the photodetector with the result that the new balanced receiver offers high-speed operation at over 50 GHz as well as high sensitivity.

InP ICs, which can be operated at over 50 GHz were used in multiplex and demultiplex circuits and the waveform shaping part to generate high-quality 111 Gbps DQPSK signals.

(2) Ultra-wide-band inline optical amplification technology

It is necessary to expand the bandwidths of the optical amplifiers in order to amplify the 10 Tbps or more signal in one optical fiber. While most fibers have bandwidths in excess of 10 THz, conventional amplifiers have bandwidths of approximately 4 THz. This means that it was necessary to divide the channels into two bands (C and L band) or three bands (S, C, and L band) *5, amplify each band separately, and then remultiplex the bands.

NTT succeeded in extending the bandwidth of an L-band amplifier so that it was 1.75 (7 THz) larger than that of convention amplifiers. By improving the amplification medium and configuration of the amplifier, NTT was able to achieve a low noise characteristic.

Future Schedule

NTT aims to construct a 10 Tbps-class large capacity core optical network that excels in terms of its economy and quality; it will promote the realization of a long-distance transmission system that supports 100 Gbps high-speed channels.

Terminology

*1: CSRZ-DQPSK

Abbreviation of Carrier Suppressed Return to Zero Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying. Modulation format in which CSRZ pulse modulation is added to differential quadrature phase modulation; it is appropriate for high-density WDM long-distance transmission.

*2: Forward error correction code

Code to detect an error caused during transmission and to correct it in the receiver by adding redundant arithmetic data to the transmitted signal. The international standard ITU-T G.709 recommendation adopts the Reed-Solomon (255,239) code as an error correction code for high-quality transmission.

*3: OTN

Abbreviation of Optical Transport Network. The international standard for optical network using WDM system (ITU-T G.709 recommendation).

*4: Silica PLC

Planer lightwave circuit formed on fused silica that includes an optical waveguide. This technology can integrate complex passive optical devices into small areas and is used to realize multiplex and demuliplex devices for WDM systems, Mach-Zehnder type optical switches and so on.

*5: C band, L band and S band

Wavelength band classification for optical communication standardized in ITU-T. C (Common) band is from 1530 to 1565 nm, L (Long) band is from 1565 to 1625 nm, and S (Short) band is from 1460 to 1530 nm. The current practicable bandwidth in the L-band is 35 nm (about 4THz) centered on about 1590 nm.

About NTT

NTT is a holding company of the Global Information Sharing Enterprise Group and NTT group, which consists more than 430 companies.

One of the important missions of NTT group is to contribute the achievement of a Ubiquitous Broadband society. NTT group concentrates on integrating the group on expanding Broadband Service on Photonic Access, Third Generation Cellular Phone, Wireless LAN, are provided for Access means, promoting the structure of distributing the contents of Movies and music, and enhance the providing contents.

In November 2002, the Vision for a new optical generation is announced.

Contact:

NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group
Planning Department, Attn: Tamechika
Tel: 046-240-5152
http://www.ntt.co.jp/sclab/contact_e/

Copyright (C) 2006 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Japan Corporate News Network K.K.

**********************************************************************

As of Monday, 09-25-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated a DOWNTREND on
09-22-2006 for NTT @ $23.96.

For more information on Comtex SmarTrend Alert, contact your market data
provider or go to CSTADirect.com

SmarTrend is a registered trademark of Comtex News Network, Inc.
Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.
Paradial Receives a 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. Check it out:
RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy Honored For Deliverin Exceptional VoIP/IP Telephony Solutions

Oslo, Norway 28. October 2006 Paradial announced today that Technology Marketing Corporations (TMC) INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine (www.itmag.com) has named RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy as a recipient of a 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been a VoIP Authority since 1998.



The RealTunnel Enterprise Proxy is a complete solution for companies that want to deploy a corporate SIP Firewall/NAT solution, handling SIP phones and legacy voice and video systems. There are no other solutions in the market that provides connectivity and security on all deployed corporate network infrastructures without any reconfiguration required, says Christian Testman, Chief Operating Officer at Paradial. Our partnership with HP for both hardware and hosting enable Paradial to provide the RealTunnel SIP Enterprise Server solution globally towards medium to large companies.

The editorial staff of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine is proud to announce the winners of the second annual INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Awards. These companies are as varied as the products that fit under the IP telephony umbrella, but they have all achieved delivering winning solutions for their customers needs, indicated Rich Tehrani, Editor-in-Chief of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

The winners of the second annual INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award are leaders in VoIP. Taking risks to advance VoIP technology and provide real solutions has earned Paradial recognition from the editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY. The Tunnel Enterprise Proxy has excelled in the VoIP/IP Telephony industry, and most importantly, its customers are willing to offer their testaments of support, said Greg Galitzine, Editorial Director of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

Since the first issue in February of 1998, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been providing unbiased views of the complicated converged communications space. INTERNET TELEPHONY offers rich content from solutions-focused editorial content to reviews on products and services from TMC Labs and Minacom. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has a circulation of 55,000.

The 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award winners will be published in the October 2006 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine, www.itmag.com, or can be found directly online at http://www.tmcnet.com/awards/it-excellence-award-winners-2006.htm.

For more information, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

Recent IPO Filings

| | Comments (0)
Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/28 DataPath Inc. (Duluth, GA) $346.1
Is a leading provider of satellite communications networks.
09/28 AeroVironment Inc. (Monrovia, CA) $115.0
Designs, develops, produces and supports a technologically-
advanced portfolio of small unmanned aircraft systems.
09/28 Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Yokneam, ) $86.2
Is a leading supplier of semiconductor-based, high-
performance interconnect products.
09/27 Switch & Data Inc. (Tampa, FL) $150.0
Is a leading provider of network neutral interconnection and
colocation services.
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
CRM Case Study On Orbitz: How to Insult, Irritate, Patronize, Stress And Lose Customers; Open Solutions. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elton John's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy:

Open Solutions Inc. has announced that Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank, with $473 million in assets, has selected its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Banking Solution, and other Open Solutions' complementary applications.



The second largest bankers' bank in the United States in terms of assets under management, PCBB provides correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country.

Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and internationally. In September 2005, Open Solutions announced an agreement with PCBB to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB's cash letter settlement service.

Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB, said his company's primary focus was "finding an open architecture application that would allow the CBC to interface in a dynamic environment." They were also looking for a core platform "that could change as we grow, not only in assets but also in customers, products and services. We evaluated numerous vendors and focused on identifying the best solution to interface our in-house applications with the core database."

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, PCBB will implement Open Solutions' Financial Accounting Suite -- general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets -- and cView MyVision and Report Wizard.

Evans said the cView report writer would be used to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others.


The ongoing Orbitz live CRM case study has been completed, and I'm sorry to report that through some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced, they've destroyed whatever possibilities for customer loyalty may have existed with us.

Basically, my family of five is flying from Istanbul to Washington, D.C. round-trip for Thanksgiving. We went online to look for tickets, and we'd had good experiences, both in price and customer service, with both Expedia and Travelocity, so we figured Orbitz was kind of like those guys.

We booked tickets, and went on Orbitz's site to pick out the seats, a feature they offer which we like. It's booked through Alitalia but a few legs are operated by Delta, we have Istanbul-Milan, Milan-Boston, Boston-Washington going, and Washington-Atlanta, Atlanta-Milan, Milan-Istanbul coming. We filled in seat requests for all six flights, Orbitz charged our card for just north of $3,100, we figured the matter closed.

Then we noticed that the seats for the Washington-Atlanta and Atlanta-Milan legs were "pending," not confirmed. We sent an e-mail to the Orbitz customer service address promising "We try to answer all queries in three hours," or something like that, saying hey, what's going on here, we've paid and these seats are unconfirmed? Visions of being stranded at the D.C. airport danced through our heads.

My wife wrote to them and I did too.

Let's review: In CRM, the first priority is to make a good first impression on a customer. Orbitz failed there. Not the end of the world -- as I wrote on the first installment, the problem isn't the problem. How you handle the problem is much more important.

Customer loyalty is frequently won for good in the resolution of a problem. It's like a relationship that hasn't had any fights: You don't know what'll happen when a real problem comes up. When you have a fight and get over it you have a stronger relationship, right? Same with customers.

Look, nobody's going to provide perfect service. Not Orbitz, not Southwest, Nordstrom's, Amazon.com, Ritz-Carlton, Rolls-Royce, nobody. We customers don't expect perfect customer service. We expect problems to be handled the right way, and we'll give an amazing amount of loyalty to a company who does so.

So Orbitz's response to our problem was no response. Not even an autoresponder saying "We've received your e-mail." We sent another e-mail saying look, we're getting concerned that we've paid you and we can't get seats confirmed on these two flights. Orbitz couldn't be bothered to answer that one either. Not a concern, evidently, they had their $3,100, what did they care about our personal problems?

So yesterday I sent them a fourth e-mail telling them I'd contacted our credit card bank and was requesting them to cancel the payment and that we'd rebook with someone else.

And I did, that wasn't an empty threat. I sent an e-mail to my bank instructing them to do that. And -- this is the honest 100% truth -- three or four minutes later I got a phone text message from my wife saying "Seats confirmed on all flights."

I called her back and it turns out this thing about Orbitz not giving us confirmed seats was stressing her out to the point where she took time off work to go to the Delta office here in Istanbul and personally get the confirmations. Oh, and Orbitz finally decided we were worth their precious time. Got an e-mail:

"Dear Orbitz Customer, Thank you for contacting Orbitz. In reviewing our contact history, I show that this is your first correspondence via e-mail and phone under the e-mail address '[email protected]'. It is possible that you may have corresponded using another e-mail address."

Well, bull, seeing as how I had sent that e-mail using the exact same system we'd used to send the first three. CRM Rule #1: Lying to your customers isn't a good move.

"In reviewing our reservation system, I show that the online seat assignment for the flight segment 'Istanbul to Milan' on Alitalia 707 and flight segment 'Milan to Istanbul' on Alitalia 706 has been restricted by the airlines."

Gee, thanks for telling us that when we tried to use your system for getting seat assignments on the site. And for not telling us that the first three times we asked.

"Please note that most airlines hold some seats for airport check-in only. However, you can be assured that you will always get your seat assignment at the gate or check-in counter on the day of departure.

Sorry, but seeing that Orbitz is perfectly willing to lie to me I don't take much faith in their reassurances that if I just trust them I'll get my seat assignments.

I wrote back saying they were damn lucky my wife wasted a day doing their legwork for them, and that the seat assignment confirmations were easily enough obtained from Delta since she had just gotten them, and their aside that our seats were probably just being held for airport check-in only was sheer misdirection. See CRM Rule #1 above.

Then we got another e-mail from them saying they had, for reasons known only to God, reassigned the seats we'd chosen -- which were confirmed by the airline and weren't ever disputed -- on the Boston-Washington leg. We hadn't asked them to do that, and didn't want them to. But I guess they have to punish mouthy customers somehow.

They they wrote "also, Alitalia Airlines does not have online seat selection capabilities. This means that only the airline is able to assign these seats. We are also unable to view the seat map of the flight type the airline will be assigning you these seats and you will see your seat assignments at the airport on the date of departure."

Well, look, stupid, Alitalia isn't operating the flights in question, that's why my wife went to the DELTA office, wasting time doing the work we had paid you to do, where she picked up the confirmations you claimed didn't exist.

So there's your CRM case study: How to Insult, Irritate, Patronize, Stress And Lose Customers, by Orbitz. Honestly. It makes me quiver that I ever entrusted my travel to them in the first place.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
CRM Vendor Open Solutions Picked By PCBB. Check it out:

CRM vendor Open Solutions Inc. has announced that Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank, with $473 million in assets, has selected its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Banking Solution, and other Open Solutions' complementary applications.



The second largest bankers' bank in the United States in terms of assets under management, PCBB provides correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country.

Open Solutions sells integrated enabling technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and internationally. In September 2005, Open Solutions announced an agreement with PCBB to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB's cash letter settlement service.

Last week Open Solutions announced a partnership with Rosetta Technologies Corporation, a Tampa-based vendor of secure enterprise printing products. The partnership will provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.

With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing lineup, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs.

"This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint products in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president of Rosetta Technologies.

Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB, said his company's primary focus was "finding an open architecture application that would allow the CBC to interface in a dynamic environment." They were also looking for a core platform "that could change as we grow, not only in assets but also in customers, products and services. We evaluated numerous vendors and focused on identifying the best solution to interface our in-house applications with the core database."

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, PCBB will implement Open Solutions' Financial Accounting Suite -- general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets -- and cView MyVision and Report Wizard.

Evans said the cView report writer would be used to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

Olympus signs eighth licensing deal in eight months. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Patriot Scientific Corporation (PTSC) confirmed that Olympus Corporation has purchased a license to use the Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) Portfolio.

Seven other major system manufacturers have purchased MMP licenses this year, including Casio, Fujitsu, HP, Seiko Epson, Sony, Nikon and Pentax. In addition, AMD and Intel are also licensees.

Patriot Scientific and The TPL Group are co-owners of the MMP Portfolio, which Alliacense, a TPL Group enterprise, exclusively manages. The MMP Portfolio patents, filed in the 1980s, cover techniques that have become essential to consumer and commercial digital systems including medical equipment.



Patriot Scientific also announced that board of directors member Jim Turley will be devoting increased attention to technology matters for the company. Turley, formerly editor-in-chief of Embedded Systems Design and currently the editor of Silicon Insider, is the author of seven books and has been editor of the prestigious industry journal Microprocessor Report, where he was three-time winner of the Computer Press Award.

A former senior executive at ARC International, where he was responsible for three high-tech acquisitions and a successful IPO, Turley serves on several technical advisory boards for high-tech companies as well as on the advisory board for the Embedded Systems Conference and The Microprocessor Report.

As Patriot Scientific accumulates capital resulting from licensing revenues, the company is ready to implement the next phase of its strategic plan and is now evaluating possible opportunities to diversify its revenue stream by entering into joint ventures or by acquiring other companies and technologies.

Patriot Scientific is a intellectual property licensing company.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
DST Systems, Inc. announces agreement to acquire Amisys Synertech, Inc.. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
DST Systems, Inc. (DST) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Amisys Synertech, Inc. (Amisys) through a merger with a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Health Solutions, Inc.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Amisys is an enterprise software developer, software applications service provider, and business process outsourcer for the U.S. commercial healthcare industry. Amisys reported revenues of $103.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2005 and $65.1 million for the seven months ended July 31, 2006. Amisys has approximately 1,400 employees located in three principal locations: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Rockville, Maryland; and Hyderabad, India.



The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and satisfaction of standard pre-closing conditions. Upon closing, which is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2006, DST will integrate the operations of Amisys with DST's wholly owned subsidiary DST Health Solutions, Inc. The integrated business unit will operate as DST Health Solutions. DST believes the expanded DST Health Solutions business will provide deeper product offerings to existing and new customers, as well as leverage DST's AWD and Output Solutions products.

Upon completion of the transaction, Amisys' financial results will be consolidated with those of DST. On a pro-forma basis, the transaction is not expected to have a material impact on DST's net income or earnings per share for 2006. DST will fund the acquisition with available cash balances and existing credit facilities.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Accelrys appoints Rick Russo as chief financial officer. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Accelrys, Inc. (ACCL) announced the appointment of Rick Russo as the company's senior VP and chief financial officer, effective as of October 2, 2006.

Russo has nearly 30 years of finance and accounting leadership experience and has held positions of increasing scope with a number of both public and private high technology companies. Most recently, from 2000 through 2006, Russo served as the chief financial officer of Captiva Software Corp., a global provider of automatic data capture software and enterprise input management solutions. Captiva was a publicly held company prior to its acquisition by EMC Corp. for approximately $275 million in December 2005.



"I am pleased to have Rick joining our senior leadership team," said Mark Emkjer, the company's president and CEO. "Rick is a seasoned and innovative business leader who brings with him a wealth of experience in financial reporting, corporate finance and capital markets. Rick also has extensive software-industry experience which I believe will prove invaluable to us in pursuing our growth strategy and creating value for our customers and shareholders."

In commenting upon his appointment, Russo stated: "I am excited to be joining Accelrys as its chief financial officer. I am enthusiastic about the company's unique position as a software company with leading-edge scientific solutions. I am looking forward to working with the Accelrys team and continuing to improve the financial trajectory of this dynamic company."

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com

M&M buys German co for Rs 830 cr

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M&M buys German co for Rs 830 cr. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) Ltd on Thursday bought a 67.9% stake in German forging company Jeco Holdings, in a deal struck at an enterprise value of Rs 830 crore (140 million euros). M&M did not disclose the exact payout for the acquisition though it claimed it was the largest acquisition in the auto components sector. "The acquistion, to be done through Mahindra's Mauritian subsidiary, is the largest acquisition by an Indian company in the auto component manufacturing space," Systems and Technology (Systech) president Hemant Luthra said. Jeco, which has a capacity of one lakh tonne per annum and a turnover of 180 million euro, supplies major products including gear boxes, engine & axle pans, hubs, gears and piston heads to customers which include the DaimlerChrysler Group, ZE Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt. The stake, currently held by Mahindra, would be transferred to the recently relisted Mahindra Automotive and Steels Ltd (MASL), Luthra said. This is the third acquisition by the company within the space of a year. Earlier in January this year, M&M had acquired 98.6% of the shares in UK-based automotive forging company Stokes Group Ltd. Forging ahead



Products Gear boxes, engine & axle pans, hubs, gears and piston heads Customers DaimlerChrysler Group, ZE Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt Capacity One lakh tonne per annum Turnover 180 million euro Just before that in December last year, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd entered into an agreement with Plexion Technologies, Mauritius, a group Company of JP Morgan to acquire 88.41% of the fully diluted equity capital in Plexion Technologies (India) Ltd. The board of MASL would be reconstituted to accomodate members of Jeco, he said, adding that the debt of Jeco would get frozen as the German auto component manufacturer is not a highly leveraged company. The acquistion will help M&M service customers from three locations-UK, Germany and India for their auto component needs. With regard to the benefits accruing to the company as a result of the acquistion, Luthra said, "This transaction will result in us establishing a significant footprint in continental Europe."

Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
IGI gets CIBJO recognition to test gemstones, jewellery. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The International Gemological Institute (IGI), the world's largest independent laboratory for testing and valuing gemstones and fine jewellery, has been officially recognised as a World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) registered laboratory. CIBJO president Gaetano Cavalieri announced the registration of IGI, endorsed by Jewelers of America, at the CIBJO laboratory committee meeting in Vancouver, Canada recently. CIBJO, which is the French acronym for International Confederation of Jewellery, Silverware, Diamonds and Stones, is the international jewellery confederation of national trade organisations. Its primary purpose as a decision making body is to create and maintain standards and promote co-operation between these inter-connected organisations. Every CIBJO registered laboratory has to be independent of any commercial or private enterprise, or groups of such enterprises. It should always be managed under competent professional direction and abide by all CIBJO rules without exception. It is mandatory for the registered body to work in accordance with the CIBJO publications such as the Diamond Book, the Gemstone Book, the Pearl Book. It can only issue diamond, gemstone and/or pearl reports, prepared in accordance with the CIBJO rules. In case of deviation from these rules, its recognition can be cancelled by CIBJO. Commenting on the recognition, Tehmasp Printer, managing director, IGI India said, "In a short span of seven years, IGI has established a leadership position in certification across the country. IGI's recent recognition as a CIBJO registered laboratory is a further reassurance to all our customers of the quality and accuracy of our processes and expertise of gemologists." The International Gemological Institute established in 1975, is located in important diamond centres such as Antwerp, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Bangkok, Mumbai, Tokyo, Dubai and Hong Kong. IGI has also received the prestigious ISO 9001:2000 certification for standard grading and certification processes', the only certifying laboratory in the country to have this certification.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Chronicle Solutions picks chairman [Chronicle Solutions]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Network content monitoring and capturing software firm Chronicle Solutions has appointed Alan Watkins, founder and former managing director of Cisco UK, as its new chairman. Watkins built up Cisco's UK operation from a standing start to over 300m revenue and has a proven track record of establishing and growing start up companies.



Chronicle Solutions flagship product, netReplay is the world's first enterprise-class Network Content Appliance that captures and indexes all user communications on a network in real-time, helping companies to enforce email, instant messenger and Internet acceptable use policies. It enables forensic investigations by monitoring and recording relevant traffic, alerting on transgressions, as well as enabling search, retrieval and replay of individual web sessions, including webmail, blogs, instant messenger, Voice-over-IP and downloads.

Nick Kingsbury, recently appointed CEO of Chronicle Solutions comments, "Alan has an excellent reputation within the high tech industry and his proven success in growing fast track start-ups will be invaluable to us, as we expand our operations both here in the UK and in the US."

Alan Watkins adds, "There cannot be a single enterprise in the modern world that does not use the Internet for communications, to go about its every day business. But in the world we live in today, that also brings significant challenges in terms of compliance, corporate responsibilities and employee behaviour. Chronicle Solutions has a very real solution to offer the enterprise to address these needs. This combined with an outstanding management team and the financial backing of 3i, SEP and Soc Gen were compelling reasons why I am delighted to accept the chairmanship of Chronicle."

Watkins has over 30 years experience within the IT industry. He has chaired both public and private companies and works closely with the private equity and venture capital industry in the technology, media and telecommunications sector.

Watkins is currently chairman of AIM-listed Matrix Communications Group Plc, a 60m virtual network operator (VNO); Glasshouse, a Boston-based, VC- backed storage services company; Appligenics, a VC- backed software house; and Foster MacCallum, an early stage software house. In addition to founding Cisco UK, Watkins has previously held senior positions within BT, Timeplex, Outsource Group and Giantloop.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Verizon expands Euro ethernet [Verizon Business]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) READING, UK - 28 September 2006 - Customers in six additional countries now have Ethernet access to the Verizon Business Private IP network under an expansion announced by the company today. Enterprise customers in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland and Spain now can use Verizon Business next-generation Ethernet services to access the companys Private IP network in a flexible way.



The announcement extends Verizon Business Ethernet Access to a total of 16 European countries. Customers in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK have been able to benefit from Ethernet services since January. Verizon Business also offers Ethernet Access to Private IP in the US, and in seven countries across Asia.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Swisscom, Ciena get compliance [Ciena]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Swiss market leader offering Ethernet Private Lines using Cienas CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform and CN 2300 Managed Optical Services Multiplexer

Madrid (Carrier Ethernet World Congress) 28 September, 2006 Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEND*), the network specialist, and Swisscom today announced Carrier Ethernet certification for Swisscoms Carrier Optical Service (COS) and Cienas optical Ethernet platforms the CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform and CN 2300 Managed Optical Services Multiplexer that power COS. Both the Swisscom service and Ciena platforms have been certified to deliver Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) compliant Ethernet Private Lines based on the groups MEF9 technical specifications for Ethernet Services at the User Network Interface (UNI).



The Swiss market leader in Carrier Ethernet services, Swisscom has been connecting pharmaceutical, banking and other large enterprise customers with rigorous wide area network performance requirements with its Ethernet Private Line services for nearly two years on the Ciena platforms, in addition to offering storage extension and TDM connectivity services. Carrier Optical Service is a transparent point-to-point Layer 1 service for high to very high dedicated bandwidth connecting LAN applications throughout Switzerland. Cienas optical Ethernet platforms are sold to Swisscom and supported through a partnership with Ericsson.

The MEFs Carrier Ethernet Certification Program is designed to accelerate the rollout of Carrier Ethernet services by reducing the time and cost of equipment testing and providing end users with consistent, reliable services across service providers and network equipment. Both Cienas platforms and Swisscoms service were tested by Iometrix in accordance with its MEF-approved Test Plan for Ethernet Services at the UNI.

Weve seen tremendous uptake in our Carrier Optical Service from enterprises looking for flexible bandwidth options backed by strong service level agreements for mission-critical data center, business continuity and other wide area network applications, said Thomas Aeberhard, Head of Data Services, Swisscom Fixnet Wholesale. As customers increasingly move to Ethernet and look for services that are standards-based, this Carrier Ethernet certification will only broaden the appeal of our market leading Carrier Optical Service.

Ciena's CN 4200, the flagship product of its FlexSelect Architecture, is the first multiservice transport and service aggregation platform capable of supporting the migration to packet networks using future-ready technology such as ITU G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) for service transparency, dynamic wavelength routing featuring a hybrid ROADM solution, software-defined service ports, and remote service provisioning and management capabilities.

As a Charter Member of the MEF, this certification reflects our early focus on developing innovative optical Ethernet platforms for delivering MEF-certified Carrier Ethernet services, said Martin Nuss, vice president and chief technologist at Ciena. Swisscom was the first to deploy CN 4200 and weve worked closely with them to ensure our optical Ethernet platforms create a flexible network capable of delivering a variety of Carrier Ethernet and storage extension services with automated provisioning and advanced service level management.

Based on the recent MEF testing for Ethernet Private Lines, Cienas CN 4200 and CN 2300 have been certified for both Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) and Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps). Ciena is committed to supporting standards-based Carrier Ethernet networking through MEF certification of multiple products in its portfolio.

*Effective as of 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, 22 September, 2006, Ciena completed a one-for-seven reverse split of Ciena common stock. Cienas common stock began trading on a split-adjusted basis when the market opened on Monday, September 25, 2006. For a period of approximately 20 days, NASDAQ will append a D to Cienas stock symbol in order to inform the investment community of the reverse stock split.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
NTP Software(TM) Introduces NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition Including Support for Snapshots. Check it out:
NASHUA, N.H. --(Business Wire)-- NTP Software(TM), the worldwide leader in the management and control of unstructured data, today announced the availability of its new version of NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition, which now includes support for Snapshots.



NTP Software Storage M&A(TM), a member of NTP Software Smart ILM(TM) suite of products, provides Senior Executives and Storage Administrators a way to understand what's happening in their environment. While NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) will allow you to report on anything in the environment, its real value comes from the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM) which uses heuristics, trend analysis and spot analysis to discern what's important and help focus your attention.

Snapshots, as part of your data protection strategy are a critical component of the health of your network storage. Up until now it has been difficult to analyze how storage is used by snapshots, other than its basic allocation. Without NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) and the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM), Storage Administrators have no way to judge the appropriateness of their allocation.

"In a NetApp(R) environment, much of a network's storage can be consumed by Snapshots, which means they can become quite costly," said David Hilton, President of Strategic Vision. "Using the NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) Engine to analyze their storage utilization is critical to cost-effective management."

"We see Snapshot support as one of the steps in helping our customers better understand their storage environments," said Aaron Dufoe, NTP Software's Vice President for Worldwide Sales. "Coupled with the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM), which will tell you what's important and not bury you in raw data, our customers can now see all the important elements of their NetApp(R) environment."

NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition with Snapshot support provides the functionality to report and project on the storage space in an environment, as well as take into consideration space that is allocated for Snapshots and compare it to the space that is actually being used. This new product feature provides greater insight into the overall storage environment and allows the enterprise to understand what is going on in their environment and where, through one central location.

NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition with support for Snapshots is now available. Pricing starts at $9,995, and is licensed per Filer.

About NTP Software

Founded in 1994, NTP Software is the worldwide leader in the control and analysis of storage. We create platform-independent products that enable our customers to control and manage their storage environments.

NTP Software is based in Nashua, NH, and is privately held. NTP Software is located on the web at www.ntpsoftware.com, and can be reached at (800) 226-2755 or (603) 622-4400, or via email at [email protected].
Global Government Health and Human Services Experts to Gather at Curam Software International User Conference - Focus on Social Infrastructure Modernization. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Curam Software, the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, today announced it will hold its second annual International User Conference, "Transforming the Social Enterprise," October 3-6, 2006 in Long Island, N.Y., bringing together government social infrastructure modernization experts from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel as well as Gartner and Forrester analysts. The conference provides an opportunity for Curam Software clients, prospective clients, and partners to gain insight into how SEM is transforming the contemporary health and human services landscape.



The conference will feature information sessions hosted by progressive state agencies, provincial governments, industry analysts, and Curam Software executives, including representatives from New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development and the State of Utah's Department of Technology Services, as well as other leading agencies.

The conference sessions - delivered by international government executives and industry analysts from Forrester and Gartner - will allow attendees to participate in a peer-to-peer information exchange within the Curam Software community. Speakers include:

-- Steve Barnett, Vice President and Assistant Chief Financial Officer, Claims Management Solutions, WorkSafeBC

-- Valerie Adamo, Vice President Business Technology Services and Chief Information Officer, Executive Lead Integrated Case and Account Management Program, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

-- John Kost, Vice President and Managing Partner, Gartner Research Worldwide

-- Tim Occleshaw, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand

-- Stephen Fletcher, Chief Information Officer and Executive Director of the newly-formed Department of Technology Services, State of Utah

-- Greg Gardner, Deputy Director, Department of Workforce Services, State of Utah

-- Gene Leganza, Vice President of Government Research, Forrester Research

"We designed the Curam Software User Conference to bring leading social enterprise management professionals together to share best practices and experiences," said Ronan Rooney, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Curam Software Inc. "As the market leader, we know that we must continue to provide solutions that transform business and operational processes as well as improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. The Curam User Conference will provide a glimpse of what is possible using SEM."

Platinum sponsors for the user conference include Accenture, IBM, and HP. Additional sponsors include Enterprise Ireland, EDS, Deloitte Consulting, Cognos, Oracle, Keane, Ciber, Quartech Systems, and eSystems, Inc.

SEM is a new category of enterprise software that is client-centric and leverages commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products to transform as well as modernize health, human services, labor, and social security agencies. SEM provides comprehensive enterprise eligibility IT solutions crossing agency boundaries, simplifying policies, and integrating with existing technology. SEM fosters holistic, convenient services for citizens, as well as provides screening for needs and referrals to state and community-based resources.

About Curam Software

Curam Software is the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, delivering best-in-class applications for social enterprises globally including, health and human services, workforce services, and social security organizations. Using the Curam Business Application Suite(TM) agencies can immediately reap the benefits of client-centric business processes and an outcomes-driven integrated service delivery model. The Curam Business Application Suite, underpinned by the Curam Enterprise Framework(TM), combines the advantages of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software, an enterprise platform and service oriented architecture with the business and technical flexibility required to allow agencies to implement solutions to meet their strategic objectives. Curam Software is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with additional offices located in New York, Washington, D.C., United Kingdom, and Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.curamsoftware.com.

Minimum pay up in '07

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Minimum pay up in '07. Check it out:
(Columbian, The (Vancouver, WA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--The paychecks for Washington's minimum-wage workers will increase by about 29 cents an hour in 2007, giving joy to employees like Ryan Bisson and frustration to business owners like Scott Dickinson.



The two are the yin and yang of the wage debate.

"That's a big increase for me," said Bisson, a Clark College student who works two minimum wage jobs. "You really notice it in your check."

Dickinson, who owns seven KFC restaurants in Southwest Washington and employs about 140 workers, sees the impact differently.

"The minimum wage issue has quite honestly been disastrous for small business for many years now," he said.

It's a debate that is revived each year in Washington as the state Department of Labor and Industries adjusts the wage figure. This year's announcement comes Friday. The new minimum goes into effect Jan. 1.

In Clark County, roughly 4,000 of the 132,000 workers here likely held minimum wage jobs in 2005. Economists say the actual figure is difficult to compute since most people in such jobs aren't working full time.

The annual wage alteration comes each September and is courtesy of Washington's voters who in 1998 approved a law that adjusts the state's minimum hourly wage according to the annual change in the Consumer Price Index. The CPI measures the average inflationary shift in prices for a fixed number of goods and services such as food, shelter and medical care.

The actual figure to come from the state Friday could be a few pennies higher or lower than the estimated 29 cents an hour. Congress this summer unsuccessfully tried to raise the national minimum wage of $5.15 to $7.25 during a two-year period.

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio will decide in November whether to raise minimum wage levels above the national rate.

Wage debate

Critics of the arbitrary wage requirement argue it hurts the country's low-income workers, depresses private enterprise and can actually result in a loss of jobs.

Dickinson agrees wholeheartedly. Before Washington's law was enacted, Dickinson's workers who had more skills or seniority made significantly more than the minimum wage. None of his employees make more than a dollar over minimum wage.

He said the automatic pay increase gives a 16-year-old the same pay as a 35-year-old trying to support a family.

"We're approaching $8 (an hour)," he said. "I shudder to think where we go with it."

Shelly Lundberg, an economics professor at the University of Washington, said moderate increases in minimum wage tend to have small negative impacts on employment of the very young or inexperienced workers and negligible impacts on more highly experienced or skilled workers in the overall job market. She said businesses have learned to deal with the annual adjustments.

Bisson understands businesses can struggle with the forced pay increase, but is still thankful for the pay boost.

A year ago he was making $10.50 an hour working in a warehouse in Clackamas, Ore., when he realized he needed to "step up and go to school so I'm not in a minimum-wage job my whole life."

Bisson quit the warehouse job, moved back in with his parents and studies at Clark College to become a music teacher.

He spends 20 hours a week as a barista at Savana Coffee House and another 10 hours a week at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store at Westfield Vancouver mall. Starting next, year because of the minimum wage change, his total weekly pay will increase to about $237.60, up $8.70.

Debbie Parshall, owner of Savana Coffee House, said it can be difficult to absorb the pay increase for her six employees. Still, she considers it necessary to keep good workers. In fact, Parshall pays above minimum wage for most of her employees.

"I don't have the resources for health benefits or paid vacation so I pay decently so they stay," she said.

Jonathan Nelson covers retail for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-759-8013 or via e-mail at [email protected].

WASHINGTON'S HOURLY WAGE

2007: $7.92 2006: $7.63 2005: $7.35 2004: $7.16 2003: $7.01

*estimated figure; effective Jan. 1.

Source: Washington Employment Security Department

Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbian, Vancouver, Wash.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
OneSource(R) Database To Include Coverage Of Great Britain's Small Business Market. Check it out:
OMAHA, Neb. --(Business Wire)-- infoUSA(R) (NASDAQ:IUSA), the leading provider of proprietary business and consumer databases and sales leads, today announced OneSource(R), an infoUSA(R) company, and leading provider of the most comprehensive, global business information announced today, coverage of an additional two million small to medium sized UK companies and four million of their executives. This enhanced content further strengthens the breadth of OneSource(R)'s company profiles and is now available within OneSource(R)'s UK Business Browser.



According to recent research from the Department of Trade and Industry(a), the Small to Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) market employs 58.5% of the UK workforce and generates over half of the sales of all companies in the country. Having identified this as a significant market opportunity, OneSource(R) is at the forefront of helping UK businesses target prospects in this rapidly growing market.

"The increased coverage of OneSource(R)'s UK company information is a reflection of our commitment to providing customers with comprehensive global business information," said Phil Garlick, President of OneSource(R) Information Services, Inc. "As a result we are pleased to provide our customers access to a significant UK market segment."

As part of the UK data expansion of Business Browser, customers now gain access to 1.4 million actively trading companies and over 500,000 new businesses yet to file accounts. The new information includes director profiles, 3 years of financials, gazette codes, mortgage, auditor and banking data to assist companies in evaluating new business partners, customers and suppliers.

(a) Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) report on Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Statistics for the UK 2004.

About OneSource Information Services

OneSource(R), an infoUSA company, delivers products and services to support a company's sales and marketing efforts including serving customers better, identifying and leveraging new sales opportunities, and creating stronger marketing campaigns. OneSource(R) combines and organizes content from over 2,500 information sources supplied by more than 35 world-class content providers, creating an unequalled business information resource encompassing company profiles, corporate families, industries, executives, financials, news, analyst reports, and trade and business press articles.

OneSource(R) is headquartered in Concord, MA, with offices located in North America, Europe, Pacific Rim, and Latin America. Customers include Bank One, Chubb, Citigroup, Deloitte & Touche, i2 Technologies, Orange, SAS Institute, and Sun Microsystems.

About infoUSA

infoUSA (www.infoUSA.com), founded in 1972, is the leading provider of business and consumer information products, database marketing services, data processing services and sales and marketing solutions. Content is the essential ingredient in every marketing program, and infoUSA has the most comprehensive data in the industry, and is the only company to own a proprietary database of 250 million consumers and 14 million businesses under one roof. The infoUSA database powers the directory services of the top Internet traffic-generating sites. Nearly 3 million customers use infoUSA's products and services to find new customers, grow their sales, and for other direct marketing, telemarketing, customer analysis and credit reference purposes. infoUSA headquarters are located at 5711 S. 86th Circle, Omaha, NE 68127 and can be contacted at (402) 593-4500. To know more about Sales Leads, click www.infousa.com. To get a 7-day free trial and 100 free sales leads, click www.salesgenie.com.

Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, recent changes in senior management, the successful integration of recent and future acquisitions, fluctuations in operating results, failure to successfully carry out our Internet strategy or to grow our Internet revenue, effects of leverage, changes in technology and increased competition. More information about potential factors that could affect the company's business and financial results is included in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Blue Ridge Networks(TM) Launches RemoteLink(TM) -- ''Guaranteed, Impenetrable'' Secure Communications Between Small/Mobile Offices and Headquarters. Check it out:
CHANTILLY, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Blue Ridge Networks, the premier provider of secure communications products and managed services, today launched RemoteLink, the first device that provides impenetrable communications for small offices, personal offices, and mobile offices. The RemoteLink is also unique in that it requires no end-user configuration. This plug-and-play device can be deployed by non technical staff in minutes--enabling organizations to quickly add users, locations, and devices to secure networks affordably and easily.



RemoteLink secures any device with an Ethernet interface. It can be used to create a secure bridge across a wide variety of broadband connections, including dial-up access, T1, DSL, cable, wireless, satellite, frame-relay, and even MPLS networks. Since any Ethernet device can be plugged into RemoteLink, whether IP or non-IP, it extends the enterprise's network enabling secure data, VoIP and video communications across the enterprise. RemoteLink also extends the life of older systems, even DOS-based terminals commonly used in retail point of sale equipment.

"With RemoteLink, we're delivering on our promise to our customers--to put forward solutions that combine the highest security, the greatest flexibility, and the ultimate in mobility," noted Blue Ridge Networks' CEO Tony Russo. "This affordable, scalable solution can help organizations make remote branches, teleworkers, and even temporary offices as secure as if they were inside headquarters."

RemoteLink is an ideal option for organizations such as banks with multiple branches, civilian Government agencies with ad-hoc field offices, even multi-location healthcare providers--all environments where timely access to critical information while maintaining ironclad security is essential. RemoteLink affordably provides several security measures that allow organizations to meet and/or exceed the most stringent requirements they face including the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Requirements, DoD PKI, HSPD-12, HIPAA and a host of others.

"RemoteLink continues to open up new options for secure communications that were previously not possible," continued Russo. "We're giving organizations everywhere the freedom to secure new technology alongside their legacy equipment to increase productivity and ultimately drive cost savings to the bottom line."

About Blue Ridge Networks

Blue Ridge Networks develops a full spectrum of secure communications solutions for wireless and wired environments. The company was responsible for the industry's first commercial virtual private network and has completed widespread deployments across commercial and Government sectors. The Blue Ridge Networks BorderGuard product suite has been deployed globally and in demanding applications such as wireless LAN, extranets, site-to-site and remote access VPN, and thin client computing. The company has earned several Government agency certifications, including: JITC, Army TIC, FIPS 140-2 validation, Common Criteria certification, HIPAA compliance, and the Department of Defense SPOCK validation. Information about the company's products and managed services can be found at www.blueridgenetworks.com.

BorderGuard is a registered trademark; Blue Ridge Networks and RemoteLink are trademarks of Blue Ridge Networks, Inc. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
China.com's New Expectation on Sales. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 29, SinoCast -- China.com, the company under the aegis of CDC Corporation, has issued an updated advisory to shareholders about the impact that Chinese telecom regulations issued in July will have on its financial results.



The new policies include requiring subscribers to provide double confirmations for orders and MVAS providers to send billing reminders to subscribers, and have resulted in China.com having fewer new subscribers for its services and higher cancellation rates. In addition, costs to acquire new users have increased.

China.com says it anticipates that both the revenue and net profit of its MVAS business unit will be significantly affected this quarter. The following table sets out the unaudited revenue for the Company's MVAS business unit for the months of July and August 2006 as compared with the same months in 2005.

The company says to further reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies it initiated a headcount reduction program in August, reducing the workforce of its mobile value- added services business unit by approximately 30 per cent.

China.com achieved quarterly revenue levels and its 22nd consecutive quarter of profits with total revenues of HKD 108 million, up 24 percent when compared to Q2 2005.

The company says its online games initiative continues to achieve strong growth, the portal continues to hit key operational matrices, and the MVAS business has undergone three sequential quarters of double-digit percentage revenue growth and has progressively diversified away from SMS revenues to a point where revenues from advanced mobile products such as MMS and WAP represent 60 percent of total MVAS revenue.

China.com has established a wholly-owned subsidiary, CDC Games Limited, to hold all current and future online game business assets and investments. With strong growth expected in China's online gaming market as well as with the company's online game offering, China.com plans to focus more resources to this fast-growing sector.

The company's mobile value-added services (MVAS) business continued to show healthy growth in the third quarter of 2005 with a 15 percent increase in total revenue over Q2 2005.

Sequential quarterly revenue increases from Advanced Mobile Products amounted to the following: Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) - up 80percent, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) - up 61percent, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) - up 27percent.

The company's MVAS marketing strategy focused on cross- selling its products and services toward niche consumer groups across various platforms. The strategy resulted in meaningful ranking increases of some of the company's key WAP products on China Mobile's WAP product listings.

China.com is a mobile applications, Internet services and online game company in China. Its principle business areas are Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), online entertainment, and Internet services that target users in China.

CDC Corporation is focused on enterprise software, mobile applications and online games. As part of its strategic review, the company has reorganized into two primary operating business units, CDC Software and China.com Inc.

Its principle business areas are Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), online entertainment, and Internet services that target users in China. In the MVAS arena, China.com provides products and services on various platforms, including Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The Company also offers online games and a broad range of online products and services via its portal network (www.china.com; www.hongkong.com).

Copyright 2006 Sinocast

Kingdee Posted Growth

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Kingdee Posted Growth. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHENZHEN, September 29, SinoCast -- Kingdee International Software Group Co., Ltd. (SEHK: 0268), a leading enterprise resources planning (ERP) software vendor in China, released its interim report recently.



For the first half ended on June 30, the company's operating revenues hit CNY 287 million, jumping 17 percent from a year ago. Its software sales climbed 7.8 percent year on year to CNY 213 million.

Kingdee's software solution service reached CNY 39.75 million, hiking 73.9 percent compared with last year. And its net profit margin rose 1 percent to 10.6 percent.

In the period, the software vendor, headquartered in Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China, has gained a good performance in the high-end market. This is attributive to EAS, a high-end product by Kingdee.

For the first half, EAS has grown 64 percent, which is strategically significant to the company's expansion in the high-end market, Xu Shaochun, Kingdee's chairman and chief executive officer, said at an interview.

The product, competitive in technologies, has helped enlarge the company's market share and now is serving big groups like China's leading real estate firm China Vanke Co., Ltd., suggesting more market reception for the product.

Big clients are expected to bring more customers in their sectors to the software vendor, and further drive up the sales of its medium-end products. They have pushed the company's medium-end products sales by about 10 percent in the first half, increasing 7 to 8 percent from the previous year, and the percentage is estimated to continue to rise in coming days.

In addition, Kingdee's major rivals' high-end products account for 15 percent of their total, a fall from 23 percent for 2005, according to their interim reports.

Kingdee's service has been another fuel for its financial growth. Now the company is offering a variety of service tailored for its over 400,000 customers. From January to June, its income from service has increased 52 percent, and the number is expected to climb up further, said the chairman.

Its 2005 fiscal report showed that its business earnings reached CNY 530 million in 2005, an increase of 19 percent compared with the same period of the previous year. And its net profit increased by 40 percent year on year.

This May Kingdee took over a Shenzhen-based ERP manufacturer Godline for CNY 10 million and absorb Godline's brand. Xu Shaochun claimed that they would increase acquisitions of medium- and small-sized ERP manufacturers both at home and abroad to become a leader in the ERP market in the Asia Pacific region.

Founded in 1997, Godline is specialized at the development, promotion and service of ERP products for manufacturing industries. Now its business has covered six manufacturing segments, electric and electronic products assembly, hardware machinery, plastic & electronic, light source and lights, gifts and toys, cables and wires.

ERP software developers such as Kingdee and UFIDA are also facing another difficulty, higher costs resulting from huge investment in research and development.

In such case, some Chinese ERP software developers have quit their research and development and even were kicked out of the ERP sector to become resellers of foreign brands in China.

Industry analysts said that the only way out for Chinese ERP software developers is the ownership of core technologies in the long term.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.96)

Copyright 2006 Sinocast
Brazil: Love Lula if you're poor,worry if you're not. Check it out:
(The Economist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The voters in Brazil's elections on October 1st can look back on welcome help for the dispossessed and forward to the likelihood of little broader reform

AN UNEXPECTED whiff of garlic is the first indication of an industry that helps sustain the 70,000 people of one of the poorer districts of Contagem, a city in eastern Brazil. Elizabete Cordeiro and Romilda da Silva are among the 200 women who spend their days peeling garlic, which fetches more than the unshelled sort in nearby Belo Horizonte. Hunched over plastic buckets outside a brick hovel, they shell 1,000 kilos a month. This yields 400 reais ($185), which they share.



Hard as life is, it has lately improved. Shelling garlic pays more than it did, thanks to a one-third rise negotiated by a local NGO. And a few months ago the women became beneficiaries of the federal government's Family Fund, a stipend of up to 95 reais a month that goes to parents who keep their children at school and take them for medical check-ups. The fund now reaches the poorest quarter of Brazil's population. Mrs da Silva notes that the price of rice has "fallen a lot", another boost to the family budget.

For all this the women credit Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, the first Brazilian president whose background is as humble as theirs. Accordingly, they will vote for him on October 1st, in the first round of Brazil's general election. And so will many others like them. The man who proclaims the poor to be "every cell" of his body is backed by 57% of the voters who earn up to 700 reais a month, according to Datafolha, a polling firm. Against this bearded Evita, Geraldo Alckmin, a former governor of So Paulo, Brazil's most populous state, has been struggling.

Lula will probably win, in the second round on October 29th if not in the first, because in the eyes of most voters he has kept the promises that matter. While showering money on the poor, he has cut inflation, created jobs and kept the economy growing. Foreign debt no longer hangs over Brazil like the blade of a guillotine. The economy is enjoying "the best fundamental conditions of the past 30 years", boasts Antonio Palocci, a former finance minister who is now a congressional candidate for Lula's Workers' Party.

And yet Brazil is not as sound as Lula's popularity ratings. Economic growth has been slow by comparison with other countries in Latin America, and with the three "BRIC" countries--Russia, India and China--the less-developed world's leading economies (see charts). A big reason for this is a huge public sector, which keeps interest rates high and has only grown more voracious under Lula.

The list of reforms needed to perk up the economy is not much shorter than it was when Lula took office in 2003, and other issues have grown in urgency. Brazil's dismal standard of public education suddenly seems intolerable, prompting the president to campaign on the clunky slogan "development with income distribution and quality in education". And crime moved up the agenda when a prison-based gang in So Paulo started attacking police and public transport in May.

Then there is corruption, which does not worry garlic-shellers but enrages the newspaper-reading elite. Although graft carries no party card, much anger is directed at the ruling party and Lula himself, partly because they were once seen as the holders of the Brazilian patent on political purity. A scandal erupted in May 2005 which involved Lula's closest associates bribing congressmen to back the government. Now the final days of the campaign are being muddied by allegations that Lula's advisers tried to buy a dossier supposedly implicating Jos Serra, the candidate for the governorship of So Paulo from Mr Alckmin's Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), in another scandal. The electoral court could cancel Lula's election if it were proved that he had benefited from wrongdoing. More likely, the scandal could undermine Lula's capacity to govern. The political system itself has become a top election issue.

Efficiency must wait

No saviours are on the ballot. Mr Alckmin is "much more prepared [than Lula] to make the state efficient" and therein lies the big difference between them, says Acio Neves, the PSDB governor of Minas Gerais, whose re-election is even more certain than Lula's. This rings true. The next president's most urgent task seems impossible: to curb the state's appetite for both resources and economic influence while raising investment and improving services like education.

Lula is not the ideal agent to bring about change. He and his party embody an alliance between the dispossessed and those who benefit from an indulgent state, such as union members and public-sector workers. Some of the government's mistakes can be traced to the false notion that what is good for the one is good for the other, not surprisingly perhaps, given that Lula, born poor, became a union leader.

Tax-and-spend habits were already entrenched when Lula took office, but he has not changed them. Instead, he has turned his attention to social policy. While suppressing inflation and containing the deficit, he has transferred more cash to households, partly through the Family Fund, which helps the poor, but also through increases in the minimum wage, which raises publicly financed pensions. The upshot is that the central government's current spending is set to rise from 16.9% of GDP in 2003 to 19% this year, says Raul Velloso, a specialist in public finances.

The mix of subsidy and stability, though, has done wonders for the poor. The poverty rate, as measured by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a business school, fell from 28% of the population in 2003 to 23% last year, which was comparable to the improvement brought about by the end of hyperinflation in the early 1990s. Lula's critics carp that the Family Fund merely alleviates poverty without providing an exit. That is to underestimate the value of reducing misery. The trouble is that although the total real income of Brazil's poorest households rose 28% between 2004 and 2005, that of the middle class increased just 1.6%.

Well-being in Lula's Brazil is unevenly spread in geographic terms, too. Cash transfers have animated the economy of the poor north-east, where retail and wholesale trade jumped 15.6% in the year to July. But this will tail off when the government ratchets back increases in handouts, as it must. In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, the economy shrank 5% last year because of drought, which hurt farming, and the strong real, which damaged industries such as shoe- and furniture-making. The economy of Rio de Janeiro, the second-largest city, has not grown since 1975. Enterprise there is thwarted by bureaucracy and high taxes. A third of the income in the metropolitan area comes from pensions.

As Rio's stagnation suggests, the blame must be shared by earlier administrations and all levels of government. But Lula has done too little to spark higher growth. Investment, the best indicator of the economy's long-term health, has edged up from 18% of GDP in 2003 to 20%, not enough to sustain growth rates of more than 4%. Lula promises that investment will rise to 25% of GDP in his second term, but how?

His government has done several useful things, such as passing a bankruptcy law. A long-delayed measure to encourage the private financing of public works may at last yield results. And, after a shaky start, a new model for commissioning power generation is starting to show it can attract private capital to the electricity industry.

Ignore or overrule

But this is not enough. The central government is responsible for investment amounting to only 0.8% of GDP. Its attitude towards regulatory agencies, whose independence should encourage investment in infrastructure, has bordered on hostility. The telecoms ministry has more than once sought to overrule Anatel, the industry regulator. And investment in sanitation has been stuck at a derisory 0.2% of GDP for the past seven years, leaving a quarter of Brazil's urban population lacking access to sewerage.

The reforms required to boost Brazil's growth are as familiar as old jokes. They include formal independence for the Central Bank, which would allow it to achieve its inflation target with lower interest rates, lower trade tariffs, a simpler tax system and, above all, a long-term plan to reduce spending and the net public debt, which at present stands at about half of GDP. With taxes close to their limit (tax revenue hit a record 37% of GDP last year) and spending rising inexorably, the government will struggle to deliver the primary budget surplus (ie, before interest payments) of 4% of GDP that it has promised.

"It's clear this model is almost exhausted," says Marcos Mendes, an economist in Braslia, the capital. A better one would, among other things, give the government more discretion over spending, 90% of which is tied to items like pensions and health, and breaking the link between the minimum wage and pensions. All would inflict political pain.

Brazilians wonder whether new models can be built with the same old politics. Mr Alckmin, a tax-cutting technocrat who has run an uninspired campaign short on detail, might just do better. But the inertia built into Brazil's institutions may get the better of any candidate. The 1988 constitution is a busybody document with something to say on everything from the structure of the police to tuition fees at public universities (forbidden). It directs the government to hand about half its tax revenue to the 27 states and 5,500 (often financially incontinent) municipalities. IPEA, a research institute, says they wasted 16 billion reais in 2000, 1.5% of GDP. Many economic reforms require a constitutional amendment that must twice win three-fifths majorities in both houses of Congress. This will hobble any president.

Moreover, many of the issues exercising voters, including crime and education, are the responsibility mainly of the states and municipalities. Much therefore depends on give and take between the president and the other branches and levels of government. The voters this Sunday will elect all state governors and legislatures, the lower house of Congress and a third of the Senate, as well as the president.

Of the 27 states, 19 are expected to re-elect incumbent governors or successors from the same parties. The current Congress is widely seen as the most corrupt in history. The next one may even have a seat for Fernando Collor, a president impeached in 1992, and Mr Palocci, who has been charged with infractions while he was a mayor. Brazil's "presidential coalitionism," in which a directly elected president must fashion majorities from a fragmented Congress, is never easy to manage. Lula's administration has fared worse than most, only grudgingly giving allies top government jobs, which has left bribery as one of the few ways to recruit support. That so many congressmen are eager to succumb--nearly a fifth of the lower house is implicated in some scandal--has something to do with the way they are elected.

The missing link

With 5,406 candidates competing for 513 seats in the lower house, the congressional vote amounts to a mass beauty contest. Few of the aspirants have more than casual contact with their constituents, partly because they represent whole states rather than districts. The system is proportional: the number of votes won by a party or its candidates determines how many seats it gets in each state. Within that quota, the winners are those with the most individual votes, which may not be many.

Over half the voters generally forget which congressmen they have voted for. Winning candidates can, and often do, switch parties after the election, further straining their link with voters. This "deficit of representation" makes it difficult for voters to scrutinise their representatives and for presidents to build stable coalitions. That encourages corruption.

The answer, many believe, is political reform. One element is already in place. In the next Congress parties will for the first time have to cross a threshold--5% of the national vote--to secure various privileges, including free television time. The number of parties, 16 at present, may be halved. Other reforms may include penalties for politicians who switch parties, public money for campaigning and voting for party lists instead of single candidates.

That would not be a cure-all. Party voting and penalties for party-switching would strengthen parties and citizens' monitoring of their representatives, which ought to reduce corruption. But much of the representation deficit has to do with wider economic and social conditions. A poor and badly educated electorate is unable to control the behaviour of politicians, says Claudio Weber Abramo of Transparncia Brasil, an anti-corruption NGO. Designing a new electoral system might distract from the more urgent task of economic reform.

Some Brazilians are not altogether downhearted, though. Their country may be growing more slowly than the other BRIC countries, but its institutions are sturdier, asserts Antnio Delfim Netto, a congressman from the centrist Party of the Brazil Democratic Movement. In Brazil party politics is virtually the only politics, points out Ftima Anastasia, of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, which makes it more stable than such neighbours as Bolivia and Venezuela, where strikers and strongmen hold sway.

Even without reform, the meshing of growth and democracy keeps Brazil moving forward with occasional bursts of speed. That is certainly true in Minas Gerais, where Governor Neves claims to have eliminated the budget deficit and applied a "management shock" to the bureaucracy. "Results agreements" pay bonuses to civil servants in exchange for hitting targets such as cutting the number of prison escapes. "We're gradually changing the mind-set of the civil servant, who used to pass the exam [for his job] and then sit passively in his chair," claims Antonio Anastasia, Mr Neves's running-mate. Mostly hype, sniff his critics, who claim, among other things, that he balanced the books by cutting health spending and cares more about efficiency than ending poverty.

Yet in Contagem Mr Neves's entrepreneurial approach has made a difference. Unlike the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where gun-toting adolescents rule, the poor parts of Contagem were not abandoned by the state. Minas Gerais created special teams of police to patrol violent areas. The notorious Nelson Hungria prison no longer erupts. The state employs nearly 400 people in "social prevention" projects such as Stay Alive, which lures the young away from crime with computer training, football and other activities. And the local monthly murder rate has dropped from double to single digits.

Lula's party is allergic to the idea of management shocks but their spirit is spreading, for example, to education, where it may be needed most. Lula has been rightly skewered for ignoring basic education during his first three years in office, but that seems to be changing. Last year, for the first time, the education ministry tested all primary public schools in urban areas. In June it published the results of the national tests, school by school. Now each will be given its own targets to improve its scores.

Shock treatment needed

To help meet those targets the government intends to distribute an extra 5 billion reais to schools in the ten poorest states. A thousand teacher-training centres are to improve teaching quality. A genuine management shock would allow school directors to choose their teachers and would hold them accountable for the results. Fernando Haddad, the education minister, admits that Brazil is still in the "ante-room" of such a discussion but thinks targets and tools will "change the culture" of education. By 2022, he says, Brazil's scores should be as good as the industrial-country average.

It is indeed possible that the national tests could click with Mr Neves's results agreements and the Family Fund's education requirement to lift young Brazilians into useful work. But if that is to happen quickly, Lula will need to act. He has proposed a national pact for reform after the elections. But the attempt to smear Mr Serra threatens to disrupt his second term before it begins. The price could be four more years of underperformance.

SOURCE: The Economist

Copyright 2006 Economist Newspaper
Kazakhstan: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: In the few privatisations undertaken, the government seeks to retain control of key assets.

2009-11: As the economy approaches full capacity, there is a growing incentive to resume restructuring and large-scale privatisation. However, these processes favour domestic or Russian enterprises over Western ones.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: The government increases its presence in the hydrocarbons sector by seeking a stake in all major projects.

2009-11: There are fewer contract disputes, but corruption and bureaucratic red tape continue to cause difficulties.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Kazakhstan joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the same time as Russia. This forces the government to undertake some reforms, but implementation of trade liberalisation continues to be hindered by informal trade barriers.



2009-11: Progress is made on removing protectionist measures in agriculture, under the terms of WTO accession.

Taxes

2007-08: The government progressively shifts the tax burden on to subsurface users and other firms in the extractive sector.

2009-11: Tax evasion and poor administration continue to pose problems. Value-added tax (VAT) rate is cut from 15% to 13%.

Financing

2007-08: Banking sector consolidation proceeds, and financial supervision strengthens. Development of a corporate bond market provides a further source of finance for some large enterprises.

2009-11: Finance available for domestic investment rises, partly owing to efforts by the central bank to mobilise savings.

The labour market

2007-08: Labour mobility remains very low, accentuating sharp regional and sectoral disparities in wage earnings.

2009-11: The size of the workforce increases as a result of improving demographics and net immigration. Wages spike in 2011 ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Infrastructure

2007-08: The government seeks to improve transport, communications and energy distribution networks.

2009-11: Infrastructure development is uneven, but telecommunications booms as network upgrades are completed.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Greece: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Further reorganisation of state enterprises along private-sector lines, although this has already happened in many state firms. Privatisation and liberalisation are not likely to accelerate until after the next election.

2008-10: More effective implementation of EU legislation, but aspects of competition policy still subject to lobbying.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: The Hellenic Centre for Investment will try to reduce obstacles to direct investment. New investment law will try to promote high-tech investment and high-end tourism.

2008-10: Greece will intensify efforts to promote itself as a good location for foreign companies to launch business operations in the Balkans, but foreign direct investment will be limited.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Trade regime will remain liberal, except in agriculture, where tariffs and quotas will stay in force.

2008-10: Low chance of success in reaching a new agreement on global trade liberalisation. Trade liberalisation continues, albeit slowly, through unilateral, bilateral and regional arrangements.

Taxes

2006-07: The complex and opaque tax system will be modernised and streamlined. Corporation tax and personal income tax to be cut further. Continuation of efforts to curb tax evasion and avoidance.

2008-10: Fiscal practice will come closer into line with the rest of the EU. Tax evasion will be further reduced.

Financing

2006-07. Some further consolidation of the banking sector may take place. Increased foreign presence.

2008-10: The broadening and deepening of the Athens Stock Exchange will continue.

The labour market

2006-07: Higher wage increases than elsewhere in the euro area. Opposition to more flexible working practices.

2008-10: Labour costs remain among the lowest in the EU, but still higher than in new EU members from central and eastern Europe. The power of trade unions will decline slightly. Moderate wage increases.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Completion of another line of the Athens metro extension. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) will result in new hospitals and schools, as well as new tourist facilities.

2008-10: Improved transport links with Balkan neighbours with the help of EU funds. Gas conversion of power stations.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Kenya: Business outlook

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Kenya: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position4.154.7278771414Political environment2.62.981811616Political stability2.93.381791616Political effectiveness2.32.680801515Macroeconomic environment6.65.863781214Market opportunities2.94.182791717Policy towards private enterprise & competition3.04.575691312Policy towards foreign investment5.15.566691113Foreign trade & exchange controls4.25.573731011Taxes4.75.670611310Financing5.15.55665910The labour market5.05.169721011Infrastructure2.42.779791515(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 17 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, UAE, Angola, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.Kenya will remain an unattractive investment destination in 2006-10



The Economist Intelligence Units business environment rankings show that Kenya was among the worlds least attractive investment locations in the historical period (2001-05) and that it will remain so in the forecast period (2006-10). Kenyas operating environment has long been a challenge for investors because of weak institutions, rampant corruption, poor infrastructure, political instability, serious economic structural imbalances, and persistent cycles of boom and bust. Kenya ranks poorly on political environment, reflecting the inability of the current president, Mwai Kibaki, to unite the coalition that brought him to power in 2002. The prospect of further social unrest and increasing political uncertainty will tend to dominate political debate, particularly in the short term, distracting from the major policy challenges in other areas. This risks slowing the pace of economic reform.

Kenya ranks poorly, particularly for economic openness, policy towards foreign investment, the quality of its financial markets, its infrastructure and the labour market. As for taxes, the high corporate tax regime is not expected to change, and will remain burdensome, in the medium term.

The current government and its successor after the 2007 election are expected to remain committed to gradual economic liberalisation and step-by-step integration within the global trading and financial system. The lead-up to the election may see a rise in economic nationalism, with Kenya rejecting donor funding that has numerous conditions attached and being cautious in selling strategic assets to foreign investors, but a more balanced perspective is likely to return after the poll. However, despite the governments pursuit of donor-supported reforms, severe structural problems will continue to weigh on the business sector and the overall economy. These will be compounded by high business costs, stemming from poor infrastructure, a heavy regulatory burden, high interest rates, a shortage of skilled labour and the impact of HIV/AIDS. Mismanagement, a weak judiciary and rampant corruption will also remain major constraints to stronger growth. The governments battle against corruption is still cited by the private sector as the major obstacle to doing business in Kenya. Businesses are also expected to continue to suffer from the high cost of electricity and to face frequent power cuts. These cause disruption to output (and loss of revenue), and add to production costs (as companies are forced to install generators). The largely rain-fed agricultural sector, which accounts for about 27% of GDP, also poses a significant structural risk. Other growth inhibitors will continue to include the poor state of the road network and congestion at ports. Although investment in infrastructure and other key sectors is expected to accelerate, these substantial structural faults will take a number of years to correct.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Taiwan: Business outlook

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Taiwan: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position7.508.05211955Political environment7.27.2222555Political stability7.07.0363975Political effectiveness7.47.4172044Macroeconomic environment8.38.6181243Market opportunities5.86.74326108Policy towards private enterprise & competition7.58.0192255Policy towards foreign investment7.88.2242155Foreign trade & exchange controls7.38.2413598Taxes8.48.46533Financing7.48.9241955The labour market7.27.4141645Infrastructure8.28.9181664(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 17 countries: Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.Taiwans overall score in the Economist Intelligence Units business environment rankings rises to 8.05 in the forecast period (2006-10) from 7.5 in the historical period (2001-05). As a result of this improvement, Taiwans global rank rises slightly, from 21st place in the past five years to 19th in the forecast period. Taiwans regional ranking remains unchanged at fifth place.



The improvements in the business environment during the forecast period will be driven in a general sense by implementation of market-opening measures associated with Taiwans accession in 2002 to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, led by Chen Shui-bian, Taiwans president since 2000, has also been keen to liberalise the economy and improve the quality of regulation. It has outlined ambitious plans to upgrade Taiwans infrastructure. However, the DPPs failure to secure a majority in the Legislative Yuan (parliament) in the 2004 elections will continue to hamper implementation of the governments legislative agenda. A government freed of such impediments would, however, not be entirely good for business. A DPP lacking the constraint of having to reach consensus with the largest opposition party in parliament, the Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalists) might, for example, raise taxes to reduce the fiscal deficit. It might also seek to increase social spending. (The KMT has traditionally supported lower taxes.)

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Serbia: Business outlook

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Serbia: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position4.836.0168601413Political environment4.14.668641313Political stability4.85.164611514Political effectiveness3.64.265621212Macroeconomic environment4.76.679661615Market opportunities4.85.064681414Policy towards private enterprise & competition3.55.371601212Policy towards foreign investment6.46.949521011Foreign trade & exchange controls5.16.965631315Taxes5.86.7413375Financing3.65.971571412The labour market6.06.650401210Infrastructure4.45.858501312(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 16 countries: Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.The Economist Intelligence Unit's business environment rankings assess a wide range of factors that have an impact on the business environment in 82countries, and compare the situation in 2001-05 with what is expected in 2006-10. Serbia's overall score is 4.83 in the historical period, putting it 68th in our global rankings and 14th out of 16 transition economies. In 2006-10 Serbia's overall score improves to 6.01. This pushes the country up eight places in the global rankings to 6o. We expect significant improvements in policy towards private enterprise and competition, the foreign trade and exchange regime, and the labour market. Taxation policy and the quality of the infrastructure are also expected to make notable advances over the forecast period.



Making up lost ground

Serbia lost a lot of ground relative to its central European neighbours under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s, during which time relations with the West were, in effect, frozen and economic reform was limited. Alongside the rapid reform progress achieved in several of the new EU member states from central Europe over the past decade, this has meant that Serbia's regional ranking is fairly low, despite its relatively favourable initial conditions. Most of the laws affecting businesses in Serbia came into force after October 2000, when MrMilosevic was ousted. In 2001-05 two successive governments made great progress in transforming Serbia's business environment, by liberalising prices and foreign trade; undertaking wide-ranging privatisation aimed at making the private sector dominant within the economy; pushing through comprehensive fiscal reforms; pursuing a tight monetary policy; and reforming the banking and financial system. The Serbian authorities have broadly adhered to this reformist agenda over past five years, despite widespread political bickering among the reformist parties, the assassination of the prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, in March 2003 and the installation of a minority coalition government led by Vojislav Kostunica in March 2004.

In the World Bank's latest Doing Business (2007), a much narrower measure of the ease of doing business than our business environment rankings model, Serbia comes 68th out of 175 countries in terms of the ease of doing business, just two places behind Hungary and well ahead of Croatia (ranked 124th). In Doing Business (2006), which measured progress in 2004, Serbia was singled out as the world's leading pro-business reformer, reflecting progress in easing business start-up rules, making the labour market more flexible, making it easier to register property, and taking steps to reform bankruptcy legislation, which is generally seen as a test of reforming vigour in a transition country. However, Serbia still has much to do to achieve a flexible, liberal and efficient business environment. The bureaucracy has changed less rapidly than the legal framework, and it lacks the capacity to implement new laws effectively. The signing of an EU stabilisation and association agreement (SAA), and further steps toward EU integration, should lead to improvements in public administration. However, corruption and cronyism, some of which dates from the Milosevic era, will continue to be considerable problems.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Workstream Enters $15 Million Loan Agreement to Solidify Strong HR On-Demand Market Position. Check it out:
OTTAWA --(Business Wire)-- Workstream Inc. (TM) (NASDAQ: WSTM), a leading provider of On-Demand Enterprise Workforce Management software and services, today announced it has entered into a definitive loan agreement with Hilco Financial, LLC, a leading capital provider for a borrowing of $15 million, which is expected to fund within two weeks subject to certain agreed upon closing conditions.



Proceeds of the loan will be available primarily for working capital purposes.

"Workstream is at an exciting point in their growth and we are pleased to partnering with them," said David Chisholm, Chief Executive at Hilco Financial. "Workstream's market position is truly unique - a strong customer base of more than 400 world class firms, an on-demand services model, an integrated product set and visionary leadership in a momentous time in the company's history."

"The growth opportunities available today in the On-Demand software market have never been stronger and this investment will enable Workstream to continue to pursue its unique and innovative TalentCenter strategy," stated Michael Mullarkey, CEO and Chairman at Workstream.

Interest on the loan is payable monthly at the Bloomberg prime rate plus 2.5% per annum for the initial 180 days of the loan, and at the Bloomberg prime rate plus 3.5% per annum for the remainder of the loan. The term of the loan is for 545 days and may be prepaid at the option of the company without penalty. Upon repayment of the loan for any reason, the company will pay to the lender an additional payment such that the lender receives an internal rate of return of 30% per annum during the initial 180 days of the loan and 40% per annum during the remainder of the term of the loan. The loan contains various financial covenants that will require the company to maintain at all times at least $15 million of qualified accounts receivable and cash, and to maintain cash of at least $10 million.

In connection with loan, the company will issue the lender a warrant to purchase 2,750,000 shares of its common shares at an exercise price of $.01 per share, giving rise to original issue discount on the loan. The shares issuable upon exercise of the warrants must be registered for resale within 120 days of the closing date of the loan, or the company will be subject to certain penalties.

About Workstream

Workstream provides enterprise workforce management solutions and services that help companies manage the entire employee lifecycle - from recruitment to retirement. Workstream's TalentCenter provides a unified view of all Workstream products and services including Recruitment, Benefits, Performance, Compensation, Development and Transition. Access to TalentCenter is offered on a monthly subscription basis under an on-demand software delivery model to help companies build high performing workforces, while controlling costs. With 9 offices across North America, Workstream services customers including Chevron, The Gap, Home Depot, Kaiser Permanente, Motorola, Nordstrom, Samsung, Sony Music Canada, VISA and Wells Fargo. For more information visit www.workstreaminc.com or call toll free 1-866-470-WORK.

About Hilco Financial

Hilco Financial, LLC (www.hilcofinancial.com) provides senior secured bridge loans to facilitate mergers, acquisitions and specialized corporate funding requirements. In addition, the company also acquires senior distressed debt. Headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, Hilco Financial supports the activities of private equity firms, hedge funds, investment banks and senior lenders. Hilco Financial is part of the Hilco Organization (www.hilcotrading.com), a world leader in the valuation, acquisition, disposition and specialized debt and equity financing of businesses and business assets.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the current expectations or beliefs of Workstream's management and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements: inability to grow our client base and revenue because of the number of competitors and the variety of sources of competition we face; client attrition; inability to offer services that are superior and cost effective when compared to the services being offered by our competitors; inability to further identify, develop and achieve success for new products, services and technologies; increased competition and its effect on pricing, spending, third-party relationships and revenues; as well as the inability to enter into successful strategic relationships and other risks detailed from time to time in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cyprus: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: Continued gradual implementation of EU competition legislation. Competition authority becomes more active.

2009-11: Further strengthening of domestic competition. Small chance of privatisation of public utilities.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: Euro adoption in 2008 raises Cyprus' attractiveness as a location. Policy towards foreign investment generally welcoming. The takeover of at least one bank is likely, although reservations against foreign takeovers remain.

2009-11: Increasing market integration at EU level raises chance of further acquisitions of major Cypriot companies.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Substantial chance that Turkey will lift restrictions on transport links with Cyprus, albeit after a further delay.

2009-11: Foreign-trade regime determined by EU policy. Non-tariff restrictions to intra-EU trade in services to be reduced.

Taxes

2007-08: Tax system remains attractive, with only minor adjustments to be expected.

2009-11: Possibility of increased social security contributions, in order to accommodate the financial pressure expected from the ageing of the population.

Financing

2007-08: Consolidation of the banking sector likely. Adoption of the euro increases financing choices for business and reduces lending rates.

2009-11: Market for private pensions expands.

The labour market

2007-08: Wage indexation and fairly healthy economic growth lead to substantial wage increases.

2009-11: Legislation to raise the private-sector pension age may be passed.

Infrastructure

2007-08: Development to upgrade the two airports starts. Investment in new golf courses. Construction of new marinas may also begin.

2009-11: Further infrastructure investments to improve tourism product.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Belarus: Economic background

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Belarus: Economic background. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BACKGROUND

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Main economic indicators, 2005(Actual unless otherwise indicated)Real GDP growth (%)9.2Consumer price inflation (av; %)10.3Current-account balance (US$ m)469.1Exchange rate (av; BRb:US$)2,153.8Population (m)9.8Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, CountryData.The government's intrusive economic policies continue



The president, Alyaksandar Lukashenka, pursues a policy of pervasive state involvement in the economy. He has by and large followed this course since the early years of his presidency in the mid-1990s, when he announcedas the paramount goal of his administrationthe return to a Soviet-style economic system as seen in the late 1980s. Unlike in most other transition economies in the region, MrLukashenka has not encouraged any sort of restructuring of the state-dominated system, or promotion of the private sector. Instead, the Lukashenka administration bases its economic policy on consistent support for and preservation of large and obsolete state-controlled enterprises.

The government's emphasis on full employment and its resistance to large-scale privatisation have prevented the expansion of non-traditional sectors. Instead, small-scale privately owned enterprises are either forced to the margins or else pushed into the shadow economy, which is estimated to equal 15-20% of official GDP. This is nevertheless less than in many other former Soviet countries. The poor business climate in Belarus has led entrepreneurs to concentrate their efforts in retail trade, where sunk costs, and thus potential losses, are relatively low. They have largely avoided investment in manufacturing, where they are more vulnerable to unpredictable changes in official policies at the central and local levels.

In agriculture, collective and state farms are kept afloat by government subsidiesdespite their abysmal performance. Collective farms (and state-controlled industrial enterprises) are supported for political rather than economic reasons, as the president and his entourage understand that independent private producers are unlikely to add to the regime's power base. Nevertheless, even though private farms are virtually non-existent, collective farm workers cultivate small plots of land in their spare time and supply a disproportionately large share of total agricultural produce.

Privatisation continues to be resisted

Despite periodic Russian pressure on Belarus to sell its key industrial sector assets, Mr Lukashenka continues to resist anything more than limited privatisation. He originally indicated that major petrochemical enterprises would be sold in 2003, but then refused to agree to sales terms that prospective buyers would accept. Russian oil and gas companies are in theory interested in the acquisition of oil refineries and pipeline networks to control all stages of the export of their products to Europe. However, they refuse to agree to the restrictive terms on offer, including the acceptance of only minority stakes and wage and job guarantees for employees.

Even enterprises in which the government owns less than a majority stake are still technically subject to state intervention. The latter can be exercised through a "golden share" rule, which gives the government majority voting rights in decision-making, even if it owns only a small number of shares. In 2004 MrLukashenka extended the golden share to include even those enterprises in which the government had no ownership claim at all. Based on a vaguely worded presidential decree, the government can now justify intervening in the affairs of any privatised enterprise. This is likely to have further exacerbated the hesitancy of private investors.

Comparative economic indicators, 2005Belarus(a)Russia(a)Poland(a)Lithuania(a)Ukraine(a)GDP (US$ bn)29.6763.6303.225.682.9GDP per head (US$)3,0325,3477,9437,481(b)1,773GDP per head (US$ at PPP)7,67010,89412,752(b)14,313(b)6,802Consumer price inflation (av; %)10.312.72.12.713.5Current-account balance (US$ bn)0.583.6-4.3-1.82.5Current-account balance (% of GDP)1.610.9-1.4-7.03.1Exports of goods fob (US$ bn)16.1243.695.811.835.0Imports of goods fob (US$ bn)-16.6-125.3-98.5-14.7-36.2External debt (US$ bn)4.4(b)214.8(b)105.5(b)11.9(b)25.9(b)Debt-service ratio, paid (%)2.0(b)14.2(b)21.5(b)20.2(b)13.6(b)(a) Actual. (b) Economist Intelligence Unit estimates.Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, CountryData.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
BNE hires consultant to boost results. Check it out:
(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Buffalo Niagara Enterprise has hired a New York-based global consulting firm to help develop a focused marketing campaign and drum up leads for economic development projects, the organization said Wednesday.



The region's privately funded marketing organization is paying a retainer of more than $140,000 to Development Counsellors International, a 46-year-old economic development advisory firm. That's 5 percent of BNE's budget.

Officials say the firm's job is to assess how companies in four selected industries view Western New York, to help Buffalo Niagara Enterprise promote the region to those industries, and to solicit new businesses to consider expanding or relocating to the area.

The 7-year-old organization on Tuesday released its annual report, touting 38 "wins" in its fiscal year that ended June 30. (See accompanying chart on Page B8.) Those wins resulted in $258.2 million in local investments, as well as the retention of 1,384 jobs and the creation of 2,052 jobs, officials claimed.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise sought to portray its record as rivaling or even beating those of four fast-growing cities -- some of which have worked with DCI. But the consulting firm held off on its own praise Wednesday.

"We don't know yet whether there are improvements that can be made," said Chairman Ted M. Levine. "Part of our job is to be honest critics. I don't think we can say right now if these guys are doing a good job because we don't know."

Founded in 1960, DCI describes itself as the world's only economic development and tourism marketing consulting firm. It has worked for public- or private-sector clients in all 50 states, two U.S. territories, and more than two dozen foreign countries on six continents.

In all, it has 396 customers, including 41 state governments and 150 U.S. cities. It helped four other counties and several cities in New York state, and is now working in the Hudson Valley, Levine said. It's also helping National Grid Plc's U.S. subsidiary on an economic development marketing campaign for upstate New York.

DCI has a history with BNE, having helped develop its first general marketing plan more than five years ago in conjunction with advertising agency Eric Mower & Associates. This time, however, Levine said the work will be narrower in focus, stressing four industries selected by BNE: advanced manufacturing, back office service centers, life sciences and Canadian firms.

First, it will conduct a "perception analysis," to see how Western New York rates among U.S. and Canadian company executives and site selection consultants, when compared to other regions. The firm wants to know how these decision-makers perceive the region's strengths and weaknesses, and what impressions or misconceptions they may have.

Secondly, DCI will take BNE's strategic plan and find ways to market it, using its new slogan.

Finally, DCI will use computer modeling to identify companies in the targeted fields that may be ripe for expansion, based on their investments, employment, the location of their current sites, and recent executive changes. Then its Prospect Development Qualification (PDQ) group will call senior executives to assess their interest and set up meetings with BNE.

Levine said the service doesn't replace BNE's own efforts, but adds a new stream of leads. He said many development groups have tried just calling many companies in certain fields. But less than 10 percent of those companies are expanding at any given time, he said, so "the trick is to find them."

Also, it usually takes 10 to 15 calls to reach one of the top executives. So rather than waste BNE's staff time, the six-person PDQ group does it for them.

The PDQ feature is the consulting firm's fastest-growing service, with about 15 clients actively using it now and a total of 30 who have benefited, Levine said. With one of PDQ's first clients, DCI arranged 40 appointments, and 14 resulted in expansions or new facilities.

Still, DCI can't do it all. Levine recalled hearing a very negative comment about Buffalo from a taxi driver when he and his staff arrived. Instead, he said, it's critical for cab drivers and hotel desk attendants to be positive.

"It's not a good thing to have a taxi driver tell you the economy stinks," he said.

To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
How Are Enterprise UC and Business Process Applications Converging?. Check it out:
 
IP networking is enabling major paradigm shifts in how enterprise organizations will function in the future. While the technology will affect both the people and the business processes, the reverse is also true, i.e., the needs of the people and the business processes will dictate how the technology will be deployed and exploited.  The basic “new” infrastructure technologies that are changing how enterprise business operations will function are Internet/Web network access to people and information, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for network-based application software implementation, and wireless mobility for communicating with people and business processes. These technologies will enable business organizations of any size to operate more efficiently and cost effectively in the future. Although business process improvement objectives are not really new, just more attainable with new technology capabilities, every enterprise must face the challenge of adapting organizationally to such changes.


 
Every enterprise will have different operational needs, not only based upon the business it is in (vertical markets), but also how the organization is distributed geographically and the kind of customers it must serve. In an increasingly global economy, local market differences must be accommodated by both customer-facing staff as well as by automated self-service applications (online Web and telephone). In a distributed user environment, which includes any business process involving two or more people, IP technologies will enable centralization of application software processes, while also “virtualizing” the people components of such business processes.
 
Business Processes To Contact People
There are really two areas in evolving unified communications where business processes will benefit from the increased flexibility in making contact with people.
 
Facilitating direct people to people contact within the context of online information or automated business processes
This involves the ability to embed contact information links in any form of information, documents, pictures, etc., along with appropriate permissions for initiating different forms of contact. This is the area that Microsoft (News - Alert) is developing for its online business tools in conjunction with IP telephony technology. A contact may be a single specific individual identified in the information for “collaborative” interaction, or could be a member of a “group” of assigned, qualified people available at that moment in time to handle any questions. (Sound like a call center?)
 
Facilitating time-sensitive delivery of information to people regardless of location and modality of contact.
As automated business processes monitor and detect the need for some sort of people action, such processes will also exploit the flexibility of mobile and multimodal contacts with specific or available individuals. Example, being notified that a flight has been delayed or cancelled, or that a critical operational metric has been reached.
 
Both forms of communication activity will benefit business process performance and problem resolution by facilitating flexible and timely contacts with key personnel. Such “ROI” will pay off in enterprise “macro-productivity” involving collaborative tasks.  Identifying specific end users in an enterprise, whose job responsibilities are mission-critical, require being accessible and responsive, will be one of the top prerequisites for cost-effective UC migration planning.
 
Marty Parker’s well-attended panel session at VoiceCon Fall on migrating to UC was highlighted by the speakers from Microsoft, IBM (News - Alert), Cisco, and Nortel who underscored the need for enterprise management to prioritize the operational business application requirements selectively for those end users that will benefit from the flexibility and efficiencies of new UC functionality, particularly when they are mobile.
 
Voice/Unified Messaging, as a key component of UC, is one area that is in the midst of a challenging transition for virtualization and business process integration.  Some companies are showing the ability to make messaging a valuable part of improved business processes; these companies have typically integrated voice messaging with e-mail to create unified messaging and have extended the functionality to desktop and mobile clients.  Other companies have not made such transitions and find the voice messaging is usually declining in use, displaced by IM and e-mail.  These issues will be a focus during the upcoming IAMP Conference described below. 
 
10th Annual IAMP Conference to Highlight Free “Virtual” Sessions on Enterprise Migration to UC
 
The International Association of Messaging Professionals, an independent enterprise user group focused on the convergence of telephony and messaging, will again host several free webcast sessions at their annual conference taking place in Las Vegas, October 16-18. IT management responsible for telephony, and voice/text messaging technologies in their organizations are invited to participate free of charge. Check the IAMP Web site for more information at:
 
There are three webcasts scheduled as follows (Pacific Time):
 
Monday, October 15, 2006 – 8:15 – 9:30 AM
Keynote- Bern Elliot, Gartner (News - Alert) VP Research
“Unified Communications — What is it and why you should care?”
(Webcast information will be posted on the IAMP Web site)
 
Tuesday, October 16, 2006 – 10:45 – 12:00 Noon
“Virtual Session #1” — Provider panel discussion (hosted by Nortel)
Everything you wanted to know about migrating to UM/UC but didn’t know who to ask!
Moderated by Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Invited panelists from Avaya (News - Alert), Nortel, AVST, Microsoft, Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert), Cisco.
Click here to Register online.
 
Questions to be discussed by UC technology providers include:
  • What are the 3 biggest drivers for enterprise organizations to migrate to UM/UC? 
  • What are the 3 biggest barriers for enterprise organizations to migrate to UM/UC?
  • How important will existing enterprise text messaging server and client software technologies in choosing UM/UC solutions and what migration changes will such existing messaging technologies have to undergo?
  • How will UM and UC integrate with automated business process applications?
  • How will federated presence technology fit into UM/UC technologies for the enterprise and what impact will that have on users and on enterprise infrastructures?
  • What are the most significant changes to enterprise IT responsibilities needed for consolidating administration and end user support for UM/UC?
  • What new communication productivity metrics and tools are needed for enterprise operational management to evaluate user activity?
  • What kind of objective, external assistance do enterprise organizations need to realistically plan their migration to a UC operational environment?
 
Wednesday, October 17, 2006 – 10:15 – 12:00 Noon
“Virtual Session #2” — “Messaging Migration Customer Experience Panel”
Moderated by Marty Parker, Communication Perspectives
Invited panelists are enterprise IAMP members who have already started or are planning to start migrating their messaging systems and will report on the operational impact experienced, as well as the migration challenges they have encountered.
The audio bridge number is 1-641-696-6699 with a participant code of 101806 (the mmddyy date).
 
 
What Do You Think?
Let us know your opinion by sending us an email at [email protected], or by commenting to our new blog. (http://unified-view.blogspot.com/)
 
 
Read our articles on UC for Customer Contact applications:
The Math of Customer UC: blog (http://unified-view.blogspot.com/)
RELM Wireless Secures $5.1 Million in Federal Government Orders. Check it out:
 
RELM Wireless has received a recent boost in revenue due to federal government orders valued at $5.1 million. These sales included orders from the Department of Defense (DOD), Homeland Security, the Department of Interior (DOI) and the USDA Forest Service. Digital P25 compliant radios made up roughly 84 percent of the orders. The company anticipates that these orders will ship in the third and fourth quarters of 2006.


 
According to David Storey, president and chief executive officer of RELM Wireless, this recent activity reflects the significant progress RELM Wireless has made in securing additional federal government orders. RELM is especially gratified with the orders from DOD and Homeland Security, which represents new client penetration in 2006. Storey believes that the federal government agencies will remain a long-term source of opportunities for RELM.
 
Storey went on to add that RELM’s commitment to designing, manufacturing and delivering radios that meet or exceed the specific requirements of its customers has greatly contributed to the company’s success. RELM understands its customers’ needs and remains committed to providing the highest quality and functionality in both digital P25 and analog radios.
 
The APCO Project 25, or P25, is one in which interoperability among compliant equipment is required, regardless of the manufacturer. The project was established by the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and received approval from the US Department of Homeland Security.
 
The shift toward interoperability has gained significant momentum as a result of communications failures during the Oklahoma City bombings, 9/11 attacks and most recently Hurricane Katrina. RELM made its name with the federal government by being one of the first manufacturers to develop P25-compliant technology.
 
For almost sixty years, RELM Wireless Corp. has focused on the manufacturing and marketing of high-specification two-way communications equipment for use by public safety professionals and government agencies. RELM has also provided radios for use in a wide range of commercial and industrial applications, including disaster recovery.
 
One of the key elements for performance during a disaster, natural or otherwise, is that communication equipment is able to be used regardless of the make or model of devices associated with that equipment. In order for first responders to find their devices useful, the parties with whom they are attempting to communicate must be using devices on a similar or the same network to ensure communication is possible.
 
Introducing a standard of interoperability for devices amongst those that are charged with not only protecting the public, but also responding to those in need provides for a higher level of security and assurance when the unthinkable happens. Most likely RELM had to be the lowest bidder to win the government contracts, but the capability of the radios must be proven as well.
 
Special Attractions
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
 
 

Cocaine: A controversial name

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Cocaine: A controversial name. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--You can buy Cocaine at specific clubs, liquor stores and markets in Los Angeles and San Diego. But to find the source, you'll need to go to Murrieta.

That's where Jamey and Hannah Kirby, founders of Redux Beverages LLC, organize the marketing, sales and distribution of their new energy drink. Because of its name, the drink has generated enormous publicity since it debuted earlier this month.



"If I had a million cases, I could sell them by the end of the week. We could never have imagined being this successful so fast," said Jamey Kirby, 42, a former software executive from northern San Diego County, who started Redux last year.

Although Cocaine Energy Drink has nothing to do with the drug and contains nothing illegal, its motto claims it offers an "instant rush" and "no crash" to partiers, rock 'n' rollers and other consumers who want to go beyond coffee, Red Bull or Mountain Dew.

In fact, the entire marketing campaign, from the red can, the company motto, the Web site, www.DrinkCocaine.com, and a youth-centric Web page at myspace.com, play off the drug. Cocaine is targeting the 16- to 25-year-old age group.

Redux is registered in Nevada and lists Las Vegas as its headquarters, but Hannah Kirby said the company is operated out of Murrieta because the city has good office space and is a convenient middle ground between Los Angeles and San Diego.

The product has frustrated Los Angeles community groups who fight drug use, however, and elicited an angry response from Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, who called the drink's marketing strategy irresponsible.

"It's important that drug use of any kind is not glamorized, and this product undermines this effort," she said Wednesday during a statement.

"Cocaine has had a devastating impact on our nation and has affected everyone," added Najee Ali, an activist and director of Project Islamic Hope.

The groups plan to boycott stores that sell Cocaine.

But that reaction pales in comparison to the positive response, said Kirby, who is in New York this week to appear on TV news and entertainment shows.

"One sales rep told me he has people on the East Coast driving for a hundred miles to pick one up," Kirby said, adding that he has sold out of his first production run and begun another. Eventually, he hopes to make 150,000 cases per day.

"I chose the name because I knew it would be controversial, and controversy sells," he said. "A lot of super-right-wing groups are trying to come at us and asking about drug addiction and kids, but I think kids are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. They are not going to do cocaine because of this.

"I don't like people blaming us for the world's problems," he added.

But Cocaine will have other challenges.

Energy drinks are a $3 billion industry and growing by 50 percent a year. The category includes serious competitors such as stalwart, Red Bull; Monster, made by Corona-based Hansen Natural; and brands affiliated with major soft-drink companies.

Nevertheless, publicity and "brand awareness" don't always translate into sales, San Diego marketing consultant Liz Goodgold, owner of the Nuancing Group.

"Provocative names pique consumer interest. But you have to walk a fine line between provocative and outlandish, and I think he has crossed it," she said.

Goodgold acknowledged the name's appeal to certain segments, however.

"He's intentionally upset parents, so it will be the perfect teen drink," she said.

Kirby said Cocaine will easily find its niche.

"Most of the products out there target pro sports and athletes, so they have limited their market. We have moved into the street scene and rock 'n' roll," he explained.

The Kirbys, along with five financial partners, decided to make and sell an energy drink because of the growing popularity of this market segment.

One 8.5-ounce can -- the same size as a Red Bull -- packs a punch that is three-and-a-half times greater than a cup of coffee, the company says.

Although Redux won't reveal all of its ingredients, Kirby said Cocaine includes some of the same ingredients as other energy drinks, including Taurine, D-Carnitine, ribose, sugar and caffeine. The beverage supposedly contains a throat-numbing agent as well, although the Kirby's won't say what it is. The suggested retail price is $1.99.

So far, it can be found only in select stores in New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, and in some nightclubs, but the Kirbys are working on distribution agreements for Florida, Texas, Arizona, Oregon and northern California.

They also hope to have it in stores in the Temecula area in the next few weeks. They have no timetable for the rest of the Inland region.

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Study: Recession not expected

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Study: Recession not expected. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--California's economy may continue to slow over the next year as the housing market cools and job growth tapers off, according to a UCLA study released today.



But the Inland region may not be as harmed by the slowdown as other parts of the state, a UCLA economist said.

"The Inland Empire is experiencing the rosiest end of these trends," said Ryan Ratcliff, an economist with UCLA Anderson Forecast. "Construction growth is still strong in the Inland Empire, and there's been an uptick in manufacturing jobs."

Ratcliff said a recent exodus of residents from the coastal counties inland has resulted in a strong market in the region, unlike any other area in the state.

"But nonetheless, it is slowing down from what i t was last year," Ratliff said.

UCLA economists expect the production of new homes in the Inland region to fall next year as a result of slowing sales. That also means fewer construction jobs -- which have spurred much of the region's recent job growth -- will be added.

The forecast center predicts a statewide loss of 100,000 construction jobs between the start of 2006 and the end of 2008, or about a 10 percent drop in total construction employment.

A slowing real estate market also is harming real estate brokers and lenders, they noted.

A bit more foreboding for the Inland region, Ratcliff said, is that in Riverside County, new homes made up 40 percent of new sales, but prices continue to rise.

He said it's uncertain whether that data means falling house prices in the rest of the state haven't caught up to Riverside County or that conditions in the county are still favorable compared to the rest of the state.

Although the UCLA report calls for a statewide slowdown in the real estate market, economists do not expect a full recession. Ratcliff said recessions in the past have been caused by a parallel decline in two economic sectors, never by housing alone, and currently the rest of the economy looks healthy.

Still, though sales of new and existing homes have plummeted 30 percent in California since their September 2005 highs, there is no reason to expect a precipitous decline in home prices, the forecasters said.

UCLA economist Edward Leamer said builders who want to eliminate rising inventories are the first to cut prices, often through upgrades and subsidized financing rather than outright price reductions.

He said he doesn't expect home prices to fall more than about 5 percent over the next couple of years but may hold steady for five to 10 years.

One source of uncertainty in the UCLA forecast, Ratcliff said, is what toll the loss of rising home values will have on consumer spending by sapping feelings of wealth and making it more difficult for consumers to tap the equity from their homes to pay for large purchases.

By Josh Brown and Leslie Berkman

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Shift Adds Execs

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Shift Adds Execs. Check it out:
 
By CINDY WAXER
TMCnet Contributing Editor
 
Shift Networks is beefing up its operation with the addition of several new executives. A VoIP provider, the company is bolstering its senior management team in an effort to execute on its strategy for national expansion. The expanded team addresses all aspects of Shift's customer lifecycle, from sales and marketing through technology and network operations, customer support and retention, and will ensure Shift delivers on its promise of providing improved service to the Canadian small and medium business market.


 
"Shift's ability to attract such a wealth of senior-level talent in a highly competitive labour market speaks to the scope of our opportunity to transform the way businesses in Canada purchase and use telecommunications services," said Trent Johnsen, Shift Networks' president and CEO. "I'm excited to welcome all of our new team members and look forward to working with them as we continue to expand our subscriber base, strengthen our service offering and deliver an enhanced customer experience."
 
Shift's expanded management team now includes Keith Bradley, vice president, sales (Western Region). Bradley joins Shift from TELUS Mobility, where his most recent role was director of corporate sales for British Columbia. Keith has worked in the telecommunications industry since 1992 and has extensive experience in direct sales to the Canadian small and medium-sized business markets.
 
Also joining the company Daniel Gibbons, vice president, marketing communications. Gibbons joins Shift from SingleView Ltd., a consulting firm providing marketing analytics and business intelligence services to enterprise and mid-market clients. Daniel has substantial new media marketing experience, having founded and subsequently sold a successful email and Internet marketing company, which provided services to enterprise organizations across North America.
 
David Kozicz, vice president, client services, joins Shift from TELUS, where he was director of client services and project management, responsible for provisioning and customer care in the enterprise segment in BC. Prior to TELUS, David was director, global technology sourcing and alliance partnerships with CIBC, and also spent five years consulting to Fortune 500 companies throughout North America with A.T. Kearney, a Chicago-based tier one management company.
 
And finally, Wes Semeniuk, vice president, network operations, joins Shift from TELUS Communications where he was responsible for product management following his tenure as principal of the professional services group at TELUS Mobility.
 
------
Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.
Printing plan afoul of rules: Missourian negotiated without bids.. Check it out:
(Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Officials at the University of Missouri-Columbia journalism school planned to contract with an area newspaper company to print its morning newspaper without a public bid process and later rigged a request for bids to favor the same vendor.



Public documents, including e-mail exchanges between Columbia Missourian General Manager Dan Potter and employees with the Jefferson City News Tribune, confirm the Missourian was poised to sign a contract in early August with the capital-city newspaper to print the journalism school's six-days-a-week lab paper. The Missourian is part of the MU School of Journalism but is published by the independent Missourian Publishing Association Inc.

As officials sought final approval to execute the contract, Vice-Chancellor Jackie Jones flagged the plan and ordered the school to work with the MU procurement office to develop a bid procedure.

Late last month, the school announced it would solicit bids for an outside contractor to print the paper to avoid the cost of replacing a "decades-old press" and to introduce more color to the newspaper pages.

An Aug. 28 request for proposals, or RFP, outlined requirements that favored the News Tribune, including certain print specifications and an unusual stipulation that the printer would help launch a regional advertising network to compete in Cole, Osage, Boone and other counties in the combined circulation areas of both newspapers.

The Missourian's RFP apparently went to four newspaper printing plants within a 50-mile radius of Columbia, including the Columbia Daily Tribune. After studying the RFP, Tribune Associate Publisher Vicki Russell sent the university procurement office a five-page letter that questioned the legality of MU's publicly funded joint advertising venture with a private enterprise and other aspects of the request.

Messages exchanged from May to August by employees at the Missourian and the News Tribune document a business relationship that appeared headed toward marriage weeks before a request for bids was announced. The negotiations reached a point at which start dates were set and data files were exchanged.

Potter on June 12 wrote to Mike Vivion of the News Tribune, "I'm kind of thinking of this timetable: We'd move our printing by Aug. 1 and no later than Sept. 1 to your plant. I'll stay in touch. I'm excited about all the synergies we can create in advertising."

A few days later, Potter told Vivion he would soon meet with MU Dean of Journalism Dean Mills for final approval.

"I see no problem in getting his agreement on this because I already outlined the overall plan and got his agreement. I just need to give him the details," Potter wrote.

Mills did not respond to a request for a telephone interview but answered written questions submitted to the MU News Bureau. He said in an e-mail that Missourian officials had done nothing wrong and that the journalism school had no relationship with the News Tribune before the RFP was issued.

Among the key components of the request for bids a point that spurred questions by the Tribune was the requirement for the regional advertising alliance. In response to Russell's questioning, MU buyer Joetta Gross said the Missourian requested the requirement because it would "greatly broaden their overall business strategy."

Thirty percent of the bid score would be based on the advertising alliance requirement, and 50 percent would reflect the best printing price.

State law says that for contracts of more than $25,000, state agencies and institutions must advertise for bids in at least two daily newspapers and select the "lowest and best bidder." The successful bid for the Missourian contract likely would far exceed that threshold.

Purchasing guidelines on the university procurement Web site mirror state law and include policies that give suppliers "equal consideration" and a requirement that "a sufficient number of vendors should be contacted/solicited to ensure fair and open competition in the procurement process."

MU scuttled the RFP on Sept. 13, five days before the bid deadline, with a message posted on its procurement Web site that said, "additional information will be provided in a separate addendum to follow."

MU Chief Procurement Officer Bill Cooper said Missourian employees apparently "were unaware of the principles of procurement that would govern this type of a buy." Cooper said he did not read the RFP before it was issued because the contract fell below a review limit of $1 million.

After the RFP was issued, vendor feedback made it clear that it was flawed and needed amending to create an "equal competitive situation," Cooper said.

"It's not unusual to amend if the supplier community says, Hey, you've kind of missed the boat on this one,' " he said. "We are most confident that this new solicitation will accomplish what we need to do."

An amended RFP will be issued in "a day or two," Cooper said.

Tribune Associate Publisher Russell said she's "grateful the university chose to re-issue the RFP," but wondered if the process had already been compromised.

"I'm not sure how the university will level the playing field for all vendors," she said. "Managers at the Missourian and the Jefferson City newspaper obviously worked out conditions of the original RFP to favor Jeff City. They agreed to pricing, deadlines and various technical details weeks before the first RFP went out."

Copyright (c) 2006, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
HP Offers New Entertainment Products in Time for Holiday Season. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) today introduced a new line of computing products aimed at making it easy for people to enjoy high-definition entertainment.

In time for the holiday season, HP introduced three high-definition products based on the HD-DVD digital media format, making HP one of the first companies to announce products that deliver a high-definition experience.

The products include a 17-inch widescreen diagonal HD-DVD notebook PC with a piano-black HP Imprint finish and patterned design; an HD-DVD Media Center TV PC with 7.1 surround sound; and an HD-DVD external drive for PCs -- all of which can deliver the superior picture quality associated with high-definition movies.



HP also introduced two home storage products that are ideal for storing high-definition movies and rich digital content such as music and photos. The HP Media Vault, the first in a new product category for the company, is an expandable storage product that allows consumers to easily back up and share movies, music and photos across home networks. The HP Pocket Media Drive is an ultra-portable, 2.5-inch USB hard drive in 80 gigabyte (GB) and 120 GB(1) capacities.

Additionally, the company announced a stylish, versatile handheld, the HP iPAQ Travel Companion, which couples GPS (global positioning system) navigation with entertainment and communication features, such as an MP3 player, to keep consumers entertained and connected when on the go.

"The digital lifestyle is here, and HP is making it easy for customers to experience high-definition entertainment that is compelling and fulfilling," said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. "HP, with its heritage in digital technology, is at the forefront of simplifying the experience. Today, we're extending that leadership to the high-def lifestyle."

The news was announced at the Manhattan Center in New York as a showcase of the high-definition lifestyle.

"Demand for high-definition products is booming and HP is targeting this growth segment with its product lineup and latest introductions," said Danielle Levitas, vice president, Consumer and Broadband Markets group, IDC. "High-definition TVs and media centers, coupled with compelling HD content, bring a great experience to consumers."

HP takes the high-def road

HP's 2006 holiday lineup of high-definition products includes:

-- HP Pavilion dv9000t Series Entertainment Notebook PC -- which makes it easy to handle demanding applications with its combination of innovative digital entertainment features and blazingly fast multi-tasking performance via Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo mobile technology.(2) Cinema-quality viewing is delivered with a 17-inch diagonal high-definition BrightView widescreen display with optional HP Ultra BrightView dual-lamp technology. An integrated HDMI port enables true HD content playback on a high-definition TV or monitor.(3)

-- HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7600n Series PC -- which takes movie watching to a new level with its HD-DVD high-definition DVD player, Intel Viiv(TM) technology and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, wireless home networking,(4) and 7.1 surround sound. Users can enjoy high-definition movie playback(3) with six times better resolution than standard DVD. In addition, the built-in TV tuner NPSC and personal video recorder allow users to simply watch, pause, rewind and record live television. The new HP Pavilion Media Center TV PC paired with HP's new w22 flat panel HD-ready monitor completes the HD movie experience.

-- HP High Definition DVD-ROM Drive -- which provides the superior picture quality of high-def movies(5) in a portable device for use with widescreen notebooks. The external drive offers advanced interactivity; for example, users can access the Internet(6) and chat while watching a movie, or play games that are seamlessly integrated into a movie. Backwards compatible, the drive not only supports new HD DVDs, but also regular CDs and DVDs.

-- HP Media Vault mv2010/mv2020 -- which allows consumers to easily protect and share digital content across multiple PCs. With its user-friendly HP-designed interface, even the least technical family members can enjoy the same movie, photos, music or video by streaming the file from the Media Vault to different computers or networked TVs throughout the home. With a capacity that expands up to a staggering 1.2 terabytes, the Media Vault can store up to 500,000 photos, 16,000 hours of music or 340 hours of video.(7)

-- HP Pocket Media Drive -- which makes sharing easy. The sleek, ultra-portable, 2.5-inch USB hard drive provides the storage needed to take digital photos, recorded TV programs and professional presentations on the go. The drive easily works with any USB-enabled PC or notebook and also fits into select HP Pavilion PCs with the exclusive HP Pocket Media Drive bay for a clutter-free desktop. The drives are now available with 80 GB or 120 GB.

Navigate your way to entertainment

The slim and sleek HP iPAQ rx5000 series Travel Companion offers GPS navigation, digital entertainment and mobile connectivity.(8) For easy, turn-by-turn navigation, the device comes installed with TomTom NAVIGATOR 6 software and maps. Additional software to simplify travels includes weather, traffic, world clocks and points of interest.

In addition, the HP iPAQ rx5000 series Travel Companion allows people to travel with their music, view photos and videos, surf the web(8) and play games. Microsoft(R) Outlook Mobile keeps users' calendars, contacts and tasks up to date so they can conveniently stay connected to important people and information via Wi-Fi hotspots, Bluetooth(TM) wireless technology or USB.

Tech support just got personal

HP also is improving personal tech support with a new support capability called HP Instant Care. HP agents use the Internet to remotely solve a wide range of PC and printer issues while the customer sits back and watches. It also helps prevent problems by checking the health of the product and identifying additional issues to help avoid future calls. Based on technology created by HP's enterprise group, this help-desk technology affords consumers a secure environment, which they can opt out of at anytime. In the future, HP Instant Care is planned to encompass digital entertainment systems, TVs, cameras and more.

Rounding out the holiday lineup

HP also introduced its fall consumer PC lines, including HP Media Center, HP Slimline PC, HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario desktop PCs, 19- and 22-inch diagonal widescreen LCD monitors, HP Notebook QuickDock, and new accessories. With its ultra-wide angle, the HP 2-Megapixel Webcam takes great still pictures and high-quality video, and includes a versatile clip for easily attaching to all LCD monitors.

Additionally, HP will soon ship two new digital entertainment centers that combine the best of PC and advanced audio/video features to offer consumers a superb home entertainment experience. These advanced systems feature high-definition TV tuners, advanced audio features and digital video recorders designed for the living room. These products build on HP's launch last month of the wireless, 37-inch diagonal HP MediaSmart High-Definition LCD TV -- the industry's first TV to connect home networks to home entertainment systems.

More information on HP's new digital entertainment products is available at www.hp.com/go/yourlifeistheshow.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2006, HP revenue totaled $90.0 billion. More information about HP is available at www.hp.com.

(1) For hard drives, 1 GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual formatted capacity is less.

(2) Dual core is a new technology designed to improve the performance of certain software products. Not all customers or software applications will necessarily benefit from use of this technology. Intel EM64T requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, operating system, device drivers and applications enabled for Intel EM64T. Processor will not operate (including 32-bit operation) without an Intel EM64T-enabled BIOS. Performance will vary depending on hardware and software configurations. See www.intel.com/info/em64t for more information, including details on which processors support Intel EM64T or consult with a system vendor for more information.

(3) As HD DVD is a new format containing new technologies, certain disc, digital connection, compatibility and/or performance issues may arise, and do not constitute defects in the product. Flawless playback on all systems is not guaranteed. In order for some HD DVD titles to play, they may require an HDMI digital connection and a display may require HDCP support. Blu-ray Discs cannot be played on this notebook PC.

(4) Wireless home network sold separately.

(5) As HD DVD is a new format containing new technologies, certain disc, digital connection, compatibility and/or performance issues may arise, and do not constitute defects in the product. Flawless playback on all systems even if the above requirements are met is not guaranteed. For additional information, please visit http://www.hp.com/support/HDSupport. Some future HD DVD movie titles may require your display to support HDCP enabled DVI-D or HDMI connection only, and may not be viewed on an analog display. For more information, please see enclosed documentation or additional information at www.hp.com/support/HDSupport. Blu-ray Disc movies cannot be played with this drive.

(6) Internet access required and sold separately.

(7) Maximum capacity of 1.2 terabytes requires the purchase of additional storage capacity, sold separately. Photo capacity based on average compressed .jpg size of 2 MB/image @ 4 MP. Music capacity based on four minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding. Video capacity based on standard NTSC recording format. Actual recording times may vary. Actual quantities will vary depending on file types, file formats and other factors.

(8) A standard WLAN infrastructure, other Bluetooth-enabled devices, separately purchased equipment and a service contract with a wireless airtime provider may be required for applicable wireless communication. Wireless Internet use requires a separately purchased service contract. Check with service provider for availability and coverage. Not all web content available.

Intel, Core and Viiv are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Bluetooth is a trademark owned by its proprietor and used by Hewlett-Packard Company under license.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the achievement of expected results and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the risks described in HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006, and other reports filed after HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2005. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

(C) 2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Wansbeck District Council Deploys Alcatel's IP Network. Check it out:
 
Alcatel announced Thursday that it was tapped by the Wansbeck District Council in the North East of England to deploy the company's IP network in order to beef up community safety through CCTV surveillance.


 
Alcatel (News - Alert) joined forces with business partner Rapier Systems to install the system. The service will also include free VoIP-based internal calling for Wansbeck's 500 employees.
 
The converged IP network runs through South East Northumberland and also links DataBanks in Newcastle. The network will be powered by Alcatel's OmniSwitch network infrastructure technology, bundled with the Alcatel's OmniPCX Enterprise IP-PBX (News - Alert) phone system.
 
"We were impressed by the overall performance of the Alcatel offering, particularly the integration between its voice and data products," said Wansbeck District Council's chief IT officer John Kelly in a statement. "The new solution allows staff all over the district to communicate more effectively with one another, improving both their own productivity and Wansbeck's overall ability to deliver a high standard of service to the community."
 
The new partnership will also allow neighboring authorities to now have access to a wireless data network through Alcatel's OmniSwitch 6600, 6800 and 7700 data switches. This will re-route Wansbeck's traffic in case there is a network problem.
 
"More and more organizations are realizing that convergence isn't just about saving money, it's about overhauling and improving internal processes through greater collaboration and increased access to resources," said Graeme Allan, country director for UK and Ireland, Alcatel enterprise activities. "Wansbeck is a good example of a forward-thinking council committed to providing the highest standard of service to its citizens, and the installation serves as an excellent blueprint that other public sector organizations should seek to follow."
 
Alcatel also announced today that it signed an agreement with ATD Quart Monde, a world anti-poverty organization, and Data Telecom Service (DTS), an Internet service provider, to supply broadband Internet access to the deprived people of Antananarivo in Madagascar.
 
Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel will help establish IT discovery and training programs for people between the ages of 16 and 25 years old in very disadvantaged areas.
 
Alcatel
 
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.
Ericsson Creates More Business Units. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ericsson, the world's leading telecom end-to-end solutions provider has disclosed that Ericsson is implementing a more customer-oriented organization with three business units, each optimized for its specific market segment.



According to a release made available to THISDAY, Ericsson is set to leverage its position in mobile networks, services, transmission and expand its leadership in next generation converging IP-networks with a focus on multimedia applications and services.

Svanberg stated that Ericsson sees opportunities to further strengthen its market and technology leadership by developments in the broadband industry - fixed as well as mobile - coupled with the move toward next generation networks that will create immense possibilities for richer multimedia services that will accelerate opportunities for growth. Multimedia is an area with obvious business opportunities and potentially a powerful driver for increasing network capacity and investments by operators.

According to Svanberg, the new organization will have an even stronger customer focus and pave the way for continuously improving efficiency in all areas. Also, to further strengthen Ericsson's technology leadership, an additional 500 engineers will be recruited to accelerate research, especially in the area of next generation IP-networks and multimedia technology.

The new Ericsson organization will have three business units; Networks, Global Services and Multimedia.

The integration of Ericsson's network operations into the Networks business unit, according to Svanberg, will enable a focused solutions offering that supports converging and more cost-efficient operations. The new unit will include mobile and fixed access, core and transmission networks as well as next generation IP-networks. Ericsson is the world leader in mobile networks and has a leading position in fixed networks. The new unit will have approximately 21, 500 employees.

The Global Services business unit comprises the professional services and network rollout units and will continue to support operators with technology evolution and efficient operations. It provides operators with economies of scale and proven expertise as well as first class operations with attendant considerable savings. Through its Global Services operations, Ericsson provides round-the-clock support to networks with 725 million subscribers and manages networks with 65 million subscribers. This unit, established in 1999 is unaffected by the re-organization. It has approximately 23,000 employees worldwide.

The new Multimedia Business unit said Svanberg will comprise the multimedia units within the former systems business unit, enterprise business unit, Ericsson mobile platforms and Ericsson Consumer & Enterprise Laboratories respectively. The new unit will have approximately 4,000 employees.

Ericsson Nigeria corroborating Ericsson's positioning to sustain its leadership and drive innovation in the telecom industry, added that "in the multimedia business, we have the content and application management, the technical excellence and execution resources as well as strong relationships with content providers and operators. And let's not forget another strong asset, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and our close relationship with Sony - which further strengthens our consumer perspective for superior end-to-end offerings".

The new organization, said Edwall will further consolidate Ericsson's ability to create synergies with telecom operators in Nigeria and elsewhere providing them with leading-edge expertise and experience and in turn, enabling them provide leading edge service, cost-effectively.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Keynote Speaker to Connect GIS with Unified Emergency Response Preparedness. Check it out:
REDLANDS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- ESRI announces that James Lee Witt will deliver the keynote address on the role of geographic information system (GIS) technology in emergency response preparedness at the ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit and ESRI Health GIS Conference. These concurrent events will be held October 23-26, 2006, in Denver, Colorado. Witt is the chief executive officer of the public safety and crisis management consulting firm James Lee Witt Associates (JLWA), a part of GlobalOptions Group, Inc.



Witt's keynote presentation will address such topics as ad hoc analysis, assembling appropriate information and data, and communicating information in a new way. Attendees will see firsthand how a virtual command center can work and how GIS plays a critical role in producing real-time operating pictures and information for responding to events.

Witt served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 1993 to 2001. While at FEMA, Witt was the visionary and architect of national government programs related to emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery, and he built expertise in integrating community-based disaster management with national emergency management strategy. JLWA is currently advising Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco on the long-term recovery effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"James Lee Witt's extensive background in emergency management will provide attendees with valuable insight for developing crisis management strategies," says Russ Johnson, ESRI's manager for public safety and homeland security solutions.

In addition to Witt's keynote address, two panel discussions in the Plenary Session will focus on the many different organizations that must participate to achieve effective planning and delivery of emergency response, whether it is to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, or act of terrorism, and how GIS can play a major role in accelerating the process and producing optimal outcomes. The presentations will highlight some of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2 as they apply to common elements of homeland security. The morning panel discussion on incident management will be moderated by Ronny J. Coleman, former state fire marshal for the State of California, former chief deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and currently business development manager of Emergency Services Consulting, Inc. The afternoon panel discussion will focus on the role of GIS in bringing together and sharing data and will be moderated by Richard Andrews, former director of the California Office of Emergency Services and advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, Redlands, California.

The two-and-one-half-day ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit will also feature workshops on GIS portals and interoperability topics for homeland security solutions. It will be held concurrently with the ESRI Health GIS Conference, a colloquium for those in health, hospital systems, and scientific research interested in a range of GIS applications from community health to global systems for disease surveillance and spatial awareness. Sessions at both conferences are available to all attendees, and there will be a unified exhibit area to bring people together from peer organizations.

Both conferences will be held October 23-26; the registration deadline is October 6. For additional information and to register, visit www.esri.com/hssummit or www.esri.com/healthgis.

Founded in 1969, ESRI (www.esri.com) is the world leader in the GIS software industry. ESRI offers innovative solutions that help users create, manage, analyze, and display information to make timely decisions and solve problems they encounter every day. ESRI's comprehensive product line ranges from desktop GIS to GIS for the enterprise.
M&M buys German forging firm Jeco. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has struck a deal to buy out German forging company Jeco Holdings in the largest overseas deal in the auto component space so far.

M&M, through its component arm Mahindra Systems and Automotive Technologies, now rechristened Systech, acquired a 67.9% stake in German forging company Jeco Holdings, one of Germany's top five forgings companies, for an undisclosed amount. The enterprise value of the firm has been estimated at about e140m (Rs 830 crore), making it the largest outbound deal.



Jeco Holdings has three plants in Germany with a total capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum and a turnover of e180m. However, there is no clarity on how much M&M is paying for its 67.9% share of Jeco's total equity. Kotak Investment Banking was the principal advisor to M&M on this deal.

M&M plans to integrate this company with its subsidiary Mahindra Automotive Steels (MASPL) at a later date and is currently in discussions with the Indian regulators to chart out a course of action for the same. MASPL holds M&M other forgings interests like the Chakan unit acquired from Amforge in '05.

"Jeco is a profitable company with a strong customer base and good capabilities for innovation so this is a sound investment in terms of returns to our shareholders. Jeco's presence in the European forgings market will help us build a global business in the forgings market," said Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of M&M. Mr Hemant Luthra, president of Systech added that "Jeco's assets, in terms of machinery is perfectly complimentary to what we have in Amforge and Stokes, giving us a global platform in Germany, UK and India to meet customer demands."

Jeco manufactures forgings for gear boxes, engine and axle parts, hubs, gears and piston heads and its activities are concentrated on the truck, bus and trailer market. Its main customers include DaimlerChrysler Group, ZF Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt.

"The cost scenario for our business is difficult in Europe so we were looking for a strategic partner to tie-up with. We see immense potential in our alliance with M&M as it is a technologically competent company with a strong base in India," said Mr Oliver Scholz, member, supervisory board of JECO Holdings. "M&M's strategy for Jeco seems fairly straight forward. It will use Jeco for all the high-end work as European clients tend to be picky about where their critical parts are engineered. It may move some of the back-end and low-technology business to India to rationalise costs," said an industry analyst.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
AMD clinches major chip supply deal. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US microprocessor manufacturer AMD made another breakthrough in China yesterday, with the country's second-largest PC maker agreeing to install the firm's chips in its computers.

The US chipmaker yesterday clinched a strategic agreement with Founder Technology, China's second-largest PC vendor, under which the Chinese computer maker is expected to launch AMD64 processor-based desktop PCs throughout China early next month. Founder's decision to use AMD chips is seen as a major breakthrough for the US firm, with the world's second-largest chipmaker now trying to supply chips to all of China's major PC manufacturers.



"It is a milestone and an historic moment for AMD in China. It is one more demonstration that industry and customers are increasingly seeing the value that our products offer," said Henri Richard, AMD's executive vice-president and chief sales and marketing officer.

In 2004, AMD began to co-operating with Lenovo, China's biggest and the world's third-largest computer maker, which uses AMD chips in 80 per cent of its consumer desktop computers. Earlier this year, AMD clinched a similar deal with Tsinghua Tongfang, China's third-largest computer manufacturer and the nation's second-largest home PC brand.

Tongfang has so far launched nine new commercial and consumer PC models based on AMD Athlon 64 X2, AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Sempron processors.

Dell Inc, the world's largest computer maker, announced in May that it would start using AMD microprocessors in some of its high-end servers, a major breakthrough for AMD, which had little presence in the server market until it released its Opteron processor in 2003.

AMD's Opteron Dual-Core processors will be offered in Dell's multiprocessor servers for the first time by the year's end. Dell previously relied exclusively on chips from AMD's larger rival, Intel Corp.

HP, the world's second-largest PC maker, already uses AMD chips in 60 per cent of its consumer desktop computers sold in China.

Yesterday's agreement with Founder will begin with desktop systems and gradually expand to cover the notebook and server markets, Richard said, although he did not elaborate on when this would occur.

AMD has gained some ground in the consumer desktop computers and servers segments as it strives to catch up with archrival Intel.

But it still needs to make breakthroughs in the notebook and enterprise desktop computer segments, where most PC makers have yet to include AMD chips in their products.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Marsh, Yale and Ceres Join To Educate Corporate Directors About The Risks, Opportunities Posed By Climate Change; Collaboration lauded by President Clinton at Clinton Global Initiative. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NEW YORK, Sep 21, 2006 (Collegiate Presswire via COMTEX) --Three leading U.S. organizations have announced a unique collaborative effort to educate hundreds of independent corporate board members about the potential liabilities and strategic business opportunities global climate change can create for companies. The announcement was made at a plenary session of the 2006 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, being hosted here this week by former President Bill Clinton.



The collaboration draws together institutions with complementary expertise in the area of climate change: Marsh, the world's leading risk and insurance services firm; Yale University, one of the nation's leading academic institutions; and Ceres, the nation's largest coalition of investors and environmental groups working with companies on environmental and social issues.

"Increasingly, corporate leaders are asking us to help them better understand their total spectrum of risk, and how it affects their overall business strategies," said Brian Storms, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh. "Aligning with Yale and Ceres to educate top corporate leaders about one of the most critical business risks of our time demonstrates our strong commitment to addressing this important issue, as well as our growing focus on delivering world-class risk advisory services."

Many companies understandably focus on avoiding the liabilities related to climate change. However, Storms believes there are easily as many opportunities associated with climate change. "Those companies that understand true enterprise risk will be the ones that seize upon the growth prospects that threats like climate change create," he said. "In fact, as more companies have begun to understand this and seek advice, we're seeing increased business."

Initial training of more than 200 independent U.S. board members will begin this winter through a newly created curriculum - the Sustainable Governance Forum. The training sessions will be offered across the country through September 2008. Marsh, Yale and Ceres are combining their intellectual capital and research to develop the training, with a $250,000 contribution by Marsh being used to produce the materials.

"This training program will prepare corporate directors for what is perhaps the biggest challenge companies will face in the 21st century," said Ceres President Mindy S. Lubber, who also directs the $3 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk. "Major investors are increasingly demanding that companies sharpen their focus on the impacts from climate change, whether from new regulations, physical changes, or growing global demand for low-carbon technologies. This program will help ensure that independent directors ask the tough, smart questions of the companies they oversee."

Lubber said focusing on climate is the first step in educating corporate directors on a broad array of environmental and social issues businesses will face in the coming years. "As competition for business resources intensifies - from materials to labor, water to oil - this program will work to help board members address these challenges," she said.

The concept for the new collaboration took shape at a high-level conference on climate change hosted late in 2005 by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The school has long been committed to advancing rigorous science on climate change and has recently undertaken new initiatives to disseminate this science to major decision makers, including the corporate directors addressed by this new collaboration. The full program of action from Yale is described in a recently published book by Yale Associate Dean Dan Abbasi, entitled, "Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (http://environment.yale.edu/climate/).

"Climate change is no longer the purview of scientists only. The widespread ramifications of unchecked climate change require that more leaders in our society understand its implications," said Yale's Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, James Gustave Speth.

"Corporate directors are going to need a strategic and analytical underpinning to navigate the transformations that climate change will require in their businesses in the coming years. These changes offer great economic opportunity to those directors who act in a timely way. As a result of its combined academic, non-governmental and corporate leadership, our new initiative will be well positioned to deliver needed training and support to participating corporations," said Speth.

Initially, the training will have a U.S. focus and be made available to directors of Fortune 1000 companies, but will eventually be offered to board members worldwide. Courses and materials have been designed to provide insights into practical financial, legal, business and investor perspectives about the effects of climate change on corporations.

Marsh, Yale and Ceres officials say they would welcome assistance and additional partnerships to help further their efforts to engage the world's top corporate leaders on the subject of climate change as a matter of corporate governance.

About Marsh

Marsh, the world's leading risk and insurance services firm, has approximately 26,000 employees and annual revenues approaching $5 billion. The firm provides advice and transactional capabilities to clients in over 100 countries. Marsh is a unit of Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC), a global professional services firm with approximately 55,000 employees and annual revenues of approximately $12 billion. MMC is also the parent company of Guy Carpenter, the world's leading risk and reinsurance specialist; Kroll, the world's leading risk consulting company; Mercer, a major global provider of human resource and specialty consulting services; and Putnam Investments, one of the largest investment management companies in the United States. Its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) is listed on the New York, Chicago, Pacific, and London stock exchanges. MMC's website address is www.mmc.com. Marsh's web site address is www.marsh.com.

About Yale

The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies is a graduate and professional school within Yale University that provides teaching, research and outreach in broad areas of environmental science, policy and management to some 200 candidates for master's degrees and 75 doctoral students. For more information, visit http://environment.yale.edu.

About Ceres

Ceres is a national coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of more than 50 leading investors who collectively manage more than $3 trillion of assets. Earlier this year, Ceres issued a report evaluating 100 leading global companies on their climate change governance practices. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org.

Al Modugno
Marsh
212-345-2448
http://www.mmc.com
http://environment.yale.edu
http://www.ceres.org

(C) Copyright 2006 Marsh & Collegiate Presswire. All Rights Reserved.

Venture Capital Firms K-O

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Venture Capital Firms K-O. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Kardan Technologies A subsidiary of Kardan 85, Medinat Hayehudim St., P.O. Box 4012, Business Park, Herzliya 46140 Tel: 972-9-960-2000 Fax: 972-9-960-2001 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Creating global high-tech and e-commerce companies. Kardan is also invested in Nitzanim and Concord I and II funds.



Koonras Technologies A subsidiary of Polar Investments 21 Ha'arba'a St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel.: 972-3-684-5794 Fax: 972-3-684-5713 E-mail: Avi Shachar A technology investment company focusing on start-up and early stage financing in Israeli and Israel related software, robotics, automated inspection, biotechnology and agrotechnology companies.

Koor Corporate Venture Capital The investment arm of Koor Industries Platinum House, 21 Ha'arba'ah St., Tel Aviv 64739 Tel. 972-3-6238 410 Investment focus: Telecommunications technology, internet infrastructure, enterprise software and life sciences.

LEAP Capital 14 Shenkar St., Suite 110, PO Box 12226, Herzliya 46733 Tel.: 972-9-951-4434 Fax: 972-9-951-4435 E-mail: General inquiries Investment focus: Raising capital for, and providing advice to, growth and technology companies.

LINK Technologies Israel contact: Tel: 972-9-951-8489 Fax: 972-9-958-3692 E-mail: Galit Fuhrer A joint Israeli-Japanese team linking portfolio companies to Japan and the Far East. Its focus is software, Internet and e-commerce, communication, electronics, agro-technology, medical devices and biotechnology.

Azrieli Center 1, 35th fl., Tel Aviv 67021 Tel: 972-3-696-7285 Fax: 972-3-695-5960 E-mail: [email protected] Modi Rosen, managing director Investment focus: Communication related areas including data and IP communication, Internet, e-Commerce, communication software, wireless, as well as new models for communication services.

Maoz Everest Fund Management 21 Ha'arba'a Street, Tel Aviv 64739 Tel: 972-3-685-5855 Fax: 972-3-685-8557 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Maoz Everest manages two funds - the Everest Fund LP focuses on Israeli and Israel-related investments; Everest Special Situations LP invests in distressed companies.

Marathon Venture Capital Fund Yahalom Tower, 3A Jabotinsky Rd., Ramat Gan 52520 Tel: 972 3 613 4010 Fax: 972 3 613 4011 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Early-stage high-tech companies in the data communications, Internet and intranet, electronics, robotics and automated inspection, semiconductors, biotechnology and medical devices fields.

MATI High-Tech 3 Tel Hai St., Ra'anana 45403 Tel: 972 9 760 2716 Fax:972 9 760 2245 E-mail: [email protected]

MayTree Management Group Ackerstein Bldg., 103 Medinat Hayehudim St., Herzliya Pituah Tel.: 972-9-950-5456 Fax: 972-9-950-5461 E-mail: Rafi Zitvar MayTree is a strategic partnership between Israeli financial institution Meitav, and SunTree. Investment focus: IT, telecommunications, semiconductors, robotics, energy and environment.

Medica Venture Partners Ackerstein Towers, Bldg. B, 10th Floor, 11 Hamanofim St., Herzliya Pituah 46725 POB 2206,Herzliya Pituah 46120 Tel.: 972-9-960-1900 Fax: 972-9-954-2266 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Israeli and Israel-related biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and life sciences companies at all investment stages.

Medica Investments (US & Israel) Incubation, seed and early stage financing in healthcare, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and agro-technology.

Medmax Ventures City Gate II, 22B Ben Gurion St., Herzliya 46785 Tel: 972 9 951 1990 Fax: 972 9 951 1992 Email: [email protected] Incubation, seed and early-stage financing in healthcare, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

MG Equity Partners SHAP Tower, 19 Tuval St., Diamond Exchange District, Ramat Ran Tel: 972-3-7538900 fax: 972-3-7538903 E-mail: info Investment focus: Investment banking, equity research, cross border M&A's and private equity capital to issuing clients, specializing on the LSE, AIM, and OFEX.

Millennium Materials Technologies Fund LP 40/13 Eistein St. Ramat Aviv 69101 Tel: 972-3-643-9986 Fax: 972-3-643-9987 E-mail: [email protected] Two funds, focusing on new materials and industrial process.

Mofet Technology Fund Management 11 Galgalei Haplada St. P.O. Box 12896 Herzliya Pituah 46733 Tel: 972-9-956-1290 Fax: 972-9-956-1293 E-mail: Elie Barr Investment focus: Early stage investments in the IT, Internet and intranet, data communications, electronics, software, semiconductor and medical devices fields.

Myriad Partners 13 Ramban St, Jerusalem 92422 Tel.: 972-2-567-1345 Fax: 972-2-567-1346 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: Telecom, wireless technology and Internet.

Ness Ventures The investment arm of Ness Technologies Ness Tower, Atidim, Bldg. 4, P.O.Box 58152, Tel-Aviv 61580 Tel: 972-3-7666800 Fax: 972-3-7666809 E-mail: [email protected] Investment focus: IT start-ups.

Nokia Venture Partners Israel office: Ackerstein Towers, 11 Hamenofim St. Herzlia Pituach 46120. Tel: 972-9-951-4884 Investment focus: Mobile and IP communications start-ups.

Ofer Brothers Hi-Tech A part of the Ofer Brothers Group Ramat Aviv Towers, 11th Floor, 40 Einstein St., Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv E-mail: [email protected] Tel: 972-3-643-8890 Fax: 972-3-643-6662

OphirTech A subsidiary of Polar Investments 3 Daniel Frisch St., 13th fl. Tel Aviv Tel.: 972-3-691-1911 Fax: 972-3-609-5851 E-mail: Yermi Kaplan Investment focus: Seed and early stage financing in software, telecom and wireless communications, software and data communications.

Opus Capital 2730 Sand Hill Road, Suite 150, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: 1-650-543-2900 Fax: 1-650-561-9570 Investment focus: Seed and early-stage investments in technology companies.

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Rate the company, not the stock

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Rate the company, not the stock. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Anyone wishing to follow the semiconductor sector on a regular basis, especially the flash market, knows that there is one key figure whose opinions are well worth noting: Citigroup analyst Craig Ellis. However, in the past year, he has been joined by another analyst who is also gaining a reputation as a sector expert: WR Hambrecht & Co. analyst Daniel Amir. While one could hardly compare the two investment houses in terms of size or experience of their analysts, the fact that Ellis and Amir are now classed in the same category is quite definitely an impressive achievement for the Israeli analyst, who joined WR Hambrecht in 2004, and has already become renowned worldwide for his expertise. These are some of Amir's latest recommendations:



1. DSP Group (Nasdaq: DSPG)

Recommendation - Buy

Target Price - $33; premium - 45%

Line of business: DSP Group is a fabless semiconductor company that offers chipset solutions applications for digital telephony, European digital enhanced cordless telecommunications telephony, and Bluetooth systems for voice, data, and video communication in residential, as well as small-office home-office, and small to medium enterprise environment.

DSPG should opt, in future, for large acquisitions, rather the small ones it has made up till now.

Amir: DSP Group focuses on the wireless handset niche and it has a big advantage because it controls 70% of the US market and 10% of the European market, which it entered a year and a half ago. It is a highly profitable company operating in a market that is large enough for one company to succeed, but too small for the big competitors. This field is not growing as fast as cellular handsets. DSP Group has a handsome $353 million in cash, and it generates $15 million revenue a quarter from current operations.

Globes: DSP Group predicts revenue of $227-236 million and growth of 21-26% for 2006. What do you think about this rate? DSG Group's problem is that its sector is not growing rapidly. Revenue rose handsomely, but it's rather hard to get institutions excited about the growth rate, or about the fact that the company works with cordless telephones. All in all, this is nevertheless a wonderful company, with excellent management. The way Wall Street looks at it is not their fault. In any event, I believe that DSP Group should use its cash to expand.

What kind of acquisitions?

I'm not talking about buying small technologies as it has done until now, but buying large companies with revenue, for example in wireless communications or networking, video and image processing. Things that are close to it. If the company learns how to diversify properly, I believe that this will generate more interest in it. DSP Group's share was a great disappointment this year, even though its business was pretty good. Therefore, my target price constitutes a significant premium on the current share price.

Saifun's investors know next year will be critical

2. Saifun Semiconductors Ltd. (Nasdaq:SFUN)

Recommendation: Buy

Target Price - $38; premium - 30%

Line of business: Saifun provides intellectual property solutions for the nonvolatile semiconductor memory market. Its nitride-read-only memory (NROM) technology enables semiconductor manufacturers to double and even quadruple the amount of memory that can be stored on a given area of a processor.

What's the basis for your target price for Saifun?

People investing the company today expect the company to shortly sign a large contract with a data company. If this doesn't happen, investors might be disappointed in the long term, but it's premature to talk about this. I predict that the company will have $100 million in sales next year, and I see no reason for them not to achieve this. My hope is that they'll announce a new licensing agreement with a data company during the coming quarter, as they promised would happen by year-end. I also hope that Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN) will continue to expand its collaboration with it, and that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) (HKSE: 0981) will reach the tape-out stage and make progress towards a product. Investors in Saifun know that 2007 will be critical for the company and that 2006 is a transition year.

What's critical? What does the company have to prove?

Spansion bought code licenses from Saifun, as did most other customers. Saifun has to prove that large companies are buying licenses from it in the data field too, otherwise its NROM technology will remain a niche technology. This will be proof that the technology Saifun is talking about works, because meanwhile, there's no large-scale proof. If data companies don't go in the direction Saifun expects, it will be in trouble. Meanwhile, it's very successful and innovative, and its model of selling intellectual property is very profitable and works for it.

PowerDsine should be a division of a large company. It will succeed better that way.

3. PowerDsine Ltd. (Nasdaq: PDSN)

Recommendation: Buy

Target Price - $8.50; premium - 7%

Line of business: PowerDsine designs, develops, and supplies integrated circuits, modules, and systems that enable the implementation of power-over-Ethernet (PoE) in local area networks (LANs).

In recent weeks, PowerDsine's share has skyrocketed on assessments that it is an acquisition target, or is at least in negotiations to be acquired, after it hired Citigroup (NYSE:C). Names mentioned as possible buyers include Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE:FSL), but Freescale was itself acquired by Blackstone Group LP and other private equity funds for $17.6 billion.

Amir says, I assume that Freescale is busy with internal matters, so it's no longer relevant, but I shouldn't be surprised if companies such as Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq:BRCM) or Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN) aren't interested in such a deal.

Why is an acquisition logical at all? Wouldn't it be better for PowerDsone to continue on its independent path?

With sales of $35-40 million a year, it's better for PowerDsine to be a division of a large company. It will succeed much better that way. This isn't a recommendation for every company; DSP Group or Saifun aren't right for sale, but it's true for PowerDsine. My target price of $8.50 is more or less where the share is now.

At what price could a deal be struck?

I assume that if an acquisition takes place, it will be at around $11.50 per share, not less than the IPO price. It should be borne in mind that General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) investment in PowerDsine was made at $11.20 per share, and with a 23.7% stake in the company, I don't believe that it would sell for less.

In my opinion, investors making investments now are doing so because they think the company will be sold. However, if there is no deal, in my opinion PowerDsine is definitely worth its current share price, but not more. The rumors are strong, and after I saw the response by CEO Igal Rotem, I believe that a sale is only a matter of price, and not a question of whether or not they agree to be sold. Igal doesn't conceal the fact that he's prepared to sell if the right buyer comes along.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 28, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
M&M bags German forging firm Jeco. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has struck a deal to buy out German forging company Jeco Holdings in the largest overseas deal in the auto component space so far.

M&M, through its component arm Mahindra Systems and Automotive Technologies, now rechristened Systech, acquired a 67.9% stake in German forging company Jeco Holdings, one of Germany's top five forgings companies, for an undisclosed amount. The enterprise value of the firm has been estimated at about e140m (Rs 830 crore), making it the largest outbound deal.



Jeco Holdings has three plants in Germany with a total capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum and a turnover of e180m. However, there is no clarity on how much M&M is paying for its 67.9% share of Jeco's total equity. Kotak Investment Banking was the principal advisor to M&M on this deal.

M&M plans to integrate this company with its subsidiary Mahindra Automotive Steels (MASPL) at a later date and is currently in discussions with the Indian regulators to chart out a course of action for the same. MASPL holds M&M other forgings interests like the Chakan unit acquired from Amforge in '05.

"Jeco is a profitable company with a strong customer base and good capabilities for innovation so this is a sound investment in terms of returns to our shareholders. Jeco's presence in the European forgings market will help us build a global business in the forgings market," said Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of M&M.

Mr Hemant Luthra, president of Systech added that "Jeco's assets, in terms of machinery is perfectly complimentary to what we have in Amforge and Stokes, giving us a global platform in Germany, UK and India to meet customer demands."

Jeco manufactures forgings for gear boxes, engine and axle parts, hubs, gears and piston heads and its activities are concentrated on the truck, bus and trailer market. Its main customers include DaimlerChrysler Group, ZF Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt.

"The cost scenario for our business is difficult in Europe so we were looking for a strategic partner to tie-up with. We see immense potential in our alliance with M&M as it is a technologically competent company with a strong base in India," said Mr Oliver Scholz, member, supervisory board of JECO Holdings.

"M&M's strategy for Jeco seems fairly straight forward. It will use Jeco for all the high-end work as European clients tend to be picky about where their critical parts are engineered. It may move some of the back-end and low-technology business to India to rationalise costs," said an industry analyst.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
HP, Dell, Sun Microsystems and Oracle traverse the country to hob knob with New York press and analysts. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Reporter's Notebook: Remember, remember the month of September.

That could be the theme for high-tech events in New York City in 2006, as officials from HP, Sun Microsystems, Dell and Oracle all traveled to New York to tout new wares and curry the favor of east coast press and analysts.

HP unveiled new PCs and a new family of storage servers at separate press events in Manhattan.

The events moved like clockwork, with HP officials portraying the company's strengths in making enterprise-class computers and storage servers.

Unfortunately, the company's boardroom shenanigans overshadowed its technological accomplishments by a long shot.

But that's a whole other story.

Dell's D-Day

Dell's technology day on Sept. 12 proved to be far more noteworthy because of the company's recent financial woes and earnings delay .

And then there are things that make reporters cringe. Not many things but enough.

I witnessed one at this Dell tech event, where company officials debuted new PCs.

Check out this exchange between Michael Dell and a reporter during a Q&A session following Dell's keynote.

Reporter: "In your last quarterly report, your revenue earnings had fallen 51 percent."

Dell: "Our revenues did not fall 51 percent."

Reporter: "Your revenue earnings had fallen."

Dell: "Our revenues did not fall. Our earnings fell."

Reporter: "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Dell then made light of the gaffe, bailing the poor guy out from an embarrassing mistake. He said something to the effect that it was hard to keep the revenues and earnings straight.

Kudos to board chairman Michael Dell for his handling of the situation. He could have ripped the guy for the misstep. But he took the high road.

He sure wasn't rewarded though.

Another reporter asked Dell to comment on the job Kevin Rollins is doing as CEO. That was the second time of the day Dell had to deal with that line of questioning.

Seems there is a lot of anti-Rollins sentiment floating around after the company missed some financial targets.

Dell again handled the tough question with grace and aplomb: "I think my comments earlier about Kevin were quite clear and I don't plan to repeat them because I haven't changed my mind since this morning."

Earlier that morning, Dell staunchly defended Rollins, noting that he disagrees with press and analyst comments that Rollins isn't the right man to lead Dell. He even called Rollins and "excellent executive."

Dell noted that the board has Rollins' back, as well, adding: "I'm the biggest shareholder so you can do the math."

Will Dell and the board can Rollins? Dell, point blank: "It's not going to happen."

Sounds like Rollins' and Dell's fates are tied together for the time being. But one wonders if Dell will sing a different tune if things don't improve.

Viva La Ponytail!

A week later, I took in the tech news at Sun Microsystems' event at Chelsea Piers, the third consecutive year Sun has schlepped to New York in September to hold a quarterly news briefing with press and analysts.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, sporting the coolest ponytail in high-tech, regaled the audience with tales of how Web 2.0 is harboring a lot of convergence and that we as a society are moving from a static, passive information age to one of active participation.



That was the message peppered in and around the hard news about a few new servers and storage devices. But the real fireworks took to the sky in the Q&A.

Someone in the audience asked Schwartz for more details about Sun's relationship with Apple. The interrogator was subtly referring to the rumors that Apple might acquire Sun.

"We've consistently partnered with Apple," Schwartz said. "Certainly we feel that customers want choice. As for specifics of what else we're working on, stay tuned."

Later, Schwartz provided an object lesson in jabbing at the competition by ignoring them.

An analyst asked what effect the pending Opteron server offerings from IBM, HP and Dell will have on Sun's ability to grow its Opteron server business going forward.

"I'll leave the Opteron-specific question for John Executive Vice President John Fowler and just tell you how thrilled I am that we're seeing such an aggressive uptake of Solaris on HP, Dell and IBM."

In the past, you could count on former CEO Scott McNealy to answer such questions about competitors by roasting Dell and HP with acerbic wit.

Schwartz' approach is much more subtle. Where McNealy's words were sharp jabs, Schwartz projects a sunny, "can't we all just get along" aura. But don't be fooled.

The new CEO's digs are just as vicious, albeit in a subtler fashion.

Check these Schwartz nuggets out:

"We're not anti-vendor. We're not here to bash anybody. Every single business we're in must be multi-platform if it's going to be successful. When I'm selling the hardware we're talking about, I'm going to be thrilled to talk to the Linux community about running Ubuntu on Niagara. When I'm talking about Solaris I'm going to be thrilled to talk to you about HP and Dell. They are no longer competitors in my mind. They are now channel partners."

Go ask IBM, HP or Sun if they feel like they're Sun channel partners.

To his credit, Schwartz let an opportunity for a barb pass by. When an audience member asked Schwartz what he thought about Dell and HP's recent struggles, Schwartz wouldn't bite.

Instead, he said Sun is not focused on Dell or HP, but on customers.

I doubt McNealy would have passed on the chance to take a bite of that whopper of a question.

Oracle Locks Up Your Datacenter

For a company firing on all cylinders, see Oracle in the high-tech dictionary.

Fresh off a solid first-quarter revenue bump, Oracle President Chuck Phillips and several other executives came to New York this week to outline the company's past, present and future security strategy.

Phillips stressed breaking out of the silos of security products, eschewing point products for integrated suites.

"Most companies use a very fragmented set of solutions, and that's the way the industry grew up -- specific companies addressing specific threats with no thought of how this all fits together," Phillips said.

"One of the things we bring to the table is thinking about security holistically from the application down to the disk through the network."

Company officials demonstrated how to lock down the network at the event by detecting off "orphan" or "ghost" access privileges of former employees, to how to block a corporate insider from accessing sensitive data.

We hear about such technologies all of the time, but it was nice to see them in action.

Moreover, the interfaces made sense to me; it looked like I could grant a new employee highly specific access privileges on an HR application throughout a company's network without fouling it up.

Oracle is going to try to fine-tune its software to put IBM, Sun and others even farther in the rearview mirror.

Internet.com Corp.

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The San Diego Supercomputer Center is making available more than 400 TB of disk space and even more archival tape space for academic and scientific data in search of a good home.. Check it out:
(www.enterprisestorageforum.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The San Diego Supercomputer Center ( SDSC ) is making available more than 400 TB of disk space and even more archival tape space for academic and scientific data in search of a good home. With 18 PB of archival storage, it just didn't seem nice not to share (for a modest fee, of course).



SDSC was founded in 1985 with a $170 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Since then, SDSC has served the supercomputing needs of more than 10,000 researchers at 300 academic, government and industrial institutions in the United States and around the world.

Today, operating out of the University of California, San Diego, SDSC continues to be a strategic resource to science, industry, and academia and provides a vast array of tools and expertise to the communities it serves.

Among the new services SDSC is offering the academic, scientific and digital preservation communities is the ability to store terabytes of data experiments, collections, and more at SDSC's Data Central storage repository.

Long-Term Storage

Richard Moore, SDSC's division director for Production Systems, notes that SDSC "has been one of the primary NSF-funded supercomputer centers for 20 years. Over our lifetime, we've always had a focus on data-intensive applications, applications that require a lot of memory or require large IO as part of their code. As a result, we built a pretty powerful data infrastructure with a large amount of disk and a large amount of archival systems. The primary reason we built those systems was to support the users of our supercomputers, to support their storage needs."

But soon Moore and his team saw a new need emerging, a need for long-term reliable storage of data collections, collections that might require 10 or 20 or 40 terabytes of archival storage space.

"We saw that we had an infrastructure that could be adapted to fill what we viewed as an emerging need to store particularly large-scale, long-term digital collections," says Moore. And the thought of being able to host and store digital collections was an exciting one to Moore and his SDSC colleagues. "It's a different kind of service than we were originally chartered for by the NSF, but it's leveraging a lot of the expertise and infrastructure that we already have."

And the community was asking for help, adds Moore. "We are already working with the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library and the National Archives and Records Administration," he reports. "And these organizations have a very critical need for long-term preservation. We want to support them, and we see long-term preservation storage as an important area."

Indeed, SDSC has been doubling its volume of stored archival data every 14 months, as the need to store data long term has increased. As a result, SDSC has more than tripled its archival storage capacity, from six petabytes to more than 18 petabytes, with about five times more bandwidth.

Data Central

SDSC's newest storage initiative is Data Central and the Data Allocations program. Total capacity for storage at SDSC is 2 PB of raw disk storage space with 18 PB of archival tape storage. Of that space, SDSC has reserved 400 TB of disk space and a significant fraction of its archival tape storage for members of the U.S. academic research community wishing to participate in the Data Allocations program.

And why should institutions consider storing their valuable data collections at SDSC?

"In terms of some of the advantages, we have a large production-level infrastructure that a group can leverage," says Moore. "We have a 24/7 staff that monitors the system, people that are on call. So there's this whole infrastructure that's in place that can be leveraged. That's one big advantage. We're also at scale to be able to host large collections and do it over a long period of time."

Another key advantage is that SDSC can easily handle data migration.

"When individuals need to store data now, they have to go and buy equipment to store that data," says Moore. "And then they have to hire somebody to administer that equipment. And they have to find a machine room where they can put all this stuff. And they have to get redundant power into that machine room, and cooling. And then three or four years from now, they're going to have to figure out how to migrate to the next generation."

Or they can just send their data to SDSC's Data Central, where an expert staff will maintain and migrate data as needed, 24/7, in a safe, reliable storage environment where they can still have 24/7 access to it.

Storing a TB at SDSC

"It's one thing to call up your local vendor and say, how much does a terabyte of disk space cost? Or how much would some sort of archival system cost?" says Moore. "It's another to face some of the longer-term and associated costs that aren't so obvious," what consultants and solution providers call the total cost of ownership (TCO).

"One of the things that we're doing in our cost structure is looking at annualized costs," explains Moore. "We're not going to say you can store a terabyte here for X dollars. We're going to say you can store a terabyte here for a year for X dollars. And the reason for looking at annualized costs is that we intend for this to be a sustainable effort, and there are ongoing costs, including media migration," that need to be factored in.

Data Central Data/Storage Resources

With a capacity of more than 20 petabytes of tape and disk storage, SDSC offers a wide variety of storage resources specially designed for high-performance users.

Disk Resources SATA & SAN/Fibre Channel Disk

Capacity: 400 TB (available for allocations)

Software: SRB, GridFTP, a variety of RDBMS, SSH, HTTP

Tape Resources Capacity: 18 PB (total)

Hardware: 6 STK Powderhorn silos, 64 IBM 3592B tape drives, and two IBM P690 nodes

Software: SRB, GridFTP, HSI

Archival System The centralized, long-term data storage system at SDSC is the High Performance Storage System (HPSS). SDSC manages one of the world's largest productions of HPSS, which has the capacity to store 18 PB of data on archival tape. HPSS transparently uses an associated 100 TB disk cache to accelerate read and write operations.

SRB SRB (Storage Resource Broker) is a data management software produced at SDSC. The software provides easy access to SDSC's disk and tape resources and presents them as a single file hierarchy. SRB can also be used for remote data management and access.

"In our field, media migrations every few years are not unusual at all, whether that's tape or disk," says Moore. And there are many elements involved, which can add up over a year or many years.

"It takes labor to run these systems," he says. "It takes servers to drive the disks and allow people to access their data . It takes networks. It takes a machine room. It takes utilities. It takes maintenance on all those systems. It takes media. So there are a number of elements that are rolled into our costs.

"Right now the best available cost estimate, when we look at our total cost of ownership for storing on disk, which is accessible all the time, is about $1,500 per terabyte per year," says Moore. The cost for archival tape is considerably less, about $500 per terabyte per year, with retrieval time (or latency) in minutes.

Still, given the cost of arrays and the personnel to manage them, $500 to $1,500 a terabyte seems cheap by comparison; SDSC only charges enough to cover its costs. And Moore anticipates that the annual cost of both disk and tape will drop substantially as the density of media increases. "I'm very hopeful that these fixed costs that constitute the rest of the total cost of ownership will also scale down ," he says.

Shared Storage

SDSC is already storing data and hosting digital collections for a number of academic and institutional customers and is in talks with many more about helping them with their long-term storage needs. (To see a list of collections SDSC currently hosts, click here .)

This past summer, SDSC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Center for Atmospheric Research to make available 100 TB of archival storage at each facility for replication of each other's data. And that storage space is scheduled to increase each year by 50 TB, reaching 300 TB by 2010. By having data stored offsite in a safe location, both institutions are helping to ensure the preservation of their digital assets for future generations.

Whether SDSC will have enough storage to satisfy its institutional customers' needs or customers willing to pay the price doesn't concern Moore. "We are not a commercial venture," he states. "Our focus is on large-scale collections and nonprofit university scientific researchers as well as the digital preservation community."

As SDSC opens up its Data Allocations program to the greater academic and digital preservation communities this fall, Moore and his team will find out how great the need for outsourced or shared storage is, and what price institutions are willing to pay to store their data offsite long term. That could also provide useful information for storage service providers. Stay tuned...

For more storage features, visit Enterprise Storage Forum Special Reports

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Intel's future Centrino Duo Mobile chipsets promise interoperability with the latest routers, and will include new wireless connectivity types (HSDPA and WiMax).. Check it out:
(www.wi-fiplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The Centrino brand name Intel slapped on its embedded Wi-Fi support in laptops arguably made wireless networks the household word they are today. This week, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chip giant revealed its plans for the future of what was once code-named "Santa Rosa." It will couple draft 802.11n specification Wi-Fi with Intel's own Core 2 Duo mobile processor -- and there are future add-ons to anticipate as well, including HSDPA.



To stave off potential problems in working with other Draft-N products, Intel says it has created an 802.11n interoperability program to make sure the new Centrino laptops work with access points from vendors like Buffalo Technology, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear (the top four sellers of Wi-Fi products in the U.S. consumer market). Intel's belief is that the consumer market will snap up these products first, and that testing for enterprise use will follow once the standard is actually finished.

Interoperability testing is usually the purview of the Wi-Fi Alliance , and in fact, the Alliance said last month it will begin testing Draft-N products in 2007, long before 802.11n becomes a ratified standard (that's expected in 2008). That timeframe could be too late for Intel, which wants to have the new Centrinos on the market early next year.

"This testing is meant to supplement what the Alliance does," says Intel spokesperson Amy Martin.

Even if Intel's Santa Rosa plans were delayed and the Alliance were to begin testing first, Martin thinks Intel would still do its own interoperability check, likely to take place in an actual retro-fitted home with multiple floors to get a real-world feel, rather than the clinical lab tests run by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

"We'll still be part of their testing," Martin says.

The Intel Core 2 Duo processor part of the new Centrino package will have new power saving capabilities, a must on Wi-Fi equipment that tends to eat up batteries fast.

Centrino will also include features of Intel vPro, another marketing initiative from Intel that targets business customers. The features include an active management feature to let enterprises better track assets and check system security, and a Flash memory accelerator that will allow for faster resume from hibernation state. They're even revamping the integrated graphics core.

Intel also said a new low-power chipset would be available for the Ultra Mobile PC platform.

Intel announced separately with Nokia that the two companies will be bringing HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) connectivity to Centrino users. Nokia has made a module that supports the 3G tech, and Intel will provide it to interested notebook OEMs. (The Wall Street Journal said shares for Novatel Wireless and Sierra Wireless, companies that make modems and modules to support tech like HSDPA and EV-DO in laptops, dropped when this news was announced, indicating the power of the partnership.)

Martin says they chose to work with Nokia due to the company's strong 3G/HSDPA knowledge and product line.

Of course, Intel's real goal is integrating WiMax. While nothing official was announced today, Martin confirms that Intel will offer a mobile WiMax mini-PCI card eventually. Even that is a stopgap to the ultimate goal of a combination of WiMax and Wi-Fi on the same embedded card used on Centrino-branded laptops.

Intel has also jumped on the ultrawideband (UWB) bandwagon today by saying it will release Intel Wireless UWB Link 1480 MAC (media access controller) silicon and reference designs for vendors looking to create products supporting the specification created by the WiMedia Alliance . The first customer will be Belkin , which plans to build the 1480 (using a PHY from Alereon ) into a Certified Wireless USB adapter to come out in the first quarter of next year.

Belkin had previously planned wireless USB products with chips from Freescale, but that company's exit from UWB forced Belkin to delay products. Earlier this week, the company said it would be making a 4-port wireless USB hub with chips from WiQuest Communications .

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There's nothing small about virtualization for the SMB space. Dell's newest systems aim to serve this and other high-end features to the SMB market.. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Like kids following in their big brothers' footsteps, smaller enterprises often take IT spending cues from their larger brethren.

Dell is no exception to this. On Wednesday, the OEM introduced five new servers in the hope of capturing a larger share of the small and midsize business (SMB) market. The new systems offer a number of capabilities more frequently found in enterprise-oriented products, such as server virtualization.



Jay Parker, director of Dell PowerEdge servers, said SMBs can use virtualization to consolidate multiple applications on a single server, thus saving themselves money and, just as importantly, a considerable amount of space.

During a press conference, Dell detailed the PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers, all of which feature dual-core Intel Xeon processors.

Parker said the new servers offer dramatic increases in performance, scalability and power efficiency.

9th generation family Source: Dell

For example, according to Parker, the PowerEdge 1900 provides more than twice the performance of a PowerEdge 1800.

Parker also predicted that new products will hit the market in the next 12 to 24 months with "hardware capabilities targeting virtualized environments and SMBs simultaneously."

"You'll see us cater more to the SMB market over time," he added.

Dell is shipping the servers with versions of Microsoft Small Business Server software preinstalled.

The PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers are priced at $1,399, $749, $949, respectively, while the PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are priced at $1,049 and $599, respectively.

Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell's U.S. small business division, noted Dell is lowering price points to help small businesses adopt technologies used by larger companies, including virtualization.

"We're seeing an increasing rate of adoption of these technologies," he said during a conference call Wednesday morning.

Laurie McCabe, an analyst with consultant AMI-Partners, was more restrained.

"The term virtualization itself is confusing to small business owners," she told internetnews.com .

But she said agreed that they would be interested once they learn about it "in plain English," and companies with more than 100 employees are primed to adopt it.

Muehleman said the Round Rock, Texas computer maker has increased its share of the SMB market in unit terms from 10 percent in 2000 to 30 percent today.

That's not insignificant, as those businesses will spend $98 billion on IT products and services this year, according to AMI-Partners.

This article was originally published on internetnews .

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How does virtualization work, and why is now a good time to check it out?. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Each year brings a fresh whirl of tech buzzwords. Terms like "proactive," "360-degree view" and "information life cycle management" have all been in vogue in recent history. This year, the technology de jour is "virtualization," a topic that has more than just hype behind it and has broken through into the mainstream.



The concept behind server virtualization is not new, however. IBM has been creating virtual machines on its mainframes since the 1960s.

So what is it? Virtualization breaks the link between the hardware and the applications that run on it. This includes virtual storage, virtual networking, application virtualization and, the focus of this tutorial, server virtualization. It requires the installation of a software layer that allows more than one server to operate on the same piece of hardware. There are two basic approaches to this: Read more articles about virtualization

1. The one popularized by VMware (now part of EMC Hopkinton, Mass.) runs a virtualization layer (called a hypervisor) between the hardware and the operating system. With this method, several operating systems can run on the same set of hardware. The drawback is that each virtual server requires its own operating system, which adds to licensing costs and system overhead.

2. Sun Microsystems, of Santa Clara, Calif., takes the opposite approach. It installs its Solaris operating system directly on the hardware. Different applications run in isolated areas called "containers," but they all share the same operating system instance. Shares of the physical server resources are then assigned to each of the containers on a permanent or dynamic basis.

Why Virtualize?

There are many reasons for adopting server virtualization. A popular one is better resource utilization. It is not uncommon to see servers running at 10 percent or less of their capacity, at different points in the day. By letting several virtual servers share a single set of hardware, a much higher average utilization rate is achieved, and hardware and support costs are lowered.

Virtualization also makes it easier to provision and reallocate servers. Instead of having to manually set up a server, the virtualization software can set up a server using a pre-existing template and shift server images from one physical server to another to balance workloads or improve efficiency. It can also automatically set up a new virtual server on a different machine when there is a hardware malfunction. Each application is isolated from the others, which provides greater security.

Why Now?

In practice, virtualization requires much more than just a simple hypervisor layer. In fact, virtualization has broken through as a technology largely because all the necessary components (i.e., processors, utilities and management tools) for a completely virtual ecosystem are now in place.

AMD and Intel have both included virtualization support in their chips. In AMD's case, this involves taking some of the commands that normally would be handled by the Virtual Machine Manager and including them in the chips' instruction sets. Similarly, Intel has released its Intel Virtualization Technology (IVT) for desktops, Xeon server and Itanium server CPUs.

Utilities, too, are starting to support virtual servers. Backing up virtual servers, for example, poses a series of unique challenges. One of the biggest challenges involves server consolidation. The advantage of server consolidation is that all the virtual servers share the same set of hardware, which works out great when all servers are running at low levels. But backup is a resource intensive activity in terms of disk I/Os, processor utilization and traffic through the network interface card. Backup vendors, therefore, have developed a number of techniques for backing up virtual servers. CommVault Systems offers customers the option of backing up the entire virtual server into a single large file, and Syncsort's Backup Express can either backup each virtual server individually or backup the entire physical server.

In addition, management tool vendors are including virtual server support in their products. TeamQuest Corporation of Clear Lake, Iowa, for example, supports virtualization throughout its product line. It has a set of five collection agents for VMware ESX Server 2.0, which gather information both on the performance of the virtual machines (e.g., CPU, disk, memory and NIC) and on the ESX service console (e.g., disk space, process-workload and system log messages). Reports and alarms can be set up on each of the individual virtual servers or on the physical server. TeamQuest's capacity planning software can model each virtual machine as an individual workload as well as determine the impact of running several virtual machines on a physical server.

How to Virtualize

The primary action in setting up a virtual server is selecting and installing the virtualization layer. Here are some of the more popular options. Xen 3.0: Xen is a lightweight open source hypervisor (less than 50,000 lines of code) which runs on Intel or AMD x86 and 64-bit processors, with or without virtualization technologies. It supports up to 32-way SMP (Simultaneous Multi Processing) and requires a modification of the client operating system, which means it will run Linux but not Windows clients. Although the original Xen hypervisor works only with Linux clients, XenSource, the company behind the Xen project, released XenEnterprise, a version that supports Windows Server and Solaris guests as well.

Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2: Microsoft initially charged for its virtualization technology, and it was limited to Windows servers. With Windows Server 2003R2, customers can run up to four operating systems on a physical server. On April 3, Microsoft announced it was making Virtual Server a free download, and it extended support to clients running nine versions of Red Hat and SUSE Linux.

VMware Server: VMware (EMC) is by far the largest vendor of virtualization technology for x86 platforms. In early 2006, the company released VMware Server, a replacement for GSX Server, which is a single server virtualization platform for Linux and Windows. More than 100,000 downloads of this free product were made in the first week alone. VMware Server has all the features of the GSX Server, and adds support for virtual SMP, Intel Virtualization Technology and 64-bit guest operating systems.

VMware ESX Server: Although its entry-level product is now free, VMware still charges for its enterprise-class ESX Server. ESX server runs on x86-based servers and supports Linux (Red Hat and SUSE), Windows (Server and XP), Novell NetWare and FreeBSD 4.9 clients.

Virtual Iron: Virtual Iron is another company offering Xen-based products. It has four products: two free single server versions, an enterprise version and one for clusters. In addition to the Xen hypervisor, Virtual Iron also includes management tools and an administrative interface.

IBM Virtualization Engine Platform: This platform encompasses the entire line of IBM servers. As well as the usual hypervisor for server partitioning, it includes virtual I/O and virtual Ethernet, a workload manager and management console.

SWSoft Virtuozzo: Virtuozzo takes an approach similar to that of Solaris. It runs above, rather than below, the operating systems. It has two versions &#151 one for Windows and another for Linux &#151 and customers can create virtual servers on top of these. One particular application is for running "Virtual Private Servers (VPS)" or a hosting facility. With Virtuozzo, a single physical server can run up to 5,000 VPSes.

By and large, these ISVs make it easy to dabble in virtualization. To get your feet wet, simply download a free version of the software from the above vendors to gain familiarity and see how it works in your environment.

Although the basic concept of virtualization is likely to be around for quite a while, it is not clear whether virtualization software will always be a separate product. IBM, EMC, Microsoft, AMD, Intel and others are incorporating greater features into their product line, and this trend will continue. Overall, though, virtualization appears to be moving toward being the default method of server operation, rather than being just for a specific niche. Eventually, this may make discrete hypervisors a thing of the past.

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Time to enter the county showdown. Check it out:
(The Gazette (Blackpool) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The hunt is on to find the cream of Lancashire's businesses.

The BIBAs - Be Inspired Business Awards - 2007, are launched.

The competition is organised by Business Link Lancashire and the North and Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce and supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

Now in their ninth year, the BIBAs put companies in the spotlight for their achievements.

Clive Memmott, chief executive of Business Link Lancashire, said: "The competition has gone from strength to strength, recognising and celebrating the success of the business community in Lancashire.

"It is now firmly fixed as a key date on Lancashire's business calendar and competition to win one of the 13 fabulous BIBAs is sure to be stiff." Once again, the BIBAs will be held at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool on March 16. More than 500 entries were received last year. This year's categories are: * The Northwest Regional Development Agency New Business of the Year Award.



* The UK Trade & Investment International Trade Award.

* The Lancaster University Management School Leadership Team of the Year Award..

* The Orbit Internet Award for Best Use of E-business.

* The University of Central Lancashire Award for Business Innovation.

* The Westinghouse Springfields Award for Performance through People.

* The SELNET Social Enterprise of the Year Award.

* The Harris Walker Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

* The Write Angle and Design Force Marketing with Impact Award.

* The Royal Bank of Scotland Lancashire Business of the Year Award.

Three categories introduced this year will celebrate achievements of individuals in business: * The Napthens Business Person of the Year Award.

* The HSBC Business Woman of the Year.

* The Park Hall Hotel Employee of the Year.

Babs Murphy, chief executive of the North & Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, added: "The success of local businesses is vital to Lancashire's economy and the business awards play an important part in rewarding those companies that strive for excellence.

"We are eager to celebrate not only achievements but business values, vision, strength, and a will to build lasting success." The closing date for the competition is November 17.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Govt guidesre-registration for foreign enterprises. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A decree guiding the implementation of the Common Investment Law and the Unified Enterprise Law has just been issued by the Government.

Decree 101/2006/ND-CP, which gives detailed guidance for re-registration of foreign-invested enterprises that were licensed under the old Foreign Investment Law, is applicable to foreign-invested joint ventures, 100% foreign-owned companies, foreign-invested joint-stock companies and projects under the business cooperation contract.



Under the decree, joint ventures and 100% foreign-owned companies with more than two owners must register for conversion into limited liability companies. 100% foreign-owned companies owned by a foreign organization must also re-register into a one-member limited liability company. Joint-stock companies with foreign investment have to re-register into joint-stock companies.

Licensing authorities must examine and issue certificates within 15 days; otherwise they must notify the investors concerned in writing.

The decree also allows joint ventures and 100% foreign-owned companies to convert into one-member limited liability companies. The conversion process can start either after foreign-invested enterprises re-register or can be simultaneously carried out.

Licensing authorities must examine and reply within 30 days from the date of receiving complete documents for conversion.

More stock investors join the market

Two Korean companies have been licensed by the State Securities Commission to open rep offices to trade stocks in Vietnam, joining the trend of increasing international interest in the local stock market.

Tong Yang Investment Bank and Korea Investment Trust Management will open their offices in HCM City with an operational term of five years. Korea Investment Trust Management has set up two investment funds to invest in Vietnams stock market and potential shareholding companies. The Vietnam Growth Fund, capitalized at US$25 million, is for institutional investors, and the Worldwide Vietnam Fund, at US$75 million, is for individual investors.

Earlier, three foreign stock companies have also been licensed for opening rep offices in Vietnam, including Nomura International Limited (Hong Kong), Blackhorse Asset Management (Singapore) and Mirae Asset Maps Investment Management (South Korea).

Last week, Citigroup also organized a two-day trip to Vietnam for a delegation of more than 20 senior leaders from the worlds leading investment funds. The investors met representatives of the Government, experts, economists, bankers and business people in Hanoi and HCM City. Charly Madan, general manger of Citigroup in Vietnam, said the visit aimed to help global investors study attractive opportunities in Vietnam stock market.

Vietnams stock market is rated as one of the most attractive market in Asia, with the stock index expected to increase 66% this year. There are 49 stocks with total market value of US$3.1 billion listed on the HCM City Securities Trading Center. Vietnam expects the stock markets share of the GDP to increase from the current 6% to 30% by 2010.

The number of stocks is expected to increase strongly with Vietnams accession to the WTO, which will attract more foreign companies to the country.

Big port complex in Vung Taugets nod

The Government has approved the development of a complex of port and oil and gas services in Ben Dinh-Sao Mai in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

PetroVietnam and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) have been allowed to cooperate in developing this project. The two companies have signed a cooperation agreement to develop Ben Dinh-Sao Mai port into a complex supplying oil and gas services, shipyards, container handling services and a petroleum depot.

Ben Dinh-Sao Mai is one of the 30 key national projects planned for development in the 2006-2010 period. According to the master plan for seaports prepared by the Ministry of Communications and Transport, the project will require US$637 million in investment and is designed to handle 25-50 million tons of cargo a year.

September FDI surpasses US$1 billion

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in September surpassed US$1 billion, including US$886 million of 154 newly licensed projects and US$206 million in added capital of 112 operational projects.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investments foreign investment agency, the figure has brought the total FDI inflow in the first nine months to US$5.15 billion, up 25.9% from the same period last year. Newly licensed projects make up US$3.7 billion.

The ministry hopes that with this strong growth, the FDI target of US$6.5 billion for this year is achievable. It is evaluating many big FDI projects; among them are iron ore mining in Thach Khe of Ha Tinh Province (US$1.9 billion) by S.H.T Iron & Steel, shopping mall chain development (US$500 million) by Lotte Vina Shopping and a horserace track in Vinh Phuc Province (US$700 million).

In the first nine months, the realized capital of FDI projects amounted to US$2.78 billion, 8.8% higher than the same period last year. FDI enterprises reported sales of US$3.3 billion in September, bringing their total sales in the first nine months to US$21.6 billion, up 28.7% year-on-year.

To attract more FDI into Vietnam, the ministry plans to hold the Vietnam Investment Conference 2006 in Hanoi and HCM City in mid-October. At the conference, officials will introduce Vietnams investment environment and latest policies as well as investment opportunities in various sectors.

First trade plaza to open in Vung Tau

A luxury shopping and entertainment center will be opened for business late this year in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

The center, the first of its kind in the southern coastal province, is part of the Imperial Plaza and Hotel Complex in Vung Tau City. According to Richard Leech, director of retail service at CB Richard Ellis Vietnam (CBRE Vietnam), construction of the four-level shopping and entertainment center has been completed and it will officially open for business on December 25. Retailers are invited to join the center, which will have more than 50 shops and kiosks.

CBRE Vietnam has been appointed by Lac Viet Corporation, the owner of the Imperial Plaza Complex, the retail consultant and marketing agent for the center.

The VND246-bilion Imperial Plaza and Hotel Complex will include shopping and entertainment facilities, and a five-star hotel of 150 rooms and 60 luxury apartments. It is expected to become a popular shopping and entertainment destination for business people, local residents and tourists. The designer of the project is Graham Taylor Designs, a well known architecture company.

New oilfield to start production soon

The Government has approved a report on the potential reserves and exploration of the Ca Ngu Vang (Golden tuna) oilfield off the southern coast.

The approval will pave the way for the Hoan Vu Joint Operating Company to carry out further test drilling at the newly discovered oilfield. The company has estimated reserves of nearly 222 million barrels of crude oil and more than 11 billion cubic meters of gas at Block 09-2 where the oilfield is located.

The oilfield in the Cuu Long Basin, which was discovered in 2002 and test drillings last year seem to indicate substantial oil reserves, is expected to begin commercial production next year with an annual output of 70,000 barrels per day.

Ca Ngu Vang is jointly exploited by PetroVietnam, which holds a 50% stake, Britains Soco International and Thailands PTTEP, which hold a 25% stake each.

Export maintains robust growth

Vietnams export in the first nine months maintained momentum, with a year-on-year rise of 24.2%.

Figures from the General Statistics Office show that the total export revenue in the period reached US$29.4 billion, or nearly 78% of the years target. The foreign investment sector gained strong growth, with revenue up by 32.6% to US$10 billion. The domestic sector earned US$12.3 billion, up 20.7%, and crude oil contributed US$6.5 billion.

Key export items remained traditional commodities like crude oil, garments (US$2.6 billion), footwear (US$2.6 billion) and seafood (US$2.3 billon).

In the period, imports rose 19.3% year-on-year to US$32.75 billion, accounting for 77% of the years target. Main import commodities are machinery (US$4.7 billion), steel (4.3 million tons) and fertilizers (2.4 million tons).

Cheap Chinese steelthreatens local producers

Vietnams steel market is being hit hard by the inflow of cheap Chinese steel, which is threatening the local steel industry.

According to the Vietnam Steel Association, local steel consumption in August was only 177,000 tons, much lower than the monthly average of 250,000 tons, due to inflow of cheap Chinese steel, especially rolled steel. The steel is sold at a price that is the same as that of steel ingots, making it hard for local steel producers to compete. It is estimated that Chinese steel now holds a 30% of the local market.

Anti-dumping lawyers say under its own law, Vietnam can sue China for steel dumping although the country has yet to become a WTO member. Vietnam Steel Association has worked with the Ministry of Trades Competition Management Department on the possibility of taking legal action.

Vietnams demand for construction steel is about four million tons a year, while the domestic steel industry can produce seven million tons.

Lam Dong invites investment in industry

Lam Dong Province is calling local and foreign investors to join projects in the industrial sector.

At a promotion seminar held in HCM City last week, provincial officials introduced advantages of the sector to potential investors and invited them to build factories in 11 industrial sites and parks. Hoang Si Son, vice chairman of Lam Dong, said the province would prioritize investment that utilizes local resources and materials and employs large labor, such as bauxite mining, agro-product processing and textile and garment production.

Lam Dong is a center of agro products like coffee, tea, mulberries, rubber and vegetables, so investors can take advantage of the abundant supplies to expand business.

According to Lam Dong Industrial Zone Authority, the rate of leasing land in industrial parks in the province is lower than elsewhere. For example, the land rent is only US$0.12-0.15 a square meter as compared with US$0.5 in Dong Nai Province and US$0.34 in Tay Ninh Province. Investors can also enjoy support in site clearance and infrastructure construction.

By August, Lam Dong had 267 investment projects with total capital of VND12.5 trillion licensed, of which 48 were operational and 83 under construction.

Kumho gets license for US$380-milliontire project

The leading South Korean auto tire manufacturer Kumho Tires has received a license to invest in an auto tire factory in Binh Duong Province.

With an investment of US$380 million, it has become the biggest foreign-invested project in the southern province. Kumho Tires has signed a 50-year land lease contract for the project with Becamex IDC Corp., the developer of My Phuoc Industrial Park. Jongsun Sun, general director of Kumho Tires (Vietnam), said the company would invest US$155 million in the first phase of the project, which is due to start next month.

Beginning in 2008, the factory will produce 3.15 million radial auto tires a year for local sale and export. The company will also build a rubber processing factory in Binh Duong, home of vast rubber plantations, to supply raw materials for its operations.

The project in Vietnam is part of Kumhos expansion plan aimed to make it become the fifth biggest tire manufacturer in the world.

Tourist information center opens

The Tourist Information Center was officially opened in the city last week, with more centers around the country in the pipeline.

The center at the corner of Le Loi and Nguyen Hue streets in District 1 offers a variety of services to tourists, such as ATM, foreign currency exchange, airline and travel, tour bookings, visa arrangement and handicraft promotion. Tourists can enjoy some free services like Internet access, drinking water and tourist maps.

The center collaborates with partners to provide some services for tourists, such as foreign currency exchange by HSBC, travel services by Asiana Travel Mate and spa services by Qi Spa. Geeshah Perry, the centers director, says the center targets not only international visitors but also locals and foreigners living in HCM City. It welcomes 300 visitors a day, and 60% of them buy its services. He plans to open four centers next year in Hanoi, Phan Thiet, Danang and Hoi An.

HCM City tourism authorities have plans to establish a tourist information center in September 23 Park near Ben Thanh Market in the future.

City welcomes more touristsdespite low season

International visitors to HCM City are rising, with nearly 1.5 million coming in the first eight months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 9%.

HCM City Tourism Department says although tourism is in the low season, the city welcome 178,000 visitors last month, most of them from the U.S. and Japan. Visitors from South Korea, China, Malaysia, Australia and Singapore also increased strongly.

Le Nhut Tan, deputy director of the department, says to attract more tourists, the city is promoting standard service shops and restaurants in the media and improving foreign language and professional skills for tourist security staff. The tourism department has selected 50 shopping venues and 10 eateries meeting tourist service standards.

The department will also step up efforts to promote the citys tourism overseas and organize tourism events in the city. It will launch 200,000 tourist maps in English and Japanese and guidebooks for foreign tourists and establish more tourist information booths in the city.

HCM City expects to welcome 2.3 million international visitors this year, up 15% on 2005, and 3.5 million local tourists, up 15%. Tourism revenue should increase 20% on last year to VND16 trillion (US$1 billion).

Banks urged to find ways to boost lending

Experts have urged commercial banks in HCM City to find ways to ease capital glut, as the banks have mobilized more funds but their lending is still stagnant.

According to a banker seminar recently, banks in the city mobilized VND238.9 trillion (nearly US$15 billion) in the first eight months, posting an annualized growth rate of 26.5%. Meanwhile, their lending growth was much slower, growing only 17.5% in the period to VND205.7 trillion.

Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), Sacombank and Eximbank are the most successful in fund mobilization. In July alone, ACB raised nearly VND1.5 trillion, followed by Eximbank with VND1.45 trillion and Sacombank with VND937 billion. The hike in interest rates is seen as the main driver for the surge in these banks mobilized funds. Upheavals on the gold and stock markets also lend a part in boosting mobilization.

One more underground car park approved

HCM City authorities have recently approved the construction of an underground car park at the football field of Phu Nhuan District.

With the approval, the city now has nine underground car park projects in the pipeline. Three projects on Nguyen Hue Boulevard, on Nguyen Du Street and at the Phu Nhuan football field are calling for investment. Six others are under preparation. They include car parks at Lam Son Square by Indochina Corporation, Chi Lang Park by Hoa Binh Construction Corporation, Bach Tung Diep Park by Electronics, Informatics and Chemicals Company, Le Van Tam Park by Underground Space Investment and Development Company Hoa Lu Stadium by Indochina Corporation and Tao Dan Football Field by T.T.C.

The city government has just approved the Department of Communications and Public Works proposal to exempt land rent for the developer of the underground car park on Nguyen Hue Boulevard and to call for investment in the project in the build-operate-transfer form.

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

The Needfor Stamina

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The Needfor Stamina. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As living standards are on the rise, a recent survey has found that durability is the most important factor to consumers when purchasing goods

[QQ] A recent survey has revealed that products durability and use are the most important qualities to consumers when purchasing goods, a shift from years before when price was always the most important factor. The survey indicates that Vietnamese consumers are more conscious of the future than ever before. Not only do they want products that will last, but they are increasing their savings for the future. And while the commercially-powerful younger generation may not have the buying experience of the older crowd, they are set to make more highly informed decisions thanks to modern tools such as the Internet.



The survey on consumer behavior was conducted by the HCM City Consumer and Enterprise Research Center early this year, covering 660 consumers over 18 years of age in HCM City (48% of those surveyed), Hanoi (29%), and the Mekong Delta (23%).

Compared with previous surveys the center conducted, this survey shows many changes which can be explained by the improvement in living standard as Vietnams economy has grown quite fast recently. According to a survey conducted in 2000, there were up to 14 factors impacting consumer satisfaction. Of those, the three main factors were dealing with invoice, price and time of delivery. These were all concerns in a less-sophisticated society without solid infrastructure. With higher production quality and consumer standards now, people want their products to work well and last long.

The new survey shows that while the durability of products is the most important factor now, people often base much on their own experience to choose products. When buying a vehicle or an electric product, people often look for information from their friends and relatives while their main information source when buying secondary products is from their own experience.

However, as global trade penetrates into Vietnam, there are a variety of scientific and technological means blitzing peoples lives. The new generation (people from 18-30 years of age) in Vietnam seems to assimilate into this modern international society quite well. They are the ones who most often look for product information on the Internet. Thus, the ratio of using the Internet to look for products is increasing.

Looking towardsthe future

According to the survey, most of the people asked said they spend most of their money on food. Spending of single people on food accounts for 23.5% while that of household is 28.9%, said Vu Tien Dung, head of the survey. Their second spending is usually on such utility services as Internet, water supply, phone, electric service, while savings is also high on the list.

If income increases, they will increase their savings for future investment. Cash is their main savings form which they keep home, accounting for 62% of total people asked. Only 37% said they have deposits in banks. Dung also noted that the reason of this tendency is due to a lack of confidence in banks.

The survey also shows that the majority of people reduce their spending on food when they have the opportunity to save in that category. When having more money, consumers first priority is often to increase savings, followed by investing in their children, taking care of family, travel, and study. As to health care and life insurance, consumers said they will pay more for this only when and if their income increases.

Asked what they planned to spend in the next six months, more than 30% of consumers with lower income and 40% with middle income said they will spend on travel compared with 52.1% of those with higher income. Jewelry also has a high ratio with 27%, equivalent to that of electronic products, mobile phones, and health care.

Market force

Vietnam has a young population with people from 18 to 45 years of age as the main market force. The survey shows that people belonging to 18-30 years old group are those who favor new products. They are also more easily changeable than previous generations.

They are first consumers to buy new products and they, more than anyone else, set trends and their buying habit is the most significant factor forming the nations consumption tendency. Products are one of their means of self-assertion. Information they get mostly comes from the Internet.

However, the age range of 30 to 45 provides a very significant market impact, accounting for more than 50% of all sales. They are not the first customers to buy new products but are those who generally form a products market. This group accounts for more than half of the market force; thus, they are the main target of most enterprises, Dung added.

The poor tend to be more quality conscious than the rich. People in the Mekong Delta are the ones who were most concerned with quality while those in HCM City, a region with a higher human development index than others, showed their interests in promotional programs, said Dung.

According to the survey, product brand-name, design, service quality, price and promotion are all important factors for consumers while shopping. People of higher income care more for product design, and service quality plays a more important role in the choosing process of people in Hanoi. x

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
SPECIAL REPORT (Tabloid format): JOURNAL FOR ENTREPRENEURS (Creativity). Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In this period of harsh economic times when people are doing their best to cut down on costs, luxury items are often the first slashed on the budget list. Still, some businesses manage to prove that it is possible for a business to thrive even in a difficult and price-sensitive environment.



Ma. Yolanda Capistrano-Sevilla, chief executive officer of The Leather Collection, Inc., maker of well-crafted and high-quality leather gift items, is very proud of how the business managed not only to keep afloat but also to grow and become the market leader. Creativity played a huge part in the company's success and she has this one strong advice for entrepreneurs - recreate or perish.

"(Creativity is) critical both to survival and growth. When one ceases to be creative, one first atrophies, then dies," Mrs. Sevilla said.

The entrepreneur really has something to be proud of. Since it formally started in 1991, The Leather Collection's roster of clients has included big corporate names such as Coca-Cola, Toyota, San Miguel, Nokia, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Shakey's, Del Monte, Shell, Mitsubishi, Citibank, to name a few.

The company, which is positioned as a corporate gifts specialist that caters specifically to the institutional market for corporate gifts and accessories, has served the gift and giveaway requirements of over 500 of the Top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines.

Mrs. Sevilla greatly acknowledges that she achieved this feat together with one important person in her life - her husband who has been the originator of their businesses. Prior to setting up The Leather Collection, she was a direct marketing consultant of companies in various fields such as insurance, book distribution and retail. In fact, she is one of the pioneers of the country's direct marketing industry and was founding president of the Direct Marketing Association of the Philippines.

While working as chief executive officer of the direct marketing arm of the Manilabankers and Seaboard Eastern Insurance, she met Federico S. Sevilla, Jr., the company's printer who would turn out to be her husband and work mate.

"We started out our relationship working together. My story as an entrepreneur is the story of our marriage," Mrs. Sevilla narrated.

The Leather Collection is the grandchild of Insta Print - the enterprise Mr. Sevilla set up to provide for the family when they got married in 1981. In 1983, Insta Print gave birth to Creative Art Techniques, a creative and design boutique serving the advertising industry. Eventually, it designed and produced paper products such as the Manila, Cebu and Baguio Landmark Maps, Niji and Fedrigoni Stationery and Gift Boxes, and the Yellow Board.

One of the products developed by Creative Art Techniques was The Asian Manager (Triax Organizer Planner System), a planner encased in a leather binder that was launched in cooperation with the Asian Institute of Management for one of the school's alumni homecoming gatherings in 1988.

The company tried to source the binders from leathergoods manufacturers both here and abroad but none of the local suppliers met its quality standards. This prompted the firm to partner with a German craftsman and his wife to form an in-house unit to handle the production of leather binders in 1990.

The new division started off with the planner and eventually produced a small collection of business accessories that included card cases, wallets, pen cases and key holders. In 1991, the company's leathergoods division was spun off and the new company was called The Leather Collection.

Mrs. Sevilla admitted that The Leather Collection encountered several challenges when it was just starting. Aside from organizing the manufacturing facility, it also found promoting the brand to their target market - the corporate gifts segment - a hard task. The company also said it experienced difficulty during the financial crisis in the late 1990s when companies were cutting down on budgets for advertising and promotions.

Although the company was able to weather tough times, there are still obstacles that it finds it must overcome. On the product side, the incessant challenge is to always innovate and respond to the challenges in the marketplace.

"The profile of the gift buyer of today is very different from the gift buyer 15 years ago. To begin with, it's a new generation of buyers, the Nokia generation as it were, accustomed to continuous product innovation, beneficiaries of the China syndrome - Louis Vuitton at Divisoria prices, or LV at Divi - with access to global suppliers," Mrs. Sevilla said.

On the marketing and promotions side, she said the continuing challenge is "to capture the minds and hearts and pocketbooks of today's buyer, to position one as the brand of choice, to choose to compete with product and service quality, rather than price, as the differentiator."

Today, The Leather Collection is a brand recognized for its product and service excellence, competence and reliability. Its main strengths are anchored in three aspects: product innovation and customization, where it designs exclusive gift collections for clients aside from its house products; craftsmanship, where the firm manufactures its products to global specifications and quality standards; and service where it assists clients in selecting the appropriate gift, premium or incentive.

The Leather Collection's product and service quality is manifested not just through its handcrafted leather accessory but also through its gift packaging. It also provides other services such as product design and customization, marketing and promotions planning, which differentiates it from traders of China-made novelties.

"Our customers also prefer collaborating with us because of our competence and reliability as corporate gifts specialists. We can turn around sample requirements in 24 hours, rush orders in a little over a week," Mrs. Sevilla added.

Mrs. Sevilla has always had an entrepreneurial spirit in her ever since she was young.

"I remember setting up a 'store' with the candies my Lolo had given me as pasalubong and selling these to my siblings who were always what I needed them to be in our games - in this case my customer," she fondly remembered.

While saying that her particular competence is in planning and organizing, Mrs. Sevilla also had a streak of creativity in her. During the first few years of The Leather Collection, Mrs. Sevilla created several lines for the products such as the travel collection, business collection, desk accessories and ladies' handbags.

When it comes to creativity, the entrepreneur is proud to say that the business merits an "A" because it continues to re-invent itself as an organic enterprise in an ever-changing environment.

"Our bottom line objective is hanap buhay, not just in terms of earning the money to pay for basic necessities, but being able to fulfill the potential and to use, hone and develop skills. We are craftsmen at heart. We are constantly searching for a better way, where pwede na is not enough," she said in a previous interview with BusinessWorld.

Mrs. Sevilla, who is scheduled to graduate next month from AIM's Master in Entrepreneurship course, learned that there are many layers of creativity.

"There's the creativity required for product and service innovation. There's also the creativity required for meeting the day-to-day challenges of managing an enterprise - whether that's organizing a new venture or re- engineering an existing one; acquiring a new customer or retaining a suki," she said.

For her, creativity means "thinking out of the proverbial sandbox. It's inventing and re-inventing. It's destroying to rebuild. It's both the totally new or a new combination of elements."

Now 15 years in the business, The Leather Collection plans to further expand its market. The company recently expanded to the Middle East market for corporate gifts and giveaways and now has a showroom and sales office in Dubai.

The company is also strengthening its design capability and is currently organizing Etnico, a product innovation firm being spearheaded by her husband.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
CodeBaby adds Al-Falak to Business Partner Program. Check it out:
CodeBaby adds Al-Falak to Business Partner Program

Alliance brings CodeBabys Advanced IPTV and Mobile Customer Care Solutions to Middle East Telecom Operators

SHANGHAI (IPTV World Forum Asia), September 28th, 2006 CodeBaby®, the leading innovator in Virtual Agent based customer care solutions, today announced at IPTV World Forum Asia, that Al-Falak Electronic Equipment and Supplies Co., one of the Middle Easts leading enterprise IT solutions integrators, has joined CodeBabys Business Partner Program. Al-Falak will sell and deploy CodeBabys interactive self-help solutions to telecommunications companies throughout the Gulf Region.



Al-Falak is now a member of CodeBabys rapidly growing Business Partner Program, which is focused on creating value added relationships in the fastest growing IPTV and Mobile markets worldwide. This comes on the heels of a similar relationship announced by CodeBaby only a month ago with SGLC in South Korea.

Operators around the world are actively deploying interactive services to consumers, and they are delivering them on devices that are more complicated than ever, said Armin Gebauer, VP Mobile and Converging Services at CodeBaby. CodeBaby provides an on-device self-care and customer lifecycle management solution that enhances the overall customer experience, encourages greater customer adoption of such services and helps drive increased ARPU for the operator. As operators continue to focus on building new revenue streams from triple play offerings and advanced data services, the CodeBaby platform allows them to innovatively grow and manage their subscriber relationships on mobile networks, IPTV systems and operator websites.


We are pleased to join CodeBabys Business Partner Program as it presents several new opportunities for us in the Middle East markets, said Basel Humaidah, General Manager of Al-Falak Systems Solutions & Consulting. As telecom operators in the region look to broaden the range of services they offer, the availability of the robust CodeBaby platform will result in streamlining operations and better management of subscriber relationships. CodeBaby can look to leverage our expertise and in-depth market knowledge as they aim to expand their presence in the region.


"Al-Falak has a very strong reputation in the Gulf and is working with key telecom players to advance their IPTV and mobile offerings, said Shaheel Hooda, CodeBaby CEO. Partnering with them ensures that we have a strong presence and can offer our Customer Care platform in one of the fastest growing and most technically advanced Telco markets in the world. It is very exciting that we are jointly working on our first customer and are both looking to growing our businesses in the region."

For more than 25 years, Al-Falak has delivered enterprise IT solutions through a network of offices and trained technical personnel throughout the Middle East and through a portfolio of business partnerships with the world's leading solution and software providers, hardware and consumable manufacturers, business consultancy firms and implementation specialists.

About Al Falak
Al-Falak Electronic Equipment & Supplies Co. is a leading IT and communications solution provider throughout the Middle East. The company is focused on delivering complete End-to-End solutions and provides a wide range of products and services including system solutions and consulting, system integration and networking, analytical and business intelligence, data warehousing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), application software solutions, computer supplies and accessories, e-business and manpower outsourcing. Since its formation in 1981, the company has provided the information infrastructure to many prestigious organizations, which range from practically every government ministry and agency to universities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, as well as domestic and international private companies.

Al Falak's name is now practically synonymous with IT in the region. This 100% Saudi owned company has built upon its platform of existing partnerships with some of the most reputable companies in the IT industry. The majority of their staff is IT professionals, consultants, specialist or technicians. This combination helps to ensure that Al-Falak keeps fully abreast of industry standard platform changes to offer constantly updated systems integration, installation, programming, training and support. For more information, visit: www.alfalak.com

About CodeBaby
CodeBaby is the leader in Virtual Agent based self-service solutions, and enables organizations to integrate state-of-the-art, interactive 3D characters into Web sites, software, mobile devices, kiosks, IPTV and eLearning applications. CodeBabys Virtual Agents improve a companys ability to interact with its customers cost-effectively, offer a higher level of on-line or on-device customer care, and make technology more enjoyable and easier to use. Accolades include placement on Branham Groups Top 25 IT Up and Comers list in 2004, being named a Finalist in the Red Herring Top 100 Most Innovative Companies list in 2005, and being ranked among the Top 10 fastest growing companies in Alberta Ventures Fast 50 list for 2006. Customers include organizations in the telecommunications, automotive, and education industries, as well as government agencies. For more information, visit: www.codebaby.com. To learn more about opportunities to partner with CodeBaby, please contact us at [email protected].

Contact Information

For CodeBaby:
Doug Johnson, Director of Marketing
780-432-5227
[email protected]



For Al-Falak Systems Solutions & Consulting:
1. Fady Beyhum, Triple Play Manager
+971 50 4271 339 [Mobile]
[email protected]


2. MM Ali, Projects Manager
Qatar: + 974 5578768 [Mobile]
+ 974 4810767 [Landline]

UAE: + 97150 6458646 [Mobile]
+ 9714 3915474 [Landline]
Mantas to Provide the Habib Bank Limited, Pakistan with Industry Leading Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Compliance Software and Services. Check it out:
NEW YORK and KARACHI, Pakistan --(Business Wire)-- Mantas, Inc., a leading global provider of advanced solutions for compliance and risk management including anti-money laundering (AML), broker and trading compliance, fraud detection, and operational risk analysis, today announced its partnership with Habib Bank Ltd., the largest bank in Pakistan. With an extensive network of 1425 domestic branches and 55 international branches, Habib Bank plays an important role in Pakistan's financial and economic development.



Pakistan is in the process of modernizing laws governing the country's financial sector. But the agreement comes before the proposed Banking Act, 2006, which includes new provisions to combat financial crime, has been enacted.

Previously Habib Bank used separate business unit solutions and manual processes to identify suspicious activity. However, the bank decided it needed a more sophisticated, robust and comprehensive platform to address regulatory compliance, protect its customers and brand, and prevent operational losses stemming from financial crime. Having evaluated different solutions, Habib Bank chose Mantas ONE to address their compliance and risk management needs in a rapidly deployable and cost-effective manner.

"To continue to build on our position as a globally recognized financial institution, we sought an enterprise approach to anti-money laundering. We chose Mantas because it is a proven product, and is able to cover a large number of subsidiaries and jurisdictions. Mantas also has worldwide brand recognition, an excellent implementation track record and is price-competitive. With this choice, we are confident we have selected the very best solution to augment our efforts in combating financial crime," said Mudassir Khan, Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer, Habib Bank.

"We're seeing a tremendous interest from small-to medium sized banks across the world that wish to deploy the most acknowledged solution to combat financial crime. This plays a part in their strategy to continue to grow their business. But our clients also choose Mantas because they want a solution that can help them meet ever-evolving risk and compliance requirements as well as improve corporate governance and performance throughout their organizations," said Simon Moss, CEO, Mantas.

Mantas Behavior Detection Platform

The Mantas Behavior Detection Platform is the industry's most comprehensive solution for avoiding risk, exceeding regulatory requirements, and enhancing customer relationships. Mantas analyzes the behavior of customers, employees, and partners in every transaction across the enterprise, from every angle - past, present, and future - empowering companies to act with precision and confidence. Mantas creates transparency, increasing a financial institution's ability to understand and manage its business and identify risks and opportunities. Transparency, trust and operational excellence have been proven keys to retaining customers and growing market share.

About Habib Bank Limited

The Habib Bank Group is the leader in Pakistan's financial services industry. An extensive network of 1425 domestic branches - the largest in Pakistan - and 55 international branches enables the bank to provide comprehensive financial services for both local and international customers. This has ensured thriving client relationships that form the backbone of the Bank's operations.

Today, HBL plays an important role in Pakistan's financial and economic development. It has come a long way from its modest beginnings in Bombay in 1941 when it commenced operations with a fixed capital of 25,000 rupees. Habib Bank has been a pioneer in providing innovative banking services.

These have included the installation of the first mainframe computer in Pakistan followed by the first ATM and more recently, Internet banking facilities in all our 1425 domestic branches. For more information, please visit http://www.habibbankltd.com/html/media.cfm.

About Mantas

Mantas provides its clients with the industry's most advanced solutions for regulatory compliance, loss prevention and revenue generation. Our clients recognize greater transparency of their business and make better-informed decisions as a result. Mantas is a leading global software company with operations in Europe, the Americas and Asia/Pacific. Recognized as a leader in global operational transparency, the company's products are used by more than 5,000 finance professionals in more than 100 countries.

Headquartered in Herndon, Va., the company has offices in London, New York, and Singapore. Mantas is a Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (NYSE: SFE) partner company. For further information please visit www.mantas.com.
Microsoft Unveils Data Protection Manager Version 2. Check it out:
Microsoft Corp. has released version 2 of its Microsoft (News - Alert) System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), which is capable of continuous data protection (CDP) for Microsoft application and file servers through advanced technology.



Designed for enterprises of all sizes, DPM offers reliable recovery and efficient protection. Be it individual file servers or mission-critical Microsoft applications, DPM offers disk-to-disk-to-tape protection.

DPM version 2 includes support for Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server.

“DPM version 2 combines the concepts of continuous data protection and traditional tape backup, online and offline, into a single product, enabling a zero-data-loss configuration for applications,” said Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of the Windows Enterprise Management Division at Microsoft, in a press release.

According to the release, DPM version 2 helps customers keep an eye on data changes in real time. The system facilitates zero data loss recovery with a patent-pending agent technology. DPM version 2 ensures minimal downtime and reliable application recovery with a perfect integration of tape and disk.

“The combination of Dell’s (News - Alert) flexible PowerVault Disk and Tape storage offerings with Microsoft’s DPM running on Dell PowerEdge servers offers customers a simple, cost-effective solution that helps ensure data is protected and rapidly recoverable,” declares Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Computer Corp.’s storage business.

DPM version 2 may prove helpful for IT administrators. They can safeguard and recover all applications or application objects with application terminology and concepts such as mailboxes for Microsoft Exchange Server or file shares for Windows file servers.

For more information, visit www.microsoft.com/dpm.

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Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.
Apriso Expands Industry Expertise, Hires Rick Gallisa Industry Director for Life Sciences and Consumer Goods. Check it out:
LONG BEACH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Apriso Corporation, a provider of adaptive operations execution solutions for manufacturing, has named Rick Gallisa Industry Director Life Sciences and Consumer Goods. Rick brings to Apriso over 16 years' experience in life sciences (pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics) technology and services business. He will be responsible for driving business development in the Life Sciences and Consumer Goods verticals for FlexNet, Apriso's flagship product.



Mr. Gallisa comes to Apriso after serving as vice president, sales and marketing, for Gentiae Clinical Research, where his leadership resulted in 129% orders growth in 2005. Gentiae is a premier provider of centralized cardiac safety monitoring and technology-enabled services.

Prior to that Mr. Gallisa held senior positions in sales and marketing, national accounts and general management for Honeywell International. He served as managing director Honeywell's Life Sciences Global Business Unit that grew to $50 million worldwide, and was also formerly vice president of global sales and marketing for POMS, a wholly owned subsidiary providing enterprise software for supply chain and compliance management in life science manufacturing operations.

About Apriso Corporation

Apriso Corporation (www.apriso.com) is a software company dedicated to providing competitive advantage for its customers. It does that by enabling manufacturers in the Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Consumer Goods, High-tech and Electronics, Life Sciences, Mill Products and Industrial Machinery & Components industries to adapt quickly and easily to market changes and unexpected events; providing visibility and real-time control of manufacturing operations across the enterprise and supply network; integrating planning, execution and control; increasing operational efficiency; and eliminating errors in the production process.

Apriso operates in nine countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia; serves more than 150 customers in 39 countries; and powers more than 500 installations worldwide. Its customers include General Motors, Lear, Honeywell, Microsoft, L'Oreal, Lockheed Martin, Becton Dickinson, Rubbermaid, Saint-Gobain, Novelis and Essilor.

Apriso and FlexNet are registered trademarks, All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
VIETNAM: US$71.6 MLN CREDIT CONTRACT FOR LAO HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER PROJECT. Check it out:
(InfoProd Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) According to VoV, a credit contract to provide US$71.6 million for the construction of Xekaman 3 hydro-electric power plant in Laos was signed in Hanoi on September 27 between the Vietnam-Lao Electricity Investment Development Joint-Stock Company and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam. The 250 MW plant is expected to turn out 982 million kWh per year. Its construction is estimated to cost VND 4.26 trillion (US$266.2 million). Once completed, about 90 percent of the plant's electricity will be transmitted to Vietnam, and the remainder, to Laos. This was an overseas investment project by a Vietnamese enterprise under the formula BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer), which was approved by the Prime Minister.



Copyright 2006 . Infoprod.
Multimax Achieves Cisco Gold Certification. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Multimax, Inc. - the premier resource for performance-based enterprise information technology (IT) and communications services for Department of Defense and civilian agencies - announced today that it has achieved Gold Certification under Cisco Systems' Channel Partner Program. To achieve Gold Certification, Multimax met rigorous standards for networking competency, service, and support.



Gold Certification - the highest level of certification available in the industry-leading Cisco Channel Partner Program - validates Multimax's capabilities in advanced routing and switching, advanced wireless, advanced security, and advanced unified communications technologies. Additionally, it points to Multimax's exceptional record for customer service/ customer satisfaction.

"Multimax is gratified to have achieved Cisco Gold Certification," said Carleton Jones, CEO of Multimax. "We have worked with Cisco on numerous engagements for federal customers, over an extended period. We certainly value our strengthened partnership with Cisco as a recipient of Cisco Gold Certification."

About Multimax

Multimax is the premier resource for performance-based enterprise IT and communications services and solutions supporting the Department of Defense, federal civilian agencies, and state and local government entities, including, among others: U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of Veterans Affairs and Federal Aviation Administration. Based in Herndon, Va., Multimax offers clear value over the full technology lifecycle, with proven expertise and execution meeting the highest professional standards. For more information regarding Multimax, please visit www.multimax.com.
WorldCell Announces Expansion into Japan. Check it out:
SILVER SPRING, Md., Sept. 28 -- WorldCell announced today that it has opened a new subsidiary in Japan, WorldCell Japan, Inc. The new operation is focused on delivering WorldCell's portfolio of managed wireless services to one of its core customers, the US Military, which has over 30,000 active troops in Japan and Okinawa.



The team will be led by Kimiaki Ueno, who joins WorldCell as President and Representative Director of WorldCell Japan. Mr. Ueno has over 35 years experience in the global telecommunications industry, most recently as CEO and founder of GES Communications Corporation. Prior to establishing GES Communications, Mr. Ueno was President and CEO of WorldCom Japan Group companies (MCI WorldCom Japan, UUNet Japan).

"As Japan is one of the world's largest mobile markets, WorldCell recognizes the need to establish a local presence to service its already strong US Military customer," explains Greg Buckman, WorldCell's Vice- President of Sales and Marketing. "By establishing a full-service office locally, we will be able to provide our government customers with the high- quality customer care and service delivery that they have come to expect from WorldCell."

WorldCell is currently the leading provider of voice and data services, including BlackBerry, to the US Government outside the United States. WorldCell holds multiple government contracts such as: DITCO-Europe, USAFE- Europe, GSA and the ITEC-4 BPA, in addition to over 20 individual agency contracts. The expansion of WorldCell's office into Japan will enable the organization to expand service into the Pacific-Rim in order to continue to serve the US military with their mission-critical wireless communications.

Blake Swensrud, WorldCell's founder and Chief Executive Officer states, "I am thrilled to be entering this market with Mr. Ueno leading the local operations as he has an extensive telecommunications background and world- class experience in the Japanese market."

"WorldCell recognizes that establishing a local presence in Japan enables the organization to better serve the US Military, and its expanding customer base," explains Mr. Ueno, President and Representative Director of WorldCell Japan, Inc. "I am confident that the expansion into this region will yield strong results for the organization."

About WorldCell
WorldCell is the leading provider of BlackBerry and cellular voice and data solutions to the US Government OCONUS, and has been serving government, enterprise and mobile professionals for more than 10 years. With WorldCell's wireless managed services solutions, users are able to procure their local wireless voice and data services in over 28 countries from one-source, providing standardized device management, centralized control, and reduced costs. WorldCell is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA and has international offices in Germany, Iceland, Bahrain, Brazil and Japan. WorldCell's cross-protocol roaming service enables roaming with GSM carriers in over 200 countries. For more information about WorldCell, visit http://www.worldcell.com/

For more information please contact:

Julia Wilton
Director of Marketing

WorldCell, Inc.
301.960.0060 ext 604
[email protected]
http://www.worldcell.com/

WorldCell, Inc.

CONTACT: Julia Wilton, Director of Marketing of WorldCell, Inc.,+1-301-960-0060 ext 604, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.worldcell.com/
Evesham Technology unveils SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server. Check it out:
(Corporate IT update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CORPORATE IT UPDATE-(C)1995-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

The new SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server has been unveiled by UK IT solutions provider Evesham Technology, to help organisations deal with high storage requirements.

The SilverSTOR 3142 NAS is intended for file storage, archival storage and back-up to disk strategies and is expected to help companies with the government's forthcoming legislation to ensure safe back up of legal documentation.

The company said the server is built on reliable server technology, which includes server processors, a server specific motherboard, hot swappable HDDs and redundant power supply. It claimed the SilverSTOR 3142 NAS ensures data is readily available, protected against hardware failure and easy to access and manage.



The server offers 14 HDD bays with up to 300Mb/s throughput, support for Native Command Queuing, connection to a Serial-ATA II RAID controller and two additional HDDs assigned to hosting the Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 OS. A SilverSTOR 3142 NAS with 750GB Serial-ATA II Enterprise HDDs will provided a combined storage capacity of over 10TB.

The SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server offers expansion potential and extra SCSI cards for local tape drives and is available, with a three year Next Business Day Onsite Warranty, from GBP2999.

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

Removing barriers to growth

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Removing barriers to growth. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Small business makes up the bedrock of the UK economy, but it has never been harder to run one.

Industry giants like Dyson and Virgin may have started out as small businesses, but the impact of business crime, or the latest raft of regulations from Brussels, are taking their toll on the SME sector.

Which is why the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the biggest business organisation in the UK, is on hand to fight their corner.

With 200,000 members, from dentists to taxi drivers, small manufacturers to lawyers, the FSB represents the interests of small firms locally, nationally and internationally.

It has grown ever since it was established in 1974, and represents businesses with less than 100 employees.

Mike Cherry, chairman of the West Midlands Policy Unit of the FSB, said: "Between 12 and 13 million people work in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector and account for about 50 per cent of UK GDP.

"Growing from a small to a medium-sized firm is very difficult, as is getting a product to market."

Mr Cherry, who runs a giftware manufacturing business in Burton, said access to finance was a particularly tough area for small businesses.

The FSB is now contributing to an inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading into bank charges on small businesses, which it believes are disproportionate and discourages growth.

"Our members are on the frontline and are experiencing these problems all the time, so their input will be invaluable."

The organisation is also lobbying against business crime - by calling for a Key Performance Indicator on the police for business crime.

At present there is no set definition for business crime, although Mr Cherry favours the one adopted by Warwickshire Police as part of a pilot scheme which says: 'Any crime against a business, or on a business premises."

Across the West Midlands it is estimated that the cost of business crime is at least pounds 123 million, while it is estimated to be at least a quarter of all offences.

Mr Cherry said: "Without a definition or KPI it is harder for business crime to be recorded properly and dealt with accordingly.

"If something is measured, and targets set, the police will hopefully ensure there are adequate resources to deal with the problem.

"This impacts on business enormously, and has forced some firms to actually close. Business crime is not victim-less and does not simply mean we can make a claim against our insurers.

"It has a disproportionate effect on the area where a business is. Small companies are part and parcel of a local community - they don't up sticks and go somewhere else when the going gets tough."

The FSB is currently working with the other members of the West Midlands Regional Business Crime Forum (WMRBCF), the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), Trading Standards and others on specific issues within business crime.

Manufacturing is another key area for the FSB lobbying campaign, which has seen the organisation invite MPs to spend a day at a small firm to see for themselves what they are up against.

"We feel that manufacturing is alive and well in the Midlands," said Mr Cherry. "But I think there is too much emphasis on start-ups.

"There should be more support on companies that need to grow more steadily or diversify."

The FSB is now involved in ongoing discussions with Advantage West Midlands and other business organisations to ensure the manufacturing case is put forward to government.

"It has become harder to run a small business. The explosion in rules, red tape, codes of practice etc, means it is virtually impossible to find the necessary time to run a small business."

Mr Cherry said the substantial increases in the cost of energy as well as raw material price hikes were also making it more difficult for firms to operate, since it was virtually impossible to pass these increases on to customers.

"There are often no margins left."

Through its lobbying at government level, the FSB is campaigning against a return to locally set business rates as well as inflation busting rises in the minimum wage.

It latest 'Lifting the Barriers' survey has clearly identified certain sectors and regions where this is having an adverse impact.

The FSB has been surveying its whole membership every two years since 2000.

The research which is carried out by the University of Strathclyde and University of Stirling is recognised for its scale and is increasing used by many government departments.

The main survey is used to produce further more in-depth series of reports, which are distributed to MPs and other decision makers.

Mr Cherry said: "Our members can rest assured the FSB is working hard on their behalf to make sure the voice of small business is heard.

"We are the biggest business organisation in the UK and we understand their problems.

"Small business is so often ignored, and there is too often a serious lack of understanding. I always say that we need to engage more with the decision makers so they understand better how their decisions can adversely affect the small business community.



"This is more important than ever. Too often in local councils, local politicians and MPs have a serious lack of business knowledge.

"We are trying to overcome this with the challenge to MPs to spend a day with local business. We look forward to their positive response."

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
Intesource Sponsors Innovation'06: Best Practices in Sourcing & Procurement Conference. Check it out:
PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- Intesource, the intelligent sourcing experts, today announced that they will serve as a Platinum Sponsor at the Innovation'06 Best Practices in Sourcing Conference, to be held at the Pointe South Mountain Resort in Phoenix, October 11 through 13, 2006.



The conference will provide an executive forum for the exchange of experience, best practices, and ideas. The conference agenda will include keynote speeches from several industry luminaries including Wegmans' Chief Logistics Officer, Mike Bargmann, Schnuck Markets' head of e-Sourcing, John Scherer, Leading Supply Chain Analyst, Patrick Connaughton from Forrester Research, StoreNext President & CEO, Ray Carlin, as well as breakout sessions on sourcing, collaboration, and corporate adoption.

Intesource President & CEO Ron Southard will deliver the results of a ground-breaking and industry-first supplier survey. The discussion will focus on historical trends on supplier best practices in e-sourcing initiatives. Mr. Southard stated, "This is a significant set of findings and is designed to position both sourcing professionals and suppliers for maximized success."

The conference will officially kick off with a Welcome Reception the evening of Wednesday, October 11, with a full-day exchange on Thursday, October 12. The conference will close with an awards banquet hosted by Intesource.

For additional information on the conference, or to register, please go to www.innovation06.com or call 1-800-476-0409.

About Intesource

Intesource, Inc. is a global provider of intelligent sourcing and collaboration solutions. Serving many industries including retail and consumer goods, Intesource delivers superior technology with deep industry knowledge. Our on-demand and enterprise solutions lead to high-impact results including enhanced productivity, cost reduction, and bottom-line profitability. We do more than help: We are your source for intelligent sourcing solutions.

For additional information, please visit www.intesource.com, or call 1-800-475-2149.
Justice Department Dismisses Antitrust Lawsuit Against Exelon Corp. and Public Enterprise Service Group Inc. ; Exelon Abandons Efforts to Acquire PSEG. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WASHINGTON, Sep 28, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --The Department of Justice today announced that it filed a notice with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss its antitrust complaint challenging the potential acquisition of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PSEG) by Exelon Corp. Exelon has formally abandoned its effort to acquire PSEG, and therefore the lawsuit and proposed consent decree are no longer necessary, the Department said.



Background:

On June 22, the department filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that the acquisition would harm competition in markets for wholesale electricity in the Mid-Atlantic region. At the same time, the department filed a proposed settlement of the lawsuit that would preserve competition by requiring Exelon to divest six electricity generating plants, with a total generating capacity of more than 5,600 megawatts, in order to proceed with its $16 billion acquisition of PSEG.

http://www.usnewswire.com

U.S. Department of Justice, 202-514-2007

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire

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Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.
Clyde boss tunes in to radio promotion. Check it out:
(Evening Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) RADIO Clyde boss Paul Cooney has been awarded a major new promotion.

The managing director of the Clydebank-based operation is set to become a regional managing director for parent group Emap.

He will now have responsibility for Radio Clyde, West Sound and South West Sound.

The move is part of Emap's restructuring of their radio division.

The company claims it "will give greater autonomy to the regions and encourage stronger bonds with local audiences and advertisers throughout the UK".

A delighted Mr Cooney said: "This is in recognition of the importance of local audiences, especially inScotland. Our great strength has always been the close bond between our stations, listeners and advertisers."

Mr Cooney, 49, has worked in commercial radio and television for more than 30 years.

He has held senior positions at Clyde, Capital Radio, Scottish Television and West Sound before returning to Clyde in 2000.

He has been voted Scotland's Broadcast Journalist of the Year and won several Sony awards.

He is also a trustee of the Cash for Kids Appeal and a director of Scottish Enterprise Glasgow and Independent News.

A spokesman for Emap outlined the new business strategy which will take effect from Monday.

"The company's Big City structure will be a business of seven clusters of local stations, each with a regional managing director.

"The three Scottish regions will be Scotland North, Scotland West and Scotland East."

Adam Findlay, managing director of Radio Forth, will be responsible for Scotland East, while Ally Ballingall, managing director of Radio Tay, will be responsible for Scotland North.

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group Ltd. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Thailand: MCOT executives resign en masse. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Corporate News - The Board of Directors of MCOT Public Company Limited (MCOT Plc), Thailand's leading broadcast media, announced their resignation en masse Tuesday to take responsibility for the September 19 incident, the company's board chairman announced Tuesday.



MCOT's media sway effectively includes television channel 9, 62 radio stations and the Thai News Agency.

A state enterprise 'privatised' two years ago, MCOT remained about 65 per cent owned by the Thai government through the Ministry of Finance.

MCOT President Mingkwan Sangsuwan and the board of the privatised but still state-owned media organisation decided to leave.

The resignation will take effect Wednesday.

In a statement read by MCOT board chairman Rawat Chamchalerm, all 11 members of the board of directors agreed unanimously to resign together to show responsibility for the "September 19 incident".

MCOT's Modernine television (TV 9) was the only station that aired the speech by then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from New York where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly.

In the statement relayed from New York, former premier Thaksin attempted to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok and tried to dismiss Army commander General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin.

Mr. Thaksin said he was ordering the transfer of the nation's army chief to work in the prime minister's office, effectively suspending him from his military duties, but the speech was abruptly interrupted during transmission.

The military Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) led by Gen. Sonthi and other armed forces commanders later staged a bloodless coup d'etat to overthrow the caretaker government then under the control of Mr. Thaksin.

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Vietnam: Credit capital provided for Lao hydro-power project. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - A credit contract to provide 1.14 trillion VND (71.6 million USD) to the construction of Xekaman 3 hydro-power plant in Laos was signed in Hanoi on Sept. 27 between the Vietnam-Lao Electricity Investment Development Joint-Stock Company and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam.



The 250 MW plant is expected to turn out 982 million kWh per year. Its construction is estimated to cost 4.26 trillion VND (266.2 million USD).

Once completed, about 90 percent of the plant's electricity will be transmitted to Vietnam, and the remainder, to Laos.

This was an overseas investment project by a Vietnamese enterprise under the formula BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer), which was approved by the Prime Minister. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Vietnam: APEC ministers chart development course for SMEs. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung welcomed delegates from the 21 APEC economies to attend the 13th APEC SME Ministerial Meeting in Hanoi on September 28-29 and hoped that they will put forth new initiatives to promote SME development.



Addressing the meeting, Mr Dung noted that the Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a pioneer in the field of trade and economic development. This is partly attributed to the robust and comprehensive development of SMEs which make up more than 98 percent of the total newly established enterprises, bring about 35 percent of turnover and create more than 58 percent of jobs in the region.

However, Mr Dung said besides advantages during the globalisation, SMEs, particularly those in low-level economies, are facing numerous difficulties as a result of tough competition, unpredictable fluctuations of the financial and monetary markets and material prices, as well as the rapid changes in science and technology which require a significant amount of capital for technology renovation and the improvement of human resource quality and competitiveness.

To sustain the rapid growth rate of the regional economy, Mr Dung said it is imperative to create favourable conditions for SMEs to improve the business environment, get access to finance and technology, expand the market through encouraging domestic consumption and exports and enhancing links among SMEs within each economy and the whole region.

He welcomed practical issues to be discussed at the meeting and hoped that delegates will put forth new initiatives and devise appropriate solutions to promote SME development and contribute to the Hanoi Action Plan to be passed at the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Hanoi this November.

The PM informed participants of Vietnam's major socio-economic achievements in recent years, stressing that Vietnam has not only overcome the socio-economic crisis, but has also maintained an average GDP growth rate of 7.5 percent annually in recent years.

He attributed the success to the policy of mobilising all internal resources and encouraging the development of all economic sectors. He said that since the Enterprise Law took effect in 1999, more than 100,000 enterprises have been established, bringing the total number of registered enterprises to more than 245,000, of which SMEs make up 96 percent. These SMEs have mobilised nearly US$30 billion in investment capital - a figure which is larger than total foreign direct investment capital in the reviewed period, generated 2.6 million jobs and contributed approximately 40 percent of GDP.

Mr Dung affirmed Vietnam's consistent and long-term policy of creating favourable conditions for SMEs to develop in a healthy environment.

The Vietnamese Government is making every effort to perfect its legal framework and business environment, said Mr Dung, citing the recent approval of the Unified Enterprise Law and the Common Investment Law for all economic sectors.

He said Vietnam has developed and implemented programmes to support SMEs, particularly in human resource development, trade and investment promotion, access to technology, loans and premises, as well as encouraging SME links through associations.

At a closed session in the morning, APEC ministers discussed ways to create a favourable business environment for SMEs, including mechanisms and policies to support SMEs. They spent time discussing the Hanoi Joint Statement on enhancing competitive capacity of SMEs in trade and investment. - VOV

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Vietnam: US$71.6 million credit contract for Lao hydro-electric power project. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - A credit contract to provide US$71.6 million for the construction of Xekaman 3 hydro-electric power plant in Laos was signed in Hanoi on September 27 between the Vietnam-Lao Electricity Investment Development Joint-Stock Company and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam.



The 250 MW plant is expected to turn out 982 million kWh per year. Its construction is estimated to cost VND 4.26 trillion (US$266.2 million).

Once completed, about 90 percent of the plant's electricity will be transmitted to Vietnam, and the remainder, to Laos.

This was an overseas investment project by a Vietnamese enterprise under the formula BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer), which was approved by the Prime Minister. - VOV

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Thailand's Media Sector: MCOT CEO resigns. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Stocks - The CEO of MCOT Mingkwan Sangsuwan and the entire board of directors resigned yesterday. The resignations are effective today (27 Sep). Note that the chairman and CEO have strong relationships with ousted PM Thaksin Shinawatra, and MCOT (Ch 9) was the only TV station in the country that broadcasted Thaksin's declaration of a state emergency following the coup d'etat on 19 Sep.



The resignations are very negative to MCOT's profitability. As a state enterprise, MCOT is a typical bureaucratic entity. Ex-CEO Mingkwan was the one that turned around the TV station. Although the CEO and top management were professionals, most of middle management and staff still have a bureaucratic operating style. MCOT is out of our coverage, but we had been generally negative towards MCOT given (i) low earnings quality, as the bulk of its revenue and earnings are revenue sharing income from BEC and UBC, (ii) bureaucratic style, and (iii) high valuations (18x 2006 PE based on consensus earnings).

Investors were recommended SWITCH to BEC, which offers better value. First, BEC has quality management that is very keen on entertainment programs, which are more profitable than news and documentary programs. Second, BEC will be the prime beneficiary of ITV losing its court case. Third, BEC has superior earnings quality, as all its revenue and profit are generated from its own operations. BEC offers 24% upside potential to out target price of Bt21.0, based on 20x 2007 PE and 5.0% 2007 dividend yield. A BUY call is reiterated for BEC, which is top pick in the sector.

(DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand): 28 September 2006)

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Avoiding Tower of Babel' Mobile Communication Challenges. Check it out:
 
In my previous column, I noted that mobile workers would increasingly make their mobile devices the focus for all enterprise communications. And I predicted that when mobile devices with more robust voice communications features (such as speed dialing, contact lists, conference calling and other features typical of an IP PBX (News - Alert)) become pervasive, those devices will become the command and control point for all — voice and data — communications.


 
There are a number of advantages to making mobile devices rather than desktop phones and PCs the focus of all enterprise communications. Among them is the ability to employ one communications device with consistent features and a single user interface at anytime, regardless of location.
 
But benefits begin to dissipate when you consider a typical organization in which mobile workers carry separate RIM, Nokia (News - Alert), HP, or other devices, each with its own proprietary mobile communications software. That’s a recipe for trouble. Because while individual users may still benefit from consistent features and a single user interface, the enterprise would now risk a Tower of Babel nightmare in which scores of mobile devices look, operate, and communicate differently. What IT person is going to be responsible for learning five or six different mobile software systems so users can be trained and productive? What happens when there’s a problem with multiple mobile communications systems and calls come into the support center?
 
Unfortunately, we have today the potential for that very problem. In our small organization, for example, many employees are mobile and each of them carries a PDA or smartphone device that they swear by. Trying to get our people to standardize on a single mobile device is like dictating that they all choose the same religion: It isn’t going to happen.
 
That’s why for this mobile revolution to continue, mobile communications software is going to have to support the same features and functions on multiple devices and operating systems and work with various PBXs.
 
Consider a mobile workforce in which individual users maximize their productivity by using a device that best suits their needs and tastes. Meanwhile, because their mobile communications software looks, feels, and works the same way on each device, peers and IT staff can easily train new workers to use the features and functions and provide support when a problem surfaces.
 
Add in the fact that IT managers can let users choose from among a full range of mobile devices and PBXs to best meet individual and enterprise needs and you get a solution that’s worthy of pursuing.
 
It’s a difficult enough challenge for enterprises to deploy advanced fixed communications capabilities today. If we are to get to the promised land of enterprise communications everywhere, we must give users the choices they demand and make the administration and support of mobile devices clear-cut and doable.
 
David Hattey is president and CEO of FirstHand Technologies, an innovator in mobile VoIP software for enterprise use. He can be reached at [email protected].
 
Dell marks first anniversary in Triad. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--TRIAD -- Dell Inc. has more than 1,100 reasons to celebrate its first anniversary next week.

When Dell and state officials announced that the computer conglomerate had picked Winston-Salem for its latest manufacturing facility, the company pledged to create 1,500 jobs within five years.

As it prepares to mark its first year in operation, Dell already has more than 1,100 full-time workers. The company's employment is ahead of the 750 that Dell originally projected for the end of this year, said Donna Oldham, spokeswoman at the Winston-Salem plant. Dell plant.



"That number puts us well on the way to the 1,500 team-member number that we had projected after five years," We will add additional team members as needed," she said.

Dell will mark the formal anniversary of the opening of its more than 500,000-square-foot plant Oct. 5. North Carolina won a national recruiting battle when the state secured the Dell computer manufacturing operation. The company received a record state and local incentives package of $280 million, which will be phased in during a 12- to 15-year period. Dell hasn't applied yet to receive its first installment of incentives, said a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Commerce in Raleigh.

High Point has benefited from Dell suppliers locating in the city during the last year, creating jobs and adding to the tax base, said High Point Economic Development Corp. President Loren Hill.

"Our reputation as a place to do business was enhanced as soon as Dell made its announcement," he said. "The fact that Dell would open a major manufacturing facility and distribution operation five miles from High Point gives great credibility to our region for similar projects."

Dell is based in Round Rock, Texas, near Austin. In addition to its Triad facility, Dell has manufacturing operations in Lebanon, Tenn.; Limerick, Ireland; Penang, Malaysia; Xiamen, China; and Eldorado do Sul, Brazil.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Focus on Power Quality Software

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Focus on Power Quality Software. Check it out:
(Electrical Construction & Maintenance Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ETAP

ETAP Harmonic Analysis, a module of the new ETAP 5.5 power system enterprise solution, allows users to assess power quality by identifying harmonic problems and nuisance trips, designing and testing filters, and reporting distortion limit violations. Comprehensive load flow and frequency scan calculations are performed using detailed harmonic models and non-integer harmonic filters. Results are shown graphically, including harmonic order, harmonic spectrum plots and harmonic waveform plots, as well as detailed Crystal Reports. Under the latest 5.5 release, a new option has been added, allowing the use of long-line model for transmission lines and cables.ETAP/Operation Technology (www.etap.com)Circle 176



PowerIQ

PowerIQ power quality analysis software works in parallel with this company's on-board analyzer or controller, displaying system status and measurement results in a Windows operating environment. The program provides the user with remote-access to analyze or control various parameters. All network parameters, including harmonics, can be recorded continually or for pre-selected intervals. Recording time is limited only by the size of the computer's hard disk or other storage device (server, memory card, etc). Electrical events can be captured by associating trigger values to various network power parameters, such as low voltage or high current. The event recording will capture a user-selected before and after window of time. PowerIQ has intranet and Internet support capabilities.Elspec Ltd. (www.elspec-ltd.com)Circle 175

HI_WAVE

This software tool simulates resonance and harmonic distortion in industrial, commercial, and utility power systems. Users can define harmonic current and voltage sources at multiple locations in the power system. Capacitor banks, single-tune filters, and high-pass filters may also be included in the voltage and current distortion evaluation, impedance resonance scans, and in harmonic load flow results. With HI_WAVE, new power systems may be examined before they are built, addressing harmonic effects during the design phase. Similarly, existing power systems may be studied and corrective filter designs evaluated before they are installed. Every bus and branch in the power system may be quickly evaluated for harmonic content and for resonant impedance characteristics.SKM Systems Analysis (www.skm.com)Circle 177

ION Enterprise

ION Enterprise, a Web-enabled energy information management solution software program, offers facility and plant operations staff the ability to perform comprehensive power quality and reliability analysis, and helps reduce energy-related costs. By managing intelligent ION metering and control devices, the software enables users to gather and analyze data from multiple sources. Its flexibility and interoperability means you can add one piece at a time, while still maintaining your original investment. Connect to your existing systems through industry-standard protocols including OPC, Modbus, and XML, and choose newer components as they become available.Power Measurement (www.pwrm.com)Circle 178

Dran-View 6.0

Dran-View is a Windows-based software package that enables users to quickly visualize and analyze power monitoring data. With the help of this tool, users can scroll through data, zoom in on disturbances, trend data, filter events, evaluate statistics, and perform advanced harmonic and interharmonic analyses. Flexibility has been integrated throughout the package, making customization possible for both appearance and behavior. Two versions are available: one for the everyday user (Pro) and one for advanced power professionals (Enterprise). View events, timeplots and waveforms simultaneously and interactively using the software's three-pane window. Move your mouse over events to drill down for more detail or access to different channels. Any data source can be expoerted to IEEE PQDIF format, and COMTRADE files and tabulated text files with waveforms or trends can be imported into Dran-View Enterprise. Analysis support is also enhanced by: the harmonic demo tool; separate harmonics scaling for voltage, current, and power; and rescue kit to correct timestamps, flip probes, adjust incorrect connection types or change scaling factors without recollecting data.Dranetz-BMI (www.dranetz-bmi.com)Circle 179

SuperHarm

Designed for harmonic modeling and simulation, SuperHarm evaluates harmonics on electric power systems, enabling users to develop a computer model of a power system to explore variations on system loads and configurations along with the resulting impact on system frequency response and distortion levels. Available with a wide variety of device and source models, the software contains a generic harmonic voltage and current source model, long-line corrected pi model, simple RL branch model, capacitor model, and a balanced 3-phase coupled line model. Also included are models for the modal representation of geometrically specified lines and cables, advanced load representations, induction and synchronous machines, and 3-phase equivalents. SuperHarm can solve both balanced and unbalanced 3-phase systems by using phase domain nodal admittance matrix techniques rather than sequence component solution methods. The harmonic-producing load models allow you to enter either typical worst-case or actual measured data for the harmonic current injections. SuperHarm automatically scales this data to match the normal system conditions at the fundamental frequency. Data can easily be transferred to programs such as Microsoft Excel and Word.Electrotek Concepts (www.electrotek.com)Circle 180

PowerVision Management Software

PowerVision power management software is ideal for system administrators and facility engineers who need local or enterprise-wide monitoring of multiple UPSs and/or other power components supporting mission-critical applications. PowerVision comes in two different packages, each one tailored for its own unique application. PowerVision Network Edition provides remote monitoring and computer operating system shutdown for multiple single-phase UPSs and small-to-mid-range 3-phase UPSs, from Powerware and others using industry-standard SNMP communications and integration with popular network management systems. PowerVision Facility Edition provides one-line detailed UPS information, monitors system status of other elements in the critical power distribution system such as generators, static switches, power distribution units (PDUs), and air conditioners through alarm contacts and supports in-depth reporting, analysis, and graphics.Eaton Electrical (www.eatonelectrical.com)Circle 181

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
City moves NPCC plan ahead on split vote. Check it out:
(Bismarck Tribune, The (ND) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--Despite protests by Commissioner Steve Schwab, the Bismarck City Commission adopted an urban renewal plan and created a tax increment renewal district for the Northern Plains Commerce Centre.



Commissioner Sandi Tabor's motion to approve the plan and district creation passed on a 3-2 vote at Tuesday's meeting, but not until after a long debate.

City Administrator Bill Wocken said that the tax increment renewal district is allowed by the state's Century Code and provides a method for the city to recoup its investment in the development of the infrastructure for the NPCC. The district will freeze taxes to the governmental jurisdictions -- city, county, school district and park district -- at current rates. But as development continues and property values increase, tax revenue from those increased rates will be diverted to the NPCC urban renewal district.

City Attorney Charlie Whitman said that the tax increment district will be transparent to property tax- payers within the district and their tax bill will increase as property values increase. He also said that unless the city made the original investment in the property, the economic development associated with the NPCC wouldn't be recognized.

Schwab questioned the reasons for adopting the plan and creating the district. He said he feels it will take money from the various governmental jurisdictions, which will have to be made up by taxpayers. He also said he feels that the city has an unfair advantage in further developing the NPCC by being able to use such actions as eminent domain, should the city desire to expand the NPCC.

"The industrial site will be like a sales tax that never goes away. Have you ever had one of these districts (referring to the tax increment renewal district) go away?" Schwab asked.

Wocken said that once the renewal plan is complete, the district is to fold up.

Commissioner Connie Sprynczynatyk attempted to reply to Schwab's assertion that the district will be taking tax money from the other jurisdictions, such as park and school districts.

"All the political subdivisions are getting tax revenues from that property as if it were a pasture. All taxing entities will get in the future what they are getting now. If the city hadn't made the investment, there would be nothing there," Sprynczynatyk said. "How can you lose what you never had?"

Schwab continued to question the city's investment in the NPCC.

"A ton of money is going into this place, and this (the district) is designed to help pay for it," Schwab said. "Maybe we should deep-six the whole thing until we get renters and users."

Currently, the city only has one lease agreement, with Bobcat. But a recent announcement was made by United Pulse Trading that it is planning an agricultural facility at the NPCC.

Mayor John Warford told Schwab that the NPCC was developed as a transportation solution for Bobcat, which was considering moving its plants and 1,100 jobs out of Bismarck and perhaps out of the state. By saving those jobs, the NPCC has already reaped benefits for the community, Warford said. And though the city doesn't yet have a lease with United Pulse, Warford said he is confident the company is coming.

The NPCC is not without precedent, Sprynczynatyk said, noting that the Bismarck Municipal Airport is another example of private enterprise at work on public property.

Commissioner Dave Jensen began to argue the viability of the airport, but backed off because it was a different issue. He said he believes the tax increment district should be capped on what it can bring in.

"I find it interesting that other government entities do not seem to share these concerns," Tabor said. "They understand its importance and that it will generate economic prosperity. If they had concerns they would be here. What they understand is this is part of how a city grows."

To see more of The Bismarck Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://bismarcktribune.com

Copyright (c) 2006, The Bismarck Tribune, N.D.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
TechTarget Opens Subsidiary in U.K.. Check it out:
NEEDHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- IT media company TechTarget announced today the opening of TechTarget Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Located in London, England, the new subsidiary will focus on offering its international clients better support for regional media opportunities and capitalize on the double-digit online advertising spending growth occurring in the region.



"International expansion presents a tremendous growth opportunity as a large percentage of the IT market is located outside the US," said TechTarget CEO Greg Strakosch. "The UK is home to Europe's largest advertising agencies and international divisions of major US technology companies. The opening of this office is in response to our US customers who also conduct business in Europe and require the same kind of solutions. Opening this first subsidiary outside North America will help us meet this need."

The opening of TechTarget Ltd. is a milestone in an aggressive expansion into critical international markets as TechTarget continues to capitalize on global growth in online advertising and IT marketing. Since May 2004, TechTarget expanded its global footprint to 25 additional countries through partnerships with five market-leading media companies and launched 39 media properties, including multi-site networks and print magazines.

Sales Veteran to Head Office

Shannon Flynn, a six-year veteran of the company, heads the new office as the Director of U.K. sales. Shannon was instrumental in opening TechTarget's San Francisco office and was most recently the sales director of TechTarget's Enterprise Applications Media. Flynn reports to Susan Odell, Vice-President of International, TechTarget.

For more information on international partnership opportunities for TechTarget media, contact Susan Odell, vice president of TechTarget international, at 001-781-657-1407 or [email protected].

About TechTarget

TechTarget publishes integrated media that enable information-technology (IT) marketers to reach targeted communities of IT professionals and executives across the globe. Through its industry-leading Web sites, magazines and conferences, TechTarget delivers measurable results that help IT marketers generate qualified sales leads, shorten sales cycles and grow revenues. TechTarget's more than 2,500 advertisers include the leading IT companies in the world, among them, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. To learn more about TechTarget's international opportunities visit www.techtarget.com/international. More information about TechTarget is available at www.techtarget.com.
Keynomics And COPC Inc. Team to Drive Improvement In Contact Center Agent Performance. Check it out:
Keynomics and Performance Improvement Consulting Division of COPC Inc. Team to Drive Improvements in Overall Quality of Contact Center Agents

Teaming arrangement focuses on keyboarding weakness affecting the quality process in contact centers.

Williamsville, NY Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC Inc.), global experts in contact center excellence, and Keynomics LLC, industry leader in workstation optimization, announced a teaming arrangement designed to address improvement of agent keyboarding training and performance as it relates to the overall service quality of client contact centers.



"For over 25 years, Keynomics has monitored changes in call centers. Through the evolution, multitasking skills have become critical for maintaining a competitive advantage, saving money, and retaining customer loyalty," said David Rogers CEO of Keynomics. "Our teaming agreement with COPC Inc. will bring the advantages of keyboard training to light and identify how this training enhances the ability to Talk, Type, Listen."

The arrangement between COPC Inc.'s Performance Improvement Consulting Division and Keynomics represents a complementary coupling of problem identification with best practice solutions, the total impact of which provides clients with improved quality and operational performance.

President and co-founder of COPC Inc., Peter Bloom, explained, "COPC Inc. is the leader in contact center operational assessments, having conducted more than 800 such evaluations. During an assessment, we work with clients to identify areas in need of improvement relating to service, quality, cost, and revenue with a focus on increasing customer satisfaction and profitability. We then work with those clients to implement the necessary improvements typically at the management level. Quite often, however, our assessment identifies agent level issues so we partner with best of breed providers that have proven solutions, like Keynomics when we identify keyboard proficiency as a high priority need."

"Were excited about working with Keynomics, Bloom continued. "We work with companies daily, who are mandated with improving their bottom line while at the same time improving the overall quality within the call center. We see this relationship as a natural extension of the growing need for ongoing performance improvement."

About COPC Inc.

Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC Inc.) is the worlds leading authority on operations management and performance improvement for buyers and providers of customer contact center and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The COPC® Performance Management System includes site certification programs, operational management training, Six Sigma in Contact Centers, performance improvement consulting and vendor sourcing and management services.
Since 1996, COPC Inc. has helped organizations in 35 countries drive results averaging two to five times Return on Investment (ROI) with a payback of less than one year. These results are achieved by leveraging the COPC® Family of Standards, the industrys oldest, most rigorous and only high performance set of global best practices and performance metrics that simultaneously increases customer satisfaction and profitability.
Global clients include Accenture, Apple, BT Group, Bertelsmann Arvato, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cable & Wireless, Citigroup, Convergys, Genpact, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, NTT, Sony, Telefónica, Telstra, and Wipro. For additional information, visit www.copc.com.

About Keynomics

Keynomics is the Industry Leader in Workstation Optimization for Contact Centers, Claims Processing Departments, and Enterprise Back Office Operations. The Keynomics Performance System automatically customizes keyboard typing and keystroke accuracy courses, transforming call center agents into transparent keyboard users. These improvements in the ability to multitask to Talk, Type, Listen, leads to superior quality, cost savings, and improved productivity. Keynomics is the only company to contractually guarantee improvements in typing speed and keystroke accuracy. For over 25 years, Keynomics Training has improved keyboarding and office ergonomics techniques for Fortune 1000 companies. Keynomics services clients in Insurance, Health Care, Finance, Credit Card Processing, Outsourcing, Training, Utilities, and more. Keynomics is based in San Francisco, California.
For more information contact us at: [email protected]. And visit Keynomics on the web at: http://www.keynomics.com.
NEC establishes VoIP network for The Peninsula Hotels. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) An integrated voice and data VoIP network system has been deployed by NEC Corporation (Nasdaq:NIPNY), an Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions provider, and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Limited, the owner/operator of The Peninsula Hotels in Asia and North America.



The network has been deployed to link the hotel group's hotels and offices around the world and is reportedly the first globally-connected VoIP network to be established in the hotel industry. It was constructed by upgrading software which incorporates IP networking functionalities from NEC in NEC's IP-PBX.

The network system was designed with minimal up-front investment and connects the hotel's 14 locations including hotels in Bangkok, Beijing, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Hong Kong, Manila and New York. The connection of worldwide locations with internal lines has also helped to reduce the cost of international business calls for the hotel group.

NEC's IP communication protocol was used to provide advanced telephone features and help improve employee productivity, with features such as Caller number display, QoS control and Centralised Call Center introduced.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Talking to Tomorrow - The Road Less Travelled. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Harare, Sep 27, 2006 (Financial Gazette/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --II IS my sincerest hope that a direct consequence of Environment Africa's advertised competition for corporate social responsibility programmes will be a fresh focus on what exactly CSR is.



Companies here tend to use CSR and its cousin CSI interchangeably. Being two sides of the same coin this is to be expected. Definitions are used quite loosely, even in the practice itself. Thus, CSR has come to mean almost the same thing as donations and sponsorships. When a large corporation donates a few books to a rural school, it calls that CSR. When employees in a financial institution visit a remote village and donate blankets to child-headed families, the elderly or infirm, they call that CSR.

The examples are many and we see and hear about them every week. If the companies are unable to persuade media that there is something newsworthy about the new blankets they donated to an old people's home in Dotito, they are sure to take out a supplement in the print media, which can be anything from one page to four pages long.

There is nothing wrong with that. I just feel that companies should do more if they want to suggest to us that they care about the communities in the areas in which they operate. Small donations and one-off sponsorships are good and must continue. In fact, all responsible citizens should do something to assist the less fortunate. Such assistance, though, tends to be ad hoc in nature, where real CSR is more sustainable and long-term.

Those with the means (and the latest half-year results can give a quick indicator of the identity of some of them) can and must make more meaningful and lasting contributions than token gestures. Everyone appreciates the harsh economic operating environment in Zimbabwe today and its negative effects on business performance across all sectors.

The trouble with this is that it has become an expedient excuse for those companies who do not feel compelled to plough back into their communities. In a few years' time tomorrow, we shall be lamenting this passivity. And, at the rate things are going in a Zimbabwe where "tsika nditsikewo" and "chaita mumwe chiitewo" are becoming cultural, everyone has become everyone else's copycat. Few are willing or even brave enough to beat a new path, travel the road not used by many. We have stopped being creative: if one financial institution holds a successful corporate golf day, you can be assured that the country will quickly turn into a golfer's paradise. The week before last, in fact, there were four corporate golf days advertised for one day in Harare alone! Maybe we should look at that subject on its own some day, particularly when you consider how many executives are out of their offices on Wednesday or Friday afternoons.

For now, however, let us revisit the reasons why CSI and CSR make good business sense.

We all know that companies are set up in business to earn profits for owners or shareholders. To my knowledge, no private commercial enterprise was ever set up for the sole purpose of helping the poor. All the private commercial entities I know have fancy mission statements and vision statements that envisage themselves as the best in their industry. If we follow this argument, then, you do not set up a business to do corporate social investment.

Instead, CSI is incorporated as a core value of the business among the usual ones about ethics, good governance, integrity and so forth. To understand why companies invest or ought to invest in the communities in which they operate, we must first appreciate the subtle distinctions in CSR and CSI.

In a discussion paper on CSR and Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue published by the World Bank in 2003, Piotr Mazurkiewicz and Lucia Grenna observe that: "In the emerging global economy, where the Internet, the news media and the information revolution shine light on business practices around the world, companies are more and more frequently judged on the basis of their environmental stewardship. Partners in business and consumers want to know what is inside a company. They want to do business with companies they can trust and believe in. This transparency of business practices means that for many companies, corporate social responsibility is no longer a luxury, but a requirement."

Mazurkiewicz and Grenna say that while there are different perspectives of CSR in an organisation, common ones may cover the role of a business in relation to the state, locally and nationally, as well as to other state institutions or standards; or business performance as a responsible member of the society in which it operates and the global community.

Although the authors' focus tends to put the spotlight on CSR with particular reference to "green" issues, they pick out a number of definitions, one of which is from Business for Social Responsibility and which defines CSR as: "...operating a business in a manner that meets or exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. CSR is seen by leadership companies as more than a collection of discrete practices or occasional gestures (my emphasis), or initiatives motivated by marketing, public relations or other business benefits. Rather, it is viewed as a comprehensive set of policies, practices and programmes that are integrated throughout business operations and decision-making processes that are supported and rewarded by top management . . ."

According to the South African public relations gurus Chris Skinner and Llew von Essen, the field of CSI has evolved out of the broader CSR and is defined as the funding of, and involvement in, socioeconomic upliftment. CSR itself encompasses the responsibility of a company to ensure that it, among other things, manages itself responsibly and to the advantage of its employees and society; contributes to the sustainable development of the natural environment and contributes towards the development and upliftment of the disadvantaged.

Skinner and von Essen maintain that communication campaigns supporting social investment programmes must be sensitive and well planned.

"The aim of communicating community involvement is not to brag but to inform and create awareness."

This supports my assertion in a previous instalment on the same subject that it does not make sense for an organisation to spend huge amounts of money on publicity for a small ad hoc donation, where the publicity becomes several times more expensive than the actual donation. There are many people in society who find this insulting, seeing it as an exercise in chest beating self-indulgence. It is not necessary: the object of communication is to create awareness of the organisation's social responsibility programmes and to achieve the support from the community so essential for the success of such programmes.

Mazurkiewicz and Grenna: "Good communication is essential to building trust, and trust is the intangible factor that makes collaboration cohesive. Trust also presupposes a genuine appreciation by the partners for each other's activities. Communication should be honest, forthright, frequent and meaningful . . ."

Although they are addressing the issue of communication between collaborating partners in a CSR initiative, the comment is pertinent as regards general and broader communication, which is just as important. The leading companies of the world communicate extensively regarding their involvement in communities, with the result that general perceptions of their operations are favourable. They know that doing so makes good business sense in an environment where business performance is under growing media and societal scrutiny.

Environment Africa's CSR awards must force us to interrogate companies' behaviour further and encourage corporate Zimbabwe to venture off the beaten track.

n Ray Mawerera is a Harare-based public relations consultant and the current President of the Zimbabwe Institute of Public Relations

Copyright 2006 Financial Gazette. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
Zavata Completes Strategic Merger with Accordis Inc., Provider of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Services. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Zavata, Inc., today announced that Accordis Inc. a leading provider of business office services for hospitals and emergency transport agencies, has merged with Zavata. This marks Zavata's fourth healthcare transaction in the past two years, and significantly expands upon Zavata's existing Revenue Cycle Managed Services (RCMS) division established last year with Zavata's purchase of the Siemens' RCMS business line.



With the addition of this world-class company, Zavata can now add a complementary set of RCMS services to its existing business, including expertise in areas such as: Emergency Medical Transport billing, bad debt collections, Medicaid and Medicare application services and crossover billing, and Retroactive Claims Reprocessing (RCR) services. Founded in 1974 and a previous subsidiary of HMS Holdings Corp. (HMSY), Accordis brings to Zavata a wealth of healthcare expertise in outsourcing as well as these specialty fields, which will greatly enhance Zavata's ability to offer truly end-to-end revenue cycle services. This transaction will add over 250 US employees with an average of 15+ years in the healthcare industry, and almost double Zavata's existing RCMS business from a revenue standpoint.

"We are extremely pleased to welcome Accordis' employees and customers to the Zavata family. This transaction is a milestone for Zavata, as expanding upon our RCMS services has been a key strategic initiative this year, in large part due to the extremely successful growth of our RCMS practice following the Siemens' acquisition," said Satish Sanan, Zavata's Executive Chairman and CEO. "With this merger, both Accordis' and Zavata's customers will equally benefit from our combined services and solutions that address the growing need for healthcare providers to find one partner that can offer a comprehensive RCMS solution to increase their revenue and reduce operating costs via a blended shore delivery model. The combined synergy of both our companies is noteworthy. We believe with Zavata's full business office services and Accordis' specialty expertise, and proprietary, claims billing and collections technology, that together we will become the leading provider of outsourced RCMS services."

"I am extremely pleased to be a partner with Zavata as a result of this merger," said Hamilton F. Potter III, Accordis' President. "Our business strategies are very much aligned, and we share a common goal to offer the most comprehensive, leading edge set of RCMS services to the healthcare provider community. I am confident this merger will yield great rewards for our existing customers and look forward to continuing our track-record of providing excellent healthcare services to them."

To ensure a smooth transition and provide continuity for all Accordis customers, Potter will continue as the President of Accordis, a wholly owned subsidiary of Zavata, and all of the Accordis employees and senior management will continue on with the Company in their existing roles, and remain a key part to the continued success of the combined companies.

About Zavata

Zavata provides Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services and Enterprise Support solutions for the healthcare, insurance, and commercial enterprises industries. Zavata helps its customers improve their business performance and profitability by delivering guaranteed business process outsourcing services ranging from claims processing to technical help desk. By optimizing these knowledge intensive services, Zavata enables customers to focus on their core business. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Zavata was founded in 1995 and employs approximately 1,000 professionals internationally. To date Zavata has raised approximately $80 million in equity financing from its world-class Investors, including noted technology entrepreneur Satish Sanan, Mellon Ventures, BV-Cornerstone Ventures, LP (BV-CV) and WestBridge Capital Partners. This financing has funded Zavata's growth strategy which includes the following transactions; HPS Paradigm, Inc. in March, 2004, Symphony Data in February, 2005, RCMS division of Siemens Medical Health Services in August, 2005 and Accordis, Inc. in August, 2006. For more information, please visit www.zavata.com.

About Accordis

Founded in 1974, Accordis provides business office outsourcing services to healthcare providers nationwide. The Company's services assist clients in increasing revenue, accelerating cash flow, and reducing operating and administrative costs. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Progressive Recovery Techniques, Accordis also offers full-service healthcare collection agency. Previously a subsidiary of HMS Holdings Corp. (HMSY), Accordis is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, with offices in Chicago, IL; Farmingdale, NY; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; Springfield, IL and Sunrise, FL. For more information, please visit www.accordisinc.com.
China's M-Commerce Generates CNY5.8bn Output Value in 2005. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 29, SinoCast -- Mobile commerce is leading the tide of Internet and enterprise management and becomes a shining sector of IT market growth, along with the increasing need for mobile office and real-time management and communication.



CCID Consulting, a leading IT market researcher in China, says in a report that excluding hardware, the mobile commerce industry generated total output value of CNY 5.85 billion (USD 1 = CNY 8.00) in 2005, increasing 19.4% from a year earlier.

The growing speed is lower than other sectors of mobile telecom industry and the mobile telecom carriers' revenue made up 69.3% of the total output value. The other parts in the chain of mobile commerce have not fully realized their value.

When the 3G era comes, the advanced technologies will facilitate the development of mobile commerce, which just includes four parts at present: short messaging service, mobile payment, mobile e-mail, and mobile searching service.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
CNSIC and Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Invest in Salt Chemical Base. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 29, SinoCast -- Zhenjiang Salt and Chemical Co. Ltd of China National Salt Industry Corporation (CNSIC), which is the largest salt production and sales enterprise in Asia, Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co., Ltd, the leading company in China's chlor-alkali industry, and Dantu District People's Government have reached an Agreement on Salt and Alkali Integration Project, to invest CNY 2.8 billion in establishing the largest salt chemical base in domestic China.



This project can be divided into two phases. Phase I project includes installation of vacuum salt making plant, brine mining and transportation project, diaphragmatic alkali plant, thermal power plant and corresponding wharf and utility facility. Phase II project includes ion membrane caustic soda plant and propylene oxide plant.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
Mysterious Private Enterprise Wins Assets of Yaxiya. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ZHENGZHOU, September 29, SinoCast -- On September 27, the highlighted credit assets of Zhengzhou Yaxiya Department Store (Yaxiya), which is a famous department store located in Zhengzhou, the capital city of China's central province Henan, is said to have been taken over by a mysterious local private enterprise.



The CNY 113.0529 million worth of credit assets of Yaxiya had been acquired by Henan Xingye Investment Development Co., Ltd. (Xingye Investment) at a price of CNY 34.7 million on September 14, even though widespread talks said Five Star Appliance, a subsidiary under the wings of the world's largest household appliance retailer Best Buy.

The local buyer, registered with CCNY 10 million of capital on August 2005, specializes in various businesses like real estate, enterprise acquisition consultation and assets disposal. As one of its three shareholders, Zhang Guiping, also the legal person of the company, has taken 70% stakes in it.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -

Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai

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Piper Jaffray Lands on Shanghai. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 29, SinoCast -- Piper Jaffray & Co., the principal operating subsidiary of the America-based investment bank Piper Jaffray Companies (PJC), set up its third overseas branch in Shanghai on September 26 after the branches in London and Bombay.



Andrew Duff, the CEO of the bank revealed the move in Shanghai is a key part of the comprehensive development strategy of the bank, which would enhance its strength in the international medium-size investment and security market.

The bank, established in 1895 in Minneapolis, US, specializes in serving medium enterprises, investment groups, institutions, non-profit-making associations and institutional investors.

Since 2000, it had tapped into Asian financial markets and undertaken the first public placement of the Chinese enterprise UTStarcom in US.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank Selects Open Solutions' Enterprise-Wide Data Processing Platform. Check it out:
GLASTONBURY, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- Open Solutions Inc.(R) (NASDAQ:OPEN), announced that Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank (PCBB), with $473 million in assets, has selected its enterprise-wide data processing platform, The Complete Banking Solution(R) (TCBS), and other Open Solutions' complementary applications. The second largest bankers' bank in the United States in terms of assets under management, PCBB provides correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country. Open Solutions is a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial institutions in the United States, Canada and internationally. In September 2005, Open Solutions announced an agreement with PCBB to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB's cash letter settlement service.



"One of the contributors to PCBB's significant growth and continued success is its ability to respond quickly in an innovative manner to meet both the current and the developing correspondent banking needs of its respondents," said Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB. "Our online, user friendly and very robust cash management communications application, Correspondent Bank Connection (CBC) is the cornerstone application that provides us with the ability to conduct business very effectively and efficiently with a continually increasing number of community banks."

Evans continued, "Due to our heavy reliance on technology and the unique needs inherent in the operations of a bankers' bank, selecting the right core solution was critical to ensuring the continued execution of our business plan. Our primary focus was finding an open architecture application that would allow the CBC to interface in a dynamic environment. We were also looking for a core platform that could change as we grow, not only in assets but also in customers, products and services. We evaluated numerous vendors and focused on identifying the best solution to interface our in-house applications with the core database. After an extensive evaluation process, we found Open Solutions to be the best fit for our institution. Having worked with Open Solutions since 2005, we were impressed with their commitment to their clients and their focus on the industry."

In addition to The Complete Banking Solution, PCBB will implement Open Solutions' Financial Accounting Suite (general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets) and cView(TM) MyVision and Report Wizard.

"We are very impressed with the accounts payable, fixed assets and the cView reporting tools," Evans said. "The cView report writer will allow us to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others."

Louis Hernandez, Jr., Open Solutions chairman and CEO, said, "Correspondent banking services are fundamental in the community banking market. We are pleased that when PCBB was looking to add additional services that they turned to us. PCBB is an industry leader -- they have been very successful in offering high quality, competitively priced banking services to their community bank customers. We are proud to be PCBB's technology partner and look forward to building on our existing business relationship."

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully featured strategic product platform that integrates core data processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting tools, imaging, digital documents, Check 21, interactive voice response, network services, Web hosting and design, and payment and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States and Canada to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service.

For more information about Open Solutions or its financial product line, contact Mickey Goldwasser by email at [email protected] by phone at 860.652.3153 or via fax at 860.652.3156. Visit Open Solutions' Internet site at www.opensolutions.com.

Open Solutions Inc. is a registered trademark of Open Solutions Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 Open Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that state Open Solutions Inc.'s or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. All forward looking-statements are only as of the date of this press release and Open Solutions Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause Open Solutions Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For example, if we fail to adapt our products and services to changes in technology or in the marketplace, we could lose existing clients and be unable to attract new business. Factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, without limitation, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors affecting the banking and credit union industry and/or Open Solutions Inc.'s operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors set forth under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Open Solutions' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editors Note: The correct usage of the company name, Open Solutions Inc., is either referring to it as Open Solutions Inc. or Open Solutions. Open Solutions no longer uses the acronym of OSI to refer to the company.
Moody's: Stable outlook for Egypt's banks reflects ongoing reform. Check it out:
(The Middle East and North Africa Business Report (Amman, Jordan)(KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Implementation of the banking sector reform plan, now well under way, is resulting in a strengthening banking system, says Moody's Investors Service in its new Banking System Outlook for Egypt. Nevertheless, the ongoing reform process still has some way to go.



According to Moody's, the Egyptian government has acknowledged the longstanding issues constraining the performance of the banking system and has taken a number of steps to address them. Historically, banks have operated amid a weak economic base and low per capita GDP and, as a result, suffered from poor asset quality, low profitability and capital levels, as well as a bureaucratic operating style (particularly the four big state-owned banks).

"We believe that considerable progress has been made in many areas, and specifically in releasing the hidden value (in terms of capital gains) from the sale of joint-venture banks and other equity investments, allowing the loan loss provisioning gap to decrease. Progress has also been made in upgrading banking supervision within the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and in achieving consolidation within the sector," comments Constantinos Kypreos, a Moody's analyst and author of the new report.

Moody's also acknowledges the authorities' ongoing efforts with regard to the financial and operational restructuring of the state-owned banks, particularly in aiming to apply best practice to risk management, information technology and human resources, and in strengthening the banks' management capabilities with the appointment of top managers with private sector experience. The authorities are also committed to resolve the issue of the high level of non-performing loans (NPLs). Public enterprise-related NPLs will be settled via the re-direction of privatisation proceeds, while for the private sector's NPLs, new legislation, procedures and a special unit within the CBE were introduced to help banks settle these in the most expeditious way. According to CBE officials, more than 50% of banking sector NPLs (excluding public enterprises) have already been rescheduled and 20% of NPLs settled as a result of these initiatives. Nonetheless, Moody's expects that these issues (high NPLs and the restructuring of public sector banks) will take time to resolve.

Given the improvements taking place at these banks as regards both their financial standing and operating practices and risk management, coupled with the expected improvements in the economy and the reformist agenda of the cabinet, Moody's anticipates that the average FSR of the state-owned banks is likely to improve over the medium term. "However, we expect the differentiation in ratings between private and state-owned banks to remain, as the leading private sector banks benefit from stronger management teams, better operating systems, better asset quality and higher levels of capital and earnings," says Kypreos. The deposit ratings of all Egyptian banks are set at the Ba2/Not-Prime country ceiling for foreign currency, partly reflecting the implied support from the Egyptian financial authorities. The outlook on these ratings is stable and reflects the outlook on the country ceiling, Moody's concludes.

Copyright (c) 2006, Middle East and North Africa Business Report, Amman, Jordan
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Agfa HealthCare's Impax EPS adopted by Symbion Imaging in Australia. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Agfa HealthCare announces that Symbion Imaging in Australia is the first site to globally adopt the Impax Enterprise Productivity Suite (EPS), an enterprise tool for managing image transfers, which allows radiologists and system administrators to monitor and direct workload across the enterprise.



Symbion Imaging, a division of ASX listed Symbion Health Limited, is a provider of digital imaging in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Symbion Imaging, which is ranked third largest in the digital imaging market, has 130 sites across Australia and employs more than 150 radiologists. The company has commenced installing Agfa's Impax PACS solution (Picture Archiving and Communication Solution) in late 2001, and implemented telereporting, computed radiography (CR), load balancing and archiving in two subsequent roll-outs. This technology replaced redundant systems, increasing both productivity and profitability.

Impax EPS, developed by Agfa Australia, is a teleradiology solution that monitors study transmissions between sites across an entire health network, and provides a global view of study location and status. It provides the end-user with a realtime representation of every site and the studies resident at them. As a result radiologists no longer have to locate work on the network or manually initiate study retrieves from sites across the network.

This allows them to focus on reporting. The operational benefits of the system include simplification of IT infrastructure and system queue management. Finally, improvements to patient outcome can be achieved, particularly for patients in rural areas, who benefit from report turnaround time of an hour, instead of the 2 or 3 days they used to have to wait.

Robert Cooke, managing director and CEO of Symbion Health, stated: "Impax EPS enables us to expand services to reach regional and remote areas that do not have access to radiology on a 24-hour basis, which is particularly relevant as a shortage of specialists continues to impact on regional areas."

In terms of sub-specializing, teleradiology gives radiologists more ability, according to Ronald Shnier, director of Symbion Imaging Clinical Research Imaging Centre, and National director of Research and Professional Development at Symbion Imaging. "If you have several practices across a network, you can, for example send all the neurology work to one site, and all the musculoskeletal work to another. It gives radiologists the ability to sub-specialize and develop centres of excellence," he added.

Symbion Imaging now has 64 sites with teleradiology capacity. "Impax EPS sits over the top of our 64 sites, and gives us an enterprise-wide view of the whole network from one computer workstation. The solution gives us complete flexibility on a given day to handle manpower shortages, by effectively redistributing work with a mouse-click. It is so simple," said Gary Nicholls, National Major Projects Manager at Symbion Imaging. "Our corporate objective in this matter is to achieve economies of scale. EPS adds to our capability to expand our teleradiology network within Australia and internationally."

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Amicas, Affinity Health System ink image management partnership. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Amicas, Inc. (AMCS) announced that Affinity Health System, Appleton, Wisconsin, has successfully deployed Amicas Vision Series PACS as their image management platform across three hospitals and numerous affiliated clinics.

Affinity Health System is a network of 20 clinics, three hospitals, a long-term care facility and a health plan serving Northeast Wisconsin. Affinity Health System offers a broad variety of locations and services to ensure access and services for the entire spectrum of healthcare needs. Affinity Health System has successfully deployed the Amicas Vision Series PACS platform at St. Elizabeth Hospital, Mercy Medical Center and Calumet Medical Center.



Will Weider, CIO of Ministry Health Care and Affinity Health System, said, "Affinity Health System employed a very pragmatic approach to our PACS selection process. We identified several critical success factors early in our selection process to ensure that we maximized the value of our PACS investment. These factors included everything from tight integration with our existing Meditech patient information system to a unique rollout strategy that started with enterprise distribution of images via our Meditech Patient Care Inquiry (PCI) application before going live with PACS in the department of radiology. At the end of that evaluation, Amicas clearly had the best technical solution and demonstrated a genuine desire to partner with us to meet our specific needs."

"Amicas is thrilled to have an image management partnership with Affinity Health System," said Peter McClennen, president and COO of Amicas. "Affinity Health System is progressive in their methodology for selecting and deploying sophisticated software solutions and we are honored to be their partner of choice for image management software."

Affinity Health System utilizes Meditech as their core hospital information system. As one of the largest Meditech Magic installations in the country, the ability to leverage the existing Meditech investment was a critical consideration in their PACS selection and deployment process. "We believe that our partnership with Amicas has helped us realize more value from our investment with Meditech," said Weider. "The focus that Amicas has demonstrated on integration with Meditech allows them to deliver a functionally more robust solution than other PACS vendors."

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Celsion announces management changes and formation of Prolieve and Oncology Divisions. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Celsion Corporation (CLN) announced that Lawrence Olanoff, MD, PhD, its president and chief executive officer, tendered his resignation from executive management effective October 6, 2006 to return to Forest Laboratories Inc. as president and chief operating officer.



Olanoff will continue to serve as a member of Celsion's board of directors. Anthony P. Deasey, Celsion's executive vice president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer has been named as interim chief executive officer of Celsion during the transitional period while a permanent chief executive officer is recruited. He will also be appointed to Celsion's board of directors.

Max Link, PhD, chairman of the board, commented, "We greatly appreciate the efforts of Dr. Olanoff in implementing Celsion's strategy to become solely an oncology drug development enterprise. Dr. Olanoff focused the company's drug development program putting together a team of experienced scientists who will continue to lead the ongoing oncology programs into later stage clinical trials. Further, as part of this strategy we have created the Prolieve Division that will focus entirely on servicing its partner Boston Scientific."

Link added, "We are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Deasey as the interim chief executive. Tony has served the company well over the last several years and we are confident that he will capably lead the management team until we find a permanent president and chief executive officer to lead Celsion as an oncology drug development company."

Gary W. Pace, PhD, and Kris Venkat, PhD, members of Celsion's board of directors, will actively assist executive management during the transition period. Both Drs. Pace and Venkat have extensive pharmaceutical development and business expertise to contribute to this effort. As part of the goal of establishing a separate oncology drug development business, and advancing the current drug development program, William Hahne, MD, who is currently vice president clinical and medical affairs, will be promoted to the newly established position of vice president of research and development. Hahne joined Celsion in January, 2006 having been previously involved in oncology drug development while at Curagen and Marion Merrill Dow.

Deasey will also assume the position of president of the Prolieve Division.

Olanoff stated, "For personal and professional reasons, I have decided to return to Forest Laboratories Inc. Although, I am sad to be leaving Celsion at this juncture in its transformation to an oncology drug development company, I am pleased with the progress the development team at Celsion has achieved, especially this past year, with the completion of recruitment of senior staff in all key development disciplines. We have two ThermoDox Phase I cancer programs underway with dedicated academic investigators as contributors; one is nearing completion and recruitment in the second is progressing well.

"The company is planning to announce a third clinical indication for ThermoDox within the next few months. Also, waiting in the wings is the potential of an entirely new pre-IND development program involving the encapsulation of a different antineoplastic agent in a separate heat sensitive liposome product. We have successfully sought out working arrangements with a wide range of thermotherapy device companies to complement these efforts in the clinic. I am very comfortable with Celsion's senior management group, and confident Tony Deasey and Bill Hahne will provide the leadership to guide the various projects through the remainder of their development pathways.

"Also I am pleased that Prolieve continues to do well commercially largely through the sales and distribution efforts of Boston Scientific who have enthusiastically supported the product in the marketplace. I am looking forward to the opportunity to remain on Celsion's board of directors and play an active role in the strategic guidance of the company's oncology drug development projects."

Celsion Corporation, based in Columbia, Maryland, is a biotechnology company dedicated to the development and commercialization of heat activated treatment systems for cancer.

Celsion has research, license or commercialization agreements with leading institutions such as the National Institute of Health, Duke University Medical Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harbor UCLA Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and Duke University.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center selects ChartMaxx for document management, imaging. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (DGX), the nation's leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, announced that Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center has selected MedPlus' ChartMaxx electronic health record solution to support its Health Information Management Department with document management and imaging.



ChartMaxx was developed by MedPlus, Quest Diagnostics' healthcare information technology subsidiary. Cincinnati Children's is the region's largest pediatric medical center.

Authorized users within the Health Information Management Department will be able to electronically access patients' medical, financial and administrative information concurrently in a secure environment. With just a few clicks, ChartMaxx will enable users to quickly access patient records, expediting the flow of information and helping to provide faster service to the more than 23,000 pediatric patients admitted to Cincinnati Children's each year.

ChartMaxx is an enterprise-wide electronic health record solution built on a document management and imaging foundation that enables healthcare organizations to enhance performance by improving patient care and maximizing business results through the efficient collection, access and use of clinical, financial and administrative information. ChartMaxx provides authorized users with immediate, concurrent access to records captured from scanned documents, interfaced documents and discrete data.

"The entire team at Quest Diagnostics and MedPlus is pleased to put the power of ChartMaxx to work for Cincinnati Children's, including the thousands of pediatric patients who are admitted to the medical center each year," said Richard A. Mahoney, president, MedPlus and vice president, Healthcare Information Solutions at Quest Diagnostics. "We anticipate that improved efficiency and workflow in the Health Information Management Department will lead to faster service for Cincinnati's youngest patients."

ChartMaxx is an enterprise-wide electronic health record solution built on a document management and imaging foundation that enables healthcare organizations to enhance performance by improving patient care and maximizing business results through the efficient collection, access and use of clinical, financial and administrative information.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Memorial Healthcare selects Allscripts electronic health record and connectivity system. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Allscripts (MDRX), a provider of clinical and information software and connectivity, announced that Memorial Healthcare has selected HealthMatics Office, the integrated electronic health record (EHR) and practice management system (PMS) from A4 Health Systems, now a part of Allscripts.



The system will be used to automate clinical and financial operations for the hospital's staff physician group, Memorial Medical Associates.

Memorial Healthcare is a 148-bed not-for-profit hospital in central Michigan. Memorial Medical Associates, the hospital's fully owned physician group, includes 26 providers in 10 offices throughout the greater Shiawassee County area.

HealthMatics Office combines HealthMatics Enterprise PMS and HealthMatics EHR to provide seamless patient information management software. Built on a single intelligent platform, It will provide instant, secure access to the complete patient record anywhere at any time, and enable the practice's clinical and business sides to work hand-in-hand for better communication and improved accuracy.

In addition to its main campus in Owosso, Memorial Healthcare operates 13 satellite locations for services such as primary care, lab, X-ray, occupational medicine and rehabilitation.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
MercuryMD installs workflow and communications software in four more health systems. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
MercuryMD, a Thomson healthcare business (TOC) that provides information-driven workflow software to hospitals and physicians, announced the addition of four health systems to its growing customer base: Munroe Regional Medical Center, Ocala, Florida; Providence Alaska Medical Center, Anchorage, Alaska; Rockingham Memorial Hospital, Harrisonburg, Virginia.; and Wilson Medical Center in Wilson, North Carolina.



MercuryMD's MData Enterprise system has been installed in 220 hospitals from more than 100 healthcare to deliver patient information to mobile devices, tablet PCs, laptops and desktop computers.

The Thomson Corporation, with 2005 revenues of approximately $8.40 billion, provides value-added information, software tools and applications to users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate online learning and assessment, scientific research and healthcare.

The company headquarters are located in Stamford, Connecticut, and delivers services in approximately 130 countries.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Sharp HealthCare selects Cerner's software suite for clinical healthcare IT services. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Sharp HealthCare, a California healthcare system, has selected Cerner Corp. (CERN) as its clinical information systems provider. Sharp HealthCare will implement the Cerner Millennium clinical applications throughout its system of seven hospitals.



Sharp HealthCare has been a Cerner client for more than 15 years and this implementation expands on their existing agreement. The first implementation of Cerner's products will be in the existing Sharp Memorial Hospital in November 2007. In 2008, Sharp is opening its new state-of-the-art Memorial Hospital, which is being designed with a "paper-light" environment. This will entail direct physician order entry and complete online clinical documentation.

Sharp will continue a 2-year roll out to the remainder of its six hospitals utilizing the Cerner Millennium architecture, a healthcare information technology computing platform. It is one of the first enterprise wide, user centered technical architecture that spans clinical and financial processes across the health organization.

Sharp HealthCare, located in San Diego, is recognized for clinical excellence for services in cardiac, cancer, and multiorgan transplantation, as well as orthopedics, rehabilitation, behavioral health and women's health. The Sharp system includes four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, three affiliated medical groups and a health plan.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Sig-Tec, HealthCast launch single sign-on biometric system for access to patient information. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Sig-Tec Corporation and HealthCast, Inc. announced enterprise single sign-on combined with strong authentication biometric technologies designed specifically for clinical access to patient information at healthcare facilities.

Sig-Tec's authentication security software has is designed to be secure, convenient, and easy to use for everyone, from the clinician to the administrator. HealthCast's eXactACCESS single sign-on platform provides access to patient information while meeting HIPAA regulations. Sig-Tec's middleware has over 30 authentication devices and security technologies with replication across the enterprise.



The system offers the ability to mix and match any device combination to create its own secure access solution. In addition to single sign-on and proper application logoff, eXactACCESS offers three approaches to managing shared workstations, manages password change events, enables navigation within applications, and has integrated the most challenging applications.

Sig-Tec has designed its products to aid in compliance with government regulatory security requirements such as HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and Sarbanes-Oxley Acts.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Olympus signs eighth licensing deal in eight months. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Patriot Scientific Corporation (PTSC) confirmed that Olympus Corporation has purchased a license to use the Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) Portfolio.

Seven other major system manufacturers have purchased MMP licenses this year, including Casio, Fujitsu, HP, Seiko Epson, Sony, Nikon and Pentax. In addition, AMD and Intel are also licensees.

Patriot Scientific and The TPL Group are co-owners of the MMP Portfolio, which Alliacense, a TPL Group enterprise, exclusively manages. The MMP Portfolio patents, filed in the 1980s, cover techniques that have become essential to consumer and commercial digital systems including medical equipment.



Patriot Scientific also announced that board of directors member Jim Turley will be devoting increased attention to technology matters for the company. Turley, formerly editor-in-chief of Embedded Systems Design and currently the editor of Silicon Insider, is the author of seven books and has been editor of the prestigious industry journal Microprocessor Report, where he was three-time winner of the Computer Press Award.

A former senior executive at ARC International, where he was responsible for three high-tech acquisitions and a successful IPO, Turley serves on several technical advisory boards for high-tech companies as well as on the advisory board for the Embedded Systems Conference and The Microprocessor Report.

As Patriot Scientific accumulates capital resulting from licensing revenues, the company is ready to implement the next phase of its strategic plan and is now evaluating possible opportunities to diversify its revenue stream by entering into joint ventures or by acquiring other companies and technologies.

Patriot Scientific is a intellectual property licensing company.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
DST Systems, Inc. announces agreement to acquire Amisys Synertech, Inc.. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
DST Systems, Inc. (DST) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Amisys Synertech, Inc. (Amisys) through a merger with a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Health Solutions, Inc.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Amisys is an enterprise software developer, software applications service provider, and business process outsourcer for the U.S. commercial healthcare industry. Amisys reported revenues of $103.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2005 and $65.1 million for the seven months ended July 31, 2006. Amisys has approximately 1,400 employees located in three principal locations: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Rockville, Maryland; and Hyderabad, India.



The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and satisfaction of standard pre-closing conditions. Upon closing, which is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2006, DST will integrate the operations of Amisys with DST's wholly owned subsidiary DST Health Solutions, Inc. The integrated business unit will operate as DST Health Solutions. DST believes the expanded DST Health Solutions business will provide deeper product offerings to existing and new customers, as well as leverage DST's AWD and Output Solutions products.

Upon completion of the transaction, Amisys' financial results will be consolidated with those of DST. On a pro-forma basis, the transaction is not expected to have a material impact on DST's net income or earnings per share for 2006. DST will fund the acquisition with available cash balances and existing credit facilities.

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
Accelrys appoints Rick Russo as chief financial officer. Check it out:
(Science Letter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Accelrys, Inc. (ACCL) announced the appointment of Rick Russo as the company's senior VP and chief financial officer, effective as of October 2, 2006.

Russo has nearly 30 years of finance and accounting leadership experience and has held positions of increasing scope with a number of both public and private high technology companies. Most recently, from 2000 through 2006, Russo served as the chief financial officer of Captiva Software Corp., a global provider of automatic data capture software and enterprise input management solutions. Captiva was a publicly held company prior to its acquisition by EMC Corp. for approximately $275 million in December 2005.



"I am pleased to have Rick joining our senior leadership team," said Mark Emkjer, the company's president and CEO. "Rick is a seasoned and innovative business leader who brings with him a wealth of experience in financial reporting, corporate finance and capital markets. Rick also has extensive software-industry experience which I believe will prove invaluable to us in pursuing our growth strategy and creating value for our customers and shareholders."

In commenting upon his appointment, Russo stated: "I am excited to be joining Accelrys as its chief financial officer. I am enthusiastic about the company's unique position as a software company with leading-edge scientific solutions. I am looking forward to working with the Accelrys team and continuing to improve the financial trajectory of this dynamic company."

This article was prepared by Science Letter editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Science Letter via NewsRx.com.

Copyright 2006 Science Letter via NewsRx.com
M&M buys German co for Rs 830 cr. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) Ltd on Thursday bought a 67.9% stake in German forging company Jeco Holdings, in a deal struck at an enterprise value of Rs 830 crore (140 million euros). M&M did not disclose the exact payout for the acquisition though it claimed it was the largest acquisition in the auto components sector. "The acquistion, to be done through Mahindra's Mauritian subsidiary, is the largest acquisition by an Indian company in the auto component manufacturing space," Systems and Technology (Systech) president Hemant Luthra said. Jeco, which has a capacity of one lakh tonne per annum and a turnover of 180 million euro, supplies major products including gear boxes, engine & axle pans, hubs, gears and piston heads to customers which include the DaimlerChrysler Group, ZE Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt. The stake, currently held by Mahindra, would be transferred to the recently relisted Mahindra Automotive and Steels Ltd (MASL), Luthra said. This is the third acquisition by the company within the space of a year. Earlier in January this year, M&M had acquired 98.6% of the shares in UK-based automotive forging company Stokes Group Ltd. Forging ahead



Products Gear boxes, engine & axle pans, hubs, gears and piston heads Customers DaimlerChrysler Group, ZE Group, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Volvo, Linde, Renault, Agco, Kessler and Kolbenschmidt Capacity One lakh tonne per annum Turnover 180 million euro Just before that in December last year, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd entered into an agreement with Plexion Technologies, Mauritius, a group Company of JP Morgan to acquire 88.41% of the fully diluted equity capital in Plexion Technologies (India) Ltd. The board of MASL would be reconstituted to accomodate members of Jeco, he said, adding that the debt of Jeco would get frozen as the German auto component manufacturer is not a highly leveraged company. The acquistion will help M&M service customers from three locations-UK, Germany and India for their auto component needs. With regard to the benefits accruing to the company as a result of the acquistion, Luthra said, "This transaction will result in us establishing a significant footprint in continental Europe."

Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
IGI gets CIBJO recognition to test gemstones, jewellery. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The International Gemological Institute (IGI), the world's largest independent laboratory for testing and valuing gemstones and fine jewellery, has been officially recognised as a World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) registered laboratory. CIBJO president Gaetano Cavalieri announced the registration of IGI, endorsed by Jewelers of America, at the CIBJO laboratory committee meeting in Vancouver, Canada recently. CIBJO, which is the French acronym for International Confederation of Jewellery, Silverware, Diamonds and Stones, is the international jewellery confederation of national trade organisations. Its primary purpose as a decision making body is to create and maintain standards and promote co-operation between these inter-connected organisations. Every CIBJO registered laboratory has to be independent of any commercial or private enterprise, or groups of such enterprises. It should always be managed under competent professional direction and abide by all CIBJO rules without exception. It is mandatory for the registered body to work in accordance with the CIBJO publications such as the Diamond Book, the Gemstone Book, the Pearl Book. It can only issue diamond, gemstone and/or pearl reports, prepared in accordance with the CIBJO rules. In case of deviation from these rules, its recognition can be cancelled by CIBJO. Commenting on the recognition, Tehmasp Printer, managing director, IGI India said, "In a short span of seven years, IGI has established a leadership position in certification across the country. IGI's recent recognition as a CIBJO registered laboratory is a further reassurance to all our customers of the quality and accuracy of our processes and expertise of gemologists." The International Gemological Institute established in 1975, is located in important diamond centres such as Antwerp, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Bangkok, Mumbai, Tokyo, Dubai and Hong Kong. IGI has also received the prestigious ISO 9001:2000 certification for standard grading and certification processes', the only certifying laboratory in the country to have this certification.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Chronicle Solutions picks chairman [Chronicle Solutions]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Network content monitoring and capturing software firm Chronicle Solutions has appointed Alan Watkins, founder and former managing director of Cisco UK, as its new chairman. Watkins built up Cisco's UK operation from a standing start to over 300m revenue and has a proven track record of establishing and growing start up companies.



Chronicle Solutions flagship product, netReplay is the world's first enterprise-class Network Content Appliance that captures and indexes all user communications on a network in real-time, helping companies to enforce email, instant messenger and Internet acceptable use policies. It enables forensic investigations by monitoring and recording relevant traffic, alerting on transgressions, as well as enabling search, retrieval and replay of individual web sessions, including webmail, blogs, instant messenger, Voice-over-IP and downloads.

Nick Kingsbury, recently appointed CEO of Chronicle Solutions comments, "Alan has an excellent reputation within the high tech industry and his proven success in growing fast track start-ups will be invaluable to us, as we expand our operations both here in the UK and in the US."

Alan Watkins adds, "There cannot be a single enterprise in the modern world that does not use the Internet for communications, to go about its every day business. But in the world we live in today, that also brings significant challenges in terms of compliance, corporate responsibilities and employee behaviour. Chronicle Solutions has a very real solution to offer the enterprise to address these needs. This combined with an outstanding management team and the financial backing of 3i, SEP and Soc Gen were compelling reasons why I am delighted to accept the chairmanship of Chronicle."

Watkins has over 30 years experience within the IT industry. He has chaired both public and private companies and works closely with the private equity and venture capital industry in the technology, media and telecommunications sector.

Watkins is currently chairman of AIM-listed Matrix Communications Group Plc, a 60m virtual network operator (VNO); Glasshouse, a Boston-based, VC- backed storage services company; Appligenics, a VC- backed software house; and Foster MacCallum, an early stage software house. In addition to founding Cisco UK, Watkins has previously held senior positions within BT, Timeplex, Outsource Group and Giantloop.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Verizon expands Euro ethernet [Verizon Business]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) READING, UK - 28 September 2006 - Customers in six additional countries now have Ethernet access to the Verizon Business Private IP network under an expansion announced by the company today. Enterprise customers in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland and Spain now can use Verizon Business next-generation Ethernet services to access the companys Private IP network in a flexible way.



The announcement extends Verizon Business Ethernet Access to a total of 16 European countries. Customers in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK have been able to benefit from Ethernet services since January. Verizon Business also offers Ethernet Access to Private IP in the US, and in seven countries across Asia.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Swisscom, Ciena get compliance [Ciena]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Swiss market leader offering Ethernet Private Lines using Cienas CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform and CN 2300 Managed Optical Services Multiplexer

Madrid (Carrier Ethernet World Congress) 28 September, 2006 Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEND*), the network specialist, and Swisscom today announced Carrier Ethernet certification for Swisscoms Carrier Optical Service (COS) and Cienas optical Ethernet platforms the CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform and CN 2300 Managed Optical Services Multiplexer that power COS. Both the Swisscom service and Ciena platforms have been certified to deliver Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) compliant Ethernet Private Lines based on the groups MEF9 technical specifications for Ethernet Services at the User Network Interface (UNI).



The Swiss market leader in Carrier Ethernet services, Swisscom has been connecting pharmaceutical, banking and other large enterprise customers with rigorous wide area network performance requirements with its Ethernet Private Line services for nearly two years on the Ciena platforms, in addition to offering storage extension and TDM connectivity services. Carrier Optical Service is a transparent point-to-point Layer 1 service for high to very high dedicated bandwidth connecting LAN applications throughout Switzerland. Cienas optical Ethernet platforms are sold to Swisscom and supported through a partnership with Ericsson.

The MEFs Carrier Ethernet Certification Program is designed to accelerate the rollout of Carrier Ethernet services by reducing the time and cost of equipment testing and providing end users with consistent, reliable services across service providers and network equipment. Both Cienas platforms and Swisscoms service were tested by Iometrix in accordance with its MEF-approved Test Plan for Ethernet Services at the UNI.

Weve seen tremendous uptake in our Carrier Optical Service from enterprises looking for flexible bandwidth options backed by strong service level agreements for mission-critical data center, business continuity and other wide area network applications, said Thomas Aeberhard, Head of Data Services, Swisscom Fixnet Wholesale. As customers increasingly move to Ethernet and look for services that are standards-based, this Carrier Ethernet certification will only broaden the appeal of our market leading Carrier Optical Service.

Ciena's CN 4200, the flagship product of its FlexSelect Architecture, is the first multiservice transport and service aggregation platform capable of supporting the migration to packet networks using future-ready technology such as ITU G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) for service transparency, dynamic wavelength routing featuring a hybrid ROADM solution, software-defined service ports, and remote service provisioning and management capabilities.

As a Charter Member of the MEF, this certification reflects our early focus on developing innovative optical Ethernet platforms for delivering MEF-certified Carrier Ethernet services, said Martin Nuss, vice president and chief technologist at Ciena. Swisscom was the first to deploy CN 4200 and weve worked closely with them to ensure our optical Ethernet platforms create a flexible network capable of delivering a variety of Carrier Ethernet and storage extension services with automated provisioning and advanced service level management.

Based on the recent MEF testing for Ethernet Private Lines, Cienas CN 4200 and CN 2300 have been certified for both Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) and Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps). Ciena is committed to supporting standards-based Carrier Ethernet networking through MEF certification of multiple products in its portfolio.

*Effective as of 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, 22 September, 2006, Ciena completed a one-for-seven reverse split of Ciena common stock. Cienas common stock began trading on a split-adjusted basis when the market opened on Monday, September 25, 2006. For a period of approximately 20 days, NASDAQ will append a D to Cienas stock symbol in order to inform the investment community of the reverse stock split.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
NTP Software(TM) Introduces NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition Including Support for Snapshots. Check it out:
NASHUA, N.H. --(Business Wire)-- NTP Software(TM), the worldwide leader in the management and control of unstructured data, today announced the availability of its new version of NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition, which now includes support for Snapshots.



NTP Software Storage M&A(TM), a member of NTP Software Smart ILM(TM) suite of products, provides Senior Executives and Storage Administrators a way to understand what's happening in their environment. While NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) will allow you to report on anything in the environment, its real value comes from the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM) which uses heuristics, trend analysis and spot analysis to discern what's important and help focus your attention.

Snapshots, as part of your data protection strategy are a critical component of the health of your network storage. Up until now it has been difficult to analyze how storage is used by snapshots, other than its basic allocation. Without NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) and the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM), Storage Administrators have no way to judge the appropriateness of their allocation.

"In a NetApp(R) environment, much of a network's storage can be consumed by Snapshots, which means they can become quite costly," said David Hilton, President of Strategic Vision. "Using the NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) Engine to analyze their storage utilization is critical to cost-effective management."

"We see Snapshot support as one of the steps in helping our customers better understand their storage environments," said Aaron Dufoe, NTP Software's Vice President for Worldwide Sales. "Coupled with the NTP Software Storage Analysis Engine(TM), which will tell you what's important and not bury you in raw data, our customers can now see all the important elements of their NetApp(R) environment."

NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition with Snapshot support provides the functionality to report and project on the storage space in an environment, as well as take into consideration space that is allocated for Snapshots and compare it to the space that is actually being used. This new product feature provides greater insight into the overall storage environment and allows the enterprise to understand what is going on in their environment and where, through one central location.

NTP Software Storage M&A(TM) for NAS, NetApp(R) Edition with support for Snapshots is now available. Pricing starts at $9,995, and is licensed per Filer.

About NTP Software

Founded in 1994, NTP Software is the worldwide leader in the control and analysis of storage. We create platform-independent products that enable our customers to control and manage their storage environments.

NTP Software is based in Nashua, NH, and is privately held. NTP Software is located on the web at www.ntpsoftware.com, and can be reached at (800) 226-2755 or (603) 622-4400, or via email at [email protected].
Global Government Health and Human Services Experts to Gather at Curam Software International User Conference - Focus on Social Infrastructure Modernization. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Curam Software, the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, today announced it will hold its second annual International User Conference, "Transforming the Social Enterprise," October 3-6, 2006 in Long Island, N.Y., bringing together government social infrastructure modernization experts from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel as well as Gartner and Forrester analysts. The conference provides an opportunity for Curam Software clients, prospective clients, and partners to gain insight into how SEM is transforming the contemporary health and human services landscape.



The conference will feature information sessions hosted by progressive state agencies, provincial governments, industry analysts, and Curam Software executives, including representatives from New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development and the State of Utah's Department of Technology Services, as well as other leading agencies.

The conference sessions - delivered by international government executives and industry analysts from Forrester and Gartner - will allow attendees to participate in a peer-to-peer information exchange within the Curam Software community. Speakers include:

-- Steve Barnett, Vice President and Assistant Chief Financial Officer, Claims Management Solutions, WorkSafeBC

-- Valerie Adamo, Vice President Business Technology Services and Chief Information Officer, Executive Lead Integrated Case and Account Management Program, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

-- John Kost, Vice President and Managing Partner, Gartner Research Worldwide

-- Tim Occleshaw, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand

-- Stephen Fletcher, Chief Information Officer and Executive Director of the newly-formed Department of Technology Services, State of Utah

-- Greg Gardner, Deputy Director, Department of Workforce Services, State of Utah

-- Gene Leganza, Vice President of Government Research, Forrester Research

"We designed the Curam Software User Conference to bring leading social enterprise management professionals together to share best practices and experiences," said Ronan Rooney, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Curam Software Inc. "As the market leader, we know that we must continue to provide solutions that transform business and operational processes as well as improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. The Curam User Conference will provide a glimpse of what is possible using SEM."

Platinum sponsors for the user conference include Accenture, IBM, and HP. Additional sponsors include Enterprise Ireland, EDS, Deloitte Consulting, Cognos, Oracle, Keane, Ciber, Quartech Systems, and eSystems, Inc.

SEM is a new category of enterprise software that is client-centric and leverages commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products to transform as well as modernize health, human services, labor, and social security agencies. SEM provides comprehensive enterprise eligibility IT solutions crossing agency boundaries, simplifying policies, and integrating with existing technology. SEM fosters holistic, convenient services for citizens, as well as provides screening for needs and referrals to state and community-based resources.

About Curam Software

Curam Software is the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, delivering best-in-class applications for social enterprises globally including, health and human services, workforce services, and social security organizations. Using the Curam Business Application Suite(TM) agencies can immediately reap the benefits of client-centric business processes and an outcomes-driven integrated service delivery model. The Curam Business Application Suite, underpinned by the Curam Enterprise Framework(TM), combines the advantages of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software, an enterprise platform and service oriented architecture with the business and technical flexibility required to allow agencies to implement solutions to meet their strategic objectives. Curam Software is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with additional offices located in New York, Washington, D.C., United Kingdom, and Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.curamsoftware.com.
Symark Software Experiences Rapid Increase in Sales and Number of Fortune 500 Customers. Check it out:
AGOURA HILLS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Symark Software, the leading provider of UNIX and Linux security and administration solutions, today announced a 74 percent increase in sales during the first half of 2006 in comparison to the same period in 2005. In addition, the Company added 10 global Fortune 500 companies to its continuously expanding list of more than 1,500 global 2000 clients.



"The remarkable sales figures we achieved in the first half of 2006 demonstrate that data privacy and regulatory compliance continue to be significant revenue drivers for Symark as companies make IT purchasing decisions," said Bob Sommers, chairman and co-CEO of Symark Software. "Preventing unauthorized access to proprietary information and systems -- as well as complying with SOX, PCI DSS and other federal regulations -- are top-of-mind issues for security administrators at organizations across all industries. By offering comprehensive solutions for delegating administrative privileges and logging events, Symark is able to help both new and existing customers implement best-practices security infrastructures that meet compliance demands."

Symark Software's family of identity and access management products -- including PowerBroker(R), PowerPassword(R) and PowerKeeper(R) -- enable administrators to manage and secure their networks and maintain regulatory compliance by addressing the inherent security gaps in native UNIX and Linux operating systems. These include: a lack of granular control for granting administrative privileges, a limited ability to manage passwords, incomplete event logging capabilities and a lack of central management controls for heterogeneous networks. Symark Software's offerings take the cost and complexity out of addressing these challenges by equipping organizations with a complete solution for controlling access to information and systems across the entire network.

About Symark

Founded in 1985, Symark is the leading provider of security administration solutions for heterogeneous IT environments. Symark PowerBroker(R) enables granular delegation of administrative privileges while restricting UNIX/Linux root account access. Symark PowerPassword(R), User Management Edition provides UNIX/Linux user account management along with login and password security policies. Symark PowerKeeper(R) provides storage and secure access of administrative passwords for multiple servers, applications, and network devices. All three products offer central administration and detailed audit logs. Symark offers extensive expertise in enterprise computing security, and its products are backed by unmatched technical support. For more information, visit us at www.symark.com.
Saba Wraps Largest User Conference in Company's History. Check it out:
BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- Saba, the premier Human Capital Management (HCM) software and services provider, will conclude the largest and most successful user conference in its history. Held September 25-28 at the Westin Copley place in Boston, the conference gathered more than 600 Saba and Centra customers, partners and other members of the extended Saba community from around the world to discuss key HCM issues and best practices.



"We are energized by and appreciate the participation of our customers and partners at this year's Summit," said Bobby Yazdani, chairman and CEO, Saba. "This exceptional conference turnout illustrates the growing strategic nature of human capital and collaboration for organizations of all sizes. More and more of our customers are exploring how to adopt a more people-focused, disciplined approach to strategy and organizational execution to successfully navigate the evolving HCM landscape."

At the conference, Saba introduced Saba OnDemand Enterprise and Saba OnDemand FastTrack, fully-integrated, subscription-based HCM services tailored specifically to reduce implementation time and speed time-to-benefit. The company also announced the availability of Saba Publisher Professional Edition 6.0, a powerful new solution for creating and assembling learning content to disseminate knowledge throughout the enterprise. The company is also extending its investment in the academic market with several enhancements to its Centra Live virtual classroom, training and collaboration software and launched a dedicated academic business to address this critical market.

Yazdani and chief operating officer, Mark Frost, also shared the company's vision and product roadmap and previewed the next versions of Saba Enterprise 5 and Centra 7, which deepen integration between its Saba and Centra product offerings, improve users' experience, drive greater collaboration, and more tightly integrate learning, performance and talent management capabilities.

A powerful line-up of keynote presenters included Nick van Dam Ph.D., global chief learning officer, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Robert Todd, senior director, Product Strategy for the Convergys Learning Solution, Convergys Corporation; Roger Edmonds, manager E-Schooling Services, South Australian Department of Education & Children's Services; and Bill Kutik, technology columnist, Human Resource Executive and co-chair, of the magazine's HR Technology Conference. Kutik led a panel of some of the industry's leading industry experts from AMR, IDC, Knowledge Infusion, and the Yankee Group.

More than 15 organizations, including sponsoring partners, Convergys, Deloitte, IBM, Mohive, rapidLD, and Surgient showcased their innovative solutions that complement Saba's HCM solutions.

Exceptional Customer Achievement Honored

Saba also presented the 2006 Saba Excellence Award to Best Buy, Caterpillar, Contact North/Contact Nord, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Vignette, and Queensland Rail. The award honors those Saba customers who demonstrate superior achievement in their HCM deployments.

Award winners were honored for their achievements in the following categories:

-- Best Global Deployment: Caterpillar, Inc. - A Fortune 100 company, Caterpillar is the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines. Based on Saba Learning, Caterpillar University improves the performance of over 85,000 employees and over 120,000 dealer employees in over 70 countries.

-- Best HCM Deployment: Best Buy - Best Buy is North America's leading specialty retailers of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. One of the first Saba customers to go live on Saba Enterprise Learning 5.3, Best Buy has deployed its learning solution to more than 100,000 users at its 800 Best Buy stores, corporate offices and distribution and service centers in the US.

-- Best Saba-Centra Deployment: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu - Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is an organization of member firms devoted to excellence in providing professional services in audit, tax, consulting and financial advisory. Deloitte uses Saba and Centra products to meet the company's rigorous blended learning requirements, including support for over 15 languages, the ability to adapt to local business rules for different offices, and scalability to support 130 thousand users in 150 countries.

-- Best Innovative Use of Centra in a Corporate University: Vignette - The leading provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, expanded the power of its corporate university by using Centra to accelerate its training capabilities. With Centra, Vignette increased its revenue and decreased costs for its external training division, eliminated all offshore enablement costs, captured IP for long term use, and created a backbone for its 2007 eLearning launch across all Vignette product lines.

-- Best Centra Deployment in an Academic Institution: Contact North/Contact Nord - The Northern Ontario-based distance education and training network, utilizes Centra 7 to better facilitate access to the e-learning and training programs offered by the region's colleges, universities and school boards. Contact North/Contact Nord provides services to 67 communities, covering over 12,500 students taught by 280 instructors.

-- Best Performance Management Initiative: Queensland Rail - The primary rail network operator in Queensland, Australia, utilizes Saba Performance to achieve complete cross-functional alignment across the entire organization. The organization is in the process of rolling out the Saba solution to 6,000 users across the organization.

"The achievements of these six visionary organizations represent the pinnacle of excellence among our more than 1,100 customers," added Yazdani. "These organizations have set new standards for advancing HCM as a business strategy and aligning employees, customers and partners with the goals and performance of their enterprises. We applaud these visionary organizations."

About Saba

Saba (NASDAQ:SABA) is the premier Human Capital Management (HCM) software and services provider, using a people-centric approach to increase productivity and performance. As a trusted partner, Saba enables the Aligned Enterprise(TM) for over 1,100 customers in 150 countries by providing an integrated people management system to continuously align goals, develop people, improve collaboration and increase visibility into organizational performance.

Saba customers include ABN AMRO, Alcatel, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, BMW, CEMEX, Cisco Systems, DaimlerChrysler, Dell, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, EDS, EMC Corporation, FedEx Kinko's, Insurance Australia Group, Lockheed Martin, Medtronic, National Australia Bank, Novartis, Petrobras, Procter & Gamble, Scotiabank, Sprint, Standard Chartered Bank, Stanford University, Swedbank, Wyndham International, Weyerhaeuser, Underwriters Laboratories, and the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Saba has offices on five continents. For more information, please visit www.saba.com or call (+ 1) 877-SABA-101 or (+1) 650-779-2791.

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding future releases of Saba's products and OnDemand services. Saba's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties Saba faces that could cause results to differ materially include risks associated with: Saba's dependence on growth of the markets for Saba's products, dependence on acceptance of Saba's products by customers and channel partners, fluctuation in customer spending, length of Saba's sales cycle, competition, rapid technological change, dependence on new product introductions and enhancements and potential software defects. Readers should also refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" on pages 11 through 21 of Saba's Annual Report on Form 10-K dated August 18, 2006 and similar disclosures in subsequent Saba periodic SEC reports. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this press release are based on information available to Saba today. Saba assumes no obligation to update them.

SABA, the Saba logo, Centra and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Interval International Honored with CRM Magazine's CRM Elite Award. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Infor, one of the largest global providers of enterprise software, today announced CRM Magazine has awarded its CRM Elite Award in recognition of Infor Epiphany CRM's deployment at Interval International, an international vacation exchange network with more than 1.8 million member families.



Interval International deployed Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing products of the Infor Epiphany CRM suite to meet the evolving business requirements of the travel industry and better respond to its customer's ever-changing travel planning needs. Infor CRM centralizes Interval's customer data, sharing information across several internal departments and synchronizing marketing initiatives across all business units and touch points.

"Our goal through this CRM initiative was to better understand the needs of our customers and offer more attractive and innovative products," said Sapana Patel, director of application services for Interval International. "To meet this objective we shifted away from an operational approach to marketing to a CRM centric approach. Through the deployment of Infor CRM, we were able to better track and understand customer behavior and program effectiveness, as well as develop stronger marketing applications providing better segmentation and relevance to our member base."

The CRM Elite Award recognizes excellence in achieving hard and soft ROI results from CRM initiatives. Interval International saw overall ROI exceed 100 percent in less than 18 months, and through the use of segmentation and customized product promotions, both online and offline sales against such products increased 54 and 36 percent respectively.

"We are honored to have our customer and our solution recognized for this award," said Gregg Monastiero, senior vice president of Infor CRM, in charge of sales, professional services, support and development. "We develop solutions that meet the specific needs of our customers in travel and leisure and other customer centric industries such as Financial Services, Retail and Telecommunications. Our work with Interval International highlights the success of this approach and the capabilities of Infor's CRM solutions."

About Infor

Infor delivers fully integrated enterprise solutions for specific industries, as well as best-in-class standalone products that address the essential challenges its customers face in areas such as enterprise resource planning, supply chain planning and execution, customer and supplier relationship management, asset management, product lifecycle management, and business intelligence. With more than 8,100 employees and offices in 100 countries, Infor provides enterprise solutions to more than 70,000 customers. For additional information, visit www.infor.com.
KK Fine Foods is Highly Commended for Efficiencies Achieved with Ross ERP from CDC Software. Check it out:
ATLANTA & NORTHAMPTON, United Kingdom --(Business Wire)-- KK Fine Foods, one of the largest UK manufacturers of high quality frozen convenience foods, has been highly commended in the Manufacturing and Business Management category at Tuesday night's Best of British IT Manufacturing Awards. The awards recognise the very best IT strategies and implementations in British manufacturing industry. Using the Ross ERP (enterprise resource planning) system from CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA), KK Fine Foods has achieved a 54 per cent rise in profits and a 15 per cent drop in product wastage since 2003.



Leyla Edwards, founder and CEO of KK Fine Foods, comments, "We're delighted to receive the commendation at the Manufacturing and Business Management awards. KK Fine Foods has gone from strength to strength since implementing the Ross solution from CDC Software. It has helped us to achieve a 54 per cent rise in profits and a 15 per cent drop in product wastage."

Graham Jackson, chairman of KK Fine Foods, comments, "The ERP solution underpins our entire organisation from finance and sales order processing to production and distribution. We've been able to minimise errors in production and streamline production planning as well as achieve more effective management of our cold storage facility. The system also helps us address key requirements that are highly important to our customers, such as strict adherence to quality standards, end-to-end traceability to support brand assurance and sophisticated scheduling to ensure that we fulfill customer orders on time. As an added bonus, the expert Ross consultants have been with us every step of the way, ensuring that we were using the Ross ERP system to its full potential."

Mark Carlile, UK managing director, CDC Software, comments, "We are extremely pleased that we could play such a pivotal role in helping KK Fine Foods to achieve such a dramatic change in its business performance over the past couple of years. The fact that KK Fine Food has been highly commended at these awards is testament to the hard work put in by the staff at KK Fine Foods and here at CDC Software. The Ross ERP solution from CDC Software has helped KK Fine Foods to support standards compliance and to unlock the cost savings and efficiencies necessary to maintain competitiveness and protect profit margins as they continue to grow."

KK Fine Foods produces over 250 different recipes of frozen meals and 193 live recipes every month for its customers across the UK and Europe including Mitchell's & Butlers, Weatherspoons, Brakes Brothers, 3663, Woodward, Green King, P&O, Marriott and Whitbread. Based in North Wales, KK Fine Foods was awarded the Welsh Medium Sized Business of the Year Award in 2004 and has recently been awarded funding from the Welsh Assembly in recognition of its business success and to extend and double the capacity of its existing operation.

Implemented in 2003, the Ross system has given KK Fine Foods a fully integrated and real-time management information tool that allows it to optimise throughput, streamline the business and monitor product profitability in a way that it could not do before. The system also generates an executive level view of the entire business operation and manufacturing processes to give managers a single view of the business, enabling them to make decisions with confidence knowing they are based on current and accurate information.

As well as live management reports, the system also provides real-time stock status reports, supplying information by product, customer, ingredient, location and history, to give end-to-end online visibility of its products. This has helped KK Fine Foods achieve Grade A Food Safety Traceability Accreditation from the Food Standards Agency. It can now identify the availability of raw materials, monitor stock shelf life and react to any sudden change in customer demand dynamically.

About KK Fine Foods

KK Fine Foods started in 1897 to produce a range of vegetarian dishes. From a simple beginning in the kitchen of its founder Leyla Edwards it quickly expanded and, in 1995, moved into a 900 sq ft factory in Flint. Due to increasing demand for its products it moved in January 2003 to a new, specially designed 22,000 sq ft factory in Deeside. The very latest equipment has been installed to ensure the original principles of innovation, quality and price were maintained. During the course of this expansion, the company has collected numerous awards and gold medals for its products. www.kkfinefoods.com

About Ross Systems

Ross Systems, Inc., a software unit of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA), delivers innovative software solutions that help manufacturers worldwide fulfill their business growth objectives through increased operational efficiencies, improved profitability, strengthened customer relationships and streamlined regulatory compliance. Focused on the food and beverage, life sciences, chemicals, metals and natural products industries and implemented by more than 1,200 customer companies worldwide, the company's family of Internet-architected solutions is a comprehensive, modular suite that spans the enterprise, from manufacturing, financials and supply chain management to customer relationship management, performance management and regulatory compliance. For more information, visit www.rossinc.com.

About CDC Corporation

The CDC family of companies includes CDC Software focused on enterprise software applications and services, CDC Mobile focused on mobile applications, CDC Games focused on online games, and China.com focused on portals for the greater China markets. For more information about CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA), please visit www.cdccorporation.net.

About CDC Software

CDC Software, The Customer-Driven Company(TM), is a provider of enterprise software applications designed to help organizations deliver a superior customer experience while increasing efficiencies and profitability. CDC Software's product suite includes the Pivotal CRM (customer relationship management), c360 CRM add-on products, industry solutions and development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, Ross ERP (enterprise resource planning) and SCM (supply chain management), IMI warehouse management and order management, Platinum China HR (human resource) and business analytics solutions.

These industry-specific solutions are used by more than 5,000 customers worldwide within the manufacturing, financial services, health care, home building, real estate, and wholesale and retail distribution industries. The company completes its offerings with a full continuum of services that span the life cycle of technology and software applications, including implementation, project consulting, outsourced business services, application management and offshore development. CDC Software is the enterprise software unit of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and is ranked number 18 on the Manufacturing Business Technology 2006 Global 100 List of Enterprise and Supply Chain Management Application vendors. For more information, please visit www.cdcsoftware.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and includes statements relating to the ability of Ross to address the needs of food manufacturing customers such as the ability to decrease time-to-market, gain visibility into manufacturing operations, comply with food safety regulations and make more informed business decisions through the use of Ross' ERP software. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties and changes in circumstances. There are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements including, among others: the conditions of the food manufacturing industry; the continued ability of Ross' solutions to address industry-specific requirements of food manufacturers; demand for and market acceptance of new and existing enterprise software and services; development of new functionalities which would allow food manufacturing companies to compete more effectively and changes in the type of information required to compete in the food manufacturing business. Further information on risks or other factors that could cause results to differ are detailed in filings or submissions with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission made by our parent, CDC Corporation, including its Annual Report for the year ended December 31, 2005 on Form 20-F filed on June 21, 2006. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to management as of the date of the press release, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward looking statements which speak only as of the date of this press release. The company assumes no obligation to update or alter the forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Butler Group technology audit puts MapInfo location intelligence on the BI map. Check it out:
Butler Groups independent technology audit on the leading provider of location intelligence solutions for business now available

London, 28 September 2006 - MapInfo Corporation (Nasdaq: MAPS), the leading global provider of location intelligence solutions, today announces that a Butler Group independent technology audit, providing a comprehensive overview of MapInfo, its location-based enterprise solutions and the location intelligence market, taken in July this year, is now available as a succinct seven-page report on the company website, www.mapinfo.co.uk/butler.



Recognising the increasingly critical role of location in business analysis, the Butler Group report outlines the distinct benefits of MapInfo enterprise-wide location intelligence across vertical sector industries with specific reference to telecommunications, retail, financial services and public sector.

MapInfo solutions can be used to visualise and analyse the relationships between data and geography, and in so doing provides organisations with a valuable source of location-based Business Intelligence, the report quotes.

It goes on to deliver a detailed examination of the two flagship products; MapInfo Professional and Envinsa, identifying the clear attributes of each in context to both the business benefits and the technology validation across operating systems, application servers, databases and web browsers.

The independent audit is the first of its kind to clearly evaluate the benefits of location intelligence as a key BI solution and increasingly critical business decision tool. It highlights the value of capturing geographically-related data for public and private sector organisations by helping them to improve their decision making and daily operations to increase revenue, lower costs, boost efficiency and improve service.

The Butler Group Audit is hugely welcomed by MapInfo as an important endorsement of the value of location intelligence in business decision making, comments Reid Hislop, VP of corporate marketing, MapInfo.

It is a thorough and comprehensive evaluation of the significant business benefits of adopting a location intelligence strategy clearly articulating how MapInfo products work and the significant impact a location-based BI solution can deliver across the enterprise.

The Butler Audit has now been released for downloading for media reference for a limited time. To download the report, visit: www.mapinfo.co.uk/butler.

Boost in the Telecom Industry

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Boost in the Telecom Industry. Check it out:
(Ghanaian Chronicle Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The telecommunication industry in Ghana is still recorded as one of the fastest growing industry in Ghana and on the African continent as the number of telephone lines have increased significantly over last year.



According to the Minister of Communications, Prof. Mike Oquaye, the number of telephone lines in Ghana surpassed the four million mark, which means the target of reaching the five million mark by the end of the year is on course.

The Minister revealed this at an open forum in Accra yesterday on IP communications organized by Seatec Telecom Services Limited, the sole distributor of Alcatel products in Ghana, to introduce Alcatel IP Communication solutions to Ghanaians.

"Ghana cannot afford to miss ICT revolution if we hope to improve the quality of our citizens' lives and alleviate the widespread poverty that seriously undermines human development.

"Today, innovation in the field of ICT is driving the global digital economy forward so fast that there is urgent need for businesses, industry and government to work together to nurture policies and programmes that foster the use of cutting edge technologies that will help us to collectively interact to promote free flow of ideas and maintain an increase in the spread of knowledge at all levels," he said.

Figures available indicate that the second quarter of 2006 recorded a total subscriber base of 4,158,088.

The figures further indicate that the telephone density of Ghana has increased significantly from 1% in 2000 to about 20% now.

The figure for 2005 was over two million after the number of telephone lines had significantly increased from 218,000 in 2000 to 1 million in 2003 and 1.6 million in 2004.

Capital inflows into the telecommunication industry had also increased significantly, especially into the government's ICT programmes such as the ICT Backbone and the e-Governance projects and the mobile telephone networks in the country.

With all these developments, Africa is still lagging behind in the global transition to an information economy.

He said communications is a way of successfully doing business within the public and private sector.

"The better we communicate, the better our services and the larger our customer base or clientele will become".

In the instance of government making up-to-date information on all programmes being undertaken accessible to the citizenry no matter where they are through a seamless communication system will improve government's communication.

He applauded efforts by organizations such as Seatec Telecom to help accelerate the development and growth of ICTs in the country.

Seatec Telecom, through its partnership with technology giants like Alcatel and Bytes Communications, will improve the Ghanaian enterprises' access to such technologies so that they can be sure of the quality of the solutions as well as the sustained support of these solutions, which are a considerable investment on their part.

He called on organizations and businesses in the Ghanaian economy to take advantage of all opportunities made available to boost their growth. He said IP Communications technologies provide one sure way of increasing the value created by business activities and processes.

"This technology will not only reduce communication cost for organizations, but radically improve the service capabilities with an unprecedented interactivity adapted to business needs for employees and all customers," he added.

He said this allows all employees to access the same set of communication applications throughout the organization, simplifying the user experience and reducing the need for training and support.

He said the forum has to broaden the knowledge of participants on how they can take full advantage of IP Communications technology at this opportune time when access to the Internet, especially broadband, as well as Wide Area Networks (WAN) are fast becoming a standard feature of the enterprise's communications infrastructure in Ghana.

Prof. Oquaye said this would no doubt provide more insight into how we can improve our processes and systems to deliver better services and create a safe country for all citizens through access to quality and reliable information.

Ravin Naidu, Voice Sales Specialist of Alcatel - South Africa, made a presentation on IP communications.

He called for the deployment and upgrading of bandwidths and broadband in Ghana for the smooth use of IP facilities.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Ghanaian Chronical. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Joliet Arsenal plans unveiled: Enterprise zone will expand to support distribution center. Check it out:
(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Hoping to stimulate development and create jobs in Will County, Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced Wednesday an expansion of the Joliet Arsenal enterprise zone that will provide an industrial park developer tax incentives to convert 770 acres within the former arsenal site into a bulk distribution center.



Denver-based ProLogis, a global provider of distribution facilities, is in charge of the $300 million project at the south end of the old 23,000-acre arsenal. It is expected to produce 10 million square feet of industrial space, as many as 5,000 construction jobs and up to 3,000 permanent jobs.

"By expanding the boundaries of this enterprise zone, we're encouraging more private sector investment and we're making Will County an even better place to work in and live in." said Blagojevich, speaking at the site north of South Arsenal Road and east of Illinois Highway 53, near Wilmington.

The zone expansion, approved by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, would provide ProLogis several tax incentives to develop the property. They include sales tax exemptions on construction materials used for buildings within the zone, a $500 credit on Illinois income taxes for each worker hired and an investment tax credit for machinery and other equipment.

In addition, the Illinois Department of Transportation is working on an agreement with the Joliet Arsenal Development Authority and ProLogis that would provide $2 million worth of road improvements, much of it funded by ProLogis, state officials said.

With the expansion, the Joliet Arsenal enterprise zone would include more than 7 square miles of the former arsenal site, state officials said.

The zone also includes Oak Brook-based Centerpoint Properties Deer Run Industrial Park at the north end of the former arsenal in Elwood. That emerging project includes a 621-acre Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. intermodal facility and is expected to generate 8,000 to 12,000 jobs over the next decade.

"The arsenal site holds enormous promise as a distribution hub for companies around the world, given its excellent location and the access it affords to strategic transportation infrastructure," said Jeff Schwartz, ProLogis' chief executive officer. "This expansion of the enterprise zone makes the arsenal site even more attractive as a logistics operations base."

[email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Bankers Deploying ERF Wireless' CryptoVue(TM) Encryption System with Motorola's Broadband Technology to Add Secure Bandwidth, Reduce Costs. Check it out:
LEAGUE CITY, Texas --(Business Wire)-- ERF Wireless Inc.'s (OTCBB:ERFW) specialized data encryption solution is being deployed along with Motorola Inc.'s wireless broadband technology by banks in Gulf Coast states to upgrade bank branch financial transaction and data processing capacity while preventing service interruptions caused by hurricanes and other natural disasters.



As recently as July 2006, Iberville Bank became the fifth multi-bank branch operator in the region to launch an encrypted wireless financial network that interconnects the bank's headquarters and processing center with its 11 branches in southwest Louisiana. Previously, the bank had leased numerous land-based data transmission lines to link its facilities dotting a 500-square-mile area.

The secure, point-to-point wireless financial network, which is the backbone for all the bank's retail ATM network, teller systems, and other financial transaction data transmissions, also transports digital images of checks and financial documents from the various branches to a central processing center. Two key elements make up the network: CryptoVue(TM), a patent-pending proprietary data encryption system with biometric controls developed and deployed exclusively for high-security networks by ERF Wireless, combined with Motorola's Canopy(R) wireless broadband technology.

"The combination of CryptoVue and Canopy provides a unique solution for the banking industry while raising the prospect for other information security-conscious industries that could benefit from such a combination," said Craig Newman, a market development manager with Motorola's Networks and Enterprise business. Canopy solutions are part of Motorola's overall broadband approach to total coverage which includes its MOTOwi4(TM) portfolio of innovative wireless broadband solutions and services that create, complement and complete IP networks.

John Burns, a banking technology expert and now CEO of ERF Wireless Inc.'s Enterprise Network Services subsidiary, explains how digital images of checks -- not the actual pieces of paper -- are transported from place to place for settlement. Until just a few years ago, the original paper check had to be physically transported back to the payee bank for payment. That meant engaging ground and air couriers to hand-carry cancelled checks to the respective issuing banks -- a costly venture considering the actual cost of transport. Compounding that cost, however, was the cost of float -- the time during which the bank that cashed the check does not have access to the funds and the interest income that otherwise could be generated while in possession of those funds. Check processing centers operated by the nation's Federal Reserve Banks and numerous privately operated check processing correspondent banks situated along the route of the returning check were able to short-circuit some of the negative effects of float, but not entirely.

"For most banks, the technology of choice has been leased frame circuits or T1 lines to their remote locations," says Burns. "But telco circuits are expensive and they do not have the capacity to support the growing volume and complexity of present-day bank transactions and the new digital applications being deployed. And as we learned here last year with not one but two powerful hurricanes, land circuits don't stand up very well to high winds and flood waters. Many telephone and cable circuits were down for weeks -- some even months. And the one lesson we all learned is that people are very clear on what they need in a hurricane situation: water, ice, food, communications and access to their money."

CryptoVue devices are installed along with the Canopy radios at each bank branch in the network. The devices employ biometrically-controlled 3-DES data encrypted IPSec tunnels to encapsulate Layer 3 data LAN to LAN over the WAN network to each location. The devices also have a packet-filtering firewall to block the propagation of any traffic on the WAN network from any device other than a CryptoVue. The devices route encrypted packets of traffic to other authenticated CryptoVues on the WAN between the branch LANs and multiple internal LAN subnets across the network.

Iberville Bank President Larry Melsheimer says the deployment of his bank's new network directly addresses a number of financial operations issues. For example, Melsheimer's bank was paying $7,000 to $8,000 a month to interconnect its branches with T1s. Typical data throughputs over T1s, especially fractional T1s, can only provide connectivity of up to 1,536 Kilobits per second. "But none can compare to the 14 Megabits-per-second speeds available with our Canopy links," says Melsheimer. Another major cost to Iberville Bank -- the $70,000 it was being charged annually by couriers to deliver checks and other paper-based documents to processing centers -- has been eliminated.

Last year, on September 24, when Hurricane Rita smashed into the Texas-Louisiana border region, Brent Courrege saw first-hand the destructive force of a Category 3 hurricane and what something like that can do to disrupt local and regional commerce. Courrege, the chief operations officer at Jeff Davis Bank in Louisiana's Lake Charles area, oversees operations for the bank's 16 locations across some 800 square miles, all of which are tied together by a Motorola-ERF Wireless encrypted wireless broadband network.

"We lost about half the towers in the storm but the main network backbone and our operations center stayed up even during the most intense winds and rains," he recalls. "We lost power at most of our locations. There were mandatory evacuations -- all Lake Charles people were locked out. However, we got permission to go back in and within a day after the hurricane hit, we got busy and the affected branches were back up and running in no time. In fact, we were up and back in business before most other banks -- banks that had to wait for the local telephone company to restore their T1 connections."

Courrege and his team used rented generators to power the branches and his Motorola-ERF Wireless network while they waited for the local electrical utility to restore service. Since the hurricane, the bank has replaced failed towers with ones designed to withstand a Category 4 storm. Generators now are permanently installed at key branch locations, while a supply of portable units is available for immediate deployment should they be needed.

"These technologies were developed to satisfy both stringent auditing standards and federal banking regulations covering enterprise wireless network security. We believe we have the only wireless terrestrial systems that have been subjected to rigorous audits, banking examinations and vulnerability assessment tests necessary to carry sensitive financial data," says Burns. "In addition, ERF Wireless provides encrypted satellite failover circuits to satisfy a redundancy requirement soon to be mandated by federal regulators."

About ERF Wireless

ERF Wireless Inc. is a fully reporting public corporation (OTCBB:ERFW) that specializes in providing secure wireless broadband product and service solutions to banking and commercial clients on a national basis. Its principals have been in the network integration, Internet banking, and encryption technology businesses for over twenty years and have constructed encrypted, wireless broadband networks as well as secure Internet banking solutions for hundreds of banks across America. For more information about ERF Wireless, please visit www.erfwireless.com or call 281-538-2101. (ERFWG)

Forward-looking statements in this release regarding ERF Wireless Inc. and Motorola Inc. are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, continued acceptance of the company's products, increased levels of competition, new products and technological changes, the company's dependence upon third-party suppliers, intellectual property rights, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CryptoVue is a trademark of ERF Wireless and incorporates several patent-pending technologies filed with the US Patent & Trademark Office.
ActiveGrid Names Former BEA and Adobe Veteran Todd Hay New VP of Marketing. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- ActiveGrid, the Enterprise Web 2.0 company, today announced that it has appointed Todd Hay as Vice President of Marketing. Hay brings more than 15 years of experience in technology and marketing leadership to ActiveGrid, where he will be responsible for the ActiveGrid Studio and ActiveGrid Server brands, and driving the company's product and alliances strategies.



"Like the first web revolution, Web 2.0 has forever changed people's expectations on how they interact with web applications," said Hay. "Now, these end-users go back to corporate IT and demand the same level of rich experience and integration they get from consumer facing sites today. I believe that ActiveGrid has the compelling vision and the right solution to allow enterprises to respond to this demand. I'm excited to join the team at ActiveGrid as they take a lead role in addressing the Enterprise Web 2.0 market opportunity."

Prior to joining ActiveGrid, Hay led the Platform Marketing and Developer Relations strategy at Adobe Systems. Throughout his career, Hay has played a pivotal role in establishing growing businesses and taking new products to market. Prior to Adobe, Hay launched the application security business for BEA and played executive roles at web-services pioneer Bowstreet, vertical integration solutions provider Knowmadic, and mobile distributed process visionary WebV2.

About ActiveGrid

ActiveGrid, the Enterprise Web 2.0 company, simplifies the development and deployment of rich, interactive web applications for Global 2000 corporations. Taking the best practices proven out by leading Internet players, and adding enterprise-ready tooling, SOA and security features to the proven LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) software stack, ActiveGrid makes it possible to quickly and inexpensively build and run the next generation of enterprise-class Web 2.0 applications on existing Apache and Java infrastructures. Please see http://www.activegrid.com for more information.
Smart Software Ships SmartForecasts Version 7. Check it out:
BELMONT, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Building on its strong history of product innovation, Smart Software, Inc., provider of industry-leading demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization solutions, today announced that it is shipping Version 7 of its flagship product, SmartForecasts(R). This latest version includes powerful new conversion capabilities, as well as embedded parameter tools for further automating the forecasting process by reducing the number of repetitive planning tasks. These new features help ensure more accurate forecasting and inventory planning results during every forecasting session, and enable better cross-functional use of these results among corporate departments.



SmartForecasts 7 includes a new set of powerful conversion capabilities that enables users to dynamically switch between forecasts in units and dollars, or any other defined set of measures and conversion factors. These features significantly enhance the S&OP process by increasing planning flexibility and allowing more effective collaboration to take place between departments. For example, one department can forecast in its preferred measure--such as units, and compare their forecasts to those of another department that forecasts in a different measure--such as dollars.

In addition, SmartForecasts 7 greatly speeds up the forecasting process, especially when there are many thousands of items that need to be forecasted on a regular basis. The software employs a new, automated set of "Forecast and Selection Parameters" tools that reduce forecasting tasks previously taking hours to complete, to just a few minutes. With these tools, users can pre-specify and embed parameter values (such as varying lead times and service levels) for thousands of individual product items to be used each time forecasts are generated. This capability increases consistency and accuracy by ensuring that the same set of SKU-specific parameters will be applied from one forecasting session to the next.

The Forecast and Selection Parameters, as well as conversion capabilities, are available for both database and file-based systems. These new features expand SmartForecasts' overall utility making it easier for organizations to manage the S&OP and inventory planning processes.

SmartForecasts is a cross-industry solution for demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization. It integrates easily with host databases, such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2, as well as ERP and SCM systems like Epicor, Adonix, and SAP. SmartForecasts contains award-winning, patented technology for forecasting hard-to-forecast items with intermittent, or "slow-moving", demand. This unique technology, which yields nearly 100 percent accurate estimates of inventory stocking requirements for any lead time and desired service level, is being used by scores of companies with service parts operations, as well as industrial tools and capital goods manufacturers.

About Smart Software, Inc.

Founded in 1984, Smart Software, Inc. is a leader in providing businesses with enterprise-wide demand forecasting, planning and inventory optimization solutions. Smart Software's flagship product, SmartForecasts, has thousands of users worldwide, including customers at mid-market enterprises and Fortune 500 companies, such as Monsanto, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Disney, Pfizer, GE and The Coca-Cola Company. SmartForecasts gives demand planners the tools to handle sales seasonality, promotions, new and aging products, multi-dimensional hierarchies, and intermittently demanded service parts and capital goods items. It also provides inventory managers with accurate estimates of the minimum inventory and safety stock required to meet future orders, thereby ensuring the most cost-effective inventory allocation to achieve desired service levels. Smart Software is headquartered in Belmont, Massachusetts and can be found on the World Wide Web at www.smartcorp.com.

For more information, please contact Greg Hartunian at Smart Software at 1-800-SMART-99 (800-762-7899) or [email protected].

SmartForecasts is a registered trademark of Smart Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
NEC Corporation of America Joins the North American Fiber-to-the-Home Council. Check it out:
WASHINGTON --(Business Wire)-- The Fiber-to-the-Home Council ("FTTH Council"), a non-profit organization established to educate the public on the opportunities and benefits of fiber-to-the-home solutions ("FTTH"), today announced that NEC Corporation of America (NEC) has joined the Council as a Gold level member.



As a new member of the FTTH Council, NEC's goal is to help drive the Council's mission of educating, promoting and accelerating adoption and carrier deployments of FTTH across North America. By focusing on the benefits of FTTH, NEC hopes carriers will employ more advanced optical networking solutions to drive greater bandwidth and efficiency requirements, which are necessary for consumer, enterprise and municipality FTTH build-outs.

In addition to supporting the Council, NEC will be exhibiting at the 2006 FTTH Conference and Expo in Las Vegas on October 2 - 5, 2006. NEC will be at booth #323, and will be showcasing its current breadth of optical core, access and edge solutions.

"We are delighted to have NEC Corporation join the growing ranks of North American advocates of fiber-to-the-home," said FTTH Council President Joe Savage. "By joining the Council, NEC Corporation of America supports the goals of 21st Century Broadband, and joins the growing community of America's leading edge fiber-to-the-home companies."

"We see a rise in broadband access and fiber-to-the-home technologies as the demand for user-generated content, and more advanced entertainment and enhanced communications devices have increased across both residential and commercial communities," said Rocky Kler, general manager, Optical Network Systems Division, NEC. "As a new member of the Fiber-to-the-Home Council, we hope to show the benefits of innovative optical solutions as a way to best respond to the broadband access demand. Our joining the FTTH Council, underscores NEC's commitment to enabling high-speed optical access from the core to the premise; ensuring carriers can meet today's broadband user requirements."

NEC's SpectralWave(TM) family of optical networking solutions includes the SpectralWave GPON solution, which is aimed at delivering FTTH to residential, commercial and municipalities across North America.

FTTH Council members represent all areas of broadband industries, including telecommunications, computing, networking, system integration, engineering, and content-provider companies, as well as traditional telecommunications service providers, utilities and municipalities.

About the Fiber-to-the-Home Council

The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council is a non-profit organization established in 2001 to educate the public on the opportunities and benefits of fiber-to-the-home solutions. FTTH Council members represent all areas of broadband industries, including telecommunications, computing, networking, system integration, engineering, and content-provider companies, as well as traditional telecommunications service providers, utilities and municipalities. Communities and organizations interested in exploring FTTH options can find information on the FTTH Council web site at http://www.ftthcouncil.org or by e-mailing [email protected].

About NEC Corporation of America

NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of IT, network and visual display solutions. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation (NASDAQ:NIPNY). NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, digital presentation and visual display systems to biometric identification, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications. Leveraging NEC's SpectralWave family and the Company's reputation for reliability and performance, NEC plans to add "new dimensions" to the traditional optical backbone to deliver solutions that expand beyond traditional transport; enabling the network to become truly multi-dimensional and agile in nature. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

(C) 2006 NEC Corporation of America. All Rights Reserved.

NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. SpectralWave is trademark of NEC Corporation of America. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Swisscom's Carrier Optical Service and Ciena's Optical Ethernet Platforms Certified by the Metro Ethernet Forum for Carrier Ethernet Services. Check it out:
MADRID, Spain --(Business Wire)-- Ciena(R) Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEND*), the network specialist, and Swisscom today announced Carrier Ethernet certification for Swisscom's Carrier Optical Service (COS) and Ciena's optical Ethernet platforms - the CN 4200(TM) FlexSelect(TM) Advanced Services Platform and CN 2300(TM) Managed Optical Services Multiplexer - that power COS. Both the Swisscom service and Ciena platforms have been certified to deliver Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) compliant Ethernet Private Lines based on the group's MEF9 technical specifications for Ethernet Services at the User Network Interface (UNI).



The Swiss market leader in Carrier Ethernet services, Swisscom has been connecting pharmaceutical, banking and other large enterprise customers with rigorous wide area network performance requirements with its Ethernet Private Line services for nearly two years on the Ciena platforms, in addition to offering storage extension and TDM connectivity services. Carrier Optical Service is a transparent point-to-point Layer 1 service for high to very high dedicated bandwidth connecting LAN applications throughout Switzerland. Ciena's optical Ethernet platforms are sold to Swisscom and supported through a partnership with Ericsson.

The MEF's Carrier Ethernet Certification Program is designed to accelerate the rollout of Carrier Ethernet services by reducing the time and cost of equipment testing and providing end users with consistent, reliable services across service providers and network equipment. Both Ciena's platforms and Swisscom's service were tested by Iometrix in accordance with its MEF-approved "Test Plan for Ethernet Services at the UNI."

"We've seen tremendous uptake in our Carrier Optical Service from enterprises looking for flexible bandwidth options backed by strong service level agreements for mission-critical data center, business continuity and other wide area network applications," said Thomas Aeberhard, Head of Data Services, Swisscom Fixnet Wholesale. "As customers increasingly move to Ethernet and look for services that are standards-based, this Carrier Ethernet certification will only broaden the appeal of our market leading Carrier Optical Service."

Ciena's CN 4200, the flagship product of its FlexSelect Architecture, is the first multiservice transport and service aggregation platform capable of supporting the migration to packet networks using future-ready technology such as ITU G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) for service transparency, dynamic wavelength routing featuring a hybrid ROADM solution, software-defined service ports, and remote service provisioning and management capabilities.

"As a Charter Member of the MEF, this certification reflects our early focus on developing innovative optical Ethernet platforms for delivering MEF-certified Carrier Ethernet services," said Martin Nuss, vice president and chief technologist at Ciena. "Swisscom was the first to deploy CN 4200 and we've worked closely with them to ensure our optical Ethernet platforms create a flexible network capable of delivering a variety of Carrier Ethernet and storage extension services with automated provisioning and advanced service level management."

Based on the recent MEF testing for Ethernet Private Lines, Ciena's CN 4200 and CN 2300 have been certified for both Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) and Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps). Ciena is committed to supporting standards-based Carrier Ethernet networking through MEF certification of multiple products in its portfolio.

*Effective as of 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 22, 2006, Ciena completed a one-for-seven reverse split of Ciena common stock. Ciena's common stock began trading on a split-adjusted basis when the market opened on Monday, September 25, 2006. For a period of approximately 20 days, NASDAQ will append a "D" to Ciena's stock symbol in order to inform the investment community of the reverse stock split.

About The Metro Ethernet Forum

The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) is a global industry alliance comprising of more than 80 organizations including telecommunications service providers, network equipment/software manufacturers, semiconductors vendors and testing organizations. The MEF's mission is to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Carrier-class Ethernet networks and services. The MEF develops Carrier Ethernet technical specifications and implementation agreements to promote interoperability and deployment of Carrier Ethernet worldwide. For more information about the Forum, including a complete listing of all current MEF members, please visit the MEF web site at www.MetroEthernetForum.org.

About Swisscom

With revenue of CHF 4.8 billion for the first half of 2006 and a workforce of 16,739 full-time employees, the Swisscom Group is Switzerland's leading telecoms company. Swisscom is present nationwide, delivering all services and products for mobile, fixed and IP-based voice and data communications.

Going forward, Swisscom aims to maintain its market leadership in its core businesses of fixed network and mobile communications, push ahead with systematic expansion in broadband communications and make further inroads on the path to the multimedia future. For more information, visit www.swisscom.com.

About Ciena

Ciena Corporation is the network specialist, focused on expanding the possibilities for its customers' networks while reducing their cost of ownership. The company's systems, software and services target and cure specific network pain points so that telcos, cable operators, governments and enterprises can best exploit the new applications that are driving their businesses forward. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

Note to Ciena Investors

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 31, 2006. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
HyPerformix Names Peter Klante President and Chief Executive Officer. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- HyPerformix, the leader in Predictive IT Management, today announced that Peter Klante has been named the company's new President and Chief Executive Officer. Klante also becomes a member of the HyPerformix Board of Directors.



In addition, HyPerformix also announced that the company has secured an additional $5M in funding. The capital infusion, provided by existing investors and Silicon Valley Bank, will be used to launch HyPerformix's expansion into new markets such as predictive performance and capacity management for SAP. The funding will also be used to accelerate momentum with key channel partners such as IBM Tivoli, HP and EDS.

"The Board is extremely pleased to welcome Peter as our new President and CEO," said Jan Lindelow, Chairman of the HyPerformix Board of Directors. "HyPerformix is poised for rapid growth as the market adoption for predictive capacity and application performance management accelerates. We were looking for a proven leader with diverse business experience who can drive growth and execution, and that's what we've found in Peter."

Klante brings over 20 years of accomplishment in enterprise software at organizations such as Lotus/IBM, Cognos and Vignette. He has played a key role in the creation and realization of significant shareholder value in multiple early-stage organizations. He served most recently as President and CEO of Resolution EBS, an Austin-based business rules engine software company. Prior to Resolution EBS, Klante was Sr. VP and General Manager of the Gateway Business Unit for 724 Solutions. Klante also served as the Vice President of Marketing for Vignette where he was instrumental in the company's rapid growth and positioning for Vignette's $1B IPO.

"I'm excited to be joining HyPerformix for the next stage of growth of the company and the market. CIO's are under increasing pressure to guarantee the performance of key applications, while at the same time reduce their IT operational expenses," said Klante. "HyPerformix's predictive approach to IT service management helps companies predict and prevent performance and capacity issues in critical applications, such as SAP, to reduce fire fighting and optimize IT assets."

About HyPerformix

HyPerformix helps organizations predict and prevent application performance and capacity problems before they impact the business. Its unique product family predicts and validates end-to-end performance across the entire application life cycle - from early design, through QA/test/deployment, and into production. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HyPerformix has offices throughout the United States, as well as in Europe & Asia. To learn more about HyPerformix, please visit www.hyperformix.com.
Palm, Microsoft and MobileOne Introduce Asia's First Windows Mobile Treo Smartphone. Check it out:
SINGAPORE --(Business Wire)-- Palm (Nasdaq: PALM), MobileOne (SGX: M1) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced the first Asian availability of the new Palm(R) Treo(TM) 750v smartphone, bringing for the first time to Asia the hallmark Palm experience on Microsoft(R) Windows Mobile(R) 5.0 over a wireless 3G/UMTS network. The new Treo 750v will be available next month through M1, Vodafone's network partner in Singapore.



"Global expansion is a key part of Palm's growth strategy, so I am pleased to announce our Vodafone relationship now extends into Asia Pacific," said John Hartnett, Palm senior vice president, global markets. "With Vodafone in Europe and now M1 in Singapore providing the Treo 750v smartphone, we can deliver a robust, business-ready device featuring the Palm experience, accelerating our momentum in the enterprise market."

Today, only an estimated 3 percent of business email inboxes worldwide are accessed via mobile, according to market research firm The Radicati Group. The new Treo 750v will allow Palm to target this large, untapped market with push email platforms such as Microsoft's Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP), which includes Direct Push Technology and enhanced security features free out of the box.(1) This business-ready solution addresses the need for a robust push-email platform that can be deployed easily by small businesses to global enterprises. In June this year, M1 was the first network in Singapore to offer the Windows Mobile Email solution.

The Treo 750v combines the hallmark Palm experience of a multifeatured mobile phone with email, messaging, web browsing and organization software all in a new compact design.(2) Unique to the Treo smartphone on Windows Mobile 5.0 is a suite of software enhancements developed by Palm that underscores its brand promise of fast access, ease of use and simplicity. Examples include the following:

-- Today Screen enhancements, which feature the ability to "dial by name" with a few keystrokes on the keyboard, perform a web search directly from the Today Screen and perform one-touch dialing with personalized photo speed dials;

-- Ability to manage a call directly from the Today Screen and stay on top of voicemail with on-screen, VCR-like icons, such as rewind, delete and fast-forward controls for easy navigation;

-- Ability to ignore a call and quickly compose a text message, such as "In a meeting" or "Can't talk"; and

-- Dedicated messaging application for SMS/MMS that is organized in a "chat thread" so users can reference prior messages and use emoticons for a personal touch.

"M1 is committed to helping our business customers increase productivity and make the most of their business and personal time," said P. Subramaniam, M1's director of Enterprise and Alliances. "We are privileged to be the first telco and Vodafone network partner in Asia Pacific to launch the new Treo 750v with Palm and Microsoft. The unparalleled ease of use offered by the new Treo 750v, together with M1's high-speed 3G network, will provide a compelling mobile-computing solution to M1 customers."

"Mobility today means far more than reading email outside the office. People need to be able to access Microsoft Word, Excel(R) and PowerPoint(R) documents, organize themselves by managing their calendars and contacts, listen to music, watch videos and do much more with a single device," said Barney Lau, managing director, Microsoft Singapore. "The Palm Treo 750v builds on the power and flexibility of Windows Mobile, Palm's innovative design and user experience, and M1's fast 3G network to deliver a winning solution for professionals seeking to enhance their digital lifestyle."

More information about the new Palm Treo 750v smartphone is available at www.palm.com/Treo750v.

About M1

M1, Singapore's most exciting and innovative mobile and IDD service provider, was launched in April 1997. Since then, it has made significant inroads into the local mobile communications market, gaining considerable brand presence and market share. M1 aims to be the leader in personal voice, business and data communications, focusing on value, quality and customer service. More information on M1 is available at www.m1.com.sg

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

About Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc., a leader in mobile computing, strives to put the power of computing in people's hands so they can access and share their most important information. The company's products for consumers, mobile professionals and businesses include Palm(R) Treo(TM) smartphones, Palm handheld computers, and Palm LifeDrive(TM) mobile managers, as well as software, services and accessories.

Palm products are sold through select Internet, retail, reseller and wireless operator channels throughout the world, and at Palm Retail Stores and Palm online stores (http://www.palm.com/store).

More information about Palm, Inc. is available at http://www.palm.com.

(1) MSFP requires Exchange Server 2003 and access enabled by IT administrator.

(2) Within wireless service coverage area only. Availability and coverage depends upon carrier and the geographic scope of international roaming agreements. Email, messaging and web access requires data services from a mobile service provider at an additional cost.

Palm, Treo and LifeDrive are among the trademarks or registered trademarks owned by or licensed to Palm, Inc. All other brand and product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.
Brainshark Enables the Rapid Delivery of Information Sparked by the Recent Pension Protection Act. Check it out:
WALTHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Brainshark, the leader in on-demand communications that enable sales and marketing effectiveness, is leveraging its proven success to help financial services firms more effectively communicate to their channels and plan participants as they respond to the recent pension legislation. Brainshark has extensive experience in helping financial services companies rapidly deliver compelling, consistent, customized messages to their various constituents. Organizations can now leverage Brainshark's critical best practices expertise and enabling technology to proactively respond to the Pension Protection Act.



Alongside important changes regarding Defined Benefit programs, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 includes measures to encourage participation in Defined Contribution plans such as employer-sponsored 401k plans. Financial Services companies and benefits consultants are now faced with the task of communicating these important changes to their many constituents: broker channels, plan sponsors, participants and employees.

"With employers given new flexibility to auto-enroll employees in Defined Contribution plans, what's at stake for 401K providers is a large new market of participants," said Mike Ma, Principal, kasina, "Financial services organizations who are able to quickly respond to the needs of their many constituents with the type of education and information that is most valuable to them stand to benefit in this newly opened playing field."

Brainshark helps organizations deliver important communications regarding the implications of the Pension Protection Act. Brainshark solutions are being used to:

-- Train channels about what the changes mean for them and how to talk to their clients about 401K offerings.

-- Help providers and brokers educate plan sponsors about the decisions and changes they will need to make.

-- Help plan sponsors and HR organizations educate employees about important changes to their plans and the options available to them, and track who has viewed the information.

"When our 401k provider first delivered participant education to us via Brainshark, we realized that this type of delivery could also be effective for many of our employee communication needs," said Laurie Augustyn-Fier, NES Rentals Holdings, Inc. "When reaching out to our dispersed workforce across many time zones and schedules, Brainshark enables us to more efficiently deliver important information in a consistent and personal way, and the reporting tells us how effectively we've reached our employees."

"Brainshark makes what can be an overwhelming process much more manageable and successful for all parties affected by this recent law," said Joe Gustafson, CEO, Brainshark. "Among all the ways that firms reach plan participants today, our customers' experience demonstrates participants' strong preference for receiving education on demand at their own schedule; and in a format that makes the information understandable and engaging."

About Brainshark, Inc.

Brainshark, Inc. is the leading provider of on-demand communications that enable sales and marketing effectiveness. Our patented technologies and suite of offerings empower people to create, manage, and share on-demand presentations that combine voice, visuals, and documents for high-impact viewing anytime, anywhere. Providing secure, enterprise-class applications for today's global organizations as well as cost-effective, flexible solutions for the small businessperson, Brainshark is the solution of choice for any organization focused on increasing revenue and reducing costs through faster and more effective communications.
Ardence, CDG Europe Reach Distribution Agreement. Check it out:
WALTHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Ardence Inc., the leader in developing software platforms for the on-demand world, today announced that CDG Europe BV, the innovative IT distributor of solutions for Application Availability, is the Authorized Distributor for Ardence Software-Streaming Platform products in the Benelux and Baltic countries and in Sweden and Finland.



CDG, which is headquartered in The Netherlands, will develop a distribution network of Ardence Solution Providers - resellers and systems integrators - for Ardence Platform products in The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Finland and will also offer training programs.

The Ardence Software-Streaming Platform enables on-demand delivery of both operating systems and applications from networked storage. Ardence software provides significant economic benefits and productivity gains on the desktop and in the data center by centralizing IT management and increasing security, reliability and manageability. Ardence Platform products are deployed world-wide.

CDG Europe BV works with its partners to package innovative products and services into Application Availability solutions. CDG is the leading supplier of and support-provider for solutions in the field of Application Availability. The CDG Education Center is an authorized training center for all of its Partners' products and can provide customized training courses both for partners and end users.

Peter Hoekstra, CEO of CDG Europe BV said, "For a few years now CDG has been very pro-active in the streaming and virtualization market. We've already built a channel for this market and our partners expect CDG to be looking for new innovative products in this area. In the Ardence product portfolio we found a new and innovative product that makes it possible to stream the right OS to every device. Ardence is very important for CDG. For example, within a short period of time, many organizations will be looking at upgrading to Microsoft Windows Vista. Ardence OS streaming capabilities make the upgrade path to Vista much easier."

Mark Yohai, Ardence Vice President, Global Distribution and Alliances, said, "CDG's leadership, experience and expertise in the rapidly growing area of Application Availability puts them in an excellent position to understand the value and innovation that our Software-Streaming Platform brings to the solutions they offer in their key markets. CDG's expertise and channel knowledge will drive rapid adoption of the Ardence Platform in the Benelux and Baltic areas as well as in Sweden and Finland. CDG's training expertise is also a major plus. Knowledgeable, well trained Solution Providers are critical for successful deployment of Ardence products and our long-term success."

About Ardence (www.Ardence.com):

Ardence, Inc. is the global leader in developing secure, scalable, on-demand software platforms for deployment on desktops, in data centers and in devices throughout the enterprise. Founded in 1980, Ardence is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, and operates across North America, Europe, and Asia.

About CDG

CDG Europe BV is the leading innovative IT distributor in the Benelux, UK, Sweden and Finland, and provides solutions for an optimal Application Availability. The objective at CDG Europe BV and its partners is to translate innovative products and services into new proposals that are attuned to the current market developments. With products such as Citrix, Softricity, RES, VMware, Secure Computing and Expand Networks, CDG is the leading supplier of and support-provider for market solutions in the field of Application Availability. The CDG Education Center acts as an authorized training center for all of these products and can provide customized training courses both for partners and end users.
The Peninsula Hotels and NEC Build Industry's First Global VoIP Network System Linking Fourteen Locations. Check it out:
TOKYO, Sept. 28 -- NEC Corporation (NEC) and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited, the owner and operator of five-star luxury hotels, The Peninsula Hotels, in Asia and North America, today announced the deployment of an integrated voice and data VoIP(1) network system linking The Peninsula Hotels' fourteen hotels and offices worldwide. This globally-connected VoIP network is the first ever built in the hotel industry(2).



The Peninsula Hotels' global VoIP network was mainly built by upgrading software, which incorporates NEC's IP Networking functionalities into NEC's IP-PBX. The IP connectivity is used in the hotel's fourteen locations including the hotels in Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, New York, Chicago and Beverly Hills. This network system was designed and built with a minimal initial investment and completed in a short time.

With the new VoIP network, The Peninsula Hotels has a lower initial investment as compared with a global VoIP network using a conventional method that requires VoIP gateway in each PBX location, a significant decrease of cost from the cheaper international communication costs, and a Global Customer Service Centre located in Hong Kong which handles the global reservations of Peninsula customers.

"The Peninsula Hotels has been working to curb the cost of international calls since the communication among its hotels worldwide has become more frequent as a result of global expansion. The new network system was built in response to this, and it will expand along with the establishment of new hotels," says Mr. Shane Izaks, general manager, Information Technology of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited.

"NEC is one of our preferred vendors of PBX systems to The Peninsula Hotels. Building of the new network system signifies the hotel's recognition of NEC's technological capabilities to integrate voice and data, its ability to make a system proposal that efficiently utilizes the hotel's already existing IP-PBX assets, in addition to its proven track record," says Mr. Shane Izaks.

Main characteristics of The Peninsula Hotels' VoIP network system include the following.
1. Minimum investment and speedy construction of VoIP network system with
backward compatibility, using NEC's IP networking technology

* Building a VoIP network system in general is costly because of the
necessity to set up one VoIP gateway per PBX in order to connect
existing PBX to the IP network. The newly-built system was easily
created by upgrading software, which provides IP Networking
functionalities, to NEC's IP-PBX, UNIVERGE NEAX 2400IPX.
For the locations that use other vendors' PBXs, NEC's compact gateway
systems, IPS-DM(3), were installed.

* The VoIP network system linking fourteen locations worldwide enabled
reduction of initial investment cost. Connecting worldwide locations
with internal lines reduced the cost of international business calls.

2. Realizing improvement in employee productivity through advanced
telephone features by employing NEC's IP communication protocol

* Communications among employees are improved by standardizing telephone
numbering plans of all locations and assigning an individual phone
number to every employee.

* The use of NEC's IP networking protocol, CCIS over IP(4), enables
advanced telephone features such as Caller number display from global
locations, QoS control for voice in the IP-VPN environment and
Centralized Call Center in Hong Kong that calls can be transferred 24
hours from worldwide hotel operators.

"NEC has a major market share for PBX in Hospitality, especially in Japan and Asia Pacific. NEC is now proposing the new UNIVERGE series of IP-PBX and IP Telephony server for the hotel industry. This implementation of VoIP network for The Peninsula Hotels has shown NEC's migration path from TDM(5) PBX to IP capabilities," said Kazuo Tsuzuki, associate senior vice president of NEC Corporation.

NEC is offering solutions that enhance customer competitiveness in the forthcoming Next-Generation Network (NGN) era. NEC will continue to support management innovation by reinforcing development and sales of broadband solutions for the hospitality industry.

Notes
(1) VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol
A protocol that realizes voice calls through the transmission of voice
data over IP networks such as the Internet and intranet.
(2) Source: NEC
(3) IPS-DM: Distributed Model box that provide NEC IP gateway feature with
connection to traditional PBX
(4) CCIS over IP: Common Channel Interoffice Signaling over IP is NEC
proprietary network protocol to provide telephony service feature
across the IP network
(5) TDM: Time Division Multiplexing, a digital switching method for most
of the digital PBX systems

All company and product names appearing in this press release are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its diverse and global base of customers. NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computer, networking and electron devices, by integrating its technical strengths in IT and Networks, and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 150,000 people worldwide and had net sales of approximately 4,825 billion yen (approx. $41.2 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 2006.

For additional information, please visit the NEC home page at: http://www.nec.com/
* Newsroom: http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/?

About The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited

The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited (HSH) is an investment holding company based in Hong Kong whose subsidiary companies are engaged in the ownership and management of prestigious hotel, commercial and residential properties in Asia and the USA.

The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited was originally incorporated as The Hongkong Hotel Company, Limited in 1866 and was one of the first companies in Hong Kong to be granted a listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The delivery of high-quality products and services in each of its businesses remains the cornerstone of HSH's philosophy. This has translated into continuing growth and the very valuable Peninsula hotel brand name. The Peninsula Hotels operates seven award-winning hotels in Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Bangkok, Beijing and Manila, with The Peninsula Tokyo opening in 2007.

Peninsula Hotels Media Contact:
Sian Griffiths
Director Communications - Peninsula Hotels
[email protected]

NEC Media Contact
In Japan In the US
Hiroe Okajima Amy Dittman
NEC Corporation NEC Unified Solutions
[email protected] [email protected]
+81-3-3798-6511 +1-214-262-6384

In Hong Kong In Singapore
Candy Leung Masako Hirano
NEC Hong Kong Ltd. NEC Business Coordination
[email protected] Center Pte.Ltd
+852- 2733-5543 [email protected]
+65-64169-570
In Europe
Chris Shimizu Robert van Amerongen
NEC Europe Ltd. NEC Philips Unified Solutions
[email protected] [email protected]
+44-20-8752-2794 + 31-35-689-1521

NEC Corporation

CONTACT: Sian Griffiths, Director Communications of Peninsula Hotels,[email protected]; or NEC Media: In Japan, Hiroe Okajima,NEC Corporation, +81-3-3798-6511, [email protected], or In the US,Amy Dittman, NEC Unified Solutions, +1-214-262-6384, [email protected], orIn Hong Kong, Candy Leung, NEC Hong Kong Ltd., +852-2733-5543,[email protected], or In Singapore, Masako Hirano,NEC Business Coordination Center Pte.Ltd, +65-64169-570,[email protected], or In Europe, Chris Shimizu, NEC Europe Ltd.,+44-20-8752-2794, [email protected], or Robert van Amerongen,NEC Philips Unified Solutions, +31-35-689-1521,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.nec.com/http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/?
HelioVolt's Solar Technology Awarded Two Wall Street Journal Innovation Honors. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- HelioVolt Corporation announced today that it was chosen as the Overall Silver winner of the prestigious Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, as well as the first-place winner in the Energy and Power category. Selected from over 600 applications by a panel of expert judges from industry, research, and academia, the awards recognize the pioneering work of Dr. B.J. Stanbery for his novel FASST(TM) thin film manufacturing technology and underscore a year of growth for the company.



The Wall Street Journal award follows on recent technology and innovation accolades for HelioVolt including a Nanotech Briefs' Nano 50(TM) award, a Frost & Sullivan 2006 Innovation Award, and a finalist for Small Times' Best of Small Tech Business Leader award. HelioVolt is gaining momentum with its proprietary manufacturing process FASST(TM) that produces photovoltaics at least ten times faster than thin-film competitors. Marking a paradigm shift in solar technology, HelioVolt's thin-film CIGS can be applied directly onto conventional construction materials including steel, architectural glass, and roofing materials creating power-generating buildings.

"The key to HelioVolt's innovation lies in its unique ultra-rapid manufacturing process -- a process which delivers the superior materials performance of CIGS at dramatically reduced costs," said Arno Penzias, a Nobel Laureate and New Enterprise Associates Venture Partner. "In creating this process, HelioVolt has dramatically reduced a key market obstacle for thin film PV manufacturing, and paves the way for a wider range of ways in which we can tap into the enormous resource that solar energy can offer to all of us."

"In such a competitive market, it speaks volumes that our technology has been recognized, not simply in the energy category, but in overall technology innovation," said Dr. B.J. Stanbery, President and CEO of HelioVolt. "This award validates our technology and our commitment to commercializing a highly efficient manufacturing process to bring thin-film technology to the global marketplace."

Securing his reputation as a leader in the solar industry, thin-film efficiency world record holder, Dr. Stanbery will be speaking at the Silicon Hills Summit in Austin, TX on September 28, 2006. In addition, Dr. Stanbery will have a visual presentation on display at the Great Wall World Renewable Energy Forum in Beijing, China from October 24 - 26, 2006.

About HelioVolt

HelioVolt Corporation was founded in 2001 in order to develop and market new technology for applying thin-film photovoltaic coatings to conventional construction materials. The company's proprietary FASST(TM) process, based on semiconductor printing, was invented by HelioVolt founder Dr. Billy J. Stanbery, an eminent expert within the international PV community in the materials science of CIGS and related compound semiconductors. FASST(TM) is a low-cost, flexible manufacturing process for CIGS synthesis and is protected by both eight issued US patents and by global patents pending. For additional information, visit www.heliovolt.com.
Evesham Technology unveils SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The new SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server has been unveiled by UK IT solutions provider Evesham Technology, to help organisations deal with high storage requirements.

The SilverSTOR 3142 NAS is intended for file storage, archival storage and back-up to disk strategies and is expected to help companies with the government's forthcoming legislation to ensure safe back up of legal documentation.

The company said the server is built on reliable server technology, which includes server processors, a server specific motherboard, hot swappable HDDs and redundant power supply. It claimed the SilverSTOR 3142 NAS ensures data is readily available, protected against hardware failure and easy to access and manage.



The server offers 14 HDD bays with up to 300Mb/s throughput, support for Native Command Queuing, connection to a Serial-ATA II RAID controller and two additional HDDs assigned to hosting the Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 OS. A SilverSTOR 3142 NAS with 750GB Serial-ATA II Enterprise HDDs will provided a combined storage capacity of over 10TB.

The SilverSTOR 3142 NAS storage server offers expansion potential and extra SCSI cards for local tape drives and is available, with a three year Next Business Day Onsite Warranty, from GBP2999.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Wave Customer, Papa Gino's, Named One of Network World's Enterprise All-Star Winners. Check it out:
LEE, Ma. --(Business Wire)-- Wave Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: WAVX) announced today that one of its customers, Papa Gino's Inc. and D'Angelo Sandwich Shop Inc., has been named a winner in the prestigious 2006 Network World Enterprise All-Star Awards. Of the hundreds of entries received, Network World selected 40 winners, culled from 75 finalists and nearly 200 entries total. Winners represent a variety of vertical markets, including education, financial services, healthcare and hospitality. The full Network World article is available online at http://www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006/092506-chip-security-papa-gin o.html. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists).



Network World cited Papa Gino's for its use and advancement of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security chip found in every Dell laptop or desktop the company buys. Through the use of the TPM, Papa Gino's has created a new level of security to protect its business data, help guard against identity theft for its employees and customers, keep sensitive employee and customer data secure and more. When the chip is used with Wave Systems' EMBASSY(R) Trust Suite (ETS) it allows Papa Gino's to successfully execute its strategically architected security plan right out of the box.

"Being named an Enterprise All-Star for our use of trusted computing in the September 25, 2006 issue of Network World is a great honor," said Chris Cahalin, network manager for Papa Gino's. "The TPM and Wave software are amazing and have truly secured our network. It is such a well thought-out, elegant solution that we can't spread the word fast enough."

The TPM is a unique, standards-based hardware security chip that handles various advanced security tasks on a computer. When combined with Wave Systems' ETS software, the TPM performs a variety of business security features, such as security policy management, data protection, password management and strong pre-boot authentication. The benefits of these applications for reducing network security problems include mitigating password, data and personal information theft, application security, strong wireless authentication, secure email and more--all while increasing productivity.

"Wave, along with the other members of the Trusted Computing Group, has a clear vision of the next generation of security, and Papa Gino's selection as a Network World Enterprise All-Star is a testament to this vision," said Steven Sprague, president and CEO, Wave Systems Corp. Papa Gino's use of Wave software to leverage the security of the TPM represents an outstanding example of how Wave customers are truly taking advantage of this new level of security."

About Network World's 2006 Enterprise All-Star Award

The Network World Enterprise All-Star Award program recognizes exceptional use of network technology to further enterprise business objectives. For the 2006 award--the second annual--Network World editors selected 40 enterprises IT organizations representing the best, most innovative application of network technologies in eight categories, such as Network Management, Security and Wireless. These award-winning network IT projects are profiled in Network World's special edition Signature Series Enterprise All-Star Issue published September 25. The All-Star Web site will launch coincident with the print publication. At that time, you can find it at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006.

About Papa Gino's Holdings Corp.

Papa Gino's Holdings Corporation, Inc. is committed to building upon the legacy of the founders' principles and values to provide high-quality products, attentive service, clean, convenient, attractive restaurants, and a premium value experience for every guest. The company culture, which is characterized by our values, a strong work ethic and the fair treatment of people, includes a large number of people who have literally spent their entire working lives in these restaurants, keeping the passion for excellence alive. With more than 200 D'Angelo Grilled Sandwiches restaurants and nearly 170 Papa Gino's restaurants, they serve more than 50 million guests every year, enjoying tremendous loyalty from both employees and guests.

About Wave Systems Corp.

Consumers and businesses are demanding a computing environment that is more trusted, private, safe and secure. Wave is a leader in delivering trusted computing applications and services with advanced products, infrastructure and solutions across multiple trusted platforms from a variety of vendors. Wave holds a portfolio of significant fundamental patents in security and e-commerce applications and employs some of the world's leading security systems architects and engineers. For more information about Wave, visit http://www.wave.com.

Safe Harbor for Forward Looking Statements

Except for the statements of historical fact, the information presented herein constitutes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include general economic and business conditions, the ability to fund operations, the ability to forge partnerships required for deployment, changes in consumer and corporate buying habits, chip development and production, the rapid pace of change in the technology industry and other factors over which Wave Systems Corp. has little or no control. Wave Systems assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All brands are the property of their respective owners
Small Business Group Endorses Burns for Senate; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the endorsement in support of Conrad Burns, who is running for re- election in Montana.



Sen. Burns earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If re-elected, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste, and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The full list of TISB's endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

-----

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC, 703-399-100,
or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Information Builders Continues Its Market Leadership and Innovation With Enhancements to Portable Business Intelligence Offering. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Information Builders, the enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard of choice for organizations around the world, today announced new enhancements to the company's Active Reports that improve the performance of its portable BI solution. In addition, the company announced it has completed the first half of 2006 with a number of other industry-leading innovations. As the leader in operational business intelligence, Information Builders has continued its trailblazing history with the introduction of intelligent search, process driven business intelligence, and AJAX.



Bringing BI With You

WebFOCUS Active Reports, the industry's first portable business intelligence solution, enables users to leverage portable analytics capabilities to obtain critical business information whenever, wherever, and however they need it. This week, Information Builders announced a number of enhancements and improvements to Active Reports that increase the speed and quality of the reports being rendered. Charts and graphs from the product can now be exported to Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. The speed at which the product delivers reports to users has also been cut down from 18 seconds to three seconds.

Googlizing BI

In March, Information Builders was the first business intelligence vendor to roll out a solution that harnessed the power of enterprise search, BI reporting, and integration technology to tap into previously inaccessible and unsearchable enterprise records. WebFOCUS Intelligent Search combines iWay integration technology with the Google Search Appliance and an easy-to-use Google front-end that requires no user training.

The iWay Enterprise Index, which brings together iWay's industry-leading application integration technology and the Google Search Appliance to create a completely new way to tap information within the enterprise has resulted in rapid, at-your-fingertips retrieval of information that previously would have been locked up in proprietary information systems.

Since March many customers have tested and evaluated the WebFOCUS Intelligent Search and iWay Enterprise Index for implementation within their organizations.

The Next Generation of Business Intelligence

In a software sector more than 30 years old, being inventive and creative isn't a luxury, but a necessity. The days of simple query and reporting are over. In today's increasingly complex global economy, organizations are looking for ways to monitor and adapt their business in real time and business intelligence software needs to mature and grow with them. In the spring, Information Builders introduced process-driven business intelligence as the next wave of BI's future. Information Builders unique pairing of BI and enterprise integration technology offers customers a way to effectively address efficiency at the business-process level, reducing costly errors while improving overall agility, responsiveness, and profitability.

Process-driven BI from Information Builders includes capabilities such as alerts, analytics, visualization, and reporting. It also enables intelligent decision-making to be embedded within business processes, based on a variety of conditions, and determines how the process flow should be executed for more effective results.

Breaking Ground With AJAX

In April, Information Builders launched WebFOCUS Power Painter, a first of its kind innovation that produces powerful reporting and analytics in a thin-client environment. Until the release of Power Painter, Web technology lacked the capability to deliver a truly robust interface similar to the desktop. The first release of Power Painter is geared to the needs of the power user, but it's the beginning of a strategy to deliver a single tool to address the wide range of needs of everyone from information consumers to advanced developers.

By offering a new and thin-client development environment that uses AJAX technology, WebFOCUS Power Painter can scale to a large number of users as it is easily administered as a thin-client Web tool, and can also scale to a user's skill-level as function and capability can be customized to specific individual needs.

About Information Builders

Information Builders is the leader in enterprise business intelligence and real-time operational reporting. The company's WebFOCUS product - the industry's most scalable, secure, and flexible - is able to meet all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from analysts to power users to the widest deployments for hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, WebFOCUS' empowerment of organizations seeking to leverage all their data - by accessing it all from legacy to data warehouse - is unmatched.

Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for over 31 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,750 people and has over 350 business partners. For more information, visit www.informationbuilders.com.
Robert Sherman, CMC, Joins Emerging Health Information Technology as Vice President, Client Solutions. Check it out:
YONKERS, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- Emerging Health Information Technology, an experienced provider of healthcare information management solutions, has announced that Robert Sherman, CMC, has joined the firm as vice president, client solutions. He brings over two decades of diverse and in-depth healthcare technology, consulting, and management experience to Emerging Health.



"We are delighted that Robert is joining our company at a time of rapid client expansion. His addition to our management team is part of an overall corporate transformation strategy to create a completely customer-centric organization," said Jack Wolf, president and chief executive officer for Emerging Health. "His experience working with large multi-site healthcare networks will be invaluable."

Mr. Sherman comes to Emerging Health from Perot Systems, where he served as a director in the healthcare managed services practice, responsible for both applications management and applications delivery for the organization. Prior to this, he founded the healthcare technology practice for The Upton Group, an information technology and telecommunications consulting firm, and served as their vice president of healthcare solutions. In previous years, he served as the chief information officer for the Washington Hospital and Healthcare System, the largest independent multi-site hospital and out-patient clinic system in Northern California, where he implemented a strategy for the replacement of all financial and clinical systems, including a comprehensive disaster recovery and Y2K mitigation plan. As the chief information officer for Community Care Systems, an integrated healthcare delivery system, he led the enterprise-wide upgrade of all clinical, financial, and telecommunications systems. Mr. Sherman began his career in 1983 as a healthcare management consultant for Deloitte and Touche, and later, for Ernst and Young. He holds a BSBA degree from Boston University's School of Management, and received his MBA from Bentley College's Graduate School of Management. He received the designation of Certified Management Consultant (CMC) in 1988 from the Institute of Management Consultants, the highest standard of excellence in the field of management consulting.

About Emerging Health

Emerging Health Information Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Montefiore Medical Center, is a provider of healthcare information management solutions for hospitals, integrated delivery networks and medical centers. The company offers a comprehensive suite of clinical, financial and operations software and services that improve patient care, maximize financial performance, streamline business processes and enhance operating efficiency across the entire patient care continuum. The firm provides hosted applications and infrastructure management services, revenue cycle management solutions and full scale implementation of enterprise systems. For more information, visit www.emerginghealthIT.com.
Launch of NeoMedia qode Technology Featured in New Prentice Hall Text Book. Check it out:
FORT MYERS, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- The launch of qode(R) technology from NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (OTC BB NEOM), which links consumers and cell phones directly to information and offers on the Mobile Internet, will be featured in the new edition of a popular marketing text book from Prentice Hall, a worldwide leader in text book publishing. NeoMedia is an innovator in market-driven technologies, with offices and subsidiary companies in the U.S. and Europe.



"Marketing: Real People, Real Choices," annually used by thousands of college students and hundreds of professors and instructors worldwide, will feature the launch of qode by NeoMedia, including interviews with Rick Szatkowski, vice president of business development for the qode product line, and others in print in the text, and in a video filmed at the company's Fort Myers headquarters.

The fifth edition of "Marketing: Real People, Real Choices," scheduled to be in global distribution in January 2007, is written by Dr. Michael R. Solomon, visiting professor of Marketing, St. Joseph's University, Greg W. Marshall, professor of Marketing and Strategy in the Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College, and Elnora W. Stuart, professor of Marketing and BP Egypt Oil professor of Management Studies at The American University in Cairo. The authors selected five companies and product marketing programs in addition to NeoMedia for the upcoming edition - Tupperware(R), Ron Jon Surf ShopK, Darden Restaurants Inc. (the world's largest casual dining restaurant company with brands including Red Lobster(TM), Olive Garden(TM), Bahama Breeze(TM) and Smokey Bones Barbeque & Grill(TM)), and Grendha Shoes Corporation, the U.S. distributor of U.S. brands Rider, Melissa and Grendha.

Worldwide Launch and Go-to-Market Strategy of qode Detailed

"NeoMedia is delighted to have our exciting multi-media launch of qode included with these prestigious international companies and brands," said Mr. Szatkowski. "Taking part in a detailed case study of our go-to-market strategy for qode worldwide - including the challenge of creating and then fulfilling the need for a breakthrough technology-based offering, is exciting and worthwhile. Together with the authors and Prentice Hall, we have made this one of the first interactive textbooks using the Mobile Internet, delivering updated information as well as 'fun' content to the students and professors through their mobile phones."

Representing his co-authors, Dr. Solomon said NeoMedia and qode were chosen for the new edition of their book "because mobile marketing represents and achieves the next level in performance-based marketing.

"qode provides an opportunity for marketers to create a one-to-one marketing experience with the consumer wherever and whenever they are interacting with a product or brand through conventional media," he said. "Responses to 'calls-to-action' become measurable by media channel, providing marketers with the ability to fine-tune their message and channels in real-time. As a case study, the challenge of primary demand creation for qode and the development of partner ecosystems will stimulate professor/student dialog."

Mr. Szatkowski said that making "Marketing: Real People, Reach Choices" the first truly interactive text book is being viewed by Prentice Hall as a pilot program in its internal evaluation of interactive text books. He said the section on NeoMedia will include eight uses of qode - three for information and five for general interest on the Mobile Web. In addition, he said qode will also be used in the Ron Jon and Grendha sections of the text book.

Information on qode is available at www.qode.com, and information on "Marketing: Real People, Real Choices" is available from Prentice Hall (www.prenhall.com)

About NeoMedia Technologies, Inc.

NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (www.neom.com), is a diversified global company offering leading edge, technologically advanced products and solutions for companies and consumers, built upon its solid family of patented products and processes, and management experience and expertise. Its NeoMedia Mobile group of companies offers end-to-end mobile enterprise and mobile marketing solutions through its flagship qode direct-to-mobile-web technology and ground-breaking products and services from four of the leading mobile marketing providers in the U.S. and Europe. By linking consumers and companies to the interactive electronic world, NeoMedia delivers one-to-one, permission-based, personalized and profiled dialogue -- anytime and anywhere.

The qode suite of easy-to-use, market-driven products and applications are based on a strong foundation of patented technology, comprising the qode (www.qode.com) platform, qode(R)reader and qode(R)window, all of which provide One Click to Content(TM) connectivity for products, print, packaging and other physical objects to link directly to specific desired content on the mobile Internet.

NeoMedia's recently acquired companies and offerings include 12snap AG (www.12snap.com), a Munich, Germany-based award-winning leader in mobile marketing and entertainment applications; Mobot, Inc. (www.Mobot.com), a Lexington, Massachusetts-based pioneer in mobile visual recognition technology; Sponge Ltd. (www.spongegroup.com), a London, UK-based leader in developing and implementing mobile marketing applications and content delivery; and Gavitec AG - mobile digit (www.gavitec.com), a Wurselen, Germany-based leading provider of mobile technology and marketing solutions.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. With the exception of historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release involve risk and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.

qode is a registered trademark, and qode(R)reader, qode(R)window and One Click to Content are trademarks of NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. Other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
TrueCommerce Selected as Preferred EDI Solution for Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. Check it out:
PITTSBURGH --(Business Wire)-- TrueCommerce has been selected as the preferred Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solution for QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions (QBES) by the software's publisher, Intuit Inc. The exclusive agreement was announced during a recent QBES users conference.



Available for as little as $750, the TrueCommerce EDI solution is designed to easily integrate with QuickBooks Enterprise, helping to save users time, money and costly mistakes by greatly reducing or eliminating the need for manually re-keying information. Unlike conventional methods, such as sending faxes, emails or postal mail, EDI enables users to import and export information directly to and from QuickBooks Enterprise.

"Being designated by Intuit as the preferred EDI solution for QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is affirmation that our commitment to making EDI painless is delivering meaningful value while addressing a key need for QBES users," said George McKee, president and chief executive officer, TrueCommerce.

McKee added, "This announcement is especially exciting for us because we have been offering EDI solutions designed to integrate with QuickBooks since TrueCommerce was founded. Without a doubt, QuickBooks users represent a significant and important portion of our customer base."

Aside from affordability, another key reason Intuit selected TrueCommerce was how easy it is for a user to implement the solution.

"The EDI solution from TrueCommerce provides key functionality in an integrated and easy to use package," said Bill Lucchini, vice president, Intuit Mid Market Group. "This was very important to us as we are dedicated to providing QuickBooks Enterprise customers with the business management power Mid Market companies need with the ease of use synonymous with all QuickBooks products."

TrueCommerce specializes in providing an easy-to-use and affordable EDI solution designed for small and mid-tier companies. TrueCommerce's end-to-end solution includes everything required to successfully implement EDI, including data mapping software, network services and free support. A module that creates advance ship notices (ASNs) and UCC-128 barcode labels is also available. Users can learn more about TrueCommerce's integration with Intuit QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions by visiting www.truecommerce.com/edioverviewpr/ or by calling 1-888-430-1191.

About TrueCommerce

TrueCommerce is a Pittsburgh, PA-based EDI solutions provider founded in 1995. From the beginning, the company's vision has been to provide small to mid-tier companies with a comprehensive, end-to-end solution that is easy to implement and fully integrates with their accounting or business software. TrueCommerce customers exchange millions of EDI transactions annually within a variety of industries, including banking, retail, healthcare and government. Additional information at www.truecommerce.com.
Smart Antenna Systems Improve Mobile and In-Building Business Cases, Says ABI Research. Check it out:
LONDON --(Business Wire)-- According to a new Research Brief from ABI Research, mobile network operators are facing an increasing demand for data over their radio access networks, which could lead to extra costs unless new techniques are used to improve spectral efficiency. Similar demands are also likely from in-building wireless LANs and pico/femto cells, as IPTV and other bandwidth-hungry services are deployed both in the home and the enterprise.



"Telecom networks are going through a period of profound change as traffic moves from voice to broadband data services," says ABI Research analyst Ian Cox. "This brings with it increasing pressure to use the radio spectrum more efficiently if a rapid rise in base station numbers is to be avoided. Smart antenna systems (SAS), regarded as a research novelty until recently, can be used to improve radio access network and in-building wireless performance. This results in a more compelling business case as spectral efficiency is dramatically improved."

For users, says Cox, SAS provide better coverage and delivers higher data rates.

For vendors, SAS will allow specialist firms to develop new forms of antenna system suited for indoor and outdoor applications and for 2G, 3G, (macro, pico and femto cells) and WLAN networks, as well as WiMAX, using all the IEEE standards.

"Smart Antenna Systems" (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/research_brief/Wireless_ Infrastructure_Research_Briefs/102) reviews the market for SAS. It includes an examination of SAS approaches, and a summary of vendor activity.

The Research Brief forms part of ABI Research's Wireless Infrastructure Research Service (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/service/Wireless_Infrastructure_ Research_Service), which includes Research Reports, Research Briefs, Online Databases, Market Data, the ABI Vendor Matrix, ABI Insights and analyst inquiry support.

(Due to their length, the above URLs may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations supporting annual research programs, intelligence services and market reports in broadband and multimedia, RFID and M2M, wireless connectivity, mobile wireless, transportation and emerging technologies. For information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.
Shareholder Vision Releases New Video Profile of Avatar Systems, Inc., Including an Interview with Company President Chuck Shreve. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Ed Newsome, Vice President and Senior Producer of Shareholder Vision, announced today that the web site has released a new video profile of Avatar Systems, Inc. (OTCBB:AVSY). Included in this video profile is an exclusive interview with the company President, Robert C. (Chuck) Shreve, Jr. Avatar Systems offers a wide range of IT Products & Services to empower business through great technology. Avatar provides business solutions that increase profitability and improve efficiency. Avatar Systems is the petroleum industries leader in ERP/Accounting software, services and Internet technologies for oil and gas exploration and production companies.



Avatar provides Healthcare, Financial Services and vertical markets with enterprise-class, integrated information content management (ECM) software. It combines document and data capture, process automation, workflow, imaging, enterprise report management, and secured access in a single, browser-based application. Through Channel Partner Sales Avatar also provides Microsoft software and services, Dell hardware and support and a host of other solutions from leading technology vendors.

To view the Shareholder Vision Profile for Avatar Systems, Inc., please visit: http://www.shareholdervision.com/profiles/avsy/

About Shareholder Vision

Small cap and microcap stocks investors are generally at a major disadvantage when it comes to getting accurate and complete information about the companies they are most interested in. Yes they can read press releases, SEC filings and industry articles. They want to know about the management of the company, the products of the company, the operations of the company and so much more. The look that Shareholder Vision gives investors from inside the company allows small cap and microcap investors to really see the company, meet the key executives and really get a look inside the walls of our client companies. Think of it as a visit to the company. Think of it as truly trying the products, seeing the operations first hand, a meeting the management and really getting a feel for the company. That is what Shareholder Vision is all about.

To have Shareholder Vision feature a publicly traded company you know, please contact: Ed Newsome at (469) 252-3032; email [email protected].

The information in this news release includes certain forward-looking statements that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements to the future financial performance of the Company. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, successful performance of internal plans, product development and acceptance, the impact of competitive services and pricing, or general economic risks and uncertainties.

Disclosure: Pentony Enterprises LLC was compensated $12,000 for profile coverage. Pentony Enterprises LLC is not a registered investment adviser or broker/dealer. Pentony Enterprises LLC makes no recommendation that the purchase of securities of companies profiled in this web site is suitable or advisable for any person or that an investment in such securities will be profitable. In general, given the nature of the companies profiled and the lack of an active trading market for their securities, investing in such securities is highly speculative and carries a high degree of risk.
Sell your car online in just a few clicks. Check it out:
(Hull Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A New online service for motorists is the latest business idea to be recognised by the Mail's prestigious Business Awards.

And though it has only been up and running since April, it has already been the catalyst for customers selling more than GBP3m of their used motors.

Wewillbuyyourcar.com, which is Yorkshire born-and-bred and based in Melton, is now expected to handle more than GBP13m of sales in its first year.

The company lives up to its name - agreeing a price online, sending a driver to collect the vehicle and paying the money into the seller's bank account electronically before their unwanted wheels are driven away.

People wanting rid of their car can, within minutes of filling in their details, click to accept the offer and relax - deal done, car sold.

A finalist for the Mail's Business Link Humber-sponsored Start-up Business Of The Year Award the enterprise is the brainchild of Noel Parkinson.

He said: "We wanted to provide private owners with the fastest and easiest way of selling a car, one that separated that process from the purchase of a new vehicle." He realised there was a gap in the market, particularly for women selling cars, people moving abroad, or those about to be given a company car.



"So we set up a highly complex pricing engine, an easy to use website that gives the customers an instant offer, providing they have supplied accurate details.

"That gives us the facility to respond almost instantly with a purchase offer once the potential seller has gone online and supplied accurate details of the car for sale." With 100 cars bought in July alone, wewillbuyyourcar.com is already well down the road to its initial target of buying 10 cars a day.

[email protected] Links wewillbuyyourcar.com www.wewillbuyyourcar.com Business Link Humber www.blhumber.co.uk Mail Motorswww.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/motors

Copyright 2006 Northcliffe Newspapers Group Ltd
Decision due soon for ukt&i bidders. Check it out:
(Leicester Mercury Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The three bidders left in the running for a multi-million-pound contract to boost international trade in the region will find out who has won next week.

The contract to run the Government-funded UK Trade & Investment (UKT&I) service in the East Midlands is worth a basic GBP1.5 million per year for three years.

The three bidders in the final stages of competing for the work are: East Midlands Business, the joint venture which includes Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce; A4E Consult, of Sheffield, and Enterprise Alliance, of Sussex.

East Midlands Business is the joint venture which has picked up the contract to run the East Midlands' Business Link service from next April 1, the same date the UKT&I contract is scheduled to begin.

East Midlands Business made its main pitch for the UKT&I contract last week. The UK&TI international trade director for the East Midlands, Peter Hogarth, said the quality of all three bids had meant a decision had been delayed while further information was sought. He said: "The bidding round is continuing a little longer. We are working through the short-listed bids. Trying to decide between them is proving difficult. We've gone back to them with some questions and hope to get final submissions later this week." Mr Hogarth said: "We want to get the best deal for the customer and the taxpayer." East Midlands Business is a joint venture between Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire Chambers of Commerce. It successfully bid earlier this year for the GBP10million contract to run the unified Business Link service for the East Midlands, hearing in April that it had won the deal.



Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce managing director Martin Traynor said he was pleased with how the pitch to UKT&I had gone. He said: "We are quietly confident that the offer we are putting forward will take UKT&I forward in the East Midlands and quietly confident we will win the bid." The thrust of the UKT&I brief is to help more businesses export to more countries, he said: "We would work with the India and China trade bureaus to make sure East Midlands companies benefit from trading with those countries." The winner will take over the 50 workers doing the job as part of UKT&I in five Business Link offices in the region, including at New Walk, in Leicester, where six people are based.

Copyright 2006 Northcliffe Newspapers Group Ltd
Dow Jones Launches ''Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services''. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ) today announced the launch of "Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services," a revolutionary solution that enables financial firms to provide their advisors with reasons for personalized client contact integrated within the firms' enterprise-wide client service applications. The new solution offers advisors a stream of custom communication ideas by matching stories, articles and features from award-winning sources, including Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, to client-specific interests and holdings.



"The most pressing challenge for leaders in the industry is to help their advisors deliver on the service expectations of their clients," said Joseph Lanza, vice president, sales and marketing, Dow Jones Newswires-Americas. "Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services is the Client-Loyalty Engine that drives the frequent, productive contact that affluent clients expect from their wealth managers."

According to leading industry research, more frequent and meaningful advisor-client contact is strongly linked to increased assets and referrals for the advisor. Once satisfied with a birthday card and the occasional phone call about a hot new stock, affluent clients today demand more. A new study commissioned by Dow Jones Newswires from CEG Worldwide, "Cultivating the Affluent Client," finds that clients want 28 contacts per year, on average, with some top clients preferring as many as 48 meaningful contacts per year from their financial advisors.

For the first time, a set of web services has been developed to embed Dow Jones news directly into advisors' workflows. Full-service firms, private banks and wealth management boutiques will be able to leverage Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services, empowering their advisors and wealth managers to communicate with their clients more often and on more individually relevant topics. Once embedded in the firm's critical client service applications, Client News Matches are quickly and seamlessly accessible to the advisor, who then decides what and how best to share with clients: by phone, email or in person. This streamlined process eliminates the need to spend hours searching web sites or transferring information from one account management program to another and lets the advisor focus on the client experience.

Web Services Bridges Applications and Relationships

"Major national and regional firms have committed tremendous resources to build client service management applications," said Larry Joyce, executive director of wealth management solutions, Americas, for Dow Jones Newswires. "Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services is the technology bridge between the advisory applications and client communication, enabling the advisor to focus on providing high-quality service and firms to improve their ROI."

To start, the firm identifies the applications and platforms most critical to its advisors' productivity, such as customer relationship management (CRM), managed account and portfolio management systems, into which to embed Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services. The new solution incorporates a set of eight XML-based programmatic interface components accessed through industry-standard, secure Internet protocols.

Once integrated, the eight Web Services components allow the firm to entitle access to Dow Jones Wealth Manager, enable advisors to develop profiles of individual clients and then return news and information matches on a per-client basis - all within the most important applications on the advisor's desktop. Advisors choose items most closely aligned with a client's investment, professional and personal interests and use these as the basis for thoughtful client contact. Firms can also employ Web Services to add Dow Jones news and news search into any application, create email or alerts for the advisor, and present all Dow Jones news sorted by interests, holdings or by client groups.

Dow Jones Newswires provides technical support during implementation, including a developer's Web site, sample applications and a test environment. The firm's IT staff maintains complete control over integration of Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services' system design and content presentation. The extensive Dow Jones Wealth Manager content database is housed, maintained and updated by Dow Jones. Dow Jones' technical support and database management reduce cost of ownership and enable faster adoption by the firm's advisors.

News Matches on the Topics Clients Care About Most

To provide the broadest and most appealing array of news matches to client interests, the new solution includes all of Dow Jones' award-winning publications and sources, including Dow Jones Newswires, all editions of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and Smart Money. Dow Jones Wealth Manager also includes leading national newspapers and more than 50 industry and trade publications.

The range of sources ensures that advisors will have an abundance of matches to client-specific interests, such as:

-- Professional Life - Business and economic trends, technology, small business management, product innovations, compensation and employee benefits.

-- Personal Interests - Home, fashion, hobbies, sports, travel, lifestyle, health and education.

-- Investing - Financial planning, portfolio holdings, company and market news, investment products and alternative investment vehicles.

Dow Jones Wealth Manager also has a dedicated team of editors who rank and highlight news throughout the day so that advisors stay on top of vital developments affecting their practices and clients. In addition, Dow Jones Wealth Manager also helps firms extend the wealth management business model through the advisor ranks by including the latest news, trends and best practices in the wealth management industry, grouped into 20 Wealth Management Collections.

Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services is a significant enhancement to Dow Jones offerings' for wealth management firms and practitioners, providing installation flexibility that will dramatically increase the frequency and quality of advisor/client communication. For more information on the solution, visit djnewswires.com/djwm.

About Dow Jones Newswires

Dow Jones Newswires (djnewswires.com) offers real-time news and information solutions for financial professionals providing investment, advice and institutional services, and focused information services for corporate and communications executives. In addition to Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ; www.dowjones.com) publishes The Wall Street Journal and its international and online editions, Barron's and the Far Eastern Economic Review, Dow Jones Indexes, MarketWatch, and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is co-owner with Reuters Group of Factiva and with Hearst of SmartMoney. Dow Jones also provides news content to CNBC and radio stations in the U.S.
How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Technology Licensing Agreements. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42801) has announced the addition of Structuring & Negotiating Technology Licensing Agreements With William Swiggart of Swiggart Agin LLC (Video Leadership Seminars) to their offering.



The goal of this Video Leadership Seminar (TM) is to provide executives with critical information on understanding and negotiating technology licensing agreements. The DVD is viewable on any computer or Video iPod and features 80 minutes of live video with William F. Swiggart of Swiggart Agin LLC sharing his best practices on various strategies and external factors that play into structuring a technology licensing agreement. The Video Leadership Seminar provides an inside look at the options executives have when structuring a licensing agreement, key provisions to pay attention to, and specific negotiation strategies to get the best terms possible.

Topics covered in the Video Leadership Seminar (TM) include:

1) Strategies for structuring licensing agreements;

2) Specific provisions to be aware of and how to structure them;

3) A list of the most often negotiated items and what your best case scenario is for each area;

4) The key players and their motivations in structuring an agreement;

5) Problem areas to avoid that could haunt you later;

6) A detailed look at the most significant IP laws behind licensing agreements;

7) Case Studies of specific situations and what you should learn from them.

About William F. Swiggart:

William F. Swiggart incorporates and grows start-ups, and facilitates transactions such as debt and equity investments, IP licenses, and mergers & acquisitions. He registers and defends trademarks and copyrights, and also helps resolve business conflicts. Mr. Swiggart is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B. 1977) and the University of Connecticut School of Law (J.D. 1982), where he was a member of the Connecticut Law Review. He has served as General Counsel to Bitstream Inc., and to ON Technology Corporation.

Mr. Swiggart is a frequent lecturer on topics of licensing, technology, & start-up issues to groups such as the New England Corporate Counsels Association, the Mass. Bar Association, and the MIT Enterprise Forum. He helped found, and served as first President of the Princeton Entrepreneurs' Network, Inc., a 501(c)(3) qualified organization that promotes entrepreneurship via national and regional events, and currently serves on its Board of Directors and as Boston Chapter Head. He is a founding member of the AIGC, and edits its journal, The Independent Counsel.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42801
Thailand: Projects started under Thaksin government to be scrutinized. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: General News - The Thaksin government grandly approved a number of projects despite fears that they were riddled with corruption, The Nation reports.

Now, the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy has appointed a panel to investigate controversial deals, though it has not yet revealed what will be looked into. It's likely the panel will check these 20 projects, which have been probed by the Office of the Auditor-General: 1 Rubber seedlings The OAG found that the Agriculture Ministry's tender for Bt1.435 billion worth of rubber seedlings was designed to benefit big companies, although the project was proposed to help small farmers.



Only three bidders passed the technical criteria - Charoen Pokphan Seeds Co Ltd, Resort Land Co Ltd, and Charoen Pokphan Engineering Co Ltd - which could have jointly invested, managed and colluded on the bid price. CP Seeds also inked deals with farmers who allowed it to grow seedlings on their land, apparently having information of the bidding in advance.

There was an advance payment of Bt209.65 million, without an appropriate reason and there was no clarity in terms of the place of delivery and the number of seedlings to be delivered. Senator Usanee Chidchob, who is Newin's elder sister, raised this issue.

2 THAI kitchen Bangkok Air Catering Joint Venture and LSG Sky Chefs - Siam Flight Services Joint Venture were awarded the project worth over Bt1 billion, despite complaints about qualifications. While the terms of reference (ToR) required the bidder to have experience in the production of at least 180,000 meals per month, the bid winner's document failed to produce a correlation of the number of meals and passengers at Xian Airport. Moreover, there is a conflict of interest between Bangkok Air Catering Joint Venture and the International Airline Food Co Ltd in Xian, China - as well as the city's airport authority. The transport minister was informed but there has been no action.

3 Suvarnabhumi warehouse projects Initial probe shows WFS-PG Cargo Joint Venture Co Ltd, the concession operator of free-zone warehouses, proposed an incomplete list of facilities as specified in the ToR. It also came up with an incomplete list for the supply of ground services and maintenance facilities. It proposed too-high revenue targets from both projects, which would push up service fees at the airport. Though each project's investment value is less than Bt1 billion, and does not have to come under the public procurement laws, both projects were approved by the Cabinet, despite the OAG's protest.

4 Up-Link project The OAG found the Public Relations Department's ToR for the supply of Bt30 million of satellite uplink equipment was designed to benefit a particular bidder. The OAG advised the PRD to cancel the bidding.

5 Bangchak's investment capital guarantee Under the financial and business restructuring plan of Bangchak Petroleum that specified the separation of the refining and retail businesses and a borrowing plan, Bangchak would refinance Bt19.5 billion of loans through a Bt12.5 billion bank loan, Bt4 billion bond issue and Bt3 billion rights issue. The Finance Ministry guaranteed the investment capital investors put into the convertible bonds and common shares.

The OAG questioned the ministry about the guarantee as Bangchak was no longer a state enterprise, but there has been no answer. The ministry now owns only 20 per cent in the company.

It questioned the ministry based on what law such a guarantee was extended, and when the obligation would end. How the ministry would ensure efficiency of Bangchak's operations and if the ministry has other obligations for Bangchak.

6 AMC land sale The OAG received complaints that a land plot - collateral for non-performing loans that Asset Management Corp managed - was sold at a very cheap price. The OAG launched an investigation but Pithaya Rungruangsiri (a Thai Rak Thai party-list MP) ordered it be stopped, claiming the Bank of Thailand had looked into the matter and the sale could not be reversed. The OAG was contacted again and informed that the Finance Ministry had probed the case and found nothing. The OAG then asked the ministry for a report and informed Pithaya that if the report could explain the case, the OAG would stop the investigation. Pithaya slammed the phone down. It was later discovered that Phumtham Wechayachai (TRT) called for a meeting with the PM's advisory team and resolved that the Auditor General be removed for interference with the "PM's wife's transaction". Newin, through his sister who was a senator, later contacted the OAG, saying that if the probe was not cancelled, it could lead to problems.

7 Alliance Retail Trade As deputy commerce minister, Newin proposed the company's establishment to tone down strong protests by small shops owners against multinational retail firms. It has invested Bt400 million, most of which has gone on advisory fees and meeting allowances. But an exe-cutive board has yet to set up.

8 Food lab The government invested Bt250 million to set up a central food laboratory, as a 49:51 joint venture between the Finance Ministry and the Office for Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion. The venture opened a bid for lab equipment worth Bt1.5 billion but there was a pre-determined specification. It was known after the formation that the venture would raise funds, paving way for politicians to buy shares. It was also known there would be a law to authorise the venture to have full control in regard to the meat and food trade. In 2004, the venture received investment privileges, exempting it from income tax.

9 Land plot Irregularities were detected in the purchase of a land plot for a water treatment plant project by the Hat Yai municipality in Songkhla, in which a former mayor was found to have benefited from an inflated price of Bt300 million over the actual project value. The mayor and his son were not elected in the next term as a result of the media coverage reporting the irregularities. They then filed a defamation lawsuit against the auditor-general, with a lawyer from the same office where Winai Thongtaeng, who defended PM Thaksin in the asset concealment case, was assigned to handle the case. The mayor later had the case accepted by a young and inexperienced judge.

10 Airport rail link The Siemens/Sino-Thai/B Grimm consortium inked a turnkey contract two weeks before the 2005 election. Al-though the investor would re-ceive all its investment back on completion, the government paid the consortium Bt1.67 billion. (This was unusual as the disbursement was done when the election drew near and there should have been no pay-out.) 11 Renovation works A number of spending plans relating to renovation works by Parliament House had been conducted through unusual processes and bid rigging in favour of some contractors. One of them was the renovation work at the Coin Minting plant off Pradiphat Road for which Bt119.42 million was approved - but the cost should have been around Bt30 million. When questioned by the OAG, then parliament president Uthai Pimchaichon asked Aram Lohweera to lobby the OAG to stop probing while offering a large amount of money in return. Uthai was found to have been involved in several spending irregularities but the OAG's probe into them had stopped after he chose not to order investigations into those irregularities.

12 New ambulances The Public Health Ministry aborted bidding to purchase 201 advanced ambulances worth more than Bt400 million after the OAG notified the permanent secretary of a possible violation of the process. The project later became the subject of conflicts between the minister and the permanent-secretary and resulted in the repeated scrapping and re-bidding as the permanent secretary learned that the OAG was closely following the project and could possibly detect wrongdoings attached with it.

13 Irrigation works A project in Phase II to oversee irrigation works by the Royal Irrigation Department worth more than Bt1 billion, in which equipment and machinery, which had cost Bt110 million, were under-utilised and a Bt5-million luxury car was bought for no apparent reason. The spending in both cases was regarded as unnecessary and not cost-effective. The OAG has notified the director-general of the Royal Irrigation Department of both cases along with providing him with suggestions to correct the problem.

14 Long-distance phones TOT Plc's long-distance public phone business is worth Bt16.5 billion.

The Auditor General found that TOT delays in completing long-distance public phone lines had cost the state agency around Bt44.2 million in contractual loan fees.

The Cabinet in 1996 approved a Bt16.5-billion budget for the TOT project, which was supposed to be finished in 1998. The project involved the TOT providing of 135,000 long-distance phone lines to 45,000 villages across the country.

Moreover, the Auditor General's Office (OAG) found that TOT's installation of satellite long-distance phone lines was added later in the project - but this was not in line with the Cabinet resolution.

In addition, the 10-year-term for each satellite signal-leasing contract that TOT signed with private companies was too long and too high, at more than Bt21 billion.

15 CEOs' budget On April 28 and May 6, 2003, the Finance Ministry approved a budget for all CEO governors, classified into two parts: Bt1.12 billion to be divided equally among all provinces at Bt15 million each, and Bt2.25 billion to be given to each province according to their own proposals.

The Auditor General found that the provinces needed to improve their administrative efficiency in terms of staff allocation, job descriptions and strategy mapping. The Auditor General found the chief executives were not given full authority and the assessment process was not complete - and opened the possibility of political interference.

It also found that there were risks in achieving goals, as the strategies were unclear and incompatible with real problems.

(Note: The 2004 budget allocation did not take into account the potential of each province.) 16 BAAC site procurement The Auditor General probed the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives' (BAAC) procurement of land for a new headquarters. It found the bank bought the land for Bt137,997 per square wah, or a total of Bt894.8 million for the 6,493 square-wah plot. The price was high compared to the Bt70,000 per wah that the Highways Department paid for expropriated land nearby. In total, the bank paid Bt322 million above the department's price.

Moreover, the Auditor General found that Suay Sompon Co Ltd, in a separate transaction, paid an outsider Bt332 million. The BAAC was suspected of negligence and malfeasance. The person responsible for this matter should be ordered to reimburse the government the difference, it said. The Finance Ministry claimed later it was only a minor wrong-doing and that the matter had been settled.

17 SRT's asset management Several weak points were found in the way the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) managed its assets particularly land plots. It does not even know the combined area of land it owns. It does not know the amount of expropriated land or commercial areas and there is no proper diagram to show if the land was rented out or if the rental contracts were legal. The SRT thus can't estimate its rents, and realises only the rents under the contracts still in effect.

The OAG suggested that SRT should survey all rental land and the number of tenants to ensure better management and maximum benefits for the SRT. The Senate Committee on corruption, chaired by Pol General Pratin Santiprapop, has questioned this and found that a politician issued title land deeds in Buri Ram for land belonging to the SRT.

The deeds were pledged for loans from several banks worth a combined sum of hundreds of million baht, which could spark financial problems at banks, as in the case of the now-defunct Bangkok Bank of Commerce.

18 Laem Chabang Port project: Stage 2, phase I The Port Authority of Thailand's bid document in regard to the management of the C3 container port was not transparent and favoured the bid winner. The OAG said it violated the procurement law but the disciplinary committee, chaired by permanent secretary Yongyuth Sarasombat was of a different opinion.

19 Suvarnabhumi's power network Initial investigations found the tender terms for the power-grid supply system and conduit network were pre-determined to favour some bidders. That pushed up the investment too high. The OAG said that it violated the procurement law and the case was forwarded to the NCCC, which took no action.

20 Home Solar Cell project Solartron Co Ltd's bid was accepted, although its solar cell registration was cancelled by the Industry Ministry in 2003. The Energy Ministry is investigating this case, which was transferred from the Interior Ministry.

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Multimap Headlines in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 League of Fastest-Growing Technology Companies as One of Only Three Companies to Feature for Four Years Running!. Check it out:
Multimap, one of the worlds leading online mapping providers, features in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 League for the fourth time running, as published on 24th September, 2006. Multimap is one of only three companies to feature in the prestigious ranking for four years in a row. According to the report, with sales growth at 50 percent a year from £3.4m in 2003 to £7.6m in 2005, Multimap continues to count among the UKs fastest-growing, unquoted technology companies.



The Tech Track 100 league table, sponsored by Microsoft, is produced by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research, publishing and networking events company. Tech Track 100 ranks Britain's fastest-growing unquoted technology companies based on 2003-2005 sales growth.

Hamish Stevenson, founder and CEO, Fast Track, said, "Ranking in Tech Track for four years on the trot is no mean feat and shows that Multimap is one of the rare technology companies that has serious staying power. More than half the ventures in this years league table are new to it, but the key to staying in on the list is the ability to sustain rapid growth. Multimap is a rare breed: an innovative, professional technology company that had maintained high growth, while continuing to be profitable. Congratulations to the whole Multimap team!

Commenting on the prestigious listing, Sean Phelan, founder and chairman said, "On behalf of the Multimap teams in London, Sydney, Boston and Istanbul, I am proud to accept this highly-coveted award. This is a very exciting time for Multimap as the online mapping and location-based landscape is changing rapidly, with more and more consumers expecting to be able to access high-quality mapping services wherever they are, whether theyre at their PC in their office or at home, or on the move via their mobile. Its a high-growth sector and, with Multimaps household brand name, expert and dedicated team, extensive experience, and innovative and flexible services behind us, we have every confidence that the company will continue to go from strength to strength in the future. We are thrilled to have our continued staggering growth to be recognised for the fourth year in a row by the prestigious Tech Track league!

---ENDS---

About Multimap

Multimap is one of the worlds leading providers of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 190 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK.

Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors. In 2006, it featured in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 league of fastest-growing unquoted UK technology companies for the fourth year running. Also in 2006, Multimap won the Innovation category of The Queens Award for Enterprise. In 2005, Red Herring named Multimap as one of the top 100 private companies in Europe, and the company featured in Deloitte Touches Technology Fast 50 league for London and Southern England.
Vietnam: APEC's micro enterprise group begins series of talks. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - The first of the series of meetings leading up to the 13th APEC Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Ministerial Meeting took place in Hanoi yesterday.

Meeting under the theme of 'Building Micro Enterprise Capacity for Market Integration', the APEC Micro Enterprise Sub-Group considered ways to expand APEC action to create new market opportunities and increase access to resources for micro enterprises.



Addressing the opening ceremony at the meeting, Nguyen Van Trung, Director of the Department of Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, spoke highly of the role played by micro businesses in generating jobs and reducing poverty.

"Due to their sheer number, micro enterprises are difficult to reach and some of these businesses may be mobile or operating on a part-time basis," Trung said to the opening session of the meeting.

"It is also the case that there is a high turnover rate of micro entrepreneurs." In highlighting these problems, Trung used Vietnam's experience in dealing with micro enterprises as an example for other APEC member economies.

"Our policy measures for micro enterprises have focused mainly on simplifying procedures for setting up a business and on facilitating local training programmes," he said.

"We also have micro credit facilities and some policy lending associated with poverty alleviation." In particular, Trung added, these enterprises have contributed to boosting trade and services among the Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation member economies.

"There are about 2.7 million micro enterprises, constituting over 97 per cent of all business entities in Vietnam," Trung said.

"The majority of these micro enterprises are registered as household businesses and a significant proportion of these enterprises are owned or managed by women. Many are engaged in retail trade, manufacturing, hospitality and transportation while a number of micro-scale manufacturers are located in clusters." The meeting endorsed a series of new projects that will build the capacity of micro enterprise operators and the agencies that support them in the region. These include an initiative to establish a set of policies for supporting micro enterprise development and a study of existing financial and policy assistance measures for micro enterprises.

Issues likely to be on the agenda for APEC SME Ministers when they meet later in the week include efforts to reduce barriers to SMEs accessing international markets, initiatives to enhance the ability of SMEs to comply with standards and conformance rules and projects to help SMEs capitalise on their intellectual property rights.

This will now be followed with the two-day APEC SME Working Group meeting that started today in Hanoi. - VNS

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports

SensorLogic Tops Ten Thousand

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SensorLogic Tops Ten Thousand. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- SensorLogic Inc., www.sensorlogic.com, a leading provider of Remote Product Service (RPS) and remote monitoring and control solutions, has reached a significant milestone in its deployed enterprise subscriptions by surpassing 10,000 customer device activations in a single quarter. SensorLogic's most recent activations further demonstrate the speed and scalability of SensorLogic's enterprise solutions.



Increasingly more corporations in sectors like oil and gas, agriculture, utilities, medical, technology, and industrial manufacturing are implementing remote monitoring and control solutions where optimal product performance and reliability is critical. A company's ability to remotely monitor its assets helps contain overall operational costs and manage customer service and vendor maintenance resources, all while elevating service performance to previously unattained levels.

In most instances, SensorLogic integrated product diagnostic functionality with client back-office systems to align service parts, field technicians, and remote maintenance capabilities all through the SensorLogic application. "Achieving 10,000 activations is more than a numeric milestone; it reflects the consistent ability of our remote monitor and control solutions to scale up to a complex cold-chain environment or down to an electronic vending machine, enabling it to function as a smart device," said Ray Hood, CEO of SensorLogic.

SensorLogic's ability to activate a high volume of devices benefits both wireless carriers and enterprise customers bringing the world of monitoring and controlling assets together with wireless. For carriers, more data can be optimized and channeled to devices; for companies, more accurate data can be retrieved remotely.

According to McKinsey & Company, the machine-to-machine (M2M) market is estimated to grow to $100 billion by 2010 for US, Japan and Western Europe combined.

About SensorLogic Inc.

Headquartered in Addison, Texas, SensorLogic helps companies get more value from their assets by enabling remote monitoring, control, and optimization. We offer an on-demand Platform for creating the business rules and processes for almost any type of equipment. Through our "Hybrid Network" we can communicate with these assets via satellite, cellular, or wireline carriers. Taken together, SensorLogic's Platform and Hybrid Network create an unbeatable solution for creating "smart services" that drive new sources of revenue for our partners. SensorLogic's investors include Boston Millennia Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, Hunt Ventures, STARTech Early Ventures and Star Ventures. Contact [email protected]. Media Contact: Taylor L. Cole, APR, [email protected].
PMG Introduces New Service Catalog Workflow Features at itSMF USA Conference. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- PMG, a provider of solutions that help companies improve the quality and efficiency of their business processes, today introduced the addition of new workflow functionality to the PMG Service Catalog 2006. The new features were demonstrated at the itSMF USA Conference & Expo in Salt Lake City.



The PMG Service Catalog 2006 is now the only leading service catalog with workflows licensed by ITIL(R) (the IT Infrastructure Library), an internationally recognized set of best practices for IT Service Management. ITIL(R) was developed in recognition of the growing dependency of enterprises on IT to satisfy their corporate aims and meet their business needs. The licensed workflows now available in the PMG Service Catalog helps IT organizations enforce compliance to ITIL(R) processes, ultimately helping them fine-tune and optimize IT service processes.

The PMG Service Process Engine, the new workflow engine component of the Service Catalog, enables IT professionals to take requests for IT services and make them more actionable. The Service Process Engine's robust features streamline the management of service requests from inception to completion, resulting in superior delivery of IT services.

The PMG Service Process Engine includes the following features:

-- Rich systems integration with back-end systems so workflow control can be based on real-time data

-- Automated service provisioning, allowing for the complete automation of repeatable tasks.

-- Mobile device enhancements with support for rich decision-support tools, allowing field resources to interact with business processes and drive workflow through mobile devices

-- Rich document interaction with Microsoft Office documents allowing workflows to route based on data contained within Office documents as well as enabling workflows to create documents on the fly

-- Service timers that allow the scheduling of activities, such as request generation at a future date or on a regular schedule

"We are continually looking for ways not only to streamline the delivery of IT services, but also to improve the quality of those services," said Robert Castles, CEO, PMG. "The new workflow features we have added to the PMG Service Catalog can take our customers many steps closer to optimum performance by the IT organization. We are particularly pleased that our workflows are now licensed by ITIL(R). These workflows will breathe new life into any IT organization's ITIL initiatives by making processes enforceable, traceable, and auditable, resulting in top-notch service delivery."

The PMG Service Catalog is a centralized, unified catalog of services delivered through the intuitive interface of online shopping. It enables the IT organization to take advantage of advanced features that support fulfillment of services to the business, but in an easy-to-use format that can be used by anyone in the enterprise.

By implementing the PMG Service Catalog across the enterprise, businesses can easily and effectively acquire and track services in any department for improved communications with internal customers, accurate analysis and reporting, increased quality and consistency, and reduced costs.

Contact PMG at 770.457.8787 or www.pmg.net for more information or a demonstration.

About PMG

PMG helps clients improve the quality and efficiency of their business processes to produce better bottom-line performance and rapid ROI. PMG has delivered millions of dollars in savings to its customers by delivering demand management solutions that are easy to implement and use. PMG is a privately owned company headquartered in Atlanta, GA. For more information, please visit us at www.pmg.net.
Air Canada Selects Teradata Data Warehouse for Revenue Management Analytics Application. Check it out:
DAYTON, Ohio --(Business Wire)-- Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR), today announced that Air Canada, the largest commercial airline in Canada and 14th largest in the world, has selected Teradata for its new data warehouse. The new data warehousing platform will initially be used to enhance Air Canada's yield-marketing intelligence, and provides Air Canada a scalable platform, giving the company the option to address future growth in customer relationship management and finance analytics applications. Migration to the new Teradata warehouse is scheduled for first-quarter 2007 completion.



The new Teradata warehouse will include Teradata's market-leading analytical software, a two-node Teradata 5380 server, a Teradata 4480 development server, and four terabytes of storage.

"Air Canada set out stringent requirements for service and performance, requiring analysis of very detailed data with reports delivered quickly," said Rick Makos, president of Teradata in Canada. "The Teradata data warehouse was selected after a thorough evaluation based on performance in a realistic business environment."

About Air Canada

Air Canada provides scheduled and charter air transportation for passengers and cargo to more than 150 destinations on five continents. Canada's flag carrier is the 14th largest commercial airline in the world and serves more than 30 million customers annually.

Air Canada is a founding member of Star Alliance, providing the world's most comprehensive air transportation network.

About Teradata Division

Teradata (www.teradata.com), a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), is the global technology leader in enterprise data warehousing, analytic applications and data warehousing services. Organizations around the world rely on the power of Teradata's award-winning solutions to get a single, integrated view of their business to enhance decision-making, customer relationships and profitability. As a growing business, Teradata is always looking for outstanding talent. To learn more about Teradata career opportunities, visit www.teradata.com/careers.

About NCR Corporation

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a leading global technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships with their customers. NCR's Teradata(R) data warehouses, ATMs, retail systems, self-service solutions and IT services provide Relationship Technology(TM) that maximizes the value of customer interactions and helps organizations create a stronger competitive position. Based in Dayton, Ohio, NCR (www.ncr.com) employs approximately 29,300 people worldwide.

NCR and Teradata are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.
Computerworld Names Recipients of ''Best Practices in Business Intelligence'' Awards. Check it out:
LAS VEGAS --(Business Wire)-- Computerworld, the "Voice of IT Management," announced last night the recipients of its "Best Practices in Business Intelligence" awards during a ceremony at its Business Intelligence Perspectives conference. The awards were presented during a gala awards ceremony marking the conclusion of the conference held this week at the Green Valley Ranch Resort. The awards program was sponsored by Hyperion.



Honorees of Computerworld's "Best Practices in Business Intelligence" awards were selected from approximately 100 entries across five categories. They were judged by representatives from a variety of organizations including Computerworld and IDC.

In the category of creating a strategic vision and using BI for ROI through IT leadership, the honorees are:

- Cooper Communities, Inc., Rogers, Ariz.

- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

In the category of data visualization, prediction and presentation by leveraging customized solutions, the honorees are:

- BNSF Railway, Fort Worth, Tex.

- Emergency Medical Associates, Livingston, NJ

In the category of information retrieval and reporting by leveraging off-the-shelf enterprise software, the honorees are:

- Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago, IL

- Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, NY

In the category of planning, designing and building the BI infrastructure, the honorees are:

- Cisco Systems, San Jose, Calif.

- R. L. Polk & Co., Southfield, Mich.

In the category of using competency centers to champion BI technologies to enterprise-wide ROI, the honorees are:

- IBM Corporation, Business Performance Management Center of Excellence, Research Triangle Park, NC

- Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, UT

"This year's honorees represent a variety of organizations, from financial companies to universities to health care companies, all of which have demonstrated tremendous success in their strategic use of business intelligence," said Ron Milton, executive vice president, Computerworld.

"I'm pleased to be recognized among such a group of innovative IT professionals. The most important decision we made in our BI initiative was to leverage off-the-shelf, best-of-breed technology and best practices," said honoree Daniel MacDonald, director of customer technology at Reader's Digest Association. "These tools and processes have enabled us to efficiently transition data into actionable information and deliver it to the people who run our business."

For more information about the award, the honorees, and the conference, please visit: http://www.biperspectives.com/awards.html#finalists.

About Computerworld

Computerworld is recognized worldwide as the premier source for news, information and opinion on the critical technology and management issues affecting senior technology professionals. Computerworld's award-winning weekly publication, Computerworld.com Web site, focused conference series, and custom research, form the hub of the world's largest (58-edition) global IT media network. In the past five years alone, Computerworld has won more than 100 awards, including the 2004 and 2006 Magazine of the Year Award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. Computerworld has an online audience of over 1.1 million unique monthly visitors (Omniture) and a total print audience of 1,337,000 (IntelliQuest CIMS Spring 2006). Computerworld is on the Web at www.computerworld.com.

Computerworld is a business unit of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading technology media, research and events company. A privately held company, IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers, including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Network World and PC World. The company features the largest network of technology-specific Web sites, with more than 400 around the world. IDG is also a leading producer of more than 170 computer-related events worldwide, including Storage Networking World(R), Premier 100(R), LinuxWorld Conference & Expo(R), Macworld Conference & Expo, DEMO(R) and IDC Directions. IDC provides global market research and advice through offices in 50 countries. Company information is available at http://www.idg.com.

Storehouse anticipates sale

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Storehouse anticipates sale. Check it out:
(Furniture/Today Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) McLean, Va. Furniture retailer Storehouse said it expects to announce a new partner as soon as next week in the wake of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last week of its current parent, The Rowe Companies.



According to news reports, the Atlanta-based retailer said it has been in discussion with several investment bankers to secure financing.

"We anticipate spirited bidding at the upcoming auction and expect to announce a sale by Oct. 6," said Storehouse President Caroline Hipple.

Storehouse, which has been a bright spot for Rowe Cos., went on the market last week after the Chapter 11 filing. Rowe said it planned to reorganize and concentrate on its core upholstery manufacturing business, which has sustained the company since 1946.

"We expect that the restructuring steps we are taking, while difficult, will ensure the future of our enterprise and our people," said Gerald Birnbach, Rowe president and CEO, in a statement.

In its most recent financial statement, Rowe reported a net loss of $8.3 million in the first half of its fiscal year, through May 28, compared with a $2.7 million loss in the same period a year earlier. Sales were down 7.3% to $134.8 million.

On Wednesday, the company said it was closing its Poplar Bluff, Mo., plant and moving those operations to its high-tech Virginia facilities, where it plans to add about 250 jobs. Those jobs have been offered to the 400 employees idled in Missouri.

Hipple, in New York talking to prospective investors last week, vowed, "I'm not coming home until I have a sale made." She acknowledged that usually in bankruptcy, the debtor and its creditors look at both sale and liquidation of assets as possibilities. But she said her focus is strictly on a sale of Storehouse as a business.

"It would be a travesty if it was liquidated and a terrible waste of time and talent," she said. "I believe there will be a sale. I have one mission and that is to keep Storehouse as a going concern."

Rowe acquired Storehouse, then a 43-store chain, in 1999 in a deal valued at $25 million. Storehouse, which now has 73 stores, had sales of $151.8 million in its most recent fiscal year, ended in November 2005, and ranked 51st on Furniture/Today's list of the Top 100 U.S. furniture stores.

When it acquired the chain, Rowe already had a retail arm called Home Elements, which it later consolidated into Storehouse.

Rowe Furniture is one of the largest U.S. upholstery manufacturers with shipments of $162.8 million in the year ended November 2005. Combined with Storehouse, Rowe Cos.' total sales that year were $299.4 million.

Already operating in an unstable economy affecting furniture sales, and an escalation of raw material prices, the company suffered a major setback in 2004 when it ran into glitches with a new computerized manufacturing system that disrupted inventory control, production and order processing.

In recent months, the company took steps including shrinking its work force, renegotiating some raw materials pricing agreements, reducing waste and improving efficiency. Storehouse had initiated a hiring freeze and travel restrictions.

Starting April 1, Birnbach voluntarily took a 50% cut in his salary, which in the previous fiscal year was $939,924. Earlier this year, he and Sidney Silver, a company director, had provided personal guaranties of up to $1.5 million each to modify the company's credit agreement to eliminate a requirement that it raise additional equity.

Rowe hired a financial adviser, Morgan Joseph and Co., late last year to assist in issuing additional debt or equity securities.

Rowe lists creditorsGary EvansMcLean, Va. In Chapter 11 documents, The Rowe Cos. filed separate lists of the top 20 unsecured creditors of its two operating companies, upholstery maker Rowe Furniture here and Atlanta-based retailer Storehouse.

Furniture industry companies on Rowe Furniture's list include Carpenter Co., owed $793,250; Quaker Fabric, $727,810; Hickory Springs Mfg., $653,373; Bluelinx, $389,872; Morgan Fabric, $320,906; Richloom Fabric Group, $212,859; Tietex International, $210,751; Barrow Inds., $182,713; Pacific Coast Feather Cushion, $174,757; Quality Sample, $133,276; Mastercraft Fabrics, $124,262; Furniture Transportation Systems, $108,863; and Universal Spring, $107,262.

Industry companies on the Storehouse list include d-Scan, $977,983; Shermag, $825,091; DeCoro, $428,304; Mitchell Gold, $279,881; Four Hands, $239,976; Barcalounger, $204,286; Carolina Mattress Guild, $180,749; Padma's Plantation, $144,819; Curvet USA, $141,973; Directions, $133,946; Purnell Furniture Services, $126,474; Sitcom, $125,761; Midtjydsk Mobelfabrik, $122,442; and Sam Moore Furniture Inds., $122,429.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
On-demand streamlinesprinting processes. Check it out:
(Purchasing Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) While traditional print services are not disappearing, use of print on-demand technology is growing steadily and shows no signs of slowing down. The reason? It means printing less, printing what you need when you need it, says InfoTrends consultant Steve Adoniou.



Print on-demand is part of an even bigger trend in printing services, which is the growth of online print services. According to market research by InfoTrends, about 25% of printing done on high-speed digital color printers came through web-to-print sales, and that number is expected to increase in the next two years. These orders, says Adoniou, can be coming in through ad-hoc send-and-print, using a print driver, a templated solution, or a catalogue, or any combination of those.

Some companies, like FedEx Kinkos and WorkflowOne, offer online portals where print orders can be placed, managed, and optimized. Its not always necessary to get the lowest cost, because other things factor into it such as delivery dates and the capabilities in process, says John Nicely, vice president of marketing at WorkflowOne in Dayton, Ohio. Were also challenging the suppliers to come back with economical solutions and suggest they take a color out or change the size of a product by a half inch to make it much more economical.

Portals such as WorkflowOne Access also allow for warehouse and inventory monitoring. This means print services providers are noticing this growth and stepping up their technology to keep pace.

[Print on-demand] is the focus of our company right now, says Dale McMichael, director of marketing for technical solutions at Standard Register in Dayton, Ohio. Weve focused a lot of effort and investment on the on-demand business, from technology to production-related investments.

Print on-demand can save print buyers money and time because much of the workflow on the printers end is automated. Everything from getting a price quote to printing, binding and collating can be done automatically.

Solutions are growing more and more in their functionality where theyre becoming more end-to-end or theyre integrated with other components of the workflow, which enable efficiency and productivity, says Adoniou.

Print on-demand is not a panacea for lower printing costs, Adoniou points out, as it wont fit every business model. However, it does present the possibility for savings as it can reduce or completely eliminate inventory.

McMichael has similar views, however, saying as the volume of the print order increases over a certain break-even point, theres actually cost efficiencies to printing [items] traditionally, meaning large print orders based on a forecasted volume, she says. Conversely, while many print service providers now employ print on-demand technology, the benefits can be negated if the delivery method is inefficient, such as printing everything at one central location far away from the delivery point.

In some cases a distribute and print model makes more sense, according to McMichael, where a digital file to be printed is sent to multiple printing locations. Whereas traditional bulk printing sent out from one location could have a leadtime from 10-17 days, with a distribute and print model, McMichael says that can be cut down to as few as four days or even overnight, depending on the proximity to the print center.

The flexibility offered by online print services in conjunction with print on-demand have allowed print services providers to work more visibility into the print procurement processa real boon for buyers.

Though Adoniou warns that a buyer cant just look at Web-to-print and think its going to answer all your problems. It can answer a lot of your problems as a print buyer if you just want a simple way to access it and employ it through an enterprise.

Online printing systems, such as printing portals, can allow a purchaser a secure way to monitor the flow of print spend for different kinds of documents, control access to that spend at different levels, and track long-term pricing trends. Adoniou says that the growing solutions offered online can help a purchaser with their workflow so you know whats coming in and going out and when its going to get done.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
A merger of purchasing and technology. Check it out:
(Purchasing Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Water treatment system manufacturers design, build and market equipment to improve the water we use for drinking, cooking, washing, and more. The water treatment industry is huge, with sales in the billions of dollars annually. Two managersone, the director of purchasing; the other, director of information technologycoordinate a $14 million procurement budget for Aquion Water Treatment Products (AWTP), an Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based firm that makes water conditioning equipment and products in various plants.



AWTP is the parent of several strategic business units that make various types of water and air treatment products: Erie Water Treatment Controls makes rotary and diaphragm valves with time clock or advanced computer controls; ProSystems Select Series makes pre-engineered and custom designed residential systems; ProSystems Private Label offers wholly customized systems; ProSystems Commercial & Industrial products provides off-the-shelf or as custom designed systems, and ClearWater Tech, another division, designs and manufacturers ozone generation systems for commercial, residential and industrial water and air purification purposes. The firm's largest division, RainSoft, makes products that treat, purify and soften water for homes and businesses. These firms are ISO-certified and operate under a continuous quality improvement philosophy.

A purchasing and inventory control group that supports the manufacture of equipment is led by Steve Swiderski, director of purchasing. Matt Hancher is the IT director and supports the systems and technology for all of the firms. Swiderski's group makes the purchaseswhether they are ion exchange resins, custom injection-molded components, switches, or other electronic components. Hancher's group uses Infor VISUAL Enterprise on-demand software as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and develops custom reports that track order points, deliveries and other key supplier metrics.

The two managers have been working to reorganize how purchasing collects and manages corporate business data. The idea has always been to develop the best support systems for this growing business, says Swiderski. It's an interesting team approach that coordinates five buyers, six information technology staffers and two production controllers to leverage better buying.

While people know the businesses, know the seasonality of the various sales, marketing operations and know the special circumstances that affect how and when we buy, we need to transfer the human factor into system processes, notes Swiderski.

Humans still make the purchasing decisions, of course, says Hancher, a six-year veteran at the firm, but our newly automated information systems are allowing Steve's people to access the complete data needed about supplier performance to make the best future buying decisions.

Swiderski explains the synergy between the two managers: There are many standard product offerings among water treatment equipment firms and a lot of interchangeability between the equipment parts and water softening systems out there but ours are, in a variety of respects, superior and much more challenging to manage. Matt and I have many of the same goals and objectives. Up and down the supply chain, we want our people to manage supply and suppliers better, to catch problems early on and supervise intervention to make buying better, he says.

Aquion Water Treatment ProductsBusiness:
Privately held, the parent of a number of strategic business units serving the global water treatment marketplace

Products:
Water conditioning systems, drinking water systems, special filters, valves and meters, air purification systems, pre-engineered residential and commercial products and systems.

AWTP at a glance Purchasing: Decentralized; however, with supply chain management directives from corporate headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Ill.

Key initiatives: Lean manufacturing, continuous improvement through ISO protocols, strategic cost reduction and metrics, supply chain evaluations and general business optimization and support using Infor VISUAL Enterprise software.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

On Track for Online Selling

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On Track for Online Selling. Check it out:
(Publishers Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Do technical developments that aid in selling used, out-of-print and new books online arise from evolution or intelligent design? The players in this field agree that, for an enormous industry that's not much more than a decade old, they have required a great deal of both. Ingenuity prompted individual bookseller Web sites, then aggregate bookseller sites such as Abebooks and Alibris, and, most recently, third-party software developers have gotten into the act.



The latter have devised methods allowing used-book sellers to easily integrate with the growing number of online marketplaces, which now include such entities as Amazon Marketplace, eBay's half.com, Biblio and TomFolio, not to mention venues in other countries around the world.

Among the first individual Web sites to emerge was Powells.com, out of Portland, Ore. Launched in 1994 after its inventory of technical books was computerized, the site's January 1995 sales were $8,000. By 2003, sales reached 40% of Powell's total sales of used and new books, both bricks-and-mortar and Internet. "To get onto the Internet, we knew we needed a software program," says Darin Sennett, whose title is director of Web stuff. "Today there's a world of software out there to put on your computer, but when we started, there wasn't anything. So we created our own. We built a shopping cart before the concept was even in the vernacular." Powells.com now employs six programmers. "We've looked at other software," Sennett says, "but they're all expensive and they didn't do what we wanted. With our own staff, if we need something, we can add a feature in a day."

Kanth Gopalpur was the force behind the launch of Powells.com and is now CEO of Monsoon (www.monsoonworks.com

), a software development company he co-founded in 2002. "I knew how to upload data and download orders," he says, "and we realized that we could build a comprehensive tool that would allow booksellers not only to list inventory for marketplace selling, but also to manage orders and price accurately. Online, there is no set retail price for a book, only what customers will pay. That's a huge mindshift." Monsoon's products appeared on the market in 2003, and booksellers began purchasing software that allows them to control inventory information and to price used booksat the lowest prices offered on the Internet, at an average of the lowest five prices, or at any other parameter they select. "We're constantly evolving," adds Gopalpur. "We have between eight and 10 developers and invested $1.5 million in Monsoon last year."

Indaba Systems (www.goindaba.com
) is another software developer, one that grew out of the needs of Better World Books, a textbook reseller founded in 2002. Its product permits each seller to adhere to the differing rules and requirements of the various online marketplaces. Indaba's Web site dates its first working release as March 2003, and among the software's components is a proprietary program called ASIN Assassin, which provides a unique Amazon Standard Identification Number for products lacking an ISBN. An ASIN is a necessity for listing on Amazon Marketplace, which was launched on Amazon.com in November 2000 and has since expanded to Canada, Germany, France and elsewhere, making it the largest online marketplace.

"It's interesting that there are people out there developing this stuff," says Ryan Jackson, manager of Powell's Bookstores in Chicago. "We use Indaba because we like the way it returns orders from all marketplaces to one central database. Third-party software developers can help you move a lot of product, whether it's antiquarian, scholarly, hurts, remainders. Another kind of third-party software helps in book scouting by using PDAs [personal digital assistants] or cell phones. We've had grad students come in who were selling books on half.com. They'd scan 1,000 books in the basement, buy what they wanted and then turn around and resell them. Or they can go to a flea market, scan in a book that's selling for $4 and see that it's worth $15."

Denny Magers, owner of Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, reports that his store developed its own Web site and now uses some third-party software to manage Internet sales. "The hard part is how you integrate," he says. "We've written some proprietary software to help clean sold inventory from our database quickly." Magers & Quinn also employs proprietary software in book scouting. "We take our laptop, log onto the Internet, and when we scan a book, all the information pops up on one pagehow many copies we have on hand, when it last sold, what it's selling for on Amazon. We couldn't survive very well without all this technology."

Getting Your FillZYet another enterprise that enables booksellers to list on multiple marketplaces is FillZ (www.Fillz.com

). "One big competitive advantage to FillZ," says business development manager Shaun Jamieson, "is that it works in conjunction with a seller's existing system, and because we're Web-based rather than PC-based, we're on 24/7." FillZ, which officially debuted in 2004, also simplifies the complexities of integrating with different marketplaces, in this case, 13 of them. "FillZ is an inventory, repricing and order-management tool," explains Jamieson. "We can set up a pricing strategy for each marketplace and bring all orders down into one user interface." FillZ racked up more than $20 million in sales in 2005.

That's one reason Abebooks bought FillZ earlier this year, but it's not the only one. "FillZ really helps people manage their inventory," says Sue Connors, director of sales and account management at Abebooks, which went online in 1996. Today the company claims a virtual inventory of more than 80 million books listed by more than 13,500 booksellers from 53 countries. Abebooks, like Alibris, doesn't touch a book. It brings seller and buyer together and earns its money from a monthly subscription fee paid by booksellers and a commission on sales. "We bought FillZ because it offers a valuable service. If booksellers are offering the same book on a variety of platforms, it has to be deleted from all the rest when one marketplace makes the sale. Whether it's Abebooks or another marketplace, we want to make sure the transaction is efficiently achieved. If a book isn't deleted, it might be sold twice, which wouldn't bode well either for the customer or us."

Connors points out that Abebooks has no formal connection with services other than FillZ, but the company interacts with all. "We work with Monsoon and Indaba," she says. "Regardless of what software a bookseller uses, we want to make sure the technical aspects work with our programs. Monsoon will contact us and say, 'You're a key marketplace. We want to connect with you correctly.' So it's kind of a three-party relationship: the bookseller, Monsoon and us." To assist its booksellers further, Abebooks developed HomeBase, a desktop book inventory management system, which it has supplied gratis since 1997.

Another aggregate marketplace is Alibris, which burst onto the scene in 1998. "We have over 7,000 booksellers in the U.S., and more outside," says president and COO Brian Elliott. "We're a marketplace for sellers of used books primarily, and we supply them with the software they need. We have 65 million listings from all types of operations, from Powell's to people working out of their garages. We help them sell not only on our Web site but also on other channels such as B&N, Borders, Books-a-Million and Ingram."

The profile of Alibris's booksellers has changed fairly significantly over the last five years, reports Elliott. Many bricks-and-mortar used- book stores have closed and now sell only online, and then there are booksellers who have never had a physical store. "Also, the growth in people selling used books online has meant that prices have declined, just because of the competition. That's one of the biggest challenges: keeping prices updated. Two days after a book is listed, the price can easily change." Elliott agrees with Connors at Abebooks that significant growth has occurred in sales of new books.

WebNotions (www.a1techbooks.com
) is a multipurpose corporation with an unusual combination of strengths. Founder and CEO Shinu Gupta reports that the parent company offers A1Books, an aggregate marketplace that took shape in 1995"before Amazon.com," he saysas well as A1Overstock, a wholesale-only company; and A1Channel: Your Marketplace Gateway!, a service for book wholesalers wishing to list their books on marketplaces around the world. "Everything we do is house-developed," says Gupta, "and everything is Web-based." A1Books numbers some 3,500 booksellers among its offerings. Being a wholesaler as well, Gupta notes that "the whole overstock business used to be hush-hush, but because of what Amazon has done, anyone can see what people are charging."

A1Channel adds another layer of service because it will even handle the physical books. "Since we're already doing it for ourselves," says Gupta, "we can supply that service to other wholesalers." Companies that sign on send the pertinent data and direct bulk shipments to A1 Channel's New Jersey warehouse, from which sold books are distributed. Gupta says that he actively pursues sources at book shows around the world. And, indeed, his global plans include the Internet book market in India within a matter of weeks.

It's clear that another word for "Internet" is "opportunity" for used-book sellers, and it's one that has not yet been fully tapped. As Jamieson of FillZ puts it, "It's really interesting how many booksellers are still not selling online."

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
OnLine Distribution and Symbol Technologies celebrate four years of partnership. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Symbol Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:SBL), the enterprise mobility company, and its value added networking distributor, Online Distribution, have registered substantial business success in the region and will continue to work together to offer end to end networking solutions across the Middle East.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
IceWEB Partners with Secure Computing for Federal Security Initiatives. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- IceWEB, Inc. (OTCBB:IWEB) a leading provider of hosted and enterprise software and network infrastructure services, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Secure Computing (NASDAQ:SCUR) to offer their entire line of network security products. IceWEB has begun an initiative to target key existing and new Federal Government customers with PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), multi-factor authentication, firewall, and secure messaging systems based around the already established IceWEB(TM) network of hosted products.



"Network security is of tantamount concern and importance to any organization, but especially critical to the Federal Government. We will combine IceWEB(TM) and Secure Computing products in both our hosting facilities to create a secure shared services environment custom tailored to meet various security requirements for the Federal Government on an agency by agency basis," said IceWEB Chairman and CEO John R. Signorello. "This newly minted relationship between IceWEB and Secure Computing will also serve to broaden our reach into the Federal marketplace by allowing us to provide enterprise gateway security products to protect critical Web, E-mail and Network assets. IceWEB's network is already up and running, we have two GSA schedules, GWAC BPA's and teaming arrangements with quite a few large Federal Integrators so moving aggressively into this space is a logical and simple progression. It will also have an immediate impact on revenue in the current quarter and throughout Fiscal 2007."

"We have high expectations for our relationship with IceWEB," said Matt Galligan, Secure Computing's Vice President of Federal Sales. "Partners with their breadth and depth of technology expertise are critical to the success of our customers and our products. IceWEB, because they are an established hosted service provider, could create significant opportunities for offering secured hosted email and network service offerings."

Additionally, IceWEB will launch two Federal portals over our existing network specifically for the Federal Government:

1. FEDERALINBOX.COM - this portal will provide Government agencies
  with the ability to launch multiple secure Microsoft Exchange
  networks in a matter of hours.
2. FEDZOO.COM - this portal will provide Government agencies with the
  ability to order online thousands of products and services
  offered through various contracting vehicles.



The two portals will be operational on or before the Government year end September 2007.

About IceWEB

IceWEB, Inc. (OTCBB:IWEB), utilizes a hosted software services model that brings technologies normally reserved for large corporations to the small business customer. Small businesses can now have the benefits of these more advanced software systems for a low monthly subscription price instead of large up-front capital expenses. IceWEB also provides integration and professional services along with our hosted solutions that are uniquely tailored to ensure value for small and medium size businesses. Founded in 2000, IceWEB is headquartered in Herndon, V.A., and serves customers in the public and private sectors. For more information, please visit http://www.IceWEB.com or http://www.IceMAIL.com.

About Secure Computing

Secure Computing (NASDAQ:SCUR) has been securing the connections between people and information for over 20 years. Specializing in delivering the world's strongest security appliances/firewalls, identity and access management solutions, content management and filtering solutions, Secure Computing is uniquely qualified to be the global security solutions provider to organizations of all sizes. Our more than 17,000 global customers, supported by a worldwide network of partners, include the majority of the Dow Jones Global 50 Titans and the most prominent organizations in banking, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, public utilities, education and national and local governments. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information, see http://www.securecomputing.com.

"Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to business conditions and the amount of growth in the computer industry and general economy, competitive factors, and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's SEC reports, including but not limited to its annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.

All trademarks and brand names are the property of their respective companies.
New Gigabit Millimeter Wave Broadband Wireless Link. Check it out:
Contact: John Stover

Gilland Electronics, of Morgan Hill CA, has announced that its business partner, ELVA-1 Ltd., of St. Petersburg, Russia, received FCC Equipment Authorization for PPC-1000-E point-to-point wireless radios on September 15. This authorization enables these 1.25Gbps, full-duplex wireless Ethernet links, operating in the 71-76GHz and 81-86GHz bands, to be made available to the United States market.



According to John Stover, President of Gilland Electronics, The PPC-1000-E changes the market paradigm for U.S. point-to-point wireless communications. ELVA-1 is a well-established and respected partner, with a long history of profitability and millimeter wave engineering expertise.

The PPC-1000-E link provides a 1,250 megabit-per-second (Mbps) wireless Ethernet data pipeline that is equivalent in capacity to approximately 650 T1 lines or 1000 DSL connections. The result is terrestrial fiber equivalent performance, reliability and security, but without the high deployment costs associated with outdoor fiber installation.

We are optimistic, and expect a good market response to our wireless Gigabit Ethernet links, said Daniel Korneev, Director of ELVA-1 Millimeter Wave Division. We appreciate the opportunity to bring online fiber-like capacity to thousands of U.S. commercial enterprises with our PPC-1000-E.

Wireless Ethernet links may be established over distances up to 4.5 miles, depending upon average weather conditions for an area, and whether the user desires carrier or enterprise class availability. Secure remote monitoring and control via SNMP are easily imposed by connecting to a LAN jack anywhere in the network.

Its fiber-class data rate, superb quality of service, ease of installation and affordable cost make the PPC-1000-E an ideal solution for WiFi or mobile network extension and backhaul links, business WAN or IP telephony gateway connections, metropolitan area networks and rapid-deployment emergency communications.

About ELVA-1 Millimeter Wave Division:
Founded in 1993, ELVA-1 Millimeter Wave Division is a privately-held, internationally renowned manufacturer of millimeter wave integrated components, subsystems and test equipment. In 2000, ELVA-1 began aggressively expanded its product range into millimeter wave telecommunications products, such as 42GHz, 70/80 GHz and 94GHz transmitters and receivers, high gain antennas and other advanced wireless communications products. For a complete overview of ELVA-1s capabilities, see www.elva-1.com.

About Gilland Electronics:
Gilland Electronics (www.gilland.com) was established in the San Jose CA area in 1990, and has been importing and distributing ELVA-1 millimeter wave products in the Americas since 1997. Contact Gilland directly at [email protected], or 800-480-3391.

Gilland Electronics
P.O. Box 1090
Morgan Hill, CA 95038
The 451 Group Predicts a Sustained Shift in the Way That Geographically Distributed Companies Design Their Application Infrastructure. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- The 451 Group is predicting a sustained shift in the way that geographically distributed enterprises design their application infrastructure over the next few years. In particular, a variety of demographic, commercial and workplace trends will drive consolidation of server resources, with the resources moving away from dispersed branch offices and into centralized datacenters. 451 analysts believe this move will impact many areas of system design and purchasing, but the effect will be especially felt by those managing and building wide area networks (WANs) designed to connect dispersed users with the applications they need to access. This will lead to the increased adoption of a class of devices that 451 analysts call network-based application accelerators. These findings are contained in a report released today by New York-based The 451 Group, a technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation.



"Many enterprise applications were not designed to run efficiently over a WAN. Limited bandwidth, excessive latency and traffic congestion may radically degrade application performance - and users' patience. Throwing bandwidth at the problem by buying additional network capacity involves significant recurring expense and only directly addresses the first of these three issues," said Steve Steinke, Senior Analyst for Networks at The 451 Group and principal author of the report. "Addressing all of them requires altering the flow of network traffic generated by the application, and doing that without rewriting the application itself requires some network-based intelligence - the network-based application accelerators."

The 451 Group believes there are two complementary approaches to making application performance faster and more predictable over lengthy, bandwidth-constrained WAN links - datacenter communications accelerators (DCCAs) and WAN traffic optimizers (WTOs). DCCAs are principally designed to take workloads off constrained servers and other resources in datacenters. By contrast, WTOs are principally designed to make the best use of constrained network resources. DCCAs are deployed asymmetrically, with a single device installed as close as possible to the main server resources. WTOs are deployed symmetrically, with one appliance located within the firewall at the datacenter and another one located at the branch office.

"WTOs are especially valuable to enterprises with branch offices, a rapidly growing IT architectural model. DCCAs are primarily designed to accelerate Web browser traffic, which can have a place in enterprise IT settings but is perhaps more typical of high-volume consumer settings," said Steinke. "Of these two approaches to network-based application acceleration, we consider WTOs to hold the greatest potential for improving the performance of a wide range of network-delivered applications, and therefore we expect to see much more market activity here."

Many are already seeing the potential of this market. Server consolidation, combined with a desire to guarantee application performance, has already made this sector simmer. M&A activity is increasing as companies jockey for position and new startups continue to emerge, claiming new ways to enhance network-mediated application performance. Venture capital funding activity in this sector has been brisk, and there have been eight significant acquisitions thus far. The 451 Group expects to see additional M&A transactions going forward.

These findings come from a 451 Special Report titled 'Need for Speed: The network is the new application-performance battleground.' This report was led by Steve Steinke, with support from Andy Dornan, Analyst, Networks; Jim Davis, Senior Analyst, Networks; Simon Robinson, Senior Analyst and Sector Head, Storage; Brenon Daly, Financial Analyst; Lee Bruno, Editorial Director, Special Reports; and Chris Noble, Director of Research. This 91-page report sets out to clear up some of the confusion currently muddying this market and chart likely future trends, with their associated commercial opportunities and threats. It also highlights what 451 analysts believe are the disruptive opportunities for entrepreneurial innovators, and it looks at the startups and incumbents pushing into the application-delivery area. The report includes an examination of the recent M&A activity in this market and looks ahead at the drivers for the next round of potential acquisitions.

Key Companies Covered

The report includes in-depth competitive assessments of the vendors focused on this space, including the following companies: Blue Coat, Certeon, Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems (with its recent acquisition of Orbital Data), Converged Access, Expand Networks, F5 Networks, Juniper Networks, Packeteer (Tacit), Riverbed Technologies and Silver Peak Systems.

Report Orders

To learn more about this report, or to discuss developing a client relationship with The 451 Group, contact Simon Carruthers, Vice President of Research Services, via phone at 212-505-3030 x-103, or via e-mail at: [email protected].

About 451 Special Reports

451 Special Reports provide a complete and comprehensive picture of emerging enterprise IT market segments - analyzing the technologies, the competitors, the marketplace opportunities and obstacles, and the implications for a variety of constituencies, including other vendor companies, the investment community and early-adopter IT end users.

About The 451 Group

The 451 Group is an independent technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company's analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company - at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations - rely on 451 insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, London and Boston. The company also operates Tier 1 Research - an independent division of The 451 Group, headquartered in Minneapolis - which analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments impacting public and private companies within the IT, communications and Internet sectors.

For additional information on The 451 Group or to apply for trial access to its services, go to: www.the451group.com
Noetix and Data Visualization Expert Stephen Few Present a Web Seminar on Designing Dashboards. Check it out:
REDMOND, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Noetix:

What: Free Web Seminar

Topic: Rich Data, Poor Data: Designing Dashboards to Inform. The main problem with dashboards today is that they don't say enough and what they do say, they don't say very well. When designed properly, a dashboard provides an overview of what's going on inside a business, clearly and rapidly. To do its job, a dashboard must not only present the right measures of what's going on, it must put those measures into context by including meaningful comparisons with timely and reliable data.



Attend this Web Seminar to learn:

-- The key elements that business intelligence must embody in order to deliver on its promise to enable smart decision-making.

-- Tips and techniques for displaying, monitoring, and highlighting data.

-- Methods for accessing the data's essential supporting details.

-- Techniques for displaying data in a way that communicates clearly, accurately, and rapidly within the confines of a single screen.

When: Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006 at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET

Speakers:

-- Stephen Few, Principal, Perceptual Edge

Register: http://www.noetix.com/Corporate/Events/. Sign up today and receive the free supporting white paper!

About Stephen Few

Stephen Few has worked for 24 years as an IT innovator, consultant, and educator. Today, as Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, Stephen focuses on data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information. He provides consulting and training services, writes the monthly data visualization column for the Business Intelligence Network (www.B-EYE-NETWORK.com), speaks frequently at conferences like TDWI and DAMA, and teaches in the MBA program at the University of California in Berkeley. He is the author of two books: Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten and a new book entitled Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. You can learn more about Stephen's work at www.perceptualedge.com.

About Noetix

More than 1,300 customers worldwide use Noetix to quickly and cost-effectively access the enterprise application data they need to make important business decisions every day. Noetix provides software that automatically generates metadata from enterprise applications, enabling immediate access to data. Unlike most business intelligence tools that require weeks of extensive manual mapping to be set up and maintained, Noetix uses patented technology to automatically discover and produce metadata based on customers' specific implementations of Oracle Applications or Siebel Business Applications. Noetix provides this BI content with easy search and navigation capability, empowering users to quickly generate the ad hoc, operational reports needed to make critical and timely business decisions. Noetix's proven technology is being used by industry-leading customers worldwide, including: CompUSA, Motorola, Starbucks, Toshiba, Visa and Xerox International Partners. The company is headquartered in Redmond, Wash., with international operations in London and Hyderabad, India.

Noetix is a registered trademark of Noetix Corp.

All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
AVST Appoints Charles Stevens to Board of Directors. Check it out:
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of communications solutions for businesses of all sizes, today announced that Charles Stevens, an industry visionary, business leader, and former Microsoft Corp. executive, has joined its Board of Directors. With over 20 years of experience in the enterprise technology market, Stevens brings a wealth of business knowledge and acumen to an already diverse group of industry experts and visionaries on AVST's Board of Directors.



Joining Microsoft in 1984, Stevens held a variety of senior management positions in both the sales and marketing and product development groups throughout Microsoft, with particular emphasis on supporting Microsoft's business strategy, global expansion, and enterprise sales and marketing initiatives.

"Charles' extensive background in developing and implementing business strategies for the enterprise solutions market fits perfectly with AVST's vision of providing best-of-breed unified communications solutions for enterprises on a global scale through the continued expansion of our distribution and technology partnerships," said AVST's President & CEO Hardy Myers. "Leveraging his impressive depth of experience and expertise, Charles' primary mission will be to provide AVST senior management with strategic advice as well as help facilitate the growth of our relationships with key distribution and technology partners, including Microsoft. We expect to take full advantage of his counsel and guidance as we continue to accelerate the worldwide expansion of our business over the next several years."

Stevens most recently worked in various business start-ups in Microsoft, including the Unified Communications Group and before that the Enterprise Storage and Management Group, creating new sales and marketing strategies, including a new sales model for incubation products, comprised of OEMs, VAR channels and technical solutions professionals.

Before that, Stevens was Corporate Vice President for the Enterprise and Partner Group, where he was responsible for Microsoft's enterprise sales and partner strategy worldwide and where he developed and implemented a new enterprise solution selling model. In this role, Stevens also managed Global Account customers and Global Systems Integrator and ISV relationships. Before that, Stevens managed the Business Solutions Groups and Applications Developer Customer Unit, which handled vertical industry strategy and relationships with ISVs and developers.

From 1994 to 1997, Stevens was Vice President of Microsoft's Asia region, responsible for sales, marketing, and services for Microsoft's products in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan. Under Stevens' leadership, the region was Microsoft's fastest-growing geographic market, with over 100% annual growth. Prior to 1994, Stevens managed development and marketing for database products and marketing for Microsoft Office applications and Microsoft Word and e-mail products.

Before joining Microsoft, Stevens was a Product Manager for Hewlett-Packard Co. in the Office Products Division. A native of Great Britain and a U.S. citizen, Stevens holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree in history and English from Bristol University.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions for businesses of all sizes. Through its world-class unified communications platform, CallXpress(R), and its innovative speech application module, Seneca(R), AVST offers the industry's most powerful suite of second generation communications solutions including voice messaging, unified messaging, speech-enabled applications (including automated attendant and hands-free mobile worker access), and call processing (including embedded IVR).

The CallXpress unified communications platform is designed to facilitate the enterprise migration from legacy TDM call processing and voice mail solutions to IP-enabled unified communications by delivering the interoperability, scalability, feature depth and flexibility, and administrative capabilities that enterprise IT and Telecom teams are demanding.

Headquartered in Orange County, CA, AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, WA and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. With over 35,000 systems installed worldwide, AVST's unified communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. Established in September 2003, AVST was formed from the combined businesses of Sound Advantage (established in 1997) and the AVT division (established in 1982) of Captaris, Inc. For more information contact Denny Michael, VP of Marketing at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.
ANADIGICS Shipments Exceed 750 Million Units. Check it out:
WARREN, N.J., Sept. 28 -- ANADIGICS, Inc. , a leading supplier of wireless and broadband solutions, today announced that total product shipments over the Company's history have surpassed 750 million units. The Company's best-of-breed RF products enable a wide range of consumer and enterprise devices including mobile handsets, smart phones, data cards, WLAN notebook computers, CATV set-top boxes, and CATV infrastructure systems. ANADIGICS' customers include leading OEMs and ODMs in both the wireless and broadband markets.



ANADIGICS remains at the forefront of RF design and technology. The Company's patented InGaP-Plus(TM) technology, which combines bipolar and FET structures on the same GaAs die, has created a paradigm shift in RFIC design. The Company's InGaP-Plus(TM) technology has provided circuit designers with the flexibility to take advantage of the best characteristics of both HBT and pHEMT devices. This industry-leading technology is the foundation for many of ANADIGICS' differentiated products, including High-Efficiency-at-Lower-Power (HELP(TM)) power amplifiers, CATV integrated tuners, and WLAN front-end ICs (FEICs).

"We are extremely proud of this milestone, which demonstrates how technology leadership can be leveraged into product leadership," said Dr. Bami Bastani, President & CEO of ANADIGICS. "Whether it's a mobile handset using our HELP(TM) power amplifiers to achieve longer talk-time or CATV set-top box using our active splitters and multiple tuners to enable advanced PVR functionality, ANADIGICS' differentiated solutions are enabling manufacturers to evolve their products and meet the growing demands of tech-savvy consumers."

The Company's product leadership is being fueled by its advanced technology, such as its third-generation High-Efficiency-at-Low-Power (HELP3(TM)) power amplifiers. These power amplifiers reduce average power consumption by 75%, extending handset talk-time by 25%. ANADIGICS' advanced technology also enables world-class levels of integration, such as the Company's WLAN FEICs. These FEICs combine the power amplifier, low-noise amplifier, and RF antenna switch on a single die to minimize three dimensional space requirements. Utilizing industry-leading technology and RF expertise, ANADIGICS continues to develop differentiated solutions targeted to customer and market requirements. ANADIGICS' rich portfolio of RF products is supported by its state-of-the-art six-inch production facility that was put into operation in 1999, providing capacity for growth and operating leverage.

For additional information, contact ANADIGICS by phone (908) 668-5000 or FAX (908) 668-5132 or visit the Company's Web site at http://www.anadigics.com/.

About ANADIGICS, Inc.
ANADIGICS, Inc. designs and manufactures radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) solutions for growing broadband and wireless communications markets. The Company's innovative high frequency RFICs enable manufacturers of communications equipment to enhance overall system performance, and reduce manufacturing cost and time to market. By utilizing state-of-the-art manufacturing processes for its RFICs, ANADIGICS achieves the high-volume and cost-effective products required by leading companies in its targeted high-growth communications markets. ANADIGICS was the first GaAs IC manufacturer to receive ISO 9001 certification and is certified to the ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004 international standards.

Safe Harbor Statement
Except for historical information contained herein, this press release contains projections and other forward-looking statements (as that term is defined in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). These projections and forward-looking statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and financial performance and can generally be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as "believe," "anticipate," "expect," or words of similar import. Similarly, statements that describe our future plans, objectives, estimates or goals are forward-looking statements. No assurances can be given, however, that these events will occur or that these projections will be achieved and actual results and developments could differ materially from those projected as a result of certain factors. Important factors that could cause actual results and developments to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such projections and forward-looking statements include those factors detailed from time to time in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005, and those discussed elsewhere herein.

ANADIGICS, Inc.

CONTACT: Press Contact: Chuck Manners of Godfrey, +1-717-393-3831, Fax:+1-717-393-1403, [email protected]; Corporate Contact: Brian Ribeiro ofANADIGICS, Inc., +1-908-668-5000, +1-908-412-5978, [email protected]; orInvestor Relations: Thomas Shields of ANADIGICS, Inc., +1-908-412-5995,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.anadigics.com/
The First Successful ZigBee Implementation in the Insurance Industry. Check it out:
BELLEVUE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- MeshNetics, a leading wireless sensor technology provider and 802.15.4/ZigBee expert, today announced that together with the UK telemetry partner BOX telematics it has successfully completed the trial of the ZigBee-based wireless solution deployed to monitor building subsidence for Crawford & Company, the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions to insurance companies. Using the Zigbee-based wireless solution, Crawford & Company found that claim assessment time was cut dramatically.



Subsidence, which is a downward movement of the ground supporting a building, causes hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to buildings every year. To minimize this damage, insurance claim investigators typically conduct manual subsidence inspections - which are time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive efforts requiring two engineers for an on-site building inspection. Due to high costs, they are performed on a weekly basis at best - meaning that the task is not only expensive and time consuming, but is also an inefficient monitoring solution. As a result of this clumsy, inefficient manual inspection practice, claim assessment would take anywhere from one to two years.

Automated building subsidence monitoring solves this problem by enabling timely action that helps prevent serious damage - all while reducing costs, improving efficiency, and elevating accuracy.

Crawford & Company, together with BOX telematics and MeshNetics, deployed a standards-based wireless solution to monitor the building's structural integrity. The wireless MeshNetics nodes with tilt measurement sensors are placed in and around buildings. They form an ad-hoc mesh network, using MeshNetics ZigBee Stack software, and transmit data through the BOX GPRS gateway to the monitoring company's server. The data is then stored in a database and reports are generated. The whole process is completely automated.

Mark Woolridge, M2M Sales Director at BOX telematics, added: "Wireless m2m technology is the future of 24/7 remote monitoring of building subsidence. Our web based portal gives Crawford the opportunity to make quick and accurate data decisions without the need for regular on site evaluation by their staff."

The first ZigBee-based wireless solution trial has already enabled Crawford & Company to reduce claim investigation time from an average 12-18 months to only 2 months. Building structural integrity data is now collected on a regular basis and is available via the web in real time. The automated system eliminated the prohibitive cost of engineer labor for manual data logging. The wireless solution also eliminated the costs associated with running cables, an expense that may exceed $100 per foot. Time-to-market was another important factor. Thanks to the inherent flexibility of MeshNetics' MeshBean hardware platform and BOX' gateways, the working solution was delivered in less than four months.

"The pervasive internet revolution keeps changing the landscape of modern industries, no matter how conservative they might be. Even in the insurance industry, it is no longer business as usual," said Mr. Vasiliy Suvorov, CEO of MeshNetics. "Industry visionaries, such as Crawford & Company, are seeking new solutions and technologies that will secure a competitive edge. Wireless sensor networks are at the forefront of these groundbreaking solutions, and their ultimate value is in the data collected from sensors. Innovative system integrators like BOX telematics offer such advanced solutions today."

BOX telematics and MeshNetics will make a joint presentation of this project at the BuilConn 2006 Expo, the largest European building automation event of the year, in Amsterdam on October 3-5, 2006.

About MeshNetics: MeshNetics is a leading technology provider enabling wireless sensor data integration with customers' enterprise applications. MeshNetics has a unique expertise in hardware, firmware and software. Their product portfolio includes IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee(TM) OEM module; ZigBee Developer Kit; networking stack firmware; SensiLink gateway server software; and customization services. MeshNetics helps its partners and customers to accelerate time-to-market by providing the tools for development of complete M2M solutions for industrial automation, building automation and utility monitoring and control. MeshNetics bases its long-term strategy on open standards, and is a member of the ZigBee Alliance and OPC Foundation. For more information, please visit www.meshnetics.com.

About Crawford & Company: Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Crawford & Company (www.crawfordandcompany.com) is the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions to insurance companies and self-insured entities, with a global network of more than 700 offices in 63 countries. Major service lines include property and casualty claims management, integrated claims and medical management for workers' compensation, legal settlement administration, including class action and warranty inspections, and risk management information services. The Company's shares are traded on the NYSE under the symbols CRDA and CRDB.

About BOX telematics: System integrator and telematics devices designer/manufacturer, BOX telematics (www.boxtelematics.com), have been designing, producing and integrating their wide range of "wire-free" technology since 1998, for both the static m2m (machine to machine) and mobile telematics markets. BOX has since grown into one of the UK's most experienced and respected telemetry and telematics providers. BOX provides proven end-to-end "wire-free" telemetry and telematics solutions for many customers who trade in dynamic operating sectors such as licensed trade, service & logistics, security, industrial, asset and vehicle tracking and outdoor media.
Sonata buys 50% in German co for euro 18 mn. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Bangalore-based IT company Sonata Software has acquired a majority stake in the German firm TUI Info Tec. Sonata has acquired 50.1% in the Hanover-based company for euro 18 m, to be paid through borrowings and cash.



The Indian IT consultancy and software company has signed an agreement with TUI AG, Europe's leading tourism and shipping group, for acquiring the controlling stake in its subsidiary, TUI InfoTec, which has revenues of e130m and employs 432 people, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

B Ramaswamy, president & managing director, Sonata Software told ET, We already have a presence in the UK. But we wanted to have a foothold in the rest of Europe, hence this acquisition. This deal would help us tap into the relatively untapped and under-served German market, and TUI Info Tec would help provide local knowledge and language skills.

The combination of Sonata's 1,700-strong India development facility and TUI Info Tec's 400-plus onshore German IT professionals with extensive skills in infrastructure management and mission-critical software applications would provide compelling value proposition for European customers looking for a proven, low-risk, cost-effective and high quality outsourcing option, he added.

The company also aims to enter the infrastructure management space with this acquisition, which normally would take years to build and develop, Mr Ramaswamy said.

This is an enormous leapfrog for us in the infrastructure management space, he added. Heinz Kreuzer, Group CIO of TUI and MD of TUI InfoTec, said that 44% of the company's revenues in '05 was contributed by software services and the rest by IT infrastructure management.

There would also be transition of the on site work of TUI Info Tec, as its on site jobs would be transferred to India with Sonata, which would mean that we would also be increasing our employee strength here substantially, Mr Ramaswamy said. TUI's employees would then be used for attending to the new clients in new geographies, he added.

At present Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest applications services firm, has a dedicated remote infrastructure management centre in Chennai with a capacity of more than 2,500 seats.

Wipro Technologies claims to have the largest infrastructure services practice, with more than 6,500 infrastructure experts supporting over 200 clients in the US, Europe and Japan, apart from its Indian customers.

TUI Info Tec has capabilities in remote infrastructure management and domain knowledge in verticals like travel, tourism, airlines and hospitality, as well as expertise in horizontals like enterprise applications, web applications, business intelligence, and legacy applications management.

Its subsidiaries include Travel BA.sys and ACCON RVS which provide a technology platform and back-office services for travel agencies respectively. Mr Ramaswamy said that the management of TUI Info Tec would also undergo changes.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

China: Opening the door

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China: Opening the door. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With the continued growth of China's economy, many Chinese businesses have emerged as attractive acquisition targets. Recognising this, the Government has amended the M&A rules governing foreign investors and the enterprise bankruptcy laws, attempting to boost foreign investors' confidence in China.



China's regulations on mergers and acquisitions of domestic enterprises by foreign investors became effective on 8 September, 2006, and substantially amend and expand the interim M&A rules governing foreign investors adopted in 2003.

The three most notable changes for a foreign investor are:

. The new rules expressly permit the use of a foreign publicly-listed company's shares as consideration for the exchange of Chinese equity securities in connection with an M&A transaction. A multi-step government approval process is required for a share exchange transaction and two major requirements are: the foreign shares used as consideration must be traded on a public stock market and must have a `stable' share price over the previous 12 months; and the foreign-listed company (and its management) must not have been subject to any sanction by a relevant regulatory authority within the past three years.

. Foreign investors must notify a Chinese Government agency if a proposed M&A transaction results in foreign investors controlling any Chinese company that involves or affects a key domestic industry, national economic security or well-known or traditional trademarks or brand names.

These new provisions are broad and vague regarding which industries are `key', when `national economic security' is affected, and what trademarks and brand names are well known or traditional. The Chinese authorities are keen to protect their key industries and assets, a reaction not completely dissimilar to the US Congress' reaction to and interference in the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation's proposed purchase of US oil company Unocal in 2005. This is also consistent with the Chinese authorities' consideration of The Carlyle Group's agreement to acquire an 85% stake in Xugong Group Construction Machinery for $375m (197.6m) which, although signed in October 2005, has yet to receive approval.

. A Chinese Government agency must give its approval if a `domestic person' establishes or controls a foreign company and the foreign company acquires a Chinese affiliated company. Requirements for approval are unclear and key terms remain undefined.

When foreign investors acquire a Chinese company, it is common for the foreign investors to offer selected Chinese citizens an opportunity to own equity interests in the foreign company established to make the acquisition. Whether such a transaction would trigger the approval requirement under the 2006 M&A rules is unclear.

Enterprise Bankruptcy Law

In June 2007, China's new Enterprise Bankruptcy Law will become effective. The groundbreaking legislation will streamline bankruptcy procedures and better protect the interests of creditors.

The most significant change from the existing bankruptcy law is that the Chinese Government will no longer play a leading role in bankruptcy cases. Other notable changes are:

. Any Chinese enterprise may be a debtor, regardless of whether the entity is stated owned, private or foreign invested. The interim enterprise bankruptcy law did not establish procedures governing the bankruptcy of financial institutions. However, and very importantly, financial institutions are now covered by the new law that may add transparency and other benefits to creditors who invest in this key sector.

. Displaced workers' compensation claims were often paid ahead of secured claims. The new law reverses this practice and provides that in a liquidation, secured creditors are entitled to distribution to the extent of the value of the collateral prior to any payments to employee for wages, medical insurance, and other compensatory benefits.

. A debtor or a creditor may now apply directly to the court for a reorganisation. A debtor in possession may manage the assets and operate the business of the debtor under the supervision of the administrator, or the administrator may operate the business and administer the assets by engaging the existing management. Only the debtor in possession or the administrator can propose a plan of reorganisation, the exclusivity period is six months after the reorganisation application is accepted by the court and that period may be extended for another three months. If exclusivity expires, the court shall terminate the reorganisation proceeding and declare the enterprise bankrupt.

. The new law allows the People's Court to recognise and enforce the orders and judgments issued by a foreign court sitting in the foreign bankruptcy proceeding to the extent that such orders or judgments may be enforced or recognised by a Chinese court pursuant to any existing treaties or international convention or based on the principle of reciprocity.

Substantial regulatory and legal changes continue to unfold in China, and such changes are reshaping and improving the country's legal environment for M&A, restructuring and bankruptcy transactions, which should generate more confidence in the Chinese market.

Tai Hsia is a London associate and Helena Huang a New York associate at Kirkland & Ellis.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

Insolvency: A closing chapter

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Insolvency: A closing chapter. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) I must start with a confession; I have converted to Chapter 11. Theologically speaking, I am a practising US lawyer who strictly follows the dictates of the United States Code. Well, almost. After years of acting for banks, it has proved impossible to stop being sympathetic to secured creditors and to retain a fondness for the simple joys of a rapid receivership appointment.



This all came about following a decision to move to Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York in 2003, where I had the good fortune to be partner for three exciting years. I worked with a superb team of bankruptcy lawyers from whom I learned a great deal. I vividly recall a conversation with a senior workout banker shortly after my arrival in New York. He had recently endured a bad experience in the London market and was struggling to locate either the rescue culture of which I repeatedly spoke or a recognisable reorganisation regime. Despite my confident assertion that the UK system was flexible and effective, he was not at all persuaded that the UK system should be taken seriously.

I continued the debate in my head long after that discussion and, as I started to become more deeply involved with the Chapter 11 process, I began to appreciate just how powerful a vehicle it is for achieving a restructuring result when driven by the commerciallyminded and activist bankruptcy bench.

I had been closely involved with US bankruptcy proceedings while practising in London and before moving to Davis Polk in New York but there is, inevitably, a world of difference between being an observer, albeit an active one, and being a participant. Seeing things from inside the system gives you a very different perspective.

Over time I developed a clearer sense of what my banker friend was telling me and how the US approach involved a fundamentally different mindset and style. The fact the Chapter 11 system has traditionally been debtor-friendly and limits the rights and leverage of secured creditors is well known, but to understand how strong the debtor's position is in the US system compared with that of the UK, you need to see the full range of rights and powers given to a debtor.

The debtor has the benefit of a wide automatic stay covering all actions aimed at enforcing pre-bankrupcty claims, with certain limited exceptions, such as police or regulatory activity. It has plan exclusivity; in other words, it has the right initially to control the process for formulating and negotiating a plan of reorganisation. It has the power to assume or reject executory contracts and unexpired leases, including the ability to reject - disclaim, in UK terms - contracts that create quasi-property rights, such as options.

Contract termination rights conditioned on insolvency or the financial condition of the debtor - so called ipso facto clauses - in executory contracts and unexpired leases are invalidated. The debtor has the power to obtain post-petition financing and, in some circumstances, to grant security interests ranking ahead of existing mortgages and liens. It has the power to sell property free and clear of liens. There are also various limitations on the rights of secured creditors, including the invalidation of after-acquired property clauses as they relate to property acquired by the estate after the start of the bankruptcy.

The debtor also has what are known as `cram down powers'. This is the ability, if certain detailed conditions are met, to confirm a plan despite the fact that a class of creditors has voted against it. This does not exist under UK law. Finally, there is the lower voting majority required to approve a plan. The Bankruptcy Code requires a vote of only two-thirds in amount - rather than the three-quarters in amount under the UK system - and a majority in number.

But it is not just the rights given to the debtor by the code that make a difference. There are also various institutional factors that are significant, including the litigation context, which is particularly important.

The code was drafted to promote negotiation among creditor and shareholder groups and contains provisions that give all interested parties some negotiating leverage, if sometimes only in the form of the ability to delay the ultimate confirmation of the plan. Bargaining in Chapter 11 cases takes place in the shadow of bankruptcy court litigation and Chapter 11 can often bring the process of negotiating the reorganisation into the courtroom.

These proceedings are conducted, at least to UK eyes, with considerable informality and are presided over by an assigned bankruptcy judge who sees the case from beginning to end. The judge's approval is needed for transactions outside the ordinary course of business and the judge sees it as an important part of his or her job to support the debtor and the promotion of a successful reorganisation.

One of the guiding principles of Chapter 11 is that it rewards parties that are actively involved in the process and that make it clear to other parties that they are prepared to protect their rights in the bankruptcy court if an acceptable deal cannot be negotiated. This explains why those who are used to the US system are so comfortable with taking disputes to court.

However, although a combination of the code and an activist court creates the conditions for a strong debtor-led procedure, important amendments to the code during the past decade have given added protection to a number of classes of creditors including aircraft financiers, commercial property owners, counterparties to financial contracts and landlords and suppliers. To some, this weakens the effectiveness of the process and undermines the rehabilitation principle.

These changes can be seen as compounding a trend for creditors to exert increasing control over the Chapter 11 process. This has been achieved through the use of tight covenants in post-petition financing documentation and the appointment of chief restruc-turing officers at the instigation of creditors. This has, in turn, led to increases in the frequency of sales of debtors' businesses during Chapter 11 to proceedings of shorter duration. There has also been an increase in the number of pre-packaged or pre-negotiated reorganisation plans (to reduce costs and damage to the debt-or's business). In addition, the continuing growth of claims trading brings experienced professionals who specialise in recapitalising distressed businesses to the negotiating table. These professionals tend to have strong views about the timetable for emergence from the case, management strategies and exit terms.

Most restructuring negotiations take place primarily between the senior and junior creditors. With hedge funds and other institutional investors acquiring senior debt, however, there can be inter-creditor tensions and bargaining within creditor classes, which can be difficult to resolve quickly.

Even in this somewhat diluted form Chapter 11 still has its critics. Many would say that its benefits come at too high a price. The costs are substantial both because of high legal and professional fees - in part because every document is turned into a pleading - and because of the amount of time and resources that need to be devoted to the proceeding. There are many who cite the reorganisation recidivists - the Chapter 22s and 33s who have filed for bankruptcy protection more than once - as evidence of the system's failure to achieve the results that its promoters proclaim as its raison d'etre. And there are many who point out that the decision-making process before different bankruptcy courts across the country can be rough and ready, making outcomes difficult to predict. A current topic of debate is the significance of valuation evidence in cases where a cram down of junior creditors is contested, and the problems caused by the unpredictability of judicial valuations.

In many respects, Chapter 11 has now evolved into a form of distressed M&A and a mechanism for effecting changes in corporate control. Both in theory and in practice, reorganisation is a change of control transaction involving a sale of the debtor's business to its creditors.

My US banker friend's implicit criticism of the UK model is that it limits restructuring options to either reschedulings that tinker with, rather than resolve, the debtor's problems or asset or business sales through the receivership mechanism. But this was always somewhat simplistic and is now rather outdated - in recent years US methodologies and models have found their way to Europe with the influx of experienced US bankers, investors and professionals and US funds. As a result there has been a major shift in thinking and practice and a desire in some quarters to replicate the style and methods of the Chapter 11 process. We have even seen US Supreme Court opinions being cited in skeleton arguments in recent litigation concerning contested schemes of arrangement.

While the reforms to the US system mentioned above have strengthened the rights of creditors, the UK's Enterprise Act 2002 has strengthened the administration regime by giving precedence to the concept of company rescue and weakening the position of secured creditors by eliminating their right to appoint an administrative receiver, except in exceptional circumstances.

So we now have some level of convergence. Local legal cultures remain resilient, however, and it is dangerous to assume that the two systems do, or can be made to, replicate one another. For example, there is a temptation for some to equate a scheme of arrangement with a Chapter 11 plan. However, the three sections of the Companies Act 1985 that regulate schemes are a long way away from the detailed provisions of the US Bankruptcy Code, even with the judge-made law supplementing the statute.

Nevertheless, I have little doubt that the US expatriate community will continue to reshape the landscape of European restructurings well into the future - with a little help from the Chapter 11 converts.

Nick Segal is a partner in the restructuring and insolvency group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

Insolvency: A fresh approach

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Insolvency: A fresh approach. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) When the Enterprise Act reforms were introduced in September 2003, it was against the background of a government initiative to bring the UK entrepreneurial regime closer to that of the US. The Enterprise Act covered both competition law and insolvency law reform with the objective, as announced by Gordon Brown in June 2001, being to help the UK economy reach US levels of productivity. A key facet of this for the reformers was that bankruptcy in the US did not have the same stigma as it did in Europe, and so the Enterprise Act sought to bring the UK closer to the US approaches to insolvency.



The reality of the Enterprise Act reforms was that they fell far short of the apparent purpose of introducing a Chapter 11-style process in the UK. There was no introduction of a debtor-in-possession (DIP) concept. There was no effort to introduce a framework to allow DIP priority financing, a key aspect of a Chapter 11 (so much so that there is now an established industry of `DIP lenders' who will make funding available to support a company during its restructuring in a Chapter 11). There was no introduction of provisions similar to those that apply in the US to executory contracts. There was no invalidation of insolvency events of default, which enabled counterparties to walk away at a time when the distressed company needed them most.

But where the legislative reforms may have failed to go far enough, the market has quickly adapted to US-style techniques. These have, ultimately, helped form a new environment in which restructuring and the continuance of the company has replaced the prevalent attitude of the 1990s which saw many large and complicated workouts ending up in formal insolvency - seen by most as ultimately destructive of value.

A key element in driving the market in this way has been the emergence of hedge funds and distressed debt trading desks as key players in a restructuring. There is now more than $1.1trn (579bn) worldwide under hedge fund management, with London at the centre of Europe's hedge fund management industry, responsible for approximately two-thirds of the $325bn (171bn) in funds under management in Europe. Many of those London-based hedge funds specialise in - or at least have - a presence in the distressed debt and restruc-turing market. This has represented a significant sea change, particularly when coupled with the fact that many constituencies that traditionally would have held onto their debt and seen through the restructuring, such as private placement noteholders and senior banks, are now willing to sell out to the distressed debt traders. Such debt inevitably ends up in whole, or in part, in the hands of the hedge funds. Add this to the fact that many hedge funds will hold debt positions across several layers of the capital structure, and it is evident that the dynamics have changed hugely from the environment that preceded the Enterprise Act of 2003. In that environment, the senior secured banks tended to be the dominant party in control of the restructuring or, if they deemed it appropriate, the insolvency.

Instead, the usual paradigm for a restructuring in the UK will be the formation of ad hoc committees of various levels in the capital structure, with a view to negotiating each constituency's corner in order to reach a consensual restructuring. Each committee is likely to have its own financial and legal advisers and will be driven towards achieving a successful, consensual restructuring, rather than lining up the administrators to take over the business. Moreover, where administrators and receivers are used, it may often only be as a small part of the process, for example to implement a restructuring through a pre-pack sale of the business to a new company owned by the hedge funds and secondary traders.

Accordingly, many of the restructurings in the UK over the past few years have gone some way towards dispelling the notion that hedge funds are aggressive and destructive in their approach to these complicated situations. Many of the funds are not there to `make a quick buck' - in fact, many of them wish to own the company at the end of the restructuring process, usually via a form of debt-for-equity swap, and that will often be the key motivation behind their strategy. They will then want to hold the company for a sufficient period of time to enable it to have turned the corner so that it may then be capable of being sold or become the subject of an IPO.

A recent example of this has been the Gate Gourmet restructuring. Latham & Watkins and Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin acted for the mezzanine creditors which, by the time the restructuring and debt for equity was consummated, were fully constituted by hedge funds (in other words there was not one original mezzanine lender left). This group and their advisers entered into the usual valuation debate with the private equity firm that owned Gate Gourmet prior to its restructuring. Notwithstanding the difficult background (namely, strikes at Heathrow and labour arbitration in the US) no-one (including, notably, the company) panicked and called in the administrators. Everyone held their nerve, agreed a solution in which the hedge funds ended up owning a majority of the company and laid the foundations for the company to be put back on a stable footing. An IPO exit in the next year or two is now highly likely. All of the hedge funds made significant money in the restructuring process, with the promise of more to come if there is a successful IPO exit.

Similarly, in the restructuring of Jarvis, a group of hedge funds led by an investment bank (and represented by Latham & Watkins and Close Brothers) provided bridging finance to the debt-for-equity restruc-turing as well as a post-restructuring working capital facility. This group still continues to hold equity in the listed company and remains very much involved in the company's strategy going forward. It would not be fanciful to suggest that in the climate of, say, five years ago, Jarvis would have been a candidate for administration. Instead, it continues as a listed company and has successfully refinanced its working capital facilities.

However, this is not to say that the lions have become lambs. Hedge fund creditors will not hesitate to litigate if they perceive that their rights are being threatened, insufficient value is being attributed to their debt holdings or they are otherwise being treated unfairly. There have been a string of such cases where hedge funds have either litigated or challenged a restructuring on this basis, for example, MyTravel (hedge funds bought subordinated bonds and challenged the restructuring); British Energy (hedge funds bought equity and challenged the restructuring as being unfair to shareholders); Colt Telecom (hedge fund creditors sought to put the company into administration in order to stop the management burning through its cash reserves) and TXU (hedge fund creditors sought to challenge a series of linked company voluntary arrangements).

But it would be wrong to end on such a note. Many hedge funds have a strategy that combines distressed debt investing with something more akin to a private equity or distressed private equity strategy, looking for positions of control and influence rather than seeking to make a quick buck or litigating to acquire leverage in a restructuring. Such a strategy often involves a medium-term hold of their debt (or the resultant equity in a restructuring) of anything from one to several years. Couple this with the modernisation of bankruptcy law regimes in Germany, France and Italy and it can be seen that there is an increasingly favourable environment for distressed investors seeking a US-style solution - and returns - in a restructuring.

These new legal regimes are now being tested and knowhow and precedents are building up (for example, the new procedure de sauvegarde is being tested in both Global Auto Logistics and Eurotunnel). There is now more confidence in the Italian restructuring regime, given the large returns made by several US hedge funds (and some investment banks' proprietary desks) in the Parmalat restructuring. There have also been more cases where there has been a practical application of the EC Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings 2000 and a useful precedent from the European Court of Justice in relation to the key issue of `centre of main interest' ( Eurofoods [2006]). All this points to an increasingly favourable European environment for hedge funds to seek out arbitrage opportunities and to invest in debt for a longer-term holding and ownership strategy.

John Houghton is a partner specialising in restructuring and insolvency at Latham & Watkins.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
DEMOfall '06 Conference Wraps; 67 New Technologies Catalyze Market. Check it out:
SAN DIEGO, DEMOfall '06, Sept. 27 -- The prestigious DEMOfall '06 conference closed today after an information-packed program focused on new products and services that are designed to improve and enhance business and consumer computing. The sold-out crowd -- comprised of business development executives, investors, reporters, and entrepreneurs -- was also treated to an in-depth discussion on nanotechnology and the near-term prospects for products based on today's sub-microscopic research.



(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGO )
"Nanotechnology is a fascinating area of study," said Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer. "Despite all the hype and the money poured into the field, we have yet to see outcomes that are affecting people's everyday lives. Thanks to John Patrick's FutureScan panel, the DEMO community has a much better sense of where that market is headed. My thanks to panelists Dr. Gian-Luca Bona of IBM's Almaden Research Center, Dr. Gerald Hoegl of Metcomb Nanostructures, and Rohit Sharma of Mohr Davidow Ventures for participating in this panel."

The semi-annual DEMO conferences are a reflection of the technology industry as a whole -- a microcosm of the best, most viable emerging technology products in the market categories that are the hottest in the industry. Today at DEMOfall, the focus was on:

-- Internet security,
-- Internet search,
-- application infrastructure,
-- telecom,
-- consumer-generated content,
-- social content,
-- digital content management, and
-- the connected desktop.

The morning general session began with a look at Internet security and Internet search -- two robust categories that are making giant strides in sophistication and customization every six months. Demonstrating their new innovations in these areas were:

-- Data Security Systems Solutions, Inc. -- OTPK (One Time Private Key)
protects electronic transactions through digital signatures.
-- MyPW, LLC -- MyPW authentication platform that protects against
identity theft and online fraud.
-- Retrevo, Inc. -- Retrevo searches and delivers smart content for
consumers that are researching, installing, using, fixing and upgrading
their consumer electronics products.
-- Imaginestics, LLC -- 3D-Seek.com is a shape-based search engine that
uses a drawing of the object being sought.

Changing tacks, the DEMOfall stage program continued with a look at infrastructure components that make building, managing and delivering new applications faster and easier. Demonstrations included:

-- NComputing, Inc. -- NStation Computing Solution is a hardware/software
package that will accelerate the market migration from desktop to
server based computing.
-- BriteSoft Corp. -- BriteWorks automates software development of
enterprise-class applications, typically speeding development by
20 percent.
-- Widgetbox -- Widgetbox is a Web-based marketplace where entrepreneurs
can develop and sell content and code that enhance everyday blogs.

Life in a Digital Age

"The arrival of the Internet age has made communicating much easier ... and much more complicated," said Shipley. "We now find ourselves texting, emailing, IM-ing, Skype-ing, and even, sometimes, putting old fashioned pen to paper. My research for DEMOfall showed that companies continue to improve services around voice communications, as evinced by Be Here's 'Total View' VoIP collaboration phone, JAJAH's free mobile VoIP solution, and GrandCentral's unified communications service that gives people one phone number for life. These are big ideas that enhance the traditional telecom experience and simplify people's lives."

DEMOfall also had a major focus on consumer-generated content, innovative social networking sites, and digital content management and delivery -- three hotspots in the consumer tech industry. The rise of social media and the influx of services designed to easily customize and enrich online sites has led to the proliferation of online data. Shipley invited the best new entrants in this field to launch at DEMOfall and to take the stage this afternoon:

-- SiteKreator -- SiteKreator Business Edition is a Web site creation and
hosting service designed for small business owners.
-- Wallop, Inc. -- Wallop is a social computing site with a sophisticated
user interface that allows users to express their individuality online
as they would offline.
-- Scrapblog, Inc. -- Scrapblog.com combines the storytelling aspect of
scrapbooks with the publishing power of blogs.
-- HeyLetsGo, Inc. -- HeyLetsGo.com connects people with local events and
an active local community to enhance their offline social life.
-- Yoriwa, Inc. -- LeapTag employs user-customized tags to find matching
content online, becoming more sophisticated as the user rates the
search results.
-- adaptiveblue, LLC -- Blueorganizer Browser Extension for Firefox is a
semantic Web tool that redefines how people collect, manage, discover
and share information.

"DEMOfall opened with exciting demonstrations from Dash Navigation, Tribeca Labs, and Pluggd and we closed the conference will equally heady stuff," said Shipley. "Eluma's community-driven, brandable marketing application will mean increased customer loyalty and revenue for the smart organizations that adopt this platform. And the Cozi Central message center profoundly enhances family communications in the digital age. It's been a tremendously enlightening couple of days here at DEMOfall."

DEMOgod Awards and Media Panel Review
Chris Shipley took the stage one final time to announce the recipients of the DEMOfall DEMOgod awards. Bestowed on the speakers that most effectively and charmingly communicate the salient attributes of their products despite the intensity of the DEMO stage, DEMOgod awards honor grace under pressure. DEMOfall award winners are:

-- Data Security Systems Solutions, Inc.
-- Eluma
-- Fonpods, Inc.
-- i-Lighter, Inc.
-- Mercora, Inc.
-- Moixa Energy Holdings, Ltd.
-- RingCube, Inc.
-- uControl, Inc.

At the conclusion of a full day, DEMOfall attendees tuned into the media roundtable, designed to give well-respected national business reporters the opportunity to opine about the business models and ideas debuted at the conference. Begun at DEMO 2006 in February, the media roundtable is already a much-anticipated element of the event program. Panelists at DEMOfall were:

-- Victoria Murphy Barret, Associate Editor, Silicon Valley Bureau, Forbes
-- John Gallant, President & Editorial Director, Network World
-- Kara Swisher, Co-Producer, D: All Things Digital & Staffer, Wall Street
Journal
-- Steve Wildstrom, "Technology & You" Columnist, BusinessWeek

DEMOfall Sponsors

DEMOfall '06's principal sponsor is QUALCOMM Incorporated. Decision Counsel, RealNetworks, Inc, Sun Microsystems, and Sony Electronics, Inc. are platinum sponsors. Porter Novelli and the National Science Foundation are gold sponsors of the event. The strategic partner is Guidewire Group. Media partners are American Venture Magazine, PR Newswire, TechConfidential/The Deal, and VentureCapitalConferences.com. Cellular wireless coverage provided by SpotWave. Marketing partners are Kauffman eVenturing, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), VC Experts, and VentureChoice.

About the DEMO Conferences
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*TRADE, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit http://www.demo.com/ .

The DEMO community also benefits from the award winning DEMOletter. A weekly e-newsletter designed to reach the people who are creating companies, building products and launching new ideas, DEMOletter provides smart insight and analysis of entrepreneurial business issues.

About Network World
Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community ( http://www.networkworld.com/ ), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns, and create new revenue opportunities. Additionally, Network World is the event organizer of DEMO and DEMOfall, the leading events for new technology innovation.

About IDG
International Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events, and research company. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, and PC World. IDG's online network includes more than 400 Web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and gaming worldwide. IDG is a leading producer of more than 170 technology-related events including LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Macworld Conference & Expo, DEMO, and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events. Over 850 IDC analysts in 50 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends. Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at http://www.idg.com/ .

NOTE: All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Network World Events and Executive Forums

CONTACT: Becky Sniffen of MC2 Communications, onsite at DEMOfall,+1-510-682-6613, or [email protected], for DEMOfall

Web site: http://www.demo.com/http://www.networkworld.com/http://www.idg.com/
Modavox To Launch Innovative Small Cap Promotions Technology Suite. Check it out:
PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- A dynamic business partnership has been formed between QualityStocks.Net a leading on-line newsletter and promoter of small cap stocks, and Modavox, Inc. (OTCBB: MDVX), one of the worlds leading providers of streaming media solutions. Together these two entities will combine to bring cutting edge internet streaming audio/video technologies, programming, and current small cap stock news directly to consumers, promoters and traders across the nation and abroad.



"Our desire was to reach out to a global audience with instant delivery of timely information which is fresh and cutting edge," states Nathan Bradley, VP of Business Development and Marketing for Modavox. "Early adopters of emerging technologies are tipping the demand for news, entertainment, education, and information to be available on-line and through most portable devices. This partnership with Modavox and QualityStocks.Net merges the distribution solution with news and information at the click of a button."

Starting on September 26, 2006, the long standing QualityStocks.Net internet presence will be revamped and distributed through the Modavox Network and proprietary technologies. Beginning October 2, 2006 weekday web-isodes of "QualityStocks.Net Market Report" will be broadcast featuring microcap and small cap stocks to watch.

About QualityStocks.Net:

With all of the stock picks and recommendations available today in the investment world, selecting and deciding on the right stocks can be tedious and time consuming. At QualityStocks.Net, we collate hundreds of investment newsletters into The ONE and ONLY "The QualityStocks Daily," featuring a summary format in which you can view the latest stock picks everyday.

About Modavox:

Modavox, Inc. (www.modavox.com), a pioneer in internet broadcasting, producing and syndicating online audio and video, offers innovative, effective and comprehensive online tools for reaching targeted niche communities worldwide. Through patented Modavox Central(TM) technology, Modavox delivers content straight to desktops and internet-enabled devices. Through proprietary StreamSafe(TM), WebcastWizard(TM) and Stream Syndicate(TM) tools, Modavox provides managed access for live and on-demand internet broadcasting/syndication; content management; and Rich Media Advertising, event management, enterprise communications and distance learning.
Xinhua world economic news summary at 0500 GMT, Sept. 28. Check it out:
(Comtex Energy Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 28, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX) --A senior Zimbabwean official said on Wednesday that

the southern African country, which is reforming its economy to
reduce foreign control, was eager to strengthen ties with China to
benefit from the Asian giant's better trade and investment terms.

The Zimbabwean government was shifting focus in its
relationship with China from politics to economic cooperation, having cemented the former firmly since independence from Britain

in 1980, Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu
told Xinhua in an exclusive interview. (Zimbabwe-China)
- - - -
WASHINGTON -- U.S. commercial crude oil inventories fell over
the past week but supplies of gasoline and other refined fuels
posted strong gains, the Energy Department said Wednesday in its
weekly petroleum report.
In the week to Sept. 22, commercial crude oil reserves declined
by 100,000 barrels to 324.8 million, or 5 percent more than last
year. Analysts were expecting a drop of 1.7 million barrels.
(US-Oil Reserves)
- - - -
ATHENS -- Greece will make efforts to attract 30 percent more
visitors next year, Greek Tourism Minister Fani Palli Petralia
said on Wednesday.
Inaugurating Tourism Planetarium in Athens, an exhibition to
mark world tourism day, the minister said the target was ambitious
but feasible. (Greece-Tourism)
- - - -
HANOI -- The 13th APEC Ministerial Meeting on Small- and
Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) kicked off here Thursday, centering
on measures to foster the firms in the Asia-Pacific region.
The two-day meeting, with participation of ministers in charge
of SMEs of members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), has the theme "Strengthening SME Competitiveness for Trade and

Investment" which covers such fields as business-enabling
environment for SME, SME capacity building for trade and
investment, and facilitation of linkages for SME.
(Vietnam-APEC-Enterprise)
- - - -
SAN JOSE -- Costa Rica and Russia have revived a series of
agreements on trade and energy, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bruno
Stagno and visiting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak
said on Wednesday.
Kislyak and Stagno made the remarks at a joint press conference
on Wednesday, the last day of Kislyak's two-day visit, following a
late Tuesday meeting with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
(Costa Rica-Russia-Agreement)

Copyright 2006 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY.
Financial systems firm moves to new Cardiff site. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) One of the UK's leading independent software providers for the financial services sector has opened new offices in Cardiff. Peterevans' systems now handle more than 20% of the retail trades executed on the London Stock Exchange.



The company's office expansion follows 22 years of success in the financial services sector, providing front to back office solutions focusing on the securities and investment market.

The company also has a presence in the financial heart of the City of London, where it has a strong customer base of blue chip companies featuring major international banks and stockbrokers.

Cardiff is the centre for the firm's software design, customer service, product maintenance and research and development work.

Peterevans' managing director Mike Foley said, 'Our products are used by some of the world's largest financial institutions and all of these products are produced at our Cardiff design centre - proving that talented IT people do not have to leave Wales to make an impact on the world stage.' The company's new offices at the Parade were opened by Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, Andrew Davies.

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
Catering installer Shine's winning at Wembley Stadium. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A family-run niche catering installation venture has further expansion on its menu after winning a lucrative pounds 8m contract for the new Wembley Stadium. Shine Food Machinery of Newport is acknowledged as a market leader in its sector. It was established in 1979 by John Shine, and while remaining the largest shareholder and chairman of the company, his two sons - Julian, the managing director, and Jonathan, operations director - are now the main driving forces.



The Wembley contract was secured with the financial assistance of Finance Wales, the organisation created by the Welsh Assembly Government to provide commercial funding to Welsh businesses.

Julian said, 'Securing the Wembley contract required a totally different business model. Because of the scale of this contract, outsourcing was inevitable as the manufacturing of the essential equipment would have been detrimental to the continued growth of our established core business.

'Our marketing analysis has resulted in a product and service ideally suited to the blue-chip private sector in addition to the public sector, as we specialise in the production of highly-engineered, bespoke, fabricated food systems suitable for the markets where the primary concern is the lifecycle cost of the installation.

'Shine's advanced design and manufacturing systems has resulted in reliable, high-quality food service counters, kitchen ventilation systems, service distribution units and general catering, construction and architectural fabrication.

'Over the last few years, despite a flat construction industry, Shine has produced strong and sustainable growth which has elevated us to the number one position in our market.'

Andrew Davies, the Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, congratulated the firm on its latest contract win. Mr Davies said, 'It is gratifying to see a Welsh company such as Shine securing such a high-profile contract. The new Wembley Stadium will, like Wales' own Millennium Stadium, be a sporting icon on the world stage and Shine highlights how Welsh companies can compete for prestigious contracts.

'It also highlights how Finance Wales, established by the Welsh Assembly Government, is helping Welsh businesses to thrive through targeted investment.'

Nick Larcombe, senior investment executive for Finance Wales, believes the management team of Shine has developed and exploited a niche market position.

'Shine has become acknowledged nationally as a market leader that is innovative and committed to the highest levels of quality throughout all aspects of company performance. And the recognition of this capability by end users such as design consultants, architects and construction contractors has enabled Shine to secure the Wembley contract.' Some of the recent larger contracts completed by Shine include the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Tag McClaren and a Royal Navy destroyer.

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
Management-worker partnership key to success, Welsh bosses told. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Partnership between management and employees is key to the future of Wales's businesses and organisations, industry leaders claim.

High performance working and increased productivity in the face of fierce global competition depends on improved employee, employer and trade union partnership.

Some leading businesses and organisations across Wales are reaping the benefits of working in partnership but industry experts claim there remains a long way to go.

Many large companies in Wales, those employing in excess of 250 people and which make up some 70% of the workforce in the country, have developed communications and consultative processes. However only some 15-20% have so far converted these into full working partnership arrangements.



Among Welsh firms already reaping the rewards of partnership working are 10,000-employee Broughton-based aero industry business Airbus and Gorseinon's 400-worker 3M tape products plant.

A conference organised by the conciliation service Acas aims to highlight the benefits of employee involvement and partnership approaches to the successful running of businesses and organisations in Wales.

The all-day conference, at Newport's Celtic Manor Resort, will bring together leading trade union officials and major employers from across Wales.

It will be opened by Assembly Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks Andrew Davies. Other speakers include Acas chief executive John Taylor and IPA director Willy Coupar.

The Welsh Assembly Government sponsored project is supported by lead bodies such as the CBI, TUC and EEF Cymru Wales. Acas Wales Partnership at Work project director Bill Griffiths said considerable positive results have already been achieved from partnership working for businesses in Wales.

Mr Griffiths said, 'In the face of global economic pressures, increasing overseas competition and the need for organisations to respond and adapt to new challenges, the roles of employees - a key asset of any organisation - and their involvement and engagement in and with the management of their operations is as crucial as ever.'

Research clearly shows that the employers that pay greatest attention to the people that work for them are the ones that consistently achieve best results, he said.

Evidence from countries that have adopted similar partnership working patterns, such as Sweden, Germany and France, suggest impressive results can be achieved.

'Figures show that organisations and businesses that work in partnership tend to be more successful than those that don't,' Mr Griffiths said.

He said businesses operating in this way benefit from greater employee commitment, loyalty and understanding which, in turn, lead to greater operational success, productivity and better results overall.

The Partnership at Work Conference is at the Celtic Manor Resort Golf Lodge on October 12. For more details and to book a free place contact 029 2076 8129 or email [email protected]

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
Takeover Season on WSE to Enter Decisive Phase. Check it out:
(Polish News Bulletin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In the opinion of analysts, the number of mergers and acquisitions in which the companies listed on the WSE are to play key roles will continue to grow. However, apart from Netia and Prokom, they will mainly be smaller firms partially controlled by foreign investors. For the last few months, mergers and acquisitions have been propelling business on Western stock markets. The most spectacular transactions were concluded in the financial, oil, extraction and telecom sectors. "Companies representing several market segments had accumulated considerable wealth which they then needed to invest. Paying out large dividends would have meant that their management boards had no vision of future enterprise development. Instead, they preferred to search for opportunities to strengthen their position by takeovers," says Deutsche Bank analyst Krzysztof Kaczmarczyk.



While in Poland these opportunities are much more limited, a similar development path was chosen by a number of listed companies operating on the domestic market, such as IT firms Emax and ComputerLand or ceramics manufacturers Cersanit and Opoczno. "In the near future, we will probably see the completion of more transactions of that type. However, they will be carried out more by second-rank businesses, not blue chips. The only likely major players to engage in such endeavours may be Prokom and Netia," says head of Analysis Department at DM BZ WBK brokerage house Marek Juras. Prokom remains one of the few Polish IT companies targeted by international corporations representing the sector. Meanwhile, the attention of its charismatic owner and CEO Ryszard Krauze has recently shifted to the oil industry. As for Netia, the former rival of TPSA has lately been experiencing a bad streak of luck. The failure of its current development strategy means its owner, Icelandic investment fund company Novator, may increase the pressure to realise profits from the investment.

As for the situation in the domestic pharmaceutical sector, CDM Pekao experts point out that the five leading drug distributors control around 60 percent of the market, whereas in Western European states it is usually three companies that hold an over 70-percent share of the local market. Moreover, so far no major foreign enterprise operating in this line of business has decided to enter the Polish market, despite its considerable size. In other words, it is only a matter of time before mergers and acquisitions take place in this sector as well. In the opinion of Andrzej Szymanski from DM BZ WBK, the only obstacle to carrying out such operations is the elevated price expectations of the owners of domestic drug distributors.

DI BRE Bank experts do not rule out that the takeover craze will start anew in the construction industry. In the past, sector investors have gained a presence in Budimex, Mostostal Warszawa and the no-longer-listed Exbud. Moreover, the last few months have seen the merger of Polimex and Mostostal Siedlce. In the opinion of Michal Marczak from DI BRE Bank, large construction companies will soon begin to acquire their subcontractors. A step in that direction has already been made by Polimex, which in return for its own shares intends to take over Energomontaz Polnoc. However, many analysts agree that it is Polimex that will soon fall prey to a major investor.

"If in the next few years annual GDP growth rate remains between 5-6 percent, foreign enterprises may presently have one last chance to purchase domestic companies at a moderate price," says Marczak. However, in the judgment of head of CDM Pekao Analysis Department Sobieslaw Pajak the current market prices of Polish firms are in most cases already too high for investors from abroad and are not sufficiently justified by expected profits. Nonetheless, it is widely believed that Goodyear will eventually acquire the remaining stake in domestic tyre manufacturer Debica. By the same token, Heineken and Accor, which are strategic investors in Zywiec brewery and Orbis travel agency, respectively, are expected to finally call for the stakes remaining in the hands of minority investors.

Copyright 2006 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Business Objects Continues Its Leadership of the Overall Western European Business Intelligence Tools Market. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. & PARIS --(Business Wire)-- Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), today announced that it has strengthened its position as the leading business intelligence (BI) vendor in Western Europe, according to the report "Western European Business Intelligence Tools, 2005 Vendor Shares" (IDC #LT07N, August 2006) issued by IDC. The report positions Business Objects as the leader throughout Western Europe in the overall business intelligence tools market, as well as the end-user query, reporting, and analysis segment. Business Objects was also the top vendor in the four Western European countries with the largest BI tools revenues - France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.



The IDC report combines software license and maintenance revenue data from query, reporting, and analysis tools, and advanced analytics software. In the report, IDC notes that in 2005, the BI tools market in Western Europe grew 13.7 percent to nearly 1.6 billion Euros. Business Objects commanded the top market share with 16.1 percent, based on 2005 license and maintenance revenues of more than 255 million Euros. In the largest segment of the BI tools market, end-user query, reporting, and analysis, Business Objects secured the leadership position with 20.6 percent of the market.

IDC also breaks out market share by country and region. In the report, Business Objects was one of the top three vendors in every Western European country or region. In France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom - the four Western European countries with the largest BI tools revenues - Business Objects secured the highest market share, including more than a 20 percent share in three of the four countries.

"Business Objects continues to lead the BI tools market in Western Europe," said report author Rasmus Andsbjerg of IDC. "The company has performed very strongly over a number of years, with strategic acquisitions paving the path for a larger portfolio in the business analytics space. As the overall market leader in Western Europe, Business Objects is also the largest BI tools vendor in a number of individual countries. Building on a strong customer base and partner network, Business Objects is set for continued success in Western European markets."

"With revenues that are nearly 40 percent larger than the next closest competitor, Business Objects is the clear leader of the BI tools market in Western Europe," said Maurizio Carli, senior vice president and general manager of European Operations at Business Objects. "Having double digit revenue growth is a clear endorsement of our strategy and execution. We continue to out innovate our competitors and deliver the industry's most advanced and complete business intelligence solution. Across every industry and in organizations of all sizes, Business Objects delivers the entire spectrum of BI capabilities, including core BI, enterprise information management, and enterprise performance management required to improve performance and gain a competitive advantage."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company's innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Verizon Business Expands European Ethernet Access to Private IP Service. Check it out:
READING, England, Sept. 28 -- Customers in six additional countries now have Ethernet access to the Verizon Business Private IP network under an expansion announced by the company today. Enterprise customers in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland and Spain now can use Verizon Business' next-generation Ethernet services to access the company's Private IP network in a flexible way.



The announcement extends Verizon Business Ethernet Access to a total of 16 European countries. Customers in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have been able to benefit from Ethernet services since January. Verizon Business also offers Ethernet Access to Private IP in the United States and in seven countries across Asia.

Ethernet is part of a wide range of access services available for Private IP, ranging from leased lines, DSL and satellite to WiFi, 3G and dial. This provides Verizon Business customers with the flexibility they need to connect their global sites to the Private IP network. Private IP, Verizon Business' fastest-growing service, is an ideal platform for customers wishing to implement advanced voice applications such as IP telephony, and is also a logical transition technology for traditional data customers wanting to make the move to an advanced IP network environment.

Using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology, Private IP customers benefit from connectivity between multiple locations in an "any-to-any" configuration, with simple customer-network configuration and management.

Peter Konings, Verizon Business' product director of international advanced data services, said: "By extending Ethernet access to Private IP to additional European markets, we are opening up the business benefits of Ethernet solutions to even more of our enterprise customers. Providing flexible access methods is a key element of Verizon Business' Application Aware networking strategy. To deliver upon this, Verizon Business is investing in a network infrastructure that ultimately will allow the network to sense and dynamically adapt its resources to the needs of the applications running over the network."

Verizon Business is recognized as a leader in providing global Ethernet services by the Metro Ethernet Forum, the foremost industry authority, and continues to deliver carrier-class Ethernet Services to the market. Ethernet Access to Private IP is part of the global Ethernet portfolio, which includes Ethernet Private Line (EPL) and Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL), providing service in 145 metro markets in the United States and in ten European countries, as well as between the United States and Europe; E-LAN Services in 53 metro markets in the United States; and Ethernet Access to the Internet throughout the United States, in 19 European countries and in seven countries within the Asia-Pacific region.

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications , is a leading provider of advanced communications and information technology (IT) solutions

to large business and government customers worldwide. Combining unsurpassed
global network reach with advanced technology and professional service
capabilities, Verizon Business delivers innovative and seamless business
solutions to customers around the world. For more information, visit
http://www.verizonbusiness.com/.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and
biographies, media contacts, high quality video and images, and other
information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at
http://www.verizon.com/news. To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News
Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news
releases.

Verizon

CONTACT: Jo Perrin of Verizon Business, +011-44-770-252-5868,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.verizon.com/http://www.verizonbusiness.com/http://www.verizon.com/new
s


Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/094251.html
Industry-Leading UK Telecom, Opal Telecom, Goes Beyond CRM to Embrace NetSuite for Partner Relationship Management. Check it out:
SAN MATEO, California and LONDON, September 28 --

- Key UK Resellers Adopt NetSuite PRM to Manage Entire Business Cycle

- NetSuite PRM Allows Hundreds of Partners 24/7 Self-Service to Manage
End-to-End Business

NetSuite, Inc., the leader in on-demand business software suites, today
announced the wide usage of NetSuite for Partner Relationship Management
(PRM) by industry-leading companies such as Opal Telecom, a wholly owned
subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc (CPW.L, a UK FTSE 250 company)
and key UK resellers. NetSuite's 3rd generation of Partner Relationship
Management and Self-Service portal capabilities enables partners to do much
more than other PRM applications available on the market. NetSuite enables
them to jointly manage leads and customers with their parent organization --
including lead registration, opportunity management, order management
(entering orders, invoicing and billing), Market Direct Fund (MDF)
management, email campaigns and customer service inquiries through a
Dashboard with business intelligence and publishing capabilities. This
personalised self-service portal is available anytime, anywhere. For more
information about how NetSuite's Partner Relationship Management capabilities
are helping companies run their partner channels, please visit
www.netsuite.com/partner .

The widespread growth in adoption of NetSuite PRM is a global phenomenon.
In the US, ViewSonic, a worldwide leader in visual display products, has
deployed NetSuite for complete partner relationship management, creating a
comprehensive partner portal that allows its thousands of partners 24/7
self-service access leveraging NetSuite's 3rd generation Partner
Relationship Management (PRM) and Self-Service portal capabilities. In Asia,
Singapore-based UP Your Service! (R) College, founded by internationally
acclaimed service and partnership innovator Ron Kaufman, has implemented
NetSuite to help build a global ecosystem with access to all its company,
customer and partner business information in real-time. NetSuite allows
International Service Innovator's partners to manage entire business cycles
through self-service in one system.

Opal Telecom (www.opaltelecom.co.uk), with headquarters in Warrington and
divisions in Manchester, London, The West Midlands and Glasgow, offers voice
services primarily to the corporate and SME (small and medium sized
enterprises) market in the UK. While implementing NetSuite in a phased
approach, Opal Telecom is already utilising many of NetSuite's customer and
order management features to manage its fast-growing business. More
importantly, NetSuite Partner Relationship Management is used to manage its
army of partners who work directly with end users. With NetSuite, Opal
Telecom's 150-plus partners can now manage and forecast opportunities as they
work them through the sales cycle, providing invaluable forecast visibility
to Opal Telecom's Dealer Channel sales group against their established
quotas.

"Previous to NetSuite, our Dealer Channel sales team -- with about 150
resellers -- operated by way of a paper-based system," said Andy French, Head
of Information Systems at Opal Telecom. "NetSuite's PRM capabilities have
helped us streamline the process for our Dealer Channel sales teams, with
opportunities feeding the forecast, so we now have complete visibility into
our forecast for Dealer Channel sales."

In the same vein, NetSuite resellers such as Nolan Computers and
Bluebridge One use NetSuite's PRM capabilities to manage their day-to-day
business. Because NetSuite is one system, it provides the resellers the
functionality to run their business seamlessly ranging from customer
support -- for tracking enhancement requests and support issues; to sales
and marketing efforts -- for email campaigns, prospecting and the
collaboration of sales efforts; to internal management -- for viewing their
own account information such as balances and transactions; to order
management - for entering orders, invoicing and billing; to calculating
partner commissions - which serve to motivate their sales reps and guide
sales behavior to complement overall business goals.

Nolan Computers (www.implementcrm.com) -- is using NetSuite's PRM
capabilities for support tracking; sales and marketing materials; prospecting
and collaborating on sales efforts; and reviewing their own accounting
information such as balances and transactions. "Using NetSuite Partner
Relationship Management allows us to collaborate with the NetSuite team,
helping to eliminate the conflicts of interest often faced by resellers in
other channels," said Tim Nolan, MD, Nolan Computers UK.

BlueBridge One (www.bluebridgeone.co.uk) -- is using NetSuite PRM for
entering orders, invoicing and billing; partner commissions; and marketing
campaigns including telemarketing and e-blasts. "By using NetSuite's PRM
capabilities, we are able to view and share information on our prospects,
deal status and existing customers both internally, across lines of business
and with our NetSuite channel representatives. This saves time and improves
efficiency," said Jon Ryan, MD, BlueBridge One.

Launched in February 2003, NetSuite's PRM capabilities are in their 3rd
generation of product development (in a separate press release today,
NetSuite announced PRM+). NetSuite PRM+ includes a new Incentive Management
tool for partners which can handle sophisticated multi-level channel sales
compensation plans and provide invaluable motivation to partner reps by
allowing revenue share visibility. These latest advancements add more power
to the only complete on-demand Partner Relationship Management solution that
allows an organisation to manage its end-to-end relationships with partners
from lead registration to completing the sale and delivering a joint service
or product to the end customer.

The cornerstone of NetSuite solutions is the collaborative web of
processes for end-to-end business management that it enables. NetSuite's PRM
capabilities seamlessly extend those processes to provide a platform for
collaboration among the extended enterprise of partner channels. Companies
such as Opal Telecom, Nolan Computers and BlueBridge One benefit by
leveraging NetSuite's PRM capabilities. Because the opportunities are managed
directly in the same system as their other sales, marketing, service and
finance operations, they get visibility into partner pipelines and forecasts.
Redundant day-to-day partner support is eliminated since partners can now
access much of what they need to know simply by logging into the self-service
portal. Customers can determine the effectiveness of joint marketing
campaigns, and set up and run incentive compensation plans with as much
complexity and levels as required to align the partner channel with strategic
goals for business growth. This provides partners with visibility into their
revenue share in real-time as new orders are entered, ensuring a high
adoption rate of the partner self-service portal.

Moreover, the company providing this partner access doesn't have to do
anything special to enable the self-service portal. There's no complex data
to be imported or exported, no tricky XML or Web services to be written. All
that's required is a simple point and click graphical user interface to
define what data and application functionality a specific partner has rights
to view and edit, and the partners can be online -- leveraging all the
advanced sales and order management functions integrated in NetSuite along
with joint marketing program management and delivery of customer support and
service. Ultimately, it is the companies that "get" this level of
collaboration with their partners that will realize competitive advantage in
today's market and in the future.

About Opal Telecom:

Opal is one of the UK's largest telecoms network operators and is a
wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc (a UK FTSE 250
company). Opal's strategy is for the group to lease transmission capacity and
focus capital investment on the development of bespoke intelligent network
solutions. The business has developed its own intelligent network (IN),
interactive voice response (IVR) and internet service provider outsourcing
(ISPO) platforms. Against a background of deregulation in the market for
telecoms services, Opal has been successful in winning new business and
growing customer revenue streams rapidly.

Through a multi-million pound investment in technology, Opal Telecom is a
major player in the delivery of business-focused telecom solutions that are
at the forefront of the new communications era.

About Nolan Computers

Nolan Computers Plc is a specialist in corporate and business solutions.
As a software development house, it plays an integral part in thousands of
installations of business systems worldwide. Its customers cover a range of
industries, including IT, financial and distribution. Nolan has many years of
experience in the software development, distribution, and support market.
Offices in the UK, United States and Australia give Nolan a worldwide
infrastructure.

About Bluebridge One

BlueBridge One is a leading provider of integrated on-demand business
solutions -- including software, services, training and support. Its goal is
to provide sophisticated integrated enterprise solutions without the
complexity and associated cost to high-growth small and medium-size
businesses. BlueBridge One is an accredited partner of NetSuite Inc. and Sage
PLC and was the leading NetSuite EMEA solution provider for 2004.

About NetSuite

NetSuite, Inc. is the leader in on-demand business software suites and
the fastest-growing software company in North America (source: Deloitte Fast
500 study). NetSuite enables companies to manage all key business operations
in a single system, which includes accounting/Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Ecommerce. NetSuite is
delivered as an on-demand service, so there is no hardware to procure, no
large, up-front license fee, and no complex set-ups. NetSuite's
patent-pending "real-time dashboard" technology provides an easy-to-use view
into role-specific business information that is always up-to-date. For more
information about NetSuite, visit: www.netsuite.com.


Contact:
Mei Li
NetSuite, Inc.
+1-650-627-1063
[email protected]

Web site: http://www.netsuite.com

NetSuite, Inc.

Mei Li of NetSuite, Inc., +1-650-627-1063, or [email protected] /Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20021024/SFTH024LOGO/

AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org PRN Photo Desk,[email protected]
Perry plan calls for truth in spending: But opponents argue he has failed to use funds for their stated purpose. Check it out:
(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Gov. Rick Perry called Wednesday for budget reforms that would create a truth in spending policy as well as return surplus revenue to taxpayers.

Speaking to the Greater Dallas Chamber in Addison, Mr. Perry said dedicated funds should be used for their stated purpose, not tossed into the state's general fund for other needs.

"I'm kind of drawing a line in the sand," Mr. Perry told a group of business leaders and elected officials gathered at the Chamber luncheon. "I'm going to fight that practice real hard so people get the government spending that they have been promised."



Mr. Perry's opponents quickly dismissed his five-point plan, saying that he has been part of the problem.

"If Rick Perry wants to stop fraud, he should stop being a fraud," said Jason Stanford, a spokesman for Democrat Chris Bell. "He has been defrauding the taxpayers of Texas for the last six years. He never spoke out about this until Chris Bell raised the issue."

Independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn accused the governor of "wasteful spending and misrepresentations to the people of Texas." The campaign noted that state spending has increased $44 billion on Mr. Perry's watch and decried what it called $300 million in corporate welfare, a reference to the governor's Texas Enterprise Fund, which provides state incentives for job creation.

Mr. Perry's plan would:

--Impose a stricter limit on how much state government spending can grow.

--Require that dedicated funds, such as a sporting-goods sales tax designed to fund state parks, be used as intended or refunded to taxpayers.

--Require detailed descriptions of spending in the state budget, rather than lump-sum line items.

--Push state agencies to publish their expenditures online.

--Amend the constitution to allow the state to return surplus revenue to taxpayers.

"It's time to scream bloody murder on this," Mr. Perry said after his speech. "Texans need to know that when they have been told that this is what this money is being collected for, that's what it goes for."

The governor, locked in what could be a tight four-way scrum as he seeks a second full term, defended his decision to push for the reforms just weeks before the election.

"An election is a really good time to talk about it," Mr. Perry said. "People are focused, the public is paying attention. If I'd said it 18 months ago, nobody might have paid attention."

One business group praised Mr. Perry's proposals.

"They sound like reasonable ideas, depending on the details on how they are to be implemented," said Bill Allaway, president of the Taxpayers and Research Association, which represents hundreds of medium and large companies.

Strayhorn aides noted that Mr. Perry has never returned state surplus money to taxpayers.

"This last-minute, pre-election conversion will be seen for what it is -- a political gimmick the governor is trying to pull over on the voters after six years of failures and deceit," said Strayhorn spokesman Mark Sanders.

The governor spent most of Wednesday in Dallas, speaking at a nanotechnology convention and the grand opening ceremony of the Rena Tarbet Cancer Center in McKinney.

He also visited The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board, where he said he wanted to be governor for, perhaps, another eight years. Most observers have figured that if he wins another term, he won't run again and might be angling for a spot on the 2008 Republican presidential ticket.

"I'm interested in getting things done," he said. "When you look at the decisions we have made day in and day out ... we're making progress. We're doing some inventive things to move this state forward."

E-mail [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Dell is taking steps to lock up the lucrative but fragmented small business market with a new line of servers.. Check it out:
(www.aspnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Like kids following in their big brothers' footsteps, smaller enterprises often take their IT spending cues from their larger brethren.

Dell which introduced five new servers today in the hopes of capturing a larger share of the small and medium sized business (SMB) market, sees this trend encompassing even such enterprise-oriented strategies as server virtualization.

Jay Parker, director of Dell PowerEdge servers, said that SMBs can use virtualization to consolidate multiple applications on a single server, thus saving themselves money and, just as importantly, a considerable amount of space.

During a press conference, Dell detailed the PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers, all of which feature dual-core Intel Xeon processors.

Parker noted that the new servers offer dramatic increases in performance, scalability and power efficiency.

9th generation family. Source: Dell

For instance, according to Parker, the PowerEdge 1900 provides a 211 percent greater performance than a PowerEdge 1800.

Parker also predicted that new products will hit the market in the next 12 to 24 months with "hardware capabilities targeting virtualized environments and SMBs simultaneously."

"You'll see us cater more to the SMB market over time," he added.

Dell is shipping the servers with versions of Microsoft Small Business Server software.

The PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers, as well as Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers, are priced at $1,399, $749, $949, $1,049 and $599, respectively.

Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell's U.S. small business division, noted that Dell is lowering price points to help small businesses adopt technologies used by larger companies, including virtualization.

"We're seeing an increasing rate of adoption of these technologies," he said during a conference call this morning.

Laurie McCabe, an analyst with consultant AMI-Partners, was somewhat more restrained in her view.

"The term virtualization itself is confusing to small business owners," she told internetnews.com .

But she said agreed that they would be interested once they learn about it "in plain English," and said that companies with more than 100 employees are certainly primed to adopt it.

Muehleman said the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker has increased its share of the SMB market in unit terms from 10 percent in 2000 to 30 percent today.

That's not insignificant, as those businesses will spend $98 billion on IT products and services this year, according to AMI-Partners.

Internet.com Corp.

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Gelsinger discusses the new vPro, PCI, SSE and power initiatives.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Patrick Gelsinger may not be the chief technology officer of Intel these days, but he sure sounded like it at his keynote on the second day of the Intel Developer Conference.

In addition to discussing further the company's new quad core CPUs, Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of the digital enterprise group, also announced several new initiatives from Intel.

The first announcement was the next generation of Intel's vPro technology, planned for next year. It will feature the third generation of Intel Active Management technology, adding support for the new Web Services Management (WS-MAN) APIs and system defense features that can slow or stop the spread of viruses and worms



Patrick Gelsinger Source: Intel

The next version of vPro will also include Intel Trusted Execution Technology, formerly codenamed LaGrande.

The technology includes hardware extensions for Intel processors and chipsets that protect applications by running them in their own space, isolated from other applications.

Gelsinger also announced 50 new instructions that will be added to the Penryn and Nehalem processors; the 45nm designs due next year. "SSE4 and more," as he called it, would handle high-performance computing, searching and security systems.

Intel is also pumping up the internal bus of the PC, giving PCI Express a boost for the first time in years. The project, done in conjunction with IBM , is called "Geneseo."

It would bring higher bandwidth and a lower latency interface to all peripheral cards. In a slide showing "Broad industry support" for Geneseo," ATI was conspicuous by its absence from the list of vendors.

Gelsinger's final announcement was one out of left field. Intel is partnering with BAPCo, developer of the 3Dmark benchmarking software, to create a power management and efficiency benchmark product called EECoMark.

According to BAPCo, EECoMark will measure power consumption across all components and while running different applications.

The show really reflects how much of a headache AMD has become for Intel, because Intel was hitting back at AMD. A lot.

Gelsinger ran a demo showing the Xeon 5300 against an Opteron (and clobbering it), and during a demo of vPro security, his "password" on a dummy bank account was "I hate amd."

He also cited reduced time to market, higher yield and lower manufacturing costs of the Xeon over the Opteron, and that it was shipping. "We'll have a million units before the competition ships one unit," he said.

The day prior, Intel CTO Justin Rattner looked in a trashcan during his keynote demo and said "Wait, is that an Opteron I see in there?"

Internet.com Corp.

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The CA CEO discusses the impact of virtualization and distributed computing, as well as falling IT costs.. Check it out:
(www.aspnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The computing resources that make the bedrock of IT will be virtualized over the next five years to alleviate the tangled Web of complexity in data centers.

Virtualization, in which software on physical machines is split up to act as several physical machines, is showing up in processors, storage, networks, applications and databases.

John Swainson Source: CA

However, these technologies create more complexity and need to be carefully managed as "enterprise IT management," according to CA ( Quote , Chart ) CEO John Swainson during his keynote at the Interop New York 2006 event here.

That complexity is in large part derived from the automation of computers and all of the networking gear, applications, management and security infrastructure that connect and power them.

This complexity is manifested in remotely connected devices, as well as new types of security applications to corral those gadgets.

Moreover, these technologies must work with existing environments and legacy technology, such as mainframes.

In short, complexity derives from treating complexity.

"Businesses are continuing to automate their business processes, and that's a good thing," Swainson said. "It ensures that productivity will increase, and that drives up productivity and enables economic growth.

"But each time we do it we add another layer of complexity to the IT environment ... The level of complexity is becoming overwhelming."

Swainson noted that CIOs can use virtualization to cut through the time-and cost-consuming of traditional custom coding.

However, the next step is to find a way to choreograph the components in a virtualized environment, which is where service-oriented architectures (SOAs) come in.

SOAs ( define ), he said, offer standard interfaces connected to centralized repositories, as well as a standard way for vendor software to integrate processes and transactions to allow for the smooth consumption of Web services ( define ).



But SOAs trigger the need for more management.

Complexity spawned by virtualization and SOAs, as well as the uptick in computing usage associated with falling IT costs, is creating the need for stronger management schemas.

"We need to drive relentlessly to full process automation via technology ... even as new and disruptive technologies emerge and are exploited," Swainson said.

Then came the pitch: Swainson touts CA's enterprise IT management plan, which includes security, enterprise systems management (ESM) for storage, and business service optimization (BSO), as having the potential "to do for IT what ERP did for business processes."

Enterprise resource planning provided a framework for managing application processes, which is what CA hopes to accomplish at a holistic level with EITM.

The idea is to rapidly respond to business changes, but be proactive about them where possible to accommodate such technologies as Web services, RFID ( define ) and VoIP ( define ).

EITM, Swainson said, will both effectively automate IT processes and reduce the costs of manual labor chances of human error.

CA isn't the only company in the high-tech space working on such a plan; IBM ( Quote , Chart ), BMC ( Quote , Chart ), HP ( Quote , Chart ), Microsoft ( Quote , Chart ) and just about any company that makes management software is trying to concoct a catch-all strategy for managing IT resources.

But that could be easier said than done.

At a session here earlier today about why network management is becoming popular again, panel members claimed the different categories of management software are breeding too many point solutions that don't solve the whole IT management problem.

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SPECIAL FEATURE: RP, INC.

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SPECIAL FEATURE: RP, INC.. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Who owns the Philippines? Textbooks say that as citizens of the country, the Filipinos - regardless of ethnicity or social class - are the rightful owners of the land.

But more than being a simple test of Filipinos' level of nationalism, this question is capable of sparking a heated debate. While some will argue that the most important stakeholders are the middle class, others will assert the stake of the masses. Leftists, meanwhile, would bitterly admit that politicians own the country.



But then, given the influence that large corporations wield, one could easily believe that this group is the biggest stakeholder of the country.

"The truism that probably 5% owns 95% of the country holds true till today, especially now that the number of taipans have dramatically increased," BusinessWorld columnist Argee Guevarra said in an interview.

Modern-day thinking would probably agree with this, as reflected in the Ulat ng Bayan survey conducted by Pulse Asia, Inc. last July. According to the study, 41% of Filipinos believe that the country is under an oligarchy, or a government led by a powerful few, and Filipinos cannot do anything about the situation, and another 41% cannot discern what kind of political system runs in the country. This suggests that people do not see much of democracy, that everything is dictated by a ruling class.

On the other hand, De La Salle University Graduate School of Business professor Elfren S. Cruz said foreign firms get a sizeable stake of the country, considering the rise of globalization that allowed for their increased presence and control of industries in the country, not to mention the colonial ties between the United States and the Philippines.

"To a large extent, a lot of the wealth in this country is not just owned by Filipinos; a lot of wealth is owned by foreigners," Mr. Cruz said, which is evident in how foreign food and beverage conglomerates, manufacturing firms, among others, dominate various industries in the country.

The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, despite accounting for an estimated 99.6% of the total establishments in the country, still cannot claim to have a significant amount of wealth compared to large corporations.

According to a National Statistics Office (NSO) study in 2004, only 32% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) can be attributed to the SMEs. Mr. Cruz added that SMEs are still not that influential given the small market share that they get.

"[SMEs] have a smaller share of the market. The large companies are the ones who control the market," he said.

Mr. Guevarra shared the same view, saying, "[The influence of SMEs] can be determined through a period of years ... because wealth accumulation has just started. I feel that they are beginning to own part of the Philippines but whether that is sizeable enough will be proven in the years to come."

ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eugenio Lopez III, however, recognized the growing overseas Filipino worker (OFW) sector, considering the large amounts of dollar remittances that currently fuels the economy.

"The traditional concept is it's really the business sector who has a lot to say. But I think that situation has changed dramatically over the years. I think the OFW as a sector now plays a critical role. In that respect we can say that the OFW sector plays a bigger role in terms of the middle class of the Philippines," he said.

Mr. Guevarra also acknowledged that the OFW sector is now "buying back shares" of the country considering the volume of remittances that they send to their families, even more so their purchase of real estate properties.

The real estate industry in fact posted the most accelerated growth rate for the first quarter at 7.2% due to sale of properties to OFWs. Property developers say that this segment is 60% to 75% of their total market. Despite the growing purchasing power of OFWs, Mr. Guevarra said that "these real estate projects are still managed, owned, and developed by these specialized class of taipans."

Indeed, in terms of influence, capability, and wealth, the business sector becomes the unrecognized owners and rulers of the land.

This fact one cannot easily dismiss since it is not exclusive to the Philippines. In his book Understanding Popular Culture, cultural studies expert John Friske gave a universal explanation of how big corporations function in a given society, saying that as the producers of goods and services, they are the ones who set the pace of the business sector. This leaves the people as consumers who are at the mercy of what big corporations have to offer. Because business owners have the capital to produce or manufacture anything they believe the market will patronize, consumers have no choice but to buy what is offered to them.

Given the power of the business sector, Mr. Cruz said that large corporations should be able to contribute to the improvement of the community where they operate in. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects may make for a good step to reach out to the poor, but Mr. Cruz added that mere donations are not enough to create a better community.

As Philippine American Life and General Insurance Co. (Philamlife) President and Chief Executive Officer Jose L. Cuisia, Jr. said in his speech at the 6th Asian CEO Insurance Summit in Bangkok, Thailand last February, "It is clear that only when CSR is part of business strategy does it get all the resources it needs, and consequently, makes it [an] effective [tool for the development of the community or country]."

Mr. Cuisia also quoted University of Michigan professor C.K. Prahalad: "When you have good times and profitable times, you can put money into CSR, and in bad times, you can cut it off. But if that is your business ... what do you cut off?"

While people may benefit from the innovations that they offer, big businesses must be able to contribute to national development. Given the case of poverty and unemployment in the Philippines, they should be able to provide jobs even to the poor, even if that means a negative impact on their bottom lines.

"What is the role of businesses? Hopefully, they will be the engines of growth, and therefore create jobs. But businesses will tell you that they will not make money if they will create jobs for the poor. But how do you assure people of dignity? By giving them jobs, not just charity," Mr. Cruz said.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Cisco in Turkey, FireSocket for Auto CRM, NetSuite's PRM. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Only Life by The Feelies:

Cisco Systems has announced what company officials consider a "significant investment initiative" in Turkey, totaling up to $275 million (about 410 million New Turkish Lira frickin' heck it's down to 1.45 YTL per dollar again, we live here in Istanbul and our rent's set in lira and we get paid in dollars, it's been as high as 1.60ish recently, let's see it do that again) over five years.



This announcement was made by John Chambers, President and CEO of Cisco Systems, during his visit to Central and Eastern Europe and highlights the growing importance of places like Turkey in the global emerging markets.

Don'tcha just love that phrase, "emerging markets?" When I was a journalist here in Istanbul in the early '90s it was an "emerging" market. When has a market emerged as much as it's ever going to, and what do you nicely call it when it does? If you've got a 5'2, 48-year old man you don't call him a "growing man," you call him a "short man."

Chambers discussed Cisco's investment plans in Turkey with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan while in Ankara this week.

Chambers said Cisco's announcement about its investment in Turkey "supports the country's entrepreneurial focus and e-transformation initiatives, which are focused on establishing a more connected country and skilled workforce and are vital for Turkey to sustain the same rate of growth it has enjoyed over the past four years."

Cisco Systems' five-year investment plan for Turkey will allocate investments in the following areas:

Create technology investment initiatives aligned with Turkey's Networked Economic Agenda to help accelerate country transformation and economic growth.

Support the Turkish Prime Minister's Connected Turkey e-transformation agenda by providing networking technology and prototypes to support pilot programs targeted towards rural broadband for education, as well as connectivity for small and medium businesses, municipalities and local communities.

Develop a Cisco Systems Technology Innovation Center to demonstrate the impact technology has on productivity across the different market segments and foster closer collaboration with local companies and partners to accelerate partner testing as well as customer pilot projects. As part of this, Cisco will provide a lab platform for testing complex new technologies for the Turkish marketplace with local partners and entrepreneurs and increase the number of CCIE engineers in the country to a minimum of 100.
Establish the Cisco Entrepreneurship Institute, an initiative between Cisco, the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) and the Turkish government, to teach skills for opening and running small businesses. The education partner in the program is the University of Economics and Technology. As part of this initiative Turkish entrepreneurs and small businesses will be eligible for equity and project financing, supporting information and communications technology development in Turkey.

Support the establishment of 200 new Networking Academies in the country over the next five years to provide enhanced technical programs in concert with leading local universities. There are currently 47 Networking Academies across Turkey.

Offer localized products as well as customer service and support for the technical needs and requirements of local service provider customers.

Increase overall headcount of Cisco employees in Turkey from 80 to 400 employees and expand office space to accommodate employee growth.

Cisco first established operations in Turkey in 1996 and today maintains offices in Istanbul and Ankara.


In an announcement sure to warm the cockles of Bob Thompson's heart, NetSuite, Inc., a vendor of on-demand business software suites, has announced the wide usage of NetSuite for Partner Relationship Management (PRM) by such companies as Opal Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc and key UK resellers.

Partner Relationship Management is basically CRM for businesses dealing with each other, it lets partners to do things like jointly manage leads and customers with their parent organization -- including lead registration, opportunity management, order management (entering orders, invoicing and billing).

Tools like NetSuite's have such features as Market Direct Fund (MDF) management, e-mail campaigns and customer service inquiries through a Dashboard with business intelligence and publishing capabilities.

With PRM tools, Opal Telecom's 150-plus partners can now manage and forecast opportunities as they work them through the sales cycle, providing forecast visibility to Opal Telecom's Dealer Channel sales group against their established quotas.

"Previous to NetSuite, our Dealer Channel sales team -- with about 150 resellers -- operated by way of a paper-based system," said Andy French, Head of Information Systems at Opal Telecom. "PRM capabilities have helped us streamline the process for our Dealer Channel sales teams, with opportunities feeding the forecast, so we now have complete visibility into our forecast for Dealer Channel sales."

The cornerstone of NetSuite's and similar PRM products is the collaborative web of processes for end-to-end business management that it enables. PRM capabilities extend those processes to provide a platform for collaboration among the extended enterprise of partner channels. Because the opportunities are managed directly in the same system as their other sales, marketing, service and finance operations, they get visibility into partner pipelines and forecasts.

Redundant day-to-day partner support is eliminated since partners can now access much of what they need to know simply by logging into the self-service portal. Customers can determine the effectiveness of joint marketing campaigns, and set up and run incentive compensation plans with as much complexity and levels as required.

The neat trick to all this is the company providing this partner access doesn't have to do anything special to enable the self-service portal. There's no complex data to be imported or exported, no tricky XML or Web services to be written. All that's required is a simple point and click graphical user interface to define what data and application functionality a specific partner has rights to view and edit, and the partners can be online.

PRM came out in the early 2000s, but never really took off the way some hoped it would. Nevertheless it remains a good idea, workable in places.

By the way, what are "cockles?"


Software vendor FireSocket has announced what company officials call "significant enhancements" to its enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) platform, DealerSocket.

The upgrade focuses on the automotive service department and includes dynamic appointment scheduling, service management and follow up support tools that promise to optimize a critical but often neglected part of a dealer's business operations.

With as much as 60 percent of the average automotive dealership's profits coming from automotive service and repair departments, these new features stand to be welcomed by dealers. Most CRM technologies focus solely on a dealer's sales and customer service operations.

"Controlling and managing the pace of service is one of those 'make or break' issues in creating the ideal customer experience for a service department's customers," said Ord. "Unfortunately, it's often left to chance at most dealerships."

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Casinos bring surge of funds to tribes, Arizona. Check it out:
(Arizona Daily Star, The (Tucson) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 28--Arizona tribal casinos made a record $1.79 billion in gambling revenue during the year that ended June 30.

That's an increase of about 16 percent from the previous year's total of $1.54 billion, according to figures released Wednesday by the Arizona Department of Gaming.

The department oversees the state's 23 Indian casinos, including the five in Southern Arizona owned by the Tohono O'odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.

Locally, the Pascua Yaquis operate Casino del Sol and Casino of the Sun, employing about 1,300 workers on the Southwest Side.

The O'odham operate the two Desert Diamond Casinos and Golden Ha:san Casino near Why. The casinos employ about 1,200.

Both tribes ranked in the top 20 in this year's Star 200 survey of the area's largest employers.

Though no new casinos have opened since 2002, revenues have grown from about $1.3 billion in 2004 to $1.7 billion this year. That increase could be attributed to a good economy and more people moving to Arizona, said Sheila Morago, executive director of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association in Phoenix.



The state's population grew by about 3.5 percent last year, making Arizona second behind Nevada as the fastest-growing state, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.

The state's tourism industry is also healthy, with more visitors going to casinos, Morago said.

New visitors to the Pascua Yaquis' casinos also are being noted this year, tribal Chairwoman Herminia Frias said.

"We've seen the trend in our casinos," she said. "Gaming is a form of entertainment. People like to come out to see a show, eat at a nice restaurant and have a good time."

Since voter-approved Proposition 202 went into effect in 2003, tribal-state compacts require tribes with casinos to send contributions to the state every three months.

Using a sliding scale, tribes pay 1 percent of the first $25 million in net winnings to the state, 3 percent for the next $50 million, 6 percent for the following $25 million, and 8 percent when net winnings exceed $100 million.

Total tribal contributions to the state, counties, cities and towns totaled about $91 million this year, an increase of 26 percent from $72 million last year, the Gaming Department said.

Of that $91 million, tribes sent about $81 million this year to fund education, trauma care and other community services around the state.

The remaining $10 million went to city, county and state programs of the tribes' choosing. The Pascua Yaqui Tribe, for example, gave money to buy computer equipment for Tucson neighborhood centers and a new garbage truck for the city of South Tucson, according to an e-mail from the tribe.

But it's Arizona's schools that benefit the most from the contributions, with about $40 million this year going to teacher-compensation funds and programs to reduce classroom size.

The Sunnyside Unified School District received nearly $700,000, while the Tucson Unified School District got about $2.5 million in gambling money in its last fiscal year, district spokeswomen said.

The funds are helping to reduce class sizes, said Chyrl Hill Lander a TUSD spokeswoman. "Rather than having 35 (students), we have 25 in a classroom, and we'll be able to give more students individual attention and help with dropout prevention to keep students in school," she said.

Compared with other states, Arizona ranks third for Indian casino revenue, behind California's $7.2 billion and Connecticut's $2.3 billion says the most recent Indian Gaming Industry Report by economist Alan Meister of Analysis Group Inc. The state's gambling revenue is likely to grow further in the future.

The Navajo Nation Council, with a reservation in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, approved a bill this week to create the first Navajo Gaming Enterprise, which will handle gambling operations for the tribe.

Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. has entered into an agreement with a hospitality firm to develop the tribe's first casino in Navajo, Ariz., about 55 miles west of Gallup, N.M., on Interstate 40.

More casino-hotels are also being developed, with restaurants, retail and entertainment venues, adding options other than gaming, Morago said.

The Tohono O'odham Tribe is moving forward with its $120 million hotel and casino project on Tucson's South Side.

Expected to open by fall 2007, it will replace the original Desert Diamond Casino at 7350 S. Nogales Highway and become Southern Arizona's first casino-hotel complex.

Though nothing is final, the Pascua Yaquis have discussed building a hotel near the tribe's casinos, Frias said.

"It's a way to diversify economic opportunities for the tribe," Frias said. "It offers an opportunity to bring people from outside the community. It would also add to the tribe's new hospitality environment."

The Salt River-Pima Indian Community broke ground this week on Casino Arizona Resort, a casino-hotel project near Loop 101 and Indian Bend Road near Scottsdale.

Wild Horse Pass Casino, operated by the Gila River Indian Community, is rebuilding its facility and moving closer to Interstate 10 near Chandler. The tribe plans to turn Wild Horse Pass into a casino-resort with 250 hotel rooms, a 2,300-seat entertainment hall and a parking garage.

State benefits

--Some 2006 tribal gambling contributions

l $81,087,909 total to fund state programs in 2006.

l $2,530,000 million to TUSD.

l $673,623 to Sunnyside.

Sources: Tucson Unified School District and Sunnyside Unified School District

--Contact reporter Levi J. Long at 573-4179 or [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Adecco emphasizes professionalisation as key for profitable growth. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Corporate news announcement processed and transmitted by Hugin ASA. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- -------------- Management specifies strategy and provides trading update; long-term targets reiterated Valencia, Spain - September 28, 2006: The management of the Adecco Group, the worldwide leader in human resource services, provides a strategy update and outlook at the Adecco Strategy Days in Valencia, Spain. The future strategy towards the traditional Office and Industrial staffing sectors will be one of specialization and cost leadership in order to secure Adecco's global market leadership. In the professional staffing sector the emphasis will be on increased candidate retention, competencies and skills. "We see the staffing industry at an interesting turning point. There is an increasingly strong global demand for both flexible and skilled labour, to the extent that skills shortages are becoming a serious problem. We will meet the demand for flexibility and skills by focusing not only on recruitment but also on training and continuous learning", says Dieter Scheiff, Adecco Group CEO. Adecco reiterates its objective of revenue growth of at least 7-9% per annum on average for the coming years provided there are no material changes to the macroeconomic environment. At the same time management continues to be confident that the focus on professional business fields and the specialization of the Office and Industrial business will allow Adecco to continuously improve operating income margin to over 5% by 2009. Related to the introduction of an economic value added concept and to better reflect the group's focus on the combination of revenue growth, profitability and invested capital, Adecco aims to improve return on capital employed (ROCE) to above 25% by 2009. Dominik de Daniel, Adecco Group CFO, gives a trading update for the current quarter: "In the first two months of the third quarter 2006 we continued to see strong revenue growth of 11% when excluding the impact of trading days, currency and acquisitions. Revenue development in all of Adecco's main markets remained similar to the underlying growth rates in the second quarter." Rene Schuster appointed new head of Adecco UK & Ireland Adecco Group CEO Dieter Scheiff announces an important addition to the Group's leadership team. Rene Schuster will commence as the new head of Adecco UK & Ireland on October 1, and replace interim country head Mo Dedat who will revert back into his previous role as Adecco UK Finance Director. Rene Schuster joins Adecco from the Vodafone Group where he was global director for Vodafone's enterprise businesses. About Adecco The Adecco Group is the world market leader in Human Resource services with sales of EUR 18.3 billion in 2005. The Adecco network connects over 700,000 associates with business clients each day through its network of 33,000 employees and 6,600 offices in over 70 countries and territories around the world. Headquartered in Switzerland, and managed by a multinational team with expertise in markets spanning the globe, Adecco delivers an unparalleled range of flexible staffing solutions to corporate clients and qualified associates. _________________________ Contacts: Adecco Corporate Press Office [email protected] or +41 (0) 44 878 8832 Adecco Corporate Investor Relations [email protected] or +41 (0) 44 878 8925 Attachments/Links:http://hugin.info/100102/R/1078145/185916.pdf --- End of Message --- WKN: 922031; ISIN: CH0012138605; Index: SLCI, SMI, SPI, SMIEXP; Listed: Main Market in SWX Swiss Exchange;



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
CRM Vendor NetSuite Still Plugging Away At PRM. Check it out:

NetSuite, Inc., a vendor of on-demand business software suites, has announced the "wide usage" of NetSuite for Partner Relationship Management (PRM), by such companies as Opal Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc and key UK resellers.



NetSuite deserves some kudos for this, for being one of the few high-profile CRM vendors also trying to keep a high profile in the significantly smaller PRM market.

Partner Relationship Management is basically CRM for businesses dealing with each other, it lets partners to do things like jointly manage leads and customers with their parent organization -- including lead registration, opportunity management, order management (entering orders, invoicing and billing).

Tools like NetSuite's have such features as Market Direct Fund (MDF) management, e-mail campaigns and customer service inquiries through a Dashboard with business intelligence and publishing capabilities.

With PRM tools, Opal Telecom's 150-plus partners can now manage and forecast opportunities as they work them through the sales cycle, providing forecast visibility to Opal Telecom's Dealer Channel sales group against their established quotas.

"Previous to NetSuite, our Dealer Channel sales team -- with about 150 resellers -- operated by way of a paper-based system," said Andy French, Head of Information Systems at Opal Telecom. "PRM capabilities have helped us streamline the process for our Dealer Channel sales teams, with opportunities feeding the forecast, so we now have complete visibility into our forecast for Dealer Channel sales."

There really aren't many other vendors in this space -- that well-known industry observer, CBRO's Staff Writer, has reported recently that the just-acquired PRM vendor Click Commerce "has grown, but remains a small player overall, with revenue of $59 million last year."

Acquisition by a manufacturer (Click Commerce was bought out by Illinois Tool Works) instead of a fellow software vendor, is "a mark of the depth of the problems vendors in the sector are facing as the market for independent supply chain management (SCM) and partner relationship management (PRM) solutions dries up," faithful scribe Staff Writer observes correctly.

The cornerstone of NetSuite's and similar PRM products is the collaborative web of processes for end-to-end business management that it enables. PRM capabilities extend those processes to provide a platform for collaboration among the extended enterprise of partner channels. Because the opportunities are managed directly in the same system as their other sales, marketing, service and finance operations, they get visibility into partner pipelines and forecasts.

Redundant day-to-day partner support is eliminated since partners can now access much of what they need to know simply by logging into the self-service portal. Customers can determine the effectiveness of joint marketing campaigns, and set up and run incentive compensation plans with as much complexity and levels as required.

The neat trick to all this is the company providing this partner access doesn't have to do anything special to enable the self-service portal. There's no complex data to be imported or exported, no tricky XML or Web services to be written. All that's required is a simple point and click graphical user interface to define what data and application functionality a specific partner has rights to view and edit, and the partners can be online.

PRM came out in the late 1990s, early 2000s, but never really took off the way some hoped it would. Nevertheless it remains a good idea, workable in places. Just don't bet the ranch on it.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

CRM For Car Dealers Released By FireSocket. Check it out:

Software vendor FireSocket has announced what company officials call "significant enhancements" to its enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) platform, DealerSocket.

The upgrade focuses on the automotive service department and includes dynamic appointment scheduling, service management and follow up support tools that promise to optimize a critical but often neglected part of a dealer's business operations.



With as much as 60 percent of the average automotive dealership's profits coming from automotive service and repair departments, these new features stand to be welcomed by dealers. Most CRM technologies focus solely on a dealer's sales and customer service operations.

"Controlling and managing the pace of service is one of those 'make or break' issues in creating the ideal customer experience for a service department's customers," said Ord. "Unfortunately, it's often left to chance at most dealerships."

For some reason selling cars isn't one of the tasks that's covered by much of the CRM studies, except at the high end like tracking Mercedes' service programs, one feels it's almost like it's too dirty shirt of an industry to merit serious coverage. That's puzzling, since it's one of the industries well-suited to CRM, one in which customer loyalty is of great importance.

For instance, earlier this month software vendor 5square released a Web-based system automating every part of the sales process, including lead management, CRM, showroom control, desking, F&I, inventory, customer marketing campaigns, and dealership analytics. It guides the sales team on every lead and every deal, improving sales processes, customer satisfaction, and closing ratios, and integrates with both ADP and Reynolds and Reynolds DMS systems.

NADA statistics show that the average dealer spent $571 in 2005 on advertising and lead generation for each new vehicle sold. This investment dwarfs the cost of all management systems combined -- DMS, CRM, Desking, F&I, etc.

"How the dealership manages its leads and its sales process determines whether this investment is a gusher or a dry hole. Effective follow-up will substantially increase sales," said Yuri Pikover, 5square.com chairman and CEO.

5square.com integrates the entire sales process and company officials claim the product "has demonstrated consistent results in improving customer satisfaction, closing ratios, and gross." They point to a recent five-month study of eight pilot dealerships which "produced a 21 percent increase in closing rates, equal to 34 additional units per month per dealership."

According to John Anderson of the California-based John Anderson Group (which includes one of the largest Honda dealerships in the world), 5square.com's structured sales process and improved follow-up has, as good, salesperson-friendly CRM always does, help sell more cars and improve closing ratios: "We're capturing more than 90 percent of the ups, as opposed to 50 percent with CRM only software. Salespeople are happy to log an up because it guarantees them protection on the deal."

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/27 Switch & Data Inc. (Tampa, FL) $150.0
Is a leading provider of network neutral interconnection and
colocation services.
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
VegaStream Appoints Donald Krause VP, Service Provider Sales for North America. Check it out:
PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 28 -- Today, VegaStream announced it has appointed Donald Krause vice president of service provider sales in response to increasing demand from this specialized segment of the market.

"VegaStream is experiencing increasing sales across all its served market segments," said Robert Brakeman, general manager of the Americas, "and the service provider market is showing particularly robust growth. The specialized requirements of this market deserve strong, experienced sales leadership and I'm confident that Donald Krause is the right leader at the right time."



Krause is an 18-year veteran of telecommunications sales and his career includes tenure at Alcatel. "I'm very enthusiastic about helping service providers mine new growth in their long-established customers. Service providers are using VegaStream's cost-effective, reliable and easy-to-deploy digital media gateways to deliver all the benefits of VoIP with none of the risk. It's a win for their customers, a win for service providers and a big win for VegaStream." Krause brings an unsurpassed breadth of knowledge in the IOC, CLEC, IXC and ISP market segments and was responsible for service provider sales at Audiocodes before joining VegaStream in 2005. Krause is based in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina where he lives with his wife and two children.

Multi-Channel Strategy Multiples Success
The service provider market is one of three channels that VegaStream's award-winning voice-over-IP gateways reach customers. The other two channels include the traditional value-added reseller channel and the original equipment manufacture channel. VegaStreams's OEM channel had a major win at the Fall VON show in Boston when NACT announced it will private label VegaStream's 400 line of digital media gateways.

VegaStream: Standards-Based, Excellence-Driven
VegaStream's wide range of award-winning VoIP gateways let service providers and business customers rapidly deploy and profit from lower telephony costs and improved productivity. VegaStream gateways seamlessly integrate existing communications investments. From the Vega 400 digital gateway, a carrier-grade platform that connects digital telephony equipment to the public network, to the latest Vega 50 family of analog gateways -- all of VegaStream's products streamline the introduction of VoIP services.

About VegaStream
Founded in 1998, VegaStream is one of the most experienced companies in the enterprise VoIP market. The company supplies cost-effective, reliable and easy-to-deploy gateways to both traditional telecommunications carriers and the new generation of Internet telephony service providers. VegaStream serves the enterprise market through a global network of distributors and resellers supported by regional offices in the UK, USA and Australia. VegaStream is a privately-held company.

North American Media Contact UK Media Contact
Brian D. Johnson Steve Davis
VegaStream VegaStream Group
vox: 877-834-4470, ext. 7057 vox: 01344 7849900

VegaStream

CONTACT: Brian D. Johnson of VegaStream, +1-877-834-4470, ext. 7057, orSteve Davis of VegaStream Group, +01344 7849900

Web site: http://www.vegastream.com/
Esat Sezer is named Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. senior vice president. Check it out:
(Turkish Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Coca-Cola Enterprises announced that Esat Sezer of Turkey has been named senior vice president and chief information officer. Sezer, 44, will oversee the company's technology and information capabilities and will report to John F. Brock, president and chief executive officer.



The Coca-Cola Company had earlier appointed another Turk, Muhtar Kent, as president of Coca-Cola International and executive vice president of The Coca-Cola Company.

"Esat has more than 20 years of global information technology experience," said Brock. "His proven leadership skills and his expertise in enterprise-wide SAP implementation will help Coca-Cola Enterprises expand the capabilities and technologies necessary to better engage our employees and provide unparalleled service to our customers."

Most recently, Sezer served as corporation vice president and chief information officer for Whirlpool Corporation, a position he held since 2002 prior to joining Whirlpool as vice president of global information services in 2001.

Sezer held several positions of increasing responsibility with Colgate-Palmolive Co., including global information technology director, Europe/Africa/Middle East Division director, global applications associate director and information technology director in Warsaw and in Istanbul.

From 1988 to 1991, he was a senior consultant at Andersen Consulting in London. Born and raised in Istanbul, Sezer received his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Istanbul Technical University and his master of science in quantitative analysis from Istanbul University. Sezer will replace Bill Hartman, vice president of information technology.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. is the world's largest marketer, distributor and producer of bottle and can liquid nonalcoholic refreshment. Coca-Cola Enterprises sells approximately 80 percent of The Coca-Cola Company's bottle and can volume in North America and is the sole licensed bottler for products of The Coca-Cola Company in Belgium, continental France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Monaco, and the Netherlands

Copyright 2006 Turkish Daily News. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Middle East Intelligence Wire.

People power

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People power. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: dai The strength of employees is of great importance to any enterprise. That is where Manpower Inc gets its core business values. As a head hunter and human resources (HR) management expert, Manpower has a different business approach from many of its rivals: instead of simply seeking employees for clients and earning a commission, it tries to play a positive role in lobbying and aiding companies to do a better job keeping the talents they have. Through this approach, the head hunter aims to build a long-term relationship with clients and maintain a positive business circle, says David Arkless, executive board member of Manpower. "If our clients thrive further after consulting us, they will offer us more business opportunities in the future," Arkless explains. Replacing an employee with a new recruit can be expensive, often as much as the cost of the employee's annual salary. That price could mount when considering hiring new employees involves assessment, training fees and loss of quality, Arkless says. "When clients come to us requesting new talents, we always ask them why they want to substitute certain existing employees," Arkless explains. "In fact, they have to realize that it costs more to find and use new people." In reality, however, it is sometimes difficult for companies to keep first-class talent, as a long term relationship requires both companies and employees' efforts to adapt to each other. "Therefore, we will not turn down business chances or refuse requests from companies for new talents, though we warn them of the extra cost involved to use new people," Arkless says. Boosting morale As to how to keep talents longer, Arkless proposes another counterintuitive theory: rather than forcing an employee to change his or her many years of values and experiences, it is relatively easier for companies and organizations to shift their culture, management style and system to boost employees' morale and enhance working efficiency. "That is why we always tell our clients to figure out better ways to tune in with employees' needs," Arkless says. This proposal seems unconventional when considering Chinese State-owned enterprises, which have long sacrificed employees' benefits for self-development. In order to save the extra costs caused by brain drain, they should adjust their style to be in line with modern business management principles, the HR consultant suggests. The "employee-first" theory is also useful to foreign companies, who should bear in mind what it takes to keep Chinese employees and to secure smooth business operations in China. A recent survey by Manpower indicated that Chinese workers tend not to be as motivated by salary and compensation as their European counterparts. Rather, they attach greater importance to hands-on management and face-to-face communication with executives. "They prefer a flat organization, in which they can get access to new knowledge, training, and communication opportunities with the top administrators," Arkless says. Because of these factors, foreign companies need to better organize themselves to motivate their talents in China. "They have to combine modern management know-how with a traditional Chinese context in HR management," Arkless says. A unique market The Chinese market has other unique characteristics as well. There are more students graduating from colleges every year, but the country still lacks a skilled labour force to drive its economy further. This is another particular phenomenon of China that Arkless has observed. "Many graduates come out of university without the necessary silks to meet employers' requirements. As a result, it is hard for them to find jobs," Arkless says. There are profound reasons behind this phenomenon. The structure of high-level education does not fully fit the requirements of the social and economic development of China. Furthermore, enterprises do a poor job innovating, which is necessary to stimulate and keep talents, according to Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission of China. Furthermore, people have not changed their perception as to what they see as ideal jobs, Zhang says. He indicates that vocational training and skilled labour positions are still regarded as inferior. To help the Chinese authority solve the problem of skilled-worker shortages, Manpower is working closely with the relevant government divisions, such as the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, on vocational training and employment, Arkless says. Manpower is working on a more scientific method known as "talent planning" to identify what category of skilled talents a certain Chinese city, such as Shanghai, is in desperate need of. Based on the research, the company will provide consultation for local governments and help them train professionals in need. Manpower is a global employment and HR service provider. It is currently ranked 412th in Fortune's Global 500 list. The company has opened 60 offices in China since its entry into the Chinese market in the 1960s.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US software firm Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) is planning a Latin American tour to launch its new open source platform Suse Linux Enterprise 10, during October and November, the company said in a statement.



The tour includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and will be sponsored by other IT multinationals such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).

***

The Chilean government, through the education ministry Mineduc, non-profit technology transfer foundation Fundacin Chile and the website EducarChile, have signed an agreement with US internet search company Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to offer educational applications, the government said in a statement.

Under the terms of the agreement, signed during the 2006 IT tour organized by Chile's universal access foundation Fundacin Pas Digital, Google will offer educational internet tools to EducarChile through Google Earth.

***

Venezuela's science and technology ministry has launched a national center for research and development in open source technologies (Cenditel) located in the state of Mrida, local newspaper El Nacional reported.

The center aims to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) with open standards helping in the research and development of innovative solutions.

***

US networking solutions provider Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) has launched a contest for SMEs in Argentina and Chile offering as a prize the renovation of their IT platform, including IP telephony, security, wireless networks, switching and routing, Cisco said in a statement.

The prize also includes support and guarantees for a year.

The contest is open to private companies that have been operating for at least three years with 30-250 employees and at least 20 PCs in their network.

***

US software company Altiris (Nasdaq: ATRS) is about to sign an agreement with the Brazilian unit of US IT giant Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) to include its asset administration solutions in HP's PCs, regional news service TelcosIT reported.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Self-employed telecommuters work hard to stay connected. Check it out:
(Frederick News-Post, The (Frederick, MD) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--FREDERICK -- While the technological gadgets for home-based businesses and telecommuters may be similar, the requirements can be quite different.

Home-based businesses focus their technological needs on their customers.

Telecommuters work at home as if they were at the office, so their equipment needs to be compatible with their business or government employers.

"What we provide to our home-based business customers is central to what goals they want to accomplish, said Lynda Wagner, president and owner of NewTeQ Computer Services.

"We analyze their needs and help clients spend their money intelligently," Ms. Wagner said. "For example, if the company has three people, the owner doesn't need a $1,000 router.

"We want them to get the most bang for the buck for the greatest productivity and efficiency in the long run."

John Dickerson runs his business, SOHO Systems Inc., out of his Urbana home. His company focuses on small business clients, and technology follows need, he said.

For example, Mr. Dickerson installed all the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment for his wife, Erica, who has an interior design business, based in their home.

"Erica needs to take pictures, figure measurements, use AutoCAD (a suite of computer-assisted design products); and her work with customers is collaborative," Mr. Dickerson said

One of his customers is an Urbana farmer, and there is 100 acres between the old farm house and the new house.

"It was difficult to get technology into the 1700s-era farmhouse, but the new house had a cable modem. So we put directional antennas on both roofs to create a wireless bridge that enabled us to hook up to a server and three work stations," he said.



Telecommuters need their equipment at home to be compatible with the equipment at the business or government agency, Ms. Wagner said.

"We analyze the equipment, and the equipment at home doesn't have to match exactly the equipment at work, only be compatible," she said. "A piece of equipment at the telecommuter's home that more closely resembles that of a small business may be able to tie into the workplace."

There are two good technologies used for telecommuters, Mr. Dickerson said: a virtual private network, or VPN, and a Citrix technology where applications are installed on services in a central computer room.

The VPN establishes a secure and encrypted tunnel to the office. Once established, traffic can pass just as if on a local network, he said.

The Citrix product allows any computer to access Microsoft applications without having to install the applications on every desktop in the system, Mr. Dickerson said. "It uses a Citrix platform but the applications run on Microsoft servers in a central computer room.

"It's like the old days when terminals were linked to a mainframe. All the work is done on the Microsoft servers, not on the telecommuters' desktops," Mr. Dickerson said.

As for hardware costs, buying quality now saves on headaches later, said Nick Damoulakis, co-owner with wife, Amy, of Orases Consulting Corp. "You get what you pay for in customer service.

"I have a plan with Dell that guarantees that a service professional will be at my door in four hours. I would never buy generic; it's a headache if something breaks. I want to be able to call, and 1-2-3, it's done and they (service reps) are out of here."

Mr. Dickerson said users should buy the best products they can afford. "Do you want to buy cheap or keep your business up and running?" he said. "Take a switch. You can buy a cheap thing, and it works. Let's say the switch has eight connections; that's fine, but your entire enterprise may depend on that one switch.

"That single-point failure can take you down. Or, you could spend several hundred dollars on a switch that will last for the next 10 years."

The best software is free, Mr. Damoulakis said.

That would be software from the Open Source Initiative at www.opensource.org.

"We use and build from open source," he said. "It's the client's option. For example, if we tailor open source code for a real estate agent and improve the software, we'll put it out for the public to use.

"Using open source software can save a client thousands of dollars," he said.

Open source is very nice, but you have to have people locally who can support it and make it work correctly, Mr. Dickerson said. With a licensed product, there is a much broader support mechanism.

"If you use an open source word processor on a Linux platform, it can work well with a very nice look and functionality; but if you don't know Linux and its applications, and don't have a support contract, and the platform goes down, you're stuck," he said.

Ms. Wagner always recommends standard software products because the specialized software for her clients doesn't work with open source, she said.

"Title companies are a big part of our business, and we use TitleExpress software (from TSS Corp.)," Ms. Wagner said. "We take the software and customize it for our clients.

"We create merge docs and merge sets using their software," she said. "We can print out, in order, the documents needed for a settlement agent at the time of settlement. It makes the settlement very efficient."

Advances in computer technology are rapid, but Ms. Wagner takes it slow when introducing new technology to her clients.

"We are always watching what I call the bleeding edge of technology," she said. "We do not incorporate this technology among our clients because more often than not there are bugs that need to be massaged through to make the hardware and software stable.

"Instead, we use what I call cutting-edge technology, but it's been tested and is stable."

As a partner of Microsoft, NewTeQ gets Microsoft products before the general public because the software giant wants its partners to test and work out any bugs, Ms. Wagner said.

"For example, I never used Windows Millennium in any of my products because Microsoft was never able to stabilize it. Eventually, Microsoft pulled it."

Mr. Damoulakis believes that if a business buys a high-end computer of good quality, it can last six years. "Usually, it's the software rather than the hardware that we would more likely upgrade," he said. "It's tricky. For us, having the newest software allows us to do the newest things on the Web, and the software is compatible with the older hardware."

Mr. Dickerson says obsolescence is always a factor in PC technology. "Five years ago, in 2001, the average speed of a machine was less than 1 gigahertz. Now, the machine in Erica's office contains eight processors at 3.8 gigahertz per processor," he said. "That machine today costs $2,500, similar to what it cost five years ago for the single processor."

There are so many orders of magnitude, he said. An application on a machine five years ago that took five minutes could take one second today on a newer machine.

To see more of The Frederick News-Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.fredericknewspost.com/.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Transitive Demonstrates Solaris/SPARC Applications Running on Hitachi BladeSymphony Intel Itanium-Based Server Platform. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Transitive(R) Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system (OS) pairs, today announced it is working with Hitachi to apply its QuickTransit(R) virtualization software to allow many applications written for Solaris(TM)/SPARC(R) platforms to run without source code or binary changes on Hitachi BladeSymphony servers with the Linux(R) OS and Intel(R) Itanium(R) processors. The technology was successfully demonstrated today during the Intel Developer Forum keynote address by Pat Gelsinger, Senior Vice President of Digital Enterprise Group for Intel Corporation. The Hitachi BladeSymphony and QuickTransit software demonstration will also appear at the Intel Developers Forum in Hitachi booth #406.



The demonstration runs on an eight-way Hitachi BladeSymphony platform with a Dual-Core Intel Itanium Series 9000 processor, with QuickTransit virtualization technology enabling unmodified Solaris/SPARC binaries to run alongside native Linux applications. The translated applications typically run faster on the Itanium platform than on the native SPARC platform. Hard and soft (virtualized) partitions allow for a variety of OS support, for example Windows(R) partitions showcase increased server utilization by consolidating multiple databases, while Oracle back end database support is provided on a separate Linux partition.

"The IDF demonstration provides a clear example of how enterprise platform migration can be dramatically simplified, with minimal disruption to end users," said Bob Wiederhold, President, and CEO of Transitive Corporation. "We appreciate the work and effort that both Intel and Hitachi have put into this sophisticated demonstration which reflects the complex environments of many enterprise data centers worldwide."

"We have been so pleased with the initial evaluation of QuickTransit running on Hitachi BladeSymphony servers, that we want our customers to see how quick and easy it really is," said Elizabeth King, Vice President and General Manager for the Server Systems Group of Hitachi America, Ltd. "By eliminating the burdens and uncertainties of application porting, a QuickTransit solution can immediately change a migration decision from doubtful to compelling with unimpeded opportunities for enhanced datacenter performance, scalability, and workload flexibility."

"Today the industry has witnessed the first Solaris applications running on an industry standard Itanium processor based platform using Intel Virtualization Technology," said Kirk Skaugen, Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group at Intel Corporation. "The demonstration shows how QuickTransit software enables Solaris application environments to easily move to Itanium systems without need for porting or recompiling."

About Transitive Corporation

Transitive Corporation is a pioneer and leader in providing solutions that allow the transportability of software applications across multiple hardware platforms. The company's QuickTransit hardware virtualization technology allows software applications that have been compiled for one processor/operating system to run on another without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports. The technology dramatically reduces software developers' cost, risk, and time-to-market of supporting multiple hardware platforms, facilitates computer companies' migration to new computer platforms, and makes significantly more software available on hardware platforms. QuickTransit technology provides the engine for Apple's Rosetta translation software, and is currently shipping on all of Apple's Intel-based computers. It is also shipping on all Silicon Graphics' Linux/Itanium-based computers. Transitive Corporation is located in Los Gatos, California with a research and development team in Manchester, England. The company is privately held, with funding participation by Pond Venture Partners Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund, Crescendo Ventures and Accel Partners. For more information, please visit Transitive's website at www.transitive.com.

Transitive and QuickTransit are registered trademarks, and the Transitive logo is a trademark of Transitive Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Telecom Manufacturers Shift Focus to Growing SMBs. Check it out:
 
A number of leading telephone system manufacturers are addressing capacity and migration needs of growing businesses by adding new, larger platforms to existing families of business telephony systems. Distributed work environments with branch offices and remote workers continue to be the workplace trend, and leading manufacturers are responding with telephony systems for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). However, database publisher and analyst group TelecomTactics has detected a shift in focus from small business systems that target businesses with fewer than 250 employees to growing businesses in the mid-size range (250–750 employees). Nearly 40% of the new enterprise telephony systems introduced in 2006 to date in the North American market have been designed for SMBs in the 250–750 station range — a shift from previous years in which 70–80% of system introductions in the SMB market targeted the under-250 station range.


 
“No one goes into business with the intention to stay small or keep the same profit levels. From the largest enterprise to the smallest business — everyone is looking to grow and succeed. So, when businesses look at convergence technologies that are vital to helping them grow, they are asking for products that have the capability to grow along with them,” notes Stephen Gobeli, VP of Samsung (News - Alert) Business Communication Systems.
 
The ESI-600, Inter-Tel (News - Alert) CS-5600, Panasonic KX-TDA600 and Samsung OfficeServ 7400 are a few of the new scalable systems just introduced this summer (2006). In addition to addressing capacity requirements, these new systems also provide ease of migration, convergence, improved performance, and reliability and advanced applications, including unified communications, enhanced networking and wireless LAN.
 
Look for a full 2006 summary from TelecomTactics in early 2007.
 
In recent months, ESI (Estech Systems, Inc.) announced an array of new and enhanced products that target larger-sized businesses and address employee productivity. The new ESI-600 System for Converged Communications is the largest system ever offered by ESI, scaling to 408 IP stations or 336 digital stations in a single location with additional capacity by networking up to 100 systems. ESI-600 is a compact, rack-mounted system with one main cabinet and three expansion cabinets and includes an on-board integrated voice mail/auto attendant system, optional Mirrored Memory Module and ESI's Virtually Integrated Phone (VIP) communication management tool, ESI PC Attendant Console and the Presence Management Suite among other options. In addition to the new ESI-600, the company offers a number of other systems for smaller businesses in North America, including entry-level, full-featured and LAN-based platforms.
 
Inter-Tel recently addressed growth requirements for smaller businesses with new software and a new server platform for the company’s Inter-Tel 5000 IP-based system family. The new software expands the capacities of the Inter-Tel CS-5200 and CS-5400 servers, while a new server platform, the Inter-Tel CS-5600, addresses growth to 346 endpoints (250 IP devices per site and 96 analog and digital phones). The CS-5600 is a dual 1U configuration that combines a base server (same hardware as that of Inter-Tel’s CS-5200 or CS-5400 server) and a processing server. All Inter-Tel 5000 servers run the same applications (Inter-Tel’s Unified Communicator, Call Center Suite, Enterprise Messaging and Enterprise Conferencing/Instant Messaging), use the same trunk cards and accommodate Inter-Tel IP telephones, digital phones and wireless handsets — easing the migration for growing businesses. Inter-Tel has also just introduced the Inter-Tel 7000 IP-based system family with server platforms that support from 100 to 2,500 stations.
 
Panasonic’s new KX-TDA600 is a hybrid IP PBX (News - Alert) and larger version of the company’s earlier KX-TDA100/200 platforms. Ideal for businesses with more than 175 employees, the modular and stackable (or rack-mountable) KX-TDA600 includes a basic shelf and up to three expansion shelves, creating a system that can scale to 640 devices (analog, digital, IP or wireless) or 960 Panasonic KX-T7600 digital proprietary telephones using Panasonic’s Digital eXtra Device Port (XDP) feature. Power supplies, most circuit cards and telephones are compatible among all KX-TDA platforms which results in cost savings for Panasonic customers who outgrow a smaller TDA system. The KX-TDA600 supports Panasonic’s Version 3.0 KX-TDA software, introduced earlier in 2006 for the KX-TDA100/200 systems, with enhanced networking (centralized voice mail, network DSS/BLF, expanded call coverage), additional cellular phone features, new call center functionality and more.
 
Samsung BCS announced OfficeServ 7400 for the North American market this summer, a voice, data and wireless platform for businesses with up to 500 users. The new system promises more power than the earlier OfficeServ 7200 (192 ports) introduced in October 2005, adding additional capacity (up to three cabinets and 1,344 ports), gigabit Ethernet connectivity and 64-channel Media Gateway (News - Alert) Interface (MGI) cards to interface between circuit switching and packet switching applications. Trunk and station cards are compatible with smaller OfficeServ 7200 systems, and digital and IP telephones are compatible among most OfficeServ systems (including the former iDCS100/500). A recently introduced Wireless LAN solution with a wireless Internet phone that operates on a 2.4 GHz frequency band is also available for employees who need freedom of mobility in their office environment.
 
Sandra M. Gustavsen is an analyst for TelecomTactics and Access Intelligence, LLC. To see more of her articles, please visit the TelecomTactics column page or visit the firm’s Web site at www.telecomtactics.com.
 
 

Manufacturer

 

 

Platform

 

 

Target Market

 

 

Maximum Stations

 

 

ESI

 

 

ESI-600

 

 

250-300

 

 

400

 

 

Inter-Tel

 

 

CS-5600

 

 

100-250

 

 

350

 

 

Panasonic

 

 

KX-TDA600

 

 

175+

 

 

640+

 

 

Samsung

 

 

OfficeServ 7400

 

 

100-500

 

 

500

 

 

 
Buffalo Niagara Enterprise wins deals. Check it out:
(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--Just seven years into its mission to promote Western New York as a place to do business, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is now competing on par with more established economic development organizations nationwide, and winning more deals, officials said Tuesday.



The region's privately-funded business development group, whose job is to retain businesses in Western New York or attract new ones, said it achieved 38 "wins" in its 2006 fiscal year ended June 30.

That's a 5.5 percent increase over the previous year, when it raked in 36 victories. And the previous total for fiscal 2005 was more than twice the number of wins of Kansas City, Phoenix, Richmond or St. Louis.

"You've had a lot of wins here, for a community that doesn't think of itself as a national leader," said Marilyn Higgins, the Syracuse-based vice president of economic development for electric utility National Grid, an investor in Buffalo Niagara Enterprise that actively aids business development efforts across upstate New York.

Those numbers don't count other business development successes in which the group either wasn't involved or took a secondary role to a local industrial development agency. Enterprise officials say they plan to consolidate those numbers in their total in the future.

Even so, the efforts last year resulted in $258.2 million in new capital investment in the region, a 12.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the group's annual report. And they created or retained 3,436 jobs -- 1,384 kept and 2,052 added.

That's a drop of 27 percent in jobs from the previous year. But officials argue that investments, especially those that generate more dollars in the future, are more important than jobs. And they note the group had some unusual success of late.

More than 11,000 jobs were created or kept in the previous two fiscal years combined, including the 2,500 service jobs being added by insurer GEICO Corp. in Amherst. The GEICO project was the biggest economic development success in the nation in the 2004 fiscal year, while a second local project that year, for health insurer Definity Health, was one of the top 30.

"We got spoiled," said Enterprise CEO Thomas Kucharski, in an interview with the Buffalo News Editorial Board.

The challenge now, both Kucharski and Higgins said, is to ensure the region maintains a supply of "shovel-ready" properties that are already prepared and approved for development and that can be turned around quickly to meet a client's needs. There are 10 such sites locally, but only one is in Buffalo.

"All upstate cities have to provide shovel-ready sites if they want to compete for projects," Higgins said. "The cities that do that will score very big. The cities that don't offer speed and predictability will lose out to the suburbs every time."

This morning, the Enterprise will release its most recent annual report in a public presentation to its 71 investors. Only 10 percent of its funding comes from government -- $500,000 from the state -- but officials hope to bring in Niagara County, the city of Buffalo, and the Southern Tier counties as well.

So officials say it's critical for them to prove to the businesses that the Enterprise is worth it. About 95 percent of the original investors have maintained their participation, and 20 percent increased their support.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise was formed seven years ago as a separate affiliate of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, sharing space, technology and some staff. But where the Partnership tries to improve the business climate locally, the Enterprise just markets the region.

Unlike the local industrial development agencies or the Empire State Development Corp., the Enterprise does not give out any cash or tax incentives. Instead, it seeks to coordinate the efforts of all the other agencies locally that do, so that businesses have a single point of contact. Officials said it's now expanded its reach to all eight counties of the region, signing collaborative agreements with appropriate parties.

"We now have a system where everybody knows what their role is," Kucharski said.

The organization has tightened its marketing, targeting specific industries where officials believe Western New York has an edge. Those include advanced manufacturing, customer service and back-office centers, hospitality and tourism, life sciences, logistics, and Canadian or international expansions.

It's a member of the Toronto Board of Trade, has a representative on the board of the American-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and shares an office in Mississauga with National Grid and Empire State Development. And it introduced a new advertising slogan, "Where life works," and a Web site to help prospective companies.

As a result, it now deals with fewer leads and prospective projects -- 428 last year, compared to 703 in its second year of existence. But the leads are more solid and realistic. And the number of wins has risen steadily each year.

Enterprise recorded 36 wins in its 2005 fiscal year, compared to 18 for Phoenix -- a hotbed of activity where one BNE official said they "don't recruit, they take orders" -- and 17, 9, and 8 for Richmond, St. Louis and Kansas City, respectively.

Its $229.2 million in investments fell short of $386 million in Phoenix, $373 million in St. Louis and $320 million in Richmond, but beat $130 million in Kansas City. But with 4,730 jobs created or retained that year, it easily beat all four cities by more than 1,000 jobs each.

To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Crossroads Systems To Highlight New BIA Partner Program at IT ChannelVision. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Crossroads Systems, Inc. (OTCBB Pink Sheets: CRDS.PK), a leading provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions, today announced its participation in IT ChannelVision, a Gartner event, October 3-6th at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona.



Rob Sims, President and CEO of Crossroads, and Jo McCausland, head of the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, will be highlighting Crossroads' new strategic direction and the new Crossroads BIA Partner Program to key solution providers and members of the media.

"Crossroads is expanding its sales model to engage directly with end users via a new channel composed of Value Added Resellers (VARs), System Integrators (SIs) and consulting firms," said Jo McCausland, head of the Crossroads BIA Partner Program. "We feel that it is most important to reach out to as many business partners as possible. Already, we have scheduled meetings with 20 partners at IT ChannelVision and feel this venue will provide an excellent opportunity to discuss end-to-end BIA solutions that meet end customer needs for today and tomorrow."

Crossroads' BIA partners benefit from substantial financial growth opportunities, as they deliver industry leading solutions that enhance their current practices in security, storage, risk management, audits and assurance, disaster recovery, and business continuity. The Crossroads BIA Partners Program is custom-designed to rapidly deploy new key logical data protection solutions in a fully supported manner and promote offerings through a series of joint channel marketing and sales activities.

From its interaction with new prospective partners, key industry analysts and members of the press, Crossroads also plans on expanding its market leadership. The event also assists in gaining crucial insight into requirements of prospective partners and markets in order to best align Crossroads' solutions with key vertical and horizontal solutions such as HIPAA, BASEL II and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

To learn more about Crossroads' offerings, Crossroads welcomes attendees to schedule one-on-one, in-person meetings with Crossroads by contacting Scott Griffith at [email protected] or Jo McCausland at [email protected].

Potential partners should apply online at https://partners.crossroads.com/access/SignUp.asp. For more information on the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, visit Crossroads' Web site at www.crossroads.com/partners/biaprogram/ or contact Jo McCausland at 512-928-7553 or [email protected].

For more information on IT ChannelVision, please visit http://www.itchannelvision.com/us/.

About the Crossroads BIA Partner Program

To qualify for the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, prospective partners are asked to complete an application form and demonstrate an extensive breadth of expertise in security or storage. Jointly, Crossroads and its selected BIA partners identify and close regional, national and global opportunities for the sale of Crossroads' BIA solutions.

About IT ChannelVision

IT ChannelVision is produced by Gartner Vision Events, the leader in ROI-driven business events for the global IT industry. IT ChannelVision is built on the foundation of three successful and established Gartner events: VARVision, an industry-leading event for the value-added channel for over a decade; System Builder Summit, the premier event for the white box market for the past seven years; and EnterpriseVision, the leading event for Solution Providers serving enterprise customers. With new technologies redefining the parameters of traditional IT markets and channels, the best of these three programs is now consolidated into a single integrated event, along with a focus on the rapidly emerging home integration market. IT ChannelVision is designed to build business partnerships and collaboration between technology Vendors and today's leading System Builders, VARs, Enterprise Solution Providers and Home Integrators. For more information, visit www.itchannelvision.com.

About Crossroads Systems, Inc.

With headquarters in Austin, Texas, Crossroads Systems is a leading provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions. Solutions from Crossroads serve the growing needs of data storage, business continuity, disaster recovery, information protection, risk management and business information assurance markets. Crossroads' offerings are designed to help companies store, manage and ensure the security, resiliency and access to their critical enterprise information. Crossroads' products are embedded in solutions from companies such as EMC, HP, Quantum and SUN. Crossroads (CRDS.PK) is currently traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) and is a member of several key industry associations such as the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information about Crossroads Systems, please visit www.crossroads.com or call 1-866-BUY-CRDS/1-866-289-2737.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may include forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "will" and similar phrases as they relate to Crossroads are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current views and assumptions of Crossroads and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.

(C) 2006 Crossroads Systems, Inc. Crossroads and Crossroads Systems are registered trademarks of Crossroads Systems, Inc. All specifications are subject to change without notice.
Radio IP Software's Road Partner Division Targets US Fleet Managers. Check it out:
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 27 -- Enterprise Wireless Conference -- Radio IP Software, Inc., the leader in secure wireless data connectionware solutions, today announced the introduction of its Road Partner(R) fleet management solution to the US marketplace. Road Partner, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Radio IP Software, was acquired in April of 2006. Road Partner products will be distributed through US-based resellers.



Radio IP Software's acquisition of Road Partner's fleet management system combined with the company's recent announcement to launch a line of GPS connectionware products reflects its responsiveness to market demand for mobile resource management in tandem with reliable communications.

By leveraging its established track record in mobile data communications and the convergence between wireless and location-based technologies, Radio IP Software strives to provide public safety, government, utility, transportation and industry sectors with critical business information exchange regardless of variables such as data formats, applications or data transports.

With the addition of Road Partner's functionality, large and small organizations with deployed personnel and vehicles are now also assured of sophisticated fleet management tools, including workflow management, vehicle performance monitoring, driver messaging and vehicle tracking.

"Our seamless wireless connectivity combined with location-based GPS technologies offers fleet managers timely and accurate tools to cost- effectively manage vehicles and personnel," said Alain Adam, President & CEO of Radio IP Software. "We are actively seeking established dealers to offer this critical solution to their customers."

Road Partner facilitates operational cost reduction in the management of vehicular fleets. The Road Partner solution is comprised of an intelligent on-board client-server based system that acquires, processes and reports fleet vehicle status and performance information in real- or deferred-time through means of wireless communication. This reporting allows for day-to-day monitoring as well as long-term vehicle life cycle management. Contrary to standard web-based systems, Road Partner's unique solution eliminates recurring charges for downloading reports and AVL (automatic vehicle location) data.

About Radio IP Software
More than 400 organizations worldwide have installed Radio IP Software's wireless connectionware products since the company was established in 1998. Privately-held Radio IP Software's feature-rich family of applications, including its flagship Radio IP MTG(TM) product, helps companies and agencies overcome the performance and connectivity challenges inherent to wireless networks. The result is faster mission response time and increased productivity through connection reliability and enhanced network security and performance. Mobile users are able to seamlessly roam in a diverse range of public and private wireless network environments, integrating all networks under a single interoperable TCP/IP standard. Ideally suited for organizations whose geographically-dispersed mobile workforces depend on mission-critical and safety-critical data, Radio IP Software's customers are largely in the public safety, utility, military and transportation sectors.

Radio IP Software - Make the Connection

For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.radio-ip.com/.

About Road Partner

Montreal-based Road Partner, Inc. helps fleet managers achieve the best possible return-on-investment for their vehicular fleets. Road Partner(R) intelligent on-board systems acquire, process, and report fleet vehicle status and performance information in real- or deferred-time to facilitate operational cost-reduction decisions by finance, human resources, security, operations and maintenance professionals. Road Partner, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of privately-held Radio IP Software, Inc. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.road-partner.com/.

Road Partner - Make the Connection
Radio IP Software, Inc.

CONTACT: Media Inquiries: Neela Parsnani of Radio IP Software Inc.,[email protected] , Toll Free: +1-877-717-2242 # 426,Tel: +1-514-890-6070 # 426, or [email protected] , [email protected]

Web site: http://www.radio-ip.com/http://www.road-partner.com/
Symbol Technologies and IBM Global Financing Offer Customer Financing Program. Check it out:
Symbol Technologies, Inc., announced today a five-year strategic financing services agreement with IBM Global Financing to help Symbol grow its enterprise mobility products, software and services.


 
Under the terms of the agreement, IBM (News - Alert) Global Financing will offer Symbol’s worldwide corporate and small-business customers with various payment plans to purchase Symbol's hardware, software and services.
 
“Our market-leading enterprise mobility solutions—paired with the IBM's unique financing capabilities—enhance our business potential, further building on the Symbol-IBM Global Strategic Alliance,” said Sandy Preizler, Symbol’s vice president of worldwide channels, in a statement.
 
Preizler added that she believes the collaboration will “add value to Symbol customers and partners who desire financing solutions for Symbol-based solutions.”
 
Mark Young, vice president of IBM Global Financing said that the agreement underlines IBM Global Financing’s growing scope of providing non-IBM IT suppliers with financing tools.
 
IBM Global Financing has operations in more than 40 countries, and a global sales team of almost 1,000 finance sales executives. IBM Global Financing’s resources will hopefully help Symbol implement its corporate plans.
 
For more information visit, please visit http://www-03.ibm.com/financing/us/ and www.symbol.com.
 
Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.
 
 
 

Escalation clues

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Escalation clues. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WAS IT GOOD OR WAS IT BAD FOR THE SENate?

I refer to all that fuss in the hallowed chamber, featuring the headline-grabbing arrest warrants for PCGG officials, for example.

The Senate issued them in connection with its inquirywell, in aid of legislation, of courseinto the internal affairs of the sequestered Philcomsat group.

The group only happened to be holding its 20th year of wacky boardroom intramural among the belligerent stockholders.

In effect, one group of stockholders was accusing another group of misuse of corporate funds, with one court case after another flying all over the place.

Leading the attack were Victor Africa and Erlinda Ilusorio-Bildner, whose group took over two corporations called POTC and Philcomsat about six years ago.

On the defensive side was supposedly the camp of government nominees in the board of another company called Philcomsat Holdings Corp. or PHC.

For whatever reason, the Senate committee on government corporations and public enterprise, headed by Sen. Richard Gordon, saw it fit to look into the matter.

According to media reports, the Senate inquiry in aid of legislation has escalated to a constitutional crisis: Who between the executive and the legislative will blink?

To think, as proof of the misuse of funds, the senators initially hinged their call for an investigation on cars that the company allegedly bought for board members.

Its not as if the Senate thinks that if it fails to investigate corporations that buy cars for its officers and directors, the world will end the next day.

But all government outfits buy cars, okay! Jet planes, agreed, are something else. Dont you think, bossing, we have many other problems in this country?

Down here in my barangay, the guys could not just accept the car issue as the be-all-and-end-all of the investigation, and there could only be something else.

Taking a high profile in the Senate investigation was Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile or JPE, who already threatened PCGG officials with libel cases for saying that he had vested interests in the Philcomsat group.

JPE insisted that the stake of his daughter, Katrina, in the Philicomsat group had nothing to do with his fight to end corruption in Philcomsat.

I guess I can live with JPEs explanation, although I dont think that it sits well with the other guys down here in my barangay, simply because JPEin factis an original incorporator of the business group under the Marcos dictatorship.

Todays holdings of Katrina Ponce Enrile, who now heads the Jaka conglomerate of the Enrile family, are the same holdings of JPE during martial rule.

Precisely because of such an irregular situation, which in my book is an obvious conflict of interest, JPE volunteered to inhibit himself from the Senate investigation.

Yet the good senator could not keep his word, as he virtually took over from Senate committee chair Gordon the questioning of the witness in a recent hearing.

As a clue to further escalation of the word war, word goes around that certain board directors are filing a complaint against JPE before the Senate ethics committee.

In other words, this whole mess is not about to end. It so happens that the Senate is only the highest policy-making body in this country with millions of problems.

To think, several cases between the warring stockholders have been filed in the Court of Appeals and the Sandiganbayan, and even the Supreme Court.

And so the Senate hearings will go on duplicating the court hearings on the ongoing cases involving, precisely, the same Philcomsat group.

How pleasing is that to the public, considering that not a few of the guys down here in my barangay already think of the Senate as an expensive circus?

***

RECENTLY, the BCDA held a public bidding for some 1.2 hectares of prime land, which was nicknamed Big Delta, at the fast-developing high-end area in Metro Manila called the Fort.

As such, you would think that real estate companies would fall over each other, rushing to bid for such a sure-hit property at the Fort. Think again!

Word has it that, out of the 11 top real estate companies that bought the terms of reference for the bidding, the BCDA got a total of zero bids.

For that kind of property, nobody is biting, even at a time when real estate is said to be moving up?

Whats more, the BCDA public information office brushed the whole thing away as nothing to do with the raging issue on this cute administrations use of military troops to take over the seaport at Poro Point from the private contractor.

If that was true, how come the BCDA was trying to set up a P6.5-million PR campaign?

Reports had it that BCDA was trying to convince the Palace that the commando-like raid would have little impact on investor confidence.

Sure, except that one German group already postponed its investments, pointing at the Poro Point incident as the cause.

For what was the message of the Poro Point story to business in general?

Well, under this cute administration, if the government wants to take your business, whether you like it or not, the government will just send the troops, period.

***

LAST WEEK, the DepEd launched a new version of the adopt a school program.

The new program basically offers packages to the private sectori.e. the various foundations of those tycoonsin such area of education as infrastructure, teacher training, support to students, computer learning, and health.

In other words, instead of the business people having to rock their brains to come up with projects for the school system, the DepEd now has a menu from which the donors can choose.

It is much more simple for the donors. You knowless work for an equal savings in tax payments!

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Patton & Pingtel Birth Pioneering IP-PBX Appliance. Check it out:
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Sept. 27 -- Patton -- the leader in network-access, connectivity, and VoIP solutions -- announces availability of the SIPxNano, a new kind of IP-PBX appliance developed in cooperation with Pingtel, the leading provider of SIP-based Enterprise Communications Systems (ECS).



On March 10, 2006, Patton and Pingtel announced a strategic relationship to deliver a next-generation IP-PBX appliance to the under-30-extensions business market.

The SIPxNano(TM) is the result. It combines Patton's NanoServ(TM) ultra- compact server technology with a tailored version of Pingtel's SIPxchange ECS software.

"Most small-office IP-PBX products skimp on features," said Scott Whittle, Patton's V.P. of Product Management. "Really useful next-generation features usually only get built onto large PBX systems, but that's not our style. We are giving small offices Fortune-500-functionality at a very affordable price."

"The Cisco SPA9000 does not even support basic voice mail, and the Linksys products require you only use their VoIP phones," said Joe Gomez, Patton's Product Manager. "We think the small enterprise market is smarter than that."

Designed for offices with fewer than 30 phone extensions, SIPxNano offers advanced call-control features and includes integrated voice mail and email, auto attendants, interactive voice response, and web-based configuration and management. Such advanced PBX attributes help small businesses make a good impression and they are essential for integrating small branch offices deploying SIP-based communications into large enterprise-wide VPNs.

"Everyone wins from this endeavor," said Jerry Stable, Pingtel's Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations. "Small business customers are the big winners, but I can tell you both Patton and Pingtel channels are very excited that we are addressing this market. The SIPxchange ECS plug & play solution is the easiest to install, administer and use VoIP PBX system on the market, which makes it particularly attractive to small businesses who do not have the time to tinker with complex systems."

Based on 100% standard SIP, the SIPxNano is fully compatible with all industry standard IP devices including Polycom phones and Patton's line of VoIP phones, gateways and routers.

Priced under $1,000, the SIPxNano is a compelling alternative for small and medium businesses requiring advanced PBX features.

About Patton
Patton manufactures SmartNode(TM) VoIP solutions that support SIP, H.323, and MGCP for analog and ISDN telephony. For more information, contact [email protected].

Patton Electronics

CONTACT: Chris Christner of Patton Electronics, +1-301-975-1000

Web site: http://www.patton.com/
Orange aims to 'demystify' mobile for enterprises. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) First it launched Orange Mail, its attempt to "democratise" mobile email and provide a broad range of mobile email solutions for enterprise customers small and large.

Now mobile operator Orange wants to help demystify the entire area of mobile communications within the enterprise and is embarking on a long-term strategy to educate users and change negative perceptions about the perceived risks of implementing mobile solutions.



"Today we are taking about phase one," said Cynthia Gordon, vice president of business marketing in the Orange group, during a roundtable in London on Wednesday. "There will be more to come."

Phase one will largely involve the distribution of educational literature throughout the Orange channel to enterprise users across the operator's entire footprint. Next will come actual products relating to issues such as device management and security, although the operator is giving little away as yet.

According to Martin Crossley, head of commercial evaluation across the entire France Telecom group, a key issue is to first resolve the lack of understanding about mobile communications within the enterprise and establish the actual risks involved in order to remove the "fear factor" and overcome vendor hype.

"My focus is on balancing risks with revenue opportunity," Crossley said.

He commented that while there is always some risk involved, "if you don't take any risks, you don't have a business."

This view is backed up by a recent report from Quocirca, Securing the Enterprise, which seeks to provide a guide for enterprises that want to deploy mobile technologies.

According to Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, an important aspect for IT and business managers is to balance any problems with the likely benefits of a solution, rather than just dismissing a mobile solution out of hand. He said if managers have the right attitude to the technology, this could also translate into a need for less control, although Bamforth stressed that some level of control is always required.

Gordon said operators should be taking a greater role in educating users about the pros and cons of mobility, although not going so far as turning themselves into managed services providers or systems integrators.

She stressed that particularly when it comes to smaller companies, operators have an increasing responsibility to help and advise customers on what they should deploy.

"We have to step back and realise people don't understand this area," she commented. "Operators need to take a more proactive role."

Mark Beattie, head of information technology at utility company LondonWaste, which awarded Orange its mobile communications contract almost three years ago, said his main requirement is that an operator is honest about the potential risks.

"Just be honest with us," he said. "Tell us if it's high risk or not and then we can make the decision."

Beattie said he chose Orange after an open tender because the operator was able to meet the majority of his company's requirements a key one being the ability to provide devices without a camera.

LondonWaste has so far deployed 25 PDAs from Orange across its 320-strong workforce, while simpler mobile devices are also installed in trucks to enable communication with drivers.

Beattie said the nature of his business is very unpredictable, and it is often the case that a waste-disposal order will come in at 5pm. He said the fact that such orders can now be communicated quickly and efficiently to the transport fleets means that the company is able to carry out business it would otherwise have been unable to do.

"I have seen increases in productivity," said Beattie, who said he ensures against the misuse of the devices by providing every member of staff with a technology policy.

"Telecoms has to be pulled back into IT it's now part of their budget," he added. "For us, the business is everything and the technology is there to support it. We've become a very email-dependent business."

Gordon noted that cost is not always the issue when deploying mobile technology. The most important aspect is to ensure that the cost of any solution fits in with the overall business case and adds value for the company.

Crossley added that a great deal of what Orange is doing in the enterprise area forms part of broader cross-industry developments, such as the plan to put SIM cards into laptops.

"We work with a high level of disclosure," he said. "We share information with other operators."

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Blended services worth 14.0bn [Lucent Technologies]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Lucent Technologies research also finds that more end-users would prefer blended services over bundles of separate services

According to primary research conducted by Lucent Technologies, communications operators potential market for blended lifestyle services in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK combined could reach a cumulative total of 14.0B by 2011.

Lucent projected the potential market size by surveying a targeted market sample nearly 1,500 consumers and enterprises across those five countries. To accurately assess interest in blended services, Lucent simulated market conditions using a leading statistical methodology known as discrete choice modelling. This method enabled Lucent to determine which blended services, consisting of key applications sets, will generate the greatest interest at which price points. The market simulation has the ability to assess likely product and service success before a product is ready for the test market.



The research objective was to identify the value, market demand and willingness to pay for blended lifestyle services that is the inter-working of voice, video, data and multimedia applications to produce personalized services. Among the key findings:

Twice as many consumers and enterprises are willing to pay more for blended services (inter-working or blending separate applications or services into a single service), than those who are willing to pay more for bundled services (a package of separate applications or services) alone.

Early adopter consumers are more likely to be either young males looking for fresh, multiple applications to get things done or somewhat older consumers with a higher overall income (greater than 45K) seeking simple solutions for their technology needs.

Early enterprise adopters are large, multi-location corporations seeking portability, company network access, and flexibility of communications with more emphasis on the quality rather than the price of blended services.

Convenience is more important for very small companies (10 or fewer employees) than other enterprises, while portability and remote access to the company network are also important but not rated quite as high as with the large firms. These companies are more price sensitive and look for technology upgrades to have a more immediate impact on their bottom line.

More than 60 percent of enterprises and consumers across five Western European countries are willing to switch providers to get blended services.

Based on survey responses, consumers most preferred blended service was a Family and Friends package containing key applications related to messaging, location-based and presence services, call management, calendar, and dual-mode phone capabilities. Estimated revenue for Family and Friends peaked at a price of 39 a month and a theoretical 25 percent market share of the total number of individuals who prefer this service. The total consumer market for blended services is projected to have a five-year cumulative revenue opportunity of 6.6B by 2011 with an estimated 6.3 million subscribers.

Enterprises most preferred blended service was a Managers package, which emphasized communications management, containing a combination of messaging, advanced call management, conferencing, location-based services, and security applications. Estimated revenue for the Managers package peaked at a price of 59 a month and a theoretical 28 percent market share of the total number of individuals who prefer this service. The total enterprise market for blended services is projected to have a five-year cumulative revenue opportunity of 7.4B by 2011 with an estimated 6 million individual workers who would be subscribers. .

Lucents Western European primary research shows operators that now is the time to pursue the blended services market, said John Marinho, Lucent Technologies corporate strategic marketing vice president. The operators can benefit from increased revenue as well as a greater share of the end-users 'telecom wallet' and operational efficiencies that come with deployment of an IP Multimedia Subsystem infrastructure for blended services."

"Lucent's study helps provide some additional, and much-needed perspective on the blended services opportunity in Western Europe. Pyramid Research sees tremendous upside potential for service providers offering blended applications around the world", said Guy Zibi, director of Communications Media Technology Research, at Pyramid.

In addition to the consumer adult research, Lucent also completed an adjunct study of the Western European Youth segment, including tweens (8-12 years old) and teens (13-17). Among its highlights, the study found that European teenagers, with the authority to spend, are more likely to expect to pay more for blended services than their parents would expect to pay. The teens also are significantly more likely than their parents to place greater importance on the always on feature and the ability to use voice, video, data simultaneously during the same communication session.

The consumers surveyed for the Western European research were individuals ages 8 to 65, who use mobile phones, have high-speed Internet access at home and are one of the primary decision-makers regarding communication services for the household. The enterprises surveyed were a mix of micro, small, medium and large enterprises that were not telephone service providers or ISPs, and the business contact was a purchase decision-maker.

The research, completed earlier this year, is part of Lucents ongoing primary market research into the demand for blended lifestyle services and also another example of how Lucent helps customers transform their networks and their business.

Lucent is sharing detailed results of the research with its service provider customers to help them tailor their service introductions for specific markets.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Quiconnect expands team [Quiconnect]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) September 27, 2006 - Quiconnect, a specialist systems integrator offering interconnectivity services and applications in the wireless broadband sector, announces today a series of new senior technical and commercial staff appointments which add considerable breadth and depth of expertise, as the company expands.



Quiconnect supplies tools, technologies and services to enable Service Providers and Network Operators to offer their customers the ability to roam reliably on different mobile broadband networks, along with competitively priced, branded user experiences across these multiple networks, platforms and applications.

From a technical delivery perspective, Jen Redmon has been appointed as director of customer engineering a role which involves liaising between sales, marketing and technical staff to ensure service delivery, as well as working with customers to facilitate brand extension. Jen is an expert in all wireless broadband technologies, having worked at both large organisations such as Texas Instruments and Bosch Telecom, and start-up companies Spectrapoint, Callahan Broadband Wireless, Wirefree Systems and Tatara Systems in the USA, Asia and Europe.

Next, Luke Vinogradov joins Quiconnect as senior manager for new product development responsible for all new product and solution initiatives, from initial business case creation to the technical delivery which follows. An experienced manager of online content products and platforms, Luke has held senior positions at Telstra Corporation, Australias leading telco, where he developed and launched its BigPond Movies DVD rental and movie download services, and held key roles in mobile content. Prior to that Luke held roles with SMS Management and Technology, and Deutsche Bank in London where he was a senior researcher in the Investment Banking division.

Rob Myers has been appointed as senior manager of partnerships and alliances with a remit to identify and create agreements with a range of commercial and strategic partners operating in the wireless broadband sector. A MBA qualified marketing-led business manager with over 15 years experience working in the IT and telco industries, Rob has held a variety of senior roles including channel manager, global carrier services at Cable and Wireless; head of enterprise and carrier services at Inmedia Communications Limited, the satellite services division of Kingston Communications Plc; and group business development manager at Bandwidth Technologies International Group (BTIG), a vertically integrated satellite communications solutions provider.

To augment the marketing team, Carley Elsdon has joined as senior marketing manager. A global marketing professional, Carley has 10 years experience spanning Fortune 500 companies as well as business start ups in both Europe and the USA. Prior to joining Quiconnect, Carley was USA marketing director at Systimax Solutions, a division of CommScope which designs, manufacturers and markets end-to-end connectivity solutions for enterprise networks, as well as acting marketing director (North American region) at Avaya Incs connectivity solutions division.

Completing the new team, Stphane Perret joins the company as mobile access engineering manager. Stphane will work from a technical perspective with Luke Vinogradov to develop and implement new Wi-Fi related products and services. Stphane has a MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Universit Joseph Fourier, Grenoble and has worked for the past 5 years on wireless networking technologies and mobility projects for both Hewlett Packard and SUN Microsystems.

Quiconnect recently moved into new offices in central London to cater for its commercial expansion, having also recently hired additional sales, operations and support personnel.

Andrew Schultz, Quiconnects head of marketing and strategy, says, Our approach to making public Wi-Fi access easy for consumers has attracted huge interest from the global telco community as simplified usage means greater revenue possibilities for Service Providers and Network Operators. BT, Sprint, Orange and a host of commercial hotspot operators are now all working with us which is a testament to our approach and value. These new appointments mean that we have the technical and commercial personnel bandwidth to capitalise on our innovation, can service and delight customers, and meet our growth aspirations.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
TomorrowNow Expands Worldwide Headquarters to Accommodate Rapid Company Growth. Check it out:
BRYAN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- TomorrowNow, Inc., the most experienced provider of third-party Siebel, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft maintenance and support, today announced the expansion of its worldwide headquarters in response to the rapid growth over the past two years. TomorrowNow's expert support team has already provided its 200 clients with more than 500 TomorrowNow tax and regulatory updates and thousands of TomorrowNow fixes.



A ribbon cutting ceremony took place last week at the company's new corporate headquarters in the "Research Valley" cities of Bryan and College Station where more than $1 billion in research is performed annually. In choosing to expand in the Research Valley, TomorrowNow remained true to the company's roots and commitment to economic development goals of the Research Valley Partnership, which helped the company when it started.

"This expansion was driven by increased business for TomorrowNow's support services for Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft," said Andrew Nelson, president and CEO of TomorrowNow. "We are so proud of our team and the accomplishments of everyone involved in taking TomorrowNow from an idea in 1998 to the present. If you'd have told me eight years ago when I started this company with a single server on my kitchen table, that one day I would be walking into this beautifully designed worldwide headquarters, that we would have offices in 10 cities worldwide, and that we would have clients in 37 countries, I don't think I would have believed you. It has been a rewarding journey, and I'm often humbled by the loyalty of our clients, and the dedication of our employees."

Research Valley Partnership, Inc. (RVP) a public and private economic development organization funded by Brazos County, the cities of Bryan and College Station, Texas, and the private sector was integral to TomorrowNow's success by providing some of the initial funds that helped Nelson expand the company in 2002.

Founded in 1990, The Research Valley Partnership (RVP) promotes the seven county area surrounding Brazos County and the cities of College Station and Bryan as a business location of choice to national and international firms. The RVP focuses its efforts on creating jobs and new investment in a variety of industries including technology, life sciences and manufacturing in addition to pursuing initiatives that help to identify and address economic development needs and collaborative efforts to enhance the retention and expansion of existing businesses.

"We are very enthusiastic about TomorrowNow's success over the years. They have become a vital part of the community, supporting Texas A&M University, recruiting local talent and helping to establish and expand the technology community in central Texas," said Todd E. McDaniel RVP President and CEO. Research Valley co-sponsored the ribbon-cutting event for the new headquarters and continues to work collaboratively with TomorrowNow toward further economic development of the region.

TomorrowNow support services are available worldwide for Siebel, J.D. Edwards World, J.D. Edwards OneWorld, and PeopleSoft licensees who want to extend the life of their current enterprise applications and replace the vendor's maintenance and support at a 50 percent cost savings. TomorrowNow Support Services provides enterprise software customers with the time they need to thoroughly assess all their long-term enterprise software strategy options. TomorrowNow clients are each assigned a primary support engineer with nine years of experience, on average. TomorrowNow provides engineer-level support within 30 minutes of the request 24 hours a day, seven days a week in 9 languages and in 37 countries.

About TomorrowNow, Inc.

TomorrowNow, Inc. is the most experienced third-party provider of Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft software maintenance and support. TomorrowNow Support Services offer up to 10-year support periods with new fixes, 24x7 product support with a 30-minute response time, quality tax and regulatory updates, highly responsive support engineers, and significant financial savings. Fortune 500, mid-market, and public sector organizations from nearly every industry sector have selected TomorrowNow as their maintenance and support vendor of choice. Please visit our website at www.tomorrownow.com to learn more about TomorrowNow Support Services, our clients, and see what's being written about TomorrowNow; or contact us at +1 925 931 1350.

TomorrowNow and the TomorrowNow logo are trademarks of TomorrowNow, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright (C) 2006 TomorrowNow, Inc. All rights reserved.
Broadview Networks Scheduled to Speak at Deutsche Bank Fourteenth Annual High Yield Conference. Check it out:
RYE BROOK, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- On Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 8:35 AM, CEO Michael K. Robinson of Broadview Networks will speak at the Deutsche Bank Fourteenth Annual High Yield Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Broadview is a facilities-based communications provider that serves the voice, data, hardware and managed services needs of small and medium-sized businesses throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.



Broadview's operational and financial results, as well as an overview of the company's pending acquisition of ATX Communications will be presented. "It has been a dynamic year for consolidation and access to capital in our sector," said Michael K. Robinson, CEO of Broadview Networks. "Broadview has reached many milestones this year and we look forward to entering 2007 as a leading player in our target markets."

About Broadview Networks (broadviewnet.com)

Broadview Networks is a network-based electronically integrated communications provider (e-ICP) serving small and medium-sized businesses in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, United States. The Company offers integrated communications solutions, including local and long-distance voice services; data services that encompass VPN and MPLS-enabled offerings; hosted and premises-based VoIP systems; traditional telephone systems; and high-speed Internet services using DSL, T1 and T3 technologies. Customers receive a single, easy-to-understand bill and have a primary point of contact for real-time, personal customer care. Broadview is a control investment of MCG Capital Corporation (www.mcgcapital.com) (NASDAQ:MCGC). Broadview's largest investors are MCG Capital, Baker Capital (www.bakercapital.com) and New Enterprise Associates (www.NEA.com).

Forward-looking Statement: This press release contains forward-looking statements (i.e., statements that are not historical) describing future plans and objectives. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and difficult to predict and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions could prove to be inaccurate, and as a result, the forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also could be incorrect. In light of these and other uncertainties, the inclusion of a projection or forward-looking statement in this press release should not be regarded as a representation by us that our plans and objectives will be achieved. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update such statements to reflect subsequent events.
Philips Supports China's Energy Saving Light Bulb Enterprise. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 28, SinoCast -- Philips, the number one in global lighting market, is on the side of China while EU is conducting anti-dumping investigation to China??s energy saving light bulbs enterprises.



As early as 2000, Philips had united the other two energy saving light bulb giants in Europe, to accuse Chinese enterprises of coming into European market by means of unusually low prices. As a result, Chinese energy saving light bulb enterprises was imposed 59.1% to 66.1% anti-dumping taxes from July 2001 to July 2006.

This time, Philips has taken sides with China. According to Pieter de Haan, general manager of East Asia Region of Philips, China is the largest maker as well as a large consuming market of energy saving light bulbs in the world. The products of Chinese enterprises are not in direct competition with those high-end products manufactured by European countries. That is why Philips thinks it??s of no necessity to conduct anti-dumping investigation to China.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US software firm Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) is planning a Latin American tour to launch its new open source platform Suse Linux Enterprise 10 during October and November, the company said in a statement.



The tour includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and will be sponsored by other IT multinationals such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).

***

The Chilean government, through the education ministry Mineduc, non-profit technology transfer foundation Fundacin Chile and the website EducarChile, has signed an agreement with US internet search company Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to offer educational applications, the government said in a statement.

Under the terms of the agreement, signed during the 2006 IT tour organized by Chile's universal access foundation Fundacin Pas Digital, Google will offer educational internet tools to EducarChile through Google Earth.

***

Venezuela's science and technology ministry has launched a national center for research and development in open source technologies (Cenditel) located in the state of Mrida, local newspaper El Nacional reported.

The center aims to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) with open standards helping in the research and development of innovative solutions.

***

US networking solutions provider Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) has launched a contest for SMEs in Argentina and Chile offering as a prize the renovation of their IT platform, including IP telephony, security, wireless networks, switching and routing, Cisco said in a statement.

The prize also includes support and guarantees for a year.

The contest is open to private companies that have been operating for at least three years with 30-250 employees and at least 20 PCs in their network.

***

US software company Altiris (Nasdaq: ATRS) is about to sign an agreement with the Brazilian unit of US IT giant Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) to include its asset administration solutions in HP's PCs, regional news service TelcosIT reported.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Patton & Pingtel Birth Pioneering IP-PBX Appliance. Check it out:
GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, September 27 --

- Patton Ships the SIPxNano(TM), an Ultra-Miniature, Feature-Rich
Enterprise Communications Appliance for Small and Medium Businesses Built on
Pingtel's ECS Software

Patton -- the leader in network-access, connectivity, and VoIP solutions
-- announces availability of the SIPxNano, a new kind of IP-PBX appliance
developed in cooperation with Pingtel, the leading provider of SIP-based
Enterprise Communications Systems (ECS).

On March 10, 2006, Patton and Pingtel announced a strategic relationship
to deliver a next-generation IP-PBX appliance to the under-30-extensions
business market.

The SIPxNano(TM) is the result. It combines Patton's NanoServ(TM)
ultra-compact server technology with a tailored version of Pingtel's
SIPxchange ECS software.

"Most small-office IP-PBX products skimp on features," said Scott
Whittle, Patton's V.P. of Product Management. "Really useful next-generation
features usually only get built onto large PBX systems, but that's not our
style. We are giving small offices Fortune-500-functionality at a very
affordable price."

"The Cisco SPA9000 does not even support basic voice mail, and the
Linksys products require you only use their VoIP phones," said Joe Gomez,
Patton's Product Manager. "We think the small enterprise market is smarter
than that."

Designed for offices with fewer than 30 phone extensions, SIPxNano offers
advanced call-control features and includes integrated voice mail and email,
auto attendants, interactive voice response, and web-based configuration and
management. Such advanced PBX attributes help small businesses make a good
impression and they are essential for integrating small branch offices
deploying SIP-based communications into large enterprise-wide VPNs.

"Everyone wins from this endeavor," said Jerry Stable, Pingtel's Senior
Vice President of Sales and Operations. "Small business customers are the big
winners, but I can tell you both Patton and Pingtel channels are very excited
that we are addressing this market. The SIPxchange ECS plug & play solution
is the easiest to install, administer and use VoIP PBX system on the market,
which makes it particularly attractive to small businesses who do not have
the time to tinker with complex systems.

Based on 100% standard SIP, the SIPxNano is fully compatible with all
industry standard IP devices including Polycom phones and Patton's line of
VoIP phones, gateways and routers.

Priced under US$1,000, the SIPxNano is a compelling alternative for small
and medium businesses requiring advanced PBX features.

About Patton

Patton manufactures SmartNode(TM) VoIP solutions that support SIP, H.323,
and MGCP for analog and ISDN telephony. For more information, contact
[email protected].

Web site: http://www.patton.com

Patton Electronics

Chris Christner of Patton Electronics, +1-301-975-1000
TABLETmedia ANNOUNCES NEW ENTERPRISE P2P WALKIE-TALKIE FOR MOBILE DEVICES. Check it out:
San Francisco, California. TABLETmedia, Inc. announces today the ingtroduction of iTalkie, a new solution to greatly ease the integration of paging and voice calling into enterprises.

In 2001 we introduced the worlds first voice and video soft phone for PDAs. Today we are pleased to provide yet another significant contribution into mobile communications says Alessandro Gatti, President and CEO of TABLETmedia, Inc. Push-to-Talk (PTT) is one of the most requested features in many vertical markets which require the integration of traditional walkie-talkie functionality into powerful mobile data devices. iTalkie is ideal for organizations with one or more small to medium size sites where the primary voice requirement is one-to-many paging and one-to-one direct local calling. The peer-to-peer (P2P) nature of iTalkie eliminates any setup, thus minimizing deployment and maintenance costs..



iTalkie is a software application for WiFi-enabled PDAs and PDA/phones based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. Once installed, it requires no servers and it is immediately operational: users can just press a button to send a page. Through TABLETmedias P2P self-detecting and configuring technology, they can also see the presence of other users and call them directly. iTalkie supports up to 999 channels, including an emergency channel that is heard by all users irrespective of what channel they have selected and whether they are sending a page. Based on the feedback from several field customer trials, it incorporates many features to make it easy to use and transparently integrate into the devices with other applications. In addition, it has some of the unique capabilities of TABLETmedias other voice/video phone clients for improving the battery life of the device as well as managing and compensating the limitations of wireless networks.

iTalkie was created with businesses in mind that require simple to use, yet advanced, communications tools to enhance and transparently integrate into their day-to-day operations. It is the first solution of its kind that enables PDAs with reliable and expandable paging, full duplex voice and presence capabilities says Gatti, This announcement allows TABLETmedia to maintain its leadership position and track record as an innovator of the way people communicate in real-time with their mobile devices..

TABLETmedia is also introducing an optional server application to bridge the local area network with traditional public address (PA) systems. User can send pages from their mobile device through this PA gateway directly to the sites overhead paging system connected to the sound output of the server. Future products will also provide businesses better integration of the iTalkie solution into their existing workflow.


###


About TABLETmedia, Inc.
TABLETmedia, Inc. is the leader of next-generation IP-based communication solutions for mobile platforms distributed to service providers, manufacturers and integrators. Using advanced integration, communication and compression technologies, TABLETmedia was the first company in the world to turn PDAs into ITU-T H.323 and IETF SIP standards-based wireless telephones and videoconferencing devices operating on any type of wireless packet data networks. On dual-mode devices iFon users benefit from a single interface to place voice calls or send text messages, while the software automatically chooses the most appropriate wireless network. TABLETmedia iTalkie enables businesses to transparently add zero-setup paging and direct voice into their workflow, by replacing traditional walkie-talkie functionality while adding more capabilities. TABLETmedias products enable service providers and enterprises to deploy previously unfeasible converged mobile voice, video and messaging services. Wireless VoIP (or VoWLAN) greatly improves employee productivity and efficiency, while reducing costs by simply extending the existing corporate telephony infrastructure to mobile devices such as PDA-based phones. More information on TABLETmedia is available at http://www.tabletmedia.com.



TABLETmedia, iTalkie and iFon and associated design marks and logos are trademarks of TABLETmedia, Inc..
All other trademarks, registered trademarks and logos belong to their respective owners.
©2006 TABLETmedia, Inc. All rights reserved.



Contacts:
TABLETmedia, Inc.
Alessandro Gatti
(415) 567-8100
[email protected]
ROADM Equipment Sales to Reach $920 Million Worldwide in 2011, Heavy Reading Estimates. Check it out:
NEW YORK, Sept. 27 -- Worldwide sales of reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) gear will break the $250 million mark for the first time in 2006 and will grow to $920 million in 2011, for an average annual growth rate of almost 30 percent, according to a major new report from Heavy Reading (http://www.heavyreading.com/ ), the market research division of Light Reading Inc. (http://www.lightreading.com/ ).



ROADM & WDM Worldwide Market Forecast, 2006-2011 assesses the current state of the ROADM market and forecasts its performance through 2011. The report includes extensive five-year revenue and market share forecasts for the ROADM and WDM sectors, as well as market share data for WDM and ROADM system vendors current through the second quarter of 2006.

"IPTV and triple-play services are the biggest drivers for ROADM deployment," notes Scott Clavenna, Chief Analyst with Heavy Reading and author of the report. "ROADMs are the primary link between IPTV and optical, so where IPTV is rolled out, ROADMs will follow. ROADMs are an excellent way for optical transport vendors to ride the massive tide of consumers and content lifting other telecom segments."

Clavenna cautions that the long-term success of the ROADM sector depends on telco commitments to offer video services over their networks. "If telco IPTV buildouts get scrapped or postponed, the ROADM market will suffer," he adds.

The ROADM and WDM markets involve most of the world's largest telecom equipment makers, including Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei Technologies, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks, and Siemens. In total, the report profiles and analyzes 17 different providers of ROADM and WDM gear and assesses the competitive positioning of six leading suppliers of ROADM subsystems, including JDS Uniphase.

Other key findings of ROADM & WDM Worldwide Market Forecast, 2006-2011 include:
North America currently generates the lion's share of ROADM revenues, but the market opportunity is global. North American service providers are leading the ROADM charge, led first by cable MSOs building video-on-demand (VOD) infrastructure, and now by large telcos building IPTV and video networks to challenge cable's hold on consumer entertainment. However, activity has been picking up in Europe and Asia throughout 2006.

The overall metro WDM market has hit its stride with good, but slowing, growth prospects. Worldwide metro WDM revenue reached $1.3 billion in 2005, seven years into its existence as an equipment segment. Heavy Reading forecasts that metro WDM revenue will increase at a 12 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2006 to 2011, to reach $2.8 billion. At that point, ROADMs will account for roughly a third of the overall metro WDM market.

ROADM subsystem revenue will keep pace with the market for ROADM systems. Heavy Reading projects double-digit annual revenue increases over the next five years for the ROADM subsystem market, which will quadruple in size as ROADM networks proliferate.

ROADM & WDM Worldwide Market Forecast, 2006-2011 costs $3,795 and is published in PDF format. The price includes an enterprise license covering all of the employees at the purchaser's company.

For additional information, or to request a free executive summary of this report, please contact:
Dave Williams
Sales Director
Heavy Reading
858-485-8870
[email protected]

Press/analyst contact:
Dennis Mendyk
Managing Director
Heavy Reading
201-587-2154
[email protected]

About Heavy Reading

Heavy Reading is an independent market research organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to service providers, vendors, and investors. Its mandate is to provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the deployment of profitable networks based on next-generation hardware and software.

About Light Reading Inc.
Founded in 2000, Light Reading Inc. (http://www.lightreading.com/ ) is the ultimate source for technology and financial analysis of the communications industry, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. It reaches an extensive audience of executives and technologists within the telecom and enterprise networking communities, as well as the financial/industry analysts and investors who track these sectors. Light Reading was acquired by United Business Media in August 2005, and operates as a unit of CMP Technology.

About CMP Technology
CMP Technology (http://www.cmp.com/ ) is a marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP has earned the confidence of more technology professionals than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Technology is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/ ), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

Heavy Reading

CONTACT: Dave Williams, Sales Director, +1-858-485-8870,[email protected], or Press/analyst contact, Dennis Mendyk,Managing Director, +1-201-587-2154, [email protected], both of HeavyReading

Web site: http://www.lightreading.com/http://www.heavyreading.com/http://www.cmp.com/http:
//www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/
Microsoft and VMware are just two of the vendors unveiling data protection products at this week's Storage Decisions conference.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Data protection is a big theme at this week's Storage Decisions conference in New York, with Microsoft and VMware among the vendors showing off their wares.

Microsoft on Wednesday released a public beta of the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager ( DPM ) version 2 at the conference.

The new version delivers continuous data protection ( CDP ) for Microsoft application and file servers, extending DPM's benefits from individual file servers to mission-critical Microsoft applications like Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint Portal Server with integrated disk-to-disk-to-tape protection.



"DPM version 2 combines the concepts of continuous data protection and traditional tape backup, online and offline, into a single product, enabling a zero data loss configuration for applications," stated Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows Enterprise Management Division.

VMware Backup Makes a Splash

VMware said it has received broad support for VMware Consolidated Backup, a part of VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise edition that leverages virtualization technology to speed up backup and recovery.

CA, CommVault, EMC, IBM Tivoli, Symantec and Vizioncore have all pledged support for the product, the EMC unit said.

Karthik Rau, VMware's senior director of infrastructure products and solutions, said virtualization "provides groundbreaking new ways to address age-old problems in the areas of system and data protection and recovery. Unlike traditional physical infrastructure, a virtual infrastructure eliminates the hardware dependencies that typically complicate backup and restore operations."

VMware Consolidated Backup offloads backup to a centralized server, allowing VMware ESX Server, which is also part of VMware Infrastructure 3, to run more virtual machines by reducing its load, eliminating hardware dependencies and enabling backup to occur safely even during production hours.

Index Engines Adds Value to Tape

Index Engines, meanwhile, unveiled what it claims is the first solution to directly index the contents of offline tape media, making backup, recovery and legal discovery processes more efficient and intelligent.

The new TE-200 Tape Engine turns offline backup tapes into a directly searchable repository, Index Engines says. It can scale to index tape archives of all sizes, from small discovery operations of a few hundred tapes up to large corporate environments. The TE-200 indexes tapes at the maximum physical speeds of modern tape drives and can index many tape drives simultaneously.

The Tape Engine supports leading backup software formats, including Tivoli Storage Manager, EMC Legato and Veritas. Pricing starts at $29,500 for a package that scales to support a four million-file network.

Kazeon also released new information and classification ( ICM ) products targeting legal discovery, enterprise reporting and data security, while Signiant unveiled Mobilize for Remote Data Protection (RDP), a centrally-managed software solution for protecting data in remote and branch offices.

Back To Enterprise Storage Forum

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Security and advanced tools are cool, but day-to-day routines have an even bigger impact on server security and reliability.. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
With the start of a new school year and the fourth-quarter crunch that befalls businesses, returning to basics never hurts. Many enterprises get caught up in the importance of advanced security and advanced tools and forget that sometimes it's the more day-to-day routine stuff that helps the most.



I've recently noticed a trend that many companies are failing to deal with some standard routine activities. These include: Backups Testing environments Password strength and timeouts Standardized desktops If I've Said It Once ...

Let's start with backups. Yes, you do need them. They aren't just for events like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. They are for whenever you might lose data. This can include things like user errors, viruses, hardware failures and other regular, ho-hum disasters.

The first form of backup is a complete or full backup (sometimes referred to as an archival backup). This is the whole system, including the operating system and the data itself. What this means is that if a failure occurs you can recover the system in its entirety (at the time of backup) in one shot. This makes for a faster recovery and is one of the reason's why it's preferred.

The reality is, however, that this isn't as viable as a solution as much any more because of the size of the operating systems and the vast amount of data now stored on systems. Because of this, full backups often take a long period of time to complete.

Usually, this isn't a viable option for user desktops, as they cannot let their systems go down for vast periods of time. Plus, oftentimes users have their systems with them (since laptops have become the new desktop for many corporations). It is more common to perform a full back up at one point and then follow up with an incremental or differential backup. A full backup, however, should be done. Generally, once a month or twice a month is a good place to start &#151 depending on how much data goes through your systems.

Now for the more periodic options, which include incremental backups or differential backups.

The incremental backup only records what has been changed since the last full backup. Obviously a lot quicker but limited in what it records. This particular one would be limited to changes in data. You may also decide to create system state backups/restores ( http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315412 ) to ensure registry and other system critical options are recorded as well. This tends to be a far faster process compared to a full backup, but it can lengthen as time goes on and more data is added. On the other side is the differential backup that copies data that has been changed since the full and incremental backups.

We often associate backups with DLT tape backup. Today, with high-speed access, tape backup is a rather slow option. Other options/combinations can include the following:

Backing up to a NAS/SAN: Since it's likely for many corporations to be using these storage options anyway, it makes sense to use them as the backup option.

Tiered backup: Again, using a SAN/NAS for original disk storage means you can backup to a NAS/SAN, but in the tiered process you move data to tape later, so the slower disk-to-tape speed has no performance impact on the system.

Mirroring of SAN/NAS: Use that network side of the SAN. Mirror it across the city or the country with a provider who can look after the backup live. Test and Test Again

Some of you may be reading this and saying, "But I backup! I don't need to do anything further!"

Right.

So when was the last time you tested the backup? That is, actually recovered it to a new system to see if it worked? I too often see people who run into issues and go to backup, only to discover the backup doesn't work.

With any system you have you should undergo some testing, whether building a system from scratch, performing updates or verifying a procedure actually works. A prevalent assumption is that large manufacturers have been doing this long enough that they've tested for every scenario, and thus, it must work. This assumption is based on a house of cards.

Computers are still built with the basic premise of CPU, memory, disks and, more recently (that is, in the last 10 to 15 years), networking components. Yet, we don't test hardware or software. Testing must be done for a variety of situations:

The company has purchased new hardware: Perform a hardware diagnostic and verify all the components in the system are, in fact, as per the order. Additionally, do a 48-hour memory test. http://www.memtest.org is a free option to use, but note that NUMA systems may not respond properly to this kind of testing. Faulty memory is often the cause of many instability problems. Remember that mixed memory is a *bad* thing in servers.

New software/upgrades/patches: Automated patching systems have been helpful in ensuring systems are kept up-to-date, but testing must be done to ensure that systems are not adversely affected. A recent example includes an anti-virus product update that thought the lssass.exe process was a virus and "prevented" systems from booting properly. The reality is that software vendors cannot possible test for *every* environment and configuration.

New or updating of policies/procedures: Any change made to the system may have adverse effects on the whole of the IT infrastructure. Again, the perfect environment doesn't exist in the corporation. There are always flaws and challenges within the corporate day-to-day that must be addressed and resolved.

As with any testing or backup procedure, having a log that indicates who did what and when is helpful.

If you end up in a situation that requires help from a vendor, being able to provide that information can help resolve an issue faster and avoids duplication of efforts. Information should include the name of the person responsible, a brief but accurate description of what was done, what tools &#151 if any &#151 were used, the date and time it was started, and when it was completed. Keep this log in a central location so those who do testing or backups can find it and use it.

This article was originally published on Enterprise IT Planet .

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Supplier Relationship Management Delivers Value for Business, According to Capgemini Study. Check it out:
UTRECHT, Netherlands --(Business Wire)-- Capgemini has today announced some of the findings of its most recent research into the management of supplier relationships, entitled 'What value should you expect from Supply Relationship Management'. The research looked at the priorities for global Chief Purchasing Officers (CPOs) from six countries for the coming year from a variety of vertical markets and then looked at the disconnect between these priorities and the current use of purchasing and procurement systems both by businesses in general and by users of the systems. Purchasing remains a key issue for businesses who could expect to save 10-25% on their purchasing costs with an effective system, depending on the organizations' spend complexity and maturity of procurement.



SRM is defined as creating an all-encompassing strategy where suppliers connect to your business in real-time, enabling you to gain control of your companies' direct and indirect spend, transforming suppliers into business partners and extending applications to create value.

Key findings of the research are as follows:

-- CPOs believe that the most significant business driver for 2007 is leveraging preferred supplier relationships, this means compliance to contracts and improved visibility of spend with these suppliers

-- CPOs also report a significant increase in focus on supplier relationship management, including performance measurement and supplier development

-- Public sector CPOs show evidence of a governmental drive for greater value improvement

-- A unique focus for financial services is commodity outsourcing. Financial services tend to lead the way in sophistication when it comes to purchasing

-- Legislative issues such as SOX are a growing focus area, feedback suggests that businesses are still responding to legislation in a reactive way rather than devising a proactive strategy

Contrary to these positive focuses which SRM can address, the research, which also surveyed users of the purchasing systems, showed that many businesses, despite having implemented systems, are not using them to their full potential and have not gained the full buy-in of system users.

-- Less than 50% of SRM users use the application to track orders, typically taking information out of the system and running reports separately. For instance, 20% of users are currently tracking orders outside of the SRM system

-- Only 7% of purchasers use the reporting functions contained in the application. 35% never use this function at all, which is designed to enable easy and accurate reporting

-- Many purchasers use spend information to prepare contracts, but less than 40% of purchasers can access the spend information on their SRM application, for 60% of users this information is inaccessible even though it does reside in the system

-- 30% of users said they would need training to use the SRM application effectively

Mario van Vliet, Global Supply Chain Management Leader at Capgemini, comments: "There is still a lot of confusion in the market about what true SRM is. This is compounded by the fact that SRM can be complex to deploy and integrate. Many businesses don't spend enough time identifying the business processes and procurement channels that will be affected by an implementation and find that they get stuck half way through the process without being able to realize the cost savings they had predicted. Businesses need to get advice before an implementation, or seek consultancy on how to bring an implementation back on track to deliver real business advantage. Companies who have effectively rolled out procurement systems find that they reduce the administration involved with procurement, find compliance much easier, can reduce time to market for competitive advantage and attract better purchasing professionals into their organizations."

Capgemini's SRM definition

Capgemini recognizes that most purchasing managers rarely speak of SRM in terms of software support of processes; they talk about supplier relationships and managing product categories. Capgemini has a broader definition, identifying three key stages of SRM development within an organization ; coordinated procurement and harmonization of channels, 'closing the loop' between the strategic sourcing cycle and the procurement order cycle, embedding the procurement strategy into the core of the enterprise and integrating it with key suppliers to develop mutually beneficial relationships. Capgemini contends that companies can achieve sustainable savings from moving up the procurement maturity ladder from eProcurement to SRM. Procurement should mature to focus on the 'bigger picture' including:

-- Strategic vs. tactical sourcing

-- Emerging market sourcing

-- Multi-language requirements

-- Supplier integration

-- Support for complex goods and services

-- Integration and coverage for MRO

-- Global deployment and merging ERP

About Capgemini

Capgemini, one of the world's foremost providers of Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services, has a unique way of working with its clients - Collaborative Business Experience. Through commitment to mutual success and the achievement of tangible value, the company helps businesses implement growth strategies, leverage technology, and thrive through the power of collaboration. Capgemini employs approximately 61,000 people worldwide and reported 2005 global revenues of 6,954 million euros.

Capgemini offers transformational excellence through understanding specific customer needs in all business sectors. Based on our strong functional expertise and our ability to accelerate change, we collaborate with customers to design the best strategies and execute the transformation, impacting both business results and growth.

More information about individual service lines, offices and research is available at www.capgemini.com.
Case claims that Mister Parker's restaurant only hired male servers. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--A federal lawsuit alleges The Parker Palm Springs hotel hired only male waiters at the hotel's restaurant, Mister Parker's.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the gender discrimination lawsuit Tuesday in California's Central District Court on behalf of Lorraine Morton, a former restaurant employee at the hotel.

The Parker Palm Springs, formerly Merv Griffin's Givenchy Resort and Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, caters its 144-room hotel and spa to the hip and famous. It s restaurant has offered $1,000 omelets made with caviar.

Thomas Meding, general manager with The Parker Palm Springs since 2005, referred questions about the lawsuit to his lawyer. Meding said the hotel doesn't hire based on gender, and the hotel's 190 employees include both men and women.

"We have both male and female (servers) and always did ever since I got here," he said of employees in the hotel's two restaurants, Mr. Parker's and Norma's.

The hotel's lawyer, David Jacobs with LA-based Epstein, Becker and Green, was traveling Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

Santos Albarran, spokesman for EEOC, said the evidence is based on testimony from employees in hiring positions who were told to only hire male servers in Mister Parker's restaurant.

"They wanted to create a certain ambience," he said.

Albarran said Morton applied for a transfer to an evening server position at Mr. Parker's and was told they were only hiring men. Morton quit and filed a complaint with the EEOC on Jan. 28, 2005.

"At the moment , it's not an issue, but we have to take a look at the harm or discriminatory action that was taken against those individuals," Albarra said, referring to other women who applied for jobs with Mister Parker's and were denied.



The commission is seeking back pay for unjustly fired female employees, damages and a new hotel policy to prevent discrimination.

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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OpenFabrics Alliance Showcases First-Ever Unified InfiniBand and iWARP Ethernet Software Solution in Oracle and Fluent/Intel MPI Application Environments. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced that it is hosting two demonstrations at the Intel Developer Forum that showcase InfiniBand and iWARP (RDMA over Ethernet) running concurrently in clusters over the OpenFabrics stacks. One demonstration features Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC) and the other features Fluent running over Intel MPI. Both demonstrations are running concurrently over InfiniBand and iWARP. The Intel Developer Forum runs September 26-28 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The OpenFabrics demonstrations are located in booths 728 and 732.



The Oracle Database 10g demonstration shows the capability to failover seamlessly between InfiniBand and iWARP devices despite the fact that the underlying transport technologies are different. The OFA software stack abstracts the transport details from Oracle and other applications built on top of this stack, accelerating the development and time to market of RDMA-enabled solutions.

"The unification of InfiniBand and iWARP software solutions unlocks the power and promise of these technologies," said Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst, StorageIO Group. "The combination of InfiniBand and iWARP makes both transport technologies stronger and should lead to broader market adoption by providing a foundation for RDMA-enabled applications in an open environment. This demonstration by the OpenFabrics Alliance is a great step forward in the evolution of these technologies into solutions that are ready to address real-world IT issues."

The charter of OFA has been expanded from its InfiniBand roots to be transport independent, which means formal support for iWARP in the OFA software stack. While the iWARP R-NICs are relatively new to the market, OFA has iWARP providers as members, resulting in the first-ever proofs of concept of InfiniBand and iWARP devices interoperating on the same Intel server cluster. The two demonstrations on display at the Intel Developer Forum include the common elements of the OFA software stack, the latest Intel dual-core servers and PCI Express adapters.

The first demonstration showcases Oracle 10g RAC running over SilverStorm Technologies InfiniBand Host Channel Adapters and switches, Chelsio R-NICs and a Fujitsu 10Gb Ethernet switch and NFS over RDMA storage. The second demonstration showcases Fluent and Intel MPI with Cisco IBA and 10Gb Ethernet switches, NetEffect Ethernet Channel Adapters and QLogic IBA Host Channel Adapters.

This advancement in the OFA stack for InfiniBand and iWARP will deliver an innovation platform for the industry for high-speed interconnects and applications. It is expected to provide validation efficiencies and design choice based on specific customer requirements for system integrators with cost reductions for end users irrespective of their interconnect requirements.

"The demonstrations at the Intel Developer Forum this week represent achievement of significant milestones by the OpenFabrics Alliance," said Jim Ryan, chair, OpenFabrics Alliance and manager of Intel Industry Initiatives. "Through close cooperation with many companies, we are executing on the vision of the OpenFabrics Alliance and demonstrating the capabilities of a single, interoperable software stack that supports InfiniBand and iWARP Ethernet transports."

About OpenFabrics Alliance

The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) develops and licenses open source software for RDMA transport-agnostic fabrics. The organization was founded in June 2004 as the OpenIB Alliance with two goals: to develop a Linux-based InfiniBand software stack for acceptance into the kernel, and for the Linux distributors to include and support this stack. In 2005, with encouragement from Microsoft, the Alliance expanded to develop and support a Windows stack. In 2006, with the decision to integrate iWARP (also known as RDMA over Ethernet) into the same software stack, the Alliance has become fabric, or transport, agnostic. This transport agnosticism allows other RDMA interconnects to leverage the OFA software. The OFA is comprised of technology vendors and end-user organizations including: AMD, Appro, Chelsio, Cisco, Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique CEA, DataDirect Networks, Dell, IBM, Intel, Linux Networx, LSI Logic, Mellanox Technologies, Neterion, Inc., Network Appliance, NetEffect, Oracle, PANTA Systems, QLogic Corporation, Rackable Systems, Silicon Graphics, Inc., SilverStorm Technologies, System Fabric Works, Sun Microsystems, Tyan Computer Corp., Symantec, Voltaire, Xsigo Systems and the following research members: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. Participating OFA Member Endorsements

"Chelsio is pleased to participate in this demonstration with a unified wire solution," said Kianoosh Naghshineh, CEO of Chelsio Communications. "It is very rewarding to see this level of cooperation amongst the many participants in the industry as we work toward OFA's vision of a transport-neutral API. The capability of running RDMA applications over Ethernet provides a new level of flexibility and economic gains for customers by enabling fabric independence as well as fabric convergence."

"The OpenFabrics demonstrations showcase new capabilities over InfiniBand and Ethernet fabrics that provide greater flexibility and agility for high-performance applications," said Bill Erdman, director of product marketing, Server Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco Systems. "With new features and protocol interoperability, we are seeing an increase in the rate of adoption of InfiniBand in the enterprise as well as high-performance computing environments."

"As one of the founding members of the OpenFabrics Alliance and the first to represent Ethernet, NetEffect is pleased to participate in this demonstration," said John Hagerman, vice president of marketing and business development for NetEffect. "These demonstrations signify the tremendous progress OFA has made in integrating InfiniBand and iWARP Ethernet into a single software stack. As a result, end users will now have the flexibility to adopt either or both technologies for their data center fabrics without changing their RDMA-enabled applications."

"Oracle is pleased to participate in the OpenFabrics demonstration, and showcase the use of 10Gb InfiniBand and Ethernet for high-performance database applications," said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president of systems technology for Oracle. "Both InfiniBand and iWARP have the potential to become a unified fabric for storage, cluster communication and networking."

"SilverStorm is pleased to continue its strong commitment to Oracle RAC clustering with InfiniBand by partnering with Intel, Oracle and the OpenFabrics community to enable the RAC OpenFabrics interoperability demo at IDF," said Russ Hawkins, CEO of SilverStorm. "SilverStorm looks forward to adding the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution software to its scalable, multi-protocol InfiniBand solution set for Oracle RAC."
Alamo Group Implements RF-SMART Solution for JD Edwards. Check it out:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- ICS, Inc., developers of the RF-SMART(R) brand of wireless, mobile and RFID software solutions for JD Edwards(R) enterprise software from Oracle(R), announced that Alamo Group has implemented RF-SMART beginning in their Seguin, Texas, facility.



Alamo Group is a leader in the manufacture, distribution and service of industrial and agricultural maintenance equipment. Their products include mowers, loaders, excavators, street sweepers, backhoes, tillers, and related aftermarket parts.

"We searched for a cost effective, scaleable solution to multiple business challenges," noted Keith W. Vinyard, Alamo Group's Vice President, Information Technology. "One of our greatest operational needs was to move from batched data entry to real-time data collection to provide up-to-the minute information on inventory, sales order picking and shipping status, work order status, and other peripheral data collection capabilities."

Alamo Group selected RF-SMART's Manufacturing and Distribution suites based on the product's strength, its easy adaptability to their growth needs, and its reasonable total cost of ownership. "RF-SMART proved to be the solution to our many needs and growth opportunities," Vinyard said. "Part of our growth is through well-managed acquisitions. RF-SMART's flexibility helps us be prepared and easily address those transitions."

"ICS has provided an excellent level of service to Alamo Group and has been prompt and attentive to our business requirements. The level of support before, during, and after the implementation process has been exceptional," said Rick Solano, ERP Application Specialist for Alamo Group. "RF-SMART is very easy to use and well-accepted amongst our employees, the functionality and performance has been extremely stable and reliable, and we look forward to implementing the solution at our other USA facilities."

Alamo Group will implement RF-SMART in their remaining USA facilities by the end of this year, keeping within their planned schedule.

About Alamo Group

Alamo Group is a leader in the design, manufacture, distribution and service of high quality equipment for right-of-way maintenance and agriculture. Their products include tractor and truck mounted mowing and other vegetation maintenance equipment, street sweepers, snowblowers, pothole patchers, excavators, agricultural implements and related after market parts and services. The Company, founded in 1969, has over 2,250 employees and operates fourteen plants in North America, Europe and Australia as of June 2006. The corporate offices of Alamo Group Inc. are located in Seguin, Texas and the headquarters for the Company's European operations are located in Salford Priors, England. www.alamo-group.com

About ICS

ICS is the award-winning developer of RF-SMART, the leading line of wireless and mobile solutions for Oracle's JD Edwards enterprise software. RF-SMART provides end-to-end supply chain visibility and control throughout manufacturing, distribution, warehousing and delivery environments using wireless, mobile and RFID technology. For 25 years, ICS has built a reputation for delivering flexible, powerful solutions.

Oracle and JD Edwards are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
China Telecom's Telemarketing Services Receive Boost from PacificNet. Check it out:
PacificNet, a provider of CRM and telemarketing services, eCommerce, gaming and Value-Added Services (VAS) in China, has announced today that its PacificNet Epro subsidiary has been chosen by China Telecom’s Ningbo Branch to supply CRM consulting and call center training services.



The agreement provides that PacificNet Epro will enhance the CRM service level and telemarketing management capability of China Telecom’s (News - Alert) customer service center called the “10000 Information Hotline.”
 
The agreement serves as creating a comprehensive consulting project that consists of Development of Outsourcing Telemarketing Program, Call Center Workflow Design, Business Management, Project Return on Investment (ROI), Critical Success Factors on Customer Affinity, Five Steps of Customer Service and Telemarketing, How to Design Effective Telemarketing Script and Customer Service Agent Role Playing Sessions.

Ms. Ren Xiu Li, Head of China Telecom Ningbo Call Center “10000 Information Hotline,” made note of the increase in the overall performance of the contact center management workflow, telemarketing effectiveness and its CRM service quality. The Telecom hopes to work with PacificNet Epro as a long-term CRM partner on future call center projects.

Joyce Poon, general manager of PacificNet Epro’s CRM Consulting and Training Services Division, contributed that her company is proud to be retained by China Telecom as its CRM contact center consulting and training provider. PacificNet Epro values the opportunity to work with China Telecom on this important project and is confident that its telemarketing knowledge in China will help the Telecom improve their overall customer satisfaction. Additionally, PacificNet Epro is looking to increase the overall effectiveness of their telemarketing efforts to help China Telecom capture more cross-selling opportunities.

PacificNet CFO, Joseph Levinson, added that with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games drawing near, there will be tremendous changes taking place in the city and throughout China. The company will make the most of available resources to realize necessary business expansion and future development in China.
 
Levinson went on to add that PacificNet has grown the company into a 2,300 employee organization with a presence in Hong Kong, Macau, 26 provinces in mainland China and in the US. The company will continue to execute on its strategy of capturing market share and revenue growth through organic growth, accretive acquisitions and synergistic value creation.
 
According to Victor Tong, president of PacificNet, the belief is that the CRM contact center has emerged as the new competitive advantage for the market leaders in China. With over 15 years as a telemarketing, CRM services and contact center management provider in Hong Kong and China, PacificNet is well positioned to capture a significant share of this rapidly growing market.

China has been identified as a prime growth area for the contact center industry and as such, PacificNet has positioned itself well to benefit from the anticipated growth. Selection by China Telecom will greatly impact PacificNet Epro’s ability to capture future wins and expand its share in the market. As dynamic as the contact center industry is, the opportunities are likely to continue to be strong for some time to come. As long as PacificNet Epro continues to be innovative in their strategy, they should be able to maintain a strong momentum in the China market.
=================================================================================================
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
=================================================================================================
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
 
OSI Systems Announces New Director. Check it out:
HAWTHORNE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIS), a vertically integrated provider of specialized electronics for critical applications in the Healthcare and Security industry, today announced the election of Mr. Leslie Bider to its Board of Directors.



Mr. Bider, currently of Elevation Partners, a Menlo Park and New York based private equity firm, brings a track record of successful management of a fast-growing global enterprise, as well as expertise in finance, including founding and managing Los Angeles-based accounting firm Bider & Montgomery. Between 1987 and 2005, Mr. Bider served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Warner Chappell Music, Inc., during which time annual revenues for Warner Chappell grew from approximately $30 million to more than $500 million. Prior to his tenure as Chairman and CEO of Warner Chappell, Mr. Bider was Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Warner Bros. Music. Mr. Bider currently serves on the board of directors of several charitable and educational institutions. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California and a Masters degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania

OSI Systems Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Deepak Chopra, stated, "We are pleased that Les has agreed to join the OSI board. Les brings a unique combination of experience and expertise to OSI, which will be of enormous value as we continue to build on our growth."

About OSI Systems, Inc.

OSI Systems, Inc. is a Hawthorne, California based diversified global developer, manufacturer and seller of specialized electronics security and inspection systems, medical monitoring and anesthesia products, and optoelectronic devices and value-added subsystems. The company has more then 30 years of experience in electronics engineering and manufacturing and maintains offices and production facilities located in more than a dozen countries. OSI Systems implements a strategy of expansion by leveraging its electronics and contract manufacturing capabilities into selective and product markets through organic growth and acquisitions. For more information on OSI Systems, Inc. or any of its subsidiary companies, visit www.osi-systems.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements include information regarding our expectations, goals or intentions about the future, including, but not limited to, statements regarding Mr. Leslie Bider. Other important factors are set forth in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
POLITICS-U.S.: WAR VETERANS DEPLOYED TO CAMPAIGN'S FRONT LINES. Check it out:
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO, Sep. 26, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- The 2006 U.S.
congressional elections are heating up, bring with them a
proliferation of television ads featuring veterans of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I'm a veteran," a series of men and women in civilian clothes
say into the camera in an attack ad against anti-war Democrat Ned
Lamont, who is challenging incumbent Joe Lieberman for one of
Connecticut's U.S. Senate seats.

The campaign has turned into a nationally watched referendum on
the war in Iraq, and earlier this month a Virginia-based group
called "Vets for Freedom" entered the fray, buying about $100,000
in television advertising time to support the embattled Lieberman,
a Democrat who is running as an independent after being defeated
in the primary by Lamont.

"I was wounded in Baghdad," one of the vets tells the camera.

"When we were over there, it was important that someone had our
back," says another.

"Like Senator Lieberman," a female soldier chimes back.

"Whatever your feelings about Iraq, he was there for us," the
ad goes. "Thanks Senator Lieberman."

The advertisement gives the impression of a grassroots campaign
by U.S. veterans, but the truth is more complicated. While some
Iraq war veterans undoubtedly support Vets for Freedom, an overview
of its operations indicate it is more of a Republican Party front
group than anything else.

The campaign is managed by Taylor Goss, a former spokesman for
George W. Bush, who also managed the president's public relations
during the recount of votes in Florida in the 2000 election. Bill
Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, and Republican
strategist Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the U.S. occupation
authority in Iraq, are also advisers.

The nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy found links between
Vets for Freedom and the public relations firm that created the
Swift Boat ad campaign against Democrat John Kerry, and call it the
"equivalent of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican 527
committee whose attack advertisements in battleground states helped
sink Kerry in the 2004 presidential race by smearing him as a phony
war hero and a traitor to his country." Both campaigns have worked
with the Republican-affiliated Donatelli PR firm, but the group
denies they have anything to do with the Republican Party.

"If we were a Republican front group, we wouldn't be running
advertisements for Joe Lieberman," the group's founder, former
Marine Lt. Wade Zirkle, told IPS. "That's not something that
Republicans do. They get involved in races where they want
Republicans to win. I think it's pretty clear that we are what we
say we are: a bipartisan group that concerns itself with one issue,
the war on terror, specifically Iraq."

Because of the vagaries of campaign finance laws, it is
difficult to tell who is funding Vets for Freedom.

"There are almost no reporting requirements on these
committees," said Craig Holman of the Washington-based reform group
Public Citizen. "So it's often impossible to know who's paying for
these ads. Unlike the candidates themselves, independent committees
take in unlimited campaign donations."

Also, unlike the candidates themselves, so-called 527 committees
(named after a section of the tax code) are not regulated by the
Federal Election Commission, but instead must only make quarterly
reports to the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. tax bureaucracy.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that more than $210
million have been raised and spent by 527 committees during the
2005-2006 election cycle. The most free-spending groups have been
Democratic-leaning labor unions like the Service Employees
International Union, which has spent $18 million, and the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has paid
out $10 million in this year's election campaigns.

Indeed, the Democrats have put forward their own crop of
veterans. Using the power of unrestricted campaign donations, a 527
campaign committee called VoteVets has taken out ads against
incumbent Republican Sens. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania and George
Allen in Virginia. The ads target the Republicans for voting
against more funding for body armor for U.S. troops in the field.

Vets for Freedom maintains that VoteVets is a Democratic Party
front group. Iraq war veterans affiliated with the group deny the
charge.

"The DNC [Democratic National Committee] does not dictate our
policy or our strategies," retired Maj. Paul Hackett told IPS.
After serving tours in Ramadi and Fallujah, he returned to his
native state of Ohio and ran for Congress in a special election in
2005. On Election Day, Hackett stunned the political universe,
winning more than 48 percent of the vote in a district where George
Bush received nearly two-thirds of the vote just 10 months earlier.

"Our ideas come from those who are affiliated with the group,"
he said. "Some of us have more say than others, but we are
certainly not a mouthpiece for the DNC. We're using it as an
opportunity to get politicians to take note and listen, and I think
it's important."

Hackett doesn't see anything wrong with Vets for Freedom either.

"I'm torn," says Raf Noboa, a seven-year veteran of the U.S.
Army. When he returned from a tour in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, he
became active in the antiwar movement. He worked on Ned Lamont's
primary campaign earlier this year and helped found a grassroots
group called Iraq Veterans for Progress, which is not affiliated
with either party.

"If you're going to have folks like me who are against the Iraq
war, then obviously you're going to have random guys on the other
side," Noboa told IPS. "The problem is that these guys help
legitimate what is an illegitimate enterprise. It's an illegitimate
enterprise politically and an illegitimate enterprise morally. I'm
not a fan. You know what I'm saying?"

Copyright 2006 Global Information Network
Sirius Telecom to Use Equinox's ExtractCDR to Convert Softswitch Data into 'Usable' Formats. Check it out:
Sirius Telecom, which provides carrier-class switch partitions, switch services and co-location space in Los Angeles and New York, has reportedly selected Equinox Information Systems’ ExtractCDR reporting software to transform raw switch data and billing records generated from the Veraz Control Switch into usable formats.



Sirius first announced that it was deploying the Veraz (News - Alert) Control Switch, made by Veraz Networks, back in January of this year.

ExtractCDR (CDR stands for Call Detail Record) lets users extract data from a soft switch, based on a range of filter parameters, and then put it into a variety of formats, including ASCII, CDR and other custom output formats. The Windows-based software is said to eliminate the chance of errors created by manual translation of usage records. In addition to allowing the user to filter records based on a variety of parameters, ExtractCDR also processes records in real-time or batch mode.

“Sirius considered other commercial software applications as well as the option to develop a custom application internally,” commented Dan Maxwell, EVP of operations for Sirius Telecom, in a press release. “We determined that ExtractCDR was the best option given the software’s price point and native ability to integrate with our Veraz Networks’ Softswitch platform.”

“ExtractCDR will definitely improve the efficiency of Sirius’ billing and customer service processes,” explained David West, Equinox’s executive vice president. “Equinox looks forward to future collaborations with Sirius to address and improve other operational processes vital to their business.”

Sirius Telecom’s customer base is primarily comprised of International PTT’s, Tier 1 telecom carriers and enterprise service providers. It supports virtually all legacy TDM formats, in addition to next generation VOIP solutions.

For more information about Sirius Telecom, visit www.siriustelecom.com.

For more information about Equinox, visit www.equinoxis.com.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

--------

Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.
Don't fear a merger it could be the defining moment of your career. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IN RECENT months we have seen a real boom in merger and acquisition activity.

In the insurance industry Resolution's recent GBP3.6bn ($6.8bn) acquisition of Abbey's life operations immediately springs to mind, with the former also saying it is bracing itself for further consolidation in the closed life sector in coming months.



Many perceive the world of M'A to be rather glamorous, with sharp-suited lawyers and bankers signing multi-million deals. But once all the glitz and razzmatazz has subsided, and the bankers and lawyers have taken the fees and moved on to another project, what happens next?

Well, you can be sure that it will fall on the shoulders of someone, usually the chief financial officer, to deliver all the vast synergy benefits that were promised.

The heat is on to deliver savings against the odds. According to Deloitte between 50% and 70% of mergers fail to deliver shareholder value.

Speed is of the essence too. Accenture revealed that for an acquirer expecting to reap $500m in yearly cost savings from a transaction a mere one-month delay reduces the net present value of the deal by more than $150m assuming a 10% cost of capital.

It certainly sounds an almost impossible task, but should a merger really strike so much fear into the executive's heart? Not necessarily.

In fact forward-thinking chief financial officers in the insurance sector could actually view mergers as a golden opportunity not only to pro-gress the success of a company but also to make a name for themselves and delight their bosses. So the question is: 'How, exactly?'

In order to attain meaningful reporting information after a merger, the chief financial officer has to see how the new business is performing in order to develop financial and market results and appease stakeholders as they eagerly await information on the merger's success.

But, when two insurance companies of significant size come together, merging IT systems overnight is clearly impossible. A solution is needed that allows companies to integrate management information rapidly from disparate systems without the need for standardisation or invasive change to source systems.

It can be tempting to choose one company's system over the others, but this will only serve to alienate both customers and employees, according to analysts.

Moreover, any chief financial officer who attempts this will soon realise that rapid standardisation is almost impossible. There will always be diversity. It is more important to implement quickly a system that will give a cross-company perspective and so immediate benefit.

This is all very worthy, but what you need immediately is to understand the gross margins of all the product lines, channels and global accounts across the newly acquired entity. Switching off old systems can wait.

Clearly, any M'A in the insurance industry signals a time of upheaval within a company. But this is not the only time major changes will affect operations, so the merger provides an excellent opportunity to make sure any systems and processes to acquire data after the merger are flexible enough to cope in the future.

Therefore a solution that provides adaptability to business after the merger and market changes, such as competitor activity, reorganisation or market consolidation, is crucial.

Companies would do well to look to one of the largest mergers in recent years, Halifax and Bank of Scotland's venture to form HBOS where they chose a flexible data warehouse to get a consistent view of procurement data held in disparate systems.

The company was realistic enough to recognise integrating operations and IT systems from different divisions was a long-term endeavour.

But by implementing an iterative approach, taking the project in bite-sized chunks and using a data warehouse to sit above their underlying systems, business users were able to gain the necessary insight to drive significant cost savings. Above all, these savings were delivered quickly.

A merger or acquisition of any size presents significant challenges when it comes to integrating the disparate systems of two insurance companies. However, with the right approach, chief financial officers can make it the defining moment of their career.

Andy Hayler is founder and chief strategist of enterprise data warehousing and data management software company Kalido

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
All roads still lead to ROAM, or ruin. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ASSETS AND PROFITS/ All roads still lead to ROAM, or ruin MOST company results this year reflect a positive economy. They also confirm something that causes many senior executives much discomfort. Growth through acquisition, or investment in modern technology to mechanise jobs and raise labour productivity, often results in an asset burden that depresses profitability.



The accompanying chart, based on results published this year, illustrates the issue. It compares the sales productivity of each firm's asset base asset turnover with ROAM (return on assets managed).

The correlation of higher asset turnover with a higher ROAM is clear. Asset turnover drives ROAM. It is the most important productivity measure of all for operating managers.

The worst performing companies on this chart are in the information technology and paper sectors. Sappi comes last with a ROAM of 3,5%. That's not surprising. In 1974, in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, the late Peter Drucker observed that since the Second World War the pulp and paper industry had swapped labour for capital on a massive scale. He called it a thoroughly uneconomic tradeoff. In fact, he wrote, the paper industry represents a massive triumph of engineering over economics and common sense. With an asset turnover of about 0,8, Sappi hasn't recovered its cost of capital for the past 20 years. Cumulative value destruction is massive and its downward momentum is unstoppable. More share options for management won't matter a jot.

SABMiller's asset turnover is even lower, at 0,6. There are three reasons. First, 60% of its asset base, $16bn of it, is goodwill and intangible. Second, Miller is proving to be a burden. It has yet to start recovering its cost of capital. Pitted against Budweiser, the straight and narrow brewing road in the US can lead only to perdition. Because of their beer war, Anheuser Busch's ROAM fell from 42% to 33%. They are both in a lose-lose situation. Maybe SAB's new man in the US will couple his drink skills know-how with SAB's to take Miller on to non-beer brands. Third, Bavaria in Latin America cost about $8bn. But it had an extremely low asset turnover of 0,2 before SAB bought it: that means $1 of assets generated just 20 of sales. Now the company has announced it is to invest even more to increase capacity. Management's asset turnover task for the next few years is clear. Beat 1. After that, aim for 2.

Another company that had an abysmally low asset turnover of around 0,3 before its collapse was Didata. After writing off the $3bn premium it spent on acquisitions, it has inched up sales profitability slightly. However, it still carries the burden it bought overseas. International operations generate 80% of its sales revenue at only 2,1% return on sales. To make things worse, central costs wipe out any profit they make. Meanwhile, its African operations generate a 10% return on sales. Again, it's clear what top management has to do. If it doesn't, then the company seems doomed to perform poorly for a long time.

Business Connexion's ROAM is also bad but this company suffered from taking its own medicine last year. It sapped itself with the introduction of an enterprise resource planning system. According to management, this increased costs and expenses and contributed to a lower return on sales. It confirms that there seems to be no tested, proven, positive correlation between an investment in enterprise resource planning systems and value creation. That doesn't bode well for Richemont, which has done well. Using executive chairman Johann Rupert's colourful segmentation of the luxury goods market, clearly lots of wealthy chaps all over the world have been buying beads, baubles and bangles to get lucky on a Saturday night! Management, after writing off 6bn of acquisition premiums, has increased ROAM to a respectable 14% which is no mean achievement. In fact, there is proud acknowledgement of the ROAM result for the first time in the annual report. However, there is need for caution. Like Business Connexion, they are about to sap themselves with an enterprise resource planning implementation. Let's hope they do it to support line managers with value creation in mind, instead of a Teutonic application of the latest technology and bureaucratic procedure.

An ill wind blows nobody any good. Maybe Richemont learned something from the Rainbow Chickens disaster. This company levered up its asset turnover to 2,4 before making long overdue reinvestment in operating assets. Today it has a lower asset turnover of 1,5 with a return on sales of 14,3% that takes it back to the halcyon days of its entrepreneurial founder, the late Stanley Methven. However, this record ROAM result of 21,5% does not compare with Astral's. During its reported last six months, Astral achieved an asset turnover of 2,5. Over the past six years its asset turnover has not fallen below 2,2, and once reached 3,0. Today, its return on sales is 17% and ROAM 42,5% a brilliant achievement for a company in the agricultural sector.

Finally, there is Tiger Brands. After divesting Astral, its asset turnover was 1,3 and return on sales 13,9%, generating a ROAM of 18,1%. Three years later, asset turnover improved 39% and return on sales 8%. The effect is a ROAM of 27,3% an improvement of 50%.

Despite its leverage, you seldom hear executives talking about the asset turnover effect. We tend to focus myopically on sales, margins, and profits in isolation. Yet, if the last market collapse showed us anything, it is that in times like the present consult Murphy every day, and add assets with care and fear. If you do add them to reposition the firm, give the asset turnover effect higher priority than the profit effect on the business.

If you don't, you may find yourself writing them off one day.

Black, writer, coach, and performance improvement consultant, is a partner of Schaffer Consulting and co-author of Who Moved My Share Price?

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
E.ON ready for talks with Acciona on Endesa. Check it out:
(EFE News Service Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The German energy titan trying to acquire Spain's biggest electric utility said Wednesday it is ready to talk to the construction firm that this week acquired 10 percent of Endesa.

In a conference call with investors, the chairman of E.ON said his company is determined to pursue the acquisition and that he had learned through the media that builder Acciona is willing to enter talks with the German concern about its stake in Endesa.



Under the circumstances, it would "probably be a good idea" for E.ON and Acciona to talk, CEO Wulf Bernotat said.

Acciona's surprise purchase Monday of 10 percent of Endesa at a price of 32 euros ($40.55) per share prompted E.ON to sweeten its own bid for the Spanish utility, from the 25.41 euros ($32.19) it offered in February to 35 euros ($44.40) a share.

Amounting to 37.1 billion euros ($47.1 billion) in cash, the enhanced offer from E.ON represents a 38 percent increase over the German company's original bid.

Acciona said its purchase of Endesa shares was not part of "a speculative operation" and that it was prepared to negotiate with E.ON - Europe's largest utility - about control of the Spanish power provider.

The builder also expressed an interest in increasing its holding to 25 percent of Endesa.

Bernotat used Wednesday's conference call to prod Madrid to heed this week's ruling by the European Commission that the conditions imposed by Spain's National Energy Commission on the E.ON-Endesa tie-up are illegal under EU legislation.

Leaders of the 25-member European Union have agreed, at least in principle, on the need to create a genuine single market in the energy sector.

The CEO, who suggested E.ON's acquisition of Endesa could be completed by year's end, said Tuesday's move to increase the offer was intended as a "clear signal" that his company plans to press ahead with the transaction.

The involvement of Acciona has caused Endesa's share price on the Madrid Stock Exchange to soar more than 18 percent, and it stood at 34.75 euros midway through Wednesday's session.

Bernotat said E.ON remains convinced that "the combination of the two enterprises follows a strategic and industrial logic."

He said that E.ON had been prepared from the outset to boost its offer for Endesa if necessary and that "the moment has come to use our flexibility."

E.ON "will use all available financial resources," Bernotat said, mentioning the possibility of issuing new shares or selling assets.

The German company says completion of the deal is contingent on E.ON's acquisition of at least 50.01 percent of Endesa's shares, and on the Spanish firm's elimination of a rule restricting investors to 10 percent of voting rights, no matter how big their stake in the enterprise.

E.ON's February offer for the electric utility came after Spain's leading gas group, Gas Natural, launched a takeover bid worth $27.8 billion bid for Endesa in September 2005.

Endesa management considers the E.ON offer to be better than the one made by Gas Natural because it provides a higher price, payment in cash and would maintain the company's current structure.

If it gets done, the E.ON-Endesa deal would create the biggest electric and gas company in the world, with more than 50 million customers in over 30 countries and 107,000 employees.

Endesa was a state-owned company for decades until it was privatized in 1998.

For its part, the Spanish government opposes E.ON's ambitions to obtain control of Endesa, but has not moved overtly to block the transaction.

While the future of Endesa remains uncertain, another Spanish construction firm, ACS, announced that it bought 6.3 percent of Spain's second-largest utility, Iberdrola.

As ACS already holds 35 percent of No. 3 utility Union Fenosa, its foray into Iberdrola shares sparked speculation about a possible merger between the energy companies.

Copyright 2006 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

eBay May Quit from China

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eBay May Quit from China. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHENZHEN, September 28, 2006, SinoCast -- Online auction giant eBay is probably to quit from China due to strong competition from Chinese rivals, Taobao.com.

Tom Group, the media group controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, may take over eBay Eachnet and its online payment service, PayPal's China division.

Analysts said it was unlikely that eBay would withdraw from the China market, but it was possible that eBay would retain some stake in its China division while seeking a Chinese partner.

Neither of the two companies denied the report.

"We have no comment on this report now," said Liu Wei, director of public relations with Shanghai-registered eBay Eachnet.

The 21st Century Business Herald reported that Hong Kong- listed Tom Group would announce its takeover of eBay's China division and its PayPal service within a few days, citing a well-informed source. An agreement between the two companies had already been signed, it said.



Lee Shuk Wen, an official from Tom Group, said they were "open to the business opportunities on mainland but have no details to disclose at present." eBay bought one-third of Eachnet's stake for USD30 million in 2002. It spent another USD150 million on the remaining shares of Eachnet in 2003.

But shortly after that, eBay Eachnet's share in the consumer-to-consumer market went down under competition from taobao.com.

Taobao.com attracted customers from eBay Eachnet with its free online trading platform, while Eachnet collected a commission of up to CNY 8 for each item sold on its site.

By last year, Taobao accounted for 67.3 percent of the C2C market in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, much higher than eBay's 29.1 percent, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), the country's official Internet statistical agency.

"It is possible that eBay will reduce its investment in China because of its poor performance in the past three years over pressure from its shareholders," said Yu Yang, president of Analysys International, a Beijing-based research company.

"But China is such a big market that no big multinationals can afford to lose, so it's unlikely that it will completely withdraw from China." In March 2003, eBay bought one third of Eachnet's stake by paying USD30 million, while Eachnet accounted for over 90 percent of China's C2C market. It spent another USD150 million to buy the remaining shares of Eachnet in 2003.

However, in April, Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com'China's largest B2B Website, established Taobao.com and later lured away many of eBay China's customers by offering a free online trading platform, while Eachnet collected a commission of up to CNY 8 for each item sold on its Website.

By 2005, Taobao accounted for 67.3 percent of the C2C market in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, much higher than eBay's 29.1 percent, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

In another development, the People's Bank of China is drafting a regulation which stipulates that foreign investment faces a limit for its shares in an enterprise operating online payment systems. eBay is the only owner of its C2C Website in China and the Paypal service. It was looking for Chinese partners in its startup, but ended up selling off its Chinese branch.

By the end of June, Tom Group had HKD 1.7 billion in cash and a credit line of HKD 2.1 billion. The well-informed source also said eBay China appointed Liao Guangyu as its new CEO only to carry out the takeover. Liao replaced Martin Wu, who became eBay's CEO last September.

Copyright 2006 Sinocast

Founder Invests in Shenyang

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Founder Invests in Shenyang. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHENYANG, September 28, SinoCast -- Founder Group, one of the leading PC makers in China, recently signed a memo with relevant departments of Shenyang City, according to which it will obtain a 44.56% stake in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Shenyang People's Government.



Since Northeast Pharmaceutical Group holds a 47.51% stake in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (SZSE: 000597), Founder will become the controlling shareholder of the later after the conclusion of the deal.

Founder will follow the mode of "BlueStar" in restructuring Northeast Pharmaceutical Group, remarked an official from Shenyang People's Government. This means that Shenyang People's Government transfers the stake to Founder free of charge, and in return, Founder will make investments in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd. and build an 8-inch-above chip plant there.

In April 2004, China National BlueStar (Group) Corporation struck an agreement with Shenyang People's Government concerning the acquisition of Shenyang Chemical Industry Group (SCIG)'s state-owned assets and stake.

Since the beginning of 2005, BlueStar and SCIG have carried out cooperation in an all-round way, establishing three significant projects with a total investment of CNY 10 billion in Shenyang City. It is estimated that the three projects will bring in production value of around CNY 20 billion by 2010 for Shenyang City, according to a manager of SCIG.

Perhaps being aware of the benefit, Shenyang decided to continue to adopt the mode in the transfer of the stake in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group.

"Shenyang People's Government had the plan to introduce strategic investors rather long ago. Since the R&D investment in the pharmaceutical industry is huge, Northeast Pharmaceutical Group can not sustain the continuous development Northeast Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd.," a source disclosed, "Previously, several companies in South China, especially in Shenzhen, had expected to become the controlling shareholder of Northeast Pharmaceutical Group. However, because of the requirements of Shenyang, they eventually gave up the plan." Founder, strong in capital, can increase the investment in R&D after taking a majority stake in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group, according to Liu Guohong, an analyst with V-sun Securities. Founder possesses the huge marketing system, which is its most valuable asset. Although the marketing system is mainly for IT products, Founder still can integrate client resources within the system.

Northeast Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., the largest bulk drug production base in China, boasts the biggest sodium fosfomycin and VC production capacity. It is the first enterprise in the country producing anticancer drug Zidovudine, and its products Amanta die and remantadine are recommended as the drugs for curing bird flu by the country's Ministry of Health.

"More importantly, Founder is a state-owned enterprise as well, and this is the major factor for Shenyang's transfer of the stake to it," said an insider, "Furthermore, Founder offers more preferential conditions." In 2003, Founder made an investment of CNY 300 million into Southwest Synthetic Pharmaceutical Corp. Ltd., thus becoming the controlling shareholder of the latter and indirectly holding a majority stake in Southwest Synthetic Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

(SZSE: 000788).

"Southwest Synthetic Pharmaceutical Corp. Ltd. and Northeast Pharmaceutical Group are related and complementary to each other in product property, which lays a solid foundation for Founder in the future integration," said Liu Guohong.

Not long ago, Jiang Bijin, vice president of Founder, once said that Founder discovered two new profit breakthroughs, namely multi-layer circuit water and chip.

One of the conditions for Founder procuring the controlling stake in Northeast Pharmaceutical Group is the establishment of an 8-inch-above chip project in Shenyang City.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.94)

Copyright 2006 Sinocast
Sonata buys 50% in German co for euro 18 mn. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Bangalore-based IT company Sonata Software has acquired a majority stake in the German firm TUI Info Tec. Sonata has acquired 50.1% in the Hanover-based company for euro 18 m, to be paid through borrowings and cash.



The Indian IT consultancy and software company has signed an agreement with TUI AG, Europe's leading tourism and shipping group, for acquiring the controlling stake in its subsidiary, TUI InfoTec, which has revenues of e130m and employs 432 people, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

B Ramaswamy, president & managing director, Sonata Software told ET, We already have a presence in the UK. But we wanted to have a foothold in the rest of Europe, hence this acquisition. This deal would help us tap into the relatively untapped and under-served German market, and TUI Info Tec would help provide local knowledge and language skills.

The combination of Sonata's 1,700-strong India development facility and TUI Info Tec's 400-plus onshore German IT professionals with extensive skills in infrastructure management and mission-critical software applications would provide compelling value proposition for European customers looking for a proven, low-risk, cost-effective and high quality outsourcing option, he added.

The company also aims to enter the infrastructure management space with this acquisition, which normally would take years to build and develop, Mr Ramaswamy said.

This is an enormous leapfrog for us in the infrastructure management space, he added. Heinz Kreuzer, Group CIO of TUI and MD of TUI InfoTec, said that 44% of the company's revenues in '05 was contributed by software services and the rest by IT infrastructure management.

There would also be transition of the on site work of TUI Info Tec, as its on site jobs would be transferred to India with Sonata, which would mean that we would also be increasing our employee strength here substantially, Mr Ramaswamy said. TUI's employees would then be used for attending to the new clients in new geographies, he added.

At present Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest applications services firm, has a dedicated remote infrastructure management centre in Chennai with a capacity of more than 2,500 seats.

Wipro Technologies claims to have the largest infrastructure services practice, with more than 6,500 infrastructure experts supporting over 200 clients in the US, Europe and Japan, apart from its Indian customers.

TUI Info Tec has capabilities in remote infrastructure management and domain knowledge in verticals like travel, tourism, airlines and hospitality, as well as expertise in horizontals like enterprise applications, web applications, business intelligence, and legacy applications management.

Its subsidiaries include Travel BA.sys and ACCON RVS which provide a technology platform and back-office services for travel agencies respectively. Mr Ramaswamy said that the management of TUI Info Tec would also undergo changes.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

China: Opening the door

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China: Opening the door. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With the continued growth of China's economy, many Chinese businesses have emerged as attractive acquisition targets. Recognising this, the Government has amended the M&A rules governing foreign investors and the enterprise bankruptcy laws, attempting to boost foreign investors' confidence in China.



China's regulations on mergers and acquisitions of domestic enterprises by foreign investors became effective on 8 September, 2006, and substantially amend and expand the interim M&A rules governing foreign investors adopted in 2003.

The three most notable changes for a foreign investor are:

. The new rules expressly permit the use of a foreign publicly-listed company's shares as consideration for the exchange of Chinese equity securities in connection with an M&A transaction. A multi-step government approval process is required for a share exchange transaction and two major requirements are: the foreign shares used as consideration must be traded on a public stock market and must have a `stable' share price over the previous 12 months; and the foreign-listed company (and its management) must not have been subject to any sanction by a relevant regulatory authority within the past three years.

. Foreign investors must notify a Chinese Government agency if a proposed M&A transaction results in foreign investors controlling any Chinese company that involves or affects a key domestic industry, national economic security or well-known or traditional trademarks or brand names.

These new provisions are broad and vague regarding which industries are `key', when `national economic security' is affected, and what trademarks and brand names are well known or traditional. The Chinese authorities are keen to protect their key industries and assets, a reaction not completely dissimilar to the US Congress' reaction to and interference in the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation's proposed purchase of US oil company Unocal in 2005. This is also consistent with the Chinese authorities' consideration of The Carlyle Group's agreement to acquire an 85% stake in Xugong Group Construction Machinery for $375m (197.6m) which, although signed in October 2005, has yet to receive approval.

. A Chinese Government agency must give its approval if a `domestic person' establishes or controls a foreign company and the foreign company acquires a Chinese affiliated company. Requirements for approval are unclear and key terms remain undefined.

When foreign investors acquire a Chinese company, it is common for the foreign investors to offer selected Chinese citizens an opportunity to own equity interests in the foreign company established to make the acquisition. Whether such a transaction would trigger the approval requirement under the 2006 M&A rules is unclear.

Enterprise Bankruptcy Law

In June 2007, China's new Enterprise Bankruptcy Law will become effective. The groundbreaking legislation will streamline bankruptcy procedures and better protect the interests of creditors.

The most significant change from the existing bankruptcy law is that the Chinese Government will no longer play a leading role in bankruptcy cases. Other notable changes are:

. Any Chinese enterprise may be a debtor, regardless of whether the entity is stated owned, private or foreign invested. The interim enterprise bankruptcy law did not establish procedures governing the bankruptcy of financial institutions. However, and very importantly, financial institutions are now covered by the new law that may add transparency and other benefits to creditors who invest in this key sector.

. Displaced workers' compensation claims were often paid ahead of secured claims. The new law reverses this practice and provides that in a liquidation, secured creditors are entitled to distribution to the extent of the value of the collateral prior to any payments to employee for wages, medical insurance, and other compensatory benefits.

. A debtor or a creditor may now apply directly to the court for a reorganisation. A debtor in possession may manage the assets and operate the business of the debtor under the supervision of the administrator, or the administrator may operate the business and administer the assets by engaging the existing management. Only the debtor in possession or the administrator can propose a plan of reorganisation, the exclusivity period is six months after the reorganisation application is accepted by the court and that period may be extended for another three months. If exclusivity expires, the court shall terminate the reorganisation proceeding and declare the enterprise bankrupt.

. The new law allows the People's Court to recognise and enforce the orders and judgments issued by a foreign court sitting in the foreign bankruptcy proceeding to the extent that such orders or judgments may be enforced or recognised by a Chinese court pursuant to any existing treaties or international convention or based on the principle of reciprocity.

Substantial regulatory and legal changes continue to unfold in China, and such changes are reshaping and improving the country's legal environment for M&A, restructuring and bankruptcy transactions, which should generate more confidence in the Chinese market.

Tai Hsia is a London associate and Helena Huang a New York associate at Kirkland & Ellis.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

Insolvency: A closing chapter

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Insolvency: A closing chapter. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) I must start with a confession; I have converted to Chapter 11. Theologically speaking, I am a practising US lawyer who strictly follows the dictates of the United States Code. Well, almost. After years of acting for banks, it has proved impossible to stop being sympathetic to secured creditors and to retain a fondness for the simple joys of a rapid receivership appointment.



This all came about following a decision to move to Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York in 2003, where I had the good fortune to be partner for three exciting years. I worked with a superb team of bankruptcy lawyers from whom I learned a great deal. I vividly recall a conversation with a senior workout banker shortly after my arrival in New York. He had recently endured a bad experience in the London market and was struggling to locate either the rescue culture of which I repeatedly spoke or a recognisable reorganisation regime. Despite my confident assertion that the UK system was flexible and effective, he was not at all persuaded that the UK system should be taken seriously.

I continued the debate in my head long after that discussion and, as I started to become more deeply involved with the Chapter 11 process, I began to appreciate just how powerful a vehicle it is for achieving a restructuring result when driven by the commerciallyminded and activist bankruptcy bench.

I had been closely involved with US bankruptcy proceedings while practising in London and before moving to Davis Polk in New York but there is, inevitably, a world of difference between being an observer, albeit an active one, and being a participant. Seeing things from inside the system gives you a very different perspective.

Over time I developed a clearer sense of what my banker friend was telling me and how the US approach involved a fundamentally different mindset and style. The fact the Chapter 11 system has traditionally been debtor-friendly and limits the rights and leverage of secured creditors is well known, but to understand how strong the debtor's position is in the US system compared with that of the UK, you need to see the full range of rights and powers given to a debtor.

The debtor has the benefit of a wide automatic stay covering all actions aimed at enforcing pre-bankrupcty claims, with certain limited exceptions, such as police or regulatory activity. It has plan exclusivity; in other words, it has the right initially to control the process for formulating and negotiating a plan of reorganisation. It has the power to assume or reject executory contracts and unexpired leases, including the ability to reject - disclaim, in UK terms - contracts that create quasi-property rights, such as options.

Contract termination rights conditioned on insolvency or the financial condition of the debtor - so called ipso facto clauses - in executory contracts and unexpired leases are invalidated. The debtor has the power to obtain post-petition financing and, in some circumstances, to grant security interests ranking ahead of existing mortgages and liens. It has the power to sell property free and clear of liens. There are also various limitations on the rights of secured creditors, including the invalidation of after-acquired property clauses as they relate to property acquired by the estate after the start of the bankruptcy.

The debtor also has what are known as `cram down powers'. This is the ability, if certain detailed conditions are met, to confirm a plan despite the fact that a class of creditors has voted against it. This does not exist under UK law. Finally, there is the lower voting majority required to approve a plan. The Bankruptcy Code requires a vote of only two-thirds in amount - rather than the three-quarters in amount under the UK system - and a majority in number.

But it is not just the rights given to the debtor by the code that make a difference. There are also various institutional factors that are significant, including the litigation context, which is particularly important.

The code was drafted to promote negotiation among creditor and shareholder groups and contains provisions that give all interested parties some negotiating leverage, if sometimes only in the form of the ability to delay the ultimate confirmation of the plan. Bargaining in Chapter 11 cases takes place in the shadow of bankruptcy court litigation and Chapter 11 can often bring the process of negotiating the reorganisation into the courtroom.

These proceedings are conducted, at least to UK eyes, with considerable informality and are presided over by an assigned bankruptcy judge who sees the case from beginning to end. The judge's approval is needed for transactions outside the ordinary course of business and the judge sees it as an important part of his or her job to support the debtor and the promotion of a successful reorganisation.

One of the guiding principles of Chapter 11 is that it rewards parties that are actively involved in the process and that make it clear to other parties that they are prepared to protect their rights in the bankruptcy court if an acceptable deal cannot be negotiated. This explains why those who are used to the US system are so comfortable with taking disputes to court.

However, although a combination of the code and an activist court creates the conditions for a strong debtor-led procedure, important amendments to the code during the past decade have given added protection to a number of classes of creditors including aircraft financiers, commercial property owners, counterparties to financial contracts and landlords and suppliers. To some, this weakens the effectiveness of the process and undermines the rehabilitation principle.

These changes can be seen as compounding a trend for creditors to exert increasing control over the Chapter 11 process. This has been achieved through the use of tight covenants in post-petition financing documentation and the appointment of chief restruc-turing officers at the instigation of creditors. This has, in turn, led to increases in the frequency of sales of debtors' businesses during Chapter 11 to proceedings of shorter duration. There has also been an increase in the number of pre-packaged or pre-negotiated reorganisation plans (to reduce costs and damage to the debt-or's business). In addition, the continuing growth of claims trading brings experienced professionals who specialise in recapitalising distressed businesses to the negotiating table. These professionals tend to have strong views about the timetable for emergence from the case, management strategies and exit terms.

Most restructuring negotiations take place primarily between the senior and junior creditors. With hedge funds and other institutional investors acquiring senior debt, however, there can be inter-creditor tensions and bargaining within creditor classes, which can be difficult to resolve quickly.

Even in this somewhat diluted form Chapter 11 still has its critics. Many would say that its benefits come at too high a price. The costs are substantial both because of high legal and professional fees - in part because every document is turned into a pleading - and because of the amount of time and resources that need to be devoted to the proceeding. There are many who cite the reorganisation recidivists - the Chapter 22s and 33s who have filed for bankruptcy protection more than once - as evidence of the system's failure to achieve the results that its promoters proclaim as its raison d'etre. And there are many who point out that the decision-making process before different bankruptcy courts across the country can be rough and ready, making outcomes difficult to predict. A current topic of debate is the significance of valuation evidence in cases where a cram down of junior creditors is contested, and the problems caused by the unpredictability of judicial valuations.

In many respects, Chapter 11 has now evolved into a form of distressed M&A and a mechanism for effecting changes in corporate control. Both in theory and in practice, reorganisation is a change of control transaction involving a sale of the debtor's business to its creditors.

My US banker friend's implicit criticism of the UK model is that it limits restructuring options to either reschedulings that tinker with, rather than resolve, the debtor's problems or asset or business sales through the receivership mechanism. But this was always somewhat simplistic and is now rather outdated - in recent years US methodologies and models have found their way to Europe with the influx of experienced US bankers, investors and professionals and US funds. As a result there has been a major shift in thinking and practice and a desire in some quarters to replicate the style and methods of the Chapter 11 process. We have even seen US Supreme Court opinions being cited in skeleton arguments in recent litigation concerning contested schemes of arrangement.

While the reforms to the US system mentioned above have strengthened the rights of creditors, the UK's Enterprise Act 2002 has strengthened the administration regime by giving precedence to the concept of company rescue and weakening the position of secured creditors by eliminating their right to appoint an administrative receiver, except in exceptional circumstances.

So we now have some level of convergence. Local legal cultures remain resilient, however, and it is dangerous to assume that the two systems do, or can be made to, replicate one another. For example, there is a temptation for some to equate a scheme of arrangement with a Chapter 11 plan. However, the three sections of the Companies Act 1985 that regulate schemes are a long way away from the detailed provisions of the US Bankruptcy Code, even with the judge-made law supplementing the statute.

Nevertheless, I have little doubt that the US expatriate community will continue to reshape the landscape of European restructurings well into the future - with a little help from the Chapter 11 converts.

Nick Segal is a partner in the restructuring and insolvency group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

Insolvency: A fresh approach

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Insolvency: A fresh approach. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) When the Enterprise Act reforms were introduced in September 2003, it was against the background of a government initiative to bring the UK entrepreneurial regime closer to that of the US. The Enterprise Act covered both competition law and insolvency law reform with the objective, as announced by Gordon Brown in June 2001, being to help the UK economy reach US levels of productivity. A key facet of this for the reformers was that bankruptcy in the US did not have the same stigma as it did in Europe, and so the Enterprise Act sought to bring the UK closer to the US approaches to insolvency.



The reality of the Enterprise Act reforms was that they fell far short of the apparent purpose of introducing a Chapter 11-style process in the UK. There was no introduction of a debtor-in-possession (DIP) concept. There was no effort to introduce a framework to allow DIP priority financing, a key aspect of a Chapter 11 (so much so that there is now an established industry of `DIP lenders' who will make funding available to support a company during its restructuring in a Chapter 11). There was no introduction of provisions similar to those that apply in the US to executory contracts. There was no invalidation of insolvency events of default, which enabled counterparties to walk away at a time when the distressed company needed them most.

But where the legislative reforms may have failed to go far enough, the market has quickly adapted to US-style techniques. These have, ultimately, helped form a new environment in which restructuring and the continuance of the company has replaced the prevalent attitude of the 1990s which saw many large and complicated workouts ending up in formal insolvency - seen by most as ultimately destructive of value.

A key element in driving the market in this way has been the emergence of hedge funds and distressed debt trading desks as key players in a restructuring. There is now more than $1.1trn (579bn) worldwide under hedge fund management, with London at the centre of Europe's hedge fund management industry, responsible for approximately two-thirds of the $325bn (171bn) in funds under management in Europe. Many of those London-based hedge funds specialise in - or at least have - a presence in the distressed debt and restruc-turing market. This has represented a significant sea change, particularly when coupled with the fact that many constituencies that traditionally would have held onto their debt and seen through the restructuring, such as private placement noteholders and senior banks, are now willing to sell out to the distressed debt traders. Such debt inevitably ends up in whole, or in part, in the hands of the hedge funds. Add this to the fact that many hedge funds will hold debt positions across several layers of the capital structure, and it is evident that the dynamics have changed hugely from the environment that preceded the Enterprise Act of 2003. In that environment, the senior secured banks tended to be the dominant party in control of the restructuring or, if they deemed it appropriate, the insolvency.

Instead, the usual paradigm for a restructuring in the UK will be the formation of ad hoc committees of various levels in the capital structure, with a view to negotiating each constituency's corner in order to reach a consensual restructuring. Each committee is likely to have its own financial and legal advisers and will be driven towards achieving a successful, consensual restructuring, rather than lining up the administrators to take over the business. Moreover, where administrators and receivers are used, it may often only be as a small part of the process, for example to implement a restructuring through a pre-pack sale of the business to a new company owned by the hedge funds and secondary traders.

Accordingly, many of the restructurings in the UK over the past few years have gone some way towards dispelling the notion that hedge funds are aggressive and destructive in their approach to these complicated situations. Many of the funds are not there to `make a quick buck' - in fact, many of them wish to own the company at the end of the restructuring process, usually via a form of debt-for-equity swap, and that will often be the key motivation behind their strategy. They will then want to hold the company for a sufficient period of time to enable it to have turned the corner so that it may then be capable of being sold or become the subject of an IPO.

A recent example of this has been the Gate Gourmet restructuring. Latham & Watkins and Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin acted for the mezzanine creditors which, by the time the restructuring and debt for equity was consummated, were fully constituted by hedge funds (in other words there was not one original mezzanine lender left). This group and their advisers entered into the usual valuation debate with the private equity firm that owned Gate Gourmet prior to its restructuring. Notwithstanding the difficult background (namely, strikes at Heathrow and labour arbitration in the US) no-one (including, notably, the company) panicked and called in the administrators. Everyone held their nerve, agreed a solution in which the hedge funds ended up owning a majority of the company and laid the foundations for the company to be put back on a stable footing. An IPO exit in the next year or two is now highly likely. All of the hedge funds made significant money in the restructuring process, with the promise of more to come if there is a successful IPO exit.

Similarly, in the restructuring of Jarvis, a group of hedge funds led by an investment bank (and represented by Latham & Watkins and Close Brothers) provided bridging finance to the debt-for-equity restruc-turing as well as a post-restructuring working capital facility. This group still continues to hold equity in the listed company and remains very much involved in the company's strategy going forward. It would not be fanciful to suggest that in the climate of, say, five years ago, Jarvis would have been a candidate for administration. Instead, it continues as a listed company and has successfully refinanced its working capital facilities.

However, this is not to say that the lions have become lambs. Hedge fund creditors will not hesitate to litigate if they perceive that their rights are being threatened, insufficient value is being attributed to their debt holdings or they are otherwise being treated unfairly. There have been a string of such cases where hedge funds have either litigated or challenged a restructuring on this basis, for example, MyTravel (hedge funds bought subordinated bonds and challenged the restructuring); British Energy (hedge funds bought equity and challenged the restructuring as being unfair to shareholders); Colt Telecom (hedge fund creditors sought to put the company into administration in order to stop the management burning through its cash reserves) and TXU (hedge fund creditors sought to challenge a series of linked company voluntary arrangements).

But it would be wrong to end on such a note. Many hedge funds have a strategy that combines distressed debt investing with something more akin to a private equity or distressed private equity strategy, looking for positions of control and influence rather than seeking to make a quick buck or litigating to acquire leverage in a restructuring. Such a strategy often involves a medium-term hold of their debt (or the resultant equity in a restructuring) of anything from one to several years. Couple this with the modernisation of bankruptcy law regimes in Germany, France and Italy and it can be seen that there is an increasingly favourable environment for distressed investors seeking a US-style solution - and returns - in a restructuring.

These new legal regimes are now being tested and knowhow and precedents are building up (for example, the new procedure de sauvegarde is being tested in both Global Auto Logistics and Eurotunnel). There is now more confidence in the Italian restructuring regime, given the large returns made by several US hedge funds (and some investment banks' proprietary desks) in the Parmalat restructuring. There have also been more cases where there has been a practical application of the EC Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings 2000 and a useful precedent from the European Court of Justice in relation to the key issue of `centre of main interest' ( Eurofoods [2006]). All this points to an increasingly favourable European environment for hedge funds to seek out arbitrage opportunities and to invest in debt for a longer-term holding and ownership strategy.

John Houghton is a partner specialising in restructuring and insolvency at Latham & Watkins.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
DEMOfall '06 Conference Wraps; 67 New Technologies Catalyze Market. Check it out:
SAN DIEGO, DEMOfall '06, Sept. 27 -- The prestigious DEMOfall '06 conference closed today after an information-packed program focused on new products and services that are designed to improve and enhance business and consumer computing. The sold-out crowd -- comprised of business development executives, investors, reporters, and entrepreneurs -- was also treated to an in-depth discussion on nanotechnology and the near-term prospects for products based on today's sub-microscopic research.



(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGO )
"Nanotechnology is a fascinating area of study," said Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer. "Despite all the hype and the money poured into the field, we have yet to see outcomes that are affecting people's everyday lives. Thanks to John Patrick's FutureScan panel, the DEMO community has a much better sense of where that market is headed. My thanks to panelists Dr. Gian-Luca Bona of IBM's Almaden Research Center, Dr. Gerald Hoegl of Metcomb Nanostructures, and Rohit Sharma of Mohr Davidow Ventures for participating in this panel."

The semi-annual DEMO conferences are a reflection of the technology industry as a whole -- a microcosm of the best, most viable emerging technology products in the market categories that are the hottest in the industry. Today at DEMOfall, the focus was on:

-- Internet security,
-- Internet search,
-- application infrastructure,
-- telecom,
-- consumer-generated content,
-- social content,
-- digital content management, and
-- the connected desktop.

The morning general session began with a look at Internet security and Internet search -- two robust categories that are making giant strides in sophistication and customization every six months. Demonstrating their new innovations in these areas were:

-- Data Security Systems Solutions, Inc. -- OTPK (One Time Private Key)
protects electronic transactions through digital signatures.
-- MyPW, LLC -- MyPW authentication platform that protects against
identity theft and online fraud.
-- Retrevo, Inc. -- Retrevo searches and delivers smart content for
consumers that are researching, installing, using, fixing and upgrading
their consumer electronics products.
-- Imaginestics, LLC -- 3D-Seek.com is a shape-based search engine that
uses a drawing of the object being sought.

Changing tacks, the DEMOfall stage program continued with a look at infrastructure components that make building, managing and delivering new applications faster and easier. Demonstrations included:

-- NComputing, Inc. -- NStation Computing Solution is a hardware/software
package that will accelerate the market migration from desktop to
server based computing.
-- BriteSoft Corp. -- BriteWorks automates software development of
enterprise-class applications, typically speeding development by
20 percent.
-- Widgetbox -- Widgetbox is a Web-based marketplace where entrepreneurs
can develop and sell content and code that enhance everyday blogs.

Life in a Digital Age

"The arrival of the Internet age has made communicating much easier ... and much more complicated," said Shipley. "We now find ourselves texting, emailing, IM-ing, Skype-ing, and even, sometimes, putting old fashioned pen to paper. My research for DEMOfall showed that companies continue to improve services around voice communications, as evinced by Be Here's 'Total View' VoIP collaboration phone, JAJAH's free mobile VoIP solution, and GrandCentral's unified communications service that gives people one phone number for life. These are big ideas that enhance the traditional telecom experience and simplify people's lives."

DEMOfall also had a major focus on consumer-generated content, innovative social networking sites, and digital content management and delivery -- three hotspots in the consumer tech industry. The rise of social media and the influx of services designed to easily customize and enrich online sites has led to the proliferation of online data. Shipley invited the best new entrants in this field to launch at DEMOfall and to take the stage this afternoon:

-- SiteKreator -- SiteKreator Business Edition is a Web site creation and
hosting service designed for small business owners.
-- Wallop, Inc. -- Wallop is a social computing site with a sophisticated
user interface that allows users to express their individuality online
as they would offline.
-- Scrapblog, Inc. -- Scrapblog.com combines the storytelling aspect of
scrapbooks with the publishing power of blogs.
-- HeyLetsGo, Inc. -- HeyLetsGo.com connects people with local events and
an active local community to enhance their offline social life.
-- Yoriwa, Inc. -- LeapTag employs user-customized tags to find matching
content online, becoming more sophisticated as the user rates the
search results.
-- adaptiveblue, LLC -- Blueorganizer Browser Extension for Firefox is a
semantic Web tool that redefines how people collect, manage, discover
and share information.

"DEMOfall opened with exciting demonstrations from Dash Navigation, Tribeca Labs, and Pluggd and we closed the conference will equally heady stuff," said Shipley. "Eluma's community-driven, brandable marketing application will mean increased customer loyalty and revenue for the smart organizations that adopt this platform. And the Cozi Central message center profoundly enhances family communications in the digital age. It's been a tremendously enlightening couple of days here at DEMOfall."

DEMOgod Awards and Media Panel Review
Chris Shipley took the stage one final time to announce the recipients of the DEMOfall DEMOgod awards. Bestowed on the speakers that most effectively and charmingly communicate the salient attributes of their products despite the intensity of the DEMO stage, DEMOgod awards honor grace under pressure. DEMOfall award winners are:

-- Data Security Systems Solutions, Inc.
-- Eluma
-- Fonpods, Inc.
-- i-Lighter, Inc.
-- Mercora, Inc.
-- Moixa Energy Holdings, Ltd.
-- RingCube, Inc.
-- uControl, Inc.

At the conclusion of a full day, DEMOfall attendees tuned into the media roundtable, designed to give well-respected national business reporters the opportunity to opine about the business models and ideas debuted at the conference. Begun at DEMO 2006 in February, the media roundtable is already a much-anticipated element of the event program. Panelists at DEMOfall were:

-- Victoria Murphy Barret, Associate Editor, Silicon Valley Bureau, Forbes
-- John Gallant, President & Editorial Director, Network World
-- Kara Swisher, Co-Producer, D: All Things Digital & Staffer, Wall Street
Journal
-- Steve Wildstrom, "Technology & You" Columnist, BusinessWeek

DEMOfall Sponsors

DEMOfall '06's principal sponsor is QUALCOMM Incorporated. Decision Counsel, RealNetworks, Inc, Sun Microsystems, and Sony Electronics, Inc. are platinum sponsors. Porter Novelli and the National Science Foundation are gold sponsors of the event. The strategic partner is Guidewire Group. Media partners are American Venture Magazine, PR Newswire, TechConfidential/The Deal, and VentureCapitalConferences.com. Cellular wireless coverage provided by SpotWave. Marketing partners are Kauffman eVenturing, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), VC Experts, and VentureChoice.

About the DEMO Conferences
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*TRADE, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit http://www.demo.com/ .

The DEMO community also benefits from the award winning DEMOletter. A weekly e-newsletter designed to reach the people who are creating companies, building products and launching new ideas, DEMOletter provides smart insight and analysis of entrepreneurial business issues.

About Network World
Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community ( http://www.networkworld.com/ ), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns, and create new revenue opportunities. Additionally, Network World is the event organizer of DEMO and DEMOfall, the leading events for new technology innovation.

About IDG
International Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events, and research company. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, and PC World. IDG's online network includes more than 400 Web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and gaming worldwide. IDG is a leading producer of more than 170 technology-related events including LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Macworld Conference & Expo, DEMO, and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events. Over 850 IDC analysts in 50 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends. Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at http://www.idg.com/ .

NOTE: All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Network World Events and Executive Forums

CONTACT: Becky Sniffen of MC2 Communications, onsite at DEMOfall,+1-510-682-6613, or [email protected], for DEMOfall

Web site: http://www.demo.com/http://www.networkworld.com/http://www.idg.com/
Modavox To Launch Innovative Small Cap Promotions Technology Suite. Check it out:
PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- A dynamic business partnership has been formed between QualityStocks.Net a leading on-line newsletter and promoter of small cap stocks, and Modavox, Inc. (OTCBB: MDVX), one of the worlds leading providers of streaming media solutions. Together these two entities will combine to bring cutting edge internet streaming audio/video technologies, programming, and current small cap stock news directly to consumers, promoters and traders across the nation and abroad.



"Our desire was to reach out to a global audience with instant delivery of timely information which is fresh and cutting edge," states Nathan Bradley, VP of Business Development and Marketing for Modavox. "Early adopters of emerging technologies are tipping the demand for news, entertainment, education, and information to be available on-line and through most portable devices. This partnership with Modavox and QualityStocks.Net merges the distribution solution with news and information at the click of a button."

Starting on September 26, 2006, the long standing QualityStocks.Net internet presence will be revamped and distributed through the Modavox Network and proprietary technologies. Beginning October 2, 2006 weekday web-isodes of "QualityStocks.Net Market Report" will be broadcast featuring microcap and small cap stocks to watch.

About QualityStocks.Net:

With all of the stock picks and recommendations available today in the investment world, selecting and deciding on the right stocks can be tedious and time consuming. At QualityStocks.Net, we collate hundreds of investment newsletters into The ONE and ONLY "The QualityStocks Daily," featuring a summary format in which you can view the latest stock picks everyday.

About Modavox:

Modavox, Inc. (www.modavox.com), a pioneer in internet broadcasting, producing and syndicating online audio and video, offers innovative, effective and comprehensive online tools for reaching targeted niche communities worldwide. Through patented Modavox Central(TM) technology, Modavox delivers content straight to desktops and internet-enabled devices. Through proprietary StreamSafe(TM), WebcastWizard(TM) and Stream Syndicate(TM) tools, Modavox provides managed access for live and on-demand internet broadcasting/syndication; content management; and Rich Media Advertising, event management, enterprise communications and distance learning.
Arsenal Digital Sets New Standard for Effortless PC Backup. Check it out:
CARY, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Arsenal Digital Solutions(R), a leading provider of data protection services, announced availability of a new online backup service designed specifically for consumer needs. PC Vault(TM) provides consumers with effortless data backup and the reliability and security only a company with 24 petabytes of data protection experience can provide. The service automatically backs up files, such as music, photos and financial records, and securely transmits them to a remote data center, where they are available for recovery at any time through an easy-to-use and extremely intuitive user interface.



"Faced with a growing volume of often irreplaceable digital content, backup and recovery has evolved into an emotional issue for many consumers," said Frank Brick, Arsenal's chairman & CEO. "Unfortunately, traditional methods of backup are cumbersome and complicated, and the prospect of losing significant memories, money and time looms large. We designed PC Vault to help consumers easily secure their files offsite and quickly recover them when necessary."

In a recent IDC survey, 69 percent of consumers said that they do not make backup copies to protect their data. "Consumers are increasingly generating and using digital files for personal use," said Doug Chandler, program director for storage software and services at IDC. "Arsenal Digital's PC Vault service is designed to let consumers easily back up these files and have them available for retrieval."

Signing up for PC Vault is as easy as buying a book online. Once set up, the service backs up files automatically and requires no ongoing action on the user's part, which makes data protection truly effortless. If it becomes necessary, however, one click can initiate a manual backup, retrieve files, or allow the user to view the status and history of previous backups.

"I was surprised at how fast and easy it was to set up and use PC Vault," said Wendy Clarke, a University of North Carolina student. "It's as easy to use as my iPod, and really comforting to know that no matter what happens to my computer, I won't lose my papers, music and photos. And I don't have to burn CDs or even remember to do a backup."

PC Vault will be brought to market through Arsenal's channel partners, which include many of the world's leading service providers. The service, which is billed on a monthly basis, requires no technical skills on the user's part to set up and operate, and comes with Arsenal's world-class 24x7 support and industry-leading experience. For more information or to purchase, please visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

About Arsenal Digital Solutions

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., Arsenal Digital Solutions is one of the world's largest and most trusted providers of data protection services, delivering the broadest portfolio of fully managed, on-demand solutions. From enterprise data centers and remote offices, to small and medium businesses and consumers, Arsenal delivers secure, scalable, and easy-to-use services to meet the widest range of data protection needs. For more information on Arsenal, its services and solutions, visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

Arsenal Digital Solutions is a registered trademark and PC Vault is a trademark of Arsenal Digital Solutions USA, Inc. All other trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.
Sigaba Appoints Technology Veteran as Senior Vice President of Sales. Check it out:
SAN MATEO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sigaba, the leading provider of security software infrastructure and solutions, today announced the appointment of Troy Hartless as Senior Vice President of Sales. In his new role, Hartless will be responsible for Global sales and business development efforts for both Federal and Commercial markets, and will report to Edwin Miller, Sigaba's president and Chief Executive Officer.



In his new position, Hartless is responsible for expanding Sigaba's sales organization as well as the planning and execution for the company's strategic sales objectives.

"Troy Hartless is a seasoned business professional with extraordinary strength in leadership and strategy that is instrumental for this exciting period of growth," said Miller. "I am honored to welcome Troy to the Sigaba team."

Prior to joining Sigaba, Hartless served as Vice President of Enterprise Solutions and Product Management at GTSI Corporation. Prior to GTSI, he was Chief Operating Officer at Infodata Systems, where he was responsible for global sales, consulting, and marketing until McDonald Bradley acquired Infodata Systems in 2005. During his tenure at Infodata, Hartless served in several management positions including vice president of sales and marketing, and vice president and general manager of the Public Sector.

Before Infodata, Hartless served in several senior executive positions at Solutions Technology International, Ikimbo, Inc., and at a joint venture between Ericsson and General Electric.

ABOUT SIGABA

Sigaba provides patented security infrastructure solutions that enable industry and government to exchange information securely with their colleagues, customers, partners and constituents. The company's standards-based SigabaNet platform takes the complexity out of strong encryption and enables organizations to easily authenticate users across federated environments. The result is a unique way to separately encrypt sensitive data in order to mitigate risks while strengthening relationships, improving efficiencies and safeguarding intellectual property. Sigaba's technology is used by government organizations and businesses to secure the world's most critical information. Sigaba is headquartered in San Mateo, California with sales offices in Reston, Virginia; San Diego, California; Chicago, Denver, and New York. Sigaba takes its name from the SIGABA encryption machine used by the United States during WWII - it was the only device of its kind never compromised by the enemy. For more information visit www.sigaba.com.
Curam Software Recognized for Setting the Bar for Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Curam Software, a leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, today announced that it received top marks in current offering and strategy as a "Leader" in the Forrester Wave(TM) report, "Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks, Q3 2006" published September 15, 2006.



Trumping eight other vendors, Curam Software received top scores in the current offering criteria which evaluated major needs-based and contributions-based program including income support, medical assistance, unemployment insurance, child care, child welfare, child support enforcement, and workers' compensation. Additional evaluation was performed on key business processes including integrated case management, integrated eligibility, business process support, financial administration support, flexibility, and customer support. Curam Software also received top marks in the strategy criteria which evaluated product direction and services strategy. According to the Forrester Wave report, "Dublin-based Curam sets the bar for human and social services enterprise frameworks."

"Forrester evaluated leading human and social services enterprise framework vendors across 93 criteria and found that Curam Software has established early human and social services enterprise framework leadership thanks to its program-specific capabilities and multiprogram enterprise focus," the Forrester Wave report said.

The report found that Curam Software is an especially good fit for government agencies who have a broad scope for human and social services integration, prefer working with the top system integrators, need support for major needs-based and contribution-based programs, and want a vendor with global reach.

"We are extremely pleased with Forrester's evaluation," said Ronan Rooney, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, Curam Software, Inc. "The high marks we received reflect the tireless work of our employees and our commitment to providing citizen-centric solutions to streamline the delivery of human and social services. Curam will continue to develop and enhance our Social Enterprise Management solutions to revolutionize service delivery and provide more program-specific applications."

The research firm developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria after examining past research, undertaking user need assessments, as well as conducting vendor and expert interviews. According to the report, "Curam is the clear Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks Leader. Curam's enterprise framework, enterprise modules, and solution modules provide large government organizations, such as US state governments, a comprehensive set of well-integrated capabilities designed to support its integrated service delivery models."

Social Enterprise Management (SEM) is a new category of enterprise software that is client-centric and leverages COTS products to transform as well as modernize health, human services, labor, and social security agencies. SEM provides comprehensive enterprise eligibility IT solutions crossing agency boundaries, simplifying policies, and integrating with existing technology. SEM fosters holistic, convenient services for citizens, as well as provides screening for needs and referrals to state and community-based resources.

About Curam Software

Curam Software is the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions delivering best-in-class applications for social enterprises including, health, human services, labor, workers' compensation, and social security programs. Using the Curam Business Application Suite(TM) agencies can immediately reap the benefits of improved business processes, automation and efficiency through integration--for the same or lower cost as projects based on traditional custom developments or transfer systems. The Curam Business Application Suite, underpinned by the Curam Enterprise Framework(TM), combines the advantages of an enterprise platform with the business and technical flexibility required to allow agencies to implement solutions to meet their short-term and strategic objectives. Curam Software is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with additional facilities located in New York, Washington, D.C., and the United Kingdom. For more information, please visit www.curamsoftware.com.
SIPERIAN DEMONSTRATES BUSINESS IMPACT OF ITS CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM AT ITS ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE. Check it out:
SIPERIAN DEMONSTRATES BUSINESS IMPACT OF ITS CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM AT ITS ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE



Siperian User Community Creates Positive Momentum for Siperian HubTM





Princeton, NJ September 27, 2006 Siperian - a developer of an award-winning, adaptive platform for customer-centric master data management - today announced that it recently completed its annual user conference on September 20th. The company met with its user base to share success stories and discuss the overall business impact of the Siperian HubTM, a multi-product data integration platform that helps organizations entitled; Delivering Business Impact from Siperian Customer-Centric MDM Platform: Learn. Discuss. Discover., further demonstrates Siperians ongoing commitment to helping organizations focus on the business impact and the business case for customer-centric master data management.




Siperian established the conference so users could share personal accounts of how Siperian has positively effected their bottom-line. Customers discussed Siperian Hub best practices, leveraging Siperian Hub to solve their changing business needs and requirements, and the latest Siperian product enhancements and offerings. Designed as an open exchange among peers and Siperian solution experts, the user conference has become the ideal forum for customers who represent a variety of industries to exchange ideas and participate in future product enhancement discussions.



Our annual user conference enables us to do more than just engage with our user community, it allows us to truly listen to the voice of our customers, said Peter Caswell, CEO of Siperian. By creating an open exchange of information, ideas and experiences, we establish a unique environment that enables our customers to not only learn from industry best practices but also play a key role in the future impact of our product roadmap.



Siperians Annual User Conference follows closely on the heels of the companys recently announced set of architectural styles that enable organizations to deploy their MDM solution in a manner that best fits their unique business requirements (See announcement dated 9.11.06 - SIPERIAN ACCELERATES ADOPTION OF CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT WITH DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURAL STYLES) and Siperian new Business Value Services that help organizations identify and quantify the economic benefits of addressing data reliability and data integration issues as the first step in their roadmap to a solid master data management (MDM) strategy (See announcement dated 9.18.06 - SIPERIAN LAUNCHES BUSINESS VALUE AND FAST START SERVICES; ENABLES RAPID JUSTIFICATION AND EXECUTION OF CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT)



About Siperian Inc.

Siperian Inc. offers an award-winning, adaptive platform for customer-centric data integration & management. With Siperians metadata driven configurable architecture, organizations can rapidly adapt the award-winning Siperian Hub to a specific solution style; ensure that the solution coexists with multiple legacy hubs and external data sources; and then evolve the solution over time with additional capabilities or to new geographies and business units. Siperian is the only vendor to offer a set of proven solutions that can start small within a business unit to deliver rapid return on investment and then grow over time across the enterprise to become the master data management platform with data services for complete operational context with unified customer views without locking the company into a single vendors proprietary architecture. As a result, Siperian helps companies improve operational customer relationship management and analytical processes, as well as other business processes such as regulatory compliance, order-to-cash and new product launches all at significantly lower total cost of ownership, faster time-to-value and demonstrably higher return on investment as compared to other alternatives. For further information, visit us on the Web at http://www.siperian.com or call 1-866-SIPERIAN (1-866-747-3742).
SageCom Launches into Hosted PBX Market. Check it out:
 
 
The seeming increase in natural disasters has been a boon to the hosted services market, which has seen vendors putting everything from customer management to business productivity on the Web.
 
While many firms tout the low-cost entry to sophisticated tools that were once the province of only the largest of firms, many organizations are looking to on-line providers as a way to ensure that business keeps moving even in the event of a catastrophic loss.


 
But while access to CRM and ERP systems is a major concern among business managers, nothing will shut down a thriving enterprise like the loss of telecommunications services. So it’s no wonder that a wealth of hosted PBX (News - Alert) service providers has entered the market over the past several years.
 
SageCom Inc. is one of the latest entrants into an increasingly crowded field. The company, based on Miami — which has had its share of natural disasters over the years — just launched a hosted PBX service in connection with its SageVone VoIP system.
 
The system essentially offers everything an in-house PBX system would, overseeing main telephone line connectivity, call center capabilities, voice mailboxes, teleconferencing operations and other services, from one of numerous locations.
 
“It’s a way for businesses to have a phone system that continues to operate no matter what happens,” said Jerry Huyghe, marketing and sales manager at SageCom during an interview with TMCnet. “When customers can’t reach a business for a week after a major disaster, they think the business is no longer in operation. That can have repercussions for years.”
 
While even a hosted system cannot ring company headquarters if it’s been destroyed by an earthquake or hurricane, it can still contact voicemail, mobile systems and remote offices to provide at least a modicum of continuity.
 
Huyghe said that while even large firms are starting to streamline IP and telecommunications operations with hosted solutions, SageCom designed its version with the SMB in mind.
 
“We’re looking for niche markets to approach,” he said. “There is a lot of interest from real estate offices because they tend to have multiple agents and remote offices. We’re looking at who’s buying now, and how we can bundle specific features and applications to different markets.”
 
SageCom also designed a lot of flexibility into the system. It’s SIP-compatible, making it interoperable with most of the feature-laden phone systems on the market. All settings are Web-based and user-configurable. It also sports an integrated Windows toolbar tied to Explorer and Outlook, providing caller ID and other features.
 
“Businesses that can’t afford $10,000 on an in-house PBX system, and pay even more to have it continuously updated and maintained, can have all the features that a Fortune 100 company has at $30 per month,” Huyghe said. “A typical PBX system requires a professional technician and several days to reconfigure the system, even if someone simply changes offices. A hosted solution is plug-and-play. Extensions can be configured day-by-day to ring on the mobile, at home or a remote location.”
 
For more information, please visit the company online at www.sagecominc.com.
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Arthur Cole is a freelance writer specializing in high-tech information and communications. To see more of his articles, visit his columnist page.
Tumbleweed Validation Authority Secures FIPS 201 Certification. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), a leading provider of email security, file transfer security, and identity validation software and appliances, today announced that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has certified the Tumbleweed Validation Authority(TM) as a compliant certificate validation solution meeting requirements for validating digital certificates embedded in Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards of Federal employees and contractors. Based on widely adopted open standards and technologies, including the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP, RFC 2560), the Tumbleweed Validation Authority validates the status of digital certificates in real time, ensuring that revoked credentials cannot be used for smart card login, secure email, web access, wireless, VPN, or other electronic transactions.



The certification qualifies Tumbleweed's public key infrastructure (PKI) validation software and appliances for any Federal agency seeking compliance with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) and the Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201). HSPD-12 mandates that on October 27, 2006, Federal agencies must start issuing FIPS 201 compliant common identification cards (smart cards) for controlling physical and logical access to government facilities and information systems. The government will eventually roll out the smart cards to millions of Federal employees and contractors, and FIPS 201 requires that each card must contain a unique credential number, a digital certificate and an expiration date.

"GSA's FIPS 201 approval of the Tumbleweed Validation Authority certifies that our product meets Federal PIV requirements for functionality and government-wide interoperability, providing Federal agencies with the flexibility to deploy a single infrastructure capable of multiple validation protocols in both enterprise and Federal Bridge-enabled environments," said Ann Smith, Vice President of Federal Sales for Tumbleweed. "Functionality, flexibility, and interoperability are key factors for agencies to keep in mind as they seek to satisfy current needs and anticipate future requirements relevant to HSPD-12/FIPS 201 compliant solutions. This is especially true for agencies that will need to support trusted relationships with external, cross-certified PKIs."

When a government or contractor employee uses the smart card to access a Federal information system or facility, the Tumbleweed Validation Authority enables FIPS 201 mandated digital certificate validation via OCSP in a process that is instantaneous and completely transparent to the end user. The Tumbleweed Validation Authority also meets the GSA's requirements for Delegated Path Discovery and Validation, enhancing validation services for cross-certified entities.

Recently, Tumbleweed authorized reseller, Operational Resource Consultants (ORC), a leading provider of PKI authentication services, was granted certification as an HSPD-12 Shared Service Provider (SSP), utilizing the Tumbleweed Validation Authority to provide validation services for its Federal customers.

The Tumbleweed Validation Authority is the most widely deployed identity validation solution within U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence communities, offering critical infrastructure and identity protection in demanding environments. The product suite also features a broad portfolio of independent third party evaluations and certifications, including Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 3 certification, based on one of the strongest protection profiles for PKI products.

The FIPS 201 certification extends to the following components of the Tumbleweed Validation Authority product suite:

-- Tumbleweed Validation Authority (VA Server) - A FIPS 140-2 high-performance multi-platform solution to process client digital certificate status queries using a number of different protocols including OCSP, SCVP, and VA certificate revocation lists (CRL). The platform also includes the Tumbleweed Valicert VA Repeater, available as software or as a hardware appliance. The VA Repeater Appliance solution offers a secure, hardened Linux-based platform, with Tumbleweed's Repeater Server software to provide a drop-in solution for deploying a high-scale, high-reliability digital certificate infrastructure for distributed hosted computing environments

-- Server Validator - A flexible plug-in application for enabling digital certificate validation in the most widely used secure Web servers and Web application servers available on UNIX, Linux, Windows, and Apple server platforms

-- Desktop Validator (Standard and Enterprise) - Flexible client solutions for enabling Microsoft Windows based desktop and server applications to validate digital certificates via the Microsoft Cryptographic API (CAPI). Includes support for automatically deploying and configuring Desktop Validator plug-ins for ease of large-scale deployment

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on plans and expectations as of the date of the press release, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the guidance given at this time. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to the functionality and performance of the products in the Tumbleweed Validation Authority product suite, as well as the continued compliance of such products with requirements such as those relevant to HSPD-12 or FIPS. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 16, 2006 and Form 10-Q filed August 8, 2006.

Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release. Although this release may remain available on Tumbleweed's website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that Tumbleweed is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.

About Tumbleweed Validation Authority

Tumbleweed Validation Authority (VA) (formerly known as Valicert Validation Authority), the leading identity validation solution, enables banks, governments, and businesses worldwide to secure highly valued and trusted transactions, ranging from corporate network access to multi-million dollar electronic transactions to physical access of military facilities. VA is a fourth-generation product line, offering a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable framework for real-time validation of digital certificates, based on numerous well-accepted international security standards and open technologies. VA is Certificate Authority neutral, FIPS 140-1, DOD JITC, Identrust, and Common Criteria compliant, as well as part of the Identrust, SWIFT Trust Act, BACS and Global Trust Authority financial trust infrastructures. VA has been deployed by hundreds of customers worldwide for over ten years, including the U.S. Department of Defense and all branches of the U.S. military which utilize VA to check the status of more than 3.5 million Common Access Cards used to secure system and network access, email, and other mission-critical resources.

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.

Tumbleweed provides security solutions for email protection, file transfers, and identity validation that allow organizations to safely conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three comprehensive product suites: MailGate(R), SecureTransport(TM), and Validation Authority(TM). MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables business to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. Validation Authority is the world-leading solution for determining the validity of digital certificates. Tumbleweed's enterprise and government customers include ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), St. Luke's Episcopal Healthcare System, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, and all four branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Tumbleweed was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.

Tumbleweed, the Arrows logo, MailGate, SecureTransport, Tumbleweed Validation Authority and Validation Authority are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Tumbleweed Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Italy-Based Integra SpA is Newest Member of Protegrity's Alliance Network. Check it out:
STAMFORD, Conn & MILAN, Italy --(Business Wire)-- Protegrity(R) Corporation, the leader in Data Security Management(TM) solutions, announced it has further expanded the Protegrity Alliance Network with the signing of a reseller agreement with Integra SpA, a leading security company. Based in Milan, Italy, Integra SpA will serve as a reseller of the Defiance(TM) Security Software Suite to customers in Italy. Integra SpA will also provide implementation services and first-level technical support for Protegrity solutions.



"Our agreement with Protegrity provides us access to the only data and application security suite on the market designed to protect enterprise data from acquisition to deletion," said Franco Rasello. "We are seeing a growing demand among Italian companies for a centrally managed security solution that can be deployed enterprise-wide, while giving them the confidence that their sensitive data is protected throughout its lifecycle."

Companies use Defiance Security Software Suite to protect data at the application, database, file, and storage levels. With Defiance companies can address immediate security needs and comply with global banking and legal regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, the European Union Directive on Data Protection, Basel II, the Bank Secrecy Act and PCI.

"Integra SpA brings proven expertise in auditing and database security to its customers; it recognizes that data security is a crucial component to any business operation," noted Gordon Rapkin, president and CEO of Protegrity. "With Protegrity's Defiance Security Software Suite, Integra's banking, utility/transportation, and enterprise clients gain the enterprise-wide control of data they require to meet industry and EU standards, and they have local access to Integra's data security expertise and support in Italy."

"Protegrity provides products with the best cost/benefit ratios available today; its portfolio allows Integra representative to address security needs in the major customer asset, i.e., company databases, where integrity, confidentiality and access control have to face operational constrains," said Yann Bongiovanni, Integra Director of Security Technologies.

This agreement comes on the heels of the 2006 Global Information Security Survey which shows that data security breaches continue to vex the majority of business technology professionals around the globe, even though most do not acknowledge their own vulnerability to malicious attacks. In fact, 13% of respondents in Europe, 16% in China and 24% in India say their organizations are more vulnerable to security dangers than a year ago.

ABOUT PROTEGRITY

Protegrity Corporation delivers enterprise-wide data security management solutions for end-to-end protection for applications and sensitive data, enabling companies to deploy comprehensive security policies with centralized management and auditing. Protegrity is committed to protecting sensitive data wherever it resides in today's highly distributed and heterogeneous computing environments.

Protegrity empowers management to take responsibility for sensitive data by mitigating legal and financial risks associated with security breaches and assuring compliance with regulatory requirements for data security.

For more than ten years, Protegrity's award-winning technology has enabled customers to address and resolve critical security challenges. Protegrity invented the core technology used for data-level encryption and owns key patents for database and application security and protection. For more information, visit www.protegrity.com or call 203.326.7200 x1004.

Protegrity and Defiance are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Protegrity Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

ABOUT INTEGRA

Integra SpA is a leading Italian company specializing in Information Technology Security.

Integra Group's mission is to provide solutions which can help customers to meet their targets in the IT Security and Legacy Application Integration.

Within IT Security, Integra is the leading company in auditing, and has achieved important results promoting products today used by the most important Italian organizations.

For more information, visit www.integra-group.it or call +390289307051.
Rotani Introduces VideoPuck(TM) Technology for IPTV. Check it out:
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. --(Business Wire)-- Rotani, Inc., a leading developer and designer of wireless 802.11 networking solutions, today announced the release of its VideoPuck(TM) software for IPTV use. An after-market upgrade to commercial Wi-Fi equipment, VideoPuck offers IPTV service providers an immediate wireless solution to facilitate their IPTV rollouts and reduce installation costs and time.



One key issue for carriers wishing to deploy IPTV services is how to facilitate an appropriate connection between the DSL modem and the IPTV Set Top Box connected to the TV. Traditional installation methods require the installer to run new wiring, which is very time consuming, costly and undesirable to the home-owner.

A wireless (Wi-Fi) connection is generally the solution of choice for both the home-owner and service provider. Yet today's commercial Wi-Fi gear is used predominately for data networking, and does not provide support for wireless multicast IPTV. What's more, Wi-Fi gear suffers from packet loss that ultimately results in screen pixilation and poor video quality.

VideoPuck software turns today's commercial Wi-Fi gear into a robust wireless solution for streaming multicast IPTV. VideoPuck is basically a wireless replacement of Ethernet cables and just as simple to install. Without any user intervention, VideoPuck automatically configures and establishes an error-free link for wireless transmission of IPTV. VideoPuck is processor and radio chip independent.

"We have already validated VideoPuck on commercial platforms sold by leading Wi-Fi gear vendors for less than $49," said Nicholas Funke, Executive VP of Rotani. "The video quality on this low-cost platform is immaculate and the range is exceptional, even when surrounded by multiple WLANs co-located in neighboring apartments."

IPTV service providers can now easily upgrade their current Wi-Fi gear with VideoPuck to accelerate and increase their return from IPTV. VideoPuck is available via open licensing agreements and we can be contacted via email at [email protected].

About Rotani, Inc.

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Rotani, Inc. specializes in the development of high-performance Wireless LAN (WLAN) communication systems. The company's flagship product, AirReferee(TM), is a performance-enhancing WLAN technology that automatically circumvents and reduces interference between neighboring wireless systems. Rotani's solutions, currently sold as reference designs, will take wireless networking to the next level and enable a new generation of wireless multimedia products and applications for the digital home, the small office, as well as a scalable wireless network architecture for the enterprise market. Rotani is privately held. For more information go to www.rotani.com.
Palisade Systems and Zix Corporation to Offer Fully Integrated Compliance Solution to Protect Sensitive Data. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Palisade Systems Inc., a leading provider of comprehensive compliance and content monitoring solutions and Zix Corporation (ZixCorp(R)), (NASDAQ: ZIXI), the leader in hosted services for email encryption, today announced a strategic partnership to add ZixCorp's Email Encryption Services to Palisade's PacketSure content monitoring and filtering solution. Under the terms of the agreement, Palisade will also integrate ZixCorp's powerful HIPPA and GLBA policy inspection technology into the PacketSure solution. This will provide PacketSure a mature technology that has been used for the policy scanning of billions of email messages over the last 5 years.



"By combining our monitoring technology and ZixCorp's encryption service and industry expertise in the healthcare and financial services market we provide a solution that not only protects email messages, but other communication methods, including Instant Messaging, Web-mail, and FTP," said Kurt Shedenhelm, president and CEO of Palisade Systems. "Our combined solution provides a comprehensive content compliance protection solution on all methods of communication. While competing vendors provide pieces of an overall solution, Palisade and ZixCorp deliver a completely integrated solution."

Palisade Systems will now provide advanced content control with early identification of violations, automatic email encryption, centralized policy enforcement and reporting. As a result of this agreement Palisade will also deliver boundary-based email encryption for customers who need to protect sensitive information as it travels over the Internet. With this solution, email can be automatically encrypted based on content or manually encrypted by the end user. By enabling automatic enforcement of corporate policies, organizations can help to control the flow of information in and out of the corporate network and keep sensitive information secure.

"This agreement broadens ZixCorp's reach into the content monitoring and filtering space as we continue to expand our channel distribution capabilities ," said Nigel Johnson, vice president of business development and product management for ZixCorp. "By joining our Email Encryption Service, Palisade customers will now be able to connect to all ZixCorp customers including four of the five federal banking regulators and the one in eight hospitals that use ZixCorp today."

Key benefits of Palisade PacketSure powered by ZixCorp:

1. A regulatory safety net for organizations bound by legislation such as HIPAA or GLBA

2. An integrated solution from respected leaders in the healthcare and financial services markets

3. Compliance monitoring and control across all communication methods used by employees protecting against inadvertent leaks of sensitive data

4. Automatic email encryption without any user interaction

5. Flexible send-to-anyone email encryption, including the use of TLS, S/MIME, OpenPGP, direct to the inbox "push" and web-based "pull" technologies

6. Business controls without impeding business flow

About Palisade Systems, Inc.

Founded in 1996, Palisade Systems, Inc., is a leading provider of enterprise content compliance security and data protection solutions with over 500 customers across North America and Europe. Palisade security appliances help organizations proactively secure intellectual property and private client information from leaking outside the network, define and enforce access to internal network resources, and enforce compliance with federal privacy and industry security regulations. Palisade Systems customers include prominent clients in healthcare, financial services, insurance industries, and universities. For more information, please visit www.palisadesys.com or contact Palisade's sales department at 1.888.824.0720.

About Zix Corporation

ZixCorp is the leading provider of hosted email encryption and e-prescribing services. ZixCorp's hosted Email Encryption Service provides an easy and cost-effective way to ensure customer privacy and regulatory compliance for corporate email. Its PocketScript(R) e-prescribing service reduces costs and improves patient care by automating the prescription process between payors, doctors, and pharmacies. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.
AVST Expands Relationship with Novell to Further Extend CallXpress(R) Integration to Novell GroupWise. Check it out:
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced it has joined the Novell PartnerNet program with plans to further extend the integration between its flagship CallXpress unified communications platform and Novell GroupWise, a leading alternative to Microsoft Exchange. The expanded relationship with Novell is part of an ongoing AVST initiative to maximize the interoperability of AVST's products and elevate the company's stature as an expert in unifying communications by providing the marketplace with a consistent source of innovation, education, and options when it comes to choosing the optimal communications solution.



"This stronger relationship with Novell and our commitment to work with Novell to further extend the interoperability of our CallXpress Unified Communication platform with Novell GroupWise is another milestone of our 'Know Your Options' initiative," said AVST's Vice President of Product Management, Tom Minifie. "The ultimate goal of this initiative is to encourage professionals to take advantage of newer technologies and advancements in enterprise communications that can result in improved customer service, better return on investment, and a significant increase in their competitive advantage."

One of the advanced communications technology options available to enterprise customers today is AVST's popular CallXpress solution, which delivers world-class voice mail, call processing, fax, advanced unified messaging and speech-enabled capabilities. It is the optimal choice for businesses of all sizes because it offers the most complete set of migration options from first generation voice mail and call processing solutions that are rapidly approaching end-of-life, as well as integrates with a wide variety of e-mail platforms including Novell GroupWise. The powerful interoperability of the CallXpress platform enables customers to easily integrate CallXpress with existing communications technologies from other vendors, reducing the need for customers to invest in costly infrastructure replacement and end user training programs when replacing their first generation voice mail and call processing solutions.

For example, CallXpress can easily be installed, managed, and maintained at any company or organization that currently uses Novell GroupWise, a complete collaboration software solution that provides information workers with e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging, task management, and contact and document management functions. CallXpress enables GroupWise users to play voice messages and receive faxes as easily as managing e-mail messages. When out of the office, users can dial into the CallXpress system to access all voice, fax and e-mail messages from any telephone. CallXpress reads GroupWise e-mail messages using advanced text-to-speech technology. All these enhanced communications capabilities are available to an enterprise by connecting CallXpress to the company's existing Novell GroupWise solution.

"It is important for our customers to have access to best-of-breed unified communications options that can result in increased efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness in the workforce," said Wendy Steinle, Novell Director of Product Marketing for Workgroup Solutions. "AVST provides our customers with proven, integration-ready technology that features simple installation and administration as well as user-friendly interfaces."

Further demonstrating its leadership and commitment to innovation in the unified communications space, AVST is contributing to Novell's Cool Solutions online community, which offers articles, tips and Q&A from users, administrators, and developers, as well as free tools to download. AVST also recently teamed up with Business Communications Review to launch a series of educational programs, including a webinar, print ad campaign, and electronic banner campaign, in conjunction with VoiceCon Fall. The webinar, titled "A VoiceCon Webinar: Unifying Communications in a Multi-Vendor Environment," took place earlier in August and can be viewed online at http://www.avst.com/r/bcr2.asp.

In addition, the AVST website features "Unified Communications: the Movie," a short film produced by the company that explains the benefits of unified communications and AVST's flagship CallXpress solution. The movie can be viewed by visiting AVST's home page at www.avst.com.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions for businesses of all sizes. Through its world-class unified communications platform, CallXpress(R), and its innovative speech application module, Seneca(R), AVST offers the industry's most powerful suite of second generation communications solutions including voice messaging, unified messaging, speech-enabled applications (including automated attendant and hands-free mobile worker access) and call processing (including embedded IVR).

The CallXpress unified communications platform is designed to facilitate the enterprise migration from legacy TDM call processing and voice mail solutions to IP-enabled unified communications by delivering the interoperability, scalability, feature depth and flexibility, and administrative capabilities that enterprise IT and Telecom teams are demanding.

Headquartered in Orange County, CA, AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, WA and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. With over 35,000 systems installed worldwide, AVST's unified communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. Established in September 2003, AVST was formed from the combined businesses of Sound Advantage (established in 1997) and the AVT division (established in 1982) of Captaris, Inc. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.
California Clean Tech Open Announces Inaugural Winners. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Organizers of the California Clean Tech Open gathered at City Hall yesterday to unveil the five winners of the inaugural competition. Each winner received more than $100,000 worth of prizes in a "start-up in a box" prize package comprised of $50,000 cash, legal services, accounting services, public relations consulting, office space and executive search services. The winners are: Adura Technologies in the Energy Efficiency Category, GreenVolts in the Renewable Energy Category, KiteShip in the Transportation Category, EDC Technologies Inc. in the Smart Power Category, and Crystal Clear Technologies in the Water Management Category.



"The response from entrepreneurs to the California Clean Tech Open has been overwhelming and has exceeded our expectations," said competition co-chairs Laurent Pacalin and Michael Santullo. "The judges' decisions were difficult, but we're confident that the competition's winners offer the best combination of sound business model and innovative technology in their respective categories. These five companies exemplify the competition's mission to encourage economic growth and environmental sustainability by creating a clean technology cluster in California."

The competition's awards ceremony took place from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and features remarks from the winners, competition organizers, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, leading venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld and Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Winners and First Runners Up

The California Investor Owned Utilities Energy Efficiency Prize:

Adura Technologies (www.adura.com) provides a wireless lighting management solution designed to save businesses over 50 percent on lighting energy costs and offers a quick payback. With flexibility enough to allow easy configuration for growing or shrinking lighting needs, Adura enables dramatic energy savings as well as dynamic control capabilities.

First runner up in the Energy Efficiency Category: Nila Inc. (www.nila.tv).

The AMD Smart Power Prize:

EDC Technologies has developed a hot water controller that reduces natural gas consumption in Multifamily Apartments, Condominiums, Dormitories and Hotels/Motels by 15 to 40 percent. The technology allows users to see proof of their savings via the internet where they are offered the ability to view performance of other components within their hot water environment.

First runner up in the Smart Power Category: Energy Recommerce (www.energyrecommerce.com).

The Lexus Transportation Prize:

KiteShip (www.kiteship.com) develops, builds and sells very large traction kites, which reduce ship owners' crippling fuel costs by up to 25 percent, and vastly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants.

First runner up in the Transportation Category: Aurora Biofuels (www.aurorabiofuels.com).

The Agora Foundation Water Management Prize:

Crystal Clear Technologies (CCT), using nano-coating technology, has created proprietary filter media with dramatically higher absorption capability and capacity than currently available media, at considerably lower costs. CCT can deliver potable water from a river at $1.50 per 100 gallons, versus competitive systems that offer $16.50 - $49 per 100 gallons.

First runner up in the Water Management Category: Meridian Design (www.uvaquastar.com).

The Renewable Energy Prize:

GreenVolts (www.greenvolts.com) supplies renewable energy matching peak demand at costs competitive with natural gas used for peak demand generation. Our revolutionary High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) technology produces energy at half the cost of traditional solar panels without reliance on scarce silicon wafers.

First runner up in the Renewable Energy Category: CoolEarth Solar (www.coolearthsolar.com).

"The California Clean Tech Open is a perfect example of the practical initiatives that will make the city of San Francisco and the state of California, epicenters for innovation in environmentally-conscious technology," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "The City is honored to host this groundbreaking competition. Today's winners will be an important part of the fast-growing, clean-tech industry in San Francisco."

The California Clean Tech Open received more than 155 submissions to its initial challenge in May. A panel of experts--including venture capitalists, researchers and faculty from the state's leading universities and research laboratories, and leading industrialists from related sectors--narrowed the field to 43 finalists in June. The finalists spent the remainder of the summer preparing their business plans, which were submitted at the end of August. Judges spent the first several weeks of September determining the winners.

About The California Clean Tech Open

The mission of the California Clean Tech Open is to encourage the development of clean technology companies that foster a healthy natural environment -- companies that provide environmental benefits in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution reduction and resource protection, and conservation. The competition will also serve as a platform to educate the public, as well as the participants, about the environmental challenges we face and new technologies that can provide solutions to those challenges. The inaugural competition opens in April 2006, and winners will be announced in September at a finals event in the Bay Area. The best plan submitted from five categories -- Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Smart Power, Transportation, and Water Management -- will be awarded a bundle of prizes to create a sustainable business. Prize sponsors to date include: Energy Efficiency -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company, and San Diego Gas and Electric; Smart Power -- AMD; Transportation -- Lexus; Water Management -- Agora Foundation, led by President Wynnette LaBrosse. The competition was initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Club of Northern California (MITCNC) with charter partners Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Horn Murdock Cole, A&R Edelman, Plug & Play Real Estate, PeopleConnect and CalCEF. Ernst and Young and MCF Corp. are also supporting the competition as Gold Sponsors.

A group of entrepreneurs and technologists from Silicon Valley -- Derry and Charlene Kabcenell, Mark Farley, Frank H. Levinson, Geoff Ralston, and Michael and Amy Santullo -- have generously provided the charter funding to launch the competition. The 2006 Host City is the City of San Francisco. Venture capital partners are Advanced Technology Ventures, Chevron Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Foundation Capital, New Enterprise Associates, J.P. Morgan's Bay Area Equity Fund, and Venrock Associates. Innovation partners include Electric Power Research Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center, SRI International, and Technology Ventures Corporation. Competition partners include Clean Edge and Clean Tech Venture Network. University partners include: the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley Institute for the Environment; Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students; Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University; Stanford Graduate School of Business Environmental Management Club; and Stanford Graduate School of Business Energy Club. Competition supporters include California Clean Energy Fund, Environmental Entrepreneurs, CalPERS, and Natural Resources Defense Council. The competition co-chairs are Laurent Pacalin and Michael Santullo.

Acterra: Action for a Sustainable Earth, a California 501(c)3 non-profit public benefit corporation (Tax ID 23-7064937) is the administrative and fiscal sponsor of the 2006 California Clean Tech Open legally responsible for the activities of the competition. Acterra is located at 3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303-4303. Additional details about the program are available at www.CaCleanTech.com.
Quintet of New Dell Servers Designed for Growing Businesses. Check it out:
ROUND ROCK, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today announced five server models engineered to deliver increased performance, reduced complexity and business-ready solutions for businesses of all sizes.

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are designed to help small businesses grow and large businesses that need remote office support. These servers -- combined with the availability of Microsoft(R) Small Business Server (SBS) R2, Dell OpenManage(TM) systems management software and Dell services -- reduce complexity and simplify IT operations, allowing customers more time to manage and grow their business.



"Dell is committed to understanding the unique technology challenges our customers face and responding with products and services that specifically meet their needs," said Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell's U.S. Small Business division. "Developed with feedback from fast-growing customers like Sew What?, winner of the 2006 Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award(1), our complete line of small-business servers is another milestone in our continued goal of reducing complexity and simplifying IT management for our customers so they can get back to business."

Higher Performance Means Increased Efficiency, Room to Grow

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers feature dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors for dramatic increases in performance, scalability and power efficiency, especially when running multiple applications such as file serving, email, and databases.

"Our Web site helped our business grow nearly 45 percent last year and managing all of the business it generates requires a lot of storage -- from global customer information to thousands of drapery and fabric images to QuickBooks files," said beta customer Megan Duckett, a small-business owner and founder of custom theatrical drapery manufacturer Sew What? Inc. "With the power and scalability of the PowerEdge 860, we still have plenty of room to grow and soon will be able to host our Web site in-house."

PowerEdge 1900, a dual-socket tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 5100 series processors, delivers:

-- A platform optimized for database, messaging, file and print sharing as well as remote location deployments

-- Up to 211 percent increase in performance than previous generation(2)

-- Up to 16GB fully buffered DIMMs for up to three-times theoretical throughput compared with DDR-2 memory

-- Embedded NIC featuring TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) designed for improved performance

-- DRAC5 (Dell Remote Access Controller) for improved performance in secure remote management

-- IMPI 2.0 and SMASH, which deliver simplified management capabilities today and in the future via a standardized management infrastructure

PowerEdge 840, a general-purpose tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- An ideal platform for remote offices, retail POS and small businesses

-- Up to 66 percent increase in performance than previous generation(3)

-- SAS and SATA hot-pluggable storage technology

-- Available with Microsoft Windows Storage Server R2 for file serving

-- Optional TOE-capable NIC

PowerEdge 860, a 1U rack-mountable server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- Simplified enterprise-class server capabilities that maximize data center density and performance while reducing power consumption

-- A platform for edge-of-the-network, infrastructure or Web applications for organizations of all sizes

-- Up to 66 percent increase in performance than previous generation(3)

-- Up to 146 percent improvement in performance per watt(4)

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

-- Optional TOE-capable NIC

PowerEdge SC440, an entry-level tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- Small-business capabilities for file and print sharing, small workgroup, e-mail, Web or dedicated applications

-- Up to 40 percent increase in performance than previous generation(5)

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

-- Optional internal backup tape

-- Easily accessible and serviceable tower chassis

PowerEdge SC1430, featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 5100 series processors, delivers:

-- One of the industry's smallest design for file and print sharing, dedicated workgroup, e-mail messaging and small Web server applications

-- Up to 155 percent increase in performance than previous generation(6)

-- Up to 8GB fully buffered DIMMs for improved theoretical throughput compared with DDR-2 memory

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

Complete Business-Ready Solutions and Reduced Complexity for Customers of all Sizes

Dell makes it easier than ever for small- and medium-sized businesses to have large application capabilities with factory installed and fully tested Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server) R2 available on Dell PowerEdge and PowerEdge SC servers.

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) R2 running on Dell PowerEdge servers gives small businesses an affordable server and operating system designed to boost productivity right out of the box. This network solution can increase productivity, protect data and improve communications for customers. Most importantly, it can expand with their businesses, providing a comprehensive range of essential business capabilities for up to 75 employees, including:

-- File and printer sharing

-- Increased e-mail limits and shared calendaring

-- Desktop faxing

-- Internet and intranet access

-- Improved multi-level firewall security

-- Simplified management

-- Flexibility to add additional servers

Dell's enhanced management offerings provide a wide selection of deployment, monitoring and support tools for Dell servers. Dell Server Assistant ships with every PowerEdge server as a bootable, stand-alone CD-ROM, providing the tools to set up and configure the PowerEdge system components and software. These include:

-- Setup and configuration - This tool provides all the necessary means for setting up and configuring new PowerEdge systems and software, and configures Dell-provided RAID controllers with a consistent interface

-- Utilities, drivers and diagnostics - These provide users with a "System Tools" utility to view and create Dell software diskettes, and deliver Dell optimized and tested drivers, diagnostics and utilities.

"We know that it can be daunting to move to a server-based environment, but we are working to change that," said Muehleman. Dell has launched a site providing self-guided tutorials to first time server buyers -- complementing the installation services Dell offers to customers today. The new Dell Networking Basics site explains the advantages of a server-based environment and the basics of networking -- simplifying the hardware purchasing and implementation process.

Dell also offers a wide range of flexible storage offerings bringing simplicity, affordability and balanced scalability to IT environments of any size. Dell's PowerVault(TM) portfolio of disk, autoloaders and libraries offers a range of options that let organizations choose the type and number of tape drives along with the most appropriate amount of storage based on IT policies and requirements. Additionally, Dell/EMC SAN arrays provide highly scalable networked storage for environments of all sizes.

Pricing and Availability

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are available today worldwide. Prices start at $1,399, $749, $949, $1,049 and $599, respectively. Additional product information is available at http://www.dell.com/poweredge. Product photography is available at http://www.dell.com/photos. More information on Sew What? And the Dell/NFIB Excellence in Small Business Award can be found at: http://www.dell.com/ceaward.

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell sells more systems globally than any computer company, placing it No. 25 on the Fortune 500. Company revenue for the past four quarters was $57.4 billion. For more information, visit http://www.dell.com. To get Dell news direct, visit http://www.dell.com/RSS.

Pricing, specifications, availability, and terms of offers may change without notice. Taxes, fees, shipping, handling and any applicable restocking charges are extra, and vary.

(1) For more information, visit http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/ 2006/2006_06_19_dc_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field and delete the extra space should one exist.)

(2) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Aug 2006 on a PE1900 with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0Ghz Woodcrest) processors, 8GB 667Mhz FBD memory, 1x SAS 36GB/15k rpm HDD, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PE1800 with two single core Intel Xeon 3.8Ghz (Irwindale) processors, 4GB 400Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(3) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in April 2006 and Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge 860 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3070 (2.66Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SAS 73GB/10K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to the PowerEdge 850 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 (Presler) processor, 8GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x 80GB SATA HDD, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(4) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test and power measurements performed by Dell Labs in Sept 2006 on a PowerEdge 860 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3070 (2.66Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SAS 73GB/10K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to the PowerEdge 850 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 (3.4Ghz Presler) processor, 4GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x 36GB/15K SCSI HDD, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance and power consumption will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(5) Based on the SPECint_rate benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Mar 2006 and Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge SC440 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3060 (2.4Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SATA 80GB/7.2K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PowerEdge SC430 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 3.4GHz (Presler) processor, 2GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(6) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge SC1430 with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5140 (2.33Ghz Woodcrest) processors, 4GB 667Mhz FBD memory, 1x SAS 36GB/15k rpm HDD, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PowerEdge SC1420 with two single core Intel Xeon 3.8Ghz (Irwindale) processors, 4GB 400Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

SPEC(R) and the benchmark name SPECjbb(R) are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For the latest SPECjbb2005 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/jbb2005.

Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc.

Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.
Dobson Cellular Systems Taps Air2Web's Self Care Solution. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Air2Web, the leading provider of mobile marketing and messaging applications, today announced its newest Self Care customer, Dobson Cellular Systems, the largest independent rural wireless provider in the United States.



Under the service agreement, Air2Web is enabling Dobson to accept and respond to customer inquiries (including balance, used minutes, overage fees, etc.) via short message service (SMS).

Using Air2Web's Self Care solution, Dobson's 1.5 million subscribers can request account information using keywords. A keyword such as "BAL" (short for balance) is sent from a subscriber's phone to the carrier. Once Dobson receives the balance request, the relevant data is pulled from the Company's customer database. The system then generates a text message response and pushes it through Air2Web's content gateway directly to the customer's wireless device. The entire process takes just seconds.

Dobson's customer support team currently fields calls from 16 states and more than 60 wireless markets. Implementing Air2Web's Self Care is expected to offer some reprieve to the 3,000-man workforce, reduce operational costs of high-volume call centers, and improve customer service response times considerably.

"Air2Web's mobile marketing and messaging services offer value throughout the customer relationship lifecycle," said Alfredo Narez, Vice President of Marketing at Air2Web. "Dobson's decision to expand their relationship with Air2Web is indicative of how to leverage mobile messaging throughout an enterprise."

About Air2Web

Air2Web is the leading developer of mobile messaging and marketing applications for enterprises and carriers. Headquartered in the United States with locations in India (serving the Asia Pacific market), France and England (serving the European markets), Air2Web solutions are the core of the wireless value chain -- connecting marketers to mobile subscribers on a global scale. Since 1999, Air2Web has played a vital role in the successful mobile marketing initiatives of leading brands such as The Weather Channel interactive, American Express, PGA Tour, CBS Sportsline, Cingular and UPS. More information on Air2Web can be found at http://www.air2web.com.

About Dobson Cellular Systems

Dobson Cellular Systems is a subsidiary of Oklahoma City-based Dobson Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DCEL). The company is the largest independent provider of wireless service in rural America and operates a state-of-the-art GSM/GPRS/EDGE network in 16 states. For more information on the products and services of Dobson Cellular, visit www.dobson.net.
Integrated Mobile Completes Equity Financing to Support Growth Strategy. Check it out:
COLUMBUS, Ohio --(Business Wire)-- Integrated Mobile, Inc. ("the Company"), a leading wireless managed mobility services provider, today announced that it has closed on a $5 million equity capital investment transaction with Enhanced Equity Fund LP, a NY-based private equity investment company. Additional financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.



"We are delighted that Enhanced Equity Fund LP has become an investor in Integrated Mobile and believe this is a strong endorsement for our company, its management team, and our prospects for growth," said Integrated Mobile CEO Jay Highley. "This capital will allow us to make the investments in our infrastructure, people and processes to continue offering our clients best in class service while managing our phenomenal growth. Our proven services solution, which delivers complete visibility and control to business enterprise users of wireless devices and services, has allowed us to consistently exceed our customers' expectations and enjoy exceptional growth - and something we expect will continue in the future."

Highley added, "Our solution helps businesses reduce their total cost of wireless ownership by 20-40%, provides a single point of contact for all wireless services across multiple carriers, improves the overall quality of administrative and end user support -- all while simplifying the management of wireless devices and services. The demand has been so strong for our solution that, on average, our revenue base has grown more than 50% quarter over quarter since our founding and we now serve over a quarter of the Fortune 1000 companies. This new capital will ensure that we stay ahead of customer requirements and deliver value-added services that contribute to our customers' success."

About the Company

Integrated Mobile, headquartered in Columbus, OH, is a leading managed wireless services company that uses Six Sigma methodology to globally deliver a proven, end-to-end management solution for the enterprise's entire wireless lifecycle, including device fulfillment and configuration, training, asset management, bill optimization, reporting and 24/7 end-user support. The Integrated Mobile solution helps businesses reduce their total cost of wireless ownership by 20-40%, provides a single point of contact for all wireless services across multiple carriers, improves the overall quality of administrative and end user support -- all while simplifying the management of wireless devices and services. For more information about us, please visit www.integratedmobileinc.com.

About Enhanced Equity Fund LP

Enhanced Equity Fund LP is a $205 million private equity investment company focused on service companies in the healthcare, communications and technology sectors.
eWEEK Labs Names SlickEdit Must-Have Tool. Check it out:
MORRISVILLE, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- SlickEdit Inc., provider of the most advanced code editors available, announces that its flagship editor, SlickEdit(R) v11, has been named a must-have tool by eWEEK labs. eWeek is a weekly technology magazine featuring editorials, reviews, lab tests and news that guide readers in making the best technology decisions for their enterprises.



Each year, eWEEK Labs evaluates hundreds of enterprise-class products. The Must-Have Tools list is comprised of tools used by the analysts at eWEEK Labs on an ongoing basis to maintain their own testing systems. The list is compiled by asking each analyst what tools they can't live without and which ones they would recommend to benefit any serious computer user.

SlickEdit was named by the eWEEK lab analysts as a must-have tool for its ability to edit files up to 2GB in size on a variety of platforms and its extensive support for many programming languages and tasks.

"Being named a must-have tool by eWEEK is as good a compliment as you can get," said Clark Maurer, CTO of SlickEdit. "eWEEK is a highly respected source of information both on and offline for high-tech news and reviews. To be chosen by their lab analysts as a tool they can't live without is quite an honor."

SlickEdit pricing starts at $284 for new licenses. Other products available from SlickEdit are the SlickEdit(R) Plug-in for Eclipse(TM) and SlickEdit(R) Tools for Microsoft(R) Visual Studio(R) 2005. For more information about SlickEdit and free trial downloads, please visit http://www.slickedit.com.

About SlickEdit Inc.

SlickEdit Inc. provides software developers with multi-language development tools and the most advanced code editors available. Power programmers, from Fortune 500 companies to individuals, have chosen SlickEdit as their development tool of choice for over 18 years. Proven on Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X platforms, SlickEdit products enable even the most accomplished developers to write more code faster, and more accurately. For more information about SlickEdit and free trial downloads, please visit www.slickedit.com.

Visual SlickEdit and SlickEdit are registered trademarks of SlickEdit Inc. All other products or other company names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
The Use of Infrastructure Outsourcing Continues to Increase in the Financial Services Sector. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42809) has announced the addition of the new report from Datamonitor "End User Trends in Financial Services Outsourcing (Customer Focus)" to their offering.



The infrastructure and application services outsourcing market has moved to a more strategic business model with the financial services institutions showing increasing interest in enterprise wide outsourcing of their infrastructure and applications domains.

Scope of this title:

The analysis is based on interviews with over 200 financial services institutions from the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA.

The brief is focused on demonstrating financial services current and future infrastructure and applications outsourcing services take-up.

Highlights of this title include:

The results of the research indicate that outsourcing is being viewed as a strategic tool for achieving the financial services main business and IT objectives. Although the suitability of outsourcing to achieve business objectives varies by lines of business.

While more than half of the respondents currently outsourcing their infrastructure and applications domains, roughly the same amount of FSIs expect to increase their infrastructure and applications outsourcing usage in the next two years.

Applications development is touted as the most outsourced area in the financial services sector, while Maintenance/Support/Break fix is the most outsourced area on the infrastructure side.

Reasons to order your copy:

To improve understanding of the financial services application outsourcing services market.

To improve positioning relative to competitors and market opportunity.

Key Points Covered:

Outsourcing is a major enabler of change in the financial services sector

Outsourcing is intrinsic to meeting corporate objectives

"Variabilization" of costs and overall IT rationalization are the primary motivators for outsourcing

Outsourcing is a major vendor opportunity despite high take-up levels

Increased outsourcing by current customers will fuel IT domains outsourcing market growth

Applications development is touted as the most outsourced area in the financial services sector

The use of infrastructure outsourcing in the financial services continues to increase

Internal servicing remains the default situation with many FSIs apprehensive of outsourcing

List of Tables Include:

Table 1: The financial services main IT business objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing

Table 2: The financial services institutions infrastructure and applications outsourcing

Table 3: The financial services overall outsourcing strategy by line of business

List of Figures Include:

Figure 1: The financial services primary IT and business objectives / objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing

Figure 2: The financial services top five IT business objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing, by line of business

Figure 3: The main drivers for outsourcing in the financial services

Figure 4: Infrastructure / applications domains currently outsourced

Figure 5: The financial services infrastructure / applications outsourcing (at least one function)

Figure 6: The financial services applications outsourcing

Figure 7: The financial services infrastructure outsourcing

Figure 8: The financial services overall outsourcing strategy

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42809

Source: Datamonitor
SkyeTek Opens European Headquarters to Expand Sales Channels for ETSI Compliant RFID Reader Modules and Software. Check it out:
WESTMINSTER, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- SkyeTek, Inc., the leading provider of embedded RFID reader technology, today announced the creation of its sales headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, responsible for covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Over the past few months, SkyeTek has announced the availability of two globally compliant reader modules - the M9 UHF SkyeModule and the M2 HF SkyeModule. As a result, the company's sales in Europe and Asia-Pacific have more than doubled for the second consecutive year, marking the emergence of overseas markets as significant growth areas for SkyeTek.



SkyeTek's first channel partner in Europe is Meshed Systems, a leading RFID solutions provider based in Munich, Germany. Meshed has been a SkyeTek value added reseller (VAR) for several quarters and will continue to cover Germany, Austria, and Switzerland under the purview of SkyeTek's EMEA sales organization.

"Meshed Systems focuses exclusively on RFID and deals with sophisticated customers in both HF and UHF applications," stated Michael E. Wernle, President of Meshed Systems. "Consequently, we require a robust, ETSI compliant product line that allows us to offer our customers the best value proposition for their unique application, regardless of frequency, protocol, or tag. We chose SkyeTek's Advanced Universal Reader Architecture (AURA) because it gives our customers a robust reader platform with an attractive ROI while allowing us to focus our sales and support efforts around one platform."

Mark Troyer, Sales Director, will head up SkyeTek's EMEA sales operations as the company looks to expand its footprint across Europe and beyond. Troyer joins SkyeTek from Jabber where he led the expansion of European sales channels for Jabber's enterprise instant messaging platform. He has also held several executive sales and marketing positions at Lucent, Network Associates, Novell, and Sun Microsystems. Troyer earned an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management (ie, Thunderbird) and a dual degree, BS in Computer Science and BA in French, from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"Europe has been a significant growth region for us and projects to be a very large RFID reader market driven by embedded applications in anti-counterfeiting, smartcard payments, and item-level inventory management," said Chris R. Turner, EVP of Sales and Business Development, SkyeTek. "Mark has a long and very successful track record of growing European sales channels for technology-based companies. We are very fortunate to have a seasoned sales executive at the helm of our expansion in EMEA."

SkyeTek offers its technology to OEMs, systems integrators, and distributors as reader modules (which come with ReaderWare included) or ReaderWare software licenses. Licensing provides customers with access to ReaderDNA reference designs, allowing them to integrate the technology directly into their product design and realize 40 to 70 percent cost savings versus a typical reader module.

About SkyeTek, Inc.

SkyeTek, Inc. develops reader technology that enables the pervasive adoption of RFID as an embedded feature in existing products. Customers use SkyeTek's technology to create new applications for their product lines in areas such as anti-counterfeiting, configuration management, consumables authentication, item-level inventory, patient safety, patron management, contactless payment, and mobile data collection. SkyeTek specifically designed AURA to serve as the multi-frequency, universal reader architecture for embedded RFID applications. AURA's common architecture disaggregates the RFID reader into a ReaderWare software layer, optimized for broad tag support, reader intelligence and easy application integration, and ReaderDNA hardware reference designs, crafted to optimize read range / performance while exploiting Moore's Law for gains in cost, space, and power efficiency. SkyeTek offers its AURA-based products as either a SkyeModule or ReaderWare license, which comes with access to ReaderDNA. Customers using SkyeTek represent numerous vertical markets and range from mid-market companies to Fortune 500 corporations. Based in Westminster, Colorado, USA, SkyeTek sells exclusively through OEMs, systems integrators, and distributors. For more information about SkyeTek, visit www.skyetek.com or call 720-565-0441.

Tagnostic is a registered trademark of SkyeTek Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved.
Ned Hayes Joins Pillar Data Systems as New CFO. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Pillar Data Systems, a leading provider of enterprise network storage systems, today announced that Edward "Ned" Hayes has joined Pillar as Chief Financial Officer. Hayes will report directly to Mike Workman, chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer at Pillar.



Hayes has more than 25 years experience in senior financial management positions, most recently as Executive Vice President of Finance and CFO at Quantum Corporation. Before Quantum, he was President and CEO of DirecTV Broadband a nationwide ISP delivering residential broadband and value-added services over DSL. At DirecTV Broadband, Hayes and his management team successfully drove the business to roughly $100M in annualized revenues with approximately 150,000 residential subscribers across the country.

Prior to that assignment, he served as EVP and CFO at Telocity, where he helped take the company public in March 2000, and then successfully sold the business to DirecTV in December of that same year. Hayes was Financial Vice President and CFO in two of Lucent Technologies' divisions, including the $20 billion Global Service Provider Business, selling Wireless, Switching and Access, Optical Networking, Communications Software, Data Networking and Installation Services worldwide. He holds Board of Director positions at Alaska Communications Group and New Wave Research.

"Pillar is thrilled to welcome Ned as our new CFO," said Workman. "Ned's versatile experience in senior management, finance and technology will be exceptionally valuable as Pillar establishes itself as a world class data storage systems company. Ned will be a fine complement to our executive management team as we continue to focus on the growth and development of our company and its award-winning Pillar Axiom storage solution."

As CFO at Pillar, Hayes will be responsible for all aspects of finance, corporate governance, investor relations and compliance-related programs under Sarbanes-Oxley.

"I am very excited to be a part of the world class team at Pillar," said Hayes. "This company has clearly had an unprecedented growth path since introducing its product last year. I look forward to assisting the company with its continued growth and success."

About Pillar Data Systems

Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops midrange and enterprise network storage systems. The company's Pillar Axiom solution, driven by its innovative policy-based management capabilities, integrates SAN and NAS into a centrally managed storage platform. Pillar Axiom systems consolidate multiple tiers of enterprise network storage into a single, easily managed system capable of scaling to hundreds of terabytes of capacity. Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered at 2840 Junction Avenue, San Jose, California 95134. The company can be reached on the Web at http://www.pillardata.com, by phone at 408-503-4000 or by email at [email protected].

Pillar Data Systems, Pillar Axiom, and the Pillar logo are all trademarks of Pillar Data Systems. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Strix Systems Leads Wireless Mesh Network Market in Radios Sold in Both 2005 and First Half of 2006. Check it out:
CALABASAS, Calif., Sept. 27 -- Strix Systems, the leader in high-performance wireless mesh networking, today announced that it has shipped more mesh radios than any other vendor in both 2005 and 1H2006, according to Wireless Mesh Equipment Market Tracker published by Heavy Reading, the research division of Light Reading, Inc. The company has shipped a total of 32,100 radios: 16,000 in 2005 since it began shipping the Access/One(R) Network Outdoor Wireless System (OWS) in April 2005, and another 16,100 in the first six months of 2006.



The Wireless Mesh Equipment Market Tracker report noted that worldwide sales of wireless mesh equipment are expected to grow by more than 100 percent in 2006, and that the market's cumulative revenue will approach $1 billion by the end of 2008. As the market grows, it is shifting from sales to small WISPs, municipal authorities, and enterprises to carriers, which will account for 40 percent of the market in 2008.

"As large-scale mesh deployments increase and mesh technologies advance, radios shipped will increase in importance as an indicator of system capacity and vendor success," said Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading and creator of the Wireless Mesh Equipment Market Tracker. "By shipping a high capacity, multiradio, product in significant volume from day one, Strix has taken a leadership position in terms of that market share benchmark."

"We are pleased to be the market leader in the wireless mesh network market," said Nan Chen, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Strix. "It reflects the market's rapid adoption of the third-generation multi-radio wireless mesh architecture, which dedicates separate radios to access and backhaul of ingress and egress. Single- and dual-radio approaches are limited in scalability and performance and offer no practical support of real-time applications such as voice and video. As the market leader, it's our responsibility to continue to provide our customers with the industry's most scalable, flexible, and future-proof solution, which only a multi-radio, carrier-class system can provide. Strix Access/One operates in any carrier environment and provides capabilities crucial to carriers as they become a dominant force in the wireless mesh network market."

Strix's multi-radio OWS platform enables customers to build the largest-scale mesh networks with the industry's highest throughput, lowest latency, greatest scalability, and carrier-class reliability, verified this year through independent wireless mesh product testing conducted by Iometrix. Because Strix networks can scale to 10 or more wireless hops with near-zero throughput loss and latency, they can support real-time applications with a minimum of wired connections for a given area, thus significantly lowering CapEx and OpEx. Strix's multi-radio architecture also yields the highest capacity in the industry, with a practical maximum of 768 users per node and throughput of more than 100 Mbps per node. In addition, the company provides a carrier-class network management system.

With radios dedicated exclusively to backhaul and an architecture that provides the most resilient dynamic mesh capabilities, Strix will always provide sufficient backhaul bandwidth as the wireless mesh network grows. Single- and dual-radio architectures force customers to invest in a larger number of wired backhaul connections and purchase add-on backhaul solutions as the network grows to provide the network performance, quality, and reliability needed to maintain end-user satisfaction. Strix Systems' multi-radio approach requires the industry's fewest wired backhaul connections and does not require additional backhaul products, thus decreasing CapEx and OpEx and making the network more manageable.

About Strix Systems
Strix Systems is the worldwide leader in wireless mesh networking. Strix's Access/One(R) products are the industry's only modular (chassis-based) mesh systems, delivering the largest capacity, highest throughput, and best scalability. This new generation of products provides the broadband mobility and reach to support voice, video, and data applications. Sold globally by a network of first-class distributors and integrators, Access/One(R) solutions have been deployed in hundreds of networks worldwide, outdoor and indoor, for the service providers, metro, public safety, government, energy, transportation, hospitality, education, enterprise, and residential markets. For more information about Strix Systems, please visit http://www.strixsystems.com/.

NOTE: Strix Systems and Access/One Network are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States and certain other countries, of Strix Systems. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.

Strix Systems

CONTACT: Kirby Russell of Strix Systems, Inc., +1-818-251-1058,[email protected]; or Jeannette Bitz of Engage PR,+1-510-748-8200, ext. 207, [email protected], for Strix Systems, Inc.

Web site: http://www.strixsystems.com/
SAP Business One Fuels Oil and Gas Services Company, Vetco International Inc.. Check it out:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SAP Business One Fuels Oil and Gas Services Company, Vetco International Inc.

Friday September 27th, 2006
Oil and Gas Services Company Recognized for its ROI by SAP Software

Clearwater, FL -- September 27th, 2006 -- Cornerstone Consulting Inc. is pleased to announce that SAP selected our client, Vetco International Inc., to be featured as an outstanding SAP Business One success story. To better provide its broad range of supplies to the oil and gas industry in Venezuela and worldwide, Vetco International Inc. replaced inadequate and costly accounting software with a comprehensive business management application, SAP® Business One. This decision instantly enabled the U.S. based distribution and supply company to consistently maintain and transfer accurate client data company-wide.


Vetcos staff was challenged by having to utilize an inadequate and non-integrated accounting system for managing all aspects of customer relationship management, sales, order processing, inventory control, accounts receivable, accounts payable and more. Without the use of a seamlessly integrated computer program, enabling the transfer of client data in real-time from one department to another, the Vetco staff experienced communication break downs.

Unfortunately, the lack of effective communication also led to: duplicate entries of client orders into the accounting system, generation of conflicting quotes for the same customer's order, payment duplications, omission of billable items and more. Such situations created enormous amounts of unnecessary paperwork, accounting nightmares and logistical difficulties for every division of the company.
SAP Business One provided the most cost-effective and scalable solution for Vetco International Inc.'s needs. Without straining its I.T. (Information Technology) budget, Vetco was able to install (a) a comprehensive and integrated accounting, customer relationship management and light manufacturing SMB (Small to Midsize Business) enterprise solution, (b) expand it throughout many departments of their business and (c) utilize the software efficiently. The implementation was on-schedule, and all departments went live with SAP Business One at the same time.
The implementation of SAP Business One as a comprehensive business management application has exceeded our expectations. Not only have we achieved an almost paperless environment, weve greatly enhanced efficiencies, streamlined our workflow, improved data management controls, and enforced accurate accounting procedures, said Jose Barrios, Chief Information Officer, Vetco International Inc.
Following the SAP Business One software implementation, previous critical business production issues were resolved. Mr. Barrios estimated the immediate return on investment to be $120,000.00. He arrived at that amount by calculating the salaries for three additional employees Vetco would have been forced to hire, had the company not implemented SAP Business One.
About Vetco International Inc.:
For more than twenty years, Vetco International, Inc. has been recognized as a leading distributor of industrial supplies to the Americas, for the oil and gas industry. The business, which is privately owned by Ali Segura and his wife Bahia Gomez, consists of ten employees and generates more than $6 million in annual revenue.
Vetco International, Inc. distinguishes itself from the competition by providing customers with a highly customized order processing and fulfillment service that is designed to meet its clients individual business needs. Vetco not only locates the highest quality chemicals; electrical, lighting, HVAC and plumbing equipment power tools; lift & pull equipment and safety industrial items; they also facilitate high volume purchases of such products for their clients.
About SAP Business One Software:
Many small and midsize firms have invested in multiple software applications for business management. Business owners report that using disparate programs which do not integrate, makes it difficult and time-consuming to generate accurate, up-to-the-minute business status reports. They lack the ability to access the information needed for analyzing their business status when they need it. Without easy access to real-time business information, mission critical decisions may not be made efficiently. SAP Business One was designed to help small and midsize businesses streamline their operational and managerial processes by providing robust and fully integrated financial and sales management capabilities.
SAP Business One supports companies with as few as ten and as many as several hundred employees, and can be implemented in weeks. The solutions award-winning Drag & Relate data navigation system provides users with intuitive data access simply by highlighting and dragging pieces of information on the screen. SAP Business One features an integrated sales force automation system for pipeline tracking, opportunity management, strategic selling, and contact management. Key functionalities also include: (a) materials requirements planning, (b) comprehensive financial management (with multi-currency, budgeting, and bank reconciliation), (c) a complete inventory management system, with kitting and multi-level price lists; and, (d) a comprehensive reporting module that allows easy access to any data.

Most SMBs (Small to Midsize Business) view software purchase with caution, expecting tangible operational improvements before spending large sums of money. SAP Business One not only provides immediate results in operating efficiency and real-time business decisions, but also comes with an affordable price tag. This affordably priced new solution, starting at approximately $11,000.00 for three users, is designed for those businesses that recognize the importance of leveraging business software as an integral component of their business growth strategy.


About Cornerstone Consulting Inc.:
Founded in 1983, Cornerstone Consulting, Inc. is a privately-owned company that provides a full suite of information technology products and services for small, mid-sized, and large companies. Cornerstones services include: system integration for LAN, WAN, VPN, wireless and Internet networks, Custom Programming, EDI, Barcodes and Scanning, RFID, E-commerce, Website Design and Hosting, Security, Networks, Remote Monitoring, as well as Custom Web Application Development. We look forward to the opportunity to help your business maintain a competitive edge in todays aggressive marketplace, said David Boos, President, Cornerstone Consulting Inc. He continued, SAP Business One and related offerings are competitively priced for small to mid-sized businesses. This software, in conjunction with the numerous value-added services Cornerstone Consulting offers, improves our clients productivity and ultimately reduces their costs. SAP Business One is making the leap into enterprise management easy and affordable for the SMBs with systems that work the first time, every time. Headquartered in Clearwater, FL at 2600 McCormick Dr., Suite 210, owner David Boos can be reached at (727) 791-3410. For further information about our company visit www.Cornerstone1.com
# # #


SAP, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.


For more information, press only:

Eleanor Mullaney
Vice President of Marketing
(727) 791-3410 xt. 2783
(727) 796-9513 fax

Cornerstone Consulting, Inc.
2600 McCormick Dr. Ste 210
Clearwater, FL 33759
http://www.Cornerstone1.com
FISHER/UNITECH Launches New Website. Check it out:
TROY, Mich. --(Business Wire)-- FISHER/UNITECH, a leading engineering technologies firm serving the Midwest, has announced a complete redesign of its website, http://www.funtech.com. The new website brings a substantial improvement to several company business processes. The site is completely integrated with the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, bringing end users accurate, real-time information on education and events. The site incorporates the company's unique SupportExpress technical support and customer care portal and offers an e-commerce area for purchase of several products.



Benefits of the new website include a much easier to use interface and navigation system. Powered by FISHER/UNITECH's ERP system, the Education section includes a searchable database of SolidWorks(R) 3D mechanical design and COSMOSWorks(R) analysis software courses by class title, location or availability. Company events are presented the same way with a searchable database of topics, dates and times and also offer online registration.

Another important facet of FISHER/UNITECH's use of web technology is 3DU, an education venue that remains exclusive to the company within its immediate industry. With the new website, the company has integrated its 3DU.FUNTECH.COM website, created specifically for online courses, into the new interface to provide one point of entry for all course information and registration. 3DU.FUNTECH.COM, launched in February 2005, offers continuing education for SolidWorks users via an interactive online environment. FISHER/UNITECH is the only SolidWorks reseller in North America to offer staffed online courses delivering customers unparalleled convenience and flexibility.

The most unique portion of FISHER/UNITECH's web-based infrastructure is SupportExpress, the company's intuitive 24/7 technical support and customer care program. Fully integrated into the new website, SupportExpress can be accessed by visiting http://www.funtech.com and clicking on Support.

Access to SupportExpress is available only to FISHER/UNITECH's maintenance contract customers, who are also entitled to software upgrades, parts coverage, free update training courses and power user's clinics.

Users can open a technical support case online, via e-mail or toll free phone. Customers may also check the status of their case online at anytime. If a technical support case warrants, the company's "Virtual Advisor" capability enables FISHER/UNITECH support engineers to view and take control of a customer's desktop over the web. Virtual Advisor also offers an instant remote technical support session for users, easy data transfer of files via the internet and accurate system information and screen capture transferability.

More than just a technical support tool, SupportExpress is a full-service customer care portal offering online bill paying and transaction history, a searchable knowledge base, viewable quotes, orders and return request capability, and e-commerce with secure shopping cart functionality.

The infrastructure of FISHER/UNITECH's website provides increased efficiency, e-commerce expansion capability and a platform for continued growth.

About FISHER/UNITECH (www.funtech.com)

FISHER/UNITECH, established in 1993, provides Product Lifecycle Management solutions to discrete manufacturing companies. The company's focus is on process improvement for product development. Process improvement is obtained through the integration of advanced software solutions to replace legacy systems. The applications include CAID, CAD, CAM, CAE, PDM, KBE, Reverse Engineering and Rapid Prototyping. Professional services are offered for design automation and data management which provides customers with a full service, one-stop source for complex PLM systems. The company offers advanced web-based delivery of education programs with its interactive, instructor-led 3DU. Please visit the company's website at www.funtech.com or call 800-816-8314.
Intel VP: Intel's Relentless Pursuit of Moore's Law to Bring Cios Incredible Performance, Stronger Security, Lower Costs. Check it out:
SAN-FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- During his keynote today at the Intel Developer Forum, Pat Gelsinger, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Digital Enterprise Group, outlined the next stage of the company's multi-core product roadmap and new industry initiatives that offer developers a design platform for innovation and new capabilities for businesses. Gelsinger said that Moore's Law and the accelerated pace of Intel innovation are enabling faster and more reliable and secure networking and computing technologies, including PCs that boast a future "system defense" technology.



Demonstrating how the company capitalizes on Moore's Law, Intel previewed its forthcoming Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5300 series -- products with four processors inside -- for workstations and servers, and the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme quad-core processor for the enthusiast market segment. Available this year, the products are based on the revolutionary Intel(R) Core(TM) microarchitecture and deliver socket compatibility with existing Intel platforms.

The chips will extend technology and performance leadership by delivering up to 50 percent more performance(1) within the same power envelope than today's dual-core generation, already well recognized as the world's highest performing processors. Gelsinger also reiterated that Intel will deliver a power-thrifty 50 watt quad-core server processor next year.

"Today saw the IDF stage awash in a sea of 65 nanometer silicon as we demonstrated the breadth and depth of our enterprise processor portfolio," said Gelsinger. "We also confirmed our commitment to leading and working with the greater high-tech industry in a number of ways to champion true open industry standards that will bring more and more benefits to businesses of all shapes and sizes."

Intel also revealed plans for more than 50 new SSE4 instructions, extending the Intel(R) 64 instruction set architecture to better take advantage of Intel's next-generation 45 nanometer (nm) silicon manufacturing process and expand the performance and capabilities of Intel(R) Architecture. New products based on the Intel 64 instruction set architecture will first appear next year and benefit a variety of applications, including those involving graphics, video encoding and processing, 3D imaging, gaming, web servers and application servers.

The company also highlighted several new industry standards initiatives. Intel and IBM have co-developed a specification for a new PCI Express technology, codenamed "Geneseo," that would extend the standard to include co-located hardware on the bus. The goal is to make such tasks as visualization and media processing, math intensive data crunching and content processing faster and more efficient than existing add-in cards or software approaches.

Intel and IBM plan to further collaborate with the PCI-SIG, one of the oldest and most respected open industry standards organizations and the group that maintains PCI and PCI Express specifications. As further example of its support for industry innovation, Intel has announced that it will license its front-side bus technology to select vendors.

New Family of Enterprise Class Processors

Gelsinger highlighted how the company has refreshed its entire line-up of dual-core products, including more than 30 new enterprise-class processors for both business PCs and servers, all launched in less than 100 days. Among these is a new family of dual-core Intel Itanium processors designed for the high-end, reduced instruction set computing (RISC)-dominated space. Intel's Itanium processor family continues to gain momentum; worldwide system revenue in the first half of this year grew by nearly 40 percent compared to the same period last year, according to analyst reports(2).

Intel also has extended the Intel Xeon processor line, targeting lower-end, single-processor servers typically used for home offices and small businesses with the introduction of the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3000 series, dramatically improving server performance and power efficiency. Intel also launched the latest ultra-dense Dual Core Intel Xeon Processor 5148 that features a low thermal design point of only 40 watts.

For business PCs, Gelsinger disclosed details on the company's next-generation Intel(R) vPro(TM) technology that will extend the platform's manageability and security capabilities. Available next year, the platform will include the third generation of Intel Active Management technology, adding support for the new Web Services Management (WS-MAN) standard and new "system defense" features that can slow or stop the spread of viruses and worms. Further bolstering PC security, this next-generation technology will also include for the first time Intel Trusted Execution Technology, formerly codenamed "LaGrande Technology".

Lastly, Gelsinger discussed a proposed method for measuring energy-efficient performance (energy efficiency at a given performance level) on the client and encouraged the industry to move toward standardization of methodologies that deliver meaningful results to end users.

About the Intel Developer Forum

IDF, now in its 10th year, is the premier global technology forum for hardware and software developers to confer on Intel-based platforms, technologies and solutions, and the new usage models they enable. Visit www.intel.com/idf for more information.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

Intel, Xeon, Itanium, vPro, Core and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

(1) Performance Claim: Based on published/measured SPECint_rate_base2000 results

Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5160 based platform details: Dell PowerEdge 2950 Server platform with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5160, 3.00 GHz with 4M L2 Cache, 1333 MHz system bus, 8GB (8x1GB) FB-DIMM memory, Microsoft Windows Server* 2003. SPEC binaries built with Intel C/C++ Compiler 9.1. Referenced as published at 123. For more information see http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2006q2/ cpu2000-20060501-05940.html(Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 53xx based platform details: Intel preproduction Server platform with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Clovertown, 2.67 GHz with 2x4M L2 Cache, dual 1333 MHz system bus, 8GB (8x1GB) 667MHz FB-DIMM memory; Microsoft Windows Server x32 Enterprise Edition. SPEC binaries build with Intel compiler 9.1.

(2) Q2 2006 Release of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. August 22nd 2006.
IBM, Intel Propose Innovative Extension to Popular PCI Express Computing Standard. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- IBM and Intel Corporation, with support from dozens of other companies, have developed a proposal to enhance PCI Express* technology to address the performance requirements of new usage models, such as visualization and extensible markup language (XML).



The proposal, codenamed "Geneseo," outlines enhancements that will enable faster connectivity between the processor -- the computer's brain -- and application accelerators, and improve the range of design options for hardware developers. Applications that will benefit include visualization, such as complex weather modeling; math and physics, such as data intensive financial applications; and content processing, such as the encryption and decryption of communications infrastructure data.

"IBM is co-founding a new open standard for attaching accelerators and co-processors to server platforms," said Dr. Tom Bradicich, IBM fellow and chief technology officer, System x(TM) and BladeCenter(R) Servers. "Like PCI-X, InfiniBand and PCI Express, this new architecture defines a standards-based approach for improving general purpose server accessibility within new and emerging application areas, such as encryption, visualization, XML and complex mathematical modeling."

"Five years ago Intel, along with IBM and other industry leaders, laid out a 10-year vision for an open, standards-based interface for the entire computer industry," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president, general manager, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "In 2004, PCI Express was the first step and today is the overwhelming choice for desktop, mobile and server systems. Geneseo is the next step in this vision and will address new requirements and opportunities that come with next-generation platforms."

Geneseo is supported by key technology companies including Adaptec Inc., AGEIA Technologies Inc., Altera Corporation, Broadcom Corporation, Celoxica, Cisco Systems, ClearSpeed Technology, Dell, EMC Corporation, Emulex Corporation, HP, Integrated Device Technology Inc., Lecroy Corporation, Linux Networx, LSI Logic, Mellanox Technologies, Myricom, NetEffect, Novell, NVIDIA, PLX Technology, PMC-Sierra, QLogic, Sun Microsystems, Synopsys, Tektronix, Xambala Inc., Xilinx Inc. and Xtreme Data.

PCI Express technology was first delivered in client and server computing platforms in 2004. Its introduction signaled the transition of computing platform I/O from the parallel bus model that had existed since the PC industry's inception to a high-speed, serial I/O standard. Since this time, millions of PCI Express-enabled platforms and devices have been delivered to customers, and PCI Express has emerged as the industry's choice for platform I/O and internal interconnect connectivity.

About the Intel Developer Forum

IDF, now in its 10th year, is the premier global technology forum for hardware and software developers to confer on Intel-based platforms, technologies and solutions, and the new usage models they enable. Visit www.intel.com/idf for more information.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

For more information about IBM, go to www.ibm.com.

IBM, System x and BladeCenter are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Intel is trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
PIPKINS SELECTED FOR MEMBERSHIP IN AVAYA DEVELOPERCONNECTION PROGRAM. Check it out:
ST. LOUIS, MO.Pipkins Inc., a leading supplier of workforce management software for commercial call centers, today announced it has been selected by Avaya Inc. (NYSE: AV), a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, for membership in the Avaya DeveloperConnection program.


Founded in 1983, Pipkins Inc. is the leading supplier of workforce management software and services to the call center industry, providing sophisticated forecasting and scheduling technology. The companys systems forecast and schedule more than 100,000 agents in more than 300 locations across industries worldwidefrom financial services and healthcare to manufacturing, travel and telecommunications.
Pipkins premier enterprise product is Vantage Point, which features comprehensive scheduling, forecasting and planning for enterprise-wide, multisite call center workforce management. The product supports centers with as few as 30 agents or as many as 3,000. Pipkins Vantage Point is designed to work with the Avaya Call Management System, an application that provides the information and management tools businesses need to monitor and analyze the performance of their contact center operations.
The Avaya DeveloperConnection program promotes the development, compliance-testing and co-marketing of innovative third-party products that are compatible with standards-based Avaya solutions. Member organizations have expertise in a broad range of technologies including IP telephony, contact centers and mobility applications helping companies extend the value of multivendor networks and transform voice into an intelligent business application that delivers true value to the bottom line.
Membership in Avayas developer community will help us build our business by serving customers more efficiently and effectively, said Bob Webb, VP of Sales for Pipkins. By working more closely with Avaya to deliver compliance-tested solutions to the market, we are able to reduce network complexity, improve security and reliability, and speed time to deployment so businesses can quickly realize a benefit to their bottom line.
The Avaya DeveloperConnection program currently includes thousands of software and hardware developer companies, integrators, service providers and customers. Members have created hundreds of innovative solutions tested for Avaya compliance, including natural language speech recognition applications, wireless services, specialized computer telephony integration and reporting capabilities, and applications tailored for specific vertical industries.
Through the DeveloperConnection program, Avaya provides a number of tools and capabilities to member companies. One example is Application Enablement Services (AES)a set of application programming interfaces, protocols and Web services that makes it easier for developers to create Avaya-compatible networks, devices and applications.
With the involvement of companies like Pipkins, our Avaya developer community has become a catalyst for rapid innovation creating multivendor applications that help enterprises around the world unleash powerful new possibilities for operating more efficiently and effectively, said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya. We help businesses embed secure, reliable Intelligent Communications into the very fabric of their organization so employees and customers have ready access to information regardless of where they are and how they prefer to communicate.
As a member of the DeveloperConnection program, companies have access to a wide range of support from Avaya, including technical resources and training. There are four levels of membership Registered, Innovator, Premier and Strategic each entailing progressive levels of marketing and sales involvement. Free Registered membership is available to anyone interested in designing Avaya-compatible solutions. Higher-level Innovator, Premier and Strategic members must meet rigorous Avaya criteria for customer satisfaction, product support, business operations, marketing and sales. Pipkins is an Innovator-level member of the Avaya DeveloperConnection program.
Membership information and a listing of solutions developed and tested under the DeveloperConnection program are available at www.devconnectprogram.com.

About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than 1 million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®. Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services.
Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications - and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services - Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya website: www.avaya.com.

About Pipkins

Pipkins Inc., founded in 1983, is the leading supplier of workforce management software and services to the call center industry. The company is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. For more information, visit www.pipkins.com.
Analyst Research Confirms Witness Systems Market Leadership. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS), a leading global provider of workforce optimization software and services, today announced that new research from The PELORUS Group, Tern Systems, and DMG Consulting reveals the company's market leadership in several categories.



The PELORUS Group

According to the "2006 World Contact Center Recording Systems Market" report published by The PELORUS Group (www.pelorus-group.com), an independent market research and consultancy company for the financial services and telecommunications markets, Witness Systems holds a leading 33.6 percent in the broadly defined recording (both combined and selective) software and services global market. Additionally, the report shows Witness Systems leading in two other categories - the company boasts a 43.3 percent share in selective recording and is the clear leader in recording software and services in North America with 29.9 percent.

"In a largely technology-driven market, Witness Systems is perhaps the best at conducting market research and listening to customer needs," said Dick Bucci, associate consultant, The PELORUS Group. "The company is well ahead of the curve in recognizing that recording solutions have applications well beyond contact centers, a direct result of customer feedback. Its leadership and market share numbers represent and reinforce that continued commitment to customer service and success."

Tern Systems

New research from Tern Systems, a highly regarded market research firm specializing in the call automation area, indicates that Witness Systems leads the quality monitoring systems installed base category with 40.9 percent. The report entitled "2006 Voice/Data Recording Market Report" also positions the company as a leader in quality monitoring shipments with 39.6 percent market share. Witness Systems received further recognition by leading the shipments for quality monitoring software with 44.8 percent, as well as the installed customer base for quality monitoring software with 46.1 percent.

"The call recording vendors are offering integrated suites that tie together capabilities from single component technologies, such as call recording and quality monitoring," said Walt Tetschner, founder and president, Tern Systems. "Witness Systems is leading the pack with its Impact 360(TM) solution and that became clear in the numbers for this year's report."

DMG Consulting

In its "2006-2007 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report," DMG Consulting - a research firm that specializes in customer-focused business strategy, operations and technology for Global 2000 and emerging companies - ranks Witness Systems the leader with 32.6 percent for 2005 contact center revenue and market share, including workforce management.

"Witness Systems had made it clear to the market that it wants to differentiate itself in the area of contact center workforce optimization," commented Donna Fluss, principal, DMG Consulting. "As of the end of 2005, Witness Systems was the leader in contact center revenue for workforce optimization solutions."

About Witness Systems

Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS) is the worldwide leader in software and services that help businesses capture customer intelligence and optimize their workforce performance. The company's Impact 360(TM) solution features quality monitoring, compliance and IP recording, workforce management, performance management and e-learning. Primarily deployed in contact centers - as well as the remote, branch and back offices of global organizations - the workforce optimization solution captures, analyzes and enables users to share and act on cross-functional information across the enterprise. With Impact 360, organizations can improve interactions and the underlying back-office processes that enhance the customer experience and build customer loyalty. For more information, visit us at www.witness.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this release that involves Witness Systems' expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. They are identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. These statements are based upon information available to Witness Systems as of the date of this release, and the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements believed true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Some of the factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include fluctuations in customer demand and the timing of orders; the company's ability to manage its growth; the risk of new product introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological change which characterizes the company's markets; the risks associated with international sales as the company expands its markets, including the risks associated with foreign currency fluctuations; the ability of the company to complete and integrate successfully any acquisitions or investments it may make; and the ability of the company to compete successfully in the future, as well as other risks identified under the caption "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005 and its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional risks that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include the risk of management distraction and other consequences that might result from the review of certain option grants and option granting practices described in the Current Report on Form 8-K filed by the Company on August 11, 2006 and related developments.

Witness, Impact 360, Improve Everything and the Witness logo are the trademarks (registered or otherwise) of Witness Systems, Inc. protected by laws of the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
New Version of the First Enterprise-Proven RSS Reader Available Free from Attensa. Check it out:
PORTLAND, Ore. --(Business Wire)-- Attensa, Inc., the leading developer of RSS software for business, today introduced Attensa for Outlook 2.0, the first RSS reader designed specifically for enterprise use. With the new, free version, business users can easily get the critical business information they need while cutting through information overload. In addition IT managers can easily deploy a secure RSS reader and take full advantage of using internal and external Web feeds to channel business information.



"The never ending quest for IT departments is to get the right information, to the right people as soon as it is available. At the same time, information workers struggle with too much information that isn't relevant. The new version of Attensa for Outlook addresses these challenges head on," said Craig Barnes, CEO of Attensa. "In fact, the additions to Attensa for Outlook 2.0 come from our experiences working with tens of thousands of users in the world's largest corporations who demand a secure, easy to use and deploy RSS reader that helps streamline communications, cut through information overload and deliver rock solid performance."

Attensa for Outlook 2.0 brings new usability features and additional functionality based on in-depth feedback from IT professionals and corporate information workers in organizations where tens of thousands of desktops are using Attensa for Outlook. New features and benefits include:

Secure connectivity to Internal and External Web Feeds and AttentionStream reporting with the Attensa Feed Server

Attensa for Outlook 2.0 has deep connectivity with the Attensa Feed Server. When Attensa for Outlook is connected to the Attensa Feed Server articles read and deleted are treated consistently whether they are read in Outlook, the Attensa AJAX web reader, or on mobile devices. Attention data is gathered by the Attensa Feed Server which generates reports that can be used to streamline communication workflow, identify "must read" news feeds and articles and develop prioritized up-to-the-minute flow of critical business information.

Easily Play Audio and Video Content Directly in Player of Choice

The new version of Attensa for Outlook introduces a mini player that lets users listen and watch audio and video content in Outlook, directly in the River of News. As more businesses take advantage of on demand video and audio to create and deliver specialized information, Attensa for Outlook gives users a choice on how they want to consume rich media content. Users can get instant access to the content using the new River of News player, or they can access the content when it is most convenient using the Attensa for Outlook Pod Catcher. The Pod Catcher automatically downloads audio and video attachments and puts them in a clearly labeled playlist in Windows Media Player or iTunes.

Never Miss Priority Information

The new Desktop Alert toaster allows users to track fast breaking business information whether they are working in Outlook or not. The Desktop Alert appears when user selected priority feeds are updated with new articles.

Predictive Ranking AttentionStream

Attensa's AttentionStream(TM) technology uses predictive ranking to continuously observe and analyze how users read and process RSS articles and subscriptions. Through this ongoing analysis of AttentionStream(TM) data, including the time and frequency that feeds are accessed and articles read, deleted and ignored, Attensa for Outlook 2.0 displays feeds in a prioritized list based on the likelihood that they will be of interest to the reader. Priorities are constantly refined as the continuous stream of attention is processed. Attensa for Outlook 2.0 lets users choose how they want subscriptions and articles presented. Subscriptions can be displayed in a "River of News" view that simulates a single news feed, regardless of how many RSS feeds the user has subscribed to.

Other productivity features include:

-- Automatically find, preview and add RSS feeds

-- Powerful automated search tools

-- Create, import and export custom reading lists

-- Keep feeds and articles organized with tagging and categories

-- Republish to blogs and forward articles as easily as sending and email

-- Advanced compatibility with the Microsoft RSS Platform and minimal memory impact on Outlook performance.

Pricing and Availability - Attensa for Outlook for Outlook 2.0 can be downloaded at no charge immediately from the Attensa the Web site (www.attensa.com).

About Attensa

Attensa, Inc. is a venture backed software company committed to developing an RSS Network that intelligently delivers relevant, up-to-the-minute information to people on any device they choose.

For more information and to keep informed about new product introductions, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.attensa.com/ and at our blog at http://www.attensa.com/blogs/attensa.

(C)2006 Attensa, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Attensa, the Attensa logo and AttentionStream are trademarks of Attensa, Inc. Microsoft Outlook is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are used for identification purposes only and are the rights of their exclusive holders.
E.ON ready for talks with Acciona on Endesa. Check it out:
(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) By Arantxa Iiguez.

Frankfurt, Germany, Sep 27 (EFE).- The German energy titan trying to acquire Spain's biggest electric utility said Wednesday it is ready to talk to the construction firm that this week acquired 10 percent of Endesa.

In a conference call with investors, the chairman of E.ON said his company is determined to pursue the acquisition and that he had learned through the media that builder Acciona is willing to enter talks with the German concern about its stake in Endesa.



Under the circumstances, it would "probably be a good idea" for E.ON and Acciona to talk, CEO Wulf Bernotat said.

Acciona's surprise purchase Monday of 10 percent of Endesa at a price of 32 euros ($40.55) per share prompted E.ON to sweeten its own bid for the Spanish utility, from the 25.41 euros ($32.19) it offered in February to 35 euros ($44.40) a share.

Amounting to 37.1 billion euros ($47.1 billion) in cash, the enhanced offer from E.ON represents a 38 percent increase over the German company's original bid.

Acciona said its purchase of Endesa shares was not part of "a speculative operation" and that it was prepared to negotiate with E.ON - Europe's largest utility - about control of the Spanish power provider.

The builder also expressed an interest in increasing its holding to 25 percent of Endesa.

Bernotat used Wednesday's conference call to prod Madrid to heed this week's ruling by the European Commission that the conditions imposed by Spain's National Energy Commission on the E.ON-Endesa tie-up are illegal under EU legislation.

Leaders of the 25-member European Union have agreed, at least in principle, on the need to create a genuine single market in the energy sector.

The CEO, who suggested E.ON's acquisition of Endesa could be completed by year's end, said Tuesday's move to increase the offer was intended as a "clear signal" that his company plans to press ahead with the transaction.

The involvement of Acciona has caused Endesa's share price on the Madrid Stock Exchange to soar more than 18 percent, and it stood at 34.75 euros midway through Wednesday's session.

Bernotat said E.ON remains convinced that "the combination of the two enterprises follows a strategic and industrial logic."

He said that E.ON had been prepared from the outset to boost its offer for Endesa if necessary and that "the moment has come to use our flexibility."

E.ON "will use all available financial resources," Bernotat said, mentioning the possibility of issuing new shares or selling assets.

The German company says completion of the deal is contingent on E.ON's acquisition of at least 50.01 percent of Endesa's shares, and on the Spanish firm's elimination of a rule restricting investors to 10 percent of voting rights, no matter how big their stake in the enterprise.

E.ON's February offer for the electric utility came after Spain's leading gas group, Gas Natural, launched a takeover bid worth $27.8 billion bid for Endesa in September 2005.

Endesa management considers the E.ON offer to be better than the one made by Gas Natural because it provides a higher price, payment in cash and would maintain the company's current structure.

If it gets done, the E.ON-Endesa deal would create the biggest electric and gas company in the world, with more than 50 million customers in over 30 countries and 107,000 employees.

Endesa was a state-owned company for decades until it was privatized in 1998.

For its part, the Spanish government opposes E.ON's ambitions to obtain control of Endesa, but has not moved overtly to block the transaction.

While the future of Endesa remains uncertain, another Spanish construction firm, ACS, announced that it bought 6.3 percent of Spain's second-largest utility, Iberdrola.

As ACS already holds 35 percent of No. 3 utility Union Fenosa, its foray into Iberdrola shares sparked speculation about a possible merger between the energy companies. EFE

aia/dr

Copyright 2006 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc.
Plasmon and Hyland Software Form Strategic Alliance. Check it out:
DENVER --(Business Wire)-- Plasmon (LSE: PLM), the trusted source in archiving systems, today announced a strategic alliance with Hyland Software Inc., developer of OnBase(R) enterprise content management (ECM) software. As a part of the alliance, customers will be able to leverage both vendors' platforms as an integrated solution that protects data investments and meets the needs of regulatory compliance.



"This strengthened technology relationship with Plasmon helps further our mutual visions for helping organizations reduce the cost of critical business functions," said Bob Hayes, senior manager, Office of the CTO, Hyland Software. "We allow our customers to manage, control and share all of their digital content. By providing them with yet another trusted archive option with Plasmon's Archive Appliance, they can have the confidence that their content is protected throughout its lifecycle."

The combination of Hyland's OnBase ECM software and Plasmon's UDO Archive Appliance can provide organizations with a true, long-term data retention strategy that allows businesses to reduce the spending curve on storage and improve organizational efficiencies to reduce risk and cost across the business.

"Our partnership with Hyland Software allows us to expand our market reach for the Archive Appliance and take advantage of new market opportunities," said Mike Koclanes, Chief Strategy Officer and senior vice president, sales and marketing, Plasmon. "The synergies in our businesses will help us deliver the Archive Appliance to a market that requires a comprehensive approach to protecting critical information assets."

About Hyland Software

Established in 1991, Hyland Software Inc. is the developer of OnBase, a rapidly deployable suite of enterprise content management (ECM) software applications. OnBase is a modular suite of ECM applications that includes document imaging, workflow, electronic document management, COLD/ERM and records management. OnBase allows organizations to manage all digital content, including scanned paper documents, e-mails, faxes, print streams, application files, e-forms, Web content and multi-media files. OnBase is used by businesses and government agencies around the world to reduce the time and cost of performing important business functions and address the need for regulatory compliance through the management, control and sharing of digital content with employees, business partners, customers and other constituencies. For more information about OnBase, please contact an authorized OnBase solution provider or visit www.onbase.com.

About Plasmon

Plasmon is the trusted source in archiving systems and provides the most comprehensive line of archival storage solutions, including the flagship Archive Appliance product. Founded in 1984, Plasmon is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: PLM) with worldwide headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and U.S. headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Plasmon offers longevity, authenticity, and ease of access to critical business data to enterprises looking to protect business assets for competitive reasons and meet regulatory compliance requirements. For more information, visit www.plasmon.com.
EDITORIAL: Send airport on new path: If private enterprise won't step in at WGA, scale expectations back. Check it out:
(Tribune, The (Mesa, AZ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--Williams Gateway Airport is often characterized as the East Valley's future mother lode for jobs and development.

The airport, coupled with Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus, is located in Mesa at the junction of the East Valley's largest city with the towns of Gilbert and Queen Creek.

Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker has on several occasions pointed to Williams with the expectation that 100,000 jobs will be created there, putting food on the tables in the tens of thousands of new homes that eventually will be built in the region.



But an independent panel of land development experts last week offered a sobering perspective.

The panelists were brought in from all over the country under the auspices the Urban Land Institute and at the request of stakeholders. They spent an intense week studying a 42-square-mile area which includes the airport, and came up with a series of recommendations that evidently rocked Lynn Kusy, Williams Gateway Airport executive director.

The panel said it was time for the airport authority, consisting of the surrounding East Valley cities, Phoenix and the Gila River Indian Community, to become "more aggressive."

"Williams Gateway Airport won't achieve profitability -- or even break even (by 2020) -- if it continues with business as usual," panelist and Houston-based planning expert Zane Segal said.

So what needs to be done to end business as usual?

Among the panel's recommendations, none seemed to take a sharper turn from business as usual than its call for a private company to manage the airport and development of its properties under a shared revenue agreement.

Kusy, whose job could be at stake, was among the first in the crowd to grab the microphone to ask what drove that recommendation. Panelist Alex Rose answered that private firms can maximize revenue and minimize costs.

Rose, vice president of Continental Development Corporation in El Segundo, Calif., called taking the airport's management private "a forward-looking way to maximize the benefit of that asset."

The airport's development is critical to the East Valley's future. But it's also a drain on public funds at a time when none of the authority's East Valley members is flush with tax revenue.

The authority should adopt the panel's recommendation and go looking for a credible private company to take on the job. If it can find one, chances for the airport's success will be improved and in a faster time frame.

If it can't find a private company willing to invest time and resources into the airport, then expectations will need to be reined in.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Metier Expands Patent Portfolio to Include Resource Management. Check it out:
WASHINGTON --(Business Wire)-- Metier, Ltd., an innovator in project portfolio management software and services, today announced that it has been granted another patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Metier's newest patent uses costs, effort, variance analysis, lexicon mapping, and other task data to provide a real-time resource management system. This patent extends the reach of Metier patent portfolio from project portfolio management to advanced resource models and metrics.



The capability will provide an accurate and current analysis of resource performance. By using existing past performance data, such as project plans, metadata, taxonomy information, activities sequencing, the portfolio lexicon, and risk data, portfolio managers can accurately and scientifically predict future performance of resources in their portfolio.

Metier's suite of intellectual property includes advanced technology for predicting, planning, monitoring and illustrating the project portfolio. With this patent, Metier furthers its unique position in the project portfolio management industry.

"Next year, the analysis represented by this patent, along with others, granted and pending, will be delivered as part of the WorkLenz Analysis Server," said Douglas Clark, CEO of Metier. "We will continue to spend a large percentage of our profits on R&D in supporting our customer's desire to make better decisions via intelligent analysis of the data they produce."

About Metier, Ltd.

A two-time Inc. 500 software company headquartered in Washington, D.C., Metier delivers project portfolio management that empowers the modern project enterprise to work forward(TM). Since 1998, Metier's suite of software and services analyzes and predicts work for government agencies and Global 2000 corporations. It transforms existing data into valuable information, delivering trusted intelligence for better decisions. For more information about how your organization can work forward, please visit www.metier.com or call 1-877-965-9501.
Workshop will help landowners explore enterprise options. Check it out:
(Delta Farm Press Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Corn mazes, hunting leases and bird watching enterprises are some of the topics to be covered in an Oct. 10 workshop focusing on natural resource enterprises.

Mississippi landowners interested in earning additional revenue from their land can take part in this workshop held at Central Mississippi Research and Extension Center in Raymond, Miss. Natural resource enterprises include a variety of activities such as fee hunting and fishing, trail riding, agritourism, heritage tourism, wildlife watching, and the operation of bed and breakfasts.



Workshop participants will hear advice from enterprise owners as well as learn from resource professionals.

Topics to be covered include revenue potential from natural resource enterprises, liability and legal considerations, enterprise development, marketing, business considerations and cost-share programs. The afternoon session will take place in the field and focus on wildlife habitat management and conservation.

Mississippi State University's Extension Service created the Natural Resource Enterprises program to assist private landowners in developing alternative or supplemental means of income on their land. The program is a partnership with MSU's Extension Service, MSU's Forest and Wildlife Research Center, the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

To offer this workshop, MSU is partnering with the city of Raymond, Hinds Community College, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Early registration is recommended due to space limitations. A fee of $25 is required. For more information or to get a registration form, visit the workshop Web site at http://www.wildlifeworkshop.msstate.edu or call (601) 857-2284.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US software firm Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) is planning a Latin American tour to launch its new open source platform Suse Linux Enterprise 10, during October and November, the company said in a statement.



The tour includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and will be sponsored by other IT multinationals such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).

***

The Chilean government, through the education ministry Mineduc, non-profit technology transfer foundation Fundacin Chile and the website EducarChile, have signed an agreement with US internet search company Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to offer educational applications, the government said in a statement.

Under the terms of the agreement, signed during the 2006 IT tour organized by Chile's universal access foundation Fundacin Pas Digital, Google will offer educational internet tools to EducarChile through Google Earth.

***

Venezuela's science and technology ministry has launched a national center for research and development in open source technologies (Cenditel) located in the state of Mrida, local newspaper El Nacional reported.

The center aims to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) with open standards helping in the research and development of innovative solutions.

***

US networking solutions provider Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) has launched a contest for SMEs in Argentina and Chile offering as a prize the renovation of their IT platform, including IP telephony, security, wireless networks, switching and routing, Cisco said in a statement.

The prize also includes support and guarantees for a year.

The contest is open to private companies that have been operating for at least three years with 30-250 employees and at least 20 PCs in their network.

***

US software company Altiris (Nasdaq: ATRS) is about to sign an agreement with the Brazilian unit of US IT giant Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) to include its asset administration solutions in HP's PCs, regional news service TelcosIT reported.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Self-employed telecommuters work hard to stay connected. Check it out:
(Frederick News-Post, The (Frederick, MD) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--FREDERICK -- While the technological gadgets for home-based businesses and telecommuters may be similar, the requirements can be quite different.

Home-based businesses focus their technological needs on their customers.

Telecommuters work at home as if they were at the office, so their equipment needs to be compatible with their business or government employers.

"What we provide to our home-based business customers is central to what goals they want to accomplish, said Lynda Wagner, president and owner of NewTeQ Computer Services.

"We analyze their needs and help clients spend their money intelligently," Ms. Wagner said. "For example, if the company has three people, the owner doesn't need a $1,000 router.

"We want them to get the most bang for the buck for the greatest productivity and efficiency in the long run."

John Dickerson runs his business, SOHO Systems Inc., out of his Urbana home. His company focuses on small business clients, and technology follows need, he said.

For example, Mr. Dickerson installed all the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment for his wife, Erica, who has an interior design business, based in their home.

"Erica needs to take pictures, figure measurements, use AutoCAD (a suite of computer-assisted design products); and her work with customers is collaborative," Mr. Dickerson said

One of his customers is an Urbana farmer, and there is 100 acres between the old farm house and the new house.

"It was difficult to get technology into the 1700s-era farmhouse, but the new house had a cable modem. So we put directional antennas on both roofs to create a wireless bridge that enabled us to hook up to a server and three work stations," he said.



Telecommuters need their equipment at home to be compatible with the equipment at the business or government agency, Ms. Wagner said.

"We analyze the equipment, and the equipment at home doesn't have to match exactly the equipment at work, only be compatible," she said. "A piece of equipment at the telecommuter's home that more closely resembles that of a small business may be able to tie into the workplace."

There are two good technologies used for telecommuters, Mr. Dickerson said: a virtual private network, or VPN, and a Citrix technology where applications are installed on services in a central computer room.

The VPN establishes a secure and encrypted tunnel to the office. Once established, traffic can pass just as if on a local network, he said.

The Citrix product allows any computer to access Microsoft applications without having to install the applications on every desktop in the system, Mr. Dickerson said. "It uses a Citrix platform but the applications run on Microsoft servers in a central computer room.

"It's like the old days when terminals were linked to a mainframe. All the work is done on the Microsoft servers, not on the telecommuters' desktops," Mr. Dickerson said.

As for hardware costs, buying quality now saves on headaches later, said Nick Damoulakis, co-owner with wife, Amy, of Orases Consulting Corp. "You get what you pay for in customer service.

"I have a plan with Dell that guarantees that a service professional will be at my door in four hours. I would never buy generic; it's a headache if something breaks. I want to be able to call, and 1-2-3, it's done and they (service reps) are out of here."

Mr. Dickerson said users should buy the best products they can afford. "Do you want to buy cheap or keep your business up and running?" he said. "Take a switch. You can buy a cheap thing, and it works. Let's say the switch has eight connections; that's fine, but your entire enterprise may depend on that one switch.

"That single-point failure can take you down. Or, you could spend several hundred dollars on a switch that will last for the next 10 years."

The best software is free, Mr. Damoulakis said.

That would be software from the Open Source Initiative at www.opensource.org.

"We use and build from open source," he said. "It's the client's option. For example, if we tailor open source code for a real estate agent and improve the software, we'll put it out for the public to use.

"Using open source software can save a client thousands of dollars," he said.

Open source is very nice, but you have to have people locally who can support it and make it work correctly, Mr. Dickerson said. With a licensed product, there is a much broader support mechanism.

"If you use an open source word processor on a Linux platform, it can work well with a very nice look and functionality; but if you don't know Linux and its applications, and don't have a support contract, and the platform goes down, you're stuck," he said.

Ms. Wagner always recommends standard software products because the specialized software for her clients doesn't work with open source, she said.

"Title companies are a big part of our business, and we use TitleExpress software (from TSS Corp.)," Ms. Wagner said. "We take the software and customize it for our clients.

"We create merge docs and merge sets using their software," she said. "We can print out, in order, the documents needed for a settlement agent at the time of settlement. It makes the settlement very efficient."

Advances in computer technology are rapid, but Ms. Wagner takes it slow when introducing new technology to her clients.

"We are always watching what I call the bleeding edge of technology," she said. "We do not incorporate this technology among our clients because more often than not there are bugs that need to be massaged through to make the hardware and software stable.

"Instead, we use what I call cutting-edge technology, but it's been tested and is stable."

As a partner of Microsoft, NewTeQ gets Microsoft products before the general public because the software giant wants its partners to test and work out any bugs, Ms. Wagner said.

"For example, I never used Windows Millennium in any of my products because Microsoft was never able to stabilize it. Eventually, Microsoft pulled it."

Mr. Damoulakis believes that if a business buys a high-end computer of good quality, it can last six years. "Usually, it's the software rather than the hardware that we would more likely upgrade," he said. "It's tricky. For us, having the newest software allows us to do the newest things on the Web, and the software is compatible with the older hardware."

Mr. Dickerson says obsolescence is always a factor in PC technology. "Five years ago, in 2001, the average speed of a machine was less than 1 gigahertz. Now, the machine in Erica's office contains eight processors at 3.8 gigahertz per processor," he said. "That machine today costs $2,500, similar to what it cost five years ago for the single processor."

There are so many orders of magnitude, he said. An application on a machine five years ago that took five minutes could take one second today on a newer machine.

To see more of The Frederick News-Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.fredericknewspost.com/.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Transitive Demonstrates Solaris/SPARC Applications Running on Hitachi BladeSymphony Intel Itanium-Based Server Platform. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Transitive(R) Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system (OS) pairs, today announced it is working with Hitachi to apply its QuickTransit(R) virtualization software to allow many applications written for Solaris(TM)/SPARC(R) platforms to run without source code or binary changes on Hitachi BladeSymphony servers with the Linux(R) OS and Intel(R) Itanium(R) processors. The technology was successfully demonstrated today during the Intel Developer Forum keynote address by Pat Gelsinger, Senior Vice President of Digital Enterprise Group for Intel Corporation. The Hitachi BladeSymphony and QuickTransit software demonstration will also appear at the Intel Developers Forum in Hitachi booth #406.



The demonstration runs on an eight-way Hitachi BladeSymphony platform with a Dual-Core Intel Itanium Series 9000 processor, with QuickTransit virtualization technology enabling unmodified Solaris/SPARC binaries to run alongside native Linux applications. The translated applications typically run faster on the Itanium platform than on the native SPARC platform. Hard and soft (virtualized) partitions allow for a variety of OS support, for example Windows(R) partitions showcase increased server utilization by consolidating multiple databases, while Oracle back end database support is provided on a separate Linux partition.

"The IDF demonstration provides a clear example of how enterprise platform migration can be dramatically simplified, with minimal disruption to end users," said Bob Wiederhold, President, and CEO of Transitive Corporation. "We appreciate the work and effort that both Intel and Hitachi have put into this sophisticated demonstration which reflects the complex environments of many enterprise data centers worldwide."

"We have been so pleased with the initial evaluation of QuickTransit running on Hitachi BladeSymphony servers, that we want our customers to see how quick and easy it really is," said Elizabeth King, Vice President and General Manager for the Server Systems Group of Hitachi America, Ltd. "By eliminating the burdens and uncertainties of application porting, a QuickTransit solution can immediately change a migration decision from doubtful to compelling with unimpeded opportunities for enhanced datacenter performance, scalability, and workload flexibility."

"Today the industry has witnessed the first Solaris applications running on an industry standard Itanium processor based platform using Intel Virtualization Technology," said Kirk Skaugen, Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group at Intel Corporation. "The demonstration shows how QuickTransit software enables Solaris application environments to easily move to Itanium systems without need for porting or recompiling."

About Transitive Corporation

Transitive Corporation is a pioneer and leader in providing solutions that allow the transportability of software applications across multiple hardware platforms. The company's QuickTransit hardware virtualization technology allows software applications that have been compiled for one processor/operating system to run on another without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports. The technology dramatically reduces software developers' cost, risk, and time-to-market of supporting multiple hardware platforms, facilitates computer companies' migration to new computer platforms, and makes significantly more software available on hardware platforms. QuickTransit technology provides the engine for Apple's Rosetta translation software, and is currently shipping on all of Apple's Intel-based computers. It is also shipping on all Silicon Graphics' Linux/Itanium-based computers. Transitive Corporation is located in Los Gatos, California with a research and development team in Manchester, England. The company is privately held, with funding participation by Pond Venture Partners Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund, Crescendo Ventures and Accel Partners. For more information, please visit Transitive's website at www.transitive.com.

Transitive and QuickTransit are registered trademarks, and the Transitive logo is a trademark of Transitive Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Telecom Manufacturers Shift Focus to Growing SMBs. Check it out:
 
A number of leading telephone system manufacturers are addressing capacity and migration needs of growing businesses by adding new, larger platforms to existing families of business telephony systems. Distributed work environments with branch offices and remote workers continue to be the workplace trend, and leading manufacturers are responding with telephony systems for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). However, database publisher and analyst group TelecomTactics has detected a shift in focus from small business systems that target businesses with fewer than 250 employees to growing businesses in the mid-size range (250–750 employees). Nearly 40% of the new enterprise telephony systems introduced in 2006 to date in the North American market have been designed for SMBs in the 250–750 station range — a shift from previous years in which 70–80% of system introductions in the SMB market targeted the under-250 station range.


 
“No one goes into business with the intention to stay small or keep the same profit levels. From the largest enterprise to the smallest business — everyone is looking to grow and succeed. So, when businesses look at convergence technologies that are vital to helping them grow, they are asking for products that have the capability to grow along with them,” notes Stephen Gobeli, VP of Samsung (News - Alert) Business Communication Systems.
 
The ESI-600, Inter-Tel (News - Alert) CS-5600, Panasonic KX-TDA600 and Samsung OfficeServ 7400 are a few of the new scalable systems just introduced this summer (2006). In addition to addressing capacity requirements, these new systems also provide ease of migration, convergence, improved performance, and reliability and advanced applications, including unified communications, enhanced networking and wireless LAN.
 
Look for a full 2006 summary from TelecomTactics in early 2007.
 
In recent months, ESI (Estech Systems, Inc.) announced an array of new and enhanced products that target larger-sized businesses and address employee productivity. The new ESI-600 System for Converged Communications is the largest system ever offered by ESI, scaling to 408 IP stations or 336 digital stations in a single location with additional capacity by networking up to 100 systems. ESI-600 is a compact, rack-mounted system with one main cabinet and three expansion cabinets and includes an on-board integrated voice mail/auto attendant system, optional Mirrored Memory Module and ESI's Virtually Integrated Phone (VIP) communication management tool, ESI PC Attendant Console and the Presence Management Suite among other options. In addition to the new ESI-600, the company offers a number of other systems for smaller businesses in North America, including entry-level, full-featured and LAN-based platforms.
 
Inter-Tel recently addressed growth requirements for smaller businesses with new software and a new server platform for the company’s Inter-Tel 5000 IP-based system family. The new software expands the capacities of the Inter-Tel CS-5200 and CS-5400 servers, while a new server platform, the Inter-Tel CS-5600, addresses growth to 346 endpoints (250 IP devices per site and 96 analog and digital phones). The CS-5600 is a dual 1U configuration that combines a base server (same hardware as that of Inter-Tel’s CS-5200 or CS-5400 server) and a processing server. All Inter-Tel 5000 servers run the same applications (Inter-Tel’s Unified Communicator, Call Center Suite, Enterprise Messaging and Enterprise Conferencing/Instant Messaging), use the same trunk cards and accommodate Inter-Tel IP telephones, digital phones and wireless handsets — easing the migration for growing businesses. Inter-Tel has also just introduced the Inter-Tel 7000 IP-based system family with server platforms that support from 100 to 2,500 stations.
 
Panasonic’s new KX-TDA600 is a hybrid IP PBX (News - Alert) and larger version of the company’s earlier KX-TDA100/200 platforms. Ideal for businesses with more than 175 employees, the modular and stackable (or rack-mountable) KX-TDA600 includes a basic shelf and up to three expansion shelves, creating a system that can scale to 640 devices (analog, digital, IP or wireless) or 960 Panasonic KX-T7600 digital proprietary telephones using Panasonic’s Digital eXtra Device Port (XDP) feature. Power supplies, most circuit cards and telephones are compatible among all KX-TDA platforms which results in cost savings for Panasonic customers who outgrow a smaller TDA system. The KX-TDA600 supports Panasonic’s Version 3.0 KX-TDA software, introduced earlier in 2006 for the KX-TDA100/200 systems, with enhanced networking (centralized voice mail, network DSS/BLF, expanded call coverage), additional cellular phone features, new call center functionality and more.
 
Samsung BCS announced OfficeServ 7400 for the North American market this summer, a voice, data and wireless platform for businesses with up to 500 users. The new system promises more power than the earlier OfficeServ 7200 (192 ports) introduced in October 2005, adding additional capacity (up to three cabinets and 1,344 ports), gigabit Ethernet connectivity and 64-channel Media Gateway (News - Alert) Interface (MGI) cards to interface between circuit switching and packet switching applications. Trunk and station cards are compatible with smaller OfficeServ 7200 systems, and digital and IP telephones are compatible among most OfficeServ systems (including the former iDCS100/500). A recently introduced Wireless LAN solution with a wireless Internet phone that operates on a 2.4 GHz frequency band is also available for employees who need freedom of mobility in their office environment.
 
Sandra M. Gustavsen is an analyst for TelecomTactics and Access Intelligence, LLC. To see more of her articles, please visit the TelecomTactics column page or visit the firm’s Web site at www.telecomtactics.com.
 
 

Manufacturer

 

 

Platform

 

 

Target Market

 

 

Maximum Stations

 

 

ESI

 

 

ESI-600

 

 

250-300

 

 

400

 

 

Inter-Tel

 

 

CS-5600

 

 

100-250

 

 

350

 

 

Panasonic

 

 

KX-TDA600

 

 

175+

 

 

640+

 

 

Samsung

 

 

OfficeServ 7400

 

 

100-500

 

 

500

 

 

 
Buffalo Niagara Enterprise wins deals. Check it out:
(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 27--Just seven years into its mission to promote Western New York as a place to do business, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is now competing on par with more established economic development organizations nationwide, and winning more deals, officials said Tuesday.



The region's privately-funded business development group, whose job is to retain businesses in Western New York or attract new ones, said it achieved 38 "wins" in its 2006 fiscal year ended June 30.

That's a 5.5 percent increase over the previous year, when it raked in 36 victories. And the previous total for fiscal 2005 was more than twice the number of wins of Kansas City, Phoenix, Richmond or St. Louis.

"You've had a lot of wins here, for a community that doesn't think of itself as a national leader," said Marilyn Higgins, the Syracuse-based vice president of economic development for electric utility National Grid, an investor in Buffalo Niagara Enterprise that actively aids business development efforts across upstate New York.

Those numbers don't count other business development successes in which the group either wasn't involved or took a secondary role to a local industrial development agency. Enterprise officials say they plan to consolidate those numbers in their total in the future.

Even so, the efforts last year resulted in $258.2 million in new capital investment in the region, a 12.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the group's annual report. And they created or retained 3,436 jobs -- 1,384 kept and 2,052 added.

That's a drop of 27 percent in jobs from the previous year. But officials argue that investments, especially those that generate more dollars in the future, are more important than jobs. And they note the group had some unusual success of late.

More than 11,000 jobs were created or kept in the previous two fiscal years combined, including the 2,500 service jobs being added by insurer GEICO Corp. in Amherst. The GEICO project was the biggest economic development success in the nation in the 2004 fiscal year, while a second local project that year, for health insurer Definity Health, was one of the top 30.

"We got spoiled," said Enterprise CEO Thomas Kucharski, in an interview with the Buffalo News Editorial Board.

The challenge now, both Kucharski and Higgins said, is to ensure the region maintains a supply of "shovel-ready" properties that are already prepared and approved for development and that can be turned around quickly to meet a client's needs. There are 10 such sites locally, but only one is in Buffalo.

"All upstate cities have to provide shovel-ready sites if they want to compete for projects," Higgins said. "The cities that do that will score very big. The cities that don't offer speed and predictability will lose out to the suburbs every time."

This morning, the Enterprise will release its most recent annual report in a public presentation to its 71 investors. Only 10 percent of its funding comes from government -- $500,000 from the state -- but officials hope to bring in Niagara County, the city of Buffalo, and the Southern Tier counties as well.

So officials say it's critical for them to prove to the businesses that the Enterprise is worth it. About 95 percent of the original investors have maintained their participation, and 20 percent increased their support.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise was formed seven years ago as a separate affiliate of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, sharing space, technology and some staff. But where the Partnership tries to improve the business climate locally, the Enterprise just markets the region.

Unlike the local industrial development agencies or the Empire State Development Corp., the Enterprise does not give out any cash or tax incentives. Instead, it seeks to coordinate the efforts of all the other agencies locally that do, so that businesses have a single point of contact. Officials said it's now expanded its reach to all eight counties of the region, signing collaborative agreements with appropriate parties.

"We now have a system where everybody knows what their role is," Kucharski said.

The organization has tightened its marketing, targeting specific industries where officials believe Western New York has an edge. Those include advanced manufacturing, customer service and back-office centers, hospitality and tourism, life sciences, logistics, and Canadian or international expansions.

It's a member of the Toronto Board of Trade, has a representative on the board of the American-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and shares an office in Mississauga with National Grid and Empire State Development. And it introduced a new advertising slogan, "Where life works," and a Web site to help prospective companies.

As a result, it now deals with fewer leads and prospective projects -- 428 last year, compared to 703 in its second year of existence. But the leads are more solid and realistic. And the number of wins has risen steadily each year.

Enterprise recorded 36 wins in its 2005 fiscal year, compared to 18 for Phoenix -- a hotbed of activity where one BNE official said they "don't recruit, they take orders" -- and 17, 9, and 8 for Richmond, St. Louis and Kansas City, respectively.

Its $229.2 million in investments fell short of $386 million in Phoenix, $373 million in St. Louis and $320 million in Richmond, but beat $130 million in Kansas City. But with 4,730 jobs created or retained that year, it easily beat all four cities by more than 1,000 jobs each.

To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Crossroads Systems To Highlight New BIA Partner Program at IT ChannelVision. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Crossroads Systems, Inc. (OTCBB Pink Sheets: CRDS.PK), a leading provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions, today announced its participation in IT ChannelVision, a Gartner event, October 3-6th at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona.



Rob Sims, President and CEO of Crossroads, and Jo McCausland, head of the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, will be highlighting Crossroads' new strategic direction and the new Crossroads BIA Partner Program to key solution providers and members of the media.

"Crossroads is expanding its sales model to engage directly with end users via a new channel composed of Value Added Resellers (VARs), System Integrators (SIs) and consulting firms," said Jo McCausland, head of the Crossroads BIA Partner Program. "We feel that it is most important to reach out to as many business partners as possible. Already, we have scheduled meetings with 20 partners at IT ChannelVision and feel this venue will provide an excellent opportunity to discuss end-to-end BIA solutions that meet end customer needs for today and tomorrow."

Crossroads' BIA partners benefit from substantial financial growth opportunities, as they deliver industry leading solutions that enhance their current practices in security, storage, risk management, audits and assurance, disaster recovery, and business continuity. The Crossroads BIA Partners Program is custom-designed to rapidly deploy new key logical data protection solutions in a fully supported manner and promote offerings through a series of joint channel marketing and sales activities.

From its interaction with new prospective partners, key industry analysts and members of the press, Crossroads also plans on expanding its market leadership. The event also assists in gaining crucial insight into requirements of prospective partners and markets in order to best align Crossroads' solutions with key vertical and horizontal solutions such as HIPAA, BASEL II and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

To learn more about Crossroads' offerings, Crossroads welcomes attendees to schedule one-on-one, in-person meetings with Crossroads by contacting Scott Griffith at [email protected] or Jo McCausland at [email protected].

Potential partners should apply online at https://partners.crossroads.com/access/SignUp.asp. For more information on the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, visit Crossroads' Web site at www.crossroads.com/partners/biaprogram/ or contact Jo McCausland at 512-928-7553 or [email protected].

For more information on IT ChannelVision, please visit http://www.itchannelvision.com/us/.

About the Crossroads BIA Partner Program

To qualify for the Crossroads BIA Partner Program, prospective partners are asked to complete an application form and demonstrate an extensive breadth of expertise in security or storage. Jointly, Crossroads and its selected BIA partners identify and close regional, national and global opportunities for the sale of Crossroads' BIA solutions.

About IT ChannelVision

IT ChannelVision is produced by Gartner Vision Events, the leader in ROI-driven business events for the global IT industry. IT ChannelVision is built on the foundation of three successful and established Gartner events: VARVision, an industry-leading event for the value-added channel for over a decade; System Builder Summit, the premier event for the white box market for the past seven years; and EnterpriseVision, the leading event for Solution Providers serving enterprise customers. With new technologies redefining the parameters of traditional IT markets and channels, the best of these three programs is now consolidated into a single integrated event, along with a focus on the rapidly emerging home integration market. IT ChannelVision is designed to build business partnerships and collaboration between technology Vendors and today's leading System Builders, VARs, Enterprise Solution Providers and Home Integrators. For more information, visit www.itchannelvision.com.

About Crossroads Systems, Inc.

With headquarters in Austin, Texas, Crossroads Systems is a leading provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions. Solutions from Crossroads serve the growing needs of data storage, business continuity, disaster recovery, information protection, risk management and business information assurance markets. Crossroads' offerings are designed to help companies store, manage and ensure the security, resiliency and access to their critical enterprise information. Crossroads' products are embedded in solutions from companies such as EMC, HP, Quantum and SUN. Crossroads (CRDS.PK) is currently traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) and is a member of several key industry associations such as the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information about Crossroads Systems, please visit www.crossroads.com or call 1-866-BUY-CRDS/1-866-289-2737.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may include forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "will" and similar phrases as they relate to Crossroads are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current views and assumptions of Crossroads and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.

(C) 2006 Crossroads Systems, Inc. Crossroads and Crossroads Systems are registered trademarks of Crossroads Systems, Inc. All specifications are subject to change without notice.
Radio IP Software's Road Partner Division Targets US Fleet Managers. Check it out:
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 27 -- Enterprise Wireless Conference -- Radio IP Software, Inc., the leader in secure wireless data connectionware solutions, today announced the introduction of its Road Partner(R) fleet management solution to the US marketplace. Road Partner, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Radio IP Software, was acquired in April of 2006. Road Partner products will be distributed through US-based resellers.



Radio IP Software's acquisition of Road Partner's fleet management system combined with the company's recent announcement to launch a line of GPS connectionware products reflects its responsiveness to market demand for mobile resource management in tandem with reliable communications.

By leveraging its established track record in mobile data communications and the convergence between wireless and location-based technologies, Radio IP Software strives to provide public safety, government, utility, transportation and industry sectors with critical business information exchange regardless of variables such as data formats, applications or data transports.

With the addition of Road Partner's functionality, large and small organizations with deployed personnel and vehicles are now also assured of sophisticated fleet management tools, including workflow management, vehicle performance monitoring, driver messaging and vehicle tracking.

"Our seamless wireless connectivity combined with location-based GPS technologies offers fleet managers timely and accurate tools to cost- effectively manage vehicles and personnel," said Alain Adam, President & CEO of Radio IP Software. "We are actively seeking established dealers to offer this critical solution to their customers."

Road Partner facilitates operational cost reduction in the management of vehicular fleets. The Road Partner solution is comprised of an intelligent on-board client-server based system that acquires, processes and reports fleet vehicle status and performance information in real- or deferred-time through means of wireless communication. This reporting allows for day-to-day monitoring as well as long-term vehicle life cycle management. Contrary to standard web-based systems, Road Partner's unique solution eliminates recurring charges for downloading reports and AVL (automatic vehicle location) data.

About Radio IP Software
More than 400 organizations worldwide have installed Radio IP Software's wireless connectionware products since the company was established in 1998. Privately-held Radio IP Software's feature-rich family of applications, including its flagship Radio IP MTG(TM) product, helps companies and agencies overcome the performance and connectivity challenges inherent to wireless networks. The result is faster mission response time and increased productivity through connection reliability and enhanced network security and performance. Mobile users are able to seamlessly roam in a diverse range of public and private wireless network environments, integrating all networks under a single interoperable TCP/IP standard. Ideally suited for organizations whose geographically-dispersed mobile workforces depend on mission-critical and safety-critical data, Radio IP Software's customers are largely in the public safety, utility, military and transportation sectors.

Radio IP Software - Make the Connection

For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.radio-ip.com/.

About Road Partner

Montreal-based Road Partner, Inc. helps fleet managers achieve the best possible return-on-investment for their vehicular fleets. Road Partner(R) intelligent on-board systems acquire, process, and report fleet vehicle status and performance information in real- or deferred-time to facilitate operational cost-reduction decisions by finance, human resources, security, operations and maintenance professionals. Road Partner, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of privately-held Radio IP Software, Inc. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.road-partner.com/.

Road Partner - Make the Connection
Radio IP Software, Inc.

CONTACT: Media Inquiries: Neela Parsnani of Radio IP Software Inc.,[email protected] , Toll Free: +1-877-717-2242 # 426,Tel: +1-514-890-6070 # 426, or [email protected] , [email protected]

Web site: http://www.radio-ip.com/http://www.road-partner.com/
Symbol Technologies and IBM Global Financing Offer Customer Financing Program. Check it out:
Symbol Technologies, Inc., announced today a five-year strategic financing services agreement with IBM Global Financing to help Symbol grow its enterprise mobility products, software and services.


 
Under the terms of the agreement, IBM (News - Alert) Global Financing will offer Symbol’s worldwide corporate and small-business customers with various payment plans to purchase Symbol's hardware, software and services.
 
“Our market-leading enterprise mobility solutions—paired with the IBM's unique financing capabilities—enhance our business potential, further building on the Symbol-IBM Global Strategic Alliance,” said Sandy Preizler, Symbol’s vice president of worldwide channels, in a statement.
 
Preizler added that she believes the collaboration will “add value to Symbol customers and partners who desire financing solutions for Symbol-based solutions.”
 
Mark Young, vice president of IBM Global Financing said that the agreement underlines IBM Global Financing’s growing scope of providing non-IBM IT suppliers with financing tools.
 
IBM Global Financing has operations in more than 40 countries, and a global sales team of almost 1,000 finance sales executives. IBM Global Financing’s resources will hopefully help Symbol implement its corporate plans.
 
For more information visit, please visit http://www-03.ibm.com/financing/us/ and www.symbol.com.
 
Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.
 
 
 

Escalation clues

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Escalation clues. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WAS IT GOOD OR WAS IT BAD FOR THE SENate?

I refer to all that fuss in the hallowed chamber, featuring the headline-grabbing arrest warrants for PCGG officials, for example.

The Senate issued them in connection with its inquirywell, in aid of legislation, of courseinto the internal affairs of the sequestered Philcomsat group.

The group only happened to be holding its 20th year of wacky boardroom intramural among the belligerent stockholders.

In effect, one group of stockholders was accusing another group of misuse of corporate funds, with one court case after another flying all over the place.

Leading the attack were Victor Africa and Erlinda Ilusorio-Bildner, whose group took over two corporations called POTC and Philcomsat about six years ago.

On the defensive side was supposedly the camp of government nominees in the board of another company called Philcomsat Holdings Corp. or PHC.

For whatever reason, the Senate committee on government corporations and public enterprise, headed by Sen. Richard Gordon, saw it fit to look into the matter.

According to media reports, the Senate inquiry in aid of legislation has escalated to a constitutional crisis: Who between the executive and the legislative will blink?

To think, as proof of the misuse of funds, the senators initially hinged their call for an investigation on cars that the company allegedly bought for board members.

Its not as if the Senate thinks that if it fails to investigate corporations that buy cars for its officers and directors, the world will end the next day.

But all government outfits buy cars, okay! Jet planes, agreed, are something else. Dont you think, bossing, we have many other problems in this country?

Down here in my barangay, the guys could not just accept the car issue as the be-all-and-end-all of the investigation, and there could only be something else.

Taking a high profile in the Senate investigation was Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile or JPE, who already threatened PCGG officials with libel cases for saying that he had vested interests in the Philcomsat group.

JPE insisted that the stake of his daughter, Katrina, in the Philicomsat group had nothing to do with his fight to end corruption in Philcomsat.

I guess I can live with JPEs explanation, although I dont think that it sits well with the other guys down here in my barangay, simply because JPEin factis an original incorporator of the business group under the Marcos dictatorship.

Todays holdings of Katrina Ponce Enrile, who now heads the Jaka conglomerate of the Enrile family, are the same holdings of JPE during martial rule.

Precisely because of such an irregular situation, which in my book is an obvious conflict of interest, JPE volunteered to inhibit himself from the Senate investigation.

Yet the good senator could not keep his word, as he virtually took over from Senate committee chair Gordon the questioning of the witness in a recent hearing.

As a clue to further escalation of the word war, word goes around that certain board directors are filing a complaint against JPE before the Senate ethics committee.

In other words, this whole mess is not about to end. It so happens that the Senate is only the highest policy-making body in this country with millions of problems.

To think, several cases between the warring stockholders have been filed in the Court of Appeals and the Sandiganbayan, and even the Supreme Court.

And so the Senate hearings will go on duplicating the court hearings on the ongoing cases involving, precisely, the same Philcomsat group.

How pleasing is that to the public, considering that not a few of the guys down here in my barangay already think of the Senate as an expensive circus?

***

RECENTLY, the BCDA held a public bidding for some 1.2 hectares of prime land, which was nicknamed Big Delta, at the fast-developing high-end area in Metro Manila called the Fort.

As such, you would think that real estate companies would fall over each other, rushing to bid for such a sure-hit property at the Fort. Think again!

Word has it that, out of the 11 top real estate companies that bought the terms of reference for the bidding, the BCDA got a total of zero bids.

For that kind of property, nobody is biting, even at a time when real estate is said to be moving up?

Whats more, the BCDA public information office brushed the whole thing away as nothing to do with the raging issue on this cute administrations use of military troops to take over the seaport at Poro Point from the private contractor.

If that was true, how come the BCDA was trying to set up a P6.5-million PR campaign?

Reports had it that BCDA was trying to convince the Palace that the commando-like raid would have little impact on investor confidence.

Sure, except that one German group already postponed its investments, pointing at the Poro Point incident as the cause.

For what was the message of the Poro Point story to business in general?

Well, under this cute administration, if the government wants to take your business, whether you like it or not, the government will just send the troops, period.

***

LAST WEEK, the DepEd launched a new version of the adopt a school program.

The new program basically offers packages to the private sectori.e. the various foundations of those tycoonsin such area of education as infrastructure, teacher training, support to students, computer learning, and health.

In other words, instead of the business people having to rock their brains to come up with projects for the school system, the DepEd now has a menu from which the donors can choose.

It is much more simple for the donors. You knowless work for an equal savings in tax payments!

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Patton & Pingtel Birth Pioneering IP-PBX Appliance. Check it out:
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Sept. 27 -- Patton -- the leader in network-access, connectivity, and VoIP solutions -- announces availability of the SIPxNano, a new kind of IP-PBX appliance developed in cooperation with Pingtel, the leading provider of SIP-based Enterprise Communications Systems (ECS).



On March 10, 2006, Patton and Pingtel announced a strategic relationship to deliver a next-generation IP-PBX appliance to the under-30-extensions business market.

The SIPxNano(TM) is the result. It combines Patton's NanoServ(TM) ultra- compact server technology with a tailored version of Pingtel's SIPxchange ECS software.

"Most small-office IP-PBX products skimp on features," said Scott Whittle, Patton's V.P. of Product Management. "Really useful next-generation features usually only get built onto large PBX systems, but that's not our style. We are giving small offices Fortune-500-functionality at a very affordable price."

"The Cisco SPA9000 does not even support basic voice mail, and the Linksys products require you only use their VoIP phones," said Joe Gomez, Patton's Product Manager. "We think the small enterprise market is smarter than that."

Designed for offices with fewer than 30 phone extensions, SIPxNano offers advanced call-control features and includes integrated voice mail and email, auto attendants, interactive voice response, and web-based configuration and management. Such advanced PBX attributes help small businesses make a good impression and they are essential for integrating small branch offices deploying SIP-based communications into large enterprise-wide VPNs.

"Everyone wins from this endeavor," said Jerry Stable, Pingtel's Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations. "Small business customers are the big winners, but I can tell you both Patton and Pingtel channels are very excited that we are addressing this market. The SIPxchange ECS plug & play solution is the easiest to install, administer and use VoIP PBX system on the market, which makes it particularly attractive to small businesses who do not have the time to tinker with complex systems."

Based on 100% standard SIP, the SIPxNano is fully compatible with all industry standard IP devices including Polycom phones and Patton's line of VoIP phones, gateways and routers.

Priced under $1,000, the SIPxNano is a compelling alternative for small and medium businesses requiring advanced PBX features.

About Patton
Patton manufactures SmartNode(TM) VoIP solutions that support SIP, H.323, and MGCP for analog and ISDN telephony. For more information, contact [email protected].

Patton Electronics

CONTACT: Chris Christner of Patton Electronics, +1-301-975-1000

Web site: http://www.patton.com/
Orange aims to 'demystify' mobile for enterprises. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) First it launched Orange Mail, its attempt to "democratise" mobile email and provide a broad range of mobile email solutions for enterprise customers small and large.

Now mobile operator Orange wants to help demystify the entire area of mobile communications within the enterprise and is embarking on a long-term strategy to educate users and change negative perceptions about the perceived risks of implementing mobile solutions.



"Today we are taking about phase one," said Cynthia Gordon, vice president of business marketing in the Orange group, during a roundtable in London on Wednesday. "There will be more to come."

Phase one will largely involve the distribution of educational literature throughout the Orange channel to enterprise users across the operator's entire footprint. Next will come actual products relating to issues such as device management and security, although the operator is giving little away as yet.

According to Martin Crossley, head of commercial evaluation across the entire France Telecom group, a key issue is to first resolve the lack of understanding about mobile communications within the enterprise and establish the actual risks involved in order to remove the "fear factor" and overcome vendor hype.

"My focus is on balancing risks with revenue opportunity," Crossley said.

He commented that while there is always some risk involved, "if you don't take any risks, you don't have a business."

This view is backed up by a recent report from Quocirca, Securing the Enterprise, which seeks to provide a guide for enterprises that want to deploy mobile technologies.

According to Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, an important aspect for IT and business managers is to balance any problems with the likely benefits of a solution, rather than just dismissing a mobile solution out of hand. He said if managers have the right attitude to the technology, this could also translate into a need for less control, although Bamforth stressed that some level of control is always required.

Gordon said operators should be taking a greater role in educating users about the pros and cons of mobility, although not going so far as turning themselves into managed services providers or systems integrators.

She stressed that particularly when it comes to smaller companies, operators have an increasing responsibility to help and advise customers on what they should deploy.

"We have to step back and realise people don't understand this area," she commented. "Operators need to take a more proactive role."

Mark Beattie, head of information technology at utility company LondonWaste, which awarded Orange its mobile communications contract almost three years ago, said his main requirement is that an operator is honest about the potential risks.

"Just be honest with us," he said. "Tell us if it's high risk or not and then we can make the decision."

Beattie said he chose Orange after an open tender because the operator was able to meet the majority of his company's requirements a key one being the ability to provide devices without a camera.

LondonWaste has so far deployed 25 PDAs from Orange across its 320-strong workforce, while simpler mobile devices are also installed in trucks to enable communication with drivers.

Beattie said the nature of his business is very unpredictable, and it is often the case that a waste-disposal order will come in at 5pm. He said the fact that such orders can now be communicated quickly and efficiently to the transport fleets means that the company is able to carry out business it would otherwise have been unable to do.

"I have seen increases in productivity," said Beattie, who said he ensures against the misuse of the devices by providing every member of staff with a technology policy.

"Telecoms has to be pulled back into IT it's now part of their budget," he added. "For us, the business is everything and the technology is there to support it. We've become a very email-dependent business."

Gordon noted that cost is not always the issue when deploying mobile technology. The most important aspect is to ensure that the cost of any solution fits in with the overall business case and adds value for the company.

Crossley added that a great deal of what Orange is doing in the enterprise area forms part of broader cross-industry developments, such as the plan to put SIM cards into laptops.

"We work with a high level of disclosure," he said. "We share information with other operators."

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Blended services worth 14.0bn [Lucent Technologies]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Lucent Technologies research also finds that more end-users would prefer blended services over bundles of separate services

According to primary research conducted by Lucent Technologies, communications operators potential market for blended lifestyle services in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK combined could reach a cumulative total of 14.0B by 2011.

Lucent projected the potential market size by surveying a targeted market sample nearly 1,500 consumers and enterprises across those five countries. To accurately assess interest in blended services, Lucent simulated market conditions using a leading statistical methodology known as discrete choice modelling. This method enabled Lucent to determine which blended services, consisting of key applications sets, will generate the greatest interest at which price points. The market simulation has the ability to assess likely product and service success before a product is ready for the test market.



The research objective was to identify the value, market demand and willingness to pay for blended lifestyle services that is the inter-working of voice, video, data and multimedia applications to produce personalized services. Among the key findings:

Twice as many consumers and enterprises are willing to pay more for blended services (inter-working or blending separate applications or services into a single service), than those who are willing to pay more for bundled services (a package of separate applications or services) alone.

Early adopter consumers are more likely to be either young males looking for fresh, multiple applications to get things done or somewhat older consumers with a higher overall income (greater than 45K) seeking simple solutions for their technology needs.

Early enterprise adopters are large, multi-location corporations seeking portability, company network access, and flexibility of communications with more emphasis on the quality rather than the price of blended services.

Convenience is more important for very small companies (10 or fewer employees) than other enterprises, while portability and remote access to the company network are also important but not rated quite as high as with the large firms. These companies are more price sensitive and look for technology upgrades to have a more immediate impact on their bottom line.

More than 60 percent of enterprises and consumers across five Western European countries are willing to switch providers to get blended services.

Based on survey responses, consumers most preferred blended service was a Family and Friends package containing key applications related to messaging, location-based and presence services, call management, calendar, and dual-mode phone capabilities. Estimated revenue for Family and Friends peaked at a price of 39 a month and a theoretical 25 percent market share of the total number of individuals who prefer this service. The total consumer market for blended services is projected to have a five-year cumulative revenue opportunity of 6.6B by 2011 with an estimated 6.3 million subscribers.

Enterprises most preferred blended service was a Managers package, which emphasized communications management, containing a combination of messaging, advanced call management, conferencing, location-based services, and security applications. Estimated revenue for the Managers package peaked at a price of 59 a month and a theoretical 28 percent market share of the total number of individuals who prefer this service. The total enterprise market for blended services is projected to have a five-year cumulative revenue opportunity of 7.4B by 2011 with an estimated 6 million individual workers who would be subscribers. .

Lucents Western European primary research shows operators that now is the time to pursue the blended services market, said John Marinho, Lucent Technologies corporate strategic marketing vice president. The operators can benefit from increased revenue as well as a greater share of the end-users 'telecom wallet' and operational efficiencies that come with deployment of an IP Multimedia Subsystem infrastructure for blended services."

"Lucent's study helps provide some additional, and much-needed perspective on the blended services opportunity in Western Europe. Pyramid Research sees tremendous upside potential for service providers offering blended applications around the world", said Guy Zibi, director of Communications Media Technology Research, at Pyramid.

In addition to the consumer adult research, Lucent also completed an adjunct study of the Western European Youth segment, including tweens (8-12 years old) and teens (13-17). Among its highlights, the study found that European teenagers, with the authority to spend, are more likely to expect to pay more for blended services than their parents would expect to pay. The teens also are significantly more likely than their parents to place greater importance on the always on feature and the ability to use voice, video, data simultaneously during the same communication session.

The consumers surveyed for the Western European research were individuals ages 8 to 65, who use mobile phones, have high-speed Internet access at home and are one of the primary decision-makers regarding communication services for the household. The enterprises surveyed were a mix of micro, small, medium and large enterprises that were not telephone service providers or ISPs, and the business contact was a purchase decision-maker.

The research, completed earlier this year, is part of Lucents ongoing primary market research into the demand for blended lifestyle services and also another example of how Lucent helps customers transform their networks and their business.

Lucent is sharing detailed results of the research with its service provider customers to help them tailor their service introductions for specific markets.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Quiconnect expands team [Quiconnect]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) September 27, 2006 - Quiconnect, a specialist systems integrator offering interconnectivity services and applications in the wireless broadband sector, announces today a series of new senior technical and commercial staff appointments which add considerable breadth and depth of expertise, as the company expands.



Quiconnect supplies tools, technologies and services to enable Service Providers and Network Operators to offer their customers the ability to roam reliably on different mobile broadband networks, along with competitively priced, branded user experiences across these multiple networks, platforms and applications.

From a technical delivery perspective, Jen Redmon has been appointed as director of customer engineering a role which involves liaising between sales, marketing and technical staff to ensure service delivery, as well as working with customers to facilitate brand extension. Jen is an expert in all wireless broadband technologies, having worked at both large organisations such as Texas Instruments and Bosch Telecom, and start-up companies Spectrapoint, Callahan Broadband Wireless, Wirefree Systems and Tatara Systems in the USA, Asia and Europe.

Next, Luke Vinogradov joins Quiconnect as senior manager for new product development responsible for all new product and solution initiatives, from initial business case creation to the technical delivery which follows. An experienced manager of online content products and platforms, Luke has held senior positions at Telstra Corporation, Australias leading telco, where he developed and launched its BigPond Movies DVD rental and movie download services, and held key roles in mobile content. Prior to that Luke held roles with SMS Management and Technology, and Deutsche Bank in London where he was a senior researcher in the Investment Banking division.

Rob Myers has been appointed as senior manager of partnerships and alliances with a remit to identify and create agreements with a range of commercial and strategic partners operating in the wireless broadband sector. A MBA qualified marketing-led business manager with over 15 years experience working in the IT and telco industries, Rob has held a variety of senior roles including channel manager, global carrier services at Cable and Wireless; head of enterprise and carrier services at Inmedia Communications Limited, the satellite services division of Kingston Communications Plc; and group business development manager at Bandwidth Technologies International Group (BTIG), a vertically integrated satellite communications solutions provider.

To augment the marketing team, Carley Elsdon has joined as senior marketing manager. A global marketing professional, Carley has 10 years experience spanning Fortune 500 companies as well as business start ups in both Europe and the USA. Prior to joining Quiconnect, Carley was USA marketing director at Systimax Solutions, a division of CommScope which designs, manufacturers and markets end-to-end connectivity solutions for enterprise networks, as well as acting marketing director (North American region) at Avaya Incs connectivity solutions division.

Completing the new team, Stphane Perret joins the company as mobile access engineering manager. Stphane will work from a technical perspective with Luke Vinogradov to develop and implement new Wi-Fi related products and services. Stphane has a MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Universit Joseph Fourier, Grenoble and has worked for the past 5 years on wireless networking technologies and mobility projects for both Hewlett Packard and SUN Microsystems.

Quiconnect recently moved into new offices in central London to cater for its commercial expansion, having also recently hired additional sales, operations and support personnel.

Andrew Schultz, Quiconnects head of marketing and strategy, says, Our approach to making public Wi-Fi access easy for consumers has attracted huge interest from the global telco community as simplified usage means greater revenue possibilities for Service Providers and Network Operators. BT, Sprint, Orange and a host of commercial hotspot operators are now all working with us which is a testament to our approach and value. These new appointments mean that we have the technical and commercial personnel bandwidth to capitalise on our innovation, can service and delight customers, and meet our growth aspirations.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
TomorrowNow Expands Worldwide Headquarters to Accommodate Rapid Company Growth. Check it out:
BRYAN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- TomorrowNow, Inc., the most experienced provider of third-party Siebel, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft maintenance and support, today announced the expansion of its worldwide headquarters in response to the rapid growth over the past two years. TomorrowNow's expert support team has already provided its 200 clients with more than 500 TomorrowNow tax and regulatory updates and thousands of TomorrowNow fixes.



A ribbon cutting ceremony took place last week at the company's new corporate headquarters in the "Research Valley" cities of Bryan and College Station where more than $1 billion in research is performed annually. In choosing to expand in the Research Valley, TomorrowNow remained true to the company's roots and commitment to economic development goals of the Research Valley Partnership, which helped the company when it started.

"This expansion was driven by increased business for TomorrowNow's support services for Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft," said Andrew Nelson, president and CEO of TomorrowNow. "We are so proud of our team and the accomplishments of everyone involved in taking TomorrowNow from an idea in 1998 to the present. If you'd have told me eight years ago when I started this company with a single server on my kitchen table, that one day I would be walking into this beautifully designed worldwide headquarters, that we would have offices in 10 cities worldwide, and that we would have clients in 37 countries, I don't think I would have believed you. It has been a rewarding journey, and I'm often humbled by the loyalty of our clients, and the dedication of our employees."

Research Valley Partnership, Inc. (RVP) a public and private economic development organization funded by Brazos County, the cities of Bryan and College Station, Texas, and the private sector was integral to TomorrowNow's success by providing some of the initial funds that helped Nelson expand the company in 2002.

Founded in 1990, The Research Valley Partnership (RVP) promotes the seven county area surrounding Brazos County and the cities of College Station and Bryan as a business location of choice to national and international firms. The RVP focuses its efforts on creating jobs and new investment in a variety of industries including technology, life sciences and manufacturing in addition to pursuing initiatives that help to identify and address economic development needs and collaborative efforts to enhance the retention and expansion of existing businesses.

"We are very enthusiastic about TomorrowNow's success over the years. They have become a vital part of the community, supporting Texas A&M University, recruiting local talent and helping to establish and expand the technology community in central Texas," said Todd E. McDaniel RVP President and CEO. Research Valley co-sponsored the ribbon-cutting event for the new headquarters and continues to work collaboratively with TomorrowNow toward further economic development of the region.

TomorrowNow support services are available worldwide for Siebel, J.D. Edwards World, J.D. Edwards OneWorld, and PeopleSoft licensees who want to extend the life of their current enterprise applications and replace the vendor's maintenance and support at a 50 percent cost savings. TomorrowNow Support Services provides enterprise software customers with the time they need to thoroughly assess all their long-term enterprise software strategy options. TomorrowNow clients are each assigned a primary support engineer with nine years of experience, on average. TomorrowNow provides engineer-level support within 30 minutes of the request 24 hours a day, seven days a week in 9 languages and in 37 countries.

About TomorrowNow, Inc.

TomorrowNow, Inc. is the most experienced third-party provider of Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft software maintenance and support. TomorrowNow Support Services offer up to 10-year support periods with new fixes, 24x7 product support with a 30-minute response time, quality tax and regulatory updates, highly responsive support engineers, and significant financial savings. Fortune 500, mid-market, and public sector organizations from nearly every industry sector have selected TomorrowNow as their maintenance and support vendor of choice. Please visit our website at www.tomorrownow.com to learn more about TomorrowNow Support Services, our clients, and see what's being written about TomorrowNow; or contact us at +1 925 931 1350.

TomorrowNow and the TomorrowNow logo are trademarks of TomorrowNow, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright (C) 2006 TomorrowNow, Inc. All rights reserved.
Broadview Networks Scheduled to Speak at Deutsche Bank Fourteenth Annual High Yield Conference. Check it out:
RYE BROOK, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- On Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 8:35 AM, CEO Michael K. Robinson of Broadview Networks will speak at the Deutsche Bank Fourteenth Annual High Yield Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Broadview is a facilities-based communications provider that serves the voice, data, hardware and managed services needs of small and medium-sized businesses throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.



Broadview's operational and financial results, as well as an overview of the company's pending acquisition of ATX Communications will be presented. "It has been a dynamic year for consolidation and access to capital in our sector," said Michael K. Robinson, CEO of Broadview Networks. "Broadview has reached many milestones this year and we look forward to entering 2007 as a leading player in our target markets."

About Broadview Networks (broadviewnet.com)

Broadview Networks is a network-based electronically integrated communications provider (e-ICP) serving small and medium-sized businesses in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, United States. The Company offers integrated communications solutions, including local and long-distance voice services; data services that encompass VPN and MPLS-enabled offerings; hosted and premises-based VoIP systems; traditional telephone systems; and high-speed Internet services using DSL, T1 and T3 technologies. Customers receive a single, easy-to-understand bill and have a primary point of contact for real-time, personal customer care. Broadview is a control investment of MCG Capital Corporation (www.mcgcapital.com) (NASDAQ:MCGC). Broadview's largest investors are MCG Capital, Baker Capital (www.bakercapital.com) and New Enterprise Associates (www.NEA.com).

Forward-looking Statement: This press release contains forward-looking statements (i.e., statements that are not historical) describing future plans and objectives. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and difficult to predict and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions could prove to be inaccurate, and as a result, the forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also could be incorrect. In light of these and other uncertainties, the inclusion of a projection or forward-looking statement in this press release should not be regarded as a representation by us that our plans and objectives will be achieved. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update such statements to reflect subsequent events.
Philips Supports China's Energy Saving Light Bulb Enterprise. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 28, SinoCast -- Philips, the number one in global lighting market, is on the side of China while EU is conducting anti-dumping investigation to China??s energy saving light bulbs enterprises.



As early as 2000, Philips had united the other two energy saving light bulb giants in Europe, to accuse Chinese enterprises of coming into European market by means of unusually low prices. As a result, Chinese energy saving light bulb enterprises was imposed 59.1% to 66.1% anti-dumping taxes from July 2001 to July 2006.

This time, Philips has taken sides with China. According to Pieter de Haan, general manager of East Asia Region of Philips, China is the largest maker as well as a large consuming market of energy saving light bulbs in the world. The products of Chinese enterprises are not in direct competition with those high-end products manufactured by European countries. That is why Philips thinks it??s of no necessity to conduct anti-dumping investigation to China.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US software firm Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) is planning a Latin American tour to launch its new open source platform Suse Linux Enterprise 10 during October and November, the company said in a statement.



The tour includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and will be sponsored by other IT multinationals such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).

***

The Chilean government, through the education ministry Mineduc, non-profit technology transfer foundation Fundacin Chile and the website EducarChile, has signed an agreement with US internet search company Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to offer educational applications, the government said in a statement.

Under the terms of the agreement, signed during the 2006 IT tour organized by Chile's universal access foundation Fundacin Pas Digital, Google will offer educational internet tools to EducarChile through Google Earth.

***

Venezuela's science and technology ministry has launched a national center for research and development in open source technologies (Cenditel) located in the state of Mrida, local newspaper El Nacional reported.

The center aims to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) with open standards helping in the research and development of innovative solutions.

***

US networking solutions provider Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) has launched a contest for SMEs in Argentina and Chile offering as a prize the renovation of their IT platform, including IP telephony, security, wireless networks, switching and routing, Cisco said in a statement.

The prize also includes support and guarantees for a year.

The contest is open to private companies that have been operating for at least three years with 30-250 employees and at least 20 PCs in their network.

***

US software company Altiris (Nasdaq: ATRS) is about to sign an agreement with the Brazilian unit of US IT giant Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) to include its asset administration solutions in HP's PCs, regional news service TelcosIT reported.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Patton & Pingtel Birth Pioneering IP-PBX Appliance. Check it out:
GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, September 27 --

- Patton Ships the SIPxNano(TM), an Ultra-Miniature, Feature-Rich
Enterprise Communications Appliance for Small and Medium Businesses Built on
Pingtel's ECS Software

Patton -- the leader in network-access, connectivity, and VoIP solutions
-- announces availability of the SIPxNano, a new kind of IP-PBX appliance
developed in cooperation with Pingtel, the leading provider of SIP-based
Enterprise Communications Systems (ECS).

On March 10, 2006, Patton and Pingtel announced a strategic relationship
to deliver a next-generation IP-PBX appliance to the under-30-extensions
business market.

The SIPxNano(TM) is the result. It combines Patton's NanoServ(TM)
ultra-compact server technology with a tailored version of Pingtel's
SIPxchange ECS software.

"Most small-office IP-PBX products skimp on features," said Scott
Whittle, Patton's V.P. of Product Management. "Really useful next-generation
features usually only get built onto large PBX systems, but that's not our
style. We are giving small offices Fortune-500-functionality at a very
affordable price."

"The Cisco SPA9000 does not even support basic voice mail, and the
Linksys products require you only use their VoIP phones," said Joe Gomez,
Patton's Product Manager. "We think the small enterprise market is smarter
than that."

Designed for offices with fewer than 30 phone extensions, SIPxNano offers
advanced call-control features and includes integrated voice mail and email,
auto attendants, interactive voice response, and web-based configuration and
management. Such advanced PBX attributes help small businesses make a good
impression and they are essential for integrating small branch offices
deploying SIP-based communications into large enterprise-wide VPNs.

"Everyone wins from this endeavor," said Jerry Stable, Pingtel's Senior
Vice President of Sales and Operations. "Small business customers are the big
winners, but I can tell you both Patton and Pingtel channels are very excited
that we are addressing this market. The SIPxchange ECS plug & play solution
is the easiest to install, administer and use VoIP PBX system on the market,
which makes it particularly attractive to small businesses who do not have
the time to tinker with complex systems.

Based on 100% standard SIP, the SIPxNano is fully compatible with all
industry standard IP devices including Polycom phones and Patton's line of
VoIP phones, gateways and routers.

Priced under US$1,000, the SIPxNano is a compelling alternative for small
and medium businesses requiring advanced PBX features.

About Patton

Patton manufactures SmartNode(TM) VoIP solutions that support SIP, H.323,
and MGCP for analog and ISDN telephony. For more information, contact
[email protected].

Web site: http://www.patton.com

Patton Electronics

Chris Christner of Patton Electronics, +1-301-975-1000
TABLETmedia ANNOUNCES NEW ENTERPRISE P2P WALKIE-TALKIE FOR MOBILE DEVICES. Check it out:
San Francisco, California. TABLETmedia, Inc. announces today the ingtroduction of iTalkie, a new solution to greatly ease the integration of paging and voice calling into enterprises.

In 2001 we introduced the worlds first voice and video soft phone for PDAs. Today we are pleased to provide yet another significant contribution into mobile communications says Alessandro Gatti, President and CEO of TABLETmedia, Inc. Push-to-Talk (PTT) is one of the most requested features in many vertical markets which require the integration of traditional walkie-talkie functionality into powerful mobile data devices. iTalkie is ideal for organizations with one or more small to medium size sites where the primary voice requirement is one-to-many paging and one-to-one direct local calling. The peer-to-peer (P2P) nature of iTalkie eliminates any setup, thus minimizing deployment and maintenance costs..



iTalkie is a software application for WiFi-enabled PDAs and PDA/phones based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. Once installed, it requires no servers and it is immediately operational: users can just press a button to send a page. Through TABLETmedias P2P self-detecting and configuring technology, they can also see the presence of other users and call them directly. iTalkie supports up to 999 channels, including an emergency channel that is heard by all users irrespective of what channel they have selected and whether they are sending a page. Based on the feedback from several field customer trials, it incorporates many features to make it easy to use and transparently integrate into the devices with other applications. In addition, it has some of the unique capabilities of TABLETmedias other voice/video phone clients for improving the battery life of the device as well as managing and compensating the limitations of wireless networks.

iTalkie was created with businesses in mind that require simple to use, yet advanced, communications tools to enhance and transparently integrate into their day-to-day operations. It is the first solution of its kind that enables PDAs with reliable and expandable paging, full duplex voice and presence capabilities says Gatti, This announcement allows TABLETmedia to maintain its leadership position and track record as an innovator of the way people communicate in real-time with their mobile devices..

TABLETmedia is also introducing an optional server application to bridge the local area network with traditional public address (PA) systems. User can send pages from their mobile device through this PA gateway directly to the sites overhead paging system connected to the sound output of the server. Future products will also provide businesses better integration of the iTalkie solution into their existing workflow.


###


About TABLETmedia, Inc.
TABLETmedia, Inc. is the leader of next-generation IP-based communication solutions for mobile platforms distributed to service providers, manufacturers and integrators. Using advanced integration, communication and compression technologies, TABLETmedia was the first company in the world to turn PDAs into ITU-T H.323 and IETF SIP standards-based wireless telephones and videoconferencing devices operating on any type of wireless packet data networks. On dual-mode devices iFon users benefit from a single interface to place voice calls or send text messages, while the software automatically chooses the most appropriate wireless network. TABLETmedia iTalkie enables businesses to transparently add zero-setup paging and direct voice into their workflow, by replacing traditional walkie-talkie functionality while adding more capabilities. TABLETmedias products enable service providers and enterprises to deploy previously unfeasible converged mobile voice, video and messaging services. Wireless VoIP (or VoWLAN) greatly improves employee productivity and efficiency, while reducing costs by simply extending the existing corporate telephony infrastructure to mobile devices such as PDA-based phones. More information on TABLETmedia is available at http://www.tabletmedia.com.



TABLETmedia, iTalkie and iFon and associated design marks and logos are trademarks of TABLETmedia, Inc..
All other trademarks, registered trademarks and logos belong to their respective owners.
©2006 TABLETmedia, Inc. All rights reserved.



Contacts:
TABLETmedia, Inc.
Alessandro Gatti
(415) 567-8100
[email protected]
Esker Picks Paperless Productivity, Inc. as Certified Partner. Check it out:
MADISON, Wis. --(Business Wire)-- Esker, the leader in business document delivery solutions, today named as an Esker Certified Partner Paperless Productivity, Inc., a premier business workflow solutions provider specializing in helping organizations increase productivity by eliminating the manual paper handling of mission-critical business documents. By working together, the partnership allows Esker to expand its distribution channel to customers in the northwestern United States who seek more effective document management for their enterprise applications. Esker DeliveryWare enhances the Paperless Productivity portfolio of technology-based business process automation solutions by adding new layers of document automation capabilities that include inbound document delivery and dynamic data capturing.



Esker DeliveryWare is a single platform that streamlines the flow of transactional documents to, from, and within enterprise applications, including SAP(R), Oracle(R), and Salesforce.com(R), as well as a host of legacy applications. By keeping documents electronic instead of printing, scanning and faxing physical documents, organizations save time, reduce overhead costs and improve accuracy in their communications with customers. Esker DeliveryWare also furnishes archiving capabilities which allow documents to be saved and easily retrieved at a later date. The DeliveryWare Rules Engine allows users to develop and customize data capture rules for specific types of documents, regardless of format, such as sales orders and invoices.

As an Esker Certified Partner, Paperless Productivity will offer Esker DeliveryWare to its entire customer base, which consists primarily of medium and large-sized companies located in the northwestern United States. Paperless Productivity consultants are very involved in their customers' paperless initiatives. Paperless Productivity's consultative approach begins with an analysis of the client's current document processes and manual workflow, followed by recommendations for business process automation, solution deployment services, training, maintenance and support of the implementation and future upgrades. Paperless Productivity clients are spread across a wide range of vertical markets, including a strong foothold within the healthcare, financial and manufacturing communities.

"As a solution provider, the key to our success is anticipating the next step for the market. And while we already offer a wide range of document automation capabilities, we knew that our customers would be asking for more," said Shamel Naguib, President of Paperless Productivity, Inc. "Partnering with Esker has enabled us to take that final step in closing the paper document life cycle by offering our customers the ability to fully automate and digitize both inbound and outbound documents. We've also been able to leverage Esker's expertise in enabling SAP and other ERP and host systems in a paperless environment. It's been a very exciting time for our consultants and our customers."

"Esker and Paperless Productivity share the same goal of achieving the paperless environment for its clients. By joining forces, not only will Esker be able to reach new markets, but we can also learn from Paperless Productivity's experienced consultants who have already achieved great success working with companies to improve document management," said Jon Schmidt, Director of Channel Sales, Americas, at Esker. "More and more companies are realizing the opportunities of automated document delivery, so partnering with those who educate their clients to the benefits will only strengthen our mission to increase that awareness as well."

About Paperless Productivity, Inc.

Paperless Productivity specializes in minimizing and eliminating the manual paper handling and processing of mission-critical business documents. Paperless Productivity's solutions enable companies and organizations to communicate securely with all customers, investors, and trading partners in their preferred format, be that via internet, email, wireless, or fax. Whether the customer, investor, or trading partner has a fax number, an email address, a mobile device, or web access, Paperless Productivity's clients can proactively maintain real-time, secure paperless communication channels. Since most mission-critical documents are often paper (contracts, purchase orders, medical authorizations), increasing the productivity of document handling has a bottom-line effect on profitability, cost reduction, and provides a rapid ROI. Paperless Productivity, Inc., is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and services clients in Oregon, Idaho, California, Montana, and Alaska. For more information please visit www.paperlessproductivity.com or send an email to [email protected].

About Esker

Esker is a recognized leader in helping organizations streamline manual, paper-intensive processes and reduce the use of paper by automating the flow of documents into, within and outside the organization. With patented document delivery automation software (Esker DeliveryWare) and hosted document delivery services (FlyDoc(SM)), Esker offers a total solution to automate every phase and every type of business information exchange. Customers gain significant and immediate operational efficiencies, cost savings and measurable ROI in as little as three to six months. Founded in 1985, Esker operates globally and has over 80,000 customers and millions of licensed users worldwide. Esker has global headquarters in Lyon, France and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit www.esker.com or www.flydoc.com.

(C) 2006 Esker S.A. All rights reserved. Esker, the Esker logo, and FlyDoc are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of Esker S.A. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Emerson Power Transmission Standardizes on InfinityQS Software. Check it out:
CHANTILLY, Va. --(Business Wire)-- InfinityQS(R) International, the leading provider of statistical process control (SPC) software, today announced that Emerson Power Transmission (EPT), a major producer of mechanical power transmission drives, components and bearings, has selected and deployed InfinityQS SPC software. EPT Bearings decided to standardize on InfinityQS' SPC solutions after achieving successful and measurable results and ROI at its plants in Aurora, IL and Valparaiso, IN. The company purchased additional licenses at these plants, as well as nearly two dozen licenses for its plant in Guadalajara, Mexico.



EPT products are frequently designed for specific applications and are used across a wide range of industries, including aerospace, automotive, construction, healthcare, food and beverage processing, HVAC and air handling, exploration and drilling, solar power and textiles among others. The company has gained a strong foothold in its industry and is experiencing steady growth with its well known branded products such as Browning, Kop-Flex, SealMaster, McGill and Rollway.

"Not only do InfinityQS SPC products provide the flexibility and power we need, but we also aren't required to purchase any additional proprietary hardware or cables, saving dollars from the onset," said Matt Mersman, manager of strategic programs and quality bearings at EPT. "We have a tradition and promise to uphold to our customers, so we evaluate our quality products very closely. InfinityQS' software and support services made the installation and setup easy, allowing us to increase work production while saving money and time."

"Manufacturers remain the largest contributors to the U.S. economy, but each year the industry is predisposed to losing upwards of $8 billion in product recalls," said Michael A. Lyle, president and CEO at InfinityQS. "Manufacturers such as EPT are leveraging SPC products to increase their monitoring and control to improve and preserve quality production from start to finish. We believe it to be a great validation that EPT has fully engaged with InfinityQS and is standardizing on our SPC software to assure its quality production and to remain globally competitive."

About Emerson Power Transmission

Emerson Power Transmission (EPT), a division within Emerson Industrial Automation, is a major producer of mechanical power transmission drives, components and bearings. EPT serves a wide array of machinery-intense industries, including forestry and wood products, mining and quarrying, power generation, and heating and ventilation. With headquarters in Ithaca, N.Y., EPT consists of the Browning(R), Sealmaster(R), Rollway(R), Morse(R), US Gearmotors(R), McGill(R) and Kop-Flex(R) product brands. It has 14 manufacturing and distribution facilities. For more information, please visit www.emerson-ept.com.

About InfinityQS International

InfinityQS is the leading provider of SPC software and services to a broad array of companies, from multi-national giants to smaller, more specialized manufacturers. InfinityQS solutions allow manufacturers to monitor, control and improve the quality of their manufacturing operations across a site, an enterprise or an entire supply chain, continuing to provide significant returns on their initial investment. The company's goal is to improve clients' internal quality standards and ensure their continued success in the global marketplace. For more information on InfinityQS, visit the company's website at www.infinityqs.com.
Basis Technology Acquires Translingual Technologies. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Basis Technology, the leading provider of enterprise software solutions for multilingual text retrieval and analysis, today announced it has acquired the intellectual property assets of Translingual Technologies LLC. As part of this transaction, Dr. Scott Miller has joined the firm as Chief Scientist.



Translingual Technologies is a two-year-old Massachusetts startup which has developed highly innovative algorithms for making foreign-language content accessible to monolingual English speakers. Its technology incorporates such ground-breaking techniques as statistical parsing; automatic grammar construction; and exploitation of large, unannotated corpora.

"During the past six months, I've met with several of the best firms in text analytics and extraction," Dr. Miller said. "After considering several offers, I decided to accept the one from Basis Technology, a company which has clearly distinguished itself by its track record of successful deployments, in both the commercial and government sectors."

Prior to founding Translingual Technologies, Dr. Miller spent more than ten years at BBN Technologies, most recently as Division Scientist, where he developed several statistical named-entity tagging algorithms. Miller's SIFT algorithm was the first trainable relation-extraction technique to achieve top performance in the U.S. Government's MUC-7 competition, demonstrating the feasibility of automatically projecting syntactic structures onto semantic relations.

"Scott Miller brings much more than his impeccable academic credentials to Basis Technology," stated Benson Margulies, CTO. "When I first saw a demonstration of Translingual Technologies' operational prototype, I was blown away. Our team can hardly wait to get the first production release into the hands of our customers."

Dr. Miller holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Northeastern University. He has worked extensively in machine learning and statistical language modeling for over fifteen years, managing numerous efforts and publishing more than 20 articles.

About Basis Technology

Basis Technology provides software solutions for multilingual text mining and information retrieval applications. The company's Rosette(R) Linguistics Platform is a suite of high-performance, robust, interoperable software components designed for applications that analyze and process all the world's languages.

Top-tier software vendors, content providers, multinational enterprises, and government agencies rely on Basis Technology's solutions for Unicode compliance, language identification, multilingual search, normalization, transliteration, and entity extraction. Customers include industry leaders America Online, Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, FAST, Google, Hewlett-Packard, L.L. Bean, Microsoft, Oracle, SAS, Symantec, and Yahoo. Government contractors include BBN Technologies, CACI, Lockheed Martin, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, and SAIC.

Company headquarters are located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with branch offices in San Francisco, California; Herndon, Virginia; and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, visit www.basistech.com or call 800-697-2062.
FAST X10 Partner Program Expands Reach of FAST's Enterprise Search Solutions across the Globe. Check it out:
OSLO, Norway & NEEDHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (OSEAX: FAST.OL) (FAST(TM)), the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions, today announced the world's leading technology innovators are joining the FAST X10 Partner Program in unprecedented numbers to develop and deliver solutions that enable the search-driven enterprise. FAST now has over 150 partners worldwide, ranging from global system integrators and large application infrastructure vendors to regional consultants with specific application or market expertise.



In support of its partners, FAST is hosting exclusive partner events that provide partners all the resources and tools they require to effectively distribute and deliver FAST solutions. The FAST Partner Summits offer partners insider access to FAST executives and training, and are planned for Rome, October 5-6 and San Francisco, October 17-18, 2006. Existing FAST partners can sign up at www.fastsearch.com/partners.

FAST X10 is the enterprise search industry's most comprehensive partner program and represents the company's commitment to enabling partners to distribute, deliver and build solutions using FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP(TM)) as a foundation. Search-enabled solutions span every corner of the IT spectrum and can be delivered as an embedded offering within storage, enterprise content management and CRM products or as a component of a new solution that delivers unique business value such as mobile content distribution, media asset management, data cleansing, fraud protection and more.

Partners that have recently joined the FAST X10 Partner Program include:

-- India - HCL, Satyam

-- Middle East - Integrated Knowledge Dynamics (IKD), System of Strategic Business Solutions (SSBS)

-- Russia - Nvision, Inline Technologies, IBS

-- Asia Pacific - Xcurenet, Fuji-Xerox, Knowledge Works, OmniWise, Penta Systems

-- Australia - Frame Group, KAZ, Logica CMS, Plaut IT Australia, Ernst & Young Australia

"Success with the indirect channel is vital to a software vendor's long-term success. Our ability to partner with forward thinking solution providers who see the inherent value of our enterprise search technology is helping us grow our channel organization as a strategic business differentiator," said John M. Lervik, chief executive officer of FAST. "We have seen tremendous demand for our enterprise search solutions as businesses across the globe realize the diverse ways that search technology can be used to help them increase profits, protect their brand, augment employee performance, and enhance business intelligence. With the FAST X10 Partner Program we're helping our partners deliver the highest levels of innovation to their customers while providing unparalleled value and support to our partners."

FAST is leveraging relationships between OEM and system integration partners to form a mutually collaborative approach to solution building that is based on best of breed hardware, software, and services offerings. This "channel triangulation" strategy enables system integrators and OEM partners to work together to develop value-added solutions and search derivative applications (SDAs) for their customers.

FAST places great value in the education of all of its partners worldwide. Part of FAST University, the FAST Partner Education Program produces high quality professionals capable of successfully supporting FAST solutions. In addition, the program's global presence ensures that the quality of FAST support is consistent everywhere. The result is a substantial resource base of expertise in all parts of the world: professionals who are fully knowledgeable, trained and current with their skills to help customers get the most from FAST search technology.

About FAST

FAST is the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable enterprise search platform (FAST ESP) elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's solutions are used by more than 2,600 global customers and partners, including America Online (AOL), Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Computer Associates, Dell, EMC Documentum, Factiva, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Merrill Lynch, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Stellent, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.

FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America, and the Middle East and Africa. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.

(C) 2006 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, Contextual Insight and the FAST logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved.
OVO Announces ''Self-Service'' Idea Management Software. Check it out:
RALEIGH, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- OVO, a software firm providing consulting, software applications and processes to reduce innovation cycle time in the "Front End" of innovation, announced today that its Spark brainstorming application and Incubator idea management application are now available to customers over the web through a "self-service" application.



"Our prospects and customers have requested an approach which makes it easy to get started quickly", said Dean Hering, Chief Innovator for OVO. "Our innovation applications reduce the cycle time from idea to product or service. With the new "self-service" offering, any firm can start using our software in just a few minutes with no long-term commitment."

Any team can tap into OVO's innovation applications that are scalable for use with any brainstorming or idea management project. These new applications are completely secure and offer a low risk way to evaluate and use innovation applications.

OVO software applications including Spark and Incubator are available as licensed applications as well as hosted solutions, making it simple for a hosted to client to migrate to a licensed version.

"Combining our "self-service" offering with an exceptional price point and a month by month commitment means that any firm can use idea management solutions," said Jeffrey Phillips, Vice President of Marketing for OVO.

Interested customers can sign up for a free 30-day trial or can purchase the software directly on the OVO website. OVO also announced introductory pricing for the hosted software. Spark is priced at $20 per concurrent user per month, and Incubator at $40 per concurrent user per month. Both applications are available on a month-by-month basis.

To purchase Spark or Incubator or to learn more about OVO, see our website at www.ovoinnovation.com/software/purchaseProcess.php.

About OVO

OVO, the innovation business unit of NetCentrics, offers software, consulting services and processes to improve idea management and innovation throughout any enterprise. These solutions reduce the cycle time from idea to new product or service, reduce the risk associated with innovation and maximize return on investment. OVO also introduced the Innovate on Purpose(TM) concept and the Concept to Cash(TM) innovation process. For more information, see www.ovoinnovation.com or call 919-844-5644 x789.

EFI to Acquire Jetrion LLC

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EFI to Acquire Jetrion LLC. Check it out:
FOSTER CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- EFI (Nasdaq:EFII), the world leader in digital controllers, superwide format inkjet printers and inks, and print management solutions, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire privately held Jetrion LLC, a subsidiary of Flint Group Incorporated, for approximately $40 million in cash. Jetrion is a leading innovator of inkjet printers, inks and custom printing systems for the label and packaging industries. EFI expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2006, subject to certain closing conditions.



"Jetrion's advanced technology and very talented team are great additions to our inkjet business and are a key element in fulfilling our strategy to expand our presence in the industrial inkjet market," said Guy Gecht, EFI CEO. "We are especially impressed with Jetrion's packaging and label printing expertise, and we see this as an emerging market opportunity for digital printing given the increasing demand for short-runs, variable content and fast turn-around in these segments. In addition, the Jetrion and VUTEk development capabilities complement each other quite nicely. Combining EFI's leadership in precision color and intelligent, high speed Raster Image Processing (RIP) technology with the market-leading innovation of the VUTEk and Jetrion product lines will give us multiple opportunities to share expertise, benefiting all of our products."

"We are excited to join the EFI team and be able to leverage their global reputation, vast industry relationships and financial strength to gain greater market reach and provide our valued customers with an even higher quality of service," said Dr. Kenneth Stack, president of Jetrion. "Our customers and employees will also benefit from EFI's culture of innovation and technical depth, allowing us to remain competitive and forward-thinking."

The acquisition is expected to add between $3 million and $5 million in revenues to EFI's fourth quarter results with an immaterial impact on pro forma earnings. For the full year 2006, Jetrion is expected to post revenues of approximately $16 million to $18 million. The Jetrion products are currently anticipated to show top line growth of 30-40 percent in 2007 and again have an immaterial impact to pro forma earnings as EFI makes investments to expand the Jetrion product line and distribution.

Jetrion is headquartered in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with approximately 50 employees. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Flint Group, Jetrion specializes in digital printing, providing a complete spectrum of industrial inkjet systems, custom high-performance integration solutions and specialty inks to the converting, packaging and direct mail industries. They are a pioneer in hybrid digital printing systems for several high-growth digital print segments, such as labels and packaging, which require variable printing capabilities, and recently announced plans for a full color UV inkjet label press.

About EFI

EFI (www.efi.com) is the world leader in digital controllers, superwide format printers and inks, and commercial and enterprise print management solutions. EFI's award-winning solutions, integrated from creation to print, deliver increased performance, cost savings and productivity. The company's robust product portfolio includes Fiery(R) color print servers; superwide digital inkjet printers, UV and solvent inks; print production workflow and management information software; and corporate printing solutions. EFI maintains 22 offices worldwide.

All trademarks noted herein are the property of EFI or Jetrion.

Safe Harbor for Forward Looking Statements

The statements, "EFI expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2006" and "are a key element in fulfilling our strategy to expand our presence in the industrial inkjet market" and "we see this as an emerging market opportunity for digital printing given the increasing demand for short-runs, variable content and fast turn-around in these segments" and "Combining EFI's leadership in precision color and intelligent, high speed Raster Image Processing (RIP) technology with the market-leading innovation of the VUTEk and Jetrion product lines will give us multiple opportunities to share expertise, benefiting all of our products" and "We are excited to join the EFI team and be able to leverage their global reputation, vast industry relationships and financial strength to gain greater market reach and provide our valued customers with an even higher quality of service" and "Our customers and employees will also benefit from EFI's culture of innovation and technical depth, allowing us to remain competitive and forward-thinking" and "The acquisition is expected to add between $3 million and $5 million in revenues to EFI's fourth quarter results with an immaterial impact on pro forma earnings " and "For the full year 2006, Jetrion is expected to post revenues of approximately $16 million to $18 million" and The Jetrion products are currently anticipated to show top line growth of 30%-40% in 2007 and again have an immaterial impact to pro forma earnings as EFI makes investments to expand the Jetrion product line and distribution" are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future results to differ materially, including, but not necessarily limited to, the following: (1) Management's ability to forecast revenues and control expenses, especially on a quarterly basis, continues to be a challenge. Unexpected declines in revenue without a corresponding and timely decline in expenses could have a material adverse effect on results of operations; (2) current world-wide financial/economic difficulties continue including variations in foreign exchange rates; (3) variations in growth rates or declines in the printing and imaging market across various geographic regions may cause a material impact in our results; (4) changes in historic customer order patterns, including changes in customer and channel inventory levels may cause a material impact in our results; (5) changes in the mix of products sold leads to variations in results; (6) market acceptance of new products and contribution to EFI's revenue cannot be assured; (7) delays in product delivery can cause quarterly revenues and income to fall significantly short of anticipated levels; (8) competition and/or market factors in the various markets may pressure EFI to reduce prices on certain products; (9) competition with products internally developed by EFI's customers may result in declines in EFI sales and revenues; (10) excess or obsolete inventory and variations in inventory valuation may cause a material impact in our results; (11) continued success in technological advances, including development and implementation of new processes and strategic products for specific market segments may not be assured; (12) timely and qualitative execution in the manufacturing of products may not be assured; (13) litigation involving intellectual property or other matters may cause a material impact in our results; (14) our ability to adequately service our debt; (15) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses with our own without operational disruption to their business or ours, loss of sales, unexpected costs or adverse impact on relations with customers or suppliers; (16) our financial results as filed on Form 10-Q and Form 10-K may differ from the results included in our earnings press releases due to the complexity in accounting rules and (17) other risk factors listed from time to time in the Company's SEC reports. EFI undertakes no obligation to update information contained in this release. For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with EFI's business, please refer to the section entitled "Factors That Could Adversely Affect Performance" of EFI's SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting EFI's Investor Relations Department by phone at 650-357-3828 or by email at [email protected] or EFI's Investor Relations website at http://www.efi.com.
SciQuest Adds Amazon.com to Supplier Network, Offering SciQuest Customers More Products Than Ever Before. Check it out:
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- SciQuest, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand supplier management and procurement automation solutions for world-wide purchasing organizations, announced today that it has added Amazon.com to the SciQuest Supplier Network (SQSN) so that customers can now purchase products from Amazon.com through SciQuest. The SQSN is an aggregation of supplier catalog content specific to each organization using SciQuest solutions. The SQSN provides a streamlined, easy-to-use procurement experience with comprehensive content.



With the addition of Amazon.com to the SQSN, SciQuest customers can now choose from Amazon.com's extensive product selection, including millions of unique low-priced new, refurbished, and used items in a multitude of categories. Other SQSN suppliers include Apple, Barnes & Noble, CDW/CDW-G, and Dell, among many others in the computer, office supply, MRO, scientific and services commodity verticals.

According to a recent Aberdeen e-Procurement Benchmarking Survey, "Enterprises grossly underestimate the level of effort required to enable and manage supplier content and transactions." SciQuest understands that enabling supplier catalog content is a critical factor in maximizing user adoption, purchasing efficiency, spend management, and spend visibility within e-procurement systems. Yet, organizations are often challenged to enable the variety and quality of suppliers that end-users want in a way that also improves compliance. With the addition of Amazon.com, organizations now have easy access to timely and accurate product information for millions of retail products.

By accessing the SQSN, organizations can access suppliers through hosted catalog content and prices or punch-out catalogs and electronic order/invoice transmission. The combination of SciQuest's managed Supplier Enablement services and the SQSN allow organizations to reallocate internal resources for more strategic procurement initiatives.

"For almost a decade, SciQuest has addressed the supplier enablement challenges of many organizations of all sizes and needs through our proven client-centered approach," said Steve Wiehe, president and CEO of SciQuest. "With the addition of Amazon.com to our growing list of select network providers, we continue to deliver on that initiative by offering companies a critical mass of suppliers in key commodity groups."

Amazon.com joins a comprehensive network of suppliers who participate in the SQSN. For a complete list of suppliers in the SQSN, please contact your SciQuest representative.

About SciQuest

SciQuest provides on-demand supplier enablement and procurement automation solutions that reduce operating costs, drive end-user adoption, bring more spend under management and increase visibility into organization-wide spending. Through SciQuest solutions, organizations gain immediate cost savings and rapid ROI.

Organizations can quickly enable a critical mass of suppliers through the SciQuest Supplier Network (SQSN) and leverage SciQuest Managed Services to fully manage catalog data and order delivery on an ongoing basis, significantly reducing the need for in-house IT and support resources. With an integrated supplier base, organizations can maximize on-contract spending and gain real-time visibility and reporting capabilities throughout the entire order process.

In addition to a source-to-settle suite of e-procurement applications, SciQuest also offers supplier and order management modules that seamlessly integrate with existing ERP and enterprise financial systems, driving greater return from existing investments.

For more information about SciQuest, please visit www.sciquest.com, or call 919.659.2100.

SciQuest and SelectSite are registered trademarks of SciQuest, Inc. HigherMarkets is a trademark of SciQuest, Inc.
Ardence Adds Champion Solutions Group to Partner Program. Check it out:
WALTHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Ardence Inc., the leader in developing software platforms for the on-demand world, today announced that technology infrastructure solutions provider Champion Solutions Group has agreed to market and sell Ardence's Software-Streaming Platform products and become a member of its Partner Program.



For more than 25 years, Champion has been providing customers with comprehensive solutions that increase productivity, reduce costs and improve application availability. Champion specializes in the design and deployment of IT Simplification, Data Management, Business Continuity, Managed Services and Managed Maintenance Services solutions. Headquartered in Boca Raton, FL, Champion has 25 additional offices in 14 states.

Uniquely, the Ardence Software-Streaming Platform delivers both operating systems and applications on-demand from network storage. By virtualizing the OS and applications, Ardence enables centralized IT management and increases both security and reliability in desktop and data center deployments. The Ardence Platform is deployed worldwide.

"The full virtualization capabilities that our Software-Streaming Platform delivers not only completely changes the way data centers are configured and managed, but also their entire cost structure. Server count can be reduced, utility costs are lowered substantially, IT can be more flexible and its management's burden is eased. New strategies for disaster recovery are possible. We're pleased that Champion, an experienced and trusted advisor to hundreds of data centers customers, quickly grasped Ardence's value and is adding it to their solutions offerings," said Richard J. Davis, Ardence Chairman, CEO and President.

"We are pleased to be included among top-tier resellers chosen to represent Ardence as a Premier Partner," said Mike Piltoff, Sr. VP of Strategic Marketing at Champion. "By partnering with industry-leading technology companies such as Ardence, Champion is able to harness the most innovative technology available to design and architect the best solutions for our customers."

About Ardence Inc. - www.Ardence.com

Ardence, Inc. is the global leader in developing secure, scalable, on-demand software platforms for deployment on desktops, in data centers and in devices throughout the enterprise. Founded in 1980, Ardence is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, and operates across North America, Europe, and Asia.

About Champion - www.championsg.com

Champion Solutions Group has brought innovation to the marketplace for more than 25 years by delivering world-class solutions to our clients that increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve overall system performance and availability. We have the skills, processes and technology to architect and integrate the most complex IT architectures.
The TPL Group Names Nicholas A. Antonopoulos Senior Vice President of Business Development. Check it out:
CUPERTINO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- The TPL Group today announced that Nicholas A. Antonopoulos has been named senior vice president of business development. Reporting to chairman Dan Leckrone, he will be responsible for identifying, evaluating and negotiating the purchase of Intellectual Property and related technology assets that can be commercialized by TPL and its enterprise companies.



With more than 20 years' experience working with high-technology companies, Antonopoulos was the vice president of sales and marketing for OnSpec Electronics when The TPL Group acquired and merged OnSpec into its IntellaSys enterprise. "During our negotiations to acquire OnSpec, Nick demonstrated solid business development skills that we now look forward to leveraging in our future growth trajectory," said Leckrone.

During his five-year tenure at OnSpec, Antonopoulos played a key role in transforming the Santa Clara, California company into a key supplier of advanced system-on-chip solutions for memory control and management. Under his watch, OnSpec expanded its OEM customer base into new markets including HDTV, DVD, Printers, and cell phones.

Antonopoulos' high tech career experience includes executive management positions with Mediamatics (National Semiconductor), Headland Technology (LSI Logic), Zilog and Faraday Electronics (Western Digital). He holds a BS in Marketing from San Jose State University.

About The TPL Group

Founded in 1988, the Silicon Valley based TPL Group has emerged as a coalition of high technology enterprises involved in intellectual property development and management as well as the fabless development of system-on-chip solutions for distributed digital media processing applications. For more information, visit www.tplgroup.net.
etalk(R) Receives TMC Labs 2006 Innovation Award for Customer Interaction Solutions(R) Magazine. Check it out:
DALLAS, Sept. 27 -- etalk Corporation, a division of Autonomy Corporation plc and leading provider of contact center recording and analytics solutions, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation's TMC Labs division named Qfiniti Explore as a 2006 Innovation Award winner from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.



Qfiniti Explore is a unique speech analysis technology that allows companies to automatically organize, categorize, and access their customer conversations, delivering relevant and accessible customer intelligence. Qfinti Explore's automated alerts, SmartViews, and cluster maps provide results of critical customer calls that can be reviewed and analyzed to immediately impact the business. By finding recorded calls based on the meaning of the conversation between an agent and the customer, Qfiniti Explore can further help organizations quickly uncover customer trends that can be used in sales and marketing or process improvement initiatives.

"We are honored that Qfiniti Explore has been recognized for its revolutionary speech analytics and searching capabilities," said Scott Shute, etalk CEO. "etalk firmly believes in developing smart, innovative contact center technology that helps our customers deliver outstanding service."

"Qfiniti Explore has clearly demonstrated to the staff of TMC Labs that etalk's product is truly innovative in the contact center industry. New companies, new products and new services for contact centers are being created all the time. With the rapid advances in technology, there's never been a greater need for this award," said Nadji Tehrani, founder and chairman of TMC, publisher of Customer Interaction Solutions.

"The TMC Labs Innovation Awards are based solely upon the uniqueness of the company's offering or how pioneering the particular product or service is. It is not based on company revenue or number of products sold. It is based on the concept that Qfiniti Explore is innovative," according to Tom Keating, CTO and TMC Labs Editorial Director.

Keating continued, "Qfiniti Explore deserves this great honor for creating a ground-breaking contact center product. I look forward to seeing other innovative solutions from etalk as they continue to contribute to the future of the contact center marketplace."

The TMC Labs 2006 Innovation Award highlights will be published in the September and October 2006 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.

About etalk
etalk, an Autonomy Company, is a leading provider of contact center software and services that helps global, multi-site companies understand their customers and deliver outstanding service. Through 27 offices worldwide, etalk provides a unified, scalable, and centrally managed enterprise platform for call recording, quality monitoring and speech analysis to some of the world's premier companies, including 35 of the Fortune 100. etalk offers the only technology to actually understand the communication a business has with its customers, automatically delivering relevant and accessible customer intelligence. For more information, go to http://www.etalk.com/.

About Autonomy
Autonomy Corporation plc is a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise and is spearheading the meaning- based computing movement. Autonomy's technology forms a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data including unstructured information, be it text, email, voice or video. Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications including information access technology, BI, CRM, KM, call center solutions, rich media management, compliance and litigation solutions and security applications, and is recognized by industry analysts as the clear leader in enterprise search.

Autonomy's customer base comprises more than 16,000 global companies and organizations including BAE Systems, Boeing, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Shell, AOL, BBC, Reuters, Hutchison 3G, Ericsson, T-Mobile, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestle, Lloyds TSB, GlaxoSmithKline, KPMG, Citigroup, ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank, Nomura, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. Autonomy has over 300 OEM partners and more than 350 VARs and Integrators, numbering among them leading companies such as BEA, Business Objects, Citrix, EDS, IBM Global Services, Novell, Vignette, Tibco, Stellent, Symantec and Sybase. The company has offices worldwide.

The Autonomy Group includes: Aungate, specialist in Real-Time Enterprise Governance; Virage, a visionary in Rich Media Management and Security and Surveillance technology; etalk, award-winning provider of enterprise-class contact center products, Cardiff, a leader in content capture and business process management solutions, and Ultraseek, a leading provider of business search engines.

All Rights Reserved. etalk, e-talk, Qfiniti, Observe, Advise, and Recorder are trademarks of etalk. Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About TMC(R)
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes four print publications: Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 1,400 sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves more than one million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, The VoIP Developer Conference, VoIP Demo, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference. TMCnet.com publishes more than 15 topical online newsletters. For more information about TMC, visit http://www.tmcnet.com/. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.)

etalk Contact:
Kathy Kuehne
etalk
+1 972 819 3221
[email protected]

TMC Contact:
Michael Genaro
(203) 852-6800 Ext 142
[email protected]

Autonomy Corporation UK

CONTACT: Kathy Kuehne of etalk, +1-972-819-3221, [email protected];or Michael Genaro of TMC, +1-203-852-6800 Ext 142, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.tmcnet.com/http://www.etalk.com/
Double-Take(R) Software Announces Double-Take 101 eLearning Program. Check it out:
SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Double-Take(R) Software today announced the availability of Double-Take 101, an interactive Web-based course that provides instruction on how to install, configure and use Double-Take to protect Microsoft(R) applications. The new program provides both partners and customers with an efficient way to become a Certified Double-Take Professional and train employees across multiple locations.



Double-Take 101 eLearning lets users remotely examine the Double-Take graphical user interface through task-based exercises, making them self-sufficient in configuring Double-Take to protect applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. The Web-based training can be completed at the user's desk or as a more comprehensive classroom training experience, allowing customers and partners to learn in their own space, on their own time.

"The Double-Take 101 eLearning course was very well-written and informative," said Thad Darcy, systems administrator at MassHousing. "By actively participating in the program exercises, I became much more knowledgeable about Double-Take and its capabilities. I look forward to incorporating the course into our IT program, as it will be a great asset when training our employees."

"The training was very easy to follow and the clean interface was filled with a fresh approach, making the entire experience enjoyable," added Shawn LoPresto, business support manager at Sunbelt Software. "I can see this online course being very beneficial when having to train new employees across different locations to ensure consistent procedures across the IT departments."

The complete Double-Take 101 course is divided into seven modular lessons which can be completed at the user's pace. Skill-building and informal quizzes added to the end of each module can optionally prepare users for the Certified Double-Take Professional exam.

"Our goal is to provide partners and customers with an extremely cost-effective way to become self-sufficient in configuring Double-Take and become a Certified Double-Take Professional," said Mike Lesh, vice president professional services, support and training at Double-Take Software. "By using this interactive, tutorial-based training tool we can provide organizations with a more flexible, faster way to understand Double-Take. Employees don't have to travel or be at one location to learn - it's the best way to train and certify staff across multiple locations."

The Double-Take 101 eLearning course is now available to all Double-Take users via www.doubletake.com/training. The registration fee is $395 per user.

About Double-Take(R) Software

Double-Take(R) Software provides the world's most relied upon solution for accessible and affordable data protection for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) applications. The Double-Take product is the standard in data replication, enabling customers to protect business-critical data that resides throughout their enterprise. With its partner programs and professional services, Double-Take delivers unparalleled data protection, centralized back-up, high availability, and recoverability. It's the solution of choice for thousands of customers, from SMEs to the Fortune 500 in the banking, finance, legal services, retail, manufacturing, government, education and healthcare markets. Double-Take is an integral part of their disaster recovery, business continuity and overall storage strategies. For more information, please visit www.doubletake.com.

The company recently expanded its global presence and technical support through the acquisition of its subsidiary, Sunbelt System Software.

(C) Double-Take Software. All rights reserved. Double-Take, GeoCluster, and NSI are registered trademarks of Double-Take Software, Inc. Balance, Double-Take for Virtual Systems, and Double-Take for Virtual Servers are trademarks of Double-Take Software, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.
Samsung and T-Mobile Unveil Premium Slim Flip Phone With BlackBerry Connect and QWERTY-like Keyboard. Check it out:
DALLAS, Sept. 27 -- Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung) and T-Mobile USA Inc. (T-Mobile) announce the availability of the Samsung SGH-t719, a premium slim flip phone with integrated BlackBerry(R) Connect(TM) software.

Available exclusively through T-Mobile, the Samsung t719 with BlackBerry Connect enables users to communicate with all the important people in their lives without skipping a beat. The flip phone design is married to a powerful, yet compact, QWERTY-like keyboard with speedy word predictive text and an enhanced organizer making it quick and simple to type messages, remain organized and stay connected.



As the first Samsung flip phone in the U.S. market to offer e-mail powered by BlackBerry Connect software, consumers will benefit from proven BlackBerry push-based wireless e-mail and attachment viewing in conjunction with both BlackBerry(R) Internet Service and BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server. Additional features supported by BlackBerry Enterprise Server include wireless calendar synchronization, remote address lookup, and advanced security with Triple DES encryption.

"Consumers will love the advanced feature set that keeps them connected, wrapped up in a great flip phone," said Mike Selman, director, Marketing, T-Mobile USA.

"Samsung is proud to have been selected by T-Mobile to create a handset that combines the style of a flip phone with the convenience of a speedy word keypad, as well as BlackBerry Connect technology, and calendar and contact sync options," said Peter Skarzynski, senior vice president, Samsung. "The t719's unique style, advanced features and proven Samsung quality make it ideal for small business owners and busy parents on-the-go."

The t719 also features a host of additional features, including cutting- edge voice-activated dialing, Bluetooth(R) technology, a swivel-lens 1.3 megapixel camera with video capture, video player (supports MP4 and 3GP), instant messaging capabilities* and advanced messaging capabilities*, such as SMS (Short Messaging Support), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Support) and EMS (Enhanced Messaging Support). And with the t719's quad-band technology, users can access their e-mail, contacts and calendar while traveling worldwide.

Key features of the t719 include:
-- Slim, flip design
-- BlackBerry Connect
-- Wireless E-mail Synchronization with up to 5 accounts
-- Wireless Calendar Synchronization
-- QWERTY-like keyboard with speedy word-predictive text
-- Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) voice-activated dialing
-- Bluetooth(R) technology
-- Built-in 1.3 megapixel, swivel-lens digital camera with multiple
resolutions
-- Video Player (supports MP4 and 3GP)
-- Address Book stores up to 1,000 entries, plus the phone's SIM card
stores an additional 250 entries
-- Java(TM) Support for application download
-- GPRS/EDGE high-speed connectivity
-- Quad-Band: GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
-- Messaging services: AOL(TM), ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!(TM) Instant Messenger*
-- HiFi Ringers*
-- Speakerphone
-- Dimensions: 3.78" x 2.05" x 0.72" (standard battery)
-- Weight: 3.5 ounces (standard battery)
-- Internal Display: 2.2" diagonal, 176 x 220 Pixel, 262K TFT Color
-- External Display: 96 x 96 Pixel, 4 Gray

The Samsung t719 is available exclusively at participating T-Mobile retail stores and online at http://www.t-mobile.com/ . For additional information, please visit http://www.samsungwireless.com/ or http://www.t-mobile.com/ .

* Separate additional charges may apply

About Samsung Telecommunications America

Samsung Telecommunications America, L.P., a Dallas-based subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., researches, develops and markets wireless handsets and telecommunications products throughout North America. For more information, please visit http://www.samsungwireless.com/ .

About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies, with 2005 parent company sales of US$56.7 billion and net income of US $7.5 billion. Employing approximately 128,000 people in over 90 offices in 51 countries, the company consists of five main business units: Digital Appliance Business, Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business and Telecommunication Network Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones, and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit http://www.samsung.com/ .

About T-Mobile USA Inc.
Based in Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile USA, Inc. is a member of the T-Mobile International group, the mobile telecommunications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. T-Mobile USA's GSM/GPRS voice and data networks in the United States (including roaming and other agreements) reach more than 275 million people. In addition, T-Mobile operates the largest carrier-grade, commercial wireless broadband network in the United States, providing Wi-Fi access at more than 7,800 public locations throughout the country, with further Wi-Fi access being made available at nearly 30,000 international roaming locations. For more information, visit the company Web site at http://www.t-mobile.com/ . T-Mobile(R) is a federally registered trademark of Deutsche Telekom AG.

Samsung Telecommunications America, L.P.; T-Mobile USA Inc.

CONTACT: Tracy Calabrese of MWW Group, +1-972-301-5406, [email protected] , for Samsung Telecommunications America, L.P.; or TomHarlin, Media Relations of T-Mobile USA Inc., +1-425-378-4002, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.samsungwireless.com/http://www.samsung.com/http://www.t-mobile.com/
2006 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Announced by PDMA. Check it out:
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- The Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) announces that Bank of America-Global Consumer and Small Business Bank (GCSBB) and Xerox Corporation, have been named Outstanding Corporate Innovators for 2006 on the basis of their success in developing and commercializing, differentiated new products and services in highly competitive markets.



Bruce Nussbaum, Assistant Managing Editor of Business Week will present the prestigious PDMA OCI award to both organizations at the PDMA 30th Annual International Conference www.pdma.org/2006, October 21-25 in Atlanta, Georgia.

"The award is presented with two objectives," said Stan Jankowski, Chair of PDMA's OCI Award Selection Committee, "to recognize organizations demonstrating an enterprise-wide commitment to innovation, proven success in continuous development of profitable new products as well as providing significant learning opportunities for the new product development community by sharing the award-winning practices at the PDMA International Conference."

Embracing, and linking to a corporate strategy of driving organic growth through the innovation of new consumer product offerings, Bank of America - GCSBB has adopted a strategy driven and integrated approach to New Product Development and has created disciplined processes and business management routines leading to successful execution. GCSBB uses many observational and other Voice of the Customer (VOC), market research techniques, not normally associated with the banking industry, to uncover unmet consumer product and service needs. They have translated those needs into innovative product and service offerings such as "Keep the Change" and "Business 24/7", which enhances the customers' experience and breaks the bounds of conventional banking products. Bank of America - GCSBB has enjoyed an enviable level of NPD success since embarking on a journey of cultural and strategic alignment in 2002.

In concert with corporate restructuring, Xerox's new product successes have been a major contributor to the company's recovery and return to profitability. A remarkable, 90% of Xerox's products currently in the marketplace were launched in the past four years. In 2005 alone, Xerox launched 49 products winning almost 300 awards. Xerox and the Xerox Innovation Group (XIG) ( www.xerox.com/innovation ) employ a very broad range of highly disciplined exploratory and planning processes while still maintaining a creative and risk taking environment and culture. Among the many elements of interest leading to Xerox's OCI selection were their "Gil Hatch Center" for customer interaction as well as a focus on the development of "deep customer knowledge" and the use of technology and platform incubation within the new product development community. Xerox's coupling of technology with deep market understanding to fuel NPD success is truly noteworthy.

The Product Development and Management Association is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. Its mission is to improve the effectiveness of individuals and organizations in product development and management. More information on the International Conference may be found by visiting www.pdma.org/2006.
BPS Launches Software Developers' Kit to Streamline Application Development for Compliance Management. Check it out:
TORONTO --(Business Wire)-- BPS (Business Propulsion Systems), a leading provider of enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, has announced the immediate availability of its BPS Server GRC SDK (Software Developers' Kit). The GRC SDK will allow financial services clients to integrate BPS' GRC process management software, BPS Server, with key enterprise applications, business processes and technologies.



The BPS Server GRC SDK provides documentation, samples, libraries and tools to develop applications that run on BPS Server. Two distinct APIs, a REST style interface for read/write access to the BPS product, and a Java-based API, give developers the ability to extend and integrate other applications with the compliance management system. Specifically, the kit lets developers:

-- Customize business logic and validation rules to match procedures and policies as they exist in the client's unique business environment

-- Integrate with "single sign-on" solutions, enable enterprise entitlements and provide access to centralized user directories - in order to simplify user and group security management

-- Allow referential access to internal databases, eliminating the need to maintain duplicate data

-- Provide reporting and data warehouse feeds allowing for custom report creation

BPS' latest offering is designed specifically for companies in the financial services industry, whose complex reporting and governance requirements demand flexible technologies that enable risk management across the organization, not just within discrete silos. IT managers and software developers in this sector face the strategic challenge of bringing disparate systems and applications together in a way that lets end-users access, analyze and report on data across the business.

"Our clients are under intense pressure to implement technologies and processes that add value, rather than increasing the complexity and costs associated with compliance," said BPS CTO Gavin Terrill. "The GRC SDK reinforces BPS's ability to accelerate an internal build, and supports the level of flexibility and sophistication that enterprise clients expect when integrating BPS Server with business-critical applications."

About BPS.

BPS (Business Propulsion Systems Inc.) is setting the standard in enterprise-level governance, risk and compliance solutions for global financial services institutions. The company's flagship product, BPS Server, is a flexible, scalable and comprehensive system for managing compliance, internal audit and operational risk across the organization. A privately held company with offices in Toronto and New York, BPS provides enterprise-strength solutions that deliver measurable value to clients across North America and around the world.

For more information, visit www.bpsgrc.com
Appian to Host Webinar Featuring Leading Research Analyst on ''Driving the BPM Initiative''. Check it out:
VIENNA, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Appian Corporation, the leading provider of Business Process Management Suites (BPMS), will host a live webinar titled "Driving the BPM Initiative" on October 4, beginning 2:00 p.m. EDT. Attendees will gain insight into how IT departments can strategically engage business users and C-level executives to ensure their BPM projects are destined for success. Among the key takeaways from this one-hour webinar will be practical guidance for how companies should select the right BPM project, the best BPM suite for their organization and how to engage executives to facilitate change within the organization.



The webinar will feature Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Jim Sinur, and Appian's Director of Professional Services, Steve Seese. Mr. Sinur has spent more than 10 plus years researching and advising companies at Gartner, Inc., with more than 37 years in the IT industry. Mr. Seese will share his experiences and discuss the lessons he has learned in the field over the past 25 years.

When:    Wednesday, October 4, 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT.
Where:   Please register by visiting:
      http://www.appian.com/Campaigns/web100406.html
Who:    Jim Sinur, Featured Vice President and Distinguished
      Analyst, Gartner, Inc.
      Steve Seese, Director of Professional Services, Appian
Contact:  For more information about the webinar, please contact
      Ashley Kazlauskas at [email protected]



"In customer-centric organizations, a core set of best practices are helping to close the loop between the business sponsors driving business process requirements and the IT departments often responsible for managing the overall BPM initiatives," said Steve Seese, Director of Professional Services for Appian Corporation. "We're looking forward to presenting with Jim Sinur, a recognized authority on this topic, to provide attendees with practical advice on how to ensure these initiatives are successful."

About Appian

Appian is the first Business Process Management (BPM) company to deliver advanced process, knowledge, and analytics functionality in a fully integrated suite. Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations are deploying Appian's award-winning software, Appian Enterprise, to drive continuous process improvements and build next-generation, composite process solutions. For more information, visit www.appian.com.
Trendium Introduces InfraSight: A Network Infrastructure Health and Traffic Performance Management Service. Check it out:
SUNRISE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Trendium, Inc., the leading global provider of service assurance and performance management software, today announced the availability of InfraSight, an enterprise traffic performance management and IT infrastructure health service, and the first offering from the Trendium Service Bureau. Service Bureau, a subscription-based "software as a service" line of business, is Trendium's immediate response to the overwhelming market demand for highly network performance management capabilities integrated with security management functions, available at a fraction of current cost-of-ownership and delivery time constraints.



In today's hyper-competitive global marketplace, IT operational budgets and resources - while expected to grow in the coming year - are stretched thin by maintenance (Gartner estimates more than 60% of IT budgets are consumed by labor and maintenance). This burden, coupled with an ongoing stream of new security threats and the complexities associated with proactive response resolution, has created a demand for blended functionality between traffic performance management and security resources. There is a clear need for change in the current Enterprise IT business model - evident in several vertical markets, such as financial services, healthcare and transportation - to which Trendium has responded with the introduction of its Service Bureau.

"The launch of Trendium's Service Bureau represents the natural forward progression of our business and a new means with which to deliver our proven service intelligence expertise," said Hanafy Meleis, CEO, Trendium. "Since our inception, Fortune 500 companies worldwide have looked to Trendium to optimize and assure service objectives, monitor the user experience, and meet expectations. Implementing this new subscription-based business model enables us to offer specific functionality inherent in our existing solutions, in addition to advanced security information monitoring resources, packaged as an extremely cost-effective service. Today's global enterprise, with its over-extended IT capital - is forced to deal with paradigm-shifting forces such as HIPAA, GLBA and SOX compliance, as well as proactive identification of potential system threats. Liberating valuable resources to allow for re-alignment of IT with business strengths is what makes Trendium's Service Bureau right on time."

A significant trend in IT is the migration of the software business from packaged products, to a new, subscription-based service model. Research firm IDC notes that the management model of support provides an option for organizations looking for many of the traditional outsourcing's benefits -- such as labor and maintenance savings - but without the loss of control over core network functions. Also of note, is that according to new research from the analyst firm, worldwide security software support services spending will climb from $1.43 billion in 2005 to $2.13 billion in 2010. Trendium's Service Bureau will address this climate, in which spending indicates a growing confidence in managed services' security, reliability and effectiveness, in addition to the promise of accelerated deployment and potential cost savings.

As part of Trendium's Service Bureau, InfraSight is a state-of-the-art infrastructure health/performance management service that offers a blend of proven, real-time data collection and trend performance analysis, in addition to security insights, event monitoring and network traffic predictive alerts - solutions critical to maintaining a healthy enterprise. Included in InfraSight's powerful functionality, are:

Network and IT Infrastructure Health

InfraSight consolidates and organizes across every network domain, so customers are able to monitor all interfaces, flow-based conversations and bandwidth utilization.

Application Capacity Planning

Bandwidth capacity modeling is calculated per interface, or class-based QoS queue to enable accurate planning for external and inter-site bandwidth. Comparable modeling is performed at the server level as well.

Traffic Forensics

InfraSight performs traffic deviation monitoring to detect suspicious anomalies that lead to the manifestation of serious network threats. Also, InfraSight is able to inspect the IT infrastructure to find network degradation threats in advance of user awareness; this service reports on port scans and port sweeps, and when necessary, triggers alerts that proactively defend the network from potential threats.

To cost-effectively serve key domestic markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and West Coast, Trendium has implemented a channel marketing and distribution strategy; a nationwide recruitment for individual partners who can serve as trusted reseller agents in the aforementioned areas is currently underway. Trendium will announce its Partner Channel Distribution strategy for Europe and the Middle East in the coming weeks.

For additional information on Trendium, Trendium Service Bureau or InfraSight, please contact Tom Leh, at [email protected] / +1-954-835-9500, or visit: www.trendium.com.

ABOUT TRENDIUM, INC.

Founded in 1999, Trendium, Inc., is the leading global provider of service intelligence and performance management software solutions currently deployed at Fortune 500 and service providers worldwide. Trendium's award-winning solutions portfolio includes its ServicePATH(TM) Service Intelligence System and PerforMAX Performance Management System. A scalable, policy-based software offering, ServicePATH(TM) effectively manages services and Service Level Agreements - avoiding costly penalties - in addition to assuring service quality in real-time and increasing operational efficiency for computing infrastructures, telecommunications networks, operating systems, as well as converged and mission-critical applications. With Trendium service intelligence, service providers and enterprises are able to create new revenue streams, identify unused service capacity and rapidly prototype and deliver high-margin, quality-assured services. Trendium's PerforMAX(TM) software enables enterprises and service providers to proactively monitor, manage and accurately report on network, data center and application performance in real-time.
Index Engines Automates the Backup Tape eDiscovery Process. Check it out:
NEW YORK, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- Index Engines, the leader in next-generation enterprise-wide indexing solutions, today unveiled the industry's first solution to directly index the contents of offline tape media. For the first time, companies can comply with legal discovery requests to search their entire tape archives without having to first restore the data, thereby fully automating the previously time consuming legal discovery process. Finally, the costs, time delays and erroneous reporting involved with manual searches are a thing of the past.



The new TE-200 Tape Engine turns offline backup tapes into a directly searchable repository. It can scale to index tape archives of all sizes, from small discovery operations of a few hundred tapes up to large corporate environments. The TE-200 indexes tapes at the maximum physical speeds of modern tape drives. Many tape drives can be indexed simultaneously for efficiency.

Today, organizations must be prepared to locate and produce information - emails, files, and database data - in electronic format during legal litigation according to amendments made in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that goes into effect in December 1, 2006.

Index Engines has addressed this vexing problem for businesses that are increasingly facing litigation and requests for documents as part of the discovery processes. The TE-200 functions as an automated paralegal, transforming a time consuming manual process into a fast, automated operation and eliminating the errors associated with manual discovery.

According to the Enterprise Strategy Group, 91 percent of organizations with over 20,000 employees had to produce an email as part of an electronic discovery request in the past year and one-third of these companies go through one or more requests per month. Fifty-six percent of organizations claim that retrieving information from offline media such as tape is their largest challenge when responding to electronic discovery requests. More than half the time, discovery requests are not satisfied because of these challenges leaving organizations to settle lawsuits or spend significant resources fighting cases without a full arsenal of evidence.

"Companies can no longer rely on traditional discovery methods because locating digital information across multiple IT systems is like looking for a football in the Grand Canyon. It just becomes an impossible task," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst of ESG. "Customers need better technology solutions to facilitate the discovery of electronic information in response to a myriad of discovery requests that occur on a regular basis."

"CIOs have been faced with two major problems in managing offline tape archives: the pain of simply not knowing what resides on those tapes, and the time and excessive costs involved when trying to catalog the archives in response to legal discovery requests," said Tim Williams, CEO of Index Engines. "Our eDiscovery Engine addresses both of these concerns by dramatically simplifying a complex process and giving CIOs the power to produce discovery evidence much quicker, while enabling an organization to easily perform a risk assessment to determine any possible legal exposure and then proactively eliminate the exposure."

The new Tape Engine from Index Engines eliminates the cost and complexity of indexing offline tapes by seamlessly integrating into existing tape backup infrastructures and directly indexing offline tapes. The patent pending indexing engine supports the leading backup software formats, including Tivoli Storage Manager, EMC-Legato and Veritas, and directly indexes the contents without the drudgery and complexity involved in manually restoring the tape contents and then rummaging through the files and emails to find the required documents. Instead, as the tapes are indexed the database is immediately searchable. IT managers have full flexibility in searching the index and can issue queries for full content search using Boolean operators, document metadata (title, author, date modified, date accessed, file type, size, and more), or email metadata.

When a document is located and needs to be restored, users can simply select the file in the list of search results and an email will automatically be generated to the administrator will all the relevant information required (tape ID, location on tape and file name) to restore the specific file.

The TE-200 is currently available with prices starting at $29,500 for a package that scales to support a four million file network.

For more information on Index Engines enterprise indexing products contact the company at (732) 817-1060.

About Index Engines

Founded in 2003, Index Engines is the leader in next-generation enterprise-wide indexing. The company's mission is to organize enterprise data assets and make them immediately accessible and easily manageable. Businesses rely on Index Engines' solutions for comprehensive insight into their data in order to streamline the discovery, classification and management of enterprise assets. The company was started by Tim Williams and Gordon Harris, who prior to Index Engines, were responsible for successful startups that include CrosStor and Tacit Networks. CrosStor was a storage operating system company that was sold to EMC (NYSE: EMC) in November of 2000. Tacit Networks, sold to Packeteer in 2006, is the leader in enterprise file sharing for remote office solutions. Index Engines has recruited top talent from both leading storage solution vendors and the enterprise search space.

Index Engines is privately funded and headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey. Index Engines products are sold and serviced worldwide directly and through Index Engines channel partners. For more information on Index Engines, please visit the company's website at www.indexengines.com.

Index Engines is a trademark or registered trademark of Index Engines, Inc. All rights reserved. All product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective organizations.
Logicworks Selects Switch and Data to Support Expansion. Check it out:
NEW YORK & TAMPA, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Logicworks, a provider of full-service managed hosting solutions, has selected Switch and Data, a leading provider of Internet exchange and colocation services, as an additional data center location in New York. Expanding into Switch and Data's location at 111 8th Avenue, Logicworks will leverage the new space, power, and Switch and Data's SingleCNXT service to enhance its operations both nationally and internationally.



Logicworks will deploy its rack-mountable servers, storage arrays, network and other hardware devices to serve the needs of complex hosting customers throughout the world.

"It ultimately came down to a combination of facility location, power and HVAC density, service responsiveness, and options for expansion," said Kenneth Ziegler, Logicworks' Chief Financial Officer. "Switch and Data was the only provider meeting these requirements in a location that fit into our operations while also having a national footprint and remote hands capabilities via their TechSmart service. We view the Switch and Data relationship as a key component of Logicworks' growth in delivering multi-site, complex hosting solutions to our enterprise-level customers for maximum uptime."

According to Logicworks, numerous colocation and data center providers were evaluated in the New York City area. The company engaged a third party consultancy to perform site analyses on several major facilities before selecting Switch and Data. It was determined that Switch and Data's facility met all of Logicworks' technical, power, and HVAC requirements, while providing the on-site support and interconnections options to more than 300 networks.

About Switch and Data

Switch and Data is a leading provider of Internet exchange and services. Based in Tampa, Florida, Switch and Data operates one of the largest footprints of neutral Internet exchange and colocation facilities in North America with 34 data centers in 23 markets serving more than 800 customers. Switch and Data's PAIX is recognized worldwide as the premier name in peering and Internet exchange services and is home to one of the largest commercial exchange points in North America. For more information, please visit http://www.switchanddata.com/.

About Logicworks

Logicworks delivers fully redundant, fault-tolerant hosting solutions to customers with applications and content requiring 100% uptime. By outsourcing hardware, systems, security, and database administration, Logicworks' global customers are able to focus on their business goals, achieving faster time-to-market, accelerated revenue growth, and greater operating efficiency. Founded in 1993, Logicworks is a SAS 70 Type II certified service provider with servers spanning across 3 data centers. For more information visit http://www.logicworks.net or call 866-FOR-LOGIC.
Quiconnect expands team, appointing staff to drive wireless broadband application and interconnectivity development. Check it out:
September 27, 2006 - Quiconnect, a specialist systems integrator offering interconnectivity services and applications in the wireless broadband sector, announces today a series of new senior technical and commercial staff appointments which add considerable breadth and depth of expertise, as the company expands.



Quiconnect supplies tools, technologies and services to enable Service Providers and Network Operators to offer their customers the ability to roam reliably on different mobile broadband networks, along with competitively priced, branded user experiences across these multiple networks, platforms and applications.

From a technical delivery perspective, Jen Redmon has been appointed as director of customer engineering a role which involves liaising between sales, marketing and technical staff to ensure service delivery, as well as working with customers to facilitate brand extension. Jen is an expert in all wireless broadband technologies, having worked at both large organisations such as Texas Instruments and Bosch Telecom, and start-up companies Spectrapoint, Callahan Broadband Wireless, Wirefree Systems and Tatara Systems in the USA, Asia and Europe.

Next, Luke Vinogradov joins Quiconnect as senior manager for new product development responsible for all new product and solution initiatives, from initial business case creation to the technical delivery which follows. An experienced manager of online content products and platforms, Luke has held senior positions at Telstra Corporation, Australias leading telco, where he developed and launched its BigPond Movies DVD rental and movie download services, and held key roles in mobile content. Prior to that Luke held roles with SMS Management and Technology, and Deutsche Bank in London where he was a senior researcher in the Investment Banking division.

Rob Myers has been appointed as senior manager of partnerships and alliances with a remit to identify and create agreements with a range of commercial and strategic partners operating in the wireless broadband sector. A MBA qualified marketing-led business manager with over 15 years experience working in the IT and telco industries, Rob has held a variety of senior roles including channel manager, global carrier services at Cable and Wireless; head of enterprise and carrier services at Inmedia Communications Limited, the satellite services division of Kingston Communications Plc; and group business development manager at Bandwidth Technologies International Group (BTIG), a vertically integrated satellite communications solutions provider.

To augment the marketing team, Carley Elsdon has joined as senior marketing manager. A global marketing professional, Carley has 10 years experience spanning Fortune 500 companies as well as business start ups in both Europe and the USA. Prior to joining Quiconnect, Carley was USA marketing director at Systimax Solutions, a division of CommScope which designs, manufacturers and markets end-to-end connectivity solutions for enterprise networks, as well as acting marketing director (North American region) at Avaya Incs connectivity solutions division.

Completing the new team, Stéphane Perret joins the company as mobile access engineering manager. Stéphane will work from a technical perspective with Luke Vinogradov to develop and implement new Wi-Fi related products and services. Stéphane has a MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble and has worked for the past 5 years on wireless networking technologies and mobility projects for both Hewlett Packard and SUN Microsystems.

Quiconnect recently moved into new offices in central London to cater for its commercial expansion, having also recently hired additional sales, operations and support personnel.

Andrew Schultz, Quiconnects head of marketing and strategy, says, Our approach to making public Wi-Fi access easy for consumers has attracted huge interest from the global telco community as simplified usage means greater revenue possibilities for Service Providers and Network Operators. BT, Sprint, Orange and a host of commercial hotspot operators are now all working with us which is a testament to our approach and value. These new appointments mean that we have the technical and commercial personnel bandwidth to capitalise on our innovation, can service and delight customers, and meet our growth aspirations.
Trendium launches InfraSight: Network Infrastructure health and performance management service. Check it out:
Initial Subscription-based Offering From Trendium Service Bureau Represents
Natural Evolution of Award-Winning Service Intelligence Portfolio, Response to Market Need for Traffic Forensics, Application Capacity Planning and Security Event Monitoring

Trendium, Inc., the leading global provider of service assurance and performance management software, today announced the availability of InfraSight, an enterprise traffic performance management and IT infrastructure health service, and the first offering from the Trendium Service Bureau. Service Bureau, a subscription-based software as a service line of business, is Trendiums immediate response to the overwhelming market demand for highly network performance management capabilities integrated with security management functions, available at a fraction of current cost-of-ownership and delivery time constraints.



In todays hyper-competitive global marketplace, IT operational budgets and resources while expected to grow in the coming year are stretched thin by maintenance (Gartner estimates more than 60% of IT budgets are consumed by labor and maintenance). This burden, coupled with an ongoing stream of new security threats and the complexities associated with proactive response resolution, has created a demand for blended functionality between traffic performance management and security resources. There is a clear need for change in the current Enterprise IT business model evident in several vertical markets, such as financial services, healthcare and transportation to which Trendium has responded with the introduction of its Service Bureau.

The launch of Trendiums Service Bureau represents the natural forward progression of our business and a new means with which to deliver our proven service intelligence expertise, said Hanafy Meleis, CEO, Trendium. Since our inception, Fortune 500 companies worldwide have looked to Trendium to optimize and assure service objectives, monitor the user experience, and meet expectations. Implementing this new subscription-based business model enables us to offer specific functionality inherent in our existing solutions, in addition to advanced security information monitoring resources, packaged as an extremely cost-effective service. Todays global enterprise, with its over-extended IT capital - is forced to deal with paradigm-shifting forces such as HIPAA, GLBA and SOX compliance, as well as proactive identification of potential system threats. Liberating valuable resources to allow for re-alignment of IT with business strengths is what makes Trendiums Service Bureau right on time.

A significant trend in IT is the migration of the software business from packaged products, to a new, subscription-based service model. Research firm IDC notes that the management model of support provides an option for organizations looking for many of the traditional outsourcings benefits -- such as labor and maintenance savings but without the loss of control over core network functions. Also of note, is that according to new research from the analyst firm, worldwide security software support services spending will climb from $1.43 billion in 2005 to $2.13 billion in 2010. Trendiums Service Bureau will address this climate, in which spending indicates a growing confidence in managed services' security, reliability and effectiveness, in addition to the promise of accelerated deployment and potential cost savings.

As part of Trendiums Service Bureau, InfraSight is a state-of-the-art infrastructure health/performance management service that offers a blend of proven, real-time data collection and trend performance analysis, in addition to security insights, event monitoring and network traffic predictive alerts solutions critical to maintaining a healthy enterprise. Included in InfraSights powerful functionality, are:

Network and IT Infrastructure Health
InfraSight consolidates and organizes across every network domain, so customers are able to monitor all interfaces, flow-based conversations and bandwidth utilization.

Application Capacity Planning
Bandwidth capacity modeling is calculated per interface, or class-based QoS queue to enable accurate planning for external and inter-site bandwidth. Comparable modeling is performed at the server level as well.

Traffic Forensics
InfraSight performs traffic deviation monitoring to detect suspicious anomalies that lead to the manifestation of serious network threats. Also, InfraSight is able to inspect the IT infrastructure to find network degradation threats in advance of user awareness; this service reports on port scans and port sweeps, and when necessary, triggers alerts that proactively defend the network from potential threats.

To cost-effectively serve key domestic markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and West Coast, Trendium has implemented a channel marketing and distribution strategy; a nationwide recruitment for individual partners who can serve as trusted reseller agents in the aforementioned areas is currently underway. Trendium will announce its Partner Channel Distribution strategy for Europe and the Middle East in the coming weeks.

For additional information on Trendium, Trendium Service Bureau or InfraSight, please contact Tom Leh, at [email protected] / +1-954-835-9500, or visit: www.trendium.com.
Network World Chooses Winners of Annual Enterprise All-Star Awards. Check it out:
SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Network World, Inc. honors 40 outstanding network IT enterprise projects with this week's announcement of its Enterprise All-Star Award winners. The winners, selected from nearly 200 entries by a panel of editorial judges, represent the best use of technology within eight technology categories. From building virtualized Linux applications infrastructures to rolling out VoIP across the organization, Enterprise All-Star winners are applying innovative technologies to help their companies enter new markets, streamline business processes, increase competitive advantage and dramatically reduce costs.



Cost-cutting was a key driver among the majority of All-Star winners, cumulatively reporting savings of more than $20.7 million in the first year of implementation. The winning projects took a median of eight months from planning to production, with 82% requiring less than a year.

"This year's competition can be summed up in one word: innovation," said Beth Schultz, editor, Network World's Signature Series. "Recognizing such companies is rewarding. One winner for example stands as a proving ground for chip-level security, while another bucked conventional wisdom and used freeware to automate configuration across dozens of makes and models of desktops."

Some facts about the winners include:

-- 10 winners in the healthcare category, the vertical industry with the most wins

-- Six years for the longest running project. One month for the shortest.

-- $939,733 for the mean project savings

-- 56 total vendors used in the award-winning projects

All 40 Network World Enterprise All-Star award winners along with a description of project goals and technologies are profiled in the September 25 Signature Series issue and can be viewed online by industry and technology category at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006

2006 Network World Enterprise All-Star Award Recipients
1-800-flowers.com         Aeroplan
Alamance Regional Medical Center Appalachian State University
BNSF Logistics          BNSF Railway
Cabell Huntington Hospital    Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
City of Loma Linda        Community Health Network
Continental Airlines       Credit Suisse
Evolution Benefits        FirstHealth of the Carolinas
Franklin W. Olin College of    Goldsmith Agio Helms
Engineering
Harvard Business School      Inergy Automotive Systems
Kansas City Power & Light     Kindred Healthcare
Las Vegas Review-Journal     MasterBrand Cabinets
MedicAlert Foundation       NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Ochsner Health System       Paccess
Papa Gino's and D'Angelo     PHH Mortgage
Sandwich Shops
Priceline.com           Prudential Financial
Saugus Union School District   Southwest Washington Medical Center
Subaru of Indiana Automotive   Taleo
University at Buffalo Health   U.S. Department of Health and Human
Sciences             Services, Office of the Inspector
                 General
Vassar Brothers Medical Center  Wachovia Bank
Wilson & Company, Engineers and  Wound Technology Network
Architects



About Network World's 2006 Enterprise All-Star Award

The Network World Enterprise All-Star Awards recognize exceptional use of network technology to further business objectives of organizations across a range of industries. Forty enterprise IT organizations representing the best, most innovative application of network technologies were selected. These award-winning network IT projects are profiled in Network World's special edition Signature Series Enterprise All-Star Issue published September 25, and on the Web site at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006.

About Network World

Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community (www.networkworld.com) and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns and create new revenue opportunities.

About International Data Group (IDG)

International Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events and research company. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World and PC World. IDG's online network includes more than 400 Web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment and gaming worldwide. IDG is a leading producer of more than 170 technology-related events including LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Macworld Conference & Expo, DEMO and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services and events. Over 850 IDC analysts in 50 countries provide global, regional and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends. Additional information about IDG, a privately-held company, is available at http://www.idg.com.

All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.
AFINA and Lucent Sign Value Added Distributor Agreement to Resell Lucent Security Solutions Throughout Latin America. Check it out:
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Sept. 27 -- Lucent Technologies today announced that it has signed a Value Added Distributor (VAD) agreement with AFINA, regional leader in distribution of products and professional services for Internet/Intranet, to resell Lucent's Bell Labs- developed comprehensive security portfolio as part of its larger IT offerings to Latin American IT resellers, system integrators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecom carriers, and enterprises.



This new partnership will enable AFINA and its reseller and carrier clients to directly offer solutions to enterprises through the full suite of Lucent's award-winning, carrier-grade network and security components -- a portfolio that spans the full spectrum of network security from firewall and VPN functionality to robust bandwidth management and secure mobile data networking. Lucent's comprehensive security portfolio includes the VPN Firewall Brick(R) IP services portfolio, the Lucent Security Management Server and the Lucent IPSec Client. AFINA will also have a Master Reseller Agreement for Lucent's VitalSuite products for network management in Latin America.

With this announcement, Lucent is introducing a two-tier channel model in the Latin American region, providing leading national IT distributors with the technology, products, and support infrastructure to sell best-in-class solutions for delivering secure VoIP and data networking applications to local security resellers, systems integrators, ISPs, smaller carriers and enterprises.

"We are pleased to have signed this VAD agreement with AFINA to support our overall global strategy to leverage our hardware, software, and management tools to deliver carrier-grade security solutions that meet the needs of enterprise customers," said Francisco Berrueta, Director Global Business Partners for Lucent Technologies in Latin America. "Through AFINA's network of experienced security reseller partners, we can extend our expertise and leverage our Bell Labs innovations to address the complex security needs of enterprise customers."

Lucent is currently recruiting more distributors for security in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and other regions throughout the world, and thus implement the two-tier channel model in all key markets.

"AFINA represents our first VAD partner in the Caribbean-Latin America Region as we extend the benefits of our security solutions to enterprise customers throughout the world," said Carmen Sorice, Director, Global Business Partner Programs for Lucent Technologies. "We look forward to working with AFINA as we continue to expand our global two-tier security distribution program and build on the success of our VAD launch in Europe earlier this year."

Product Background
A winner of numerous industry awards, the Lucent VPN Firewall (LVF) portfolio is used by service providers throughout the world not only to protect their own network elements, but also as a resale solution for managed security services. With the addition of this new two-tier distributor model, Lucent carrier-grade security products and solutions are now also available directly to enterprises through the above named distributors´ system integrator and value added reseller partners.

The Lucent VPN Firewall portfolio was designed from the start to be a highly secure, fully redundant and centrally managed security platform that provides customers with improved security, less operations downtime, and considerably lower operational expenses over traditional firewall solutions.

The product portfolio features include:

* Full-featured bridging: enables stealthy, depth-of-defense security that
conventional router-based firewalls cannot match.

* Advanced security safeguards: denial-of-service attack protection;
high-speed content security; premium authentication services; with low
occurrences of reported advisories or vulnerabilities and no backdoors.

* High-performance packet processing: supports up to 3 million
simultaneous VPN sessions, 1,100 virtual firewalls, and 20,000 VPN
tunnels.

* Ultra-thin, highly secure operating system: virtually impenetrable to
hacker attacks; frees memory for packet processing, policy management.

* Plug-and-play deployment: implement secure mission-critical applications
without costly, time-intensive network reconfiguration

* Low ownership costs: no ongoing feature-licensing expenses; easy
installation, management and upgrades save IT staff time and effort;
high-performance, high-capacity features reduce the need to purchase
additional equipment.

* Simplified management: unique client/server design; centralized staging,
real-time monitoring and no-touch management of all VPN, security and
service-quality assurance capabilities via scalable, proven Lucent
Security Management Server.

* Virtual firewall and VLAN support: easily assign and enforce security
policies for diverse user groups.

* Granular bandwidth management: maximize service quality via flexible
class-based queuing (CBQ) technology, server-level and user-level limits
and guarantees.

* Carrier-grade reliability: native high-availability architecture with no
single point of failure.

Security Enabled by Lucent Technologies

As Lucent delivers on the promise of next-generation IP communications, one of its top priorities is to ensure reliability and security of the global communications networks and the people who use them. To support this goal Lucent offers a comprehensive and integrated security portfolio and architecture that integrates best in class dedicated security products, network solutions that are security-hardened, professional consulting services, managed security services -- as well as promoting industry standards around network security such as the ITU X.805 and ISO/IEC 18028-2 standards. All of these solutions are tightly integrated in Lucent's offerings and are based on cutting edge security research led by Bell Labs, Lucent's award- winning R&D research institution.

Background on the Lucent Sales Business Partner Program
The Lucent Market Advantage Program offers Sales Business Partners the combined powers of leading-edge solutions, Bell Labs expertise, world-class services and support to increase their revenue opportunities. Partners have access to resell Lucent's innovative products and solutions that span optical, data, convergence, software and mobility technologies. A complete set of tools is available to support partners in providing end-to-end solutions and services to ensure they address each customer's unique needs. For more information on the Sales Business Partner Program or to locate a Lucent Sales Business Partner, visit the website at http://www.lucent.com/map/salesbp/

About AFINA:
Since its foundation, AFINA has specialized in UNIX environments. With a clear vision of the future, the company has focused its activities in IP communications and in open systems that are basic for Internet communications. Currently, AFINA's strategy is based on Internet/Intranet. During its 10 years of existence, AFINA has been installed in new markets and now operates in Spain, Portugal, France, Mexico, EUA, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile. The general strategy of AFINA is to differentiate itself from other companies by offering clients not only products but also a complete coverage in all business areas, an adequate tools selection to meet specific needs, certified technical support and consulting services customized to the clients requirements, carefully personalized. And for Business Partners, the 100 percent assurance that sales will be done through them.

About Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks. Supported by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent uses its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers, while enabling them to quickly deploy and better manage their networks. Lucent's customer base includes communications service providers, governments and enterprises worldwide. For more information on Lucent Technologies, which has headquarters in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, visit http://www.lucent.com/.

Lucent Technologies

CONTACT: Marco Malfavon of Lucent Technologies - Latin America,+1-954-885-2810, [email protected], or Devon Prutzman of LucentTechnologies - Bell Labs, +1-908-582-7190, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.lucent.com/http://www.lucent.com/map/salesbp
Telargo Leverages Motorola's Wireless Communications Technology to Track, Monitor and Communicate with Mobile Assets in Real-time. Check it out:
JERSEY CITY, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- Telargo, Inc., a leading provider of mobile asset management solutions, announced that it will be leveraging Motorola's G24 wireless communications module as part of its comprehensive solution for tracking and monitoring mobile assets including vehicles, workforce, equipment and cargo.



Telargo provides mobile asset management solutions to its customers to help them optimize their operations, drive profitability and achieve service excellence. Telargo's enterprise-level solution incorporates hardware, software and communications services. Motorola's G24 is an embedded module for voice and data communications that uses the GSM and GPRS standards for transmitting data from Telargo's portable terminals.

"The core of our service is based on real-time insight and communication with the vehicles and workforce that we track for our customers," said Bogdan Pavlic, CEO of Telargo. "The comprehensiveness of our solution requires higher availability, quality voice and larger data transfers than other solutions on the market. We chose Motorola's solution because we believe it is a proven, robust and reliable product that ensures our system has the highest availability, reliability and flexibility on the market."

Customers rely on Telargo to provide them with up-to-the-minute information on the status, performance and location of their mobile assets. Telargo also applies critical analysis to the data for true business intelligence for maximizing fleet and equipment utilization, increasing workforce productivity, reducing expenses and enforcing safety and compliance regulations. Motorola's wireless modules ensure that Telargo's system provides fast, accurate and secure data transmissions with superior geographic coverage.

"Telargo has broken new ground in mobile asset management," said Aviad Gefen, manager of Motorola's wireless module unit. "Telargo's approach enables customers to retrieve data on an infinite number of critical parameters, far beyond vehicle location, such as driver performance, equipment status, expense monitoring, and two-way communications. Motorola's wireless module is at the center of the system - providing 24/7 reliable and secure transmissions of information."

About Telargo, Inc.

Telargo is a leading provider of mobile asset management technology, services and business solutions. A joint venture of NTT DoCoMo, a world leader in mobile communications, and Ultra, a European technology company, Telargo has been in operation in the U.S. since 2005. Telargo enables its customers to streamline operations and maximize the performance of their mobile assets including: vehicles, machinery, trailers, vessels and drivers/operators. Using advanced technologies coupled with comprehensive analysis and management software, Telargo provides its customers with valuable intelligence to make critical business decisions.

For more information, please visit: www.telargo.com
KANA and Autonomy Extend Alliance to Benefit Call Centers. Check it out:
 
KANA Software, a global multi-channel customer service provider, and Autonomy, a global infrastructure software for the enterprise company, have announced an extension to their OEM alliance. Under the agreement, KANA will deploy Autonomy’s infrastructure technology in its solutions for eService, call centers, and Web self-service solutions. As a result, KANA will be able to deliver relevant information to users in a more timely fashion that can ensure customer inquiries are resolved quickly and accurately across channels.


 
KANA users will be provided with a breadth of functionality with Autonomy’s infrastructure software, including automatic hyperlinking of conceptually-related information as well as automatic delivery of personalized information. KANA’s multi-channel customer service solutions ensure that customers will benefit from accurate and focused answers to customer queries by using concept-based retrieval of items from the support knowledge base.
 
Autonomy touts that it has one of the industry’s strongest OEM programs. The solution supports more than 300 third-party applications across a range of industries such as Product Lifecycle Management, Content Management, Information Security, Financial Services, Human Resources, Records Management, Compliance and eCommerce. As a strategic OEM partner, KANA is a key contributor in guiding product direction and has been a participant in the annual Autonomy OEM Advisory Board meeting for a number of years.
 
Autonomy’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nicole, Eagan, contributed that Autonomy is pleased that KANA has chosen to continue this fruitful and longstanding relationship. This is further validation of the IDOL strategic roadmap and a real win for KANA customers as they will continue to benefit from the strength of Autonomy’s infrastructure software and Autonomy’s close partnership with KANA.
 
As more and more call centers are moving toward technology implementations that allow for multi-channel communications for customers, the need for solutions such as those offered by KANA and Autonomy has grown. Customer service is still, and should always be, a primary focus for these organizations and constant improvements in solutions will help to ensure that the customer is satisfied with their experience.
 
KANA and Autonomy have an already proven successful relationship and to further their alliance, they are another step closer to establishing themselves as the expected standard in the industry. A continued focus on innovation and keeping their customers’ core interests incorporated in their strategy will help to ensure long-term success.
 
Special Attractions
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Pace Global Addresses Governor, Chairman at Annual Dinner for Alaska Permanent Fund ; Sutherland Urges Action on the Alaska Pipeline System. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WASHINGTON, Sep 27, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Timothy F. Sutherland, chairman and CEO of Pace Global Energy Services LLC, provided the keynote address at the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation's (APFC) Annual Dinner. Held on Sept. 20, the dinner featured Gov. Frank H. Murkowski's announcement of the $1,106.96 annual dividend for each qualified citizen of Alaska. Sutherland offered a global view of how Alaska fits into an increasingly competitive and complex energy market that is rapidly responding to meet the needs of the United States for the next 50 years.



While Alaskan citizens enjoy the reversal of a five-year, declining trend in the annual dividend, Sutherland presented a sharp contrast to current circumstances should Alaska be unable to supplement and extend dwindling state oil revenues with natural gas revenues from Alaskan North Slope gas development. "My advice to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is: please, don't blow it," Sutherland told the approximately 200 attendees.

"There is a window of opportunity for monetizing stranded North Slope gas reserves, but that window could close if delays allow time for the many alternative sources of gas supply to balance the North American market ... The longer the fate of the Alaska gas pipeline system remains uncertain, the more domestic and import capacity will be planned, built and operated," Sutherland asserted.

The APFC, with over $34 billion in invested capital, is among the world's 100 largest investment funds. In closing, Sutherland congratulated the fund on its past and current successes, but also warned of the risk to sustaining the annual royalty contributions to the fund if North Slope pipeline development stalls. After reviewing some of the many forms of gas resource development now underway to serve the North American market, Sutherland stated, "the rest of the world is not waiting for Alaska."

For a copy of Sutherland's remarks, visit http://www.paceglobal.com/paceglobal/Events.cfm.

To read Gov. Murkowski's reaction, visit http://www.gov.state.ak.us/news.php?id(equal)2643.

-----

About Pace Global Energy Services LLC

For more than 25 years, Pace Global has assisted energy infrastructure developers and managers. The company provides asset and enterprise strategy development, project valuation, market assessment, risk management and price forecasting services. Pace Global's clients include financial institutions, energy companies, public utilities and energy-intensive industrial companies. For more information, please visit http://www.paceglobal.com or call 703-818-9100.

http://www.usnewswire.com

Tamara Pedersen, 703-227-8776 or
[email protected] ; Web:
http://www.paceglobal.co

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Ponemon Institute and Littler Mendelson Join Axentis in Discussing Vendor and Outsourcing Privacy Risk in an Interactive Webinar. Check it out:
CLEVELAND --(Business Wire)-- Axentis, the leading provider of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) management solutions, will co-host a Webinar with Business Finance Magazine. The event, titled, "An Emerging Disaster?: Addressing Vendor / Outsourcer Privacy Risk," will take place on Thursday, September 28, at 1pm ET and will feature James Jordan III, CIPP for The Ponemon Institute, Phil Gordon, partner with Littler Mendelson and Ted Frank, president of Axentis.



The interactive discussion will focus on the world of vendor and outsourcing privacy risk. The content will cover current critical mandates, the importance of effectively managing privacy compliance and the benefits of a strong vendor/outsourcer privacy program. The conversation will also include discussion on the areas often neglected in privacy compliance and the common missteps made by companies today. Special focus will be given to leveraging an organization's substantial investment in other compliance processes to effectively manage a risk.

What: Compliance Webinar; An Emerging Disaster?: Addressing Vendor / Outsourcer Privacy Risk

When: September 28, 2006, from 1:00-2:00 PM (EST)

Where: http://www.businessfinancemag.com/webcasts/index.html

Who: James Jordan III, CIPP, The Ponemon Institute

Phil Gordon, partner, Littler Mendelson

Ted Frank, president, Axentis

About Axentis

Axentis delivers the only on-demand business performance optimization environment that empowers companies to turn governance, risk and compliance initiatives into better business performance and competitive advantage. With its unique software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Axentis Enterprise (Ae) Suite delivers a one-world view of the entire organization for better risk management, mitigation and compliance. Ae is easy-to-use and can be deployed quickly, delivering immediate impact and a quick return on investment (ROI). Axentis, which was recently named an industry leader and innovator by several leading analyst firms, touts over 700,000 users from leading Global 2000 companies including ADT and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Axentis is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with data centers in Boulder, CO and Basel, Switzerland. For more information, please visit http://www.axentis.com.
New Study from Topline Strategy Group Reveals Enterprise Software Still Attractive to Venture Investors. Check it out:
BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- According to a new study by the Topline Strategy Group, a leading technology consulting and market intelligence firm, venture capitalists still fund significantly more installed enterprise software solutions than Software as a Service (SaaS), appliance, or Open Source-based solutions. The newly released Follow the Money study contradicts the general market impression that traditional enterprise software has fallen out of favor with venture investors while offering encouragement for start-up companies seeking funding for these types of software solutions.



"Given the buzz around SaaS, appliances, and Open Source, this finding was totally unexpected," said Jon Klein, founder and general partner of Topline Strategy. "We found that large companies, which contribute the majority of dollars spent in the market, still prefer installed software."

Based on a pool of 735 companies that received more than $6.3 billion in venture investment, Follow the Money found that 49 percent of the software companies receiving funding offered only an installed software option to their customers. In contrast, companies offering Software as a Service (SaaS) represented 25 percent of the total number, and companies offering appliances represented 14 percent. 12 percent offered multiple delivery options or other options. Only seven of the 183 software companies that received funding in the second quarter of 2006 were pursuing an Open Source business model.

"This study reveals data that has never been available before," said Noel Fenton, general partner of Trinity Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California. "It is extremely valuable for entrepreneurs developing their business strategies, tuning their business plans, and defining target markets. It is equally valuable for venture capitalists who want to identify trends in the investor landscape."

Follow the Money data also provides support for start-up companies' target market and product decisions. For example, more than 40 percent of all new consumer Internet businesses funded in the second quarter of 2006 focused on social networking offerings. Offerings included social networking sites targeted to specific demographics and interests, such as networking with college friends, joke and video sharing, and ranged to solutions that enable users to create, store, and share personal multimedia content. While the social networking category is currently highly active, a high level of existing investment may signal saturation of the segment.

The study also revealed that the once-lively local market and lead referral solution category went cold in the second quarter, while sites that enable task aggregation, such as Billeo, appear to be on the rise.

"This study encompasses critical data for leaders of venture-backed companies," remarked Klein. "In the end, business success will rely on choosing and implementing the right strategy and business model."

Follow the Money is a research product of the Topline Strategy Group. Currently, it is the only study that analyzes venture investing in information technology based on start-up companies' target markets and their go-to-market strategies. In addition to the findings mentioned, the study also delivers previously unavailable details about funding, including companies' targeted customer segments and the business models that are capturing funding. Follow the Money is available at http://followthemoney.toplinestrategy.com.

About The Topline Strategy Group

The Topline Strategy Group is a consulting and market intelligence firm dedicated to helping technology companies accelerate sales. Topline consultants possess strategy expertise gained at top strategy consulting firms and operating experience acquired through launching and growing numerous successful technology companies. The Topline Strategy Group employs proven methodologies to help companies grow at each stage of their lifecycles--from launching successful new products and accelerating sales of current products, to building comprehensive corporate growth plans. Topline clients have identified and captured tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in market capitalization.
Oracle to Build Additional 21 Units in China in 2007 FY. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 27, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Oracle Corp., the world's leading supplier of software for enterprise information management, will increase current 5 subsidiaries in China to 26 ones in 2007 fiscal year so as to gain more profit from services for small and medium companies in the country.



The company has opened its new branches in Dalian, Jinan and Tianjin for business recently, said general manager for enterprise management software of Oracle Greater China.

Oracle, No. 2 independent software supplier globally, saw its worldwide management software business, database business and service respectively go up 80 percent, 15 percent and 33 percent, in accordance with financial results ended May 31 this year the company released on September 20.

China has become the market where the company has seen the fastest business growth across the world. Apart from strengthening services for large companies, the software builder will also launch businesses with small and medium firms of the country.

From dycj.ynet.com, Page 1, Tuesday, September 26, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
AT&T Launches Automated Online PC Backup Services for Consumers, Small Businesses. Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 27 -- AT&T Inc. today announced the extension of AT&T's enterprise portfolio of online PC, laptop and server backup solutions to consumers and small and medium-sized businesses. The solutions being introduced are designed to enable these customers to take advantage of simple and affordable protection of critical files.



The expanded backup offerings are examples of AT&T's ongoing efforts to adapt innovative enterprise business solutions to deliver new capabilities for residential and smaller business customers.

For consumers and home offices, the AT&T Online Vault(SM) solution provides an online PC backup service that conveniently stores user data at a remote location to heighten the protection of important and sometimes irreplaceable files, such as financial records, digital photos, music and other important documents. The service is fully automated and secure, removing the guesswork and time commitment often associated with manual PC backups.

For business customers, the AT&T Remote Vault(SM) offering is an online service that allows small and medium-sized organizations to easily implement an enterprise-quality offsite data protection and restore program using a simple broadband Internet connection. Data from customer servers, PCs or laptops is remotely accessed, copied and stored at an AT&T Internet Data Center, where it is centrally managed and securely protected.

"Today's announcement is yet another example of the many ways in which AT&T is using its assets and capabilities to benefit all of its customers, from the most sophisticated multinational firm to consumers uploading prized family photos into their PCs," said David Krantz, vice president-AT&T Business Development. "Many customers understand the importance of backing up files and data, yet, with the hassle and time involved in manual backup methods, data is not backed up as often as it should be. Our online backup services make this process easy and automatic, so users will never have to worry about the loss of an important document or file."

AT&T Online Vault Service for Consumers
The AT&T Online Vault service eliminates the need for external storage devices and the inconvenience of burning CDs, moving files into flash drives or remembering to back up to external hard drives. By storing the files off- site and online in a secure AT&T Internet Data Center, files are also protected from subsequently contracted computer viruses, accidental file deletions, hard drive crashes and natural disasters such as fire, floods or hurricanes.

The service is offered to all high speed Internet users in the home and home office environment and is available at http://www.attonlinevault.com/ . The solution removes the burden of constantly backing up PC files every time something is added or modified. Working behind the scenes, and with little technical knowledge required, the AT&T Online Vault service automatically detects new files and changes to existing files and stores users' PC data online at a remote AT&T Internet Data Center.

The AT&T Online Vault service compresses and encrypts all files in a customer's Documents and Settings folders and safely stores them at an AT&T Internet Data Center. Consumers have the option to exclude certain file types from their backup, such as e-mail or videos. Consumer data is available for recovery at any time -- only by the user -- for as long as the consumer subscribes to the service.

Once the initial backup has occurred, the service will perform automatic, daily searches for updated files every time the user logs on to the Internet. The service also retains any individual updates as far back as 30 days, so consumers can recover files that may have been deleted from their hard drive or choose an earlier version of the file to recover.

The AT&T Online Vault service is available for a standard monthly fee of $5.95 for the first two gigabytes of storage space. For each additional gigabyte used, the cost is an additional $2 a month, not to exceed $17.95 a month. Customers are offered the opportunity to try the AT&T Online Vault service risk-free for 30 days with a money-back guarantee.

AT&T Remote Vault Service for Small Business
The AT&T Remote Vault service is geared to the data protection needs of small to midsize businesses, as well state and local governments and education and healthcare organizations. Using the service, data from customer servers, PCs or laptops is remotely accessed, copied and stored at an AT&T Internet Data Center, where it is centrally managed and securely protected.

AT&T Internet Data Centers feature redundant, uninterruptible power sources, state-of-the-art fire suppression and air-conditioning systems, and 24/7 network management and monitoring. Government-standard 128-bit advanced encryption standard (AES) is used to safely transmit all data.

The AT&T Remote Vault service requires no capital investment and allows small and medium-sized businesses to add PCs and servers as their business grows. The service is easy to install and use, requiring no training or technical expertise. Backups can be scheduled to automatically occur hourly, daily, weekly or as needed. Backup data is easily restorable to customer PCs, laptops or servers through the Web-based Remote Vault application.

According to a recent report from technology consulting firm Yankee Group, U.S. small and medium-sized businesses spent $13.5 billion on storage-related initiatives in 2005, including investments in hardware, software and services.* In addition, the firm projects 14 percent growth this year in storage spending by small and medium-sized businesses.

According to Yankee Group's Gary Chen, analyst, small and medium-sized business strategies: "As small and medium-sized businesses realize the significant impact that power outages and natural or manmade disasters can have on their operations, more and more are investing in remote data storage and backup services. It's a market that Yankee Group expects will grow for the foreseeable future."

With the AT&T Remote Vault service, a business customer's data is stored off-site for a standard period of up to four months -- longer, if needed. For PCs and laptops, the service is available for a standard monthly fee of $6.95 for the first gigabyte of storage space and $2 per gigabyte thereafter. Pricing for servers is between $6 and $12 per gigabyte, depending on the retention schedule selected and amount of data protected. Businesses can contact their AT&T representative for more information or to order the AT&T Remote Vault service.

"AT&T Online Vault and AT&T Remote Vault services enable consumers and smaller businesses alike to take advantage of data backup and recovery offerings that are already proved in the marketplace," Krantz said. "These solutions represent the latest example of how AT&T is bringing down-market the communications products, services and tools that large, global enterprises have found invaluable."

These data backup and recovery services, available through an agreement with Arsenal Digital Solutions, are based on the same, proven technology that AT&T provides to its enterprise customers.

Note: This AT&T release and other news announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at http://www.att.com/rss .

* Source: Yankee Group, "The SMB and Mid-Market Storage Windfall, May 25, 2006"
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. is one of the world's largest telecommunications holding companies and is the largest in the United States. Operating globally under the AT&T brand, AT&T companies are recognized as the leading worldwide providers of IP-based communications services to business and as leading U.S. providers of high speed DSL Internet, local and long distance voice, and directory publishing and advertising services. AT&T Inc. holds a 60 percent ownership interest in Cingular Wireless, which is the No. 1 U.S. wireless services provider with 57.3 million wireless customers. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and AT&T products and services is available at http://www.att.com/ .

Subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. provide products and services under the AT&T brand.
Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
Information set forth in this news release contains financial estimates and other forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. A discussion of factors that may affect future results is contained in AT&T's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AT&T disclaims any obligation to update or revise statements contained in this news release based on new information or otherwise.

AT&T

CONTACT: Dan Gugler of AT&T Inc., Office: +1-213-489-8293, or E-mail:[email protected]

Web site: http://www.attonlinevault.com/http://www.att.com/rsshttp://www.att.com/
FireSocket Expands Automotive Dealer CRM Platform with Service and Repair Department Profit Optimization. Check it out:
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- FireSocket, a growing software company serving automotive dealers, today announced significant enhancements to its enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) platform, DealerSocket. The upgrade focuses on the automotive service department and includes dynamic appointment scheduling, service management and follow up support tools that promise to optimize a critical but often neglected part of a dealer's business operations.



With as much as 60 percent of the average automotive dealership's profits coming from automotive service and repair departments, these new features stand to be welcomed by dealers. Most CRM technologies focus solely on a dealer's sales and customer service operations, making the DealerSocket upgrade rather unique in the industry.

"This is exactly what the industry needs right now," said Jim Brown, general manager, Larry H. Miller, LEXUS. "For us, technology has to connect to revenue. And DealerSocket does this for us with every new product that they release to the market."

Cracking the "Pace of Play" Code

Already one of the industry's most comprehensive dealer operations management platforms, DealerSocket's strength lies in supporting the unique way in which an automotive dealership actually runs day to day. After all, the platform was created by two technology consultants who worked for a full year in a dealership prior to writing a single line of code. Today, DealerSocket is one of the fastest growing software companies in the industry, with nearly 500 dealerships deployed on the platform.

Last year, responding to demand, the company focused on cracking an industry-wide challenge: optimizing service scheduling, called "pace of play" in the industry. Managing the schedule of vehicles against specific technician and resource availability is a complicated problem facing nearly all dealerships. "Most don't fare well," said Jonathan Ord, CEO of FireSocket.

"Controlling and managing the pace of service is one of those 'make or break' issues in creating the ideal customer experience for a service department's customers," said Ord. "Unfortunately, it's often left to chance at most dealerships."

The new DealerSocket platform addresses the pace of play issue with an interactive "service calendar" feature. Unique in the industry, this extended service functionality manages all service appointments for the dealership to help maintain and organize customer relationships and provide the best service possible to all its customers. It helps the dealership assess and manage capacity and service drive loading. It also manages types of service customers (wait in customers, loaner vehicle customers, etc.) and automatically manages appointment cancellations, confirmations, no shows and reappointments on the fly. DealerSocket has even included a service loaner vehicle tracking and optimization tool.

Upgrades to the DealerSocket platform include:

-- Service Calendar - easy to use graphical look at all service drive interactions and schedules, including operation code level views

-- Media Mail - availability for DealerSocket customer to send flash video email marketing automatically based on service interactions

-- Survey Functionality - online automated surveys for customers to provide feedback at any point in the customer lifecycle

-- Roll-up Reporting - new metrics added to reporting functionality for large dealerships and dealership groups

-- Loaner and Rental Vehicle - maintains loaner vehicle information including availability, service schedules, forecasts and customer check out tools

For more information on this upgrade, visit www.dealersocket.com.

About FireSocket

Based in San Clemente, California, FireSocket is a CRM software provider focused on providing the most comprehensive solution available to the U.S. automotive dealership market with its DealerSocket platform. Currently nearly 500 dealers use the DealerSocket solution to optimize and manage their sales, customer communications and service department operations. Dealership franchises of all sizes, including Van Tuyl, Cush, Gosch, Larry H. Miller, Ken Garff, Tuttle Click, Findlay, United Auto Group, Mossy and Hendrick Automotive, to name a few, are using the DealerSocket platform because of its proven ability to optimize operations, revenues and profits. More information available at www.firesocket.com.
Consul risk management Celebrates 20th Anniversary. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Consul risk management, the authority in security audit and compliance, is marking its 20th anniversary as a technology leader helping companies find an efficient and affordable road to protecting information and ensuring policy and regulatory compliance. Hundreds of large global organizations leverage Consul's solutions to monitor, report on and investigate the activities of privileged users and access to regulated data.



Consul began by offering mainframe auditing and administration solutions, giving the company a unique background in simplifying the security management of the most complex, mission critical systems. Despite pundit predictions on the "death of the mainframe" the continued resiliency of mainframes in today's computing environment has served Consul well.

"In 1986 Consul was three technicians working out of their homes in Holland. It was a time when Windows wasn't worth mentioning as a server system, but enterprises faced many of the same challenges managing security and automating tasks as they do today," said Rob van Hoboken, co-founder of Consul. "Twenty years ago, compliance and standard certification were major drivers in Europe. We saw log file auditing as an essential piece to compliance, but it was difficult and time consuming to analyze, report on and correlate information across multiple platforms in a language that all levels of business could understand. It was this basic need that fueled Consul's growth and inspired the Consul InSight Suite."

In the late 1990s, Consul expanded its auditing and compliance capabilities to the enterprise with The Consul InSight(TM) Suite. Using a patent pending W7 (Who, did What, When, Where, Where from, Where to and on What) methodology, Consul InSight consolidates, normalizes and analyzes vast amounts of user and system activity, delivering instant alerts and reports on who touched what information and how those actions may violate external regulations or internal security policies. Sales of the InSight Suite took off as it uniquely enables organizations to do something no other solution provider does: monitor the behavior of users and match that behavior to acceptable use, change management and privileged use policies. With the arrival of stricter regulations, Consul's solutions became mandatory.

"Consul InSight enables organizations to demonstrate to regulators and auditors that they have proper controls in place over privileged user activities and are effectively managing security risks," said Joseph Sander, president and CEO of Consul. "Sales of Consul's audit and compliance solutions have grown at more than 100% per annum - a trend we expect to continue. Next to Consul's growth in new customers, Consul has seen an 80%+ product upgrade and/or expansion rate among its installed base of customers. This is a testament to the customers' satisfaction with InSight meeting their compliance and audit needs."

"The Philadelphia Stock Exchange has been associated with Consul for 20 years, beginning with support for RACF on the mainframes. Throughout the years we have always experienced top service. In the late '90s they took the extra risk of working with us to create a new segment of their product that would cover the 3rd segment of our platform layer, as their product already addressed our other two. They invested the time and money along with us for a solution that the regulators had been prodding us for years to achieve. Consul is one of those rare organizations that really cares about customer relations regardless of dollars being spent. They are the BMW of the security industry and want nothing but satisfied clients," said Bernie Donnelly, vice president of quality assurance at Philadelphia Stock Exchange, a client since Consul was officially incorporated.

Its unique series of regulatory compliance modules for Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, ISO 17799 and HIPAA enable Consul InSight to instantly deliver the policies and reports needed for specific compliance initiatives. In effect, organizations get an auditor-in-a-box for each new compliance initiative under a single management platform. And with dual headquarters in Washington, D.C. and the Netherlands, Consul is poised to continue its two decades of success and growth.

About Consul risk management, Inc.

Founded in 1986, Consul risk management is an authority in security audit and compliance. Consul provides policy-based user monitoring solutions to track, report on and investigate non-compliant behavior, such as unauthorized activity by administrators and other privileged users. The Consul InSight(TM) Suite automates the process of enterprise-wide log collection, privileged user monitoring, behavioral forensics and compliance reporting.

More than 350 customers around the world rely on Consul to accelerate their security audit and compliance efforts, including AEGON Canada, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Fidelity Financial Services, Ford, Kroger, The New York Times, Office Depot, Philadelphia Stock Exchange, Wachovia and government agencies. Consul has offices in the United States and the Netherlands, and 25 partners worldwide, including BMC Software. For additional information about Consul and its products, services and partners please call +1 800.258.5077 or +31 15.251.3333 (Worldwide), or visit www.consul.com.

Consul InSight, Consul InSight Suite are trademarks of Consul risk management, Inc.
Arsenal Digital Expands Its Industry Leading Suite of Data Protection Solutions. Check it out:
CARY, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Arsenal Digital Solutions(R), a leading provider of data protection services, has expanded its suite of online backup and recovery solutions. The company today introduced services designed specifically for the small and medium-sized business (SMB) and consumer markets. ViaRemote(R) Business Edition and PC Vault(TM) offer the simplicity, ease of use and security users in these markets desire, while leveraging Arsenal's enterprise-proven architecture and 24 petabytes of data management experience. The services will be brought to market through Arsenal's channel partners, which include many of the world's leading service providers.



ViaRemote(R) Business Edition and PC Vault work by automatically transmitting files to a disaster-proof facility, where they are securely stored for quick recovery at any time. Through an intuitive interface that was refined through extensive usability testing, users simply set up their backup preferences and are not required to take any further action. Users can also initiate a manual backup, retrieve data, view the status and history of previous backups, or change settings at any time.

According to Gartner there is an increasing demand for new storage services among small and midsize businesses. "In a January 2006 Gartner survey, 'User Survey: Midsize Business Storage Service Opportunities, North America, 2006,' 43 percent of smaller companies said they plan to use a service provider to backup their servers," said Adam Couture, principal analyst, Gartner. "That's a good thing because 59 percent of them also told us that they only back up to a local target so a fire or other event destroying their servers would likely destroy their backup data as well."

In addition, a recent IDC survey states 69 percent of consumers said that they do not make backup copies to protect their data. "Consumers are increasingly generating and using digital files for personal use," said Doug Chandler, program director for storage software and services at IDC. "Arsenal Digital's PC Vault service is designed to let consumers easily back up these files and have them available for retrieval."

"Arsenal has a long, rich history of meeting the complex data protection needs of enterprises. The time is right to leverage our proven experience and technology to offer similar solutions to SMBs and consumers ," said Frank Brick, chairman & CEO of Arsenal Digital Solutions. "Our new backup and recovery services will enable our traditional service provider partners to expand their reach and drive new revenue. The services will also enable Arsenal to work with new channels, such as distributors, retailers, systems integrators, and VARs."

"As the owner of a financial services business, I need an affordable data protection solution that protects our clients' data and automates the backup process for me and my employees. Having to manually back up our systems, and manage the process takes way too much time," said Tommy Lewis, principal, First Financial Group. "The benefits and the performance in Arsenal's approach are clear: simplicity, ease of use and flexibility. Online backup services like Arsenal's take the hassle out of data protection, which allows me to focus on more strategic issues, like making my clients successful."

"I was surprised at how fast and easy it was to set up and use PC Vault," said Wendy Clarke, a University of North Carolina student. "It's as easy to use as my iPod, and really comforting to know that no matter what happens to my computer, I won't lose my papers, music and photos. And I don't have to burn CDs or even remember to do a backup."

ViaRemote(R) Business Edition and PC Vault are billed on a monthly basis. They require no technical skills on the user's part to set up and operate, and come with Arsenal's world-class 24x7 support and industry-leading experience. With the greatest data management experience in the industry, and an industry-leading recoverability record, Arsenal is well-positioned to expand its online backup service offerings beyond its traditional enterprise customer base. For more information or to purchase, please visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

About Arsenal Digital Solutions

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., Arsenal Digital Solutions is one of the world's largest and most trusted providers of data protection services, delivering the broadest portfolio of fully managed, on-demand solutions. From enterprise data centers and remote offices, to small and medium businesses and consumers, Arsenal delivers secure, scalable, and easy-to-use services to meet the widest range of data protection needs. For more information on Arsenal, its services and solutions, visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

Arsenal Digital Solutions and ViaRemote are registered trademarks and PC Vault is a trademark of Arsenal Digital Solutions USA, Inc. All other trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.
Susquehanna International Group Takes NetApp Performance to the Next Level with Tek-Tools. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Performance -- it matters in the fast-paced and volatile world of business and finance. To maximize their investment in NetApp and to ensure optimal performance, the Susquehanna International Group of Companies (SIG), a leading institutional sales, research, investment banking, and market making firm, has chosen StorageProfiler, Tek-Tools' award-winning storage monitoring and reporting suite, for global management of its Network Appliance environment. SIG will use StorageProfiler to manage its NetApp installations in offices throughout the world including the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia.



Faced with the challenge of optimizing performance and management across a number of distributed NetApp filers that hold mission critical data, SIG needed a secure, and scalable monitoring and reporting solution that could meet their performance needs based on increasing storage growth. To address this challenge, SIG implemented the StorageProfiler for NetApp module to enhance management reporting and performance analysis. SIG's StorageProfiler implementation brings real-time monitoring coupled with historical trend analysis and a normalized view of the entire enterprise via a single pane-of-glass, enabling the IT organization to proactively manage storage growth and avoid costly outages.

According to Norbert Thier, Manager of Server Systems at SIG, the key reason the firm chose StorageProfiler was to simplify the management of its NetApp infrastructure, which is quite comprehensive. "With StorageProfiler, we have significantly reduced the time we spend on forecasting and capacity planning, and the level of automation has dramatically increased our accuracy," said Thier.

"StorageProfiler gives us one platform in which to extract information on all NetApp filers throughout the organization. From our systems administrators to our management team, we now have one system that will be used for day-to-day operations, as well as for budgeting and auditing purposes," continued Thier. "From what we were doing previously, that's a fantastic leap forward."

"By implementing StorageProfiler's NetApp module, we are able to deliver rich, timely reporting and analysis capabilities to key business areas that are critical to our operations," concluded Thier. "Not only were we able to improve performance and drive down costs, but the addition of Profiler also enabled us to add business intelligence views that enhance managing our storage."

"SIG is truly a leader in worldwide financial markets, and as such, both the performance and reliability of its IT infrastructure is key to maintaining their strategic competitive advantage," said Curt Simmons, Vice President of Sales at Tek-Tools. "At the end of the day, it's about the availability of mission-critical applications and the associated data that drives the firm's business. What SIG and Tek-Tools are doing together is a clear indication of the necessity to gain visibility into the storage infrastructure, understand usage patterns, and mitigate the risk of system outages to ensure availability of the systems that support the firm's core business."

About the Susquehanna International Group

The Susquehanna International Group of Companies (SIG) is a leading institutional sales, research, investment banking and market making firm. For institutional investors, SIG offers brokerage in listed and NASDAQ stocks, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), options, program trading and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), as well as differentiated equity research. For corporate clients, SIG offers a range of traditional investment banking services. SIG encompasses a market making operation in over 6,000 stocks, is among the nation's largest option market makers, is the leading sector index options trading firm and is one of the largest liquidity providers in ETFs. SIG has offices in Bala Cynwyd, Boston, Chicago, Dublin, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Shanghai, Stamford and Sydney. For more information, please visit www.sig.com. Susquehanna International Group, LLP (SIG) is comprised of a number of trading and investment related entities under common control.

About Tek-Tools

Tek-Tools Software, Inc. is the recognized leader in the storage resource management space. Tek-Tools' Profiler Suite is a high-performance, modular, Web-based, real-time and historical resource reporting application targeting DAS, NAS, SAN, database, and backup pain points in customer environments. Tek-Tools' headquarters are located at 4020 McEwen Dr., Suite 105, in Dallas, Texas 75244, (972) 980-2890, and on the Web at www.tek-tools.com.
Arsenal Digital Sets New Standard for Effortless PC Backup. Check it out:
CARY, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Arsenal Digital Solutions(R), a leading provider of data protection services, announced availability of a new online backup service designed specifically for consumer needs. PC Vault(TM) provides consumers with effortless data backup and the reliability and security only a company with 24 petabytes of data protection experience can provide. The service automatically backs up files, such as music, photos and financial records, and securely transmits them to a remote data center, where they are available for recovery at any time through an easy-to-use and extremely intuitive user interface.



"Faced with a growing volume of often irreplaceable digital content, backup and recovery has evolved into an emotional issue for many consumers," said Frank Brick, Arsenal's chairman & CEO. "Unfortunately, traditional methods of backup are cumbersome and complicated, and the prospect of losing significant memories, money and time looms large. We designed PC Vault to help consumers easily secure their files offsite and quickly recover them when necessary."

In a recent IDC survey, 69 percent of consumers said that they do not make backup copies to protect their data. "Consumers are increasingly generating and using digital files for personal use," said Doug Chandler, program director for storage software and services at IDC. "Arsenal Digital's PC Vault service is designed to let consumers easily back up these files and have them available for retrieval."

Signing up for PC Vault is as easy as buying a book online. Once set up, the service backs up files automatically and requires no ongoing action on the user's part, which makes data protection truly effortless. If it becomes necessary, however, one click can initiate a manual backup, retrieve files, or allow the user to view the status and history of previous backups.

"I was surprised at how fast and easy it was to set up and use PC Vault," said Wendy Clarke, a University of North Carolina student. "It's as easy to use as my iPod, and really comforting to know that no matter what happens to my computer, I won't lose my papers, music and photos. And I don't have to burn CDs or even remember to do a backup."

PC Vault will be brought to market through Arsenal's channel partners, which include many of the world's leading service providers. The service, which is billed on a monthly basis, requires no technical skills on the user's part to set up and operate, and comes with Arsenal's world-class 24x7 support and industry-leading experience. For more information or to purchase, please visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

About Arsenal Digital Solutions

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., Arsenal Digital Solutions is one of the world's largest and most trusted providers of data protection services, delivering the broadest portfolio of fully managed, on-demand solutions. From enterprise data centers and remote offices, to small and medium businesses and consumers, Arsenal delivers secure, scalable, and easy-to-use services to meet the widest range of data protection needs. For more information on Arsenal, its services and solutions, visit www.arsenaldigital.com.

Arsenal Digital Solutions is a registered trademark and PC Vault is a trademark of Arsenal Digital Solutions USA, Inc. All other trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.
Sigaba Appoints Technology Veteran as Senior Vice President of Sales. Check it out:
SAN MATEO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sigaba, the leading provider of security software infrastructure and solutions, today announced the appointment of Troy Hartless as Senior Vice President of Sales. In his new role, Hartless will be responsible for Global sales and business development efforts for both Federal and Commercial markets, and will report to Edwin Miller, Sigaba's president and Chief Executive Officer.



In his new position, Hartless is responsible for expanding Sigaba's sales organization as well as the planning and execution for the company's strategic sales objectives.

"Troy Hartless is a seasoned business professional with extraordinary strength in leadership and strategy that is instrumental for this exciting period of growth," said Miller. "I am honored to welcome Troy to the Sigaba team."

Prior to joining Sigaba, Hartless served as Vice President of Enterprise Solutions and Product Management at GTSI Corporation. Prior to GTSI, he was Chief Operating Officer at Infodata Systems, where he was responsible for global sales, consulting, and marketing until McDonald Bradley acquired Infodata Systems in 2005. During his tenure at Infodata, Hartless served in several management positions including vice president of sales and marketing, and vice president and general manager of the Public Sector.

Before Infodata, Hartless served in several senior executive positions at Solutions Technology International, Ikimbo, Inc., and at a joint venture between Ericsson and General Electric.

ABOUT SIGABA

Sigaba provides patented security infrastructure solutions that enable industry and government to exchange information securely with their colleagues, customers, partners and constituents. The company's standards-based SigabaNet platform takes the complexity out of strong encryption and enables organizations to easily authenticate users across federated environments. The result is a unique way to separately encrypt sensitive data in order to mitigate risks while strengthening relationships, improving efficiencies and safeguarding intellectual property. Sigaba's technology is used by government organizations and businesses to secure the world's most critical information. Sigaba is headquartered in San Mateo, California with sales offices in Reston, Virginia; San Diego, California; Chicago, Denver, and New York. Sigaba takes its name from the SIGABA encryption machine used by the United States during WWII - it was the only device of its kind never compromised by the enemy. For more information visit www.sigaba.com.
Curam Software Recognized for Setting the Bar for Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Curam Software, a leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, today announced that it received top marks in current offering and strategy as a "Leader" in the Forrester Wave(TM) report, "Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks, Q3 2006" published September 15, 2006.



Trumping eight other vendors, Curam Software received top scores in the current offering criteria which evaluated major needs-based and contributions-based program including income support, medical assistance, unemployment insurance, child care, child welfare, child support enforcement, and workers' compensation. Additional evaluation was performed on key business processes including integrated case management, integrated eligibility, business process support, financial administration support, flexibility, and customer support. Curam Software also received top marks in the strategy criteria which evaluated product direction and services strategy. According to the Forrester Wave report, "Dublin-based Curam sets the bar for human and social services enterprise frameworks."

"Forrester evaluated leading human and social services enterprise framework vendors across 93 criteria and found that Curam Software has established early human and social services enterprise framework leadership thanks to its program-specific capabilities and multiprogram enterprise focus," the Forrester Wave report said.

The report found that Curam Software is an especially good fit for government agencies who have a broad scope for human and social services integration, prefer working with the top system integrators, need support for major needs-based and contribution-based programs, and want a vendor with global reach.

"We are extremely pleased with Forrester's evaluation," said Ronan Rooney, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, Curam Software, Inc. "The high marks we received reflect the tireless work of our employees and our commitment to providing citizen-centric solutions to streamline the delivery of human and social services. Curam will continue to develop and enhance our Social Enterprise Management solutions to revolutionize service delivery and provide more program-specific applications."

The research firm developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria after examining past research, undertaking user need assessments, as well as conducting vendor and expert interviews. According to the report, "Curam is the clear Human and Social Services Enterprise Frameworks Leader. Curam's enterprise framework, enterprise modules, and solution modules provide large government organizations, such as US state governments, a comprehensive set of well-integrated capabilities designed to support its integrated service delivery models."

Social Enterprise Management (SEM) is a new category of enterprise software that is client-centric and leverages COTS products to transform as well as modernize health, human services, labor, and social security agencies. SEM provides comprehensive enterprise eligibility IT solutions crossing agency boundaries, simplifying policies, and integrating with existing technology. SEM fosters holistic, convenient services for citizens, as well as provides screening for needs and referrals to state and community-based resources.

About Curam Software

Curam Software is the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions delivering best-in-class applications for social enterprises including, health, human services, labor, workers' compensation, and social security programs. Using the Curam Business Application Suite(TM) agencies can immediately reap the benefits of improved business processes, automation and efficiency through integration--for the same or lower cost as projects based on traditional custom developments or transfer systems. The Curam Business Application Suite, underpinned by the Curam Enterprise Framework(TM), combines the advantages of an enterprise platform with the business and technical flexibility required to allow agencies to implement solutions to meet their short-term and strategic objectives. Curam Software is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with additional facilities located in New York, Washington, D.C., and the United Kingdom. For more information, please visit www.curamsoftware.com.
SIPERIAN DEMONSTRATES BUSINESS IMPACT OF ITS CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM AT ITS ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE. Check it out:
SIPERIAN DEMONSTRATES BUSINESS IMPACT OF ITS CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM AT ITS ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE



Siperian User Community Creates Positive Momentum for Siperian HubTM





Princeton, NJ September 27, 2006 Siperian - a developer of an award-winning, adaptive platform for customer-centric master data management - today announced that it recently completed its annual user conference on September 20th. The company met with its user base to share success stories and discuss the overall business impact of the Siperian HubTM, a multi-product data integration platform that helps organizations entitled; Delivering Business Impact from Siperian Customer-Centric MDM Platform: Learn. Discuss. Discover., further demonstrates Siperians ongoing commitment to helping organizations focus on the business impact and the business case for customer-centric master data management.




Siperian established the conference so users could share personal accounts of how Siperian has positively effected their bottom-line. Customers discussed Siperian Hub best practices, leveraging Siperian Hub to solve their changing business needs and requirements, and the latest Siperian product enhancements and offerings. Designed as an open exchange among peers and Siperian solution experts, the user conference has become the ideal forum for customers who represent a variety of industries to exchange ideas and participate in future product enhancement discussions.



Our annual user conference enables us to do more than just engage with our user community, it allows us to truly listen to the voice of our customers, said Peter Caswell, CEO of Siperian. By creating an open exchange of information, ideas and experiences, we establish a unique environment that enables our customers to not only learn from industry best practices but also play a key role in the future impact of our product roadmap.



Siperians Annual User Conference follows closely on the heels of the companys recently announced set of architectural styles that enable organizations to deploy their MDM solution in a manner that best fits their unique business requirements (See announcement dated 9.11.06 - SIPERIAN ACCELERATES ADOPTION OF CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT WITH DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURAL STYLES) and Siperian new Business Value Services that help organizations identify and quantify the economic benefits of addressing data reliability and data integration issues as the first step in their roadmap to a solid master data management (MDM) strategy (See announcement dated 9.18.06 - SIPERIAN LAUNCHES BUSINESS VALUE AND FAST START SERVICES; ENABLES RAPID JUSTIFICATION AND EXECUTION OF CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT)



About Siperian Inc.

Siperian Inc. offers an award-winning, adaptive platform for customer-centric data integration & management. With Siperians metadata driven configurable architecture, organizations can rapidly adapt the award-winning Siperian Hub to a specific solution style; ensure that the solution coexists with multiple legacy hubs and external data sources; and then evolve the solution over time with additional capabilities or to new geographies and business units. Siperian is the only vendor to offer a set of proven solutions that can start small within a business unit to deliver rapid return on investment and then grow over time across the enterprise to become the master data management platform with data services for complete operational context with unified customer views without locking the company into a single vendors proprietary architecture. As a result, Siperian helps companies improve operational customer relationship management and analytical processes, as well as other business processes such as regulatory compliance, order-to-cash and new product launches all at significantly lower total cost of ownership, faster time-to-value and demonstrably higher return on investment as compared to other alternatives. For further information, visit us on the Web at http://www.siperian.com or call 1-866-SIPERIAN (1-866-747-3742).
SageCom Launches into Hosted PBX Market. Check it out:
 
 
The seeming increase in natural disasters has been a boon to the hosted services market, which has seen vendors putting everything from customer management to business productivity on the Web.
 
While many firms tout the low-cost entry to sophisticated tools that were once the province of only the largest of firms, many organizations are looking to on-line providers as a way to ensure that business keeps moving even in the event of a catastrophic loss.


 
But while access to CRM and ERP systems is a major concern among business managers, nothing will shut down a thriving enterprise like the loss of telecommunications services. So it’s no wonder that a wealth of hosted PBX (News - Alert) service providers has entered the market over the past several years.
 
SageCom Inc. is one of the latest entrants into an increasingly crowded field. The company, based on Miami — which has had its share of natural disasters over the years — just launched a hosted PBX service in connection with its SageVone VoIP system.
 
The system essentially offers everything an in-house PBX system would, overseeing main telephone line connectivity, call center capabilities, voice mailboxes, teleconferencing operations and other services, from one of numerous locations.
 
“It’s a way for businesses to have a phone system that continues to operate no matter what happens,” said Jerry Huyghe, marketing and sales manager at SageCom during an interview with TMCnet. “When customers can’t reach a business for a week after a major disaster, they think the business is no longer in operation. That can have repercussions for years.”
 
While even a hosted system cannot ring company headquarters if it’s been destroyed by an earthquake or hurricane, it can still contact voicemail, mobile systems and remote offices to provide at least a modicum of continuity.
 
Huyghe said that while even large firms are starting to streamline IP and telecommunications operations with hosted solutions, SageCom designed its version with the SMB in mind.
 
“We’re looking for niche markets to approach,” he said. “There is a lot of interest from real estate offices because they tend to have multiple agents and remote offices. We’re looking at who’s buying now, and how we can bundle specific features and applications to different markets.”
 
SageCom also designed a lot of flexibility into the system. It’s SIP-compatible, making it interoperable with most of the feature-laden phone systems on the market. All settings are Web-based and user-configurable. It also sports an integrated Windows toolbar tied to Explorer and Outlook, providing caller ID and other features.
 
“Businesses that can’t afford $10,000 on an in-house PBX system, and pay even more to have it continuously updated and maintained, can have all the features that a Fortune 100 company has at $30 per month,” Huyghe said. “A typical PBX system requires a professional technician and several days to reconfigure the system, even if someone simply changes offices. A hosted solution is plug-and-play. Extensions can be configured day-by-day to ring on the mobile, at home or a remote location.”
 
For more information, please visit the company online at www.sagecominc.com.
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Arthur Cole is a freelance writer specializing in high-tech information and communications. To see more of his articles, visit his columnist page.
Tumbleweed Validation Authority Secures FIPS 201 Certification. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), a leading provider of email security, file transfer security, and identity validation software and appliances, today announced that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has certified the Tumbleweed Validation Authority(TM) as a compliant certificate validation solution meeting requirements for validating digital certificates embedded in Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards of Federal employees and contractors. Based on widely adopted open standards and technologies, including the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP, RFC 2560), the Tumbleweed Validation Authority validates the status of digital certificates in real time, ensuring that revoked credentials cannot be used for smart card login, secure email, web access, wireless, VPN, or other electronic transactions.



The certification qualifies Tumbleweed's public key infrastructure (PKI) validation software and appliances for any Federal agency seeking compliance with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) and the Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201). HSPD-12 mandates that on October 27, 2006, Federal agencies must start issuing FIPS 201 compliant common identification cards (smart cards) for controlling physical and logical access to government facilities and information systems. The government will eventually roll out the smart cards to millions of Federal employees and contractors, and FIPS 201 requires that each card must contain a unique credential number, a digital certificate and an expiration date.

"GSA's FIPS 201 approval of the Tumbleweed Validation Authority certifies that our product meets Federal PIV requirements for functionality and government-wide interoperability, providing Federal agencies with the flexibility to deploy a single infrastructure capable of multiple validation protocols in both enterprise and Federal Bridge-enabled environments," said Ann Smith, Vice President of Federal Sales for Tumbleweed. "Functionality, flexibility, and interoperability are key factors for agencies to keep in mind as they seek to satisfy current needs and anticipate future requirements relevant to HSPD-12/FIPS 201 compliant solutions. This is especially true for agencies that will need to support trusted relationships with external, cross-certified PKIs."

When a government or contractor employee uses the smart card to access a Federal information system or facility, the Tumbleweed Validation Authority enables FIPS 201 mandated digital certificate validation via OCSP in a process that is instantaneous and completely transparent to the end user. The Tumbleweed Validation Authority also meets the GSA's requirements for Delegated Path Discovery and Validation, enhancing validation services for cross-certified entities.

Recently, Tumbleweed authorized reseller, Operational Resource Consultants (ORC), a leading provider of PKI authentication services, was granted certification as an HSPD-12 Shared Service Provider (SSP), utilizing the Tumbleweed Validation Authority to provide validation services for its Federal customers.

The Tumbleweed Validation Authority is the most widely deployed identity validation solution within U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence communities, offering critical infrastructure and identity protection in demanding environments. The product suite also features a broad portfolio of independent third party evaluations and certifications, including Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 3 certification, based on one of the strongest protection profiles for PKI products.

The FIPS 201 certification extends to the following components of the Tumbleweed Validation Authority product suite:

-- Tumbleweed Validation Authority (VA Server) - A FIPS 140-2 high-performance multi-platform solution to process client digital certificate status queries using a number of different protocols including OCSP, SCVP, and VA certificate revocation lists (CRL). The platform also includes the Tumbleweed Valicert VA Repeater, available as software or as a hardware appliance. The VA Repeater Appliance solution offers a secure, hardened Linux-based platform, with Tumbleweed's Repeater Server software to provide a drop-in solution for deploying a high-scale, high-reliability digital certificate infrastructure for distributed hosted computing environments

-- Server Validator - A flexible plug-in application for enabling digital certificate validation in the most widely used secure Web servers and Web application servers available on UNIX, Linux, Windows, and Apple server platforms

-- Desktop Validator (Standard and Enterprise) - Flexible client solutions for enabling Microsoft Windows based desktop and server applications to validate digital certificates via the Microsoft Cryptographic API (CAPI). Includes support for automatically deploying and configuring Desktop Validator plug-ins for ease of large-scale deployment

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on plans and expectations as of the date of the press release, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the guidance given at this time. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to the functionality and performance of the products in the Tumbleweed Validation Authority product suite, as well as the continued compliance of such products with requirements such as those relevant to HSPD-12 or FIPS. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 16, 2006 and Form 10-Q filed August 8, 2006.

Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release. Although this release may remain available on Tumbleweed's website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that Tumbleweed is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.

About Tumbleweed Validation Authority

Tumbleweed Validation Authority (VA) (formerly known as Valicert Validation Authority), the leading identity validation solution, enables banks, governments, and businesses worldwide to secure highly valued and trusted transactions, ranging from corporate network access to multi-million dollar electronic transactions to physical access of military facilities. VA is a fourth-generation product line, offering a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable framework for real-time validation of digital certificates, based on numerous well-accepted international security standards and open technologies. VA is Certificate Authority neutral, FIPS 140-1, DOD JITC, Identrust, and Common Criteria compliant, as well as part of the Identrust, SWIFT Trust Act, BACS and Global Trust Authority financial trust infrastructures. VA has been deployed by hundreds of customers worldwide for over ten years, including the U.S. Department of Defense and all branches of the U.S. military which utilize VA to check the status of more than 3.5 million Common Access Cards used to secure system and network access, email, and other mission-critical resources.

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.

Tumbleweed provides security solutions for email protection, file transfers, and identity validation that allow organizations to safely conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three comprehensive product suites: MailGate(R), SecureTransport(TM), and Validation Authority(TM). MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables business to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. Validation Authority is the world-leading solution for determining the validity of digital certificates. Tumbleweed's enterprise and government customers include ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), St. Luke's Episcopal Healthcare System, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, and all four branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Tumbleweed was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.

Tumbleweed, the Arrows logo, MailGate, SecureTransport, Tumbleweed Validation Authority and Validation Authority are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Tumbleweed Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Italy-Based Integra SpA is Newest Member of Protegrity's Alliance Network. Check it out:
STAMFORD, Conn & MILAN, Italy --(Business Wire)-- Protegrity(R) Corporation, the leader in Data Security Management(TM) solutions, announced it has further expanded the Protegrity Alliance Network with the signing of a reseller agreement with Integra SpA, a leading security company. Based in Milan, Italy, Integra SpA will serve as a reseller of the Defiance(TM) Security Software Suite to customers in Italy. Integra SpA will also provide implementation services and first-level technical support for Protegrity solutions.



"Our agreement with Protegrity provides us access to the only data and application security suite on the market designed to protect enterprise data from acquisition to deletion," said Franco Rasello. "We are seeing a growing demand among Italian companies for a centrally managed security solution that can be deployed enterprise-wide, while giving them the confidence that their sensitive data is protected throughout its lifecycle."

Companies use Defiance Security Software Suite to protect data at the application, database, file, and storage levels. With Defiance companies can address immediate security needs and comply with global banking and legal regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, the European Union Directive on Data Protection, Basel II, the Bank Secrecy Act and PCI.

"Integra SpA brings proven expertise in auditing and database security to its customers; it recognizes that data security is a crucial component to any business operation," noted Gordon Rapkin, president and CEO of Protegrity. "With Protegrity's Defiance Security Software Suite, Integra's banking, utility/transportation, and enterprise clients gain the enterprise-wide control of data they require to meet industry and EU standards, and they have local access to Integra's data security expertise and support in Italy."

"Protegrity provides products with the best cost/benefit ratios available today; its portfolio allows Integra representative to address security needs in the major customer asset, i.e., company databases, where integrity, confidentiality and access control have to face operational constrains," said Yann Bongiovanni, Integra Director of Security Technologies.

This agreement comes on the heels of the 2006 Global Information Security Survey which shows that data security breaches continue to vex the majority of business technology professionals around the globe, even though most do not acknowledge their own vulnerability to malicious attacks. In fact, 13% of respondents in Europe, 16% in China and 24% in India say their organizations are more vulnerable to security dangers than a year ago.

ABOUT PROTEGRITY

Protegrity Corporation delivers enterprise-wide data security management solutions for end-to-end protection for applications and sensitive data, enabling companies to deploy comprehensive security policies with centralized management and auditing. Protegrity is committed to protecting sensitive data wherever it resides in today's highly distributed and heterogeneous computing environments.

Protegrity empowers management to take responsibility for sensitive data by mitigating legal and financial risks associated with security breaches and assuring compliance with regulatory requirements for data security.

For more than ten years, Protegrity's award-winning technology has enabled customers to address and resolve critical security challenges. Protegrity invented the core technology used for data-level encryption and owns key patents for database and application security and protection. For more information, visit www.protegrity.com or call 203.326.7200 x1004.

Protegrity and Defiance are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Protegrity Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

ABOUT INTEGRA

Integra SpA is a leading Italian company specializing in Information Technology Security.

Integra Group's mission is to provide solutions which can help customers to meet their targets in the IT Security and Legacy Application Integration.

Within IT Security, Integra is the leading company in auditing, and has achieved important results promoting products today used by the most important Italian organizations.

For more information, visit www.integra-group.it or call +390289307051.
Rotani Introduces VideoPuck(TM) Technology for IPTV. Check it out:
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. --(Business Wire)-- Rotani, Inc., a leading developer and designer of wireless 802.11 networking solutions, today announced the release of its VideoPuck(TM) software for IPTV use. An after-market upgrade to commercial Wi-Fi equipment, VideoPuck offers IPTV service providers an immediate wireless solution to facilitate their IPTV rollouts and reduce installation costs and time.



One key issue for carriers wishing to deploy IPTV services is how to facilitate an appropriate connection between the DSL modem and the IPTV Set Top Box connected to the TV. Traditional installation methods require the installer to run new wiring, which is very time consuming, costly and undesirable to the home-owner.

A wireless (Wi-Fi) connection is generally the solution of choice for both the home-owner and service provider. Yet today's commercial Wi-Fi gear is used predominately for data networking, and does not provide support for wireless multicast IPTV. What's more, Wi-Fi gear suffers from packet loss that ultimately results in screen pixilation and poor video quality.

VideoPuck software turns today's commercial Wi-Fi gear into a robust wireless solution for streaming multicast IPTV. VideoPuck is basically a wireless replacement of Ethernet cables and just as simple to install. Without any user intervention, VideoPuck automatically configures and establishes an error-free link for wireless transmission of IPTV. VideoPuck is processor and radio chip independent.

"We have already validated VideoPuck on commercial platforms sold by leading Wi-Fi gear vendors for less than $49," said Nicholas Funke, Executive VP of Rotani. "The video quality on this low-cost platform is immaculate and the range is exceptional, even when surrounded by multiple WLANs co-located in neighboring apartments."

IPTV service providers can now easily upgrade their current Wi-Fi gear with VideoPuck to accelerate and increase their return from IPTV. VideoPuck is available via open licensing agreements and we can be contacted via email at [email protected].

About Rotani, Inc.

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Rotani, Inc. specializes in the development of high-performance Wireless LAN (WLAN) communication systems. The company's flagship product, AirReferee(TM), is a performance-enhancing WLAN technology that automatically circumvents and reduces interference between neighboring wireless systems. Rotani's solutions, currently sold as reference designs, will take wireless networking to the next level and enable a new generation of wireless multimedia products and applications for the digital home, the small office, as well as a scalable wireless network architecture for the enterprise market. Rotani is privately held. For more information go to www.rotani.com.
Palisade Systems and Zix Corporation to Offer Fully Integrated Compliance Solution to Protect Sensitive Data. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Palisade Systems Inc., a leading provider of comprehensive compliance and content monitoring solutions and Zix Corporation (ZixCorp(R)), (NASDAQ: ZIXI), the leader in hosted services for email encryption, today announced a strategic partnership to add ZixCorp's Email Encryption Services to Palisade's PacketSure content monitoring and filtering solution. Under the terms of the agreement, Palisade will also integrate ZixCorp's powerful HIPPA and GLBA policy inspection technology into the PacketSure solution. This will provide PacketSure a mature technology that has been used for the policy scanning of billions of email messages over the last 5 years.



"By combining our monitoring technology and ZixCorp's encryption service and industry expertise in the healthcare and financial services market we provide a solution that not only protects email messages, but other communication methods, including Instant Messaging, Web-mail, and FTP," said Kurt Shedenhelm, president and CEO of Palisade Systems. "Our combined solution provides a comprehensive content compliance protection solution on all methods of communication. While competing vendors provide pieces of an overall solution, Palisade and ZixCorp deliver a completely integrated solution."

Palisade Systems will now provide advanced content control with early identification of violations, automatic email encryption, centralized policy enforcement and reporting. As a result of this agreement Palisade will also deliver boundary-based email encryption for customers who need to protect sensitive information as it travels over the Internet. With this solution, email can be automatically encrypted based on content or manually encrypted by the end user. By enabling automatic enforcement of corporate policies, organizations can help to control the flow of information in and out of the corporate network and keep sensitive information secure.

"This agreement broadens ZixCorp's reach into the content monitoring and filtering space as we continue to expand our channel distribution capabilities ," said Nigel Johnson, vice president of business development and product management for ZixCorp. "By joining our Email Encryption Service, Palisade customers will now be able to connect to all ZixCorp customers including four of the five federal banking regulators and the one in eight hospitals that use ZixCorp today."

Key benefits of Palisade PacketSure powered by ZixCorp:

1. A regulatory safety net for organizations bound by legislation such as HIPAA or GLBA

2. An integrated solution from respected leaders in the healthcare and financial services markets

3. Compliance monitoring and control across all communication methods used by employees protecting against inadvertent leaks of sensitive data

4. Automatic email encryption without any user interaction

5. Flexible send-to-anyone email encryption, including the use of TLS, S/MIME, OpenPGP, direct to the inbox "push" and web-based "pull" technologies

6. Business controls without impeding business flow

About Palisade Systems, Inc.

Founded in 1996, Palisade Systems, Inc., is a leading provider of enterprise content compliance security and data protection solutions with over 500 customers across North America and Europe. Palisade security appliances help organizations proactively secure intellectual property and private client information from leaking outside the network, define and enforce access to internal network resources, and enforce compliance with federal privacy and industry security regulations. Palisade Systems customers include prominent clients in healthcare, financial services, insurance industries, and universities. For more information, please visit www.palisadesys.com or contact Palisade's sales department at 1.888.824.0720.

About Zix Corporation

ZixCorp is the leading provider of hosted email encryption and e-prescribing services. ZixCorp's hosted Email Encryption Service provides an easy and cost-effective way to ensure customer privacy and regulatory compliance for corporate email. Its PocketScript(R) e-prescribing service reduces costs and improves patient care by automating the prescription process between payors, doctors, and pharmacies. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.
AVST Expands Relationship with Novell to Further Extend CallXpress(R) Integration to Novell GroupWise. Check it out:
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced it has joined the Novell PartnerNet program with plans to further extend the integration between its flagship CallXpress unified communications platform and Novell GroupWise, a leading alternative to Microsoft Exchange. The expanded relationship with Novell is part of an ongoing AVST initiative to maximize the interoperability of AVST's products and elevate the company's stature as an expert in unifying communications by providing the marketplace with a consistent source of innovation, education, and options when it comes to choosing the optimal communications solution.



"This stronger relationship with Novell and our commitment to work with Novell to further extend the interoperability of our CallXpress Unified Communication platform with Novell GroupWise is another milestone of our 'Know Your Options' initiative," said AVST's Vice President of Product Management, Tom Minifie. "The ultimate goal of this initiative is to encourage professionals to take advantage of newer technologies and advancements in enterprise communications that can result in improved customer service, better return on investment, and a significant increase in their competitive advantage."

One of the advanced communications technology options available to enterprise customers today is AVST's popular CallXpress solution, which delivers world-class voice mail, call processing, fax, advanced unified messaging and speech-enabled capabilities. It is the optimal choice for businesses of all sizes because it offers the most complete set of migration options from first generation voice mail and call processing solutions that are rapidly approaching end-of-life, as well as integrates with a wide variety of e-mail platforms including Novell GroupWise. The powerful interoperability of the CallXpress platform enables customers to easily integrate CallXpress with existing communications technologies from other vendors, reducing the need for customers to invest in costly infrastructure replacement and end user training programs when replacing their first generation voice mail and call processing solutions.

For example, CallXpress can easily be installed, managed, and maintained at any company or organization that currently uses Novell GroupWise, a complete collaboration software solution that provides information workers with e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging, task management, and contact and document management functions. CallXpress enables GroupWise users to play voice messages and receive faxes as easily as managing e-mail messages. When out of the office, users can dial into the CallXpress system to access all voice, fax and e-mail messages from any telephone. CallXpress reads GroupWise e-mail messages using advanced text-to-speech technology. All these enhanced communications capabilities are available to an enterprise by connecting CallXpress to the company's existing Novell GroupWise solution.

"It is important for our customers to have access to best-of-breed unified communications options that can result in increased efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness in the workforce," said Wendy Steinle, Novell Director of Product Marketing for Workgroup Solutions. "AVST provides our customers with proven, integration-ready technology that features simple installation and administration as well as user-friendly interfaces."

Further demonstrating its leadership and commitment to innovation in the unified communications space, AVST is contributing to Novell's Cool Solutions online community, which offers articles, tips and Q&A from users, administrators, and developers, as well as free tools to download. AVST also recently teamed up with Business Communications Review to launch a series of educational programs, including a webinar, print ad campaign, and electronic banner campaign, in conjunction with VoiceCon Fall. The webinar, titled "A VoiceCon Webinar: Unifying Communications in a Multi-Vendor Environment," took place earlier in August and can be viewed online at http://www.avst.com/r/bcr2.asp.

In addition, the AVST website features "Unified Communications: the Movie," a short film produced by the company that explains the benefits of unified communications and AVST's flagship CallXpress solution. The movie can be viewed by visiting AVST's home page at www.avst.com.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions for businesses of all sizes. Through its world-class unified communications platform, CallXpress(R), and its innovative speech application module, Seneca(R), AVST offers the industry's most powerful suite of second generation communications solutions including voice messaging, unified messaging, speech-enabled applications (including automated attendant and hands-free mobile worker access) and call processing (including embedded IVR).

The CallXpress unified communications platform is designed to facilitate the enterprise migration from legacy TDM call processing and voice mail solutions to IP-enabled unified communications by delivering the interoperability, scalability, feature depth and flexibility, and administrative capabilities that enterprise IT and Telecom teams are demanding.

Headquartered in Orange County, CA, AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, WA and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. With over 35,000 systems installed worldwide, AVST's unified communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. Established in September 2003, AVST was formed from the combined businesses of Sound Advantage (established in 1997) and the AVT division (established in 1982) of Captaris, Inc. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.
California Clean Tech Open Announces Inaugural Winners. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Organizers of the California Clean Tech Open gathered at City Hall yesterday to unveil the five winners of the inaugural competition. Each winner received more than $100,000 worth of prizes in a "start-up in a box" prize package comprised of $50,000 cash, legal services, accounting services, public relations consulting, office space and executive search services. The winners are: Adura Technologies in the Energy Efficiency Category, GreenVolts in the Renewable Energy Category, KiteShip in the Transportation Category, EDC Technologies Inc. in the Smart Power Category, and Crystal Clear Technologies in the Water Management Category.



"The response from entrepreneurs to the California Clean Tech Open has been overwhelming and has exceeded our expectations," said competition co-chairs Laurent Pacalin and Michael Santullo. "The judges' decisions were difficult, but we're confident that the competition's winners offer the best combination of sound business model and innovative technology in their respective categories. These five companies exemplify the competition's mission to encourage economic growth and environmental sustainability by creating a clean technology cluster in California."

The competition's awards ceremony took place from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and features remarks from the winners, competition organizers, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, leading venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld and Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Winners and First Runners Up

The California Investor Owned Utilities Energy Efficiency Prize:

Adura Technologies (www.adura.com) provides a wireless lighting management solution designed to save businesses over 50 percent on lighting energy costs and offers a quick payback. With flexibility enough to allow easy configuration for growing or shrinking lighting needs, Adura enables dramatic energy savings as well as dynamic control capabilities.

First runner up in the Energy Efficiency Category: Nila Inc. (www.nila.tv).

The AMD Smart Power Prize:

EDC Technologies has developed a hot water controller that reduces natural gas consumption in Multifamily Apartments, Condominiums, Dormitories and Hotels/Motels by 15 to 40 percent. The technology allows users to see proof of their savings via the internet where they are offered the ability to view performance of other components within their hot water environment.

First runner up in the Smart Power Category: Energy Recommerce (www.energyrecommerce.com).

The Lexus Transportation Prize:

KiteShip (www.kiteship.com) develops, builds and sells very large traction kites, which reduce ship owners' crippling fuel costs by up to 25 percent, and vastly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants.

First runner up in the Transportation Category: Aurora Biofuels (www.aurorabiofuels.com).

The Agora Foundation Water Management Prize:

Crystal Clear Technologies (CCT), using nano-coating technology, has created proprietary filter media with dramatically higher absorption capability and capacity than currently available media, at considerably lower costs. CCT can deliver potable water from a river at $1.50 per 100 gallons, versus competitive systems that offer $16.50 - $49 per 100 gallons.

First runner up in the Water Management Category: Meridian Design (www.uvaquastar.com).

The Renewable Energy Prize:

GreenVolts (www.greenvolts.com) supplies renewable energy matching peak demand at costs competitive with natural gas used for peak demand generation. Our revolutionary High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) technology produces energy at half the cost of traditional solar panels without reliance on scarce silicon wafers.

First runner up in the Renewable Energy Category: CoolEarth Solar (www.coolearthsolar.com).

"The California Clean Tech Open is a perfect example of the practical initiatives that will make the city of San Francisco and the state of California, epicenters for innovation in environmentally-conscious technology," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "The City is honored to host this groundbreaking competition. Today's winners will be an important part of the fast-growing, clean-tech industry in San Francisco."

The California Clean Tech Open received more than 155 submissions to its initial challenge in May. A panel of experts--including venture capitalists, researchers and faculty from the state's leading universities and research laboratories, and leading industrialists from related sectors--narrowed the field to 43 finalists in June. The finalists spent the remainder of the summer preparing their business plans, which were submitted at the end of August. Judges spent the first several weeks of September determining the winners.

About The California Clean Tech Open

The mission of the California Clean Tech Open is to encourage the development of clean technology companies that foster a healthy natural environment -- companies that provide environmental benefits in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution reduction and resource protection, and conservation. The competition will also serve as a platform to educate the public, as well as the participants, about the environmental challenges we face and new technologies that can provide solutions to those challenges. The inaugural competition opens in April 2006, and winners will be announced in September at a finals event in the Bay Area. The best plan submitted from five categories -- Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Smart Power, Transportation, and Water Management -- will be awarded a bundle of prizes to create a sustainable business. Prize sponsors to date include: Energy Efficiency -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company, and San Diego Gas and Electric; Smart Power -- AMD; Transportation -- Lexus; Water Management -- Agora Foundation, led by President Wynnette LaBrosse. The competition was initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Club of Northern California (MITCNC) with charter partners Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Horn Murdock Cole, A&R Edelman, Plug & Play Real Estate, PeopleConnect and CalCEF. Ernst and Young and MCF Corp. are also supporting the competition as Gold Sponsors.

A group of entrepreneurs and technologists from Silicon Valley -- Derry and Charlene Kabcenell, Mark Farley, Frank H. Levinson, Geoff Ralston, and Michael and Amy Santullo -- have generously provided the charter funding to launch the competition. The 2006 Host City is the City of San Francisco. Venture capital partners are Advanced Technology Ventures, Chevron Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Foundation Capital, New Enterprise Associates, J.P. Morgan's Bay Area Equity Fund, and Venrock Associates. Innovation partners include Electric Power Research Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center, SRI International, and Technology Ventures Corporation. Competition partners include Clean Edge and Clean Tech Venture Network. University partners include: the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley Institute for the Environment; Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students; Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University; Stanford Graduate School of Business Environmental Management Club; and Stanford Graduate School of Business Energy Club. Competition supporters include California Clean Energy Fund, Environmental Entrepreneurs, CalPERS, and Natural Resources Defense Council. The competition co-chairs are Laurent Pacalin and Michael Santullo.

Acterra: Action for a Sustainable Earth, a California 501(c)3 non-profit public benefit corporation (Tax ID 23-7064937) is the administrative and fiscal sponsor of the 2006 California Clean Tech Open legally responsible for the activities of the competition. Acterra is located at 3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303-4303. Additional details about the program are available at www.CaCleanTech.com.
Quintet of New Dell Servers Designed for Growing Businesses. Check it out:
ROUND ROCK, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today announced five server models engineered to deliver increased performance, reduced complexity and business-ready solutions for businesses of all sizes.

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are designed to help small businesses grow and large businesses that need remote office support. These servers -- combined with the availability of Microsoft(R) Small Business Server (SBS) R2, Dell OpenManage(TM) systems management software and Dell services -- reduce complexity and simplify IT operations, allowing customers more time to manage and grow their business.



"Dell is committed to understanding the unique technology challenges our customers face and responding with products and services that specifically meet their needs," said Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell's U.S. Small Business division. "Developed with feedback from fast-growing customers like Sew What?, winner of the 2006 Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award(1), our complete line of small-business servers is another milestone in our continued goal of reducing complexity and simplifying IT management for our customers so they can get back to business."

Higher Performance Means Increased Efficiency, Room to Grow

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers feature dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors for dramatic increases in performance, scalability and power efficiency, especially when running multiple applications such as file serving, email, and databases.

"Our Web site helped our business grow nearly 45 percent last year and managing all of the business it generates requires a lot of storage -- from global customer information to thousands of drapery and fabric images to QuickBooks files," said beta customer Megan Duckett, a small-business owner and founder of custom theatrical drapery manufacturer Sew What? Inc. "With the power and scalability of the PowerEdge 860, we still have plenty of room to grow and soon will be able to host our Web site in-house."

PowerEdge 1900, a dual-socket tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 5100 series processors, delivers:

-- A platform optimized for database, messaging, file and print sharing as well as remote location deployments

-- Up to 211 percent increase in performance than previous generation(2)

-- Up to 16GB fully buffered DIMMs for up to three-times theoretical throughput compared with DDR-2 memory

-- Embedded NIC featuring TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) designed for improved performance

-- DRAC5 (Dell Remote Access Controller) for improved performance in secure remote management

-- IMPI 2.0 and SMASH, which deliver simplified management capabilities today and in the future via a standardized management infrastructure

PowerEdge 840, a general-purpose tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- An ideal platform for remote offices, retail POS and small businesses

-- Up to 66 percent increase in performance than previous generation(3)

-- SAS and SATA hot-pluggable storage technology

-- Available with Microsoft Windows Storage Server R2 for file serving

-- Optional TOE-capable NIC

PowerEdge 860, a 1U rack-mountable server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- Simplified enterprise-class server capabilities that maximize data center density and performance while reducing power consumption

-- A platform for edge-of-the-network, infrastructure or Web applications for organizations of all sizes

-- Up to 66 percent increase in performance than previous generation(3)

-- Up to 146 percent improvement in performance per watt(4)

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

-- Optional TOE-capable NIC

PowerEdge SC440, an entry-level tower server featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 3000 series processors, delivers:

-- Small-business capabilities for file and print sharing, small workgroup, e-mail, Web or dedicated applications

-- Up to 40 percent increase in performance than previous generation(5)

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

-- Optional internal backup tape

-- Easily accessible and serviceable tower chassis

PowerEdge SC1430, featuring dual-core Intel Xeon 5100 series processors, delivers:

-- One of the industry's smallest design for file and print sharing, dedicated workgroup, e-mail messaging and small Web server applications

-- Up to 155 percent increase in performance than previous generation(6)

-- Up to 8GB fully buffered DIMMs for improved theoretical throughput compared with DDR-2 memory

-- SAS and SATA storage technology

Complete Business-Ready Solutions and Reduced Complexity for Customers of all Sizes

Dell makes it easier than ever for small- and medium-sized businesses to have large application capabilities with factory installed and fully tested Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server) R2 available on Dell PowerEdge and PowerEdge SC servers.

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) R2 running on Dell PowerEdge servers gives small businesses an affordable server and operating system designed to boost productivity right out of the box. This network solution can increase productivity, protect data and improve communications for customers. Most importantly, it can expand with their businesses, providing a comprehensive range of essential business capabilities for up to 75 employees, including:

-- File and printer sharing

-- Increased e-mail limits and shared calendaring

-- Desktop faxing

-- Internet and intranet access

-- Improved multi-level firewall security

-- Simplified management

-- Flexibility to add additional servers

Dell's enhanced management offerings provide a wide selection of deployment, monitoring and support tools for Dell servers. Dell Server Assistant ships with every PowerEdge server as a bootable, stand-alone CD-ROM, providing the tools to set up and configure the PowerEdge system components and software. These include:

-- Setup and configuration - This tool provides all the necessary means for setting up and configuring new PowerEdge systems and software, and configures Dell-provided RAID controllers with a consistent interface

-- Utilities, drivers and diagnostics - These provide users with a "System Tools" utility to view and create Dell software diskettes, and deliver Dell optimized and tested drivers, diagnostics and utilities.

"We know that it can be daunting to move to a server-based environment, but we are working to change that," said Muehleman. Dell has launched a site providing self-guided tutorials to first time server buyers -- complementing the installation services Dell offers to customers today. The new Dell Networking Basics site explains the advantages of a server-based environment and the basics of networking -- simplifying the hardware purchasing and implementation process.

Dell also offers a wide range of flexible storage offerings bringing simplicity, affordability and balanced scalability to IT environments of any size. Dell's PowerVault(TM) portfolio of disk, autoloaders and libraries offers a range of options that let organizations choose the type and number of tape drives along with the most appropriate amount of storage based on IT policies and requirements. Additionally, Dell/EMC SAN arrays provide highly scalable networked storage for environments of all sizes.

Pricing and Availability

The Dell PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers are available today worldwide. Prices start at $1,399, $749, $949, $1,049 and $599, respectively. Additional product information is available at http://www.dell.com/poweredge. Product photography is available at http://www.dell.com/photos. More information on Sew What? And the Dell/NFIB Excellence in Small Business Award can be found at: http://www.dell.com/ceaward.

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell sells more systems globally than any computer company, placing it No. 25 on the Fortune 500. Company revenue for the past four quarters was $57.4 billion. For more information, visit http://www.dell.com. To get Dell news direct, visit http://www.dell.com/RSS.

Pricing, specifications, availability, and terms of offers may change without notice. Taxes, fees, shipping, handling and any applicable restocking charges are extra, and vary.

(1) For more information, visit http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/ 2006/2006_06_19_dc_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field and delete the extra space should one exist.)

(2) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Aug 2006 on a PE1900 with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0Ghz Woodcrest) processors, 8GB 667Mhz FBD memory, 1x SAS 36GB/15k rpm HDD, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PE1800 with two single core Intel Xeon 3.8Ghz (Irwindale) processors, 4GB 400Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(3) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in April 2006 and Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge 860 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3070 (2.66Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SAS 73GB/10K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to the PowerEdge 850 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 (Presler) processor, 8GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x 80GB SATA HDD, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(4) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test and power measurements performed by Dell Labs in Sept 2006 on a PowerEdge 860 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3070 (2.66Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SAS 73GB/10K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to the PowerEdge 850 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 (3.4Ghz Presler) processor, 4GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x 36GB/15K SCSI HDD, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance and power consumption will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(5) Based on the SPECint_rate benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Mar 2006 and Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge SC440 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3060 (2.4Ghz Conroe) processor, 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SATA 80GB/7.2K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PowerEdge SC430 with a dual core Intel Pentium D 950 3.4GHz (Presler) processor, 2GB 533MHz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HDD, and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

(6) Based on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark test performed by Dell Labs in Aug 2006 on a PowerEdge SC1430 with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5140 (2.33Ghz Woodcrest) processors, 4GB 667Mhz FBD memory, 1x SAS 36GB/15k rpm HDD, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS as compared to a PowerEdge SC1420 with two single core Intel Xeon 3.8Ghz (Irwindale) processors, 4GB 400Mhz DDR2 memory, 1x SCSI 36GB/15K rpm HD, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition OS. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

SPEC(R) and the benchmark name SPECjbb(R) are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For the latest SPECjbb2005 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/jbb2005.

Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc.

Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.
Dobson Cellular Systems Taps Air2Web's Self Care Solution. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Air2Web, the leading provider of mobile marketing and messaging applications, today announced its newest Self Care customer, Dobson Cellular Systems, the largest independent rural wireless provider in the United States.



Under the service agreement, Air2Web is enabling Dobson to accept and respond to customer inquiries (including balance, used minutes, overage fees, etc.) via short message service (SMS).

Using Air2Web's Self Care solution, Dobson's 1.5 million subscribers can request account information using keywords. A keyword such as "BAL" (short for balance) is sent from a subscriber's phone to the carrier. Once Dobson receives the balance request, the relevant data is pulled from the Company's customer database. The system then generates a text message response and pushes it through Air2Web's content gateway directly to the customer's wireless device. The entire process takes just seconds.

Dobson's customer support team currently fields calls from 16 states and more than 60 wireless markets. Implementing Air2Web's Self Care is expected to offer some reprieve to the 3,000-man workforce, reduce operational costs of high-volume call centers, and improve customer service response times considerably.

"Air2Web's mobile marketing and messaging services offer value throughout the customer relationship lifecycle," said Alfredo Narez, Vice President of Marketing at Air2Web. "Dobson's decision to expand their relationship with Air2Web is indicative of how to leverage mobile messaging throughout an enterprise."

About Air2Web

Air2Web is the leading developer of mobile messaging and marketing applications for enterprises and carriers. Headquartered in the United States with locations in India (serving the Asia Pacific market), France and England (serving the European markets), Air2Web solutions are the core of the wireless value chain -- connecting marketers to mobile subscribers on a global scale. Since 1999, Air2Web has played a vital role in the successful mobile marketing initiatives of leading brands such as The Weather Channel interactive, American Express, PGA Tour, CBS Sportsline, Cingular and UPS. More information on Air2Web can be found at http://www.air2web.com.

About Dobson Cellular Systems

Dobson Cellular Systems is a subsidiary of Oklahoma City-based Dobson Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DCEL). The company is the largest independent provider of wireless service in rural America and operates a state-of-the-art GSM/GPRS/EDGE network in 16 states. For more information on the products and services of Dobson Cellular, visit www.dobson.net.
Integrated Mobile Completes Equity Financing to Support Growth Strategy. Check it out:
COLUMBUS, Ohio --(Business Wire)-- Integrated Mobile, Inc. ("the Company"), a leading wireless managed mobility services provider, today announced that it has closed on a $5 million equity capital investment transaction with Enhanced Equity Fund LP, a NY-based private equity investment company. Additional financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.



"We are delighted that Enhanced Equity Fund LP has become an investor in Integrated Mobile and believe this is a strong endorsement for our company, its management team, and our prospects for growth," said Integrated Mobile CEO Jay Highley. "This capital will allow us to make the investments in our infrastructure, people and processes to continue offering our clients best in class service while managing our phenomenal growth. Our proven services solution, which delivers complete visibility and control to business enterprise users of wireless devices and services, has allowed us to consistently exceed our customers' expectations and enjoy exceptional growth - and something we expect will continue in the future."

Highley added, "Our solution helps businesses reduce their total cost of wireless ownership by 20-40%, provides a single point of contact for all wireless services across multiple carriers, improves the overall quality of administrative and end user support -- all while simplifying the management of wireless devices and services. The demand has been so strong for our solution that, on average, our revenue base has grown more than 50% quarter over quarter since our founding and we now serve over a quarter of the Fortune 1000 companies. This new capital will ensure that we stay ahead of customer requirements and deliver value-added services that contribute to our customers' success."

About the Company

Integrated Mobile, headquartered in Columbus, OH, is a leading managed wireless services company that uses Six Sigma methodology to globally deliver a proven, end-to-end management solution for the enterprise's entire wireless lifecycle, including device fulfillment and configuration, training, asset management, bill optimization, reporting and 24/7 end-user support. The Integrated Mobile solution helps businesses reduce their total cost of wireless ownership by 20-40%, provides a single point of contact for all wireless services across multiple carriers, improves the overall quality of administrative and end user support -- all while simplifying the management of wireless devices and services. For more information about us, please visit www.integratedmobileinc.com.

About Enhanced Equity Fund LP

Enhanced Equity Fund LP is a $205 million private equity investment company focused on service companies in the healthcare, communications and technology sectors.
eWEEK Labs Names SlickEdit Must-Have Tool. Check it out:
MORRISVILLE, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- SlickEdit Inc., provider of the most advanced code editors available, announces that its flagship editor, SlickEdit(R) v11, has been named a must-have tool by eWEEK labs. eWeek is a weekly technology magazine featuring editorials, reviews, lab tests and news that guide readers in making the best technology decisions for their enterprises.



Each year, eWEEK Labs evaluates hundreds of enterprise-class products. The Must-Have Tools list is comprised of tools used by the analysts at eWEEK Labs on an ongoing basis to maintain their own testing systems. The list is compiled by asking each analyst what tools they can't live without and which ones they would recommend to benefit any serious computer user.

SlickEdit was named by the eWEEK lab analysts as a must-have tool for its ability to edit files up to 2GB in size on a variety of platforms and its extensive support for many programming languages and tasks.

"Being named a must-have tool by eWEEK is as good a compliment as you can get," said Clark Maurer, CTO of SlickEdit. "eWEEK is a highly respected source of information both on and offline for high-tech news and reviews. To be chosen by their lab analysts as a tool they can't live without is quite an honor."

SlickEdit pricing starts at $284 for new licenses. Other products available from SlickEdit are the SlickEdit(R) Plug-in for Eclipse(TM) and SlickEdit(R) Tools for Microsoft(R) Visual Studio(R) 2005. For more information about SlickEdit and free trial downloads, please visit http://www.slickedit.com.

About SlickEdit Inc.

SlickEdit Inc. provides software developers with multi-language development tools and the most advanced code editors available. Power programmers, from Fortune 500 companies to individuals, have chosen SlickEdit as their development tool of choice for over 18 years. Proven on Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X platforms, SlickEdit products enable even the most accomplished developers to write more code faster, and more accurately. For more information about SlickEdit and free trial downloads, please visit www.slickedit.com.

Visual SlickEdit and SlickEdit are registered trademarks of SlickEdit Inc. All other products or other company names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
The Use of Infrastructure Outsourcing Continues to Increase in the Financial Services Sector. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42809) has announced the addition of the new report from Datamonitor "End User Trends in Financial Services Outsourcing (Customer Focus)" to their offering.



The infrastructure and application services outsourcing market has moved to a more strategic business model with the financial services institutions showing increasing interest in enterprise wide outsourcing of their infrastructure and applications domains.

Scope of this title:

The analysis is based on interviews with over 200 financial services institutions from the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA.

The brief is focused on demonstrating financial services current and future infrastructure and applications outsourcing services take-up.

Highlights of this title include:

The results of the research indicate that outsourcing is being viewed as a strategic tool for achieving the financial services main business and IT objectives. Although the suitability of outsourcing to achieve business objectives varies by lines of business.

While more than half of the respondents currently outsourcing their infrastructure and applications domains, roughly the same amount of FSIs expect to increase their infrastructure and applications outsourcing usage in the next two years.

Applications development is touted as the most outsourced area in the financial services sector, while Maintenance/Support/Break fix is the most outsourced area on the infrastructure side.

Reasons to order your copy:

To improve understanding of the financial services application outsourcing services market.

To improve positioning relative to competitors and market opportunity.

Key Points Covered:

Outsourcing is a major enabler of change in the financial services sector

Outsourcing is intrinsic to meeting corporate objectives

"Variabilization" of costs and overall IT rationalization are the primary motivators for outsourcing

Outsourcing is a major vendor opportunity despite high take-up levels

Increased outsourcing by current customers will fuel IT domains outsourcing market growth

Applications development is touted as the most outsourced area in the financial services sector

The use of infrastructure outsourcing in the financial services continues to increase

Internal servicing remains the default situation with many FSIs apprehensive of outsourcing

List of Tables Include:

Table 1: The financial services main IT business objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing

Table 2: The financial services institutions infrastructure and applications outsourcing

Table 3: The financial services overall outsourcing strategy by line of business

List of Figures Include:

Figure 1: The financial services primary IT and business objectives / objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing

Figure 2: The financial services top five IT business objectives highly likely to be achieved through outsourcing, by line of business

Figure 3: The main drivers for outsourcing in the financial services

Figure 4: Infrastructure / applications domains currently outsourced

Figure 5: The financial services infrastructure / applications outsourcing (at least one function)

Figure 6: The financial services applications outsourcing

Figure 7: The financial services infrastructure outsourcing

Figure 8: The financial services overall outsourcing strategy

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42809

Source: Datamonitor
SkyeTek Opens European Headquarters to Expand Sales Channels for ETSI Compliant RFID Reader Modules and Software. Check it out:
WESTMINSTER, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- SkyeTek, Inc., the leading provider of embedded RFID reader technology, today announced the creation of its sales headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, responsible for covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Over the past few months, SkyeTek has announced the availability of two globally compliant reader modules - the M9 UHF SkyeModule and the M2 HF SkyeModule. As a result, the company's sales in Europe and Asia-Pacific have more than doubled for the second consecutive year, marking the emergence of overseas markets as significant growth areas for SkyeTek.



SkyeTek's first channel partner in Europe is Meshed Systems, a leading RFID solutions provider based in Munich, Germany. Meshed has been a SkyeTek value added reseller (VAR) for several quarters and will continue to cover Germany, Austria, and Switzerland under the purview of SkyeTek's EMEA sales organization.

"Meshed Systems focuses exclusively on RFID and deals with sophisticated customers in both HF and UHF applications," stated Michael E. Wernle, President of Meshed Systems. "Consequently, we require a robust, ETSI compliant product line that allows us to offer our customers the best value proposition for their unique application, regardless of frequency, protocol, or tag. We chose SkyeTek's Advanced Universal Reader Architecture (AURA) because it gives our customers a robust reader platform with an attractive ROI while allowing us to focus our sales and support efforts around one platform."

Mark Troyer, Sales Director, will head up SkyeTek's EMEA sales operations as the company looks to expand its footprint across Europe and beyond. Troyer joins SkyeTek from Jabber where he led the expansion of European sales channels for Jabber's enterprise instant messaging platform. He has also held several executive sales and marketing positions at Lucent, Network Associates, Novell, and Sun Microsystems. Troyer earned an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management (ie, Thunderbird) and a dual degree, BS in Computer Science and BA in French, from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"Europe has been a significant growth region for us and projects to be a very large RFID reader market driven by embedded applications in anti-counterfeiting, smartcard payments, and item-level inventory management," said Chris R. Turner, EVP of Sales and Business Development, SkyeTek. "Mark has a long and very successful track record of growing European sales channels for technology-based companies. We are very fortunate to have a seasoned sales executive at the helm of our expansion in EMEA."

SkyeTek offers its technology to OEMs, systems integrators, and distributors as reader modules (which come with ReaderWare included) or ReaderWare software licenses. Licensing provides customers with access to ReaderDNA reference designs, allowing them to integrate the technology directly into their product design and realize 40 to 70 percent cost savings versus a typical reader module.

About SkyeTek, Inc.

SkyeTek, Inc. develops reader technology that enables the pervasive adoption of RFID as an embedded feature in existing products. Customers use SkyeTek's technology to create new applications for their product lines in areas such as anti-counterfeiting, configuration management, consumables authentication, item-level inventory, patient safety, patron management, contactless payment, and mobile data collection. SkyeTek specifically designed AURA to serve as the multi-frequency, universal reader architecture for embedded RFID applications. AURA's common architecture disaggregates the RFID reader into a ReaderWare software layer, optimized for broad tag support, reader intelligence and easy application integration, and ReaderDNA hardware reference designs, crafted to optimize read range / performance while exploiting Moore's Law for gains in cost, space, and power efficiency. SkyeTek offers its AURA-based products as either a SkyeModule or ReaderWare license, which comes with access to ReaderDNA. Customers using SkyeTek represent numerous vertical markets and range from mid-market companies to Fortune 500 corporations. Based in Westminster, Colorado, USA, SkyeTek sells exclusively through OEMs, systems integrators, and distributors. For more information about SkyeTek, visit www.skyetek.com or call 720-565-0441.

Tagnostic is a registered trademark of SkyeTek Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved.
NEA leads PortAuthority $18m third round. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Information security start-up PortAuthority Technologies Ltd. yesterday announced that it closed its third financing round, raising $18 million. The company has raised $40 million to date.

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round, joined by the company's existing investors, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Lexington Ventures. The confidence shown by the venture capital funds is turning PortAuthority into a promising information security company.



PortAuthority Technologies was founded in 200 by VP technical services Assaf Litai, chief scientist Dr. Lidror Troyansky, and Ariel Feld. The company develops technology to protect an enterprise's software environment, especially from leaks of sensitive information. The company's solutions help companies comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Previously called Vidius, until 2003 the company focused copyright protection of video films.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 26, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Object graph editing context and methods of use. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111013
Appl. Data 10 20030516
Applicant Next Software, Inc.
Inventor(s) Federighi, Craig
Willhite, Dan
Noyau, Eric
Title Object graph editing context and methods of use
Abstract The present invention comprises a novel system for
managing changes to a graph of data bearing objects. In one embodiment, an
object graph manager object referred to as an editing context is used to
identify changes made to data bearing enterprise objects and to notify other
interested objects when changes occur. As a result, data bearing objects need
not themselves contain code necessary for monitoring changes. In another
embodiment of the invention, the editing context is used to provide event-based
"undo" capabilities. In another embodiment of the invention, each enterprise
object has a primary key that is used to maintain the identification between an
enterprise object instance and a corresponding database row. In another
embodiment of the invention, multiple levels of editing contexts are used to
provide multiple isolated object graphs, each of which allows independent
manipulation of the underlying data bearing objects.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC

Jack having safety effect

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Jack having safety effect. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7108245
Appl. Data 11 20050114
Applicant Kai Hsiang Enterprise Co., Ltd.
Inventor(s) Lin, Lai-Shun
Title Jack having safety effect
Abstract A jack includes a base provided with a plurality of
catch blocks, a lift arm pivotable relative to the base, and a safety member
pivotally mounted on the lift arm to move therewith. Thus, when the lift arm is
lifted, the first end of the safety member is locked on either one of the catch
blocks of the base, so that the safety member is fixed by the base during
upward movement of the lift arm so as to fix the lift arm, thereby preventing
the lift arm from being lowered too quickly when the power supplied to the lift
arm disappears accidentally due to malfunction so as to provide a safety
effect.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Knowledge-based management diagnostic system. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111008
Appl. Data 09 20011113
Applicant Fuji Xerox Co., LTD
Inventor(s) Nomura, Takahiko
Konno, Noboru
Title Knowledge-based management diagnostic system
Abstract The present invention provides a knowledge-based
management diagnosis system which evaluates/diagnoses enterprise management and
automatically generates a community for enhancing the enterprise management. A
questionnaire on the awareness, and etc. of employees is conducted, whereupon
on the basis of the questionnaire, the management situation of an organization
is diagnosed, the course of improvement/reform is indicated, and a community of
persons who are interested in particular knowledge or whose work styles are
similar is automatically generated. Knowledge assets are classified into the
characteristic of individual working manners, the characteristic of working
manners in the organization, and a characteristic expressive of the sources of
profits at present and in the future, to which the characteristic of
knowledge-based management may well be added. A correlation analysis is made
using these characteristics, and evaluation/generation evaluates analytical
results based on the correlation analysis or generates the community from the
analytical results.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Real-time aggregation of data within a transactional data area of an enterprise planning environment. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111007
Appl. Data 10 20040527
Applicant Cognos Incorporated
Inventor(s) Thier, Adam
Sandles, Jon M
Pearson, George Duncan
Gould, Michael
Title Real-time aggregation of data within a transactional data area of
an enterprise planning environment
Abstract An enterprise business planning system includes a
database having a relational data area and a transactional data area, and a
server to store within the transactional data area contribution data received
from a set of enterprise contributors. The server publishes the contribution
data from the transactional data area to the relational data area. The
transactional data area may include a set of contribution slots and a set of
aggregations slots hierarchically related in accordance with an enterprise
model. The relational area includes a set of related tables defined in
accordance with the model. The transactional data area supports real-time
interaction with the enterprise contributors, while the relational data area
allows detailed statistical analysis and report generation.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Platform partners with Dell and Intel to make Linux cluster deployment easier.. Check it out:
(www.gridcomputingplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Platform Computing took the wraps off Platform Open Cluster Stack (OCS) at this week's Intel Developer Forum.

Platform said the modular, hybrid stack integrates open source and commercial software into a single consistent cluster operating environment. Platform OCS is a pre-integrated, vendor-certified software stack that eliminates the costs of development, sales and support caused by inconsistent software development and certification in Linux clusters, the company said.



Intel, Dell and Platform will demonstrate the stack at this week's IDF on a number of off-the-shelf applications, including Fluent and LS-DYNA.

"Platform has worked closely with Dell and Intel to create a reference platform which simplifies cluster development not only for ISVs, but for HPC users as well," stated Gary Tyreman, vice president of Platform's Open Cluster Group. "Customers get the support they expect from a commercial vendor and benefit from the unique innovation that is symbolic of open source."

"We believe Platform Computing is addressing a key industry need by providing an approach to simplify the growing use of clustered Linux computing systems," said Bill Magro, Intel's director of Cluster Software and Technologies.

Dell also made news this week by working with the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) to help create a powerful new supercomputing grid. It will include six Dell server clusters packing 30 teraflops of computing power, or the ability to perform 30 trillion operations per second.

The system will be used to perform hurricane tracking and storm surge modeling with much greater speed and accuracy, among other uses.

LONI is a fiber optics network connecting supercomputers at Louisiana's six major research universities. Each LONI member campus will host a 132-node supercomputing cluster made up of Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers.

In other news, Voltaire unveiled software for managing and automating dynamic grid computing environments in data centers. The software "enables true automation of repetitive IT tasks associated with network, server and storage provisioning to deliver unprecedented efficiency," the company said. Provisioning tasks that used to take days can be done in seconds, the company claims.

Voltaire said GridVision Enterprise integrates with leading server and storage virtualization solutions, as well as provisioning and scheduling tools, to create a single, logical data center environment consisting of both physical and virtual resources.

Back to Grid Computing Planet

Internet.com Corp.

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Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
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E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa

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E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa. Check it out:
(EFE News Service Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Germany's E.ON said Tuesday that it is increasing its offer for Spain's largest electric utility to 37.1 billion euros ($47.1 billion) in cash, responding to the surprise purchase of a 10 percent stake in Endesa by a third party.



Spanish construction firm Acciona SA on Monday acquired 10 percent of Endesa at a price of 32 euros ($40.55) per share, compared with the 25.41 euros ($32.19) per share offered by E.ON in February.

Acciona left the door open to buying additional shares of Endesa.

The enhanced offer from E.ON translates into 35 euros ($44.40) a share, which represents a 38 percent increase over the German company's original bid for Endesa.

"Our improved offer represents an exceptionally attractive opportunity for the shareholders of Endesa and reflects our long-term confidence in Endesa's business model and its prospects for growth," E.ON CEO Wulf Bernotat said Tuesday in a statement.

The German titan, already Europe's biggest utility, had said earlier that it was "pursuing its offer for Endesa and expects to meet all requirements to proceed shortly."

The company also stressed that completion of the deal is contingent on E.ON's acquisition of at least 50.01 percent of Endesa's shares, and on the Spanish firm's elimination of a rule restricting investors to 10 percent of voting rights, no matter how big their stake in the enterprise.

E.ON's February offer for the electric utility came after Spain's leading gas group, Gas Natural, launched a takeover bid worth $27.8 billion bid for Endesa in September 2005.

Endesa management considers the E.ON offer to be better than the one made by Gas Natural because it provides a higher price, payment in cash and would maintain the company's current structure.

If it gets done, the E.ON-Endesa deal would create the biggest electric and gas company in the world, with more than 50 million customers in over 30 countries and 107,000 employees.

Endesa was a state-owned company for decades until it was privatized in 1998.

Spain's National Energy Commission, or CNE, voted unanimously in late July to conditionally approve the bid by E.ON, but both companies - and the European Union - have expressed concern about some of those requirements.

For its part, the Spanish government has indicated uneasiness with the acquisition of the utility by a foreign company, but has not moved overtly to block the transaction.

Copyright 2006 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
PSE to relax listing rules for second, SME boards to attract. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will relax the listing requirements to entice more companies to raise capital through the stock market, President and chief executive Francis Lim said.



In a briefing with reporters last Tuesday, Mr. Lim said operating history, market capitalization, and track record requirement will be made less rigid for the companies in the second board and the small- and medium- enterprise (SME) board. However, he assured that only qualified companies will be given the go signal to offer their shares to the public.

Under the basic guidelines, a company under the second board must demonstrate its potential for superior growth. It must have an operating history of at least one year prior to its listing. At listing, its market capitalization must be at least P250 million. A company eyeing the SME board will be evaluated based on the integrity and capability of its management and its controlling stockholders; company's prospects for further growth and profitability; viability of the business and sustainability of the projected earning stream and company's lack of existing material conflict of interest.

"If the board approves our initiative in terms of listing rules for the second and SME boards, we will submit this to the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. The [companies listing in the] first board do not have a problem since they have the capability. One thing peculiar is people are used to [the idea of] raising money through the debt market. They are not educated in terms of raising capital through the stock market. That is one alternative I would like to give. They don't have to give up control of the company," he added.

Mr. Lim also said companies would find it easier to list either in the second board or SME board rather than do backdoor listing.

In a recently SEC-approved guideline, backdoor listing is defined as a situation when "a listed company acquires or merges or combines with an unlisted company, or when a listed company is acquired by, merged or combined with an unlisted company, and which acquisition, merger, or combination results in a substantial change in the business, membership of the board of directors or voting structure of the listed company."

The SME index, put up in 1999, is a separate listing board which allows young firms with high-growth potential to raise capital by offering shares to the public. SMEs include those registered with the Board of Investments (BoI) as well as small- and medium-scale manufacturers and exporters. There are three firms under the SME index: online equity matchmaker Cashrounds, Inc., Makati Finance Corp. and information technology firm SQL Wizard, Inc.

Mr. Lim also said he expects a fourth company to list by yearend following soon-to-be listed Alliance Tuna International, Inc.

In the first semester, the market saw the market debut of Lopez-led independent power producer First Gen Corp. and online stockbrokerage firm CitisecOnline.com.

The company, which he declined to identify, will try to take advantage of the uptrend in the stock market and list in the first board to raise $200 million.

BusinessWorld sources said this company has a capitalization of P30 billion.

Last Tuesday, the PSE entered into an agreement with Knowledge Institute to educate more companies on the how's and why's of listing.

Knowledge Institute managing director Rodolfo Reyes said the unit of SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co. (SGV & Co.) has sent out invitations to 200 clients for its lecture series that will start on Oct. 10. Knowledge Institute will first tap the companies under business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

"We approached the PSE since it is their thrust is to educate the public. In Knowledge Institute, this is our main line of business. We organize seminars. We are focusing on BPOs because they are the hottest item in town. We are going to focus on industries such as semiconductors, franchisees, BoI-registered firms," he added.

Mr. Lim said it is not simple to get companies to be listed.

"They have to prepare themselves. They have to do their own housekeeping. They have to know the rules. We hope we are planting the seeds to help more listings. This is where we can help them prepare themselves. Partnering with professional firm is the right step to take of getting more companies listed," he added.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
HELIOS Announces Unbreakable Server Solutions for Windows Server Platform. Check it out:
SUMMARY
The leading provider of file, print, imaging, and PDF server solutions for LANs and Internet-based prepress and enterprise networks announces that five HELIOS UB applications now support Microsoft Windows servers

Hannover, Germany September 27, 2006 Formerly available only on major UNIX-based platforms, HELIOS Software GmbH announced today that five HELIOS UB Unbreakable Server Solutions for prepress and enterprise networks now run on Microsoft Windows based computers. HELIOS will introduce their products for Windows at the upcoming IfraExpo in Amsterdam, October 9 - 12, and at GRAPH EXPO in Chicago, October 15 - 18.



The HELIOS UB product family includes HELIOS Base UB for Windows, providing advanced print services, and HELIOS WebShare UB for secure web-based file sharing, distribution, and document collaboration. HELIOS ImageServer UB, PDF HandShake UB and PrintPreview UB bring high efficiency and advanced capabilities to office, design, prepress, and printing operations.

Praise for HELIOS UB servers comes from around the world from leading media companies including USA Today, Le Figaro of France, Mirror Group in the UK, Mohn Media in Germany, and many more. For them, HELIOS server solutions are considered the most reliable, secure, and fastest available for enterprise and prepress networks today, offering cross-platform local and Internet file sharing and printing, with PDF, image conversion, color management, and proofing solutions.

"We are glad that our Web, PDF, print, and prepress server solutions now support the Windows Server platform," reports Helmut Tschemernjak, CEO and president of HELIOS. "HELIOS server solutions represent over 15 years of server development, and are finally available as a first-class citizen on the Windows Server platform. Supporting all major server platforms allows customers to choose the server platform which best fits their needs."

Supported Windows Platforms:
Windows Server 2000
Windo ws Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit edition)
Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit edition)

Customers can contact HELIOS to schedule meetings at the IfraExpo and GRAPH EXPO events.

For more information, please visit www.helios.de

Smart Ideas for Better Networking
HELIOS UB Unbreakable Server Solutions deliver mission critical server solutions to enterprise, government, university, and prepress sites. WebShare provides extremely secure and high performance remote file management via any Web browser. Base UB for Windows adds advanced print server services to Windows, and HELIOS ImageServer, PDF HandShake and PrintPreview bring high efficiency and advanced capabilities to design, prepress and printing operations.

HELIOS products run on powerful and scalable servers including Apple Computer Mac OS X, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, IBM AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows systems. HELIOS products provide reliable cross-platform support for Macintosh, Windows, Web and UNIX-based clients.

Distributors sell HELIOS products worldwide to value-added resellers who provide complete networking solutions to customers. HELIOS also works with many strategic partners that incorporate HELIOS server software to provide powerful third party archive, asset management and workflow solutions.

For U.S. Sales:
European MikroGraf Corp.: 916-923-3520; E-mail: sales (at) ugraf.com; www.ugraf.com

Editorial contact:

Germany
Helmut Tschemernjak, HELIOS Software GmbH, Steinriede 3, D-30827 Garbsen, Germany; Tel +49-5131-709320 Fax +49 5131-709325;
E-mail: mktg (at) helios.de; Internet: www.helios.com

U.S.A.
Thomas Hallinan, HELIOS Software GmbH, 209-827-2760, mktg (at) helios.de
Bill Gram-Reefer, WORLDVIEW, 925-215-8463, reefer (at) worldviewpr.com
Five Steps to Get from Current to Best-Practice IT Risk Management. Check it out:
By Greg Hughes

As individuals, corporations, and our economy grow increasingly dependent on the Internet and IT systems, the risks in these systems become far more visible and significant. Breaches or failures of information systems cause serious business crises reputation damage caused by identify theft, business losses stemming from system failures, and regulatory restrictions arising from compliance issues. Recent news has prominently covered many major stories of information technology risk, including phishing scams, theft of personally identifiable data records, identity theft, stolen backup tapes, litigation resulting from improper preservation and production of electronic records, and intellectual property breaches.



The rate of recovery from these events is a contributing factor in the severity of the business crises. A recent study by Oxford Executive Research found that companies that recovered quickly from major operational disasters increased their share price by five percent on average versus the market. Companies that struggled to regain their operations took a 20 percent drop in relative value. From this research, it appears that investors factor a companys resilience to adversity into its stock price.

It is clear to see why corporate executives in boardrooms around the world want answers to the IT risk question: How we dramatically mitigate the risk and improve the return on investments in information systems?

The answer to these questions lies in treating information technology risk within the integrated framework of business risk management. IT risks need to be identified, measured and managed as part of a single view of all risks in the corporation, with oversight by senior management to understand and guide the appropriate risk/reward tradeoffs to achieve the goal of increasing return on IT investments. The name for this approach to managing and balancing information risk and reward is IT risk management.

The Reality of IT Risk Management
Most companies have a poor awareness of their IT risk exposure, arent fully exploiting the breadth of tools to manage these risks, and havent begun to systematically build the knowledge and processes to manage IT risks.

Companies have struggled partly because IT risk management is a newly emerging field, where the traditional models of risk management do not always cleanly apply. Typically, businesses have only a vague understanding of the impact of the loss of information assets or access to their applications. For example, the ability to transfer risk is a fundamental concept in financial risks; however, since liquid markets do not yet exist for buying and selling IT risks, companies must build the internal competence to manage these risks on their own.

Another example of the difference is that IT risks are more challenging to quantify. In IT, the kind of well developed statistical or actuarial models that assess financial risk and give it a reasonable level of precision do not yet exist. However, roughly right approaches based on heuristics and experience still yield accurate, valuable and usable measures of IT risk.

Going from current to best-practice IT risk assurance could yield substantial improvements to shareholder value.

In order to lead this transformation to best-practice IT risk assurance, business leaders should:
1. Develop an awareness of the nature of the different IT risks to the business;
2. Determine the quantified impact to their business resulting from the loss of information or access to applications
3. Understand the range of tools available to manage IT risks
4. Align the costs of IT risk management to the business value
5. Build a systematic, corporate capability to manage security risk.

Developing an awareness of IT risks
Information technology risks either concern the potential loss of information and its recovery, or they concern the ongoing usage of information. They fall into the following six major categories.

Security: Risk that information is altered or used by non-authorized people. Example causes: Computer crimes, internal breaches, and cyberterrorism.
Availability: Risk that information is not accessible, such as after a system failure. Example causes: Configuration changes, lack of redundancy in architectures, human errors.
Recoverability: Risk that needed information cannot be recovered in sufficient time after a security or availability incident. Example causes: Hardware and/or software failures, external threats, and natural disasters.
Performance: Risk that information is not provided when it is needed. Example causes: Distributed architectures, peak demand, heterogeneity in the IT landscape.
Scalability Risk that major new sources of demand for information (new applications, new businesses) cannot be handled cost-effectively. Drivers: Business growth, provisioning bottlenecks. Siloed architectures.
Compliance: Risk that the management or usage of information violates regulatory requirements. Example causes: Government regulations, corporate governance guidelines, internal policy.

Understanding the quantified impact to the business
It is essential to understand the risks in terms of the probability of an event that would trigger the risk, and in terms of the time value of the exposure should such risk occur. Further, the risks need to be quantified for each critical business application. Knowing these two parameters allows the decision maker to plot the values on a simple two-dimensional graph and to assign mitigation/remediation priorities to different applications. Moreover, a policy to deal with different and/or multiple categories of risks can be defined and applied effectively and consistently throughout the enterprise.

Looking more broadly across multiple categories risks and correlating risks across these categories will better quantify the business impact. For example, an exploited security vulnerability may contribute to a recoverability risk. An application performance issue that prevents data access may provide opening for a security risk or result in a compliance risk. The business impact may be direct or indirect including financial, legal, customer loss and operational dependencies. Each of these may, in turn, have downstream implications.

Businesses find diligence in this area hard to justify, and there is often denial that risks exist or that their impact can be effectively measured. While challenges are real, quantifying the business impact gets to the core issue of being able to manage the risk equation.

Understanding IT risk management approaches
IT risks have different root causes and thus different approaches are required to manage and mitigate them. Broadly speaking, these approaches require a combination of process, people, technology and information.

First, processes for running data center and IT operations are going through a similar period of rapid evolution, as the best run IT organizations are moving from a haphazard, job shop model to more rigorously designed, executed, and measured systematic approach. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and other standards are emerging to describe best of breed IT operational processes.

Second, companies are paying more attention to the way they employ their people in the battle to reduce risk. Companies are experimenting with a wide-range of techniques, including awareness-building, identity or role specific authority, new divisions of labor, new roles and specialists, and enhancing risk mitigation capabilities at all levels.

Third, new software is emerging from vendors who are responding to the demand for improved IT risk management. Rapid advances have created an arsenal of software in such areas as long-distance replication, clustering, content, intrusion and phishing detection, data protection and backup, vulnerability assessment and policy management. Importantly, these tools are being integrated to offer workflow-driven solutions designed to follow customized processes and regulatory requirements. Event-driven automation is increasingly taking the place of onerous manual analysis and remediation.

Fourth, information sources are available that provide insight into emerging as well as known threats and vulnerabilities, which can be assessed against companies internal security environment (e.g., security risks, virus signatures and databases, operating system patches and configurations) to identify exposures and develop mitigation plans. Considering the speed with which new attacks propagate across networks, such early warning intelligence is essential to proactive and successful defense.

Align the costs of IT risk management to business value
Investments in, process, people technology and information are required to mitigate risks. However, since IT budgets are constrained (and feeling continued downward pressure), leading companies need to make sure theyre not over-investing or under-investing in risk management. How do companies manage their IT risk management investments effectively and efficiently?

Utility computing has emerged over the past few years as the most promising approach to align the costs of IT to the business value. In utility computing, the role of IT with respect to the business evolves from a cost center to a service center. As it evolves under the utility computing approach, the IT organization masters four primary activities:

1. Providing IT as a collection of well-defined services, developed and managed by a service management group that interfaces with the business
2. Exposing these services to the business through service level agreements and charge-backs to the business
3. Building and maintaining a shared, heterogeneous infrastructure to improve capital utilization and reduce costs, rather than building custom systems for each business application
4. Running IT operations in an automated fashion to increase labor efficiency and reduce costs

A number of leading companies are first applying the utility computing concept by building storage utilities. The storage utility provides data storage for business application usage through different service classes, for example
Platinum storage service with very high performance, availability, recoverability and security
Gold storage service with moderate performance, availability, recoverability and security
Bronze storage service with the low performance, availability, recoverability and security

The costs of these different storage services are exposed to the business Platinum is typically 10 times more costly than Bronze service aligning the risk requirements of the business and overall usage to the spending on IT.

Mastering the activities of utility computing is a journey for IT organizations. The first step they take is to discover the IT assets, for example servers and storage, and ideally tie these assets to critical business processes. Second, they redesign and consolidate the environment to gain efficiencies in administrator productivity and resource utilization. Third, they start to standardize classifying applications and agreeing upon specific vendors for storage and server hardware, while managing the environment through a standard set of software tools. Fourth, they automate, driving down the time and labor required to request, provision and manage the environment. And, fifth, they move to a true service provider model by equating service level delivery with costs by allocating or charging-back to the business units.

Building an institutional capability to control IT risk
Leading corporations are building an institutional capability to understand, act on and control IT risks with the same level of scrutiny and urgency as financial risks. Using insight from a variety of sources they develop a risk heat map showing the potential impact and likelihood of the six IT risks on their lines of business, core business processes or major applications. Then, they create a prioritized program to remediate these risks and deploy the tools of software, people, process improvements and information. Finally, they control the risks by continuous measurement and improvement. In these corporations, IT risk management is fundamentally affecting IT governance and risk governance approaches.

As companies build IT risk management into an institutional capability, the questions most are trying to address include:
If and how does our IT strategy need to evolve or change in accordance with maintaining an acceptable risk posture?
Should we have new or expanding leadership roles to address IT risk, such as an IT Risk Manager?
How do we create reporting and management systems to monitor performance?
Must we create a governance board to oversee and approve IT risk decisions?
How do we educate our IT staff, and build skills for cultural awareness and understanding of risk throughout the employee base?
What steps should be take to make our planning and testing processes more rigorous and to make our systems impenetrable?

Improving IT risk management should be on the agenda of nearly every senior executive of a large corporation. Those executives, who are aware of their IT risks, understand the tools to manage these risks, and build the institutional capability to control them should be in a fundamentally better position to improve the risk and return of information investments.

Greg Hughes is senior vice president of global services and support, managing Symantec's consulting, education, and technical support operations.
Signiant offers remote office data solution. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A Massachusetts vendor has addressed the problem of tape data backup in remote offices by removing tape from the enterprise entirely.

Privately held Signiant Inc., of Burlington, will unveil its Mobilize for Remote Data Protection product at the Storage Decisions Conference that opens Wednesday in New York City.

Mobilize is designed to aggregate data at the remote offices of a large- and medium-size business for transport over wide area networks (WANs) to a datacenter at its headquarters. Signiant is partnering with Sepaton Inc., of Marlborough, Massachusetts, which offers a virtual tape library system for datacenters.



Businesses are increasingly concerned about protecting data in their field offices by consolidating it in the central office, said Rich Vining, Signiant's director of marketing. "Companies realize that up to 60 percent of their data is in remote offices and it's mostly on tape. There is a big risk companies see in terms of data loss," Vining said.

Most remote offices don't have the information technology staff to effectively manage tape backup systems. "They're mostly sales and marketing people so it's not part of their job," Vining said.

A 2005 survey of enterprise IT managers by the research firm Gartner Inc. showed that more than 50 percent of them said they were looking for a better way to protect data at their remote offices, said Dave Russell, a research vice president at Gartner.

"I'm getting more and more inquiries from clients about how to protect the remote office," said Russell.

Russell is witnessing a trend toward disk drive data backup as opposed to tape back up. "Disk reduces human intervention and the risk of human errors or of tapes going missing," he said.

But tape still is a much less expensive solution than disk storage.

Signiant faces competition for its new product from companies such as Symantec Corp., of Cupertino, California, which in April introduced its Net Backup Pure Disk for Remote Offices, and Avamar Technologies Inc., of Irvine, California, whose remote office solution compresses the data at the field office to make it easier to transmit over its WAN to the data center.

Signiant is introducing Mobilize for companies with from five to 30 remote offices at a starting price of less than US$10,000 per office and a larger system for companies with between 30 and 2,000 remote offices starting at $75,000 per office.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Cisco jumps into enterprise video publishing. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Cisco Systems has rolled out an online video publishing package for businesses, an offering in line with the company's strategy to move beyond its traditional focus on networks to make more of a splash in the unified communications market.



Cisco said Tuesday that its Digital Media System could, for example, allow a company to stream an executive keynote online and then archive it immediately for further viewing.

The company envisions a range of applications for the system from companies using it to train employees in remote locations to governments broadcasting public meetings online. The system is based on an IP (Internet Protocol) platform, Cisco said.

The Digital Media System includes two media encoders, one portable and one a "studio-level" appliance, Cisco said. A second feature, the Digital Media Manager, is a batch of tools that allows metadata and keywords to be added to video clips along with publishing and archiving functions. The third component is a customizable portal to search and watch videos.

The product comes out of Cisco's Emerging Market Technology Group, which Cisco described as an internal team that looks outside the company's core networking business.

The Digital Media System starts at $133,000.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Fresh start for US software maker. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: dai For software maker CA, transformation is clearly a buzzword. The US company, founded by Chinese-American Charles Wang, had a high flying past. In 1999, its annual revenue hit US$5.6 billion, trailing only Microsoft and IBM. Yet, in recent years, CA, formerly known as Computer Associate International, has been hit by a series of setbacks including accounting irregularities, which have chipped away at its past glory and reputation. Revenue growth has also slowed down. In the fiscal year 2005, its revenue totalled US$3.5 billion, down 60 percent compared to 1999. This is why transformation has become crucial to CA to restore its glory. In the eyes of company executive vice-president and chief marketing officer Donald Friedman, CA is now getting back on track and is set to cash in on the evolution of the global software industry. China, he says, is going to play a major role in the make-over. "The information technology (IT) industry is experiencing fundamental changes (such as industry consolidation and increasing demands for integrated products). CA is in the best position," Friedman says. IT management CA used to provide more than 1,000 software tools ranging from network management, security, and databases to applications. Now it is focusing on integrated solutions called IT management. "CA is a unique company," Friedman says. "It's the only software company focusing on IT managementthe priority for managing IT is to simplify or unify the problems, regardless of software and hardware." "There is a lot of pressure on CIOs (chief information officers) to deliver higher efficiency," he says. Nowadays, companies seldom place an order for a single software product from a single company. This means they need integrated IT management solutions that can help streamline operations and improve efficiency, which is crucial to stay competitive in a quickly changing business environment. To adapt to the market changes, Friedman, an IBM veteran who joined CA last April, has been reshuffling CA's marketing strategy and sales organizations drastically. He has helped to change CA's regional chiefs in the United States and Europe as well as its global product marketing strategy. He even implemented a new logo, new ads agencies and new sponsorship strategies. In China, CA is planning a greater revamp of its marketing strategy. "The global software market is growing at an annual rate of 7.8-7.9 percent," he says. "But if you look at the Chinese market, it's growing 21 percent." CA entered the Chinese market in 1995 and now has more than 400 employees in the country. As it is founded by a Chinese-American, CA has always been active in investing in China. In 1985 the firm established a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in Beijing and launched a China Technology Centre in 2000. In recent years, CA has established a customer base in China's government, finance, telecoms and manufacturing sectors. Yet, China still contributes a small portion to CA's global sales. The reason for this is flawed sales channels in China, according to Gavin Selkirk, senior vice-president of sales, Asia-Pacific and Japan at CA. "We would be arrogant if we thought our direct model is going to be right," he says. Previously, about 90 percent of CA's sales in China are based on the so-called direct model, under which CA's sales people sold software products and services to customers directly. The direct model has resulted in limited market coverage as CA's sales force in China has been unable to fully cater to local customers' demands. Selling with partners It's already a common practice for a great number of global technology giants such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard to join with local partners to provide technology offerings to local customers. A partner programme can help the technology firms extend their reach. The partner programme is more important in China, which is a huge and geographically complicated market. For instance, 100 percent of sales of global networking giant Cisco Systems are sold to China-based customers via its local partners. "We have been investing heavily in indirect channels in China," Selkirk says. In the fiscal year 2006, CA China has been aggressively recruiting local partners and certificated nearly 200 sales people and technology engineers working as its partners. Sales via partners have recorded double-digit growth. CA China executives earlier said they hope 95 percent of the company's sales in the country would be realized via partners in the future. CA is now betting on its revamped sales strategy to boost its growth in Asia-Pacific, which is crucial to its transformation in the coming years. "Japan, India and China are tremendously important for CA," Selkirk says. "We have made great progress in the past 18 months and seen great willingness of local partners in China to work with CA more closely." CA last November established a regional headquarters in Hong Kong to oversee its operations in Asia-Pacific and Japan. Such an arrangement could help CA better take advantage of opportunities in the Asia-Pacific market. According to US research firm IDC, security software sales in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan, is projected to hit US$3.16 billion by 2009 compared to US$1.96 billion in 2005. IT spending in India and Japan will grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 18 percent and 13 percent during 2004-08. "China represents wonderful opportunities. In 15 years, China will exceed Japan (in terms of GDP)," says Selkirk, adding CA has been working out an "optimized" strategy for the Chinese market. Now it's time to get moving. "Investing in China is our top priority," he says. "We will make substantial investments in organization structures in China in the next couple of quarters. We'd better prepare ourselves to work with our partners." CA last month announced it is cutting 1,700 employees globally which could help the firm save US$200 million in costs annually. Selkirk says China will not be much impacted by the lay-offs. "We have very lean operations in Asia and China," he says. "We have very strong business fundamentals in the region."



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Jingkelong shares close up 22 percent on first day. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: l Shares in Beijing Jingkelong Co Ltd, the capital's second-largest supermarket operator, leapt 22 percent to close at HK$5.5 (71 US cents) on their first day of trading in Hong Kong yesterday, boosted by investors' confidence in the mainland's booming retail sector. Shares in the Beijing-based supermarket chain surged nearly 39 percent soon after the market opened yesterday morning, reaching HK$6.25 (80 US cents). Jingkelong had an IPO price of HK$4.50 (58 US cents), the top end of its indicative range. With a more attractive valuation than its bigger rivals, Jingkelong's share sale in Hong Kong, which was oversubscribed 547 times in the retail portion and 60 times in the institutional section, has whetted investors' enthusiasm for China's retail sector. The supermarket chain, which runs four hypermarkets, 34 supermarkets and 131 convenience stores, including self-managed and franchised outlets in the capital city, proposed an indicative price from HK$3.90 (50 US cents) to HK$4.50 (58 US cents) and offered 132 million H-shares, or 36 percent of its enlarged share capital. The top of its price range represents 19.7 times its 2006 earnings, whereas Jingkelong's rival Beijing supermarket operator Wumart Stores trades at 31 times its prospective profit. Investor confidence has been boosted by the mainland's surging consumer-driven economy, with mainland retail already popular among institutional investors and the imminent "Golden Week" holiday likely to give a further fillip to retail shares, noted analysts. Several offerings have demonstrated investors' interest in the sector, such as vintner Dynasty Fine Wines Group, sportswear retailer Li Ning and Mengniu Dairy, all of which have been heavily oversubscribed amid hopes that consumer spending on the mainland will continue to soar. Retail sales of consumer goods in Beijing reached about 290.3 billion yuan (US$36.55 billion) in 2005, compared to 95 billion yuan (US$11.58 billion) in 1995, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics. The mainland's retail sales rose 13.3 percent to 5.4 trillion yuan (US$650 billion) last year as annual per capita disposable income increased 7.7 percent to 9,422 yuan. Sales in the mainland's top 30 retail chains surged 32.9 percent to 384.56 billion yuan (US$46.9 billion) last year, according to official data. A host of newly listed companies have recently seen their share prices leap around 20 to 30 percent on their first trading day in Hong Kong. Last week, shares in China Merchants Bank closed 25 percent higher than their IPO price, while Jutal Offshore Oil Services Ltd's went up 49 percent. Jingkelong raised a total of HK$594 million (US$75 million) in a four-day sale of the retail tranche of its IPO from September 12 to 15. The supermarket chain, which lists on the secondary Growth Enterprise Market, said earlier that it planned to use HK$282 million (US$36.6 million) of its IPO proceeds to expand its network in Beijing from the current 169 outlets to 255 by the end of 2008, in a bid to overtake its rivals. Its first-half net profit soared 23 percent year-on-year to 47.3 million yuan (HK$5.9 million). The mainland's retail sector has attracted investments from foreign giants such as France's Carrefour, Wal-Mart from the United States, and Germany's Metro. But the sector remains dominated by local players, including Shanghai Bailian Group, Beijing Wangfujing Group and Wumart.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
LM Team Awarded Contract For US Air Force Air And Space Integration. Check it out:
(Space Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The United States Air Force has selected an industry team led by Lockheed Martin to be the Air and Space Operations Center Weapon System Integrator (AOC WSI). Under this multi-year contract, the team will work with the Air Force to standardize, modernize, sustain and transform the more than 20 AOCs worldwide into interoperable net-centric weapon systems that will provide commanders real-time, common operational views of the global battlefield.



The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, cost-plus-fixed fee, and cost-plus- award fee contract, including funding for operations, maintenance, and sustainment, is worth $589 million.

Our team is honored to support the Air Force in this transformational effort, said Stan Sloane, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin's Integrated Systems and Solutions (IS and S) business area.

With our customer we'll evolve today's AOCs into integrated net centric operations, incorporating essential combat capabilities that will enable joint and coalition warfighters to continue to dominate command and control in future conflicts, while improving operational efficiencies.

The Lockheed Martin team includes Raytheon, SAIC, IBM, L-3 Communications, Dynamics Research Corporation, Intelligent Software Solutions, Gestalt, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

As the primary systems used by Joint Force Air Component Commanders to exercise command and control of air and space power worldwide, AOCs are highly complex facilities with up to 48 discrete systems that support diverse missions. While they share some functions, their missions are supported by different systems, operating procedures and personnel requirements.

The AOC WSI effort will evolve this heterogeneous infrastructure into a standardized, seamless, integrated enterprise. This will enable interoperability across the AOCs for faster access to intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting and other important operational data. It will provide a common technical baseline for efficient and cost-effective technology upgrades while reducing the cost and footprint for deployed personnel and material.

By implementing an open, service-oriented architecture across the AOC enterprise, the government and Lockheed Martin team will enable greater collaboration internally within the AOC and externally with other joint and coalition warfare elements, said John Mengucci, vice president and general manager of Department of Defense Systems for Lockheed Martin IS and S.

This approach will also allow the Air Force to quickly and easily accommodate new capabilities and technologies, ensuring a cost-effective, low risk growth path to net centric operations. Warfighters can expect rapid operational improvements that consistently meet or exceed expectations.

The AOC WSI team will take full advantage of the Lockheed Martin Center for Innovation in Suffolk, Virginia, relying on the facility's powerful analysis, modeling and simulation tools in a C2ISR Wind Tunnel configuration for rapid analysis of potential improvements to operating concepts, processes and systems.

The Center provides a rich experimentation environment as well as an infrastructure for collaboration with AOC Weapon System stakeholders and organizations. This shared access to innovative industry and joint C2ISR experimentation, along with powerful net-centric warfare analysis tools such as the C2ISR Wind Tunnel, will enable rapid combat capability upgrades and reduce program risk.

Copyright 2006 Space Daily, Distributed by United Press International
PAC SOFT IN TALKS WITH GOVTS TO ROLL OUT EDUCATION MODULE (will be launching its education ERP solution Lyceum in 40,000 schools in Karnataka by Jan 2007). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pac Soft Solutions Ltd of Bangalore is holding discussions with the governments of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat to offer them its education enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution Lyceum.



Pac Soft will be launching Lyceum in 40,000 schools through the length and breadth of Karnataka by Jan 2007. A consortium formed by Microsoft, Intel and Hewlett-Packard has formed a consortium with Pac Soft Solutions to promote Lyceum. Lyceum helps to automate all the work flow processes in a school on different modules. The company has 1,800 institutions all over India as its clients.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
ZENSAR TECHNOLOGIES: A DEVELOPING APPLICATION (the company expects to announce a net profit of Rs50 crore for 2006-2007). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Zensar Technologies Ltd is expected to record robust growth in 2006-2007. The company expects to announce a growth of 47 percent in net profit at Rs50 crore for 2006-2007 and a 28 percent growth in revenues at Rs550 crore. The company has announced a net profit of Rs14.69 crore for Apr-Jun 2006 (Rs16.47 crore for Apr- Jun 2005).



Revenues have increased by 10 percent to Rs137.78 crore. The company is active in Application Portfolio Management, Enterprise Solutions, Innovative Technology Solutions and Business Process Outsourcing.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Campaign aims at more efficient use of resources. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A new awareness campaign to encourage the public to use energy more efficiently has been launched.

Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources Noel Dempsey said he hoped the "Power of One" campaign would achieve a "sea-change" in the behaviour of Irish consumers in relation to their use of energy.

"The concept of Power of One is that the sum of individual effort by consumers as well as enterprise can, and will, make a national difference. In essence, this is about creating a momentum."

A Green Paper on energy policy, to be published next Sunday, is expected to stress that Ireland is overly reliant on imported fossil fuels and needs to use energy more efficiently. Energy consumption has risen by over 60 per cent since 1990, and CO2 output is also rising.



Irish houses consume 35 per cent more energy than the EU average, while their CO2 emissions are almost twice the EU average.

The new campaign aims to persuade consumers to take simple steps to save energy.

"We're asking people to change the habits of a lifetime, to break habits we all have," Mr Dempsey told the press launch yesterday.

Asked how he was changing his own habits, the Minister admitted he had been "a little bit careless" about energy efficiency up to now.

However, he had bought some long-life bulbs for his home, started using a thermostat and had begun to switch off the television when unused, instead of leaving it on standby.

"This campaign is not about regulating behaviour or restricting lifestyle choice. It is about motivating and informing behaviour and offering a better lifestyle. Energy efficiency is good for the individual, good for business and ultimately good for the economy, the environment and society."

The average spending on energy in each house is more than 1,500 a year and the number of houses has increased by almost a half since 1990, according to Sustainable Energy Ireland.

Mr Dempsey denied the campaign amounted to window-dressing for a wider failure to control the State's energy consumption. "The easy way out is to say it's someone else's responsibility, that the Government should be doing something or the power company."

However, he acknowledged that "we need to do more" to meet Ireland's obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, and said it was not possible to do much in the short term to reduce transport emissions.

More than 7 million is being spent on the two-year campaign, which is already getting under way with a major advertising blitz. Further information and tips on saving energy are available at the associated website, www.powerofone.ie

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Ghosts of Lowry and Haughey come back to haunt Taoiseach. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) After Bertie Ahern's emotional performance, the question remains: was it proper for a minister for finance to accept money for personal use? writes Stephen Collins , Political Correspondent

The Taoiseach threw himself on the mercy of the electorate in his long and emotional interview on television last night. His political future now rests on whether the natural sympathy of the Irish public for Mr Ahern's personal difficulties will outweigh continuing questions about the propriety of accepting almost 50,000 from a group of business friends.



In the shorter-term the political focus will be on the Progressive Democrats. The attitude taken by the junior Coalition party to the central issue that Mr Ahern was given the money in 1993 and 1994 for his personal use by a group of businessmen will dictate the course of politics over the coming months.

It will be no surprise that the Opposition parties have made it clear that they will continue to pursue the issue when the Dail resumes today, after the summer recess, but it is the attitude of the PDs that will determine whether the Government suffers real strain.

While the detail provided by the Taoiseach in his interview went some way to meet the demands of his critics, there are still a number of outstanding concerns. For a start, the propriety of the minister for finance of the day accepting such a substantial sum for his personal use from a group of business people, even if they were his close friends, is an issue that will not go away.

Over the past few days the Opposition parties and the media have thrown the Taoiseach's own remarks on this subject in relation to Michael Lowry and Charles Haughey back in his face.

However, Mr Ahern last night refused to accept that taking the money had placed him under any financial obligation.

"The difference of talking about somebody taking millions and somebody taking hundreds of thousands in exchange for contracts and other matters, and taking what is a relatively small contribution from friends who had a clear understanding they would be paid back. I do not equate those. If I was to take several hundreds of thousands of pounds or several million from people where I had no association with, or people that were totally business interests, that would be totally, totally wrong."

The Taoiseach's contention that what was involved was "a relatively small contribution" raised a few eyebrows, as 50,000 was a substantial sum of money as far as the vast majority of hard-pressed and highly-taxed Irish workers were concerned in 1993. The fact that those who gave him the money were personal friends was clearly an important point for Mr Ahern, as he saw that as a factor that did not place him under any obligation to them.

Aside from the principle of someone in his position accepting money, there is the issue of what constitutes a loan as distinct from a gift. Mr Ahern maintained that all the money he had received was in the form of loans that amounted to "a debt of honour". The problem is that 13 years later, neither the principal nor the interest had been repaid to any of those who gave him the money. So can the money be legitimately described as a loan or was it a gift? "If money given to Mr Ahern remains unpaid after 13 years and in respect of which no interest was ever paid either, then it can only be regarded as a gift, and a gift that in all probability would have been liable to tax," the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte, maintained last night. He quoted the Taoiseach's response to the suggestion in 1996 that the money paid to Michael Lowry might have been a loan.

Mr Ahern told the Dail that "there would have to be incontrovertible written evidence of that at the time and arrangements having been made for its repayment . . . The making of such a personal loan on more favourable conditions than would be available from any lending institution would clearly represent a personal favour that ought to be declared."

The Opposition will certainly be raising questions about how some of the coterie of Mr Ahern's 12 friends, who provided money to him in 1993, have ended up in positions of influence courtesy of the Government. Curiously, Mr Ahern said that he had appointed the people to State boards precisely because they were his friends and for no other reason.

David McKenna was appointed to the board of Enterprise Ireland while Des Richardson, who was the Fianna Fail fundraiser in 1993, was appointed to the board of Aer Lingus on which he still continues to serve. The perk of free air travel which applies to Aer Lingus board members is a highly-prized one which made it the most sought after board in the semi-State sector. Another of the contributors, the former Dublin city councillor, Joe Burke, was appointed by the Government as the chairman of the Dublin Port Company.

The Taoiseach takes a very different attitude to those appointments than the Opposition.

"I've checked that and I repeat my advice is I've broken no codes, ethical, tax, legal or otherwise, and I've checked that to the best of my ability. These were close friends, they were not big business interests that were removed from me, they were people that I saw, if not on a weekly basis, on a very, very regular basis, most of them would be known to be very, very close to me."

There were some other curious remarks by the Taoiseach towards the end of his interview, which may be explained by the strain he was under, but which beg further elaboration nonetheless. At one stage he referred to a fundraising event in Manchester from which he got GBP8,000. He later referred to paying gift tax, but it was not at all clear why that tax bill had been incurred.

Mr Ahern also referred to a bank account of his own into which he lodged money after his separation in 1993. "I think people are perhaps looking at my own money that I'd saved and put back into, I didn't have an account in my own name during the separation years.

"I opened an account after the separation work was over. And I put back in my own money and then paid out, perhaps that's what people are talking about. But the impression that I got between GBP50,000 and GBP100,000 and maybe far more from just a few people wasn't correct."

Over the years the Taoiseach's apparently confused account of certain events has got him into trouble, and also got him out of it.

For most of last night's interview he was clear about the message he wanted to convey, but he did leave a certain confusion in his wake as always. All the ambiguities will be teased out in the coming days.

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

In Short

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In Short. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Other commercial property stories in brief

O'Connell Street investment for over 5.5 million

With the demand for commercial investments in Dublin city centre still strong, Davin Auctioneers is suggesting a price of region 5.5 million and 5.75 million for a retail building at 52 Lower O'Connell Street which is to go to tender on October 24th. At this selling price the yield would be around 3.25 per cent. The four-storey over basement building has Eddie Rockets on the ground floor and basement. The upper floors are rented by recruitment consultants Hynes Agency. The current rent roll of 187,600 is expected to rise to around 200,000 on review.



Over 1.8m for Burgh Quay retail/office investment

Close by Colliers Jackson-Stops is quoting over 1.8 million for 3 Burgh Quay where William Hill trades out of the ground floor. Three income-producing office floors overhead have separate access on the quays. The total rental income of 69,774 would show a yield of over 4.3 per cent. The agent says the property would also suit an owner-occupier as the first floor office is currently vacant but offered for sale with a rental guarantee.

Clerys to rent at Naas retail park

Clerys Home Furnishings is moving into the last vacant unit at Globe Retail Park in Naas. Clerys will be paying in the region of 270 per sq m (25 per sq ft) for its outlet. Apart from its headquarters in Dublin's O'Connell Street, Clerys also has home furnishing units at Leopardstown and Blanchardstown retail parks. DTZ Sherry FitzGerald handled the letting in the Globe Retail Park which is anchored by Woodies DIY and Smyths Toys.

3.5m for Georgian building on South William Street

Turley & Associates is suggesting 3.5 million for a Georgian retail building at 16 South William Street, Dublin 2, which goes to auction on October 18th. The four-storey over basement building, currently vacant, has a ground floor area of 60.3sq m (649sq ft) and a total area of 290sq m (3,123sq ft). There is also a small rear yard.

1.45m for own-door D4 office

Another own-door office building at Clanwilliam Square in Dublin 4 has come on the market through Davin Auctioneers with a guide price of 1.45 million. The two-storey building has 102sq m (1,100sq ft) and dates from the late 1980s. The row of buildings has been extremely popular with professional firms. The original planning permission allowed the owners to use the premises for either offices or residential. The area is now one of the fastest changing in the city with a range of new office blocks and hundreds of new apartments already occupied.

Over 7m for 4.2-acre Cork site

Douglas Newman Good Commercial is quoting over 7 million for a site of 1.7 hectares (4.2 acres) on Forge Hill, just off the Kinsale Road in Cork, which is for sale by tender. The land is zoned primarily for industry and enterprise in the Cork County development plan and would suit either an office scheme, light industry or showrooms.

Techcrete site not sold says firm's main shareholder

Reports that Techcrete Ireland has sold its Howth plant and site were denied this week by the company's main shareholder, Chris O'Dea. He said he was aware of rumours in the area but the company was not in discussions on the sale of the site. But he conceded they "will move in time" when they found an alternative site to manufacture architectural precast concrete cladding. The Howth site is one of the best development opportunities in the area.

Over 5m for redevelopment site in Greystones

An interesting redevelopment opportunity has arisen at Church Road in Greystones, Co Wicklow, where Lennox Estates is handling the sale of two adjoining Victorian properties. Stanley House and Kirkee stand on a site of 0.54 of an acre which could be further developed for a mixed-use scheme when sold at tender on November 3rd. The guide price is likely to be between 5 million and 6 million. Neither of the two houses going for sale are listed for preservation though a local area plan has identified Church Road as an area of architectural importance.

Ready-to-go residential site in Mullingar for over 4.3m

Joint agents Sherry FitzGerald Davitt & Davitt and Property Partners James B McDonnell and Co are guiding over 4.3 million for a residential site at Dublin Road, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, which goes to tender on October 11th.

The ready-to-go site at Gleann Petit Square has full planning permission for 56 one, two and three-bedroom apartments.

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Altek Said to Have Secured Pentax Orders. Check it out:
(Taiwan Economic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Taipei, Sept. 27, 2006 (CENS)--Altek Corporation, one of Taiwan's leading contract manufacturers of digital still cameras (DSCs), is said to have acquired orders from Pentax of Japan for shipments beginning from the first quarter of 2007



But Altek hasn't yet proved the rumor, saying it has secrecy agreement with clients. If the rumor is proved to be true, the Japanese orders will account for 30% of Altek's total sales next year as this is the first time for the company to secure Japanese orders

At present, Altek is over-concentrated on such major clients as Eastman Kodak and Hewlett Packard of the U.S. Altek president Hsia Ju-wen said his company will add a Japanese client next year to help disperse operating risks. Hsia estimated the Japanese market will account for 30% of Altek's total sales next year

An institutional investor said over the past two years Altek has been strenuous to struggle for Japanese orders. In addition, Altek is said to have helped Sony of Japan to set up production facility in mainland China in the second quarter of this year

Altek estimated it would challenge NT$18 billion (US$545.45 million) in consolidated sales this year and the amount will exceed NT$20 billion (US$606.06 million). Sales to Japanese market will amount to NT$6 billion (US$181.81 million) next year

Specializing in the production of medium and low-tier DSCs, Altek is seen to have upgraded manufacturing technology as it has acquired Japanese orders

The company posted NT$4.04 (US$0.122) in EPS in the first half of this year and is expected to grab NT$10 (US$0.3) for the whole of this year

The company said it posted NT$2.263 billion (US$68.57 million) in consolidated sales in august, up 46.46% year-on-year and hitting a historic high monthly record. Thanks to the continued injection of orders, the company believed it would hit another record high in monthly sales in September

In addition to the strong performance of Altek, another DSC contract manufacturer-Ability enterprise Co. also saw historic-high record in shipments and sales in September. The company said it shipped 700,000 units of DSCs in September, hitting an all-time high monthly record

To meet customers' demand, Ability has recently launched an expansion project in a plant in mainland China. At present, the company's mainland plant is capable of rolling out 800,000 units of DSCs per month. Thanks to the expansion project, the company will see mainland production capacity increase to one million units yearly in the first half of next year.

Copyright 2006 China Economic News Service. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
AMD sure has lit a fire under the company.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO - Just a few years ago, the Intel Developer Forum seemed to be about everything but CPUs. Not this time. CPUs were the first, last and everything else that CEO Paul Otellini discussed here today.

Having shed its distractions , a few thousand employees and some market share in the process, Intel is focused on CPUs more than it has been in years.

With the Core 2 Duo on the market, Intel is now looking at releasing four core chips by year's end.

Core 2 Extreme Quad Desktop, code-named Kentsfield, will be up to 70 percent faster than the current top-end desktop chip, the Core 2 Extreme X6800.

Xeon 5300, code-named Cloverfield, will replace the extremely popular 5100 line that's only been on the market for three months.

Otellini said that more than 1 million Xeon 5100 processors have been sold in its first three months of release, impressive for a server.

"Much has been written in the past year about Intel losing its leadership in the marketplace," Otellini said during the morning keynote. "I believe we have regained our leadership and these are going to gain share in the marketplace."



Intel plans to roll out new microarchitectures every two years, starting with Core 2 this year, Nehalem in 2008 and Gesher in 2010. Intel is charging forward with three massive new fabrication plants and plans to reach 45nm die by next year.

"We're not slowing down on Moore's Law. We have the technical capacity to make it happen," said Otellini.

Core 2 Quad chips won't be in notebooks any time soon due to their heat envelopes for quad core chips.

Instead, next year will see the release of Santa Rosa, a new Centrino chip with the Core 2 Duo architecture, integrated graphics that support Vista's Aero interface, 802.11n networking, NAND Flash memory and new manageability and security features for the enterprise.

This will be the first time NAND memory, Flash memory used in place of a hard disk, is used in a notebook. Data that's frequently accessed is stored in this flash memory instead of a hard disk.

By using Flash memory as a large cache, it cuts down on hard drive access, boot time, and wake from hibernation. Otellini predicted faster boot times, twice the application performance and cutting battery power consumption in half.

Reduction of CPU power isn't just a concern for datacenters, it's also on the minds of mobile devices, too. Intel is promising to cut battery consumption in half next year, and reduce power consumption ten-fold by 2008.

CTO Justin Rattner followed Otellini to discuss power-related issues and the future datacenter, or what he called the megacenter.

He predicted that 25 percent of servers would be going into datacenters with 100,000 servers or more in the next five years.

The growth in server farms can't be underestimated. To provision a million servers today, Rattner pointed out you need 800,000 square feet to house the equipment. That's the size of 18 football fields.

The farm would require 500 megawatts to power it, which is enough for 278,000 homes.

"It's hard to imagine we won't be impacted by this in a fundamental way," he said.

But while Intel works on reducing the power consumption of its Xeon chips, it also looked at other parts of the power chain.

The typical datacenter delivers only a third of the measured power to the computers.

The other two-thirds of power literally goes up in smoke as wasted heat due to inefficient conversions between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC).

Through its own power supply research, Intel was able to create a 90 percent efficient power supply that will provide a 60 percent increase in servers per megawatt in the datacenter.

That translates to 600 more servers for the same power, or just save the energy.

Finally, Intel gave some clues to where it's going in the future.

In addition to demonstrating its new laser-based processor, the company offered the first details of its Tera-scale Computing Research Program.

The project, in conjunction with the University of California at Santa Barbara, is the world's first programmable processor said to deliver 1 trillion floating point operations, or teraflops, per second.

The chip had 80 programmable floating point processors each, with on-chip memory, capable of a teraflop of bandwidth throughput.

This will allow for high-speed computing like video searches and real-time gaming, said Rattner. However, the chip is at least five years from availability.

Internet.com Corp.

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EANTC Completes Multi-Vendor Carrier Ethernet Interoperability Test, Presents Live Showcase at Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2006. Check it out:
BERLIN --(Business Wire)-- The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) presents a live, multi-vendor interoperability showcase at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2006 (CEWC) this week. CEWC is the official conference of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) organized by IIR in Madrid, Spain, September 26-29, 2006. (http://www.carrierethernetworld.com)



Actelis Networks, ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel, Ciena, Circadiant Systems, Corrigent Systems, Huawei Technologies, Ixia, Juniper Networks, Lucent Technologies, Nortel, RAD Data Communications, Redback Networks, Stratex Networks, Telco Systems a BATM company and Tellabs participated in the test. In preparation for the Madrid showcase, all vendors took part in a hot-staging event at EANTC's lab in Berlin, Germany, two weeks ago.

The CEWC 2006 interoperability event verified multi-vendor Carrier Ethernet infrastructures offering business and residential services. Compared to the preceding event in 2005, this test was larger, explored major new MEF and IEEE standards for the first time, and implemented more advanced services in the test network. Equipment vendors verified real-world implementations of Carrier Ethernet standards and improved key interoperability aspects.

T-Systems attended the hot-staging event and conducted tests in the interoperability network together with EANTC. "The service performance of the test network was excellent, demonstrating interworking between various vendors," said Dr. Ralf-Peter Braun, Project Manager, Network Architecture, T-Systems. "We also observed vendor progress in the fault management (OAM) area with great interest. In Carrier Ethernet networks, OAM support is mandatory and interoperability is key to success in heterogeneous network environments."

"COLT has built a strong portfolio of carrier-class Ethernet services in Europe," said Dr. Alireza Mahmoodshahi, CTO at COLT. "We appreciate that Carrier Ethernet equipment suppliers are mindful of multi-vendor interoperability from the start, thus easing and accelerating our network integration. Technically advanced events like the EANTC test help to achieve this goal. Specifically, the successful integration of multiple transport technologies like SDH, wireless technologies, MPLS, and copper access strengthens end-to-end Carrier Ethernet services."

"Since our last multi-vendor Carrier Ethernet test event in 2005, vendors have worked to enhance and extend their solutions to a great extent," said Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director of EANTC. "We were positively surprised to witness so many interoperable implementations of Ethernet in the First Mile (802.3ah), Ethernet link aggregation (802.3ad) for resilience, MPLS traffic engineering (DiffServ-TE) and even the pre-standard continuity checks as per CFM (802.1ag). EANTC will continue to assist vendors and service providers to further enhance Carrier Ethernet performance and interoperability."

A 16-page, detailed technical test report is available for download at http://www.eantc.com/cewc2006.

About EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers vendor-neutral network test facilities for manufacturers, service providers, and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability, conformance, and performance testing for Ethernet in enterprise and service provider environments, Triple Play, MPLS / IP network technologies and applications. EANTC provides independent network-related services, consulting and seminars. For more information contact Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director, at +49.30.3180595-0 or via e-mail at [email protected]. http://www.eantc.com

About IIR

IIR is the world's leading knowledge and skills transfer company with a global network of 47 companies and 112 operating units. IIR provides business executives with knowledge and skills through training, conferences, seminars, e-Learning, blended solutions, exhibitions, consulting and mentoring.

IIR's market leading Optical Transmission industry conference portfolio provides technical forums and networking opportunities for the industry in EMEA and globally. For more information, visit www.optical-transmission.com

About T-Systems

T-Systems is one of Europe's leading providers of information and communications technology (ICT). Within the Deutsche Telekom Group, T-Systems is responsible for supporting the business customer segment, ranging from medium-sized and large companies all the way up to multinational corporations and public institutions. T-Systems also operates Deutsche Telekom's global network, which links all the world's key business centers and allows T-Systems to provide international organizations with high-quality ICT services wherever they are based. The company has 52,000 employees in over 20 countries worldwide, and posted revenues of approximately EUR 12.9 billion in 2005.

For more information about the company and its services, see www.t-systems.com.

About COLT

COLT is a leading European provider of business communications. COLT specialises in providing data, voice and managed services to midsize and major businesses and wholesale customers. It has more than 50,000 customers across all industry sectors. COLT owns and operates a 13-country, 20,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 32 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 10,000 buildings and 14 COLT data centres. COLT Telecom Group S.A. is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT). Information about COLT and its services can be found at www.colt.net.

All brand names and logos mentioned here are registered trademarks of their respective companies in the United States and other countries.
Tellabs Adds New Feature Pack and Industry Successes to its Tellabs(R) 6300 System Nodes. Check it out:
HIGH WYCOMBE, England, September 27 -- Both the Tellabs(R) 6325 Edge Node and the Tellabs(R) 6315 Metro Ethernet

Node successfully demonstrated interoperability at the multi-vendor carrier
Ethernet interoperability test completed by EANTC (European Advanced
Networking Test Center). Following the test, Tellabs is participating at the
live interoperability showcase at CEWC (Carrier Ethernet World Congress).

CEWC is the official conference of the Metro Ethernet Forum organised by
IIR in Madrid, Spain, September 26-29, 2006. At the conference Tellabs also
announced the Carrier Ethernet Certification by Iometrix of the Tellabs 6325
node, as well as the launch of the node's Feature Pack 1.1.

The CEWC 2006 interoperability event verified multi-vendor Carrier
Ethernet infrastructures offering business and residential services. This
test explored major new MEF and IEEE standards for the first time, and
implemented more advanced services in the test network. Equipment vendors
verified real-world implementations of Carrier Ethernet standards and
improved key interoperability aspects.

The Tellabs 6325 Edge Node is an award winning (1), compact
Next-Generation Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (NG-SDH) node with very high
density. With FP1.1 the Tellabs 6325 node becomes part of Tellabs(R)
AssuredEthernet(SM) solution as it adds another key application to its
capabilities: the delivery of carrier-class data services. The Tellabs 6325
node offers hard Quality of Service (QoS) at minimum bandwidth consumption
with Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based Ethernet. Furthermore, the
1U high Tellabs 6325 node FP1.1 provides features expected in a
fully-featured Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP) including Multiplex
Section Protection (MSP) 1+1 network protection, redundant matrices, power
and synchronisation. All this enables carriers to cost-effectively transform
the way networks are built and to offer new profitable services to end-users.

During the award ceremony on Tuesday, September 26th at the Carrier
Ethernet World Congress, Iometrix test laboratories certified that the
Tellabs 6325 Edge Node operating at the User Network Interface (UNI) delivers
Ethernet Private Line (EPL), Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) and
Ethernet-Local Area Network (E-LAN) services compliant with the Metro
Ethernet Forum (MEF) MEF 9 and MEF 14 technical specifications. Both the
Tellabs 6325 node and the Tellabs 6315 node now provide the assurance of this
certification and are strong network migration solutions for carriers
world-wide.

(1) At this year's Globalcomm 2006 trade show in Chicago, this product
won the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) award for "Innovation
in Technology - Optical Networks"

About Tellabs

Tellabs advances telecommunications networks to meet the evolving needs
of users. Broadband solutions from Tellabs enable service providers to
deliver high-quality voice, video and data services over wireline and
wireless networks around the world. Ranked among the BusinessWeek InfoTech
100, Tellabs (NASDAQ: TLAB) is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index, NASDAQ Global
Select Market and the S&P 500. www.tellabs.com

About EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers
vendor-neutral network test facilities for manufacturers, service providers,
and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability,
conformance, and performance testing for Ethernet in enterprise and service
provider environments, Triple Play, MPLS / IP network technologies and
applications. EANTC provides independent network-related services, consulting
and seminars. For more information contact Carsten Rossenhövel, Managing
Director, at +49.30.3180595-0 or via e-mail at [email protected]. For the full
release see http://www.eantc.com. A 16-page, detailed technical test report
is available for download at http://www.eantc.com/cewc2006.

About IIR

IIR is the world's leading knowledge and skills transfer company with a
global network of 47 companies and 112 operating units. IIR provides business
executives with knowledge and skills through training, conferences, seminars,
e-Learning, blended solutions, exhibitions, consulting and mentoring.

IIR's market leading Optical Transmission industry conference portfolio
provides technical forums and networking opportunities for the industry in
EMEA and globally. For more information, visit www.optical-transmission.com

Tellabs(R) and (R) are trademarks of Tellabs or its affiliates in the
United States and/or other countries. Any other company or product names
mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Tellabs UK Ltd

Media Contacts: Beatrice Martin-Vignerte, +44 7884 187763, [email protected]. Investor Contact: Tom Scottino, +1-630-798-3602, [email protected]

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/26 CVR Energy Inc. (Sugar Land, TX) $300.0
Is an independent refiner and marketer of high value
transportation fuels.
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
SPF SELLS 20.2% STAKE IN SKVIRSKY BAKERY FOR UAH 1.24M. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) on September 7 sold at Kyiv International Stock Exchange a 20.218% stake in OJSC Skvirsky bakery in Kyiv region for UAH 1.242 million, the SPF press service told Interfax- Ukraine on Friday. The press service said the stake was sold at a price of UAH 25 kopecks per stock. Skvirsky bakery processes grain and beans. In the summer 2006, the enterprise launched the new universal complex to produce oatmeal, which costs UAH 1.2 million. The production capacity of the line is 50 tonnes of oatmeal par day. According to the State Commission for Securities and Stock Market, as of June, the main stockholders of the enterprise were five individuals who owned 14.24%, 14.01%, 14.42%, 14.24%, 14.01% stakes each. The OJSC's statutory fund is UAH 6.144 million.



Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
SPF HAS NOT RECEIVED GOVERNMENT ORDER TO SUSPEND TENDER TO SELL. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) LUHANSKTEPLOVOZ, SAYS SPF HEAD The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) did not receive orders from the Ukrainian Cabinet to suspend a tender to sell a 76% stake in Luhansk- based Luhanskteplovoz holding company, SPF Head Valentyna Semeniuk said on Era-FM radio on Friday. She said that statements made by Vice-Premier Andriy Kliuyev during his visit to Russia that the privatization of the enterprise won't take place, and that a joint enterprise will be created on its basis, were his personal opinion. Moreover, Semeniuk said that the plan outlined by Kliuyev as impossible, as the tender to sell the state stake has already been announced and agreements on the confidentiality of information with buyers have already been signed. The cancellation of the tender could lead to a situation in which the potential buyers demanded compensation from the state, she said. Semeniuk also said that such statements could reduce the value of the stake, threaten the transparency of the tender and undermine trust in the state. Semeniuk said that if the tender is canceled, the fulfillment of the revenues plan from privatization would be under threat. As reported, on July 19, the fund announced an open auction to sell 76% of the shares of the open JSC Luhanskteplovoz holding. The starting price for the stock is UAH 292 million. The tender will be held on October 3. Luhanskteplovoz, Ukraine's monopoly manufacturer of mainline cargo diesel locomotives, ended 2005 with losses estimated at UAH 478,000. In 2004, the company was in the black with a UAH 207,000 profit. In 2005, the company's net revenues from sales fell by 3.4% year-on- year, to UAH 395.25 million, and the company's losses were estimated at UAH 478,000, while in 2004 the company saw UAH 207,000 in net profit. This year, the company is planning to increase production volumes by tentatively 10%. The company's statutory fund is UAH 54.796 million, with the face value of each of its shares being 25 kopecks.



Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Novell unveils Linux based virtualisation solution. Check it out:
(Corporate IT update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CORPORATE IT UPDATE-(C)1995-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Software provider Novell, Inc (Nasdaq: NOVL) announced on Monday (25 September) an enterprise Linux-based virtualisation solution built on Xen, optimized for Intel Virtualization Technology.

According to the company, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell running on Dual-Core Intel Xeon platforms will provide customers with a high-performing virtualisation solution that will enable them to host Linux environments without the need to modify the guest operating systems. In addition, Novell announced plans to offer enterprise support for virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, allowing Red Hat customers to migrate to Novell service and support while still running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a virtualized environment.



Novell will reportedly support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Intel Virtualization Technology, up through and including Level 3 (core engineering) support, meaning Novell will provide technical support for the Xen hypervisor if a customer uncovers an issue running a virtual instance of Red Hat Linux and that issue is not reproducible in a non-virtualized environment. If the customer runs a virtual SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 or 10 instance, Novell will offer Level 3 support for the host operating system, the Xen hypervisor and the guest operating system. Moreover, Intel and Novell will work together to fix all issues which are related to the hypervisor and Intel VT hardware.

Novell will begin a pilot programme in late October 2006. General availability of the solution is expected by the end of 2006. No pricing details were disclosed.

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
APEC economies urged to create favourable conditions for micro enterprises. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - APEC economies need to create favourable conditions for micro enterprises by simplifying administrative procedures and facilitating their accession to resources, especially financial resources by making minor loans available.



Speaking with reporters after the 7th APEC Micro Enterprises Sub-group (MESG) Meeting closed in Hanoi on Sept. 25, Nguyen Hoa Cuong, from the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Department for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development, said all the participants had agreed that APEC economies should help to strengthen cooperation among micro enterprises and related organisations.

They also emphasised the necessity of providing information technology (IT) and telecommunication training for the enterprises to help them to introduce their products on the Internet.

At the meeting, the participants praised the theme of "Strengthening Micro Enterprises' Capacity to Integrate into the Market", an initiative of Vietnam for regional micro enterprises' cooperation in 2006.

Nine APEC member economies, including Indonesia, Chile, China, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, and representatives from the APEC Women Leaders' Network delivered speeches in support of the theme.

Measures discussed at the meeting will be compiled for the Meeting of APEC Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Working Group, which will open on Sept. 26, Cuong added.

The delegates agreed to organise the 8th MESG meeting in Australia on March 4, 2007. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Vietnam: APEC micro enterprise sub-group meeting opens. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - Improving capacity of micro businesses in accessing the market was the theme of the 7th APEC Micro Enterprise Sub-group Meeting opening in Hanoi on Sept. 25.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Nguyen Van Trung, Director of the Department of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, spoke highly of the role played by micro businesses in generating jobs and reducing poverty.



In particular, Trung added, these enterprises have contributed to boosting trade and services among the Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) member economies.

Along with reviewing the implementation of projects funded by APEC and proposing new plans, delegates also discussed a number of topics, including creating a favourable business environment for micro enterprises, facilitating their accession to resources, and creating more business opportunities for them.

The conference was held within the framework of the upcoming APEC SME Ministerial Meeting slated for Sept. 28-29 in Hanoi. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Las Vegas Review-Journal Real Estate column. Check it out:
(Las Vegas Review-Journal (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--TAHITI VILLAGE TIME SHARE PROJECT ENTERS NEW PHASE: Las Vegas-based time share developer Consolidated Resorts has started construction on the second phase of its $135 million Tahiti Village flagship property on Las Vegas Boulevard South, between the Las Vegas Beltway and Warm Springs Road.



The second phase will have 284 time share units in a 10-story tower, designed and decorated to the same standards of the 154 units in the $60 million first phase, Consolidated Chairman Michael Kaplan said. Martin-Harris is the general contractor.

When finished, the 1,083 units will generate an estimated $1.5 billion in sales, Kaplan said.

The 1,550-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condos come with a plasma-screen television. Units can be divided into two independent suites with the turn of a lock. Total living space will exceed 1 million square feet on the 27-acre site.

One of Tahiti Village's expected features is the quarter-mile "lazy river" that will take guests floating through the resort's inner courtyard, where they can enjoy the pool and Jacuzzi, Kaplan said.

Consolidated, founded in Hawaii in 1980, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The ASNY Corp., a privately held diversified investment company with headquarters in Las Vegas.

Kaplan said he will be announcing the location and preliminary details for the company's next master-planned time share resort in the coming months.

Consolidated has developed nine resorts in Hawaii and three in Las Vegas, including Club de Soleil and Tahiti on west Tropicana Avenue.

LOFTS FINISHED: Blue Heron has completed the second phase of construction at Stone Canyon luxury lofts at Buffalo Drive and Del Rey Avenue and all 23 units have been sold, principal Tommy Isola said. Dax Contracting was the general contractor. Prices started in the $600,000s, or about $200 a square foot, for units ranging from 3,400 to 3,900 square feet.

MEDICAL OFFICE: TWC Construction has received a new contract valued at $9.8 million for the Centennial Hills medical office building developed by Ensemble Real Estate Co. and Universal Health Realty Trust at 8560 North Durango Drive. Construction of the four-story, 100,000-square-foot structural steel building is scheduled for completion in third quarter 2007. The 3-acre project is close to the new hospital being built in the Centennial Hills area.

HENDERSON OFFICE: San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based commercial developer Mammoth Equities has finished a three-story, 58,000-square-foot office building in Henderson. The steel-framed Mammoth Professional Building is at 2470 St. Rose Parkway.

SALVATION ARMY: JVC Architects has been contracted to design a 5,000-square-foot chapel for the Salvation Army campus at 37 Owens St. The chapel will feature a bell wall, sanctuary, small prayer room and support area. Cost of the project is $1.4 million, and completion is scheduled for summer 2007.

TRANSACTIONS: Kevin Higgins and Garrett Toft of Voit Commercial Brokerage represented J&S Diesel in the sale of four acres at Decatur Boulevard and Diablo Drive to Heller Management Corp. for $4.45 million.

They also negotiated the sale of a 5,390-square-foot industrial building at 2612 Ables Lane to Enterprise Cabinets for $557,500.

Christina Roush, Charles Moore and Marlene Fujita of CB Richard Ellis represented Donahue Schriber Realty Group in the sale of a 188,000-square-foot retail building at Nellis Boulevard and Stewart Avenue to Sarofim Realty Advisors for $29.5 million.

Keith Spencer of CB represented Robert Russell in the sale of 12,133 square feet of industrial space at 4612 Industry Center Drive to Farmer Bros. Co. for $1.4 million.

MILLION-DOLLAR HOME SALES: Luxury Homes of Las Vegas reported the following million-dollar home sales last week:

--$1.1 million, 5,047 square feet, 6 bedroom, 6 bath, stone exterior, wet bar, family room, outdoor kitchen, putting green, Regency at The Lakes.

--$1.2 million, 3,888 square feet, 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom, Strip and mountain views, hardwood flooring, guard gated, two balconies in master bedroom, Christopher home, Summerlin.

--$1.35 million, 3,085 square feet, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 11th fairway location with Strip and mountain views, infinity pool, spa, barbecue, fire pit, Anthem Country Club.

--$1.6 million, 6,538 square feet, 6 bedroom, 5.5 bath, half acre, pool, waterfalls, swim-up bar, grotto cave, five-car garage, family room with wet bar, Henderson.

--$1.79 million, 5,664 square feet, 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath, guard gated, two family rooms, beach entry pool with slide and waterfall, cabana with fireplace, putting green, travertine floors, Summerlin.

--$1.94 million, 5,730 square feet, 4 bedroom, 4.5 bath, separate casita and guest house with views of golf course and lit mountain, balcony, four-car garage, Red Rock Country Club.

--$1.95 million, 5,071 square feet, 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath, Canyon Fairways home, exterior stone accents, custom driveway, travertine, office, surround sound system, Summerlin.

--$2.48 million, 7,135 square feet, 6 bedroom, 5.5 bath, basement with theater, balcony, pool, waterfall, spa and barbecue, Summerlin.

To see more of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.lvrj.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
B.C.-based Columbia Valley Credit Union Selects Open Solutions' Core Data Processing Technology. Check it out:
GLASTONBURY, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- Golden, B.C., Canada-based Columbia Valley Credit Union has selected Open Solutions Inc.'s(R) (NASDAQ: OPEN) core enterprise platform, The Complete Credit Union Solution(R), to meet its data processing and member service needs. Open Solutions is a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers across the United States, Canada and other international markets.



A long-time client of Open Solutions Canada, Columbia Valley Credit Union prides itself on "making a difference" in the community where it serves more than 5,000 members and manages more than $114 million (CAD) in assets. In its 20-year relationship with Open Solutions Canada, the credit union has frequently stepped up as an "early adopter" of Open Solutions Canada's technology. Over the years, it has been the first financial institution in Golden to offer ATM services, phone and Internet banking and imaged member statements. Earlier this year, Columbia Valley became the first of Open Solutions' Canadian financial institution clients to connect to the newest version of Open Solutions Canada's POSH switch.

Paul Pupo, Columbia Valley's general manager, said, "We are very pleased to continue the business relationship between our two organizations and look forward to a bright future with Open Solutions Canada as our technology partner. In the 20 years since we became a client, Open Solutions Canada has consistently provided us with the expertise, the tools, products and latest technology to allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition and add value to our members. Operationally, our credit union is a technology-driven organization and we are excited to have access to the people and wide array of technology products Open Solutions Canada offers. Our credit union's business strategy is simple: to operate efficiently, provide good service and give our employees the right technology tools to help them excel in their positions. We believe Open Solutions' core technology will help us to execute on this strategy and are looking forward to our migration to the new system."

Built on a single, centralized Oracle(R) relational database, The Complete Credit Union Solution's open architecture and member-centric platform is designed to help credit unions streamline both front and back office applications with a focus on improving member service.

"We are pleased Columbia Valley Credit Union has chosen The Complete Credit Union Solution as the technology platform to enable its continued growth and success," says Blair Goulet, president of Open Solutions Canada. "As the third credit union in British Columbia to announce its decision to migrate to our core data processing solution, Columbia Valley has once again demonstrated technology leadership in the interests of serving the unique needs of its members and community more effectively. This underscores our belief that any financial institution, regardless of size or geographic location, can take advantage of the flexibility inherent in Open Solutions' core technology to support its business strategies. Open Solutions Canada welcomes this opportunity to continue our long-standing business relationship with Columbia Valley Credit Union as its trusted technology partner."

Open Solutions Chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez, Jr., says: "In the nearly two years since Open Solutions entered the Canadian market, we have seen an increasing interest from the country's credit union market in our proven, advanced, open technology. Today, nearly one third of Canada's credit unions, spanning four provinces, are committed to Open Solutions' core enterprise solution and we are pleased to welcome Columbia Valley Credit Union to that group. We believe credit unions play a key role in the financial services industry and we are dedicated to providing institutions such as Columbia Valley with the technology tools they need to help them 'make a difference' in the community they serve."

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully featured strategic product platform that integrates core data processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting tools, imaging, digital documents, Check 21, interactive voice response, network services, Web hosting and design, and payment and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States and Canada to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service.

For more information about Open Solutions or its financial product line, contact Mickey Goldwasser by email at [email protected] by phone at 860.652.3153 or via fax at 860.652.3156. Visit Open Solutions' Internet site at www.opensolutions.com.

Open Solutions Inc. and The Complete Credit Union Solution are registered trademarks of Open Solutions Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 Open Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that state Open Solutions Inc.'s or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. All forward looking-statements are only as of the date of this press release and Open Solutions Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause Open Solutions Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For example, if we fail to adapt our products and services to changes in technology or in the marketplace, we could lose existing clients and be unable to attract new business. Factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, without limitation, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors affecting the banking and credit union industry and/or Open Solutions Inc.'s operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors set forth under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Open Solutions' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editors Note: The correct usage of the company name, Open Solutions Inc., is either referring to it as Open Solutions Inc. or Open Solutions. Open Solutions no longer uses the acronym of OSI to refer to the company.
Red Hat Reports Fiscal 2007 Second Quarter Results. Check it out:
RALEIGH, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter.

Total revenue for the quarter was $99.7 million, an increase of 52% from the year-ago quarter and 19% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $84.9 million, up 56% year-over-year and 19% sequentially. JBoss-related revenue of $7 million was at the top of management's previously provided guidance.



Net income for the quarter was $11.0 million or $0.05 per diluted share compared with $16.7 million or $0.09 per diluted share for the second quarter of the last fiscal year. Due to differences in the accounting treatment for taxes and stock compensation expense between fiscal 2006 and 2007, net income is not directly comparable between these periods. After adjusting for these accounting differences, non-GAAP adjusted net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2007 was $23.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share. This compares to non-GAAP adjusted net income of $17.7 million, or $0.09 per diluted share in the second quarter of the last fiscal year.

At quarter end, the company's total deferred revenue balance was $284.1 million, an increase of $29.4 million, or 12% when compared to the end of the last fiscal quarter.

Other highlights from the quarter included:

-- Quarterly gross margin improved to 84% from 82% in the year-ago period.

-- Red Hat Enterprise Linux OEM revenue grew 90% year-over-year.

-- Total cash and investments as of August 31, 2006 were $1.0 billion.

"The second quarter was one of intense focus on integrating our recent acquisitions in Argentina, Brazil, India and, of course, JBoss," stated Charlie Peters, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "We are pleased with the pace and progress of our integration work and believe that results in subsequent quarters will benefit from the investments in employee time and expense made in Q2. Revenue grew nicely and we expect the recent introduction of the Red Hat Application Stack will help continue that trend. We expect operating results and cash flow will improve in the second half of fiscal 2007 since much of the heavy integration work is behind us already."

"Our better than expected revenue and earnings per share speak to the ongoing demand for open source solutions that we continue to see worldwide," stated Dion Cornett, Vice President of Investor Relations. "Moreover, the particular strength we saw in hardware OEM revenue growth stands in stark contrast to the reported weakness experienced by server suppliers this past quarter. We feel this difference highlights the value Red Hat is able to provide that extends beyond mere box counts."

Additional information on Red Hat's reported results, including a reconciliation of the non-GAAP adjusted results, are included in the financial tables below.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices spanning the globe. CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat as the industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with applications, management and middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). Red Hat is accelerating the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, secure open source platform. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries.

              RED HAT, INC.
        CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
              (Unaudited)
       (In thousands - except per share amounts)
               Three Months Ended  Six Months Ended
               ------------------- -------------------
                Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,
                2006   2005   2006   2005
               ------------------- -------------------
Revenue:
 Subscriptions        $ 84,947 $ 54,327 $156,439 $103,568
 Training and services     14,726  11,391  27,237  22,930
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
  Total subscription,
  training and services
  revenue           99,673  65,718  183,676  126,498
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Cost of revenue:
 Subscriptions          7,386   5,003  13,382  10,836
 Training and services      9,034   6,589  16,484  13,384
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
  Total cost of subscription,
  training and services
  revenue           16,420  11,592  29,866  24,220
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Total gross profit       83,253  54,126  153,810  102,278
Operating expense:
Sales and marketing       37,807  20,478  68,308  40,793
Research and development    18,068  10,450  31,883  20,298
General and administrative   17,926  11,271  31,555  21,614
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
 Total operating expense    73,801  42,199  131,746  82,705
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Income from operations      9,452  11,927  22,064  19,573
Other income (expense), net    9,573   8,220  20,275  15,956
Interest expense         (1,490)  (1,556)  (2,974)  (3,122)
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Income before provision for
income taxes          17,535  18,591  39,365  32,407
Provision for income taxes    6,488   1,859  14,565   3,241
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Net income           $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Net income-diluted       $ 12,000 $ 18,079 $ 26,705 $ 31,889
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Net income per share:
Basic             $  0.06 $  0.09 $  0.13 $  0.16
Diluted            $  0.05 $  0.09 $  0.12 $  0.15
Weighted average shares
outstanding:
Basic             190,292  177,208  186,936  176,995
Diluted            219,940  208,583  217,348  207,894
Diluted net income per share
computation:
GAAP Net income, basic     $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
Interest expense on convertible
debentures, net of related
GAAP tax effects          464    654    927   1326
Amortization of debt issuance
costs, net of related GAAP tax
effects              489    693    978   1397
GAAP Net income, diluted    $ 12,000 $ 18,079 $ 26,705 $ 31,889
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
          CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
              (In thousands)
                ASSETS
                        Aug 31,  February 28,
                        2006     2006
                       ----------- ------------
                       (unaudited)
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents          $ 568,181  $ 267,547
Investments in debt securities         269,775   537,324
Accounts receivable, net             70,346    59,792
Prepaid expenses and other current assets    27,859    16,576
                       ----------- ------------
 Total current assets             936,161   881,239
Property and equipment, net           40,055    35,822
Goodwill                    343,122    75,942
Identifiable intangibles, net          90,958    13,467
Investments in debt securities         196,002   272,669
Other assets, net                34,273    35,102
                       ----------- ------------
 Total assets                $1,640,571  $1,314,241
                       =========== ============
  LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable               $  7,642  $  5,627
Accrued expenses                 32,858    31,960
Deferred revenue                211,400   162,934
Other current obligations              493     401
                       ----------- ------------
 Total current liabilities           252,393   200,922
Deferred lease credits              5,418    4,994
Long term deferred revenue            72,709    60,554
Other long term obligations             89     213
Convertible debentures             570,000   570,000
Stockholders' equity:
Minority interest                   -     771
Common stock                     19      19
Additional paid-in capital           997,708   763,906
Deferred compensation                 -    (2,418)
Accumulated deficit              (127,199)  (152,113)
Treasury stock, at cost            (125,656)  (124,125)
Accumulated other comprehensive loss       (4,910)   (8,482)
                       ----------- ------------
 Total stockholders' equity          739,962   477,558
                       ----------- ------------
 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $1,640,571  $1,314,241
                       =========== ============
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
        CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
              (Unaudited)
              (In thousands)
              Three Months Ended   Six Months Ended
             --------------------- ---------------------
              Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,
              2006    2005    2006    2005
             --------------------- ---------------------
Cash flows from operating
activities:
Net income         $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
Adjustments to reconcile
net income to net cash
provided by operating
activities:
 Depreciation and
 amortization        6,754   3,751   11,098   7,298
 Deferred income taxes    4,092    (606)   9,502    (799)
 Share-based compensation
 expense           8,300   1,310   15,926   2,495
 Excess tax benefits from
 share-based payment
 arrangements         (740)     -   (2,875)     -
 Gain from repurchase of
 convertible debentures     -   (1,544)     -   (3,140)
 Provision for doubtful
 accounts           201     57    702    141
 Amortization of debt
 issuance costs        752    770   1,504   1,552
 Other             (12)    993    (289)   1,018
Changes in operating assets and
liabilities net of effects of
acquisitions:
 Accounts receivable     3,311   (9,837)   (181)  (9,241)
 Prepaid expenses and
 other current assets    (1,115)    615   (2,415)   (790)
 Accounts payable        399    735    509   (3,367)
 Accrued expenses      (1,707)   5,049    (157)   7,456
 Deferred revenue      12,623   27,760   38,079   50,246
 Other assets          (21)    (29)    53    325
 Net cash provided by
 operating activities    43,884   45,756   96,256   82,360
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash flows from investing
activities:
Purchase of investment
 securities          (112) (130,577)  (7,444) (139,177)
Proceeds from sales and
 maturities of investment
 securities         78,021   19,731  356,052  111,017
Acquisitions of
 businesses, net of cash
 acquired         (147,651)  (2,500) (149,562)  (2,500)
Purchase of other
 investments           -     -     -    (767)
Purchase of property and
 equipment          (5,107)  (4,716)  (8,985)  (7,988)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
 Net cash provided by
 (used in) investing
 activities        (74,849) (118,062)  190,061  (39,415)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash flows from financing
activities:
Excess tax benefits from
 share-based payment
 arrangements          740     -   2,875     -
Repurchase of convertible
 debentures            -  (18,091)     -  (26,301)
Structured stock
 repurchases           -     -     -   1,031
Net proceeds from issuance
 of common stock under
 Employee Stock Purchase
 Plan               -    770    306   1,497
Proceeds from exercise of
 common stock options     4,354   5,418   11,684   7,124
Purchase of treasury stock  (1,359)  (11,560)  (1,532)  (16,688)
Other financing         (31)    415    (31)    83
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
 Net cash provided by
 (used in) financing
 activities         3,704  (23,048)  13,302  (33,254)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Effect of foreign currency
exchange rates on cash and
cash equivalents       (1,475)   (958)   1,015   (1,804)
Net increase in cash and
cash equivalents      (28,736)  (96,312)  300,634   7,887
Cash and cash equivalents
at beginning of the period 596,917  244,368  267,547  140,169
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash and cash equivalents
at end of period     $ 568,181 $ 148,056 $ 568,181 $ 148,056
             ========== ========== ========== ==========
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
NON CASH SHARE-BASED COMPENSATION AND RECONCILIATION OF GAAP RESULTS
          TO NON-GAAP ADJUSTED RESULTS
              (Unaudited)
       (In thousands - except per share amounts)
Non cash share-based compensation expense included in Consolidated
Statements of Operations:
                 Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
                 ------------------ -----------------
                 Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31,
                  2006   2005   2006   2005
                 ------------------ -----------------
Cost of revenue          $  539 $   - $ 1,049 $   -
Sales and marketing         2,455    19  4,572    31
Research and development      1,771    53  3,268   105
General and administration     3,535  1,238  7,037  2,359
                 --------- -------- -------- --------
Total stock based compensation
 expense             $ 8,300 $ 1,310 $15,926 $ 2,495
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Reconciliation of GAAP Results to non-GAAP
adjusted Results (for prior year
comparison purposes only)
                 Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
                 ------------------ -----------------
                 Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31,
                  2006   2005   2006   2005
                 ------------------ -----------------
GAAP Net income          $11,047 $16,732 $24,800 $29,166
GAAP Provision for income taxes   6,488  1,859  14,565  3,241
GAAP Income before provision for
income taxes           $17,535 $18,591 $39,365 $32,407
Add: Share-based compensation per
FAS 123R (Aug 06 only)       8,300  1,310  15,926  2,495
Deduct: Intrinsic value of stock
options per APB No. 25        (870) (1,310) (1,686) (2,495)
                 --------- --------------------------
Incremental non-cash share-based
 compensation expense        7,430    0  14,240    0
Non-GAAP adjusted income before
provision for income taxes    $24,965 $18,591 $53,605 $32,407
Non-GAAP cash provision for income
taxes               $ 1,248 $  930 $ 2,680 $ 1,620
                 --------- -------- -------- --------
Non-GAAP adjusted net income    $23,717 $17,661 $50,925 $30,787
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Non-GAAP adjusted net income-
diluted              $25,109 $19,083 $53,708 $33,661
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Non-GAAP adjusted net income per
share:
Basic               $ 0.12 $ 0.10 $ 0.27 $ 0.17
Diluted              $ 0.11 $ 0.09 $ 0.25 $ 0.16
Non-GAAP diluted net income per
share computation:
Non-GAAP adjusted net income    $23,717 $17,661 $50,925 $30,787
Interest expense on convertible
debentures, net of related 5%
cash tax effects           677   691  1,354  1,400
Amortization of debt issuance
costs, net of related 5% cash tax
effects                715   731  1,429  1,474
Non-GAAP adjusted net income-
diluted              $25,109 $19,083 $53,708 $33,661
                 ========= ======== ======== ========

HickoryTech Approved to Provide Digital TV to City of Janesville. Check it out:
MANKATO, Minn., Sept. 26 -- HickoryTech Corporation announced that it has added Digital TV to the list of communications products and services available to the residents of Janesville.

The Janesville City Council overwhelmingly approved a cable television franchise agreement on Sept. 25, 2006 and Digital TV services will be available to the entire community beginning in the spring of 2007. Residents can subscribe to services on a stand-alone basis or as part of a money saving bundle including Digital TV, high-speed DSL, local telephone, and long distance all from one local company on one bill.



"We are excited that our community now has a value-based alternative when selecting entertainment services for their families," said Clinton Rogers, Janesville city administrator. "We are fortunate as a small community to have these new service options. As our city grows, HickoryTech continues to increase the quality of life for residents choosing to make their home in Janesville."

HickoryTech offers more than 200 channels in five package options that allow customers to select additional channels of their choice. Digital TV delivers a crystal-clear image and offers premium tier channels. Hispanic and sports tier channels are offered, in addition to HBO(R), Cinemax(R), Starz/Encore(R), Showtime(R), pay-per-view and commercial-free music programming.

"Our affordable alternative for TV service features exceptional digital picture quality unmatched by our competition and shows HickoryTech's commitment to bring value to our customers," said Damon Dutz, president of HickoryTech's Consumer Solutions Division. "We are pleased to provide attractive programming packages that also allow customers to reap the added benefit of discounts with our bundled suite of services."

HickoryTech offers Digital TV delivered with high-speed Internet over an advanced fiber neighborhood network and existing infrastructure. Unique to this service is the ability to display caller ID information directly on the TV screen.

Janesville will become the ninth community served by HickoryTech with the "triple-play" of voice, data and video services. Customers seeking additional information should contact HickoryTech by calling 866-HICKORY or by visiting the company's Web site at http://www.hickorytech.com/ .

About HickoryTech:
HickoryTech Corporation is a diversified communications company headquartered in Mankato, Minn., with approximately 480 employees in Minnesota and Iowa. In its 109th year of operation, HickoryTech offers a full array of telecommunications products and services to business and residential customers. The Telecom Sector offers local voice, long distance, Internet, Broadband services, Digital TV, and IP networking. The Enterprise Solutions Sector provides IP Telephony, call center management, and data network solutions. Enventis Telecom provides IP-based voice and data services and network solutions on a state wide SONET-based network. The Information Solutions Sector develops telecom and carrier access billing solutions. To learn more about HickoryTech Corporation, visit the company's Web site at http://www.hickorytech.com/ or call 1-866-HICKORY.

Certain statements included in this press release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the industry in which HickoryTech operates and management's beliefs and assumptions. The forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and probabilities. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they were made. Except as required by federal securities laws, HickoryTech undertakes no obligation to update any of its forward-looking statements for any reason.

HickoryTech Corporation

CONTACT: Paul Bertino, Director of Marketing & Product Management ofHickoryTech, +1-507-387-1889, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.hickorytech.com/
Colubris launches MAP-330 [Colubris Networks]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MultiService Access Point Delivers Always-On RF Surveillance,

Intrusion Detection and Prevention without Compromising Voice and Video Performance.

Colubris Networks, a leader in optimized wireless LAN (WLAN) switching systems, today introduced the MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP, the industrys first access point to protect WLANs with continuous security monitoring while simultaneously delivering high performance voice, video and data applications. It eliminates trade-offs between Quality-of-Service, performance and security that are inherent in competing WLAN switch offerings, and slashes costs by 50% compared to overlay security solutions.



The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP is part of the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), an optimized WLAN switching system that provides high performance client access with integrated best-of-breed RF security. The Integrated Sensor/AP uses a unique dual IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio design. It dedicates one of its radios to continuous monitoring and protection of the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands, while the second radio delivers full bandwidth network access services for client devices. This design enables the Integrated Sensor/AP to deliver full spectrum performance and consistent QoS for real-time applications, such as voice over WLAN, without compromising security.

The Integrated Sensor/AP eliminates the hard choices facing network managers today. They can deploy competing WLAN switch offerings, which use a single IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio to perform intermittent security scans, interrupting the flow of client traffic and reducing QoS with this time slicing technique. Alternatively, they can deploy a separate overlay network of dedicated security sensors, which doubles equipment costs and substantially increases ongoing maintenance expenses.

"The time-slicing technique for security monitoring builds an obstacle into enterprise migration to wireless voice services, notes Steven J. Schuchart Jr. Senior Analyst with Current Analysis. Security conscious network managers address this challenge by deploying dedicated sensors, but this adds to costs and complexity. Colubris addresses each of these challenges with the MAP-330, and is delivering a solid foundation that lets enterprises realize VoWLAN's compelling story."

The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP secures the airwaves by combining strong WLAN client authentication and encryption with continuous RF intrusion detection and prevention. Together with the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), the Integrated Sensor/AP supports full-frequency scans, including out-of-region frequencies, and detects over 140 different WLAN events, threats and vulnerabilities. It accurately detects and classifies threats without the false positives that are common in competing systems. The Integrated Sensor/AP is designed for high performance, with the capacity to simultaneously scan and block up to twenty attacks.

Colubris is increasingly recognized as the future proof enterprise WLAN system of choice for advanced, reliable and secure performance that supports growing user populations and expanding applications, said Roger Sands, vice president of engineering for Colubris Networks. The MAP 330 Integrated Sensor/AP adds best-of-breed RF security to complement our industry-leading performance and brings new advanced location tracking features to securing the wireless enterprise.

About Colubris

Colubris Networks is the leading global provider of intelligent wireless LAN mobility systems for service providers and enterprises. Its optimized WLAN switching systems deliver unmatched bandwidth efficiency, seamless mobility and secure, easy access for more than 1,000 organizations and 40 million users worldwide. Its systems unify and integrate with existing network infrastructures, security and management systems, and provide future-proof investment protection as standards evolve and user populations grow. Colubris numerous recognitions include Red Herrings top 100 private companies in North America, Fierce Wireless Fierce 15 and Mobile Trax Mobility Award. For more information, visit www.colubris.com.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US IT giant Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has appointed Mara Garaa as the company's new regional director for the Southern Cone, taking the responsibility for operations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, the company said in a statement.



With an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in business administration and law from the Spanish university Universidad de San Pablo, the executive joined Microsoft in 2002 as operations and marketing director for the company's Mexican unit.

***

Argentine batteries manufacturer Unionbat has selected e-Flexware ERP and human resources applications provided by Argentine software developer Sistemas Bejerman, the companies said in a statement.

Unionbat invested nearly 150,000 pesos (US$48,300) in the implementation of these solutions for 45 workstations in the commercial, operations, accountability and human resources divisions.

***

Colombian IT firm Axesnet has received the certification as specialist in portals and enterprise content management from US IT giant Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Axesnet said in a statement.

The certification guarantees the partner's specialization in developing collaboration and productivity solutions for companies backed by applications that allow companies to administrate and prioritize increasing levels of information.

***

US technical support and customer service outsourcer Stream plans to open its second contact center in the Dominican Republic on October 12, to support operations of two current clients in the US, the company said in a statement.

The first facility opened 15 months ago with 800 positions and the new call center will add a further 450. Stream has 25 call centers worldwide and for 2007 plans to open new facilities that may complement plans in Latin America.

***

Peru's tax office SAT has launched a service allowing taxpayers from capital Lima to make their payments through the internet, local newspaper Diario Correo reported.

The service will be available in the next 30 days and users will be able to register their data and modify or upgrade their information once they have received a user name and a password.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Sterling: SCM applications to drive regional growth. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US-based business integration solutions provider Sterling Commerce expects 40% of its Latin American revenue to come from supply chain management (SCM) applications by 2008, Sterling South American general director Marcelo Ramos told BNamericas.



Applications in 2006 will represent just 5% of Sterling's Latin American revenues, he said. The company, a subsidiary of US telco AT&T (NYSE: T), does not publish hard figures.

The growth in applications is part of Sterling's plan to develop its multi-enterprise services architecture (MESA), a service orientated architecture (SOA) based system.

Sterling chose to expand its architecture through acquisitions of strategically important companies, Ramos said.

In May this year, Sterling acquired Minnesota-based logistics solutions company Nistevo to complement its available business-to-business services and software solutions.

Nistevo has an on-demand, web-based network that allows optimization of logistics and supply chain operations. The network is used by more than 60 shippers, spanning a community of over 6,400 carriers, and manages approximately 65 million transactions annually, according to the acquisition statement.

"Nistevo will bring to Sterling a full set of transportation system solutions. It's available to North American customers and it will be available to the world," Ramos said.

Large retail, manufacturing and wholesale corporations account for the bulk of Sterling's Latin American clients. The company has some 610 corporate clients in total, whose logistical systems require other trade partners to use Sterling's applications.

The value-added network (VAN) services handle many of its larger corporate client transactions and also requires client trade partners to use the system. Currently some 5,000 SMEs use the VAN services for this reason, Ramos said.

Despite the advancements, Ramos emphasized there is still plenty of room to grow in the area of SCM.

"There are so many needs right now in terms of logistics and transportation," he said.

Ramos sees other growth opportunities in the migration of current companies to more comprehensive hosted services. Only 10% have the comprehensive set of services and solutions offered by Sterling.

Additionally, Sterling aims to increase deployment of its hosted services, which account for 11% of the company's revenues.

Sterling's MESA combines business integration, business intelligence, business process management and business application logic with service oriented architecture in the government, finance, insurance, retail, telecom and utilities sectors, the company says.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Some immigrant workers exploited but home builders say they follow rules. Check it out:
(Post and Courier, The (Charleston, SC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--Jose Santana, a painter from Matamoros, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, used to get stiffed all the time.

The North Charleston resident would assess a job, submit a quote, get an agreement from a contractor, then receive only a portion of what was owed him.

Eventually, he figured out what to do: Draw up a contract in English that includes a detailed statement of work and price, and get the contractor to sign it.

"No more problems," he said, at least when it comes to getting paid. Today, he is licensed and insured and works with a crew of five, he said. But should Santana or his men get hurt on the job, it could mean trouble.

Wage disputes and on-the-job injuries are on the rise at construction sites in the Lowcountry populated by low-wage Hispanic workers, many of whom are illegal immigrants and some of whom are underage. State agencies and advocacy groups are reporting more problems even as home builders say they operate legally. Charleston Trident Homebuilders Association says immigrants with proper documentation are paid the same as native-born workers.



For some workers, the problems amount to exploitation. For others, they are a small price to pay for the good fortune of working in the United States.

Hispanic construction workers are substantially more likely to be injured or killed on the job than other workers, said Mary Bauer, director of the Immigration Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. That's because of the inherent physical danger and language obstacles that prevent Hispanics from understanding necessary safety information and getting properly trained.

Three known construction-related fatalities have been reported since 2004, including two this year. Miguel Angel Rojas Lucas, 20, of North Charleston died in May 2004 while working for a subcontractor to Palmetto Bridge Constructors on the Ravenel Bridge. Rojas drowned after slipping through an uncompleted section of road and falling 75 feet into Town Creek.

Josue Daniel Martinez Castillo fell to his death May 11, one day shy of his 17th birthday. And a 32-year-old man from Colombia died April 25 when he fell two floors onto concrete at a Summerville construction site.

Most migrant workers who contact Bauer have wage-related complaints, she said. Too often, workers are simply not paid, and when they pressure employers, they are blackmailed: "If you insist, I'll call the authorities" is what they're told, Bauer said.

"Big builders are relying on a system of multiple-layer contractors to allow for the hiring of illegal immigrants," she said, and labor brokers are providing legal cover. Primary contractors rely on subcontractors for specific parts of the construction job, and those subcontractors (who sometimes depend on other subcontractors) are the ones responsible for hiring workers, Bauer said. When documents are presented -- a fake Social Security card, for example -- no questions are asked.

The legal shell game is flimsy, she said. The main contractor is typically liable no matter what, but legal challenges are limited because of fear of deportation.

Bauer was quick to say that many employers are honest, that her office hears mostly "the worst of the worst." But she said she has collected enough information to know that exploitation is a serious issue.

"It's distressing to see how chronic the problems are," she said.

Employers are legally obligated to provide workers' compensation to injured laborers, regardless of legal status, according to Tammie Brasfield, director of the Coverage Division at the S.C. Workers' Compensation Commission. Furthermore, the owner or principal contractor is responsible for the subcontractor's employees.

Scott Gear, South Carolina district director of the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, receives many complaints about failure to pay wages. He also gets calls about illegal child labor practices. Workers younger than 18 cannot operate power tools, drive trucks or work in ditches or atop roofs. Employers can be fined $11,000 for any on-the-job fatalities, Gear said. Penalties for other violations range from a demand for restitution to a few hundred dollars per person.

His office maintains a complaint hot line, and illegal immigrants who call need not worry about discovery: Gear's policy is not to ask about their legal status or check I-9 forms. "In none of the statutes that we enforce do we legally care whether the people are here in the country legally or not," he said.

His office receives 500 to 700 complaints a year and completes about 500 investigations. Less than 10 percent of complaints come from migrant workers.

Phillip Ford, president of Charleston Trident Homebuilders Association, said most builders, especially the big builders, are honest, law-abiding employers who pay prevailing wages to all workers and seek to hire legal immigrants.

"I think there's a misconception that there are a lot of contractors out there hiring illegal workers so they can pay them dirt," he said.

It's possible that certain small subcontractors target "lower-echelon" laborers so they can pocket as much profit as possible, Ford said, but wages are typically set as a function of supply and demand, not country of origin.

Truth is, he said, native-born workers are in short supply. "It's ingrained in our imaginations that the trades are horrible work," Ford said. "All I heard when I was young was, you've got to go to college."

So it's the migrant workers who tend to get the less-skilled jobs as framers, painters and landscapers, he said. "A lot of people have a hard time finding anybody who's not Hispanic," Ford said.

If the government limited the supply of migrant workers, a labor shortage would certainly result, Ford said, "but I don't think the industry would tank." Costs would go up, though. "You'd have to pay a lot more to get somebody to come out and do your jobs," he said.

Greg Shell, managing attorney of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, based in Florida, has worked on a number of South Carolina cases. Shell said keeping labor costs low is a business priority, and depressed wages, though good for American consumers, are bad for American workers, who are essentially shut out of certain markets because of the low pay.

"Americans will do any job at some price," he said. Interestingly, the labor component of construction costs has remained almost flat in recent years; higher home prices have more to do with material and real estate costs, he said. New homes would be even more expensive if wages were higher.

"The market!" Shell said with undisguised exasperation. Conservatives want unhindered free enterprise and yet complain that illegal immigration is bad for the American worker. Moderates call for a guest worker program that also hurts the American worker. And employers prefer not to bother with the federal Employment Verification Program, though they could if they wanted to, he said.

"There's such hypocrisy in Congress in all this when it comes to protecting the interests of business. Both parties are totally hypocritical," he said, especially when it comes to guest-worker programs, which don't work well for anyone.

Yet the U.S. market beckons. And horrible things happen.

Sometimes, workers' compensation attorney Don Gibson hears about them.

One Mexican construction worker nearly sawed his hand in half and went home to cauterize the wound with a hot iron so he could go back to work the next day. His employer took him to the hospital for proper treatment.

Another Mexican laborer fell off a roof in July 2004 and fractured two discs in his spinal column which had to be fused together. Months later, he took a position at a restaurant where he worked 16-hour days, seven days a week, with 25 percent physical impairment. He earned $360 a week.

A 19-year-old construction worker cut his forearm into the bone while on the job. His boss took him to a chiropractor and threatened to kick him out of the employer-owned apartment in which the teen was living. When the case was brought before Gibson, the employer tried to deny that he was the worker's boss.

"It reminds you of the days before the child labor laws," Gibson said.

Gibson is working on more than 100 workers' compensation cases. More than half involve employers who pay in cash and fail to declare their labor costs to the government, thereby avoiding taxes and other financial obligations, Gibson said.

Once he worked on a case where a contractor got Hispanic laborers to sign complicated forms in English that effectively designated them as subcontractors responsible for paying the premiums of their own workers' compensation policies. The amount of those premiums was withheld in cash from the workers' pay.

When he brings cases before the workers' compensation commission, a reasonable settlement is usually the result, he said. Officials rarely fall for the ruses of subcontractors who deny responsibility.

Gibson said his Hispanic clients are hard workers who want to avoid bureaucracy. "Most of the Spanish workers I know would almost rather be dead than to find themselves in my office," he said. "These people want to get better medically and get back to work."

Migrants impact Americans

Greg Shell, of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, cited two cases showing how immigrant labor negatively impacts the domestic workforce:

--The bracero program was sponsored by the U.S. government during World War II when the country was experiencing a labor shortage. It resulted in the importation of millions of Mexican farm workers, many of whom were exploited by unscrupulous employers. Farm owners loved the program for the low-cost labor it provided and worried about the impact of higher costs when, in 1964, the program came to an end.

--When the braceros fell away, crops were harvested with mechanical pickers, and the operators of the new equipment were indeed paid more. But the machines also were more efficient, and what the farm owners lost in higher wages they more than made up for in higher productivity.

--During the 1980s in Los Angeles, big office buildings were cleaned by unionized workers, predominantly blacks, who earned a bout $13 an hour. But then maintenance contractors busted the union and replaced the black workers with Latino immigrants, paying them minimum wage. As of 2000, when the Latino workers went on strike to demand better compensation, they were making between $6.90 and $7.90 an hour, according to news reports at the time.

To see more of The Post and Courier, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.charleston.net.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Exclusive legislation can expedite growth. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Unlike developed countries such as the United States and most European nations, India does not have a specific law to deal with franchising. Instead, the business of franchising in India is regulated by the provisions of the Contract Act, 1872 various commercial and taxation legislations, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy of the Indian Government, and guidelines laid out by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). However, the absence of a specific franchising law and the need to comply with the often disjointed set of applicable rules, has not hampered the expansion of franchising business which witnessed impressive growth in the recent past. In addition to the Contract Act, the other important laws that deal with various facets and dimensions of franchising include Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), Trade Marks Act, 1999, Patents Act, 1970 and Shops and Establishment Act, 1988. The provisions of the Contract Act play a determinative role in defining the relationship between a franchisor and a franchisee. Therefore, the franchise agreement becomes an all-important document. All the rights and liabilities arising out of and relating to a franchise agreement are determined on the basis of the terms and conditions contained in the agreement. Further, under the Contract Act, a franchisee or franchisor can seek compensation and claim damages for breach of contract and for any losses incurred due to any fraudulent or deceptive practice in relation to the offer and sale of franchises. Moreover, common law also imposes a general legal obligation on the parties to the contract to deal with each other in good faith and not to withhold any critical information which may influence any material decision of the other party. No legal proceedings will lie against any person in respect of anything done in good faith. The duty of good faith can be imposed in common law even in the absence of a contract stating the existence of the duty. The basic requirements of a valid franchise agreement are that it should be made by free consent of parties competent to contract, for a lawful consideration, and with a lawful object. The FEMA and RBI regulate the terms of payment under franchise agreements (such as franchise fees, management fees, development fees, administrative fees, royalty fees and technical fees) where one party is a non-Indian entity including the amount to be paid and procedure for remittance of these payments outside India. The RBI prescribes certain requirements such as furnishing of tax clearances and chartered accountant certificate at the time of remittance of royalty payments by the franchisee to franchisor outside India. The Trademarks Act provides exclusive rights to the trademark owner to use the registered mark and restrain others from using marks identical or similar to the registered trademark in relation to the class of goods/services for which the mark is registered. However, if the trademark is a well-known mark, the owner may restrict the use of the trademark by third parties in relation to other goods/services as well. India has recently updated the Patents Act to provide adequate protection to many types of intellectual property frequently involved in franchising arrangements. Under patent laws, the owner of technology can enter into a Technical know-how or License Agreement with an Indian party. These agreements are required to contain details such as the time period, territory for which the agreement is entered into, proof of up-front payment, a running and minimum royalty, etc. The Shops and Establishment Act is particularly relevant to franchisee outfits dealing in consumer goods. Every state or union territory has its own SEA. The SEA covers all establishments irrespective of their size, turnover, or number of persons employed. It applies to all persons employed, whether directly or through an agency or contract and whether for wages or not, in or about the business of an establishment, including apprentices. The SEA prescribes guidelines with respect to working hours, working conditions, overtime, leave, maintenance of records, etc. The FDI Policy facilitates foreign investors to enter into franchise agreements with Indian companies, proprietorship concerns, or partnerships to engage in franchise business in India. The FDI Policy allows foreign companies to establish retail operations in India provided the FDI is limited to 51 per cent of the enterprise's equity and the business pertains to retail trading of single brand products'. Pursuant to Press Note 1 of 2005 Series (dated January 12, 2005 )issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, prior approval of the government is required in cases where the foreign franchisor has an existing franchise/trademark agreement in the same' field in India. The onus to provide requisite justification and proof to the satisfaction of the government that the new proposal would or would not in any way jeopardise the interests of the existing franchisee/trademark partner lies equally on the foreign franchisor/technology supplier and the Indian partner. Where there is no such previous or existing technology transfer/trademark agreement, only a simple declaration to that effect is required to be filed with the Secretariat of Industrial Assistance under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Further, in view of the government's 2005 change in policy concerning FDI in the single brand retail sector, foreign investment is likely to increase manifold. Foreign investment in multi brand retail sector should also witness a boost. The bulk of such investments will be made through the franchise route. The government could greatly expedite the growth of franchise business by enacting a law to deal exclusively with franchising. Such new legislation would have a direct influence on strengthening the relationship between a franchisor and a franchisee. It would also address specific issues like pre-sale disclosures, royalties, sub franchising liabilities, exemptions and exclusions from responsibilities and liabilities, etc. This would immensely help parties to the transactions to make informed decisions. -The writer is founder of the law firm Titus & Co, Advocates. He can be reached at [email protected]



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Oracle to Build Additional 21 Units in China in 2007 FY. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 27, SinoCast -- Oracle Corp., the world's leading supplier of software for enterprise information management, will increase current 5 subsidiaries in China to 26 ones in 2007 fiscal year so as to gain more profit from services for small and medium companies in the country.



The company has opened its new branches in Dalian, Jinan and Tianjin for business recently, said general manager for enterprise management software of Oracle Greater China.

Oracle, No. 2 independent software supplier globally, saw its worldwide management software business, database business and service respectively go up 80 percent, 15 percent and 33 percent, in accordance with financial results ended May 31 this year the company released on September 20.

China has become the market where the company has seen the fastest business growth across the world. Apart from strengthening services for large companies, the software builder will also launch businesses with small and medium firms of the country.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -

Information, wherever its needed

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Information, wherever its needed. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Information is power today and timely information is absolutely priceless. Decision making process for any kind of business needs timely and precise information as a critical input.

Deciding product and service specifications, human resource needs, managing suppliers and distributors and marketing efforts, all have information as a vital link in the chain. This has created a need to have a fine balance between information mobility and information management for the business enterprise.



Information mobility has extended beyond voice calls and basic telephony to almost all the different segments of the value chain. From customer facing processes to inventory tracking, CRM and supply chain management, enterprises are increasingly going mobile and hence, wireless. Information mobility is finding wide usage in the field of sales force automation and m-commerce nowadays.

On the other hand, information management has become the backbone of almost all the modern enterprises. Information management has become pivotal for areas like consumer analytics, product customisation, e-procurement and supply chain integration.

An unwired enterprise balances both information management and information mobility for secure and seamless movement of information between data sources and point of action. An ideal unwired enterprise is one in which information generated through any data source, server platform or application can be accessed and pooled into a common and easy-to-use storehouse for analysis and decision making, after which it can be sent across to any mobile device at any desired location for action.

But what is the need of a mobile and unwired enterprise? Wireless access to emails and PIM enables employees to make faster, more informed decisions, regardless of where they are. Mobile data collection by field force improves accuracy and reduces paper and latency costs. Sales force automation enables better customer service at the point of customer interaction. Seamless flow of information can help in cutting down the order and delivery cycle time drastically.

Some big retail stores have deployed representatives with handled billing devices to cut down on queuing time and ensure a higher customer entry and repeat customer base. As John Chen, CEO, Sybase, puts it "In the Unwired Enterprise, organisations can securely move business-critical information back and forth between the data centre and mobile devices -to the right person, anytime, anywhere.

Built within a company's existing infrastructure, the Unwired Enterprise is a seamless way of doing business, ensuring that information is always available wherever it's needed." In the following examples, use of wireless solutions and changing the art of information management has made companies cost efficient and more competitive.

BNSF, a US railway company created an application called PARS (Planning and Activity Reporting System) to keep track of payroll data for its employees, and to record details regarding the work they perform. After successfully adding wireless capabilities to it, PARS now helps its management to move toward a preventive rather than a reactive maintenance environment.

Replacing track or equipment a few years too early, can prove unnecessarily expensive while waiting long could lead to serious problems causing service delays for customer freight. Getting information on a regular basis helps BNSF in scheduling maintenance work at just the right time to maximise return on its capital investments.

Britannia Airways, UK, needed wireless connectivity to enable its cabin crew and pilots to access a wide variety of information including email, flight crew rosters, health and safety information and duty-free point of sales applications during a fifteen-minute pre-flight window. It used a mobile solution providing bi-directional synchronisation of data from back-office systems to cabin crews' PDAs and pilots' laptops.

In course of time, this has helped the airlines in increasing employee productivity, improving customer satisfaction, improving compliance. In addition to this, it aims at cost reduction by automating the availability of flight manuals, for saving fuel costs and automating paper-based workflow processes which previously required 600 different forms, with up to 1,00,000 copies.

FedEx also extended its services of package tracking and drop-off location finder to mobile handheld device users on wireless WAP-enabled phones, RIM pagers and PDAs. It created mobile.fedex.com. to leverage its existing services to mobile device users and allowing it to enhance its online services for desktop and mobile access, including support for multilingual users. This solution reduced call centre costs for routine requests, boosted overall customer service and value and lowered IT support and management costs.

Hyundai Department Stores, South Korea, with 14 stores and over $340m in annual sales, has developed a mobile, WiFi point-of-sale (POS) system. The system is deployed on 2,400 PDAs, for use by 5,000 store employees. The solution enables sales associates to assist customers from the beginning to the end of the sales process. It helps customers choose merchandise by allowing the associates to check stock, and to inform them of options that facilitate up-selling and cross-selling.

The associates

can then process transactions (reading product bar codes and scanning credit cards) on the spot, eliminating the need for customers to wait in line at traditional stationary registers. So, customers tend to spend more time in the store and spend more money. Using the new system, transactions are completed in 10 seconds. Company executives and store managers also use the system to do real time analysis and facilitate dynamic merchandising activities.

Otis Elevator wanted a solution that would provide critical, up-to-date information in a mobile computing environment to avoid the inefficiencies and multiple data entry points of a legacy paper-based system among its legion of field service technicians.

Otis needed a solution that was scalable and flexible regarding device and connectivity support, while also delivering accuracy and timeliness to efficiently record service activities, maintain inventory information and facilitate billing processes. Otis made an in-house initiative for wireless access to mission-critical service information, regardless of handheld device, wireless standard, network or carrier.

The company now has a single mobile platform that allows centralised management and support. Field service technicians have increased their responsiveness to customer requests and service calls, thus improving overall customer satisfaction while facilitating more accurate and timely billing. This helped in decreasing non-productive travel time between office and worksites and ensuring availability of comprehensive work data prompting a review of work routes. Otis expects more than 200% discounted ROI from the project.

To sum it all, wireless enterprise is the changing face of doing business. Although, the timing and cost of deployment of mobile solutions would be areas to consider carefully, wireless solutions are bound to bring in efficiencies and payback in the world of information.

ETIG

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

Manage on the move

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Manage on the move. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The rules of doing business are fast changing. For starters, an unwired business is no longer confined to your office or workstation but moves around with you.

That's precisely what happens when information management and information mobility intersect. It creates an enterprise that is not confined to one place but is always available, always mobile.

Top industry honchos gathered at the ETIG Knowledge forum in association with Sybase to brainstorm on the potential and challenges of creating an unwired enterprise. A distinguished panel of speakers, including John Chen, CEO and president of Sybase, GV Gopalakrishnan, senior VP(IT), HDFC Bank, Sunil Chandiramani, national director and partner, Ernst and Young( the moderator for the evening), SB Roy, group general manager (PRS), Centre for Railway Information Systems and Pratyush Prabhat, IT vertical head at Evalueserve, provided key insights on their experiences on 'The Unwired Enterprise: When Information management and Information mobility Intersect'.



The discussions focused on the need for enterprises to go wireless, the challenges especially when it comes to security issues and where do Indian companies stand in terms of going wireless. Discussions began with a presentation by Mr Chen on the concept of a wireless enterprise and the role of Sybase in moving companies towards becoming wireless.

According to Mr Chen, since we live in a knowledge driven economy, the goal is to provide the information of the right content to the right people. This is precisely the concept behind the wireless enterprise, as it focuses on converging data into information and taking analytical information into a more useful format.

Mr Chandiramani, argued that India always believes in leapfrogging when it comes to technology. However, a company would introduce a technology, only if it gives it competitive advantage. The key question, therefore, becomes, whether these solutions will provide a company that edge.

When it comes to the potential of the applications that go into the unwired enterprise, Mr Roy highlighted the commendable progress made by the Indian Railways in adopting such technologies. In fact, a French delegation that visited the Indian railways six months back was astounded by the efficiency of the railway systems and how it has been able to effectively manage such a vast network.

According to Mr Roy, the primary reason behind the success of the system was the transparency it introduced in transactions. Indian Railways is looking for ways to move towards unwired applications. Consider a scenario where real time data on the number of seats vacant in a railway is available, such that by the time the train reaches the next destination, the seats are filled up again.

According to Mr Roy, mobile computing can be solution, but so far the lack of network coverage in most places may not allow the deployment. If 80% of the path is not connected then it is not possible for information to get transmitted along that path.

Other problems such as the size of the mobile screen have also posed a challenge. However, the railway system is looking for various ways of overcoming such challenges in introducing mobile computing.

Banking and financial services is yet another sector that is likely to benefit the most from unwired applications. Mr Gopalakrishnan talked about the potential of the unwired enterprise in different divisions of the banking sector, primarily retail and wholesale.

According to him, on the retail front there are innumerable applications but also challenges. Loan processing, for instance is a very important product for banks and fulfillment of loan applications, therefore becomes an important task. Payments is yet another area where applications can be used. At present, transacting through mobile phones is not an option with the customers, who have to rely on the use of plastic.

When it comes to the usage of mobile applications in wholesale, the supply chain management division comes to the fore. According to Mr Gopalakrishnan, here M-commerce will play a very important role in fulfilling the requirement. In the wholesale segment, while the volume of transactions is low, its value is quite high. Mr Gopalakrishnan pointed out, in any transaction trust is the key issue and therefore, transaction authorisation and security play a primary role.

On infrastructure requirement, Mr Chen pointed out the three phases of mobilising, namely e-mail, electronic forms and transactions. It is the third phase where a company begins to take advantage of the changing business rules. Most companies have already crossed the first two phases of transition, with an increasing usage of email and applications such as the Blackberry.

In India, the transition to the third phase would need some more maturity in the applications environment. According to Mr Chen, while the Indian Railways has reached a certain level of maturity, banks need to introduce mobile transactions because in this sector, a delay in a fraction of a second could mean huge losses for the bank.

According to Mr Prabhat, when it comes to a mobile enterprise, it would still take around 5-10 years for it to take off in India. We are looking at around 40-50 million people working from home the world over. In India, this would soon be a necessity.

The key concern then remains the right time to deploy these applications. The panelists had some interesting thoughts on the subject. Mr Roy, for instance, explained that since he belongs to sector that is engaged in public service, the prime driver is transparency in transactions.

For the public sector giant, the bigger question is that of the sustainability of the operations on the unwired applications. According to Mr Gopalakrishnan, one cannot expect a return on investment of less than two years. Mr Prabhat, too, gave a time frame of 3-5 years for the return on investments, based on the research by Evalueserve. However, he mentioned that companies are more concerned about whether this is a risk worth taking and whether confidential data should be passed on to a third party.

To the growing security and risk related concerns, Mr Chen was quick to respond that instead of looking at the risk aspect, each company should consider whether it will miss out an opportunity if it does not deploy the technology. A company may be able to survive even if it does not deploy but it would not be able to grow faster and higher than others in the industry who may have deployed the new technology. The question of risk, therefore, has been completely overshadowed by the benefits.

ETIG

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
ET Businesswoman of the Year: Mallika Srinivasan. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : There couldn't have been a more appropriate setting to interview ET's Businesswoman of the Year: under the shade of a century-old banyan tree. This tree, at one corner of the lush green lawns of Tractors and Farm Equipment (Tafe's) Sembiyam factory, seems to embody the philosophy of Mallika Srinivasan: reach for the skies but ensure that you are firmly rooted to the ground.



At another level, a 100-year-old banyan tree in the vicinity of a state-of-the-art factory also seems rather anachronistic. Quite like a woman in the driver's seat of a seemingly macho business like tractors. But it is this ability to rise above such stereotypes which makes Ms Srinivasan such a compelling individual and businessperson. Says Akhila Srinivasan, MD, Shriram Life Insurance, "Women do well in the service industry that's an accepted fact. But in manufacturing, building such a big enterprise and creating an almost leadership position is an outstanding achievement."

We wonder if it's tough being a woman in what is even today seen as a man's business. Have there been moments when she wished she were a man? "There is no point in wishing 'if only things were different'," points out Ms Srinivasan. And things might well have been had it not been for her father's insistence that she join and manage the family concern.

"I had the freedom of choice in a lot of other things, but not in choosing the line of business," she says, "he believed that I could learn a lot here."

In the initial years, she often leaned on her father to guide her. "It was nice to have somebody to go to when there was a problem," she says, "and while my father is a man of few words, but his advice always helped me to put things in perspective," she said.

And learn a lot she did. Take a look at what she has done over the years. When Ms Srinivasan joined the company in 1986, its turnover was Rs 85 crore, and today Tafe and its allied companies earn revenues of Rs 2,900 crore. The goal is to crash into the elite $1bn league within the next three years. She has masterminded and overseen the acquisition of Eicher group's business in early '05 and is today inches away from the leader in terms of market share.

However, she believes that end alone cannot reflect the true success of an organisation but that the means to the end are just as important. In her view, it is important that ethics be blended into business and companies strive for a broader social purpose with profit making. Says Ms Srinivasan, "There might be different perspectives, opinions and ways of doing the same thing. But when it comes to ethics, there can be no two ways of looking at it." She goes on to add, "Profits are important, but only for sustaining a business. You don't need to love money to run a business. You have to have a dream to build an institution, to build centres of excellence, to create a great team. Business has a larger purpose. And return on capital employed is important to serve that larger purpose."

So it's no surprise that Tafe also runs hospitals and schools, but Ms Srinivasan doesn't see these as acts of charity. "Business can operate well only in the social context of educated and healthy people. So, it is a mix of charity and business sense," she said.

A serious votary of woman power, Ms Srinivasan says, women's contribution to society has often been underestimated. "I think the role women play in the corporate world is too narrow a parameter to judge their growing strength or their contribution to society and nation. The role they play in educating their children, itself, should not be underestimated," she said.

Her husband - automobile tycoon Venu Srinivasan, CMD of TVS Motors - who has been a pillar of support through the years, said, "I am proud of Mallika getting the award. The highest recognition in the business world today is The ET Award. It is a significant milestone in anyone's business career."

Says Ms Srinivasan, who a couple of years after her marriage in 1982 and less than a year after her daughter was born went to Wharton to pursue her MBA, "It would not have happened but for a lot of support from my mother and Venu."

Ms Srinivasan herself said she felt a sense of satisfaction for having been chosen by a jury whose members have such distinguished profiles. "I didn't quite expect the number of calls that I got for two days after the awards were announced. That so many people read ET came as a surprise," she said.

Given her inclusive approach to business and life it is hardly surprising to hear her acknowledge the employees of Tafe. "They are all so happy, because they knew the award is for the whole team," she says.

As we were getting ready for the photo shoot she tells us yet again that one has to accept what one gets in life. "You take up some roles, and some roles are thrust upon you, like this one," pointing out the task of posing for photographs. "I am not an actress. I am not from Bollywood," she protests.

Actress or not, she is definitely going to be a heroine who inspires many.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
HR needs to keep evolving to tackle future challenges. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) HR needs to keep evolving to tackle future challenges Organisations are getting flexible in the wake of globalisation, says , and human resources have a key role ARECENT Deloitte report on global human resources (HR) transformation says that while HR management practices have developed significantly over the past decade, these changes may not be sufficient to meet critical future challenges. More needs to be done.



The early 1990s marked the start of first generation (First Gen) global HR transformation. This movement focused primarily on changing the existing relationship between employees, managers and HR. Technology and process reengineering characterised First Gen efforts that aimed to render employees more self-sufficient, while also asking them to assume increased responsibility for their careers. It also sought to make managers more responsible for handling their employees' HR needs. Essentially, the main principles of First Gen HR transformation were to: provide employees and managers with direct access to information and tools; standardise and simplify HR administrative processes; and provide the right level of HR support where and when it was needed.

First Gen HR transformation represented a major shift in HR's role, from transactions and administration to strategy and business transformation, says Walsh. It was characterised by several objectives: Reducing costs through shared service centres, self-service, and outsourcing. This entailed developing uniform HR processes to lower administrative delivery costs, as well as creating a self-service culture, says Walsh. Companies also outsourced key services that could be managed more efficiently externally. Self-service applications were delivered to an electronic desktop.

Streamlining technology and hardware support to improve access to information, which resulted in a single, integrated global HR management system for standard transactions and reporting. Managing people globally. According to Walsh, three related developments influenced First Gen HR transformation. The first was Prof David Ulrich's work regarding specialised HR roles (as described in his book, HR Champions, in 1997). Ulrich proposed that specialised HR roles would be more efficient and effective than a generalist approach, says Walsh. He advocated specialty roles such as compensation, benefits, training, administration and business support. The second driver was a three-tier structure for customer service which included: Tier 1, where employees and managers serve themselves for routine inquiries and transactions; Tier 2, where organisations provide basic assistance for issues that cannot be addressed through self- service; and Tier 3, where specialists manage complex issues and provide strategic support to the company.

The third factor was process re-engineering which emerged in the mid to late 1990s and encouraged organisations to rethink, restructure, and consolidate business operations, including HR administration. Software vendors subsequently developed programmes to facilitate enterprise-wide transformation.

All this introduced a new vision for HR including a 'service delivery' model, says Walsh. But the transformation was more difficult to execute than most organisations imagined. A roadmap for HR transformation did not exist. Companies were still deciding how to operate their businesses globally, and many of the systems, tools, and services that formed the foundation for HR transformation were still nascent. According to Walsh, many lessons have emerged from First Gen HR transformation. There is no one-size-fits-all regarding how to transform an HR function. Every organisation is unique, and change management is an integral component. HR cannot drive transformation alone; strong leadership is needed. Early pioneers were probably too ambitious trying to do too much too soon without paying enough attention to the business and managing expectations as the face of HR withdrew, says Walsh. Undoubtedly, companies today face significant HR challenges that did not exist a decade ago, including global competition, shifting demographics and an ageing workforce that will initiate a talent shortage. More and more, organisations are recruiting nontraditional sources of labour (retirees, Generation Y-ers and offshore workers) and engaging in more flexible working arrangements. Emerging markets are becoming sources of skilled labour and revenue growth. Organisations face greater legislative scrutiny and compliance reporting. And, as always, the pressure to cut costs ensues.

In this scenario, HR's role needs to encompass the ability to anticipate workforce trends, recruit the right talent and exploit the potential of workers.

How will HR successfully manage this challenge? Where First Gen HR transformation focused inward, seeking to render HR services more efficient, faster and cheaper, the next generation of HR transformation will look outward, with the objective being to help companies achieve their desired results while growing in an environment typified by global competition and a skills shortage.

In addition to finding new sources of labour, HR will play a role in developing an organisation's capabilities and infrastructure to ensure its scalability in an economic arena characterised by increased mergers and acquisitions, says Walsh, noting that mergers and acquisitions activity in Europe increased 52% in 2004-05.

It will also need to improve its ability to operate quickly and effectively in new markets, while adapting to the changing demands of a global marketplace.

First Gen HR transformation focused on establishing and deploying a new HR service delivery model with a strong emphasis on technology, process design, and efficiency that would create a solid infrastructure for the future and baseline HR capabilities, says Walsh. Next Gen HR transformation will build on that foundation by focusing on creating additional HR capabilities and developing HR solutions directly tied to business issues. NEXT Gen HR will include new roles for HR, such as business partner and vendor manager. The former implies having an understanding of the company's business, industry, and strategy and thinking like a business person; using financial measures to help determine results; acting as a broker of HR-related services by connecting the company to needed resources; consulting to the organisation regarding people issues; and helping to craft the right business strategy.

As a vendor manager, with companies increasingly outsourcing HR activities, HR will need to improve its vendor management capabilities. HR will ultimately be responsible for service quality and results. Outsourcing selected administrative activities will not automatically make HR more strategic, says Walsh. According to the Deloitte report, companies that develop an HR service delivery model before deciding what to outsource are much more likely to achieve their desired results. The model helps HR to identify and evaluate different options, instead of assuming business process outsourcing is the only alternative. It also helps provide a blueprint to define clear roles, says the report. Next Gen HR transformation will also tackle several future people- related issues such as workforce planning, talent management (helping companies make themselves more attractive to top talent and finding ways to boost the capabilities of the existing workforce); new market entry; global mobility (having access to the right talent, wherever it happens to reside); merger integration; global programme management; change management; and global workforce security.

Before embarking on its journey towards Next Gen HR, Walsh advises the HR function to align its priorities with the needs of the company. To focus on improving overall business performance and competitiveness, HR will require a deep understanding of business challenges and strong alignment with business strategy, says Walsh. HR must also be confident it has the skills and competencies needed to fulfil its new role. Simply re-branding HR as 'strategic' is not enough. Effective results require the right people with the right skills. Of course, HR must also have agile systems, processes, and infrastructure to support the changing needs of the organisation. Walsh advises companies to develop the vision of the future before doing anything knowing where there is, is critical. Recognise systems implementation as an enabler. Clarify the business drivers for transformation. Engage stakeholders and acquire business sponsorship. Promote the role of the service centre to attract talent. Deliver the basics at employee level well. And, to ensure an organisation's natural tendency to revert to old behaviours does not impede the journey, keep the change management team and governance structures for long enough after go-live.

In the future, HR's performance will be measured not by its administrative efficiency but by how well it enables the business strategy and maximises workforce performance. Walsh is head of European human capital practice at Deloitte.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Does a new strategy demand new leaders?. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Does a new strategy demand new leaders? BILL MacLeod felt relieved when the board meeting finally ended. It was one of the toughest sessions he could remember in his six years as Fusilier Technology's CEO. But that was hardly surprising, given the main item on the agenda: a review of why the company had lost the Chase Dynamics account. The oil services company had been one of Fusilier's largest and most loyal customers. The deal was a whopper: a $40m contract to make Chase's 23-country information technology (IT) network state-of-the-art in security and enhanced cross-enterprise communication. Elena Gonzalez, the veteran sales director responsible for the account, didn't exactly cover herself in glory during the meeting. When a few board members, led by Ed Zorthian, cross-examined her, she grew increasingly flustered. Being grilled by a Silicon Valley legend like Zorthian, who had founded two of the Valley's giants, Silicon Devices and Deximation, was understandably intimidating. And Gonzalez wasn't used to being in the hot seat. Over the years, her sales teams were consistently outstanding performers; they had never before lost a major account. The loss of Chase was a blow to Fusilier, based in Mountain View, California. Its sales had been flat for five years. One reason was the general slowdown in IT spending. But there was another reason that worried MacLeod more: the performance edge that Fusilier had long enjoyed in its core product categories was eroding, forcing it to compete increasingly on price. The timing wasn't great for Gonzalez either, MacLeod mused. She was the leading internal candidate to succeed Mark Hartley as vice-president of sales. Gonzalez, an imposing woman with a warm, round face, defended the sales team responsible for the Chase account, but Zorthian wasn't buying it. Elena, I don't understand how this could have happened given that we must have had a stronger relationship with Chase than Network Protect, he said, referring to their successful competitor. We did, said Gonzalez. I know that Paul Holmes, Chase's chief information officer, thinks highly of us. But Chase didn't leave this one to Paul and his IT crew. It's my understanding that the marketing and finance folks pushed to go with Network Protect. She explained that marketing asked to weigh in because it was overhauling its customer relations management system. And finance was in the process of upgrading its reporting systems to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and to integrate financial reporting from Chase's foreign operations. Didn't you see that coming and get to Chase's marketing and finance people? asked Morgan Kingley, a venture capitalist who had helped launch Fusilier in the mid-1980s. Of course, Gonzalez said defensively. We even brought in consultants from our new professional services unit and two external software companies with expertise in CRM and SOX applications to address Chase's issues. Our proposal to Chase was one of the most ambitious we've made to sell solutions instead of product performance. Then what went wrong? asked Joan Creeley, a Caltech engineering professor who had been a board member for many years. Two things, I guess, Gonzalez responded. From what Paul Holmes told me, Network Protect did a better job of pulling together its capabilities and those of its business partners in its proposed solutions. They also pushed to be much more involved in the CRM and finance projects. Frankly, I now realise we should have courted the marketing and finance vice-presidents much more than we did. Then why the heck didn't you? Zorthian pushed. As I'm sure you can understand, we didn't feel comfortable doing an end run around Paul. He's been very good to us over the years. Zorthian massaged the bridge of his signature pug nose but didn't say anything more during the rest of the inquisition, which continued for 30 minutes. MacLeod could tell there was plenty more on his mind. So the CEO wasn't surprised when Zorthian called two days later and invited him to go for a run in Shoreline Park that evening. They agreed to meet at the Boat House parking lot at 6pm. Accelerating Change They ran about 6km and took a break at a spot overlooking the salt marshes. For a few minutes, while they caught their breath, they watched egrets and ibis skimming the water. They felt comfortable with each other even though they were hardly alike. Zorthian, a creative genius whose product designs and marketing savvy had transformed the consumer electronics industry, had a flamboyant personality. At age 62 he was on his fourth marriage and had six children. A former marine, MacLeod was 52 and, with his lanky build, looked even younger. He was still married to his college sweetheart; they had a daughter and a son and were content. Fusilier's founders, Mike Balestra and Bill Hermann, had recruited him to be vice-president of finance and de facto chief operating officer (COO) in the early 1990s, when the company's sales were starting to take off. Balestra and Hermann knew that they needed someone to inject financial and process rigour into their young organisation of innovative engineers. At the time MacLeod had been the president of a division of Venerable Technologies, a Silicon Valley pioneer. MacLeod organised Fusilier into profit and loss (P& L) centres, each focused on a major product category. The culture of accountability and discipline he had instilled had positioned the company to exploit the technology boom and rack up a decade of robust, profitable growth. The firm had become an industry leader and now had nearly $6bn in sales and 10000 employees. While MacLeod knew that many in the Valley thought Zorthian was an obnoxious egotist, he appreciated Ed's stellar mind and his unvarnished advice. They had solidified their relationship six years ago, when MacLeod steered Fusilier through its initial public offering (IPO). Balestra and Hermann had cashed out and left, and MacLeod had become CEO. He and Zorthian had begun their occasional runs together during the IPO. So where do things stand in replacing Mark Hartley? Zorthian asked. MacLeod had not been totally surprised when, three months ago, Hartley informed him of his decision to retire as soon as the company could replace him. Hartley was only 56. His battle with prostate cancer two years ago was the main reason, he explained. It had made his wife and him rethink things. Although Hartley hadn't said so, MacLeod suspected that the new strategy to compete on the basis of selling solutions rather than superior product was also a factor. Hartley had been politely sceptical of the solutions approach. Perhaps the real reason for the company's flat sales, Hartley had suggested, was that the product divisions had lost their edge and needed to be shaken up. Zorthian reminded MacLeod that both of them had seen Hartley's departure as an opportunity to accelerate implementation of the new strategy.



Bill, I've learned over the years that the longer you take to bite the bullet, the greater your organisation's resistance will be. Maybe we underestimated the magnitude of the necessary changes, MacLeod responded. And the fact is, most of our customers are still IT managers who buy individual products for infrastructure needs. You're always reminding me that the smart monkey in the competitive jungle never lets go of one branch until he's grasped the next one. Yes, acknowledged Zorthian, standing up to resume the run. But if the monkey doesn't move fast enough, the first branch might break off while he's still clinging to it. New Strategy For the first few years of the tech bust, Fusilier had preserved its profit margins by cutting costs through re-engineering its supply chain, focusing its research and development budgets and winnowing its product line. When it became apparent about two years ago that the company had exhausted these opportunities the board encouraged the executive team to rethink fundamentally how the company could achieve profitable growth.

The result had been the integrated solutions strategy, announced throughout Fusilier with great fanfare 18 months ago.

It was a radical departure from the traditional product-performance approach. It called for Fusilier to bundle its own consulting, hardware and customised software, as well as other vendors' products, to serve the particular needs of users in areas such as marketing, sales, finance and human resources. Fusilier's market research department had found that a substantial number of the company's biggest customers were willing to pay a premium to a supplier that could provide such customised offerings to their operations around the globe. A consulting firm confirmed that finding, but cautioned that Fusilier faced two major challenges: building relationships with executives beyond the IT department and getting Fusilier's disparate product and service units to work seamlessly with one another and the sales force. With one exception, Fusilier was still largely organised into the P& L centres MacLeod had created in his early days at the company. There were three main divisions: datacentre products, which supplied components for servers and corporate websites; network products, whose offerings were essential for data security and enhanced communications across a customer's geographical sites; and services, which traditionally had consisted of maintenance and repair services. The exception was professional services, a new consulting unit whose mission was to jump-start the solutions-centric sales approach with a handful of key global clients. To staff it, Fusilier had transferred 60 people from the divisions and had hired 40 more from outside the company. These consultants were expected to have a deep understanding of how Fusilier's product applications linked to business issues and to work closely with the sales force and product units both before and after a sale. However, sales would continue to own the customer relationship. It would have overall responsibility for designing and selling these new, tailored solutions and for pulling together the best Fusilier products and people from wherever they resided. The consulting firm had spelled out the substantial changes that would be necessary for sales to play this role. Traditionally, a salesman's compensation had been based largely on his or her individual results. In the new world, the compensation system would have to reward the solutions teams. Account managers' compensation would have to be redesigned to reward them for orchestrating this team effort and for building relationships beyond customers' IT departments. A longer sales cycle would also have to be factored into the equation. Fusilier would also have to re- examine training and the processes for deploying the sales force. Historically, sales training had focused on product features and cost-performance advantages, not on the business issues. The internal market had determined how the sales force was deployed: product managers had competed fiercely for the attention of sales, and salesmen tended to specialise over the years. In the new world, salesmen had to understand, promote and select from the entire portfolio of products and services offered by Fusilier and its business partners. MacLeod had hoped that professional services and a transformed sales division would serve as the vanguard for the new strategy. In the past 12 months, though, there had been troubling signs. Working with human resources, Hartley appointed a task force to design a blueprint for overhauling incentives and training but had made little progress in acting on its proposed plan. Professional services was still not meeting expectations. Its leader, Liz McGowan, had begun to complain regularly about a lack of support from the product and service units and much of the sales division. They don't really know what we do, she told MacLeod. They resist changing prices or features for a specific deal. Too many in the sales force see us as their competitors. Indeed, a survey by human resources found that many in sales resented the consultants and did not understand their role. The notable exception was Gonzalez's staff, who seemed to be genuinely trying to change its ways of doing business and had scored some successes in selling solutions.

It's because of Elena's leadership, said McGowan. She's persuaded them that the new strategy is the only way we can get back on a growth track and that they will all come out ahead in the end. Assessing the Risks Back in the parking lot after the run, MacLeod relayed this information to Zorthian. Where do you stand with candidates the executive recruiters produced? Zorthian asked.

We've narrowed them down to one guy: Jon Shapiro from MegaLeap Technologies, MacLeod said. What I like best about him is his experience working across organisational boundaries. He also seems to have a superb analytical mind. He's got a Stanford MBA and, for someone in his late 30s, has held a variety of interesting positions at a number of technology companies. He spent some years in marketing and then did strategic mergers and acquisitions, including postmerger integration for BD Technologies. He's been running international sales at MegaLeap for four years and has built them into a power in Europe. Sounds like a winner. So you're leaning towards him? I'm worried about how he'd fit in. He's brash. He's never worked in our business, so he doesn't know our products. He's jumped around quite a bit. And Fusilier isn't an easy place for outsiders. Hiring Shapiro may be just too big a risk. The biggest risk is inertia, Zorthian countered. Do you really think Elena's got what it takes to lead the change? A Mover and Shaker Ten days earlier, MacLeod and Peter Spokes, Fusilier's executive vice-president and COO, had interviewed Shapiro in the CEO's office when they decided he was the best of the three outside finalists. They were struck by how passionately Shapiro advocated the solutions approach. Frankly, without it, you're dead, he told them. Your business is commoditising. Companies don't care about terabytes and gigaflops anymore. They want to know how you're going to help them outperform the competition, satisfy Wall Street and meet the Securities and Exchange Commission's requirements. They want you to know their business needs and help them shrink their IT departments. Shapiro had then cross-examined them about their business model, organisation, customer relationships and people. He was blunt in telling them that he was unimpressed by their progress. Sounds like you need someone who can shake things up. I suppose that's why you're looking outside, he said. MacLeod felt his face reddening, but Shapiro didn't pick up on his body language.

I inherited a similar situation at MegaLeap, Shapiro said. Our big multinational customers were demanding solutions to business issues and more co-ordination from our sales and product units. But the units just couldn't respond. So I cleaned house. I replaced all but one of our sales directors and overhauled the rules of the game for the sales force. In my first two years running international sales, turnover among salesmen ran at nearly 30% annually. Yeah, it wasn't a happy place, but the results speak for themselves. Machiavelli was right, he added. When a prince needs to make a big change he must do it quickly, before the forces of resistance can coalesce to stop it. There was an awkward silence. MegaLeap is much smaller than we are, and we've got some damn good people here, MacLeod said calmly. Don't you think you'd need some time to familiarise yourself with the place before applying Machiavelli? And you wouldn't be the prince here. The product units wouldn't report to you. That just means internal selling is part of the job, Shapiro said.

A Homegrown Superstar MacLeod and Spokes discussed Gonzalez and Shapiro over lunch at the Cantankerous Fish on Castro Street. MacLeod had recruited Spokes from his old company, Venerable Technologies, shortly after Fusilier's IPO, and valued his views. As a waiter ground fresh pepper over his fish stew, Spokes said: Shapiro would certainly shake things up. He explained the rationale and requirements of the integrated solutions strategy better than any of us. But how can we not give Elena the chance? She's earned it. Gonzalez, who was 40, had joined Fusilier in the early 1990s in technical services. She moved from Phoenix, where she had worked for a computer services firm after graduating from Arizona State University. A down-to-earth people person, she had moved into sales and quickly had been promoted to manager. Her teams' victories had become legend. More often than not she had personally made the difference in closing crucial deals. Modest and self-effacing, she never grabbed the glory for herself. Her people loved her but they knew she didn't accept excuses when it came to meeting the quarterly numbers. We can help her do the stuff that Mark's avoided like revamping compensation and training, Spokes said. And let's not forget that some of our most important customers are her relationships. But virtually all of those relationships are with IT managers, MacLeod pointed out. In addition, there's the question of whether Elena can make the tough choices that need to be made. Not everyone on the sales force can make it to the promised land. The same goes for customers: unless we're smart about segmenting and targeting the right customers for this solutions approach, the selling, general and administrative expenses will kill us. Elena's a good administrator, but is she a strategist? I just don't know, Spokes said. Neither do I, MacLeod sighed. What should Bill MacLeod do to put Fusilier back on a growth track? Four commentators offer advice. is a senior lecturer in the narketing area and managing partner at The Centre for Executive Development in Boston, Massachusetts.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Can Microsoft win at everything?

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Can Microsoft win at everything?. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Can Microsoft win at everything? Computer giant aims to become 'glue' that connects disparate applications CONSIDER the latest news from Microsoft: the company is creating a music player and service, Zune, to compete with Apple's iPod, and on August 17 signed up EMI Group as a music video partner. The company's Xbox is a money- losing venture, but remains a hit with gamers. Meanwhile, Microsoft is offering PC makers design kits so they can dress up their computers to match the company's new Vista operating system, due early next year.



The common thread: Microsoft, well known as a software giant, is increasingly dabbling in hardware and playing a bigger role in product design. The big question is, why? While some analysts dismiss Microsoft's efforts as Apple envy, experts at Wharton say there is a bigger picture. Microsoft wants more control over integrating its software with the gadgets that could open new markets. Its real mission: find new vertical markets to dominate so it can continue to grow even if its Windows monopoly erodes. Microsoft understands that software, its core business, is becoming commoditised. It needs new revenue streams to keep growing, says Wharton business ethics' Prof Kevin Werbach. Value is moving from the desktop to network-connected services. Integrating software, hardware, content and services, as Apple has done so effectively with the iPod, can be a wonderful business model if you can do it right. If the vertical market playbook sounds familiar, it is: Microsoft has $34bn in cash and short-term investments as of June 30, largely because it profits by controlling a PC ecosystem that revolves around Windows. In other words, Windows has become a de facto standard. Apple is using the same approach in music, pairing the iPod with the iTunes music portal along with its digital rights management software, which controls how content is used. All three pieces of the iPod eco- system are dominant standards. Wharton operations and information management professor, Eric Clemons, says Microsoft's forays into new markets tell a larger tale of insecurity. The bigger story here is twofold: Microsoft's continued fear that it may lose its power and pricing in operating systems, and its continued need to show rapid growth in a world in which it already owns nearly the entire market in its core product areas, says Clemons.

What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can make the right moves in its products and strategy to own a new market. In many respects, market domination is the equivalent of a lightning strike. Other companies, such as Google with its search engine and Apple with the iPod, have also developed hits due to fortuitous timing and well-designed products. There's this notion that Microsoft lies in wait and then dominates a new market, says Wharton marketing's Prof Peter Fader. But it's not true. Microsoft fails as much as it succeeds. What Microsoft is attempting has been tried. The history of the computer industry is littered with the remains of companies that tried to integrate hardware, software and services, but lost out to more focused competitors, says Werbach.

But with newer, specialised platforms like mobile devices and home media centres, there may be more benefits to integration. Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of information technology at Wharton, believes Microsoft's persistence often pays off. For instance, a decade ago few would have predicted that devices from Palm would run Microsoft's Windows mobile operating system. Today they do largely because the original Palm operating system failed to evolve quickly enough while Microsoft steadily improved its mobile software. If it tries long enough, eventually Microsoft will succeed. With enough money and enough time, anything is possible. What could emerge is a new Microsoft geared more towards services and integrating various devices littering the digital living room, including PCs, game machines, digital set-top boxes, digital cameras and music players. In this vision, Microsoft's software and internet services become the glue connecting a host of devices. Perhaps one of the larger questions is whether Microsoft can succeed at everything. Can a tech company really have multiple core competencies, as Microsoft says it can? asked Merrill Lynch analyst Kash Rangan in an August 2 research note. Microsoft has a breadth of products and markets. Competing and winning in all of them seems to be a dizzying proposition that could tax even the most competent of management teams. One way to answer Rangan's question will be to look at Microsoft's Zune music player. Little is known about Zune, beyond a few pictures leaked on the web and hints that Zune will include built-in Wi-Fi network access. But Microsoft will have to line up music partners, create an online service to sell songs and design a portable music player in order to launch the product by its planned release this year.

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and services division, has said Zune will be a three-to-five year investment. As for dollars invested, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions on Zune, less than the billions spent on Xbox. Why is Microsoft doing this? Perhaps to make money selling portable music players as Apple has done, but I suspect it's really more about controlling the distribution chain for digital music, says Whitehouse. With the success of its iPod and digital rights management that only works with the iPod, Apple has control of the entire channel. Microsoft's move is an acknowledgement of Apple's leverage. And with a new project such as Zune, it is unclear whether the goal is to sell the player, distribute songs, give Microsoft's software (such as its Windows Media Player) and digital rights management tools better footing, or just keep Apple in check, say Wharton experts. To analysts such as Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, Microsoft's Zune is a critical part of the effort to thwart Apple's dominance and prevent it from usurping Windows as consumers buy iPods and Macintosh computers. We believe Microsoft needs to start chipping away at Apple in the near term or risk losing more ground as Apple expands its massive footprint, says Munster. According to Fader, however, it will be difficult for Microsoft to curtail Apple's momentum in digital music. The idea behind Zune is to give the consumer a better experience, but it's not clear it will do that well. The Apple iPod is a rock-solid reference and anything Zune does will be compared with the iPod. The iPod is the standard. Nevertheless, he argues that there is an opening for Microsoft. Apple's digital rights management can be restrictive and its player does not have a built-in FM radio receiver or the ability to use some of the major subscription music services. Part of the reason Apple has been so successful is that CEO Steve Jobs successfully lined up all the major record labels behind the iPod and iTunes. In addition, Apple is viewed as more hip, and any product it develops comes with that aura. Apple has a glow and Microsoft has a burden that it's not friendly to customers, says Fader.

Given Microsoft's recent activities, it seems clear that the company is anticipating a time when Windows yields to something Whitehouse calls the webtop. Microsoft is preparing for the day when it does not have control of the dominant software platform, says Whitehouse, who argues that many software applications will one day become subscriber-based services delivered over the web.

Rangan highlights a host of new markets for Microsoft, including enterprise servers, databases, games, online advertising and television. Microsoft is attacking vastly different markets, seeding a variety of potentially large opportunities, he suggests. In these new markets, integration becomes more important since software that cannot connect with other devices can become irrelevant. That means Microsoft has to become more of a glue company, focusing on middleware, or software that is used to connect disparate applications. According to Whitehouse, this is a new focus for Microsoft. Instead of trying to put the PC operating system everywhere, the new challenge becomes synchronising everything. The problem, says Fader, is that it's hard to be seen as a glue company when you're seen as a Windows company. Microsoft can't just jam Windows into everything as the glue. It has to be nimble and have a different approach. Werbach, however, says that the ability to connect various platforms may be within Microsoft's reach. Microsoft knows a thing or two about integrating platforms. Even though it only controlled the operating system, it was able to dictate the structure of the PC ecosystem for years. Making devices and services work together is an immense challenge, which no one, not even Apple, has fully solved. Microsoft at least has the benefit of many years of working to make an astounding array of hardware and software co-exist with Windows. In general, Microsoft's focus on connecting various devices makes sense, Werbach argues. After all, it cannot compete with the likes of Apple on product design. What Microsoft hopes to do is make software 'middleware' the differentiator in an integrated environment, because that plays to its strengths. Republished with permission from Knowledge@Wharton (http:/knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu), the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Ensure that entire company is marching to the same tune. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Ensure that entire company is marching to the same tune Randall D Kelley THE key decision Bill MacLeod should make is where he wants to retire once the board fires him! I say this for several reasons. He has tolerated a vice-president of sales who has been politely sceptical of the company's new solutions-based growth strategy. He is getting a series of not-so-subtle hints from his board that it is not happy and wants him to accelerate implementation of the new strategy. He was not personally involved in an unsuccessful effort to land a major deal with one of the company's largest customers. And he seems nervous and reluctant to bring in a candidate whom the board feels could be part of the solution. In my judgment, MacLeod must decide immediately whether he is really committed to the new growth strategy and organisational changes. Any successful change programme starts with awareness of the need for the change and a willingness to act. My sense is MacLeod is not quite there yet and is communicating some doubts and reservations that are, in effect, freezing the organisation. If this continues, he may soon be getting more of Ed Zorthian's unvarnished advice to step aside. MacLeod needs to know exactly what the board's expectations are for revenue growth, profitability, and timing. It is important that he know just how much runway he has left to implement the strategy and what the board will consider a success. In addition, he needs a clear, compelling plan for communicating the business case for the new strategy throughout the company and for winning over veteran employees.



Given the longer sales cycle and the organisational complexities required to deliver integrated solutions, it is doubtful that the company can afford to abandon its traditional product-based sales approach altogether. More likely, Fusilier will need sales from the traditional business to generate cash flow and help fund the new solutions strategy. This means MacLeod will not have to choose between Elena Gonzalez and Jon Shapiro. He will need both. The company should retain a product sales and services division to serve customers who are price sensitive and still view IT as a commodity. Gonzalez sounds like the right person to run this, in large part because of her strong internal support and customer relationships. Concurrently, the company should form an enterprise sales and services division made up primarily of services department to focus on customers who are less price- sensitive and value end-user solutions. Shapiro sounds like the right leader for this group. To minimise the implementation risks to the firm, MacLeod needs to be absolutely sure both candidates buy into this new organisational model and can work together in a complementary, collaborative way. The time is perfect for MacLeod to give each candidate an assignment to detail their objectives and proposed action plans for the first 90 days in their new jobs. These could produce valuable insights and recommendations and ensure that all members of the new leadership team will be marching to the same tune. Moreover, it could assure the board that MacLeod is moving forward aggressively with a well-thought-out strategy for growth, a new organisational model, and the right leadership team. Kelley is a partner in the Dallas office of the executive search firm Spencer Stuart. He leads the company's professional services practice for North America.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Saudi Arabia: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Although legislative changes will be few, extensive investment requirements should see a rise in the role of the private sector.

2008-10: The private sector plays a greater role in telecommunications, transport, non-oil mining, education, health, utilities and infrastructure.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Following accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), new laws and initiatives on competition, capital markets, corporate taxation, insurance and foreign ownership of banks begin to create a more level playing field.

2008-10: Further labour law legislation and WTO membership enhance flexibility and transparency for foreign investors.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: WTO accession and free-trade talks between the Gulf Co-operation Council and the EU, India and China begin to lock in lower tariffs. No exchange controls. Strong commitment to full convertibility.

2008-10: Increased import flows as large capital projects get under way.

Taxes

2006-07: Foreign companies corporate income tax subject to 20% ceiling, but tax in the oil and gas sector remains higher.

2008-10: Efforts to improve tax collection. Possible broadening of tax regime.

Financing

2006-07: The capital markets law gives a tentative start to the development of a capital market, with an increasing number of initial public offerings and gradually improving transparency, confidence and investor protection.

2008-10: Greater use of the stockmarket by companies and the development of a corporate bond market. Foreign banks begin to operate more widely.

The labour market

2006-07: Strong emphasis on Saudiisation of the workforce and greater focus on ensuring Saudis are adequately trained.

2008-10: An additional labour law, which promotes greater mobility between jobs and more transparency in contracts, starts to ease labour market distortions. Government steps up actions to deter recruitment of foreign workers.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Uneven advances towards meeting expansion needs in power, water, housing, transport, roads and railways.

2008-10: Regulatory advances in utilities and infrastructure encourage private investment to help plug the financing gap.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Oman industry: Gas limits

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Oman industry: Gas limits. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Growing demands on its limited natural gas reserves present a challenge for Oman. In the absence of new discoveries, the government may face some difficult decisions

When Omani officials are listing the countrys selling-points to entice investors, its long-standing political stability tends to come top of the list. Under the 35-year rule of Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said, Oman has managed to strike an impressive balance between economic development and social continuity. Now, however, the country is facing a major demographic challenge. Substantial numbers of the overwhelmingly young citizen population (55% of whom are under the age of 20) are shortly set to graduate from school or university and launch themselves into the labour market. If Oman is to retain its reputation for political and social tranquillity, they must be found jobs. Andin keeping with its fiscal caution and awareness of the transience of oil incomethe government wants those jobs to be in the private sector.



Jobs for the boys (and girls)

Omans oil reserves are respectable, rather than superabundant, and currently look set to run out in about two decades time. In keeping with all the best international advice, the Omani government is trying to make responsible use of the current economic boom fuelled by high oil prices to promote sustainable diversification in labour-intensive industries. At the same time, it is implementing a policy of Omanisation, imposing targets on businesses for the employment of Omani nationals. (The Omani population is larger and poorer than the citizenries of many other Gulf states, outnumbering expatriate workers by a proportion of around 3:1, with a GDP/head of US$16,000.) Less controversially, the government is also making sustained efforts to improve education and training.

Oman has high hopes for the future prospects and employment opportunities provided by its tourism industry. Currently, however, this sector constitutes only a small percentage of GDP. Moreover, the government perceives a need to proceed with caution, focusing on the more limited high-end market. Officials fondest hopes are therefore centred on the rapidly-growing set of gas-based industries centred around Sohar, on the northern Batinah coast. These new ventures, which include an aluminium smelter and various petrochemical plants, themselves provide some jobs. They also have a potentially much larger knock-on effect on employment, as labour-intensive small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are set up to provide them with inputs and process their products.

There is, however, a problem. Omans existing natural gas reserves are already overcommitted, and demand is rising. The government gas system, which supplies local residences and businesses as well as the gas-based industries, takes just under a quarter of total output. Oman also now has no less than three liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains. The latest, Qalhat LNG, was formally opened this March. The three trains now absorb almost half of total gas output. Moreover, the figures from Qalhat suggest that it is not yet functioning at full capacity, and its requirement is therefore likely to increase further in order to fulfil its various long-term sale and purchase agreements. Finally, Oman is trying to make the most of its oil reserves (which are not only limited, but also locked away in some very difficult fields), through the use of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. These and other oil-company operations often require the use of natural gasand most of the associated gas produced in Oman (over 20% of the total) is currently re-injected, flared, or used as fuel in the oil-fields. The oil companies, which previously treated the gas largely as a by-product, are now being asked by the government to account for it.

On the hunt

There is little scope to limit natural gas usage in any of these areas. The countrys best alternative would obviously be to avoid the problem entirely by finding more reserves. In this cause, the ministry of oil and gas has offered additional concessions across the country, with Block 60, including the Abu Butabul field, being awarded to BG Group of the UK in April. The winner of another concession, at Khazan, will be announced soon, with BG once again among the frontrunners. These are geologically complex fields, however, and further exploration will take time. So the government has a back-up plan: to become a gas importer. An agreement has already been signed to import gas from Qatar through the Dolphin pipeline from early 2008. There are also ongoing discussions of the possibility of importing gas from Iran. The quantity of Dolphin gas available is likely to be small, however, with the UAE (which now imports around 4% of Omans total natural gas production) taking most of it. In either case, Oman is likely to be paying a high market price for the commodity.

This raises questions about the economics of the entire enterprise. Gas-based industries have been enticed to Oman, in a competitive international market, by the promise of cheap energy. But Omanis may begin to question the concept of importing natural gas at a premium in order to sell it at a subsidised price. Will the cost really be outweighed by the hoped-for benefits in terms of economic diversification, employment and social stability?

SOURCE: Business Middle East

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
What will the next generation of software-as-a-service look like?. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Like products, it seems concepts are getting version numbers. First there was Web 2.0. Now there is SaaS 2.0.

High-tech officials floated the new term here at SaaScon, an event geared to foster discussion on the growing popularity of software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Whereas Web 2.0 is built around user-driven content and interactivity, SaaS 2.0 is an enhancement to the initial efforts of software services.

Bill McNee, CEO of research consulting firm Saugatuck Technology, introduced the SaaS 2.0 concept, noting that it is an expansion of the SaaS concept to further integrate software services into "premises-based" software, the term used at the show to describe installed, packaged software.



"SaaS 2.0 is about transforming business processes," McNee said. "It's closer to business service provisioning and a platform with programmable services on top of it."

SaaS 2.0 involves greater integration of these hosted apps into the enterprise, with extensive use of service-oriented architecture (SOA) for scaling, configuration and tighter synchronization with back-end applications.

A part of this emerging SaaS 2.0 will be SaaS Integration Platforms, or SIPs. These are solution hubs that share, deliver and manage applications, and serve as an integration layer between the application services and the hardware and software platform.

SIPs will be needed to move beyond standalone silos of data and provide tighter integration between service applications and installed application.

Right now, SaaS is still about the application, McNee noted. "This market has to move beyond just delivering software. It's very much about information, not applications," he said.

SaaS is projected to grow at a 20 percent compound average growth rate for the rest of the decade to become a $15 to $20 billion market by 2010. However, that's still only 15 percent of enterprise application market.

"So packaged software is not going away," said McNee.

In surveying clients and various enterprises, some surprises emerged. First, large enterprises have been the quickest to adopt SaaS, which is unusual. Large firms are usually slowest to adopt new technologies.

The reason most cited by large firms for adopting software services: cost reduction. That's especially true for vertical apps, which are often much more expensive than general-purpose applications.

More notable: pre-existing relationships with vendors are the least important consideration for customers looking at SaaS.

It's no accident that the bulk of companies brought up in the keynotes were small startups, even if IBM and Microsoft were there. This shows that many software giants are significantly challenged to keep their customers, said McNee.

SaaS may not be threatening the existence of packaged software, but it's eating up most of the venture money.

Buell Duncan, general manager for ISV and developer relations at IBM, said that virtually all software startups today that are being funded are SaaS developers.

In a survey of IBM's PartnerWorld members, IBM found 55 percent are considering SaaS for their company while 45 percent are not. However, of that 55 percent, only 13 percent are actually planning on it, 42 percent were evaluating it.

Duncan stated the same needs for SaaS as McNee.

"For SaaS to go to the next level, it has to integrate into broader business processes. As customers ask about integrating it more broadly into the enterprise, it will fuel this growth at an almost unprecedented level," Duncan said.

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The new browser-based development tools put alphaWorks into the services arena.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
IBM is rolling out a trio of new Web-based development services, as the first from the newly launched alphaWorks Services site .

The services extend IBM's 10-year-old alphaWorks efforts into the software as a service arena.

Chris Spencer, emerging technologies strategist for IBM alphaWorks, explained to internetnews.com that alphaWorks is essentially a conduit between IBM's R&D and the early-adopter market.

IBM claims that alphaWorks has introduced almost 700 new technologies, 129 of which have found their way into existing IBM products.

The new Services approach adds Web-based services, two of which are browser-based development tools, to the alphaWorks legacy.

The Ad hoc Development and Integration tool for End Users (ADIEU) is an online development environment for the rapid development of Web Services.

The idea is that developers can deploy services without the need for using traditional programming methods.

They can instead use something IBM refers to as "cards," which are form-based function widgets that can extract data from a Web page or consume existing Web Services.

Web Relational Blocks (WebRB) is a similar sort of service, but with more of a database focus.

"Most of the Web applications that are out there today are simply Web front ends for back-end databases," Spencer said.

"What Web Relational Blocks does is it creates an environment with the browser where you can drag and drop elements to create web application."

"You don't have to understand the database structure on the backend; you can simply say 'I want to create a relationship between this field and that database field,' and the program will just do it for you," Spencer continued.

"It allows you to create and prototype Web front ends relatively easily."

With the new services, IBM is also hedging its bets in the current browser war.

ADIEU works best on Microsoft's Internet Explorer, while WebRB is optimized for Mozilla Firefox.

"Ideally we'd to have all these services not care which browser you're using," Spencer admitted. "Just due to technological constraints that's not always possible."

At this point it's not clear exactly how IBM plans to monetize the new alphaWorks services, or even which division of IBM commercial implementation would reside in.

"The services that we're launching today are all from IBM Research so they are all somewhat agnostic," Spencer said. "That doesn't mean they won't find a home in a specific place; it's just that right now we don't know."



Success for the new services will measured by usage and feedback.

"The main way we're going to judge whether Alphaworks services is successful or not is whether the community views it as valuable," Spencer said.

"We're going to be adding features to the site that will hopefully allow us to gauge that."

IBM is expected to add new services to alphaWorks Services on a regular basis. Among them include the company's QED Wiki, which will be IBM's challenge to the enterprise wiki market.

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.
Recordless e-mail and advanced content management, highlight DEMO conference kickoff.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - It's not exactly SAP meets MySpace, but enterprise software vendors are increasingly looking to easier user interfaces and Web 2.0 technology to enhance the usefulness of their applications.

At today's kickoff of the DEMO conference here, several consumer and business software companies showed off new applications that emphasized the ability to easily present and obtain information from the Web, as well as other sources such as e-mail and remote servers.



"Enterprise software is looking more and more like consumer software," said DEMO producer Chris Shipley.

Probably the most controversial of the product debuts was Stream Messaging, a "recordless" e-mail service from VaporStream .

The Web-based service is meant to complement a company's existing e-mail system; users don't need to create a new e-mail address.

"Stream" messages are sent and received in a private system and therefore, according to VaporStream, not susceptible to spam and viruses.

The company said the messages travel through its own services in memory and vanish once sent, sans caching.

Also, unlike anonymous e-mail solutions, VaporStream said the identity of the sender is always verified. VaporStream plans to offer Stream Messaging to mobile devices in November.

"Today, no one has any real control over their messaging," said Joe Collins, CEO and co-founder of VaporStream. "This is a way to reclaim lost privacy."

The company is not promoting the service as an e-mail replacement.

"If you need to a record, use e-mail," said Collins. "If you don't, use VaporStream."

Meanwhile, Koral said it has created a way to provide better content management with the community aspects of Web 2.0 services.

The basic Koral service, which is free, is designed to easily access information from multiple sources in the enterprise: e-mail, services, intranet, Web, etc.

Koral CEO Mark Suster claimed enterprise content management is a $3 billion industry but only five percent of companies use any system at all.

In a demo, Suster showed how a search on a term like "high tech" returned an array of documents from different sources.

Koral generates previews to make it easy to scroll through different documents without having to open them, including PowerPoint files. RSS feeds and e-mails will send an alert when there are changes to documents you save.

Koral also works with Web applications from Salesforce.com.

"With a single click you can get all the content you're looking for into one list," said Suster.

Startup BuzzLogic also debuted an on-demand software service designed to help marketers identify who is influential within specific conversations taking place in social media such as blogs.

BuzzLogic said it's able to identify influencers who are shaping and driving specific conversations in social media with algorithms that analyze relationships, such as who connects to whom, what is happening and who is listening.

Marketing and communications practitioners can use these insights to understand influence and who wields it to manage their brands, reputations, products and customer relationships.

In a demo, BuzzLogic CEO Rob Krumpler, searched on "iPod Zune" to see what sources were most influential in the coverage of the music player battle between Apple's iPod and Microsoft's planned Zune entry.

The service combs through blogs, mainstream media, corporate Web sites and other information sources to get its results.

In the this case, a top ten list was created by a blog called Lost Remote and the Seattle Weekly.

One early beta tester, David Churbuck, vice president of global Web marketing for Lenovo, said he found the service useful.

"BuzzLogic promises to do for brand communications and customer satisfaction, public relations and press relations what Web metrics have done for online advertising," said Churbuck.

Sixty-seven companies are slated to present at the Demo conference which runs through Wednesday.

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.

E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa

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E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa. Check it out:
(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Frankfurt, Germany, Sep 26 (EFE).- Germany's E.ON said Tuesday that it is increasing its offer for Spain's largest electric utility to 37.1 billion euros ($47.1 billion) in cash, responding to the surprise purchase of a 10 percent stake in Endesa by a third party.



Spanish construction firm Acciona SA on Monday acquired 10 percent of Endesa at a price of 32 euros ($40.55) per share, compared with the 25.41 euros ($32.19) per share offered by E.ON in February.

Acciona left the door open to buying additional shares of Endesa.

The enhanced offer from E.ON translates into 35 euros ($44.40) a share, which represents a 38 percent increase over the German company's original bid for Endesa.

"Our improved offer represents an exceptionally attractive opportunity for the shareholders of Endesa and reflects our long-term confidence in Endesa's business model and its prospects for growth," E.ON CEO Wulf Bernotat said Tuesday in a statement.

The German titan, already Europe's biggest utility, had said earlier that it was "pursuing its offer for Endesa and expects to meet all requirements to proceed shortly."

The company also stressed that completion of the deal is contingent on E.ON's acquisition of at least 50.01 percent of Endesa's shares, and on the Spanish firm's elimination of a rule restricting investors to 10 percent of voting rights, no matter how big their stake in the enterprise.

E.ON's February offer for the electric utility came after Spain's leading gas group, Gas Natural, launched a takeover bid worth $27.8 billion bid for Endesa in September 2005.

Endesa management considers the E.ON offer to be better than the one made by Gas Natural because it provides a higher price, payment in cash and would maintain the company's current structure.

If it gets done, the E.ON-Endesa deal would create the biggest electric and gas company in the world, with more than 50 million customers in over 30 countries and 107,000 employees.

Endesa was a state-owned company for decades until it was privatized in 1998.

Spain's National Energy Commission, or CNE, voted unanimously in late July to conditionally approve the bid by E.ON, but both companies - and the European Union - have expressed concern about some of those requirements.

For its part, the Spanish government has indicated uneasiness with the acquisition of the utility by a foreign company, but has not moved overtly to block the transaction. EFE

aia/dr

Copyright 2006 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc.
Owens Corning nearly out of bankruptcy. Check it out:
(UPI Business News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Ohio's Owens Corning said Tuesday it gained bankruptcy court approval for its reorganization plan.

Judge Judith Fitzgerald of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware OK'd the plan, paving the way for Owens Corning to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of next month.

Owens Corning's creditors and shareholders overwhelmingly supported the plan, including the asbestos, bondholder and trade creditor classes, as well as bank debt holders.

The plan must also be approved by Judge John P. Fullam of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The agreement assumes a total distributable value of $8.627 billion, consisting of the total enterprise value of $5.858 billion, assumed excess cash of $1.432 billion and Fibreboard trust and asbestos trust assets of $1.491 billion, less existing debt of $55 million and $99 million in assumed value of new shares reserved for employee incentive programs.



Owens Corning's exit financing will come from a combination of new equity, new debt financing and existing debt at non-debtor Owens Corning entities. The company will begin distributions to creditors upon the effective date of its emergence from Chapter 11.

Copyright 2006 United Press International
Stonesoft demonstrates Secure Information Flow with StoneGate IPS technology trial. Check it out:
Addressing recent heightened suspicions of network espionage, Stonesoft is providing a free 10-day trial installation of StoneGate IPS, a powerful and simple to use network intrusion protection system

HELSINKI, Finland 26th of September, 2006 Stonesoft Corporation, the leading innovator in optimised integrated network security technology, has developed a brand new solution for further securing the information flow. Recent trends in network security have proved that perimeter security alone is no longer sufficient protection against malicious intrusions. Along with external threats, company servers are increasingly facing additional internal threats that arise, for example, when connecting laptops to internal networks.



Stonesoft has developed a new IPS solution for its award-winning StoneGate Platform to meet these concerns head-on. StoneGate IPS detects harmful traffic and stops it, avoiding potential damages caused by worms, spyware and other malicious intrusions. StoneGate IPS removes these threats from corporate network traffic, securing business continuity, reducing unplanned service breaks, and increasing overall productivity of business operations.

The free trial version of StoneGate IPS is extremely easy for customers to use. They dont require any IPS know-how or additional resources for the duration of the trial period. explains Klaus Majewski, product marketing manager at Stonesoft. Our experts install the system and follow the operation during a trial period of ten days, ensuring the trial does not cause any extra work for the customers IT staff. By offering IPS for trial we give our customers a chance to discover the true benefits of IPS in a real production environment at their own premises. In addition, this ensures the customer gets a clear picture of internal network traffic thanks to the reports and analysis produced during that trial period.

StoneGate IPS detects intrusions that are not picked up by firewalls alone. Some features of StoneGate IPS are already patented and several features are patent-pending. Stonesoft believes that because an intrusion protection system stops traffic abuse and removes malicious traffic from corporate networks, many companies have already been able to reduce extra working hours for their IT teams.

Majewski continues: Companies and communities are more and more interested in learning what is happening inside internal networks. The centralised management of StoneGate IPS intensifies the reporting of the network traffic and helps to solve detected network intrusions. Centralised management also ensures resource optimisation as a support tool for overall business operations. We have a good example of a multi-national company that was able to considerably reduce its network auditing overheads as a direct result of deploying StoneGate IPS. Instead of 52 annual audits taking a week apiece to conduct, for example, each audit took just two days. That saved them 156 days per year

Thanks to efficient reporting we can detect intrusion trends from a large number of logs. One of our Finnish customers paid attention to an unexpectedly large number of Domain Name Service (DNS) protocol violations. It turned out that the customers DNS server had been cracked and information had leaked outside the company. Without the reporting information produced by IPS it would have been extremely difficult to detect this intrusion, Majewski says.

About Stonesoft Corporation
Stonesoft Corporation (HEX: SFT1V) is an innovative provider of integrated network security and business continuity. Stonesoft is a global company focused on enterprise level customers requiring advanced network security and always-on business connectivity with low TCO, best price-to-performance ratio, and highest ROI. StoneGate Security Platform unifies firewall, VPN and IPS, blending network security, end-to-end availability and award-winning load balancing into a unified and centrally managed system for distributed enterprises.

Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation has corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit: www.stonesoft.com
WhiteBlox and Vistacast Partner to Deliver Superior IPTV Training Solutions for Corporations. Check it out:
HOUSTON --(Business Wire)-- WhiteBlox today announced that it has taken a significant equity position in Vistacast, which has resulted in the formation of a strategic partnership that will provide a full range of IPTV training capabilities for corporations. Moving forward, Vistacast, a leading provider of distributed video training solutions, will exclusively use the WhiteBlox interactive media player with all of its clients that deliver both online and offline video training to their employees. The move will expose tens of thousands of new customers to the WhiteBlox IPTV system.



"With this new alliance, WhiteBlox is breaking into the rich field of corporate communications and distance learning," said Greg Demetriades, Chairman and CEO of WhiteBlox. "The WhiteBlox system is a valuable asset to any corporate enterprise that provides training to its employees, and will increase efficiency and productivity countless times over."

The powerful back-end analytics native to the WhiteBlox system will allow employers to accurately and uniformly monitor training protocols and scoring for all of their employees on a global level. Additionally, the interactive features found in the WhiteBlox media player will create increased versatility in the ways corporations communicate with their employees. The player's interactive marketing tiles may also be used for co-branding opportunities between companies, which could enable clients to generate revenue from the solution.

"This strategic partnership takes the best from WhiteBlox and Vistacast to create a solution that offers convenience, control, and choice to our customers," said Jose Carrasquillo, President and CEO of Vistacast. "Our clients can extend their reach to more end-users, deliver consistent IP Video information and training, and preserve eLearning standards such as SCORM and Learning Management Systems."

Vistacast's business model utilizes subscription based licenses known as seats. This model facilitates the tracking of sales, renewals, and revenue growth as their client base expands. Under the partnership agreement, WhiteBlox and Vistacast will share revenues from these licensed seats.

"Our entry into the exciting eLearning space will showcase the versatility of our solution in another business vertical, thus adding diversity to our portfolio of assets," said WhiteBlox SVP of Finance, John Giunti.

About Vistacast

Vistacast, LLC was founded in 2003 to develop software products enabling the next generation of distributed eLearning, leveraging the Internet Protocol (IP) video technology wave. The Vistacast software solution, known as vLearning, supports video training with a patent pending integrated Server-Client software package. With vLearning, corporate and government content providers realize an increased subscriber base, while reducing their cost of operations; and their subscribers benefit with video training in mobile devices. vLearning ensures that content providers continue to leverage their investment in industry standards such as SCORM and learning management systems (LMS).

About WhiteBlox

WhiteBlox, a leading broadband network solutions company, delivers robust technology and application services in a comprehensive production and delivery suite that allows companies to become their own IPTV broadcasters. WhiteBlox gives customers the flexibility, control and tools to leverage video assets and content into dynamic, engaging and profitable networks through use of its integrated broadband solutions.

WhiteBlox is a company of Continental Vista Broadcasting Group, Inc., based in The Woodlands, TX, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Orlando, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Mexico City. For more information, please call 281.210.5000 or visit www.whiteblox.com.
Clients Can Enhance the Customer Experience with Proxy Remote Control 5.10. Check it out:
The general availability of Proxy Remote Control 5.10 and Proxy Gateway (News - Alert) Server 5.10 has been announced by Proxy Networks, a provider of remote control products for remote support, training, network management, compliance and collaboration.



Several new features and enhancements are included in this latest software release. Proxy Gateway Server acts as a virtual router enabling customer to tie large numbers of PCs and servers into a single, centrally-managed remote access network. Help desk professionals and network administrators can access and take over a machine instantly as Proxy Gateway Server maintains persistent connections with each of these hosts.

As a result of this efficient remote support, network management and collaboration can be setup and executed more quickly and proficiently throughout the enterprise.

According to Robert Platus, managing director of Quality Network Solutions, an outsourced technical support provider based in London, England, the Proxy Gateway Server allows clients to take over a machine on a different domain in a different location within seconds and know that they are taking over the right PC with the right user logged on, which makes life so much easier.

With screen recording and playback capabilities, Proxy Gateway Server 5.10 enables customers to create content for remote training or compliance purposes. Through advanced compression algorithms, the Gateway Server can produce compact recording files, enabling customers to keep screen recording turned on continuously without worrying about storage costs.

Users can now capture the entire virtual Windows desktop distributed across multiple displays on remote machines as Proxy Remote Control 5.10 includes multi-monitor support.

Proxy Networks CEO Andy Kim noted that Proxy Remote Control 5.10 is the first Proxy release since the acquisition of the Proxy Remote Control products from Funk Software earlier this year. Proxy Networks is committed to developing, delivering and supporting new features on top of proven, low cost infrastructure that millions of users rely upon for remote control and remote access everyday.

Proxy Remote Control has been the chosen infrastructure for over a decade for remote control and remote access by thousands of enterprises and SMBs around the world due to its reliability, ease of use, high performance and low cost.

Solutions such as those offered by Proxy Networks can add significant value to the services that are offered by contact centers or help desks as they will be able to do so much more than just troubleshooting over the phone. Proxy Remote Control will enable technicians to gain control of the clients’ desktop to diagnosis and fix the problem on the spot. This capability is sure to enhance the customer experience.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

-------

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
EI Seals Skarbiec Acquisition Deal with BRE Bank. Check it out:
(Polish News Bulletin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) On 26 September Enterprise Investors (EI) signed an agreement with BRE Bank concerning the acquisition of a 100-percent stake in Skarbiec Asset Management Holding (SAMH). According to its plans, it will sell the company on to another investor after three to five years. EI is hoping for a threefold or even fourfold return on the investment. The transaction, which is to be realised in Q1 of 2007, will cost Enterprise Investors ZL155m. Its CEO Dariusz Pronczuk announced that EI is presently waiting for the approval of the Commission for Financial Supervision (KNF) and the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) in order to complete the operation. By the end of 2006, SAMH will repurchase 62,000 of its own shares from BRE Bank in order to write them off for ZL62m. SAMH CEO Boguslaw Grabowski said that the Skarbiec brand will be retained by the holding. In 2006, Skarbiec group generated a net profit of ZL8.3m, while in H1 of 2006 its earnings amounted to ZL12.6m.



Copyright 2006 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Keep Off PHCN, Union Tells Prospective Buyers. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Electricity workers in the South-west zone, yesterday rejected the on-going privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) by the Federal Government, and warned prospective buyers to keep off in their own interests.



The workers, under the platform of National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), told President Olusegun Obasanjo not to go ahead with privatisation of the electricity company, maintaining that prospective buyers are doing so at their own risks.

Its General Secretary, Comrade Joe Ajaero, while speaking in Ibadan, also called for the immediate dissolution of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), claiming that the enterprise had not given any direct benefit to Nigerians and that it had outlived its usefulness.

Addressing reporters at the union headquarters in Ibadan on the state of PHCN, Ajaero admitted that they have been selfish in their previous dialogue with the Federal Government on the privatisation exercise, saying the decision not to allow the sale of the electricity company was to protect the interest of the citizenry.

According to him, "there is a new twist in our campaign regarding privatisation of PHCN, contrary to our initial position that labour issues including workers' rights and salaries must be taken care of by prospective buyers but now we have resolved to resist the privation of not only the electricity board, but water, because the two are matters of human rights that must be provided by government for the citizenry.

As a result, we are putting a caveat to the Bureau of Public Enterprises(BPE), that anyone who buys PHCN installations is on his own.

"We have come to realise the scandal in Transcorp and Eleme Petrochemicals, and we are of the view that the BPE is not transparent, it is merely allocating slots to those who are in government. Let the organisation debunk our claims by telling Nigerians how they have benefited from the privatisation exercise," he said.

Ajaero challenged the BPE to tender concrete evidence to convince Nigerians how they had benefited from privatisation, adding that "the exercise has inflicted more injuries on Nigerians. It should not exist again."

The meeting, which drew chairmen from the South-west, vowed that the union would resist any attempt by l government to privatise electricity and water, describing the two as basic necessity that citizenry should enjoy.

He lamented that a whopping sum of N1trillion had been pumped into electricity, "still Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the money," and called on patriotic Nigerians and non-governmental organisationsto set up an independent committee, headed by either Chief Gani Fawehinmi or Olisa Agbakoba, to look into privatisation and see how far it has helped us in this country.

He wondered how government could be planning to privatise a company without carrying the employees of the company along, citing the instance of how government has refused to settle workers of the privatised Nigerian Ports Authority and Nigerian Airways.

he threatened that NUEE workers would not allow their rights to be trampled upon.

Said he "Look at the case of the NPA and Nigeria Airways, when government privatized the two companies especially Nigeria Airways, drove away all the workers resident in the government quarters and those houses are now overgrown with weeds".

He enjoined Nigerians not to see their struggle as a selfish one, but said it was high time for Nigerians to stop suffering in silence

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Holcim SA Retains 62.5pc Stake in Tanga Cement. Check it out:
(East African (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The recent acquisition of an 85 per cent stake in Holcim South Africa by a South African Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) consortium from Holcim Ltd of Switzerland will not alter Holcim South Africa's status in the Tanzania-based Tanga Cement Company.



The consortium, AfriSam, is a broad-based BEE company established specifically for the Holcim acquisition. Black Economic Empowerment wants to bring about a significant increase in ownership, management and control of the economy by South Africans from historically disadvantaged communities.

Holcim Ltd of Switzerland signed a conditional agreement in September to sell 85 per cent of its stake in Holcim South Africa to AfriSam, based on an enterprise value of 15.5 billion rand ($2.1 billion.) Holcim Ltd is one of the world's leading suppliers of cement, crushed stone, sand and gravel, ready-mix concrete and asphalt.

Holcim South Africa will meanwhile maintain its 62.5 per cent shareholding in the Tanga Cement since the Holcim deal "has not affected its business in Tanzania."

Juerg Fluehmann, managing director of Tanga Cement said, "The proposed transaction has no impact on Tanga Cement's shareholding, management or the board of directors in the foreseeable future."

Holcim will retain a 15 per cent shareholding in the newly founded AfriSam, which will hold a 54 per cent share in Holcim South Africa. Holcim will continue to provide technical assistance through the current technical arrangement.

Mr Fluehmann said Holcim South Africa is satisfied with the overall performance of Tanga Cement, which has seen earnings per share increase by 87 per cent in the first six months of the current financial year compared with the same period last year.

Tanga Cement is listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, and trades its shares under the Simba brand. Holcim Ltd of Switzerland has shareholdings in companies in more than 70 countries around the world.

Holcim will maintain its 15 per cent share in the newly founded AfriSam, which will hold a 54 per cent share in Holcim South Africa. Holcim will continue to provide technical assistance through the current technical arrangement.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 East African (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
System and method for assessing a procurement and accounts payable system. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7110957
Appl. Data 10 20031203
Applicant International Business Machines Corporation
Inventor(s) Barnard, Ray F.
Cirulli, Philip J.
Flannery, Kerin J.
Lanuti, Carl J.
Murphy, Jane M.
Title System and method for assessing a procurement and accounts
payable system
Abstract A system for deploying to a client accounting
installation a general procurement and accounts payable application
specifically configured for the client by an enterprise includes a database
server for (1) maintaining on a storage device a database of templates
describing procedures for assessing, preparing, developing, deploying and
supporting the application, and for (2) serving these templates to team members
operating web-enabled terminals for coordinating, recording and tracking team
activities with respect to the application while generating a description for
adapting a front end server and an accounting system server to the requirements
of the client.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Method of processing customer transactions. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7110973
Appl. Data 09 20000928
Applicant Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
Inventor(s) Goldstein, Neal L.
Richards, Adam J.
Sherr, David
Levy, David
Mullins, Chalon G.
Title Method of processing customer transactions
Abstract A method of and system for conducting electronic
commerce segments an enterprise is segmented into a single firm side system,
and multiple customer facing and street side systems. The firm side system
maintains a single system of record for the enterprise. The customer facing
systems provide an interface between the enterprise and the customer. The
street side systems are in communication with the customer facing systems. The
street side systems provide an interface between the enterprise and various
markets.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Method and apparatus for managing tunneled communications in an enterprise network. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111065
Appl. Data 09 20001129
Applicant Efficient Networks, Inc.
Inventor(s) Davidson, John M.
Sundarraj, Akkamapet P.
Pickering, James R.
Title Method and apparatus for managing tunneled communications in an
enterprise network
Abstract In one aspect of the invention a method includes,
at a tunneling server, receiving from first client a point-to-point protocol
signal encapsulated within a network address request header, the point-to-
point protocol signal comprising an identifier identifying a destination
client. The method further comprises encapsulating the point-to-point signal
within a network address response header and communicating the network address
response encapsulated signal toward the destination client.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Method and apparatus for passing service requests and data from web based workstations directly to online transaction processing (OLTP) server systems. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111077
Appl. Data 09 20001222
Applicant Unisys Corporation
Inventor(s) Starkovich, Daniel P.
Rappa, Scott L.
Erickson, Joey L.
Title Method and apparatus for passing service requests and data from
web based workstations directly to online transaction processing (OLTP) server
systems
Abstract An apparatus for and method of processing service
requests provided by a user at a standard Internet work station. The service
requests are received by the server and routed to a gateway. The gateway has
the capability to convert the service request to a format acceptable by an
enterprise server without the need of a view buffer. Thus, the conversion does
not require a priori notification concerning the data formats employed. The
output of the gateway is coupled through a corresponding one of a number of
connectors to the end service provider for honoring. The response is
transferred from the service provider to the appropriate connector to be
formatted for the requesting gateway. The response is converted by the original
adapter to an HTML or XML message for transfer back to the requester via the
Internet.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
DEMOfall '06 Conference Celebrates Simplicity and Sophistication. Check it out:
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 26 -- DEMOfall '06 Conference -- Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer, opened the DEMOfall '06 conference today noting the transition in the technology industry from a six-year period of post-bubble recovery to an economically strong and innovation rich marketplace. Over the course of two days, the DEMOfall '06 audience of analysts, investors, journalists, and executives will witness the introduction of 67 market-changing technologies and discover the newest ideas in consumer and enterprise computing.



(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGO )
In her keynote, Shipley also called out the major emerging technology trends that will take the DEMOfall stage during the conference:

-- digital content creation, collection and management,
-- Internet customization and search,
-- applications that extend the functionality of mobile phones,
-- telecom in the age of VoIP,
-- online security advancements, and
-- platforms that ease application development and deployment.

"Simplicity is in," said Shipley, commenting on the recent rise of easy- to-use hardware and software products. "DEMOfall demonstrators exemplify the types of elegant user interfaces, fundamentally useful concepts, and all around feel-good business models that are bound to be the foundations for the next wave of computing. In this post-bubble economy, these elements are critical to building smart and lasting companies."

Since the inaugural DEMO conference in 1991, the conference has focused intensely on the products -- not the marketing behind them. DEMOfall '06 kicked off with a look at five smart new ideas, all selected for their beautiful design and easy-to-use experience.

-- Dash Navigation, Inc. -- Dash Navigator delivers real-time, relevant
information to the car dashboard, saving users time on the road.
-- Tribeca Labs, Inc. -- Photobot is the first zero-click, automatic
photo-correction and photo-finishing software program.
-- Pluggd, Inc. -- HearHere allows users to jump to the content they want
to hear in an audio or video file.
-- Presto - Presto Service and the HP Printing Mailbox together deliver
digital content to those who do not use a computer or who prefer to
receive email, digital photos and more via traditional mail.
-- RingCube, Inc. -- MojoPac allows consumers to carry the contents of an
entire PC on any portable storage device, giving them the power to turn
any computer into their personal computer.

Business computing tools are always a major element at each DEMO event. Shipley invited these companies to take the stage this morning in order to demonstrate services that simplify and enrich the at-work computing experience:

-- ThinkFree, Inc. -- ThinkFree AJAX Edition is an office applications
suite that allows users to create documents based on templates, track
changes from collaborators, and manage, view and roll back changes from
previous versions.
-- Koral, Inc. -- Koral is an enterprise content management solution for
the business Web that spans email, desktop folders, and corporate LANs.
-- Serebrum Corp. -- Axon is enterprise collaboration and content
management software based on and extending the wiki concept of
information sharing.
-- BuzzLogic, Inc. -- BuzzLogic is search and analytics software that
measures influence within the social media space such as blogs, wikis
and forums.

Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO of QUALCOMM Incorporated, delivered an address to the DEMOfall audience that encapsulates his thinking about the future of wireless mobility, its convergence with computing and content and how it will drive changes in social networking and how we experience our lives. "The wireless Internet will have a greater impact on the world than the wired Internet. Cellphones have become the single electronic device that people carry with them all the time. Worldwide, cellphones have changed the way that people communicate and, with the integration of consumer electronics functions, high- bandwidth network connectivity and software platforms, they have the potential to rapidly change the way people are entertained, compute, manage their personal data and take care of themselves," Dr. Jacobs stated.

DEMOfall's afternoon general session hosted a continuing conversation about the mobile future. DEMOfall demonstrators launched onstage a series of applications and development platforms for the most ubiquitous of mobile devices: the cell phone. Emerging technology demonstrations included:

-- PixSense, Inc. -- PixSense M3 automatically uploads digital media clips
from mobile phones online for storing, editing and sharing.
-- 4INFO, Inc. -- 4INFO Mobile Open Platform allows consumers to search,
discover and receive information on their cell phones.
-- Eyespot Corp. -- Eyespot Mobile Share is the first download-free online
video editing and remixing platform for the editing, mashing,
production and publishing of unique content.
-- SportStat, LLC -- SCORE enables users to send real-time video of
student athletes to a mobile phone as a wireless application.
-- Pinger, Inc. -- Pinger is instant voice messaging for your mobile
phone, with no ringing, no greetings, and no lengthy prompts.

DEMOfall attendees also benefited from an in-depth panel on the future of mobile computing, moderated by John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC. "The Future of Mobile," the first of two FutureScan panels at DEMOfall, explored the technical challenges that stand in the way of a truly mobile future. Patrick was joined by panelists Juergen Urbanski of FON North America, Joseph Ziskin of IBM Corporation, and Tom Jacobs of Sun Microsystems, all of whom debated the design, functionality, and usability of mobile devices.

The DEMOfall afternoon general session concluded with a look at emerging technology that will provide the foundations for a mobile future, as well as wireless infrastructure innovations. Demonstrations by:

-- Moixa Energy Holdings, Ltd. -- USBcell is a smart, reusable battery
design for mobile professionals.
-- Mvox Technologies, Inc. -- Mvox Duo works as a Bluetooth headset as
well as a USB-connected conference phone for VoIP calls, all with an
intelligent voice dialing interface.
-- W5 Networks, Inc. -- The W5 ESL System cuts labor costs by updating and
displaying supermarket prices and promotions chain-wide within minutes
via a long-range, low-power wireless network.
-- ZING Systems, Inc. & SIRIUS Satellite Radio, Inc. -- SIRIUS Satellite
Stiletto 100 is the first commercially availably product based on ZING,
a platform for mobile music and entertainment solutions.

DEMO is legendary for its rapid-fire onstage demonstrations that put developers on the spot. Each demonstrating company get six minutes to present its product to a powerful audience of investors, journalists, and corporate decision makers. Attendees are then able to test the products themselves in the DEMOfall Pavilion -- not your typical overcrowded industry exhibition venue -- where the people who created the technologies are on hand to answer questions and give personal, one-on-one demonstrations.

DEMOfall Sponsors
DEMOfall '06's principal sponsor is QUALCOMM Incorporated. Decision Counsel, RealNetworks, Inc, Sun Microsystems, and Sony Electronics, Inc. are platinum sponsors. Porter Novelli and the National Science Foundation are gold sponsors of the event. The strategic partner is Guidewire Group. Media partners are American Venture Magazine, PR Newswire, TechConfidential/The Deal, and VentureCapitalConferences.com. Cellular wireless coverage provided by SpotWave. Marketing partners are Kauffman eVenturing, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), VC Experts, and VentureChoice.

About the DEMO Conferences
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit http://www.demo.com/ .

The DEMO community also benefits from the award winning DEMOletter. A weekly e-newsletter designed to reach the people who are creating companies, building products and launching new ideas, DEMOletter provides smart insight and analysis of entrepreneurial business issues.

About Network World
Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community ( http://www.networkworld.com/ ), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns, and create new revenue opportunities. Additionally, Network World is the event organizer of DEMO and DEMOfall, the leading events for new technology innovation.

About IDG
International Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events, and research company. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, and PC World. IDG's online network includes more than 400 Web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and gaming worldwide. IDG is a leading producer of more than 170 technology-related events including LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Macworld Conference & Expo, DEMO, and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events. Over 850 IDC analysts in 50 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends. Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at http://www.idg.com/ .

NOTE: All product and company names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060726/DEMOFALL2006LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Network World, Inc.

CONTACT: Becky Sniffen of MC2 Communications, onsite at DEMOfall:+1-510-682-6613, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.demo.com/http://www.idg.com/http://www.networkworld.com/
NEA leads PortAuthority $18m third round. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Information security start-up PortAuthority Technologies Ltd. yesterday announced that it closed its third financing round, raising $18 million. The company has raised $40 million to date.

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round, joined by the company's existing investors, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Lexington Ventures. The confidence shown by the venture capital funds is turning PortAuthority into a promising information security company.



PortAuthority Technologies was founded in 200 by VP technical services Assaf Litai, chief scientist Dr. Lidror Troyansky, and Ariel Feld. The company develops technology to protect an enterprise's software environment, especially from leaks of sensitive information. The company's solutions help companies comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Previously called Vidius, until 2003 the company focused copyright protection of video films.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 26, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Object graph editing context and methods of use. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111013
Appl. Data 10 20030516
Applicant Next Software, Inc.
Inventor(s) Federighi, Craig
Willhite, Dan
Noyau, Eric
Title Object graph editing context and methods of use
Abstract The present invention comprises a novel system for
managing changes to a graph of data bearing objects. In one embodiment, an
object graph manager object referred to as an editing context is used to
identify changes made to data bearing enterprise objects and to notify other
interested objects when changes occur. As a result, data bearing objects need
not themselves contain code necessary for monitoring changes. In another
embodiment of the invention, the editing context is used to provide event-based
"undo" capabilities. In another embodiment of the invention, each enterprise
object has a primary key that is used to maintain the identification between an
enterprise object instance and a corresponding database row. In another
embodiment of the invention, multiple levels of editing contexts are used to
provide multiple isolated object graphs, each of which allows independent
manipulation of the underlying data bearing objects.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC

Jack having safety effect

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Jack having safety effect. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7108245
Appl. Data 11 20050114
Applicant Kai Hsiang Enterprise Co., Ltd.
Inventor(s) Lin, Lai-Shun
Title Jack having safety effect
Abstract A jack includes a base provided with a plurality of
catch blocks, a lift arm pivotable relative to the base, and a safety member
pivotally mounted on the lift arm to move therewith. Thus, when the lift arm is
lifted, the first end of the safety member is locked on either one of the catch
blocks of the base, so that the safety member is fixed by the base during
upward movement of the lift arm so as to fix the lift arm, thereby preventing
the lift arm from being lowered too quickly when the power supplied to the lift
arm disappears accidentally due to malfunction so as to provide a safety
effect.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Knowledge-based management diagnostic system. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111008
Appl. Data 09 20011113
Applicant Fuji Xerox Co., LTD
Inventor(s) Nomura, Takahiko
Konno, Noboru
Title Knowledge-based management diagnostic system
Abstract The present invention provides a knowledge-based
management diagnosis system which evaluates/diagnoses enterprise management and
automatically generates a community for enhancing the enterprise management. A
questionnaire on the awareness, and etc. of employees is conducted, whereupon
on the basis of the questionnaire, the management situation of an organization
is diagnosed, the course of improvement/reform is indicated, and a community of
persons who are interested in particular knowledge or whose work styles are
similar is automatically generated. Knowledge assets are classified into the
characteristic of individual working manners, the characteristic of working
manners in the organization, and a characteristic expressive of the sources of
profits at present and in the future, to which the characteristic of
knowledge-based management may well be added. A correlation analysis is made
using these characteristics, and evaluation/generation evaluates analytical
results based on the correlation analysis or generates the community from the
analytical results.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Real-time aggregation of data within a transactional data area of an enterprise planning environment. Check it out:
(U.S. Patents Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pub. Number US7111007
Appl. Data 10 20040527
Applicant Cognos Incorporated
Inventor(s) Thier, Adam
Sandles, Jon M
Pearson, George Duncan
Gould, Michael
Title Real-time aggregation of data within a transactional data area of
an enterprise planning environment
Abstract An enterprise business planning system includes a
database having a relational data area and a transactional data area, and a
server to store within the transactional data area contribution data received
from a set of enterprise contributors. The server publishes the contribution
data from the transactional data area to the relational data area. The
transactional data area may include a set of contribution slots and a set of
aggregations slots hierarchically related in accordance with an enterprise
model. The relational area includes a set of related tables defined in
accordance with the model. The transactional data area supports real-time
interaction with the enterprise contributors, while the relational data area
allows detailed statistical analysis and report generation.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this patent, please call MicroPatent at 800-648-6787.

Copyright 2006 Micropatent LLC
Platform partners with Dell and Intel to make Linux cluster deployment easier.. Check it out:
(www.gridcomputingplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Platform Computing took the wraps off Platform Open Cluster Stack (OCS) at this week's Intel Developer Forum.

Platform said the modular, hybrid stack integrates open source and commercial software into a single consistent cluster operating environment. Platform OCS is a pre-integrated, vendor-certified software stack that eliminates the costs of development, sales and support caused by inconsistent software development and certification in Linux clusters, the company said.



Intel, Dell and Platform will demonstrate the stack at this week's IDF on a number of off-the-shelf applications, including Fluent and LS-DYNA.

"Platform has worked closely with Dell and Intel to create a reference platform which simplifies cluster development not only for ISVs, but for HPC users as well," stated Gary Tyreman, vice president of Platform's Open Cluster Group. "Customers get the support they expect from a commercial vendor and benefit from the unique innovation that is symbolic of open source."

"We believe Platform Computing is addressing a key industry need by providing an approach to simplify the growing use of clustered Linux computing systems," said Bill Magro, Intel's director of Cluster Software and Technologies.

Dell also made news this week by working with the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) to help create a powerful new supercomputing grid. It will include six Dell server clusters packing 30 teraflops of computing power, or the ability to perform 30 trillion operations per second.

The system will be used to perform hurricane tracking and storm surge modeling with much greater speed and accuracy, among other uses.

LONI is a fiber optics network connecting supercomputers at Louisiana's six major research universities. Each LONI member campus will host a 132-node supercomputing cluster made up of Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers.

In other news, Voltaire unveiled software for managing and automating dynamic grid computing environments in data centers. The software "enables true automation of repetitive IT tasks associated with network, server and storage provisioning to deliver unprecedented efficiency," the company said. Provisioning tasks that used to take days can be done in seconds, the company claims.

Voltaire said GridVision Enterprise integrates with leading server and storage virtualization solutions, as well as provisioning and scheduling tools, to create a single, logical data center environment consisting of both physical and virtual resources.

Back to Grid Computing Planet

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.

E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa

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E.ON sweetens bid for Endesa. Check it out:
(EFE News Service Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Germany's E.ON said Tuesday that it is increasing its offer for Spain's largest electric utility to 37.1 billion euros ($47.1 billion) in cash, responding to the surprise purchase of a 10 percent stake in Endesa by a third party.



Spanish construction firm Acciona SA on Monday acquired 10 percent of Endesa at a price of 32 euros ($40.55) per share, compared with the 25.41 euros ($32.19) per share offered by E.ON in February.

Acciona left the door open to buying additional shares of Endesa.

The enhanced offer from E.ON translates into 35 euros ($44.40) a share, which represents a 38 percent increase over the German company's original bid for Endesa.

"Our improved offer represents an exceptionally attractive opportunity for the shareholders of Endesa and reflects our long-term confidence in Endesa's business model and its prospects for growth," E.ON CEO Wulf Bernotat said Tuesday in a statement.

The German titan, already Europe's biggest utility, had said earlier that it was "pursuing its offer for Endesa and expects to meet all requirements to proceed shortly."

The company also stressed that completion of the deal is contingent on E.ON's acquisition of at least 50.01 percent of Endesa's shares, and on the Spanish firm's elimination of a rule restricting investors to 10 percent of voting rights, no matter how big their stake in the enterprise.

E.ON's February offer for the electric utility came after Spain's leading gas group, Gas Natural, launched a takeover bid worth $27.8 billion bid for Endesa in September 2005.

Endesa management considers the E.ON offer to be better than the one made by Gas Natural because it provides a higher price, payment in cash and would maintain the company's current structure.

If it gets done, the E.ON-Endesa deal would create the biggest electric and gas company in the world, with more than 50 million customers in over 30 countries and 107,000 employees.

Endesa was a state-owned company for decades until it was privatized in 1998.

Spain's National Energy Commission, or CNE, voted unanimously in late July to conditionally approve the bid by E.ON, but both companies - and the European Union - have expressed concern about some of those requirements.

For its part, the Spanish government has indicated uneasiness with the acquisition of the utility by a foreign company, but has not moved overtly to block the transaction.

Copyright 2006 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
PSE to relax listing rules for second, SME boards to attract. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will relax the listing requirements to entice more companies to raise capital through the stock market, President and chief executive Francis Lim said.



In a briefing with reporters last Tuesday, Mr. Lim said operating history, market capitalization, and track record requirement will be made less rigid for the companies in the second board and the small- and medium- enterprise (SME) board. However, he assured that only qualified companies will be given the go signal to offer their shares to the public.

Under the basic guidelines, a company under the second board must demonstrate its potential for superior growth. It must have an operating history of at least one year prior to its listing. At listing, its market capitalization must be at least P250 million. A company eyeing the SME board will be evaluated based on the integrity and capability of its management and its controlling stockholders; company's prospects for further growth and profitability; viability of the business and sustainability of the projected earning stream and company's lack of existing material conflict of interest.

"If the board approves our initiative in terms of listing rules for the second and SME boards, we will submit this to the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. The [companies listing in the] first board do not have a problem since they have the capability. One thing peculiar is people are used to [the idea of] raising money through the debt market. They are not educated in terms of raising capital through the stock market. That is one alternative I would like to give. They don't have to give up control of the company," he added.

Mr. Lim also said companies would find it easier to list either in the second board or SME board rather than do backdoor listing.

In a recently SEC-approved guideline, backdoor listing is defined as a situation when "a listed company acquires or merges or combines with an unlisted company, or when a listed company is acquired by, merged or combined with an unlisted company, and which acquisition, merger, or combination results in a substantial change in the business, membership of the board of directors or voting structure of the listed company."

The SME index, put up in 1999, is a separate listing board which allows young firms with high-growth potential to raise capital by offering shares to the public. SMEs include those registered with the Board of Investments (BoI) as well as small- and medium-scale manufacturers and exporters. There are three firms under the SME index: online equity matchmaker Cashrounds, Inc., Makati Finance Corp. and information technology firm SQL Wizard, Inc.

Mr. Lim also said he expects a fourth company to list by yearend following soon-to-be listed Alliance Tuna International, Inc.

In the first semester, the market saw the market debut of Lopez-led independent power producer First Gen Corp. and online stockbrokerage firm CitisecOnline.com.

The company, which he declined to identify, will try to take advantage of the uptrend in the stock market and list in the first board to raise $200 million.

BusinessWorld sources said this company has a capitalization of P30 billion.

Last Tuesday, the PSE entered into an agreement with Knowledge Institute to educate more companies on the how's and why's of listing.

Knowledge Institute managing director Rodolfo Reyes said the unit of SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co. (SGV & Co.) has sent out invitations to 200 clients for its lecture series that will start on Oct. 10. Knowledge Institute will first tap the companies under business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

"We approached the PSE since it is their thrust is to educate the public. In Knowledge Institute, this is our main line of business. We organize seminars. We are focusing on BPOs because they are the hottest item in town. We are going to focus on industries such as semiconductors, franchisees, BoI-registered firms," he added.

Mr. Lim said it is not simple to get companies to be listed.

"They have to prepare themselves. They have to do their own housekeeping. They have to know the rules. We hope we are planting the seeds to help more listings. This is where we can help them prepare themselves. Partnering with professional firm is the right step to take of getting more companies listed," he added.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
HELIOS Announces Unbreakable Server Solutions for Windows Server Platform. Check it out:
SUMMARY
The leading provider of file, print, imaging, and PDF server solutions for LANs and Internet-based prepress and enterprise networks announces that five HELIOS UB applications now support Microsoft Windows servers

Hannover, Germany September 27, 2006 Formerly available only on major UNIX-based platforms, HELIOS Software GmbH announced today that five HELIOS UB Unbreakable Server Solutions for prepress and enterprise networks now run on Microsoft Windows based computers. HELIOS will introduce their products for Windows at the upcoming IfraExpo in Amsterdam, October 9 - 12, and at GRAPH EXPO in Chicago, October 15 - 18.



The HELIOS UB product family includes HELIOS Base UB for Windows, providing advanced print services, and HELIOS WebShare UB for secure web-based file sharing, distribution, and document collaboration. HELIOS ImageServer UB, PDF HandShake UB and PrintPreview UB bring high efficiency and advanced capabilities to office, design, prepress, and printing operations.

Praise for HELIOS UB servers comes from around the world from leading media companies including USA Today, Le Figaro of France, Mirror Group in the UK, Mohn Media in Germany, and many more. For them, HELIOS server solutions are considered the most reliable, secure, and fastest available for enterprise and prepress networks today, offering cross-platform local and Internet file sharing and printing, with PDF, image conversion, color management, and proofing solutions.

"We are glad that our Web, PDF, print, and prepress server solutions now support the Windows Server platform," reports Helmut Tschemernjak, CEO and president of HELIOS. "HELIOS server solutions represent over 15 years of server development, and are finally available as a first-class citizen on the Windows Server platform. Supporting all major server platforms allows customers to choose the server platform which best fits their needs."

Supported Windows Platforms:
Windows Server 2000
Windo ws Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit edition)
Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit edition)

Customers can contact HELIOS to schedule meetings at the IfraExpo and GRAPH EXPO events.

For more information, please visit www.helios.de

Smart Ideas for Better Networking
HELIOS UB Unbreakable Server Solutions deliver mission critical server solutions to enterprise, government, university, and prepress sites. WebShare provides extremely secure and high performance remote file management via any Web browser. Base UB for Windows adds advanced print server services to Windows, and HELIOS ImageServer, PDF HandShake and PrintPreview bring high efficiency and advanced capabilities to design, prepress and printing operations.

HELIOS products run on powerful and scalable servers including Apple Computer Mac OS X, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, IBM AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows systems. HELIOS products provide reliable cross-platform support for Macintosh, Windows, Web and UNIX-based clients.

Distributors sell HELIOS products worldwide to value-added resellers who provide complete networking solutions to customers. HELIOS also works with many strategic partners that incorporate HELIOS server software to provide powerful third party archive, asset management and workflow solutions.

For U.S. Sales:
European MikroGraf Corp.: 916-923-3520; E-mail: sales (at) ugraf.com; www.ugraf.com

Editorial contact:

Germany
Helmut Tschemernjak, HELIOS Software GmbH, Steinriede 3, D-30827 Garbsen, Germany; Tel +49-5131-709320 Fax +49 5131-709325;
E-mail: mktg (at) helios.de; Internet: www.helios.com

U.S.A.
Thomas Hallinan, HELIOS Software GmbH, 209-827-2760, mktg (at) helios.de
Bill Gram-Reefer, WORLDVIEW, 925-215-8463, reefer (at) worldviewpr.com
Five Steps to Get from Current to Best-Practice IT Risk Management. Check it out:
By Greg Hughes

As individuals, corporations, and our economy grow increasingly dependent on the Internet and IT systems, the risks in these systems become far more visible and significant. Breaches or failures of information systems cause serious business crises reputation damage caused by identify theft, business losses stemming from system failures, and regulatory restrictions arising from compliance issues. Recent news has prominently covered many major stories of information technology risk, including phishing scams, theft of personally identifiable data records, identity theft, stolen backup tapes, litigation resulting from improper preservation and production of electronic records, and intellectual property breaches.



The rate of recovery from these events is a contributing factor in the severity of the business crises. A recent study by Oxford Executive Research found that companies that recovered quickly from major operational disasters increased their share price by five percent on average versus the market. Companies that struggled to regain their operations took a 20 percent drop in relative value. From this research, it appears that investors factor a companys resilience to adversity into its stock price.

It is clear to see why corporate executives in boardrooms around the world want answers to the IT risk question: How we dramatically mitigate the risk and improve the return on investments in information systems?

The answer to these questions lies in treating information technology risk within the integrated framework of business risk management. IT risks need to be identified, measured and managed as part of a single view of all risks in the corporation, with oversight by senior management to understand and guide the appropriate risk/reward tradeoffs to achieve the goal of increasing return on IT investments. The name for this approach to managing and balancing information risk and reward is IT risk management.

The Reality of IT Risk Management
Most companies have a poor awareness of their IT risk exposure, arent fully exploiting the breadth of tools to manage these risks, and havent begun to systematically build the knowledge and processes to manage IT risks.

Companies have struggled partly because IT risk management is a newly emerging field, where the traditional models of risk management do not always cleanly apply. Typically, businesses have only a vague understanding of the impact of the loss of information assets or access to their applications. For example, the ability to transfer risk is a fundamental concept in financial risks; however, since liquid markets do not yet exist for buying and selling IT risks, companies must build the internal competence to manage these risks on their own.

Another example of the difference is that IT risks are more challenging to quantify. In IT, the kind of well developed statistical or actuarial models that assess financial risk and give it a reasonable level of precision do not yet exist. However, roughly right approaches based on heuristics and experience still yield accurate, valuable and usable measures of IT risk.

Going from current to best-practice IT risk assurance could yield substantial improvements to shareholder value.

In order to lead this transformation to best-practice IT risk assurance, business leaders should:
1. Develop an awareness of the nature of the different IT risks to the business;
2. Determine the quantified impact to their business resulting from the loss of information or access to applications
3. Understand the range of tools available to manage IT risks
4. Align the costs of IT risk management to the business value
5. Build a systematic, corporate capability to manage security risk.

Developing an awareness of IT risks
Information technology risks either concern the potential loss of information and its recovery, or they concern the ongoing usage of information. They fall into the following six major categories.

Security: Risk that information is altered or used by non-authorized people. Example causes: Computer crimes, internal breaches, and cyberterrorism.
Availability: Risk that information is not accessible, such as after a system failure. Example causes: Configuration changes, lack of redundancy in architectures, human errors.
Recoverability: Risk that needed information cannot be recovered in sufficient time after a security or availability incident. Example causes: Hardware and/or software failures, external threats, and natural disasters.
Performance: Risk that information is not provided when it is needed. Example causes: Distributed architectures, peak demand, heterogeneity in the IT landscape.
Scalability Risk that major new sources of demand for information (new applications, new businesses) cannot be handled cost-effectively. Drivers: Business growth, provisioning bottlenecks. Siloed architectures.
Compliance: Risk that the management or usage of information violates regulatory requirements. Example causes: Government regulations, corporate governance guidelines, internal policy.

Understanding the quantified impact to the business
It is essential to understand the risks in terms of the probability of an event that would trigger the risk, and in terms of the time value of the exposure should such risk occur. Further, the risks need to be quantified for each critical business application. Knowing these two parameters allows the decision maker to plot the values on a simple two-dimensional graph and to assign mitigation/remediation priorities to different applications. Moreover, a policy to deal with different and/or multiple categories of risks can be defined and applied effectively and consistently throughout the enterprise.

Looking more broadly across multiple categories risks and correlating risks across these categories will better quantify the business impact. For example, an exploited security vulnerability may contribute to a recoverability risk. An application performance issue that prevents data access may provide opening for a security risk or result in a compliance risk. The business impact may be direct or indirect including financial, legal, customer loss and operational dependencies. Each of these may, in turn, have downstream implications.

Businesses find diligence in this area hard to justify, and there is often denial that risks exist or that their impact can be effectively measured. While challenges are real, quantifying the business impact gets to the core issue of being able to manage the risk equation.

Understanding IT risk management approaches
IT risks have different root causes and thus different approaches are required to manage and mitigate them. Broadly speaking, these approaches require a combination of process, people, technology and information.

First, processes for running data center and IT operations are going through a similar period of rapid evolution, as the best run IT organizations are moving from a haphazard, job shop model to more rigorously designed, executed, and measured systematic approach. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and other standards are emerging to describe best of breed IT operational processes.

Second, companies are paying more attention to the way they employ their people in the battle to reduce risk. Companies are experimenting with a wide-range of techniques, including awareness-building, identity or role specific authority, new divisions of labor, new roles and specialists, and enhancing risk mitigation capabilities at all levels.

Third, new software is emerging from vendors who are responding to the demand for improved IT risk management. Rapid advances have created an arsenal of software in such areas as long-distance replication, clustering, content, intrusion and phishing detection, data protection and backup, vulnerability assessment and policy management. Importantly, these tools are being integrated to offer workflow-driven solutions designed to follow customized processes and regulatory requirements. Event-driven automation is increasingly taking the place of onerous manual analysis and remediation.

Fourth, information sources are available that provide insight into emerging as well as known threats and vulnerabilities, which can be assessed against companies internal security environment (e.g., security risks, virus signatures and databases, operating system patches and configurations) to identify exposures and develop mitigation plans. Considering the speed with which new attacks propagate across networks, such early warning intelligence is essential to proactive and successful defense.

Align the costs of IT risk management to business value
Investments in, process, people technology and information are required to mitigate risks. However, since IT budgets are constrained (and feeling continued downward pressure), leading companies need to make sure theyre not over-investing or under-investing in risk management. How do companies manage their IT risk management investments effectively and efficiently?

Utility computing has emerged over the past few years as the most promising approach to align the costs of IT to the business value. In utility computing, the role of IT with respect to the business evolves from a cost center to a service center. As it evolves under the utility computing approach, the IT organization masters four primary activities:

1. Providing IT as a collection of well-defined services, developed and managed by a service management group that interfaces with the business
2. Exposing these services to the business through service level agreements and charge-backs to the business
3. Building and maintaining a shared, heterogeneous infrastructure to improve capital utilization and reduce costs, rather than building custom systems for each business application
4. Running IT operations in an automated fashion to increase labor efficiency and reduce costs

A number of leading companies are first applying the utility computing concept by building storage utilities. The storage utility provides data storage for business application usage through different service classes, for example
Platinum storage service with very high performance, availability, recoverability and security
Gold storage service with moderate performance, availability, recoverability and security
Bronze storage service with the low performance, availability, recoverability and security

The costs of these different storage services are exposed to the business Platinum is typically 10 times more costly than Bronze service aligning the risk requirements of the business and overall usage to the spending on IT.

Mastering the activities of utility computing is a journey for IT organizations. The first step they take is to discover the IT assets, for example servers and storage, and ideally tie these assets to critical business processes. Second, they redesign and consolidate the environment to gain efficiencies in administrator productivity and resource utilization. Third, they start to standardize classifying applications and agreeing upon specific vendors for storage and server hardware, while managing the environment through a standard set of software tools. Fourth, they automate, driving down the time and labor required to request, provision and manage the environment. And, fifth, they move to a true service provider model by equating service level delivery with costs by allocating or charging-back to the business units.

Building an institutional capability to control IT risk
Leading corporations are building an institutional capability to understand, act on and control IT risks with the same level of scrutiny and urgency as financial risks. Using insight from a variety of sources they develop a risk heat map showing the potential impact and likelihood of the six IT risks on their lines of business, core business processes or major applications. Then, they create a prioritized program to remediate these risks and deploy the tools of software, people, process improvements and information. Finally, they control the risks by continuous measurement and improvement. In these corporations, IT risk management is fundamentally affecting IT governance and risk governance approaches.

As companies build IT risk management into an institutional capability, the questions most are trying to address include:
If and how does our IT strategy need to evolve or change in accordance with maintaining an acceptable risk posture?
Should we have new or expanding leadership roles to address IT risk, such as an IT Risk Manager?
How do we create reporting and management systems to monitor performance?
Must we create a governance board to oversee and approve IT risk decisions?
How do we educate our IT staff, and build skills for cultural awareness and understanding of risk throughout the employee base?
What steps should be take to make our planning and testing processes more rigorous and to make our systems impenetrable?

Improving IT risk management should be on the agenda of nearly every senior executive of a large corporation. Those executives, who are aware of their IT risks, understand the tools to manage these risks, and build the institutional capability to control them should be in a fundamentally better position to improve the risk and return of information investments.

Greg Hughes is senior vice president of global services and support, managing Symantec's consulting, education, and technical support operations.
Tripwire Names Robert Kidd Vice President of Asia-Pacific and Latin American Sales. Check it out:
PORTLAND, Ore. --(Business Wire)-- Tripwire, Inc.(R), the world leader in change auditing software, has named Robert Kidd as Vice President of Asia-Pacific and Latin American sales, a new position at the company. As a result of growing international demand for its change auditing solutions, Tripwire has added Kidd to lead sales and support in these regions, starting with Australia, China, India, Mexico and Singapore. He will also support Tripwire's current efforts in Japan.



Said Tripwire CEO, Jim Johnson, "The voice of Tripwire customers outside North America and Europe grows louder every day. As a customer-focused organization, we have hired Robert to directly support them and the mounting global market interest in Tripwire Enterprise. As Robert brings a wealth of experience in expanding high-growth companies internationally, I'm confident he will make an immediate contribution to Tripwire on the global stage."

In his new role, Robert Kidd will lead day-to-day management and operations of Tripwire's sales organization outside of North America and EMEA. Reporting to the Worldwide Vice President of Sales, Bob Dunne, Kidd's hiring is the first step in a series of investment commitments that Tripwire plans to make to build its presence outside of North America and EMEA.

"I was drawn to Tripwire because of its strong reputation, excellent leadership and the fact that its solutions directly meet the growing market need to simultaneously provide enterprise-wide IT operational excellence, security and compliance," said Kidd. "Tripwire is on the cusp of a new stage of global growth, and I am excited by the huge international opportunity that sits before us."

Robert Kidd joins Tripwire with over 20 years of progressive leadership experience building worldwide businesses. Specifically, Robert spent 18 years at Intel where he developed its channel sales strategy to accelerate its global market presence. Following Intel, Robert led Asia sales and support operations for Lightpointe Communications, was President and CEO of Quickcaddy LLC, and served as Worldwide Director of Sales for Avocent Corporation.

About Tripwire, Inc.

Tripwire is the leading provider of change auditing software and services. Tripwire solutions enable enterprises to prove that their IT change management controls are effective and their infrastructure is safe. Tripwire software provides proof of regulatory compliance, instills accountability for change, ensures the security of business-critical systems, and increases the overall availability of IT services. Tripwire is headquartered in Portland, Ore. with offices in the UK and Japan. For more information visit: http://www.tripwire.com/.
Digi-Data Expands Partner Program. Check it out:
COLUMBIA, Md. --(Business Wire)-- Digi-Data Corporation, an innovator and developer of storage solutions for mid-tier, secondary storage, and fixed content markets, announces that it is recruiting partners to expand its channel program. New solutions yet to be announced, as well as significant enhancements to the T-2000 clustered RAID controller, position Digi-Data with a top-to-bottom portfolio of compelling storage solutions for the small-to-medium business market.



To focus on the channel expansion program, Digi-Data hired a seasoned channel sales professional, Tom Fabrizio. Fabrizio, director of channel sales, has significant experience in the enterprise storage market. Prior to joining Digi-Data, Fabrizio managed storage system sales for JMR, and was also in sales management positions at Andataco, Clarion/EMC and MegaDrive Systems/DataDirect Networks.

"I am excited about building this channel, and feel that my previous successes have prepared me to bring the Digi-Data product family to market," says Fabrizio. "I am inspired to work with my fellow Digi-Data employees who also have significant channel expertise in marketing, alliances and business development. We're all focused on building a viable, healthy network of value-added partners."

Partner Program

At the core of the channel program is the new customer registration process. By protecting the partners that bring in new business with a significant delta in margins, Digi-Data plans to manage a dedicated, efficient channel.

Another change in the partner's favor is the elimination of individual quotas for the sales team. "Socializing" or pooling the compensation plan immediately fosters teamwork and improves the access to support for the partners. This quickly translates into a customer benefit, as they get fast, accurate answers.

"Digi-Data is happy to have Tom on board to help us build this channel," says Dennis Cindrich, CEO of Digi-Data. "Our product is now ready, and Tom will definitely be a major factor in bringing it to market."

Digi-Data

Digi-Data Corporation, based in Columbia, MD, is a leading manufacturer of high-performance storage systems and controllers with over 55,000 systems installed worldwide. The company offers innovative solutions with products like the T-series of advanced storage products and bigVAULT online digital storage. Since 1960, Digi-Data has engineered its products to the highest standards, combining proven technologies and innovative thinking to continually achieve unprecedented levels of performance, reliability, scalability and ease of management. For more information, visit www.digidata.com
BridgeWave Empowers One Ring to Rule Atlanta's Skies. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- BridgeWave Communications, Inc. announces today that One Ring Networks has installed its fifth BridgeWave wireless gigabit Ethernet link to support the Atlanta Metro portion of its Georgia network. BridgeWave's ultra high-speed 60 GHz and E-band wireless bridges provide network operators with true fiber-equivalent wireless connections. One Ring Networks utilizes BridgeWave products to create a metro-area wireless backbone to support its delivery of advanced services to local businesses.



"What separates us from the competition is our ability to offer an end-to-end solution for our customers, without being dependent on other operators' networks," stated Matt Liotta, One Ring's Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. "The BridgeWave solution frees us from the high costs and lengthy delays associated with leasing fiber-based services, while providing us control over network quality of service and reliability."

"One Ring exemplifies a new breed of operator who leverages technology advances to offer enterprise-class network services to smaller businesses," said Amir Makleff, BridgeWave's President and CEO. "We are proud to support One Ring as they expand their offerings throughout Georgia and beyond."

Mr. Liotta will discuss his company's use of the BridgeWave solution at a social event on the evening of October 9th after the Comptel Plus Fall convention in Orlando, Florida.

About BridgeWave Communications

BridgeWave Communications, Inc. is the leading supplier of gigabit wireless solutions. Setting the standard for product quality, BridgeWave employs Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) during design and Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS) during production to ensure the highest levels of product reliability and customer satisfaction. BridgeWave has achieved ISO9001 registration for over five years running. For more information, please visit http://www.bridgewave.com/.

About One Ring Networks

One Ring Networks is out to change the world of small business networking, and is saving customers as much as 50% on data and telephone services. By building a next-generation telecommunications network that is feature-rich, stable and affordable, One Ring Networks avoids the expense and downtime of traditional telecommunications networks.

One Ring is the only carrier that can offer an end-to-end solution to their customers without a dependency on any other company's resources. One Ring Networks is able to offer all of the following:

-- High-speed Wireless Data Service

-- Feature-rich IP Phone Services

-- IP Telephony Infrastructure, Integration and Management

-- Network Monitoring and Management
SecureInfo RMS Achieves Government's Stringent Common Criteria Certification. Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- SecureInfo(R) Corporation, a leading provider of information security solutions, today announced that SecureInfo RMS(TM), the company's NIST, DIACAP and DoDIIS compliance software that supports FISMA, has achieved Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance certification under the National Information Assurance Partnership's (NIAP) Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS). The company will accept the award at the upcoming Federal Information Assurance Conference at the University of Maryland, College Park on October 25, 2006.



The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Security Agency (NSA) have established a program under the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) to evaluate IT product conformance to international standards. The program, officially known as the NIAP Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme for IT Security (CCEVS), was implemented to help consumers select information technology products that meet stringent security requirements. Under U.S. government policy, a certified IT product or service is preferred over non-certified solutions.

"Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance certification is one of the toughest certifications to achieve," said Christopher Fountain, president and CEO of SecureInfo. "Many Federal agencies, including The Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and the United States Treasury, rely on SecureInfo RMS to help them more effectively comply with mandated regulations. This certification underscores our commitment to deliver trusted risk management solutions that meet the stringent security requirements of the Federal government. We are extremely pleased to have earned this honor."

Please visit www.secureinfo.com for more information on SecureInfo RMS. Additional information regarding NIAP's CCEVS can be found at http://niap.bahialab.com/cc-scheme/st/ST_VID10042.cfm.

About SecureInfo

SecureInfo Corporation, Inc. is a leading provider of information security solutions, including professional and managed services, and compliance and policy software products. Organizations rely on SecureInfo's solutions to achieve, sustain and measure IT compliance, protect sensitive data and critical IT assets, and mitigate risk more effectively. The company has designed, built and managed enterprise security operations centers and enterprise-wide compliance and policy solutions across Federal government agencies and commercial companies. Customers include Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, NASA, United States Air Force, US Treasury and Nortel Networks. Further information can be found at www.secureinfo.com. SecureInfo is a registered trademark and SecureInfo RMS is a trademark of SecureInfo Corporate. All other products and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Delivery with pizzazz

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Delivery with pizzazz. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE FOLLOWING IS A BUSINESS success story in which motor vehicles, two-wheeled as well as four-wheeled, playedand continue to playa starring role.

It is about a pizza parlor that was established in 2001 by Mr. E.P., a Filipino entrepreneur. Today, Yellow Cab Pizza has 54 stores across the country, as far north in Baguio City and as far south as Davao. Not bad for an all-Filipino enterprise that was opened only five years ago in competition with famous, well-established global brands such as Shakeys, Pizza Hut and Wendys.



Different

What makes Yellow Cab Pizza different from other pizza chains, both local and international, is the pizzazz of its delivery system. When you order pizza from Yellow Cab, it is delivered to you via a 150 cc Vespa, the prestigious Italian motor scooter. Other pizza brands use less glamorous transportation, usually Japanese motorcycles such as the Kawasaki 100 cc.

Yellow Cab has 400 Vespasall painted yellow, of courseacross the country to deliver its products on time. Aside from 400 Vespas, Yellow Cab has a 2002 model Chrysler PT Cruiser, painted in the same bright yellow color, that is used for special occasions such as at the grand opening of a store, motorcades, car shows and sponsorship events.

Image builder

Mr. E.P. acquired the PT Cruiser for P1.5 million in 2004 from Kevin Limjoco, C! Magazines editor-at-large. The PT Cruiser is meant to build the image of Yellow Cab, Mr E.P. said in an interview. The character of the car is what I wanted to portrayyoung, hip, retro, very much like the Vespa design. It helps that the PT Cruiser is not sold in the Philippines and is rarely seen on Philippine roads, thus contributing to the eye-catching mystique of the Yellow Cab brand. Only young peoplestudents and modelsget to drive the PT Cruiser, Mr. E.P. revealed. He himself does not drive it.

It is actually logical for Yellow Cab Pizza to own and parade a yellow automobile from America, since the pizza business was named after the ubiquitous yellow taxicabs in New York City. But while the cabs in New York are big, full-size, 6 or 8-cylinder passenger sedans, the PT Cruiser is a compact hatchback with a 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder twin cam engine producing 150 peak horsepower.

Boost sales

Together with the Chrysler 300 C executive sedan, the PT Cruiser is credited with boosting sales of the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler in the first five years of the 2000s. The PT Cruiser has been consistently recommended by Consumer Reports for four years now mainly because of its reliability and versatile interior. The rear seats can be removed and the front passenger seat folded flat to increase cargo space.

With 400 Vespas at hand, Yellow Cab may well be the company with the largest number of Vespas in the world. Ninety percent of the Vespa fleet was purchased brand-new with the remaining 10 percent acquired secondhand. Mr. E.P. said that the average price of a new Vespa is P80,000 (compared to the P60,000 retail price of a 100 cc Kawasaki) while a used Vespa costs around P50,000. Mr. E.P. sources the Vespas from Italy, where the original Piaggio Vespa is manufactured and from India, where the scooter is produced by LML. There is a Vespa distributor in Metro Manila that sells both. Seventy percent of the Yellow Cab fleet are Piaggio Vespas and the rest, LML Vespas.

Mr. E.P. says that the Vespa has been a part of his life since he was a child. His father rode a Vespa in the 1950s and 1960s and when the Vespa returned to Manila in the 1990s, Mr. E.P. bought one and rode it to work in Makati almost daily. At one time, he even rode his Vespa all the way to Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte.

Rolling stock

When he was organizing Yellow Cab Pizza, Mr. E.P. saw that the Vespa has a lot of paintable surfaces for advertisements. Perhaps this is one reason he chose the Vespa for Yellow Cabs rolling stock. Another reason could be the Vespas durability. Mr. E.P. says that the Vespa is less prone to break down since the spindle coming from the transmission is attached to the wheel and motion is not transferred by a chain.

In any case, choosing the Vespa and the PT Cruiser to distinguish the Yellow Cab brand was a stroke of marketing genius. Now the question is: When will CATS Motors Inc., the Philippine distributor of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, make the PT Cruiser available here?

***

TODAYS BUMPER STICKER: A committee is a group of the unwilling picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.

***

E-mail comments to [email protected].

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Interactive Intelligence Releases New IP-based Predictive Dialer and Gateway. Check it out:
INDIANAPOLIS --(Business Wire)-- Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq:ININ), a global developer of business communications software, has released a new VoIP-enabled version of its outbound dialing and campaign management software, Interaction Dialer(R), designed for contact centers, teleservices firms and collections operations.



The latest release of Interaction Dialer, version 2.4, is now based on the SIP standard so it can operate in an all-software, all-VoIP environment to help reduce costs and simplify management. The release includes an all new SIP gateway called Interaction Gateway(TM) -- an appliance connecting legacy telephone trunks (T1s) to VoIP networks. Interaction Gateway works with Interaction Dialer to give high-volume outbound contact centers accurate predictive call analysis capabilities.

"Interaction Gateway is unique because it provides advanced outbound call analysis -- such as distinction between answering machines versus live speakers, and wrong numbers versus network issues -- while taking full advantage of the open SIP standard," said Yankee Group senior analyst, Ken Landoline. "Combined, these enhancements result in more effective dialing campaigns, simplified deployment and configuration, lower cost, better redundancy, and unbeatable flexibility compared to traditional outbound dialing solutions."

According to Interactive Intelligence, the new SIP-based Interaction Dialer can lower costs by between 10 and 50 percent compared to traditional TDM-based dialers by reducing hardware requirements.

The company says Interaction Dialer can reduce costs further using Interaction Gateway at strategic locations to ensure it uses the most cost-effective call routing. To illustrate, in a typical configuration, ISDN PRI trunks from the public phone network are connected to Interaction Gateway. After that point, the entire configuration is voice over IP. This provides unmatched geographic independence. For example, the Interaction Dialer and Gateway servers can be in the U.S., while agents are in India.

"As an outsourced provider of CRM services, our clients drive our technology requirements, and a key requirement across the board is to offer highly customizable services at an affordable price," said Chris Adomaitis, president of network and telecom services for Dialogue Marketing, an Interactive Intelligence customer since 1998. "Interaction Dialer's new Gateway option lets us do just that by using a pure softswitch, thus dramatically reducing costs associated with hardware."

Other Interaction Dialer enhancements include improvements to its patented pacing algorithm, which maintains the optimum balance between low abandon rates and maximum agent utilization; a single "Health View" interface that enables supervisors to monitor and analyze Dialer statistics from campaigns, workflows, and outbound calls; and a "Contact Import Wizard" that simplifies campaign management by providing a tool to import records into call list tables from a variety of commonly used sources, including CSV files, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, SQL Server, and Oracle.

Interaction Dialer was first released in 1999 as an add-on module to the company's contact center automation software, Customer Interaction Center(R) (CIC). By leveraging CIC's multi-channel routing, recording, and interactive voice response, Interaction Dialer reduces costs and simplifies infrastructure compared to traditional, standalone dialers. Interaction Dialer, in conjunction with CIC, can also work with existing PBXs and IP PBXs.

In addition to power, preview, predictive, precise, and agent-less dialing, outbound campaign management, and inbound/outbound call blending, Interaction Dialer includes capabilities for telemarketing regulatory compliance, Web-based scripting, campaign staging, real-time supervision and reporting.

A single Interaction Dialer system, along with Interaction Gateway's "rack and stack" architecture, can support up to 1,000 outbound agents -- more when deploying multiple systems -- while giving multi-site organizations maximum load-balance and fault tolerance capabilities.

Interaction Dialer 2.4 is available immediately and is offered through the Interactive Intelligence channel composed of approximately 250 value-added resellers, and through the company's direct sales force.

About Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq:ININ) is a global developer of business communications software for contact center automation and enterprise IP telephony. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 2,000 customers worldwide. Recent awards include the 2006 Network World 200, CRM Magazine's 2006 Rising Star Excellence Award, Network Computing Magazine's 2006 Well-Connected Award, Software Magazine's 2005 Top 500 Global Software and Services Companies, Miercom's 2005 Best Integrated Multimedia IP Contact Center product award, and Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Excellence in Technology of the Year Award. Interactive Intelligence employs more than 400 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis. The company has 12 offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or [email protected]; on the Net: http://www.inin.com.

This release contains certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings.

Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
KANA and Autonomy Extend OEM Alliance. Check it out:
MENLO PARK and SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- KANA Software, Inc. (Pinksheets: KANA.PK), a world leader in multi-channel customer service, and Autonomy (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced an extension to their OEM alliance through which KANA will deploy Autonomy's infrastructure technology in KANA's solutions for eService, call centers and Web self-service solutions. As a result, KANA can deliver relevant information to users in a more timely fashion, ensuring that customer inquiries are resolved quickly and accurately across channels.



Autonomy's infrastructure software brings KANA users an impressive breadth of functionality, including automatic hyperlinking of conceptually-related information as well as automatic delivery of personalized information. Users of KANA's multi-channel customer service solutions benefit from accurate and focused answers to customer queries by using concept-based retrieval of items from the support knowledge base.

"We continually seek new ways to help our customers exceed their customers' expectations," said Charlie Isaacs, chief technology officer at KANA. "After consideration of other options we are pleased to confirm Autonomy as a technology partner in this goal."

Autonomy boasts one of the industry's strongest OEM programs, supporting more than 300 third-party applications across a range of industries including, Product Lifecycle Management, Content Management, Information Security, Financial Services, Human Resources, Records Management, Compliance and eCommerce, to name a few. As a strategic OEM partner, KANA is a key participant in guiding product direction and has been a multi-year participant in the annual Autonomy OEM Advisory Board meeting.

"We are pleased that KANA, has chosen to continue this fruitful and longstanding relationship," says Nicole Eagan, Autonomy's Chief Marketing Officer. "This is further validation of the IDOL strategic roadmap and a real win for KANA customers, who will continue to benefit from the strength of Autonomy's infrastructure software and our close partnership with KANA."

About Autonomy

Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L) is a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise. Autonomy's technology powers applications dependent upon unstructured information including call center, customer relationship management, knowledge management, enterprise portals, enterprise resource planning, online publishing and security applications. Autonomy's customer base comprises more than 16,000 global companies and organizations including, among others, BAE Systems, Ford, Ericsson, Shell, Nestle, AOL, BBC, Reuters, Hutchison 3G, Royal Sun Alliance, Sun Microsystems, Philips, Boeing, Schneider Electric, Coca Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Citigroup, ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank, the New York Stock Exchange, Daimler Chrysler, Kraft Foods, Lloyds TSB, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. Strategic reseller and OEM partners include leading companies such as BEA, Business Objects, Citrix, EDS, IBM Global Services, Novell, Veritas, Vignette, Supportsoft and Sybase. The company has offices worldwide.

The Autonomy Group includes: Aungate, a leader in technology for Real-Time Enterprise Governance; Virage, a leading supplier and visionary in Rich Media Management technology; etalk, a leading provider of enterprise-class contact center products, Cardiff, a leader in content capture and business process management solutions, and Ultraseek, a leading provider of business search engine.

Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About KANA

KANA is a world leader in multi-channel customer service. KANA's integrated solutions allow companies to deliver consistent, managed service across all channels, including email, chat, call centers and Web self-service, so customers have the freedom to choose the service they want, how and when they want it. KANA's clients report double-digit increases in customer satisfaction, while reducing call volumes by an average of 20%. KANA's award-winning solutions are proven in more than 600 companies worldwide, including approximately half of the world's largest 100 companies. For more information visit www.kana.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

Information in this release regarding KANA's forecasts, projections, expectations, beliefs, and intentions are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to KANA as of the date of this release, which may likely change, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. These statements include statements about demand for multi-channel customer service solutions, and KANA's growth and success. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: competition in our marketplace, including introductions of new products or services, or reductions in prices, by competitors; risks associated with lack of market acceptance of KANA's products or services; inability to enhance and develop our products and services within budget and on schedule; inability to attract and retain qualified employees, to manage cash and expenditures or to expand sales; inability to manage our business in light of recent personnel reductions; KANA's history of losses; the effect of potential military action and terrorist activities; and slow economic conditions, particularly as they affect spending by our prospective customers on SRM and similar enterprise software products. These and other factors are risks associated with our business that may affect our operating results and are discussed in KANA's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

NOTE: KANA is a registered trademark of KANA Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Cisco Enables Business-Class Video with New Digital Media System. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Cisco Systems(R) Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), today announced the Cisco(R) Digital Media System, a new emerging technology that will enable organizations to use business-quality, dynamic video and audio to easily connect customers, employees, partners or students anywhere, anytime. Solutions in this new digital media systems technology category will extend digital media into new markets and compelling applications for real-time and on-demand broadcasting, to enable organizational transformation by putting the human face back into business.



The Cisco Digital Media System quickly and easily allows users to create, manage and deliver live and on-demand digital media in various formats to multiple wired or wireless connected devices. The solution utilizes the power of an Internet Protocol (IP) network as the platform to enhance productivity and business operations by improving communications and collaboration capabilities. The Digital Media System was developed in Cisco's Emerging Markets Technology Group, an internal venture team that focuses on innovation in adjacent markets beyond Cisco's traditional networking audience.

"While the digital media explosion has taken off in the consumer world, businesses are just beginning to realize the potential of video. The Cisco Digital Media System, combined with the power of the IP network as the platform, allows organizations to move to a business environment where compelling interactions and experiences are created and shared," said Marthin De Beer, vice president of Cisco's Emerging Markets Technology Group. "As the worldwide leader in networking, Cisco is making significant investments in new markets like business video, enabling new ways for organizations to connect and collaborate.

"I'm pleased to see Cisco enter the digital media market," said Ira Weinstein, Senior Analyst and Partner for Wainhouse Research. "Cisco's strong reputation within the enterprise, combined with its ability to address the entire digital media value chain from content creation to delivery, should help pave the way for the adoption of digital media communications within many organizations."

Wide Variety of Customer Applications

Taking advantage of the network as the platform for digital media delivery provides customers in many industries with the latest tools for communication, collaboration, marketing, sales, education and information retention. For example, an organization can easily broadcast a CEO keynote to a widely dispersed audience and make the event immediately available for on-demand viewing. Other potential applications include:

-- Financial Services: Training remote customer service representatives without taking employees away from essential customer-facing roles.

-- Retail: Communicating with customers quickly and easily via the Internet or in stores about new offerings and changing specials; offering broadcasts of live promotional events.

-- Government: Enabling live and on-demand Web-based access to city council meetings; providing access to digital media-based information on relevant regulations and laws.

-- Education: Extending the classroom to include remote broadcast and viewing of lectures, as well as on-demand materials.

-- Health Care: Alleviating staff and resource shortages by providing patients, family and friends with digital media-based informational materials.

-- Safety and Security: Providing the public with important up-to-the-minute information about changing conditions in airports, stadiums, train stations and auto routes.

"As one of the most ambitious and forward-thinking universities in the United Kingdom, we needed to provide our student body with access to rich media," said Simon Furber, network manager of Brunel University. "Because our students use, live and breathe digital media every day, the university sought a solid platform that could support the creation and delivery of this capability, The Cisco Digital Media System was just the right solution we've been looking for. It is incredibly scalable, with a great user interface and is simple to use."

Cisco Digital Media System Components

The innovative Web-based Cisco Digital Media System takes advantage of Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), an architectural framework that helps enterprises evolve existing infrastructure into an Intelligent Information Network that supports new IP strategies, including service-oriented architecture (SOA), Web services and virtualization. The Cisco Digital Media System comprises three product lines:

-- Cisco Digital Media Encoders: The Cisco Digital Media Encoder 2000 is a studio-level appliance with multiple channel support. The Cisco Digital Media Encoder 1000 is a portable encoder that can be used wirelessly for single-channel encoding. Both encoders support live and on-demand encoding in many formats.

-- Cisco Digital Media Manager: The Cisco Digital Media Manager manages and publishes digital media and provides tools for users to add and archive media; assign metadata and keywords; preview content and manage workflow; and schedule instant and future deployments. Cisco Digital Media Manager integrates with Cisco Application Networking Services technologies, including Cisco's Application and Content Networking System and wide-area content engines, for business-class digital media deployment across the network.

-- Cisco Video Portal: The portal allows users to browse, search and view digital media content. It features a customizable program guide and search functions; personalized playlists and featured lineups; advanced player controls, full-screen playback; and a usage reporting system. It is also fully integrated with the Cisco Digital Media Manager and supports Windows Media, RealPlayer and Flash file formats initially, with QuickTime and MPEG4 following later this year.

The Cisco Digital Media System is available now and is list priced starting at $133,000 USD. For more information on the solutions, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/dms. Cisco and its partners provide a lifecycle services approach to deploy and support the Cisco Digital Media System, along with end-user and partner financing packages. For additional information on partner programs, please visit http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/index.html.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Rackable Systems Unveils World's First Cabinet of Servers Based on Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) 5300 Series Processors. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Rackable Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data centers, today unveiled the world's first publicly-demonstrated cabinet of servers based on Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5300 Series. Showcased during Intel President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini's keynote, the cabinet is populated with 40 Rackable Systems C1000 1U DC Powered servers to achieve industry-leading density levels of eight processing cores per system for a total of 320 cores in a mere 22U footprint.



The new Rackable Systems Quad-Core servers showcased at the Intel Developer Forum leverage DC Power technology, the energy efficient, high performance Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 Series and Rackable Systems' hallmark back-to-back mounting to reduce overall power consumption and maximize density to achieve leading performance per watt. The systems will become available for purchase in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Rackable Systems has also released a new line of servers based on the ultra efficient Low Voltage Dual-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5148 Series, which became available earlier this month. Also available with Rackable Systems' industry-leading DC Power technology, the new line of servers features highly customizable 1U, 2U and 3U rack-mount configurations designed to optimize power consumption and reduce the cost of data center operations.

"Rackable Systems is pleased to be working closely with Intel to optimize density and performance per watt for the data center," said Tom Barton, chief executive officer of Rackable Systems. "Our current Intel Xeon Dual-Core servers feature stunning performance, while our next generation Quad-Core solutions will take that to an even higher level for our customers."

"We continue to see tremendous innovation from Rackable Systems around the Intel(R) Core(TM) Microarchitecture," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel. "As a leader in energy efficient, high performance solutions for the data center, Rackable Systems servers are an ideal platform for our lower-wattage Dual-Core and upcoming Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors."

Designed using industry-standard components with an open architecture approach, Rackable Systems' broad range of products support the full suite of Intel Xeon processors to provide maximum choice and leading performance per watt. Rackable Systems servers are deployed fully racked and cabled in cabinets holding up to 88 systems. Ideal for applications ranging from Web hosting to High Performance Computing, Rackable Systems' unique designs feature easier serviceability, maximum density and greater thermal efficiency to reduce overall operational expenditures.

About Rackable Systems

Rackable Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:RACK) is a provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data center deployments. The company's products are designed to provide benefits in the areas of density, thermal efficiency, serviceability, power distribution and remote management. Founded in 1999 and based in Milpitas, California, Rackable Systems serves Internet, semiconductor design, enterprise software, federal government, entertainment, financial services, oil and gas exploration and biotechnology customers worldwide.

To learn more about Rackable Systems, visit www.rackable.com.

Rackable Systems is a registered trademark of Rackable Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.
Adaptive Announces Next Major Release of its Repository Suite of Products, Built on the Acclaimed Adaptive Foundation(TM). Check it out:
WASHINGTON --(Business Wire)-- Adaptive, Inc., a leading provider of standards-based Repository products, today announced the general availability of Version 4.0 of its Adaptive product suite, including Adaptive Foundation(TM), Adaptive Enterprise Architecture Manager(TM) (EAM), Adaptive Business Process Manager(TM) (BPM), Adaptive IT Portfolio Manager(TM) (ITPM) and Adaptive Project Portfolio Manager(TM) (PPM).



New features in Adaptive's Version 4.0 release include:

-- UML 2.1 Import/Export

Adaptive continues its industry leading support for the use of standards to achieve interoperability with other tools and data sources by providing import/export of UML 2.1, the latest version of the OMG(R) standard for systems analysis and design.

Import/Export of UML 2.1 allows Adaptive users to exchange modeling information with the latest version of the UML modeling tools on the market, which enables the information from these modeling tools to be imported into Adaptive Repository(TM), integrated with modeling and architecture information from other sources, and analyzed to achieve end-to-end traceability.

-- Role-based Control of Navigation Maps, Classification Schemas and Item Types

Adaptive has extended its unique role-based control of the user interface to include navigation maps, classification schemas and item types. Making these additional capabilities role-based provides users with a more tailored user experience that is ideally suited to their specific responsibilities and the needs of the tasks they must perform.

-- Explorer View for Hierarchical Relations

Adaptive Version 4.0 has added a new Explorer view for hierarchical relations. This Explorer view is used for displaying hierarchical relationships such as process/function decomposition, and organization structures in intuitive tree structures, and supports selective expanding and closing of "tree branches". An in-place focus panel allows users to select an item of interest from the tree view and immediately see its detail appear in the panel without waiting for a separate window to open, or losing sight of the original hierarchy.

-- Support for Oracle(R) 10g and Oracle(R) 10g/XE

Adaptive now supports deployment using Oracle 10g, including Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle 10g/XE), providing users with the most current and robust database management system. Oracle is providing Oracle 10g/XE free to use for smaller installations. Use of Oracle 10g/XE can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership for an Adaptive installation.

-- Version Merging

Adaptive has improved its industry leading configuration management capability by adding a merge feature that enables the changes made in separate version branches to be merged together. This merge feature supports sophisticated configuration management processes that require multiple teams to work in parallel along separate branches and then automatically integrate their changes when a milestone is reached. Users also have the ability to prioritize how conflicts are resolved during the merge.

-- Enhanced Support for SOA and Metadata Management

To better support the metadata requirements of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Adaptive has extended its underlying metamodels, item types and views to provide explicit support for modeling services and messages. Metadata Management enhancements include support for XML Schema and COBOL copybooks, and more sophisticated data lineage capabilities required to assess the impact of changes from data elements to the software and business processes affected by them.

"Based on the Adaptive vision of being the repository hub for enterprise metadata, and through close collaboration with our customers and partners, we have developed significant new capabilities in Adaptive Version 4.0.", said James B. Gambrell, CEO of Adaptive. "These new capabilities extend our technology leadership in the metadata management and enterprise architecture repository markets."

About Adaptive, Inc.

Adaptive provides a scalable, web-based enterprise-class metadata repository to support and manage multiple models, architectures and tools across an evolving set of technologies, applications and users. Adaptive's repository enables organizations to capture and share consistent metadata to support the entire change management cycle including planning and architecture, analysis and design, development and implementation and monitoring and governance.

Adaptive Foundation(TM) is a repository platform that enables Adaptive and its technology partners to quickly create applications which encompass techniques, tools and analytical capabilities tailored to target specific domains or markets. The Adaptive suite includes Adaptive Foundation(TM), Adaptive Enterprise Architecture Manager(TM) (EAM), Adaptive Business Process Manager(TM) (BPM), Adaptive IT Portfolio Manager(TM) (ITPM) and Adaptive Project Portfolio Manager(TM) (PPM).

Adaptive works with many Global 2000 companies and governments around the world to address the challenges of enterprise architecture, business performance improvement, IT governance, meta-data management and Model Driven Architecture(TM).

All product names used herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Convio, Inc. Names Dick Tusia Vice President of Services; Technology Industry Veteran Brings Extensive Professional Services Experience to Leading On-Demand Internet Company for Nonprofits. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Convio, Inc. - the leading provider of on-demand software and services that help nonprofits use the Internet for building strong constituent relationships and driving support - today announced that technology industry veteran Dick Tusia has joined the company as vice president of services.



Tusia has more than 25 years of experience in enterprise software deployment and professional services, and brings to Convio a strong track record of building and leading worldwide services organizations at high-growth technology companies. Prior to joining Convio, Tusia served as vice president of professional services at United Devices and was responsible for domestic and international customer support, professional services, technical services, training, pre-sales and information technology. While at United Devices, Tusia grew the company's services organization from a start-up model to an enterprise customer service model, increasing services revenue by 70 percent in a one-year period.

"Dick is well known within the technology industry as an experienced leader who knows how to build and run highly productive services organizations that increase customer loyalty and satisfaction," said Gene Austin, CEO, Convio, Inc. "His background in helping technology start-ups scale their professional services groups as they transition to the next level as companies makes him a great asset to the Convio team."

Before United Devices, Tusia was a senior vice president of worldwide customer services at PlanView, a provider of comprehensive IT portfolio management solutions. At PlanView, Tusia led a customer services team of more than 150 personnel that was well-regarded by IT industry analysts groups and which became a competitive advantage for the company. Prior to PlanView, Tusia was at Pervasive Software, a developer and marketer of systems management software for corporate IT environments, where he directed all worldwide technical services and support personnel and helped increase the company's overall customer satisfaction by more than 50 percent.

"As Convio continues to grow and expand its customer base, it is clear that the company, much like the previous companies I've been with, is taking the necessary steps for ensuring optimal customer service," said Dick Tusia. "It's exciting to join Convio and help contribute to the company's growth while helping nonprofit organizations leverage the Internet in new ways to achieve their marketing and fundraising goals."

Convio serves more than 600 organizations from diverse segments of the nonprofit sector. The company recently was named one of the fastest growing private companies in the country by Inc. magazine, and also was selected for Deloitte's "Texas Technology Fast 50" list which recognizes the fastest growing technology companies in the Lone Star State. Additionally, the Austin Business Journal named Convio as its 2005 "Private Company of the Year," and twice has recognized the company as one of the fastest growing private businesses in Central Texas.

About Convio

Convio is the leading provider of on-demand software and services that help nonprofits use the Internet strategically to build strong relationships with constituents for driving fundraising, advocacy and other forms of support. Convio has online solutions for fundraising, advocacy, Web content management, event fundraising, ecommerce and email communications. All solutions include the Constituent360(TM) platform, a sophisticated, online marketing database that centralizes constituent data and integrates with offline databases.

Convio's clients include American Red Cross, American Diabetes Association, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, AVON Foundation, Easter Seals, Farm Aid, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Trust For Historic Preservation, Ronald McDonald House Charities, The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Thirteen/WNET New York. For more information, please visit www.convio.com.

MARKETING INDUSTRY BOOST

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MARKETING INDUSTRY BOOST. Check it out:
(The Sunday Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A new crossindustry drive to add GBP50 million in sales to the Scottish marketing, advertising and PR sectors is to have its first meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Under the working title of the Scottish Marketing Communications Action Group, it aims to address the fact that the top eight Scottish companies by marketing spend-all mainly use London agencies.

It will take place at the Edinburgh Hallion Club on Tuesday from 10am and all the main players in each sector have been invited. It follows co-funding for research from Scottish Enterprise.

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Islamic bank aims to tap into Scottish market BANKING: EXPANSION Sharia-compliant institution plans to open branch in Glasgow. Check it out:
(The Sunday Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE Islamic Bank of Britain plans to establish its first Scottish branch in Glasgow next year buoyed by a worldwide resurgence in interest in Islamic finance.

The bank, which launched an internet and phone banking service last week, is also looking at expansion into France and Germany in 2008.

Ashraf Piranie is finance director of the Islamic Bank, which became the UK's first standalone Sharia-compliant retail bank when it launched two years ago. He is keen to serve Scotland's Muslim population, which is approaching 50,000 and has its highest concentration in Glasgow.



"Glasgow is on our target list. We'd like to have a branch office there in 2007.

We've had very positive feedback, not just from Glasgow but also Dundee, " Piranie said.

The bank, which has its headquarters in Birmingham, is to roll out a series of new products, such as Sharia-compliant overdrafts and trade finance terms for business banking. It already offers personal banking products and residential and commercial property finance.

The term Sharia refers to Islamic law and the overarching principle relating to financial transactions is that interest, known as "riba", is forbidden. This means that Muslims are not permitted to earn interest on bank deposits nor to purchase property using mortgages which involve interest repayments.

However, earning profit from legitimate trade and transactions is permitted.

Piranie said there is a growing awareness among the UK's two-million strong Muslim community and Muslim visitors to the UK that there is now an alternative to conventional banks which allows them to remain true to their religion without losing out financially.

"All of our products are very competitively priced. Our aim was that Islamic products should not be charged at a premium, " Piranie said.

Islamic financial products have been around globally since the 1960s, but an increased focus on Islam has drawn greater attention on the sector, with traditional banks such as Lloyds TSB now targeting Muslims with Shariacompliant products.

Piranie said the UK is leading the way in Europe in terms of efforts to establish a supportive legislative and fiscal framework for Sharia-compliant products. He said the Treasury and Customs and Revenue have been engaged in high-level discussions to approve new products.

A number of banks operating in the UK, including the subsidiaries of Middle East-owned banks and HSBC, as well as stockbrokers and mutuals, offer Shariacompliant products. Piranie said that the Islamic Bank's unique proposition is that it is the only dedicated UK bank offering such products whose entire financial activities are ring-fenced.

"We do not invest in alcohol, firearms or pornography. We earn profits for ourselves and for our customers by permitted activities such as trading in metals and property investment, and we only place our funds with other Islamic banks so we do not earn interest at any point in the cycle, " Piranie explained.

The bank is advised by Islamic scholars, who must approve all new products, and it also undergoes a quarterly Sharia compliance audit. Piranie said that the bank's ethical stance as well as the transparency of its charging structure and investment policy have attracted a number of non-Muslim customers. "At one point 20-per cent of our customers in Leicester were non-Muslims, " he said.

The Islamic Bank was set up with capital from UK and Middle East Muslims, including the Qatari royal family who remain shareholders. Its shares trade on the Alternative Investment Market. It has seven branches, including three in London, two in Birmingham, one in Leicester and one in Manchester, with plans to open a further six in the UK.

PIRANIE said: "We started from zero and have acquired 23,500 customers. Since we opened more branches and launched more products, growth has taken off. Customer growth has been 67-per cent in the past six months and deposits have grown by 47-per cent to GBP70 million." The customer base is diverse and includes a range of socioeconomic and ethnic groups, from Bengalis to Arabs and Pakistanis.

After just two years of operations, the bank does not yet have a credit rating, but Piranie said it is well capitalised at 10 times the minimum capital adequacy ratio. "We've raised GBP54m, " he said. The bank is still incurring set-up costs and posted half-year losses of GBP4.2m to the end of June 2006 and forecasts that it will become profitable in 2008.

Piranie, who formerly worked for Alliance & Leicester, anticipates strong growth in home and commercial property finance. This entails the bank buying a property and then leasing it back to the customer, who pays a monthly rent with an agreed profit margin, ultimately transferring ownership to the customer.

He also predicts growth in products aimed at the small and medium business sector. "One in three Muslims owns their own business, compared to one in 10 for the wider UK community, so business banking is very important."

NEED TO KNOW

THE FACTS

The Islamic Bank of Britain is planning to open a branch in Glasgow.

BACKGROUND

Islamic finance is based on Sharia law, which is derived from several sources including the Koran; Sunna (the practice and sayings of the prophet Muhammad); and Ijtehad (reasoning and logic applied by Islamic scholars). The main principle of Islamic finance is that interest (riba) is forbidden. It also enshrines the sharing of risk and reward between a bank and customer, with returns generated on profit from transactions.

The Islamic economic system has four key principles: the abolition of interest; economic prosperity within Islam's moral structure; universal brotherhood and justice; the desirability of economic enterprise.

There are more than 250 Islamic financial institutions worldwide and the global Islamic banking market is estimated to be worth some dollars-500 billion.

NEED TO KNOW MORE?

www. islamic-bank. com Website of the Islamic Bank of Britain.

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
CALEDONIA CALLING GLOBALISATION: NEW TRENDS Scotland is once again making its presence felt internationally - with a little help from some friends.. Check it out:
(The Sunday Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IT'S the old adage - lift the lid of an engine room, on any ship, anywhere in the world and shout Jock. "Someone will answer, " says Mark Thompson of Epeus.

And Scots are set to become more prevalent in global business if the trend toward internationalisation continues.

The founder and chief executive of the Aberdeen-based project management firm, focusing on the engineering, construction and energy sectors, has seen his company grow exponentially since it successfully negotiated the often fraught task of internationalising.



In 2006, Epeus is expecting revenue of GBP18 million and is forecasting revenue of GBP60m in 2007 this from a turnover of just GBP2m in 2005. As a result of the company's growth, Thompson is now looking at investing in the company's infrastructure abroad.

The story of growth off the back of exports, whether products or services, is being heard increasingly from all over Scotland. And a survey due out on Tuesday suggests that the decline in Scotland's export performance is bottoming out, if not reversing.

The survey, carried out by Ipsos MORI on behalf of DLA Piper Scotland, reports that over half (56-per cent) of Scottish companies trading internationally anticipate an increase in exports of more than 10-per cent for the next three years.

The poll chimes with the latest figures from the CBI's monthly industrial trends survey, which report order books across the UK at their strongest in 21 months.

The Ipsos MORI study polled executives from 245 Scottish exporters, mainly SMEs, and found that 38-per cent see potential for international growth of between 10-per cent and 25-per cent. For the majority (58-per cent), international business accounts for at least a quarter of their turnover.

But does this snapshot of export activity point to a turnaround in what has been a downward trend? And what, for those hoping to boost exports, are the best methods for achieving success abroad?

It is not possible to scale up the results from such a survey but Iain McTaggart, general manager of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI), which collates export figures for Scotland, says that there are signs of an upturn.

"Responses to our next survey for the year, due out in late October, early November, are still coming in, " he says.

"However, from those responses that are in, about 20-per cent are predicting double digit growth. Roughly half are predicting positive growth and less than 10-per cent are expecting a decline in exports." Most companies in the Ipsos MORI poll are trading in a wide variety of countries 82-per cent operate in Central and Western Europe; 60-per cent in Asia Pacific; 60-per cent in North America; 49-per cent in the Middle East; and 47-per cent in Eastern Europe.

Epeus is quite far along with its process of internationalisation. It now has offices in Houston, Aberdeen, Singapore and Port Harcourt, Nigeria and is aiming to have an office in Abu Dhabi before the end of the year to give it global coverage.

When the company set up in 2003, its first client was in Egypt. Aberdeen became an administrative and business support unit. The original plan was to be based in Scotland and service international work from there.

Thompson said: "In 2004 we started a rethink. We were doing business in Southeast Asia, Norway and Trinidad.

We thought there might well be a case for opening a business in each of these regions. After the first year, we looked at globalisation, at establishing a globally integrated network of companies.

"In our original list we were looking at the US, Russia, the Far East and the Middle East. We thought we could support West Africa from Aberdeen. We felt that it was too risky for us to physically establish an office there." Thompson was joined by a young Malaysian graduate, Leng Forrest, who was finishing an MBA at Robert Gordon University. Forrest was charged with redrafting the company's business plan.

Thompson says: "We had to do market analysis to see where the business was. Then we had to work out how best to secure it. We needed to know the visa situations, the workforce composition, how to set up an office and what taxation issues we would face." According to the Ipso MORI poll, the most common route for international trade is exporting goods directly from Scotland, with 59-per cent of companies adopting this strategy. Twenty percent work with agents or distributors overseas, while 10-per cent have gone as far as establishing their own branches overseas.

The majority of companies, 49-per cent, seek advice from Scottish Enterprise about trading or operating internationally.

Around one in three use banks or accountants, while one in five use lawyers or the Scottish Executive.

The Ipso MORI survey also reports that a small proportion, around 6-per cent, use the Globalscot network. However, as Scottish Enterprise points out, this is a service set up and run by the economic development agency and boosts its claim to being the primary agency for helping Scottish companies expand globally.

Globalscot is a network for making Scottish connections globally, by harnessing the expertise of the many Scots and friends of Scotland active in business around the world.

The network meets for the first time this week in Edinburgh, with 150 entrepreneurs and business people in attendance.

Epeus initially approached the Energy Industry Council, a UK trade association for the energy sector, for help. It sent the company to Scottish Development International (SDI), the international wing of Scottish Enterprise.

Thompson said: "We decided to join a trade mission to Moscow. There are great opportunities out there but for us it was just too risky. Also, our core group of international clients were not in Russia at that time. When we finished our analysis we decided to discount Russia.

It is still on our radar screen though.

"We then went to Malaysia. In comparison to Singapore it was cheaper, but Singapore has a number of huge shipyards which build rigs and FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading) vessels. The yards at that time were on the verge of a boom. Our client base was in Singapore.

"In Singapore we received a lot of support from SDI and Globalscot. In the first year we invested around dollars-100,000 on offices and incorporation in Singapore.

We got revenue back of around dollars-500,000, which wasn't bad. Then, with our Globalscot's intro, we got work on the building of the Molly Brown. That was dollars-15 million to dollars-18m for just one job.

More jobs came in off the back of that as we built a brand. We found ourselves work in Korea, Indonesia and China." The Globalscot network now has about 900 members.

Martin Togneri, chief executive of SDI, says: "Most countries try to link with their diaspora. But they do it on a cocktail party basis. Everyone gathers at the embassy, they pledge their desire to help and then forget about it until the next year's function comes around.

"What we do is make it practically possible for expats to make a difference.

Each Globalscot member sits down with one of our representatives abroad and is asked what they need to deliver help.

This help could be in the form of a mentoring capacity, taking a non-executive board position in a start-up or visiting their old school to inspire the next generation to take up a career in business.

Some of the most senior members of the organisation sit down with Scottish Enterprise leaders once a year and advise on how to improve our performance.

"The whole thing costs no more than GBP300,000 a year, which is very modest for what we get back. Consultant fees for the same outcome would run into millions." Globalscots are now established in almost every corner of the world. Frank Boyland is SDI's country head in Japan, where the organisation has had a presence for more than 20 years.

Boyland says: "The latest company to come out here was Aberdeen Asset Management. The financial services market is very interested in Japan at the moment because of the privatisation of the Japanese postal service." Since the postal service in Japan is said to hold 25-per cent of the world's savings, privatising it will release a lot of new money into the world's economy and the financial services industry is positioning itself accordingly. Boyland is optimistic that Scottish companies can capitalise on the presence of a number of Scottish expats holding senior positions in Japan's financial services sector.

"We're already seeing the big boys arriving. RBS and Scottish Widows have built up their presence here recently.

We are lucky to have a number of very high profile Globalscots. Graham McNaughton is president and CEO of HSBC Japan and Gary McGregor is country head for Lloyds TSB in Japan. These are great resources for Scots to draw on." The most common obstacles/barriers facing companies when trading internationally appear to be red tape and bureaucracy (49-per cent). Other barriers include currency (eg convertibility, stability) (29-per cent), language (27-per cent), taxation (25-per cent), inadequate professional support services (24-per cent), lack of skills or experience (23-per cent), lack of political stability (23-per cent) and lack of a strong legal environment (23-per cent).

For most, language is the biggest barrier to doing business in Japan. As a result, companies tend to get involved in joint ventures or hire distributors to act for them.

"Cold calling doesn't really work out here, " says Boyland. "Japanese company executives are very respectful of government departments though, their own government departments as well as foreign governments. We can call and be listened to. It's also about understanding who the right people are.

"Culturally, companies entering the Japanese market have to understand that it's all about relationships. You can turn up here with a great story to tell and not get much of a response. That doesn't mean that nobody is interested. We advise that companies visit two or three times, they then get to see that energy starts coming back from meetings.

"The important thing to note is that business processes such as Kaizan, quality circles and just-in-time production all originated here. Everything is analysed to the nth degree. Some companies are taken by surprise by this but I tell them that if they are being quizzed in this way it means there is interest in what they are selling." But, as McTaggart points out, there are places where the business environment is less alien. "India is a market we need to focus on more. In many ways, India should be easier because it has a more familiar business culture due to historical legacies, " he says.

"We would advise companies to do their homework. Speak to the international division of their bank; ask about the best payment methods. Speak to credit insurers and logistics experts." For Thompson, the familiar culture finally swayed him towards Singapore as a Far East base.

"One of the reasons we went to Singapore was that the business culture was very similar to the UK's. It makes a difference when you go into a bar and meet so many Scots. Scots who are making a success, " he says.

The hope is that Scots will soon be in the engine rooms of many more economies around the world.

The Globalscot inaugural conference takes place at Edinburgh International Conference Centre, September 27 to 28

Copyright 2006 Newsquest Media Group. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
King County bus routes hitch ride on Google mapping site. Check it out:
(Seattle Times, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--Google is broadening its maps and directions service today in the Seattle area and four other cities with one that helps users plan trips on public transit.

The Google Transit Trip Planner, online at http://google.com/transit, uses data from King County to map bus routes and calculate how long the trip would take. It also compares the cost with what you would spend if you made the trip by car.



Google's research unit began testing the trip planner in Portland late last year and invited feedback from government agencies interested in being included.

King County Executive Ron Sims said he directed his staff to contact Google. The county's own transit-planning site was seeing steady traffic -- it planned 7.5 million trips for users last year -- and Sims wanted more sources of information online.

"We're moving into an age where people are incredibly comfortable with technology," Sims said. "If you're going to serve them, whether you're a private enterprise or a public agency, you've got to recognize how people are sourcing their information and using it."

The project gained momentum when Peng Zhao, an engineer in Google's Kirkland office, offered to help with the Seattle component. Google is also launching the service in Pittsburgh; Honolulu; Tampa, Fla.; and Eugene, Ore.

The county has mainly shared its route data with Google and Busmonster.com, a site created by a Seattle developer, but Sims said it wants to work with more partners.

He said the county has not been approached by Microsoft, which competes with Google in offering online maps and directions.

There are a few differences between Google's planner and the county's site. Google offers maps of routes, something that the county doesn't have. But the county gives a user up to three choices to reach a destination, while Google gives one.

And Google has access only to King County bus routes, while the county provides ferry schedules and transit data from other counties.

Finally, Google's service doesn't work on cellphones. The county's site works with certain handheld devices.

"We don't treat this as competition, and neither does King County," said Avichal Garg, a product manager with Google's transit team at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. "We're in this very luxurious position where people come to Google looking for more information."

The county is receiving no money from Google.

The company isn't planning to place any advertising on its transit site, Garg said, and is looking to expand to more cities in the U.S. and internationally.

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Seattle Times
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Leading Food Service Industry Supplier Cites Route Service Efficiency Gains From Zebra-Symbol Mobile Wireless Solution. Check it out:
VERNON HILLS, Ill., Sept. 26 -- Zebra Technologies Corporation , a global leader in on-demand printing solutions for business improvement, and Symbol Technologies, Inc. , The Enterprise Mobility Company(TM), today announced that NuCO2 Inc., the largest nationwide supplier of bulk carbon dioxide (CO2) products for carbonated beverages to the food service and hospitality industries, has reported significant benefits and ROI from a new mobile/wireless route service and delivery solution from Zebra and Symbol. The announcement is further evidence of an increasing reliance on Zebra's rugged portable and wireless printers in mobile route accounting and direct store delivery applications.



Headquartered in Stuart, Fla., NuCO2 serves more than 100,000 hospitality customers across the U.S., including restaurants, convenience store chains, movie theaters, theme parks and sports venues. NuCO2 contracted Compsee Solutions Group of Mt. Gilead, N.C., a leading systems integrator/provider of data collection solutions for mobile and in-house business processes, for help transitioning from its legacy route accounting system to a more reliable and automated mobile solution. Specifically, NuCO2 needed a corporate-wide solution that would enable its entire field force to complete delivery and customer service calls more quickly and accurately. Compsee Solutions Group developed a best-of-breed, Bluetooth-enabled system comprised of third-party software, Symbol Technologies' rugged MC9000 mobile computers, and compact, rugged RW 420 mobile/wireless printers from Zebra Technologies.

According to Ron Starnes, NuCO2's field liaison, the mobile solution has yielded major business process improvements. "For one thing, we have experienced increased system reliability and uptime," he notes. "Our route representatives make 20 to 25 stops per day, and the elapsed time between their transactions in the field and data entry into our central information system has been reduced from up to 12 days to just 24 hours. This has increased the speed of problem resolution, while enabling us to improve customer service. We also were impressed by the ruggedness and professional print quality of the Zebra printer."

Bob Danahy, director of Zebra's global mobile and wireless business, adds: "Rugged construction was a key factor in our development of the RW 420 thermal printer. We knew it needed to be tough enough to withstand the bumps, drops and extreme weather experienced by mobile workers, and we're proud that it meets those expectations. Our work with NuCO2 is an excellent example of how Zebra's mobile applications help customers in many industries -- from beverage to utilities -- address their route and direct store delivery needs."

Today, NuCO2's delivery drivers use the new system to measure CO2 deliveries, input data for uploading into the central business system, and issue customer receipts -- all on demand at the point of delivery. The CO2 tank filling process has become much easier because 95 percent of the data can be populated simply by using the Symbol MC9000 mobile computer to scan the bar code on the tank or fill box, or based on customer data from the corporate routing system. NuCO2 field service technicians also use the system to document new installations and service calls. In both applications, Compsee's solution, with Zebra-Symbol mobile/wireless technology, has increased field force efficiency and productivity, eliminated redundant data entry, and improved the speed and responsiveness of NuCO2's overall customer service. According to Mr. Starnes, "With the internal efficiencies gained from our route/delivery solution and decreased down-time thanks to the durability of the mobile devices, NuCO2 is able to achieve higher customer satisfaction, higher existing customer retention rates and increased new business for our organization."

More information about Zebra's mobile and wireless on-demand direct thermal printing solutions and supplies is available online at http://www.zebra.com/ .

About Zebra Technologies
Zebra Technologies Corporation delivers innovative and reliable on-demand printing solutions for business improvement and security applications in 100 countries around the world. More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Zebra(R)-brand printers. A broad range of applications benefit from Zebra-brand thermal bar code, "smart" label and receipt printers, and plastic card printers, resulting in enhanced security, increased productivity, improved quality, lower costs, and better customer service. The company has sold more than five million printers, including RFID printer/encoders and wireless mobile solutions, as well as software, connectivity solutions, and printing supplies. Information about Zebra specialty printing solutions is at http://www.zebra.com/ .

About Symbol Technologies
Symbol Technologies, Inc., The Enterprise Mobility Company(TM), is a recognized worldwide leader in enterprise mobility, delivering products and solutions that capture, move and manage information in real time to and from the point of business activity. Symbol enterprise mobility solutions integrate advanced data capture products, radio frequency identification technology, mobile computing platforms, wireless infrastructure, mobility software and world-class services programs. Symbol enterprise mobility products and solutions are proven to increase workforce productivity, reduce operating costs, drive operational efficiencies and realize competitive advantages for the world's leading companies. More information is available at http://www.symbol.com/ .

CONTACT: Michelle Meek
+1 312 873 3424
[email protected]

Zebra Technologies Corporation

CONTACT: Michelle Meek for Zebra Technologies Corporation,+1-312-873-3424, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.zebra.com/http://www.symbol.com/
Unicon Develops & Contributes New Features & Technology Enhancements to uPortal Open Source Portal for Higher Education. Check it out:
PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- Unicon, Inc., the leading independent provider of open source-based technologies and professional services for the online campus in academic institutions, today announced it's in the process of contributing several feature and technology enhancements to the uPortal open source enterprise portal for higher education. uPortal was developed by the higher education community for higher education institutions. Unicon's contributions to uPortal v2.x will include enhancements to the flexibility and configurability of the uPortal framework, enrichment of the channel environment, data loading support for SQL Server, user experience refinements, and significant performance improvements.



Since becoming a founding member, developer, and architect of uPortal in 1999, Unicon has continually contributed back to the core shared uPortal project to mutually benefit the future development of the portal and Unicon's own products.

"In the interest of making our own Academus Web Portal development more sustainable and also for improving the quality and vibrancy of the uPortal project, Unicon is pleased to contribute back to the core uPortal project all modifications to the uPortal framework currently maintained for Academus," commented Mike Zackrison, vice president of product management for Unicon, Inc.

About uPortal

From the Java Architectures Special Interest Group (JA-SIG), uPortal is an open source enterprise portal collaboratively developed by higher education, for higher education. Utilizing Java, Extensible Markup Language (XML), JavaServer Pages Technology (JSP) and Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technologies, the uPortal framework enables easy, standards-based integration with authentication and security applications, single sign on secure access, and end user customization. Now gaining favor worldwide, uPortal is one of the most widely used portal technologies in the United States.

About Unicon

Unicon, Inc. is the leading independent provider of open-source frameworks, applications and professional services for the online campus. Unicon delivers enterprise portal, collaboration, learning, and integration technology for higher education institutions worldwide. Unicon is the leading commercial supporter of the uPortal open source Web portal initiative, and is a Sakai Commercial Affiliate for the community source Collaboration and Learning Environment. The company's signature Academus(R) brand encompasses an Enterprise Portal, Web Content Management system, Collaboration Tools, and Learning Environments. Unicon strives to base its solutions on open-source technology for increased productivity and reduced costs. Unicon also provides a full complement of professional consulting, training and support services.

More information about Unicon, Inc. and Academus Open Campus is available at www.unicon.net & www.academusopencampus.com

Unicon and Academus are Registered Trademarks of Unicon, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.
WiMAX Industry Visionaries to Keynote at WiMAX World Conference & Expo 2006. Check it out:
BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- Trendsmedia today announced its executive keynotes for WiMAX World 2006, the largest wireless and mobile broadband event in the world focused on WiMAX. WiMAX World Conference & Expo is scheduled for October 10-12, 2006 at the Boston World Trade and Seaport Hotel.



This year's keynote speakers include:

-- Gregory Q. Brown, President, Networks & Enterprise, Motorola, Inc.

-- Sean Maloney, Executive Vice President, General Manager, Sales and Marketing Group, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Intel

-- Diana Hage, Director, Wireless and RFID Services, IBM Corporation

-- Peter MacKinnon, General Manager of WiMAX, Chairman, LG-Nortel Joint Venture

-- Ron Resnick, President and Chairman, WiMAX Forum

-- Dr. Klaus-D. Kohrt, Senior Vice President Government & Industry Relations, Siemens Communication Mobile Networks, Vice Chairman, UMTS Forum

The Yankee Group Mobile Broadband Executive Summit keynote speakers include:

-- Berge Ayvazian, Chief Research Officer and Conference Co-Chair, Yankee Group

-- John J. Roese, Chief Technology Officer, Nortel

-- Barry West, Chief Technology Officer and President 4G Mobile Broadband, Sprint Nextel

Additional information about general session speakers is available at http://www.wimaxworld.com/speakers.htm#keynotes

"WiMAX will soon make it possible for people in underserved, isolated communities to connect to the Web with the same performance and capabilities as those in urban environments. By the same token, those in dense city environments will be able to enjoy next generation mobility with much greater performance, and at a much lower cost, than the current cellular environment can provide," said Peter MacKinnon, Nortel's General Manager of WiMAX and chairman, LG-Nortel. "We're driving significant innovation in emerging wireless technologies and we're proud to again be a part of the only event dedicated to the latest WiMAX trends and developments."

"The growth and popularity of WiMAX World demonstrates that we're on the eve of wide-spread adoption." said Eliot Weinman, conference chairman and CEO of Trendsmedia. "WiMAX has become of great interest to operators, businesses and municipalities and we're excited to bring these parties together to learn about how WiMAX technology will enable the next generation of mobile broadband."

In addition to the keynote presentations, WiMAX World will now host a special executive roundtable on October 11 entitled "The Clearwire Partnership and the Future of Wireless Broadband" that will feature Gregory Brown from Motorola, Scott Richardson from Intel and Benjamin Wolff from Clearwire.

Registration

Registration is available at: www.wimaxworld.com/registration.htm.

Rates are as follows:

-- 3 Day VIP Conference Pass: $1,595

-- 2 Day Conference Pass: $1,195

-- 1 Day Conference Pass: $795

-- Yankee Group Mobile Broadband Executive Summit (Oct 10-11): $1,195

-- Mobilizing the Enterprise Summit (Oct 11): $495

-- WiMAX World Expo Pass: $50

Note to Media and Analysts

For inquiries about press and analyst activities at WiMAX World, please contact one of the following PR persons:

Dana O'Neill, Bite PR: [email protected]

Virginia Jamieson, Bite PR: [email protected]

About WiMAX World & Expo

WiMAX World Conference & Expo is the largest business and technology forum in the world focused on WiMAX, wireless broadband and mobile broadband! Sponsored by the WiMAX Forum(TM) and developed by an advisory board of industry thought leaders, it is the industry's premier educational conference, networking forum and technology expo focused on the advancement and adoption of WiMAX and wireless broadband as a global business and communications solution. For more information, see www.wimaxworld.com

About Trendsmedia

Trendsmedia is an integrated media firm serving emerging technology markets. Founded by media veterans, our mission is to help business and technology executives stay ahead of major technology trends that are likely to impact their businesses significantly within the next few years.

Trendsmedia provides business executives with independently researched media products to help them learn about the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice of major emerging technology markets. Our clients stay abreast of these emerging technologies by attending our regular series of conferences that explore these markets in-depth, and can keep track of them throughout the year by accessing our informative, focused and independently produced content portals and subscribing to in-depth newsletters and market intelligence studies. For more information, please see www.trendsmedia.com
Blue Knot Orange County Presents Panel of Technology Start-Up Executives at October Networking Event. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Blue Knot, the Jewish Technology Initiative, will host its monthly networking event at the Samueli Jewish Campus of the Jewish Federation in Irvine on Tuesday, October 3 at 6:00 p.m., featuring a panel of technology start-up executives who will conduct a candid discussion of the life of a Southern California technology start-up.



Southern California is known for its nice weather and Disney. Can a start-up survive in Orange County? The panelists will share their experiences as start-up technology firms in Southern California, describe what start-up companies can and should be thinking about to be successful, and explain what it takes to make it today in Southern California.

Panel members include:

Tal Golan, president, Sendio Inc. (www.sendio.com), the only enterprise-level tool that uses Sender Address Verification (SAV) to solve the unwanted email problem.

David Landis, president, Ultimate 80's (www.ultimate-80s.com), the station bringing the best of the '80s music, live on the Internet.

David Saad, president, Calibra (www.calibra.com), a software company that is pioneering a new and exciting category of software called Referral Automation.

Uzi Yair, CEO, GTB Technologies (www.gttb.com), which provides comprehensive security solutions for detecting and preventing outbound transmissions of confidential content that violate corporate policy as well as government and industry regulations.

The panel moderator will be Blue Knot co-chair Bart Greenberg of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP (www.manatt.com), who practices general corporate law with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings and the cost-effective representation of entrepreneurs, start-ups and emerging technology companies. The other co-chairs are Arie Shen of Hummingbird, who has over 20 years of experience in the information technology industry, and Ellia Kassoff of Strategic Software Resources, Inc., a search firm specializing in software and technology, and local co-founder of Blue Knot Orange County.

Blue Knot committee members include Zach Cohen (First American Title Insurance); Robby Lazar; Andy Markowitz (Netreo); Howard Mirowitz (investor and consultant); Ron Moskowitz (County of Orange Health Care Agency); Marshal H. Perlman (Panasonic Avionics Corporation); Michael Reznick (Tripwire, Inc.); Arnon Tuval (Orbotech, Inc.); Uzi Yair (GTB Technologies); Hadar Ziv (University of California Irvine); and Alan Zwiren (IBM).

Blue Knot, the Jewish Tech Initiative, is an organization focused on professional development. With relevant speakers, networking opportunities, and information about emerging trends, Blue Knot exists to address the specific needs of high-technology professionals. Blue Knot Orange County sponsors are Business Wire, Daly-Swartz PR and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

Admission is $25 in advance, $35 at the door. For further information, contact Kathie Wolin, Jewish Federation of Orange County, 1 Federation Way, Suite 210, Irvine, CA 92603, (949) 435-3484 or (714) 755-5555, fax (949) 435-3485, email [email protected] or access http://www.blueknotoc.org.
WorkforceLogic Wins Over Major Financial Services Customers. Check it out:
SONOMA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- WorkforceLogic, a workforce management software and services provider, today added to its impressive client roster four new customers in the financial services sector: the world's largest credit card membership organization, the world's most prestigious non-profit organization making low-interest loans to developing countries, one of the largest procurement and consulting companies with a $400 million annual spend, and one of the fastest-growing specialty banks in the Silicon Valley.



"The financial services sector is expanding rapidly and companies need to maintain profitability by properly managing their growing workforces," said Jeff Phelps, President of WorkforceLogic. "WorkforceLogic is helping these new customers manage their human resources as a strategic asset by giving them a technology platform to control their workforce spend and optimize their supplier contracts. In this way they can manage their own growth efficiently and in accordance with today's increasing regulations and compliance requirements."

The world's largest credit card membership organization and electronic payments network is using WorkforceLogic to manage HR compliance and payroll processes for non-qualified independent contractors, creating a solid risk mitigation system for engaging outsourced service providers.

The non-profit lending organization for making low-interest loans to developing nations is using WorkforceLogic to install an automated procurement process for hiring contingent workers. The WorkforceLogic platform provides greater visibility into the organization's annual spend in order to drive cost savings.

The procurement and consulting company is incorporating WorkforceLogic technology into its vendor-neutral Managed Service Provider (MSP) program. The company offers consulting in program design and implementation incorporating best practices in the sourcing and management of contingent labor.

One of the fastest growing specialty banks in Silicon Valley has implemented the full suite of WorkforceLogic solutions -- WorkforceLogic Enterprise, Compliance and Payroll -- to improve visibility into and control over their contingent workforce. They are using WorkforceLogic to create hiring process efficiencies and to mitigate compliance risk when using independent contractors.

These four new customers join the ranks of financial services industry leaders including Bank of the West and Europe's leading global financial services institution, who continue to use WorkforceLogic as a strategic tool for managing their growth and profitability by controlling their labor spend.

About WorkforceLogic

WorkforceLogic is an innovative workforce management company focused on risk mitigation, talent acquisition management and contingent workforce planning. As a professional advisor, we help our clients strategically manage their workforce acquisition process while managing costs and mitigating risk.

We help our clients create and execute an innovative strategy for managing the acquisition of their workforce that fits their budget, specific business goals and market response requirements.

Some of WorkforceLogic premier clients include Harley-Davidson, Brocade, Bank of the West, Hitachi Data Systems and Barclays Global Investors.

About the Nelson Family of Companies

The Nelson Family of Companies was founded in 1970 by Chairman and CEO Gary D. Nelson, and is headquartered in Sonoma, CA. According to Staffing Industry Analysts, the company has grown into the 64th largest staffing company in the United States and is the largest independent human capital solutions company in Northern California. This solid growth recently culminated in record revenues of $288 Million in 2005. The Nelson Family of Companies has been ranked as one of the "Best Places to Work" in the Greater Bay Area for the second year in a row according to an employee survey done by the publishers of the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
Intel CEO: Silicon Advances Usher in New Era of Energy Efficient Performance. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini outlined the company's plan to accelerate its technology leadership and told thousands of developers and engineers gathered here that advances in silicon technology will deliver new performance breakthroughs in an era of energy-efficient computing. Otellini also disclosed that Intel will ship the world's first quad-core processors for PCs and high-volume servers in November and provided new details related to Intel's industry-leading 65nm and 45nm manufacturing technologies.



"The industry is going through the most profound shift in decades, moving to an era where performance and energy efficiency are critical in all market segments and all aspects of computing," Otellini said. "The solution begins with the transistor and extends to the chip and platform levels."

Citing recent trends, Otellini showed how processing power is becoming more relevant than ever. The advent of new operating systems, more lifelike games, online video and high- definition video continue to drive the need for more processing power. A single You Tube(TM) stream today will hobble a PC from just a few years ago, said Otellini. "As we move to high definition video, users will need eight times greater performance just for encoding."

"More than ever processing power matters, even as the need to reduce heat, extend battery life, and reduce electricity costs in data centers becomes more critical," said Otellini. "Silicon technology is at the heart of the solution. It is how we get there."

Intel Core(TM) Microarchitecture Products

When it comes to performance and energy efficiency, Intel's new Core micro-architecture and flagship Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo processor have set a new standard for the industry, Otellini said. He showed where Core2 Duo benchmarks led across a wide range of applications and said it was now the fastest-ramping product in the company's history, with 5 million units shipped since it was introduced less than 60 days ago.

"With Core2 Duo we have the best performance, from the thinnest notebook to dual processor servers, and we are very pleased with the way this product is ramping."

Otellini went on to discuss new details around the company's plan for delivering the industry's first quad core processors for PCs and high-volume servers. The first processor, targeted at gamers and content creators, will be shipped in November and be called the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme quad-core processor. It will feature a dramatic 70 percent performance improvement over today's Intel Core2 Extreme processor.* The company's mainstream quad-core processor will be shipped in the first quarter of 2007 and will be called the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad processor. For servers, the Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5300 series brand for dual processor servers will be shipped this year, and a new low-power 50-watt Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor L5310 for blade servers that will be shipped in the first quarter of 2007.

Silicon Process and Manufacturing Technology

Performance and energy efficiency "all start with the transistor" he said, describing Intel's legacy of advancing Moore's Law and its industry-leading silicon technology and manufacturing capability. Intel was the first to implement advanced 65nm silicon manufacturing technology in 2005, integrating power-saving features into the process that were critical to delivering power-efficiency at the transistor level. Otellini said the company is now officially shipping the majority of its processors on 65nm, before any other company had even shipped a single production unit.

Looking ahead, Intel's next-generation 45nm technology is on track for production in the second half of 2007 as planned, and Otellini disclosed for the first time that the company has 15 45nm products already in development across desktop, mobile, and enterprise segments. The first of these products is on track to complete its design in the fourth quarter of this year. He described the company's extensive 45-nm factory network with more than 500,000 square feet of clean room space and more than $9 billion invested.

Sustained Leadership

Otellini estimated that the "cadence" of these manufacturing process technologies which follow Moore's Law, coupled with Intel's plans to introduce new micro-architectures about every 2 years, will result in significant performance-per-watt improvement over today's Core micro-architecture products by 2010. He showed a chart that mapped out new micro-architectures coming in 2008 (code-named Nehalem and targeted at 45nm) followed by another in 2010 (code-named Gesher and targeted at 32nm). These new micro architectures will be developed by separate teams working in parallel, and targeted for intersection with specific future process technologies.

"By the end of the decade we will deliver a 300 percent increase in performance per watt over today's processors," he said. "This improved power and performance will enable developers and manufacturers to develop systems with incredibly exciting new capabilities."

To demonstrate how Moore's Law will continue well into the future with amazing potential, Otellini showed a new research prototype processor that has 80 floating point cores on a single die. The tiny silicon die on this experimental chip, just 300mm(squared), is capable of achieving a Teraflop of performance, or 1 trillion floating point operations per second. He contrasted this with Intel's historic breakthrough 11 years ago with the world's first Teraflop supercomputer, a massive machine powered by nearly 10,000 Pentium Pro processors in more than 85 large cabinets occupying about 2,000 square feet.

Innovation and the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Challenge

In the first ever appearance of an Apple executive at IDF, Otellini was joined on stage by Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing who discussed how Apple has been able to innovate with sleek form factors and leverage the Intel Core family of processors across their entire computing product line. Rackable Systems CEO Thomas Barton also joined Otellini to talk about how his company is accelerating a significant shift to the Intel Core Microarchitecture, starting with the Dual-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 5100 Series that began shipping in July. Barton also showed a system featuring what he said was a new a record -- 320 cores in a single 22 unit high server rack -- using the upcoming Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 series processors.

On innovation, Otellini challenged the computing and consumer electronics industry to do more, to take advantage of the energy-efficient performance capabilities of Core2 Duo processors. To do this, Otellini announced the Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Processor Challenge, a contest that will award up to $1 million in prizes to the PC designer or manufacturer that builds the smallest and most stylish PCs powered by an Intel Core2 Duo processor coupled with Intel(R) Viiv(TM) technology, Intel's premium brand for in-home, media-optimized PCs.

New Growth Opportunities

Otellini also summarized the progress the company was seeing on its Intel(R) Viiv(TM) technology and Intel(R) Centrino(TM) mobile technology platforms, and said the next-generation mobile platform codenamed Santa Rosa is on track to ship next year. He said the next big "inflection point" for the industry is clearly broadband to go or "carrying broadband Internet with you."

In this regard Intel is making significant progress with its WiMAX effort, he said, bolstered by the recent news that Sprint and Clearwire would deploy the technology. The company is also working on a new category of PCs known as the ultra-mobile PC, which Otellini said could result in devices with 10 times lower power consumption than today's laptops by 2008.

About the Intel Developer Forum

IDF, now in its 10th year, is the premier global technology forum for hardware and software developers to confer on Intel-based platforms, technologies and solutions, and the new usage models they enable. Visit www.intel.com/idf for more information.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

*Based on estimated SPECint*_rate_base2000 performance. SPECint* is a registered trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For more information see www.spec.org. Based on estimated SPECint*_rate_base2000 performance

Intel, Intel Core, Centrino, Intel Viiv and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
RadioScape achieves listing in Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100. Check it out:
One of the UKs top 100 fastest growing technology companies

London, UK 26 September 2006 -- RadioScape, a world leader in digital multimedia head-end and receiver technology, has been ranked as the 36th fastest growing technology company in the UK in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100. This is the second time that RadioScape has appeared in the league table; it was ranked 16th in 2002. Full details of the league table can be found in the Sunday Times of the 24th September 2006, or at www.fasttrack.co.uk



John Hall, RadioScapes CEO, commented: We are very pleased to receive this recognition for our achievements over the past 2 years. This has been a huge transformation for the company as we have geared up to address the global market for digital radio. This is a moment where we must recognise the outstanding achievements and commitment of our employees both in the UK and in Hong Kong. We will be celebrating the companys 10th anniversary in November and this will be a very special occasion for our employees, partners and customers.

The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 ranks Britains fastest growing private technology companies by their sales growth over a two-year period between January 2003 and 2005. In RadioScapes case, sales for 2003 were £2.6 million and £9.2 million in 2005 giving an annual percentage sales growth of 89%. The league table is only open to companies that have evidence of significant technological innovation in a companys product or service.

About RadioScape
RadioScape Plc. is the worlds only developer of end-to-end digital audio broadcasting solutions giving RadioScape unmatched systems knowledge and enabling it to ensure that customers receive the highest levels of quality, robustness and reception at all stages.

Its Digital Radio Broadcast Suite is used extensively throughout the world including the largest DAB installation to date -- the UKs commercial DAB network. This is also being used to roll out Mobile TV services using Digital Multimedia Broadcasting in many countries, particularly in the Asia Pacific region where there are already many installations in China.

RadioScapes innovative Software Defined Digital Radio approach has made it a leader in DAB and DMB technology with its DAB receiver modules being extensively used by many of the worlds leading consumer electronics manufacturers. The company has recently begun shipping its first generation of DRM/DAB modules, enabling multi-standard consumer receivers to reach retail this year.

Founded in 1996, RadioScape's investors include Atlas Ventures, Royal Bank Ventures Investments, Scottish Equity Partners, JAFCO, Texas Instruments, Yasuda Enterprise Development, iGlobe Partners, Psion and Arqiva. RadioScape is headquartered in London, England with offices in Hong Kong. For more information, please visit http://www.radioscape.com

RadioScape is a registered trademark and Software Defined Digital Radio is a trademark of RadioScape Plc. All other trademarks are acknowledged.

For an image of RadioScape products, please go to
http://www.radioscape.com/Resource_Library/Images

For more information, please contact:
Caroline Skipworth
RadioScape Plc.
+44 20 7317 1996
[email protected]

Nigel Robson
Vortex PR
+44 1481 233080
[email protected]
JETRO Hosts Business Matching Events Between Japanese and Overseas ICT Related Companies. Check it out:
TOKYO --(Business Wire)-- Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) will host specific tailored business matching in early October.

JETRO and CEATAC JAPAN will jointly host the event "JETRO BIZMATCH@CEATEC JAPAN 2006" on October 3 - 5, 2006. The event will focus on introducing foreign and Japanese companies within the ICT industry to each other and increasing mutual understanding through workshops and informal gatherings. Approximately 40 companies in enterprise solutions, mobile technologies, network, security, and contents business from United States, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Kazakhstan, Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Israel, Australia, and Colombia will participate and will be introduced to over 90 Japanese companies.



CEATEC JAPAN (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies' Providing Image, Information and Communications) is the largest international exhibition in Asia featuring imaging, information and communications. More than 700 companies attend the event and attract over 190,000 visitors, mainly from the business community.

JETRO will also host United States-Japan Investment Initiative events in Sendai and Yokohama during October 1 to 6. The US-Japan Investment Initiative was established in June 2001 by Prime Minister Koizumi and President Bush as a forum for the exchange of views on how to improve the investment climate in the two countries. Several events have been held each year in both the US and Japan in relationship to this initiative.

One of the highlights this year is an event which will host a US business delegation of companies mainly in the ICT sector. These companies will be visiting the Sendai and Yokohama and meetings with potential business partners will be arranged by JETRO and the local governments. Sendai and Yokohama are known for their strong R&D base and renowned researchers and academics.

Appendix

About Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO)

JETRO, or the Japan External Trade Organization, is a government-related organization that works to promote mutual trade and investment between Japan and the rest of the world. Originally established in 1958 to promote Japanese exports abroad, one of JETRO's core focuses in the 21st century has shifted toward promoting foreign direct investment into Japan and helping small to medium size Japanese firms maximize their global export potential. It utilizes its extensive knowledge base, resources and network, which comprises offices in Tokyo and Osaka, the Institute of Developing Economies, 36 domestic offices, and more than 70 overseas offices.

Please access the JETRO website for further details: http://www.jetro.go.jp

Please access the JETRO website for further details on the investing in Japan: http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest

About JETRO's effort in FDI (Foreign Direct Investment)

JETRO proactively supports foreign businesses that are considering FDI in Japan. It not only uses the unique and extensive JETRO network that currently encompasses 55 countries worldwide. In 2003, JETRO established the ISBC (Invest Japan Business Support Center), one-stop service centers that provide investment information and consulting services for individual businesses, as well as office space for businesses without their own base in Japan. Through such initiatives JETRO has solidly reinforced its knowledge base and support system for FDI to Japan. Over the last three years (April 2003 to March 2006), JETRO has supported over 300 companies in setting up a business in Japan.

Inquiries to:

Amane Imada, Invest Japan Department, JETRO, Tokyo 81-3-3582-5571 / [email protected], Ryoko Matsumoto/Akiko Nishimura, Burson-Marsteller Tokyo, Tokyo 81-3-3264-6701 / [email protected]/[email protected].
Sterling: SCM applications to drive regional growth. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US-based business integration solutions provider Sterling Commerce expects 40% of its Latin American revenue to come from supply chain management (SCM) applications by 2008, Sterling South American general director Marcelo Ramos told BNamericas.



Applications in 2006 will represent just 5% of Sterling's Latin American revenues, he said. The company, a subsidiary of US telco AT&T (NYSE: T), does not publish hard figures.

The growth in applications is part of Sterling's plan to develop its multi-enterprise services architecture (MESA), a service orientated architecture (SOA) based system.

Sterling chose to expand its architecture through acquisitions of strategically important companies, Ramos said.

In May this year, Sterling acquired Minnesota-based logistics solutions company Nistevo to complement its available business-to-business services and software solutions.

Nistevo has an on-demand, web-based network that allows optimization of logistics and supply chain operations. The network is used by more than 60 shippers, spanning a community of over 6,400 carriers, and manages approximately 65 million transactions annually, according to the acquisition statement.

"Nistevo will bring to Sterling a full set of transportation system solutions. It's available to North American customers and it will be available to the world," Ramos said.

Large retail, manufacturing and wholesale corporations account for the bulk of Sterling's Latin American clients. The company has some 610 corporate clients in total, whose logistical systems require other trade partners to use Sterling's applications.

The value-added network (VAN) services handle many of its larger corporate client transactions and also requires client trade partners to use the system. Currently some 5,000 SMEs use the VAN services for this reason, Ramos said.

Despite the advancements, Ramos emphasized there is still plenty of room to grow in the area of SCM.

"There are so many needs right now in terms of logistics and transportation," he said.

Ramos sees other growth opportunities in the migration of current companies to more comprehensive hosted services. Only 10% have the comprehensive set of services and solutions offered by Sterling.

Additionally, Sterling aims to increase deployment of its hosted services, which account for 11% of the company's revenues.

Sterling's MESA combines business integration, business intelligence, business process management and business application logic with service-oriented architecture in the government, finance, insurance, retail, telecom and utilities sectors, the company says.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Financial Mail, London, Lisa Buckingham column. Check it out:
(Daily Mail (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--Why Lord Browne fought unsuccessfully to stay at the helm of BP long after the company's compulsory retirement date of 60 is anyone's guess.

It was an ignominious tussle with his chairman, Peter Sutherland, and one that resulted in him getting only a few months extra in the top job.

But even as unseemly briefings by "friends" of both men were given gleeful coverage in the financial Press, BP appeared to be unravelling faster than a ball of wool in the paws of a kitten.

To say that BP, once one of our most admired companies, has had a torrid year or so is an understatement. It suffered the worst refinery fire in the industry's history last year when 15 people died and hundreds were injured in Texas.

Its giant Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico was badly damaged by Hurricane Dennis and production will now come on stream in 2008 two years late.

Several of its commodity traders in America were accused of trying to manipulate the propane gas market. The US authorities also announced an investigation into its trading in crude oil and gasoline between 2002 and 2004.

And it was forced to shut production at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska after the discovery of severe corrosion in the pipes. It then emerged that senior BP executives had been warned repeatedly by employees that maintenance at Prudhoe Bay was not up to scratch, yet these alarms were, somehow, ignored.



Browne is resisting pressure to put in a personal appearance at hearings in the US into some of the group's alleged failures. These have incensed politicians on Capitol Hill, where BP's laudable refusal to make the political contributions routinely expected from oil majors means he has few friends to call on in times of need.

The company is, of course, a gigantic enterprise and wildcat fires can be expected in far-flung reaches of its empire. But the coincidence of bad news suggested something might be rotten at the heart of the edifice that Browne built.

Shareholders, with whom BP has in recent times enjoyed the best of relations, let it be known they were seeking one-to-one meetings with the company's diminutive boss to satisfy themselves that things were not as bad as they appeared.

There were signs of hope late on Friday when BP said it was about to bring parts of Prudhoe Bay back into operation.

And, though it is arguably a year late in coming, Browne has now ordered a top-to-bottom overhaul of the company's safety and environmental procedures, similar in scale to the rethink undertaken by Exxon after its tanker, the Valdez, caused one of the worst oil spills.

The operation to clean up the damage in Alaska is likely to take up to a decade. But by that time Browne will be long gone.

What a pity that the man who has year-in, year-out been voted Britain's most-admired business executive will spend his final days at BP fighting fires. And what a terrible misjudgment to have sought to extend them.

HAD YOU HAD THE DUBIOUS DISTINCTION of carrying out a refinancing of Russian government debt, only to have the Kremlin turn round and devalue the rouble, emerging markets might not seem a terribly comfortable place.

That seems to have informed the recent thinking at investment bank Goldman Sachs. But under new chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, the Wall Street powerhouse seems ready to have another look.

Blankfein believes that emerging markets -- Russia, China, India and Latin America are becoming mainstream (though the Putin government appears hell-bent on undermining that in Russia).

Look at some recent blockbuster mergers and acquisitions to see what Blankfein means.

Cases in point include Indian-born Lakshmi Mittal's 18.3 billion acquisition of Europe's Arcelor, the emergence of a Russian bank as the largest outside shareholder in Airbus's parent group, Eads, plus a host of Chinese companies that rushed to list on the London Stock Exchange.

Goldman is already well ensconced in China, but watch out for it bulking up in territories where it feels underrepresented.

There is also likely to be a push into the mid-corporate market. Goldman is, of course, best known for working with some of the world's largest companies.

But many of these have balance sheets bigger than Goldman's and do not always want the Americans' huge funding resources.

Smaller fry may not be prepared to pay top dollar for Goldman's strategic advice, but may be happier to dig into their pockets if there were the possibility that such huge coffers might be at their disposal.

Goldman, which recently announced sparkling profits, does not aim to be an all-things-to-all-people bank such as Citigroup (it has, for example, permanently eschewed a retail offering).

But it has a sure-footed record on diversifications -- insurance and commodities have been happily added. There seems little reason to suspect that it will not safely cast its net even wider.

To see more of the Financial Mail on Sunday, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.financialmail.co.uk.

Copyright (c) 2006, Financial Mail on Sunday, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Partner Security Program launched by Cybertrust. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Cybertrust, an information security provider, has announced the launch of its Partner Security Program, a solution for organisations to manage the compliance of their extended enterprise.

According to the company, the programme will enable Cybertrust customers to identify and eliminate risks that result from opening up its networks and systems to partners, customers and other vendors that may not be compliant with an individual organisation's security requirements.



Partner Security Program reportedly provides customers with a single view into the status of all internal business units, external business partners and other entities performing compliance validation activities via a web-based dashboard.

In addition the Partner Security Program from Cybertrust can assess a customer's extended business partners and internal business units against industry standards including ISO 17799, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley. According to the company, an automated questionnaire response scoring engine provides the ability to adapt scoring for individual standard or customer-specific needs.

No pricing information was available.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Travel Channel built with FAST search technology launched by Times Online. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions, has announced that Times Online has selected the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP) to power its new online Travel Channel.



Times Online Travel Channel is using FAST technology and the FAST Search Best Practices (FAST SBP) consultancy services to create a scalable search infrastructure that indexes each piece of editorial from The Times, The Sunday Times and Times Online to provide a range of relevant intelligence consumers researching any destination.

In addition, as part of the project, Times Online Travel Channel will also provide associated content including local weather reports and currency and exchange rates. The investment in FAST by Times Online will also create contextual advertising solutions for the company's advertisers.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
HiPath BizIP launched by Siemens. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Telecomms provider Siemens Communications has announced the UK launch of HiPath BizIP, an IP telephony product for the small office/home office (SoHo) market.

The new solution reportedly provides "plug and phone" VoIP connectivity and incorporates the latest SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology to provide the small or home office with access to business IP telephony services.

According to the company, the product works with existing VPN networks providing home and remote offices with a robust VoIP system. HiPath BizIP is reportedly easy to install, requiring minimal handling, training and support costs.

In addition HiPath BizIP delivers enterprise telephone services including conferencing, speed dialling, call lists, diversion and swapping. The package is able to scale from two to sixteen phones and there is no need for a dedicated PBX.

No pricing information was available.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Wales gets a vote of confidence for its handling of Euro cash. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A vote of confidence in Wales' handling of Euro-cash has been welcomed by Labour MEPs Glenys Kinnock and Eluned Morgan. At a meeting in Warsaw yesterday, the European Commission signed a 'Contract of Confidence' with Wales - its first ever such contract with any EU country or region.



It means the Commission has such a high level of trust in Wales' management of EU regional funding that it is to leave the job of auditing the spending of the cash to the Welsh authorities, rather than overseeing it itself.

Mrs Kinnock said, 'This is a tremendous vote of confidence in Wales and its management of EU funds. The Commission would not have made this decision lightly. It's a strong endorsement of the way the Assembly Government has handled European regional aid since 2000.'

Since 2000, around pounds 1.5bn of European regional funding has been spent in Wales, mainly through the Objective One programme. From 2007-13, Wales will receive another pounds 1.3bn in regional aid from the EU through its new Convergence programme.

Ms Morgan said, 'Wales should be extremely proud that it is the first region in the EU to sign this contract. This move should buoy confidence that the next round of EU funding will continue to benefit the people of Wales - creating jobs, developing skills and regenerating our communities.'

The 'Contract of Confidence' is a voluntary agreement between the Commission and a member state, or region, to guarantee the quality of the audit work done on existing Structural Fund programmes until 2008. The qualifying conditions are that the Commission must be satisfied with the effective functioning of the management and control system, the audit strategy and the quality of the annual control report.

A representative of the Wales Audit Office signed the contract on behalf of Wales, and EU Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hubner signed on behalf of the Commission. Commissioner Hnbner said, 'Today is a momentous occasion as the first Contract of Confidence is signed with Wales, part of the United Kingdom. Congratulations to them for their efforts in achieving this goal.' Enterprise Minister Andrew Davies said, 'Being rated best in Europe is excellent news for Wales, and further demonstrates our efficient and effective use of structural funds. We will build on this success and continue to deliver for the people of Wales through the next round of funding.'

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
Unisys Announces Date of Third-Quarter 2006 Financial Results and Conference Call. Check it out:
BLUE BELL, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) said today that it will release its third-quarter 2006 financial results on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 before the opening of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Following the release, Unisys will host a conference call with the financial community from 8:15 - 9:15 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the results.



The company will offer a live, listen-only Webcast of the conference call via a link on the Unisys Investor Web site at www.unisys.com/investor. A replay of the Webcast will be available on the Unisys Investor Web site shortly following the conference call.

About Unisys

Unisys is a worldwide technology services and solutions company. Our consultants apply Unisys expertise in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure, and server technology to help our clients achieve secure business operations. We build more secure organizations by creating visibility into clients' business operations. Leveraging Unisys 3D Visible Enterprise, we make visible the impact of their decisions--ahead of investments, opportunities and risks. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

RELEASE NO.: 0926/8712

http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/09268712.htm

Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
SchemaLogic Introduces Worldwide Partner Program to Support Growing Demand for Business Semantics Management. Check it out:
KIRKLAND, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- SchemaLogic, the leader in Business Semantics Management for Global 5000 companies, today introduced Partner Advantage, a worldwide partner program to address the growing demand for business semantics management (BSM). SchemaLogic's Partner Advantage program will provide organizations with the ability to create and have access to enhanced solutions, expand their customer initiatives and reach, increase market share and grow revenues. The first companies to participate in Partner Advantage include Advent One (Australia), Advance Document Sciences, Credo Systems, InfoClear Consulting, Metataxis (UK), and WinsData (Brazil).



"The SchemaLogic Partner Advantage program was created to provide a single, integrated platform that recognizes the expertise and complementary technologies of organizations in the industry, rewards them for individual contributions and impact, and then delivers value to help their businesses succeed," said Jeff Dirks, president and chief executive officer of SchemaLogic. "Our partners are vital to delivering top-quality products and services to help our customers move toward Business Semantics Management. By working together, we can create and deliver comprehensive solutions that will help companies increase their competitive advantage and reduce operational costs through better information management, increased data quality, and more agile, intelligent business decisions."

Partner Advantage membership is most valuable for System Integrators (SI's) or independent contractors who are engaged in information management, application integration, system re-architecture, content management and portal and search initiatives. Among the program offerings are: access to lead generation, training for customers and partners, technical and development support, Proof of Concept scope, integration design, demonstration and presentation support.

Partner Advantage was created for anyone helping to establish the business semantics of an industry, organization or enterprise, including consultants, taxonomists, information architects, data modelers and industry experts. SchemaLogic regularly partners with companies and subject matter experts that specialize in information management, taxonomy management, metadata modeling, integration, custom programming and business process improvement.

Simon Holmes, head of the EDRMS practice for Advent One in Melbourne, Australia says, "Through this partnership, companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and specifically Australia, now have access to the combination of SchemaLogic's industry leading software and our extensive software expertise. SchemaLogic offers a much needed solution for organizations in an emerging technology area of the world. We are pleased to be the exclusive provider of SchemaLogic's solutions in Australia and look forward to introducing and supporting SchemaLogic throughout the region."

For more information on SchemaLogic's Partner Advantage program, call 425.952.2133 or visit http://www.schemalogic.com/partners.asp.

About SchemaLogic

SchemaLogic is the global leader in providing Business Semantics Management (BSM) solutions for Global 5000 enterprises. Our solution provides a framework that enables companies to model the structures and relationships of business semantics that define corporate knowledge and content. We facilitate dynamic changes to the business semantic models through a Web-based governance and collaboration process that enables participation across organizational, corporate and industry boundaries.

SchemaLogic enables enterprises to increase competitive advantage and reduce operational costs through better information management, increased data quality and more agile, intelligent business decisions. SchemaLogic has licensed its solution to some of the best known and largest companies in the world.

For more information about SchemaLogic, call 1-425-885-9695 or visit www.schemalogic.com.
Black Duck Software Demonstrates Software License Compliance Platform at Embedded Systems Conference and Gartner Open Source Summit. Check it out:
BOSTON and PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of software compliance management solutions, today announced a series of activities at two trade shows scheduled for this week that will introduce the newest version of the Company's flagship product. In conjunction with a major new release of its protexIP(TM)/development system, Black Duck will demonstrate protexIP/development 4.0 at the Embedded Systems Conference, September 25-28 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, and at Gartner's Open Source Summit, September 27-29 at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Hotel & Spa in Phoenix.



At the Embedded Systems Conference, Black Duck will demonstrate in booth 520 to embedded software developers who face significant consequences, including production delays, for not establishing software compliance processes. Black Duck's solutions aid developers, managers, legal parties, and other third parties to manage the licenses governing software components within developed applications.

At the Gartner Open Source Summit, Black Duck (booth C) will discuss the benefits of a full enterprise software compliance management platform. Black Duck's solutions provide multiple interfaces, catered to various corporate parties that have an interest in software license compliance. For example, while legal counsel is given a specific view into license issues, different information is provided to software developers who only need to know immediate action items to rectify concerns.

"The reality of today's software development process demands a platform for addressing licensing compliance, and as long as that platform is in place, enterprises can benefit fully from the advantages of new methods of building applications from components," said Douglas Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software. "Given the strategic and day to day tactical importance of software compliance to companies, we are unveiling our new software version at two events that reach many roles within the enterprise--from developers all the way to c-level executives."

Yesterday, Black Duck announced protexIP/development 4.0 (See related release: "Black Duck Software Unveils Major New Version of Software Compliance Management System," September 25, 2006).

About the protexIP Suite

Black Duck's protexIP platform creates a new work environment that helps organizations effectively manage their increasingly complex software IP and licensing issues. By validating software contents, finding and addressing issues early in the development cycle or well in advance of a due diligence event, and verifying license compliance, the protexIP platform helps companies reduce business risks, complete software projects on time and on budget, and stay on track with their business plans.

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software(TM) is the leading provider of software compliance management solutions that help companies govern how software assets are created and managed. Black Duck's offerings help businesses take maximum advantage of open source software while at the same time ensure that they satisfy the obligations associated with the code they use. Black Duck's customer base includes enterprises, product developers, outsourcers, law firms and other organizations worldwide that are concerned with protection of software intellectual property. For more information about Black Duck, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Black Duck Software is a registered trademark, and the Black Duck logo, protexIP, and Know Your Code are trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
Uganda's Online Shopping Staggers. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COMPUTER illiteracy coupled with inadequate Internet connectivity is a major roadblock to web-based business, where consumers purchase products or services over the Internet.

Websites that are involved in online purchasing include Amazon, eBay, and Buy.com among others. However low Internet connectivity has increased the cost of doing this type of business in Uganda.

According to the 2005 annual African e-business survey, conducted by Pan African Consulting Group (PACG), a leading Management, Systems and technology consulting firm, entitled: "The African Establishment of E-shopping Habits Among Consumers" confirms that online shopping in Africa and Uganda in particular, is still a growing channel, with lack of access to internet and lack of computer knowledge making online advertising a nightmare.



"Ugandan consumers like to shop in stores, touch the merchandise and take it with them right at that moment," according to PACG findings.

"The Internet has not yet developed and has barriers to immediate consumer gratification."

PACG estimates that more than 80 per cent of Ugandan consumers have no computer knowledge and therefore, prefer street shopping to online purchasing. According to the report the figure cuts across the entire business community with a large number of merchants still hooked to the old habits. However, lack of mutual trust among trading parties is the other reason online business has not developed.

"I can't trust Internet business; I prefer face-to-face business and there is no bureaucracy at all," said Mr Musa Kasiita, the Managing Director of Basiita enterprise Ltd, a local company dealing in imported fabrics along Ben Kiwanuka Street. Mr Gad Murungi, the Materials and Logistics officer at Uchumi supermarket, says: "We don't offer online purchasing here and we haven't got customers asking for it."

PACG 's analysis, drawn from more than 10,000 professional respondents from 30 African countries including Uganda, says that although e-advertising is increasingly becoming a popular practice, online shopping in developing countries has not taken shape because of lack of knowledge and access to new information technology.

However, one of the main concerns associated with online purchasing is piracy. According to Mr Amos Ahimbisibwe, a Researcher at Uganda Consumer Protection Service Ltd (UCPS), a private company offering products and consumer information, many stories revolve around fears of credit card numbers being stolen online and often clients lose money to pirates involved in online scam.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media
Ugandan Exporters Cut Niche Into Neighbours' Markets. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) STRINGENT requirements for market access in the European Union have forced most Ugandan exporters to shift their attention to neighbouring markets underscoring the importance of regional trade.



Requirements like the Euregap, the need for Corporate Social Responsibility, environmental consciousness, high costs of transportation including air freight and security surcharges have forced exporters to exploit less stringent market like the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa). The move has seen African regional markets become increasingly competitive compared to the lucrative European market.

"People have begun to understand the benefits of trading with the next-door neighbour especially as market access conditionalities for trading with stiffer markets like the EU continue to bite," Ms Florence Kata, the Executive Director of the Uganda Exports Promotions Board, said in an interview with Business Power last week.

According to UEPB records, the EAC as a component of Comesa has been running neck-to-neck with the EU in market share, once Uganda's leading export market.

In 2004, Comesa commanded 26 per cent of the total $653 million (Shs1.1 trillion) export earnings and EU led with 27 per cent. In 2005, Comesa and the EU both stood at 31 per cent each of the total $812 million (Shs1.4 trillion) export earnings for Uganda.

With over 300 million people, the regional trade could spur much needed growth in the form of increased trade returns, job creation, support for Small and Medium scale Enterprise and the branding of products as East African, especially in the central, eastern and southern Africa, a region with the most economic hardships in the world.

"We are working to see that EAC positions itself as a single unit against the rest of the markets.

The initiative that we are having in place is to try to identify and standardise to some degree a range of export products," Kata said.

To achieve this, the East Africa trade promotion agencies are soon launching an EA export.com e-commerce portal, where they have agreed as member countries to select products, which can compete favourably in other bigger markets like the EU.

Kata said that they have also embarked on training trainers who will train producers in selected sectors.

"We want a scenario when you get a fish that is coming from EA, it generally has the same characteristics and properly packaged. Even at the Bureau of Standards we have harmonisation of standards at the region level," she said.

A further effort in Uganda, said Kata, is to establish an export school - the Uganda Export Development Centre - to equip exporters with market skills that are internationally recognised.

The Dutch and the Japanese governments have been in the forefront in funding training for export purposes. Kata said that regional security, however, must be sustainable for any meaningful regional trade to prevail. Political stability in the DR Congo, Southern Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda would boost regional trade as more people would begin to move freely from one country to another.

Government's role

Government has played a key role through several interventions to improve production, productivity, marketing, trade and encourage value addition and a total fund of Shs9 billion (Bonabagaggawale) has been set aside in the 2006/7 financial year to cater for these needs.

These strategic actions will be focused on the needs of the household using the sub-county as the operational center for delivery of the respective programmes.

The strategy will be implemented by deliberately engaging more households in gainful production enterprise by re-orienting the role of sub-county chiefs and production personnel at the Sub-county level to undertake community mobilisation.

"We in exports believe when you have organised production today, it should be benchmarked against international standards, so if you are going to produce your potato or pineapple, organise the poor people that you seek to become rich to produce a pineapple that is internationally saleable and therefore locally consumable.

So we shall use the domestic market just as a stake towards internationalising of the market. In that process you are creating a framework for a massive growth towards an export led economic," Kata explains.

Research is the other initiative of intervention that has been put in place by agencies like UEPB, NAADS.

Research is increasing and a lot is happening between Makerere University and the Uganda Industrial Research Institute in terms of being their scientific center for helping the country beginning to add value, importing technology prototypes and customise them at the local level.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media
Cutting Advises On Interest Rates. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The banking industry has come under attack for not addressing the prohibitively high interests rates, while continuing to line their pockets with multibillion-shilling profits. Mr David Cutting, CEO Standard Chartered Bank, in this interview with Business Power's Muhereza Kyamutetera elaborates on why the rates are high and the challenges he faces as a baker.



Excerpts:

Standard Chartered Bank has just announced impressive half-year results across Africa. What is the energy behind this good performance?

Our bank is represented in twelve countries in Africa. The results we have just announced for the half-year for our African operations were very strong and we are very proud of it. Our operating income is up by 24 per cent to $315 million, operating profit before taxes of went up by 203 per cent to $91 million.

Wholesale banking system grew by over 600 per cent while consumer business grew by 19 per cent. In other words, all the major components of our business across Africa grew significantly, driven by our Nigerian, Zambian, Ghanaian and Kenyan operations.

I should also say that Uganda's performance, compared to the size and current state of our economy, did well. It is difficult to compare our Ugandan operations with our other businesses worldwide but there are of course standards by which our functional businesses are measured and benchmarked and in this regard, we compare very well.

Standard Chartered are the only international Bank in Africa with a significant presence both here as well as in Asia and the Middle East, which makes us well placed to support emerging trade between Asia, China and Africa.

The final point on that would be to say that we compare with all the rest of the bank in the sense that the functional aspects of our business is that its consumer banking, whole sale banking and the benchmark that we use to compare are the same so when you use those benchmarks, Uganda stands out as everybody else.

The bank has also manifested an interest in Small Medium Enterprise banking in its portfolio in Uganda. Why is that so and what impact does it have on the bank's business and the economy as a whole?

Standard Chartered Bank is enthusiastic about SME [Small Medium Enterprise] banking and this has manifested itself in the attention we have given to that market over the last one-year.

We have re-branded the business that we used to call business financial services and we now use the term SME banking, mainly to create consistence in use of the term across all our markets but also make our interests so clear so that people know what you are talking about.

Recently we announced a commercial mortgage product that was designed specifically for this small and medium enterprise sector and the idea here is to show that we are willing to support small business.

Collectively, we believe that small businesses drive this economy in the private sector and have the potential to make a very significant on sustainable development. The challenge I think is that small and medium enterprises vary in size, sophistication and the quality of management and that is the challenge that banks have in terms of how they are going to support them.

The ones that are most sophisticated and have the best management will probably get the best financial support. What I can say is that as the one of the oldest and biggest banks, the market should expect a lot from us both in terms of new products and back up promotional activities.

As SCBU in particular and the industry in general, how have you been affected by the power shortage?

The banking industry has suffered the same inconvenience that the rest of the players in the economy have suffered. We have experienced increased costs and inconvenience.

As Standard Chartered we have put in place measures to ensure that we can still conduct our business with minimum disruption and inconvenience to our customers but the challenge that the industry has as a whole importantly is to effectively balance the need to support customers in a crisis while at the same time being able to manage the increased risks in the businesses of our clients posed by the energy crisis.

That is the equation that we are balancing now. People have had to cut down production time and are able to carry forward the cost of that production in the price that they offer customers. Some of our customers have had negative impacts on their business. While we want to be supportive of them, we still have to be careful of a risk of continuing to support a company that might be going down.

As an industry, are there any changes especially in your clients banking habits that can be linked to power shortages?

Well, I can't speak for other banks. We have done what we've called a stress test and that is portfolio review of our customers. That is to help us understand how their businesses are doing.

We have found there are some customers that we feel, we have to watch more carefully. There are also other customers that we may decide to put a sealing on how much credit they get exposed to. However, we haven't seen customers whom we are worried that they are going to go out of business but we are watching very carefully.

Despite the competition in the industry, interest rates have not come down significantly for a long time. This issue has been very thorny and at one time the president blamed the banks for not doing enough to deal with this problem. Why do rates continue to be high?

Let me first say that interest rates is a naturally thorny subject. Investors want to maximise their returns and borrowers want the rates to be as low as possible. Banks and other providers of credit are in the middle of that discussion because the challenge is the balance between risk and rewards. There is a lot of emotion in this debate because the higher the interest rates are, the costlier it is to run businesses.

But I think the debate will be less thorny if banks are better understood and our role in mobilisation of funds and costs involved appreciated, then operating costs and the premium that is added to the interest rate by a bank to reflect the risk of the borrower. When you add all those things together, that determines the interest rate but I think most people don't look at it by segmenting those components.

The public should understand how these components are put together and that is when they will be able to have a better appreciation of why interest rates are as high as they are.

I should also add that the actual interest rate charged is customer and situation specific so the interest rate offered to you would be different to the one offered to another person because the risk provided is different. So whereas you may have started in the same place in terms of the mobilisation cost, it is the risk profile that differentiates the price.

Banks in Uganda are making gigantic profits which presents a bit of a mismatch between the difficult operating environment you are painting. There is a feeling that banks are all about their shareholders and not the customer. What do you have to say about this?

I think there is a perception that banks are making unreasonable profits, which should also be put in context. If you for example look at Standard Chartered Bank's results in 2005, we reported a 34 per cent decline in our trading profit. It was actually the worst performances in the industry in terms of the earlier performances and we explained that to the public.

When I look at how this year has gone and all the things I have just told you about.

We don't believe we are performing significantly better than our customers. If our customers are not doing well, we can't do well.

Ofcourse, there is a difference of opinion of how much we should get for the risk that we take and that is a subjective discussion.

Some people will say, 'you are taking too much'. I think each bank has the right to price the margin that is acceptable given the risk that is taken and also, the operating cost of each bank is different.

As SCBU, we don't think that our profit margins are unreasonable. We think that when you consider pricing all the costs of operating and particular in a good environment like ours and then consider the high risk of lending in this market, I think our margins are reasonable.

What causes the high risk of lending?

There are a couple of reasons but the major one is that there is no national identity card, therefore there's high risk in identifying people.

We don't have a credit reference bureau. One is coming soon but at the moment, the data that is available on the extent of indebtedness for individuals is not accurate because we depend on people's personal disclosure and not everybody tells the truth.

When the national identity card project is finished and the credit reference bureau comes into operation there will be reduced risk and this might influence interest rates where the premium associated with risk can probably go down because we will now be dealing with more certain information.

The financial services sector is very prone to fraud. How serious is it here?

I can't give you an accurate figure for the industry and I won't certainly give you a figure for Standard Chartered but I would say that the numbers are going up.

There are higher incidences of fraud and it is a concern for the industry. It's one of the highest risks for industry, particularly cheque fraud.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media
Country's Sap Among the Best in the World. Check it out:
(The Nation (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The opening of a commercial aloe processing factory in Baringo this month removes the trade from just a few well-connected people to hundreds of local farmers.

Trade in aloe was banned through a presidential decree and listing on appendix (II) of CITES 17 years ago. But an estimated 300 tonnes of the plant extract are still exported illegally from the country every year.

"This ends up in South Africa where it is re-packaged and re-exported to Europe, Asia and North America," says Kenya Forestry Research Institute's head of the Biospecting and Intellectual Property Coordinator, Dr Kavaka Watai.

The black market - a thriving multi-million shilling trade - has been going on for decades, complete with its own chain of producers, middlemen, transporters and exporters, but who disguise their products as natural gum.

The ban was, however, never gazetted to give it legal teeth. In the absence of this, punishment for those caught trading in aloe products (usually exported as boiled bitters or crystals) was confiscation of the items.

But the worst impact has been discouraging investors and farmers who, lucrative as the aloe-based cosmetics industry is, have shied away from putting their resources in it due to CITES restrictions and lack of regulations.

The global demand for aloe gum is estimated at over 1,000 tonnes. Kenya's informal trade exports 300 tonnes a year, while South Africa produces 600 tonnes and Venezuela and India about 100 tonnes. Mr Watai says the country can produce 1,600 tonnes.



"The global demand for aloe gel is estimated at $80 million but trade in derived products is estimated at $110 billion. We may not earn all this money but it will contribute to poverty reduction and wealth creation, especially in the arid regions."

Three years ago, a lobby - Kenya Aloe Working Group (KAWG) - comprising researchers, farmers and State agencies like Kefri, National Museums of Kenya and regulator KWS, was formed to promote domestic propagation of commercial aloes.

So far, aloe nurseries and plantations have been established in Baringo, Laikipia, Taita Taveta and West Pokot by individuals, communities and institutions like Kefri and Nature Kenya.

KWS has proposed to set up 10 pilot utilisation blocks in areas with adequate densities of aloes, especially in Laikipia, Isiolo, Marsabit, Samburu, Wajir and West Pokot where controlled non-detrimental harvesting can be undertaken as an incentive to communities to conserve their range lands.

The beauty of aloe herbs is that one plant can be harvested several times over a long period.

The idea, says Mr Fred Kihara, chairman of the Kenya Aloe Working Group, is to have a thriving market selling local aloes as a brand name to compete with exotic ones like Aloe Vera, Aloe Barbadensis and Aloe Ferox.

Some 57 species of aloe, known locally as thukurui (Gikuyu), sukuroi (Maasai), subri (Somali), among others, grow naturally in Kenya, mostly in semi-arid areas. Some of the species (specifically Aloe Turkanenis and Aloe Secundiflora) have been found to possess similar chemical composition to Aloe Vera - the most successfully commercialised species.

Although Aloe Vera-based gums have traditionally been sold as having a higher content of the active ingredient, aloin, studies have since shown the Kenyan species (Aloe Secundiflora and Aloe Turkanensis) have comparable aloin content. Indeed, the Kenyan gums have higher contents of other ingredients - aloe resin, aloesin and aloenin - used in cosmetics industries.

The new factory, Baringo Aloe Bio-enterprise, is in an area estimated to have over two million commercial indigenous wild aloes, namely Aloe Secundflora and Aloe Turkanensis, which are the main source of commercial aloe bitter gum in Kenya.

Early this year, KWS released guidelines on harvesting, licensing, trading and exploitation of aloe in a sustainable way.

Aloe extracts are used in the manufactures of drugs, cosmetics and a health drink produced by Golden Products in Southern Africa (Golden Life Aloe Vera-plus).

Aloe has been used throughout the ages to cure headaches, stomach upsets and many other ailments. In Kenya, it is traditionally used to treat burns and cuts, acne and skin disorder, stomach upsets, hair loss and skin ailments.

Doctors rediscovered aloe vera in the 1930s, when it was found to heal radiation burns due to X-rays, after other methods met with little success. It did the same for atomic fallout victims a decade later, following the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings.

The extract is also used to give trauma victims the fluid they need to stay alive until they can get blood transfusion. These include soldiers wounded on the battlefield and who have lost several pints of blood - they can be injected with a small amount of extract from aloe vera. The extract quickly diffuses through the bloodstream and multiplies the effectiveness of the blood remaining in the system.

Aloe vera extract is now part of First Aid medical products being marketed to the U.S military for precisely this purpose.

Scientists have also been looking at the extract's ability to treat internal inflammatory diseases like irritable bowel syndrome.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 The Nation (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Lenovo Debuts Fleet of Intel Core 2 Duo ThinkCentre Desktop PCs. Check it out:
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Lenovo today introduced several new desktop PCs including the new ThinkCentre M55p with Intel(R) vPro(TM) technology, which combines the industry's most advanced PC processing features with rock-solid design, functionality and reliability. The new M55p is part of two lines of ThinkCentre desktops that, for the first time, offer the Intel Core(TM) 2 Duo processor, and provide enterprise users with high performance, enhanced security features and automation tools designed to help IT staff remotely manage systems.



The two lines of Core 2 Duo-enabled ThinkCentre desktops include the M55p, M55, M55e, A55 and A53 models and offer enterprises maximum choice for processor technology, graphics and form factors and the lowest total cost of ownership. The ThinkCentre M and A Series desktops are built for the way IT managers work and offer platform stability, industry-leading service and support and a common software image for easy fleet management.

To further enhance user experience, the new desktops are preloaded with ThinkVantage Technologies, a suite of software tools that help maintain user productivity and reduce costly and time consuming calls to the help desk. ImageUltra Builder and ThinkVantage System Migration Assistant make rollouts simpler and more efficient for IT departments. ThinkVantage Productivity Center guides the user to a host of information and tools to help set up, understand, maintain, and enhance their ThinkCentre desktop. All ThinkCentre M and A series desktops also feature ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery to help recover from crashes, quickly and easily.

"Today's enterprise customers want the best performance but not at the expense of security and reliability," said Tom Tobul, executive director, global desktop marketing, Lenovo. "Our new ThinkCentre desktops with ThinkVantage Technologies offer IT managers image stability along with leading security and manageability tools, while end users benefit from improved productivity. Lenovo designs the best-engineered PCs to support day-to-day business, and customers will find peace of mind knowing their investment will support the operating systems and applications of today and tomorrow."

The performance model of the ThinkCentre M Series line - the M55p - features Intel's vPro platform, which utilizes Intel's Active Management Technology and Intel Virtualization Technology to provide an advanced level of remote PC management. The M55p with vPro technology optimizes the functionality of ThinkVantage Technologies to allow IT managers to remotely access and inventory PCs even if the systems are powered down, or if the operating system is not responding. This new software helps empower businesses to take full advantage of managing their ThinkCentre desktops, with immediate system updates and tracking across entire PC fleets.

ThinkCentre M Series desktops also feature the ThinkVantage Client Security Solution, an additional layer of security that helps protect vital company security information like passwords, encryption keys and electronic credentials. Rescue and Recovery with Antidote Delivery Manager allows IT staff to rapidly deploy security updates, even to systems that are powered down.

All ThinkCentre M and A Series desktops offer customers a choice of Intel's Core 2 Duo, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron D processors. Toolless-entry drives, adapter cards and steel chassis further enhance the simplicity of the ThinkCentre M and A Series desktops by allowing users to easily access components for quick repairs or upgrades. Both lines are Microsoft Vista capable and designed to support today's and tomorrow's software for flexible PC solutions that can evolve over time.

Pricing and Availability

The new ThinkCentre M and A Series will be available beginning September 26th 2006 via www.lenovo.com and select Lenovo business partners. Prices for M Series models start at $749. Prices for the A Series start at $379.

About Lenovo Group Ltd.

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is dedicated to building the world's best engineered personal computers. Lenovo's business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group's acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable high-quality, secure, and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com
New leaf, open season at Tribune. Check it out:
(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CHICAGO _ The pivotal board meeting held last Thursday on the hushed 24th floor of Chicago's Tribune Tower signaled the end of a summer of conflict between Tribune Co. and its largest shareholder, California's Chandler family.



But it also marked the beginning of a new era at the 159-year-old media enterprise. Tribune, one of Chicago's oldest and most iconic companies, will likely never be the same.

Besieged for months by the Chandlers and then by a growing list of polite but determined major shareholders like Chicago's Ariel Capital, Tribune Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis FitzSimons loosened his hold on the company and set in motion a process to dismantle it.

Over the next three months, management will evaluate restructuring options and present the board with a recommendation. But a committee of independent directors with its own set of advisers will oversee that effort and ultimately decide what gets done.

The idea, said one major investor, is to give comfort to shareholders who had seen their stock drop like a rock for more than two years before the recent restructuring talk turned it upward.

"It's analogous to a special prosecutor," said Brian Rogers, chief investment officer for T. Rowe Price, which owns the third-largest block of Tribune shares. "You'll have a handful of directors that will take a real hard look at this without management's involvement, and that's a positive."

Sources with knowledge of the company's thinking say management's favored solution would be to spin off many of Tribune's 23 television stations in a tax-advantaged transaction, unload several of the smaller papers and take the rest of the company private in a leveraged buyout.

One way to lower taxes in such a deal, said an executive at another media company, would be to take some or all of Tribune's $4.9 billion in corporate debt and put it into the television transaction, thereby reducing the taxable gain. That would have the added benefit of unburdening the balance sheet of the remaining company so it could support the debt required for a buyout of the public shareholders _ presumably including the Chandlers, who currently own a 19.6 percent stake in the company.

Analysts vary in their estimates of what it would cost per share to complete a buyout. But they ranged from $37 to more than $40. Tribune stock is already running in anticipation of a breakup. It opened at $33.15 on Tuesday.

Whether Tribune can get a deal done during such a dismal time in the local media business is hard to predict, analysts said. They noted that buyers for local TV station groups aren't plentiful. And sliding circulation and ad revenue make it difficult to determine how much newspaper assets are worth and how much debt they can support.

Hale Holden, a fixed-income analyst at Barclays Capital Research, points out that Tribune is already trading near the multiple of cash flow paid by McClatchy Co. for Knight Ridder Inc. earlier this year.

Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert said in a report Friday that the likelihood of a leveraged buyout was "low." He expects a smattering of assets sales, including the TV stations, instead.

Others, however, said there's so much private equity money sloshing around the market chasing deals that finding interest, even at a relatively high price, might not be so difficult.

Noting that Texas Pacific Group recently funded a $1 billion deal for the low-growth consumer packaging division of Smurfit Stone Container Corp., investment banker Jeff Golman, vice chairman of Chicago's Mesirow Financial, said, "We're seeing money go into deals in companies that are not experiencing significant growth. I don't think that's an impediment to getting a deal done."

A leveraged buyout of this sort would likely require both bank debt and private equity. And one executive at a major private equity firm said alliances between firms interested in bidding would be forming over the next couple of weeks.

Chicago's Madison Dearborn is widely expected to get involved, partly because it has shown plenty of interest in media companies in the past and partly because former Tribune Chairman John Madigan is a special partner there.

This private equity executive said other likely suspects are Blackstone Group, Providence Equity Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., among others.

Tribune executives have expressed interest in keeping TV stations in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and maintaining their grip on the major papers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. They've also insisted the Chicago Cubs are not for sale.

That may change as FitzSimons evaluates his options. He stated that "everything is on the table," after Thursday's board meeting

Several sources confirmed that the company has already evaluated selling its papers in Connecticut, including the venerable Hartford Courant, as well as one in Allentown, Pa. The company discussed selling the papers to MediaNews Group Inc., the private company run by William Dean Singleton, but talks are not active, said a source with knowledge of the relationship.

Tribune would not comment.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

One Tribune executive said the company may have to content itself with selling some assets and "toughing it out as a public company." But there's plenty of appeal in a buyout scenario for Tribune management.

For one thing, going private would allow the company to run its business without interference from Wall Street. The Chandlers would get bought out along with the rest of the public shareholders and the pressure would be reduced for producing quarter after quarter of earnings growth. Instead, management would be responsible for paying banks interest and principal and giving private equity players an adequate exit strategy after a number of years.

Those are hardly easy requirements. But with newspaper profit margins in the 20 percent to 30 percent range, there might be ample cash to keep up with debt service, said several industry analysts and investment bankers.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

One thing that's clear, however: Tribune isn't likely to escape the kinds of pressures that led to the recent mutinous blow-up at the Los Angeles Times, the company's biggest revenue generator. Under the gun from Chicago for months to cut jobs, Times Editor Dean Baquet was quoted in his own paper saying he would not. His boss, publisher Jeffrey Johnson, supported him.

Going private might take off some of the quarterly pressure to produce profit growth. And private equity partners might be more easily persuaded than Wall Street to sacrifice margins in the short term to invest in long-term revenue producing initiatives, such as more-robust Internet sites.

But one Tribune executive said he has no illusions about what it would be like to partner with a private equity firm. The objective of going private is to boost shareholder value, not create a totem to the public interest like the St. Petersburg Times, which is controlled by the nonprofit Poynter Institute.

"Henry Kravis is not the Poynter Institute," this executive said, referring to the hard-boiled co-founder of the private equity powerhouse Kohlberg, Kravis.

"There would be big demands. It's a way to unlock value."

___

(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Copyright 2006 Chicago Tribune
Time Warner Telecom Announces Closing of Secondary Common Stock Offering By Principal Stockholders and Exercise of Over-Allotment Option. Check it out:
LITTLETON, Colo., Sept. 26 -- Time Warner Telecom Inc. , a leading provider of managed voice and data networking solutions for businesses, today announced that it has closed the previously announced underwritten secondary public offering of 43,544,158 shares of its Class A common stock, including 3,883,560 shares sold pursuant to the underwriters' exercise of their over-allotment option. The shares of Class A common stock were sold to the public at a price of $17.50 per share. The Company will not receive any cash proceeds from the sale of the shares in the offering.



The shares were sold by subsidiaries of Time Warner Inc. and by Advance Telecom Holdings Corporation and Newhouse Telecom Holdings Corporation, which prior to the offering were the Company's principal stockholders and held all of the shares of the Company's Class B common stock. In connection with the offering, all of the Class B common stock was converted into Class A common stock, and the Company no longer has any shares of Class B common stock outstanding.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Lehman Brothers Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. are joint bookrunning managers. Interested parties may obtain a written prospectus from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10020.

The Company has filed a registration statement on Form S-3 (File No. 333-132504) (including a prospectus) with the SEC for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement, the prospectus supplement for this offering and other documents the Company has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the Company and this offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC Web site at http://www.sec.gov/. Alternatively, the Company, any underwriter or any dealer participating in the offering will arrange to send you the prospectus and related prospectus supplement if you request it by calling toll-free 1-800-503-4611.

About Time Warner Telecom
Time Warner Telecom Inc., headquartered in Littleton, Colo., provides managed network services, specializing in Ethernet and transport data networking, Internet access, local and long distance voice, VoIP and security, to enterprise organizations and communications services companies throughout the U.S. As a leading provider of integrated and converged network solutions, Time Warner Telecom delivers customers overall economic value, quality, service, and improved business productivity. Please visit http://www.twtelecom.com/ for more information.

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts may be considered forward-looking statements as that item is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Many of these risks and uncertainties cannot be predicted with accuracy and some might not even be anticipated. Some of the factors that could significantly impact the forward-looking statements in this press release are discussed in the prospectus supplement for this offering and in our reports filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement is qualified by reference to these risks and factors. These risks and factors are not exclusive, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release. Additional information regarding these and other factors may be contained in the Company's SEC filings, including without limitation, the Company's Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2005. You may obtain the Company's filings for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov/ or by visiting the Company's website at http://www.twtelecom.com/.

Time Warner Telecom Inc.

CONTACT: Investor Relations, Carole Curtin, +1-303-566-1000,[email protected], or Media Relations, Bob Meldrum, +1-303-566-1354,[email protected], both of Time Warner Telecom Inc.

Web site: http://www.twtelecom.com/
Paradigms, principles, practices. Check it out:
(Manila Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) People are our only remaining source of competitive advantage as a country. Most of our other natural resources--forests, marine life, minerals, etc.--are either gone or are seriously imperiled due to years, nay, centuries of abuse and neglect. Not only are people our last hope for deliverance, people are also the key to ensuring that our other sources of national competitiveness are regained, nurtured, and restored to tip-top shape, if not for ourselves, then for the sake of the future generations.



Anyone who needs further convincing about the critical and central role of people in the country's long-term viability need only to picture in his mind a doomsday scenario: Imagine what will happen if all Filipino workers overseas are sent home. They are the so-called new heroes because, to be candid about it, they are the ones propping up the economy and without them this whole country could have gone belly up a long time ago. It is not technology or financial capital that is keeping bankruptcy at bay, it is people-- and most of them are underemployed, underpaid and poorly managed.

We've known for quite some time now that people will continue to be our main "export," and yet isn't it tragic that we still have to come up with an integrated national manpower development plan for our country and our people? One would have thought that a strategic blueprint on how we intend to leverage and harness our seeming inherent gifts as a people should have been implemented by now. But, nope, we insist on focusing our energies and spending more money on projects with dubious significance and value mainly because they enhance the image of the powers-that-be in this country.

For sometime now, people managers in this country, through the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines, have been advocating the need to craft a human resource agenda for the Philippines. It has been a lonely uphill struggle. But some legislators have finally gotten the message and there are now pending bills in both Houses that support the creation of an integrated strategic development plan for the country's human resources. It's about time.

This is a relief because the truth is, most of our leaders merely pay lip service to the phrase "people are our best asset." It sounds good and makes them look good. Unfortunately, we need more than empty statements and false promises. What we need are deliberate and earnest efforts to invest in people management and development, not out of social guilt or for public relations purposes, but because it makes for good business.

There are many successful stories about people management and development practices that have produced certain desired outcomes such as profitability, growth, sustainability and even enhanced image. The problem is that there has been little effort to document these stories in the past.

Well, not anymore. This year, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, PMAP has put together a book featuring 14 success stories in people management and development. The book is entitled People Management in the Philippines: Real Stories of Excellence. The book will be officially launched today, 4 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza, Ortigas Center, immediately after the opening ceremonies of PMAP's annual conference.

The 14 stories of excellence that are showcased in the book are arranged according to three levels: paradigms, principles and practices.

The first level, paradigms, features three stories, each one anchored on a unique model in people management. All three stories are heartwarming because they prove that putting people at the center of the enterprise works. Bangko Kabayan, a rural bank in Pampanga, validates that spirituality, business objectives, and people management and development can be mutually inclusive concepts. Moog, a multiawarded manufacturing company based in Baguio (they manufacture highly sensitive aviation parts), uses a humanistic model. At Moog, pagkamakatao (value for people) defines the essence of their existence and their business is thus integrated into their employee's pagkatao or personhood. On the other hand, Pfizer Philippines entrusts the future of their company fully in the hands of their employees, who are empowered to strive for excellence. For Pfizer, being known as an employer of choice, is a critical business strategy.

The stories in the second level, principles, represent a wide range of beliefs and frameworks that drive people management and development in the featured organizations. The stories in this level provide a rich tapestry of experiences, each one bringing a special color, a unique touch, a distinctive philosophy. Together, they prove that engaging hearts and minds of employees is a daunting but truly rewarding passion. And what is more, it produces wonderful results, as the stories show.

The collection of stories include those of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (Community of Learners Brings Success), Del Monte Philippines (Prioritizing Employee Welfare), eTelecare (MbO: Management by Ownership), Globe Telecoms (Empowering Employees), Lafarge (People as Drivers of Performance), Smart Telecommunications (People as Business Partners) and Unilab (Bayanihan).

The third level, practices, showcase four specific examples of successful implementation of human resource technologies. The stories in this section highlight the convergence of both the heart and mind of the human resource management function--that HRM is a science, but in its essence, it is still about people. The success stories of Amkor, Manila Water, Petron and Philips illustrate that successful HRM programs are those that recognize the primacy of people as drivers of business and not the other way around. It is human talent that creates and nurtures the business.

An article by renowned HRM guru Sonny Coloma caps the stories. The book was edited by Gerardo Cabochan Jr. and is a project of PMAP's 50th anniversary committee chaired by Grace Abella-Zata. The book is available through PMAP.

And while we are talking about people management and development, PMAP's annual conference opens today and will culminate on Friday with a black-tie gala night to celebrate the association's golden anniversary.

Copyright 2006 Manila Standard. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
SPF SELLS 20.2% STAKE IN SKVIRSKY BAKERY FOR UAH 1.24M. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) on September 7 sold at Kyiv International Stock Exchange a 20.218% stake in OJSC Skvirsky bakery in Kyiv region for UAH 1.242 million, the SPF press service told Interfax- Ukraine on Friday. The press service said the stake was sold at a price of UAH 25 kopecks per stock. Skvirsky bakery processes grain and beans. In the summer 2006, the enterprise launched the new universal complex to produce oatmeal, which costs UAH 1.2 million. The production capacity of the line is 50 tonnes of oatmeal par day. According to the State Commission for Securities and Stock Market, as of June, the main stockholders of the enterprise were five individuals who owned 14.24%, 14.01%, 14.42%, 14.24%, 14.01% stakes each. The OJSC's statutory fund is UAH 6.144 million.



Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
SPF HAS NOT RECEIVED GOVERNMENT ORDER TO SUSPEND TENDER TO SELL. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) LUHANSKTEPLOVOZ, SAYS SPF HEAD The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) did not receive orders from the Ukrainian Cabinet to suspend a tender to sell a 76% stake in Luhansk- based Luhanskteplovoz holding company, SPF Head Valentyna Semeniuk said on Era-FM radio on Friday. She said that statements made by Vice-Premier Andriy Kliuyev during his visit to Russia that the privatization of the enterprise won't take place, and that a joint enterprise will be created on its basis, were his personal opinion. Moreover, Semeniuk said that the plan outlined by Kliuyev as impossible, as the tender to sell the state stake has already been announced and agreements on the confidentiality of information with buyers have already been signed. The cancellation of the tender could lead to a situation in which the potential buyers demanded compensation from the state, she said. Semeniuk also said that such statements could reduce the value of the stake, threaten the transparency of the tender and undermine trust in the state. Semeniuk said that if the tender is canceled, the fulfillment of the revenues plan from privatization would be under threat. As reported, on July 19, the fund announced an open auction to sell 76% of the shares of the open JSC Luhanskteplovoz holding. The starting price for the stock is UAH 292 million. The tender will be held on October 3. Luhanskteplovoz, Ukraine's monopoly manufacturer of mainline cargo diesel locomotives, ended 2005 with losses estimated at UAH 478,000. In 2004, the company was in the black with a UAH 207,000 profit. In 2005, the company's net revenues from sales fell by 3.4% year-on- year, to UAH 395.25 million, and the company's losses were estimated at UAH 478,000, while in 2004 the company saw UAH 207,000 in net profit. This year, the company is planning to increase production volumes by tentatively 10%. The company's statutory fund is UAH 54.796 million, with the face value of each of its shares being 25 kopecks.



Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Novell unveils Linux based virtualisation solution. Check it out:
(Corporate IT update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CORPORATE IT UPDATE-(C)1995-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Software provider Novell, Inc (Nasdaq: NOVL) announced on Monday (25 September) an enterprise Linux-based virtualisation solution built on Xen, optimized for Intel Virtualization Technology.

According to the company, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell running on Dual-Core Intel Xeon platforms will provide customers with a high-performing virtualisation solution that will enable them to host Linux environments without the need to modify the guest operating systems. In addition, Novell announced plans to offer enterprise support for virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, allowing Red Hat customers to migrate to Novell service and support while still running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a virtualized environment.



Novell will reportedly support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Intel Virtualization Technology, up through and including Level 3 (core engineering) support, meaning Novell will provide technical support for the Xen hypervisor if a customer uncovers an issue running a virtual instance of Red Hat Linux and that issue is not reproducible in a non-virtualized environment. If the customer runs a virtual SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 or 10 instance, Novell will offer Level 3 support for the host operating system, the Xen hypervisor and the guest operating system. Moreover, Intel and Novell will work together to fix all issues which are related to the hypervisor and Intel VT hardware.

Novell will begin a pilot programme in late October 2006. General availability of the solution is expected by the end of 2006. No pricing details were disclosed.

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
APEC economies urged to create favourable conditions for micro enterprises. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - APEC economies need to create favourable conditions for micro enterprises by simplifying administrative procedures and facilitating their accession to resources, especially financial resources by making minor loans available.



Speaking with reporters after the 7th APEC Micro Enterprises Sub-group (MESG) Meeting closed in Hanoi on Sept. 25, Nguyen Hoa Cuong, from the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Department for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development, said all the participants had agreed that APEC economies should help to strengthen cooperation among micro enterprises and related organisations.

They also emphasised the necessity of providing information technology (IT) and telecommunication training for the enterprises to help them to introduce their products on the Internet.

At the meeting, the participants praised the theme of "Strengthening Micro Enterprises' Capacity to Integrate into the Market", an initiative of Vietnam for regional micro enterprises' cooperation in 2006.

Nine APEC member economies, including Indonesia, Chile, China, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, and representatives from the APEC Women Leaders' Network delivered speeches in support of the theme.

Measures discussed at the meeting will be compiled for the Meeting of APEC Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Working Group, which will open on Sept. 26, Cuong added.

The delegates agreed to organise the 8th MESG meeting in Australia on March 4, 2007. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Vietnam: APEC micro enterprise sub-group meeting opens. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - Improving capacity of micro businesses in accessing the market was the theme of the 7th APEC Micro Enterprise Sub-group Meeting opening in Hanoi on Sept. 25.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Nguyen Van Trung, Director of the Department of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, spoke highly of the role played by micro businesses in generating jobs and reducing poverty.



In particular, Trung added, these enterprises have contributed to boosting trade and services among the Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) member economies.

Along with reviewing the implementation of projects funded by APEC and proposing new plans, delegates also discussed a number of topics, including creating a favourable business environment for micro enterprises, facilitating their accession to resources, and creating more business opportunities for them.

The conference was held within the framework of the upcoming APEC SME Ministerial Meeting slated for Sept. 28-29 in Hanoi. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
Las Vegas Review-Journal Real Estate column. Check it out:
(Las Vegas Review-Journal (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--TAHITI VILLAGE TIME SHARE PROJECT ENTERS NEW PHASE: Las Vegas-based time share developer Consolidated Resorts has started construction on the second phase of its $135 million Tahiti Village flagship property on Las Vegas Boulevard South, between the Las Vegas Beltway and Warm Springs Road.



The second phase will have 284 time share units in a 10-story tower, designed and decorated to the same standards of the 154 units in the $60 million first phase, Consolidated Chairman Michael Kaplan said. Martin-Harris is the general contractor.

When finished, the 1,083 units will generate an estimated $1.5 billion in sales, Kaplan said.

The 1,550-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condos come with a plasma-screen television. Units can be divided into two independent suites with the turn of a lock. Total living space will exceed 1 million square feet on the 27-acre site.

One of Tahiti Village's expected features is the quarter-mile "lazy river" that will take guests floating through the resort's inner courtyard, where they can enjoy the pool and Jacuzzi, Kaplan said.

Consolidated, founded in Hawaii in 1980, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The ASNY Corp., a privately held diversified investment company with headquarters in Las Vegas.

Kaplan said he will be announcing the location and preliminary details for the company's next master-planned time share resort in the coming months.

Consolidated has developed nine resorts in Hawaii and three in Las Vegas, including Club de Soleil and Tahiti on west Tropicana Avenue.

LOFTS FINISHED: Blue Heron has completed the second phase of construction at Stone Canyon luxury lofts at Buffalo Drive and Del Rey Avenue and all 23 units have been sold, principal Tommy Isola said. Dax Contracting was the general contractor. Prices started in the $600,000s, or about $200 a square foot, for units ranging from 3,400 to 3,900 square feet.

MEDICAL OFFICE: TWC Construction has received a new contract valued at $9.8 million for the Centennial Hills medical office building developed by Ensemble Real Estate Co. and Universal Health Realty Trust at 8560 North Durango Drive. Construction of the four-story, 100,000-square-foot structural steel building is scheduled for completion in third quarter 2007. The 3-acre project is close to the new hospital being built in the Centennial Hills area.

HENDERSON OFFICE: San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based commercial developer Mammoth Equities has finished a three-story, 58,000-square-foot office building in Henderson. The steel-framed Mammoth Professional Building is at 2470 St. Rose Parkway.

SALVATION ARMY: JVC Architects has been contracted to design a 5,000-square-foot chapel for the Salvation Army campus at 37 Owens St. The chapel will feature a bell wall, sanctuary, small prayer room and support area. Cost of the project is $1.4 million, and completion is scheduled for summer 2007.

TRANSACTIONS: Kevin Higgins and Garrett Toft of Voit Commercial Brokerage represented J&S Diesel in the sale of four acres at Decatur Boulevard and Diablo Drive to Heller Management Corp. for $4.45 million.

They also negotiated the sale of a 5,390-square-foot industrial building at 2612 Ables Lane to Enterprise Cabinets for $557,500.

Christina Roush, Charles Moore and Marlene Fujita of CB Richard Ellis represented Donahue Schriber Realty Group in the sale of a 188,000-square-foot retail building at Nellis Boulevard and Stewart Avenue to Sarofim Realty Advisors for $29.5 million.

Keith Spencer of CB represented Robert Russell in the sale of 12,133 square feet of industrial space at 4612 Industry Center Drive to Farmer Bros. Co. for $1.4 million.

MILLION-DOLLAR HOME SALES: Luxury Homes of Las Vegas reported the following million-dollar home sales last week:

--$1.1 million, 5,047 square feet, 6 bedroom, 6 bath, stone exterior, wet bar, family room, outdoor kitchen, putting green, Regency at The Lakes.

--$1.2 million, 3,888 square feet, 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom, Strip and mountain views, hardwood flooring, guard gated, two balconies in master bedroom, Christopher home, Summerlin.

--$1.35 million, 3,085 square feet, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 11th fairway location with Strip and mountain views, infinity pool, spa, barbecue, fire pit, Anthem Country Club.

--$1.6 million, 6,538 square feet, 6 bedroom, 5.5 bath, half acre, pool, waterfalls, swim-up bar, grotto cave, five-car garage, family room with wet bar, Henderson.

--$1.79 million, 5,664 square feet, 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath, guard gated, two family rooms, beach entry pool with slide and waterfall, cabana with fireplace, putting green, travertine floors, Summerlin.

--$1.94 million, 5,730 square feet, 4 bedroom, 4.5 bath, separate casita and guest house with views of golf course and lit mountain, balcony, four-car garage, Red Rock Country Club.

--$1.95 million, 5,071 square feet, 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath, Canyon Fairways home, exterior stone accents, custom driveway, travertine, office, surround sound system, Summerlin.

--$2.48 million, 7,135 square feet, 6 bedroom, 5.5 bath, basement with theater, balcony, pool, waterfall, spa and barbecue, Summerlin.

To see more of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.lvrj.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
B.C.-based Columbia Valley Credit Union Selects Open Solutions' Core Data Processing Technology. Check it out:
GLASTONBURY, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- Golden, B.C., Canada-based Columbia Valley Credit Union has selected Open Solutions Inc.'s(R) (NASDAQ: OPEN) core enterprise platform, The Complete Credit Union Solution(R), to meet its data processing and member service needs. Open Solutions is a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers across the United States, Canada and other international markets.



A long-time client of Open Solutions Canada, Columbia Valley Credit Union prides itself on "making a difference" in the community where it serves more than 5,000 members and manages more than $114 million (CAD) in assets. In its 20-year relationship with Open Solutions Canada, the credit union has frequently stepped up as an "early adopter" of Open Solutions Canada's technology. Over the years, it has been the first financial institution in Golden to offer ATM services, phone and Internet banking and imaged member statements. Earlier this year, Columbia Valley became the first of Open Solutions' Canadian financial institution clients to connect to the newest version of Open Solutions Canada's POSH switch.

Paul Pupo, Columbia Valley's general manager, said, "We are very pleased to continue the business relationship between our two organizations and look forward to a bright future with Open Solutions Canada as our technology partner. In the 20 years since we became a client, Open Solutions Canada has consistently provided us with the expertise, the tools, products and latest technology to allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition and add value to our members. Operationally, our credit union is a technology-driven organization and we are excited to have access to the people and wide array of technology products Open Solutions Canada offers. Our credit union's business strategy is simple: to operate efficiently, provide good service and give our employees the right technology tools to help them excel in their positions. We believe Open Solutions' core technology will help us to execute on this strategy and are looking forward to our migration to the new system."

Built on a single, centralized Oracle(R) relational database, The Complete Credit Union Solution's open architecture and member-centric platform is designed to help credit unions streamline both front and back office applications with a focus on improving member service.

"We are pleased Columbia Valley Credit Union has chosen The Complete Credit Union Solution as the technology platform to enable its continued growth and success," says Blair Goulet, president of Open Solutions Canada. "As the third credit union in British Columbia to announce its decision to migrate to our core data processing solution, Columbia Valley has once again demonstrated technology leadership in the interests of serving the unique needs of its members and community more effectively. This underscores our belief that any financial institution, regardless of size or geographic location, can take advantage of the flexibility inherent in Open Solutions' core technology to support its business strategies. Open Solutions Canada welcomes this opportunity to continue our long-standing business relationship with Columbia Valley Credit Union as its trusted technology partner."

Open Solutions Chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez, Jr., says: "In the nearly two years since Open Solutions entered the Canadian market, we have seen an increasing interest from the country's credit union market in our proven, advanced, open technology. Today, nearly one third of Canada's credit unions, spanning four provinces, are committed to Open Solutions' core enterprise solution and we are pleased to welcome Columbia Valley Credit Union to that group. We believe credit unions play a key role in the financial services industry and we are dedicated to providing institutions such as Columbia Valley with the technology tools they need to help them 'make a difference' in the community they serve."

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully featured strategic product platform that integrates core data processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting tools, imaging, digital documents, Check 21, interactive voice response, network services, Web hosting and design, and payment and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States and Canada to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service.

For more information about Open Solutions or its financial product line, contact Mickey Goldwasser by email at [email protected] by phone at 860.652.3153 or via fax at 860.652.3156. Visit Open Solutions' Internet site at www.opensolutions.com.

Open Solutions Inc. and The Complete Credit Union Solution are registered trademarks of Open Solutions Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 Open Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that state Open Solutions Inc.'s or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. All forward looking-statements are only as of the date of this press release and Open Solutions Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause Open Solutions Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For example, if we fail to adapt our products and services to changes in technology or in the marketplace, we could lose existing clients and be unable to attract new business. Factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, without limitation, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors affecting the banking and credit union industry and/or Open Solutions Inc.'s operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors set forth under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Open Solutions' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editors Note: The correct usage of the company name, Open Solutions Inc., is either referring to it as Open Solutions Inc. or Open Solutions. Open Solutions no longer uses the acronym of OSI to refer to the company.
Red Hat Reports Fiscal 2007 Second Quarter Results. Check it out:
RALEIGH, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter.

Total revenue for the quarter was $99.7 million, an increase of 52% from the year-ago quarter and 19% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $84.9 million, up 56% year-over-year and 19% sequentially. JBoss-related revenue of $7 million was at the top of management's previously provided guidance.



Net income for the quarter was $11.0 million or $0.05 per diluted share compared with $16.7 million or $0.09 per diluted share for the second quarter of the last fiscal year. Due to differences in the accounting treatment for taxes and stock compensation expense between fiscal 2006 and 2007, net income is not directly comparable between these periods. After adjusting for these accounting differences, non-GAAP adjusted net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2007 was $23.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share. This compares to non-GAAP adjusted net income of $17.7 million, or $0.09 per diluted share in the second quarter of the last fiscal year.

At quarter end, the company's total deferred revenue balance was $284.1 million, an increase of $29.4 million, or 12% when compared to the end of the last fiscal quarter.

Other highlights from the quarter included:

-- Quarterly gross margin improved to 84% from 82% in the year-ago period.

-- Red Hat Enterprise Linux OEM revenue grew 90% year-over-year.

-- Total cash and investments as of August 31, 2006 were $1.0 billion.

"The second quarter was one of intense focus on integrating our recent acquisitions in Argentina, Brazil, India and, of course, JBoss," stated Charlie Peters, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "We are pleased with the pace and progress of our integration work and believe that results in subsequent quarters will benefit from the investments in employee time and expense made in Q2. Revenue grew nicely and we expect the recent introduction of the Red Hat Application Stack will help continue that trend. We expect operating results and cash flow will improve in the second half of fiscal 2007 since much of the heavy integration work is behind us already."

"Our better than expected revenue and earnings per share speak to the ongoing demand for open source solutions that we continue to see worldwide," stated Dion Cornett, Vice President of Investor Relations. "Moreover, the particular strength we saw in hardware OEM revenue growth stands in stark contrast to the reported weakness experienced by server suppliers this past quarter. We feel this difference highlights the value Red Hat is able to provide that extends beyond mere box counts."

Additional information on Red Hat's reported results, including a reconciliation of the non-GAAP adjusted results, are included in the financial tables below.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices spanning the globe. CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat as the industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with applications, management and middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). Red Hat is accelerating the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, secure open source platform. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries.

              RED HAT, INC.
        CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
              (Unaudited)
       (In thousands - except per share amounts)
               Three Months Ended  Six Months Ended
               ------------------- -------------------
                Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,
                2006   2005   2006   2005
               ------------------- -------------------
Revenue:
 Subscriptions        $ 84,947 $ 54,327 $156,439 $103,568
 Training and services     14,726  11,391  27,237  22,930
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
  Total subscription,
  training and services
  revenue           99,673  65,718  183,676  126,498
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Cost of revenue:
 Subscriptions          7,386   5,003  13,382  10,836
 Training and services      9,034   6,589  16,484  13,384
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
  Total cost of subscription,
  training and services
  revenue           16,420  11,592  29,866  24,220
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Total gross profit       83,253  54,126  153,810  102,278
Operating expense:
Sales and marketing       37,807  20,478  68,308  40,793
Research and development    18,068  10,450  31,883  20,298
General and administrative   17,926  11,271  31,555  21,614
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
 Total operating expense    73,801  42,199  131,746  82,705
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Income from operations      9,452  11,927  22,064  19,573
Other income (expense), net    9,573   8,220  20,275  15,956
Interest expense         (1,490)  (1,556)  (2,974)  (3,122)
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Income before provision for
income taxes          17,535  18,591  39,365  32,407
Provision for income taxes    6,488   1,859  14,565   3,241
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Net income           $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Net income-diluted       $ 12,000 $ 18,079 $ 26,705 $ 31,889
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Net income per share:
Basic             $  0.06 $  0.09 $  0.13 $  0.16
Diluted            $  0.05 $  0.09 $  0.12 $  0.15
Weighted average shares
outstanding:
Basic             190,292  177,208  186,936  176,995
Diluted            219,940  208,583  217,348  207,894
Diluted net income per share
computation:
GAAP Net income, basic     $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
Interest expense on convertible
debentures, net of related
GAAP tax effects          464    654    927   1326
Amortization of debt issuance
costs, net of related GAAP tax
effects              489    693    978   1397
GAAP Net income, diluted    $ 12,000 $ 18,079 $ 26,705 $ 31,889
               ========= ========= ========= =========
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
          CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
              (In thousands)
                ASSETS
                        Aug 31,  February 28,
                        2006     2006
                       ----------- ------------
                       (unaudited)
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents          $ 568,181  $ 267,547
Investments in debt securities         269,775   537,324
Accounts receivable, net             70,346    59,792
Prepaid expenses and other current assets    27,859    16,576
                       ----------- ------------
 Total current assets             936,161   881,239
Property and equipment, net           40,055    35,822
Goodwill                    343,122    75,942
Identifiable intangibles, net          90,958    13,467
Investments in debt securities         196,002   272,669
Other assets, net                34,273    35,102
                       ----------- ------------
 Total assets                $1,640,571  $1,314,241
                       =========== ============
  LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable               $  7,642  $  5,627
Accrued expenses                 32,858    31,960
Deferred revenue                211,400   162,934
Other current obligations              493     401
                       ----------- ------------
 Total current liabilities           252,393   200,922
Deferred lease credits              5,418    4,994
Long term deferred revenue            72,709    60,554
Other long term obligations             89     213
Convertible debentures             570,000   570,000
Stockholders' equity:
Minority interest                   -     771
Common stock                     19      19
Additional paid-in capital           997,708   763,906
Deferred compensation                 -    (2,418)
Accumulated deficit              (127,199)  (152,113)
Treasury stock, at cost            (125,656)  (124,125)
Accumulated other comprehensive loss       (4,910)   (8,482)
                       ----------- ------------
 Total stockholders' equity          739,962   477,558
                       ----------- ------------
 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $1,640,571  $1,314,241
                       =========== ============
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
        CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
              (Unaudited)
              (In thousands)
              Three Months Ended   Six Months Ended
             --------------------- ---------------------
              Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,  Aug 31,
              2006    2005    2006    2005
             --------------------- ---------------------
Cash flows from operating
activities:
Net income         $ 11,047 $ 16,732 $ 24,800 $ 29,166
Adjustments to reconcile
net income to net cash
provided by operating
activities:
 Depreciation and
 amortization        6,754   3,751   11,098   7,298
 Deferred income taxes    4,092    (606)   9,502    (799)
 Share-based compensation
 expense           8,300   1,310   15,926   2,495
 Excess tax benefits from
 share-based payment
 arrangements         (740)     -   (2,875)     -
 Gain from repurchase of
 convertible debentures     -   (1,544)     -   (3,140)
 Provision for doubtful
 accounts           201     57    702    141
 Amortization of debt
 issuance costs        752    770   1,504   1,552
 Other             (12)    993    (289)   1,018
Changes in operating assets and
liabilities net of effects of
acquisitions:
 Accounts receivable     3,311   (9,837)   (181)  (9,241)
 Prepaid expenses and
 other current assets    (1,115)    615   (2,415)   (790)
 Accounts payable        399    735    509   (3,367)
 Accrued expenses      (1,707)   5,049    (157)   7,456
 Deferred revenue      12,623   27,760   38,079   50,246
 Other assets          (21)    (29)    53    325
 Net cash provided by
 operating activities    43,884   45,756   96,256   82,360
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash flows from investing
activities:
Purchase of investment
 securities          (112) (130,577)  (7,444) (139,177)
Proceeds from sales and
 maturities of investment
 securities         78,021   19,731  356,052  111,017
Acquisitions of
 businesses, net of cash
 acquired         (147,651)  (2,500) (149,562)  (2,500)
Purchase of other
 investments           -     -     -    (767)
Purchase of property and
 equipment          (5,107)  (4,716)  (8,985)  (7,988)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
 Net cash provided by
 (used in) investing
 activities        (74,849) (118,062)  190,061  (39,415)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash flows from financing
activities:
Excess tax benefits from
 share-based payment
 arrangements          740     -   2,875     -
Repurchase of convertible
 debentures            -  (18,091)     -  (26,301)
Structured stock
 repurchases           -     -     -   1,031
Net proceeds from issuance
 of common stock under
 Employee Stock Purchase
 Plan               -    770    306   1,497
Proceeds from exercise of
 common stock options     4,354   5,418   11,684   7,124
Purchase of treasury stock  (1,359)  (11,560)  (1,532)  (16,688)
Other financing         (31)    415    (31)    83
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
 Net cash provided by
 (used in) financing
 activities         3,704  (23,048)  13,302  (33,254)
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Effect of foreign currency
exchange rates on cash and
cash equivalents       (1,475)   (958)   1,015   (1,804)
Net increase in cash and
cash equivalents      (28,736)  (96,312)  300,634   7,887
Cash and cash equivalents
at beginning of the period 596,917  244,368  267,547  140,169
             ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Cash and cash equivalents
at end of period     $ 568,181 $ 148,056 $ 568,181 $ 148,056
             ========== ========== ========== ==========
Note: certain prior year amounts have been reclassified to conform
with current year presentation.


              RED HAT, INC.
NON CASH SHARE-BASED COMPENSATION AND RECONCILIATION OF GAAP RESULTS
          TO NON-GAAP ADJUSTED RESULTS
              (Unaudited)
       (In thousands - except per share amounts)
Non cash share-based compensation expense included in Consolidated
Statements of Operations:
                 Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
                 ------------------ -----------------
                 Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31,
                  2006   2005   2006   2005
                 ------------------ -----------------
Cost of revenue          $  539 $   - $ 1,049 $   -
Sales and marketing         2,455    19  4,572    31
Research and development      1,771    53  3,268   105
General and administration     3,535  1,238  7,037  2,359
                 --------- -------- -------- --------
Total stock based compensation
 expense             $ 8,300 $ 1,310 $15,926 $ 2,495
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Reconciliation of GAAP Results to non-GAAP
adjusted Results (for prior year
comparison purposes only)
                 Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
                 ------------------ -----------------
                 Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31, Aug 31,
                  2006   2005   2006   2005
                 ------------------ -----------------
GAAP Net income          $11,047 $16,732 $24,800 $29,166
GAAP Provision for income taxes   6,488  1,859  14,565  3,241
GAAP Income before provision for
income taxes           $17,535 $18,591 $39,365 $32,407
Add: Share-based compensation per
FAS 123R (Aug 06 only)       8,300  1,310  15,926  2,495
Deduct: Intrinsic value of stock
options per APB No. 25        (870) (1,310) (1,686) (2,495)
                 --------- --------------------------
Incremental non-cash share-based
 compensation expense        7,430    0  14,240    0
Non-GAAP adjusted income before
provision for income taxes    $24,965 $18,591 $53,605 $32,407
Non-GAAP cash provision for income
taxes               $ 1,248 $  930 $ 2,680 $ 1,620
                 --------- -------- -------- --------
Non-GAAP adjusted net income    $23,717 $17,661 $50,925 $30,787
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Non-GAAP adjusted net income-
diluted              $25,109 $19,083 $53,708 $33,661
                 ========= ======== ======== ========
Non-GAAP adjusted net income per
share:
Basic               $ 0.12 $ 0.10 $ 0.27 $ 0.17
Diluted              $ 0.11 $ 0.09 $ 0.25 $ 0.16
Non-GAAP diluted net income per
share computation:
Non-GAAP adjusted net income    $23,717 $17,661 $50,925 $30,787
Interest expense on convertible
debentures, net of related 5%
cash tax effects           677   691  1,354  1,400
Amortization of debt issuance
costs, net of related 5% cash tax
effects                715   731  1,429  1,474
Non-GAAP adjusted net income-
diluted              $25,109 $19,083 $53,708 $33,661
                 ========= ======== ======== ========

HickoryTech Approved to Provide Digital TV to City of Janesville. Check it out:
MANKATO, Minn., Sept. 26 -- HickoryTech Corporation announced that it has added Digital TV to the list of communications products and services available to the residents of Janesville.

The Janesville City Council overwhelmingly approved a cable television franchise agreement on Sept. 25, 2006 and Digital TV services will be available to the entire community beginning in the spring of 2007. Residents can subscribe to services on a stand-alone basis or as part of a money saving bundle including Digital TV, high-speed DSL, local telephone, and long distance all from one local company on one bill.



"We are excited that our community now has a value-based alternative when selecting entertainment services for their families," said Clinton Rogers, Janesville city administrator. "We are fortunate as a small community to have these new service options. As our city grows, HickoryTech continues to increase the quality of life for residents choosing to make their home in Janesville."

HickoryTech offers more than 200 channels in five package options that allow customers to select additional channels of their choice. Digital TV delivers a crystal-clear image and offers premium tier channels. Hispanic and sports tier channels are offered, in addition to HBO(R), Cinemax(R), Starz/Encore(R), Showtime(R), pay-per-view and commercial-free music programming.

"Our affordable alternative for TV service features exceptional digital picture quality unmatched by our competition and shows HickoryTech's commitment to bring value to our customers," said Damon Dutz, president of HickoryTech's Consumer Solutions Division. "We are pleased to provide attractive programming packages that also allow customers to reap the added benefit of discounts with our bundled suite of services."

HickoryTech offers Digital TV delivered with high-speed Internet over an advanced fiber neighborhood network and existing infrastructure. Unique to this service is the ability to display caller ID information directly on the TV screen.

Janesville will become the ninth community served by HickoryTech with the "triple-play" of voice, data and video services. Customers seeking additional information should contact HickoryTech by calling 866-HICKORY or by visiting the company's Web site at http://www.hickorytech.com/ .

About HickoryTech:
HickoryTech Corporation is a diversified communications company headquartered in Mankato, Minn., with approximately 480 employees in Minnesota and Iowa. In its 109th year of operation, HickoryTech offers a full array of telecommunications products and services to business and residential customers. The Telecom Sector offers local voice, long distance, Internet, Broadband services, Digital TV, and IP networking. The Enterprise Solutions Sector provides IP Telephony, call center management, and data network solutions. Enventis Telecom provides IP-based voice and data services and network solutions on a state wide SONET-based network. The Information Solutions Sector develops telecom and carrier access billing solutions. To learn more about HickoryTech Corporation, visit the company's Web site at http://www.hickorytech.com/ or call 1-866-HICKORY.

Certain statements included in this press release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the industry in which HickoryTech operates and management's beliefs and assumptions. The forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and probabilities. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they were made. Except as required by federal securities laws, HickoryTech undertakes no obligation to update any of its forward-looking statements for any reason.

HickoryTech Corporation

CONTACT: Paul Bertino, Director of Marketing & Product Management ofHickoryTech, +1-507-387-1889, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.hickorytech.com/
Colubris launches MAP-330 [Colubris Networks]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MultiService Access Point Delivers Always-On RF Surveillance,

Intrusion Detection and Prevention without Compromising Voice and Video Performance.

Colubris Networks, a leader in optimized wireless LAN (WLAN) switching systems, today introduced the MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP, the industrys first access point to protect WLANs with continuous security monitoring while simultaneously delivering high performance voice, video and data applications. It eliminates trade-offs between Quality-of-Service, performance and security that are inherent in competing WLAN switch offerings, and slashes costs by 50% compared to overlay security solutions.



The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP is part of the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), an optimized WLAN switching system that provides high performance client access with integrated best-of-breed RF security. The Integrated Sensor/AP uses a unique dual IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio design. It dedicates one of its radios to continuous monitoring and protection of the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands, while the second radio delivers full bandwidth network access services for client devices. This design enables the Integrated Sensor/AP to deliver full spectrum performance and consistent QoS for real-time applications, such as voice over WLAN, without compromising security.

The Integrated Sensor/AP eliminates the hard choices facing network managers today. They can deploy competing WLAN switch offerings, which use a single IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio to perform intermittent security scans, interrupting the flow of client traffic and reducing QoS with this time slicing technique. Alternatively, they can deploy a separate overlay network of dedicated security sensors, which doubles equipment costs and substantially increases ongoing maintenance expenses.

"The time-slicing technique for security monitoring builds an obstacle into enterprise migration to wireless voice services, notes Steven J. Schuchart Jr. Senior Analyst with Current Analysis. Security conscious network managers address this challenge by deploying dedicated sensors, but this adds to costs and complexity. Colubris addresses each of these challenges with the MAP-330, and is delivering a solid foundation that lets enterprises realize VoWLAN's compelling story."

The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP secures the airwaves by combining strong WLAN client authentication and encryption with continuous RF intrusion detection and prevention. Together with the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), the Integrated Sensor/AP supports full-frequency scans, including out-of-region frequencies, and detects over 140 different WLAN events, threats and vulnerabilities. It accurately detects and classifies threats without the false positives that are common in competing systems. The Integrated Sensor/AP is designed for high performance, with the capacity to simultaneously scan and block up to twenty attacks.

Colubris is increasingly recognized as the future proof enterprise WLAN system of choice for advanced, reliable and secure performance that supports growing user populations and expanding applications, said Roger Sands, vice president of engineering for Colubris Networks. The MAP 330 Integrated Sensor/AP adds best-of-breed RF security to complement our industry-leading performance and brings new advanced location tracking features to securing the wireless enterprise.

About Colubris

Colubris Networks is the leading global provider of intelligent wireless LAN mobility systems for service providers and enterprises. Its optimized WLAN switching systems deliver unmatched bandwidth efficiency, seamless mobility and secure, easy access for more than 1,000 organizations and 40 million users worldwide. Its systems unify and integrate with existing network infrastructures, security and management systems, and provide future-proof investment protection as standards evolve and user populations grow. Colubris numerous recognitions include Red Herrings top 100 private companies in North America, Fierce Wireless Fierce 15 and Mobile Trax Mobility Award. For more information, visit www.colubris.com.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
ExaGrid Appoints G. Anthony Munno Director of Federal Sales. Check it out:
WESTBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- ExaGrid Systems, Inc., http://www.exagrid.com a leading provider of cost-effective disk-based backup systems, today announced that G. Anthony Munno has joined the company as director of federal sales. Munno will be responsible for managing federal government accounts and expanding ExaGrid's customer base in the federal market.



ExaGrid's newly created federal sales position addresses an increasing demand for disk-based backup products in the federal market.

"Tony is a seasoned technology sales veteran with an in-depth understanding of the federal market," said Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. "The federal market is seeking solutions that streamline their processes and cut costs, and ExaGrid's disk-based backup system is the most cost-effective solution on the market today."

Munno was the founder, president and CEO of Interlan Communications, Inc. a privately held Virginia-based data networking and network security company. In June 2003, Interlan was acquired by IceWEB Incorporated, and he retained his position as division president and was subsequently named president of IceWEB Corporate. Prior to Interlan, he was a director of sales for Microcom Incorporated, a publicly traded manufacturer of modems and other wide area networking products, and manager of systems and tests, major business opportunities for Government Technology Services Inc. (GTSI) a publicly traded systems provider to government and education.

About ExaGrid Technology

ExaGrid is a turnkey plug-and-play solution that sits behind existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup windows are reduced by 30 to 80%. ExaGrid's unique byte-level delta data reduction and last backup compression, coupled with high quality SATA drives, is on average about 25-30% the price of standard drives without data reduction. This unique approach reduces the amount of disk space needed to at least 20 to 1.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.

Located in Westborough, Massachusetts, ExaGrid is the leader in cost-effective disk-based backup solutions. A scalable system that works with existing backup applications, ExaGrid is ideal for mid-market and small enterprise companies looking to quickly eliminate the hassles of tape backup while reducing their existing backup windows. ExaGrid's innovative approach minimizes the amount of data to be stored by providing standard data compression for the most recent backups along with byte-level delta data reduction technology for all previous backups. Customers can deploy ExaGrid at a primary site and at a second site to supplement or eliminate offsite tapes with a live data repository or for disaster recovery. For more information, contact ExaGrid at 800-868-6985 or visit http://www.exagrid.com.
Project.net Reports More Colleges and Universities Adopting Project and Portfolio Management Solutions. Check it out:
BEDFORD, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- The use of Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) applications is gaining momentum in the higher education marketplace, according to Project.net (http://www.project.net), the leading provider of commercial and open source project and portfolio management applications.



The company today announced that Cornell University and Ithaca College have joined its growing roster of more than 50,000 users in Global 2000 companies. Building on this growing trend among educational institutions, Project.net is developing a customized version of its PPM application designed specifically for colleges and universities.

Universities use Project.net to consolidate project planning and management, workflow, and collaboration across departments, enabling cross-campus, distributed project teams to manage projects from inception to execution and completion. Project.net provides universities with a single, standard tool that can be customized to meet the needs of diverse functional groups, replacing proprietary project planning, CRM and organizational tools.

"Universities must constantly control costs, but also provide state-of-the-art technology and facilities to draw top students and drive enrollment, and PPM tools like Project.net are helping them achieve these results," said Peter Winston, Project.net's CEO. "PPM tools must also be flexible and easy to implement, and our proven open source solution can be easily integrated with existing IT systems. Individual departments can also customize the application to suit their unique needs. Going forward, Project.net is taking an additional step, with 'PPM for higher education in a box' -- a customized version of our PPM application for colleges and universities."

The Project.net application is scaleable, customizable Web-based software that facilitates cross-enterprise project management, collaboration and execution, enabling organizations to reduce costs and realize time savings by improving project execution across the enterprise. Project.net addresses the needs of a broad range of organizations, from those requiring commercial quality support and services to users seeking free and open access to an enterprise-proven project and portfolio management solution.

Recently launched in an open source version, Project.net is the first open source effort of its kind based on a commercial PPM product. Project.net was named a finalist in the LinuxWorld 2006 Product Excellence Awards and selected by the Open Source Business Conference, LLC, as one of three emerging open source companies to watch.

About Project.net

Project.net, a commercial project and portfolio management application with more than 50,000 users in Global 2000 companies worldwide, helps companies realize dramatic cost and time savings by enabling them to improve project execution across the enterprise. Project.net is available in both enterprise and commercial open source versions, addressing the needs of a broad range of organizations, from those requiring commercial quality support and services to users seeking free and open access to an enterprise-proven project and portfolio management solution.
Colubris Integrated Sensor/AP Delivers Industry's First Voice and Video over WLAN Services with Continuous RF Security. Check it out:
WALTHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Colubris Networks, a leader in optimized wireless LAN (WLAN) switching systems, today introduced the MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP, the industry's first access point to protect WLANs with continuous security monitoring while simultaneously delivering high performance voice, video and data applications. It eliminates trade-offs between Quality-of-Service, performance and security that are inherent in competing WLAN switch offerings, and slashes costs by 50% compared to overlay security solutions.



The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP is part of the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), an optimized WLAN switching system that provides high performance client access with integrated best-of-breed RF security. The Integrated Sensor/AP uses a unique dual IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio design. It dedicates one of its radios to continuous monitoring and protection of the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands, while the second radio delivers full bandwidth network access services for client devices. This design enables the Integrated Sensor/AP to deliver full spectrum performance and consistent QoS for real-time applications, such as voice over WLAN, without compromising security.

The Integrated Sensor/AP eliminates the hard choices facing network managers today. They can deploy competing WLAN switch offerings, which use a single IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio to perform intermittent security scans, interrupting the flow of client traffic and reducing QoS with this time slicing technique. Alternatively, they can deploy a separate overlay network of dedicated security sensors, which doubles equipment costs and substantially increases ongoing maintenance expenses.

"The time-slicing technique for security monitoring builds an obstacle into enterprise migration to wireless voice services," notes Steven J. Schuchart Jr. Senior Analyst with Current Analysis. "Security conscious network managers address this challenge by deploying dedicated sensors, but this adds to costs and complexity. Colubris addresses each of these challenges with the MAP-330, and is delivering a solid foundation that lets enterprises realize VoWLAN's compelling story."

The MAP-330 Integrated Sensor/AP secures the airwaves by combining strong WLAN client authentication and encryption with continuous RF intrusion detection and prevention. Together with the Colubris Intelligent Mobility System (CIMS), the Integrated Sensor/AP supports full-frequency scans, including out-of-region frequencies, and detects over 140 different WLAN events, threats and vulnerabilities. It accurately detects and classifies threats without the false positives that are common in competing systems. The Integrated Sensor/AP is designed for high performance, with the capacity to simultaneously scan and block up to twenty attacks.

"Colubris is increasingly recognized as the "future proof" enterprise WLAN system of choice for advanced, reliable and secure performance that supports growing user populations and expanding applications," said Roger Sands, vice president of engineering for Colubris Networks. "The MAP 330 Integrated Sensor/AP adds best-of-breed RF security to complement our industry-leading performance and brings new advanced location tracking features to securing the wireless enterprise."

About Colubris

Colubris Networks is the leading global provider of intelligent wireless LAN mobility systems for service providers and enterprises. Its optimized WLAN switching systems deliver unmatched bandwidth efficiency, seamless mobility and secure, easy access for more than 1,000 organizations and 40 million users worldwide. Its systems unify and integrate with existing network infrastructures, security and management systems, and provide "future-proof" investment protection as standards evolve and user populations grow. Colubris' numerous recognitions include Red Herring's top 100 private companies in North America, Fierce Wireless Fierce 15 and Mobile Trax Mobility Award. For more information, visit www.colubris.com.
Opsware Introduces Global Partner Advisory Council. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Opsware Inc. (Nasdaq:OPSW), the leading provider of Data Center Automation software, today announced the formation of its Global Partner Advisory Council. The Council provides a strategic forum for communication between Opsware and its worldwide partners, with the goal of increasing mutual business success. The charter group of Advisory Council partners is comprised of leading Value-Added Resellers, System Integrators, Managed Service Providers and Technology Partners, including Activalia, Calence, FusionStorm, Tangible Software, Telindus, and ThruPoint.



Opsware's Global Partner Advisory Council will obtain valuable insight into partner business objectives, and align these priorities with Opsware's strategic initiatives. The Council will work closely with Opsware to define new marketing and business development activities for partners, and extend the technical leadership of Opsware System 6, the industry's most comprehensive Data Center Automation solution. The Council will meet several times throughout the year to discuss Opsware's product roadmap, business development and partner initiatives.

"Opsware's Partner Advisory Council comes at a time when we're seeing increasing demand for technology solutions that solve the challenge of managing today's distributed and complex IT infrastructures," said Jeff Friedman, Service Management Practice Director at ThruPoint, Inc. "IT Automation is at the forefront of these technologies, and Opsware is taking yet another step to help its partners increase their market opportunity. As a founding member of Opsware's Advisory Council we believe Opsware leads the industry in its continued efforts to build a comprehensive partner program and technically superior product."

"As Opsware continues to place more emphasis on its channel program, partner feedback becomes increasingly critical to the company's success. To facilitate open and ongoing communication, Opsware is bringing together a select group of worldwide partners with our executive management team to discuss the company's vision, product strategy and partner programs," said Patrick Joyce, vice president of worldwide channel sales at Opsware Inc. "The Council aligns the needs of our partner ecosystem with Opsware's strategic business initiatives, giving both parties the best possible opportunity to capitalize on the growing market for Data Center Automation software."

Charter members of Opsware's Global Partner Advisory Council include companies from key industry segments and geographic regions, including:

Activalia -- Since 1998, Activalia has focused on the IT Asset Management, IT Contract Management and Data Centre Optimization disciplines and serves markets in Spain and Portugal.

Calence -- As one of the largest pure-play network solutions providers in the U.S., Calence delivers core network solutions, secure converged solutions, consulting, and management services to commercial, enterprise, education and public sector organizations. Calence's consultative approach includes a comprehensive delivery methodology with relentless focus on customer satisfaction and operational excellence.

FusionStorm -- "Making Technology Work" -- is a leading national provider of IT products, professional services, support contract services and 24x7 managed services for enterprises of all sizes. The company delivers complete solutions for system infrastructure, storage, networking, voice-over-IP, and security, database, disaster recovery, managed hosting and remote managed services.

Tangible Software -- Tangible, a certified 8(a) business, provides enterprise software and innovative IT services to both federal and Fortune 500 customers. The company specializes in the design, implementation, and operations of complex IT systems and networks.

Telindus -- Telindus serves business and public market needs as a solution and sourcing partner, delivering secured converged networking, and secured systems & applications underpinned by management and support services.

ThruPoint -- ThruPoint is a leading provider of IT consulting services designed to deliver positive financial impact through more efficient technology and processes. ThruPoint has helped major financial institutions, service providers, and Fortune 500 companies to align their IT objectives with their strategic business goals.

For additional information about the Opsware Partner Program, please visit http://www.opsware.com/partners/.

About Opsware Inc. (Nasdaq:OPSW)

Opsware Inc. is the world's leading Data Center Automation software company. The growth of the Internet is driving a shift from client/server computing to Web architecture. With this shift comes an overwhelming proliferation of servers, networking devices and applications, creating massive complexity that makes automated IT operations a necessity. Opsware automates the complete IT lifecycle and enables IT to automatically discover, provision, patch, configure, secure, change, scale, audit, recover, consolidate, migrate, and reallocate servers, network devices and applications. Over 350 of the world's largest companies, outsourcers and government agencies use Opsware to deliver this new, automated model of IT. For more information on Opsware Inc., please visit our Web site at www.opsware.com.

Opsware is a service mark and trademark of Opsware Inc. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding market demand for our automation software and the potential benefits of our Global Partner Advisory Council. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including the risk that the assumptions underlying our current business strategy may change, that our experience operating as a software company is limited and that we may not achieve the benefits we expect from our Global Partner Advisory Council. More information about these and other factors that could affect our business are included in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 14, 2006 under the headings "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and the Forms 10-Q and 8-K that we file during the fiscal year.
Witness Systems to Present at Upcoming Contact Center and IT Industry Events. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS), a leading global provider of workforce optimization software and services, today announced that it will present at several upcoming contact center and IT industry events including the ATA Annual Convention & Expo, Austin Contact Center Alliance Fall Symposium, Call Center 2.0/Internet Telephony Conference & Exposition, and ICCM Canada 2006.



"Workforce Optimization - Achieving Customer Centricity"

When: October 10, 2006; 1:30 - 2:20 p.m. ET

Where: ATA Annual Convention & Expo; Orlando, FL

In this session, Bill Durr - principal market consultant for Witness Systems - will address how workforce optimization (WFO) should be viewed as a strategy, not merely technology. In addition to touching on the integrations among key software components, Durr also will review ROI case studies and discuss the functional silos that can limit performance in today's contact centers. Attendees will walk away with the knowledge to construct internal business cases that enable execution of WFO initiatives.

"Taking the Handcuffs Off of WFM Software and Implementing the Right Processes"

When: October 12, 2006; 10:30 - 11:40 a.m. CT

Where: Austin Contact Center Alliance Fall Symposium; Austin, TX

Witness Systems' Oscar Alban - principal global market global consultant - will explore the many advantages to implementing a workforce management solution - it's more than simply managing agent schedules. This session will discuss how workload blending can boost morale and lower agent attrition. It also will evaluate intraday change management, service levels, long range planning and effective scheduling models.

"IP Contact Center Shootout"

When: October 13, 2006; 1:15 - 3 p.m. PT

Where: Call Center 2.0/Internet Telephony Conference & Exposition; San Diego, CA

During this panel, Oscar Alban will join several other industry leaders to debate and discuss the merits of IP contact center solutions. Set in an interactive Q&A format, attendees and panel experts will cover different solutions on the market along with their advantages/benefits, while also addressing industry insight and trends.

"60 Ideas in 60 Minutes"

When: October 25, 2006; 8:45 - 10 a.m. ET

Where: ICCM Canada 2006; Toronto, Canada

In this fast-paced and high demand session, Kevin Hegebarth - Witness Systems' director of strategic analysis - will join other industry veterans and experts to share a lifetime's worth of contact center experience and education in only 60 minutes. Each panel member will provide one idea for improving the call center for each minute of the hour - all run the gamut from innovative to outrageous, but ultimately useful.

"When CRM Meets Workforce Optimization: Collision or Collusion"

When: October 25, 2006; 10:15 - 11:15 a.m. ET

Where: ICCM Canada 2006; Toronto, Canada

In this forum about merging two technology worlds, Kevin Hegebarth joins others in the industry to address the new generation of CRM and workforce optimization solutions. The popularity of the two customer care solutions continues to grow - their paths are bound to cross. This session will explore how they will work together to create a dynamic environment for service organizations.

To learn more about Witness Systems' participation in these upcoming events, visit www.witness.com.

About Witness Systems

Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS) is the worldwide leader in software and services that help businesses capture customer intelligence and optimize their workforce performance. The company's Impact 360(TM) solution features quality monitoring, compliance and IP recording, workforce management, performance management and e-learning. Primarily deployed in contact centers - as well as the remote, branch and back offices of global organizations - the workforce optimization solution captures, analyzes and enables users to share and act on cross-functional information across the enterprise. With Impact 360, organizations can improve interactions and the underlying back-office processes that enhance the customer experience and build customer loyalty. For more information, visit us at www.witness.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this release that involves Witness Systems' expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. They are identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. These statements are based upon information available to Witness Systems as of the date of this release, and the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements believed true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Some of the factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include fluctuations in customer demand and the timing of orders; the company's ability to manage its growth; the risk of new product introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological change which characterizes the company's markets; the risks associated with international sales as the company expands its markets, including the risks associated with foreign currency fluctuations; the ability of the company to complete and integrate successfully any acquisitions or investments it may make; and the ability of the company to compete successfully in the future, as well as other risks identified under the caption "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005 and its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional risks that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include the risk of management distraction and other consequences that might result from the review of certain option grants and option granting practices described in the Current Report on Form 8-K filed by the Company on August 11, 2006 and related developments.

Witness, Impact 360, Improve Everything and the Witness logo are the trademarks (registered or otherwise) of Witness Systems, Inc. protected by laws of the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
HYT North America Expands Two-Way Product Portfolio to Meet Growing Market Demand. Check it out:
SUNRISE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- HYT, a leading global provider of professional wireless communication solutions, today announced its expanded product portfolio for the United States and Canada. The new two-way radio solutions are being launched at Enterprise Wireless 2006 in Orlando, Florida.



"We have recognized an incredible dealer response since our introduction into the North American market earlier this year," said Mike Fraser, President of HYT North America. "Our full-feature, high-value expanded product offering leverages HYT's renowned R&Dcapabilities and will further meet the communication needs of key industries in the U.S. and Canadian markets."

The expanded portfolio delivers additions to the professional portable radio and mobile radio product offerings:

Professional Portable Two-Way Radios

HYT introduces the TC3000S and TC3600S. These high power, mission critical, portable radios offer extensive features including multi channels and zones, DTMF, 2 and 5 tone encode/decode signaling and emergency/ANI. The TC3600S also includes channel aliasing, front panel programming and wireless cloning. The 4 and 5 watt radios, which meet military standards and operate with a 1700 mAh Li-ion battery, are designed for use by all industries, particularly public safety, public service, utilities and management.

The company also announced the introduction of the TC1600, a value-based business radio perfect for property management, retail and light industrial applications. HYT's TC1600 is a 0.5 - 1.0 watt UHF radio offering 8 channels, a communication range alert, a 1000 mAh Li-ion battery with rapid charger and an LCD display. The TC1600 features a compact, durable design and simplified controls making it ideal for on-site businesses seeking affordable and reliable two-way radio communication. The TC1600 is compatible with a full line of accessories, including those from other manufacturers.

Mobile Radios

To meet the needs of professionals in the security, public service and construction industries, HYT introduces the TM600 and TM610 mobile two-way radios. These wide-band mobile radios feature a full signaling package, integrated scrambler, built-in modem for data applications and powerful 5 watt audio output. The TM610 model also includes 128 channels and an 8 character alpha numeric display. The TM600 and TM610 offer an outstanding performance-to-price ratio.

The new radios from HYT will be available in mid-October. HYT additionally offers a full portfolio of professional accessories - including microphones, multi-unit chargers, and cases - enabling businesses to customize their two-way radio communications.

As one of the world's leading manufacturers of two-way radios, HYT has successfully helped thousands of public safety organizations, utility companies, and businesses of all sizes respond. The company's innovative research and development capability is among the finest in the world with over 400 research and development staff in two R&Dcenters and three laboratories. The company maintains its own intellectual property and has secured more than 20 patents.

About HYT

Since its founding in 1993, HYT has been dedicated to the development, manufacturing and sales of two-way radios and wireless trunking systems. Today, the company has become a full solutions provider for professional wireless communications for public safety, government agencies, transportation, and commercial/light industrial sectors. HYT's reliable, robust and secure communications products are distributed in more than 60 countries across the globe. For more information, call 1-877-449-8621 or visit www.hyt-na.com.

Editor's Note:

HYT will be showcasing its new products at Enterprise Wireless 2006 in Orlando, FL, September 27-28. Visit HYT at Booth #401/403. High resolution product images available upon request.
GlobalTouch Telecom Names James Maddox to CFO. Check it out:
GlobalTouch Telecom Names James Maddox Chief Financial Officer

Los Angeles, CA, September 25, 2006 GlobalTouch Telecom, Inc., a leading provider of proprietary, vertically-integrated VoIP platforms, is pleased to announce today the appointment of James R. Maddox as Chief Financial Officer.

Mr. Maddox brings over twenty-five years of success as a finance professional and executive in a variety of industries. His experience spans corporate finance, venture capital, private equity, mergers and acquisitions, commercial real estate finance and mortgage backed securities. Mr. Maddox was one of GlobalTouchs co-founders and has been involved as a Director and in an advisory capacity since its inception in 2003. In his new role, he will be responsible for managing all finance activities in support of GlobalTouch Telecoms growth as the industrys only provider of a vertically integrated VoIP platform.



I am excited to have James join our team on a full-time basis. His breadth of experience gained as financial executive is invaluable, said Gregory O. Welch, CEO of GlobalTouch Telecom, Inc. James will be instrumental in ensuring GlobalTouch Telecoms continued rapid growth as a leader in providing a one-stop, single vendor VoIP solution.

Joining GlobalTouch Telecom is a fantastic opportunity, said Maddox. Having been involved with the company from the start, it is so exciting to see our vision becoming reality as our customer acquisition is rapidly accelerating. GlobalTouch is extremely well positioned to leverage the explosive expansion of the VoIP market.

Prior to joining GlobalTouch Telecom in a full time capacity, Mr. Maddox served as a real estate finance executive with Gramercy Capital Corp. and ARCS Commercial Mortgage where he had responsibility for originating commercial real estate financings and managing related operations. From 1998 to 2002, he was CFO and Director of Q Telecom, an international wholesale carrier based in Los Angeles. Previously, he has closed more than $2 billion of corporate and real estate transactions as a private venture capitalist, an investment banker with Citicorp Securities and as a mortgage finance executive with Weyerhaeuser Mortgage Company. Mr. Maddox holds an MBA from UCLAs Anderson School of Management and a BA from Claremont McKenna College.

For additional information on GlobalTouch Telecom, Inc. and its products, visit www.globaltouchtelecom.com and www.siptalk.com or call +1 (888) 422-3500.

ABOUT GLOBALTOUCH TELECOM, INC.
GlobalTouch Telecom, Inc. offers the industrys leading proprietary, vertically integrated VoIP platform. The company built every aspect of its technology from the ground up, creating a one-stop single vendor VoIP solution. The product comprises an all-inclusive, private label (white label) offering for carriers, MSOs, Resellers, PTTs, ILECs, ISPs, CLECs and marketing companies. The platform can be completely customized and rolled out in 60 days or less. The ASP product enables low CAPEX/OPEX offerings for both enterprise and residential deployments. Since GlobalTouch Telecom developSd, owns and operates all aspects of its VoIP technology, it gives the company the flexibility to create, leverage and market its own innovations and applications versus having to resell 3rd party technology
- END
CipherOptics Launches Industry's First 10Gig IPsec Encryption Solution, Simplifying the Complexity of Managing Data Security. Check it out:
RALEIGH, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Responding to the market demand for a more comprehensive approach to scalable encryption, CipherOptics, the recognized innovator of easy to install, cost-effective solutions for data protection, today announces the general availability of the CipherOptics SG10G-B, the industry's first 10Gig IPsec encryption solution. With 10-Gigabit Networks showing signs of becoming the general-purpose successor to Gigabit Networks, the SG10G-B removes the limitations of traditional encryption, allowing organizations to customize secure data streams with an automated security policy generation and distribution method that simplifies the complexity of managing encrypted links.



As security breaches rise and network boundaries continue to disappear, enterprises are struggling for solutions that seamlessly integrate data protection into the network. Because the CipherOptics SG10G-B integrates into any network without requiring changes to the existing IT architecture, the solution delivers the lowest cost of ownership and highest return on investment in the industry today. Providing enterprises with the functionality and support to secure their data in motion as it has never been possible before, the SG10G-B allows for simplified security configuration policy management, saving time and money while increasing productivity and simplifying network operations.

The SG10G-B is the first encryption solution that virtualizes a set of encryption modules as a single 10-Gigabit IPsec system that supports stateful failover between encryption modules, supports policy and key synchronization between the installed encryption modules, and provides a centralized management tool that reduces the time for system installation and management. With this unique approach, end users can optimize encryption and traffic flow resources, pool them for full 10-Gigabyte Network performance or use the SG10G-B as an aggregation point for thousands of high speed IPsec data streams.

Enterprises moving to 10 Gigabit Networks are collapsing independent Networks into one corporate or wide area backbone. As a result, voice networks, storage networks and corporate e-mail networks are increasingly sharing the same high speed connections. The CipherOptics SG10G-B gives customers the ability to prioritize encrypted traffic by available bandwidth, maximizing the performance of their network with advanced traffic priorities that encrypts the right traffic to ensure that high priority traffic such as VoIP is transmitted securely without delay.

"As data breaches engulf the front page, organizations are beginning to examine their end to end security and discovering that there are significant gaps," said Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst, IT Harvest. "Organizations need to look to solutions that will provide the necessary speed and control to encrypt data across traffic streams to effectively plug these security gaps."

CipherOptics SG10G-B includes value-added features such as:

-- An advanced modular design that grows as enterprise data protection needs grow;

-- Handling of all types of IP traffic without dropped packets;

-- Stateful redundancy for fail-over;

-- The industry's only encryptor with optimized traffic grooming for prioritizing critical traffic and data protection;

-- Secure one-touch set up and add/change/deletes from anywhere, freeing resources and saving valuable time and money; and,

-- Automated security policy generation and distribution service that allows for easier updates and refreshes.

"CipherOptics has long been committed to negating the limitations of the network and providing customers with the lowest total cost of ownership for their network security investments," said Ron Willis, President and CEO of CipherOptics. "As the only solution to provide group security configuration policy management, CipherOptics SG10G-B allows for exponentially less policies to manage and store, ensuring non-disruptive network operation while cutting the cost of operation and management by up to 50 percent."

About CipherOptics

CipherOptics, the leading network security solution innovator for enterprise-wide data protection, provides unrivaled data security for multi-national organizations including: Fortune 100 companies, top-tier financial institutions, healthcare providers and government agencies. Their breakthrough security technology is transparent to any network, offers virtually no network latency and is easy to deploy and configure.

CipherOptics' solutions are ideal for: protecting data storage, protecting data over 3rd party networks, protecting wireless end to end, and securing sensitive virtual networks. CipherOptics help organizations comply with government regulations including: HIPAA, Basel II, GLBA, Sarbanes Oxley and many others. CipherOptics has the network security solution for your company.

For more information about CipherOptics, visit www.cipheroptics.com
Liaison's Content Director Earns SAP Certified Integration with SAP NetWeaver(R). Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Liaison Technologies, a real-time business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure provider, announced today that its Content Director 6.0 has achieved SAP certified integration with the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform. The Liaison solution has achieved certified integration with the SAP(R) R/3(R) Enterprise 4.7 solution via SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver XI)-based content.



To attain certified integration with SAP NetWeaver, Liaison's solutions met several requirements. Liaison's Content Director was integrated with SAP material master data and SAP R/3 using Liaison's Real-Time Network and SAP NetWeaver XI.

The SAP certified integration of Liaison's Content Director with SAP R/3 Enterprise allows Liaison's clients to synchronize master data with SAP solutions. This provides top- and bottom-line improvements such as advanced analytics, reduced time for manual rework and increased customer satisfaction.

"Attaining SAP certified integration with SAP NetWeaver demonstrates Liaison Technologies' continued commitment to supporting our customer's investments in SAP solutions and SAP's strategy for the SAP NetWeaver platform," said Bob Renner, chief executive officer of Liaison Technologies. "We currently have a number of customers using SAP solutions, and this strengthens our ability to complement their strategies with our integration and master data management products to improve supply chain efficiency."

With Content Director seamlessly integrated with SAP NetWeaver, Liaison's clients can reduce costs and reduce the amount of time and customization required to implement Liaison's master data management application. As a result, users will be better able to take advantage of vital manufacturing and product information more quickly and efficiently. Liaison's clients will have the opportunity to tap into Liaison's expertise when it comes to integrating with SAP NetWeaver for business-to-business transactions.

The SAP NetWeaver platform powers the mySAP(TM) Business Suite family of applications, SAP xApps(TM) packaged composite applications, and partner solutions. SAP NetWeaver unifies integration technologies into a single platform and is pre-integrated with business applications, enabling change and reducing the need for custom integration.

Liaison's Content Director is a real-time master data management solution that supports large catalogs of information with multiple attributes for each item. Built for sharing data with trading partners, Liaison's hosted master data management platform offers a unique combination of customizable workflows with a validation engine and active data repository. Content Director is certified by 1SYNC(TM), the leading Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)-certified Data Pool, to support current standards for data synchronization, including Hardlines and office supply extensions. Liaison earned 1SYNC Consultant Certification and Content Director Earned Certification from 1SYNC earlier this year.

Liaison's integration services are based on a proven, scalable, real-time network that provides clients a single connection to unlimited trading partners in unlimited formats, including Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Extensible Markup Language (XML) and AS2; tight integration with suppliers, customers and distributors; and flexible message mapping. Liaison supports EDI standards, including ANSI X12, EDIFACT, EMBARC, TRADACOMS, UCS and VICS.

About Liaison Technologies

Liaison Technologies helps companies transform themselves into real-time enterprises. Clients are able to maximize profits through shortened time-to-market, improved supply-chain flow and synchronized product information. More than 3,000 organizations have benefited from Liaison Technologies' managed services, consulting services, as well as its real-time transaction network, master data management and product information management solutions. Liaison Technologies Data Exchange Platform enables more than 2 million XML-based, real-time transactions per month. To learn more about the results Liaison Technologies has delivered for real-time enterprises like International Paper, Weyerhaeuser Company, Merck & Co., PaperlinX, MAP, Lecta Group, M-Real, Sappi, Stora Enso, Grupo Portucel Soporcel and Unisource, call 866-336-7378 or visit www.liaison.com.

SAP, SAP NetWeaver, R/3, mySAP, xApps and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.
Sanbolic Announces New Support for Large Enterprise Storage Environments. Check it out:
WATERTOWN, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sanbolic, Inc., a leading developer of software to simplify and share storage area networks (SANs), today announced important new functionality for Melio Clustered File System 2.2 (Melio FS 2.2), which is designed for large shared SAN storage environments.



Melio FS 2.2 now supports GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks, which were introduced with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 to enable very large storage disks with large numbers of partitions. Sanbolic's Melio FS 2.2 and LaScala volume manager can support as much as 18 million terabytes in a single file system. Sanbolic has also added check disk functionality to its Melio FS 2.2, providing an efficient tool for maintaining file system integrity in very large storage environments. Melio's new quality of service feature allows administrators to dynamically assign bandwidth to high performance and critical applications, providing flexibility and the ability to meet even the most demanding peak performance.

Sanbolic's Melio FS 2.2 and LaScala volume manager enable end-users to aggregate multiple storage arrays into a centrally managed pool of storage and provide multiple servers concurrent read and write access to data over Fibre Channel or iSCSI connections. Melio FS 2.2 and LaScala are designed for intuitive ease-of-use by Windows administrators and support key Windows data center technologies, including Microsoft clustering services.

"Melio is designed for customers using SAN in Windows data center environments," said Momchil Michailov, a founder of Sanbolic. "These file system additions give administrators tools for creating and effectively managing very large storage environments, while improving the utility and flexibility of storage resources."

One key application for Melio FS 2.2 is large file serving installations using clusters of servers running Windows Storage Server 2003 R2. Sanbolic has demonstrated up to 64 servers clustered into a common file system on a SAN, and larger clusters can be supported. Client systems can access the shared data through any of the servers using Common Internet File System (CIFS) or Network File System (NFS), providing scalability and high-availability. Input/Output (I/O) performance scales linearly as additional storage servers are added to the cluster. Additional servers or storage can be added dynamically while data remains accessible.

"Sanbolic's products integrate well with Microsoft's Windows Server technology and add important functionality for applications such as creating very large file serving environments and dynamically migrating Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 across physical hosts," said Dr. Claude Lorenson, group product manager, Storage Technologies at Microsoft Corp. "We are very pleased to see that Sanbolic continues to enhance the functionality of its clustered file system technology and systematically supports new Microsoft Windows platform components."

Sanbolic software currently supports Microsoft Windows Server 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003, including Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2. Sanbolic distributes its product solutions worldwide through a network of distributors, original equipment manufacturers, value-added resellers and system integrators.

Sanbolic will show its products at Storage Decisions in New York in the Microsoft Pavilion, Booth 900D, September 27-29. The demonstration will highlight the use of Melio FS 2.2 to enable dynamic migration of Microsoft Windows Virtual Server 2005 state across physical hosts.

About Sanbolic, Inc.

Sanbolic, Inc is a Watertown, Massachusetts-based company that provides software for sharing and simplifying shared SAN storage environments. Networked storage is one of the fastest growing segments of the information technology market. Sanbolic products address the growing customer need for tools that simplify data storage management, increase system flexibility and enable shared access to information in a reliable, scalable and secure data environment. Further information about Sanbolic can be found on its website www.sanbolic.com.
OpenService Launches New Version of Security Information and Event Management Solution. Check it out:
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- OpenService(TM), Inc., the leading provider of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Event Correlation and Network Monitoring solutions, today announced the release of Security Management Center (SMC) 4.0, which will deliver unsurpassed reliability and security visibility to the world's largest enterprise networks.



SMC 4.0's features include: Advanced Real-Time Threat Correlation, a Multi-Vendor- Multi-Application Vulnerability Signature MetaBase (VSMB), Risk Profiling, and extensive Automated Threat Response capabilities. SMC 4.0 integrates with a wide array of security devices and products where data is brought into a single integrated console, eliminating the need to view each security vendor's product consoles. The information from all security log sources is available in a single integrated, web-based management and reporting console.

"SMC 4.0 can handle hundreds of millions of events per day and create risk-prioritized alerts, which provide our customers real time security awareness," said Geoffrey Coulter, CTO of OpenService. "Out of the box, SMC 4.0 detects and identifies true threats and attacks that save our enterprise customers time and money by bringing to attention the real threats amidst all the noise."

Central Reporting on Forensics, Compliance and Policy Management

OpenService's Security Log Manager (SLM) provides access to historical log data for forensics, compliance reporting and policy management. SMC's reporting functionality includes, but is not limited to, simple creation of ad-hoc reports, conversion of ad-hoc reports into scheduled reports (including e-mail distribution), and "real-time" reports that update as new events arrive (i.e. reports covering 90 day spans that are always current). Dynamic user defined dashboards can display a combination of alerts, reports and content from third party web based applications. Dashboards are completely customizable and can be configured to meet the preferences of the NOC analyst or the CISO.

Finite State Risk Assessment versus Rules Based Assessment Saves Time and Money

SMC 4.0's Finite State Engine tracks the history of an entire event and continuously builds a log of an attack in progress while simultaneously identifying and escalating threat warnings. Rules based products, on the other hand, analyze events over a defined window of time making low and slow attacks nearly impossible to catch. With SMC's risk based assessment, analysts are not required to write complex rules to match new threats that emerge daily. Instead, they must simply define the assets that are most important to their organization and let SMC 4.0 do the work. Much of this is made possible by SMC's Vulnerability Signature MetaBase, which collects and ties together events from CVE, CAN, and/or BugTraq IDs (among others) to make sure organizations are always correlating on the most up to date list of known vulnerabilities.

"Finite state risk assessment is crucial for successful protection of the infrastructure," said Geoffrey Coulter, CTO of OpenService. "Many times, in a rules based solution, you have to write the rule in just the right way to catch an attack. If the repeated attacks don't all happen in the defined timeframes, you never get an alert. With finite state risk assessment, you can refine your priorities and focus on events that are most critical to your business."

Intelligent Correlation Profiles of the Attacker and Automated Responses

SMC 4.0's advanced correlation models are used to automatically sort, profile, consolidate, and scan security events to automate the analysis of threat patterns and progressions. The analyzed input from firewalls and IDS' (along with a variety of other supported applications) is all stored in one place allowing for immediate identification of a targeted attack against critical assets. Add in vulnerability scanning data, and SMC 4.0 can then correlate against known vulnerabilities on the network. If there's a match, defenses and notification can be automated using techniques such as e-mail alerts, pager notification, script notification, or SNMP traps. On the other hand, if the asset being attacked is already patched or hardened, SMC 4.0 won't "cry wolf" in the middle of the night by issuing a critical alert. Despite a critical alert not being generated, the analyst will still be informed that the asset is being poked and prodded so it can be monitored. SMC 4.0 makes the analyst's job easier by allowing them to focus on the events that need immediate attention versus the events which have a lower priority.

Types of Events and Their Locations in One Simple View

SMC 4.0 organizes network assets in user defined, hierarchical trees (by geography, business line, division, department, or any user defined criteria). As events are generated, they are prioritized and visually represented by bubbling the most dangerous threats against the most critical assets to the top. The navigation tree also provides immediate visual notification showing where the event is occurring and how serious it is.

The SMC 4.0 Console is built to be comprehensible and useful to advanced security analysts, junior level operators or non-technical users who need to assess the security posture of their organization in real-time. No longer is it necessary for analysts to spend hours and hours scouring data from hundreds of different sources; the work is all done by SMC 4.0. SMC 4.0 also provides information required to prove compliance and make auditing easier. With all the time saved by using SMC 4.0, OpenService customers are able to provide their enterprise with pristine security saving them time, money and quick ROI.

About OpenService

OpenService improves the reliability and security of the world's largest enterprise networks. The company specializes in SIEM, Event Correlation and Network Monitoring solutions that scale to high volume, global implementations in use by hundreds of the world's best-known enterprises. Enterprise customers using OpenService's software solutions include Argonne National Labs, Citigroup, Connexion by Boeing, Visa, Verizon and many others in the Fortune 500. For more information, call 508-597-5300 or visit http://www.openservice.com.
SYSPRO Reseller, Business Technology Partners, LLC, Selected 'All Star VAR'. Check it out:
COSTA MESA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- SYSPRO, a leading enterprise business solutions provider, has announced that Business Technology Partners, LLC, a SYSPRO Chicago area-based reseller, has been selected one of five US "All Star VARs" by Vertical Systems Reseller Magazine (VSR).



According to VSR editor Abby Lorden, the All Star award recognizes top value-added resellers, solution providers and system integrators for outstanding achievement in serving small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). "The six winners represent industry-leading solutions that combine both state-of-the-art technology with superior service and support. These resellers show a dedication to their specified vertical market and operate under business models with strong potential for future growth," she said.

Business Technology Partners, LLC was recognized in the category of "Warehousing/Manufacturing." The other categories for which All Star VARs were selected include: Healthcare; Repair and Marketing in Retail; Field Service; Hospitality; and Public Sector.

Todd Perlman, principal, Business Technology Partners, Northbrook, Ill., said of the honor, "As a value-added reseller of SYSPRO for over 10 years, we have found SYSPRO's technology evolving at a fast pace in line with our clients' needs. This has allowed us to keep our clients current on the software without incurring the high costs normally associated with software upgrades.

"From a new sales standpoint, SYSPRO provides us with the .NET connectivity that allows us to offer solutions beyond the typical ERP system's capabilities. We are able to cover that 20% gap and our clients reap the benefits. Again, our clients are not bound to older versions of the software because we are able to provide them with version independent solutions."

According to Joey Benadretti, SYSPRO USA president, "We extend congratulations to Business Technology Partners, a VAR which has always exemplified the highest standards of dedication and service. BTP's customer support is among the finest in an industry where attention to detail is paramount. We are proud to have them on the SYSPRO team."

About SYSPRO

Since its inception in 1978, SYSPRO has been delivering state-of-the-art business solutions to some of the world's leading companies. As a global leader in the production of world-class ERP software, the company now caters to the specialized needs of 12,000 licensed companies in more than 60 countries worldwide. SYSPRO is marketed globally through regional territory distribution centers and a global reseller network in the US, Canada, Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia and the UK.

SYSPRO is a fully integrated business software solution that provides complete control over the planning and management of all facets of business including accounting, manufacturing and distribution operations in a variety of industries.

About Business Technology Partners, LLC

Business Technology Partners, LLC (BTP) is a professional services firm dedicated to helping companies find the best business solution to suit their needs. Headquartered in Northbrook, IL, BTP is a full service consultancy providing solutions to the small to mid-market company and is among the largest US resellers of mid-range ERP software. BTP's team of dedicated experts has helped thousands of companies in implementing and developing practical and economic solutions to address a wide-range of business issues.

For more information, contact Stanley Goodrich at 1-714-437-1000 or email: [email protected].

For additional information on SYSPRO, go to www.syspro.com.

The Business Technology Partners' Web site is: www.btpartners.com.
Pentaho Board Member Bernard Dalle to Present on Panel at European Technology Roundtable Exhibition. Check it out:
ORLANDO, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Pentaho Corp., creator of the world's most popular open source business intelligence (BI) suite, today announced that Pentaho Board of Directors member Bernard Dalle will participate in a panel discussing the rapid growth of open source software and the synergistic opportunities that exist between open source software development models and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery models. The panel discussion will also include Marc Fleury, SVP and General Manager of JBoss, a division of Red Hat, Deborah Magid, Director of Strategic Alliances, IBM Software Group and Manel Sarasa, Chief Executive Officer, OpenBravo. The panel will take place at ETRE 2006 on Tuesday, October 10 at 5:20pm local time in Barcelona, Spain.



Mr. Dalle is a General Partner at Index Ventures, having joined the firm in 1997. His current focus is in the areas of enterprise infrastructure, applications, and services. Prior to Index, Mr. Dalle held key roles at leading companies including McKinsey & Company, Merrill Lynch, and Procter & Gamble. He holds a M. Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and a MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Business.

An active board member since 2005, Mr. Dalle will talk about how open source software is rapidly expanding beyond on-premises software to incorporation in SaaS solutions. Open source software frequently provides better technology, easier integration, and far better value for companies assembling SaaS applications. This creates an outstanding opportunity for SaaS providers to enhance their applications while lowering their costs, and helps expand the community of contributors to popular open source projects. As an example, Pentaho already has a number of partners creating and delivering SaaS applications that embed Pentaho's best-in-class open source BI capabilities.

Index Ventures is a forerunner in the open source investor movement and Mr Dalle will be drawing on a number of examples from the Index portfolio in discussing the opportunity for the SaaS model to accelerate the proliferation of open source software.

For more information on Bernard Dalle, please see www.indexventures.com.

For more information on ETRE 06, please see www.etre06.com.

For more information on Pentaho, please see www.pentaho.org.

About Pentaho

Pentaho provides a full spectrum of open source Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities including reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, data integration, and a BI platform that have made it the world's most popular open source BI suite. Formed by a highly experienced team of industry veterans, Pentaho's mission is to bring innovative, high quality technology and professional support to the BI market. Pentaho uses a revolutionary approach to development, distribution and support made possible by an open source business model. Pentaho is the primary sponsor and owner of popular open source projects including JFreeReport, Kettle, Mondrian, and Weka. Pentaho's technologies support a wide range of business initiatives from sales and profitability analysis, customer analysis, HR reporting, Financial reporting, KPI dashboards, Supply Chain analytics, and operational reporting.
Noble Financial OnTrack 2006 Small Cap Conference Presenter Profiles. Check it out:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- Noble Financial OnTrack 2006 Small Cap Conference takes place September 26-28, 2006 at Lowe's Motor Speedway and the Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte, NC. For in-depth information about the event, please visit http://www.ontrack06.com/ .



Below are profiles from Noble Financial OnTrack 2006 Small Cap Conference presenters. Breaking news releases are available at http://www.tradeshownews.com and http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/bwges-noble-smallcap-06/ .

Business Wire is the official news wire service for the Noble Financial OnTrack 2006 Small Cap Conference.

Company: AspenBio Pharma, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: APNB:OTCBB
Investor Relations Contact: Ron Both
Investor Relations Contact Phone: Liolios Group, 949-574-3860
Web: www.aspenbiopharma.com
Date of Presentation: 9-26-2006
AspenBio Pharma, Inc. is an emerging bio-pharmaceutical company
dedicated to the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of
novel patented products that enhance reproductive efficiency in
animals. Originally founded to produce purified proteins for
diagnostic applications, it is now a leading supplier of human
hormones to the nation's largest medical diagnostic & research
organizations. AspenBio has leveraged this expertise in reproduction
hormones utilizing patented recombinant DNA technology to develop an
enviable late-stage pipeline of four novel reproduction analogs for
wide-ranging therapeutic use in bovine & equine species. These
drugs/reagents are designed to enhance the profitability of animal
businesses they impact. All of the companies products in development
are designed to either enhance the profitability of business
operation or improve time to diagnosis there by saving time &
expense. Also in development are a human appendicitis blood test & an
early pregnancy test for dairy cows.
Company: ATS Medical, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: ATSI:Nasdaq
Investor Relations Contact: Michael Dale
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 763-553-7736
Web: http://www.atsmedical.com
Date of Presentation: September 26, 2006
ATS Medical, Inc. manufactures and markets products and services
focused on cardiac surgery. The company is global in scope and
headquartered in Minneapolis. More than 130,000 ATS Open Pivot(R)
Heart Valves, using a unique pivot design resulting in exceptional
performance and low risk profile, have been implanted worldwide. Our
focus on serving the cardiac surgery community is strengthened by
offerings that include ATS Simulus(TM) annuloplasty products for
valve repair, Surgi-Frost(R) and Frost-Byte(TM) products for surgical
cryoablation of cardiac arrhythmias, RTI-Cardiovascular for allograft
tissue services, QAS home monitoring services for anticoagulation
therapy and the development of PARSUS blood filtration technology.
Company: Baldwin Technology Company, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: BLD on American Stock Exchange
Investor Relations Contact: Helen P. Oster at Baldwin
Investor Relations Contact Phone: Frank Hawkins at Hawk Associates,
305-451-1888
Web: www.baldwintech.com
Date of Presentation: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 By Vijay Tharani,
CFO
Baldwin Technology Company, Inc. is a leading global manufacturer of
accessories and controls for the printing and publishing industry.
The Company's broad range of products are designed to enhance the
quality, productivity and cost-efficiency of the print manufacturing
process while addressing environmental concerns and safety issues.
Baldwin maintains product development, manufacturing and sales
facilities in 12 countries. Approximately 85% of the Company's
revenues come from its Asian and European operations.
Company: Dynamex Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: DDMX : NASDAQ
Investor Relations Contact: Ray E. Schmitz
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 214-560-9308
Web: www.dynamex.com
Date of Presentation: September 26, 2006
Dynamex is a leading provider of same-day delivery and logistics
services in the United States and Canada. The Company provides same-
day, on-demand, door-to-door delivery services, local and regional
distribution services which encompass recurring, point-to-point
deliveries, and outsourcing services. Outsourcing services include
designing and managing systems to maximize efficiencies in
transporting, sorting and delivering customers' products on a local
and multi-city basis. With its fleet management service, the Company
manages and may provide a fleet of dedicated vehicles at single or
multiple customer sites.
Company: Environmental Power Corporation
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: EPG
Investor Relations Contact: John Baldissera
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 800-368-1217
Web: www.environmentalpower.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006 12:45pm - 1:10pm (ET)
Environmental Power Corporation is a developer, owner and operator of
renewable energy production facilities. Its principal operating
subsidiary, Microgy, Inc., holds an exclusive license in North
America for the development and deployment of a proprietary anaerobic
digestion technology for the extraction of methane gas from animal
wastes for its use to generate energy. The company's renewable
natural gas facilities can also generate significant quantities of
marketable greenhouse gas credits. For more information visit the
Company's web site at http://www.environmentalpower.com.
Company: Handleman Company
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: NYSE: HDL
Investor Relations Contact: Greg Mize
Investor Relations Contact Phone: (248) 362-4400 x211
Web: www.handleman.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006
Handleman Company is a category manager and distributor of home
entertainment products to leading retailers in the United States,
United Kingdom, and Canada. The Company manages and distributes a
broad assortment of titles to optimize sales and inventory
productivity in its customers' retail stores. Home entertainment
products include: Pre-recorded music, console video game hardware,
software and accessories, DVDs, books and greeting cards.
Company: Hill International, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: HINT
Investor Relations Contact: Devin Sullivan
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 212 836-9617
Web: www.hillintl.com
Date of Presentation: September 28, 2006, 11:15 AM ET
Hill International is a worldwide leader in construction project
management and claims consulting. Hill's Project Management Group has
participated in more than 1,000 assignments with a total construction
value in excess of $100 billion, including such high profile projects
as the United States Supreme Court Building, Philadelphia's Comcast
Center, and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. Engineering
News-Record recently ranked Hill as the 17th largest construction
management firm in the United States. Hill's Construction Claims
Group--one of the largest and best known firms of its kind--has
helped resolve over 5,000 construction disputes valued in excess of
$50 billion.
Company: Hypercom Corporation
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: NYSE: HYC
Investor Relations Contact: Scott Tsujita, SVP Finance, Treasury &
Investor Relations
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 602.504.5161
Web: www.hypercom.com
Date of Presentation: Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006
About Hypercom (www.hypercom.com) - Global payment technology leader
Hypercom Corporation (NYSE: HYC) delivers a full suite of high
security, end-to-end electronic payment products and services. The
company's solutions address the high security electronic transaction
needs of banks and other financial institutions, processors, large
scale retailers, smaller merchants, quick service restaurants, and
users in the transportation, healthcare, prepaid, unattended and many
other markets. Hypercom solutions enable businesses in more than 100
countries to securely expand their revenues and profits.
Company: iGATE Corporation
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: IGTE:NASDAQ
Investor Relations Contact: Mr. Michael J. Zugay
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 412-787-9590
Web: www.igatecorp.com
Date of Presentation: Wednesday, September 27
iGATE Corporation (Nasdaq: IGTE) is the first fully integrated
technology and operations firm with a global service model. iGATE
Corporation, through its offshore subsidiary iGATE Global Solutions,
enables clients to optimize their business through a combination of
process investment strategies, technology leverage and business
process outsourcing and provisioning. Services include consulting,
enterprise data management and data warehousing, business
intelligence and analytics, design, development, system integration,
package evaluation and implementation, re-engineering and
maintenance. iGATE Corporation also offers IT Professional Services
through its other subsidiaries. The company services more than 500
clients across five continents. Clients rely on iGATE because of our
high quality of service, our responsiveness and our cost-effective
global reach.
Company: Inspire Pharmaceuticals
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: Nasdaq: ISPH
Investor Relations Contact: Jenny Kobin
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 919-287-1219
Web: www.inspirepharm.com
Date of Presentation: Thursday, Sept. 28, 2006
Inspire is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering,
developing and commercializing prescription pharmaceutical products
in disease areas with significant commercial potential and unmet
medical needs. The research and development programs of Inspire are
driven by extensive scientific experience in the therapeutic areas of
ophthalmology and respiratory/allergy, and supported by expertise in
the field of P2 receptors. Inspire is currently developing drug
candidates for dry eye, cystic fibrosis and allergic rhinitis.
Inspire's U.S. specialty sales force promotes Elestat(R) (epinastine
HCI ophthalmic solution) 0.05% for allergic conjunctivitis and
Restasis(R) (cyclosporine ophthalmic emulsion) 0.05% for dry eye,
ophthalmology products developed by Allergan, Inc.
Company: Ironclad Performance Wear Corporation
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: ICPW.OB
Investor Relations Contact: John Mills / Anne Rakunas, Integrated
Corporate Relations
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 310-954-1100
Web: www.ironclad.com
Date of Presentation: Wednesday September 27, 2006
Ironclad, which created the performance work glove category in 1998,
continues to lead the construction and industrial markets in
innovation, technology, design, advanced material science and
durability. Ironclad designs, manufactures and sells a comprehensive
line of task-specific gloves and performance fabric apparel available
at hardware stores, lumber yards, home centers, industrial suppliers,
and sporting goods retailers nationwide.
Company: Lifecore Biomedical, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: LCBM
Investor Relations Contact: David Noel, VP of Finance & CFO
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 952-368-4300
Web: www.lifecore.com
Date of Presentation: Wednesday, September 27, 2006. 12:15 p.m.
Lifecore Biomedical, celebrating its 40th anniversary, develops,
manufactures and markets biomaterials and medical devices for use in
various surgical markets through two divisions, the Dental Division
and the Hyaluronan Division. The Dental Division conducts its dental
surgery business through direct sales and marketing in the United
States, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden and through 25 distributors
in 49 other countries. The Hyaluronan Division conducts its business
through OEM and contract manufacturing alliances in the ophthalmic,
orthopedic and veterinary surgical fields. General Corporate
Information is available on the internet at www.lifecore.com
Company: MedaSorb Technologies Corporation
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: MSBT.OB
Investor Relations Contact: Dave Gentry
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 800-644-6297
Web: www.medasorb.com
Date of Presentation: 09-28-06 11:15AM
MedaSorb Technologies Corporation is a medical device company
headquartered in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. MedaSorb has
developed and is preparing to commercialize a blood purification
technology that efficiently removes toxic compounds from circulating
blood. The Company's products target large and growing markets
affecting millions of people annually. These include treatment of
severe sepsis, cardiopulmonary bypass, acute renal failure, chronic
renal failure, drug detoxification and trauma induced organ
dysfunction.
Company: NeoGenomics, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: NGNM.OB
Investor Relations Contact: Steven C. Jones
Investor Relations Contact Phone: (239) 325-2001
Web: www.neogenomics.org
Date of Presentation: 9/28/06
NeoGenomics, Inc. is a high-complexity CLIA-certified clinical
laboratory that specializes in cancer genetics testing, the fastest
growing segment of the laboratory industry. The Company analyzes
chromosomes, genes and DNA for the presence of cancerous disease
states through its cytogenetics, fluorescence in-situ hybridization
(FISH), flow cytometry and molecular genetic testing services.
NeoGenomics is headquartered in Fort Myers, Fla., and services the
needs of oncologists, pathologists, urologists, hospitals and other
reference laboratories throughout the United States. For additional
information about NeoGenomics, visit http://www.neogenomics.org.
Interested parties can also access additional investor relations
material, including an in-depth equity research report, from the
American Microcap Institute at
http://www.americanmicrocapinstitute.com/ngnm/ or from Hawk
Associates at http://www.hawkassociates.com.
Company: Nevada Gold & Casinos, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: UWN
Investor Relations Contact: Ann Callan
Investor Relations Contact Phone: (713) 621-2245
Web: www.nevadagold.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006
Nevada Gold & Casinos, Inc. is a developer, owner and operator of
gaming facilities and lodging and entertainment facilities in
Colorado, California, and New York. The Company owns a 43% interest
in the Isle of Capri-Black Hawk and Colorado Central Station, 40%
interest in Tioga Downs Racetrack & Vernon Downs Racetrack and wholly
owns Colorado Grande Casino. The Company also works with Native
American tribes in a variety of capacities.
Company: PDG Environmental
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: PDGE (OTC BB)
Investor Relations Contact: Chris Witty
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 212-838-3777
Web: www.pdge.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006
PDG Environmental, Inc., headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, is a leading
provider of specialty contracting services including asbestos
abatement, demolition, mold remediation, emergency response and
reconstruction to commercial, industrial and governmental clients
nationwide. With over twenty years experience, PDG Environmental has
18 offices capable of responding to customer requirements coast to
coast. For additional information, please visit http://www.pdge.com.
Company: PetMed Express, Inc. dba 1-800-PetMeds
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: PETS
Investor Relations Contact: Bruce Rosenbloom, CFO
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 954-979-5995 ext 8600
Web: www.1800petmeds.com
Date of Presentation: 09-27-2006
PetMed Express, Inc. d/b/a 1-800-PetMeds, is a leading nationwide pet
pharmacy. The Company markets prescription and non-prescription pet
medications, and other health products for dogs, cats, and horses
direct to the consumer. The Company offers consumers an attractive
alternative for obtaining pet medications in terms of convenience,
price, ease of ordering and speed of delivery. The Company markets
its products through national television, online and direct
mail/print advertising campaigns, which aim to increase the
recognition of the "1-800-PetMeds" brand name, increase traffic on
its website at www.1800petmeds.com , acquire new customers, and
maximize repeat purchases.
Company: Q Comm International, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: Amex- QMM
Investor Relations Contact: Ashley Ammon
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 203-682-8208
Web: www.qcomm.com
Date of Presentation: Sept. 26th, 2006
Q Comm International is a prepaid transaction processor that
electronically distributes prepaid products from service providers to
the point of sale. Q Comm offers proprietary prepaid transaction
processing platforms, support of various point-of-sale (POS)
terminals, product management, merchandising, customer support and
engineering. Q Comm systems replace traditional hard cards (also
known as scratch cards or vouchers) that are costly to distribute,
and provide more comprehensive reporting and inventory management
among other benefits. Q Comm's solutions are currently used by
wireless carriers, telecom distributors, and various retailers to
sell a wide range of prepaid products and services, including prepaid
wireless, prepaid phone cards, prepaid dial tone and prepaid debit
cards, such as prepaid MasterCard and Visa. Visit
http://www.qcomm.com for more information.
Company: Traffix, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: (Nasdaq: TRFX)
Investor Relations Contact: Erika Kay
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 212-896-1208
Web: www.traffixinc.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006, 2:45 p.m. EST
Traffix, Inc is a premier interactive media company that develops its
own content and builds communities tailored to consumers' specific
interests and lifestyles. Its full solution marketing services group
delivers media, analytics and results to third parties through its
three business groups: Traffix Performance Marketing
(http://www.traffixinc.com) offers marketers brand and performance
based distribution solutions though the Traffix network of
entertaining web destinations, via its proprietary ad-serving
optimization technology. SendTraffic (http://www.sendtraffic.com) is
a performance focused, search engine marketing firm focused on
building online presence, optimizing marketing expenditures and
retaining customers. Hot Rocket Marketing
(http://www.hotrocketinc.com) is an online direct-response media firm
servicing advertisers, publishers and agencies by leveraging vast
online inventory across sites, networks, search engines and email to
drive users to client web properties, generating qualified leads,
registrations and sales. mxFocus (http://www.mxfocus.com) develops
and distributes content and services for mobile phones and devices
and provides interactive mobile media solutions for advertisers,
marketers and content providers
Company: Ultimate Shopping Network Corp.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: USNR
Investor Relations Contact: Aurelius Consulting Group, Inc./Bill
Miller
Investor Relations Contact Phone: (407) 644-4256, ext. 113
Web: www.runonideas.com
Date of Presentation: 9/20/06
Launched in May of 2003, Ultimate Shopping Network has become
distinguished as "the luxury brand" of television shopping -
providing consumers with branded better goods much like retailers
Neiman Marcus and Tiffany & Co. USN provides consumers with these
goods at a great value. USN was founded by Michael Reinstein, former
president of Odin Companies, a $35 million television marketing
company, and Brian Kelly, former president of Guthy-Renker
Distribution, the nation's largest privately held direct response
media company. USN has organically grown to compete in a $7 billion a
year industry, currently broadcasting 24 hours per day, 7 days per
week.
Company: USA Technologies
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: USAT
Investor Relations Contact: George R. Jensen, Jr.
Investor Relations Contact Phone: 610-989-0340
Web: WWW.USATECH.COM
Date of Presentation: September 28, 2006
USA Technologies, Inc. (Symbol: USAT) is a leading supplier of
networked devices and associated wireless noncash payments, including
intelligent vending, as well as energy management products. Its
products enable the owners and operators of distributed assets, such
as vending machines, personal computers, copiers, faxes, kiosks, and
laundry equipment the ability to remotely monitor and control, as
well as the ability to offer their customers alternative cashless
payment options. The Company's energy management products reduce the
power consumption of various types of equipment, such as refrigerated
vending machines and glass front coolers. The company has 65 patents.
Company: Whitney Information Network, Inc.
Ticker Symbol & Exchange: OTCBB: RUSS
Investor Relations Contact: Alfred R. Novas, CFO
Investor Relations Contact Phone: Constance Schwarberg, (239) 540-6582
Web: www.wincorporate.com
Date of Presentation: September 27, 2006 at 9:45 AM EDT
Whitney Information Network, Inc. (OTCBB:RUSS) is a provider of
postsecondary education focused on educating individual investors in
real estate and financial markets. Whitney Information Network, Inc.
provides students with comprehensive instruction and mentorship in
the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Costa Rica. Whitney
Information Network is headquartered in Cape Coral, Florida and has
offices in Salt Lake City, London and Toronto.



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Times Online Launches New Travel Channel Built with FAST Search Technology. Check it out:
OSLO, Norway and NEEDHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (OSEAX: FAST.OL) (FAST(TM)), the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions, announced today that Times Online has selected the FAST Enterprise Search Platform(TM) (FAST ESP(TM)) to power its new online Travel Channel. The Times Online's combination of strong editorial content with innovative contextual advertising enables it to be the first media owner to categorize and index its travel content in such a sophisticated way - offering the site's users more relevant results and its advertisers greater insight into the preferences of particular target markets.



With the rapid growth of travellers researching and booking their holidays online, users of popular Web portals' search quickly become dissatisfied when the first five pages of results to any travel-associated search are unrelated advertisements for cheap flights or hotels. Times Online Travel Channel is using FAST technology and the FAST Search Best Practices(TM) (FAST SBP(TM)) consultancy services to create a scalable search infrastructure that indexes each piece of editorial, past and present, from The Times, The Sunday Times and Times Online to provide a wide range of relevant intelligence to those researching any destination. As part of the project, Times Online Travel Channel will also provide associated content such as local weather reports and currency and exchange rates.

Anne Spackman, Times Online Editor-In-Chief, said, "FAST's solutions allow all the content on great travel locations and holidays that readers have grown to depend on - from our cache of well-known travel writers and contributors such as Bel Mooney, Dom Joly and Michael Palin - to be easily recalled on site via our optimized search functions. Users can choose holiday information by country, type of holiday and subcategories within each type, such as diving or walking holidays, offering relevant information on the type of holiday you'd really like - all in one place."

In addition to enhancing the experience for its users, Times Online's investment in FAST will create innovative contextual advertising solutions for its advertisers.

Zach Leonard, Digital Media Publisher, Times Online, said "No other media company can offer such a complete package of information to readers. It will act as an invaluable resource while making use of the vast amount of travel information available from The Times, Sunday Times and Times Online. The combination of the power of the channel to amalgamate information and the extremely diverse audience of Times brand readers should prove an extremely successful offering to our advertisers."

"From our vantage point, the Times Online travel site now offers one of the most sophisticated contextual advertising solutions in the travel market today," says John M. Lervik, CEO of FAST. "Times Online has taken full advantage of FAST's robust, highly configurable enterprise search platform to offer an increased level of relevancy of search for its users and to create new opportunities for targeted messaging for advertisers. FAST continues to power innovation across the globe as evidenced by our support for differentiating the Times Online travel brand."

About FAST

FAST is the leading developer of enterprise search technologies and solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable enterprise search platform (FAST ESP) elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's solutions are used by more than 2,600 global customers and partners, including America Online (AOL), Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Computer Associates, Dell, EMC Documentum, Factiva, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Merrill Lynch, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Stellent, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.

FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America, and the Middle East and Africa. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.

(C) 2006 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, Contextual Insight and the FAST logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved.
eIQnetworks Announces Availability of Financing Through eIQ Credit Corporation. Check it out:
ACTON, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- eIQnetworks(TM), Inc., a global leader in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) market, today announced the formation of eIQ Credit Corporation and launch of an all-inclusive, 100% financing program in North America. eIQ's new program offers a variety of financing alternatives for eIQ software, support and maintenance contracts.



Designed to meet the needs of both enterprise and service provider businesses, the program can be customized to meet specific requirements. The program offers flexible 24, 36 and 48 payment terms to enable customers to spread payments over time to better meet individual cash flow requirements without exhausting credit lines.

"Once again eIQnetworks has raised the bar by enabling us to not only deliver comprehensive security management services, but to also provide attractive and compelling financing options," said Michael Bruck, President of BAI Security, a leading Managed Security Service Provider based in Chicago. "The new monthly financing program aligns nicely with our existing monthly service model."

Benefits of eIQ's financing program include:

-- Provides faster access to leading IT security and compliance management solutions

-- Eliminates the need to secure budget for technology acquisition upfront

-- Avoids capital budget timing constraints

-- Allows enterprise customers to implement leading SIEM solution using operational budgets

-- Better aligns service models with software purchase requirements

-- Amortizes software "soft costs" (i.e., support/maintenance) over multiple years

-- Preserves bank lines for other uses

"In today's competitive marketplace, many organizations struggle to find or allocate budget for necessary technology purchases," said Peter McGovern, Chief Financial Officer at eIQnetworks, Inc. "We developed eIQ Credit Corporation to help our customers quickly acquire solutions by removing the issues of limited funds, short budgetary cycles and tight financial caps from the purchasing scenario."

For more information, please visit www.eIQnetworks.com/financing or contact us at +1 877 564 7787.

About eIQnetworks

eIQnetworks, Inc., a global leader in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) market, provides results-driven solutions to help enterprise, government and MSSP customers improve security operations while reducing costs. With over 1,800 organizations relying on the power of eIQ to centrally manage information risk and protect IT assets, security professionals worldwide are able to take proactive steps to minimize security breaches and meet compliance mandates. eIQ customers include Avaya, Boeing, BT, Casio, Citibank, Celgene, Fujitsu, Hess, KPMG, Sprint, Malaysia Telecom, Singapore Telecom, Nuspire, Rackspace, US Army and US Navy. eIQ products are sold worldwide through strategic OEM partners Astaro, Fortinet, Intoto, IPolicy Networks, Mirapoint, NEC, NetContinuum, Secure Computing, Top Layer Networks, and a global network of distributors and resellers. For additional information, please visit www.eIQnetworks.com or call +1 877 564 7787.

About BAI Security

BAI Security, a leading Managed Security Service Provider, helps organizations of all sizes protect their IT infrastructures and comply with ever-changing regulations. BAI Security offers advanced specialization with high-profile and highly-regulated industries, such as Banking & Finance, as well as Healthcare, Education, and Retail. BAI Security's use of Comprehensive Threat Prevention is unique in the industry. By leveraging our ability to simultaneously monitor firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention, antivirus inspection, Spyware and SPAM protection, as well as content management, our Managed Security Service (MSS) can take advantage of the shared information between these security components - giving BAI a layered approach which is critical to a successful security protection program. For additional information, please visit www.baisecurity.net or call 630-836-8680.
Cyber-Ark Releases First-Ever US Privileged Password Survey. Check it out:
DEDHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Cyber-Ark(R) Software, the information security software company that develops and markets digital vaults for securing and managing highly-sensitive information within and across global enterprise networks, today announces the surprising results of its 2006 Privileged Password Survey. Privileged passwords are the non-personal passwords that exist in virtually every device or software application in an enterprise, such as root on a UNIX server, Administrator on a Windows workstation, and Cisco Enable on a Cisco device.



A surprising set of statistics

Completed by more than 140 IT professionals, the 2006 Privileged Password Survey reveals that privileged passwords are far more common in enterprises than previously thought: approximately one-half of all enterprises contain more privileged passwords than individual ones. Second, although these privileged passwords provide "super-user" system access, the survey exposes that up to 42 percent are never updated, a frightening prospect in today's environment of increased audits and hacker attacks. In fact, half of the IT professionals surveyed reveal that they're concerned about audits, and 6 out of 10 state that their organization has been hacked.

Often, the reason privileged passwords are rarely updated is a simple one: many enterprises still manually change these key passwords.

Approximately half of all enterprises have more privileged passwords than personal ones

According to the 2006 Enterprise Privileged Password Survey, the typical enterprise contains:

-- More than 500 employees, and each employee has an Administrator account associated with their workstation (72%)

-- More than 500 servers with privileged password accounts (44%)

-- More than 100 routers with privileged password accounts (41%)

-- More than 100 software applications (71%), most of which connect with other applications (92%)

"Often organizations believe that because they have a small number of IT administrators, they can't have many privileged passwords," says Adam Bosnian, Vice President of Products, Strategy and Sales for Cyber-Ark Software. "The truth is that privileged passwords come pre-loaded onto virtually every piece of hardware and software in an enterprise and are therefore extremely common. Simply put, these super-user passwords are the keys to your kingdom, and yet they are often left unguarded."

Privileged passwords are more powerful but less likely to be changed

Although privileged passwords provide "super-user" access to a target system, the survey shows they are far less likely to be updated. Respondents report that 99 percent of individual passwords are updated, however for privileged passwords:

-- 13% of ROUTER privileged passwords are never changed

-- 21% of LOCAL WORKSTATION privileged passwords are never changed

-- 13% of SERVER privileged passwords are never changed

-- 42% of SOFTWARE passwords are never changed

In many cases, these passwords are never changed because organizations still manually update them, a time-consuming process. As an IT Executive at one Fortune 500-sized company explained: "Virtually every server, router, and application in our enterprise has a number of Privileged Accounts. Of course, we have to regularly change the Privileged User Passwords for these powerful systems; however, manually changing thousands of passwords across hundreds of databases is simply impractical."

A major risk for hacker attacks and failed audits

The survey not only revealed that privileged passwords are rarely changed, it also supports that this is a dangerous practice in today's environment of hacker attacks and increased audit pressure. For example, in survey results:

-- 6 out of 10 enterprises report being hacked

-- 9 out of 10 enterprises state they're annually audited for IT practices

-- Half of all IT professionals are often or always concerned about passing audits

"Of course, having unsecured privileged passwords is an unnecessary risk," says Adam Bosnian. "There are proven software applications available today that automatically update privileged passwords across all enterprise systems, including routers, servers, workstations and software applications. Cyber-Ark is proud to offer the Enterprise Password Vault as the award-winning solution for managing, securing, auto-updating and logging all activity associated with privileged passwords."

For more information on managing these privileged user passwords and for the full results of this survey, visit www.cyber-ark.com/survey.asp

About Cyber-Ark

Cyber-Ark Software is an Information Security company that develops and markets digital vaults for securing and managing sensitive information within and across global enterprise networks. Based on it's patented Vaulting Technology(TM), Cyber-Ark's digital vault products include: The Inter-Business Vault, a secure infrastructure for cross-enterprise data exchange of highly-sensitive information; the Network Vault(R), for secure storage and management of highly-sensitive documents, and the Enterprise Password Vault, for the secure management of administrative, emergency and privileged user passwords. Cyber-Ark's Vaulting platform has been tested by ICSA Labs, an independent division of Cybertrust. ICSA is the security industry's central authority for research, intelligence, and certification testing of security products.

Cyber-Ark Software was founded in 1999 by a team of industry-recognized security experts with the aim of producing a truly effective security offering where complete end-to-end security was the initial, key design consideration rather than applied as an afterthought. Today, over 200 Global 1000 companies rely on Cyber-Ark Software's digital vault solutions for managing, sharing and securing highly-sensitive information both within their organization and with their partners, vendors and customers. Cyber-Ark Software is privately held and backed by some of the world's most successful venture capitalists, including Jerusalem Venture Partners, Seed Capital Partners (a SOFTBANK Affiliate), JP Morgan/Chase Partners and Vertex Management.
Leading Advertisers and Agencies Join Click Quality Council to Provide Input into Development of Click Measurement Standards. Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- Click Forensics(TM), LLC today announced that leading online advertisers, VISA and LendingTree, as well as major agencies, Carat Fusion and Agency.com, have joined the recently formed Click Quality Council (CQC).



The Council's goals are to establish a forum for advertising industry leaders to discuss Pay Per Click (PPC) quality issues and to ensure their interests and those of the 2,500 members in the Click Fraud Network are represented in the development of PPC measurement standards. Kevin Embree of Click Forensics will moderate the group and represent Council member interests and those of the Click Fraud Network(TM).

"The absence of pay-per-click quality standards is the single largest barrier for large advertisers to expand their media buying strategies on search engines and contextual networks alike," said Robert Pettee, Senior Search Marketing Manager for LendingTree.

"As an industry, we must define click fraud before we solve it," said Jason Clement of Carat Fusion. "This is why we are pleased to say that we will be participating in the CQC and adding an advertiser's perspective to discussions about this growing problem."

Members of the CQC will convene quarterly to discuss click quality issues and recent industry news. During the meetings, Council participants will provide input and feedback on processes and concerns related to the development of click quality measurement standards. The Council will then prioritize feedback, which will be communicated to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Click Measurement Working Group and other standards bodies.

"Our goal is to ensure that the voice of the online advertising community is heard when it comes to developing industry standards that will define click measurement guidelines," said Kevin Embree, former eBay Trust & Safety Director. "Members of the Click Quality Council and online advertisers feel the impact invalid and fraudulent clicks are having on their online campaigns everyday. Their first-hand insight and experience will prove invaluable to the development of standards and our work with the IAB. We look forward to working closely with Council members to help with this important initiative."

Advertisers and agencies interested in joining the CQC or learning more about the group, can visit www.clickqualitycouncil.org.

About the Click Fraud Network

More than 2,500 advertisers and agencies are currently members of the Click Fraud Network, which is the first and largest independent third-party service dedicated to helping advertisers, agencies and search providers monitor online advertising campaigns for click fraud free of charge. The Network is comprised of a representative cross-section of online advertisers and interactive advertising agencies including Fortune 500 companies, such as some of the world's largest retailers, travel sites, financial services firms and pharmaceutical companies. Advertisers and agencies who wish to monitor online pay per click advertising campaigns of up to 100,000 clicks per month free of charge, can sign up for the Click Fraud Network at www.JoinTheNetwork.com.

About Click Forensics, LLC

Click Forensics, LLC is the leading provider of third-party technology and services that help online advertisers, agencies and search providers to better identify pay per click fraud. Click Forensics also provides enterprise-class solutions to help advertisers with campaigns of 100,000 clicks or more per month track click fraud. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings are available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, LLC. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Ipanema Launches New Dedicated Branch Office Appliance: IPE 5. Check it out:
CONCORD, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Ipanema Technologies, the leader in application traffic management systems for wide area networks, today announced the launch of its new dedicated branch office appliance: IPE 5.

IPE 5 is a competitively priced, WAN optimization device for branch offices with ADSL/SDSL accesses. By acknowledging the DSL revolution in the WAN marketplace and launching a dedicated new appliance for branch offices, Ipanema further facilitates WAN optimization adoption for large networks.



Despite its competitive price, the new IPE 5 appliance is a high performing device. It can handle ADSL lines up to 20Mbps download, 1 Mbps upload and SDSL line up - to 8Mbps download and upload. The IPE 5 supports the many WAN Optimization mechanisms delivered through the Ipanema System, including Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation, Smart Packet Forwarding, Compression and TCP Acceleration optimizing TCP and UDP flows. In addition, the device collects the most precise application performance metrics including Mean Opinion Score for VoIP.

"The IPE 5 is yet another example of how Ipanema is dedicated to bring to market an efficient and cost effective solution for managing large networks," said Vargha Moayed, EVP of Ipanema Technologies. "Thanks to our patented Tele-Optimization feature we have already been enabling branch office optimization without requiring a device. However, some branch offices require compression, or have VoIP which cannot be handled without a device. Now with the IPE 5, it becomes doable at an affordable price."

With an entry price as low as $1500, the IPE 5 allows enterprises to benefit from the versatility of the DSL technology in their large scale deployments while guaranteeing the performance their mission critical applications.

"Our enterprise customers have been clamoring for the ability to implement advanced traffic management in their branch offices," said Martin England, General Manager: Managed CPE & Service Propositions at BT. With the IPE 5, Ipanema is helping us drive WAN optimization services further into our customer base."

The IPE 5 is available immediately from Ipanema and from its service provider partners such as BT Global Services and Vanco.

About Ipanema Technologies (www.ipanematech.com)

Founded in 1999, Ipanema Technologies is a provider of advanced application traffic management solutions that maximize network application performance. Its solutions are utilized by organizations deploying VoIP, ERP applications and other bandwidth-hungry projects as well as those embarking on ITIL projects. Network integrators market the Ipanema system to enterprises, while telecom service providers and network managed service providers offer it as a service.

The Ipanema system is simple, automated and scalable and is unique in guaranteeing critical application performance regardless of network conditions. It enables this by providing full visibility of application flows over the network, optimizing network resources through a combination of integrated technologies and rightsizing bandwidth according to application performance objectives. Ipanema's solutions are deployed in more than 75 countries; its customers include large organizations such as the French Army, L'Oreal, Sanofi, Europcar, Rhodia and Lexmark. Ipanema is based in France, U.S, Germany and UK.
Proxy Networks Introduces Proxy Remote Control 5.10. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Proxy Networks, a leading provider of reliable, low cost remote control products for remote support, training, network management, compliance and collaboration, announced today the general availability of Proxy Remote Control 5.10 and Proxy Gateway Server 5.10. This latest software release includes several new features and enhancements to the reliable, easy-to-use remote control products that are installed on several million PCs and servers around the world.



Proxy Gateway Server acts as a virtual router enabling customers to tie large numbers of PCs and servers into a single, centrally-managed remote access network. Proxy Gateway Server maintains persistent connections with each of these hosts, allowing help desk professionals and network administrators to access and take over any machine instantly. The result is that remote support, network management and collaboration can be setup and executed more quickly and efficiently throughout the enterprise.

"What Proxy Gateway Server allows us to do - take over a machine on a different domain in a different location within seconds, and know that we're taking over the right PC with the right user logged on - makes our life so much easier," said Robert Platus, Managing Director of Quality Network Solutions, an outsourced technical support provider based in London, England.

Proxy Gateway Server 5.10 now features screen recording and playback capabilities that Proxy customers can use to create content for remote training or compliance purposes. The Gateway Server uses advanced compression algorithms that results in ultra compact recording files. As a result, customers can keep screen recording turned on continuously without worrying about storage costs.

Proxy Remote Control 5.10 now includes multi-monitor support, which allows users to capture the entire virtual Windows desktop distributed across multiple displays on remote machines. Multi-monitor support is particularly useful for collaboration and training in industries where large displays are commonplace, such as oil & gas, pharmaceuticals and financial services.

"Proxy Remote Control 5.10 is our first release since the acquisition of the Proxy Remote Control products from Funk Software earlier this year. We are committed to developing, delivering and supporting new features on top of proven, low cost infrastructure that millions of users rely upon for remote control and remote access everyday," said Proxy Networks CEO Andy Kim.

For over a decade, Proxy Remote Control has been the chosen infrastructure for remote control and remote access by thousands of enterprises and SMBs around the world because of it reliability, ease of use, high performance and low cost:

-- Reliable: Persistent Proxy client software ensures that the right infrastructure is in place for the most reliable and secure connections for remote control, especially if you need access to unattended machines

-- Real-Time: Pixel-perfect screen capture and low-latency response to keyboard and mouse inputs makes you feel like you are sitting in front of the remote machine

-- Low Cost: Less than half the cost of PCAnywhere or GoToMyPC

Proxy Remote Control 5.10 is available today. Existing customers with active maintenance agreements will receive notification shortly with the location of the new software and upgrade keys (if necessary). Existing customers without active maintenance agreements should contact Proxy Networks by phone at 617-621-3900 or by email at [email protected] to get new upgrade keys. New customers are invited to download the new version from the Proxy Networks website at http://www.proxynetworks.com for a free 30-day trial.

ABOUT PROXY NETWORKS, INC.

Proxy Networks develops, markets, distributes and supports reliable, low cost remote control products for remote support, training, network management, compliance and collaboration. The Proxy Remote Control family of products is used actively by thousands of SMB and enterprise customers around the world, and over the last decade, has been installed on millions of PCs and servers. Based in Cambridge, MA, Proxy Networks products are available through direct and indirect channels in the United States and through indirect channels in the rest of the world. For more information on Proxy Networks, visit www.proxynetworks.com.
Network World Names EqualLogic Customer Olin College an Enterprise All-Star Award Winner. Check it out:
NASHUA, N.H. --(Business Wire)-- EqualLogic(R), the leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that Network World has named The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering as a 2006 Enterprise All-Star Award winner for its iSCSI SAN project, which used EqualLogic's PS Series storage arrays. Olin College, which offers an engineering education that bridges science, technology, enterprise and society, deployed a PS Series SAN to support its complex and growing network environment while remaining efficient and cost effective.



The Network World Enterprise All-Star Award program recognizes exceptional use of network technology to further enterprise business objectives. For the 2006 award - the second annual - Network World editors selected 40 enterprise IT organizations representing the best, most innovative application of network technologies in eight IT categories, including storage and network management. These award-winning network IT projects are profiled in Network World's Signature Series Enterprise All-Star Issue, published September 25 and available online at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006.

"Olin College showed true innovation in a network IT environment by deploying an iSCSI-based SAN to address the rapidly growing storage requirements of its institution," said Beth Schultz, editor of Network World's Enterprise All-Star Issue. "The project resulted in reduction of costs for additional and replacement servers by approximately 45 percent and a reduction in annual incremental backup systems by approximately 50 percent. As a result of these accomplishments, we are proud to recognize Olin College as a 2006 Network World Enterprise All-Star Award Winner."

"EqualLogic's PS Series SAN has had a very positive impact on our faculty's ability to innovate and meet the growing needs of our students," said Joanne Kossuth, chief information officer and associate vice president of development at Olin College. "We were impressed with the PS Series' fully integrated feature set, redundant hardware and hot-swappable components that gave us the high data availability of enterprise storage. As a forward-thinking institution, we seek technology solutions that break traditional models to address today's evolving operational requirements. EqualLogic's technology fits our way of thinking."

EqualLogic delivers a dynamic virtual storage solution to companies of all sizes, offering a reliable, self-managing, scalable pool of storage that responds automatically to users' demands. The award-winning and data-center-proven PS Series is the only native iSCSI SAN solution to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost. Each PS Series storage array comes with fully redundant, fault-tolerant hardware and includes automatic storage management software. Multiple arrays combine to form a scalable storage grid that expands in capacity as needed without disruption.

"Network World's recognition of the real-life accomplishments of customers like Olin College is a helpful validation of innovative technologies and practices for other IT organizations," said John Joseph, EqualLogic's vice president of marketing. "EqualLogic is dedicated to giving both large and small customers a dynamic alternative to traditional storage products, enabling them to serve their unique missions with greater flexibility."

About EqualLogic

EqualLogic(R), Inc., is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations in more than 30 countries worldwide - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. The EqualLogic PS Series of storage arrays, based on the company's patented peer storage architecture, is the industry's first automatic storage platform that delivers operational simplicity, comprehensive data management services and high data availability in a single, scalable pool of storage. EqualLogic's headquarters are located in Nashua, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.

About Network World

Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community (www.networkworld.com), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns, and create new revenue opportunities.

EqualLogic is a registered trademark of EqualLogic, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners
Arbor Networks and Featured Analyst Firm Discuss the Benefits of Securing the Enterprise with Network Behavior Analysis. Check it out:
--(Business Wire)-- Arbor Networks:

TITLE: Securing the Enterprise with Network Behavior Analysis

WHO: Paul Proctor, featured Research Vice President of Gartner

Tom Bienkowski, Director of Product Marketing, Arbor Networks(R)

WHEN: Tuesday, September 26, 2006

WHERE: Please register for this free on-demand Webcast at:

http://www.accelacomm.com/jlp/PR/0/10010001/

WHAT: In this Webcast, Arbor Networks and featured Gartner research vice president Paul Proctor discuss Network Behavior Analysis (NBA). NBA is an innovative new technology that leverages flow data to provide network-wide visibility and anomaly detection.



Attend this Webcast and learn:

-- How companies can use NBA to overcome the security and performance management challenges that they face on a daily basis;

-- The benefits of NBA technology and how it complements traditional security devices, such as IDS, IPS, and SIEM.

-- How NBA can be used to ease the burden associated with regulatory compliance.

ABOUT ARBOR NETWORKS

Arbor Networks(R) delivers core-to-core network security and operational performance for global business networks. Arbor's Network Behavioral Analysis (NBA) solutions are based on the Arbor Peakflow(R) platform, providing real-time views of network activity enabling organizations to instantly protect against worms, DDoS attacks, insider misuse, and traffic and routing instability as well as segment and harden networks from future threats.

Today, Arbor Networks' customer base is comprised of a broad range of service provider and enterprise customers within a variety of industries spanning the globe, demonstrating the depth and breadth of Arbor Networks security expertise. All rely on the Arbor Peakflow platform to prevent costly downtime, enable network cleanup, and increase customer trust.

To learn more about Arbor Networks, please visit: http://www.arbornetworks.com. And, to learn more about the Arbor Security Engineering & Response Team (ASERT) - the company's security research arm - please visit the ASERT blog: http://asert.arbornetworks.com/

Note to Editors: Arbor Networks and Peakflow are registered trademarks and the Arbor Networks logo and ArbOS are trademarks of Arbor Networks, Inc. in the USA and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
StrikeIron Launches Super Data Pack. Check it out:
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- StrikeIron Inc., provider of the Web Services Marketplace, today announced the launch of the StrikeIron Super Data Pack. Designed to ease the development of composite applications, Web applications, mashups, and other data-driven applications, the Super Data Pack provides risk-free access to dozens of different data sources all under a single registered account. As part of the package available now, StrikeIron is providing access to the first 10,000 hits per month across all of the various data sources at no cost or commitment from the user.



Leveraging external data sources help an organization reduce the costs associated with fragmented, redundant, and out-dated data, including the maintenance and hardware costs of storing and updating data internally. As an example, the Web services within the Super Data Pack can quickly be integrated into a service oriented architecture (SOA) in order to expand the breadth and depth of data available throughout the enterprise while decreasing the cost of maintaining the same data internally.

"StrikeIron offers a compelling solution for users who are looking for agile, resilient access to multiple external data sources," said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC. "When you combine StrikeIron's Super Data Pack with the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, users can start with simple data mashups, and quickly build sophisticated service-oriented composite applications that solve dynamic business challenges."

One of the challenges for SOA projects integrating with external Web services is the ability to handle authentication and transaction tracking across disparate sets of data. The Super Data Pack provides a consistent mechanism and interface for developers and end-users, regardless of the Web service being integrated, to quickly and easily create robust composite applications without having to juggle multiple authentications and dealing with inconsistent Web services implementations. These free Web services can be combined with any of the StrikeIron Marketplace commercial Web services to create CRM, e-commerce, data quality applications and much more.

The Super Data Pack currently has 20 services, with plans to be at over 100 services by the end of 2006. This includes Web services that provide city, county, and state information across the US, healthcare-related data, governmental data, international data, business data, communications related data, transportation data, financial data, statistics, and more. In addition, StrikeIron is seeking partners who want to list their Web services or publicly available data for use with the Super Data Pack (e.g. a list of all the major golf courses or a directory of locations for a restaurant chain). Visit www.strikeiron.com/SDP for more information.

"The Super Data Pack really helps to open the flood gates of what is possible with Web services, service oriented architecture, and the Programmable Web," said Bob Brauer, CEO and president of StrikeIron. "We are excited about providing the platform that brings all of this live data together and makes it consistent and easy to use for delivery into a broad range of real-time applications."

About StrikeIron

StrikeIron is the leader in the commercialization of Web Services, providing the world's largest library of externally available plug-and-play Web services. Built on top of a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use Web Services Commerce Platform, the Marketplace serves as a place for providers and consumers of XML-based Web services to publish, subscribe to, and build applications and Web sites using a diverse set of Web services.

Enabling a business model for the Programmable Web, the core technology provides self-service publishing and consumption of Web services, micro-transactions and usage-based billing, software infrastructure, multiple productivity tools, seamless integration for both individual customers and software technology partners, and a consistency of usage from multiple Web services across multiple vendors. The Aurora Funds, Inc. and NC IDEA provided funding for StrikeIron after recognizing the significant opportunity to invest in a technology firm leading innovation of the Programmable Web and Web 2.0. For more information, visit www.strikeiron.com.
Kewill Recognized by Three Leading Industry Publications in 2006 as a Top Supply Chain Solution Innovator and Partner. Check it out:
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Kewill, (LSE:KWL), the leader in enterprise shipping management software and services, today announced the company's receipt of three different 2006 industry awards including being named to the Top 100 Logistics IT Company list from Inbound Logistics magazine, the Supply & Demand Chain Executive (SCDE) 100 list from Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine, and the GL&SCS 100 Great Supply Chain Partners Award from Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies magazine.



Each year Inbound Logistics magazine selects 100 software providers who offer cutting-edge logistics IT solutions that drive advances in the practice of integrated logistics. The April 2006 issue of Inbound Logistics featured an expanded profile of "the best of the best" - 100 logistics, transportation, ERP, and SCM technology - best-of-breed and end-to-end providers including Kewill, selected by Inbound Logistics editors.

The 2006 SCDE 100 honor was awarded to vendors that are leading the way in providing cutting-edge solutions and helping enterprises address pain points in their supply chains through the application of new technologies and new processes. This year the magazine focused its judging criteria for its top "100" list on innovation, evaluating hundreds of applicants based on current trends in supply chain enablement to find the most innovative leaders. Kewill and other SCDE 100 award recipients were featured in the June/July 2006 issue of the publication as well as the SCDE web site: www.sdcexec.com.

Unlike the Inbound Logistics and SCDE honors which award companies following evaluation by the publications' editors, the annual Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies awards stem from technology users who submit nominations to the publication. Readers of GL&SCS nominated Kewill as one of the best 'linking' partners, deeming Kewill to be a vital player that constantly improves business processes and communication. GL&SCS magazine received over 2,000 qualified responses nominating over 450 different companies; the final list of 100 received the most nominations. Kewill is featured together with the other 2006 honorees in the publication's July issue: http://glscs.texterity.com/glscs/200607/.

"2006 has proven to be a powerful growth year for Kewill and its enterprise shipping management solutions," said Michael P. Dolan, COO for Kewill. "Earning multiple awards and endorsements from top supply chain trade magazines further validates the value that Kewill solutions provide to our customers with our industry-leading enterprise solutions."

About Kewill Systems plc.

Kewill Systems plc. is a leading international company dedicated to the development and provision of software and services to manage complex business to business supply chains. With over 33 years' experience in the supply chain space, Kewill Systems plc. is a long-time innovator of Supply Chain Execution software focusing on order management, transportation management, international trade logistics and visibility solutions for global trading communities. Over 55,000 customers have trusted Kewill Systems plc. for the management of their supply chain information including household names such as UPS, Fedex, TNT, DHL, Frans Maas, Panalpina, A.N. Deringer, General Motors, Mazda, General Electric, Philips, Pratt & Whitney, Mitsubishi, Texas Instruments, Littlewoods, Sainsbury's, JD Williams, Marks & Spencer, Toys R Us and Legal & General.
Mimosa NearPoint Named a Two-Time 2006 Readers' Choice Award Winner by Windows IT Pro. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Mimosa Systems(TM), a leader in unified information management solutions for enterprise content, today announced that Mimosa NearPoint(TM) for Microsoft(R) Exchange Server was named a winner in two categories of the 2006 Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards: Mail Archiving and Storage Management Software. Kim Paulsen, Group Publisher of Penton Media's Windows IT Pro, recently announced the winners of the fifth-annual contest.



"The 2006 Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards continue our tradition of honoring products that our readers tell us are most worthy of recognition," said Paulsen. "These are the hardware, software, and services that measure up where it counts most - in the businesses, agencies, and institutions that rely on them to deliver what they promise."

"It's an honor to receive this recognition from the readers of Windows IT Pro," said Mike Ivanov, vice president of product marketing, Mimosa Systems. "These awards are a strong testament to our growing momentum and they underscore the value of Mimosa NearPoint as a next-generation information management solution with powerful capabilities for information immediacy, discovery and continuity."

Readers were asked to vote on their product preferences in 12 broad technology categories. More than 5,200 readers chose the best among more than 750 products and services.

"The IT pros who voted in this year's awards are tough, in-the-trenches critics," Paulsen continued. "They demand solid value and performance from the products they use and put those products to the test day after day." Paulsen concluded, "Readers' Choice award winners can feel proud that the products and services they develop have earned the respect and recognition of the IT world's most knowledgeable and exacting professionals."

The articles for the two categories can be viewed online at: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/92699/92699.html and http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/92719/92719.html

About Mimosa NearPoint

Mimosa NearPoint addresses critical customer requirements around email information archiving, eDiscovery, regulatory compliance, business continuity and storage optimization. Mimosa NearPoint provides immediate mailbox and message recovery, disaster recovery, email archiving, and self-service search and access in one solution. By leveraging cost-effective storage, NearPoint also optimizes e-mail storage and reduces overall infrastructure costs.

About Mimosa

Mimosa Systems, Inc. delivers next-generation information management solutions for information immediacy, discovery and continuity. Mimosa NearPoint(TM) for Microsoft(R) Exchange Server is the industry's most comprehensive information management software solution for Microsoft Exchange, unifying email archiving, recovery and storage optimization. NearPoint assures email continuity and regulatory compliance, while leveraging cost-effective disk technologies to optimize email storage growth. Mimosa is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner recognized for its competencies in Networking Infrastructure Solutions, ISV Software Solutions, and Information Worker. Mimosa is a privately held company whose investors include August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, Dot Edu Ventures and JAFCO Ventures. Mimosa was founded in 2003 and is based in Santa Clara, California and Pune, India. For more information see www.MimosaSystems.com.

About Windows IT Media

Penton's Windows IT Media, the largest independent Windows IT community in the world, includes flagship print publication Windows IT Pro. First published in 1995, Windows IT Pro is the editorial leader in its field and has a paid subscription base of 110,000. The magazine is published in 13 languages and has an international reach into 160 countries. Windows IT Pro UPDATE, the group's flagship email newsletter, is the only e-newsletter to make BtoB Magazine's Media Power 50 list.

The Windows IT Media network has 2.5 million unique visitors to its websites each month, and over one million (gross) subscribers who opt-in to one or more of its email newsletters. Windows IT Media is the world's leading producer of custom roadshows, paid conferences and paid workshops for Windows and SQL Server IT professionals.

For more information visit: www.windowsitpro.com/pressroom, and www.windowsitmedia.com.

Mimosa, Mimosa Systems, Mimosa NearPoint and NearPoint are trademarks of Mimosa Systems. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Chooses Ensemble Rapid Integration Software. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- InterSystems Corporation today announced that, based on an extensive evaluation of leading integration products, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has selected Ensemble as its enterprise integration engine. Ensemble will replace SeeBeyond DataGate, the integration technology currently used by Cedars-Sinai, and will be used for all future integration projects, according to Cedars-Sinai CIO Darren Dworkin.



The leading database provider in healthcare, InterSystems develops and markets the CACHE post-relational database, Ensemble rapid integration software and HealthShare health information exchange platform. Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai is one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States. Approximately 1800 physicians in virtually all medical specialties serve Cedars-Sinai's patient population. Known throughout healthcare as a leader in advanced technology and ranked as a national leader in quality healthcare delivery, six of Cedars-Sinai's specialities ranked among the nation's best in U.S. News and World Report's 2006 "America's Best Hospitals" guide. And, Cedars-Sinai received the "Most Wired Hospital" designation from Hospitals & Networks Magazine in 2006.

"The speed of development made possible by Ensemble combined with the ability to address the entire range of our requirements were critical to our integration software selection," Dworkin said. "We currently have more than 160 interfaces running on production systems where Ensemble will replace the legacy integration technology. And, Ensemble will be the foundation software used for advanced integration work as we move forward."

"InterSystems is a proven leader in healthcare and shares our strong commitment to advancing healthcare technology standards," Dworkin continued. "Our long-term strategy is aimed at building a single system environment for our clinical IT platform. Ensemble provides the extensibility, speed-to-deployment and wide choice of adapters needed to replace the current integration engine and is critical to implementing our organization's IT strategic vision."

"InterSystems is very excited about partnering with Cedars-Sinai to fulfill their visionary strategy for enterprise-wide integration," said Trevor Matz, InterSystems Managing Director, Application Integration. "Cedars-Sinai has a well-deserved reputation for successful healthcare technology innovation. InterSystems is committed to supporting these advanced initiatives for rapidly linking internal and external people, processes and applications while preserving their IT investment."

About InterSystems

For over 25 years, InterSystems Corporation has been a technology innovation leader in database and integration software. The CACHE post-relational database, Ensemble rapid integration software and HealthShare information exchange platform enable developers to quickly create, deploy and integrate high-performance systems. With world headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, InterSystems has offices in 20 countries and provides support to customers in 88 countries.

InterSystems is a leader in integration technology and the world's #1 database provider in healthcare, with its products used by most major hospitals and labs, including America's 10 best hospitals as rated by U.S. News and World Report. For more information, visit www.InterSystems.com

About Cedars-Sinai

The first of eight hospitals in California whose nurses have been honored with the prestigious Magnet designation, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States. For 18 consecutive years, it has been named Los Angeles' most preferred hospital for all health needs in an independent survey of area residents. Cedars-Sinai is internationally renowned for its diagnostic and treatment capabilities and its broad spectrum of programs and services, as well as breakthroughs in biomedical research and superlative medical education. It ranks among the top 10 non-university hospitals in the nation for its research activities and was recently fully accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, Inc. (AAHRPP). Additional information is available at www.cedars-sinai.edu.
Redline's WiMAX Products Connect Gulf of Mexico Oil Rigs. Check it out:
MEXICO --(Business Wire)-- Redline Communications, a leading provider of standards-based broadband wireless equipment, and AlanDick, the communications infrastructure specialist, announced today that they will deploy the world's first multipoint WiMAX network at sea. Redline's industry-leading broadband wireless system will be used by Pemex to establish the high-speed WiMAX connections on board a cluster of 11 off-shore oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.



"This project represents the world's first WiMAX network deployment to an oil rig cluster, and the first major WiMAX network in Mexico," said John Oliver, AlanDick group marketing manager for broadband technology.

"After a thorough review of available technologies, we selected Redline's RedMAX equipment to provide the reliable, secure, high-throughput links that Pemex needs. WiMAX's inherent flexibility, coupled with the high performance of the Redline RedMAX kit used in the project, has allowed Pemex to make the right choice in terms of technology, hardware and, of course, system integrator."

The 11 oil production platforms owned by Pemex, one of Mexico's major companies, are located up to 16kms (10 miles) offshore from Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche and span an average of 10kms (6 miles) between each platform. The 3.4 GHz WiMAX network uses double redundancy components and systems at all points in the network to minimize environmental interference that could significantly impact data throughput and link reliability.

"AlanDick's WiMAX knowledge and technical capabilities have positioned the company among the world leaders in driving WiMAX deployments for companies in a wide range of industries and environments," said Kevin Suitor, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Redline Communications. "This 'world first' WiMAX network oil rig deployment demonstrates the breadth of AlanDick's expertise and the robustness and reliability of Redline's RedMAX systems."

"Redline's RedMAX products support several different data modulation schemes to deliver an unmatched combination of range, capacity, security, and reliability, even in very challenging environments like those found in the Gulf of Mexico. RedMAX is an ideal solution for off-shore oil rig deployments where the distances and variable, often hostile, weather conditions test the performance limitations of any communications technology," said Suitor.

Redline's RedMAX(TM) Family

Redline's RedMAX family of WiMAX solutions is the world's first complete system to receive the WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) mark for conformance to the WiMAX standards for performance and interoperability. Redline's carrier-class RedMAX Base Station (AN-100U) supports voice, video, and prioritized data traffic, enabling long-range, high-capacity wireless broadband networks. Redline's WiMAX products also include the RedMAX Indoor Subscriber Unit (SU-I) and Outdoor Subscriber Unit (SU-O) designed for enterprise and residential services. The RedMAX Management Suite enables operators to monitor and control the network, ensuring high service availability. Redline is maintaining its WiMAX leadership with the expansion of its RedMAX family to include products for additional frequency bands, applications and standards.

About AlanDick

The AlanDick group of companies operates over 30 offices across the globe and employs over 2,000 people. It is viewed as the world leader in its sector, providing communication network infrastructure solutions in markets such as, cellular, broadcast, radar/surveillance and enterprise wireless.

The group was established in 1971 and has offices spread across 5 continents AlanDick is a world-class organisation which, for its mobile network operator clients, plans, designs, deploys, develops, maintains, manages, supports, integrates and optimises communication networks across the globe.

With over 30 years experience in global communication infrastructure, AlanDick provides innovative products, services and solutions to support the highest standards of performance and reliability demanded by international network operators, service operators, service providers, technology manufacturers & integrators.

The company's client list reads like the Who's Who of the world's cellular network operators.

About Redline Communications

Redline Communications is the leading provider of standards-based wireless broadband solutions. Redline's WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) systems and award-winning backhaul and transport products enable service providers and other network operators to cost-effectively deliver high-bandwidth services including voice, video and data communications. Redline is committed to maintaining its wireless industry leadership with the continued development of WiMAX and other advanced wireless broadband products. With more than 30,000 installations in 75 countries, and a global network of over 100 partners, Redline's experience and expertise helps service providers, enterprises and government organizations roll out the services and applications that drive their business forward. For more information, visit www.redlinecommunications.com.

NOTE: All registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.
Rising Launches New Virus Wall Products. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 26, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Rising Corp., a leading antivirus and content security software and services provider in China, has rolled out five models of new hardware virus wall products for various enterprises.



RSW-B2000, kilomega-level chip virus wall, is not only the first of its kind but it is taking the top position in technology worldwide as well.

Hardware virus wall is what global anti-virus software builders are going to develop in the future, and overseas institutions used to aired that virus wall will make up more than 50 percent of enterprise-level anti-virus software market in the coming five to ten years.

Rising released China's first model of virus wall product in 2004, which came to the same level of products launched by international leaders of the sector.

The RSW-B2000 virus wall will be mainly applied to networks with huge traffic in telecom operators and banks for checking ill-intended viruses.

From cyd.com.cn, Page 1, Monday, September 25, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
CCT Gets CNY500mn Long-term Loans from CDB. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 26, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --China Chengtong Group (CCT) recently signed a contract for a CNY 500 million loan with China Development Bank, one of the country's three policy lenders, marking a new phase of cooperation between CDB and the nation's state-owned assets administration body as well as CCT itself.



The life of the CNY 500 million loans signed this time will be as long as ten years, and it will be used in state-owned assets regrouping, thus making it the first long-term renminbi credit extended for state-owned assets projects.

In 2005, CCT and CDB has signed a development finance partnership agreement that gave CCT a line of credit of CNY 20 billion during 2005 and 2008, and the newly-signed CNY 500 million loans was a part of that agreement with DDB, according to the company.

CCT is a large state-owned enterprise which operates the nation's largest, and the widest-spreading chain logistic network, metal distribution network and container transportation network with integrated functions in storage, distribution and information services.

From dycj.ynet.com, Page 1, Monday, September 25, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
Smoothstone and Network Solutions Enter Partnership. Check it out:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. and SOUTH BEND, Ind., Sept. 26 -- Smoothstone IP Communications and Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) today announced a new partnership to deliver Smoothstone's solutions through NSI's Business Advisors to mid-sized enterprise clients. NSI kicked off the partnership by installing a Smoothstone solution in its South Bend headquarters and in its newly expanded Indianapolis office.



(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060214/CLTU019LOGO)
"We are delighted to have Network Solutions as our 'go-to' Cisco integrator partner in Indiana and Michigan," said Chuck Piazza, Smoothstone's vice president of sales. "Many companies don't qualify to work with Smoothstone, but NSI certainly does. Their 17 years of experience and focus on providing flexible solutions to meet each client's individual needs fit perfectly with our professional services approach."

"We were so impressed, we become a Smoothstone client ourselves," said Larry Tadevich, NSI's owner and president. "We know of no other fully managed services provider with such a feature-rich, robust and cost effective solution. Smoothstone is definitely 'best-of-breed' in this space."

The partnership will offer SmoothstoneCOMPLETE, a fully managed, hosted solution that includes enterprise-class VoIP, unified messaging and group collaboration tools, and SmoothstoneCONNECT, an IP Trunking solution that delivers carrier services to Cisco CallManager and CallManager Express, complementing NSI's Cisco Voice Practice. Both include a Quality of Service guarantee; all of the benefits of single, converged, wide area network; and advanced disaster recovery capabilities. To learn more, visit: http://www.smoothstone.com/solutions.php.

About Smoothstone IP Communications
Smoothstone is the leading, nationwide IP communications provider for medium-sized enterprises. Its unique platform provides centrally managed solutions, including VoIP, over a private, nationwide network, with local dial tone available in over 6,000 local calling areas. Smoothstone is a Cisco Powered Network member and is the oldest managed VoIP company in the U.S. For more information, visit http://www.smoothstone.com/ or call 800-773-3037.

About Network Solutions, Inc.
Network Solutions, Inc. is a network convergence company that provides advanced voice, video, data and security solutions to the private and public sector. NSI is the #1 Cisco Commercial Voice applications partner in Indiana and provides solutions from Tandberg, Solutionary, Trend, Websense, Liebert, MRV and now Smoothstone IP Communications. Founded in 1989, Network Solutions, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Granger, IN. For more information, visit http://www.nsi1.com/ or call 574-271-0900.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060214/CLTU019LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Smoothstone IP Communications

CONTACT: Russ Maney of Smoothstone IP Communications, +1-502-315-5177,or [email protected]; or Steve Tadevich of Network Solutions, Inc.,+1-574-271-0900, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.smoothstone.com/http://www.nsi1.com/http://www.smoothstone.com/soluti
ons.php
MIT's Michael Cusumano to Deliver Closing Keynote at Technology Professional Services Association November Summit. Check it out:
SAN DIEGO --(Business Wire)-- The Technology Professional Services Association (TPSA), the technology professional services industry's premier organization, announced today that Michael Cusumano, Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, will be the closing keynote speaker at the TPSA Summit, to be held November 12-14 in Washington, D.C.



The fall Summit, themed "Aligning Professional Services," is focused on achieving total alignment between overall corporate strategy and the professional services strategy.

Cusumano's presentation, "Managing the Product/Service Mix for Long-Term Success -- Which is the Better Business Model, in Software and Other Industries?", builds on his latest book, The Business of Software, and focuses on the common debate among entrepreneurs and managers, in software and other businesses, of corporate positioning as a products company versus a services company.

After constructing a database of over 400 public software companies and applying a historical perspective of more than 15 years, Cusumano's research now extends to non-software companies and is designed to answer the question of which is the better business model: products, services, or something in between, in terms of firm performance and market valuation over time.

"One of our missions as an association is to guide our members in the process of designing a viable services strategy that complements a broader company portfolio. This continues to be a critical discussion," said Thomas Lah, TPSA Executive Director. "Michael's rich perspective, based on both academic research and hands-on experience, will provide Summit attendees with valuable information that they can directly apply to their own businesses."

Cusumano is the Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. He specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in the software business. He has been a director of several public and private software companies, including Patni Computer Systems. He also has consulted for dozens of major organizations around the world. Cusumano is the author or co-author of eight books. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton, a Ph.D. from Harvard, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Production and Operations Management at the Harvard Business School.

For more information on the TPSA Summit, along with community resources including important industry news and key financial trends, TPSA programs and member benefits, visit www.tpsaonline.com.

About TPSA

The Technology Professional Services Association (TPSA) is the first and only organization for executives who create, produce, deliver, manage, measure, and optimize technology services in the world's leading corporations. Member companies represent a diverse group of market segments including hardware and software products, systems integration, on-demand hosted applications, and value-added solutions. Through membership collaboration and management expertise, TPSA provides the information, concepts, models, and best practices required for success in the critical professional services component of the technology enterprise.

Leveraging its influential membership, TPSA serves as a pre-eminent thought leader and issues advocate, providing insights and trends analysis to the media, industry and business community-at-large on all matters related to technology professional services. Among its member programs, TPSA offers a Benchmark Survey with peer-group specific and industry average metrics, and The Service 50, an aggregation and analysis of publicly reported financial data, with a focus on trends in services revenues, margins, and contributions to total corporate revenue.

TPSA is part of the Point B group of associations. For over 16 years, Point B has successfully managed industry groups, including the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA). More information on TPSA can be found at www.tpsaonline.com.
Softscape Announces Expanded Mid-Market Delivery Services to Support Growing Customer Base. Check it out:
WAYLAND, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Softscape, the industry pioneer in innovative people management, today announced it has expanded its Softscape On-Demand(TM) mid-market offering in response to significant market momentum with small to midsize businesses. To meet the growing demand from mid-market customers, Softscape has also expanded its On-Demand Services Group, which offers proven experience to assist customers in streamlining their human capital management (HCM) deployments. The company expects continued growth and plans to triple headcount in the On-Demand Services Group by the end of the year to support customers directly.



Softscape On-Demand is the company's award-winning HCM system delivered fully hosted on a single common platform and at one low monthly fee. The expanded offering now includes Softscape's integrated performance management, goals management, competencies, 360 multi-source feedback, succession planning, learning management (LMS), learning content management (LCMS), compensation management, surveys & assessments, hiring management, HR management system (HRMS), resource demand planning, project and portfolio management, position management, expense management, time & attendance, e-meetings & collaboration, advanced reporting, and analytics. Softscape is the only talent management vendor to offer this level of product breadth and depth that also includes core HR management to link historical employee records with strategic HCM functions.

"We have significantly grown our mid-market business while continuing to pioneer new technologies with our enterprise customers," said Dave Watkins, CEO and co-founder Softscape. "Each of these markets requires different methodologies to support the diverse needs of customers. Our proven approaches to both have enabled us to maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction."

"Softscape's service is akin to Nordstrom," said Linda St. John, Senior Director of HR at Fallon Community Health Plan. "We chose Softscape for both their advanced technology and their customer-centric approach to service. They partnered with us and helped us redesign our system, not just replicate it."

Softscape's expertise has long been regarded by industry analysts as most appropriate for enterprises seeking to solve complex business problems. More than 20% of Softscape's customer base represents Fortune 500 and Global 500 organizations, and 10% are Fortune 100. Over the past three years, Softscape's mid-market customer base has grown 695%, and the company's expanded services group provides the horsepower to support this explosive growth.

Softscape also offers customers flexible growth paths enabling them to expand and update their HCM deployments in real-time as their organizations grow. This includes the ability to further configure or tailor their deployments to meet future business requirements, as well as multiple hosting options.

Small to midsize customers benefit from Softscape's extensive experience delivering best practices to large multi-national organizations through Softscape's Global Solutions Group. Softscape is unique in the industry, providing both advanced technology and superior consultative services to help customers more effectively solve their business challenges.

"Softscape's level of customer flexibility, as well as breadth and depth of our product offerings, is unmatched in the industry," said Dave Watkins. "We continue to invest heavily to meet growing market demand and to help customers better manage their people and their business."

For more information about Softscape's solutions, please visit www.softscape.com.

About Softscape (www.softscape.com)

Softscape is the pioneer in advanced people management technologies providing organizations unprecedented experience in solving complex business problems. Recognized by leading industry analysts as the most comprehensive integrated people management platform, Softscape's award-winning web-based software enables customers to enhance productivity, improve effectiveness, facilitate long-term planning, reduce operational costs, and drive organizational performance. Softscape's customers represent Global 500, mid-market, and government organizations including Seagate, Northrop Grumman, Freightliner, LandAmerica, Medica, the City of Chicago, and the US Department of Homeland Security. Softscape is based in Massachusetts with offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Hartford, Washington DC, New York City, London, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg.

The Softscape logo and marks related to Softscape products are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Softscape, Inc. Other brand & product names contained herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Unisys Evaluation Shows Intel vPro Technology Can Yield Quantifiable Benefits for IT Outsourcers and Their Clients. Check it out:
BLUE BELL, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) today announced proof-of-concept test results demonstrating that new Intel(R) vPro(TM) technology can deliver significant benefits for both outsourcing services providers and their enterprise clients. Unisys extensive evaluation shows that Intel vPro technology deployed in managed PCs can improve automation of some key infrastructure management tasks by up to 98 percent and reduce some client business costs by as much as 20 percent.



Intel vPro technology combines the advanced Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor with specialized technologies, such as Intel(R) Active Management Technology, and communications capabilities to make PCs more powerful, secure and manageable. Services providers can remotely discover, monitor and manage those systems even when they are powered down or the operating system is malfunctioning.

Through extensive modeling of potential user cases, Unisys determined that Intel vPro technology can help outsourcing services providers and clients achieve impressive results in asset management, problem resolution and performance monitoring. They can potentially:

-- Cut the costs of modeling an infrastructure between 20 percent and 45 percent;

-- Reduce deskside visits by service representatives for software problem diagnostics and resolution by some 40 percent to 50 percent;

-- Shorten the time required for remote discovery of PC assets by up to 50 percent;

-- Reduce the cost of hardware asset inventory by up to 50 percent and eliminate virtually all manual inventories;

-- Reduce business costs of user downtime due to software patches by approximately 10 percent to 20 percent by performing up to 98 percent of updates in off-hours;

-- Perform up to 98 percent of system firmware updates remotely; and

-- Speed deployment of critical software patches. Up to 30,000 PCs could potentially be patched in one day, regardless of whether they were powered on at the start of the cycle - significantly reducing the window of security vulnerability, among other benefits.

For full results, see the Unisys white paper.

Unisys anticipates that the Intel vPro technology could enable the company to create additional remote managed services. It could help extend Unisys capabilities to collect client infrastructure performance and modeling data in outsourcing engagements. Aligned with Unisys 3D Visible Enterprise (3D-VE) approach, this infrastructure visibility could enable Unisys to better determine the linkage between the infrastructure and the client's strategic business goals, predict the business impact of business changes to the infrastructure before making them, and innovate for secure service delivery and cost optimization.

"In outsourcing services engagements where Intel vPro technology is deployed, Unisys enhanced visibility into the IT infrastructure can add significant value for our clients' business," said Stuart Gavurin, vice president and managing partner, IT Outsourcing Services, Unisys. "Intel vPro technology enables Unisys both to measure the business impact of our outsourcing services more effectively and to continually create new, innovative, lower-cost managed services for our clients."

"Unisys, with its broad client base, is well positioned to prove the value of Intel vPro technology in real-world enterprise settings," said Robert Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager, Business Client Group. "Unisys has demonstrated not only the singular benefits of Intel vPro technology in security and manageability, but also its flexibility that enables a variety of service models tailored to different business environments and needs."

Unisys Outsourcing Solutions: Visibility for Secure Business Operations

By capitalizing on the visibility into the linkages and dependences between business and IT within their enterprises provided by Unisys 3D-VE approach for outsourcing, Unisys clients can realize the benefits of secure business operations - breakthrough performance in customer service and satisfaction, competitive advantage in a dynamic marketplace, greater agility in IT management with minimized risks and higher availability, improved operational efficiency, and more effective cost control.

About Unisys

Unisys is a worldwide technology services and solutions company. Our consultants apply Unisys expertise in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure, and server technology to help our clients achieve secure business operations. We build more secure organizations by creating visibility into clients' business operations. Leveraging Unisys 3D Visible Enterprise, we make visible the impact of their decisions - ahead of investments, opportunities, and risks. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

RELEASE NO.: 0926/8711

http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/09268711.htm

Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Certeon and CorasWorks Collaborate to Optimize Enterprise Business Workflow. Check it out:
BURLINGTON, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Certeon, the first vendor to provide secure application acceleration from desktop to the data center, today announced that CorasWorks(R) Corporation has joined the Certeon Partner Acceleration Program as a complementary technology partner. Deploying the CorasWorks Workplace Suite(TM) with Certeon's S-Series(TM) Application Acceleration Appliances results in businesses delivering a high level of information availability to Microsoft(R) SharePoint(R)-based applications, with improved application response times of 1000 percent.



The CorasWorks Workplace Suite enables users to quickly and easily design, create, and deploy inter-connected business applications that run on top of SharePoint, without custom development--but with so many demands on the network, it's prudent for organizations to further optimize their SharePoint platform by accelerating its native performance. Certeon's complementary technology provides high performance and productivity for all SharePoint applications and knowledge workers, regardless of their location on a WAN.

"Enterprises today are eager to effectively support a dynamically changing network environment which is challenged by an increasing number of users, applications, and businesses processes, across multiple locations," said William Rogers, president and CEO, CorasWorks. "In looking for ways to optimize their CorasWorks software investment and ensure its value is available to all current and future users, Certeon's SharePoint Application Acceleration Blueprint(TM) stands out as the ideal solution to speed network performance today and as their networks grow."

The joint solution enables increased productivity for branch office workers by improving application response times by 1000 percent. It also provides support for more users and more applications over existing bandwidth, reduces network utilization, and enhances the overall SharePoint user experience.

"CorasWorks' ready-built solutions and modular components can be snapped together to drive business processes and offer custom benefits with out-of-the-box simplicity," said John Lloyd, vice president, business development at Certeon. "Together, CorasWorks and Certeon deliver a compelling solution to optimize business processes and speed collaboration across the enterprise."

About CorasWorks

CorasWorks Corporation is the leading provider of workplace application software on the Microsoft SharePoint collaboration platform and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. CorasWorks is the fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective way to design, build, and manage applications on SharePoint. The CorasWorks Workplace Suite is being used by more than 500,000 users, in more than 700 enterprise, corporate, non-profit, and government organizations in more than 20 countries around the world to build powerful and flexible integrated business workplaces, without custom development. For more information about CorasWorks, visit www.corasworks.net.

About Certeon

Certeon's S-Series Application Acceleration Appliances provide the industry's first solution for Application Intelligent Networking to deliver application acceleration, security, and scalability from the desktop to the data center. Based on Certeon's patent-pending Secure Acceleration Technology(TM), the Company's S-Series appliances minimize network traffic to significantly improve application response times, while maintaining end-to-end security. Founded in 2003, Certeon is a private company funded by Globespan Capital Partners and Sigma Partners. The Company is headquartered in Burlington, Mass. For more information, visit www.certeon.com or call 781-425-5200.
Airband Provides Internet Access for Texas Wireless Summit in Austin. Check it out:
DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Airband Communications Inc., the largest fixed wireless company for businesses in the United States, today announced it is providing high-speed Internet access to the Texas Wireless Summit, an industry conference commencing today in Austin, Texas. Attendees will have access to 20Mbps of bandwidth through the Wi-Fi network that the Summit has deployed.



"We are delighted to provide the Summit and its attendees with Internet access via our pre-WiMAX network," said Mark Spagnolo, airBand president and CEO. "This is a great example of how we surpass traditional wireline offerings by delivering such high bandwidth levels in a matter of days, without any compromise in service quality."

"Although the industry hype is focused on the impending future value of wireless standards such as WiMAX and 4G services, Airband demonstrates the tremendous value that businesses can take advantage of today," stated Erin Defosse, Chairman of the Austin Wireless Alliance, which is co-hosting the event. "The inherent power and flexibility of their wireless network will continue to be a key point of differentiation in the enterprise market."

The Texas Wireless Summit is a premier conference for leaders to discuss and plan for the business models and disruptive technologies that will define the future of the wireless industry. Now in its fourth year, the Summit is hosted by the Austin Wireless Alliance (AWA) with the support of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at The University of Texas at Austin - September 26-27 at the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin Hotel.

About Airband Communications, Inc.

Airband Communications, Inc., is a broadband communications provider dedicated to helping businesses realize the full potential of their voice and data services. The company delivers a comprehensive portfolio of high-speed data, Voice over IP, remote data protection, security and other managed solutions - all over one of the industry's most scalable last-mile networks. The company bypasses the local phone company to provide faster provisioning intervals, immediate scalability and complete redundancy for its customers. Airband also offers an unmatched level of reliability backed by its Service Level Agreement (SLA) that provides a 100% uptime guarantee. As a result, nearly 2,000 businesses already count on Airband for their broadband service, including market leaders like Continental Airlines, Fender Guitars, FILA, Salomon Smith Barney and The Staubach Company. Airband is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. More information about the company is available at www.airband.com.
IBM Global Financing and Symbol Technologies in customer financing agreement. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IBM Global Financing, the lending business unit of IBM (NYSE:IBM), and Symbol Technologies Inc (NYSE:SBL), a provider of enterprise mobility, announced on Monday (25 September) the completion of a five-year strategic financing services agreement.



The agreement will enable Symbol customers to benefit from more options to finance their enterprise mobility products, software and services.

Under the terms of the agreement IBM Global Financing will be Symbol's financing partner and will provide the company's worldwide corporate and small-business customers with a variety of payment plans to acquire Symbol's hardware, software and services.

No financial details were available.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
DataFlux selected by Xerox Europe for multi-market SAP implementation. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Provider of data quality integration solutions DataFlux has announced that Xerox, a provider of document management, has selected technology from DataFlux to underpin its European ERP systems.

Xerox data sources will be integrated by DataFlux into a European large-scale SAP migration covering 16 countries and the company will also offer data quality support from completion of the initial implementation in June 2007.

According to the companies, DataFlux's Data Quality Integration Solution 7.1 will be used by Xerox to profile and address the quality of the existing data across its multiple legacy systems. Using the new technology Xerox will be able to consolidate information on customers, products and corporate assets into one enterprise-wide ERP system.



In addition Xerox will then use dfPower Studio, a GUI-based data management solution, to build and implement rules to ensure that on an ongoing basis only quality data is generated at source.

The technology is to be implemented in two stages and the initial implementation will cover 85% of Xerox Europe's business operations. As part of stage one technology from DataFlux will be rolled out across the Xerox Pan-European Office Products Business Unit, UK, France and Germany by June 2007. The final stage, covering the remainder of Western Europe, will be completed within the next two years, the companies said.

Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Jobs lost faster than they were created, says report. Check it out:
(Newsletter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) JOBS were being lost faster than they were being created, despite hundreds of millions of pounds in investment by Northern Ireland's economic development agency during its first three years in operation.



A report today into Invest Northern Ireland's performance reveals that over pounds 400 million was spent supporting economic projects between 2002 and 2005 while overall employment in its client companies dropped by 4,700.

The figures are contained in the internal report covering the first three years after Invest Northern Ireland was created from a group of separate economic agencies.

The net losses were despite thousands of jobs being created with Invest NI financial assistance over the period.

Launching the report, Invest NI chief executive Leslie Morrison said it marked "an important stage in the maturity of the organisation" and should be seen as a first step towards the production of meaningful performance indicators.

"The business of economic development is complex. Invest NI cannot take credit for all the positive consequences associated with our activities, just as we cannot take full responsibility for addressing all of the economic difficulties faced by Northern Ireland."

An agency spokesman said the drop in employment in its client companies was due to the huge fall-off in employment of around 50 per cent in the manufacturing sector, in particular textiles, adding that similar falls were recorded by Enterprise Ireland in the Republic and other UK agencies.

Without the job creation efforts, he said the situation could have been worse.

"There are clearly many factors which influence the performance of our clients, only one of which is assistance received from Invest NI," said Mr Morrison.

"We acknowledge that further work is required to understand better the connections between our interventions and their consequences."

The report highlighted that over the three-year period, it offered assistance of just over pounds 400 million towards projects which plan to invest over pounds 1.5 billion within the Northern Ireland economy.

Over 8,800 offers were made to help individuals start a business. Not all start-ups survived, but INI estimates some 7,800 jobs were created.

A further 6,500 were created through foreign direct investment by companies either new to Northern Ireland or those expanding.

The value of exports generated by Invest NI client companies increased, in real terms, by 12.5 per cent to pounds 4.2 billion.

Almost 70 per cent of small or medium-sized client companies introduced some degree of product or process innovation - compared with 39 per cent for other local businesses and 62 per cent for a comparative British sample.

Copyright 2006 . Century Newsletters Ltd.

Cash injection for telecoms firm

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Cash injection for telecoms firm. Check it out:
(Newsletter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BELFAST-based venture capital firm, Enterprise Equity has pumped pounds 2.6m worth of funds into a Northern Ireland-based telecoms software company.

Mobile Cohension (MoCo), which employs 20 people in Belfast and has offices in the US and Singapore, said it will use the cash injection to "exploit its competitive advantage globally".

MoCo's Hydra product enables mobile phone operators to automatically manage their relationship with the content providers that offer data services (such as ringtones, games and news) on mobile phones.

The investment round was supported by existing investors, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners and Accel Partners, the Mobile Cohesion management team and Viridian Growth Fund.

"In just under five years, MoCo has developed a software suite that sets the standard in partner relationship management solutions for mobile phone operators," said Brian Cummings of Enterprise Equity (NI), who joins the board as Non-Executive Director.



He said the Hydra product takes the pain out of signing-up and managing the numerous content and application providers that offer data services to mobile users.

Mr Cummings added:

"We were very impressed with Mobile Cohesion's management team and their track record in building successful software businesses.

"Having established key reference customers across the world, the challenge for the company is to build on this base.

"With the European mobile data services market projected to grow from pounds 15 billion to pounds 40 billion in the next five years, this represents an exciting opportunity and the quality of the Hydra product puts MoCo in an excellent position to exploit this window."

MoCo's Executive Chairman Denis Murphy, and Chief Operating Officer Richard McConnell were previously involved in the formation of APiON, a telecommunications software company that developed a WAP software solution for mobile phone operators.

APiON was sold to Phone.com (which later became Openwave) in 1999 for $240 million; at that time the largest acquisition in Northern Ireland's history.

Denis Murphy said the financial backing was an endorsement of MoCo's market-defining position in partner relationship management solutions for mobile operators: "We can now further develop our presence in a vast market - one in which we already have big competitive advantage," he added.

Copyright 2006 . Century Newsletters Ltd.
Celebrating the true spirit of the entrepreneur. Check it out:
(Newsletter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) This Thursday, 24 of Ireland's top business stars, including three from Northern Ireland, will be competing for the prestigious title Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. ADRIENNE McGILL profiles the trio who are among the entrepreneurial elite.



SINCE their inception 20 years ago, the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards have honoured entrepreneurial men and women across the globe and the companies they have built and grown.

The awards programme now stretches across 26 regions in the US and 35 countries throughout the world and recognises the vital contributions of entrepreneurs who have led, created, built and sustained world-class companies that are a testament to vision, leadership, achievement, and social responsibility.

This Thursday evening, 24 leading Irish entrepreneurs will compete for title 2006 Ernst and Young Ireland Entrepreneur of the Year at a gala ceremony in Dublin's City West Hotel.

The acclaimed title is in recognition of the winner's role in driving, building and sustaining the economy of Ireland.

Among the finalists will be three entrepreneurs from Northern Ireland: Martin McKay of Texthelp, Christopher Watson of Chain Reaction Cycles and Steve Brankin of Asidua.

The trio have reached the final after being chosen from a competitive pool of more than 150 business and individual entries across the island of Ireland.

Invest Northern Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland, Ulster Bank and the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship are co-sponsors of the all-island event.

Invest NI's Director of Life Sciences and Creative, Donal Durkan, says: "This is not just another awards ceremony. Taking part in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards is a tremendous experience for local entrepreneurs, regardless of whether they win.

"Over the last six months these 24 finalists got the opportunity to attend an entrepreneur CEO retreat in Shanghai, China, met with Chinese business leaders and local entrepreneurs, participated in masterclasses with global business experts and were able to network with over 60 finalists and winners from previous years. They have made valuable contacts and many are going away with a completely fresh perspective on how to take their business forward," adds Mr Durkan.

Companies are judged on criteria such as growth in turnover and employee numbers, vision, innovation, creativity in production, marketing and selling, and expansion in local and international markets. There will be individual winners in the category of Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year, Industry Entrepreneur of the Year, and International Services Entrepreneur of the Year as well as an overall winner.

The overall winner will then take part in the World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Monte Carlo next year.

'Having your perceptions challenged is invaluable'

Martin McKay, Texthelp

MARTIN McKay is the Technical Director of Antrim based Texthelp, the global market leader in the design of technology and software products which benefit students and educational institutions to improve reading and writing abilities.

He was nominated by Invest Northern Ireland and is a finalist in the international category of the awards.

This is Martin's second time in the competition and he feels that Texthelp benefited enormously from the fresh perspective the competition gave him the first time round.

"I learned a lot from people I met who were running very diverse businesses and it spurred me on to open new business units within Texthelp. I was delighted to be nominated again this year."

The 2006 programme was particularly attractive to Martin because of the focus on China. "The 10-day trip to China included three days of lectures and three days of meetings. The lectures were excellent and the meetings gave me a good insight into the Chinese market. I discovered that there are 250 million Chinese seeking a qualification in English and that by 2008, when the Olympics will be held in Beijing, every taxi driver must be proficient in English. As a result of the trip we have an opportunity of signing a deal with a Chinese company to stream audio to taxi drivers via their radios to help them learn English."

Texthelp employs 55 and has a multi-million pound turnover. Its products include the award-winning Read & Write Gold for special needs students, and it also owns the Browsealoud technology and brand.

On a personal level Martin feels that participating in the awards has been very worthwhile. "It's good to get out of your own working environment and meet other business people. Having your perceptions challenged is also invaluable," he says. "It's always difficult to justify taking time out from work but taking part in these awards has already delivered many benefits - and it's been fun."

Chance to identify potential new business opportunities

Steve Brankin, Asidua

STEVE Brankin is the CEO of Asidua, a rapidly growing, software consultancy and services company in Belfast. He was nominated by Invest Northern Ireland and is a finalist in the emerging entrepreneur category of the awards.

Steve was initially a little sceptical as to how the initiative could benefit him:

"I thought it would just result in another awards ceremony but I carried out some research and was really impressed with the networking and personal development opportunities on offer."

Steve was successful in the shortlisting process and, with the other 23 participants, he embarked on an intensive few months of activities.

"It was hard work," he admits, "but absolutely amazing. Ernst and Young developed a really dynamic and imaginative programme which really kept me engaged in the process."

In particular, Steve found the networking elements and the team spirit gave him a completely new perspective on things.

"I didn't think I would have so many challenges and issues in common with business people from such diverse sectors. It was really refreshing to discuss an idea or problem with someone from the construction or food sector who has been through a similar experience."

But it was the trip to China with fellow participants and the judging panel which really made an impact on him. "I was completely amazed by the rapid growth of the economy there. It really put things into perspective and also helped me to identify potential new business opportunities."

It's clear that the initiative has had a major impact on Steve and has proven to be an invaluable experience. "Regardless of the outcome on 28 September, I already consider myself to be a winner. For anyone thinking of entering next year I would just say go for it - you will never have a better opportunity to develop your skills, contacts and your business."

'The experience has been great'

Christopher Watson, Chain Reaction Cycles

CHRISTOPHER Watson owns and runs Chain Reaction Cycles in Ballyclare, the largest independent retailer of cycle parts on the UK and Irish markets. Chris was nominated by the Ulster Bank and is a finalist in the international category of the awards.

"I was surprised to be nominated because you don't really think of yourself as an entrepreneur, you're just getting on with things," he says. "But the whole experience has been great."

The highlight of the awards programme so far for Chris was the trip to China with the other finalists. "We got the chance to attend excellent lectures at business schools there, as well as visiting potential customers and suppliers," says Chris. "The chance to talk to 23 other like-minded business people was especially helpful for me. Getting their perspective helped me see the potential for my business. When you're working on your own you sometimes wonder 'am I doing this right?' but this experience has given me a lot more confidence and reassured me that I am."

Chain Reaction Cycles supplies high value cycle parts and clothing from more than 300 brands direct to the end consumer. The company exports to over 100 countries and its award-winning website is translated into four languages.

Despite this, Chris feels that the company has had a low profile and so has been delighted at the publicity generated by the Ernst and Young awards.

"Although we employ over 70 staff and trade internationally, we have a low profile. The media coverage we have enjoyed by being involved in the awards has been great for making our name more widely known and giving us added credibility," he says.

Copyright 2006 . Century Newsletters Ltd.
ANALYSTS LAUD QSR'S MOVE TO INCREASE STAKE IN KFCH. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 17 (Bernama) -- Analysts are generally in favour of QSR Brands Bhd's move to increase its stake in cash-rich KFC Holdings Malaysia Bhd (KFCH) from 32.83 percent to 40.43 percent to protect its interest as well as that of its parent company, Kulim (Malaysia) Bhd



According to Yeonzon Yeow, head of research at K&N Kenanga, the move will allow the diversified plantation group to gain more control of KFCH, albeit via QSR, and gain a better grip of the fast food operator's cash flow of around RM150 million per year

"Increasing its stake in KFCH will improve overall dividend flow into Kulim and QSR, which benefits it greatly in servicing the RM400 million loan it secured to purchase QSR," Yeow told Bernama

A Kuala Lumpur-based analyst of a Swiss brokerage house said the action taken by QSR was not surprising as it was Kulim's only avenue to protect its interest and deter future hostile takeover attempts for QSR's crown jewel, KFCH

"It only makes sense for Kulim via QSR to up its stake in KFCH to ensure that the company solidifies its position," the analyst said

According to him, KFCH is an attractive catch

"It is the leading fast-food firm in the country with over 50 per cent market share. It owns 420 restaurants in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei and has RM148.14 million in its bank account as at June 2006," he said

Its net profit for the first half of the year stood at RM41.65 million versus a net loss of RM76.1 million in the same period a year ago

Revenue grew slightly to RM723.75 million from RM723.18 million previously

On the uptake of the mandatory general offer (MGO), with an offer price of RM4.94 per KFCH share, the analyst said the majority of shareholders would most probably not take up the offer as there was little upside compared to the company's current trading price

However, resistance to the offer could be an indication of support for the institution-led presence that ushered in an era of management stability, as well as their belief in the future positive performance of KFCH, he said

In its statement to Bursa Malaysia on Sept 12, QSR said the RM4.94 price was derived from the five-day weighted average market price of KFCH shares up to and including Sept 11 this year

The price represents a premium of RM0.12 or about 2.49 percent to the weighted average market price of KFCH shares during the period

QSR on Sept 12 announced that it had triggered a MGO for all remaining ordinary shares of KFCH after its stake increased from 32.83 percent to 37.88 percent

It purchased 5.04 percent or 10 million shares of KFCH via direct business transaction through Bursa Malaysia, where the seller is believed to be Unioncity Enterprise Ltd

The company then made a further purchase the following day on Sept 13, totalling 2.56 percent or five million KFCH shares, bringing QSR's total stake in KFCH to 40.44 percent

On the issue of taking KFCH private, Tan Sri Muhammad Ali Hashim, who is chairman of both QSR and KFCH, said recently that the focus now was to secure more KFCH shares from the open market

"Taking KFCH private is not related to the raising of stake in KFCH

This is also not the time to talk about taking KFCH private as that would entail a separate business decision," he said. Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
CELCOM AIMS 150,000 3G SUBSCRIBERS BY YEAR END. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 19 (Bernama) -- Celcom (Malaysia) Bhd is confident of achieving its target of 150,000 3G subscribers by end of this year



As at July 31, 2006, the company had 90,000 3G subscribers

Its chief executive officer, Datuk Shazalli Ramly said the launch of its new 3G package for enterprise called "Power of Three" is expected to boost the company's enterprise customer division

He said the company has been receiving encouraging response for its enterprise products and managed to get a high number of customers in July this year for an earlier product "PowerTools"

"For a start, we will offer "Power of Three" package for our existing enterprise customers," he told reporters after the product was launched here today by Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Jamaluddin Jarjis

"Power of Three" was developed by both Celcom and the world's mobile telecommunications company, Vodafone

Under the package, Celcom offers three new products and services such as Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G Broadband data card, access to Vodafone's vast international roaming footprint and the 'Blackberry by Vodafone" service powered by Celcom

"Through this alliance, Celcom customers can now stand to enjoy a complete "mobile working experience," Shazalli said

The Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G Broadband data card supports High-Speed Data Packed Access (HSDPA), known locally as Celcom 3GX and enables download speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps and upload speed of up to 384 Kbps

On the roaming partnership, Shazalli said the strategic alliance with Vodafone would enable Celcom customers to enjoy superior roaming services over 306 operators worldwide, with 34 operators fully equipped for 3G roaming

In near future, Celcom customers would also enjoy a Virtual Home Environment (VHE) when roaming on Vodafone networks, with the same short codes and services that they would use in Malaysia

Under the "Power of Three" package, Shazalli said the company has launching the latest Blackberry service, using the first 3G Blackberry device in Malaysian market - the Blackberry 8707v

Celcom, a Telekom Malaysia Bhd unit has 7.8 million mobile subscribers so far with network coverage covering 97 percent of the populated areas in Malaysia

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Izzo gets 2 key posts at PSEG

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Izzo gets 2 key posts at PSEG. Check it out:
(Record, The (Hackensack, NJ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--Ralph Izzo was named Monday as president and chief operating officer and became heir apparent as chief executive officer of Public Service Enterprise Group, the final steps in a rapid rise up the company's corporate ladder.



For three years, Izzo has been president of Public Service Electric and Gas Co., New Jersey's largest utility with more than 2.2 million customers. PSE&G is one of Newark-based PSEG's three major business units.

Izzo, 48, takes over the new positions Oct. 1 and is in line, the company said, to become CEO when E. James Ferland retires in March. Ferland does not have to retire as chairman, and the company did not say whether he would.

Rutherford native Ralph LaRossa, 43, was named to replace Izzo at PSE&G. He has been vice president for electric delivery.

The announcements come less than two weeks after PSEG's proposed $17.8 billion sale to Exelon Corp. collapsed under pressure from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

Had the sale gone through, creating the nation's largest utility, Izzo was to become president of the energy division overseeing utilities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois. LaRossa was set to take over Izzo's job.

The selection of Izzo, who has held several senior executive positions since joining Public Service in 1992, was not surprising, said Paul Fremont, an analyst who covers PSEG for Jeffries & Co. in New York.

"He's been with the company for a long time, and he's done a fine job on the regulated side," Fremont said, referring to the utility, which is regulated by the BPU.

The challenge will be dealing as well with the unregulated PSEG Power division, which provides the company with more than half its revenues.

Izzo, who holds a Ph.D. in applied physics from Columbia University and an MBA from Rutgers, said he was ready.

Despite some obvious difference between the two sides of the business, "at the end of the day, this isn't selling shoes," Izzo said in a telephone interview.

"The same basic technologies determine your place in the marketplace," he said. Both, he said, are capital-intensive and heavily dependent on union relationships, and rely on operational excellence to build a financially strong house.

Izzo's selection ends what observers saw as a three-man competition with Robert Dougherty, president and chief operating officer of PSEG Energy Holdings, and Thomas O'Flynn, the chief financial officer, to replace Ferland, who turns 65 next year. The company had no comment on whether the elevation of Izzo would have any effect on the other two.

Selecting someone as young as Izzo seems to indicate that the board of directors was planning long-term, and Izzo says that's how he looks at the situation.

"I have every expectation this is a long-term relationship," he said. "That's my plan."

LaRossa had a similar outlook.

"I have 21 years down, and I'm looking for another 21," he said.

In a conference call last week with analysts, Ferland gave no indication that an announcement was imminent. But he did say his successor would be named in plenty of time for a smooth transition and to update the company's long-term strategic business plan.

"The board's choice of Ralph Izzo and Ralph LaRossa to guide PSEG and PSE&G in the ever-changing energy business environment is a tribute to their wealth of knowledge, vast experience, hard work and depth of leadership capabilities," Ferland said in a statement.

"Both are well-liked and well-respected in and out of the company. ... I am confident they will do an excellent job for our shareholders, customers, employees and the communities we serve."

The two Ralphs said a priority is reestablishing New Jersey's reputation as a leader in social and environmental issues. Company activities in those areas were put on hold while the Exelon deal was working its way through the approval process.

PSEG stock has held steady after dropping about $6 a share within hours of the announcement that Exelon had withdrawn from the deal Sept. 14. Shares closed Monday at $61.37, up 42 cents.

RALPH IZZO

-- Occupation: Named Monday as president and chief operating officer, Public Service Enterprise Group, effective Oct. 1; expected to become chief executive in March

-- Age: 48

-- Education: Columbia University, B.S. (1978), M.S. (1979) and Ph.D. (1981) in applied physics; Rutgers University, MBA (2003)

-- Background: Served as president and COO of Public Service Electric and Gas Co. since 2003.

-- Other jobs: Research scientist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; Congressional Science Fellow in office of U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley; senior science, energy and technology policy adviser to former Gov. Thomas Kean.

-- Interests: Baseball, Bruce Springsteen.

To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.NorthJersey.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Landmark building gets new owner

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Landmark building gets new owner. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--HIGH POINT -- High Point's unofficial symbol, often called The World's Largest Bureau, Monday was purchased by a woman who values its history and wants to preserve it.



"I don't know what I'm going to try to do with it," Pam Stern said. "I'm just trying to save the building." Stern owns Move It! Makeovers, a business to decorate empty homes for use in the real estate market.

Although the 3,000-square-foot structure looks like a chest of drawers, it contains office space and a basement.

Stern noticed about six months ago that the building at 508 N. Hamilton St. was for sale.

"I saw it and thought, this is crazy. It should be preserved. I couldn't believe the city of High Point didn't buy it."

Mayor Becky Smothers said she's delighted that a private entrepreneur purchased the building, which most recently was designed by late architect Sid Lenger to look like a large chest of drawers, with two socks hanging from the representation of the middle drawer.

"I think the fact that she bought it is a perfect indication of why the city didn't buy it," Smothers said. "There is certainly recognition of its value in the private sector."

The building most recently was owned and used by the Jaycees, and before that it was the home of the High Point Chamber of Commerce.

The building is in disrepair, Stern said, and she will renovate it for any tenant who wants to rent it. If a tenant can't be found, she'll renovate it for her use, perhaps to sell market samples.

Negotiations to purchase the building took longer than expected, and Stern planned to have more time to make it available for rental during October's furniture market. "I'm going to have to see how fast we can pull this off. If I can get it rented by market, I can definitely pat myself on the back," she said.

Built in 1926, the building was located in Tate Park at N. Main Street and Church Avenue, currently a parking lot for First Baptist Church. The building was relocated in 1951 to its current location and was used as home of the High Point Jaycees. It was purchased in 1952 by the High Point Jaycees for use as local/state Jaycees headquarters.

The original white frame building is 32 feet high, 27 feet wide and 14 feet deep. The front was remodeled in the mid-1990s.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Hospitals compete for share of north High Point market. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--HIGH POINT -- The race is on for patients in north High Point.

In a week's span this month, plans for major facilities were announced by Moses Cone Health System and High Point Regional Health System. Both multi-million-dollar facilities are targeted for north High Point -- within two miles of each other. Both should be completed by mid- to late 2008.



High Point Regional, in conjunction with Cornerstone Health Care, plans up to a 50,000-square-foot facility on Premier Drive that could cost $15 million. Moses Cone intends to build a 51,000 square-foot facility, projected to cost $20 million, on Willard Dairy Road.

"It's disappointing to see somebody else want to put a facility in north High Point," said Eric Fletcher, High Point Regional director of public relations and marketing.

"North High Point, historically, has aligned with High Point Regional as far as patient usage. We're proud of the access we've provided in north High Point and continue to provide."

Whatever Moses Cone does, Fletcher said High Point Regional and Cornerstone will move ahead with the project.

"We think we've been very responsible in our growth in north High Point," he said. "That's where the disappointment comes in. We provide outstanding care, world-class facilities, and we're starting to replicate those facilities closer to where people live and work."

Unlike Moses Cone, High Point Regional and Cornerstone have not filed a certificate of need application with the Division of Facility Services in the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Medical office buildings are exempt from certificate-of-need laws," Fletcher said. "We're evaluating what services might go in there. If we meet the criteria, we certainly would apply."

Fletcher said there's a good chance the mix of services for Premier Medical Plaza will require a certificate of need. Current plans call for physician offices, a fertility center and diagnostic imaging.

Moses Cone Health System insists it has a lot of patients to serve in north High Point.

"We serve 44 percent of the people who live in the targeted area," said Doug Allred, Moses Cone public relations specialist. "We see it as a way of enhancing our service to those folks."

The "it" Allred refers to is a new $20 million, 51,000 square-foot facility on Willard Dairy Road.

"Part of our service is a seven-day, 24-hour-a-day emergency department," Allred said. "That will give people along the (N.C.) 68 corridor a much more convenient way to get that kind of service.

"It's a growing area. We hope, when additional growth comes, to see some of that as well."

Allred said Moses Cone, which has already filed an application for a certificate-of-need with the state, has been planning its new facility quite a while. The state will decide whether the facility will conflict with High Point Regional and Cornerstone Health Care's planned new $15 million facility or duplicate services to north High Point, Allred said.

Martha Frisone, project analyst for the Certificate Need Section of the state Division of Facility Services, said if applications are submitted in the same review period and for the same services, they are reviewed competitively.

"Cone's application will not be reviewed competitively with anything," she said. "When, and if, High Point should submit something, we will evaluate High Point's application based on the facts in existence at the time we do the review."

Frisone said each certificate-of-need applicant must stake out its service area.

"The applicant has to identify the population served and demonstrate the need of that population for the proposed services," she said.

"They have to demonstrate that it won't result in unnecessary duplication of existing or approved services or facilities," she said.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Asia Pacific Leading Metro Ethernet Services Market According to In-Stat. Check it out:
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. --(Business Wire)-- Asia Pacific (APAC) is leading the market adoption of metro Ethernet services, as Japan and South Korea companies are entering the mass adoption stage, reports In-Stat (http://www.in-stat.com). The APAC market registered 0.632 million business metro Ethernet service subscribers in 2005, the high-tech market research firm says. Most of them were in Japan and South Korea, and consisted mainly of small and medium-size enterprises that value the cost-effectiveness of metro Ethernet services for inter-office connectivity and high-speed Internet access. The number of metro Ethernet service subscribers among APAC enterprises is forecasted to grow to over 2.648 million by 2010.



"As service providers realize that the bandwidth flexibility metro Ethernet offers to enterprise users is greatly welcomed by customers, they will put more effort into developing market opportunities around basic metro Ethernet connectivity in the next five years," says Victor Liu Zhoujiao, In-Stat analyst.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

-- For service providers, marketing and customer education will play an important role in getting customers to understand and subscribe to metro Ethernet services.

-- A wide selection of value-added services will help operators to generate sustainable revenue from customers.

-- In the international sector, major regional and international bandwidth providers position metro Ethernet as a good replacement of legacy frame relay, and will accelerate market adoption.

The research, "Metro Ethernet Asia" (#IN0602774ANT), covers the market for metro Ethernet services in Asia. It contains regional forecasts of metro Ethernet service revenue and subscribers through 2010, along with breakdowns for four Asian markets: China, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. It also includes analysis of major market providers' strategies and customer perceptions.

For more information on this research or to purchase it on line, please visit: http://www.instat.com/catalog/bcatalogue.asp?id=238. To speak with a sales representative, please visit: http://www.instat.com/sales.asp. The price is $2,995 (US).

About In-Stat

Technology vendors, service providers, technology professionals and market specialists, worldwide, rely on In-Stat's experienced staff and in-depth research to support critical business, product and technology decisions. In-Stat's insights are derived from both a deep technology understanding and comprehensive research, which examines each segment of the value chain for each market. Regular and ongoing end-user demand and primary research surveys underpin much of the analysis, enabling In-Stat to provide incisive market knowledge and guidance on future market opportunities.

In-Stat is a strategic segment of the $9 billion Reed Elsevier global information network, with access to an expansive worldwide electronic network, extensive technology databases and well-informed personnel. As a member of Reed Business Information, In-Stat is a division of the largest business-to-business publisher in the U.S.
Worldwide Enterprise Incentive Management Packaged Software Market To Grow 30% Per Annum To Reach $1b By 2010. Check it out:
Independent Study Confirms Strong Growth for Worldwide EIM Solutions Market

Callidus Software, the leader in Enterprise Incentive Management (EIM), today announced the results of a new EIM market sizing study conducted by Evalueserve, a research and analytics company. Results show that the overall worldwide market for EIM solutions was estimated at US$ 3 billion in 2005. This market mainly consisted of home-grown solutions (91%). The global third-party packaged software market for EIM solutions is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 30% from US$ 275 million to US$ 1 billion by 2010.



We have examined EIM market growth rates by geography and industry, as well as industry fit. According to our study, the EIM market together with EIM solution providers will experience tremendous growth over the next four years, said Alok Aggarwal, Chairman of Evalueserve. Our research suggests that pure-play EIM vendors who have focused on providing the capability to manage highly complex compensation systems will be well positioned to take advantage of the major growth projected in the EIM market. Specifically, we expect the global market for third-party packaged EIM software solutions to grow at a CAGR of 30% during the years from 2005-2010.

The results of the EIM market sizing study validate Callidus Softwares approach to the EIM market, said Shanker Trivedi, senior vice president and CMO of Callidus Software. The market shows exceptional growth compared to other markets, such as CRM and ERP. Companies across all industries recognize the huge value that best-of-breed packaged EIM software brings to their organizations. It helps them to align sales with corporate objectives, drive revenue and increase shareholder value.

Highlights from the research of industry-specific projections show the following growth rates and opportunities for leading industries using EIM solutions:
34% Growth in Insurance Industry EIM solutions are primarily driven by bonus and commission payouts, but there is also a projected increase of insurance sales agents through 2014 that will boost EIM expenditures
26% Growth in Retail Industry an increased need for EIM solutions due to complex supply chains, a large number of transactions and the growing number of retail salesperson jobs
25% Growth in High-Tech Industry supported by implementation of EIM solutions in many companies, due to the complex distribution structures, compensation plans and growing sales force
11% Growth in Telecom industry - resulting from increased sales force, retail outlets and variety of tariff plans complicating incentive payment management

Callidus Softwares best-in-class EIM solutions provide tangible business benefits to todays leading enterprises. Its solutions allow companies to drive revenue and increase shareholder value by improving new product time to market. Customers also benefit from aligning sales with corporate objectives and focusing selling time among the sales distribution channels. The effective use of incentive compensation budget dollars maximizes a companys market potential, motivates the sales force and provides better visibility into sales performance. Companies using Callidus Softwares solutions experience productivity improvements. Using this technology, they can significantly reduce compensation errors, payment redundancy and error-prone manual systems.

Please download a full copy of the study at http://www.callidussoftware.com/go/06/market-study.jsp.
OKERE Selects Rackspace to Provide Software-as-a-Service Hosting Infrastructure. Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- Rackspace Managed Hosting, a recognized leader in the managed hosting market, today announced that OKERE Inc., a management and technology consulting firm for on-demand business applications, recently selected Rackspace as its infrastructure provider for its IntegrationService.com data integration and migration solution for salesforce.com users. Rackspace was recently certified by salesforce.com as an ideal infrastructure partner for software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors building value-added applications for distribution to millions worldwide through salesforce.com's AppExchange.



OKERE's IntegrationService.com platform is an on-demand solution that enables clients to significantly decrease the time and effort associated with systems integration and data migration from legacy systems. To launch IntegrationService.com, OKERE sought a hosting partner that understood the specific needs of the SaaS delivery model and offered infinite scalability as the success of its new application grew. The company selected Rackspace as its hosting infrastructure provider not only for its salesforce.com certification, but because Rackspace has a long history in quickly deploying and supporting SaaS providers and ISV's in delivering on-demand services to end customers.

"Selecting the right hosting provider is critical to the success of IntegrationService.com, so we went through a rigorous evaluation process," said Henry Hai, head of product development at OKERE Inc. "We chose Rackspace because they could deploy and scale our server configuration very quickly and guarantee 100 percent uptime, while providing unmatched technical expertise. Rackspace enabled us to bring our service to market quickly and cost effectively."

"Rackspace is the trusted business partner to hundreds of software-as-a-service providers who rely on us to supply the on-demand infrastructure and Fanatical Support(TM) needed to support their business," said Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of worldwide sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. "Rackspace enables ISVs to free up internal resources to develop applications that meet customer demands."

About Rackspace Managed Hosting

A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a world-class service organization delivering enterprise-level Web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 10,000 customers across seven data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company's award-winning Fanatical Support(TM). Through trusted partnerships with its customers, Rackspace serves as an extension of their IT department, enabling customers to focus on their core business. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company's inception. For more information, please visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.

About OKERE

OKERE is a management and technology consulting firm that focuses on software-as-a-service. With extensive experience in CRM, data management, integration and user enablement, OKERE's innovative approach enables clients to maximize the value of their technology investment for faster return and greater long-term benefits. OKERE delivers comprehensive, industry-specific solutions for leading companies such as Merrill Lynch, Symbol Technologies and TD Ameritrade. OKERE is a privately-held company, headquartered in New York with additional offices in Europe and Asia. For more information, call 1-888-44-OKERE (in the U.S.) or visit www.okere.com.
Aspect Launches Contact Center Unplugged Blog. Check it out:
What’s the next “thing” in corporate communications? Corporate blogs, it seems. Aspect announced today it has launched “Contact Center: Unplugged,” a blog from the company’s technology leaders, Gary Barnett, Roger Sumner and Jim Mitchell. The new blog will offer postings from the three industry veterans that will explore a range of topics concerning the contact center: new and future technologies, agent interactions and business processes, plus the three contributors' own experiences as consumers.



Gary Barnett, the founding engineer of Aspect Communications more than 25 years ago developed that company's first automatic call distributor (ACD). He was also the founding engineer at Octel Communications and founder of Prospect Software, which pioneered computer-telephony integration (CTI) in the early 1990s. Roger Sumner has more than 25 years in the contact center industry and was the co-inventor of the Aspect Spectrum ACD. Jim Mitchell, one of the founders of Davox more than 25 years ago, introduced the Aspect Unison Predictive Dialer which helped to revolutionize the outbound dialing process.

“Our focus is to enhance communications with our customers and prospects, as well as to build an engaged community for the contact center industry using a variety of tools, including the blog and RSS feeds,” said Jim Foy, president and CEO of Aspect Software (News - Alert).  “With such well-respected members of the contact center industry as our technology leaders, it makes sense to showcase their views on where the industry is headed and their insight into how companies can continuously improve their company-customer interactions.”

Readers can view the blog at www.aspect.com/go/blog. Since the blog’s launch last Friday (Sept. 22), content has included Jim Mitchell’s view on proactive customer service using predictive dialer technology and Roger Sumner’s insight on planning a successful disaster recovery plan.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

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The author may be contacted at [email protected].
Cynapse Launches cyn.in - Their Collaborative Information Management Service for the Enterprise. Check it out:
WILMINGTON, Del. --(Business Wire)-- Cynapse launches cyn.in, a collaborative information management web 2.0 service for small, medium and large businesses. With cyn.in, organizations can effortlessly manage and collaborate upon knowledge and build a secure central repository of information and files. Teams across geographical locations can seamlessly work together on the same documents or content and discuss upon them. cyn.in is a 4th generation product and replaces Cynapse's previous offering, Amieo.



"cyn.in will evolve enterprise collaboration, productivity and information management to a whole new level," says Apurva Roy Choudhury -CEO, Cynapse. "cyn.in is truly revolutionary in every aspect that I can think of. From its use of some seriously advanced technology, to its rock solid delivery model, every small piece of cyn.in has been carefully and precisely designed. Our decision to adopt the 'Software as a Service' business model has enabled us to offer the most flexible pricing model ever offered by any enterprise software to date. Now small and mid-sized companies can affordably benefit from otherwise unaffordable, advanced enterprise technology and infrastructure."

Customers pay a monthly fee for every user from their team or organization that uses the system. There are no setup or other additional costs to the service. Customers can buy a cyn.in 'site' with a minimum of two users at $30 a user, and scale up to thousands.

cyn.in received an overwhelmingly positive response during the week-long exclusive preview to market experts and bloggers.

cyn.in is now available to teams, organizations and enterprises across the world, and can be instantly purchased online. http://cyn.in

About cyn.in

cyn.in (pronounced: "sign-in") empowers teams, companies or communities to manage, organize, store, version, search through, collaborate & discuss upon, share, publish and broadcast any kind of information or data.

cyn.in manages rich content, audio, video, images, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, drawings, archives and any types of files.

Applications and uses of cyn.in: Being a versatile system, cyn.in can be applied to various technology verticals, namely:

-- Knowledge Management

-- Secure Online File Storage & Versioning

-- Group Collaboration

-- Content Management & Broadcasting

-- Personal Information Management

-- Document & Digital Asset Management

-- Community Blogs & Group Systems

-- Intranets & Extranets Management

About Cynapse

Cynapse invents technology that applies to and benefits everyday life.

Cynapse has been creating technology and technology platforms for collaboration systems and information management systems since the last 5 years, and has delivered various successful products such as SyncNotes.com and Amieo.

cyn.in is the cumulative result of Cynapse's 5 years of research towards collaboration, productivity and communication.
Ugandan Exporters Cut Niche Into Neighbours' Markets. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 26, 2006 (The Monitor/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --STRINGENT requirements for market access in the European Union have forced most Ugandan exporters to shift their attention to neighbouring markets underscoring the importance of regional trade.



Requirements like the Euregap, the need for Corporate Social Responsibility, environmental consciousness, high costs of transportation including air freight and security surcharges have forced exporters to exploit less stringent market like the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa). The move has seen African regional markets become increasingly competitive compared to the lucrative European market.

"People have begun to understand the benefits of trading with the next-door neighbour especially as market access conditionalities for trading with stiffer markets like the EU continue to bite," Ms Florence Kata, the Executive Director of the Uganda Exports Promotions Board, said in an interview with Business Power last week.

According to UEPB records, the EAC as a component of Comesa has been running neck-to-neck with the EU in market share, once Uganda's leading export market.

In 2004, Comesa commanded 26 per cent of the total $653 million (Shs1.1 trillion) export earnings and EU led with 27 per cent. In 2005, Comesa and the EU both stood at 31 per cent each of the total $812 million (Shs1.4 trillion) export earnings for Uganda.

With over 300 million people, the regional trade could spur much needed growth in the form of increased trade returns, job creation, support for Small and Medium scale Enterprise and the branding of products as East African, especially in the central, eastern and southern Africa, a region with the most economic hardships in the world.

"We are working to see that EAC positions itself as a single unit against the rest of the markets.

The initiative that we are having in place is to try to identify and standardise to some degree a range of export products," Kata said.

To achieve this, the East Africa trade promotion agencies are soon launching an EA export.com e-commerce portal, where they have agreed as member countries to select products, which can compete favourably in other bigger markets like the EU.

Kata said that they have also embarked on training trainers who will train producers in selected sectors.

"We want a scenario when you get a fish that is coming from EA, it generally has the same characteristics and properly packaged. Even at the Bureau of Standards we have harmonisation of standards at the region level," she said.

A further effort in Uganda, said Kata, is to establish an export school - the Uganda Export Development Centre - to equip exporters with market skills that are internationally recognised.

The Dutch and the Japanese governments have been in the forefront in funding training for export purposes. Kata said that regional security, however, must be sustainable for any meaningful regional trade to prevail. Political stability in the DR Congo, Southern Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda would boost regional trade as more people would begin to move freely from one country to another.

Government's role

Government has played a key role through several interventions to improve production, productivity, marketing, trade and encourage value addition and a total fund of Shs9 billion (Bonabagaggawale) has been set aside in the 2006/7 financial year to cater for these needs.

These strategic actions will be focused on the needs of the household using the sub-county as the operational center for delivery of the respective programmes.

The strategy will be implemented by deliberately engaging more households in gainful production enterprise by re-orienting the role of sub-county chiefs and production personnel at the Sub-county level to undertake community mobilisation.

"We in exports believe when you have organised production today, it should be benchmarked against international standards, so if you are going to produce your potato or pineapple, organise the poor people that you seek to become rich to produce a pineapple that is internationally saleable and therefore locally consumable.

So we shall use the domestic market just as a stake towards internationalising of the market. In that process you are creating a framework for a massive growth towards an export led economic," Kata explains.

Research is the other initiative of intervention that has been put in place by agencies like UEPB, NAADS.

Research is increasing and a lot is happening between Makerere University and the Uganda Industrial Research Institute in terms of being their scientific center for helping the country beginning to add value, importing technology prototypes and customise them at the local level.

Copyright 2006 The Monitor. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

NACFA - Jorotom Pays N359m

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NACFA - Jorotom Pays N359m. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In a bid to actualise its dream of purchasing the Federal Government owned National Clearing and Forwarding Agency (NACFA), Jorotom International Agency Nigeria Limited, one of the companies which recently won the bid to buy the multi-billion naira agency has paid N359, 999,820 to the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE).



With the payment which represents 10 per cent of the winning bid of N3.59bn, Jorotom which is a key player in international forwarding, shipping, clearing and air cargo handling, has beat the deadline which stated that the preferred bidder must effect 10 percent payment within 10 days after the receipt of offer letter from BPE.

BPE had through a letter dated September 6, 2006, conveyed the approval of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) for Jorotom to pay 10 per cent of the bided sum on or before September 20, 2006.

According to the letter which was signed by the Director General of BPE, Mrs. Irene N. Chigbu, the remaining N3, 239,998,380, representing 90 percent of the amount required for the outright purchase of NAFCA shall be paid to BPE on or before October 18, 2006.

"Your failure to pay within the stipulated period will leave us with the option of executing the bid bond submitted by you and offering the enterprise to the reserved bidder", the letter added.

Apparently conscious of the strict stipulations outlined by BPE, Jorotom International Agency Nigeria Limited effected payment last Wednesday, a move seen by key players in the maritime industry as a sign that the company is prepared to take full ownership of NACFA. The company bided to acquire 100 per cent equity stake in NAFCA.

A statement issued by the company and made available to THISDAY at the weekend said Jorotom team to effect the payment was led by its Chief Executive Officer, Senior Evangelist J. Omotosho.

The payment, according to the statement which was signed by Jorotom General Manager, Mr. Austin Modebe, was also witnessed by top officials of Phoenix Capital Limited and Skye Bank Plc.

While Phoenix Capital Limited is the Jorotom's financial adviser for the acquisition of NAFCA, Skye Bank Plc is one providing the necessary funds for the transaction which will put the multi-billion naira government agency under the management of the international shipping company.

Among the companies that participated in the bid to purchase NAFCA were Kungo Rock Investments Limited, TSM Global Logistics Limited and Jalieth Holding Nigeria Limited.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
dB Wizards breaks new ground in office workflow automation. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) dB Wizards recently launched K2.net, a workflow automation tool that will help companies apply workflow automation to their operations and critical business processes so they can achieve organizational effectiveness and strategic advantage.



dB Wizards, a 100% Filipino-owned company, has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 2002 and a leader in delivering advanced Microsoft technology solutions. The executive briefing launch was conducted in partnership with SourceCode, a global leader for business process management software.

Built on the Microsoft.NET Framework, K2.net enables organizations to design, execute, manage and control true enterprise-level, human-to-human and human-to-system workflow solutions that makes it possible for information workers to focus on key business drivers like customer satisfaction and innovation, thus spend less time on routine work tasks.

K2.net offers two key business benefits - increased productivity and reduced costs. K2.net delivers powerful, proven, and flexible seamless integration across a range of Microsoft products and a broad spectrum of back-end systems, collaborative tools, and people.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

LET'S TALK TAX

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LET'S TALK TAX. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In today's computer age, information technology ("IT") has become the emerging industry in the global economy. And with the country's English- speaking and highly skilled IT professionals, the Philippines has become a favorite investment destination for most IT and IT-enabled companies.



Due to this competitive advantage, the Philippines is now hosting a number of business process outsourcing ("BPO") firms, contact centers (popularly known as "call centers"), software research and development enterprises, medical and legal transcription firms, design engineering companies and other IT and IT-enabled firms.

Most of these IT and IT-enabled firms are registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority ("PEZA") obviously for the availment of certain fiscal and non-fiscal incentives. As in the case of any other PEZA- registered entity, the IT industry is also entitled to the 5% special tax regime based on the gross income earned. Under existing PEZA rules, "gross income" refers to the gross sales or gross revenues derived from business activity within the ECOZONE, net of sales discounts, sales returns and allowances and minus costs of sales or direct costs but before any deduction is made for administrative expenses or incidental losses during a given taxable period.

For export enterprises, the direct costs are enumerated in Section 2, Rule XX of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 7916, as follows: * direct salaries, wages or labor expenses; * production supervision salaries; * raw materials used in the manufacture of products; * goods in process (intermediate goods); * finished goods; * supplies and fuels used in production; * depreciation of machinery and equipment used in production, and buildings owned or constructed by an ECOZONE enterprise; * rent and utility charges associated with building, equipment and warehouses, or handling of goods; and * financing charges associated with fixed assets.

Notably, the list of allowable deductions for export enterprises is more applicable to manufacturing companies rather than to service, such as IT or IT-enabled companies.

Are these deductions intended to be all-inclusive or are these merely enumeration of the typical expenses that can be considered as direct costs?

Should PEZA-registered IT enterprises be allowed to deduct direct costs and other expenses which are in the nature of direct costs, although not included in the list?

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) attempted to address this concern when it issued Revenue Regulations ("RR") No. 2-2005 where it inserted the word "only" in the enumeration of the allowable deductions, thus, limiting the deductible costs to those listed. But the implementation of the said regulations was suspended.

In trying to arrest the issue, the BIR subsequently issued RR No. 11- 2005 which deleted the word "only" in the list. Going through the content of RR No. 11-2005, it can be observed that the list of expenses provided under the BIR regulations and the PEZA implementing regulations are the same, except for the clarification that the depreciation and financing charges allowed as deductions shall be limited to those relating to fixed assets used in the production of goods and the deductible portion of goods in process and finished goods accounts.

On the other hand, the removal of the word "only" in the list was understood by most PEZA-registered companies, particularly the IT enterprises, that the BIR has conceded that the allowable deductions are not only limited to those listed in the regulation and, as such, other expenses that are in the nature of direct costs, depending on the nature of the business, can also be claimed as deduction.

Consequently, PEZA IT enterprises may deduct other expenses which are in the nature of direct cost for purposes of computing the gross income earned.

The justification of a specific cost as a direct cost could be an issue. Under the generally accepted accounting principles, the underlying principle in determining the item of cost or expense as part of direct cost is the direct relation of such item in the production of the product or service.

If such item of cost or expense is a prerequisite element in the production of the product or service, then it should be considered as direct cost. Hence, it may be significant to understand the production processes of a certain company to properly determine which item of cost or expense is classifiable as direct cost.

In the absence of specific regulations, it would be prudent for PEZA IT enterprises to secure ruling from the BIR should they decide to claim expenses, other than those listed in the regulations, as deductions for purposes of computing the 5% special tax.

Our regulators, however, should consider that formulation of specific regulations on the allowable deductions for PEZA IT enterprises would foster a uniform application of the PEZA incentives. With a well defined incentive system, the Philippines will not be far from being the number one investment destination in the IT industry.

(The author is a tax manager at the Cebu branch of Punongbayan & Araullo, member of Grant Thornton International. For comments and inquiries, e-mail [email protected] or call 032-231-6090.)

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Professor James Scott

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Professor James Scott. Check it out:
(Yorkshire Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dean of the School of Medicine, Leeds University Professor James Scott died on September 17 at the age of 82 and the appearance here of his name will trigger memories and gratitude in a wide cross-section of readers.



For example: women who were helped through a mom-entous event in their life by his skill as an obstetrician or had reason to be thankful to him for solving a problem for them as a gynaecologist; doctors, once medical students at Leeds, who will remember his infectious enthusiasm as a teacher and his kindliness as Dean in guiding their careers, and NHS consultants in various disciplines, who will remember him as a colleague who could be counted upon for a well-judged opinion on any problem, whether clinical or non-clinical.

Added to these are former colleagues in the medical school and the wider University of Leeds, who had reason to be grateful to him for his intellect and wisdom as a contributor to academic life in Leeds.

Sadness at the news of the death of this much-loved and respected man will be accompanied by happy memories of a man who was a joy to be with at work and at play.

James Steel Scott was born in Glasgow, where he went to school and university. He made a successful start to his academic career at Liverpool University and had the distinction of being appointed to the chair of obstetrics and gynaecology in Leeds in 1961 at the age of only 37. His research interests were in the field of reproductive immunology and he was internationally recognised as a leader and innovator.

In those days the university's department of obstetrics and gynaecology was in the Leeds Maternity Hospital in Hyde Terrace, for which James had a great affection. He even retained that designation for his department after it had been relocated to the Clarendon Wing, confusing though it was for everyone else until finally dropped at his instigation just before his retirement.

His drive and enterprise took the department from strength to strength, with ground-breaking research in the laboratory being matched always by innovation and constant improvement in patient care on the wards. As well as being a brilliant res-earcher, James was an excellent surgeon, so he was able to lead from in front in everything he asked of his colleagues as their head of dep-artment for almost 30 years.

For the last three years of his career James took on the additional role of Dean of the School of Medicine. That brought him into the mainstream of university life, but he was already versed in its rituals and procedures. Unusually for a clinical professor, he had been a regular attendee at Senate and other university committee meetings.

James carried out his duties as Dean with distinct-ion and he made great efforts to bring together colleagues working at the Infirmary and St James's at a time when relations between those two hospitals were often very strained. One of his most inspired initiatives, which gave a whole new meaning to the term "medical engineering", was the annual Graduation Dinner.

He invited university and NHS colleagues from both sides of the city to a good dinner, but his seating plan was contrived to break down barriers and achieve "cross fertilisation", so important in bringing people together to make common cause.

In this situation, as in private gatherings, James was the perfect host. He was widely read, had many indoor and outdoor interests, a good memory and a lovely sense of humour, so when James got up to speak everyone knew they were in for a treat.

James was blessed with a long and happy marriage to Dr Olive Scott, who was a distinguished paediatric cardiologist at Killingbeck Hospital until she retired in 1986. Their homes in Leeds and later in Knaresborough were places where a wide range of people - friends and professional colleagues - enjoyed wonderful hospitality.

They enjoyed an interesting range of leisure activit-ies before and after retirement. These included regular visits to Scotland to their beloved retreat in Achilitbuie, which overlooks the Summer Isles, and Zermatt, Switzerland, where James was still skiing in his 80s.

James is survived by his wife and their sons, Alistair and Malcolm.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Tech VC funds queue up to put money in India. Check it out:
(Indian Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Venture capital (VC) funds are lining up to invest money in Indian technology sector as never before. A whopping $5-6 billion is waiting to get invested in the tech and services sectors in the next 6-9 months, industry sources say. VC investment, as per the Asian Venture Capital Journal, during the first half of 2006 was a record $3.6 billion in India, showing a staggering 400 per cent growth over the same period last year. Tech funds accounted for a lion's share of this money. Though this is less than the $5 billion received by China, India has signed more deals. Says Rishi Navani, Founding Managing Director, Matrix Partners India: "I think India is attractive, there is strong economic growth and as a result in various industries the quality of entrepreneurs has also improved significantly''. Moreover, the Indian tech story is continuing with companies putting up a good performance over the years. This is just the beginning. More VC funds are waiting in the wings. Industry sources say that over 44 US-based funds want to invest in start-ups and early-stage companies in the country. In late August, the $1.4 billion fund IDG Ventures, a pioneer in funding start-ups, announced a $150-million IDG Ventures India Fund. This fund will invest between $0.5 million and $5 million in early-stage tech firms and $10 million in high-growth firms. Says Sudhir Sethi, the Managing General Partner of IDG Ventures India, "We want to invest in high potential, futuristic firms which want to go global and not limit its operations to India. Our prime focus will be technology and tech-enabled ventures. Though the tech venture scenario is very competitive in the country, very few players are operating in this space who invest in start-ups and early stages of development''. Sequoia Capital India, run by California-based Sequoia has closed a $400-million fund to invest in later-stage and growth-stage businesses on September 15. Formerly called WestBridge Capital Partners, the firm had one of the few India-focused and India-managed venture funds for early- and mid-stage firms. Matrix Partners India, co-founded by Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani along with Matrix Partners US, has closed its first investment of a Rs 32 crore ($7 million) in Seventymm, India's first online movie rental firm. Matrix Partners India invests over $10 million multiple rounds with an initial investment ranging from $ 500,000 to $10 million in various tech and other services sectors. In August, State Bank of India had raised $100 million along with Softbank of Japan to invest in Indian firms at all stages of their life cycles. Draper Fisher Jurvetson's $250-million India fund and New Enterprise Associates's fund have already started their operations. But why the VC funding has gone up drastically in 2006, especially in the tech sector? "US is over funded, so VCs are looking for other avenues. India as a market is now becoming sizeable in certain sectors. Over funding is a concern going ahead though in India too,'' says Navani. "Over the next five years we expect to invest in 20-25 firms in India and the Indo-US corridor. Given IDG Venture's global network, one of the key value-additions to our investee firms in India is to help them expand into China," Sethi adds.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Business computing now needs to catch up with gaming. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--The business end of IT is finally catching up with the leisure and entertainment side of computing when it comes to developing products aimed at an international user base.



PC operating systems and computer games are global products, while back-office enterprise software has generally been developed to suit the needs of locally-based businesses. Anyone playing the latest shoot-'em-up PC game expects the same high-quality product to be instantly available in any games store in the developed world, while companies running mission-critical applications to manage their payroll or recruitment are often restricted to localised IT companies.

But business software developers are now starting to realise that it makes more sense to sell their existing software internationally rather than develop new software to expand into their home market.

US-based Lawson's entry into the European business software market with the recent acquisition of Intentia is a case study in the increasing globalisation of the IT industry. Rather than expanding its business in the US, Lawson is taking its product global, using back-office software applications developed in its home market to cut costs and control supply management in its target sectors across the world. Two of Lawson's key specialisations are healthcare and local government. Rather than, for example, using its local government niche in the US to expand into the federal government software market, Lawson is opting to remain a niche player, but on a global scale.

It is translating software products originally developed in the US into languages as diverse as French and Japanese. Europe is a key market for the US developer. Like many other US companies, Lawson is learning that Europe is made up of many different cultures, each with its own attitude to areas such as healthcare and local government. In common with other US-based organisations, Lawson opted to make the UK its first choice for a foray outside the US markets and the company is currently engaged in early-stage negotiations with the NHS.

The potential rewards for niche enterprise software operators which can overcome initial national hurdles are potentially huge. Cost savings identified in healthcare in the US can be translated into similar economies in Birmingham or Beijing.

Similarly, recruitment software developed by Lawson for use in the US healthcare system can be used to hire staff all over the world. By having common hiring criteria across entire industries, it will facilitate unprecedented movement in global labour markets. Nursing qualifications gained in Shanghai or Stockholm will be instantly identifiable in New York or London.

The development of global software standards by business software companies such as Lawson and the market leader, Germany-based SAP, is having the same effect on back-office business software that Microsoft has on the desktop 20 years ago. It is streamlining and standardising business supply chain management and human resource management, as staff control is now called, on an international basis. Enterprise software developers believe that this process will be hugely beneficial to business.

But if back-office enterprise software such as that provided by companies like Lawson is becoming more of a global product, then so is the increasingly complex array of hardware used by organisations across the world. Motorola's purchase of Symbol Technologies is an example of the way in which hardware manufacturers are now beginning to pay more attention to the needs of business.

In the past, Motorola's chief focus has been on taking on Nokia, the global market leader, in the consumer mobile phone market. While it has produced business phones, these have generally appealed to individual users rather than being rolled out across entire organisations. But there is now growing evidence that companies such as Motorola are starting to understand that modern organisations need a whole array of devices and that the globe-trotting executive who wants a slim device that doubles as a phone and e-mail reader to slip into a suit pocket does not represent the only non-consumer market.

Healthcare is a one example of a sector that has a great many professionals with very specific IT needs. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists need to keep track of all types of hospital equipment, ranging from a scalpel to X-ray machine. New advances in radio-frequency (RFID) chip technology also mean that healthcare professionals can keep a constant track of medication using a scanner incorporated into a variety of mobile devices. This will not only cut down on the theft of drugs from hospitals but save lives by keeping a closer watch on the medication administered to patients.

Analysts believe that the acquisition of Symbol will enable Motorola to offer devices that will allow organisations to use devices that are extend intranet intelligence right from the warehouse to the boardroom.

Who knows? By allying this hardware with the international back-office software, healthcare and local government may soon start catch up with the games industry.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Skype readies enterprise-friendly VOIP software. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Skypeis working to make its Internet telephony service more enterprise friendly, and expects to introduce a beta version of its software with support for enterprise management functions within weeks.



The update will allow system administrators to use standard Windows management tools to set how the Skype software connects to the Internet, or to disable any of half a dozen functions, including file transfers, said Skype's vice president of telecommunications and Skype for business, Michael Jackson.

Use of Skype in business is widespread: Of Skype's 113 million registered users, 30 percent say they use it for business, Jackson said, speaking at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris on Monday.

The proprietary and hard-to-block connection protocols used by Skype's peer-to-peer communications system have raised concerns about security in some businesses.

"There was a rumor we disrupt networks to get around things," Jackson said. That started, Jackson said, "because we design things for consumers so they work in any network environment. The back end of that is, it works in any network environment." That makes it difficult for enterprises to block the software, he said.

That was a concern for Intel's chief information officer, John N. Johnson, when some Intel employees installed Skype software on their own initiative.

"What if some vulnerability developed, or if someone came up with a way to use it as a transport into the enterprise? We couldn't tell who was using it, or where, if it needed to be patched," said Johnson, speaking on the sidelines of the forum.

Skype has worked with Intel to meet the company's security requirements, Johnson said. Together, they came up with a proxy server approach, allowing Johnson to cut off the software's network access if a security problem is identified. "It doesn't go straight out onto the Internet any more," Johnson said.

To make Skype connect via the proxy server, Intel forced its Skype-using employees to upgrade their software client to a version supporting proxy connections. For Johnson, that presented no problem: "I have a way to scan the environment to see what's installed."

Skype, designed for consumer use, has much in common with text instant messaging, Johnson said. "IM started as a consumer technology. Now most businesses couldn't work without it."

Johnson himself used Skype "for a bit," he said -- but stopped because Skype wasn't part of the standard software image on a new computer. "I keep changing computers, and I don't have time to reload every little thing on it," he said.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Trend Micro launches anti-botnet service. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Trend Micro announced a new service to help large organizations and Internet service providers (ISPs) fight networks of zombie machines, known as "botnets."

The new service, dubbed InterCloud, was announced Monday and is intended to help organizations fight botnets, fast-changing networks of rogue computers that are used in denial of service (DOS) attacks, spam campaigns, identity theft, and other malicious acts. The new service uses behavioral analysis technology, developed by Trend, and known as Behavioral Analysis Security Engine (BASE) to spot and isolate bot machines on managed networks, according to Paul Moriarty, director of product development for Internet Content Security at Trend.



BASE analyzes application and network infrastructure data, such as DNS queries and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables. The engine can spot behavior indicative of bots, such as an abnormal series of DNS queries.

The service also uses data from Trend's global network of researchers and customers to provide intelligence on new or evolving bot activity. The company's Bot Identification Team identify and monitor bot activity globally, Trend said.

InterCloud relies, in part, on a new, hardened and revamped DNS server that allows Trend to aggregate suspicious data and report on host systems that may be infected with bot programs, Moriarty said.

"We can take a day's worth of DNS logs and tell them how many spambots or zombies they have. That's a capability that most ISPs lack," he said.

InterCloud customers can remediate infected systems by denying them access to the network, or by quarantining them and pushing out necessary updates or scanning and disinfecting them, said Dave Rand, CTO of Trend's Internet Content Security group.

The InterCloud service includes a Web-based management portal for viewing and reporting on bot activity and managing security policies, Trend said.

Botnets are one of the fastest growing and most dangerous online threats, said Rand. On any day, Trend tracks millions of infected systems that have been joined to one of a number of global bot networks. But bot infections can also jump up, depending on the availability of easy to exploit security holes, such as the recent VML vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, or the Windows Server Service vulnerability that was disclosed by Microsoft in August.

Trend identified more than 250,000 new bots each day for the two days after an exploit was developed for the Server Service hole, which Microsoft patched with MS06-040. Typically, the company might identify 250,000 new bots over the course of a month, Moriarty said.

Trend researchers are also spotting many more targeted attacks, in which bots are being written for specific purposes, such as culling sensitive information from the targeted network, then forwarding it back to a command and control server, usually in a foreign country. Many of those appear aimed at identity theft, or espionage against the U.S. government or government contractors.

Few enterprise security products can scale to support hundreds of thousands or millions of hosts, which means that ISPs and very large organizations often rely on internal security teams and products to manage security. However, those company-focused teams lack the broad perspective that companies with global research operations and a global customer base can muster, Moriarty said.

InterCloud, which will be licensed by the seat, will offer ISPs the prospect of turning security into a profit center, by focusing attention on the relatively small number of infected systems, then targeting their owners with software, such at Trend's Web-based HouseCall antivirus scanner, that can clean their system and keep it from becoming reinfected. ISPs could then get a share of any software sales made through that channel, Moriarty said.

Trend Micro will feature InterCloud Security Service and the BASE technology at DEMOfall '06 this week in San Diego.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle releases new piece in telecom platform. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As part of its ongoing bid to target telecommunications providers, Oracle took the wraps off Virtual PBX, an important new piece of its planned service delivery platform (SDP).

Generally available Monday, Virtual PBX (public branch exchange) is one of the deliverables Oracle committed to back in April when the database, applications and middleware vendor firstlaid out its SDP plans.

Those in the telecommunications industry are coming under increasing pressure to rapidly adapt their businesses to mirror the ongoing convergence of data, voice, and video services. To cope with the speed of change, carriers, network operators and systems integrators are moving their IT operations to a SOA (service-oriented architecture) approach.



Oracle's SDP aims to offer telecommunications developers a single programming environment based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) so they can build new services quickly as well as integrate and manage those offerings with existing services.

An operator-hosted PBX service for small, medium and larger enterprises, Virtual PBX includes functionality to enable the handling of incoming calls without requiring major changes to the telecom network's underlying architecture as well as the ability to offer specific bundles of telecom features to individual customers.

Back in April, Oracle sketched out its SDP strategy, explaining that some pieces of the platform already exist like its Fusion middleware and its Oracle 10g relational database, while pledging to release others, including Virtual PBX, later in the year.

As part of SDP, Oracle is expanding its middleware so that users can access newer mobile, voice services and enterprise applications through traditional communication networks and networks based on Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem also known as IMS and VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol).

Oracle has yet to commit to an exact time for when SDP will be complete.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
TECH MAHINDRA AND MOTOROLA IN JOINT VENTURE (for the design and delivery of content services and customised application solutions). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Tech Mahindra and Motorola have formed a joint venture, CanvasM, for the design and delivery of content services and customised application solutions.

The portfolio of CanvasM will include messaging, location-based services, entertainment, e-commerce and enterprise productivity applications. Tech Mahindra will offer to the joint venture its experience in applications development and integration capabilities, while Motorola will contribute its applications portfolio, applications and service delivery platform and mobile technology expertise.



CanvasM will be headquartered in Noida.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
SUNDARAM INFOTECH LAUNCHES ERP TRAINING CENTER (to train functional and technical professionals on Axapta ERP). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sundaram Infotech Solutions (SIS) has launched an enterprise resource planning (ERP) centre, Axapta Academy of Excellence, in Chennai.

The academy will train functional and technical professionals on Axapta ERP. SIS expects the training to enhance the quality of its consulting and technical teams.

SIS is the information technology division of Sundaram Finance.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
SWEET IS THE BUSINESS THAT'S FLAVOURED WITH IT! (Anand Sweets will go in for ERP implementation once the new manufacturing unit becomes operational). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Anand Sweets, which started in 1988 with a single outlet, has six outlets in different parts of the Bangalore city with 350 employees. The company has a manufacturing unit in Bangalore for sweets, snacks, namkeen, bakery products and chaat. The company is now building a new factory of 72,000 square feet and will open more outlets across Bangalore when the new factory becomes operational. Information technology (IT) has an important role in the business of Anand Sweets. The company currently uses Tally 7.2 for accounting, along with a customised payroll software, which helps the company manage activities such as employee salaries, bonuses, net pay deductions and tracking records.



The company will go in for the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage its day-to-day activities once the new manufacturing unit becomes operational. The company also has a website through which it proposes to take orders online. It has also tied up with sify.com and fabmall.com for taking orders online during festivals. Anand Sweets has a target of becoming a Rs100-crore company by 2011. The company has plans to open new outlets in Mauritius, Dubai and the UK to sell its sweets globally.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

Telecom firm in BSkyB contract

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Telecom firm in BSkyB contract. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Midlands-based Telent - the rump of the former Marconi telecoms firm - has landed a deal with Easynet, part of BSkyB.

The Coventry firm has been contracted by Easynet to manage the development of access equipment as part of the company's local loop unbundling (LLU) programme - the process of granting access to its communications network.

In the UK, Easynet is a pioneer of LLU and provides the infrastructure for the broadband requirements of BSkyB.

"We selected Telent to ensure an efficient and speedy deployment, which will assist Easynet in expanding our LLU footprint to deliver further innovative services to our UK enterprise customers," said Trevor Legg, Easynet's network implementation officer.



"Both Telent and Easynet are very experienced in deploying large-scale access solutions within the UK, which is why this partnership is such a compelling one. Our longstanding relationship with the Telent team, and our experience of them constantly delivering on time and to budget, also influenced our decision of deployment partner."

Mark Plato, chief executive at Telent, added: "This project represents an excellent fit for Telent's capabilities.

"We are solely focused on the provision of leading edge telecommunications services, and this specialisation gave us a definite competitive edge.

"We also have a longstanding history of delivery in this area, having installed over 5,000 access platforms in the UK

"Moreover, Telent boasts an intimate knowledge of BT processes, having worked closely with the PTT for many years.

"We are delighted that this contract will further strengthen our reputation for managing all aspects of a turnkey LLU deployment.

"The size and reach of our installation field force also proved invaluable in demonstrating our suitability for this project."

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
How chip and pin screens will improve. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A Coventry firm with a device to stop 'shoulder surfing' at till points has signed a licensing deal with one of the biggest names in chip and pin technology.

Secure Access Solutions will supply Ingenico UK with its ViewSafe device which magnifies the Chip and PIN terminal. This makes it easier for the user to see the keypad but distorts it for those standing a little further away.

The device, which has undergone a successful trial with Boots at its Cambridge store since May, will now be taken nationwide.

Ingenico, which has led the introduction of Chip and PIN in the UK, has around 800,000 units installed and a close to 50 per cent market share.

Nick Parsons, managing director of Ingenico Northern Europe, said: "More than 150 Chip and PIN transactions now take place every second and that is why we are committed to exploring options for how security can be further enhanced to give users even greater peace of mind.



"ViewSafe is a breakthrough solution that cuts off yet another avenue to fraudsters.

"In the coming months Ingenico will be working closely with SAS to drive the introduction of the device and tailor it for different payment environments."

Neil Radford, a University of Warwick Enterprise Fellow who founded SAS, said he was looking forward to working with Ingenico.

"We are delighted that three years of careful and detailed research and product development has now come to fruition and is being very positively received," he said.

The company - which originally developed ViewSafe to help partially sighted shoppers - is also continuing work with the Royal National Institute of the Blind on commissioning a number of further trials.

joanna_ [email protected]

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
Firms in 'chaos' over e-mail compliance. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) More than a third - 38 per cent - of large organisations across the UK admit their e-mail management system is in "complete chaos" according to the findings of a survey released by specialist firm AIIM on compliance and its impact on information management.



The survey also found that the same number of end users admitted that their company either had no policy or they didn't know their company's policy when it came to e-mail archiving.

In fact, a third of UK organisations do not have any clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues, especially concerning historical records, which poses a number of compliance-related risks.

Two thirds describe themselves as being in the very early stages of implementing compliance initiatives, with a quarter of them not having begun to develop any compliance-related strategy at all.

The survey also showed that over 90 per cent of end users agree that compliance concerns relating to managing electronic information are here to stay and compliance must take a higher precedence in order to ensure consistent practices throughout their organisations. Companies have a disturbingly narrow view of compliance and what it really means for their organisation.

Only 16 per cent understand that the broader concept relates to information within enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, with over 60 per cent failing to acknowledge that e-mail information falls under compliance requirements for enterprise content management.

Other key findings include:

Half of the users surveyed admitted that employees do not fully understand how to access current versions of policies and procedures or other critical corporate information. This highlights the deeper issue of training employees to understand and cope with the implications of compliance.

Over two thirds (70 per cent) of organisations admit that content created by employees who have then left, is not actively reviewed or archived appropriately

When it comes to compliance, the weakest link in the information management chain is electronic, not paper related, with nearly 60 per cent of end users feeling that there is no widespread understanding of exactly what electronic records are and how they should be retained.

Only 27 per cent of organisations archive e-mails outside of Outlook in fully searchable and traceable e-mail or document management systems. Some 16 per cent of organisations add to the paper mountain by printing paper copies of important e-mails for filing. A worrying seven per cent delete all e-mails after three months and rely on back-up tapes for archive.

Only a third of all the organisations surveyed say that compliance initiatives are driven by the company executives with the burden of implementing them falling heavily on the IT department in 80 per cent of companies.

Two thirds (66 per cent) of records managers and IT managers have found a marked increase in the time spent on compliance related activities over the last 18 months with ten per cent of these declaring that the majority of their time is dedicated to this.

The research was carried out by AIIM from an Industry Watch survey that was conducted during May and June 2006. Some 223 UK organisations took part - with half of the organisations employing in excess of 1,000 employees.

Atle Skjekkeland, vice-presdient of AIIM Europe, said: "These findings highlight a widely varying and inconsistent understanding of how to deal with sensitive company information, clearly indicating the struggle that companies are facing in mounting systematic policies to meet the compliance challenge."

The full results of the survey will be available at Documation UK in Olympia, London on the October 18-19.

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
Is TXU a merger target?: Exelon is reportedly shopping for power generation. Check it out:
(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--TXU Corp. or its power plants could become acquisition targets now that merger talks between two big power-generation companies have broken down.

Exelon Corp. of Chicago and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., in Newark, N.J., announced this month that, after working for nearly two years to merge, they're declaring the deal dead.

Exelon chief executive John Rowe said in a news report during the weekend that he's still shopping and that he's most interested in power-generation assets, particularly nuclear power plants.

An Exelon spokeswoman confirmed that company executives have discussed a deal with TXU. The idea wasn't necessarily to merge but possibly to swap generation capacity, or to strike a deal for Exelon to own or manage TXU's nuclear assets.



TXU spokeswoman Lisa Singleton said those discussions are long over.

"The discussions he was referring to were quite some time ago, about a year, and we're not in any current discussions," she said.

Still, there are a lot of coincidences that make Mr. Rowe's comments intriguing for investors.

TXU, which operates two nuclear reactors, recently announced it would build up to six more nuclear reactors at three plant sites.

The TXU announcement surprised industry observers because the company had been focused on a giant plan to build 11 coal-fired plants.

Further, TXU chief executive John Wilder last year mentioned discussions with other power-generation companies about sharing the nuclear power plant risk.

"I think we're going to be talking about that project for a long time, frankly," Mr. Wilder said during a conference call in August 2005.

"We're still working it. We still think it is a good idea. We're still having actually fairly productive discussions with a number of different companies."

Mr. Wilder praised Exelon last summer for its ability to run nuclear plants efficiently. Exelon is known for buying nuclear plants and improving operations.

"They have absolutely perfected this art of running these big complexes at very, very low-cost levels. We're trying to learn from them, we're trying to copy from them," he said during a presentation to investors at a conference hosted by Deutsche Bank in 2005.

These days, TXU engineers are working on designs to build nuclear plants quickly, efficiently, cheaply and repeatedly. The idea is to reuse the same design to streamline the building process.

TXU officials on Monday wouldn't comment any further on Exelon. Mr. Wilder is scheduled to speak at a Merrill Lynch conference today.

Exelon operates 17 nuclear reactors, none of them in Texas.

But last year, Exelon sent a 15-year nuclear power veteran to Texas to manage the company's two natural gas plants.

Gerome Randle became general manager of Exelon Power Texas in April 2005. He'd been working at an Exelon nuclear plant in Illinois since 2000.

Exelon declined requests to interview executives or managers about their plans for Texas.

Of course, as one analyst pointed out, these coincidences don't mean the companies are going to do a deal.

"Although there's a potential for something to happen, I think it's difficult to handicap the chances," said Paul Patterson, a power industry analyst with Glenrock Associates LLC in New York.

"It's not like they're in a supermarket and they're trying to decide which breakfast cereal to buy. ... [A merger is] not that simple. It involves a lot of work, a lot of assessment," he said.

TXU shares ended Monday at $61.32, up 2 percent.

E-mail [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Atos Origin Middle East buys German subsidiary Escador. Check it out:
(Gulf News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dubai: Atos Origin Middle East (AOME) has bought the German subsidiary, Escador from LBI International AB (LBI) in an all share transaction giving LBI a 10 per cent ownership interest in AOME and creating a strategic alliance between LBI and AOME in the Middle East.



Escador is the leading German company providing customer relationship management (CRM) system implementation services to corporations, which makes it highly complementary to the enterprise system development services offered by AOME. AOME will expand its CRM services in the Middle East. This expansion is driven by customer demand from existing clients and the strong economic development in the Middle East's CRM market.

AOME CEO Ferras Zalt states, "The purchase of Escador and the alliance with LBI in the Middle East catapults AOME in its service offerings to clients in this region. We are experiencing the stage of economic market development that is unprecedented in this region.

Companies that started in the Middle East are now looking for digital solutions that not only attract customers in this region but that position them to sell services and products around the world. The alliance with LBI combines the market leader in technology services in the Middle East with the number 1 European digital services and branding company."

AOME is the leading full-service systems integrator, servicing clients in all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.

"The purchase of Escador and the alliance with LBI in the Middle East catapults AOME in its service offerings to clients in this region."

Copyright 2006 Al Nisr Publishing LLC. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

ADC Wins Order From T-Com

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ADC Wins Order From T-Com. Check it out:
BERLIN --(Business Wire)-- ADC - (NASDAQ:ADCT) (www.adc.com) announced today that T-Com, Europe's leading Broadband/fixed network provider, is now using ACX (Automated Copper Cross Connect), the latest generation of automated cross connects from ADC, to automate its cabinets. This in turn, represents one of the largest orders in the history of ADC.



The automatic activation and switching of services provides a considerable increase in efficiency, thereby enabling existing copper cable networks to be used to provide services such as x-DSL more cost effectively.

"By introducing the automated cross connects within the cross connect cabinet, we have laid the foundations for the next generation of network infrastructure solutions," said Axel Kahsnitz, vice president of ADC and regional director for EMEA. "We are very pleased that T-Com, Europe's largest Broadband/ fixed network provider, is using our innovative products throughout Germany, and in so doing is laying the foundation for the construction of one of the most modern high-speed VDSL networks."

ADC has many years of expertise in the planning, installation and maintenance of networks as well as the installation of the systems. As a turn-key partner, ADC provides solutions from a single source, which represents a key advantage when it comes to achieving projects on a large scale.

About T-Com

With around 42.1 million narrowband connections and 7.1 broadband connections, T-Com is one of Europe's largest fixed network providers. In Germany, T-Com provides services to domestic and small business customers and is represented in Hungary, Macedonia and Montenegro (via Magyar Telecom), Croatia (Via T-Hrvatski Telekom) and in Slovakia (via Slovak Telecom).

In Germany, T-Com provides basic fixed network infrastructural services for further divisions of the Deutsche Telekom Group and for other telecommunications companies. In Central Eastern Europe (CEE), T-Com is not only represented as a provider of fixed network services, but also as an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and a provider to business customers. For further information, please visit www.t-com.de.

About ADC

ADC provides the connections for wireline, wireless, cable, broadcast, and enterprise networks around the world. ADC's innovative network infrastructure equipment and professional services enable high-speed Internet, data, video, and voice services to residential, business and mobile subscribers. ADC (NASDAQ:ADCT) has sales into more than 140 countries. Learn more about ADC at www.adc.com.
SwitchCore Joins Ethernet Alliance. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Lund, Sweden, September 26, 2006 -- SwitchCore, a global leader and independent Ethernet Switch supplier for Enterprise and Carrier networks, today announced it has joined the Ethernet Alliance, a consortium of system and component vendors, industry experts, and university and government professionals who are committed to the continued success and expansion of Ethernet technology. SwitchCore will specifically play a key role in the advancement of all IEEE 802 Ethernet Standards with its expertise in developing Ethernet Switch technology for enterprise and access networks. Switchcore will partner with other Alliance members to demonstrate the usability of Ethernet technologies for both consumer and industrial applications. "Alloptic recognizes SwitchCore as a pioneer in high performance Ethernet networking devices and understands the importance of its participation in the Ethernet Alliance and their contributions to the development of Ethernet standards and interoperability, " said Ric Johnsen, President & Chief Executive Officer "Ethernet is being adopted everywhere. It is the dominating standard for network build-outs and will be the dominating standard for transport networks moving forward," said Erwin Leichtle, CEO of SwitchCore. "We look forward to collaborating with Ethernet Alliance members on creating highly integrated, innovative Application Specific integrated circuits (ASIC) solutions. Working together ultimately offers the market new and better ways to deliver more bandwidth, mobility and security." Members of the Ethernet Alliance include: 3Com, ADC, Agere Systems, AMCC, Aquantia, Broadcom, Force10 Networks, Foundry Networks, Intel, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Pioneer Corporation, Quake Technologies, Samsung, Sun Microsystems, Tehuti Networks, Tyco Electronics, The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), Xilinx and others. For more information please contact: Erwin Leichtle, CEO SwitchCore Email: [email protected] Phone: +46 703 38 93 00 Maria Ryden-Persson, CFO SwitchCore Email: [email protected] Phone: +46 73 429 25 65 About SwitchCore SwitchCore AB develops, markets and sells highly integrated network devices for data, voice and video communication based on the Ethernet standard. The core of SwitchCore's expertise is in its CXE technology, which allows for significantly higher network product capacity. Using SwitchCore's components, customers can develop network products that cost-efficiently manage and prioritize data, video and voice traffic for many demanding applications. Independent market analysts rank SwitchCore as the world's third largest supplier on the Gigabit Ethernet switching device market. Customers and partners are network equipment manufacturers and suppliers, including Intel, Allied Telesyn, Huawei/3Com, Alloptic, Corecess, Dasan, Radisys and World Wide Packets. The Group presently has 60 employees and 40 consultants. SwitchCore's headquarters is in Lund, Sweden. The Company also has offices in San Jose, USA, as well as Singapore and Shanghai in Asia. The Company is listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange's O List under the SCOR ticker. For more information visit http://www.switchcore.com/ About Ethernet Alliance The Ethernet Alliance was created to promote industry awareness, acceptance and advancement of technology and products based on both existing and emerging IEEE 802 Ethernet standards and their management. The organization accelerate adoption and removes barriers to market entry by providing a cohesive, market responsive Ethernet 802 projects. For more information, visit www.ethernetalliance.org. Attachments/Links:http://hugin.info/130062/R/1077543/185669.pdf



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
Sunrise Community Bank to open in Palm Desert. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--A billion-dollar financial holding company that specializes in launching small community banks plans to jump into the Coachella Valley's increasingly crowded lending market in Palm Desert.



Lansing, Mich.-based Capitol Bancorp Limited will provide 51 percent of the initial investment in Sunrise Community Bank, which is scheduled to open in January.

Stu Bailey, a veteran desert banker who is president of the proposed bank, his staff and board of directors will raise the other 49 percent, just under $4 million.

It's an unusual strategy that has worked well for Capitol Bancorp, Bailey said. The company, founded in 1988 by Joseph Reid, has chartered 47 banks in 13 states, including nine in 2005 and seven in 2006, according to its Web site.

Reid couldn't be reached for comment.

Sunrise will be the 52nd or 53rd bank by the time it opens, Bailey said.

Each bank is managed by its own president and a local board of directors and has full decision-making authority. Sunrise's board includes several well-known business and civic leaders, including former Palm Springs Mayor Will Kleindienst.

New banks are typically funded entirely by investors, who are able to cash out within several years if the bank goes public and the stock does well.

Capitol Bancorp's strategy allows investors to cash out after three years by selling their stock back to the company or by trading it for shares of Capitol Bancorp.

That's where fellow Capitol Bancorp start-up Bank of Escondido is now, said president Mike Peters. Founded in 2003, Bank of Escondido was profitable within eight months, about a third of the time it takes a typical new bank.

"I have done a new bank the old-fashioned way and this way, and this has been a great ride," Peters said, adding that Capitol Bancorp also provides back-office support.

The company also uses an unusual strategy to decide on new locations: "They search out good community bankers around the country rather than searching out certain communities," said Bailey, who was recruited by Capitol Bancorp.

Sunrise will face competition, as the Coachella Valley has seen steady banking expansion, and there are now four desert-based institutions.

Palm Springs-based Canyon National Bank recently added its fourth branch, while Palm Desert's El Paseo Bank, with two locations, plans to add three more by 2011.

The oldest, Palm Desert National Bank, has $300 million in assets and three branches in the Valley, while the newest, Desert Commercial Bank founded in August 2005, has said it plans to be profitable by the end of the year.

Bailey said small businesses are an underserved market, however, and he will target that group, as well as nonprofit organizations and homeowners associations.

Sunrise, which will start with 12 employees, will lease an 8,160-square-foot building in a new office park at Cook Street and Hovley Lane in Palm Desert.

The location is important because the bank will have only one branch.

"The whole philosophy is that you are a community bank, and the premise is that the president sits in the corner office by the front door and gets to know all the customers who come in. You can't do that with three or four branches," Bailey said.

CAPITOL BANCORP LIMITED

Headquarters: Lansing, Mich.

Assets: $3.7 billion

Ticker symbol: CBC

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif., business briefs column. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 26--INLAND -- RETAIL DEVELOPER PLANS INDIO SHOPPING CENTER: Florida-based Regency Centers, owner of 390 shopping centers nationwide, has bought 65.5 acres in Indio for an undisclosed price, according to a company press release.



Regency Centers plans to develop a 631,479-square -- foot Home Depot-anchored center on the land off Jackson Street near Interstate 10. Other tenants will include a grocery store, 24-Hour Fitness, Staples, Petco, Jack in the Box, McDonald's and PFF Bank.

The company is also building Jefferson Square in La Quinta.

--By Kimberly Pierceall

HANSEN NATURAL BOOSTS SHARE REPURCHASE PLAN: Hansen Natural Corp. said Monday that its board of directors increased its stock repurchase program from $50 million to $75 million, sending its stock price 5.5 percent higher on the Nasdaq.

The Corona-based beverage company already has bought back $27.7 million shares of stock under a repurchase program it announced in 2005. At the close of trading Monday, Hansen's stock price was $35.36 a share, up from $33.51 at Friday's close.

--By Leslie Berkman

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
SAP and Callidus Partner, Enforta In Russia, Global Vision, Caiman.com, Rhapsody At 26. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann's live CD, Live At St. Ann's Warehouse. Didn't know there was a patron saint of warehouses:

Callidus Software Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management products, has announced that it has signed a Cooperative Development Agreement with SAP AG.

Under the terms of the agreement, SAP and Callidus will promote and market Callidus Software's TrueComp and TrueInformation products in the United States and Canada.

"With this partnership agreement, SAP and Callidus will offer their customers a comprehensive, fully-integrated incentive compensation and sales performance management software solution. Callidus is pleased to be a part of the growing SAP NetWeaver ecosystem," said Robert Youngjohns, president and CEO of Callidus Software.



Callidus specializes in tools for tracking incentive compensation for both direct and indirect sales channels. Company officials say they help with "efficient modeling, implementation, and monitoring of incentive compensation programs with easy-to-create business rules." Incentive compensation is "one of the untapped levers to bring these strategies to life," Youngjohns said.


Global Vision Technologies, Inc., a vendor of software specializing in what they characterize as "cost effective, easy-to-use applications," has announced "full PDMA compliance support in their suite of pharmaceutical sales and marketing support products."

GVT has partnered with Signature Applications, a Lansing, Michigan based company, to provide software for the compliance requirement -- of which the pharmaceutical industry is loaded -- to ensure tracking of pharmaceutical samples. The new technology allows tracking through a touch pad to capture electronic signatures that are recognized by court officials.

"The GVT framework, because of its roots in clinical trials and Phase IV patient registries, already had the electronic auditing requirements necessary for compliance, but needed the actual signature piece to ensure the doctors that are documented as to having received samples, actually did get them," says GVT's President, Chris Freund.

"We have spent years developing a secure application to help automate and ensure HIPAA compliance in waiting rooms by using this technology," says Greg Rivet, President of Signature Applications, "and we have a current patent pending on this."

GVT expects to have this final piece integrated into their GVTIconnect product within the next quarter and is finalizing beta customers now. The GVTIconnect product is described by company officials as "a full, web based, Sales Force Automation/Customer Relationship Management (SFA/CRM) product" that is "particularly well suited for the pharma-industry due to its medical education portal and sample fulfillment/tracking handling."


The column First Coffee wrote about how Caiman.com screwed him over on a CD order, "Terrible Service Costs Caiman.com Another Customer," just keeps on giving. I've gotten more e-mails on that topic than any other I've ever written. The vast majority are commiserations, people saying how this cheapjack outfit has lied to or cheated them too. Why Caiman.com is still allowed to sell on Amazon.com is a mystery to First Coffee.

Here's the latest:

DAVID ---I TOO WAS RIPPED OFF BY CAIMAN----THEY SENT WITHOUT NOTIFICATION A DVD THAT IS REGION 2---WE ARE REGION 1------REGION 2 ONLY PLAYS IN EUROPE AND EGYPT. AMAZON SHOULD REMOVE THEM AND THEY SHOULD BE RUN OUT. I AM A LAW OFFICER AN WONDER IF THEY ARE A TERRORIST SCHEME TO RAISE MONEY. YOUR LOCAL POLICE SHOULD RECIEVE A REPORT, THE FBI AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF YOUR STATE. THIS WOULD BE IN ADDITTION TO THE NORMAL GOV. PROTECTION AGENCIES, OF WHICH I GOT A LIST FROM AMAZON. IF ENOUGH COMPLAIN TO AMAZON THEY WILL DROP THEM----DO YOU HAVE AMAZONS 1-800 NUMBER ???

First Coffee doesn't think Caiman.com's necessarily a "terrorist scheme," there are plenty of other reasons for their perfidy. Sorry I don't have the Amazon.com 1-800 number, but I have printed Caiman.com's customer service number. Use it liberally before they disconnect it.


BV and ARTCommunications have announced that Enforta has acquired a 51 percent share in ARTCommunications Ltd.

ARTCommunications is a wireless broadband operators in Russia serving the countries two largest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg as well as Moscow Region. Upon completing this investment, Enforta broadband services are now available in a total of 18 Russian regional capital cities as well as the growing Moscow Region market.

Both companies will have the ability to provide services to their customers within the expanded footprint. In fact, "The acquisition now gives us wireless broadband service capability in 18 cities," an Enforta official said.

"Enforta's initial strategy was to focus on Russia's underserved regional markets, but to service our growing base of enterprise customers we needed to extend our service area to Moscow and St Petersburg earlier than originally planned," said Lee Sparkman, President of Enforta. "Due to the absence of additional radio spectrum, the only means to enter these two cities was through acquisition."

"It is clear that scale will be critical for success in the wireless broadband business and we wanted to affiliate with a company of like mind and objective", said Alexander Ohotnikov, co-founder and General Director of ARTCommunications. "The joining of our two companies will clearly benefit both our current and future customers."

Enforta has experienced rapid growth this past year both building and acquiring broadband wireless operators. In May Enforta announced the acquisition of "Netprovodov," the largest wireless broadband operator in Russia's Ural region. This was followed by the acquisition of Sky Telecom in Rostov and Mir TV in Ufa during August.

Simultaneously, the company has constructed its own operations in 12 cities, and company officials claim the inclusion of ARTCommunications gives Enforta" the largest wireless broadband footprint in Russia."

Enforta plans to further extend services to a total of 30 cities by the end of 2007. "Actually, we have found that the wireless broadband products match well with requirements of SME and enterprise customers," Sparkman said. "And those customers are constantly pushing us to expand the footprint. So while we were planning 30 cities by end of 2007, we have already launched operations in 18. [This is] faster than we had originally planned, but we have our investors' full support."

Enforta was formed in October, 2003 with the objective to provide broadband services using Wi-Max and other advanced technologies in Russia. Enforta is owned by Sumitomo Corporation, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, and its management team.

ArtCommunications Ltd was founded in 1995 and is in the Russian Internet and broadband access markets. In 2002 ArtCommunications began operation of its wireless broadband network under the trade mark "5G," constructed using pre-Wi-Max equipment provided by InfiNet Wireless, and company officials say today 5G has "the largest wireless footprint in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Moscow region."


Forget Mozart writing a symphony or opera or whatever when he was eight, do you ever hear it performed? No, wonder why not? Because it sucks, that's why not. First Coffee's impressed with today's birthday boy, George Gershwin, born in 1898, who wrote Rhapsody In Blue when he was 26. Now that's music to be proud of.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
Argos Goes Live With Global Trade System. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Retailer Will Use Global Network to Improve Visibility and Collaboration LONDON -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 09/26/06 -- One Network Enterprises and Argos, one of Europe's largest retailers, announced the successful deployment of the second phase of a key project, expanding the automation of Argos' fast growing Direct Import (DI) department. As announced earlier this year, the DI container management project provides Argos and its freight forwarders visibility into the import containers at the ports, providing a better system to make decisions on which containers to prioritize and pull forward into the network based on latest store sales and critical supply chain constraints. One Network delivers advanced sense-and-respond capability that automates the decision-making process of container prioritization using its patented Intelligent eXecution Manager, an innovative process optimization framework that allows planning and decision making to be executed in real-time, using the latest available data. The project manages over 1000 containers per week, tying together Argos with its shipping partners and supplying: -- Automatic scheduling of import containers into Argos DC's while considering real demand, supply, warehouse and transport constraints. This gives planners more efficient decision-making support as to which containers are due and ensures supply chain constraints are enforced. -- Order and Container prioritization automation, bringing forward needed products based on real-time situations at the retail level. Argos benefits by saving on demurrage charges at ports, since containers with required stock will be moved into the distribution network automatically while others can be found via off-dock solutions. -- Exception-based collaboration with freight forwarders with real-time visibility for all partners, allowing planners & managers to concentrate on exceptions. "Agile systems are vital to ensuring that Argos gains a competitive edge through its supply chain processes," says Argos' Direct Import Stock Manager. "The One Network tool gives us the ability to automate the container scheduling process to ensure that the most important lines are prioritized as quickly as possible, ultimately ensuring the highest possible service levels for our customers." "We are excited about the expansion of the Direct Import project with Argos," says Vice President, International, Peer Steffensen. "This solution is part of our Global Trade network, which spans all continents and is providing solutions for manufacturers, distributors, freight forwarders and retailers on a daily basis. This is a highly scalable solution that encompasses complex and diverse sourcing challenges easily implemented on our network. One Network is a web service, which allows Argos' legacy systems to communicate with those of its partners, without costly investment in a software solution." About One Network Enterprises, Inc. One Network Enterprises is a technology innovator and pioneer of the Business Process Network market. The company delivers a network-centric, process-driven solution, including powerful software architecture for managing multi-enterprise operation processes; robust replenishment, supply and service templates; and leading-edge mobile/RFID devices. The solution is delivered via an on-demand network to over 1200 customers and manages over $100 billion a year in annual retail trade. One Network is based in Dallas, Texas and has offices in the United States and Europe. For more information, please call +1 972-385-8630 in the US, +44 20 7255 7789 in the UK or visit www.onenetwork.com. About Argos Argos is a unique catalogue retailer recognized for choice, value and convenience. It sells general merchandise and products for the home from 670 stores throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland, online and over the telephone. In the last financial year, Argos sales topped GBP 3.8 billion. Argos serves over 130 million customers a year through its stores and takes four million customer orders either online or over the phone. On average, 17 million UK households, or around two thirds of the population, have an Argos catalogue at home at any time. Argos expects to add around 30 stores per annum with the chain expected to exceed 800 over time. Its internet site, www.argos.co.uk, is the second most visited internet retail site in the UK. Argos is Retail Week's 2006 Online Retailer of the Year and winner of the Customer Service Initiative Award. Press Contact: Kenny Smith Phone (972) 455-3515 [email protected]



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
Callidus, SAP Announce Partnership. Check it out:

Callidus Software (News - Alert) Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management products, has announced that it has signed a Cooperative Development Agreement with SAP (News - Alert) AG.



Under the terms of the agreement, SAP and Callidus will promote and market Callidus Software's TrueComp and TrueInformation products in the United States and Canada.

"With this partnership agreement, SAP and Callidus will offer their customers a comprehensive, fully-integrated incentive compensation and sales performance management software solution.  Callidus is pleased to be a part of the growing SAP NetWeaver ecosystem," said Robert Youngjohns, president and CEO of Callidus Software. 

Last week Callidus announced that Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which is, evidently, "the nation's leading fraternal benefit society with nearly 3 million members," has selected Callidus' TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules to "automate the organization's administration, reporting and analysis of incentive compensation."

Thrivent Financial officials says they chose the Callidus Software to "reduce operating costs and to improve time to market with new products and compensation changes." The organization will implement Callidus Software's TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules for its 2,500 financial representatives.

Callidus has also recently announced the appointment of V. Holly Albert as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Albert is responsible for all corporate legal affairs relating to Callidus, and reports to Robert Youngjohns, president and CEO.

Albert joins Callidus from Docent Inc., where she was vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Prior to that, Albert served as vice president, general counsel and COO at Tradenable, Inc., an Internet financial services company. Previously, Albert held executive positions at infoUSA.com and also worked with Honeywell for 16 years serving as the general counsel for Honeywell-Measurex Corporation and prior to that position as division legal counsel for Honeywell Inc.

EIM software products are used to allow employees and channel distribution partners to be compensated accurately and on time.

Callidus specializes in tools for tracking incentive compensation for both direct and indirect sales channels. Company officials say they help with "efficient modeling, implementation, and monitoring of incentive compensation programs with easy-to-create business rules." Incentive compensation is "one of the untapped levers to bring these strategies to life," Youngjohns said.  

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

Borland's Developer Tools Group Introduces InterBase(R) 2007. Check it out:
FRANKFURT, Germany --(Business Wire)-- Today, the Developer Tools Group of Borland Software (NASDQAQ:BORL) announced InterBase(R) 2007, a significant new version of the Group's multi-platform, embeddable database that is used in hundreds of thousands of applications world wide. Combining high performance with low total cost of ownership, InterBase is a flexible database ideal for both embedded and business-critical enterprise server applications. InterBase 2007 delivers a number of new features, including Unicode international character support, increased performance and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities.



Today's release includes two major editions - InterBase 2007 Server Edition and InterBase 2007 Desktop Edition. A third edition, InterBase 2007 Developer Edition, is expected to be delivered for Borland Developer Studio, the Developer Tools Group's enterprise-class multi-language IDE for Windows(R) and .NET development. Borland Developer Studio combines the previously separate Delphi(R), C++Builder(R) and C#Builder(R) products and supports both native Windows development and .NET development in a single Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment.

InterBase 2007 includes increased durability for data protection and new disaster recovery options. This includes log-based journaling for short-term recovery and journal archiving for long-term recovery in the event of a system failure. The database also provides improved scalability, performance and availability. In addition to sophisticated features that support business-critical applications, InterBase 2007 has a small footprint that makes it well suited for embedding and ideal for ISVs, OEMs and VARs that require a compact database for easy redistribution.

Providing database portability across platforms (Solaris(TM), Linux, Windows) and editions (Desktop and Server), with many standard database connectivity options, InterBase 2007 is designed for self-tuning and minimum administration. New features and enhanced benefits include:

 1  Greater Durability - Designed for long and short-term recovery,
   InterBase 2007 protects against failures and data loss.
 2  Improved Performance - Fast database access now with batch
   updates, query optimizations and OLTP improvements.
 3  Tight integration with development tools - InterBase Developer
   Edition will be included directly within Borland Developer
   Studio, Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder and JBuilder. Tight
   integration and standard database connectivity options will
   make it easy to develop new applications using InterBase.



"InterBase has been successful in both the embedded and small to medium enterprise database markets because it combines higher end features and performance customers expect in a modern SQL database, with simple configuration and minimal to zero management requirements; perfect for embedded and SME applications," said Michael Swindell, senior director of product management in Borland's Developer Tools Group. "We're excited to introduce InterBase 2007, which is the only SQL database that combines the flexible performance of a multi-generational architecture with the durability of log-based journaling. InterBase 2007 increases performance, durability and international capabilities, making it ideal for both new and existing customers."

InterBase Server Edition is available for the Microsoft(R) Windows, Solaris and Linux operating systems, with support for Linux to be made available soon. InterBase Desktop Edition is Windows only. InterBase 2007 Server Edition and InterBase 2007 Desktop Edition are available immediately, while InterBase 2007 Developer Edition is expected to be available later this year. For more information on InterBase 2007, including system requirements and pricing, please visit www.borland.com/us/products/interbase/index.html.

Attendees at EuroDevCon 2006, taking place September 26-28 in Frankfurt, Germany, can explore InterBase 2007 and the latest product offerings from the Developer Tools Group.

About the Developer Tools Group

The Developer Tools Group at Borland delivers innovative, high-productivity development tools for a wide spectrum of software developers ranging from individuals to enterprise teams. Products enable developers to freely develop on their platform of choice while focusing on simplifying complex technologies and tasks so they can concentrate on application design, not infrastructure, to ensure on-time project delivery.

About Borland

Founded in 1983, Borland (NASDQAQ:BORL) is a global leader in application lifecycle management (ALM), providing solutions that make software delivery a more manageable, efficient and predictable business process. Borland provides the software, services and training that enable companies to achieve Software Delivery Optimization and maximize the business value of software. To learn more about delivering quality software, on time and within budget, visit http://www.borland.com.

Borland, InterBase, Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder, JBuilder and all other Borland brand and product names are service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of Borland Software Corporation in the United States and other countries. Microsoft, Windows and all other Microsoft brand and product names are service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Solaris and all other Sun brand and product names are service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the U.S. Federal Securities Laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is subject to the safe harbors created by such laws. Forward-looking statements may relate to, but are not limited to, the expected introduction of InterBase 2007 Developer Edition, and the features available in, and potential benefits to be derived from Borland's InterBase products. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations that involve a number of uncertainties and risks that may cause actual events or results to differ materially. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the following: rapid technological change that can adversely affect the demand for Borland products, shifts in customer demand, shifts in strategic relationships, delays in Borland's ability to deliver its products and services, software errors or announcements by competitors. These and other risks may be detailed from time to time in Borland periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, its latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and its latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained from www.sec.gov. Borland is under no obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update or alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Information contained in our website is not incorporated by reference in, or made part of this press release.
Enforta Expands Wi-Max Footprint In Russia. Check it out:

BV and ARTCommunications have announced that Enforta has acquired a 51 percent share in ARTCommunications Ltd.

ARTCommunications is a wireless broadband operators in Russia serving the countries two largest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg as well as Moscow Region.  Upon completing this investment, Enforta broadband services are now available in a total of 18 Russian regional capital cities as well as the growing Moscow Region market. 



Both companies will have the ability to provide services to their customers within the expanded footprint. In fact, "The acquisition now gives us wireless broadband service capability in 18 cities," an Enforta official said. 

Enforta plans to further extend services to a total of 30 cities by the end of 2007. "Actually, we have found that the wireless broadband products match well with requirements of SME and enterprise customers," Lee Sparkman, President of Enforta, told this reporter. "And those customers are constantly pushing us to expand the footprint. So while we were planning 30 cities by end of 2007, we have already launched operations in 18.  [This is] faster than we had originally planned, but we have our investors' full support."

Enforta's initial strategy was to focus on Russia's underserved regional markets, but "to service our growing base of enterprise customers we needed to extend our service area to Moscow and St Petersburg earlier than originally planned," Sparkman explained.  "Due to the absence of additional radio spectrum, the only means to enter these two cities was through acquisition."

"It is clear that scale will be critical for success in the wireless broadband business and we wanted to affiliate with a company of like mind and objective", said Alexander Ohotnikov, co-founder and General Director of ARTCommunications.  "The joining of our two companies will clearly benefit both our current and future customers."

Enforta has experienced rapid growth this past year both building and acquiring broadband wireless operators.  In May Enforta announced the acquisition of "Netprovodov," the largest wireless broadband operator in Russia's Ural region.  This was followed by the acquisition of Sky Telecom in Rostov and Mir TV in Ufa during August. 

Simultaneously, the company has constructed its own operations in 12 cities, and company officials claim the inclusion of ARTCommunications gives Enforta" the largest wireless broadband footprint in Russia."   

Enforta was formed in October, 2003 with the objective to provide broadband services using Wi-Max and other advanced technologies in Russia.  Enforta is owned by Sumitomo Corporation, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, and its management team.

ArtCommunications Ltd was founded in 1995 and is in the Russian Internet and broadband access markets.  In 2002 ArtCommunications began operation of its wireless broadband network under the trade mark "5G," constructed using pre-Wi-Max equipment provided by InfiNet Wireless, and company officials say today 5G has "the largest wireless footprint in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Moscow region." 

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

New Itanium Programs and Membership Milestone Highlight First Itanium Solution Summit. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance today hosts the first Itanium Solutions Summit. Aimed at highlighting the breadth of Itanium(R) 2-based solutions opportunities, this event brings together Itanium-based hardware vendors with top software players.



The Alliance has launched the ISV Platform Expansion Program, geared towards easing the migration of solutions currently deployed on legacy SPARC Solaris platforms to the latest, high-performance Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 architecture. Using Transitive(R) Corporation's QuickTransit(R) technology, ISVs who have applications specifically written for SPARC Solaris can immediately expand their market to include Itanium-based platforms - without porting. For more information about this program, please visit www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

"Our QuickTransit software enables applications written for the Solaris/SPARC platform to run on the Itanium platform without source code or binary changes," said Bob Wiederhold, president and CEO of Transitive Corporation. "As a new member of the ISA, we will provide licenses and support to ISV member companies who are interested in running their Solaris applications on the newest generation of Itanium platforms - immediately."

At the event the Alliance also launched the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Contest. Aimed at showcasing deployments of Itanium 2-based applications, this program will award grand prizes of $50,000 in three categories.

"Itanium Solutions Alliance programs have provided a foundation for industry innovation and customer deployment of Itanium platforms while attracting a critical mass of member companies," said Jens-Peter Seick, vice president of enterprise server business at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "The innovation award program has been chartered to award best in class industry innovation and bring attention to the work of some of the industry's most talented developers. We expect the program to spur new thoughts on usage for Itanium platforms in mission-critical business and technical computing environments."

Multiple awards will be delivered in spring 2007 and judged by a panel of industry experts. The award categories include:

-- Humanitarian Impact: This category will highlight innovative use of applications that demonstrate a profound impact on humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts.

-- Enterprise/Business Applications: This category will award the uses of applications running on Intel Itanium 2 architecture that produce effect business effectiveness in a number of measurable categories

-- Entrepreneurial: Aimed at smaller companies, this award will recognize companies who utilize Itanium 2-based solutions to improve business operations.

In addition to the grand prizes other accolades will be awarded. For more information about the program and to download an entrance application, please visit the Itanium Solutions Alliance Website at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

In addition to presentations from leading hardware and software vendors, the industry heard from customers that are currently deploying Itanium-based solutions. Customers appearing onstage included RMS Solutions and the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE). Also in attendance was JDA Software who recently became the 100th company to join the Alliance.

A global organization, the Itanium Solutions Alliance was founded in September 2005 with a mission to accelerate Itanium-based solution deployments through a suite of software porting and optimization tools. Alliance enabling programs include Developer Days, a Solutions Center Network and the Itanium Solutions Catalog, the first public listing of software applications available on Itanium-based platforms.

Membership to the Alliance is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of computing solutions. More information about the Alliance, programs and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry.

-- All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

(C) Copyright 2006, Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance. All rights reserved.
Rising Launches New Virus Wall Products. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- Rising Corp., a leading antivirus and content security software and services provider in China, has rolled out five models of new hardware virus wall products for various enterprises.



RSW-B2000, kilomega-level chip virus wall, is not only the first of its kind but it is taking the top position in technology worldwide as well.

Hardware virus wall is what global anti-virus software builders are going to develop in the future, and overseas institutions used to aired that virus wall will make up more than 50 percent of enterprise-level anti-virus software market in the coming five to ten years.

Rising released China's first model of virus wall product in 2004, which came to the same level of products launched by international leaders of the sector.

The RSW-B2000 virus wall will be mainly applied to networks with huge traffic in telecom operators and banks for checking ill-intended viruses.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
CCT Gets CNY500mn Long-term Loans from CDB. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- China Chengtong Group (CCT) recently signed a contract for a CNY 500 million loan with China Development Bank, one of the country's three policy lenders, marking a new phase of cooperation between CDB and the nation's state-owned assets administration body as well as CCT itself.



The life of the CNY 500 million loans signed this time will be as long as ten years, and it will be used in state-owned assets regrouping, thus making it the first long-term renminbi credit extended for state-owned assets projects.

In 2005, CCT and CDB has signed a development finance partnership agreement that gave CCT a line of credit of CNY 20 billion during 2005 and 2008, and the newly-signed CNY 500 million loans was a part of that agreement with DDB, according to the company.

CCT is a large state-owned enterprise which operates the nation's largest, and the widest-spreading chain logistic network, metal distribution network and container transportation network with integrated functions in storage, distribution and information services.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
OSG buys Maritrans for $455m to form US flag giant. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) OVERSEAS Shipholding Group's $455m acquisition of Maritrans, the venerable Jones Act tanker and barge player, has created the largest player in US flag petroleum shipping.

The all-cash deal announced yesterday, in one fell swoop, removes a major regional rival for OSG and solves the conundrum of pitting its product tankers against Maritrans' articulated tug barges.

Some analysts are already speculating that the conquest is the first tangible precursor of OSG's stated ambition to reverse all its US-flag business into one enterprise and then spin it off.

For now, Maritrans' assets are to be subsumed into OSG's US-flag strategic division.

The deal adds complementary geographical markets to OSG's portfolio.

It puts OSG's $300m Capital Construction Fund to use, and validates OSG's recent statements about using its hoard of cash to become even more of a 'market leader'.

The deal also appears to do justice to Maritrans' intrinsic value, with the $37.50 a share OSG has agreed to pay being almost a 50% premium to Maritrans' prevailing share price.

Natasha Boyden, Cantor Fitzgerald equity analyst in New York, who has closely followed Maritrans in recent years, said: 'Maritrans has been undervalued for some time now. It is good to see that the market is not unaware of the company's true worth.'



Jonathan Whitworth, Maritrans chairman and chief executive, paid tribute to OSG's 'financial strength', and added: 'A greater commercial footprint will allow us to serve customers better. The larger fleet also enhances our market intelligence.'

Mr Whitworth is to remain with OSG after the merger as senior vice president, heading up the US-flag strategic business unit that will be run out of Tampa.

The deal will add Maritrans' 11 ATB's, three ATB newbuildings and five product tankers, two of which have been converted to grain-carriers, to OSG's seven tankers and 10 newbuildings.

Morten Arntzen, OSG president and chief executive, hailed the 'strategic fit' of Maritrans and the 'growth opportunities in US-flag business'.

He added: 'The lightering business in Delaware Bay and the addition of new customers in the complementary ATB Gulf of Mexico and Florida short-haul trade will contribute to our business.'

Maritrans' $232.5m ATB trio under construction at Bender Shipbuilding will allow OSG to use a 'substantial portion' of its Capital Construction Fund, OSG said. The CCF market value stood at $300m in OSG's June 30 accounts.

The purchase consideration of $455m including outstanding debt will come from available cash and existing loan agreements, OSG said. June 30 working capital stood at $228m, and OSG has a seven-year $1.8bn revolving credit facility.

The deal will be 'immediately accretive before considering any transaction synergies,' OSG said

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Agents Groups Raise Concerns About Zurich Contingent Commission Settlement. Check it out:
(BestWire Services Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
A proposed class settlement covering the incentive compensation practices of Zurich Financial Services Group's U.S. subsidiaries would have significant and undeserved adverse impacts on insurance producers, according to "friend of the court" briefs submitted by a pair of national agent groups.



In separate briefs filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, both the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents and the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America take issue with elements of the proposal they contend would impose burdensome new legal and administrative duties on agents and brokers.

The proposed class settlement looks to consolidate and resolve in federal court a spate of actions brought against Zurich by state attorneys general, most concerning the company's alleged participation in schemes to "fix" insurance prices in the excess casualty sector through fraudulent bidding practices.

In March, Zurich agreed to pay $171 million to settle bid-rigging charges brought in Florida, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon and West Virginia (BestWire, March 20). That same month, the company separately agreed to a $153 million settlement with New York, Connecticut and Illinois that included $88 million in refunds to policyholders, and that also covered charges the insurer used certain "finite reinsurance" transactions to bolster both its own financial results and those of its clients.

Although the settlements didn't call on Zurich to either confirm or deny wrongdoing, the company agreed to implement new disclosure and compliance measures that Zurich's chief executive officer, James J. Schiro, said would "bring greater clarity to how Zurich will move forward to serve producers and customers in this new era of transparency." (BestWire, March 27, 2006)

But according to the agents groups, many of the costs and duties associated with those disclosures would be passed on to agents and brokers. Under the settlement, independent insurance agents would transmit to insureds and potential insureds a court-mandated Mandatory Disclosure Statement describing Zurich's practices for compensating producers. Should other carriers be made to follow similar disclosure requirements, "the multitude of forms will exacerbate consumer confusion significantly, and create inefficiencies in independent agencies," according to Robert A. Rusbuldt, the Big I's chief executive officer.

"Zurich should have the responsibility to provide to insureds any disclosure form it is obligated by law or otherwise chooses to provide about how it compensates agents and brokers," Rusbuldt said in a statement. "Agents and brokers should continue to have the latitude to customize their interactions to the specific requests and needs of customers."

Moreover, argued PIA CEO Len Brevik, provisions of the settlement proposal that commit Zurich to support legislation abolishing contingent commission incentives amount to state attorneys general using "their law enforcement powers in an effort to bring about a fundamental change in the American system of free enterprise."

"Performance-based compensation is not a threat to that system, it is the basis of that system," Brevik said. "Certain provisions contained in these agreements are grossly unfair to PIA agents, and grossly unfair to carriers by restricting their ability to compensate their producers in a legal and honest manner."

The agents groups also said application of the agreement would discriminate unfairly against independent agencies. The Big I noted that the agreement doesn't require equivalent compensation transparency for insurance purchased from captive agents or direct writers. PIA's brief said settlement agreements that called for some of the largest commercial insurance brokers to abandon all contingent compensation have been amended in recent months to clarify the firms' ability to receive incentive rewards when acting as an insurer's managing general agent.

(By R.J. Lehmann, Washington bureau manager: [email protected])

Copyright 2006 A.M. Best Company, Inc.
Mavent Receives $10 Million Commitment Led by FTVentures. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Mavent, the leading provider of automated compliance solutions for the financial services industry, announced today the completion of a $10 million round of financing led by FTVentures, a private equity firm focused on business services and software companies that benefit the global financial services industry.



This most recent round of financing is a result of Mavent's strong industry presence and will support growth opportunities including continuing product development and the rollout of yet unannounced customers. The financing brings total institutional investment in the Company to $25 million. Since its inception, Mavent has signed multi-year agreements with many of the industry's largest originators and purchasers of mortgages including Fannie Mae, Credit Suisse, UBS, National City Mortgage Corp., Ohio Savings Bank, HomeLoanCenter (a division of Lending Tree), Ocwen Financial Corp., and GreenPoint Mortgage Funding.

"Over the last three years, Mavent has emerged as the leader in providing solutions for managing regulatory risk in the mortgage industry," said Bob Huret, founding partner at FTVentures and Mavent chairman of the board. "Mavent's proven solutions have helped create cost-efficiencies and process improvements for leading mortgage lenders. This investment reflects our continuing confidence in Mavent and the team's ability to capitalize on expansion opportunities."

"FTVentures is far more than a financial backer to Mavent," said Louis Pizante, chief executive officer of Mavent. "FTVentures' expertise and industry relationships have helped Mavent to accelerate and manage our growth. This latest transaction allows us to continue to innovate and provide exceptional value to our clients."

About Mavent Inc.

Mavent Inc. is a leading provider of automated compliance solutions for the mortgage industry. Mavent, incorporated in 2000, is the developer of the Mavent Expert System and the Mavent Compliance Console (MC2). The Mavent Expert System is a comprehensive automated solution that submits loan data for reviews against nearly 300 legislative acts, 200 license types, and the rules and regulations of over 60 regulatory authorities. Mavent's review functions include aspects of the Truth In Lending Act; HOEPA, state and local high cost reviews; loan level lender and broker license reviews; state consumer credit laws relating to such terms as usury, fee restrictions, prepayment penalties, and late fees; certain requirements of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; the Office of Foreign Asset Control; and, investor program requirements, such as an accurate Fannie Mae points and fees threshold test. Mavent can also implement custom business rules for its clients. The Mavent Expert System is supported by a growing network of law firms (including such prominent firms as Hudson Cook) who approve each of the nearly 7,000 pages of rules documentation that supports the Mavent Expert System.

The Mavent Expert System has conducted more than 15 million compliance reviews to date for some of the industry's largest originators and purchasers, including Fannie Mae, National City Mortgage Corp., Ohio Savings Bank, First Franklin, Ocwen Financial Corp., Credit Suisse, GreenPoint Mortgage and HomeLoanCenter (a division of LendingTree). For more information on Mavent, contact Louis Pizante, chief executive officer at 949-474-4732 or visit the company Web site at www.mavent.com.

About FTVentures

FTVentures provides capital to growth companies to finance organic expansion, recapitalizations, build-ups and buyouts. The firm invests in software and business services companies that derive value from its unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes 38 of the world's leading financial institutions. FTVentures' Global Partner Network provides the firm with a unique vantage point into the business driven IT and operating challenges of the global enterprise. Founded in 1998, FTVentures currently has $624 million under management with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.ftventures.com.
Configuresoft Appoints Marco Bussadori Vice President of EMEA. Check it out:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- Configuresoft, an innovator in systems management technology and the creator of enterprise Configuration Intelligence, today announced the appointment of Marco Bussadori as vice president of EMEA. Mr. Bussadori, who is based in London, UK, will be responsible for expanding the company's direct operations in EMEA and developing key partnerships to accelerate adoption of the award-winning Configuresoft Enterprise Configuration Management (ECM) solution.



With enterprise management new license revenue in Europe at more than 2.4 billion dollars for 2006 and projections for approximately 3 billion dollars by 2009 according to a 2005 Gartner Dataquest(1) report, Configuresoft is well positioned for the rapid European growth building on an established base of customers including Royal Bank of Scotland, Banque du France, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, BP Group and Land Rover. Prior to joining Configuresoft, Mr. Bussadori was instrumental in driving EMEA revenue and growth in the systems management space for a number of software companies including PS'SOFT, Microsoft UK, Marimba, NetIQ and Tivoli across all market segments.

"Demand for Configuresoft solutions throughout Europe is rising, and EMEA is a huge market opportunity for us to accelerate organic growth and expand the distribution channel," said Mark Ruport, Configuresoft CEO. "Marco's extensive experience in mature and entrepreneurial environments and his strong sales track record will enable us to build on our success in the core European marketplace and extend our reach across the rest of EMEA."

"Configuresoft's ECM solution delivers best-in-class packaged solutions making it practical and efficient to automate critical governance, audit and regulatory compliance processes," said Marco Bussadori. "I'm excited to drive EMEA expansion for Configuresoft and maximize on our unique position at the heart of this dynamic market. Configuresoft's success and growth in EMEA will be expanded by the direct sales channel, maturing strategic relationships in our established channel, and developing new partnerships to maximize coverage of existing markets as well as launch new ones."

This appointment follows substantial momentum for Configuresoft, including capture of the "Best Systems Management & Operations" award at Tech Ed 2006 and Best of Tech Ed Europe 2005 for Systems Management. Configuresoft recently launched ECM for Active Directory, extending ECM change detection and control into the Active Directory environment, as well as ECM for Microsoft Exchange and ECM Management Extensions for Assets.

(1) Forecast: Enterprise Management Software Worldwide, 2004-2009 (Executive Summary) by Laurie F. Wurster, Gartner Research, July 13, 2005.

About Configuresoft

Configuresoft is an innovator in systems management technology, delivering the enterprise configuration intelligence to effectively and efficiently manage today's heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Spanning both security and operations, the Company's configuration management, compliance and remediation products are used by 12 of the world's 25 largest companies to keep their critical systems properly configured, while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, FISMA, GLBA, Basel II, HIPAA and DISA, and industry standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS and Microsoft Security Hardening Guides. To contact Configuresoft, please call (888) U-CONFIG or visit www.configuresoft.com.
Silicon Laboratories Celebrates Ten Years of Innovation. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Silicon Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq:SLAB), a leader in high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today celebrates ten years of mixed-signal innovation. By fundamentally changing semiconductor architectures, Silicon Laboratories has achieved multiple industry firsts in the communications, wireless, networking, power and microcontroller markets. Silicon Laboratories has built a portfolio of market leading products leveraging mixed-signal trade secrets, a world-class engineering team and more than 700 issued or patent pending innovations.



A Growth Story

Silicon Laboratories was founded by Nav Sooch, Dave Welland and Jeff Scott in 1996 in Austin, Texas to develop world-class mixed-signal ICs. The company's initial product was an analog modem for personal computers (PCs). Ten years later, the company is now a global enterprise with operations, sales and design activities worldwide. The company became profitable just two years after its inception and completed a successful initial public offering (IPO) in 2000. Today, Silicon Laboratories is a publicly traded, approximately $500 million company, leading mixed-signal innovation across a broad set of products.

"Few companies have grown as consistently and profitably as Silicon Labs. By striving for excellence in all that we do, we've been able to create a company with not only strong products and financial performance, but a sustainable values-oriented culture and a history of giving back to our community," said Nav Sooch, Silicon Laboratories' co-founder and chairman of the board of directors. "We are very proud of what the team has accomplished over the last decade, and we're enthusiastic about the future potential of the business. Over the next ten years, we'll be leveraging expanded resources, the best team of mixed-signal engineers in the world and our cycles of learning to bring our technology leadership to brand new markets."

A Proven Mixed-Signal Leader

Acknowledged by leading trade publications, Silicon Laboratories' products have received more than 20 design awards. The company has rapidly established a leadership position in many major semiconductor markets and has shipped close to 2 billion CMOS-based mixed-signal ICs including:

-- One billion analog modems designed into over 50 percent of PCs and satellite set-top boxes worldwide,

-- 600 million Aero(R) GSM/GPRS transceivers in hundreds of different cellular handsets,

-- 80 million VoIP ICs shipping into products across the majority of VoIP deployments and

-- Nearly 40 million MCUs and over 50,000 MCU development kits.

"Mixed-signal is at the forefront of the next generation of innovation as the analog world we live in and the digital world of computing continue to intersect. Over the next ten years, we'll see power consumption and battery life improve in portable devices, dramatically increasing the convergence of functionality in these products. Broadcast technology will become highly portable; power supplies, wireless networks, and remote monitoring will become commonplace, and bandwidth requirements will continue to increase," said Necip Sayiner, president and chief executive officer of Silicon Laboratories. "The end result is a marketplace ripe for innovation that makes technology less expensive, less power hungry and easier to use. We excel in this environment and look forward to the next ten years of developing product innovations in the areas where we compete."

Financial Strength

Consistently recognized as one of Texas' fastest growing companies, Silicon Laboratories has a financial framework built on best practices that has resulted in a strong balance sheet with excellent cash growth, a cash balance of over $400 million and no debt. This prudent financial management has enabled continued investment in research and development to further build the company's arsenal of patented, mixed-signal innovations.

A Winning Culture

Voted by employees as one of the best places to work in Central Texas, Silicon Laboratories has a winning culture that has allowed the company to maintain its focus as it has grown. Silicon Laboratories' employees pride themselves on their commitment to core values that include open, transparent communication, continuous innovation, refusal to compromise on the quality of talent, a collaborative work environment, a desire to win and a dedication to commercial success.

Silicon Laboratories is also committed to sharing its financial success with the community and has donated funds and volunteer support to 40 local organizations that make a measurable difference in improving the quality of life in Austin.

About Silicon Laboratories Inc.

Silicon Laboratories Inc. is a leading designer of high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for a broad range of applications. Silicon Laboratories' diverse portfolio of highly integrated, patented solutions is developed by a world-class engineering team with decades of cumulative expertise in cutting-edge mixed-signal design. The company has design, engineering, marketing, sales and applications offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information about Silicon Laboratories please visit www.silabs.com.

Cautionary Language

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on Silicon Laboratories' current expectations. The words "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "plan," "project," "will" and similar phrases as they relate to Silicon Laboratories are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current views and assumptions of Silicon Laboratories and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are the following: risks that Silicon Laboratories may not be able to maintain its historical growth; quarterly fluctuations in revenues and operating results; volatile stock price; average selling prices of products may decrease significantly and rapidly, especially for mobile handset products; dependence on a limited number of products and customers; risks associated with shifting market demand from GSM/GPRS to EDGE and WCDMA; difficulties developing new products that achieve market acceptance; risks that Silicon Laboratories may not be able to manage strains associated with its growth; dependence on key personnel; difficulties managing our manufacturers and subcontractors; difficulties managing international activities; credit risks associated with our accounts receivable; geographic concentration of manufacturers, assemblers, test service providers and customers in the Pacific Rim that subjects Silicon Laboratories' business and results of operations to risks of natural disasters, epidemics, war and political unrest; product development risks; inventory-related risks; intellectual property litigation risks; risks associated with acquisitions; the competitive and cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry and other factors that are detailed in Silicon Laboratories' filings with the SEC. Silicon Laboratories disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Note to editors: Silicon Laboratories, Aero and the Silicon Laboratories logo are trademarks of Silicon Laboratories Inc. All other product names noted herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.
Easy Does It! Intuit Announces QuickBooks 2007. Check it out:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq:INTU) today announced the availability of QuickBooks(R) 2007. The new line of products and services focuses on what matters most to small businesses: making day-to-day tasks even easier to complete, while adding deeper functionality for specialized and growing businesses.



QuickBooks 2007 includes powerful new tools and services that help small businesses succeed in activities beyond accounting. For the first time, Intuit is offering customers integrated tools to market their business and attract new customers, as well as new services that extend QuickBooks' functionality -- from accepting credit cards to managing timesheets and running payroll. Combined, these create a strong ecosystem of distinctive solutions to help existing and new-to-the-world businesses be successful.

"No one serves small business and accountants better than Intuit," said Brad Smith, senior vice president of Intuit's Small Business Division. "For nearly 15 years we have remained laser-focused on ease, continuously improving the market-leading small business management platform. At the same time, we have developed a powerful mix of integrated services that our customers asked us for to help better connect them with their customers, vendors, partners and employees."

Solutions Beyond Accounting

QuickBooks now offers more than 25 products and services that go beyond core accounting functionality. From QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores to Intuit Small Business Payroll services, customers can leverage their existing QuickBooks data to better manage and market their companies. QuickBooks also offers easy solutions to process payments, such as the QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit and the new QuickBooks Time Tracker to easily collect and manage employee timesheets on the Web.

The latest addition to Intuit's comprehensive small business ecosystem is a series of popular marketing tools from Google. The new integrated online tools include Google Maps(TM), Google AdWords(TM) and the QuickBooks Product Listing Service, designed to solve another critical small business concern -- attracting new customers online.

Customers can also easily find more than 400 add-on applications that solve specific needs from sales force automation to eBay integration through the QuickBooks Solutions Marketplace (www.marketplace.intuit.com).

"Small businesses are increasingly interested in moving from piecemeal solutions to more integrated approaches to company operations," said Merle Sandler, senior research analyst at IDC. "But this can be tricky, because small firms also want resources that can support company growth, but not be too expensive or difficult to use. With that in mind, Intuit's strategy of extending beyond basic accounting to build a valuable network of available capabilities will resonate with both small businesses and the accountants that serve them."

Focusing on What Matters Most -- Ease

QuickBooks 2007 features numerous enhancements that simplify users' most frequent activities, helping the approximate 3.7 million small businesses using the software be more efficient:

-- Easier Setup: To help new users set up their income and expense accounts more accurately, QuickBooks 2007 features a simplified recommended Chart of Accounts. The new version offers users the 30 most commonly-used accounts for their business type -- reducing the likelihood of incorrectly categorizing expenses down the road. Optional accounts to suit specific business needs can easily be added.

-- Easier Payroll: The nearly 1 million businesses that use Intuit Small Business Payroll Services can now easily run payroll for all their employees at once, rather than one at a time. A new dashboard clearly displays the impact of payroll across the business, showing in one clear view what the company needs to pay employees and the government, and what forms they need to file. And, a new "review, confirm and submit" process gives users the confidence their payroll is correct and ready to go.

-- Easy Data Sharing with Accountants: It is now easier than ever for accountants to make changes to their clients' company files, while the business owner continues to work on their day-to-day business transactions without interruption. Previously, if a company needed to send files to an accountant, the business would have to stop entering data into QuickBooks to ensure version control. While the files were with the accountant, the business could not process financial information, including invoices, bills or payroll. With the new Dividing Date functionality, QuickBooks allows accountants to edit and review all information before a specified date, while giving the company the freedom to continue business as usual. When the accountant is done with the adjustment, the business owner can quickly review and import those changes directly into QuickBooks.

-- Easier Customization: Small businesses rely on forms to communicate with customers, suppliers and partners. On average, a small business uses 168 forms per month, including invoices, letters and purchase orders. With QuickBooks 2007 small businesses no longer have to print their customized document, walk to the printer and look at the hard copy to see if the form meets their needs. New for this year, QuickBooks includes an auto-preview feature that makes it easy to customize forms with color schemes, logos and more, while showing users their changes as they are made. The software also consolidates the most commonly-used customization options all on one screen.

New "Right for Me" Solutions to Solve Specific Needs

As part of Intuit's Right for Me strategy to offer QuickBooks versions for companies of different sizes and industries with specific needs, the QuickBooks 2007 line adds new capabilities for specialized businesses and growing companies:

-- Enhanced Features for Product-based Businesses: Inventory management is critical to the success of product-based businesses, but in order to keep accurate record of total inventory, they must often convert products from one unit of measure to another. For example, a company that purchases a product by the case from a supplier may sell the same product by the individual bottle to its customers. Available in select QuickBooks 2007 offerings, the new Unit of Measure feature removes the hassle of manual conversion, and the risk of costly errors, by automatically calculating the conversion from one unit to another in the appropriate forms including invoices, purchase orders and inventory reports.

"To meet the needs of large retailers, we were spending two to three hours a day manually calculating and converting quantities. We have different shipping requirements for each retailer and any error in shipping too many or too few of any one item results in shipping error fees," said Tom Mitchell, CFO of HBH Pet Products in Springville, Utah. "QuickBooks gives us that peace of mind to know that we have shipped out what our customers want, when they want it."

In addition, an improved Shipping Manager enables multi-parcel and high-value shipping with FedEx and UPS, handles third-party billing and can print labels right from QuickBooks on popular thermal printers.

-- Online Time Tracking for Professional Services Firms: Businesses can now collect and manage employee and contractor timesheets on the Web with the new QuickBooks Time Tracker service, available by subscription. Freeing managers and employees from manually entering data into QuickBooks from hand-written timesheets, Time Tracker easily downloads data into QuickBooks saving hours of tedious work and reducing errors that can cause incorrect billing.

"Time Tracker saves us so much time when entering employee timesheets," said Leticia Zaragoza, of K Page Kistler, PC in Virginia Beach, Va. "Plus, I have total control when managing these entries for billing."

-- After-the-Fact Payroll: Approximately 28 percent of the 250,000 accountants who work with QuickBooks perform after-the-fact payroll services, entering payroll data from paychecks that clients have prepared themselves. To save accountants considerable time and effort, QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll for Accountants features a new After-the-Fact Payroll spreadsheet-style data entry tool that transforms this traditionally time-intensive task into a simple process.

-- Increased List Limits for Growing Businesses: Mid-market businesses using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 7.0 now have the capability to add a hundred thousand or more inventory items, customers and vendors as they grow -- an increase of more than 400 percent.

Pricing and Availability

QuickBooks Premier -- including industry-specific editions for accountants, contractors, manufacturers and wholesalers, nonprofits, professional service firms and retailers -- is priced at $399.95. QuickBooks Pro retails for $199.95 and QuickBooks' entry-level product, QuickBooks: Simple Start Edition is $99.95. A new three-user value pack for QuickBooks Pro is $499.95 and a five-user value pack for QuickBooks Premier is $1,499.95.

QuickBooks 2007 products are currently available direct from Intuit at www.quickbooks.com and will be available starting on October 11, 2006 at fine retailers everywhere including: Amazon.com, Best Buy, CDW, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco.com, Fry's Electronics, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Sam's Club and Staples.

For mid-market companies QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 7.0 starts at $3,000 for a five-seat license and is available for up to 20 simultaneous users. The QuickBooks Enterprise price includes a 12-month full-service plan which entitles businesses to 24/7 technical support from a dedicated support engineer, product upgrades, data recovery and reporting services, interactive training tools and automatic renewals. QuickBooks Enterprise can be purchased direct from Intuit by calling 866-379-6635.

About Intuit Inc.

Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services, including QuickBooks(R), Quicken(R) and TurboTax(R) software, simplify small business management and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. ProSeries(R) and Lacerte(R) are Intuit's leading tax preparation software suites for professional accountants.

Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of $2.3 billion in its fiscal year 2006. The company has nearly 7,500 employees with major offices in 13 states across the United States, and offices in Canada and the United Kingdom. More information can be found at www.intuit.com.

Intuit, the Intuit logo, and QuickBooks, among others, are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Answerthink to Webcast Presentation at The Noble Financial ONTRACK 2006 Conference. Check it out:
MIAMI --(Business Wire)-- Answerthink, Inc. (Nasdaq:ANSR) will provide a live audio Webcast of its presentation at The Noble Financial ONTRACK 2006 Small Cap Conference and Micro Cap Symposium.

The Webcast is scheduled for Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 1:45 pm ET.

To listen to the live Webcast, go to http://www.ontrack06.com/webcast.html and click on the link to the Webcast. The Website has instructions for accessing the Webcast. Please allow at least 15 minutes prior to the event to download and install any necessary software.



About Answerthink

Answerthink, Inc. (www.answerthink.com) is a leading business and technology consulting firm that enables companies to achieve world-class business performance. By leveraging the comprehensive database of The Hackett Group, Answerthink's business and technology solutions help clients significantly improve performance and maximize returns on technology investments. Answerthink's capabilities include benchmarking, business transformation, business applications, business intelligence, and offshore application development and support. Founded in 1997, Answerthink has offices throughout the United States and in Europe and India.

About The Hackett Group

The Hackett Group (www.TheHackettGroup.com), a strategic advisory firm and an Answerthink company, is a world leader in best practice research, benchmarking and business transformation services that empirically define and enable world-class enterprise performance.

Through the acquisition of REL Consultancy Group, a global leader in generating cash improvement from working capital, we offer Hackett-REL Total Working Capital services to liberate cash flow from operations through improved working capital, reduced costs and increased service quality. Hackett-REL has helped clients in more than 60 countries free up over $25 billion through working capital improvements in the last 10 years alone.

Only The Hackett Group empirically defines world-class performance in sales, general and administrative (SG&A) and supply chain activities with analysis gained through 3,500 benchmark studies over 14 years at 2,100 of the world's leading companies. Our clients comprise 97 percent of the Dow Jones Industrials, 77 percent of the Fortune 100 and 90 percent of the Dow Jones Global Titans Index.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Answerthink's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that impact such forward-looking statements include, among others, the ability of the products, services, or practices mentioned in this release to deliver the desired effect, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions into our operations, our ability to attract additional business, our ability to effectively market and sell our product offerings and other services, the timing of projects and the potential for contract cancellations by our customers, changes in expectations regarding the information technology industry, our ability to attract and retain skilled employees, possible changes in collections of accounts receivable, risks of competition, price and margin trends, foreign currency fluctuations, changes in general economic conditions and interest rates as well as other risks detailed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 30, 2005 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
PMC-Sierra Provides Update to Q3 2006 Business Outlook. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Nasdaq:PMCS), a leading provider of high-speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors, is today providing an update to its business outlook for the third quarter of 2006. The Company now expects revenues for the third quarter ending October 1st, 2006, to be in the range of $114 million to $116 million compared to revenues in the second quarter of 2006 of $118.8 million. The Company's previous outlook for third quarter revenues announced on the July 20th 2006 earnings conference call was for a revenue range of $122 million to $124 million.



The revision in outlook for revenues for the third quarter of 2006 is primarily attributable to changes in customer demand related to the Company's communications products. Due to cost containment efforts, the Company expects operating expenses for the third quarter of 2006 to be at or below $60 million compared to the outlook for expenses provided during the earnings conference call on July 20th of $62.5 million to $63.5 million.

"Business activity in the third quarter is less than earlier expected in the communications area, particularly in Asia, while activity in enterprise storage continues to improve as previously expected," said Bob Bailey, Chairman and CEO of PMC-Sierra. "We remain positive on the industry trends for continued build-out of next-generation network infrastructure, enterprise storage and deployment of Fibre-To-The-Home."

On August 25th, 2006, PMC-Sierra announced the closing of its development site in Ottawa, Canada, that is expected to result in the elimination of between 30 and 40 positions. That workforce reduction, combined with the elimination of approximately 10 positions at the Company's development site in Portland, Oregon, is estimated to result in operating expense savings of approximately $1.5 to $1.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2006 and a normalized quarterly expense savings of approximately $1.8 to $2.2 million in subsequent quarters. The Company expects to complete the restructuring activities by the end of 2006.

Third Quarter 2006 Conference Call

Management will be providing a review of the Company's third quarter 2006 results and provide guidance for the fourth quarter of 2006 during a conference call at 1:30 pm Pacific Time/4:30 pm Eastern Time on October 19th, 2006. To listen to the call, investors can access an audio webcast of the conference call on the Financial Events and Calendar section at http://investor.pmc-sierra.com/. A replay of this webcast will be posted and available two hours after the conference call has been completed. A replay of the webcast will be available for five business days.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. The forward looking statements include the estimate of revenue and expenses for the third quarter, expectations regarding enterprise storage and other industry trends and expected expense savings from the closing of operations in Ottawa and Portland. Actual results may differ from projections. The Company's SEC filings describe more fully the risks associated with the Company's business including PMC-Sierra's limited revenue visibility due to variable customer demands, orders with short delivery lead times and customer concentration, and changing environments in the different segments and regions of the business. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update the forward-looking statements.

About PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra(TM) is a leading provider of broadband communications and storage semiconductors for metro, access, fiber to the home, wireless infrastructure, storage, laser printers and customer premises equipment. PMC-Sierra offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe, Israel and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information, visit www.pmc-sierra.com.

(C) Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2006. All rights reserved. PMC is a registered trademark of PMC-Sierra, Inc. in the United States and other countries. PMC-SIERRA, PMCS and "Thinking You can Build On" are trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Intros Mobile Virtual PBX Service. Check it out:
Oracle (News - Alert) Virtual PBX (News - Alert) was introduced today by Oracle. The new service will be part of the company's Oracle Service Delivery Platform (Oracle SDP). The platform, to be deployed by operators and service providers, supports SIP, SIP Servlets, and Parlay/Parlay X. The Oracle SDP enables the development of network-centric services and their portability across IMS-enabled and VoIP networks.


 
The Oracle Virtual PBX will be delivered as an operator-hosted PBX service. The service features Queues and Attendant functionality, Hunting Groups and Auto attendants. Oracle Virtual PBX can be implemented using standard J2EE and Web technologies.
 
"Network operators are finding that the ideal way to address fixed/mobile convergence is to build their infrastructures and services on top of standards-based IT platforms like the Oracle SDP," said Oracle's vice president of development Vittorio Viarengo in a statement.
 
 "Rapid service deployment on today's networks with a future-proof architecture for easy migration is essential. The Oracle SDP and services like the Oracle Virtual PBX represent Oracle's commitment to help solve the problems of communication service providers and network operators through a proven, standards-based, carrier-grade platform as well as out-of-the-box services that are immediately revenue generating."
 
The Oracle Virtual PBX is currently available and is priced on a per-subscriber basis.
 
 
What’s the Number One VoIP Conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP Expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for Service Providers, Resellers, and the Enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.
 
Click Commerce Customer and Executive to Address Aberdeen Research's Inaugural Chief Service Officer Summit. Check it out:
CHICAGO --(Business Wire)-- Click Commerce, Inc. (Nasdaq:CKCM), a leading provider of on-demand supply chain management solutions, and customer Kawasaki Motors Corp will present at Aberdeen Research's inaugural Chief Service Officer (CSO) Summit, Oct. 3-4 in Boston. David Dora, executive vice president of operations at Kawasaki Motors Corp, will present a case study on how to "Drive Revenues by Moving from a Company-Centric to a Customer-Centric Service Approach." Also presenting at the conference is Click Commerce Senior Vice President of Product Management and Strategy Steve Cole. Mr. Cole will join a panel of solution provider experts who will discuss "Service Chain Solutions Directions."



The CSO summit offers a networking conference for forward-looking service, finance, supply chain, and operations executives interested in transforming their post-sales service processes. Aberdeen's research indicates that 78 percent of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) currently or soon will manage post-sales service as a strategic profit center. Click Commerce is a platinum sponsor of the summit.

"As a pioneer in offering service supply chain solutions, we have seen first-hand the growing need to turn post-sales operations into revenue generating service organizations. In many cases, post-sales service has become a significant advantage for companies competing globally," said Nancy Koenig, executive vice president of operations for Click Commerce. "The CSO summit provides service executives a great venue for learning new methods to drive service supply chain transformation and increase market share."

To learn more about Aberdeen Research's Chief Service Officer Summit and Click Commerce's participation, go to http://www.aberdeen.com/events/live/CSO06/

About Click Commerce, Inc.

Click Commerce, Inc., (Nasdaq:CKCM), a leading provider of on-demand supply chain management solutions, enables millions of users in 70 countries to collaborate, in real time, with business partners across the extended enterprise. Click Commerce solutions support the unique business processes of multiple industry segments such as manufacturing, aerospace and defense, and high-tech. Click Commerce enables corporations including Alaska Airlines, BASF, Citibank, Delphi, Eastman Kodak Company, Jabil Global Services, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Pier 1, Ryder, and Verizon to coordinate and optimize business processes, accelerate revenue, lower costs, and improve customer service. More information can be found at www.clickcommerce.com.
Mobile Cohesion gains $4.8m [Mobile Cohesion]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise Equity Leads Round with Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Accel Partners, and Clarendon Fund Managers

Belfast UK, September 25th 2006 Mobile Cohesion, the UK based telecommunications software firm, has announced that it has closed its second major funding round of $4.8m one of the largest venture investments this year for any Northern Ireland based technology firm.



According to Per Lindblad, Mobile Cohesions CEO, this is further endorsement of the companys market defining position in partner relationship management solutions for mobile operators worldwide.

Our customers, some of the best known brand leaders in mobile telephony, have endorsed the concept of partner and performance focused partner relationship management based on our HYDRA product.

With this funding round we can now further develop our presence in a vast market one in which we have massive competitive advantage. We are very proud that our achievements have been recognised by our existing backers Cross Atlantic Partners and Accel Partners. But now Belfast-based Enterprise Equity (NI), Northern Irelands longest established VC firm, has led our latest funding round supported by existing investors as well as Viridian Growth Fund - a Northern Ireland based fund managed by Clarendon Fund Managers.

The funds will be used to leverage our existing customer relationships in other geographies and to attract new customers who are wrestling with partner management challenges. In addition, well be developing our customer operations organisation and further enhancing our product offerings through more R&D.

According to Brian Cummings of Enterprise Equity, We were very impressed with the energy and talent exhibited by the Mobile Cohesion team and its track record of building successful telecommunication software companies. We believe that HYDRA offers a compelling proposition to operators that want to exploit the real business opportunity of mobile content, applications and data services. The challenge for the company is to build on its installed customer base and to further spread the word about the huge revenue and profit opportunities represented by HYDRA.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Easynet picks Telent for LLU [telent plc]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Multimillion pound contract makes telent a strategic partner for Easynets volume roll-out plan

London 25 September 2006 telent plc (LSE: TLNT) is pleased to announce that it has been contracted by Easynet to manage the volume deployment of access equipment as part of the companys Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) programme. The brief gives telent responsibility for management, installation and commissioning, including all aspects of inventory control, for Easynets expansion of its LLU footprint.



In addition to the management of the inventory control, telent has also secured the contract to supply installation materials (racks, cables and other infrastructure equipment).

Easynet is an international networking company owner and part of the BSkyB group. In the UK, Easynet is a pioneer of LLU and provides the infrastructure for the broadband requirements of BSkyB. At an international level, Easynet provides global managed IP network solutions into the enterprise marketplace.

We selected telent to ensure an efficient and speedy deployment, which will assist Easynet in expanding our LLU footprint to deliver further innovative services to our UK enterprise customers. Both telent and Easynet are very experienced in deploying large-scale access solutions within the UK, which is why this partnership is such a compelling one. Our longstanding relationship with the telent team, and our experience of them constantly delivering on time and to budget, also influenced our decision of deployment partner, comments Trevor Legg, Easynets network implementation director.

This project represents an excellent fit for telents capabilities. We are solely focussed on the provision of leading edge telecommunications services, and this specialisation gave us a definite competitive edge. We also have a long-standing history of delivery in this area, having installed over 5,000 access platforms in the UK. Moreover, telent boasts an intimate knowledge of BT processes, having worked closely with the PTT for many years, comments Mark Plato, chief executive officer, telent plc.

We are delighted that this contract will further strengthen our reputation for managing all aspects of a turnkey LLU deployment. The size and reach of our installation field force also proved invaluable in demonstrating our suitability for this project, Mr Plato concluded.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Verizon Named to Working Mother Magazine's 2006 List of 100 Best Companies. Check it out:
NEW YORK, Sept. 25 -- Verizon has been named to Working Mother magazine's 2006 list of 100 Best Companies. The only telecom company on the list, Verizon was cited for its continuing commitment to working mothers its family-friendly benefits and policies.



Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless, the corporation's wireless arm, filed a joint entry.
"Verizon is exceptional for its continuing commitment to working mothers, and we salute them for making the 100 Best," said Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Media, the magazine's parent company. "Every year we see companies upping the ante, establishing new paradigms for quality of life among their employees and redefining the status quo for workplaces across the country. Among the many worthy entrants, the winners really set the gold standard."

In surveying the companies that applied for this year's list, Working Mother gave particular weight to whether the companies provide two key benefits: flexible scheduling, the most critical benefit for working mothers; and leave time, which is essential for parents who need to take time off from work to deal with family issues.

Verizon offers a wealth of benefits for working parents with children ranging in age from infants to college students. For example, employees returning to work after the birth of a child, adoption or any leave covered by the Family Leave Act have the flexibility to work on a reduced schedule while retaining full benefits for up to six months, and in some cases 12 months.

"We strive to create programs and preserve a culture that help our working parents strike a balance between the demands of home and work, because it's the right thing to do for our employees and for our business," said Magda Yrizarry, Verizon's vice president of workplace culture, diversity and compliance. "It's an honor to be named a Working Mother Magazine 100 best company, and one we accept on behalf of Verizon's working parents."

To apply for the Working Mother 100 Best, Verizon provided Working Mother magazine with detailed information on seven areas of work/life balance: workforce profile, compensation, child care, flexibility, time off and leaves, family-friendly programs and company culture. The survey checked the availability, tracking and usage of programs to support working mothers; the accountability of managers to implement programs; and the successful advancement of women into top-paying jobs, board position and management ranks. Verizon was also required to submit benefits handbooks and supporting documentation.

The complete list of the 2006 Working Mother 100 Best Companies can be found at http://www.workingmother.com/.

Earlier this year, Working Mother magazine also named Verizon Communications a Best Company for Women of Color, a list of 12 companies with cutting-edge policies and practices that support African-American, Asian-American, Latina and Native-American women in the workplace.

In August, Verizon was among the Top 13 companies in LatinaStyle Magazine's list of 50 Best Companies for Latinas and No. 7 on Hispanic Business' Top 50 Companies for Hispanics. BusinessWeek recently ranked Verizon No. 11 on the magazine's list of Best Places to Launch a Career.

Also in 2006, Verizon was ranked No. 1 on DiversityInc Magazine's Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, a list on which Verizon has earned a Top 10 ranking each of the last three years. The Women's Business Enterprise National Council named Verizon among the top American corporations for women's business enterprises. Verizon's goal is to increase year-over-year spending with companies that are owned by minorities, women or disabled veterans -- business enterprises that did $2.17 billion worth of business with Verizon in 2005.

Verizon Communications Inc. , a Dow 30 company, is a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 55 million customers nationwide. Verizon Business operates one of the most expansive wholly-owned global IP networks. Verizon Telecom is deploying the nation's most advanced fiber-optic network to deliver the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services to customers. Based in New York, Verizon has a diverse workforce of more than 252,000 and generates annual consolidated operating revenues of approximately $90 billion. For more information, visit http://www.verizon.com/.

About Working Mother
Founded in 1979, Working Mother magazine reaches nearly 3 million readers and is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers. Its 21-year signature initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, is the most important benchmark for work/life practices in corporate America. The publication also releases the annual list of the Best Companies for Women of Color in the June issue. Working Mother is published by Working Mother Media (WMM), which also owns the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), NAFE Magazine, the annual 100 Best Companies WorkLife Congress, as well as the Best Companies for Women of Color Multicultural Conference and regional Town Halls. This year, WMM launched its Best Small Companies for Working Mothers initiative.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at http://www.verizon.com/news. To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.

Verizon

CONTACT: Media, Alberto Canal of Verizon, +1-908-559-6367,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.verizon.com/http://www.workingmother.com/

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/094251.html
CLARIFICATION of eWan1, Inc. Press Release on September 12th Entitled, ''eWan Contracts with ARM Technologies and JTAG Technologies to Provide for Secure Componentry for Its Patented AccessKey(TM)''. Check it out:
LOS ANGELES --(Business Wire)-- eWan1, Inc.(Pink Sheets:EWAN) wishes to issue the following clarification to its release, BW5918, (CA-EWAN1) "EWAN Contracts with ARM Technologies and JTAG Technologies to Provide for Secure Componentry for Its Patented AccessKey(TM)" issued Tuesday, September 12, 2006:



Upon review of the aforementioned press release it was determined by ARM Technology (LSE:ARM) (NASDAQ:ARMHY) that ARM did not authorize eWAN to reference ARM in its press release.

Additionally, within the same release, JTAG Technologies was referenced as being a supplier of the "primary operating system" for eWan's AccessKey(TM) technology-based products. This statement was both erroneous and misplaced, as there is no formal or informal relationship between JTAG Technologies and eWan.

George Stevens, eWan's CEO, commented, "We are truly sorry for any misstatements that eWan has made with respect to both of these highly regarded companies. With respect to ARM, we did not utilize the proper press release approval process, and as such did not have ARM's explicit permission to reference that company in the September 12th Press Release." He continued, "With respect to JTAG Technologies, eWan has neither a formal nor an informal relationship with JTAG. One of eWan's vendors has a similar moniker to that of JTAG Technologies, which was somehow erroneously replaced with JTAG's name during the editorial process. I truly apologize to both companies as well as our shareholder base and the investing community at-large for this oversight and any and all inconvenience this may have caused. We will shortly be correcting this error with the issue of a new release that accurately reflects and references our vendor relationships."

About eWan1, Inc.

eWAN is a developer of technology and equipment that enables the delivery of High-Definition (HD) quality video and television content to consumers over internet protocol (a revolution known as "IPtv" or television broadcasting over the Internet) and believes it is the first company with the ability to deliver Internet TV with the clarity of high definition to ordinary TV sets. The company's suite of advanced technology products, including its patented and proprietary AccessKey(TM)-powered flash drive-sized set-top box product, a portable version of the Company's wireless "Triple Play" Digital Media Center(TM), is unique in that it turns any computer into a television, enabling users to receive their favorite TV programming anywhere on earth by plugging the USB device and product into their laptop or home computer. Both the AccessKey(TM)-powered flash drive-sized set-top box product and the Triple Play set-top box(TM) enable traditional Internet access, telephone service (VoIP) and data and video capability including video conferencing. Additionally, the company's "IPtv cache" technology enables music channels that can play music and the corresponding video if it is available, as well as provide "time shifted" services such as the ability to record one program while watching another, similar to the offering of TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO).

About ARM Technologies

ARM - The Architecture for the Digital World(TM). ARM Holdings pic (LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY), ranked by Dataquest as the number one semiconductor IP supplier in the world, emerged as a pre-eminent force in the semiconductor revolution. When ARM pioneered the concept of openly-licensable IP for the development of 32-bit RISC processor-based SoCs in the early 1990s, it changed the dynamics of the semiconductor industry forever. By licensing, rather than manufacturing and selling its chip technology, the company established a new business model that has redefined the way processors are designed, produced and sold. More importantly, ARM(R) technology has shaped a new era of next-generation electronics: ARM Powered(R) processors are pervasive in electronic products, driving key functions in a diverse variety of applications in key markets, including Home, Mobile, Enterprise, Embedded and Emerging. ARM licenses its IP to a network of Partners, which includes some of the world's leading semiconductor and system companies, including 19 out of the top 20 semiconductor vendors worldwide, as ranked by iSuppli Corp. These Partners utilize low-cost, power-efficient ARM processor designs to create processors, peripherals and SoC solutions.

About JTAG Technologies

JTAG Technologies is a market leader and technology innovator of boundary-scan software and hardware products and services. Its customers include world leaders in electronics design and manufacturing like Ericsson, Medtronic, Motorola, Nokia, Raytheon, Rockwell-Collins and Samsung. Its innovative boundary-scan (IEEE Standard 1149.1) products provide test preparation, test execution, test result analysis and in-system programming applications. With an installed base of over 4,000 systems worldwide, JTAG Technologies serves the communications, medical electronics, avionics, defense, automotive, and consumer industries. JTAG Technologies is headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information visit: www.jtag.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements, which may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of eWan1, and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events or changes to future operating results.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, go to the Company's website at: http://www.ewan1.com, or contact: Brass Bulls Corp - (866) 342.2700, [email protected].

Lawson to target Europe and NHS

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Lawson to target Europe and NHS. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--US-based Lawson Software, the third largest business software developer in the world, is planning more acquisitions in the UK and Europe after its recent $480m (253m, E369m) takeover of Swedish software company Intentia.



Lawson is also aggressively pitching for lucrative back-office software contracts in European markets such as the UK, Germany and France and has already started talks with the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

In an exclusive interview with The Business, Lawson president and chief executive Harry Debes revealed the US-based software company is already talking with a shortlist of potential takeover targets in Europe.

"Financing further acquisitions will not be a problem for Lawson. The banks are throwing themselves at us asking how much we want to borrow. If we wished, we could borrow north of a $1bn and we already have $300m in cash."

But he added that it is important for Lawson and Intentia to merge successfully before embarking on another major acquisition. According to Debes, there will be little rationalisation of the US and Swedish software companies as their operations are entirely complimentary. Lawson is a US-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) company specialising in service companies while Intentia is a Sweden-based operation specialising in ERP for manufacturing.

But Debes intends to use Intentia's 2,500 customer base, which is mostly in Europe, to sell Lawson's niche healthcare and local government software. Around 95 percent of all Lawson's business is in the US, where it claims to dominate its niche.

"In the US, we have 4,500 hospitals. No one, not even [German software giant] SAP, comes close to us in the healthcare space," said Debes.

Like many US-based companies, Lawson's first foray to Europe was in the UK because English is spoken. The company signed a contract with Nuffield Hospital and Lawson is now understood to have begun talks with the NHS.

According to Debes, the savings ERP software can offer the healthcare industry are huge. It believes it can drive down cost by supply chain management. "Around 70 percent of purchases are specific to health care and the global suppliers of hospital equipment are often the same as those used by US companies," said Lawson vice president Dean Hager. "We can realise huge cost savings in this area."

ERP software also handles other back-office functions such as human resources.

"It is vital in areas such as healthcare that the ERP software is designed to match the needs of the industry in which it is used," said Hager. "While it is true that all companies need to hire people, the criteria between one industry are very different. For example, that used for hiring nurses is totally different from that used in the construction industry."

According to Debes, back-office ERP is needed to manage all hospital resources including operating theatre slots and the number of beds available at any one time.

The company intends to use the in-house language expertise developed by Intentia to break into new markets outside the UK and the US.

"Previously, Lawson used an outsourced language service to help translate our products for foreign markets," said Debes. "This was not ideal as this approach often fails to take full account of the cultural differences involved."

But Intentia had developed its own in-house translation capabilities, which Lawson believes will enable it to translate its products, currently available in five languages to 10-20 languages including Chinese and Japanese. Following the merger, more than half the company's revenues are outside the US.

According to sector analysts, the company is following a global trend in software where firms tend to address global industries rather than national markets. Instead of specialising in providing software to the US or the UK, developers are now starting to address narrow business niches on a global basis.

Debes predicts that this strategy will enable Lawson to increase its annual revenues from $389.6m to $1bn in 2009, irrespective of planned acquisitions.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
LifeSize Provides New Lifelike Video Conferencing for AIC Ventures. Check it out:
For any company with a dispersed workforce or client base, conferencing solutions provide a way to effectively collaborate, without the need to travel. These collaborations have in the past, sometimes lacked clear quality and did not always provide an answer, especially in situations when face-to-face communications were essential.


 
Now, LifeSize, provider of high definition video communication solutions, is making face-to-face communications possible, even for remote users.
 
Their solution, LifeSize Room, boasts clear video and good reliable audio as well as high-definition (1280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second) video resolution, so that participants of the conference appear lifelike.
 
Recognizing the productivity benefits and cost saving of their solution, AIC Ventures installed LifeSize Room in three of their company locations.
 
This new communication capability will serve to enhance productivity, further eliminate the need to travel and allow for communications that are more effective.
 
The patent pending high-definition technology included in the LifeSize Room product also offers quality over any bandwidth, a factor some companies may previously been concerned about.
 
"In our business, being able to look someone in the eye is as important, if not more so, than any documentation we may share. LifeSize lets us do that without having to bust our bottom line on travel," commented AIC President and Managing Partner Peter S. Carlsen in a statement to the press.
 
AIC Ventures Chairman Paul Robshaw commented on his experience with AIC's  first introduction of the product during a branding strategy earlier this year, "It was beautiful. I felt as if I could walk through the screen and right into our other offices. Since then we have made LifeSize an integral part of our business communications strategy."
 
According to a news release, "AIC has used LifeSize Room to conduct internal meetings between offices and to hold "live" meetings between investors, clients and employees—regardless of which of the three offices the participants are visiting."
 
Providing the same technology and benefits for the smaller conferencing group is LifeSize Team, a lower cost system introduced by LifeSize just last month.
 
For more please visit: www.lifesize.com
 
 
What’s the Number One VoIP Conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP Expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for Service Providers, Resellers, and the Enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
 
-----
 
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
 
 
Motorola seeks to rival the Blackberry with range of devices. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--MOTOROLA is planning to create a new generation of portable devices for business that will rival the RIM Blackberry, according to City analysts.

Richard Windsor, a telecoms analyst at Nomura Securities, believes that Motorola's purchase of Symbol Technologies for $3.9bn (2.1bn, E3bn) last week will enable the US's biggest mobile phone maker to take on RIM, the maker of the Blackberry, and Nokia in mobile business communications.



"Symbol Technologies makes and sells handheld and fixed equipment and software used to manage retail, wholesale, transportation and healthcare industries. Symbol will become the core of Motorola's enterprise business," said Windsor.

Motorola has been successful in manufacturing devices designed to appeal to business users such as the Q smartphone, with its Qwerty keyboard and Microsoft mobile business software. But it has yet to make a serious impact on the global business enterprise market.

"Until now we have viewed Motorola as a minnow in enterprise," said Windsor. "We have long believed that companies need far more than just a device. For large corporations we believe that device customisation, device management and 24/7 support need to be offered along with the device to be successful."

Analysts now believe that the Symbol takeover offers Motorola a big opportunity to grow its enterprise business by giving companies a coordinated mobile network that covers white and blue collar operations together with a new generation of mobile devices aimed at business users.

Typically, white-collar mobile workers require elegant devices that can access e-mail while on the move and connect to the corporate intranet. Blue-collar workers traditionally require more robust devices with a scanner to read bar codes or wireless tags. But industry commentators now report that the division is becoming increasingly blurred with sales staff asking for more robust devices and blue-collar workers using increasingly sophisticated wireless access to the corporate network.

"Using Symbol's existing client base we see no reason why [Motorola's] coverage cannot be extended from the warehouse right the way up to the boardroom," said Windsor. "The only question is whether Motorola has the management depth to execute the vision."

Symbol makes bar code readers that scan prices at supermarkets and track inventory in warehouses. Its hand-held computers, which have bar code readers, are used by a host of mobile workers, from doctors to delivery van drivers. Symbol is a market leader in rugged mobile computers, with about a 31 percent share. Motorola has revenues of over $36bn, the majority of which comes from mobile phones.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Acopia Networks to Highlight the Impact of Intelligent File Virtualization on Application Performance at Storage Decisions, Fall 2006. Check it out:
LOWELL, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Acopia Networks(R), the leader in high-performance, intelligent file virtualization, today announced that it will showcase new configurations that utilize tiered storage to dramatically increase application performance. The company will present a preview of these capabilities in Booth #409 during this week's Storage Decisions, Fall 2006, taking place September 27 - 29, 2006 at the New York Hilton.



Traditional tiered storage, or Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), approaches seek to move lower priority files to lower performing, less expensive disk in an effort to save on storage and backup costs. Acopia leads the industry in providing real-time automation of tiered storage for this purpose. However, Acopia is now expanding that traditional cost-saving approach to include tiering of data for the specific purpose of optimizing performance as well. At Storage Decisions, Acopia will highlight the results of exciting new research that underscores its ability to move specific data sets to higher performance, memory-based platforms, resulting in dramatic improvement in application performance.

In Acopia laboratory tests, when a specific application file set was moved to a high-performance storage device, application throughput increased by almost 30 times compared to similar tests run with the same file set residing on a popular modern NAS system. Amazingly, this high performance storage device consisted solely of a single, popular off-the-shelf server configured with 32GB memory and dual Intel(R) processors. The cost of this configuration was under $10,000. Given the cost difference between the popular NAS system and performance storage device this solution was 300x more cost effective than the popular NAS system alone when serving this workload.

"Time and again, in real-world customer environments, we have proven the value of automatically tiering data to less expensive systems - freeing up expensive disk resources and dramatically reducing storage and backup costs," said Kirby Wadsworth, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Acopia. "Now, we are again leading the market by offering the ability to move critical data sets to a very high performance, memory-based performance storage device. Furthermore, because new industry standard servers now support massive memory configurations, we are accomplishing this with commodity hardware. For the right applications, the resulting price/performance improvements are off the chart."

In addition to discussing these test results, Acopia will be demonstrating the value of intelligent file virtualization, and its ability to simplify file storage management - making it easier than ever for companies to migrate, tier, balance, and replicate file data across the entire enterprise storage environment.

Specifically, Acopia Booth #409, will also show how intelligent file virtualization provides the ability to:

-- Migrate large numbers of files, transparently to users, without scheduled outages,

-- Tier data to appropriate storage media automatically and continuously - freeing expensive high-performance disk and dramatically reducing storage and backup costs

-- Increase utilization and optimize performance with advanced real-time load balancing

-- Replicate data efficiently and flexibly to ensure data protection and high availability

About Acopia Networks

Acopia Networks is the leader in high-performance, intelligent file virtualization. Its family of ARX systems help customers manage the growth, complexity and cost of unstructured, globally distributed, file-based information. By providing automatic, policy-driven, data migration, tiering, load balancing, and replication across multi-vendor storage environments, the ARX systems help IT executives to reduce management overhead and accelerate business workflow. For further information about Acopia's products and services, please visit its Website at www.acopia.com, call 978-513-2900 (US) / 49-89-944-90-165 (Europe) or email [email protected].

(C) 2006 Acopia Networks, Inc. Acopia is a trademark of Acopia Networks. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.
Thailand risk: Labour market risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC53C50Labour market riskC50C50Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

Only an estimated 2-5% of the labour force is unionised, and unions have traditionally wielded little power. There are, however, signs of increasingly militant labour movements in the large state enterprises, particularly those scheduled for privatisation. A critical issue for employers is the lack of skilled and specialised workers in the labour force. The Thaksin administration has acknowledged the need to reform secondary and higher-level education and is in the process of introducing 12 years of free schooling for all Thai children. There are doubts, however, about the state's ability to finance the government's ambitious schemes. There are an estimated 3m legal, and illegal, migrant workers in the country, typically from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Their presence puts downward pressure on average wages as they often work for as little as half the Thai minimum wage.



SCENARIOS

Firms face a shortage of skilled and specialised workers (High Risk)

Levels of primary education and literacy in Thailand are high, but there has been a marked deterioration in the provision of education at a more advanced level. Even when students are fortunate enough to receive tertiary education, there is a very low level of interest in technology- related and business subjects. Thailand's educational system is still oriented toward the needs of a largely rural, agrarian economy. The government has promised reform of the education system, but even if it enacts the required legislation and reforms, improvements in the quality of the workforce will not be felt for many years. Foreign companies are likely to have to import skilled or specialised workers for their Thai operations, which will significantly raise production costs.

Labour militancy increases (Moderate Risk)

An increasingly vocal and militant union movement is beginning to develop, particularly in state-owned organisations that are scheduled for privatisation in the next couple of years. In March 2004 the union movement achieved a major victory when the government was forced to delay plans to privatise the state electricity company, EGAT, largely because of the scale of union opposition. However, the rise in union activity is within the context of a historically weak labour movement; only about 2% of the total Thai workforce is unionised, and within the industrial sector union membership stands at only around 10%. Labour laws are flexible, and few days are lost to strikes. Before investing, foreign companies should carefully research labour conditions and obligations in their chosen sector, especially if they are investing in a privatisation or asset sale.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 14th, 2006)

Union Strength

The state enterprise ban has greatly weakened Thailands labour movement; the ban left only the textile industry with a high level of trade-union membership. Growing numbers of layoffs have also eroded support in this industry stronghold, and internal power struggles have stifled the effectiveness of the top labour leadership. Despite several mergers of labour congresses in recent yearsincluding a loose partnership of the four biggest in 1997trade-union leadership is heavily splintered; hence, industrial action tends to be isolated and rarely spreads beyond individual factories. Private-sector unions are limited mostly to single plants or companies.

Trade-union membership, which has become a target for dismissals since 1997, is thus falling. The ILO estimated in mid-2004 that only 25% of the total labour force is unionised; about 10% of the industrial workforce is organised. Unionisation is high in state enterprises, however; more than half of state-enterprise employees belong to a union.

The 1975 Labour Relations Act permits and recognises trade unions and plant employee associations. The governments failure to enact the trade-union law may prove an obstacle to the successful negotiation of the free-trade agreement with the United States (see International agreements). Based on the governments version, the legislation permits one trade union for each state enterprise, with a requirement that 25% of the total workforce become members. Collective bargaining for state employees has been revived but not the right to strike. Private-sector workers, however, are free to strike. Thailand is one of only 18 countries that have not ratified International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions 87 and 98, instruments forged in 1948 and 1949 that protect workers right to set up labour unions and engage in collective bargaining.

Labour Disputes

A requirement for 50% of private-sector workers to support a strike also means that all-out work stoppages are kept to a minimum. Action is prohibited until the workforce has gone through the wage-bargaining process with management, and unlawful strikes can bring dismissal or undermine any arbitration proceedings. Unionised workers need the support of 20% of workers in their unit to negotiate; non-unionised workers need 15% support to negotiate a demand.

The 1975 labour law makes contracts mandatory for all companies with 20 or more employees. Labour contracts must specify employment conditions, working days, hours, wages, benefits, termination conditions, complaint procedures and provisions for amending contracts. Agreements are annual (subject to extension of up to three years by mutual agreement). Employees must select negotiating representatives. In the event of failure to reach agreement, a government conciliator may be appointed. The Labour Court rules on contractual disputes (mostly complaints on severance, overtime or holiday pay). Court proceedings are informal, with lawyers acting as advisers rather than advocates and judges appointed on a tripartite basis, representing government, employers and employees. The main advantages of the court are low costs and prompt hearings. Appeals may be made on points of law to the Dika (Supreme) Court. A labour panel was set up in 1993 to resolve broader disputes as part of a reorganisation that created separate labour and social-welfare ministries, but it has not held a meeting since 1998 and is believed to be dormant. The panel, with representatives of employers, employees and the government, was designed to diffuse grievances before they affect production.

A separate committee was established in 1997 to arbitrate disputes involving foreign-owned companies, but it lapsed after the change of government in that year. Mainly intended to represent the interests of local employees, the 15-member committee was supposed to resolve labour issues left behind by failed firms and ensure that workers received full legal compensation. It was set up following the return abroad of several foreign owners who did not settle their labour affairs.

Wage Restrictions

Wages and bonuses continue to rise in line with the expanding economy; salaries in the private sector are expected to have increased by 6.1% by end-2005 after posting a rise of 5.9% in 2004, according to surveys by Watson Wyatt, an employment consultancy. Companies on average plan to pay fixed bonuses amounting to 1.5 months worth of salary and 2.5 months in variable bonuses. After the recession took full effect in 199899, wages had declined by an estimated 20% in real terms because of the elimination of bonuses and overtime and an effective wage freeze.

Government salaries, which the private sector often uses as a guide, have risen by a more restrained 5% since 1996, down from 1015% in better times. Unlike their private-sector counterparts, however, civil servants still get their bonus entitlementsthough these were reduced under a new system the Bank of Thailand introduced from the start of the 2000/01 fiscal year in October 2000. The new system incorporates bonuses into the actual salaries to avoid charges of preferential treatment for civil servants. State-enterprise workers also have fared better than private employees, since they usually work under an automatic-remuneration scheme linked to salary scales. InJuly 2005 the government announced a 5% pay raise for civil servants, and those earning less than Bt10,000 per month received Bt1,000 extra per month (up to an aggregated Bt10,000 per month). In September 2004 the government announced a special increase for low-ranking civil servants earning less than Bt10,000 per month. The increase, which affected around 350,000 civil servants, raised the minimum monthly salary of all government workers to Bt7,000. Labour activists have demanded equal treatment for private-sector minimum-wage earners, whose daily wages would need to rise to more than Bt200 to reach that level. In 2006, the government aims to reduce the number of civil servants by up to 50,000 by offering an early-retirement scheme. Civil servants opting for retirement will receive 815 times their final monthly salary. Under a similar scheme offered in 200002, about 70,000 civil servants retired, with severance payments totalling Bt9.6bn.

Monthly salaries in multinational companies are generally higher than those in purely Thai companies, but the recession has also moderated these. Semi-skilled workers can expect to earn about Bt12,000 and skilled employees an average of about Bt16,000. Fringe benefits became scarce following the 199798 financial crisis but are returning now as labour shortages make themselves felt. According to a 2005 survey conducted by Hewitt Associates, a consultancy, covering 110 multinational companies operating in Thailand, 90% of employers had introduced variable pay; individual performance awards (70% of companies surveyed) and business incentives (50%) the most popular forms.

Few fringe benefits are compulsory, although there are legal provisions for paid holidays, sick leave, maternity leave, injury benefits, termination benefits and other basic benefits under the Social Security Act and Labour Protection Act. The former provides for a Social Security Fund covering payments for sickness, disability, death, maternity leave, child support or retirement. Unemployment benefits were introduced on July1st 2004. Laid-off workers are entitled to half their salary for six months, and those who quit their jobs are paid 30% of their last months pay for three months. Previously, coverage was given to units with ten employees or more, but coverage has been extended since April 2002 to units with just one worker.

The Social Security Fund is funded from monthly salary deductions from employees and a corresponding level of contribution from employers, as well as a government contribution. It now covers all firms with ten or more workers. Virtually all industrial-sector employees will be part of the scheme once agricultural and fishery workers receive cover in 2006 or 2007.

Under the present rules, any firm may opt out if it can prove that its employees have better welfare benefits. The contribution rate to the Social Security Fund increased by 1percentage point to 5% of monthly earnings, equally shared between employers and employees, from January31st 2004. The minimum salary covered under the fund is Bt1,650 per month. The highest applicable salary, of Bt15,000 per month, results in a contribution of Bt375. There are about 7.5m contributors to the fund, which had assets of around Bt332bn as at October 2005. The fund is administered by the Social Security Office (SSO) under the Ministry of Labour. In October 2005 the SSO announced it planned to invest up to Bt8bn of the Social Security Fund in foreign bondsa plan ill received by labour groups and others.

Sick leave is payable at 50% of wages for 90 days each time, or a maximum of 180 days a year. To qualify for sick leave, employees must contribute to the fund for at least three months. Maternity leave is granted only after seven months of employment, at 50% of wages for 90 days.

Parliament passed an amended Labour Protection Bill in 1998 that imposed more-stringent rules on the employment of women and children. The minimum employment age was raised to 15 years (from 13), and overtime for children was banned after 10 pm. Restrictions also apply for employees younger than aged 18, who must be granted additional break times and are banned from working overtime. The act bans the employment of women in hazardous or strenuous occupations such as mining and prohibits work by pregnant women after 10 pm or on weekends.

Since 1995 all businesses employing more than 50 workers have had to set up a safety-monitoring committee of employer and worker representatives. Failure to do so can result in a fine of Bt20,000. Major firms normally provide employees with healthcare and accident insurance, which is sometimes extended to workers families. Aworkers compensation fund is compulsory for all firms with ten or more employees. In addition, employers and employees may contribute to provident and superannuation funds. Employer contributions to registered funds are tax deductible.

The labour ministry introduced the first compulsory retirement scheme for companies with ten or more employees in 1997. Employers must contribute 3% of the total salary up to the age of 55. A similar scheme for public employees, the Government Pension Fund (GPF), has not proven successful since it was implemented on a voluntary basis. Only about 4,000 employers nationwide have established GPF schemes since the fund started operating in 1996. Employees must contribute 3% of their wages. Membership is compulsory for new employees but not for existing staff, who may continue using a pension scheme. The finance ministry had originally expected to have a framework to compel employers to have provident funds in place by end-2004, but it said in September 2005 that it would delay the plan to 2007. Under the scheme, every company will be required to set up a mandatory provident fund for employees. Employees will contribute at least 6% of their salaries to the new funds, and employers will match these contributions. Companies that already offer voluntary provident funds to which the contribution is 6% or more will be allowed to register these as mandatory provident funds. Under the existing Provident Fund Act, the establishment of provident funds is voluntary, and employers and employees can contribute 215% of employees salaries to the fund. Authorities, faced with a slowly ageing population, are increasingly worried that most workers pension coverage is insufficient. The ratio of people of working age to elderly declined from 19:1 in 1970 to 11:1 in 2000, and it is forecast to decline further, to 8:1 in 2010 and 6:1 in 2020. Present coverage provides retirees with about 13% of their final salaries, well below the 50% most retirees will need. Efforts to create pension funds have so far yielded coverage for only about 1m employeesless than 3% of the countrys labour force. By comparison, the Social Security Fund (which might also be combined with the pension scheme) has about 7.5m members, and the civil-service pension fund covers 1.1m workers.

Workers contributing to the Social Security Fund for 15 years or more receive, as a form of pension, about 15% of their average salary over the past 60 months on retirement.

An employee who has been working continuously for more than one year is entitled to at least six working days of paid vacation; all staff members get the 13 publicly observed holidays. Financial institutions frequently give personal loans, but this is unusual for other organisations. Annual bonuses, once standard practice in the Thai workplace, began making a comeback in 2000; however, they were still well below the generous pre-1997 levels, when four or five months salary was commonplace. Average bonuses for 2005 will probably be equivalent to 1.5 months salary, according to a survey of local companies.

Hiring and Firing Restrictions

Under the Alien Occupation Law of 1973, foreigners wishing to work legally in Thailand require work permits that can normally be sponsored only by an entity registered to do business in Thailand. It is usually necessary to establish that a Thai national cannot be found to perform a task in order to obtain a work permit for a foreigner. Moreover, certain occupations are reserved for Thai nationals.

New regulations for the employment of foreigners came into effect on November1st 2004. A company with fully paid-up capital of at least Bt2m is permitted to have one foreign employee. For each additional Bt2m in paid-up capital, one more foreign employee is permitted, up to a maximum of ten persons. Companies that already have ten foreign employees (and meet the fully-paid-up capital criteria) must comply with any one of the following criteria to add additional foreign employees: paying at least Bt3m corporate income tax during the previous year; bringing in at least Bt30m through export business; bringing in at least 5,000 foreign tourists in the previous year through the tourism business; or employing at least 100 Thais. The Ministry of Labour may grant exceptions on acase-by-case basis. The paid-up-capital requirement is reduced by half for a foreign employee married to a Thainational.

There are four classes of work permits: temporary permits (renewed every year), which accounted for well over half the total issued in 2005; permits issued through the Board of Investment; permits issued under cabinet resolutions to foreigners; and permanent-resident work permits. Many foreigners arriving in Thailand were issued permanent-resident work permits 30 years ago; since then, however, such permits have not been issued. The number of permanent-resident permits has been falling gradually as residents die or depart, officials say.

Foreigners are allowed to work in Thailand under the Employment of Aliens Act of 1978 and a royal decree of 1979. New minimum monthly wage rates for work permits came into effect at end-August 2003 and vary by nationality. They require citizens of Japan, the United States and Canada to be paid at least Bt60,000 to qualify for a work permit and non-immigrant visa. For Europeans and Australians, the figure is Bt50,000; for South Koreans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and Hong Kong passport holders, it is Bt45,000; for Malaysians, Indians, Filipinos and Middle Eastern nationals, Bt35,000; and for Africans, Bt25,000. For those working in the newspaper business the figure is Bt20,000, regardless of nationality.

The government said in September 2004 that it plans to ease restrictions on the employment of foreigners for companies from countries that have signed free-trade agreements with Thailand, though no changes in the regulations had been made as of November 2005.

The nationwide registration of foreign migrant workers began in September 2001, with employers having to register their alien workers with the Ministry of Labour. Their employment is allowed only in ten categories of work facing severe labour shortages. The number of registered foreigners was about 580,000 in 2001, but it declined to about 400,000 in 2002 and to less than 300,000 in 2003. An amnesty during July 2004 for illegal migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia resulted in the registration of 1.2m foreigners, 70% of them from Myanmar. Employers of foreign labourers also had to register. After registering, the foreigners were required to pay Bt600 for a medical check-up fee and Bt1,300 for medical insurance. If they intended to work in the country, they also had to pay Bt1,900 for a work permit, which is valid for one year. By registering alien workers, the government hopes both to get a clear idea of the number of foreigners in the country and to track labour demand.

According to government figures, the number of migrants working legally in Thailand had dropped to 700,000 by November 2005, but it believed that another 300,000 were living and working illegally at that time. The Ministry of Labour said it was considering amending the labour laws to encourage these illegal labourers to register as well; it said it would also import 200,000 workers from Laos and Cambodia via government-to-government contracts. The ministry estimates that the Thai economy needs at least 1.2m foreign workers, and demand for lowly skilled labour is likely to soar as the government starts implementing its Bt1.7trn infrastructure programme.

Illegal foreign workers risk being jailed for up to three months and/or fined up to Bt5,000. Those employing illegal labourers risk a jail sentence of up to three years and/or a fine of up to Bt60,000.

The draft Foreign Business Law had fixed the proportion of foreign staff at 20% of all employees and stipulated that specialist expatriate staff could be hired for up to five years, instead of being negotiated on a case-by-case basis. But these changes were never included in the final version of the law.

Special rules apply to individual investors, consultants and journalists. The immigration regulations recognise short visits by businesspersons for legitimate trading purposes, conferences or seminars. Immigration legislation provides for permanent residence status on deposit of a bank guarantee. A similar scheme also applies to skilled entrepreneurs.

Both forms of permanent residency require a direct investor to bring more than Bt10m into a project with total investment (excluding land and working capital) of at least Bt100m or in which foreign ownership exceeds 25%. A portfolio investor must purchase minimum amounts of special Ministry of Finance bonds with foreign exchangeBt8m for the individual investor, Bt6m for a spouse and Bt2m per child. A foreign specialist must be older than age 25 and employed in a qualifying field at an annual salary of at least US$10,000. Separate conditions apply for applicants with a Thai spouse. Those qualifying will be granted residency visas for a probationary term of three years, to be extended if qualifying status is maintained.

Rules for dismissal and severance pay have been in force since 1974 and were updated under the amended Labour Protection Act. According to Section 119 of the act, employers need not pay severance pay if an employee performs his duties dishonestly, or intentionally commits a criminal act against the employer; intentionally causes the employer to suffer losses; performs an act of gross negligence which causes the employer to suffer severe losses; neglects his duties for a period of three consecutive working days without reasonable cause; is imprisonedunder a final judgment, except for offences arising out of negligent acts or for petty offences; or violates the employers work rules, regulations or orders which are legal and fair, and the employer has already given a written warning, except in serious situations for which the employer is not required to give a warning. Thewritten warning is effective for a period of one year from the date of the violation by the employee.

It is normal for employers to issue warning letters to employees for any first offence to build evidence if the eventual dismissal is referred to the Labour Court. Regular employees are otherwise entitled to severance pay on dismissal, depending on the length of employment: 30 days when employment has been at least 90 days but less than one year; 90 days for more than one year but less than three years; 180 days for more than three years but less than six years; 240 days for more than six years but less than ten years; and 300 days for any employment longer than ten years.

Since 1995 firms that replace workers with machines have had to give employees advance notice of 60 days before terminating their employment. Employees who have worked for more than six years are eligible for compensation, in the form of 15 days wages for each year of employment after the first six years. Unless otherwise provided in an employment contract, retirement can give rise to entitlement to severance pay, even though provident-fund or other retirement benefits may also be payable. Severance pay is no longer liable for income tax under changes announced by the Finance Ministry in 1999.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Thailand risk: Government effectiveness risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC53C50Government effectiveness riskE82D75Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

The outlook for government effectiveness is uncertain, given that the country is under martial law. The military has pledged to install a civilian government very soon, but it remains to be seen whether this appointed administration will have the authority to rule effectively. Vested interests and cronyism historically distorted the decision making process in the public sector in Thailand. The 1997 constitution attempted to limit graft, but during the Thaksin administration (2001-06) the government manoeuvred loyalists in to key roles in the anti-graft institutions. Political connections still played an important role in commercial deals. The Thaksin administration was particularly vulnerable to allegations of cronyism because the cabinet included a high number of former businessmen. There are grounds for some optimism that if, as planned, Thailand has a new stronger constitution then government effectiveness will rise towards the end of the forecast period.



SCENARIOS

The government reverses open, liberal policies that seek to attract foreign investors (Low Risk)

The Thaksin administration promoted Thai self-reliance and appealed to the nationalist sentiment of the electorate. The government did appear to recognise the need for foreign investment, but would then send confusing signals by placing subtle curbs on foreign investors. For example, the Thaksin administration pledged to push ahead with privatisation, but would retain the controlling stake in the companies concerned. In late 2004 the Bank of Thailand (the central bank) announced that no foreign investment would be allowed in the financial services sector for two years, to give the sector the chance to consolidate. However, obligations to the World Trade Organisation will prevent any overtly discriminatory policies. Furthermore signs of a slowing economy are likely to lead to more concerted efforts to attract foreign investment and financing during the forecast period. In the light of the recent political turmoil, Thailand will need to demonstrate a less circumspect welcome to foreign investors, if it is going to remain competitive as an investment location. Also, given the ongoing uncertainty, businesses should be mindful, that current inducements offered to foreign investors may be rescinded, and should ensure that legal contracts are in place guaranteeing them access to these benefits even if the law is changed at a later date.

Corruption and cronyism influence policy decisions regarding business (Moderate Risk)

Vested interests and cronyism still play a significant role in public decision-making despite efforts by the anti-graft agencies to reduce their prevalence. In May 2004 a parliamentary censure motion by the opposition Democrat Party, against key ministers, focused on allegations of government legislation benefiting the commercial interests of the ministers' families. The Thaksin administration is also suspected of attempting to undermine the credibility of the anti-graft agencies and thus indirectly reduce their power. Foreign companies may need to strengthen their political affiliations if they expect to win a public contract. More broadly, for businesses new to Thailand, it is advisable to resist strenuously from the start any requests by the Thai bureaucracy for bribes or improper payments. Once a company develops a reputation for engaging in such practices, it can be very difficult to end. Companies should be particularly wary of the Thai Customs Service, which has a well-deserved reputation for irregularities.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 14th, 2006)

Constitution, Institutions and Administration

A new constitution, Thailands 16th since 1932, was approved in September 1997. Its principal aims were to stamp out government corruption and to ensure a corruption-free and transparent electoral process. Under the new constitution, MPs must resign their parliamentary seats to take up cabinet posts, ministers are made to declare their assets before and after taking office, and the prime minister must be an elected MP. Candidates must stand for election to the 200-member Senate (the upper house) instead of being appointed.

The constitution stipulates 500 members of the lower house, of whom 400 are directly elected in single-seat constituencies nationwide and the remaining 100 (called party-list MPs) are apportioned to each political party in direct relation to the proportion of votes they receive. Any party receiving less than 5% of the popular vote loses its right to any party-list MPs. The aim is to ensure that MPs directly elected in constituencies concentrate on constituency and legislative work. Only MPs on the party list may be selected to join the cabinet.

The new constitution created 11 constitutionally independent bodies in a bid to try to limit the scope for graft in politics and to create a democratic system of checks and balances. One of these bodies, the Election Commission (EC), was established to monitor elections to both the upper and lower houses. Although the 2001 election was still subject to fraud and vote-buying, the EC played an active role in attempting to reduce such activities, marking considerable progress in Thailands move towards more transparent democratic processes. However, the EC came under intense criticism for its handling of the April 2006 snap election, most notably for its alleged favouritism towards the ruling TRT.

The ECs reputation has not been the only one to suffer. The fact that Thaksin was acquitted by the Constitutional Court raised questions about its impartiality, particularly as it was acting on a recommendation to prosecute from the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC). Thaksin, unsurprisingly, has been heavily critical of the anti-graft agencies, and has attempted to undermine their credibility. Since taking office in 2001, Thaksin has compromised the impartiality of the agencies by appointing a number of his supporters to them. The NCCCs reputation, however, was severely damaged in May 2005, not because of a lack of independence but because all NCCC members were forced to resign after being found guilty of wilful self-serving.

The Constitutional Court regained some of its credibility when ruling in favour of nullifying the results of the controversial April 2006 election. The judiciary is independent of the legislative and executive branches of government, and Supreme Court judges are appointed by the king. The legal system is based on a civil law system, with elements of common law.

The 1997 constitution reduced the size of the cabinet from 48 members to 36 in a bid to increase efficiency. However, the Thaksin governments bureaucratic reform bills, enacted on October 3rd 2002, involved the creation of five new ministries (making a total of 20) and 35 new departments. The new ministries cover natural resources and the environment, tourism and sport, information and communications technology, culture, and social development and human security. The public debt office and the state enterprise department now come under the Ministry of Finance. The reforms appear to run contrary to the decentralisation initiative outlined in the 1997 constitution and are instead increasing the power of the state sector. They were rushed through the legislature, raising questions about adequate preparation and research, and about the governments numerical strength, which allows it to push through controversial legislation without full debate.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Belgium: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Increased energy competition, with separation of infrastructure from production; part-privatisation of a telecoms operator, Belgacom, to continue, while a competitor, Telenet, joins BEL-20; competition introduced into rail freight.



2008-10: Liberalisation of postal services in line with EU directives.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Regions compete to attract foreign investors; attitude towards foreign direct investment (FDI) remains welcoming.

2008-10: New initiatives may be introduced to attract research and research-based commercial activity.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Trade will remain liberal, except for agriculture. Belgian banking becomes increasingly international.

2008-10: Imports of Chinese textile products to be fully liberalised from 2008. Agricultural protection, although continuing, will probably diminish a little as a result of reforms of the EU's common agricultural policy.

Taxes

2006-07: Programme of personal income tax reductions is completed in 2006; relief on notional interest introduced for company tax, which will be highlighted in an effort to attract FDI. Introduction of controversial tax on mutual funds.

2008-10: Further moderate reductions in social security charges. Increase in energy taxes and other indirect taxes.

Financing

2006-07: Short-term interest rates rise gradually. Long-term rates will also rise from recent low levels, but remain subdued. More equity and bond financing.

2008-10: Short-term interest rates level out just below 4%. Equity and bond financing should increase further.

The labour market

2006-07: Rising inflation triggers wage indexation in 2006, giving rise to pressure by business lobbies to hold down labour costs, which are increasing faster than in Germany or the Netherlands.

2008-10: Less favourable conditions for early retirement begin to have an impact on employment rate of older workers, but overall employment rate, although rising, will remain well below EU average and Lisbon target of 70% in 2010.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Continued rapid expansion of broadband Internet connections. New Brussels commuter rail services and high-speed rail links with Netherlands and Germany.

2008-10: Long-term rail investment programme improves passenger and freight transport, but roads are more congested.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Canada: Business outlook

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Canada: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position8.638.752211Political environment7.98.3171352Political stability7.88.5261453Political effectiveness8.18.1131545Macroeconomic environment9.29.21511Market opportunities7.78.05422Policy towards private enterprise & competition9.09.04433Policy towards foreign investment8.78.791022Foreign trade & exchange controls9.610.02121Taxes8.18.111911Financing9.39.3101344The labour market7.77.67832Infrastructure9.39.45322(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US.The Economist Intelligence Units business rankings model seeks to measure the quality of the business environment and its key components for each of the 82 countries covered by Country Forecasts. The quantitative assessment (on a scale of 1 to 10) of the business environmentthe opportunities for, and the hindrances to, the conduct of businessenables the ranking of a country on its overall position and in each of the ten component categories, on both a global and regional basis (see the methodological notes at the end of this report). The assessment is made for the five-year forecast period (2006-10) as well as for the previous five years (2001-05).



Canada remains in second place in the global rankings in 2006-10

Canada remains in second place, after Denmark, as the most attractive business location in the world in the forecast period (2006-10). This is despite a significant decline in Canadas ranking for macroeconomic environment and smaller declines in rankings for policy towards foreign investment, financing and the labour market. This setback was offset by a major improvement in the ranking for political stability, which bumped up the ranking for political environment, and minor improvements in the rankings for market opportunities, foreign trade and exchange controls and infrastructure.

Currency volatility will continue

The macroeconomic picture has been clouded by an increase in currency volatility. Since the beginning of 2003 the Canadian dollar has appreciated by about 40% against the US currency. This sharp increase has mainly been caused by strong global demand for Canadian goods, particularly commodities, and weakness in the US currency. Since most Canadian trade is done with the US, this appreciation has adversely affected exporters of resources and manufactured goods. Resource exporters have been partly insulated from the currency effect by high global commodity prices. The manufacturing sector, especially companies located in the industrial heartland of Ontario, has been hard hit. An expected slowdown in the US will exacerbate manufacturers troubles. We expect the Canadian currency to remain strong against the US dollar for most of the forecast period, as commodity prices remain high and foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to flow into Canada. It will weaken later on in the forecast period, but this will provide little relief to Canada's beleaguered manufacturing industry.

The main reasons for the gain in political stability were improvements in the categories of social unrest and change of government. The federal election in January 2006 produced a change in government from Liberal minority to Conservative minority. Another election is due within the forecast period, which we expect the Conservatives to win and perhaps even gain a majority of seats. Separatist sentiment in the French-speaking province of Quebec waxes and wanes but currently is at a low point, reducing the prospect of social unrest. There is, however, a number of land disputes with aboriginal Canadians that have flared up in recent months. The new government has yet to set forth an aboriginal policy. Depending on how it handles this important brief, there could be renewed conflict during the forecast period.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
France: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Pace of privatisation programmes slows as the scope for further sell-offs of state assets diminishes.

2008-10: Opening of gas and electricity markets to full competition. State aid and barriers to foreign takeovers of domestic companies cause friction with the EU.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Favourable official attitude towards foreign direct investment qualified by support for "national champions" and persistent obstacles to foreign takeovers of domestic companies.

2008-10: Possible erosion of barriers against foreign takeovers, as a result of commercial pressures and EU law.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Resistance to further reforms of the EU's common agricultural policy.

2008-10: Qualified support for multilateral trade liberalisation, but opposition to full liberalisation of trade in agriculture and cultural programmes.

Taxes

2006-07: Weak public finances force pause in programme of income tax cuts. Resumption of income tax cuts in 2007.

2008-10: Possible reform of wealth tax and of tax treatment of foreign managerial personnel working in France.

Financing

2006-07: Possible involvement of Euronext (of which the Paris bourse is a member) in cross-border consolidation of stock exchanges.

2008-10: Growing competition between financial firms to provide capitalised pension funds (plan d'epargne retraite populairePERP).

The labour market

2006-07: Shelving of any further attempts at labour market following widespread opposition to introduction of a new working contract for young workers.

2008-10: Attempts to raise the rate of participation in the labour force. Continued skills shortages despite persistently high unemployment.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Extension of high-speed rail link (TGV) to Strasbourg.

2008-10: The national railway, SNCF, remains in state hands.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Bulgaria: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: Industrial sector and utility privatisation proceeds slowly, but is almost complete by 2008; there is more stringent enforcement of intellectual property law and reduced bureaucratic interference.

2009-11: Utility prices increase to Western levels. The EU plays a significant role in competition policy.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: The government is active in attracting foreign investors; greenfield and infrastructure investments increase.

2009-11: There are further attempts to attract foreign investment, but financial incentives are restricted by the EU.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Trade policy becomes the EU's responsibility. Controls on agricultural trade with the EU are removed.

2009-11: The lev is replaced by the euro when Bulgaria joins European economic and monetary union (EMU).

Taxes

2007-08: Overhaul of customs and revenue collection; higher excise duties; limited cuts in social security contributions; shift towards employee contributions to finance healthcare and social security.

2009-11: Further improvements in tax collection as modernisation continues. There is a gradual increase in the funded element of the pension system.

Financing

2007-08: Corporate and household lending expands rapidly. Access to bank finance improves.

2009-11: There are further efficiency gains from foreign involvement and a gradual increase in non-bank finance.

The labour market

2007-08: Labour costs are low, but rising. Fiscal incentives help to create jobs in areas with high unemployment.

2009-11: Labour costs rise considerably in US dollar terms, but are still low by regional standards. Difficulties in finding highly educated staff lead to greater wage dispersion, reducing incentives for university graduates to move abroad.



Infrastructure

2007-08: Moves towards market mechanisms in energy. The telecommunications sector is liberalised, ports are modernised and power plants upgraded. There is some motorway construction. The railways are rationalised.

2009-11: Further roadbuilding; a second Danube bridge is completed and construction of a new nuclear-power plant to replace the closed reactors at Kozlodui gets under way.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Indonesia: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The government tries to reduce the corporate cost base by simplifying bureaucratic procedures and tackling corruption. Policies to support small and medium-sized enterprises are enacted.

2008-10: Less state regulation in the energy and services sectors will create a more favourable environment for privateenterprise.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Government efforts to encourage foreign investment are stepped up; tax incentives in key sectors are likely to be offered, and procedures simplified. Attempts at judicial reform begin in earnest.

2008-10: Liberalisation in the utilities sectors (including power) will provide attractive opportunities for foreign investors.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Some restrictions on importsprimarily of agricultural goodsremain in place, but, barring a crisis, capital controls will not be contemplated.

2008-10: Liberal foreign-exchange policies will remain in force, and the trade regime will be deregulated further.

Taxes

2006-07: The government proposes an overhaul of the tax schedule, which will attempt to lower the corporate tax burden, reduce tax evasion and increase coverage.

2008-10: Efforts to improve tax collection and coverage will continue.

Financing

2006-07: The high level of foreign participation in the banking sector encourages competition, modernisation and a more transparent operating regime.

2008-10: Improvements in the health of the corporate sector will encourage banks to increase lending to companies.

The labour market

2006-07: Despite attempts at reform, the labour market is likely to remain relatively inflexible.

2008-10: Skill shortages in the labour market will become a problem as Indonesia seeks to move into higher value addedindustries.

Infrastructure

2006-07: The government has pledged to prioritise infrastructure development. Incentives are offered to encourage private-sector investment.

2008-10: The gradual improvement of the business environment will prompt a modest recovery in investment in infrastructure, particularly in the potentially more profitable areas, such as telecommunications.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Canada: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: A generally pro-business stance will be maintained. While the change in government clears the way for bank mergers, the government has not yet made them a priority.

2008-10: Most mergers and acquisitions will win approval, subject to close scrutiny by the Competition Bureau. There will be a cautious loosening of foreign ownership curbs in telecommunications and broadcasting.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Domestic banks will face increasing competition as a result of reduced restrictions on foreign firms.

2008-10: Banking, transport, telecoms, the media and the airline industry will become less protected.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Co-operation with the US over border security will remain a high priority, although the government will attempt, probably unsuccessfully, to delay the implementation of US plans to require passports for border crossings.

2008-10: Trade relations with the US will remain of vital importance and Canada will push for freer trade on a bilateral and multilateral basis.

Taxes

2006-07: Federal capital tax will be revoked. The goods and services tax (GST) will fall from 7% to 6%, effective July 2006. Corporate tax cuts will be geared towards improving competitiveness.

2008-10: Corporate surtax eliminated. Corporate income tax rate gradually reduced, to 19% by 2010.

Financing

2006-07: The comprehensive overhaul of regulations governing financial services will increase competition.

2008-10: Domestic consolidation and a growing foreign banking presence will significantly alter the structure of the financial sector.

The labour market

2006-07: Immigration will rise and the government will move to ease labour shortages by allowing in more foreign workers on temporary permits and by improving recognition of foreign credentials.

2008-10: The government will continue to give a high priority to training in knowledge-based industries.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Private-sector investment in the electricity grid will be held up by the ambiguity in the public sector's commitment to market deregulation.

2008-10: Federal and provincial governments will continue to invest heavily in infrastructure, including large-scale water and sewerage projects, highway and rail networks, tourism and urban development, local transportation and high-speed broadband communications.



Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Pakistan: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The restructuring of banks continues. The government pushes ahead with the privatisation programme and encourages growth in small and medium-sized enterprises.

2008-10: Liberalisation of the economy will continue, and the government will improve the regulatory framework.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign investment remains concentrated in the telecommunications, oil, gas and banking industries, although the government tries to attract investment into other sectors.

2008-10: Privatisation will attract additional foreign capital, and foreign investor sentiment will improve.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Foreign-exchange controls are eased further. Import tariffs are reduced, but distortions favouring certain domestic producers persist. Progress is made towards free-trade agreements with a number of Pakistan's major trade partners.



2008-10: Full currency convertibility is unlikely to be introduced, but the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP, the central bank) will become more independent and assertive.

Taxes

2006-07: Attempts to widen the tax base have some success. The government tries to boost revenue through indirect taxes. The gap between the rates of tax paid by public and private companies is reduced.

2008-10: Most Pakistanis will remain outside the tax net, but efforts will be made to close tax loopholes for business andindustry. Corporate tax rates will be unified.

Financing

2006-07: Private banks dominate financing. Privatisation of the major state banks continues.

2008-10: As competition in the banking sector rises, smaller private banks will merge or shut.

The labour market

2006-07: Child labour and bonded labour remain problems. The low literacy rate curbs the growth of skilled labour.

2008-10: Productivity will remain low. Lay-offs of public-sector employees may cause civil unrest.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Efficiency at ports improves. Some previously planned projects are revised, and private development of infrastructure is encouraged.

2008-10: Power costs and rail charges will continue to rise. The urban transport infrastructure will not keep pace with demand.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Italy: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Limited scope for privatisation. Political resistance at local level. Effectiveness of the antitrust authority and other sectoral watchdogs improves. Some measures to increase competition in sheltered service sectors

2008-10: The EU will press for the opening of markets for products and services, but resistance will continue in some sectors.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Some simplification of investment application procedures. Availability of financial incentives will be curtailed.

2008-10: The national development agency fails to make an impact. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows remain low.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Quotas and tariffs in line with EU practices. General textiles and clothing import quotas lifted on January 1st 2005, but some reimposed in mid-2005. Leather imports to the EU from China and Vietnam restricted.

2008-10: Full opening to textile imports from China in 2008. Non-tariff barriers to intra-EU trade in services to be reduced. If completed, new world trade round could lead to a reduction in agricultural protection in the EU from 2010 onwards.



Taxes

2006-07: Regional tax on productive activities (IRAP) raised in some regions, but may be replaced. Reform of taxation of financial investment income and possible reintroduction of inheritance tax. More reductions in labour taxes also expected.

2008-10: Overall tax rates stay high. Cuts in central government taxes are likely to be offset by higher local taxation. Cuts in employers' social security contributions limited by failure to cut state pension outlays. A shift from direct to indirect taxes.

Financing

2006-07: Damage to financial market confidence caused by problems at the central bank gradually repaired. Minor improvements in corporate governance rules. More foreign banks enter the market, accelerating mergers of Italian banks.

2008-10: Competition from foreign banks will increase. Stockmarket capitalisation as a share of GDP will stay low.

The labour market

2006-07: The new government may restrict the use of temporary and fixed-term contracts. Opposition to broader reformscontinues.

2008-10: Union opposition to greater wage differentials and fewer restrictions on dismissals likely to continue.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Fiscal constraints, limited private-sector involvement, bureaucratic obstacles and resistance from local interest groups hinder government efforts to revive much-needed investment. EU funding will decline from 2007.

2008-10: Italy's infrastructure lags further behind the rest of the EU as a result of a lack of investment.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Ukraine: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
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FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: Regulatory system rationalised and streamlined; the number of regulations affecting business decreases further. Accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ensures progress, including removal of the ban on foreign bank branches.



2009-11: Large-scale privatisation is completed.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: Licensing requirements are simplified, but other barriers to investment inflows remain a problem.

2009-11: Foreign investors are still excluded from land sales.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Major exchange controls lifted, but trade liberalisation incomplete. Accession to WTO expected in 2007.

2009-11: Trend towards further reduction in tariffs. Progress towards an EU free-trade deal.

Taxes

2007-08: Expenditure management improves, but progress in broadening the tax base slows. Value-added tax (VAT) and profit tax rates are reduced.

2009-11: Implementation of a new tax code. Continued fiscal rationalisation, particularly regional fiscal management.

Financing

2007-08: Despite increased lending and greater consolidation, the financial sector remains underdeveloped.

2009-11: Large-scale foreign acquisitions in the banking sector end. Continuing weakness in financial supervision.

The labour market

2007-08: Strong real wage growth. Workforce migration continues.

2009-11: Increased productivity and restructuring bring continued growth in real wages, as well as higher unemployment.

Infrastructure

2007-08: Deferral of infrastructure maintenance and development; private investment mainly in telecommunications.

2009-11: Privatisation of sea port infrastructure is likely. Despite higher government capital expenditure, deteriorating infrastructure constrains economic growth.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Channel Agents Ally to Form a New Enterprise. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- Thirteen channel agents of the original 3721 will form an "enterprise flagship" and debut a new search engine product "ad-union" through the introduction of venture capital, according to sources.



At present, the agents are in talks with venture capitalist Softbank and will finalize the cooperative plan by the end of this month possibly, disclosed the sources.

Softbank will make investments of USD 5 million in the first stage and USD 10 million in the second stage, totaling USD 15 million, and the thirteen channels will integrate into an enterprise to offer shares 18 months later, according to the preliminary plan.

However, the heads of some agents of 3721 refused to disclose details concerning the contact with Softbank and make comment on the news, such as Xu Changzhi, general manager of Qingdao Leixun, Mo Guangshun, general manager of Beijing Insintek, and Shui Peijun, general manager of Guangzhou Yuansheng.

Jack Ma, president of Alibaba.com, recently acknowledged in the public that he would give up 3721 Internet keyword business, which was a big blow to the channel agents of 3721. The agents have nothing to do but find a new way out, namely the debut of their own product.

It is obvious that the strength of a single channel agent is not enough, and it is likely to be affected by any move of manufacturers. But the situation will be completely different if channel agents can join hands with each other. In this way they may have the strength and capital to negotiate with manufacturers.

Under the lead of Zhao Xu, chairman of Century-time, 5 channel agents struck a common agreement immediately. In the process of contacting with venture capitalists, however, the agents began to realize that they were short of core competitiveness if just advocating a "channel consortium." Therefore, their primary task was to develop their core product.

On August 1, the agents eventually launched their new product, namely ad-union, which integrated the advertisement platforms of NetEase, China.com, Tom, and 21cn. As long as users purchase the keyword of ad-union, their advertisements can be displayed on the four platforms. Furthermore, the price for purchasing the keyword is even lower than that of releasing advertisements on a single platform.

Meanwhile, the number of channel agents involved in the plan increased from the original 5 to 13, which were Century- time, Ningbo Chuangya, Guangzhou Yuansheng, Beijing Insintek, Qingdao Leixun, Dalian Globalmart, Fuzhou Chenglixin, Hefei Chenguang, Shenzhen Yingte, Changzhou Yitong, Tianjin Cuijie, Jinan Chengxin, and Wenzhou Zhongwang. Nearly all of them are 3721's local registered centers.

The move of the 13 channel agents drew a hefty response in the industry. Leading search engines such as Google, Baidu.com, and Yahoo! paid close attention to the event.

A search engine in Jinan said that channel agents now heavily rely on manufacturers, which can control their profit rate, and even their life. Once manufacturers adopt the direct- selling strategy, agents will go bankrupt for sure.

The consortium can not only enhance channel agents' capacity of negotiating with upstream manufacturers, but also phase out relatively smaller agents in the industry, thus reshuffling the channel market.

As a matter of fact, it is not the first time that channel agents team up with each other. In April this year, BookSir, along with around 600 medium-sized and small agents, went against search giants such as Google and Baidu.com, only in a different way.

Copyright 2006 Sinocast
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bits & Bytes column. Check it out:
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--The University of Pittsburgh's technology transfer chief Marc Malandro has a lot to say about the "Mind to Market" report, released this week by the Milken Institute, which ranked universities' success in commercializing their biotech research.



Pitt didn't shine in the study, failing to make Milken's list of the top 25 institutions that channeled their research into products and companies from 2000 to 2004.

It was a disappointing showing for Pitt, which reported in January that it had spun out a record 10 startups from research generated within its walls in 2004.

Dr. Malandro said Pitt supports the conclusions of the Milken study, which considered such things as research published, patents issued, income received from licensing discoveries and startup companies formed.

But there's more to the story, he added.

It's difficult to realize the full impact of Pitt's tech transfer efforts in 10 years, Dr. Malandro noted, given that Pitt's technology transfer efforts didn't kick into full gear until 1996.

Pitt continues to fine-tune and tweak its technology transfer program, Dr. Malandro said. Recently, he took over Pitt's Office of Enterprise Development (OED), formerly led by Carolyn Green, who left in August to launch her own biotech firm.

The OED is charged with educating and assisting Pitt scientists on the commercial potential of their research.

By melding his office with the OED, Dr. Malandro said Pitt can be more strategic about capturing technologies that have the potential to become products -- and helping researchers recognize the possibilities of their work.

The tech transfer office will release its annual report for 2006 on Oct. 10, the day Pitt has designated its Celebration of Innovation, honoring the university's innovators.

"Our office continues to move forward and we work very hard to be judged as successful amongst our peer institutions when sometimes comparisons of our offices are like apples and oranges," Dr. Malandro said.

AUGUSTASYSTEMS, a Morgantown, W.Va., maker of tools for managing sensor systems, was one of the 25 startups picked to pitch to potential investors at this week's 3 Rivers Venture Fair at PNC Park.

The 4-year-old company, led by Chief Executive Officer Pat Esposito, opened a Pittsburgh office in May and has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University spinoff EyeSee360 Inc. to develop its sensor-using security product, known as ThreatViewer.

ThreatViewer was used during July's Major League Baseball All Star Week to aid security personnel, according to spokesman James Dobbs. The firm, he said, hopes to raise to raise $1.5 to $3 million.

PLEXTRONICS, the O'Hara-based nanotechnology firm headed by Andrew Hannah, was a runner-up in the 2006 Wall Street Journal Global Technology Innovation Awards.

The newspaper assembles a panel of judges from the academic, research and industry worlds to review novel technologies in 12 categories, including medicine and medical devices, wireless, security, consumer electronics and semiconductors. Now in its sixth year, the competition attracted 600 applications. The judges weighed whether the technology truly represented a breakthrough from conventional methods. A winner was named in each of the 12 categories, along with 37 runners-up.

SPEAKING OF NANOTECH -- for some consumed by economic development, nanotech is the new biotech. States are spending millions to snag the title of "Nanotech Hub." As the still nascent industry blossoms, it is following a similar pattern from the last century, when biotech was the hot industry to nurture.

Several states -- Pennsylvania included -- are busy trying to build a nanotech industry, a science that by manipulating atoms and molecules promises to radically alter the way products are made and the world does business.

While some see dollar signs, others are worried. This week, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies chief science adviser Andrew Maynard testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee that "nanotechnology is no longer a scientific curiosity. It is in the workplace, the environment and the home. But if people are to realize nanotechnology's benefits, the federal government needs a master plan for identifying and reducing potential risks."

In his testimony, Mr. Maynard said "the federal government needs to invest a minimum of $100 million over two years in targeted risk research in order to lay a strong, science-based foundation for safe nanotechnology."

According to Mr. Maynard's analysis, despite investing more than $1 billion annually on nanotechnology research, U.S. government spending on highly relevant nanotechnology risk research is only $11 million per year.

Mr. Maynard's testimony, which is available online at www.nanotechproject.org, draws heavily from his new report, "Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk."

THE PITTSBURGH TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL has released its Annual Total Compensation survey of the southwestern Pennsylvania region. The survey gathered employment compensation information from 52 companies within the region, a 37 percent increase from last year's survey. The results will be discussed Thursday at the council's human resources network event at the Westin Convention Center Hotel, Downtown.

PAUL J. PETROVICH, a senior technology consultant at the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence Small Business Development Center, has received the prestigious national Tibbetts Award. The award recognizes his services connecting Western Pennsylvania's technology innovators with the Small Business Innovation Research funding they need to enhance their product development efforts. Mr. Petrovich will receive the award Tuesday at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

GREG COTICCHIA may have left LogicLibrary last week, but he hasn't disappeared. He's returned to his consulting practice, Entra Inc., which he said has been around for 11 years. Mr. Coticchia added that he already has four customers, including local firms Four Rivers and IGD Systems/e-billinghub.com.

Got tech buzz? Contact Corilyn Shropshire at [email protected] or 412-263-1413.

To see more of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.post-gazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Agencies help minority entrepreneurs flourish in S.J.. Check it out:
(Record, The (Stockton, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--STOCKTON -- Minority entrepreneurs may be able to thrive by targeting niche markets, serving populations ignored or underserved by larger companies. However, they often must work through language and cultural barriers to reach a larger customer base.



And they face problems common to all small-business owners: difficulty obtaining capital, satisfying government restrictions and fees and honing their business operations.

Access to financing was a hurdle for Jessie Garza-Roderick, co-owner of a small string of pharmacies and associate dean for San Joaquin Delta College's Tracy Learning Center.

Many commercial lenders won't consider lending to a business unless they can demonstrate a net worth of $500,000 or so.

"A lot of minority businesses don't have that kind of capital," Garza-Roderick said.

"They have to find a niche, stay at it a long, long time to build some equity, to build a portfolio and maybe then they can open a second restaurant or second location."

Minority entrepreneurs don't have to do it all by themselves, however.

Before launching his Indian Grocery Outlet in Weston Ranch, M. Jalil Hay got help at the Small Business Development Center in developing and evaluating his business plan.

The center also helped him secure a Small Business Administration-backed loan to help get his store off the ground.

Hay does have previous retail experience, having worked in management at major computer store chains and in sales.

"I actually grew up in retail. My father used to own a little grocery story in the Fiji Islands," he said.

There are a number of loan programs available to small businesses, said Gillian Murphy, director of the San Joaquin Delta College Small Business Development Center in Stockton. Most are open to everybody regardless of ethnic background.

Traditional bank-based lending programs, with minimum loans beginning around $50,000, may not be suitable for startup or mom-and-pop operations. The SBDC also has information about three microloan programs.

San Joaquin County operates a revolving loan fund that lends up to $25,000 at a time. There is an SBA-guarantee program that makes loans from $5,000 to $20,000. And the Downtown Stockton Enterprise Loan Fund, a new nonprofit facilitated by the Downtown Stockton Alliance, operates a new fund exclusively for downtown Stockton businesses, offering loans from $5,000 to $50,000.

"Not everyone is going to be able to get them," Murphy cautioned. "Having pretty good credit is a major factor."

That may rule out people who have had a recent bankruptcy or other credit problems, including people with low incomes who may have little collateral to secure a loan or have no credit history.

"One problem I found in Los Angeles is that immigrant entrepreneurs tended to not fully report income to the government. On paper, businesses can look like they are broke, even when they are doing well," said Tom Larson, economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles, who has studied minority and women-owned businesses in the state.

"While this can reduce taxes, it also makes getting regular bank loans very difficult. This was a big problem for businesses that were damaged in the 1992 civil unrest."

Cut off from commercial funding sources, minorities and immigrants often turn to community-based groups instead.

"Both the Chinese and Koreans are very good at setting up associations that help members accumulate money to start businesses," Larson said.

"This is an approach used elsewhere as well. My grandfather came here from Sweden using money raised by his village. After he was working here, he repaid the money and helped bring others to the U.S."

SBDC services also include a variety of business startup workshops and classes, as well as free one-on-one counseling.

Murphy estimates 1,300 people attend the center's workshops annually and about 700 become regular clients.

Courses may cover the basics of financing, licensing, insurance and drafting a business plan. The last is a key for many budding entrepreneurs to obtain financing and make their dream a reality.

"They do the work and we just help them through the process," Murphy said.

A well-made business plan can help an entrepreneur identify possible problems and needs. It can help win financing from a lender and also may serve up a warning against especially risky ventures.

"We count it as successful when somebody puts together a business plan and looks at it and says, 'This is not going to work,' " Murphy said.

Business plans are not for startups alone, she added. Established concerns may use them to evaluate what's working and what's not, as well as to set new goals.

"Let's look at where your business has been since Day 1," Murphy said. "Has it done what you want it to do? What do you want it to do in the next five years and how do you go about it?"

Officials of the San Joaquin County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which works closely with the SBDC, agreed that a business plan is a vital business tool.

"When you have your business plan together and you have a relationship with your banking source, it really helps the business to weather the storms," said Mark Martinez, chamber chief executive officer.

And while such a plan doesn't guarantee business success, he said, "It does enhance the chance that it will succeed."

It also can help secure bank financing.

"It's almost like an attorney having to build a winning case," Martinez said. "...You have to build a very solid business plan so the bank understands there's a minimal risk for the loan."

Another way business owners can help themselves is to look to outside groups for information and education, said Mark Stebbins, a south Stockton building contractor and real estate agent.

As current president of the South Stockton Merchants Association and a former president of the African American Chamber of Commerce, he believes in the value of such organizations.

"You improve the community by the knowledge there are things going on and people possibly have an opportunity to do something about it," Stebbins said.

"That knowledge may be as direct as knowing there are city grants available for improvement of the front of your business," he said. "And even if it doesn't connect, then there's the possibility to change how a program will work, because you get the information that what is there isn't connecting."

And there's an additional benefit to small-business owners who may be toiling long hours, seven days per week, in their shops.

"Sometimes it's important just because it's stress-relieving just to get away for a moment from that daily grind of business or to look at something from another focus," Stebbins said.

Groups such as the merchants association, as well as SBDC, Hispanic chamber, Central Valley Asian-American Chamber of Commerce and African American Chamber of Commerce provide such educational opportunities to area business owners. And sometimes they work collaboratively to do so.

"We really do strive and we work with the minority chambers to do training together and to reach out to the broad community." Murphy said. "You see, the chambers coming together. We're working with them and we're all working together."

Contact reporter Reed Fujii at (209) 546-8253 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
ARINC Managed Services Introduces Airport-Centric Staffing Division. Check it out:
ANNAPOLIS, Md. --(Business Wire)-- How can airport managers improve their speed-to-hire and fill urgent IT staff vacancies faster? ARINC Managed Services (AMS) today introduced an answer: an airport IT staffing unit dedicated to filling technology positions at airports on a temporary, short-term, or permanent basis.



AMS will discuss the details of its new Staffing offering at the 2006 Airports Council International-North America Conference in Reno, NV. A press conference is planned for 9:00 am September 26, 2006 in ARINC Booth #1217.

"Among all our customers--government, aviation, or corporate--we realized airports have a critical need to quickly fill an IT vacancy when it occurs," stated Jim L. Martin, ARINC Managed Services Senior Director. "Many good potential employees simply aren't trained on airport-specific systems. We intend to fill that gap with AMS Staffing, and to become the resource of choice for the airport industry's IT staffing needs."

AMS Staffing can work with airport IT management or outside IT support and service companies, in effect providing scalable IT staff resources as required. This provides the flexibility that is often needed in the implementation of IT projects and enables project continuity when staff fluctuations occur. AMS Staffing is an ideal option for surge-related work, such as special projects that require staff quickly for a short period of time, but not on a permanent basis.

AMS Staffing is aware that the costs associated with bringing new airport IT staff up to speed are unrecoverable. Today it is more important than ever for IT directors to locate properly trained and qualified technicians and engineers. As an IT staffing and vendor management provider, AMS Staffing successfully fills government and commercial IT positions supporting a multitude of technologies, and places only the most qualified professionals with customers.

"AMS Staffing knows airports well, because they have supported AMS on all of our airport Service-Level Agreements. We have simply decided to make AMS Staffing expertise available directly to the industry," added Martin.

AMS Staffing will source experienced IT personnel for any airport--whether or not the airport is a customer of ARINC Managed Services.

ARINC Managed Services (AMS) is the global IT support and service subsidiary of ARINC Incorporated. As a leading provider of operations, maintenance, and staffing services, AMS has the skilled personnel and engineering know-how to handle the most complex IT maintenance and support projects. AMS provides airports, healthcare, government, and enterprise customers with a low-risk, highly reliable outsourcing solution, with staff trained to make it work. For more information, visit the ARINC Managed Services web site at www.arinc.com/ams.

ARINC Incorporated is the world leader in transportation communications and systems engineering. The company develops and operates communications and information processing systems and provides systems engineering and integration solutions to five key industries: airports, aviation, defense, government, and surface transportation. Founded to provide reliable and efficient radio communications for the airlines, ARINC is headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, and operates key regional offices in London and Singapore, with over 3,200 employees worldwide. ARINC is ISO 9001:2000 certified. For more information, visit the ARINC web site at www.arinc.com.
Treasury Aims to Cancel PZU Privatisation. Check it out:
(Polish News Bulletin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Treasury Minister Wojciech Jasinski is to contact the Public Prosecutor's Office in order to acquire documents which might prove helpful in the cancellation of the PZU privatisation deal concluded with Eureko. In the opinion of the representatives of the Dutch company, such a move would be illegal. According to Rzeczpospolita, Jasinski has already begun preparing to file a motion to cancel the agreement. Reportedly the treasury minister applied to the justice ministry for an evaluation conducted by consulting company BDO, which proved that a conflict of interests existed between Eureko and the ABN Amro bank. Moreover, its authors suggested that the data present in the documents filed by the Dutch enterprise was not in line with the actual state of affairs. Meanwhile, Eureko Polska CEO Pawel Nastula stressed that there are no legal grounds for the cancellation of the agreement. He said that the company is demanding that the contract be carried out. - New Player on Gas Market



The news that Ryszard Krauze's Prokom Investment bought shares in four Kazakh firms, controlling oil deposits and licences for oil extraction, was a market highlight a few weeks ago. Experts indicate that Prokom may be interested in gas also. The likelihood of this interest is strengthened by actions undertaken by Pol-Aqua, a company whose 23-percent stake was acquired by Prokom Investments in June this year. The firm is currently looking for customers for the gas. "We are talking to potential clients. We want to send gas to heat and power stations and industrial firms," said Ireneusz Misiolek, Pol-Aqua's board member. But before you can sell gas, you must buy it first. The resource could either be bought from PGNiG or from abroad. It is a fact that Pol-Aqua will be one of the companies building oil extraction installations for Prokom in Kazakhstan. Will it also transfer gas from Kazakhstan? "We are making attempts to buy gas abroad," answered Misiolek enigmatically.

Copyright 2006 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Cersanit Makes Call for 100-Percent Stake in Opoczno. Check it out:
(Polish News Bulletin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sanitary ceramics manufacturer Cersanit made a call for a 100-percent stake in sector company Opoczno. Transaction intermediary Bank BPH DM brokerage house announced that the share price has been established at ZL33.5. Interested parties will be able to subscribe for the sale of shares between 13 October and 21 December. The call was made on the condition that Cersanit obtains the approval of the head of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) for the takeover of Opoczno. Michal Solowow, one of Cersanit's major shareholders, first declared a willingness to acquire a stake in Opoczno held by Enterprise Investors back in 2005. In H1 of 2006 Cersanit group recorded a profit of ZL76.49m, as compared to ZL61.21m in the respective period of 2005. Year-on-year, its sales revenue increased from ZL283.62m to ZL359.32m. During the same period, Opoczno generated a consolidated net loss of ZL6.7m.



Copyright 2006 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Browne makes his big mistake right at the end. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Why Lord Browne fought - unsuccessfully - to stay at the helm of BP long after the company's compulsory retirement date of 60 is anyone's guess.

It was an ignominious tussle with his chairman, Peter Sutherland, and one that resulted in him getting only a few months extra in the top job.

But even as unseemly briefings by 'friends' of both men were given gleeful coverage in the financial Press, BP appeared to be unravelling faster than a ball of wool in the paws of a kitten.

To say that BP, once one of our most admired companies, has had a torrid year or so is an understatement. It suffered the worst refinery fire in the industry's history last year when 15 people died and hundreds were injured in Texas.

Its giant Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico was badly damaged by Hurricane Dennis and production will now come on stream in 2008 - two years late.

Several of its commodity traders in America were accused of trying to manipulate the propane gas market.

The US authorities also announced an investigation into its trading in crude oil and gasoline between 2002 and 2004.

And it was forced to shut production at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska after the discovery of severe corrosion in the pipes. It then emerged that senior BP executives had been warned repeatedly by employees that maintenance at Prudhoe Bay was not up to scratch, yet these alarms were, somehow, ignored.



Browne is resisting pressure to put in a personal appearance at hearings in the US into some of the group's alleged failures. These have incensed politicians on Capitol Hill, where BP's laudable refusal to make the political contributions routinely expected from oil majors means he has few friends to call on in times of need.

The company is, of course, a gigantic enterprise and wildcat fires can be expected in far-flung reaches of its empire. But the coincidence of bad news suggested something might be rotten at the heart of the edifice that Browne built.

Shareholders, with whom BP has in recent times enjoyed the best of relations, let it be known they were seeking one-to-one meetings with the company's diminutive boss to satisfy themselves that things were not as bad as they appeared.

There were signs of hope late on Friday when BP said it was about to bring parts of Prudhoe Bay back into operation.

And, though it is arguably a year late in coming, Browne has now ordered a top-to-bottom overhaul of the company's safety and environmental procedures, similar in scale to the rethink undertaken by Exxon after its tanker, the Valdez, caused one of the worst oil spills.

The operation to clean up the damage in Alaska is likely to take up to a decade. But by that time Browne will be long gone.

What a pity that the man who has year-in, year-out been voted Britain's most-admired business executive will spend his final days at BP fighting fires. And what a terrible misjudgment to have sought to extend them.

HAD you had the dubious distinction of carrying out a refinancing of Russian government debt, only to have the Kremlin turn round and devalue the rouble, emerging markets might not seem a terribly comfortable place.

That seems to have informed the recent thinking at investment bank Goldman Sachs. But under new chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, the Wall Street powerhouse seems ready to have another look.

Blankfein believes that emerging markets - Russia, China, India and Latin America - are becoming mainstream (though the Putin government appears hell-bent on undermining that in Russia).

Look at some recent blockbuster mergers and acquisitions to see what Blankfein means.

Cases in point include Indian-born Lakshmi Mittal's GBP18.3 billion acquisition of Europe's Arcelor, the emergence of a Russian bank as the largest outside shareholder in Airbus's parent group, Eads, plus a host of Chinese companies that rushed to list on the London Stock Exchange.

Goldman is already well ensconced in China, but watch out for it bulking up in territories where it feels underrepresented.

There is also likely to be a push into the mid-corporate market.

Goldman is, of course, best known for working with some of the world's largest companies.

But many of these have balance sheets bigger than Goldman's and do not always want the Americans' huge funding resources.

Smaller fry may not be prepared to pay top dollar for Goldman's strategic advice, but may be happier to dig into their pockets if there were the possibility that such huge coffers might be at their disposal.

Goldman, which recently announced sparkling profits, does not aim to be an all-things-to-all-people bank such as Citigroup (it has, for example, permanently eschewed a retail offering).

But it has a surefooted record on diversifications - insurance and commodities have been happily added. There seems little reason to suspect that it will not safely cast its net even wider.

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.
Interactive Intelligence to Host ``IP Telephony for Business'' Seminar in Detroit. Check it out:
--(Business Wire)-- Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq:ININ):

WHAT / WHEN:

Interactive Intelligence Inc., a global developer of business communications software, along with Troy-based systems integrator, The OAS Group, will host a free "IP Telephony for Business" seminar in Detroit, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.



This educational seminar is designed for contact center supervisors, IT managers, CIOs and others involved in voice/data decisions at enterprises of all types and sizes who want to learn how to leverage IP telephony and unified communications technology to increase profits and decrease expenses.

WHY:

Attendees will learn:

-- What industry experts are saying about unified communications technology and the vendors that claim to support it

-- How unified communications is impacting the enterprise and contact center, and why you should care

-- How unified communications can effect your network and employees

-- How to drive customer satisfaction through multimedia: VoIP, video, and instant messaging

-- How to realize the value of remote employees

Guest speakers include Rich Tehrani, president of Technology Marketing Corp. (TMC(R)) and group editor-in-chief of Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine.

Co-sponsors include The OAS Group, Alliance Systems, AudioCodes, Intel, and Vonexus.

WHERE:

Embassy Suites Hotel Detroit-Livonia
19525 Victor Parkway
Livonia, Mich. 48152
(734) 462-6000



HOW:

To register, or for more information about this free seminar, visit http://www.inin.com/News/Events/seminars/seminars.asp?id=691. If you have additional questions about the seminar, call (317) 872-3000, or e-mail [email protected].

For media inquiries, contact Christine Holley, director of market communications, Interactive Intelligence, (317) 715-8220, [email protected].
Ugandan Exporters Cut Niche Into Neighbours' Markets. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 26, 2006 (The Monitor/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --STRINGENT requirements for market access in the European Union have forced most Ugandan exporters to shift their attention to neighbouring markets underscoring the importance of regional trade.



Requirements like the Euregap, the need for Corporate Social Responsibility, environmental consciousness, high costs of transportation including air freight and security surcharges have forced exporters to exploit less stringent market like the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa). The move has seen African regional markets become increasingly competitive compared to the lucrative European market.

"People have begun to understand the benefits of trading with the next-door neighbour especially as market access conditionalities for trading with stiffer markets like the EU continue to bite," Ms Florence Kata, the Executive Director of the Uganda Exports Promotions Board, said in an interview with Business Power last week.

According to UEPB records, the EAC as a component of Comesa has been running neck-to-neck with the EU in market share, once Uganda's leading export market.

In 2004, Comesa commanded 26 per cent of the total $653 million (Shs1.1 trillion) export earnings and EU led with 27 per cent. In 2005, Comesa and the EU both stood at 31 per cent each of the total $812 million (Shs1.4 trillion) export earnings for Uganda.

With over 300 million people, the regional trade could spur much needed growth in the form of increased trade returns, job creation, support for Small and Medium scale Enterprise and the branding of products as East African, especially in the central, eastern and southern Africa, a region with the most economic hardships in the world.

"We are working to see that EAC positions itself as a single unit against the rest of the markets.

The initiative that we are having in place is to try to identify and standardise to some degree a range of export products," Kata said.

To achieve this, the East Africa trade promotion agencies are soon launching an EA export.com e-commerce portal, where they have agreed as member countries to select products, which can compete favourably in other bigger markets like the EU.

Kata said that they have also embarked on training trainers who will train producers in selected sectors.

"We want a scenario when you get a fish that is coming from EA, it generally has the same characteristics and properly packaged. Even at the Bureau of Standards we have harmonisation of standards at the region level," she said.

A further effort in Uganda, said Kata, is to establish an export school - the Uganda Export Development Centre - to equip exporters with market skills that are internationally recognised.

The Dutch and the Japanese governments have been in the forefront in funding training for export purposes. Kata said that regional security, however, must be sustainable for any meaningful regional trade to prevail. Political stability in the DR Congo, Southern Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda would boost regional trade as more people would begin to move freely from one country to another.

Government's role

Government has played a key role through several interventions to improve production, productivity, marketing, trade and encourage value addition and a total fund of Shs9 billion (Bonabagaggawale) has been set aside in the 2006/7 financial year to cater for these needs.

These strategic actions will be focused on the needs of the household using the sub-county as the operational center for delivery of the respective programmes.

The strategy will be implemented by deliberately engaging more households in gainful production enterprise by re-orienting the role of sub-county chiefs and production personnel at the Sub-county level to undertake community mobilisation.

"We in exports believe when you have organised production today, it should be benchmarked against international standards, so if you are going to produce your potato or pineapple, organise the poor people that you seek to become rich to produce a pineapple that is internationally saleable and therefore locally consumable.

So we shall use the domestic market just as a stake towards internationalising of the market. In that process you are creating a framework for a massive growth towards an export led economic," Kata explains.

Research is the other initiative of intervention that has been put in place by agencies like UEPB, NAADS.

Research is increasing and a lot is happening between Makerere University and the Uganda Industrial Research Institute in terms of being their scientific center for helping the country beginning to add value, importing technology prototypes and customise them at the local level.

Copyright 2006 The Monitor. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

NACFA - Jorotom Pays N359m

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NACFA - Jorotom Pays N359m. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In a bid to actualise its dream of purchasing the Federal Government owned National Clearing and Forwarding Agency (NACFA), Jorotom International Agency Nigeria Limited, one of the companies which recently won the bid to buy the multi-billion naira agency has paid N359, 999,820 to the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE).



With the payment which represents 10 per cent of the winning bid of N3.59bn, Jorotom which is a key player in international forwarding, shipping, clearing and air cargo handling, has beat the deadline which stated that the preferred bidder must effect 10 percent payment within 10 days after the receipt of offer letter from BPE.

BPE had through a letter dated September 6, 2006, conveyed the approval of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) for Jorotom to pay 10 per cent of the bided sum on or before September 20, 2006.

According to the letter which was signed by the Director General of BPE, Mrs. Irene N. Chigbu, the remaining N3, 239,998,380, representing 90 percent of the amount required for the outright purchase of NAFCA shall be paid to BPE on or before October 18, 2006.

"Your failure to pay within the stipulated period will leave us with the option of executing the bid bond submitted by you and offering the enterprise to the reserved bidder", the letter added.

Apparently conscious of the strict stipulations outlined by BPE, Jorotom International Agency Nigeria Limited effected payment last Wednesday, a move seen by key players in the maritime industry as a sign that the company is prepared to take full ownership of NACFA. The company bided to acquire 100 per cent equity stake in NAFCA.

A statement issued by the company and made available to THISDAY at the weekend said Jorotom team to effect the payment was led by its Chief Executive Officer, Senior Evangelist J. Omotosho.

The payment, according to the statement which was signed by Jorotom General Manager, Mr. Austin Modebe, was also witnessed by top officials of Phoenix Capital Limited and Skye Bank Plc.

While Phoenix Capital Limited is the Jorotom's financial adviser for the acquisition of NAFCA, Skye Bank Plc is one providing the necessary funds for the transaction which will put the multi-billion naira government agency under the management of the international shipping company.

Among the companies that participated in the bid to purchase NAFCA were Kungo Rock Investments Limited, TSM Global Logistics Limited and Jalieth Holding Nigeria Limited.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
dB Wizards breaks new ground in office workflow automation. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) dB Wizards recently launched K2.net, a workflow automation tool that will help companies apply workflow automation to their operations and critical business processes so they can achieve organizational effectiveness and strategic advantage.



dB Wizards, a 100% Filipino-owned company, has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 2002 and a leader in delivering advanced Microsoft technology solutions. The executive briefing launch was conducted in partnership with SourceCode, a global leader for business process management software.

Built on the Microsoft.NET Framework, K2.net enables organizations to design, execute, manage and control true enterprise-level, human-to-human and human-to-system workflow solutions that makes it possible for information workers to focus on key business drivers like customer satisfaction and innovation, thus spend less time on routine work tasks.

K2.net offers two key business benefits - increased productivity and reduced costs. K2.net delivers powerful, proven, and flexible seamless integration across a range of Microsoft products and a broad spectrum of back-end systems, collaborative tools, and people.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

LET'S TALK TAX

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LET'S TALK TAX. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) In today's computer age, information technology ("IT") has become the emerging industry in the global economy. And with the country's English- speaking and highly skilled IT professionals, the Philippines has become a favorite investment destination for most IT and IT-enabled companies.



Due to this competitive advantage, the Philippines is now hosting a number of business process outsourcing ("BPO") firms, contact centers (popularly known as "call centers"), software research and development enterprises, medical and legal transcription firms, design engineering companies and other IT and IT-enabled firms.

Most of these IT and IT-enabled firms are registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority ("PEZA") obviously for the availment of certain fiscal and non-fiscal incentives. As in the case of any other PEZA- registered entity, the IT industry is also entitled to the 5% special tax regime based on the gross income earned. Under existing PEZA rules, "gross income" refers to the gross sales or gross revenues derived from business activity within the ECOZONE, net of sales discounts, sales returns and allowances and minus costs of sales or direct costs but before any deduction is made for administrative expenses or incidental losses during a given taxable period.

For export enterprises, the direct costs are enumerated in Section 2, Rule XX of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 7916, as follows: * direct salaries, wages or labor expenses; * production supervision salaries; * raw materials used in the manufacture of products; * goods in process (intermediate goods); * finished goods; * supplies and fuels used in production; * depreciation of machinery and equipment used in production, and buildings owned or constructed by an ECOZONE enterprise; * rent and utility charges associated with building, equipment and warehouses, or handling of goods; and * financing charges associated with fixed assets.

Notably, the list of allowable deductions for export enterprises is more applicable to manufacturing companies rather than to service, such as IT or IT-enabled companies.

Are these deductions intended to be all-inclusive or are these merely enumeration of the typical expenses that can be considered as direct costs?

Should PEZA-registered IT enterprises be allowed to deduct direct costs and other expenses which are in the nature of direct costs, although not included in the list?

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) attempted to address this concern when it issued Revenue Regulations ("RR") No. 2-2005 where it inserted the word "only" in the enumeration of the allowable deductions, thus, limiting the deductible costs to those listed. But the implementation of the said regulations was suspended.

In trying to arrest the issue, the BIR subsequently issued RR No. 11- 2005 which deleted the word "only" in the list. Going through the content of RR No. 11-2005, it can be observed that the list of expenses provided under the BIR regulations and the PEZA implementing regulations are the same, except for the clarification that the depreciation and financing charges allowed as deductions shall be limited to those relating to fixed assets used in the production of goods and the deductible portion of goods in process and finished goods accounts.

On the other hand, the removal of the word "only" in the list was understood by most PEZA-registered companies, particularly the IT enterprises, that the BIR has conceded that the allowable deductions are not only limited to those listed in the regulation and, as such, other expenses that are in the nature of direct costs, depending on the nature of the business, can also be claimed as deduction.

Consequently, PEZA IT enterprises may deduct other expenses which are in the nature of direct cost for purposes of computing the gross income earned.

The justification of a specific cost as a direct cost could be an issue. Under the generally accepted accounting principles, the underlying principle in determining the item of cost or expense as part of direct cost is the direct relation of such item in the production of the product or service.

If such item of cost or expense is a prerequisite element in the production of the product or service, then it should be considered as direct cost. Hence, it may be significant to understand the production processes of a certain company to properly determine which item of cost or expense is classifiable as direct cost.

In the absence of specific regulations, it would be prudent for PEZA IT enterprises to secure ruling from the BIR should they decide to claim expenses, other than those listed in the regulations, as deductions for purposes of computing the 5% special tax.

Our regulators, however, should consider that formulation of specific regulations on the allowable deductions for PEZA IT enterprises would foster a uniform application of the PEZA incentives. With a well defined incentive system, the Philippines will not be far from being the number one investment destination in the IT industry.

(The author is a tax manager at the Cebu branch of Punongbayan & Araullo, member of Grant Thornton International. For comments and inquiries, e-mail [email protected] or call 032-231-6090.)

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Professor James Scott

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Professor James Scott. Check it out:
(Yorkshire Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dean of the School of Medicine, Leeds University Professor James Scott died on September 17 at the age of 82 and the appearance here of his name will trigger memories and gratitude in a wide cross-section of readers.



For example: women who were helped through a mom-entous event in their life by his skill as an obstetrician or had reason to be thankful to him for solving a problem for them as a gynaecologist; doctors, once medical students at Leeds, who will remember his infectious enthusiasm as a teacher and his kindliness as Dean in guiding their careers, and NHS consultants in various disciplines, who will remember him as a colleague who could be counted upon for a well-judged opinion on any problem, whether clinical or non-clinical.

Added to these are former colleagues in the medical school and the wider University of Leeds, who had reason to be grateful to him for his intellect and wisdom as a contributor to academic life in Leeds.

Sadness at the news of the death of this much-loved and respected man will be accompanied by happy memories of a man who was a joy to be with at work and at play.

James Steel Scott was born in Glasgow, where he went to school and university. He made a successful start to his academic career at Liverpool University and had the distinction of being appointed to the chair of obstetrics and gynaecology in Leeds in 1961 at the age of only 37. His research interests were in the field of reproductive immunology and he was internationally recognised as a leader and innovator.

In those days the university's department of obstetrics and gynaecology was in the Leeds Maternity Hospital in Hyde Terrace, for which James had a great affection. He even retained that designation for his department after it had been relocated to the Clarendon Wing, confusing though it was for everyone else until finally dropped at his instigation just before his retirement.

His drive and enterprise took the department from strength to strength, with ground-breaking research in the laboratory being matched always by innovation and constant improvement in patient care on the wards. As well as being a brilliant res-earcher, James was an excellent surgeon, so he was able to lead from in front in everything he asked of his colleagues as their head of dep-artment for almost 30 years.

For the last three years of his career James took on the additional role of Dean of the School of Medicine. That brought him into the mainstream of university life, but he was already versed in its rituals and procedures. Unusually for a clinical professor, he had been a regular attendee at Senate and other university committee meetings.

James carried out his duties as Dean with distinct-ion and he made great efforts to bring together colleagues working at the Infirmary and St James's at a time when relations between those two hospitals were often very strained. One of his most inspired initiatives, which gave a whole new meaning to the term "medical engineering", was the annual Graduation Dinner.

He invited university and NHS colleagues from both sides of the city to a good dinner, but his seating plan was contrived to break down barriers and achieve "cross fertilisation", so important in bringing people together to make common cause.

In this situation, as in private gatherings, James was the perfect host. He was widely read, had many indoor and outdoor interests, a good memory and a lovely sense of humour, so when James got up to speak everyone knew they were in for a treat.

James was blessed with a long and happy marriage to Dr Olive Scott, who was a distinguished paediatric cardiologist at Killingbeck Hospital until she retired in 1986. Their homes in Leeds and later in Knaresborough were places where a wide range of people - friends and professional colleagues - enjoyed wonderful hospitality.

They enjoyed an interesting range of leisure activit-ies before and after retirement. These included regular visits to Scotland to their beloved retreat in Achilitbuie, which overlooks the Summer Isles, and Zermatt, Switzerland, where James was still skiing in his 80s.

James is survived by his wife and their sons, Alistair and Malcolm.

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc. Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Tech VC funds queue up to put money in India. Check it out:
(Indian Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Venture capital (VC) funds are lining up to invest money in Indian technology sector as never before. A whopping $5-6 billion is waiting to get invested in the tech and services sectors in the next 6-9 months, industry sources say. VC investment, as per the Asian Venture Capital Journal, during the first half of 2006 was a record $3.6 billion in India, showing a staggering 400 per cent growth over the same period last year. Tech funds accounted for a lion's share of this money. Though this is less than the $5 billion received by China, India has signed more deals. Says Rishi Navani, Founding Managing Director, Matrix Partners India: "I think India is attractive, there is strong economic growth and as a result in various industries the quality of entrepreneurs has also improved significantly''. Moreover, the Indian tech story is continuing with companies putting up a good performance over the years. This is just the beginning. More VC funds are waiting in the wings. Industry sources say that over 44 US-based funds want to invest in start-ups and early-stage companies in the country. In late August, the $1.4 billion fund IDG Ventures, a pioneer in funding start-ups, announced a $150-million IDG Ventures India Fund. This fund will invest between $0.5 million and $5 million in early-stage tech firms and $10 million in high-growth firms. Says Sudhir Sethi, the Managing General Partner of IDG Ventures India, "We want to invest in high potential, futuristic firms which want to go global and not limit its operations to India. Our prime focus will be technology and tech-enabled ventures. Though the tech venture scenario is very competitive in the country, very few players are operating in this space who invest in start-ups and early stages of development''. Sequoia Capital India, run by California-based Sequoia has closed a $400-million fund to invest in later-stage and growth-stage businesses on September 15. Formerly called WestBridge Capital Partners, the firm had one of the few India-focused and India-managed venture funds for early- and mid-stage firms. Matrix Partners India, co-founded by Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani along with Matrix Partners US, has closed its first investment of a Rs 32 crore ($7 million) in Seventymm, India's first online movie rental firm. Matrix Partners India invests over $10 million multiple rounds with an initial investment ranging from $ 500,000 to $10 million in various tech and other services sectors. In August, State Bank of India had raised $100 million along with Softbank of Japan to invest in Indian firms at all stages of their life cycles. Draper Fisher Jurvetson's $250-million India fund and New Enterprise Associates's fund have already started their operations. But why the VC funding has gone up drastically in 2006, especially in the tech sector? "US is over funded, so VCs are looking for other avenues. India as a market is now becoming sizeable in certain sectors. Over funding is a concern going ahead though in India too,'' says Navani. "Over the next five years we expect to invest in 20-25 firms in India and the Indo-US corridor. Given IDG Venture's global network, one of the key value-additions to our investee firms in India is to help them expand into China," Sethi adds.



Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Business computing now needs to catch up with gaming. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--The business end of IT is finally catching up with the leisure and entertainment side of computing when it comes to developing products aimed at an international user base.



PC operating systems and computer games are global products, while back-office enterprise software has generally been developed to suit the needs of locally-based businesses. Anyone playing the latest shoot-'em-up PC game expects the same high-quality product to be instantly available in any games store in the developed world, while companies running mission-critical applications to manage their payroll or recruitment are often restricted to localised IT companies.

But business software developers are now starting to realise that it makes more sense to sell their existing software internationally rather than develop new software to expand into their home market.

US-based Lawson's entry into the European business software market with the recent acquisition of Intentia is a case study in the increasing globalisation of the IT industry. Rather than expanding its business in the US, Lawson is taking its product global, using back-office software applications developed in its home market to cut costs and control supply management in its target sectors across the world. Two of Lawson's key specialisations are healthcare and local government. Rather than, for example, using its local government niche in the US to expand into the federal government software market, Lawson is opting to remain a niche player, but on a global scale.

It is translating software products originally developed in the US into languages as diverse as French and Japanese. Europe is a key market for the US developer. Like many other US companies, Lawson is learning that Europe is made up of many different cultures, each with its own attitude to areas such as healthcare and local government. In common with other US-based organisations, Lawson opted to make the UK its first choice for a foray outside the US markets and the company is currently engaged in early-stage negotiations with the NHS.

The potential rewards for niche enterprise software operators which can overcome initial national hurdles are potentially huge. Cost savings identified in healthcare in the US can be translated into similar economies in Birmingham or Beijing.

Similarly, recruitment software developed by Lawson for use in the US healthcare system can be used to hire staff all over the world. By having common hiring criteria across entire industries, it will facilitate unprecedented movement in global labour markets. Nursing qualifications gained in Shanghai or Stockholm will be instantly identifiable in New York or London.

The development of global software standards by business software companies such as Lawson and the market leader, Germany-based SAP, is having the same effect on back-office business software that Microsoft has on the desktop 20 years ago. It is streamlining and standardising business supply chain management and human resource management, as staff control is now called, on an international basis. Enterprise software developers believe that this process will be hugely beneficial to business.

But if back-office enterprise software such as that provided by companies like Lawson is becoming more of a global product, then so is the increasingly complex array of hardware used by organisations across the world. Motorola's purchase of Symbol Technologies is an example of the way in which hardware manufacturers are now beginning to pay more attention to the needs of business.

In the past, Motorola's chief focus has been on taking on Nokia, the global market leader, in the consumer mobile phone market. While it has produced business phones, these have generally appealed to individual users rather than being rolled out across entire organisations. But there is now growing evidence that companies such as Motorola are starting to understand that modern organisations need a whole array of devices and that the globe-trotting executive who wants a slim device that doubles as a phone and e-mail reader to slip into a suit pocket does not represent the only non-consumer market.

Healthcare is a one example of a sector that has a great many professionals with very specific IT needs. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists need to keep track of all types of hospital equipment, ranging from a scalpel to X-ray machine. New advances in radio-frequency (RFID) chip technology also mean that healthcare professionals can keep a constant track of medication using a scanner incorporated into a variety of mobile devices. This will not only cut down on the theft of drugs from hospitals but save lives by keeping a closer watch on the medication administered to patients.

Analysts believe that the acquisition of Symbol will enable Motorola to offer devices that will allow organisations to use devices that are extend intranet intelligence right from the warehouse to the boardroom.

Who knows? By allying this hardware with the international back-office software, healthcare and local government may soon start catch up with the games industry.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Skype readies enterprise-friendly VOIP software. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Skypeis working to make its Internet telephony service more enterprise friendly, and expects to introduce a beta version of its software with support for enterprise management functions within weeks.



The update will allow system administrators to use standard Windows management tools to set how the Skype software connects to the Internet, or to disable any of half a dozen functions, including file transfers, said Skype's vice president of telecommunications and Skype for business, Michael Jackson.

Use of Skype in business is widespread: Of Skype's 113 million registered users, 30 percent say they use it for business, Jackson said, speaking at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris on Monday.

The proprietary and hard-to-block connection protocols used by Skype's peer-to-peer communications system have raised concerns about security in some businesses.

"There was a rumor we disrupt networks to get around things," Jackson said. That started, Jackson said, "because we design things for consumers so they work in any network environment. The back end of that is, it works in any network environment." That makes it difficult for enterprises to block the software, he said.

That was a concern for Intel's chief information officer, John N. Johnson, when some Intel employees installed Skype software on their own initiative.

"What if some vulnerability developed, or if someone came up with a way to use it as a transport into the enterprise? We couldn't tell who was using it, or where, if it needed to be patched," said Johnson, speaking on the sidelines of the forum.

Skype has worked with Intel to meet the company's security requirements, Johnson said. Together, they came up with a proxy server approach, allowing Johnson to cut off the software's network access if a security problem is identified. "It doesn't go straight out onto the Internet any more," Johnson said.

To make Skype connect via the proxy server, Intel forced its Skype-using employees to upgrade their software client to a version supporting proxy connections. For Johnson, that presented no problem: "I have a way to scan the environment to see what's installed."

Skype, designed for consumer use, has much in common with text instant messaging, Johnson said. "IM started as a consumer technology. Now most businesses couldn't work without it."

Johnson himself used Skype "for a bit," he said -- but stopped because Skype wasn't part of the standard software image on a new computer. "I keep changing computers, and I don't have time to reload every little thing on it," he said.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Trend Micro launches anti-botnet service. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Trend Micro announced a new service to help large organizations and Internet service providers (ISPs) fight networks of zombie machines, known as "botnets."

The new service, dubbed InterCloud, was announced Monday and is intended to help organizations fight botnets, fast-changing networks of rogue computers that are used in denial of service (DOS) attacks, spam campaigns, identity theft, and other malicious acts. The new service uses behavioral analysis technology, developed by Trend, and known as Behavioral Analysis Security Engine (BASE) to spot and isolate bot machines on managed networks, according to Paul Moriarty, director of product development for Internet Content Security at Trend.



BASE analyzes application and network infrastructure data, such as DNS queries and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables. The engine can spot behavior indicative of bots, such as an abnormal series of DNS queries.

The service also uses data from Trend's global network of researchers and customers to provide intelligence on new or evolving bot activity. The company's Bot Identification Team identify and monitor bot activity globally, Trend said.

InterCloud relies, in part, on a new, hardened and revamped DNS server that allows Trend to aggregate suspicious data and report on host systems that may be infected with bot programs, Moriarty said.

"We can take a day's worth of DNS logs and tell them how many spambots or zombies they have. That's a capability that most ISPs lack," he said.

InterCloud customers can remediate infected systems by denying them access to the network, or by quarantining them and pushing out necessary updates or scanning and disinfecting them, said Dave Rand, CTO of Trend's Internet Content Security group.

The InterCloud service includes a Web-based management portal for viewing and reporting on bot activity and managing security policies, Trend said.

Botnets are one of the fastest growing and most dangerous online threats, said Rand. On any day, Trend tracks millions of infected systems that have been joined to one of a number of global bot networks. But bot infections can also jump up, depending on the availability of easy to exploit security holes, such as the recent VML vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, or the Windows Server Service vulnerability that was disclosed by Microsoft in August.

Trend identified more than 250,000 new bots each day for the two days after an exploit was developed for the Server Service hole, which Microsoft patched with MS06-040. Typically, the company might identify 250,000 new bots over the course of a month, Moriarty said.

Trend researchers are also spotting many more targeted attacks, in which bots are being written for specific purposes, such as culling sensitive information from the targeted network, then forwarding it back to a command and control server, usually in a foreign country. Many of those appear aimed at identity theft, or espionage against the U.S. government or government contractors.

Few enterprise security products can scale to support hundreds of thousands or millions of hosts, which means that ISPs and very large organizations often rely on internal security teams and products to manage security. However, those company-focused teams lack the broad perspective that companies with global research operations and a global customer base can muster, Moriarty said.

InterCloud, which will be licensed by the seat, will offer ISPs the prospect of turning security into a profit center, by focusing attention on the relatively small number of infected systems, then targeting their owners with software, such at Trend's Web-based HouseCall antivirus scanner, that can clean their system and keep it from becoming reinfected. ISPs could then get a share of any software sales made through that channel, Moriarty said.

Trend Micro will feature InterCloud Security Service and the BASE technology at DEMOfall '06 this week in San Diego.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle releases new piece in telecom platform. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As part of its ongoing bid to target telecommunications providers, Oracle took the wraps off Virtual PBX, an important new piece of its planned service delivery platform (SDP).

Generally available Monday, Virtual PBX (public branch exchange) is one of the deliverables Oracle committed to back in April when the database, applications and middleware vendor firstlaid out its SDP plans.

Those in the telecommunications industry are coming under increasing pressure to rapidly adapt their businesses to mirror the ongoing convergence of data, voice, and video services. To cope with the speed of change, carriers, network operators and systems integrators are moving their IT operations to a SOA (service-oriented architecture) approach.



Oracle's SDP aims to offer telecommunications developers a single programming environment based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) so they can build new services quickly as well as integrate and manage those offerings with existing services.

An operator-hosted PBX service for small, medium and larger enterprises, Virtual PBX includes functionality to enable the handling of incoming calls without requiring major changes to the telecom network's underlying architecture as well as the ability to offer specific bundles of telecom features to individual customers.

Back in April, Oracle sketched out its SDP strategy, explaining that some pieces of the platform already exist like its Fusion middleware and its Oracle 10g relational database, while pledging to release others, including Virtual PBX, later in the year.

As part of SDP, Oracle is expanding its middleware so that users can access newer mobile, voice services and enterprise applications through traditional communication networks and networks based on Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem also known as IMS and VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol).

Oracle has yet to commit to an exact time for when SDP will be complete.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Vietnam: 7th Micro Enterprises Sub-Group Meeting opens in Hanoi. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - Under the framework of the 13th SME Ministerial Meeting, the seventh Micro Enterprises Sub-Group Meeting (MESG) opened in Hanoi on September 25.

Present at the meeting were APEC member economies, the APEC secretariat, APEC official observers as well as Macau and Chinese observers.

The meeting is aimed at discussing the theme Building ME capacity for market integration and sub-themes on business enabling environment for micro-enterprises, facilitating micro-enterprises to resources, enhancing business opportunities for micro-enterprises.



According to the 2002 Establishments Census in Vietnam, there were about 2.7 million micro enterprises, constituting over 97 percent of all business entities and generating over 5 million jobs, which accounted for about 52 percent of all non-farm employment.

The majority of theses businesses were engaged in retail trade, manufacturing, hotels and restaurants, transportation and personal services.

Speaking at the meeting, director general of the agency for SME Development under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) Nguyen Van Trung said - I am sure that we can all share our first hand experiences regarding the difficulties of reaching millions of micro entrepreneurs with effective support measures and programmes'.

As the leader of the Agency for SME Development, I am looking forward to the discussions and the joint-learning opportunity we will have during the Micro Enterprise Sub-Group and would like to offer my support to the theme and meeting format proposed by the Australian Delegation for the Micro Enterprises Sub-Group Meeting in 2007, he said.

During the meeting, delegates also heard the Micro Enterprises 2006 Work Plan, evaluation reports on APEC funded projects and new project proposals. - VOV

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports
The Americas' First Broadband World Forum Closes with Breaking News, Leading-Edge Panels, Top Vendors and International Attendance. Check it out:
CHICAGO --(Business Wire)-- With attendees from Canada, Mexico, the U.S. and many countries from Europe and Asia as well, the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) wrapped up the Americas' first Broadband World Forum with breaking news, leading-edge panels, top vendors and an international audience in Vancouver this month with TELUS as the official host sponsor.



IEC President John Janowiak stated, "Broadband is one of the hottest, most topical issues around the globe today. What we discuss and learn at the Broadband World Forums will affect every consumer and business in some shape or form. The transformations in our industry will affect our daily lives -- how way we receive our information, conduct our business, entertain ourselves, and more. We are ecstatic that we were able to bring the forum to the Americas and we look forward to next year's Broadband World Forum Americas in Brazil with Telefonica as the official host sponsor."

This year's sponsors included TELUS, the official host sponsor, Siemens, Bell Canada, Accenture, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, ECI Telecom, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Redback Networks, Visionael, Texas Instruments, and Operax.

Nashville attendee Eko Ishii of Cwell Institute, LLC, commented, "Our clients from Japan thoroughly enjoyed the programs they attended. Beginning with our registration, we truly appreciated the IEC's assistance at the Broadband World Forum Americas."

The Broadband World Forum Americas' world-class programming consisted of speakers from service and content providers such as TELUS, BT, Bell Canada, Canby Telecom, Cox Communications, Deutsche Telekom K.K, Easynet, Rogers Communication, Sasktel, Sprint Nextel, Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and Verizon.

The IEEE Communications Society held their annual EntNet at the Broadband World Forum Americas.

Gabriel Jakobson, EntNet 2006 General Chair, commented, "The 6th IEEE Conference on Enterprise Networking and Services (ENTNET 2006) is an annual tradition bringing together business leaders, visionaries, vendors, practitioners, and technologists. This year ENTENT took place in Vancouver in association with the IEC's Broadband World Forum Americas, which had an excellent program including technical panel sessions, workshops on advanced wireless technologies and a tutorial program."

The DSL Forum also introduced its new plans for broadband with its BroadbandSuite at the Broadband World Forum Americas previewing the latest features of its BroadbandControl, BroadbandAccess, and BroadbandHome to attendees and media.

Operax, Siemens, ECI, Redback Networks, PeerApp, Telcordia, and Modulus Video presented their latest technologies and services in the TecPreview Theatre, which took place on the exhibition floor.

For photos, keynote addresses, and event highlights, visit www.iec.org/events/2006/bbwf_americas/ or contact Lisa Reyes at +1-312-559-3325 or [email protected].

Under an Assumed Name

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Under an Assumed Name. Check it out:
(Access Control & Security Systems Integration Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The year of 2006 has been a busy one for potential identity theft, including the 26.5 million records contained on a stolen VA laptop, the 21,000 federal direct student borrowers' data exposed on a Department of Education Web site and the missing back-up tape from the California Department of Mental Health that referenced the names, addresses and telephone numbers of nearly 10,000 employees.



The Federal Trade Commission received nearly 700,000 fraud and identity theft complaints in 2005. Consumer Affairs estimates in 2005 that more than 50 million Americans received notification that their personal data had been stolen due to a data security breach. The illegal use of Social Security numbers has also risen sharply from 11,000 reports in 1998 to more than 65,000 cases five years later. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse lists the total number of publicly reported breached records since February 2005 as surpassing 90 million. Even more fearsome is the fact that identity theft is a common practice for terrorists.

Identity theft, a federal crime, happens when someone uses another person's identification such as name, Social Security number, license number or account number to commit fraud. Theft occurs by creating new financial accounts (credit cards, loans, etc.) or by taking over existing accounts such as checking, savings and investment portfolios, as well as committing crimes (DUI, shoplifting, etc.) while using the assumed identity.

While the growing use of technology and the Internet have exacerbated identity theft, it is by no means the root cause. The FTC reported only 3 percent of identity fraud victims cited misuse of their Internet accounts. High-profile identity thieves such as Abraham Abdallah, Philip Cummings and James Rinaldo Jackson routinely relied on publicly available information and pretexting or posing as a legitimate representative to obtain private financial data that allowed them to steal million of dollars from celebrities and business magnates prior to their arrests. During their incarcerations, they continued to perpetuate their crimes via telephone and the U.S. mail.

Terrence DeFranco, CEO of Edentify, providers of identity theft detection and prevention solutions and an associate member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, explains that data is often acquired through low-tech means such as shoulder surfing, stolen laptops and dumpster diving.

Stealing identities is still done in a low-tech fashion, but the way of carrying out the actual crimes afterwards are enabled by technology, DeFranco says. Once the data is in the possession of the fraudster, that is where technology really takes over. What technology has actually done is increase the volume of transactions that can take place.

DeFranco also attributes the rise of identity theft over the last seven years to the fact that identity data has been separated from its owner. He points out that identity verification for online transactions is based upon the validity of presented data, not an actual person. This is where he sees room for improvement.

Besides protecting the data once it has entered their possession, DeFranco believes that financial institutions and government agencies need to better scrutinize the data as it is introduced to their systems. If I steal your data, it shouldn't be so easy for me to walk into JCPenney and get an account in 10 seconds, DeFranco says. Scrutiny of the information when it is presented is just as important as holding on to the information safely.

With the increase in identity theft, vendors are responding with both consumer and enterprise solutions for combating personal data theft.

Gartner reported that in the first five months of 2004, 57 million Americans received phishing emails a popular Internet spoofing scam in which identity thieves masquerade as legitimate business Web pages to gain access to usernames, passwords, and PIN and account numbers. Popular consumer products such as the Zone Alarm by Zone Labs, Redwood City, Calif., and Norton Internet Security by Symantec Corp., Cupertino, Calif., have integrated features to prevent phishing attacks, which have been linked to spam, spyware and malware.

Realizing that a data breach can create both a negative financial impact and damage an organization's reputation, enterprises are responding to the threat of identity theft in an assortment of methods such as two-factor authentication and encrypted sessions. Craig Isaac, president of Neon Software, Lafayette, Calif., developers of intrusion detection and network discovery software, help solve the problems surrounding data theft both internal and external from the network. Seeing network access control as the direction in which organizations are moving, Isaac says, Companies are looking closely at who is getting access to their networks, how they are getting access and where they are connecting to the network.

That level of access control may have stopped 2,000 patrons of the Wichita State University in Kansas from having their credit card numbers stolen due to the unauthorized access of three computers in their College of Fine Arts box office.

In an effort to further curb identity theft, 34 states have enacted data breach legislation requiring organizations to notify those whose private personal information has been compromised. This practice lets individuals be more proactive by placing fraud alerts on their credit reports and by closely monitoring their financial accounts. Unfortunately, the majority of identity theft targets do not realize they have been victimized until it is too late often when making a significant purchase such as a vehicle or a home. House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., pointed out in an interview after the recent passage of the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act (ITPEA) that it often takes years for identity theft victims to clear fraudulent credit history and criminal charges.

It comes as no surprise that laptop computers are popular targets of thieves. The University of Washington's Medical Center, Ernst & Young and the Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colo., have all had laptops stolen that contained thousands of private personal records.

While policies against storing sensitive data on portable media including laptops, USB drives, CDs and mobile drives such as iPods are gaining, they failed for the VA when a long-time analyst at the Veterans' Administration had their now-famous laptop stolen. In addition to stepping up its cyber security awareness training after the theft, the VA has chosen to begin encrypting all personal data that could be used to commit identity theft, regardless of location.

Two of the most effective measures against identity theft are education and common sense. Organizations that routinely handle personal and financial information are also taking non-technical measures to protect data. Background checks for even low-level customer service representatives and extensive training on how to spot possible fraud are becoming customary.

Additionally, consumer education in regard to both preventing and identifying possible identity theft is on the rise. In the wake of publicized data breaches, the media and the victims flood consumers with advice to regularly check credit reports with major credit bureaus and to call creditors and banks when statements do not arrive on time. Moreover, consumers are advised to shred unsolicited credit applications and to never give out any personal information to unsolicited telephone calls and e-mails.

According to the FTC, the good news is that the dollar amount per instance of identity theft is decreasing, which means both organizations and individuals are beginning to stop fraud from rolling out of control. People are getting educated and looking out for it a lot more actively, DeFranco says. As long as we're doing that, it's a great trend but the numbers [of theft] are still pretty significant. DeFranco also warns that fraudsters are looking for new ways to steal identities.

Despite better education about identity theft, fraudsters are out there reading the same warnings and finding alternative ways to pilfer identities. What is yesterday's phishing is today's pharming or redirecting a legitimate IP request to a bogus Web site. Identity thieves are looking for the least intrusive and least risky way for stealing information, DeFranco says. When so much of it is out there on the Internet being sold in chat rooms and stolen in low-tech ways, it is really discouraging. But preventing people from handing over information by educating them about identity theft seems to be finally taking hold.

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

Edentify.75Symantec Corp.76Zone Labs77Neon Software78

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

Converge With Caution

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Converge With Caution. Check it out:
(Access Control & Security Systems Integration Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The security industry is entering a new and exciting evolution. Security convergence into the IT world has opened up many possibilities for solutions and integration, but are we jeopardizing the integrity of our security solutions in the process? Are we more vulnerable to system downtime and loss of information? What are the pros and cons of full convergence onto the IT network?



Deploying physical security initiatives on the IT network can indeed open up concerns for the integrity of security programs.

The first concern would be for system reliability, back-up and recovery. The network itself needs to be evaluated for reliability and for redundancy of the network infrastructure. Many of today's corporate networks are plagued with downtime and poor architecture. Networks have a tendency to fail and run into bandwidth and collision issues. While these issues may not seem to be as prevalent in state-of-the-art enterprise networks, in the small/medium business (SMB) environment, IT budgets and maintenance are not keeping up with the need for reliable networks. Thus, a good audit of the network should be the first step when considering a converged security project.

The next issue, which has been a problem even when security systems stand alone as silo solutions is the quality of computers and servers. In the case of access control, manufacturers suggest minimum specifications, and it seems these solutions end up running on the cheapest computers available. Most of these access control computers never get updated or maintained through their life cycles, causing even more issues and potential problems, such as system downtime. Also, the DVR has been almost a fear factor in many security operations. The same problem exists here as vendors sometimes build computers in-house while cutting costs by using the least expensive processors, motherboards, controllers and hard drives. As these systems are connected to the networks for remote client access, it has made them vulnerable to viruses and worm attacks. Thus, an inexpensive solution could cost more in the long run.

We have entered a new era in video surveillance for the enterprise, as Network Video Recorders (NVRs) now enable security or IT managers the choice of what server and storage can be used. It puts the end-user in control over the equipment that has to be supported and the level of fault tolerance or fault-resilient servers are used in the security application. This level of servers can ensure uptime and protect the solution as a whole. NVRs also let the end-user determine the quality and quantity of storage for a video solution, allowing the ability to capture, store and achieve exactly the amount of video needed in the application.

So what about viruses and worms? Any time computers are attached to a network either a LAN or WAN there is a risk of viruses, so adequate protection should be implemented, and virus definitions should be kept up to date.

The concerns don't stop there. Almost every network video system DVR or NVR and some access control systems allow for users to log in remotely. This capability leaves holes for others to try to enter and gain control over the security systems. Web access or secure VPN (virtual private networking) ensures adequate firewalls, and these systems should have authentication and credentials needed to access these systems. A good hacker with enough time can gain at least some level of access. But what about the hacker who sits outside the security director's residence and monitors his activity and home wireless network until he learns the needed access codes to the corporate network?

These are just some of the security concerns that may come up when considering deploying a converged physical security solution. But there are steps to mitigate some of the risk. Many proactive enterprises are already using them.

It takes a converged effort between the security and IT departments to deploy an IP-based security solution. Unifying the effort helps to gain the resources to effectively unify the overall risk management perspective. By integrating the security initiatives, organizations gain the perspective of the IT personnel, who tend to focus on intrusion prevention and risk management. While IT focuses on network stability, redundancy, backup and recovery, physical security looks at perimeters, incidents and violations and the safety of personnel. All these disciplines need to be synchronized and managed to effectively deploy and operate a converged physical security solution.

In the past, IT was often reluctant to cooperate or interact with other departments; but security and IT have, in many instances, received a corporate mandate to converge physical security into the network infrastructure. This trend is becoming commonplace.

Looking at the potential of implementing a physical security solution, there are decisions to make. The solutions available in a truly converged security program create many advantages over a more traditional approach, including:

higher levels of security, both physically and logically;

efficiencies in response time of an incident;

higher levels of reliability and redundancy;

more flexibility and capabilities;

cost effectiveness and reduction: potential for ROI (Return on Investment); and

more self-sufficient security operations.

How can a security solution riding on the corporate network do all this? Being attached to the network enables security to look at the information from the edge devices or servers as data and analyze this data through algorithms. This can help them make certain decisions based on predetermined rules, taking some of the human factor out of the equation. More efficiency can be achieved by using databases to enroll and unsnarl users from multiple systems in a credential application. Convergence offers one point of control of information for systems like administration, finance, POS (point of sale), access control loyalty programs, logical access and many more.

Security convergence into the IT infrastructure helps make security solutions bullet-proof. Using servers that are fault-tolerant ensures system uptime and performance. Also, the fact that servers and devices are on the network allows security to monitor the health of these systems and devices, thus creating a huge advantage over more traditional silo security applications.

As far as flexibility and cost, organizations can use this data for just about anything the user, integrator or vendor can think of, creating the ability to go far beyond the current state of security. Not to mention, by using the network infrastructure, organizations can save substantially over stand-alone security systems. IT can now be a resource for the physical security department minimizing the need for outside support of the security program.

In short, the benefits are well worth the risks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Gompers is founder and President and CEO of Gompers Inc., which is made up of Gompers Technologies Design Group (GTD Group), Gompers Technologies Testing and Research Group (GTTR Group) and the Gompers Alliance. The Gompers Alliance pools talent from top consulting firms in the security, communications and data industries to provide total solution plans and services to clients in North America and around the world. He has more than 20 years of experience in the security industry. Want to share an example of your own integration experience? E-mail questions or comments to him at [email protected]

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

Heightened Awareness

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Heightened Awareness. Check it out:
(Access Control & Security Systems Integration Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Security professionals know that support from upper management is crucial, a truth that is demonstrated at Parker Jewish Institute, an adult health care and rehabilitation facility in New Hyde Park, N.Y. James Civil, director of safety, security and support services, credits the 527-bed facility's president and chief executive officer, Michael N. Rosenblut, with taking an aggressive, proactive approach to security. That approach has resulted in key improvements at the facility, from an expanded and upgraded CCTV system, to new visitor management and access control systems, to a restructuring of the security department.



As a facility in New York City, we have a heightened awareness of the necessity for security, so we have put systems in place to monitor access control very closely, Civil says. Our CEO and president has been very proactive and supportive, staying current on security and technology issues.

Civil believes that long-term care facilities have historically trailed hospitals in embracing security technology, a trend that is currently changing, he says. He believes Parker is at the forefront of the security evolution occurring in these health care facilities. Many long-term-care facilities are coming to see that we have to make the same investment in security as hospitals, Civil says. A prime example of this would be the technology hospitals have embraced to curb infant abductions. With the aging Baby Boomer population, it is becoming more apparent that long-term-care facilities must take similar care to protect wandering, eloping patients at their facilities.

Parker has had technology in place for some time to deal with resident safety and security, using a code-alert system by RF Technology, Brookfield, Wis., consisting of bracelets with a transmitter worn by certain residents, and receivers mounted at specified doors to pick up signals should a resident wearing a bracelet approach. The upgraded CCTV system has augmented and enhanced this code-alert system.

We have the code-alert receivers installed at locations where we feel there is a vulnerability to residents leaving their unit or the building, Civil says. For instance, the main entrance would be one such vulnerable point. We have placed cameras strategically to help us address issues relating to unauthorized resident movement.

Civil previously worked for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. as regional associate director of hospital police for the Queens Health Network. He is currently responsible for two Parker facilities the main, eight-story, 527-bed facility, which has approximately 1,000 employees; and the One Delaware Drive site, which has hospice, adult day care, diagnostic and treatment services, and a home health care program.

CCTV upgraded

Civil has supervised the upgrading of CCTV, access control and visitor management systems, along with the restructuring of the security department. Three years ago, Parker was using a black-and-white, analog system with standard VCR recording. We had fewer than 30 cameras total, and no pan/tilt/zoom, Civil says. Since that time, we have doubled the number of cameras, and gone to a color, digital system. We now have approximately 70 cameras, including a Pelco Spectra Dome 3 day/night pan/tilt/zoom camera in front of the main facility. This camera overlooks part of the parking lot of Parker, the front of the facility, the driveway and the adjacent Long Island Jewish Hospital Center's physician's parking lot.

The other cameras are fixed, color Panasonic mini-domes, Civil says. They are discreet, small and unobtrusive indoor cameras. We use the WVCF 224 Panasonic cameras. We also have four Mitsubishi DX-PC 25U 240 gigabyte Digital Video Recorders, each with a 16-camera color multiplexer. All 16 cameras record in real time simultaneously. One of these DVRs is dedicated to the Delaware Drive site, where we have five indoor cameras.

The cameras, powered by a central Altronix UL-listed 16-camera master power supply, are connected by plenum-rated cable to the DVRs. A cable from each DVR is then connected to Parker's LAN through a network jack. The cameras can be viewed by authorized users from their PCs. Software for the DVRs has been installed on selected PCs.

As the system administrator, Civil decides who among his security staff is authorized to view the cameras, and at what access level. I set the access parameters, Civil says. Security supervisors have modified access to the network to review incidents or time frames, but cannot change any of the recording parameters, he says. The cameras were supplied and installed by SV Video Service, Jericho, N.Y.

All entrances and exits in the main building, are monitored by the cameras as well as strategic points in which patient movement needs to be monitored. One camera, for instance, has been placed at the 8th floor roof stairwell and covers the inside corridor leading to the roof landing.

In addition, there is a 20-inch LCD flat screen at the lobby desk with a built-in switcher that monitors lower-level cameras, which lead to the adjacent building. As at any facility, the cameras have paid for themselves in helping to control and deter employee theft, Civil says

Access control enhances security

In addition to upgrading and expanding the CCTV system, Parker expects to have a new access control system from Continental Instruments, Amityville, N.Y., installed at the Delaware Drive building by early fall. A self-service kiosk to streamline and upgrade visitor management at the main facility will be installed in the near future.

The Continental Instruments Enterprise Class Access Control system uses mini-prox readers from HID Global, Irvine, Calif. Six readers will be installed at Delaware in strategic locations, Civil says. The software will be installed on a PC, with Civil overseeing authorization of access levels. The system includes the SuperTerm 8-door controller, and all employees at Delaware Drive will be issued prox cards from Metropolitan Data Solutions, Melville, N.Y.

We're planning to expand the system to the main building next year, Civil says. We will also have the capacity to add controllers and readers at Delaware Drive should we need to expand there.

New visitor management system

While the new access control system at the Delaware Drive site will enhance security, an electronic kiosk to be installed at the main facility's lobby will upgrade visitor management. The system, from LobbyGuard Solutions LLC, Raleigh, N.C., is a single unit with a built-in camera, bar code scanner, printer and LCD screen that can sit on a counter.

Visitors will need a valid I.D, Civil says. The system will print a visitor badge, in the form of a label, which has a bar code. The bar code on the pass will enable us to scan visitors as they leave, as well. Visitors can use the kiosk by themselves, or ask for help from one of the security officers on duty at the lobby.

The current procedure is manual, Civil says, with visitors signing in at the lobby and telling the security officer where they are going. The new system will be automatic, will keep a record of visitors and will require an I.D. The visitors will be scanned out with a bar code scanner used by the security officer, Civil says.

Security department restructured

Civil's security staff is an important part of Parker's overall security program. A combination of in-house and outsourced personnel what he calls a hybrid staff. Initially, the staff was all in-house, or proprietary. The transition from proprietary to hybrid has worked extremely well, he says, and reflects management's commitment to security. We retained certain members of the original department and created a supervisory level. Now, the supervisors are proprietary, while the security officers are contract.

Parker uses Securitas Inc. for the contract officers. We contract approximately six security officers, Civil says. We have six in-house supervisors, who work day, afternoon and night shifts, along with a per diem supervisor. This arrangement gives us the flexibility of having supervisory personnel available when and where needed.

Civil has carefully chosen people of varied backgrounds to provide the security force with diverse skills. Supervisors may come from law enforcement or correctional backgrounds, and all are certified fire drill instructors, Civil says.

Security supervisors are responsible for patrol tours, fire safety, fire drills and equipment maintenance, among other tasks. They use the PulseStar guard tour system by Videx, Corvallis, Ore., which includes a small metallic wand with memory. The software, installed in a PC, is programmed for pre-determined tours. Officers touch the wand to a tag on the wall at specific points on their tour to verify their presence. When the tour is ended, the data from each tour is downloaded from the wand into the PC. In this way, Parker can verify that the tours have been completed. One security supervisor prints out daily tour reports.

Civil's officers are also involved with life safety, from fire drills to disaster training. Fire, disaster and Code Gray (patient elopement) drills are conducted regularly. Roof drills help employees deal with the potential of patients wandering toward the roof. We also do table-top drills with both managerial and non-managerial staff, which emphasize planning. We'll discuss a scenario, such as an approaching storm, and ways to deal with the event. This gives people a chance to critique the plans and see how they would act in these situations, Civil says.

Parker also uses an alarm system monitored through Electronix, Huntington Station, N.Y. These are audible alarms for which we follow an emergency procedure including response and investigation of the alarm, Civil says.

Providing for upgrades, expansion and new technology are not simply one-time tasks, but represent Parker's on-going, vigilant approach to the safety and security of patients, employees and visitors.

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

Altronix4Continental Instruments5Electronix6HID Global7LobbyGuard Solutions8Metropolitan Data Solutions9Mitsubishi10Panasonic11Pelco2RF Technology13Securitas Inc.14SV Video Service15Videx16

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

New Products

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New Products. Check it out:
(Access Control & Security Systems Integration Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Network Camera

One-click pan/tilt/zoom

Designed for indoor surveillance, the camera features no moving parts, two-way audio, power-over-ethernet, a three-megapixel sensor and a wide-angle lens for zooming within areas less than 500 square feet. Axis 212 PTZ, Axis Communications (axis.com)CIRCLE #31 ON CARD



Video Stabilizer

For mobile video applications

The system corrects video shaking that occurs in camera applications and unsteadiness on pre-recorded VCR tapes. Suitable for field applications, the stabilizer provides sub-pixel level correction precision, correcting up to 40 percent in vertical or horizontal directions. The system is suitable for use in cars, planes and boats as well as for highway and railway monitoring. IVS-100, For-A Corporation of America, (for-a.com)CIRCLE #32 ON CARD

Access Control System

Uses ethernet technology

The upgraded system features AES 128-bit encryption, IP camera and DS RealVue support, and First Person In capability, which operates on a timed schedule. The system's ethernet technology delivers power and communications (power over ethernet) to door controllers via a CAT 5/6 cable. Additional card defaults have been added, and a translation editor is offered for language customization. Intelli-M PoE version 6.1, Integral Technologies (integraltech.com)CIRCLE # 33 ON CARD

Network Communication Controller

Maintains security over widespread facilities

The system's embedded panel manages communication directly between the controller and the supplier's EntraPass access control software with onboard TCP/IP capability. This reduces cost of access control by decreasing maintenance costs. The controller integrates global anti-passback, system-wide alarms and data back-up protection. KT-NCC, Tyco Fire and Security (kantech.com)CIRCLE #34 ON CARD

Mobile Video System

Records four cameras per vehicle

The in-vehicle surveillance system also provides real-time wireless video to distant command-and-control centers. Each camera records three resolutions, and the video is available remotely with five combinations of resolution, frame rate and data rate. The system is suitable for law enforcement and mass transportation applications. LIVE In-car Video System Boundless Security Systems Inc. (boundlesssecurity.com)CIRCLE #38 ON CARD

Hybrid Digital Video Solution

Features upgraded PC platform with dual-core processors

Features include improved noise filtering in motion detection, multiple pan/tilt/zoom camera tours with schedule, and the freedom to move cameras remotely. The system is PC-based and supports up to 32 analog cameras and IP cameras, which can be added in increments of four, up to 32. Capture cards record 240 frames per second at standard resolution without synchronization. HBV400 version 9.7, Stanley Security Solutions (stanleysecuritysolutions.com)CIRCLE #39 ON CARD

Video Management Software

For managing loss prevention

The software add-on integrates point-of-sale and automatic teller machine transaction data with IP video images for simultaneous searching, viewing, analysis and export of evidence. The program is compatible with the supplier's XProtect Enterprise, Professional or Basis-plus management platforms. Users can search transactions by date, time and query and view video sequences by hours, minutes and seconds. XProtect Transact version 2.0, Milestone Systems (milestonesys.com)CIRCLE #40 ON CARD

Access Control Solution

Supports existing access control hardware

The system unifies existing suppliers into the intelligent Security Operations Center (iSOC) V5 to offer a single graphical-user interface. The solution offers access control, graphical maps, automation, reporting, alarm monitoring, PLC control, video badging, visitor management and server software to integrate physical and IT security. Longtitude IP Access Control, DVTel Inc. (dvtel.com)CIRCLE #41 ON CARD

Dome Camera

Protects against contaminants and moisture

The camera features stainless steel housing and special valves that minimize decrease in pressure over time. Pressure and internal temperature readings are relayed back to the control center. The product line includes 18X or 22X optical zoom color cameras and 23X or 26X optical zoom day/night cameras. V1750 Series PTZ Dome Cameras, Infinova (infinova.com)CIRCLE #42 ON CARD

Digital Video Recorders

For high-end security applications

The redesigned four-channel IP models feature a curved, silver-molded front panel and can be integrated with various access control and video management solutions. Kollector Elite XG, Kollector Pro XG, Vicon Industries Inc. (vicon-cctv.com)CIRCLE #43 ON CARD

Stainless Steel Electronic Cylinders

Convert mechanical locks

Stainless steel components including the front inner core, lock face and contact pins enhance performance in wet or corrosive environments. The cylinders are designed to convert existing mechanical locks and padlocks into a complete electronic access control system without hardwiring. Cyberlock Electronic Cylinders Videx (videx.com)CIRCLE #44 ON CARD

Passive Infrared Motion Detector

For ceiling-mount applications

The wireless intrusion detector features a hard lens that offers wide coverage patterns at low-mounting heights, a built-in tamper switch and selectable high/low sensitivity. Designed for use with the supplier's DMP 1100D/1100X wireless receivers, the system is immune to sunlight, halogen lights and fluorescent lights. The detector offers 360-degree/65.6-foot diameter coverage when mounted on a 10-foot-high ceiling. Two-Way Wireless PIR 360 Motion Detector, DMP (dmp.com)CIRCLE #45 ON CARD

Day/night Camera

For 24-hour surveillance

The camera features a movable IR cut filter that produces true color rendition during daytime and is removed to increase infrared sensitivity at night. Internal logic based on-scene illumination; an external light sensor or an RS485 communication port controls the changeover from day to night. The camera can be used indoors, and, when combined with the supplier's environmental housings, can be applied outdoors. A six-zone backlight system provides for proper exposure. HCD484E True Day/Night Camera, Honeywell (honeywellvideo.com)CIRCLE #46 ON CARD

Video Alarm Verification Software

For remote and central station monitoring

The software integrates with the supplier's IQeye700 cameras to offer a complete video alarm verification system. Users may browse the software to view live and recorded images simultaneously. The system records multiple pre/post events and exports AVI clips for e-mail and archiving. IQverify, IQinvision (iqeye.com)CIRCLE #47 ON CARD

Cashless Vending System

Incorporates contactless smart card technology

The product line incorporates HID's iCLASS 13.56 MHz smart card technology to increase transaction speed and convenience for the user. The system eliminates cash handling, reduces machine maintenance and extends card life by reducing mechanical contact between the card and reader. Additional applications include physical and logical access biometric authentication. QiWAVE Cashless Vending System, QI Systems Inc. (qisystems.ca)CIRCLE #48 ON CARD

Aggravated Assault System

For remote responders and school systems

The ethernet/Internet-based system provides real-time detection and notification of alarm sensors. School systems, school administrators and teachers can signal an emergency condition with a wireless key-fob that is detected by a local receiver to signal an alarm. Remote responders monitor each area's element of danger using the SecurePad life safety station. The system uses motion and door contact detector technology to reveal any activity. NetTalon 3000 Aggravated Assault System NetTalon (nettalon.com)CIRCLE #50 ON CARD

Command and Control Software

For complete situational awareness

The software combines data from various subsystems via site maps to keep the operator informed. The system features live and recorded video, pan/tilt/zoom camera control and a view of recent card access activity. The system can also take video snapshots and export information directly via e-mail. Surveillint, Proximex Corp. (proximex.com)CIRCLE # 51 ON CARD

Nurse Call System

For communication between staff and patient

The system integrates digital duplex intercoms, infrared staff and equipment locators, PBX and wireless phones and pocket pagers. These capabilities allow caregivers to stay in touch with patients to maintain a high quality of care. The system offers five master consoles and CAT-5 wiring. Provider 680 Nurse Call System, Jeron Electronic Systems Inc. (jeron.com)CIRCLE #52 ON CARD

Wireless Video Surveillance

Remote viewing capability

The camera line offers long-range IP 802.11N wireless surveillance in a self-configuring plug-and-play format. Users can connect up to 10 cameras to a network digital video manager and view them live from a Web browser or cell phone. Smartvue S2 Wireless/Wire IP Video Security Solution Smartvue Corp. (smartvue.com)CIRCLE #53 ON CARD

Access Power Controller

Multiple configuration options simplify installation

The controller interfaces with access control panels and routes power to devices including magnetic locks, electric strikes, door holders, card readers and biometrics. The system features 16 trigger-controlled wet/dry outputs via two eight-output access power controllers. The controllers can be configured simultaneously to offer 12vDC and/or 24vDC at up to 12 amps of total power. Maxim 33 Access Power Controller, Altronix (altronix.com)CIRCLE #49 ON CARD

Network Camera

For IP network video surveillance

The camera features 1280960 resolution on a -in. Fuji Super CCD along with 30-frame-per-second video streaming, optical and digital zoom and multiple-speed pan/tilt/zoom capability. The system contains an SD card slot and integrated two-way audio to allow communication with security personnel or to hear intruders. The camera can be monitored and controlled from a Web browser or network communication device. IK-WB15A Network Camera, Toshiba (ipvideo.toshiba.com)CIRCLE #54 ON CARD

Exit Alarm

For exit point monitoring

The controlled door management system combines standard door management functions with an audible alarm that activates for a forced door violation. The alarm sounds continuously until it is reset, using a key switch, remote contact or onboard auto-reset function. The alarm is adjustable from zero to 60 seconds. Applications include exit doors, emergency exits, stairwells, dormitories, file vaults and internal warehouse doors. ES4300A Series Exit Alarm, Designed Security Inc. (dsigo.com)CIRCLE #55 ON CARD

Hybrid Surveillance DVR/NVR

Includes Windows XP DOM device

The 16-channel system features remote surveillance monitoring, recording and playback, retrievable through a LAN or Internet capability. The system's added software allows the user to connect to analog and IP cameras. Other functions include 720480 resolution support, PTZ preset point alarm support, SMS/MMS alarm support and playback by search and bookmark. NV6480DOM Hybrid Surveillance DVR/NVR, AVerMedia Inc. (avermedia.com)CIRCLE #56 ON CARD

Digital Video Recorder

User expandable

The recorder uses MPEG4 recording and allows eight channels of real-time video and audio to be recorded at 30 images per second. Onboard recording capacity is 250 GB and is expandable to 2 TB. WJ-RT208 Series DVRs Panasonic Security Systems (panasonic.com/security)CIRCLE #57 ON CARD

Product Focus

VISITOR MANAGEMENT

ID Verification Software

Validates authenticity of state and provincial driver's licenses

The supplier has added Intelli-Check identification and verification software to its visitor management software systems. Intelli-Check's DCM/2 2D bar-code and triple-stripe reading module is capable of confirming the authenticity of government-issued driver's licenses, military IDs and other identity documents. The supplier's product line also screens visitors against historical directories, tracks citizenship and passport information and confirms visitor authorization levels. PassagePoint Professional Software System, Enterprise Video Management Software System, STOPware Inc. (stopware.com)CIRCLE #35 ON CARD

Electronic Visitor Management System

Replaces manual, paper-based visitor logs

The system creates customized photo badges, limits visitor access to specified areas and tracks visitors by providing an audit trail. Visitor access privileges can be programmed to expire at a specific date and time. The system works with the supplier's Picture Perfect and Secure Perfect access control systems. Visitor Central Software, GE Security (gesecurity.com)CIRCLE #36 ON CARD

Visitor Management System

Checks in visitors in 10 seconds or less

The upgraded system, compatible with Microsoft Windows, scans identification documents, prints badges, produces watch lists and coordinates visitor self-registration. The system integrates with 16 major access control systems, with new ones being added. The em>product is also available in Spanish, French and German. Secure Visitor Management 9.0, EasyLobby Inc. (easylobby.com)CIRCLE #37 ON CARD

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
ClearSight Network Analyzer 6.0 Adds Real Time Monitoring of Triple Play, IPTV. Check it out:
ClearSight Networks has introduced the newest version of its ClearSight Network Analyzer.

Version 6.0, which will be widely available come November, is said to be the first network analyzer to provide real time monitoring of triple play services, including support for IPTV (News - Alert).



The new analyzer lets network administrators simultaneously track and troubleshoot data, telephony and entertainment/IPTV resources. The new version also adds new reporting capabilities and patent-pending algorithms for measuring video quality.

Clearsight claims the new version takes network monitoring and analysis "to an entirely new level by allowing users providing real-time information about the application, network and physical layers of the network to empower users to accurately identify the source of network bottlenecks and thieves."

The user interface is said to be "simple" and "richly-graphical," thus enabling the IT guys to get a grip on things quickly. In fact, ClearSight claims it allows administrators to troubleshoot complex networks "immediately, without additional training."

"Version 6.0 of ClearSight Analyzer significantly raises the bar for real-time monitoring and analysis tools," said Masaru Gomi, president and chief executive officer of ClearSight Networks, in a press release. "In today's networking environments, the ability to effectively and consistently manage multiple environments has become critical. ClearSight Analyzer now incorporates Triple Play (News - Alert) in real time, including patent-pending video analysis and support for IPTV flows and analysis. This is a tremendous leap for those charged with supporting provider or enterprise networks."

Perhaps best of all, the company claims the new version comes at the same price as its predecessor.

For more information visit, www.clearsightnet.com


--------

Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard¹s columnist page.
Be Here Corporation Announces TotalView - the First VoIP Collaboration Phone - at DEMOfall. Check it out:
DEMOfall Booth #61, SAN DIEGO and FREMONT, Calif., Sept. 25
-- Be Here Corporation, the pioneer in immersive optics and imaging, today announced at DEMOfall 2006 the beta version of TotalView, the first VoIP Collaboration Phone with full-room video. TotalView is the next essential business tool, delivering a view of the entire conference room that provides a natural experience as if all locations are sitting around the same conference table. Designed for multi-location meetings of three to four people in each location, TotalView delivers voice, video and data in a simple appliance that sits at the center of the conference table. Leveraging the enterprise's VoIP investment, TotalView replaces the conference room speaker phone with a single integrated device. Each person can connect their laptop to TotalView and individually control their camera view as well as the data they see and share, separately from the other meeting attendees. TotalView can be experienced live at DEMOfall 2006 Conference in San Diego, CA, September 25 - 27 at booth #61.



"Large studies we conducted in 2005 and 2006 resulted in two key findings. The first was that over 90% of all meetings in the enterprise are small, between two to six people, and there is intense interaction between members. The second key finding showed that the most common meetings include one or two remote sites," said David Coleman, managing director of Collaborative Strategies. "TotalView is the first collaboration appliance we have seen that deals with all media types in a small conference room and has the power and flexibility to support small meetings."

Today there are already 30 million VoIP-enabled phone lines in the North American enterprise. One out of every ten of these lines goes to a small conference room or table in an executive's office -- where a speaker phone is typically in use today and where small, ad hoc meetings lie at the heart of enterprise productivity. TotalView empowers users at these conference tables and eliminates the need for expensive, cumbersome video conferencing systems, resource scheduling, call bridges, and additional data sharing technologies.

Key features of TotalView include:
Full Room Video -- TotalView's patented 360o camera captures the entire conference room delivering a natural "at-the-table" experience.

Individual View Control -- TotalView enables each attendee to individually navigate their camera view on their desktop, ensuring that each user sees what is most important to them.

Instant Data Collaboration -- TotalView allows on-demand viewing and sharing of any application from presentations, to spreadsheets, to industry leading collaborative services.

"The opportunity for the VoIP Collaboration Phone is here today. Every major provider in this industry has made a substantial commitment to visual communications," said Stephen Von Rump, president and CEO of Be Here Corporation. "Users have significant capabilities now at the desktop and in the large conference room, but a huge gap exists at the average working person's conference table, and that is the venue TotalView addresses."

Pricing and Availability
TotalView is scheduled to ship early next year and will sell for $1,995. To request an invitation to join the TotalView beta program please visit us at http://www.behere.com/contact.php

About Be Here Corporation
Be Here(R) totally changes the way we work in multi-location meetings. The company's VoIP collaboration phone is poised to become the preferred device on the enterprise conference room table, combining an integrated 360-degree panoramic view that captures the entire room in full motion video for both local and remote sites, with audio conferencing and data sharing. Each participant "customizes" what they see, hear and share, delivering the confidence and simplicity to accomplish more in meetings. The company is privately held and led by a seasoned and experienced management team from industry leaders such as internetMCI, Mitel, Nortel, Polycom and VTEL. Be Here offers the next essential business tool that transforms the way people meet across multiple locations, and puts individuals in control of their meetings. For more information, please visit http://www.behere.com/.

NOTE: Be Here is a registered trademark of Be Here Corporation. All other registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.

Be Here Corporation

CONTACT: Erica Lee of Authentic Marketing, +1-415-863-3241, [email protected], for Be Here Corporation; or Margaret Atmar of Be HereCorporation, +1-510-505-7905, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.behere.com/
Absolute Software Corporate Data Protection: Important Practices for Employees and IT Departments. Check it out:
Absolute Software, leader in computer theft recovery, data protection and secure asset tracking solutions, advocates best practices to safeguard sensitive corporate data

VANCOUVER, Sept. 25 - Absolute(R) Software Corporation ("Absolute") (TSX: ABT), the leading provider of patented, firmware-based, Computer Theft Recovery, Data Protection and Secure Asset Tracking(TM) solutions, announced today best practices for corporate data security for both employees and IT departments. Key strategies include documenting policies, establishing and governing new business processes, and leveraging advanced security technology solutions.



"A data breach is a defining moment for an organization," said John Livingston, CEO of Absolute Software. "Without a proactive approach to mitigating the damage caused by the breach, an organization's exposure can be immense. A layered approach to data security helps companies eliminate the risks associated with the accidental or malicious disclosure of data through unsecured computers. This includes policies and practices that address regulatory compliance law, data protection, as well as computer theft recovery, because theft remains the root cause of data breaches and compliance risk."

Absolute Software advocates the following combination of written policies, business processes and technology to better protect corporate data from being compromised:

1. Identify and control access to sensitive information. Recognize what types of sensitive data your organization has, identify who needs access to specific information, and specify different levels of access/security clearance for individuals and departments

2. Create rules on how information is stored, accessed and transported. This includes on- and off-site practices, desktop, mobile device and removable drive guidelines, as well as controls for the download and remote transmission of specific types of information

3. Document "common sense" guidelines on laptop use and device security. Avoid accessing information in public places such as airports, buses, internet cafes; avoid unsecured wireless networks, etc., and monitor adherence using technology

4. Mandate data protection on all remote, mobile and local devices. Install and use encryption, strong authentication, firewalls, remote data deletion on lost or stolen devices, with special consideration for devices that carry sensitive data

5. Set rules for destroying and storing old data. Comply with local, state and/or federal security mandates as well as establish internal initiatives for effective data storage and audits

6. Establish mandatory compliance to user authentication. Validate the identity of users to devices (e.g., multi-factor authentication, biometrics) and require re-authentication after specified periods of inactivity

7. Develop procedures for managing corporate database transactions. Identify when to make only partial information available (e.g., extracts/views of sensitive information), and log and monitor all data access for anomalies

8. Create a contingency plan. Identify the resulting damage to the enterprise in the event of a potential breach and develop protocols to mitigate risk

9. Protect all mobile devices and notebooks. Use asset tracking and recovery software to monitor the location of devices, reducing the risk of data breaches due to loss and theft, and assisting with adherence to regulatory compliance

10. Evaluate policies, processes and technology on an ongoing basis. Regular dissemination of best practices helps explain roles and responsibilities throughout the organization. Understand that security is not something put in place once and then forgotten about.

For more information on Absolute Software and its range of Computer Theft Recovery, Data Protection and Secure Asset Tracking solutions, please visit www.absolute.com.

For more information on Absolute's success in protecting computer data and recovering lost or stolen computers, please visit http://www.absolute.com/Public/successstories/default.asp

About Absolute Software
Absolute Software Corporation (TSX: ABT) is the leader in Computer Theft Recovery, Data Protection and Secure Asset Tracking(TM) solutions. Absolute Software provides organizations and consumers with solutions in the areas of
regulatory compliance, data protection and theft recovery. The Company's Computrace(R) software is embedded in the BIOS of computers by global leaders, including Dell, Lenovo, Gateway, HP and Fujitsu, and the company has reselling partnerships with these OEMs and others, including Apple and Toshiba. For more
information about Absolute Software and Computrace, visit www.absolute.com.

For More Information contact: Walter Ocner at Affect Strategies 212-398-9680 x 140

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, the expected performance of our services and products and other expectations, intentions and plans contained in this press release that are not historical fact. When used in this press release, the words "plan," "expect," "believe," and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current expectations. They are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, changes in technology and general market conditions. In light of the many risks and uncertainties you should understand that we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements contained in this press release will be realized.
Your employees need not be malicious to pose a danger to your enterprise.. Check it out:
(www.esecurityplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Last month I wrote about the inside threat to your network and your company at large. In this column I'll offer two more examples of internal threats to your organization.

There are two types of employees that I like to call Dennis the Menace and Alice in Wonderland. They are bright, motivated, friendly and have only the best of intentions. They can also be your worst nightmare.

Dennis, for instance, sees some problem with the production code you use for your core business. He knows there s an easy fix, it will only take five minutes, and everyone will be very glad at how much better the system runs once it s fixed.



He rewrites the function, and replaces it in the module where he first identified the problem. What he fails to realize is that several other modules have dependencies and the change causes the production code to grind to a halt. Your network looks fine, everything should be working, but it s not.

If you have change controls in place, and critical file monitoring done by a centralized location, you would have already determined that Dennis was mucking about in the code. Additionally, you can identify which files were changed, and compare them to, or replace them with back-up code, and return to production with limited down time.

Certainly you don t want to be the one explaining to the CEO, CIO, or CTO what happened and why it took so long to do something about it. You also don t want to be the one responsible for informing customers about loss of data, down time and loss of revenue.

A change control process sets the framework for protecting all the parties involved. It allows for the identification and timely resolution of a snag in your code, but it also clearly identifies who is responsible for the change, and what the back out should be in case of difficulties.

In Dennis case, it also means that every time there s some difficulty, you won t be camped on his desk asking what he did this time. He ll be relieved to know that he isn t a scapegoat in bad situations.

Educating the Trusting

Then there s Alice. She will be the first to tell you she s not very technically inclined. She loves her computer, it lets her do so many things. She s working on a novel, she thinks the world wide web is amazing for its ability to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about anything.

And she believes it all. If it comes to her in email from friends, then it s obviously something she needs to see, sign, buy or try. After all, who on earth would know who she is and what her email address is?

We ve talked about this situation before, and we ll likely talk about it again. It is very difficult to educate the trusting to recognize the threats inherent in the virtual world. Teaching users to avoid suspicious sites sent in email and learning to recognize attempts to gain privileged information by unauthorized persons either via the web or email will go a long way to cutting down the number of compromises as the result of malicious web content.

Alice has another bad habit. She can never remember her password, so she s written it down and put it in a safe place. How many safe places can you think of? Want to bet it s one of the first three you can come up with? Let s see: bottom of keyboard, behind monitor, under edge of desk (next to last week s gum), or in Rolodex under computer. But they are such good hiding places ! (sigh)

The reason I bring this up is, if you ll recall from last month, there are all these people who have access to you physical spaces that you have little or no control over. Cleaners, caterers, contractors. If Alice isn t going to protect her password, do you think she s left her user name lying around? What s to prevent the hired help from taking advantage of the situation?

As we talked about before, in many situations, you have no ability to vet the employees of your contract labor. You also have limited ability to monitor work being done outside normal business hours.

You might be saying to yourself that Alice s laxness with her password and user name aren t really a major problem, since she doesn t have access to critical systems or data. But what does she have access to? Memos between the CEO and the CFO about the next round of venture capitalization? Plans for going public? What would the loss of this information mean to the organization?

In many respects, policy implementation regarding the use of the Internet, password strength, and replacement, minimizes certain aspects of these threats. Eliminating unauthorized software or applications improves the ability to control unanticipated vulnerabilities.

I want you to be able to look at your organization with an eye for security hotspots. Anyone can identify the unsecured fire door, or the modem tied into the office server. What you need to be able to identify is the invisible threat of the stranger at your door (contractors), the well-intentioned, and the dearly departed.

You can do a lot of things to handle these threats. Policy implementation can force updates to operating systems, enforce strong passwords and prevent the installation of unauthorized software. Education brings a better understanding to your employees about the threats they confronted with on a daily basis. Finally, knowing your employees as people with families, hopes and dreams, and problems as well. You can identify potential problem areas when you know the people who work with and for you.

On Wednesday, Sept. 27, I will be participating in a webcast discussing this subject. You ll hear about these employees and others in detail. Hopefully, you will gain better insight into identifying possible situations before problems arrive. I hope you ll join me. For more information, check here .

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.

Runco Buys NView Trademark

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Runco Buys NView Trademark. Check it out:
(TWICE Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Denver Sam Runco, chairman of high-performance video display enterprise Runco

International, announced at CEDIA Expo that he recently bought the rights to
the dormant NView brand and certain assets out of bankruptcy this month, with
plans to use the trademark to market a new retail video display line.

Runco said that he had long wanted to market a line of video display
products for do it yourselfers, like himself, and needed a new brand to
execute the plan.

Although Runco purchased the rights to the Projectavision trademark when
he purchased Vidikron's assets, he said the name didn't work well with
flat-panel displays, which the NView line would most likely carry, along with
projectors.

Runco International currently markets Runco and Vidikron branded display
products through custom installers and high-end A/V specialty dealers. Runco
said the new company's products would not cross over into the distribution
channels of those two successful lines.

Runco said the new brand would be used to market products through
specialty dealers that aren't currently served by Runco or Vidikron. In jest,
he said at the press conference that the brand would target Costco, Sam's
Club, Target and Wendy's, but he later qualified the remark.

Runco said he has not yet had time to develop product plans or price
ranges for any products he would sell under the line.

Manufacturing, he said, would most likely be handled off shore, using
in-house designs and engineering produced at Runco International headquarters.
He said Runco has used similar arrangements for some of its previous
products.

It all depends on how well you set up your contracts [with off-shore
manufacturers], he said, adding that high-quality products can be produced
by third-party manufacturing operations if the level of quality control is
clearly indicated.

NView had been a manufacturer of commercial video display products, and
was noteworthy for purchasing the first hundred DLP engines from Texas
Instruments, Runco said.

This all happened so fast that our methods of marketing still
aren't clear, Runco said. But it is not going to be a Runco-lite or
Vidikron-lite company.

In other news, select models under the Runco and Vidikron lines became
the first products to receive THX video certification, through the expansion of
that organization's home theater standards and certification programs.

Models receiving the certification all offered three-chip DLP
configurations and included the Runco VX-2cx projector family, and the Vidikron
Vision models 90t and 100t.

Runco and THX were also said to be working on a series of THX-certified
1,080p models.

In other announcements, Runco International said it is encouraging third
party screen manufacturers to work with it in developing projection screens
that can present in full images delivered by its CineWide and
AutoScope-enhanced projectors. Runco CineWide and Autoscope projectors were
paired at CEDIA with a Stewart screen with automated masking capabilities,
allowing viewers to enjoy 4:3, 16:9, and ultra-widescreen 2.35:1 source
material at full-resolution without black bars.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
First Multi-Functional Display Card Serves Enterprise-Wide Access and Authentication Needs. Check it out:
PASADENA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- TRI-D Systems, Inc, the leading developers of multi-functional display cards with embedded identity and authentication technologies, announced today the availability of its TRI-D AllAccess(TM) Card, the first ISO 7816 compliant card that combines flexible display and One-Time-Password (OTP) technology with RFID and smart card capabilities to offer enterprises a single card to issue to employees for company-wide access and authentication.



First-to-market with flexible displays and OTP technology on an ISO 7816 compliant card, TRI-D has sold its display cards to several major enterprise customers in the U.S. TRI-D continues to strengthen its market leadership in emerging display card technologies by addressing the enterprise need to combine employee identity, access, and strong authentication into one convenient and easy-to-use form factor.

"It is not uncommon for companies to issue as many as 5 different cards and devices to their employees; an access card for parking garage entry, a photo ID badge with proximity physical access, an OTP key fob token for remote network access, and a smart card and smart card reader for digital signature and credential storage," said Debra Shatford, CEO of TRI-D Systems. "Combining all of this functionality into one small card that is easily carried in a wallet decreases total cost of ownership for the enterprise and increases employee adoption and convenience."

Compatible with industry leading printing technology, the TRI-D AllAccess card can be personalized with employee information to serve as a standard ID badge. The RFID inlay for physical access and the smart card module can be customized to work with a company's existing infrastructure in most cases. The OTP displayed on the card provides strong authentication for network access and, because no external hardware or readers are required, it can be used to authenticate an individual from any device, anytime. The TRI-D OTP validation software is open source and plugs into a company's existing authentication server.

TRI-D will add its proprietary biometric technology to the AllAccess card in the near future. "The biometric sensor will ensure that cardholders are exactly who they should be and will activate the various functions of the card upon a positive match," said Shatford.

The cost for the TRI-D AllAccess card is comparable to what some competitors are charging for an OTP token alone. The company will sell the cards directly to end users as well as through distribution partners. More information about this and other TRI-D products can be found at the company's website http://www.tri-dsystems.com.

About TRI-D Systems

Established in 2003, TRI-D Systems, Inc is the leading developer of multi-functional display cards with embedded identity and access technologies. It was first-to-market with deployments of an OTP display card that met ISO 7816 requirements. Its patent-pending portable biometric technology ensures people are who they claim to be when logging onto computer networks and authenticates the cardholder for physical access without the need for external readers or power supplies. TRI-D is a privately held company headquartered in Pasadena, Calif. and has offices in the San Francisco Bay area.

If you'd like more information about TRI-D Systems, or to schedule an interview with a TRI-D executive, please call Misty Gonzales at 626-240-0644 or email [email protected].
Vignette Releases Next-Generation Web Solution. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Vignette (NASDAQ:VIGN) today announced the latest version of its market-leading Web content management software, Vignette Content Management. The flagship product of its Next-Generation Web suite, Vignette Content Management helps organizations improve customer interactions and build stronger brand loyalty through dynamic delivery of personalized, persuasive online content. This release enhances Vignette's fully extensible information management and delivery solution to custom deploy in real-time, a large number of content items to multiple Web sites and devices.



An early adopter of Vignette Content Management, OneBeacon Insurance, a provider of property-casualty and select specialty insurance solutions, selected Vignette to run its Brokers' Portal and deliver personalized, timely information to its customers via the Web.

"The latest release of Vignette Content Management reaffirms that Vignette is fully aligned with our goals and committed to providing a superior content management solution for our associates," said Robert Gess, program manager at OneBeacon. "The advanced search capabilities and content entry options helped streamline our publishing workflows. Combined with their Portal offering, our content owners find it remarkably easy to push the right content to the right audience across multiple delivery channels."

New Vignette Content Management features include:

-- Additional options for content entry, like wizards and layouts, enabling faster input and easier alteration of information.

-- Customer-driven publishing and policy enhancements to help align internal processes with end user requirements.

-- Expanded search and workflow support for additional custom fields to help streamline the manipulation of data.

-- Improved performance for viewing and retrieving millions of data elements to help organizations respond quickly to the growing number of end users and applications on the Web.

-- Extended platform support across a range of IT environments, including HP-UX, Microsoft SQL and OpenLDAP among others, aligning key customer desires with our strategic partner's direction.

"Organizations looking to heighten the customer experience are increasingly adding interactive functionality into their Web sites, enabling customers to not only consume but contribute content as well," said Lou Latham, principal research analyst at Gartner. "An enterprise-class Web content management solution lets organizations successfully deploy next-generation Web initiatives."

"In today's highly competitive and fast-paced world, organizations have a need to fundamentally change the way they communicate with their customers, partners and employees to gain mindshare," said Larry Warnock, chief marketing officer at Vignette. "Our Next-Generation Web solution enables these organizations to provide a differentiated, interactive experience to their customers through the use of personalized content. Vignette's software powers the Web presence for some of the most important brands in the world. This is our heritage, and we have again raised the bar in the Web content management industry."

About Vignette

For more than 10 years, Vignette (NASDAQ:VIGN) has helped organizations worldwide transform their content from a liability to an asset. Vignette's family of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions lets these organizations leverage their records, documents, Web pages, images, multimedia and other unstructured content to create new opportunities, expand profits, manage their risk and realize greater savings and efficiencies. Vignette is headquartered in Austin, Texas with local operations worldwide. Visit www.vignette.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements including statements regarding the Company's expectations, beliefs, hopes, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Vignette's products, future sales, market growth and competition. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. Actual results could differ materially from the Company's current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, Future Losses, Limited Operating History, Fluctuation of Quarterly Revenues and Operating Results, Acquisition Integration, Competition, Dependence on a Small Number of Large Orders, Lengthy Sales Cycle and Product Implementation, Market Awareness of Our Product, Rapid Changes in Technology and New Products, and other factors and risks discussed in the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Vignette and the V Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vignette Corp. in the United States and other countries. All other names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Takes Another Step Towards Making 100 Gigabit Per Second Ethernet-Over-Optical a Reality. Check it out:
MURRAY HILL, N.J., and CANNES, France, Sept. 25 -- In a paper presented to the European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC) in Cannes this week, Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies , announced the first transmission of 10 channels of 107 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) data over 2000 kilometers of fiber -- a significant enough distance to prove the technology's viability for the majority of networks where 100G Ethernet is a sought-after technology.



In this same paper Bell Labs researchers also announced the successful transmission and reception of electronically multiplexed and demultiplexed 107 Gb/s traffic using hardware similar to that used in today's 40 Gb/s networks. By employing differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) at 107 Gb/s, the high-speed electronics and opto-electronics used were required to have a mere 25% speed-up compared to those used in today's 40-Gb/s systems. A prototype of the fully integrated Lithium Niobate DQPSK modulator was provided by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, Japan) and Sumitomo Osaka Cement, Inc. The use of technology similar to commercially available products is a significant step towards realizing the viability of manufacturing and installing 100 Gb/s-based networks at a reasonable cost per transmitted information bit.

"An enormous amount of research here at the Labs is focused on providing carriers with broadband network technologies that enable their metro area networks and backbones to support the dramatic increase in IP traffic by enterprise applications and consumer services such as IP-based video on demand," said Martin Zirngibl, director, Bell Labs. "Our breakthroughs in both transmission distance and the use of commercially-viable components prove that 100 Gb/s serial is a viable technology for transmitting data traffic in its native Ethernet format."

Today data traffic is carried over the WDM backbone at rates of 10 Gb/s and occasionally 40 Gb/s using SONET/SDH or OTN connections. This Bell Labs research is aimed at developing the technologies and architectures to enable carrier-grade wide area transport and switching of 107 Gigabit Ethernet data streams (100 gigabit of data plus additional 7 percent overhead for error correction).

A copy of this paper is available from ECOC (http://www.ecoc2006.org/).

About Bell Labs

Bell Labs, the R&D division of Lucent Technologies, is the leading source of new communications technologies. It has generated more than 30,000 patents since 1925 and has played a pivotal role in inventing or perfecting key communications technologies, including transistors, digital networking and signal processing, lasers and fiber-optic communications systems, communications satellites, cellular telephony, electronic switching of calls, touch-tone dialing, and modems. Bell Labs scientists have received eleven Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. National Medals of Science and eight U.S. National Medals of Technology(R). For more information about Bell Labs, visit its Web site at http://www.bell-labs.com/.

About Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent uses its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers, while enabling them to quickly deploy and better manage their networks. Lucent's customer base includes communications service providers, governments and enterprises worldwide. For more information on Lucent Technologies, which has headquarters in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, visit http://www.lucent.com/.

Lucent Technologies

CONTACT: Peter Benedict, +1-908-582-7710, mobile - +1-908-489-4373,[email protected], or Devon Prutzman, +1-908-582-7190, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.ecoc2006.org/http://www.bell-labs.com/http://www.lucent.com/
IBRIX CEO To Speak At Storage Decisions. Check it out:
BILLERICA, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- IBRIX(R) Inc., the leader in scalable file serving solutions, today announced that Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Shaji John will be presenting at Storage Decisions on Wednesday, September 27, 2006, in New York City. Mr. John has been invited to speak at the conference in its "emerging technology" session to present an overview of the IBRIX business and its flagship product, IBRIX Fusion(TM), a multipurpose, highly scalable parallel file serving solution. IBRIX also will have an exhibit in the Emerging Technology Showcase Pavilion.



The Storage Decisions conference will feature the top 500 storage-focused IT managers and top independent experts in the field to address the most daunting challenges IT departments in organizations face as they continue to meet the demands of data manageability and growth. This year's theme, "Scale Storage, Manage Costs: Cost-Conscious Growth in a Deluge of Data," will feature keynotes, sessions and workshops that will focus around five distinct tracks as attendees will be able to tailor their conference experience to meet their information needs.

When: September 27, 2006, 3:30-3:45pm ET

Where: Hilton New York

1335 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10019

Who: Shaji John, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBRIX

About IBRIX, Inc.

IBRIX(R) delivers increased application performance to enterprise computing environments utilizing a unique, software-based parallel file serving solution. The IBRIX Fusion(TM) software suite, comprised of a single namespace parallel file system, a scalable volume manager, high availability features, and a comprehensive management interface, is the most scalable, economical, multipurpose file serving solution available for cluster computing, grid computing, and enterprise computing environments. Based on IBRIX's patented Segmented File System(TM), IBRIX Fusion increases application performance, simplifies administration, and reduces total cost of ownership. The IBRIX Fusion software suite is available through leading OEMs. For more information, visit www.ibrix.com.

IBRIX and IBRIX Fusion are trademarks of IBRIX, Inc. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.
Transitive(R) Joins Itanium Solutions Alliance to Assist ISVs to Expand Platform Coverage to Intel Itanium Systems. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Transitive(TM) Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system (OS) pairs, today announced that it has joined the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) to help facilitate maximum availability of key enterprise applications for Intel Itanium platforms as part of the ISA Platform Expansion Program. The first product to be used in this program will be Transitive's QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/Itanium, announced in June 2006.



"Obtaining the maximum business benefits from highly-scalable, performance-oriented platforms hinges on how quickly and completely customers can move their application workloads to the new platform," said Bob Wiederhold, president, and CEO of Transitive Corporation. "Transitive will provide QuickTransit licenses and support to ISA Platform Expansion Program members, so that leading enterprise ISVs can now offer their customers Solaris/SPARC applications that run immediately -- without modification -- on any Linux/Itanium-based platform."

"Transitive's technology is highly compatible and synergistic with the ISA's overall mission of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry-standard solutions based on the Itanium architecture," said Robin Drummond, president of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "Transitive provides an enticing incentive for ISVs to join the ISA, and we will be providing loaner systems and access to the Solutions Center Network so that ISVs can see for themselves how easy it can be for their customers to migrate to Itanium."

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry.

About Transitive Corporation

Transitive Corporation is a pioneer and leader in providing solutions that allow the transportability of software applications across multiple hardware platforms. The company's QuickTransit hardware virtualization technology allows software applications that have been compiled for one processor/operating system to run on another without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports. The technology dramatically reduces software developers' cost, risk, and time-to-market of supporting multiple hardware platforms, facilitates computer companies' migration to new computer platforms, and makes significantly more software available on hardware platforms. QuickTransit technology provides the engine for Apple's Rosetta translation software, and is currently shipping on all of Apple's Intel-based computers. It is also shipping on all Silicon Graphics' Linux/Itanium-based computers. Transitive Corporation is located in Los Gatos, California with a research and development team in Manchester, England. The company is privately held, with funding participation by Pond Venture Partners Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund, Crescendo Ventures and Accel Partners. For more information, please visit Transitive's website at www.transitive.com.

Transitive and QuickTransit are registered trademarks, and the Transitive logo is a trademark of Transitive Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Itanium Industry Announces Software Application Availability Milestone. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance today announced the availability of 10,000 applications running on Itanium(R) 2-based platforms. This number represents over 50 percent growth in applications available in the year since the Alliance was formed. Highlighting the momentum of application availability, Oracle today announced that it will work with the Alliance in its certification of Oracle(R) software on Itanium-based platforms, which includes extensive regression testing and performance optimization.



"Oracle is committed to delivering its industry-leading infrastructure software products for the Itanium platform," said Prem Kumar, vice president, Server Technologies, Oracle. "In keeping with our long-standing tradition of presenting customers with many choices in deployment platforms, Oracle plans to certify the next major releases of Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware across a range of operating systems for Itanium, with proven Oracle performance, availability, and security."

"The industry has hit a major milestone with application availability exceeding 10,000" said Michel Lepert, executive vice president and general manager of Bull Products and Systems. "With the recent delivery of Itanium 9100 processor-based solutions to the market, and customer deployments delivering a 36 percent increase in Itanium system revenue in the last year, the industry is accelerating the transition to a new era of mission-critical computing."

These announcements came as the Itanium Solutions Alliance hosts the first Itanium Solutions Summit in San Francisco. At this event, executives from dozens of companies met to learn more about the latest Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processor developments. The Summit also provided Alliance members companies with an opportunity to network and extend partnerships to other Itanium-based solutions providers.

Geared towards mission-critical computing, Itanium-based platforms continue to see a steady increase in the market. According to IDC, sales of Itanium-based systems grew 36.4 percent year over year generating $740 million in revenue for Q2 2006. Itanium-based platform revenue currently represent 43.6 percent of IBM* Power* market segment share and 44.9 percent of Sun* SPARC*.

A global organization, the Itanium Solutions Alliance was founded in September 2005 with a mission to accelerate Itanium-based solution deployments through a suite of software porting and optimization tools. Alliance enabling programs include Developer Days, a Solutions Center Network and the Itanium Solutions Catalog, the first public listing of software applications available on Itanium-based platforms.

Membership to the Alliance is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of computing solutions. More information about the Alliance, programs and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry.

-- Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

(C) Copyright 2006, Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance. All rights reserved.
New Itanium Programs and Membership Milestone Highlight First Itanium Solution Summit. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance today hosts the first Itanium Solutions Summit. Aimed at highlighting the breadth of Itanium(R) 2-based solutions opportunities, this event brings together Itanium-based hardware vendors with top software players.



The Alliance has launched the ISV Platform Expansion Program, geared towards easing the migration of solutions currently deployed on legacy SPARC Solaris platforms to the latest, high-performance Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 architecture. Using Transitive(R) Corporation's QuickTransit(R) technology, ISVs who have applications specifically written for SPARC Solaris can immediately expand their market to include Itanium-based platforms - without porting. For more information about this program, please visit www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

"Our QuickTransit software enables applications written for the Solaris/SPARC platform to run on the Itanium platform without source code or binary changes," said Bob Wiederhold, president and CEO of Transitive Corporation. "As a new member of the ISA, we will provide licenses and support to ISV member companies who are interested in running their Solaris applications on the newest generation of Itanium platforms - immediately."

At the event the Alliance also launched the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Contest. Aimed at showcasing deployments of Itanium 2-based applications, this program will award grand prizes of $50,000 in three categories.

"Itanium Solutions Alliance programs have provided a foundation for industry innovation and customer deployment of Itanium platforms while attracting a critical mass of member companies," said Jens-Peter Seick, vice president of enterprise server business at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "The innovation award program has been chartered to award best in class industry innovation and bring attention to the work of some of the industry's most talented developers. We expect the program to spur new thoughts on usage for Itanium platforms in mission-critical business and technical computing environments."

Multiple awards will be delivered in spring 2007 and judged by a panel of industry experts. The award categories include:

-- Humanitarian Impact: This category will highlight innovative use of applications that demonstrate a profound impact on humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts.

-- Enterprise/Business Applications: This category will award the uses of applications running on Intel Itanium 2 architecture that produce effect business effectiveness in a number of measurable categories

-- Entrepreneurial: Aimed at smaller companies, this award will recognize companies who utilize Itanium 2-based solutions to improve business operations.

In addition to the grand prizes other accolades will be awarded. For more information about the program and to download an entrance application, please visit the Itanium Solutions Alliance Website at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

In addition to presentations from leading hardware and software vendors, the industry heard from customers that are currently deploying Itanium-based solutions. Customers appearing onstage included RMS Solutions and the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE). Also in attendance was JDA Software who recently became the 100th company to join the Alliance.

A global organization, the Itanium Solutions Alliance was founded in September 2005 with a mission to accelerate Itanium-based solution deployments through a suite of software porting and optimization tools. Alliance enabling programs include Developer Days, a Solutions Center Network and the Itanium Solutions Catalog, the first public listing of software applications available on Itanium-based platforms.

Membership to the Alliance is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of computing solutions. More information about the Alliance, programs and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry.

-- All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

(C) Copyright 2006, Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance. All rights reserved.
Rising Launches New Virus Wall Products. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- Rising Corp., a leading antivirus and content security software and services provider in China, has rolled out five models of new hardware virus wall products for various enterprises.



RSW-B2000, kilomega-level chip virus wall, is not only the first of its kind but it is taking the top position in technology worldwide as well.

Hardware virus wall is what global anti-virus software builders are going to develop in the future, and overseas institutions used to aired that virus wall will make up more than 50 percent of enterprise-level anti-virus software market in the coming five to ten years.

Rising released China's first model of virus wall product in 2004, which came to the same level of products launched by international leaders of the sector.

The RSW-B2000 virus wall will be mainly applied to networks with huge traffic in telecom operators and banks for checking ill-intended viruses.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
CCT Gets CNY500mn Long-term Loans from CDB. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- China Chengtong Group (CCT) recently signed a contract for a CNY 500 million loan with China Development Bank, one of the country's three policy lenders, marking a new phase of cooperation between CDB and the nation's state-owned assets administration body as well as CCT itself.



The life of the CNY 500 million loans signed this time will be as long as ten years, and it will be used in state-owned assets regrouping, thus making it the first long-term renminbi credit extended for state-owned assets projects.

In 2005, CCT and CDB has signed a development finance partnership agreement that gave CCT a line of credit of CNY 20 billion during 2005 and 2008, and the newly-signed CNY 500 million loans was a part of that agreement with DDB, according to the company.

CCT is a large state-owned enterprise which operates the nation's largest, and the widest-spreading chain logistic network, metal distribution network and container transportation network with integrated functions in storage, distribution and information services.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
OSG buys Maritrans for $455m to form US flag giant. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) OVERSEAS Shipholding Group's $455m acquisition of Maritrans, the venerable Jones Act tanker and barge player, has created the largest player in US flag petroleum shipping.

The all-cash deal announced yesterday, in one fell swoop, removes a major regional rival for OSG and solves the conundrum of pitting its product tankers against Maritrans' articulated tug barges.

Some analysts are already speculating that the conquest is the first tangible precursor of OSG's stated ambition to reverse all its US-flag business into one enterprise and then spin it off.

For now, Maritrans' assets are to be subsumed into OSG's US-flag strategic division.

The deal adds complementary geographical markets to OSG's portfolio.

It puts OSG's $300m Capital Construction Fund to use, and validates OSG's recent statements about using its hoard of cash to become even more of a 'market leader'.

The deal also appears to do justice to Maritrans' intrinsic value, with the $37.50 a share OSG has agreed to pay being almost a 50% premium to Maritrans' prevailing share price.

Natasha Boyden, Cantor Fitzgerald equity analyst in New York, who has closely followed Maritrans in recent years, said: 'Maritrans has been undervalued for some time now. It is good to see that the market is not unaware of the company's true worth.'



Jonathan Whitworth, Maritrans chairman and chief executive, paid tribute to OSG's 'financial strength', and added: 'A greater commercial footprint will allow us to serve customers better. The larger fleet also enhances our market intelligence.'

Mr Whitworth is to remain with OSG after the merger as senior vice president, heading up the US-flag strategic business unit that will be run out of Tampa.

The deal will add Maritrans' 11 ATB's, three ATB newbuildings and five product tankers, two of which have been converted to grain-carriers, to OSG's seven tankers and 10 newbuildings.

Morten Arntzen, OSG president and chief executive, hailed the 'strategic fit' of Maritrans and the 'growth opportunities in US-flag business'.

He added: 'The lightering business in Delaware Bay and the addition of new customers in the complementary ATB Gulf of Mexico and Florida short-haul trade will contribute to our business.'

Maritrans' $232.5m ATB trio under construction at Bender Shipbuilding will allow OSG to use a 'substantial portion' of its Capital Construction Fund, OSG said. The CCF market value stood at $300m in OSG's June 30 accounts.

The purchase consideration of $455m including outstanding debt will come from available cash and existing loan agreements, OSG said. June 30 working capital stood at $228m, and OSG has a seven-year $1.8bn revolving credit facility.

The deal will be 'immediately accretive before considering any transaction synergies,' OSG said

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Agents Groups Raise Concerns About Zurich Contingent Commission Settlement. Check it out:
(BestWire Services Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
A proposed class settlement covering the incentive compensation practices of Zurich Financial Services Group's U.S. subsidiaries would have significant and undeserved adverse impacts on insurance producers, according to "friend of the court" briefs submitted by a pair of national agent groups.



In separate briefs filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, both the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents and the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America take issue with elements of the proposal they contend would impose burdensome new legal and administrative duties on agents and brokers.

The proposed class settlement looks to consolidate and resolve in federal court a spate of actions brought against Zurich by state attorneys general, most concerning the company's alleged participation in schemes to "fix" insurance prices in the excess casualty sector through fraudulent bidding practices.

In March, Zurich agreed to pay $171 million to settle bid-rigging charges brought in Florida, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon and West Virginia (BestWire, March 20). That same month, the company separately agreed to a $153 million settlement with New York, Connecticut and Illinois that included $88 million in refunds to policyholders, and that also covered charges the insurer used certain "finite reinsurance" transactions to bolster both its own financial results and those of its clients.

Although the settlements didn't call on Zurich to either confirm or deny wrongdoing, the company agreed to implement new disclosure and compliance measures that Zurich's chief executive officer, James J. Schiro, said would "bring greater clarity to how Zurich will move forward to serve producers and customers in this new era of transparency." (BestWire, March 27, 2006)

But according to the agents groups, many of the costs and duties associated with those disclosures would be passed on to agents and brokers. Under the settlement, independent insurance agents would transmit to insureds and potential insureds a court-mandated Mandatory Disclosure Statement describing Zurich's practices for compensating producers. Should other carriers be made to follow similar disclosure requirements, "the multitude of forms will exacerbate consumer confusion significantly, and create inefficiencies in independent agencies," according to Robert A. Rusbuldt, the Big I's chief executive officer.

"Zurich should have the responsibility to provide to insureds any disclosure form it is obligated by law or otherwise chooses to provide about how it compensates agents and brokers," Rusbuldt said in a statement. "Agents and brokers should continue to have the latitude to customize their interactions to the specific requests and needs of customers."

Moreover, argued PIA CEO Len Brevik, provisions of the settlement proposal that commit Zurich to support legislation abolishing contingent commission incentives amount to state attorneys general using "their law enforcement powers in an effort to bring about a fundamental change in the American system of free enterprise."

"Performance-based compensation is not a threat to that system, it is the basis of that system," Brevik said. "Certain provisions contained in these agreements are grossly unfair to PIA agents, and grossly unfair to carriers by restricting their ability to compensate their producers in a legal and honest manner."

The agents groups also said application of the agreement would discriminate unfairly against independent agencies. The Big I noted that the agreement doesn't require equivalent compensation transparency for insurance purchased from captive agents or direct writers. PIA's brief said settlement agreements that called for some of the largest commercial insurance brokers to abandon all contingent compensation have been amended in recent months to clarify the firms' ability to receive incentive rewards when acting as an insurer's managing general agent.

(By R.J. Lehmann, Washington bureau manager: [email protected])

Copyright 2006 A.M. Best Company, Inc.
Mavent Receives $10 Million Commitment Led by FTVentures. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Mavent, the leading provider of automated compliance solutions for the financial services industry, announced today the completion of a $10 million round of financing led by FTVentures, a private equity firm focused on business services and software companies that benefit the global financial services industry.



This most recent round of financing is a result of Mavent's strong industry presence and will support growth opportunities including continuing product development and the rollout of yet unannounced customers. The financing brings total institutional investment in the Company to $25 million. Since its inception, Mavent has signed multi-year agreements with many of the industry's largest originators and purchasers of mortgages including Fannie Mae, Credit Suisse, UBS, National City Mortgage Corp., Ohio Savings Bank, HomeLoanCenter (a division of Lending Tree), Ocwen Financial Corp., and GreenPoint Mortgage Funding.

"Over the last three years, Mavent has emerged as the leader in providing solutions for managing regulatory risk in the mortgage industry," said Bob Huret, founding partner at FTVentures and Mavent chairman of the board. "Mavent's proven solutions have helped create cost-efficiencies and process improvements for leading mortgage lenders. This investment reflects our continuing confidence in Mavent and the team's ability to capitalize on expansion opportunities."

"FTVentures is far more than a financial backer to Mavent," said Louis Pizante, chief executive officer of Mavent. "FTVentures' expertise and industry relationships have helped Mavent to accelerate and manage our growth. This latest transaction allows us to continue to innovate and provide exceptional value to our clients."

About Mavent Inc.

Mavent Inc. is a leading provider of automated compliance solutions for the mortgage industry. Mavent, incorporated in 2000, is the developer of the Mavent Expert System and the Mavent Compliance Console (MC2). The Mavent Expert System is a comprehensive automated solution that submits loan data for reviews against nearly 300 legislative acts, 200 license types, and the rules and regulations of over 60 regulatory authorities. Mavent's review functions include aspects of the Truth In Lending Act; HOEPA, state and local high cost reviews; loan level lender and broker license reviews; state consumer credit laws relating to such terms as usury, fee restrictions, prepayment penalties, and late fees; certain requirements of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; the Office of Foreign Asset Control; and, investor program requirements, such as an accurate Fannie Mae points and fees threshold test. Mavent can also implement custom business rules for its clients. The Mavent Expert System is supported by a growing network of law firms (including such prominent firms as Hudson Cook) who approve each of the nearly 7,000 pages of rules documentation that supports the Mavent Expert System.

The Mavent Expert System has conducted more than 15 million compliance reviews to date for some of the industry's largest originators and purchasers, including Fannie Mae, National City Mortgage Corp., Ohio Savings Bank, First Franklin, Ocwen Financial Corp., Credit Suisse, GreenPoint Mortgage and HomeLoanCenter (a division of LendingTree). For more information on Mavent, contact Louis Pizante, chief executive officer at 949-474-4732 or visit the company Web site at www.mavent.com.

About FTVentures

FTVentures provides capital to growth companies to finance organic expansion, recapitalizations, build-ups and buyouts. The firm invests in software and business services companies that derive value from its unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes 38 of the world's leading financial institutions. FTVentures' Global Partner Network provides the firm with a unique vantage point into the business driven IT and operating challenges of the global enterprise. Founded in 1998, FTVentures currently has $624 million under management with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.ftventures.com.
Configuresoft Appoints Marco Bussadori Vice President of EMEA. Check it out:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- Configuresoft, an innovator in systems management technology and the creator of enterprise Configuration Intelligence, today announced the appointment of Marco Bussadori as vice president of EMEA. Mr. Bussadori, who is based in London, UK, will be responsible for expanding the company's direct operations in EMEA and developing key partnerships to accelerate adoption of the award-winning Configuresoft Enterprise Configuration Management (ECM) solution.



With enterprise management new license revenue in Europe at more than 2.4 billion dollars for 2006 and projections for approximately 3 billion dollars by 2009 according to a 2005 Gartner Dataquest(1) report, Configuresoft is well positioned for the rapid European growth building on an established base of customers including Royal Bank of Scotland, Banque du France, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, BP Group and Land Rover. Prior to joining Configuresoft, Mr. Bussadori was instrumental in driving EMEA revenue and growth in the systems management space for a number of software companies including PS'SOFT, Microsoft UK, Marimba, NetIQ and Tivoli across all market segments.

"Demand for Configuresoft solutions throughout Europe is rising, and EMEA is a huge market opportunity for us to accelerate organic growth and expand the distribution channel," said Mark Ruport, Configuresoft CEO. "Marco's extensive experience in mature and entrepreneurial environments and his strong sales track record will enable us to build on our success in the core European marketplace and extend our reach across the rest of EMEA."

"Configuresoft's ECM solution delivers best-in-class packaged solutions making it practical and efficient to automate critical governance, audit and regulatory compliance processes," said Marco Bussadori. "I'm excited to drive EMEA expansion for Configuresoft and maximize on our unique position at the heart of this dynamic market. Configuresoft's success and growth in EMEA will be expanded by the direct sales channel, maturing strategic relationships in our established channel, and developing new partnerships to maximize coverage of existing markets as well as launch new ones."

This appointment follows substantial momentum for Configuresoft, including capture of the "Best Systems Management & Operations" award at Tech Ed 2006 and Best of Tech Ed Europe 2005 for Systems Management. Configuresoft recently launched ECM for Active Directory, extending ECM change detection and control into the Active Directory environment, as well as ECM for Microsoft Exchange and ECM Management Extensions for Assets.

(1) Forecast: Enterprise Management Software Worldwide, 2004-2009 (Executive Summary) by Laurie F. Wurster, Gartner Research, July 13, 2005.

About Configuresoft

Configuresoft is an innovator in systems management technology, delivering the enterprise configuration intelligence to effectively and efficiently manage today's heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Spanning both security and operations, the Company's configuration management, compliance and remediation products are used by 12 of the world's 25 largest companies to keep their critical systems properly configured, while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, FISMA, GLBA, Basel II, HIPAA and DISA, and industry standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS and Microsoft Security Hardening Guides. To contact Configuresoft, please call (888) U-CONFIG or visit www.configuresoft.com.
Silicon Laboratories Celebrates Ten Years of Innovation. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Silicon Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq:SLAB), a leader in high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today celebrates ten years of mixed-signal innovation. By fundamentally changing semiconductor architectures, Silicon Laboratories has achieved multiple industry firsts in the communications, wireless, networking, power and microcontroller markets. Silicon Laboratories has built a portfolio of market leading products leveraging mixed-signal trade secrets, a world-class engineering team and more than 700 issued or patent pending innovations.



A Growth Story

Silicon Laboratories was founded by Nav Sooch, Dave Welland and Jeff Scott in 1996 in Austin, Texas to develop world-class mixed-signal ICs. The company's initial product was an analog modem for personal computers (PCs). Ten years later, the company is now a global enterprise with operations, sales and design activities worldwide. The company became profitable just two years after its inception and completed a successful initial public offering (IPO) in 2000. Today, Silicon Laboratories is a publicly traded, approximately $500 million company, leading mixed-signal innovation across a broad set of products.

"Few companies have grown as consistently and profitably as Silicon Labs. By striving for excellence in all that we do, we've been able to create a company with not only strong products and financial performance, but a sustainable values-oriented culture and a history of giving back to our community," said Nav Sooch, Silicon Laboratories' co-founder and chairman of the board of directors. "We are very proud of what the team has accomplished over the last decade, and we're enthusiastic about the future potential of the business. Over the next ten years, we'll be leveraging expanded resources, the best team of mixed-signal engineers in the world and our cycles of learning to bring our technology leadership to brand new markets."

A Proven Mixed-Signal Leader

Acknowledged by leading trade publications, Silicon Laboratories' products have received more than 20 design awards. The company has rapidly established a leadership position in many major semiconductor markets and has shipped close to 2 billion CMOS-based mixed-signal ICs including:

-- One billion analog modems designed into over 50 percent of PCs and satellite set-top boxes worldwide,

-- 600 million Aero(R) GSM/GPRS transceivers in hundreds of different cellular handsets,

-- 80 million VoIP ICs shipping into products across the majority of VoIP deployments and

-- Nearly 40 million MCUs and over 50,000 MCU development kits.

"Mixed-signal is at the forefront of the next generation of innovation as the analog world we live in and the digital world of computing continue to intersect. Over the next ten years, we'll see power consumption and battery life improve in portable devices, dramatically increasing the convergence of functionality in these products. Broadcast technology will become highly portable; power supplies, wireless networks, and remote monitoring will become commonplace, and bandwidth requirements will continue to increase," said Necip Sayiner, president and chief executive officer of Silicon Laboratories. "The end result is a marketplace ripe for innovation that makes technology less expensive, less power hungry and easier to use. We excel in this environment and look forward to the next ten years of developing product innovations in the areas where we compete."

Financial Strength

Consistently recognized as one of Texas' fastest growing companies, Silicon Laboratories has a financial framework built on best practices that has resulted in a strong balance sheet with excellent cash growth, a cash balance of over $400 million and no debt. This prudent financial management has enabled continued investment in research and development to further build the company's arsenal of patented, mixed-signal innovations.

A Winning Culture

Voted by employees as one of the best places to work in Central Texas, Silicon Laboratories has a winning culture that has allowed the company to maintain its focus as it has grown. Silicon Laboratories' employees pride themselves on their commitment to core values that include open, transparent communication, continuous innovation, refusal to compromise on the quality of talent, a collaborative work environment, a desire to win and a dedication to commercial success.

Silicon Laboratories is also committed to sharing its financial success with the community and has donated funds and volunteer support to 40 local organizations that make a measurable difference in improving the quality of life in Austin.

About Silicon Laboratories Inc.

Silicon Laboratories Inc. is a leading designer of high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for a broad range of applications. Silicon Laboratories' diverse portfolio of highly integrated, patented solutions is developed by a world-class engineering team with decades of cumulative expertise in cutting-edge mixed-signal design. The company has design, engineering, marketing, sales and applications offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information about Silicon Laboratories please visit www.silabs.com.

Cautionary Language

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on Silicon Laboratories' current expectations. The words "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "plan," "project," "will" and similar phrases as they relate to Silicon Laboratories are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current views and assumptions of Silicon Laboratories and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are the following: risks that Silicon Laboratories may not be able to maintain its historical growth; quarterly fluctuations in revenues and operating results; volatile stock price; average selling prices of products may decrease significantly and rapidly, especially for mobile handset products; dependence on a limited number of products and customers; risks associated with shifting market demand from GSM/GPRS to EDGE and WCDMA; difficulties developing new products that achieve market acceptance; risks that Silicon Laboratories may not be able to manage strains associated with its growth; dependence on key personnel; difficulties managing our manufacturers and subcontractors; difficulties managing international activities; credit risks associated with our accounts receivable; geographic concentration of manufacturers, assemblers, test service providers and customers in the Pacific Rim that subjects Silicon Laboratories' business and results of operations to risks of natural disasters, epidemics, war and political unrest; product development risks; inventory-related risks; intellectual property litigation risks; risks associated with acquisitions; the competitive and cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry and other factors that are detailed in Silicon Laboratories' filings with the SEC. Silicon Laboratories disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Note to editors: Silicon Laboratories, Aero and the Silicon Laboratories logo are trademarks of Silicon Laboratories Inc. All other product names noted herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.
Easy Does It! Intuit Announces QuickBooks 2007. Check it out:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq:INTU) today announced the availability of QuickBooks(R) 2007. The new line of products and services focuses on what matters most to small businesses: making day-to-day tasks even easier to complete, while adding deeper functionality for specialized and growing businesses.



QuickBooks 2007 includes powerful new tools and services that help small businesses succeed in activities beyond accounting. For the first time, Intuit is offering customers integrated tools to market their business and attract new customers, as well as new services that extend QuickBooks' functionality -- from accepting credit cards to managing timesheets and running payroll. Combined, these create a strong ecosystem of distinctive solutions to help existing and new-to-the-world businesses be successful.

"No one serves small business and accountants better than Intuit," said Brad Smith, senior vice president of Intuit's Small Business Division. "For nearly 15 years we have remained laser-focused on ease, continuously improving the market-leading small business management platform. At the same time, we have developed a powerful mix of integrated services that our customers asked us for to help better connect them with their customers, vendors, partners and employees."

Solutions Beyond Accounting

QuickBooks now offers more than 25 products and services that go beyond core accounting functionality. From QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores to Intuit Small Business Payroll services, customers can leverage their existing QuickBooks data to better manage and market their companies. QuickBooks also offers easy solutions to process payments, such as the QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit and the new QuickBooks Time Tracker to easily collect and manage employee timesheets on the Web.

The latest addition to Intuit's comprehensive small business ecosystem is a series of popular marketing tools from Google. The new integrated online tools include Google Maps(TM), Google AdWords(TM) and the QuickBooks Product Listing Service, designed to solve another critical small business concern -- attracting new customers online.

Customers can also easily find more than 400 add-on applications that solve specific needs from sales force automation to eBay integration through the QuickBooks Solutions Marketplace (www.marketplace.intuit.com).

"Small businesses are increasingly interested in moving from piecemeal solutions to more integrated approaches to company operations," said Merle Sandler, senior research analyst at IDC. "But this can be tricky, because small firms also want resources that can support company growth, but not be too expensive or difficult to use. With that in mind, Intuit's strategy of extending beyond basic accounting to build a valuable network of available capabilities will resonate with both small businesses and the accountants that serve them."

Focusing on What Matters Most -- Ease

QuickBooks 2007 features numerous enhancements that simplify users' most frequent activities, helping the approximate 3.7 million small businesses using the software be more efficient:

-- Easier Setup: To help new users set up their income and expense accounts more accurately, QuickBooks 2007 features a simplified recommended Chart of Accounts. The new version offers users the 30 most commonly-used accounts for their business type -- reducing the likelihood of incorrectly categorizing expenses down the road. Optional accounts to suit specific business needs can easily be added.

-- Easier Payroll: The nearly 1 million businesses that use Intuit Small Business Payroll Services can now easily run payroll for all their employees at once, rather than one at a time. A new dashboard clearly displays the impact of payroll across the business, showing in one clear view what the company needs to pay employees and the government, and what forms they need to file. And, a new "review, confirm and submit" process gives users the confidence their payroll is correct and ready to go.

-- Easy Data Sharing with Accountants: It is now easier than ever for accountants to make changes to their clients' company files, while the business owner continues to work on their day-to-day business transactions without interruption. Previously, if a company needed to send files to an accountant, the business would have to stop entering data into QuickBooks to ensure version control. While the files were with the accountant, the business could not process financial information, including invoices, bills or payroll. With the new Dividing Date functionality, QuickBooks allows accountants to edit and review all information before a specified date, while giving the company the freedom to continue business as usual. When the accountant is done with the adjustment, the business owner can quickly review and import those changes directly into QuickBooks.

-- Easier Customization: Small businesses rely on forms to communicate with customers, suppliers and partners. On average, a small business uses 168 forms per month, including invoices, letters and purchase orders. With QuickBooks 2007 small businesses no longer have to print their customized document, walk to the printer and look at the hard copy to see if the form meets their needs. New for this year, QuickBooks includes an auto-preview feature that makes it easy to customize forms with color schemes, logos and more, while showing users their changes as they are made. The software also consolidates the most commonly-used customization options all on one screen.

New "Right for Me" Solutions to Solve Specific Needs

As part of Intuit's Right for Me strategy to offer QuickBooks versions for companies of different sizes and industries with specific needs, the QuickBooks 2007 line adds new capabilities for specialized businesses and growing companies:

-- Enhanced Features for Product-based Businesses: Inventory management is critical to the success of product-based businesses, but in order to keep accurate record of total inventory, they must often convert products from one unit of measure to another. For example, a company that purchases a product by the case from a supplier may sell the same product by the individual bottle to its customers. Available in select QuickBooks 2007 offerings, the new Unit of Measure feature removes the hassle of manual conversion, and the risk of costly errors, by automatically calculating the conversion from one unit to another in the appropriate forms including invoices, purchase orders and inventory reports.

"To meet the needs of large retailers, we were spending two to three hours a day manually calculating and converting quantities. We have different shipping requirements for each retailer and any error in shipping too many or too few of any one item results in shipping error fees," said Tom Mitchell, CFO of HBH Pet Products in Springville, Utah. "QuickBooks gives us that peace of mind to know that we have shipped out what our customers want, when they want it."

In addition, an improved Shipping Manager enables multi-parcel and high-value shipping with FedEx and UPS, handles third-party billing and can print labels right from QuickBooks on popular thermal printers.

-- Online Time Tracking for Professional Services Firms: Businesses can now collect and manage employee and contractor timesheets on the Web with the new QuickBooks Time Tracker service, available by subscription. Freeing managers and employees from manually entering data into QuickBooks from hand-written timesheets, Time Tracker easily downloads data into QuickBooks saving hours of tedious work and reducing errors that can cause incorrect billing.

"Time Tracker saves us so much time when entering employee timesheets," said Leticia Zaragoza, of K Page Kistler, PC in Virginia Beach, Va. "Plus, I have total control when managing these entries for billing."

-- After-the-Fact Payroll: Approximately 28 percent of the 250,000 accountants who work with QuickBooks perform after-the-fact payroll services, entering payroll data from paychecks that clients have prepared themselves. To save accountants considerable time and effort, QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll for Accountants features a new After-the-Fact Payroll spreadsheet-style data entry tool that transforms this traditionally time-intensive task into a simple process.

-- Increased List Limits for Growing Businesses: Mid-market businesses using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 7.0 now have the capability to add a hundred thousand or more inventory items, customers and vendors as they grow -- an increase of more than 400 percent.

Pricing and Availability

QuickBooks Premier -- including industry-specific editions for accountants, contractors, manufacturers and wholesalers, nonprofits, professional service firms and retailers -- is priced at $399.95. QuickBooks Pro retails for $199.95 and QuickBooks' entry-level product, QuickBooks: Simple Start Edition is $99.95. A new three-user value pack for QuickBooks Pro is $499.95 and a five-user value pack for QuickBooks Premier is $1,499.95.

QuickBooks 2007 products are currently available direct from Intuit at www.quickbooks.com and will be available starting on October 11, 2006 at fine retailers everywhere including: Amazon.com, Best Buy, CDW, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco.com, Fry's Electronics, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Sam's Club and Staples.

For mid-market companies QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 7.0 starts at $3,000 for a five-seat license and is available for up to 20 simultaneous users. The QuickBooks Enterprise price includes a 12-month full-service plan which entitles businesses to 24/7 technical support from a dedicated support engineer, product upgrades, data recovery and reporting services, interactive training tools and automatic renewals. QuickBooks Enterprise can be purchased direct from Intuit by calling 866-379-6635.

About Intuit Inc.

Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services, including QuickBooks(R), Quicken(R) and TurboTax(R) software, simplify small business management and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. ProSeries(R) and Lacerte(R) are Intuit's leading tax preparation software suites for professional accountants.

Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of $2.3 billion in its fiscal year 2006. The company has nearly 7,500 employees with major offices in 13 states across the United States, and offices in Canada and the United Kingdom. More information can be found at www.intuit.com.

Intuit, the Intuit logo, and QuickBooks, among others, are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Answerthink to Webcast Presentation at The Noble Financial ONTRACK 2006 Conference. Check it out:
MIAMI --(Business Wire)-- Answerthink, Inc. (Nasdaq:ANSR) will provide a live audio Webcast of its presentation at The Noble Financial ONTRACK 2006 Small Cap Conference and Micro Cap Symposium.

The Webcast is scheduled for Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 1:45 pm ET.

To listen to the live Webcast, go to http://www.ontrack06.com/webcast.html and click on the link to the Webcast. The Website has instructions for accessing the Webcast. Please allow at least 15 minutes prior to the event to download and install any necessary software.



About Answerthink

Answerthink, Inc. (www.answerthink.com) is a leading business and technology consulting firm that enables companies to achieve world-class business performance. By leveraging the comprehensive database of The Hackett Group, Answerthink's business and technology solutions help clients significantly improve performance and maximize returns on technology investments. Answerthink's capabilities include benchmarking, business transformation, business applications, business intelligence, and offshore application development and support. Founded in 1997, Answerthink has offices throughout the United States and in Europe and India.

About The Hackett Group

The Hackett Group (www.TheHackettGroup.com), a strategic advisory firm and an Answerthink company, is a world leader in best practice research, benchmarking and business transformation services that empirically define and enable world-class enterprise performance.

Through the acquisition of REL Consultancy Group, a global leader in generating cash improvement from working capital, we offer Hackett-REL Total Working Capital services to liberate cash flow from operations through improved working capital, reduced costs and increased service quality. Hackett-REL has helped clients in more than 60 countries free up over $25 billion through working capital improvements in the last 10 years alone.

Only The Hackett Group empirically defines world-class performance in sales, general and administrative (SG&A) and supply chain activities with analysis gained through 3,500 benchmark studies over 14 years at 2,100 of the world's leading companies. Our clients comprise 97 percent of the Dow Jones Industrials, 77 percent of the Fortune 100 and 90 percent of the Dow Jones Global Titans Index.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Answerthink's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that impact such forward-looking statements include, among others, the ability of the products, services, or practices mentioned in this release to deliver the desired effect, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions into our operations, our ability to attract additional business, our ability to effectively market and sell our product offerings and other services, the timing of projects and the potential for contract cancellations by our customers, changes in expectations regarding the information technology industry, our ability to attract and retain skilled employees, possible changes in collections of accounts receivable, risks of competition, price and margin trends, foreign currency fluctuations, changes in general economic conditions and interest rates as well as other risks detailed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 30, 2005 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
PMC-Sierra Provides Update to Q3 2006 Business Outlook. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Nasdaq:PMCS), a leading provider of high-speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors, is today providing an update to its business outlook for the third quarter of 2006. The Company now expects revenues for the third quarter ending October 1st, 2006, to be in the range of $114 million to $116 million compared to revenues in the second quarter of 2006 of $118.8 million. The Company's previous outlook for third quarter revenues announced on the July 20th 2006 earnings conference call was for a revenue range of $122 million to $124 million.



The revision in outlook for revenues for the third quarter of 2006 is primarily attributable to changes in customer demand related to the Company's communications products. Due to cost containment efforts, the Company expects operating expenses for the third quarter of 2006 to be at or below $60 million compared to the outlook for expenses provided during the earnings conference call on July 20th of $62.5 million to $63.5 million.

"Business activity in the third quarter is less than earlier expected in the communications area, particularly in Asia, while activity in enterprise storage continues to improve as previously expected," said Bob Bailey, Chairman and CEO of PMC-Sierra. "We remain positive on the industry trends for continued build-out of next-generation network infrastructure, enterprise storage and deployment of Fibre-To-The-Home."

On August 25th, 2006, PMC-Sierra announced the closing of its development site in Ottawa, Canada, that is expected to result in the elimination of between 30 and 40 positions. That workforce reduction, combined with the elimination of approximately 10 positions at the Company's development site in Portland, Oregon, is estimated to result in operating expense savings of approximately $1.5 to $1.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2006 and a normalized quarterly expense savings of approximately $1.8 to $2.2 million in subsequent quarters. The Company expects to complete the restructuring activities by the end of 2006.

Third Quarter 2006 Conference Call

Management will be providing a review of the Company's third quarter 2006 results and provide guidance for the fourth quarter of 2006 during a conference call at 1:30 pm Pacific Time/4:30 pm Eastern Time on October 19th, 2006. To listen to the call, investors can access an audio webcast of the conference call on the Financial Events and Calendar section at http://investor.pmc-sierra.com/. A replay of this webcast will be posted and available two hours after the conference call has been completed. A replay of the webcast will be available for five business days.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. The forward looking statements include the estimate of revenue and expenses for the third quarter, expectations regarding enterprise storage and other industry trends and expected expense savings from the closing of operations in Ottawa and Portland. Actual results may differ from projections. The Company's SEC filings describe more fully the risks associated with the Company's business including PMC-Sierra's limited revenue visibility due to variable customer demands, orders with short delivery lead times and customer concentration, and changing environments in the different segments and regions of the business. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update the forward-looking statements.

About PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra(TM) is a leading provider of broadband communications and storage semiconductors for metro, access, fiber to the home, wireless infrastructure, storage, laser printers and customer premises equipment. PMC-Sierra offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe, Israel and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information, visit www.pmc-sierra.com.

(C) Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2006. All rights reserved. PMC is a registered trademark of PMC-Sierra, Inc. in the United States and other countries. PMC-SIERRA, PMCS and "Thinking You can Build On" are trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Intros Mobile Virtual PBX Service. Check it out:
Oracle (News - Alert) Virtual PBX (News - Alert) was introduced today by Oracle. The new service will be part of the company's Oracle Service Delivery Platform (Oracle SDP). The platform, to be deployed by operators and service providers, supports SIP, SIP Servlets, and Parlay/Parlay X. The Oracle SDP enables the development of network-centric services and their portability across IMS-enabled and VoIP networks.


 
The Oracle Virtual PBX will be delivered as an operator-hosted PBX service. The service features Queues and Attendant functionality, Hunting Groups and Auto attendants. Oracle Virtual PBX can be implemented using standard J2EE and Web technologies.
 
"Network operators are finding that the ideal way to address fixed/mobile convergence is to build their infrastructures and services on top of standards-based IT platforms like the Oracle SDP," said Oracle's vice president of development Vittorio Viarengo in a statement.
 
 "Rapid service deployment on today's networks with a future-proof architecture for easy migration is essential. The Oracle SDP and services like the Oracle Virtual PBX represent Oracle's commitment to help solve the problems of communication service providers and network operators through a proven, standards-based, carrier-grade platform as well as out-of-the-box services that are immediately revenue generating."
 
The Oracle Virtual PBX is currently available and is priced on a per-subscriber basis.
 
 
What’s the Number One VoIP Conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP Expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for Service Providers, Resellers, and the Enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.
 
Click Commerce Customer and Executive to Address Aberdeen Research's Inaugural Chief Service Officer Summit. Check it out:
CHICAGO --(Business Wire)-- Click Commerce, Inc. (Nasdaq:CKCM), a leading provider of on-demand supply chain management solutions, and customer Kawasaki Motors Corp will present at Aberdeen Research's inaugural Chief Service Officer (CSO) Summit, Oct. 3-4 in Boston. David Dora, executive vice president of operations at Kawasaki Motors Corp, will present a case study on how to "Drive Revenues by Moving from a Company-Centric to a Customer-Centric Service Approach." Also presenting at the conference is Click Commerce Senior Vice President of Product Management and Strategy Steve Cole. Mr. Cole will join a panel of solution provider experts who will discuss "Service Chain Solutions Directions."



The CSO summit offers a networking conference for forward-looking service, finance, supply chain, and operations executives interested in transforming their post-sales service processes. Aberdeen's research indicates that 78 percent of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) currently or soon will manage post-sales service as a strategic profit center. Click Commerce is a platinum sponsor of the summit.

"As a pioneer in offering service supply chain solutions, we have seen first-hand the growing need to turn post-sales operations into revenue generating service organizations. In many cases, post-sales service has become a significant advantage for companies competing globally," said Nancy Koenig, executive vice president of operations for Click Commerce. "The CSO summit provides service executives a great venue for learning new methods to drive service supply chain transformation and increase market share."

To learn more about Aberdeen Research's Chief Service Officer Summit and Click Commerce's participation, go to http://www.aberdeen.com/events/live/CSO06/

About Click Commerce, Inc.

Click Commerce, Inc., (Nasdaq:CKCM), a leading provider of on-demand supply chain management solutions, enables millions of users in 70 countries to collaborate, in real time, with business partners across the extended enterprise. Click Commerce solutions support the unique business processes of multiple industry segments such as manufacturing, aerospace and defense, and high-tech. Click Commerce enables corporations including Alaska Airlines, BASF, Citibank, Delphi, Eastman Kodak Company, Jabil Global Services, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Pier 1, Ryder, and Verizon to coordinate and optimize business processes, accelerate revenue, lower costs, and improve customer service. More information can be found at www.clickcommerce.com.
Mobile Cohesion gains $4.8m [Mobile Cohesion]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise Equity Leads Round with Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Accel Partners, and Clarendon Fund Managers

Belfast UK, September 25th 2006 Mobile Cohesion, the UK based telecommunications software firm, has announced that it has closed its second major funding round of $4.8m one of the largest venture investments this year for any Northern Ireland based technology firm.



According to Per Lindblad, Mobile Cohesions CEO, this is further endorsement of the companys market defining position in partner relationship management solutions for mobile operators worldwide.

Our customers, some of the best known brand leaders in mobile telephony, have endorsed the concept of partner and performance focused partner relationship management based on our HYDRA product.

With this funding round we can now further develop our presence in a vast market one in which we have massive competitive advantage. We are very proud that our achievements have been recognised by our existing backers Cross Atlantic Partners and Accel Partners. But now Belfast-based Enterprise Equity (NI), Northern Irelands longest established VC firm, has led our latest funding round supported by existing investors as well as Viridian Growth Fund - a Northern Ireland based fund managed by Clarendon Fund Managers.

The funds will be used to leverage our existing customer relationships in other geographies and to attract new customers who are wrestling with partner management challenges. In addition, well be developing our customer operations organisation and further enhancing our product offerings through more R&D.

According to Brian Cummings of Enterprise Equity, We were very impressed with the energy and talent exhibited by the Mobile Cohesion team and its track record of building successful telecommunication software companies. We believe that HYDRA offers a compelling proposition to operators that want to exploit the real business opportunity of mobile content, applications and data services. The challenge for the company is to build on its installed customer base and to further spread the word about the huge revenue and profit opportunities represented by HYDRA.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Easynet picks Telent for LLU [telent plc]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Multimillion pound contract makes telent a strategic partner for Easynets volume roll-out plan

London 25 September 2006 telent plc (LSE: TLNT) is pleased to announce that it has been contracted by Easynet to manage the volume deployment of access equipment as part of the companys Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) programme. The brief gives telent responsibility for management, installation and commissioning, including all aspects of inventory control, for Easynets expansion of its LLU footprint.



In addition to the management of the inventory control, telent has also secured the contract to supply installation materials (racks, cables and other infrastructure equipment).

Easynet is an international networking company owner and part of the BSkyB group. In the UK, Easynet is a pioneer of LLU and provides the infrastructure for the broadband requirements of BSkyB. At an international level, Easynet provides global managed IP network solutions into the enterprise marketplace.

We selected telent to ensure an efficient and speedy deployment, which will assist Easynet in expanding our LLU footprint to deliver further innovative services to our UK enterprise customers. Both telent and Easynet are very experienced in deploying large-scale access solutions within the UK, which is why this partnership is such a compelling one. Our longstanding relationship with the telent team, and our experience of them constantly delivering on time and to budget, also influenced our decision of deployment partner, comments Trevor Legg, Easynets network implementation director.

This project represents an excellent fit for telents capabilities. We are solely focussed on the provision of leading edge telecommunications services, and this specialisation gave us a definite competitive edge. We also have a long-standing history of delivery in this area, having installed over 5,000 access platforms in the UK. Moreover, telent boasts an intimate knowledge of BT processes, having worked closely with the PTT for many years, comments Mark Plato, chief executive officer, telent plc.

We are delighted that this contract will further strengthen our reputation for managing all aspects of a turnkey LLU deployment. The size and reach of our installation field force also proved invaluable in demonstrating our suitability for this project, Mr Plato concluded.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Verizon Named to Working Mother Magazine's 2006 List of 100 Best Companies. Check it out:
NEW YORK, Sept. 25 -- Verizon has been named to Working Mother magazine's 2006 list of 100 Best Companies. The only telecom company on the list, Verizon was cited for its continuing commitment to working mothers its family-friendly benefits and policies.



Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless, the corporation's wireless arm, filed a joint entry.
"Verizon is exceptional for its continuing commitment to working mothers, and we salute them for making the 100 Best," said Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Media, the magazine's parent company. "Every year we see companies upping the ante, establishing new paradigms for quality of life among their employees and redefining the status quo for workplaces across the country. Among the many worthy entrants, the winners really set the gold standard."

In surveying the companies that applied for this year's list, Working Mother gave particular weight to whether the companies provide two key benefits: flexible scheduling, the most critical benefit for working mothers; and leave time, which is essential for parents who need to take time off from work to deal with family issues.

Verizon offers a wealth of benefits for working parents with children ranging in age from infants to college students. For example, employees returning to work after the birth of a child, adoption or any leave covered by the Family Leave Act have the flexibility to work on a reduced schedule while retaining full benefits for up to six months, and in some cases 12 months.

"We strive to create programs and preserve a culture that help our working parents strike a balance between the demands of home and work, because it's the right thing to do for our employees and for our business," said Magda Yrizarry, Verizon's vice president of workplace culture, diversity and compliance. "It's an honor to be named a Working Mother Magazine 100 best company, and one we accept on behalf of Verizon's working parents."

To apply for the Working Mother 100 Best, Verizon provided Working Mother magazine with detailed information on seven areas of work/life balance: workforce profile, compensation, child care, flexibility, time off and leaves, family-friendly programs and company culture. The survey checked the availability, tracking and usage of programs to support working mothers; the accountability of managers to implement programs; and the successful advancement of women into top-paying jobs, board position and management ranks. Verizon was also required to submit benefits handbooks and supporting documentation.

The complete list of the 2006 Working Mother 100 Best Companies can be found at http://www.workingmother.com/.

Earlier this year, Working Mother magazine also named Verizon Communications a Best Company for Women of Color, a list of 12 companies with cutting-edge policies and practices that support African-American, Asian-American, Latina and Native-American women in the workplace.

In August, Verizon was among the Top 13 companies in LatinaStyle Magazine's list of 50 Best Companies for Latinas and No. 7 on Hispanic Business' Top 50 Companies for Hispanics. BusinessWeek recently ranked Verizon No. 11 on the magazine's list of Best Places to Launch a Career.

Also in 2006, Verizon was ranked No. 1 on DiversityInc Magazine's Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, a list on which Verizon has earned a Top 10 ranking each of the last three years. The Women's Business Enterprise National Council named Verizon among the top American corporations for women's business enterprises. Verizon's goal is to increase year-over-year spending with companies that are owned by minorities, women or disabled veterans -- business enterprises that did $2.17 billion worth of business with Verizon in 2005.

Verizon Communications Inc. , a Dow 30 company, is a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 55 million customers nationwide. Verizon Business operates one of the most expansive wholly-owned global IP networks. Verizon Telecom is deploying the nation's most advanced fiber-optic network to deliver the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services to customers. Based in New York, Verizon has a diverse workforce of more than 252,000 and generates annual consolidated operating revenues of approximately $90 billion. For more information, visit http://www.verizon.com/.

About Working Mother
Founded in 1979, Working Mother magazine reaches nearly 3 million readers and is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers. Its 21-year signature initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, is the most important benchmark for work/life practices in corporate America. The publication also releases the annual list of the Best Companies for Women of Color in the June issue. Working Mother is published by Working Mother Media (WMM), which also owns the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), NAFE Magazine, the annual 100 Best Companies WorkLife Congress, as well as the Best Companies for Women of Color Multicultural Conference and regional Town Halls. This year, WMM launched its Best Small Companies for Working Mothers initiative.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at http://www.verizon.com/news. To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.

Verizon

CONTACT: Media, Alberto Canal of Verizon, +1-908-559-6367,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.verizon.com/http://www.workingmother.com/

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/094251.html
CLARIFICATION of eWan1, Inc. Press Release on September 12th Entitled, ''eWan Contracts with ARM Technologies and JTAG Technologies to Provide for Secure Componentry for Its Patented AccessKey(TM)''. Check it out:
LOS ANGELES --(Business Wire)-- eWan1, Inc.(Pink Sheets:EWAN) wishes to issue the following clarification to its release, BW5918, (CA-EWAN1) "EWAN Contracts with ARM Technologies and JTAG Technologies to Provide for Secure Componentry for Its Patented AccessKey(TM)" issued Tuesday, September 12, 2006:



Upon review of the aforementioned press release it was determined by ARM Technology (LSE:ARM) (NASDAQ:ARMHY) that ARM did not authorize eWAN to reference ARM in its press release.

Additionally, within the same release, JTAG Technologies was referenced as being a supplier of the "primary operating system" for eWan's AccessKey(TM) technology-based products. This statement was both erroneous and misplaced, as there is no formal or informal relationship between JTAG Technologies and eWan.

George Stevens, eWan's CEO, commented, "We are truly sorry for any misstatements that eWan has made with respect to both of these highly regarded companies. With respect to ARM, we did not utilize the proper press release approval process, and as such did not have ARM's explicit permission to reference that company in the September 12th Press Release." He continued, "With respect to JTAG Technologies, eWan has neither a formal nor an informal relationship with JTAG. One of eWan's vendors has a similar moniker to that of JTAG Technologies, which was somehow erroneously replaced with JTAG's name during the editorial process. I truly apologize to both companies as well as our shareholder base and the investing community at-large for this oversight and any and all inconvenience this may have caused. We will shortly be correcting this error with the issue of a new release that accurately reflects and references our vendor relationships."

About eWan1, Inc.

eWAN is a developer of technology and equipment that enables the delivery of High-Definition (HD) quality video and television content to consumers over internet protocol (a revolution known as "IPtv" or television broadcasting over the Internet) and believes it is the first company with the ability to deliver Internet TV with the clarity of high definition to ordinary TV sets. The company's suite of advanced technology products, including its patented and proprietary AccessKey(TM)-powered flash drive-sized set-top box product, a portable version of the Company's wireless "Triple Play" Digital Media Center(TM), is unique in that it turns any computer into a television, enabling users to receive their favorite TV programming anywhere on earth by plugging the USB device and product into their laptop or home computer. Both the AccessKey(TM)-powered flash drive-sized set-top box product and the Triple Play set-top box(TM) enable traditional Internet access, telephone service (VoIP) and data and video capability including video conferencing. Additionally, the company's "IPtv cache" technology enables music channels that can play music and the corresponding video if it is available, as well as provide "time shifted" services such as the ability to record one program while watching another, similar to the offering of TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO).

About ARM Technologies

ARM - The Architecture for the Digital World(TM). ARM Holdings pic (LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY), ranked by Dataquest as the number one semiconductor IP supplier in the world, emerged as a pre-eminent force in the semiconductor revolution. When ARM pioneered the concept of openly-licensable IP for the development of 32-bit RISC processor-based SoCs in the early 1990s, it changed the dynamics of the semiconductor industry forever. By licensing, rather than manufacturing and selling its chip technology, the company established a new business model that has redefined the way processors are designed, produced and sold. More importantly, ARM(R) technology has shaped a new era of next-generation electronics: ARM Powered(R) processors are pervasive in electronic products, driving key functions in a diverse variety of applications in key markets, including Home, Mobile, Enterprise, Embedded and Emerging. ARM licenses its IP to a network of Partners, which includes some of the world's leading semiconductor and system companies, including 19 out of the top 20 semiconductor vendors worldwide, as ranked by iSuppli Corp. These Partners utilize low-cost, power-efficient ARM processor designs to create processors, peripherals and SoC solutions.

About JTAG Technologies

JTAG Technologies is a market leader and technology innovator of boundary-scan software and hardware products and services. Its customers include world leaders in electronics design and manufacturing like Ericsson, Medtronic, Motorola, Nokia, Raytheon, Rockwell-Collins and Samsung. Its innovative boundary-scan (IEEE Standard 1149.1) products provide test preparation, test execution, test result analysis and in-system programming applications. With an installed base of over 4,000 systems worldwide, JTAG Technologies serves the communications, medical electronics, avionics, defense, automotive, and consumer industries. JTAG Technologies is headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information visit: www.jtag.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements, which may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of eWan1, and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events or changes to future operating results.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, go to the Company's website at: http://www.ewan1.com, or contact: Brass Bulls Corp - (866) 342.2700, [email protected].

Lawson to target Europe and NHS

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Lawson to target Europe and NHS. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--US-based Lawson Software, the third largest business software developer in the world, is planning more acquisitions in the UK and Europe after its recent $480m (253m, E369m) takeover of Swedish software company Intentia.



Lawson is also aggressively pitching for lucrative back-office software contracts in European markets such as the UK, Germany and France and has already started talks with the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

In an exclusive interview with The Business, Lawson president and chief executive Harry Debes revealed the US-based software company is already talking with a shortlist of potential takeover targets in Europe.

"Financing further acquisitions will not be a problem for Lawson. The banks are throwing themselves at us asking how much we want to borrow. If we wished, we could borrow north of a $1bn and we already have $300m in cash."

But he added that it is important for Lawson and Intentia to merge successfully before embarking on another major acquisition. According to Debes, there will be little rationalisation of the US and Swedish software companies as their operations are entirely complimentary. Lawson is a US-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) company specialising in service companies while Intentia is a Sweden-based operation specialising in ERP for manufacturing.

But Debes intends to use Intentia's 2,500 customer base, which is mostly in Europe, to sell Lawson's niche healthcare and local government software. Around 95 percent of all Lawson's business is in the US, where it claims to dominate its niche.

"In the US, we have 4,500 hospitals. No one, not even [German software giant] SAP, comes close to us in the healthcare space," said Debes.

Like many US-based companies, Lawson's first foray to Europe was in the UK because English is spoken. The company signed a contract with Nuffield Hospital and Lawson is now understood to have begun talks with the NHS.

According to Debes, the savings ERP software can offer the healthcare industry are huge. It believes it can drive down cost by supply chain management. "Around 70 percent of purchases are specific to health care and the global suppliers of hospital equipment are often the same as those used by US companies," said Lawson vice president Dean Hager. "We can realise huge cost savings in this area."

ERP software also handles other back-office functions such as human resources.

"It is vital in areas such as healthcare that the ERP software is designed to match the needs of the industry in which it is used," said Hager. "While it is true that all companies need to hire people, the criteria between one industry are very different. For example, that used for hiring nurses is totally different from that used in the construction industry."

According to Debes, back-office ERP is needed to manage all hospital resources including operating theatre slots and the number of beds available at any one time.

The company intends to use the in-house language expertise developed by Intentia to break into new markets outside the UK and the US.

"Previously, Lawson used an outsourced language service to help translate our products for foreign markets," said Debes. "This was not ideal as this approach often fails to take full account of the cultural differences involved."

But Intentia had developed its own in-house translation capabilities, which Lawson believes will enable it to translate its products, currently available in five languages to 10-20 languages including Chinese and Japanese. Following the merger, more than half the company's revenues are outside the US.

According to sector analysts, the company is following a global trend in software where firms tend to address global industries rather than national markets. Instead of specialising in providing software to the US or the UK, developers are now starting to address narrow business niches on a global basis.

Debes predicts that this strategy will enable Lawson to increase its annual revenues from $389.6m to $1bn in 2009, irrespective of planned acquisitions.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
LifeSize Provides New Lifelike Video Conferencing for AIC Ventures. Check it out:
For any company with a dispersed workforce or client base, conferencing solutions provide a way to effectively collaborate, without the need to travel. These collaborations have in the past, sometimes lacked clear quality and did not always provide an answer, especially in situations when face-to-face communications were essential.


 
Now, LifeSize, provider of high definition video communication solutions, is making face-to-face communications possible, even for remote users.
 
Their solution, LifeSize Room, boasts clear video and good reliable audio as well as high-definition (1280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second) video resolution, so that participants of the conference appear lifelike.
 
Recognizing the productivity benefits and cost saving of their solution, AIC Ventures installed LifeSize Room in three of their company locations.
 
This new communication capability will serve to enhance productivity, further eliminate the need to travel and allow for communications that are more effective.
 
The patent pending high-definition technology included in the LifeSize Room product also offers quality over any bandwidth, a factor some companies may previously been concerned about.
 
"In our business, being able to look someone in the eye is as important, if not more so, than any documentation we may share. LifeSize lets us do that without having to bust our bottom line on travel," commented AIC President and Managing Partner Peter S. Carlsen in a statement to the press.
 
AIC Ventures Chairman Paul Robshaw commented on his experience with AIC's  first introduction of the product during a branding strategy earlier this year, "It was beautiful. I felt as if I could walk through the screen and right into our other offices. Since then we have made LifeSize an integral part of our business communications strategy."
 
According to a news release, "AIC has used LifeSize Room to conduct internal meetings between offices and to hold "live" meetings between investors, clients and employees—regardless of which of the three offices the participants are visiting."
 
Providing the same technology and benefits for the smaller conferencing group is LifeSize Team, a lower cost system introduced by LifeSize just last month.
 
For more please visit: www.lifesize.com
 
 
What’s the Number One VoIP Conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP Expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for Service Providers, Resellers, and the Enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
 
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Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
 
 
Motorola seeks to rival the Blackberry with range of devices. Check it out:
(Business, The (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--MOTOROLA is planning to create a new generation of portable devices for business that will rival the RIM Blackberry, according to City analysts.

Richard Windsor, a telecoms analyst at Nomura Securities, believes that Motorola's purchase of Symbol Technologies for $3.9bn (2.1bn, E3bn) last week will enable the US's biggest mobile phone maker to take on RIM, the maker of the Blackberry, and Nokia in mobile business communications.



"Symbol Technologies makes and sells handheld and fixed equipment and software used to manage retail, wholesale, transportation and healthcare industries. Symbol will become the core of Motorola's enterprise business," said Windsor.

Motorola has been successful in manufacturing devices designed to appeal to business users such as the Q smartphone, with its Qwerty keyboard and Microsoft mobile business software. But it has yet to make a serious impact on the global business enterprise market.

"Until now we have viewed Motorola as a minnow in enterprise," said Windsor. "We have long believed that companies need far more than just a device. For large corporations we believe that device customisation, device management and 24/7 support need to be offered along with the device to be successful."

Analysts now believe that the Symbol takeover offers Motorola a big opportunity to grow its enterprise business by giving companies a coordinated mobile network that covers white and blue collar operations together with a new generation of mobile devices aimed at business users.

Typically, white-collar mobile workers require elegant devices that can access e-mail while on the move and connect to the corporate intranet. Blue-collar workers traditionally require more robust devices with a scanner to read bar codes or wireless tags. But industry commentators now report that the division is becoming increasingly blurred with sales staff asking for more robust devices and blue-collar workers using increasingly sophisticated wireless access to the corporate network.

"Using Symbol's existing client base we see no reason why [Motorola's] coverage cannot be extended from the warehouse right the way up to the boardroom," said Windsor. "The only question is whether Motorola has the management depth to execute the vision."

Symbol makes bar code readers that scan prices at supermarkets and track inventory in warehouses. Its hand-held computers, which have bar code readers, are used by a host of mobile workers, from doctors to delivery van drivers. Symbol is a market leader in rugged mobile computers, with about a 31 percent share. Motorola has revenues of over $36bn, the majority of which comes from mobile phones.

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business, London
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Acopia Networks to Highlight the Impact of Intelligent File Virtualization on Application Performance at Storage Decisions, Fall 2006. Check it out:
LOWELL, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Acopia Networks(R), the leader in high-performance, intelligent file virtualization, today announced that it will showcase new configurations that utilize tiered storage to dramatically increase application performance. The company will present a preview of these capabilities in Booth #409 during this week's Storage Decisions, Fall 2006, taking place September 27 - 29, 2006 at the New York Hilton.



Traditional tiered storage, or Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), approaches seek to move lower priority files to lower performing, less expensive disk in an effort to save on storage and backup costs. Acopia leads the industry in providing real-time automation of tiered storage for this purpose. However, Acopia is now expanding that traditional cost-saving approach to include tiering of data for the specific purpose of optimizing performance as well. At Storage Decisions, Acopia will highlight the results of exciting new research that underscores its ability to move specific data sets to higher performance, memory-based platforms, resulting in dramatic improvement in application performance.

In Acopia laboratory tests, when a specific application file set was moved to a high-performance storage device, application throughput increased by almost 30 times compared to similar tests run with the same file set residing on a popular modern NAS system. Amazingly, this high performance storage device consisted solely of a single, popular off-the-shelf server configured with 32GB memory and dual Intel(R) processors. The cost of this configuration was under $10,000. Given the cost difference between the popular NAS system and performance storage device this solution was 300x more cost effective than the popular NAS system alone when serving this workload.

"Time and again, in real-world customer environments, we have proven the value of automatically tiering data to less expensive systems - freeing up expensive disk resources and dramatically reducing storage and backup costs," said Kirby Wadsworth, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Acopia. "Now, we are again leading the market by offering the ability to move critical data sets to a very high performance, memory-based performance storage device. Furthermore, because new industry standard servers now support massive memory configurations, we are accomplishing this with commodity hardware. For the right applications, the resulting price/performance improvements are off the chart."

In addition to discussing these test results, Acopia will be demonstrating the value of intelligent file virtualization, and its ability to simplify file storage management - making it easier than ever for companies to migrate, tier, balance, and replicate file data across the entire enterprise storage environment.

Specifically, Acopia Booth #409, will also show how intelligent file virtualization provides the ability to:

-- Migrate large numbers of files, transparently to users, without scheduled outages,

-- Tier data to appropriate storage media automatically and continuously - freeing expensive high-performance disk and dramatically reducing storage and backup costs

-- Increase utilization and optimize performance with advanced real-time load balancing

-- Replicate data efficiently and flexibly to ensure data protection and high availability

About Acopia Networks

Acopia Networks is the leader in high-performance, intelligent file virtualization. Its family of ARX systems help customers manage the growth, complexity and cost of unstructured, globally distributed, file-based information. By providing automatic, policy-driven, data migration, tiering, load balancing, and replication across multi-vendor storage environments, the ARX systems help IT executives to reduce management overhead and accelerate business workflow. For further information about Acopia's products and services, please visit its Website at www.acopia.com, call 978-513-2900 (US) / 49-89-944-90-165 (Europe) or email [email protected].

(C) 2006 Acopia Networks, Inc. Acopia is a trademark of Acopia Networks. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.
Thailand risk: Labour market risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC53C50Labour market riskC50C50Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

Only an estimated 2-5% of the labour force is unionised, and unions have traditionally wielded little power. There are, however, signs of increasingly militant labour movements in the large state enterprises, particularly those scheduled for privatisation. A critical issue for employers is the lack of skilled and specialised workers in the labour force. The Thaksin administration has acknowledged the need to reform secondary and higher-level education and is in the process of introducing 12 years of free schooling for all Thai children. There are doubts, however, about the state's ability to finance the government's ambitious schemes. There are an estimated 3m legal, and illegal, migrant workers in the country, typically from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Their presence puts downward pressure on average wages as they often work for as little as half the Thai minimum wage.



SCENARIOS

Firms face a shortage of skilled and specialised workers (High Risk)

Levels of primary education and literacy in Thailand are high, but there has been a marked deterioration in the provision of education at a more advanced level. Even when students are fortunate enough to receive tertiary education, there is a very low level of interest in technology- related and business subjects. Thailand's educational system is still oriented toward the needs of a largely rural, agrarian economy. The government has promised reform of the education system, but even if it enacts the required legislation and reforms, improvements in the quality of the workforce will not be felt for many years. Foreign companies are likely to have to import skilled or specialised workers for their Thai operations, which will significantly raise production costs.

Labour militancy increases (Moderate Risk)

An increasingly vocal and militant union movement is beginning to develop, particularly in state-owned organisations that are scheduled for privatisation in the next couple of years. In March 2004 the union movement achieved a major victory when the government was forced to delay plans to privatise the state electricity company, EGAT, largely because of the scale of union opposition. However, the rise in union activity is within the context of a historically weak labour movement; only about 2% of the total Thai workforce is unionised, and within the industrial sector union membership stands at only around 10%. Labour laws are flexible, and few days are lost to strikes. Before investing, foreign companies should carefully research labour conditions and obligations in their chosen sector, especially if they are investing in a privatisation or asset sale.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 14th, 2006)

Union Strength

The state enterprise ban has greatly weakened Thailands labour movement; the ban left only the textile industry with a high level of trade-union membership. Growing numbers of layoffs have also eroded support in this industry stronghold, and internal power struggles have stifled the effectiveness of the top labour leadership. Despite several mergers of labour congresses in recent yearsincluding a loose partnership of the four biggest in 1997trade-union leadership is heavily splintered; hence, industrial action tends to be isolated and rarely spreads beyond individual factories. Private-sector unions are limited mostly to single plants or companies.

Trade-union membership, which has become a target for dismissals since 1997, is thus falling. The ILO estimated in mid-2004 that only 25% of the total labour force is unionised; about 10% of the industrial workforce is organised. Unionisation is high in state enterprises, however; more than half of state-enterprise employees belong to a union.

The 1975 Labour Relations Act permits and recognises trade unions and plant employee associations. The governments failure to enact the trade-union law may prove an obstacle to the successful negotiation of the free-trade agreement with the United States (see International agreements). Based on the governments version, the legislation permits one trade union for each state enterprise, with a requirement that 25% of the total workforce become members. Collective bargaining for state employees has been revived but not the right to strike. Private-sector workers, however, are free to strike. Thailand is one of only 18 countries that have not ratified International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions 87 and 98, instruments forged in 1948 and 1949 that protect workers right to set up labour unions and engage in collective bargaining.

Labour Disputes

A requirement for 50% of private-sector workers to support a strike also means that all-out work stoppages are kept to a minimum. Action is prohibited until the workforce has gone through the wage-bargaining process with management, and unlawful strikes can bring dismissal or undermine any arbitration proceedings. Unionised workers need the support of 20% of workers in their unit to negotiate; non-unionised workers need 15% support to negotiate a demand.

The 1975 labour law makes contracts mandatory for all companies with 20 or more employees. Labour contracts must specify employment conditions, working days, hours, wages, benefits, termination conditions, complaint procedures and provisions for amending contracts. Agreements are annual (subject to extension of up to three years by mutual agreement). Employees must select negotiating representatives. In the event of failure to reach agreement, a government conciliator may be appointed. The Labour Court rules on contractual disputes (mostly complaints on severance, overtime or holiday pay). Court proceedings are informal, with lawyers acting as advisers rather than advocates and judges appointed on a tripartite basis, representing government, employers and employees. The main advantages of the court are low costs and prompt hearings. Appeals may be made on points of law to the Dika (Supreme) Court. A labour panel was set up in 1993 to resolve broader disputes as part of a reorganisation that created separate labour and social-welfare ministries, but it has not held a meeting since 1998 and is believed to be dormant. The panel, with representatives of employers, employees and the government, was designed to diffuse grievances before they affect production.

A separate committee was established in 1997 to arbitrate disputes involving foreign-owned companies, but it lapsed after the change of government in that year. Mainly intended to represent the interests of local employees, the 15-member committee was supposed to resolve labour issues left behind by failed firms and ensure that workers received full legal compensation. It was set up following the return abroad of several foreign owners who did not settle their labour affairs.

Wage Restrictions

Wages and bonuses continue to rise in line with the expanding economy; salaries in the private sector are expected to have increased by 6.1% by end-2005 after posting a rise of 5.9% in 2004, according to surveys by Watson Wyatt, an employment consultancy. Companies on average plan to pay fixed bonuses amounting to 1.5 months worth of salary and 2.5 months in variable bonuses. After the recession took full effect in 199899, wages had declined by an estimated 20% in real terms because of the elimination of bonuses and overtime and an effective wage freeze.

Government salaries, which the private sector often uses as a guide, have risen by a more restrained 5% since 1996, down from 1015% in better times. Unlike their private-sector counterparts, however, civil servants still get their bonus entitlementsthough these were reduced under a new system the Bank of Thailand introduced from the start of the 2000/01 fiscal year in October 2000. The new system incorporates bonuses into the actual salaries to avoid charges of preferential treatment for civil servants. State-enterprise workers also have fared better than private employees, since they usually work under an automatic-remuneration scheme linked to salary scales. InJuly 2005 the government announced a 5% pay raise for civil servants, and those earning less than Bt10,000 per month received Bt1,000 extra per month (up to an aggregated Bt10,000 per month). In September 2004 the government announced a special increase for low-ranking civil servants earning less than Bt10,000 per month. The increase, which affected around 350,000 civil servants, raised the minimum monthly salary of all government workers to Bt7,000. Labour activists have demanded equal treatment for private-sector minimum-wage earners, whose daily wages would need to rise to more than Bt200 to reach that level. In 2006, the government aims to reduce the number of civil servants by up to 50,000 by offering an early-retirement scheme. Civil servants opting for retirement will receive 815 times their final monthly salary. Under a similar scheme offered in 200002, about 70,000 civil servants retired, with severance payments totalling Bt9.6bn.

Monthly salaries in multinational companies are generally higher than those in purely Thai companies, but the recession has also moderated these. Semi-skilled workers can expect to earn about Bt12,000 and skilled employees an average of about Bt16,000. Fringe benefits became scarce following the 199798 financial crisis but are returning now as labour shortages make themselves felt. According to a 2005 survey conducted by Hewitt Associates, a consultancy, covering 110 multinational companies operating in Thailand, 90% of employers had introduced variable pay; individual performance awards (70% of companies surveyed) and business incentives (50%) the most popular forms.

Few fringe benefits are compulsory, although there are legal provisions for paid holidays, sick leave, maternity leave, injury benefits, termination benefits and other basic benefits under the Social Security Act and Labour Protection Act. The former provides for a Social Security Fund covering payments for sickness, disability, death, maternity leave, child support or retirement. Unemployment benefits were introduced on July1st 2004. Laid-off workers are entitled to half their salary for six months, and those who quit their jobs are paid 30% of their last months pay for three months. Previously, coverage was given to units with ten employees or more, but coverage has been extended since April 2002 to units with just one worker.

The Social Security Fund is funded from monthly salary deductions from employees and a corresponding level of contribution from employers, as well as a government contribution. It now covers all firms with ten or more workers. Virtually all industrial-sector employees will be part of the scheme once agricultural and fishery workers receive cover in 2006 or 2007.

Under the present rules, any firm may opt out if it can prove that its employees have better welfare benefits. The contribution rate to the Social Security Fund increased by 1percentage point to 5% of monthly earnings, equally shared between employers and employees, from January31st 2004. The minimum salary covered under the fund is Bt1,650 per month. The highest applicable salary, of Bt15,000 per month, results in a contribution of Bt375. There are about 7.5m contributors to the fund, which had assets of around Bt332bn as at October 2005. The fund is administered by the Social Security Office (SSO) under the Ministry of Labour. In October 2005 the SSO announced it planned to invest up to Bt8bn of the Social Security Fund in foreign bondsa plan ill received by labour groups and others.

Sick leave is payable at 50% of wages for 90 days each time, or a maximum of 180 days a year. To qualify for sick leave, employees must contribute to the fund for at least three months. Maternity leave is granted only after seven months of employment, at 50% of wages for 90 days.

Parliament passed an amended Labour Protection Bill in 1998 that imposed more-stringent rules on the employment of women and children. The minimum employment age was raised to 15 years (from 13), and overtime for children was banned after 10 pm. Restrictions also apply for employees younger than aged 18, who must be granted additional break times and are banned from working overtime. The act bans the employment of women in hazardous or strenuous occupations such as mining and prohibits work by pregnant women after 10 pm or on weekends.

Since 1995 all businesses employing more than 50 workers have had to set up a safety-monitoring committee of employer and worker representatives. Failure to do so can result in a fine of Bt20,000. Major firms normally provide employees with healthcare and accident insurance, which is sometimes extended to workers families. Aworkers compensation fund is compulsory for all firms with ten or more employees. In addition, employers and employees may contribute to provident and superannuation funds. Employer contributions to registered funds are tax deductible.

The labour ministry introduced the first compulsory retirement scheme for companies with ten or more employees in 1997. Employers must contribute 3% of the total salary up to the age of 55. A similar scheme for public employees, the Government Pension Fund (GPF), has not proven successful since it was implemented on a voluntary basis. Only about 4,000 employers nationwide have established GPF schemes since the fund started operating in 1996. Employees must contribute 3% of their wages. Membership is compulsory for new employees but not for existing staff, who may continue using a pension scheme. The finance ministry had originally expected to have a framework to compel employers to have provident funds in place by end-2004, but it said in September 2005 that it would delay the plan to 2007. Under the scheme, every company will be required to set up a mandatory provident fund for employees. Employees will contribute at least 6% of their salaries to the new funds, and employers will match these contributions. Companies that already offer voluntary provident funds to which the contribution is 6% or more will be allowed to register these as mandatory provident funds. Under the existing Provident Fund Act, the establishment of provident funds is voluntary, and employers and employees can contribute 215% of employees salaries to the fund. Authorities, faced with a slowly ageing population, are increasingly worried that most workers pension coverage is insufficient. The ratio of people of working age to elderly declined from 19:1 in 1970 to 11:1 in 2000, and it is forecast to decline further, to 8:1 in 2010 and 6:1 in 2020. Present coverage provides retirees with about 13% of their final salaries, well below the 50% most retirees will need. Efforts to create pension funds have so far yielded coverage for only about 1m employeesless than 3% of the countrys labour force. By comparison, the Social Security Fund (which might also be combined with the pension scheme) has about 7.5m members, and the civil-service pension fund covers 1.1m workers.

Workers contributing to the Social Security Fund for 15 years or more receive, as a form of pension, about 15% of their average salary over the past 60 months on retirement.

An employee who has been working continuously for more than one year is entitled to at least six working days of paid vacation; all staff members get the 13 publicly observed holidays. Financial institutions frequently give personal loans, but this is unusual for other organisations. Annual bonuses, once standard practice in the Thai workplace, began making a comeback in 2000; however, they were still well below the generous pre-1997 levels, when four or five months salary was commonplace. Average bonuses for 2005 will probably be equivalent to 1.5 months salary, according to a survey of local companies.

Hiring and Firing Restrictions

Under the Alien Occupation Law of 1973, foreigners wishing to work legally in Thailand require work permits that can normally be sponsored only by an entity registered to do business in Thailand. It is usually necessary to establish that a Thai national cannot be found to perform a task in order to obtain a work permit for a foreigner. Moreover, certain occupations are reserved for Thai nationals.

New regulations for the employment of foreigners came into effect on November1st 2004. A company with fully paid-up capital of at least Bt2m is permitted to have one foreign employee. For each additional Bt2m in paid-up capital, one more foreign employee is permitted, up to a maximum of ten persons. Companies that already have ten foreign employees (and meet the fully-paid-up capital criteria) must comply with any one of the following criteria to add additional foreign employees: paying at least Bt3m corporate income tax during the previous year; bringing in at least Bt30m through export business; bringing in at least 5,000 foreign tourists in the previous year through the tourism business; or employing at least 100 Thais. The Ministry of Labour may grant exceptions on acase-by-case basis. The paid-up-capital requirement is reduced by half for a foreign employee married to a Thainational.

There are four classes of work permits: temporary permits (renewed every year), which accounted for well over half the total issued in 2005; permits issued through the Board of Investment; permits issued under cabinet resolutions to foreigners; and permanent-resident work permits. Many foreigners arriving in Thailand were issued permanent-resident work permits 30 years ago; since then, however, such permits have not been issued. The number of permanent-resident permits has been falling gradually as residents die or depart, officials say.

Foreigners are allowed to work in Thailand under the Employment of Aliens Act of 1978 and a royal decree of 1979. New minimum monthly wage rates for work permits came into effect at end-August 2003 and vary by nationality. They require citizens of Japan, the United States and Canada to be paid at least Bt60,000 to qualify for a work permit and non-immigrant visa. For Europeans and Australians, the figure is Bt50,000; for South Koreans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and Hong Kong passport holders, it is Bt45,000; for Malaysians, Indians, Filipinos and Middle Eastern nationals, Bt35,000; and for Africans, Bt25,000. For those working in the newspaper business the figure is Bt20,000, regardless of nationality.

The government said in September 2004 that it plans to ease restrictions on the employment of foreigners for companies from countries that have signed free-trade agreements with Thailand, though no changes in the regulations had been made as of November 2005.

The nationwide registration of foreign migrant workers began in September 2001, with employers having to register their alien workers with the Ministry of Labour. Their employment is allowed only in ten categories of work facing severe labour shortages. The number of registered foreigners was about 580,000 in 2001, but it declined to about 400,000 in 2002 and to less than 300,000 in 2003. An amnesty during July 2004 for illegal migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia resulted in the registration of 1.2m foreigners, 70% of them from Myanmar. Employers of foreign labourers also had to register. After registering, the foreigners were required to pay Bt600 for a medical check-up fee and Bt1,300 for medical insurance. If they intended to work in the country, they also had to pay Bt1,900 for a work permit, which is valid for one year. By registering alien workers, the government hopes both to get a clear idea of the number of foreigners in the country and to track labour demand.

According to government figures, the number of migrants working legally in Thailand had dropped to 700,000 by November 2005, but it believed that another 300,000 were living and working illegally at that time. The Ministry of Labour said it was considering amending the labour laws to encourage these illegal labourers to register as well; it said it would also import 200,000 workers from Laos and Cambodia via government-to-government contracts. The ministry estimates that the Thai economy needs at least 1.2m foreign workers, and demand for lowly skilled labour is likely to soar as the government starts implementing its Bt1.7trn infrastructure programme.

Illegal foreign workers risk being jailed for up to three months and/or fined up to Bt5,000. Those employing illegal labourers risk a jail sentence of up to three years and/or a fine of up to Bt60,000.

The draft Foreign Business Law had fixed the proportion of foreign staff at 20% of all employees and stipulated that specialist expatriate staff could be hired for up to five years, instead of being negotiated on a case-by-case basis. But these changes were never included in the final version of the law.

Special rules apply to individual investors, consultants and journalists. The immigration regulations recognise short visits by businesspersons for legitimate trading purposes, conferences or seminars. Immigration legislation provides for permanent residence status on deposit of a bank guarantee. A similar scheme also applies to skilled entrepreneurs.

Both forms of permanent residency require a direct investor to bring more than Bt10m into a project with total investment (excluding land and working capital) of at least Bt100m or in which foreign ownership exceeds 25%. A portfolio investor must purchase minimum amounts of special Ministry of Finance bonds with foreign exchangeBt8m for the individual investor, Bt6m for a spouse and Bt2m per child. A foreign specialist must be older than age 25 and employed in a qualifying field at an annual salary of at least US$10,000. Separate conditions apply for applicants with a Thai spouse. Those qualifying will be granted residency visas for a probationary term of three years, to be extended if qualifying status is maintained.

Rules for dismissal and severance pay have been in force since 1974 and were updated under the amended Labour Protection Act. According to Section 119 of the act, employers need not pay severance pay if an employee performs his duties dishonestly, or intentionally commits a criminal act against the employer; intentionally causes the employer to suffer losses; performs an act of gross negligence which causes the employer to suffer severe losses; neglects his duties for a period of three consecutive working days without reasonable cause; is imprisonedunder a final judgment, except for offences arising out of negligent acts or for petty offences; or violates the employers work rules, regulations or orders which are legal and fair, and the employer has already given a written warning, except in serious situations for which the employer is not required to give a warning. Thewritten warning is effective for a period of one year from the date of the violation by the employee.

It is normal for employers to issue warning letters to employees for any first offence to build evidence if the eventual dismissal is referred to the Labour Court. Regular employees are otherwise entitled to severance pay on dismissal, depending on the length of employment: 30 days when employment has been at least 90 days but less than one year; 90 days for more than one year but less than three years; 180 days for more than three years but less than six years; 240 days for more than six years but less than ten years; and 300 days for any employment longer than ten years.

Since 1995 firms that replace workers with machines have had to give employees advance notice of 60 days before terminating their employment. Employees who have worked for more than six years are eligible for compensation, in the form of 15 days wages for each year of employment after the first six years. Unless otherwise provided in an employment contract, retirement can give rise to entitlement to severance pay, even though provident-fund or other retirement benefits may also be payable. Severance pay is no longer liable for income tax under changes announced by the Finance Ministry in 1999.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Thailand risk: Government effectiveness risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC53C50Government effectiveness riskE82D75Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

The outlook for government effectiveness is uncertain, given that the country is under martial law. The military has pledged to install a civilian government very soon, but it remains to be seen whether this appointed administration will have the authority to rule effectively. Vested interests and cronyism historically distorted the decision making process in the public sector in Thailand. The 1997 constitution attempted to limit graft, but during the Thaksin administration (2001-06) the government manoeuvred loyalists in to key roles in the anti-graft institutions. Political connections still played an important role in commercial deals. The Thaksin administration was particularly vulnerable to allegations of cronyism because the cabinet included a high number of former businessmen. There are grounds for some optimism that if, as planned, Thailand has a new stronger constitution then government effectiveness will rise towards the end of the forecast period.



SCENARIOS

The government reverses open, liberal policies that seek to attract foreign investors (Low Risk)

The Thaksin administration promoted Thai self-reliance and appealed to the nationalist sentiment of the electorate. The government did appear to recognise the need for foreign investment, but would then send confusing signals by placing subtle curbs on foreign investors. For example, the Thaksin administration pledged to push ahead with privatisation, but would retain the controlling stake in the companies concerned. In late 2004 the Bank of Thailand (the central bank) announced that no foreign investment would be allowed in the financial services sector for two years, to give the sector the chance to consolidate. However, obligations to the World Trade Organisation will prevent any overtly discriminatory policies. Furthermore signs of a slowing economy are likely to lead to more concerted efforts to attract foreign investment and financing during the forecast period. In the light of the recent political turmoil, Thailand will need to demonstrate a less circumspect welcome to foreign investors, if it is going to remain competitive as an investment location. Also, given the ongoing uncertainty, businesses should be mindful, that current inducements offered to foreign investors may be rescinded, and should ensure that legal contracts are in place guaranteeing them access to these benefits even if the law is changed at a later date.

Corruption and cronyism influence policy decisions regarding business (Moderate Risk)

Vested interests and cronyism still play a significant role in public decision-making despite efforts by the anti-graft agencies to reduce their prevalence. In May 2004 a parliamentary censure motion by the opposition Democrat Party, against key ministers, focused on allegations of government legislation benefiting the commercial interests of the ministers' families. The Thaksin administration is also suspected of attempting to undermine the credibility of the anti-graft agencies and thus indirectly reduce their power. Foreign companies may need to strengthen their political affiliations if they expect to win a public contract. More broadly, for businesses new to Thailand, it is advisable to resist strenuously from the start any requests by the Thai bureaucracy for bribes or improper payments. Once a company develops a reputation for engaging in such practices, it can be very difficult to end. Companies should be particularly wary of the Thai Customs Service, which has a well-deserved reputation for irregularities.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 14th, 2006)

Constitution, Institutions and Administration

A new constitution, Thailands 16th since 1932, was approved in September 1997. Its principal aims were to stamp out government corruption and to ensure a corruption-free and transparent electoral process. Under the new constitution, MPs must resign their parliamentary seats to take up cabinet posts, ministers are made to declare their assets before and after taking office, and the prime minister must be an elected MP. Candidates must stand for election to the 200-member Senate (the upper house) instead of being appointed.

The constitution stipulates 500 members of the lower house, of whom 400 are directly elected in single-seat constituencies nationwide and the remaining 100 (called party-list MPs) are apportioned to each political party in direct relation to the proportion of votes they receive. Any party receiving less than 5% of the popular vote loses its right to any party-list MPs. The aim is to ensure that MPs directly elected in constituencies concentrate on constituency and legislative work. Only MPs on the party list may be selected to join the cabinet.

The new constitution created 11 constitutionally independent bodies in a bid to try to limit the scope for graft in politics and to create a democratic system of checks and balances. One of these bodies, the Election Commission (EC), was established to monitor elections to both the upper and lower houses. Although the 2001 election was still subject to fraud and vote-buying, the EC played an active role in attempting to reduce such activities, marking considerable progress in Thailands move towards more transparent democratic processes. However, the EC came under intense criticism for its handling of the April 2006 snap election, most notably for its alleged favouritism towards the ruling TRT.

The ECs reputation has not been the only one to suffer. The fact that Thaksin was acquitted by the Constitutional Court raised questions about its impartiality, particularly as it was acting on a recommendation to prosecute from the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC). Thaksin, unsurprisingly, has been heavily critical of the anti-graft agencies, and has attempted to undermine their credibility. Since taking office in 2001, Thaksin has compromised the impartiality of the agencies by appointing a number of his supporters to them. The NCCCs reputation, however, was severely damaged in May 2005, not because of a lack of independence but because all NCCC members were forced to resign after being found guilty of wilful self-serving.

The Constitutional Court regained some of its credibility when ruling in favour of nullifying the results of the controversial April 2006 election. The judiciary is independent of the legislative and executive branches of government, and Supreme Court judges are appointed by the king. The legal system is based on a civil law system, with elements of common law.

The 1997 constitution reduced the size of the cabinet from 48 members to 36 in a bid to increase efficiency. However, the Thaksin governments bureaucratic reform bills, enacted on October 3rd 2002, involved the creation of five new ministries (making a total of 20) and 35 new departments. The new ministries cover natural resources and the environment, tourism and sport, information and communications technology, culture, and social development and human security. The public debt office and the state enterprise department now come under the Ministry of Finance. The reforms appear to run contrary to the decentralisation initiative outlined in the 1997 constitution and are instead increasing the power of the state sector. They were rushed through the legislature, raising questions about adequate preparation and research, and about the governments numerical strength, which allows it to push through controversial legislation without full debate.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Belgium: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Increased energy competition, with separation of infrastructure from production; part-privatisation of a telecoms operator, Belgacom, to continue, while a competitor, Telenet, joins BEL-20; competition introduced into rail freight.



2008-10: Liberalisation of postal services in line with EU directives.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Regions compete to attract foreign investors; attitude towards foreign direct investment (FDI) remains welcoming.

2008-10: New initiatives may be introduced to attract research and research-based commercial activity.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Trade will remain liberal, except for agriculture. Belgian banking becomes increasingly international.

2008-10: Imports of Chinese textile products to be fully liberalised from 2008. Agricultural protection, although continuing, will probably diminish a little as a result of reforms of the EU's common agricultural policy.

Taxes

2006-07: Programme of personal income tax reductions is completed in 2006; relief on notional interest introduced for company tax, which will be highlighted in an effort to attract FDI. Introduction of controversial tax on mutual funds.

2008-10: Further moderate reductions in social security charges. Increase in energy taxes and other indirect taxes.

Financing

2006-07: Short-term interest rates rise gradually. Long-term rates will also rise from recent low levels, but remain subdued. More equity and bond financing.

2008-10: Short-term interest rates level out just below 4%. Equity and bond financing should increase further.

The labour market

2006-07: Rising inflation triggers wage indexation in 2006, giving rise to pressure by business lobbies to hold down labour costs, which are increasing faster than in Germany or the Netherlands.

2008-10: Less favourable conditions for early retirement begin to have an impact on employment rate of older workers, but overall employment rate, although rising, will remain well below EU average and Lisbon target of 70% in 2010.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Continued rapid expansion of broadband Internet connections. New Brussels commuter rail services and high-speed rail links with Netherlands and Germany.

2008-10: Long-term rail investment programme improves passenger and freight transport, but roads are more congested.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Canada: Business outlook

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Canada: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position8.638.752211Political environment7.98.3171352Political stability7.88.5261453Political effectiveness8.18.1131545Macroeconomic environment9.29.21511Market opportunities7.78.05422Policy towards private enterprise & competition9.09.04433Policy towards foreign investment8.78.791022Foreign trade & exchange controls9.610.02121Taxes8.18.111911Financing9.39.3101344The labour market7.77.67832Infrastructure9.39.45322(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US.The Economist Intelligence Units business rankings model seeks to measure the quality of the business environment and its key components for each of the 82 countries covered by Country Forecasts. The quantitative assessment (on a scale of 1 to 10) of the business environmentthe opportunities for, and the hindrances to, the conduct of businessenables the ranking of a country on its overall position and in each of the ten component categories, on both a global and regional basis (see the methodological notes at the end of this report). The assessment is made for the five-year forecast period (2006-10) as well as for the previous five years (2001-05).



Canada remains in second place in the global rankings in 2006-10

Canada remains in second place, after Denmark, as the most attractive business location in the world in the forecast period (2006-10). This is despite a significant decline in Canadas ranking for macroeconomic environment and smaller declines in rankings for policy towards foreign investment, financing and the labour market. This setback was offset by a major improvement in the ranking for political stability, which bumped up the ranking for political environment, and minor improvements in the rankings for market opportunities, foreign trade and exchange controls and infrastructure.

Currency volatility will continue

The macroeconomic picture has been clouded by an increase in currency volatility. Since the beginning of 2003 the Canadian dollar has appreciated by about 40% against the US currency. This sharp increase has mainly been caused by strong global demand for Canadian goods, particularly commodities, and weakness in the US currency. Since most Canadian trade is done with the US, this appreciation has adversely affected exporters of resources and manufactured goods. Resource exporters have been partly insulated from the currency effect by high global commodity prices. The manufacturing sector, especially companies located in the industrial heartland of Ontario, has been hard hit. An expected slowdown in the US will exacerbate manufacturers troubles. We expect the Canadian currency to remain strong against the US dollar for most of the forecast period, as commodity prices remain high and foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to flow into Canada. It will weaken later on in the forecast period, but this will provide little relief to Canada's beleaguered manufacturing industry.

The main reasons for the gain in political stability were improvements in the categories of social unrest and change of government. The federal election in January 2006 produced a change in government from Liberal minority to Conservative minority. Another election is due within the forecast period, which we expect the Conservatives to win and perhaps even gain a majority of seats. Separatist sentiment in the French-speaking province of Quebec waxes and wanes but currently is at a low point, reducing the prospect of social unrest. There is, however, a number of land disputes with aboriginal Canadians that have flared up in recent months. The new government has yet to set forth an aboriginal policy. Depending on how it handles this important brief, there could be renewed conflict during the forecast period.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
France: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Pace of privatisation programmes slows as the scope for further sell-offs of state assets diminishes.

2008-10: Opening of gas and electricity markets to full competition. State aid and barriers to foreign takeovers of domestic companies cause friction with the EU.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Favourable official attitude towards foreign direct investment qualified by support for "national champions" and persistent obstacles to foreign takeovers of domestic companies.

2008-10: Possible erosion of barriers against foreign takeovers, as a result of commercial pressures and EU law.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Resistance to further reforms of the EU's common agricultural policy.

2008-10: Qualified support for multilateral trade liberalisation, but opposition to full liberalisation of trade in agriculture and cultural programmes.

Taxes

2006-07: Weak public finances force pause in programme of income tax cuts. Resumption of income tax cuts in 2007.

2008-10: Possible reform of wealth tax and of tax treatment of foreign managerial personnel working in France.

Financing

2006-07: Possible involvement of Euronext (of which the Paris bourse is a member) in cross-border consolidation of stock exchanges.

2008-10: Growing competition between financial firms to provide capitalised pension funds (plan d'epargne retraite populairePERP).

The labour market

2006-07: Shelving of any further attempts at labour market following widespread opposition to introduction of a new working contract for young workers.

2008-10: Attempts to raise the rate of participation in the labour force. Continued skills shortages despite persistently high unemployment.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Extension of high-speed rail link (TGV) to Strasbourg.

2008-10: The national railway, SNCF, remains in state hands.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Bulgaria: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: Industrial sector and utility privatisation proceeds slowly, but is almost complete by 2008; there is more stringent enforcement of intellectual property law and reduced bureaucratic interference.

2009-11: Utility prices increase to Western levels. The EU plays a significant role in competition policy.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: The government is active in attracting foreign investors; greenfield and infrastructure investments increase.

2009-11: There are further attempts to attract foreign investment, but financial incentives are restricted by the EU.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Trade policy becomes the EU's responsibility. Controls on agricultural trade with the EU are removed.

2009-11: The lev is replaced by the euro when Bulgaria joins European economic and monetary union (EMU).

Taxes

2007-08: Overhaul of customs and revenue collection; higher excise duties; limited cuts in social security contributions; shift towards employee contributions to finance healthcare and social security.

2009-11: Further improvements in tax collection as modernisation continues. There is a gradual increase in the funded element of the pension system.

Financing

2007-08: Corporate and household lending expands rapidly. Access to bank finance improves.

2009-11: There are further efficiency gains from foreign involvement and a gradual increase in non-bank finance.

The labour market

2007-08: Labour costs are low, but rising. Fiscal incentives help to create jobs in areas with high unemployment.

2009-11: Labour costs rise considerably in US dollar terms, but are still low by regional standards. Difficulties in finding highly educated staff lead to greater wage dispersion, reducing incentives for university graduates to move abroad.



Infrastructure

2007-08: Moves towards market mechanisms in energy. The telecommunications sector is liberalised, ports are modernised and power plants upgraded. There is some motorway construction. The railways are rationalised.

2009-11: Further roadbuilding; a second Danube bridge is completed and construction of a new nuclear-power plant to replace the closed reactors at Kozlodui gets under way.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Indonesia: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The government tries to reduce the corporate cost base by simplifying bureaucratic procedures and tackling corruption. Policies to support small and medium-sized enterprises are enacted.

2008-10: Less state regulation in the energy and services sectors will create a more favourable environment for privateenterprise.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Government efforts to encourage foreign investment are stepped up; tax incentives in key sectors are likely to be offered, and procedures simplified. Attempts at judicial reform begin in earnest.

2008-10: Liberalisation in the utilities sectors (including power) will provide attractive opportunities for foreign investors.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Some restrictions on importsprimarily of agricultural goodsremain in place, but, barring a crisis, capital controls will not be contemplated.

2008-10: Liberal foreign-exchange policies will remain in force, and the trade regime will be deregulated further.

Taxes

2006-07: The government proposes an overhaul of the tax schedule, which will attempt to lower the corporate tax burden, reduce tax evasion and increase coverage.

2008-10: Efforts to improve tax collection and coverage will continue.

Financing

2006-07: The high level of foreign participation in the banking sector encourages competition, modernisation and a more transparent operating regime.

2008-10: Improvements in the health of the corporate sector will encourage banks to increase lending to companies.

The labour market

2006-07: Despite attempts at reform, the labour market is likely to remain relatively inflexible.

2008-10: Skill shortages in the labour market will become a problem as Indonesia seeks to move into higher value addedindustries.

Infrastructure

2006-07: The government has pledged to prioritise infrastructure development. Incentives are offered to encourage private-sector investment.

2008-10: The gradual improvement of the business environment will prompt a modest recovery in investment in infrastructure, particularly in the potentially more profitable areas, such as telecommunications.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Canada: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: A generally pro-business stance will be maintained. While the change in government clears the way for bank mergers, the government has not yet made them a priority.

2008-10: Most mergers and acquisitions will win approval, subject to close scrutiny by the Competition Bureau. There will be a cautious loosening of foreign ownership curbs in telecommunications and broadcasting.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Domestic banks will face increasing competition as a result of reduced restrictions on foreign firms.

2008-10: Banking, transport, telecoms, the media and the airline industry will become less protected.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Co-operation with the US over border security will remain a high priority, although the government will attempt, probably unsuccessfully, to delay the implementation of US plans to require passports for border crossings.

2008-10: Trade relations with the US will remain of vital importance and Canada will push for freer trade on a bilateral and multilateral basis.

Taxes

2006-07: Federal capital tax will be revoked. The goods and services tax (GST) will fall from 7% to 6%, effective July 2006. Corporate tax cuts will be geared towards improving competitiveness.

2008-10: Corporate surtax eliminated. Corporate income tax rate gradually reduced, to 19% by 2010.

Financing

2006-07: The comprehensive overhaul of regulations governing financial services will increase competition.

2008-10: Domestic consolidation and a growing foreign banking presence will significantly alter the structure of the financial sector.

The labour market

2006-07: Immigration will rise and the government will move to ease labour shortages by allowing in more foreign workers on temporary permits and by improving recognition of foreign credentials.

2008-10: The government will continue to give a high priority to training in knowledge-based industries.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Private-sector investment in the electricity grid will be held up by the ambiguity in the public sector's commitment to market deregulation.

2008-10: Federal and provincial governments will continue to invest heavily in infrastructure, including large-scale water and sewerage projects, highway and rail networks, tourism and urban development, local transportation and high-speed broadband communications.



Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Pakistan: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The restructuring of banks continues. The government pushes ahead with the privatisation programme and encourages growth in small and medium-sized enterprises.

2008-10: Liberalisation of the economy will continue, and the government will improve the regulatory framework.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign investment remains concentrated in the telecommunications, oil, gas and banking industries, although the government tries to attract investment into other sectors.

2008-10: Privatisation will attract additional foreign capital, and foreign investor sentiment will improve.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Foreign-exchange controls are eased further. Import tariffs are reduced, but distortions favouring certain domestic producers persist. Progress is made towards free-trade agreements with a number of Pakistan's major trade partners.



2008-10: Full currency convertibility is unlikely to be introduced, but the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP, the central bank) will become more independent and assertive.

Taxes

2006-07: Attempts to widen the tax base have some success. The government tries to boost revenue through indirect taxes. The gap between the rates of tax paid by public and private companies is reduced.

2008-10: Most Pakistanis will remain outside the tax net, but efforts will be made to close tax loopholes for business andindustry. Corporate tax rates will be unified.

Financing

2006-07: Private banks dominate financing. Privatisation of the major state banks continues.

2008-10: As competition in the banking sector rises, smaller private banks will merge or shut.

The labour market

2006-07: Child labour and bonded labour remain problems. The low literacy rate curbs the growth of skilled labour.

2008-10: Productivity will remain low. Lay-offs of public-sector employees may cause civil unrest.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Efficiency at ports improves. Some previously planned projects are revised, and private development of infrastructure is encouraged.

2008-10: Power costs and rail charges will continue to rise. The urban transport infrastructure will not keep pace with demand.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Italy: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Limited scope for privatisation. Political resistance at local level. Effectiveness of the antitrust authority and other sectoral watchdogs improves. Some measures to increase competition in sheltered service sectors

2008-10: The EU will press for the opening of markets for products and services, but resistance will continue in some sectors.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Some simplification of investment application procedures. Availability of financial incentives will be curtailed.

2008-10: The national development agency fails to make an impact. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows remain low.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Quotas and tariffs in line with EU practices. General textiles and clothing import quotas lifted on January 1st 2005, but some reimposed in mid-2005. Leather imports to the EU from China and Vietnam restricted.

2008-10: Full opening to textile imports from China in 2008. Non-tariff barriers to intra-EU trade in services to be reduced. If completed, new world trade round could lead to a reduction in agricultural protection in the EU from 2010 onwards.



Taxes

2006-07: Regional tax on productive activities (IRAP) raised in some regions, but may be replaced. Reform of taxation of financial investment income and possible reintroduction of inheritance tax. More reductions in labour taxes also expected.

2008-10: Overall tax rates stay high. Cuts in central government taxes are likely to be offset by higher local taxation. Cuts in employers' social security contributions limited by failure to cut state pension outlays. A shift from direct to indirect taxes.

Financing

2006-07: Damage to financial market confidence caused by problems at the central bank gradually repaired. Minor improvements in corporate governance rules. More foreign banks enter the market, accelerating mergers of Italian banks.

2008-10: Competition from foreign banks will increase. Stockmarket capitalisation as a share of GDP will stay low.

The labour market

2006-07: The new government may restrict the use of temporary and fixed-term contracts. Opposition to broader reformscontinues.

2008-10: Union opposition to greater wage differentials and fewer restrictions on dismissals likely to continue.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Fiscal constraints, limited private-sector involvement, bureaucratic obstacles and resistance from local interest groups hinder government efforts to revive much-needed investment. EU funding will decline from 2007.

2008-10: Italy's infrastructure lags further behind the rest of the EU as a result of a lack of investment.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Ukraine: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2007-08: Regulatory system rationalised and streamlined; the number of regulations affecting business decreases further. Accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ensures progress, including removal of the ban on foreign bank branches.



2009-11: Large-scale privatisation is completed.

Policy towards foreign investment

2007-08: Licensing requirements are simplified, but other barriers to investment inflows remain a problem.

2009-11: Foreign investors are still excluded from land sales.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2007-08: Major exchange controls lifted, but trade liberalisation incomplete. Accession to WTO expected in 2007.

2009-11: Trend towards further reduction in tariffs. Progress towards an EU free-trade deal.

Taxes

2007-08: Expenditure management improves, but progress in broadening the tax base slows. Value-added tax (VAT) and profit tax rates are reduced.

2009-11: Implementation of a new tax code. Continued fiscal rationalisation, particularly regional fiscal management.

Financing

2007-08: Despite increased lending and greater consolidation, the financial sector remains underdeveloped.

2009-11: Large-scale foreign acquisitions in the banking sector end. Continuing weakness in financial supervision.

The labour market

2007-08: Strong real wage growth. Workforce migration continues.

2009-11: Increased productivity and restructuring bring continued growth in real wages, as well as higher unemployment.

Infrastructure

2007-08: Deferral of infrastructure maintenance and development; private investment mainly in telecommunications.

2009-11: Privatisation of sea port infrastructure is likely. Despite higher government capital expenditure, deteriorating infrastructure constrains economic growth.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Channel Agents Ally to Form a New Enterprise. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 26, SinoCast -- Thirteen channel agents of the original 3721 will form an "enterprise flagship" and debut a new search engine product "ad-union" through the introduction of venture capital, according to sources.



At present, the agents are in talks with venture capitalist Softbank and will finalize the cooperative plan by the end of this month possibly, disclosed the sources.

Softbank will make investments of USD 5 million in the first stage and USD 10 million in the second stage, totaling USD 15 million, and the thirteen channels will integrate into an enterprise to offer shares 18 months later, according to the preliminary plan.

However, the heads of some agents of 3721 refused to disclose details concerning the contact with Softbank and make comment on the news, such as Xu Changzhi, general manager of Qingdao Leixun, Mo Guangshun, general manager of Beijing Insintek, and Shui Peijun, general manager of Guangzhou Yuansheng.

Jack Ma, president of Alibaba.com, recently acknowledged in the public that he would give up 3721 Internet keyword business, which was a big blow to the channel agents of 3721. The agents have nothing to do but find a new way out, namely the debut of their own product.

It is obvious that the strength of a single channel agent is not enough, and it is likely to be affected by any move of manufacturers. But the situation will be completely different if channel agents can join hands with each other. In this way they may have the strength and capital to negotiate with manufacturers.

Under the lead of Zhao Xu, chairman of Century-time, 5 channel agents struck a common agreement immediately. In the process of contacting with venture capitalists, however, the agents began to realize that they were short of core competitiveness if just advocating a "channel consortium." Therefore, their primary task was to develop their core product.

On August 1, the agents eventually launched their new product, namely ad-union, which integrated the advertisement platforms of NetEase, China.com, Tom, and 21cn. As long as users purchase the keyword of ad-union, their advertisements can be displayed on the four platforms. Furthermore, the price for purchasing the keyword is even lower than that of releasing advertisements on a single platform.

Meanwhile, the number of channel agents involved in the plan increased from the original 5 to 13, which were Century- time, Ningbo Chuangya, Guangzhou Yuansheng, Beijing Insintek, Qingdao Leixun, Dalian Globalmart, Fuzhou Chenglixin, Hefei Chenguang, Shenzhen Yingte, Changzhou Yitong, Tianjin Cuijie, Jinan Chengxin, and Wenzhou Zhongwang. Nearly all of them are 3721's local registered centers.

The move of the 13 channel agents drew a hefty response in the industry. Leading search engines such as Google, Baidu.com, and Yahoo! paid close attention to the event.

A search engine in Jinan said that channel agents now heavily rely on manufacturers, which can control their profit rate, and even their life. Once manufacturers adopt the direct- selling strategy, agents will go bankrupt for sure.

The consortium can not only enhance channel agents' capacity of negotiating with upstream manufacturers, but also phase out relatively smaller agents in the industry, thus reshuffling the channel market.

As a matter of fact, it is not the first time that channel agents team up with each other. In April this year, BookSir, along with around 600 medium-sized and small agents, went against search giants such as Google and Baidu.com, only in a different way.

Copyright 2006 Sinocast
Enea Announces Version 2.0 of Element High-Availability Middleware; Enhanced Middleware Supports Multiple Linux Flavors, Runs on Kontron ATCA System and Provides Standard SA Forum and AdvancedTCA Interfaces. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. & BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- Enea, the world leader in advanced device software, today announced version 2.0 of its Element(TM) high-availability middleware. Optimized for distributed network infrastructure applications spanning multiple processors and operating systems, Element 2.0 is now available for MontaVista Carrier Grade Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora Core and CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System). Element 2.0 also works out of the box with Kontron's XL8000 AdvancedTCA system and provides standard interfaces for AdvancedTCA and SA Forum's Hardware Platform Interface.



"Element provides a scaleable out-of-the-box solution that makes it easy for network equipment providers to outsource their middleware development, freeing up precious engineering resources for more profitable tasks such as application and service development," said Terry Pearson, vice president of product management for Element at Enea. "Element's versatile Linux support and standard SA Forum and ATCA interfaces make it easier than ever to integrate Element with open architecture target hardware platforms and legacy applications."

Element provides a suite of middleware services that sits between the operating system and applications. Element provides core services for synchronizing, instrumenting, monitoring, and establishing communications between applications spread across multiple operating systems and processors. Element also provides network supervision, fault management, and shelf management services that make it easy to monitor, repair, configure, provision, and upgrade live systems as they operate in the field.

Element is the first HA middleware solution optimized for distributed telecom systems. Element provides an end-to-end solution that makes it easy for OEMs to combine Linux with real-time operating systems like Enea's OSE(TM) in the same system. Element is also the first HA middleware equipped to run on DSPs and network processors as well as 32-bit CPUs. This flexibility greatly simplifies application development, enabling designers to use a common set of services with a single API to partition, distribute, and manage applications spread across multiple processors, blades, and operating systems.

Element utilizes Enea's LINX communications services to provide a foundation for building complex distributed applications that span multiple devices and operating systems. LINX services make it easy for processes to discover other processes and services, communicate with those processes, advertise service availability, broadcast information to and share information with other processes (publish/subscribe), and monitor other processes for readiness. LINX communications are device and OS independent, providing transparency that enables systems to be scaled and reconfigured without changes to the application code.

Element's event logging and application monitoring services greatly increase visibility into system operation. Event logging enables application processes to log and report event and state information such as slot/service availability, diagnostics and critical network events such as alarm conditions. Developers and network operators can interactively obtain this information using standard Web browsers.

Element's HA Framework (HAF) delivers all of the services required to build a true non-stop computing platform. The HAF provides full fault management, including monitoring, detection, recovery, and reporting, for every resource in the system. It also employs active heartbeat monitoring and reactive error detection schemes to ensure the health of key hardware and software components at the system, slot and application levels.

Element provides a comprehensive suite of shelf management services for configuring and monitoring individual slots, blades and chassis. Element works with shelf management controllers to detect and configure blades, track revision numbers, and monitor key blade-level parameters like temperature, voltage and fan speed. Element also supports hot swap, which enables individual blades to be inserted and removed from a live chassis.

Element 2.0 for Linux will be generally available in Q4 2006. Pricing starts at $ 100,000 depending on the configuration.

About Enea

Enea (STO:ENEA) is the leading supplier of real-time operating systems, middleware, development tools, database technology and professional services for high-availability distributed multiprocessing applications such as telecommunications infrastructure, mobile devices, medical instrumentation, and automobile control/infotainment. Enea's flagship operating system, OSE is deployed in approximately half of the world's 3G mobile phones and base stations. Enea has over 500 employees and is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. For further information on Enea, please visit www.enea.com.

OSE and Element are registered trademarks of Enea AB or its subsidiaries. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. (C) 2006 Enea.
Savvion and BoldTech Form Strategic Alliance to Provide Superior Value-Added Services for Industry-Leading Business Process Management Platform. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Savvion(R), the leading business process management (BPM) company, today announced a strategic alliance with BoldTech Systems, a leading systems integrator in the US and China, to provide joint customers with value-added services around Savvion's industry-leading BPM platform. Under the agreement, BoldTech will work closely with Savvion to establish a BPM Center of Excellence (COE) for its clients.



The COE will provide customers with a team of trained consultants with deep industry expertise and thorough knowledge of Savvion BusinessManager(TM). The COE will provide customers with the people, framework, and methodologies needed to implement repeatable business process improvements quickly and effectively. BPM Centers of Excellence are growing in popularity as more and more organizations look to extend BPM deployments from a departmental solution to an enterprise-wide strategy.

"As a company committed to providing our clients with the quickest ROI possible, BoldTech recognizes the critical importance BPM plays in the success of today's organizations," said Kent Kasica, executive vice president for BoldTech. "With Savvion, BoldTech's Center of Excellence will be able to rapidly implement the industry's leading BPM solution to address the unique and complex needs of our diverse client base."

Savvion has a history of strong relationships with companies specializing in outsourcing key projects. The strategic alliance will enable BoldTech clients to re-design their work processes around how people actually work and collaborate with IT to automate changes within business units or across global enterprises. BoldTech's customers span multiple verticals including telecommunications, manufacturing, government, healthcare, and retail.

"Our partnership with BoldTech demonstrates Savvion's commitment to delivering the most advanced BPM technology on the market today to clients across multiple industry verticals," said Shawn Price, president and CEO of Savvion. "BoldTech's expert knowledge base, deep integration expertise, and seasoned service professionals will be instrumental in providing customers with the BPM solutions they need to cut operational costs, streamline workflow, and drive business success."

About BoldTech Systems

BoldTech Systems is a technology consultancy that has "quietly" established a national reputation for tackling the toughest technology problems.

Known for straight talk and an innovative eXtreme Delivery approach, BoldTech delivers business process, customer relationship management, wireless broadband data, application development, and integration solutions. BoldTech, headquartered in Denver, CO, has offices in Columbus, OH, Arlington, VA, Bridgewater, NJ and Hangzhou, China. For additional information, visit BoldTech's website at www.boldtech.com.

About Savvion

Savvion is the leading provider of business process management (BPM) software that improves business performance and reduces costs. Savvion has a proven track record of turning process improvement ideas into real-world solutions quickly, often in as few as 30 days, and delivering a return on investment as high as 300%. More than 200 global business enterprises, public service agencies, and systems integration firms, including 20 of the Fortune 100, use Savvion systems to manage their business. Savvion is recognized by Intelligent Enterprise as one of the most influential companies in information technology today, and is a Leader in the Forrester Wave for BPM. To start down the path of process improvement, download the Savvion Process Modeler available for free at www.savvion.com/startnow. Or visit the Savvion ProcessXchange, where people can connect with a community of interest devoted to business process management, at www.processxchange.com.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Savvion can be reached at www.savvion.com or 888-544-5511.

The Savvion logo, Savvion, and Savvion BusinessManager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Savvion, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
Siemens to Integrate Factory Logic(TM) Lean Manufacturing Software Into SIPLACE Electronics Assembly Solutions. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Factory Logic, the leading provider of lean solutions that meet the needs of the customer demand-driven factory, and the Automation and Drives Group of Siemens AG of Germany announced today the signing of an OEM agreement whereby Siemens will integrate the Factory Logic(TM) Lean Operations Suite (Factory Logic) into SIPLACE manufacturing optimization solutions for the global electronic assembly market. SIPLACE is the Siemens product family name for integrated hardware, software and services solutions to support the entire SMT (Surface Mount Technology) production facility. Factory Logic is a software solution designed from the ground up to support demand-driven production scheduling and pull-based supply synchronization using proven lean methods originally pioneered in the Toyota Production System (TPS).



As part of SIPLACE lean manufacturing solutions, Factory Logic will enable electronics manufacturers to perform advanced production leveling and kanban/supermarket management functions in conjunction with SIPLACE SMT machines and other Siemens solution components. Factory Logic supports an integrated approach that directly links production to actual customer demand, while maintaining the stability required for consistent, reliable, waste-free factory and supply chain operations. Siemens will sell and support the Factory Logic software as an embedded component of SIPLACE solutions globally.

"Siemens is committed to addressing the needs of the electronics manufacturing market with our SIPLACE lean manufacturing solutions," stated Holger Ewald, Vice President of Software for Siemens A&D Electronic Assembly Systems. "We selected Factory Logic as one of the most important components for our lean solution because it's the most comprehensive level pull production management system in the market. It's built around well recognized lean scheduling methods and has been proven in large-scale, real-world deployments."

"We are pleased to be partnering with Siemens to accelerate adoption of lean, demand-driven manufacturing methods within the electronic assembly industry," stated Allan Wilson, Factory Logic President and CEO. "SIPLACE manufacturing solutions are the perfect marriage of world-class equipment, software, and services with lean concepts. We believe they will keep on setting the standard in the electronics assembly market over the next few years."

About Factory Logic

Factory Logic is the leading provider of lean solutions to meet the needs of the customer demand-driven factory. With Factory Logic, manufacturers are able to automate the pace of production, accelerate Lean deployments and associated benefits, and sustain continuous improvement and standardized best business practices across the entire enterprise. Factory Logic's platform-independent, real-time demand leveling and supply synchronization engine allows companies to extend their investments in ERP/MRP to the plant floor and transform the extended enterprise into a real-time demand driven supply network. Factory Logics is based in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit: www.factorylogic.com.

About Siemens

Siemens Energy and Automation, Inc. represents Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) in the U.S. Headquartered in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, GA, Siemens Energy & Automation manufacturers and markets one of the world's broadest ranges of electrical and electronic products, systems and services to industrial and construction market customers. Its technologies range from circuit protection and energy management systems to process control, industrial software and totally integrated automation solutions. The company also has expertise in systems integration, technical services and turnkey industrial systems. For more information visit: www.sea.siemens.com.

Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $96 billion in fiscal 2005. Founded nearly 160 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas of Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $18.8 billion and employs approximately 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Eleven of Siemens' worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 460,000 people in 90 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States visit: www.usa.siemens.com.
Surgient Virtual Lab Management Experts to Speak at InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 25 -- Surgient, the leader in virtual lab management applications for automating software demo, test and training labs, today announced that Sameer Jagtap, director of product management at Surgient, and Wade Reynolds, senior architect at Surgient, will be presenting at the InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum, a two day event focused on enabling enterprise virtualization for IT solutions management.



What: "Virtualization-Oriented Architecture-Defining a Smarter, Simpler
Reality"

Who: Wade Reynolds will join a panel of experts, moderated by Test
Center Chief Technologist at InfoWorld, Tom Yager, to speak about
the benefits of integrating virtualization at the enterprise
architecture level.

When: Monday, September 25th, 10:45 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. ET

What: "Better Testing Through Virtualization"

Who: Sameer Jagtap will participate in a breakout session, moderated by
Andrew Binstock, principal analyst, Pacific Data Works LLC, and
senior contributing editor, InfoWorld, to examine existing software
tools and industry best practices for lab-based virtualization.

When: Monday, September 25th, 3:20 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. ET

Where: Both sessions will take place at the InfoWorld Virtualization
Executive Forum
Roosevelt Hotel
45 East 45th Street
New York, N.Y.

Register at: http://virtexecforum.com/register

Who should attend both sessions:

* Senior technologists including CIOs, CTOs, VPs of technology, IT
directors and managers, network managers, network engineers, and
enterprise architects;

* Business executives including CEOs, CMOs, CIOs, presidents, VPs,
directors, product and purchasing managers, and senior executives
responsible for the delivery of software and software quality.

About the Speakers

Sameer Jagtap is director of product management for Surgient, responsible for defining and managing the business goals for Surgient's product portfolio. Prior to joining Surgient, Jagtap was the founding director, product management and software development at All.com, a joint venture between Dell and Motive Communications. Before that Jagtap held various leadership roles at Dell and was responsible for Dell's Systems Management product development in the Enterprise Systems Group. Prior to joining Dell, Jagtap worked at NCR Corporation. Jagtap holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree from the University of Poona, India, and a Master of Computer Science degree from the University of South Carolina.

Wade A. Reynolds is a senior architect at Surgient specializing in server virtualization and infrastructure architecture. He is the co-author of the new book, "Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center" (http://www.vmbook.info/). Reynolds is a Microsoft Certified Professional with extensive experience architecting and implementing advanced data center solutions using virtual infrastructure. Prior to virtualization, Reynolds focused on enterprise software development and database design.

About Surgient
Surgient puts virtualization technology to work for the world's largest independent software vendors (ISVs) and Global 2000 organizations. The first company to provide on-demand applications that can automate the deployment, configuration and teardown of complex enterprise software environments or "virtual labs," Surgient's award-winning virtual lab management solutions enable end-users to rapidly provision needed computing resources for business- critical initiatives such as software QA/test, training, sales and marketing. With over 500,000 applications delivered to-date using its virtual labs, Surgient enables companies such as Business Objects, EMC, Mercury Interactive, Microsoft, Oracle, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Symantec to dramatically accelerate the software application delivery lifecycle, reduce operating costs, increase productivity and enable IT to better align with business priorities. Surgient partners with leading technology companies including EMC/VMware, Microsoft, Mercury Interactive, Saba/Centra, ViewCentral and WebEx Communications. Surgient is a private, venture-backed company based in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.surgient.com/.

For Additional Information Contact:

Keith Giannini or Laura Ackerman
Schwartz Communications
781-684-0770
[email protected]

Surgient

CONTACT: Keith Giannini or Laura Ackerman, Schwartz Communications,+1-781-684-0770, [email protected], for Surgient

Web site: http://www.surgient.com/
LTO Ultrium Format Maintains Momentum With More Than 1,500,000 Tape Drives And 50,000,000 Cartridges Shipped. Check it out:
Format reaches new heights by delivering performance, scalability and compatibility

SILICON VALLEY, CALIF. (September 25, 2006) HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, the three technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Programme, today announced that the LTO Ultrium format has achieved not one, but two major milestones. The programme has seen more than 1.5 million LTO Ultrium tape drives shipped worldwide since products based on the format first became commercially available in September 2000.



In addition, LTO Ultrium tape cartridge shipments have passed the 50 million mark since commercial availability, achieving a second milestone for the format. The milestones demonstrate the strong adoption of the LTO format by business and government that have embraced the performance, scalability and compatibility that Ultrium delivers.

The new LTO tape drive and cartridge milestones follow recently released news on the strong shipments of Write Once, Read Many (WORM) LTO Ultrium 3 tape cartridges, and plans to feature encryption capabilities in generation 4 by enabling the writing of encrypted data to the LTO Ultrium tape cartridge.

Theres no denying that LTO Ultrium products have established considerable momentum and acceptance in the marketplace, said Dianne McAdam, director of enterprise information assurance for the Clipper Group. This is a testament to the importance of tape storage and its ability to address user's needs for dependable data retention, data protection and low cost of ownership, as compared to disk.

As storage administrators seek out powerful and open technologies that they can trust, they continue to turn to the LTO Ultrium format to address their storage needs, said Bob Wilson, vice president, Nearline Storage Division, HP. The new milestones demonstrate that the combination of performance, reliability and versatility delivered by LTO Ultrium is well positioned in the market to address the functionality and security that is required for enterprise use both today and tomorrow.

How to License LTO Ultrium Technology
The LTO programme offers several different license packages from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture Ultrium products, to basic packages, providing Ultrium format specifications and guidelines for interchangeability. Buyers seeking Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO technology may obtain information by contacting the LTO Programme at [email protected].

About Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Technology
LTO technology is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format created by technology providers HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.

The LTO Ultrium format has a well-defined roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. Compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Programme. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensee basis. For additional information on LTO technology, visit the LTO Programme Web site at www.ultrium.com.
*Data rate and capacity assume 2:1 data compression
Veramark Announces Multi-year VeraSMART(R) Managed Services Contract with Beverage Industry Provider. Check it out:
PITTSFORD, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- Veramark Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: VERA) today announced receipt of a new 3-year managed services contract with a large beverage company, that approaches $200,000 in value. Veramark's ASP (Application Service Provider) model allows its customers easy web browser access to the full functionality of the VeraSMART Suite of Applications; without the need to install, host, and maintain a premise-based solution. The client will utilize Veramark's Call Accounting module primarily for performing departmental bill back of telecom charges.



The company also will employ VeraSMART's Invoice Management module to perform carrier bill management and allocate usage charges from multiple Wireless and Wireline Carriers. In addition, EZ-Share(TM), Veramark's exclusive data import/export utility, will be utilized to feed data to the customer's general ledger system. The Veramark services will be used to manage more than 20,000 extensions on a voice network comprised of 11 Siemens PBX's.

The flexibility of Veramark's offerings allows small, medium, and large business enterprises to buy what they require today and expand as future needs dictate. Clients have the option to select a managed services model or to purchase a right-to-use software license for all of the VeraSMART modules including Call Accounting, Allocation, Invoice Management, Online Directory, Asset Management, and Work Order. Using the same premise-based telemanagement tools developed by Veramark, the Managed Services solutions can remotely poll, process, and report on telecommunications and work flow activity; then provides comprehensive reports and analysis in a variety of formats.

Veramark president and CEO David Mazzella said, "For companies that recognize the benefits of telemanagement solutions, but would rather not manage a system themselves, Veramark's Managed Services offers application hosting in a variety of arrangements from full-service to Applications Service Provider (ASP) models. We are pleased to provide our new client with solely dedicated and optimized servers maintained in a secure environment; end-to-end Web access; our industry-leading service delivery and dedicated account support; and knowledgeable technical support. Revenue from this contract will be realized over a 36 month period."

VeraSMART is available from Veramark and their leading industry partners. For more information, visit www.veramark.com.

About Veramark Technologies, Inc.

For over 20 years, Veramark's telemanagement solutions have set the industry standard for technological excellence, application experience, and process expertise. Veramark's completely web-based software architecture integrates communications management software with operation support systems (OSS) software. These solutions include Call Accounting, Telemanagement, Work Flow Management, Asset Management, Directory/Information Management, Service Inventory Build and Line Verification, Service Analysis and Recommendations, Wireless Optimization and Ongoing Management, Contract Analysis/Negotiations, and Billing Dispute Resolution.

This broad portfolio of products and services allows enterprises to optimize network performance, increase productivity, improve enterprise security, and measurably reduce communications expenses. By utilizing industry-standard databases, secure web-browser based user interfaces, and dynamic reporting tools, Veramark's products and services make managing complex communications networks easy and efficient. Veramark's web-based software architecture eliminates the need for client software and makes the software accessible from every networked PC in the enterprise. In addition to Veramark's premise-based solutions, Veramark offers its customers a robust ASP and managed services alternative, designed to meet all or a portion of the customer's defined needs.

The company sells and markets its solutions directly and through leveraged distribution channels to customers ranging from the Fortune 500 to small businesses as well as the public sector, including government agencies and the military. Veramark's leadership position is demonstrated by its relationships with telecom's leaders - Avaya(R), Nortel Networks(R), Cisco Systems(R), NEC Unified, AT&T Inc., Sprint(R) and others. All Veramark products and services are made and provided by personnel in the United States.

Veramark and VeraSMART are registered trademarks of Veramark Technologies, Inc.

All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

This report may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A variety of factors could cause actual results to differ from the anticipated results expressed in such forward-looking statements. These may include but are not necessarily limited to changes in general economic conditions in the United States and overseas, technological changes in the telecommunications or computer industries, the timely and successful launch of planned new products, the timely installation and acceptance by end-user customers, and the impact of competition or changes In the marketing strategies of major distributors.
Tier Achieves Gold Certified Partner Status in Microsoft Partner Program. Check it out:
RESTON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Tier Technologies, Inc. (OTC:TIER), today announced that it has achieved Gold Certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program with competencies in ISV/Software Solutions and in Business Process and Integration, recognizing Tier's expertise and total impact in the technology marketplace. As a Gold Certified partner, Tier has demonstrated expertise with Microsoft technologies and a proven ability to meet customers' needs.



Tier recently announced an alliance with Microsoft to use Microsoft Dynamics GP(TM) enterprise resource planning (ERP) software as the framework and foundation for its next generation public sector Financial Management Systems (FMS) solution. Tier is building its next generation FMS product by combining its proprietary functionality with Dynamics GP, creating an integrated, functionally rich, complete ERP solution for the public sector.

Tier's FMS Practice offers a broad range of financial management solutions that meet the complex financial management challenges of today's public sector, including functions such as Accounting, Budgeting, Purchasing, Asset Management, and Human Resources/Payroll Management, as well as complete implementation and support services, and in-house product development.

"We are extremely pleased to have achieved this significant milestone in the Microsoft Partner Program," said Ronald L. Rossetti, Chief Executive Officer of Tier. "We look forward to realizing the many benefits provided through our Gold Certified Partner status which will ultimately enable us to deliver enhanced solutions that meet the needs of our public sector customers."

"Tier's commitment to our relationship and its FMS redevelopment effort around Microsoft Dynamics is reflected in how quickly it achieved Gold Certified Partner status. Tier attained Gold Certified status more quickly than any partner previously has in the ISV Partner Group," said Sig Behrens, director of Business Solutions for Microsoft Public Sector. "Customers are looking for partner companies that can bridge the gap between their business demands and technology capabilities. Microsoft Gold Certified Partners, which have certified expertise and direct training and support from Microsoft, can build a positive customer experience with our technologies."

Microsoft Competencies are designed to help differentiate a partner's capabilities with specific Microsoft technologies to customers looking for a particular type of solution. Microsoft Gold Certified Partners that have obtained the ISV/Software Solutions Competency have a successful record of developing and marketing software based on Microsoft technologies. Partners who have achieved the Business Process and Integration competency have proven skills and experience deploying Internet-based business solutions and infrastructure using Microsoft tools and software.

The Microsoft Partner Program was launched in December 2003 and represents Microsoft's ongoing commitment to the success of partners worldwide. The program offers a single, integrated partnering framework that recognizes partner expertise, rewards the total impact that partners have in the technology marketplace, and delivers more value to help partners' businesses be successful.

About Tier

Tier Technologies, Inc. offers a diversified array of innovative business and financial transaction processing solutions. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Tier's clients include more than 2,200 federal, state, and local governments, educational institutions, utilities and commercial clients in the U.S. and abroad. Tier provides information technology solutions, and through its Official Payments Corp. subsidiary, delivers payment processing solutions for a wide range of markets. From designing, installing and maintaining cutting-edge public sector software systems, to delivering fast, secure and convenient financial transaction processing solutions, Tier provides integrated information solutions that solve problems while balancing innovation with practicality. For more information, see www.tier.com and www.officialpayments.com.

Statements made in this press release that are not historical facts, including statements regarding expectations for future revenues, earnings, and expenses, are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Tier undertakes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these and other factors which may cause our actual events or results to differ from those projected, please refer to the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Sept. 30, 2004, our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2005, as well as other filings with the SEC.
Small Business Group Names First Endorsements; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Pro-Candidate Ad Campaigns. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces its first candidate endorsements since it was formed earlier this year. TISB has endorsed candidates in 12 races across the country, four of whom will be further supported by the organization's first flight of television ads.



To receive TISB's endorsement, candidates must have demonstrated both their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy. The following candidates have received the endorsement and an "A" rating from TISB:

U.S. Senate Candidates:

-- Conrad Burns, Montana

-- Bob Corker, Tennessee

-- Mark Kennedy, Minnesota

-- Jon Kyl, Arizona (see note 1)

-- Mike McGavick, Washington

-- Jim Talent, Missouri (see note 1)

U.S. House of Representatives Candidates:

-- John Gard, Wisconsin-8 (see note 1)

-- Gus Bilirakis, Florida-9

-- Clay Shaw, Florida-22

-- Mike Sodrel, Indiana-9

-- Rick O??Donnell, Colorado-7 (see note 1)

-- Mike Whalen, Iowa-1

Note 1: TISB will be running its first flight of television ads in support of these candidates.

The ads, as well as TISB's full endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com. The ads are scheduled to hit the airwaves on Monday, Sept. 25.

This is the first set of candidates the newly created political action committee has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto Jr., said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

-----

Trust in Small Business PAC was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Optimus Solutions Hailed as a ''Best Place to Work'' for Second Time; Dedicated Employees Enjoy Quality of Life Perks and Opportunity to Grow. Check it out:
NORCROSS, Ga. --(Business Wire)-- Optimus Solutions, a comprehensive technology solutions provider, has been recognized for a second time by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of "Atlanta's 2006 Best Places to Work." Optimus ranked number six out of 50 companies on the list, based on the results of anonymous employee surveys conducted during the months of June and July by Quantum Market Research of Wichita, Kansas.



Established in 1998, Optimus Solutions' headquarters in Norcross is home to over 160 employees. "Our people are our greatest resource," said Mark Metz, CEO of Optimus Solutions. "From the start, we built Optimus as a great place to come to work, providing our team with opportunities to grow and benefits that recognize achievement and value quality of life. As a result, Optimus employees work very hard and are dedicated to delivering superior service and outstanding value to clients."

Over 300 area businesses and organizations received nominations this year. The annual workplace survey covers a range of topics, including workplace culture, employee benefit programs, and overall satisfaction in the work environment.

"We're proud to be among Atlanta's elite employers," said Steve Johnson, president of Optimus Solutions. "Having been recognized as one of the 'Best Places to Work' tells us that the steps we take to promote employee well-being are the right ones. I'm thrilled to see so much pride in our workplace."

Optimus Solutions was presented with the Best Places to Work award at the Atlanta Business Chronicle's annual award ceremony. For the complete list of the 2006 Best Places to Work, see the September 15th edition of the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

ABOUT OPTIMUS SOLUTIONS

Optimus Solutions provides comprehensive IT solutions designed to streamline and integrate business processes across the enterprise. Optimus provides solutions that assist our customers in integrating their business with partners, suppliers, and customers. We do this with a comprehensive range of integration and consulting services, as well as hardware, software, and storage product offerings. Optimus is a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for Cisco and IBM systems and software (System i, p, x, and Storage). The firm is a division of the $220 million OHC LLC. For additional information, contact Optimus Solutions at 1.877.848.OPTI or http://www.OptimusSolutions.com.
LTO Ultrium Format Maintains Momentum with More Than 1,500,000 Tape Drives and 50,000,000 Cartridges Shipped; Format Reaches New Heights by Delivering Performance, Scalability and Compatibility. Check it out:
SILICON VALLEY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, the three technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program, today announced that the LTO Ultrium format has achieved not one, but two major milestones. The program has seen more than 1.5 million LTO Ultrium tape drives shipped worldwide since products based on the format first became commercially available in September 2000.



In addition, LTO Ultrium tape cartridge shipments have passed the 50 million mark since commercial availability, achieving a second milestone for the format. The milestones demonstrate the strong adoption of the LTO format by business and government that have embraced the performance, scalability and compatibility that Ultrium delivers.

The new LTO tape drive and cartridge milestones follow recently released news on the strong shipments of Write Once, Read Many (WORM) LTO Ultrium 3 tape cartridges, and plans to feature encryption capabilities in generation 4 by enabling the writing of encrypted data to the LTO Ultrium tape cartridge.

"There's no denying that LTO Ultrium products have established considerable momentum and acceptance in the marketplace," said Dianne McAdam, director of enterprise information assurance for the Clipper Group. "This is a testament to the importance of tape storage and its ability to address user's needs for dependable data retention, data protection and low cost of ownership, as compared to disk."

"As storage administrators seek out powerful and open technologies that they can trust, they continue to turn to the LTO Ultrium format to address their storage needs," said Bob Wilson, vice president, Nearline Storage Division, HP. "The new milestones demonstrate that the combination of performance, reliability and versatility delivered by LTO Ultrium is well positioned in the market to address the functionality and security that is required for enterprise use both today and tomorrow."

How to License LTO Ultrium Technology

The LTO program offers several different license packages - from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture Ultrium products, to basic packages, providing Ultrium format specifications and guidelines for interchangeability. Buyers seeking Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO technology may obtain information by contacting the LTO Program at [email protected].

About Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Technology

LTO technology is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format created by technology providers HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.

The LTO Ultrium format has a well-defined roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. Compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Program. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensee basis. For additional information on LTO technology, visit the LTO Program Web site at www.ultrium.com.

- Data rate and capacity assume 2:1 data compression

Note: Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium, and the Ultrium logo are trademarks of HP, IBM and Quantum in the US and other countries.
University Hospitals Goes Live on Soarian Financials. Check it out:
MALVERN, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- Siemens Medical Solutions (www.usa.siemens.com/medical) and University Hospitals (UH), Cleveland, Ohio, announce that two facilities within UH have recently gone live on Soarian Financials, Siemens revenue cycle management solution. Brown Memorial Hospital (Conneaut, Ohio) and Memorial Hospital of Geneva (Geneva, Ohio) converted three million patient records and 10 years worth of visit details into the new system.



Soarian Financials is a new generation information technology (IT) solution designed to streamline revenue cycle management and help manage costs through a holistic, patient-centric, workflow-driven approach. Soarian goes beyond traditional patient management and patient accounting systems. It embeds a contract engine and an enterprise-wide master person index (EMPI) into a comprehensive revenue cycle solution. These capabilities combine with payer edits throughout the revenue cycle workflow to help streamline an organization's processes. Soarian Financials supports performance tracking against the financial goals of the organization through Embedded Analytics. By delegating the right work, to the right person, at the right time and place, Soarian helps an organization improve efficiency, reduce denials, minimize rebilling, reduce accounts receivable days, and lower administrative costs.

"The cutover from our legacy system to Soarian Financials went extremely well," said Liz Novak, vice president, Information Technology and Solutions Transformational Strategies, University Hospitals. "The transition was completed June 1 and our users are actively engaging with the system. The implementation is an important milestone for our organization as it brings the benefits of Soarian to our first two sites and builds the foundation for further deployment across our enterprise."

"We are excited by the positive reception Soarian is receiving at University Hospitals," said Janet Dillione, president, Healthcare IT Division, Siemens Medical Solutions. "With its innovative workflow architecture, Soarian has been designed to help providers manage their revenue cycle more effectively. With Soarian Financials in place, UH is on its way to a more streamlined operation with fewer manual steps, cleaner claims, and more comprehensive and patient-friendly billing."

The unique workflow-based approach to patient access and revenue management evident in Soarian Financials helps healthcare facilities optimize the revenue cycle while improving operational efficiency and patient and user satisfaction. Key functionality includes:

-- Point of Service (POS) processing with the ability to post charges and co-pays, and to generate a POS bill, facilitating upfront collection of self-pay balances

-- Integrated medical necessity processing, which helps reduce denials

-- Encounter preparation work list functions, which help improve the quality of data collected before service, thus reducing denials

-- New reporting capabilities, including billing exception and secondary business office effectiveness, improving the convenience of working with reporting output

Soarian integrates clinical, financial and administrative processes to support patient-centered care. By seamlessly integrating all clinical, financial and operational data, Soarian facilitates more informed decision-making - enabling improved care delivery, reduced medical errors, increased physician and patient satisfaction, and more efficient business practices.

UH is Northern Ohio's premier healthcare delivery system, serving patients at more than 150 locations. Committed to advanced care, UH offers the region's largest network of primary care physicians, outpatient centers and hospitals. The system's goal is to provide comprehensive primary and community-based care, as well as access to the highest quality specialty care when necessary.

Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) with headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and Erlangen, Germany, is one of the largest suppliers to the healthcare industry in the world. The company is known for bringing together innovative medical technologies, healthcare information systems, management consulting, and support services, to help customers achieve tangible, sustainable, clinical and financial outcomes. Employing approximately 33,000 people worldwide and operating in more than 120 countries, Siemens Medical Solutions reported sales of 7.6 billion EUR, orders of 8.6 billion EUR and group profit of 976 million EUR for fiscal 2005. More information can be obtained by visiting www.usa.siemens.com/medical-pressroom.
IDS Scheer Cooks Up ARIS(TM) SmartPath for Foods Implementation with Ateeco, Inc. and its Mrs. T's Pierogies Brand. Check it out:
BERWYN, Penn. --(Business Wire)-- IDS Scheer, the leading provider of solutions for business process excellence, today announced that its Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) SAP reseller business unit has secured a major customer win in the consumer packaged goods industry with Ateeco, Inc. (www.pierogies.com), a Shenandoah, PA-based manufacturer and marketer of pierogies under its Mrs. T's brand. The company selected IDS Scheer's ARIS SmartPath for Foods, a bundled solution of mySAP All-In-One enterprise software with ARIS industry-specific reference models and consulting services. In addition, Ateeco will also implement GuiXT, a third-party application that combines multiple screens and business-related transactions into one, thus increasing data accuracy and improving data entry.



Ateeco ships more than 11.4 million pierogies, a potato and cheese filled pasta product, each week to supermarkets, mass merchandisers, food clubs and foodservice distributors across the United States, as well as to military commissaries around the world. The family-owned company was founded by Ted Twardzik, Sr. in 1952; the product was named after his mother, Mary Twardzik. Today, Tom Twardzik, grandson of Mary Twardzik, is the company President.

Ateeco reviewed solutions from Ross Systems, Harris Data, Enterprise 21, Infor XA and JustFoodERP, but recognized how the powerful combination of SAP and IDS Scheer could deliver cost-effective, yet technologically superior solutions tailored to the needs of a company its size. The food manufacturer selected IDS Scheer for its market expertise and proven industry-specific ARIS SmartPath solution and SAP for its commitment to the SMB market -- SAP has penetrated this market with a large percentage of customers under $200 million in revenues, an impressive 37 percent of its 42,000 customer base.

A team of six IDS Scheer Process Implementation Consulting experts will deploy the system for 32 Ateeco users over a period of 11 weeks, beginning October 2, 2006 with a go-live date of January 1, 2007.

"Ateeco is a well-known food manufacturer and we are excited to provide them with our industry-specific solutions for the consumer goods market. This is another initiative that underlines IDS Scheer's CPG expertise," said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, CEO of IDS Scheer for the Americas. "With ARIS SmartPath for Foods, Ateeco will be in a position to truly align its business processes, including its manufacturing and distribution operations. Our industry reference models will be the roadmap to guide that process."

With ARIS SmartPath for Foods, Ateeco hopes to realize the following efficiencies:

-- Improved inventory management

-- Implementation of best business practices

-- Better controls

-- Greater inventory control

-- Enhanced data integration

"Our consumer goods expertise, especially within the food segment, was a driving force behind Ateeco's selection of ARIS SmartPath for Foods, as well as our consulting services to deploy SAP," said John Haddad, managing director of IDS Scheer SME. "With IDS Scheer as its business process partner, Ateeco is in prime position to realize continued business efficiencies, while simultaneously reducing costs throughout its operations."

About IDS Scheer in the Americas

With the ARIS Platform, IDS Scheer is the leading provider of solutions for business process excellence. The company's ARIS-based solutions offer a complete portfolio of software, services and methods to address all phases of the business process lifecycle: strategy, design, implementation, controlling, documentation, and continuous improvement. From small/medium enterprises to Global 1000 organizations, IDS Scheer helps companies optimize their investments in Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Architecture (EA), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Corporate Performance Management (CPM), and Compliance Management. As a Global SAP Service Partner and strategic SAP development partner, IDS Scheer has unmatched domain expertise in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and SAP NetWeaver. With more than 2,500 employees worldwide and 6,000-plus customers in over 70 countries, IDS Scheer's 2005 revenues reached $386.4 million USD/318 million Euros. IDS Scheer was established in 1984 by August-Wilhelm Scheer, widely recognized as a founding father of Business Process Management.

For more information on IDS Scheer in the Americas, visit http://www.ids-scheer.com/us.

Copyright (C) 2006 IDS Scheer All rights reserved.

Note to Editors: When referring to ARIS, please print in all caps.

SAP, SAP NetWeaver and all other SAP product and service names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries around the world. Other product or company names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
DMTF's CDM System Health Management Initiative Unveiled at Industry Kick-Off; Demonstrations, Executives Provide Insight into the Technology Industry's Cross-Platform System Diagnostics Standard. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF)(R), the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards, today held a kick-off event for its Common Diagnostic Model (CDM) System Health Management Initiative for diagnostics. This initiative will, for the first time, unify the computer industry on a single interoperable, secure, and functionally rich interface to diagnostics programs on multi-vendor computer systems.



At today's kick-off, executives from the industry's top companies and organizations addressed the importance of CDM, including Keith Brown, Director, IBM System x Software Development; Rich Rysiewicz,VP, CompTIA Services; Greg Shoemaker, VP, HP Central Direct Procurement; Kevin Soelberg, VP, Dell Worldwide Services; and Michael Wentz, VP, Enterprise Support, Symantec Corporation.

The CDM System Health Management Initiative is led by the DMTF's CDM Forum, the group dedicated to uniting the computer industry on a single interoperable interface to all system diagnostics. The key elements of the initiative are a Software Development Kit (SDK), compliance testing tools, use cases and profiles, as well as a certification process.

Via CDM technology, Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) will no longer need to develop unique diagnostic solutions for their various customers, reducing their diagnostic development investment. In addition, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) will benefit by having a single vehicle to deliver adaptive software systems, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) will benefit by having an improved level of support from their vendors.

"The DMTF's CDM has long been the solution for delivering cross-platform diagnostics to the technology industry," said Winston Bumpus, president, DMTF. "At today's kick-off of the CDM System Health Management Initiative, the industry has a chance to see the significant advancements underway, and find out how they can become involved in this important work."

Support from CDM Forum Leadership Companies

AMD

"AMD is committed to enabling open standards that promote interoperability and ease-of-use for our customers, which is why we are supporting the DMTF's CDM Forum as a Forum Leadership member," said Margaret Lewis, director, Commercial Solutions, AMD. "We are pleased to support the launch of the CDM Initiative and look forward to continuing to work with CDM and other standards organizations to build support for open standards in AMD64 technology."

Dell

"Dell is focused on creating and deploying industry standards which help customers reduce their costs by taking back control of their enterprises," said Kevin Soelberg, vice president of Dell World Wide Services. "The DMTF CDM System Health Initiative will help increase availability and isolate problems more quickly."

HP

"The DMTF's CDM Initiative intends to unify the industry on a common diagnostic interface," said Greg Shoemaker, vice president, Central Direct Procurement, HP. "HP encourages companies to attend today's kick-off event to understand first hand how CDM can benefit them and the industry. HP's key role as a leader in the DMTF CDM Forum demonstrates our commitment to promoting and adopting this industry standard."

IBM

"We see CDM as a critical component of our System x diagnostic strategy, which includes our Dynamic System Analysis (DSA) product," said Keith Brown, director, IBM System x Software Development. "DSA 2.0 fully implements the CDM standard and lays a path for future diagnostic support by our partners. CDM allows our partners to develop incremental value for their hardware products, delivering diagnostics for all their OEM customers with a single design and code base."

Intel

"CDM reduces TCO by providing a framework for answering the age old IT troubleshooting question: Is the problem in hardware, software or the network?" said Gregory Bryant, general manager, Intel Digital Office Platform Group. "Intel is enhancing the availability and reliability of business PCs by helping drive standards, such as CDM, as well as delivering platforms with management and security capabilities that change the game around business computing."

PC-Doctor

"As one of the authors of the original CDM specification, we're delighted to join industry leaders in advancing the success of the CDM standard," said Doug van Aman, chief marketing officer for PC-Doctor, Inc. "We welcome the opportunity to contribute our dozen-plus years of experience in developing world-class diagnostics for manufacturing, support and service environments."

Symantec

"Maintaining the health of computing solutions is essential to success in mission critical business applications," said Mark Bregman, executive vice president, chief technology officer, Symantec. "The CDM management initiative is a key component of Symantec's technology strategy moving forward, and Symantec is committed to the success of the initiative as a leader in the CDM Forum."

About the DMTF

With more than 3,500 active participants representing 39 countries and nearly 200 organizations, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards. DMTF management technologies include the Common Diagnostic Model (CDM) initiative, the Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) initiative, Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) - including protocols such as CIM-XML and Web Services for Management (WS-Management) - which are all based on the Common Information Model (CIM). Information about the DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.
A New Generation of ETL Solutions for an Ever More Demanding Data Management Market. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42545) has announced the addition of Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) report to their offering.

Technically, ETL stands for 'extract, transform and load'. Historically, this meant that you extracted data from source systems, transformed it appropriately, and then loaded into a target system. Further, this process has traditionally been associated with the loading of data into a data warehouse in a batch-based process.



The problem with this description is that none of these things are true any longer. If we take the association with data warehousing first, there are a number of other environments in which you may want to use an ETL process; such as when you are migrating from one database to another or if, after a merger, you need to synchronise different databases. There are also cases where you might want to move data from a source system directly into an application environment such as a call centre or contact management system.

Summary of Contents:

What is meant by ETL?

Market drivers

Technology requirements

Connectivity

Development

Scalability and performance

Real-time capabilities

Metadata

Data warehousing support

Extended Capabilities

Individual vendors:

Ab Initio

Business Objects

Cognos

Computer Associates

Embarcadero

ETI

ETL Solutions

Group 1 Software

Hummingbird

IBM

Informatica

InterSystems

iWay

Microsoft

Oracle

Pervasive

SAS

Sesame Software

Solonde

Sunopsis

Other vendors

Different approaches

EAI/ESB vendors

Open source products

Real-time specialists

Specialists

Conclusion

The Bullseye

The Landscape Bullseye

Domain dashboards

Summary of results

General purpose products--enterprise class

General purpose products--organisational class

General purpose products--departmental class

Developer solutions

Open source solutions

Complementary solutions

Conclusion

Appendix A

The Bullseye scoring method

Scores and details

The Landscape Bullseye

Conclusion

Appendix B--Spreadsheet data

Appendix C--Vendor information

Appendix D--About the author

Appendix E--Available product evaluations

Appendix F--Available software downloads

Research Overview

Copyright & Disclaimer

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42545
Stylus Studio Releases All-New XML Pipeline and XML Publishing Tools to Simplify XML Development. Check it out:
BEDFORD, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Stylus Studio (http://www.stylusstudio.com), the industry-leading provider of XML tools and components for advanced data integration, today announced the immediate availability of Stylus Studio(R) 2007 XML Enterprise Suite. The latest release of the worldwide popular and award-winning XML IDE offers completely new XML Pipeline and XML Publisher tools, and it is being heralded by the company as being the single biggest and most significant release in Stylus Studio's 10 year history.



The Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tool is a powerful XML application design tool that lets software architects design XML data services at a higher and more integrated level than ever before. Rather than manually editing individual stylesheets, queries, schemas, Web services, and other pieces of XML applications, Stylus Studio XML Pipeline editor allows developers to quickly and easily model their entire application as a sequence of XML processing operations. For example, a typical XML application might involve converting legacy data into an XML format, validating the resulting XML document, then transforming it to HTML or PDF using XQuery or XSLT. Using the Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tool, developers can visually assemble such an application by dragging and dropping dozens of common XML operations from a tools palette onto a canvas and simply wiring them together according to the application's business requirements. Developers can also drag XQuery, XSLT, and other XML documents from a file system and drop them directly on the XML Pipeline canvas.

The Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tool seamlessly integrates all of Stylus Studio's powerful XSLT and XQuery debugging tools and utilities, enabling users to debug the entire application as a whole, or individual components or chains of components, by setting breakpoints where they choose. And when it comes to getting the XML application out of the lab and into the real world, Stylus Studio provides integrated Java(TM) Code Generation tools to automatically generate the required code to deploy and run the entire XML application in a production environment. The Stylus Studio XML application debugging and code generation tools provide unparalleled extensibility, offering seamless integration with the world's leading XML, XQuery, XSL and XSLT processors including DataDirect XQuery(TM), Apache Xalan, Apache Xerces, Microsoft .NET, MSXML, Saxonica, RenderX XEP, XSV, and others. Furthermore, integration with Stylus Studio XML Deployment Adapters enables seamless access to any data source including EDI and flat files.

Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite takes XML application development to the next level, providing an intuitive and productive environment for building complete XML applications, including modeling, editing, debugging, and deploying an entire XML application, thus making the Stylus Studio product the world's first truly integrated XML Application Development Environment.

The Stylus Studio XML Publisher product is a powerful XML report designer that allows users to create advanced document layouts for use in single-source publishing, XML content management, and multi-channel publishing applications. Using an intuitive visual interface, business users can easily design rich document layouts to publish XML content to PDF, HTML, Postscript and many other document formats using XSLT 1.0, XSLT 2.0, or XQuery 1.0. The Stylus Studio XML Publisher product supports numerous heterogeneous data sources including relational databases; XML databases; Web services: EDI, EDIFACT, X12, CSV and other flat file formats; as well as XML and XML Schema documents.

"Simply put - if XML standards compliance, developer productivity, application scalability, and getting true value for your money matter to you and your organization, then buy Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite today," said Robert Evelyn, DataDirect VP Strategy and General Manager XML Products Group. "Companies that are looking for a complete XML set of offerings need to look no further than DataDirect Technologies. The combination of our full featured Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite announced today, along with the Stylus Studio Deployment Adaptors to access those older formats such as EDI and the world class, and the enterprise ready DataDirect XQuery 2.0 product allowing easy access to XML, Relational DB, Web Services, and older formats using an industry standard query language provides answers to your XML challenges today and in the future."

Pricing and Availability

Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite is now available for free trial download (http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_download.html), or for purchase at the Stylus Studio online shop (http://www.stylusstudio.com/buy/). Stylus Studio has rolled-back prices across the board to levels never seen before. Stylus Studio 2007 Release 3 XML Enterprise Suite is offered at $795 (USD) for a single-user license. Stylus Studio XML Professional Suite is now offered at $450 for a single-user license, and Stylus Studio 2007 Home Edition is offered at $99 for a single-user license. For a limited time, Stylus Studio is offering special introductory pricing of approximately an additional 20-50% off these already discounted prices. Significant volume discounts and competitive upgrades are also available - please visit the online shop for a complete price list (http://www.stylusstudio.com/buy/full_price_list.html). For more information about enterprise licensing, or for any questions about purchasing Stylus Studio products, call (781) 280-4832 or send an email to [email protected].

About Stylus Studio(R) XML Pipeline

The Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tool is the world's first true integrated development environment for developing complete XML applications because it provides a comprehensive way to model, edit, debug, and deploy the entire application, rather than just the individual bits and pieces that make it up. The following are some of the highlights of the new Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tool:

-- Visual editor lets you specify and link together any number of XML processing operations to be applied to your data

-- Support for dozens of XML processing operations including converting, transforming, validating, querying, and publishing your data

-- Re-use Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tools inside other XML Pipelines

-- Complete XML Pipeline debugging support

-- Cross-language debugging support -- step into XSLT or XQuery

-- Define pipeline flow control based on different conditions, for example, the outcome of an XML validation operation, or the result of an XPath expression

-- Generate Java code to deploy an entire XML application, not just one piece

-- Extensible execution framework enables developers to choose different processors for XML validation, XSLT, XSL:FO, and XQuery

About Stylus Studio(R) XML Publisher

The Stylus Studio XML Publisher product provides the easiest way to create professional quality reports from your XML and relational data without needing a degree in Computer Science. The following are just a few of the highlights of Stylus Studio XML Publisher product:

-- Visual editor lets you design reports and publish them to PDF, HTML, PostScript and other document formats.

-- Access numerous data sources including relational databases, XML, Web services, EDI, X12, EDIFACT, IATA, CSV and thousands of other legacy file formats.

-- Generate XQuery or XSLT 1.0 / XSLT 2.0 to generate XSL:FO or HTML output.

-- Integration with RenderX XEP and Apache FOP.

-- Support for rich formatting including tables, lists, text blocks, images, and more.

-- Support for iteration, flow control, and conditions based on XPath.

-- Integration with the Stylus Studio XML Pipeline tools enables XML publishing as part of a larger XML workflow application.

Both the Stylus Studio XML Pipeline and Stylus Studio XML Publisher products are offered in Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite.

About Stylus Studio(R)

Stylus Studio(R), a product from DataDirect Technologies, an operating company of Progress Software Corporation, is the industry's most innovative XML IDE (http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_product_index.html), providing a comprehensive suite of advanced XML tools and scalable deployment components for working with XML, XSLT, XQuery, XML Schema, Web services, EDI, legacy data integration, XML Pipeline, XML mapping, XML Publishing, Web services and more. Used by leading software developers world-wide, Stylus Studio simplifies XML programming and enhances developer productivity through innovation. For more information, visit: http://www.stylusstudio.com.

About DataDirect Technologies

DataDirect Technologies is the software industry's only comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world's most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect(R) products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC(TM) and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on DataDirect Technologies to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration. DataDirect Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation. For more information, visit www.datadirect.com.

DataDirect, DataDirect XQuery, and Stylus Studio are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Java and all Java-based marks are trademarks or service marks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Stylus Studio Announces Significant Price Reductions on Award Winning Enterprise XML Tools Suite. Check it out:
BEDFORD, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Stylus Studio (http://www.stylusstudio.com), the industry-leading provider of XML tools and components for advanced data integration, today announced significant price cuts on the newly released Stylus Studio(R) 2007 XML Enterprise Suite. Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite is the single biggest and most significant release in Stylus Studio's 10 year history. The latest release of the worldwide popular and award-winning XML tools suite offers all-new Stylus Studio XML Pipeline and Stylus Studio XML Publishing tools along with an integrated suite of countless other handy tools and utilities for working with W3C XML technologies - at a special introductory price of just $595 (USD) for a single user license.



Historically, prices in the XML tools industry have risen sharply in the past several years. The newly announced price cuts effectively rolls-back the clock on enterprise XML tool suite pricing to levels that not been seen for many years, affording both corporations and the average XML developer with the ability to enjoy unprecedented developer productivity and value.

"We're so excited about the ground-breaking new features in Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite including the Stylus Studio XML Pipeline and Stylus Studio XML Publisher tools, that we've decided to significantly reduce prices to ensure that both large and small corporations and individual developers alike can benefit from them," said Robert Evelyn, DataDirect VP of Strategy and General Manager XML Products Group. "Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite affirms our commitment to you by providing, feature rich, innovative and productive XML tools to developers at truly affordable prices. Give Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite a try!"

Additional Special Introductory Pricing

In addition to the newly announced reductions in list price, for a limited time, Stylus Studio is offering even greater special introductory savings on Stylus Studio 2007 XML products. From now through October 6, 2006, customers can save approximately an additional 20-50% off already our already-reduced software products. For more information, including a complete price list, visit the Stylus Studio online shop at: http://www.stylusstudio.com/buy/

XML Developers Get More for Less with Stylus Studio(R)

With Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite, XML developers get more powerful and productive XML tools including all-new Stylus Studio XML Pipeline and Stylus Studio XML Publisher tools at significantly less cost than ever before. The Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite provides a comprehensive and productive suite of XML development tools for XML Mapping, Web services, XQuery, XML publishing, EDI integration and much more, all in one product at one affordable price. Developers seeking to maximize value for their dollars spent are urged to purchase Stylus Studio products or download a free trial today.

Increased Volume Discounts

Organizations can enjoy further price reductions on volume purchases. For example, a company with 100 engineers seeking to increase developer productivity across the entire development organization could do so for just $41,650 (USD), saving approximately an additional 30% off of already sharply reduced prices.

About Stylus Studio(R)

Stylus Studio(R), a product from DataDirect Technologies, an operating company of Progress Software Corporation, is the industry's most innovative XML IDE (http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_product_index.html), providing a comprehensive suite of advanced XML tools and scalable deployment components for working with XML, XSLT, XQuery, XML Schema, Web services, EDI, legacy data integration, XML Pipeline, XML mapping, XML Publishing, Web services and more. Used by leading software developers world-wide, Stylus Studio simplifies XML programming and enhances developer productivity through innovation. For more information, visit: http://www.stylusstudio.com.

About DataDirect Technologies

DataDirect Technologies is the software industry's only comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world's most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect(R) products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC(TM) and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on DataDirect Technologies to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration. DataDirect Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation. For more information, visit www.datadirect.com.

DataDirect and Stylus Studio are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Java and all Java-based marks are trademarks or service marks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Diligent Technologies' HyperFactor Technology Defines the Future of De-Duplication for Enterprise Networks. Check it out:
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Diligent Technologies Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise data protection solutions, today announced the availability of a new report that validates the unique capabilities of its HyperFactor(TM) data de-duplication technology. HyperFactor powers Diligent's ProtecTIER enterprise-class disk-based data protection solution and provides customers with an efficient, secure and reliable backup, recovery and archive solution.



"All enterprises with significant data protection requirements need to be looking seriously at how to control their data growth and disk-based storage capacities. Advanced de-duplication technologies like HyperFactor are now the best weapons in the arsenal," said Arun Taneja, analyst and founder of the Taneja Group. "Without question, enterprises evaluating their options for capacity optimization in D2D need to understand this proven technology from Diligent Technologies."

The Taneja report describes how it sees Diligent Technologies on the cutting-edge of a burgeoning market it terms capacity optimization. Capacity Optimization (CO) is the term Taneja Group uses to describe technologies that cut down an enterprise's physical storage requirements for secondary disc storage. Taneja Group says Diligent, with its ProtecTIER VT solution and its "secret sauce" - HyperFactor - stand out as extremely scalable, efficient, high-performance data de-duplication software and that its ability to de-duplicate data at 25:1, at in-line rates of 200 MB/s is "mind bending" and sets this technology apart as second to none.

"We are happy with the findings of the Taneja Group report. It is in line with the experiences of dozens of ProtecTIER enterprise customers who are able to dramatically transform their data-protection operations by improving the reliability and performance of their backup and restore, increasing the economical retention of backup and archive data on disk and eliminating trucks as a means for transporting data to disaster recovery and archive sites," said Doron Kempel, Chairman and CEO of Diligent Technologies. "Reducing the amount of physical space needed to store vital information is absolutely needed in enterprises of all sizes. By dramatically reducing the costs of storing and transporting data, Diligent's ProtecTIER is pushing the envelope of data protection effectiveness."

According to the validation report, HyperFactor can reduce capacities anywhere from 10:1 to 25:1 or more, depending on workload type and retention periods. Taneja Group states when this optimization efficiency is coupled with HyperFactor's scalability, it translates into some boggling figures: HyperFactor can scale to support 25 petabytes of managed data, which it will optimize down to a 1 petabyte physical storage repository, all managed under a single 4GB RAM index. The group adds that because of Diligent's breakthroughs in indexing design, HyperFactor's index can map an entire data repository at 250,000:1 ratio, which is an unprecedented level of efficiency. In contrast, hash-based algorithms require an index in orders of magnitude higher and are penalized with complex recoveries, performance degradation and the possibility of data integrity issues.

The report, "Diligent HyperFactor: Redefining De-Duplication" is available online at both Diligent Technologies' (www.diligent.com) and the Taneja Group's (www.tanejagroup.com) Web sites.

About Diligent Technologies Corporation

Diligent delivers scalable, proven, enterprise-class disk-based data protection solutions. Diligent's ProtecTIER(TM) platform, powered by HyperFactor(TM), a game-changing data de-duplication technology, enables customers to protect more data while recording less of it, all without disrupting existing policies, practices and procedures in their data center. Diligent's solutions and professional services are available through its reseller and partner channels along with sales, service and R&D support located worldwide. Information on Diligent Technologies is available on the World Wide Web at www.diligent.com, tel: +1-508-663-1300 or e-mail: [email protected].

Note to Editors: Diligent, Diligent Technologies logo, VTF, ProtecTIER and HyperFactor are trademarks of Diligent Technologies Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Pillar Data Systems Congratulates the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Winning a Network World Enterprise All-Star Award. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Pillar Data Systems, a leading provider of enterprise network storage systems, announced today that one of its customers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, is the winner of a 2006 Network World Enterprise All-Star Award for the implementation of its state-of-the-art data center.



The Network World Enterprise All-Star Awards recognize IT organizations representing the most innovative applications of network technology. Las Vegas Review-Journal's consolidation of data, applications and services displayed exemplary use of technology without sacrificing performance for its high-priority data sets.

This year's winners were culled from 75 finalists and nearly 200 total entries. Winners are segmented into eight categories: Applications; LANs & Routers; OS, Servers & Data Center; Network Management; Security; Storage; WANs, Convergence & VoIP; and Wireless. They represent a variety of industries, including education, financial services, healthcare and hospitality.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal serves as the corporate headquarters for the Stephens Media Group. Focusing on hometown news, the organization owns and operates dozens of businesses.

"Our new data center environment allows us to scale more rapidly than ever before and accommodate business needs as they arise," said Steven Olson, infrastructure manager, Las Vegas Review-Journal. "This increase in speed for deployment of systems is a quantum leap over previous capabilities, changing the Review-Journal's service level targets from weeks to literally hours."

"The state-of-the-art data center that Steven and his staff are building at the Las Vegas Review-Journal is extremely impressive," said Brenda Zawatski, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Pillar Data Systems. "The Pillar team is extremely proud of being a part of that innovation. It's clear this Network World Enterprise All-Star award recognizes innovation and unyielding commitment to customer satisfaction."

Details on all winners of the Network World Enterprise All-Star Awards are available online at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006.

About Pillar Data Systems

Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops midrange and enterprise network storage systems. The company's Pillar Axiom solution, driven by its innovative policy-based management capabilities, integrates SAN and NAS into a centrally managed storage platform. Pillar Axiom systems consolidate multiple tiers of enterprise network storage into a single, easily managed system capable of scaling to hundreds of terabytes of capacity. Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered at 2840 Junction Avenue, San Jose, California 95134. The company can be reached on the Web at http://www.pillardata.com, by phone at 408-503-4000 or by email at [email protected].

Pillar Data Systems, Pillar Axiom, Pillar Axiom ONE and the Pillar logo are all trademarks of Pillar Data Systems. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Castile Ventures Leads Series B Financing of Whaleback Systems. Check it out:
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. --(Business Wire)-- Whaleback Systems(TM) today announced the completion of its $7.5 million Series B round of financing. The round was led by Castile Ventures with participation from new investor Egan-Managed Capital and existing investor Ascent Venture Partners. This financing will be utilized to expand Whaleback's channel and geographic market coverage and to fund aggressive feature development for Whaleback's CrystalBlue(TM) Voice Service for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). Whaleback Systems is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and the pioneering developer of the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband.



The company's CrystalBlue Voice Service is monitored and maintained around the clock and allows SMBs to gain the benefits of full-featured IP telephony without the costs and limitations of IP Centrex services or the capital and operating costs of deploying and self-managing IP PBX platforms originally designed for large companies but scaled back to accommodate SMBs.

"Whaleback was founded on a new approach to IP telephony that promises to bring the advanced features and low costs of VoIP to millions of SMBs for the first time," said Roger Walton, a partner at Castile Ventures. "No small or medium business wants to become its own phone company, and Whaleback's innovations have enabled the only managed telephony service that delivers the switching intelligence directly to the customer premises while monitoring the system 7 by 24 to provide reliable, no-hassle, full-featured business VoIP services. The team's deep telephony roots have helped Whaleback design a solution that provides these benefits without compromising the high quality, ease-of-use and absolute reliability that businesses expect from phone systems. This is a company that is positioned to grow rapidly and build value, and we are very excited to be working with them."

Castile Ventures is investing its third fund in innovative enterprises developing future generations of enterprise, mass market and service provider information technology. According to Mark Galvin, co-founder, president and CEO of Whaleback. "We are proud to receive the financial backing of Castile Ventures and will leverage the capital from this round of financing to broaden our market coverage and continue to aggressively develop advanced new VoIP features."

Walton has now joined the Board of Directors of Whaleback Systems. "With a networking industry career spanning over twenty years, Roger brings a deep knowledge of networking technologies and marketing expertise to our Board," said Galvin. "Roger has advised emerging and established product companies and service providers, and we welcome his insights and the strategic contributions he will make to the continued growth and success of Whaleback."

About Whaleback Systems

Whaleback Systems is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and the pioneering developer of the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband. Unlike traditional systems, the Whaleback CrystalBlue Voice Service is 100 percent premises-based and software-driven. It includes the only IP PBX with Key System Unit features and Road Warrior Functionality. Whaleback's all-inclusive, unlimited nationwide calling package makes the most advanced technology immediately affordable for companies that need between 5 and 1,500 phone stations. The Whaleback service is available through partnerships with channel partners and VARs. For more information, visit www.WhalebackSystems.com.

About Castile Ventures

Founded in 1998, Castile Ventures is a top-performing early stage venture capital firm investing in innovative enterprises developing future generations of information technology for enterprises, service providers and the mass market. Castile is distinguished by its partners' deep sector and business-building experience and a high degree of value-added support delivered through lasting partnerships with entrepreneurs. Currently managing three funds, Castile's investments include Ahura Corp, Brix Networks, GeoTrust (acquired by VeriSign), Neah Power (NPWS), Network Intelligence (acquired by EMC), Quantiva (acquired by NetScout Systems), Sandbridge Technologies, SilverStorm Technologies, Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), Stargus (acquired by C-COR), and Trapeze Networks. Please visit Castile at www.castileventures.com.
AmberPoint Customer MedicAlert Foundation Honored with Network World Enterprise All-Star Award. Check it out:
OAKLAND, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- AmberPoint is pleased to congratulate its customer, MedicAlert Foundation, for its recognition as an Enterprise All-Star by Network World. The Network World Enterprise All-Star Award recognizes exceptional use of network technology to further enterprise business objectives, representing the best application of network technologies in eight categories. MedicAlert was selected for its ongoing use of AmberPoint's SOA Management System to drive business agility.



"MedicAlert Foundation has a great story to tell as a small nonprofit with a big technology project. Its ambitious, cutting-edge SOA implementation, complete with governance and security layers, marks it as an Enterprise All-Star," said Beth Schultz, editor, Network World Signature Series.

Network World editors selected enterprise IT organizations representing the best, most innovative application of network technologies, choosing from more than 200 nominees. These award-winning network IT projects are profiled in Network World's special edition Signature Series Enterprise All-Star Issue published today, September 25, and on the web site at www.networkworld.com/allstar/2006.

With more than 4 million members worldwide, MedicAlert Foundation is a leading non-profit healthcare informatics organization dedicated to providing services that protect and save lives. As the trusted third-party custodian of comprehensive personal health information, MedicAlert provides critical medical information between patients, providers, payers and first responders twenty four hours a day, anywhere in the world. Since launching its SOA initiative two years ago, the non-profit has leveraged AmberPoint's SOA Management System to generate vital new forms of collaboration with partners, and accelerated the introduction of new products and services to strengthen its business.

"This is a great honor for MedicAlert Foundation and AmberPoint," said Ed Horst, VP of Marketing at AmberPoint. "For the second year in a row an AmberPoint customer has been selected for the Enterprise All-Star Awards, validating our ability to help leading organizations achieve their business goals through use of SOA."

About Network World

Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community (www.networkworld.com), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns, and create new revenue opportunities.

About AmberPoint

AmberPoint is the industry's leading provider of SOA visibility, management and security solutions. Customers such as British Telecommunications, H&R Block, Motorola and the U.S. Department of Defense have chosen AmberPoint for its comprehensive capabilities, its non-invasive approach and its native support for Java and .NET. For more information, contact AmberPoint at 510-663-6300 or [email protected], or visit www.amberpoint.com for a complimentary developer's edition of AmberPoint software.
Tridion Appoints Ion Global as Its First Premier Partner in US Market to Enable Organizations to Align Web Content and Global Business Strategy. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Tridion, a leading global provider of web content management software solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Ion Global, an international e-business consultancy, to provide customers with the solutions and technology they need to launch global e-business initiatives.



The partnership will take advantage of Tridion's strength in providing web content management solutions that support organizations' web site globalization projects and Ion Global's expertise in counseling clients throughout the process of developing multinational e-business endeavors. The emphasis Tridion and Ion Global each place on enabling their customers to align their online content to global business strategy led both companies to partner and therefore extend their already robust offerings. The partnership will allow Ion Global to develop substantial Tridion software implementation capabilities, extending Tridion's competence to roll out its WCM software across the US. As a Tridion Premier Partner, Ion Global is committed to having a pool of certified resources with the highest level of expertise around the Tridion offering and work very closely with Tridion in knowledge sharing.

"Tridion elected to partner with Ion Global because of its compelling reputation of guiding the Global 2000 throughout the process of creating their global online business initiatives," said Erik Aeyelts Averink, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Tridion. "We have seen an increase in demand from US companies for web content management software with global capabilities that will allow them to present a unified brand across multiple online channels while maintaining a localized web presence. Our partnership with Ion Global will allow us to offer these companies a more competitive solution across the US and Asia."

Prior to this formal partnership, Tridion and Ion Global have worked on a number of international projects, including one with Emirates Airline to successfully roll out its global internet presence and ensure the usability of its Internet booking engine. With Tridion's recent emphasis on the US market, an official relationship with Ion Global is a logical next step to continued project success given each company's strong capabilities in the area of web site globalization.

"We have been selecting and deploying web content management solutions for our clients for over a decade," said Wei-Tai Kwok, Managing Director of Ion Global San Francisco. "Over the past few years, however, we have seen more of our customers selecting Tridion, particularly for its elegant multilingual, multibrand and multichannel features. Therefore, it is natural for us to take an interest in specializing in Tridion deployments. We look forward to partnering with Tridion to not only help clients plan their e-business projects but to also provide them with the tools they need to execute them."

About Ion Global

Established in Hong Kong in 1995 and with offices in San Francisco and Seoul, Ion Global offers e-business strategies and solutions for major corporations and government organizations that recognize the power of the Internet as a business platform and customer relationship channel. Ion Global integrates four core competencies - strategy, user experience, technology and marketing - which together represent the key components of a successful e-business solution.

For more information, please visit www.ionglobal.com

About Tridion

Tridion is the leading provider of best of breed enterprise class Web Content Management solutions. Tridion's solutions empower enterprises to provide compelling, consistent and personalized customer experiences across multiple web sites in multiple languages and through multiple (online) channels. Its unique 'Building Block' architecture and 'BluePrint Management'(TM) technology allow enterprises to vastly improve customer experience by providing a consistent corporate image, multilingual localized content, accelerated time-to-market, and overall improvement of content quality, all while reducing operational costs. Over 400 customers rely on Tridion's Web Content Management solutions, including ABN AMRO, Agfa, Alcatel, Canon, Goodyear, Heineken, Honda, KLM, Renault, Suzuki, Toyota, ING, ReedElsevier, and Unilever.
Alliacense Expands Executive Staff to Manage Global Licensing of Technology Patent Portfolios. Check it out:
CUPERTINO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Alliacense today announced the further expansion of its executive staff to manage both current and emerging patent portfolios owned by The TPL Group. Bruce Sanderson, the newest addition to the Alliacense team, has been appointed VP, Licensing. Sanderson follows the appointment of Rich Schuette who was appointed VP, Intellectual Property in April. Collectively, both VPs add more than 40 years of collective experience in global patent licensing.



"With more and more system manufacturers expressing interest in the Moore Microprocessor Patent(TM) (MMP) Portfolio, our licensing activity is growing rapidly," said Mac Leckrone, Alliacense president. "Adding high-caliber executives such as Rick and Bruce is critical to our continued success in commercializing and licensing the MMP Portfolio as well as other IP assets being developed by The TPL Group." Leckrone noted that the MMP Portfolio patents, filed by The TPL Group in the 1980s, are fundamental to consumer and commercial digital systems ranging from DVD players, cell phones and portable music players to computers, communications infrastructure, medical equipment and automotive electronics.

About Bruce Sanderson

Sanderson formerly served as Sr. VP of Licensing for IPVALUE Management, a private equity firm funded by Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic Partners and Boston Consulting Group. During his four-year tenure, he led efforts to close over 20 deals generating more than $100 million revenue. During his four-year tenure at Lucent Technologies, most recently serving as subsidiary president of the Licensing Division, he generated several hundred million dollars in revenue from the technology assets of Bell Labs including a portfolio of 26,000 patents. Over the course of his 13-year tenure with AT&T, he led a corporate-wide multifunctional team to establish a holding company subsidiary and the transfer of IP assets valued at $30 billion, which resulted in $25 million tax savings annually. While at AT&T, he evaluated 40 technologies and implemented licensing programs resulting in tens of millions of dollars in royalties. Sanderson holds an MBA from the University of Miami and a BA in Psychology from Tulane University.

About Rick Schuette

Schuette previously worked for Hewlett-Packard in Fort Collins, Colorado where for the last seven years of his 18-year tenure he served as Senior Counsel. His most current responsibilities at HP included house counsel for numerous microprocessor based litigations, the drafting and negotiation of joint development and licensing agreements for the company's PA-RISC and IPF microprocessor and chipset development labs, as well as providing IP support for the Open Source and Linux Operation, the Software Global Business Unit (Open View) and America's Marketing Organization. Before joining HP in 1988, he served as a regional attorney over a three-year tenure with Digital Equipment Corporation where he provided IP support for computer and peripherals products. Schuette holds an MA in Financial Management from Catholic University and a Juris Doctorate degree from the College of William and Mary. He earned his BSEE from Catholic University of America where he was also a member of Tau Beta Pi, the National Engineering Honor Society.

About Alliacense

Alliacense is a TPL Group Enterprise executing best-in-class design and implementation of intellectual property licensing programs. As a cadre of IP licensing strategists, technology experts, and experienced business development /management executives, Alliacense focuses on expanding the awareness and value of TPL's intellectual property portfolios. For more information, visit www.alliacense.com.

Alliacense and Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) are trademarks of Technology Properties Limited (TPL). All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Fusion Dynamic Service Oriented Infrastructure Now Available for IBM Customers. Check it out:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Fusion Dynamic, pioneering the service-oriented infrastructure for the data center, has announced today that it will offer the company's new dynamic data center operating environment, DynamicOE(R), on IBM's BladeCenter and System x platform.



"One of the value propositions for IBM BladeCenter has long been the enablement of users to create a modular, flexible On Demand IT environment. Fusion Dynamic DynamicOE complements this by delivering service oriented software with focus on the dynamic data center," said Doug Balog, vice president, IBM BladeCenter. "We are pleased to be working with Fusion Dynamic as a part of the IBM BladeCenter ecosystem to bring value to our customers."

Fusion Dynamic's DynamicOE is a data-center operating environment that provides end-to-end service modeling; dynamic binding of applications, servers, network, and storage; automated provisioning and availability management from high-level, service-oriented models; replication of service models across data centers (i.e., from OE to OE), and dynamic, real-time, automated adjustment of service capacities. The most recently announced version of DynamicOE operating environment focuses on data centers based upon IBM BladeCenter. Future releases will extend the service-oriented infrastructure to ad hoc collections of servers, network appliances, and storage. The DynamicOE is installed in a number of IBM deployments worldwide, including (among others) Elant, ND Satcom, Exostar, and GroupAma.

"Because of its leadership, working with IBM allows us to bring to major accounts the capability to fully implement data center architectures that can truly enable the service oriented enterprise," said Asaf Mohr, CEO of Fusion Dynamic. "We look forward to helping customers benefit from this relationship as we move forward."

About Fusion Dynamic

Fusion Dynamic has pioneered the service-oriented infrastructure for the data center, a broad-scope, software-based operating environment that dynamically links all of the hardware and software resources into a flexible, adaptive, fault-tolerant, and self-healing infrastructure. This infrastructure permits data centers to be provisioned, managed, and maintained from a high-level, abstract, "application and service delivery" perspective, rather than from the low-level, physical-resource perspective that consumes growing amounts of personnel and capital in virtually every commercial and enterprise data center today. The result is ultra-high availability of services, reduced hardware requirements, significantly lowered operational complexity, and a commensurate reduction in capital and operational expenses.

Future releases will extend the service-oriented infrastructure to ad hoc collections of servers, network appliances, and storage. The DynamicOE has been thoroughly field proven in dozens of mission-critical deployments worldwide.

Fusion Dynamic's products and technologies are available for deployment in qualifying environments. In addition, the company is actively working with tier 1 software and hardware vendors to embed portions of its highly-modular technology into their products, allowing such companies to "OEM" portions or all of the operating environment, and is actively expanding this program. The company is venture-capital funded, and is based in the Silicon Valley and Israel.

Editors, note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are those of their respective companies.

Additional background information is available at www.roeder-johnson.com.

See also: "Beyond Virtualization: New Operating Environment Offers First True Service-oriented Infrastructure for Data Centers", September 6, 2006, http://www.roeder-johnson.com/RJDocs/FUbeyondvirtualization0906.html
Columbitech's Wireless VPN Adds Symbian OS Support to Provide World's Most Comprehensive Mobile VPN. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Mobile security solutions provider Columbitech today announced that its Wireless VPN solution includes support for Symbian OS(TM) 9.1. Adding support for Symbian to Columbitech's existing portfolio of mobile VPN solutions that includes Windows XP and Windows Mobile 5, presents Columbitech Wireless VPN as the world's first and only mobile VPN to support laptops as well as both Windows and Symbian-based smartphones and PDAs.



The use of smartphones for remote access to corporate resources and business applications puts a new challenge on security solutions. The same security applied in the wired world is required for secure communications via mobile devices. As a result, Columbitech has developed a mobile VPN solution to support all mobile devices targeted at the enterprise market.

"Introducing Symbian as one of the platforms for our wireless VPN reflects our dedication to the development of a holistic and platform-independent security solution," said Lars Resenius, CEO of Columbitech. "By addressing the specific requirements of security combined with mobility and ease-of-use, we have created a product line that is one of the most widely deployed mobile VPN products in the world with more than 1.4 million client licenses sold. Support for Symbian 9.1 is a natural part of our mission to provide our customers with a complete security solution that enables new mobile services and increased data revenues."

Columbitech Wireless VPN is a software-only solution offering significant advantages in terms of guaranteed security and convenient "always-on" connectivity. By using standards and protocols especially adopted for wireless communication, Columbitech has been able to create a VPN with exceptional reliability. The architecture not only provides a very high level of security, but also high performance through efficient adaptive compression and various protocol optimization techniques. Furthermore, the complexities of wireless data communication are made transparent by providing the end user with a robust, convenient and hassle-free, single sign-on environment.

Support for Symbian 9.1 will be available in December 2006. Currently, Columbitech Wireless VPN supports PPC 2002/2003, Windows Mobile5/WinCE.Net/3/4/5, Win2K, WinXP, DOS, pSOS, VxWorks, and Ubicom. Columbitech server support includes Win2000/2003, WinNT4.0, Lynx and Linux.

About Columbitech

Columbitech, the market leader in embedded wireless security, develops and markets solutions for the securing of wireless access to corporate data, without sacrificing performance and ease-of-use. Customers include service providers, retailers, military and government agencies, and other mobile staff who require proven reliability and security for their wireless communications. The Columbitech solution is OEM licensed by leading companies, including Symbol Technologies, Toshiba TEC, Hewlett Packard and Ericsson. With products built from the ground up for the wireless world, Columbitech offers end-to-end security, convenient always-on connectivity, and optimized performance. The Columbitech solution holds a FIPS 140-2 certification and is in the evaluation process for Common Criteria Certification. Columbitech is privately held with offices in Stockholm, Sweden, and New York, USA. For more information, please visit www.columbitech.com.

Bingo returns to Osage gaming

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Bingo returns to Osage gaming. Check it out:
(Tulsa World (OK) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--Inside the new event center at the Osage Nation Million Dollar Elm Casino on the Tisdale Expressway, the pace is slower and the room is quieter, but the jackpots are still green.



The Osage Nation has revived the blotter version of bingo in Tulsa. The Osage Nation Enterprise Board made the decision a few months ago, Osage Nation Chief Jim Gray said.

"We turn a modest profit, but we mainly reinstituted it to make use of our event center when we're not using it," Gray said. "We also considered the social aspect of it, too."

Byron Bighorse, the casino's special events manager, said Million Dollar Elm began paper bingo Aug. 7. The traditional game, which is played on Sunday through Thursday nights, draws between 200 to 400 patrons a night, he said.

"Usually, our best nights are Sunday, but don't let the setting fool you, these little ladies are serious about their bingo," Bighorse said. "We're drawing people out here who probably wouldn't come out to Million Dollar Elm if it weren't for the old-fashioned bingo."

Although most of the electronic games in tribal casinos are bingo-based, the Class II machines are run by preprogrammed computer chips. In the Osage events center, the traditional bingo is either paper or electronic, which uses a video screen.

The bingo caller sits above the crowd and announces the numbers, which are picked electronically and flashed onscreen.

The Tulsa bingo operation has about 15 employees and is the only traditional bingo game that the tribe runs inside its casinos in Hominy, Sand Springs and Pawhuska.

The bingo jackpots start at $200 and increase to $5,000, Bighorse said. The players are generally older women.

Alcoholic drinks are not available in the events center, but patrons can buy them inside the adjoining casino and bring them into the bingo game.

"People sometimes want to get more out of their $20," Bighorse said. "In the casino, they might throw $20 in a machine and have it gone in a few minutes; here it can last all night long."

On the nights with no paper bingo, the 15,000-square-foot events center is used for concerts. It also has been the host of two televised boxing matches, officials said.

The advent of electronic gaming machines has reduced blotter bingo significantly in the state. Paper bingo is offered by roughly eight of the 38 Oklahoma tribes, among them the Choctaw, Comanche and the Seneca-Cayuga.

In Tulsa, the Cherokee Nation and Musocgee (Creek) Nation discontinued paper bingo almost two years ago.

Tribes don't offer the only local paper bingo games. Traditional bingo fans can still play at Travelers Bingo and Super T Bingo in Tulsa.

Copyright (c) 2006, Tulsa World, Okla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Firetide and Axis Communications Partner to Deliver Wireless Video Surveillance. Check it out:
LOS GATOS, Calif., Sept. 25 -- Firetide Inc., a leading developer of wireless multi-service mesh technology, and Axis Communications, the global leader in network video solutions, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver high quality video over wireless mesh networks. The two companies also announced a joint public safety deployment in Haverhill, Mass. Firetide's mesh technology allows security and network professionals to install and operate Axis network cameras, video servers, and video management software virtually anywhere, indoors and outdoors, without the expense and physical limitations of wires or cabling. The system is easy and cost- effective to deploy and does not require any modification or additional configuration of the video equipment.



"Wireless connectivity provides tremendous installation freedom for anyone needing to deploy network cameras in remote or difficult locations or for temporary installations," said Fredrik Nilsson, general manager of Axis Communications. "Network video systems are quickly gaining ground on traditional analog systems, because of their improved image quality, scalability and flexibility to use IP-based infrastructure such as mesh networks."

Mesh networks are being used by a number of cities to provide wireless video surveillance. In Massachusetts, the Haverhill Police Department working with iAffari Inc., a local integrator, selected Firetide and Axis for its own video surveillance system. Initially installed in a small, high-crime area downtown, the solution consists of Firetide HotPort outdoor and indoor wireless mesh nodes and AXIS 214 PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) and AXIS 211 fixed cameras. The cameras, connected directly to the HotPort nodes, offer remote viewing and enable 10 days of recorded digital video. Designed for rapid deployment, the entire system was up and running in about an hour. The area of coverage will continue to grow and develop. One police cruiser has a mesh node, and plans call for the installation of additional nodes into other cruisers as well.

"We are really pleased with how quickly and easily the whole system went up," said Police Chief Alan R. DeNaro. "We're already seeing results and with this system we can also record evidence for the police department. With budget cuts and reduced manpower, it's another set of eyes, and anytime you have more eyes out there it helps."

Once installed, Firetide's mesh nodes automatically connect to each other to form multiple wireless links to each node. These redundant paths increase the network's coverage and reliability even around tall buildings or large vehicles.

The Firetide mesh is designed to support multiple concurrent applications. "Cities and enterprises alike are now looking for wireless networks that can support video surveillance, voice over IP, Wi-Fi access, and first responder communications," said Bo Larsson, CEO of Firetide. "In terms of wireless network speed and capacity, video is the most demanding of these applications. Knowing this, we are very pleased to work with Axis to provide a complete multi-service mesh solution to the market."

In addition to network cameras, Axis also provides video servers that convert analog camera and recorder signals to digital information for distribution over IP networks, including Firetide wireless mesh networks. This enables security professionals to modernize existing CCTV systems rather than making them obsolete.

For more information about Firetide products, please visit http://www.firetide.com/. For more information about Axis Communications, please visit http://www.axis.com/.

NOTE: Firetide, HotPoint, HotPort are registered trademarks and Multi- Service Mesh Networks is a trademark of Firetide, Inc. Axis is a registered trademark of Axis Communications.

About Firetide Inc.
Firetide is the leading provider of multi-service mesh networks that enable concurrent video, voice, and data for municipal, public safety, and enterprise applications. Firetide HotPort mesh nodes and HotPoint access points provide a secure, high performance wireless infrastructure and access solution for video surveillance, Internet access, public safety networks, and temporary networks wherever rapid deployment, mobility, and easy of installation are required. The company's patented AutoMesh(TM) flow-based routing protocol optimizes network performance and capacity for high bandwidth and latency sensitive applications. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Firetide is a privately held company with worldwide product distribution. For more information, visit http://www.firetide.com/.

About Axis Communications
Axis increases the value of network solutions. The company is an innovative market leader in network video and print servers. Axis' products and solutions are focused on applications such as security surveillance, remote monitoring and document management. The products are based on in-house developed chip technology, which is also sold to third parties. Axis was founded in 1984 and is listed on the O-list (Attract 40) of Stockholmsborsen (XSSE: AXIS), Sweden. Axis operates globally with offices in 17 countries and in cooperation with distributors, system integrators and OEM partners in 70 countries. Markets outside Sweden account for more than 95% of sales. Information about Axis can be found at http://www.axis.com/.

Firetide Inc.

CONTACT: Mike Downes of Firetide, Inc., +1-808-387-2181, [email protected]; or Dominic Ybarra of Edelman, +1-650-762-2960, [email protected], for Firetide; or Valerie Wehler of AxisCommunications, +1-978-614-2068, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.axis.com/
Web site: http://www.firetide.com/
Covelight Demonstrates the Power of CTF at the 2006 Executive at American Banker Identity Theft and Fraud Symposium. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Covelight Systems, the innovator of real-time application-independent, transparent online fraud management solutions, will demonstrate for the first time their newly announced Capture-Transform-Feed (CTF) architecture that provides web channel data at wire speed to backend analytic engines for a variety of enterprise uses.



-- Join Covelight at booth #6 during the American Banker Identity Theft and Fraud Symposium being held at the Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA from September 25-26, 2006.

-- Demonstrations of FraudProbe(TM) 2.0, the first product based on this new architecture, will be available at the booth as well as by appointment.

About FraudProbe 2.0

Covelight FraudProbe(TM) is the only online fraud monitoring solution designed to deliver comprehensive fraud data to any fraud management system without requiring integration with the application - in real time.

About Covelight Systems

Covelight Systems is the field-proven leader in online fraud and identity theft solutions. With deployments at organizations that combined represent approximately $1.5 trillion in assets, Covelight's products, including Percept(TM) and FraudProbe(TM), provide real-time identity-based monitoring of critical online applications to protect the institutions' reputation and end-users from online fraud and identity theft. Only by deploying Covelight solutions can organizations detect suspicious user activity associated with online account takeover fraud, insider identity theft, phishing activity and session hijacking. For more information, go to www.covelight.com or call at (919) 677-9680.
Small Business Group Endorses Corker for Senate; Trust in Small Busines PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the endorsement of Rep. Bob Corker who is running for U.S. Senate in Tennessee.



Corker is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement.

Corker earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If elected, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The full list of TISB's endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
SunGard Availability Services Introduces Pandemic Response Planning Services; Services Guide Organizations through Assessment, Contingency Planning and Incident Management Stages to Respond to Avian Flu Pandemic. Check it out:
WAYNE, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- SunGard Availability Services today announced a portfolio of Pandemic Response Planning services to help organizations develop and test preparedness plans that help safeguard employees and business operations during an influenza pandemic. The services help companies minimize the risks to business and information technology (IT) operations created by a pandemic where upwards of 40 percent of staff may be absent over an extended timeframe.



The SunGard pandemic services help organizations examine business and IT processes that may be impacted by pandemic-caused staff shortages. They also develop strategies to maintain information availability that help keep staff connected with business information so operations can continue during an avian flu pandemic.

In the event of a pandemic, organizations can be impacted in a number of ways, such as staff who have contracted the illness or reluctant to come to work because of fear of becoming ill, family members sick at home, schools and daycare facilities closed requiring parents to stay home, travel restrictions and disrupted public transport systems. Additionally, companies need to prepare for disruptions caused by business partners or customers unable to operate under normal conditions.

"As we inch closer to a possible avian influenza pandemic now is the time to review and update your organization's contingency and business continuity plans," according to the Gartner note "Scenarios for Avian Influenza and How IT Can Mitigate Risk" by Dion Wiggins, Steve Bittinger and Roberta Witty. "Even if you are skeptical that there will ever be an avian influenza pandemic, the cost of not being prepared far outweighs the effort to plan for such a world-changing event."

The SunGard pandemic services are designed for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as large enterprises. They leverage SunGard's extensive disaster preparedness and information availability experience. The services offered are:

SunGard Pandemic Response Planning, which includes a response roadmap that examines pandemic risks, business impacts, business strategies and recommended actions. Other components include an incident management plan for senior management to lead an enterprise-wide response to a pandemic-related event and action plan template that provides a model to update any existing availability plans. The plans have action-oriented procedures that include decision point checklists, explanation of roles and summaries of potential exposures.

SunGard Pandemic Continuity Preparedness Assessment, which includes a comprehensive evaluation of existing availability and incident management plans, and identifies gaps where they fall short of industry standards for pandemic planning.

Incident Management Exercise, where SunGard consultants work with customers to conduct a simulated pandemic scenario, providing a controlled environment for companies to determine how well they are prepared and whether enterprise plans are understood throughout the employee base.

"Responding to a pandemic requires a new approach to disaster preparedness to help maintain information availability for all workers regardless of their locations," said Renate Noone, vice president, professional services at SunGard Availability Services. "The SunGard pandemic services help organizations address work-sharing and cross-training, and examine business and IT processes that need to be changed to address staff shortages. They also prepare organizations should technology outside their control - such as broadband carriers providing Internet access to workers at home - have performance issues that impact the ability to get work done remotely."

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services is the pioneer and leading provider of information availability services, helping to ensure that more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe have access to their business-critical information systems. With over 3 million square feet of hardened facilities, SunGard offers a complete range of information availability services for more than 30 technology platforms, from 48-hour disaster recovery hotsites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure, and electronic vaulting services. SunGard also provides technology and systems management services for application and data center outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software. For more information about SunGard Availability Services, visit www.availability.sungard.com or call 1-800-523-4970.

About SunGard

With annual revenue of $4 billion, SunGard is a global leader in software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world's 50 largest financial services companies. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

Trademark Information: SunGard and the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Nextance Creates New COO Position and Recruits VP Professional Services. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Nextance Inc., the top choice for enterprise-wide contract management (CM), today announced appointing Bill Wagstaff as its new chief operating officer, a newly-created position, and Sig Lackner as vice president of professional services. Both are among Silicon Valley's most accomplished executives and most recently had similar responsibilities at IBM.



Ranked higher on the latest Inc 500 list than any other CM solutions provider or Silicon Valley software company, Nextance's 800% growth over the last three years has enabled the company to recruit some of the best talent in technology. And while the competition remains entangled with mergers, Wagstaff and Lackner will help Nextance drive greater marketshare by delivering a focused, powerful combination of best-in-class technology with an exceptional customer experience.

"As part of our aggressive plans to continue Nextance's momentum, we are proactively adding more depth to our executive team," explained Kyle Bowker, president and chief executive officer of Nextance. "Bill will help ensure that our expanding operations and product introductions will be flawlessly executed, while Sig will help drive even faster time-to-value for our customers, which is especially important as we continue to close the market-defining deals and grow our presence in existing customers."

Wagstaff carries over 25 years of experience in enterprise software, with a focus on managing high-growth businesses. Most recently, he led worldwide strategy and market management for IBM's Business Intelligence and Analytics business line. Wagstaff also was senior vice president and chief technology officer for Alphablox, a leading analytics company acquired by IBM in 2004, as well as vice president of product development for Red Brick Systems, a database technology company that successfully went public in 1996. He earned a BS in computer science from UC Irvine and an MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.

Lackner brings to Nextance more than 16 years of experience in professional services, having supported customers in a range of industries. Most recently, he led the professional services organization within the Information Management division of IBM's Software Group. Prior to IBM, he was the vice president of professional services at Alphablox, where he built a services team and partner network from the ground up. Lackner has also worked in professional services organizations at Oracle and KPMG Consulting. He earned a BS in business from the University of Southern California.

About Nextance Inc.

Nextance is setting the standard for enterprise contract management (CM) solutions with innovative software and best-practices professional services. Global 2000 companies are improving financial and business performance by using Nextance CM to improve the standardization, visibility and control of their contractual relationships. Countrywide, Covenant Health, Eastman Chemical Company, Fireman's Fund, Genzyme Corporation, Google, Juniper Networks, Peabody Energy, Sasol, Sun Microsystems, and others are using Nextance software every day to tap into the value that is written into each of their thousands of revenue, procurement, intellectual property licensing, and partner agreements. Nextance is based in Redwood City, CA, and is privately held. For additional information, visit: www.nextance.com.

(C) 2006 Nextance Inc. All rights reserved. Nextance and the Nextance logo are registered trademarks of Nextance Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Small Business Group Endorses Kennedy for Senate; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the endorsement of Rep. Mark Kennedy who is running for U.S. Senate in Minnesota.



Kennedy is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement.

Kennedy earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If elected to the Senate, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The full list of TISB's endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
One IP Voice announces agreement with Intrado. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) One IP Voice Inc has announced that its subsidiary OIPV Corp, a US provider of IP powered business communication solutions, has reached an agreement with Intrado Inc (NASDAQ: TRDO), a provider of integrated data and telecomms solutions, to market VoIP E9-1-1 services.



Under this agreement OIPV will market Intrado V9-1-1 Services targeted at small to medium enterprises; larger enterprises supporting a dispersed and mobile workforce; and IP powered communications service providers.

According to the company, OIPV's solution will utilise E9-1-1 management applications and a VoIP platform to track physical locations of phone users. The solution and combined offers reportedly address all aspects of 9-1-1 support. They interface with the enterprise network to provision the caller's current location, detecting phone moves and changes, and then provide call routing and delivery to the geographically correct public safety answering point (PSAP) with the automatic location information (ALI) for each 9-1-1 call, the company claims.

No financial or pricing details were disclosed.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
silicon.com Reveals Top 50 Tech Titans www.siliconagendasetters.com. Check it out:
London, 25 September, 2006: silicon.com (www.silicon.com), a leading UK online publication for senior IT and business decision-makers and a property of CNET Networks UK, today reveals the results of its seventh annual Agenda Setters poll (www.siliconagendasetters.com) and claims 2006 as a 'changing of the guard' in the tech industry. The top 50 finalists, who are chosen by a panel of industry experts, also track the expansion of Asian IT companies onto the world stage; the tension between media moguls and the web 2.0 upstarts; the dominance of Google and the end of IT support.



For the first time since the poll's launch in 2000 a Microsoft executive holds the top spot - but it's not Bill Gates nor Steve Ballmer, neither of whom make the list. Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, wins the number 1 spot on the Agenda Setters poll for leading the company into the post-Bill Gates era and proving he's a radical change force within the software giant as it moves into the world of online software services.

Another Microsoft executive, chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, comes in at number 24 for taking over Bill Gates' jobs of articulating Microsoft's technical philosophy and leading the research for Redmond's next-generation of products. Both winners reveal a 'changing of the guard' in the tech industry where the founders and CEOs of major tech companies are ceding control to a new wave of leaders.

More changings of the guard are seen in the new Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (46) debuting on the list instead of Sun chairman and founder Scott McNealy; and in Dell CEO Kevin Rollins (45) taking the spot of Dell founder Michael Dell.

Tony Hallett, editor and site director of silicon.com, said: "Our annual poll continues to reveal the major themes in the tech industry from the re-emergence of Asia on the global stage to the innovation taking place in online media. The poll has developed from being focused on corporate CEOs and politicians to being dominated by the creators and inventors of technologies and ideas that will shape the industry for years to come."

Other interesting results from this years survey include:
Google dominates. Four executives from Google make the list, the most representatives from one company ever in the history of the poll, revealing Google's continuing ability to innovate and willingness to go head-to-head with Microsoft. The Google Agenda Setters are: CEO Eric Schmidt (3), co-founders Larry Page and Serge Brin (23) and Omid Kordestani, VP global sales and business development (50).

Asia goes global. Alibaba.com CEO Jack Ma (11) is changing the way people trade around the world. Huawei Technologies CEO Ren Zhengfei comes in at number 25 for expanding outside of China - he's one spot above rival Cisco CEO John Chambers. Also Indian outsourcing leaders S Ramadorai, CEO at TCS, (22) and Nandan Nilekani, CEO at Infosys, (40) get the nod for turning their companies into global leaders.

Anti-establishment. Carrying the open source flag are Bruce Perens (36) and Mozilla Foundation chair Mitch Kapor (28). Also chosen for his anti-establishment activity in the book publishing industry is Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, at number 18 (up from 49 last year).

End of IT support? Jim Ginsburgh, VP enterprise architecture at BP, comes in at 17 for designing a ground-breaking scheme whereby select BP employees are given an allowance in exchange for handling their own IT support.

Web 2.0. A slew of winners are chosen for creating innovative websites and user-generated content including: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (7), YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen (9), Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake (27), Craigslist founder Craig Newmark (37) and Digg founder Kevin Rose (49).

Rupert Murdoch vs citizen journalism. The News Corp chairman and CEO wins the number 4 spot for buying MySpace and developing a solid internet strategy. He is the only individual to appear on every Agenda Setters poll since its inception in 2000. A few rungs down the list is OhMyNews.com founder and CEO Oh Yeon-Ho (16), for threatening traditional media by allowing citizens to become journalists.

The top 10 Agenda Setters for 2006 are:
1. Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, Microsoft
2. The next generation
3. Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
4. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO, News Corp
5. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
6. Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman, One Laptop Per Child project
7. Jimmy Wales, founder and chair, Wikimedia Foundation
8. Ashley Highfield, director of new media and technology, BBC
9. Chad Hurley and Steven Chen, co-founders, YouTube
10. Niklas Zennstrom, CEO, Skype

The full results and special report are available at www.siliconagendasetters.com.
Small Business Group Endorses Kyl for Senate; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the launch of a television ad campaign in support of Jon Kyl, who is running for re-election in Arizona. The ads cite the commitment to small business that Sen. Kyl has demonstrated in U.S. Senate.



Kyl is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement, and one of four whose candidacy is being supported with TISB's initial round of television ads. The PAC is also running ads in support of Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri, who is running for re- election; Rick O'Donnell, Congressional candidate from Colorado; and John Gard, Congressional candidate in Wisconsin.

Kyl earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If re-elected, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The Kyl ads are scheduled to hit the airwaves on Sept. 25th. The ad, as well as the full list of TISB's endorsements, can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Tridion Appoints Ion Global as Its First Premier Partner in US Market. Check it out:
Tridion Appoints Ion Global as Its First Premier Partner in US Market
to Enable Organizations to Align Web Content and Global Business Strategy

Partnership will Capitalize on Dual Expertise in Launching Global e-Business Initiatives


New York, NY, September 25, 2006 - Tridion, a leading global provider of web content management software solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Ion Global, an international e-business consultancy, to provide customers with the solutions and technology they need to launch global e-business initiatives.



The partnership will take advantage of Tridions strength in providing web content management solutions that support organizations web site globalization projects and Ion Globals expertise in counseling clients throughout the process of developing multinational e-business endeavors. The emphasis Tridion and Ion Global each place on enabling their customers to align their online content to global business strategy led both companies to partner and therefore extend their already robust offerings. The partnership will allow Ion Global to develop substantial Tridion software implementation capabilities, extending Tridions competence to roll out its WCM software across the US. As a Tridion Premier Partner, Ion Global is committed to having a pool of certified resources with the highest level of expertise around the Tridion offering and work very closely with Tridion in knowledge sharing.

Tridion elected to partner with Ion Global because of its compelling reputation of guiding the Global 2000 throughout the process of creating their global online business initiatives, said Erik Aeyelts Averink, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Tridion. We have seen an increase in demand from US companies for web content management software with global capabilities that will allow them to present a unified brand across multiple online channels while maintaining a localized web presence. Our partnership with Ion Global will allow us to offer these companies a more competitive solution across the US and Asia.

Prior to this formal partnership, Tridion and Ion Global have worked on a number of international projects, including one with Emirates Airline to successfully roll out its global internet presence and ensure the usability of its Internet booking engine. With Tridions recent emphasis on the US market, an official relationship with Ion Global is a logical next step to continued project success given each companys strong capabilities in the area of web site globalization.

We have been selecting and deploying web content management solutions for our clients for over a decade, said Wei-Tai Kwok, Managing Director of Ion Global San Francisco. Over the past few years, however, we have seen more of our customers selecting Tridion, particularly for its elegant multilingual, multibrand and multichannel features. Therefore, it is natural for us to take an interest in specializing in Tridion deployments. We look forward to partnering with Tridion to not only help clients plan their e-business projects but to also provide them with the tools they need to execute them.


About Ion Global
Established in Hong Kong in 1995 and with offices in San Francisco and Seoul, Ion Global offers e-business strategies and solutions for major corporations and government organizations that recognize the power of the Internet as a business platform and customer relationship channel. Ion Global integrates four core competencies strategy, user experience, technology and marketing which together represent the key components of a successful e-business solution.

For more information, please visit www.ionglobal.com

About Tridion
Tridion is the leading provider of best of breed enterprise class Web Content Management solutions. Tridion's solutions empower enterprises to provide compelling, consistent and personalized customer experiences across multiple web sites in multiple languages and through multiple (online) channels. Its unique 'Building Block architecture and 'BluePrint Management' technology allow enterprises to vastly improve customer experience by providing a consistent corporate image, multilingual localized content, accelerated time-to-market, and overall improvement of content quality, all while reducing operational costs. Over 400 customers rely on Tridions Web Content Management solutions, including ABN AMRO, Agfa, Alcatel, Canon, Goodyear, Heineken, Honda, KLM, Renault, Suzuki, Toyota, ING, ReedElsevier, and Unilever.

For more information please visit our web site at www.tridion.com, telephone 800-820-5621, or contact

Alison Durant or Carole Trachimovsky
Horn Group
781-356-7100
[email protected]; [email protected]
Small Business Group Endorses McGavick for Senate; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the endorsement in support of Mike McGavick, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Washington.



McGavick earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If elected, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The full list of TISB's endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Grupo IG8 acquire Tisa (Grupo IG8: adquisicion de la empresa madrilena Tisa). Check it out:
(Expansion Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Spanish IT solutions group Grupo IG8 has acquired Tisa, a Madrid-based group that specialises in the production of point-of-sale terminals for the distribution and logistics sector. This will be Grupo IG8's first venture into the wholesale and retail enterprise resource planning and hardware solutions sectors.



The acquisition will take Grupo IG8's workforce to 175, of whom 40 are based in Madrid, and its number of clients to 700. Turnover, meanwhile, will increase to 12m euros. Grupo IG8 were advised by Spanish firm Norgestion while Tisa was advised by UK firm Goetz Partners.

Abstracted from Expansion

Copyright 2006 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.
GlobalSCAPE Acquires Availl, Inc., a leading provider of Wide-Area File Systems (WAFS). Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- GlobalSCAPE, Inc., (OTCBB:GSCP), a leading provider of secure file transport products, today announced that it has acquired 100% of the stock of privately held Availl, Inc. (www.availl.com), a leading provider of Wide-Area File System (WAFS), collaboration and continuous data protection (CDP) products. This transaction expands GlobalSCAPE's technology base into data replication, acceleration of file transfer, sharing/collaboration and continuous data backup and recovery. The combined GlobalSCAPE/Availl will be uniquely positioned to provide comprehensive, secure transfer, sharing, and replication of files that need to be transmitted inside the firewall to distributed offices or outside the firewall to business and trading partners.



GlobalSCAPE is purchasing Availl for a total initial consideration of $9,650,000, which is comprised of $7,650,000 in cash and $2,000,000 in GlobalSCAPE stock. The former Availl stockholders are also entitled to up to an additional $100,000 in cash depending upon the achievement of certain revenue targets for Availl for the third and fourth quarters of 2006.

"We are excited about the synergies created between these two companies," stated Randy Poole, President and CEO of GlobalSCAPE. "Besides state-of-the-art technology, Availl has very talented people; we welcome them to our team and look forward to working with them. Availl is profitable and growing rapidly. We expect this deal to be accretive for GlobalSCAPE immediately."

SVB Silicon Valley Bank has provided a $5,000,000 senior acquisition debt facility, together with a $750,000 revolving line of credit, to assist GlobalSCAPE in the acquisition of Availl, Inc. "GlobalSCAPE has spent a decade helping companies develop efficient and secure file management systems at the enterprise level," said Doug Mangum, Managing Director with SVB Silicon Valley Bank. "We're excited to be working with an acknowledged leader in this space and are glad to be supporting the company in this strategic acquisition."

About GlobalSCAPE

GlobalSCAPE provides secure file management software that enables companies to safely send data over the Internet. GlobalSCAPE's products guarantee the privacy of critical information such as the transfer of financial data, medical records, customer files, intellectual property, and other sensitive documents. GlobalSCAPE's file management software ensures compliance with government regulations on protecting information and allows enterprises to reduce IT costs, increase efficiency, track and audit transactions, and automate processes. GlobalSCAPE's products are used by leading technology, banking, healthcare, and public sector organizations and can be customized to fit various customer needs, creating a variety of solutions. In addition, GlobalSCAPE provides content management and website development tools. Founded in 1996, GlobalSCAPE is the developer of CuteFTP, the most popular file transfer protocol application on the market. GlobalSCAPE is headquartered in San Antonio, TX. For more information, please visit http://www.globalscape.com or call GlobalSCAPE toll-free at 800-290-5054 (US) or 210-308-8267 (international).

About Availl

Based in Andover, Mass., Availl is the market leader in real time wide area file systems (WAFS) and Continuous Data Protection software. With the most advanced acceleration and true mirrored/coherent multi-directional Distributed File System, Availl's enterprise solutions are used by 14 of the Fortune 100 companies, and thousands of sites of all sizes around the globe. Availl's customers have both efficient and transparent WAFS, as well as consolidated and continuous data and database protection in real time, and on any scale. The Availl solution allows truly distributed organizations to function transparently across any distance. For more information, please visit Availl at http://www.availl.com.

About Silicon Valley Bank

SVB Silicon Valley Bank is a member of global financial services firm SVB Financial Group, with SVB Alliant, SVB Analytics, SVB Capital and SVB Global. SVB Silicon Valley Bank provides banking services to emerging growth and mature companies in the technology, life science, private equity and premium wine industries. Through its focus on specialized markets and extensive knowledge of the people and business issues driving them, SVB Silicon Valley Bank provides a level of service and partnership that measurably impacts its clients' success. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., the company serves clients around the world through SVB Financial Group's 27 U.S. offices and three international operations. More information on the company can be found at www.svb.com. SVB Silicon Valley Bank refers to the commercial banking operation of SVB Financial Group, which includes Silicon Valley Bank, the California bank subsidiary of SVB Financial Group.
Local vacancy rate rises for distribution centers. Check it out:
(Orlando Sentinel, The (FL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--The local vacancy rate for bulk-distribution space in the second quarter was 7.88 percent, according to a survey by Greg Rebman of Rebman Properties Inc. in Winter Park.



That's was up from the end of last year, when the vacancy rate was a record-low 5.40 percent.

Rebman surveys 121 buildings totaling just less than 15 million square feet. He found no new construction during the quarter, but more than 800,000 square feet of new space has been added so far this year.

Rates for new space are being quoted in the range of $4.25 to $6.50 a square foot, according to Rebman. The largest lease deal during the period: American Hotel Register Co., an Illinois-based company, took 160,000 square feet in Cypress Park East V in south Orlando.

Levie joins TransLand

James Levie, a longtime Central Florida mortgage industry veteran, has hooked up with TransLand Financial Services Inc. as executive director of commercial lending.

Levie has his eyes on the "small balance" commercial-mortgage market. By small balance, we're generally talking loans of $5 million or less. The market for such loans last year exceeded $130 billion, surprising a lot of experts who were trying to gauge market depth, according to Levie, who is operating out of offices in Maitland.

TransLand is taking a flexible lending approach, perhaps forgoing tax returns for higher credit scores. Of course, the borrower pays an interest-rate premium, but Levie said the program provides capital to many businesses that otherwise would be shut out. "We see tremendous potential here," Levie said.

Deals

James K. Densmore and William C. Pellatt of Signature Realty Commercial recently completed deals totaling $1.99 million. The largest involved the sale of Woodie's Restaurant at 12348 W. Colonial Drive for $1.25 million. . . .

Metro Development Group has agreed to buy 1,000 acres of the 8,000-acre Clark Sherwood Ranch west of Lakeland. It's planning an 1,800-home community.

Construction

The townhome division of the Cornerstone Group plans to develop Solaris at Metro- West, a 10.8-acre urban village at 6007 Raleigh St. in Orlando. The project will include 216 homes priced from the $200,000s to the $300,000s. . . .

Brentwood Custom Homes of Altamonte Springs has 97 houses valued at more than $90 million under construction. President Mark Herring says all but five are already sold. . . .

R.L. Haines Construction did tenant build-out on a 30,000-square-foot building at 5442 Hoffner Road in southeast Orlando. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is using the building for its regional headquarters. . . .

McCree Designed and Built Right constructed the 8,000-square-foot Hughes Supply Kitchen & Bath Collection Showroom at 1155 N. Orange Ave. in Orlando. . . .

Pertree Constructors of Orlando and Jacksonville was tapped to handle $3 million in build-out work for Bank of New York at the 300 Colonial Parkway Building in Lake Mary. . . .

Madden Engineering of Maitland is providing civil engineering services for a subdivision at Marsh and Avalon roads in Orange County. . . .

ep3 Inc., a Winter Park environmental engineering company, evaluated a former gas-station site at U.S. Highways 17-92 and State Road 434 in Longwood for a bank branch.

Leasing

ConservCare Inc. of Orlando rented 6,718 square feet of office space at Lake Ellenor Business Center in south Orlando. Nick Poole and David Chapin of Grubb & Ellis/Commercial Florida represented the tenant. . . .

United Fasteners took 4,958 square feet of office/warehouse space at 9195 Boggy Creek Road in south Orange County. Robert Blackwell of NAI Realvest handled the deal. . . .

Brentwood Custom Homes leased 3,500 square feet of space in Uptown Altamonte for a home-design center. . . .

Sales

All of the residential market news isn't bad: Tarragon Corp. said it has sold out two of its Orlando-area condo communities -- Bordeaux in Ocoee and Central Park on Lee Vista in Orlando. The two projects totaled 495 units. And Fred Schaub, founder and president of Arlington Homes in Winter Park, said he sold three luxury homes totaling nearly $4.5 million in one month.

Design

Beasley & Henley Interior Design recently completed work for ABD Homes, Greater Homes and Pulte Homes. The firm also provided design services for the Westshore Yacht Club in Tampa. . . .

Burke, Hogue & Mills Architects of Lake Mary is working on the design of the Pavilion Office Park in Tampa. . . .

Cuhaci & Peterson Architects of Orlando is designing a 30,000-square-foot office/retail building at U.S. Highway 27 and Woodcrest Road in Lake County. . . .

Burke, Hogue & Mills Associates of Lake Mary is designing a softball stadium for Stetson University in DeLand. . . .

Rick Girard of Girard Environmental Services, a commercial landscaping company, has created a new division called Enhancement Services. The division targets spruce-up work for existing properties.

Finance

Thomas D. Wood and Co.'s Miami office arranged $10 million in acquisition financing for the Lucien Pointe office building in Maitland. . . .

Lake Nona, the 7,000-acre development in southeast Orlando, has opened a new information center at 9588 Narcoossee Road.

Jack Snyder can be reached at 407-420-5094 or [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Incuity to Host 18-City Business Intelligence Roadshow on How to Optimize Manufacturing Productivity, Profitability. Check it out:
MISSION VIEJO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Incuity Software, Inc., a leading developer of real-time business intelligence software for manufacturing enterprises, today announced a new Incuity Roadshow seminar series that will be held in 18 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada from October 17 through November 29, 2006.



The seminars will be dynamic workshops for manufacturing executives that will help them learn how to make better business decisions that can optimize their productivity and profitability, explained Doug Lawson, Incuity Chief Executive Officer.

"These free workshops are ideal for both decision makers and decision implementers in any manufacturing company, including people in production, operations, plant management, engineering and IT management," Lawson said. "There will be two sessions per workshop, one covering the business problems that our Incuity EMI software can help people solve and one covering the more technical aspects of how to do that.

"Anyone in the business of manufacturing knows the roadblocks encountered in attempting to link plant floor systems with enterprise applications," Lawson added. "The first half of the workshop will cover how users can resolve issues such as leveraging legacy historians; compliance management; downtime/OEE analysis and reports; product analysis and reporting; key performance indicator (KPI) support and dashboards; manufacturing integration with ERP systems; and enhanced supply chain visibility.

"The second half will explain how to access, correlate, analyze, visualize and act on manufacturing and business data from all the systems in a manufacturing enterprise," he added.

The schedule for the Incuity Roadshow workshops includes:

-- Vancouver, BC, Houston, TX, and Toronto, ON, on Oct. 17

-- Seattle, WA, and Houston, TX, on Oct. 18

-- Portland, OR, Dallas, TX, and Allendale, NJ, on Oct. 19

-- Chicago, IL, and Philadelphia, PA, on Oct. 24

-- Denver, CO, and St. Louis, MO, on Oct. 25

-- Pittsburgh, PA, on Oct. 26

-- Laguna Beach, CA, on Nov. 1

-- San Francisco, CA, on Nov. 2

-- Richmond, VA, on Nov. 7

-- Charlotte, NC, on Nov. 8

-- Atlanta, GA, on Nov. 9

-- Calgary, AB, on Nov. 29

"Anyone interested in attending these seminars should go directly to our web site at http://www.incuity.com to find the details for the city closest to them and register online, or contact their nearest value-added reseller for more information," Lawson said. "Seating is limited for these special events, so people are urged to sign up early so they don't miss out."

About Incuity

Incuity Software, based in Mission Viejo, California, is a pioneer in the creation of data management systems for reporting, analysis and business intelligence applications in manufacturing and process companies. More than 45,000 seats of the company's products have been installed since 1998, in 13 languages and in more than 40 countries. In addition to its headquarters operations in California, Incuity has regional offices in Nevada and Massachusetts in the U.S. as well as in Sydney, Australia; Duesseldorf, Germany; and Johannesburg, South Africa. The company also maintains a Professional Services group in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.

For additional information about the company and Incuity products, or for a complete list of value-added resellers around the world, please visit the corporate web site at http://www.incuity.com.
Prince George's Community College Selects Datatel to Improve Business Processes and Student Services. Check it out:
FAIRFAX, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Datatel(R), Inc. today announced that Prince George's Community College has chosen Datatel Colleague(R) and ActiveCampus(R) CMS (content management system) to better manage its business operations and Web presence. Located in Largo, MD, Prince George's Community College will leverage Datatel technology and professional services to improve business processes, recruit students, bolster support for various constituents, and communicate more effectively across the institution. Datatel will also implement a comprehensive online system that enables students to conveniently register for classes, pay fees, and check their grades via the Web.



Prince George's Community College will also deploy the Datatel ActiveCampus(R) Portal(TM) to enable current and prospective students to personalize content and information on the college Web site, and create an online relationship with the institution. Datatel Colleague will help college employees be more productive by easily enabling them to share information with each other and their various constituents. As part of its technology migration, Prince George's Community College will replace its current reporting solution with products from Datatel's partnership with SAS(R) to make accurate information-based business decisions using predictive analytics.

"After a comprehensive search for a technology provider, Prince George's Community College chose Datatel primarily to enhance its delivery of services to the community," said Ronald A. Williams, president of the College. "As the county continues to grow and develop, Datatel will be a key partner in helping Prince George's Community College strengthen the way we serve students, county residents, and businesses."

Datatel Colleague improves business processes by enhancing department workflows, productivity, and efficiency within five key business areas - enrollment and student services, financial management, financial aid, human resources, and institutional advancement. ActiveCampus CMS, Datatel's Web site management system, enables non-technical higher education professionals to execute effective e-marketing and communication campaigns by managing their own content and automating CRM strategies.

"We are honored that one of Maryland's largest higher education institutions chose us to help deliver state-of-the-art Web-based services to its employees and the community they serve," said John F. Speer, Datatel president and COO. "Prince George's Community College will soon be celebrating five decades of exemplary service to the community. Datatel is proud to join them in their mission for the next 50 years."

About Datatel, Inc.

Datatel is a leading provider of fully-integrated enterprise information management solutions for higher education. Headquartered in Fairfax, VA, the company has more than 725 client institutions throughout North America. For more than 25 years, Datatel has exclusively focused on meeting the needs of colleges and universities, helping institutions operate more efficiently so they may better serve their constituents. For more information, please visit www.datatel.com.

About Prince George's Community College

Prince George's Community College serves more than 37,000 students each year. In addition to its main campus in Largo, MD, the college has three degree centers at the University Town Center in Hyattsville, Laurel College Center, and Andrews Air Force Base. The College offers more than 100 programs of study in a wide range of traditional and recently developed disciplines, and delivers customized contract training to more than 40 businesses a year.

(C) 2006 Datatel, Inc. All rights reserved. Datatel, Colleague, and ActiveCampus are registered trademarks of Datatel, Inc. All other names, products and services mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
AppSense Ranks 35th on New Tech Track 100 Ranking-. Check it out:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. / DARESBURY, United Kingdom --(Business Wire)-- AppSense, a leading security and system management software vendor, was announced as one of the UK's fastest growing independent technology companies by The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100. For the third year running, AppSense increased its position in the ranking, driven by an increasing rate of growth. This is a remarkable achievement. AppSense surged ahead with revenue growth of over 90 percent during the two-year period from 2003 to 2005.



Fast Track, the company behind the rankings, produces the annual league table of Britain's top performing privately held technology companies based on sales growth. To show increasing rate of growth over three sets of awards is a stunning performance. AppSense has been ranked 65th, 41st and 35th in 2004, 2005 and 2006 respectively.

"This is a remarkable achievement driven by the skill and determination of our employees, the commitment of our partners and support of our customers." commented Charles Sharland, CEO of AppSense. "Organizations are driving increased efficiency and security in their IT environments. AppSense is there to help them achieve it. Whether the issue is enhancing performance of their IT environment or protecting it from viruses and spy-ware, we have the right products at the right time"

AppSense have more than 2,500 enterprise customers worldwide across a variety of markets, including:

-- Finance: Deutsche Bank, Mechanics Bank, Washington Mutual, Bank of America, HSBC

-- Government: UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Mitre Corporation,

-- Healthcare: University of Utah Health Sciences, UK National Health Service

-- Telecom: Nokia, Swisscom, NTL

-- Consumer: Unilever

Partnerships/Awards: Increased recognition within the worldwide IT industry, including achieving Gold Partner Status with Microsoft, Public Sector accreditation through CSIA and DIPCOG, as well as being a Medallist in the British Computing Society's prestigious Technology Awards

Released "Best Practices" Insights: Published a whitepaper authored by Kevin Mitnick, the notorious hacker who is now a highly respected security consultant. The paper is a refreshing, unbiased, 3rd party view of security vulnerability trends and genuine "best practices" for organizations. (Download paper at: www.mitnickwhitepaper.com)

About AppSense

Today organizations of all sizes are challenged with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their IT infrastructure. The drive to improve system security, increase performance and reduce costs is a common goal among IT organizations. AppSense software has solved these problems for thousands of organizations and is installed on hundreds of thousands of desktops and servers across the world. Mid-to-large organizations and across many industries such as Public Sector, Finance, Pharmaceutical and Healthcare all rely on AppSense solutions. AppSense solutions have been designed for desktops and servers which are based upon the Microsoft Windows platform and are ideal for Windows, Terminal Servers, Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Servers, Web Services and other critical business systems. AppSense operates through a worldwide channel of certified partners with offices in the US, UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Australia. For more information visit: www.appsense.com

AppSense is a trademark of AppSense Ltd. Other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
First-Ever Software as a Service Conference (SaaScon) Kicks off Today in San Francisco. Check it out:
--(Business Wire)-- WHAT: SaaScon: The Central Gathering Place for the Software Industry www.saascon.com.

WHERE: San Francisco Marriott, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA

WHEN: Monday, September 25, 2006, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006, 8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

WHO: Owned and produced by IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com)

HOW: Media Registration in the Nob Hill B room of the hotel, approximately 2 floors down from the lobby. Pre-registered media can pick their badges up at Media Registration. Media who have not pre-registered for SaaScon can register on-site with the appropriate credentials. Media Registration hours are 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Monday, September 25th, and from 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 26th. Media have access to all conference sessions and special events.



Keynotes:

Monday, September 25th

8:00 a.m. Timothy Chou, Author, "The End Of Software"

10:15 a.m. Buell Duncan, GM, ISV & Developer Relations for IBM, "The Next Evolution of Software"

10:45 a.m. Bill McNee, President, Saugatuck Technology, "SaaS 2.0: Transforming Enterprise Applications"

Panels:

SaaScon will also feature several panels led by industry luminaries including Jeff Kaplan, John Gallant, Maryfran Johnson and Phil Wainewright. Discussions will address a broad range of industry topics and feature panelists from companies including Authoria, Inc., BMC Software, Everdream Corp., Hummer Winblad, Keystone Automotive Industries, Klir Technologies, Oracle, OpSource Inc., RightNow Technologies, SAP America, WebEx Communications, Inc., and the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

For a full conference schedule visit www.saascon.com

Attendance: We are expecting 500+ total attendees
DRS wins deal for combat-ready computers. Check it out:
(Orlando Sentinel, The (FL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 25--DRS Technologies Inc.'s Melbourne unit has landed an $18.8 million deal to provide the Army with combat-ready computers and other equipment for various tactical command centers and military vehicles.



The unit, which builds rugged tactical computers for military operations, will produce more than 2,000 computer systems and 4,000 hard-disk drives for the Army's Force XXI Battle Command.

The Army and Marines will install the systems at various combat centers and more than 40 types of military vehicles as part of the military's overall battlefield-management operations.

It is the latest order in an ongoing program for the DRS Melbourne unit, which has produced more than 25,000 combat-ready computer systems to date.

The Army's Communication-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command awarded the contract. It is based in Fort Monmouth, N.J. DRS is based in Parsippany, N.J.

Honor for SkillStorm

SkillStorm Inc., a government and commercial technical-services company based in Orlando, received the Governor's Entrepreneurship Award in Florida's Mega Market.

The award is given to a start-up company, less than 5 years old, that sets standards for creativity and entrepreneurship.

The company, with 2005 revenue of more than $26 million and projected growth of 60 percent in 2006, recently moved into offices in the Quadrangle Office Park near the Central Florida Research Park and the University of Central Florida.

Recognition for AuthenTec

AuthenTec Inc., a leading vendor of fingerprint-based security products, received the Governor's Business Diversification Award for Innovation.

The Melbourne company was nominated for the award by the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast.

The awards program, created by Enterprise Florida, recognizes companies for efforts to diversify and enrich the state's economy by creating higher-wage jobs and investing in their communities.

Zvetco fingerprint reader

Zvetco Biometrics of Orlando announced a new fingerprint reader designed to handle identification schemes in government, enterprise and Web transactions.

The 7-year-old business, which manufactures authentication hardware and identity-management products, has a client list that includes government agencies and financial-service, health-care and food-service companies.

The company's new product "provides a perfect biometric tool for identifying unique individuals from within extremely large databases," said Zavi Cohen, the company's chief executive officer.

Vonage extends 3PV deal

Vonage Network Inc., a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., extended its contract with Third Party Verification Inc., known simply as 3PV, as its provider of third-party verification services through 2009.

3PV, based in Altamonte Springs, provides speech-enabled and online third-arty verification and call-recording services for the cable and telephony industries.

Chris Cobbs can be reached at [email protected] or 407-420-5447. Richard Burnett can be reached at 407-420-5256 or [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Guangzhou TCOM Computer Tech Develops and Markets Proprietary Web-Based Social Networking Software Applications. Check it out:
HONG KONG, Sept. 25 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Telecom Communications, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: TCOM) , the Total Solutions Provider, announced today that its subsidiary, Guangzhou TCOM Computer Tech Limited (GTCT) has developed and marketed proprietary web-based social networking software applications, including video email, video instant messaging and live web-casting. GTCT bundles its proprietary applications with other open source applications and sells them as an integrated suite through an Internet-based subscription model. GTCT's Web 2.0 communication tools enable users to create, trans-code, send, manage and store all forms of digital media content (i.e., photos, videos, music, documents). These innovative social networking applications are scalable, customizable and highly extendible.



Currently, the primary source of subscribers for these applications is the Company's social networking website, http://www.skyestar.com/ , GTCT intends to aggressively expand its subscription base by offering its suite of communications tools to affinity groups as such http://www.subaye.com/ , enterprises and other social networks, http://www.blogolb.com/ the largest online music, video blog website in China using its unique multi-tiered marketing program. By providing subscribers with its rich and expanding suite of collaborative applications, GTCT is facilitating the rapidly accelerating trends in streaming media, social networking, pod-casting and self-generated content. With its dynamic marketing strategy and the remarkable ease of use of its products, GTCT intends to simplify the digital lives of millions of subscribers.

About Telecom Communications, Inc.
Telecom Communications, Inc. (TCOM) is a Total Solutions Provider that offers Integrated Communications Network Solutions and Internet Content Service in universal voice, video, data web and mobile communications for interactive media applications, technology and content leaders in interactive multimedia communications. It develops, markets and sells a universal media software solution for enterprise-wide deployment of integrated voice, video, data web and mobile communications and media applications. Telecom Communications, Inc. does business in Asia via its wholly owned subsidiaries, Alpha Century Holdings Ltd. (http://www.subaye.com/), IC Star MMS, Ltd. (http://www.icstarmms.com/), 3G Dynasty Inc. (http://www.skyestar.com/) and Guangzhou TCOM Computer Technology Limited.

Safe Harbor
The statements made in this release constitute "forward-looking" statements, usually containing the words "believe," "estimate," "project," "expect," or similar expressions. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, changing economic conditions, interest rates trends, continued acceptance of the Company's products in the marketplace, competitive factors and other risks detailed in the Company's periodic report Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward- looking statements, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release.

For more information, please contact:
Ms. Sandy Tang
Telecom Communications, Inc.
Tel: +852-782-0983
Email: [email protected]

Telecom Communications, Inc.

CONTACT: Ms. Sandy Tang, Telecom Communications, Inc., +852-782-0983,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.skyestar.com/http://www.subaye.com/http://www.blogolb.com/http://www.
icstarmms.com/
Swedish Mobile Operator NewPhone Chooses the Sonim Push to Talk Solution for its Enterprise Subscribers. Check it out:
SAN MATEO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sonim Technologies, the leader in mobile VoIP and push-to-talk IMS solutions for operators and the global provider of high-performance mobile VoIP applications and devices, today announced that NewPhone, a mobile operator based in Sweden, will offer the Sonim hosted OMA compliant push to talk (PTT) solution to its subscriber base. The Sonim solution will allow NewPhone to offer one-to-one and one-to-many push to talk (PTT) capabilities to industrial, field and other mobile workers leveraging Sonim's unique XP1 handset, the first ruggedized, IP52-complaint handset to offer the OMA PoC PTT capability.



The Sonim solution includes not only the XP1 designed with such features as extra large interface buttons, an oversized screen for better visibility outdoors and extended battery life, but also a complete desktop dispatch capability that allows a dispatcher to interact with up to 20 simultaneous calls and to broadcast to thousands of simultaneous users.

"Sonim has provided a world class Push to Talk solution that was designed with the enterprise user in mind. With Sonim's hosted solution, we're immediately able to meet the needs of our target market -- the industrial worker who needs instant communication on a physically rugged but technologically sophisticated phone," said Andreas Khoshnou, Deputy Managing Director at NewPhone. "Sonim is the only supplier of the OMA PoC standard solution that has the right phone and the right tools for the enterprise to control and optimize this new type of instant communication."

"NewPhone is really one of the finest examples of a European mobile operator focused on our target market, small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We're thrilled that they have selected our solution and excited about the immediate take up they are experiencing in the market," said Bob Plaschke, CEO of Sonim. "As a result, NewPhone's ARPUs are double that of their competitors, and they expect to generate significant additional revenues from offering our solution. We've said all along that Push To Talk starts in Europe in the enterprise, and NewPhone is the living proof."

About Sonim Technologies, Inc.

Sonim Technologies enables today's GPRS, UMTS & WiFi data networks to deliver high-performance VoIP applications and services, specifically optimized to meet the productivity objectives of mobile enterprises. Sonim's OMA PoC 1.0 server, client and handset solutions represent the industry's only business class implementation of the push-to-talk standard and form the basis of an emerging suite of streaming IMS-compliant applications. Sonim is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices in Bangalore, London, Stockholm and Madrid. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.sonimtech.com.

About NewPhone

NewPhone is a Service Provider (MVNO) in Sweden utilising the Telenor GSM and 3G network. NewPhone acts as a full-scale mobile operator focused on providing effective mobile solutions to companies, primarily the SME market. NewPhone started its operation in 2004 and has achieved a substantial customer base with an ARPU of 81 Euro per month. NewPhone is also present in Norway where both NetCom ASA and Telenor are network partners.

Copyright (C) 2006 Sonim Technologies, Inc., Sonim, Sonim Xtend, Sonim Xperience, Sonim XP1, and the Sonim logo are trademarks of Sonim Technologies, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated.
Small Business Group Endorses Bilirakis for Congress; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the endorsement of Mike Bilirakis who is running to represent Florida's 9th District in Congress.



Bilirakis is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement.

Bilirakis earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. He has promised that in Congress, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The full list of TISB's endorsements can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Small Business Group Endorses O'Donnell for Congress; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the launch of a television ad campaign in support of Rick O'Donnell, who is running to represent Colorado's 7th District in Congress. The ads cite his commitment to small business and his pledge to carry that commitment to Washington.



O'Donnell is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement, and one of four whose candidacy is being supported with TISB's initial round of television ads. The PAC is also running ads in support of Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri, both running for re-election, and John Gard, Congressional candidate from Wisconsin.

O'Donnell earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. He has promised that in Congress, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The O'Donnell ads are scheduled to hit the airwaves on Sept. 25 in Denver. The ad, as well as the full list of TISB??s endorsements, can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won??t be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Small Business Group Endorses Talent for Senate; Trust in Small Business PAC Launches Media Campaign Supporting Candidate. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sep 25, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --Trust in Small Business PAC (TISB), a national political action committee supporting pro-small business candidates, announces the launch of a television ad campaign in support of Jim Talent, who is running for re-election in Missouri. The ads cite the commitment to small business that Sen. Talent demonstrated in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.



Talent is one of 12 candidates receiving the TISB endorsement, and one of four whose candidacy is being supported with TISB's initial round of television ads. The PAC is also running ads in support of Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who is running for re- election; Rick O'Donnell, Congressional candidate from Colorado; and John Gard, Congressional candidate in Wisconsin.

Talent earned an "A" rating from TISB for repeatedly demonstrating his commitment to small business. If re-elected, he'll work to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent; make job creation and economic security his top priorities; strive to improve America's position in the international marketplace; reduce government waste; and cut regulation that stifles small business and competition.

The Talent ads are scheduled to hit the airwaves on Sept. 25th. The ad, as well as the full list of TISB's endorsements, can be viewed online at http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com.

This is the first set of candidates TISB has endorsed, but Chairman and CEO Ed Pinto said it won't be the last.

"Small business represents half of our national economy and jobs, but is sorely underrepresented in Washington. The case for small business is made all the more compelling by the fact that voters trust small business more than any other group," Pinto said. "We want small business owners and their employees to know which candidates support small business."

Trust in Small Business was created in 2006 to grow and maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress that are friendly toward small business. The candidates TISB endorses have demonstrated their support for the interests of the tens of millions of small business owners and their employees across the country and their belief that the free enterprise system will grow the American economy.

TISB is a non-partisan, transparent, member-driven organization.

-----

Paid for by Trust in Small Business PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Web: http://www.trustinsmallbusiness.com

---

http://www.usnewswire.com

Mari Rusch of Trust in Small Business PAC,
703-399-1004, or [email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire
Rackspace Certified as Salesforce.com AppExchange Hosting Partner. Check it out:
SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- Rackspace Managed Hosting, a recognized leader in the managed hosting market, and salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Rackspace has been certified as a salesforce.com AppExchange hosting partner. Rackspace provides an excellent hosting infrastructure for software-as-a-service vendors who are building applications for distribution worldwide through salesforce.com's AppExchange. AppExchange partners Genius.com, Interweave by Integration Technologies, OKERE'S IntegrationService.com, and others are using Rackspace for managed hosting today.



More than 300 application listings created by salesforce.com, its customers, developers and partners are now available on the salesforce.com AppExchange, the world's first on-demand platform and application sharing service. AppExchange provides unprecedented ease of customization and integration for Salesforce deployments, as well as enabling a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond CRM. AppExchange enables all of these on-demand applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with one click into a customer's salesforce.com account. AppExchange can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

Developers who want to offer their application on the AppExchange need a stable, scaleable and reliable infrastructure on which to host their applications. Rackspace has been certified by salesforce.com to help developers who lack proper internal infrastructure, by providing a fully-managed hosting solution utilizing Rackspace's guaranteed network uptime, advanced custom monitoring services, comprehensive managed security including intrusion detection, leading hardware platforms, managed backup and recovery, managed storage and advanced database administration services. By hosting with Rackspace, ISVs can bring their application to market on the AppExchange more quickly.

"In order to maintain the integrity of the applications made available to our customers through salesforce.com's AppExchange, we require our partners to host the application on a rock solid network infrastructure, complete with best security practices and world-class customer support," said Matt Holleran, vice president, AppExchange partners, salesforce.com. "Rackspace offers all of these things including reliability and availability guarantees backed by industry-leading Service Level Agreements. By hosting with Rackspace, ISVs can focus on the development of the application and leave the infrastructure management to an AppExchange-certified service provider."

"By utilizing Rackspace, ISV's can bring their application online much more quickly and cost effectively than if they built out their own infrastructure," said Scott White, partner program manager, Rackspace Managed Hosting. "And, as the application grows, Rackspace can scale with its customers, adding capacity on-demand when needed."

Rackspace offers salesforce.com's AppExchange partners special server configurations, designed specifically for ISVs and developers. For more information, please visit https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000 0024QtVAAU (Due to certain characters contained in this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field) or contact Scott White at 210-447-4456.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com's on-demand platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications quickly and easily, customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their unique business needs, and distribute and sell on-demand applications at www.appexchange.com. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com's world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.

As of July 31, 2006, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 24,800 customers and approximately 501,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and The Business Web, AppExchange and Successforce are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About Rackspace Managed Hosting

A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a world-class service organization delivering enterprise-level Web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 10,000 customers across seven data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company's award-winning Fanatical Support(TM). Through trusted partnerships with its customers, Rackspace serves as an extension of their IT department, enabling customers to focus on their core business. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company's inception. For more information, please visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.
Boost for Motorola's two-way radio operations in region. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WIRELESS and broadband communications leader Motorola expects the expansion of its research and develoment (R&D) operations in Penang to cater to the growing demand for two-way radios and energy products in the Asia-Pacific region.



Motorola Penang, which is the largest of the three manufacturing centres worldwide for two-way radio products, expects to increase its presence in the next decade by moving up the manufacturing value chain.

With the increase in awareness in public safety deployment, the demand for mission-critical communications systems has also increased in the Asia-Pacific region," Motorola Malaysia's national director, system solution sales for networks and enterprise division, Mohd Asri Hassan said.

He said the injection of another US$12 million (RM44.16 million) in May in the Penang outfit, which also houses the only two-way radio design centre in Asia, reaffirmed its long-term investment strategy in Malaysia.

"This year will also mark a major milestone for Motorola Penang which expects its headcount to cross the 1,000-mark," he said at a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Currently, 75 per cent of its mission critical Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) and products compliance to APCO P25 (Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials) systems are designed and developed in Penang for the worldwide market.

Motorola is the only communication vendor that has the expertise to design, manufacture and implement mission-critical communications systems based on APCO P25 and TETRA communications platform.

In 2005, Motorola's two-way radio business accounted for 18 per cent of global sales contribution, and combined with the wireless broadband sales, the contribution was 35 per cent.

Motorola has so far invested more than US$1.3 billion (RM4.78 billion) in Malaysia and established as a leading manufacturer of high-technology communications solutions and radio accessories for the global market.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

Managing uncertainty

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Managing uncertainty. Check it out:
(New Straits Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WE have many outstanding statesman whom we revered. In my Form Six history lessons in the early 70s, one that fascinated me was Benjamin Disraeli, (British premier 1804-1881). One of his famous statements was: "What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens". This quote has a lot of relevance to the art and soul of risk management because its fundamentals are not complete without the understanding of "uncertainty" or "unknown". Indeed, risk is all about the uncertainty of risk occurring. If we know the risk will occur, we will not do the deal or execute the operation.



The fact is that we do not know, and only hope that it does not occur.

For this reason, we diligently apply all the known ways of managing the uncertainty of risk occurring. Obviously, it is not easy to prevent the risk from occurring, especially if it is something beyond our control. But if it does occur, the negative impact would be minimised to that we could accept or live with. After all, we are not too concerned about the risk per se. Rather, our focus is on the impact of the risk that may be negative for us. If the impact is positive, or we gain from the risk, then of course that would be welcomed. WHAT CAUSES UNCERTAINTY? Uncertainty crops up because of few factors that haunt our mindset, attitude or opinion. They include: * Uncertainty due to poor overall decision and wrong opinion: The feeling that the option or decision we take would be the wrong one; * Uncertainty due to rationale or relationship: The rationale or relationship of the issue being studied might be seen from the wrong perspective where we may have inadequate parameters; * Uncertainty due to doubt in the analysis process: The model/guide-values for our evaluation of the issue may be irrelevant or wrong; * Uncertainty due to inadequate sampling: The statistics that we use for the assessment of the subject matter might be insufficient, unrealistic, incomplete or outdated; and * Uncertainty due to errors and biases: The analysis done for the samplings taken might be tainted with errors and poor human judgment.

The above five factors causing the doubt. The elements of unknown/uncertainty in us can turn haywire to our risk management programme. To minimise such unknown, it is vital to ensure that these issues are adequately addressed.

RISK OCCURS FROM THE UNKNOWN. It is not easy to manage unknown events, as some of the risks are beyond human controls, such as flood, earthquake, tornado and robbery. However, managing the negative financial or non-financial impact might be easy to strategise. For example, we can keep all our precious assets on higher floor, so that should a flood still occur after a heavy rain, the negative financial impact and damage by water would be minimised. Or we would install an alarm system in our premises so that should the robbers came unannounced, they might abort the raid because the alarm bell was triggered. Thus the risk of robbery is mitigated. Assuming we have taken the burglary insurance cover, should the robbers succeeded in carting away the valuables, we would have the financial loss minimised because we have insured the valuables and could claim back the amounts from the insurance company.

THE PAST AS GUIDES TO MOVE FORWARD. Machiavelli, an Italian philosopher and statesman who lived from 1446 to 1507, once said, "Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past." More often than not, risk managers rely a lot on past data and historical events to chart forecast and assess the various risks inherent in any organisation. A lot of truth prevailed in the quote by Machiavelli. In some instances, history tends to repeat itself because the same kind of risk could surface again at some later time, if such risk is then not effectively managed using the lessons learnt from the past risk occurrence. RISK MANAGEMENT IS A PROACTIVE ART. Of course, we must be mindful that risk management is not about history alone. It should have balanced proactive feature - using the previous risk occurrences to predict what would happen in both the short and long period in the future. It is not a fallacy to state that risk management is about moving forward. It is about preparing and predicting the future state of events and operations using past patterns or historical trends in supporting such predictions.

SIX WAYS TO TREAT THE UNKNOWN. How do we treat risk? There are many ways, but the more popular options are: i) Avoid. We can simply avoid the risk and do not do the deal. But this is not really risk management since there will be nothing to manage anyway, given that the transaction or operation is aborted. But not everything is as simple as that. There are risks that we have to face everyday, and as part of our way of doing the business and operations. ii) Share. We can share the negative risk impact by putting up a strategic alliance, joint-venture or merging our smaller outfits to bigger outfit that can withstand more risk or cushion the negative impacts. There is truth in the adage of "strength in unity" and the bigger the size, the stronger it should be. iii) Transfer. A good example of risk transfer is using insurance. An insurance policy taken to cover the damage and loss by fire would provide comfort to the property owner as he would be able to receive the financial compensation benefits from the insurance company. However, not all risks could be insured. We are still left at the mercy of the non-insurable risks. So, the need to ensure that we have a good risk management plan to address those non-insurable risks is very critical for the success of any organisation. iv) Reduce. We can reduce the likelihood of the risk to occur, and minimise the negative impact of the risk by either cutting down on our exposure or involvement in the operations.

v) Accept. Many risks that haunt us are common day-to-day events that cannot be avoided, which we address as the cost of doing that kind of business. We need to accept those risks as a normal way to do the business. An example of this kind of risk is a supermarket's cashier with a minor cash shortage at the end of the day's takings. vi) Prevent. Some forms of risk can be prevented from occurring. For example, theft of valuable asset from a strong room is a risk. One way to prevent this is to ensure that no one can enter the strong room alone, and a closed-circuit TV must be installed for monitoring purpose. There must be at least two people holding the keys and going in at any time. The writer is chief risk officer of a commercial bank and author of Enterprise-wide Risk Management Made Easy. He can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]. Part two of this article will appear next Saturday.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Plexus Manufacturing to open third plant in Penang. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) PLEXUS Corp, a US-based electronics contract manufacturer, plans to expand its operations in Malaysia by opening a third plant in Penang, company officials said.

Plexus, headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, currently has two manufacturing plants in Penang via Plexus Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, which is located at the Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone.

Other than Penang, Plexus also has operations in China.

The expansion here will bring Plexus' manufacturing capacity to 630,000 sq ft, making Penang its largest base in Asia.

The Nasdaq-listed Plexus, which has yearly revenue of US$1.2 billion (RM4.40 billion), is expected to invest as much as US$38 million (RM139.46 milion) to beef up operations in Penang.

Operation at the new facility is due to start by as early as the middle of next year. The last time Plexus expanded its operations in Penang was in 2004.

Plexus' investment plans should be soothing to Penang, the country's technology-driven manufacturing hub.

The state recently received a blow when Intel Corp, the world's biggest chipmaker, announced a global scale layoff.

It was reported that as many as 2,000 jobs would be cut in Malaysia.

Intel, at the start of the year employed some 6,500 people.

Business Times was told that while the Intel job cuts was a blow, the authorities were more concerned about Vietnam emerging as a threat to Penang for technology-driven jobs and investment.

In February, Intel said it was investing as much as US$300 million (RM1.10 billion) in Vietnam, with an option to double the investment size.

The investment, the biggest by a single company, will create 1,200 jobs in Vietnam by 2007. Intel intends to build a greenfield plant to produce chips and computer parts at Ho Chi Minh City's high-tech park.

Months before that, International Data Group, the world's largest IT media group, invested as much as US$100 million (RM368 million) to help start-up technology companies grow in Vietnam.

The communist-run country, where minimum wage at foreign-based enterprise is only about US$55 (RM202) a month, exported some US$1.44 billion (RM5.28 billion) of electronic products last year.

With a relatively modest labour cost and a young educated population, Vietnam is hoping to rope in as much as US$6 billion (RM22.02 billion) in foreign direct investments this year.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
QDOS aims to set up Indian plant by 2007. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) QDOS Flexcircuits Sdn Bhd, a local manufacturer of flexible printed circuit (FPC), wants to ride the wave of the booming electronics and electrical (E&E) sector in India by setting up a production plant there by the end of next year.



QDOS chairman and chief executive officer, Radzali Hassan, said many multinational corporations (MNCs) are moving to India as it is the next growth area.

"We have started looking for space (in India) and production is set to start either at the end of 2007 or the first quarter 2008.

"It will be supported from Malaysia's office and the investment (in the factory) could be around RM300,000," Radzali told Business Times in Kuala Lumpur recently.

FPC, due to it fexibility, is highly in demand by manufacturers of consumer equipment and military equipment such as mobile phones, digital cameras, medical-related equipments, smartcards, passports, walkie talkies as well as audio and portable electronics products.

QDOS Fexcircuits and QDOS Technology Sdn Bhd are subsidiaries of QDOS Holdings Sdn Bhd, which in turn is a wholly-owned subsidiary of main-board listed Suiwah Corp Bhd.

Radzali said QDOS also has an affiliate company in China, QDOS (Xiamen) Flexcircuits Sdn Bhd, which is involved in the manufacturing and marketing.

QDOS, a pioneer and fully-integrated local manufacturer of FPC, has electronic giants like Motorola as its customers.

About 70 per cent of the company's FPC are supplied to MNCs in Penang's free trade zone, where the end products are exported worldwide.

Radzali said QDOS currently has a research and development (R&D) centre in India, namely QDOS Flexcircuits India Pvt Ltd, that employs 10 people, including support staff, sales team and engineers.

"When we begin manufacturing operation in India, it will make our factory in Penang (QDOS Technology) as the centre of high-end activities, while mid-end activities will be in India and China," he said.

QDOS, which came out first in the annual Enterprise 50 (E50) award last year, sees participation in the programme as a boost to the company's image and will provide motivation to its 600-strong staff. "It is not the winning that matters but it is the mindset change and the running of the organisation," said Radzali, who likens winning E50 as a "health supplement" to improve and motivate the company's staff.

He said the publicity given to QDOS as top E50 company has helped the company to draw in more customers while at the same time, it receives many enquiries from overseas MNCs.

Radzali said QDOS invests 1 per cent of its turnover annually for R&D activities.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
SAREGAMA TO FOCUS ON TECH TO STEP UP PROFITS (company has announced a net profit of Rs8.87 crore for 2005- 2006). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Saregama India Ltd is planning to focus more on technology to improve its profits. The company is part of the RPG Group and will soon complete the digitalisation of its musical collection. Saregama intends to implement an enterprise resource planning application software at a cost of Rs4 crore.



The company is planning to invest Rs20 crore on three films. The company has announced a net profit of Rs8.87 crore on total income of Rs118.87 crore for 2005-2006.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
KPOs EYE BIG BIZ IN REAL ESTATE LEASE SERVICES FOR US COs (NTrust Infotech is providing niche services in real estate lease administration). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service providers in India are planning to provide real estate lease services for US real estate companies. NTrust Infotech of Chennai is providing niche services in real estate lease administration.



The company is providing software product and services to companies like Staubach, Tramell Crow, May Company and Liz Clairborne.

NTrust has developed an enterprise software product, REAP, for real estate administration. The company has developed LEAP for lease management abstraction service and back-office support.

NTrust expects to increase the revenues from Rs54 crore in 2005-2006 to Rs72 crore in 2006-2007. The potential of real estate lease administration is valued at $10 billion.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
RBI MAKES BAD LOAN DEALS TOUGHER FOR ARCS (has asked ARCs to invest up to five percent in the security receipts). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) that deal in bad loans to invest up to five percent in the security receipts (SR) issued by them to banks against the acquisition of bad loans. By forcing ARCs to invest in SRs, RBI is asking ARCs to participate in the risks involved in the bad loan market. Until now, instead of paying cash against the bad loans, ARCs used to float special purpose vehicles that issue SRs to the banks to acquire bad assets from the banks. According to RBI, ARCs will have to invest in the SRs issued by their trust within six months.



The ICICI-promoted Asset Reconstruction Company of India Ltd (Arcil) has outstanding SRs worth Rs4,000 crore. It will have to buy back up to Rs200 crore from the banks. Other ARCs include UTI-promoted Asrec and IFCI- promoted Asset Care Enterprise.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

It's all about the customer

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It's all about the customer. Check it out:
(New Straits Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) OVER the years, the information and communications technology business has evolved from technology equipment provision to more customer-focused ICT solutions and services provision. The technology vendor now acts more like a partner and an adviser to organisations in achieving business goals and objectives. Fujitsu Asia Pte Ltd's regional chief executive officer Noboru Oi shares with ROZANA SANI about his experience and take on this trend.



Q: Having held your present position for some two months now, can you share with us your current scope of responsibility? A: My current responsibility is to ensure that all country offices within Fujitsu in the Asean region leverage on and optimise the company's global network and knowledge sharing. If each country runs the company as a standalone, it's almost equal to a local company, right? Hence, it is important that we use our depth of knowledge in technology, which is our key strength and differentiator, to create value-add for our customers.

Obviously, customers would know their business best, but through discussions and the sharing of their experience and based on our IT experience, we can create a framework that would cater to their needs and requirements.

Q: What are your plans for the business in this region? A: Fujitsu's IT solution is for the enterprise, not for the ordinary customer. From Fujitsu's point of view, enterprise business management and IT need to be highly aligned.

Traditionally, IT companies push IT technologies and enterprises try to adopt the technologies. Now, enterprises can customise IT solutions to achieve their desired business results and multiple benefits.

To illustrate, in Japan, Fujitsu is working with a famous department store to explore new ideas using RFID (radio frequency identification), point-of-sales and several other technologies to help the company interact better with its customers. For example, through the store's loyalty card, the company can track where the customers go and what they pick and buy. With such information, the company can cater to the customers' needs better while increasing sales.

That's where I want to see Fujitsu going in this region. Our strategy is customer-focused. This means to develop our ideas through the customer's view. To achieve this, I believe human resource development and training is very important.

Q: How does this vision fit in the Malaysian market? A: We need to address customers' expectations. We want the customers to see us as a partner and valuable adviser. That's why we seek long-term relations.

Malaysia is a high-potential country for the future. It's geographically wide, English is widely spoken, it's a platform through which we can access other Muslim countries, and its Government is keen to invite hi- tech companies to invest there. Even our chairman is a member of the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) international advisory panel. So, Malaysia is one of the key countries for Asia and also for Fujitsu.

Q: What is your management philosophy? A: For me, customer expectations are the same worldwide. However, their behaviours are sometimes different. My philosophy for this service business is more of an agricultural approach. This means putting the seeds into the ground, pouring water every day and then look forward to harvest.

Some people think that you can buy resources. That is not the philosophy of Fujitsu. We hire talented people with potential. And we help them grow by giving them training, networking opportunities and so on.

Q: You've been with Fujitsu for more than 30 years. What has made you stick with the company for so long? A: I started with Fujitsu (in Japan) for four years attached to an electric power company. Then I moved on to Australia, then back to Japan and then on to the United States for American-style company management. So, my resume has many lines; it's almost like job hopping. But the experience has been good for my family as well, so everything has been positive so far.

BIODATA NOBORU Oi graduated with a Master's in physics from Osaka University in Japan in March 1976. A month later, he secured a job with Fujitsu Ltd, starting off a long-term career with the global information and communications technology solutions provider.

Prior to his present positions as regional chief executive officer of Fujitsu Asia Pte Ltd and general manager, Asia-Pacific regional operations office of Fujitsu Ltd based in Singapore, he was vice president, Asean and Oceania division, Asia-Pacific business unit, Fujitsu Ltd.

Earlier on in March 2004, he was group vice president, Asia-Pacific division, global business group, Fujitsu Ltd. His stint with Fujitsu also includes executive vice president, business development, Fujitsu Consulting (US), and senior system engineer, Fujitsu Australia Ltd.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Investors must be patient to avail of opportunities in China. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Companies working in China list competition as a key challenge, writes Clifford Coonan in Beijing.

Driving in from Qingdao airport in eastern China through the suburbs, you see a showroom proudly emblazoned with the logo of the property company Century 21. Next store, in an equally flash shop-front, is Century 22. Further along the street, smiling Chinese versions of the Colonel Sanders logo beam out from fast-food restaurants indistinguishable from KFC.



The Colonel may just have been voted one of the 50 most influential foreigners in China ever, but a Chinese version is giving him a run for his money.

China presents lots of opportunities for Irish companies but no country in the world is quicker to learn from foreign technology than the Chinese market. The pace at which ideas are swallowed up is simply unprecedented and companies working in China list competition as a key challenge.

China's pirated CD and DVD industry, and its market in fake watches and branded goods, has become the stuff of legend, although the pirates are coming under more and more pressure.

On one side of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project which was completed earlier this year, the turbines on one side of the dam are all built by the world's biggest engineers, like GE and Siemens. On the other side of the dam, which was more recently built, the turbines are largely domestic copies. "We have absorbed the Western technology in their construction," a leading engineer says proudly.

In sector after sector Chinese companies enter the market very quickly and drive all the value out before earning significant market share. The mobile handset market is a classic case, where Chinese manufacturers undercut everyone and earned huge market share, forcing rivals from Korea to come back with new products, technology and distribution.

Consultants regularly recommend their clients should be aware of ethical issues. For example, some foreign firms have realised that people in their company have excessively close relations to suppliers or clients, which goes against the company's standard business practice. In some cases, what is standard in a Chinese company will not work in a foreign company.

"Choose your market segment very carefully. If you're going to compete in China, don't try to compete with companies with the same products as you. Compete on technology, on product and brand but don't try to match the Chinese with similar products as they will have cheaper products. Foreign companies pay higher taxes, come with higher standards and have other costs which means they cannot compete," says Dr Paul Clifford, a director of Mercer Management Consultants.

Be ready to compete, says SlI Siar consultancy chief Nicole Bernard. Work closely with your local partners but don't give too much away.

One story tells of a company with no local presence in China which relied on resellers to market and distribute their products. The CEO of the company went to China to meet customers and asked how they felt about the company, its products, and its services. The customers said they were happy with the products but thought the employees in China gave poor service. The CEO soon discovered that the resellers had mocked up business cards with his company logo, telling people they were the the firm's representatives in China.

"If you have a great business idea, the probability that someone else has already thought of it too is pretty high. If you have a great technology, keep in mind that someone will try to make a local version of it - I don't mean piracy, I mean locally produced, cost-effective applications. If you think your end user doesn't have alternative options or substitutes to your offering, you are probably kidding yourself," says Bernard.

Intellectual property rights enforcement is a key concern too, although increasingly firms are saying the government is taking steps to combat piracy.

Some firms have left important decisions relating to the protection of key technology to the last minute, leaving them exposed to infringement of their rights by local competitors.

One Australian mining equipment company discovered one of their top local engineers sneaking out the back door with the plans for their products, while their warehouseman admitted he was being paid backhanders for keeping the packaging intact when unwrapping the products on arrival to sell the boxes to the competing, Chinese firm down the road which had simply copied their brand exactly. It got so bad that the pirates approached the Western firm asking for paint to touch up the machinery, as they couldn't get the tone right.

"I have come across many foreign companies who have come to China, and after an initial successful dalliance with the market over a number of years, have fallen victim to the fact that they never signed an adequate formal agreement with their local distributors or suppliers, or made adequate provisions for the protection of their intellectual property rights," says Ray Moroney, an Irish lawyer working at Rouse & Co International, an intellectual property specialist consultancy.

Getting specific legal advice before you enter the market is vital, says Moroney, an alumnus of the EU-China Managers Training Programme, an EU Commission sponsored language and commercial programme located in Beijing.

"If you do not register your rights, or have suitably drafted localised contracts, your company runs the risk of exposing its entire investment and may have no means to enforce their rights against would be infringers and competitors," says Moroney.

It can take up to 2 years to register your trademark, but less than 60-80 days if you wish to record the copyright in your software, with the proper documentation and legal advice. Litigation is still relatively inexpensive in China but there is no substitute for doing due diligence on a potential partner, distributor, agent or investment.

"Beware of would be agents and intermediaries who claim to have great local connections or "guangxi". You wouldn't rely on them at home, so why take it seriously when it comes to China if you have not undertaken proper background checks," says Moroney.

Irish companies who fall foul of the pirates should seek advice from Enterprise Ireland as well as legal firms.

In order to accede to the WTO in November 2001, the Chinese government was required to implement many international legal conventions in order to comply with its obligations in joining the global trade organisation, particularly in the area of IPR protection, and since then there has been a range of laws and rules introduced to meet these requirements, with varying degrees of success.

While the legal system in China is becoming better grounded, choosing the right lawyer to advise on the legal pitfalls and local regulations and licensing requirements is crucial.

"While the legal issues you usually come across in China are not insurmountable and China is certainly not the most difficult of places in the world to do business, you do need to be sure of your local advisers and that they will do what is needed on the ground to get the deal done," says Richard Curran, a partner at LK Shields solicitors in Dublin.

Transparency of information about the costs and opportunities is an issue that many firms say is getting worse in China, with persistent problems with inadequate public comment periods on proposed rules that have been implemented but never published.

Understanding your business and how your business is viewed from a Chinese legal and regulatory point of view is essential. Business processes that are accepted practice in Europe and the US sometimes simply do not work here, says Paul O'Driscoll, a partner in the property company Investors in Asia.

The Chinese government recently took everyone by surprise when it introduced rules restricting foreigners from speculating on the Chinese property market - a sudden move aimed at cooling an overheating market. Investors in Asia are not currently processing sales in China for customers other than Chinese passport holders and long-term residents. "Clearly it is time to sit and wait for clarity on taxation and other issues before we proceed," says O'Driscoll.

The company was originally set up with an Asia-wide focus and has recently opened offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Being on site and having good contracts with the largest local law firms and government departments has been key in finding solutions and bringing solutions to the market," says O'Driscoll.

There is money to be made.According to the US-China Business Council's annual membership survey, 81 per cent of companies said their China operations are profitable, while over half said that profitability rates for their China operations meet or exceed their company's global profit margins.

Most US companies are invested in wholly foreign-owned enterprises, not joint ventures with Chinese partners and the companies invest in China primarily to serve the Chinese domestic market, not export back to the United States.

Ninety-seven per cent of respondents are optimistic or somewhat optimistic about the prospects of their China business over the next five years.

DCC unit SerCom Solutions, which provides supply chain management services, employs 500 people and has a current annual spend of 80 million, and has been doing business in China for the last six years. It recently opened China offices in Shenzhen.

Kevin Vaughan, SerCom's head of business development, says pitfalls to building trading links include future competitors, different culture, lack of track record, poorly developed relationships, and question-marks surrounding the reliability and quality of supply.

"However, now that people are learning more about business in China the phrase has moved to 'China an opportunity' and there is no doubt that there has been a sea-change in attitude," he says.

"We would encourage Irish- based manufacturers to see China, not as a threat but as an opportunity. This no doubt, will take a change of mindset and may involve significant change for existing operations. But developing our links with China can only bode well and it is by finding out what is going on there and opening our minds to the potential opportunities to trade and collaborate, that we can transform doom into boom," says Vaughan.

While not every business is suited to China, the advice is not to become disillusioned if it doesn't work out first time, or if deals don't close as quickly as hoped.

"Whatever your assessment, follow through on your decisions - pursue opportunities persistently and with adequate local presence, consider changing your business model if it's not working, and be aware of the implications of exiting China or passing up the market altogether," says Bernard.

Ray Moroney believes China is open for business, but common sense and avoiding risk should prevail. "In my experience companies should avoid viewing this market as a place to earn a quick buck, you should be prepared to be in it for the long haul if you expect to reap the rewards."

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Mobile Cohesion raises 3.8m

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Mobile Cohesion raises 3.8m. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Belfast-based telecommunications software company Mobile Cohesion has raised 3.8 million in an investment round.

The investment round was led by Enterprise Equity (NI), part of the all-Ireland Enterprise Equity venture capital group and supported by existing investors Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Accel Partners, the Mobile Cohesion management team, and Viridian Growth Fund.



It is one of the largest technology venture capital deals in Northern Ireland this year.

Mobile Cohesion provides products that allow mobile phone operators to manage data content provision on their handsets. The company was established in 2002 and employs 20 people. It has offices in the US and Singapore.

The Enterprise Equity Venture Capital group was established in 1987 by the International Fund for Ireland and manages a 40 million fund. It has offices in Belfast, Dundalk, Cork and Galway.

Enterprise Equity investment manager, Brian Cummings, said it was "very impressed with Mobile Cohesion's management team and their track record in building successful software businesses".

"Having established key reference customers across the world, the challenge for the company is to build on this base.With the mobile data services market projected to grow from 15 billion to 40 billion in the next five years, this represents an exciting opportunity," he said

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Taiwanese Top 10 U.S. Patent Holders. Check it out:
(Taiwan Economic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Patent Holder Year 2005 Ranking Year-To-Year Comparison Year 2004 Ranking TSMC 1 Advance 2 Hon Hai 2 Decline 1 ITRI 3 Unchanged 3 VIA 4 Advance 6 BenQ 5 Unchanged 5 AU Optronics 6 Advance 11 Macronix 7 Decline 4 UMC 8 Advance 10 Delta 9 Decline 7 Nanya Tech 10 Decline 8 Sources: National Chengchi University and National Taiwan University Skype Grants Gold Code Certifications to Accton, Inventec's Wi-Fi Phones Taipei, Sept. 25, 2006 (CENS)--Skype Ltd., a global leader of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) software, recently granted Gold Code Certifications to Taiwan's Accton Technology Corp. and Inventec Appliances Corp., which have begun big-volume shipments of Skype Wi-Fi handsets this month. Both Accton and Inventec successfully developed their Skype Wi-Fi phones late last year, but they can hardly ship the products due to lack of relevant certifications from Skype. According to Accton president Ken Lu, his company's Skype Wi-Fi phones are sold in the global small office, home office (SOHO) and enterprise markets under its own brands of Edge-core and SMC. The firm has also won orders from Belkin, a leading computer peripheral brand in North America. Accton claimed that its monthly Skype Wi-Fi phone shipment is expected to reach about 40,000 units. Inventec said that it has started to fill a Skype Wi-Fi phone order from Netgear, the No. 3 SOHO networking equipment brand in North America, with its first-batch shipment outstripping 10,000 units. The Taiwan company said that Netgear has started selling such product on its website. Geoffrey Prentice, co-founder of Skype, said earlier that the Wi-Fi Skype phone is his company's first try to directly implant Skype software into a compatible hardware



Some institutional investors pointed out that currently the global number of Skype-service subscribers is about 113 million, serving as strong momentum for pushing the development of Skype-enabled products

Skype is the world's fastest-growing Internet communication offering, allowing unlimited free voice and video communication among Skype e-users. Skype is available in 27 languages and is used in almost every country around the world.

Copyright 2006 China Economic News Service. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
National University of Health Sciences Selects crystalreports.com. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) (Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that National University of Health Sciences has selected crystalreports.com to easily access and share critical information with decision makers across the campus. With crystalreports.com, the University can leverage business intelligence on demand to centrally manage and distribute data. This helps administrators improve performance for its student services including registration, financial aid, housing, and student accounts.



National University of Health Sciences, an Illinois-based leader in health sciences education, trains professionals in chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, massage therapy, and biomedical sciences. The University recently deployed a comprehensive student and campus administration system from Three Rivers Systems and uses Crystal Reports(R) XI to extract and report on data within the system. National University of Health Sciences uses crystalreports.com to securely share Crystal reports and extend the value of Crystal Reports XI across the university.

"Last year all data sharing was done departmentally -- we had no enterprise system but now crystalreports.com enables us communicate centrally and in real-time," said Keith R. Werosh, University Registrar at National University of Health Sciences. "We are a small organization on a tight technology budget. That's why crystalreports.com made so much sense. It took our IT staff about ten minutes to get crystalreports.com up and running. The solution has an extremely easy user interface so our staff can sign up and get information simply, regardless of their technical expertise. People are excited that they can get important information right away and by themselves. The new crystalreports.com is a great enhancement to the existing Business Objects solutions, like Crystal Reports XI."

Business Objects provides the National University of Health Sciences with better insight into all student-related information. Crystal Reports XI enables administrators to analyze how many prospective student inquiries the University receives, which geographic regions the requests come from, how people heard about the University, and which programs they are interested in. With crystalreports.com, any authorized staff member can access these reports. The University uses that information to better predict course demand and ensure they are adequately staffed, pinpoint regions where they should focus marketing efforts, and analyze which types of prospects turn into students. Staff can also use crystalreports.com to help identify students with academic issues early, so they can solve problems before they get out of hand.

National University of Health Sciences also uses Crystal Reports XI and crystalreports.com to create and distribute reports that give executive management a better grasp on how the entire institution is performing. Business Objects helps executives evaluate total enrollment by college, attrition and enrollment trends amongst colleges, and general interest in different programs. These high-level reports show comparative progress at all of the colleges, how overall performance maps to the University's future goals, and help executive management make decisions that benefit the university as a whole.

Before using Business Objects, information silos existed within the various departments and administrators were not able to gain a comprehensive view of student-related data. Data was managed on Excel spreadsheets that each department maintained individually, which meant accessing and sharing data was both difficult and time consuming. Now, with crystalreports.com, the University can leverage information from the enterprise-wide system to produce a report, post it on the web, and allow authorized staff to view information in a secure environment. Because the University has standardized on one BI solution, they have ensured that all staff are using a consistent, accurate version of the data.

About National University of Health Sciences

National University of Health Sciences is a not-for-profit, private university accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org) and the Commission on Accreditation of the Council on Chiropractic Education (www.cceusa.org). The massage therapy program is accredited by the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation (www.comta.org).

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company's innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at ww.businessobjects.com.

The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
ADVA OPTICAL NETWORKING AND INFOVISTA PARTNERSHIP SUPPORTS MASS-MARKET ADOPTION OF ETHERNET SERVICES. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Corporate news announcement processed and transmitted by Hugin ASA. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- -------------- InfoVista's VistaInsight for Networks performance management solution and ADVA Optical Networking's Etherjack-enabled FSP 150 support Ethernet SLAs, enabling service levels like those of traditional services Paris, France and Herndon, Virginia, USA; Mahwah, New Jersey, USA and Martinsried/Munich, Germany. September 25, 2006. ADVA Optical Networking and InfoVista (NASDAQ: IVTA; Euronext IFV - FR0004031649) today announced a global partnership through which InfoVista's industry-leading performance-management solution, VistaInsight for Networks, will be paired with ADVA's Etherjack-enabled FSP 150 product family. Used in tandem, the joint solution enables service providers to confidently offer exacting service level agreements (SLAs) with their intelligent Ethernet offerings and deliver customers real-time access to information on the performance of those services. By so comprehensively supporting Ethernet SLAs, the combined benefits of InfoVista's and ADVA Optical Networking's solutions address a critical last obstacle to mass-market adoption of Ethernet services. ADVA Optical Networking will demonstrate InfoVista's VistaInsight for Networks with the FSP 150 products in Booth 26 at Carrier Ethernet World Congress in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 25-29. With ADVA Optical Networking's Etherjack Service Assurance (ESA) feature, service providers for the first time can offer, monitor and verify Ethernet SLAs. Drawing data from the ADVA FSP 150 equipment, InfoVista's VistaInsight for Networks enables Ethernet customers to easily see that they are experiencing the performance levels guaranteed in their SLAs. Through VistaInsight for Networks' customer portal, enterprises can monitor data on frame delay, frame delay variation, frame loss and network availability end-to-end across services. This data gives enterprise customers the confidence that their Ethernet services are as carrier-grade as Frame Relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Private Line and other traditional offerings with historically strong levels of support for mission-critical business applications. "We are continuing to see strong uptake of our Ethernet services, and one of the key reasons is that we have put in place an infrastructure that enables us to offer Ethernet SLAs as stringent as those offered with traditional services," said Brendan Park, Director of Strategy with Uecomm (http://www.uecomm.com.au/), a national Australian carrier offering high-speed broadband data solutions across its own advanced fiber optic network. "More and more businesses recognize the unprecedented value of Ethernet-based business services, and the ability to offer and assure Ethernet SLAs enables them to migrate." The VistaInsight for Networks, Metro Ethernet option, addresses the needs of 3 major markets: Consumer Broadband, Business Services and Wireless Backhaul to compete in today's bandwidth-demanding industry. The Metro Ethernet performance management solution complies with the service definition model defined by the Metro Ethernet Forum to intelligently monitor and report on E-LINE and E-LAN service levels in accordance with industry standard methodology. Service Providers are able to use VistaInsight for Networks to view Metro Ethernet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and real-time performance notifications, hierarchically by service type, customer location, device type and interface, allowing them and their customers to easily verify SLAs, anticipate growth, upgrade capacity and investigate performance problems. By incorporating bandwidth profiles of QoS based services, the solution provides service availability, in and out traffic metrics, as well as end-to-end delay, jitter and packet loss measurements that provide the critical visibility necessary to deliver and ensure service levels for global user communities. ADVA's ESA functionality, already deployed by carriers around the globe, is a built-in feature of the FSP 150 solution, expressly designed for mass-market delivery of intelligent Ethernet services. Aligned with emerging IEEE 802.3ah, 802.1ag and ITU Y.1731 standards, the FSP 150 provides a rich set of Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) capabilities at both the link and service levels. Etherjack demarcation technology is combined with a wide range of standards-based transport technologies - fiber, time division multiplexing (TDM), copper and Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) - to allow carriers to deliver Ethernet ubiquitously while utilizing existing infrastructure whenever possible. "Pairing VistaInsight for Networks with the Etherjack-enabled FSP 150 family provides a service provider with a turnkey solution for offering differentiated, intelligent Ethernet-based business services," said Jean-Luc Valente, senior vice president, marketing and strategic alliances with InfoVista. "With this joint solution in place, the service provider is assured that its Ethernet services will deliver the guaranteed performance across its own and leased infrastructures, and the enterprise customer will receive the highest degree of service at all times." Added Fred Ellefson, vice president, Etherjack alliances, with ADVA Optical Networking, "This is a powerful partnership because, together, our solutions eliminate what has been the leading impediment to broad-scale adoption of intelligent Ethernet services by business customers: the ability to meaningfully track and monitor SLAs. With our Etherjack technology and InfoVista's VistaInsight for Networks supporting Ethernet SLAs, service providers are finding an eager enterprise customer base for Ethernet-based offerings supporting Internet access, Ethernet private lines, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other mission-critical applications." # # # ABOUT ADVA OPTICAL NETWORKING ADVA Optical Networking (FSE: ADV) is at the forefront of providing Optical+Ethernet solutions that advance next-generation networks for data, storage, voice and video services. ADVA's strength comes from passionate and dedicated employees, all sharing a common vision: a fast, customized response to customers' ever-changing needs. Our innovative Fiber Service Platform (FSP) and strong customer focus provide carriers and enterprises the ability to scale their networks and deliver intelligent, competitive new services. ADVA's solutions have been deployed at more than 100 carriers and 5,000 enterprises in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about ADVA: www.advaoptical.com. ABOUT INFOVISTA InfoVista is the Service-Centric Performance Management Software Company that assures the optimal delivery of business-critical IT services. Driven by a uniquely adaptive and real-time technology foundation, InfoVista solutions improve business effectiveness, reduce operating risk, lower cost of operations, increase agility and create competitive advantage. Eighty percent of the world's largest service providers as ranked by Fortune, as well as leading Global 2000 enterprises, rely on InfoVista to enhance the business value of their technology assets. Representative customers include ABN AMRO, Allstream, Banques Populaires, AXA, Banque de France, Bell Canada, British Telecom, Broadwing Communications, Cable & Wireless, Com Hem, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, Savvis Corporation, SingTel, Telefonica, US Cellular. A Software Magazine 500 company, InfoVista stock is traded on the NASDAQ (IVTA) and on Eurolist by Euronext (FR0004031649). For more information about the company, please visit www.infovista.com. CONTACT INFORMATION: ADVA Optical Networking: InfoVista: Christine Keck Herman Chin Press & Analyst Relations Account Director, Articulate Communications Inc. t +1 201 258 8293 (U.S.) 212.255.0080 ext. 20 t +49 89 89 0665 0 (Europe) [email protected] t +81 3 5408 5891 (Asia) [email protected] Wolfgang Guessgen Investor Relations t +1 201 258 8300 (U.S.) t +49 89 89 0665 940 (Europe) t +81 3 5408 5891 (Asia) [email protected] --- End of Message --- WKN: 510300; ISIN: DE0005103006 ; Index: CDAX, Prime All Share, TECH All Share; Listed: Geregelter Markt in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Amtlicher Markt in Borse Stuttgart, Prime Standard in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Amtlicher Markt in Bayerische Borse Munchen, Amtlicher Markt in Borse Berlin Bremen, Amtlicher Markt in Hanseatische Wertpapierborse zu Hamburg, Amtlicher Markt in Niedersachsische Borse zu Hannover, Amtlicher Markt in Borse Dusseldorf;



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
Fujifilm Announces Development Plans for New FinePix S5 Pro; DSLR Slated for Early 2007 Introduction. Check it out:
VALHALLA, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- Confirming the company's commitment to professional photographers, Fujifilm today announced the development of the much anticipated FinePix S5 Pro digital SLR camera. The new FinePix S5 Pro is further affirmation of Fujifilm's goal to achieve professional D-SLR image quality consistent with Fujifilm's professional film heritage.



The FinePix S5 Pro carries a number of features that made its predecessor, the FinePix S3 Pro, so popular with wedding, portrait and studio photographers. One is increased dynamic range from the Super CCD SR double pixel technology (6.17 million S-pixels and 6.17 million R-pixels). The new FinePix S5 Pro continues this tradition of expanded dynamic range and goes a step further by coupling the new Super CCD SR Pro sensor with Fujifilm's new RP (Real Photo) Processor Pro for even more outstanding, film-like results. Moreover, the FinePix S5 Pro will house the two technologies in a fully digital and durable metal alloy body frame. This opens the door for Fujifilm's digital imaging technologies to expand into other applications such as outdoor and high endurance commercial photography.

Highlight features of the FinePix S5 Pro include:

Image Processing and Quality

-- Real Photo Technology Pro, which combines the Super CCD SR Pro sensor and the RP Processor Pro, allows for the wide dynamic range with smoother tonality from brightest light to darkest shadow. The re-designed new Super CCD SR Pro features an optimized low-pass filter that will reduce the noise and minimize moire. The newly developed RP Processor Pro features two cycles of noise reduction so photographers can snap pictures at light sensitivities as high as ISO 3200 with less noise than comparable cameras at similar ISOs.

Increased Color and Dynamic Range Control

-- Photographers can choose from six preset ranges for greater creative control over the FinePix S5 Pro's expanded dynamic range between 100% and 400%,

-- Three new variations of the original film simulation mode have been added (five modes in total) for improved reproduction of natural skin tones.

Face Detection Technology for post image verification

-- At the push of a button, the FinePix S5 Pro's Face Detection Technology detects up to ten faces in a scene immediately after each image is captured. Photographers can zoom in and confirm facial detail, whether eyes are open or closed, focus and exposure on the FinePix S5 Pro's LCD monitor.

Other camera functions and features

-- Nikon F-mount compatibility with all Nikkor AF-D/G and the latest AF-S optics

-- RAW+JPEG (4,256 x 2,848 pixels, 3,024 x 2,016 pixels, 2,304 x 1,536 pixels) dual-save mode

-- MAC and PC supported tethered shooting mode via USB 2.0 port and optional HyperUtility software

-- Robust, lightweight magnesium-alloy body

-- Durable shutter unit stands up to approximately 100,000 releases

-- Adoption of high-precision i-TTL flash control

-- 11-point AF sensor for consistent, fast and precise focusing. This is an improvement from the FinePix S3 Pro's 5-point AF sensor

-- Supports 1/3, 1/2, and 1 stop lens aperture control

-- Shutter speed 30 sec. to 1/8000 sec., maximum flash sync speed of 1/250 sec.

-- Remark function enables addition of comments to an image file by connecting a special bar code reader to the camera body.

-- 3 levels of custom Function Locking with password protection

-- 2.5 inch LCD with 235,000 pixels with 100% frame coverage featuring color or monochromatic 30 seconds, live view function to check the focusing

-- Li-ion rechargeable battery

-- Compact Flash (TM) (CF) Card (Type I/II) and Microdrive (TM) compatible

Optional Accessories

-- LAN Adapter for wireless, high-speed image transfer.

-- New Hyper Utility Software for precise editing control of images taken in CCD-RAW 14-bit format. Software also enables PC control of the FinePix S5 Pro.

-- Rechargeable Battery

-- Battery Charger

-- AC Power Adapter

About Fujifilm

Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc. is a subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. and delivers technology solutions to meet the imaging and information needs of retailers, consumers, professionals and business customers. As a global leader in digital imaging, Fujifilm pioneered the development of digital medical systems, and today is the leader in digital minilab systems. The company was ranked number 18 for U.S. patents granted during 2005, employs more than 75,000 people worldwide and in the year ending March 31, 2006, had global revenues of $22.8 billion.

In the United States, Fujifilm is a leader in delivering high quality, easy-to-use imaging and information solutions in the following categories: Digital Imaging Systems, Film and Imaging Systems, Recording/Storage Media, Motion Picture Film, Graphic Arts and Printing Systems and Medical Imaging and Diagnostics Systems. Fujifilm is an environmentally friendly, humane enterprise and an exemplary corporate citizen.

For more information on Fujifilm products, consumers can call 800-800-FUJI or access the Fujifilm USA Web site at www.fujifilmusa.com. Consumers also can receive news and information direct from Fujifilm USA via RSS. Subscription is free at www.fujifilmusa.com/rss.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.
Fujifilm Brings Face Detection to the Compact Digital Camera Category with the FinePix F31fd; Camera also Boasts 3200 ISO, i-Flash and Picture Stabilization. Check it out:
VALHALLA, N.Y. --(Business Wire)-- Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc., is proud to unveil the FinePix F31fd, the first pocketable digital camera from Fujifilm to feature the company's new Face Detection Technology.

Fujifilm's Face Detection Technology debuted on the SLR-styled FinePix S6000fd. It has a tremendous impact on the quality of "people pictures" by ensuring that cameras like the FinePix F31fd will automatically focus on and expose for faces, rather than details that lead to less-than-desirable photographs. Identifying up to 10 faces in a frame, Face Detection Technology ensures photos of friends and family are crisp, clear and properly exposed for a natural feel. It has an advantage over the few other face detection systems currently on the market as the technology is built-in to the camera's processor, enabling the FinePix F31fd to identify faces and optimize settings within a scant 0.05 seconds.



With the FinePix F31fd, which is similar in style to the FinePix F30, Fujifilm adds Face Detection to the many significant breakthrough features in the award winning and critically-acclaimed FinePix F30 - unprecedented light sensitivities up to ISO 3200 at full resolution, Fujifilm's Picture Stabilization, the 'i-Flash' system, and best-in-class 580-shot battery life. Add a 3x optical zoom lens from Fujinon, a 6-MegaPixel Super CCD HR sensor, and a 2.5 inch LCD screen with glare-reducing coatings and the FinePix F31fd is an ideal companion for consumers looking for a first-class upgrade to their current digital cameras.

Face Detection Technology

Fujifilm's Face Detection Technology was originally developed for the company's photofinishing division where it has been improving the quality of photos produced at retail photo centers nationwide by Fujifilm's Frontier Digital Lab Systems. Fujifilm's Research & Development team adapted the technology for use within digital cameras, where it is now a genuinely useful tool for making subjects look their best.

A selectable option, Fujifilm's Face Detection Technology identifies faces by triangulating a subject's eyes and mouth using an algorithm to optimize focus and exposure. It simultaneously displays a green rectangle around the primary subject, while white squares identify up to nine other subjects. Movement tracking keeps the camera 'locked on' to its subjects until they move out of the picture. The technology works regardless of the subject's position in the frame, and is not confused by eyeglasses.

In Playback mode, Face Detection automatically zooms to subjects' faces and trims the shot for optimum portraits.

Low Light Photography and Picture Stabilization

Fujifilm has identified low light photography as one of the true benchmarks of a digital camera's performance, as many images are taken when light is limited. Limited light requires the use of a flash, however, a flash can leave subjects looking 'washed out' and background detail almost non-existent. Higher light sensitivities make flash-free photography possible with available light, balancing foreground and background exposure and contributing to a natural look and feel.

Higher light sensitivities also enable the camera to shoot with faster shutter speeds, which lessen the likelihood of blurry pictures caused by a moving subject or the shake of an unsteady hand. To make it easy for consumers to achieve blur-free results, the FinePix F31fd features a helpful "Picture Stabilization" mode dial setting. This easy-to-identify, automatic setting lets the FinePix F31fd choose the correct light sensitivity and best-matching shutter speed, producing the highest quality digital pictures without blur and the noise often associated with high sensitivity photographs.

i-Flash

For those occasions when flash is required, Fujifilm's intelligent 'i-Flash' system sets flash power output to achieve natural foreground illumination with balanced background exposure. Fujifilm's i-Flash system is more advanced than similar flash systems because it can detect more accurately the subtle lighting differences within a scene, and then light the subject accordingly with a wider range of flash intensities. Together, the Face Detection and i-Flash technologies produce photographs with prominent subjects exhibiting pleasing, natural tones.

"Fujifilm set the benchmark for digital camera performance earlier this year with the introduction of the FinePix F30, a model that helped consumers take better pictures through innovative technology breakthroughs and best-in-class performance," remarked David Troy, Senior Product Manager, Consumer Digital Cameras, Electronic Imaging Division, Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc. "With the addition of Face Detection Technology to an already outstanding camera package, the FinePix F31fd will turn just about any picture-taker into a top-notch photographer."

The FinePix F31fd has a number of useful features that make it easy to snap outstanding photos:

-- "Natural Light & with Flash" Dual Shot Mode: In this mode the FinePix F31fd quickly shoots two images in succession -- one with and one without the flash -- saving both. This convenient function lets the user perform an on-the-spot picture comparison and decide whether the FinePix F31fd produced the most pleasing photo with flash, or without.

-- "Natural Light" shooting mode: This mode preserves scene mood and enhances background detail by shooting with faster shutter speeds at higher light sensitivities (if necessary) with a suppressed flash.

-- Fast Operation: The camera's fast response times, 0.01 second shutter lag and 1.5 second start-up time, ensure it will catch all the action and spell the end for missed photo opportunities.

-- LCD: The FinePix F31fd features a large 2.5 inch, 230,000 pixel LCD screen coated with Fujifilm's proprietary CV film. This minimizes glare and reflection so that images can be viewed from any angle and even in sunny conditions, when glare would usually be a problem. In addition, the screen's brightness adjusts automatically, depending on the amount of light available, to further enhance ease of viewing.

-- Better Movie Quality: Movie capture for the FinePix F31fd is enhanced by noise reduction, making it possible to capture clear, sharp moving images even at high ISO sensitivity speeds. It is also capable of VGA movie capture at 30 frames per second with sound.

-- Special scene modes: The FinePix F31fd has 15 scene positions including beach, snow and fireworks for optimum photography, no matter what the event.

-- Manual settings: Includes shutter and aperture priority, for more user control.

The FinePix F31fd will be available in December at a retail cost of $399.

About Fujifilm

Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc. is a subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. and delivers technology solutions to meet the imaging and information needs of retailers, consumers, professionals and business customers. As a global leader in digital imaging, Fujifilm pioneered the development of digital medical systems, and today is the leader in digital minilab systems. The company was ranked number 18 for U.S. patents granted during 2005, employs more than 75,000 people worldwide and in the year ending March 31, 2006, had global revenues of $22.8 billion.

In the United States, Fujifilm is a leader in delivering high quality, easy-to-use imaging and information solutions in the following categories: Digital Imaging Systems, Film and Imaging Systems, Recording/Storage Media, Motion Picture Film, Graphic Arts and Printing Systems and Medical Imaging and Diagnostics Systems. Fujifilm is an environmentally friendly, humane enterprise and an exemplary corporate citizen.

For more information on Fujifilm products, consumers can call 800-800-FUJI or access the Fujifilm USA Web site at www.fujifilmusa.com. Consumers also can receive news and information direct from Fujifilm USA via RSS. Subscription is free at www.fujifilmusa.com/rss.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

      FinePix F31fd Digital Camera - Specifications *
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Number of 6.3 million pixels effective pixels ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- CCD sensor 1/ 1.7-inch Super CCD HR ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Number of Still image: 2,848 x 2,136 (6.1m) / 3,024 x 2,016 (3:2 recorded format) / 2,048 x 1,536 /1,600 x 1,200 / 640 X 480 pixels pixels Movie: 640 x 480 pixels (30 frames/sec.), 320 x 240 pixels (30 frames/sec.) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Storage media Internal memory (approx. 26MB) /xD-Picture Card (16MB - 2 GB) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- File format Still image : JPEG (Exif Ver 2.2) Movie : AVI (Motion JPEG) (Design rule for Camera File system compliant / DPOF- compatible) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Lens Fujinon 3.0x Optical zoom lens , F2.8 - F5.0 ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Lens focal 8.0 - 24.0mm (36-108mm on a 35mm camera) length ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Focus Auto Focus (Single, Continuous) (Center, Multi) AF assist illuminator available ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Focus Normal : Approx. 2.0 ft. to Infinity distance Macro: Wide Angle: Approx. 2.0 in. to 2.6 ft. Telephoto: Approx. 1.0 ft. to 2.6 ft. ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Recording Still Image Movie Capacity -------------------------------------------------------- with (256 xD 6MP(F) 6MP(N) 3:2 3MP 2MP 0.3MP 640x480 320x240 Picture Card -------------------------------------------------------- (not 85 169 169 325 409 1,997 Approx. Approx included) 3.4 min. 7.2 min. ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Shutter speed 15 sec. to 1/2000 sec. (depend on Shooting mode), 15 sec.(long exposure mode) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Aperture F2.8 - F8, 10 steps in 1/3 EV increments ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Sensitivity Auto / Equivalent to 100/200/400/800/1600/3200 ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Exposure 256-zones TTL metering(Multi/Spot/Average) control ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Exposure mode Programmed AE, Shutter Priority AE, Aperture Priority AE ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- White balance Automatic scene recognition Preset (Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm White), Fluorescent light (Cool White), Incandescent light), Custom ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- LCD monitor 2.5 inches, Aspect ratio: 4:3, Amorphous silicon TFT, Approx 230,000 pixels, Coverage Approx. 100% ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Flash Auto flash Effective range: (ISO AUTO): Wide-angle: approx. 2.0 - 21.3 ft Telephoto: approx. 2.0 - 11.5 ft Macro: approx. 1.0 ft - 2.6 ft Red-eye Reduction + Slow Synchro. ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Self-timer Approx. 10 sec./2 sec. delay ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Video output NTSC / PAL selectable ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Digital USB High-speed input/output ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Power supply NP-95 Rechargeable Battery, AC Power Adapter AC-5VC (included) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Dimensions 3.6(W)x 2.2(H)x 1.1(D) in. (excluding accessories and attachments) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Weight Approx. 5.5 oz. (excluding accessories, batteries and xD-Picture Card) ----------------------------------------------------------------
------ Camera functions --------------------------
-------------------------------------------- Digital zoom 6.20x ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Shooting Normal : Auto, Picture Stabilization, Scene Position, modes Macro, Movie, Burst/Continuous, SP: Natural Light, Natural Light & with Flash Position: Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Museum, Party, Flower Close-Up, Text Continuous: 1.Top-3 (max.2.2 frames/sec., up to 3 frames) 2.Final-3 (max.2.2 frames/sec., up to 3 frames) 3.Long-period (max.0.7frame/sec. Up to memory card size) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Movie 640 x 480 pixels, 30 frames/sec. recording 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames/sec. With monaural sound, AVI format (Motion JPEG) ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Voice Memo Up to 30 sec. WAV format ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Color modes B&W/Chrome/Standard ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Photography Face Detection, High-speed shooting, Best framing, functions Frame No. memory ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Playback Face Detection, IR Communication (IR simple(TM)), Single functions frame, 9 Multi-frame, Sorting by date, Image rotate, Voice Memo, Trimming, Automatic playback ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Accessories Li-ion battery NP-95 included AC Power Adapter AC-5VC Hand Strap USB cable for the FinePix F31fd A / V cable for the FinePix F31fd CD-ROM FinePixViewer ImageMixer VCD2 LE for FinePix Owner's Manual ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Optional xD-Picture Card: 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB accessories PC Card Adapter DPC-AD CompactFlash Card Adapter DPC-CF AC Power Adapter AC-5VX Battery Charger BC-65S Soft Case SC-FXF30 Waterproof Housing WP-FXF30 -------------------------------------------------------------
--------- * With Fujifilm's commitment to constant improvement, the company reserves the right to alter specifications without prior notice.

Sunny moto cabbie

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Sunny moto cabbie. Check it out:
(Malay Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MOTOROLA, Inc announced that Sunlight Radio Taxi has installed more than 1,000 Motorola mobile radios in its cars as the taxi operator moves toward the creation of its own two-way radio private communications network.



"To gain a competitive edge and enhance our customer service, we needed to improve our overall communications and network reliability," said Sunlight Radio Taxi Services Sdn Bhd executive director Abdul Jalil Maarof.

"Using disparate radio systems simply hamper the drivers' communications, resulting in lost business opportunities.

Hence, it became clear that it was imperative to standardise our in-vehicle radio system to achieve optimal communications with our Radio Call Centre." The implementation, which also involved Motorola Malaysia local system integrator, Teknik Johan Telecommunications Sdn Bhd, was carried out in stages over nine months.

In addition to installing Motorola's GM338 mobile radios, Sunlight also installed three Motorola's MC2000 Desktop Controllers to support command and control at Sunlight's 24 hour Radio Call Centre and two Motorola's MTR2000 repeaters fixed on different sites to enhance the overall communication network coverage.

"We were quick to provide Sunlight with a resolution that best suited their business-critical environment," said Motorola director of distribution (South Asia, Networks & Enterprise) Albert Wong.

"For instance, the GM338's MDC1200 signaling ability offers safety and security benefits to both drivers and operator.

"It allows the Call Centre to receive emergency signal when a driver is in distress.

It also remotely disables a radio when it is compromised.

The MC2000, on the other hand, enables seamless command and control from the Radio Call Centre required to enhance their day-to-day operations." The Sunlight KBK Group of Companies has a total fleet of about 2,000 taxis at Klang Valley, contributing more that 10 per cent market share of the taxi vehicles in Klang Valley and another 200 taxis at Johor Baru.

The Group caters to both the premier and economical taxi market segment.

The Group operates a state-of-the-art 24 hour radio call centre in Bandar Baru Sri Petaling and Johor Baru providing a comprehensive 3 channel communication in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin languages for the commuters and taxi drivers.

The Sunlight Group is also the first centre in Malaysia to offer on-line connection for quick taxi bookings and advance bookings.

Visit www.sunlighttaxi.com for more information.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Mobiltel Deploys Vallent's Performance Management. Check it out:
BELLEVUE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Vallent(TM) Corporation, the global leader in Service Assurance management, today announced that Mobiltel will deploy their Performance Management solution to help manage and deliver quality multimedia and traditional services over their GSM and UMTS networks.



Mobiltel is part of the mobilkom austria group (mag), the wireless segment of Telekom Austria. Together, the members of mag serve 9.5 million customers in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Liechtenstein. The group's cooperative spirit and transfer of intelligence allows them to offer their customers stronger, more innovative solutions.

Mobiltel, the biggest mobile operator in Bulgaria, is one of the most successful mobile operators in Europe. Mobiltel is the only Bulgarian operator to offer EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA services to its clients and became the world's fifth to launch HSDPA.

"We're committed to providing the newest and widest variety of high-bandwidth services on the market," said Thomas Klemenschits, Chief Technical Officer of Mobiltel. "Vallent offers solutions and expertise that help us roll-out high quality new services faster."

Vallent's performance management (PM) solution provides critical metrics that enable Mobiltel to manage their network infrastructure. With the PM solution, Mobiltel can assess the quality of their EDGE, UMTS, and HSDPA networks, monitor daily and hourly network performance, isolate, analyze and fix service-affecting problems, and plan and forecast infrastructure capacity.

Mobiltel is committed to maintaining its leadership position in Bulgaria and Europe by continuing to roll out innovative and progressive new services. In March 2006, Mobiltel started offering its clients the first UMTS/HSDPA network in Bulgaria. In December 2005, the operator enlarged its network capacity to 5 million customers.

"Mobiltel's roll out of a nationwide 3G UMTS/HSDPA network is a significant success and we are proud of the role we have played to help make that possible," said John Hansen, CEO of Vallent. "We look forward to providing ongoing performance management support as Mobiltel continues to deliver new, powerful multimedia services to their mobile customers."

About Mobiltel

Mobiltel is recognized as the innovative telecom market leader in Bulgaria and one of the most successful mobile operators in Europe. Today the Company serves 4 million clients. In 2005 the operator won the only UMTS A Class license tender in Bulgaria for a 20-year term. Six months later - on September 14, 2005, Mobiltel presented the first operational UMTS network in Bulgaria. On March 6, 2006 the company introduced the first 3G services in Bulgaria and the mobile data access over HSDPA.

Since July 2005 Mobiltel is part of the mobilkom austria group - together with mobilkom austria, Vipnet, Si.mobil and mobilkom liechtenstein. In February 2006 Mobiltel announced the cooperation with Vodafone, thanks to which Mobiltel started offering selected Vodafone services to its clients.

About Vallent Corporation

Vallent Corporation (www.vallent.com) is the global leader in Service Assurance management of evolving, complex communication services. Through its deep communications network knowledge, the company helps service providers leverage their network data to improve operational performance. Vallent's proven solutions are deployed in over 200 operators worldwide and are offered by the leading network equipment providers. The company's integrated network Performance Management and Service Quality Management solutions increase operational efficiency, enable service providers to quickly adapt to technology changes, accelerate the transition to a customer-focused enterprise and close the loop between network performance, the customer experience, service quality and business objectives. The company, formed in February 2005 from the merger of WatchMark-Comnitel and Metrica(R) Software Systems, operates globally with headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, USA and major offices and support centers in Richmond and Bath in the UK, Cork and Galway in Ireland, and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Vallent, the Vallent logo, Watchmark, Metrica, Virtuo, ServiceAssure and NetworkAssure are registered trademarks or trademarks of Vallent Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. All other brand and product names are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective holders.
Kodak Unleashes the Power of Pictures with New Imaging Solutions. Check it out:
ROCHESTER, N.Y. & COLOGNE, Germany --(Business Wire)-- Eastman Kodak Company today introduced an array of new products and services--from self-serve kiosks and digital capture solutions to professional photo services--that unleash the power of pictures for consumers, professionals and retailers.



Kodak's new lineup, unveiled at Photokina--the largest imaging exposition and trade show in Europe--is a continuation of the steady stream of innovative, award winning products and services introduced to help retailers succeed in today's changing marketplace.

"Kodak invented digital photography, and today's announcements further demonstrate our innovation and commitment to enhance all types of imaging--digital, traditional and mobile," said Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and CEO, Eastman Kodak Company. "These new products and services allow consumers to enjoy a richer imaging experience, and provide our partners with increased business opportunities."

Kodak's line-up of new products and services include:

-- New KODAK Picture Kiosk GS Digital Station--an addition to the digital picture kiosk family--that creates a new category of affordable, medium volume retail digital photo printing solutions. The self-service GS Digital Station sports a 17-inch touch screen monitor and the ability to print from a full range of input methods, including BLUETOOTH (R) wireless technology. The GS Digital Station is fast--11 seconds per print--and yields 750 4x6 prints per roll. It will be available for installation in Europe beginning October 2006.

-- New KODAK Picture Kiosk G4 Software, V1.1, brings a host of features specifically designed to maximize return on hardware investment for retailers and elevates the consumer experience. The V1.1 software creates photographic specialty products such as greeting cards, calendars and collages instantly from the kiosk without any additional hardware expense. A new "shopping cart" feature allows retailers to drive incremental sales of enhanced prints and enlargements--all printed in seconds for the consumer.

-- New KODAK EASYSHARE Z710 Zoom Digital Camera combines advanced photographic features with point-and-shoot simplicity. With a 7.1 megapixel image sensor and 10X optical zoom, the Z710 model makes it simple to zoom and capture crisp shots that can make high-quality prints up to 30 x 40 inches (76 x 102 cm).

-- New KODAK EASYSHARE Photo Printer 350 connects to camera phones for high-quality prints. Using BLUETOOTH wireless technology, the Photo Printer 350 prints 4 x 6 photos directly from BLUETOOTH technology-enabled devices.

-- Enhanced KODAK PROFESSIONAL PORTRA color negative films underscore Kodak's ongoing support of the professional photography market. The recently released 160VC, 160NC, 400VC and 400NC films in the PORTRA film family produce finer grain, spectacular skin tones and improved scanning performance for greater enlargement capability. At Photokina, a panel of professional photographers, including Renate Forster, Frederic Lagrange, Jock McDonald and Chris Usher will discuss their experiences with PORTRA Film, and how it fits into their photography work.

-- New KODAK NEXPRESS Photo Bundle provides increased revenue opportunities for digital print providers. The Photo Bundle includes software and hardware components to enhance a KODAK NEXPRESS system for high quality digital photo applications. The professional advisory services included in Photo Bundle provide tailored assistance, training and workflow consultation to the growing number of digital print providers. The NEXPRESS 2500 digital production color press will be on display in Hall 5, Stand A002, to demonstrate a range of new photo-rich print applications.

-- New KODAK KAF-10500 Image Sensor--developed specifically for the LEICA M8 digital camera--continues Kodak's legacy of offering high performance imaging devices that result in low noise, high sensitivity and wide dynamic range.

-- New KODAK batteries for digital cameras maximize speed, performance and battery life, resulting in an increase in the number of pictures consumers can take between battery charges.

Kodak believes in the power and beauty of pictures, and to bring this to life, the Kodak exhibit at Photokina will include an explosion of cutting edge, dramatic images in electrifying fashion. On the booth's catwalk--and the entire Kodak show floor--models dressed in one-of-a-kind ensembles made of KODAK pictures and products, including CDs, memory cards, film, paper and stickers will fuse fashion with photography. The Kodak Photokina gallery will showcase a visually stunning array of more than 250 images from 20 of the world's top professional photographers. Visit Kodak in Hall 5.2, Stand A002/C031 to experience the largest display of imaging products at the Photokina trade show.

About Eastman Kodak Company

Kodak is the world's foremost imaging innovator, providing leading products and services to the photographic, graphic communications and healthcare markets. With sales of $14.3 billion in 2005, the company is committed to a digitally oriented growth strategy focused on helping people better use meaningful images and information in their life and work. Consumers use Kodak's system of digital and traditional image capture products and services to take, print and share their pictures anytime, anywhere; Businesses effectively communicate with customers worldwide using Kodak solutions for prepress, conventional and digital printing and document imaging; Creative Professionals rely on Kodak technology to uniquely tell their story through moving or still images; and leading Healthcare organizations rely on Kodak's innovative products, services and customized workflow solutions to help improve patient care and maximize efficiency and information sharing within and across their enterprise.

More information about Kodak (NYSE: EK) is available at www.kodak.com.

Kodak, EasyShare, Kodak Professional, Portra and NexPress are trademarks of Eastman Kodak Company.

The Bluetooth wordmark is owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc.
Why the regions are the losers The death of enterprise. Check it out:
(The Daily Telegraph, Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Gordon Brown's decision to pump Britain's economic fringes with vast injections of public spending is fast earning him a reputation as Europe's last great social planner.

But analysis of this regional reliance on the state typically misses the more worrying flipside: the anaemic condition of private enterprise in much of the country.

Private-sector employment in Wales, at 61 per cent of all jobs, is fast approaching a tipping point at which working for a profit-making company will soon become a minority pursuit. Stop an average woman on her way to work in the north-east of England and the odds are she is directly or indirectly employed by the government. In both areas, public spending now accounts for 59 per cent of local gross domestic product (GDP)- nearly twice as much as it does in London and the south-east.



This pounds 73bn of new public money since Brown turned on the taps in 2001 crowds out business activity in a variety of ways. The Engineering Employers' Federation has warned that its members are finding it hard to compete on wages. Try hiring talented middle managers to work in a globally competitive sector such as manufacturing when they can get twice as much for a job in the NHS. A guaranteed pension linked to your final salary is all but impossible to find in the private sector, but on offer to every traffic warden and diversity officer in the country.

Meanwhile, the higher taxes needed to pay for this largesse, particularly payroll taxes such as National Insurance, have hit companies in the regions hardest. No business likes higher taxes, but if you are barely making a profit in the first place then a levy on headcount is far worse than a penny on corporation tax.

What this means is that the Brownite efforts to equalise national living standards has deprived poorer regions of their one big economic advantage: low costs.

The tragedy is that manufacturing therefore favours Hungary over Humberside. Call centres relocate to Bangalore rather than Barnsley. Instead of relieving pressure on the crowded South East, government departments rather than private employers fill the shiny new office parks of Cardiff and Edinburgh. After all, why leave London when a receptionist or cleaner costs only a little less in Newcastle?

But the paucity of private-sector success stories outside the south-east also has a less obvious cultural effect. Where once proud industrial towns could measure their contribution to national prosperity in tons of coal, steel or textiles, many children have only heritage museums and football clubs to remind them what business looks like. Their schools and council offices may be in better shape than in the 1980s, but the spirit of enterprise has been left to die.

Business has much to answer for too. Globalisation has distanced companies from their roots. It is incredibly difficult for anyone to understand how wealth is really created in today's service economy. Those who do manage to punch above their weight on the international stage, such as the City's financiers and traders, do little to explain the source of their riches to a sceptical public. The BBC's laughable depiction of life in Dragons' Den or cartoon tycoons such as Sir Richard Branson or Sir Alan Sugar are no substitute for a guy in his garage creating the next Microsoft or Google.

Meanwhile the masters of the public-sector universe think they know what modern business culture looks like already. The first-class carriages of our overpriced railways are full of well-dressed and well-meaning managers on their way to deliver Powerpoint presentations to conferences at expensive hotels. NHS managers who rarely leave the office are issued with Blackberries to make them feel efficient.

There are exceptions. Cambridge, as we report in this week's business section, is a city far removed in culture from the cosmopolitan rush of London, but just as in touch with the global zeitgeist. Its computer chip industry has become the envy of bigger foreign rivals. Edinburgh has built a globally competitive banking and fund management industry despite the long shadow cast by the City.

Regional development need not be about just bribing Japanese carmakers to stay in Sunderland. Other university towns could follow Cambridge. In the US, several dozen second-tier cities from Austin to Seattle have reinvented themselves for 21st century capitalism. The biggest ambition of many British equivalents is persuading the Government to issue them with a casino licence.

It does not feel this bad, of course. The city centres of Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds and even Birmingham have been transformed by subsidised art galleries and trendy hairdressers that give people the illusion of prosperity. Self-confidence may have improved too, but the complacency makes it much harder to drive through socially divisive solutions such as the abolition of national pay bargaining. It will always be hard to tell a headteacher in Gateshead that he or she is worth half what their counterpart in Reigate is being paid- even if it goes further.

Optimists also argue that this public-sector bias is a necessary part of the transition from industrial Britain to service Britain and that working for the Government is an improvement on being dependent on it for benefits.

There are other signs that it will only get worse. Local Futures Group, a research consultancy, estimates that knowledge economy jobs are even more unevenly distributed and clustered in the south-east than globally competitive manufacturers.

Falling wages and higher regional unemployment may ultimately prove the only way out of this vicious circle. After all, the former Communist countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic watched the East German experience and realised they did not want the EU to throttle their economic future in the name of equality. Here, the Soviet experiment is still being repeated from Fishguard to Faslane.

Copyright 2006 The Daily Telegraph. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Cut the inane grinning and stick up for business. Check it out:
(The Daily Telegraph, Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) DON'T get your hopes up. The joys of the political party conference season are upon us. An excuse for yet more hot air to emanate from people who surely receive far too much publicity than is good for them. It all seems to boil down to incessant clapping, inane grinning and bland statements of intent. Really, it's an excuse for hordes of moronic-looking activists to go to the seaside and chat up other equally badly dressed activists. So what about business? What should the parties be saying? How should they be reaching out for that crucial small business vote? The what? You heard. Here's some advice, and some party pledges.



DO close loopholes. "Restructuring and simplifying tax rules, promoting compliance with regulations rather than penalising non-compliance and considering the impact of regulations and standards on smaller firms before implementation would all ease the burden of red tape.'' So says Nick Goulding, chief executive of the Forum of Private Business. Other specific measures he recommends include closing VAT loopholes that big firms exploit, changing the Small Business Rates Relief Scheme to focus on the size of the business and addressing unfair practices by large businesses. Finally, he adds: "One way to slow the rising cost of employment would be to link increases in the National Minimum Wage to the Retail Price Index.''

DON'T rush it. The Federation of Small Businesses is calling on the major parties "to temper their calls for family-friendly working practices with a dose of reality''. With small businesses employing over half of the private sector workforce and contributing 58pc of GDP, it says holding back small business growth is not in the best interests of the economy. "Small businesses are often in the vanguard of new family-friendly policies as the workers and the boss are usually in the same room,'' says Carol Undy, FSB national chairman.

DON'T hold your breath. The CBI's latest policy announcement to boost the lot of small firms is for the much-maligned Small Business Service to be given the authority to "promote the needs of smaller firms to policy-makers''. CBI director-general Richard Lambert says: "The CBI's vision of the SBS has always been built on the success of the US's Small Business Administration in its heyday when it was a powerful advocate for enterprise, with a chief executive able to speak out with authority on behalf of small business. This should be the aim for Government.''

DO vote for us. "Many small businesses pay a disproportionate amount in rates,'' says the Liberal Democrats, "as much as 35pc of their profits. The burden of business rates is far greater on smaller concerns... As an immediate measure to help small businesses, we will reform the business rates system to allow firms with a rateable value of less than pounds 25,000 to claim a business rate allowance of up to pounds 1,500. This would represent a saving of over pounds 600 a year for the majority of small businesses.''

DON'T vote for them. The Conservative's Action for Business plan includes: "A good education system, with strong vocational options. Decent roads, and a reliable public transport system. Targeted support for small businesses, manufacturers and tomorrow's entrepreneurs.'' The Tories are also keen to reduce the number of regulations and talk about "reducing tax''. The document concludes: "British business faces a clear choice at the election: deregulation and support with the Conservatives, or yet more talk from Mr Blair.''

DO vote for us (again). Labour point to their achievements so far: a stable economy, low interest rates, the lowest inflation rates in 30 years and high employment. It says how it is "easier than ever before to start a business, taking an average of one day and costing pounds 85 in Britain. Across the EU it takes an average of 11 weeks and costs over pounds 1,000. We now have over 4m businesses, 300,000 extra since 1997.'' Looking ahead, the talk is all stability, cutting the regulatory costs on business and stimulating innovation.

Copyright 2006 The Daily Telegraph. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Large Monopoly Enterprises Added in Number. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 25, SinoCast -- Experts have pointed out that during the next five to ten years, those resource-intensive enterprises and monopoly enterprises will accumulate more profits, more social resources and more assets.



Data from National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) show that the number of large enterprise groups, especially those with billions of assets and turnovers, is growing.

37 enterprise groups have had over CNY 100 billion assets. In 2005, the following enterprises was recognized as the top ten enterprises in terms of total assets: State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), CITIC Holdings, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China Everbright Bank (CEB), China Telecom, China Mobile, Ping An Insurance, China Netcom and China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. (CSG). Among them, the asset of State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) is as high as CNY1.1697 trillion.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
AIG-Huatai Fund Management Enhances Regitered Capital. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 25, SinoCast -- AIG-Huatai Fund Management Co., Ltd. (AIG-Huatai), a Shanghai-based joint venture fund management company, recently enhanced its registered capital from CNY 100 million to CNY 200 million after gaining approval from relevant governmental agency.



Prior to that, its shareholders AIG Global Investment Corporation (AIGGIC), Huatai Securities Co., Ltd. (Huatai Securities) and Suzhou New District Hi-tech Industrial Co. respectively took 49%, 49% and 2% of interests in the joint venture. This time, the fund injection is conducted in light of the proportion of their respective interest.

An official of the joint venture expressed the enhancement of registered capital would be helpful for the expansion and development of the company, for relevant Chinese law indicates the fund management in the interbank foreign exchange market must have no less than CNY 150 million of registered capital.

Later, the joint venture will sequentially start the business regarding QFII and QDII and enterprise annuity, added the official.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
Changhong Builds A PDP Production Line. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SICHUAN, September 25, SinoCast -- Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., Ltd., once the largest TV maker in China, recently started the construction of a PDP (Plasma Display Panel) production line in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, according to sources.



The production line, co-invested by Changhong Electric and IRICO Group Corporation, a Shaanxi-based color picture tube manufacturer, will cost USD 800 million in total, of which USD 300 million, the investment in the early stage, will be used for infrastructure construction. South Korean plasma TV pioneer OrionPDP will join the cooperation as a third party.

In terms of the schedule, the production line will be completed and put into production in March 2008. By then, it will be capable of turning out 2 million PDP panels every year, equal to the production capacity of Japan-based Pioneer Electronics, the world's fifth largest plasma panel manufacturer.

With regard to the core technology of PDP production, Changhong Electric and IRICO introduced the third party OrionPDP, which alleged the possession of 171 patents in PDP and relevant technological sectors. The president of the enterprise said publicly in August this year that OrionPDP was promoting cooperation with Chinese enterprises such as Changhong Electric and IRICO in creating a large plasma display plant in China.

Changhong Electric originally planned to lay a foundation for the production line on August 8 and make it known to the public at the same time, revealed insiders. Due to some reasons, however, it kept a low profile at last, and even asked its employees to hold their tongues. Not long ago, the company held a press conference for the release of some models of quanta chip flat panel TVs, saying that it would have further movements in the PDP sector. But managers presenting at the conference still disclosed nothing about the new production line.

Since the PDP production line involves interests of different parties, and the investment is huge, all news will be subject to the announcement of the board of directors, according to Guo Dexuan, vice president of Changhong Electric.

Previously, Changhong Electric and IRICO had negotiated an equal stake in the production line. However, after the introduction of technologies OrionPDP, the stake structure is changed into 4:4:2, according to insiders. But the accurate news is that the three parties are now discussing with each other about their stakes in the plant, and Changhong Electric is pursuing a controlling stake.

At present, most of TV makers in China focus on liquid crystal TVs, and the ones previously invested by domestic manufacturers such as BOE and SVA were liquid crystal panel production lines as well. The production volume of plasma TVs had been only one tenth of that of crystal liquid TVs in the first seven months of this year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry of China. Changhong Electric is one of the few companies supporting plasma TV.

Asked about this, Guo Dexuan said that Changhong Electric had special "affection" for plasma TV, considering it superior to liquid crystal TV no matter from the aspect of technology or from the aspect of cost. Although there is a difference between the sales volumes of the two kinds of products, their sales are roughly the same. At present, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, FHP, and Pioneer Electronics turn out above 99% PDP panels in the world, and the intervention of Changhong Electric and IRICO perhaps can break the monopolization.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.92)

Copyright 2006 Sinocast

Breaking the monopoly

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Breaking the monopoly. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A market economy facilitating the development of all businesses, instead of just monopoly players, is in the best interest of the country, says a signed article in China Economic Times. An excerpt follows: PetroChina Company Limited (PetroChina) has topped the list of Asia's 150 best enterprises selected by Business Week. China Mobile cracked the top 10, coming from the 41st place last year to No 9. There are also 17 other Chinese businesses in the top 50.



It is not strange that PetroChina has secured the top position in Asia. Its outstanding performance primarily results from the consistent high price of petroleum, its monopoly on the domestic energy market and a fairly good corporate governance.

Admittedly, PetroChina has improved its corporate governance significantly in recent years and this has reduced errors in management decisions and sharpened its competitive edges. However, the first two reasons are the main engine for its business success. PetroChina's top position in the list is not purely a result of its business capability, but determined by its role in the country's energy strategy.

As a State-owned enterprise monopolizing a key industry of the country, PetroChina's position on the list does not reflect the real competence of the Chinese businesses in average.

The latest official figures show that State-owned enterprises are being gathered in the monopolizing industries, such as energy, transportation and communication. More than 80 per cent of the State-owned or State holding enterprises were making good profits in 2005.

However, academics observe that Chinese businesses are being less profitable on average. As long as the economy is not open enough to private capital in the country, the State support to the State-owned enterprises would impose more limits on the further development of the private sector, which, in turn, would threaten the commercial climate and the competence of the businesses. If a private company from China survived the market competition and becomes the best performer of Asia, we would be able to applaud for a successful market economy.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Gov't Strategy for Mining Industry Rejected Once Again. Check it out:
(Polish News Bulletin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) For yet another time, the majority of trade unions have rejected the government strategy for the mining industry. The meeting organised by Deputy Economy Minister Pawel Poncyliusz, which was attended by over 100 people representing the sector, turned into a full-blown dispute. While Poncyliusz pointed out the dangers related to the rising costs of mining enterprises, representatives of trade unions argued that there is no chance of their being lowered. In the opinion of the government, companies unable to divest their produce will have to reduce extraction and use own finances to shut down unprofitable mines. This view is opposed both by the unions and management boards of mining companies. They believe that the budget will have to take into account the ZL400m necessary to raise the capital of leading sector enterprise Kompania Weglowa (KW). However, Poncyliusz stated that such a solution is impossible.



Copyright 2006 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.

Goodbye Mr Wibbly Wobbly Wonder

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Goodbye Mr Wibbly Wobbly Wonder. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TO BERTIE Ahern as a boy, it meant 'either it was a birthday or Sunday'. To playwright Bernard Farrell, getting a pint brick of HB ice cream home for Sunday dinner in pre-fridge days involved a ritual of timing so precise it was like transporting uranium.



Once safely home, Farrell recalls, it was stored away under two cushions on the sofa to keep it cold.

'Bring home a brick after Mass,' the advertising slogan said. And, indeed, from the mid-1920s onwards, generation after generation of Irish households did just that - serving the weekly treat with a tin of fruit cocktail in the good times, on its own in the not so good.

HB, of course, stands for Hughes Brothers, but also for Hazelbrook, the name of the eponymous farmhouse on the luxury ice cream line the company now markets. But there was a real Hazelbrook farm - in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, where in 1926 a farmer called William Hughes started making ice cream - and there were real Hughes brothers.

This week the last of them, also called William, died peacefully at the ripe old age of 86. His death went almost unnoticed.

But an enterprise that started almost by chance - because grandfather Hughes' cows were producing more milk than he could sell to local housewives - was to become a success story and a national institution.

Hazelbrook's dairy was Ireland's first ice-cream factory.

And HB itself became Ireland's largest ice-cream manufacturer - a position it has maintained, in the face of fierce international competition, to this day - and the creator of such enduring national icons as the Golly Bar, the Brunch and the Wibbly Wobbly Wonder.

Today, the Hazelbrook farm is long gone, concreted over by suburbia. The original farmhouse was demolished brick-by-brick and moved to the Bunratty folk park in Co.

Clare, where it was rebuilt in 2001. The Rathfarnham factory itself survived until 2003, but it too is now gone.

Until HB ice cream came along, the dessert had only been made in Ireland in very small quantities in the kitchens of the 'big houses' of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. It was a rare luxury for the really wealthy.

Today, Ireland's per capita consumption rate of ice cream, about 10.5 litres a head, is the third highest in Europe.

WE ACTUALLY eat as much as the Italians, traditionally considered the real ice cream lovers in Europe.

And about 80 per cent of all ice cream sold in Ireland is HB's.

The first William Hughes had 'emigrated' from Co.

Meath in the 1870s and moved to work in Rathfarnham as a land steward on a farm. He and his wife Margaret always wanted a farm of their own, so, in 1884, they rented a farmhouse - which they called Hazelbrook - and the surrounding land.

The house was named after a nearby brook, which can still be seen today.

Eventually farmer Hughes got enough money together to build his own four-bedroomed house in 1898, which he also called Hazelbrook.

There the Hughes family grew up in a happy rural atmosphere - in those days, Rathfarnham was in open country, miles from the city.

William died in 1906 and his sons, James, George and William, took over the business and were the pioneers who eventually launched ice cream on an unsuspecting Irish public. The farm prospered under their control and the dairy herd was built up.

The Hughes family initiated the hygienic production and distribution of milk and started selling their milk in bottles - then a revolutionary concept - in 1912.

By 1924, the Hughes' milk business had grown so big they opened a brand new dairy for bottling the milk at Hazelbrook. Two years later came the prototype icecream factory.

Initially, because so few areas of the country had electricity, they had to concentrate on supplying shops that could install the free fridges given to them by Hughes Brothers.

Soon, the biggest customer was Woolworths, which in those days had a chain of stores around Ireland. The first one-pint ice-cream brick was marketed in 1933.

By 1938, just 12 years after the factory opened, it was selling GBP22,000 worth of ice cream a year, while the milk side of the firm was selling more than double that, GBP58,000.

However, World War II - and the declining health of James Hughes, the company manager - spelled the death knell for family ownership of the business and very nearly for the business itself. In 1944, bailed out by the Royal Bank of Scotland, HB became a public company.

William Hughes - he always preferred to be called just 'Bill' - was the only member of the founding family to retain any shares in this new company. He joined in 1950 as a director and became assistant managing director eight years later.

In 1964, the firm was bought out by an American food company, W & R Grace, based in New York. The previous year, W & R Grace had bought out another iconic local company, Urney Chocolates in Tallaght, a brand that has long since disappeared.

Three years after the U.S.

firm took over, Bill Hughes was appointed managing director. A huge new icecream factory at Rathfarnham was to follow, built in 1967 at a cost of GBP1.3million.

Then came the big split. In 1968, the two major dairies in Dublin, HB and Premier, did a swap. Premier took over HB's milk business and HB got Premier's ice- cream trade.

The Rathfarnham factory became a major exporter to the UK.

Bill Hughes became managing director of the Hughes Dairy business, by then part of Premier Dairies. However, he retained his links with both the dairy and the ice cream firms until 1982, when ill-health forced him to retire.

Hughes then went to live at Druid's Glen in Co. Wicklow, with his wife Georgina.

UNILEVER, anxious to protect its position in the British market, bought out W & R Grace in 1973. Between 1973 and 1990, the Rathfarnham factory launched a string of new products, including the Fat Frog and Viennetta and, in 1974, the legendary Wibbly Wobbly Wonder.

But it was too big to produce the purely local brands marketed by HB, such as the pint bar, Golly Bars and Brunches, and too small for economic production of brands such as Magnum and Cornetto for export markets.

In 2003, Unilever Ireland chairman Paul Murphy announced the closure of the Rathfarnham facility.

Today, the site lies derelict, awaiting development as a suburban shopping mall.

Hazelbrook farmhouse itself survives - albeit in Bunratty, where Bill Hughes visited his reconstructed childhood home in 2001 and declared: 'Going up the stairs I might have been four years old. It all came back to me.' But, most importantly of all, those uniquely Irish HB creations survive - the Wibbly Wobbly Wonder, the Golly Bar, the Brunch and, the daddy of them all, the pint brick.

The Story Of HB: 80 Years Of Ireland's Favourite Ice Cream, by Paul Mulhern and Kieran Fagan is published by Unilever, priced E29.50.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Unionists get invitation to meet Dail committee. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) UNIONIST politicians could appear before a Dil parliamentary committee in the near future, it emerged yesterday.

The all-party Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business said that it would consider a proposal by the SDLP to invite unionist parties from the North to Dublin for talks at Leinster House.

Addressing a session of the all-party body, Sean Farren, the SDLP enterprise spokesman, suggested that the committee should extend an invitation to members of Ian Paisley's Democratic Union Party and the Ulster Unionist Party as part of ongoing North-South co-operation initiatives.



Committee chairman Donie Cassidy said: 'We will certainly pursue the possibility of inviting all parties in the North to come down to have dialogue with us.

'We would also accept an invitation to see how we can play our part in visiting Stormont.' Earlier, Mr Cassidy called also for a substantial 20-year EU investment plan to help the North's economy.

'The South has achieved a lot with Europe and the North could certainly be achieving just as much if the EU played its part,' he said.

Committee member Phil Hogan added that such co-operation would lead to further integration and less duplication of services on both sides of the border.

Meanwhile, committee members pulled no punches as they called for the northern parties to agree on power-sharing before the November 24 deadline set by the British and Irish governments.

Fianna Fil senator Terry Leyden said: 'For God's sake get your act together. It will be the last chance for a long time to come unless you all move on November 24.' Mr Farren said that if no deal is agreed on devolution, the politicians would continue to carry out their work.

'We can't just fold up our tents and walk away,' he said.

The SDLP delegation, which attended the committee meeting, included MLAs John Dallat and Dolores Kelly.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Labour admits: We gave GBP3m of taxpayers' money to the unions. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE true extent of Labour's capitulation to the union barons who fund the party is revealed today in an embarrassing internal dossier.

Labour chairman Hazel Blears has penned an extraordinary seven-page memo boasting of the 25 ways the party has acceded to trade union demands over the past two years.

These include a new GBP3million 'union modernisation fund' from which taxpayers' money is directly used to subsidise their activities.

Ms Blears also trumpets the watering-down of antistrike legislation and Labour's plans to give union bosses greater power in the 'modern workplace'.

The document was prepared as a private briefing note to MPs to help them head off any complaints from local shop stewards that the Labour Government was doing too little to help them.

Unions are keen to ensure Ministers deliver on the so-called Warwick Agreement of 2004, when the party agreed to a series of controversial demands in return for their continued financial support.

Publicly Tony Blair likes to keep his distance from the increasingly Leftwing figures who lead Britain's big unions. But the Blears memo reveals clearly how his Government has been quietly advancing union interests behind the scenes.

The Tories claimed the dossier showed that Labour, despite its talk about helping enterprise and industry, was still in hock to the unions. The unions now provide it with most of its large donations.

And Labour's largest outstanding loan is owed to the Unity Trust Bank, set up by the trade unions to help credit unions and charities.

Conservative chairman Francis Maude said: 'This is yet more evidence of the dodgy deals hatched between Labour and the unions.

'In return for funding Labour's campaigning, they're getting pet policies and bungs with taxpayers' money. This cronyism undermines our entire democratic process.

'That's why we put forward proposals to clean up politics, including a cap on political donations. It should come as no surprise that Labour have already rejected them out of hand.'

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.

TDs' supermarket swoop

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TDs' supermarket swoop. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IRELAND's major grocery retailers may face a probe into alleged abuse of their market dominance after a call from a powerful Dil committee.

The panel wants the Competition Authority to use its powers to look into the turnover and profits of major retailers such as Tesco, Dunnes Stores and Supervalu over concerns that shoppers are being ripped off over food prices.

The news comes despite the recent abolition of the Groceries Order, which prevented retailers from passing the benefit of bulk discounts on to consumers.

While the latest inflation figures showed items covered by the order fell by 0.2 per cent in the past year, other items increased in price by 3.5 per cent, giving rise to general rises of 0.8 per cent for groceries overall.

The call for the probe into the Irish grocery sector comes after a report compiled by Fine Gael Senator Paul Coghlan into the British retail sector, which identified evidenceof anti-competitive behaviourby some of the major grocery multiples.



Writing in the report - formally adopted by the Oireachtas Enterprise Committee yesterday - Senator Coghlan noted suggestions that the UK major multiples were engaged in anti-competitive behaviour to the 'ultimate detriment of consumers'.

Senator Coghlan concluded that there was clear evidence of pricefixing by large retailers in the UK, and expressed fears that the same abuses could now be taking place here.

He also noted the existence of 'price-flexing' in the UK, whereby smaller retailers were put at a competitive disadvantage by being forced to pay more for the same products than their larger retail counterparts.

Typically, the multiple retailer takes a large order from a particular supplier, on condition that the supplier makes other smaller retailers pay more for the same product.

Calling for a probe similar to that now under way in the UK by the Competition Commission, he said: 'The Competition Authority in Ireland must now launch its own investigation into competition in the retail grocery sector, particularly-since some UK retailers are major operators in the Irish market.' The hard-hitting report also calls on the Competition Authority to investigate large retailers' strategic purchases of land banks across the country.

Typically these land banks lie fallow until another retailer attempts to set up in the same location, or in close proximity.

Once this happens, the owner of the land bank develops a new retail outlet with a view to killing off the potential competition.

In a hard-hitting conclusion, the Enterprise Committee's report states: 'In retail planning terms, competition should be a relevant factor in granting permission for stores.

'Where an existing retailer already has a presence in a town, then there should be an inhibition on a new store being opened or acquired in that town, unless it can be shown that local competition will not suffer.' The report also calls for an examination of restrictive covenants on the part of retailers, which prevent competitors from setting up in locations they have since abandoned.

The report concludes: 'This is blatantly anti-competitive.' There are also calls in the report for a reform of the planning laws to ensure competition in the groceries trade.

Currently, planning applications for new grocery outlets are often rejected on the grounds that a particular location is already served by a major retailer.

On a more fundamental level, there is even a call for an assessment of the impact of the different parking regimes for outlet retailers compared with those operating in town centres.

Senator Coghlan expressed his concern at the growing power of major grocery retailers in Ireland.

He added: 'Consumers have a right to a wide range of goods at the lowest possible prices.

'In order for this to happen, we need to constantly review the growth of the multiple retailers because they have the power to exercise enormous influence over suppliers, producers, smaller competitors and consumers.'

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Bharti gets enterprising, targets banks, IT firms. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : After playing a key role in changing India's telecom landscape with mobile services, Bharti Airtel is now strengthening and expanding its enterprise services business. The enterprise services division, made a separate business unit in March this year, is focusing on seven key verticals as it begins to cash in on the telecommunication needs of large enterprises, including banks, BPOs and financial services.



Enterprise services, which includes long distance and corporate enterprise businesses, mopped up Rs 900 crore in revenues in the quarter ended June 30, '06. As we move forward, we are accelerating. India is making big strides in automation, which has also been enabled by state-run projects. We see a plethora of opportunities for connecting enterprises, Vinod Sawhny, joint president, Airtel Enterprise Services, told ET.

The unit's other verticals are real estate, insurance, retail, IT and ITeS. Bullish on the banking vertical, Airtel has networked over 1,000 branches of Bank of India (BoI) in a contract valued at nearly Rs 64 crore.

This will help BoI in implementing the Basel II system, for which banks have to maintain data of every transaction at a centralised level. We also provided them real-time gross settlement (RTGS) solution through which even outstation cheques are immediately settled, said Mr Sawhny.

Going forward, we will connect not only Indian branches of banks, but also their international branches. The next two to three years will see every bank well connected, he added. The company will use its undersea cable infrastructure for international connectivity. Airtel's i2i undersea cable network is complemented with the SeMeWe4 cable, which connects four subcontinents.

The margins in Bharti's enterprise business jumped from 35.6% in January-March '06 to 47.5% in the first quarter of the current fiscal. It compares favourably with rivals in the enterprise segment, which include BSNL and Reliance Communications.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Zee, Motorola in mobile radio technology deal. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) : Media giant, Zee Group has decided to join hands with Motorola for launching public mobile radio trunking services in Bangalore.

The proposed deal includes using the US-based telecom giant's iDEN technology for this venture.

Though the company had applied for one MHz of spectrum in January this year, Zee TV business head and director of the group Punit Goenka informed the Department of Telecom last week that it has roped in with Motorola and requested the DoT's intervention for allocation of 1 MHz of spectrum at the earliest to commence the operations.



In his letter, dated September 15, Goenka said "After evaluating several technologies, we have decided to use Motorola's iDEN technology for this PMRT services...as per the guidelines, 3MHz of spectrum has been earmarked for digital PMRT services, out of which 1 MHz shall be allocated to any applicant on a first-com first-serve basis."

The Motorola devices could useful to enterprise customers that have long depended on the reliability and range of the walkie-talkie-like push-to-talk (PTT) service on the iDEN network.

Zee plans to provide services using the Motorola-iDEN technology enabling private conversation in a closed group, which will not be charged.

The device will run voice and data services over the network while keeping the PTT VOIP service on the iDEN network.

Motorola's iDEN technology has been in use for the last 20 years across several networks in 22 countries. The US-based Nextel is the largest and most successful service provider using the technology.

"We have done an extensive Radio frequency survey at Bangalore...for city wide coverage as well as to support a network capacity upto 10,000 subscribers, we would require 40 pairs of frequencies (1 MHz)," the letter said.

Zee plans to launch the service during the current fiscal itself.

Stating no other organisation has been approached DoT for usage of spectrum to provide PMRTS, Zee urged the DoT to allocate the same at the earliest.

It also sought the department's intervention as 'despite repeated meetings and discussions with the WPC wing of the Ministry of Communication the required amount of spectrum was not yet released.'

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited

Hope floats

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Hope floats. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Looking at the action in the primary market so far this year, it's difficult to miss the significance of May 11, '06. In the preceding four months and 11 days, as many as 36 IPOs got listed on the BSE.



This indicates a clear arbitrage opportunity waiting to be tapped. On May 11, Reliance Petroleum debuted at a huge premium (Rs 101.95) over its offer price (Rs 60). The Sensex hit its life-time high of 12671 on the same day.

However, subsequently, the number of new listings dried up to just eight. Standard Chartered Enterprise Equity Fund, which aims to generate capital growth mainly by investing in initial public offerings (IPOs) and subsequent public offers, hit the market on May 16, '06. It is a threeyear close-ended equity fund.

Its strategy is to invest in about 70% of the IPOs which hit the market, and sell on listing. The offer document states that the fund looks at holding equity at an average rate of 60-65%. The fund has managed to beat the benchmark BSE200 since its launch, though it has underperformed the equity funds category.

It has generated 6.4% returns since launch, compared to near zero returns by the BSE200. Its three-month returns, at 6.2%, trailed equity fund returns, at 14%. The net asset value (NAV) of the fund is currently at Rs 10.64. Investors in normal equity funds could have obtained better returns than those generated by this fund.

With the slowdown in the number and quality of IPOs, it remains to be seen to what extent the fund can generate returns for investors. During its launch, the fund had said that it expected more than 200 companies to list in the next couple of years.

But with the equity market witnessing a huge correction immediately after its new fund offering (NFO) in May '06, a couple of big issues were postponed. Following this, the fund went on a capital protection mode, remaining high on cash. Its onemonth returns stood at 1.74%.

The fund had hit the market during the peak of the bull run, when investors' confidence was at an alltime high. This helped the fund to mop up an impressive corpus. As on August 31, the assets under management (AUM) of the fund stood at Rs 1,514 crore.

However, immediately after its launch, the market went on a slide and bottomed out at 9000-level in mid-June. Hence, the fund kept away from IPOs during this period, including Deccan Aviation, which opened flat on its offer price of Rs 148 and subsequently fell to Rs 98 the same day.

Following this, the jumbo IPO of real estate major DLF was rescheduled. The market recovered lost ground in July and August. As a result, the fund expects a revival in the primary market, though the size of some individual IPOs have been extremely small.

The fund manager, Kenneth Andrade, maintains an optimistic view on the pipeline of issues. However, if the primary market continues to remain lukewarm, the fund's managers have a plan-B in place. In the absence of IPOs, the fund will invest in the Nifty and/or arbitrage between stocks and futures.

The fund has also been grad

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Boost for Motorola's two-way radio operations in region. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WIRELESS and broadband communications leader Motorola expects the expansion of its research and develoment (R&D) operations in Penang to cater to the growing demand for two-way radios and energy products in the Asia-Pacific region.



Motorola Penang, which is the largest of the three manufacturing centres worldwide for two-way radio products, expects to increase its presence in the next decade by moving up the manufacturing value chain.

With the increase in awareness in public safety deployment, the demand for mission-critical communications systems has also increased in the Asia-Pacific region," Motorola Malaysia's national director, system solution sales for networks and enterprise division, Mohd Asri Hassan said.

He said the injection of another US$12 million (RM44.16 million) in May in the Penang outfit, which also houses the only two-way radio design centre in Asia, reaffirmed its long-term investment strategy in Malaysia.

"This year will also mark a major milestone for Motorola Penang which expects its headcount to cross the 1,000-mark," he said at a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Currently, 75 per cent of its mission critical Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) and products compliance to APCO P25 (Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials) systems are designed and developed in Penang for the worldwide market.

Motorola is the only communication vendor that has the expertise to design, manufacture and implement mission-critical communications systems based on APCO P25 and TETRA communications platform.

In 2005, Motorola's two-way radio business accounted for 18 per cent of global sales contribution, and combined with the wireless broadband sales, the contribution was 35 per cent.

Motorola has so far invested more than US$1.3 billion (RM4.78 billion) in Malaysia and established as a leading manufacturer of high-technology communications solutions and radio accessories for the global market.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

Managing uncertainty

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Managing uncertainty. Check it out:
(New Straits Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WE have many outstanding statesman whom we revered. In my Form Six history lessons in the early 70s, one that fascinated me was Benjamin Disraeli, (British premier 1804-1881). One of his famous statements was: "What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens". This quote has a lot of relevance to the art and soul of risk management because its fundamentals are not complete without the understanding of "uncertainty" or "unknown". Indeed, risk is all about the uncertainty of risk occurring. If we know the risk will occur, we will not do the deal or execute the operation.



The fact is that we do not know, and only hope that it does not occur.

For this reason, we diligently apply all the known ways of managing the uncertainty of risk occurring. Obviously, it is not easy to prevent the risk from occurring, especially if it is something beyond our control. But if it does occur, the negative impact would be minimised to that we could accept or live with. After all, we are not too concerned about the risk per se. Rather, our focus is on the impact of the risk that may be negative for us. If the impact is positive, or we gain from the risk, then of course that would be welcomed. WHAT CAUSES UNCERTAINTY? Uncertainty crops up because of few factors that haunt our mindset, attitude or opinion. They include: * Uncertainty due to poor overall decision and wrong opinion: The feeling that the option or decision we take would be the wrong one; * Uncertainty due to rationale or relationship: The rationale or relationship of the issue being studied might be seen from the wrong perspective where we may have inadequate parameters; * Uncertainty due to doubt in the analysis process: The model/guide-values for our evaluation of the issue may be irrelevant or wrong; * Uncertainty due to inadequate sampling: The statistics that we use for the assessment of the subject matter might be insufficient, unrealistic, incomplete or outdated; and * Uncertainty due to errors and biases: The analysis done for the samplings taken might be tainted with errors and poor human judgment.

The above five factors causing the doubt. The elements of unknown/uncertainty in us can turn haywire to our risk management programme. To minimise such unknown, it is vital to ensure that these issues are adequately addressed.

RISK OCCURS FROM THE UNKNOWN. It is not easy to manage unknown events, as some of the risks are beyond human controls, such as flood, earthquake, tornado and robbery. However, managing the negative financial or non-financial impact might be easy to strategise. For example, we can keep all our precious assets on higher floor, so that should a flood still occur after a heavy rain, the negative financial impact and damage by water would be minimised. Or we would install an alarm system in our premises so that should the robbers came unannounced, they might abort the raid because the alarm bell was triggered. Thus the risk of robbery is mitigated. Assuming we have taken the burglary insurance cover, should the robbers succeeded in carting away the valuables, we would have the financial loss minimised because we have insured the valuables and could claim back the amounts from the insurance company.

THE PAST AS GUIDES TO MOVE FORWARD. Machiavelli, an Italian philosopher and statesman who lived from 1446 to 1507, once said, "Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past." More often than not, risk managers rely a lot on past data and historical events to chart forecast and assess the various risks inherent in any organisation. A lot of truth prevailed in the quote by Machiavelli. In some instances, history tends to repeat itself because the same kind of risk could surface again at some later time, if such risk is then not effectively managed using the lessons learnt from the past risk occurrence. RISK MANAGEMENT IS A PROACTIVE ART. Of course, we must be mindful that risk management is not about history alone. It should have balanced proactive feature - using the previous risk occurrences to predict what would happen in both the short and long period in the future. It is not a fallacy to state that risk management is about moving forward. It is about preparing and predicting the future state of events and operations using past patterns or historical trends in supporting such predictions.

SIX WAYS TO TREAT THE UNKNOWN. How do we treat risk? There are many ways, but the more popular options are: i) Avoid. We can simply avoid the risk and do not do the deal. But this is not really risk management since there will be nothing to manage anyway, given that the transaction or operation is aborted. But not everything is as simple as that. There are risks that we have to face everyday, and as part of our way of doing the business and operations. ii) Share. We can share the negative risk impact by putting up a strategic alliance, joint-venture or merging our smaller outfits to bigger outfit that can withstand more risk or cushion the negative impacts. There is truth in the adage of "strength in unity" and the bigger the size, the stronger it should be. iii) Transfer. A good example of risk transfer is using insurance. An insurance policy taken to cover the damage and loss by fire would provide comfort to the property owner as he would be able to receive the financial compensation benefits from the insurance company. However, not all risks could be insured. We are still left at the mercy of the non-insurable risks. So, the need to ensure that we have a good risk management plan to address those non-insurable risks is very critical for the success of any organisation. iv) Reduce. We can reduce the likelihood of the risk to occur, and minimise the negative impact of the risk by either cutting down on our exposure or involvement in the operations.

v) Accept. Many risks that haunt us are common day-to-day events that cannot be avoided, which we address as the cost of doing that kind of business. We need to accept those risks as a normal way to do the business. An example of this kind of risk is a supermarket's cashier with a minor cash shortage at the end of the day's takings. vi) Prevent. Some forms of risk can be prevented from occurring. For example, theft of valuable asset from a strong room is a risk. One way to prevent this is to ensure that no one can enter the strong room alone, and a closed-circuit TV must be installed for monitoring purpose. There must be at least two people holding the keys and going in at any time. The writer is chief risk officer of a commercial bank and author of Enterprise-wide Risk Management Made Easy. He can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]. Part two of this article will appear next Saturday.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Plexus Manufacturing to open third plant in Penang. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) PLEXUS Corp, a US-based electronics contract manufacturer, plans to expand its operations in Malaysia by opening a third plant in Penang, company officials said.

Plexus, headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, currently has two manufacturing plants in Penang via Plexus Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, which is located at the Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone.

Other than Penang, Plexus also has operations in China.

The expansion here will bring Plexus' manufacturing capacity to 630,000 sq ft, making Penang its largest base in Asia.

The Nasdaq-listed Plexus, which has yearly revenue of US$1.2 billion (RM4.40 billion), is expected to invest as much as US$38 million (RM139.46 milion) to beef up operations in Penang.

Operation at the new facility is due to start by as early as the middle of next year. The last time Plexus expanded its operations in Penang was in 2004.

Plexus' investment plans should be soothing to Penang, the country's technology-driven manufacturing hub.

The state recently received a blow when Intel Corp, the world's biggest chipmaker, announced a global scale layoff.

It was reported that as many as 2,000 jobs would be cut in Malaysia.

Intel, at the start of the year employed some 6,500 people.

Business Times was told that while the Intel job cuts was a blow, the authorities were more concerned about Vietnam emerging as a threat to Penang for technology-driven jobs and investment.

In February, Intel said it was investing as much as US$300 million (RM1.10 billion) in Vietnam, with an option to double the investment size.

The investment, the biggest by a single company, will create 1,200 jobs in Vietnam by 2007. Intel intends to build a greenfield plant to produce chips and computer parts at Ho Chi Minh City's high-tech park.

Months before that, International Data Group, the world's largest IT media group, invested as much as US$100 million (RM368 million) to help start-up technology companies grow in Vietnam.

The communist-run country, where minimum wage at foreign-based enterprise is only about US$55 (RM202) a month, exported some US$1.44 billion (RM5.28 billion) of electronic products last year.

With a relatively modest labour cost and a young educated population, Vietnam is hoping to rope in as much as US$6 billion (RM22.02 billion) in foreign direct investments this year.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
QDOS aims to set up Indian plant by 2007. Check it out:
(Business Times (Malaysia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) QDOS Flexcircuits Sdn Bhd, a local manufacturer of flexible printed circuit (FPC), wants to ride the wave of the booming electronics and electrical (E&E) sector in India by setting up a production plant there by the end of next year.



QDOS chairman and chief executive officer, Radzali Hassan, said many multinational corporations (MNCs) are moving to India as it is the next growth area.

"We have started looking for space (in India) and production is set to start either at the end of 2007 or the first quarter 2008.

"It will be supported from Malaysia's office and the investment (in the factory) could be around RM300,000," Radzali told Business Times in Kuala Lumpur recently.

FPC, due to it fexibility, is highly in demand by manufacturers of consumer equipment and military equipment such as mobile phones, digital cameras, medical-related equipments, smartcards, passports, walkie talkies as well as audio and portable electronics products.

QDOS Fexcircuits and QDOS Technology Sdn Bhd are subsidiaries of QDOS Holdings Sdn Bhd, which in turn is a wholly-owned subsidiary of main-board listed Suiwah Corp Bhd.

Radzali said QDOS also has an affiliate company in China, QDOS (Xiamen) Flexcircuits Sdn Bhd, which is involved in the manufacturing and marketing.

QDOS, a pioneer and fully-integrated local manufacturer of FPC, has electronic giants like Motorola as its customers.

About 70 per cent of the company's FPC are supplied to MNCs in Penang's free trade zone, where the end products are exported worldwide.

Radzali said QDOS currently has a research and development (R&D) centre in India, namely QDOS Flexcircuits India Pvt Ltd, that employs 10 people, including support staff, sales team and engineers.

"When we begin manufacturing operation in India, it will make our factory in Penang (QDOS Technology) as the centre of high-end activities, while mid-end activities will be in India and China," he said.

QDOS, which came out first in the annual Enterprise 50 (E50) award last year, sees participation in the programme as a boost to the company's image and will provide motivation to its 600-strong staff. "It is not the winning that matters but it is the mindset change and the running of the organisation," said Radzali, who likens winning E50 as a "health supplement" to improve and motivate the company's staff.

He said the publicity given to QDOS as top E50 company has helped the company to draw in more customers while at the same time, it receives many enquiries from overseas MNCs.

Radzali said QDOS invests 1 per cent of its turnover annually for R&D activities.

Copyright 2006 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire
Minister of Information and Communications Technology visits Ayla Information Technology. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) His Excellency Eng. Omar Ashraf Al- Kurdi, Jordan's Minister of Information and Communications Technology recently visited the Ayla Information Technology firm, one of Jordan's growing developers of business software solutions. This visit, which was arranged by the Information Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j), comes as part of the effort initiated by the Minister to hear, first hand, about the successes, opportunities, and challenges of the Jordanian ICT private sector.



"This visit reflects the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologys focus on enhancing its partnership with the ICT private sector, which is crucial to the industrys growth and development", said Al Kurdi. He also emphasized that "The Ministry is quite keen on providing all the necessary support to Jordanian ICT companies towards building capacity, developing innovative and competitive products, as well as penetrating regional and international markets".

The Minister was received by Aylas General Manager Mr. Raja Said who accompanied him on his tour of the premises. Through his conducting of an elaborate presentation, Mr. Said introduced His Excellency to Aylas profile, products and services. He explained the different types of services provided by the company, including the company Enterprise Resource Planning Application, its web development services as well as Mobile Development.On another level, Mr. Said also introduced his guest to the firm's goals, objectives, future plans and operations. On this occasion he further affirmed that the firms presence in the local market had allowed it to serve several large corporations in Jordan including the Amman Chamber of Industry, MobileCom, National Paints, Ring Jordan, Medlabs Consultancy Group, and others.

Mr. Said acknowledged His Excellency for his visit, whereby he said, "We at Ayla regard the Ministers visit to our headquarters with great importance, and we hope that this visit provided His Excellency with adequate information about the company's activities and challenges. We hope that His Excellency and the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology will work to instill laws and regulations that will in turn foster the wider and more fruitful spread of our services on both local and regional scale, and we hope that our firm will continue to develop top quality products and services that in turn respond to the demands of Jordans thriving corporate IT sector." Mr. Said stated that a large portion of the firms success is attributed to its highly skilled and motivated team members," Our technical team possesses valuable experiences, and is proficient in the use of several technologies. Their skills are further enhanced by the strategic guidance of our highly dedicated and motivated management team. On my part I am proud of each and every individual on the Ayla force, for without their hard work we wouldnt be where we are today. We hope that His Excellency visit to our headquarters will help us solidify our role as leading providers of convenient corporate services to members of the Jordanian community, for we will always use our full understanding of the market as our guide for creating high quality technological solutions, and we will continue to create solutions that serve to further advance national economic growth" "Our mission is to utilize the latest and most robust technologies available on the market to provide intelligent software solutions for both the local and regional business community. With the expertise of our team we have achieved our goals and more" he added 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Two senior executives join the growing Dubai Aerospace Enterprise team. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), the global aerospace, manufacturing and service corporation, has strengthened its senior management team with the appointment of two new senior executives.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Open Text, UAE partner

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Open Text, UAE partner. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Telco, Internet & IT Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Open Text Corporation, a provider of enterprise content management software, has restructured its Middle East marketing and business strategy. The company has appointed Itqan, a systems integrator and solutions provider, as its partner in the UAE. The partnership will aim to extend the use of Open Text's solutions by corporate clients across the Middle East.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Two senior execs join DAE

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Two senior execs join DAE. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Travel & Leisure Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has appointed two new senior executives. Robert Mionis has been appointed as the CEO of DAE Manufacturing and DAE Engineering, while Michael Allgood has been named as DAE's Chief Financial Officer. Mionis was previously Vice President of Integrated Supply Chain for Honeywell Aerospace; Allgood has had a variety of roles with financial and banking institutions, as well as logistics and freight companies.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
HH Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan officially inaugurates Danet Abu Dhabi site at grand ground breaking ceremony. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Presidential Affairs, was the guest of honour of Eng. Salah Bin Omeir Al Shamsi, Chairman Al Qudra Holding, today for the celebration of the ground breaking ceremony for the landmark project of Al Qudra Real Estate, the Danet Abu Dhabi project. They were joined by the Board Members of Al Qudra Holding; dignitaries; developers; shareholders and members of the press.



The ground breaking ceremony was held in a luxurious marquis on the site of Danet Abu Dhabi. Images of the project were displayed along with a model of the whole project. HH Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan cut the ribbon marking the official opening of the site and cemented a break as a symbolic gesture.

Al Qudra Real Estate, a subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding PJSC, announced their first project, Danet Abu Dhabi, in May 2006 and it sold-out off plan a mere 45 days after its launch. Construction has started on Danet Abu Dhabi which promises to provide a new urban community in uptown Abu Dhabi and will be ready for residents to move in by early 2009.

"We are committed to developing a world class real estate project with Danet Abu Dhabi," said Eng Salah Al Shamsi. "We are now handing over the land to our investors and we anticipate construction work will be completed within two and half years." Danet Abu Dhabi is a complete community and will feature a spectacular 210 room Holiday Inn which will provide the city with an international-standard hotel fully equipped with restaurants, a health club, swimming pools, meeting rooms and other luxury amenities.

"Abu Dhabi is an important market for business hotels. Holiday Inn is a powerful international brand that will help us achieve our objective of attracting a share of the domestic and international business and leisure travelers." Said Eng Salah Al Shamsi.

Danet Abu Dhabi will be a real community within the heart of Abu Dhabi and will also be a fully interactive Smart Digital Community. The ground breaking ceremony displayed an example of how Danet Abu Dhabi will offer its tenants a comprehensive value-added e-service experience from the comfort of their homes. These include:o Direct links to Danets E-Storefront and delivery services allowing tenants to access Danets retail channels and restaurants to virtually tour shops and purchase items & groceries through the TV set and handheld deviceso Distinctive E-Banking facilities allowing tenants to instantly connect to their bank accounts and transfer money onlineo E-Concierge offering residents an online virtual tour of the Property Facilities as well as outing suggestions and reservations Al Qudra Real Estate has appointed Maunsell Consulting Services to design the whole projects infrastructure utilizing the expertise of EUDO an Autsralian based company and Emirates Utilities Company Holding (EUCH) to implement the proposed work. The demolition and paving of the projects foundation has been completed and executed by TASK General Contracting and Road Works. Al Habtoor Engineering was appointed to carry out the water drilling and consolidation activities expected to be completed by November, 2006 under the management of 3 D/I+PI, another subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding. 3D/I+PI is a Company that manages and develops projects. It emerged as a result of a strategic alliance between Al Qudra Holding, the American 3DI and Projacs Company. The Company supports and manages all of Al Qudra Real Estates projects. 3D/I+PI also manage other important projects in the region. Furthermore, Q Active will implement and interactive Smart Digital Community.

For the construction development of Danet Abu Dhabis landmark, Holiday Inn Hotel, Al Qudra Real estate has appointed Architectural Engineering Consultants (AEC) as the Project Architect.

Danet Abu DhabiDesigned for a value-driven community with high life aspirations in a clearly defined environment, Danet Abu Dhabi enhances natures treasures with the technology of tomorrow to provide you with one of the most valuable investment opportunities available a real estate project positioned as the Pearl of Abu Dhabi. Within a 5 minute drive, residents will have access to many leisure and business facilities. Parking being one of the major ordeals that Abu Dhabi residents suffer daily, Danet Abu Dhabi architects have ensured that this problem is smartly addressed at the city. All buildings are being provided parking spaces to satisfy residential and commercial requirements.

Danet Abu Dhabi will feature five districts inspired from the different Arabic names for pearls: Jumana, Dorra, Louolou, Giwan and Gemash Districts.

Pearls are timeless and classic - they've stood the test of time and they are loved by nearly all. Among all of the gemstones available in this world, the pearl is absolutely unique. This is due to the fact that it is the only gem which is formed entirely within a living being. The same is true of Danet Abu Dhabi formed within the thriving area of Uptown Abu Dhabi. A world class business Holiday Inn Hotel will be built at Danet Abu Dhabi. Holiday Inn has been chosen as it focuses specifically on business and will be a great asset to the city offering state of the art facilities for meetings and conferences of all sizes. The new Holiday Inn forms a landmark for Danet Abu Dhabi and will offer residents and visitors an array of restaurants and leisure facilities. The hotel and its surrounding complex have been designed to offer quality, comfort and convenience.

Facilities and ServicesDanet Abu Dhabi is the place to live par excellence, as an array of facilities and services meet every conceivable residents needs.

1. Business Centre2. Internet services3. Wireless Internet4. 24-hour security Protection5. Facility Management6. Family areas7. Day care Centre8. Sports Centre9. Childrens Playgrounds10. Laundry services11. Swimming pool12. Outdoor running track13. Shopping Malls About Al Qudra Real EstateAQRE believes in developing real communities for real people and offers shrewd investors the opportunity for strategic development investments.The company provides investors with a lifetime chance to invest now in the future of Abu Dhabi itself and play a role in the development of the UAE economy.

AQRE sells to real estate developers and investors. The organization provides investors with land and a full master plan for a community to be developed. AQRE sells to the investor developer and provides them with the strategy and tools needed to sell, or lease, to the end user in order to provide a solid return on initial investment. Plots of land are sold with pre approved permission and the right to develop that land. In depth research into the Abu Dhabi market has been conducted ensuring all future developments address the growing needs and desires of the community. Communities will be created focusing on residential, retail and commercial sectors in prime real estate locations.

As a subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding, Al Qudra Real Estate provides numerous advantages for investors: sound investment opportunities promising real deliverables, in the shortest of timeframes, a truly strategic partnership, and the chance to be at the forefront of the property investment and ownership trend in Abu Dhabi. These advantages will be inherent in all AQRE projects, and a wide array of investment options, financial facilities and payment procedures are designed to suit every investors needs.

About Al Qudra HoldingAl Qudra Holding was established in May 2005 with a capital of AED 600 Million. Today, the company has become the mother company of a large group of specialized subsidiaries that operate under its umbrella in important sectors of the countrys education, tourism, industry, energy, infrastructure development, sports management and the entertainment industry to name a few.

The company is considered the ideal strategic partner for many leading regional companies looking into investments in the United Arab Emirates, and Abu Dhabi in particular. This was achieved through the trust, expertise and competencies that the company has acquired through the foundation of projects, investment strategies and companies that cover a wide range of sectors of development, thus attracting strategic and specialized partners in all fields.

About EUCHEmirates Utilities Company Holding flourished as a result of the important strategic partnership between Al Qudra Holding and the Kuwaiti Al Kharafi Group, represented by one of its subsidiaries, Utilities Development Company Holding. Key endeavors undertaken by EUCH are the management and implementation of BOT and BOO privatization projects.

About Q ActiveA subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding that will specialize transforming the Danet Abu Dhabi project into a fully interactive Smart Digital Community.

About 3DIPI3D/I+PI is a Company that manages and develops projects. It emerged as a result of a strategic alliance between Al Qudra Holding, the American 3DI and Projacs Company. The Company supports and manages all of Al Qudra Real Estates projects and is currently managing the new state of the art building for Al Qudra Holding which is located in the city of Abu Dhabi. This project is expected to be completed in 2008. 3D/I+PI also manage other important projects in the region.

About Habtoor Engineering Ltd,Al Habtoor Group has since grown with the UAE and is now internationally recognized through its Construction, Hotels, Real Estate, Education, Automobile Distribution & Leasing and Publishing businesses. It is one of the UAEs most successful & respected diversified business corporations operating across the Middle East and beyond.The Groups Construction division, Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises, has a rich portfolio having created some of worlds most stunning landmarks such as the magnificent symbol of Dubai the Burj Al Arab, the ultra modern Sheikh Rashid Terminal Concourse 1 and the multi billion US$ construction of the new Terminal 3 Concourse 2project.Just as the name of the United Arab Emirates has become synonymous with trade and enterprise all over the world, the name of the Al Habtoor Group has become synonymous with dynamic growth, evidenced by its commitment to develop new businesses in multiple sectors. For more information see www.habtoor.com 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Creating brands for famous Pinoy pasalubong. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CITY OF SAN FERNANDO From a startup capital of P80 in 1990, the polvoron and pastillas business of couple Redentor and Fatima del Rosario has grown to a P2 million venture.

On Tuesday, their enterprise, called Sasmuan Delicacies, as well as 10 other small businesses earned the trademark Vida Pampanga!

The brand, which stands for excellence in food products standards, would allow Sasmuan Delicacies to sell more in the export market, says Carissa Cruz-Evangelista, Department of Trade and Industry undersecretary for regional operations.

The brand, launched last Tuesday, qualifies the company to be part of the governments One Town, One Product (Otop) marketing program that in 2005 grossed export sales of $113.98 million out of various products from 10 regions, Cruz-Evangelista tells the Inquirer.



Domestic sales from out of 130 Otop pasalubong centers and 1,129 outlets totaled P2.19 billion last year, she says.

On top of that, 3,000 new medium to small enterprises created at least 102,423 jobs over the last 18 months, she adds.

According to her, among the top sellers are lambanog or coco vodka from Tayabas, Quezon; processed bangus from Pangasinan; chicharon from Ilocos Sur; papier mache and woodcarved items from Laguna; gifts and holiday decorations from Rizal; sabutan hats from Aurora; jewelry from Meycauayan, Bulacan; ceramics from Sto. Tomas and furniture from Guagua, both in Pampanga; mangoes from Zambales; cut foliages from Capiz, Iloilo; and marine products from General Santos City.

These products have penetrated the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong markets, Cruz-Evangelista says.

Aside from Sasmuan Delicacies, others that were given certificates of accreditation that allowed them to carry the Vida Pampanga! brand were Nut N Else, NeriMars Sweets, Lailens Pastries, Pines Brownies and Delicacies, Aizas Sweets, Carreons Sweet and Pastries, Emys Sweets and Pastries, Aling Conchings Native Products, Navarro Food International and Kuliat Cakes and Pastries.

They joined the vibrant league of homegrown enterprises. The branding provides us a breakthrough in the export market, says Del Rosario after the launch.

The 11 family-based enterprises have banded under the Sweets and Delicacies Association of Pampanga (SnDAP).

Gov. Mark Lapid emphasized self-reliance, saying small businesses would really have to live and succeed on what they know they do best.

The brand carries the symbols of the famous San Fernando lantern and Mt. Arayat and the phrase Sharing the Best!

The provincial government has set aside P1 million for the promotion of the brand. It will be introduced to the Filipino-American community through a trade fair in Los Angeles, California, by the end of September, Lapid says.

Anacleto Blanco, DTI provincial director, says the branding process took two years. It started when Pampanga joined the Philippine food business mission to the US in 2004 and All Asia Food Expo in Toronto, Canada, in 2005.

The idea of going full-blast in the promotion and marketing of local food products came from former Trade Secretary Cesar Purisima, Blanco says, recalling the canned laing that sold well in the US.

Cruz-Evangelista says Goldilocks, makers of cakes and pastries, was one of the first Filipino companies that ventured into the foreign markets, starting with the Filipino-American community in North America and eventually among American consumers.

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
CEO challenge to sustainable CSR. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO speak to you today. It is heartening to see the participation of so many companies. Clearly, this is an indication of the collective awareness, consciousness and desire of everyone in the private sector to work together and take a more active role in the national development process.



Like many of the companies represented here, the Ayala group is committed to corporate social responsibility. This is a commitment that has increasingly grown over time, especially in more recent years, and has evolved in approach, methods and platforms.

At the heart of this is our firm belief that indeed, the private sector must play a greater and much more involved role as a corporate citizen, given the enormous social and economic disparities that exist in a developing country like the Philippines. As a company that has over time attained some scale and size, we believe we are, just like many of you here, in a good position to make a meaningful impact particularly in the lives of the marginalized sectors of our society.

Throughout our history, we have endeavored to incorporate elements of corporate philanthropy in our business tradition. As we evolved in business, we also constantly transform and reshape our corporate philanthropy programs to meet the needs of the times. Initially, these tended to be stand alone in nature, involved dole-outs or donations, which responded pragmatically to immediate needs. This is not to say these were not effective programs, in fact they were, but the scale and reach were naturally limited and narrower in scope.

It was not until the formation of the Ayala Foundation in the 1960s where our corporate philanthropy programs started to crystallize in a much bigger way. As we institutionalized and formalized our CSR efforts under the foundation, we have been able to engage and participate in different platforms for corporate philanthropy. This has led us to develop projects where we felt we could create most value and make the most impact, which are in the areas of education, culture and the environment.

Education

An example of this is Centex (Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education), a laboratory school which offers the brightest children of the poorest families top quality education within the public education system. It offers the latest curriculum technologies complemented with a total support package (books, uniforms, transportation and nutrition) to ensure that the children do not drop out and that they achieve their full potential. There are currently two Centex schoolsone in Tondo and one in Batangas which are fully endowed to ensure the continuity of the program. Since it started in 1998, Centex has enrolled 1,058 students and last year graduated its second batch of grade school students.

Culture

In the area of culture, we have constructed a new building for the Ayala Museum in Greenbelt which has started to showcase various art forms and crafts that depict our rich cultural heritage and history. The museum serves not only as an important venue for learning but a means to cultivate among Filipinos a greater sense and appreciation of their own history in an atmosphere that is both entertaining and educational.

We have also increasingly worked on projects that promoted causes for the environment in collaboration with other groups such as the World Wildlife Fund.

Literacy

Beyond our involvement in these stand alone efforts, the foundation has also been able to build momentum in recent years to increase the scale and scope of its CSR programs through collaborative endeavors with other entities that shared its vision. With education at the center of this, we have engaged a multi-sectoral group in a project called Gilas or Gearing-up Internet Literacy and Access for Students which aims to connect to the Internet all of the 5,500 public high schools nationwide in the next five years. This is its largest program to date and perhaps the most ambitious. It is being carried out in conjunction with all the major hardware, software and telecommunications companies in the country, many of whom are members of the League of Corporate Foundations. It serves as an interesting example of what a collaborative effort can achieve. To date, about 780 schools have been connected, reaching about 350,000 underprivileged youth. We believe Gilas is not only strategic for these young adults as they develop their skills, but important as well for our country as we build our capabilities in the ICT sector.

Another example is Text2Teach, an Ayala Foundation-led project in partnership with Nokia, USAID, and other global and local companies including Globe Telecom to beam interactive learning modules via satellite to 200 under-resourced public elementary schools.

By working together and engaging in a cooperative effort with other groups that have a commonality of vision for the future, we are better able to make use of resources, achieve scale, reach out and make a substantial impact in the lives of a much broader segment of our population.

I believe, however, that the most significant and by far most effective way the Ayala group has been able to contribute to the upliftment of the lives of the marginalized sectors in our society is in the way we have been able to progressively align our business objectives with our sustainable development and socio-civic goals. By increasingly tailoring our business models to create products and services that respond and cater to the needs of the lower income groups, we believe we are able to help create sustainable solutions to basic socioeconomic problems.

Two businesses particularly stand out as an example. One is Manila Water, the other Globe Telecom.

Prior to the privatization of MWSS, only 26 percent of the households in the East Zone of Metro Manila, which is Manila Waters concession area, had access to 24-hour uninterrupted water supply. Often, women and children, particularly from the low income families had to stand in line for hours to get water from a public faucet and the water cost them nearly 10 times the commercial rate. This resulted in lost productivity, poor accessibility, less money for other basic needs, high incidence of water-borne diseases and poor sanitation.

Since the privatization, Manila Water has been recognized as one of the most successful privatization endeavors in the region. It was able to transform a poorly performing public sector company into a profitable, financially stable and socially responsible private company.

Today, it delivers more water to more customers with a current customer base of over 600,000 households from only 325,000 nine years ago. Significantly about half of the newly served population comes from the marginalized communities within its concession area.

Billed water volume has constantly grown to 887 million liters per day (mld) as of March this year from only 440 mld when it started in 1997.

Through its flagship program, Water for the Poor, Manila Water recognized that the delivery of potable and safe water to the low income communities must be a strategic priority, and in fact, a strategic necessity. Uninterrupted access to potable water at lower cost results in better hygiene, improved health, higher productivity, more money for other basic needs, and improved livelihood opportunities. Through the program it has provided potable water to more than 860,000 residents in various poor communities in the East Zone and as the health and well-being of its customers improved, so did Manila Waters commercial efficiency. New connections from this segment contributed about 1/3 of the incremental billed volume and have helped reduce system losses from leaks and pilferage, allowing the recovered water to be sold to high margin customers.

One of the breakthrough innovations put in place is the collective installation, metering, and billing using cooperatives. The collective billing scheme has proven to be incredibly powerful. Not only did it help lower the cost of acquisition for the customer, it effectively gave the service provider group insurance coverage on bills payment. About 70 percent of the urban poor now bill through this mechanism and the collection efficiency in communities that use it is 100 percent. An offshoot of this is that it has allowed cooperatives to buy water at bulk rates and resell these at retail for some profit, creating a steady source of livelihood for many of these communities.

Manila Water has also helped develop other livelihood opportunities for many small entrepreneurs in the local communities. Many of the pipe-laying work in small roads and districts were sub-contracted to smaller contractors who have the appropriate scale to work on these projects. As a direct result of the companys capital investment program, it has generated more than 10,000 jobs through small and medium scale accredited contractors. To assist in their financing needs, Manila Water links its contractors and suppliers with its own relationship banks to help in their working capital requirements. Complementary to this is its micro-financing program for communities, enabling them to establish livelihood projects that augment their families incomes.

Telecommunications

Globe is another example that has touched the lives of a cross section of the population. With the industrys shift to the pre-paid model several years ago, barriers to access to telecommunications no longer exist. By offering SIM card packages as low as P100 and loads as low as P1, combined with low handset cost, virtually anyone can have access to mobile communications. The accessibility and affordability of mobile phone service has allowed us to reach a much larger number of people who had virtually no access to proper communications in the past.

Electronic loading also opened up tremendous livelihood opportunities for enterprising individuals and sari-sari stores. With the auto-load system, Globe now has 500,000 retailers nationwide, helping enhance incomes of these micro-entrepreneurs.

Globes latest innovation in m-commerce, GCash, is also opening possibilities for microfinance institutions to disburse microloans and receive micropayments. If successful, this will have a beneficial impact on this important global program to empower people who have no access to capital and credit.

We feel that by tailoring their business models they have effectively provided vital services to poor communities, improved the quality of their lives, and offered livelihood opportunities. They have created jobs and businesses by engaging many of the poor in operationalizing their distribution and collection systems. The key lesson is clear: doing business at the bottom of the pyramid can be a sound business strategy.

We continue to explore ways through our core businesses to see where else we can find business solutions to the problems of poverty. The Bank of the Philippine Islands, for instance, is now looking into microfinance as a possible area of expansion. It is studying the needs of the sector beyond credit such as capacity building, financial literacy programs for overseas Filipinos and their families, and technical assistance. Ayala Land is also seeking to engage the local communities in each of its developments and bringing them in as a partner within a larger community. It is also working with Habitat for Humanity to see how it can collaborate to bring basic housing to a larger segment of our population.

What we at Ayala find so exciting about these developments is that we truly feel that we may have found viable business solutions to the problems of poverty. While we have corporate social responsibility programs that have been part and parcel of the way we do business, Globe and Manila Water have found a sustainable and profitable way of improving the quality of life of millions of our countrymen. This has in turn allowed them to commit a much larger amount of resources to uplift the lives of people that had limited access to these basic services in the past.

I believe that at the end of the day, the fulfillment in running our businesses lies in the way we have tangibly affected and improved the lives of the public we serve. In the same way we measure ourselves with business, financial and operating metrics, we hope to come to a level where we can measure our CSR involvement in a way that is integral to our assessment and evaluation of how we as an enterprise have done as a whole.

Often, we feel that the many social problems and challenges that face us appear intractable. But perhaps by working together in a collaborative spirit, taking an innovative view and an entrepreneurial approach in the same manner we pursue our financial investments, we may find more viable and sustainable ways to help address the enormous social and economic challenges we face as a nation.

(Excerpts from the speech delivered by the author during the recent CSR Conference of the League of Corporate Foundations. The author is president and COO of Ayala Corp.. Feedback at [email protected])

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
SB Corp. lending to small businesses up 23% to P2B. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) STATE-RUN SMALL BUSINESS GUARANTEE and Finance Corp. said it had released some P2 billion in loans to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the first half of the year.

Benel P. Lagua, SB Corp. president and chief executive, said this was 23 percent higher than year-agos P1.7 billion.

From January to June this year, SB Corp. released P1.44 billion in loans under its SME wholesale lending program and P113.7 million under its credit guarantee program.

Also, P189.7 million was released under the wholesale microfinance program and another P353.4 million, under its MSME retail program.

Lagua said 70 percent or P1.46 billion of the amount lent by SB Corp. went to borrowers in Luzon; 18 percent or P387.8 million to Visayas, and 12 percent or P248.8 million went to Mindanao.

Trade Undersecretary Amelia Alonzo, who is also SB Corp. chair, said the agency was confident it would be able to hit its P4-billion target for this year.

In 2005, SB Corp. approved a total of P3.25 billion in loans to SMEs nationwide.

Based on our experience, borrowings usually pick up during the last quarter of the year as SMEs rush to complete their job orders and meet increased consumer demand during the Christmas season, Alonzo said.

Earlier this month, SB Corp. announced it was veering away from collateral-based banking toward risk-based lending in an effort to provide small and medium enterprises greater access to funds.

Officials said the new policy meant that borrowers credit worthiness would be measured based on re-payment capability, managerial ability, production capacity and prevailing market conditions.

Still, ones ability to put up collateral would be among factors that would be consider an enterprise is qualified for a loan.

SB Corp. is pilot-testing its borrowers risk rating (BRR) system this month in assessing the credit worthiness of those applying for loans.

The BRR system, which was developed with funding and technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank, uses the scorecard method in computing the prospective borrowers overall credit standing and credit-risk rating.

Credit investigators would evaluate borrowers using a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the most satisfactory rating and 10 meaning the worst credit risk, and rating of 5 considered the passing mark.

The interest rate and terms of a loan would vary depending on how low the loan applicant scores in the test.

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Around the world in 7 stores: S.J. shopping center a reflection of county's wide diversity. Check it out:
(Record, The (Stockton, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--STOCKTON -- Nearly three years after opening her House of Elegance Salon in Weston Ranch, Vesha Walters finds herself in a bit of a slump.

A number of her clients from nearby subdivisions have moved away in pursuit of new jobs or to cash in home equity gained in the real estate boom of the past few years.

"I'm kind of in that starting-all-over stage," Walters said recently.

Still, she considers the salon a success. It's an ongoing business that allowed her to buy a home in Patterson. And she's looking for a location in that community to open another House of Elegance.

"It's motivated me to go for everything I wanted to do," she said. "It's all happened since I've been here."

Here is the Weston Ranch Commercial Center, a neighborhood shopping center anchored by a Food 4 Less supermarket. It may seem like any of a thousand such commercial strips, complete with chain businesses such as Subway, Hollywood Video and Curves.



But look closer and you'll also find Manila Foods, a Filipino grocery and deli; Cascada Juice and More, serving Mexican-style fresh-fruit drinks, smoothies, and American and Mexican foods; Walter's House of Elegance, offering hair care for blacks and everyone else; and Indian Grocery Outlet, a small shop offering a variety of south Asian foods among many other minority-owned businesses.

The latter's owner, M. Jahil Hay, draws trade from Weston Ranch residents who can't find their favorite foods at the nearby supermarket. Customers include Indians, Afghans, Pakistanis, as well as ethnic Indians who hail from places such as the Caribbean, South Africa and South Pacific.

"This is the melting pot of Stockton," Hay said. "It's the United Nations. It really is."

That diversity is a reflection of San Joaquin County's full spectrum of races and cultures. The 2000 Census found more than 40 percent of county residents classify themselves as nonwhites. Of the more than 34,000 county firms tallied in the 2002 economic census, nearly 5,000 reported Asian ownership, another nearly 5,000 were Latino-owned and more than 1,000 were owned by blacks. There could be some overlap in those figures as the 2002 census, for the first time, allowed business owners to report their background from more than one racial or ethnic group.

The overwhelming majority of county businesses were mom-and-pop operations -- more than 25,000, or 70 percent, had no paid employees, the 2002 census found. Among the only group for which the census provided a breakdown, more than 80 percent of Latino-owned businesses reported no paid employees.

It's a reality that Gillian Murphy sees every day as director of the San Joaquin Delta College Small Business Development Center in downtown Stockton.

Latinos comprise almost 25 percent of her cliental, blacks are 17 percent and Asian-Pacific Islanders, 12 to 13 percent.

"What I'm happy to say is that we mirror very closely the region's ethnic makeup," said Murphy, whose agency provides free and low-cost services to small-business owners in San Joaquin, Calaveras, Amador and Alpine counties.

The region's history of minority business ownership goes back to the mid-19th century and the California gold rush, said Tod Ruhstaller, director of The Haggin Museum. Initially, Chinese and blacks, both as free men and as slaves, came to work the gold fields. More Chinese followed to help build the railroad and, later, as farm labor.

Over the decades since, San Joaquin County has seen successive waves of immigration, largely driven by the need for agricultural labor and changing politics. Those include Japanese and south Asian immigrants, followed by Filipinos, Mexicans under the Bracero program, and Southeast Asians following the Vietnam War. There was also an influx of Indian, Pakistani and Filipino immigrants, largely with degrees in medicine and other professions, in the late-1960s through 80s.

San Joaquin County's vibrant immigrant communities have contributed much to minority entrepreneurship, said Mark Plovnick, director of economic development at University of the Pacific.

By choosing to move to a new country, tackling the unknown in hopes of building a better life for themselves and their children, immigrants show they have qualities needed to run a business.

"That's the kind of spirit that also leads to entrepreneurial activity," Plovnick said. "Those are the ingredients you find in entrepreneurs: willing to work hard and take risks.

"America as a country has a higher proportion of entrepreneurship because so much of our population has come from elsewhere and, in many cases, not so many generations ago," he said.

Attitude and culture do play a part in immigrants choosing to run their own businesses, said Tom Larson, economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles. However, so do barriers to landing a good-paying job.

"In an immigrant community, you tend to have high rates of self-employment because they have a hard time getting good jobs in the regular labor market," said Larson, who has studied the impact of local-government, affirmative-action programs for minority and women-owned businesses in the state.

A lack of employment opportunities in San Joaquin County is one reason Joga Singh owns and operates the $1 Only Store in the Weston Ranch shopping center.

"Give me a job; I'll give you this thing," he said of his nearly 3-year-old business.

San Joaquin County's recent housing boom -- new homes going up at the rate of 5,000 to 6,000 per year through last summer -- helped bring shoppers to Singh's store. But many of those new residents continue to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, he noted.

"If they can get a job here, nobody would commute to San Jose ... 150 miles every day," Singh said.

Running a mom-and-pop retail store or restaurant may well be better than the minimum-wage dead-end jobs most easily obtained by immigrants facing language and cultural barriers, Larson said.

But their English-speaking offspring, often with better educations, tend to seek other paths.

"The self-employment rate for Korean immigrant males is just phenomenal," he said. "When you get into the second and third generation, they're more likely to pursue more conventional ways of earning a living."

That pattern is the same for European immigrants as well, he noted.

"It's a way to get started in America."

Many of these fledgling businesses operate on a shoestring. The shops may carry scant stock and employ a minimum of furnishings and displays, Larson noted.

This approach provides low start-up costs, he said, "but that's not the kind of business that's going to be easy to develop."

Such minority business owners may also lack formal training.

"A lot of these entrepreneurs haven't taken a course in business. They are just running it by the seat of their pants," Larson said.

Also they may be hampered by limited access to investment capital, either in personal resources or bank loans, to build their businesses.

Some business owners, of course, overcome these hurdles and establish an enterprise that can grow.

Such is the case for Fritz Chin Photography in Stockton, founded by Fritz Chin, a native of China, and his wife, Liza, from Seoul, South Korea.

They began photographing weddings in the late 1960s and opened their studio on Pacific Avenue in 1973. Now, their son, managing director Arnold Chin, handles the reins.

The younger Chin said his philosophy is to reinvest a portion of the profits every year back into the photography business, creating in new products and services, hiring new employees, expanding his market.

"We're always trying to push forward and grow and grow," he said. "Any small business that wants to survive has to constantly improve."

That drive for improvement led to a $100,000 project in 2005 that provided three expanded photo studios and a larger customer lobby, as well as a gallery and client meeting room.

Unfortunately, Fritz Chin Photography is more the exception than the rule, Chin said.

"It's nice there's minority business but ... those minority businesses are not making a huge dent in unemployment numbers for San Joaquin County," he said.

Minority-owned firms do tend to be smaller with less revenue than businesses overall, the 2002 Economic Census found.

While California's more than 2.9 million businesses averaged $961,000 in annual sales that year, on average Asian-owned firms reported about $338,000 in receipts, Latino businesses had about $134,000 in sales and black-owned firms put about $86,500 into the till.

Finding a market and building sales volume is are challenges faced by all small businesses and require determination, hard work and a bit of luck to overcome.

Take Abraham and Hidolina Miranda, owners of the Cascada Juice and More shop in Weston Ranch. Abraham Miranda said the couple investigated franchise opportunities, including a national smoothie chain, but were discouraged by the high capital and net worth requirements.

Opening the the shop more than two years ago was a struggle -- stalled by an unreliable contractor and trouble with the building code -- , but they have steadily expanded the business from its base offering of fresh-squeezed juice drinks and smoothies to add salads, tortas, hot dogs, hamburgers, tostadas, ice cream desserts and more.

Still, said Abraham Miranda, he's doing little better than breaking even on the venture.

"It's not easy," he noted recently and speculated. "If we can do more advertising, maybe we can build this up."

Miranda said he and his wife got started with a catering truck in the San Jose area, which is a money maker and that they continue to run. In addition, they opened a second Cacasda Juice shop this year in downtown Stockton.

"We like challenges," said Miranda, who wore a cast from an Achilles tendon injury. He advised:

"If you still can walk, just keep going. Don't look back."

Contact reporter Reed Fujii at (209) 546-8253 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Large Monopoly Enterprises Added in Number. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 25, SinoCast -- Experts have pointed out that during the next five to ten years, those resource-intensive enterprises and monopoly enterprises will accumulate more profits, more social resources and more assets.



Data from National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) show that the number of large enterprise groups, especially those with billions of assets and turnovers, is growing.

37 enterprise groups have had over CNY 100 billion assets. In 2005, the following enterprises was recognized as the top ten enterprises in terms of total assets: State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), CITIC Holdings, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China Everbright Bank (CEB), China Telecom, China Mobile, Ping An Insurance, China Netcom and China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. (CSG). Among them, the asset of State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) is as high as CNY1.1697 trillion.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
AIG-Huatai Fund Management Enhances Regitered Capital. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI, September 25, SinoCast -- AIG-Huatai Fund Management Co., Ltd. (AIG-Huatai), a Shanghai-based joint venture fund management company, recently enhanced its registered capital from CNY 100 million to CNY 200 million after gaining approval from relevant governmental agency.



Prior to that, its shareholders AIG Global Investment Corporation (AIGGIC), Huatai Securities Co., Ltd. (Huatai Securities) and Suzhou New District Hi-tech Industrial Co. respectively took 49%, 49% and 2% of interests in the joint venture. This time, the fund injection is conducted in light of the proportion of their respective interest.

An official of the joint venture expressed the enhancement of registered capital would be helpful for the expansion and development of the company, for relevant Chinese law indicates the fund management in the interbank foreign exchange market must have no less than CNY 150 million of registered capital.

Later, the joint venture will sequentially start the business regarding QFII and QDII and enterprise annuity, added the official.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -
Secure Computing launches SafeWord SecureWire 50 identity and access management appliance for SMEs in the Middle East. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Secure Computing Corporation (Nasdaq: SCUR), the experts in securing connections between people, applications and networks, has launched its SafeWord SecureWire 50 identity and access management (IAM) appliance in the Middle East. This unique solution offers small and midsize enterprises in the region a remote access, authentication and compliance hub that provides secure SSL VPN-based remote access for as many as 50 concurrent users, with an add-on module that can accommodate up to 100 concurrent users.



The SecureWire solution provides secure anytime, anywhere access to critical data and applications, providing a broad range of access and identity capabilities, including Web-based remote access via SSL VPN, wireless LAN management, endpoint device security as well as internal Network Access Control (NAC).

Sami Mulla, Director, Middle East, Secure Computing said: "Our channel partners and their customers who want to provide secure remote access to key corporate data and applications for their employees and business partners want fewer vendors and easier solutions. The SecureWire 50 combines secure remote access through SSL VPN with SafeWord two factor authentication tokens in one appliance form factor." SafeWord strong authentication tokens included with the SecureWire solution are typically used together with a remote access solution to positively establish the identity of users entering the network, so that organisations deploying a remote access solution no longer need to look to different vendors for these key components of an IAM solution.

"With close integration to Microsoft Active Directory management tools, the SecureWire 50 is ideal for the growing number of small and medium enterprises that manage IT in a Microsoft environment. Companies can easily manage user identities by leveraging their existing Microsoft tools and applications. Aimed at the entry point of the market, it offers a great solution with a lower total cost of ownership," Mulla added.

For small and midsize enterprises that are looking for an SSL VPN remote access solution, the SecureWire 50 provides lightning-fast, remote access to every application and data resource in the organisation's network. Midsize organisations need a reliable, secure gateway for users accessing the network from remote locations. The SecureWire 50 provides an easy-to-use remote access solution at an affordable price and broadens Secure Computing's IAM technology line-up that now encompasses small business to large enterprise -- in an IAM market that IDC values at US$5 billion by 2010.

Identity and Access management solutions such as SecureWire are key components of any corporate IT infrastructure. Without the ability to manage identities and control access, companies leave themselves open to a wide range of internal and external threats. With embedded end-point security capabilities, SecureWire provides a reliable mechanism to achieve configuration compliance ensuring that every end-point device adheres to corporate IT policy, including work PCs, laptops, home PCs, servers and workstations. Only properly configured, properly secured devices are granted access, making certain that system patches, anti-virus software and firewall protection are all in place.

The SecureWire 50 adds to Secure Computing's robust line-up of IAM appliances that includes SecureWire 100, which is designed for small, single site businesses and which supports up to 100 concurrent users; SecureWire 500, designed for medium enterprise and remote sites and which supports up to 500 concurrent users; and SecureWire 2500, which is built for medium to large organisations and supports up to 2,500 concurrent users.

"SecureWire can simplify access, management and compliance for any organisation, from branch offices to large enterprises. Any organisation that extends its information assets to internal and external users can benefit from SecureWire," Mulla said.-About Secure Computing: Secure Computing (NASDAQ:SCUR) has been securing the connections between people and information for over 20 years. Specializing in delivering the worlds strongest security appliances/firewalls, identity and access management solutions, content management and filtering solutions, Secure Computing is uniquely qualified to be the global security solutions provider to organizations of all sizes. Our more than 17,000 global customers, supported by a worldwide network of partners, include the majority of the Dow Jones Global 50 Titans and the most prominent organizations in banking, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, public utilities, education and national and local governments. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information, see http://www.securecomputing.com.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
AMD ANNOUNCES SOCKET COMPATIBILITY PLANS TO DRIVE. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket."This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure." The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design documentation."As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative approach to innovation," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "By working with AMD and joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach.""Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines," said Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they require.""When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments," said Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division, HP. "The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need.""Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus innovation," said Jan Silverman, Cray's senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "Our Adaptive Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the realized performance people have come to expect from Cray.""Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMDs Torrenza initiative, and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza," said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves customers server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership." "Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD Opteron processor are powerful," said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology Officer, Dell. "The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our enterprise customers."Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.About the AMD Opteron ProcessorToday, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.



About AMD Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.

### AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Advanced Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Spurger meat market ready to get back to business. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--For all the signs of normality at Tom's Meat Market, normal still is a long way away.

Customers shuffled about the store's concrete floor midday Wednesday the same way they have for 30 years -- lining up at the rear counter and placing their lunchtime orders as meat sizzled on the grill.

The aroma of toasting buns and sauce-soaked barbecue beef, and the sound of laughter from customers and owners Randy and Sandra Holcomb filtered between shelves that once overflowed with canned goods and echoed off rumpled, water-damaged wall panels lined with photos of sponsored little league teams, sagging wooden beams and deformed, water-stained ceiling tiles above them.



"It's the only one," said Jack Jeans, 73, a loyal customer, said of the store's presence in Spurger while waiting for a few pounds of fresh stew meat. "When you come here, Randy cuts it just the way you want it."

But the walls and roof are lasting signs of Hurricane Rita's unexpected swipe at Spurger one year ago that brought the family-run business to its knees as the Holcombs still find themselves searching for assistance to rebuild the business Randy's father, Tom Holcomb, built from ground-up in 1976.

"I really wasn't expecting what happened," said Randy Holcomb, 43.

FRUSTRATION

The family could only listen in darkness while huddled in the kitchen of their adjoining home on Sept. 24, 2005, as Rita's winds peeled off a 60-foot chunk of the uninsured store's tin roof "like a Spam can," splintered the attached smokehouse in two and rolled its remains onto FM 92.

Rita's rains did the dirtiest work, flooding the store ankle-deep with water that wiped out merchandise, rendered meat coolers useless, caused the store to close for three weeks and forced loyal customers to travel as far as Lufkin to find a good meat market.

The family sank about $10,000 of their savings into making the building functional again, but the damage was done. The Holcombs said they haven't been able to afford to completely stock the store's shelves since, and some customers have chosen to shop elsewhere.

"I thought I could at least obtain a loan," he said. "My wife and I weren't looking for any free money, and it took everything we had just to get where we could open up."

The Holcombs had to get rid of three employees because of the revenue decline, and say they have tried for and been denied help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

"Everywhere we call, they refer us to someone else," said Sandra Holcomb, 44. "We're just about run out of options."

RESOURCES

Though options are dwindling for business owners, those still struggling to ward off Rita's lingering effects have at least a few chances to score assistance.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided hurricane recovery grant money to the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, but it's mostly for residential purposes, said Walter Diggles, the council's executive director.

State officials still have not determined how much of the $428 million in additional aid granted to Texas for hurricane recovery eventually would go to Deep East Texas or Southeast Texas -- the two areas that suffered the most damage -- or whether the funds can be applied toward small businesses, Diggles said.

Help also still might be available from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Development Center, which is administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration, said Weldon Gibson, a consultant with the Lamar University SBDC.

"Published deadlines have passed, but they are saying that if you have anybody that still has needs, to have them write a letter and submit the documentation," Gibson said.

The SBDC loans can cover physical repairs or recover economic losses. Applicants who previously were rejected can submit appeals, Gibson said.

The Lamar SBDC, one of four centers serving Southeast Texas and Deep East Texas, has processed "literally hundreds" of loan applications, Gibson said.

Loans of as much as $15,000 are available through SB Alliance Capital, a Beaumont-based organization created in 1984 to promote business growth and development.

The loans are zero-interest for the first year, and recipients can work out a payment arrangement for the next four years, said Jim Rich, SB Alliance Capital's executive director and Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce president.

The group serves Hardin, Jasper, Jefferson, Newton, Orange and Tyler counties, Rich said.

TRY AGAIN

"We're not anywhere near out of money, and if we needed more, we could get it since disaster loans were part of the funding request that the governor submitted to Congress," Rich said.

Hardin, Jefferson and Orange business owners still can apply for $5,000 grants from the Southeast Texas Workforce Development Board's Small Business Capitalization Grant Initiative, workforce liaison Pamela Wise said.

The funds come from a first-ever U.S. Department of Labor program geared toward businesses with between two and 25 employees that have paid unemployment insurance for at least 18 months, said Karen Bourdier, economic development research manager for Entergy who serves on one of the approval panel.

Recipients must complete a business recovery plan and agree to a post-grant evaluation, Wise said.

"You don't have to pay it back, but you're certainly accountable for it," she said.

Randy and Sandra Holcomb said although they are frustrated, they will continue to serve customers while trying to find help.

But help must come soon to save the family business that they hope to pass to the next generation, they said.

"There's times I just want to give up," Randy Holcomb said. "But this is what I've done all my life, and I'm just not ready to give it up."

[email protected]

(409) 880-0736

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

KU provost joins board for KTEC

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KU provost joins board for KTEC. Check it out:
(Journal-World (Lawrence, KS) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--Kansas University's new provost and executive vice chancellor picked up an additional post this month: board member for the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp.

Richard Lariviere is among five new KTEC board members appointed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Lariviere started work at KU on June 1, after serving as dean of liberal arts at the University of Texas.

KTEC's board also has new officers.

Doug Brush, founder of Brush Art Corp. in Downs, is the new chairman for KTEC, the organization he joined as a board member in 2000.

Linda Reinhardt, of Erie, is KTEC's vice chairman. She and her husband operate a agricultural production operation in southeast Kansas.

KTEC is a private/public partnership established by the state of Kansas to promote technology-based economic development.

Copyright (c) 2006, Journal-World, Lawrence, Kan.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Minister of Information and Communications Technology visits Ayla Information Technology. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) His Excellency Eng. Omar Ashraf Al- Kurdi, Jordan's Minister of Information and Communications Technology recently visited the Ayla Information Technology firm, one of Jordan's growing developers of business software solutions. This visit, which was arranged by the Information Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j), comes as part of the effort initiated by the Minister to hear, first hand, about the successes, opportunities, and challenges of the Jordanian ICT private sector.



"This visit reflects the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologys focus on enhancing its partnership with the ICT private sector, which is crucial to the industrys growth and development", said Al Kurdi. He also emphasized that "The Ministry is quite keen on providing all the necessary support to Jordanian ICT companies towards building capacity, developing innovative and competitive products, as well as penetrating regional and international markets".

The Minister was received by Aylas General Manager Mr. Raja Said who accompanied him on his tour of the premises. Through his conducting of an elaborate presentation, Mr. Said introduced His Excellency to Aylas profile, products and services. He explained the different types of services provided by the company, including the company Enterprise Resource Planning Application, its web development services as well as Mobile Development.On another level, Mr. Said also introduced his guest to the firm's goals, objectives, future plans and operations. On this occasion he further affirmed that the firms presence in the local market had allowed it to serve several large corporations in Jordan including the Amman Chamber of Industry, MobileCom, National Paints, Ring Jordan, Medlabs Consultancy Group, and others.

Mr. Said acknowledged His Excellency for his visit, whereby he said, "We at Ayla regard the Ministers visit to our headquarters with great importance, and we hope that this visit provided His Excellency with adequate information about the company's activities and challenges. We hope that His Excellency and the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology will work to instill laws and regulations that will in turn foster the wider and more fruitful spread of our services on both local and regional scale, and we hope that our firm will continue to develop top quality products and services that in turn respond to the demands of Jordans thriving corporate IT sector." Mr. Said stated that a large portion of the firms success is attributed to its highly skilled and motivated team members," Our technical team possesses valuable experiences, and is proficient in the use of several technologies. Their skills are further enhanced by the strategic guidance of our highly dedicated and motivated management team. On my part I am proud of each and every individual on the Ayla force, for without their hard work we wouldnt be where we are today. We hope that His Excellency visit to our headquarters will help us solidify our role as leading providers of convenient corporate services to members of the Jordanian community, for we will always use our full understanding of the market as our guide for creating high quality technological solutions, and we will continue to create solutions that serve to further advance national economic growth" "Our mission is to utilize the latest and most robust technologies available on the market to provide intelligent software solutions for both the local and regional business community. With the expertise of our team we have achieved our goals and more" he added 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Two senior executives join the growing Dubai Aerospace Enterprise team. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), the global aerospace, manufacturing and service corporation, has strengthened its senior management team with the appointment of two new senior executives.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Open Text, UAE partner

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Open Text, UAE partner. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Telco, Internet & IT Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Open Text Corporation, a provider of enterprise content management software, has restructured its Middle East marketing and business strategy. The company has appointed Itqan, a systems integrator and solutions provider, as its partner in the UAE. The partnership will aim to extend the use of Open Text's solutions by corporate clients across the Middle East.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Two senior execs join DAE

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Two senior execs join DAE. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Travel & Leisure Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has appointed two new senior executives. Robert Mionis has been appointed as the CEO of DAE Manufacturing and DAE Engineering, while Michael Allgood has been named as DAE's Chief Financial Officer. Mionis was previously Vice President of Integrated Supply Chain for Honeywell Aerospace; Allgood has had a variety of roles with financial and banking institutions, as well as logistics and freight companies.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
HH Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan officially inaugurates Danet Abu Dhabi site at grand ground breaking ceremony. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Presidential Affairs, was the guest of honour of Eng. Salah Bin Omeir Al Shamsi, Chairman Al Qudra Holding, today for the celebration of the ground breaking ceremony for the landmark project of Al Qudra Real Estate, the Danet Abu Dhabi project. They were joined by the Board Members of Al Qudra Holding; dignitaries; developers; shareholders and members of the press.



The ground breaking ceremony was held in a luxurious marquis on the site of Danet Abu Dhabi. Images of the project were displayed along with a model of the whole project. HH Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan cut the ribbon marking the official opening of the site and cemented a break as a symbolic gesture.

Al Qudra Real Estate, a subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding PJSC, announced their first project, Danet Abu Dhabi, in May 2006 and it sold-out off plan a mere 45 days after its launch. Construction has started on Danet Abu Dhabi which promises to provide a new urban community in uptown Abu Dhabi and will be ready for residents to move in by early 2009.

"We are committed to developing a world class real estate project with Danet Abu Dhabi," said Eng Salah Al Shamsi. "We are now handing over the land to our investors and we anticipate construction work will be completed within two and half years." Danet Abu Dhabi is a complete community and will feature a spectacular 210 room Holiday Inn which will provide the city with an international-standard hotel fully equipped with restaurants, a health club, swimming pools, meeting rooms and other luxury amenities.

"Abu Dhabi is an important market for business hotels. Holiday Inn is a powerful international brand that will help us achieve our objective of attracting a share of the domestic and international business and leisure travelers." Said Eng Salah Al Shamsi.

Danet Abu Dhabi will be a real community within the heart of Abu Dhabi and will also be a fully interactive Smart Digital Community. The ground breaking ceremony displayed an example of how Danet Abu Dhabi will offer its tenants a comprehensive value-added e-service experience from the comfort of their homes. These include:o Direct links to Danets E-Storefront and delivery services allowing tenants to access Danets retail channels and restaurants to virtually tour shops and purchase items & groceries through the TV set and handheld deviceso Distinctive E-Banking facilities allowing tenants to instantly connect to their bank accounts and transfer money onlineo E-Concierge offering residents an online virtual tour of the Property Facilities as well as outing suggestions and reservations Al Qudra Real Estate has appointed Maunsell Consulting Services to design the whole projects infrastructure utilizing the expertise of EUDO an Autsralian based company and Emirates Utilities Company Holding (EUCH) to implement the proposed work. The demolition and paving of the projects foundation has been completed and executed by TASK General Contracting and Road Works. Al Habtoor Engineering was appointed to carry out the water drilling and consolidation activities expected to be completed by November, 2006 under the management of 3 D/I+PI, another subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding. 3D/I+PI is a Company that manages and develops projects. It emerged as a result of a strategic alliance between Al Qudra Holding, the American 3DI and Projacs Company. The Company supports and manages all of Al Qudra Real Estates projects. 3D/I+PI also manage other important projects in the region. Furthermore, Q Active will implement and interactive Smart Digital Community.

For the construction development of Danet Abu Dhabis landmark, Holiday Inn Hotel, Al Qudra Real estate has appointed Architectural Engineering Consultants (AEC) as the Project Architect.

Danet Abu DhabiDesigned for a value-driven community with high life aspirations in a clearly defined environment, Danet Abu Dhabi enhances natures treasures with the technology of tomorrow to provide you with one of the most valuable investment opportunities available a real estate project positioned as the Pearl of Abu Dhabi. Within a 5 minute drive, residents will have access to many leisure and business facilities. Parking being one of the major ordeals that Abu Dhabi residents suffer daily, Danet Abu Dhabi architects have ensured that this problem is smartly addressed at the city. All buildings are being provided parking spaces to satisfy residential and commercial requirements.

Danet Abu Dhabi will feature five districts inspired from the different Arabic names for pearls: Jumana, Dorra, Louolou, Giwan and Gemash Districts.

Pearls are timeless and classic - they've stood the test of time and they are loved by nearly all. Among all of the gemstones available in this world, the pearl is absolutely unique. This is due to the fact that it is the only gem which is formed entirely within a living being. The same is true of Danet Abu Dhabi formed within the thriving area of Uptown Abu Dhabi. A world class business Holiday Inn Hotel will be built at Danet Abu Dhabi. Holiday Inn has been chosen as it focuses specifically on business and will be a great asset to the city offering state of the art facilities for meetings and conferences of all sizes. The new Holiday Inn forms a landmark for Danet Abu Dhabi and will offer residents and visitors an array of restaurants and leisure facilities. The hotel and its surrounding complex have been designed to offer quality, comfort and convenience.

Facilities and ServicesDanet Abu Dhabi is the place to live par excellence, as an array of facilities and services meet every conceivable residents needs.

1. Business Centre2. Internet services3. Wireless Internet4. 24-hour security Protection5. Facility Management6. Family areas7. Day care Centre8. Sports Centre9. Childrens Playgrounds10. Laundry services11. Swimming pool12. Outdoor running track13. Shopping Malls About Al Qudra Real EstateAQRE believes in developing real communities for real people and offers shrewd investors the opportunity for strategic development investments.The company provides investors with a lifetime chance to invest now in the future of Abu Dhabi itself and play a role in the development of the UAE economy.

AQRE sells to real estate developers and investors. The organization provides investors with land and a full master plan for a community to be developed. AQRE sells to the investor developer and provides them with the strategy and tools needed to sell, or lease, to the end user in order to provide a solid return on initial investment. Plots of land are sold with pre approved permission and the right to develop that land. In depth research into the Abu Dhabi market has been conducted ensuring all future developments address the growing needs and desires of the community. Communities will be created focusing on residential, retail and commercial sectors in prime real estate locations.

As a subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding, Al Qudra Real Estate provides numerous advantages for investors: sound investment opportunities promising real deliverables, in the shortest of timeframes, a truly strategic partnership, and the chance to be at the forefront of the property investment and ownership trend in Abu Dhabi. These advantages will be inherent in all AQRE projects, and a wide array of investment options, financial facilities and payment procedures are designed to suit every investors needs.

About Al Qudra HoldingAl Qudra Holding was established in May 2005 with a capital of AED 600 Million. Today, the company has become the mother company of a large group of specialized subsidiaries that operate under its umbrella in important sectors of the countrys education, tourism, industry, energy, infrastructure development, sports management and the entertainment industry to name a few.

The company is considered the ideal strategic partner for many leading regional companies looking into investments in the United Arab Emirates, and Abu Dhabi in particular. This was achieved through the trust, expertise and competencies that the company has acquired through the foundation of projects, investment strategies and companies that cover a wide range of sectors of development, thus attracting strategic and specialized partners in all fields.

About EUCHEmirates Utilities Company Holding flourished as a result of the important strategic partnership between Al Qudra Holding and the Kuwaiti Al Kharafi Group, represented by one of its subsidiaries, Utilities Development Company Holding. Key endeavors undertaken by EUCH are the management and implementation of BOT and BOO privatization projects.

About Q ActiveA subsidiary of Al Qudra Holding that will specialize transforming the Danet Abu Dhabi project into a fully interactive Smart Digital Community.

About 3DIPI3D/I+PI is a Company that manages and develops projects. It emerged as a result of a strategic alliance between Al Qudra Holding, the American 3DI and Projacs Company. The Company supports and manages all of Al Qudra Real Estates projects and is currently managing the new state of the art building for Al Qudra Holding which is located in the city of Abu Dhabi. This project is expected to be completed in 2008. 3D/I+PI also manage other important projects in the region.

About Habtoor Engineering Ltd,Al Habtoor Group has since grown with the UAE and is now internationally recognized through its Construction, Hotels, Real Estate, Education, Automobile Distribution & Leasing and Publishing businesses. It is one of the UAEs most successful & respected diversified business corporations operating across the Middle East and beyond.The Groups Construction division, Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises, has a rich portfolio having created some of worlds most stunning landmarks such as the magnificent symbol of Dubai the Burj Al Arab, the ultra modern Sheikh Rashid Terminal Concourse 1 and the multi billion US$ construction of the new Terminal 3 Concourse 2project.Just as the name of the United Arab Emirates has become synonymous with trade and enterprise all over the world, the name of the Al Habtoor Group has become synonymous with dynamic growth, evidenced by its commitment to develop new businesses in multiple sectors. For more information see www.habtoor.com 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
.e4 Announces free shipping of Digium Hardware to USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and beyond.. Check it out:
.e4 Announces free shipping of Digium Hardware to USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and beyond.

In an effort to maintain market dominance in the rapidly widening Open Enterprise Telephony market, .e4 announced today that it plans to offer free shipping to a global audience. This move was in response to increased competition from lower priced, knock off hardware.



As hardware vendors, .e4s management team understands that the early adopter community can be its biggest voice. This word of mouth can have both a positive and negative effect on the community. Without product support, Asterisk users can easily be frustrated, and deterred from further embracing the software.

The company sees their mission as making sure that end-users are Asterisk ambassadors. To that end, .e4 provides Free Digium and Asterisk support live at their website from 7AM-7PM EST daily.

Because our core focus is Asterisk, we feel the community is best served by offering only Digium hardware to our clients. Without Digium there is no Asterisk. Our responsibility is to stay loyal to the manufacturers who see the value of open standards says Michael White, President of .e4

About .e4

http://www.digiumcards.com specializes in Asterisk the Open Source PBX; .e4 LLC http://www.e4strategies.com is based in Traverse City, Michigan and has a sales organization serving the US, Europe, Canada, Mexico and Latin America.

Key products include but are not limited to: Digium, Polycom, Snom, Aastra, and Linksys.

.e4 LLC
http://www.digiumcards.com
11138 S West Bayshore Drive
Traverse City, MI 49684
P: 877-4E4-VoIP
F: 602.338.4332
[email protected]

Support for small ventures

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Support for small ventures. Check it out:
(Leicester Mercury Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A free service is about to be launched to support small and start-up businesses in Hinckley and Bosworth.

Ivanhoe Enterprise Solutions Ltd, which is made up of experienced business people, will work on behalf of the East Midlands Development Agency to encourage small businesses. It will be able to give advice about matters such as planning, marketing and money management.



Copyright 2006 Northcliffe Newspapers Group Ltd
Secure Computing launches SafeWord SecureWire 50 identity and access management appliance for SMEs in the Middle East. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Secure Computing Corporation (Nasdaq: SCUR), the experts in securing connections between people, applications and networks, has launched its SafeWord SecureWire 50 identity and access management (IAM) appliance in the Middle East. This unique solution offers small and midsize enterprises in the region a remote access, authentication and compliance hub that provides secure SSL VPN-based remote access for as many as 50 concurrent users, with an add-on module that can accommodate up to 100 concurrent users.



The SecureWire solution provides secure anytime, anywhere access to critical data and applications, providing a broad range of access and identity capabilities, including Web-based remote access via SSL VPN, wireless LAN management, endpoint device security as well as internal Network Access Control (NAC).

Sami Mulla, Director, Middle East, Secure Computing said: "Our channel partners and their customers who want to provide secure remote access to key corporate data and applications for their employees and business partners want fewer vendors and easier solutions. The SecureWire 50 combines secure remote access through SSL VPN with SafeWord two factor authentication tokens in one appliance form factor." SafeWord strong authentication tokens included with the SecureWire solution are typically used together with a remote access solution to positively establish the identity of users entering the network, so that organisations deploying a remote access solution no longer need to look to different vendors for these key components of an IAM solution.

"With close integration to Microsoft Active Directory management tools, the SecureWire 50 is ideal for the growing number of small and medium enterprises that manage IT in a Microsoft environment. Companies can easily manage user identities by leveraging their existing Microsoft tools and applications. Aimed at the entry point of the market, it offers a great solution with a lower total cost of ownership," Mulla added.

For small and midsize enterprises that are looking for an SSL VPN remote access solution, the SecureWire 50 provides lightning-fast, remote access to every application and data resource in the organisation's network. Midsize organisations need a reliable, secure gateway for users accessing the network from remote locations. The SecureWire 50 provides an easy-to-use remote access solution at an affordable price and broadens Secure Computing's IAM technology line-up that now encompasses small business to large enterprise -- in an IAM market that IDC values at US$5 billion by 2010.

Identity and Access management solutions such as SecureWire are key components of any corporate IT infrastructure. Without the ability to manage identities and control access, companies leave themselves open to a wide range of internal and external threats. With embedded end-point security capabilities, SecureWire provides a reliable mechanism to achieve configuration compliance ensuring that every end-point device adheres to corporate IT policy, including work PCs, laptops, home PCs, servers and workstations. Only properly configured, properly secured devices are granted access, making certain that system patches, anti-virus software and firewall protection are all in place.

The SecureWire 50 adds to Secure Computing's robust line-up of IAM appliances that includes SecureWire 100, which is designed for small, single site businesses and which supports up to 100 concurrent users; SecureWire 500, designed for medium enterprise and remote sites and which supports up to 500 concurrent users; and SecureWire 2500, which is built for medium to large organisations and supports up to 2,500 concurrent users.

"SecureWire can simplify access, management and compliance for any organisation, from branch offices to large enterprises. Any organisation that extends its information assets to internal and external users can benefit from SecureWire," Mulla said.-About Secure Computing: Secure Computing (NASDAQ:SCUR) has been securing the connections between people and information for over 20 years. Specializing in delivering the worlds strongest security appliances/firewalls, identity and access management solutions, content management and filtering solutions, Secure Computing is uniquely qualified to be the global security solutions provider to organizations of all sizes. Our more than 17,000 global customers, supported by a worldwide network of partners, include the majority of the Dow Jones Global 50 Titans and the most prominent organizations in banking, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, public utilities, education and national and local governments. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information, see http://www.securecomputing.com.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
AMD ANNOUNCES SOCKET COMPATIBILITY PLANS TO DRIVE. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket."This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure." The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design documentation."As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative approach to innovation," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "By working with AMD and joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach.""Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines," said Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they require.""When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments," said Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division, HP. "The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need.""Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus innovation," said Jan Silverman, Cray's senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "Our Adaptive Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the realized performance people have come to expect from Cray.""Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMDs Torrenza initiative, and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza," said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves customers server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership." "Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD Opteron processor are powerful," said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology Officer, Dell. "The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our enterprise customers."Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.About the AMD Opteron ProcessorToday, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.



About AMD Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.

### AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Advanced Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
China politics: A little solidarity. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST

Increased union membership generates cash for the government

THE Chinese Communist Party has always been swift to crush independent organisations of workers, but even its own puppet trade unions have had a hard time in recent years. Until recently at least, the burgeoning private sector has eschewed them and so too has its workforce, despite widespread abuses such as dangerous working conditions, derisory wages and forced overtime. But now the party-controlled unions are making a comeback. Is it time for bosses to worry?



Since late July the Chinese media have been crowing over a grudging decision by Wal-Mart, one of the most prominent foreign firms in China, to allow members of its 31,000-strong Chinese workforce to form trade unions. Wal-Mart had been discouraging this since it began operating in China in 1996, just as it does elsewhere, including in America, its home country. The company says unions are unnecessary for its employees. But the Chinese media reported that an order from President Hu Jintao earlier this year prompted official efforts to get Wal-Mart to change its mind. On July 29th in the coastal city of Quanzhou, workers at one of Wal-Mart's 60-odd supermarkets in China formed the company's first union there.

Wal-Mart had not been accused of any specific mistreatment of its workers. But it was accused of breaking a law which says that companies are not allowed to obstruct the formation of trade unions. An official survey conducted two years ago found that trade unions had been established in a mere 10% of half a million foreign-invested enterprises then registered in China. Wal-Mart, with its self-proclaimed anti-union stance, came under growing scrutiny--notwithstanding its large contribution to China's economy. The company says it bought $19 billion-worth of goods from China in 2004, amounting to some 15% of China's total exports to America in that year according to China's statistics (10% by America's).

But what of the other foreign-invested firms in China? The slow development of trade unions in these companies has been mainly a result of lack of interest among workers rather than opposition to union activity among managers. Unions in China are controlled by the Communist Party through an umbrella organisation, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), to which all unions must be affiliated. Two decades ago, when China's economy was still mostly run by the state, almost all urban workers belonged to trade unions set up in the state-owned enterprises to which they belonged. At best these unions acted as mediators between management and workers rather than as champions of workers' interests. They had little bargaining power--strikes and other forms of collective pressure being effectively banned (the right to strike was removed from China's constitution in 1982). Most union offices did little more than organise occasional entertainment and help the party monitor worker morale.

Since the 1990s the rapid growth of private, including foreign, enterprise and the widespread closure of state-owned firms has gutted unions from the urban workforce. It has also stripped the party of its own network of cells in workplaces, each of which once had both a union and a party committee. Even if newly established private enterprises employed party members, such people often neglected to organise cells and fell out of touch with the party itself.

Party rules require a cell in any enterprise with three or more party members. But even if members wanted to form one, they felt that management would disapprove. In state-owned enterprises, the boss often doubled as party chief. In private firms, even ones set up by party members, managers were often concerned that business secrets might be leaked and efficiency impaired by the existence of a separate power structure inside the business. And without party cells, there was little impetus to form unions. By 1999 union membership had fallen to 87m, down from a peak of 104m in 1995 (see chart).

This has been a blow to the authorities. For a party used to all-pervasive control, the withering of its grassroots organisations has left it feeling increasingly uneasy. In recent years wildcat strikes, go-slows and other forms of worker protest have become more frequent. These have been triggered both by the shrinking of the state sector and by harsh working conditions in some private enterprises. The party wants its unions back in place in order to keep workers off the streets, which, it accepts, sometimes means restraining employers too. Giving government-controlled unions a little bit more muscle, the party feels, helps to deter desperate workers from trying to establish independent unions. The party still shudders at the recollection of Solidarity's growth in Poland in the 1980s. And more unions mean more money for the government. Unionised companies have to give 2% of payroll to their unions. Of this, 40% is meant to be forwarded to the ACFTU.

Official figures suggest the party is making headway. By the end of 2004 there were 55m union members in non-state-owned enterprises, 35% more than a year earlier and a more than fourfold increase compared with the late 1990s. In foreign-invested enterprises, progress has been particularly striking. About one-third now have unions, official reports say. In some areas with large concentrations of such firms, unionisation is even more widespread. Shanghai expects 60% of foreign-financed firms to have unions by the end of this year and 80% at the end of 2007. Neighbouring Zhejiang province, a big export-manufacturing base, says 70% of foreign firms there are already unionised. Two-thirds of Wal-Mart's supermarkets now have unions. In August the company's first two openly declared Communist Party cells were set up in the north-eastern city of Shenyang. Since unions are usually led by senior party members in a firm, it is likely there are others.

Some companies are worried. A new labour-contract law, which may be passed within the next year or so, contains provisions that critics (inside both foreign and Chinese enterprises) say could give unions a greater say in company decision-making. In a recent survey of its members by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, about half the consumer-goods companies questioned said they had negative or very negative views of the law as currently drafted. Revisions are expected.

However, there is little likelihood that trade unions in China will acquire the clout that some of their counterparts exercise in Western countries. For all its Marxist pretensions, the party is still more interested in business than in the grievances of the proletariat.

SOURCE: The Economist

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
TECH-Tips Week of 9-25 - Fieldbus Encapsulation - LEDs/Lasers-Transparent LAN Switches-RF Azimuth-Earth Buldge - MIM Poison Attacks. Check it out:
TECHtionary TECH-Tips Week of September 25-29, 2006

Monday Fieldbus Encapsulation
Tuesday - LEDs versus Laser Diodes
Wednesday Transparent LAN Switches
Thursday RF Azimuth & Earth Bulge
Friday Man-in-the-Middle Poison Attacks

The animated tutorials are available at: http://www.techtionary.com
-----------------
Monday TECHtionary.com TECH-Tip Fieldbus Encapsulation
Here is the encapsulation process for Fieldbus. This is an example
of how protocols at different layers are used to provide data
communications. Fieldbus is a standard data communications protocol
using in ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning (manufacturing) and other
industrial applications. While Fieldbus can work with Ethernet,
Fieldbus has its own data protocol format (shown here) or use a
number of OSI Layers to provide for data communications.
-----
Tuesday TECHtionary.com TECH-Tip LEDs versus Laser Diodes
A few words on Light Sources The advantages of LED-Light Emitting
Diodes are: - Lower power - High spectral spread - Non-coherent
(LASER) light - Wide differential group delay (see Next)
The advantages of LD-Laser Diodes are:
- High power - Single wavelength frequency - Coherent LASER light -
Narrow modal dispersion LASER-Light Amplified Stimulated Emitted
Radiation

-----
Wednesday TECHtionary.com TECH-Tip Transparent LAN Switches
Transparent LAN Switches build Tables/Lists based on MAC-Media Access
Control (LAN card address) and then forward packet out port
associated with the MAC address unless address is unknown or
broadcast and then flood to all ports.
LAN switches and bridges are Layer 2-Datalink devices do NOT filter
broadcast traffic. That is, switches and bridges do NOT change the
broadcast domain (area of service). In other words, if the
switch/bridge does not know the MAC addresses, they will
flood/forward frames to ANYWHERE they don't know the MAC address. A
large number of flooded frames causes slow performance and is called
a Broadcast Storm in a broadcast domain. However, bridges/switches
can reduce the number of collisions without changing the broadcast
domain.
-----
Thursday TECHtionary.com TECH-Tip Azimuth & Earth Bulge
Azimuth refers to the angle of direction such as east is 90 degrees,
south is 180, degrees west is 270 degrees and north 360 or 00.
Degrees. Altitude refers to position relative to the horizon at 00
degrees with +90 degrees straight up and -90 degrees straight down.
Since we are talking about the earth issues, Earth Bulge is the
natural angle of the earth over distance. That is, antenna height
must be adjusted when towers are separated by more than seven miles.
-----
Friday TECHtionary.com TECH-Tip Man-in-the-Middle Poison Attacks
In a wireless network, Hackers can use ARP to mislead or poison other
hosts. Hacker Host C is now the "Man-in-The Middle" and can monitor
telnet (terminal emulation) sessions, intercept and read SMTP-Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol or POP-Post Office Protocol email, SSH-Secure
SHell encrypted data host-server transactions or upload viruses to
any or all hosts. Here are four scenarios which poison attacks may
likely occur.
Scenario 1 - Hacker attacks two or more wired hosts on the same AP-
Access Point and same LAN switch.
Scenario 2 - Hacker attacks two or more wired and wireless hosts on
the same AP-Access Point and same LAN switch.
Scenario 3 - Hacker attacks two wireless hosts on the same AP-Access
Point and same LAN switch.
Scenario 4- Hacker attacks two or more wireless hosts on multiple AP-
Access Points and multiple LAN switches.

ABOUT
TECHtionary.com produces dealer and customer training programs, online presentations including iPod and PC formats sales brochures, virtual installation manuals and animated online presentations. The company has more than 2,850+ free online presentations on data communications,, internet, wireless, VoIP-Voice over Internet Protocol, PBX Systems, central office switching, protocols, telephony, telecommunications, networking, routing, IPTV, WiMax, power systems, broadband, WiFi-wireless fidelity and other related technologies available at http://www.techtionary.com. TECHtionary also produces VoIP Dealer Training. Some of the key highlights are: Building a VoIP Business, Selling & Marketing VoIP, Customer and End User Training, VoIP Technology, Network Design, Provisioning, Customer Service, Dealer Portal, and Enhanced & Professional Services. VoIP training is also available as a one-day introduction to a five-day indepth course and can be customized and delivered via web seminar or online tutorial series. More details on VoIP Dealer training are available by calling Tom Cross at 303-594-1694 or [email protected] Thomas Cross is a magazine columnist with many key technology publications and a member of the Technical Board of Advisors for the VoIP-Security Alliance.

PRODUCTS & Services

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PRODUCTS & Services. Check it out:
(Transmission & Distribution World Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) POLE-TOP Inspections

The PoleTop Peeper from EDM International Inc. is designed to make the inspection of aboveground conditions easy and quick. This is an example of necessity being the mother of invention. After finding it needed a method to quickly and accurately inspect pole-top conditions, EDM International began to put together plans for a device that could fill that need.



The PoleTop Peeper is a camera mounted to the top of a hot stick that is used to identify wood pole-top conditions and equipment conditions through a visual means. The signal is viewed by the inspector on the ground via heads-up display goggles. The signal is transferred to the goggles via radio-frequency communication.

Inspectors at a Northwestern utility are currently using the PoleTop Peeper to look for aboveground conditions and, based on the conditions noted, the inspectors will identify if repair or replacement is warranted. When it is, a crew is assigned to specific poles to make repairs or replacements.EDM International Inc. | www.edmlink.com

POLYPHASE Endpoint

Hunt Technologies and Landis+Gyr Inc.'s TS2 S4e polyphase endpoint provides a commercial meter platform for utilities deploying Hunt's two-way advanced metering infrastructure system.

This new endpoint combines the intelligence and advanced communication capabilities of Hunt's TS2 module with the powerful functionality of the S4e meter. The TS2 system reads data directly from the meter register, using power line carrier technology to transmit data to and receive data from the utility. The module is capable of accessing more than 85 data values from the meter. The TS2 S4e endpoint provides a reprogrammable and updateable solution that includes advanced features and supports system functionality. Utilities may purchase S4e meters with the TS2 module factory installed or purchase the products separately for retrofit.Hunt Technologieswww.hunttechnologies.comLandis+Gyr Inc. | www.landisgyr.us

Conduit CONNECTORS

Thomas & Betts' T&B fittings stainless-steel liquid-tight conduit connectors meet the demand for conduit fittings that function well in heavily corrosive environments. The connector's body and gland nut are constructed of stainless steel, offering the corrosion resistance of nonmetallic fittings and the strength, durability and ultraviolet resistance of conventional metallic fittings.

Designed to connect metallic-cored, liquid-tight conduit to a box or enclosure, these conduit connectors are available in straight, 45-degree and 90-degree configurations in sizes to fit conduit from 3/8 inch to 2 inches (9.4 mm to 50.8 mm).Thomas & Betts | www.tnb.com

High-Voltage INSULATORS

Advanced Rubber Products, a division of TMP Technologies Inc., has purchased the polymer high-voltage insulator product line from Victor Insulators. Advanced Rubber Products has been producing these parts for Victor Insulator for more than eight years. The polymer insulator designs feature large-diameter fiberglass rods, thicker shed cross-sections and high-strength alloy end fittings. In addition, the products feature a 360-degree moisture-tight outer seal, as well as a moisture-tight, compressed inner seal.Advanced Rubber Products | www.advancedrubberproducts.com

SVN ARRESTER

The Ohio Brass Type SVN arrester from Hubbell Power Systems offers extremely high energy capability for 69-kV to 500-kV voltages. The arrester boasts a silicone rubber housing, high mechanical strength, 65-kA pressure-relief capability and the same proven sealing system as used in Ohio Brass porcelain VN designs.Hubbell Power Systemswww.hubbellpowersystems

Substation ENCLOSURE

Noise Reduction Problems Inc.'s substation enclosures offer complete work-area noise isolation. The enclosures are easy to install, cost effective and available in a variety of surface finishes. Plus, the company provides full design services.Noise Reduction Problems Inc.http://noisereduction.net

PD DETECTION

The UltraTev is a handheld partial discharge (PD) detection instrument being distributed by TJ|H2b Analytical Services. The device can detect both surface discharges and internal transient earth voltages.

The UltraTev gives an instantaneous reading of the presence of PD activity, at threshold levels that indicate the need for further investigation or that an asset is unsafe for personnel to approach.TJ|H2b Analytical Serviceswww.tjh2b.com

UV/IR Daylight CAMERA

The MultiCAM from CSIR is a long-wave, infrared, daylight corona visible camera. The first MultiCAM will ship in October 2006.

The MultiCAM has had models operating for about two years proving the feasibility, developing technology and getting operational feedback from ESKOM, the South African electric utility. CSIR develops its cameras specifically to address known needs in the electric utility industry.

CSIR has some MultiCAM example pictures and will soon have more to show how this camera will save utilities real money by doing a concurrent infrared and daylight corona survey. This type of survey is applicable from distribution through transmission voltages. The knowledge from each type of survey is presented in a concurrent image using the camera.CSIR | www.corocam.com

Handheld COMPUTERS

Tough Corp. has been named the master distributor in Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea for the Tripod Data Systems (TDS) Recon and TDS Ranger rugged handhelds for mobile computing applications.

Handheld Europe AB of Gothenburg, Sweden, is the master distributor for Europe, and Santiago & Cintra Technologies, based in Miami, Florida, U.S., serves TDS customers in Latin America.

The Recon and Ranger offer field-proven mobile computing capabilities in extreme temperatures, driving rain, dusty job sites and other harsh environments. Tough will provide sales, service and support for the TDS rugged handhelds throughout Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea.

The handheld computers feature Windows Mobile software, allowing users to run thousands of familiar applications, as well as industry-specific programs. Both feature integrated Bluetooth and 802.11b wireless, a sunlight-readable color TFT touchscreen and two CompactFlash slots for adding peripheral devices. The Ranger also offers a Secure Digital slot.Tough Corp. | www.toughcorp.com

Power MANAGEMENT

MGE UPS SYSTEMS has introduced universal support for Macintosh OS X with the latest release of its Solution-Pac Power Management Software. For Intel-based and legacy Mac hardware protected by an MGE UPS, the software assures added security for connected systems by verifying the UPS connections and, in the event of a prolonged power outage, initiating a graceful shutdown when the UPS battery level is low.

Mac OS X ships with a built-in power management driver that provides limited functionality, while MGE's new solutions provide additional capabilities and user control. Local power management can be achieved through the Personal Solution Pac application, which consists of a power control module and a simple system preference panel. The control module enables communication with the UPS through the Mac's USB port, displays user alerts, and triggers an orderly shutdown sequence when the battery capacity reaches a user-specified level during a power outage.

Designed to work with MGE's desktop and network UPS products, Personal Solution Pac for Mac OS X complements MGE's power management software offerings for PCs, LANs/WANs and enterprise-wide networks, and is available as a free download at www.mgeups.com/download/soft/explore/eng/network/net_sol.htm.MGE UPS Systems | www.mgeups.com/us

Explosion-Protected CAMERAS

Extreme CCTV announces the EX70 series, a new suite of certified explosion-protected cameras and infrared illuminators for hazardous environments. The EX70 Explosion-Protected series are CSA/UL certified to Class I, Division 1 Groups B, C, D and Class II, Division 1, Groups E, F, G and to temperature code T6, the safest available rating. The products are available with LXR mechanical filter technology, 550 TVL sensor and optional integrated day-night design. As one of the industry's only explosion-protected night-vision solutions, the EX70 series is ideal for minimizing risk and maximizing safety at hazardous locations.Extreme CCTV | www.ExtremeCCTV.com

USB-Based ETHERNET SERVER

Onset Computer Corp., a supplier of battery-powered data loggers, announces the availability of a USB-based Ethernet server, which allows multiple HOBO data loggers to be connected over an Ethernet network.

The Keyspan USB Server, when used in conjunction with HOBO loggers, enables users to remotely manage and access HOBO loggers distributed throughout a facility and to receive alarm notification via e-mail or cell phone when environmental conditions exceed set thresholds.

The Keyspan server is plugged into an Ethernet network, and multiple HOBO loggers are connected to the server. An accompanying software driver is then installed on each client PC, enabling data to be readily shared by any interested parties in the facility. For example, facility managers can view data on HVAC/R systems performance and energy usage, warehouse managers can view data on storage climate conditions, and quality managers can view process heating and cooling statistics.

The Keyspan USB Server is compatible with USB-based HOBO data loggers, and allows for connection of up to four loggers at each server location.Onset Computer Corp. | www.onsetcomp.com/hobo

Automated Measurement SOFTWARE

Telvent announces the release of Titanium2, the second version of its Titanium software, for use with the Telvent Metering System (TMS) platform for automatic energy measurement. The TMS platform is based on Echelon Corp.'s Networked Energy Services system. With the release of Titanium2, energy companies can use a Web-based application to administer all aspects of their automatic meter reading (AMR) infrastructure including:

Installation of meter and data concentrator software

Execution of orders to obtain data from meters and concentrators

Management of system incidents (events and alarms)

Configuration of hourly and daily readings and their storage in a database

Management of user access to the system.Telvent | www.telvent.com

TERMINATION for Medium-Voltage Cables

Tyco Electronics' TFT-E elastomeric medium-voltage terminations are designed for 15-kV, 25-kV and 35-kV cold-shrink terminations and feature cold applied material technology. With this new material technology, electrical utility engineers can expect an improvement in tracking erosion test performance (TERT) by up to three times over the previous generation TFT-E termination material. Furthermore, the elastomeric body provides improved shelf life and cold temperature recovery along with outstanding UV stability, all adding to the product's useful life.

By using the improved TFT-E termination, utilities will also gain the benefit of an advanced stress control method employing metal oxide matrix technology to provide superior electrical performance. A pre-lubricated, crush-resistant holdout (or core) simplifies installation.

The product is tested to IEEE 48-1996 and is available in three sizes, which accept a wide range of cable sizes.Tyco Electronicswww.tycoelectronics.com

WIRELESS Communications System

Eaton Corp.'s new wireless communications system allows utility workers to remotely monitor ac distribution network protectors, alleviating the extra cost, and more importantly, the risks associated with workers entering underground vaults.

Eaton's new Cutler-Hammer-branded NPView is a wireless web server that is placed inside the underground vault or abovegrade control room that can wirelessly transmit data from multiple Microprocessor Communications Variant (MPCV) relays underground to a wireless-enabled laptop or handheld PocketPC.

This remote monitoring system can monitor, calibrate, log data and control network protectors. The unit's connection options provide local access up to 100 m (328 ft) away from the module or with a cellular modem for infinite range ability, sparing utility workers the dirty and often dangerous task of entering vaults. It also allows maintenance crews to focus their attention on known power interruptions instead of spending hours performing routine inspections underground.

Up to 12 MPCVs can be connected to one NPView Web server. The relays can be daisy-chained for distances up to 2400 m (1.5 miles) without repeaters with simple twisted pair to the wireless module.Eaton Corp. | www.eaton.com

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
VoIP peering's business model shifts. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The explosion in voice-over-IP traffic is producing a new and rapidly growing market for peering services, as VoIP providers try to avoid the public network in transporting and terminating their IP-based calls. What VoIP peering promises is the ability both to provide end-to-end IP connections for VoIP, thus improving quality and control, and to enable new services, such as video calling, that aren't possible as long as VoIP calls traverse the public network.



As VoIP usage increases, so does the use of VoIP peering. Stealth Communications, which operates a voice peering fabric (VPF), has seen minutes of use grow from 18 billion in 2005 to a projected 100 billion this year, said Shrihari Pandit, president and CEO. In the near term, however, it can be confusing to sort through the voice peering options, which include multiple commercial models, in terms of what a VoIP peering service can do and how the relationship between the two VoIP providers is commercialized.

There is some confusion in the market, said Alan Nunn, chief technology officer of Newport Networks, a softswitch maker. The first level of confusion comes from whether peering companies are talking about purely carrying IP traffic regardless of what is in that traffic or whether they are peering voice traffic. Then there are different commercial models from the two extreme communities the telco community and the pure Internet community each of which is coming from a different angle. The telco guys are thinking per minute, and the Internet guys are thinking per number.

A number of neutral entities have popped up that offer VoIP providers peering and give them a choice between those two common commercial models.

There are two different commercial paradigms, said Eli Katz, CEO of Xconnect, which announced at VON '06 that it had acquired IpeerX and now collectively serves 300 service providers in 30 countries. One is a bilateral settlement based on per-minute, per-call activity, and the other is settlement free. The relationship between the service providers is independent of the role the neutral facilitator plays in that. We provide products and services for both models. For a true peer-to-peer environment, bill and keep seems to be the more appropriate commercial model.

Having fixed costs is increasingly important to VoIP players because competition is forcing everyone to fixed-rate models, Pandit said.

Beyond the choice of commercial models, however, there are also distinctions in the type of VoIP peering service and competition among the players to attract the largest number of service providers and thus build the largest ENUM database of VoIP numbers to which calls can be terminated over an all-IP connection.

There are many different levels of peering or interconnection of networks, Pandit said. You can connect at the physical layer, the network layer or the application layer.

Stealth's VPF is primarily transport, operating what amounts to a private Internet, around North America and into both Europe and Asia, he said, enabling direct peering among service providers. The service supports either bilateral agreements or fixed connections with per-month fees and free ENUM database dips. When calls come into the VPF, the database dip determines if the number being called is served by a provider connected to the VPF and terminates the call accordingly.

Other peering providers, including NeuStar and Xconnect, have layers of applications on top of peering services such as signaling management, security and protection against VoIP's version of spam known as spit, quality of service, caller ID authentication and more.

Global Crossing announced a wholesale VoIP peering service at VON '06 that followed its enterprise peering service both enable its customers to keep their VoIP calls on its IP network whenever possible.

It enables our customers to have more predictable costs and to control quality, said Patrick Reilly, senior product development manager. That's important, as they are forced to move to flat annual fees and compete against folks with larger scale.

Within the VoIP peering community, many expect more telecom service providers will be offering peering as a commercial service.

It's a very natural extension for carriers to offer this within their own customer base, just to enable traffic that logically should remain on-net to remain on-net, as it has no reason to go off-net, Katz said. There is a natural evolution within the carrier network.

The question is whether larger telecom providers will seek to muscle in on VoIP peering and change the shift toward a bill and keep environment.

The telcos have been sitting back for a while, saying, This VoIP stuff is no big deal to us, Nunn said. Now, they are starting to see the peering guys getting some traction we would expect to see them start playing a me-too.

Peering will only become more important in the VoIP world, Katz said, to enable VoIP providers to compete on more than price by adding advanced features. VoIP peering will enable advanced services such as video calling, and increase the value of VoIP by increasing the number of all VoIP connections for consumers, he said.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
Nortel Networks pushes into the enterprise. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) How much of an enterprise vendor can Nortel become?

After months of confusion over its strategic direction, Nortel Networks has voiced clear, bold ambitions in the enterprise space through a few recent moves. As the telecom vendor vows to accelerate IT/communications convergence and blur the line between carrier and corporate networks, it's raising questions about just how enterprise-focused it will ultimately become.



When CEO Mike Zafirovski vowed early this year to devote Nortel only to markets in which it could hold at least a 20% share, many wouldn't have guessed the enterprise would be among them. Nortel took 15% of the enterprise telephony market last year while most of its other enterprise segments held single-digit shares. The big shares don't appear to be growing, and the business as a whole isn't generating much profit.

Nortel only gets about a quarter of its revenue from the enterprise market today; it's expected to contribute less than $3 billion of Nortel's more than $11 billion in total revenue this year. Though the company won't say how enterprise-reliant it ultimately wants to be, it's clearly upping its bet there. Although it exited some telecom ventures this summer (wireless UMTS access and an access partnership with Huawei Technologies), Nortel announced a broad partnership with Microsoft to integrate and jointly develop unified communications (or converged voice/IT) products that Zafirovski said will bring Nortel more than $1 billion over the next three years. And according to Joe Chiasson, Susquehanna Financial Group analyst, Nortel may be mulling an acquisition of high-end enterprise Ethernet router vendor Force10 Networks to complement last year's acquisition of lower-end enterprise router maker Tasman Networks.

In some ways, Nortel's enterprise push acts as a defense against its merging competitors in telecom. When Alcatel and Lucent Technologies kicked off big-merger mania, odds makers paired off most vendors in their minds, but most expected Nortel to be left out, its lingering accounting problems making it too risky a merger partner. Nortel's enterprise push is an alternative to big telecom M&A and a zig to its rivals' zag. Alcatel is a leading IP PBX vendor in Europe, but Lucent hasn't been a supplier to the enterprise space since it spun off Avaya in 2000. And in North America lately, major vendors have been focused more on residential broadband than IT network convergence.

However, Nortel's enterprise push is also one from frying pan to fire, as it forces direct competition with the indomitable Cisco Systems. Nortel says it will offer much-needed choice and multi-vendor interoperability to Cisco's customers, but other would-be challengers have found that Cisco wields too much influence over distributors to allow a strong second-place player.

Very few [value-added resellers] are willing to divert resources away from Cisco and thus risk its wrath given how much of their existing revenue is derived from Cisco, Chiasson said. By courting Microsoft, Nortel may instead hope to pit one giant against another.

They have to tear up the model, said Jim Kelleher, Argus Research analyst. [Nortel has to] say the future of enterprise communication is not a box, it's a software suite.

Since the Microsoft announcement, Nortel has seen renewed interest from enterprise channel partners, said Ruchi Prasad, Nortel's vice president of enterprise global marketing. This month, the company announced new packages of its enterprise voice and data products and a shorter distributor accreditation process, both aimed at making it easier for resellers to take Nortel gear to small and medium-sized businesses. Further announcements on distribution strategy are soon to come, Prasad said, and the company also might expand its Microsoft partnership to other areas of the software giant's business.

Microsoft is a big company, she said. Stay tuned.

NORTEL'S ENTERPRISE PRESENCE, 2005

Product areaRevenue (in millions of dollars)Market shareEnterprise telephony123915%L2-L3 switching (modular)3114.3%L2-L3 switching (fixed)2794.4%High-end routing101.3%Access routing351.1%Security (IPSec VPN/firewall)2109%Security (SSL gateway)3116%L4-L7 load-balancing8713.5%Total2203Source: Susquehanna Financial Group, SFG Research, Infonetics, Dell'Oro

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

Oz targets the consumer inbox

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Oz targets the consumer inbox. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) While the attention on mobile e-mail seems to be focused on the enterprise push e-mail market, Oz Communications is carving, unnoticed, a niche for itself in the consumer e-mail space.

Though it has only three announced carrier customers 3 Scandinavia, Telus and Virgin Mobile Oz claims to have more than a million individual subscribers to the e-mail service it powers for AOL, MSN and Yahoo. More than likely, the dozen major global carriers that use its instant messaging solution are using Oz' e-mail product on the side. Aside from Oz, however, the consumer market and the billion or so Web e-mail accounts worldwide remain unaddressed, probably because the money in enterprise e-mail is simply too powerful a lure for e-mail applications developers. Thus, the Good Technologies, Research in Motions, Sevens and Vistos have made no effort to move their technologies across that mass-market line.



Regular people don't want to use it, said Beverly Wilks, director of corporate marketing and communications for Oz. People want to use their personal e-mail as a casual service, not as a lifeline to their work places, and the highly advanced push solutions are too expensive and too omnipresent for their tastes, Wilks said. Oz's pull solution uses an embedded client to retrieve e-mail on demand, augmented with a message waiting push notification service that operates through regular short message service. And instead of the $100 or more monthly data bills for a BlackBerry service, carriers are charging customers merely by the message or by the bit downloaded.

Of all the push e-mail solution providers, Visto would be the most likely candidate to compete against Oz for a place in the consumer handset. It has developed clients that can work on simple Java handsets, extending its reach well beyond other vendors, which either target smartphones or dedicated messaging devices. But although Visto definitely has ambitions beyond the enterprise set, it's willing to leave the consumers to companies such as Oz.

Moving ahead, we don't want to restrict ourselves to be an enterprise e-mail service, said Sanjay Kamble, Visto vice president of marketing. We believe there is a much broader base of business e-mail users that we can reach. The enterprise is too limited.

ONLINE

Don't forget to read Telephony's guide to carrier Ethernet, a new supplement we created to help you make sense of where this market is going. Along with that, we've also added an Ethernet One-Stop page to our Web site. Some of the highlights from the supplement include:

A look at how Ethernet fits into Verizon's data services planThe variety of Ethernet-based services availableHow Ethernet-based backhaul is helping to address 3G capacity issues.www.telephonyonline.com/ethernet

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

CONFLICTED NO MORE

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CONFLICTED NO MORE. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As one of the industry's newest public companies, Windstream, the former landline business of Alltel which is now a wireless company is no small start-up. This company is big real big for an independent telephone company. The biggest, said CEO Jeff Gardner. It's 3.5 million customers across 16 states big. Three point four billion dollars in annual revenue big. Eight thousand employees big. But it's not big enough.



Like any healthy newborn, Windstream needs to grow. It's the main question about the business, said Mitch Mitchell, director of Mercer Management Consulting's communications, information and entertainment practice. It's not hard to guess one of the ways the company will achieve the necessary growth spurt. However, before we look at how Gardner and company plan to grow the company, let's look at their rationale for splitting the company in two and simultaneously merging the landline business with Valor Communications.

No need to go all the way back to the founding of Allied Telephone Co. in 1943, when it began servicing rural communities in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma from its headquarters in Little Rock, Ark. Nor is it necessary to go back to 1983 when Allied merged with Mid-Continent Telephony Co. of Ohio to form Alltel the nation's fifth-largest local telephone company at the time.

But starting in 1993, the company began to do what Gardner said is so essential for successful companies to do: reinvent themselves every five years or so. In 1993, it acquired GTE in Georgia and its 320,000 access lines and directory publishing business. In 1996, it became a long-distance company as well. In 1999, Alltel merged with Standard Group in Cornelia, Ga., and Aliant Communications of Lincoln, Neb., adding another 71,000 and 293,000 access lines, respectively, as well as 70,000 long-distance customers from Aliant.

A year later, Valor Telecom was formed with assets from GTE Southwest. Two years after that, in 2002, Alltel purchased 600,000 lines from Verizon in Kentucky. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Alltel built a wireless business 11 million customers strong. And in 2005 it announced the separation of its wireless and wireline businesses and the creation of Windstream.

Why?

For years the wireline business had been one that we could apply a little strategic horsepower to, and it would move along just fine, Gardner said. But it became clear that to be successful in the long run, the wireline business which was really the engine that produced the cash flow that helped Alltel grow into one of the largest companies in the U.S. would need 100% strategic focus.

Gardner believed and still does that during the next 10 years, the company could create more value for shareholders by separating the wireline and wireless businesses. So far, investors must believe it, too.

If you look at how the stock has performed, the answer from the market is that we have unlocked some value here, he said. This is not going to be the highest-growth business in the world, but it is one I believe we can transform.

Gardner has been involved in several business transformations, but he said by far this was the most difficult. Obviously, rather than the merger process he had been through several times, this was a company split. It also was the creation of a new public company and the simultaneous merger with Valor. To make matters worse, prior to the split, Alltel had done a tremendous job integrating its businesses to drive low operational costs, which is great for a united company's bottom line, but can make it awfully tough to split it apart.

It meant Windstream would have to rebuild a customer service department as well as many of the internal business functions, such as human resources, and had to separate engineering and marketing teams. And it had to do it while incorporating or altering the same functions and processes from Valor.

Besides bulking Windstream's access line numbers, the Valor merger did something else: It paid for the cost of setting up the new public company with additional financial synergies left over.

Gardner said setting up a new public company would require another $12 million. That's a run rate of $12 million a year forever, he said.

So Gardner and his team looked for a deal that could offset some of that cost. With Valor, we could drive $52 million in synergies. So if you subtract the $12 million in start-up costs, shareholders were better off by almost $40 million. And we were a bigger entity as a result.

It's difficult not to make comparisons to another big and newly created independent telco: Embarq, the landline spinoff from Sprint, which also claims to be the largest provider of services to rural America. Here's how Gardner sets the record straight:

They are a large company with a similar market cap. We are much more rural than Embarq. When you look at access lines per square mile, we are in much less dense markets, Gardner said. But we have higher margins, higher broadband penetration and we pay much bigger dividends.

Keith Paglusch, chief operating officer of Windstream, said there is a big difference in the average density of their respective markets. Windstream currently has about 25 access lines per square mile, whereas Embarq has 105. The average for rural providers is around 130 access lines per square mile. The largest metropolitan areas that Windstream serves are in Lexington, Ky., and Lincoln, Neb. Embarq has Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla.

The challenge going forward as stated above is for Windstream to grow and not for that average number of access lines per square mile to shrink further because of the industry pandemic known as access-line loss. Gardner said that the company has faired better than some in this area. In the second quarter of this year, Alltel reported access line loss of 4.1% compared with 4.5% for CenturyTel and 4.6% or more for Citizens.

So even before we started our new marketing campaign, we had some of the best access-line loss numbers in the business. And we can build on that, Gardner said. I believe that if we can get broadband and digital television customers signed up, we will have an impact on customer losses.

To date, penetration rates in television services are not enough to offset that loss. It is less than 2%. However, Windstream has invested heavily in its ability to deliver entertainment services with its partner EchoStar. And its broadband penetration is in the high teens, Gardner said, and moving toward a record year. The company has offered what Gardner called meaningful bonuses to all employees if they reach their goals.

It is this type of investment and focus the landline business was not able to apply as part of Alltel.

Our folks have been a non-strategic part of a large wireless company for a long time. Gardner said. Now Scott Ford and his team are free to pursue their path to maximize returns without worrying about the wireline business, and we are free to do the same, to apply a much different approach, get more aggressive and grow this business through acquisition.

There. He said it. Now that the ice has been broken, and the a word uttered, let's get into the subject everybody wants to hear about.

Mercer's Mitchell said the industry is really poised for another round of pretty substantial consolidation. But the big question is: Who is going to be the real catalyst for the next big roll-up in the independent space? he said.

Gardner would not get specific about certain opportunities for acquisition that may have passed by when Windstream was part of Alltel, but he did say: From 2002 through 2005, Alltel's strategic focus was 100% on wireless, so we missed out on opportunities where we could have been a disciplined acquirer of access lines that we believe could have added great value for shareholders and driven a lot of synergies, he said.

Gardner believes there will be an opportunity for some company to become the leader in the rural space and that Windstream can be that company. We have the expertise from an M&A perspective. We have the lowest costs in the business, and we are already in 16 states with 3.4 million customers, he said. Over time, Verizon and/or AT&T will decide to exit some rural markets where their fiber strategies don't make sense because of these density issues. A company like Windstream could operate those markets in a more efficient way.

Gardner said his company can run rural markets better than anyone and that, We like markets with no Starbucks on the corner. We know how to operate there.

That doesn't mean Windstream will run out and buy every available rural access line. We will grow this business over time, but we will do it in a very disciplined way. In these cash-flow businesses, you have to be very cautious not to overpay, Gardner said. I am a former CFO and have a lot of financial expertise on my team, which is perfect for the capital structure and M&A environment we will be operating in.

Windstream also will look at acquiring other rural telcos, not just cast-off lines from AT&T, Qwest or Verizon. Although, as Mercer's Mitchell said, It's certainly a lot easier to acquire six millions lines from one company than through several small phone company roll-ups.

Gardner said that while M&A activity is a big part of Windstream's story, he didn't want to overstate it because the company also has to grow internally and develop its own culture.

The company's internal growth plans include a focus on broadband and entertainment but also address another big question for watchers of Windstream: What about wireless?

Paglusch said Windstream will make the go/no-go decision about a future wireless offering in the next few months. We will not build our own wireless network, he said. If we do anything at all, we would be a [mobile virtual network operator].

That if doesn't sound like a very big one because Gardner said the decision is very close and that the company would be a reseller of services from multiple wireless operators. And Paglusch said, I am straight up when I say that the future of communications is about both wireline and wireless services.

On whether or not Alltel would be one of those operators whose service Windstream resells, Paglusch said, At this point, anything is fair game. We have great respect for Alltel. They have fantastic service in our rural communities. But we will also look at Verizon, Sprint and Cingular.

Asked about the struggles other MVNO's such as Disney and ESPN are having, Paglusch dismissed it by saying those companies' propositions are different.

They have very specific applications and are banking on their brand names, he said. In our case, our brand equity is with the people who have worked in our communities for years. We would be packaging communication and entertainment products, whereas they package their brand and specific apps.

Even with a wireless offering, Windstream will be a rural communications company with wireless playing a complementary role; it will not necessarily become a provider of fixed/mobile converged services.

We would package wireless as something to use when you're not near your landline phone, Paglusch said. He had spent 18 years at Sprint so he knew converged services are not always the best option. This is another way the company is different from Embarq, whose strategy is all about the convergence of wireline and wireless.

Converged services are good when they benefit the customer and the customer says, My life is easier because of those services. Paglusch said. But for the technology to enable converged services even if the customer doesn't understand it or use it in a converged way doesn't make sense.

Another service that doesn't make sense to Paglusch and Windstream in general is fiber-based IPTV. We have looked at it and will continue to look to see if there is any benefit there. But at the moment, we don't see a compelling reason to offer IPTV services, he said. I understand the view that says he who wins the TV race could win the bundle, but right now, our anchor is clearly our telephone service and quickly growing broadband service.

Gardner said it is very unlikely that a fiber-to-the-home strategy would work in most rural markets because it is tremendously cost prohibitive. Instead, Windstream is putting its resources post-surgery into building its brand and tweaking its operations.

Paglusch has been touring the company soliciting input from employees, whose ideas the company has taken to heart and actually implemented.

Our employees are now saying, Wow, they're really listening to us, he said. The stick to that carrot is that the employees are also being held more accountable for specific results.

Employee-inspired changes at Windstream include the way the company manages customer credit and the way it bundles services. For the first time, the company is offering broadband service independent from voice service and is test marketing Simplified Broadband in four markets, including Harrison, Ark., and Jasper, Ga.

Through skip level meetings with employees, Windstream discovered something else. I didn't hear our pricing was an issue. I didn't hear our products were an issue. I heard visibility was an issue, Paglusch said.

Visibility shouldn't be an issue for long with the company's new mascots a pair of vintage apple-green pickup trucks completing their 33-market promotional tour. They're hard to miss and probably one of the better marketing tools of the modern, high-tech communications age.

It was important to have something iconic in our ads, Gardner said. So much of what you see today, you forget about yesterday. It's a great symbol for the transformation we're trying to create and for bringing the old and new together.

Part of that transformation includes adopting some of the database technologies and processes from Valor that enable features like Caller Name ID that require dips into third-party databases. It also includes the aforementioned employee-inspired changes and building its own human resources department and customer service operations, including call centers, the continued buildout of its broadband infrastructure, the integration of the Valor properties, building brand loyalty, growing its CLEC's enterprise business, and making that wireless decision, then implementing it.

The management team is trying to create a new culture, but not one vastly different from the one at Alltel. Gardner said Alltel has a great culture. However, they are trying to change the mindset somewhat. We want a team with a different view in terms of how to market this business instead of thinking of it as a detriment to the wireless business. The world is changing, and we have to take advantage of having 3.4 million customers and this cash flow to change with it, Gardner said.

He knows the aura of being a new company won't last forever and that Windstream must produce. So as part of its new culture, management is simply making Windstream a great place to work for people who want to work.

I am not a big believer in being able to motivate people. I can't force someone to get out of bed in the morning, but I can create an environment for people to motivate themselves, Paglusch said.

As a new company, Windstream had to define a new mission statement and a set of core values. It did so with a 25-member cross-functional team from throughout the company. We didn't do it top down with executives, Paglusch said.

And so they have a virtue for each letter of the Windstream name, which is not, by the way, where the name came from. The name is meant to convey a new, fresh way of doing things. Wind and streams are part of the Arkansas heritage. Its origins are not, as Paglusch said, like anyone's dead grandfather was called Windstream.

With its first full quarterly earnings call right around the corner, Windstream will either get an extension of its honeymoon with investors or that honeymoon will come to a quick end. At Alltel, they had what Mitchell called a magic potion that helped them run their business with one of the industry's leanest operations models.

Windstream may or may not be able to duplicate that magic, but with all the good will emanating through the walls of the nearby Christ the King Catholic Church or the Temple B'nai Israel or the First Baptists Church of Little Rock or the Trinity Assembly of God, or all of them combined, perhaps Windstream stands a chance.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
QUALITY OF SERVICE MOVES DOWN MARKET. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Call it the fallout from MPLS deployment. Service providers deployed multi-protocol label switching to provide classes of service (COS) that protect and prioritize their business customers' voice, video and mission-critical data applications.



Now, according to some within the industry, businesses are asking for DSL services that offer the same thing to their remote locations that an MPLS service brings to the headquarters.

In a world where MPLS has become a wide new area of technology, DSL with MPLS isn't there yet, said Drew Lydecker, a voice and data specialist with CDW, who serves as an agent for 24 major service providers to a range of business customers. Our customers want to be able to use DSL as access for the MPLS backbone, so they can get class of service type technologies.

For many, the options are to use a more expensive dedicated circuit to remote locations or a PC-based virtual private network (VPN) tunnel into the MPLS cloud, he said.

Some service providers, such as managed service provider Virtela and national data CLEC New Edge Networks now part of EarthLink and Sprint Business, have added COS capabilities to their offerings, to address the need for consistent service quality over DSL.

New Edge Networks announced its end-to-end COS on MPLS-based VPNs in August, promising to have five classes of service available across its network, including the access portion, whether it is DSL, T-1 or frame relay (see chart on page 27). The company was responding to customer demand for end-to-end COS to support a burgeoning number of critical data network applications, including voice over IP (VoIP), said Greg Griffiths, vice president of marketing.

What we are seeing in the marketplace, and we continue to see over the last several years, is new applications and a very dynamic IT environment, he said. In addition to VoIP and applications tied to VoIP, service-oriented architecture as a philosophy is coming out. Network managers are trying to do a lot more and be more productive with less on the resource side.

By adding COS, New Edge is able to move up market, courting larger companies with remote locations to its Big Foot network.

As a result, he said, they are looking to use single facilities to the greatest extent possible, which often means having one circuit to the outside world and all the applications running on top. That leads to the need for prioritized bandwidth.

Virtela, which launched its DSL with COS within the last year, saw demand from its multinational customers to be able to guarantee critical applications at even its most remote sites and not just the headquarters location.

They may have a handful of people at those remote sites, but they had critical apps running there, said Gunnar Peters, senior product manager for enterprise VPN and MPLS services for Virtela.

In many cases, it isn't VoIP or other delay-sensitive services that is driving the need for COS-based DSL, Peters added.

What our customers are telling us is that there are specific applications and that it is key to make sure they are working, he said. It may be e-mail or Internet access or something else.

As a global managed service provider, Virtela has multinational clients that expect guaranteed service levels wherever they have remote offices, making DSL the likely access method. Virtela's approach is to use DiffServ as a feature on top of DSL to guarantee a certain amount of bandwidth to a specific application. The company is able to remotely program the customer's router, as well as modify its own network, to handle COS.

BellSouth is in the process of upgrading its DSLAMs from ATM to Gigabit Ethernet, and once that process is completed, it will be able to offer COS features over DSL, said Nimesh Shah, senior director of data product management of business markets for BellSouth.

One of the things we are seeing as customers look to create consistently ubiquitous networks with consistently available bandwidth is the need to have COS, he said. We are in the midst of creating capabilities that would support those kinds of services.

Today, the company offers a mid-band Ethernet product over copper lines that includes that function, albeit at a higher price than DSL, and it offers a private DSL service that doesn't touch the Internet but is still best effort, Shah said.

The challenge to deploying COS-based DSL is getting the requirements right and getting the technology deployed on a ubiquitous basis, he added.

We can see that demand is growing we need to qualify that and make sure this is what customers are asking us to go do, Shah said. And we need to get the requirements together that will enable us to integrate with the network.

The upgrade to Gig-E involves both BellSouth's DSLAMs and the aggregation points that sit upstream from the DSLAMs, said Glenn Couper, senior director in BellSouth's DSL product planning and development department. One of the next steps, both men agreed, is for the product team to develop requirements for the network team.

We need to give Glenn the necessary requirements so when the DSL traffic hits the aggregation point, we pull the private traffic onto our private MPLS net as opposed to sending that out onto the Internet, Shah said.

From the network perspective, we have to look across both the network and the [customer premises equipment], Couper said. Our network can deliver those capabilities now; it's not ubiquitous because that is part of the upgrade going on now. But we also have to make sure the CPE we offer can support it as well, and we haven't done that study yet.

Verizon also has looked at offering COS for DSL, according to a spokesman, in order to provide guaranteed bandwidth for VoIP for small businesses.

We are aware that this is going to be an emerging need, but at the moment, there is not enough demand to justify the investment in the QOS/SLA kind of thing, he said. Demand for VoIP over DSL is still miniscule. It's on the radar, and we will keep monitoring that.

Demand from larger businesses for this kind of service is likely to grow as they enable teleworkers and implement disaster recovery plans, said Lawrence Byrd, director of IP telephony and mobility for Avaya, which makes IP PBXs and other telecom gear.

Businesses creating disaster recovery and business continuity services are looking at the ability to rapidly turn up a teleworker network in the event of a weather disaster, terrorist event or Avian flu outbreak. VoIP phones, particularly soft-phones that run off a laptop and package all the office voice features, would make such an effort possible, but the underlying network would need to support that.

A lot of consumer issues are about how fast the [broadband] network is, but the business issue is not how fast but is it consistent, can I get QOS? Byrd said. I may get a very fast download but with a lot of delay and jitter. The ability to do this kind of VoIP network relies on consistency and QOS.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

THE QUIET REVOLUTION

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THE QUIET REVOLUTION. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SUBTLETY IS NOT A TYPICAL CHARACTERISTIC of the telecom industry, particularly when it comes to emerging areas. The typical drill for the introduction of a new network architecture or service with some potential for improving on preceding formats is to produce pomp and promises, thereby ensuring at the outset that it will be years before the actual performance of said technology or service catches up with the hype.



Mercifully, that was not the case for carrier Ethernet. Perhaps owing to Ethernet's three decades of development in the enterprise and its steady migration outward, carrier Ethernet seems to have mostly avoided the hype cycle. The result is a standardized, well-defined, carrier-class service.

Another gratifying characteristic about carrier Ethernet is that it continues to inspire innovation, both in the way it is adapted, defined and certified by standards bodies and other industry groups, and in the way it is applied in various types of networks. That's what made Telephony's staff decide to explore the topic in more depth.

What you'll notice about the content of this supplement is although it takes Telephony's characteristic forward-looking examination at where carrier Ethernet is going, it does so without speculation about whether that future is realistic. The outlook for carrier Ethernet is solid, with so many service providers already embracing it in its many formats and over different transmission modes to address various service issues.

To that end, Editor-at-Large Carol Wilson's cover story (page 14) takes a look inside the Ethernet strategy of Verizon Business, one of the U.S. service providers that has integrated Ethernet into its service strategy most completely. Her companion piece (page 24) explores how several other service providers are applying carrier Ethernet, while contributor Tim Kridel's article on page 10 takes a further look at Ethernet service strategies in the business and residential customer sectors.

We also examine the technology implications of carrier Ethernet, beginning with Senior Writer Ed Gubbins' article on network migration (page 4). On page 28, Senior Editor Tim McElligott explores QOS and provides an analysis of the Metro Ethernet Forum's testing and certification program. And on page 34, Editor-in-Chief Dan O'Shea examines how the proliferation of 3G wireless is moving carrier Ethernet heavily into the wireless backhaul business.

The bonus poster we produced with contributions from the MEF, Infonetics Research and New Paradigm Resources Group offers a visual breakdown of carrier Ethernet's application and future. And our supplement closes with a contribution from MEF President Nan Chen on why carrier Ethernet has become so prevalent.

Telephony will continue to explore the implications of carrier Ethernet in regular issues, supplements and a newly launched One-Stop section of TelephonyOnline.com. We welcome your feedback on our coverage of this critical sector that has quietly but firmly established itself as an important component of the service provider scene.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

CARRIER ETHERNET'S KILLER APPS

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CARRIER ETHERNET'S KILLER APPS. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IN THE CONSUMER AND ENTERPRISE markets, carrier Ethernet doesn't have a single killer app, but it has several compelling ones. Enterprises, particularly large ones, increasingly see Ethernet as a way to kill several birds with one stone, including standardizing their IT and telephony infrastructure on a single technology and accommodating changing business needs.



A lot of customers are centralizing their operations and looking for disaster recovery, disk mirroring, regulatory compliance and data center backup, said Rich Klapman, product director of Ethernet access services for AT&T.

On the regulatory-compliance side, big drivers include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Electronic Signatures Act. Both require enterprises to store and exchange files some of them large, such as patient X-rays in real time, making fat Ethernet pipes an attractive way to link offices or to connect to business partners. Another example is Sarbanes-Oxley, which also can produce massive amounts of data, such as an oil-and-gas company uploading analyses of drilling operations in order to calculate its reserves for its quarterly financial reports.

Those regulations are driving the need for tremendous amounts of highly reliable bandwidth, said Kevin Curran, senior vice president of marketing and product management for Optimum Light-path, the business division of Cablevision Systems.

That outlook is backed by growth so far and analyst forecasts. Worldwide revenue from Ethernet services more than doubled to $5.9 billion between 2004 and 2005, according to an April 2006 report by Infonetics Research. The firm expects revenue to hit $22.5 billion by 2009. Roughly 75% of that revenue will come from retail services such as Ethernet private line and wide area network access, and transparent local area network services.

Banks are particularly interested in the high-capacity, peer-to-peer connections that Ethernet over Lambda enables. We're seeing that as both a backup-and-storage application, as well as a real-time financial services-type application, said Michael O'Malley, group manager of portfolio marketing for Tellabs.

ETHERNET HAS BEEN AROUND for about three decades. That longevity has given the technology two attributes that help from a sales standpoint, particularly in the enterprise market. First, Ethernet silicon has spent that time riding Moore's Law down the cost curve to the point that it's now highly competitive with incumbent transport technologies such as ATM and TDM.

We're seeing a lot of adoption of Ethernet because it's been around so long, and it's so cheap, Klapman said. [Some enterprises] use servers and blade servers on Ethernet even though Fibre Channel might be better for the application, but it's proprietary and expensive.

Second, over the past few years, Ethernet has entrenched itself in enterprise IT hardware. That's partly because the cost of Ethernet gear has declined and partly because the technology can eliminate the need for some hardware such as routers. There's also a general enterprise shift from private line, frame relay and virtual private network services to Layer 2 and Layer 3 IP-based services, such as Ethernet for private line replacement also known as E-Line and multipoint Layer 2 services, known as E-LAN.

We're seeing their equipment end points migrating from Layer 3 or Layer 1 to Layer 2, AT&T's Klapman said. In the data world, Layer 3 IP routers are moving toward Layer 2 Ethernet switches. We're also seeing Layer 1 circuit-switched voice boxes PBXs migrating to voice-over-Ethernet, Layer 2 packet switches.

The ability to run multiple applications over a single network technology is attractive to CIOs and IT managers because it reduces total cost of ownership. That simplicity is particularly attractive to small and medium-sized enterprises because it means that they don't have to staff a large IT department just to manage a potpourri of technologies, such as both ATM and frame relay. Those savings help make the business case for an Ethernet migration.

Ethernet adoption is driven by the fact that it's very simple, said Alla Reznik, a group manager of nationwide Ethernet services and Ethernet access for Verizon Business.

Besides the potential for lower capex and opex, enterprises also are drawn by competitive pricing. On average, we save our customers 50 percent, said Optimum Lightpath's Curran. It's very, very compelling. It's way beyond the CLECs that used to say 15 percent.

Although Ethernet has been around for decades, it's still a relatively new technology in carrier networks. As a result, vendors, service providers and industry groups such as the Metro Ethernet Forum are still developing tools and techniques to deliver the quality of service (QOS) that enterprises require.

Some of the operations, management and troubleshooting tools are less well-defined in Ethernet than they are in, say, Sonet or ATM, said Lindsay Newell, vice president of product marketing for IP at Alcatel. Service providers have been asking vendors like us to do more instrumentation and more service awareness in the network platforms. So when they deploy Ethernet infrastructure or [offer it] as an enterprise service, they have much more capability to do provisioning, troubleshooting and monitoring of individual subscribers or services, instead of just being able to tell whether a particular switch or router is up.

The ability to ensure QOS is key for displacing incumbent technologies such as ATM, particularly among enterprises that look for reliability and service-level agreements (SLAs) rather than just the low-cost option.

There's a difference between redundancy and a carrier-class service, said Tellabs' O'Malley. There's also a difference between class of service and guaranteed QOS. You can take an Ethernet switch, put it on steroids, give it a redundant switch fabric and a redundant power supply, but that doesn't make it a carrier-class device.

As more service providers offer Ethernet, QOS could emerge as a market differentiator and as a way to justify a price premium. For example, a service provider could use guaranteed, per-flow QOS to stand out from the pack of Ethernet services using non-guaranteed, class of service routing.

ETHERNET CAN BE RUN over copper or fiber. That flexibility is key because by some estimates, only 20% of U.S. enterprises are connected by fiber. Some service providers use MPLS to accommodate copper-connected enterprises, while others focus only on companies with facilities already lit with fiber. Still others eat the cost of running a fiber lateral by building that expense into their business model and pricing. The ability to do that is partly a byproduct of the same reason why Ethernet is attractive to enterprises: cheap gear.

The cost of Ethernet equipment is less expensive, so we've been able to bring down our build costs, said Curran, whose company claims that its fiber passes within 2500 feet of more than 70% of the businesses in its footprint. All they need to spend with us is $2500 a month, and we'll pay the whole cost to bring the fiber to their building.

Selling carrier Ethernet into large enterprises means acknowledging that not all of a company's offices need ultra-fat pipes. For branch offices that don't, we'll use our hybrid fiber coax plant to terminate that traffic, Curran said.

In some cases, bringing Ethernet services to a large enterprise means using another carrier's fiber to reach some of its offices. We have no problem using someone else's fiber to reach that customer, said Verizon's Reznik.

Service providers credit the MEF with creating benchmarks that help them ensure QOS when using other carriers' networks to reach customers. The MEF's product certification was very helpful for giving the customer an end-to-end SLA, Curran said.

Some enterprises require access diversity, ranging from a backup fiber line owned by another service provider to leaving copper in place even after the fiber transition is complete. You could provide diversity by leaving a T-1 intact and then have Ethernet as the primary link, said Bob Walters, executive director of metro data services for AT&T. We've seen some customers do that.

CARRIER ETHERNET'S FAT PIPES are a good fit for bandwidth-intensive residential services such as IPTV and triple plays. IPTV is bandwidth-hungry, said Tellabs' O'Malley. It's being looked at as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 over Ethernet. Based on that, service providers are looking for a high-capacity infrastructure that can handle multiple Ethernet-based flows, stack them up across the network and then switch them wherever they need to go. From an IPTV standpoint, there's a lot of momentum in North America.

One reason why carrier Ethernet has found a market among enterprises is that it's generally cheaper than incumbent technologies. That's increasingly the case on the consumer side, too. In the access network, on the DSLAM and PON side, the pricing on a per-port basis generally is 20 to 30 percent less, said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics Research.

Those savings make it easier for Ethernet-based operators to price services such as IPTV and broadband competitively yet profitably. We've got 8 million customers out there that would demonstrate that price probably is a bigger factor than speed, said Ernie Carey, vice president of network for AT&T. I still scratch my head wondering why anybody in their right mind would be on dial-up when they could have DSL at $12.99.

Another parallel between the enterprise and consumer markets is simplicity. CIOs and IT managers are drawn to carrier Ethernet because it lets them consolidate multiple services on a single technology. For some consumers, carrier Ethernet enables a bundle of services with simplified pricing from a single operator. We've got years of experience demonstrating that customers love bundles, Carey said.

Carrier Ethernet for the residential market should benefit from its growing adoption both by enterprises and in countries abroad. Those equipment volumes give Ethernet a global cost structure and help drive down the cost of gear to the point that service providers can make a business case for using the technology in more consumer and enterprise applications.

Said O'Malley: We're seeing carrier Ethernet as a global activity.

ONLINE

Read BellSouth announces virtual Metro Ethernet on our Web site. www.telephonyonline.com/ethernet

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
VERIZON TAKES ETHERNET WIDE & DEEP. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ETHERNET IS NOT A NEW SERVICE AT VERIZON.

Within the legacy local telco side of the business, in fact, Ethernet has been offered as a service since 1993 in New York City and Washington, albeit only to very large customers. Since 2001, the company has embarked on a more aggressive Ethernet strategy, building a product portfolio that addressed evolving customers needs. And since the Verizon/MCI merger was completed earlier this year, resulting in the creation of Verizon Business as a new unit, the service has gained much greater reach.



Combined with the corporate commitment to massive fiber-optic deployment in the local loop, Ethernet is now a cornerstone of Verizon's data services portfolio and only destined to become more strategic, company officials say.

It is becoming the predominant networking technology in the metro area, said Thomas Roche, vice president of marketing for network voice and data services for Verizon Business. It's a very simple network to deploy. Our customers see it as simple, efficient and scalable.

As a result of its early movement into Ethernet, Verizon already is addressing issues such as how to generate more revenue when Ethernet lowers the cost of bandwidth for customers and how to enable end-to-end Ethernet connections that traverse multiple carrier networks. Later this year, the company is introducing more new Ethernet options, including an N by T-1 service and a national Ethernet virtual private line service (VPLS). Earlier this year, Verizon was named service provider of the year by the Metro Ethernet Forum and earned a J.D. Power & Associates rating of highest in customer satisfaction for large business customers.

Roche insisted, however, that all this Ethernet activity plays out against a broader backdrop of providing customer choice.

It really comes back to the customer, he said. It is their business applications that drive the development of new services their business requirements and their business applications that drive the requirement for bandwidth. Because we offer a high-value service in the network, customers see us as another choice, and we offer them a comprehensive set of services.

In addition to a detailed set of Ethernet solutions, Verizon can offer voice over IP (VoIP) as converged option, managed IP PBXs for its customers, as well as hosted call center services, collaboration services and more, Roche added.

THE BREADTH OF THE PRODUCT LINE is particularly impressive, said David Hold, an analyst with Current Analysis who conducted a detailed assessment of Verizon's Ethernet options (see table on page 21).

Verizon has quite a detailed list of Ethernet services, Hold said. There is the reach within the metro area with the combination of the facilities that MCI had [with legacy Verizon]. Where they have had overlapping products, such as the Verizon Enterprise Advance national MPLS backbone, the customers are being transitioned onto the former MCI national network. Verizon doesn't yet have a national VPLS service offering, but they're talking about having something ready by the end of the year.

The national VPLS offering will fill a gap in Verizon's product line and give the company an edge over rival AT&T, which also boasts an impressive array of Ethernet products, Hold said.

Ron Kaplan, an analyst with IDC, agreed that Verizon's breadth and reach are particular assets.

Verizon has a lot of fiber in some very attractive markets, particularly along the East Coast, he said. They have rolled out a broad product set. In addition to connecting offices, they also offer Internet access over Ethernet. They have a broad portfolio, and they continue to expand and invest in new central offices.

The evolution of Ethernet at Verizon began just after the telecom bubble burst, when Verizon and its vendor, Cisco Systems, unveiled a simple Ethernet LAN (E-LAN) service, said Carlos Benavides, group manager of metro Ethernet services for Verizon.

It was a simple service, he said. It featured LAN-to-LAN connectivity. Customers purchased a port and were placed on the same wide area network as their other sites. We transported all their traffic based on their MAC addresses. Everything was transparent we didn't see their traffic, and they could add stations and new applications without us ever having to do anything.

To this day, E-LAN remains one of Verizon's major Ethernet successes, Benavides said, because of the customer control and simplicity, as well as cost savings.

A lot of the time, customers' equipment already has Ethernet ports available as opposed to using a router which needs a packet over Sonet port, which is much more expensive, he said. They also like the flexibility they can make changes within their LAN, and they get propagated through the WAN as well. The bandwidth is a lot more flexible. You can buy a larger port and fill it up as needed.

FOR E-LAN SERVICE, Ethernet is still best-effort and viewed as satisfactory for data services, but not for critical applications including voice.

We realized that what we would like to do is offer another service that would allow customers to do voice, data and video by moving to an Ethernet virtual private line (E-line) service that would be point-to-point, with predictable traffic flows and hard quality of service, Benavides said.

The private-line offerings are important to customers because of the ability to offer service level agreements (SLAs), said IDC's Kaplan. Ethernet private line over Sonet infrastructure enables companies to connect headquarters to data centers or do other applications that you need an ironclad SLA to perform, he said. Verizon is doing its Ethernet over Sonet, which has a much stronger SLA than an E-LAN.

Metro Ethernet service has opened the door for Verizon's customers to add applications because of its flexibility and lower cost, Benavides said.

The arrival of metro Ethernet has opened up the ability for customer to add more applications to the network for a price that is affordable to them, he said. What we have seen from customers is that their telecom budgets have been fairly stagnant. If they can add more bandwidth for roughly the same price, they can invest in new applications that require this bandwidth. Without metro Ethernet services, they wouldn't be able to roll out those applications it would be too expensive.

Verizon is already seeing that growth in bandwidth consumption, Roche said.

As customers migrate from fast packet to Ethernet, we start to see a year-over-year increase in bandwidth utilization of 20%, he said. The good news is the efficiency of the networks and the fact that we are deploying fiber backbones and utilizing fiber in the metro and in our long-haul networks means it is much easier to be able to upgrade to Ethernet services and support higher bandwidth than it would be to have to add transitional TDM muxes to support legacy services. Just as customers see the efficiency in using their bandwidth, we see the efficiency in the fact that we can now put more services over our facilities and be able to manage them more effectively than with legacy services.

THAT TRANSITION AWAY FROM legacy networks has enabled Verizon to reduce its overall costs, Roche said.

We have deployed extensive fiber, so we can implement services very rapidly, he said. We are using DWDM [dense wave division multiplexing] and CWDM [coarse WDM] to get more reach and penetration of customers that we may not have been able to reach. Utilizing Ethernet as an access point to a national or global network allows us to begin to offer services like voice over IP, collaboration or hosted call centers as value-adds. Now that we have QOS on our metro Ethernet networks, that is what allowed us to move up the value chain and offer services on a hosted basis and not just connectivity.

Roche expects to see Verizon's customers move toward QOS-based services and away from best-effort services, based in part on the company's ability to develop more intelligent tools that allow customers to manage QOS, not just provide it.

We are working with a number of suppliers in the tools space, as well as in application acceleration, to more efficiently use the bandwidth and get the most out of it, he said. We are actively building and deploying tools to help our customers manage QOS and provide things like bandwidth-on-demand, which we will offer in the future.

Those future services include the nationwide Ethernet VPLS and a virtual private wire service that will encapsulate and transport multiple protocols, including Ethernet, frame relay, ATM, HDLC and TDM in a point-to-point configuration as specified by the IETF Martini Draft [pseudowire] specifications, said Hold of Current Analysis.

The VPLS service is important to large business customers that are used to doing their networking at Layer 2, where Ethernet lives, and not interested in a Layer 3 VPN solution, IDC's Kaplan said.

The bandwidth-on-demand option will give customers tools to throttle up their own bandwidth, Roche said, without the typical service order.

You will start to see customers control their overall bandwidth, he said. We will have billing systems to be able to support true bandwidth-on-demand, which we will start to deploy in the 2007 time frame.

MANY CUSTOMERS COMING TO ETHERNET are migrating off traditional data services such as frame relay, either because they need more bandwidth and want a more cost-effective solution or because of a desire to converge voice, data and video onto a single network, Benavides said.

Verizon is unique in following a fiber-based strategy for its Ethernet offerings even as other companies BellSouth among them branch into copper-based service.

We have looked at the copper-based solutions, but we have seen so much success in the 10 Meg to 100 Meg arena that we have focused on fiber-based services, especially with the FiOS buildout and fiber-based initiatives that Verizon has, Benavides said. We are focused on the higher-speed services, and that's where you have to have fiber.

Verizon also offers Ethernet access to its VPN service, which enables companies to tie in locations that don't have fiber access, IDC's Kaplan said.

As big as Verizon's Ethernet rollout is, it is still limited to large buildings and fiber access, he said. There are many buildings and small branch offices that don't have fiber access, and they can be connected with VPNs. That has made Ethernet more popular, and we think the bigger carriers are all kind of moving in that direction. The copper deployments come down to carrier economics: It might not be worth it for carriers with a lot of access fiber to use a copper solution.

For the many locations that won't get fiber, frame relay and private line service will remain important, Kaplan added.

Verizon's Roche agreed.

There will be certain customers who keep those services, he said. There is always a leveling off of new technology rollouts.

As part of its Ethernet rollout, however, Verizon now believes it can cost-justify deploying fiber into more buildings because of the customer benefits Ethernet brings, and the efficiencies of the Ethernet and WDM technologies, Roche said.

We can also more efficiently use our personnel and transform the organization from managing high resource-intensive TDM-type networks to efficiently managing the network and putting more of a focus on high-value applications and services, he said. It's more of a transformation of resources.

Verizon will continue to try to differentiate in a highly competitive Ethernet market by its level of service, Roche said, and now by the reach of its network and the greater density of its Ethernet deployments.

VERIZON'S ETHERNET PORTFOLIO

E-LINE SERVICE

IN-REGION METRO (FORMER VERIZON)

Ethernet Private Line Service (EPL)Enhanced Dedicated SONET Ring (EDSR)Ethernet Virtual Private Line-Metro (EVPL)U.S. NATIONAL (FORMER MCI)

Ethernet Private Line (EPL)Converged EVPL ServicesU.S. Private Line Ethernet (USPLE)Metro Private Line Ethernet (MPLE)Global Data Link Ethernet (GDLE)Other point-to-point servicesinclude IDE and Ethernet Access to Private IP.E-LAN SERVICES

(Available in-region until national VPLS is launched)

Verizon Ethernet-LAN Metro ServiceSwitched Ethernet ServicesSource: Current Analysis

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com
THE MANY FACES OF CARRIER ETHERNET. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AS ETHERNET BECOMES A POPULAR data service option in the carrier realm, differing strategies are emerging among service providers as to the best fit for this scalable, efficient and cost-effective technology.



Some of the variation is based on market position: Competitive service providers, for example, have been aggressive in pushing Ethernet as a low-cost attraction to new customers. But even among incumbents, there are different opinions on where Ethernet fits in the product portfolio, how quickly customers should migrate to this new service from legacy frame relay and ATM services, and whether new, lower-speed copper-based Ethernet service fits into the broader deployment plan.

Even in areas where service providers agree such as Ethernet's potential as the platform for convergence and for value-added services they face skepticism from industry analysts who have adopted a wait and see attitude toward this latest candidate for converged network nirvana.

It is perhaps an indication of Ethernet's arrival in the real world of the public network that what started as a straightforward big bandwidth service is now evolving into a myriad of options and choices, tailored to attract enterprise customers in an increasingly competitive market. Classes of service (COS), service level agreements (SLAs) and more bandwidth options have all become part of the carrier Ethernet picture.

If you rewind the clock a little bit, metro Ethernet was originally designed for the enterprise market, said Nimesh Shah, senior director of data product management for business markets at BellSouth. Then it started to evolve more.

BellSouth still was serving primarily education, health care and finance with its Ethernet offering, Shah said, but the applications for those sectors started to get more sophisticated, evolving into areas like medical imaging and financial transactions.

That's when we launched a premium service, with [committed information rate] capability, because that's what they are familiar with, he said. Then we continued to penetrate the market more broadly, and Ethernet went from being a Layer 2 networking protocol to moving into access. School systems were using it to support the administration but also for Internet backhaul to connect individual schools and libraries. Then we saw demand down market and focused on how do we expand the market to medium and small businesses, which is where we now offer mid-band service using copper and fiber.

ONE PRIME EXAMPLE OF ETHERNET'S EVOLUTION is the current crop of new services, based on bonded copper technology from companies such as Hatteras Networks and Actelis Networks. Service providers such as BellSouth and XO Communications are embracing the new mid-band Ethernet services, at speeds between 2 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s, as a means of serving small and medium-sized businesses that don't inhabit buildings served by fiber.

Rich Klapman, product director of Ethernet access services for AT&T, which has not yet announced the copper-based service, said his company is excited about the potential of mid-band Ethernet. As long as it fills the right performance characteristics, then it is something we can sell, he said. You could go more down market if you go down to 2 Mb/s, whereas today our Optiman service supports down to 5 Mb/s.

By extending the reach of Ethernet, copper-based technology opens up some new markets.

Ethernet has had one big Achilles' heel: Until recently, you had to have fiber to get it, said David Hold, an analyst for Current Analysis. There are now some carriers deploying over copper. We are seeing some of the copper bonding to produce low-speed Ethernet for sub-10 Mb/s.

But not everyone is a fan. Verizon, for one, is focusing on using its fiber infrastructure.

Ethernet over copper is kind of DSL, said Ron Kaplan, an analyst for IDC. It's very similar to DSL. I can see that it is important for some companies, like BellSouth. But enterprise LANs operate at 10 [Mb/s] and 100 Mb/s, so I don't think a 2 Mb/s service is going to work for a lot of customers. You can't really compare what Verizon and AT&T are doing to a 2 Mb/s service.

Optimum Lightspan, a CLEC operating in New York and owned by Cablevision, doesn't have time to ponder copper. The company is too busy adding buildings to its fiber network.

We will light well over 200 buildings this year, which is 40% over budget, but they are all success-based builds, said Kevin Curran, senior vice president of marketing for Optimum Lightspan. We are acquiring 30 new customers a month, acquiring 20 to 40 buildings a month. We will reach [more than] 2000 lit buildings in this very dense geographic area by October.

The key to the company's success, he said, has been devising a standardized pricing plan and cutting its 70-day selling cycle by more than 20%.

THERE ALSO ARE DIFFERING STRATEGIES among service providers for how to effectively transition customers from the frame relay and ATM services to which they've become accustomed to Ethernet and IP offerings.

Bell Canada decided in 2003 to take a straightforward approach to the transition issue. After studying the success of Ethernet services in Europe, the company decided to stop selling its frame relay and ATM offerings in favor of its next-generation offering. Today, 60% of its data revenues come from its next-generation services.

Our strategy is to focus on platforms, and right now, we are focusing on ATM and frame relay working with our customers to help them see the value of [next-generation services] as their business evolves, said Paul Rove, vice president of enterprise marketing for Bell Canada. At some point, he added, Bell Canada will exit the legacy data market. It is not a strategy in which we let them die slowly. We will proactively move we're just not there yet.

At AT&T, the expected transition may be slower. Nothing ever goes away in our business, Klapman said. We are seeing adoption at the edges. There was tire kicking two to three years ago, and now we are seeing adoption. But stuff will coexist. We see an evolution. We have a very large global MPLS network, and we see Ethernet mostly kicking in at the hub sites where our customers have clusters of locations.

Carriers do agree on what is attracting customers to Ethernet the ability to get more bandwidth for the buck, using a technology with which they are very familiar and eliminating the cost, equipment and process of converting their familiar Ethernet local area network traffic into a TDM data format for transport all factor into the customer appeal.

Some more aggressive competitors already have taken the service a step further, using Ethernet virtual private line service (VPLS) to offer long-haul, any-to-any or city-to-city service. The list includes Mesergy, Time Warner Telecom and Yipes and, by year's end, Verizon.

We are extending their LANs all the way across town, and with a VPLS solution, we can take customers' Ethernet city-to-city as well, said Michael Rouleau, senior vice president of business development and strategy for Time Warner Telecom, which launched its commercial Ethernet services in 2003. This gives our customers one common infrastructure they can manage. We see more and more of them moving to a converged strategy, where they are managing their internal data, delivering Internet access and now starting to delve into VoIP over their PBX systems all over the same Ethernet network.

CONVERGENCE IS AN EMERGING THEME for Ethernet, according to service providers, which see their customers eager to collapse multiple networks onto a single Ethernet backbone something they can't do with their existing frame relay and ATM services. In addition, carriers say they expect to move up the value chain and sell their customers additional services like hosting, storage and more, using Ethernet as the platform.

Analysts, however, are skeptical about the move up the value chain.

Carriers have been talking about that for years, said Current Analysis' Hold. The majority of customers tend to opt for unmanaged services because they are cheaper, while service providers want to sell managed services with higher margin. Ethernet might help with some applications such as remote storage.

One problem, said IDC's Kaplan, is that Ethernet is already a competitive service, and prices can get squeezed.

A lot of Ethernet offerings are actually a competitive reaction, he said. The start-ups start offering someone something, but the big players aren't interested until it gets popular, and then they offer the same service. They are earning more money by offering more bandwidth at a lower price, but because of the competitive nature of telecom, they have to do it.

It is also the service providers' job to spread the word about Ethernet's value and potential as more than a lower-cost replacement for existing services, said Dick Tomlinson, executive vice president of New Paradigm Resources Group.

The customers aren't picking up yet on more advanced features they are using it to replace [legacy] services, he said. It's a problem for all carriers. The end users just haven't gotten comfortable with bundling multiple services onto the same port. I think there are things they can do to get the customer more comfortable with the advanced features of Ethernet, but it is going to take a while. There needs to be more case studies of companies that have successfully utilized Ethernet in a way that provides total lower cost of service, even if it doesn't produce an upfront lower cost.

BellSouth's new Virtual BellSouth Metro Ethernet Service addresses that issue by introducing classes of service that allow customers to easily assign priorities to different types of traffic being carried over the same Ethernet port, Shah said.

AS ETHERNET PROLIFERATES, it will allow service providers to operate more efficiently and thus deliver services at those lower price points, said Bell Canada's Rove.

When you can manage a metro Ethernet with a concentrated number of nodes, it becomes efficient for the service provider so you can offer a better value proposition in terms of price, he said.

Another point of agreement among the service providers is the need for network-to-network interfaces (NNIs) that will allow Ethernet to be deployed on an end-to-end basis for customers across the country over multi-carrier networks.

Vanco, a virtual network operator, is basing its value proposition on the ability to do that, creating process based on its relationships with service providers globally. It expects to offer an Ethernet service of that ilk soon. Today, Ethernet accounts for only 5% of the company's revenues, but that is expected to grow as the end-to-end capabilities expand.

We design solutions to handle the switching and routing of the traffic to different providers' networks, said Ciaran Roche, Vanco's lead technical consultant. We have been testing NNIs for quite a while. The standardization has dragged on for so long, there are a lot of different variants. That's a key obstacle to the formation of on NNI. We have the ability to integrate different types of networks, including at Layer 2 and at Layer 3 with IP, but it's better when you can do it at Layer 2. Technically, we have the capability to [tie together] Ethernet, and by the end of this year and early next year, you will see us knitting together some of their service providers.

Just as early demand for Ethernet produced best-effort services and the later evolution has led to today's quality of service offerings, with SLAs and COS options, it seems likely that growing demand for seamless global Ethernet connections will lead service providers in that direction as well.

LIST OF METRO ETHERNET CARRIERS IN THE U.S.

ILECS

AT&TBELLSOUTHCINCINNATI BELLEMBARQQWESTVERIZONWINDSTREAM

CABLE MSOS

CHARTERCOXGENERAL COMMUNICATIONS INC. (GCI)TIME WARNER CABLE

COMPETITIVE CARRIERS

ABOVENETALPHEUS COMMUNICATIONSAMERICAN FIBER SYSTEMSCOGENT COMMUNICATIONS INC.EXPEDIENTIP NETWORKSLEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS INC.MCLEODUSAMET-NET COMMUNICATIONSONE COMMUNICATIONSONFIBEROPTIMUM LIGHTPATHPPL TELCOMTDS METROCOMTIME WARNER TELECOMXO COMMUNICATIONSXSPEDIUSYIPES ENTERPRISE SERVICES INC.

Source: New Paradigm Resources Group

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

A NEW WORLD OF COMMUNICATIONS

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A NEW WORLD OF COMMUNICATIONS. Check it out:
(Telephony Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Carrier Ethernet is rapidly becoming the network and service that powers next-generation Internet, where the future world economy, cultures and communities emerge, borderless and limitless.

The world of carrier Ethernet, which started in the metro network space, now has expanded to a variety of access technologies and global networks and is becoming the default offering and network of many service providers worldwide. This initiative has its home in the Metro Ethernet Forum, which has defined specifications that interwork with other standards bodies to enable carrier Ethernet. It has gained almost instant traction with equipment vendors, service providers and others.



The speed of adoption has been so rapid that many people may not be familiar with what carrier Ethernet actually is, so here are its primary characteristics:

Carrier Ethernet is a ubiquitous, standardized, carrier-class service defined by five attributes that distinguish carrier Ethernet from familiar LAN-based Ethernet (see sidebar).

Carrier Ethernet brings the compelling business benefit of the Ethernet cost model to achieve significant savings.

Carrier Ethernet promotes the use of Ethernet in the global, metro and access network space, but also facilitates the scalability of Ethernet services across a variety of existing and new aggregation network technologies.

The use of common infrastructure for business, residential and wireless services enabled by carrier Ethernet creates the opportunity for high-speed, high-performance, high-mobility and low-cost services that pave the way for a new generation of growth for enterprise, residential and mobile applications Carrier Ethernet revolutionizes how business operates and information flows within or among businesses. The applications enabled or greatly enhanced are site-to-site access, server consolidation, disaster recovery, service-orientated architecture and Internet access. The attractions to the IT departments are high-speed, control, reliability, performance, scalability, cost reduction and simplicity of implementation.

The ubiquitous nature of carrier Ethernet services also makes it an ideal way to deliver Internet, entertainment and broadband data, voice and video to residents and create an on-demand experience. These are made compelling by the underlying favorable attributes for converged networking at low cost.

Our interaction with the world is converging on an Internet-centric model for business, information, entertainment and communication. And of course, we want it all to be delivered as one high-performance service that can fuel world economies.

The attributes of carrier Ethernet mean it is poised to be that one service borderless, limitless, ubiquitous and seamless that truly creates a new world of communications.

NAN CHEN ([email protected]) is president of the Metro Ethernet Forum (www.metroethernetforum.org) and vice president of product management and marketing for Strix Systems.

THE FIVE ATTRIBUTES OF CARRIER ETHERNET

STANDARDIZED SERVICES

E-Line and E-LAN provide transparent, private line, VPL and LAN services.

A ubiquitous service provided globally and locally via standardized equipment.

Requires no changes to customer LAN equipment or networks and accommodates existing network connectivity such as time-sensitive TDM traffic and signaling.

Ideally suited to converged voice, video and data networks.

Wide choice and granularity of bandwidth and QOS options.

SCALABILITY

The ability for millions to use a network service ideal for the widest variety of business, information, communications and entertainment applications with voice, video and data.

Spans access and metro to national and global services over a wide variety of physical infrastructures, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, DSL, cable and a variety of optical networks implemented by a wide range of service providers.

Scalability of bandwidth from 1 Mb/s to 10 Gb/s and beyond, in granular increments.

RELIABILITY

The ability for the network to detect and recover from incidents without impacting users.

Meeting the most demanding quality and availability requirements.

Rapid recovery time when problems do occur as low as 50 milliseconds.

QUALITY OF SERVICE

Guaranteed end-to-end performance matching the requirements for voice, video and data, delivered over converged business, residential and wireless networks.

Wide choice and granularity of bandwidth and QOS options.

Guaranteed end-to-end performance to defined service level agreements based on equipment identity register, committed information rate, frame loss, delay and delay variation characteristics.

SERVICE MANAGEMENT

The ability to monitor, diagnose and centrally manage the network, using standards-based vendor independent implementations.

Carrier-class OAM.

Rapid service provisioning.

Copyright 2006 by Prism Business Information. All rights reserved.www.prismb2b.com

New Role Raises Eyebrows

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New Role Raises Eyebrows. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Disclosures by Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd that he failed to read a report addressed to him about the company's spying investigation are prompting governance experts to ask why the company board yesterday handed Hurd more responsibility.



Hurd, praised for helping the Palo Alto, Calif., technology company rebound after he took over in April 2005, picked up the title of board chairman yesterday, after Patricia C. Dunn resigned during widening investigations by California's attorney general, federal prosecutors, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In his first public remarks since news of the leak probe broke two weeks ago, Hurd sought to clarify his role. He said he was told in February by company investigators that they would send an e-mail "containing false information" to a reporter to uncover the source of press leaks. A month later, Hurd said, he attended a meeting at which employees provided a "verbal summary" of the probe. He said there was a written report addressed to him summarizing the investigation, but he did not read it.

"I could have, and I should have," Hurd said. He took no questions at the news conference yesterday.

Hurd's description of his actions is "not exactly a glowing endorsement" for giving him additional duties as HP's board chairman, said Patrick S. McGurn, an executive vice president at Rockville proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.

Charles M. Elson, leader of the corporate governance center at the University of Delaware, said HP's culture "needs to be seriously reexamined and completely reworked."

"It is inconceivable to me that top management could have been aware of this kind of activity and not taken steps to separate the company from it," Elson said. "Large organizations are based on ethics and integrity, and the tone comes right from the top."

Hurd, though, has long been popular with Wall Street analysts and respected in the technology sector. A lawyer for prominent venture capitalist and former board member Thomas J. Perkins, who quit in protest over the intrusive tactics employed by investigators hired by HP, said in a written statement that Hurd "deserves the benefit of the doubt" and that he "is the right person to lead HP."

Moreover, McGurn said, the privacy issues raised by the HP revelations have nothing to do with the company's financial statements -- actions that ultimately doomed the leaders of other companies.

John W. Sidgmore stepped aside at WorldCom Inc. after only six months as chief executive, after questions were raised about what he may have known about financial problems at the Ashburn telecommunications company under his predecessor, Bernard J. Ebbers. Sidgmore, who was never accused of wrongdoing, has died.

Fannie Mae chief executive Franklin D. Raines kept his job for months after regulators began an investigation into its accounting practices. But after a Securities and Exchange Commission official ruled that the District mortgage company had improperly handled complex financial contracts called derivatives, Raines announced his early retirement in December 2004. Federal prosecutors recently said that they would not charge the company with a crime. Raines may still face civil charges by housing regulators and the SEC.

Last year, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, the chief executive of insurance provider American International Group Inc., gave up his post during federal and state investigations of the company's accounting practices, and resigned under pressure as chairman weeks later. Greenberg is fighting civil charges lodged by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer.

On the other hand, Daniel H. Mudd, the former Fannie Mae operations chief who took over as chief executive from Raines, continues to lead the company despite a report by federal regulators that said he was aware of allegations of accounting problems. The report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was inconclusive about what Mudd knew. He said he never attended "any meeting where there was any discussion of shifting or falsifying income."

Each of those companies was ensnared in questions about its finances. But in recent years, a few boards have yanked top executives over broader questions of personal judgment.

For example, directors at aerospace giant Boeing Co. sought the resignation of chief executive Harry C. Stonecipher in March 2005 after disclosures that Stonecipher had a personal relationship with a female subordinate, a violation of the company's code of conduct. "The board concluded that the facts reflected poorly on Harry's judgment," the board's chairman, Lew Platt, said at the time.

RadioShack Corp. chief executive David J. Edmondson left the Dallas company in February after news reports questioned the accuracy of his r sum . The company's board initially supported Edmonson, but after a week of protest, he and RadioShack directors agreed he should resign.

Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm, said that Hurd is on the brink: "This is a critically important document, and if he overlooked it, that says as much about it as if he approved it."

2006 The Washington Post Company
Open Text appoints ITQAN as prime partner. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Open Text Corporation, a leading provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, announced recently its restructuring plan for the Middle East marketing and business strategy.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
New network puts researchers on the fast track. Check it out:
(Virginian-Pilot, The (Norfolk, VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 23--An ultrafast fiber-optic network that officials hope will turn Hampton Roads into a national magnet for high-tech research and business is up and running.

The $4.8 million network, which became operational in late August, will link six regional research institutions, allowing scientists to quickly share and process massive amounts of information.

The system also connects them with researchers across the country through the National LambdaRail, a new Internet superhighway, and various other optical networks available only to academic and government research facilities.

This week, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, a federal energy lab that studies the nature of matter, became the latest to connect.

Now, all but one of the six local research institutions are linked to the network. The last -- the U.S. Joint Forces Command's research labs in northern Suffolk -- should be tied in by the middle of October.

Wayne Jones, who manages the network for partner Old Dominion University, summed up his feelings to the milestone in one word: "Ecstatic."

The fiber-optic network, provided under contract by Verizon, has been under discussion since early 2004. It is expected to be a catalyst for the region's economic growth, Jones said.

The opportunities it offers for sharing research with industry should draw more companies that specialize in computer modeling and simulation, Jones said.

The Joint Forces Command already has spawned a vibrant community of defense contractors that use modeling and simulation to support military research into new ways to train and fight.

Using the new network, Jefferson Lab researchers can transfer large data files over the Internet at speeds 60 times faster than before. The system can move one terabyte of data -- equal to a 9-mile-high stack of paper sheets printed on both sides -- in 15 minutes. Before, it took 15 hours.



"Our old network was a bottleneck," said Andy Kowalski, Jefferson Lab's deputy computer center director. "It was too time-consuming to transfer data to do any major work" with outside researchers.

Besides Old Dominion, Jefferson Lab and Joint Forces, the other local partners are The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton and ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk.

The institutions call their partnership the Eastern Litewave Internetworking Technology Enterprise, or E-LITE.

"It's like the second generation of what the Internet is all about -- to facilitate research-based and military communications," said Bob Armstrong, director of technology for the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center.

-- Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 446-2318 or [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Government Picks Consortium to Lead Mumias Share Sale. Check it out:
(The Nation (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A consortium led by Dyer and Blair Investment Bank, will be the lead advisors to the Government on the sale of its 18 per cent of its shares in Mumias Sugar Company.

The official announcement is scheduled for Monday next week, but the group, known as DSC Consortium, clinched the highest pass mark (92 per cent) on the technical evaluation, and quoted the lowest financial bid of Sh3 million.

The other companies in the consortium are Standard Investment Bank, CFC Financial Services and a local audit firm PKF. Of the six bids for lead advisor or broker that were pre-qualified for technical evaluation, only three met the 75 per cent pass mark.



PricewaterhouseCoopers and Suntra Investment Bank returned 88.6 per cent on technical evaluation, and quoted Sh11 million on financial bid exclusive of local taxes estimated at Sh1.8 million. A joint bid by Commercial Bank of Africa, multinational audit firm KPMG and Reliable Securities scored 89.3 per cent and quoted $369,780 (Sh27 million) and local taxes at $58,320 (Sh4.2 million). The technical evaluation has a weight of 70 per cent and the financial evaluation 30 per cent in the formula to chose the winner.

"Strictly speaking if you have scored the highest in the technical evaluation, and quoted the lowest in the financial bids, then you should be the winner," noted Mr Charles Onchoke the Finance director in the department of government investment and public enterprise.

The consortium will advise the Government on the price to sell the shares to the public. They will also sell shares on behalf Government. The sale of 92 million shares in the market is expected to begin in January 2007.

"In three months time, we should be ready (to sell )," noted Mr Onchoke.

For the public relations and advertising agents, all the three bids were pre-qualified met the pass mark. Nurtun Bates scored 79 per cent on a financial bid of Sh53 million, and the lowest third-party cost. Ogilvy East Africa returned 76.5 per cent on its technical evaluation on a financial bid of Sh17 million, while MCL Saatchi and Saatchi scored 76.3 per cent, and quoted Sh8 million in its financial bid.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 The Nation (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
PULKOVO AIRLINES GETS EU NOTIFICATION ON POSSIBLE FLIGHT BAN. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 21 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006.

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
CRM Hall of Fame, Support Fusion, Unipower and Symbol. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis's Sketches Of Spain:

Not a bad day for musical birthdays today -- 1926 John Coltrane, 1930 Ray Charles and 1949 Bruce Springsteen.

Wrapping up the news for the week, bear in mind that a couple days ago Support Fusion, a vendor of web-based Helpdesk, CRM, and Business Process products, announced the immediate availability of its no-cost, web-based Helpdesk Application Service for commercial and non-profit organizations



Support Fusion's web-based, high availability system is now being made available free of cost to thousands of small, medium, and large size companies for tracking and managing issues and tasks related to every day business operations.

Traditionally companies of all sizes have "struggled with the overall value proposition" when it comes to implementing helpdesk systems largely due to cost and resources, company officials say, claiming that Support Fusion "mitigates cost and resource risks by providing a no-cost option along with the convenience of an application service."

Along with Free web-based Helpdesk, Support Fusion offers a no-cost, no obligation "needs assessment" to help companies understand their business requirements, and will provide assistance and startup training to get users and system administrators off to a successful start.

"Our Free system is the perfect way to level the playing ground when it comes to providing a feature-rich, easy-to-use system for issue and task tracking," company officials say in a clear marketing pitch to the "little guy" out there. The product's Professional version with additional features can be added on to the basic system for "as little as $9.95 per user per month," too.

Effective immediately, users can click to the main Support Fusion Web site and register online to receive their Free system -- no cost, no obligation, officials claim. The first 100 users to register will also be entered into a drawing to receive 12 months of the Professional add-on features at absolutely no cost.


Unipower Solutions, a UK vendor of software that handles all customer-facing retail and wholesale activities, has joined Symbol Technologies' PartnerSelect Independent Software Provider Partner Program as an ISV member.

Symbol's PartnerSelect ISV Partner Program provides qualified ISVs the opportunity for joint marketing, demand generation and collaboration with Symbol and other PartnerSelect members.

ISVs do not resell Symbol products, focusing instead on relationship development, application software and professional services.

Unipower's software also integrates with Microsoft Dynamics NAV to provide a complete end-to-end retail and wholesale product including: EPoS, supply chain management, service management, in-store back office, financials, merchandising, eCommerce, distribution & warehousing, mobile, business intelligence, CRM, HR and payroll.

Joining Symbol's PartnerSelect ISV Partner Program complements Unipower's "established strategy" of "building relationships with complementary software vendors and other organizations involved in the retail sector," company officials say.


Word of advice to Larry C.: Look, stop running that same tired, rewritten "Lean" press release flogging that same tired Practices report. It's tiresome, nobody's impressed and it makes you look desperate.


Didn't know there was a CRM Hall of Fame, did you? Yankee Group has announced that Sheryl Kingstone, director of Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies Decision Service, has won the 2006 Influential Leader Award and, as a result, is inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame.

This year's slate of honorees includes Kingstone, Joe Montana, Willie Nelson, Stephen King and whoever the guy was who came up with Velcro, who by law should be in every Hall of Fame that exists.

There will be a gala Hall invitation-only black tie banquet at the Ritz Carlton in New York tonight at eight. First Coffee will be there reporting on what the backs of the heads of the celebrities look like from behind police barriers across the street.

The CRM Influential Leader award is presented to "industry individuals who have demonstrated leadership and significant influence in the marketplace within the past year," and the CRM Hall of Fame award is a "special recognition for individuals who have made a significant impact and displayed leadership year after year."

First Coffee has gotten in the CRM Hall of Fame, and hey, so can you the next time you're in Duluth with an extra $2.50 you don't know what to do with. The standing exhibit includes a transcription of the first customer complaint ever recorded, the first customer response card ever placed on a Denny's table, a picture of Dick Lee with long hair at Woodstock and Bob Thompson's sophomore year of high school report card.

"This acknowledgement of our analyst Sheryl Kingstone affirms her established leadership and reputation in the CRM space," said Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group wireless/ mobile enterprise solutions vice president.

Kingstone joins former winners such as Larry Ellison, Brad Wilson, the general manager of Microsoft CRM and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.

Samples of Kingstone's research include "Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Vendors Gain Momentum Using the Business Web," September 2006, and "Customer Centricity: Improving the Customer Experience," August 2006.


Scott Smith, President and Chief Executive Office of TGI, has announced that IQ Consulting Services has been added to TGI's Platinum Partner program.

IQCS's experience in the plastics industry (okay, the scene from The Graduate, everybody together now: "Ben -- I just want to say one word to you -- just one word. Are you listening?" Dustin Hoffman: "Yes I am." "Plastics.") and in WMS software will "truly compliment our partner program," Smith said.

IQCS's team specializes in providing manufacturing and distribution related consulting services for the automotive, plastics, and life science vertical markets and consults for ERP implementations.

"We set out to find an ERP product to support order to cash integration, and specific industry requirements for small to mid size companies," said Steve Crapser, President and Chief Executive Officer of IQCS, adding that TGI was their "clear selection."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
TV INTERVIEW WITH VICE PREMIER AND DEFENSE MINISTER SERGEI IVANOV VESTI NEDELI TV RUSSIA SUNDAY PROGRAM WITH SERGEI BRILYOV, 20:00, MARCH 26, 2006. Check it out:
(Federal News Service (Russia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

Anchor: Sergei Borisovich, how many months have passed since
you were appointed vice premier -- three, four?

Ivanov: Four months.

Anchor: Four months. And all these four months there has been
talk about how Ivanov would increase his bureaucratic clout, and
what methods he would use. But now a decision has been made to
create the Military-Industrial Commission. Why was this particular
scenario of building a new mechanism chosen?

Ivanov: Let us begin with the "apparatus" clout. I did not seek
to acquire any "apparatus" clout, and the creation of a Military-
Industrial Commission under the Russian government indicates that
there will be no new ministries with a huge staff. And the decree
leaves no doubt about it.

Now about the substance. Of course as Defense Minister I have
frequently visited defense enterprises, but I paid those visits as a
customer. I was interested in when an order would be fulfilled and I
did not go deep into the production processes. But now the situation
has changed and in the last four months, since my appointment, I
have visited defense enterprises in many regions: Krasnoyarsk,
Kaluga, Novosibirsk, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.

Anchor: And you are about to go on a swing through Siberia.

Ivanov: Yes, and previously it was Tambov, I have visited a lot
of enterprises and I was confirmed in what was previously just a
guess. As of today, if one takes the average temperature, like in a
hospital, the average load of the capacity of the enterprises in the
defense industry is between 20 and 40 percent. In principle, this is
normal. It's the same everywhere in the world.

Anchor: That is, if there is a war, then it is 100 percent, but
in peacetime --

Ivanov: Yes, yes. But on condition that the remaining part of
production capacity is loaded with the production of high-tech
civilian products. I am not calling on the defense industries to
produce cooking pots, irons and so on -- that of course would be
foolish. But there are some instances, including in this country, of
defense enterprises which produce some serious stuff like rockets,
simultaneously producing high-tech civilian products. And that is
how it should be.

Unfortunately, this is not the case yet here. So, idle capacity
is formed, and so an enterprise has to think not so much about its
development as about survival. A real bankruptcy situation arises.
And we know of instances of genuine bankruptcy, and sometimes bogus
bankruptcy. One should draw that distinction. The existence of idle
capacity pushes prices up, because the director of an enterprise in
this case has to include the upkeep of unloaded capacity in the
price of the military products.

I don't want to sound alarmist, but our defense industry is
still capable of producing the whole range of modern weapons: to
build ships, planes, rockets and spacecraft.

Anchor: To use modern language, Russia remains a self-
sufficient and sovereign country militarily.

Ivanov: Yes, of course. I spoke about problems. The problem of
idle capacity is one of the main problems.

Anchor: And who will tackle this problem of organizing civilian
production? Will it be awarded to these factories in the shape of
state orders or are you calling on these factories to go to the
market?

Ivanov: Our whole economy is already a market economy. All the
enterprises should at least pay their way. Just continued subsidies
won't ensure their survival. We realize that there are special
cases, for example, the production of ammunition: huge areas are
involved, and clearly, such enterprises should be helped, this is
what the whole world does and not only we. And we have chosen to
create state-financed and state-run enterprises for this sector of
the military economy.

Anchor: How do you see the future of the mechanism, of the
operation of this triangle: government -- defense industry -- the
armed forces?

Ivanov: Initially, when the President offered me to become vice
premier in charge of the military-industrial complex, it was assumed
that a very close tie-in was necessary. Over the past five years the
armed forces started developing, and most importantly the range of
weapons that will be required in the short and in the longer term
has been determined.

Now it is important that the defense industry should be able to
supply such quality products to the forces at a price not as high as
it would sometimes like to.

Anchor: Who are members of your commission? How frequently will
it meet? And a subquestion is, what will be the role of General
Putilin? Will you mainly run the commission, or do you see Putilin
as a kind of sergeant who will mind the commission?

Ivanov: To start with, the commission has existed before, it
has in fact existed all along. What is a new departure is the
creation of a permanent body of the commission. Because decisions
need to be taken promptly. Prompt decision-making and monitoring of
execution. Vladislav Nikolayevich Putilin is thoroughly conversant
with the military system, with the forces, armaments and at the same
time in recent years he acquired extensive practical experience of
economic issues. I think the combination of these two qualities is
exactly what is needed.

And besides, the commission will only have a permanent staff of
five. One will have the rank of deputy chief of the government staff
and he will be in charge of all the paper work because the
commission has the right to prepare government decrees that we will
submit to Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov, or, if necessary, to prepare
presidential decrees on the entire range of issues connected with
the Military-Industrial Commission.

Anchor: But under the new regulations, it will be your
function, in other words, you have the right to prepare presidential
decrees.

Ivanov: I have such a right as Defense Minister.

Anchor: And as head of Military-Industrial Commission?

Ivanov: As head of Military-Industrial Commission I will, of
course, initial these draft government decrees and submit them to
Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov, the government chairman. The principle
of one-man responsibility remains in the army and in the government.
You can rest assured on that score. But let me go on about the other
positions. The third position will be the person at the head of the
Scientific-Technical Commission, that is, he will do science on a
permanent basis, all the scientific aspects of the Military-
Industrial Commission, and the three remaining officials will deal
with down-to-Earth matters, for example, land, sea and air.

Anchor: Sergei Borisovich, you have uttered a verbal formula
which is instantly understood by the political class, but we still
live in what is partially a Byzantine atmosphere. If you were to
describe in a single word the atmosphere in the government in
connection with these reshuffles, the creation of new structures and
the appearance recently of new key ministers and vice presidents,
are they rivals, allies, partners?

Ivanov: Co-thinkers.

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CRM Hall of Fame Inducts Kingstone. Check it out:

Didn't know there was a CRM Hall of Fame, did you? Yankee Group has announced that Sheryl Kingstone, director of Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies Decision Service, has won the 2006 Influential Leader Award and, as a result, is inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame.



The CRM Influential Leader award is presented to "industry individuals who have demonstrated leadership and significant influence in the marketplace within the past year," and the CRM Hall of Fame award is a "special recognition for individuals who have made a significant impact and displayed leadership year after year."

This reporter has gotten in the CRM Hall of Fame, and hey, so can you the next time you're in Duluth with an extra $2.50 you don't know what to do with. The standing exhibit includes a transcription of the first customer complaint ever recorded, the first customer response card ever placed on a Denny's table, a picture of Dick Lee with long hair at Woodstock and Bob Thompson's sophomore year of high school report card.

"This acknowledgement of our analyst Sheryl Kingstone affirms her established leadership and reputation in the CRM space," said Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group wireless/ mobile enterprise solutions vice president.

Kingstone joins former winners such as Larry Ellison, Brad Wilson, the general manager of Microsoft (News - Alert) CRM and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.

Samples of Kingstone's research include "Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Vendors Gain Momentum Using the Business Web," September 2006, and "Customer Centricity: Improving the Customer Experience," August 2006.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

Houston now lists 10 billionaires: FORBES 400. Check it out:
(Houston Chronicle (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 23--One's an owner of a professional basketball team who got on the list with the help of investments.

Another got there with a boost from the energy sector.

And the third makes much of his money distributing Toyotas.

This year, Houston can claim three more rich people added to Forbes magazine's annual list of the 400 Richest Americans, which was released this week.

Rockets owner Les Alexander, 63, Gulf States Toyota founder Thomas Friedkin, 71, and Hilcorp Energy Co. CEO Jeffery Hildebrand, 47, all made the list with net worths of $1 billion or more.

All three either declined comment or could not be reached.

Alexander and Friedkin, who each had a reported net worth of $1.2 billion, came in ahead of Hildebrand, with $1 billion, but behind Houstonians Dan Duncan, Fayez Sarofim, Richard Kinder, Bob McNair, Joe Jamail, Tracy Krohn and George Mitchell.



Forbes determines the net worths of those on the list by valuing their assets -- from shares of publicly traded companies to real estate holdings to yachts and planes and art collections.

Alexander, No. 322 on the list, had a good year with investments in Boston-based First Marblehead, of which he is a board member. Today, he owns 14.2 million shares worth $750 million in the education-loan processing firm, according to Forbes. The firm's stock has been up 60 percent since January.

University of Texas graduate Hildebrand, No. 374, made much of his wealth via Hilcorp Energy, a privately held exploration and production company that produced 2.9 million barrels of oil last year and a net profit in excess of $90 million, according to Forbes.

Friedkin, who tied for No. 322, made his fortune in part from Gulf States Toyota, which delivers vehicles and parts to dealers in Texas and other states and had estimated sales of more than $4 billion, according to Forbes.

Duncan, 73, chairman of Enterprise Products Partners and the richest Houstonian on the list, saw his wealth increase by $1 billion to $7.5 billion this year, but his rank dropped to 35th place from 34th.

The only Houstonian to move up was W&T Offshore founder Krohn, who climbed to No. 278 this year from No. 320 last year.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' $53 billion put the computer magnate in the No. 1 spot for the 13th year.

[email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Houston Chronicle
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
TGI Adds IQ Consulting To Partner Program. Check it out:

Scott Smith, President and Chief Executive Office of TGI, has announced that IQ Consulting Services has been added to TGI's Platinum Partner program.

IQCS's experience in the plastics industry (okay, the scene from The Graduate, everybody together now: "Ben -- I just want to say one word to you -- just one word. Are you listening?" Dustin Hoffman: "Yes I am." "Plastics.") and in WMS software will "truly compliment our partner program," Smith said.



IQCS's team specializes in providing manufacturing and distribution related consulting services for the automotive, plastics, and life science vertical markets and consults for ERP implementations.

 

"We set out to find an ERP product to support order to cash integration, and specific industry requirements for small to mid size companies," said Steve Crapser, President and Chief Executive Officer of IQCS, adding that TGI was their "clear selection."

 

Recently Rebecca Gill, vice-president of Technology Group International, has suggested that "ERP vendors must support organic producers in food processing and manufacturing, as well as full distribution management throughout the entire supply chain."

Indeed the record keeping required to authenticate "organic" status is significant, costly, and comprehensive. Gill detailed some of the key features technology solutions must provide to ensure organic standards, such as record keeping for organic raw material purchases, country of origin tracking of purchases, organic supplier tracking, separate organic product storage to prevent product commingling (hate when that happens), hazardous chemical tracking and reporting to prevent contact with prohibited substances as well as ERP's specialty processes -- online processing procedures to ensure adhere to compliance standards and online record keeping and audit trails for fast compliance reporting.

 

It's for more than just the food industry -- Technology Group International announced about a month ago that Nu-west Construction Products selected Enterprise 21 ERP software as the replacement package for its existing legacy system.

 

Nu-West Construction Products, headquartered in Saskatoon, Canada, is a wholesale distributor and light manufacturer of construction products. 

 

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

 

New Role Raises Eyebrows

| | Comments (0)
New Role Raises Eyebrows. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Disclosures by Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd that he failed to read a report addressed to him about the company's spying investigation are prompting governance experts to ask why the company board yesterday handed Hurd more responsibility.



Hurd, praised for helping the Palo Alto, Calif., technology company rebound after he took over in April 2005, picked up the title of board chairman yesterday, after Patricia C. Dunn resigned during widening investigations by California's attorney general, federal prosecutors, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In his first public remarks since news of the leak probe broke two weeks ago, Hurd sought to clarify his role. He said he was told in February by company investigators that they would send an e-mail "containing false information" to a reporter to uncover the source of press leaks. A month later, Hurd said, he attended a meeting at which employees provided a "verbal summary" of the probe. He said there was a written report addressed to him summarizing the investigation, but he did not read it.

"I could have, and I should have," Hurd said. He took no questions at the news conference yesterday.

Hurd's description of his actions is "not exactly a glowing endorsement" for giving him additional duties as HP's board chairman, said Patrick S. McGurn, an executive vice president at Rockville proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.

Charles M. Elson, leader of the corporate governance center at the University of Delaware, said HP's culture "needs to be seriously reexamined and completely reworked."

"It is inconceivable to me that top management could have been aware of this kind of activity and not taken steps to separate the company from it," Elson said. "Large organizations are based on ethics and integrity, and the tone comes right from the top."

Hurd, though, has long been popular with Wall Street analysts and respected in the technology sector. A lawyer for prominent venture capitalist and former board member Thomas J. Perkins, who quit in protest over the intrusive tactics employed by investigators hired by HP, said in a written statement that Hurd "deserves the benefit of the doubt" and that he "is the right person to lead HP."

Moreover, McGurn said, the privacy issues raised by the HP revelations have nothing to do with the company's financial statements -- actions that ultimately doomed the leaders of other companies.

John W. Sidgmore stepped aside at WorldCom Inc. after only six months as chief executive, after questions were raised about what he may have known about financial problems at the Ashburn telecommunications company under his predecessor, Bernard J. Ebbers. Sidgmore, who was never accused of wrongdoing, has died.

Fannie Mae chief executive Franklin D. Raines kept his job for months after regulators began an investigation into its accounting practices. But after a Securities and Exchange Commission official ruled that the District mortgage company had improperly handled complex financial contracts called derivatives, Raines announced his early retirement in December 2004. Federal prosecutors recently said that they would not charge the company with a crime. Raines may still face civil charges by housing regulators and the SEC.

Last year, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, the chief executive of insurance provider American International Group Inc., gave up his post during federal and state investigations of the company's accounting practices, and resigned under pressure as chairman weeks later. Greenberg is fighting civil charges lodged by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer.

On the other hand, Daniel H. Mudd, the former Fannie Mae operations chief who took over as chief executive from Raines, continues to lead the company despite a report by federal regulators that said he was aware of allegations of accounting problems. The report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was inconclusive about what Mudd knew. He said he never attended "any meeting where there was any discussion of shifting or falsifying income."

Each of those companies was ensnared in questions about its finances. But in recent years, a few boards have yanked top executives over broader questions of personal judgment.

For example, directors at aerospace giant Boeing Co. sought the resignation of chief executive Harry C. Stonecipher in March 2005 after disclosures that Stonecipher had a personal relationship with a female subordinate, a violation of the company's code of conduct. "The board concluded that the facts reflected poorly on Harry's judgment," the board's chairman, Lew Platt, said at the time.

RadioShack Corp. chief executive David J. Edmondson left the Dallas company in February after news reports questioned the accuracy of his r sum . The company's board initially supported Edmonson, but after a week of protest, he and RadioShack directors agreed he should resign.

Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm, said that Hurd is on the brink: "This is a critically important document, and if he overlooked it, that says as much about it as if he approved it."

2006 The Washington Post Company
Open Text appoints ITQAN as prime partner. Check it out:
(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Open Text Corporation, a leading provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, announced recently its restructuring plan for the Middle East marketing and business strategy.



Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
New network puts researchers on the fast track. Check it out:
(Virginian-Pilot, The (Norfolk, VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 23--An ultrafast fiber-optic network that officials hope will turn Hampton Roads into a national magnet for high-tech research and business is up and running.

The $4.8 million network, which became operational in late August, will link six regional research institutions, allowing scientists to quickly share and process massive amounts of information.

The system also connects them with researchers across the country through the National LambdaRail, a new Internet superhighway, and various other optical networks available only to academic and government research facilities.

This week, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, a federal energy lab that studies the nature of matter, became the latest to connect.

Now, all but one of the six local research institutions are linked to the network. The last -- the U.S. Joint Forces Command's research labs in northern Suffolk -- should be tied in by the middle of October.

Wayne Jones, who manages the network for partner Old Dominion University, summed up his feelings to the milestone in one word: "Ecstatic."

The fiber-optic network, provided under contract by Verizon, has been under discussion since early 2004. It is expected to be a catalyst for the region's economic growth, Jones said.

The opportunities it offers for sharing research with industry should draw more companies that specialize in computer modeling and simulation, Jones said.

The Joint Forces Command already has spawned a vibrant community of defense contractors that use modeling and simulation to support military research into new ways to train and fight.

Using the new network, Jefferson Lab researchers can transfer large data files over the Internet at speeds 60 times faster than before. The system can move one terabyte of data -- equal to a 9-mile-high stack of paper sheets printed on both sides -- in 15 minutes. Before, it took 15 hours.



"Our old network was a bottleneck," said Andy Kowalski, Jefferson Lab's deputy computer center director. "It was too time-consuming to transfer data to do any major work" with outside researchers.

Besides Old Dominion, Jefferson Lab and Joint Forces, the other local partners are The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton and ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk.

The institutions call their partnership the Eastern Litewave Internetworking Technology Enterprise, or E-LITE.

"It's like the second generation of what the Internet is all about -- to facilitate research-based and military communications," said Bob Armstrong, director of technology for the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center.

-- Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 446-2318 or [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Government Picks Consortium to Lead Mumias Share Sale. Check it out:
(The Nation (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A consortium led by Dyer and Blair Investment Bank, will be the lead advisors to the Government on the sale of its 18 per cent of its shares in Mumias Sugar Company.

The official announcement is scheduled for Monday next week, but the group, known as DSC Consortium, clinched the highest pass mark (92 per cent) on the technical evaluation, and quoted the lowest financial bid of Sh3 million.

The other companies in the consortium are Standard Investment Bank, CFC Financial Services and a local audit firm PKF. Of the six bids for lead advisor or broker that were pre-qualified for technical evaluation, only three met the 75 per cent pass mark.



PricewaterhouseCoopers and Suntra Investment Bank returned 88.6 per cent on technical evaluation, and quoted Sh11 million on financial bid exclusive of local taxes estimated at Sh1.8 million. A joint bid by Commercial Bank of Africa, multinational audit firm KPMG and Reliable Securities scored 89.3 per cent and quoted $369,780 (Sh27 million) and local taxes at $58,320 (Sh4.2 million). The technical evaluation has a weight of 70 per cent and the financial evaluation 30 per cent in the formula to chose the winner.

"Strictly speaking if you have scored the highest in the technical evaluation, and quoted the lowest in the financial bids, then you should be the winner," noted Mr Charles Onchoke the Finance director in the department of government investment and public enterprise.

The consortium will advise the Government on the price to sell the shares to the public. They will also sell shares on behalf Government. The sale of 92 million shares in the market is expected to begin in January 2007.

"In three months time, we should be ready (to sell )," noted Mr Onchoke.

For the public relations and advertising agents, all the three bids were pre-qualified met the pass mark. Nurtun Bates scored 79 per cent on a financial bid of Sh53 million, and the lowest third-party cost. Ogilvy East Africa returned 76.5 per cent on its technical evaluation on a financial bid of Sh17 million, while MCL Saatchi and Saatchi scored 76.3 per cent, and quoted Sh8 million in its financial bid.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 The Nation (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Microsoft gets credit for tightening security. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CodeRed, Nimda, and Blaster. These high-profile worms, which exploited flaws in Microsoft's Windows operating system and other applications, made Microsoft the butt of security jokes and forced the company to reexamine its approach to developing secure software.



"Throughout Microsoft, we thought Windows 2000 was a very solid, reliable operating system, perfect for deployment in the enterprise," said Ian Hellen, a security program manager at Microsoft's Windows Security Engineering Team. "Those tiny pieces of code were realwake-up calls, saying Windows 2000 isn't there yet. It's just not designed to cope with these kinds of threats."

That was then. With the commercial release of Vista just months away, Microsoft'sefforts to improve securityare now showing results, though much remains to be done by the company, said security experts attending the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week.

"Microsoft has done a left-hand turn in its business and said, 'Right, we've got to start building secure applications,'" said Mark Curphey, vice president of professional services at McAfee's Foundstone division. "They've implemented a very rigorous process across their organization and now they're starting to see the benefits of that."

The progress that Microsoft has made can be seen in recent versions of software, such as Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6, which has had one high-risk vulnerability uncovered, Curphey said.

"They've done a lot better," said Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security.

Curphey and others credit Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) software-development process with reducing the number of design and coding errors that lead tosecurity vulnerabilities. "We spent a long time trying to reorganize our whole development process so that all of Microsoft's products, particularly the Windows operating system, is reoriented to have security engineering at its core," Hellen said.

To some degree, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 demonstrate how SDL has helped Microsoft improve the security of its products. "But it's really only in Windows Vista that we've been able to implement this in a comprehensive way," Hellen said, adding there is room for further improvement.

One security improvement that has yet to be made to Windows Vista is a defense against Blue Pill, a prototype technology that uses hardware virtualization to install undetectable malware on a computer running the OS.

Blue Pill, developed by Polish researcher Joanna Rutkowska, was first demonstrated using the second beta release of Vista. However, the latest pre-production release of Vista, called RC1, does not include defenses against Blue Pill, Rutkowska said, adding she was "surprised" by the omission.

Blue Pill does not exploit any bugs in Vista, but Rutkowska recommended Microsoft disable paging of kernel memory in Vista, which would prevent Blue Pill from accessing the operating-system kernel and executing code. In response, Microsoft executives attending HITB said the company continues work on improving security in Vista, while making no specific promise that changes will be made to prevent Blue Pill attacks in the production version of Vista.

Microsoft gets credit for improving the overall security of its products, but more can be done. However, users must first decide if the company's progress in this area is sufficient. "If we think it's enough, we're done. If we don't, than we have to do more," Schneier said. "They're going to fix the problem to the limit of their economic losses."

One option is to make vendors like Microsoft liable for the economic risks of the security vulnerablilities that users face -- something that is unlikely to happen given the current political environment, Schneier said. "If we want more security, we have to raise the cost of not having it," he said.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
The ServerWatch newsletter for Friday, September 22, 2006. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
*********************************** ServerWatch Newsletter upt_http://www.serverwatch.com/ Friday, September 22, 2006 **********************************

---------------------- New on ServerWatch ----------------------

1. Virtually Speaking: Simplifying the Infrastructure September 22, 2006 Virtualization doesn't mean simplification. Reducing the complexity may remove some barriers to entry, though.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3633556

------------------------------------------------------------ 2. IBM Takes Tape Storage Into Overdrive September 22, 2006 Big Blue adds long-distance disaster recovery and grid tools to its enterprise-class tape system.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3633771

------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Solaris 10: What's New in Update 2? September 21, 2006 In addition to the long-awaited ZFS, the second update of Solaris 10 features the Solaris Fault Manager for AMD64, IPv6 support for IPFilter and more.



http://www.serverwatch.com/sreviews/article.php/3633511

------------------------------------------------------------ 4. BladeLogic Sharpens Data Center Automation September 20, 2006 Version 7 of the BladeLogic's data center automation software is out. New features include synchronization management and the Application Release Manager module.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3633296

------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Innovative Laggard Is Not an Oxymoron September 20, 2006 Technology categories keep everything neat and organized in theory, but when it comes to real-world adoption, few enterprises are completely early adopter or laggard in their server or storage purchases.

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3633241

------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Red Hat Builds an Application Stack September 19, 2006 A mere 100 days after acquiring JBoss, Red Hat released a combined LAMP-J2EE stack.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3632771

------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Tip of the Trade: Graphing With Cacti September 19, 2006 Cacti is a pre-fab front end to RRDTool that takes the prickles out of writing scripts to capture and parse data to be graphed. Unlike Nagios, it allows you to view trend data.

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3632766

------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Hardware Today: Strategic Server Disposal September 18, 2006 A server disposal strategy is as important as a server acquisition strategy, yet too few enterprises pay it any mind.

http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3632696

------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Axigen Mail Server vs. Kerio Mail Server September 18, 2006 Is one of these moderately priced and scalable mail servers right for you?

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/313530_Ext

------------------------------------------------------------ 10. A Tale of Two Vendors September 14, 2006 In the ups and downs of the OEM life cycle, Sun and Dell aren't all that far apart. Both learned the value of customer input when it comes to server sales.

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3632181

------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------- Server Updates ---------------------------------

Updated MDaemon, a 4.5 star Mail server, to version 9.07. - Sep 22, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/16027

Updated Kerio Mail Server, a 5 star Mail server, to version 6.2.2. - Sep 22, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/17081

Updated Sambar Server, a 4 star Web server, to version 6.4.6. - Sep 18, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/15893

Updated Visnetic MailFlow, a 4 star Mail server, to version 3.0.1.7. - Sep 18, 2006 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/server/index.php/17107

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
Republication and redistribution of Jupitermeida Corp. content is
Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.
BLACKBERRY 7130G LAUNCHED (jointly by Airtel and Research in Motion). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Airtel and Research in Motion (RIM), a company with its headquarters in Ontario, have jointly launched the Blackberry 7130G mobile handset in India. The Blackberry 7130G works on EDGE and GPRS networks and is based on Java. The handset has a 64- megabyte flash memory and provides e-mail, text message, browser, and organiser facilities. The Blackberry 7130G has features such as smart dialling, speed dialling, conference calling, call forwarding, speakerphone and bluetooth support. It has a high- resolution colour liquid crystal display screen. Corporate users with Blackberry enterprise server, are provided with third-party mobile business solutions for sales force automation, and network and systems management.



Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
NORTEL NETWORKS (Nortels' operations in India comprise carrier network segment and enterprise network segment). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Toronto-based Nortel Networks has had a ten-year presence in India.

The country is an important regional hub for Nortel and it boasts of a strong channel network.

The company's operations are divided into two business units, namely carrier network segment and the enterprise network segment.

The carrier networks segment includes its wireless, wire-line and optical businesses.

The enterprise network segment offers solutions in voice communications, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), virtual private network (VPN), data and contact centre.

In 2005, the company bagged BSNL's $500-million contract.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
ACCEL FRONTLINE (proposes to enter the capital market with an initial public offering of 5 million equity shares). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Accel Frontline of Chennai proposes to enter the capital market with an initial public offering (IPO) of 5 million equity shares of Rs10 each for a premium to be decided through the book building process.



It proposes to utilise the proceeds from the issue to expand its global and regional operations, for acquisitions/alliances, to improve its enterprise software solution (ESS) and business processes outsourcing (BPO) infrastructure, for partial clearance of debts and for increasing its working capital. Accel Frontline, of the Accel group, is a provider of information technology (IT) services specialising in consulting, infrastructure, software applications and support services.

It operates through 4 strategic business units (SBUs) - information technology (IT) infrastructure solutions (IS), IT infrastructure management services (IMS), enterprise software solutions (ESS) and business processes outsourcing (BPO). Accel has entered into tie-ups with Oracle, IBM and Microsoft to offer services around their software.

It has its regional offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kochi, Hyderabad and Pune, and support centres at more than 100 places.

It has also set up 2 subsidiaries in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

It also has a presence in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines. It made a turnover of Rs170 crore and a net profit of Rs8.99 crore in 2005-2006.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
PULKOVO AIRLINES GETS EU NOTIFICATION ON POSSIBLE FLIGHT BAN. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 21 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006.

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
CRM Hall of Fame, Support Fusion, Unipower and Symbol. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis's Sketches Of Spain:

Not a bad day for musical birthdays today -- 1926 John Coltrane, 1930 Ray Charles and 1949 Bruce Springsteen.

Wrapping up the news for the week, bear in mind that a couple days ago Support Fusion, a vendor of web-based Helpdesk, CRM, and Business Process products, announced the immediate availability of its no-cost, web-based Helpdesk Application Service for commercial and non-profit organizations



Support Fusion's web-based, high availability system is now being made available free of cost to thousands of small, medium, and large size companies for tracking and managing issues and tasks related to every day business operations.

Traditionally companies of all sizes have "struggled with the overall value proposition" when it comes to implementing helpdesk systems largely due to cost and resources, company officials say, claiming that Support Fusion "mitigates cost and resource risks by providing a no-cost option along with the convenience of an application service."

Along with Free web-based Helpdesk, Support Fusion offers a no-cost, no obligation "needs assessment" to help companies understand their business requirements, and will provide assistance and startup training to get users and system administrators off to a successful start.

"Our Free system is the perfect way to level the playing ground when it comes to providing a feature-rich, easy-to-use system for issue and task tracking," company officials say in a clear marketing pitch to the "little guy" out there. The product's Professional version with additional features can be added on to the basic system for "as little as $9.95 per user per month," too.

Effective immediately, users can click to the main Support Fusion Web site and register online to receive their Free system -- no cost, no obligation, officials claim. The first 100 users to register will also be entered into a drawing to receive 12 months of the Professional add-on features at absolutely no cost.


Unipower Solutions, a UK vendor of software that handles all customer-facing retail and wholesale activities, has joined Symbol Technologies' PartnerSelect Independent Software Provider Partner Program as an ISV member.

Symbol's PartnerSelect ISV Partner Program provides qualified ISVs the opportunity for joint marketing, demand generation and collaboration with Symbol and other PartnerSelect members.

ISVs do not resell Symbol products, focusing instead on relationship development, application software and professional services.

Unipower's software also integrates with Microsoft Dynamics NAV to provide a complete end-to-end retail and wholesale product including: EPoS, supply chain management, service management, in-store back office, financials, merchandising, eCommerce, distribution & warehousing, mobile, business intelligence, CRM, HR and payroll.

Joining Symbol's PartnerSelect ISV Partner Program complements Unipower's "established strategy" of "building relationships with complementary software vendors and other organizations involved in the retail sector," company officials say.


Word of advice to Larry C.: Look, stop running that same tired, rewritten "Lean" press release flogging that same tired Practices report. It's tiresome, nobody's impressed and it makes you look desperate.


Didn't know there was a CRM Hall of Fame, did you? Yankee Group has announced that Sheryl Kingstone, director of Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies Decision Service, has won the 2006 Influential Leader Award and, as a result, is inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame.

This year's slate of honorees includes Kingstone, Joe Montana, Willie Nelson, Stephen King and whoever the guy was who came up with Velcro, who by law should be in every Hall of Fame that exists.

There will be a gala Hall invitation-only black tie banquet at the Ritz Carlton in New York tonight at eight. First Coffee will be there reporting on what the backs of the heads of the celebrities look like from behind police barriers across the street.

The CRM Influential Leader award is presented to "industry individuals who have demonstrated leadership and significant influence in the marketplace within the past year," and the CRM Hall of Fame award is a "special recognition for individuals who have made a significant impact and displayed leadership year after year."

First Coffee has gotten in the CRM Hall of Fame, and hey, so can you the next time you're in Duluth with an extra $2.50 you don't know what to do with. The standing exhibit includes a transcription of the first customer complaint ever recorded, the first customer response card ever placed on a Denny's table, a picture of Dick Lee with long hair at Woodstock and Bob Thompson's sophomore year of high school report card.

"This acknowledgement of our analyst Sheryl Kingstone affirms her established leadership and reputation in the CRM space," said Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group wireless/ mobile enterprise solutions vice president.

Kingstone joins former winners such as Larry Ellison, Brad Wilson, the general manager of Microsoft CRM and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.

Samples of Kingstone's research include "Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Vendors Gain Momentum Using the Business Web," September 2006, and "Customer Centricity: Improving the Customer Experience," August 2006.


Scott Smith, President and Chief Executive Office of TGI, has announced that IQ Consulting Services has been added to TGI's Platinum Partner program.

IQCS's experience in the plastics industry (okay, the scene from The Graduate, everybody together now: "Ben -- I just want to say one word to you -- just one word. Are you listening?" Dustin Hoffman: "Yes I am." "Plastics.") and in WMS software will "truly compliment our partner program," Smith said.

IQCS's team specializes in providing manufacturing and distribution related consulting services for the automotive, plastics, and life science vertical markets and consults for ERP implementations.

"We set out to find an ERP product to support order to cash integration, and specific industry requirements for small to mid size companies," said Steve Crapser, President and Chief Executive Officer of IQCS, adding that TGI was their "clear selection."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/22 Carrols Holdings Corp. (Syracuse, NY) $210.0
Is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United
States.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
TV INTERVIEW WITH VICE PREMIER AND DEFENSE MINISTER SERGEI IVANOV VESTI NEDELI TV RUSSIA SUNDAY PROGRAM WITH SERGEI BRILYOV, 20:00, MARCH 26, 2006. Check it out:
(Federal News Service (Russia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

Anchor: Sergei Borisovich, how many months have passed since
you were appointed vice premier -- three, four?

Ivanov: Four months.

Anchor: Four months. And all these four months there has been
talk about how Ivanov would increase his bureaucratic clout, and
what methods he would use. But now a decision has been made to
create the Military-Industrial Commission. Why was this particular
scenario of building a new mechanism chosen?

Ivanov: Let us begin with the "apparatus" clout. I did not seek
to acquire any "apparatus" clout, and the creation of a Military-
Industrial Commission under the Russian government indicates that
there will be no new ministries with a huge staff. And the decree
leaves no doubt about it.

Now about the substance. Of course as Defense Minister I have
frequently visited defense enterprises, but I paid those visits as a
customer. I was interested in when an order would be fulfilled and I
did not go deep into the production processes. But now the situation
has changed and in the last four months, since my appointment, I
have visited defense enterprises in many regions: Krasnoyarsk,
Kaluga, Novosibirsk, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.

Anchor: And you are about to go on a swing through Siberia.

Ivanov: Yes, and previously it was Tambov, I have visited a lot
of enterprises and I was confirmed in what was previously just a
guess. As of today, if one takes the average temperature, like in a
hospital, the average load of the capacity of the enterprises in the
defense industry is between 20 and 40 percent. In principle, this is
normal. It's the same everywhere in the world.

Anchor: That is, if there is a war, then it is 100 percent, but
in peacetime --

Ivanov: Yes, yes. But on condition that the remaining part of
production capacity is loaded with the production of high-tech
civilian products. I am not calling on the defense industries to
produce cooking pots, irons and so on -- that of course would be
foolish. But there are some instances, including in this country, of
defense enterprises which produce some serious stuff like rockets,
simultaneously producing high-tech civilian products. And that is
how it should be.

Unfortunately, this is not the case yet here. So, idle capacity
is formed, and so an enterprise has to think not so much about its
development as about survival. A real bankruptcy situation arises.
And we know of instances of genuine bankruptcy, and sometimes bogus
bankruptcy. One should draw that distinction. The existence of idle
capacity pushes prices up, because the director of an enterprise in
this case has to include the upkeep of unloaded capacity in the
price of the military products.

I don't want to sound alarmist, but our defense industry is
still capable of producing the whole range of modern weapons: to
build ships, planes, rockets and spacecraft.

Anchor: To use modern language, Russia remains a self-
sufficient and sovereign country militarily.

Ivanov: Yes, of course. I spoke about problems. The problem of
idle capacity is one of the main problems.

Anchor: And who will tackle this problem of organizing civilian
production? Will it be awarded to these factories in the shape of
state orders or are you calling on these factories to go to the
market?

Ivanov: Our whole economy is already a market economy. All the
enterprises should at least pay their way. Just continued subsidies
won't ensure their survival. We realize that there are special
cases, for example, the production of ammunition: huge areas are
involved, and clearly, such enterprises should be helped, this is
what the whole world does and not only we. And we have chosen to
create state-financed and state-run enterprises for this sector of
the military economy.

Anchor: How do you see the future of the mechanism, of the
operation of this triangle: government -- defense industry -- the
armed forces?

Ivanov: Initially, when the President offered me to become vice
premier in charge of the military-industrial complex, it was assumed
that a very close tie-in was necessary. Over the past five years the
armed forces started developing, and most importantly the range of
weapons that will be required in the short and in the longer term
has been determined.

Now it is important that the defense industry should be able to
supply such quality products to the forces at a price not as high as
it would sometimes like to.

Anchor: Who are members of your commission? How frequently will
it meet? And a subquestion is, what will be the role of General
Putilin? Will you mainly run the commission, or do you see Putilin
as a kind of sergeant who will mind the commission?

Ivanov: To start with, the commission has existed before, it
has in fact existed all along. What is a new departure is the
creation of a permanent body of the commission. Because decisions
need to be taken promptly. Prompt decision-making and monitoring of
execution. Vladislav Nikolayevich Putilin is thoroughly conversant
with the military system, with the forces, armaments and at the same
time in recent years he acquired extensive practical experience of
economic issues. I think the combination of these two qualities is
exactly what is needed.

And besides, the commission will only have a permanent staff of
five. One will have the rank of deputy chief of the government staff
and he will be in charge of all the paper work because the
commission has the right to prepare government decrees that we will
submit to Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov, or, if necessary, to prepare
presidential decrees on the entire range of issues connected with
the Military-Industrial Commission.

Anchor: But under the new regulations, it will be your
function, in other words, you have the right to prepare presidential
decrees.

Ivanov: I have such a right as Defense Minister.

Anchor: And as head of Military-Industrial Commission?

Ivanov: As head of Military-Industrial Commission I will, of
course, initial these draft government decrees and submit them to
Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov, the government chairman. The principle
of one-man responsibility remains in the army and in the government.
You can rest assured on that score. But let me go on about the other
positions. The third position will be the person at the head of the
Scientific-Technical Commission, that is, he will do science on a
permanent basis, all the scientific aspects of the Military-
Industrial Commission, and the three remaining officials will deal
with down-to-Earth matters, for example, land, sea and air.

Anchor: Sergei Borisovich, you have uttered a verbal formula
which is instantly understood by the political class, but we still
live in what is partially a Byzantine atmosphere. If you were to
describe in a single word the atmosphere in the government in
connection with these reshuffles, the creation of new structures and
the appearance recently of new key ministers and vice presidents,
are they rivals, allies, partners?

Ivanov: Co-thinkers.

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CRM Hall of Fame Inducts Kingstone. Check it out:

Didn't know there was a CRM Hall of Fame, did you? Yankee Group has announced that Sheryl Kingstone, director of Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies Decision Service, has won the 2006 Influential Leader Award and, as a result, is inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame.



The CRM Influential Leader award is presented to "industry individuals who have demonstrated leadership and significant influence in the marketplace within the past year," and the CRM Hall of Fame award is a "special recognition for individuals who have made a significant impact and displayed leadership year after year."

This reporter has gotten in the CRM Hall of Fame, and hey, so can you the next time you're in Duluth with an extra $2.50 you don't know what to do with. The standing exhibit includes a transcription of the first customer complaint ever recorded, the first customer response card ever placed on a Denny's table, a picture of Dick Lee with long hair at Woodstock and Bob Thompson's sophomore year of high school report card.

"This acknowledgement of our analyst Sheryl Kingstone affirms her established leadership and reputation in the CRM space," said Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group wireless/ mobile enterprise solutions vice president.

Kingstone joins former winners such as Larry Ellison, Brad Wilson, the general manager of Microsoft (News - Alert) CRM and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.

Samples of Kingstone's research include "Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Vendors Gain Momentum Using the Business Web," September 2006, and "Customer Centricity: Improving the Customer Experience," August 2006.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

Houston now lists 10 billionaires: FORBES 400. Check it out:
(Houston Chronicle (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 23--One's an owner of a professional basketball team who got on the list with the help of investments.

Another got there with a boost from the energy sector.

And the third makes much of his money distributing Toyotas.

This year, Houston can claim three more rich people added to Forbes magazine's annual list of the 400 Richest Americans, which was released this week.

Rockets owner Les Alexander, 63, Gulf States Toyota founder Thomas Friedkin, 71, and Hilcorp Energy Co. CEO Jeffery Hildebrand, 47, all made the list with net worths of $1 billion or more.

All three either declined comment or could not be reached.

Alexander and Friedkin, who each had a reported net worth of $1.2 billion, came in ahead of Hildebrand, with $1 billion, but behind Houstonians Dan Duncan, Fayez Sarofim, Richard Kinder, Bob McNair, Joe Jamail, Tracy Krohn and George Mitchell.



Forbes determines the net worths of those on the list by valuing their assets -- from shares of publicly traded companies to real estate holdings to yachts and planes and art collections.

Alexander, No. 322 on the list, had a good year with investments in Boston-based First Marblehead, of which he is a board member. Today, he owns 14.2 million shares worth $750 million in the education-loan processing firm, according to Forbes. The firm's stock has been up 60 percent since January.

University of Texas graduate Hildebrand, No. 374, made much of his wealth via Hilcorp Energy, a privately held exploration and production company that produced 2.9 million barrels of oil last year and a net profit in excess of $90 million, according to Forbes.

Friedkin, who tied for No. 322, made his fortune in part from Gulf States Toyota, which delivers vehicles and parts to dealers in Texas and other states and had estimated sales of more than $4 billion, according to Forbes.

Duncan, 73, chairman of Enterprise Products Partners and the richest Houstonian on the list, saw his wealth increase by $1 billion to $7.5 billion this year, but his rank dropped to 35th place from 34th.

The only Houstonian to move up was W&T Offshore founder Krohn, who climbed to No. 278 this year from No. 320 last year.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' $53 billion put the computer magnate in the No. 1 spot for the 13th year.

[email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Houston Chronicle
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

TMCnet's SIP Week in Review

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TMCnet's SIP Week in Review. Check it out:
Though this week was much drier than the last, that didn’t stop SIP news from flooding in. Motorola, pbxnsip, AGN Networks, Pannaway, Centile and Gizmo Project all made headlines.


 
Motorola (News - Alert) jumped into the SIP world this week when they added a new SIP-based SBV5100 series to their suite of voice-enabled cable modems. With the new series, voice and data are converged on one network and in one product. "Bundling multiple services in one unit will offer consumers an array of advanced voice services," reported TMCnet's Johanne Torres in an article.
 
Johanne also quoted Charles Dougherty, corporate vice president, Motorola Connected Home Solutions as saying, "Operators around the world are already making the move towards SIP-based products…by providing a voice-enabled cable modem with the SIP protocol, Motorola enables cable operators to not only expand their offerings with voice today, but to lay the foundation for new feature-rich voice and multimedia services, such as fixed-mobile convergence.
 
While were on the topic, fixed-mobile convergence is no longer a matter of “if” but “when” and although projections vary on timing, everyone knows the it is now inevitable. How can service providers capitalize on it? What do enterprises and end-users to need to do to prepare for it? Be sure to attend the Mobility Summit taking place at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006, in San Diego.
 
Now back to SIP news for the week, pbxnsip took some time to speak with TMCnet and during a conversation with CEO Christian Stredicke, TMCnet's Mae Kowalke uncovered, Eight Reasons to choose pbxnsip's PBX (News - Alert).
 
Some of the reasons they discussed included: "It makes you independent—because pbxnsip's PBX is SIP-based, it supports a large range of devices from many different vendors as well as, it talks to remote users—pbxnsips PBX makes it easy for companies provide access for remote workers.
 
Mae also highlighted that PBX can run with several IP addresses, set to public or private.
 
For more, check out the article featured on pbxnsip's IPBX TMCnet channel.
 
Mae also reported this week that AGN Networks (News - Alert) OnDemandSIP trunking service was used at this years Interop New York 2006 show to provide network connectivity.
 
This is the third year AGN will be connected Interop to the public telephone network.
 
Mae quoted Lenny Heymann, General Manager Interop as saying,  "Using AGN Networks OnDemandSIP services has helped us make dramatic reductions in our setup time for each show, while giving us a range of new real-time capabilities that help us get more out of our network."
 
Also announced this week, Pannaway's Service Convergence (News - Alert) Network platform has allowed Ponderosa Telephone to make the switch from a TDM and ATM-based network. TMCnet's Patrick Barnard reported that with the platform they can now provide subscribers with next generation services like VoIP.
 
Gary Pemelton, senior facility plant engineer for Panderosa was quoted as saying, "SIP will allow us to provide our subscribers with a much more robust and scalable digital voice service and our access partner of choice needs to be able to support this capability."
 
Also this week, Patrick reported that Centile's IntraSwitch would deliver enterprise and residential VoIP over Debitel Denmark's network.
 
"IntraSwitch is a SIP-based carrier grade VoIP services platform featuring built in capabilities for fixed mobile convergence and compliance with IMS standards," noted  Patrick.
 
TMC's Tom Keating reported this week that SIPphone's Gizmo would offer an "All Calls Free" calling plan to business users worldwide. Tom also highlighted Gizmo's appeal as a softphone client because it uses the SIP standard. He wrote, "The beauty of the SIPphone client is that it supports dual SIP logons. Thus, you can register with Gizmo's SIP server as well as any second SIP server you wish."
 
For more, visit Tom's VoIP and Gadget's blog here.
 
Also, be sure to check out the September issue of SIP Magazine now available online. Feature articles to check out: "How to develop and implement an effective IP Strategy" and "SIP & ENUM- Foundations of Peering."
 
And don’t forget, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo West is just around the corner! For all you SIP followers, be sure to check out the SIP Workshop and see what all the buzz is about!
 
Want More SIP?
 
 
 
-----
 
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
 
Vietnam: Women leaders' network makes 11 recommendations to APEC leaders. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - The 11th APEC Women Leaders' Network Meeting closed in Hanoi on Sept. 21, making 11 recommendations to APEC leaders, including the facilitation of women's participation in the digital economy.



In a statement/recommendations released at the closing ceremony, the Women Leaders' Network (WLN) says: "The WLN strongly believes that the economic contribution of women and gender-responsive policies and practices will bring about sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction in the region and will advance a stronger APEC community." The WLN proposed that APEC ministers responsible for micro, small and medium enterprises (M/SMEs) review existing investment, business and credit laws, regulations and practices so as to eliminate gender bias; and identify, fund and implement gender-responsive programmes and policy models that will assist women-owned and/or women-led M/SMEs.

The WLN also proposed that APEC leaders encourage APEC enterprises to adopt and implement the International Labour Organisation's Code of Practice concerning HIV/AIDS and the World of Work, so as to help women avoid HIV infection.

The WLN made a commitment to establish a WLN Secretariat which will be based in the Philippines, to monitor the APEC's response to the WLN's recommendations and to develop a holistic Strategic Framework for Women's Enterprise Development to build the capacity and support the growth of women-owned and/or women-led enterprises, at all stages of their business.

The Vietnamese Minister of Planning and Investment, Vo Hong Phuc, who will chair the APEC Small and Medium Enterprise Ministerial Meeting on Sept. 28-29, accepted the WLN's recommendations and promised to present these recommendations to the meeting for discussion.

At the closing ceremony, Diana Abruzzi, Chairwoman of the International Women's Federation of Commerce and Industry and Vice President of APEC Confederation of the Women's Business Councils assumed the presidency of the APEC WLN for 2007.

In the afternoon, the APEC WLN issued a press release calling for efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS by increasing women's economic independece. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Latin American call center market is expected to record the largest growth globally between 2006 and 2010, regional news service TelcosIT reported citing statistics from the Mexican telemarketing institute IMT.



According to the report, the industry is expected to grow 29.3% in the period adding 17.6 million operators in the region. During 2005, 585,000 operators migrated their facilities to other overseas locations, with 105 installing their call centers in Latin America.

***

US Linux operating systems integrator Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) has selected Mexican IT training institute CompuEducacin as the company's authorized training center in Mexico, InfoChannel reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, CompuEducacin is authorized to offer training on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Certified Engineer certification.

***

The Chilean unit of Spanish IT consultancy DMR Consulting has appointed Jos Ortega as the new manager in charge of the industrial sector division, DMR said in a statement.

With a degree in physical sciences from the Spanish university Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the executive has been working at DMR for the past nine years at the company's Spanish and Italian subsidiaries.

In his new position Ortega will be in charge of strengthening DMR's position within companies from the industrial sector.

***

Colombian software development powerhouse Parquesoft has opened a new facility in the city of Ibagu, local newspaper El Nuevo Da reported.

Parquesoft, currently home of over 180 IT firms, employs over 800 software developers and 200 additional employees for service, support and business development. The hub also plans to open a new facility in Villavicencio this year.

***

The Santa Cruz trade and industry chamber (Cainco) in Bolivia has launched a new online service that allows local companies to sell their products through the internet, local press reported.

The service allows clients to purchase products using credit cards with a 6% commission on each purchase.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
The storage giant's acquisition of RSA is the latest move in its ambition to become a general IT vendor.. Check it out:
(www.enterprisestorageforum.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
What EMC wants, EMC gets or so it appears. Just as it was completing its acquisition of RSA Security earlier this week, it also announced the acquisition of Massachusetts-based Network Intelligence. It seems that EMC takes on a different identity each month.



Just a few years back, it was a relatively simple creature and the dominant disk array vendor. Then it moved into NAS , then storage software and services. Soon thereafter, EMC rolled out the hype machine around the information lifecycle management ( ILM ) moniker. More recently, we've been introduced to EMC the security specialist and now it may be edging into the network. So what's next? Online gaming applications?

Mike Karp, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, points out that these seemingly random buys are heading in a very definite direction.

"It has everything to do with EMC's strategic thrust to become a vendor serving all of IT, rather than 'just' a storage vendor," Karp says. "HP and IBM are there already, while Cisco and HDS are heading in that direction."

IBM, for example, has announced security enhancements that tie together operating systems, mainframe processors, software and storage systems, including tape, as part of a cross-domain, total ecosystem approach. Sun, on the other hand, handles security from a server and host software perspective, while companies like Cisco prefer a network model, where they sit between users and servers, and servers and storage.

"EMC is moving up from being a storage hardware and storage management software vendor into a broader data and information management role that has to include a strong security element," says Greg Schulz, senior analyst and founder of StorageIO. "To remain competitive, vendors need to expand their offerings. Thus, traditional storage vendors must add value beyond storage systems without losing sight of their bread and butter business."

Growing Dominance

By spending tens of billions on mergers over the last decade, EMC has steadily expanded its dominance in the storage sector.

"EMC has spent probably the equivalent of the GNP of some small nations on acquisitions over the past 10 to 15 years" says Schulz. "It has done relatively well if you look at growth."

According to Gartner, EMC holds the number one spot in the worldwide external controller-based disk storage market with a 23.8 percent revenue share. That represents almost a billion dollars in one quarter, and a growth rate of 4.3 percent and that number excludes OEM revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Siemens.

The gross figures don't tell the story of a willingness to adapt to a changing technology landscape. When NetApp appeared out of nowhere to create the NAS category, for example, EMC shifted gears so that today, along with NetApp, it has cornered that segment. Now it is charging headlong after the ILM dream. That broad concept is taking it into pastures new.

"The battlefront in security has shifted from securing the network perimeter to protecting and securing the information itself wherever that information lives and wherever it moves," says Joe Tucci, EMC's chairman, president and CEO. "The additions of RSA and Network Intelligence to the EMC family enable us to execute on our information-centric security strategy to help organizations around the world secure their information throughout its lifecycle and reduce the associated cost of regulatory compliance."

As a result of its reputation for encryption and protecting online identities, Tucci says, the RSA Security brand will remain. The new information security division within EMC will house RSA products in the fields of enterprise identity and access management products, consumer identity and fraud protection, encryption and key management, as well as other ILM security items.

Network Intelligence will fall under the RSA umbrella. Network Intelligence focuses on the security information and event management market, with tools to collect, monitor, analyze and report on security event-related activity anywhere on the network. Such products take the millions of security alarms and messages generated within the enterprise and consolidate and prioritize them according to preset policies. Thus, storage managers can view summarized information about potential threats on one screen before drilling down as necessary.

Look for these tools to be leveraged on the compliance side too, making it easier to show compliance with the growing number of information security rules.

Making It Work

While this may look good on paper, translating it into real-world gains is another challenge. As a result, some analysts express doubts about the long-term viability of such mergers.

"EMC's RSA has achieved a good standard in security, but its technology is not necessarily state-of-the-art," says Donna Taylor, an analyst at Gartner Dataquest. "The question is whether it will be robust enough, especially as it pertains to open systems."

She admits, though, that the company's vision for the future makes buys like RSA and Network Intelligence attractive. If EMC is able to successfully harness these areas in conjunction with its own core competencies, it can further strengthen its position in the market.

"A key determinant of M&A success is, of course, the integration piece," says Taylor. "Very few companies succeed in this area even if the target and the deal itself is well-planned and executed."

Schultz concurs. But he believes EMC's track record is better than many in this regard. Centera, CLARiiON and VMware are three examples where the company has added value via an acquisition. Not every acquisition has been a resounding success, however.

"I think the jury is still out on EMC's union with the likes of Legato, Dantz and Documentum," Schultz says.

Will End Users Benefit?

How will the EMC/RSA merger affect customers? Karp, for one, doesn't see any immediate effect.

"Customers of both companies will go on being serviced by the same sales and service orgs they are used to seeing," says Karp. "Any changes will be well downstream, and may not be significant."

Schultz sees some clear pluses on the customer front. Having a single vendor to go to for data storage and security management needs could mean, for example, better security option capabilities for traditional EMC solutions.

"If EMC can operate RSA in a somewhat autonomous manner similar to what they have done with VMware, that should help bring some near-term peace of mind to RSA customers," says Schultz. "This approach will also enable EMC to leverage the technology into its own solutions."

On the other hand, he says, existing RSA customers could see changes in the way they acquire products and rising concern over pricing changes.

Gartner's Taylor agrees. She believes that continued consolidation in the industry will reduce end-user choice and slow ongoing price declines in the process.

And what about the fact that more security is being built into EMC's products better identity/access management, encryption and key management via RSA, as well as event management courtesy of Network Intelligence? Will this mean free security added to existing storage gear? Not likely.

"Keep in mind that nothing is for free," says Schultz. "I expect that some basic capabilities will be incorporated into existing solutions as part of feature enhancements to add and maintain value. But some extra value features beyond standard items will have some add-in costs."

Karp takes this theme further.

"All but the most basic security products are likely to be for-charge products," he says. "As the company integrates the marketing of the new security features, and as these features start to share a common infrastructure, look for them to be bundled in enterprise IT offerings."

For more storage features, visit Enterprise Storage Forum Special Reports

Internet.com Corp.

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Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Jupitermedia
Corp.. Jupitermedia Corp., shall not be liable for any errors
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Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.
SocialText ramps up its wiki approach to improving enterprise applications.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Web 2.0 is finding its way into the enterprise by way of a Wiki.

Wikis , collaborative Web sites on which all members of a community can contribute and post, have become commonplace on the consumer Web.

Now, solutions such as Jotspot and Socialtext are finding their way into more business users' hands.

JotSpot , an early wiki hit with home users, now counts businesses such as eBay , Symantec and Oxford University Press as customers of its enterprise wiki applications for collaborating online.

Socialtext has just rolled out version 2.0 of its enterprise collaboration tool.

The new version includes an improved user interface, said Ross Mayfield, SocialText CEO, during the Interop conference here.

It also includes new application programming interfaces that will enable developers to customize the wiki for their enterprise, and mash-up wiki functionality with other applications.

Andrew McAfee, associate professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School, who spoke alongside Mayfield, said wikis could enable organizations to use their enterprise applications more effectively.

"Most knowledge work is exception processing yanked out of an enterprise system," he said.

For example, business users are alerted by an ERP system about excess inventory and then try to resolve the issue.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of how a similar situation was dealt with in the past is usually contained in the head of a retired employee or buried in an unintelligible e-mail string.

McAfee suggested that users will eventually be able to open a window to SAP's ERP within their Socialtext wiki.

More broadly, though, McAfee predicted wikis would succeed where other knowledge management solutions have failed because they harness social forces.

"This is not about the underlying technologies, this is about a social phenomenon," he said.

Mayfield made much the same point.

"The Internet has always been a social tool," he said. "Web 2.0 doesn't mean Ajax or RSS or any other buzzword. The Internet is made of people."

But Mayfield admitted that for wikis to succeed at the enterprise level, managers will have to refrain from imposing rules or ordaining certain members of the community as experts.

"If you're willing to share control, you might find something wonderful," he said.

McAfee said that wikis also provide basic tools, such as tagging, that allow structure and meaning to emerge from what can also look like a collaborative chaos of data.

But McAfee cautioned that wikis will not succeed unless substantially more users contribute content in the enterprise environment, compared to users in a consumer setting.

In the consumer version of Web 2.0, he said, only a very small percentage of users actually contribute to Wikipedia, the collaborative Web-based encyclopedia, compared to the number of users who simply use it to look up information.

"That's a vanishingly small number of contributors at the enterprise level," he said.

McAfee also said that managers may have to lower their profiles to boost the chances for wikis to succeed in the enterprise.

"There are no managers on the Internet," he noted. "That's why we love it so much."

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After a two-year drought, CommVault becomes the second storage IPO in two days.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Data storage has been a healthy market the last few years, holding up even as server sales stalled earlier this year.

So perhaps it's not surprising that Wall Street has suddenly warmed to storage companies again after a two-year drought.

CommVault on Friday became the second storage company in two days to go public, following Riverbed's stellar debut on Thursday, the first storage IPOs since Xyratex in mid-2004.

CommVault priced 11.1 million shares at $14.50 each late Thursday, at the top of its anticipated offer range, and raised $161 million in the process. Nearly 5 million of the shares were sold by current shareholders. Shares opened for trading Friday morning 10% higher at $16 before pulling back.



The IPO gives CommVault a market cap of more than $600 million. The data management software specialist had long been considered one of the most promising storage companies for an IPO.

In the June quarter, CommVault earned $1.9 million on sales of $33.5 million. For the year ending March 31, 2006, CommVault earned $5.1 million on sales of $109.5 million.

The successful IPOs of Riverbed and CommVault could pave the way for other storage companies to go public. Isilon and Double-Take are two others that are considering the IPO route.

Back To Enterprise Storage Forum

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But it will be. When is the question.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Though Ethernet may be everywhere in the enterprise, it isn't everywhere in Municipal/Metro Area Networks (MAN). Yet.

Depending on whether you ask Verizon or AT&T, the time for Metro Ethernet is either now or still a few years away.

Mike Tighe the chairman of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and also director of strategy at Verizon Business joined Rich Klapman, product director of Ethernet services at AT&T, addressed just this issue to a well-attended session here at Interop.



Bob Mandeville, president of Iometrix, which is the firm that does the testing that certifies whether a particular deployment is Metro Ethernet Forum compliant. moderated the two carrier competitors.

Mandeville noted that since Ethernet first appeared in 1973, there have been more than 2 billion ports sold, and it clearly dominated in the enterprise space.

For the most part, Ethernet has always been a box, but carriers don't sell boxes; they sell services. Hence the need for the MEF.

The MEF has had to define what Ethernet as a service is, Mandeville explained. He also noted that scalability is a big focus, as well as reliability, protection schemes and management.

There are a number of MEF standards, but the key one according to Mandeville is MEF No. 10.

"It defines the building blocks that are required to define Ethernet services, and all other MEFs revolve around it," Mandeville said.

Even with standards in place, the question remains: When will Ethernet truly be everywhere? The answer to that may well be learned from the frame relay experience.

AT&T's Klapman was an active participant in the process during the late 1980s when frame relay became the dominate Metro Area interconnect.

"We've seen this movie before," Klapman said. "Every new tech must compete with existing technologies."

He added that what the industry learned from the frame relay experience is that there are a number of critical questions that carriers must ask.

"What are the apps driving the bits, what are the endpoints we connect to, and what are the economics."

Klapman argued, however, that even though most companies are switching from routers to switches, and Ethernet convergence on the MAN may seem obvious, there are some hurdles to overcome.

In Klapman's view, enterprises will save on capital and operating expenditure with Ethernet, but the industry ecosystem isn't quite there yet.

But Verizon's Tighe doesn't quite agree. Tighe commented that as Ethernet has expanded, thanks to standards from a best-efforts model to a carrier-grade quality service, it is now relevant across a broad array of industry verticals.

The quality of service that Metro Ethernet can offer was the subject of a terse question that a member of the audience asked.

The audience member wanted to know how the carriers were working to improve reliability and standardize the service level agreements for stringent enterprise deployments.

"If you're not happy with what we have on SONET you won't be happy with Ethernet," Klapman responded. "In the U.S. we just slip Ethernet cords into our SONET boxes."

SONET, or synchronous optical network technology, is a standard for fibre-optic data and voice communication and is widely deployed in carrier networks.

Klapman did say, however, that since 9/11 there has been increasing demand for improved reliability and higher update, and as such maybe SONET isn't good enough.

To that end AT&T is working on some initiatives to further improve reliability across its network, Klapman noted.

"The potential is there for Ethernet to be a bigger market, but the inflection point is two, three years away," Klapman said. "We couldn't handle the demand if it came today."

Tighe has a bit of a different view.

"There is tremendous demand for Ethernet services now because enterprises see the benefit, and service providers see the opportunity, " Tighe said.

"As opposed to two years ago when they had a wait-and-see approach and were worried about cannibalizing existing services."

"It's really not cannibalizing; it's being put in with other services, and it's actually growing our market."

In Tighe's view the tipping point for Metro Ethernet is now, which is a view that Klapman didn't agree with.

"I don't agree and I'm taking a more sober view. All I see is a lot of tire kicking," Klapman said. "Enterprises like the idea of Ethernet but they aren't going to rip out frame relay overnight."

That being the case, both men agreed at the panel wrap-up point that you can't bet against Ethernet.

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Helium's site survey incorporates NetStumbler; open source CUWiN upgrade does dual-radio; Network Chemistry upgrades; and more.. Check it out:
(www.wi-fiplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Helium Networks' latest, SiteStumbler, is a $995 "entry-level" site survey/audit program for mapping 802.11a/b/g networks and creating simulations of how they'll perform. They describe it as incorporating "a proprietary version of the popular NetStumbler for superior wireless data collection." A free seven-day demo is available for download.



The folks at Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) announced earlier this week the release of an update to its open-source, community-network-oriented, wireless mesh software, CUWiNware, to version 0.7.0. It now has dual-radio support, one for access another for mesh backhaul, improved routing, support for Atheros chips ( specifically the AR5312 Wireless Soc) and other new hardware, and a Web-based user interface, among other improvements. The city of Urbana is converting its current CUWiN nodes with one radio into dual-radio units, putting the free software to the test.

September 19, 2006

Network Chemistry has upgraded its RFprotect Distributed product with a new dashboard and Web-based interface, as well as better integration with the RFprotect Endpoint software running on laptops. Now, when a user with Endpoint enters the network, RFprotect Distributed sensors will automatically see them and classify the user as authorized. Endpoint continues to disable bridging automatically, in case a user gets an ad hoc connection from outside that might want to connect to the wired side of the network. Network Chemistry, which designs its own sensors, has also upgraded software to take preventative measures against rogues and other unwanted devices, blocking them from accessing the network infrastructure. The capacity is also up each sensor can now contain/restrict multiple devices, not just one-on-one. All the upgrades are available now and free to current users.

Sputnik has a new product, the $499 Gateway 700 , plus new software, the Sputnik Agent NMS . 700 works with Sputnik Control Center or SputnikNet to handle user tracking and authentication at hotspots; NMS is a firmware upgrade for various Wi-Fi access points (including models from Asus, Buffalo, Linksys, Motorola and Siemens) to let them be run by Control Center it integrates with the popular DD-WRT firmware upgrade for Linux-based APs. Agent NMS lacks the user authentication found in the standard and pro versions, but it is free.

Belden has announced a new WLAN system, the Belden Wireless Solution , using a "Channel Blanket" topology that allows use of almost all radio channels on each AP. The higher the traffic, the higher the throughput, they say. It fully complies with 802.11a/b/g and WPA2 for security. The line consists of switches (8- and 24-port) with Power over Ethernet (PoE), a 'thin' AP (model BWAP-200) that requires no configuration, and management software.

Xirrus was issued a patent last month (United States Patent Number US D526,973 S) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that covers the design of the physical housing of its Wi-Fi Array, which can pack in 4, 8, or 16 radios with a Gigabit Switch in a ceiling mounted unit. That product, or specifically the XS-3x00 family, according to a report by the Tolly Group , provides 2.5x the range and 13x the throughput of TCP traffic of "leading enterprise access point tested."

PePLink's latest is the Balance & Surf Combo, a wireless indoor bridge for citywide Wi-Fi networks and existing wired broadband. It comes with a Surf 200BG to connect to wireless via a 200mW radio and a Balance 30 unit to connect to Ethernet-based broadband. The Balance 30 combines the wired throughput with the wireless to boost the overall performance. The products are also sold separately, but you'll want to look for them through your local wireless broadband provider if you have one.

September 13, 2006

Trusted Computing Group , the industry group backing the network access control (NAC) architecture called Trusted Network Connect (TNC), has new members -- including big wireless players like Meru Networks and Trapeze Networks. Meru will run TNC across all its products as a complement to its own Security Services Module. Trapeze says it's supporting TNC by working with the policy enforcement platform "and wireless access based on client's health or configuration."

They don't mention numbers, but the CDMA Development Group (CDG) says more EV-DO modems have sold than were expected. EV-DO is the wireless wide area network (WWAN)/3G tech powering the data networks of Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel in various cities around the U.S. This is due to major notebook vendors like Dell, HP, Lenova, Panasonic and Toshiba embedding EV-DO support.

Nevada-based AirTegrity Wireless has built support for 900 MHz and 4.9 GHz (for public safety) wireless into its products (APs, base stations and CPEs) for use by ISPs, adding to its established support for Wi-Fi under 2.4 and 5.8GHz. Units run at 400mW for increased power, and can scale up to support thousands of simultaneous users.

September 12, 2006

Trade shows this week ( CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2006 in Los Angeles and Fall 2006 VON in Boston) mean a slew of mostly unrelated announcements for a Tuesday:

It's not a surprise, as the Wi-Fi Alliance said this was coming as long ago as April , but today it announced officially that it is working with CTIA - The Wireless Association on joint testing documents that ensure mobile technologies like GSM, CDMA, EV-DO and more work seamlessly with Wi-Fi (especially since more and more products are converging Wi-Fi with these technologies). CTIA says it will help carriers determine the best dual-mode phones to pick for use on their networks. The tests will cover transmit and emitted power and receive sensitivity of products and those products have to be Wi-Fi Certified and CTIA certified as well, of course.

Paragon Wireless says it is ready to launch a SIP-based Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) phone that also supports quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and GPRS. The phone, called hipi-2200, will be licensed to OEMs and ODMs, and probably will debut in Europe first (it takes a SIM card). Paragon makes dual-mode voice tech that handles seamless hand-off between the two types of mobile networks. The phone runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and thus also supports Web browsing, music play and recording of voice or video. The reported battery life is 4 hours of talk and 100 hours in standby, even with both Wi-Fi and GSM radios turned on.

Wi-Fi tester Azimuth Systems is ready to check on Wi-Fi handsets. On October 10, the company will make available a new test suite for testing VoWi-Fi handset power use, battery life, voice quality, signal range and roaming performance (using motion emulation). It runs on the Azimuth W-Series platform in radio-signal proof enclosures, as do all Azimuth scripts.

If you wanted to enter the contest to build an application that uses the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) set up by Skyhook Wireless , well, you're too late. The company announced three finalists today (the winner gets a Segway Human Transporter). The products include a game that builds in location data called Plundr that mimics marauding pirates but in real-world locations; an auto-location extension for the Firefox and Minimo browsers (Skyhook already makes a Firefox toolbar called Loki); and a location stamp that will work with the future Eye-Fi cards that will wirelessly enable digital cameras.

Xirrus says it is offering new enclosures for its Wi-Fi Array products, including a new outdoor box suitable for campus or metropolitan deployments the XE-4000, which looks like a street light. The array can deliver a half-mile range with aggregate wireless capacity of 648 Megabits per second. The new tamper-proof XE-2000 is for indoors, and mounts on a ceiling where you'd find a drop-down ceiling tile measuring 2x2 feet.

Broadcom revealed today that its AirForce One 54g Wi-Fi and VoIP phone chips are in new small business and consumer phones from Samsung. The models are the SMT-W5100 for businesses and the SMT-W6100 for consumers (used by Net2Phone ), out now in North America.

England's CSR has launched a VoIP phone called UniVox that uses its own UniFi-1 Portable Wi-Fi chip, which CSR will license to manufacturers the cost to build it could be as low as $35. The design can supposedly do 20 hours talk time and 400 hours in standby from a single charge. Production-ready units won't arrive until end of 2006.

After a few months as vaporware, Netgear said today that it is now shipping the Netgear Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. The SPH101 which has been pre-selling for a while on sites like Amazon, with numbers Netgear calls "impressive," will cost $250 MSRP and doesn't need a computer to make a Skype call, just an open Wi-Fi connection for the phone. It will be available overseas in October.

Kineto Wireless , one of the big providers of the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology powering networks with seamless roaming from cellular 2G and 3G networks to Wi-Fi networks and back again, is teaming with Ubiquisys in the UK to make low-cost femtocell access point products supporting the UMA standard as outlined by the 3GPP. It will be something operators around the world can use to build UMA networks. Ubiquisys makes the ZoneGate femtocell system, and they say this will let operators "fully realize the coverage, capacity and cost benefits of femtocells."

September 7, 2006

The TV dream a digital video recorder (DVR) that will stream content to other sets in your house using Wi-Fi is not a dream any more, if you live in the Netherlands. CanalDigital satellite TV providers will be offering a Caton V2O Wireless Home Media Network set-top box soon that has an Airgo Networks True MIMO Media chip inside. Get a couple of "slave" boxes to hook to other TVs in the house, and you're watching pre-recorded shows anywhere without stringing wires. Select CanalDigital customers can get the box later this year as part of a trial run.

AirMagnet's Enterprise Analyzer is now ready to troubleshoot networks running the Aruba Mobility software version 2.5.3, using Aruba's own APs when in either AP mode or air monitoring mode. The former provides a data feed about a single Wi-Fi channel, while the latter allows complete analysis. Cost for the integrated AirMagnet Analyzer is $9,995.

September 6, 2006

AirMagnet's Survey product made the jump to version 4.0 this week and brought with it a new product called AirMagnet Planner to help businesses decide where to place nodes for an indoor WLAN. Planner is also available as a separate, standalone product that sells for $2,000 ($1,000 as an upgrade for Survey users). Survey already integrates with the AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer 2.0 and works with Microsoft MapPoint; the latest version will integrate with AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer and build in support for maps from Google Earth, all the better for planning an outdoor network. The product can take GPS information and drill down to the street level to check for good wireless coverage. Survey 4.0 will control roaming in active surveys, taking control of the client's Wi-Fi driver and forcing it to roam as needed (most cards stick with the strongest signal even when not appropriate). Survey costs $1,995 for the standard edition or $3,695 for the PRO version.

UTStarcom's latest Wi-Fi handset, the F3000, is now available in Europe. The clamshell phone comes in black or gold, each with a 1.8-inch full-color LCD screen, polyphonic ringtones, talk time of three hours or 75 hours of standby without recharge. It supports SIP (it will store info on three different SIP accounts), SDP, RTP/RTCP and RFC 2833/inband DTMF, and utilizes ITU codecs G.711 and G.729 on 802.11b/g networks, with security including WPA support. It will auto-search for a Wi-Fi network and store profiles on those you want to use most often.

Garderos Software Innovations has released new software for wireless broadband providers to enhance Wi-Fi support and offer WiMax as well. Its C-OSS platform (carrier operational support software) will allow secure authentication of users, including those using SIM card modules. Its RADIUS access controller supports VLANs and zones. The new Multi-Protocol Access Controller (MPAC) will let WiMax operators allow subscriber authentication right at the base station.

Airgo Networks' True MIMO Media chips are part of the power behind a new reference design called SimpleWare Home. Along with chips from STMicroelectronics and software from Universal Electronics Inc . (UEI), the chips allow for wireless playback and centralized management of all the DVDs, CDs, and digitial video, audio and photos on home entertainment systems. The tech is on display at the IFA Conference in Germany this week.

If you're planning on taking the CWNA Exam for wireless network administration any time soon, be aware that the exam has been updated to reflect current terminology set by the IEEE. The CWNA courseware has the update, but CWNP will not be publishing a new study guide including changes. You'll have to read the full list online . They include such things as Power over Ethernet, referred to at 802.2-2005, clause 33 (instead of the old 802.3af).

September 5, 2006

What state loves their Wi-Fi? Perhaps Rhode Island most of all. CDW Government, a subsidiary of CDW, today announced their second State & Local Government Technology Investment Curve (TIC) to see which government since 2000 has purchased the most Wi-Fi equipment (this doesn't mean they've deployed the most, just bought it for different things, not all of which may be public -- it's quantity, not connectivity). RI has an investment profile of 147% over the average. Ohio, Colorado, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming follow, all well above the average. CDW-G says the more public-private partnerships a government has, the more it invests in wireless.

Symbol Technologies will provide the Wi-Fi and other parts that will be used in a new handheld gaming/gambling on demand system for casinos to be made by Sona Mobile Holdings and Shuffle Master. Symbol will apparently help the company get regulatory permission to get the device out into the wild.

Xirrus says it can extend the Quality of Service (QoS) for voice and video traffic found on wired networks to its Wi-Fi Array. The array will support the Wi-Fi QoS standard of 802.11e, plus will tag wireless packets with 802.1Q virtual LAN and 802.1p prioritization when sourced on the wired network. The company says tagging and prioritization will extend wired QoS to Wi-Fi, and that previous switched WLANs couldn't tag or prioritize packets moving from the AP to the wiring closet.

Techworld is reporting on a transceiverprints , a technology under investigation that could transform wireless security. Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa say they could tell the difference between signals from different devices even if they were from the same manufacturer. Each signal could be recognized as matching a pre-recorded transceiverprint from the product. It could be just what the doctor ordered to keep networks locked just to approved devices, MAC address spoofed or not.

August 30, 2006

The state of California has passed the "Wi-Fi User Protection Bill," according to Reuters. The law, to take effect in January after being signed by the Governator, instructs vendors who make and sell Wi-Fi equipment to include instructions on how to set up security to prevent "piggybackers" who would "steal" access, which they state is against the terms of service of many broadband providers. A warning label in every box would show up either as a sticker over the ports (uh... wireless doesn't use the ports), an on-screen warning when installed or configured, or an alert that requires user intervention to set up or bypass security configuration. A Los Angeles-based lawmaker in the state assembly wrote the bill when he was shown how easy it is to find other networks to use. Lets hope he doesn't figure out how easy it is to skip commercials with that new-fangled TiVo device...

RoamAD of New Zealand has a new release of its WLAN software platform that supports quad-band radios on mesh networks. It can support nodes running 2.4GHz 802.11b/g, 5GHz 802.11a, 4.9GHz (reserved for public safety use), even 900MHz. RoamAD partners and OEMs build the nodes with these radios, and the company has announced a partnership with a new OEM, ADI Engineering , to make them under the Pronghorn Metro product line based on Intel XScale CPUs and RoamAD's WNP 1.5 software.

Auguest 29, 2006

Hong Kong-based PePLink announced a new Surf-AP Wi-Fi Modem today. Like previous PePLink products, it serves as a bridge from an outside wireless network to your home. The difference this time is that the Surf-AP also is a full Wi-Fi access point, so you can connect to multiple wireless computers. Previously, you hooked a single computer to the PePLink hardware via an Ethernet cable, which killed the whole "wireless" aspect. The Surf-AP is designed for central management by a wireless ISP offering a citywide Wi-Fi network. PePLink equipment is in use by some municipal mesh networks run by Tropos , as it supports the Tropos extension for better connections to the mesh.

Another month, another Wi-Fi phone for Skype ! This time, Logitec (the Japanese company, not the US Logitech) will release the familiar looking candy-bar design with its model LAN-WSPH01WH. No word on pricing, and it isn't likely to be released in the U.S. One nice difference is that it not only supports Wi-Fi but also runs Bluetooth, so this one you could actually use with a wireless headset and maybe even connect to your PC. Maybe.

Speaking of voice, the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology guys at Kineto Wireless say their UMA client software now supports 3G/UMTS connections. UMA lets users keep a call going as they talk on a handset supporting Wi-Fi and various mobile technologies. Most UMA devices support 2.5G/GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellular networks. Now, handsets with the right chips/antennas and this software can roam from Wi-Fi to 2.5G to 3G as needed without dropping a call. The UMTS Forum believes use of 3G/UMTS technology will reach 100 million subscribers worldwide by the end of this year. Currently, a trial run by T-Mobile is underway to test UMA roaming in the Seattle area.

NextHop Technologies , providers of software to run wireless switches, is working with AirTight Networks . The two will co-market their wares to the OEM community to get AirTight's SpectraGuard Enterprise intrusion detection/prevention systems built into hardware running NextHop's Dynamic Network Architecture (DNA).

If you were one of the people panicked by the so-called " Wi-Fi Drive By " demonstration and you grabbed new drivers for your Intel Centrino laptop to become unhackable, well, that's probably a good thing overall... but you got hosed. The files apparently have a memory leak that slows things down on laptops. Intel figured out the problem and has already released new drivers, which you can download now .

Can anyone claim to have 2 million Wi-Fi users on their network? Nintendo does. That many unique players of the Nintendo DS handheld had logged onto the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection as of last week. The network is found at various hotspots, including those at McDonald's restaurants, where Nintendo DS users can log on for free. Recent releases for the DS that include Wi-Fi functions include the new Star Fox Command .

Hawking Technologies has a new Wireless-G USB Networking Adapter (model HWUG1) with a removable, screw-on antenna so you can upgrade to its various hi-gain versions, some of which they claim boost network range up to six times. The $59 card supports 108Mbps Turbo Mode when it talks to a Hawking Wireless-108G MIMO Router, and has full support for security up to WPA2.

August 23, 2006

BetaNews reports that invitations are going out to testers from Microsoft to check out Windows Live Connection Center Wi-Fi. It's a service that will be split into two parts, an application for finding and connecting to networks (replacing Windows Zero Config in XP, perhaps?), and a Web-based service with a hotspot directory integrated with the Windows Live Local service to map out the venue locations. No word on if this software will also integrate the Wi-Fi Protected Setup standard the Wi-Fi Alliance has been working on, but it might be a good bet since MS was involved in creating it. There's also a form online where users can sign up for what's called the Windows Live Wi-Fi Suite . Currently, the software isn't running on Vista builds until RC1 comes out in September, nor does it work for handhelds. The beta test is expected to run through early 2007.

Vonage will be selling a new wireless router made by D-Link that includes two phone ports to use with the Vonage VoIP service. The VWR Wireless B/G Broadband Router (with 4-port Ethernet switch) will sell directly from the Vonage site for $130 (there's currently a $40 instant rebate, but you have to factor in the $30 activation fee for the bundled Vonage service, so plan on spending $80).

Linksys says LELA can help. It stands for the Linksys EasyLink Advisor , which is a Windows-based software application that will come with the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Routers with SpeedBooster (model WRT54GS), and eventually other routers as well. Users can also download it directly. It's supposed to simplify setup and management of the network. The company says once a user names the network through this utility, that configures enough to skip up to 15 steps that would usually follow, showing Flash-based presentations the whole way. It will even accept settings from currently installed WLAN hardware, installing existing devices when it finds them, creating a network map reminiscent of that from Network Magic .

August 22, 2006

Cognio's Spectrum Expert is now at version 3.0, an upgrade designed to make it easy for those without a radio frequency background to understand what's going on. A new Channel Utilization Chart shows overuse of channels; a Signal-to-Noise Chart shows how APs perform vs. interferers. Users can also easily save plots and data charts to use in Office software for reports. (Unfortunately, for now, they don't call out anything special about the Draft-N/802.11n products and how they use 40MHz channels they just show up on the spectrum plot.) This Windows software is the basis for similar products from AirMagnet and WildPackets. All the various incarnations come with an 802.11a/b/g card. Cognio's version costs $3,995, but it's free to current users with a maintenance contract.

InfoWorld reports that there's another new pre-certification testing lab opened by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The latest, run by Wipro, is in Bangalore, India. It's the third of its kind (the others are in the U.S. and Taiwan). Vendors can send Wi-Fi products to these labs for tests to be sure they'll interoperate with the Alliance testbed before they send products in for official, expensive testing that they could potentially fail and have to re-test. This way is cheaper.

The Wi-Fi shootout contest that takes place every year at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas always gets a new winner in the long-distance Wi-Fi connection record. This year was no exception. iFiber-Redwire got a 124.9-mile connection without amplification, going from mountaintop to mountaintop; the connection lasted three hours. Last year, they only got 55.1 miles. The amplified signal record is 192 miles. The team claims it can get 300 miles without amplifying the signal, but they couldn't in Vegas due to the terrain. Of course, to do that, they have homemade antennas attached to Wi-Fi equipped laptops; one was a 10-foot diameter dish on a trailer, the other a 12-footer mounted on scaffolding. via WiredNews

August 17, 2006

Marvell 's newest Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g) chip is also a Bluetooth 2.0 chip (upgradeable to 2.1). Designed for handsets, media players and other low-power consumer platforms, the 88W8688 has an overall size of less than 80 cubic millimeters. It's sampling now to vendors.

Synergy Research Group says the overall WLAN market worldwide took a dip in the second quarter of 2006, by 3% from the first quarter. But overall, it was up 14% compared to Q2 of 2005. Enterprise sales, as usual led by Cisco (down 4% from Q1), were flat. Consumer/SOHO sales of Wi-Fi equipment were down 4%, led by Linksys (a Cisco subsidiary), which was down 2% quarter-to-quarter. Synergy notes that Q2 precedes back-to-school and holiday purchases, so a rebound by Q3 is a possibility.

In-Stat says that in Q2, at least 300,000 routers and client cards were shipped supporting Draft-N (the 1.0 draft of the 802.11n standard). The researchers say users who bought them will find the transition to the final 11n "bumpier" than it was for the people who bought early 11g products before that standard was finalized. They expect 11n chips to comprise only 3.6% of the WLAN chips shipped in 2006, but that will grow 20% next year even though the latest reports say the 11n standard won't be finalized until 2008.

August 16, 2006

A few naughty vendors are leaking the name of the Wi-Fi Alliance's upcoming program for easily setting up Wi-Fi network security, so the Alliance is going to spill the beans on the official name: Wi-Fi Protected Setup. (The code name was "Simple Config.") This doesn't replace 802.11i/WPA2 or anything else -- it will just make those standards easier to set up for consumers; Wi-Fi Protected Setup is not really going to help enterprise IT people. Alliance research shows 43% of users found it " moderately to very difficult" to set up security (which, honestly, seems low). How exactly it will perform its duties will remain under wraps for now. Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Alliance, told Wi-Fi Planet today that "the details of the program and the specifics are not cooked enough." Vendors with their own software or hardware based 'one-button setup' of security, like Buffalo, Broadcom, Atheros, have all been involved in the creation of Wi-Fi Protected Setup. With luck, it might show up in products before the holidays.

Rumors are rampant that T-Mobile will launch a service in Seattle as soon as September 12 using Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), which would allow hand-off of cellular GSM calls to voice over Wi-Fi with a phone that supports both. With thousands of hotspots, T-Mobile users could theoretically walk off the street while on the phone, enter Starbucks, trip over to the Wi-Fi network while still talking (freeing up cell tower space for other calls while T-Mobile still gets money for the minutes used). The focus at first is likely to be home users, who can use their phone for cell calls or to make VoWi-Fi calls over their own home network, without needing a separate service like Skype which would entail getting a separate phone number. Likely phone candidate for the trial is the Samsung T709. via GigaOm

Aruba Networks will be performing for the military. Through a deal with strategic partner General Dynamics, Aruba's WLAN system will be available through the U.S. Air Force Network Centric Solutions (NETCENTS) indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. Air Force, Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies can all get FIPS-certified Aruba equipment through GD.

August 15, 2006

Crutchfield's catalog leaked info about the Sirius Stilletto 100, a new portable unit that will not only stream Sirius satellite radio from satellites, but can also do it via Wi-Fi at home or hotspots. Think of it as TiVo for satellite radio, as it will also record 100 hours of audio programming. It will also play WMA and MP3 files of your choice, ripped by you or pulled from subscription services supporting the Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM. Price will be $400. Docking stations sold separately. via Gizmodo

WildPackets is releasing a new version of its spectrum analysis software in the next 30 days. OmniSpectrum 3.0 (based on tech from Cognio ) runs on Windows laptops and has additional graphical displays for showing interference, with a per-channel showing of what the sources are. The software comes with a CardBus PC Card supporting 802.11a/b/g and sells for $3,995.

Cisco Systems has received Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 validation of its wireless security. This means a Cisco Unified Wireless Network is now okay for use by parties in the Department of Defense. The company's centralized WLAN is in the process of getting Common Criteria certification from National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), which means it would be compliant with DoD Directive 8100.2 by 2007. 8100.2 compliance is the final step required for all off-the-shelf products used by DoD.

Hawking Technologies loves to dish it has sold a dish antenna for laptop Wi-Fi for a while. Now, it offers the Hi-Gain 8dBi WiFi Directional Dish Antenna (model HAI8DD , $49) that works with APs, bridges and adapters. It can be wall-mounted or put on a desktop. It comes with an RP-SMA connector and the Hawking HACST (SMA to TNC) adapter to connect not just to Hawking equipment, but also to other third-party wireless devices.

AnchorFree 's wiPod application, which puts a list of AnchorFree's 10,000 free-to-access hotspots on the Apple iPod, is now available -- for free, of course, though you have to become a member of the AnchorFree online community. Once installed, the directory can be found in the Notes section of the iPod OS, under "Extras".

All the major players in the Wi-Fi-based RFID/asset tagging world are working on something this week:

Ekahau is working with St. Croix Systems on a combo solution for health care markets, integrating the former's real-time location system (RTLS) with the Capital Asset Lifecycle Management software from St. Croix. Again focusing on hospitals and health care, PanGo Networks is working with Versus Technology to combine the latter's IR/RFID tracking system with the PanGo software, which the Versus platform will in turn use to track items over a Wi-Fi infrastructure. AeroScout is updating features on its Wi-Fi-based T2 Tag, which it calls "unique and unparalleled in the market." They include an optional temperature monitor used for remote alerts, and a real-time motion sensor. Using the motion sensor can also help push battery life in the tag to over four years. The tags also are getting call buttons and three different-colored LED lights. The tags have Electromagnetic Compatibility Certification to signify they're safe to use around people.

August 10, 2006

BelAir Networks has added support for the licensed 4.9GHz spectrum (reserved for first responders) to its products. A BelAir multi-radio node can be used with Wi-Fi for standard citizen access and 4.9GHz for cops and fire and EMS, while also providing a backhaul mesh network that precludes the need for Ethernet or fiber. BelAir now has products with a single radio (50C), dual radios (100), four radios (200) and the new six-radio BelAir300 Converged Multi-Service Wireless Node that can include cellular, Wi-Fi and wireless mesh.

The HypeWifi Advertising Platform will serve up targeted advertising to hotspot users, based not just on location but also demographics. End users are given marketing questions (nothing personal, they promise) to answer before can log in to the free Internet access. HypeWifi is a provider of hotspot services in the Houston, Texas area, and will, naturally, launch the platform at those locations.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts a rosy picture for WLAN chipsets. They think the $910 million in revenue earned in 2005 will more than double, to $2.288 billion by 2009. (They're equally bullish on the assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) chipset market.) Reasons for the continued WLAN chip growth include, among other things, the coming of 802.11n as a standard and the expected move of Wi-Fi into consumer electronics of all shapes and sizes.

Daewoo Electronics will be building Wi-Fi into its next generation set-top box (STB), but not just any Wi-Fi 802.11n-draft compliant wireless. It will do this with the WLANPlus chip from Israel's Metalink . The company plans to show the technology off at the IFA show in Berlin, Germany in September.

In case you were worried about that Wi-Fi card driver exploit that was recently pointed out at the Black Hat conference, vendors of wireless intrusion prevention systems like AirTight Networks and Network Chemistry want you to know that there's no reason to worry... if you own and run their products, you're protected.

August 8, 2006

Sony's Mylo ("my life online") is a new phone-sized handheld communicator that looks a lot like the PSP but doesn't play games. Instead, it uses open Wi-Fi (11b) networks for sending instant messages via Google Talk, Skype or Yahoo! Messenger accounts all free, no monthly fees involved. It can handle voice-over IP calls using Skype as well and Skype is allowing calls from the SkypeOut service to any phone in the U.S. or Canada for free (usually, it's only free from Skype user to Skype user), at least for a while, after which you'll just pay for SkypeOut minutes. The Mylo has a 2.4-inch color screen for browsing JPEG photos, reading emails (using Yahoo! Mail or Gmail) and Web surfing, or watching movies in MPEG-4 format. It's an MP3/WMA player (via a built-in speaker or headphones), and will play the ATRAC audio format that Sony likes but no one else does. That 1GB of flash memory will probably fill up fast, but you can add more with Memory Sticks. The keyboard is revealed when the top of the Mylo slides upward. Put it close to another Mylo, and they seek each other out for an ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection so you can IM or share music and photos. It comes in black or white, and has a built-in database provided by JiWire of 20,000+ hotspots in the United States that you can use to get Mylo online. The battery supposedly runs for 45 hours of music playback, seven hours when online, or three hours when talking with Skype. Microphone, headphones, USB cable and a neoprene case are all included. All that (but no camera?!) for $350 at SonyStyle and retail dealers starting in September.

Wavion made a splash in May saying mesh networks won't work for cities, and that you gotta use MIMO-like characteristics (such as taking advantage of multi-path interference). Now the details are out on their product that will do just that. Each ruggedized WS410 access point will have six antennas inside. It can mount on buildings or poles, and has numerous power options such as standard AC, Power over Ethernet, or a power tap when on a light pole. It can even send out power to another device that works with it, such as a backhaul radio or a camera. Wavion wants to license out the technology, but will sell the WS410 itself. The company admits the cost is higher than any mesh radio system per node, but says you buy so few that the return on investment is high from the get-go for any citywide deployment. They'll ship in volume by the end of August.

AirMagnet's new StreetWise will come in three versions, all suited to make sure mobile workers are practicing good security. There's a personal, freeware version any user can download for free and install on a Windows laptop to set their own security parameters; the regular StreetWise gives admins control over laptops in the enterprise when users install a pre-configured version of the software with the security policy in place; and the full central version lets administrators push policies down to the end user. StreetWise doesn't do advanced things like force you to upgrade the OS or anti-virus definitions. It's all about the wireless security. It can limit hardware used for Wi-Fi connections (no swapping cards); adapt to user locations so you have different policies for work, home and hotspots; turn on or off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or infrared; and prevent simultaneous use of wired and wireless connections. The software meets various government criteria (such as FIPS 140-2) and even has US Army TIC approval. Cost for the regular version is $22 per seat, or $36 per seat for the centrally managed version. AirMagnet says there's been a delay and the freeware version, at least, won't debut until next week.

Socket Communications says the Go Wi-Fi! P300 802.11g SDIO card (model WL6217-664) for devices running the Windows Mobile OS (2003/2003SE or 5) is ready (though not for sale on their site as of today). It uses a free version of the Socket Wi-Fi Companion for the interface (it usually costs $25 for just the software) and supports 802.1X authentication with WEP/WPA encryption, runs on screens both landscape and square, and sells for $99 MSRP. Supported devices will eventually be listed online.

It didn't take long for Broadcom to find another company to build in its Draft-N Intensi-Fi chips (Dell was the first to offer the option). Acer's new Ferrari 1000 ultra-portable notebooks with Acer's InviLink Nplify mobile wireless technology will be powered by the Intensi-Fi. It also uses Broadcom's Blutonium Bluetooth 2.0 wireless and Gigabit Ethernet.

Atheros won't long be behind with the laptop wins for Draft-N technology. Its AR5008 chip using the 1.0 draft of 802.11n tech they call XSPAN is now running on a mini PCI Express (PCIe) card reference design. The chipmaker says the design "is the first in the industry to achieve PCIe compatibility certification," and the chip has the same certification as well. Atheros also has PCIe cards for 802.11b/g and dual-band a/b/g.

August 4, 2006

Verizon Wireless and Novatel Wireless are trumpeting the availability of the WWAN PCI ExpressCard/34 (model V640) which supports the Verizon EV-DO network called BroadbandAccess. It works in ExpressCard/34 (which are 34 millimeters wide) and ExpressCard/54 (54 mm wide) slots on laptops. The card comes with Verizon Wireless' VZAccess Manager software for setting preferences, and will fall back to working with the Verizon NationalAccess network if EV-DO is not in the area.

AirDefense has upgraded its Mobile product to version 4.0. It has a new analysis engine based on the engine found in AirDefense Enterprise, which comes with 100 alarms and notification types (including e-mail and Syslog messages). The software (which runs on Windows 2000/XP) synchronizes with the Enterprise version for scanning areas that may be slightly out of the usual range. New location tracking can hone in on a device by triangulating using the device's own signal strength. The software can now come with a hardware kit that includes a dual-band 802.11a/b/g card with external antenna connectors for the included omni (with 3dBi for 2.4GHz and 5dBi for 5GHz bands), and two 7dBi directional patch antennas (one each for each unlicensed radio band). With the hardware, Mobile 4.0 retails for $1,695.

Vivato lives? The Web site for the company, which shut down operations in December 2005 , now proclaims "Vivato is back! The acquisition of Vivato is now complete. The same great technology that Vivato brought to the marketplace is being reintroduced to our partners and customers." Now called Vivato Networks, the company will continue to sell the entire line of 802.11b and 11g outdoor and indoor base stations, plus AP/bridges for outdoors and indoors.

August 1, 2006

Draft-N products aren't just for home networks any more. As promised, Linksys has announced its line of products running the 1.0 draft specification for 802.11n that are geared toward small businesses. The line-up will consist of a $169 access point (model WAP4400N) and $119 PC Card (WPC4400N), both available now, as well as a $229 VPN-capable router (WRVS4400N) coming in September. The big difference between these products and the consumer products is support for Gigabit Ethernet on the switch ports, WMM-based Quality of Service for voice and video, Power over Ethernet (PoE), an intrusion prevention system created by Linksys, IPsec tunnel support in the router, and a different look. They'll only be available from distributors and value-added resellers (VARs).

AirMagnet says it's now shipping its AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer software for analysis of Voice over WLAN networks. AT&T is already using it in performance labs. Calls are checked from the PBX all the way to the wireless client, as the software can integrate with the IP-PBX or call manager software. The software's MSRP is $17,500, plus $7,500 for the call manager integration. The company is also offering a free white paper called " The Evolution of Vo-Fi: Voice over IP over Wireless LAN ." The company also recently passed the 5,000 customer mark.

You know how no one ever turns on security for their home Wi-Fi network? Well, that's not the case, apparently. JupiterResearch found that 60% of home networks have it turned on. It's covered in the report, "Home Wi-Fi Security: Understanding Consumer Behavior and Impact on Wi-Fi Adoption." Associate analyst Ina Sebastian says security is still the biggest concern, but that the advent of WPA makes things easier to set up for consumers. 29% of respondents have also logged onto a stranger's open network while traveling. Only 12% would get on their own neighbor's network.

After a few years of waiting, the CWNE (Certified Wireless Network Expert) Program is now available. This is the highest level available of the program, and "tests the candidate's expert level knowledge of advanced topics surrounding QoS, Voice over Wi-Fi and advanced WLAN design," according to a company announcement. Anyone who has or gets a CWNA, CWSP or CWAP certification before the end of this year can apply for the CWNE; after January 2, 2007, you'll have to pass the PW0-300 exam to get the certification, which is valid until you die. The official study guide is from the IEEE.

The ZigBee Alliance says 10,000 developer's kits have been shipped by Alliance members, and that it has certified 13 platforms as ZigBee compliant. The latest is from RadioPulse. The ZigBee specification has been downloaded over 29,000 times in the last year; they say it s the third most downloaded IEEE 802 standard (it's based on 802.15.4). All of that is meant to say that ZigBee should be coming out strong, soon.

Firetide's new software for its mesh equipment (version 3.3) is, the company claims, better suited to support the triple play (video, voice, and data all at once). Flow-based routing will help bring throughput up to 32 Mbps; Quality of Service (QoS) for video and voice prioritization is expanded; there's now mobility as clients roam from mesh node to mesh node; and they've finally added full WPA2 encryption support. 3.3 comes with new Firetide products, and is a free download for current customers.

Colubris is the tenth and latest company to get certification from SpectraLink's VIEW (Voice Interoperability for Enterprise Wireless) program, which started a year ago. The tests confirm interoperability between Colubris hardware and SpectraLink VoIP phones. Other companies with VIEW certification include 3Com, Alcatel, Aruba, Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks, Nortel, Siemens, Symbol Technologies and Trapeze Networks.

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Computer and software firms team up on email security.. Check it out:
(www.esecurityplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Dell gets a lot of e-mail.

While that's not surprising, the company said a recent internal review of its 100,000+ email boxes revealed that 90 percent of the incoming traffic were spam messages. The computer giant gets about 400 million online intrusions a day between spam, pop-ups and attempted virus attacks.



But few companies are as big as Dell ( Quote , Chart ) or have the same resources to combat the flow of online junk and security threats. That set off a few light bulbs at the Round Rock, TX-based Dell, with a solution aimed at medium-sized businesses.

Secure Exchange is a joint development of Dell and Symantec designed for medium-sized businesses with 500 to 2000 seats of Microsoft's Exchange Server. The package, which includes Dell servers and Symantec security software, will be sold Dell and supported by both companies. Dell said it's the first validated solution to deliver end-to-end security, back up recovery and archiving.

"We're addressing the chaos many of our customers have had to deal with," said Brad Anderson, a senior vice president in Dell's enterprise product group, in a conference call briefing today. Anderson noted Dell has accrued considerable experience with Exchange, having been involved in over 4 million customer migrations to Exchange at various companies.

Secure Exchange includes Dell PowerEdge 1950s server, PowerVault 112T and M1000 with tape backup as well as Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2002, and Symantec Backup Exec. Pricing for a 500-seat modular back up and recover system starts at $54,678. Up to 2,000 seats will be supported. Anderson said the system can support more users but the goal is to target medium sized businesses.

Jeremy Burton, group president, security and data management at Symantec, said email is the next mission critical application.

"You think of ERP and back office apps, but everyone uses email," said Burton. He quoted research estimates that 79 percent of companies accept email as some form of transaction, and 75 percent of a company's intellectual property is in email. Symantec offers specific modules for anti-virus, spam, and mail box management.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com . To read the full article, click here .

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Virtualization doesn't mean simplification. Reducing the complexity may remove some barriers to entry, though.. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

There are many well-documented advantages to virtualization. Now that the technology is deployed throughout the data center, the disadvantages are starting to surface.

One such disadvantage is rising complexity.

Although virtualization simplifies the infrastructure in some ways, in others it's equally complex and requires as much, if not more, administrative effort.

From workshops to keynotes, the pros and cons of virtualization surfaced frequently at this week's Interop show in New York City. CA CEO John Swainson's keynote was particularly focused on virtualization, citing the stat that during the next five years, the computing resources constituting today's typical IT infrastructure all will be virtualized.



Thus, tomorrow's admins will be wrangling with managing virtual complexity, as opposed to physical complexity.

One company that already has an eye on managing the complexity is PlateSpin . PlateSpin offers a number of agentless data center automation software products that collect and analyze a given server infrastructure and then determines the best fit for application workloads on the given hardware resources and streams over the network from any source to any destination. This approach makes its products well-suited for virtualization.

And indeed, this week PlateSpin went public on two alliances involving two of its software offerings: PowerRecon and PowerConvert.

PlateSpin's PowerConvert was selected for IBM's Project SwitchBlade, an IBM migration effort designed to steer enterprises away from Dell's and HP's blades to those from Big Blue. Virtualization is the cheese in a blade system sandwich not essential, but often present.

PowerConvert is an automated migration tool that functions in both physical and virtual environments. It migrates data, applications, and operating systems across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures in any direction. It's also designed to do it quickly, reducing migration time from days or weeks to hours by removing the need to re-provision new Windows and Linux servers from scratch.

As far as alliances and partnerships go, that one is fairly ho-hum. More significant is the relationship PlateSpin forged with Virtual Iron Software.

The companies have agreed to co-develop joint product offerings for users and resellers as well as to collaborate on marketing and sales efforts. The initial fruits are compatibility and bundling.

PlateSpin's PowerRecon will now support the Virtual Iron environments. Thus, when the software scans the network, and returns an analysis of where resources can best be consolidated, its deep knowledge of Virtual Iron will enable it to spit back an infrastructure optimized for Virtual Iron.

It can then switch over to PowerConvert, which performs the actual migration.

The software has supported VMware environments and Microsoft Virtual server since its inception.

Partnering with Virtual Iron is no doubt a boon for the less-prominent vendor.

Although Virtual Iron Software Director of Product Management Chris Barclay told ServerWatch that he anticipates the bulk of the the action taking place at the value-added reseller (VAR) level. Virtual Iron will bundle one free migration of PlateSpin PowerConvert with every Virtual Iron Consolidation and Enterprise Editions license.

Support for Virtual Iron in both in PowerRecon and PowerConvert is expected to be available in November. The products will also be made available at that time for VARs to sell as a single bundle.

The bundling will feature PlateSpin PowerRecon and a Virtual Iron/PlateSpin PowerConvert priced to encourage enterprises joint solution. PlateSpin CEO Stephen Pollack noted that the solution will be the only one on the market to cover the process from start to finish.

That may well be, but it's doubtful others won't be joining them soon. Removing the physical server does not eliminate the infrastructure, and there is ample opportunity for vendors that can connect the two.

Amy Newman is the managing editor of ServerWatch. She has been following the virtualization space since 2001.

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Dutch firms to join Cambridge biotech cluster. Check it out:
(Boston Globe, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--A joint biotechnology research venture by two Dutch companies is further underscoring the appeal of the Boston life-science cluster to out-of-state firms, and creating an even tighter real estate market in Cambridge's Kendall Square.



The companies, Crucell N.V. and Royal DSM N.V., decided to lease buildings at 1 Hampshire St. after considering locations in Maryland and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, according to Dr. Marco Cacciuttolo, chief executive of the joint venture.

"Cambridge is the real gravitational center of biotechnology," said Cacciuttolo. "It's really the premier location in the world to engage in these research activities."

The facility will employ about 50 people when fully staffed, he said.

In recent years, companies including Schering-Plough Corp., Akzo Nobel N.V., Novartis Pharma, and Merck & Co. Inc. have set up substantial research operations in Boston or Cambridge. They seek access to top biopharmaceutical talent; cutting-edge research from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools; and the intangible advantage that comes from being surrounded by other life-science businesses.

The action isn't just limited to the Boston-Cambridge area. In June, drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said it would build a $660 million manufacturing plant on part of the site of the former Fort Devens in central Massachusetts.

The Crucell-Royal DSM venture is called PER.C6 Development Center LLC, after a specific line of human cells that the companies are developing.

Many biotechnology companies manufacture treatments by modifying the genetic instructions in animal cells so they produce a specific protein with therapeutic properties. Often, those therapeutics are grown in cells derived from hamster ovaries.

But scientists have found that using proteins made from animal cells can cause dangerous side effects. They have attempted to make the therapeutics more "human," with fewer characteristics of the host cell.

PER.C6 has developed a line of cells it believes will eliminate problems associated with proteins made from animal cells and plans to license the line to biotech companies.

"We want to license the cell line to everybody," said Cacciuttolo.

The venture is equally funded by the two partners. Crucell makes vaccines for two types of hepatitis, influenza, and the diseases that plague travelers, including typhoid. DSM is a sprawling enterprise that manufactures food and pharmaceutical ingredients, and chemicals for a wide variety of applications. It has 22,000 employees and annual sales of about $10 billion. Its biologics division provides manufacturing services to biotech companies.

The new venture will occupy most of the remaining space in a complex of new and existing buildings owned by Draper Laboratory. Last year Schlumberger Technology Corp. leased 190,000 square feet in the complex.

PER.C6 R&D Center is believed to be paying annual rent between $55 and $60 per square foot, and will also contribute to utility costs, real estate taxes, and building operating expenses, according to real estate brokers familiar with East Cambridge. It will receive an allowance of more than $100 per square foot from Draper to convert the bare space into laboratories and offices.

"The biotech cluster is a powerful draw," said Ryan Weber, a life-science specialist with NAI Hunneman Commercial , a real estate firm that represented PER.C6. "This group felt they needed to be in Kendall Square."

Just two years ago, there was a 26.2 percent vacancy rate in Cambridge laboratory and research-and-development space, according to Mark J. Winters, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc., a real estate firm that represented Draper Laboratory. In the second quarter of this year, the vacancy rate dropped to 11.5 percent. Excluding space available through subleasing, the rate was even lower, 5.5 percent.

"The lab market has shifted from a tenant to a landlord market in a very short period of time," said Winters.

To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Boston Globe
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Wood-Armfield begins last sale

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Wood-Armfield begins last sale. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--HIGH POINT -- Wood-Armfield Home Furnishings opened its doors for the first time in months Thursday as it launched its high-impact going-out-of business sale.

"It's bittersweet," said Peggy Marram, event manager. "The customers are excited. They were so happy to see the doors open again."

Wood-Armfield's parent company, Utility Craft Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July after 67 years in High Point.

The company reported assets of $3.9 million and liabilities of $11.6 million. Approximately 1,500 customers had unfulfilled orders at that time. The sale, which started at Wood-Armfield at 460 S. Main St. on Thursday and will last no more than 180 days, involves $3 million of inventory.



"We're selling inventory purchased for this sale," Marram said. "A lot of it is 'one-onlys.'" The vast five-floor, 160,000-square-foot building is filled with dining room and bedroom furniture, rugs, mattresses and artwork -- all on sale at different price points. Notable brands are Broyhill, Bernhardt, Hickory Chair, Hooker, Pennsylvania House and Stanley.

"I actually just came to look, to browse," said Carolyne Burgman of Greensboro. "I'm looking for several pieces to finish off a family room in my house."

Burgman was eyeing a two-person Charleston Forge table Thursday morning. She said she had ordered a sofa, loveseat and recliner from Wood-Armfield earlier this year but canceled the order just before the company filed for bankruptcy.

"I got my deposit back," she said. "I don't have any hard feelings."

Customers trickled in as the day progressed, some browsing while others knew exactly what they were looking for.

"I enjoy just coming and looking," said Maxine Hiatt of High Point, who is a repeat customer of Wood-Armfield. "There's a lot of odds and ends you have to have, and you don't know it until you see it."

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Consultancy: ERP sales to reach US$107mn in 2006. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions could generate sales in Argentina of up to US$107mn in 2006, newspaper Infobae reported local consultancy Trends Consulting director Ricardo Karaman as saying.



This figure includes licenses, maintenance and services, Karaman explained. A total of 22.3% of big and medium-sized companies plan to adopt ERP solutions this year, while 43.8% plan to expand their current ERP solutions.

The implementation of ERP solutions among the SME segment has also increased in the last three years due to the introduction of solutions designed especially for that segment as well as improved access to credit.

SMEs have been heavily adopting technology such as IT services and consulting in a bid to optimize their business processed and to increase competitiveness, Karaman said.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
One IP Voice Partners with Intrado for VoIP E9-1-1. Check it out:
Making IP a part of the communications infrastructure allows enterprises to acquire and utilize new applications and capabilities that are essential to improving processes in order to more effectively meet today’s evolving business goals.  Chief among those enhancements is the ability to realize and extended mobile workforce, increasing productivity and both employee and customer satisfaction.


 
But, as employees move from place to place, their physical locations can become difficult to track in case of emergency, which can result in difficulty in relaying information to correct PSAP, which, in turn, can result in significant delays in emergency personnel reaching a person in need. 
 
To ease that concern for its customer base, One IP Voice (formerly Farmstead Telephone Group) subsidiary OIPV Corp, which provides carrier-based IP services, has reached an agreement with Intrado to market Intrado’s (News - Alert) VoIP E9-1-1 services, targeting the enterprise market, including SMEs as well as larger distributed organizations and mobile workforces, and IP powered communications service providers. 
 
OIPV will combine its comprehensive solution, which delivers the capabilities required to effectively provide 9-1-1 services.  Significantly, OIPV will leverage E9-1-1 management applications and VoIP to track physical locations of phone users — including mobile users providing Local Information Services (LIS) to PSAPs.  Using OIPV’s private converged IP network, customers are ensured ubiquitous and secure access at all times.
 
The benefit of teaming with Intrado is evident is Intrado’s recent success in trialing its nationwide real-time location information delivery over its Intrado V9-1-1 Services platform.  In short, the success means that Intrado customers and partners will be able to base location information for emergency personnel deployments solely on data gleaned from the end user device, rather than requiring end users to continually update location data as the travel.
 
The OIPV solution, combined Intrado’s E9-1-1 services, interface with the enterprise network identify location, detect phone moves, adds, and changes, and then provide call routing and delivery to the geographically correct PSAP with any additional requisite information. 
 
 
Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.
 
Seeven goes always-on [SEVEN Networks]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SEVENs latest software connects users to their inbox in less than 5 minutes

Redwood City, CA September 21, 2006 Consumers can now have push email up and running on their phone within minutes. The latest version of SEVENs Always-On Mail makes it easier than ever before to keep up to date with personal or work email, and paves the way for true mass market adoption of mobile email services.



As the adoption rate of mobile email increases and the technology reaches mass market levels, operators will need to scale their services rapidly. Simple and fast provisioning, ease of use and a minimum of administration is essential for our operator customers and for their customers says Paul Hedman, COO, SEVEN. Our latest version of Always-On Mail meets these requirements. It brings to market the fastest installation process of any mobile email service, and it is available on more devices and through more operators than any other solution. All of these benchmarks mean we hold the number one position in the white-label mobile email market.

Two-click access is just one of a number of new features in Version 5.2 of Always-On Mail. With the multiple email inbox feature, end-users can now have mails from multiple accounts pushed to the same device, and each inbox retains the familiar look and feel of Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes or Internet email.

The new version also brings added benefits to operators, all designed to maximize consumer and enterprise adoption rates in the retail market. Enhancements include simplified provisioning, delivery and administration which help speed time to market, increase ARPU (average revenue per user) and lower subscriber churn rates. Furthermore, Always-On Mail now has single client architecture and a single relay server for all its products to simplify administration and lower support costs for operators. This makes the distribution and management of the software highly efficient.

The range of mobile devices on which Always-On Mail is, or can be, pre-installed is another major benefit to operators. Service adoption rates of up to 35% have been achieved by SEVEN customers using this method of service delivery. By combining pre-installation with over-the-air provisioning and a white-label download site, operators can reach out to any potential user via their device, the web or a PC.

Hedman concludes; SEVENs focus on the end-user and their needs is making mass market mobile email a reality for our operator customers. Whether business or consumer, people want a solution which is familiar and easy to use, which is flexible to suit their particular needs, and which is readily available from a local provider. We have achieved this with the latest version Always-On Mail, and it will be the foundation of the next phase of our growth.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
DCI awarded Sethusamudram contract. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) INDIA'S cabinet committee on economic affairs has awarded state-run Dredging Corporation of India the entire Rs20.78bn ($448m) job of dredging 82.5m cu m for the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project, writes Shirish Nadkarni in Mumbai.



DCI had earlier been awarded the capital dredging contract for 13.55m cu m for the Sethusamudram project, of which the company has finished pulling out 6.95m cu m of rock, silt and soil from the sea bed to date.

The public sector enterprise has now received approval for the remaining 69m cu m.

Earlier, Tuticorin Port Trust had floated an international tender for the work for the second time. The authorities were, however, dissatisfied with the rates of upwards of Rs50bn quoted by a number of global bidders, including Dutch and Belgian dredging companies.

'Had we accepted their bids it would have more than doubled the outlay for the Sethusamudram project,' said TPT chairman N Raghupathy.

The Sethusamudram project envisages dredging a ship channel across the Palk straits between India and Sri Lanka.

The channel will allow ships sailing between the east and west coasts of India to cut a straight passage through Indian territorial waters instead of having to sail round Sri Lanka.

It has been estimated that in the first year of operation of the project 3,055 ships will pass through the channel.

This translates to about nine transits a day.

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Pulkovo Airlines gets EU notification on possible flight ban. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 21 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006. mg jh

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

Public Service considers split

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Public Service considers split. Check it out:
(Record, The (Hackensack, NJ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Less than one week after regulators quashed its proposed sale to Exelon Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group is examining whether to split its power generation division from its regulated utility.



If Public Service splits into two companies, the power generation business could become an acquisition target for a competitor looking to add power plants.

CEO E. James Ferland said there are no immediate plans for splitting the company, but acknowledged Wednesday that "one has to examine that model" as a way to maximize shareholder value. He was responding to an analyst's question during a conference call.

The Newark-based company's proposed $17.8 billion sale to Exelon Corp. collapsed last week, partially due to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities insistence that Public Service divest some of its generating plants as a condition of BPU approval.

As a separate company, the PSEG Power division would not be subject to BPU oversight, even as Public Service Electric and Gas Co., the operating utility, remains regulated by the BPU, Ferland said. PSE&G is New Jersey's largest utility with 2.1 million customers.

Ferland said the parent company's financial outlook is the strongest it has been in 20-plus years, and stressed there is no rush to undertake a major restructuring. "It's something we'd want to think through before we'd do it," he said.

Deregulation, which took effect in 1999, opened the market to third-party suppliers, leading New Jersey's three other utilities to sell off their generation businesses, as did New York's Consolidated Edison, to concentrate on delivery and service.

But Public Service decided to remain in the generation business, and its plants have supplied a significant percent of the company's earnings. The Public Service plants sell energy on the open market to utilities in several states, including PSE&G.

Although the BPU has no regulatory jurisdiction over the operation of Public Service's generating plants, they were a key and contentious factor in negotiations between the parties. The company agreed to sell off four plants to win approval of the sale from the U.S. Department of Justice, but the BPU called for selling two more.

Paul Patterson, an analyst with Glen Rock Associates, an independent research company based in New York, said splitting into separate companies isn't all that unusual in the industry.

Public Service and other companies "have to reflect on the regulatory environment, and whether they might be better to separate into two companies," Patterson said.

Ferland's comments came in a call intended to assure investors that the company remains on solid financial footing despite the collapse of the Exelon deal.

Last year Public Service earned $661 million.

The Exelon deal, as originally planned, was a very good strategic move for investors and the state of New Jersey, Ferland said. But those benefits disappeared under the terms being insisted upon by the BPU staff, he added.

Still, Ferland said the outlook for Public Service as a stand-alone company is extremely strong.

PSEG stock fell about $6 in the first trading session after Exelon's withdrawal was announced, but it has since held steady. It closed at $61.40 a share Wednesday, down 10 cents from Tuesday's close.

Several analysts expressed concern that the failed Exelon deal could portend tough times for Public Service in dealing with state regulators, but Ferland said he doesn't think that will happen.

"Over the years, New Jersey regulators have generally been quite fair," he said. "I'm quite confident this is the situation we'll return to once this merger is out of the way."

He said he will find out quickly, because the company has filed for $200 million in rate increases. Action had been put on hold pending the outcome of the Exelon discussions.

Despite the collapse of the deal to sell the company, Exelon will continue operating Public Service's three nuclear plants under an agreement reached almost two years ago, Ferland said. The Hope Creek and two Salem plants, which had frequent problems before Exelon got involved, have been operating at 96 percent of capacity and were performing near 100 percent during this summer's hottest days, he said.

Exelon owns 43 percent of the two Salem plants, so it has a vested interest beyond an operation contract, which Public Service can extend for another three years when the current agreement expires in January.

In addition, Public Service will explore swapping ownership interests in the plants with Exelon, including its 100 percent stake in Hope Creek, Ferland said. "I think that will be the subject of discussions."

He didn't say what Public Service might get in return.

To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.NorthJersey.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Egypt risk: Labour market risk

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Egypt risk: Labour market risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC44C46Labour market riskB39B39Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

A new labour law was passed in April 2003 after nine years of discussion. The legislation was highly contentious as employers feared the consequences of allowing workers the right to strike, while workers' representatives were resistant to allowing employers greater latitude in making redundancies. The law does give workers the right to strike. However, complicated and time-consuming conditions in practice severely limit the ability of workers to do this. The law also eases restrictions on termination of employment--most importantly redundancies can now be made on economic grounds. The education system, based on learning by rote rather than critical analysis, is not geared to teaching the skills required in the free market. A Nasserite government promise to employ all university graduates still stands, though in practice it is no longer applied. The labour market is packed with young job-seekers.



SCENARIOS

The passage of the new labour law causes an increase in the incidence of strikes by Egyptian workers (Low Risk)

Egypts parliament passed a long-considered labour law in April 2003. This measure gives workers limited rights to strike and to take other industrial action. In practice, however, the procedure for gaining permission to strike is complicated and time-consuming and strikes will be hard to implement--the government dislikes populist activity such as industrial action, and disapproves of anything that disrupts industrial production. As in any country, advance notice of changes in labour conditions and a transparent approach to worker relations will minimise the risk of industrial action. Incentive-related pay schemes have proved successful where implemented and may encourage more loyalty to the company.

The education system produces too few graduates with the skills needed by foreign businesses (High Risk)

The state education system is massively overburdened, teachers are underpaid and instruction methods are based on learning by rote rather than by critical analysis. Companies complain of too few workers with specialised training, particularly in the tourism and pharmaceutical sectors, but also in the budding high-technology industries. The government under Ahmed Nazif has recognised the deficiencies of the education system and has announced plans for an overhaul, including the introduction of public-private partnerships, an idea which is yet to be fully fleshed out. However, it will take time for benefits to accrue from any such overhaul. Foreign businesses, at least initially, may find suitable workers among the large number of Egyptians educated in Europe or the US. There is, however, no shortage of able and motivated graduates looking for employment who will respond well to in-house, on-the-job training.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 4th, 2006)

Union Strength

Unified Labour Law 12/2003 gives workers the right to organise trade unions, and employers are prohibited from interfering in union activities. There are 23 industrial unions in Egypt, all of which are under the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which is closely linked to the ruling National Democratic Party. Union membership exceeds 4m, and members are drawn mostly from state-owned companies. Hence, the ETUF represents more than 20% of Egypts workforce.

Workers have the right to organise a union in any enterprise employing more than 50 workers, but only one union is allowed in a workplace. Where there is no trade union, discussions can be held between the employer and five employees elected by a general trade union that is associated with the sector. Union membership is not mandatory, even at state-owned enterprises.

Articles 146151 of Law 12 cover collective bargaining, defined as negotiations between trade unions and employers to improve the terms and conditions of employment or to settle disputes between workers and employers (Article 146).

Even with the new labour law, collective bargaining is difficult since the government sets public-sector wages, benefits and job classifications by law. The unions have little influence in determining private-sector wages, which are kept above those of the public sector by market needs. There are no closed shops in the private sector, but employees may not be dismissed for being union members.

Labour Disputes

Strikes appear to have increased in recent years. Karam Saber, director of the Land Centre for Human Rights, reported 743 labour protests in Egypt in 19982003, adding that there was nearly one per day in 2004. MahmoudMohieldin, the minister of investment, called the report exaggerated. Even so, strikes started receiving local and foreign media attention during the first half of 2005: workers at the private-sector Aura-Misr Asbestos Factory demanded compensation for severe health problems; public-sector textile workers staged hunger strikes amid fears about the upcoming privatisation of the Esco factory, thereby receiving early-retirement packages or seasonal contracts; and air-traffic controllers at Cairo International Airport staged a disruptive work slowdown for better wages, prompting Ahmad Shafiq, the minister of civil aviation, to proclaim them traitors. There were 16 demonstrations, 43 strikes and 53 sit-ins in 2005.

Article 192 of Law 12 gives workers the right to stage peaceful protests, although these must be organised and approved by the appropriate trade union. Workers are prohibited from modifying a collective labour agreement during its period of validity, and staging a strike is prohibited if such action is deemed a threat to national security.

Strikes rarely last more than a few days, usually taking the form of sit-ins, work slowdowns or stoppages, or demonstrations in worker-housing areas. Strikers may be sentenced to up to two years in prison, and those who incite others to strike may receive more severe penalties. Union involvement tends to be low-profile since the government can remove any union executive from office for provoking a strike.

Public confrontations between the ETUF and the government are rare, and disputes are usually resolved by consensus behind closed doors. The principal unions are those in the industries dominated by the public sector, including petroleum, chemicals, iron and steel, textiles, and transport. Aside from privatisation, the main reason for strikes is the failure to pay bonuses or allowances due to employees.

Wage Restrictions

Even the highest wages and salaries in Egypt are low by international standards. The minimum monthly wage, which applies to all workers except those under probation or in vocational training, is less than E400 for a six-day, 48-hour working week. Wages for any job at a foreign-owned firm are probably at least four times the basic minimum wage.

Article 34 of Unified Labour Law 12 specifies annual wage increases of at least 7% of base salary. Standard compensation includes salary, bonuses (other than productivity bonuses), allowances, cost-of-living increases and profit sharing. If an employer cannot afford a pay increase of 7%, the National Council for Wages will adjudicate to resolve the issue. Many private-sector employers prefer to pay workers a low basic wage and add incentives to improve productivity.

There is no generally recognised wage index, and the governments attitude to wage questions reflects its need to restrain public-sector wages and reduce the budget deficit. As far as the private sector is concerned, the government mainly wishes to keep people employed. However, in late 2005, the government increased public-sector salaries by up to 100% as part of President Hosni Mubaraks election campaign. Officials at the Finance Ministry point out that the lions share of public-sector pay packets comes from bonuses and other allowances, and even a 100% increase in basic salaries will have little effect on the budget deficit.

As a result of an overall labour surplus, wages in many areas of the private sector have hardly risen at all in recent years. Wage rises have been slight even amid concerns about inflation on staple consumer goods since January 2003, following the devaluation of the Egyptian pound. For most local firms, any acknowledgement of rising living costs has been offset by corresponding increases in business costs as a result of the currency devaluation.

Private-sector salaries for skilled workers and professionals are considerably higher than in the public sector, and foreign companies are generally willing to pay more than market rates to attract the best candidates. Financial and human-resources managers and qualified sales and marketing staff, which are in short supply, can demand relatively high salaries. Salaries at banks and financial-services firms also have risen in recent years as the market has become more sophisticated.

In service sectors, including hotels and restaurants, the distribution of service charges (for instance, through tip sharing) is more significant than the basic salary level. For every E1 earned in salary, employees tend to receive E34 as their share of service charges.

Employers must pay monthly contributions to the Ministry of Social Insurance and Social Affairs in accordance with Social Insurance Law 79 of 1975, as amended by Law 47 of 1984. The law requires total contributions amounting to 40% of the employees basic annual salary, subject to an upper limit of E5,400, with 26% paid by the employer and the remainder deducted from the employees salary. In addition, a contribution of 35% is payable on variable salary (such as bonuses and commissions), subject to an upper limit of E6,000. A separate system applies to workers employed by a contractor, whose contributions amount to 28% of all wages (18% of which is contributed by the contractor). The payments, due within 15 days of the end of the month, cover old-age pensions and insurance for disability, death, work accidents, medical needs and unemployment.

Foreign employers are not required to pay social contributions if their country of origin offers the same treatment to Egyptians. Private-sector companies can obtain exemption from payments to the health-insurance scheme if they provide a free health-insurance scheme of their own, offering equivalent or better care.

Article 54 of Law 12 entitles an employee whose illness is verified by a competent medical authority to sick leave as determined by the Social Insurance Law, which guarantees compensation equivalent to 75% of salary for the first 20 days of illness and 85% for the following 90 days within the same year. For workers aged 1217 years, employers must pay for additional health provisions, including a yearly physical examination, up-to-date medical records and a daily cup of milk (at least 200 grams).

Article 47 provides for an annual vacation for employees in all sectors, set at 21 days for workers with more than one year of service and 30 days for workers with ten years of service, or who are older than aged 50. Workers employed for less than a year are entitled to take leave in proportion to their time employed. Vacations can be increased by up to one week for employees who work in dangerous occupations or remote areas, depending on ministerial directives.

Article 91 of Law 12 grants female workers a three-month maternity leave at full wages, assuming that the worker has been at the company for at least ten months. Women are not required to work during the 45 days after a childs birth, but such maternity leave does not have to be granted more than twice in the course of one job. Mothers of infants up to 24 months old are entitled to two extra daily rest periods of at least 30 minutes each without any loss of pay. In firms with more than 50 employees, women workers may also take up to three unpaid leaves of two years to care for their children. Firms employing more than 100 workers at one location must provide nursery care for workers children.

All employees are permitted six casual days per year, with a maximum limit of two days at a time. Employees are also entitled to full pay for holidays designated by the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration (not to exceed 13 days per year, except that with Coptic Christian holidays the number may rise to 18 days). An employer may ask employees to work during public holidays, but such employees will be entitled to double pay.

Public-sector employees have come to expect annual bonuses equivalent to at least one month pay, in addition to benefits from profit-sharing and social-insurance schemes. Bonuses and voluntary fringe benefits are also an important element of the private-sector pay structure; indeed, some 40% of companies award a standard one-month pay bonus each year, and 20% award a two-month bonus.

The payment of bonuses is not mandatory, but it can become so under the doctrine of acquired rights. A bonus must be of general application, must be fixed and must be paid for at least three consecutive years before it can be considered habitual and therefore mandatory.

Around 70% of private-sector firms offer representative allowances, such as a company car or a uniform, which are not subject to tax. Most large firms also provide bus transport for their employees, partly as a benefit and partly to ensure on-time arrival. Many private firms also arrange for a doctor to visit the workplace several days a week in a bid to discourage absenteeism.

In general, the total cost of fringe benefits is only about 10% of base pay. Foreign-owned firms must offer the same benefits as those required of Egyptian companies.

Hiring and Firing Restrictions

To work in Egypt, all foreigners (with the exception of accredited foreign journalists) must obtain a work permit from the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration in the relevant governorate (or from the free-zone authority for free-zone projects). The General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI) has established its own manpower office to assist companies registered under Law 230 and Law 8. A foreigner working for one of these firms should submit an application to GAFI with the necessary documents from the employer and a fee of E250 (E150 for renewals). Application reviews normally take up to two months, and permits last for one year.

Before a foreigner can obtain a work permit, the employer may be required to demonstrate that no qualified Egyptian is available for the job. On requesting work permits for non-Egyptians, the employer must commit to appointing Egyptian assistants who will be trained to take over the foreigners job. Hence, work permits are not renewed indefinitely, though renewals rarely present difficulty in actual practice. Non-Egyptian company owners automatically obtain a residence visa when they obtain permission to establish a company in Egypt.

For Law 159 companies (and previously for Law 230 inland projects), the number of foreign employees is limited to 10% of staff, with pay not exceeding 20% of total compensation. For shareholder companies, at least 75% of professional and administrative employees must be Egyptian, with combined earnings comprising not less than 70% of the total. An exception may be granted for up to two years if no qualified Egyptians are available. Similar rules for staff composition apply in the free zones, where at least 75% of staff must be Egyptian citizens.

Termination of employment is a lengthy and rigidly supervised procedure. Although employers may establish work requirements, the Unified Labour Law limits initial disciplinary sanctions imposed on an employee to a warning, postponement of the annual wage increase and deferment of a promotion. No penalty may be imposed without submitting reasons for it in writing. The employer may suspend the worker pending dismissal, but not for longer than 60 days.

If the suspended employee files a complaint within three days, a dismissal committee will be summoned to review the case. This committee includes two judges from the Ministry of Justice, the general manager of the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration (as chairman), a representative of the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions and a member of the concerned employers organisation. The affected employee must be allowed to have a trade-union representative attend the associated investigation. The committee must decide on the case within 15 days of the employers first request for discharge. The employer must pay the salary in full until the case is decided.

Article 69 of Law 12 provides that dismissal of an individual employee requires documented evidence of the employees deficiency or wrongdoing. Grounds for dismissal include the following: submission of false certificates or references; deliberate damage to company property; commission of an error that results in grave material loss to the employer; failure to observe safety instructions; absence from work for 20 intermittent days or ten consecutive days in a year; disclosure of a firms secrets; conviction of a crime; appearance at work under the influence of drugs or alcohol; assault on the employer; or display of gross inefficiency.

The committee must decide by a majority vote. If the committee refuses the request, the employer must either drop the dismissal or pay the worker compensation. The decision issued by the committee may be challenged before the Court of Appeals, in accordance with provisions of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law.

By law, the government may grant a company permission to cut back production and lay off workers only if the company is operating at a loss or can give some other substantial reason. Dismissals are generally not permitted for consolidation. An application by a company to lay off excess staff will lead to the summoning of a stoppage committee within 15 days.

The decision issued by the stoppage committee may be challenged before the Court of Appeals, in accordance with provisions of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law. Appeal may be made to a district committee, which must convene within 15 days with at least five members. These members include the deputy ministers of the relevant ministry for the companys activities and those for manpower and immigration, social insurance and the interior. The committee must reach a decision within 30 days of its first session, subject to review by the manpower and immigration minister.

Articles 104130 address contract expirations. Under the present law, if employees and employer continue with the same work arrangement after a contract expires, the contract is automatically renewed. Significantly, contracts renewed by default in this way become indefinite.

For a contract with an indefinite period, the employer may not terminate the contract unless the employee is guilty of wrongdoing as stipulated under Article 69. Expired contracts can also be renewed for a limited term by agreement between both parties.

An employer is legally responsible for providing two months notice of termination for employees with an employment contract of less than ten years, and three months notice if a contract extends beyond ten years. The labour contract remains legal during the notification period. Upon notification, the employee has the right to take off one day a week to search for other work until a job is found or the notification period ends.

Article 125 puts the retirement age at 60 years.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Portugal: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The state airline, TAP, an oil and gas company, Galp Energia, and Portucel (paper and pulp) will be privatised. Regulatory bodies will be enhanced, with benefits for competition in utility markets, especially telecoms and energy.

2008-10: Privatisations will continue in the energy sector. Diminished resistance to foreign takeovers and joint ventures with Spanish firms, especially in the banking, retail and energy sectors.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Continued efforts to boost foreign direct investment (FDI) through tax incentives, although efforts to make significant improvements to the overall tax framework will be hampered in the short term by budgetary constraints.

2008-10: Stiffer competition for FDI from central and eastern Europe. High-tech companies may benefit from tax incentives.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Moderate trade friction persists between the EU and the US. Despite reintroduction of EU quotas on certain textile imports from China in 2005, Portuguese textile firms continue to struggle against increased competition.

2008-10: Full opening to textile imports from China in 2008.

Taxes

2006-07: The income tax rate on high earners rose from 40% to 42% in January 2006. Taxes on tobacco, fuel and cars increased in January 2006, with further increases in 2007. The government will enact measures to counter tax evasion.

2008-10: Some tax cuts likely for low-income earners in the run-up to the general election in 2009.

Financing

2006-07: Renewed merger and acquisitions activity in the banking sector will lead to high concentration in the sector.

2008-10: Further consolidation in the financial sector. Medium-sized businesses will seek more funding on international capital markets. Spanish banks will attempt to increase their presence in the Portuguese market.

The labour market

2006-07: Relations with public-sector trade unions are under strain over reduced staffing, low pay rises and cuts in benefits.

2008-10: Additional investment in education and research to improve the quality of the labour force.

Infrastructure

2006-07: The airport at Oporto will be expanded, and construction will begin on a new airport for Lisbon in 2007.

2008-10: Further work on resolving infrastructure deficiencies, notably by expanding high-speed rail links with Spain. Integration of the pan-Iberian energy market will be accelerated, with the aim of reaching full integration during 2008.



Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Netherlands: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Increased energy, telephone and broadband competition, but incumbents remain dominant.

2008-10: Some liberalisation of sectors not covered by the new anti-cartel law, such as the media and possibly healthcare.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: No significant changes to generally favourable conditions.

2008-10: Some tax privileges may have to be reduced or eliminated under pressure from the OECD and the EU.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: An EU-China agreement will restrict imports of some textile products from China.

2008-10: Low chance of success in reaching a new agreement on global trade liberalisation. Trade liberalisation continues, albeit slowly, through unilateral, bilateral and regional arrangements

Taxes

2006-07: Reduction in the rate of corporation tax to 25% in 2007.

2008-10: Further reductions in corporation tax possible. Rises in indirect and environmental taxes. New efforts to reduce the use of mechanisms to avoid tax payments.

Financing

2006-07: Regulatory controls over financial operations and dealers strengthened.

2008-10: Dutch banks and insurance companies to reinforce alliances in more open EU market.

The labour market

2006-07: Companies face higher costs for the disability benefit scheme, but otherwise moderate wage cost increases.

2008-10: Greater efforts to expand labour force participation through financial incentives. Trade unions will remain influential, especially if a more left-wing government were to take over after the November 2006 election.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Upgrading of Rotterdam port, as well as of rail, road, waterways and telecommunications infrastructure. The "Betuwelijn", a goods rail connection between the port of Rotterdam and the Ruhrgebiet in Germany comes into operation.



2008-10: Expansion of Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and improved rail links with Germany. High-speed train to Belgium and France enters into service.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Canada: Forex regulations

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Canada: Forex regulations. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Overview

Few controls hinder the movement of capital or other payments either into or out of Canada. But the federal government has strengthened its anti-money-laundering regime to deal with the increased threat of terrorism and to bring it in line with international best practices.



There are some restrictions on investments in Canada. Large direct investments must be approved by a federal agency, Investment Canada, and sometimes also by the federal Competition Bureau. Portfolio investment is limited in several types of business, including banking; media and communications; cultural activities (book publishing and retailing, filmmaking and distribution); and, to some extent, transportation. Restrictions on foreign portfolio holdings in these sectors range from 2049%.

One regulation that limited outflows of Canadian capitalforeign holdings in pension fundswas eliminated in the February 2005 federal budget. Foreign pension assets had previously been limited to a maximum of 30%.

In November 2001 the federal government began to monitor currency flows under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act. (The act, originally passed in May 2000, became more relevant after the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001.) Individuals, financial institutions and intermediaries are required to provide information to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) to help prevent money laundering and, with subsequent amendments, the financing of terrorist activities. FINTRAC and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) can share information under June 2004 revisions to federal law. The following types of exchanges must be reported:

cash transactions of C$10,000 or more;

international electronic funds transfers of C$10,000 or more;

crossborder movements of large amounts of currency or monetary instruments if the rate of exchange exceeds the posted rate; and

payments of C$3,000 or more in casino cheques.

Information posted on the FINTRAC website includes (1) information on money laundering and the intent of the new law; (2) a list of the activities that should be reported and how this should be done; (3) an explanation of when and how to submit reports; and (4) an outline of how compliance procedures are to be implemented by individuals and organisations.

Under Canadian law, money laundering is a criminal offence that includes such acts as concealing or converting property (or the monetary proceeds of property) and knowing that the proceeds were derived from committing an offence under Section 462.31 of the Criminal Code. Money laundering takes the form of placement (putting proceeds of crime into the financial system), layering (using a complex series of transactions to disguise an illegal source of income) or integration (putting illegal proceeds into legitimate businesses).

Canadian law supports international efforts to combat money laundering and, more recently, the financing of terrorism. Canada has been a member of the OECD-led Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering since it was formed in 1989.

Penalties for not filing reports under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act are severe: up to five years in prison and/or a fine up to C$2m for failing to report a suspicious transaction; fines of C$500,000 (first offence) to C$1m (subsequent offences) for failing to report large cash transactions; and five years in prison and/or a fine up to C$500,000 for failing to keep records.

Lawyers challenged portions of the new law, arguing that it violated the principle of client-solicitor privilege. Application of the law to lawyers was suspended by mid-April 2002. The government repealed sections of the law pertaining to lawyers in March 2003 and said it would develop a new regulatory and legislative regime that takes into account the nature of the duties of legal counsel. The Attorney General of Canada has indicated that clients rather than lawyers are responsible for reporting under the act, and lawyers have been advised to explain that to their clients. In April 2004 the Law Society of British Columbia adopted a rule to prohibit lawyers in the province from accepting more than C$10,000 in cash from a client, except in certain circumstances (as executor of a will, or for payment of bail or legal fees).

During the fiscal year which ended March 31st 2006, FINTRAC detected the probability of illegal conduct in 142 cases (from among about 10m reported transactions). Of these, 110 involved suspected money laundering, 24 concerned suspected terrorist activities and eight combined the two offences. The total dollar value represented in these cases was more than C$2bn, an increase from C$700m in the previous fiscal year. All suspicions of illegal actions are turned over to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for investigation. In February 2006, FINTRAC upgraded its electronic reporting system, creating a secure website called F2R.

Repatriation of capital

No restrictions apply.

Profit remittances

No restrictions or reporting requirements apply.

Tax consequences. Dividends are paid out after corporate income tax. There is no withholding tax on dividends paid by resident companies to Canadian individuals or corporations. In general, dividends paid or credited to non-residents are subject to a 25% withholding tax. Double-tax treaties can reduce this rate to 15% or less.

In addition to normal business expenses, Canadian corporations can generally deduct dividends received from another Canadian enterprise. Private companies are subject to a special refundable 25% tax on dividends received from companies in which the recipient has an interest of less than 10%. The tax is refundable to the corporation when it passes the dividend income on to its shareholders.

Loan inflows and repayment

No restrictions apply to borrowing from abroad. There are no limitations on the remittance of interest or principal on foreign-currency loans, and no reporting requirements.

Tax consequences. Corporations can pay interest to non-residents free of withholding tax on debt of five years or more. Interest payable to a non-resident-owned investment corporation is exempt from withholding tax. Otherwise, interest payments to non-resident individuals and corporations are generally subject to a 25% withholding tax (although this rate may be reduced under double-tax treaties). Interest paid to a Canadian resident is generally taxed as regular income to the recipient.

Transfer of royalties and fees

No restrictions apply. There are no reporting requirements, except when the remittances are subject to an agreement under the Investment Canada Act.

Tax consequences. A 25% tax is withheld on royalties and management fees paid to non-residents (but may be reduced by various tax treaties). For example, a US-Canada income tax treaty protocol in effect since 1995 abolished the withholding tax on royalties for computer software, patents and technical data.

Ontario restricts the amounts of royalties and management fees paid to non-residents that can be deducted from taxable income in calculating provincial taxes.

Restrictions on trade-related payments

No restrictions apply to export or import payments. Leading and lagging of payments are allowed.

Both bilateral and multilateral netting are freely permitted.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Ecuador: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Red tape, regulatory opacity, institutional politicisation and powerful vested interests distort the business climate. Attempts to modernise the state oil company, Petroecuador, and hire private managers for utilities are pursued only haltingly.



2008-10: Some progress on liberalising price controls in utilities and transport, but inefficiencies remain in Petroecuador.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Ambivalent attitude towards foreign direct investment (FDI). Disputes will sour the climate in the oil industry. Official policy is open, but FDI outside the oil industry will be slow to arrive.

2008-10: In the absence of a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the US, foreign investment inflows slow.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Efforts to revive FTA negotiations with the US are likely to fail, and trade preferences under the Andean Trade-Promotion and Drug-Eradication Act (ATPDEA) will expire. There will be few restrictions on foreign-exchange transactions.

2008-10: Exporters find it difficult to compete in US markets. Lingering doubts over sustainability of dollarisation, amid sluggish reform.

Taxes

2006-07: Complex, unwieldy tax system subject to frequent tinkering in the absence of wholesale reform. Some selective corporate tax increases to pay for one-off expenditurecommitments.

2008-10: Political opposition to reform will mean that, although the government should be able to push through improvements to compliance, attempts to raise rates or broaden the tax base may founder.

Financing

2006-07: Lending to the private sector increases from a low base. Rising interest rates amid tighter global liquidity complicate financing.

2008-10: Banks to strengthen balance sheets to meet Basel II standards. Medium- and long-term financing remains scarce.

The labour market

2006-07: Moves to reform labour laws, to guarantee the rights of workers to form unions and reduce the minimum number of workers required to form a union.

2008-10: Persistent scarcity of skilled labour aggravated by emigration.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Work on airport improvements and some hydroelectric projects will continue, but utilities services remain costly.

2008-10: Concessions to the private sector in areas such as airports and roads will encourage investment.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Algeria: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Privatisation of some state-owned firms may proceed, including some banks and Algerie Telecom.

2008-10: There is a good chance that further major privatisation deals will have been completed by the end of this period.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign investment will be encouraged in most areas of the economy, in a bid to develop the private sector. However, the business environment for foreign firms will remain opaque.

2008-10: Foreign investors will continue to be courted. Deregulation will expand, and transparency will improve further.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: The Association Agreement with the EU will force some rationalisation and reduction of tariffs.

2008-10: Reforms of the trade system and the financial services industry will accelerate as Algeria prepares for accession to the World Trade Organisation.

Taxes

2006-07: Corporation tax lowered from 30% to 25% with retroactive effect from January 1st 2006. Exemptions remain widespread. Few efforts to widen the tax base and improve collection, given strong levels of hydrocarbons revenue.

2008-10: Value-added tax will be expanded, and corporate and income tax rates may be reduced further.

Financing

2006-07: Banking sector reform will gradually pick up pace, focusing on staff training and strengthening the balance sheets. The role of foreign banks is likely to increase.

2008-10: Further efforts will be made to modernise and recapitalise the banking system, with further divestments expected.

The labour market

2006-07: Organised labour will remain resistant to privatisation, although a shift in attitude is discernible, offering room for negotiation and compromise. However, progress will be slow, with little movement on liberalising restrictive labour laws.



2008-10: Growth in the private sector will be too slow to create a sufficient number of sustainable jobs. Although there will be some progress on labour legislation reform, implementation will remain patchy.

Infrastructure

2006-07: There will be increasing use of build-operate-transfer schemes in the power and water sectors. The government will also step up public investment in areas such as housing, transportation and telecommunications.

2008-10: A broader array of public works projects will be opened up to foreign private capital.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Brazil: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Heavy burden of red tape impairs efficiency, despite progress on boosting competition and private investment in infrastructure. Intellectual property rights increasingly respected, but weak enforcement leaves piracy rife in some areas.



2008-10: Improvements to regulatory agencies and spread of public-private partnerships will stimulate private investment.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign direct investment (FDI) is officially welcomed, but in some areas domestic businesses will receive preferential treatment. FDI inflows will hold up, but will be below the privatisation-driven levels seen in the late 1990s.

2008-10: Tax incentives for foreign and domestic investors will favour those considering Brazil as an export base.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Diversified export markets foster continued growth of exports. Slow progress in trade talks with OECD countries, as Brazil will insist on reciprocal liberalisation. Further easing of remaining restrictions on currency movements.

2008-10: Export development will continue to be a policy priority, but remaining trade barriers will ease only slowly.

Taxes

2006-07: No discrimination against foreign capital, but the tax system remains complex and unwieldy.

2008-10: Efforts to reduce tax distortions, but the tax burden will still be by far the highest in the region.

Financing

2006-07: Capital markets continue to deepen, as macroeconomic stability is consolidated and crowding out by the public sector diminishes, but access to medium-term external financing will remain relatively costly and limited.

2008-10: Fiercer competition between financial institutions will support gradual reduction in borrowing costs, although these will remain high. Increased availability of equity and domestic bond market finance.

The labour market

2006-07: Labour market rigidities persist, but unemployment contains unit labour costs. Strikes and labour unrest are rare.

2008-10: Skills shortages persist, but education and training will gradually improve. Major labour reform unlikely.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Gradual advances on alleviating difficult and costly logistics, reflecting underinvestment in physical infrastructure.

2008-10: Public-private partnerships will stimulate needed investment in transport infrastructure and the energy network.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Latin American call center market is expected to record the fastest growth globally between 2006 and 2010, regional news service TelcosIT reported citing statistics from the Mexican telemarketing institute IMT.



According to the report, the industry is expected to grow 29.3% in the period adding 17.6 million operators in the region. During 2005, 585,000 operators migrated their facilities to other overseas locations, with 105 installing their call centers in Latin America.

***

US Linux operating systems integrator Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) has selected Mexican IT training institute CompuEducacin as the company's authorized training center in Mexico, InfoChannel reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, CompuEducacin is authorized to offer training on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Certified Engineer certification.

***

The Chilean unit of Spanish IT consultancy DMR Consulting has appointed Jos Ortega as the new manager in charge of the industrial sector division, DMR said in a statement.

With a degree in physical sciences from the Spanish university Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the executive has been working at DMR for the past nine years at the company's Spanish and Italian subsidiaries.

In his new position Ortega will be in charge of strengthening DMR's position within companies from the industrial sector.

***

Colombian software development powerhouse Parquesoft has opened a new facility in the city of Ibagu, local newspaper El Nuevo Da reported.

Parquesoft, currently home of over 180 IT firms, employs over 800 software developers and 200 additional employees for service, support and business development. The hub also plans to open a new facility in Villavicencio this year.

***

The Santa Cruz trade and industry chamber (Cainco) in Bolivia has launched a new online service that allows local companies to sell their products through the internet, local press reported.

The service allows clients to purchase products using credit cards with a 6% commission on each purchase.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
The Denver Post business briefs column. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--PERRY ROSE LLC, a Denver-based planning, development and advisory firm, received the Partnership Award from the International Economic Development Council. Perry Rose was cited for partnering with the Denver Urban Renewal Authority to develop Highlands Garden Village.



ADAM AIRCRAFT of Arapahoe County received a production certificate for its A500 twin-engine propeller plane from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday, giving the company approval to manufacture and deliver the aircraft under an approved design.

LIQUID COMPASS, a Denver-based streaming and creative media provider, has launched its ad sales division.

FRESHIES FOOD CORP., a Denver-based producer of natural, nonalcoholic drink mixes, announced the launch of three new flavors -- Pomegranate Mojito, Tangerita Tangerine Margarita Mix and Cosmopolitan Cranberry Splash.

SUMMUS WORKS INC. of Denver announced that it has executed a contract with Atlantis Holding Corp. to design and implement a corporate branding, marketing and advertising initiative.

THE DENVER GOLD GROUP will hold its annual Denver Gold Forum on Monday through Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency Denver. Mining companies, with a combined market capitalization of about $186 billion, will make presentations to mining analysts, fund managers and institutional investors.

NEWSGATOR TECHNOLOGIES INC., a Denver-based RSS platform company, announced the release of NewsGator Go for Windows Mobile. The product allows users to read content and manage their RSS subscriptions from any Windows-mobile capable device.

QWEST has expanded its suite of Internet telephony products available to business customers. Qwest has added the OneFlex IP Long-Distance and OneFlex IP Toll Free products.

DENVER'S SWALLOW HILL MUSIC ASSOCIATION has welcomed Boulder Weekly as a media sponsor of the Denver Folk & Roots Folk Festival 2007 and the 2007 concert season.

BMC WEST'S worksite in Fort Collins was recognized by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration for achievement in its employee safety and health program. The lumber-and-building- materials supplier was designated a Voluntary Protection Programs "Merit" site.

PRESERVE AMERICA'S final round of grants were announced Tuesday by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Colorado recipients were: $33,000 for the Wayfinding and Marker Project in Georgetown; $24,000 for the downtown Steamboat Springs' research and documentation project; and $58,000 for the Park County Heritage Tourism pilot project.

UC4 SOFTWARE, a provider of enterprise job scheduling and data center automation with U.S. headquarters in Denver, announced the UC4 Strategic Partner Alliance Program. The program builds on the company's existing relationships with information-technology businesses while building new alliances in the industry.

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Thumbs down for small-enterprise plans. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Thumbs down for small-enterprise plans Trade and Industry Correspondent GOVERNMENT's latest plans to advance small enterprises to drive industrial output and grow jobs were unlikely to deliver dividends, social commentator Moeletsi Mbeki said yesterday at the Congress of South African Trade Unions' (Cosatu's) ninth congress in Midrand.



Poverty and unemployment were central to the trade union federation's deliberations at the congress, which ended yesterday.

Mbeki, speaking on the fringes of the congress, was sceptical that the new approach by the state would have a meaningful effect. He said government was locked into a capitalist agenda dictated by the west, from which it did not want to deviate. Its elitist approach to empowerment was at the core of the discontent emanating from the labour movement, Mbeki said.

Earlier this week, the South African Communist Party's (SACP's) Blade Nzimande called for a major reorientation of economic policy in line with the Freedom Charter.

The SACP general secretary spoke harsh words about a strategic rupture in the ANC, criticising the party's partners in government for moving away from the organisation's original shared perspective in favour of a new drive to manage capitalism. He called for renewed focus in building up manufacturing capacity through the development of small enterprises. However, this drive for growth, and the development of small black business, is at the heart of government's industrial development plans.

Nzimande noted growing class disparities, marked by a consensus between the black and white elite, at the expense of the poor. Escalation in strike action over the past two years and growing working class militancy was due to their being left behind as the new elite accelerated its pursuit of wealth, he said.

Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Seminar: Pitches critiqued

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Seminar: Pitches critiqued. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--For entrepreneurs, raising enough money to turn their ideas into productive businesses can be a formidable task.

Navigating the road to profitability is often winding and hard to follow, and without sizable personal wealth or a rich uncle willing to invest, start ups usually have only one option: Present the plan to venture capitalists.

In an effort to help Inland entrepreneurs win funding to launch their businesses, the TriTech Small Business Development Center, which provides training and consulting to high-tech start ups in the area, held a daylong seminar Thursday to help the would-be executives polish their communication and presentation skills.



The center, which is funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration and Cal State Fullerton, recently moved from Irvine and is now administered by the Riverside Community College District. The center gives assistance to start ups, including helping them find venture capitalists.

Mark Mitchell, TriTech's director, said one of the group's goals is to prepare entrepreneurs for the process of seeking venture funding.

"It's a difficult maze out there for start ups -- where to go, who to talk to, what to say," Mitchell said.

More than 100 entrepreneurs attended the seminars, which were held at the Mission Inn in Riverside.

After a morning of tips from business consultants and TriTech specialists on presenting pitches to venture capitalists, several start up business people made presentations that were critiqued by a group of five investors.

Zaia Youkhanna presented a growth plan for his software company, Iress, which develops programs for real-estate transactions.

"You need a lot of practice," one of the investors, Frank Peters, told Youkhanna after his presentation.

Peters is president of the Orange County chapter of the investment group Tech Coast Angels, a group of about 270 investors who fund and advise technology companies throughout Southern California. Peters said the hours spent at workshops are well worth it for start up operators.

"But that's the beauty of the TriTech experience," Peters said. "If you were to come into Tech Coast Angels and you blow it, it's over."

Another Angels investor, Sid Mohasseb, said he still didn't understand the purpose of Youkhanna's company after the presentation.

"Very early on, you need to explain what you are and how you make money," Mohasseb said.

Youkhanna, of Irvine, said the practice run helped, and he appreciated the investors' suggestions.

In a few months, he said he will make real pitches to investors.

"What really matters is to come up with simple words that communicate what we do," he said. "We need to explain it in the ways the investors want to hear it."

SEMINAR TIPS: How to pitch your business to investors:

--Tell a story to investors.

--Use examples.

--Be honest about the company.

--Practice giving the presentation.

--Dress properly.

--Give short answers for follow-up questions.

SOURCE: TriTech Small Business Development Center

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Delegata Named as One of the Fastest Growing Companies by the Business Journal. Check it out:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Delegata, a premier consulting and systems integration firm, announced today that the Sacramento Business Journal has recognized Delegata as one of the fastest growing companies in the region. Of the 100 companies selected, Delegata was ranked the 23rd fastest growing company.



"We are honored to be recognized for our growth by the Sacramento Business Journal," stated Kais Menoufy, CEO and President of Delegata. "This prestigious ranking is a testament to our partnerships with our clients and the dedication of our people. We hope to continue to deliver higher than expectations every year. Our clients and our employees are the impetus of our success and providing both with first class quality is our highest priority."

Bridging existing systems with innovative technologies, Delegata's customized solutions deliver targeted results based on unique client objectives. Delegata blends application, integration and development competencies with broad consulting and management skills to rapidly achieve measurable outcomes.

Headquartered in Downtown Sacramento, Delegata serves a variety of government agencies including the DMV, CalPERS, the Department of Justice, the State Controller's Office, the Legislative Data Center and the Department of Alcohol & Drug Programs to name a few.

About Delegata

Delegata is a premier consulting and systems integration firm. Specializing in Project Management, Technology Planning and Analysis, Application Development, Enterprise Architecture, Organizational Change Management, Package Integration, and Process Alignment, Delegata delivers Award Winning Total Solutions to its clients. The firm's comprehensive approach addresses business objectives and processes by leveraging broad implementation skills and multifaceted project management and technology expertise. Delegata's solutions facilitate a client's rapid transition to new technologies and processes while leveraging current investments. Utilizing strong industry acumen and its configurable Diamond Methodology, Delegata begins with client business objectives, aligns technology components, and delivers tightly integrated Total Solutions tailored to its clients' unique environments. Visit Delegata's website at www.delegata.com
SPAIN: BUSINESS INVESTMENT IN AFRICA WILL STEM MIGRATION - NGO. Check it out:
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
MADRID, Sep. 21, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- The world can promote
development in Africa by supporting the private sector in Africa,
as Spanish businesses agreed to do this week, and combating
people-trafficking mafias, according to a non-governmental aid
group.

"Supporting investment in Africa is important," Antonio Molina,
secretary general of Fundacin Sur, told IPS in interview Thursday.

That was the commitment made during the Spain-Africa Business
Cooperation meeting held Monday through Wednesday in Las Palmas,
Gran Canaria, a Spanish island located off the coast of northwest
Africa.

"The tide of emigrants from Africa must be stemmed, because it's
usually the best people with the highest level of education who
leave. They hope to find a better future in Europe, but many lose
their lives in the attempt, and others are condemned to social
exclusion," Molina said.

In the last few months, thousands of undocumented migrants from
Africa have reached the Canary Islands by sea.

In his opinion, the exodus can be stopped by encouraging young
Africans to set up businesses in their own countries, supporting
these enterprises, and at the same time combating the mafias that
organize and profit from trafficking in migrants. "As these are
investigated, it becomes clear that they involve people at the
highest levels of these societies," he said.

Two hundred members of the business community from Benin,
Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali,
Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and Togo attended the meeting in Las
Palmas.

Adn Martn, the head of the regional government of the Canary
Islands, urged business people not to look on Africa merely out of
solidarity, "but out of responsibility; because it was we of the
Old Continent who forced our neighbors into the situation in which
they are now living," referring to European colonialism.

The humanitarian crisis generated by the intermittent waves of
undocumented migrants, thousands of whom cross the seas in frail
boats, must be used to make European Union member countries
understand they must finance development projects in Africa, Martn
said.

Referring to the rise in Spanish investment in the last few
years, and the further commitments made at this meeting, the
president of Spain's High Council of the Chambers of Commerce,
Javier Gmez-Navarro, said that it "demonstrates the aim of Spanish
businesses to finally look Africa straight in the eye." He also
said that the present levels of investment and trade are "far too
low."

Gmez-Navarro mentioned infrastructure for transport, health and
education as promising sectors for investment, as well as tourism
and renewable energy sources, for which financing from
international organizations and the public and private sector in
Spain is available, he told the conference.

He also said that the Assembly of Chambers of Commerce of West
Africa, formally established at the meeting, was a significant
advance, and called it "an excellent vehicle for closer
institutional and business ties between that region and Spain."

The important thing now, he told IPS, "is to get large, medium
and small businesses together, with very flexible formulas, to
stimulate national and international cooperation and promote
environmentally and socially sustainable development."

One of the first tasks of the assembly, supported by the Las
Palmas Chamber of Commerce, will be to work toward a borderless
free trade zone, sharing information through a common network, and
using it to seek more foreign investment.

For his part, Martn said that "Africa cannot wait any longer.
Public institutions in the Canary Islands, Spain and Europe can
contribute decisively to turning the situation around, but we have
to do it together."

Another task assumed by the assembly is to spread knowledge
about real conditions in the African continent, and promote an
image of Africa as an attractive investment opportunity. It will
also train specialists to develop business cooperation projects,
and contribute to making African businesses more competitive.

Representatives of the World Bank and COFIDES -- a joint-stock
company of mixed capital that promotes investment by Spain in
developing countries -- announced that funds were available for
investment in Africa.

Paula Alayo, of the World Bank's International Finance Corp.
(IFC), announced that the IFC has $1.7 billion available, while
Teresa Madrigal of COFIDES announced that they would spend $900
million to finance Spanish companies' investments in development
projects in the South.

But Alfredo Bonet, secretary general for foreign trade at the
Spanish Ministry of Industry, criticized the barriers to trade with
Africa that Spain throws up, and said the numerous difficulties
that African business persons face to obtain a visa to visit this
country must be overcome.

He said that the three ministries involved in this issue, those
of Trade, Employment and the Interior, are working on that and he
hoped that results would be forthcoming soon.

The head of the Gran Canario parliament, Jos Manuel Soria, made
a similar statement. He said that the greatest constraints on trade
between Spain and Africa "are still the enormous administrative,
regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles that public institutions have
established on both sides of the ocean."

According to Soria, public institutions should not take on the
mission of managing factories or competing with private enterprise,
but should concentrate on eliminating the hurdles so that those who
want to do business can do so.

A report was presented at the meeting which indicated that
regional gross domestic product grown in Africa averaged 5 percent
last year, and is expected to reach 6 percent this year.

Copyright 2006 Global Information Network
Initiative On Youth Healthy But Not Enough. Check it out:
(The Nation (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Two events with profound national implications concerning Kenya's youth have been in the news recently.

One of them was articulated by the permanent secretary in the Youth Affairs ministry, Mr Kinuthia Murugu, who assured both youth and other Kenyans that the Sh1 billion allocated in the budget for this group's Enterprise Fund would be available by November.



Then, a global forum meant to address similar endeavours took place here in Nairobi the whole of last week. The import of these two initiatives cannot be lost on anyone.

Kenya's youth constitute about 60 per cent of the population. According to recent counts, the young adults in this age-set who do not have meaningful jobs is over six million. In this group are those have completed high school, vocational institutions, and university.

A good number have been forced to resort to, among other things, hawking or working as matatu touts. These two trades are the most buffeted by complements of vicious authorities even though they contribute significantly to the nation's GDP.

The furious battles, threats, strikes and so on that result stem from the short-sighted policies that the Government has endlessly pursued, knowing full well that none would resolve the problems.

The point here is that there are few nations in the world that allow their most energetic, able-bodied, highly-educated and potentially productive age-group to atrophy even as their elders share amongst themselves what has euphemistically come to be known as the "national cake".

This absurdity is what brings about major problems. Kenya's soaring crime levels are a good example. So are the rowdiness, hooliganism and disrespect for law and authority that is all too evident in society today.

That is why initiatives such as the Enterprise Fund can be a godsend. Sh1 billion may not be big potatoes for such a huge group, but it is a good beginning - unless, of course, the omnipresent politics pokes its nose into the affair and messes up everything.

Managed well, and being sustained incrementally, the Fund should start alleviating this high level of unproductivity among youth.

For instance, most members of the 1830 age-group are technosavvy. They converse with computers, the Internet and related activities in ways that befuddle the older age-group.

It only requires conscious will by the authorities to harness these young people in new areas such as out-sourcing, computer programming and software development to make Kenya a rival to India in these matters. It can be done.

Acutely troubling question

When US Senator Barrack Obama addressed University of Nairobi students three weeks ago, he posed the acutely troubling question: if Kenya was at par with South Korea economically in the 1960s, why is this Asian country now 40 times ahead of Kenya?

What he did not need to say was that South Korea moved, not only to educate its youth, but to create avenues for them to build computers, television sets, home appliances, ships, steel products and a vast array of products with which it littered the entire world. All this it did with hardly any comparable resources such as Kenya has always had.

We have always had enormous tea, coffee and other agro-based produce; one of the world's most bountiful tourism product, and a good industrial base. South Korea, on the other hand, according to the US State Department's Country Handbook, is a mountainous and almost barren country whose main economic activity used to be growing rice. It is said the country produced more Beri Beri disease victims than rice.

It is not difficult for insightful leaders to see that it is worthwhile to ensure their offspring and their age-mates are economically productive.

If they did, Kenya would be on its way to catching up with South Korea and other countries in the developed West.

The entrepreneurial spirit in Kenya is high, and it is shameful when almost 60 per cent of the population is forced to live below the poverty line.

If the Government stopped considering how to enlarge the bottomless purses of so many unproductive entities such as MPs, commissions of inquiry and such-like and used these amounts to cater for the welfare of this largely idle age-group, it would see, in short order, an economy galloping at the rate of China's.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 The Nation (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.

Constructive Empowerment Needed

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Constructive Empowerment Needed. Check it out:
(Zimbabwe Independent Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) FEW can credibly deny that the majority of the Zimbabwean population has never been economically empowered. Until shortly before Independence, most were effectively barred from any substantive economic activity, other than employment as labour. The black population could not own land in rural areas, and therefore could only engage in agricultural activities, on a subsistence basis, on state-owned communal lands. In like vein, conduct of commercial and industrial operations in most urban areas, by blacks, was not permitted, save and except to some minimal extent in designated high-density areas which were the only urban in which blacks could reside, other than for domestic servants residing on employers' properties.



Until the late 1950s, few blacks could receive secondary school education beyond Form II, let alone tertiary education, unless amongst the extraordinarily few who were able to access education outside the country. Even when the education constraints progressively eased, the majority could not fund tertiary education and, therefore, had no opportunity of entry into any economic activity founded upon tertiary skills. Moreover, it was exceptional in the extreme for blacks to be able to borrow working capital from the financial sector, in part because of pronounced racial prejudice, and in part due to being devoid of any substantial assets which could be offered as collateral security.

Very slowly, mainly during the latter part of the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period of 1965 to 1980, there was some change in the enablement of black participation within the economy. The abhorrent, extremely discriminatory Land Apportionment Act (which should never have been enacted), was belatedly repealed, enabling blacks to engaged in self-owned agricultural operations, albeit still subject to severe working capital constraints in most instances, to establish commercial operations, and some other economic activities. A few forward-looking companies initiated share participation schemes and in-house executive training opportunities but, until after Independence, these were generally exceptions to the rule. After Independence, the constraints upon economic participation by blacks as prevailed in law wholly ceased, but an overwhelming majority could not avail themselves of the new environment, being without the necessary capital resources.

Over 26 years there have, of course, been notable exceptions. The majority of Zimbabwe's banks and other financial institutions are significantly owned by blacks, as are many of the companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. There are numerous retail businesses, industries, transport enterprises, tourism operations, and other economically engaged entities that are now wholly, or substantially, black-owned or managed. There are thousands of blacks engaged in informal sector economic ventures. But of Zimbabwe's estimated 11,4 million people, it is improbable that more than, at the most, 200 000 are economically-independent, and it could well be a markedly lesser number.

Some may challenge the credibility of that estimate, but as it is widely believed that about 80% of Zimbabweans live below the Poverty Datum Line (PDL), which would equate to about 9,1 million people, and as the remaining 2,3 million include workers, old aged, and children, even 200 000 economically-independent is potentially an overly-optimistic projection. Such wealth as has been created in black lands is not exclusively, but to a very major extent, in the hands of the politically hierarchy and the politically well-connected, but there is little spread across the populace of real economic empowerment.

Government has long undertaken to ensure meaningful economic empowerment, and to a minimal degree has taken some actions, including the establishment of the Small Enterprises Development Corporation (Sedco) and the National Investment Trust (NIT) and, somewhat more recently, the very necessary creation of the Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprises. However, that virtually sums up its effective steps towards economic empowerment of the black indigenous population. In contradistinction, government has so devastated the economy as did exist, including its essential agriculturally foundation, that the overwhelming majority of the population has never been subject to as much economic distress as is presently the case. As a result, belatedly sensitive to growing dissatisfaction and, therefore, its own potential insecurity, government is now talking more than ever of the need for "indigenisation", meaning black economic empowerment. It is "better late than never", but pointless if it is not pursued constructively and effectively.

Government is making three critical errors in its alleged policies towards economic empowerment. Firstly, it is placing great emphasis upon transferral of existing economic enterprise from non-blacks to blacks. When an economy is so emaciated that it cannot support even a material fraction of the population, the Robin Hood stance of "taking from the rich to give to the poor" does not enhance the economy, does not create employment or greater economic activity. It is surely more constructive and beneficial, and especially so in the medium to long-term, to stimulate, facilitate and motivate economic development, which can encompass black participation or entrepreneurship. A mere conversion of ownership, whether total or partial, does nothing towards economic recovery, which is Zimbabwe's greatest need.

Secondly, government persists in a belief that if government owns any enterprise, in whole or in part, that represents black economic empowerment. That perception is founded upon the facts that government is black, and is in the main elected by blacks. But state-ownership does not accord any in the populace, other than perhaps a few highly governmentally favoured, any improvement in their economic circumstance, or status in life and, therefore, there is no genuine black economic empowerment. Currently, in pursuing the "indigenisation" of the mining sector, government is contemplating partial state-ownership, which can benefit none but government and its chosen few. Moreover, with a track record of gross mismanagement of most parastatals, there are no grounds to expect government to be any more effective in mining enterprises, and very understandably there are extremely few who are desirous of being co-owners with government.

Of equal, or even greater, gravity is the inconsistency of government's policy statements, destroying any possibility of any potential investors according any credibility to government, its statements, assurances, and alleged policies. The president has addressed parliament on a number of occasions on the issue of mining sector indigenisation, stating on at least two of such occasions that at least 51% of all mines of gold, strategic and previous metals will be acquired by the state and not less than 49% of all other mines would be similarly acquired. In March the Minister of Mines and Mining Development made a statement on the contemplated basis of such acquisitions, the terms and conditions being so inequitable as to alienate all in the mining sector, and destroy any investor confidence (not only in mining, but in any Zimbabwean enterprise, the international stance being that "First they took the land, now they're taking the mines, and thereafter will take all else!").

Almost immediately the president made placatory comments, suggestive that final policies were yet to be formulated, and would be just and equitable. In May, government issued an investment promotion brochure, detailing diverse investment opportunities. That document states that foreign investment in agriculture was restricted to 70% of equity, but foreigners could acquire up to 100% in other sector enterprises' equity. Only two months later, the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development has issued a "Proposed Shareholding Scorecard for Foreign Investors in the Mining Sector", restricting foreign investment to 49% of mining equity, save where up to an additional 11% can be held by virtue of "Investment Credits" gained by the investor funding the construction of dams, roads, clinics, schools and other infrastructure.

It is little wonder, therefore, that possible foreign investors are sceptical in the extreme as to government's agenda, the genuineness of its undertakings and assurances, the security of any investment that would be made, and therefore the desirability of investment in Zimbabwe. Similarly, it is unsurprising that existing mining sector investors feel very insecure and ill-disposed to enhance their investments.

Government would achieve much more, benefiting the economy and the populace, if it would encourage and incentivise, instead of dictate, partial disinvestment within the mining sector, in favour of black investors, and would create a genuinely welcoming, conducive investment environment, key elements thereof being policy consistency, equity, reasonable deregulation, and unqualified adherence to undertakings given. Then black economic empowerment would be constructive and attainable.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Zimbabwe Independent. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
With Las Vegas Debut Turned Successful, Ethiopian Products to Showcase At NY Tradeshow. Check it out:
(The Daily Monitor (Ethiopia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Following last year's first-time appearance at a US (Las Vegas) tradeshow successfully ending with a 10 million US dollars contract, Ethiopian products will next week showcase at one of the US giant trade fair events for a second time, The Daily Monitor has learnt.



Of the 15 local companies short-listed earlier for the show, nine garment and handicraft producers are selected to display their products at the three-day tradeshow scheduled to take place in New York from 26th -28th September, according to Addisu Alemayehu ,Chief of Party,VEG-Ethiopia which,along with Enterprise Ethiopia, coordinates and facilitates participation of Ethiopian companies.

The selected garment and handicraft producers, whose representatives Addisu said will leave for the US tomorrow (Saturday Sept. 23,2006), will have 75 per cent of their participation fees at the fair covered through a World Bank- funded sponsorship Enterprise Ethiopia will provide, while the companies are expected to settle the balance by themselves, according to Addisu.

The major criteria for selecting the companies had a lot to do with labor issues, productivity and the working environment of the given companies, the Chief of Party said.

The selection was conducted by two Ethiopian-American consulting experts, according to Addisu.

The seven garment producing companies selected to participate at the event are: MA Garment (owned by the country's biggest single foreign investor Sheik Ai Amoudi), WOW International Garment, Nova Star, Ras Dashen Textile, G.G. Super Garment, Feleke Garment, and OASIS, while the two handicrafts companies are KK Design and Nigist handicrafts.

The bi-annual event, dubbed one of the the United State's biggest tradeshows, will witness some 220 exhibiting companies drawn from over forty countries around the world. forty-two companies from Africa will take parte in the show.

In their products first-time exposure at a Las Vegas tradeshow a year earlier, some six garments and leather producing Ethiopian companies were able to grab about 10 million US dollar worth contracts and orders, a US Embassy's press release had then disclosed.

According to Addisu, the main purpose of coordinating and facilitating the participation of Ethiopian companies at the US trade shows is to promote Ethiopia as a new garment producing destination.

"Our aim is to promote the good side of the country's image to the world outside, while branding Ethiopia in the global market in the process," Addisu said. "The ultimate objective will be creating a sustainable job and help reduce the poverty prevailing in the country." The Chief of Party added that the event will also promote AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) market, where he said Ethiopia could exploit its competitive advantage to attract foreign buyers and investment through the duty free privileges the country's exports destined to the US are entitled to through the Act.

Ethiopia's exports through AGOA has markedly increased this year, where export earnings secured through AGOA in the first half of the 2006 (over 4.2 million USD) has nearly doubled, compared to that of same period of the previous year, according to latest figures.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Should banks focus on relationship or transaction lending'. Check it out:
(The Nation (Thailand) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Each country's banking system varies in the degree or weight of importance it places on the risk and closeness-to-client factors

Banks are like any other businesses in that they want to develop good and long-term relationships with their clients. Banks' terms of lending then may be driven by the desire to foster client-bank relationships while exploring other business opportunities, such as earning fee-based income.



Therefore, the importance of relationship factors should not be overlooked, as they provide inside information and future economic benefits to the banks. It is interesting to see how such factors are considered concurrently with risk factors in banks' lending decisions.

Banking practices can be grouped into two types. The first is transaction-based banking, commonly practised in the United States and the United Kingdom; the second is relationship-based banking, widely practised in Germany and Japan. Transaction-based banking treats each loan transaction as a single deal and focuses on the risk of the loan. Relationship-based banking involves investment and considers relationship factors to be valuable information and opportunities that are generated through the course of relationship building.

In the past two decades, American banks have shifted to transaction-based banking practices, in which price and convenience rather than the financial relationship are a means of attracting a steady stream of business. In contrast, German banks spend most of their time building up their capacities for pursuing relationship-based banking. Credit volume is not an explicit measure of performance, and price and convenience remain only a minor part of competitive strategies. German banks have stayed with a more conservative approach of growth through an existing and stable customer base.

In commercial lending, German banks develop close and long-term ties with small and medium-sized enterprises. Bank-firm relationships in the US, in contrast, have become distant and short-term in nature.

In the US, most large commercial banks treat small business customers essentially the same as their private retail customers. Few banks assign relationship managers to these firms to help them manage their financial business. Evaluation of loan applications, just like evaluations of credit cards, has become a centralised, back-office affair carried out by officers with no contact with business owners and little knowledge of a borrower's industry.

In the middle market, American banks are rather keen to avoid risk and to earn what they can from short-term business deals instead of cultivating truly long-term business relations. Relationship managers spend more of their time trying to find new clients than they do cultivating existing clients. Credit decision-making also shows a bias towards generating revenues from short-term business deals rather than from long-term financial relationships.

For most banks, the decision to grant a loan is based most heavily on a firm's balance sheet, the available collateral and an industry risk evaluation, while factors like a firm's management and the strength of its business plan are considered last.

In Germany, banks spend much of their time attempting to improve their capacity for relationship-based banking with small business clients. For most German banks, branch managers act as relationship managers for small business customers. These branch managers typically advise each small business customer on both private financial affairs and whatever financial questions that may arise in connection with the business enterprise. Credit-scoring programmes to assist the relationship manager in assessing risk are common, but personal impressions gathered through the course of contact is more important in arriving at a credit decision.

German banks typically play a key role in helping medium-sized companies overcome financial or business crises by drawing on the expertise gathered through experience with other firms. Financial information is used as a guide to credit decision-making but is outweighed in importance by factors related to a firm's management, organisational strengths and proposed business plan.

However, it is generally neither possible nor practical to describe a banking system as being based purely on transactions or purely on relationships. Conventional wisdom says it may not be optimal for banks to consider only risk factors and not relationship factors or vice versa, because both can reveal important information.

In practice, most banks in many countries consider risk and relationship factors alike, because both types are valuable in their loan-making decisions. It should not be surprising (or regarded as inappropriate) to find that banks in many countries, even in developing nations, consider both types of factors in their lending decisions.

Therefore, it is expected that each country's banking system may vary in the degree or weight of importance it puts on risk and relationship factors.

The writer is director of the Financial Policy Section of the Finance Ministry's Fiscal Policy office. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Chodechai Suwanaporn

Copyright 2006 The Nation Publications (PVT) Ltd. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
INM profit after tax down almost 30pc. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) INDEPENDENT News and Media (INM) has reported profit after tax and exceptionals of 7.3m for the six months to June 30, down 29.7pc on the 2005 figure of 24.1m.

However, the company pointed out that the decrease was accounted for by the boost last year from the windfall sale of phone services company iTouch for 2.7m. It also reported a rise in pre-tax profits of nearly 11pc to E114m on the back of a 4pc rise in group revenues to 97m.



The company said all of its markets contributed to growth, with price increases leading to a 5.5pc increase in circulation revenue from newspapers.

Advertising growth was slightly slower at 3.8pc.

In Ireland, profits were up 4.5pc to 6.7m, with revenues up 2.3pc. INM said advertising growth was 'in line with the market' while circulation growth was ahead of last year's first half.

Ryanair Bremen base set for takeoff in 2007

NO- FRILLS airline Ryanair is to begin flights from Bremen in April 2007, its 17th European base.

The airline said that it is to invest 65m in three Boeing 737-800 aircraft, nine new European routes and the purchase of a low-cost terminal facility at Bremen Airport for m following an EU tender in which the Irish airline was the successful bidder.

From April 2007, Ryanair will base two Boeing 737 aircraft in Bremen followed by a third in September 2007, creating 150 direct jobs.

To celebrate the launch of the new routes the airline said it is offering 50,000 seats from Bremen for E1 for travel in May and June 2007.

3 claims 80pc cover

MOBILE phone network 3 Ireland has claimed that more than 80pc of the population can now access its mobile media services. Ireland's fourth mobile operator and 3G specialist said about 3,200,000 consumers throughout the country have access to its 3G network. David Hennessy, 3's head of network development said: 'Our strategy has always been to roll out the most advanced network in the country.'

ComReg seeks views

COMREG has called for input on its review of the markets for retail fixed calls.

The watchdog is obliged to carry out the survey under new EU telecoms laws.

ComReg proposes to define four national markets. It is seeking opinions on whether there is effective competition in these markets and whether current law is adequate to address market failures.

The deadline for comments is October 31.

Caudwell carve-up

THE .2bn sale of mobile phone retailer Caudwell Group to Doughty Hanson and Providence Equity Partners has been cleared by the EC. The Caudwell Group owns Irish mobile handset trader 20:20 Logistics. Doughty Hanson will retain the 20:20 Logistics Distribution Group, to be renamed the 20-20 Mobile Group, and Providence Equity Partners will acquire the Phones4U Group.

.5m biotech funds

ENTERPRISE Ireland is to invest .5m in projects to develop technologies to drive new biotech businesses.

The technologies that emerge will form the basis for new start-up companies or will be licensed into existing companies in Ireland to improve competitiveness.

The 11 research projects funded range from nanosensors for diagnosing cardiovascular disease to cancer treatments.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
MBA prize will mean my staff get more out of life. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Spare time is at a premium in the Naughton household. Nora Naughton combines marriage and looking after her two small children with running her own company, which manages medical and business books from manuscript to publication.



She is going to be even busier after winning this year's Financial Mail on Sunday MBA scholarship, run by the prestigious Henley Management College at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

Nora, 48, from Strood, Kent, hopes the business qualification will improve her ability to run her own enterprise. She also thinks it will help her to train her freelance staff to enjoy a better work-life balance.

'I hope to bring new knowledge back into the business and improve my strategic thinking so that I can enable other people to benefit from flexible working,' she says.

It was this view that set her apart from the other entrants for the parttime two-year scholarship, worth GBP27,000, plus a further GBP5,000 from Financial Mail towards the cost of books and accommodation. Candidateshad to write an essay on how traditional business networks affected women's careers and whether women needed their own specific networking groups.

Professor Jane McKenzie, director of the executive MBA programme at Henley, says: 'Nora did some primary research and was objective, arguing both the pros and the cons of women's networking rather than advocating a singular position.

'She is very concerned for her employees and has undoubtedly done her bit to help other women.' The average MBA salary is GBP66,500 and 70 per cent of graduates become board directors or senior managers.

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.

Growth choked by red tape

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Growth choked by red tape. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE growing mountain of red tape is threatening the competitiveness of British business as vital medium-sized firms are squeezed and small firms fail to grow, figures this week are expected to show.



At the start of 2002, mid-sized companies accounted for 15 per cent of turnover. This had dropped to 14.6 per cent at the start of 2005, according to Government figures.

The friendly economic climate of low wage growth and high consumer spending would normally mean an increase of small businesses growing into medium-sized ones.

But the medium-sized sector accounted for 11.9 per cent of employment in 2002, unchanged by the start of 2005, and 0.7 per cent of all enterprises by headcount four years ago. This had fallen to 0.6 per cent by the start of 2005.

Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small Businesses believes that tomorrow's official figures - the latest comprehensive annual report on the size, location and activities of business - are likely to highlight the squeeze on the middle ranks.

'We are seeing a real bottleneck of small firms progressing to medium-sized businesses,' he says.

'Not only are they worried about the legal and legislative burden of employing people and becoming a more substantial enterprise, but there are also worries about, for example, having a High Street presence as rents are rising fast.' He accuses Ministers of preferring 'quantity over quality' over the highlighting of start-up figures that took little account of the number of business closures.

He says the figure of three out of five businesses struggling within the first three years has remained much the same, despite much-vaunted initiatives.

At the start of 2002, small businesses accounted for 99.1 per cent of all enterprises against 99.3 per cent at the start of 2005; 43.7 per cent of all employment against 46.8 per cent; and 37 per cent of turnover against 36.4 per cent at the start of 2005.

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.
Microsoft gets credit for tightening security. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CodeRed, Nimda, and Blaster. These high-profile worms, which exploited flaws in Microsoft's Windows operating system and other applications, made Microsoft the butt of security jokes and forced the company to reexamine its approach to developing secure software.



"Throughout Microsoft, we thought Windows 2000 was a very solid, reliable operating system, perfect for deployment in the enterprise," said Ian Hellen, a security program manager at Microsoft's Windows Security Engineering Team. "Those tiny pieces of code were realwake-up calls, saying Windows 2000 isn't there yet. It's just not designed to cope with these kinds of threats."

That was then. With the commercial release of Vista just months away, Microsoft'sefforts to improve securityare now showing results, though much remains to be done by the company, said security experts attending the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week.

"Microsoft has done a left-hand turn in its business and said, 'Right, we've got to start building secure applications,'" said Mark Curphey, vice president of professional services at McAfee's Foundstone division. "They've implemented a very rigorous process across their organization and now they're starting to see the benefits of that."

The progress that Microsoft has made can be seen in recent versions of software, such as Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6, which has had one high-risk vulnerability uncovered, Curphey said.

"They've done a lot better," said Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security.

Curphey and others credit Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) software-development process with reducing the number of design and coding errors that lead tosecurity vulnerabilities. "We spent a long time trying to reorganize our whole development process so that all of Microsoft's products, particularly the Windows operating system, is reoriented to have security engineering at its core," Hellen said.

To some degree, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 demonstrate how SDL has helped Microsoft improve the security of its products. "But it's really only in Windows Vista that we've been able to implement this in a comprehensive way," Hellen said, adding there is room for further improvement.

One security improvement that has yet to be made to Windows Vista is a defense against Blue Pill, a prototype technology that uses hardware virtualization to install undetectable malware on a computer running the OS.

Blue Pill, developed by Polish researcher Joanna Rutkowska, was first demonstrated using the second beta release of Vista. However, the latest pre-production release of Vista, called RC1, does not include defenses against Blue Pill, Rutkowska said, adding she was "surprised" by the omission.

Blue Pill does not exploit any bugs in Vista, but Rutkowska recommended Microsoft disable paging of kernel memory in Vista, which would prevent Blue Pill from accessing the operating-system kernel and executing code. In response, Microsoft executives attending HITB said the company continues work on improving security in Vista, while making no specific promise that changes will be made to prevent Blue Pill attacks in the production version of Vista.

Microsoft gets credit for improving the overall security of its products, but more can be done. However, users must first decide if the company's progress in this area is sufficient. "If we think it's enough, we're done. If we don't, than we have to do more," Schneier said. "They're going to fix the problem to the limit of their economic losses."

One option is to make vendors like Microsoft liable for the economic risks of the security vulnerablilities that users face -- something that is unlikely to happen given the current political environment, Schneier said. "If we want more security, we have to raise the cost of not having it," he said.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Intel, Siemens Team on VoIP

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Intel, Siemens Team on VoIP. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Intel Corp. and Siemens Communications have announced a technology relationship that includes an agreement to work together on VoIP (voice over Internet protocol.)

The companies said they would collaboratively create open unified communications solutions for VoIP, and agreed to jointly fund and cooperatively conduct research on secure wireless networks in the short term. For the long term the companies will collaborate on creating vertical industry solutions for business process optimization in segments such as telecom service providers, financial services and digital healthcare.



The agreement also calls for the two companies to establish joint market development efforts focused on the enterprise and service provider sectors. The overall goal of the joint effort is to demonstrate real time communications solutions for business process optimization using Intel architecture such as Intel dual-core technology and carrier class Rack Mounted Servers (RMS) from Intel and the HiPath 8000 and OpenScape from Siemens.

The first step is to demonstrate the OpenScape platform running applications such as Personal Portal, Unified Communications, Video and Voice Conferencing and Mobile Clients. Intel and Siemens expect to present findings and display the first wave of technology solutions developed at the Intel lab to selected customers by the fourth quarter of 2006.

"Intel's experience as the leading provider of silicon technology to the enterprise market world wide and established track record of industry collaboration puts it in a great position to shape the enterprise of the future," said Gordon Graylish, VP of the sales and marketing group and general manager of Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

"Siemens has a strong commitment to this joint development effort and to ongoing collaboration with Intel to unlock the potential of our open communication enterprise solutions to a global ecosystem of third party independent software providers and systems integrators," said Thomas Zimmermann, president, Enterprise Systems, Siemens Communications. "Growth potential for the open unified communications market is significant. Our own customer base for the HiPath 8000 solution has more than doubled since the first quarter of the year, and Siemens is adding a new HiPath 8000 customer nearly every week."

The Intel lab will also act as a center for the optimization and integration of products from independent software vendors and other third party systems to work with the new open unified communication VoIP technologies. Additionally, Siemens and Intel plan to jointly optimize and prepare Siemens' software portfolio based on Intel dual-core technology and Intel virtualization technology.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

CMM Group invests in growth

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CMM Group invests in growth. Check it out:
(London, Sep 06) CMM Group, the £30m turnover communications and mailing specialist, has concluded £400k of investment in new IT and hardware to streamline the flow of management and operational information, and to increase its production capacity. The Group has invested in an ERP system, as well as additional folding and polywrapping hardware.





Following CMM Groups acquisition of Pims National at the start of 2006, and the rapid growth of its international mail consolidation service FastPost launched last year, the organisation has successfully integrated Group operations and management. However, this process soon revealed client demand for the full range of CMM Group services. The Group therefore decided to invest further in operational and management information systems to support co-ordinated account management for multi-service clients.



The Group has invested in a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to consolidate all of its business functions into one system. Microsoft Dynamics NAV now takes the five previous systems that performed financial accounting, job management, and shop floor processes, and runs all their tasks off one platform.



Previously, because of discrete legacy IT, the Group ran as a series of individual businesses. Now, with a single Group-wide system, management can access high quality data from across the Group and unified account management is supported by consolidated data on multi-service clients .



Alastair Maclean, Group Operations Director and co-founder of CMM Group, comments: Previously our businesses operated with their own P&L, and information was consolidated only at the Group topline level. This is a natural process when either a new line of business is proving its sustainability, or an acquired business is proving its value. However, with clients increasingly asking us to provide several services, there is a need for absolutely seamless account management, and that requires a single data view. We need to continue to deliver on the brand promise that CMM represents.



Another key benefit is that management has access to real-time data and visibility of whats happening across the entire business. We now have the capability to decide exactly where to place a specific piece of work. Previously jobs could only be scheduled within each site. Now, we have the means to schedule at a macro-level across the whole Group and the ability to look at planned orders and assess where best to carry them out. By looking at what were doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it, we can improve our service levels and potentially develop new products.



In response to its rapid expansion, CMM has also made additional investments in hardware capabilities. Its polywrapping division, AlphaMail, has invested in online camera systems on its polythene wrapping machines in order to enhance still further its security and tracking standards.



The new cameras allow AlphaMail to record the sequential numbers on every document that is wrapped. If a number is missing the machine automatically stops, allowing staff to investigate the matter.



Don Green, Managing Director, Alpha Mail, comments: Monitoring the production line has been done manually for years and is therefore very labour intensive. Financial reporting and statements always have to be processed to a very high standard. The cameras, which can read either face up or down on our machines, now enable us to automate the whole process resulting in the capacity to handle more reporting and financial accounts work.



CMM National, the Groups direct mailing division, has invested in a new MB Multimaster 38 folder to support the growth of its transactional mailing business. Electronic set-up allows the plates to set themselves automatically once an operator has keyed in the size of the paper and the fold. The MB Multimaster 38 also has continuous feed capability, a camera and an accumulator. It reads information on every mailing piece and then collates and audits the correct number of pages before folding them, in one process.



Kevin Semple, Managing Director, CMM National, comments: Clients such as banks and building societies require 100% validation of their mailings because of issues such as identity theft and data protection, which can be headline news these days. The automated set-up and non-stop reading facility will speed up the process and improve security for our mailings. It will also reduce mis-feeds and mis-inserts to zero. Additionally, we can download the results of the folding process onto disk to give to the client for their peace-of-mind.
MergeOptics Will Demonstrate Its 40Gbit/s CWDM Transponder and Its New SFP+ Product Family at ECOC 2006. Check it out:
BERLIN, Germany --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- MergeOptics GmbH a leading supplier of highly integrated, low power fiber optic components and transceivers, announced today the availability of prototypes of its next generation SFP+ product family. A live demonstration including its 40Gbit/s solution will be offered at ECOC 2006 in Cannes France on booth #654.



MergeOptics' SFP+ product family addresses the market need for higher port density and lower power consumption in Enterprise and Storage applications at speeds of up to 10Gbit/s. It is suited for transmission over 300m of OM-3 multimode fiber and over 10km of single mode fiber.

With this new platform MergeOptics enables its customers to stay in a leading innovative position. For evaluation and system level testing MergeOptics provides its customers with prototypes in accordance with latest standard developments.

The SFP+ prototypes are available on request, volume production is scheduled for the 2nd quarter 2007.

The 40Gbit/s transponder addresses the market need for higher bandwidth in core and backbone networks. This new product generation is based on MergeOptics' LX4 technology. The module in a XENPAK form factor integrates four individual data lines each at 10Gb/s, optically multiplexed into a single fiber enabling a 40Gbit/s data throughput over up to 10km at only 8W power consumption.

Dag Neumeuer, President and CEO of MergeOptics stated today, "With these latest developments we are consequently following our product strategy addressing customer needs by offering one of the most comprehensive portfolios for applications at 10Gbit/s and beyond."

About MergeOptics

MergeOptics GmbH was founded in Germany, in September 2000 and develops highly integrated components and modules for the rapidly growing optical communication market. The company integrates optical components (lasers, modulators and photo diodes) with high-frequency electrical circuits to create compact modules that operate with industry standard optical and electrical interfaces. MergeOptics' business objective is to specialize in high-speed optical products that are world-class for both integration and performance. MergeOptics has partnerships with several leading German universities and research facilities, including the prestigious Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, Germany. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.mergeoptics.com or contact your regional Sales and Marketing.
Global Crossing Opens Facility in Monterrey. Check it out:
Global Crossing announced Friday it opened a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) facility in Monterrey, Mexico. The company plans to offer carrier and enterprise customers with direct access to its Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP-based network at this new location.



“Mexico continues to be a key market within our global strategy and we're pleased to expand our IP infrastructure in response to growing customer demand,” said Global Crossing’s chief executive officer John Legere in a statement. “Customers increasingly require bandwidth-intensive applications that require a highly advanced network, and this is exactly what Global Crossing's network was built for.”

The new PoP currently serves as Global Crossing's global interconnection center in Monterrey and is already serving customers. The company's other locations in Latin America include another facility in Mexico City and other locations across Central and South America. Global Crossing's IP-based services available from the new Monterrey PoP also include Private Line, International Private Line, high-speed Internet access, IP VPN, collaboration services, ATM and Frame Relay.

“This important investment in Monterrey allows us to give customers a competitive advantage by providing a global gateway to our secure, fiber-optic network from one of Mexico's most important business and industrial districts,” added Adrian Gonzalez, Global Crossing's managing director in Mexico. “We will continue to solidify our key position in this market by advancing Mexico's connectivity to the rest of the world.”

Global Crossing made news last week when it introduced VoIP Professional Services, which will extend an enhanced agreement the company has with Avaya (News - Alert).

The new set of services includes technical support, transition management and managed solutions. Common service bundles may include network readiness assessment and design, network integration and implementation, and managed VoIP PBX (News - Alert) services. Global Crossing's partnership with Avaya will also allow Global Crossing to resell Avaya's IP telephony applications, systems and services as part of a complete VoIP-based offering.

Global Crossing
http://www.globalcrossing.com

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.
One IP Voice, Inc. Enters into Agreement with Intrado to Deploy Enhanced 9-1-1 for VoIP Communications Solutions. Check it out:
EAST HARTFORD, Conn., Sept. 22 -- One IP Voice, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: OIVO.OB) , announced today that its OIPV Corp (OIPV), a national provider of intelligent IP powered business communication solutions, reached an agreement with Intrado Inc., a global provider of integrated data and telecommunications solutions and a leading provider of VoIP E9-1-1 services, to market VoIP E9-1-1 services. Under terms of the agreement, OIPV will market Intrado(R) V9-1-1(R) Services targeted to:



* Small to medium enterprises
* Larger enterprises supporting a dispersed and mobile workforce
* IP powered communications service providers

The introduction of IP powered technologies enables enterprises to acquire new applications and capabilities critical to meeting the demands of dynamic business environments, including enabling businesses to support nomadic business environments integrated with premise based business operations. As business employee location conditions change, locations and phone numbers of the 9-1-1 caller can no longer be easily identified. This can result in complications to get the 9-1-1 call to the geographically correct public safety answering point (PSAP). OIPV provides comprehensive E9-1-1 coverage in an IP based environment for prospective and existing business customers.

The OIPV solution is designed and developed to offer delivery of the capabilities needed to support diverse and dynamic businesses with essential 9-1-1 services. Integral to the solution, OIPV will leverage E9-1-1 management applications and (VoIP) voice over intelligent protocol platform to track physical locations of phone users inside the premise and mobile users providing Local Information Services (LIS) to public safety answering points (PSAPs). OIPV's solution enables mobile workforces to utilize ubiquitous and secure access leveraging OIPV's private IP converged network offer "One IPNET."

Flexible IP addressing allows users to leverage voice, data and imaging applications in a mobile environment with OIPV solution utilizing assigned IP device and applications to access their company's private network. Whether they are telecommuters using company-assigned IP communication applications or are located in remote locations that are networked to larger company operation centers supporting on or off net calling, they can now gain essential E9-1-1 support.

The solution and combined offers address all aspects of 9-1-1 support. They interface with the enterprise network to provision the caller's current location, detecting phone moves, adds and changes and then provide call routing and delivery to the geographically correct PSAP with the requisite automatic location information (ALI) for each 9-1-1 call.

About One IP Voice Inc.
One IP Voice Inc., formerly known as Farmstead Telephone Group, Inc. until it changed its corporate name on July 19, 2006, is a nationwide provider of business telecommunications equipment and IP telephony products and services. Operations are conducted through its two business units: the Farmstead Telephone Group Division and the OIPV Corp Division as further described below. Further information about One IP Voice Inc. may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

Farmstead Telephone Group Division
Farmstead Telephone Group is a Platinum level member of Avaya's BusinessPartner program. Since 1984, Farmstead has been one of the nation's largest full service enterprise telecommunications providers with a comprehensive nationwide systems, services and parts network. Farmstead has garnered many prestigious awards for service, customer satisfaction and growth. Further information about Farmstead may be found at http://www.farmstead.com/

OIPV Corp DivisionOIPV Corp, formerly named One IP Voice, Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary, providing Carrier-Based Hosted Voice over Intelligent Protocol(TM) (VoIP) solutions to Small to Medium Businesses nationwide. Further information about OIPV Corp may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

To add yourself to our email distribution list, click here: http://www.b2i.us/frame.asp?BzID=1042&to=ea&Nav=1&S=0&L=1

CONTACT
Robert G. LaVigne
One IP Voice, Inc.
Voice: 860-610-6002
Fax: 860-610-6001

INVESTOR CONTACT
Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday
Aurelius Consulting Group, Inc.407-644-4256
[email protected]
http://www.runonideas.com/

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. In addition to historical information, investors should consider carefully the risks associated with an investment in the Company's securities as previously outlined by the Company in its prior filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One IP Voice, Inc.

CONTACT: Robert G. LaVigne of One IP Voice, Inc., +1-860-610-6002,+1-860-610-6001 (fax); or Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday, Investor Contacts, ofAurelius Consulting Group, Inc. for One IP Voice, Inc., +1-407-644-4256,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.oneipvoice.com/
Support Development, Fight Trafficking Rings to Curb Migration. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Madrid, Sep 21, 2006 (Inter Press Service/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --Supporting the private sector in Africa, as Spanish businesses agreed to do this week, and combating people trafficking mafias is the way to promote development and prevent brain drain from African countries.



That was the conclusion of Antonio Molina, secretary general of Fundacion Sur, a non-governmental aid organisation working in Africa, in an interview with IPS on Thursday.

"Supporting investment in Africa is important," Molina added, referring to the commitment adopted at the Spain-Africa Business Cooperation meeting held Monday through Wednesday in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, a Spanish island located off the coast of northwest Africa.

But it is not enough, he warned. "The tide of emigrants from Africa must be stemmed, because it's usually the best people with the highest level of education who leave. They hope to find a better future in Europe, but many lose their lives in the attempt, and others are condemned to social exclusion."

In the last few months, thousands of undocumented migrants from Africa have reached the Canary Islands by sea.

In his opinion, the exodus should be prevented by encouraging young Africans to set up businesses in their own countries, supporting these enterprises, and at the same time combating the mafias that organise and profit from trafficking in migrants. "As these are investigated, it becomes clear that they involve people at the highest levels of these societies," he said.

Two hundred members of the business community from Benin, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and Togo attended the meeting in Las Palmas.

Adan Martin, the head of the regional government of the Canary Islands, urged business people not to look on Africa merely out of solidarity, "but out of responsibility; because it was we of the Old Continent who forced our neighbours into the situation in which they are now living," referring to European colonialism.

The humanitarian crisis generated by the intermittent waves of undocumented migrants, thousands of whom cross the seas in frail boats, must be used to raise the consciousness of the European Union that its member countries must finance development projects in Africa, Martin said.

Referring to the rise in Spanish investment in the last few years, and the further commitments made at this meeting, the president of Spain's High Council of the Chambers of Commerce, Javier Gomez-Navarro, said that it "demonstrates the aim of Spanish businesses to finally look Africa straight in the eye." He also said that the present levels of investment and trade are "far too low."

Gomez-Navarro mentioned infrastructure for transport, health and education as promising sectors for investment, as well as tourism and renewable energy sources, for which financing from international organisations and the public and private sector in Spain is available, he told the conference.

He also said that the Assembly of Chambers of Commerce of West Africa, formally established at the meeting, was a significant advance, and called it "an excellent vehicle for closer institutional and business ties between that region and Spain."

The important thing now, he told IPS, "is to get large, medium and small businesses together, with very flexible formulas, to stimulate national and international cooperation and promote environmentally and socially sustainable development."

One of the first tasks of the Assembly, supported by the Las Palmas Chamber of Commerce, will be to work towards a borderless free trade zone, sharing information through a common network, and using it to seek more foreign investment.

For his part, Martin said that "Africa cannot wait any longer. Public institutions in the Canary Islands, Spain and Europe can contribute decisively to turning the situation around, but we have to do it together."

Another task assumed by the Assembly is to spread knowledge about real conditions in the African continent, and promote an image of Africa as an attractive investment opportunity. It will also train specialists to develop business cooperation projects, and contribute to making African businesses more competitive.

Representatives of the World Bank and COFIDES -- a joint-stock company of mixed capital whose aim is the promotion of investment by Spain in developing countries --announced that funds were available for investment in Africa.

Paula Alayo, of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), announced that the IFC has 1.7 billion dollars available, while Teresa Madrigal of COFIDES announced that they would spend 900 million dollars to finance Spanish companies' investments in development projects in countries of the South.

But Alfredo Bonet, secretary general for foreign trade at the Spanish Ministry of Industry, criticised the barriers to trade with Africa that Spain throws up, and said the numerous difficulties that African business persons face to obtain a visa to visit this country must be overcome.

He said that the three ministries involved in this issue, those of Trade, Employment and the Interior, are working on that and he hoped that results would be forthcoming soon.

The head of the Gran Canario parliament, Jose Manuel Soria, made a similar statement. He said that the greatest constraints on trade between Spain and Africa "are still the enormous administrative, regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles that public institutions have established on both sides of the ocean."

According to Soria, public institutions should not take on the mission of managing factories or competing with private enterprise, but should concentrate on eliminating the hurdles so that those who want to do business can do so.

A report was presented at the meeting which indicated that regional gross domestic product grown in Africa averaged five percent last year, and is expected to reach six percent this year.

Copyright 2006 Inter Press Service. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
Proponents Press Senate on Stem Cell Research Measure. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A full year after the House passed legislation that would loosen President Bush's restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research, the Senate is coming under intense pressure to tackle the controversial bill -- in the awkward new context of an election year.



The legislation, which Bush has repeatedly threatened to veto, would allow the National Institutes of Health to fund research on human embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics. It is backed by science and patient-advocacy groups, and was endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) last summer, when momentum behind the research was at a peak.

But the political calculus around stem cells has changed in unexpected ways since then, raising questions about how Frist can fulfill his promises to bring the bill to a vote without weakening his appeal to conservatives as he considers a 2008 presidential run.

Opponents of the research note that its most promising advances, reported last year from South Korea, were recently found to have been faked -- a revelation that has stoked critics' claims that the medical potential of embryonic cells has long been hyped.

Also unexpected a year ago was the recent blossoming of independently funded embryonic stem cell research programs at universities.

"We're seeing private funding come up, and, of course, states have stepped up in various ways," said David Prentice, a senior fellow with the conservative Family Research Council, which opposes the House bill. "I don't know that there is a big need for a huge infusion of NIH money."

But proponents -- including several congressional leaders and ailing patients who plan a news event this morning to mark the first anniversary of the House bill's passage -- are expressing impatience with Frist's repeated delays.

They point to new polling data indicating that a greater majority of Americans than ever, 72 percent, support the research -- a finding that candidates, they say, cannot afford to ignore.

They contend that without the full support of the federal research enterprise, the field of regenerative medicine in the United States will remain stunted and other countries will pull ahead.

And they say that as long as the research is relegated to the private sector, it will remain free of federal oversight and ethics rules.

"The South Korean debacle has underscored the need for national, even global, ethical standards, but there is a terrible leadership vacuum with regard to stem cell science in the United States," said Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute of Regeneration Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

Embryonic stem cells, derived from days-old human embryos, can turn into virtually any kind of cell and show promise as a way to replace damaged tissues or organs.

Opponents say it is immoral to destroy human embryos for research. They point to preliminary evidence that other kinds of cells, which can be obtained harmlessly from adults, show many of the same properties as embryonic cells.

Under Bush's restrictions, announced on Aug. 9, 2001, scientists may use federal funds to study only cells derived from embryos destroyed before that date. That has put off-limits the many new stem cell colonies created in private and foreign labs since then.

Frist, said spokeswoman Amy Call, is "working with a number of colleagues on both sides of this issue to see if we can bring this up in a thoughtful and productive manner."

Members of Congress and Hill watchers said they expect Frist to bring up H.R. 810 this summer as part of a package with at least two related bills that conservatives want. That would provide political cover for senators who support the measure -- as a majority do -- but are from conservative states.

One of those bills would require the NIH to help find noncontroversial sources of embryonic stem cells, such as embryos engineered to contain fatal defects, which could be ethically destroyed because they could not become babies.

Another bill that sources said may be included would ban the cultivation of human fetuses (embryos more than 8 weeks old) just for research, and the gestation of human fetuses in animals -- experiments that conservatives say are on some scientists' wish list.

Proponents of H.R. 810 say they could live with such bills, as long as they do not harbor surprises in the fine print. But they bristle at opponents' assertion that privately funded labs have made NIH funding unnecessary.

Philanthropic funding of stem cell work is growing. In addition to Kriegstein's program at UCSF, programs backed by tens of millions of dollars have recently been launched at Harvard and the University of California at Irvine. Project A.L.S., a patient group that focuses on nerve-destroying Lou Gehrig's disease, announced last week that it was opening a private research facility in New York.

Several states -- including Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and California -- have begun grant programs to support the field.

Still, said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who helped shepherd House passage of H.R. 810: "Private funds and states cannot begin to match the basic science that NIH can generate with broader research guidelines."

DeGette said she knows of at least seven seats in play this November in which candidates' positions on stem cells are shaping up as significant political divides. "It's beginning to percolate up in the elections," she said.

Even if the Senate passes a stem cell package, H.R. 810 is unlikely to become law, both sides agree. The president has made clear his intention to veto it if it arrives on his desk, and an override appears out of reach in the House.

"We don't have to choose between science and ethics," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said. "We can continue to pursue both."

2006 The Washington Post Company
Multimax Wins $9.5M Air Force Financial Management Task; Maintenance and Sustainment Activities to Foster DoD Paperless Initiative. Check it out:
HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Multimax, Inc. - the premier resource for performance-based enterprise information technology (IT) and communications services for Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian agencies - announced today that it has won a task order for maintenance and sustainment of the Automatic Business Services System (ABSS).



ABSS is an Air Force-wide standard financial management system that is deployed to Air Force locations worldwide. Under the task order, the Multimax team will provide:

-- Maintenance and sustainment for ABSS application modules

-- ABSS database administration support

-- Level 2 and level 3 help desk support for the ABSS user community

This task order contributes to achievement of DoD goals for promoting a paperless work environment by providing a system that interfaces with Air Force accounting and contracting systems.

The work will be performed primarily at Multimax's facilities in Beavercreek, Ohio, adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The award was made to Multimax under the Air Force Network-Centric (NETCENTS) contract. The total value of the task order is $9.5 million over a one-year base period and three option years. Multimax's team members for this engagement are Battelle Memorial Foundation and Peerless Technology Corporation.

"It goes without saying that we are delighted to have won this new Air Force work with our highly capable partners, Battelle and Peerless," said Carleton Jones, Multimax CEO. "As with our other assignments for the Wright-Patterson Air Force community, we pledge to do our very best to exceed customer requirements and expectations."

About Multimax

Multimax is the premier resource for performance-based enterprise IT and communications services and solutions supporting the Department of Defense, federal civilian agencies, and state and local government entities, including, among others: U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of Veterans Affairs and Federal Aviation Administration. Based in Herndon, Va., Multimax offers clear value over the full technology lifecycle, with proven expertise and execution meeting the highest professional standards. For more information regarding Multimax, please visit www.multimax.com.
Sourcefire Turns Failed Deal Into an Opportunity. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Network security firm Sourcefire Inc. enthusiastically agreed to sell itself for $225 million in October, watched the deal crumble in March, then immediately began searching for new investors -- and found them.



Not many companies bounce back after an attention-grabbing deal fails. But Columbia-based Sourcefire has secured $20 million in late-stage funding, announced its first-ever cash-flow positive quarter and started preparing to go public since its proposed sale to Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. fell through.

Check Point, of Ramat Gan, Israel, and Sourcefire agreed to withdraw the deal after a federal panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, expressed concerns about the transaction's national security implications. Sourcefire makes software that protects against hackers and sells it to U.S. intelligence agencies and some of the country's largest companies, such as Lockheed Martin Corp. The companies and the federal panel declined to discuss details of the investigation or why the deal was scuttled.

While the deal's collapse was disappointing, it may turn out to be fortuitous, said Wayne Jackson, Sourcefire's chief executive. As the investigation into the sale dragged on, Sourcefire's revenue kept increasing, and presumably so did its value.

"By the end of it, we felt we were leaving quite a bit of money on the table," said Jackson, who joined Sourcefire in 2002, about two years after selling his firm Riverbed Technologies Inc. to Aether Systems Inc. for $1 billion. "The company's value changed quite a bit during that time, and we started to see a lot of additional potential in the company as a stand-alone entity."

Sourcefire does not disclose its revenue or income, except to say that the company is profitable and that its sales in 2005 rose 68 percent from the previous year. Analysts estimate that the company had $35 million in revenue in 2005 and that its list of customers keeps growing.

For all those reasons, Meritech Capital Partners of Palo Alto, Calif., led the most recent round of financing, which injected the largest one-time infusion of capital into Sourcefire since it was founded in 2001.

"We've looked at dozens of security companies out there, and this is one of two or three that we've decided to invest in," said Mike Gordon, Meritech's managing director. "In this sector, it's very hard to get beyond a few initial customers and develop momentum, and Sourcefire has developed that momentum."

The company has raised $53.7 million and still has about half of that in cash, Jackson said.

Sourcefire is the creation of Martin Roesch, who invented the coding program Snort in 1998 in his home in Eldersburg, Md., while juggling a day job as a software engineer. Roesch posted Snort, which "sniffs" packets of data to detect signs of network intrusion, on the Internet.

Snort is an open-source program, meaning anyone can download it free, modify it, copy it or resell it.

While allowing anyone to inspect and manipulate network security software may sound counterintuitive, it's not, said Scott Crawford, a senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, an information-industry research firm in Boulder, Colo.

"One of the security virtues of open source is it's open to everybody's scrutiny," Crawford said. "You can look at every line of code, and in that sense, it's inherently more trustworthy. If there's a weakness that exists, it's more probable that someone will catch it because so many eyes are looking at it."

Anyone who uses Snort for commercial purposes must publish changes made to the software or to any software they create that links to Snort, said Roesch, who is Sourcefire's chief technology officer.

It's an honor system, he said, but ignoring the rules "results in the technology equivalent of accounting fraud. Someone figures it out and blows the whistle on you and everyone who writes open-source software basically blacklists you."

So how does a firm that offers its wares free make money?

By enhancing its offering.

The free Snort basically inspects traffic for potential threats to a network, but the money-making Snort adds to the technology by enabling it to make decisions about the flow of traffic and block attacks in networks on a global scale. Those added features, particularly the prevention aspects, are what companies and intelligence agencies find useful.

"It's one thing to give away the engine for free, and it's another thing to build the car," Jackson said. "We make the whole car and make it robust and fail-proof."

Most of the company's money comes from ready-to-use hardware loaded with Snort programs that sell for $6,000 to $125,000, depending on the rate of traffic it is capable of inspecting. The equipment fits directly into the customers' network. More money comes from distributing updates of Snort's detection rules in advance of their release on the Internet.

Greg Young, an analyst at information-technology research firm Gartner Inc., said the real value of open-source Snort is that it gives Sourcefire greater foot-in-the door recognition for selling the souped-up commercial product.

"There's a mistaken perception that Check Point was buying Sourcefire for open-source Snort," Young said. But they were really buying them for the intellectual property they have around the commercial product, he said.

2006 The Washington Post Company

Constructive Empowerment Needed

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Constructive Empowerment Needed. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 22, 2006 (Zimbabwe Independent/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --FEW can credibly deny that the majority of the Zimbabwean population has never been economically empowered. Until shortly before Independence, most were effectively barred from any substantive economic activity, other than employment as labour. The black population could not own land in rural areas, and therefore could only engage in agricultural activities, on a subsistence basis, on state-owned communal lands. In like vein, conduct of commercial and industrial operations in most urban areas, by blacks, was not permitted, save and except to some minimal extent in designated high-density areas which were the only urban in which blacks could reside, other than for domestic servants residing on employers' properties.



Until the late 1950s, few blacks could receive secondary school education beyond Form II, let alone tertiary education, unless amongst the extraordinarily few who were able to access education outside the country. Even when the education constraints progressively eased, the majority could not fund tertiary education and, therefore, had no opportunity of entry into any economic activity founded upon tertiary skills. Moreover, it was exceptional in the extreme for blacks to be able to borrow working capital from the financial sector, in part because of pronounced racial prejudice, and in part due to being devoid of any substantial assets which could be offered as collateral security.

Very slowly, mainly during the latter part of the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period of 1965 to 1980, there was some change in the enablement of black participation within the economy. The abhorrent, extremely discriminatory Land Apportionment Act (which should never have been enacted), was belatedly repealed, enabling blacks to engaged in self-owned agricultural operations, albeit still subject to severe working capital constraints in most instances, to establish commercial operations, and some other economic activities. A few forward-looking companies initiated share participation schemes and in-house executive training opportunities but, until after Independence, these were generally exceptions to the rule. After Independence, the constraints upon economic participation by blacks as prevailed in law wholly ceased, but an overwhelming majority could not avail themselves of the new environment, being without the necessary capital resources.

Over 26 years there have, of course, been notable exceptions. The majority of Zimbabwe's banks and other financial institutions are significantly owned by blacks, as are many of the companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. There are numerous retail businesses, industries, transport enterprises, tourism operations, and other economically engaged entities that are now wholly, or substantially, black-owned or managed. There are thousands of blacks engaged in informal sector economic ventures. But of Zimbabwe's estimated 11,4 million people, it is improbable that more than, at the most, 200 000 are economically-independent, and it could well be a markedly lesser number.

Some may challenge the credibility of that estimate, but as it is widely believed that about 80% of Zimbabweans live below the Poverty Datum Line (PDL), which would equate to about 9,1 million people, and as the remaining 2,3 million include workers, old aged, and children, even 200 000 economically-independent is potentially an overly-optimistic projection. Such wealth as has been created in black lands is not exclusively, but to a very major extent, in the hands of the politically hierarchy and the politically well-connected, but there is little spread across the populace of real economic empowerment.

Government has long undertaken to ensure meaningful economic empowerment, and to a minimal degree has taken some actions, including the establishment of the Small Enterprises Development Corporation (Sedco) and the National Investment Trust (NIT) and, somewhat more recently, the very necessary creation of the Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprises. However, that virtually sums up its effective steps towards economic empowerment of the black indigenous population. In contradistinction, government has so devastated the economy as did exist, including its essential agriculturally foundation, that the overwhelming majority of the population has never been subject to as much economic distress as is presently the case. As a result, belatedly sensitive to growing dissatisfaction and, therefore, its own potential insecurity, government is now talking more than ever of the need for "indigenisation", meaning black economic empowerment. It is "better late than never", but pointless if it is not pursued constructively and effectively.

Government is making three critical errors in its alleged policies towards economic empowerment. Firstly, it is placing great emphasis upon transferral of existing economic enterprise from non-blacks to blacks. When an economy is so emaciated that it cannot support even a material fraction of the population, the Robin Hood stance of "taking from the rich to give to the poor" does not enhance the economy, does not create employment or greater economic activity. It is surely more constructive and beneficial, and especially so in the medium to long-term, to stimulate, facilitate and motivate economic development, which can encompass black participation or entrepreneurship. A mere conversion of ownership, whether total or partial, does nothing towards economic recovery, which is Zimbabwe's greatest need.

Secondly, government persists in a belief that if government owns any enterprise, in whole or in part, that represents black economic empowerment. That perception is founded upon the facts that government is black, and is in the main elected by blacks. But state-ownership does not accord any in the populace, other than perhaps a few highly governmentally favoured, any improvement in their economic circumstance, or status in life and, therefore, there is no genuine black economic empowerment. Currently, in pursuing the "indigenisation" of the mining sector, government is contemplating partial state-ownership, which can benefit none but government and its chosen few. Moreover, with a track record of gross mismanagement of most parastatals, there are no grounds to expect government to be any more effective in mining enterprises, and very understandably there are extremely few who are desirous of being co-owners with government.

Of equal, or even greater, gravity is the inconsistency of government's policy statements, destroying any possibility of any potential investors according any credibility to government, its statements, assurances, and alleged policies. The president has addressed parliament on a number of occasions on the issue of mining sector indigenisation, stating on at least two of such occasions that at least 51% of all mines of gold, strategic and previous metals will be acquired by the state and not less than 49% of all other mines would be similarly acquired. In March the Minister of Mines and Mining Development made a statement on the contemplated basis of such acquisitions, the terms and conditions being so inequitable as to alienate all in the mining sector, and destroy any investor confidence (not only in mining, but in any Zimbabwean enterprise, the international stance being that "First they took the land, now they're taking the mines, and thereafter will take all else!").

Almost immediately the president made placatory comments, suggestive that final policies were yet to be formulated, and would be just and equitable. In May, government issued an investment promotion brochure, detailing diverse investment opportunities. That document states that foreign investment in agriculture was restricted to 70% of equity, but foreigners could acquire up to 100% in other sector enterprises' equity. Only two months later, the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development has issued a "Proposed Shareholding Scorecard for Foreign Investors in the Mining Sector", restricting foreign investment to 49% of mining equity, save where up to an additional 11% can be held by virtue of "Investment Credits" gained by the investor funding the construction of dams, roads, clinics, schools and other infrastructure.

It is little wonder, therefore, that possible foreign investors are sceptical in the extreme as to government's agenda, the genuineness of its undertakings and assurances, the security of any investment that would be made, and therefore the desirability of investment in Zimbabwe. Similarly, it is unsurprising that existing mining sector investors feel very insecure and ill-disposed to enhance their investments.

Government would achieve much more, benefiting the economy and the populace, if it would encourage and incentivise, instead of dictate, partial disinvestment within the mining sector, in favour of black investors, and would create a genuinely welcoming, conducive investment environment, key elements thereof being policy consistency, equity, reasonable deregulation, and unqualified adherence to undertakings given. Then black economic empowerment would be constructive and attainable.

Copyright 2006 Zimbabwe Independent. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
Government Increasingly Turning to Data Mining. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Pentagon pays a private company to compile data on teenagers it can recruit to the military. The Homeland Security Department buys consumer information to help screen people at borders and detect immigration fraud.



As federal agencies delve into the vast commercial market for consumer information, such as buying habits and financial records, they are tapping into data that would be difficult for the government to accumulate but that has become a booming business for private companies.

Industry executives, analysts and watchdog groups say the federal government has significantly increased what it spends to buy personal data from the private sector, along with the software to make sense of it, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They expect the sums to keep rising far into the future.

Privacy advocates say the practice exposes ordinary people to ever more scrutiny by authorities while skirting legal protections designed to limit the government's collection and use of personal data.

Critics acknowledge that such data can be vital to law enforcement or intelligence investigations of specific targets but question the usefulness of "data-mining" software that combs huge amounts of information in the hopes of finding links and patterns that might pick someone out as suspicious.

Recent reports about the National Security Agency's effort to acquire phone call records highlights the government's growing interest in the technique.

"The only question we would have is at what rate would the demand be increasing," Wayne Johnson, a financial analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc., said of the government's interest in buying commercial data and related software.

It is difficult to pinpoint the number of such contracts because many of them are classified, experts said. At the federal level, 52 government agencies had launched, or planned to begin, at least 199 data-mining projects as far back as 2004, according to a Government Accountability Office study. Most of the programs are used to improve services, such as detecting Medicare fraud and improving customer relations. But a growing number of agencies are exploring the technology to analyze intelligence and assist in the hunt for terrorists.

Another GAO report released in April found that of $30 million spent by four government agencies last year on services from data-crunching companies, 91 percent was for law enforcement or counterterrorism.

The hope is that the technology can help to discern and thwart threats just as businesses have used it for years to predict consumer behavior on buying cosmetics or repaying mortgages, for example.

Companies keep an increasing amount of data about everyone -- tracking their buying, travel, bank transactions and bill-paying habits. Data mining uses mathematical formulas to look for patterns in those behaviors. The results could enable the grocery store to send out targeted coupons, or, in theory, help the government decide how likely it may be that someone is linked to terrorist groups.

The Education Department's Project Strikeback uses mining methods to compare its databases with the FBI and verify identities. The Defense Department's Verity K2 Enterprise program searches data from the intelligence community and Internet searches to identify foreign terrorists or U.S. citizens connected to terrorists. A Navy program analyzes data to try to predict where it might find small weapons of mass destruction and narcotics smuggling in the shipping industry.

Cogito Inc. sells software to the National Security Agency that the company says can find patterns in massive amounts of data, such as lists of telephone calling records.

The Utah-based company does not know how the super-secret agency is using the software, but it does know that data-mining technology once used primarily by commercial clients is now doing booming business with the federal government.

"What was surprising . . . was how aggressive and hot the intelligence and security market is for this," said William Donahoo, vice president of product management and marketing at Cogito. More than half of Cogito's clients are in the fields of intelligence, security and public safety, he said.

Donahoo said he believed the NSA could use the software to reveal patterns about how people deal with one another just from their calling records.

"There are gatekeepers and bridges and collaborators and leaders that could be identified just by the nature of the communications among the groups," he said. "You do not have to know the content of the conversation to identify this."

Critics argue that catching terrorists is far different from predicting consumer purchases or preventing credit card fraud, saying that data mining is likely to provide so many false leads that its use is a waste of time and money.

"What you don't want is to get into the Kevin Bacon game, which is to say that you show that everybody is six degrees of separation from a terrorist," said James B. Steinberg, dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Steinberg was a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration.

"Out of pure resource allocation, it is so unlikely to provide something useful and so likely to provide dead ends and false leads that you are going to spend an enormous amount of resources on things that don't pan out," he said. "Before you start searching haystacks for needles, you've got to have some reason to believe that the needles are there."

The federal government's most public experiment with data mining since the terrorist attacks in 2001 failed to get off the ground, after the Homeland Security Department spent $200 million on it and the technology failed to prove what it set out to do, according to several former U.S. officials familiar with the program.

The system, originally called CAPPS II, sought to comb airline passenger records and verify information that fliers provided about themselves with information provided by companies that aggregate data about consumers. The problem, according to several officials who worked closely on the program but declined to speak publicly about it, was that the information about consumers was never proved to be effective in evaluating the risk posed by an airline passenger.

At first, officials sought to identify passengers who were not "deeply rooted" in a community and, for example, moved often and did not have an established credit history. But the system always ended up scoring too many people as "risky" who really posed little threat.

"I am just not prepared to say that because someone can't get a mortgage, they are a terrorist threat to an airplane," said a former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the program. "These data aggregator products are used today in the financial world to identify certain things, and they're not designed to identify potential terrorist threats."

The former official said that the program still shows some promise, but that it needs more testing and should be considered only one tool of many to protect the nation's air travel system.

Despite privacy concerns about CAPPS II that were raised by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, top U.S. officials continue to express faith that the technology will prove to be useful for national security purposes.

"This issue of using data to ferret out evildoers, many administration officials believe very firmly this is the way we should be going and that the barriers there should be overcome because it will result in a greater good," said another former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's a philosophy that if you have nothing to hide, why do you care if I know what movies you rent? Who you are talking to? If you live a godly life, a perfect life, you don't have worry about 100 percent disclosure."

Even critics say data mining can be effective in targeted circumstances, such as gathering information about known suspects. But the government's wide interest in the technology disturbs privacy advocates, who say the vast commercial data industry provides a ready-made window into private lives that the government would be unable to legally assemble on its own.

Jim Dempsey, policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said risks include errors in the data, drawing incorrect inferences from the information and "the chilling effect that comes when a citizenry feels itself under scrutiny."

But since the 2001 terror attacks, a slim majority of the American public has favored protecting security over preserving civil liberties, according to opinion pollsters.

"The public is willing to bend the rules a little bit with respect to privacy," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, adding that Americans showed similar tendencies during the "red scares" after World War I and World War II. "They are giving the government the benefit of the doubt in large part because they are concerned about terrorism."

2006 The Washington Post Company
Bill Gates's World of Possibility. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Melinda Moree met plenty of naysayers who dismissed the prospects of a malaria vaccine. Then she encountered Bill Gates.

No one had developed a human vaccine against a parasite like malaria before, and the monetary incentives simply did not exist for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs targeted at poor children. Development would require cooperation among scientists, drug companies, health groups and international governments -- an alliance so large it didn't seem possible, she recalled someone telling Gates.



"Of course it is," Gates countered, according to Moree, now director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Seattle, which along with other groups has received nearly $500 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop, test, manufacture and eventually distribute a malarial vaccine. "There's something about vision and belief that these things are possible," Moree said.

People in the nonprofit world say Gates, 50, could fundamentally alter the methodology of philanthropy with his announcement last week that he will quit his day-to-day role at Microsoft Corp. in two years to spend more time on his foundation. He will take the same energy he once directed toward software technology to global health, education and other intractable issues, they say.

Even as Microsoft is grappling with a changing competitive environment in which the software that Gates championed is losing ground to Internet-based services, the foundation is facing hurdles that observers say only Gates may be able to clear.

The co-founder of Microsoft has given $25.9 billion of his personal wealth to the foundation and has pledged to give billions of dollars more to devote to several dozen specific programs, such as minority scholarships, clean water initiatives, updated computer systems in libraries and the development of a variety of vaccines. (His wife, Melinda Gates, is on the board of The Washington Post Co.)

The foundation has not been able to carry many of its projects through to completion because of the enormous logistical, political and commercial barriers inherent in distributing malarial vaccine to Africa, for example, and developing a vaccine against HIV and AIDS. Finishing those tasks requires political diplomacy, organizational efficiency, and monetary and human resources -- challenges that Gates may be uniquely positioned to take on as one of the most successful and driven businessmen of the era.

"A lot of the corporate foundations were born in the corporate style," but few have had someone of Gates's stature get involved personally in the execution of their programs, said Sharon Oster, director of the Program on Social Enterprise at Yale University. Logistics -- getting vaccines into places such as Rwanda quickly, for example -- will be a large part of what the foundation will need to do, and Gates will probably have to make hard decisions about which worthy causes are more deserving of his money, such as medicines, infrastructure or education, she said.

Decisions about operational controls and investment are not new to Gates, Oster said, adding, "There are also more complicated governmental issues, and certainly Microsoft has dealt with those." But this time Gates's enemy isn't another company -- it's disease, mosquitoes, ignorance, political unrest. And vanquishing those requires a different approach to partnership, she said. It will require working with a disparate group of governments, other nonprofit groups and companies that do not answer to him.

Vaccines have to be tested in human populations in large numbers. Collecting that data in the impoverished, remote villages where many diseases are common requires manpower, organization and funding. Once a drug is ready for production, it has to be mass produced in a way that allows it to withstand transportation, high temperatures and other environmental factors that can be tough on vaccines. Some countries charge tariffs or are in states of civil unrest that makes it hard to deliver services.

The most frustrating problem with vaccine delivery is the lack of political will and social infrastructure in some countries whose people need the medicines, said Adel Mahmoud, incoming chief executive of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, another group sponsored by the Gates Foundation.

The pharmaceutical industry also needs a business case to justify such work. By helping to fund drug development and trials for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and acute diarrheal disease, which usually affect poorer populations, the Gates Foundation has essentially created a new market for drug companies.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC conducted malaria vaccine trials on 2,000 children, and "that trial wouldn't have taken place without the Gates Foundation," said Nils Daulaire, president and chief executive of the Global Health Council, a Gates Foundation grantee and a membership group that advocates for worldwide health-care access. "As lead investors, they're almost like a country in themselves, with their own world aid programs."

Now, the challenge will be developing an easy way to manufacture and distribute the vaccines, Daulaire said. "Mr. Gates is someone who has built his entire career and business and worldview on the application of technology -- and having the right technology and application of that technology in user-friendly ways," he said.

Moree, the director of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said that the foundation is impatient for results and that this drives a "private-sector mind-set."

Moree meets with officials from the foundation to lay out timelines and goals for the group. The group is focused on speed because 1 million people, mostly children, die every year from malaria. The foundation's money has allowed Moree's group to invest in a number of projects simultaneously, as if planning for further trials even before a first one has finished, she said. "You can do multiple shots on goal" without fear of making mistakes, she said, because the foundation wants an aggressive approach that could allow more products to move through the pipeline. "We're constantly innovating -- better, faster, cheaper is our mantra."

As an ambassador for projects, Gates is likely to draw more funding and interest from other corporations, Moree said.

"The Gates Foundation is a quality brand. It's something they want to be associated with," she said. "People want to be associated with success."

2006 The Washington Post Company

Firms Aim at Business Networks

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Firms Aim at Business Networks. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Microsoft Corp. and AOL are making separate bids this week to rewire the way businesses communicate, tapping into new technologies for e-mail, instant messages, Internet calls and video conferences.

Microsoft yesterday announced a partnership with Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks to help companies make the transition from traditional phone systems to software-based networks. Today, AOL is rolling out a new business-oriented instant-messaging program that ties in WebEx video-conferencing services and Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program.



The new alliances hope to reduce costs, increase productivity and simplify communications tools for businesses, the companies said.

Nortel, which has long been an industry leader in providing hardware for corporate phone systems, expects to bring in more than $1 billion in revenue from its partnership with Microsoft, the world's largest software maker. The companies plan to work together over the next four years to develop software for Internet calling, instant messaging, and voice and video conferencing. They plan to share the investment in development, marketing and integrating the new technology into existing systems.

"Our partnership fundamentally changes the telephone landscape with the software approach," said Mike S. Zafirovski, Nortel's president and chief executive. "This will drive down the cost of business communications. . . . The bottom line is that we take the risk out of the transition."

Some businesses have been slow to adopt Internet-based communications tools because of the complex technology that surrounds them, said Robert Whiteley, senior analyst with Forrester Research Inc. The partnership bodes well for smaller businesses that do not have the resources to put Internet-based systems in place, he said.

"Nortel is good at providing the underpinning technology, and Microsoft is good at creating the applications," Whiteley said. "In the past, users had to bring those together themselves."

Businesses are interested in the cost-saving possibilities of Internet-based communications, while telecom and software firms are hoping to capitalize on that transition, said Samir Sakpal, an industry analyst at the research firm Frost & Sullivan.

The Internet-based communications market will experience healthy growth this year, according to Forrester Research. A recent survey showed that 64 percent of U.S. companies are shifting their voice traffic to an Internet network.

Cisco Systems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are also collaborating to converge data, voice and video on Internet networks, and analysts expect similar partnerships to emerge as telecom companies try to compete.

AOL is also looking to revamp business communication with its new instant-messaging program, AIM Pro, which combines instant messaging, e-mail, desktop sharing, and voice and video conferencing into one application.

The AIM franchise, which this year is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Buddy List, is used by 14 million U.S. workers, according to Osterman Research Inc.

AOL is trying to reach a larger share of the at-work instant-messenger users, said John McKinley, president of AOL's digital services division. "We should have a version of AIM to reflect the role it's playing at any part of the day," he said.

Radicati Group Inc., an industry research firm, estimates that 135 million people use IM programs at work, and that number is expected to grow to 477 million by 2009.

"For the longest time, key players have been wanting to move into the enterprise IM space," said Sarah Radicati, the group's president and chief executive.

But persuading business owners to adopt the programs has been difficult. Two years ago, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. linked their instant-messaging services for use at the workplace, but corporations did not jump on board. This time, Radicati said, companies will probably be more open to AOL's program.

"IM used to be viewed as just a toy; now it's viewed as an important communications tool," she said.

2006 The Washington Post Company
IT Security in Primary Schools is the Main Concern of Most Education Providers. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42552) has announced the addition of Balancing an Open Culture with IT Security in the Education Market (Market Focus) to their offering.



IT security is ultimately dependant on the behavior of users. Education faces a particular challenge from the nature of its users and has distinctive IT needs as a result.

Scope of this title:

-- Security is the primary IT concern of most education providers.

-- HEIs will focus on securing data while primary and secondary schools focus on filtering managed and shared services offer opportunities in decentralized schools balancing freedom with security while enabling new services will drive growth in HEIs

Highlights of this title:

-- Educational institutions face the same challenges that other enterprises are confronting. However in addition to the immature and muddled character of their existing security technology, these organizations also face very different challenges to most commercial organizations.

Reasons to order your copy:

-- Understand how different levels of education will respond to IT security challenges

-- Discover the vital differences between nation education systems

-- Learn which problems and priories are driving security uptake

Topics Covered
OUR VIEW
CATALYST
SUMMARY
METHODOLOGY
ANALYS
IS Security is the primary IT concern of most education providers In a recent survey European universities put security ahead of all other concerns The Technology Trends survey showed security as the most mentioned investment priority New functionality and compliance will drive security uptake Regulations designed to protect students necessitate controlling web access Both regulation and public scandal have forced institutions to take securing student data more seriously Malicious threats can come from without and within an HEIs The need to provide services outside the firewall creates new security headaches HEIs in particular need help to cope with a heterogeneous environment The need to maintain relative freedom in HEIs creates opportunities for vendors Ignorance and tight budgets will continue to restrain security spending Overall IT budgets remain stubbornly low and necessitate cost efficient solutions A fragmented structure limits the demand for enterprise systems A lack of well-informed staff in schools or departments makes purchasing the most apt solutions difficult HEIs will focus on securing data while primary and secondary schools focus on filtering The contrast in attitudes to access between levels of education is massive The activities of academic staff also generate very different security problems The scale of back office activities differs both by level of education and geography Managed and shared services offer opportunities in decentralized schools Decentralization of decision making has been a trend in primary and secondary around the globe Large school groups will be the key target for secure content management within this segment Managed and shared services present a way for individual schools to access enterprise security features Balancing freedom with security while enabling new services will drive growth in HEIs Wireless LAN continues to generate security concerns Demand for remote access for staff and students will help to stimulate investment Need for free access should stimulate investment in more sophisticated solutions APPENDIX Definitions[FEED_
CRLF]Extended methodology Further reading Ask the analyst List of Figures Figure 1: IT solution priorities of European universities Figure 2: Top ten solution investment areas for education in the next 6 months Figure 3: The sliding scale of priorities in different educational environments Figure 4: Consequences of different student controls for security Figure 5: Consequences of different academic objectives Figure 6: Consequences of the difference in scale between different types of educational institution Figure 7: Percentage of decisions about purchasing resources taken at school and government level


For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42552

Source: Datamonitor

A Biotech Firm's New Formula

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A Biotech Firm's New Formula. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Craig A. Rosen gets bored easily. During his last few years at Human Genome Sciences Inc., he oversaw the development of a $230 million manufacturing plant. Boring. He was promoted to chief operating officer. Boring. And president. Boring. The board of directors even talked to him about becoming chief executive. Boring.



What doesn't bore Rosen is molecular biology. Back when he co-founded HGS, when it was doing a lot of molecular biology, Rosen wasn't bored at all. He was sequencing genes. He was discovering new drugs. But that was 14 years ago. Now the Rockville company is pushing some of those drugs toward the final stage of development, which requires negotiating with federal regulators and forming partnerships with big drug companies such as Novartis AG. Demanding. Important. But boring.

Rosen's predicament is illustrative of the graying of the biotech industry, which as it matures gradually loses its grip on the scientific entrepreneurs whose creative spirit and microscopic digging got things started. Here was a company where Rosen once helped hang bookshelves, but as it finishes developing drugs that he helped discover, his prized skills are needed less and less. He knew it. His boredom was a symptom.

"I would argue for the last three or four years that I was bored," he said. "I didn't feel like I was contributing. I felt like I was a bystander in the process."

Then Rosen, 48, discovered something right in front of him: lab space no longer being used. Equipment no longer being used. Researchers no longer being used to their potential. And with the company's chief financial officer, Rosen eventually decided that if HGS could no longer fully focus on the early-stage side of the business, they would just buy a sizable chunk of the research-and-development capabilities from the company and do it themselves.

Only Rosen and his partner, Steven C. Mayer, would do it differently. That is, flip the biotech world on its head by starting a company that has no interest in selling drugs to patients. Instead, they want to test new products just long enough to persuade big drug firms to buy them. The drug companies will finish the most expensive testing, then eventually sell the products. Rosen and Mayer will walk away and start the process over. The idea is for the new company, CoGenesys Inc., to become a drug development engine for big pharmaceutical firms desperate for new products.

"After 10 years or so, the business is no longer in the start-up phase," said William A. Haseltine, a renowned scientist and founder and former chief executive of HGS who stepped aside two years ago in a similar move. "Different skills are needed at different times. And the skills of building a company are a lot different than being a scientist."

Rosen said: "For me at HGS, do I think the company can succeed? Yes. Do I really see that they are using my skills on anything new? No."

As he grew bored, HGS got Rosen an executive coach to help engage him again. The coach offered him brochures for training programs at Harvard Business School. Rosen wouldn't look at them. "They were probably trying to convince me -- it was just personal -- that I should be more interested in the development end of things," Rosen said. "But it wasn't me. I was more in early-stage and research."

Rosen's decision to leave, while reflective of the industry's inevitable maturation process, also says something about a topic perhaps more complicated than the biotech business. It is a window into what makes a top scientist -- Haseltine called Rosen's brain "first-class" -- interested in the things he is interested in, and how those interests can drive the eventual commercialization of science. In Rosen's case, his drive may be the avoidance of boredom, but it really is a desire to not do things that everyone else is doing.

"There is a lot of that in me," Rosen said. "That's probably my driving force."

In fact, Rosen's decision to leave HGS is almost identical to the decision he made 14 years ago to help start HGS.

He had been chairman of the Department of Gene Regulation at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology when venture capitalists asked him to help Haseltine, whom he had worked with on HIV/AIDS research at Harvard, start Human Genome Sciences. The novelty of HGS would be its pursuit of sequencing human genes to rapidly find better drug targets.

To keep him at the scientific institute, Roche offered to bring Rosen into its drug company and make him the head of worldwide cancer research. Rosen went home and told his wife that Roche had made him incredible offer. But he was still leaving.

"There was nothing new to it," Rosen said. "It was essentially running an oncology group using the science of the past 20 years."

Now, Rosen is no longer working at a company on the front lines of genomic research. Instead of renowned scientists, one of the firm's key hires recently was given this title: chief commercial officer. "I feel I had a few more years in me to discover drugs but nobody wanted to do that at HGS anymore," Rosen said.

At first, Rosen thought he could find a way to stay at HGS. Rosen and Mayer persuaded the HGS board to make the research group a separate division, but when they produced a budget of $20 million for the first year of operations, they said, HGS management balked. Finally, one day Rosen said to Mayer, if HGS doesn't want to fund the operation, "Let's buy it and design a whole new company around it."

HGS made the deal, announced last December, in return for a 13 percent equity stake in the company and the rights to develop some of the CoGenesys drugs and secure some revenue-sharing rights. HGS chief executive H. Thomas Watkins has said the deal was a "have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too" strategy. "Moving all of our clinical compounds forward is a costly priority for us, a challenge that requires every ounce of funding and energy we have," he said.

But the deal was contingent upon CoGenesys raising enough money to run the new company. Mayer and Rosen set off for dozens of meetings with venture capital firms. Last month, they announced they raised $55 million from several groups, including the largest investor, New Enterprise Associates in Baltimore, which pumped in $24.5 million. Having the HGS technology, as well as 70 of its scientists, gives the new company a significant head start on other biotech start-ups.

CoGenesys "can be self-sustaining in three to four years," said James Barrett, general partner of New Enterprise. "If they can develop projects and do them serially, the cash flow will make the company essentially self-sufficient. That makes it a profitable enterprise much sooner than is typical in the biotech business."

The idea is to spend, say, $10 million working on a drug and then flip it to a big drug company for several hundred million dollars. The way Rosen sees it, the newness is a business model that lets him discover and quickly develop drugs over and over again. He's the chief scientific officer of CoGenesys. Mayer is the chief executive.

There is also newness in the kinds of drugs he wants to develop -- that is, looking at a variety of old drugs and using new technology to help the drug linger in the body longer. For instance, the lead product at CoGenesys is Cardeva, a long-acting version of a treatment that typically can be given for only short periods of time to hospitalized heart-failure patients. CoGenesys wants its version to be used on an outpatient basis.

Rosen has settled into his new -- and much smaller -- office with barely enough room for his old desk from HGS, which he negotiated for when he left the company. He said, "When this thing started, I told a few people here 'I'm finally excited. This is the first time in three years that I have been excited.' "

He also said, "I do hope I'm not bored soon."

2006 The Washington Post Company

Against All Odds

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Against All Odds. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Locked in a federal prison in the Nevada desert, tortured by the distant lights of the Las Vegas strip, Jay Cohen couldn't stop thinking about getting even with the government that had put him away -- and his revenge fantasy had a unique twist.



U.S. prosecutors put Cohen behind bars in 2002 for running an Internet gambling site in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda. Not long before the prison gates clanged shut, he had learned that the federal crackdown on online betting might violate global trade rules.

So he got Antigua and Barbuda to instigate a complaint at the World Trade Organization. "It kind of helped keep my spirits up," he said.

Fast forward: Antigua and Barbuda, population 69,000, is winning. The case has become an embarrassment to Washington, one that could result in economic pain. It isn't quite over, but the world's only superpower may have to capitulate to a country whose entire population could easily fit into the Rose Bowl.

Never has such a tiny nation brought a WTO complaint against the United States, which is one reason the dispute has implications well beyond the issue of gambling.

A frequent irritant in international relations is that small, weak countries such as Antigua feel run over by big, rich countries such as the United States. That's especially true in global trade. For instance, developing countries say their destitute farmers get the short end of the stick because of the subsidies and protections that rich governments give their farmers. Just last week, negotiations to redress such grievances collapsed.

The WTO, the body that referees global commerce from its offices in Geneva, claims to play equalizer: Its Web site notes that small countries have beaten bigger ones in its trade courts. A win for Antigua would improve the WTO's image of requiring all nations, Davids and Goliaths alike, to follow the rules.

At the same time, global institutions such as the WTO sometimes seem to infringe on national sovereignty, forcing countries to defy the will of their own people. An Antiguan victory could inflame such feelings in Congress. Sentiment against online gambling remains strong there; the House recently voted to bolster the U.S. ban on it.

Far as it may be from the central debates of world trade, the curious tale of Internet gambling in Antigua reveals a lot about the perceptions of fairness that fuel those debates.

Setting global precedents wasn't what Cohen, now 38, had in mind a decade ago when he quit his job as a floor trader at the Pacific Stock Exchange and moved to Antigua with a couple of friends.

Gambling was legal in Antigua, so Cohen and his buddies figured they would have no problem operating a business that took sports bets from people in the United States. Between golf rounds and fishing trips, they built World Sports Exchange Ltd., one of several dozen Internet betting parlors then springing up in Antigua and elsewhere.

They booked millions of dollars in wagers, mostly on football games and other sporting events in the United States. The industry boomed, becoming Antigua's second-largest employer, after tourism. "Life was fine," Cohen recalled.

Back in the States, though, many leaders grew alarmed, citing a risk that computer betting would lure teenagers and fuel gambling addiction. A crackdown ensued. "You can't go offshore and hide. You can't go online and hide," said Janet Reno, the attorney general at the time.

In 1998, federal prosecutors charged several operators, including Cohen, with violating a 1960s-era law forbidding the use of phone wires for gambling. Convinced that the law didn't apply in Antigua, Cohen returned voluntarily to U.S. soil.

"No judge is going to let this stand," he recalled thinking. But a jury convicted him, the judge gave him 21 months, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

Out of the blue, not long before Cohen entered prison in Nevada, a strange letter arrived. He has since lost it. The writer suggested that the U.S. government's position left it vulnerable to a trade complaint.

"Is there anything to this?" he asked a lawyer friend.

Turned out there might be: Several years earlier, Washington had pledged in a trade treaty to open the U.S. market in "recreational, cultural and sporting services" to global competition.

Cohen alerted the Antiguans. They hesitated to file a case, citing one of the biggest inequities in the WTO system: a dearth of funds and legal expertise that often shuts out small countries. Antigua's budget is $145 million a year, and a trade case promised to cost at least $1 million.

The gambling industry finally agreed to foot the bill. Antigua filed. "Did we not have a duty to our citizens to protect their jobs?" said Sir Ronald Sanders, who was then Antigua's ambassador to Britain and the WTO.

The United States had a seemingly strong defense -- the need to protect "public morals and public order." WTO member countries can ban goods and services that might harm their social fabric, a classic case being the prohibition of liquor imports in Muslim countries.

"Gambling in general, and remote supply of gambling in particular, raises grave law-enforcement and consumer-protection concerns," the U.S. trade representative's office said in a legal filing. Attorneys for the trade representative declined to make additional public comments.

There was, however, a hole in the U.S. position: The government tolerates Internet betting on horse races and, in some states, lotteries and other games. Numerous U.S. sites, including Youbet.com and Xpressbet.com, let users wager on races from the New Jersey Meadowlands to the Louisiana Downs.

This was blatant hypocrisy, the Antiguans claimed, contending that the U.S. position violated a trade principle called "national treatment." The principle essentially requires a government to treat foreign goods and services the same as domestic ones. To outlaw liquor imports, a Muslim country must ban domestic brewing, too.

Likewise, the Antiguans contended, the United States can bar citizens from using overseas gambling sites only if it bans domestic sites. Yet Congress has refused to enact a comprehensive ban -- in part because horse racing depends on phone and Internet wagers.

Gambling "preys on lower income classes," said Gary C. Hufbauer, a trade specialist at the Institute for International Economics, who opposes it. "But here we've had all this tolerance toward gambling -- Indian gambling, for example, in my native state of New Mexico. So if the U.S. is going to tolerate this amount of vice, while ruling out a foreign supplier of vice, it does seem to be . . . inconsistent" with trade rules.

WTO judges bought that argument. Antigua won a slam-dunk ruling in 2004, and though an appeals panel scaled it back, Washington was still in a tough spot. The final ruling essentially said that the United States must outlaw all forms of online gambling, including on horse racing, or Antigua wins.

The U.S. government has refused to concede defeat.

The Bush administration first vowed to secure legislation "clarifying" that all forms of online betting are illegal. But the horse racing industry has blocked such efforts on Capitol Hill.

Next, the administration cited testimony by the Justice Department in April claiming that all Internet wagering across state lines, including that on horses, violates existing laws. That was news to the horse racing industry, and it seems to have had little effect. Even so, the administration has pointed to the statement as evidence that the United States treats all online gambling the same.

Scoffing, the Antiguans are asking the WTO to declare that Washington is defying its ruling. Many experts expect Antigua to win again, after months of delay.

Then comes the hard part for Antigua.

The WTO cannot force a country to do anything. Even if found guilty, a country can refuse to change its trade practices. The WTO largely enforces its rulings by giving the victorious country the right to impose punitive duties on the loser's products.

That enforcement mechanism works for big, rich countries such as the United States because other nations fear losing the vast U.S. market. But Antigua's economy is so tiny that few U.S. companies would notice.

"The WTO gives the little guys clout, but it cannot guarantee symmetry of justice," said Claude Barfield, a trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

So the Antiguans plan to ask the WTO for the right to impose sanctions that would hurt -- namely, permission to copy and export U.S.-made DVDs, CDs and similar material. Hollywood is not amused.

It's unclear whether the WTO will allow Antigua to exact such a pound of flesh. For now, the Antiguans are trying shame, accusing the United States of being a scofflaw. If Washington refuses to obey WTO rulings, the Antiguans say, other countries may follow suit, undermining global trade.

Cohen, the convicted gambling tycoon, has finished his probation but will not say what he's doing. He has nothing but scorn for U.S. trade policymakers.

"They're so stubborn," he said. "They want all these commitments from other countries, and tell them, 'Oh yeah, we're all equal.' But when they lose, they run away."

2006 The Washington Post Company
PAETEC and US LEC Announce Early Termination of Hart-Scott-Rodino Waiting Period for Proposed Merger. Check it out:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. and FAIRPORT, N.Y., Sept. 22 -- US LEC Corp. , a full-service provider of IP, data and voice solutions to businesses and enterprise organizations throughout the Eastern United States, and PAETEC Corp, a privately-held supplier of communications solutions to medium and large businesses and institutions, today announced that the companies have received notice from the Federal Trade Commission that early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 with respect to their proposed merger has been granted. The companies expect that the transaction will close in the fourth quarter of 2006.



On August 14, 2006, US LEC and PAETEC announced that their Boards of Directors had unanimously approved a definitive merger agreement under which PAETEC and US LEC will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of a new publicly owned holding company ("PAETEC Holding Corp."). The merger creates a premier communications provider to enterprise customers. PAETEC Holding Corp. will have over 45,000 enterprise customers, consisting of medium and large businesses and institutions. It will operate in 52 of the top 100 Metropolitan Service Areas in the U.S., with a leading presence in the Eastern U.S., as well as several other major markets across the country.

As previously announced, the transaction is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, as well as approval by a majority of both US LEC and PAETEC shareholders.

About PAETEC
PAETEC is an innovative supplier of communications solutions to medium and large businesses and institutions. With the belief that every customer has unique needs, PAETEC offers personalized solutions that include a comprehensive suite of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services delivered over our Private-IP MPLS network. With more than 1,100,000 access line equivalents in service, PAETEC serves more than 17,000 core business customers across the U.S. by offering a full line of telecommunications and Internet services, enterprise communications management software, security solutions, and managed services. The company was the recipient of the 2005 American Business Ethics Award for a mid-size company, presented by the Society of Financial Services Professionals. PAETEC is headquartered in Fairport, N.Y. More information about the company can be found by visiting http://www.paetec.com/.

About US LEC
Based in Charlotte, N.C., US LEC is a full-service provider of IP, data and voice solutions to medium and large businesses and enterprise organizations throughout 16 Eastern states and the District of Columbia. US LEC offers advanced, IP-based, data and voice services such as MPLS VPN and Ethernet, as well as comprehensive Dynamic TSM VoIP-enabled services and features. The company also offers local and long distance services and data services such as frame relay, Multi-Link Frame Relay and ATM. US LEC provides a broad array of complementary services, including conferencing, data backup and recovery, data center services and Web hosting, as well as managed firewall and router services for advanced data networking. US LEC also offers selected voice services in 27 additional states and provides enhanced data services, dedicated Internet services and MegaPOP(R) (local dial-up Internet access for ISPs) nationwide. For more information about US LEC, visit http://www.uslec.com/.

Safe Harbor
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for certain forward-looking statements so long as such information is identified as forward-looking and is accompanied by meaningful cautionary statements identifying important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the information.

The use of words such as "may", "might", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "project", "intend", "future", "potential" or "continue", and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

All of these forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions by management that, although we believe them to be reasonable, are inherently uncertain. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors outside of our control, that may cause our business, industry, strategy or actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements.

These risks and uncertainties may include those discussed in US LEC's reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and other factors which may not be known to us. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of its date. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Additional Information and Where to Find It
PAETEC Holding Corp. will file with the SEC a registration statement that will contain a proxy statement/prospectus regarding the proposed merger transaction between PAETEC and US LEC, as well as other relevant documents concerning the proposed transaction. Investors and security holders of US LEC are urged to read the proxy statement/prospectus for the transaction and the other relevant documents when they become available because they will contain important information about PAETEC Holding Corp., PAETEC, US LEC and the proposed merger transaction. The proxy statement/prospectus will be mailed to stockholders of US LEC prior to their stockholders meeting. Investors and security holders of US LEC may obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus and other documents filed by PAETEC Holding Corp. with the SEC (when they become available) at the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov/. Free copies of the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other documents also may be obtained by writing to PAETEC, One PAETEC Plaza, 600 Willowbrook Office Park, Fairport, New York 14450, Attention: Investor Relations.

Information regarding the identity of persons who may, under the SEC's rules, be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of stockholders of US LEC in connection with the proposed transaction, and their interests in the solicitation, will be set forth in the proxy statement of US LEC and in the registration statement that will be filed by "PAETEC Holding Corp." with the SEC.

Contact Information
US LEC Investors: J. Lyle Patrick, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, US LEC, 704-319-1114, [email protected]

PAETEC Investors: Keith Wilson, Chief Financial Officer, PAETEC, 585-340-2970, [email protected]

Media: Steve Frankel / Sharon Goldstein, Both of Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, 212-355-4449

US LEC Corp.

CONTACT: US LEC Investors, J. Lyle Patrick, Executive Vice President andChief Financial Officer of US LEC, +1-704-319-1114, or [email protected]; orPAETEC Investors, Keith Wilson, Chief Financial Officer of PAETEC,+1-585-340-2970, or [email protected]; or Media, Steve Frankel or SharonGoldstein, of Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, +1-212-355-4449

Web site: http://www.uslec.com/http://www.paetec.com/
Co-Founder Of Digene Joins Partner In Leaving. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sixteen years ago, Evan L. Jones and Charles M. Fleischman -- two college buddies from the 1970s -- founded a small biotech company called Digene Corp., sometimes paying the bills with their own checkbooks. Today, the Gaithersburg company is worth nearly $1 billion.



Soon, both founders will be gone.

Fleischman resigned yesterday as president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer, effective in October, saying he could not stay at the company without running it. His resignation came two months after Jones said he would retire within the next year as chief executive and indicated his partner would not succeed him.

"If am not going to be in charge, then I am going to do something else," Fleischman said in an interview yesterday. "I am going to find someplace else where I can contribute mightily to this world."

Digene shares closed yesterday at $42.68, down $4.75, or 10 percent.

Joseph P. Slattery, a senior vice president at Digene, is to become chief financial officer. The firm, which is still searching for a chief executive, said it was not considering filling Fleischman's other roles.

Fleischman, 48, is also leaving Digene's board and said his decision marks a bittersweet moment for him and the company, further signaling its transition from a start-up to an established, profitable enterprise, and one that might need different skill sets than he or Jones offers.

Digene sells a test for a virus that can cause cervical cancer. Fleischman acknowledged that for the company to grow, it would have to expand internationally and produce new products, possibly by buying other companies.

"As you look for the next generation in leadership, you would look for those skill sets," Fleischman said.

Analysts were not surprised at Fleischman's decision, particularly because it had become clear that the firm would look outside for a new chief executive. Matthew Scalo, an analyst with Canaccord Adams Inc., went so far as to refer to him as the "jilted CFO."

"Evan Jones and Chuck Fleischman joined the company together and have run it as partners for over a decade now," said Amit Hazan, an analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Capital Markets. "So Chuck was never second to anyone. They ran this together."

Hazan, who does not own stock in Digene and whose firm does not have an investment banking relationship with the company, said he was confident that Fleischman's resignation was not related to anything negative about the company.

The company recently reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $3 million (13 cents per share), compared with a loss of $3.8 million (19 cents) in the corresponding period last year. Revenue increased 33 percent, to $43.3 million, for the quarter ended June 30. For the year, net income was $8.4 million (38 cents), compared with a loss of $8.2 million (41 cents). Revenue increased 33 percent, to $152.9 million.

Fleischman is to receive severance payments under a separation agreement he negotiated with Digene. Terms were not released. Fleischman owns about 30,000 shares, or 0.13 percent of the firm's outstanding shares. He also owns 6.1 percent through a private partnership with Jones.

Of his departure, Fleischman said: "What am I going to feel? Incredibly proud. Very enthusiastic. Extraordinarily pleased and happy -- all of that combined with the bittersweet nature of change."

2006 The Washington Post Company
Movie Downloads, Coming Soon to An IPod Near You. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) It is not a stretch to say that the iPod changed, and helped save, the music business. One in five Americans has owned one of Apple Computer Inc.'s sleek little iPods. Consumers have filled their iPods with more than 1 billion songs from Apple's Internet music store, where tunes go for 99 cents each. In the five years since the iPod's rollout, Apple has locked down the online music business.



Now, Apple founder Steve Jobs may try to revolutionize another industry: motion pictures. Today Apple plans to debut an online store for movies. The company has cloaked the event in secrecy, but a number of Hollywood sources have confirmed that Apple will begin selling movies from the Walt Disney Co. and Lionsgate Films for play on iPods, computers and perhaps televisions. Financial analysts expect the films to cost from $9.99 to $14.99 each.

Selling full-length movies over the Web has been an industry grail for half a decade -- the profit margins would be high, as there are no manufacturing costs -- but the effort has been thwarted by slow Internet connections, software glitches, studio concerns about piracy, a limited library of films and a collective yawn from consumers, who remain perfectly happy to drive to Blockbuster or open an envelope from Netflix containing an easy-to-use DVD at an affordable rental price.

Five years ago, only a few executives and designers inside Apple had heard of an iPod. Five years from now, will one-fifth -- or more -- of Americans buy their movies from Apple?

"If anybody could pull this off with movies, it has to be Apple," said Tim Bajarin, president of technology research and consulting firm Creative Strategies Inc.

Apple's key to success is the creation of an easy-to-use "ecosystem," Bajarin says, that lets users find, buy and listen to music on a cool-looking device with just a couple of clicks.

But if Apple is to extend that success to motion pictures, the Cupertino, Calif., company faces a number of hurdles not present when it entered the digital music market:

Who wants to watch a two-hour movie on a 2.5-inch screen, currently the largest available on an iPod?

If there is one thing that technology analysts agree on, it is that despite the explosion of video cellphones, hand-held game devices, laptops of all stripes, consumers still and will continue to prefer their television for watching video of more than a few minutes. Many Mac users say they buy television shows from iTunes for $1.99 but watch them on their computers, not their iPods.

"I have been wracking my brain thinking when I would use" the new Apple movie-download service, said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents 2,000 technology companies, including Apple. "If you're going to watch a movie and pay for a movie experience, unless you're stuck in an airplane . . . you would prefer to watch it on a bigger screen with surround sound. If you can't transfer that experience easily to your TV set, then it's going to be challenging."

As usual, Apple has declined to discuss the nature of its announcement, but the company may seek to anticipate the small-screen problem by introducing a new iPod today with a bigger screen or a wireless device for the home to let consumers easily beam movies from their computers to their televisions, much like a WiFi system. Such a device would differentiate Apple's service from the online movie store launched last week by Amazon.com, called Amazon Unbox, and would be key to consumer acceptance, as more households buy high-definition televisions and speaker systems to create home theaters.

Shapiro's research shows that about 30 percent of consumers with portable entertainment devices are interested in buying movies online. But even with high-speed Internet connections -- present in 45 percent of homes with Internet access -- downloading a feature film will still take about an hour, analysts say.

Is there anything to watch? So far, Apple has agreements to sell movies only from Disney (where Jobs sits on the board of directors) and Vancouver, B.C.,-based independent studio Lionsgate Films, which needs the distribution. And it's not clear which of all of Disney's studios -- which include Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films -- will make their films available for sale. This means that films from the other major studios -- Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Studios -- will not appear on Apple's new service.

When Apple launched iTunes, it had noticeable gaps in its catalogue -- no Beatles, for instance -- but all of the major labels were represented. When iTunes began selling television shows, only programs from ABC -- also owned by Disney -- were available. Now, shows from many networks are for sale, even though the catalogue remains thin.

Whither Wal-Mart? Unlike the music industry in 2001, which was being hammered by illegal downloading, the movie industry is healthier. Much of the health comes from DVD sales, which now provide more studio dollars than box office revenue. And the big seller of DVDs is Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which uses DVDs and CDs as loss leaders to lure shoppers into the store to buy bigger-ticket items.

Wal-Mart is leery of any enterprise -- say, an Apple online movie store -- that could bleed away its DVD revenue, especially when the retail giant has acknowledged it is considering launching its own online movie store.

The tension -- Wal-Mart on one side, Apple on the other -- has created an "emotional" time in Hollywood, one studio executive said on condition of anonymity because negotiations are ongoing. Studios recognize that DVDs sales have flattened and are eager to get a foothold with a proven seller of online content. But they fear angering Wal-Mart, the No. 1 customer of most studios' wholesale DVD sales.

Finally, consumers use movies differently than music. Parents of small children often know their kids can watch the same movie dozens and dozens of times. For them, it makes sense to spend $14.99 for "Finding Nemo" on the new Apple service. But will grown-ups want to watch other Disney offerings, such as "Bridget Jones's Diary" or "Gangs of New York," the way they listen and re-listen to "Born to Run" or "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back"?

2006 The Washington Post Company

Soap Gets in Your Ears

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Soap Gets in Your Ears. Check it out:
(Newsbytes Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NEW YORK Olivia nearly shoved Ava off a balcony during a catfight. Alan is trying to prove that Jonathan's marriage to Lizzie is a farce. The cops took Dinah in for questioning about the fire at the Beacon Hotel, but lacking any evidence of arson they had to let her go.



Slow month at "Guiding Light," television's longest-running soap opera. A little ho-hum compared with years ago, when one character traveled back in time, lost her eyesight, regained her eyesight and was cloned. What sets apart recent events on the show isn't the message -- keep your enemies close and your ex-wife closer, nobody is actually dead , the daddy is never the husband -- it's the messenger.

Specifically, it's Janet Morrison, a 25-year-old from Michigan who has become the online docent for "Guiding Light's" snarling zoo of backstabbing animals. It's her job to take each episode of the TV show, snip out ads, transition shots and dagger-eyed pauses and post a streamlined, audio-only version of the program on the Web (downloadable at iTunes and CBS.com). She also narrates a quick intro recapping events, and during the show she briefly reappears to tell listeners where a scene is set.

"Previously on 'Guiding Light,' " goes a typical Morrison voice-over, "Dinah confessed to Harley that she worked with Alan-Michael to try and bring Harley down at Spaulding. Lizzie was determined to keep the real paternity of her baby a secret. Reva kept her chemotherapy from Josh. Jonathan found himself in trouble again when Ashlee turned out to be the D.A.'s daughter and the D.A. decided to press charges against him."

Bring on the drama!

"I used to be self-conscious about it. Now I'm just like, okay, time to do the announce," says Morrison. She's sitting in her office one recent morning, in front of a huge computer monitor, microphone in hand, getting ready to record about a week's worth of introductions and segues. She turns down the ringer on her phone and clears her throat.

"This is a long list," she says, looking down at a yellow legal pad, where she's scribbled line after line of narration.

We're in the "Guiding Light" offices in the CBS building on West 57th Street, a few stories above the set where the show is filmed. There are copies of Soap Opera Digest on the coffee table and a couple of impassive guys on a couch, apparently here to audition. The hallways and cubicles look like regular corporate America, but the work here is anything but common. This is where the latest torments and traumas are dreamed up and scripted for the benighted souls of Springfield, a fictional Midwestern town where hobbies include relentless psychological warfare and vicious double-crossing.

It's a pretty chilling world, and unfortunately for its creators, fewer and fewer viewers seem to care about it. Like all soaps, "Guiding Light" -- which marked its 15,000th TV broadcast a few weeks ago -- has been shedding Nielsen rating points in recent years: Nearly 5 million viewers checked out the program each day back in the '94-'95 season, and about half that number tune in today. The soap craze of the '80s, when millions of high school and college kids were following the travails of Luke and Laura on "General Hospital," was many hankies ago.

The culprits cited by TV executives and soap-related magazine scribes include the growth of cable programming and the rising number of women in the workforce.

"When I was growing up there were three networks and nothing else to watch in the afternoon and mom stayed home," says Carolyn Hinsey, editor of Soap Opera Weekly. "Now there's a couple dozen shows to watch, and mom is either working outside the home or ferrying the kids to a soccer game."

Like any soap heroine with a problem, "Guiding Light" is fighting back, craftily. The podcast was the brainchild of Ellen Wheeler, a former soap actress who is now executive producer of "Guiding Light." ("It's like being the dictator of a small country," she jokes.) She dreamed up the concept when her stay-at-home husband noted that he could follow the action of the show while he cleaned the house -- if he kept the volume of the TV high enough.

"I came in and asked [CBS and Procter & Gamble, the show's owner] if we could do a podcast," she recalls, "and literally the answer was 'What is a podcast?' " After a quick tutorial -- it's a way to distribute multimedia files online, people -- and further discussion, Wheeler rounded up equipment and recruited Morrison. Since October, "GL," as it's called on the spiffy digital-age-ish logo, has been podcasting every episode, which is about 25 minutes long once the edits are done. (The TV show is 39 minutes, with the rest of the hour taken up by commercials.) A month later, Wheeler launched "Guiding Light Lite," a 10-minute download that follows one strand of the story and typically ends with an interview with an actor. Both podcasts are available at 3 p.m. the day the show airs, and every episode, archived right back to the first podcast, is free.

This isn't "GL's" only attempt at digital up-to-dateness. Written into the plot is the existence of a local gossip blog -- http://springfieldburns.com/ -- whose creator is a source of nonstop and fruitless speculation among "GL" characters. Embarrassing photos of Springfield's most villainous keep turning up on the site, causing humiliation and much tut-tutting. The postmodern twist here is that when fans of "Guiding Light" type "springfieldburns.com" into their real-life Web browsers, they visit the very site that the characters in the show appear so vexed by. So anyone can log on and see what is ostensibly mortifying Reva, Cassie and everyone else.

"Family first, huh?" read a recent Springfieldburns.com home-page headline, with hellish flames flickering behind the head of a character. "Not for this Springfield mom."

"As the World Turns," Procter & Gamble's other soap, now podcasts, too. Are these high-tech extra-credit projects roping in viewers? Barbara Bloom, who is in charge of daytime programming for CBS, says daily downloads number in the tens of thousands, though "Guiding Light" remains next to last among the soaps in TV ratings. (Only NBC's relative newcomer, "Passions," performs worse.)

Just as telling, Morrison has yet to achieve the cult status that she richly deserves. Her vowel-flattening Midwestern accent and gift for condensing tragedy into haiku is one of the podcast's best features.

"There have been some questions on fan sites, like 'Whose voice is that?' " Morrison says. "But the only person I really hear from about the podcast is my dad."

Maybe if she identified herself at some point during her narration, her profile would rise. But the point isn't to make Morrison famous. It's to introduce a somewhat fusty medium to the Internet. Though forever packed with marital and extramarital intrigue, the soaps have seldom truly pushed the envelope when it comes to mores. In the soaps of the '50s and '60s, married couples slept in separate beds and divorce was considered a sin.

"If a woman had an affair, not only did she not get the man, he usually died," says Julie Poll, co-author of "Guiding Light: The Complete Family Album." "Boating accidents and car crashes were favorite punishments."

"Guiding Light," which began on radio in 1937, is racier than ever, though certain boundaries remain. Nowadays, if a "GL" character gets pregnant, she might mention abortion, but if the baby can't be shoehorned into the plot, bet on a miscarriage.

What hasn't changed much in recent decades is the core feel of the show: the real-time pace, the square-dance approach to coupling and uncoupling, the endless churn of tantrums and make-ups, the passion-related crime sprees. The atmosphere of stillness and doom that is the genre's hallmark is unchanged, too. Everything seems to take place in some windowless netherworld where background noise has been muted and conversations end with a wounded, quizzical squint.

In reality, "Guiding Light" is taped in a studio where a director has to shout for silence before every take. During a recent visit to the set, a dozen or so stagehands and cameramen fluttered around a bed where Kim Zimmer (who plays Reva) and Jordan Clarke (Billy) were supine and awaiting their cue. Someone asked Clarke to scootch further down the bed.

"I feel like a mouse that's been glued to a board," Clarke muttered dryly, staring up at the ceiling, willing the strength to scootch and angling for a laugh.

Watching, you're struck with this rather basic thought: It's a job, working on a soap. People get bored. People cut up. With five shows a week, the pace is kind of grueling. (Two takes, says a stage guy, is pretty much the max.) It looks exotic enough to an outsider, but everyone here seems like a salaried worker engaged in the classic American enterprise of selling a product. The product just happens to be a story that will never end.

" 'Guiding Light,' Episode 15,013, Scene 5!" shouted the stage manager. Then a countdown, then a very brief bit of action and dialogue, which, per request of the show's publicist, will not be revealed here.

Once the scene was finished, there was a brief moment of quiet. Then Clarke, still lying on his back, slowly raised his arm, elbow bent, middle finger extended. The crew erupted with laughter.

Yes, the gap between the solemnity of the characters and the ironic detachment of the actors playing them is gloriously immense. At one point, Zimmer played a teary, earnest scene in which Reva mulled over her cancer and yearningly stared into the heavens, wishing upon a star. Between takes, she chatted with a sound guy about the gas mileage of her new SUV.

"Sixty-five dollars to fill it up," she sighed, in her nightgown. "Can you believe it?"

2006 The Washington Post Company
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Router Family with Cost-Effective, Fixed-Port, Broadband Routers. Check it out:
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Router Family with Cost-Effective, Fixed-Port, Broadband Routers

New Devices Target Carrier Service Offerings for Small- and Medium-sized Business (SMB) Customers

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. --(September 19, 2006)--ADTRAN®, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN), a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, today announced the introduction of the NetVanta 3100 Series of fixed-port IP access routers. These devices are designed to address the needs of SMBs for secure cost-effective Internet access and corporate connectivity using carrier-supplied broadband services such as DSL or cable.



The NetVanta 3100 Series consists of the NetVanta 3120 and NetVanta 3130. The NetVanta 3120 is a fixed-port Ethernet router with an integral four-port managed Ethernet switch, a single 10/100Base-T Ethernet WAN interface, and an analog modem for dial-backup or remote management. The NetVanta 3130 is a fixed-port ADSL access router with an integral four-port managed Ethernet switch, a single ADSL WAN interface, and an analog modem for dial-backup or remote management. In addition to ADSL and ADSL2, the NetVanta 3130 supports todays most advanced ADSL technology, ADSL2+, for applications with the ability to take advantage of its greater reach and higher bandwidth (up to 25Mbps).

Each of these devices offers a variety of standard features including: standards-based routing/switching protocols; stateful inspection firewall for network security; IPSec VPN for secure corporate connectivity across the Internet; a familiar Command Line Interface (CLI) that eliminates re-training of technical personnel; a user-friendly Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI); NAT-compatible SIP ALG for VoIP applications; Quality of Service (QoS) for VoIP and other delay-sensitive applications; and an analog dial-backup interface for disaster recovery/mission critical applications or for remote management by the carrier.

The NetVanta 3100 Series addresses the needs of our carrier customers for cost-effective, business-class routers that offer proven reliability and remote management capability, said Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager, ADTRAN Enterprise Networks Division. SMBs benefit from versatile customer-premises devices that offer flexibility and security with a built-in switch, VPN for data protection, firewall for denial of service attacks, and dial backup for disaster recovery, all provided as a cost-effective, secure DSL/cable bundle from their carrier.

The NetVanta 3120 and 3130 are priced at $595 and $645 respectively, and are currently shipping.

About ADTRAN
ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, with an 18-year history of profitability and a portfolio of more than 1,400 solutions for use in the last mile of today's telecommunications networks. Widely deployed by carriers and enterprises alike, ADTRAN solutions enable voice, data, video, and Internet communications across copper, fiber, and wireless network infrastructures. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by every major U.S. service provider and many global ones, as well as by thousands of public, private and governmental organizations worldwide.

For more information, contact the company at 800 9ADTRAN (800 923-8726) or via email at [email protected]. On the Web, visit www.adtran.com.

###

Interop Booth #617

Contact:
Tammie Dodson
ADTRAN, Inc.
256.963.6739
[email protected]
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Family with Performance-Enhanced Multiservice Access Routers. Check it out:
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Family with Performance-Enhanced Multiservice Access Routers

New Devices Surpass Leading Competitor with Wire-Speed Performance Bringing Added Benefit for Bandwidth-Intensive Applications

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. --(September 19, 2006)--ADTRAN®, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN), a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, today announced the introduction of the NetVanta® 3400 Series of Multiservice Access Routers. These powerful platforms outperform competing models in their class by delivering up to two T1s of wire-speed performance, even with advanced services like Firewall, Access Control Lists (ACLs) and IPSec Virtual Private Networking (VPN) enabled.



The NetVanta 3400 series includes the NetVanta 3448 and 3430, each a modular, 1U-high, rack-mountable metal chassis. These products are designed for Small and Medium Business (SMB) or enterprise applications requiring high-performance throughput for bandwidth-intensive applications. Each offers a single-slot to house any of the NetVanta Network Interface Modules (NIMs) for WAN access and Dial Backup Interface Modules (DIMs) for disaster recovery applications, two 10/100Base-T Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) interfaces that allow for broadband backup or DMZ, CompactFlash® for configuration backup and storage of multiple firmware revisions, and support for up to 500 simultaneous VPN tunnels. Each is RoHS compliant making it ideal for both domestic and international applications.

The NetVanta 3448 is differentiated by the addition of a fully managed, non-blocking, eight-port 802.3af-compliant Power over Ethernet (PoE) Switch delivering a full 15.4 watts of power per port. This provides the ability to power any PoE device, including SIP phones, wireless access points or security cameras. The platforms compact size and flexibility (IP router, dial backup, LAN connectivity and managed Ethernet/Power over Ethernet switch) also make it a perfect solution for retail applications.

Recent independent third-party testing conducted by The Tolly Group showed that ADTRANs NetVanta 3400 Series platforms provide significantly better performance when compared to the Cisco® 1841 and 2811. Tests of the NetVanta 3430 passing data across two simulated T1s shows that the ADTRAN router was the only device tested that achieved wire-speed, zero-loss throughput, even when subjected to taxing 64-byte packets, said Kevin Tolly, president/CEO/founder of The Tolly Group. The Cisco products that we tested struggled with 64-byte packets, while the NetVanta 3430s performance shows that the products design has the processing power to handle high packet rates, even when security services are active and vying for processor cycles.

Like all members of the NetVanta family, the NetVanta 3448 and 3430 are based on the ADTRAN Operating System (AOS), which provides a wealth of features and benefits to users including a user-friendly Command Line Interface (CLI) and Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI), NAT-compatible SIP ALG for VoIP applications, Quality of Service (QoS) for delay-sensitive applications, and Virtual Private Networking (VPN). These products also offer a five-year warranty and free firmware upgrades for the life of the unit.

As the demand for bandwidth-intensive applications continues to grow so does the need for greater throughput and processing speed, said Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager, ADTRAN Enterprise Networks Division. The NetVanta 3400 Series clearly addresses these needs by allowing businesses to fully utilize a complete arsenal of security and performance features without degrading throughput performance.

The NetVanta 3430 has a list price of $895, while the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $1,045. Both models are currently shipping. The Power over Ethernet option for the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $345 and will be available in Q4. Enhanced VPN capabilities can be activated through a software upgrade for $395. For a limited time, U.S and Canadian customers purchasing a NetVanta 3400 Series Multiservice Access Router will receive a one-year ADTRAN Custom Extended Services (ACES) 5x8xNext Business Day Maintenance agreement at no additional charge. For more information on this offer, visit www.adtran.com/FreeService.

About ADTRAN
ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, with an 18-year history of profitability and a portfolio of more than 1,400 solutions for use in the last mile of today's telecommunications networks. Widely deployed by carriers and enterprises alike, ADTRAN solutions enable voice, data, video, and Internet communications across copper, fiber, and wireless network infrastructures. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by every major U.S. service provider and many global ones, as well as by thousands of public, private and governmental organizations worldwide.

About The Tolly Group
The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL., offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies. For more information on The Tolly Groups services, visit its Web site at http://www.tolly.com, E-mail [email protected], call (561) 391-5610, or fax (561) 391-5810.

For more information, contact the company at 800 9ADTRAN (800 923-8726) or via email at [email protected]. On the Web, visit www.adtran.com.

###

Interop Booth #617

Contact:
Tammie Dodson
ADTRAN, Inc.
256.963.6739
[email protected]
Qualys CEO to Present at SaaScon in San Francisco. Check it out:
SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Qualys(R), Inc., the leading provider of on demand vulnerability management and policy compliance, will be presenting at the upcoming SaaScon(TM), the premier business to business event for the software as a service (SaaS) industry. The event takes place September 25-26, 2006 at the San Francisco Marriott.



On Monday, September 25, Philippe Courtot, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualys, will present a session titled "SaaS: Bringing Security and Compliance Together Effectively." With the vast amounts of time and money spent on security and compliance initiatives, companies can still find themselves secure but not compliant and vice-versa. Courtot will discuss how SaaS changes the way companies manage both security and compliance programs.

Attendees will learn how SaaS can bring these programs together to collect data once, show different views to different constituencies and distribute the right data to the appropriate people, eliminating the complexity and redundancy associated with these tasks and simplifying the analysis of data, ultimately increasing the effectiveness while drastically reducing associated costs.

Topic:  SaaS: Bringing Security and Compliance Together Effectively
Date:   Monday, September 25, 2006
Location: San Francisco Marriott
     55 Fourth Street
     San Francisco, Calif.
Time:   1:30 p.m. PDT, Salon 13



Qualys will be demonstrating its on demand vulnerability management and policy compliance solution at booth # 217 in the exhibition hall throughout the two-day conference.

About Qualys

Qualys, Inc., the leader in on demand vulnerability management and policy compliance serves more than 2,200 enterprise subscribers around the world including 200 of the Forbes Global 2000. QualysGuard Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions help security managers effectively strengthen the security of their networks, conduct automated security audits and ensure compliance with internal policies and external regulations. Qualys' cost effective on demand technology requires no capital outlay, infrastructure or maintenance and can be deployed in a matter of hours anywhere in the world. Qualys global customers include AXA, DuPont, eBay, ICI Ltd, Kaiser Permanente, Novartis, Oracle and many others. Qualys is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, with business units in Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.qualys.com.

Qualys, the Qualys logo, and QualysGuard are trademarks of Qualys, Inc. All other products or names may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Cosmetic dentistry start-up all smiles over sales. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A south wales company is on course to achieve pounds 4m turnover within a year, thanks to its innovative technology that gives clients a Hollywood-like winning smile.

Marc Eckley from Cwmbran and Ieuan Nicholas from Carmarthen teamed up earlier this year to create their Smile Spa teeth-whitening system, which they say is both safer and less expensive than conventional methods.

So successful have they been since the launch that this week they formally opened a new headquarters in Cardiff.

From here they will continue to expand the enterprise, which has already generated income of nearly pounds 500,000 and is on target to reach pounds 4m turnover within the next 12 months. In addition to soaring UK sales, orders have also been secured from the USA, Italy and Australia.



The total UK market for cosmetic dentistry is now believed to be around pounds 283m a year and is recording average annual growth of 25%.

Mr Eckley and Mr Nicholas have developed a pioneering system which uses chlorine dioxide gel rather than traditional hydrogen peroxide-based products.

This is applied to the customer's teeth using hi-tech equipment designed by the business partners and manufactured in Bridgend.

The business now employs 12 people directly and has a network of more than 40 spa clinics across the UK that are licensed to deliver the Smile Spa treatment.

These include many beauty and hair salons as well as self-employed individuals who can provide the 40-minute treatment after a short period of training.

The Smile Spa system is designed to provide a non-invasive cosmetic procedure that can be administered safely outside the traditional dentist's surgery. A one-off treatment can last for up to two years. The procedure takes around 40 minutes and costs in the region of pounds 200.

Mr Eckley, managing director of Smile Spa, said, 'We've created a procedure that is safer and cheaper yet equally effective, by delivering it in a completely different way.

'The portability and ease of use of our system means that it can complement other spa/salon treatments very easily and cost effectively as it requires very little additional space or training to be able to use the system within an existing business.

'A decade ago, cosmetic dentistry was the preserve of the rich and famous, but today everyone hankers after the Hollywood smile and Smile Spa makes it affordable for them.

'There's been a definite boom in ordinary people seeking cost- effective and long-lasting ways to make themselves feel more attractive and confident.

'Teeth whitening is actually one of the less drastic cosmetic enhancements you can have, which is probably why it's proving so popular. Our technology and delivery method means that people can literally walk into their nearest salon and come away within an hour with a much brighter smile. Our systems really are as simple as that.'

Traditional teeth-whitening procedures have tended to be administered by staff with dental training whereas the Smile Spa treatment can be applied safely by non-specialist personnel. The patented whitening gel based on chlorine dioxide is teamed with LED (light-emitting diode) matrix equipment. The company says this provides one the safest, least invasive teeth-whitening treatments on the market to date, which can be carried out by non-medical technicians.

The company's growth strategy is to focus on developing the network of clinics worldwide.

Mr Eckley said, 'We will continue to target the spa and salon markets in the UK, as well as looking for opportunities to build our network abroad. Our complete end-to-end package has already demonstrated that it has worldwide appeal with many orders coming in from Europe and the US.'

Smile Spa has been exhibiting its technology at exhibitions all over the UK and has more than 50 clinics waiting for their systems.

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
'Innovation wouldn't be possible if not for research fund support'. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) An Assembly initiative aimed at supporting research and development has invested pounds 12.6m in companies since being launched three years ago.

SMARTCymru is a Welsh Assembly Government programme helping Welsh small and medium-sized businesses and individuals to undertake research to develop new technology, products and processes.

It was created in 2003 as part of a concerted campaign to increase investment into R&D and to help firms come up with ideas for new processes and technologies.

Yesterday the Assembly said the fund had also triggered more than pounds 13m of additional private sector investment.

About 227 projects have been supported within key sectors, ranging from software, biotechnology, optoelectronics, engineering and manufacturing, to medical, petrochemicals, electronics and the environment.

One beneficiary of the initiative is Consort Precision Diamond, based in Conwy.

Consort received financial and mentoring support to develop quality rotary diamond dressers for a range of industries.

The company produces a diamond cutting tool that allows specialist manufacturers to cut intricate and specialist components - such as turbine blades for the aerospace sector.

With the help of SMARTCymru, Consort has become a worldwide leader in diamond dressing and is highly regarded for its engineering and innovation excellence.

Its managing director David Morris, said, 'Not only have we been helped by SMARTCymru financially, we have also been offered mentoring support and received invaluable advice from International Business Wales, the exporting arm of the Welsh Assembly Government.



'Our export level is now almost 70% of our output and we are proud to be a Welsh company, having established ourselves as suppliers in the global market of prime and sub-contract component manufacturers [and] earning the respect of both our customers and our competitors.'

Meanwhile, Haemair, based at Technium Digital, Swansea, received a grant to develop a next generation portable, artificial lung that could save the NHS millions of pounds.

Its managing director, Bill Johns said, 'Our innovation simply would not have been possible were it not for the way in which SMARTCymru supported our pioneering work in developing the most up-to-date artificial lung, that could help save thousands of lives in the future. SMARTCymru helped us double our research team and has also offered mentoring support along the way that has greatly helped us with the work we are doing.'

Andrew Davies, Minister For Enterprise, Innovation And Networks, said good quality research and development was critical to ensuring success in today's competitive global marketplace.

He said, 'The creation of new ideas and processes through R&D is more about constant evolution than a one-off process. The Assembly Government's SMARTCymru is geared not just to providing financial support to help companies take ideas forward, but, through mentoring, it helps them realise the benefits of continual development and, in turn, increased sales, investment and employment.'

SMARTCymru also

supports non-SMEs, where the project is of significant benefit to Wales and the technology involved impacts on several other industry sectors.

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd

TMCnet's SIP Week in Review

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TMCnet's SIP Week in Review. Check it out:
Though this week was much drier than the last, that didn’t stop SIP news from flooding in. Motorola, pbxnsip, AGN Networks, Pannaway, Centile and Gizmo Project all made headlines.


 
Motorola (News - Alert) jumped into the SIP world this week when they added a new SIP-based SBV5100 series to their suite of voice-enabled cable modems. With the new series, voice and data are converged on one network and in one product. "Bundling multiple services in one unit will offer consumers an array of advanced voice services," reported TMCnet's Johanne Torres in an article.
 
Johanne also quoted Charles Dougherty, corporate vice president, Motorola Connected Home Solutions as saying, "Operators around the world are already making the move towards SIP-based products…by providing a voice-enabled cable modem with the SIP protocol, Motorola enables cable operators to not only expand their offerings with voice today, but to lay the foundation for new feature-rich voice and multimedia services, such as fixed-mobile convergence.
 
While were on the topic, fixed-mobile convergence is no longer a matter of “if” but “when” and although projections vary on timing, everyone knows the it is now inevitable. How can service providers capitalize on it? What do enterprises and end-users to need to do to prepare for it? Be sure to attend the Mobility Summit taking place at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006, in San Diego.
 
Now back to SIP news for the week, pbxnsip took some time to speak with TMCnet and during a conversation with CEO Christian Stredicke, TMCnet's Mae Kowalke uncovered, Eight Reasons to choose pbxnsip's PBX (News - Alert).
 
Some of the reasons they discussed included: "It makes you independent—because pbxnsip's PBX is SIP-based, it supports a large range of devices from many different vendors as well as, it talks to remote users—pbxnsips PBX makes it easy for companies provide access for remote workers.
 
Mae also highlighted that PBX can run with several IP addresses, set to public or private.
 
For more, check out the article featured on pbxnsip's IPBX TMCnet channel.
 
Mae also reported this week that AGN Networks (News - Alert) OnDemandSIP trunking service was used at this years Interop New York 2006 show to provide network connectivity.
 
This is the third year AGN will be connected Interop to the public telephone network.
 
Mae quoted Lenny Heymann, General Manager Interop as saying,  "Using AGN Networks OnDemandSIP services has helped us make dramatic reductions in our setup time for each show, while giving us a range of new real-time capabilities that help us get more out of our network."
 
Also announced this week, Pannaway's Service Convergence (News - Alert) Network platform has allowed Ponderosa Telephone to make the switch from a TDM and ATM-based network. TMCnet's Patrick Barnard reported that with the platform they can now provide subscribers with next generation services like VoIP.
 
Gary Pemelton, senior facility plant engineer for Panderosa was quoted as saying, "SIP will allow us to provide our subscribers with a much more robust and scalable digital voice service and our access partner of choice needs to be able to support this capability."
 
Also this week, Patrick reported that Centile's IntraSwitch would deliver enterprise and residential VoIP over Debitel Denmark's network.
 
"IntraSwitch is a SIP-based carrier grade VoIP services platform featuring built in capabilities for fixed mobile convergence and compliance with IMS standards," noted  Patrick.
 
TMC's Tom Keating reported this week that SIPphone's Gizmo would offer an "All Calls Free" calling plan to business users worldwide. Tom also highlighted Gizmo's appeal as a softphone client because it uses the SIP standard. He wrote, "The beauty of the SIPphone client is that it supports dual SIP logons. Thus, you can register with Gizmo's SIP server as well as any second SIP server you wish."
 
For more, visit Tom's VoIP and Gadget's blog here.
 
Also, be sure to check out the September issue of SIP Magazine now available online. Feature articles to check out: "How to develop and implement an effective IP Strategy" and "SIP & ENUM- Foundations of Peering."
 
And don’t forget, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo West is just around the corner! For all you SIP followers, be sure to check out the SIP Workshop and see what all the buzz is about!
 
Want More SIP?
 
 
 
-----
 
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
 
Vietnam: Women leaders' network makes 11 recommendations to APEC leaders. Check it out:
(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Section: Regional News - The 11th APEC Women Leaders' Network Meeting closed in Hanoi on Sept. 21, making 11 recommendations to APEC leaders, including the facilitation of women's participation in the digital economy.



In a statement/recommendations released at the closing ceremony, the Women Leaders' Network (WLN) says: "The WLN strongly believes that the economic contribution of women and gender-responsive policies and practices will bring about sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction in the region and will advance a stronger APEC community." The WLN proposed that APEC ministers responsible for micro, small and medium enterprises (M/SMEs) review existing investment, business and credit laws, regulations and practices so as to eliminate gender bias; and identify, fund and implement gender-responsive programmes and policy models that will assist women-owned and/or women-led M/SMEs.

The WLN also proposed that APEC leaders encourage APEC enterprises to adopt and implement the International Labour Organisation's Code of Practice concerning HIV/AIDS and the World of Work, so as to help women avoid HIV infection.

The WLN made a commitment to establish a WLN Secretariat which will be based in the Philippines, to monitor the APEC's response to the WLN's recommendations and to develop a holistic Strategic Framework for Women's Enterprise Development to build the capacity and support the growth of women-owned and/or women-led enterprises, at all stages of their business.

The Vietnamese Minister of Planning and Investment, Vo Hong Phuc, who will chair the APEC Small and Medium Enterprise Ministerial Meeting on Sept. 28-29, accepted the WLN's recommendations and promised to present these recommendations to the meeting for discussion.

At the closing ceremony, Diana Abruzzi, Chairwoman of the International Women's Federation of Commerce and Industry and Vice President of APEC Confederation of the Women's Business Councils assumed the presidency of the APEC WLN for 2007.

In the afternoon, the APEC WLN issued a press release calling for efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS by increasing women's economic independece. - VNA

Copyright 2006 Thai Press Reports

Tech news roundup

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Tech news roundup. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Latin American call center market is expected to record the largest growth globally between 2006 and 2010, regional news service TelcosIT reported citing statistics from the Mexican telemarketing institute IMT.



According to the report, the industry is expected to grow 29.3% in the period adding 17.6 million operators in the region. During 2005, 585,000 operators migrated their facilities to other overseas locations, with 105 installing their call centers in Latin America.

***

US Linux operating systems integrator Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) has selected Mexican IT training institute CompuEducacin as the company's authorized training center in Mexico, InfoChannel reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, CompuEducacin is authorized to offer training on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Certified Engineer certification.

***

The Chilean unit of Spanish IT consultancy DMR Consulting has appointed Jos Ortega as the new manager in charge of the industrial sector division, DMR said in a statement.

With a degree in physical sciences from the Spanish university Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the executive has been working at DMR for the past nine years at the company's Spanish and Italian subsidiaries.

In his new position Ortega will be in charge of strengthening DMR's position within companies from the industrial sector.

***

Colombian software development powerhouse Parquesoft has opened a new facility in the city of Ibagu, local newspaper El Nuevo Da reported.

Parquesoft, currently home of over 180 IT firms, employs over 800 software developers and 200 additional employees for service, support and business development. The hub also plans to open a new facility in Villavicencio this year.

***

The Santa Cruz trade and industry chamber (Cainco) in Bolivia has launched a new online service that allows local companies to sell their products through the internet, local press reported.

The service allows clients to purchase products using credit cards with a 6% commission on each purchase.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
The storage giant's acquisition of RSA is the latest move in its ambition to become a general IT vendor.. Check it out:
(www.enterprisestorageforum.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
What EMC wants, EMC gets or so it appears. Just as it was completing its acquisition of RSA Security earlier this week, it also announced the acquisition of Massachusetts-based Network Intelligence. It seems that EMC takes on a different identity each month.



Just a few years back, it was a relatively simple creature and the dominant disk array vendor. Then it moved into NAS , then storage software and services. Soon thereafter, EMC rolled out the hype machine around the information lifecycle management ( ILM ) moniker. More recently, we've been introduced to EMC the security specialist and now it may be edging into the network. So what's next? Online gaming applications?

Mike Karp, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, points out that these seemingly random buys are heading in a very definite direction.

"It has everything to do with EMC's strategic thrust to become a vendor serving all of IT, rather than 'just' a storage vendor," Karp says. "HP and IBM are there already, while Cisco and HDS are heading in that direction."

IBM, for example, has announced security enhancements that tie together operating systems, mainframe processors, software and storage systems, including tape, as part of a cross-domain, total ecosystem approach. Sun, on the other hand, handles security from a server and host software perspective, while companies like Cisco prefer a network model, where they sit between users and servers, and servers and storage.

"EMC is moving up from being a storage hardware and storage management software vendor into a broader data and information management role that has to include a strong security element," says Greg Schulz, senior analyst and founder of StorageIO. "To remain competitive, vendors need to expand their offerings. Thus, traditional storage vendors must add value beyond storage systems without losing sight of their bread and butter business."

Growing Dominance

By spending tens of billions on mergers over the last decade, EMC has steadily expanded its dominance in the storage sector.

"EMC has spent probably the equivalent of the GNP of some small nations on acquisitions over the past 10 to 15 years" says Schulz. "It has done relatively well if you look at growth."

According to Gartner, EMC holds the number one spot in the worldwide external controller-based disk storage market with a 23.8 percent revenue share. That represents almost a billion dollars in one quarter, and a growth rate of 4.3 percent and that number excludes OEM revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Siemens.

The gross figures don't tell the story of a willingness to adapt to a changing technology landscape. When NetApp appeared out of nowhere to create the NAS category, for example, EMC shifted gears so that today, along with NetApp, it has cornered that segment. Now it is charging headlong after the ILM dream. That broad concept is taking it into pastures new.

"The battlefront in security has shifted from securing the network perimeter to protecting and securing the information itself wherever that information lives and wherever it moves," says Joe Tucci, EMC's chairman, president and CEO. "The additions of RSA and Network Intelligence to the EMC family enable us to execute on our information-centric security strategy to help organizations around the world secure their information throughout its lifecycle and reduce the associated cost of regulatory compliance."

As a result of its reputation for encryption and protecting online identities, Tucci says, the RSA Security brand will remain. The new information security division within EMC will house RSA products in the fields of enterprise identity and access management products, consumer identity and fraud protection, encryption and key management, as well as other ILM security items.

Network Intelligence will fall under the RSA umbrella. Network Intelligence focuses on the security information and event management market, with tools to collect, monitor, analyze and report on security event-related activity anywhere on the network. Such products take the millions of security alarms and messages generated within the enterprise and consolidate and prioritize them according to preset policies. Thus, storage managers can view summarized information about potential threats on one screen before drilling down as necessary.

Look for these tools to be leveraged on the compliance side too, making it easier to show compliance with the growing number of information security rules.

Making It Work

While this may look good on paper, translating it into real-world gains is another challenge. As a result, some analysts express doubts about the long-term viability of such mergers.

"EMC's RSA has achieved a good standard in security, but its technology is not necessarily state-of-the-art," says Donna Taylor, an analyst at Gartner Dataquest. "The question is whether it will be robust enough, especially as it pertains to open systems."

She admits, though, that the company's vision for the future makes buys like RSA and Network Intelligence attractive. If EMC is able to successfully harness these areas in conjunction with its own core competencies, it can further strengthen its position in the market.

"A key determinant of M&A success is, of course, the integration piece," says Taylor. "Very few companies succeed in this area even if the target and the deal itself is well-planned and executed."

Schultz concurs. But he believes EMC's track record is better than many in this regard. Centera, CLARiiON and VMware are three examples where the company has added value via an acquisition. Not every acquisition has been a resounding success, however.

"I think the jury is still out on EMC's union with the likes of Legato, Dantz and Documentum," Schultz says.

Will End Users Benefit?

How will the EMC/RSA merger affect customers? Karp, for one, doesn't see any immediate effect.

"Customers of both companies will go on being serviced by the same sales and service orgs they are used to seeing," says Karp. "Any changes will be well downstream, and may not be significant."

Schultz sees some clear pluses on the customer front. Having a single vendor to go to for data storage and security management needs could mean, for example, better security option capabilities for traditional EMC solutions.

"If EMC can operate RSA in a somewhat autonomous manner similar to what they have done with VMware, that should help bring some near-term peace of mind to RSA customers," says Schultz. "This approach will also enable EMC to leverage the technology into its own solutions."

On the other hand, he says, existing RSA customers could see changes in the way they acquire products and rising concern over pricing changes.

Gartner's Taylor agrees. She believes that continued consolidation in the industry will reduce end-user choice and slow ongoing price declines in the process.

And what about the fact that more security is being built into EMC's products better identity/access management, encryption and key management via RSA, as well as event management courtesy of Network Intelligence? Will this mean free security added to existing storage gear? Not likely.

"Keep in mind that nothing is for free," says Schultz. "I expect that some basic capabilities will be incorporated into existing solutions as part of feature enhancements to add and maintain value. But some extra value features beyond standard items will have some add-in costs."

Karp takes this theme further.

"All but the most basic security products are likely to be for-charge products," he says. "As the company integrates the marketing of the new security features, and as these features start to share a common infrastructure, look for them to be bundled in enterprise IT offerings."

For more storage features, visit Enterprise Storage Forum Special Reports

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SocialText ramps up its wiki approach to improving enterprise applications.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Web 2.0 is finding its way into the enterprise by way of a Wiki.

Wikis , collaborative Web sites on which all members of a community can contribute and post, have become commonplace on the consumer Web.

Now, solutions such as Jotspot and Socialtext are finding their way into more business users' hands.

JotSpot , an early wiki hit with home users, now counts businesses such as eBay , Symantec and Oxford University Press as customers of its enterprise wiki applications for collaborating online.

Socialtext has just rolled out version 2.0 of its enterprise collaboration tool.

The new version includes an improved user interface, said Ross Mayfield, SocialText CEO, during the Interop conference here.

It also includes new application programming interfaces that will enable developers to customize the wiki for their enterprise, and mash-up wiki functionality with other applications.

Andrew McAfee, associate professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School, who spoke alongside Mayfield, said wikis could enable organizations to use their enterprise applications more effectively.

"Most knowledge work is exception processing yanked out of an enterprise system," he said.

For example, business users are alerted by an ERP system about excess inventory and then try to resolve the issue.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of how a similar situation was dealt with in the past is usually contained in the head of a retired employee or buried in an unintelligible e-mail string.

McAfee suggested that users will eventually be able to open a window to SAP's ERP within their Socialtext wiki.

More broadly, though, McAfee predicted wikis would succeed where other knowledge management solutions have failed because they harness social forces.

"This is not about the underlying technologies, this is about a social phenomenon," he said.

Mayfield made much the same point.

"The Internet has always been a social tool," he said. "Web 2.0 doesn't mean Ajax or RSS or any other buzzword. The Internet is made of people."

But Mayfield admitted that for wikis to succeed at the enterprise level, managers will have to refrain from imposing rules or ordaining certain members of the community as experts.

"If you're willing to share control, you might find something wonderful," he said.

McAfee said that wikis also provide basic tools, such as tagging, that allow structure and meaning to emerge from what can also look like a collaborative chaos of data.

But McAfee cautioned that wikis will not succeed unless substantially more users contribute content in the enterprise environment, compared to users in a consumer setting.

In the consumer version of Web 2.0, he said, only a very small percentage of users actually contribute to Wikipedia, the collaborative Web-based encyclopedia, compared to the number of users who simply use it to look up information.

"That's a vanishingly small number of contributors at the enterprise level," he said.

McAfee also said that managers may have to lower their profiles to boost the chances for wikis to succeed in the enterprise.

"There are no managers on the Internet," he noted. "That's why we love it so much."

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After a two-year drought, CommVault becomes the second storage IPO in two days.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Data storage has been a healthy market the last few years, holding up even as server sales stalled earlier this year.

So perhaps it's not surprising that Wall Street has suddenly warmed to storage companies again after a two-year drought.

CommVault on Friday became the second storage company in two days to go public, following Riverbed's stellar debut on Thursday, the first storage IPOs since Xyratex in mid-2004.

CommVault priced 11.1 million shares at $14.50 each late Thursday, at the top of its anticipated offer range, and raised $161 million in the process. Nearly 5 million of the shares were sold by current shareholders. Shares opened for trading Friday morning 10% higher at $16 before pulling back.



The IPO gives CommVault a market cap of more than $600 million. The data management software specialist had long been considered one of the most promising storage companies for an IPO.

In the June quarter, CommVault earned $1.9 million on sales of $33.5 million. For the year ending March 31, 2006, CommVault earned $5.1 million on sales of $109.5 million.

The successful IPOs of Riverbed and CommVault could pave the way for other storage companies to go public. Isilon and Double-Take are two others that are considering the IPO route.

Back To Enterprise Storage Forum

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But it will be. When is the question.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Though Ethernet may be everywhere in the enterprise, it isn't everywhere in Municipal/Metro Area Networks (MAN). Yet.

Depending on whether you ask Verizon or AT&T, the time for Metro Ethernet is either now or still a few years away.

Mike Tighe the chairman of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and also director of strategy at Verizon Business joined Rich Klapman, product director of Ethernet services at AT&T, addressed just this issue to a well-attended session here at Interop.



Bob Mandeville, president of Iometrix, which is the firm that does the testing that certifies whether a particular deployment is Metro Ethernet Forum compliant. moderated the two carrier competitors.

Mandeville noted that since Ethernet first appeared in 1973, there have been more than 2 billion ports sold, and it clearly dominated in the enterprise space.

For the most part, Ethernet has always been a box, but carriers don't sell boxes; they sell services. Hence the need for the MEF.

The MEF has had to define what Ethernet as a service is, Mandeville explained. He also noted that scalability is a big focus, as well as reliability, protection schemes and management.

There are a number of MEF standards, but the key one according to Mandeville is MEF No. 10.

"It defines the building blocks that are required to define Ethernet services, and all other MEFs revolve around it," Mandeville said.

Even with standards in place, the question remains: When will Ethernet truly be everywhere? The answer to that may well be learned from the frame relay experience.

AT&T's Klapman was an active participant in the process during the late 1980s when frame relay became the dominate Metro Area interconnect.

"We've seen this movie before," Klapman said. "Every new tech must compete with existing technologies."

He added that what the industry learned from the frame relay experience is that there are a number of critical questions that carriers must ask.

"What are the apps driving the bits, what are the endpoints we connect to, and what are the economics."

Klapman argued, however, that even though most companies are switching from routers to switches, and Ethernet convergence on the MAN may seem obvious, there are some hurdles to overcome.

In Klapman's view, enterprises will save on capital and operating expenditure with Ethernet, but the industry ecosystem isn't quite there yet.

But Verizon's Tighe doesn't quite agree. Tighe commented that as Ethernet has expanded, thanks to standards from a best-efforts model to a carrier-grade quality service, it is now relevant across a broad array of industry verticals.

The quality of service that Metro Ethernet can offer was the subject of a terse question that a member of the audience asked.

The audience member wanted to know how the carriers were working to improve reliability and standardize the service level agreements for stringent enterprise deployments.

"If you're not happy with what we have on SONET you won't be happy with Ethernet," Klapman responded. "In the U.S. we just slip Ethernet cords into our SONET boxes."

SONET, or synchronous optical network technology, is a standard for fibre-optic data and voice communication and is widely deployed in carrier networks.

Klapman did say, however, that since 9/11 there has been increasing demand for improved reliability and higher update, and as such maybe SONET isn't good enough.

To that end AT&T is working on some initiatives to further improve reliability across its network, Klapman noted.

"The potential is there for Ethernet to be a bigger market, but the inflection point is two, three years away," Klapman said. "We couldn't handle the demand if it came today."

Tighe has a bit of a different view.

"There is tremendous demand for Ethernet services now because enterprises see the benefit, and service providers see the opportunity, " Tighe said.

"As opposed to two years ago when they had a wait-and-see approach and were worried about cannibalizing existing services."

"It's really not cannibalizing; it's being put in with other services, and it's actually growing our market."

In Tighe's view the tipping point for Metro Ethernet is now, which is a view that Klapman didn't agree with.

"I don't agree and I'm taking a more sober view. All I see is a lot of tire kicking," Klapman said. "Enterprises like the idea of Ethernet but they aren't going to rip out frame relay overnight."

That being the case, both men agreed at the panel wrap-up point that you can't bet against Ethernet.

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Helium's site survey incorporates NetStumbler; open source CUWiN upgrade does dual-radio; Network Chemistry upgrades; and more.. Check it out:
(www.wi-fiplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Helium Networks' latest, SiteStumbler, is a $995 "entry-level" site survey/audit program for mapping 802.11a/b/g networks and creating simulations of how they'll perform. They describe it as incorporating "a proprietary version of the popular NetStumbler for superior wireless data collection." A free seven-day demo is available for download.



The folks at Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) announced earlier this week the release of an update to its open-source, community-network-oriented, wireless mesh software, CUWiNware, to version 0.7.0. It now has dual-radio support, one for access another for mesh backhaul, improved routing, support for Atheros chips ( specifically the AR5312 Wireless Soc) and other new hardware, and a Web-based user interface, among other improvements. The city of Urbana is converting its current CUWiN nodes with one radio into dual-radio units, putting the free software to the test.

September 19, 2006

Network Chemistry has upgraded its RFprotect Distributed product with a new dashboard and Web-based interface, as well as better integration with the RFprotect Endpoint software running on laptops. Now, when a user with Endpoint enters the network, RFprotect Distributed sensors will automatically see them and classify the user as authorized. Endpoint continues to disable bridging automatically, in case a user gets an ad hoc connection from outside that might want to connect to the wired side of the network. Network Chemistry, which designs its own sensors, has also upgraded software to take preventative measures against rogues and other unwanted devices, blocking them from accessing the network infrastructure. The capacity is also up each sensor can now contain/restrict multiple devices, not just one-on-one. All the upgrades are available now and free to current users.

Sputnik has a new product, the $499 Gateway 700 , plus new software, the Sputnik Agent NMS . 700 works with Sputnik Control Center or SputnikNet to handle user tracking and authentication at hotspots; NMS is a firmware upgrade for various Wi-Fi access points (including models from Asus, Buffalo, Linksys, Motorola and Siemens) to let them be run by Control Center it integrates with the popular DD-WRT firmware upgrade for Linux-based APs. Agent NMS lacks the user authentication found in the standard and pro versions, but it is free.

Belden has announced a new WLAN system, the Belden Wireless Solution , using a "Channel Blanket" topology that allows use of almost all radio channels on each AP. The higher the traffic, the higher the throughput, they say. It fully complies with 802.11a/b/g and WPA2 for security. The line consists of switches (8- and 24-port) with Power over Ethernet (PoE), a 'thin' AP (model BWAP-200) that requires no configuration, and management software.

Xirrus was issued a patent last month (United States Patent Number US D526,973 S) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that covers the design of the physical housing of its Wi-Fi Array, which can pack in 4, 8, or 16 radios with a Gigabit Switch in a ceiling mounted unit. That product, or specifically the XS-3x00 family, according to a report by the Tolly Group , provides 2.5x the range and 13x the throughput of TCP traffic of "leading enterprise access point tested."

PePLink's latest is the Balance & Surf Combo, a wireless indoor bridge for citywide Wi-Fi networks and existing wired broadband. It comes with a Surf 200BG to connect to wireless via a 200mW radio and a Balance 30 unit to connect to Ethernet-based broadband. The Balance 30 combines the wired throughput with the wireless to boost the overall performance. The products are also sold separately, but you'll want to look for them through your local wireless broadband provider if you have one.

September 13, 2006

Trusted Computing Group , the industry group backing the network access control (NAC) architecture called Trusted Network Connect (TNC), has new members -- including big wireless players like Meru Networks and Trapeze Networks. Meru will run TNC across all its products as a complement to its own Security Services Module. Trapeze says it's supporting TNC by working with the policy enforcement platform "and wireless access based on client's health or configuration."

They don't mention numbers, but the CDMA Development Group (CDG) says more EV-DO modems have sold than were expected. EV-DO is the wireless wide area network (WWAN)/3G tech powering the data networks of Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel in various cities around the U.S. This is due to major notebook vendors like Dell, HP, Lenova, Panasonic and Toshiba embedding EV-DO support.

Nevada-based AirTegrity Wireless has built support for 900 MHz and 4.9 GHz (for public safety) wireless into its products (APs, base stations and CPEs) for use by ISPs, adding to its established support for Wi-Fi under 2.4 and 5.8GHz. Units run at 400mW for increased power, and can scale up to support thousands of simultaneous users.

September 12, 2006

Trade shows this week ( CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2006 in Los Angeles and Fall 2006 VON in Boston) mean a slew of mostly unrelated announcements for a Tuesday:

It's not a surprise, as the Wi-Fi Alliance said this was coming as long ago as April , but today it announced officially that it is working with CTIA - The Wireless Association on joint testing documents that ensure mobile technologies like GSM, CDMA, EV-DO and more work seamlessly with Wi-Fi (especially since more and more products are converging Wi-Fi with these technologies). CTIA says it will help carriers determine the best dual-mode phones to pick for use on their networks. The tests will cover transmit and emitted power and receive sensitivity of products and those products have to be Wi-Fi Certified and CTIA certified as well, of course.

Paragon Wireless says it is ready to launch a SIP-based Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) phone that also supports quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and GPRS. The phone, called hipi-2200, will be licensed to OEMs and ODMs, and probably will debut in Europe first (it takes a SIM card). Paragon makes dual-mode voice tech that handles seamless hand-off between the two types of mobile networks. The phone runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and thus also supports Web browsing, music play and recording of voice or video. The reported battery life is 4 hours of talk and 100 hours in standby, even with both Wi-Fi and GSM radios turned on.

Wi-Fi tester Azimuth Systems is ready to check on Wi-Fi handsets. On October 10, the company will make available a new test suite for testing VoWi-Fi handset power use, battery life, voice quality, signal range and roaming performance (using motion emulation). It runs on the Azimuth W-Series platform in radio-signal proof enclosures, as do all Azimuth scripts.

If you wanted to enter the contest to build an application that uses the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) set up by Skyhook Wireless , well, you're too late. The company announced three finalists today (the winner gets a Segway Human Transporter). The products include a game that builds in location data called Plundr that mimics marauding pirates but in real-world locations; an auto-location extension for the Firefox and Minimo browsers (Skyhook already makes a Firefox toolbar called Loki); and a location stamp that will work with the future Eye-Fi cards that will wirelessly enable digital cameras.

Xirrus says it is offering new enclosures for its Wi-Fi Array products, including a new outdoor box suitable for campus or metropolitan deployments the XE-4000, which looks like a street light. The array can deliver a half-mile range with aggregate wireless capacity of 648 Megabits per second. The new tamper-proof XE-2000 is for indoors, and mounts on a ceiling where you'd find a drop-down ceiling tile measuring 2x2 feet.

Broadcom revealed today that its AirForce One 54g Wi-Fi and VoIP phone chips are in new small business and consumer phones from Samsung. The models are the SMT-W5100 for businesses and the SMT-W6100 for consumers (used by Net2Phone ), out now in North America.

England's CSR has launched a VoIP phone called UniVox that uses its own UniFi-1 Portable Wi-Fi chip, which CSR will license to manufacturers the cost to build it could be as low as $35. The design can supposedly do 20 hours talk time and 400 hours in standby from a single charge. Production-ready units won't arrive until end of 2006.

After a few months as vaporware, Netgear said today that it is now shipping the Netgear Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. The SPH101 which has been pre-selling for a while on sites like Amazon, with numbers Netgear calls "impressive," will cost $250 MSRP and doesn't need a computer to make a Skype call, just an open Wi-Fi connection for the phone. It will be available overseas in October.

Kineto Wireless , one of the big providers of the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology powering networks with seamless roaming from cellular 2G and 3G networks to Wi-Fi networks and back again, is teaming with Ubiquisys in the UK to make low-cost femtocell access point products supporting the UMA standard as outlined by the 3GPP. It will be something operators around the world can use to build UMA networks. Ubiquisys makes the ZoneGate femtocell system, and they say this will let operators "fully realize the coverage, capacity and cost benefits of femtocells."

September 7, 2006

The TV dream a digital video recorder (DVR) that will stream content to other sets in your house using Wi-Fi is not a dream any more, if you live in the Netherlands. CanalDigital satellite TV providers will be offering a Caton V2O Wireless Home Media Network set-top box soon that has an Airgo Networks True MIMO Media chip inside. Get a couple of "slave" boxes to hook to other TVs in the house, and you're watching pre-recorded shows anywhere without stringing wires. Select CanalDigital customers can get the box later this year as part of a trial run.

AirMagnet's Enterprise Analyzer is now ready to troubleshoot networks running the Aruba Mobility software version 2.5.3, using Aruba's own APs when in either AP mode or air monitoring mode. The former provides a data feed about a single Wi-Fi channel, while the latter allows complete analysis. Cost for the integrated AirMagnet Analyzer is $9,995.

September 6, 2006

AirMagnet's Survey product made the jump to version 4.0 this week and brought with it a new product called AirMagnet Planner to help businesses decide where to place nodes for an indoor WLAN. Planner is also available as a separate, standalone product that sells for $2,000 ($1,000 as an upgrade for Survey users). Survey already integrates with the AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer 2.0 and works with Microsoft MapPoint; the latest version will integrate with AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer and build in support for maps from Google Earth, all the better for planning an outdoor network. The product can take GPS information and drill down to the street level to check for good wireless coverage. Survey 4.0 will control roaming in active surveys, taking control of the client's Wi-Fi driver and forcing it to roam as needed (most cards stick with the strongest signal even when not appropriate). Survey costs $1,995 for the standard edition or $3,695 for the PRO version.

UTStarcom's latest Wi-Fi handset, the F3000, is now available in Europe. The clamshell phone comes in black or gold, each with a 1.8-inch full-color LCD screen, polyphonic ringtones, talk time of three hours or 75 hours of standby without recharge. It supports SIP (it will store info on three different SIP accounts), SDP, RTP/RTCP and RFC 2833/inband DTMF, and utilizes ITU codecs G.711 and G.729 on 802.11b/g networks, with security including WPA support. It will auto-search for a Wi-Fi network and store profiles on those you want to use most often.

Garderos Software Innovations has released new software for wireless broadband providers to enhance Wi-Fi support and offer WiMax as well. Its C-OSS platform (carrier operational support software) will allow secure authentication of users, including those using SIM card modules. Its RADIUS access controller supports VLANs and zones. The new Multi-Protocol Access Controller (MPAC) will let WiMax operators allow subscriber authentication right at the base station.

Airgo Networks' True MIMO Media chips are part of the power behind a new reference design called SimpleWare Home. Along with chips from STMicroelectronics and software from Universal Electronics Inc . (UEI), the chips allow for wireless playback and centralized management of all the DVDs, CDs, and digitial video, audio and photos on home entertainment systems. The tech is on display at the IFA Conference in Germany this week.

If you're planning on taking the CWNA Exam for wireless network administration any time soon, be aware that the exam has been updated to reflect current terminology set by the IEEE. The CWNA courseware has the update, but CWNP will not be publishing a new study guide including changes. You'll have to read the full list online . They include such things as Power over Ethernet, referred to at 802.2-2005, clause 33 (instead of the old 802.3af).

September 5, 2006

What state loves their Wi-Fi? Perhaps Rhode Island most of all. CDW Government, a subsidiary of CDW, today announced their second State & Local Government Technology Investment Curve (TIC) to see which government since 2000 has purchased the most Wi-Fi equipment (this doesn't mean they've deployed the most, just bought it for different things, not all of which may be public -- it's quantity, not connectivity). RI has an investment profile of 147% over the average. Ohio, Colorado, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming follow, all well above the average. CDW-G says the more public-private partnerships a government has, the more it invests in wireless.

Symbol Technologies will provide the Wi-Fi and other parts that will be used in a new handheld gaming/gambling on demand system for casinos to be made by Sona Mobile Holdings and Shuffle Master. Symbol will apparently help the company get regulatory permission to get the device out into the wild.

Xirrus says it can extend the Quality of Service (QoS) for voice and video traffic found on wired networks to its Wi-Fi Array. The array will support the Wi-Fi QoS standard of 802.11e, plus will tag wireless packets with 802.1Q virtual LAN and 802.1p prioritization when sourced on the wired network. The company says tagging and prioritization will extend wired QoS to Wi-Fi, and that previous switched WLANs couldn't tag or prioritize packets moving from the AP to the wiring closet.

Techworld is reporting on a transceiverprints , a technology under investigation that could transform wireless security. Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa say they could tell the difference between signals from different devices even if they were from the same manufacturer. Each signal could be recognized as matching a pre-recorded transceiverprint from the product. It could be just what the doctor ordered to keep networks locked just to approved devices, MAC address spoofed or not.

August 30, 2006

The state of California has passed the "Wi-Fi User Protection Bill," according to Reuters. The law, to take effect in January after being signed by the Governator, instructs vendors who make and sell Wi-Fi equipment to include instructions on how to set up security to prevent "piggybackers" who would "steal" access, which they state is against the terms of service of many broadband providers. A warning label in every box would show up either as a sticker over the ports (uh... wireless doesn't use the ports), an on-screen warning when installed or configured, or an alert that requires user intervention to set up or bypass security configuration. A Los Angeles-based lawmaker in the state assembly wrote the bill when he was shown how easy it is to find other networks to use. Lets hope he doesn't figure out how easy it is to skip commercials with that new-fangled TiVo device...

RoamAD of New Zealand has a new release of its WLAN software platform that supports quad-band radios on mesh networks. It can support nodes running 2.4GHz 802.11b/g, 5GHz 802.11a, 4.9GHz (reserved for public safety use), even 900MHz. RoamAD partners and OEMs build the nodes with these radios, and the company has announced a partnership with a new OEM, ADI Engineering , to make them under the Pronghorn Metro product line based on Intel XScale CPUs and RoamAD's WNP 1.5 software.

Auguest 29, 2006

Hong Kong-based PePLink announced a new Surf-AP Wi-Fi Modem today. Like previous PePLink products, it serves as a bridge from an outside wireless network to your home. The difference this time is that the Surf-AP also is a full Wi-Fi access point, so you can connect to multiple wireless computers. Previously, you hooked a single computer to the PePLink hardware via an Ethernet cable, which killed the whole "wireless" aspect. The Surf-AP is designed for central management by a wireless ISP offering a citywide Wi-Fi network. PePLink equipment is in use by some municipal mesh networks run by Tropos , as it supports the Tropos extension for better connections to the mesh.

Another month, another Wi-Fi phone for Skype ! This time, Logitec (the Japanese company, not the US Logitech) will release the familiar looking candy-bar design with its model LAN-WSPH01WH. No word on pricing, and it isn't likely to be released in the U.S. One nice difference is that it not only supports Wi-Fi but also runs Bluetooth, so this one you could actually use with a wireless headset and maybe even connect to your PC. Maybe.

Speaking of voice, the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology guys at Kineto Wireless say their UMA client software now supports 3G/UMTS connections. UMA lets users keep a call going as they talk on a handset supporting Wi-Fi and various mobile technologies. Most UMA devices support 2.5G/GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellular networks. Now, handsets with the right chips/antennas and this software can roam from Wi-Fi to 2.5G to 3G as needed without dropping a call. The UMTS Forum believes use of 3G/UMTS technology will reach 100 million subscribers worldwide by the end of this year. Currently, a trial run by T-Mobile is underway to test UMA roaming in the Seattle area.

NextHop Technologies , providers of software to run wireless switches, is working with AirTight Networks . The two will co-market their wares to the OEM community to get AirTight's SpectraGuard Enterprise intrusion detection/prevention systems built into hardware running NextHop's Dynamic Network Architecture (DNA).

If you were one of the people panicked by the so-called " Wi-Fi Drive By " demonstration and you grabbed new drivers for your Intel Centrino laptop to become unhackable, well, that's probably a good thing overall... but you got hosed. The files apparently have a memory leak that slows things down on laptops. Intel figured out the problem and has already released new drivers, which you can download now .

Can anyone claim to have 2 million Wi-Fi users on their network? Nintendo does. That many unique players of the Nintendo DS handheld had logged onto the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection as of last week. The network is found at various hotspots, including those at McDonald's restaurants, where Nintendo DS users can log on for free. Recent releases for the DS that include Wi-Fi functions include the new Star Fox Command .

Hawking Technologies has a new Wireless-G USB Networking Adapter (model HWUG1) with a removable, screw-on antenna so you can upgrade to its various hi-gain versions, some of which they claim boost network range up to six times. The $59 card supports 108Mbps Turbo Mode when it talks to a Hawking Wireless-108G MIMO Router, and has full support for security up to WPA2.

August 23, 2006

BetaNews reports that invitations are going out to testers from Microsoft to check out Windows Live Connection Center Wi-Fi. It's a service that will be split into two parts, an application for finding and connecting to networks (replacing Windows Zero Config in XP, perhaps?), and a Web-based service with a hotspot directory integrated with the Windows Live Local service to map out the venue locations. No word on if this software will also integrate the Wi-Fi Protected Setup standard the Wi-Fi Alliance has been working on, but it might be a good bet since MS was involved in creating it. There's also a form online where users can sign up for what's called the Windows Live Wi-Fi Suite . Currently, the software isn't running on Vista builds until RC1 comes out in September, nor does it work for handhelds. The beta test is expected to run through early 2007.

Vonage will be selling a new wireless router made by D-Link that includes two phone ports to use with the Vonage VoIP service. The VWR Wireless B/G Broadband Router (with 4-port Ethernet switch) will sell directly from the Vonage site for $130 (there's currently a $40 instant rebate, but you have to factor in the $30 activation fee for the bundled Vonage service, so plan on spending $80).

Linksys says LELA can help. It stands for the Linksys EasyLink Advisor , which is a Windows-based software application that will come with the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Routers with SpeedBooster (model WRT54GS), and eventually other routers as well. Users can also download it directly. It's supposed to simplify setup and management of the network. The company says once a user names the network through this utility, that configures enough to skip up to 15 steps that would usually follow, showing Flash-based presentations the whole way. It will even accept settings from currently installed WLAN hardware, installing existing devices when it finds them, creating a network map reminiscent of that from Network Magic .

August 22, 2006

Cognio's Spectrum Expert is now at version 3.0, an upgrade designed to make it easy for those without a radio frequency background to understand what's going on. A new Channel Utilization Chart shows overuse of channels; a Signal-to-Noise Chart shows how APs perform vs. interferers. Users can also easily save plots and data charts to use in Office software for reports. (Unfortunately, for now, they don't call out anything special about the Draft-N/802.11n products and how they use 40MHz channels they just show up on the spectrum plot.) This Windows software is the basis for similar products from AirMagnet and WildPackets. All the various incarnations come with an 802.11a/b/g card. Cognio's version costs $3,995, but it's free to current users with a maintenance contract.

InfoWorld reports that there's another new pre-certification testing lab opened by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The latest, run by Wipro, is in Bangalore, India. It's the third of its kind (the others are in the U.S. and Taiwan). Vendors can send Wi-Fi products to these labs for tests to be sure they'll interoperate with the Alliance testbed before they send products in for official, expensive testing that they could potentially fail and have to re-test. This way is cheaper.

The Wi-Fi shootout contest that takes place every year at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas always gets a new winner in the long-distance Wi-Fi connection record. This year was no exception. iFiber-Redwire got a 124.9-mile connection without amplification, going from mountaintop to mountaintop; the connection lasted three hours. Last year, they only got 55.1 miles. The amplified signal record is 192 miles. The team claims it can get 300 miles without amplifying the signal, but they couldn't in Vegas due to the terrain. Of course, to do that, they have homemade antennas attached to Wi-Fi equipped laptops; one was a 10-foot diameter dish on a trailer, the other a 12-footer mounted on scaffolding. via WiredNews

August 17, 2006

Marvell 's newest Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g) chip is also a Bluetooth 2.0 chip (upgradeable to 2.1). Designed for handsets, media players and other low-power consumer platforms, the 88W8688 has an overall size of less than 80 cubic millimeters. It's sampling now to vendors.

Synergy Research Group says the overall WLAN market worldwide took a dip in the second quarter of 2006, by 3% from the first quarter. But overall, it was up 14% compared to Q2 of 2005. Enterprise sales, as usual led by Cisco (down 4% from Q1), were flat. Consumer/SOHO sales of Wi-Fi equipment were down 4%, led by Linksys (a Cisco subsidiary), which was down 2% quarter-to-quarter. Synergy notes that Q2 precedes back-to-school and holiday purchases, so a rebound by Q3 is a possibility.

In-Stat says that in Q2, at least 300,000 routers and client cards were shipped supporting Draft-N (the 1.0 draft of the 802.11n standard). The researchers say users who bought them will find the transition to the final 11n "bumpier" than it was for the people who bought early 11g products before that standard was finalized. They expect 11n chips to comprise only 3.6% of the WLAN chips shipped in 2006, but that will grow 20% next year even though the latest reports say the 11n standard won't be finalized until 2008.

August 16, 2006

A few naughty vendors are leaking the name of the Wi-Fi Alliance's upcoming program for easily setting up Wi-Fi network security, so the Alliance is going to spill the beans on the official name: Wi-Fi Protected Setup. (The code name was "Simple Config.") This doesn't replace 802.11i/WPA2 or anything else -- it will just make those standards easier to set up for consumers; Wi-Fi Protected Setup is not really going to help enterprise IT people. Alliance research shows 43% of users found it " moderately to very difficult" to set up security (which, honestly, seems low). How exactly it will perform its duties will remain under wraps for now. Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Alliance, told Wi-Fi Planet today that "the details of the program and the specifics are not cooked enough." Vendors with their own software or hardware based 'one-button setup' of security, like Buffalo, Broadcom, Atheros, have all been involved in the creation of Wi-Fi Protected Setup. With luck, it might show up in products before the holidays.

Rumors are rampant that T-Mobile will launch a service in Seattle as soon as September 12 using Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), which would allow hand-off of cellular GSM calls to voice over Wi-Fi with a phone that supports both. With thousands of hotspots, T-Mobile users could theoretically walk off the street while on the phone, enter Starbucks, trip over to the Wi-Fi network while still talking (freeing up cell tower space for other calls while T-Mobile still gets money for the minutes used). The focus at first is likely to be home users, who can use their phone for cell calls or to make VoWi-Fi calls over their own home network, without needing a separate service like Skype which would entail getting a separate phone number. Likely phone candidate for the trial is the Samsung T709. via GigaOm

Aruba Networks will be performing for the military. Through a deal with strategic partner General Dynamics, Aruba's WLAN system will be available through the U.S. Air Force Network Centric Solutions (NETCENTS) indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. Air Force, Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies can all get FIPS-certified Aruba equipment through GD.

August 15, 2006

Crutchfield's catalog leaked info about the Sirius Stilletto 100, a new portable unit that will not only stream Sirius satellite radio from satellites, but can also do it via Wi-Fi at home or hotspots. Think of it as TiVo for satellite radio, as it will also record 100 hours of audio programming. It will also play WMA and MP3 files of your choice, ripped by you or pulled from subscription services supporting the Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM. Price will be $400. Docking stations sold separately. via Gizmodo

WildPackets is releasing a new version of its spectrum analysis software in the next 30 days. OmniSpectrum 3.0 (based on tech from Cognio ) runs on Windows laptops and has additional graphical displays for showing interference, with a per-channel showing of what the sources are. The software comes with a CardBus PC Card supporting 802.11a/b/g and sells for $3,995.

Cisco Systems has received Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 validation of its wireless security. This means a Cisco Unified Wireless Network is now okay for use by parties in the Department of Defense. The company's centralized WLAN is in the process of getting Common Criteria certification from National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), which means it would be compliant with DoD Directive 8100.2 by 2007. 8100.2 compliance is the final step required for all off-the-shelf products used by DoD.

Hawking Technologies loves to dish it has sold a dish antenna for laptop Wi-Fi for a while. Now, it offers the Hi-Gain 8dBi WiFi Directional Dish Antenna (model HAI8DD , $49) that works with APs, bridges and adapters. It can be wall-mounted or put on a desktop. It comes with an RP-SMA connector and the Hawking HACST (SMA to TNC) adapter to connect not just to Hawking equipment, but also to other third-party wireless devices.

AnchorFree 's wiPod application, which puts a list of AnchorFree's 10,000 free-to-access hotspots on the Apple iPod, is now available -- for free, of course, though you have to become a member of the AnchorFree online community. Once installed, the directory can be found in the Notes section of the iPod OS, under "Extras".

All the major players in the Wi-Fi-based RFID/asset tagging world are working on something this week:

Ekahau is working with St. Croix Systems on a combo solution for health care markets, integrating the former's real-time location system (RTLS) with the Capital Asset Lifecycle Management software from St. Croix. Again focusing on hospitals and health care, PanGo Networks is working with Versus Technology to combine the latter's IR/RFID tracking system with the PanGo software, which the Versus platform will in turn use to track items over a Wi-Fi infrastructure. AeroScout is updating features on its Wi-Fi-based T2 Tag, which it calls "unique and unparalleled in the market." They include an optional temperature monitor used for remote alerts, and a real-time motion sensor. Using the motion sensor can also help push battery life in the tag to over four years. The tags also are getting call buttons and three different-colored LED lights. The tags have Electromagnetic Compatibility Certification to signify they're safe to use around people.

August 10, 2006

BelAir Networks has added support for the licensed 4.9GHz spectrum (reserved for first responders) to its products. A BelAir multi-radio node can be used with Wi-Fi for standard citizen access and 4.9GHz for cops and fire and EMS, while also providing a backhaul mesh network that precludes the need for Ethernet or fiber. BelAir now has products with a single radio (50C), dual radios (100), four radios (200) and the new six-radio BelAir300 Converged Multi-Service Wireless Node that can include cellular, Wi-Fi and wireless mesh.

The HypeWifi Advertising Platform will serve up targeted advertising to hotspot users, based not just on location but also demographics. End users are given marketing questions (nothing personal, they promise) to answer before can log in to the free Internet access. HypeWifi is a provider of hotspot services in the Houston, Texas area, and will, naturally, launch the platform at those locations.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts a rosy picture for WLAN chipsets. They think the $910 million in revenue earned in 2005 will more than double, to $2.288 billion by 2009. (They're equally bullish on the assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) chipset market.) Reasons for the continued WLAN chip growth include, among other things, the coming of 802.11n as a standard and the expected move of Wi-Fi into consumer electronics of all shapes and sizes.

Daewoo Electronics will be building Wi-Fi into its next generation set-top box (STB), but not just any Wi-Fi 802.11n-draft compliant wireless. It will do this with the WLANPlus chip from Israel's Metalink . The company plans to show the technology off at the IFA show in Berlin, Germany in September.

In case you were worried about that Wi-Fi card driver exploit that was recently pointed out at the Black Hat conference, vendors of wireless intrusion prevention systems like AirTight Networks and Network Chemistry want you to know that there's no reason to worry... if you own and run their products, you're protected.

August 8, 2006

Sony's Mylo ("my life online") is a new phone-sized handheld communicator that looks a lot like the PSP but doesn't play games. Instead, it uses open Wi-Fi (11b) networks for sending instant messages via Google Talk, Skype or Yahoo! Messenger accounts all free, no monthly fees involved. It can handle voice-over IP calls using Skype as well and Skype is allowing calls from the SkypeOut service to any phone in the U.S. or Canada for free (usually, it's only free from Skype user to Skype user), at least for a while, after which you'll just pay for SkypeOut minutes. The Mylo has a 2.4-inch color screen for browsing JPEG photos, reading emails (using Yahoo! Mail or Gmail) and Web surfing, or watching movies in MPEG-4 format. It's an MP3/WMA player (via a built-in speaker or headphones), and will play the ATRAC audio format that Sony likes but no one else does. That 1GB of flash memory will probably fill up fast, but you can add more with Memory Sticks. The keyboard is revealed when the top of the Mylo slides upward. Put it close to another Mylo, and they seek each other out for an ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection so you can IM or share music and photos. It comes in black or white, and has a built-in database provided by JiWire of 20,000+ hotspots in the United States that you can use to get Mylo online. The battery supposedly runs for 45 hours of music playback, seven hours when online, or three hours when talking with Skype. Microphone, headphones, USB cable and a neoprene case are all included. All that (but no camera?!) for $350 at SonyStyle and retail dealers starting in September.

Wavion made a splash in May saying mesh networks won't work for cities, and that you gotta use MIMO-like characteristics (such as taking advantage of multi-path interference). Now the details are out on their product that will do just that. Each ruggedized WS410 access point will have six antennas inside. It can mount on buildings or poles, and has numerous power options such as standard AC, Power over Ethernet, or a power tap when on a light pole. It can even send out power to another device that works with it, such as a backhaul radio or a camera. Wavion wants to license out the technology, but will sell the WS410 itself. The company admits the cost is higher than any mesh radio system per node, but says you buy so few that the return on investment is high from the get-go for any citywide deployment. They'll ship in volume by the end of August.

AirMagnet's new StreetWise will come in three versions, all suited to make sure mobile workers are practicing good security. There's a personal, freeware version any user can download for free and install on a Windows laptop to set their own security parameters; the regular StreetWise gives admins control over laptops in the enterprise when users install a pre-configured version of the software with the security policy in place; and the full central version lets administrators push policies down to the end user. StreetWise doesn't do advanced things like force you to upgrade the OS or anti-virus definitions. It's all about the wireless security. It can limit hardware used for Wi-Fi connections (no swapping cards); adapt to user locations so you have different policies for work, home and hotspots; turn on or off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or infrared; and prevent simultaneous use of wired and wireless connections. The software meets various government criteria (such as FIPS 140-2) and even has US Army TIC approval. Cost for the regular version is $22 per seat, or $36 per seat for the centrally managed version. AirMagnet says there's been a delay and the freeware version, at least, won't debut until next week.

Socket Communications says the Go Wi-Fi! P300 802.11g SDIO card (model WL6217-664) for devices running the Windows Mobile OS (2003/2003SE or 5) is ready (though not for sale on their site as of today). It uses a free version of the Socket Wi-Fi Companion for the interface (it usually costs $25 for just the software) and supports 802.1X authentication with WEP/WPA encryption, runs on screens both landscape and square, and sells for $99 MSRP. Supported devices will eventually be listed online.

It didn't take long for Broadcom to find another company to build in its Draft-N Intensi-Fi chips (Dell was the first to offer the option). Acer's new Ferrari 1000 ultra-portable notebooks with Acer's InviLink Nplify mobile wireless technology will be powered by the Intensi-Fi. It also uses Broadcom's Blutonium Bluetooth 2.0 wireless and Gigabit Ethernet.

Atheros won't long be behind with the laptop wins for Draft-N technology. Its AR5008 chip using the 1.0 draft of 802.11n tech they call XSPAN is now running on a mini PCI Express (PCIe) card reference design. The chipmaker says the design "is the first in the industry to achieve PCIe compatibility certification," and the chip has the same certification as well. Atheros also has PCIe cards for 802.11b/g and dual-band a/b/g.

August 4, 2006

Verizon Wireless and Novatel Wireless are trumpeting the availability of the WWAN PCI ExpressCard/34 (model V640) which supports the Verizon EV-DO network called BroadbandAccess. It works in ExpressCard/34 (which are 34 millimeters wide) and ExpressCard/54 (54 mm wide) slots on laptops. The card comes with Verizon Wireless' VZAccess Manager software for setting preferences, and will fall back to working with the Verizon NationalAccess network if EV-DO is not in the area.

AirDefense has upgraded its Mobile product to version 4.0. It has a new analysis engine based on the engine found in AirDefense Enterprise, which comes with 100 alarms and notification types (including e-mail and Syslog messages). The software (which runs on Windows 2000/XP) synchronizes with the Enterprise version for scanning areas that may be slightly out of the usual range. New location tracking can hone in on a device by triangulating using the device's own signal strength. The software can now come with a hardware kit that includes a dual-band 802.11a/b/g card with external antenna connectors for the included omni (with 3dBi for 2.4GHz and 5dBi for 5GHz bands), and two 7dBi directional patch antennas (one each for each unlicensed radio band). With the hardware, Mobile 4.0 retails for $1,695.

Vivato lives? The Web site for the company, which shut down operations in December 2005 , now proclaims "Vivato is back! The acquisition of Vivato is now complete. The same great technology that Vivato brought to the marketplace is being reintroduced to our partners and customers." Now called Vivato Networks, the company will continue to sell the entire line of 802.11b and 11g outdoor and indoor base stations, plus AP/bridges for outdoors and indoors.

August 1, 2006

Draft-N products aren't just for home networks any more. As promised, Linksys has announced its line of products running the 1.0 draft specification for 802.11n that are geared toward small businesses. The line-up will consist of a $169 access point (model WAP4400N) and $119 PC Card (WPC4400N), both available now, as well as a $229 VPN-capable router (WRVS4400N) coming in September. The big difference between these products and the consumer products is support for Gigabit Ethernet on the switch ports, WMM-based Quality of Service for voice and video, Power over Ethernet (PoE), an intrusion prevention system created by Linksys, IPsec tunnel support in the router, and a different look. They'll only be available from distributors and value-added resellers (VARs).

AirMagnet says it's now shipping its AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer software for analysis of Voice over WLAN networks. AT&T is already using it in performance labs. Calls are checked from the PBX all the way to the wireless client, as the software can integrate with the IP-PBX or call manager software. The software's MSRP is $17,500, plus $7,500 for the call manager integration. The company is also offering a free white paper called " The Evolution of Vo-Fi: Voice over IP over Wireless LAN ." The company also recently passed the 5,000 customer mark.

You know how no one ever turns on security for their home Wi-Fi network? Well, that's not the case, apparently. JupiterResearch found that 60% of home networks have it turned on. It's covered in the report, "Home Wi-Fi Security: Understanding Consumer Behavior and Impact on Wi-Fi Adoption." Associate analyst Ina Sebastian says security is still the biggest concern, but that the advent of WPA makes things easier to set up for consumers. 29% of respondents have also logged onto a stranger's open network while traveling. Only 12% would get on their own neighbor's network.

After a few years of waiting, the CWNE (Certified Wireless Network Expert) Program is now available. This is the highest level available of the program, and "tests the candidate's expert level knowledge of advanced topics surrounding QoS, Voice over Wi-Fi and advanced WLAN design," according to a company announcement. Anyone who has or gets a CWNA, CWSP or CWAP certification before the end of this year can apply for the CWNE; after January 2, 2007, you'll have to pass the PW0-300 exam to get the certification, which is valid until you die. The official study guide is from the IEEE.

The ZigBee Alliance says 10,000 developer's kits have been shipped by Alliance members, and that it has certified 13 platforms as ZigBee compliant. The latest is from RadioPulse. The ZigBee specification has been downloaded over 29,000 times in the last year; they say it s the third most downloaded IEEE 802 standard (it's based on 802.15.4). All of that is meant to say that ZigBee should be coming out strong, soon.

Firetide's new software for its mesh equipment (version 3.3) is, the company claims, better suited to support the triple play (video, voice, and data all at once). Flow-based routing will help bring throughput up to 32 Mbps; Quality of Service (QoS) for video and voice prioritization is expanded; there's now mobility as clients roam from mesh node to mesh node; and they've finally added full WPA2 encryption support. 3.3 comes with new Firetide products, and is a free download for current customers.

Colubris is the tenth and latest company to get certification from SpectraLink's VIEW (Voice Interoperability for Enterprise Wireless) program, which started a year ago. The tests confirm interoperability between Colubris hardware and SpectraLink VoIP phones. Other companies with VIEW certification include 3Com, Alcatel, Aruba, Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks, Nortel, Siemens, Symbol Technologies and Trapeze Networks.

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Computer and software firms team up on email security.. Check it out:
(www.esecurityplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Dell gets a lot of e-mail.

While that's not surprising, the company said a recent internal review of its 100,000+ email boxes revealed that 90 percent of the incoming traffic were spam messages. The computer giant gets about 400 million online intrusions a day between spam, pop-ups and attempted virus attacks.



But few companies are as big as Dell ( Quote , Chart ) or have the same resources to combat the flow of online junk and security threats. That set off a few light bulbs at the Round Rock, TX-based Dell, with a solution aimed at medium-sized businesses.

Secure Exchange is a joint development of Dell and Symantec designed for medium-sized businesses with 500 to 2000 seats of Microsoft's Exchange Server. The package, which includes Dell servers and Symantec security software, will be sold Dell and supported by both companies. Dell said it's the first validated solution to deliver end-to-end security, back up recovery and archiving.

"We're addressing the chaos many of our customers have had to deal with," said Brad Anderson, a senior vice president in Dell's enterprise product group, in a conference call briefing today. Anderson noted Dell has accrued considerable experience with Exchange, having been involved in over 4 million customer migrations to Exchange at various companies.

Secure Exchange includes Dell PowerEdge 1950s server, PowerVault 112T and M1000 with tape backup as well as Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2002, and Symantec Backup Exec. Pricing for a 500-seat modular back up and recover system starts at $54,678. Up to 2,000 seats will be supported. Anderson said the system can support more users but the goal is to target medium sized businesses.

Jeremy Burton, group president, security and data management at Symantec, said email is the next mission critical application.

"You think of ERP and back office apps, but everyone uses email," said Burton. He quoted research estimates that 79 percent of companies accept email as some form of transaction, and 75 percent of a company's intellectual property is in email. Symantec offers specific modules for anti-virus, spam, and mail box management.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com . To read the full article, click here .

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Virtualization doesn't mean simplification. Reducing the complexity may remove some barriers to entry, though.. Check it out:
(www.serverwatch.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

There are many well-documented advantages to virtualization. Now that the technology is deployed throughout the data center, the disadvantages are starting to surface.

One such disadvantage is rising complexity.

Although virtualization simplifies the infrastructure in some ways, in others it's equally complex and requires as much, if not more, administrative effort.

From workshops to keynotes, the pros and cons of virtualization surfaced frequently at this week's Interop show in New York City. CA CEO John Swainson's keynote was particularly focused on virtualization, citing the stat that during the next five years, the computing resources constituting today's typical IT infrastructure all will be virtualized.



Thus, tomorrow's admins will be wrangling with managing virtual complexity, as opposed to physical complexity.

One company that already has an eye on managing the complexity is PlateSpin . PlateSpin offers a number of agentless data center automation software products that collect and analyze a given server infrastructure and then determines the best fit for application workloads on the given hardware resources and streams over the network from any source to any destination. This approach makes its products well-suited for virtualization.

And indeed, this week PlateSpin went public on two alliances involving two of its software offerings: PowerRecon and PowerConvert.

PlateSpin's PowerConvert was selected for IBM's Project SwitchBlade, an IBM migration effort designed to steer enterprises away from Dell's and HP's blades to those from Big Blue. Virtualization is the cheese in a blade system sandwich not essential, but often present.

PowerConvert is an automated migration tool that functions in both physical and virtual environments. It migrates data, applications, and operating systems across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures in any direction. It's also designed to do it quickly, reducing migration time from days or weeks to hours by removing the need to re-provision new Windows and Linux servers from scratch.

As far as alliances and partnerships go, that one is fairly ho-hum. More significant is the relationship PlateSpin forged with Virtual Iron Software.

The companies have agreed to co-develop joint product offerings for users and resellers as well as to collaborate on marketing and sales efforts. The initial fruits are compatibility and bundling.

PlateSpin's PowerRecon will now support the Virtual Iron environments. Thus, when the software scans the network, and returns an analysis of where resources can best be consolidated, its deep knowledge of Virtual Iron will enable it to spit back an infrastructure optimized for Virtual Iron.

It can then switch over to PowerConvert, which performs the actual migration.

The software has supported VMware environments and Microsoft Virtual server since its inception.

Partnering with Virtual Iron is no doubt a boon for the less-prominent vendor.

Although Virtual Iron Software Director of Product Management Chris Barclay told ServerWatch that he anticipates the bulk of the the action taking place at the value-added reseller (VAR) level. Virtual Iron will bundle one free migration of PlateSpin PowerConvert with every Virtual Iron Consolidation and Enterprise Editions license.

Support for Virtual Iron in both in PowerRecon and PowerConvert is expected to be available in November. The products will also be made available at that time for VARs to sell as a single bundle.

The bundling will feature PlateSpin PowerRecon and a Virtual Iron/PlateSpin PowerConvert priced to encourage enterprises joint solution. PlateSpin CEO Stephen Pollack noted that the solution will be the only one on the market to cover the process from start to finish.

That may well be, but it's doubtful others won't be joining them soon. Removing the physical server does not eliminate the infrastructure, and there is ample opportunity for vendors that can connect the two.

Amy Newman is the managing editor of ServerWatch. She has been following the virtualization space since 2001.

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Dutch firms to join Cambridge biotech cluster. Check it out:
(Boston Globe, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--A joint biotechnology research venture by two Dutch companies is further underscoring the appeal of the Boston life-science cluster to out-of-state firms, and creating an even tighter real estate market in Cambridge's Kendall Square.



The companies, Crucell N.V. and Royal DSM N.V., decided to lease buildings at 1 Hampshire St. after considering locations in Maryland and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, according to Dr. Marco Cacciuttolo, chief executive of the joint venture.

"Cambridge is the real gravitational center of biotechnology," said Cacciuttolo. "It's really the premier location in the world to engage in these research activities."

The facility will employ about 50 people when fully staffed, he said.

In recent years, companies including Schering-Plough Corp., Akzo Nobel N.V., Novartis Pharma, and Merck & Co. Inc. have set up substantial research operations in Boston or Cambridge. They seek access to top biopharmaceutical talent; cutting-edge research from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools; and the intangible advantage that comes from being surrounded by other life-science businesses.

The action isn't just limited to the Boston-Cambridge area. In June, drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said it would build a $660 million manufacturing plant on part of the site of the former Fort Devens in central Massachusetts.

The Crucell-Royal DSM venture is called PER.C6 Development Center LLC, after a specific line of human cells that the companies are developing.

Many biotechnology companies manufacture treatments by modifying the genetic instructions in animal cells so they produce a specific protein with therapeutic properties. Often, those therapeutics are grown in cells derived from hamster ovaries.

But scientists have found that using proteins made from animal cells can cause dangerous side effects. They have attempted to make the therapeutics more "human," with fewer characteristics of the host cell.

PER.C6 has developed a line of cells it believes will eliminate problems associated with proteins made from animal cells and plans to license the line to biotech companies.

"We want to license the cell line to everybody," said Cacciuttolo.

The venture is equally funded by the two partners. Crucell makes vaccines for two types of hepatitis, influenza, and the diseases that plague travelers, including typhoid. DSM is a sprawling enterprise that manufactures food and pharmaceutical ingredients, and chemicals for a wide variety of applications. It has 22,000 employees and annual sales of about $10 billion. Its biologics division provides manufacturing services to biotech companies.

The new venture will occupy most of the remaining space in a complex of new and existing buildings owned by Draper Laboratory. Last year Schlumberger Technology Corp. leased 190,000 square feet in the complex.

PER.C6 R&D Center is believed to be paying annual rent between $55 and $60 per square foot, and will also contribute to utility costs, real estate taxes, and building operating expenses, according to real estate brokers familiar with East Cambridge. It will receive an allowance of more than $100 per square foot from Draper to convert the bare space into laboratories and offices.

"The biotech cluster is a powerful draw," said Ryan Weber, a life-science specialist with NAI Hunneman Commercial , a real estate firm that represented PER.C6. "This group felt they needed to be in Kendall Square."

Just two years ago, there was a 26.2 percent vacancy rate in Cambridge laboratory and research-and-development space, according to Mark J. Winters, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc., a real estate firm that represented Draper Laboratory. In the second quarter of this year, the vacancy rate dropped to 11.5 percent. Excluding space available through subleasing, the rate was even lower, 5.5 percent.

"The lab market has shifted from a tenant to a landlord market in a very short period of time," said Winters.

To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Boston Globe
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Wood-Armfield begins last sale

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Wood-Armfield begins last sale. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--HIGH POINT -- Wood-Armfield Home Furnishings opened its doors for the first time in months Thursday as it launched its high-impact going-out-of business sale.

"It's bittersweet," said Peggy Marram, event manager. "The customers are excited. They were so happy to see the doors open again."

Wood-Armfield's parent company, Utility Craft Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July after 67 years in High Point.

The company reported assets of $3.9 million and liabilities of $11.6 million. Approximately 1,500 customers had unfulfilled orders at that time. The sale, which started at Wood-Armfield at 460 S. Main St. on Thursday and will last no more than 180 days, involves $3 million of inventory.



"We're selling inventory purchased for this sale," Marram said. "A lot of it is 'one-onlys.'" The vast five-floor, 160,000-square-foot building is filled with dining room and bedroom furniture, rugs, mattresses and artwork -- all on sale at different price points. Notable brands are Broyhill, Bernhardt, Hickory Chair, Hooker, Pennsylvania House and Stanley.

"I actually just came to look, to browse," said Carolyne Burgman of Greensboro. "I'm looking for several pieces to finish off a family room in my house."

Burgman was eyeing a two-person Charleston Forge table Thursday morning. She said she had ordered a sofa, loveseat and recliner from Wood-Armfield earlier this year but canceled the order just before the company filed for bankruptcy.

"I got my deposit back," she said. "I don't have any hard feelings."

Customers trickled in as the day progressed, some browsing while others knew exactly what they were looking for.

"I enjoy just coming and looking," said Maxine Hiatt of High Point, who is a repeat customer of Wood-Armfield. "There's a lot of odds and ends you have to have, and you don't know it until you see it."

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Consultancy: ERP sales to reach US$107mn in 2006. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions could generate sales in Argentina of up to US$107mn in 2006, newspaper Infobae reported local consultancy Trends Consulting director Ricardo Karaman as saying.



This figure includes licenses, maintenance and services, Karaman explained. A total of 22.3% of big and medium-sized companies plan to adopt ERP solutions this year, while 43.8% plan to expand their current ERP solutions.

The implementation of ERP solutions among the SME segment has also increased in the last three years due to the introduction of solutions designed especially for that segment as well as improved access to credit.

SMEs have been heavily adopting technology such as IT services and consulting in a bid to optimize their business processed and to increase competitiveness, Karaman said.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
One IP Voice Partners with Intrado for VoIP E9-1-1. Check it out:
Making IP a part of the communications infrastructure allows enterprises to acquire and utilize new applications and capabilities that are essential to improving processes in order to more effectively meet today’s evolving business goals.  Chief among those enhancements is the ability to realize and extended mobile workforce, increasing productivity and both employee and customer satisfaction.


 
But, as employees move from place to place, their physical locations can become difficult to track in case of emergency, which can result in difficulty in relaying information to correct PSAP, which, in turn, can result in significant delays in emergency personnel reaching a person in need. 
 
To ease that concern for its customer base, One IP Voice (formerly Farmstead Telephone Group) subsidiary OIPV Corp, which provides carrier-based IP services, has reached an agreement with Intrado to market Intrado’s (News - Alert) VoIP E9-1-1 services, targeting the enterprise market, including SMEs as well as larger distributed organizations and mobile workforces, and IP powered communications service providers. 
 
OIPV will combine its comprehensive solution, which delivers the capabilities required to effectively provide 9-1-1 services.  Significantly, OIPV will leverage E9-1-1 management applications and VoIP to track physical locations of phone users — including mobile users providing Local Information Services (LIS) to PSAPs.  Using OIPV’s private converged IP network, customers are ensured ubiquitous and secure access at all times.
 
The benefit of teaming with Intrado is evident is Intrado’s recent success in trialing its nationwide real-time location information delivery over its Intrado V9-1-1 Services platform.  In short, the success means that Intrado customers and partners will be able to base location information for emergency personnel deployments solely on data gleaned from the end user device, rather than requiring end users to continually update location data as the travel.
 
The OIPV solution, combined Intrado’s E9-1-1 services, interface with the enterprise network identify location, detect phone moves, adds, and changes, and then provide call routing and delivery to the geographically correct PSAP with any additional requisite information. 
 
 
Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.
 
Seeven goes always-on [SEVEN Networks]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SEVENs latest software connects users to their inbox in less than 5 minutes

Redwood City, CA September 21, 2006 Consumers can now have push email up and running on their phone within minutes. The latest version of SEVENs Always-On Mail makes it easier than ever before to keep up to date with personal or work email, and paves the way for true mass market adoption of mobile email services.



As the adoption rate of mobile email increases and the technology reaches mass market levels, operators will need to scale their services rapidly. Simple and fast provisioning, ease of use and a minimum of administration is essential for our operator customers and for their customers says Paul Hedman, COO, SEVEN. Our latest version of Always-On Mail meets these requirements. It brings to market the fastest installation process of any mobile email service, and it is available on more devices and through more operators than any other solution. All of these benchmarks mean we hold the number one position in the white-label mobile email market.

Two-click access is just one of a number of new features in Version 5.2 of Always-On Mail. With the multiple email inbox feature, end-users can now have mails from multiple accounts pushed to the same device, and each inbox retains the familiar look and feel of Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes or Internet email.

The new version also brings added benefits to operators, all designed to maximize consumer and enterprise adoption rates in the retail market. Enhancements include simplified provisioning, delivery and administration which help speed time to market, increase ARPU (average revenue per user) and lower subscriber churn rates. Furthermore, Always-On Mail now has single client architecture and a single relay server for all its products to simplify administration and lower support costs for operators. This makes the distribution and management of the software highly efficient.

The range of mobile devices on which Always-On Mail is, or can be, pre-installed is another major benefit to operators. Service adoption rates of up to 35% have been achieved by SEVEN customers using this method of service delivery. By combining pre-installation with over-the-air provisioning and a white-label download site, operators can reach out to any potential user via their device, the web or a PC.

Hedman concludes; SEVENs focus on the end-user and their needs is making mass market mobile email a reality for our operator customers. Whether business or consumer, people want a solution which is familiar and easy to use, which is flexible to suit their particular needs, and which is readily available from a local provider. We have achieved this with the latest version Always-On Mail, and it will be the foundation of the next phase of our growth.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
DCI awarded Sethusamudram contract. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) INDIA'S cabinet committee on economic affairs has awarded state-run Dredging Corporation of India the entire Rs20.78bn ($448m) job of dredging 82.5m cu m for the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project, writes Shirish Nadkarni in Mumbai.



DCI had earlier been awarded the capital dredging contract for 13.55m cu m for the Sethusamudram project, of which the company has finished pulling out 6.95m cu m of rock, silt and soil from the sea bed to date.

The public sector enterprise has now received approval for the remaining 69m cu m.

Earlier, Tuticorin Port Trust had floated an international tender for the work for the second time. The authorities were, however, dissatisfied with the rates of upwards of Rs50bn quoted by a number of global bidders, including Dutch and Belgian dredging companies.

'Had we accepted their bids it would have more than doubled the outlay for the Sethusamudram project,' said TPT chairman N Raghupathy.

The Sethusamudram project envisages dredging a ship channel across the Palk straits between India and Sri Lanka.

The channel will allow ships sailing between the east and west coasts of India to cut a straight passage through Indian territorial waters instead of having to sail round Sri Lanka.

It has been estimated that in the first year of operation of the project 3,055 ships will pass through the channel.

This translates to about nine transits a day.

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Pulkovo Airlines gets EU notification on possible flight ban. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 21 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006. mg jh

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.

Public Service considers split

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Public Service considers split. Check it out:
(Record, The (Hackensack, NJ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Less than one week after regulators quashed its proposed sale to Exelon Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group is examining whether to split its power generation division from its regulated utility.



If Public Service splits into two companies, the power generation business could become an acquisition target for a competitor looking to add power plants.

CEO E. James Ferland said there are no immediate plans for splitting the company, but acknowledged Wednesday that "one has to examine that model" as a way to maximize shareholder value. He was responding to an analyst's question during a conference call.

The Newark-based company's proposed $17.8 billion sale to Exelon Corp. collapsed last week, partially due to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities insistence that Public Service divest some of its generating plants as a condition of BPU approval.

As a separate company, the PSEG Power division would not be subject to BPU oversight, even as Public Service Electric and Gas Co., the operating utility, remains regulated by the BPU, Ferland said. PSE&G is New Jersey's largest utility with 2.1 million customers.

Ferland said the parent company's financial outlook is the strongest it has been in 20-plus years, and stressed there is no rush to undertake a major restructuring. "It's something we'd want to think through before we'd do it," he said.

Deregulation, which took effect in 1999, opened the market to third-party suppliers, leading New Jersey's three other utilities to sell off their generation businesses, as did New York's Consolidated Edison, to concentrate on delivery and service.

But Public Service decided to remain in the generation business, and its plants have supplied a significant percent of the company's earnings. The Public Service plants sell energy on the open market to utilities in several states, including PSE&G.

Although the BPU has no regulatory jurisdiction over the operation of Public Service's generating plants, they were a key and contentious factor in negotiations between the parties. The company agreed to sell off four plants to win approval of the sale from the U.S. Department of Justice, but the BPU called for selling two more.

Paul Patterson, an analyst with Glen Rock Associates, an independent research company based in New York, said splitting into separate companies isn't all that unusual in the industry.

Public Service and other companies "have to reflect on the regulatory environment, and whether they might be better to separate into two companies," Patterson said.

Ferland's comments came in a call intended to assure investors that the company remains on solid financial footing despite the collapse of the Exelon deal.

Last year Public Service earned $661 million.

The Exelon deal, as originally planned, was a very good strategic move for investors and the state of New Jersey, Ferland said. But those benefits disappeared under the terms being insisted upon by the BPU staff, he added.

Still, Ferland said the outlook for Public Service as a stand-alone company is extremely strong.

PSEG stock fell about $6 in the first trading session after Exelon's withdrawal was announced, but it has since held steady. It closed at $61.40 a share Wednesday, down 10 cents from Tuesday's close.

Several analysts expressed concern that the failed Exelon deal could portend tough times for Public Service in dealing with state regulators, but Ferland said he doesn't think that will happen.

"Over the years, New Jersey regulators have generally been quite fair," he said. "I'm quite confident this is the situation we'll return to once this merger is out of the way."

He said he will find out quickly, because the company has filed for $200 million in rate increases. Action had been put on hold pending the outcome of the Exelon discussions.

Despite the collapse of the deal to sell the company, Exelon will continue operating Public Service's three nuclear plants under an agreement reached almost two years ago, Ferland said. The Hope Creek and two Salem plants, which had frequent problems before Exelon got involved, have been operating at 96 percent of capacity and were performing near 100 percent during this summer's hottest days, he said.

Exelon owns 43 percent of the two Salem plants, so it has a vested interest beyond an operation contract, which Public Service can extend for another three years when the current agreement expires in January.

In addition, Public Service will explore swapping ownership interests in the plants with Exelon, including its 100 percent stake in Hope Creek, Ferland said. "I think that will be the subject of discussions."

He didn't say what Public Service might get in return.

To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.NorthJersey.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Egypt risk: Labour market risk

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Egypt risk: Labour market risk. Check it out:
(RiskWire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

RISK RATINGSCurrentCurrentPreviousPreviousRatingScoreRatingScoreOverall assessmentC44C46Labour market riskB39B39Note: E=most risky; 100=most risky.SUMMARY

A new labour law was passed in April 2003 after nine years of discussion. The legislation was highly contentious as employers feared the consequences of allowing workers the right to strike, while workers' representatives were resistant to allowing employers greater latitude in making redundancies. The law does give workers the right to strike. However, complicated and time-consuming conditions in practice severely limit the ability of workers to do this. The law also eases restrictions on termination of employment--most importantly redundancies can now be made on economic grounds. The education system, based on learning by rote rather than critical analysis, is not geared to teaching the skills required in the free market. A Nasserite government promise to employ all university graduates still stands, though in practice it is no longer applied. The labour market is packed with young job-seekers.



SCENARIOS

The passage of the new labour law causes an increase in the incidence of strikes by Egyptian workers (Low Risk)

Egypts parliament passed a long-considered labour law in April 2003. This measure gives workers limited rights to strike and to take other industrial action. In practice, however, the procedure for gaining permission to strike is complicated and time-consuming and strikes will be hard to implement--the government dislikes populist activity such as industrial action, and disapproves of anything that disrupts industrial production. As in any country, advance notice of changes in labour conditions and a transparent approach to worker relations will minimise the risk of industrial action. Incentive-related pay schemes have proved successful where implemented and may encourage more loyalty to the company.

The education system produces too few graduates with the skills needed by foreign businesses (High Risk)

The state education system is massively overburdened, teachers are underpaid and instruction methods are based on learning by rote rather than by critical analysis. Companies complain of too few workers with specialised training, particularly in the tourism and pharmaceutical sectors, but also in the budding high-technology industries. The government under Ahmed Nazif has recognised the deficiencies of the education system and has announced plans for an overhaul, including the introduction of public-private partnerships, an idea which is yet to be fully fleshed out. However, it will take time for benefits to accrue from any such overhaul. Foreign businesses, at least initially, may find suitable workers among the large number of Egyptians educated in Europe or the US. There is, however, no shortage of able and motivated graduates looking for employment who will respond well to in-house, on-the-job training.

BACKGROUND

(Updated: September 4th, 2006)

Union Strength

Unified Labour Law 12/2003 gives workers the right to organise trade unions, and employers are prohibited from interfering in union activities. There are 23 industrial unions in Egypt, all of which are under the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which is closely linked to the ruling National Democratic Party. Union membership exceeds 4m, and members are drawn mostly from state-owned companies. Hence, the ETUF represents more than 20% of Egypts workforce.

Workers have the right to organise a union in any enterprise employing more than 50 workers, but only one union is allowed in a workplace. Where there is no trade union, discussions can be held between the employer and five employees elected by a general trade union that is associated with the sector. Union membership is not mandatory, even at state-owned enterprises.

Articles 146151 of Law 12 cover collective bargaining, defined as negotiations between trade unions and employers to improve the terms and conditions of employment or to settle disputes between workers and employers (Article 146).

Even with the new labour law, collective bargaining is difficult since the government sets public-sector wages, benefits and job classifications by law. The unions have little influence in determining private-sector wages, which are kept above those of the public sector by market needs. There are no closed shops in the private sector, but employees may not be dismissed for being union members.

Labour Disputes

Strikes appear to have increased in recent years. Karam Saber, director of the Land Centre for Human Rights, reported 743 labour protests in Egypt in 19982003, adding that there was nearly one per day in 2004. MahmoudMohieldin, the minister of investment, called the report exaggerated. Even so, strikes started receiving local and foreign media attention during the first half of 2005: workers at the private-sector Aura-Misr Asbestos Factory demanded compensation for severe health problems; public-sector textile workers staged hunger strikes amid fears about the upcoming privatisation of the Esco factory, thereby receiving early-retirement packages or seasonal contracts; and air-traffic controllers at Cairo International Airport staged a disruptive work slowdown for better wages, prompting Ahmad Shafiq, the minister of civil aviation, to proclaim them traitors. There were 16 demonstrations, 43 strikes and 53 sit-ins in 2005.

Article 192 of Law 12 gives workers the right to stage peaceful protests, although these must be organised and approved by the appropriate trade union. Workers are prohibited from modifying a collective labour agreement during its period of validity, and staging a strike is prohibited if such action is deemed a threat to national security.

Strikes rarely last more than a few days, usually taking the form of sit-ins, work slowdowns or stoppages, or demonstrations in worker-housing areas. Strikers may be sentenced to up to two years in prison, and those who incite others to strike may receive more severe penalties. Union involvement tends to be low-profile since the government can remove any union executive from office for provoking a strike.

Public confrontations between the ETUF and the government are rare, and disputes are usually resolved by consensus behind closed doors. The principal unions are those in the industries dominated by the public sector, including petroleum, chemicals, iron and steel, textiles, and transport. Aside from privatisation, the main reason for strikes is the failure to pay bonuses or allowances due to employees.

Wage Restrictions

Even the highest wages and salaries in Egypt are low by international standards. The minimum monthly wage, which applies to all workers except those under probation or in vocational training, is less than E400 for a six-day, 48-hour working week. Wages for any job at a foreign-owned firm are probably at least four times the basic minimum wage.

Article 34 of Unified Labour Law 12 specifies annual wage increases of at least 7% of base salary. Standard compensation includes salary, bonuses (other than productivity bonuses), allowances, cost-of-living increases and profit sharing. If an employer cannot afford a pay increase of 7%, the National Council for Wages will adjudicate to resolve the issue. Many private-sector employers prefer to pay workers a low basic wage and add incentives to improve productivity.

There is no generally recognised wage index, and the governments attitude to wage questions reflects its need to restrain public-sector wages and reduce the budget deficit. As far as the private sector is concerned, the government mainly wishes to keep people employed. However, in late 2005, the government increased public-sector salaries by up to 100% as part of President Hosni Mubaraks election campaign. Officials at the Finance Ministry point out that the lions share of public-sector pay packets comes from bonuses and other allowances, and even a 100% increase in basic salaries will have little effect on the budget deficit.

As a result of an overall labour surplus, wages in many areas of the private sector have hardly risen at all in recent years. Wage rises have been slight even amid concerns about inflation on staple consumer goods since January 2003, following the devaluation of the Egyptian pound. For most local firms, any acknowledgement of rising living costs has been offset by corresponding increases in business costs as a result of the currency devaluation.

Private-sector salaries for skilled workers and professionals are considerably higher than in the public sector, and foreign companies are generally willing to pay more than market rates to attract the best candidates. Financial and human-resources managers and qualified sales and marketing staff, which are in short supply, can demand relatively high salaries. Salaries at banks and financial-services firms also have risen in recent years as the market has become more sophisticated.

In service sectors, including hotels and restaurants, the distribution of service charges (for instance, through tip sharing) is more significant than the basic salary level. For every E1 earned in salary, employees tend to receive E34 as their share of service charges.

Employers must pay monthly contributions to the Ministry of Social Insurance and Social Affairs in accordance with Social Insurance Law 79 of 1975, as amended by Law 47 of 1984. The law requires total contributions amounting to 40% of the employees basic annual salary, subject to an upper limit of E5,400, with 26% paid by the employer and the remainder deducted from the employees salary. In addition, a contribution of 35% is payable on variable salary (such as bonuses and commissions), subject to an upper limit of E6,000. A separate system applies to workers employed by a contractor, whose contributions amount to 28% of all wages (18% of which is contributed by the contractor). The payments, due within 15 days of the end of the month, cover old-age pensions and insurance for disability, death, work accidents, medical needs and unemployment.

Foreign employers are not required to pay social contributions if their country of origin offers the same treatment to Egyptians. Private-sector companies can obtain exemption from payments to the health-insurance scheme if they provide a free health-insurance scheme of their own, offering equivalent or better care.

Article 54 of Law 12 entitles an employee whose illness is verified by a competent medical authority to sick leave as determined by the Social Insurance Law, which guarantees compensation equivalent to 75% of salary for the first 20 days of illness and 85% for the following 90 days within the same year. For workers aged 1217 years, employers must pay for additional health provisions, including a yearly physical examination, up-to-date medical records and a daily cup of milk (at least 200 grams).

Article 47 provides for an annual vacation for employees in all sectors, set at 21 days for workers with more than one year of service and 30 days for workers with ten years of service, or who are older than aged 50. Workers employed for less than a year are entitled to take leave in proportion to their time employed. Vacations can be increased by up to one week for employees who work in dangerous occupations or remote areas, depending on ministerial directives.

Article 91 of Law 12 grants female workers a three-month maternity leave at full wages, assuming that the worker has been at the company for at least ten months. Women are not required to work during the 45 days after a childs birth, but such maternity leave does not have to be granted more than twice in the course of one job. Mothers of infants up to 24 months old are entitled to two extra daily rest periods of at least 30 minutes each without any loss of pay. In firms with more than 50 employees, women workers may also take up to three unpaid leaves of two years to care for their children. Firms employing more than 100 workers at one location must provide nursery care for workers children.

All employees are permitted six casual days per year, with a maximum limit of two days at a time. Employees are also entitled to full pay for holidays designated by the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration (not to exceed 13 days per year, except that with Coptic Christian holidays the number may rise to 18 days). An employer may ask employees to work during public holidays, but such employees will be entitled to double pay.

Public-sector employees have come to expect annual bonuses equivalent to at least one month pay, in addition to benefits from profit-sharing and social-insurance schemes. Bonuses and voluntary fringe benefits are also an important element of the private-sector pay structure; indeed, some 40% of companies award a standard one-month pay bonus each year, and 20% award a two-month bonus.

The payment of bonuses is not mandatory, but it can become so under the doctrine of acquired rights. A bonus must be of general application, must be fixed and must be paid for at least three consecutive years before it can be considered habitual and therefore mandatory.

Around 70% of private-sector firms offer representative allowances, such as a company car or a uniform, which are not subject to tax. Most large firms also provide bus transport for their employees, partly as a benefit and partly to ensure on-time arrival. Many private firms also arrange for a doctor to visit the workplace several days a week in a bid to discourage absenteeism.

In general, the total cost of fringe benefits is only about 10% of base pay. Foreign-owned firms must offer the same benefits as those required of Egyptian companies.

Hiring and Firing Restrictions

To work in Egypt, all foreigners (with the exception of accredited foreign journalists) must obtain a work permit from the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration in the relevant governorate (or from the free-zone authority for free-zone projects). The General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI) has established its own manpower office to assist companies registered under Law 230 and Law 8. A foreigner working for one of these firms should submit an application to GAFI with the necessary documents from the employer and a fee of E250 (E150 for renewals). Application reviews normally take up to two months, and permits last for one year.

Before a foreigner can obtain a work permit, the employer may be required to demonstrate that no qualified Egyptian is available for the job. On requesting work permits for non-Egyptians, the employer must commit to appointing Egyptian assistants who will be trained to take over the foreigners job. Hence, work permits are not renewed indefinitely, though renewals rarely present difficulty in actual practice. Non-Egyptian company owners automatically obtain a residence visa when they obtain permission to establish a company in Egypt.

For Law 159 companies (and previously for Law 230 inland projects), the number of foreign employees is limited to 10% of staff, with pay not exceeding 20% of total compensation. For shareholder companies, at least 75% of professional and administrative employees must be Egyptian, with combined earnings comprising not less than 70% of the total. An exception may be granted for up to two years if no qualified Egyptians are available. Similar rules for staff composition apply in the free zones, where at least 75% of staff must be Egyptian citizens.

Termination of employment is a lengthy and rigidly supervised procedure. Although employers may establish work requirements, the Unified Labour Law limits initial disciplinary sanctions imposed on an employee to a warning, postponement of the annual wage increase and deferment of a promotion. No penalty may be imposed without submitting reasons for it in writing. The employer may suspend the worker pending dismissal, but not for longer than 60 days.

If the suspended employee files a complaint within three days, a dismissal committee will be summoned to review the case. This committee includes two judges from the Ministry of Justice, the general manager of the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration (as chairman), a representative of the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions and a member of the concerned employers organisation. The affected employee must be allowed to have a trade-union representative attend the associated investigation. The committee must decide on the case within 15 days of the employers first request for discharge. The employer must pay the salary in full until the case is decided.

Article 69 of Law 12 provides that dismissal of an individual employee requires documented evidence of the employees deficiency or wrongdoing. Grounds for dismissal include the following: submission of false certificates or references; deliberate damage to company property; commission of an error that results in grave material loss to the employer; failure to observe safety instructions; absence from work for 20 intermittent days or ten consecutive days in a year; disclosure of a firms secrets; conviction of a crime; appearance at work under the influence of drugs or alcohol; assault on the employer; or display of gross inefficiency.

The committee must decide by a majority vote. If the committee refuses the request, the employer must either drop the dismissal or pay the worker compensation. The decision issued by the committee may be challenged before the Court of Appeals, in accordance with provisions of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law.

By law, the government may grant a company permission to cut back production and lay off workers only if the company is operating at a loss or can give some other substantial reason. Dismissals are generally not permitted for consolidation. An application by a company to lay off excess staff will lead to the summoning of a stoppage committee within 15 days.

The decision issued by the stoppage committee may be challenged before the Court of Appeals, in accordance with provisions of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law. Appeal may be made to a district committee, which must convene within 15 days with at least five members. These members include the deputy ministers of the relevant ministry for the companys activities and those for manpower and immigration, social insurance and the interior. The committee must reach a decision within 30 days of its first session, subject to review by the manpower and immigration minister.

Articles 104130 address contract expirations. Under the present law, if employees and employer continue with the same work arrangement after a contract expires, the contract is automatically renewed. Significantly, contracts renewed by default in this way become indefinite.

For a contract with an indefinite period, the employer may not terminate the contract unless the employee is guilty of wrongdoing as stipulated under Article 69. Expired contracts can also be renewed for a limited term by agreement between both parties.

An employer is legally responsible for providing two months notice of termination for employees with an employment contract of less than ten years, and three months notice if a contract extends beyond ten years. The labour contract remains legal during the notification period. Upon notification, the employee has the right to take off one day a week to search for other work until a job is found or the notification period ends.

Article 125 puts the retirement age at 60 years.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Portugal: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: The state airline, TAP, an oil and gas company, Galp Energia, and Portucel (paper and pulp) will be privatised. Regulatory bodies will be enhanced, with benefits for competition in utility markets, especially telecoms and energy.

2008-10: Privatisations will continue in the energy sector. Diminished resistance to foreign takeovers and joint ventures with Spanish firms, especially in the banking, retail and energy sectors.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Continued efforts to boost foreign direct investment (FDI) through tax incentives, although efforts to make significant improvements to the overall tax framework will be hampered in the short term by budgetary constraints.

2008-10: Stiffer competition for FDI from central and eastern Europe. High-tech companies may benefit from tax incentives.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Moderate trade friction persists between the EU and the US. Despite reintroduction of EU quotas on certain textile imports from China in 2005, Portuguese textile firms continue to struggle against increased competition.

2008-10: Full opening to textile imports from China in 2008.

Taxes

2006-07: The income tax rate on high earners rose from 40% to 42% in January 2006. Taxes on tobacco, fuel and cars increased in January 2006, with further increases in 2007. The government will enact measures to counter tax evasion.

2008-10: Some tax cuts likely for low-income earners in the run-up to the general election in 2009.

Financing

2006-07: Renewed merger and acquisitions activity in the banking sector will lead to high concentration in the sector.

2008-10: Further consolidation in the financial sector. Medium-sized businesses will seek more funding on international capital markets. Spanish banks will attempt to increase their presence in the Portuguese market.

The labour market

2006-07: Relations with public-sector trade unions are under strain over reduced staffing, low pay rises and cuts in benefits.

2008-10: Additional investment in education and research to improve the quality of the labour force.

Infrastructure

2006-07: The airport at Oporto will be expanded, and construction will begin on a new airport for Lisbon in 2007.

2008-10: Further work on resolving infrastructure deficiencies, notably by expanding high-speed rail links with Spain. Integration of the pan-Iberian energy market will be accelerated, with the aim of reaching full integration during 2008.



Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Netherlands: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Increased energy, telephone and broadband competition, but incumbents remain dominant.

2008-10: Some liberalisation of sectors not covered by the new anti-cartel law, such as the media and possibly healthcare.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: No significant changes to generally favourable conditions.

2008-10: Some tax privileges may have to be reduced or eliminated under pressure from the OECD and the EU.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: An EU-China agreement will restrict imports of some textile products from China.

2008-10: Low chance of success in reaching a new agreement on global trade liberalisation. Trade liberalisation continues, albeit slowly, through unilateral, bilateral and regional arrangements

Taxes

2006-07: Reduction in the rate of corporation tax to 25% in 2007.

2008-10: Further reductions in corporation tax possible. Rises in indirect and environmental taxes. New efforts to reduce the use of mechanisms to avoid tax payments.

Financing

2006-07: Regulatory controls over financial operations and dealers strengthened.

2008-10: Dutch banks and insurance companies to reinforce alliances in more open EU market.

The labour market

2006-07: Companies face higher costs for the disability benefit scheme, but otherwise moderate wage cost increases.

2008-10: Greater efforts to expand labour force participation through financial incentives. Trade unions will remain influential, especially if a more left-wing government were to take over after the November 2006 election.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Upgrading of Rotterdam port, as well as of rail, road, waterways and telecommunications infrastructure. The "Betuwelijn", a goods rail connection between the port of Rotterdam and the Ruhrgebiet in Germany comes into operation.



2008-10: Expansion of Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and improved rail links with Germany. High-speed train to Belgium and France enters into service.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Canada: Forex regulations

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Canada: Forex regulations. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BRIEFING

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Overview

Few controls hinder the movement of capital or other payments either into or out of Canada. But the federal government has strengthened its anti-money-laundering regime to deal with the increased threat of terrorism and to bring it in line with international best practices.



There are some restrictions on investments in Canada. Large direct investments must be approved by a federal agency, Investment Canada, and sometimes also by the federal Competition Bureau. Portfolio investment is limited in several types of business, including banking; media and communications; cultural activities (book publishing and retailing, filmmaking and distribution); and, to some extent, transportation. Restrictions on foreign portfolio holdings in these sectors range from 2049%.

One regulation that limited outflows of Canadian capitalforeign holdings in pension fundswas eliminated in the February 2005 federal budget. Foreign pension assets had previously been limited to a maximum of 30%.

In November 2001 the federal government began to monitor currency flows under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act. (The act, originally passed in May 2000, became more relevant after the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001.) Individuals, financial institutions and intermediaries are required to provide information to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) to help prevent money laundering and, with subsequent amendments, the financing of terrorist activities. FINTRAC and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) can share information under June 2004 revisions to federal law. The following types of exchanges must be reported:

cash transactions of C$10,000 or more;

international electronic funds transfers of C$10,000 or more;

crossborder movements of large amounts of currency or monetary instruments if the rate of exchange exceeds the posted rate; and

payments of C$3,000 or more in casino cheques.

Information posted on the FINTRAC website includes (1) information on money laundering and the intent of the new law; (2) a list of the activities that should be reported and how this should be done; (3) an explanation of when and how to submit reports; and (4) an outline of how compliance procedures are to be implemented by individuals and organisations.

Under Canadian law, money laundering is a criminal offence that includes such acts as concealing or converting property (or the monetary proceeds of property) and knowing that the proceeds were derived from committing an offence under Section 462.31 of the Criminal Code. Money laundering takes the form of placement (putting proceeds of crime into the financial system), layering (using a complex series of transactions to disguise an illegal source of income) or integration (putting illegal proceeds into legitimate businesses).

Canadian law supports international efforts to combat money laundering and, more recently, the financing of terrorism. Canada has been a member of the OECD-led Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering since it was formed in 1989.

Penalties for not filing reports under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act are severe: up to five years in prison and/or a fine up to C$2m for failing to report a suspicious transaction; fines of C$500,000 (first offence) to C$1m (subsequent offences) for failing to report large cash transactions; and five years in prison and/or a fine up to C$500,000 for failing to keep records.

Lawyers challenged portions of the new law, arguing that it violated the principle of client-solicitor privilege. Application of the law to lawyers was suspended by mid-April 2002. The government repealed sections of the law pertaining to lawyers in March 2003 and said it would develop a new regulatory and legislative regime that takes into account the nature of the duties of legal counsel. The Attorney General of Canada has indicated that clients rather than lawyers are responsible for reporting under the act, and lawyers have been advised to explain that to their clients. In April 2004 the Law Society of British Columbia adopted a rule to prohibit lawyers in the province from accepting more than C$10,000 in cash from a client, except in certain circumstances (as executor of a will, or for payment of bail or legal fees).

During the fiscal year which ended March 31st 2006, FINTRAC detected the probability of illegal conduct in 142 cases (from among about 10m reported transactions). Of these, 110 involved suspected money laundering, 24 concerned suspected terrorist activities and eight combined the two offences. The total dollar value represented in these cases was more than C$2bn, an increase from C$700m in the previous fiscal year. All suspicions of illegal actions are turned over to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for investigation. In February 2006, FINTRAC upgraded its electronic reporting system, creating a secure website called F2R.

Repatriation of capital

No restrictions apply.

Profit remittances

No restrictions or reporting requirements apply.

Tax consequences. Dividends are paid out after corporate income tax. There is no withholding tax on dividends paid by resident companies to Canadian individuals or corporations. In general, dividends paid or credited to non-residents are subject to a 25% withholding tax. Double-tax treaties can reduce this rate to 15% or less.

In addition to normal business expenses, Canadian corporations can generally deduct dividends received from another Canadian enterprise. Private companies are subject to a special refundable 25% tax on dividends received from companies in which the recipient has an interest of less than 10%. The tax is refundable to the corporation when it passes the dividend income on to its shareholders.

Loan inflows and repayment

No restrictions apply to borrowing from abroad. There are no limitations on the remittance of interest or principal on foreign-currency loans, and no reporting requirements.

Tax consequences. Corporations can pay interest to non-residents free of withholding tax on debt of five years or more. Interest payable to a non-resident-owned investment corporation is exempt from withholding tax. Otherwise, interest payments to non-resident individuals and corporations are generally subject to a 25% withholding tax (although this rate may be reduced under double-tax treaties). Interest paid to a Canadian resident is generally taxed as regular income to the recipient.

Transfer of royalties and fees

No restrictions apply. There are no reporting requirements, except when the remittances are subject to an agreement under the Investment Canada Act.

Tax consequences. A 25% tax is withheld on royalties and management fees paid to non-residents (but may be reduced by various tax treaties). For example, a US-Canada income tax treaty protocol in effect since 1995 abolished the withholding tax on royalties for computer software, patents and technical data.

Ontario restricts the amounts of royalties and management fees paid to non-residents that can be deducted from taxable income in calculating provincial taxes.

Restrictions on trade-related payments

No restrictions apply to export or import payments. Leading and lagging of payments are allowed.

Both bilateral and multilateral netting are freely permitted.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Ecuador: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Red tape, regulatory opacity, institutional politicisation and powerful vested interests distort the business climate. Attempts to modernise the state oil company, Petroecuador, and hire private managers for utilities are pursued only haltingly.



2008-10: Some progress on liberalising price controls in utilities and transport, but inefficiencies remain in Petroecuador.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Ambivalent attitude towards foreign direct investment (FDI). Disputes will sour the climate in the oil industry. Official policy is open, but FDI outside the oil industry will be slow to arrive.

2008-10: In the absence of a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the US, foreign investment inflows slow.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Efforts to revive FTA negotiations with the US are likely to fail, and trade preferences under the Andean Trade-Promotion and Drug-Eradication Act (ATPDEA) will expire. There will be few restrictions on foreign-exchange transactions.

2008-10: Exporters find it difficult to compete in US markets. Lingering doubts over sustainability of dollarisation, amid sluggish reform.

Taxes

2006-07: Complex, unwieldy tax system subject to frequent tinkering in the absence of wholesale reform. Some selective corporate tax increases to pay for one-off expenditurecommitments.

2008-10: Political opposition to reform will mean that, although the government should be able to push through improvements to compliance, attempts to raise rates or broaden the tax base may founder.

Financing

2006-07: Lending to the private sector increases from a low base. Rising interest rates amid tighter global liquidity complicate financing.

2008-10: Banks to strengthen balance sheets to meet Basel II standards. Medium- and long-term financing remains scarce.

The labour market

2006-07: Moves to reform labour laws, to guarantee the rights of workers to form unions and reduce the minimum number of workers required to form a union.

2008-10: Persistent scarcity of skilled labour aggravated by emigration.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Work on airport improvements and some hydroelectric projects will continue, but utilities services remain costly.

2008-10: Concessions to the private sector in areas such as airports and roads will encourage investment.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Algeria: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Privatisation of some state-owned firms may proceed, including some banks and Algerie Telecom.

2008-10: There is a good chance that further major privatisation deals will have been completed by the end of this period.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign investment will be encouraged in most areas of the economy, in a bid to develop the private sector. However, the business environment for foreign firms will remain opaque.

2008-10: Foreign investors will continue to be courted. Deregulation will expand, and transparency will improve further.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: The Association Agreement with the EU will force some rationalisation and reduction of tariffs.

2008-10: Reforms of the trade system and the financial services industry will accelerate as Algeria prepares for accession to the World Trade Organisation.

Taxes

2006-07: Corporation tax lowered from 30% to 25% with retroactive effect from January 1st 2006. Exemptions remain widespread. Few efforts to widen the tax base and improve collection, given strong levels of hydrocarbons revenue.

2008-10: Value-added tax will be expanded, and corporate and income tax rates may be reduced further.

Financing

2006-07: Banking sector reform will gradually pick up pace, focusing on staff training and strengthening the balance sheets. The role of foreign banks is likely to increase.

2008-10: Further efforts will be made to modernise and recapitalise the banking system, with further divestments expected.

The labour market

2006-07: Organised labour will remain resistant to privatisation, although a shift in attitude is discernible, offering room for negotiation and compromise. However, progress will be slow, with little movement on liberalising restrictive labour laws.



2008-10: Growth in the private sector will be too slow to create a sufficient number of sustainable jobs. Although there will be some progress on labour legislation reform, implementation will remain patchy.

Infrastructure

2006-07: There will be increasing use of build-operate-transfer schemes in the power and water sectors. The government will also step up public investment in areas such as housing, transportation and telecommunications.

2008-10: A broader array of public works projects will be opened up to foreign private capital.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Brazil: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Heavy burden of red tape impairs efficiency, despite progress on boosting competition and private investment in infrastructure. Intellectual property rights increasingly respected, but weak enforcement leaves piracy rife in some areas.



2008-10: Improvements to regulatory agencies and spread of public-private partnerships will stimulate private investment.

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Foreign direct investment (FDI) is officially welcomed, but in some areas domestic businesses will receive preferential treatment. FDI inflows will hold up, but will be below the privatisation-driven levels seen in the late 1990s.

2008-10: Tax incentives for foreign and domestic investors will favour those considering Brazil as an export base.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Diversified export markets foster continued growth of exports. Slow progress in trade talks with OECD countries, as Brazil will insist on reciprocal liberalisation. Further easing of remaining restrictions on currency movements.

2008-10: Export development will continue to be a policy priority, but remaining trade barriers will ease only slowly.

Taxes

2006-07: No discrimination against foreign capital, but the tax system remains complex and unwieldy.

2008-10: Efforts to reduce tax distortions, but the tax burden will still be by far the highest in the region.

Financing

2006-07: Capital markets continue to deepen, as macroeconomic stability is consolidated and crowding out by the public sector diminishes, but access to medium-term external financing will remain relatively costly and limited.

2008-10: Fiercer competition between financial institutions will support gradual reduction in borrowing costs, although these will remain high. Increased availability of equity and domestic bond market finance.

The labour market

2006-07: Labour market rigidities persist, but unemployment contains unit labour costs. Strikes and labour unrest are rare.

2008-10: Skills shortages persist, but education and training will gradually improve. Major labour reform unlikely.

Infrastructure

2006-07: Gradual advances on alleviating difficult and costly logistics, reflecting underinvestment in physical infrastructure.

2008-10: Public-private partnerships will stimulate needed investment in transport infrastructure and the energy network.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Pulkovo Airlines gets EU notification on possible flight ban. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 20 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006. mg jh

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Correo electrnico mvil en tiempo real de alto consumo con solo dos clics; ltimo software de SEVEN conecta a los usuarios con su casilla de entrada en menos de cinco minutos. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- 22 de septiembre de 2006 -- Ahora los consumidores pueden instalar y ejecutar correo electrónico móvil en tiempo real (push email) en su teléfono en cuestión de minutos. La última versión del software Always-On Mail de SEVEN hace que sea más fácil que nunca revisar los correos electrónicos personales o del trabajo, y prepara el terreno para una adopción verdaderamente masiva de los servicios de correo electrónico móvil.



"A medida que crece el índice de adopción del correo electrónico móvil y la tecnología llega a niveles de alto consumo, los operadores necesitarán adaptar con rapidez sus servicios. Por tanto, resulta esencial que nuestro software elimine cualquier complejidad para nuestros clientes operadores y sus clientes", dice Paul Hedman, director de operaciones de SEVEN. "Nuestra más reciente versión de Always-On Mail cumple con estos requisitos. Acerca al mercado el proceso de instalación más rápido en comparación con el de cualquier otro servicio de correo electrónico móvil, y se encuentra disponible en más dispositivos y a través de más operadores que ninguna otra solución. Todas estas características nos llevan a ocupar la primera posición en el mercado white label (etiqueta blanca) del correo electrónico móvil".

El acceso con dos clics es solo una de las nuevas características de la versión 5.2 de Always-On Mail. Ahora los usuarios finales pueden enviar diversos mensajes de correo electrónico personal y del trabajo al mismo dispositivo con la función de múltiple casilla de entrada de correo electrónico, y cada casilla de entrada conserva la apariencia conocida de Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes o el correo electrónico por Internet. La nueva versión también suma beneficios para los operadores, todos diseñados para maximizar los índices de adopción de consumidores y empresas en el mercado minorista. Las mejoras incluyen suministro, entrega y administración simplificada, lo que ayuda a acelerar el tiempo de salida al mercado, aumentar los ingresos promedio por usuario (ARPU, por sus siglas en inglés) y reducir las tasas de pérdida de clientes. Además, ahora Always-On Mail cuenta con una arquitectura de cliente único y un solo servidor de relay para todos sus productos, a fin de simplificar la administración y reducir los costos de respaldo para los operadores. Esto hace que la distribución y gestión del software sea altamente eficaz.

La gama de dispositivos móviles en los que Always-On Mail ha sido, o puede ser, preinstalado es otro importante beneficio para los operadores. Los clientes de SEVEN que emplean este método de suministro de servicio lograron índices de adopción del servicio de hasta 35%. Mediante la combinación de la preinstalación con suministro por aire y sitio de descarga de etiqueta blanca, los operadores pueden llegar a cualquier usuario potencial a través de su dispositivo, la Web o una computadora personal.

Hedman añadió: "La atención que presta SEVEN al usuario final y a sus necesidades está convirtiendo al correo electrónico móvil de alto consumo en una realidad para nuestros clientes operadores. Ya se trate de empresas o particulares, la gente quiere una solución que sea familiar y fácil de usar, flexible para adaptarse a sus necesidades individuales y de rápido acceso mediante un proveedor local. Esto es lo que hemos logrado con la última versión de Always-On Mail, y servirá de base para la próxima fase de nuestro crecimiento".

Acerca de SEVEN

SEVEN es un proveedor mundial de software que permite a los operadores móviles y proveedores de servicios y de correo electrónico por Internet ofrecer a sus abonados un acceso seguro, de bajo costo y en tiempo real a aplicaciones de correo electrónico empresariales y personales. El software de SEVEN está creado especialmente para satisfacer las necesidades y los requerimientos únicos de las empresas Fortune 500, las pequeñas y medianas organizaciones, los grupos de trabajo, los profesionales particulares y los consumidores.

El software de SEVEN es compatible con todas las principales plataformas de dispositivos, incluso teléfonos basados en BREW, J2ME, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm OS y Symbian, y actualmente se entrega con más de 200 modelos de teléfonos celulares fabricados por Hitachi, HTC, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Sanyo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson y Toshiba. SEVEN está disponible actualmente en todos los principales estándares de redes internacionales, y ha sido elegido por 100 importantes operadores de comunicaciones móviles y proveedores de servicios de todo el mundo, incluso: Bharti, Cingular Wireless, Etisalat, Globe Telecom, Hutchison, KDDI Corp., NTT DoCoMo, O2, Optus, Orange, Sprint Nextel, Starhub, Telefonica Moviles, Telenor Group, Telkom Indonesia, Vimpelcom y Yahoo!.

SEVEN tiene su sede en Redwood City, CA, Estados Unidos, y cuenta con oficinas locales en todo el mundo. Para obtener más información, visite el sitio web www.seven.com.

SEVEN es marca registrada de Seven Networks, Inc. Always-On Mail, Out of the Office, System SEVEN, SEVEN Personal Edition, SEVEN Enterprise Edition y SEVEN Server Edition también son marcas de fábrica o marcas de servicio de Seven Networks, Inc. o de sus subsidiarias. Todas las otras marcas o nombres comerciales pertenecen a sus respectivos propietarios.
CRM Classic Hard Rock With Radio KCRM 98.6, RWD Tech, Howard Stern, Open Solutions, O2's VoIP, Rosetta. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first gallon or so of coffee this morning, welcome to Radio KCRM 98.6, the classic hard rock edition, brought to you courtesy of Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite For Destruction:

I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it
So the little got more and more

Good, good news for you campers out there, you might've heard that The Most Dangerous Man In Show Business, Howard Stern, is disgruntled that nobody's listening to him on his uncensored Sirius shows, and is rather hankering for his days of commercial broadcast radio, where sure, he couldn't say (deleted), or (deleted) and certainly not (deleted), but where more than eighteen or so people heard anything he said at all.



So we are pleased, very pleased, oh so pleased to welcome Howard Stern to Radio KCRM 98.6, the classic hard rock edition, take it away Howard!

Stern: Awright, you (deleted) (deleted), let's (deleted) today, all the CR(deleted)M news that's fit to (deleted) (deleted), and you know what I'm (deleted) talking about. First up, we have the (deleted) --

Hey, thanks Howard, sorry about the, ah, mike problems there, I'm sure the engineer'll get it sorted out, but until then we'll fill in here. I believe Howard was about to tell you of RWD Technologies, Inc., a company that provides human performance improvement products and services, which has released their latest CD, a new suite of services designed to help companies maximize their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) investment while "improving their overall customer experience" and slamming out crunching metal riffs.

A twenty-four city tour opening for Audioslave is in the works.

RWD CRM Optimization Services will help organizations align the three critical components of CRM success, according to band members -- customer experience, customer strategy and employee performance -- and "incorporate best practices and improve return on investment (ROI)."

According to research firm and rock critics Gartner, Inc., " ... the success rates of mature [CRM] sales force technologies remain stubbornly disappointing (or low), with few markets exceeding 50 percent... Of course we blame this on all that JoJo and Justin Timberlake sludge, but this trend also suggests that shortcomings and inefficiencies aren't necessarily technological, but rather organizational, particularly with change management, process definition and project management skills employed for initiatives."

RWD's CRM Optimization Services improve ROI and customer experience by integrating the human components of CRM and business strategy and by, like, turning it up to eleven.

RWD's CRM Optimization Services include the RWD CRM Performance Aligned with Customer Expectations (PACE), which is a six-week analysis that provides a clear action plan for CRM success and some really heavy power chording in fifths progressions. During the PACE analysis, RWD assesses the five dimensions of CRM success -- customer experience, customer strategy, business process design, technology selection, and individual band members' performances, with particular attention given to on-stage solos.

Industry best practices are then aligned with CRM needs in an action plan for success.

There's also the CRM Certification eLearning Courses. Together with BPT Partners, a leading authority on CRM and one of the top-grossing touring acts over the summer, RWD offers access to CRM experts through these courses. This first-of-its-kind Internet-based training series is based on CRM at the Speed of Light, the best selling book by Paul Greenberg and the successful global seminar series and concert tour of the same name, with Axl Rose and Slash appearing onstage for two shows with Greenberg at the Palladium.

"Too often the decision to roll out a CRM solution comes with little consideration to the 'human factor,'" said Paul Greenberg, CRM consultant, author and lead guitarist. "Businesses must see CRM as a philosophy and business strategy. Technology's role is to improve human interactions in a business environment and enable workers to improve productivity and customer advocacy and really rock the rafters."

"When it comes to CRM success, those organizations that focus first on the human factor will see greater ROI than those who lead with technology," said Patricia Begley, Vice President of Strategic Business Initiatives and bassist, formerly of Limp Bizkit who's also toured with the Black-Eyed Peas and Hinder. "RWD believes that CRM done right improves a customer-facing employee's ability to build customer trust, loyalty, a strong set list and, ultimately, account profitability."

RWD Live At Budokan will be released in October.


CRM vendor and longtime summer rock festival attraction Open Solutions Inc. has announced a double bill tour with Rosetta Technologies Corporation, a Tampa-based band and vendor of secure enterprise printing products. The tour, which kicks off next week, will provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.

With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing lineup, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs.

"This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint products in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president and rhythm guitarist of Rosetta Technologies. "On this tour we'll alternate opening and closing bands nightly."

Hullar added that the tour would concentrate on mid-market cities and venues in conjunction with a greatest hits CD to be released next month.

"Imaging has the power to dramatically reduce operating expenses for community financial institutions," said Mark Ryan, vice president, general manager and lead vocalist for Open Solutions Imaged Payment Technologies. Ryan attributed the success of Open Solutions to their "wide influences, everything from Muddy Waters and Hank Williams to AC/DC and ABBA. Seriously, those Swedes knew how to write songs, shame about the Spandex, though."

Mike Nicastro, Open Solutions' SVP, drummer and chief marketing officer said his band's relationship with Rosetta Technologies "allows our fans the opportunity to move even further into the electronic payments world."


The German telecom operator and heavy metal band O2 has chosen goth rockers TietoEnator (come on, it really sounds like a goth band, doesn't it?) to upgrade its current customer service platform by migrating it to Voice over IP (VoIP).

O2 decided to implement an IP contact center suite tightly integrated into its business applications which, the band's agent says, will help them "lower total cost of ownership and to improve time-to-market for new products and services, creating a stronger bond between the band and their loyal headbanging fan base here in Germany and Europe."

As general contractor and system integrator TietoEnator is going to develop the new innovative customer services IT-solution on the basis of network and contact center applications from Cisco and Genesys, and is negotiating with the Rolling Stones to open some of their North American tour dates.

All customer contact media, such as telephone (mobile and fixed), customer self-service, e-mail, fax, SMS, MMS, the Web and written correspondence, will be supported by the IP contact center solution, say members of O2, who also complain of being frequently mistaken for Irish rockers U2.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
INTERVIEW WITH DEPUTY MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE KIRILL ANDROSOV ITOGI WEEKLY, P. 36-39, NO. 30, JULY 24, 2006. Check it out:
(Federal News Service (Russia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

INVESTMENT FUND ALLOCATION

The Russian government is shortly to approve four projects to
be financed out of the Investment Fund. In an interview with Itogi
Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Kirill Androsov
has been speaking about the main areas a government commission has
singled out for investment.

Q: First, could you answer one question: are you a liberal or
an interventionist in terms of your economic views?

A: Do you call interventionists those who advocate active
state interference in the economy?

Q: That is correct.

A: I think in your question you mentioned two extremes, but in
fact, there are many shades in this matter. As for me
personally, I wouldn't call myself a liberal. In any case, I shudder
when they call me a liberal. On the other hand, I do not believe
that active state interference in the economy is good. One has to
distinguish the spheres in which there can be no competition and
those where state participation is a must. But where a market is
possible, it should exist. And when the state becomes involved in
competitive sectors of the economy that is indisputably bad. I do
not know of any instances when state participation in such sectors
has been in any way beneficial. Besides, any state decision in the
field of economic policy should be viewed in terms of its long-term
and short-term effects. I do not rule out that state investments may
be effective in the short term, but never in the long term. That is
why, replying to your question, I will say that in terms of my
economic views I am somewhere in-between the liberals and
interventionists.

Q: You would agree, wouldn't you, that it is a very vague
distinction? How to prevent state interference in distributing the
Investment Fund money in a competitive environment?

A: When the Investment Fund was being created, we tried to
clearly determine the criteria for selecting projects. First of all,
the private investor taking part in the project must convince us
that he cannot implement it without state participation. It is only
if we find his explanations convincing that we begin considering the
proposal. There are only two cases when the investor cannot cope
without state assistance. The first is when infrastructure
facilities have to be built which are then to become property of the
state. The second is when the project is not effective enough
without state participation, which makes it unattractive for private
investors. For example, we are interested in creating a new
enterprise for strategic reasons, not so much for the sake of
profits, as for creating new jobs and ensuring economic growth in a
concrete region. But the enterprise cannot exist without
infrastructure facilities, many of which under our laws can only be
built by the state. At the same time the government bodies or
natural monopolies may not be interested in such an enterprise
appearing simply because there is no immediate gain for them from
it. It was then that the Investment Fund should step in. The second
case is a bit complicated. Let me illustrate. For example, the
price of borrowed capital for a private investor is 8-10 percent and
its own capital, 12-15 percent while the project has an internal
profit margin of 8-10 percent. Theoretically, business wouldn't
undertake such a project. By adding a little government money we can
lower the total value of capital and thus make the project
attractive.

Q: So, the state first forbids taxpayers to engage in certain
types of economic activities -- I mean the Law on Natural Monopolies
-- and then it takes tax money to build infrastructure.

A: Yes, we do have a Law on Natural Monopolies. Keeping them as
state property is not a question of economics but of state security.
I mean reliable supplies of power, gas and heating. A natural
monopoly is subject to tariff regulation by the state, and the
regulator then himself chooses either an economically valid tariff
or subsidies to industry and the households. So, I see no
contradictions there.

Q: Let us pass on from theory to practice. Were you, by any
chance, born in St. Petersburg?

A: I see what you are driving at. We recently suggested that a
government commission invest part of the Fund in the construction of
two highways. I mean building a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway on the
stretch from the 15th to 58th kilometer and the building of a toll
tunnel under the Neva River. The answer to your question is, no, I
do not come from St. Pete. And I assure you, we have not chosen
these projects because they are connected with St. Petersburg. And
certainly not because I live in Moscow. These two projects best suit
the criteria I have mentioned. They generate a serious
multiplication effect, they stimulate economic growth and make it
possible to partially solve the transportation problems of the
regions.

Q: And what guided the commission when it decided to direct 14
billion rubles into the construction of the petrochemical complex in
Nizhnekamsk?

A: We are pursing three very important tasks. First, we are
increasing the processing of Russian raw materials and passing on
from the export of oil to the export of petroleum products which are
much less dependent on the fluctuation of world prices. One of the
tasks of the Investment Fund is diversification of the Russian
economy to make it less dependent on world prices for liquid
hydrocarbons. Secondly, we are reducing the content of high-sulfur
oil in our export. As a result, the price of Russian oil should
grow, which will generate profits for the budget and the
companies. Finally, we are giving an impetus to the development of a
large number of small and medium enterprises operating further
downstream. And in doing so, we are not interfering in the
competitive sector. The state will take part only in the creation of
engineering infrastructure. We will recommend the government to
consider an issue of building a section of a railway and the oil
pipeline.

Q: I know that the initiators of these projects have asked you
for money than you gave them. Why?

A: We had a bit of an argument with them over effectiveness, we
counted again and identified some reserves that had not been
factored in. You see, when the calculations were made the price of
oil in the world markets was lower than it is today. So, it is not
surprising. By the way, investors offered the state a share in this
petrochemical complex. We thought it was unnecessary and our partner
agreed with that point of view.

Q: On the one hand, the state has created an Investment Fund.
On the other, it has announced its intention to limit access for
investors to individual sectors declared to be strategic. Is it
to do with politics or economics?

A: I see no politics there. But the problem of national
security certainly comes into it. But this is the practice of all
countries, both developed and developing. We are not inventing
anything new. There are sectors in the economy in which
participation of foreign capital and control by foreigners, is, to
put it mildly, frowned upon because it is connected with certain
aspects of national security. The state should create transparent
rules of the game and clearly determine what can be done and what
cannot be done, who can work in these sectors and who is debarred
from them. The government has already prepared a corresponding bill
and it will shortly be introduced at the State Duma. The sectors are
named there. They are production of strategic missiles, certain
biological substances, nuclear technologies, etc.

Q: These are the sectors where foreigners will be forbidden to
work. By the way, will they be closed only to foreign investors?

A: No, there are sectors which will be entirely financed by the
state. I see nothing wrong with that.

Q: In what sectors will foreign participation be limited?

A: That is the so-called second list. To take part in second-
list sectors foreign companies will have to obtain a permit from an
authorized agency. It is still being debated how big foreign
participation can be in the capital of such enterprises. There are
two options: no than 30 percent or no than 50 percent. So,
if I am a foreigner, and I buy less than 30 or 50 percent of the
shares in an enterprise, I don't have to get a permit. If I buy
, I have to clear my purchase with an authorized agency. We have
identified 39 such sectors. They all belong to the sphere where I
haven't yet met any foreign investors, with the exception of two
areas: natural monopolies, including power transmission and air
navigation and airport infrastructure.

Q: Can you give a couple of examples from the second list?

A: Yes. The production of ammunition, of instruments actively
used in the defense industry. All the restrictions are in one way or
another connected with the defense industry.

Q: Do you think that the industry in this country will become
less or attractive as a result of these restrictions?

A: Of course it will become attractive. The worst thing
for the investor is when he doesn't understand something. This is my
personal point of view. For our economy to become attractive
for foreign investors the rules of the game in it must be as clear
as possible. This is what our bill seeks to do.

Q: Surely the bill was hotly debated when it was prepared. And
surely some of the things that other agencies demanded from you have
not been included. Could you divulge a secret in precisely what
sectors you were urged not to allow foreign investors?

A: Yes, it was a serious debate. It involved not only the
Ministry of Industry and Energy, but also the Defense Ministry, the
Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry. It is not an
easy law and we wouldn't have delivered it without a serious
conceptual discussion. But I wouldn't reveal at this point what
other sectors we were urged to close to foreigners so as not to
provoke unnecessary emotions and to rule out any intrigues.

(Interviewed by Konstantin Ugodnikov)

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
09/13 Obagi Medical Products Inc. (Long Beach, CA) $86.2
Is a specialty pharmaceutical company.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.

Keep credible certificates

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Keep credible certificates. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu Industrial associations should improve their work to win public trust, says a commentary in the Shenzhen-based Jingbao newspaper. An excerpt follows: The mooncake certificate signing (CS) has been promoted in Shenzhen for more than a decade as representing high quality, and is accepted by more and more consumers. But Jingbao reporters found out recently that the issuance of mooncake CS is not standardized. As long as it gets paid, the Shenzhen Consumer Goods Quality Promotion Association will issue the CS signs to anyone. Its behaviour has greatly damaged CS's public credibility. Certification without public trust is meaningless. This case compels industrial associations to think about the route of development with self-discipline. As the development of a market economy deepens, non-governmental industrial associations and intermediate organizations are playing a more and more important role in enhancing enterprise co-operation and protecting enterprises' rights. The government has been encouraging the development of industrial associations as well as the establishment of industrial standards and quality certification. So there will be more industrial certifications like the mooncake CS. When a box of mooncakes is labelled with various quality certification signs, we will of course think it a good thing that many organizations are making strict checks on quality. Such non-government certification is operated on a voluntary basis. A mooncake attracts consumers with its quality and taste, and enterprises volunteer to take the certification. The ability to win public trust and influence consumers' behaviour is the major factor for such certification in getting enterprises' participation. If it loses consumers' trust, the certification will lose its attraction to enterprises, too. The industrial associations should be supervised too. Besides supervision from enterprises and public opinion, governmental oversight is also needed. If fake certifications go rampant, the credibility construction of the whole society will be harmed.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Jingkelong says HK IPO retail tranche 546 times. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu oversubscribed Beijing Jingkelong Co Ltd said the retail tranche of its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) was 546 times oversubscribed, while the international tranche was "substantially oversubscribed". The IPO price was set at 4.5 HK dollars, representing the upper end of the indicated price range of 3.9-4.5 HK dollars, the company said in a statement. Due to the oversubscription, the clawback mechanism has been applied and the number of shares allocated to retail investors will be raised to 50 percent of the total 132 million shares offered, from the original 10 percent. Trading of shares will start on September 25 on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) board.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
New path for domestic firms to solve overseas disputes. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu "Ring-ring-ring" Phone bells are ringing as one falls and another rises in Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints Service Center of the Ministry of Commerce. Without personal experience, no one can believe that such an institution, which has been set up for less than one month, is undertaking the heavy burden of offering free policy information and legal consultancy, as well as settling complaints for hundreds of thousands of Chinese enterprises that have overseas business operations. As disclosed by the principal, the Center has been receiving numerous facsimiles, business letters and calls every day since its opening on August 18, being in excess of expected work load. This has reflected that, on the one hand, Chinese enterprises are confronted with new problems along with the thriving of overseas business operations; on the other hand, relevant governmental departments are caring more and more about settling the practical difficulties of these enterprises. Service Center for Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints is affiliated to the Foreign Trade Development Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce; and the bureau also presides over the daily work and specific affairs of the Center. Feng Hongzhang, Director-General of the Foreign Trade Development Bureau, told the reporter, the establishment of the Service Center was an important act of the Ministry of Commerce to reinforce enterprise services and build a service-oriented government actively. In the future, Chinese enterprises, as long as encountering difficulties like business frauds, infringements, unfair treatments or trade barriers, will be able to ask the Service Center for solution. It was reported in the 10th China International Fair for Investment and Trade held in Xiamen on September 8, that China would continue to "go out" while introducing high-qualified foreign capital actively and effectively. Making use of foreign capital is an important part of China's basic state policy of "opening up"; meanwhile, foreign investment occupies an important position in China's open economy. Both the government and enterprises should be clearly aware of that improving investment and trade facilitation is not unidirectional, but is both "bringing in" and "going out". Encouraging and supporting enterprises' foreign economic and technology cooperation will be helpful for making full use of market and resources both at home and abroad and the balance of payments equilibrium. Up to 2005, foreign business cooperation of Chinese enterprises has covered nearly 200 countries and regions throughout the world; foreign direct investment has reached US$51.7 billion; foreign construction projects has accomplished an accumulative turnover of US$135.8 billion; and foreign cooperation of labor service has gained an accumulative turnover of US$35.6 billion. Therefore, experts analyzed that people are optimistic about the future of foreign investment of Chinese enterprise. In the Investment and Trade Fair, some foreign analyzers pointed out that the average annual increase rate of China's foreign investment, namely 20 percent, would make the volume of overseas investment reach US$60 billion in 2010. However, a bright future cannot assure a plain sailing for enterprises in overseas investment. Trade friction that China has met in recent years is one of the obstacles hindering China's "going out". Statistics from Ministry of Commerce shows that over US$30 billion valued export of China's enterprises was directly affected by trade frictions in 2005, and China has successively been the country that encountered the most trade frictions for 11 years since 1995. According to statistics, only 3 among 10,000 Chinese enterprises had independent intellectual property rights and core technologies in 2005, and China's dependency on foreign technology came up to 50 percent. Thus Chinese enterprises, being likely to be confronted with business frauds, infringements, unfair treatments or trade barriers at abroad where they are not easy to lodge complaints, are deeply trapped. Feng Hongzhang said that the government should take the responsibilities and obligations to help enterprises solve practical complications in time. Going on this premise, Ministry of Commerce established the Service Center for Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints. As Feng Honghang disclosed, enterprises are actively asking for consultancies and lodging complaints since the Center was founded, and the hot line "12335" keeps ringing every day. When contacting with these enterprises, the center finds that some enterprises are not clear about the service content and scope of the center, thus they are requesting services out of scope. And Feng Hongzhang introduced the three kinds of services the center could provide: the first one is to provide enterprises with information on the markets, policies, laws and regulations, and trade measures early-warning of different countries; the second is to provide proper legal consultancy, guidance and services oriented toward ordinary civil and commercial disputes; the third is to settle enterprises' complaints against foreign governments' unfair policies and measures, or about damages and unlawful infringements from trade barriers. As for policy information services, the center will reply to enterprises within 10 working days after accepting their requests; for ordinary civil and commercial legal disputes consultancies, the center will reply within 20 working days; to complaints involving unfair policies, measures or market barriers of foreign governments or organizations, the Center will hand the complaints over to relevant departments of Ministry of Commerce within three working days and feed back to enterprises in time.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Open Solutions Partners With Rosetta Technologies. Check it out:

CRM vendor Open Solutions Inc. has announced a partnership with Rosetta Technologies Corporation, a Tampa-based vendor of secure enterprise printing products. The partnership will provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.



With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing lineup, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs.

"This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint products in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president of Rosetta Technologies.

"Imaging has the power to dramatically reduce operating expenses for community financial institutions," said Mark Ryan, vice president, general manager for Open Solutions Imaged Payment Technologies.

Mike Nicastro, Open Solutions' SVP and chief marketing officer said the relationship with Rosetta Technologies "allows our customers to move even further into the electronic payments world."

About a year ago TallyGenicom, a privately-held company focused on printing, announced the signing of a multi-year agreement with Rosetta Technologies to provide "advanced MICR printing" product support for several of TallyGenicom’s growing line of monochrome laser printers.

These products include Rosetta engineered MICR enhancements to the printers, printer-specific MICR toner cartridges, MICR fonts and software.

And last week Open Solutions was chosen by Fairwinds Credit Union to implement Open Solutions' relational core platform, The Complete Credit Union Solution, and other complementary applications to handle its enterprise-wide data processing needs.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

RWD's Latest CRM Suite Available

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RWD's Latest CRM Suite Available. Check it out:

RWD Technologies, Inc., a company that provides human performance improvement products and services, has released their latest suite of services designed to help companies maximize their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) investment while "improving their overall customer experience."



RWD CRM Optimization Services will help organizations align the three critical components of CRM success -- customer experience, customer strategy and employee performance -- and "incorporate best practices and improve return on investment (ROI)."

According to research firm Gartner, Inc., " ... the success rates of mature [CRM] sales force technologies remain stubbornly disappointing (or low), with few markets exceeding 50 percent... This trend also suggests that shortcomings and inefficiencies aren't necessarily technological, but rather organizational, particularly with change management, process definition and project management skills employed for initiatives."

RWD's CRM Optimization Services improve ROI and customer experience by integrating the human components of CRM and business strategy.

This May RWD released RWD uPerform, what company officials described as "a comprehensive performance support tool for businesses seeking to improve application functionality and return on investment for their enterprise products."

In the enterprise resource planning (ERP) sector alone, companies will invest upwards of $39 billion per year by 2009, according to the IDC study "Worldwide ERP Applications 2005-2009 Forecast and 2004 Vendor Shares," released last August. Yet despite such massive investments, many organizations are ill equipped to train their employees on -- or retain employee insight into how they use -- these products, the study contends.

RWD uPerform was developed for this target demographic, as it's advertised as allowing the user to "create, organize, distribute, access, and maintain application simulations and procedural documentation."

Earlier in the spring Baltimore-based RWD Technologies announced the acquisition of Auckland, New Zealand-based eLearning company The Learning Curve Limited. Terms of the acquisition were not announced, but RWD expects the deal will have a significant and immediate positive impact on their Australia/New Zealand operations.

RWD's CRM Optimization Services include the RWD CRM Performance Aligned with Customer Expectations (PACE), which is a six-week analysis that provides a clear action plan for CRM success. During the PACE analysis, RWD assesses the five dimensions of CRM success -- customer experience, customer strategy, business process design, technology selection, and individual performance.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

Google China Losing Users to Rival. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 22, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --Search engine titan Google China is losing its core users to its rival Baidu.com in China, according to industry reports.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said that this year Google China represents 25.3 percent in the nation's search engine market, decreasing from 33 percent in 2005 while Baidu's market shares jumps from 52 percent to current 62.1 percent.



Google China is more popular in Shanghai while Beijing netizens prefer Baidu, the center concluded. In addition, the market reception of Google is 20 percentage points lower than Baidu.

Google China's other big competitors have not gained share rise this year either in the Chinese mareket. Yahoo! China, Sohu.com and Sogou.com have a combined share of only 8 percent, and let alone a smaller rival iAsk.

Search engines including Google China are struggling to capture a larger share when Baidu is becoming the number one in the Chinese market. Google China's US parent has spared no efforts in its operations in China since last year.

Another US giant Yahoo! poured USD 1 billion into its Chinese business with hopes of taking the lead in the world's most populous market.

Domestic players have no found a way out facing Baidu's crazy expansion yet. Charles Zhang, founder of Sohu.com, a front-running Internet portal, claimed a year ago that it would exceed Baidu rapidly.

The center, however, stressed that Baudu's users are mainly students, which have brought less commercial value than other kinds of users.

The report of Lv Bowang, a well-known Internet analyst in China, delivered the similar bad news to Google China.

The report said that Baidu and Google take 64.5 percent and 20.6 percent respectively. This year Google has lost 20 percent of its core users, 80 percent of which has turned to Baidu.

Now Baidu has successfully reduced its reliance on its MP3 search business and grown into a mature search engine with a wide business variety.

But he pointed out that Google China has gained high-end users, most of which have monthly income of over CNY 3,000. It has more advantage in enterprise culture and innovative products than Baidu.

More competition is coming soon. Google China has not moved its server to China yet due to various reasons. Jack Ma, head of Alibaba.com, has just finished the adjustment in Yahoo! China. And Charles Zhang said that Sogou has not been in full sail by now.

Increasing rivals are imposing huge stress to Baidu. Is Baidu ready for fiercer competition? Things are not so optimistic to Baidu, industry insiders predicted.

For the moment, Baidu has a majority share of more than 85 percent in the Chinese MP3 search engine sector, and it gains visiting traffic of over 30 percent from its MP3 business. However, Baidu often finds itself involved in a lawsuit because of its biggest operation. It is accused of supporting pirate music operations.

But it has no plan to discard its MP3 business now for the huge visiting the business has brought to the search engine.

In addition, Baidu is challenged for the speed of its Internet access and the stability in its server. On September 13 its services stopped for nearly 30 minutes suddenly. The search engine claimed that it has been stricken by hackers and incurred a server collapse.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.96)

From www.ccidnet.com, Page 1, Thursday, September 21, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast LLC. All rights reserved

**********************************************************************

As of Monday, 09-18-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated an UPTREND on
08-16-2006 for BIDU @ $76.52.

For more information on Comtex SmarTrend Alert, contact your market data
provider or go to CSTADirect.com

SmarTrend is a registered trademark of Comtex News Network, Inc.
Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.

Broadcom Expects more in China

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Broadcom Expects more in China. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) GUANGZHOU, Sep 22, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --Broadcom, the world's largest telecommunications chip design firm, expects its Chinese revenue to grow rapidly thanks to surging demand for next-generation chips for mobile phones, high-definition TVs and wireless networks, one of its top officials said yesterday in Shanghai.



"It will grow at least 20 to 30 percent annually, seeing the market demand," Wang Kai, Broadcom's country manager for China, said during an interview this week.

In 2005, Broadcom's revenue in China was "several hundreds of millions" dollars from "several millions" in 2000, according to Wang, who declined to reveal the actual figures.

At present, Broadcom focuses on enterprise-network, wireless and broadband sectors and its domestic clients include Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp and Lenovo Group Ltd.

The mobile communication, wireless application and broadband-based applications, like voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and IPTV, are promising sectors in China, Wang said.

"Wireless (on laptop and handset) and broadband are bright spots in the domestic market and they will bring Broadcom solid income," said Li Ke, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, a research firm under the Ministry of Information.

China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line phone carrier, added 4 million new broadband users in the first half, bringing the total number to 25 million.

Broadcom Corporation is a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Its products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment.

Broadcom provides the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices.

It designs, develops and supplies a diverse portfolio of products targeted to a variety of wired and wireless communications markets.

Its semiconductor and software solutions are ubiquitous, embedded in cable and DSL modems and digital set-top boxes in the home, digital televisions, high definition DVD players, networking equipment in the enterprise, wireless-enabled laptop and desktop computers, and advanced PDAs and cellular phones, among wired and wireless equipment.

Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom Class A shares trade on the NASDAQ National Market? under the symbol BRCM.

Broadcom is one of many high-tech companies that have come under scrutiny from regulators for their handling of stock- option grants. Executives at several other firms have been forced out or are under investigation.

Broadcom, for its part, said it issued millions of stock options early in the company's life as a way to "attract top talent in a highly competitive market. As a result, the company said it paid a much higher ratio of stock to cash to compensate its workers in comparison with larger, more mature rivals.

During the years 1998 to 2003, which will account for most of Broadcom's revisions, the company said it granted 238 million stock options -- 95% of which went to employees not part of the senior management team.

Broadcom began a "voluntary" review of stock-option grants on May 18 in light of "media and analyst reports and investor inquiries."

The company is reviewing all options granted since Broadcom launched an initial public offering in 1998. The review is being conducted by Broadcom's outside legal counsel, but the company could not say when it would finish.

From Shanghai Morning Post, Page 1, Thursday, September 21, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast LLC. All rights reserved
Longbridge passport to raise work standards. Check it out:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Nanjing Automobile has signed up to a "skills passport" scheme for workers it employs to build cars at Longbridge.

Accreditation under a project run by the Birmingham-based Automotive Academy and the associated Skills4Auto will be the minimum standard expected of production workers at the former MG Rover factory.

The Chinese company, which took Longbridge over after MG Rover crashed last year, aims to start producing MG cars at the site next year.

The so-called Skills Passport guarantees that holders have been trained in modern manufacturing techniques and was developed by the Automotive Academy in response to the end of MG Rover production.

The 15-week training programme involves a package of engineering skills, incorporating the Academy's Business Improvement Techniques course at NVQ Level 2. It also features live assembly simulations as well as visits to best practice companies.



Nanjing's decision to make the Skills Passport a condition of employment for production staff follows a successful pilot programme that resulted in every trainee who passed the course being taken on at BMW's engine plant at Hams Hall.

Russell Jeans, acting managing director of S4A, said: "Firstly I am absolutely delighted that production will once again commence at the historic Longbridge site and secondly that NAC has recognised the necessity of a highly skilled workforce."

Nanjing human resources manager Louise Lane said: "Nanjing executives are working to create a completely new manufacturing operation from scratch that will do justice to the wonderful heritage of the MG brand.

"Not surprisingly they want to make sure that all their efforts are matched by the skills of their workforce as they know our reputation will stand on this. Possession of the Academy Skills Passport provides the guarantee that our people will be a credit to our company and the industry as a whole."

Automotive Academy chief executive Alan Begg said: "I commend Nanjing's foresight in demanding only the best trained people for their new enterprise and congratulate S4A in pulling this together.

"I also call upon others in our industry to recognise that globally competitive skills are essential if we are to compete effectively."

Copyright 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd.
BISD trustees approve study that could open way for bond vote. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--BEAUMONT -- Beaumont school trustees Thursday unanimously gave Superintendent Carrol Thomas authority to pursue a more detailed study of district facilities.

Thomas told trustees he had met with several groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and Realtors, in regard to the possibility of a bond issue. He said people recognize that the district's facilities need to be upgraded, and with the expected economic boom, the facilities need to be "up to scratch."



Trustees, all of whom were present, approved a contract for a Level 2 assessment by 3D/International, a Houston-based firm. It is the same company that did similar work on a 2002 bond issue that failed when more than 60 percent of voters struck down the $150 million proposal

Cost of a comprehensive facilities evaluation is not to exceed $400,000, trustees directed.

"I think it needs to be that the community carries this, rather than the school district," Thomas said after the meeting. "It needs to be the community looking at the needs and seeing those needs, and they get out there and work to get the support necessary to get it passed."

Although it's early in the process, Thomas said he believes the support for improvements is out there. The community will know more when the study is complete, possibly at the end of January, the firm indicated.

"That gives us plenty of time ... to do an election in May, or sometime like that -- if that's the will of this community," he said. "I want to really preface that: If that's not the will of the community, I don't think the board should pursue it."

During board discussion, some trustees raised questions about athletic facilities and a stadium, as well as about closures or consolidations of campuses.

Thomas said from the Level 1 study, it appeared to be more economical to replace some campuses rather than repair them. On average, he said it takes about $1 million a year to run a campus.

"That is one of the most controversial things you can do is when you start trying to close a school. But once the community is finding out you're building them a new school and consolidating, they support that," Thomas said.

"I think the things that people are asking for are important to us, to them," Thomas said. " I think we can try to get the things that all of us need to make our schools a first-class district."

Officials estimated about 2.7 million square feet of the 3.7 million square feet district-wide would be studied. The district already completed a demographic study to determine the population it serves now and can expect to serve in the future.

After the meeting, board Vice President Woodrow Reece said he would like to see a feasibility study of some kind of separate athletic facility or stadium. Examples he cited were facilities in Pearland and Galena Park.

[email protected]

(409) 880-0729

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Self-approved 18 percent pay increase earns county commissioners a meeting with angry constituents. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 22--BEAUMONT -- Simmering anger over the hefty pay raises Jefferson County commissioners plan to give themselves erupted at a public hearing Thursday evening.

At what ostensibly was a hearing on the proposed property tax rate of 40 cents per $100 valuation, dozens filled the commissioner's courtroom to blast salary hikes for elected officials.

The 18 percent salary increase commissioners voted to give themselves "has the appearance of arrogance and greed," said Bruce Drury, a Lamar University professor who spoke at the hearing.

Even if the raise could be justified, commissioners should reject it to regain the trust of voters after the financial fiasco of Ford Park, Drury said.

Commissioner Eddie Arnold was the lone dissenter in the vote last month to include the pay raises in the 2006-07 budget, and he has said he will keep no more than the 5 percent awarded to county employees.

Other county elected officials got raises ranging from 5 percent to 16 percent.

In one stunt that garnered some laughter and lots of applause, Doug Conner, chairman of the Jefferson County GOP, brought six-year old Hattie to the podium.

Hattie's family still is coping with the property damage they suffered from Hurricane Rita, Conner said as he emptied the girl's "Little Princess" piggy bank onto the podium.

"Hattie, these men need your money to give themselves raises," Conner said.

But commissioners were unmoved. Commissioner Mark Domingue, in an interview after the hearing, blamed misinformation for much of the public anger.

"This is a very small clique of politicos trying to make political hay for the Republican Party," Domingue said.

Domingue said a commissioner's job is comparable to that of city managers in his Mid-County precinct.

Compared to city managers, commissioners have long been underpaid, Domingue said.

The proposed budget raises commissioner salaries from $73,362 to $86,508.

But Billy Job, the Republican candidate for county judge and the former mayor of Groves, scoffed at the comparison.

"I know every city manager in Jefferson County, and each one does more work in a day than a commissioner does in a week," Job said.

Both Job and Ron Walker, the Democratic nominee for county judge, have said the pay hikes for elected officials are excessive.

But at Thursday's hearing they clashed over the 2.5 cent reduction in the county's property tax rate commissioners have proposed.

Job urged commissioners to adopt a 10-cent cut, a move that was supported by several speakers at the hearing.

"A 2.5 cent cut buys a nice dinner for my wife," said Chris McKinney, a Beaumont resident who spoke at the hearing. "But 10 cents gets me the new fence I need in my backyard -- that's meaningful."

But Walker blasted the 10-cent proposal as a political gimmick that would leave the county's fund balance dangerously low.

A final vote on the budget and tax rate is set for Sept. 25, after commissioners conduct a hearing on the budget itself.

While those at Thursday's hearing were vocal in their opposition to the commissioners' pay hikes, none claimed responsibility for the signs that sprang up throughout Beaumont featuring the circled number 18 with a slash through it.

[email protected]

(409) 880-0732

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Pointsec to offer full disk encryption on laptop devices. Check it out:
(Tele.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Pointsec, a provider of enterprise security software for laptop and desktop PCs, PDAs and smartphones, has announced it will offer full disk encryption on all laptop devices as an Internet managed service through its partner Alertsec, a provider of hard disk encryption as managed service.



According to the company, deploying the software over the web is a convenient and reliable way for small to medium sized businesses to secure information carried on their staff's laptops. The objective is to shorten the costly evaluation and configuration period, providing a 'ready-to-deploy' enterprise level product that is proven and stable.The service will also provide users with a 24/7 telephone help desk which will reset passwords for users who forget them, the company claims.

The managed service is charged on a monthly basis. No other pricing details were disclosed.

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Deltek Nonprofit Expert to Speak on Selecting the Right Performance Measures at 2006 Foundation & Nonprofit Performance Conference. Check it out:
--(Business Wire)-- Deltek:

Kevin Hite, Deltek, Nonprofit Industry Director, Will Discuss the Benefits of a Good Performance Management System

What:  Performance management is emerging as a significant and
    important governance tool in the nonprofit sector. In his
    seminar, Hite will outline a practical approach to performance
    management, providing a clear framework for nonprofit
    organizations to achieve their missions more effectively in
    today's competitive environment. Furthermore, Hite will show
    how a good performance management system elevates the
    visibility of elements critical to success of an
    organization's mission. By aligning metrics with the mission,
    management can make better decisions in a timely fashion and
    take governance to a new level.
Who:  Hite directs nonprofit product management in his role at
    Deltek, a leading provider of enterprise management software
    for project-focused organizations. He has more than 16 years
    of accounting and business experience in both the public and
    private sectors, particularly concentrated in the nonprofit
    arena. In addition, Hite has operated his own consulting
    practice, where he installed accounting systems, provided
    training, and conducted tax and financial planning meetings
    for many nonprofit organizations.
Where: Hilton Arlington
    Arlington, VA
When:  September 25, 2006
    2:15 - 3:15 pm
    Track A: Measuring Outcomes: Performance Measurement Systems
    Selecting the Right Performance Measures





For more information or to set up an interview with Kevin Hite, please contact Deltek's Director of Public Relations, Andrea Carl, at [email protected].

For more information on the event, please visit http://www.nonprofitperformance.org/index.html.

ABOUT DELTEK

With more than 11,000 customers worldwide, Herndon, VA-based Deltek is the leading provider of enterprise management software for project-focused organizations. Founded in 1983, Deltek enables companies to maximize profitability and productivity, integrating all aspects of their businesses. Deltek Costpoint(R), Deltek Vision(R) and Deltek GCS Premier(R) power a myriad of front- and back-office applications including accounting, billing, resource planning, budgeting and control, business intelligence, CRM and proposal automation, employee time and expense, HR management, procurement and materials management and project management. Deltek's clients include Bechtel, CACI, HOK and Verizon. Visit www.deltek.com, or call 800.456.2009 in the U.S. 703.734.8606.

Deltek Enterprise(TM), Deltek Vision(R), Deltek GCS Premier(R), Deltek Costpoint(R) and Deltek GovWin(TM) are registered trademarks of Deltek Systems, Inc. All other product names used are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. This press release is available on the Deltek Web site at www.deltek.com.
CDB, KfW to Promote Loans for Micro & Small Enterprises. Check it out:
(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Sep 22, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW), a leading policy bank of Germany, will provide USD 50 million loans to China Development Bank to help the development of the micro and small enterprises in China.



At the same time, backed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany, KfW will donate EUR 3 million to China to hire the world??s best experts to set up organizations for the micro and small enterprise loan business.

The loan for micro and small enterprises is oriented to the private industrial and commercial operators, small enterprises and rural households to help their production and business operation. A single deal of loan will be no more than CNY 1 million and the average amount of every deal will be between CNY 40,000 and CNY 50,000.

According to the previous plan, China Development Bank will join forces with the World Bank and KfW to provide technology and capital to 12 partner banks to provide loans to the micro and small enterprises at the end of 2007.

From dycj.ynet.com, Page 1, Thursday, September 21, 2006
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved
PanGo Networks Executive Presents at RFID Applications Fall 2006; Sessions Detail the Power of RFID Applications for Real-Time Asset Tracking. Check it out:
WASHINGTON --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- -- Mike Braatz of PanGo Networks, the leader in RFID-based asset tracking solutions, is discussing advanced applications of RFID technology being tapped in two industries - healthcare and defense - to effectively track and manage high-value equipment at the RFID Applications Fall 2006 conference today and tomorrow in Washington, D.C.



In two separate presentations, Braatz will address technologies and use cases for RFID-based asset-based tracking. Attendees will hear how standards-based locationing technologies - including active and passive RFID - provide a dynamic way for organizations to effectively locate critical assets, ensuring equipment is available when needed. Discussions will draw from examples of companies that have deployed RFID asset tracking solutions to achieve bottom-line business objectives: reduce and optimize inventory, improve employee workflow and productivity, and above all, lower operational expenditures.

 WHO:  Mike Braatz, vice president of marketing, PanGo Networks
 WHAT: Hospitals & Healthcare: Real-Time Asset Tracking
    "Creating Value with Standards-based RFID Asset Tracking"
    Defense Systems: Compliance, Identification and Real-Time 
    Locating
    "RFID and WiFi: A Powerful Combination for Asset Tracking"
 WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006 at 4:30 - 5:00 p.m. and
    Friday, Sept. 22, 2006 at 3:15 - 4:00 p.m., respectively
 WHERE: RFID Applications Fall 2006, Washington, D.C.



For more information on conference, visit: http://www.shorecliffcommunications.com/rfid06fall/.

About PanGo Networks

PanGo is the leading provider of a location-aware platform and applications designed for enterprise scale deployment. Its integrated, Wi-Fi-based location management solution allows organizations to transform standards-based wireless networks into a platform for intelligent applications that improve important business processes. With its flagship PanOS Platform(R) and asset tracking applications, PanGo offers the industry's first complete solution for real-time asset visibility and context-aware information delivery. Specializing in a range of markets including healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government, PanGo delivers reliable and accurate information about the location of connected devices, people and assets. For more information, visit www.pangonetworks.com.
UOB EMERGES AS FOREIGN BANK WITH LARGEST BRANCH NETWORK. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 (Bernama) -- United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd (UOB Malaysia) today announced the opening of its 38th and 39th branch in Muar and Sibu, making it the foreign bank with the largest branch network in the country



"We are thrilled and excited with our two new operations and we hope to carry across our enthusiasm and leverage on our commitment of providing quality products and customer excellence to the people in Muar and Sibu," UOB Malaysia's chief executive officer Chan Kok Seong said in a statement today

He said the locations were carefully surveyed and selected based on the growth potential of the areas and in line with the bank's plan to further broaden its channels and grow its consumer and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) banking business

Responding to Bank Negara Malaysia's recent approval on licences for two other new locations, Chan said the bank was in the midst of preparing for two new branches in Kota Damansara and Kepong

With the addition of four new branches, UOB Malaysia will have a total of 41 branches in the country by year-end

The new branches were made possible with Bank Negara's branching liberalisation policy last December, which allowed locally-incorporated foreign banks to set up four additional branches in 2006

"We are also currently studying the option to open more branches in non-urban areas in line with Bank Negara's latest policy to allow locally-incorporated foreign banks to branch into non-urban areas," Chan said

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
HP INTRODUCES NEW ITSS SOLUTION TO MALAYSIAN MARKET. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency PETALING JAYA, July 20 (Bernama) -- Computer maker, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has introduced the new HP Information Technology Shared Service (ITSS) portfolio to the Malaysian market



The ITSS, which is an across the board solution consolidating all aspects of IT operations of a company, is designed to help enterprise customers improve their IT cost efficiency, quality of service and responsiveness

Its principal business consultant, HP Services, Asia Pacific and Japan, Chary Chigurala said with the HP ITSS portfolio, customers who are involved in the area of logistics, financial and energy sector can accelerate business and IT alignment and rationalise enterprise-wide IT resources

"Combined with the HP service oriented architecture framework, the new portfolio is a key element of the HP adaptive infrastructure offering, which enables customers to move towards a "lights-out" computing environment that is remotely managed 24 hours a day," he told a media briefing here today

He said the new portfolio has been enabled with enhanced service functionality, processes and technologies

"To help customers get better overall returns on their IT investment, HP ITSS portfolio holistically addresses the people, processes and technology involved in an IT shared service delivery model," he said

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
ORACLE FUSION MIDDLEWARE REVENUE CROSSES US$1 BLN MARK. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 (Bernama) -- Oracle Corporation, the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced that revenue for Oracle Fusion Middleware passed the US$1 billion revenue threshold for financial year (FY) 2006



During the most recent quarter, Q4 FY 2006, Oracle Fusion Middleware licence revenue grew 57 percent year over year, the company said in a statement released here today

For the entire fiscal year, the product grew 34.5 percent year over year in licence revenue, it added

Oracle's president Charles Phillips said the results proved the strength of company's infrastructure software business and its ability to execute on organic growth

"We are capturing market share faster than any other player in the industry," he said

He added that nearly half of the company's middleware revenue during FY 2006 came from partners, demonstrating the strength of Oracle's middleware product with developers and systems integrators

For FY 2006, total product revenue (consisting of software licence revenues and maintenance revenue) for Oracle Fusion Middleware was more than US$1 billion

The product is aimed at enabling customers to adopt and manage service-oriented architectures in heterogeneous computing environments

Among the users are leading organisations in the financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and public sector industries

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
ImageWare Systems Partners with CyberExtruder to Combat Fraud and Enable Multi-Dimensional Facial Recognition. Check it out:
SAN DIEGO --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- ImageWare IWS Biometric Image Quality Assessment and Enhancement to Help Government Organizations Save Time and Costs Associated with Biometric Enrollment

ImageWare(R) Systems, Inc. (AMEX:IW), a leading developer and provider of identity management solutions, today announced a partnership with CyberExtruder to help prevent fraud and enable multi-dimensional facial recognition that will enhance biometric identity management applications including Driver Licenses, Passports, Visas, Watch Lists, among other highly-secure applications.



ImageWare has integrated CyberExtruder's AutoMesh software into its IWS(TM) Biometric Image Quality Assessment & Enhancement (IWS Biometric IQA&E) solution, a biometric image enhancement and assessment solution that assists government organizations with the ability to evaluate and enrich millions of biometric images automatically, saving time and costs associated with biometric enrollment while maintaining image and database integrity.

"The biometric identity management industry is demanding next generation technology to meet the more stringent (identification) requirements, and ImageWare is answering its needs," said Jim Miller, ImageWare's chairman and CEO. "Our customers have requested enterprise-class tools for assessing biometric image quality and enhancing images to eliminate identity fraud, save time and cost, and improve identification system performance. The integration of CyberExtruder's AutoMesh software with ImageWare's Biometric Image Quality Assessment & Enhancement tool further streamlines the identification process, converting two-dimensional (2D) facial images to three-dimensional (3D) within seconds. This is a critical tool for any highly-secure identity management program."

"We are excited to combine our expertise and capabilities with a world-class partner like ImageWare," said Larry Gardner, CEO of CyberExtruder. "This partnership marks a significant initiative in the biometric identity management space and offers customers the most comprehensive image quality assessment and enhancement tool for enhancing the accuracy of facial recognition."

About IWS Biometrics IQA&E

The IWS Biometric IQA&E improves the accuracy and effectiveness of biometric template enrollments. The software may be used standalone or in conjunction with the IWS(TM) Biometric Engine(TM), a biometric identity management platform for multi-biometric searching and matching that is scalable, technology agnostic and allows organizations to manage population databases of unlimited sizes.

This solution provides automated image quality assessment with respect to relevant image quality standards from organizations such as International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), International Organization for Standards (ISO) and American Association of Motor Vehicle Association (AAMVA). IWS Biometric IQA&E also enables organizations to conduct multi-dimensional facial recognition which further enhances accuracy for numerous applications including driver licenses, passports and watch lists.

IWS Biometric IQA&E automatically provides real-time biometric image quality analysis and feedback to improve the overall effectiveness of biometric images thus increasing the biometric verification performance, and maintaining database and image data integrity. IWS Biometric IQA&E provides a complete platform that includes an image enhancement library for biometric types including face, finger and iris.

The image assessment process occurs automatically or manually, and passes high-quality images to the IWS Biometric Engine, or attempts to automatically enhance the image and reduce the number of poor quality submissions of images. The manual mode benefits from automated quality assessments, improving administrator productivity with their manual analysis and manual processing of the available biometric images. Return on Investment (ROI) is achieved through cost savings from avoiding the re-enrollment process.

With IWS Biometric IQA&E, biometrics images will be compared with a reference and assessed as to the need for any enhancement which will automatically alert the image quality enhancement function to provide enhancements to the biometric images. If the assess and enhance process does not produce an image of acceptable quality, the image will then be sent to a queue for manual image enhancement. Acceptable images received from the quality process will be delivered to the IWS Biometric Engine for template generation and storage. Additional features include:

-- Manual and Auto image manipulation such as size, contrast, brightness, saturation and color levels in accordance to ISO compliance for reliable biometric storage

-- Customizable plug-and-play imaging library which can be integrated into existing applications

-- Advanced face extraction and eye finding algorithms

-- Advanced graphic filters for fingerprints

-- Integration with IWS Biometric Engine for searching and match capabilities

-- Supports automated operation with the IWS Biometric Engine in a Microsoft Windows 2003 server environment, and manual operation on Windows XP workstations

The IWS Biometric Engine's multi-biometric enrollment, management and authentication platform allows users to biometrically search and match populations of unlimited sizes for identity confirmation. Searches can be 1:1 (Verification), 1:N (Identification), X:N (Investigative) and N:N (Enrollment Integrity). IWS Biometric Engine is technology agnostic, enabling users to employ biometric devices and algorithms from virtually any vendor, as well as support the combination of the following biometric types, including: single fingerprint, Livescan fingerprint, 2D face, 3D face, iris, palmscan, finger vein, palm vein, hand geometry, palm, DNA, signature, voice, and retina. The IWS Biometric Engine currently supports more than 100 devices and methods of biometric acquisition and 70 biometric algorithms.

IWS Biometric Image Quality Assessment & Enhancement is available immediately. For more information, please contact [email protected] or call 800-842-4199.

About CyberExtruder

CyberExtruder is a software development company whose patent pending core technology enables the automatic conversion of a single two dimensional ("2D") facial image (e.g. passport photo) to an accurate three dimensional ("3D") model of the subject's face or head. The process happens in less than one second. This technology has significant applications in two industry segments: (1) as an enabling technology in the biometric technology segment of the security industry, and (2) as a personalization technology in the entertainment / communications industry. More information on CyberExtruder is available at www.cyberextruder.com.

About ImageWare Systems, Inc.

ImageWare Systems, Inc. (AMEX:IW) is a leading developer and provider of identity management solutions, providing biometric, secure credential, law enforcement and digital imaging technologies. Scalable for worldwide deployment, the Company's biometric product line includes a multi-biometric engine that is hardware and algorithm independent, enabling the enrollment and management of unlimited population sizes. ImageWare's identification products are used to manage and issue secure credentials including national IDs, passports, driver licenses, smart cards and access control credentials. ImageWare's digital booking products provide law enforcement with integrated mug shot, fingerprint Livescan and investigative capabilities. The Company also provides comprehensive digital workflow solutions for the professional photography industry. ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, with offices in Washington DC and Canada. For more information visit www.iwsinc.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This news release may contain forward-looking statements made pursuant to the "safe harbor'' provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. While these statements are meant to convey to the public the company's progress, business opportunities and growth prospects, readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements represent management's opinion. While management believes such representation to be true and accurate based on the information available to the company, actual results may differ materially from those described. The company's operations and business prospects are always subject to risks and uncertainties. Important facts that may cause actual results to differ are set forth in the company's periodic filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Global Crossing Opens Point-of-Presence Telecommunications Facility in Monterrey. Check it out:
MONTERREY, Mexico, Sept. 22 -- Global Crossing announced today the opening of a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) facility in Monterrey, Mexico. The new PoP will provide carrier and enterprise customers with direct access to Global Crossing's Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP-based network, which delivers state-of-the-art global IP solutions to more than 600 cities in 60 countries.



"Mexico continues to be a key market within our global strategy and we're pleased to expand our IP infrastructure in response to growing customer demand," said John Legere, Global Crossing's chief executive officer. "Customers increasingly require bandwidth-intensive applications that require a highly advanced network, and this is exactly what Global Crossing's network was built for."

The PoP, which serves as Global Crossing's global interconnection center in Monterrey, is already operational and serving customers. Global Crossing also has facilities in Mexico City and other locations across Central and South America. The company's IP-based solutions and traditional services available from the new Monterrey PoP include Private Line, International Private Line, high-speed Internet access, Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IP VPN), collaboration services, ATM and Frame Relay.

"Monterrey is a key business capital, and we look forward to serving the city's many prestigious carriers and companies with direct international connectivity as we continue strengthening our IP network presence in Latin America and around the world," said Jose Antonio Rios, Global Crossing's chief administrative officer and international president.

Global Crossing's advanced fiber-optic MPLS-based network in Mexico runs through a terrestrial system connecting Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mazatlan. Through its subsea system in the Pacific, Global Crossing connects facilities in Tijuana to the rest of its global network. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the company has facilities in 12 of the region's major cities, seamlessly connecting South America, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to the rest of its global network.

"Mexico's economy and its strategic geographic location have created demand for additions to the infrastructure of next-generation networks like Global Crossing's," said Ernesto Piedras, general director of The Competitive Intelligence Unit. "Previous telecommunication networks were built to support a limited number of services, but today's networks offer transport services with capabilities to run all types of traffic and, thus, any service simultaneously and efficiently. Without a doubt, building new points of presence such as Global Crossing's global center in Monterrey benefits the growth and development of Mexico."

Global Crossing has experienced remarkable IP growth around the world. The company's IP traffic increased 102 percent in the second quarter of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005, while its IP VPN traffic grew by 220 percent, another indicator of the rapid global adoption of IP convergence. This extraordinary growth was mirrored in Mexico, where the number of Global Crossing's enterprise and carrier customers increased 64 percent in the second quarter of 2006 compared to the second quarter of 2005. Overall IP traffic more than doubled in Mexico during the same period, outpacing the company's global IP growth.

"This important investment in Monterrey allows us to give customers a competitive advantage by providing a global gateway to our secure, fiber-optic network from one of Mexico's most important business and industrial districts," added Adrian Gonzalez, Global Crossing's managing director in Mexico. "We will continue to solidify our key position in this market by advancing Mexico's connectivity to the rest of the world."

As a global, Tier-1 Internet Service Provider, Global Crossing continues to make important investments in its IP network to meet the increasing demand of customers around the world. The company is planning a new landing point in Costa Rica to extend the core network in Latin America, and it recently upgraded the Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC) by adding wavelengths on this undersea system, which links North America, Latin America, Europe and the Pacific. Global Crossing has also strengthened its IP network and IP service offerings in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain.

Global Crossing has more than quadrupled the capacity of its global IP network backbone with a new IP Supercore platform. The company has deployed more than 30 new high-capacity Juniper routers in 17 worldwide locations with Terabit speeds to support its rapid expansion and quality of service well into the future. The increased core network capacity supports Global Crossing's 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections which are now available worldwide including Buenos Aires, Santiago and Sao Paulo.

With its Latin America network officially completed in 2001, Global Crossing now serves virtually all of the region's major carriers as well as many prestigious Latin American companies, including Odebrecht, Brazil's largest multinational construction company; Arcor, the world's largest confectionary; Mexicana de Aviacion and Banco Santander.

ABOUT GLOBAL CROSSING
Global Crossing provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network. Its core network connects more than 300 cities in 28 countries worldwide, and delivers services to more than 600 cities in 60 countries and 6 continents around the globe. The company's global sales and support model matches the network footprint and, like the network, delivers a consistent customer experience worldwide.

Global Crossing IP services are global in scale, linking the world's enterprises, governments and carriers with customers, employees and partners worldwide in a secure environment that is ideally suited for IP-based business applications, allowing e-commerce to thrive. The company offers a full range of managed data and voice products including Global Crossing IP VPN Service, Global Crossing Managed Services and Global Crossing VoIP services, to 36 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs.

Please visit http://www.globalcrossing.com/ for more information about Global Crossing.
Statements in this press release about expected future events and financial results are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially, including risks referenced from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Global Crossing undertakes no duty to update information contained in this press release or in other public disclosures at any time.

CONTACT GLOBAL CROSSING:
Press Contacts
Adriana Huerta
+ 1 305 808 5919
[email protected]

Kendra Langlie
Latin America
+ 1 305 808 5912
[email protected]

Analysts/Investors Contact
Laurinda Pang
+ 1 800 836 0342
[email protected]

GEN/PR1

Global Crossing

CONTACT: Press Contacts, Adriana Huerta, +1-305-808-5919, or KendraLanglie, Latin America, +1-305-808-5912, both at [email protected],Analysts, Investors Contact, Laurinda Pang, +1-800-836-0342,[email protected], all of Global Crossing

Web site: http://www.globalcrossing.com/
ASIA PACIFIC LAG IN SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURES, SAYS ORACLE. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 4 (Bernama) -- The new Oracle Grid Index IV report shows that 33 percent of organisations in Asia Pacific (APAC) have no plans for a service-oriented architecture (SOA), a modern technology that enables the information technology (IT) department to serve business needs more efficiently



Compared with this, only 5-10 percent of organisations in US and Europe have indicated the same and the region's competitive SOA position appears grim, Oracle said in a statement here today

Oracle said that the research also showed that APAC lags in the actual adoption rate of SOAs with only five percent of organisations polling in APAC have implemented an SOA compared to Europe (10 percent) and the US (20 percent)

Underlining the low adoption rate in APAC is the large number of organisations (85 percent) with little or no working knowledge of SOAs while Southeast Asia has the lowest awareness of SOA with 87 percent stating they have no awareness

"The awareness and education gap for Asia Pacific seems especially dire as companies cannot adopt what they don't understand nor implement with any confidence of success," said Clive Longbottom, research director, Quorcica

He said that the research also indicated that Asia Pacific organisations however valued all the benefits that SOA can bring, but simply lacked hands-on experience

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company

The Oracle Grid Index is designed to map global progress on the journey towards Grid Computing

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
BOEING DEMONSTRATES TSAT OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 10 (Bernama) -- The Boeing Company recently demonstrated the interoperability of the Transformational Satellite Communications (TSAT) Space Segment program with other transformational military systems during a quarterly program management review



Boeing conducted the demonstration for the U.S. Air Force Military Satellite Communications (MILSATCOM) Joint Program Office and representatives of the TSAT user community, including the U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Space Command, Secretary of the Air Force, Army Forces Strategic Command, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense and the Space and Naval Warfare System Command

The demonstration, the latest in a series of reviews for the program's critical technologies and system operations, allowed users to experience the interoperability of the future space-based network with the Transformational Communications Demonstration Capability (TCDC) system, an enterprise-wide asset that provides a live, virtual, and constructive simulation and test environment

Using the TCDC to emulate the military's Joint Tactical Radio System, Boeing engineers showed how the two systems would operate together using simulated global war on terrorism scenarios and realistic ground network signals, Boeing said in a statement from St Louis Wednesday

Boeing proved the systems' compatibility by reallocating bandwidth to provide "always connected" communications, including Web browsing, Internet voice services and text messaging to every warfighter, anywhere and at anytime

"Our tests simulated real-world conditions such as blockages due to rough terrain, loss of terminals in the network and fully loaded capacity utilization," said Michael Gianelli, vice president of Boeing Navigation and Communication Systems

"With each review session, we're pushing the technology maturity and functional operation envelope of the TSAT system. Our customer, the U.S

Air Force, and our end-users can see the tremendous progress our team is making and that TSAT's important capabilities for the warfighter are real and achievable." The review also provided progress updates in other key areas, including specification maturation, the TSAT block development approach, software architecture development, and the path to full-scale Space Segment and software integration

During a related executive risk management review with the customer, Boeing received high marks on the completion of planned development milestones and the delivery of associated data and documentation. These events, combined with demonstrations of TSAT's Next Generation Processor Router and Laser Communications earlier this year, help mark a successful path for the program's future

Boeing is working under a $514 million U.S. Air Force contract for the risk reduction and system definition phase of the TSAT Space Segment program

The Boeing TSAT team includes Raytheon, Ball Aerospace, General Dynamics, IBM, L-3 Communications, Cisco Systems, BBN Technologies, Hughes Network Systems, Lucent Technologies, Harris, EMS Technologies, ICE and Alpha Informatics. The Air Force plans to select a primary TSAT Space Segment contractor in December 2007

The results contained in this submission were generated in whole, or in part through work supporting the MILSATCOM Joint Program Office

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses. Headquartered in St

Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $30.8 billion business

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
RAFIDAH'S RESPONSE 3 KUALA LUMPUR. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency Q: What is the progress so far on negotiations to liberalise the services sector? Could you elaborate on how Asean would gain by liberalising tourism, healthcare, e-Asean and foreign equity? Some countries could be concerned about opening-up these areas too much? A: Services sector liberalisation is equally important for Asean to realise the regional single market vision



The potential of this sector in Asean are huge and remain untapped by Asean service providers

Progressively, liberalising the sector will also inject greater competition, and thereby leading to strengthening of the sector as the sector is opened up for countries outside the region under the multilateral or through the regional FTAs that are being concluded by Asean with major trading partners

Recognising the importance of the contribution of this sector to the economies of the region, Asean Leaders in December 2005 decided to endorse the speedier liberalisation of the services sector within the region by 2015, instead of 2020

The current Fourth Round of Services Negotiations under the Asean Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) commenced in January 2005 and scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006

The Fifth package of offers covering 70 sector/sub-sectors is being finalised

Further, Asean is also discussing the approach to liberalise the scope of services in nine equivalent annual tranches, i.e. subject to an annual quota of sub-sectors, over the liberalisation timeframe (2007-2015), including any other possible approaches

For this Fourth Round of Negotiations, Malaysia is considering offers that are significant to the progress of liberalising the services sectors

Among sectors where offers are being considered include education, tourism, construction, surveying and maritime

Flexibility is also allowed for sensitive sectors. Senior officials are discussing the threshold for flexibility to avoid countries using the flexibility clause as an "escape clause" from liberalisation commitments

In addition, Asean is also looking at possible Emergency Safeguard Mechanism (ESM), in case countries are affected by imports of certain services sector

Q: What is the progress so far with the Asean Single Window (ASW)? Do you see the initiative implemented by the set deadline by 2008? A: The development of the Asean Single Window (ASW) requires huge capital outlay. As an initial step, Asean member countries are in the process of developing their National Single Window (NSW), which will be subsequently integrated into the ASW

The Asean Task Force on ASW has developed the implementing Protocol, Technical Guide, National Single Window (NSW) Implementation Guide and the ASW Action Plan

The Action Plan provides the steps that need to be taken to realise the NSW/ASW from now till 2007 for Asean-6 and 2011 for CLMV

Given the complexity of establishing the system on a region-wide basis, Asean is seeking technical assistance from Dialogue Partners, particularly to help the newer member of Asean in establishing their NSW

As of now, there is strong commitment from all member countries to realise the ASW according to the established timeline of 2008 for Asean-6 and 2012 for the CLMV

Q: At the last AEM in Laos, Malaysia had proposed the setting up of an SMEs database to enable SMEs within the Asean circle to interact. Could you update us on the progress so far? A: SMEs form the backbone of the economy in Asean member countries and assume significant roles towards realising the regional integration initiatives

Asean Policy Blueprint for SME Development 2004-2014 was adopted in 2004 which contain strategic work programmes, policy measures and indicative output for SME development in the Asean region

SME Working Group in Asean is currently undertaking several projects, aimed at strengthening Asean's SMEs linkages

Some 23 projects are currently being completed or at various level of implementation

These projects include capacity building initiatives such as HRD, development of a micro credit system, establishment of Asean Trading Firms Network and programmes for improving technology transfer and licensing

Work is undertaken within the SME Working Group on a continuous basis to strengthen the SME database within Asean

Q: The 37th AEM also marked the first consultation between CLMV countries. How do you describe their level of development as these countries have larger development gap compared with other asean members? A: Various initiatives have been developed to promote the development of the CLMV to facilitate the speedier integration of these countries with the rest of Asean

Under the Initiative for Asean Integration (IAI), a Work Plan has been established for the period of 2002 - 2008. 135 projects have been identified and at various stages of implementation

The projects cover areas such as infrastructure, human resource development, ICT and regional economic integration

Funding for these projects is secured from Asean-6, international donor organisations and dialogue partners

To date, Malaysia has contributed US$ 1.53 million for the IAI projects. Malaysia also committed to provide an additional grant of up to US$500,000 for the period 2006-2008

Other measures taken to assist these countries include granting unilateral tariff preferences to products of export interests of CLMV under the Asean Integration System of Preferences (AISP)

Cross border investments from Asean-6 are also encouraged into these countries to promote their economic development

Q: During the Asean Investment Area (AIA) council meeting in Laos, it was agreed that all investment policies of Asean countries be brought together as one integrated policy to create a single investment marketplace for foreign investors. Do you think such an initiative is feasible given the intense competition for the investment dollar by countries individually? A: The Asean Investment Area (AIA) is aimed at promoting Asean as an attractive investment destination to FDI and to increase intra-Asean investment through facilitation, promotion and liberalisation programmes

Asean has accelerated the process of liberalisation programme through shortening of the end dates of the Temporary Exclusion Lists for the manufacturing sector from 2010 to 2003 for Asean-6 and Myanmar and 2010 for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

However, recognising the different level of economic development between Asean member countries, there is a need for specific national policies to be maintained to promote individual national development objectives

Q: What are the major issues that would be discussed at the 38th AEM? Are there initiatives agreed to during the Asean summit last year that would be discussed by the ministers? A: The 38th AEM will discuss a wide range of issues. These covers: *assessment of the progress of Asean towards economic integration since implementation of the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 1993. This includes status of elimination of tariffs for intra-Asean trade; *implementation issues related to the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme relating to transfer of products that are still not integrated into the CEPT scheme by some member countries such as sugar, rice and petrochemicals; *revisions to the CEPT Rules of Origin (ROO) and Operational Certification Procedures to incorporate new improvements including product specific rules for enjoyment of preferential tariffs; *implications and measures that need to be put in place to fast track the realisation of Asean Economic Community (AEC) from 2020 to 2015; *status of the implementation of measures for the 11 Priority Integration Sectors, to accelerate the realisation of Asean Economic Community (AEC); *finalisation of the Roadmap for the Logistics Services Sector which has been endorsed as the 12th priority sector for integration; *work programme and modalities for elimination of non-tariff barriers; and *liberalisation and facilitation of trade in services sector, including the finalisation of package of offers for the Fifth Package of Services liberalisation

Another important issue that will be discussed is the acceleration of timeline for realisation of the AEC

This includes, developing a comprehensive blueprint to integrate all the existing Asean's economic initiatives such as AFTA, AFAS, AIA, and integration of the priority sectors

It must be stressed that the fundamental issue in realising the Asean integration is not solely dependent by accelerating the timeline, but most importantly, adhering to the implementation of the initiatives agreed to date

Q: How would Asean countries reconcile their commitments to Afta with the FTAs signed by individual countries. There are criticisms that Asean members would offer more under FTAs and in the process negate Afta? A: This issue has been raised frequently. Malaysia views the bilateral and regional FTAs as reinforcing one another rather than eroding the commitments under Afta

The bilateral FTAs are more comprehensive and take into account the specific bilateral interests

It is likely that there are instances where the level of commitments undertaken is much higher compared to those under the regional initiatives

Notwithstanding this, Asean member countries are committed to ensure that the bilateral FTAs will not pose a hindrance towards Asean's objective of realising the Asean Economic Community (AEC)

Q: What are the major issues that would be discussed with Asean's dialogue partners, especially the economic integration between Asean+3 and efforts towards building an East Asian Community? A: The consultations with dialogue partners will mainly focus on the current status of negotiations on the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that Asean is currently negotiating with these countries

These include narrowing the differences in positions relating to issues such as services and investment liberalisation and modalities for tariff reduction for trade in goods

Asean+3 Consultations have been devoted to identification and implementation of projects, mainly capacity building initiatives

Given the many global challenges, the Asean + 3 process is now giving greater emphasis for policy dialogues on key issues confronting member countries such as the spiralling oil price, energy efficiency and conservation measures, diversification of energy supply and use of alternative and renewable energy, effective and clean use of resources, oil stockpiling system development and energy-related statistics development

The meeting will be considering the recommendations of the Expert Group on the establishment of an East Asia Free Trade Area (EAFTA)

Initial findings shows that countries will benefit from EAFTA, as all parties can expect an increase in both GDP and welfare

Further thoughts need to be given on how EAFTA could be devised, taking into account all existing and ongoing East Asian FTAs including the Asean+1 FTAs

Q: What about enhancing trade and investment ties with other dialogue partners such as the United States and Australia? A: Asean and US have established the Enterprise for Asean Initiative (EAI), which was announced by the President of the US at the sidelines of the Apec Summit on 26 October 2002 in Los Cabos

The Vision Statement for Enhanced Partnership between Asean and the US was adopted in November 2005 in Busan, Korea

To strengthen the existing relations, the Action Plan to Enhance Asean-US Partnership covering all fields, including economic cooperation was adopted by the Asean Foreign Ministers and Secretary of State recently at their Meeting in Kuala Lumpur

Currently, Asean-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) are being finalised for endorsement by the Economic Ministers and USTR during the consultations on 25 August 2006 in Kuala Lumpur

The objective of the TIFA is to promote and facilitate trade and investment as well as to identify areas of economic cooperation

As a start, the US has developed an initial list of proposed projects for Asean's consideration. This includes: *assistance to develop the Asean Single Window (ASW); *harmonisation of procedures/standards on certification for pharmaceutical products; and; *sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) on agriculture products

As you are aware, Asean is currently negotiating a comprehensive FTA with Australia and New Zealand, which also includes measures towards enhancing economic cooperation, apart from the liberalisation initiatives

Q: As hosts, what is Malaysia's aspirations for this meeting? Are there any new initiatives that Kuala Lumpur might want to put forward? A: Malaysia, as the new chair will continue to work with other Asean countries to steer the process of accelerating and deepening the economic integration of Asean as well as strengthening Asean's linkages with the dialogue partners

Emphasis will be given to ensure that commitments made are realised according to the timeline established

Malaysia would like priority to be given in the area of trade facilitation which is critical in creating a regional single market

Asean will need to devise measures to reduce the costs of doing business in the region to remain competitive vis-`-vis China and India

In addition, Malaysia will also emphasise on the need to strengthen private sector participation in the Asean economic integration initiatives

The role of private sector is critical as they are the ones who will eventually benefit from all these integration initiatives

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
GOVT TO EMPHASISE MANPOWER AVAILABILITY AND SKILLS. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 (Bernama) -- Responding to the changing global environment and enhancing competitiveness, the government is emphasising two aspects of human resource requirements under the Third Industrial Master Plan (IMP3)



They are ensuring sufficient availability of the human resources as well as providing a facilitative environment for the workforce to acquire the necessary skills in the professional and technical fields

The aim is to drive the economy into higher value-added activities, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said in its IMP3 report released today

Strategies for human resource management, including human resource planning and development, will focus on the roles of education, training, lifelong learning, capacity building and operating environment to enhance Malaysia's competitive position, MITI said

It said in the longer term, strategies adopted on human resources will lead to a more equilibrium labour market as well as more competitive business operating environment

"Appropriate systems and structures for human resource planning will enable Malaysia to respond to the changing global environment and enhance competitiveness at the national and enterprise levels," it added

While Malaysia offers a pool of talented human resources, there is presently a shortage of skilled workforce in specialist fields in engineering, information and communications technology (ICT) and high technologies, MITI noted

The ministry said nine strategic thrusts have been set for human resource management, planning and development

They include enhancing the institutional capacity for human resource management, planning and development; increasing the supply of technically-skilled, knowledgeable and ICT-trained workforce; and providing greater focus on creativity, innovation and other enabling skills in the educational, and technical and vocational training systems

Other thrusts are creating a critical mass of local experts in the scientific and engineering fields to meet research and development demand; creating a competitive employment environment which is able to attract and retain the best talents; and enhancing productivity and competitivess

Strengthening collaboration in human resource development among the industry, public sector organisations and the academia; reviewing laws and legislations to provide flexibility and mobility in employment; and intensifying automation and labour-saving initiatives comprise the remaining thrusts

The ministry said strategies to increase the supply of technically-skilled workforce include reviewing and enhancing the capacity of vocational schools and community colleges, upgrading skills training to school leavers in vocational schools and community schools and increasing the supply of highly skilled workforce in the 17-23 age group, from the present 30 percent to 40 percent by 2010

The strategies for creating a critical mass of local experts in the scientific and engineering fields include reviewing the education system to enhance the scientific, technological and business orientation of the school curricula, encouraging a higher enrolment in the tertiary education, especially in technical, scientific and engineering fields, and establishing more public-private sector joint research centres in institutions of higher learning

According to MITI, the challenges in meeting human resource requirements in the IMP3 include enhancing total factor productivity, regional integration, enhancing capacity building and increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities

During the 2006-2010 period, total employment in the economy is projected to register an average annual growth of 1.9 percent, from 10.9 million workers in 2005 to 12 million in 2010

This is in tandem with the anticipated expansion in the economy, particularly the manufacturing, services and construction sectors, which together are expected to contribute more than 95 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, MITI said

The ministry also said that with the development and creation of new products and services for existing and new regional and global markets, there will be a higher demand for workers with knowledge, skills and talents in areas like international marketing, branding, distribution and logistics

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
KONKA TV Built-in DVB-T Shines at IFA Berlin. Check it out:
Implementation of European Strategy Accelerates
SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 22 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- At IFA Berlin, held from September 1 to 6, KONKA, China's top consumer electronics enterprise, exhibited its whole series of new products including TV sets, mobile phones, set-top boxes and car audio/radios, which attracted great attention from exhibitors and visitors home and abroad.



(Logo: http://sz-web.eicp.net/konka )
With the similar reputation as the top international trade show CES, IFA has a history of over 80 years and has become one of the best venues where various consumer electronics from around the world can be exhibited and exchanged. Mr. Guohe Yang, general manager of the international business division of KONKA group, told journalists that it's the third time KONKA attended IFA. Compared to last time, the booth area was almost doubled and several new product lines such as set-top boxes and mobile phones were added to the display.

Journalists found that the exhibited items KONKA focused on this time were high-tech products, including digital TVs, flat panel TVs and slim mobile phones, which accounted for more than 80% in total. In addition, several types of slim CRT TVs and wide screen CRT TVs shown also drew attention from potential purchasers. Especially the new set-top box with DVD function and super slim mobile phone D163, which won the IF design award, representing the most advanced R&D capabilities of China's consumer electronics industry.

Yang said that the TV set with built-in DVB-T met European digital TV standards and is the hit product of KONKA, including flat panel TVs with "Flying Engine II" and several CRT types. DVD players and set-top boxes exhibited were also developed based upon European digital TV standards and reached international advanced technology levels. Yang said, "Digital TVs will be our hit product to further expand our European market share. We hope that, through the IFA platform, European customers will have a better understanding of KONKA, trusting KONKA's products and brand."

IFA has become the bridgehead of Chinese consumer electronics enterprises wishing to enter the EU market. Although many trade barriers against Chinese color TVs were set up by the EU recently, Chinese enterprises have reached smooth water and have seen increasing numbers of orders. Last year, KONKA won the bid to export 30,000 units of TV sets purchased by Carrefour HQ in France, which can be seen as the first time Chinese TV enterprises powerfully disembarked on the EU. With completion of a production base in Eastern Europe and further implementation of its global strategy, KONKA has successfully broken through antidumping barriers set up by the EU. Relying on increasingly powerful R&D capabilities and advantages of global manufacturing, KONKA is gradually accelerating its European strategy.

It is reported that by the first half year, KONKA has established stable cooperating relationships with more than ten top large-scale electronics chain stores, hypermarkets and department stores. The KONKA European branch has already been officially set-up. In just the first half year, KONKA has realized a 62% growth in overseas business and it is believed that IFA will be a promoter for KONKA to continuously increase its European business.

It can be predicted that, with the elevating status of Chinese brands in the global market, Europe and America will be the main battlefields for overseas competition of Chinese consumer electronics enterprises.

KONKA

CONTACT: Mr. Ian Cai of Overseas Marketing Dept., +86-755-2660-8866,[email protected]
AMD announces its initiative is being collaborative for future processor. Check it out:
(Business Wire Latin America - English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport(TM) technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.



Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.

"This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure."

The Torrenza Advantage

The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design documentation.

"As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative approach to innovation," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "By working with AMD and joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach."

"Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines," said Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they require."

"When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments," said Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division, HP. "The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need."

"Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus innovation," said Jan Silverman, Cray's senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "Our Adaptive Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the realized performance people have come to expect from Cray."

"Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMD's Torrenza initiative, and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza," said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves customers' server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership."

"Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD Opteron processor are powerful," said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology Officer, Dell. "The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our enterprise customers."

Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.

About the AMD Opteron(TM) Processor

Today, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. 2006 NoticiasFinancieras - Business Wire Latin America - All rights reserved

Copyright 2006 NoticiasFinancieras
DELL APPOINTS PANG GENERAL MANAGER. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 24 (Bernama) -- Pang Yee Beng will take over as general manager for Dell Malaysia from September 2006



In a statement here today, Dell said Yee's key focus would be to grow the business in the large and medium corporate segments as well as the government sector

"Pang will provide strategic direction, management of the sales team and oversee effective execution to ensure delivery of high-quality technology and service to Dell's customers in Malaysia," it said

Pang will report to Paul-Henri Ferrand, vice-president for Dell's South Asia business

Prior to his appointment, Pang was enterprise and partner director at Microsoft Malaysia. He has also served in several key leadership positions in 3Com

Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
MCA'S ICT CENTRE & BRITISH TELECOM SIGN DEAL TO HELP SMEs. Check it out:
(Bernama The Malaysian National News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) from BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 26 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA)'s Information Communication Technology (ICT) Resource Centre and BT Multimedia Malaysia Sdn Bhd, a research body of British Telecom plc, have inked a deal to jointly promote innovation among Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) companies in Malaysia



Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Datuk Kong Cho Ha said the collaboration was also aimed at improving competitiveness in the ICT industry among SME companies

"SMEs must innovate to compete in the global economy," Kong said after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between MCA ICT Resource Centre and BT Multimedia, here today

BT Multimedia, located in Cyberjaya is a research centre for the world leading communications solutions provider, British Telecom

CEO of MCA ICT Resource Centre, Andrew Wong said the tie-up was one of its initiatives to increase the level of competency among Malaysian SMEs

"We will be looking at forming collaboration with the Malaysian Plastics Association of Malaysia to promote ICT solutions created by SME companies for companies in the plastics industry," Wong said

In addition to this, Wong said, collaboration with the Kuala Lumpur Malay Chamber of Commerce will also be forged

CEO-Asian Research Centre BT Multimedia, Dr Kamal Jit Singh said Malaysian SMEs still lacked the skills to compete in the global ICT industry

"To bring innnovation, there has to be greater efforts to increase skills and promote the creation of more professionals in the country," he said

Meanwhile, Minister of Housing and Local Government, Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting said increasing global competition from countries such as China and India as well as the fast changing technology innovation landscape were some of the challenges faced in the Malaysian economy

"We will have to address these issues. The MCA Annual General Assembly tommorrow will discusss these issues especially on economic issues as well as education and social," Ong, who is also president of the MCA, said

By Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah and Farazira Amira Yusof Copyright 2006 Bernama

Copyright 2006 Bernama - Malaysian National News Agency Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Visual Network Design Signs Multi-Year Agreement With Emerson Network Power to Provide Software for Datacenter Physical Configuration Management. Check it out:
BURLINGAME, Calif., Sept. 22 -- Visual Network Design, Inc. (VNDI) today announced a multi-year software license agreement with Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, to add information on Emerson's Liebert equipment to a version of its Rackwise Datacenter physical configuration and modeling software. The customized application will be branded as the Liebert Rack Configurator (LRC) and available at Emerson Network Power's custom VAR and Customer websites.



"We are pleased with the opportunity to work with Liebert as they are an industry leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity(TM), and they clearly understand the unique power needs of Datacenters," said VNDI President and Chairman Emmett DeMoss. "VNDI has the opportunity to help Emerson support the automated configuration and modeling of Liebert racks and power equipment by allowing more than 1,000 partners to easily select, view and configure the Liebert products in a multi-vendor environment."

The LRC provides the visual selection and configuration of Liebert Racks and UPSs with access to over 120 different manufactures of Datacenter IT equipment, including Dell, Sun, HP, Cisco, and EMC. Each piece of equipment can be first browsed in the equipment catalogue then built in the on-line software application, to order, with the exact UPS power requirements, automatically calculating total power, heat, weight, ports, dimensions and locations. Equipment can be dragged and dropped into the appropriate rack position, in scale, and documented in both front and back views, generating a complete equipment bill-of-materials ready for final pricing. A complete design may be exported to many formats including Excel, PDF and Microsoft Visio.

"Our partners are always looking for ways to reduce the time and cost associated with configuration and with this agreement, we are confident that we have answered their requests and provided significantly more value," said Bob Bauer, group vice president, Emerson. "We look forward to working closely with VNDI to give our resellers, OEMs and strategic customers the tools they need to continue to grow their business and make it easier to select and configure Liebert mission-critical power from Emerson Network Power."

About Visual Network Design, Inc.
Founded in 2003, Burlingame, CA-based Visual Network Design, Inc. develops innovative software technology for physical datacenter automation and modeling for the design, configuration, visualization, reporting, and management of IT systems. The Rackwise product family is broadly used by original equipment manufacturers to intelligently configure rack-based telecommunication and computer systems as well as F1000 enterprises and service providers to intelligently plan and manage their datacenters.

About Emerson Network Power
Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, is the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity(TM). The company is the trusted source for adaptive and ultra-reliable solutions that enable and protect its customers' business-critical technology infrastructures. Backed by the largest global services organization in the industry, Emerson Network Power offers a full range of innovative power, precision cooling and connectivity products and services for computer, communications, healthcare and industrial systems. Key product brands within the Emerson Network Power family include Liebert, ASCO, Astec, and Lorain. The Liebert Adaptive Architecture creates power, cooling and monitoring platforms for IT systems that combine high reliability and flexibility while delivering the lowest total cost of ownership. For more information on Liebert visit http://www.liebert.com/. For more information on the full spectrum of enterprise-wide solutions from Emerson Network Power, visit http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/.

About Emerson
Emerson, based in St. Louis, is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and appliance and tools businesses. Sales in fiscal 2005 were $17.3 billion.

More information is available on the Web at http://www.rackwise.com/, via e-mail at [email protected], or by telephone at (650) 631-1005.

Visual Network Design and Rackwise are registered trademarks of Visual Network Design, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners.

Media Relations:

Bill Nelson
Visual Network Design
(650) 579-6675
[email protected]

This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com/.

Visual Network Design, Inc.

CONTACT: Bill Nelson, Visual Network Design, +1-650-579-6675,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.liebert.com/http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/http://www.rackwise.co
m/
Yankee Group Analyst Wins CRM Influential Leader Award; Sheryl Kingstone is First Female to be Inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame. Check it out:
BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Yankee Group today announced that Sheryl Kingstone, director of Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies Decision Service, has won CRM Magazine's 2006 Influential Leader Award. Kingstone is also the first female in CRM Magazine's history to be inducted in the CRM Hall of Fame. The CRM Influential Leader award is presented to industry individuals who have demonstrated leadership and significant influence in the marketplace within the past year. Furthermore, the CRM Hall of Fame award is a special recognition for individuals who have made a significant impact and displayed leadership year after year.



"This acknowledgement of our analyst Sheryl Kingstone affirms her established leadership and reputation in the CRM space," said Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group wireless/ mobile enterprise solutions vice president. "A leading authority on helping clients navigate the global connectivity revolution, Yankee Group helps enterprises stay competitive in an evolving and dynamic marketplace. Yankee Group and Sheryl Kingstone are dedicated in delivering unbiased, insightful analysis and research on customer-centric strategies that positions both our clients and Yankee Group as industry thought leaders."

The 2006 CRM Market Leader Awards were announced earlier this week at an awards dinner held in San Jose, CA. The CRM Market Leader awards aim to honor companies and individuals who are raising the bar in customer-centric solutions and initiatives. Kingstone joins former influential award winners such as Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle and Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft CRM and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.

Kingstone is a well-known and respected industry analyst in the CRM market. With more than 15 years experience in high-technology, enterprise vendors rely on her expertise and honest insight on how top trends in marketing and sales effectiveness are affecting their corporate strategy and bottom line.

Some samples of Kingstone's research include:

-- Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Vendors Gain Momentum Using the Business Web, September 2006

-- Customer Centricity: Improving the Customer Experience, August 2006

For more information on these reports or other Yankee Group research, visit www.yankeegroup.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS

For interviews contact:

-- Sheryl Kingstone, Yankee Group director, 905-737-1814, [email protected]

-- Christina Oh, Yankee Group public relations, 617-880-0238, [email protected]

YANKEE GROUP (www.yankeegroup.com)

Yankee Group is the expert in navigating the global connectivity revolution. For more than 35 years, Yankee Group's strategic vision, research and analysis, quantified market intelligence and credible advice have been guiding innovation and empowering our clients to make critical business decisions. Yankee Group is headquartered in Boston with presence throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
NeoMedia's 12snap Sets Up Mobile Marketing Subsidiary in Turkey; New Istanbul Office Provides Creative, Consulting and Technical Services, And Strengthens NeoMedia's Position as a Mobile Marketing Leader in Europe. Check it out:
FORT MYERS, Fla. & MUNICH, Germany --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (OTC BB: NEOM, (www.neom.com), an innovator in market-driven technologies, said today that its award-winning mobile marketing agency 12snap AG subsidiary (www.12snap.com) is now represented in Turkey with its own new subsidiary.



With its new office in Istanbul, NeoMedia's 12snap will offer its expertise locally and directly to the Turkish growth market. Along with its successful portfolio of entertainment applications and personalized mobile content, the company will offer its full range of services in Turkey.

"Entering the Turkish market considerably strengthens the NeoMedia Group presence in Europe and strengthens our position as a mobile marketing leader in the pan-European marketplace," said Martin Copus, president of NeoMedia Mobile and COO of the parent company.

Mr. Copus said that Turkey offers a young demographic with an average age of just over 27, "highly appropriate for mobile marketing programs. Much like Europe," he said, "Turkey is a prime growth region in mobile telephony, noting that the Turkish Telecommunications Authority project some 46 million phones in use - in a total population of 69 million -the end of the year."

Young Turkish Target Markets Open to Mobile Marketing Campaigns

"In the fast-moving consumer goods sector, mobile marketing campaigns are in increasing demand from international brand companies," said Stefanie Krebs, COO at 12snap. "Our research has shown that the younger demographic of cell phone users in Turkey are open to the creative appeal of mobile campaigns. This is one of the reasons why we want to offer marketing decision-makers in Turkey the full spectrum of our consulting and creative services, and work to gain a leadership role in shaping this emerging market right from the start," Ms. Krebs said.

Along with the subsidiaries in Italy, Sweden and Great Britain, Ms. Krebs said that 12snap is continuing its resolute drive for expansion as a part of the NeoMedia network.

Heading the NeoMedia 12snap Istanbul subsidiary is Ercan Kilic. Born in Turkey and with a degree in law, Mr. Kilic, 35, has experience as a managing director and company founder in Germany. Most recently, he was director of Marketing and Business Development at the Cologne-based IN-telegence GmbH, one of Germany's leading network operators for telephony value-added services.

About 12snap AG

Acquired by NeoMedia Technologies, Inc., earlier this year, 12snap AG is headquartered in Munich with branches in Dusseldorf, New York, London, Milan, Stockholm and Vienna. As an expert in innovative marketing and entertainment for mobile phones, 12snap combines know-how in mobile applications, mobile loyalty and mobile marketing. In the mobile marketing space, 12snap creates and implements national and pan-European mobile marketing campaigns for international brands; its mobile loyalty business unit offers customer loyalty programs for companies and brands, and its mobile applications business unit is the center for development and software. 12snap sells and licenses a wide spectrum of mobile solutions to satisfy the demands of the current growing market and the new uses of the third mobile phone generation (UMTS) -- from dynamic video services and multiplayer games to personalized messaging applications. 12snap has 75 employees, and provides services to companies including McDonald's, MTV(R), Coca-Cola, Ferrero, Wella, adidas, Unilever and Gillette(R).

About NeoMedia Technologies, Inc.

NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (www.neom.com), is a diversified global company offering leading edge, technologically advanced products and solutions for companies and consumers, built upon its solid family of patented products and processes, and management experience and expertise. Its mobile services group of companies offers end-to-end mobile enterprise and mobile marketing solutions, through its flagship direct-to-mobile-web qode (R)technology, and ground-breaking products and services from four of the USA's and Europe's leading mobile marketing providers. By linking consumers and companies to the interactive electronic world, NeoMedia delivers one-to-one, permission-based, personalized and profiled dialogue--anytime and anywhere.

The qode suite of easy-to-use, market-driven products and applications are based on a strong foundation of patented technology, comprising the qode (www.qode.com) platform, qodereader(TM) and qodewindow(TM), all of which provide One Click to Content(TM) connectivity for products, print, packaging and other physical objects to link directly to specific desired content on the mobile Internet.

Along with 12snap, NeoMedia's recently acquired companies and offerings include Mobot, (www.mobot.com),a Lexington, Massachusetts-based pioneer in mobile visual recognition technology; Sponge Ltd. (www.spongegroup.com), a London, U.K.-based leader in developing and implementing mobile marketing applications and content delivery; and Gavitec AG - mobile digit (www.gavitec.com), a Wurselen, Germany-based leading provider of mobile technology and marketing solutions.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. With the exception of historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release involve risk and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.

qode is a registered trademark, and qodereader, qodewindow and One Click to Content are trademarks of NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. Other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Mums make careers their new business. Check it out:
(Newsletter Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A growing number of mums in Northern Ireland are becoming 'Kitchen Table Tycoons', juggling motherhood with running their own business. ADRIENNE McGILL reports on a new study which reveals how swapping nappies for an accounts sheet is creating an enterprising breed of female entrepreneurs



DEALING with tears, toys and tantrums requires any mother to stay calm under pressure - just the qualities needed for running a business. It should be no surprise therefore that an increasing number of mums in Northern Ireland are deciding to set up a new business after having children. According to new research by Yellow Pages, almost 80 per cent of mothers who own a firm in the Province embarked on a career in business after having children.

The study identifies a new breed of enterprising female entrepreneurs, dubbed 'Kitchen Table Tycoons', who successfully juggle the roles of mother and magnate - often literally turning their kitchens into their boardrooms.

Conducted following a sharp rise in Yellow Pages directory listings for businesses typically run by women, the research throws up interesting insights into the motivations behind a move into enterprise as well as the benefits and challenges.

The research has been revealed as Yellow Pages launches a dedicated mircosite, www.bizmums.co.uk, offering free expert advice for budding business mums.

According to the study, female entrepreneurs in Northern Ireland have an average age of 36 years and the majority (94 per cent) of business mums were in full time employment prior to starting their own venture.

Motivated by a need for greater work flexibility at the birth of their first child, 79 per cent of 'Kitchen Table Tycoons' said they were satisfied running their own business now, compared to a mere 26 per cent who were satisfied in their previous jobs.

The research also indicates that for Northern Ireland business mums, small is beautiful. Considerably more than half (62 per cent) opt to go it alone whilst almost a quarter (24 per cent) of business mums keep it in the family by setting up a business with their partners.

While 41 per cent of business mums here are earning less than pounds 25,000, a third (32 per cent) are earning between pounds 25,000 and pounds 60,000. When asked what they found most difficult about being a working mum, Northern Ireland business mums most commonly answered being able to run the house properly and stay on top of chores and everyday administration.

The research also reveals that most of the 'business mums' have established businesses providing professional services. The most popular business types were training organisations (12 per cent), business consultancy (nine per cent) and financial services (nine per cent).

A separate analysis of the number of businesses listed under these classifications in Yellow Pages' Northern Ireland edition reveals significant increases over the past 10 years. Training Services listings have increased by 27 per cent while Management & Business Consultants listings have risen by 61 per cent. The growth in financial services is reflected by a 155 per cent increase in the number of Financial Advisers and a 19 per cent increase in Accountants.

More than a third of business mums surveyed had always worked in their chosen business area while a further third spotted a gap in the market. One in 10 developed their business specifically to allow them to juggle parenthood and working from home.

According to Catherine Kehoe, head of UK marketing at Yell, publisher of Yellow Pages directories, the study highlights the crucial role entrepreneurial mums play in Northern Ireland business.

"Not only is this expanding group of kitchen table CEOs making a significant contribution to the economy, but our Yellow Pages data demonstrates the huge impact they are having on the UK's business landscape, spearheading growth in business sectors such as management and business consultancy and financial services."

Drive, determination and passion for their work were highlighted as the most important factors when it comes to Mum's achieving success.

In addition, almost three quarters (74 per cent) had deliberately acquired the relevant skills or training once they'd decided to start their own business.

The research also indicates business mums' self-sufficiency. The main services used by these mums include childcare, printing and copying.

However, only a few mentioned the services of legal advisers and just one in five invest in PR, marketing and advertising for their business.

Commenting on the Yellow Pages' research, Dr Mark Durkin, Head of School of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the University of Ulster, said: "The Yellow Pages research clearly shows female entrepreneurs are gaining great satisfaction through owning/managing their own businesses.

The number of females embracing the entrepreneurship agenda is clearly rising. Here at the University of Ulster, for example, females currently represent 60 per cent of our MSc Marketing and Entrepreneurship programme. Education is a great liberator and my advice would be to explore all options and seek professional support and advice before making any life changing decisions."

TISH Dorman and Donna Devlin represent Northern Ireland's new breed of enterprising female entrepreneurs.

The pair, who are life long friends, launched their company Moon & Spoon last October and have enjoyed a highly successful first year in business.

They set up Warrenpoint-based Moon & Spoon after detecting a gap in the market for specialist foods for kids with an emphasis on nutritious ingredients.

Since starting the venture Tish from Warrenpoint, a mother of two children aged three and five and who is expecting her third child in November, and Donna, who lives in Castlewellan and has two children aged three and four - have literally not stood still.

The company supplies around 35 nursery schools across Northern Ireland with tasty meals for kids carrying catchy names such as Sneezie spaghetti bolognese, Ponto's cowboy pie and Moby's fish pie. Moon & Spoon meals are eaten by around 2,500 kids on an average week. The company has also recently started supplying meals to several schools in Dublin - a market which looks set to grow.

"It took us six months to research the idea properly and to decide the idea was going to work," explains Tish.

"We thought it would be great for kids to have nutritional food in nursery school. It made sense to go direct to nurseries as opposed to selling through supermarkets.

"We thought nurseries needed the service and it was not available in Northern Ireland. Our business is about providing good wholesome food that any parent would be happy to see their kids eat.

"We decided to set up the business after we had children.

"I always liked the idea of working for myself but because I had children I knew I needed more flexibility in order to be able to organise my life around their needs. "I knew that if I worked for myself and if I had a business partner who also had children and who was in the same position, we would work very well in terms of supporting eachother."

The meals are made by TS Foods in Castlewellan and the recipes are devised by Tish and Donna - they have dreamt up a range of 25 dishes which are all nutritionally balanced.

When researching the idea, the pair gauged interest from nursery schools across the Province.

"It was important for us to get out there and speak to nurseries and tell them what we wanted to do," says Tish.

"That is what we did - we drove around numerous nurseries and said 'this is who we are and this is what we are going to do. Do you like the idea?' From that we got an extremely good response. People were very receptive to the idea of good healthy food for children."

However Donna agrees that building the business has required a change in lifestyle.

"Before the business started, normally I would have nipped into the supermarket and picked up a meal for the evening - now you have to have a weekly shop done to see you through the week because a lot of time is spent on the business.

"You can't sit on your laurels at the weekend - you have to get the housework done but at the same time you have to keep on top of things that have to be done with the business and get yourself organised for work.

"It requires planning. We are both very lucky that we have supportive partners and we have been able to get ourselves into a routine."

However Tish and Donna agree that their family lives are a priority and while they enjoy immensely running their business, time with their families is crucial.

"Originally we had thought of going into business with the long term idea of having more time for our children - we always knew the first year was going to be tough," says Tish.

"We would eventually like to have a three-day working week and as the business grows be able to employ another person perhaps to do more of the administration.

"We are lucky in that we don't want to be multi-millionaires but we value our family life very much and we value that above financial rewards - therefore we are very happy that the company grows as fast as we want it to so we that can manage the growth level.

"I can take work home and work in the evening when the kids are asleep - it is important to keep a balance between having time for the kids and working."

Both agree setting up the company has been a worthwhile venture - but one they would not have considered before motherhood.

"The business is going very well and we are very pleased," says Donna.

"There are so many possibilities for Moon & Spoon - it would be lovely to franchise the business out and spread it to the rest of the UK and Europe. We are really loving it - it is hectic but great.

"You get great satisfaction from seeing a child picking up a plate and licking it because they have enjoyed one of our dinners - that is just fantastic."

Copyright 2006 . Century Newsletters Ltd.
Governance, Risk and Compliance Leaders Converge at Axentis Engage! 2006 User Conference; Third Annual Conference Features Leading Global 2000 Organizations and Thought Leaders--Identifies Key Strategies for Effective and Sustainable GRC Management. Check it out:
CLEVELAND --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Axentis, the leading provider of on-demand governance, risk and compliance (GRC) management solutions, today announced the success of Engage! 2006, its annual conference designed to give customers, partners and Axentis executives a forum to discuss and share views on critical trends and practical approaches to successfully managing GRC applications. The conference, which took place September 12 - 14 in Newport, RI, also highlighted the new Axentis Privacy Management Suite and previewed upcoming Axentis Enterprise and Axentis SOX Suite product enhancements.



"Customer success is the ultimate validation of the Axentis Enterprise solution, the industry's only offering that leverages the SaaS model to empower organizations to effectively address the complete spectrum of compliance concerns," said Roger Bottum, vice president, marketing at Axentis. "By bringing together partners such as IBM and The Ponemon Institute, our customers and our own people, we were able to create a forum that delivered on our objective of having participants return to their companies with new ideas for enhancing their GRC programs and their use of Axentis Enterprise."

Engage! 2006 featured customer, partner and Axentis presentations and roundtable discussions including approaches to integrating compliance into the business, measuring and managing the cost of compliance, approaches for specific areas such as Sarbanes-Oxley 404, Sarbanes-Oxley 302 and enterprise compliance training. Specific presenters included:

-- Matt Leonard, CIPP and Senior Fellow, Ponemon Institute, a pioneer in the development of privacy audits, privacy risk management and ethical information management. Leonard spoke on "The Business Case for Effective Privacy Management," which addressed mounting privacy concerns impacting Global 2000 corporations

-- John Reece, former CIO for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Time Warner. Reece spoke on "Securing Trusted Operations." The session outlined the issue of trust and why having shareholder (i.e. customers, partners, employees) trust is critical to the immediate and long-term success of large global organizations

Additional topics addressed at this year's event included:

-- "Moving from Add-on to Embedded SOX Compliance" - focusing on how companies can significantly reduce effort by embedding these processes within the internal enterprise. Organizations can eliminate duplicative test work and in the case of Sox 404, save up to 50 percent of their compliance costs.

-- "Integrating Governance, Risk and Compliance - New Models for Success" - discussing how Governance, Risk Management and Compliance are converging as disciplines and that the globalization of company operations and by extension GRC programs, are rapidly changing historical models, skill requirements, and effectiveness models. The session went on to provide insights into successfully addressing this evolving industry.

-- "The Evolution of an Effective Global Compliance Training Program" - describing the implementation of a global training compliance program to address the requirements of over 12,000 employees and contractors.

Additional discussions delivered real-life customer experiences with the Axentis Enterprise (Ae) solution, including reviews of pathways to GRC success. Engage! 2006 also featured a look at the company's recently announced Axentis Privacy Management Suite and delivered a glimpse ahead at a series of upcoming product rollouts slated to be seamlessly rolled out in Q4 2006 and Q1 2007.

Axentis is the only GRC company leveraging the SaaS model to deliver consistent workflow, reporting, security and content and learning management. Currently over 700,000 users from Global 2000 companies located in more than 100 countries trust Axentis with their GRC requirements. Whether tackling Enterprise Risk Management, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Corporate Code of Conduct, Anti Money Laundering statutes, Operational Risk, or COBIT, Axentis Enterprise is the common platform resource used to automate processes, reduce costs and manage risk.

About Axentis

Axentis delivers the only on-demand business performance optimization environment that empowers companies to turn governance, risk and compliance initiatives into better business performance and competitive advantage. With its unique software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Axentis Enterprise (Ae) Suite delivers a one-world view of the entire organization for better risk management, mitigation and compliance. Ae is easy-to-use and can be deployed quickly, delivering immediate impact and a quick return on investment (ROI). Axentis, which was recently named an industry leader and innovator by several leading analyst firms, touts over 700,000 users from leading Global 2000 companies including ADT and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Axentis is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with data centers in Boulder, CO and Basel, Switzerland. For more information, please visit http://www.axentis.com.
Phoenix Technologies Ltd. Revises Revenue Guidance for the Fourth Quarter of Fiscal 2006; Further Restructuring and Reduction in Workforce to Lower Expenses. Check it out:
MILPITAS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:PTEC), the global market leader in core system software, today issued revised revenue guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2006 and also announced plans for additional restructuring through a reduction in workforce.



Revenue Guidance

The Company had previously indicated that it expected revenues for the fourth fiscal quarter, ending September 30, 2006, to be in the range of $12.5 million to $14.5 million. The Company now expects revenues for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $8.0 million to $9.0 million.

Woody Hobbs, the company's new president and CEO explained the shortfall by pointing to earlier decisions and announcements. "Phoenix is a company with incredible strength in design engineering, and is the market leader in the development of the software that operates at the core of personal computers and servers. Historical sales and pricing policies have been successful at building our strong market share position, but may have undermined the perceived value of our contribution to the products in which we are installed. We have made the decision to eliminate the use of fully paid up licenses and the associated price discounting and this has impacted our fourth quarter revenues."

Management expects that fully paid-up license revenues in Q4 will represent approximately 13% of total Q4 revenues -- down from the 20% previously projected.

Two other factors contributed to the Company's expected revenue guidance shortfall. "As we have introduced our new applications products to our channel partners and enterprise customers, we have found that their deployment requires a more complex IT infrastructure than had previously been recognized," said Hobbs. "This has caused delays and losses of some previously anticipated sales. I am working with our sales and engineering teams to review our applications product and distribution strategies to address these issues."

The third factor influencing the fourth quarter revenue shortfall was a greater than anticipated build-up in supply chain inventories resulting from Microsoft's delay in launching its new Vista operating system.

Restructuring Plan

In an effort to further reduce expenses, the Company will today reduce its workforce by 14%, from 471 employees worldwide to 403. Most of the reductions will relate to the enterprise applications business and will include personnel in all regions. The Company expects to record a charge of approximately $2.1 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2006 for severance related costs and other restructuring expenses. With the announced restructuring and other reductions in operating expenses primarily in the marketing area, operating expenses during the first quarter of fiscal year 2007 are estimated to be approximately $15.5 million, down 24% from the normalized operating expenses during the third quarter of fiscal year 2006 of $20.5 million.

"Today's reduction in staff will not compromise our dedication to the highest levels of customer service or to our research and development initiatives," Hobbs stated further.

"We are faced with several challenges in the marketplace, but our core position at the heart of computing is solidly established, and our goal is to build long-lasting value and high-growth on that strong foundation. Phoenix Technologies has always been committed to providing a secure and reliable platform that enables our customers to create value and differentiation and we will continue this commitment and our dedication to our customers' success," said Hobbs.

The Company expects to report financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2006 ended September 30, 2006, on Monday, November 6, 2006 at 4:45 PM. (EST).

About Phoenix

Phoenix Technologies (NASDAQ:PTEC) is a global market leader in core system software that assures security, from the start. The Company first established dominant industry leadership 26 years ago with BIOS software, currently has over one billion products deployed and continues to ship in over 100 million new systems each year. From this unique foundation of core system-level expertise Phoenix software offers the highest levels of security and reliability. Phoenix serves ODMs, OEMs, system builders and ISVs by enabling them to decrease time to market, differentiate their products, create value, increase profits and decrease cost of ownership. Phoenix is headquartered in Milpitas, California with offices worldwide in global business and technology centers. For more information, visit www.phoenix.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

With the exception of historical information, the revenues and expenses guidance and other statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this document are based upon information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward looking statement. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements are discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 10-K, filed December 29, 2005.

Phoenix, Phoenix Technologies, and the Phoenix Technologies logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Phoenix Technologies Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Cortina Acquires Intel Optical Networking Biz. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Fabless analog and digital communications chip supplier, Cortina Systems, has acquired Intels optical network components businessin a cash deal worth$115 million, the companies announced today. Intel will retain a small equity stake in the business.



The deal adds Intels time division multiplexing (TDM) and optical components technology to Cortinas portfolio of IP routing and transport market products.

They have a fairly significant product, said Amir Nayyerhabibi, Cortinas CEO, who worked on Intels 286 processors at Intel earlier in his career. It brings in more than $100 million in revenues per year. The product from the Intel division falls into four separate categories which sold to telecom and networking equipment makers in North America and Asia. The Intel business and Cortina have shared many of the same customers.

Cortina will gain a few additional large customers through the deal and several smaller customers, Nayyerhabibi said. The smaller customers are those that sell through distribution channels, adding that element of the business to Cortinas operations.

Privately-held Cortina expects to take between 50 and 100 of Intels key employees in engineering, product testing/validation, operations, marketing and application engineering as part of the deal, according to Cortina's CEO. An Intel spokesman confirmed that many of the 120 Intel employees aligned with the transaction have received offer letters. Those who have not received offer letters may be redeployed within the chip giant.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Cortina plans to set up facilities in Folsom, Calif.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Asia to accommodate the new workers.

Cortina expects to leverage its existing relationship with TSMC to manufacture the Intel parts. Some of the technology is already on the TSMC process, Nayyerhabibi said, and some with other fabs. However, none of the technology was being manufactured at Intel fabs, he added.

Cortina said the acquisition will bring the company closer to its goal of becoming a leader in components for infrastructure routing, transport, and enterprise markets by making it the top provider of Ethernet framers, Ethernet PHYs, optical transport FEC framers, Ethernet over SONET service framers, and T1/E1 line interface units.

Cortina said it has also closed a $132 million rounding of funding led by a new investor, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), and including other new investors, Alloy Ventures, Bridgescale Partners, Doll Capital Management, and Sofinnova Ventures. The round also included existing investors Canaan Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures.

Intel spokesman Len Schulwitz said that the deal reflects Intel's efforts to sharpen its focus on communications products that are aligned with its core business. Those include Intel Architecture processors, network processors, optical modules and modules for communications platforms.

Intel has been working on this sharpened focus all year, announcing plans to close its design office in Glasgow, Scotland http://www.edn.com/article/CA6333089.html?partner=enews and to discontinue the Ethernet MAC product designed as part of the effort. The facility was part of the Intel Communications Group's efforts around optical networking.

First announced in April, Intel has been reevaluating its business operations http://www.edn.com/article/CA6328802.html?partner=enews this year as part of a broad restructuring effort, which, in part, aims to reduce headcount through layoffs and sales of certain business units. Intel sold its handset processor business to Marvell http://www.edn.com/article/CA6347446.html?partner=enews&ref=nbenn&text=m
arvell+intel
as part of this effort.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
Converged Mobile Device Shipments Hit New High, IDC Says. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Worldwide converged mobile device shipments continued to climb during Q2, nearly reaching the 20 million unit mark, according to Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm IDC.

The firm reported total shipments of converged mobile devices reached a record 19.3 million units for Q2, marking a 1.9 percent sequential increase and a 42.1 percent year-over-year increase. IDC defines a converged mobile device as a mobile phone having a high-level operating system, such as BlackBerry, Linux, Palm, Symbian, or Windows Mobile.



That quarterly shipments are reaching the 20 million unit mark in a single quarter is a significant milestone, noted Ramon Llamas, research analyst for IDC's mobile markets team, in a statement.

As recently as two years ago, it would have taken an entire year to ship that kind of volume. Since then, the converged mobile device, or smartphone, has evolved in terms of functionality and appeal. In addition, as functionalities have increased, prices have decreased, making converged mobile devices not just attractive, but affordable, he explained.

Although the year-over-year growth rate appears to be slowing when compared to previous quarters, this is due to a steadily rising volume of shipments and increasingly difficult comparisons. However, IDC expects to see continued growth in quarterly shipment volume with shipments reaching nearly 100 million units for the year, he continued.

The growing availability of email solutions that can support a variety of platforms is really driving demand for converged mobile devices, the firm believes. In particular, IDC has seen a steady increase in demand for enterprise-based devices for mobile workers.

While new applications and email solutions are driving the demand for converged mobile devices within the enterprise, the devices are also becoming popular with consumers.

This is because the presence of high-level operating systems on converged mobile devices has opened the door for enhanced multimedia applications geared toward a richer video and imaging experience, perhaps indicating the reason device vendors are increasingly characterizing these devices as 'prosumer.'

Nokia announced a deal with Flickr in April that allows owners of Nokia Nseries devices to access their Flickr account directly from their device, enhancing the imaging experience, which the firm said is likely to be one of many announcements aimed at bringing better integration and richer content to users, and to fuel continued strong growth in converged mobile devices.

Finnish giant Nokia remained the worldwide leader in the converged mobile device space in Q2, and continued to enhance its product portfolio with its new Nseries and Eseries devices, as well as its recently announced 5500 Sport device.

Motorola emerged as the number 2 vendor by shipment volume in Q2, posting the largest year-over-year shipment increase of any of the leading vendors. The U.S.-based vendor's highly-anticipated MotoQ helped fuel its U.S. growth while the launch of the MING device boosted its Asian presence.

In the number 3 position for Q2 was Canadian vendor Research In Motion. The company experienced healthy year-over-year growth despite a decline in BlackBerry shipments from the first quarter's volumes.

Japanese vendor Panasonic held the number 4 spot after enduring a decrease in both sequential and year-over-year shipments. Nearly all of its shipments remained within Japan in 2Q06 after its X700 and X800 models were phased out of the Asia/Pacific market earlier in the year.

Another Japanese giant --Sharp -- rounded out the top 5 vendors of converged mobile devices. A relative newcomer to the space having made its debut at the end of 2005, Sharp, like Panasonic, saw shipments remain within Japan. During Q2, the vendor added the SH702 to join its SH902 devices already on the market.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
Samsung Ventures Funds Advanced Storage Startup. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Advanced storage technology company SiliconSystems Inc. has garnered a Series C investment by Samsung Ventures.

The venture capital arm of the Korean consumer electronics giant said it invests in leading technology companies related to the business activities of the Samsung Group, including flagship company Samsung Electronics, SiliconSystems' primary supplier of storage components.



SiliconSystems designs, manufactures, and markets its advanced storage technology exclusively to the Enterprise System OEM market.

The companies provided no further information regarding Samsung's Series C financing.

"Samsung invests in highly innovative market leaders and SiliconSystems is an outstanding performer by every metric," Bill Byun, investment principal at Samsung Ventures, said in a statement.

"Samsung's support for SiliconSystems going forward will be key to assuring our continuing growth," Michael Hajeck, SiliconSystems' CEO and co-founder, added in a statement.

Previous investors in SiliconSystems include SanDisk Corp. http://www.edn.com/article/CA429778.htmland venture capital firms Miramar Venture Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners, and Shepherd Ventures. SiliconSystems intends to use the Series C financing to expand R&D and global sales and marketing programs.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
Motorola Opens Chinese Wireless Development Center. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Aiming to drive innovation across the China's wireless communication industry and promote the growth of wireless applications in China, Motorola Inc. announced the opening of its Hunan Innovation Center in Changsha, China.



The development center will focus on improving the capabilities of enterprise platforms and mobile applications, as well as provide a venue for Motorola to work with operators, service providers, content providers and end-users on wireless application innovation and development, the company said Tuesday.

All the participants in the mobile telecommunications industry stand to benefit from the development of wireless technologies and innovative mobile applications, said Ruey-Bin Kao, president of Motorola China in a statement. "The Hunan Innovation Center will help to drive the development of the next generation of mobile applications by making the most of Motorola's ability to work with the entire industry, including operators, service providers, application developers and end users."

Motorola said it received strong support from the Hunan government in building the Hunan Innovation Center.

The center is located in the Changsha National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone's Lu Valley Park, dedicated to advanced technologies in support of the national mission to realize an information society, Motorola said.

Hunan hopes to take the lead in hosting mobility enterprises and advanced telecommunications applications and services and believes the Motorola Hunan Innovation Center will help the region build experience that will be valuable for the whole country.

With the advantage of local access, Motorola said the new center is meant to help operators adopt advanced technologies, seize time-to-market advantages and increase customer revenue, thus allowing them to benefit from the rapid development of China's telecommunications industry.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

Intel, Siemens Team on VoIP

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Intel, Siemens Team on VoIP. Check it out:
(Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Intel Corp. and Siemens Communications have announced a technology relationship that includes an agreement to work together on VoIP (voice over Internet protocol.)

The companies said they would collaboratively create open unified communications solutions for VoIP, and agreed to jointly fund and cooperatively conduct research on secure wireless networks in the short term. For the long term the companies will collaborate on creating vertical industry solutions for business process optimization in segments such as telecom service providers, financial services and digital healthcare.



The agreement also calls for the two companies to establish joint market development efforts focused on the enterprise and service provider sectors. The overall goal of the joint effort is to demonstrate real time communications solutions for business process optimization using Intel architecture such as Intel dual-core technology and carrier class Rack Mounted Servers (RMS) from Intel and the HiPath 8000 and OpenScape from Siemens.

The first step is to demonstrate the OpenScape platform running applications such as Personal Portal, Unified Communications, Video and Voice Conferencing and Mobile Clients. Intel and Siemens expect to present findings and display the first wave of technology solutions developed at the Intel lab to selected customers by the fourth quarter of 2006.

"Intel's experience as the leading provider of silicon technology to the enterprise market world wide and established track record of industry collaboration puts it in a great position to shape the enterprise of the future," said Gordon Graylish, VP of the sales and marketing group and general manager of Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

"Siemens has a strong commitment to this joint development effort and to ongoing collaboration with Intel to unlock the potential of our open communication enterprise solutions to a global ecosystem of third party independent software providers and systems integrators," said Thomas Zimmermann, president, Enterprise Systems, Siemens Communications. "Growth potential for the open unified communications market is significant. Our own customer base for the HiPath 8000 solution has more than doubled since the first quarter of the year, and Siemens is adding a new HiPath 8000 customer nearly every week."

The Intel lab will also act as a center for the optimization and integration of products from independent software vendors and other third party systems to work with the new open unified communication VoIP technologies. Additionally, Siemens and Intel plan to jointly optimize and prepare Siemens' software portfolio based on Intel dual-core technology and Intel virtualization technology.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.

CMM Group invests in growth

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CMM Group invests in growth. Check it out:
(London, Sep 06) CMM Group, the £30m turnover communications and mailing specialist, has concluded £400k of investment in new IT and hardware to streamline the flow of management and operational information, and to increase its production capacity. The Group has invested in an ERP system, as well as additional folding and polywrapping hardware.





Following CMM Groups acquisition of Pims National at the start of 2006, and the rapid growth of its international mail consolidation service FastPost launched last year, the organisation has successfully integrated Group operations and management. However, this process soon revealed client demand for the full range of CMM Group services. The Group therefore decided to invest further in operational and management information systems to support co-ordinated account management for multi-service clients.



The Group has invested in a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to consolidate all of its business functions into one system. Microsoft Dynamics NAV now takes the five previous systems that performed financial accounting, job management, and shop floor processes, and runs all their tasks off one platform.



Previously, because of discrete legacy IT, the Group ran as a series of individual businesses. Now, with a single Group-wide system, management can access high quality data from across the Group and unified account management is supported by consolidated data on multi-service clients .



Alastair Maclean, Group Operations Director and co-founder of CMM Group, comments: Previously our businesses operated with their own P&L, and information was consolidated only at the Group topline level. This is a natural process when either a new line of business is proving its sustainability, or an acquired business is proving its value. However, with clients increasingly asking us to provide several services, there is a need for absolutely seamless account management, and that requires a single data view. We need to continue to deliver on the brand promise that CMM represents.



Another key benefit is that management has access to real-time data and visibility of whats happening across the entire business. We now have the capability to decide exactly where to place a specific piece of work. Previously jobs could only be scheduled within each site. Now, we have the means to schedule at a macro-level across the whole Group and the ability to look at planned orders and assess where best to carry them out. By looking at what were doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it, we can improve our service levels and potentially develop new products.



In response to its rapid expansion, CMM has also made additional investments in hardware capabilities. Its polywrapping division, AlphaMail, has invested in online camera systems on its polythene wrapping machines in order to enhance still further its security and tracking standards.



The new cameras allow AlphaMail to record the sequential numbers on every document that is wrapped. If a number is missing the machine automatically stops, allowing staff to investigate the matter.



Don Green, Managing Director, Alpha Mail, comments: Monitoring the production line has been done manually for years and is therefore very labour intensive. Financial reporting and statements always have to be processed to a very high standard. The cameras, which can read either face up or down on our machines, now enable us to automate the whole process resulting in the capacity to handle more reporting and financial accounts work.



CMM National, the Groups direct mailing division, has invested in a new MB Multimaster 38 folder to support the growth of its transactional mailing business. Electronic set-up allows the plates to set themselves automatically once an operator has keyed in the size of the paper and the fold. The MB Multimaster 38 also has continuous feed capability, a camera and an accumulator. It reads information on every mailing piece and then collates and audits the correct number of pages before folding them, in one process.



Kevin Semple, Managing Director, CMM National, comments: Clients such as banks and building societies require 100% validation of their mailings because of issues such as identity theft and data protection, which can be headline news these days. The automated set-up and non-stop reading facility will speed up the process and improve security for our mailings. It will also reduce mis-feeds and mis-inserts to zero. Additionally, we can download the results of the folding process onto disk to give to the client for their peace-of-mind.
MergeOptics Will Demonstrate Its 40Gbit/s CWDM Transponder and Its New SFP+ Product Family at ECOC 2006. Check it out:
BERLIN, Germany --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 22, 2006 -- MergeOptics GmbH a leading supplier of highly integrated, low power fiber optic components and transceivers, announced today the availability of prototypes of its next generation SFP+ product family. A live demonstration including its 40Gbit/s solution will be offered at ECOC 2006 in Cannes France on booth #654.



MergeOptics' SFP+ product family addresses the market need for higher port density and lower power consumption in Enterprise and Storage applications at speeds of up to 10Gbit/s. It is suited for transmission over 300m of OM-3 multimode fiber and over 10km of single mode fiber.

With this new platform MergeOptics enables its customers to stay in a leading innovative position. For evaluation and system level testing MergeOptics provides its customers with prototypes in accordance with latest standard developments.

The SFP+ prototypes are available on request, volume production is scheduled for the 2nd quarter 2007.

The 40Gbit/s transponder addresses the market need for higher bandwidth in core and backbone networks. This new product generation is based on MergeOptics' LX4 technology. The module in a XENPAK form factor integrates four individual data lines each at 10Gb/s, optically multiplexed into a single fiber enabling a 40Gbit/s data throughput over up to 10km at only 8W power consumption.

Dag Neumeuer, President and CEO of MergeOptics stated today, "With these latest developments we are consequently following our product strategy addressing customer needs by offering one of the most comprehensive portfolios for applications at 10Gbit/s and beyond."

About MergeOptics

MergeOptics GmbH was founded in Germany, in September 2000 and develops highly integrated components and modules for the rapidly growing optical communication market. The company integrates optical components (lasers, modulators and photo diodes) with high-frequency electrical circuits to create compact modules that operate with industry standard optical and electrical interfaces. MergeOptics' business objective is to specialize in high-speed optical products that are world-class for both integration and performance. MergeOptics has partnerships with several leading German universities and research facilities, including the prestigious Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, Germany. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.mergeoptics.com or contact your regional Sales and Marketing.
Global Crossing Opens Facility in Monterrey. Check it out:
Global Crossing announced Friday it opened a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) facility in Monterrey, Mexico. The company plans to offer carrier and enterprise customers with direct access to its Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP-based network at this new location.



“Mexico continues to be a key market within our global strategy and we're pleased to expand our IP infrastructure in response to growing customer demand,” said Global Crossing’s chief executive officer John Legere in a statement. “Customers increasingly require bandwidth-intensive applications that require a highly advanced network, and this is exactly what Global Crossing's network was built for.”

The new PoP currently serves as Global Crossing's global interconnection center in Monterrey and is already serving customers. The company's other locations in Latin America include another facility in Mexico City and other locations across Central and South America. Global Crossing's IP-based services available from the new Monterrey PoP also include Private Line, International Private Line, high-speed Internet access, IP VPN, collaboration services, ATM and Frame Relay.

“This important investment in Monterrey allows us to give customers a competitive advantage by providing a global gateway to our secure, fiber-optic network from one of Mexico's most important business and industrial districts,” added Adrian Gonzalez, Global Crossing's managing director in Mexico. “We will continue to solidify our key position in this market by advancing Mexico's connectivity to the rest of the world.”

Global Crossing made news last week when it introduced VoIP Professional Services, which will extend an enhanced agreement the company has with Avaya (News - Alert).

The new set of services includes technical support, transition management and managed solutions. Common service bundles may include network readiness assessment and design, network integration and implementation, and managed VoIP PBX (News - Alert) services. Global Crossing's partnership with Avaya will also allow Global Crossing to resell Avaya's IP telephony applications, systems and services as part of a complete VoIP-based offering.

Global Crossing
http://www.globalcrossing.com

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

-------

Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit her columnist page.
One IP Voice, Inc. Enters into Agreement with Intrado to Deploy Enhanced 9-1-1 for VoIP Communications Solutions. Check it out:
EAST HARTFORD, Conn., Sept. 22 -- One IP Voice, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: OIVO.OB) , announced today that its OIPV Corp (OIPV), a national provider of intelligent IP powered business communication solutions, reached an agreement with Intrado Inc., a global provider of integrated data and telecommunications solutions and a leading provider of VoIP E9-1-1 services, to market VoIP E9-1-1 services. Under terms of the agreement, OIPV will market Intrado(R) V9-1-1(R) Services targeted to:



* Small to medium enterprises
* Larger enterprises supporting a dispersed and mobile workforce
* IP powered communications service providers

The introduction of IP powered technologies enables enterprises to acquire new applications and capabilities critical to meeting the demands of dynamic business environments, including enabling businesses to support nomadic business environments integrated with premise based business operations. As business employee location conditions change, locations and phone numbers of the 9-1-1 caller can no longer be easily identified. This can result in complications to get the 9-1-1 call to the geographically correct public safety answering point (PSAP). OIPV provides comprehensive E9-1-1 coverage in an IP based environment for prospective and existing business customers.

The OIPV solution is designed and developed to offer delivery of the capabilities needed to support diverse and dynamic businesses with essential 9-1-1 services. Integral to the solution, OIPV will leverage E9-1-1 management applications and (VoIP) voice over intelligent protocol platform to track physical locations of phone users inside the premise and mobile users providing Local Information Services (LIS) to public safety answering points (PSAPs). OIPV's solution enables mobile workforces to utilize ubiquitous and secure access leveraging OIPV's private IP converged network offer "One IPNET."

Flexible IP addressing allows users to leverage voice, data and imaging applications in a mobile environment with OIPV solution utilizing assigned IP device and applications to access their company's private network. Whether they are telecommuters using company-assigned IP communication applications or are located in remote locations that are networked to larger company operation centers supporting on or off net calling, they can now gain essential E9-1-1 support.

The solution and combined offers address all aspects of 9-1-1 support. They interface with the enterprise network to provision the caller's current location, detecting phone moves, adds and changes and then provide call routing and delivery to the geographically correct PSAP with the requisite automatic location information (ALI) for each 9-1-1 call.

About One IP Voice Inc.
One IP Voice Inc., formerly known as Farmstead Telephone Group, Inc. until it changed its corporate name on July 19, 2006, is a nationwide provider of business telecommunications equipment and IP telephony products and services. Operations are conducted through its two business units: the Farmstead Telephone Group Division and the OIPV Corp Division as further described below. Further information about One IP Voice Inc. may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

Farmstead Telephone Group Division
Farmstead Telephone Group is a Platinum level member of Avaya's BusinessPartner program. Since 1984, Farmstead has been one of the nation's largest full service enterprise telecommunications providers with a comprehensive nationwide systems, services and parts network. Farmstead has garnered many prestigious awards for service, customer satisfaction and growth. Further information about Farmstead may be found at http://www.farmstead.com/

OIPV Corp DivisionOIPV Corp, formerly named One IP Voice, Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary, providing Carrier-Based Hosted Voice over Intelligent Protocol(TM) (VoIP) solutions to Small to Medium Businesses nationwide. Further information about OIPV Corp may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

To add yourself to our email distribution list, click here: http://www.b2i.us/frame.asp?BzID=1042&to=ea&Nav=1&S=0&L=1

CONTACT
Robert G. LaVigne
One IP Voice, Inc.
Voice: 860-610-6002
Fax: 860-610-6001

INVESTOR CONTACT
Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday
Aurelius Consulting Group, Inc.407-644-4256
[email protected]
http://www.runonideas.com/

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. In addition to historical information, investors should consider carefully the risks associated with an investment in the Company's securities as previously outlined by the Company in its prior filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One IP Voice, Inc.

CONTACT: Robert G. LaVigne of One IP Voice, Inc., +1-860-610-6002,+1-860-610-6001 (fax); or Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday, Investor Contacts, ofAurelius Consulting Group, Inc. for One IP Voice, Inc., +1-407-644-4256,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.oneipvoice.com/
ESRI Homeland Security Summit Brings Together Leaders in GIS and Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery; Data Sharing, Interoperability, and GIS Framework Advance Public Safety. Check it out:
REDLANDS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- ESRI announces that the Homeland Security GIS Summit will be held October 23-26, 2006, at the Denver Convention Center in Denver, Colorado.

The summit is for executives, management teams, and practitioners from state, local, and federal governments and their partner agencies; utilities; and the private sector. The summit aims to foster communication and collaboration using geographic information system (GIS) technology as a comprehensive, interoperable platform for managing and serving geospatial data and analysis for emergency planning and real-time event response.



The opening day will offer a plenary session on preparedness. Technical presentations will feature a virtual command center: how it can work and how GIS is used to serve relevant "operating pictures" in dynamic situations, events, and responses. The presentations will highlight some of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2 as they apply to common elements of homeland security. Five key GIS functions as they relate to homeland security will be demonstrated:

-- Collecting, building, creating, and inventorying spatial data and maps

-- Integrating and applying spatial and nonspatial databases

-- Distributing, disseminating, communicating, and sharing geographic knowledge

-- Employing the analytic capabilities of GIS to make informed decisions

-- Operating a GIS in a disconnected environment

The plenary will also feature two cross-cutting panels discussing data fusion and incident command structures. A special dinner presentation will feature David Miller, Senior Manager, Market Planning & GIS, Walgreens, who will share with the audience how enterprise GIS supported the work of Walgreens during the Katrina disaster response and the development of solutions for the delivery of emergency services.

The two-and-one-half-day summit will also feature workshops on GIS portals and interoperability topics for homeland security solutions. "A common operating picture is important," says Russ Johnson, ESRI's manager for public safety and homeland security solutions. "When you prepare for events that require coordinated responses from different agencies, you must have a framework to share knowledge. GIS provides that comprehensive platform and interoperability to serve geospatial data, saving time, money, and most important, lives."

The 2006 Homeland Security GIS Summit will be held concurrently with the ESRI Health GIS Conference, a conference for those in health, hospital systems, and scientific research interested in a range of GIS applications from community health to global systems for disease surveillance and spatial awareness. Sessions at both conferences are available to all attendees, and there will be a unified exhibit area to bring people together from peer organizations.

The inaugural ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit was held in 2005 in Denver, Colorado.

For additional information and to register, please visit www.esri.com/hssummit.

Founded in 1969, ESRI (www.esri.com) is the world leader in the GIS software industry. ESRI offers innovative solutions that help users create, manage, analyze, and display information to make timely decisions and solve problems they encounter every day. ESRI's comprehensive product line ranges from desktop GIS to GIS for the enterprise.
Dachser to get moving on logistics services. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI: Leading Germany-based logistics provider Dachser Far East Ltd, a subsidiary of GmbH & Co KG, will add new services to sharpen its competitive edge as part of its five-year development plan in China.



The company said yesterday it had set up a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) in Shanghai to monitor its business in North China and is applying for another WFOE based in Shenzhen in South China.

"This is part of Dachser's ambitious investment programme of 1 billion euros (US$1.27 billion) worldwide until 2014 that will position Dachser to continue its dynamic expansion in our key markets including China," said Thomas Reuter, managing director of Dachser Air & Sea Logistics.

Dachser plans to establish logistics centres in the areas of South China/Pearl River Delta, North and Central China, as well as in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

The company also plans to introduce a highly integrated logistics service, Contract Logistics, by 2007. Its Air & Sea logistics service is currently the company's pillar business in China.

"In the next five years, the plan is to grow Asia's turnover from 85 million euros (US$108 million) in 2005 to 303 million euros (US$385 million) by 2011, which is a triple-digit growth of 258 per cent. The Greater China region is expected to contribute 220 million euros (US$279 million) in turnover by then. And this is our plan for Greater China," Reuter said.

Dachser also plans to increase staffing at its operational office in China from 13 to 24, aiming to double the number by 2011.

Last year the company opened a representative office in Chengdu, making Dachser one of the few international logistics companies to step into inland China.

The announcement came as demand rises for logistics services in China as it becomes the world's manufacturing base, and with consolidation in the logistics market expected. Multinational logistics and postal services providers including DHL, UPS and FedEx are all expanding their presence in the market.

The past three years have seen a series of acquisitions of domestic logistics players by international giants.

"Dachser's move shows that China has become one of the fastest growing markets for logistics service providers," said Xu Gang, an analyst with Shanghai-based Tradeworld Consulting Limited.

He added that Dachser's WFOE in Shanghai and another to be opened in Shenzhen would give the company a competitive edge in the Chinese market.

"Our WFOE licence covers most areas of our current freight forwarding activities as well as a warehousing service," said Christophe Vincent, general manager of North China Dachser Shanghai Co Ltd.

"We are, without doubt, in China to stay, and setting up WFOEs for our China operations are evidence of our commitment," said Edoardo Podest, regional managing director of Dachser Far East.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
IN BRIEF (Page: 11, Date: 09/22/2006). Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING Expansion funding China International Water & Electric Corp (CWE) yesterday signed an agreement with China Development Bank, which will see the lender offer loans worth 10 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) from 2006 to 2009 to fund CWE's overseas expansion.



CWE, a large State-owned enterprise, is mainly engaged in contracting overseas engineering projects. The company has signed a deal for a massive dam project in Sudan, the largest ever such overseas contract secured by a Chinese company.

Monitoring centre Leading global anti-virus specialist Trend Micro has joined four Chinese partners, including the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre, to launch a monitoring operation centre in China. The centre will help customers monitor their data and guarantee a timely response when emergencies occur. Company executives said Chinese customers are now demanding increased security-related services, rather than hardware and software products.

SICHUAN Platform established Microsoft Corp this week established its first game technology platform in China, a move it hopes will help it carve a niche in the nation's up-and-coming gaming industry.

The company will use the platform to develop video games for its XBox360 console, in an effort to add Chinese cultural characteristics to its games. The platform, located in Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, will also provide training for local video game developers. ZHEJIANG HK IPO ditched Ningbo Commercial Bank said yesterday it has abandoned plans to sell shares in Hong Kong and is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai.

The bank has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc's Chinese securities venture to arrange the sale, it said, giving no further details. The Ningbo lender is among six or seven city-based banks preparing IPOs.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Keep credible certificates

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Keep credible certificates. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Industrial associations should improve their work to win public trust, says a commentary in the Shenzhen-based Jingbao newspaper. An excerpt follows: The mooncake certificate signing (CS) has been promoted in Shenzhen for more than a decade as representing high quality, and is accepted by more and more consumers.



But Jingbao reporters found out recently that the issuance of mooncake CS is not standardized. As long as it gets paid, the Shenzhen Consumer Goods Quality Promotion Association will issue the CS signs to anyone. Its behaviour has greatly damaged CS's public credibility.

Certification without public trust is meaningless. This case compels industrial associations to think about the route of development with self-discipline.

As the development of a market economy deepens, non-governmental industrial associations and intermediate organizations are playing a more and more important role in enhancing enterprise co-operation and protecting enterprises' rights. The government has been encouraging the development of industrial associations as well as the establishment of industrial standards and quality certification.

So there will be more industrial certifications like the mooncake CS. When a box of mooncakes is labelled with various quality certification signs, we will of course think it a good thing that many organizations are making strict checks on quality.

Such non-government certification is operated on a voluntary basis. A mooncake attracts consumers with its quality and taste, and enterprises volunteer to take the certification. The ability to win public trust and influence consumers' behaviour is the major factor for such certification in getting enterprises' participation.

If it loses consumers' trust, the certification will lose its attraction to enterprises, too.

The industrial associations should be supervised too. Besides supervision from enterprises and public opinion, governmental oversight is also needed. If fake certifications go rampant, the credibility construction of the whole society will be harmed.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
TAKING STOCK YOUR AT A-GLANCE GUIDE. Check it out:
(Evening Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TECHNOLOGY

Interactive World, the mobile content technology company that came to AIM in May, saw maiden profits rise 37% to GBP4.3 million in the year to July. The group, which services the Sport Newspaper Group, said it is looking for acquisitions.

TELECOMS

Hong Kong-listed China Telecom said it added 730,000 new customers in August, taking its total subscriber base to 220 million. That was down on July's 770,000 but higher than expected. Vodafone has 187 million subscribers worldwide.

TRANSPORT

With oil prices, on the wane, things could be looking up for airlines.

Collins Stewart has issued a buy note on British Airways with a target of 425p but says oil will need to fall "meaningfully" below $60 a barrel for a major improvement.

UTILITIES

Broker JPMorgan makes Centrica its top utility-sector pick, saying it is the key beneficiary of easing commodity prices. Generators such as International Power, British Energy and Drax should do well out of expected power-price rises, it adds, increasing share targets to 355p, 620p and 845p respectively.



BANKING AND FINANCE

There has been a mixed reaction this weeks HBOS investor update. Oriel Securities issued a buy note and a 1140p target, Merrill retains its neutral call, with a 1103p target, while JPMorgan is underweight, expecting a fall to 1000p.

BUILDING AND PROPERTY

Australian property firm Macquarie Goodman has snapped up Apples offices in Stockley Park near Heathrow and General Electrics outpost in Bracknell, part of a GBP179.4 million purchase of eight offices from Kuwait Finance House.

CONSUMER

McDonald's has launched a campaign to convince Chinese consumers beef is luxurious, fun and sexy. The burger giant is running poster ads featuring a close-up of a woman's lips homing in on a quarter-pounder.

ECONOMICS

The dollar weakened slightly on currency markets in response to last night's decision by the US Federal Reserve to leave interest rates unchanged for the second month running. The euro rose 0.25 cents to 1.2715 against the greenback while the pound gained half a cent to $1.8930.

ENGINEERING

Ford Motor Company has hired former HSBC chairman Sir John Bond, 65, to sit on its board at a salary of GBP13,000 a day. Bond has a GBP546,000a-year pension from HSBC following his retirement in July and is paid GBP500,000 to chair Vodafone.

HEALTH

Retail giant Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, is to use its buying clout to provide cut-price prescription drugs for its workers and customers in the US, according to reports. The company has often been attacked over its measly employee health benefits.

INDUSTRIALS

DAF, the world's third-largest truck builder, is not interested in bidding for rival Scania, removing the chances of a counter-bidder against the e9.6 billion (GBP6.5 million) offer from Germany's Man. DAF said it was looking for organic growth.

LEISURE

The prospect for share buybacks and dividends at Enterprise Inns suggests there could be as much as 20% upside in the shares, says Merrill Lynch, which has raised its target to 1240p. Despite a blip in the summer because of the weather and World Cup football, trading looks robust, the broker adds.

MEDIA

Times are tough in the radio sector but Chrysalis is outperforming, says Investec. The broker, which says buy, also sees hidden value in Chrysalis' music publishing operations and believes a share value of up to 200p is possible.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Bridgewell Securities rates Afren, which rallied yesterday after picking up a nine-month rig contract off Nigeria, putting it on track to reach its target of 15,000-20,000 barrels a day by 2008. Bridgewell rates the shares a buy.

RETAILING

Panmure Gordon is a Tesco buyer with a 400p target. The broker says the coup in Thailand, which provides just 3% of sales, shouldn't harm the shares, and it is more focused on strong organic growth, property value and share buybacks.

SUPPORT SERVICES

Odgers Rau & Berndston, the headhunters who recruited Paul Deighton to the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Richard Lambert to the CBI, has claimed top spot among Britain's executive recruitment agencies, according to Executive Grapevine.

Copyright 2006 Evening Standard. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
The systems vendor upgrades its enterprise-class tape system with long-distance disaster recovery and grid tools.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Need a mainframe computer for storage to back up mounds of data from sites all over the world at high speeds?

IBM claims it has the answer.

Looking to make more inroads in to prop up the tape storage market at a time when disk-based storage is gaining in popularity, IBM today revealed the IBM System Storage TS7700 Virtualization Engine.

The TS7700. Source: IBM

Designed for large businesses that store massive amounts of data, the TS7770 speeds data processing on tape systems and boosts disaster-recovery capabilities by duplicating data at a second site through global mirroring.

IBM said in a statement it will push the TS7700'S range up to eight sites, obviating complete back-ups to each site to cut the costs of hosting machines at each site.

The TS7700 will find the stored data with a built-in "global awareness" software tool.

The successor to IBM's TotalStorage Virtual Tape Server (VTS), the TS770O marries the performance and capacity of the 3592 Tape Drives with high-performance disks and a new advanced IBM System p server.

The machine supports up to 128 3490E virtual tape drives and up to 500,000 logical volumes, each with a maximum capacity between 1.2 gigabytes to 12GB.

The TS7700 Server also connects up to four FICON channels, and hooks up to the tape library and tape drives for back-end tape processing.

When fitted with IBM grid software, the TS7700 can be ported to another TS7700 to provide peer-to-peer copy utilities between tape over an Internet connection.

The machine, which will be available Sept. 29 at a starting price of $493,080, includes policy management to control physical volume pooling, cache management and dual copy across a grid network.

The news comes a week after IBM rolled out its System Storage TS1120, an encrypted tape drive for businesses of all size.

In the tape storage market, IBM competes with Sun Microsystems, which acquired an extensive tape portfolio when it purchased StorageTek last year, and Quantum, which is in the process of acquiring tape giant ADIC.

Internet.com Corp.

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WebEx goes pro on AIM ... Rivoli rolls ... LanTalk.NET revs up ... Jabber and Eyeball Networks strike integration deal ... Yahoo offers group conferencing for free ... DYS Analytics supports SameTime ... and more.. Check it out:
(www.instantmessagingplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Clients & Platforms WebEx has launched the WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition , a for-pay version of the enterprise IM service on top of a free client it launched with AOL Inc. Aimed at business users that need tighter security and management, PBE offers users an ad-free console and provides integration with Microsoft Outlook as well as all WebEx collaboration solutions.



WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition is designed to allow you to Integrate live voice, video and data. (Click for larger image)

For business IM security this new platform offers end-to-end encryption, user authentication, as well as configurable content and URL filters. AIM Pro Business Edition also offers compliance management allowing you to monitor, log, and archive your IM, voice, and video content in a time-stamped audit-ready format.

Antepo has released Rivoli , the latest version of its OPN System platform. Rivoli enables users to instantly verify if employees, customers, or partners are online and available, before initiating contact. It combines presence awareness with IM and VoIP through standards-based SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Pricing for OPN System Rivoli starts at $18 per seat with volume discounts available, and no additional per-server license fees.

CEZEO has recently released a new version of its LanTalk.NET messenger . This version includes security improvements, a new reply by e-mail function, and several fixes to both the Help file and search function of the application. LanTalk.NET is a simple messenger that can be used as a substitute for corporate e-mail and for exchanging files and messages. LanTalk.NET, according to the company, does not require additional hardware or upkeep as the program uses TCP/IP and UDP protocols, allowing PCs to communicate directly with each other. The application is designed to automatically determine which users are available, removing any need for set-up and administration of the application. Pricing for LanTalk.NET starts at 17.95 per user for up to 9 users, with discounts on the per user price after that.

Jabber and Eyeball Networks have announced a deal to integrate Jabber's XCP platform with Eyeball's Messenger and software development kits. This partnership will provide a solution for developers working on VoIP applications using Eyeball's software to integrate presence-enabling client-server IP telephony based on SIP and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).

Yahoo! is offering free group conference calling services to the 80 million users of its Yahoo Messenger service. Called ConFreeCall , this conference calling service from Vapps will provide free conference calls through Yahoo's current text, voice and photo-sharing services. Basic conferencing is free, but users will be charged for premium features, such as operator assisted call set-up or recording and playback of calls. ConFreeCall for Yahoo Messenger can be obtained by downloading Yahoo Messenger with Voice .

Mobile IM

Knewtrino has just added German language support for its NootMobile Beta , a mobile IM service for smartphones and other mobile devices. NootMobile is designed to provide mobile access to AOL Messenger, with plans to include Yahoo! and MSN Messenger in the coming weeks. The NootMobile Beta IM service is accessed through a mobile Web browser and requires no software download. Knewtrino has announced plans to expand the NootMobile Beta to include other popular IM networks, support multiple languages and introduce support for other mobile devices.

OZ , a consumer mobile messaging solution provider is celebrating a new milestone. According to the company, the OZ Mobile IM and Mobile Email clients have now been deployed on more than 50 million phones. OZ leads the market on commercial OEM agreements with 8 out of the top 10 device manufacturers globally, representing over 80 percent of handset volume shipped each year. Over the past year OZ has added its mobile IM and mobile email clients to more than 200 different models across operating platforms that include J2ME, BREW, MS Pocket PC, and Symbian-based mobile phones.

IM Security & Research DYS Analytics , an IM and e-mail management software provider has upgraded its Collaboration CONTROL! enterprise IM management solution to add support for IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5. Collaboration CONTROL! monitors, analyzes and reports on IM and Web conference use to ensure broad adoption and optimal server load balancing, archives and alerts on IM conversations to ensure appropriate use and regulation compliance. In addition, Collaboration CONTROL! performs Lotus Sametime health probing to ensure continual availability.

DYS Analytics Collaboration CONTROL! is built to analyze IM and eMeeting health and usage to lower cost and raise service levels.

The announcement is designed to coincide with IBM's recent announcement of Lotus Sametime 7.5 enterprise IM solution ( See IBM to Add a Linux Look to Lotus Sametime 7.5 ), FaceTime has announced that its IMAuditor 8.0 product supports security and compliance features for the new edition. IMAuditor 8.0 also provides comprehensive malware protection against worms, viruses, spyware and Spim as well as tamper-proof, non-repudiated full capture, recording, archival and auditing of all conversations and file transfers conducted over Lotus Sametime 7.5. FaceTime is currently offering a special offer for Lotus Sametime customers including a 60-day free trial with on-site support, a free public IM visibility assessment and a 25 percent discount on the price of FaceTime's RTGuardian.

Last week AOL ICQ users were warned of multiple vulnerabilities in the IM software. According to Core Security more than 160 million users of the service could be impacted as the vulnerabilities detected in ICQ Pro 2003b could allow hackers to take direct control of the user's PC. Security issues with the ICQ Toolbar 1.3 could enable malicious users to change the toolbar's configuration without the user's knowledge. AOL is recommending that users upgrade to version 5.1 of ICQ Pro.

E-mail and Collaboration Corporate Survey, 2006-2007 is a new study from The Radicati Group that claims fighting spam is still a top priority for businesses in 2006, and that demand for instant messaging continues to be strong. 87 percent of survey respondents indicated that they use IM at work, while 71 percent indicated that their organization uses a sanctioned IM product. Only 10 percent of respondents indicated that their organization uses an IM management solution. With the upcoming release of MS Exchange 2007, the survey shows that upgrading messaging software is also high on the priority for business. 83 percent of survey respondents are either in the process of upgrading, or plan to upgrade their messaging software within the next 18 months.

Have an interesting bit of IM news or event information you'd like to contribute to the IM News & Trends Watch? Tell us about it .

IM News & Product Watch Archives: Week of September 05, 2006 Week of August 22, 2006 Week of August 07, 2006 Week of July 24, 2006 Week of July 10, 2006

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MNCs may get to sign advance pricing pacts. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) PUNE: Tax authorities are exploring the feasibility of introducing an advance pricing arrangement (APA) to minimise transfer pricing disputes with multinational enterprises. APA is an agreement between the tax payer and the tax authority on the method to be used for pricing their future intra-group transactions.



The tax department believes that APAs will be a useful method to mitigate unnecessary transfer pricing litigations, states the latest global transfer pricing survey by Ernst & Young. The input is based on a feedback from domestic tax authorities.

Transfer pricing refers to the price charged by an MNC to an associated enterprise for supply of goods and services. Since transfer prices can be used to shift profits out of India and hence avoid taxes, the tax department has a regulation in place since '01 to check violations.

The law mandates MNCs to price their transactions with associated enterprises according to the arm's length principle. This means applying prices that independent enterprises would charge in identical transactions in the market place.

Transfer pricing controversies are of significant concern for corporates in today's globalised economy and India is no exemption. Disputes are mounting as most MNCs are contesting demands raised by tax authorities here for alleged violation of transfer pricing norms.

According to experts, APA provides legal certainty and stabilises the tax environment for MNCs. The programmes are designed to resolve actual or potential transfer pricing disputes in a co-operative manner. Many advanced countries have this mechanism and India is mulling over its introduction. APAs may be unilateral, bilateral or multilateral.

MNCs have experienced two years of transfer pricing audits in India. Adjustments to the tune of $500m were made in for FY03. The audits focused mainly on companies with large transaction volumes. Currently, appeals are the only effective means of handling transfer pricing disputes, according to the '05-06 transfer pricing survey covering more than 30 countries.

The key message of the survey is that tax authorities broadly agree on transfer pricing principles, but not transfer pricing practices. This means they adopt different approaches in the application of these principles.

A host of new countries including China, Columbia, Israel and Turkey are coming into the transfer pricing enforcement field. Old guard such as Canada, New Zealand and UK with established transfer pricing regimes are making major changes in approach. There is evidence of increasing sophistication in data-gathering by tax authorities to augment enforcement efforts, says the survey. It states that transfer pricing will remain the most important international tax issue for MNCs.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Sekondi-Takoradi SMEs Fail to Access 900m Fund. Check it out:
(Ghanaian Chronicle Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IT IS incredible to know that of the 900 million deposited in Rural Banks in the Shama Ahanta East Metropolitan Assembly (SAEMA) for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to access and expand their enterprises, no enterprise has ever access it.



This might be due to the inadequate education on the availability of the money to the SMEs in SAEMA and SMEs at SAEMA should therefore rise up to the occasion and access the fund to the fullest.

"Though the funds have been deposited in some Rural Banks, no SME in the Metropolis has benefited from it," Mr. Philip K. Nkrumah, SAEMA Metropolitan Chief Executive said.

He said this at a day's dialogue at Takoradi on Monday on the theme, "The Role of SAEMA in the promotion of SMEs"and organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), with support from the BUSAC fund and the KAB Governance Consult.

He said to avoid tagging the funds as "political gifts," the funds had been deposited at the Western and APEX Banks for disbursement to SMEs.

Mr. Nkrumah said the Youth In Agriculture Programme was also being funded by the Assembly and so far, 132 million has been disbursed to 220 individuals and groups and some 50 million have been earmarked for distribution to the Youth in Aquaculture Programme to build fishponds.

Mr. Nkrumah said the Assembly has a fund for community based rural development and through this programme, individuals establishing their own companies could access between 500,000 cedis to 40 million cedis.

Mr. Nkrumah said land acquisition, regulations and decisions of the Assembly, coupled with communication problems, had affected the SMEs in their attempt to operate.

He said negotiations were still ongoing to formalise a 300-acre land at Kansaworodu and Mpintsin for garage operators in Takoradi and Sekondi respectively.

Participants said the long delays in accessing loans and financial assistance from the Assemblies and Banks by the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) were frustrating and could be attributed to the slow growth of enterprises in the Metropolis.

Mr. Kwasi Afriyie Badu, Chief Executive Officer of the KAB Governance Consult, said the SMEs could be a channel of creating employment for many in the country but it lacked the ability to articulate its concerns.

He therefore called on GJA to advance the interest of Government through this direction, to create employment for the youth.

Mr. Bright K. Blewu, General Secretary of the GJA, said the SMEs were an important tool of socio-economic development and poverty alleviation but its importance had been ignored for a long time.

He said if the SMEs were properly assisted, they could employ, create wealth and assist in implementing many of Government's self employment programmes.

Mr. Blewu explained that dialogue was meant to motivate Journalists to articulate the concerns of SMEs and assist them to evolve new business strategies and unknown opportunities and therefore advised SMEs in the Western Region to patronize the newly introduced Small and Medium Scale Loans Trust.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Ghanaian Chronical. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.

MTN Signs Sh165m Deal

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MTN Signs Sh165m Deal. Check it out:
(New Vision (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise Uganda, MTN and Roofings have signed two memoranda worth sh165m to establish business linkages with suppliers.

The first memorandum was signed by MTN's chief executive officer Noel Meier, the executive director of Enterprise Uganda, Charles Ocici and the Uganda Investment Authority's acting director, Keremente Kyoratungye, at the Serena Kampala Hotel recently.



"The memo worth $67000 (sh124.2m) will be used to train the dealers and suppliers," Ocici said in an interview at Nakasero, Kampala.

The second memorandum worth $22,000 was signed between Roofings' Sheik Arif and a representative of the dealers.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 New Vision (Uganda). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
New Horizons Launches MSS And MBA in E-Business. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) New Horizons, the world's No. 1 IT training institution, in partnership with EC-Council of the USA has launched 2 new, elitist products: the Masters of Security Science (MSS) and MBA in E-Business.



The event took place at the Federal Palace Hotel amidst great fun-fare.

The guest speaker and Vice Chairman of New Horizons Nigeria, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman told THISDAY that the programmes are designed to fill the huge skill gap arising from Nigeria's adoption of E-Business as a way of life. With E-Business most businesses in Nigeria have become vulnerable to hackers and other cyber-criminals.

The two products are designed for successful professionals who want to become even more successful in their profession. The programmmes will run for a period of 16 months on weekends and evenings with the first batch commencing in November 2006.

Professionals that enroll for the programmes will have the opportunity of learning about Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures, Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, Network Security etc.

Credit facility has also been put in place by a consortium of banks under a project tagged "study today and pay tomorrow"

In his speech, Sulaiman, who also doubles as the Chairman of Accenture, enumerated some key features of "THE NEW WORLD ORDER" which includes Globalization, an American oriented world, a technological driven world, a mobile world, an Asian century, and a security obsessed world. He warned Nigerians not to fold their arms to these new realities but rather see how they can optimally benefit from the new world order.

The seminar was attended by a cross section of Nigerian and foreign professionals from the financial services, oil & gas, telecoms and manufacturing industry.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
DOCP Introduces Mass Market VSAT. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Managing Director of Direct on PC DOPC, Mr. Munish Sharma has disclosed that Broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP), and Direct on PC (DOPC), has launched a new VSAT hub in Washington, USA.



Mr Sharma in a release stated that the VSAT was the fourth so far launched, by the four-year old, award winning ISP.He added that the new hub will accommodate and offer prepaid broadband services in Nigeria and other West Coast countries where DOPC has operations.

Sharma, explained that the new hub is nothing but a revolution in the internet market in Nigeria and the West Coast region. Munish explained that having pioneered Ku-band VSAT, the new hub is the second time "we are creating a revolution in Nigeria"

This new hub is based on Hughes Network Systems (HNS) technology, as the most advanced platform DVB/S2, a pioneer of VSAT technology with a global market share of 60 per cent

According to Sharma,"It gives me great pleasure to announce the, launch of DOPC" fourth VSAT hub. DOPC's has been the pioneer of Ku-band VSAT and it is for the second time in the Nigerian Internet Market, that we are creating a revolution. This new hub is based on HNS technology on most advanced platform DVB/S2. Hughes Network Systems are the pioneers of VSAT technology and have a major market share (over 60%) globally. Munish explained that DVB/S2 technology is the most recent technology that has just got introduced in Europe and US and we are bringing the same in Africa, thus, ensuring that Nigeria is at par with any leading nations.

DVB/S2 technology will give us very high bandwidth efficiency by approximately 30 per cent due to which we will be able to give high Internet bandwidths at low price to our customers. The new platform comes coupled with ACM. In KU band, ACM will become very important during the rains. All existing KU band VSAT's will cut off and loose it's link. ACM, available with, DVBS-2 adjusts the VSAT during rain, so while your speed may slow down, it will keep the link alive. This is a huge advantage over any KU band VSAT platform in the world. Turbo page software on the new technology coupled with DVBS-2 will give you a super fast web browsing experience. HNS VSAT modem will be able to support uplink speed up to 1.6 Mbps and download speed capacity of 45 Mbps.

Uptimes will be higher since the new hub will be managed in USA under supervision of professional staff. The new VSAT modem HN-700 is vertical, slim and easy to transport and consumes less power for equivalent bandwidth. The VSAT is much intelligent with built in features for Security, QoS and much more.The statement further explained that here is the icing on the cake. We are going to give the most advanced technology and a complete VSAT system at an unbelievable price of N115,00 all inclusive. We would be subsidizing the cost to ensure that our services would penetrate deep down the remotest village where affording VSAT was a distant dream.

Finally, we have made our subscription plans very flexible and customer oriented. We have Shared bandwidth plans starting from N15,000 per month that could be affordable by home user, then SME plans from N21,000 onwards and high bandwidth plans for Corporates and Enterprise. There is also option of dedicated bandwidths for specific requirements. Thus we have ensured that our system can be suitable for Corporates, Schools, SME's or even residential users.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Instead of giving me a medal, they fire me. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Procedures are the US multinational's tablets of the law. They are essential to its existence. But Israeli managers who have worked at the branches of such multinationals sometimes feel that such procedures have taken over its nerve center. For their part, Israelis are, generally speaking, not inclined to view procedures as sacrosanct. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that they view excessive procedures as bureaucratic, non-productive, and insensitive. You might not be fired for failing to meet business targets, say some managers, but you will get fired for not filling in a form.



Working at the local branch of a global corporation, especially a US one, reveals differences in mentality, often vast, which sometimes merely cause discomfort, but which sometimes can result in all-out conflict, and in firings by email.

Two events of this kind made headlines recently. Yair Yahav, cardiology unit manager at the Israel branch of Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX), was suspected of excessively aggressive marketing in violation of the company's ethical code. He was disconnected from the company's computer network. When he tried to find out what the fault was, they avoided him, and when he came in to the office, he was summarily dismissed by conference call. Yahav has filed suit against the company in the Labor Court, mainly to save his good name.

This policy of instant dismissal, by email or telephone, sometimes with a security guard accompanying you to your desk and taking your employee card, keys, and other items, is common practice in US corporations. In Israel it is viewed as cruel, since it creates the impression that the person who has been singled out for dismissal did something terrible.

Four members of the communications support team at the Israel branch of Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) were fired in the following manner: They were summoned to a conference call together with other employees, and the manager from company headquarters overseas read out a list of names of people who would continue to be employed. Their names were not on the list.

The CEO and employees were fired by email

A few months ago, HP Israel was embroiled in a scandal over the grey marketing affair, the parallel marketing of HP products from Israel to other countries, in contravention of company procedures. HP Israel managing director Gil Rosenfeld received his dismissal notice by email (Dear Gil, began the letter from HP's divisional manager in Europe), along with 13 other employees, three of whom sued the company.

Following an intense battle, during the course of which Rosenfeld and HP agreed to take their dispute to an adjudicator, HP headquarters issued a statement in which it said it had been convinced that Rosenfeld was not responsible for the parallel export activity and that due to a breakdown in mutual trust, Rosenfeld had asked to step down from his post.

Eight other employees never made it to court. After their lawyers informed the company that their clients' hearings had not been conducted properly, a process of hearings and arbitration was started, and most of the cases ended in out-of-court settlements, without any lawsuits being filed. Adv. Ditza Rapahely, who specializes in labor law, says that multinational corporations that set up branches in Israel manage their local offices as if they were US branches subject to US law, which allows an employer to summon an employee, tell him to pack his bags, and wish him goodbye and all the best.

These companies are unaware of Israeli law and the rules that about a proper hearing, says Raphaely. The law in Israel states that an employee has a right to a hearing at which he will be given the opportunity to state his grievances before dismissal, and the employer must prove that he held the hearing process seriously and in good faith.

Branded an offender, instead of getting a medal

What is happening here? Why do managers who have had a good career locally and have never been suspected of anything, find themselves being sacked in such an abrupt manner? Why do others feel suffocated or intimidated, instead of feeling happy to be part of a global corporation that provides many opportunities for promotion and contacts?

This is simply a matter of cultural differences. The average Israeli manager feels pressured by the US corporate mindset. While it's true that it is an offence to fill in a form retroactively, Israelis don't expect an employer to fire someone who generated millions of shekels in revenue because of this, says Raphaely. You find yourself committing an offence whereas in an Israeli company you would get a medal.

The case of Yair Yahav and Boston Scientific is sub-judice and therefore it cannot be explored in detail. However, the two sides are in dispute over whether Yahav violated company procedures on proper reporting and authorization for actions. At worst, he is accused of activity that was not in accordance with company procedures.

For US corporations, two things represent a red light, the danger zone, explains Adv. Amos Bentzur. These are safety procedures and mechanisms for fraud prevention. For them the risk is far greater than, say, the retroactive filing of an invoice for a few hundred shekels because someone forgot to fill in a form. They see this as a breach that endangers the organization. The Israeli employee says what happened, what did I do? To him the response seems disproportionate to the action. The person who fires you is someone from the legal department who doesn't know you at all, and doesn't care who you are or how much your superiors appreciate you.

Sources close to Yahav claim that the one of things that astounded him was this cold atmosphere, that the guy from the legal department, who told him he was being fired, didn't ask his regional bosses what sort of person or employee he was. They, for their part, didn't come to his defense. People familiar with this type of corporation do not find this surprising. No one messes with the legal department in these places.

The role of legal counsel carries considerable weight in the corporation, far more than is the norm in both Israeli and European companies. Managers view his recommendation as an order, even if it is not categorical.

The corporate counsel, unlike his colleagues in law firms, does not benefit from the organization's dealflow and is not assessed according to the organization's business results, but solely by his success in keeping the organization out of trouble, says Doron Debbie, former manager of Boston Scientific Israel and now owner of Sigma Health Care. Therefore he will always play safe and be conservative in his recommendations. Whenever he is in doubt, the answer is no. This might be a generalization but it is a fair description of the overall atmosphere.

In cases of breaches of ethics, Debi adds, Any employee can phone, in confidence, a help line run by the legal department, and report a person in the organization who he or she thinks is guilty of misconduct. On the one hand, this service has given employees substantial power. However, people do not always use the tool in the way that it was intended, and it can also be an opening for the settling of scores.

Centralization has weakened managers

Yahav, who previously worked at Johnson & Johnson Israel, joined Boston Scientific Israel a year ago, after an exclusivity agreement to which it was committed lapsed and it could begin marketing its cardiological stents in Israel. Johnson & Johnson is also a US corporation, but it is an established company with many subsidiaries and a more decentralized style of management. Boston Scientific is a company with a centralizing management style like that of HP, where the global management controls every move and document from a distance.

Dr. Ehud (Udi) Graf, Gil Rosenfeld's predecessor at HP Israel, described, in his farewell interview, how companies of this kind have become more and more centralized, reducing local managers to the status of operational administrators, with no authority to make decisions on anything, whether it's price offers or human resource management, and how the enterprise builds in conflicts between departments, as a way of preserving its power.

People like Yahav suddenly find themselves having to obtain approval for everything, such as sending an employee abroad, providing customers with samples from inventory before they place their order, and certainly, the building of a complex proposal to, say, a hospital which is buying a large medical device and medical equipment inventory in one deal. This is how the organization exerts control over its geographically dispersed empire and prevents fraud. On the other hand, a local manager unused to this finds that the various forms - every form is forwarded by the CEO to vice president who then forwards it to the regional president - makes every action cumbersome.

In addition, this organizational culture has an aspect that simply drives Israelis insane. The corporation sends out daily emails, often more than once a day, to the entire staff. Employees are directed to enter the site, read the procedure and confirm that you have read it by signing the page. Sometimes the staff have to take an online test to show that they have understood the procedure. A manager who worked at such a company said the directives contained all sorts of meaningless slogans and phrases such as the significance of qualitative responsibility. They were covering their behinds.

Global companies love to use the phrase think global, act local, says Debbie, but they don't always know how to put this into practice. Sometimes they think that the way they do business in the US is the right way to do it everywhere and this is not always correct. Debi, who was manager at Boston Scientific Israel four years ago, and has been working with global corporations for more than 16 years, believes that US global corporations have become increasingly centralized in recent years. This trend has accelerated further in the aftermath of the Enron affair, as the result of which US companies, mainly the publicly-traded ones, found themselves drowning in a sea of reports and statements down the entire organizational hierarchy.

A lot of things that a local manager could previously approve alone, now need approval from above. In this way, a country general manager is turned into a sales manager rather than a CEO with authority. This creates conflicts for certain managers. A manager who is considered by the market as dominant, independent, and an initiator of change, feels such procedures have robbed him of his authority, and are even insulting. It's as if he cannot be relied on, and he may feel that he cannot demonstrate his capability.

Debbie says that the conflicts between local and global managements are not unique to Israel, and some of the European managers who report to global managements also find themselves embroiled in them. However, this culture makes a significant contribution to the growth of these companies into global corporations.

Debbie describes a situation in which 20-30% of a local manager's time is spent making reports, presentations, and filing formal documents with regional management weekly, monthly, and quarterly; Israeli managers often feel that the excess bureaucracy harms business activity, he says.

Israeli managements in multinational corporations usually report to regional managements. A regional management, says Debbie, is a staff function, often lacking operational experience on the ground. In many instances, the management team there functions as a coordinator between countries and global management. Many people take on this position as a stopover point in their career, and serve for three or four years in the role before moving on to their next position in another geographical region. Such a manager prefers not to make waves, and he or she will maintain industrial quiet and meet targets well. These will not be low, but they also won't be too high, so that they don't set him or her targets that are too aggressive in the following year."

We can do it better

Actually, and once more speaking generally, a regional manager tends to be conservative and focus on surviving. He or she is likely to turn down any suggestion for a revolutionary business move that could bring substantial success, to avoid exposure to risks. An ambitious Israeli manager is likely to find work with such a regional management frustrating, says Debi.

Adv. Bentzur thinks that Israelis, by nature, Don't always take what is said seriously. Someone issues a directive? We'll get round it' This is the approach that enabled us to survive 2000 years in exile. You accept the regime, but you know how to live under it. But when companies with a US corporate management culture hand down a directive, they expect it to be carried out. The Israeli notion that we can do it better sometimes creates tension.

In most cases, the problems stem from the fact that we misinterpret the gentility, or the cultured behavior of the other side, the manager in charge. We find that in 90% of cases, a directive was issued and someone thought he could cut corners or shorten the process. They may let such instances go as long there is success, but they don't forget. And since a person working in a US corporation is classed as vulnerable,' he or she is like a foreign citizen in a foreign land,' even if he or she works in Israel, and is the first to be affected when the organization hits a rough period. He or she is the weakest link and no American manager will sacrifice himself for an Israeli manager.

According to Bentzur, cutting corners is also commonplace among Israeli managements in other countries. We managed an operation for an Israeli company in India. It bid in an international tender, which stated explicitly that bidders would have to wait for certain regulations. I drew my customers' attention to this and they said, We'll manage, we've got connections.' Israelis think that Never mind what's written there, we'll fix things on the move.' And then the regulator exercised his authority, the activity was put on hold, and the customers yelled They've cheated us, they've set us up.' But that wasn't true. Everything that happened was predictable.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 20, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Fixed-base operator gets board's approval for $1 million hangars project. Check it out:
(Knoxville News-Sentinel, The (TN) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--The fixed-base operator at McGhee Tyson will build two 11,000-square-foot hangars at the airport in a $1 million project approved Wednesday by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority Board of Commissioners.



TAC Air of Texarkana, Texas, provides general aviation services, including airplane maintenance, storage and fuel, to the airport. The two new hangars will have 2,500 square feet of office space and 2,000 square feet of covered parking.

Randall Honea, general manager of TAC Air in Knoxville, said the hangar facilities are 75 percent pre-sold.

Preliminary design is complete but still awaiting approval. Construction should take four to six months.

The board granted a 10-year extension to TAC Air's FBO and fuel farm agreements, giving the company a 30-year lease term that expires Dec. 31, 2036.

In other business, the board approved:

--A contract for SwiftTrip LLC of Jeffersonville, Ind., to provide a flight-booking engine on McGhee Tyson's Web site, www.flyknoxville.com.

The airport authority hopes to have the engine operating in October. Travelers will be able to book their flights on the airport's Web site, and the airport authority will earn revenue from the bookings and collect marketing data on McGhee Tyson flyers.

--A nearly $600,000 change order for road realignment, drainage and electrical changes in the West Aviation Area. The money is covered by a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration.

--An Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

--An addendum to the limited fixed-base operator's license agreement of Horizon Avionics. The company has provided radio and instrument services at McGhee Tyson since 2001, and now has approval to provide aircraft maintenance services.

According to the airport authority, McGhee Tyson had 142,989 passengers in August, a 10 percent decline from the previous year. The airport authority said there are 20 percent fewer seats in the market than last year.

Year-to-date, passenger traffic is down 11.5 percent, but up 9 percent from 2004 levels, according to the airport authority.

To see more of The Knoxville News-Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.knoxnews.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Getting a taste of real Yorkshire. Check it out:
(The Star (Sheffield) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A PAIR of former Sheffield University caterers have launched a new business that gives lunchtime diners a taste of 'exotic' South Yorkshire.

PJ taste, on Glossop Road, is the brainchild of Peter Moulam and John Fitzpatrick, and has been set up with help from Business Link South Yorkshire's Enterprise in Food programme.

Their deli caf', outside catering and food consultancy business - website www.pjtaste.co.uk - supports local suppliers such as Whirlow Hall Farm, Danum Apiaries, Catherine's Choice and Yorkshire Crisps and the duo also make their own chutneys with locally picked fruit, and a range of drinks called 'Citrus Hits' which is already outselling more widely known brands.



"Some of our ingredients aren't so familiar, but they seem to have gone down a storm with our customers," said Peter Moulam.

"One of our salads is smoked tofu with almonds and sesame seeds, acorn squash, coriander and cumin. Despite the unusual ingredients, it's one of our best selling salads." The duo started the business after taking part in the eight week Enterprise in Food business start up programme, run by Business Link South Yorkshire's Food, Farming and Tourism team, which covers the fundamentals of setting up a commercially viable and legally compliant food business and offers advice from industry professionals on how best to succeed.

"The idea behind Enterprise in Food is to encourage innovative and exciting new food businesses," said Anna Sywyj, who manages the Enterprise in Food programme.

"PJ taste is a great example of this, with its emphasis on different, healthy and mouth-watering food. It offers an alternative lunchtime selection to the norm, and is a champion of delicious local produce." Peter Moulam is full of praise for the programme.

"The whole Enterprise in Food experience gave us a massive confidence boost to help turn out business ideas from plans to reality," said Peter.

"We gained sound and practical advice, and the opportunity to share ideas with others in the same boat was really thought-provoking." The next Enterprise in Food Business Start Up programme starts at the end of September. Food entrepreneurs interested in enrolling on the programme should contact Business Link South Yorkshire on 0800 073 74 74 or visit www.businessguidance.co.uk.

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Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.
Interview: BEA CTO details SOA platform. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEA Systems at the BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco conference this week stressed SOA as a core technology and unveiled its SOA 360 platform. Comprising multiple BEA products, some of which have yet to be released, the ambitious SOA 360 strategy features multiple role-based offerings for IT as well as a services architecture and modularization of existing BEA products. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Rob Levy, BEA executive vice president and chief technology officer, at the conference about SOA 360 and BEA's growth as a middleware company.



InfoWorld: Would you explain the concepts of SOA 360 WorkSpace 360, WorkSpace Central and microService Architecture?

Levy: Sure. Lets start with the highest level, which is SOA 360. SOA 360 is a governing approach to modeling, creating, developing and deploying a full lifecycle SOA application. It is a unifying methodology between all the product lines we have, as well as connecting it to other products. In that respect, think of it as a governing approach that is supported by a set of products, by a common architecture and by a set of standards that govern the lifecycle. So if you drop [down] from that, either to the bottom or the top, depending on how you want to look at that, on the bottom youre going to need a common architecture that allows you to build those SOA applications across this lifecycle. [This is] mSA, microService Architecture. Think of mSA as using the SOA practices to componentize our platform and our product line. You take the basic services that exist inside each one of our product lines and you componentize them so they can be reused with all of our products, not just in single products.... To do the SOA lifecycle correctly, the common architecture will also have to have a common repository, [a] catalog of services, where basically each one of the roles contributes a different portion of the knowledge and expertise that is necessary to move forward in the SOA lifecycle. Now lets leave that for a second, and again Ill jump back out now this time to the roles. Its a multiple view of the same problem, its all starting from the SOA lifecycle domain. Take WorkSpace 360, and WorkSpace 360 is the tool, or the set of tools, that allow each one of the roles to participate in the SOA lifecycle. The business analysts, the LOB [line of business], have a very specific set of things that they are concerned about. From the application -- from the business process to maybe ROI (return on investment) metrics that they need to measure to the definition of the business requirements. All of these artifacts need to be stored somewhere, and theyll now be stored in the central repository.

InfoWorld: Which is what product?

Levy: Its using the Flashline product we just acquired, what is now called AquaLogic Enterprise Repository. You move forward in this workspace, which is again following the lifecycle, then the next level will be an architect, right? Because you [wrote] the business requirements then you go to the architects. Architects translate business requirements into global architecture. They will have issues like architecture diagrams and flow diagrams, things the developers can use. They would also need access to, again, some sort of a central repository where they can look up to see if some of the services that are being required to build a new application already exist. If they find that they [do not], then we can define the parameters for definition of the new services. All that is done on our side though the AquaLogic product. And as you go into development, developers if they choose to develop in Java, then theyll go into Workspace 360 for Developer, which will be the tooling sets required to physically build products on either WebLogic or on Tuxedo. With Tuxedo also we made an announcement of something called SALT (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo), which basically allows you to take Tuxedo services and expose them as Web services. So youll be either using Tuxedo services or build brand new ones on top of a J2EE platform, WebLogic. Those would have the specific parameters, again, that define [where] they are. So now youre talking policy artifacts (etc.). Those will again be put in the central repository. When youre going to the deployment cycle, when people start worrying about things like SLAs, the network definition underneath, which services to deploy on, what provisioning parameters are necessary, levels of operating systems. Thats where the Workspace 360 for IT will come in. And people will do two things. One, theyll control the deployment cycle, moving it from test to production. And the other one, once its in production, will control the manageability, so finding things like -- is it up, it is running, whats the response time? Whats the availability? Is it meeting the SLAs that were defined originally by the business users? And thats how you create a closed-loop lifecycle. [We have] a set of tools that allow each one of the roles to participate. SOA 360 is an approach that governs how you do it. And underneath is an architecture of product components, mSA, that allows you to build those products from scratch. Each one of the customers will compose their own pieces of mSA that they need to provide a complete solution.

InfoWorld: Weve covered WorkSpace 360. WorkSpace Central, have we covered that one yet?

Levy: Workspace is the role-based set of tooling. SOA 360 is the governing approach. MSA is the underlying architecture. And those three together are all in support of the SOA lifecycle.

InfoWorld: So with WorkSpace 360 and the WorkSpace Central, whats the difference?

Levy: WorkSpace Central is central to WorkSpace 360. All of the four components of WorkSpace, for business analysts, for architects, for developer, for IT, will all store and read the artifacts from the same WorkSpace Central. Its kind of the hub.

InfoWorld: Does BEA really think this simplifies things? It seems pretty complex.

Levy: Im not sure I agree. Again, I think the issue we always faced in the lifecycle is that each one of the pieces was done, but done in a separate manner. Business people dealt with business issues with one set of tools, and architects dealt with another set of tools, and developers dealt with another. We believe that in order to make SOA simple, we have to put all of them in that cycle, and what connects that cycle is WorkSpace. You sort of think of reusability as the work before you.

InfoWorld: Where does WSRP [Web Services for Remote Portlets] enter into this? It was mentioned in passing like we all would have already known that. There just seems like too many elements here to grasp.

Levy: WSRP is just a standard. [It is] one of the standards that govern the behavior of SOA. I dont believe people need to know the standard, they just need to know that the products that theyre combining are all maintaining the same standard. Think of cars. Theres only two standards [for] cars -- metric and inch If you need tooling for cars, you can buy tools for cars. The only thing you need to know is whether the car is following a metric system or inch system? Everything else is provided. Our goal is to do the exact same thing. [We] provide you with a set of tools that supports those standards without you needing to actually think through which standards does which and which standard does what. So in that respect we greatly simplify SOA implementation, because all you really need to know from a user perspective -- this is now not from my side, the architecture that comes from underneath -- but how a user sees it. All the user needs to know is based on the role in the cycle - which tool they need to use. And the interface, by the way, all of them would be identical in behavior, different in function, because obviously theyre different functions. So as you move in the cycle, all you have to worry about is picking up, logging into your tool You shouldnt care about the fact that theres something called a repository or WorkSpace Central. Its just there so you wouldnt have to repeatedly ask for information from before.

InfoWorld: I understand there is going to be a modularization of some of the products that are out there now, like WebLogic Server?

Levy: Correct.

InfoWorld: How does that play into this?

Levy: Think about the deployment today of SOA on top of WebLogic. You get the full container regardless if you need all the functions of the container or not. [With modularization, you] only pick the pieces that are really necessary for the solution that we provided.

InfoWorld: Can you give an example of how somebody might pick a module of the app server as opposed to the whole product?

Levy: Well, sure. A lot of the products, the ESB (enterprise service bus), require some of the Java container services but dos not require a full JVM (Java Virtual Machine).... If youre really building full-scale applications on Java, you need [the] full WebLogic Server. But if you only need the Java container, but not the JVM thats run underneath that, then why not just take that and package that with the ESB?

InfoWorld: So when will that happen?

Levy: Its happening now.

InfoWorld: Can you give an example?

Levy: Sure. I mean tomorrow Mark [Carges, executive vice president of the BEA Business Interaction Division] is going to basically show a WebLogic server and this. Its a slimmed-down version of the execution engine.

InfoWorld: What are you going to do with that?

Levy: You can execute Java without having the development environment or the creation environment, [where] the full WebLogic server is. That is exactly what the AquaLogic product set is going to be [using].

InfoWorld: Whats the benefit of doing that?

Levy: Simplicity of installations, simplicity of administration, and of course, it allows us to spend less time trying to create a [big] environment and be more agile in our response to the marketplace. So its good for us and its good for our customers.

InfoWorld: BEAs still about $1 billion in revenue a year, correct?

Levy: $1.2 billion.

InfoWorld: It doesnt seem like BEAs been able to grow that in the past couple years. What is it going to do to finally get off the mark there at $1 billion, or maybe it has gone up a little bit?

Levy: We grow both organically and through expansion. If you look at what weve done in the last year and a half, weve expanded the reach of Java to areas where traditionally before we were not. One area, in addition to the RFID field, [is] to the communication field, so people that are developing either RFID applications or communication applications to serve in VOIP, are now developing under the same Java container that we supported before. We created WebLogic Real Time, which [extended the] standard Java reach into places where Java didnt exist before, so where traditionally people used C/C++ for real-time applications, now they can use Java. So thats another growth factor. And obviously, the whole AquaLogic product line, and the now SOA 360. We believe that SOA is going to create a large wave that obviously allows significant growth.

InfoWorld: Where BEA headed? Obviously, SOA is the big push for you.

Levy: SOA is a huge push for us, as well as completely we agree with the statements made by Shaygan [Kheradpir, CIO of Verizon] this morning. I think what were going to see Web 2.0 fully in the enterprise and SOA pushing out into the consumer. And when that happens its going to be just like in the beginning age of the Internet, when in order to make Internet successful, you really needed the technology and the infrastructure for this new world of sort of consumer-based development. Youre going to need an infrastructure that will allow you to push out the execution or the composition of the applications into this peer-to-peer world. And thats where were going.

InfoWorld: Why do see SOA in the consumer world?

Levy: You look at SOA-based applications, theyre about composition. People are looking to be able to compose the application at runtime, not at design time. So what did [Kheradpir] call it? At the speed of need That would require a new type of infrastructure.

Related ArticlesInterview: BEA CTO details SOA platform

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Update: Nokia, Alcatel extend PBX to cell phones. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Nokiaand Alcatel are jumping the gun on Wi-Fi phones that work like regular office handsets: They're offering the same capability on ordinary cell phones.

The advent of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) phones and IP PBXes (private branch exchanges) opened the door not only to business handsets that sat on a desk and sent packets around a wired LAN, but also to ones that could be carried around and use Wi-Fi. That can mean one handset for all business calls, anywhere in the enterprise, but that still leaves the employee's cell phone for use outside. Dual-mode cell and Wi-Fi devices are just starting to emerge, and moving between networks raises technical issues.



By the end of the year, Nokia and Alcatel will offer software that makes Nokia Eseries cell phones, a line of smart phones designed for business, talk to the Alcatel IP Communication server. That means they can be used like a PBX-connected desk phone, with features such as call conferencing and dialing by name, the companies said. It also lets employees keep their desk phones, use just one number, and program which device they want to receive calls on at a given time.

The system also lets cell phone users tap into Alcatel's Least Cost Routing capabilities, which can cut enterprise long-distance charges, and make cellular billing records easier to find, they said.

The PBX features work on cell phones wherever they are used, and using the system doesn't require any cooperation from the mobile operator, said Tom Libretto, a director of product marketing at Nokia.

In its first iteration, the Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel software will make the phones talk to enterprise PBXes over the ordinary cell phone network. In the near future, it will support dual-mode phones, the companies said.

Nokia, in Espoo, Finland, acquired Intellisync last year to gain a better foothold in enterprises. It also weighed in to that market on the hardware side last year when it unveiled the Eseries phones, which include a variety of business features including QWERTY keypads and support for business applications and mobile e-mail systems. Its E70 phone includes Wi-Fi as well as cellular radios.

Alcatel, in Paris, is near to closing a merger with Lucent Technologies Inc. and recently agreed to buy the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) business of Nortel Networks Corp.

Nokia already offers similar capabilities with Avaya Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. PBXes, Libretto said. It plans to extend the Alcatel system to other Nokia phones, he said.

Some features of office phones are already available on most cell phones, and mobile-to-mobile calling plans can save enterprises money on calls between employees, said Ovum Ltd. analyst Roger Entner. But having a desk phone and cell phone with one number could be a convenient feature. For one thing, heavy phone users could avoid having to charge their cell phones frequently, he said.

Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel is part of the Intellisync Mobile Suite from Nokia. It is set to become available through Nokia and Alcatel resellers in the fourth quarter. Pricing has not been set.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
More Electronics Sector Investments in China From Taiwan. Check it out:
(Taiwan Economic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Taipei, Sept. 22, 2006 (CENS)--Despite the impact of the macro-economic controls imposed by the mainland China government, investments there from domestic electronics firms are on the rise, given a decreased number of investment applications in the industry overall, according to the statistics compiled by the Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs



The Investment Commission tallies showed the number of applications for investing in the mainland totaled 682 with a value reaching US$4.592 billion in the first eight months of this year, suggesting a decrease of 20.05% and a rise of 27.82% year-on-year, respectively

The number of approved investment cases to the mainland totaled 81 with investment value reaching US$649 million in August alone, representing a decrease of 1% and an increase of 68% year-on-year, respectively

Major applications for investing in China in August included those filed by Formosa Plastics Group (FPG) and Der-Chin Enterprise Corporation. FPG applied for remitting US$50 million to the mainland for increasing capital on its Ningbo plant; Der-Chin applied for remitting US$45 million to invest in Jiangxi Yadong Cement Corp., a subsidiary of the Far Eastern Textile Group

Huang Chin-tan, executive secretary of the Investment Commission, noted the willingness of Taiwanese firms, especially for the high-pollution and high-energy-consuming ones, to invest in the mainland is on the wane because of the impact of the implementation of the mainland's macro-economic control policy. Nevertheless, the electronics firms are still increasing investments in the mainland because of the investment incentives offers by mainland's county- and city-level governments

The number of small-scale mainland investment cases of less than US$200,000 each totaled 511 with investment value amounting to US$44.05 million in the first eight months of this year, said the Investment Commission

The commission's tallies showed the number of approved applications for overseas Chinese and foreigners to invest in Taiwan totaled 220, with the value reaching US$514 million in August. Such approved applications totaled 1,081 with an investment value reaching US$8.883 billion in the first eight months of this year, up 53.33% and a whopping 282.35% year-on-year

One of the largest investment cases from overseas Chinese and foreigners to invest in Taiwan belong to the Japan-based Komatsu Electronics Corp., who applied to invest US$39.247 million in Taiwan's Komatsu Electronic Materials Co.

Copyright 2006 China Economic News Service. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Taiwan Firms Advised to Cooperate With Major Automakers in China. Check it out:
(Taiwan Economic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Taipei, Sept. 22, 2006 (CENS)--Some experts suggested local auto and parts makers cooperate with the top-15 automobile-manufacturing conglomerates in mainland China in automotive electronics, fuel cell, weight-cutting, and hybrid-power fields to gain footholds in China's 11th five-year plan to make China one of the world's top-three automakers by 2010



The specialists made the statements at a recent industry seminar held by Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center (IEK) of Industry & Technology Intelligence Services (ITIS). Huang Wen-fang, chief of the business affairs section, Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers' Association (TTVMA), pointed out that about 5.76 million new cars were sold in mainland China in 2005 (compared with the global volume of about 61 million units), making the nation the third-largest car market in the world. This year, new-car sales in China are expected to reach about seven million units, edging out Japan as the No. 2 market for cars

According to Huang, new-car sales in China are expected to reach about 10 million units in 2010, while the annual production volume in the nation is 5.79 million units

The section chief pointed out that China's 11th Five-Year Project plans to make China one of the top-three carmakers through several strategies, including imaginative development of home-grown brands and techniques; cultivation of internationally competitive automobile conglomerates and parts suppliers; encouragement of complete-auto and auto-parts exports; accelerating enterprise restructuring; and development of energy-saving and environmentally-friendly vehicles

For Taiwan companies, Huang stressed, automotive battery, automotive electronics parts, core materials, and other fuel-saving devices and technologies are windows of opportunities for business development across the Taiwan Strait

Last year, China's auto exports reached 164,000 units, outstripping the 161,000 imported for the first time; and the volume in the first six months this year was 141,000 units, compared with 103,000 imported. Huang said that most of the assembled vehicles exported from China are under-5-ton commercial types and 1.0L-1.5L passenger cars, but he suggested Taiwan companies focus more on medium- to high-end cars for the China market

Hung Shih-jieh, industry analyst of ITRI, said that Taiwan companies should hold firmly their advantageous small-batch, large-variety production mode and try to tap into international tier-one parts-supplier chains in China. He suggested local auto suppliers to choose the top-15 automakers in China as targeted partners so as to assure stable orders, but be wary of the major automakers' excess capacity and profit margins

In addition, he also suggested Taiwan companies upgrade product development and quality, as well as delivery and cost-control so as to enhance the feasibility of joint new-car development with Chinese automakers.

Copyright 2006 China Economic News Service. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)
Pulkovo Airlines gets EU notification on possible flight ban. Check it out:
(Interfax News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 20 (Interfax) - Russia's Pulkovo Airlines received official notification from the EU on September 18 warning it may possibly be put on the air carrier "black list," banning it from EU airspace, Gennady Boldyrev, acting director general, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



"In the latest year the company received 20 comments from the European Civil Aviation Commission (ECAC) concerning deviations of the technical documentation used in Russian aviation from EU standards," Boldyrev said, adding that other Russian carriers have received similar comments.

Boldyrev noted that the main tests on Pulkovo planes were
carried
out in France. He said not a single one of the company's
flights toEurope was made without an ECAC check.

"We have been invited for a preliminary session of the European commission to be held on October 3, where we will defend our position," Boldyrev said, added that for now Pulkovo had systematized all the EU comments and drawn conclusions.

"On some we have taken measures, and on others we have not and will not," he said.

"Blacklisting Pulkovo will entail the most serious consequences, but I am not yet ready to answer the question if these reproofs might concern State Transport Company Rossiya," Boldyrev added.

"The black list is a list of airlines whose aircraft do not meet safety requirements. Blacklisting the company means a ban on its flights to Europe. The list is made up collectively by EU member nations on the basis of submitted assessments of the companies and further anonymous voting of the experts. The assessment of the state of the company's airplanes is made following the data of technical testing carried out at European airports.

The EU published its first black list in March 2006. Member countries made their own lists before that. The latter never included a Russian company.

Pulkovo Airlines is the largest aviation enterprise in Russia's northwest. It has about 100 flights daily from St. Petersburg to other Russian cities and to more than 80 cities worldwide. Pulkovo currently operates about 40 planes.

Pulkovo is currently merging with Rossiya, a process that is to be concluded in 2006. mg jh

Copyright 2006 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Correo electrnico mvil en tiempo real de alto consumo con solo dos clics; ltimo software de SEVEN conecta a los usuarios con su casilla de entrada en menos de cinco minutos. Check it out:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- 22 de septiembre de 2006 -- Ahora los consumidores pueden instalar y ejecutar correo electrónico móvil en tiempo real (push email) en su teléfono en cuestión de minutos. La última versión del software Always-On Mail de SEVEN hace que sea más fácil que nunca revisar los correos electrónicos personales o del trabajo, y prepara el terreno para una adopción verdaderamente masiva de los servicios de correo electrónico móvil.



"A medida que crece el índice de adopción del correo electrónico móvil y la tecnología llega a niveles de alto consumo, los operadores necesitarán adaptar con rapidez sus servicios. Por tanto, resulta esencial que nuestro software elimine cualquier complejidad para nuestros clientes operadores y sus clientes", dice Paul Hedman, director de operaciones de SEVEN. "Nuestra más reciente versión de Always-On Mail cumple con estos requisitos. Acerca al mercado el proceso de instalación más rápido en comparación con el de cualquier otro servicio de correo electrónico móvil, y se encuentra disponible en más dispositivos y a través de más operadores que ninguna otra solución. Todas estas características nos llevan a ocupar la primera posición en el mercado white label (etiqueta blanca) del correo electrónico móvil".

El acceso con dos clics es solo una de las nuevas características de la versión 5.2 de Always-On Mail. Ahora los usuarios finales pueden enviar diversos mensajes de correo electrónico personal y del trabajo al mismo dispositivo con la función de múltiple casilla de entrada de correo electrónico, y cada casilla de entrada conserva la apariencia conocida de Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes o el correo electrónico por Internet. La nueva versión también suma beneficios para los operadores, todos diseñados para maximizar los índices de adopción de consumidores y empresas en el mercado minorista. Las mejoras incluyen suministro, entrega y administración simplificada, lo que ayuda a acelerar el tiempo de salida al mercado, aumentar los ingresos promedio por usuario (ARPU, por sus siglas en inglés) y reducir las tasas de pérdida de clientes. Además, ahora Always-On Mail cuenta con una arquitectura de cliente único y un solo servidor de relay para todos sus productos, a fin de simplificar la administración y reducir los costos de respaldo para los operadores. Esto hace que la distribución y gestión del software sea altamente eficaz.

La gama de dispositivos móviles en los que Always-On Mail ha sido, o puede ser, preinstalado es otro importante beneficio para los operadores. Los clientes de SEVEN que emplean este método de suministro de servicio lograron índices de adopción del servicio de hasta 35%. Mediante la combinación de la preinstalación con suministro por aire y sitio de descarga de etiqueta blanca, los operadores pueden llegar a cualquier usuario potencial a través de su dispositivo, la Web o una computadora personal.

Hedman añadió: "La atención que presta SEVEN al usuario final y a sus necesidades está convirtiendo al correo electrónico móvil de alto consumo en una realidad para nuestros clientes operadores. Ya se trate de empresas o particulares, la gente quiere una solución que sea familiar y fácil de usar, flexible para adaptarse a sus necesidades individuales y de rápido acceso mediante un proveedor local. Esto es lo que hemos logrado con la última versión de Always-On Mail, y servirá de base para la próxima fase de nuestro crecimiento".

Acerca de SEVEN

SEVEN es un proveedor mundial de software que permite a los operadores móviles y proveedores de servicios y de correo electrónico por Internet ofrecer a sus abonados un acceso seguro, de bajo costo y en tiempo real a aplicaciones de correo electrónico empresariales y personales. El software de SEVEN está creado especialmente para satisfacer las necesidades y los requerimientos únicos de las empresas Fortune 500, las pequeñas y medianas organizaciones, los grupos de trabajo, los profesionales particulares y los consumidores.

El software de SEVEN es compatible con todas las principales plataformas de dispositivos, incluso teléfonos basados en BREW, J2ME, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm OS y Symbian, y actualmente se entrega con más de 200 modelos de teléfonos celulares fabricados por Hitachi, HTC, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Sanyo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson y Toshiba. SEVEN está disponible actualmente en todos los principales estándares de redes internacionales, y ha sido elegido por 100 importantes operadores de comunicaciones móviles y proveedores de servicios de todo el mundo, incluso: Bharti, Cingular Wireless, Etisalat, Globe Telecom, Hutchison, KDDI Corp., NTT DoCoMo, O2, Optus, Orange, Sprint Nextel, Starhub, Telefonica Moviles, Telenor Group, Telkom Indonesia, Vimpelcom y Yahoo!.

SEVEN tiene su sede en Redwood City, CA, Estados Unidos, y cuenta con oficinas locales en todo el mundo. Para obtener más información, visite el sitio web www.seven.com.

SEVEN es marca registrada de Seven Networks, Inc. Always-On Mail, Out of the Office, System SEVEN, SEVEN Personal Edition, SEVEN Enterprise Edition y SEVEN Server Edition también son marcas de fábrica o marcas de servicio de Seven Networks, Inc. o de sus subsidiarias. Todas las otras marcas o nombres comerciales pertenecen a sus respectivos propietarios.
CRM Classic Hard Rock With Radio KCRM 98.6, RWD Tech, Howard Stern, Open Solutions, O2's VoIP, Rosetta. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first gallon or so of coffee this morning, welcome to Radio KCRM 98.6, the classic hard rock edition, brought to you courtesy of Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite For Destruction:

I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it
So the little got more and more

Good, good news for you campers out there, you might've heard that The Most Dangerous Man In Show Business, Howard Stern, is disgruntled that nobody's listening to him on his uncensored Sirius shows, and is rather hankering for his days of commercial broadcast radio, where sure, he couldn't say (deleted), or (deleted) and certainly not (deleted), but where more than eighteen or so people heard anything he said at all.



So we are pleased, very pleased, oh so pleased to welcome Howard Stern to Radio KCRM 98.6, the classic hard rock edition, take it away Howard!

Stern: Awright, you (deleted) (deleted), let's (deleted) today, all the CR(deleted)M news that's fit to (deleted) (deleted), and you know what I'm (deleted) talking about. First up, we have the (deleted) --

Hey, thanks Howard, sorry about the, ah, mike problems there, I'm sure the engineer'll get it sorted out, but until then we'll fill in here. I believe Howard was about to tell you of RWD Technologies, Inc., a company that provides human performance improvement products and services, which has released their latest CD, a new suite of services designed to help companies maximize their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) investment while "improving their overall customer experience" and slamming out crunching metal riffs.

A twenty-four city tour opening for Audioslave is in the works.

RWD CRM Optimization Services will help organizations align the three critical components of CRM success, according to band members -- customer experience, customer strategy and employee performance -- and "incorporate best practices and improve return on investment (ROI)."

According to research firm and rock critics Gartner, Inc., " ... the success rates of mature [CRM] sales force technologies remain stubbornly disappointing (or low), with few markets exceeding 50 percent... Of course we blame this on all that JoJo and Justin Timberlake sludge, but this trend also suggests that shortcomings and inefficiencies aren't necessarily technological, but rather organizational, particularly with change management, process definition and project management skills employed for initiatives."

RWD's CRM Optimization Services improve ROI and customer experience by integrating the human components of CRM and business strategy and by, like, turning it up to eleven.

RWD's CRM Optimization Services include the RWD CRM Performance Aligned with Customer Expectations (PACE), which is a six-week analysis that provides a clear action plan for CRM success and some really heavy power chording in fifths progressions. During the PACE analysis, RWD assesses the five dimensions of CRM success -- customer experience, customer strategy, business process design, technology selection, and individual band members' performances, with particular attention given to on-stage solos.

Industry best practices are then aligned with CRM needs in an action plan for success.

There's also the CRM Certification eLearning Courses. Together with BPT Partners, a leading authority on CRM and one of the top-grossing touring acts over the summer, RWD offers access to CRM experts through these courses. This first-of-its-kind Internet-based training series is based on CRM at the Speed of Light, the best selling book by Paul Greenberg and the successful global seminar series and concert tour of the same name, with Axl Rose and Slash appearing onstage for two shows with Greenberg at the Palladium.

"Too often the decision to roll out a CRM solution comes with little consideration to the 'human factor,'" said Paul Greenberg, CRM consultant, author and lead guitarist. "Businesses must see CRM as a philosophy and business strategy. Technology's role is to improve human interactions in a business environment and enable workers to improve productivity and customer advocacy and really rock the rafters."

"When it comes to CRM success, those organizations that focus first on the human factor will see greater ROI than those who lead with technology," said Patricia Begley, Vice President of Strategic Business Initiatives and bassist, formerly of Limp Bizkit who's also toured with the Black-Eyed Peas and Hinder. "RWD believes that CRM done right improves a customer-facing employee's ability to build customer trust, loyalty, a strong set list and, ultimately, account profitability."

RWD Live At Budokan will be released in October.


CRM vendor and longtime summer rock festival attraction Open Solutions Inc. has announced a double bill tour with Rosetta Technologies Corporation, a Tampa-based band and vendor of secure enterprise printing products. The tour, which kicks off next week, will provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.

With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing lineup, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs.

"This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint products in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president and rhythm guitarist of Rosetta Technologies. "On this tour we'll alternate opening and closing bands nightly."

Hullar added that the tour would concentrate on mid-market cities and venues in conjunction with a greatest hits CD to be released next month.

"Imaging has the power to dramatically reduce operating expenses for community financial institutions," said Mark Ryan, vice president, general manager and lead vocalist for Open Solutions Imaged Payment Technologies. Ryan attributed the success of Open Solutions to their "wide influences, everything from Muddy Waters and Hank Williams to AC/DC and ABBA. Seriously, those Swedes knew how to write songs, shame about the Spandex, though."

Mike Nicastro, Open Solutions' SVP, drummer and chief marketing officer said his band's relationship with Rosetta Technologies "allows our fans the opportunity to move even further into the electronic payments world."


The German telecom operator and heavy metal band O2 has chosen goth rockers TietoEnator (come on, it really sounds like a goth band, doesn't it?) to upgrade its current customer service platform by migrating it to Voice over IP (VoIP).

O2 decided to implement an IP contact center suite tightly integrated into its business applications which, the band's agent says, will help them "lower total cost of ownership and to improve time-to-market for new products and services, creating a stronger bond between the band and their loyal headbanging fan base here in Germany and Europe."

As general contractor and system integrator TietoEnator is going to develop the new innovative customer services IT-solution on the basis of network and contact center applications from Cisco and Genesys, and is negotiating with the Rolling Stones to open some of their North American tour dates.

All customer contact media, such as telephone (mobile and fixed), customer self-service, e-mail, fax, SMS, MMS, the Web and written correspondence, will be supported by the IP contact center solution, say members of O2, who also complain of being frequently mistaken for Irish rockers U2.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
INTERVIEW WITH DEPUTY MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE KIRILL ANDROSOV ITOGI WEEKLY, P. 36-39, NO. 30, JULY 24, 2006. Check it out:
(Federal News Service (Russia) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

INVESTMENT FUND ALLOCATION

The Russian government is shortly to approve four projects to
be financed out of the Investment Fund. In an interview with Itogi
Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Kirill Androsov
has been speaking about the main areas a government commission has
singled out for investment.

Q: First, could you answer one question: are you a liberal or
an interventionist in terms of your economic views?

A: Do you call interventionists those who advocate active
state interference in the economy?

Q: That is correct.

A: I think in your question you mentioned two extremes, but in
fact, there are many shades in this matter. As for me
personally, I wouldn't call myself a liberal. In any case, I shudder
when they call me a liberal. On the other hand, I do not believe
that active state interference in the economy is good. One has to
distinguish the spheres in which there can be no competition and
those where state participation is a must. But where a market is
possible, it should exist. And when the state becomes involved in
competitive sectors of the economy that is indisputably bad. I do
not know of any instances when state participation in such sectors
has been in any way beneficial. Besides, any state decision in the
field of economic policy should be viewed in terms of its long-term
and short-term effects. I do not rule out that state investments may
be effective in the short term, but never in the long term. That is
why, replying to your question, I will say that in terms of my
economic views I am somewhere in-between the liberals and
interventionists.

Q: You would agree, wouldn't you, that it is a very vague
distinction? How to prevent state interference in distributing the
Investment Fund money in a competitive environment?

A: When the Investment Fund was being created, we tried to
clearly determine the criteria for selecting projects. First of all,
the private investor taking part in the project must convince us
that he cannot implement it without state participation. It is only
if we find his explanations convincing that we begin considering the
proposal. There are only two cases when the investor cannot cope
without state assistance. The first is when infrastructure
facilities have to be built which are then to become property of the
state. The second is when the project is not effective enough
without state participation, which makes it unattractive for private
investors. For example, we are interested in creating a new
enterprise for strategic reasons, not so much for the sake of
profits, as for creating new jobs and ensuring economic growth in a
concrete region. But the enterprise cannot exist without
infrastructure facilities, many of which under our laws can only be
built by the state. At the same time the government bodies or
natural monopolies may not be interested in such an enterprise
appearing simply because there is no immediate gain for them from
it. It was then that the Investment Fund should step in. The second
case is a bit complicated. Let me illustrate. For example, the
price of borrowed capital for a private investor is 8-10 percent and
its own capital, 12-15 percent while the project has an internal
profit margin of 8-10 percent. Theoretically, business wouldn't
undertake such a project. By adding a little government money we can
lower the total value of capital and thus make the project
attractive.

Q: So, the state first forbids taxpayers to engage in certain
types of economic activities -- I mean the Law on Natural Monopolies
-- and then it takes tax money to build infrastructure.

A: Yes, we do have a Law on Natural Monopolies. Keeping them as
state property is not a question of economics but of state security.
I mean reliable supplies of power, gas and heating. A natural
monopoly is subject to tariff regulation by the state, and the
regulator then himself chooses either an economically valid tariff
or subsidies to industry and the households. So, I see no
contradictions there.

Q: Let us pass on from theory to practice. Were you, by any
chance, born in St. Petersburg?

A: I see what you are driving at. We recently suggested that a
government commission invest part of the Fund in the construction of
two highways. I mean building a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway on the
stretch from the 15th to 58th kilometer and the building of a toll
tunnel under the Neva River. The answer to your question is, no, I
do not come from St. Pete. And I assure you, we have not chosen
these projects because they are connected with St. Petersburg. And
certainly not because I live in Moscow. These two projects best suit
the criteria I have mentioned. They generate a serious
multiplication effect, they stimulate economic growth and make it
possible to partially solve the transportation problems of the
regions.

Q: And what guided the commission when it decided to direct 14
billion rubles into the construction of the petrochemical complex in
Nizhnekamsk?

A: We are pursing three very important tasks. First, we are
increasing the processing of Russian raw materials and passing on
from the export of oil to the export of petroleum products which are
much less dependent on the fluctuation of world prices. One of the
tasks of the Investment Fund is diversification of the Russian
economy to make it less dependent on world prices for liquid
hydrocarbons. Secondly, we are reducing the content of high-sulfur
oil in our export. As a result, the price of Russian oil should
grow, which will generate profits for the budget and the
companies. Finally, we are giving an impetus to the development of a
large number of small and medium enterprises operating further
downstream. And in doing so, we are not interfering in the
competitive sector. The state will take part only in the creation of
engineering infrastructure. We will recommend the government to
consider an issue of building a section of a railway and the oil
pipeline.

Q: I know that the initiators of these projects have asked you
for money than you gave them. Why?

A: We had a bit of an argument with them over effectiveness, we
counted again and identified some reserves that had not been
factored in. You see, when the calculations were made the price of
oil in the world markets was lower than it is today. So, it is not
surprising. By the way, investors offered the state a share in this
petrochemical complex. We thought it was unnecessary and our partner
agreed with that point of view.

Q: On the one hand, the state has created an Investment Fund.
On the other, it has announced its intention to limit access for
investors to individual sectors declared to be strategic. Is it
to do with politics or economics?

A: I see no politics there. But the problem of national
security certainly comes into it. But this is the practice of all
countries, both developed and developing. We are not inventing
anything new. There are sectors in the economy in which
participation of foreign capital and control by foreigners, is, to
put it mildly, frowned upon because it is connected with certain
aspects of national security. The state should create transparent
rules of the game and clearly determine what can be done and what
cannot be done, who can work in these sectors and who is debarred
from them. The government has already prepared a corresponding bill
and it will shortly be introduced at the State Duma. The sectors are
named there. They are production of strategic missiles, certain
biological substances, nuclear technologies, etc.

Q: These are the sectors where foreigners will be forbidden to
work. By the way, will they be closed only to foreign investors?

A: No, there are sectors which will be entirely financed by the
state. I see nothing wrong with that.

Q: In what sectors will foreign participation be limited?

A: That is the so-called second list. To take part in second-
list sectors foreign companies will have to obtain a permit from an
authorized agency. It is still being debated how big foreign
participation can be in the capital of such enterprises. There are
two options: no than 30 percent or no than 50 percent. So,
if I am a foreigner, and I buy less than 30 or 50 percent of the
shares in an enterprise, I don't have to get a permit. If I buy
, I have to clear my purchase with an authorized agency. We have
identified 39 such sectors. They all belong to the sphere where I
haven't yet met any foreign investors, with the exception of two
areas: natural monopolies, including power transmission and air
navigation and airport infrastructure.

Q: Can you give a couple of examples from the second list?

A: Yes. The production of ammunition, of instruments actively
used in the defense industry. All the restrictions are in one way or
another connected with the defense industry.

Q: Do you think that the industry in this country will become
less or attractive as a result of these restrictions?

A: Of course it will become attractive. The worst thing
for the investor is when he doesn't understand something. This is my
personal point of view. For our economy to become attractive
for foreign investors the rules of the game in it must be as clear
as possible. This is what our bill seeks to do.

Q: Surely the bill was hotly debated when it was prepared. And
surely some of the things that other agencies demanded from you have
not been included. Could you divulge a secret in precisely what
sectors you were urged not to allow foreign investors?

A: Yes, it was a serious debate. It involved not only the
Ministry of Industry and Energy, but also the Defense Ministry, the
Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry. It is not an
easy law and we wouldn't have delivered it without a serious
conceptual discussion. But I wouldn't reveal at this point what
other sectors we were urged to close to foreigners so as not to
provoke unnecessary emotions and to rule out any intrigues.

(Interviewed by Konstantin Ugodnikov)

Copyright 2006 Federal News Service, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/21 St. Francis Medical Technologies Inc. (Alameda, $86.2
Is a medical device company.
09/21 NewStar Financial Inc. (Boston, MA) $100.0
Is a commercial finance company.
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
09/13 Obagi Medical Products Inc. (Long Beach, CA) $86.2
Is a specialty pharmaceutical company.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.

Keep credible certificates

| | Comments (0)
Keep credible certificates. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu Industrial associations should improve their work to win public trust, says a commentary in the Shenzhen-based Jingbao newspaper. An excerpt follows: The mooncake certificate signing (CS) has been promoted in Shenzhen for more than a decade as representing high quality, and is accepted by more and more consumers. But Jingbao reporters found out recently that the issuance of mooncake CS is not standardized. As long as it gets paid, the Shenzhen Consumer Goods Quality Promotion Association will issue the CS signs to anyone. Its behaviour has greatly damaged CS's public credibility. Certification without public trust is meaningless. This case compels industrial associations to think about the route of development with self-discipline. As the development of a market economy deepens, non-governmental industrial associations and intermediate organizations are playing a more and more important role in enhancing enterprise co-operation and protecting enterprises' rights. The government has been encouraging the development of industrial associations as well as the establishment of industrial standards and quality certification. So there will be more industrial certifications like the mooncake CS. When a box of mooncakes is labelled with various quality certification signs, we will of course think it a good thing that many organizations are making strict checks on quality. Such non-government certification is operated on a voluntary basis. A mooncake attracts consumers with its quality and taste, and enterprises volunteer to take the certification. The ability to win public trust and influence consumers' behaviour is the major factor for such certification in getting enterprises' participation. If it loses consumers' trust, the certification will lose its attraction to enterprises, too. The industrial associations should be supervised too. Besides supervision from enterprises and public opinion, governmental oversight is also needed. If fake certifications go rampant, the credibility construction of the whole society will be harmed.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Jingkelong says HK IPO retail tranche 546 times. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu oversubscribed Beijing Jingkelong Co Ltd said the retail tranche of its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) was 546 times oversubscribed, while the international tranche was "substantially oversubscribed". The IPO price was set at 4.5 HK dollars, representing the upper end of the indicated price range of 3.9-4.5 HK dollars, the company said in a statement. Due to the oversubscription, the clawback mechanism has been applied and the number of shares allocated to retail investors will be raised to 50 percent of the total 132 million shares offered, from the original 10 percent. Trading of shares will start on September 25 on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) board.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
New path for domestic firms to solve overseas disputes. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: yu "Ring-ring-ring" Phone bells are ringing as one falls and another rises in Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints Service Center of the Ministry of Commerce. Without personal experience, no one can believe that such an institution, which has been set up for less than one month, is undertaking the heavy burden of offering free policy information and legal consultancy, as well as settling complaints for hundreds of thousands of Chinese enterprises that have overseas business operations. As disclosed by the principal, the Center has been receiving numerous facsimiles, business letters and calls every day since its opening on August 18, being in excess of expected work load. This has reflected that, on the one hand, Chinese enterprises are confronted with new problems along with the thriving of overseas business operations; on the other hand, relevant governmental departments are caring more and more about settling the practical difficulties of these enterprises. Service Center for Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints is affiliated to the Foreign Trade Development Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce; and the bureau also presides over the daily work and specific affairs of the Center. Feng Hongzhang, Director-General of the Foreign Trade Development Bureau, told the reporter, the establishment of the Service Center was an important act of the Ministry of Commerce to reinforce enterprise services and build a service-oriented government actively. In the future, Chinese enterprises, as long as encountering difficulties like business frauds, infringements, unfair treatments or trade barriers, will be able to ask the Service Center for solution. It was reported in the 10th China International Fair for Investment and Trade held in Xiamen on September 8, that China would continue to "go out" while introducing high-qualified foreign capital actively and effectively. Making use of foreign capital is an important part of China's basic state policy of "opening up"; meanwhile, foreign investment occupies an important position in China's open economy. Both the government and enterprises should be clearly aware of that improving investment and trade facilitation is not unidirectional, but is both "bringing in" and "going out". Encouraging and supporting enterprises' foreign economic and technology cooperation will be helpful for making full use of market and resources both at home and abroad and the balance of payments equilibrium. Up to 2005, foreign business cooperation of Chinese enterprises has covered nearly 200 countries and regions throughout the world; foreign direct investment has reached US$51.7 billion; foreign construction projects has accomplished an accumulative turnover of US$135.8 billion; and foreign cooperation of labor service has gained an accumulative turnover of US$35.6 billion. Therefore, experts analyzed that people are optimistic about the future of foreign investment of Chinese enterprise. In the Investment and Trade Fair, some foreign analyzers pointed out that the average annual increase rate of China's foreign investment, namely 20 percent, would make the volume of overseas investment reach US$60 billion in 2010. However, a bright future cannot assure a plain sailing for enterprises in overseas investment. Trade friction that China has met in recent years is one of the obstacles hindering China's "going out". Statistics from Ministry of Commerce shows that over US$30 billion valued export of China's enterprises was directly affected by trade frictions in 2005, and China has successively been the country that encountered the most trade frictions for 11 years since 1995. According to statistics, only 3 among 10,000 Chinese enterprises had independent intellectual property rights and core technologies in 2005, and China's dependency on foreign technology came up to 50 percent. Thus Chinese enterprises, being likely to be confronted with business frauds, infringements, unfair treatments or trade barriers at abroad where they are not easy to lodge complaints, are deeply trapped. Feng Hongzhang said that the government should take the responsibilities and obligations to help enterprises solve practical complications in time. Going on this premise, Ministry of Commerce established the Service Center for Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Business Complaints. As Feng Honghang disclosed, enterprises are actively asking for consultancies and lodging complaints since the Center was founded, and the hot line "12335" keeps ringing every day. When contacting with these enterprises, the center finds that some enterprises are not clear about the service content and scope of the center, thus they are requesting services out of scope. And Feng Hongzhang introduced the three kinds of services the center could provide: the first one is to provide enterprises with information on the markets, policies, laws and regulations, and trade measures early-warning of different countries; the second is to provide proper legal consultancy, guidance and services oriented toward ordinary civil and commercial disputes; the third is to settle enterprises' complaints against foreign governments' unfair policies and measures, or about damages and unlawful infringements from trade barriers. As for policy information services, the center will reply to enterprises within 10 working days after accepting their requests; for ordinary civil and commercial legal disputes consultancies, the center will reply within 20 working days; to complaints involving unfair policies, measures or market barriers of foreign governments or organizations, the Center will hand the complaints over to relevant departments of Ministry of Commerce within three working days and feed back to enterprises in time.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Open Solutions Inc.(R) and Rosetta Technologies(R) Announce Partnership; Companies Partner to Provide Advanced Software for Printing and Managing IRDs and Image Cash Letters. Check it out:
GLASTONBURY, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Open Solutions Inc., (NASDAQ: OPEN) a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers across the United States, Canada and international markets, and Rosetta Technologies Corporation, Tampa, Fla., a leader in secure enterprise printing solutions, announced they will partner to provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.



With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing product mix, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs--giving Open Solutions' clients the best of either alternative. "This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint (TM) solutions in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president of Rosetta Technologies. "We believe Open Solutions is a powerful business partner and they have demonstrated a proven ability to leverage this type of relationship to offer the market solutions both as a value-added integrator and as a service provider for its clients who choose to outsource item processing to them."

"Imaging has the power to dramatically reduce operating expenses for community financial institutions," said Mark Ryan, vice president and general manager, Open Solutions Imaged Payment Technologies. "Institutions have to be advanced enough to leverage image solutions to reduce cost, improve quality and service. Yet they have to be flexible enough to process paper, data and images. Open Solutions offers our clients the options they need to clear items - via paper or electronically - no matter what stage of technological evolution an institution may be in."

Mike Nicastro, Open Solutions' SVP and chief marketing officer, said, "Check 21 is changing long-standing operational strategies within our industry. For those clients looking to stay in front of the competition, our products, services and partnerships give them that choice. Our relationship with Rosetta Technologies allows our clients the opportunity to move even further into the electronic payments world. We believe our technology offers community financial institutions the options and the confidence to adopt new strategies and product offerings at their own pace."

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully featured strategic product platform that integrates core data processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting tools, imaging, digital documents, Check 21, interactive voice response, network services, Web hosting and design, and payment and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States and Canada to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service. For more information about Open Solutions, or its financial product line, contact Mickey Goldwasser by email at [email protected], by phone at 860.652.3153 or via fax at 860.652.3156. Visit Open Solutions' Internet site at www.opensolutions.com.

Open Solutions Inc. is a registered trademark of Open Solutions Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 Open Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.

About Rosetta Technologies

Rosetta Technologies Corporation has been developing MICR printing solutions since the early 1990s. As a total solution leader for enterprise check printing, the Company delivers a full-service product set for business-critical applications such as check printing and secure documents. The Company's offerings include a complete family of MICR laser printers from 37 to 276 IRDs-per-minute engineered by Rosetta Technologies for ANSI compliant MICR output, software packages for electronic document creation, output management and disbursement, post processing equipment, supplies, and electronic document creation services. On the Web: www.rosettatechnologies.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that state Open Solutions Inc.'s or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. All forward looking-statements are only as of the date of this press release and Open Solutions Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause Open Solutions Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For example, if we fail to adapt our products and services to changes in technology or in the marketplace, we could lose existing clients and be unable to attract new business. Factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, without limitation, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors affecting the banking and credit union industry and/or Open Solutions Inc.'s operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors set forth under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Open Solutions' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editors Note: The correct usage of the company name, Open Solutions Inc., is either referring to it as Open Solutions Inc. or Open Solutions. Open Solutions no longer uses the acronym of OSI to refer to the company.
Mitsui, Mitsubishi to sell Sakhalin shares to Gazprom. Check it out:
(Yomiuri Shimbun, The (Tokyo) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO _ Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. are selling part of their stakes in Sakhalin Energy, which operates the Sakhalin-2 oil development project, to Russia's state-run gas company Gazprom, according to sources.



Holdings to be sold by Mitsui equal a 3 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy. Mitsui holds 25 percent of the Russian enterprise.

Meanwhile, shareholdings to be sold by Mitsubishi, which has a 20 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy, are equivalent to a 2 percent stake.

The two companies apparently aim to ease pressure from the Russian government, which is trying to bring the country's entire energy industry under its control, and disperse the financial burden for the development program, expected to cost up to 2.3 trillion yen.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which owns a 55 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy, is negotiating with Russia over the possible handover of a 20 percent stake to Gazprom.

If the deals go through, Gazprom will become the second-largest shareholder with a 25 percent stake in the project-operating firm.

Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi jointly set up Sakhalin Energy in 1994, with Mitsui and Mitsubishi investing 25 percent and 20 percent of the firm's capital, respectively.

The Russian government has been pushing for Gazprom to participate in the project, which was launched during the chaotic period following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Russia apparently wanted to sustain interest in the project, which has since been wholly owned by foreign companies, and strengthen its control over it.

In July 2005, Shell, which owns a 55 percent stake, and Gazprom agreed that Shell would hand over about 25 percent of its shareholdings to Gazprom, but the negotiations have stalled since then.

Mitsui and Mitsubishi apparently decided to hand over part of their stakes to Gazprom because they believe the Russian firm's participation in the project would contribute to its stable progress.

Russian Ambassador to Japan Alexander Losyukov admitted Wednesday that negotiations between Russia and Shell were still under way.

___

(c) 2006, The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Visit the Daily Yomiuri Online at http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Copyright 2006 The Yomiuri Shimbun
Con Edison Expands Use of Itron's Customer Care Software Tools; Itron Customer Care Applications Used for New York's Mandatory Hourly Pricing Program. Check it out:
SPOKANE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Itron, Inc. (Nasdaq:ITRI) announced today a purchase of additional licenses for Itron Customer Care software solutions by Con Edison, to meet a new requirement for mandatory day-ahead hourly pricing which was imposed by the New York State Public Service Commission.



Con Edison is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, based in New York City. Already a long-time Itron customer, the utility was looking to leverage its existing infrastructure and expand its software tools to meet the requirement to provide day-ahead hourly pricing. The new policy aims to stimulate a competitive energy market for large commercial and industrial customers by requiring them to take electric service under the utility's day-ahead hourly pricing tariff or consider purchasing power from a third-party energy retailer.

Eileen Egan-Annechino, a manager of marketing and sales for Con Edison, said commercial and industrial energy bills will now be based on hour-by-hour consumption, so that large commercial and industrial customers have the ability to view their energy usage and manage it more proactively. Con Edison expanded Itron's Customer Care software package to include consulting services, analysis, rate modeling and cost analysis. The affected customers include stadiums, large high-rise buildings and hospitals.

"Through the expansion of Itron's Customer Care software, we are able to provide information to our customers, enabling them to respond to mandatory day-ahead hourly pricing." said Egan-Annechino. "Itron helped us develop the appropriate rates for use and the Customer Care software is able to calculate and compare the various energy components of the bill. This will better reflect the cost of energy in our state."

Philip Mezey, senior vice president for Itron software solutions, said Itron has helped Con Edison identify customers affected by the new energy tariff imposed this year.

"With all the new complexities in rate structures and regulations, it is critical to have a partner that understands the market and the needs of utilities serving large C&I customers," said Mezey. "As the industry leader, we understand the importance of viewing energy usage, curtailing when necessary and managing energy loads. We are happy to work with Con Edison to meet those goals and policies."

About Itron

Itron is a leading technology provider and critical source of knowledge to the global energy and water industries. Nearly 3,000 utilities worldwide rely on Itron's award-winning technology to provide the knowledge they require to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water. Itron creates value for its clients by providing industry-leading solutions for electricity metering; meter data collection; energy information management; demand response; load forecasting, analysis and consulting services; distribution system design and optimization; web-based workforce automation; and enterprise and residential energy management. To know more, start here: www.itron.com

About Con Edison

Con Edison is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with $12 billion in annual revenues and $25 billion in assets. The utility provides electric, gas and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York. For additional financial, operations and customer service information, visit Con Edison's Web site at www.coned.com.
Blue Coat Systems Receives Nasdaq Notification Related to Late Filing of Form 10-Q for Fiscal Quarter Ended July 31, 2006. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 21 -- Blue Coat(R) Systems , a leader in secure content and application delivery, today announced that on September 19, 2006, it received a notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market stating that the Company is not in compliance with Nasdaq's Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14) because the Company has not timely filed its Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006. Blue Coat has previously announced that it is not in compliance with Nasdaq's Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14) because the Company has not timely filed its Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006.



As disclosed in Blue Coat's press releases issued on July 14, 2006 and September 11, 2006, the Company has delayed the filing of its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006 and its Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006 because a committee of independent directors is conducting a review of the Company's historical practices in granting stock options to members of senior management and employees of the Company. The Company is working diligently to complete its review and to file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006 and its Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006.

Blue Coat had a hearing before a Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel for continued listing on the Nasdaq Stock Market on September 14, 2006. At the hearing, Blue Coat informed the panel that the Company would be delinquent in the filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 31, 2006. The Company is awaiting the decision of the Listing Qualifications Panel. The Company's securities will remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market pending a decision by the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel.

Other Legal Matters
Several purported shareholder derivative lawsuits concerning the Company's historical stock option granting practices have been filed in California state court and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against certain of the Company's current and former officers and directors; the Company is named as a nominal defendant.

About Blue Coat Systems
Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. Blue Coat's family of appliances and client-based solutions -- deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers -- provide intelligent points of policy-based control enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance between users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 25,000 appliances worldwide and is ranked #1 by IDC in the Secure Content and Application Delivery segment. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or http://www.bluecoat.com/ .

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Statements in this press release about Blue Coat's listing status on the Nasdaq Stock Market and the possible conclusions or determinations to be made by the Board of Directors or the independent committee are forward-looking statements and are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current information and expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in such statements due to various factors, including but not limited to, the inability of the Company to obtain a sufficient extension from Nasdaq to file its Form 10-K and Form 10-Q to avoid delisting; the Company's inability to comply with requirements imposed by Nasdaq for continued listing; additional information or actions resulting from the continued review by the Company's independent committee; the review and audit by the Company's independent auditor of the Company's fiscal 2006 financial statements; as well as other risks more fully described in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2006.

NOTE: All trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Blue Coat Systems

CONTACT: media, Steve Schick +1-408-220-2076, [email protected], or investors, Carla Chun, +1-408-220-2318, [email protected], both of Blue Coat Systems

Web site: http://www.bluecoat.com/
3Com Reports First Quarter Fiscal Year 2007 Results. Check it out:
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 --

Delivers Double Digit Year-over-Year Revenue Growth;

Continues Year-over-Year and Sequential Improvements in Bottom-Line Performance

First Quarter Highlights

-- GAAP loss per share was $0.04 in the first quarter, improved from an $0.11 loss per share in the prior-year quarter; and

-- GAAP revenue for the first quarter was $300 million, a 69 percent increase over the prior-year quarter due primarily to the inclusion of Huawei-3Com results in the current period; and a 16 percent increase over the prior year quarter's non-GAAP pro forma revenue, assuming the consolidation of Huawei-3Com from the beginning of the period.



3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) today reported consolidated financial results for its first quarter-ended September 1, 2006, including a full three months of results from its majority-owned joint-venture Huawei-3Com (H-3C). This quarter marks the first time 3Com results include the impact of adopting FAS 123 (R). 3Com also reports segment results for two operating segments, Secure, Converged Networking (SCN) and H-3C.

Revenue

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was $300 million, a 69 percent increase compared to same period in fiscal 2006. This growth is primarily the result of the inclusion of H-3C revenue in the current period offset, in part, by a decline in revenue from the SCN segment. Compared to non-GAAP pro forma revenue for the prior-year period, which includes the results of H-3C as if consolidated from the beginning of the period, 3Com's revenue grew 16 percent. This increase was principally due to growth in H-3C revenue, offset in part by a decline in the SCN segment.

Gross Profit, Operating Expense and Operating Loss - GAAP Basis

3Com's gross profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was $136 million, or 46 percent of revenue, which is a six percentage point improvement compared to the prior-year quarter, driven primarily by the inclusion of H-3C results in the current period results. First quarter fiscal 2007 operating expenses were $157 million, resulting in an operating loss of $21 million. This compares to a $47 million operating loss in the first quarter of fiscal 2006. The $26 million improvement comprises $14 million due to reduced operating loss in the SCN segment and $12 million of operating income from H-3C's results.

Non-GAAP Operating Loss(1)

The first quarter fiscal 2007 non-GAAP operating loss was $5 million, a $34 million improvement compared to the prior-year quarter's non-GAAP operating loss of $39 million. GAAP operating loss improved less than non-GAAP operating loss due to the inclusion of increased amortization expenses for the H-3C acquisition which are included in GAAP results.

Net Loss and EPS - GAAP basis

The first quarter fiscal 2007 net loss was $14 million, or $0.04 per share, including restructuring, amortization and stock-based compensation expense of $15 million, or $0.04 per share. In the same period of the prior year, the net loss was $42 million, or $0.11 per share, including restructuring, amortization and stock based compensation expense of $8 million, or $0.02 per share(2).

Cash and Short-Term Securities

3Com ended the quarter with $916 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, including the consolidated cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of H-3C, which totaled $197 million. The net increase of $52 million from the balance at the end of the previous quarter is due in large part to the sale of certain non-core assets.

"I am pleased with our overall consolidated results for the quarter, particularly the growth of H-3C and the continued improvements in our expense control for our SCN segment," commented Edgar Masri, 3Com's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our consolidated results for our North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions grew sequentially and our networking, security, voice and services businesses all grew year-over-year. We now must bring a level of consistency to all areas of our business so each group increases sales and profitability."

Conference Call

Management will host a conference call and webcast at 5 p.m. EDT today to discuss quarterly highlights, historical financial results and expectations of future performance. To participate on the call, U.S. and international parties may dial (913) 981-4902. Alternatively, interested parties may listen to the live broadcast of the call over the Internet at 3Com's Investor Relations Web site (www.3com.com/IR) in the Earnings webcast section.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including forward-looking statements regarding our goal to increase sales and profitability. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks relating to: our ability to return to profitability in light of significant historical net losses; our focus on enterprise networking and fluctuating results based on conditions in that market; our ability to respond effectively to increased competition; our ability to compensate for lower sales or cash outlays with cost reductions sufficient to generate positive net income or cash flow; the consequences of expense reduction; our dependence on our joint venture in China (H-3C); H-3C's success; economic, political and social events in China; H-3C's dependence on Huawei; our ability to evolve our financial and managerial control and systems; our ability to consummate and finance a transaction with Huawei to purchase additional interest in H-3C; the consequences of Huawei winning the bidding process, if commenced; our ability to identify and respond to market trends; our ability to hire and retain qualified personnel; our ability to use strategic alliances; the success of our outsourcing strategy; the market acceptance of our products and the inclusion of our technology in industry standards; our reliance on a small number of resellers; distributors reducing inventories of our products; our ability to successfully develop relationships with system integrators, service providers and enterprise VARs; Huawei's minority rights in our H-3C venture; competition with Huawei; the success of acquisitions; our ability to manage our supply chain; the ability of our manufacturing outsourcing strategy to meet cost, quality and performance standards; China's reforms and changing economic environment; uncertainty with respect to China's legal system; possible reduction in Chinese tax benefits; restrictions on H-3C paying dividends; our ability to maintain effective internal controls that include H-3C; currency rate fluctuations; intellectual property rights, enforcement and defense; stock price volatility; and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the SEC, including those discussed in the Company's annual report filed with the SEC on Form 10-K for the year ended June 2, 2006.

3Com Corporation does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking information contained in this release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

References to the financial information included in this press release and the related conference call reflect rounded numbers and should be considered approximate values.

About 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection. 3Com also is the majority owner of Huawei-3Com Co., Ltd. (H-3C), a China-based joint venture formed by 3Com and Huawei in November 2003. H-3C brings innovative and cost-effective product development and manufacturing and a strong footprint in one of the world's most dynamic markets. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

Copyright (C) 2006 3Com Corporation. 3Com and the 3Com logo are registered trademarks and TippingPoint is a trademark of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders.

(1) The non-GAAP operating loss measure used by the company excludes restructuring, amortization, in-process research and development, stock-based compensation expense and, if applicable in the relevant period, unusual items. The required reconciliations and other disclosures are set forth later in this press release in Table D and in the Current Report on Form 8-K furnished to the SEC on the date hereof.

(2) Our results for periods prior to the current period, in which we adopted FAS 123 (R), included stock based compensation expense primarily related to restricted stock amortization and stock-based compensation costs associated with acquisitions.

             3Com Corporation
     Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
        (in thousands, except per share data)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE A
                     Three Months Ended
                 ------------------------------------
                 September 1, June 2,  September 2,
                   2006    2006    2005
                 ------------ --------- -----------
Sales               $  300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
Cost of sales             163,715  143,999   107,570
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Gross profit             136,429  111,277    70,066
Operating expenses:
  Sales and marketing        77,122   69,860    70,118
  Research and development      47,793   32,373    21,197
  General and administrative     20,276   16,571    18,213
  Amortization of intangibles    12,181   9,317    3,862
  In-process research and
  development              -    650      -
  Restructuring charges         (75)   3,426    3,361
                 ----------- --------- -----------
    Total operating expenses   157,297  132,197   116,751
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Operating loss            (20,868)  (20,920)   (46,685)
Gain (loss) on investments, net     2,292   1,063     (414)
Interest and other income, net     14,808   17,621    5,989
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Loss from operations before
income taxes, equity interest
in unconsolidated Huawei - 3Com    
joint venture, and minority
interest of consolidated joint  
venture                (3,768)  (2,236)   (41,110)
Income tax provision          (1,358)  (5,115)    (915)
Equity interest of 3Com in the
income (loss) of unconsolidated
Huawei - 3Com joint venture (1)      -   3,251     (16)
Minority Interest of Huawei in
the income of consolidated
Huawei - 3Com joint venture (2)    (8,942)  (11,074)      -
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Net loss             $  (14,068) $ (15,174) $  (42,041)
                 =========== ========= ===========
Basic and diluted net loss per
share:              $   (0.04) $  (0.04) $   (0.11)
                 =========== ========= ===========
Shares used in computing basic
and diluted per share amounts    391,885  390,245   383,760
(1) Represents 3Com's interest in the Huawei-3Com joint venture for
  the period on and prior to February 1, 2006
(2) Represents Huawei's interest in the Huawei-3Com joint venture for
  the period subsequent to February 1, 2006
             3Com Corporation
        Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE B
                      September 1,   June 2,
                        2006     2006
                      -------------- ----------
ASSETS
Current assets:
 Cash and cash equivalent        $   554,169 $ 501,097
 Short-term investments             361,490   363,250
 Notes Receivable                50,935   63,224
 Accounts receivable, net            120,848   115,120
 Inventories, net                171,366   148,819
 Other current assets              56,970   57,835
                      -------------- ----------
   Total current assets           1,315,778  1,249,345
Property & equipment, net             80,309   89,109
Other assets                    28,929   56,803
Goodwill                     354,259   354,259
Intangibles, net                  99,614   111,845
                      -------------- ----------
   Total assets            $  1,878,889 $1,861,361
                      ============== ==========
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current liabilities:
 Accounts payable            $   148,326 $ 153,245
 Accrued liabilities and other         338,342   318,036
                      -------------- ----------
   Total current liabilities         486,668   471,281
Deferred revenue and long-term obligations     13,299   13,788
Minority Interest of Huawei (a)          182,872   173,930
Stockholders' equity              1,196,050  1,202,362
                      -------------- ----------
   Total liabilities and stockholders'
    equity               $  1,878,889 $1,861,361
                      ============== ==========
(a) Represents Huawei's 49 percent ownership in the H-3C joint-venture
           Additional Financial Data
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE C
Sales by Geography (a)
                     Three Months Ended
                --------------------------------------
                September 1,  June 2,  September 2,
                  2006     2006    2005
North America          $   58,423 $ 57,513 $  68,624
Latin and South America        15,319   18,778    14,117
Europe, Middle East and Africa     69,534   67,485    74,908
Asia Pacific Rim           156,868  111,500    19,987
                ------------- --------- -----------
Total Sales           $   300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
                ============= ========= ===========
(a) SCN segment sales are included in geographic categories based on
  the location of the end customer. H-3C segment sales included in
  the geographic categories are based upon the hub locations of OEM
  partners in the case of OEM sales and the location of
  end-customers in the case of direct customer sales
Sales by Product Category
                     Three Months Ended
                --------------------------------------
                September 1,  June 2,  September 2,
                  2006     2006    2005
                ------------- --------- -----------
Networking           $   244,033 $ 198,838 $  127,054
Security                25,462   24,681    16,876
Voice                 15,949   14,532    15,408
Services                8,351   8,757    7,835
Connectivity Products          6,349   8,468    10,463
                ------------- --------- -----------
Total Sales           $   300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
                ============= ========= ===========
             3Com Corporation
       Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Operating Loss
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE D
                     Three Months Ended
                  ----------------------------------
                 September 1, June 2, September 2,
                   2006    2006    2005
                  ----------- -------- -----------
GAAP operating loss        $  (20,868) $(20,920) $  (46,685)
 Restructuring              (75)  3,426    3,361
 Amortization of intangible
 assets                12,181   9,317    3,862
 Stock-based compensation expense
 (a)                  3,287   1,686     635
 In-process research and
 development (b)              -    650      -
                  ----------- -------- -----------
Non-GAAP operating loss      $  (5,475) $ (5,841) $  (38,827)
                  =========== ======== ===========
(a) Stock-based compensation expense is included in the following cost
  and expense categories by period (dollars in millions):
          Cost of sales $    0.3 $   - $     -
       Sales and marketing     1.2    0.3     0.1
     Research and development     1.2    1.1      -
    General and administrative     0.6    0.3     0.5
(b) This charge is the recognition of the estimated value of in-
  process R&D recognized from the H-3C 2 percent majority ownership
  acquisition
             3Com Corporation
             Segment Reporting
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE E
                    Operating Segments
               ---------------------------------------
                   SCN        H-3C
               ------------------- -------------------
                              For the
                Three   Three   Three   Period
                Months  Months  Months  February
                Ended   Ended   Ended  2, 2006
               September June 2,  June 30,  - March
                1, 2006   2006   2006  31, 2006
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Revenue            $155,823 $165,808 $169,968 $108,290
Gross profit           56,345  59,840  80,084  51,437
Total sales and marketing,
research and development, and
general and administrative
expenses            85,403  88,601  59,788  30,203
Other operating expenses (2)   3,516   7,016   8,590   6,377
Operating income (loss)     (32,574) (35,777)  11,706  14,857
Net income (loss)        (23,375) (28,919)  18,249  21,568
               -------------------------------------
                     Eliminations
               -------------------------------------
                Three Months    Three Months
                 Ended        Ended
               September 1, 2006   June 2, 2006
               -----------------  ----------------
Revenue             $(25,647)(1)    $(18,822)(1)
Gross profit
Total sales and marketing,
research and development,
and general and
administrative expenses
Other operating expenses (2)
Operating income (loss)
Net income (loss)         (8,942)(3)     (7,823)(3)
(1) Represents eliminations for inter-company revenue during the
  respective periods
(2) Represents restructuring and amortization in all periods presented
  plus in-process research and development included in the H-3C
  operating segment of $650 thousand in the two month period
  presented
(3) Represents minority interest of Huawei in the income of H-3C for
  April, May and June of 2006 for the period ended September 1,
  2006 and February and March 2006 for the period ended June 2,
  2006

Storehouse owner files bankruptcy. Check it out:
(Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 20--Furniture manufacturer and retailer The Rowe Companies has filed for federal bankruptcy protection because of rising expenses and declining sales.

The company, based at McLean in Fairfax County, said operations at its plants and its Storehouse retail stores will continue as usual.

But the company said its long-term plan calls for the sale of its Storehouse chain, which Rowe bought in 1999.

Storehouse operates about 70 stores, including seven in Virginia. Two stores are in the Richmond area -- at Stony Point Fashion Park and in Carytown.

The president of the Atlanta-based retailer is Caroline Hipple, a former Richmonder who had been executive vice president of This End Up.

Rowe listed $93.3 million in debts and $130 million in assets. It had losses in six of the past seven quarters. The company blamed lower-priced competition from Asia and a computer system installed in late 2004 as reasons for the filing.



Rowe implemented a number of cost-saving measures and other initiatives in the past year to turn around the business, the company said in court papers.

"Despite the cost reduction initiatives being undertaken, the manufacturing and retail segments have not to date generated sufficient profits from operations to cover their respective shares of interest expense, corporate overhead and capital expenditures," court papers said.

Gerald Birnbach, Rowe's president and chief executive, said the filing was necessary. "We expect that the restructuring steps we are taking, while difficult, will ensure the future of our enterprise and our people," Birnbach said in a statement.

Trading was halted on the American Stock Exchange. Shares have fallen 82 percent in the past year to 43 cents.

Rowe owes General Electric Capital Corp. about $35 million under a 2006 loan. The company's largest unsecured creditor is Carpenter Co. in Richmond, which is owed $793,000.

To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Nokia, Alcatel in pact [Nokia]

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Nokia, Alcatel in pact [Nokia]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Finland's Nokia Corp. Thursday said it will collaborate with France's Alcatel S.A. to extend business telephony by way of the Nokia Eseries range of business devices.

The Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel, is a Nokia offering designed to integrate Nokia Eseries devices into the Alcatel IP Communication server. The collaboration reaffirms both companies' commitment to mobilizing business communications, Nokia said.



Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel capitalizes on the capabilities of the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise as well as the power of Nokia Eseries, the company said.

With the solution, desk phone functionalities are available to the mobile user. For example, employees manage just one business number, and control where and when and on which device they receive their calls.

Additionally, the benefits of the office phone, such as call conferencing, call back, and dial by name are delivered with the ease of use of Nokia Eseries, within the enterprise environment.

While employees enjoy the freedom to work from any location, enterprises can enjoy the increased accessibility of employees and profit from substantial cost savings.

The IP telephony infrastructure enables companies to take advantage of Alcatel's Least Cost Routing capabilities, significantly reducing international mobile calling charges and providing greater control of overall communication costs.

The solution will be available during the fourth quarter of 2006 through Alcatel and Nokia resellers.

The solution brings added transparency to the company's telephony cost structure by making the billing records easily available, and can help companies identify costly elements in their telephony system. The information provided by the solution can assist a company to plan and build the most efficient telephony system for its business.

"Together with Alcatel, Nokia has a great opportunity to expand the adoption of converged mobility solutions," said Scott Cooper, vice-president, Mobility Solutions, Nokia."While enterprise voice solutions from Nokia are designed to work with leading enterprise communications solutions, the introduction of the new solution that integrates Nokia Eseries with the Alcatel OmniPCX is a significant milestone for us. Alcatel and Nokia are at the forefront in bringing solutions to the mobile marketplace that help overcome the barrier between fixed and mobile communications, thus making business communications more efficient both in and out the office."

"Alcatel and Nokia are teaming up to give both the business and the employee greater flexibility in their daily communications," said Jean-Christophe Giroux, president, Alcatel enterprise solutions division."With a business enabled mobile phone, employees have the freedom to work where it is most productive, while enterprises receive the benefits of predictable and controllable communications costs and enhanced customer service, as callers make immediate contact with the right person. Together, Alcatel and Nokia are delivering on our commitment to mobility and the enterprise."

The new Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel offering is part of the Intellisync Mobile Suite from Nokia. The Nokia business portfolio also features the Nokia Eseries devices which combine attractive and easy-to-use designs that appeal to individual business users with underlying technologies that allow IT departments to effectively manage security settings, corporate applications and data, and software that enable mobile applications such as email, enterprise voice and device management.

Alcatel's OmniPCX Enterprise is an integrated, interactive communications solution that delivers Alcatel's Cellular Extension software to enable Intellisync Call Connect.

Currently, Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel utilizes the cellular network to connect to a company's PBX infrastructure, and will be enhanced to support both cellular and WiFi networks with dual mode phones in the near future.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
TietoEnator wins O2 deal [TietoEnator]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Finnish information technology company TietoEnator Oyj Thursday said German telecom operator O2 has chosen it to upgrade its current customer service platform by migrating it to Voice over Internet Protocol.



The company said to further enhance customer service excellence by continued integration of all interaction channels, O2 decided to implement an IP contact center suite tightly integrated into its business applications, and that this will help to lower total cost of ownership, and to improve time-to-market for new products and services.

TietoEnator said as general contractor and system integrator, it is going to develop the new innovative customer services IT solution on the basis of network and contact center applications from Cisco and Genesys.

The company said customers use their O2 products at all times of the day and they expect the customer service to be available to match their working patterns and behaviors, and that this includes allowing O2's customers to establish contacts by every media type and receive the same information in any media at any time.

TietoEnator said all customer contact media, such as telephone, customer self-service, e-mail, fax, SMS, MMS, the Internet and written correspondence, will be supported by the IP contact center solution.

Carsten Wreth, vice president of customer services at O2, said:"With the IP-based contact center, O2 will become more flexible and cost effective in delivering the best customer experience and converting every single customer contact into a business opportunity. We decided to develop this together with TietoEnator because we know them as a trustworthy partner and have great confidence in their quality and timely deliverables."

Michael Graben, vice president, TietoEnator Digital Innovations, said:"We are more than proud to help O2 in this challenging and strategic customer service project based on the most advanced technology one can find nowadays. We have to move the traditional telecommunication network world to the IP world. Furthermore, O2 needs a solution which enables interaction between customers and the whole enterprise, not only the contact center, and including resources such as agents, voice portals, etceteras. And then, of course, we have to align the business logic and the underlying business processes."

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Oracle Validates DSI's dcLINK(R) Integration With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12; DSI Maintains Continuous JD Edwards Validation. Check it out:
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Data Systems International (DSI) announced today that Oracle has validated the integration of DSI's dcLINK(R) 5.0 automated data capture solution with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12, making dcLINK the only data capture solution to have maintained continuous integration validation with EnterpriseOne software. The 8.12 validation expands DSI's current offerings of validated data collection solutions for Oracle enterprise software.



"Continuous validation assures our customers that dcLINK adds value to their EnterpriseOne application today and will continue to do so in the future. DSI's long-term commitment to providing a continuously validated solution has made dcLINK the preferred data capture solution for EnterpriseOne," said Matt McGraw, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Data Systems International.

DSI's dcLINK is the most comprehensive automated data capture software solution available for tracking inventory, assets, and time in production, at the warehouse, and in the field. dcLINK enables data collection using RFID, bar code, and mobile applications on a single platform with real-time integration into all Oracle enterprise applications.

Oracle validated the dcLINK integration with EnterpriseOne as part of the Oracle Application Integration Initiative, which ensures standards-based integration between Oracle enterprise applications and partner solutions.

"DSI is committed to Oracle's application validation and professional certification initiatives. Validation assures our customers that dcLINK will integrate seamlessly with Oracle. Our investment in Oracle certifications for our personnel assures our customers that their dcLINK implementation will be supported by experts who understand their entire solution," said McGraw.

About Data Systems International

DSI is a trusted automated data capture expert with nearly three decades of experience serving clients worldwide with industry-leading technology solutions. DSI is an Oracle Certified Partner with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Visit DSI's web site at www.DSIonline.com.
Micrel Incorporated and Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. Settle Patent and Trade Secret Litigation. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. and LOS GATOS, Calif., Sept. 21 -- Micrel Inc., , an industry leader in analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions, and Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. ("MPS") , an industry leader in analog Power Management, announced today that they have reached a settlement of the patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit brought by Micrel in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The patents and alleged trade secrets were related to semiconductor manufacturing processes and semiconductor design elements.



In the settlement, Micrel licensed U.S. Patent Nos. 5,517,046 and 5,556,796 to MPS. The companies agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims in the litigation with prejudice. Micrel also agreed to release MPS and its chief executive officer Michael Hsing and its chief design engineer Jim Moyer from all claims for any alleged trade secret claims based on any confidential information. In connection with the settlement, MPS agreed to pay $3,000,000 to Micrel.

About Micrel, Inc.
Micrel Inc., is a leading global manufacturer of IC solutions for the worldwide analog, Ethernet and high bandwidth markets. The Company's products include advanced mixed-signal, analog and power semiconductors; high performance communication, clock management, Ethernet switch and physical layer transceiver ICs. Company customers include leading manufacturers of enterprise, consumer, industrial, mobile, telecommunications, automotive, and computer products. Corporation headquarters and state-of-the-art wafer fabrication facilities are located in San Jose, CA with regional sales and support offices and advanced technology design centers situated throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. In addition, the Company maintains an extensive network of distributors and reps worldwide. Web: http://www.micrel.com/ .

About Monolithic Power Systems, Inc.
Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (MPS) develops and markets proprietary, advanced analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. The company combines advanced process technology with its highly experienced analog designers to produce high-performance power management integrated circuits (ICs) for DC to DC converters, LED drivers, Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) backlight controllers, Class D audio amplifiers, and Linear ICs. MPS products are used extensively in computing and network communications products, LCD monitors and TVs, and a wide variety of consumer and portable electronics products. MPS partners with world-class manufacturing organizations to deliver top quality, ultra-compact, high-performance solutions through the most productive, cost- efficient channels. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Los Gatos, California, the company has expanded its global presence with sales offices in Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, and Europe, which operate under MPS International, Ltd.Web: http://www.monolithicpower.com/ .

NOTE: Micrel and the Micrel logo are among the registered trademarks of Micrel, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. Monolithic Power Systems, MPS and the MPS logo are among the registered trademarks of Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries.

Micrel Inc.

CONTACT: Vince Tortolano, Vice President, Legal Counsel of Micrel,+1-408-474-1236, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.monolithicpower.com/
Web site: http://www.micrel.com/
Workstream Inc. Schedules Fiscal 2007 First Quarter Earnings Report and Conference Call. Check it out:
OTTAWA --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Workstream Inc. (NASDAQ - WSTM), a provider of On-Demand Enterprise Workforce Management software, is scheduled to report its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 on Thursday, September 28, 2006 after the close of the stock market.



Management will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, September 28, 2006. The dial in number to participate in the call is 866-696-5910 for North American participants and 800-8989-6336 for those outside of North America. The instant replay number for the call will be available until October 5, 2006 by calling 800-408-3053 access code 3198565#.

About Workstream Inc.

Workstream provides enterprise workforce management solutions and services that help companies manage the entire employee lifecycle - from recruitment to retirement. Workstream's TalentCenter provides a unified view of all Workstream products and services including Recruitment, Benefits, Performance, Compensation, Development and Transition. Access to TalentCenter is offered on a monthly subscription basis under an on-demand software delivery model to help companies build high performing workforces, while controlling costs. With nine offices across North America, Workstream services customers including Chevron, The Gap, Home Depot, Kaiser Permanente, Motorola, Nordstrom, Samsung, Sony Music Canada, VISA and Wells Fargo. For more information visit www.workstreaminc.com or call toll free 1-866-470-WORK.
LABOR-COLOMBIA: GLOBAL UNION GROUPS PRESS FOR LOCAL ILO OFFICE. Check it out:
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
GENEVA, Sep. 20, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- International labor
associations have publicly expressed their support for the call by
Colombian trade unions to quickly establish a local office of the
International Labor Organization (ILO) in that civil war-torn South
American country.

Janek Kuczkiewicz, director of human and trade union rights at
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU),
announced that organization's support for the nationwide protests
that unions in Colombia are planning for next Tuesday.

"We are determined to step up the pressure" on the Colombian
government and business to make them live up to the commitment
assumed with the ILO, Kuczkiewicz told IPS by telephone from
Brussels, where the ICFTU is based.

The trade unionist was referring to the tripartite agreement
signed June 1 in Geneva, in which the Colombian government and
workers' and employers' representatives agreed to a permanent ILO
office in Colombia.

The local ILO office will be in charge of technical cooperation
to promote decent work and the basic rights of workers and their
representatives, with a particular emphasis on protecting the lives
of trade unionists, trade union freedom, freedom of association and
expression, collective bargaining and free enterprise for
employers.

Kuczkiewicz pointed out that labor rights continue to be
routinely violated in Colombia. A total of 74 trade unionists were
killed in 2005 alone, he said, although the government put the
number at 25. "But there are always discrepancies between the
government's figures and ours," he added.

"The Situation Regarding Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws,"
a report released Wednesday in Geneva by the Colombian Commission
of Jurists (CCJ), also states that attacks against labor-union
organizations continue.

Between January 2003 and December 2005, 271 labor activists were
killed, an average of 90 a year, CCJ representative Andrs Snchez
Thorin told IPS.

These abuses occur in the context of more than four decades of
armed conflict between leftist guerrillas and the military, who
were later joined by the ultra-right-wing paramilitary militias,
which are in the midst of a controversial partial demobilization.

Added to the mix are the drug cartels sustained by demand from
the United States, the world's largest market for illegal drugs.

But besides the violence against trade unionists, there is
"structural anti-trade unionism" on the part of the Colombian
government and business, which deny the rights to strike and to
collective bargaining while carrying out major restructurings and
downsizing that are apparently only motivated by one goal: to curb
trade union activity, said Kuczkiewicz.

That includes the restructuring carried out by the state itself,
through, for example, privatizing the postal system and
subsequently dismissing more than 1,000 public employees, Freddy
Pulencio, with the Unin Sindical Obrera de la Industria del
Petrleo (USO) -- Colombia's oil workers' union -- told IPS.

Then there is the imminent dismantling of the Social Security
Institute, and the public tender of 20 percent of the shares of the
state-run Ecopetrol oil company and 50 percent of the shares of the
Cartagena refinery, Colombia's second-largest, said Pulencio.

The privatization initiatives are among the causes of the strike
planned for the morning of Sept. 26 and the protest marches to be
held that afternoon in Bogot and other large Colombian cities.

Another reason is the workers' opposition to the free trade
treaty that the Colombian government of right-wing President lvaro
Uribe is negotiating with the United States, said Pulencio.

Free trade treaties of this kind substantially impact
agriculture due to the surge in imports of subsidized farm products
from the United States or the European Union, which local producers
cannot compete with, said the trade unionist.

With respect to intellectual property, the free trade agreement
would extend the patent rights of foreign drug companies by an
additional seven years, thus effectively eliminating generic drugs
from the market and driving up pharmaceutical prices three- or
four-fold, said Pulencio.

Besides their support for next Tuesday's strike and protests in
Colombia, the international trade union associations will press the
ILO Administrative Council, which meets Nov. 2-17 in Geneva, to
speed up the designation of a representative in Colombia, said
Kuczkiewicz.

"We are going to demand urgent compliance with last June's
agreement, the appointment of a representative, and the opening of
an office in Colombia," he said. "It has to be headed by someone
of stature, who is worthy of the confidence of the regional and
international communities."

Kuczkiewicz said an office will have to be established in
Colombia, because the representative will not be able to do all the
work on his or her own.

The ICFTU representative also said the office must dedicate
itself to the decent work program that the ILO defines as
"productive work in which rights are protected, which generates an
adequate income, with adequate social protection."

"That is why we are talking about a team," he underlined.

He noted, however, that Colombian trade unionists have
complained that the Uribe administration has expressed on several
occasions its opposition to the opening of an ILO office -- a
position that is shared by most employers.

Colombian trade unionists argue that the resistance put up by
the government and business runs counter to the tripartite
agreement reached in June.

An office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights already operates in Colombia, to oversee the country's
compliance with international human rights conventions and
recommendations.

Kuczkiewicz said that despite complaints from the international
community that the UNHCHR office's observations "could be more
severe," the office at least provides a measure of international
oversight in Colombia.

Copyright 2006 Global Information Network
Hard-luck city getting million-dollar homes. Check it out:
(Press-Enterprise, The (Riverside, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--SAN BERNARDINO -- Six-bedroom estates with multiple courtyards, theaters, wine rooms and outdoor wet bars might sound so Beverly Hills.

Instead, look for such homes in the hills of San Bernardino.

The extra-large luxury homes planned for the city's suburban outskirts are expected to be San Bernardino's first tract houses to sell for more than $1 million -- a status already reached by several other Inland cities, including Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga and Corona.



GFR Enterprises of Upland plans to begin construction by spring on 20 one-story estates starting at $1.2 million, said company president Felix Robles. Developer Jim Watson is selling land near Cal State San Bernardino to Toll Brothers to build as many as 54 houses that Watson said will be priced between $700,000 and $1 million. Construction is expected to begin early next year. Plans for both are being processed by city officials.

The projects are destined for north San Bernardino -- an increasingly affluent enclave growing in sharp contrast to downtown neighborhoods that are 10 miles away, where homes are among Southern California's lowest priced and often rented.

While it's hoped that these new houses can help reverse an outbound migration by the well-to-do, they come as national and regional home sales slow.

Robles and Watson said they aren't concerned that the recent drop in home sales might impact the ability to find buyers for super-high-end San Bernardino residences.

Jim Morris, the mayor's chief of staff and a San Bernardino native, pointed out that the city already has $1 million homes -- some built years ago near Arrowhead Country Club. But new GFR and Toll homes could help recruit businesses helmed by corporate CEOs who want to live near their companies, he said.

And it could provide an alternative for affluent locals.

"We know dozens of people we grew up with, worked with -- they left and they've gone to Redlands," Morris said.

Economist John Husing sold his San Bernardino home four years ago for a 3,500-square-foot "dream house" in Redlands. Ceilings stretch 10-feet high, bathrooms are done in marble and just about every window offers a view.

"If there's anything San Bernardino needs, this is it," Husing said. "Those of us who would have made a choice, didn't have a choice. I very well might have stayed in San Bernardino."

But Dick Dahler, who owns All Nations Realty in Rancho Cucamonga, called the projects "a big gamble," particularly with recent attention on the city's crime problems. San Bernardino was named one of the country's most-dangerous cities last year. There have been 37 homicides so far this year, one less than for the same period in 2005.

"If you know north San Bernardino, it's a nice, nice area," Dahler said. "But I'd be a little apprehensive selling $1 million homes."

The GFR houses will go on lots measuring a spacious 1 acre, with three floor plans from 4,058 to 5,621 square feet, Robles said.

A model home expected to be complete by summer 2007 will showcase what's possible, said Robles, who plans to spend at least $400,000 on upgrades to include thick, wood beams for ceilings, granite, marble, fountains and swimming pools.

"Whatever someone would want," he said.

Dry, waist-high weeds now cover the hilly terrain set aside for the houses. Once built, all will be single story, a feature favored by aging baby boomers but fading as land availability shrinks, he said.

Any house in the Inland Empire priced above $750,000 has to offer something extra special, particularly in a slowing housing market, said Randall Lewis, executive vice president for the Lewis Group of Cos., a developer of apartments and other homes.

"If the houses are the right kind of houses, and the areas in north San Bernardino are the right areas, with views or great landscaping, then they have a strong chance of being successful," he said.

It's about time San Bernardino got a share of the Inland Empire's luxury housing, said Steve Johnson, a director with real-estate consulting firm MetroStudy.

"If you would locate it anywhere, it would be in that area because of the view potential," he said.

Market shifts shouldn't affect GFR or Toll sales in San Bernardino, he said.

There is too little executive-style housing regionwide, he said, pointing to 76 homes exceeding $1 million sold last year in Corona as evidence of pent-up demand.

"The market's going through some adjustments, but it's not really a full-scale retreat," he said.

Statewide, 48,666 homes sold for at least a million dollars in 2005 -- an increase of 47 percent over the previous year, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

Any San Bernardino image problems, particularly tied to crime, won't deter affluent buyers, said Larry Sharp, president of Arrowhead Central Credit Union, which is headquartered in San Bernardino.

"If we can show people we are really dealing with those issues, I think that's what people are looking for," Sharp said, pointing to Operation Phoenix, the mayor's anti-crime plan. "If we're not, then people say there's not much hope here."

Officials with Toll Brothers, which has developments with houses priced in excess of $1 million in Corona and Rancho Cucamonga, declined to talk about their San Bernardino plans because the land sale has not closed.

But the Pennsylvania-based company reported in August that third-quarter profit declined 19 percent. Company CEO Robert Toll told The Wall Street Journal that too much supply and aggressive discounting is undermining consumer confidence.

"When buyers become confident that home prices have hit bottom, the market will return to firm footing," he told the newspaper.

Floor plans for the company's San Bernardino houses include circular staircases, libraries and multiple garages and range from about 3,500 to 5,500 square feet.

Models should be available by April, Watson said.

The Toll Brother sites, within view of Cal State San Bernardino, help the whole city by attracting prosperous residents, said Albert Karnig, the university's president.

"People who are more affluent tend to be better educated, vote more, participate more in the community as opposed to people who rent, who don't really feel a commitment to the community," he said.

To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Mibam inks agreement with Iran to develop Siderrgica Nacional. Check it out:
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The basic industries and mining ministries of Venezuela (Mibam) and Iran have signed a memorandum of understanding to analyze the participation of Iranian companies in Venezuelan state steelmaker Siderrgica Nacional.



"It will evaluate the possibility of allowing a public or private Iranian company to hold a stake in the Siderrgica Nacional EPS, a social production enterprise," a Mibam official told BNamericas.

If the agreement is cemented, the Iranian company would hold a 20% share of the social capital in Siderrgica Nacional while 80% would be controlled by the Venezuelan state, the official said.

For now, representatives from both governments are moving forward with project studies, said the official.

Construction works at the steel mill are expected to start early next year with mill startup expected by first quarter 2009, BNamericas previously reported.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez announced in September 2005 the construction of the plant at an estimated investment of US$1bn. The plant will have installed capacity of 300,000t/y coils, 900,000t/y rolled steel and 300,000t/y rounded bars.

Siderrgica Nacional will be located in Puerto Ordaz in Bolvar state and be a subsidiary of the national basic industries company Coniba.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com
Telecom Expense Management Provider Profile: ProfitLine. Check it out:
ProfitLine, a San Diego, CA-based provider of telecom expense management (TEM) services, recently won a contract with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to manage that organization’s local telecom expenses for all locations and branches, on an outsourced basis.


 
To find out more about the significance of this contract in particular, and the company’s TEM services more broadly, TMCnet spoke with two ProfitLine executives: Rick Valencia, founder and chairman; and Stephen Hundley, president and CEO.
 
About ProfitLine
 
Hundley described ProfitLine as a TEM sourcing and category manager, serving Fortune 1000 companies and big government. The company was founded in 1992 and at first offered only sourcing and contract negotiation services.
 
ProfitLine’s bill management services were launched in the late 1990s, initially using a bootstrap platform. In 2002, after the dotcom bubble burst, ProfitLine received its first round of capital funding from Menlo Ventures. That funding was used to establish My Telco Manager, the Web platform used to power all aspects of ProfitLine’s TEM services.
 
The company went through a second round of funding in 2005, and this time the monies were used to establish a TEM solution for mobile telephone services. Today, all of ProfitLine’s services have been integrated into a comprehensive offering covering wireless and wireline.
 
“We're a BPO [business process outsourcing] company that provides an all-inclusive solution from source to pay across the complete telecom lifecycle,” Hundley said.
 
He added: “Government has become a very big market for us.”
 
Government agencies, Hundley noted, have large telecom bills, encompassing both wireline and wireless services.
 
“All that stuff just begs to be managed,” he said.
 
Complete Lifecycle Management
 
Industry surveys, Hundley noted, often point out that a significant amount of “leakage” occurs between the time a particular telecom service is sourced (ordered) and when it is paid for. Estimates of leakage generally are in the 25 percent range.
 
“There's a big gap between what’s negotiated and what gets billed,” Valencia said. He added that ProfitLine acts a policeman for that gap so it can be shrunk down to zero.
 
Because ProfitLine covers the entire TEM spectrum (sourcing to payment), Hundley said it is possible to truly validate what was sourced services against what is being paid for.
 
The company has dubbed a term to describe this full-lifecycle management: telecom 360. In large part because of its broad spectrum of services, on average last year ProfitLine saved its customers 42 percent on telecom spending.
 
“We see demand increasing for TEM services,” Hundley noted.
 
He added that one of ProfitLine’s differentiators is the large database of business intelligence the company has built from all the transactions it has handled over the years. This intelligence can be used on the front or back end to help clients negotiate better prices for telecom services.
 
The USPS Contract
 
ProfitLine’s recent contact with the USPS is noteworthy because of the client’s scale.
 
“The contact is significant because the Postal Service is such a big agency with lots of locations and lots of spend,” Hundley noted.
 
Valencia added that The USPS is the biggest client, in terms of number of locations, ever to sign up with a TEM provider.
 
ProfitLine and TEM Standards
 
ProfitLine has been involved for several years with Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, an organization promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and information technologies industry, Valencia said.
 
Specifically, ProfitLine is involved in helping to develop and promote electronic data interchange (EDI) standards—methods for computer-to-computer exchange of structured information. Valencia said that the company helped drive standards for wireline telecom data, and now is doing the same for wireless.
 
“The goal is to get the bill into the hands of the enterprise in a format that we can audit and pay quickly,” he noted.
 
Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page.

Face value: China's pied piper

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Face value: China's pied piper. Check it out:
(The Economist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jack Ma is attracting a following among entrepreneurs in China and internet companies worldwide

ON A rainy weekend this month 10,000 businessmen, hobby traders and "netheads" gathered in Hangzhou, a pretty Chinese city near Shanghai, to talk about e-commerce. Most went to meet and swap tips with other online traders. All came to the "Alifest" to sit at the feet of Jack Ma, a pixie-sized, boyish 42-year-old who is the founder of Alibaba, an e-commerce firm, and is regarded as the godfather of the internet in China. In a country where businessmen are viewed with suspicion, his popularity is unusual. When he was invited recently to speak in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Mr Ma needed six bodyguards to escape a mob of online traders waiting outside to give him a hug.



Mr Ma's rock-star status reflects how he has enabled thousands of his countrymen to become their own bosses, build businesses and make money--a dream ingrained in Chinese culture but repressed by decades of Communist antipathy to private enterprise. Alibaba has become the world's largest online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, Asia's most popular online auction site and, as a result of its acquisition of Yahoo! China, the 12th most popular website in the world. That combination makes Alibaba one of the few credible challengers to the global online elite of Google, eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon.

Alibaba is far from being just a Chinese knock-off of these American giants. Indeed, they have borrowed ideas from him. "Jack is not just a Chinese visionary, but a global one. Western companies are taking pages from the Alibaba book," says Bob Peck, an analyst at Bear Stearns. At Alibaba's heart sit two B2B websites (alibaba.com and china.alibaba.com), one a marketplace for firms from across the world to trade in English, the other a domestic Chinese service. Rival e-commerce outfits, such as America's Ariba and Commerce One, sought to cut multinationals' procurement costs. In contrast, Alibaba's intention was to build markets for China's vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises, which make everything from cufflinks to motorcycles, by allowing them to trade with each other and linking them to global supply chains. Today, traders in America buy from Alibaba and resell on eBay.

Mr Ma has also led the charge into online communities and social networking, both now booming areas. In 2003 he added a consumer auction site, Taobao, that allowed instant-messaging--a feature later added to his business sites. In contrast with eBay's relative anonymity, Taobao lets buyers and sellers get chummy through messaging and voicemail, and by posting photographs and personal details on the site. Turning e-commerce into a community of "friends" has been critical in a country beset by a lack of trust. And with 70% of China's web users aged under 30, Taobao's informal, blog-like format struck a chord--attracting more than 20m users. Many have now gone professional, buying goods wholesale on Alibaba and reselling them on Taobao. The story goes that, shortly after visiting Alibaba's offices and seeing Taobao, Meg Whitman, eBay's boss, bought Skype, an internet-telephony start-up, for its instant-messaging.

Alibaba has also outflanked the opposition in online payments. Aware that most Chinese do not have credit cards, Mr Ma introduced AliPay, a system that keeps cash in escrow until goods arrive. That trick for getting round settlement risk was later adopted in China by eBay. China's powerful banking regulator has a hawkish eye on AliPay, which is, in effect, an online bank with thousands of credit histories (something mainland banks crave). Taobao's success has been startling. Its market share jumped from 8% to 59% between 2003 and 2005, while eBay China's slid from 79% to 36%. Mr Ma trumpets that it is "game over" for eBay China. Many industry watchers expect eBay to retreat and sell out to a local outfit such as Tencent (a rising star in auctions) or Alibaba itself--as Yahoo! China did.

Mr Ma is also at the forefront of the trend to integrate paid search with e-commerce. Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo! China last October gave the firm a search engine just as Google was demonstrating the huge potential of paid search, and the deal anticipated eBay's link-ups with portals (Yahoo! in America, and Google elsewhere). Baidu, China's main search engine, is a strong rival. But online advertising is surging in China and small firms are the biggest users of paid search, giving Alibaba an edge.

Keep it simple

Mr Ma seldom mentions technology. Whereas most internet entrepreneurs are geeks (think of Yahoo!'s or Google's founders), Mr Ma first touched a computer in 1995 on a trip to Seattle. "Someone as dumb as me should be able to use technology," he says. He insists on simplicity. A new feature is rejected unless he can understand and use it. Mr Ma's approach to running the company is similarly independent. He reads neither business books nor case studies, and ascribes Alibaba's survival and success to the fact that he "knew nothing about technology, we didn't have a plan and we didn't have any money." In truth, Mr Ma had powerful backers early on, including Goldman Sachs and Softbank. Yahoo!'s Jerry Yang--who joined Mr Ma at the Alifest--is also a longtime friend. In any case, he has money aplenty today: as part of its takeover by Alibaba, Yahoo! paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in the company.

Only one thing is missing: profits. As the boss of a private company in no rush to join the stockmarket, Mr Ma is relaxed. Revenues should double to more than $200m this year. But Alibaba has so far pursued market share rather than revenue. The global business site charges its users, but Taobao does not; an attempt to do so this year failed. Mr Ma says it is too early: only 30m of China's 120m online users have bought anything online. He wants to help the market grow--creating 1m jobs in China in the next three years--not stifle it with charges. He will have to tackle profitability if he is really to call the tune.

SOURCE: The Economist

Copyright 2006 Economist Newspaper
China's unions: A little solidarity. Check it out:
(The Economist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Increased union membership generates cash for the government

THE Chinese Communist Party has always been swift to crush independent organisations of workers, but even its own puppet trade unions have had a hard time in recent years. Until recently at least, the burgeoning private sector has eschewed them and so too has its workforce, despite widespread abuses such as dangerous working conditions, derisory wages and forced overtime. But now the party-controlled unions are making a comeback. Is it time for bosses to worry?



Since late July the Chinese media have been crowing over a grudging decision by Wal-Mart, one of the most prominent foreign firms in China, to allow members of its 31,000-strong Chinese workforce to form trade unions. Wal-Mart had been discouraging this since it began operating in China in 1996, just as it does elsewhere, including in America, its home country. The company says unions are unnecessary for its employees. But the Chinese media reported that an order from President Hu Jintao earlier this year prompted official efforts to get Wal-Mart to change its mind. On July 29th in the coastal city of Quanzhou, workers at one of Wal-Mart's 60-odd supermarkets in China formed the company's first union there.

Wal-Mart had not been accused of any specific mistreatment of its workers. But it was accused of breaking a law which says that companies are not allowed to obstruct the formation of trade unions. An official survey conducted two years ago found that trade unions had been established in a mere 10% of half a million foreign-invested enterprises then registered in China. Wal-Mart, with its self-proclaimed anti-union stance, came under growing scrutiny--notwithstanding its large contribution to China's economy. The company says it bought $19 billion-worth of goods from China in 2004, amounting to some 15% of China's total exports to America in that year according to China's statistics (10% by America's).

But what of the other foreign-invested firms in China? The slow development of trade unions in these companies has been mainly a result of lack of interest among workers rather than opposition to union activity among managers. Unions in China are controlled by the Communist Party through an umbrella organisation, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), to which all unions must be affiliated. Two decades ago, when China's economy was still mostly run by the state, almost all urban workers belonged to trade unions set up in the state-owned enterprises to which they belonged. At best these unions acted as mediators between management and workers rather than as champions of workers' interests. They had little bargaining power--strikes and other forms of collective pressure being effectively banned (the right to strike was removed from China's constitution in 1982). Most union offices did little more than organise occasional entertainment and help the party monitor worker morale.

Since the 1990s the rapid growth of private, including foreign, enterprise and the widespread closure of state-owned firms has gutted unions from the urban workforce. It has also stripped the party of its own network of cells in workplaces, each of which once had both a union and a party committee. Even if newly established private enterprises employed party members, such people often neglected to organise cells and fell out of touch with the party itself.

Party rules require a cell in any enterprise with three or more party members. But even if members wanted to form one, they felt that management would disapprove. In state-owned enterprises, the boss often doubled as party chief. In private firms, even ones set up by party members, managers were often concerned that business secrets might be leaked and efficiency impaired by the existence of a separate power structure inside the business. And without party cells, there was little impetus to form unions. By 1999 union membership had fallen to 87m, down from a peak of 104m in 1995 (see chart).

This has been a blow to the authorities. For a party used to all-pervasive control, the withering of its grassroots organisations has left it feeling increasingly uneasy. In recent years wildcat strikes, go-slows and other forms of worker protest have become more frequent. These have been triggered both by the shrinking of the state sector and by harsh working conditions in some private enterprises. The party wants its unions back in place in order to keep workers off the streets, which, it accepts, sometimes means restraining employers too. Giving government-controlled unions a little bit more muscle, the party feels, helps to deter desperate workers from trying to establish independent unions. The party still shudders at the recollection of Solidarity's growth in Poland in the 1980s. And more unions mean more money for the government. Unionised companies have to give 2% of payroll to their unions. Of this, 40% is meant to be forwarded to the ACFTU.

Official figures suggest the party is making headway. By the end of 2004 there were 55m union members in non-state-owned enterprises, 35% more than a year earlier and a more than fourfold increase compared with the late 1990s. In foreign-invested enterprises, progress has been particularly striking. About one-third now have unions, official reports say. In some areas with large concentrations of such firms, unionisation is even more widespread. Shanghai expects 60% of foreign-financed firms to have unions by the end of this year and 80% at the end of 2007. Neighbouring Zhejiang province, a big export-manufacturing base, says 70% of foreign firms there are already unionised. Two-thirds of Wal-Mart's supermarkets now have unions. In August the company's first two openly declared Communist Party cells were set up in the north-eastern city of Shenyang. Since unions are usually led by senior party members in a firm, it is likely there are others.

Some companies are worried. A new labour-contract law, which may be passed within the next year or so, contains provisions that critics (inside both foreign and Chinese enterprises) say could give unions a greater say in company decision-making. In a recent survey of its members by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, about half the consumer-goods companies questioned said they had negative or very negative views of the law as currently drafted. Revisions are expected.

However, there is little likelihood that trade unions in China will acquire the clout that some of their counterparts exercise in Western countries. For all its Marxist pretensions, the party is still more interested in business than in the grievances of the proletariat.

SOURCE: The Economist

Copyright 2006 Economist Newspaper

Russian energy: Yukos revisited?

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Russian energy: Yukos revisited?. Check it out:
(The Economist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Russia must stop strong-arming foreign investors

IT IS natural to be miffed when a deal that seemed shrewd turns out worse than you thought. It is especially galling if it involves a prized asset. The civilised response--if the other party is disinclined to renegotiate--is to shrug and move on. But with the gigantic energy developments on Sakhalin Island, the Kremlin prefers to bully its partners into surrender.



Sakhalin and the seas around it host the two biggest foreign investments in Russia, which are also two of the world's biggest energy projects. Led by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, the consortia signed "production-sharing agreements" (PSAs) with the Russian government in the 1990s to insure against unpredictable legal changes; another PSA applies to an Arctic development led by Total, of France. Sakhalin has other ominous peculiarities. The Shell consortium is building Russia's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, to serve markets in North America, South Korea and Japan. It is the only big energy scheme without a Russian partner. The projects are also the only exceptions to Gazprom's gas-export monopoly--staunchly defended by both the state-controlled gas giant and the Kremlin against European efforts to break it up.

In other words, Sakhalin is potentially crucial in the Kremlin's drive to recapture its geopolitical clout using energy wealth. Hardly surprising, then, that its state-controlled energy firms want pieces of the island action. Opportunities for foreign firms in energy--the "holy of holies" of the economy, as Vladimir Putin puts it--are now tightly circumscribed. Using Gazprom and Rosneft, a state-controlled oil firm, the Kremlin has recaptured its stewardship of the industry. PSAs were controversial even when they were signed, amid low oil prices and a scarcity of foreign capital and expertise; now that Russia is flush, to some officials they look downright humiliating. (An enormous cost overrun at Shell's Sakhalin project, which will massively reduce the state's share of the profits, has bolstered this conviction.) Other countries, Kremlin apologists point out, have redrafted energy deals as the oil price has risen.

Gazpromise

But none of that makes Russia's behaviour right. The Kremlin has opted for intimidation rather than negotiation. This week, the government revoked an environmental approval that may halt the Shell-led consortium's work--to the ire of Japan, which has already bought much of the anticipated LNG; Japanese companies also own 45% of the enterprise. There are legitimate environmental gripes with the scheme; but the move seems more related to Gazprom's efforts to barge its way in. Rosneft already has a minority stake in the Exxon consortium, but the Americans have also been the subject of threatening murmurs, as has Total. The Kremlin evidently believes the benefits of this strong-arming outweigh the risks. Global energy reserves being distributed as they are, foreign oil majors will surely take whatever terms Russia offers; anyway, some Russians believe, business always is a grubby affair.

The Kremlin should think again. For all its swagger, Russia still needs outside participation in its energy industry. With Russia looking to raise more than $20 billion from investors in listings in the next 18 months, other parts of the economy need foreign investment even more. Russia's reputation is still recovering from the Kremlin's last backdoor appropriation--the renationalisation of much of Yukos. To sustain that recovery, the Kremlin needs to be more civilised over Sakhalin.

SOURCE: The Economist

Copyright 2006 Economist Newspaper
Netherlands: Transport and communications. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY BACKGROUND

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Several programmes aim to tackle congestion problems

While the quality of the existing transport and telecommunications network is excellent, the road and rail density per 1,000 inhabitants is low (respectively 7.4km and 180 m), and bottlenecks and congestion are a serious source of concern. A wide range of road, rail, harbour and airport schemes are in progress or at the planning stage. The government plans to spend a total of 37bn on infrastructure investments during the period to 2010. The Ministry of Transport and Public Works wants to introduce a larger role for the private sector in public transport.



Roads

Surfaced roads totalled 113,419 km in 1996 (2,207 km of which was motorway), and the road network has since been expanded slowly, to 134,218 km of surfaced roads by 2005. However, because of environmental concerns, various measures to discourage the use of private cars have also been introduced, inter alia, higher taxes on petrol. In addition, the Netherlands has been running trials of road pricing systems, which it had been expected would lead to the introduction of a pricing system by January 2006. The plan was to apply the scheme to goods vehicles initially, but to extend it to cover private cars at a later stage. To offset the cost to motorists the government at the time promised to reduce road-vehicle licence taxes if the scheme were introduced. However, the last government decided to put the project on hold, since budget constraints have forced a rethink of many of the measures in the previous National Transport Plan.

Some schemes to ease congestion were, however, included in the 2003 budget (announced in September 2002), in which the ministry promised to devote special attention over the next four years to a number of policy areas, including improving traffic flow, railway maintenance and safety improvements. To this end the ministry made available 420m for road improvements and anti-congestion measures, 300m for effective and regular railway maintenance, and 100m for safety measures. Anti-congestion measures will include road-widening schemes, the use of reversible rush-hour traffic lanes and the construction of new link roads. However, budget limitations also meant that these had to be offset by lower spending on other projects. The government decided to shelve investments in the Hanze Line (see below) for five years and to freeze the funds for the Delft railway tunnel for the time being. It also limited funding for city and regional transport running costs, and abolished a number of small subsidies.

Railways

Passenger capacityaround 320m passengers travelled over the 2,806km rail network in 2003is being extended with a view to doubling it by 2010. Works include the establishment of fast train services linking the major population centres in the Netherlands, as well as high-speed train links between Amsterdam and other major European cities. In anticipation of a high-speed rail link to Germany, the construction of a faster rail link between Amsterdam and the Utrecht rail hub was started in 1998. The government began public consultations on the proposed high-speed link to Germany in late 2000. Moreover, in July 2000 an agreement was reached between The Hague and Rotterdam on the construction of a fast rail connection (RandstadRail) between the two cities. In February 2001 the government also selected the winning bid from among four consortia tendering to build a high-speed rail link to the Belgian border. However, budget restrictions forced the government to shelve plans to build a rapid rail link between Lelystad and Zwolle (the so-called Hanze Line) for five years. This was part of a joint scheme, in conjunction with a number of local and regional authorities, to complete a rapid rail link (the ZZ Link) between Amsterdam and Groningen, in the north of the country. The Municipality of Amsterdam is currently developing the North/South Line, a new metro line that will connect the residential area in the north of the city to the office locations in the southern part of the city. Construction began in January 2003 and is due to be completed by 2011.

Goods traffic by rail has lost ground in recent years, as freight has switched to the road. In a bid to reverse this trend, the government is constructing a 5bn-freight train trackthe Betuwe freight railwaylinking Rotterdam harbour with the industrial Ruhr area in Germany. The link is expected to be operational from January 2008.

Civil aviation

In 2004 Schiphol, the country's main airport at Amsterdam, ranked fourth in Europe in terms of both passenger and freight transport, after London, Paris and Frankfurt. Schiphol has benefited in recent years from the performance of low-cost airlines, which are strongly represented at Schiphol. In most other countries, low-cost carriers tend to use the smaller satellite airports rather than the major hubs. Following the government's decision at the end of 1999 to refrain from the construction of a new airport on an artificial island in the North Sea, Schiphol airport was allowed to expand further at its existing location, within strict new environmental limits. Schiphol started using a fifth runway in February 2003, and was subject to a new set of rules limiting sound and air pollution around the airport. In June 2005 the lower house of parliament approved a government plan to dispose of part of the states 75% shareholding in Schiphol airport, although the details of the asset sale have yet to be finalised.

Shipping

On January 1st 2003 the Dutch seagoing merchant fleet consisted of 619vessels. The size of the fleet has expanded fairly rapidly in recent years, following a decline before 1996 that had lasted 12 years. The fall was reversed as a result of tax incentives aimed at deterring Dutch shipping companies from registering their vessels in countries with less stringent shipping regulations. Rotterdam, which in 2005 handled 370m tonnes of cargo (75% of shipment through Dutch ports), is one of the world's largest ports, and to enable its expansion and improve its competitiveness, a scheme of land reclamation is currently under way. Plans to expand the port, which include the construction of a compensatory wildlife and recreation area of 750 ha, also involve improvements in rail and road transport links to and from the port, as well as increases in freight handling capacity.

Navigable inland waterways total 5,046 km, of which 3,745 km are canals. The commercial inland waterway fleet had 4,772 vessels in operation on January 1st 2003 with a total capacity of 5.57m grt. In 2003 around 60% of the freight on waterways involved international traffic, reflecting the importance of the Netherlands in the movement and transshipment of European cargoes.

Telecommunications

The Netherlands has a US$9.6bn telecommunications market (2002) equivalent to 2.3% of GDP. Full liberalisation of the telecoms sector, which occurred on July 1st 1997, removed the monopoly of the privatised national telecoms enterprise, KPN/PTT Telecom. The first companies to break the monopoly in fixed-link telephony were the cable television company, CasTel, Telfort (Nederlandse Spoorwegen/British Telecom) and Enertel (a grouping of ten energy and cable companies). An independent authority supervising competition in post and telecoms (OPTA) has also been created.

Competition has increased significantly after 1998 as a number of telecommunications companies, including WorldCom, KPNQwest, Viatel and Global Crossing, built pan-European fixed-line networks. However, an oversupply of network capacity in Europe caused severe price pressures for wireline services in the Netherlands and neighbouring countries, and many of these companies had to file for bankruptcy in 2002. For example, KPNQwest, a joint venture of KPN and Qwest Communications (US), which built a 25,000-km fibre-optic network across Europe, filed for bankruptcy in June 2002 and was eventually liquidated. KPN bought up the network assets of KPNQwest in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.

Amid the troubles plaguing the wireline telecoms market, the fastest-growing market in the Netherlands is that for mobile phones. The Dutch mobile market is the sixth-largest in western Europe, with five network operators competing for a population of 16.2m. KPN's competitors include Versatel, a joint venture between Telfort and Libertel, which is majority-owned by Vodafone of the UK. In January 2001 Dutchtone, a company created by France Telecom and two Dutch banks, ABN-Amro and Rabobank, entered the market. With the arrival of Ben, the joint company of the Belgian operator Belgacom and Tele Danmark, the Netherlands has become one of Europe's most competitive mobile-phone markets. A government auction of five third-generation (3G) universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) licences was held in July 2000. Libertel and KPN each offered 712m for the two most attractive UMTS licences, while Dutchtone, Ben and Telfort successfully bid for the other three. Competition for mobile customers has been fairly robust; price reductions for SMS (short message service) by Telfort in June 2004 led the other major operators to follow suit and cut prices sharply.

Internet

The Dutch Internet infrastructure is supported by a wide variety of Internet service providers (ISPs), an attentive government and significant bandwidth capacity. The advanced process of telecom liberalisation and local-loop unbundling has boosted the number of ISPs. The Amsterdam Internet Exchange is a major European hub for Internet traffic, and Internet use is widespread. Around 83% of Dutch businesses had Internet access in 2003, according to the Central Bureau for Statistics. The value of the Internet-based Dutch business to business market was estimated at around 3bn in 2000. Growth in the market is likely to be in part the result of the adoption of wireless broadband Internet access technologies such as WiFi. In the first quarter of 2005 the Netherlands had the highest proportion of households with Internet access in the EU (78%) and the highest proportion of households with broadband access in the EU (54%) The largest ISP in the Netherlands is Wanadoo, followed by Chello. KPN controls half of the asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) market through its subsidiaries, such as Planet Internet and Het Net. However, smaller ISPs have been increasing their market share.

In order to meet the government's objective of Internet access for all, the use of the Internet is to be stimulated by educating small-sized firms in this area. Schools, libraries and governmental organisations have to provide access to the Internet, and the government has actively promoted Internet use through propaganda campaigns. Their efforts are paying off, as about 62% of the population are Internet users, one of the highest percentages in the world.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
Malaysia: Business environment at a glance. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Policy towards private enterprise and competition

2006-07: Regional economic integration limits the government's ability to distort competition by protecting domestic industries.

2008-10: Free-trade agreements and non-discrimination clauses will reduce the privileges of the bumiputera (ethnic Malays and other indigenous peoples).

Policy towards foreign investment

2006-07: Competition with China guides investment incentives; Malaysia emphasises its relative advantages in labour skills, resources and infrastructure.

2008-10: Malaysia will increase incentives in order to establish itself as a regional services centre.

Foreign trade and exchange controls

2006-07: Bank Negara Malaysia (the central bank) maintains the existing exchange-rate system of a managed float against a trade-weighted basket of currencies. The ringgit remains non-convertible on the capital account.

2008-10: Free-trade agreements will lead to the removal of most foreign trade controls.

Taxes

2006-07: Gradual fiscal consolidation continues as subsidies are cut.

2008-10: A new goods and services tax will facilitate reductions in personal and corporate tax rates.

Financing

2006-07: Reform and liberalisation of the financial sector improve access to finance for the corporate sector, and especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.

2008-10: Greater financial market liquidity will further extend corporate access to finance.

The labour market

2006-07: Malaysia continues to attract large numbers of unskilled workers, despite government policy to expel illegal immigrants.

2008-10: A lack of skilled, well-educated labour will impede progress at the upper end of the value chain.

Infrastructure

2006-07: New infrastructure investment is started, helping the ailing construction sector.

2008-10: Thanks to greater private-sector involvement, infrastructure projects will be completed.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit

Libya: Business outlook

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Libya: Business outlook. Check it out:
(EIU Viewswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Business environment rankings(a)Value of index(b)Global rank(c)Regional rank(d)2001-052006-102001-052006-102001-052006-10Overall position4.124.3879801516Political environment3.63.677771314Political stability4.44.470691010Political effectiveness2.92.975781314Macroeconomic environment5.87.271521410Market opportunities5.96.24235106Policy towards private enterprise & competition2.32.379801516Policy towards foreign investment4.24.276751515Foreign trade & exchange controls3.33.378811417Taxes5.35.351641011Financing2.92.974811417The labour market4.65.078741312Infrastructure3.54.072771314(a) See Guide to the business rankings model at the end of this report. (b) Out of 10. (c) Out of 82 countries. (d) Out of 17 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, UAE, Angola, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.Libyas business environment ranking score improves only modestly in the forecast period (2006-10), to 4.38 from 4.12 in the historical period (2001-05), leading to a comparative deterioration in Libyas global and regional rankings, as other countries make more marked gains. At 80th, out of 82 countries worldwide, Libya will remain at the bottom end of the ranking scale, reflecting the many constraints that will continue to afflict the business environment in the country, notably opaque bureaucracy, undeveloped policy towards private enterprise, poor access to local sources of finance and relatively restrictive foreign trade and exchange controls.



The Economist Intelligence Unit nevertheless expects to see some improvements in the labour market, with the current low levels of skills and technical expertise prevalent among the local labour force likely to increase gradually as education and training programmes begin to take effect. Libya will also see an improvement in the countrys infrastructure, which will ease market access and aid economic development. Overall, therefore, market opportunities, already fairly high, will pick up further. As a result of these gains, and of the positive economic fundamentals generated by a burgeoning oil industry, the score for the macroeconomic environment also improves.

Any further gains in the score will continue to be severely constrained by Libyas score for its political environment, which remains one of the lowest in our survey. The dictatorship of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, though ensuring a degree of stability, will remain repressive and ineffective in implementing policies.

Copyright 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit
The Denver Post business people column. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 20--THE SUMMIT FOUNDATION: The Breckenridge-based foundation appointed Lee Zimmerman as executive director. Zimmerman formerly was with the Investment Management Consultants Association.



ECOLLEGE: Promoted Vance Allen to chief technology officer. Allen joined eCollege in 1997 as a software engineer.

U.S. BANK: Gary Judd, former president and chief executive of Vail Banks Inc., has joined the board in Denver as its chairman.

CONTINUUM PARTNERS LLC: Announced that Todd Moore has joined the Belmar Center as general manager.

CAGE WILLIAMS: Announced that Mark Williams, president, and Barbara Salomon, senior counsel, have been selected for inclusion in the 2007 "The Best Lawyers In America." B THE COLORADO JUDICIAL INSTITUTE: Awarded 10th District Chief Judge C. Dennis Maes, Weld County Judge Lynn J. Karowsky and 18th Judicial District Magistrate Louis A. Gresh the 2006 Judicial Excellence Award.

XP EVENTS: Promoted Alan Fey to president.

DELOITTE & TOUCHE USA LLP: Named Jeffrey T. Goodwin a partner in the organization's audit and enterprise risk services unit and Alexandra Tune a partner specializing in audit services to the organization's energy clients.

THE WILDLIFE EXPERIENCE: Hired Ruth Rohs as the new director of development.

THE GROUP INC. REAL ESTATE: Announced that Darin Slocum, broker associate/partner, has completed the course work to earn the Graduate Realtor Institute designation.

FRONTIER AIRLINES: Recently added Robert D. Taylor to its board of directors.

JACKSON KELLY PLLC: Announced that Laura E. Beverage and Ronda Sandquist of the Denver office were included in the 2007 edition of "The Best Lawyers in America." B

COLORADO CREDIT UNION: Announced that loan manager Karen Moran has graduated with honors from the Delta 2006 class of Western CUNA Management School.

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Ericsson of Brazil announces changes in board. Check it out:
(Investnews (Brazil) - English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SO PAULO - Ericsson of Brazil on Thursday announced Srgio Quiroga, the subsidiary's Commercial vice-president, will, as of October 1, 2006, take office as the chairman for the North Latin America Unit, which comprises Colombia, Ecuador, Guiana, French Guiana, Suriname, and Venezuela.



Eduardo Ricotta will now accumulate the position of vice-president of Ericsson Enterprise with part of the commercial duties, previously under Srgio Quiroga's management. 2006 NoticiasFinancieras - InvestNews - All rights reserved

Copyright 2006 NoticiasFinancieras
Eitzen private placement prior to IPO. Check it out:
(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) AXEL Eitzen has ploughed ahead with raising $300m-$350m through a private share sale in his chemical tanker business prior to an Oslo listing.

The Norwegian entrepreneur has opted for the private placement after missing an application deadline for an initial public offering next month in Oslo.

'This is a timing issue,' Mr Eitzen told Lloyd's List.

'We did not get an application before the October board and decided to go-ahead.'

The Oslo shipowner said the issue would be followed by a full public listing by the beginning of November. Mr Eitzen revealed that the volume of financial work since the Songa takeover announcement four weeks ago had held up the submission.



'It was not possible to delay our investors,' he added.

Camillo Eitzen needs to raise new equity to fund its $1.28bn swoop last month on compatriot Arne Blystad's chemical carrier fleet.

The share issue is directed at institutional international and domestic professional investors with the subscription closing on September 26. The indicative price range has been set at between NKr27.60 and NKr31.50 a share, which is equivalent to around $4.25-$4.86.

The new equity will be trade- able on the over-the-counter list from the date of issue until Eitzen Chemical lists on the Oslo Bors.

Camillo Eitzen last month said it had until the end of October to complete the chemical tanker IPO needed to part fund the Songa purchase.

Camillo Eitzen will pay for the rest of the Songa acquisition through a separate $75-$100 bond issue and a credit facility with Nordea.

Carnegie and Pareto will manage the equity deal, with the bond issue advised by Nordea and Pareto.

The Oslo group closed the bond offering early on Wednesday due to 'substantial over-subscription' from investors.

The subscription period was to extend to September 29, with the allocation date set for October 4.

The group said that the application would be made for the bonds to list on the Oslo stock exchange or the Alternative Bond Market 'as soon as practically possible'.

The bond loan will have a floating interest rate of three months Nibor-Libor plus 3.5% with a five-year term.

Mr Eitzen added that, with the bond loan already fully committed, the group could concentrate on raising the equity.

Prior to the IPO, Camillo Eitzen will also sell its relevant activities to new legal entity Eitzen Chemical and in return take control of the newly issued shares.

Mr Eitzen estimates that after the share offer, the transfer of its chemical business and the Songa takeover the group will retain a 45%-48% stake in Eitzen Chemical, up from a previous range of between 40%-47%.

Norwegian shipowner Mr Blystad will also be paid in shares and cash with Eitzen Chemical taking over its outstanding debt.

The takeover of Songa Shipholding will increase the fleet to 81 chemical tankers, with an additional 38 newbuilds on order until 2010.

That will create one of the world's largest tanker companies with a market value of $725m-$836m and an enterprise value of some $2.4bn.

Copyright 2006 Informa Martime Trade and Transport
Denver-based MapQuest to shed its publishing business. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 20--Denver-based MapQuest is shedding its publishing business, cutting roughly 40 jobs.

The company's publishing unit prints maps and atlases that are sold at retail outlets.

MapQuest produced its first printed road map for free distribution at gas stations in 1967, according to its website. The company produces more than 1.5 billion pages of printed maps every year.

"MapQuest is refocusing the company's assets to compete more effectively in a fast-changing marketplace," said Dori Salcido, a spokeswoman for MapQuest. "It's part of the company's ongoing process to better align (its) resources, invest in the future and position the company for sustainable growth going forward." MapQuest's core business is its online mapping website, which gives users driving directions.



Though MapQuest is still the leader in the online mapping industry, it has faced growing competition recently from Yahoo and Google.

MapQuest attracted more than 75 million visitors in August, more than double the number of visitors to No. 2 Google Maps, according to comScore Media Metrix.

The company is trying to grow its enterprise arm, which gives companies access to its mapping technology, and its wireless division, which gives users access to MapQuest services on their cell phone.

Salcido said MapQuest is selling the publishing unit to former employees, but it hasn't been determined yet where it will be located. Laid-off employees, who worked from the company's office in Mountville, Pa., will be given the opportunity to apply with the new publishing company.

MapQuest was founded as the cartographic-services division of R.R. Donnelley & Sons in Chicago in 1967. The company became independent in 1994 as GeoSystems Global Corp. It opened a Denver office in 1995, launched MapQuest.com in 1996 and was acquired by AOL in 2000.

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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CDB, KfW to Promote Loans for Micro & Small Enterprises. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Business Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 22, SinoCast -- Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW), a leading policy bank of Germany, will provide USD 50 million loans to China Development Bank to help the development of the micro and small enterprises in China.



At the same time, backed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany, KfW will donate EUR 3 million to China to hire the world??s best experts to set up organizations for the micro and small enterprise loan business.

The loan for micro and small enterprises is oriented to the private industrial and commercial operators, small enterprises and rural households to help their production and business operation. A single deal of loan will be no more than CNY 1 million and the average amount of every deal will be between CNY 40,000 and CNY 50,000.

According to the previous plan, China Development Bank will join forces with the World Bank and KfW to provide technology and capital to 12 partner banks to provide loans to the micro and small enterprises at the end of 2007.

Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC Source: Financial Times Information Limited -

Marketing IT the FMCG way

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Marketing IT the FMCG way. Check it out:
(Financial Express Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Business has only two functions-marketing and innovation" is the marketing success mantra of Milan Kundera, a Czech novelist, playwright and poet. And yet, most technology companies limit their marketing to the tried and tested' models, even for innovative products and solutions. Technology companies expect their products and solutions to sell on the strength of innovative technology. However, not all customers understand and appreciate the intricacies of technological innovation. This is even more applicable to the small and medium business (SMB) segment, where the entrepreneur/CEO often doubles as a CIO. To successfully market to this segment, technology companies require a more focused, hard hitting, out-of-box approach that cuts through the clutter. Technology today is often the very basis of survival for business organisations, especially SMBs. Technology tools enable SMBs to improve their efficiency and hence compete effectively with lager organizations. This also strengthens their position as major contributors to India's economic growth. India has over 7.6 million SMBs, largely organised in geographic clusters, and estimated to be spending approximately $ 500 million on servers and networking technology in 2006, according to AMI Partners. Though Indian SMBs are investing in computing technology, there is a long way to go. AMI data sugg-ests that only 21% have PCs, 20% have Internet access, and only 14% of the PC-owing SMBs have local area networks (LAN). Compare this to the United States, where 93% of small businesses have PCs, 81% have Internet access, and 39% have deployed LANs. Clearly, a large untapped market exists in India for technology providers who are willing to invest in educating the market and delivering SMB focused solutions. Quick Take



Tech firms can learn from FMCG players' innovative marketing strategies Marketers can tap SMBs' clustering tendency and reach out at their doorstep This will help SMBs explore technology live and take meaningful decisions The good news is that many Indian SMBs have understood the business benefits of new generation networks and are aggressively adopting these. Broadband connectivity, in particular, is expected to play a major role in increasing the use of IP-based technologies like IP PBX, IP Centrex, VoIP and even Internet access through cellular phones and handhelds. Over time, this could well become an opportunity for technology providers to rethink their marketing strategies. Going forward, technology companies seeking to fulfill the unique need of their SMB customers would do well to focus on: Creating innovative products and solutions Adopting innovative marketing techniques Innovative products and solutions: SMB technology requirements are different from those of an enterprise and hence offering a stripped down version of enterprise-class products is not the solution. Companies need to develop SMB specific products to cater to their IT needs. And continuous interaction and feedback from SMBs is vital for successful development of such products and solutions. Innovative marketing: Traditional marketing has helped technology companies to grow business over the last decade. However, with rapidly changing market dynamics, traditional channel partner driven go-to-market strategies need to be supplemented with innovative marketing initiatives. An ideal SMB market strategy is customer centric. It involves helping customers create a sustainable competitive advantage, improve their operational efficiencies, increase their employees' productivity, and ultimately boost their revenues and profitability. FMCG companies have been known to be the most innovative in marketing strategies for their products. Technology companies can take a leaf out of their book and market complex technology products leveraging elements of FMCG marketing. Globally, technology companies have explored the benefits of using celebrity endorsements, branding exercises, technology showcasing via roadshows, seminars and workshops as part of their marketing mix. Marketers can take advantage of the clustering tendency of SMBs to bring their technology to the customer's doorstep. Network On Wheels' is one such Cisco initiative that showcases SMB specific networking technology solutions live across tier II cities. This innovative customer-doorstep' approach helps SMBs explore technology live and take meaningful decisions on technology adoption and its benefits. It also helps to increase customer involvement with products. A focus on innovative marketing across will help technology companies develop a keener understanding of their customer's pain points and render them better equipped to deliver customised solutions that offer lower TCO, higher ROI and improved scalability. As IT products become more consumer-oriented, it's only a matter of time before FMCG style marketing helps technology marketers garner higher market share in an increasingly competitive SMB market. A move in this direction will truly fuel the SMB growth engine of the country. -The writer is vice president-enterprise-marketing, Cisco Systems (India & Saarc)

Copyright 2006 The Indian Express Online Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Palm's 1Q profit slips on 4 percent rise in sales, stock comp expenses. Check it out:
By MAY WONG AP Technology Writer
The Associated Press

Palm Inc., maker of Treo smart phones, said Thursday its profit for its fiscal first quarter fell 9 percent as it accounted for stock option expenses for the first time and grappled with slow sales growth amid tougher competition.

For the three months ended Sept. 1, Palm said it earned $16.5 million, or 16 cents per share, compared to $18.2 million, or 18 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding $6.7 million in stock-based compensation and other one-time items, Palm said it would have earned $21.5 million, or 21 cents per share. In the year-ago period, Palm's adjusted net income was $13.7 million, or 13 cents per share.

Revenue was $355.8 million, up 4 percent from $342.2 million in the year-ago period.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were expecting, on average, adjusted earnings of 18 cents on revenue of $354.4 million.

Earlier this month, the Sunnyvale-based handheld communications company had warned that sales would land between $345 million and $356 million, falling short of previous expectations by about $30 million due to slow Treo sales.

Palm is facing increasing competition in the smart phone market amid new and lower-priced offerings from its longtime rival Research in Motion (News - Alert) Ltd., maker of BlackBerry (News - Alert) devices, as well as Motorola (News - Alert) Inc. and Nokia (News - Alert) Corp.

Palm plans to expand its global efforts to grow sales and last week introduced its new Treo 750v in Europe, a region in which the company has had minimal market share. Palm also plans to introduce a lower-priced Treo model for consumers later this year.



"We executed well on a number of fronts, significantly increasing profits and Treo sell-through," said Ed Colligan, Palm's president and chief executive officer. "The product announcements we made this month put us in an even better position to meet marketplace demands and extend our worldwide reach."

For the second quarter, Palm forecast that sales will be $430 million to $450 million and that earnings per share will fall between 15 cents and 18 cents. It expects that earnings excluding items will be 20 cents to 23 cents per share.

Analysts were expecting, on average, earnings of 28 cents per share on revenue of $472.7 million for the quarter.

Palm said it will focus more on trimming costs and gaining market share over profitability for the remainder of the year.

Palm also announced that its board of directors has approved a stock buyback program of up to $250 million of its common stock.

Charlie Wolf, a Needham & Co. analyst who has a "buy" rating on Palm, thinks Palm's outlook will strengthen in its fiscal third quarter after the consumer-oriented Treo is released and after businesses have had more time to weigh the myriad of smart phone options that cropped up this past year.

"Palm will do very well in the enterprise market," Wolf predicted. He cited how Palm's new model using Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system will likely give it an edge over rival offerings that use a different platform and may not integrate as easily into companies' Windows-based computing systems.

Shares of Palm fell $1.11, or 7 percent, to close at $14.50 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In extended trading following its report, shares rose 68 cents, or 4.7 percent.
Google China Losing Users to Rival. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, September 22, SinoCast -- Search engine titan Google China is losing its core users to its rival Baidu.com in China, according to industry reports.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said that this year Google China represents 25.3 percent in the nation's search engine market, decreasing from 33 percent in 2005 while Baidu's market shares jumps from 52 percent to current 62.1 percent.



Google China is more popular in Shanghai while Beijing netizens prefer Baidu, the center concluded. In addition, the market reception of Google is 20 percentage points lower than Baidu.

Google China's other big competitors have not gained share rise this year either in the Chinese mareket. Yahoo! China, Sohu.com and Sogou.com have a combined share of only 8 percent, and let alone a smaller rival iAsk.

Search engines including Google China are struggling to capture a larger share when Baidu is becoming the number one in the Chinese market. Google China's US parent has spared no efforts in its operations in China since last year.

Another US giant Yahoo! poured USD 1 billion into its Chinese business with hopes of taking the lead in the world's most populous market.

Domestic players have no found a way out facing Baidu's crazy expansion yet. Charles Zhang, founder of Sohu.com, a front-running Internet portal, claimed a year ago that it would exceed Baidu rapidly.

The center, however, stressed that Baudu's users are mainly students, which have brought less commercial value than other kinds of users.

The report of Lv Bowang, a well-known Internet analyst in China, delivered the similar bad news to Google China.

The report said that Baidu and Google take 64.5 percent and 20.6 percent respectively. This year Google has lost 20 percent of its core users, 80 percent of which has turned to Baidu.

Now Baidu has successfully reduced its reliance on its MP3 search business and grown into a mature search engine with a wide business variety.

But he pointed out that Google China has gained high-end users, most of which have monthly income of over CNY 3,000. It has more advantage in enterprise culture and innovative products than Baidu.

More competition is coming soon. Google China has not moved its server to China yet due to various reasons. Jack Ma, head of Alibaba.com, has just finished the adjustment in Yahoo! China.

And Charles Zhang said that Sogou has not been in full sail by now.

Increasing rivals are imposing huge stress to Baidu. Is Baidu ready for fiercer competition? Things are not so optimistic to Baidu, industry insiders predicted.

For the moment, Baidu has a majority share of more than 85 percent in the Chinese MP3 search engine sector, and it gains visiting traffic of over 30 percent from its MP3 business.

However, Baidu often finds itself involved in a lawsuit because of its biggest operation. It is accused of supporting pirate music operations.

But it has no plan to discard its MP3 business now for the huge visiting the business has brought to the search engine.

In addition, Baidu is challenged for the speed of its Internet access and the stability in its server. On September 13 its services stopped for nearly 30 minutes suddenly. The search engine claimed that it has been stricken by hackers and incurred a server collapse.

(USD 1 = CNY 7.96)

Copyright 2006 Sinocast

New Log, New Direction

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New Log, New Direction. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHENZHEN, September 22, 2006, SinoCast -- CISCO Systems will increase investment in its Shanghai research center, where it is working on consumer-oriented products such as network DVD players and Internet-protocol TV equipment, the company's chief development officer said yesterday in the city.



Within the next year, the US-based router giant will invest almost USD 4 billion on research and development, mainly in its five research centers worldwide, including the Shanghai operation. Cisco plans to double staff to 500 at the local center by the middle of next year.

In the future, Cisco's Shanghai center, founded in 2005 with an investment of USD 32 million, will hire more than 1,000 engineers, about 10 percent of the company's global total for researchers, said Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, without providing a specific timetable.

Cisco's local center is now working on new technologies, from voice over Internet protocol to IPTV and network DVD devices that play computer-stored videos on TV screens through wireless connections.

"We have strong technologies for Internet protocol," Giancarlo said in an interview at the center. Cisco will launch a new marketing campaign next month to target end users, including changing its logo, Giancarlo said, declining to elaborate.

"The competition in the enterprise router market is heated, and Cisco, though still No. 1, is losing market share to rivals in China," said Zhang Tao, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, a research firm under the Ministry of Information Industry.

As such, Cisco is forced to find other business opportunities, such as the promising consumer market, Zhang said.

"The key point (in assessing the consumer sector) is price, and Cisco has to cut costs on management and talent," Zhang said.

Cisco announced on May 10 the launch of an IT services company in Beijing, capital of People's Republic of China.

The U.S. company set up its research and development center in Shanghai last October, aiming at expanding market share in China.

U.S. market investigation company International Data Corporation predicted that until 2009, China's IT services market would grow at 18.5 percent annually to USD 11.6 billion.

China had become one of Cisco's key markets with a high growth rate and the new company would meet customer demand, Pinto said.

The new services company is based on the former service department of Cisco China and would mainly provide consulting services and technical support.

The level of investment in the new company has not been disclosed, but general manger James Kuo said more money would go into services in China.

"We expect double service revenue for Cisco in the coming two or three years," said Kuo. Cisco has five other services companies in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada and India.

The companies were all set up in areas with great potential for IT services growth, said Pinto. Services accounted for 17 percent of Cisco's global sales revenue of USD 24.8 billion in the 2005 fiscal year.

Cisco Systems' revenue in its fiscal third quarter was USD 7.3 billion, up from USD 6.2 billion in last year's third quarter, as the company's business grew in the U.S. and other emerging markets like China.

Net income was USD 1.4 billion or USD 0.22 per share, including a stock-based compensation expense that the company did not include last year. With that expense applied to the results from a year earlier, Cisco would have reported net income of USD 1.2 billion or USD 0.18 per share, the company said.

Copyright 2006 Sinocast

Broadcom Expects more in China

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Broadcom Expects more in China. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) GUANGZHOU, September 22, 2006, SinoCast -- Broadcom, the world's largest telecommunications chip design firm, expects its Chinese revenue to grow rapidly thanks to surging demand for next-generation chips for mobile phones, high-definition TVs and wireless networks, one of its top officials said yesterday in Shanghai.



"It will grow at least 20 to 30 percent annually, seeing the market demand," Wang Kai, Broadcom's country manager for China, said during an interview this week.

In 2005, Broadcom's revenue in China was "several hundreds of millions" dollars from "several millions" in 2000, according to Wang, who declined to reveal the actual figures.

At present, Broadcom focuses on enterprise-network, wireless and broadband sectors and its domestic clients include Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp and Lenovo Group Ltd.

The mobile communication, wireless application and broadband-based applications, like voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and IPTV, are promising sectors in China, Wang said.

"Wireless (on laptop and handset) and broadband are bright spots in the domestic market and they will bring Broadcom solid income," said Li Ke, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, a research firm under the Ministry of Information.

China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line phone carrier, added 4 million new broadband users in the first half, bringing the total number to 25 million.

Broadcom Corporation is a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Its products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment.

Broadcom provides the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices.

It designs, develops and supplies a diverse portfolio of products targeted to a variety of wired and wireless communications markets.

Its semiconductor and software solutions are ubiquitous, embedded in cable and DSL modems and digital set-top boxes in the home, digital televisions, high definition DVD players, networking equipment in the enterprise, wireless-enabled laptop and desktop computers, and advanced PDAs and cellular phones, among wired and wireless equipment.

Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom Class A shares trade on the NASDAQ National Market? under the symbol BRCM.

Broadcom is one of many high-tech companies that have come under scrutiny from regulators for their handling of stock- option grants. Executives at several other firms have been forced out or are under investigation.

Broadcom, for its part, said it issued millions of stock options early in the company's life as a way to "attract top talent in a highly competitive market. As a result, the company said it paid a much higher ratio of stock to cash to compensate its workers in comparison with larger, more mature rivals.

During the years 1998 to 2003, which will account for most of Broadcom's revisions, the company said it granted 238 million stock options -- 95% of which went to employees not part of the senior management team.

Broadcom began a "voluntary" review of stock-option grants on May 18 in light of "media and analyst reports and investor inquiries." The company is reviewing all options granted since Broadcom launched an initial public offering in 1998. The review is being conducted by Broadcom's outside legal counsel, but the company could not say when it would finish.

Copyright 2006 Sinocast
Goldman Sachs to Arrange Ningbo Bank IPO. Check it out:
(SinoCast China Financial Watch Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ZHEJIANG, September 22, SinoCast -- The midsize Ningbo Commercial Bank is preparing for an initial pubic offering at the local equity market, it announced recently. The bank has invited Goldman Sachs Gao Hua Securities to join in the preparation and also to be the main underwriter. Established in December 2004, the securities firm is 33 percent owned by Wall Street bulge-bracket Goldman Sachs, the ceiling ownership a foreigner is allowed to have in a local securities firm. Beijing Gao Hua Securities holds the remaining stake. NBCB, based in Ningbo of Zhejiang Provice, eastern China, is to discuss the listing plan at the third extraordinary shareholders' meeting on October 7. The plan has already been submitted to local regulators, said the bank. It is now also seeking for more partners, including accounting firms and law offices to prepare for the listing. Still, it has not disclosed how many shares to offer as well as the targeted IPO size. NBCB de facto originally expected to launch a Hong Kong IPO next year instead of a local one, according to the chairman Lu Huayu in earlier interviews. But the renmimbi-dominated A-share listing is a better choice for it, insiders explained recently. Home IPO is to take a lower cost compared with overseas one. Moreover, local investors who are familiar with the midsize but well-managed bank are more willing to buy its shares, they added. Shares issued by such promising lenders are hence predicated to be a strong push for the local stock market. Founded in April 1997, NBCB in the end of 2004 lifted the capital base by CNY 1.38 billion, increasing the paid-up capital to CNY 1.8 billion. The capital adequacy ratio also rose to 10.81 percent, far beating the minimum of 8 percent required by China Banking Regulatory Commission, the market watchdog. The figure has climbed to 11.59 percent by December 2005. By the end of 2005, the bank's deposits hit CNY 37.3 billion and loans CNY 19.6 billion. The assets amounted to CNY 42.1 billion and non-performing asset ratio was 0.61 percent. It in the past year achieved up to CNY 689 million profits. NBCB sited on the top of the industry league table for 2005 in terms of financial condition, according to a list released in March by Beijing-based Banker magazine and China Commercial Bank Competitiveness Research Center. Fifteen percent controlled by the city's Financial Bureau, the bank is 55 percent owned by some private companies, including Huamao Group, Shanshan Enterprise and Youngor Group. The remaining is held by the bank's management team and staff. It early this year signed an agreement with Singapore's third biggest lender Overseas Chinese Banking Corp to sell a 12.2 percent stake for CNY 570 million. Upon the completion of the acquisition, the Singapore's investor is to be the second biggest shareholder at NBCB. Several other city commercial banks, including those in Nanjng and Xi'an, are eying the A-share sales as well. Based in the eastern province of Jiangsu, Nanjing City Commercial Bank has brought into two foreign investors, International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, as well as French-based BNP Paribas. The latter has become the second largest shareholder in NCCB only behind the Nanjing State-owned Asset Investment & Management Holding (group) Co, who controls a 19.7 percent stake. Xi'an City Commericial Bank has been partly owned by IFC and Bank Of Nova Scotia from Canada. (USD 1 = CNY 7.9)



Copyright 2006 SinoCast LLC
ESRI Health GIS Conference to Connect Health Professionals; Mapping Technology and Spatial Analysis Advance Community Health, Disease Surveillance, and Emergency Systems. Check it out:
REDLANDS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- ESRI announces that the Health GIS Conference will be held October 23-26, 2006, at the Denver Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The conference provides a lively forum for discussing how geographic information system (GIS) technology is transforming the use of information technology (IT) in health and human services professions.



Attendees include health administrators, clinicians, professionals, and educators; IT managers from hospital, public health, and human services fields; and state and local preparedness coordinators. They will have a chance to hear discussions and presentations about the role of GIS in influenza pandemic preparedness, integrated incident command systems, health workforce education programs, data integration, Hurricane Katrina recovery, epidemiological analysis, and more. Conference presenters and panelists include professionals from national and international health organizations and emergency management.

A preconference seminar and spatial statistics workshop, more than 50 paper sessions, several social gatherings, and a visit to a local health organization using GIS give attendees many opportunities to learn about advances in GIS technology, renew acquaintances, and meet the actual GIS users who are improving their programs in disease surveillance, hospital administration, public health, social and human services, and environmental health. Exhibition halls will feature displays by GIS solutions providers, user-produced map posters, and works by educational organizations that support GIS in health education.

Plenary Sessions will discuss the wide range of emergency preparedness and response issues in which GIS plays a critical role in providing real-time, integrated information. David Miller, senior manager, Market Planning & GIS, Walgreen's, will speak Tuesday evening on how, during the Hurricane Katrina disaster response, enterprise GIS supported the work of Walgreen's and the development of solutions for delivering emergency services. On Wednesday, Declan Butler, distinguished reporter for Nature magazine, will speak at the conference awards luncheon where ESRI will recognize those in the health field who exhibit best practices in the use of GIS.

The Health GIS Conference will be held concurrently with the ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit, a conference for those interested in GIS and collaborative methods at local, regional, state, and national levels for homeland security. Sessions at both conferences are available to all attendees, and there will be a unified exhibit area to bring people together from peer organizations.

Bill Davenhall, global manager, ESRI Health and Human Services Solutions Group, notes that the Health GIS Conference is a unique opportunity for health practitioners from many types of organizations to exchange ideas on how geographic intelligence best serves their clinical, social, and business missions, whether they work in a public health agency, a hospital, a university, or an NGO. "Geographic information is vital to so many people from planning and managing scarce resources to making sure health services are delivered smartly. The conference helps share best practices in applying spatial knowledge."

The registration deadline is October 9. For additional information and to register, visit www.esri.com/healthgis.

Founded in 1969, ESRI (www.esri.com) is the world leader in the GIS software industry. ESRI offers innovative solutions that help users create, manage, analyze, and display information to make timely decisions and solve problems they encounter every day. ESRI's comprehensive product line ranges from desktop GIS to GIS for the enterprise.
ESRI Homeland Security Summit Brings Together Leaders in GIS and Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery; Data Sharing, Interoperability, and GIS Framework Advance Public Safety. Check it out:
REDLANDS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- ESRI announces that the Homeland Security GIS Summit will be held October 23-26, 2006, at the Denver Convention Center in Denver, Colorado.

The summit is for executives, management teams, and practitioners from state, local, and federal governments and their partner agencies; utilities; and the private sector. The summit aims to foster communication and collaboration using geographic information system (GIS) technology as a comprehensive, interoperable platform for managing and serving geospatial data and analysis for emergency planning and real-time event response.



The opening day will offer a plenary session on preparedness. Technical presentations will feature a virtual command center: how it can work and how GIS is used to serve relevant "operating pictures" in dynamic situations, events, and responses. The presentations will highlight some of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2 as they apply to common elements of homeland security. Five key GIS functions as they relate to homeland security will be demonstrated:

-- Collecting, building, creating, and inventorying spatial data and maps

-- Integrating and applying spatial and nonspatial databases

-- Distributing, disseminating, communicating, and sharing geographic knowledge

-- Employing the analytic capabilities of GIS to make informed decisions

-- Operating a GIS in a disconnected environment

The plenary will also feature two cross-cutting panels discussing data fusion and incident command structures. A special dinner presentation will feature David Miller, Senior Manager, Market Planning & GIS, Walgreens, who will share with the audience how enterprise GIS supported the work of Walgreens during the Katrina disaster response and the development of solutions for the delivery of emergency services.

The two-and-one-half-day summit will also feature workshops on GIS portals and interoperability topics for homeland security solutions. "A common operating picture is important," says Russ Johnson, ESRI's manager for public safety and homeland security solutions. "When you prepare for events that require coordinated responses from different agencies, you must have a framework to share knowledge. GIS provides that comprehensive platform and interoperability to serve geospatial data, saving time, money, and most important, lives."

The 2006 Homeland Security GIS Summit will be held concurrently with the ESRI Health GIS Conference, a conference for those in health, hospital systems, and scientific research interested in a range of GIS applications from community health to global systems for disease surveillance and spatial awareness. Sessions at both conferences are available to all attendees, and there will be a unified exhibit area to bring people together from peer organizations.

The inaugural ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit was held in 2005 in Denver, Colorado.

For additional information and to register, please visit www.esri.com/hssummit.

Founded in 1969, ESRI (www.esri.com) is the world leader in the GIS software industry. ESRI offers innovative solutions that help users create, manage, analyze, and display information to make timely decisions and solve problems they encounter every day. ESRI's comprehensive product line ranges from desktop GIS to GIS for the enterprise.
Dachser to get moving on logistics services. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SHANGHAI: Leading Germany-based logistics provider Dachser Far East Ltd, a subsidiary of GmbH & Co KG, will add new services to sharpen its competitive edge as part of its five-year development plan in China.



The company said yesterday it had set up a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) in Shanghai to monitor its business in North China and is applying for another WFOE based in Shenzhen in South China.

"This is part of Dachser's ambitious investment programme of 1 billion euros (US$1.27 billion) worldwide until 2014 that will position Dachser to continue its dynamic expansion in our key markets including China," said Thomas Reuter, managing director of Dachser Air & Sea Logistics.

Dachser plans to establish logistics centres in the areas of South China/Pearl River Delta, North and Central China, as well as in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

The company also plans to introduce a highly integrated logistics service, Contract Logistics, by 2007. Its Air & Sea logistics service is currently the company's pillar business in China.

"In the next five years, the plan is to grow Asia's turnover from 85 million euros (US$108 million) in 2005 to 303 million euros (US$385 million) by 2011, which is a triple-digit growth of 258 per cent. The Greater China region is expected to contribute 220 million euros (US$279 million) in turnover by then. And this is our plan for Greater China," Reuter said.

Dachser also plans to increase staffing at its operational office in China from 13 to 24, aiming to double the number by 2011.

Last year the company opened a representative office in Chengdu, making Dachser one of the few international logistics companies to step into inland China.

The announcement came as demand rises for logistics services in China as it becomes the world's manufacturing base, and with consolidation in the logistics market expected. Multinational logistics and postal services providers including DHL, UPS and FedEx are all expanding their presence in the market.

The past three years have seen a series of acquisitions of domestic logistics players by international giants.

"Dachser's move shows that China has become one of the fastest growing markets for logistics service providers," said Xu Gang, an analyst with Shanghai-based Tradeworld Consulting Limited.

He added that Dachser's WFOE in Shanghai and another to be opened in Shenzhen would give the company a competitive edge in the Chinese market.

"Our WFOE licence covers most areas of our current freight forwarding activities as well as a warehousing service," said Christophe Vincent, general manager of North China Dachser Shanghai Co Ltd.

"We are, without doubt, in China to stay, and setting up WFOEs for our China operations are evidence of our commitment," said Edoardo Podest, regional managing director of Dachser Far East.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
IN BRIEF (Page: 11, Date: 09/22/2006). Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING Expansion funding China International Water & Electric Corp (CWE) yesterday signed an agreement with China Development Bank, which will see the lender offer loans worth 10 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) from 2006 to 2009 to fund CWE's overseas expansion.



CWE, a large State-owned enterprise, is mainly engaged in contracting overseas engineering projects. The company has signed a deal for a massive dam project in Sudan, the largest ever such overseas contract secured by a Chinese company.

Monitoring centre Leading global anti-virus specialist Trend Micro has joined four Chinese partners, including the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre, to launch a monitoring operation centre in China. The centre will help customers monitor their data and guarantee a timely response when emergencies occur. Company executives said Chinese customers are now demanding increased security-related services, rather than hardware and software products.

SICHUAN Platform established Microsoft Corp this week established its first game technology platform in China, a move it hopes will help it carve a niche in the nation's up-and-coming gaming industry.

The company will use the platform to develop video games for its XBox360 console, in an effort to add Chinese cultural characteristics to its games. The platform, located in Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, will also provide training for local video game developers. ZHEJIANG HK IPO ditched Ningbo Commercial Bank said yesterday it has abandoned plans to sell shares in Hong Kong and is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai.

The bank has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc's Chinese securities venture to arrange the sale, it said, giving no further details. The Ningbo lender is among six or seven city-based banks preparing IPOs.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

Keep credible certificates

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Keep credible certificates. Check it out:
(China Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Industrial associations should improve their work to win public trust, says a commentary in the Shenzhen-based Jingbao newspaper. An excerpt follows: The mooncake certificate signing (CS) has been promoted in Shenzhen for more than a decade as representing high quality, and is accepted by more and more consumers.



But Jingbao reporters found out recently that the issuance of mooncake CS is not standardized. As long as it gets paid, the Shenzhen Consumer Goods Quality Promotion Association will issue the CS signs to anyone. Its behaviour has greatly damaged CS's public credibility.

Certification without public trust is meaningless. This case compels industrial associations to think about the route of development with self-discipline.

As the development of a market economy deepens, non-governmental industrial associations and intermediate organizations are playing a more and more important role in enhancing enterprise co-operation and protecting enterprises' rights. The government has been encouraging the development of industrial associations as well as the establishment of industrial standards and quality certification.

So there will be more industrial certifications like the mooncake CS. When a box of mooncakes is labelled with various quality certification signs, we will of course think it a good thing that many organizations are making strict checks on quality.

Such non-government certification is operated on a voluntary basis. A mooncake attracts consumers with its quality and taste, and enterprises volunteer to take the certification. The ability to win public trust and influence consumers' behaviour is the major factor for such certification in getting enterprises' participation.

If it loses consumers' trust, the certification will lose its attraction to enterprises, too.

The industrial associations should be supervised too. Besides supervision from enterprises and public opinion, governmental oversight is also needed. If fake certifications go rampant, the credibility construction of the whole society will be harmed.

Copyright 2006 China Daily. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
TAKING STOCK YOUR AT A-GLANCE GUIDE. Check it out:
(Evening Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TECHNOLOGY

Interactive World, the mobile content technology company that came to AIM in May, saw maiden profits rise 37% to GBP4.3 million in the year to July. The group, which services the Sport Newspaper Group, said it is looking for acquisitions.

TELECOMS

Hong Kong-listed China Telecom said it added 730,000 new customers in August, taking its total subscriber base to 220 million. That was down on July's 770,000 but higher than expected. Vodafone has 187 million subscribers worldwide.

TRANSPORT

With oil prices, on the wane, things could be looking up for airlines.

Collins Stewart has issued a buy note on British Airways with a target of 425p but says oil will need to fall "meaningfully" below $60 a barrel for a major improvement.

UTILITIES

Broker JPMorgan makes Centrica its top utility-sector pick, saying it is the key beneficiary of easing commodity prices. Generators such as International Power, British Energy and Drax should do well out of expected power-price rises, it adds, increasing share targets to 355p, 620p and 845p respectively.



BANKING AND FINANCE

There has been a mixed reaction this weeks HBOS investor update. Oriel Securities issued a buy note and a 1140p target, Merrill retains its neutral call, with a 1103p target, while JPMorgan is underweight, expecting a fall to 1000p.

BUILDING AND PROPERTY

Australian property firm Macquarie Goodman has snapped up Apples offices in Stockley Park near Heathrow and General Electrics outpost in Bracknell, part of a GBP179.4 million purchase of eight offices from Kuwait Finance House.

CONSUMER

McDonald's has launched a campaign to convince Chinese consumers beef is luxurious, fun and sexy. The burger giant is running poster ads featuring a close-up of a woman's lips homing in on a quarter-pounder.

ECONOMICS

The dollar weakened slightly on currency markets in response to last night's decision by the US Federal Reserve to leave interest rates unchanged for the second month running. The euro rose 0.25 cents to 1.2715 against the greenback while the pound gained half a cent to $1.8930.

ENGINEERING

Ford Motor Company has hired former HSBC chairman Sir John Bond, 65, to sit on its board at a salary of GBP13,000 a day. Bond has a GBP546,000a-year pension from HSBC following his retirement in July and is paid GBP500,000 to chair Vodafone.

HEALTH

Retail giant Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, is to use its buying clout to provide cut-price prescription drugs for its workers and customers in the US, according to reports. The company has often been attacked over its measly employee health benefits.

INDUSTRIALS

DAF, the world's third-largest truck builder, is not interested in bidding for rival Scania, removing the chances of a counter-bidder against the e9.6 billion (GBP6.5 million) offer from Germany's Man. DAF said it was looking for organic growth.

LEISURE

The prospect for share buybacks and dividends at Enterprise Inns suggests there could be as much as 20% upside in the shares, says Merrill Lynch, which has raised its target to 1240p. Despite a blip in the summer because of the weather and World Cup football, trading looks robust, the broker adds.

MEDIA

Times are tough in the radio sector but Chrysalis is outperforming, says Investec. The broker, which says buy, also sees hidden value in Chrysalis' music publishing operations and believes a share value of up to 200p is possible.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Bridgewell Securities rates Afren, which rallied yesterday after picking up a nine-month rig contract off Nigeria, putting it on track to reach its target of 15,000-20,000 barrels a day by 2008. Bridgewell rates the shares a buy.

RETAILING

Panmure Gordon is a Tesco buyer with a 400p target. The broker says the coup in Thailand, which provides just 3% of sales, shouldn't harm the shares, and it is more focused on strong organic growth, property value and share buybacks.

SUPPORT SERVICES

Odgers Rau & Berndston, the headhunters who recruited Paul Deighton to the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Richard Lambert to the CBI, has claimed top spot among Britain's executive recruitment agencies, according to Executive Grapevine.

Copyright 2006 Evening Standard. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
The systems vendor upgrades its enterprise-class tape system with long-distance disaster recovery and grid tools.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Need a mainframe computer for storage to back up mounds of data from sites all over the world at high speeds?

IBM claims it has the answer.

Looking to make more inroads in to prop up the tape storage market at a time when disk-based storage is gaining in popularity, IBM today revealed the IBM System Storage TS7700 Virtualization Engine.

The TS7700. Source: IBM

Designed for large businesses that store massive amounts of data, the TS7770 speeds data processing on tape systems and boosts disaster-recovery capabilities by duplicating data at a second site through global mirroring.

IBM said in a statement it will push the TS7700'S range up to eight sites, obviating complete back-ups to each site to cut the costs of hosting machines at each site.

The TS7700 will find the stored data with a built-in "global awareness" software tool.

The successor to IBM's TotalStorage Virtual Tape Server (VTS), the TS770O marries the performance and capacity of the 3592 Tape Drives with high-performance disks and a new advanced IBM System p server.

The machine supports up to 128 3490E virtual tape drives and up to 500,000 logical volumes, each with a maximum capacity between 1.2 gigabytes to 12GB.

The TS7700 Server also connects up to four FICON channels, and hooks up to the tape library and tape drives for back-end tape processing.

When fitted with IBM grid software, the TS7700 can be ported to another TS7700 to provide peer-to-peer copy utilities between tape over an Internet connection.

The machine, which will be available Sept. 29 at a starting price of $493,080, includes policy management to control physical volume pooling, cache management and dual copy across a grid network.

The news comes a week after IBM rolled out its System Storage TS1120, an encrypted tape drive for businesses of all size.

In the tape storage market, IBM competes with Sun Microsystems, which acquired an extensive tape portfolio when it purchased StorageTek last year, and Quantum, which is in the process of acquiring tape giant ADIC.

Internet.com Corp.

Copyright 2003 Jupitermedia Corp. All rights reserved.
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WebEx goes pro on AIM ... Rivoli rolls ... LanTalk.NET revs up ... Jabber and Eyeball Networks strike integration deal ... Yahoo offers group conferencing for free ... DYS Analytics supports SameTime ... and more.. Check it out:
(www.instantmessagingplanet.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Clients & Platforms WebEx has launched the WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition , a for-pay version of the enterprise IM service on top of a free client it launched with AOL Inc. Aimed at business users that need tighter security and management, PBE offers users an ad-free console and provides integration with Microsoft Outlook as well as all WebEx collaboration solutions.



WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition is designed to allow you to Integrate live voice, video and data. (Click for larger image)

For business IM security this new platform offers end-to-end encryption, user authentication, as well as configurable content and URL filters. AIM Pro Business Edition also offers compliance management allowing you to monitor, log, and archive your IM, voice, and video content in a time-stamped audit-ready format.

Antepo has released Rivoli , the latest version of its OPN System platform. Rivoli enables users to instantly verify if employees, customers, or partners are online and available, before initiating contact. It combines presence awareness with IM and VoIP through standards-based SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Pricing for OPN System Rivoli starts at $18 per seat with volume discounts available, and no additional per-server license fees.

CEZEO has recently released a new version of its LanTalk.NET messenger . This version includes security improvements, a new reply by e-mail function, and several fixes to both the Help file and search function of the application. LanTalk.NET is a simple messenger that can be used as a substitute for corporate e-mail and for exchanging files and messages. LanTalk.NET, according to the company, does not require additional hardware or upkeep as the program uses TCP/IP and UDP protocols, allowing PCs to communicate directly with each other. The application is designed to automatically determine which users are available, removing any need for set-up and administration of the application. Pricing for LanTalk.NET starts at 17.95 per user for up to 9 users, with discounts on the per user price after that.

Jabber and Eyeball Networks have announced a deal to integrate Jabber's XCP platform with Eyeball's Messenger and software development kits. This partnership will provide a solution for developers working on VoIP applications using Eyeball's software to integrate presence-enabling client-server IP telephony based on SIP and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).

Yahoo! is offering free group conference calling services to the 80 million users of its Yahoo Messenger service. Called ConFreeCall , this conference calling service from Vapps will provide free conference calls through Yahoo's current text, voice and photo-sharing services. Basic conferencing is free, but users will be charged for premium features, such as operator assisted call set-up or recording and playback of calls. ConFreeCall for Yahoo Messenger can be obtained by downloading Yahoo Messenger with Voice .

Mobile IM

Knewtrino has just added German language support for its NootMobile Beta , a mobile IM service for smartphones and other mobile devices. NootMobile is designed to provide mobile access to AOL Messenger, with plans to include Yahoo! and MSN Messenger in the coming weeks. The NootMobile Beta IM service is accessed through a mobile Web browser and requires no software download. Knewtrino has announced plans to expand the NootMobile Beta to include other popular IM networks, support multiple languages and introduce support for other mobile devices.

OZ , a consumer mobile messaging solution provider is celebrating a new milestone. According to the company, the OZ Mobile IM and Mobile Email clients have now been deployed on more than 50 million phones. OZ leads the market on commercial OEM agreements with 8 out of the top 10 device manufacturers globally, representing over 80 percent of handset volume shipped each year. Over the past year OZ has added its mobile IM and mobile email clients to more than 200 different models across operating platforms that include J2ME, BREW, MS Pocket PC, and Symbian-based mobile phones.

IM Security & Research DYS Analytics , an IM and e-mail management software provider has upgraded its Collaboration CONTROL! enterprise IM management solution to add support for IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5. Collaboration CONTROL! monitors, analyzes and reports on IM and Web conference use to ensure broad adoption and optimal server load balancing, archives and alerts on IM conversations to ensure appropriate use and regulation compliance. In addition, Collaboration CONTROL! performs Lotus Sametime health probing to ensure continual availability.

DYS Analytics Collaboration CONTROL! is built to analyze IM and eMeeting health and usage to lower cost and raise service levels.

The announcement is designed to coincide with IBM's recent announcement of Lotus Sametime 7.5 enterprise IM solution ( See IBM to Add a Linux Look to Lotus Sametime 7.5 ), FaceTime has announced that its IMAuditor 8.0 product supports security and compliance features for the new edition. IMAuditor 8.0 also provides comprehensive malware protection against worms, viruses, spyware and Spim as well as tamper-proof, non-repudiated full capture, recording, archival and auditing of all conversations and file transfers conducted over Lotus Sametime 7.5. FaceTime is currently offering a special offer for Lotus Sametime customers including a 60-day free trial with on-site support, a free public IM visibility assessment and a 25 percent discount on the price of FaceTime's RTGuardian.

Last week AOL ICQ users were warned of multiple vulnerabilities in the IM software. According to Core Security more than 160 million users of the service could be impacted as the vulnerabilities detected in ICQ Pro 2003b could allow hackers to take direct control of the user's PC. Security issues with the ICQ Toolbar 1.3 could enable malicious users to change the toolbar's configuration without the user's knowledge. AOL is recommending that users upgrade to version 5.1 of ICQ Pro.

E-mail and Collaboration Corporate Survey, 2006-2007 is a new study from The Radicati Group that claims fighting spam is still a top priority for businesses in 2006, and that demand for instant messaging continues to be strong. 87 percent of survey respondents indicated that they use IM at work, while 71 percent indicated that their organization uses a sanctioned IM product. Only 10 percent of respondents indicated that their organization uses an IM management solution. With the upcoming release of MS Exchange 2007, the survey shows that upgrading messaging software is also high on the priority for business. 83 percent of survey respondents are either in the process of upgrading, or plan to upgrade their messaging software within the next 18 months.

Have an interesting bit of IM news or event information you'd like to contribute to the IM News & Trends Watch? Tell us about it .

IM News & Product Watch Archives: Week of September 05, 2006 Week of August 22, 2006 Week of August 07, 2006 Week of July 24, 2006 Week of July 10, 2006

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MNCs may get to sign advance pricing pacts. Check it out:
(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) PUNE: Tax authorities are exploring the feasibility of introducing an advance pricing arrangement (APA) to minimise transfer pricing disputes with multinational enterprises. APA is an agreement between the tax payer and the tax authority on the method to be used for pricing their future intra-group transactions.



The tax department believes that APAs will be a useful method to mitigate unnecessary transfer pricing litigations, states the latest global transfer pricing survey by Ernst & Young. The input is based on a feedback from domestic tax authorities.

Transfer pricing refers to the price charged by an MNC to an associated enterprise for supply of goods and services. Since transfer prices can be used to shift profits out of India and hence avoid taxes, the tax department has a regulation in place since '01 to check violations.

The law mandates MNCs to price their transactions with associated enterprises according to the arm's length principle. This means applying prices that independent enterprises would charge in identical transactions in the market place.

Transfer pricing controversies are of significant concern for corporates in today's globalised economy and India is no exemption. Disputes are mounting as most MNCs are contesting demands raised by tax authorities here for alleged violation of transfer pricing norms.

According to experts, APA provides legal certainty and stabilises the tax environment for MNCs. The programmes are designed to resolve actual or potential transfer pricing disputes in a co-operative manner. Many advanced countries have this mechanism and India is mulling over its introduction. APAs may be unilateral, bilateral or multilateral.

MNCs have experienced two years of transfer pricing audits in India. Adjustments to the tune of $500m were made in for FY03. The audits focused mainly on companies with large transaction volumes. Currently, appeals are the only effective means of handling transfer pricing disputes, according to the '05-06 transfer pricing survey covering more than 30 countries.

The key message of the survey is that tax authorities broadly agree on transfer pricing principles, but not transfer pricing practices. This means they adopt different approaches in the application of these principles.

A host of new countries including China, Columbia, Israel and Turkey are coming into the transfer pricing enforcement field. Old guard such as Canada, New Zealand and UK with established transfer pricing regimes are making major changes in approach. There is evidence of increasing sophistication in data-gathering by tax authorities to augment enforcement efforts, says the survey. It states that transfer pricing will remain the most important international tax issue for MNCs.

Copyright 2006 The Economic Times of India, Coleman & Co Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Sekondi-Takoradi SMEs Fail to Access 900m Fund. Check it out:
(Ghanaian Chronicle Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IT IS incredible to know that of the 900 million deposited in Rural Banks in the Shama Ahanta East Metropolitan Assembly (SAEMA) for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to access and expand their enterprises, no enterprise has ever access it.



This might be due to the inadequate education on the availability of the money to the SMEs in SAEMA and SMEs at SAEMA should therefore rise up to the occasion and access the fund to the fullest.

"Though the funds have been deposited in some Rural Banks, no SME in the Metropolis has benefited from it," Mr. Philip K. Nkrumah, SAEMA Metropolitan Chief Executive said.

He said this at a day's dialogue at Takoradi on Monday on the theme, "The Role of SAEMA in the promotion of SMEs"and organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), with support from the BUSAC fund and the KAB Governance Consult.

He said to avoid tagging the funds as "political gifts," the funds had been deposited at the Western and APEX Banks for disbursement to SMEs.

Mr. Nkrumah said the Youth In Agriculture Programme was also being funded by the Assembly and so far, 132 million has been disbursed to 220 individuals and groups and some 50 million have been earmarked for distribution to the Youth in Aquaculture Programme to build fishponds.

Mr. Nkrumah said the Assembly has a fund for community based rural development and through this programme, individuals establishing their own companies could access between 500,000 cedis to 40 million cedis.

Mr. Nkrumah said land acquisition, regulations and decisions of the Assembly, coupled with communication problems, had affected the SMEs in their attempt to operate.

He said negotiations were still ongoing to formalise a 300-acre land at Kansaworodu and Mpintsin for garage operators in Takoradi and Sekondi respectively.

Participants said the long delays in accessing loans and financial assistance from the Assemblies and Banks by the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) were frustrating and could be attributed to the slow growth of enterprises in the Metropolis.

Mr. Kwasi Afriyie Badu, Chief Executive Officer of the KAB Governance Consult, said the SMEs could be a channel of creating employment for many in the country but it lacked the ability to articulate its concerns.

He therefore called on GJA to advance the interest of Government through this direction, to create employment for the youth.

Mr. Bright K. Blewu, General Secretary of the GJA, said the SMEs were an important tool of socio-economic development and poverty alleviation but its importance had been ignored for a long time.

He said if the SMEs were properly assisted, they could employ, create wealth and assist in implementing many of Government's self employment programmes.

Mr. Blewu explained that dialogue was meant to motivate Journalists to articulate the concerns of SMEs and assist them to evolve new business strategies and unknown opportunities and therefore advised SMEs in the Western Region to patronize the newly introduced Small and Medium Scale Loans Trust.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Ghanaian Chronical. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.

MTN Signs Sh165m Deal

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MTN Signs Sh165m Deal. Check it out:
(New Vision (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterprise Uganda, MTN and Roofings have signed two memoranda worth sh165m to establish business linkages with suppliers.

The first memorandum was signed by MTN's chief executive officer Noel Meier, the executive director of Enterprise Uganda, Charles Ocici and the Uganda Investment Authority's acting director, Keremente Kyoratungye, at the Serena Kampala Hotel recently.



"The memo worth $67000 (sh124.2m) will be used to train the dealers and suppliers," Ocici said in an interview at Nakasero, Kampala.

The second memorandum worth $22,000 was signed between Roofings' Sheik Arif and a representative of the dealers.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 New Vision (Uganda). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
New Horizons Launches MSS And MBA in E-Business. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) New Horizons, the world's No. 1 IT training institution, in partnership with EC-Council of the USA has launched 2 new, elitist products: the Masters of Security Science (MSS) and MBA in E-Business.



The event took place at the Federal Palace Hotel amidst great fun-fare.

The guest speaker and Vice Chairman of New Horizons Nigeria, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman told THISDAY that the programmes are designed to fill the huge skill gap arising from Nigeria's adoption of E-Business as a way of life. With E-Business most businesses in Nigeria have become vulnerable to hackers and other cyber-criminals.

The two products are designed for successful professionals who want to become even more successful in their profession. The programmmes will run for a period of 16 months on weekends and evenings with the first batch commencing in November 2006.

Professionals that enroll for the programmes will have the opportunity of learning about Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures, Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, Network Security etc.

Credit facility has also been put in place by a consortium of banks under a project tagged "study today and pay tomorrow"

In his speech, Sulaiman, who also doubles as the Chairman of Accenture, enumerated some key features of "THE NEW WORLD ORDER" which includes Globalization, an American oriented world, a technological driven world, a mobile world, an Asian century, and a security obsessed world. He warned Nigerians not to fold their arms to these new realities but rather see how they can optimally benefit from the new world order.

The seminar was attended by a cross section of Nigerian and foreign professionals from the financial services, oil & gas, telecoms and manufacturing industry.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.

DOCP Introduces Mass Market VSAT

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DOCP Introduces Mass Market VSAT. Check it out:
(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Managing Director of Direct on PC DOPC, Mr. Munish Sharma has disclosed that Broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP), and Direct on PC (DOPC), has launched a new VSAT hub in Washington, USA.



Mr Sharma in a release stated that the VSAT was the fourth so far launched, by the four-year old, award winning ISP.He added that the new hub will accommodate and offer prepaid broadband services in Nigeria and other West Coast countries where DOPC has operations.

Sharma, explained that the new hub is nothing but a revolution in the internet market in Nigeria and the West Coast region. Munish explained that having pioneered Ku-band VSAT, the new hub is the second time "we are creating a revolution in Nigeria"

This new hub is based on Hughes Network Systems (HNS) technology, as the most advanced platform DVB/S2, a pioneer of VSAT technology with a global market share of 60 per cent

According to Sharma,"It gives me great pleasure to announce the, launch of DOPC" fourth VSAT hub. DOPC's has been the pioneer of Ku-band VSAT and it is for the second time in the Nigerian Internet Market, that we are creating a revolution. This new hub is based on HNS technology on most advanced platform DVB/S2. Hughes Network Systems are the pioneers of VSAT technology and have a major market share (over 60%) globally. Munish explained that DVB/S2 technology is the most recent technology that has just got introduced in Europe and US and we are bringing the same in Africa, thus, ensuring that Nigeria is at par with any leading nations.

DVB/S2 technology will give us very high bandwidth efficiency by approximately 30 per cent due to which we will be able to give high Internet bandwidths at low price to our customers. The new platform comes coupled with ACM. In KU band, ACM will become very important during the rains. All existing KU band VSAT's will cut off and loose it's link. ACM, available with, DVBS-2 adjusts the VSAT during rain, so while your speed may slow down, it will keep the link alive. This is a huge advantage over any KU band VSAT platform in the world. Turbo page software on the new technology coupled with DVBS-2 will give you a super fast web browsing experience. HNS VSAT modem will be able to support uplink speed up to 1.6 Mbps and download speed capacity of 45 Mbps.

Uptimes will be higher since the new hub will be managed in USA under supervision of professional staff. The new VSAT modem HN-700 is vertical, slim and easy to transport and consumes less power for equivalent bandwidth. The VSAT is much intelligent with built in features for Security, QoS and much more.The statement further explained that here is the icing on the cake. We are going to give the most advanced technology and a complete VSAT system at an unbelievable price of N115,00 all inclusive. We would be subsidizing the cost to ensure that our services would penetrate deep down the remotest village where affording VSAT was a distant dream.

Finally, we have made our subscription plans very flexible and customer oriented. We have Shared bandwidth plans starting from N15,000 per month that could be affordable by home user, then SME plans from N21,000 onwards and high bandwidth plans for Corporates and Enterprise. There is also option of dedicated bandwidths for specific requirements. Thus we have ensured that our system can be suitable for Corporates, Schools, SME's or even residential users.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 Accra Mail. Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
Instead of giving me a medal, they fire me. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Procedures are the US multinational's tablets of the law. They are essential to its existence. But Israeli managers who have worked at the branches of such multinationals sometimes feel that such procedures have taken over its nerve center. For their part, Israelis are, generally speaking, not inclined to view procedures as sacrosanct. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that they view excessive procedures as bureaucratic, non-productive, and insensitive. You might not be fired for failing to meet business targets, say some managers, but you will get fired for not filling in a form.



Working at the local branch of a global corporation, especially a US one, reveals differences in mentality, often vast, which sometimes merely cause discomfort, but which sometimes can result in all-out conflict, and in firings by email.

Two events of this kind made headlines recently. Yair Yahav, cardiology unit manager at the Israel branch of Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX), was suspected of excessively aggressive marketing in violation of the company's ethical code. He was disconnected from the company's computer network. When he tried to find out what the fault was, they avoided him, and when he came in to the office, he was summarily dismissed by conference call. Yahav has filed suit against the company in the Labor Court, mainly to save his good name.

This policy of instant dismissal, by email or telephone, sometimes with a security guard accompanying you to your desk and taking your employee card, keys, and other items, is common practice in US corporations. In Israel it is viewed as cruel, since it creates the impression that the person who has been singled out for dismissal did something terrible.

Four members of the communications support team at the Israel branch of Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) were fired in the following manner: They were summoned to a conference call together with other employees, and the manager from company headquarters overseas read out a list of names of people who would continue to be employed. Their names were not on the list.

The CEO and employees were fired by email

A few months ago, HP Israel was embroiled in a scandal over the grey marketing affair, the parallel marketing of HP products from Israel to other countries, in contravention of company procedures. HP Israel managing director Gil Rosenfeld received his dismissal notice by email (Dear Gil, began the letter from HP's divisional manager in Europe), along with 13 other employees, three of whom sued the company.

Following an intense battle, during the course of which Rosenfeld and HP agreed to take their dispute to an adjudicator, HP headquarters issued a statement in which it said it had been convinced that Rosenfeld was not responsible for the parallel export activity and that due to a breakdown in mutual trust, Rosenfeld had asked to step down from his post.

Eight other employees never made it to court. After their lawyers informed the company that their clients' hearings had not been conducted properly, a process of hearings and arbitration was started, and most of the cases ended in out-of-court settlements, without any lawsuits being filed. Adv. Ditza Rapahely, who specializes in labor law, says that multinational corporations that set up branches in Israel manage their local offices as if they were US branches subject to US law, which allows an employer to summon an employee, tell him to pack his bags, and wish him goodbye and all the best.

These companies are unaware of Israeli law and the rules that about a proper hearing, says Raphaely. The law in Israel states that an employee has a right to a hearing at which he will be given the opportunity to state his grievances before dismissal, and the employer must prove that he held the hearing process seriously and in good faith.

Branded an offender, instead of getting a medal

What is happening here? Why do managers who have had a good career locally and have never been suspected of anything, find themselves being sacked in such an abrupt manner? Why do others feel suffocated or intimidated, instead of feeling happy to be part of a global corporation that provides many opportunities for promotion and contacts?

This is simply a matter of cultural differences. The average Israeli manager feels pressured by the US corporate mindset. While it's true that it is an offence to fill in a form retroactively, Israelis don't expect an employer to fire someone who generated millions of shekels in revenue because of this, says Raphaely. You find yourself committing an offence whereas in an Israeli company you would get a medal.

The case of Yair Yahav and Boston Scientific is sub-judice and therefore it cannot be explored in detail. However, the two sides are in dispute over whether Yahav violated company procedures on proper reporting and authorization for actions. At worst, he is accused of activity that was not in accordance with company procedures.

For US corporations, two things represent a red light, the danger zone, explains Adv. Amos Bentzur. These are safety procedures and mechanisms for fraud prevention. For them the risk is far greater than, say, the retroactive filing of an invoice for a few hundred shekels because someone forgot to fill in a form. They see this as a breach that endangers the organization. The Israeli employee says what happened, what did I do? To him the response seems disproportionate to the action. The person who fires you is someone from the legal department who doesn't know you at all, and doesn't care who you are or how much your superiors appreciate you.

Sources close to Yahav claim that the one of things that astounded him was this cold atmosphere, that the guy from the legal department, who told him he was being fired, didn't ask his regional bosses what sort of person or employee he was. They, for their part, didn't come to his defense. People familiar with this type of corporation do not find this surprising. No one messes with the legal department in these places.

The role of legal counsel carries considerable weight in the corporation, far more than is the norm in both Israeli and European companies. Managers view his recommendation as an order, even if it is not categorical.

The corporate counsel, unlike his colleagues in law firms, does not benefit from the organization's dealflow and is not assessed according to the organization's business results, but solely by his success in keeping the organization out of trouble, says Doron Debbie, former manager of Boston Scientific Israel and now owner of Sigma Health Care. Therefore he will always play safe and be conservative in his recommendations. Whenever he is in doubt, the answer is no. This might be a generalization but it is a fair description of the overall atmosphere.

In cases of breaches of ethics, Debi adds, Any employee can phone, in confidence, a help line run by the legal department, and report a person in the organization who he or she thinks is guilty of misconduct. On the one hand, this service has given employees substantial power. However, people do not always use the tool in the way that it was intended, and it can also be an opening for the settling of scores.

Centralization has weakened managers

Yahav, who previously worked at Johnson & Johnson Israel, joined Boston Scientific Israel a year ago, after an exclusivity agreement to which it was committed lapsed and it could begin marketing its cardiological stents in Israel. Johnson & Johnson is also a US corporation, but it is an established company with many subsidiaries and a more decentralized style of management. Boston Scientific is a company with a centralizing management style like that of HP, where the global management controls every move and document from a distance.

Dr. Ehud (Udi) Graf, Gil Rosenfeld's predecessor at HP Israel, described, in his farewell interview, how companies of this kind have become more and more centralized, reducing local managers to the status of operational administrators, with no authority to make decisions on anything, whether it's price offers or human resource management, and how the enterprise builds in conflicts between departments, as a way of preserving its power.

People like Yahav suddenly find themselves having to obtain approval for everything, such as sending an employee abroad, providing customers with samples from inventory before they place their order, and certainly, the building of a complex proposal to, say, a hospital which is buying a large medical device and medical equipment inventory in one deal. This is how the organization exerts control over its geographically dispersed empire and prevents fraud. On the other hand, a local manager unused to this finds that the various forms - every form is forwarded by the CEO to vice president who then forwards it to the regional president - makes every action cumbersome.

In addition, this organizational culture has an aspect that simply drives Israelis insane. The corporation sends out daily emails, often more than once a day, to the entire staff. Employees are directed to enter the site, read the procedure and confirm that you have read it by signing the page. Sometimes the staff have to take an online test to show that they have understood the procedure. A manager who worked at such a company said the directives contained all sorts of meaningless slogans and phrases such as the significance of qualitative responsibility. They were covering their behinds.

Global companies love to use the phrase think global, act local, says Debbie, but they don't always know how to put this into practice. Sometimes they think that the way they do business in the US is the right way to do it everywhere and this is not always correct. Debi, who was manager at Boston Scientific Israel four years ago, and has been working with global corporations for more than 16 years, believes that US global corporations have become increasingly centralized in recent years. This trend has accelerated further in the aftermath of the Enron affair, as the result of which US companies, mainly the publicly-traded ones, found themselves drowning in a sea of reports and statements down the entire organizational hierarchy.

A lot of things that a local manager could previously approve alone, now need approval from above. In this way, a country general manager is turned into a sales manager rather than a CEO with authority. This creates conflicts for certain managers. A manager who is considered by the market as dominant, independent, and an initiator of change, feels such procedures have robbed him of his authority, and are even insulting. It's as if he cannot be relied on, and he may feel that he cannot demonstrate his capability.

Debbie says that the conflicts between local and global managements are not unique to Israel, and some of the European managers who report to global managements also find themselves embroiled in them. However, this culture makes a significant contribution to the growth of these companies into global corporations.

Debbie describes a situation in which 20-30% of a local manager's time is spent making reports, presentations, and filing formal documents with regional management weekly, monthly, and quarterly; Israeli managers often feel that the excess bureaucracy harms business activity, he says.

Israeli managements in multinational corporations usually report to regional managements. A regional management, says Debbie, is a staff function, often lacking operational experience on the ground. In many instances, the management team there functions as a coordinator between countries and global management. Many people take on this position as a stopover point in their career, and serve for three or four years in the role before moving on to their next position in another geographical region. Such a manager prefers not to make waves, and he or she will maintain industrial quiet and meet targets well. These will not be low, but they also won't be too high, so that they don't set him or her targets that are too aggressive in the following year."

We can do it better

Actually, and once more speaking generally, a regional manager tends to be conservative and focus on surviving. He or she is likely to turn down any suggestion for a revolutionary business move that could bring substantial success, to avoid exposure to risks. An ambitious Israeli manager is likely to find work with such a regional management frustrating, says Debi.

Adv. Bentzur thinks that Israelis, by nature, Don't always take what is said seriously. Someone issues a directive? We'll get round it' This is the approach that enabled us to survive 2000 years in exile. You accept the regime, but you know how to live under it. But when companies with a US corporate management culture hand down a directive, they expect it to be carried out. The Israeli notion that we can do it better sometimes creates tension.

In most cases, the problems stem from the fact that we misinterpret the gentility, or the cultured behavior of the other side, the manager in charge. We find that in 90% of cases, a directive was issued and someone thought he could cut corners or shorten the process. They may let such instances go as long there is success, but they don't forget. And since a person working in a US corporation is classed as vulnerable,' he or she is like a foreign citizen in a foreign land,' even if he or she works in Israel, and is the first to be affected when the organization hits a rough period. He or she is the weakest link and no American manager will sacrifice himself for an Israeli manager.

According to Bentzur, cutting corners is also commonplace among Israeli managements in other countries. We managed an operation for an Israeli company in India. It bid in an international tender, which stated explicitly that bidders would have to wait for certain regulations. I drew my customers' attention to this and they said, We'll manage, we've got connections.' Israelis think that Never mind what's written there, we'll fix things on the move.' And then the regulator exercised his authority, the activity was put on hold, and the customers yelled They've cheated us, they've set us up.' But that wasn't true. Everything that happened was predictable.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 20, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Fixed-base operator gets board's approval for $1 million hangars project. Check it out:
(Knoxville News-Sentinel, The (TN) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--The fixed-base operator at McGhee Tyson will build two 11,000-square-foot hangars at the airport in a $1 million project approved Wednesday by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority Board of Commissioners.



TAC Air of Texarkana, Texas, provides general aviation services, including airplane maintenance, storage and fuel, to the airport. The two new hangars will have 2,500 square feet of office space and 2,000 square feet of covered parking.

Randall Honea, general manager of TAC Air in Knoxville, said the hangar facilities are 75 percent pre-sold.

Preliminary design is complete but still awaiting approval. Construction should take four to six months.

The board granted a 10-year extension to TAC Air's FBO and fuel farm agreements, giving the company a 30-year lease term that expires Dec. 31, 2036.

In other business, the board approved:

--A contract for SwiftTrip LLC of Jeffersonville, Ind., to provide a flight-booking engine on McGhee Tyson's Web site, www.flyknoxville.com.

The airport authority hopes to have the engine operating in October. Travelers will be able to book their flights on the airport's Web site, and the airport authority will earn revenue from the bookings and collect marketing data on McGhee Tyson flyers.

--A nearly $600,000 change order for road realignment, drainage and electrical changes in the West Aviation Area. The money is covered by a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration.

--An Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

--An addendum to the limited fixed-base operator's license agreement of Horizon Avionics. The company has provided radio and instrument services at McGhee Tyson since 2001, and now has approval to provide aircraft maintenance services.

According to the airport authority, McGhee Tyson had 142,989 passengers in August, a 10 percent decline from the previous year. The airport authority said there are 20 percent fewer seats in the market than last year.

Year-to-date, passenger traffic is down 11.5 percent, but up 9 percent from 2004 levels, according to the airport authority.

To see more of The Knoxville News-Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.knoxnews.com.

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Getting a taste of real Yorkshire. Check it out:
(The Star (Sheffield) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A PAIR of former Sheffield University caterers have launched a new business that gives lunchtime diners a taste of 'exotic' South Yorkshire.

PJ taste, on Glossop Road, is the brainchild of Peter Moulam and John Fitzpatrick, and has been set up with help from Business Link South Yorkshire's Enterprise in Food programme.

Their deli caf', outside catering and food consultancy business - website www.pjtaste.co.uk - supports local suppliers such as Whirlow Hall Farm, Danum Apiaries, Catherine's Choice and Yorkshire Crisps and the duo also make their own chutneys with locally picked fruit, and a range of drinks called 'Citrus Hits' which is already outselling more widely known brands.



"Some of our ingredients aren't so familiar, but they seem to have gone down a storm with our customers," said Peter Moulam.

"One of our salads is smoked tofu with almonds and sesame seeds, acorn squash, coriander and cumin. Despite the unusual ingredients, it's one of our best selling salads." The duo started the business after taking part in the eight week Enterprise in Food business start up programme, run by Business Link South Yorkshire's Food, Farming and Tourism team, which covers the fundamentals of setting up a commercially viable and legally compliant food business and offers advice from industry professionals on how best to succeed.

"The idea behind Enterprise in Food is to encourage innovative and exciting new food businesses," said Anna Sywyj, who manages the Enterprise in Food programme.

"PJ taste is a great example of this, with its emphasis on different, healthy and mouth-watering food. It offers an alternative lunchtime selection to the norm, and is a champion of delicious local produce." Peter Moulam is full of praise for the programme.

"The whole Enterprise in Food experience gave us a massive confidence boost to help turn out business ideas from plans to reality," said Peter.

"We gained sound and practical advice, and the opportunity to share ideas with others in the same boat was really thought-provoking." The next Enterprise in Food Business Start Up programme starts at the end of September. Food entrepreneurs interested in enrolling on the programme should contact Business Link South Yorkshire on 0800 073 74 74 or visit www.businessguidance.co.uk.

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Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.
Interview: BEA CTO details SOA platform. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEA Systems at the BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco conference this week stressed SOA as a core technology and unveiled its SOA 360 platform. Comprising multiple BEA products, some of which have yet to be released, the ambitious SOA 360 strategy features multiple role-based offerings for IT as well as a services architecture and modularization of existing BEA products. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Rob Levy, BEA executive vice president and chief technology officer, at the conference about SOA 360 and BEA's growth as a middleware company.



InfoWorld: Would you explain the concepts of SOA 360 WorkSpace 360, WorkSpace Central and microService Architecture?

Levy: Sure. Lets start with the highest level, which is SOA 360. SOA 360 is a governing approach to modeling, creating, developing and deploying a full lifecycle SOA application. It is a unifying methodology between all the product lines we have, as well as connecting it to other products. In that respect, think of it as a governing approach that is supported by a set of products, by a common architecture and by a set of standards that govern the lifecycle. So if you drop [down] from that, either to the bottom or the top, depending on how you want to look at that, on the bottom youre going to need a common architecture that allows you to build those SOA applications across this lifecycle. [This is] mSA, microService Architecture. Think of mSA as using the SOA practices to componentize our platform and our product line. You take the basic services that exist inside each one of our product lines and you componentize them so they can be reused with all of our products, not just in single products.... To do the SOA lifecycle correctly, the common architecture will also have to have a common repository, [a] catalog of services, where basically each one of the roles contributes a different portion of the knowledge and expertise that is necessary to move forward in the SOA lifecycle. Now lets leave that for a second, and again Ill jump back out now this time to the roles. Its a multiple view of the same problem, its all starting from the SOA lifecycle domain. Take WorkSpace 360, and WorkSpace 360 is the tool, or the set of tools, that allow each one of the roles to participate in the SOA lifecycle. The business analysts, the LOB [line of business], have a very specific set of things that they are concerned about. From the application -- from the business process to maybe ROI (return on investment) metrics that they need to measure to the definition of the business requirements. All of these artifacts need to be stored somewhere, and theyll now be stored in the central repository.

InfoWorld: Which is what product?

Levy: Its using the Flashline product we just acquired, what is now called AquaLogic Enterprise Repository. You move forward in this workspace, which is again following the lifecycle, then the next level will be an architect, right? Because you [wrote] the business requirements then you go to the architects. Architects translate business requirements into global architecture. They will have issues like architecture diagrams and flow diagrams, things the developers can use. They would also need access to, again, some sort of a central repository where they can look up to see if some of the services that are being required to build a new application already exist. If they find that they [do not], then we can define the parameters for definition of the new services. All that is done on our side though the AquaLogic product. And as you go into development, developers if they choose to develop in Java, then theyll go into Workspace 360 for Developer, which will be the tooling sets required to physically build products on either WebLogic or on Tuxedo. With Tuxedo also we made an announcement of something called SALT (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo), which basically allows you to take Tuxedo services and expose them as Web services. So youll be either using Tuxedo services or build brand new ones on top of a J2EE platform, WebLogic. Those would have the specific parameters, again, that define [where] they are. So now youre talking policy artifacts (etc.). Those will again be put in the central repository. When youre going to the deployment cycle, when people start worrying about things like SLAs, the network definition underneath, which services to deploy on, what provisioning parameters are necessary, levels of operating systems. Thats where the Workspace 360 for IT will come in. And people will do two things. One, theyll control the deployment cycle, moving it from test to production. And the other one, once its in production, will control the manageability, so finding things like -- is it up, it is running, whats the response time? Whats the availability? Is it meeting the SLAs that were defined originally by the business users? And thats how you create a closed-loop lifecycle. [We have] a set of tools that allow each one of the roles to participate. SOA 360 is an approach that governs how you do it. And underneath is an architecture of product components, mSA, that allows you to build those products from scratch. Each one of the customers will compose their own pieces of mSA that they need to provide a complete solution.

InfoWorld: Weve covered WorkSpace 360. WorkSpace Central, have we covered that one yet?

Levy: Workspace is the role-based set of tooling. SOA 360 is the governing approach. MSA is the underlying architecture. And those three together are all in support of the SOA lifecycle.

InfoWorld: So with WorkSpace 360 and the WorkSpace Central, whats the difference?

Levy: WorkSpace Central is central to WorkSpace 360. All of the four components of WorkSpace, for business analysts, for architects, for developer, for IT, will all store and read the artifacts from the same WorkSpace Central. Its kind of the hub.

InfoWorld: Does BEA really think this simplifies things? It seems pretty complex.

Levy: Im not sure I agree. Again, I think the issue we always faced in the lifecycle is that each one of the pieces was done, but done in a separate manner. Business people dealt with business issues with one set of tools, and architects dealt with another set of tools, and developers dealt with another. We believe that in order to make SOA simple, we have to put all of them in that cycle, and what connects that cycle is WorkSpace. You sort of think of reusability as the work before you.

InfoWorld: Where does WSRP [Web Services for Remote Portlets] enter into this? It was mentioned in passing like we all would have already known that. There just seems like too many elements here to grasp.

Levy: WSRP is just a standard. [It is] one of the standards that govern the behavior of SOA. I dont believe people need to know the standard, they just need to know that the products that theyre combining are all maintaining the same standard. Think of cars. Theres only two standards [for] cars -- metric and inch If you need tooling for cars, you can buy tools for cars. The only thing you need to know is whether the car is following a metric system or inch system? Everything else is provided. Our goal is to do the exact same thing. [We] provide you with a set of tools that supports those standards without you needing to actually think through which standards does which and which standard does what. So in that respect we greatly simplify SOA implementation, because all you really need to know from a user perspective -- this is now not from my side, the architecture that comes from underneath -- but how a user sees it. All the user needs to know is based on the role in the cycle - which tool they need to use. And the interface, by the way, all of them would be identical in behavior, different in function, because obviously theyre different functions. So as you move in the cycle, all you have to worry about is picking up, logging into your tool You shouldnt care about the fact that theres something called a repository or WorkSpace Central. Its just there so you wouldnt have to repeatedly ask for information from before.

InfoWorld: I understand there is going to be a modularization of some of the products that are out there now, like WebLogic Server?

Levy: Correct.

InfoWorld: How does that play into this?

Levy: Think about the deployment today of SOA on top of WebLogic. You get the full container regardless if you need all the functions of the container or not. [With modularization, you] only pick the pieces that are really necessary for the solution that we provided.

InfoWorld: Can you give an example of how somebody might pick a module of the app server as opposed to the whole product?

Levy: Well, sure. A lot of the products, the ESB (enterprise service bus), require some of the Java container services but dos not require a full JVM (Java Virtual Machine).... If youre really building full-scale applications on Java, you need [the] full WebLogic Server. But if you only need the Java container, but not the JVM thats run underneath that, then why not just take that and package that with the ESB?

InfoWorld: So when will that happen?

Levy: Its happening now.

InfoWorld: Can you give an example?

Levy: Sure. I mean tomorrow Mark [Carges, executive vice president of the BEA Business Interaction Division] is going to basically show a WebLogic server and this. Its a slimmed-down version of the execution engine.

InfoWorld: What are you going to do with that?

Levy: You can execute Java without having the development environment or the creation environment, [where] the full WebLogic server is. That is exactly what the AquaLogic product set is going to be [using].

InfoWorld: Whats the benefit of doing that?

Levy: Simplicity of installations, simplicity of administration, and of course, it allows us to spend less time trying to create a [big] environment and be more agile in our response to the marketplace. So its good for us and its good for our customers.

InfoWorld: BEAs still about $1 billion in revenue a year, correct?

Levy: $1.2 billion.

InfoWorld: It doesnt seem like BEAs been able to grow that in the past couple years. What is it going to do to finally get off the mark there at $1 billion, or maybe it has gone up a little bit?

Levy: We grow both organically and through expansion. If you look at what weve done in the last year and a half, weve expanded the reach of Java to areas where traditionally before we were not. One area, in addition to the RFID field, [is] to the communication field, so people that are developing either RFID applications or communication applications to serve in VOIP, are now developing under the same Java container that we supported before. We created WebLogic Real Time, which [extended the] standard Java reach into places where Java didnt exist before, so where traditionally people used C/C++ for real-time applications, now they can use Java. So thats another growth factor. And obviously, the whole AquaLogic product line, and the now SOA 360. We believe that SOA is going to create a large wave that obviously allows significant growth.

InfoWorld: Where BEA headed? Obviously, SOA is the big push for you.

Levy: SOA is a huge push for us, as well as completely we agree with the statements made by Shaygan [Kheradpir, CIO of Verizon] this morning. I think what were going to see Web 2.0 fully in the enterprise and SOA pushing out into the consumer. And when that happens its going to be just like in the beginning age of the Internet, when in order to make Internet successful, you really needed the technology and the infrastructure for this new world of sort of consumer-based development. Youre going to need an infrastructure that will allow you to push out the execution or the composition of the applications into this peer-to-peer world. And thats where were going.

InfoWorld: Why do see SOA in the consumer world?

Levy: You look at SOA-based applications, theyre about composition. People are looking to be able to compose the application at runtime, not at design time. So what did [Kheradpir] call it? At the speed of need That would require a new type of infrastructure.

Related ArticlesInterview: BEA CTO details SOA platform

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Update: Nokia, Alcatel extend PBX to cell phones. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Nokiaand Alcatel are jumping the gun on Wi-Fi phones that work like regular office handsets: They're offering the same capability on ordinary cell phones.

The advent of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) phones and IP PBXes (private branch exchanges) opened the door not only to business handsets that sat on a desk and sent packets around a wired LAN, but also to ones that could be carried around and use Wi-Fi. That can mean one handset for all business calls, anywhere in the enterprise, but that still leaves the employee's cell phone for use outside. Dual-mode cell and Wi-Fi devices are just starting to emerge, and moving between networks raises technical issues.



By the end of the year, Nokia and Alcatel will offer software that makes Nokia Eseries cell phones, a line of smart phones designed for business, talk to the Alcatel IP Communication server. That means they can be used like a PBX-connected desk phone, with features such as call conferencing and dialing by name, the companies said. It also lets employees keep their desk phones, use just one number, and program which device they want to receive calls on at a given time.

The system also lets cell phone users tap into Alcatel's Least Cost Routing capabilities, which can cut enterprise long-distance charges, and make cellular billing records easier to find, they said.

The PBX features work on cell phones wherever they are used, and using the system doesn't require any cooperation from the mobile operator, said Tom Libretto, a director of product marketing at Nokia.

In its first iteration, the Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel software will make the phones talk to enterprise PBXes over the ordinary cell phone network. In the near future, it will support dual-mode phones, the companies said.

Nokia, in Espoo, Finland, acquired Intellisync last year to gain a better foothold in enterprises. It also weighed in to that market on the hardware side last year when it unveiled the Eseries phones, which include a variety of business features including QWERTY keypads and support for business applications and mobile e-mail systems. Its E70 phone includes Wi-Fi as well as cellular radios.

Alcatel, in Paris, is near to closing a merger with Lucent Technologies Inc. and recently agreed to buy the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) business of Nortel Networks Corp.

Nokia already offers similar capabilities with Avaya Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. PBXes, Libretto said. It plans to extend the Alcatel system to other Nokia phones, he said.

Some features of office phones are already available on most cell phones, and mobile-to-mobile calling plans can save enterprises money on calls between employees, said Ovum Ltd. analyst Roger Entner. But having a desk phone and cell phone with one number could be a convenient feature. For one thing, heavy phone users could avoid having to charge their cell phones frequently, he said.

Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel is part of the Intellisync Mobile Suite from Nokia. It is set to become available through Nokia and Alcatel resellers in the fourth quarter. Pricing has not been set.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
There are already a plethora of dual-mode devices on the market, but they're still far from being enterprise-ready.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Cisco and Nokia are working together on a dual-mode device that will support a hand-off between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

Dual-mode handsets in the enterprise would allow users to shift seamlessly from network to network without worrying about dropped calls or degraded speeds of data transmission.

Alan Cohen, senior director of mobility solutions for Cisco, told a panel here at Interop New York 2006 that the two companies are testing a handset that will give users the ability to stay connected even as they move, for instance, from their offices to the parking lot.



Cohen told internetnews.com that the devices are already in use internally and will be released to market within the next six to 12 months.

Dual-mode devices are already available by the boatload, but Cohen explained that the Cisco-Nokia iterations will include important features that have thus far kept enterprises from adopting dual-mode handsets.

These include call admission control, enhanced security and power-save features.

Call admission control prevents VoIP networks from becoming over-saturated, and improves quality of service.

Cohen said that this type of solution is already being pushed aggressively in Japan, where Cisco has a partnership with NTT DoCoMo .

One out of five cell phones produced in Japan next year will have dual-mode capabilities, he said.

But Cohen also noted that NTT is the exception among carriers, whom he blamed for inhibiting the development of this type of device.

"Carriers perceive it as lost minutes," he said.

That's because when users walk into their office buildings, their dual-mode devices would switch from the carriers' networks to an enterprise Wi-Fi or other wireless network.

Craig Mathias, principal of Farpoint Group, agreed that carriers see dual-mode devices as a threat.

But Mathias also told internetnews.com that while carriers are currently resisting dual-mode, they will ultimately come around to it because they do not have enough spectrum to meet all the demands of voice and data transmission.

"They have no choice, but they think they do now ," he said.

However, not everyone is convinced that enterprises will adopt this solution all that quickly

Vanessa Alvarez, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that enterprises will need to see a compelling value proposition in order to switch from their current handsets.

Handset manufacturers like Nokia "will have to take a vertical approach," she said.

Ben Guderian, vice president of market strategy for IP telephony solutions provider Spectralink, identified some of those vertical markets at an earlier session.

"Large retailers, manufacturing distribution centers, and health care are verticals that have a compelling need for mobility," he said.

Mathias said that the pairing of market leaders Cisco and Nokia will accelerate adoption.

Cisco had also been working with Motorola &nbsp, but that relationship didn't come to fruition, noted Alvarez.

Mathias noted that a lack of standards is also inhibiting adoption of next-generation devices.

He said that IEEE standard 802.11n will be released by the middle of 2008.

Mathias said that "politics is playing a huge role. That's why it's taking so long to get a standard."

He noted, however, that the market is not waiting around.

Another organization, the WiFi Alliance, is issuing an interim standard next year, he said.

Mathias believes that IEEE standard will be backward-compatible with the interim standard.

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UPDATED: Former Wall Street darling faces a possible delisting after failing to file its second-quarter results.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
UPDATED: Exploding laptops, delayed financials, and delayed desktops: Dell has seen better days.

The computer maker today said it received a delisting warning from the Nasdaq stock market last Friday because it missed its second quarter earnings filing.

Dell, whose founder and chairman Michael Dell said at a technology launch last Tuesday that he expected such a letter from the stock market, said it will request a meeting with the Nasdaq listing qualifications panel to work out the issue.



Dell said its shares will remain listed on the Nasdaq pending a decision by the panel.

Publicly traded companies need to hold regular quarterly financial earnings disclosures to comply with marketplace rules; failure to do so can result in a delisting.

Dell was originally supposed to file a Form 10-Q to the Nasdaq for Aug. 4 and announce second-quarter earnings on Aug. 17.

But the company has delayed them due to an ongoing investigation into its accounting practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Dell, whose board triggered an independent investigation by its audit committee, said the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York made a similar request for information as the SEC, subpoenaing documents related to the company's financial reporting from 2002 to now.

The company said it will file a report on its findings as soon as possible.

Michael Dell reaffirmed that fact at the Sept. 12 technology event, where the company unveiled power-saving and AMD Opteron PCs.

Dell is also busy on the enterprise front; yesterday the vendor teamed with Symantec on Secure Exchange, a package of Dell servers running Symantec's security software designed for medium-sized businesses with 500 to 2000 seats of Microsoft's Exchange Server.

But for every positive announcement, Dell seems to have a negative one, of late.

Just days before missing its Q2 financial report in August, the company recalled 4.1 million notebook batteries manufactured between 2004 and 2006 after some of the laptops the batteries were in caught fire.

Today, the Wall Street Journal profiled consumer outrage over delivery delays and missing features in the company's XPS 700 desktop.

PC makers aren't the only vendors faced with delistment.

Novell said Wednesday it received a delisting notice from the Nasdaq because of a delay in filing its third-quarter earnings report.

Because of this delay, Wells Fargo Bank notified Novell it what in danger of defaulting on a $600 million loan.

Novell, which attributed the delay to a review of its stock compensation practices, will request a hearing before Nasdaq to halt the delisting.

It's not a great season for tech companies.

HP is under fire for allegedly snooping on journalists it believes received inside information about its board meetings in recent years.

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Guarding against viruses? It's like 'giving vaccine to a corpse.'. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- There's a lot to be afraid of in the world of network security threats.

That was the general consensus of a diverse panel at Interop that included vendors, an analyst and an enterprise user. The panel agreed that NAC (network access control) isn't necessarily the solution and that much more needs to be done within enterprises themselves to properly understand the threats they face.



"I don't want to be a FUD Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. dealer but the truth is there is quite a lot to be afraid of," Joshua Corman, host protection architect at ISS (Internet Security Systems), told the capacity crowd.

"It's time for a reset on education. You can't defend against what you don't understand."

According to Corman, network security professionals are all chasing vulnerabilities and compliance-related items. Hackers know this fact, too. The hackers know what you're doing.

"The bad guy is getting badder, the techniques better and the volume of badness worse," Elliott Glazer, director of security architecture and consulting at Depository Trust Clearing Corp., said. "We don't see solutions keeping pace."

The issue, though, isn't entirely about technology or even compliance; sometimes there may be too much technology in play.

Mike McKinnon, director of security of ProCurve Networking by HP, noted that his firm advises enterprises to start small when trying to figure out what they need.

The portion of the enterprise that is most vulnerable from a business perspective should be addressed first.

"It's one thing to pass an audit, it's another thing to be secure," McKinnon said.

Glazer agreed with McKinnon and added that his firm started out by putting a moratorium on buying more technology. Instead what he did was look at their own existing inventory of hardware, platforms, data and devices and look at the risk of each based on location.

Though NAC technologies are the topic of much buzz at Interop NYC, panelists weren't exactly buzzing about it.

"Be very careful when you're investigating NAC," Corman advised. "It's becoming the buzzword. Everybody says they've got a NAC solution but they really don't."

Corman also suggested the enterprises don't get educated purely by the vendors about what NAC can do.

"Some of the vendors had a product for something different, and then when NAC got hot it became a NAC solution," Corman said. "On this topic there is extreme exaggeration about what the capabilities are."

Glazer suggested that enterprises need to think about whether NAC is actually secure enough for their environments. He advised that even before an enterprise embarks on the NAC path they make sure they've already provisioned a secure environment.

He also noted that for his own enterprise, it's still a little bit too early for him to deploy NAC.

"You can be completely patched and up to date and still get infected by something," Corman said. "There is a fundamental assumption that NAC will make you safer. It won't make you immune though."

Forrester Research Security Analyst Paul Stamp pointed out another big threat, namely the inability of some enterprises to act.

In his experience, people justify security expenses only after they've experienced an incident within their own enterprise or are aware of one that their peers have had.

"Our biggest threats are CEOs, not rootkits," Stamp said somewhat sarcastically.

Glazer was somewhat more focused on where the threat lies and what makes him nervous.

"We're nervous about what we see; it's a more professional bad guy, code is getting better fast and that's scary," Glazer said.

"Combine that with targeted attacks, the attack is not going to be seen or known and also there are self-deleting attacks."

Amidst all that nervousness, Corman believes that there is also another contributing factor for network insecurity, and that might be coming from security vendors themselves.

In particular those that continue to push signature-based antivirus solutions.

"You're not getting the education from your trusted security advisors," Corman argued. "This is not a virus problem."

In the virus problem model there has to be a patient zero, the first person that gets infected, and then AV vendors can produce a signature.

According to Corman, criminals are writing tailored targeted viruses that may never hit more than patient zero.

"The AV model requires discovery," Corman said emphatically, "When it's a targeted attack, giving a signature is like giving a vaccine to a corpse."

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The first storage IPO in more than two years goes swimmingly.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Riverbed Technology made a strong debut on Wall Street Thursday, pricing above its anticipated offer range and then opening even higher than that.

All that for a company that remains a long way from profitability.

Riverbed plays in the market for wide-area data services (WADS, although Riverbed prefers the acronym WDS), which includes wide-area file services ( WAFS ), WAN optimization and application acceleration.

It is the first storage IPO since Xyratex more than two years ago, an honor that was widely expected to go to the larger (and profitable) CommVault , which may soon follow with its own IPO.

Riverbed raised $85.8 million late Wednesday by selling 8.8 million shares at $9.75 each, above the anticipated range of $7-$8.50. On Thursday, the stock began trading at $14.60, giving those who got in on the IPO an initial gain of 50 percent and Riverbed a market cap of more than $900 million.



Riverbed lost $10.3 million on sales of $31.8 million in the first six months of this year but sales were up 500 percent from the first six months of 2005. The company lost $17.4 million on revenues of $22.9 million for all of 2005.

The WADS market has been a hot one, attracting the likes of Cisco, Juniper, HP and Brocade, as companies try to get a handle on far-flung data in remote offices (see Tackling Remote Challenges ).

Back To Enterprise Storage Forum

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Application acceleration hits orbital velocity.. Check it out:
(www.internetnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
NEW YORK -- Ever wanted to make a New York minute even faster?

Citrix Systems used the Interop show here as the launch pad for its latest WAN and application acceleration products WANScaler 8000 and NetScaler 7.

The WANScaler product takes advantage of Multi-level Compression technology that comes as the result of Citrix's acquisition of Orbital data earlier this year.

Greg Smith, director of product marketing for the application networking group at Citrix, explained that the Multi-level Compression technology was developed by Orbital Data and first available on the WANScaler 6000 series.

On the WANScaler 8000, the Multi-level Compression was enhanced with a longer compression history and higher compression ratios.

Citrix claims that with the WANScaler 8000, there is an application response time improvement of up to 300 percent, thanks to the Multi-level Compression technology that is utilized.

According to Smith, the Multi-level Compression in the WANScaler 8000 is a WAN optimization industry first that is different than competitive WAN acceleration technologies.

"Unlike the competition, Multi-level Compression applies up to five compression algorithms in order to achieve optimal performance for any application traffic over any WAN condition," Smith explained.

"Other vendors apply only a simple GZIP-like compressor, which is not optimal for all types of traffic and network conditions."

"Additionally, Multi-level Compression can reach very high compression ratios, sending only a few bytes that represent many megabytes results in faster application performance over the WAN."

Citrix's NetScaler product originally also was the fruit of a Citrix acquisition.

In 2005, Citrix acquired San Jose-based NetScaler for $300 million in cash and stock.

The latest Citrix Netscaler version 7 includes 150 new features to the product, many of them designed to make it easier to manage and use the product.

It's all part of an industry evolution toward looking at acceleration as a real enterprise need.

"The application delivery product industry is relatively new and growing at a rapid pace," Smith noted.

"In the early 2000's, application delivery products like NetScaler and WANScaler were considered tactical products purchased to solve a single problem in the enterprise network."

"Starting in 2003, CIOs shifted their focus away from improving network plumbing (e.g. routers and switches) to maximizing application performance for the end user."

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Copyright 2006 Jupitermedia Corp.
Vote for Your Favorite Nationally-Recognized Brand; Wilkin Guge Marketing & The Press-Enterprise Company Kick Off National Advertising Week. Check it out:
CLAREMONT, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- In observance of National Advertising Week, September 25-29, Wilkin Guge Marketing and The Press-Enterprise Company have launched a Web site, www.Vote4Favorite.com, for Inland Empire residents to vote for their favorite icon and favorite slogan.



The interactive Web site allows voters to select from twenty-six eligible slogans and brand icons, including the Michelin Man, McGruff the Crime Dog and the California Raisins.

Voters will help the deserving brand to be placed on Madison Avenue's Advertising Walk of Fame. Categories of merit are America's Favorite Ad Icon and America's Favorite Ad Slogan.

Last year's winners included the GEICO Gecko and Juan Valdez for Favorite Icon and "Imagination at Work" by General Electric Company and "When you Care Enough to Send the Very Best" by Hallmark for Favorite Slogan.

Cast your vote for your favorite icon and slogan at www.Vote4Favorite.com and help decide who and what will earn a place on the Advertising Walk of Fame. Voting ends on September 28, 2006.

About Advertising Week

Advertising Week, first launched in September of 2004 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, was created in order to promote positive impressions toward the advertising and media industries. Every year, public exhibits, conferences and various special events mark a time to recognize ingenuity and motivate aspiring brand strategists. For more information, visit www.advertisingweek.com.

About Wilkin Guge Marketing

Wilkin Guge Marketing is a full-service marketing firm that takes its clients Beyond Branding(SM) through its proprietary ten-step Brandus Operandi(TM) process. Agency campaigns, featured on www.wilkinguge.com, include integrated research, brand identity, strategic planning, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, Web development and ongoing customer relationship management. Success is measured in aggressive client growth: Brand Leaps --Business Bounds(TM).

About The Press-Enterprise Company

The Press-Enterprise Co. is part of Belo Corp. (NYSE:BLC). Belo is one of the nation's largest media companies with a diversified group of market-leading television, newspaper, cable and interactive media assets. A Fortune 1000 company with approximately 7,800 employees and $1.4 billion in annual revenues, Belo operates news and information franchises in some of America's most dynamic markets and regions, including Texas, the Northwest, the Southwest, Rhode Island, and the Mid-Atlantic region. Based in Dallas, Belo owns 19 television stations (six in the top 16 markets) reaching 13.7 percent of U.S. television households; owns or operates nine cable news channels; and manages one television station through a local marketing agreement. Belo publishes four daily newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA) and the Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, TX). Belo Interactive's new media businesses include 34 Web sites, several interactive alliances, and a broad range of Internet-based products.
Al-Faris partners with Hyperion to deliver the Most Comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Al-Faris Information Technologies Co. K.S.C.C (Al-Faris), the leading Middle East e-Business Innovator, today announced the signing of a partnership agreement with HSME, the Regional Distributor of Hyperion Solutions in the Middle East, to promote Hyperions market leading solutions in Kuwait.



"We are excited to team up with a leading company like Al Faris in Kuwait. Al Faris has the knowledge, expertise and years of market experience that makes them an ideal Hyperion partner. We are looking forward to working closely with Al Faris to offer the market Hyperions world class solutions." said Mr. Hisham Malak, Channel & Marketing Manager at HSME.

Hyperion is the global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than 10,000 customers, including over 1,000 global Financial Services companies, 93% of the Fortune 1000, 10 out 10 of the world's largest banks and 77% of the Global 500 banks, rely on Hyperion's software to translate strategies into plans, monitor execution and provide insight to improve financial and operational performance.

"There is an increasing demand for Business Intelligence in the State of Kuwait. Through our partnership with Hyperion, Al-Faris will be offering the most comprehensive business intelligence (BI) tools for reporting and analysis in the market today. We are looking to help our customers increase their productivity, lower cost of ownership, and reduce overall business risk." said Mr. Haitham Al-Faris, Chairman, President and CEO Hyperion delivers the most comprehensive and flexible business performance management (BPM) system in the marketplace today. Across lines of business, departments, or subsidiaries, Hyperion can help you track and manage your companys performance in real- time. Whether an organization wants to start with business intelligence, has already deployed business intelligence or seeks to design and implement a comprehensive Business Performance Management initiative immediately, Hyperion is the only Business Performance Management solution provider that pulls it all together to drive continuous performance improvement and accountability.

"Our partnership with Hyperion will help our customers implement the full range of BI solutions from enterprise and financial reporting to management dashboards and compliance reporting. In addition, Al-Faris will be able to provide world-class delivery of IT services and integration around Hyperions Business Intelligence solutions." Mr. Al-Faris concluded.

About Hyperion HSME is the regional distributor of Hyperion Solutions in the Middle East. Hyperion Solutions Corporation is the global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than 10,000 customers rely on Hyperion software to provide visibility into how their businesses are performing and to help them plan and model to improve that performance. Using Hyperion software, customers collect data, organize and analyze it, then communicate it across the enterprise. Along with the industry's most comprehensive and flexible set of interoperable applications, Hyperion offers the leading Business Intelligence platform optimized to support Business Performance Management solutions.

Named one of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work for (2004), Hyperion serves global customers in 45 countries. A network of more than 600 partners provides the company's innovative and specialized solutions and services. Hyperion generated revenues of $703 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005 and is traded under the Nasdaq symbol HYSL. In the Middle East, Hyperion is represented by Sybase Products Middle East.

For further information, please visit http:www.hyperion-me.com About Al Faris: Al-Faris Information Technologies Co. (Al-Faris) is a Kuwaiti Shareholding Company (Closed), located in Kuwait City, State of Kuwait with regional offices and presence around the Middle East. Al-Faris, founded in July 1988, is the Middle East e-Business Innovator delivering solutions and services for growing enterprises. Al-Faris offers business consulting services and designs scalable and innovative eBusiness solutions that are built based on "best of breed" technology and superior service that create massive economic results to the clients. Al-Faris provides innovative, open and flexible solutions of relationship management, electronic commerce and application hosting to corporate businesses so they can capitalize on the internet technologies to transform the way they support their customers, develop their markets, and build their business to stay competitive.

Al-Faris assures quality and customer satisfaction through continual improvement providing delivery of the highest quality products and services which helped us achieve ISO 9001:2000 certification in the State of Kuwait For more information, please visit: www.al-faris.com 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.

Job fair draws strong crowd

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Job fair draws strong crowd. Check it out:
(Record, The (Stockton, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--STOCKTON -- Hundreds of job seekers crowded tables manned by more than two dozen private and public sector employers Wednesday afternoon at the Stockton Diversity HIREvent.



"Anything is better than where I am now. I have given a better effort than what I have been given back," said Brittany Hood, 21, as she filled out an F&M Bank job application.

Hood, a Dillard's sales clerk and Humphreys College student, hopes to land a customer service or new account representative job with the bank.

The four-hour-long job fair, held at the Radisson Hotel Stockton, was produced by HIREvents, a division of The California Job Journal, a Sacramento-based career and employment publication.

HIREvents stages about 20 free recruitment events in Northern California annually.

Job Journal spokeswoman Christina Clark said that job fairs are a tried and true method of connecting employers and prospective employees.

"We've had 200 people walk through the door this first hour," she said.

Michele Johnson of Lodi was one of those early birds.

Her previous job as an evaluator of state standardized school tests ended one month ago.

"I'm looking for something more permanent," said Johnson, 50.

An hour-plus into the fair, Johnson had filled out applications for jobs at Central Valley Autism Project Inc., Comcast, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and The Home Depot that ranged from customer service and cashiering to manufacturing and sales.

"The main thing is to get back working. The hardest time to get a job is when you don't have one," she said.

Cathy Bentley of Central Valley Autism Project, who was recruiting tutors for autistic children, said that the majority of job seekers approaching her table were dressed appropriately, friendly and ready to find a job.

Still, she was cautiously optimistic about hiring prospects.

"This is not for everybody," she said.

In addition to employer-job seeker matchmaking, the HIREvent also offered seminars on job search techniques and resume evaluations.

Marie Cholula, a laid-off mortgage industry worker who now attends San Joaquin Delta College, walked the rows of employer tables with her sister, Marie Almaraz, and her brother, Albert Almaraz Jr.

"I'm just keeping my eyes open. I don't want to pass up an opportunity," she said.

Contact reporter Michelle Machado at (209) 943-8547 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Cox Communications Named 2006 3G A-List Award Winner; Cox's 3G CDMA-Based Wireless Data Solution Named the Best in Large Business Category. Check it out:
ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Cox Communications today announced that it has received top honors in the 2006 3G A-List(TM) Awards. The QUALCOMM-sponsored awards program, now in its fourth year, recognizes innovative and successful enterprise wireless data solutions based on third-generation (3G) CDMA standards. Cox was identified as having the best solution in the large business category during a private reception held during the CTIA Wireless I.T.(R) & Entertainment 2006 conference in Los Angeles.



"We are very excited to receive recognition for this strategic effort that is paying big dividends for Cox," said Scott Hatfield, senior vice president and chief information officer. "Our aim was to upgrade our workforce administration system to improve productivity while reducing costs. With more than six million work orders generated on a yearly basis, we saw the opportunity to take our first-generation electronic system--structured around a text-only, private radio structure--to a higher bandwidth solution that would handle work orders faster and link up with back office tools. This translates not only to greater efficiency for Cox, but also better customer service which is always foremost in our goals."

"QUALCOMM is proud to recognize Cox's outstanding achievements using a best-in-class mobility implementation based on 3G CDMA technology," said Kristin Taylor, senior director of enterprise business development for QUALCOMM. "Each of the finalists has demonstrated the benefits of using 3G mobile technology to its full potential through real results such as increased business revenue and faster, more efficient operating processes."

The annual 3G A-List Awards honor outstanding wireless implementations that demonstrate creativity and innovation, overall business impact and how the winning company or organization exceeded business objectives by introducing higher return on investment, lower operating expenses or increased user satisfaction. More information about past winners and their winning solutions may be found at: http://www.3galist.com/winners.html.

About Cox Communications

Cox Communications, a Fortune 500 company and wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc, is a multi-service broadband communications company with more than 6.6 million total customers, including more than 6.2 million basic cable subscribers (these numbers are an approximation as Cox continues to assess the effect of population loss in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina). The nation's third-largest cable television provider, Cox offers analog cable television under the Cox Cable brand as well as advanced digital video service under the Cox Digital Cable brand. Cox provides an array of other communications and entertainment services, including local and long distance telephone under the Cox Digital Telephone brand; high-speed Internet access under the Cox High Speed Internet brand; and commercial voice and data services via Cox Business Services. Local cable advertising, promotional opportunities and production services are sold under the Cox Media brand. Cox is an investor in programming networks including Discovery Channel. More information about Cox Communications can be accessed on the Internet at www.cox.com.

QUALCOMM is a registered trademark of QUALCOMM Incorporated. 3G A-List Awards is a trademark of QUALCOMM Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Quiksilver Uses Kewill Flagship Enterprise Shipping Management Solution as Foundation for High Volume Apparel Distribution; Kewill Flagship Automates Quiksilver's 10,000 Shipment-Per-Day Business. Check it out:
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Kewill (LSE:KWL), the leader in enterprise shipping management software and services, today announced that Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK), the world's leading outdoor sports lifestyle company, has successfully deployed the Kewill Flagship solution to manage its shipping operations across four company distribution centers, totaling an average of 10,000 shipments per day. Kewill Flagship is an enterprise class multi-carrier shipping management system designed to support high volume, multiple location shipping for both international and domestic locations.



"Kewill was an easy choice as the leading solution provider with expertise in managing multi-carrier, large volume shipping," said Andy Engel, Operations Warehouse Management System Director for Quiksilver. "They've been a great partner over the last year as we completed deployments across multiple distribution center sites."

Quiksilver sought a solution that could consolidate the company's shipping operations, which included multiple workstations and carrier systems across its Apparel, Footwear and Close-Out Merchandise distribution warehouses. The ideal shipping management technology would be carrier-independent and allow Quiksilver's shipping managers to use one interface regardless of the warehouse of origin or the destination for the item.

Kewill Flagship, in operation at Quiksilver since August 2005, allows the company to easily respond to customer-driven shipping requirements. Quicksilver employees can toggle between selected carriers to set up a shipment and view tracking information across all of its carriers -- all within the same interface. In addition, Quiksilver uses Kewill to pack and pre-process packages prior to the time required for shipment and schedule for a later date.

Kewill Flagship also interfaces with Quiksilver's Highjump WMS warehouse management system sharing weight, package number, tracking numbers and shipment costs which allows Quiksilver to expedite the invoice process and eliminate previous delays in updating records within Highjump following daily shipments.

"We're thrilled that Kewill's server-based system allows for deployment across multiple sites," said Engel. "We were able to shed numerous unneeded PCs, shift the training of shipping employees from learning three different systems to just one and ultimately reduce our labor count. We just completed the last expansion of Kewill use this August by deploying the system at our new distribution center in Mira Loma, California where we have 15 Kewill stations effectively automating our shipping operations."

About Quiksilver, Inc.

Across the globe, young and "young-minded" people are helping Quiksilver become a world leader as an outdoor sports lifestyle company, which designs, produces and distributes a diversified mix of branded apparel, footwear, accessories and related products under the Quiksilver, Silver Edition, Roxy DC Shoes, Raisins and Radio Fiji labels. The Company's apparel and footwear brands represent a casual lifestyle for young-minded people that connect with its board riding culture and heritage. The Company's products are sold in over 90 countries in a wide range of distribution, including surf shops, ski shops, skateboard shops, snowboard shops, proprietary Boardriders Club shops, other specialty stores and select department stores. Quiksilver, Inc. operates in the Europe, Asia/Pacific, and America. The company was incorporated in 1976 and is headquartered in Huntington Beach, California.

About Kewill Systems plc.

Kewill Systems plc. is a leading international company dedicated to the development and provision of software and services to manage complex business to business supply chains. With over 33 years' experience in the supply chain space, Kewill Systems is a long-time innovator of Supply Chain Execution software focusing on order management, transportation management, international trade logistics and visibility solutions for global trading communities. Over 55,000 customers have trusted Kewill Systems plc. for the management of their supply chain information including household names such as UPS, FedEx, TNT, DHL, Frans Maas, Panalpina, A.N. Deringer, General Motors, Mazda, General Electric, Philips, Pratt & Whitney, Mitsubishi, Texas Instruments, Littlewoods, Sainsbury's, JD Williams, Marks & Spencer, Toys R Us and Legal & General.
Callidus Announces CRM Deal With Thrivent Financial. Check it out:

Callidus Software (News - Alert) Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management, has announced that Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which is, evidently, "the nation's leading fraternal benefit society with nearly 3 million members," has selected Callidus' TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules to "automate the organization's administration, reporting and analysis of incentive compensation."



 

So if anybody asks you "Hey, what's the nation's leading fraternal benefit society?" today, you're ready for 'em.

Thrivent Financial officials says they chose the Callidus Software to "reduce operating costs and to improve time to market with new products and compensation changes." The organization will implement Callidus Software's TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules for its 2,500 financial representatives.

Thrivent and its subsidiaries offer financial services including insurance, annuities and mutual funds, as well as a broad range of educational and volunteer opportunities.

"We believe that the TrueComp EIM software will provide better support for our sales teams, support our cost reduction goals and provide significantly improved reporting and analysis capabilities to help us better monitor our business," said Mark Coleman, vice president, field administration of Thrivent Financial.

In related news, Callidus has announced the appointment of V. Holly Albert as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Albert is responsible for all corporate legal affairs relating to Callidus, and reports to Robert Youngjohns, president and CEO.

Albert joins Callidus from Docent Inc., where she was vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Prior to that, Albert served as vice president, general counsel and COO at Tradenable, Inc., an Internet financial services company. Previously, Albert held executive positions at infoUSA.com and also worked with Honeywell for 16 years serving as the general counsel for Honeywell-Measurex Corporation and prior to that position as division legal counsel for Honeywell Inc.

EIM software products are used to allow employees and channel distribution partners to be compensated accurately and on time.

"Thrivent Financial is positioned to achieve improved alignment of incentive compensation with member engagement, a key metric for a fraternal benefit society," explained Leslie Stretch, senior vice president worldwide sales for Callidus Software.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

The top 100

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The top 100. Check it out:
(Caterer and Hotelkeeper Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The second CatererSearch 100 brings you the 100 most influential people whose achievements are having the biggest impact upon the hospitality industry in 2006. It tells you where they've been, where they are now and where they are going.

This annually updated list of operators includes a diverse collection of personalities, from the bosses of the biggest corporate giants to others who are pushing the boundaries of style, comfort or cuisine in their chosen field.

The CatererSearch 100 covers all sectors of the industry - hoteliers, restaurateurs, contract caterers, pub operators and chefs. Nominees in each of these five categories were judged by panels of journalists who specialise in those sectors.



To begin with, candidates had to meet these qualifying criteria: the personality should be based mainly in the UK, and their power and influence should be primarily in the UK market.

Shortlisted candidates were awarded marks for each of five criteria, which were then averaged out to give an overall ranking in the CatererSearch 100.

First consideration was the scale and scope of the operation headed by the nominees. But size isn't everything, and candidates were next judged on the power and influence they exert in the industry and the respect they command among their peers. We asked whether they were shapers of policy, leaders in their field, or inspiring and nurturing the next generation of movers and shakers.

The judges then examined whether the candidates had a proven record of financial success and whether this was reflected in the eyes of their peers and the outside world.

The candidates' reputation for innovation was next, as the judges examined to what degree they were setting standards others wanted to copy and whether their ideas would remain in fashion.

Longevity was the fifth and final hurdle for the candidates as the panellists considered whether they - and their creations - would stand the test of time.

Profiles of our top 100 stars can be found at www.caterersearch.com/caterersearch100.

1. Gordon Ramsay

Overall ranking: 1 (4)

Chef ranking: 1 (2)

(2005 positions in brackets)

Snapshot

Gordon Ramsay is perhaps the most influential and high-profile chef-restaurateur to emerge in recent years. Hailed as a culinary genius, he is as well known to the public for his expletive-fuelled TV series and his inspirational cookbooks as for his empire of restaurants now spreading across the globe. Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) comprises nine London restaurants with eight Michelin stars between them, consultancies at the Hilton Dubai Creek hotel and the Conrad Tokyo, along with three planned US hotel restaurants, including a New York opening this autumn.

What we think

Ramsay is one of only two British chefs to currently own a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, and his group is the only one in the UK to hold a total of eight stars.

His eponymous Chelsea restaurant went from none to three Michelin stars in just three years. He was recognised with the Catey Chef Award in 2000 and, having won the Best Newcomer award in 1995, Ramsay scored a hat-trick this year with the Independent Restaurateur of the Year Catey.

Ramsay's 13 books have proved equally essential to professional chefs and lay cooks, while his various TV series, which include Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen and The

F Word, have made him an international figurehead for the trade. His international reputation saw him appointed OBE in the last New Year Honours.

His media work, which includes regular columns for the Sunday Times and Channel 4's 4Homes magazine, has boosted his fortune to an estimated 67m, making him the richest chef in Britain.

He has proved that fine dining can bring home the bacon as well as the plaudits. GRH reported a 3.7m profit on a 28m turnover for the year to August 2005, the year the Sunday Times named the group the 54th fastest-growing company in Britain.

The Harden's guide warned this year that Ramsay's grip on the popular imagination "risks becoming stifling" - a fact Ramsay himself seems to recognise. His 10th UK restaurant - a fine-dining venue that opens in Heathrow's Terminal 5 in 2008 - may be his last. Instead, a chain of country pubs is on the agenda.

Overseas is a different matter. Next month he opens his first US restaurant, at the London NYC hotel in New York under Neil Ferguson, followed by a venue at the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Florida under Angela Hartnett. Spring 2007 will see the opening of a third US Ramsay restaurant, at the London LA hotel in Los Angeles.

2. Jamie Oliver

Overall ranking: 2 (1)

Chef ranking: 2 (1)

Snapshot

TV chef Jamie Oliver is one of Britain's most famous exports. His award-winning TV series have been seen in 50 countries and the accompanying best-selling books have been translated into 16 languages. He has earned respect through his campaigns on behalf of young people, and he now has four restaurants around the globe.

What we think

Oliver's star quality was spotted when he was just 21 in a documentary about London's River Caf. The day after it was televised, Oliver fielded calls from five production companies, and thus was born The Naked Chef.

His informal and hands-on approach, which stripped food down to its bare essentials, made cooking fun and accessible to millions. A 2004 report from Mintel named Oliver, along with Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson, as the most significant influences on the nation's cooking habits.

However, three series of The Naked Chef in tandem with years of Sainsbury's ads threatened to jade the public's appetite for Oliver. But his currency as a ratings booster was revived with his next project, Jamie's Kitchen, which charted his six-month struggle to convert a derelict building in Hoxton into a 70-seat restaurant manned by 15 unemployed youngsters.

The charitable venture attracted an avalanche of accolades in 2003, including a Catey Special Award and an MBE.

Also in the same year, his restaurant Fifteen went into profit (of about 400,000) for the first time, and Oliver's media work, along with the tableware and cookware lines he developed with Royal Worcester and Tefal, helped him double his fortune to 20m. In 2006 the Independent named him Britain's second-richest chef, with an estimated value of 58m.

A fierce critic of outsourced school dinners, Oliver backed up his words with action and worked with Kidbrooke Secondary School in the London borough of Greenwich to feed pupils a healthier diet. By July 2005 nearly 80 schools in Greenwich were serving Oliver's meals.

He has not let the school meals issue drop, and in a one-off Channel 4 programme this week he turned his wrath on the 70% of parents he believes send their children to school with junk food.

The Oliver effect was seen again this month as the Government pledged to spend another 240m on school meals between 2008 and 2011.

Oliver is also an honorary vice-chairman of Hospitality Action's Ark Foundation.

3. Grant Hearn

Overall ranking: 3 (31)

Hotel ranking: 1 (10)

Snapshot

Grant Hearn is the chief executive of Travelodge, the fourth-largest hotel group in the UK and the second-largest budget brand after Whitbread's Premier Travel Inn.

What we think

Grant Hearn has always played with the biggest boys on the block, and his expansionary skills have ensured he has made his mark on the hotel landscape. Most notably, he has driven the development of the two leading budget brands, Premier Travel Inn and Travelodge.

Hearn was lured from Forte to Whitbread and quickly became the first managing director of the budget Travel Inn brand before leaving to head Hilton's UK operations in 2000.

In early 2003, Hearn joined Travelodge as chief executive, the brand his cousin Alan Hearn had launched in the UK in 1985 at Trusthouse Forte, which had bought the US Travelodge business in 1973.

By mid-2006 Hearn had boosted Travelodge numbers from 220 to 291 - including three in Spain and nine Irish franchises - with nearly 18,500 bedrooms and six million customers a year. Over the next three years he intends to open about 50 new properties a year. By the first quarter of 2007 the group expects to have 20,000 bedrooms, rising to 32,000 by 2011.

Hearn's mission is to make hotels an attractive and affordable proposition for the one-third of Britons who don't use them and the 85% who view domestic breaks as too expensive.

In December last year Travelodge announced 20m-worth of price cuts to offer 500,000 bedrooms at 26 a night and another 100,000 for 10 which, together with a new online booking system, helped boost sales by 19%.

Hearn has rattled a few cages by accusing rivals of rip-off prices. He took out full-page newspaper adverts accusing several big brands of misleading customers by advertising price-per-person rather than price-per-room rates, and he had a competitor's car park leafleted to ask its customers if they felt were being ripped off.

Hearn has been the only hotelier to actively fight a proposed "bed tax", and he raised a petition of more than 90,000 signatures against it.

Recent innovations have included the appointment of the world's first director of sleep and trials of a window transfer system - so guests can wake up to their chosen view -and of a 26-a-night mobile bedroom, or Travelpod, that can be delivered to festival-goers.

Hearn and his top management team will stay on and finish the job under new owner Dubai Investment Capital, which agreed to buy Travelodge last month.

4. Tim Clarke

Overall ranking: 4 (31)

Pub ranking: 1 (10)

Snapshot

Tim Clarke has been chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) since it demerged from Six Continents (formerly Bass) in April 2003. M&B is the fifth-largest pub operator and the second-largest managed pub business in the UK. It runs more than 2,000 pubs, bars and restaurants, of which 80% are freehold, and is a significant player in the budget hotel market. In the year to 1 October 2005, the group reported pre-tax profits of 192m on sales of 1.66b.

What we think

Tim Clarke has been at the helm of M&B since it demerged from Six Continents (formerly Bass) in April 2003. M&B now owns 3% of the UK's pubs but accounts for 10% of the sector's turnover, with weekly sales per pub three times the national average.

The group operates diverse brands under two operating divisions: pubs and bars (Ember Inns, Hollywood Bowl, Arena, Flares, Edwards, Goose, Scream, O'Neills, Sizzling Pub Co), and restaurants (Vintage Inns, Harvester, Toby Carvery, All Bar One, Innkeeper's Fayre, Brown's, and the Alex bar and brasserie chain in Germany).

M&B also operates 24 Express by Holiday Inn hotels and 80 Innkeeper Lodges, making it the UK's fifth-largest budget hotel group and the 15th-largest hotel operator.

M&B is a leading casual-dining operator, and Clarke owes much of M&B's pre-eminence in this sector to the managing director of his restaurants division, Tony Hughes. Food sales have grown from 11% to 30% of the group total in the past decade, rising to 60% at brands such as Harvester, Toby and Vintage Inns.

In May Clarke fought off a preconditional bid of 550p per share from property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz and then won the battle to buy a chunk of Whitbread pubs in July. This 497m acquisition of more than 240 pub-restaurants provides an opportunity for M&B to position its estate even further towards the high-growth eating-out market and in the long term should boost the food sales mix of its enlarged estate to 40%.

Under Clarke the group has emerged as the most esteemed hospitality business in the UK in Management Today's peer-reviewed Britain's Most Admired Companies rankings in December 2005, when it rocketed from 65th to ninth position in the pan-industry top 220.

Clarke is also a director of the British Beer & Pub Association.

5. Andrew Cosslett

Overall ranking: 5 (17)

Hotel ranking: 2 (4)

Snapshot

Andrew Cosslett took on the 650,000-a-year role of chief executive at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) on 3 February 2005. He now heads up the world's largest hotel operator by bedroom numbers, which posted pre-tax profits of 284m on a 1.9b turnover in 2005. It currently owns, leases, franchises or manages 3,651 hotels with more than 540,000 bedrooms in nearly 100 countries and employs in excess of 90,000 staff worldwide (350,000 if you count jobs created by franchisees).

What we think

The ousting of Richard North, Andrew Cosslett's predecessor, in September 2004 was a shock as it came just months after he announced a 55% boost to interim pre-tax profits.

According to chairman David Webster, IHG's future was to be "increasingly focused on growing our global brands" in a predominantly managed and franchised hotel system. The execution of this strategy required a leader with skills in brand development and operations.

Cosslett's appointment highlighted a growing trend among hotel groups to seek bosses from outside the industry as they moved from property ownership to hotel management (both Hilton and Starwood took similar measures last year).

The InterContinental portfolio was built up by brewer Bass from 1987. Having sold its brewing interests, Bass (renamed Six Continents) demerged its hotel and pub businesses in 2003 to create IHG and Mitchells & Butlers.

Three years down the line IHG has largely completed its metamorphosis. It has sold 175 of the 198 hotels it owned in a series of deals of which the largest was the 1b sale-and-manage-back in March 2005 of 73 UK hotels to a consortium led by Lehman Brothers Real Estate.

Now the group owns or leases just 22 properties, and only those in key cities such as London (the InterContinental on Hyde Park corner), Paris, New York and Hong Kong can be certain of remaining in the portfolio. Most (3,120) are now franchised, and 490 are managed.

Expansion is now the name of the game and Cosslett plans to expand the estate by 50,000 or 60,000 bedrooms over the next three years, with China earmarked for growth from 47 to 125 properties. Of 1,028 new hotels in the pipeline, all will be managed or franchised.

They will include the debut of the extended-stay Staybridge Suites brand (to date used only in the USA) in Brentford, Middlesex, towards the end of this year and in London's South Bank in 2007.

Cosslett also intends to focus on differentiating and defining the group's stable of brands to make the offers sharper and more innovative.

The disposal programme has enabled IHG to return 2.75b to shareholders (more than its flotation value of 2.6b) and the group is now worth 3.2b.

In Management Today's peer-reviewed Britain's Most Admired Companies 2005 ranking, IHG was listed 92nd in the pan-industry top 220.

top 10 Chefs

1. Gordon Ramsay

(up from 2)

2. Jamie Oliver

(down from 1)

3. Heston Blumenthal

(no change)

4. Rick Stein

(no change)

5. Michael Caines

(up from 7)

6. Mark Edwards

(up from 13)

7. Raymond Blanc

(down from 5)

8. Richard Corrigan

(new entry)

9. Chris and Jeff Galvin (new entry)

10. Rainer Becker

(no change)

This year's CatererSearch 100 includes 22 chefs - four more than last year - and chefs make up numbers one and two on the overall list: Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, respectively.

Ramsay's media domination means he overtakes Oliver as the most influential player in the sector. As well as his high-profile media presence, Ramsay has also successfully opened La Noisette in London (on the site of the former Pengelley's) and, with two new sites opening in the USA this autumn, he is now the most significant player in the sector.

However, Oliver is still having an impact with new restaurant openings and another TV programme on school meals.

Other chefs whose stock has risen this year include Michael Caines and Mark Edwards. Caines is behind Abode, a hotel brand that has a strong emphasis on its food offering.

Edwards has opened three more Nobus in 2005 and has plans for another two to open next year.

Newcomers to this year's list include Richard Corrigan, who has opened Bentley's in London, and Mark Hix.

Philip Howard has fallen out of this year's top 100, partly because he hasn't opened any new restaurants and his media profile has dipped since last year's Unichef campaign to help the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami. Also off the list is Claude Bosi, who has put his flagship restaurant, Hibiscus in Ludlow, on the market.

* Ones to watch: David Everitt-Matthias, chef-proprietor of Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham, is tipped to get another Michelin star, which could catapult him into next year's list, along with Bosi, if he finds a suitable new site in London as planned.

top 10 hoteliers

1. Grant Hearn

(up from 10)

2. Andrew Cosslett

(up from 4)

3. Ian Carter

(up from 7)

4. Robert Cook

(up from 16)

5. Alan Parker

(down from 2)

6. Jrgen Giesbert

(new entrant)

7. David Michels

(down from 1)

8. Richard Balfour Lynn

(new entrant)

9. David Orr

(up from 13)

10. Tim and Kit Kemp

(down from 6)

There are 24 players from the hotel sector who have made it to this year's list, compared with 26 last year.

Biggest mover this year is Grant Hearn, who has shot to number one in the hotel list and third overall. In a hotly debated sector, Hearn edged the judges' votes because of his dynamic leadership of Travelodge in the past year. Not only has he brokered an effective sale, which will enable the business to grow further, but he has also led the hotel industry in the fight against a bed tax. While Andy Cosslett and Ian Carter have also had extremely successful years at the helm of international hotel giants, we believe Hearn has had a bigger impact on the UK scene.

David Michels, who led the hotel list last year, has been retained, despite no longer being a part of Hilton. However, he was at the helm for much of the year, and his plans to stay in the sector mean his influence remains.

Another hotly debated subject on this list was whether Richard Balfour Lynn should be included, given that he is a property tycoon rather than an operating hotelier. However, with his involvement in new ventures at Verve and as the new owner of De Vere it was felt his inclusion was warranted.

Other new entrants include Surinder Arora, whose deal to build and manage the new Sofitel hotel at Heathrow's Terminal 5 was seen as a real coup. Also new to the list are the Matharu brothers, owners of Grange Hotels.

* Likely to reappear next year is Robin Hutson, who is keen to acquire a London hotel site as well as being involved with Soho House. Another player worth watching is Louis Woodcock, the former Holiday Inn by Express franchisee who is back in the owner-franchisee business.

top-ranked Pub executives

1. Tim Clarke

(up from 3)

2. Giles Thorley

(up from 4)

3. Ted Tuppen

(down from 1)

4. Rooney Anand

(up from 7)

5. Ralph Findlay

(up from 6)

6. John Hutson

(new entrant)

7. Mark McQuater

(up from 9)

Seven players from the pub sector make it into this year's CatererSearch 100, with two dropping out: Karen Jones, due to the sale of Spirit, and Bob Ivell, as Regent Inns' influence in the sector was seen to have dwindled slightly this year, despite the recent purchase of the Old Orleans chain of restaurants from Punch Taverns.

Topping the list is Tim Clarke, head of the Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) pub group. Clarke's stock in the industry has increased in the past 12 months as M&B goes from strength to strength. Some observers might feel that Clarke's restaurant boss, Tony Hughes, should have made it into the restaurant list due to M&B's massive influence on the casual-dining sector, but, alas, this year he didn't make it, as the judges tried to keep to one entrant per company in the pub sector.

Another mover this year was Greene King's Rooney Anand, whose business has also had a stunning 12 months.

* One to watch: news that Karen Jones is back in the pub sector with five foodie pubs bought from Punch could mean that she bounces straight back into the list next year.

top 10 Restaurateurs

1. Andrew Page

(new entrant)

2. Graham Turner

(new entrant)

3. David Page

(up from 12)

4. Nick Basing

(up from 24)

5. James Horler

(up from 14)

6. Simon Kossoff

(new entrant)

7. Chris Heath

(new entrant)

8. Des Gunewardena

(down from 6)

9. Mark Derry

(up from 16)

10. Ian Neill

(down from 8)

There were 30 restaurateurs on this year's CatererSearch 100, compared with 33 last year.

However, this list probably had the biggest churn of players, with some exiting the market or making way for younger players.

Several people have been replaced by others in their organisation, such as Simon Woodroffe making way for Robin Rowland at Yo! Sushi, Andrew Page replacing his chairman Alan Jackson at The Restaurant Group (TRG), and Simon Kossoff taking over the helm at Carluccio's.

Interestingly, it is Page who makes it to the top of the list, thanks to TRG's busy year, which has seen it reposition itself in the leisure-park sector away from the high street.

Also shooting up the list is Nick Basing, who not only picked up a Catey but also bought a bundle of Caff Unos and tied up a deal to open a Chez Grard at a Premier Travel Inn.

The upper echelons of the list are dominated by the big casual-dining chains, which reflect the growing importance of these businesses in the UK's dining-out market.

* Ones to watch: look out for John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby, whose chain of Leon healthy fast-food restaurants could grow sufficiently to earn them a place in next year's list.

top 10 Contract caterers

1. Richard Cousins (new entrant)

2. Philip Jansen (up from 3)

3. Alastair Storey (up from 4)

4. Andrew Main (up from 8)

5. William Baxter (up from 11)

6. Robyn Jones (up from 10)

7. Roy Gardner (new entrant)

8. Mike Audis (down from 6)

9. Ian El-Mokadem (new entrant)

10. Chris Copner (new entrant )

There are 17 contract caterers on the list this year, compared with 13 last year. The number has been boosted by several new Compass people.

This is the only list that has chosen to name several people from the same company, because of the overwhelming influence that Compass has on the contract-catering market. However, while last year's list had both chairman Francis Mackay and chief executive Mike Bailey in the top 10, their departure sees both names out of this year's top 100.

Its new boss, Richard Cousins, has the task of turning around Compass's fortunes, but the sheer scale and scope of the business mean that he still makes it in at number nine in the full list despite Compass's woes last year.

This year's list also includes individuals who oversee school catering, such as Michelle Hanson of Sodexho, as school meals remain higher up the political agenda following Jamie Oliver's campaign last year.

* One to watch: it's hard to pinpoint anyone making really significant ground in this market, which is dominated by so few players. However, Wilson Vale could come to the fore next year, as could niche upmarket city caterer Vacherin.

The top 100

1. Gordon Ramsay

Gordon Ramsay Holdings

2. Jamie Oliver

Fifteen and Bambino

3. Grant Hearn

Travelodge

4. Tim Clarke

Mitchells & Butlers

5. Andrew Cosslett

InterContinental Hotels Group

6. Andrew Page

The Restaurant Group

7. Graham Turner

Tragus

8. Heston Blumenthal

The Fat Duck

Hinds Head

9. Richard Cousins

Compass Group

10. David Page

Clapham House Group

11. Ian Carter

Hilton Hotels Corporation

12. Philip Jansen

Sodexho UK & Ireland

13. Nick Basing

Groupe Chez Grard

14. Rick Stein

Seafood Restaurant

15. James Horler

La Tasca

16. Alastair Storey

BaxterStorey

17. Simon Kossoff

Carluccio's

18. Robert Cook

Malmaison

19. Alan Parker

Whitbread

20. Giles Thorley

Punch Taverns

21. Chris Heath

Gondola Holdings

22. Michael Caines

Abode and Gidleigh Park

23. Des Gunewardena

Conran Holdings

24. Ted Tuppen

Enterprise Inns

25. Andrew Main

Aramark UK

26. William Baxter

BaxterStorey

27. Jrgen Giesbert

Marriott

28. Mark Derry

Premium Casual Dining

29. Robyn Jones

Charlton House

30. David Michels

Ex-Hilton

president of BHA

31. Richard Balfour Lynn

Marwick Balfour Lynn

32. Mark Edwards

Nobu

33. Sir Roy Gardner

Compass Group

34. Mike Audis

Elior UK

35. David Orr

City Inn

36. Ian Neill

Wagamama

37. Robin Rowland

Yo! Sushi

38. Ian El-Mokadem

Compass Group

39. Raymond Blanc

Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons

40. Chris Copner

Compass Group

41. Tim and Kit Kemp

Firmdale Hotels

42. Rooney Anand

Greene King

43. Michael Flaxman

Accor

44. Alan Yau

Busaba Eathai, Hakkasan and Yauatcha

45. Richard Corrigan

Lindsay House and Bentley's

46. Marco Pierre White

White Star Line, Frankie's Italian Bar and Grill

47. Surinder Arora

Arora International

48. Mike Johnson

Sodexho UK & Ireland

49. Sir Rocco Forte

Rocco Forte Hotels

50. Richard Caring

Signature Restaurants and Caprice Holdings

51. Rick Holroyd and Nick Howe

Holroyd Howe

52. Chris and Jeff Galvin

Galvin Bistrot De Luxe and Galvin at Windows

53. Rainer Becker

Zuma and Roka

54. John Campbell

The Vineyard at Stockcross

55. Peter Lederer

Gleneagles

56. Graham Gilbert

OCS

57. Nigel Platts-Martin

The Square, Chez Bruce, the Glasshouse, La Trompette and the Ledbury

58. Giorgio Locatelli

Locanda Locatelli

59. Geoffrey Harrison

Harrison Catering

60. Simon James

Eden Foodservice

61. Robby Enthoven

Nando's

62. Tim Bacon and Jeremy Roberts

Living Ventures

63. Michel and Alain Roux

The Waterside Inn

64. Gerry Ford

Caff Nero Group

65. Ralph Findlay

Wolverhampton & Dudley

66. Gordon Campbell Gray

Campbell Gray Hotels

67. Albert and Michel Roux

Le Gavroche

68. Tony and Raj Matharu

Grange Hotels

69. Richard Shepherd

Langan's Brasseries

70. Mark Hix

Caprice Holdings

71. Julian Metcalfe

Pret A Manger and Itsu

72. Gary Rhodes

Rhodes Twenty Four

73. David Guile

Macdonald Hotels

74. John Jarvis

Jarvis Hotels

75. Brian Turner

Millennium Hotel London and Turner's Grill

76. Nick Jones

Soho House

77. Claudio Pulze

A-Z Restaurants

Cuisine Collection

78. John Hutson

JD Wetherspoon

79. John Derkach

Costa Coffee

80. Marlon Abela

MARC

81. Jasminder Singh

Radisson Edwardian

82. Adam and Sam Kaye

Tasty

83. Marcus Wareing

Ptrus, Savoy Grill and Banquette

84. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou

EasyHotel and EasyPizza

85. Michelle Hanson

Sodexho UK

86. Mark McQuater

Barracuda

87. Jeremy King and Chris Corbin

CLK Restaurants

88. Namita and Camellia Panjabi

Ranjit Mathrani

Masala World

89. Nigel Haworth and Craig Bancroft

Northcote Manor and Ribble Valley Inns

90. Danny Pecorelli

Exclusive Hotels

91. Andrew Davies

Von Essen Hotels

92. Mitchell Tonks

Fishworks

93. Tim West

Lexington Catering

94. Andrew Guy

Gourmet Holdings

95. Oliver Peyton

Inn the Park

96. Bruce Poole

Chez Bruce, La Trompette and the Glasshouse

97. Tom Aikens

Tom Aikens and Tom's Kitchen

98. Tim Scoble

Thistle Hotels

99. Paul Heathcote

Heathcotes Restaurants

100. Andrew Pern

Star Inn at Harome and the Star at Scampston

* For full profiles go to www.caterersearch.com/caterersearch100

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

Computers In Personnel

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Computers In Personnel. Check it out:
(Personnel Today Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Computers In Personnel is a UK company that provides HR software solutions. The software is highly flexible and covers personnel, recruitment, training administration, skills matching, payroll and employee and manager self-service. The software and support services enable a more efficient, strategic approach to HR withinyour organisation.Learn more at www.computersinpersonnel.comFor more information on the awards, go towww.personneltodayawards.comJane SaundersCategory judgeJane Saunders is managing partner of Orion Partners, one of the UK's leading HR transformation consultancies. She has specialised in creating smarter, more streamlined and credible HR functions for the past 15 years. Before founding Orion Partners, Saunders held roles in Accenture's consulting practice, and senior HR roles in the manufacturing and services sector.FIRST CHOICE AIRWAYSThe team - FCA HR TeamNumber in team: 6 Number in HR function: 84 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 14,000About the organisation Founded in 1987, First Choice Airways (FCA) is part of travel and leisure company First Choice Holidays. It operates a fleet of 32 aircraft in the UK, and flies to 60 destinations worldwide.The challenge FCA experienced a period of industrial unrest, which culminated in the rejection of its annual pay offer last winter. Pilots felt undervalued and were perceived to be inflexible and militant. The company needed to improve relations, engage the pilots and agree a satisfactory pay deal to remain competitive.What the organisation did-Launched the Change Agenda in May 2005, with collaboration between HR, flight operations and the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa).-Implemented a partnership and recognition agreement between FCA, the pilots and Balpa.-Created a reward package to encourage engagement and improve work-life balance.-Created a new management structure that introduced non-pilot managers.-The pilot training team reviewed the training structure and created a clear five-year plan.-Implemented a pilot bonus scheme.-Held focus groups with pilots to understand their communication needs.Benefits and achievements-Engagement and productivity have risen, and work-life balance has improved.-Higher customer satisfaction rates.-Secured a three-year pay deal with the pilots.-HR now sits on the board giving strategic employee relations advice.The judge says: "The HR team provided clear evidence of effective engagement and strong business alignment. The programme has delivered tangible business results, introducing new ways of working that are now setting industry best practice."HIGHLANDS and ISLANDS ENTERPRISE NETWORK The team - Organisational Development TeamNumber in team: 4 Number in HR function: 11 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 600About the organisation The Highlands and Islands Enterprise Network is a public body responsible for economic and community development across a diverse geographical area more than half the land mass of Scotland.The challenge The network is highly diverse and widely dispersed, and staff felt there was a need to improve communication, break down barriers and gain a better understanding of what other teams did. What the organisation did-HR came up with the idea of 'Together Towards Tomorrow' - the first staff event where every employee played a role in planning and contributing to the network's success.-HR brought together staff from local enterprise companies, business units, strategy group, communications, organisational development and the executive office, creating a better understanding of each other's roles and communicating the changes of the organisational review.-Held an exhibition of each part of the network's area of work, involving more than 40 interactive displays. Benefits and achievements-More than 80% of participants said the project created a sense of belonging.-More than 80% said they now had an enhanced understanding of the rationale for organisational change.-HR increased its profile and its credibility.The judge says: "Building cohesion is a key challenge for this organisation. This highly successful initiative achieved its objective of moving the organisation towards becoming a genuinely 'networked' organisation. The team has demonstrated creativity in harnessing limited resources and has created a real sense of belonging."BOROUGH OF TELFORD & WREKINThe team - Human ResourcesNumber in team: 9 Number in HR function: 85 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 5,800About the organisation Telford & Wrekin was created as a unitary council in 1998, and is currently rated as a four-star authority by the Audit Commission. The council aims to build "a successful, prosperous and healthy community which offers a good quality of life for all the people of Telford & Wrekin". The challenge HR needed to support the council's Change for Children project, which aims to provide seamless, co-ordinated support to children and their families, and reduce the number of children and young people needing crisis intervention.What the organisation did-HR collaborated with staff from Change for Children to launch two new common processes to enable staff to intervene early and allow different agencies to work together.-Created a new team to lead the service changes and embed the new practices.-Restructured the HR function.-Established a new Children's Workforce Development Team.Benefits and achievements-HR took a central role in delivering the Every Child Matters agenda.-HR's restructure has enabled more sharing of expertise and more consistency.-The council can now locate trainers for staff in children's social care, schools and education support services in a single base, encouraging knowledge sharing and reducing duplication and waste.The judge says: "With its project, the council was trailblazing a new approach to the provision of integrated children's services. HR's input has been key to its success by introducing new ways of working, encouraging the sharing of expertise, the pooling of resources and the co-ordinationof development across multiple agencies."KEOGHS SOLICITORS The team - Human ResourcesNumber in team: 3 Number in HR function: 3 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 464About the organisation Formed in 1968, Keoghs is a national law firm with offices in Bolton and Coventry. It has 28 partners and more than 450 staff. As insurance specialists, it acts for the majority of the UK's major insurance companies.The challenge Keoghs wanted to attract and retain the best talent by outshining its competitors. It set out to create a slick recruitment process to ensure it identified the best candidates in the shortest time, working with stakeholders and external agencies.What the organisation did-Enlisted the HR director as project manager.-Set up a recruitment strategy best practice team of HR, marketing and IT professionals, litigation and employment partners/lawyers and team leaders. -Implemented an online job application process and new psychometric tests.-Collaborated with six external recruitment agencies for feedback on the project.Benefits and achievements-Shortlists and rejections now handled online.-Agencies have dedicated channels to track the vacancies, reducing admin to a minimum.-A better understanding of attracting applicants and matching them to job requirements.-A PR campaign has improved communication methods, conveyed a consistent corporate image and raised the firm's profile among potential recruits.The judge says: "With a clear strategy to become the employer of choice in its market, the team demonstrated that they engaged effectively with their business and suppliers to develop a recruitment solution that can show clear business benefits and is also raising the firm's broader business profile."IDEAL STANDARDThe team - EntitlementNumber in team: 3 Number in HR function: 24 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 2,500About the organisation Bathroom fitting manufacturer Ideal Standard aims to combine innovation and beauty. It has eight sites across the UK, which produce ceramics, taps, bathroom partitions, plastic components, acrylic baths and showers.The challenge The company recognised that to remain competitive, staff and unions needed to increase levels of safety, quality and productivity. It set out to improve productivity across its three ceramics sites by engaging staff and achieving better performance through a culture change in behaviour and attitudes.What the organisation did-The HR director and ceramic manufacturing director negotiated pay with Unity, the company's major union.-Created a collaboration agreement, called Entitlement, which followed a similar model in the company's US division, co-ordinated by an internal communications manager.-Designed and ran facilitation workshops and projects to encourage the culture change.-Trained facilitators at all three sites.Benefits and achievements-85% of the workforce in ceramics voted in favour of the Entitlement agreement in 2005 and 60% voted for it in 2006.-Twenty-two facilitators have been trained in communicating the Entitlement message.-Productivity improved by 10% in the first full year of the initiative and will increase in the second year.The judge says: "The team demonstrated a no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to employee engagement, which is now to be adopted by other parts of the business. The employee relations impact has been very positive and the business outputs have meant wage rises for the past year have been self-funded."BOROUGH OF TELFORD & WREKINThe team - Human ResourcesNumber in team: 9 Number in HR function: 85 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 5,800About the organisation Telford & Wrekin was created as a unitary council in 1998, and is currently rated as a four-star authority by the Audit Commission. The council aims to build "a successful, prosperous and healthy community which offers a good quality of life for all the people of Telford & Wrekin". The challenge HR needed to support the council's Change for Children project, which aims to provide seamless, co-ordinated support to children and their families, and reduce the number of children and young people needing crisis intervention.What the organisation did-HR collaborated with staff from Change for Children to launch two new common processes to enable staff to intervene early and allow different agencies to work together.-Created a new team to lead the service changes and embed the new practices.-Restructured the HR function.-Established a new Children's Workforce Development Team.Benefits and achievements-HR took a central role in delivering the Every Child Matters agenda.-HR's restructure has enabled more sharing of expertise and more consistency.-The council can now locate trainers for staff in children's social care, schools and education support services in a single base, encouraging knowledge sharing and reducing duplication and waste.The judge says: "With its project, the council was trailblazing a new approach to the provision of integrated children's services. HR's input has been key to its success by introducing new ways of working, encouraging the sharing of expertise, the pooling of resources and the co-ordinationof development across multiple agencies."Jane SaundersCategory judgeJane Saunders is managing partner of Orion Partners, one of the UK's leading HR transformation consultancies. She has specialised in creating smarter, more streamlined and credible HR functions for the past 15 years. Before founding Orion Partners, Saunders held roles in Accenture's consulting practice, and senior HR roles in the manufacturing and services sector.Computers In Personnel is a UK company that provides HR software solutions. The software is highly flexible and covers personnel, recruitment, training administration, skills matching, payroll and employee and manager self-service. The software and support services enable a more efficient, strategic approach to HR withinyour organisation.Learn more at www.computersinpersonnel.comFIRST CHOICE AIRWAYSThe team - FCA HR TeamNumber in team: 6 Number in HR function: 84 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 14,000KEOGHS SOLICITORS The team - Human ResourcesNumber in team: 3 Number in HR function: 3 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 464About the organisation Founded in 1987, First Choice Airways (FCA) is part of travel and leisure company First Choice Holidays. It operates a fleet of 32 aircraft in the UK, and flies to 60 destinations worldwide.The challenge FCA experienced a period of industrial unrest, which culminated in the rejection of its annual pay offer last winter. Pilots felt undervalued and were perceived to be inflexible and militant. The company needed to improve relations, engage the pilots and agree a satisfactory pay deal to remain competitive.What the organisation did-Launched the Change Agenda in May 2005, with collaboration between HR, flight operations and the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa).-Implemented a partnership and recognition agreement between FCA, the pilots and Balpa.-Created a reward package to encourage engagement and improve work-life balance.-Created a new management structure that introduced non-pilot managers.-The pilot training team reviewed the training structure and created a clear five-year plan.-Implemented a pilot bonus scheme.-Held focus groups with pilots to understand their communication needs.Benefits and achievements-Engagement and productivity have risen, and work-life balance has improved.-Higher customer satisfaction rates.-Secured a three-year pay deal with the pilots.-HR now sits on the board giving strategic employee relations advice.The judge says: "The HR team provided clear evidence of effective engagement and strong business alignment. The programme has delivered tangible business results, introducing new ways of working that are now setting industry best practice."About the organisation Formed in 1968, Keoghs is a national law firm with offices in Bolton and Coventry. It has 28 partners and more than 450 staff. As insurance specialists, it acts for the majority of the UK's major insurance companies.The challenge Keoghs wanted to attract and retain the best talent by outshining its competitors. It set out to create a slick recruitment process to ensure it identified the best candidates in the shortest time, working with stakeholders and external agencies.What the organisation did-Enlisted the HR director as project manager.-Set up a recruitment strategy best practice team of HR, marketing and IT professionals, litigation and employment partners/lawyers and team leaders. -Implemented an online job application process and new psychometric tests.-Collaborated with six external recruitment agencies for feedback on the project.Benefits and achievements-Shortlists and rejections now handled online.-Agencies have dedicated channels to track the vacancies, reducing admin to a minimum.-A better understanding of attracting applicants and matching them to job requirements.-A PR campaign has improved communication methods, conveyed a consistent corporate image and raised the firm's profile among potential recruits.The judge says: "With a clear strategy to become the employer of choice in its market, the team demonstrated that they engaged effectively with their business and suppliers to develop a recruitment solution that can show clear business benefits and is also raising the firm's broader business profile."HIGHLANDS and ISLANDS ENTERPRISE NETWORK The team - Organisational Development TeamNumber in team: 4 Number in HR function: 11 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 600IDEAL STANDARDThe team - EntitlementNumber in team: 3 Number in HR function: 24 Number of employees HR is responsible for: 2,500About the organisation The Highlands and Islands Enterprise Network is a public body responsible for economic and community development across a diverse geographical area more than half the land mass of Scotland.The challenge The network is highly diverse and widely dispersed, and staff felt there was a need to improve communication, break down barriers and gain a better understanding of what other teams did. What the organisation did-HR came up with the idea of 'Together Towards Tomorrow' - the first staff event where every employee played a role in planning and contributing to the network's success.-HR brought together staff from local enterprise companies, business units, strategy group, communications, organisational development and the executive office, creating a better understanding of each other's roles and communicating the changes of the organisational review.-Held an exhibition of each part of the network's area of work, involving more than 40 interactive displays. Benefits and achievements-More than 80% of participants said the project created a sense of belonging.-More than 80% said they now had an enhanced understanding of the rationale for organisational change.-HR increased its profile and its credibility.The judge says: "Building cohesion is a key challenge for this organisation. This highly successful initiative achieved its objective of moving the organisation towards becoming a genuinely 'networked' organisation. The team has demonstrated creativity in harnessing limited resources and has created a real sense of belonging."About the organisation Bathroom fitting manufacturer Ideal Standard aims to combine innovation and beauty. It has eight sites across the UK, which produce ceramics, taps, bathroom partitions, plastic components, acrylic baths and showers.The challenge The company recognised that to remain competitive, staff and unions needed to increase levels of safety, quality and productivity. It set out to improve productivity across its three ceramics sites by engaging staff and achieving better performance through a culture change in behaviour and attitudes.What the organisation did-The HR director and ceramic manufacturing director negotiated pay with Unity, the company's major union.-Created a collaboration agreement, called Entitlement, which followed a similar model in the company's US division, co-ordinated by an internal communications manager.-Designed and ran facilitation workshops and projects to encourage the culture change.-Trained facilitators at all three sites.Benefits and achievements-85% of the workforce in ceramics voted in favour of the Entitlement agreement in 2005 and 60% voted for it in 2006.-Twenty-two facilitators have been trained in communicating the Entitlement message.-Productivity improved by 10% in the first full year of the initiative and will increase in the second year.The judge says: "The team demonstrated a no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to employee engagement, which is now to be adopted by other parts of the business. The employee relations impact has been very positive and the business outputs have meant wage rises for the past year have been self-funded."<BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
3com sees Success in Strategic Partnership with IDC. Check it out:
(Al Bawaba Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) 3Com, a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions announced today the success of its partnership with IDC for the IDC IT Infrastructure Roadshows which was held in 5 key cities across the Middle-East region including Amman, Kuwait City, Cairo, Riyadh, and Dubai. The Roadshow, for which 3Com was a platinum sponsor for 4 cities, featured keynote addresses from IDC analysts and presentations from key 3Com representatives and customers.



Issac Shihabi, General Manager, 3Com Middle East, said: "We are extremely pleased with the success of these roadshows and very proud to partner with IDC towards achieving this. While we continue to dominate the regions SMB/SME space, we are strengthening our presence in the enterprise segment inorder to meet the business and technology needs of growing companies. The IDC IT Infrastructure roadshows have given us the right platform to reach our appropriate target audiences across the Middle-East region." "As the Middle-East market evolves enterprises are increasingly relying on infrastructures that help them achieve their strategic goals and demanding networks that are secured and safe. Morever, the dynamics of the market are radically changing with customers, partners, and employees alike using enterprise applications, resources, and services round the clock. We believe our partnership with 3Com has proved extremely fruitful in informing and educating the market about various challenges faced by businesses today"; says Jyoti Lalchandani, Vice President and Regional MD, IDC MEA." 3Coms secure converged networks are a reality today. An integrated portfolio of 3Com security, voice, wireless, network management, and service products helpsensure business continuity and closes the gap between business growth and security risk. The broad selection of end-to-end 3Com solutions-from the edge to the core of the network, from 3Com IntelliJack switches for strikingly easy port expansion to wireless LANs, terabit core switches, stackable switches, WAN routers, and IP telephony platforms-are tied together with an award-winning intrusion prevention system and robust centralized management capabilities.

3com has penetrated several new industry verticals and strengthed existing ones recently including education, airline, and banking.

The IDC's IT Infrastructure Roadshow 2006 also highlighted several end-user case studies on unique infrastructure deployments. The Roadshow was specifically designed to inform and update senior IT professionals on the latest trends and deployment of infrastructure technologies. The Roadshow targeted several industry sectors including Business Services, Education, Healthcare, Banking & Financial Services, Government & Public Administration, Transportation, Utilities and Logistics and Trade & Manufacturing About IDC IDC Provides Global Research with Local ContentIDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and eventsfor the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community makefact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. Over 850 IDCanalysts in 50 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology andindustry opportunities and trends. For more than 42 years, IDC has provided strategicinsights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives.

IDC CEMATo cover Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa, IDC employs 90+analysts in a coordinated network of offices in 19 countries, with regional researchcenters in Prague, Moscow, Dubai, and Istanbul. Customers include wide range of ICThardware, software, and services suppliers, governments, and members of the financialcommunity.

IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and EventsCompany. Additional information can be found at www.idc.com.

About 3com3Com Corporation is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection for corporate enterprises, government agencies, service providers and academic institutions.

For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Copyright 2006 Al-Bawaba.com, Inc.
Visualisation Centre to offer UK's best facilities. Check it out:
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Building work on a multi-million-pound development at a Welsh university is under way.

It is hoped the development at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, will put Wales at the forefront of the use of 3D technology.

The beginning of work on the project, which is being funded with pounds 6m from the Welsh Assembly Government, including pounds 4.4m from the European was marked by Vice-Chancellor Professor Noel Lloyd.

He said, 'This new centre will provide a world-class virtual-reality environment unequalled in the UK with the capacity to solve complex problems and improve the profitability of the business sector in Wales.'

A total of pounds 10.4m is being invested in the Centre of Excellence for Visualisation at the university's Penglais campus.

The Visualisation Centre is known as See3D and will operate as a department in the University at Aberystwyth, offering its services to commercial and other outside organisations as well as the university's own academic departments.

The centre will provide a 'world-class' virtual reality environment in which to solve complex problems and create products through 3D visualisation.

The university said more than 100 jobs will be created by the development, which will include:

A domed 3D reality theatre and a Fakespace CURV immersive environment - a large curved screen facility;

Fully immersive and interactive projection produced with Fakespace Powerwall displays;

High-powered computing equipment for processing large data;

Computing equipment and workstations for a personal virtual reality experience;

Offices, workshops and workstations for individuals and groups of visualisation users.

The work of building and equipping the new centre is expected to be completed by next September.

Andrew Davies, Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, said he was pleased to see work under way for such an important project which, he said, would place Wales at the fore- front of the global visualisation sector.

Professor Noel Lloyd, the vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth, said, 'This is a significant new development for the university, which will establish Aberystwyth as a centre of national importance in this field and at the forefront of visualisation technologies.



'It will enhance the university's profile in research and development and contribute to the economic development of Mid and West Wales and of the whole of Wales.

'The university is an important force for economic development in Mid Wales in its role as a large employer, in training a skilled workforce, and in helping local companies enhance and develop their use of technology.'

The Visualisation Centre is the latest in a series of high-profile plans announced by the university.

Earlier this year, Aberystwyth announced a series of joint research ventures - with both universities investing millions of pounds in the developments.

The two universities are getting pounds 10m from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

The plan includes a joint research management structure, the appointment of a partnership director and the development of a joint research strategy.

Joint research projects will be carried out in environmental science, materials science and the arts and humanities.

Copyright 2006 . Western Mail & Echo Ltd
Insurer boosts network to support apps. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Christian [email protected] broker Benfield has rolled out Wan acceleration technology to assign bandwidth intelligently to key applications across its principal global offices.The firm said growing pressure on the network had driven the adoption of the system. More than 1,500 users operate over 100 data-intensive research and financial applications and analysis software models.Ian Dobbyn, Benfield's network services manager, said the risk of disruption and downtime in an environment where staff required fast, accurate and accessible applications to act on global market information had made more intelligent networking an imperative.The technology, from Silver Peaks, uses local-instance networking to inspect and classify all Wan traffic. This means that when a file is transferred at the beginning of the day a local copy is cached for quick access by users, relieving pressure on the network.Steve Broadhead, director of Broadband-Testing Labs, said Wan acceleration is likely to become increasingly common, as it is very cost effective compared with the next most viable alternative - deploying a enterprise application globally."Different suppliers go about it in different ways, but typically [Wan acceleration] results in a two to 10 times improvement in performance, and sometimes considerably greater," said Broadhead.<BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
Choosing a route to agile systems. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Miya Knights [email protected] increasingly regard their IT infrastructures as a series of systems to support operational business processes. To drive down cost and improve the management and speed of business change, they need to break these IT systems down into standard, adaptable and reusable building-block components at each stage of an end-to-end business process. The pursuit of such business agility through IT optimisation has led to the emergence of software dedicated to aligning these processes with the IT systems that serve them. This, in turn, has spawned an approach to IT management that looks on technology as an enabler, underpinning business processes with a service oriented architecture (SOA) approach. Both concepts are designed to join up IT components in a way that business, as well as IT users, can under?stand and manipulate on the fly and in real time. The growing business process management (BPM) software market that has emerged to meet these needs is populated by a number of suppliers with different approaches to solving the same problems.Jim Sinur, Gartner vice-president and BPM analyst, said, "BPM is the second fastest growing software market and is part of an architectural revolution in terms of IT and business management." Gartner estimates the BPM software market to be worth ?750m in terms of licence and maintenance revenue during 2006, which is comparable to the markets for financial compliance or business intelli?gence systems. Gartner said there are as many as 170 BPM suppliers, with 17 top performing or innovative suppliers marked out as relevant to large enterprises.A BPM system makes the rules and services normally embedded in IT components leveragable and serviceable by the business. Gartner also believes BPM is needed for developing an SOA."An SOA approach needs BPM, but BPM does not necessarily need SOA. The basic building blocks of a BPM system or approach for configuring IT infrastructure components in support of specific business processes are real-time business activity monitoring, events management, and business process modelling and simulation tools," said Sinur.Sinur said BPM systems tend to take one of two approaches. The main platform providers offer system-to-system activity. The alternative is the human workflow method, where work is ushered through human-to-human activity and generally includes some form of data or content management system. Generally, the larger platform providers will offer middleware technology to orchestrate how and when systems talk to each other. ?Microsoft, for example, sells its Biztalk product, and IBM offers Websphere.Microsoft takes the suite approach to BPM, where the most central point from which to implement BPM would be to have a process server. The process server is used both for connecting systems and for centralising the processes of the business. Gavin King, BPM product solutions marketing manager at Microsoft, said his firm's BPM strategy benefits from the ubiquity of its desktop products, along with its .net development framework. "Suites offer several advantages over the pure-play proposition, ?because of strong cohesion between tools, simplified development processes, ease-of-use and familiar business user packages," King said.Other major suppliers have ?gained BPM functionality through acquisition. One example is IBM's recent takeover of enterprise content management supplier FileNet to help it improve how business intelligence and business processes integrate. IBM's main differentiator is its component modeller - a tool linking SOA and BPM. David Henderson, technology strategy partner at IBM, said, "A component view, as opposed to a process view, helps organisations to look at processes through different lenses to discover what areas a business needs to either be good at or commoditise because it is not part of their core competence."Tibco also approaches BPM from an SOA perspective. It builds on an SOA platform and does system-to-system integration. The company has also added ?human-to-human capability with its acquisition of workflow supplier Staffware. Tibco is moving towards the use of BPM to predict problems and bottlenecks before they occur. Vivek Ranadiv?, chief executive at Tibco, said, "Predictive business allows companies to take real-time events and correlate them with historical patterns to accurately and consistently predict their futures." On the technology front, Rana?div? said the core IT components of a predictive business model include an event-driven infrastructure ?using an enterprise messaging service, application integration with an SOA ?approach, and a decision engine based on rules or analytics software. Another option for IT directors is to consider tools that aim to embrace the concept of BPM holist?ically. The argument for this approach is that if you start from a business process design perspective, you allow business people to use familiar languages and create blueprints that can then be used to deliver competitive advantage. This is basically how Bob Farrell, chief executive at BPM provider Metastorm, has tried to engineer his company's product.Alternatively, IT directors can buy products that aim to tackle BPM from a business goals perspective. The idea here is to avoid having to buy integration tools to align human tasks with ?associated IT processes. For instance, companies have traditionally used business intelligence and datawarehousing tools to marry the task to the process.Phil Gilbert, chief technology officer at supplier Lombardi, said, "Our view of BPM is into the visibility of an organisation's process instances and tasks in the context of its goals. It is not just delivering efficiencies through workflow improvement, but is giving the business people visibility of associated tasks."Some products, such as Ilog, use the concept of a business rules engine. Alain Gendre, BPM and SOA programme manager at Ilog, said, "An essential element for the implementation of efficient, flexible and compliant business processes is a business rules management system to make routine decisions and create policies that are transparent and auditable, to improve compliance and reduce operational cost," he said.BPM is primarily a business management philosophy about people and the processes by which they work together, as well the performance objectives that underpin their work. At the same time, it is about the technology they use to make all that visible. Whether you decide to address your integration needs and operational performance through a human- or a systems-led approach, Sinur urges organisations not to be afraid of taking on third-party help or establishing a process centre of excellence to identify the key processes that need improving for maximum agility and return. "Look for modelling capabilities with strong links to simulation and execution engines that have rules management capabilities to affect processes in flight," he said. "Round-trip, iterative BPM is best, allowing for simulation, execution, reporting and continual adaptation of processes to suit rapidly changing business models and needs."Whatever BPM approach you take, the question is how to get started. Derek Miers, independent industry analyst and BPM report author, said, "The trick is to find a small project that can be highly ?impactful and delivered in 90 days or less. That way, you get the business behind you with the 'wow' factor."He suggested that IT directors identify the 30% to 40% of functionality that gives the business the biggest bang for its buck, and take an iterative approach according to that focus. "Work out where the functionality lies in your IT infrastructure and make you technology choice with that as your guide." <BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
Royal Mail sets up online system to support new post pricing structure. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Arif Mohamed [email protected] Royal Mail has implemented an online pricing application to handle the changes it made to its letter and package pricing last month. The changes in the pricing structure, the first in 100 years, link the cost of postage to the size and weight of an item, rather than its weight alone.Technology supplier Selectica redeveloped the Royal Mail's legacy online pricing calculator and used Java code to support the new Pricing in Proportion structure. The system, which is used by organisations that have large, complex mailing requirements, uses Selectica's Java-based pricing and configuration engine, the Pricing Configurator, which integrates into Royal Mail's existing Java-based portal, which uses software from ATG.The Pricing Configurator will also link into new online applications, such as Stampnow, which allows users to buy and print their own postage stamps once they have calculated the correct price.Royal Mail has worked with Selectica since 2001 and was using a vanilla version of its pricing software, which was not integrated into the postal service's e-commerce platform. Explaining the initial lack of customisation, Dennis Greene, head of e-business at Royal Mail, said, "At the time, the business was losing money and we were in the midst of a recovery plan. Investment in IT was limited." He added that integration with the ATG environment would allow Royal Mail to support a wide range of evolving online products and offer more personalisation, customisation and content targeting. Royal Mail will also be able to offer online users a more reliable and faster service, he said. Ian Mahoney, principal consultant at Selectica, said it deployed and tested the application on its own application and web servers, then ported it to Royal Mail machines. The application itself runs as an Enterprise Java Bean - a self-contained Java programme - embedded in Royal Mail's ATG environment. It also draws on Royal Mail's Oracle database and uses XML messaging to transfer data. Greene said Royal Mail's e-commerce team would continue to focus on developing customer self-service technologies in the future. Royal Mail put 70 applications online last year and ran 150 IT projects. It plans to complete 170 IT projects this year. "Despite the squeeze on investment, we have made some significant improvements," said Greene. <BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
IT and change management central. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Computer Weekly [email protected] Council is placing new IT systems at the heart of an overhaul of the way it deals with the people and the communities it serves.The council is working on three projects in conjunction with Fuj?itsu Services as part of its iBusiness transformation strategy. It is introducing a new customer relationship management system, enterprise resource planning systems and a document management system. Running alongside these projects is a major change management and benefits realisation programme, with staff helping to identify and reap the benefits of the new systems, both in terms of improving services and in saving money.The CRM system is being used as part of Wirral Council's "It's Your Call" phone service for reporting anti-social behaviour, and for an electronic social care record system, which is due to go live next month.The council is set to launch a revamped website later this year, and it will go live with the new ERP system next April.Among the benefits highlighted by the council to date are:? Increased customer satisfaction? Improved data quality ? Reduction in duplication? Automation of previously manual processes? Reduced cost. Cost has been driven down through headcount reductions, decreases in accommodation costs thanks to the introduction of hot ?desking and home working, and by reducing procurement costs through using fewer suppliers and maximising the council's spending power.The council has also benefited by encouraging service users - both internal and external - to move to cheaper channels, often using web-based self-service systems.The technology implementation is being supported by a project team made up of a change co-ordinator, an HR co-ordinator, a training co-ordinator and a communications co-ordinator. This team reports to a programme board made up of the council's chief officers, led by the deputy chief executive.Wirral Council's efforts to ensure staff buy-in for the system and to spread best practice among staff are backed by a determination to achieve large, measurable improvements within the organisation. Financial targets have been built into the change management process to complement the measurement of the council's overall performance, which is being monitored by the Audit Commission. <BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
EMC unveils service oriented vision. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Arif Mohamed [email protected] is to release a new breed of system and information management tools. However, it needs to carry out extensive integration first.The storage supplier has gone through a highly acquisitive stage where it bought in virtualisation, data management and security technologies, adding these to its core storage platform. The result will be a product line that will rely on simpler virtualised IT systems and reach deeper into the application stack, giving users simpler IT management and more automation and control.EMC is still open to more technology acquisitions if they fit into its strategy, said Adrian McDonald, vice-president and general manager, UK & Ireland, at EMC. "The customers are interested in a more joined-up product line," he added. At the root of that strategy is a desire to become the central supplier for what the company calls "the information layer". EMC's aim is to help users manage their data more intelligently and provide innovation and professional services, said McDonald. Galen Schreck, senior analyst at Forrester Research, said, "EMC has laid out its vision of an infrastructure built on virtualised hardware resources that will run the next generation of service-oriented applications."The acquired technologies cover storage and information, with Legato and Documentum respectively. EMC has also added virtualisation (VMware), virtualisation automation (Akimbi), end-to-end service monitoring (Smarts), datacentre management (Layers), and security and policy management (RSA). RSA is the only acquisition that has not been finalised yet. "EMC now has all the ingredients for a software portfolio that neatly parallels its vision of a service oriented infrastructure," said Schreck. As a result, EMC will eventually offer users an alternative to systems management tools from the likes of BMC, HP and IBM.However, EMC has not yet integrated RSA security technology, and the virtualisation automation technology from Akimbi currently serves test and not production environments. Schreck estimated it would take EMC a minimum of two years to integrate the components it had acquired. "EMC will need to centralise its configuration data and work on ways to simplify and automate the process of building complete services that span storage, servers, and applications," he said. Meanwhile, EMC needs to use RSA to unify security and policy management across its product line, from hardware like the Centera to Documentum's document management in order to provide users with the ability to secure their data using RSA's identity, access management and key encryption software. EMC's information management strategy has been given the thumbs-up from users, but better product integration is needed. The Open University is one major user that has implemented multiple EMC brands, including Storage (San discs and Centera Content Addressed Storage), Legato Networker software, and DiscXtender and EmailXtender, which it is yet to use. The university is also a long-term user of VMware virtualisation and RSA security tokens.It uses Documentum Content Server 5.3, for which it has 600,000 licences. It is also in the design phase for eRooms Enterprise 7.2, an online collaboration platform, which it plans to roll out in October or November to 5,000 internal staff.Jed Cawthorne, enterprise content management programme manager at the Open University, said the products "appear to be reasonably well integrated, but getting better all the time." For example, the university is currently investigating swapping its EMC EmailXtender licences for the newly integrated Documentum Archiving for Email.Competitive upgrades are available. EMC offered the university a competitive trade-in to swap its Sun Microsystems fibre channel discs for EMC San storage. Cawthorne said his main concern was "the speed with which the [product integration] process can be executed. All businesses that go on buying sprees then have to contend with integrating their new acquisitions. "This is by no means unique to EMC. Thus it will be interesting to watch how quickly they bring Captiva, RSA and other recent acquisitions fully on board."WHSmith News is also an EMC and VMware user, with a mixture of DMX-2000s, Clariion CX700s, the EMC Nas Gateway, NS700G and EMC/Brocade switches, as well as EMC Legato Networker. It also uses both of VMware's virtualisation platforms, ESX and GSX. Robert Wilson, CTO at WHSmith News, said the firm uses EMC ControlCenter to monitor and control the storage components within the datacentre. It uses the Clariion and DMX storage systems and Legato software to form its information lifecycle management system.It has a purchasing agreement called EMC Openscale, which enables it to increase disc capacity at a known cost when required. Wilson said EMC needed to continue to focus on its core storage technology. "With EMC's recent forays down the acquisition route, and their appetite to expand their software portfolio, repositioning themselves as information providers, EMC should not take their eye off their core competency as a primary storage vendor," he said.<BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

Can you square the circle?

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Can you square the circle?. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
IT security can enable a business to improve operational efficiency and give staff flexible access to corporate IT resources. However, there are technical and cultural barriers that must be overcome if a project is to be successfully rolled out across a business where IT security is a major factor.The multi-faceted nature of enterprise security means that any security project must be planned and implemented carefully, as illustrated by the following case studies.How ADP took the Cisco routeADP is one company that has implemented an enterprise-wide security project from the ground up. ADP provides payroll and human resources administration services to other companies, and because it deals with other peoples' information on its own systems, security is particularly important. ADP's project to upgrade its Cisco network and implement "future-proof" secure wireless working was combined with an office move and, unusually, the IT team was given only six weeks to carry out the IT project, including three weeks of planning and three weeks of testing. As part of the project, ADP deployed a fixed Cisco IP network at its new UK headquarters in Chertsey, with several layers of security. ADP uses Cisco Security Agent to analyse network behaviour and protect the company's servers against breaches from worms and viruses, rather than using an updated database of threats. ADP also incorporated Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) technology. NAC is embedded in the Cisco networking infrastructure, and enforces security policy compliance on all devices that try to access network resources. The system can ensure that remote workers who are trying to access the network are authentic. NAC is built on two core products. The first is an NAC server security appliance, based on Cisco's Clean Access product line. This acts as a network watchman, only allowing network access to compliant and trusted endpoint devices, such as PCs, servers, and PDAs, and restricting the access of noncompliant devices. The second product is the NAC Framework, which communicates with anti-virus and other security and management software from about 75 suppliers, providing an "intelligent network infrastructure" that can deal with security threats in a coordinated way. The NAC technology is particularly effective in protecting remote workers' laptops, said Mike Smith, technical support manager at ADP, and is used in combination with Cisco Trust Agent - client software that is a core component of NAC. "We like the idea that NAC, or Cisco Trust Agent, checks the laptop and says, 'Are your anti-virus and patch levels up to date? Yes or no?' and puts you in our mediation area while it does this. It gives us safety around our laptops."The wireless system allows laptops to connect to the network using Cisco's Secure Wireless Blueprint, an IT plan that employs Cisco Catalyst switches and the Cisco Trust Agent on each laptop. Wireless users have to enter a password to access the network, which is termed user-base authentication. ADP chose this over machine-based authentication because it brought additional security. ADP also uses Cisco technologies to encrypt all wireless traffic and detect and pinpoint rogue wireless access points in and around the offices. Smith said the firm chose the system mainly for its scalability and the fact it allowed workers to roam between floors and not lose their connection. ADP plans to roll out IP phones within the next 18 months, and the infrastructure will support this. "Our main constraint was time," said Smith. "Whatever solution we picked had to be available and implemented quickly - from signing the contract to going live we only had six weeks," he said. The main technical problems ADP faced concerned older laptops that did not support the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), an authentication framework used to secure wireless networks. It depended on the chipsets the laptops used. "On some we upgraded the wireless cards, on others we used a software client on top. It was mentioned by our partner that we should make sure we did a double and ?triple check, but we had other things to worry about at the time," said Smith. As a result, the IT department had to check and update 150 laptops. However, Smith said the wireless connection was seamless once it was up and running. "The machines take slightly longer to authenticate to the network, about 30 seconds on start-up. The main thing is if you log in too soon, your log-in script does not work, but most staff have got used to this," he said.The main lesson ADP learned, apart from the fact that a secure network project could be completed in just six weeks, was not to skimp on the upfront auditing of the laptops and to make sure they supported the chosen protocol. "That was our main headache - laptops not connecting," said Smith. However, now the secure wired and wireless network is in place, ADP's IT team is able to give visitors to the building guest access to the internet from their laptops by generating a security token. "This is very well perceived by clients," said Smith, who added that visitors cannot gain access to the internal network because it runs on a secure and separate network.Durham's security go-betweenDurham County Council needed to bolster its security for when remote workers accessed applications and information on its intranet. The main driver for implementing new technology was a requirement from its partner, the NHS.The council chose the Netilla Security Platform (NSP) from AEP Networks. This is termed a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) virtual private network (VPN) gateway, and is a hardware server appliance. It acts as a go-between for workers using corporate resources remotely, and the applications. It authenticates users, encrypts the traffic and gives the users only what they require, while limiting their network access. Users can access applications remotely from any web browser, provided they input their user name and password. Keith Hollins, infrastructure support manager at Durham, says, "It allows us to have secure communications between ourselves and external sources. "We have a broad partnership with the NHS. They utilise the system for patient care. One of the prerequisites was that the NHS wanted the connection to be very secure. They wanted to ensure their systems were not vulnerable." The council needed to replace its thin client remote access system, which was struggling due to increased traffic and usage. The way it had been implemented meant it was not very scalable, says Hollins. Of the SSL VPNs available, the NSP came in at ?20,000 including a failover server and a concurrent licence for 50 users. This was priced well against the competition. Hollins was looking for a system with a low cost of ownership, which required very little training to use. It had to use fewer network ports than the previous system, so it could be more secure. The NSP only needs one port open, over a private network rather than the internet, which means it is even more secure. "While open source solutions were available, the time required to deliver a solution was not, as we were under pressure to deliver immediately. We needed something that was proven and easy to implement," says Hollins.Durham went live in December 2005 with the NSP, which was set up by systems integrator Enforce Technology. The secure access system was configured to give workers access to Lotus Notes e-mail and the intranet, which is hosted on a Lotus Domino server. It also gives some health professionals access to information via two applications: an Oracle database query tool called Discovery, and the Oracle-based social services information database (SSID). These two social care systems are used in-house for delivering adult and children services.One of the challenges was getting the browser access to SSID to work. "We had found that the SSID solution was not straightforward to deliver to remote devices, and this was a challenge that needed to be overcome," says Hollins.The SSID application was based on Oracle Forms. Durham's IT team wrote a Sun Java applet to replace the Oracle JInitiator code on the browser. JInitiator enables end-users to run Oracle Developer Server applications directly from Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. "When problems arose with the SSID solution, time could have been spent analysing the ports and types of communications that were preventing it from working using the solution's native version of Java, but we had to come up with something fast. Changing the solution to use Sun Java enabled the application to work fine," says Hollins. However, not having to pre-install client software at the browser meant that workers could get instant connectivity, enabling the council to meet its project deadline.Durham's criteria was whether end-users would find the secure remote access system easy to use, says Hollins, and fortunately, they did. When users log on via their browsers and input their name and password, they are then faced with just two icons for the applications they require. "We have users in the NHS and the council who have little time to spare for learning new systems. Therefore the solution had to be intuitive and easy to use to ensure we got immediate buy-in from those users," says Hollins. "We provide services to organisations that are responsible for the public's health and safety and we require safeguards in place should the worst happen. However, even with the growing number of users there has been no performance degradation and the solution has proved reliable and stable."<BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
Schools supplier looks to boost CRM with Sage. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Lindsay [email protected] & Chemical Supplies has rolled out Sage 1000 to improve its customer service and inventory management. Although Microsoft and SAP are increasingly offering accounting software for smaller businesses, Scientific & Chemical Supplies, which sells science equipment to schools and colleges, said it chose to remain with Sage because it liked the product interface.Philip Palser, operations director at Scientific & Chemical Supplies, said the company was wary of installing potentially expensive, complex systems. "We are a ?12m company and we have not got buckets of money," he said.Sage 1000 provides an integrated sales and stock management system. Previously these functions were managed by separate systems. "There is a lot more transparency in the information provided to sales forces - in terms of customer history - and a lot more information for customer service staff, which sales reps can see," Palser said."Purely in financial terms, reduced support costs mean the pay-back time for the product will be about two and a half years. Further down the road we want to get more value from it." Because the Sage 1000 interface lets sales staff compare their performance against that of their colleagues, it can be used to improve output across the team, Palser said. Scientific & Chemical Supplies also wanted to allow customers to manage their own accounts with the web features of the product, he said. Sage 1000 was launched in April. According to Sage, it aims to combine the benefits of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management into a single, integrated product.<BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

SAP expands governance products

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SAP expands governance products. Check it out:
(Computer Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Antony [email protected] is expanding its range of products designed to help enterprises manage governance, risk and compliance. The enterprise software provider is adding three products to its governance, risk and compliance offering: SAP GRC Repository, SAP GRC Process Control and SAP GRC Risk Management. SAP GRC Repository will document and maintain governance, risk and compliance information in a single central system of record, including corporate policies, board of director minutes, regulations, compliance and control frameworks, as well as key business processes. The product will also store and link risk and control libraries to multiple control frameworks and international regulations. This centralisation of key governance, risk and compliance information simplifies risk management, promotes business transparency and cuts the costs associated with governance, risk and compliance initiatives, said SAP.SAP GRC Repository and SAP GRC Process Control will be generally available on 30 November. SAP GRC Risk Management will be introduced in December 2006. All three products will be sold individually. <BR>



Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
Avion Group extends offer for Atlas Cold Storage. Check it out:
(Nordic Business Report Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Icelandic investment company Avion Group's offer to acquire all of the outstanding trust units of Atlas Cold Storage Income Trust will be extended to 6 October, Avion announced on Thursday (21 September).



The offer was due to expire on Friday (22 September). The offer was originally announced on 3 August 2006 and was mailed to Atlas unit holders on 17 August 2006.

The terms of the offer remain unchanged.

Avion Group's offer is for CAD7 per Atlas share in cash, valuing the company at CAD574m (enterprise value).

One Canadian dollar (CAD) is worth approximately 0.47 British pounds (GBP).

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Finishing cattle a 'tricky' business. Check it out:
(Farmers Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Higher beef prices may be tempting some beef finishers to cash in and sell early, but Martin Howlett is hoping to maximise the potential of his cattle by holding on that little bit longer.

And, with such a dry summer, it is proving tricky to predict fat class, so the finishing period has become a balancing act between feeding and accurate selling.

"At the recent South West Beef and Growing Cattle event, the cattle entered in the hoof-and-hook competition looked fat, but came in at just class one and two. According to the abattoirs it has been a common problem all autumn - so we're going to hold back and be cautious not to sell too early."



Mr Howlett is already feeding 2kg of cake per head daily, but may increase that to 2.5-3kg, alongside some big-bale silage to balance the poor quality autumn flush. "Our own round bales are not ready to use yet so we're going to try to buy some in - but people are reluctant to part with silage in September after the season we've had."

Mr Howlett has got 72 fat cattle to sell this autumn, with the first group picked to go to Jaspers abattoir at Treburley this week. As well as the Continental-cross steers, he has 48 Welsh Blacks, which tend to take slightly longer to finish, causing another problem.

"Ideally they will finish at around 30 months, but they do need a month or two's leeway to reach their target weights. We are still being faced with a 100 discount if we allow them to go over age, which is a big knock. It is ludicrous to be in this position despite the over-30-month scheme having been scrapped."

Mr Howlett plans to carry slightly more cattle than normal through the winter, with 150 12-18-month-old stores on the home farm and nearby Kit Hill. He will therefore be buying fewer calves at the autumn sales - particularly if prices are too high.

"EBLEX says we need to be paying no more than 120p/kg liveweight for Continental cross sucked calf steers on average, and selling finished cattle at an average of 226p/kg deadweight if we are to break even. We are some way off that deadweight price. We need to buy 75 calves but if the steers are too dear then we'll get heifers instead - they have a smaller carcass but should be cheaper and finish quicker."

Another investment is a new hard standing feed area and corral in the 8ha (20-acre) over-wintering field. "We got a 1000 grant from the Farm Environment Link Project to meet cross-compliance requirements on poaching. But I've also put in a corral to handle the fattening cattle over the summer, which should make life a lot easier."

Meanwhile, Mr Howlett has bought another 80 big square bales of wheat straw off a neighbouring farmer to see the cattle over the winter. "It works out at 36-40/t ex-field - cheaper than the loads we brought in from up country, but the quality won't be as good."

The second-cut silage has also come in, averaging about 15.8t/ha (6.4t/acre) "It's not a fantastic yield but we are pleased with it under the circumstances."

Meanwhile, the White Star stubble turnips are growing well and will provide forage for the fattening hoggets in October and November. This year Mr Howlett has reduced his sheep flock to 240, down from almost 400 at one point. "Sheep are always a secondary enterprise and the more we have the more grass they eat. In a summer, like the one we've just had, we need all our grass for the cattle."

However, at the recent National Sheep Association sale at Exeter he did invest in three Suffolk rams to improve the quality of the flock. "They averaged 252gns which is 50-60gns down on last year. People just seemed to have lost confidence in the trade - in contrast to the cautious optimism now finally returning to the beef sector."

[email protected]

<E051> Deer Park Farm, Luckett, Cornwall is a 113ha (280-acre) beef, sheep and arable family partnership run by Martin and Geoff Howlett. A further 61ha (150 acres) of rough grazing is rented.

<E051> The land is grade 3 peaty soil overlying shillett, running up to 500ft

<E051> Beef is the mainstay, with 150 head fattened each

year. There is a small 32-cow suckler herd

<E051> Welsh Black and Highland cattle are fattened

for a local butcher; numbers are set to increase,

replacing Continental crosses

<E051> The farm also supports 240 Continental cross

ewes - a Suffolk tup is used to produce fat lambs,

a Texel for replacements

<E051> About a third of the grass is permanent, the rest

five-year leys. 20ha (50 acres) of arable crops,

mainly winter barley, are grown for feed

<E051> A holiday cottage complex and a tipi green

holiday enterprise tap the tourist market

<E051> The farm relies on family labour

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
So you want to...convert to organic dairying?. Check it out:
(Farmers Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
What is the market for organic milk?

Good. UK organic liquid milk sales are booming and are forecast by the Soil Association to grow 25% a year for the foreseeable future. Supplies are short and some processors are importing organic milk to keep up.

In just 10 years since 1995/96, organic milk production has grown from 7m litres to 300m litres a year. Sales were boosted in 2005 by research findings showing that organic milk had potential human health benefits over conventional milk and through promotion by producers, processors and retailers.



This upturn in sales led enquiries from farmers about conversion to pick up in October last year. Once SFP entitlements were established and following the announcement of the Organic Entry Level Scheme, people began to be able to plan their businesses, says Pete Douglas of the Soil Association.

In mid September this year in a tight market, the ex-farm organic milk price is 24-25p/litre on a rolling 12-month basis and looks like reaching 27-28p/litre by the end of the year on the same basis.

However it was only a few years ago that a five-fold increase in supply over two years (2001/02) meant that the market was flooded with organic milk, much of which had to be sold at conventional prices.

This time, things are different, say advisers and processors. The market is already much larger, it is better established and they think that the forecast increase in demand is reliable. Nevertheless, all preach caution to those considering conversion, emphasising that they must seek commitment from a buyer before undertaking the conversion process.

And producers must be sure that the profitability of the changed systems does not depend entirely on premiums.

New conversions must be planned against the background of a finely balanced market, says the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative (OMSCo). More than 60m litres of conversion a year could easily tip supply from balance back to unsustainable over-production, it warns.

OMSCo is the largest and longest-established organic milk co-op. With 300 member farmers, it handles 60% of the UK's organic milk output. Sales and marketing director Richard Hampton is keen to avoid a rush to conversion.

"Organic milk has moved from 2% to 3% of the market, so it's not as if it's heading for maturity. There is certainly a long term future."

There are currently 75m litres in conversion, 45m litres of which started the process this year. Producers of a further 60m litres are said to be currently considering conversion.

Where do I start?

Advice and help is available from the Organic Conversion Information Service (England), including a free visit to assess potential for conversion of a business, followed up by a further visit to look in more detail at management and financial aspects of conversion. These are carried out by the Organic Advisory Service at Elm Farm Organic Research Centre.

An identical service is available to farmers in Wales through OCSI (Wales) although advisory visits are provided through ADAS and the Organic Advisory Service.

The Scottish Agricultural College through its Scottish Organic Farming Service provides a telephone helpline, free telephone advice, farm walks, market information and demonstration farms. It also funds up to 300 or 50% of the cost of producing an organic conversion plan.

A free Organic Conversion Information Service is available to producers in Northern Ireland through the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Conversion can be achieved on a stepped basis but most advisers advocate a whole farm approach.

How long does it take to become organic?

It takes two years for full conversion of land and nine months for dairy cows to be converted. It is possible to convert stock and land at the same time, so that from day one of the land being fully organic, stock and therefore milk production is also organic. To achieve this, organic veterinary management must start nine months before the intended day of organic milk production and cows have to be fed to organic standards for six months before organic milk production can begin.

What are the main rules and regs?

<E051> Organic standards require the use of renewable natural resources including muck, legumes and fodder crops and pasture systems to build and maintain fertility.

<E051> Each converting holding must draw up a detailed Livestock Management Plan covering health management, feeding regime, housing, transport and a clean grazing programme.

<E051> Conventional NPK fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are not allowed but some naturally occurring mineral fertilisers may be used to correct identified deficiencies.

<E051> Cow diets must be at least 60% forage. Currently, up to 5% feed from non-organic sources is allowed where ingredients are not available in organic form, but this is for a limited range of feed ingredients. From December 2007, ruminant diets will have to be 100% organic. At least 50% of the diet must be produced on the holding or in co-operation with other organic producers.

<E051> Mineral supplements are permitted where a deficiency is identified and antibiotics and other conventional veterinary medicines are permitted as a treatment for individual animals with clinical symptoms. However, withdrawal periods are up to three times longer than in conventional production. Homeopathic remedies are permitted.

<E051> Stocking rates are limited by nitrogen being restricted to 170kg/N/ha (69kg/acre) a year.

<E051> Units which are wholly organic are exempt from set-aside requirements.

<E051> For details see: www.defra.gov.uk/farm/organic/standards/pdf/compendium-sept 06.pdf

How often will I be inspected?

Most inspection bodies visit registered holdings once a year by appointment. Where action is required, there may be a follow-up visit. Some unannounced visits are also carried out.

There are 10 approved UK certification bodies, some of which operate to stricter-than-minimum standards. Most charge from 400 a year upwards for registration and inspection. Generally, the larger the holding or the more complex the mix of enterprises, the higher the charge although the Soil Association charges on certified area alone. Some bodies have special rates for small-scale farmers and young farmers.

What are the main challenges and pitfalls?

Everyone in this sector stresses that securing a market for your milk and other products is essential before going into conversion. Many buyers are willing to give this commitment. For example, OMSCo is offering contracts beyond 2010.

Co-ops and processors are willing to commit forward with contracts for organic milk because knowing who is coming through conversion helps them to plan their businesses.

Aside from this, one of the main challenges is to produce enough high quality forage and to balance forage production with grazing requirements to maintain milk yields, especially in a dry summer like the past one, says Mr Douglas. At about 250/t, organic cake is an expensive emergency purchase.

Some producers have a problem where land holdings are split. Ideally the whole farm should be converted, but landowners will not always give permission.

"It's very rare that a farm is not suitable for conversion, but sometimes the enterprise mix is not suitable," says Mr Douglas. However, he and others warn that organic is not a low cost, easy option.

If you're not on top of things as a conventional dairy producer, you're unlikely to succeed in the organic sector, warn advisors. You have to change your approach and plan in the longer term to ensure the fundamentals of organic farming are taken care of, in particular fertility building and prevention of disease rather than relying on medication as a cure. Attention to technical and business detail is perhaps even more important than in the conventional sector.

Many producers try to make the change not only from conventional to organic production, but to introduce other new enterprises or diversifications at the same time and this can be risky, warn advisors. New ventures drain time, energy and money from the business when all eyes need to be on managing the process of conversion. They can also cloud the picture financially, making it difficult to assess progress.

While he is glad to see organic milk price premiums at a more healthy level, NFU dairy board chairman Gwyn Jones warns those considering converting not to overlook the fact that other countries, such as Denmark, can produce organic milk cheaper than UK producers and that this is a potential threat. However transport costs of up to 7p/litre mean that imports cost at least 35p/litre to land in the UK.

Typical organic dairy output ranges from 5000 to 8000 litres, of which 3500-4500 will be from forage, says OMSCo. Forage yields are up to 10t DM/ha a year (4t/acre) from white clover leys and up to 14t DM/ha a year (5.7t/acre) from red clover and lucerne leys, while stocking rates are generally between 1.5 and 2 cows/ha (0.6-0.8 cows/acre).

The high forage input required for organic production means that late winter shortages will continue to be a problem for the industry unless milk buyers offer better prices for milk at this time of year, says the Soil Association

Tenants need to study their tenancy agreement carefully when considering organic conversion, warns George Dunn of the Tenant Farmers' Association.

This may contain a general restriction preventing organic farming, or a restriction on applying for grant schemes such as conversion grants.

"If may be indirect problems such as the tenant having to take in sewage sludge (water company tenancies) which would cause problems in converting."

"If you are clear that there is nothing in the tenancy agreement then you may still need to speak to the landlord if you have a FBT with only a few years left to run. You do not want to be investing money in turning organic if you will have to give the farm up in a few years' time. The same will apply if the landlord is considering development on the land and therefore may be looking to serve a notice to quit."

There may be higher compensation available at the end of the lease for organic farming, he says.

What return can I expect?

Organic dairy producers have stocking rates around 10% lower than their conventional counterparts, and yields are also lower

to roughly the same degree. At current costs they need a milk price of 28-29p/litre, says OMSCo. Getting supply and demand in balance will be crucial in achieving sustainable returns, warns OMSCo's Huw Bowles.

The organic farming schemes only partly compensate for conversion costs, particularly where there is no access to premium prices, warns Dr Nic Lampkin, senior lecturer at the Institute of Rural Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth.

The seventh edition of his Organic Farm Management Handbook, an essential tool for all organic and potential organic producers, has just been published.

Budgets in the handbook show a projected gross margin for a typical 106-cow, 100ha (250-acre) specialist dairy farm in 2007 of 1146/ha (464/acre) - a whole farm equivalent of 114,564. This is a 22,500 improvement on 2004, but 27,500 less than 2001 illustrating the rollercoaster nature of recent organic milk history.

"The financial implications, in particular cash flow during the transition phase, also need to be considered. A full conversion plan should therefore involve analysis of both financial and physical aspects of the whole farm business."

The farm system should also be designed so that it can withstand shocks such as disease or drought.

"Most producers will face yield and stocking rate reductions during the conversion period but once they get on top of forage management and clover yields rise, they can get back to conventional milk yields within four to five years, says Mr Bowles.

What financial support is available?

Each UK region has a different method of supporting organic producers during and after conversion.

In England, Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) pays 60/ha (24/acre) in each of the five years of the agreement plus 175/ha (71/acre) on "improved" land in years one and two while in conversion if the producer meets the points requirements for OELS.

Wales also supports organic conversion for five years, paying 175/ha (71/acre) for grassland (and AAP ineligible land) in the first year, 105/ha (42.50/acre) in year two, 40/ha (16/acre) in year three, then 35/ha (14/acre) in years three and four.

Lower rates apply for unenclosed land and grazed woodlands. AAP land and land in permanent crops attracts 225/ha (91/acre) in year one, 135/ha (56/acre) in year two, 50/ha (20/acre) and 35/ha (14/acre) in years four and five.

Smaller lump sums up to a total of 600 are available to help with training, advice and certification. The payments can be combined with Tir Cynnal, the Welsh equivalent of entry/higher level stewardship giving a similar level of support through the first five years as in England.

Scotland's Organic Aid Scheme also distinguishes more heavily between arable and grassland, paying 220/ha (89/acre) in years one and two for arable land and 60/ha (24/acre) for three years thereafter. Improved grassland attracts 120/ha (49/acre) for the first two years and 60/ha (24/acre) for years three to five. Other lower payments apply for rough and unimproved grassland. Support for arable, fruit, vegetable and improved grassland in Scotland is subject to an upper limit of 300ha (741 acres) while there is a total ceiling of 1000ha (2471 acres). Scotland also has a capital grant scheme specific to organic conversion but it is discretionary unlike in other parts of the UK.

In Northern Ireland, the Organic Farming Scheme has similar land categories to those of Scotland and Wales. Also using front-loaded payments, it offers a total over five years of 450/ha (182/acre) for AAP land and permanent crop land, 350/ha (142/acre) over five years for ineligible (ie non AAP) land and grassland, and 50/ha (20/acre) across five years for unenclosed land and grazed woodland.

Case study

Coombe Farms

crewkerne, somerset

<E051> "Convert yourself first before you start converting the farm. It's about the philosophy, not just the numbers," says Andy King, who has seen several dairy units through conversion for Coombe Farms, part of the A H Warren Trust, based near Crewkerne, Somerset.

The most recent is Greencoombe Farm, Winsham, which supplies milk to Waitrose for its own-brand liquid milk sales.

Making sure you have a buyer is another essential first step, even before conversion begins, recommends Mr King. You also need to understand what part of the market that buyer will be supplying.

"There is no blueprint. You've got to really think across the whole farm and plan what the farm will be doing for the next five to 10 years and how everything will fit together.

You are likely to be running an eight year rotation. The first wheat crop following red clover (at the end of year 3 or 4, will tell you whether you're on the right track, says Mr King.

He is worried that some consultants may be advising producers to go down the organic route as a soft option. "A farmer who could improve his conventional dairy herd performance would not necessarily make a good organic farmer. Even greater attention to detail is needed to manage an organic unit properly.

"You have to be prepared to think about cropping slightly differently. We're working to minimise the impact of pests, diseases and weeds. For example, we've got an area of grass which has a dock problem - we've put in stubble turnips to either give us something to graze or to go in as green manure to help us cultivate out a problem."

Mr King advises anyone going into conversion to invest in reseeding as much and as quickly as possible, the year before conversion if possible. His other tips include:

<E051> Make sure you have a buyer who is committed to promoting organic dairy produce

<E051> Don't underestimate the value of clover in building and maintaining fertility - it might not look much at the end of its first summer, but the second year will see it come back

<E051> Be prepared for a big yield drop - yields among the Coombe Farms herds were averaging about 9000 litres a cow before going organic - they now average between 7000 and 8000 litres.

<E051> Beware of seed mixes where clover content is too low - you might need 10-11kg/ha (4-4.5kg/acre) of red or 5-6kg/ha (2-2.5kg/acre) of white in a mix

<E051> Talk to like-minded people who are already organic - you can't go on too many farm walks. Organic farmers are very open about discussing performance and experiences

<E051> Docks and thistles are probably going to be your biggest weed challenges

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
Property boom will simmer off softly, analysts say. Check it out:
(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 19--U.S. homeowners are trying to sell 4.42 million homes, a record inventory that could push prices lower in coming months.

Some economists are going as far as to predict that median home values will decline next year for the first time since the 1930s. A. Gary Shilling, an economist based in Springfield, N.J., predicts home prices nationally will turn negative by year's end and move sharply south in 2007.



Most other economists, however, think the real estate market will come in for a soft landing as it makes a necessary retreat from record-high levels of activity, cushioned by strength in other parts of the economy.

"The best predictor of home sales and housing activity is employment. If the job market remains pretty good, then the demand for property won't fall completely away," said Carl Tannenbaum, an economist with LaSalle Bank in Chicago.

The National Association of Realtors is forecasting that median home prices will rise nearly 3 percent next year. Home prices in Denver continued to rise at an annual pace of 2.7 percent in the second quarter, although the market struggles with a near- record 31,664 unsold homes in August.

Appreciation of home values has begun to slow throughout the Front Range. In Weld County, home-resale prices are actually moving lower. They dropped 0.35 percent in the second quarter compared with a year ago, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

The weakness in the housing market and a slump in commodity prices have made it less likely that the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee will raise interest rates when it meets Wednesday.

"There is no reason to expect anything other than no change in policy at Wednesday's meeting," predicts David Joy, chief market strategist with RiverSource Investments.

A growing number of economists think the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged for a period of time and then to begin reducing rates starting sometime next year.

Goldman Sachs is forecasting that the federal funds rate, a key benchmark for overnight bank loans, will fall to about 4 percent by late next year from its current level of 5.25 percent, said Andrew Tilton, an economist with the firm.

"Housing-market weakness leads to both consumer weakness and labor-market weakness," Tilton said.

Goldman Sachs doesn't forecast that the housing-market weakness will lead to a recession -- defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Shilling and some other economists, however, believe a recession is now unavoidable.

A recession would only worsen home-price declines, Shilling argues. Over the next two years, he said, "we are looking at a 25 percent decline in national median single-family home prices." Consumers have increased their spending 3 percent a year since the last recession ended in the fourth quarter of 2001 -- far ahead of the 1 percent gain in real incomes, Shilling said.

They have had negative savings since the spring of 2005, fueled in large part by the spending down of home equity. Declining home values will cap that practice.

Another hit will come for consumers who took out adjustable-rate mortgages in recent years to stretch their finances. More than $1 trillion in mortgages are expected to adjust to significantly higher payments in 2007.

Those trends could make it only tougher for sellers who need to get out.

Ven Jayaram has tried for a year to sell his home in Highlands Ranch after moving to Florida to take a software job. He even lowered the price from $345,000 to $329,000.

Add in $40,000 in improvements, a $25,000 Japanese garden and the sales commission, and Jayaram estimates he will only break even after nine years of ownership.

"I left it in the hands of the Realtor. They keep telling me the market is slow. They keep asking me to drop my price," he lamented.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
New Horizons Launches MSS And MBA in E-Business. Check it out:
(AllAfrica.com English Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Lagos, Sep 20, 2006 (This Day/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --New Horizons, the world's No. 1 IT training institution, in partnership with EC-Council of the USA has launched 2 new, elitist products: the Masters of Security Science (MSS) and MBA in E-Business.



The event took place at the Federal Palace Hotel amidst great fun-fare.

The guest speaker and Vice Chairman of New Horizons Nigeria, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman told THISDAY that the programmes are designed to fill the huge skill gap arising from Nigeria's adoption of E-Business as a way of life. With E-Business most businesses in Nigeria have become vulnerable to hackers and other cyber-criminals.

The two products are designed for successful professionals who want to become even more successful in their profession. The programmmes will run for a period of 16 months on weekends and evenings with the first batch commencing in November 2006.

Professionals that enroll for the programmes will have the opportunity of learning about Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures, Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, Network Security etc.

Credit facility has also been put in place by a consortium of banks under a project tagged "study today and pay tomorrow"

In his speech, Sulaiman, who also doubles as the Chairman of Accenture, enumerated some key features of "THE NEW WORLD ORDER" which includes Globalization, an American oriented world, a technological driven world, a mobile world, an Asian century, and a security obsessed world. He warned Nigerians not to fold their arms to these new realities but rather see how they can optimally benefit from the new world order.

The seminar was attended by a cross section of Nigerian and foreign professionals from the financial services, oil & gas, telecoms and manufacturing industry.

Copyright 2006 This Day. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
QCSI Named One of the Top Companies in Arizona; Phoenix-Based QCSI Recognized as One of the State's Top 50 Private Companies for 2006. Check it out:
PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- QCSI(R) (Quality Care Solutions, Inc.), a leading provider of advanced information technology and enterprise application software and services for health insurers and benefits administrators, announced today that it was named one of the top 50 private companies in Arizona for 2006. Arizona Corporate Excellence (ACE) Awards are presented each year to the top 50 qualifying companies. Companies are ranked by their annual net sales after eliminating any inter-company sales, and financial information is confirmed by an ACE official.



Recognizing excellence within Arizona's business community since 1995, the purpose of the ACE Awards is to recognize for-profit companies for their contributions to the local economy and their innovative business strategies to maintain growth and establish industry leadership.

Included is a brief list of recent growth achievements that led to QCSI's inclusion in the ACE Award Top 50 Companies List:

-- QCSI is celebrating more than 12 years in business, with over 30% growth in annual revenue over the last four years.

-- QCSI has sales momentum - Over the last 32 months, QCSI averaged one new health plan customer every 46 days.

-- By re-investing 32% of total revenues into its products, QCSI continues to offer its customers comprehensive functionality that meets the changing needs of the market through constant innovation.

"QCSI's achievements and recognitions continue to grow at a tremendous rate, and we are honored to include the 2006 ACE Award in that list," said Dave Engert, President and CEO of QCSI. "Receiving recognition from our home state of Arizona has extra meaning to QCSI. Founded in Phoenix in 1994, we have grown with this city and have a strong connection to our community."

Engert continued, "We believe that the success we have experienced as a company is a result of not only our advanced technologies, but also our employees' dedication to our goal of transforming healthcare technology for healthcare payors."

About QCSI

Cited by a global independent research company as a leader for healthcare claims platforms, claims platforms for consumer-directed health, and claims platforms with integrated medical management, QCSI is empowering companies for "The Next Healthcare Economy, Without Information Boundaries." The company is celebrating more than 12 years of delivering advanced technology enterprise solutions that empower health insurers, benefits administrators, and healthcare consumers to automate healthcare administration, lower the cost of care, and improve outcomes. QCSI's service oriented architecture (SOA) applications give health plans the flexibility to reduce costs, improve customer service, increase profitability, expand market share, and prepare for government regulations, including HIPAA. QCSI's award-winning enterprise applications include the QNXT product family (Medical, Dental, Case Management, Accounts Receivable, View, Connect, and AutoQ), and the Web-based MyHealthBank suite (Transact, Direct, and Finance), proven applications and solutions for the rapidly growing Consumer-Directed Healthcare segment. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, QCSI can be contacted at 888-940-6432 or via e-mail at [email protected]. For more information, visit our website at www.qcsi.com.

QNXT, QMACS, QCSI, AutoQ, LEAP3 and MyHealthBank are trademarks or registered trademarks of QCSI. U.S. Patent No. 6,879,959. Other marks referenced herein are the service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Vivox(TM) to Give Away One Million Free Phone Minutes to Residents of Second Life(TM). Check it out:
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Vivox, a leader in integrated online voice communications, today announced that it will give away one million free phone minutes and distribute group chat "microphones" to residents of Second Life. The Vivox Million Minutes promotion will kickoff October 4, 2006.



Using Vivox's innovative technology, Second Life residents will be able to make voice calls to other residents and make phone calls from any of the Vivox Phone Booths placed in sponsored areas throughout Second Life to any PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) or mobile phone in North America. In addition, residents will be able to go to the Vivox kiosk and receive one of a limited number of Vivox microphones. The Vivox microphones, when placed on property in Second Life, will enable up to five people to have live group voice chat. Partner sponsors include Electric Sheep, Illusion Factory, Languagelab.com, Linden Lab(R), and Uvvy. Second Life is a 560,000+-user 3D virtual world launched by Linden Lab in 2003.

"The line between the virtual and physical worlds is becoming thinner every day. As more complex interactions take place in virtual spaces, better communication is essential," says Rob Seaver, CEO of Vivox. "In an industry first, Vivox and Linden Lab are crossing that line by enabling real-time phone calls from within Second Life, dramatically enriching the online experience for residents."

"The residents of Second Life have always innovated, and the Vivox Phone Booth is a great example of how individuals can dramatically change the world," says Joe Miller, VP of Product Development for Linden Lab. "Live voice communication will add an exciting new dimension to the social structure in-world, and I look forward to seeing how Second Life residents will incorporate the Vivox Phone Booth into their online experience."

For additional information about the Vivox Million Minutes kickoff and its partner sponsors, visit http://www.vivox.com/millionmins.php.

ABOUT VIVOX

Vivox strengthens online communities with an integrated and customized IP communication service that enhances online social interactions. Vivox brings the intelligence and richness of physical world communication to the web, creating more powerful and natural connections. Vivox's innovative communications solution, Precision Studio(TM), is delivered via an enterprise quality managed service and provides the best of IP technology, Instant Messaging (IM), VoIP, video and presence, with a cutting-edge rules engine. This simple-to-integrate and customizable solution helps online communities enhance offerings and generate revenue opportunities.

Vivox and Precision Studio are trademarks of Vivox, Inc. Second Life is a trademark of Linden Lab. Linden Lab is a registered trademark of Linden Lab.
Dell benefits pair of nonprofits. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Dell Inc.'s corporate giving will make a difference for a pair of nonprofit groups in the region.

The Dell Foundation on Tuesday announced its 2006-07 series of Connected Community grants to 25 organizations nationwide. In North Carolina, the Girl Scout Tarheel Triad Council Inc. and N.C. Zoological Society each will receive two-year, $50,000 grants. The Connected Community program focuses on helping underserved children with computer skills and access.



Dell reports that previous grants provided Internet access and computers for preschool and after-school programs and promoted Internet resources for children to do homework.

"I think it's a reflection on the company's values. They show their appreciation by reinvesting in the community," said Kathy Bull, education funding director for the zoo society.

The zoo society will use the grant for its Kids Connect! program. The society will partner with libraries, including the High Point Neal F. Austin Public Library, to provide children access to the Field Trip Earth Web site.

The interactive Web site uses technology to promote understanding of conservation. Children also will make a field trip to the zoo in Asheboro.

The Girl Scouts will use the money for a variety of technology programs for girls, including offering financial assistance to children in need, said Amanda Osborne, director of fund development. The donation from Dell also will allow the Girl Scouts to purchase computer equipment and other supplies, she said.

The Dell Foundation awards the grants in communities across the country where Dell has significant numbers of employees. Dell opened its Winston-Salem manufacturing facility a year ago.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Wood-Armfield liquidation Thursday. Check it out:
(High Point Enterprise (NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--HIGH POINT -- The setback for Wood-Armfield Furniture Co. in bankruptcy could become the gain for hundreds of shoppers this week.

As part of the liquidation of the defunct retailer's assets, a public sale of Wood-Armfield's inventory took place Thursday. "This will generate proceeds to pay creditors," said Christie Myatt, an attorney from Greensboro representing Wood-Armfield and its parent company, Utility Craft Inc.



The creditors' committee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn't have a financial goal for the public sale, Myatt said. But the sale will involve $3 million worth -- estimated at cost -- of inventory, she said. Utility Craft filed its Chapter 11 petition in July in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. When it filed, approximately 1,500 customers had unfulfilled orders.

Wood-Armfield has made progress on orders to customers who were left in limbo when the longtime retailer closed abruptly in early June, Myatt said. "Letters have gone out to the customers, as well as telephone calls," she said. The company is seeking approval from the bankruptcy court to ship products to customers, which could begin in two weeks, she said. "Once we get a court order, we will be able to ship out the inventory we have on hand," Myatt said. Customers and creditors of Utility Craft can check the Web site www.poyners.com for information about the status of the bankruptcy.

The N.C. Attorney General's Office has 70 open complaints from Wood-Armfield customers, said spokeswoman Noelle Talley in Raleigh. The Attorney General's office recommends that customers owed furnishings follow up with the bankruptcy court or the agent handling the liquidation for Wood-Armfield, she said. The High Point Group, a division of the national business consulting firm Gorden Brothers, is the agent for the going-out-of-business sale and distribution of assets. In its bankruptcy petition, Utility Craft listed assets of $3.9 million and liabilities of $11.6 million.

To see more of the High Point Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hpe.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, High Point Enterprise, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Labour unions urge Council to restore democratic rule soon. Check it out:
(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Labour unions yesterday urged the Council for Democratic Reform to restore people's power under a democratic system as soon as possible, according to Sirichai Mai-ngam, the leader of the Egat union.



As a pro-democratic organisation, the labour union did not support the military action, but the previous system did not work, he said.

"The council should restore people's power as soon as possible but it is important that the people should also have strength under the democratic system," he said.

The union also wants the council to ensure that the press has the freedom to provide fair reports, and that people can gather as they wish.

Military authorities have banned gatherings of more than five people and warned the media against spreading "disinformation".

He emphasised that the council should look into measures to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor because the uneven distribution of wealth had led to vote-buying, which was a fundamental problem in Thai politics.

"This situation [the coup] will cause the Thai economy to stagnate in the short term but the country will stabilise in the future. In the past, the benefits rested with a group of people who could not drive the country," he said.

Egat's union issued a statement calling for Egat employees to unite, adding that providing electricity was significant to the country's economic development.

It called off a planned gathering yesterday to mark Thai State Enterprise Day.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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ExecutiveBiz's Web 2.0 Business Conference A Success; ''The New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Business'' Proves Business Strategies Based on Future Technologies. Check it out:
VIENNA, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Early Web 2.0 adopters and visionaries addressed more than 400 Greater Washington business leaders during a highly-successful Web 2.0 applications conference yesterday. The New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Business, presented by ExecutiveBiz (the Greater Washington, DC area's leading executive events organization and weekly digital magazine) showcased strategies from high-level experts. Topics covered by guest speakers included the growth of user content and control, adaptive web technologies that enable new and enhanced user experiences, predictions for winners and losers in the 2.0 space, and how the enterprise must adapt to survive and benefit. The Sept. 20 day-long conference, the first of its kind on the east coast, featured a series of keynotes, panel discussions and presentations for senior executives and IT professionals on the growing relevance of Web 2.0 for business and government.



"Companies like Jobster, Digg and YouTube have demonstrated explosive growth, an indication of Web 2.0's imminent disruptive impact on the business community," said Jim Garrettson, president, ExecutiveBiz. "This session started a new dialogue among the Greater Washington business community and we are so pleased with the turn out that we will be holding this event again next year."

Notable speakers from foremost technology companies and educational institutions, including Harvard University, shared their thoughts on how Web 2.0 technologies, like wiki's, user content generation, mash-ups, Ajax and other rapidly evolving technologies are changing the shape, scope and reach of business models. Special guest Aneesh Chopra, secretary of technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, provided thoughts on building a 21st century economy in all four corners of Virginia and announced a new Web 2.0 initiative for the commonwealth. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, provided perspective from a front-row seat to the next generation of the Web and business; Jason Goldberg, founder & CEO of Jobster discussed the definition of Web 2.0; and Rajen Sheth, enterprise development and management expert for Google took the discussion one step further, defining Business Web 2.0.

"ExecutiveBiz put together an exciting conference with an amazing cast of Web 2.0 visionaries, and it was great to see such a large and diverse group of technical and business leaders interacting to identify the opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0. We were proud to sponsor an event of this caliber, and enjoyed sharing our vision and real-world experiences in applying JackBe's Web 2.0 Ajax and SOA technologies to optimize business activity within the enterprise," said John Crupi, chief technology officer, JackBe, presenter on the panel 'Where is Web 2.0 Taking Business - And Where Will Business Take Web 2.0?'.

Event sponsors included Nexaweb, JackBe, Voxant, Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), SAIC and Verisign.

About ExecutiveBiz

ExecutiveBiz is a weekly digital magazine that covers the Greater Washington, DC business community. ExecutiveBiz was launched in 2002 as the official newsletter of the Potomac Officers Club, Greater Washington's leading business organization for C-level executives. With the dramatic cuts in corporate training budgets and need for straight talking business events, ExecutiveBiz launched an events division to provide peer-to-peer community building and "executive-only" opportunities to network. For more information, visit www.executivebiz.com.
One IP Voice Signs National Distribution Agreement with MicroCorp. Check it out:
EAST HARTFORD, Conn., Sept. 21 -- One IP Voice, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: OIVO.OB) , announced today that its OIPV Corp (OIPV) has entered into Agreement with MicroCorp, a 20-year industry leader and pioneer offering best of class carrier service solutions.



Under the terms of the agreement, MicroCorp will offer One IP Voice hosted VoIP products and services to its North American Distribution channel, which consists of over 1300 independent partners doing business nationwide and abroad. The One IP Voice portfolio of products and services includes: turn-key Hosted IP Centrex and IP trunking services bundled with One IP Net QOS enabled private IP customer access nationwide, long distance calling, on net calling, local area calling, V-911 capabilities, wide area networking, data connectivity and customer premise equipment solutions.

Jean-Marc Stiegemeier, One IP Voice's Chairman, President and CEO, said: "Our agreement with MicroCorp, a leader in providing carrier service solutions in North America for over 20 years, further validates the industry's support of One IP Voice's Go-To-Market strategy. MicroCorp recognizes that One IP Voice's Voice over Intelligent Protocol (VoIP) offering delivers the reliability and quality of service critical to the successful deployment of converged VoIP communications solutions. With this, MicroCorp is confident the One IP Voice solution will greatly enhance the portfolio of products and services they currently provide to their distribution channels.

Both companies see significant opportunity in the forecasted growth of One IP Voice's unique business class VoIP services in the Small to Medium Business (SMB) marketplace. We are very pleased to have MicroCorp representing One IP Voice products and services."

About One IP Voice Inc.
One IP Voice Inc., formerly known as Farmstead Telephone Group, Inc. until it changed its corporate name on July 19, 2006, is a nationwide provider of business telecommunications equipment and IP telephony products and services. Operations are conducted through its two business units: the Farmstead Telephone Group Division and the OIPV Corp Division as further described below. Further information about One IP Voice Inc. may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

Farmstead Telephone Group Division
Farmstead Telephone Group is a Platinum level member of Avaya's BusinessPartner program. Since 1984, Farmstead has been one of the nation's largest full service enterprise telecommunications providers with a comprehensive nationwide systems, services and parts network. Farmstead has garnered many prestigious awards for service, customer satisfaction and growth. Further information about Farmstead may be found at http://www.farmstead.com/

OIPV Corp Division
OIPV Corp, formerly named One IP Voice, Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary, providing Carrier-Based Hosted Voice over Intelligent Protocol (TM) (VoIP) solutions to Small to Medium Businesses nationwide. Further information about OIPV Corp may be found at http://www.oneipvoice.com/

About MicroCorp
Founded in 1986, MicroCorp Inc. is a telecommunications convergence company that provides multi-vendor solutions to business customers nationwide. MicroCorp customers receive best-of-breed Telecom and ASP solutions from industry recognized service providers. MicroCorp solutions and products are distributed nationally via a network of over 1,500 employees, agents, system integrators and VARs. Additional information about MicroCorp can be found at http://www.microcorp.com/

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This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. In addition to historical information, investors should consider carefully the risks associated with an investment in the Company's securities as previously outlined by the Company in its prior filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CONTACT:
Robert G. LaVigne, CFO Scott Eaton, VP Sales
One IP Voice, Inc. MicroCorp, Inc.
Voice: 860-610-6002 Voice: 770-649-1919
Fax: 860-610-6001 Fax: 770-649-1717

Or

Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday
Aurelius Consulting Group, Inc.
407-644-4256
[email protected]
http://www.runonideas.com/

One IP Voice Inc.

CONTACT: Robert G. LaVigne, CFO of One IP Voice, Inc., +1-860-610-6002,or fax: +1-860-610-6001; or Scott Eaton, VP Sales of MicroCorp, Inc., +1-770649-1919, fax: +1-770-649-1717; or Dave Gentry or Sanford Diday, both ofAurelius Consulting Group, Inc., at +1-407-644-4256, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.farmstead.com/http://www.oneipvoice.com/http://www.microcorp.com/
State launches rural effort in Seymour. Check it out:
(The Tribune (Seymour, IN)(KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Referring to the state's new Breaking the Boundaries economic development initiative as a beginning in economic growth for rural communities, Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman kicked off the initiative Wednesday in downtown Seymour.



Skillman said the framework for the initiative came from Rural Indiana Strategy for Excellence: A 2020 Vision for the Indiana Countryside, also known as Rise 2020.

Skillman spoke along with David Terrell of the Office of Rural and Community Affairs and Mayor Bill Graham of Scottsburg, who called both Seymour and Scottsburg role models for other communities for growth and helping small cities and towns prosper.

"Communities need to know the resources available to them at the state level," Skillman said. She said communities now have a "one-stop shop" within the Community of Rural Affairs office.

Referring to Jackson County as "aggressive" in industrial development, Skillman said the program is a blue print for other communities.

Having served as a state senator representing Jackson County for 12 years, Skillman said it was a pleasure to share the news of the initiative with residents here.

"Rural development should not happen by chance, but by choice," Skillman said. She said the initiative will benefit all aspects of rural life, including Internet, health and human services to rural areas.

Skillman said the Rise 2020 program is the first of its kind in the nation and it's going to be a model for many other states.

Skillman said she was aware before she took office as lieutenant governor that the "government alone would not be able to tackle rural issues that impact small cities and towns." She said it is important that the private sector get involved to deal with the issues.

Giving credit to the group behind Rise 2020, Skillman said it was developed by people who know the area the best -- the people who call it home.

She said the program is making available thousands of dollars for communities to support local entrepreneurship and welfare training education. She said funds are also available for water and sewer systems and micro enterprise projects.

Graham said it was an honor to work on the Rise 2020 program.

"The program was developed by people from the communities -- in the trenches that knew the daily chores and tasks," Graham said.

Seymour Mayor Jim Bullard said Seymour plans to participate in the program.

"Seymour is right in the heart of the rural community this program is geared to assist," Bullard said.

Bringing a tourism perspective to Skillman's announcement, Tina Stark, director of Jackson County Visitor Center, said the initiative is not about tourism but an economic base for family, friends and community.

"In general, 2020 is going to help the economics of the smaller communities who don't have the resources," Stark said.

Encouraging others to look toward the future, Stark said it is a new world that needs to be re-evaluated.

Skillman also announced a new state award for outstanding young people in Indiana. She said a new honor -- the Rising Star Award -- will be given to a Hoosier student from kindergarten through high school.

She said winners will be contributors in making their community grow and prosper and those actively engaged in their community.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Seymour, Ind.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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Intraware Schedules Conference Call and Webcast to Discuss Fiscal Second Quarter 2007 Financial Results. Check it out:
ORINDA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Intraware, Inc. (Nasdaq:ITRA), the leading provider of electronic software and license delivery and management solutions, today announced that it will report its fiscal second quarter 2007 financial and operating results after the close of regular trading on Thursday, October 5, 2006. A teleconference and webcast hosted by Peter Jackson, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Wendy Nieto, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will begin at 5:00 pm Eastern Time the same day.



Those wishing to participate in the live conference call should call 800-479-9001 (international callers dial 719-457-2618) and enter confirmation code 4515643 a few minutes prior to register. A replay of the call will be available starting at 8:00 pm Eastern Time the same day and can be accessed by dialing 719-457-0820 and entering confirmation code 4515643. Those wishing to participate via the Internet should go to http://www.intraware.com.

Like most companies, Intraware will be taking live questions from professional investors but the complete call is open to all interested parties on a listen-only basis. Furthermore, Intraware will answer questions submitted by individual investors at any time prior to the call. Individual investors should send their questions via the "Comments" section of the "Investors" area of the company's website.

About Intraware, Inc.

Intraware, Inc. provides digital services that enable enterprise technology publishers to tie together licensing and software processes into a clean, simple customer experience. The Intraware SubscribeNet service (patent pending) is a Web-based delivery and support solution that enables technology companies to deliver, track and manage the software, licenses and other digital content they distribute to their global customer bases. Intraware's digital delivery and management solutions power business-to-business technology providers including Progress Software Inc., EMC Corporation, Sybase Inc., RSA Security Inc., and McKesson. Intraware is headquartered in Orinda, California and can be reached at 888-446-8729 or http://www.intraware.com.
Open Solutions Inc.(R) and Rosetta Technologies(R) Announce Partnership; Companies Partner to Provide Advanced Software for Printing and Managing IRDs and Image Cash Letters. Check it out:
GLASTONBURY, Conn. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Open Solutions Inc., (NASDAQ: OPEN) a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers across the United States, Canada and international markets, and Rosetta Technologies Corporation, Tampa, Fla., a leader in secure enterprise printing solutions, announced they will partner to provide enhanced software and MICR laser printers for the printing and management of image replacement documents (IRDs) or substitute checks for the new Check 21 initiative.



With the addition of the Rosetta Technologies functionality to Open Solutions' imaging and item processing product mix, banks and credit unions processing items in-house can print cash letter and IRDs--giving Open Solutions' clients the best of either alternative. "This relationship is unique in that Open Solutions is not only going to resell Rosetta Technologies solutions in a traditional value-added reseller capacity, but Open Solutions is already an end-user of our IRDPrint (TM) solutions in their item processing sites," said Rob Hullar, president of Rosetta Technologies. "We believe Open Solutions is a powerful business partner and they have demonstrated a proven ability to leverage this type of relationship to offer the market solutions both as a value-added integrator and as a service provider for its clients who choose to outsource item processing to them."

"Imaging has the power to dramatically reduce operating expenses for community financial institutions," said Mark Ryan, vice president and general manager, Open Solutions Imaged Payment Technologies. "Institutions have to be advanced enough to leverage image solutions to reduce cost, improve quality and service. Yet they have to be flexible enough to process paper, data and images. Open Solutions offers our clients the options they need to clear items - via paper or electronically - no matter what stage of technological evolution an institution may be in."

Mike Nicastro, Open Solutions' SVP and chief marketing officer, said, "Check 21 is changing long-standing operational strategies within our industry. For those clients looking to stay in front of the competition, our products, services and partnerships give them that choice. Our relationship with Rosetta Technologies allows our clients the opportunity to move even further into the electronic payments world. We believe our technology offers community financial institutions the options and the confidence to adopt new strategies and product offerings at their own pace."

About Open Solutions Inc.

Open Solutions Inc. offers a fully featured strategic product platform that integrates core data processing applications built on a single centralized Oracle relational database, with Internet banking, cash management, CRM/business intelligence, financial accounting tools, imaging, digital documents, Check 21, interactive voice response, network services, Web hosting and design, and payment and loan origination solutions. Open Solutions' full suite of products and services allows banks, thrifts, credit unions and financial services providers in the United States and Canada to better compete in today's aggressive financial services marketplace, and expand and tap their trusted financial relationships, client affinity, community presence and personalized service. For more information about Open Solutions, or its financial product line, contact Mickey Goldwasser by email at [email protected], by phone at 860.652.3153 or via fax at 860.652.3156. Visit Open Solutions' Internet site at www.opensolutions.com.

Open Solutions Inc. is a registered trademark of Open Solutions Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright 2006 Open Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.

About Rosetta Technologies

Rosetta Technologies Corporation has been developing MICR printing solutions since the early 1990s. As a total solution leader for enterprise check printing, the Company delivers a full-service product set for business-critical applications such as check printing and secure documents. The Company's offerings include a complete family of MICR laser printers from 37 to 276 IRDs-per-minute engineered by Rosetta Technologies for ANSI compliant MICR output, software packages for electronic document creation, output management and disbursement, post processing equipment, supplies, and electronic document creation services. On the Web: www.rosettatechnologies.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that state Open Solutions Inc.'s or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. All forward looking-statements are only as of the date of this press release and Open Solutions Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause Open Solutions Inc.'s actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For example, if we fail to adapt our products and services to changes in technology or in the marketplace, we could lose existing clients and be unable to attract new business. Factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, without limitation, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors affecting the banking and credit union industry and/or Open Solutions Inc.'s operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors set forth under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Open Solutions' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2006, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Editors Note: The correct usage of the company name, Open Solutions Inc., is either referring to it as Open Solutions Inc. or Open Solutions. Open Solutions no longer uses the acronym of OSI to refer to the company.
Mitsui, Mitsubishi to sell Sakhalin shares to Gazprom. Check it out:
(Yomiuri Shimbun, The (Tokyo) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO _ Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. are selling part of their stakes in Sakhalin Energy, which operates the Sakhalin-2 oil development project, to Russia's state-run gas company Gazprom, according to sources.



Holdings to be sold by Mitsui equal a 3 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy. Mitsui holds 25 percent of the Russian enterprise.

Meanwhile, shareholdings to be sold by Mitsubishi, which has a 20 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy, are equivalent to a 2 percent stake.

The two companies apparently aim to ease pressure from the Russian government, which is trying to bring the country's entire energy industry under its control, and disperse the financial burden for the development program, expected to cost up to 2.3 trillion yen.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which owns a 55 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy, is negotiating with Russia over the possible handover of a 20 percent stake to Gazprom.

If the deals go through, Gazprom will become the second-largest shareholder with a 25 percent stake in the project-operating firm.

Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi jointly set up Sakhalin Energy in 1994, with Mitsui and Mitsubishi investing 25 percent and 20 percent of the firm's capital, respectively.

The Russian government has been pushing for Gazprom to participate in the project, which was launched during the chaotic period following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Russia apparently wanted to sustain interest in the project, which has since been wholly owned by foreign companies, and strengthen its control over it.

In July 2005, Shell, which owns a 55 percent stake, and Gazprom agreed that Shell would hand over about 25 percent of its shareholdings to Gazprom, but the negotiations have stalled since then.

Mitsui and Mitsubishi apparently decided to hand over part of their stakes to Gazprom because they believe the Russian firm's participation in the project would contribute to its stable progress.

Russian Ambassador to Japan Alexander Losyukov admitted Wednesday that negotiations between Russia and Shell were still under way.

___

(c) 2006, The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Visit the Daily Yomiuri Online at http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Copyright 2006 The Yomiuri Shimbun
Con Edison Expands Use of Itron's Customer Care Software Tools; Itron Customer Care Applications Used for New York's Mandatory Hourly Pricing Program. Check it out:
SPOKANE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Itron, Inc. (Nasdaq:ITRI) announced today a purchase of additional licenses for Itron Customer Care software solutions by Con Edison, to meet a new requirement for mandatory day-ahead hourly pricing which was imposed by the New York State Public Service Commission.



Con Edison is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, based in New York City. Already a long-time Itron customer, the utility was looking to leverage its existing infrastructure and expand its software tools to meet the requirement to provide day-ahead hourly pricing. The new policy aims to stimulate a competitive energy market for large commercial and industrial customers by requiring them to take electric service under the utility's day-ahead hourly pricing tariff or consider purchasing power from a third-party energy retailer.

Eileen Egan-Annechino, a manager of marketing and sales for Con Edison, said commercial and industrial energy bills will now be based on hour-by-hour consumption, so that large commercial and industrial customers have the ability to view their energy usage and manage it more proactively. Con Edison expanded Itron's Customer Care software package to include consulting services, analysis, rate modeling and cost analysis. The affected customers include stadiums, large high-rise buildings and hospitals.

"Through the expansion of Itron's Customer Care software, we are able to provide information to our customers, enabling them to respond to mandatory day-ahead hourly pricing." said Egan-Annechino. "Itron helped us develop the appropriate rates for use and the Customer Care software is able to calculate and compare the various energy components of the bill. This will better reflect the cost of energy in our state."

Philip Mezey, senior vice president for Itron software solutions, said Itron has helped Con Edison identify customers affected by the new energy tariff imposed this year.

"With all the new complexities in rate structures and regulations, it is critical to have a partner that understands the market and the needs of utilities serving large C&I customers," said Mezey. "As the industry leader, we understand the importance of viewing energy usage, curtailing when necessary and managing energy loads. We are happy to work with Con Edison to meet those goals and policies."

About Itron

Itron is a leading technology provider and critical source of knowledge to the global energy and water industries. Nearly 3,000 utilities worldwide rely on Itron's award-winning technology to provide the knowledge they require to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water. Itron creates value for its clients by providing industry-leading solutions for electricity metering; meter data collection; energy information management; demand response; load forecasting, analysis and consulting services; distribution system design and optimization; web-based workforce automation; and enterprise and residential energy management. To know more, start here: www.itron.com

About Con Edison

Con Edison is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with $12 billion in annual revenues and $25 billion in assets. The utility provides electric, gas and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York. For additional financial, operations and customer service information, visit Con Edison's Web site at www.coned.com.
Blue Coat Systems Receives Nasdaq Notification Related to Late Filing of Form 10-Q for Fiscal Quarter Ended July 31, 2006. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 21 -- Blue Coat(R) Systems , a leader in secure content and application delivery, today announced that on September 19, 2006, it received a notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market stating that the Company is not in compliance with Nasdaq's Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14) because the Company has not timely filed its Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006. Blue Coat has previously announced that it is not in compliance with Nasdaq's Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14) because the Company has not timely filed its Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006.



As disclosed in Blue Coat's press releases issued on July 14, 2006 and September 11, 2006, the Company has delayed the filing of its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006 and its Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006 because a committee of independent directors is conducting a review of the Company's historical practices in granting stock options to members of senior management and employees of the Company. The Company is working diligently to complete its review and to file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2006 and its Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2006.

Blue Coat had a hearing before a Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel for continued listing on the Nasdaq Stock Market on September 14, 2006. At the hearing, Blue Coat informed the panel that the Company would be delinquent in the filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 31, 2006. The Company is awaiting the decision of the Listing Qualifications Panel. The Company's securities will remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market pending a decision by the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel.

Other Legal Matters
Several purported shareholder derivative lawsuits concerning the Company's historical stock option granting practices have been filed in California state court and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against certain of the Company's current and former officers and directors; the Company is named as a nominal defendant.

About Blue Coat Systems
Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. Blue Coat's family of appliances and client-based solutions -- deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers -- provide intelligent points of policy-based control enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance between users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 25,000 appliances worldwide and is ranked #1 by IDC in the Secure Content and Application Delivery segment. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or http://www.bluecoat.com/ .

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Statements in this press release about Blue Coat's listing status on the Nasdaq Stock Market and the possible conclusions or determinations to be made by the Board of Directors or the independent committee are forward-looking statements and are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current information and expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in such statements due to various factors, including but not limited to, the inability of the Company to obtain a sufficient extension from Nasdaq to file its Form 10-K and Form 10-Q to avoid delisting; the Company's inability to comply with requirements imposed by Nasdaq for continued listing; additional information or actions resulting from the continued review by the Company's independent committee; the review and audit by the Company's independent auditor of the Company's fiscal 2006 financial statements; as well as other risks more fully described in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2006.

NOTE: All trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Blue Coat Systems

CONTACT: media, Steve Schick +1-408-220-2076, [email protected], or investors, Carla Chun, +1-408-220-2318, [email protected], both of Blue Coat Systems

Web site: http://www.bluecoat.com/
3Com Reports First Quarter Fiscal Year 2007 Results. Check it out:
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 --

Delivers Double Digit Year-over-Year Revenue Growth;

Continues Year-over-Year and Sequential Improvements in Bottom-Line Performance

First Quarter Highlights

-- GAAP loss per share was $0.04 in the first quarter, improved from an $0.11 loss per share in the prior-year quarter; and

-- GAAP revenue for the first quarter was $300 million, a 69 percent increase over the prior-year quarter due primarily to the inclusion of Huawei-3Com results in the current period; and a 16 percent increase over the prior year quarter's non-GAAP pro forma revenue, assuming the consolidation of Huawei-3Com from the beginning of the period.



3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) today reported consolidated financial results for its first quarter-ended September 1, 2006, including a full three months of results from its majority-owned joint-venture Huawei-3Com (H-3C). This quarter marks the first time 3Com results include the impact of adopting FAS 123 (R). 3Com also reports segment results for two operating segments, Secure, Converged Networking (SCN) and H-3C.

Revenue

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was $300 million, a 69 percent increase compared to same period in fiscal 2006. This growth is primarily the result of the inclusion of H-3C revenue in the current period offset, in part, by a decline in revenue from the SCN segment. Compared to non-GAAP pro forma revenue for the prior-year period, which includes the results of H-3C as if consolidated from the beginning of the period, 3Com's revenue grew 16 percent. This increase was principally due to growth in H-3C revenue, offset in part by a decline in the SCN segment.

Gross Profit, Operating Expense and Operating Loss - GAAP Basis

3Com's gross profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was $136 million, or 46 percent of revenue, which is a six percentage point improvement compared to the prior-year quarter, driven primarily by the inclusion of H-3C results in the current period results. First quarter fiscal 2007 operating expenses were $157 million, resulting in an operating loss of $21 million. This compares to a $47 million operating loss in the first quarter of fiscal 2006. The $26 million improvement comprises $14 million due to reduced operating loss in the SCN segment and $12 million of operating income from H-3C's results.

Non-GAAP Operating Loss(1)

The first quarter fiscal 2007 non-GAAP operating loss was $5 million, a $34 million improvement compared to the prior-year quarter's non-GAAP operating loss of $39 million. GAAP operating loss improved less than non-GAAP operating loss due to the inclusion of increased amortization expenses for the H-3C acquisition which are included in GAAP results.

Net Loss and EPS - GAAP basis

The first quarter fiscal 2007 net loss was $14 million, or $0.04 per share, including restructuring, amortization and stock-based compensation expense of $15 million, or $0.04 per share. In the same period of the prior year, the net loss was $42 million, or $0.11 per share, including restructuring, amortization and stock based compensation expense of $8 million, or $0.02 per share(2).

Cash and Short-Term Securities

3Com ended the quarter with $916 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, including the consolidated cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of H-3C, which totaled $197 million. The net increase of $52 million from the balance at the end of the previous quarter is due in large part to the sale of certain non-core assets.

"I am pleased with our overall consolidated results for the quarter, particularly the growth of H-3C and the continued improvements in our expense control for our SCN segment," commented Edgar Masri, 3Com's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our consolidated results for our North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions grew sequentially and our networking, security, voice and services businesses all grew year-over-year. We now must bring a level of consistency to all areas of our business so each group increases sales and profitability."

Conference Call

Management will host a conference call and webcast at 5 p.m. EDT today to discuss quarterly highlights, historical financial results and expectations of future performance. To participate on the call, U.S. and international parties may dial (913) 981-4902. Alternatively, interested parties may listen to the live broadcast of the call over the Internet at 3Com's Investor Relations Web site (www.3com.com/IR) in the Earnings webcast section.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including forward-looking statements regarding our goal to increase sales and profitability. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks relating to: our ability to return to profitability in light of significant historical net losses; our focus on enterprise networking and fluctuating results based on conditions in that market; our ability to respond effectively to increased competition; our ability to compensate for lower sales or cash outlays with cost reductions sufficient to generate positive net income or cash flow; the consequences of expense reduction; our dependence on our joint venture in China (H-3C); H-3C's success; economic, political and social events in China; H-3C's dependence on Huawei; our ability to evolve our financial and managerial control and systems; our ability to consummate and finance a transaction with Huawei to purchase additional interest in H-3C; the consequences of Huawei winning the bidding process, if commenced; our ability to identify and respond to market trends; our ability to hire and retain qualified personnel; our ability to use strategic alliances; the success of our outsourcing strategy; the market acceptance of our products and the inclusion of our technology in industry standards; our reliance on a small number of resellers; distributors reducing inventories of our products; our ability to successfully develop relationships with system integrators, service providers and enterprise VARs; Huawei's minority rights in our H-3C venture; competition with Huawei; the success of acquisitions; our ability to manage our supply chain; the ability of our manufacturing outsourcing strategy to meet cost, quality and performance standards; China's reforms and changing economic environment; uncertainty with respect to China's legal system; possible reduction in Chinese tax benefits; restrictions on H-3C paying dividends; our ability to maintain effective internal controls that include H-3C; currency rate fluctuations; intellectual property rights, enforcement and defense; stock price volatility; and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the SEC, including those discussed in the Company's annual report filed with the SEC on Form 10-K for the year ended June 2, 2006.

3Com Corporation does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking information contained in this release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

References to the financial information included in this press release and the related conference call reflect rounded numbers and should be considered approximate values.

About 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection. 3Com also is the majority owner of Huawei-3Com Co., Ltd. (H-3C), a China-based joint venture formed by 3Com and Huawei in November 2003. H-3C brings innovative and cost-effective product development and manufacturing and a strong footprint in one of the world's most dynamic markets. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

Copyright (C) 2006 3Com Corporation. 3Com and the 3Com logo are registered trademarks and TippingPoint is a trademark of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders.

(1) The non-GAAP operating loss measure used by the company excludes restructuring, amortization, in-process research and development, stock-based compensation expense and, if applicable in the relevant period, unusual items. The required reconciliations and other disclosures are set forth later in this press release in Table D and in the Current Report on Form 8-K furnished to the SEC on the date hereof.

(2) Our results for periods prior to the current period, in which we adopted FAS 123 (R), included stock based compensation expense primarily related to restricted stock amortization and stock-based compensation costs associated with acquisitions.

             3Com Corporation
     Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
        (in thousands, except per share data)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE A
                     Three Months Ended
                 ------------------------------------
                 September 1, June 2,  September 2,
                   2006    2006    2005
                 ------------ --------- -----------
Sales               $  300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
Cost of sales             163,715  143,999   107,570
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Gross profit             136,429  111,277    70,066
Operating expenses:
  Sales and marketing        77,122   69,860    70,118
  Research and development      47,793   32,373    21,197
  General and administrative     20,276   16,571    18,213
  Amortization of intangibles    12,181   9,317    3,862
  In-process research and
  development              -    650      -
  Restructuring charges         (75)   3,426    3,361
                 ----------- --------- -----------
    Total operating expenses   157,297  132,197   116,751
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Operating loss            (20,868)  (20,920)   (46,685)
Gain (loss) on investments, net     2,292   1,063     (414)
Interest and other income, net     14,808   17,621    5,989
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Loss from operations before
income taxes, equity interest
in unconsolidated Huawei - 3Com    
joint venture, and minority
interest of consolidated joint  
venture                (3,768)  (2,236)   (41,110)
Income tax provision          (1,358)  (5,115)    (915)
Equity interest of 3Com in the
income (loss) of unconsolidated
Huawei - 3Com joint venture (1)      -   3,251     (16)
Minority Interest of Huawei in
the income of consolidated
Huawei - 3Com joint venture (2)    (8,942)  (11,074)      -
                 ----------- --------- -----------
Net loss             $  (14,068) $ (15,174) $  (42,041)
                 =========== ========= ===========
Basic and diluted net loss per
share:              $   (0.04) $  (0.04) $   (0.11)
                 =========== ========= ===========
Shares used in computing basic
and diluted per share amounts    391,885  390,245   383,760
(1) Represents 3Com's interest in the Huawei-3Com joint venture for
  the period on and prior to February 1, 2006
(2) Represents Huawei's interest in the Huawei-3Com joint venture for
  the period subsequent to February 1, 2006
             3Com Corporation
        Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE B
                      September 1,   June 2,
                        2006     2006
                      -------------- ----------
ASSETS
Current assets:
 Cash and cash equivalent        $   554,169 $ 501,097
 Short-term investments             361,490   363,250
 Notes Receivable                50,935   63,224
 Accounts receivable, net            120,848   115,120
 Inventories, net                171,366   148,819
 Other current assets              56,970   57,835
                      -------------- ----------
   Total current assets           1,315,778  1,249,345
Property & equipment, net             80,309   89,109
Other assets                    28,929   56,803
Goodwill                     354,259   354,259
Intangibles, net                  99,614   111,845
                      -------------- ----------
   Total assets            $  1,878,889 $1,861,361
                      ============== ==========
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current liabilities:
 Accounts payable            $   148,326 $ 153,245
 Accrued liabilities and other         338,342   318,036
                      -------------- ----------
   Total current liabilities         486,668   471,281
Deferred revenue and long-term obligations     13,299   13,788
Minority Interest of Huawei (a)          182,872   173,930
Stockholders' equity              1,196,050  1,202,362
                      -------------- ----------
   Total liabilities and stockholders'
    equity               $  1,878,889 $1,861,361
                      ============== ==========
(a) Represents Huawei's 49 percent ownership in the H-3C joint-venture
           Additional Financial Data
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE C
Sales by Geography (a)
                     Three Months Ended
                --------------------------------------
                September 1,  June 2,  September 2,
                  2006     2006    2005
North America          $   58,423 $ 57,513 $  68,624
Latin and South America        15,319   18,778    14,117
Europe, Middle East and Africa     69,534   67,485    74,908
Asia Pacific Rim           156,868  111,500    19,987
                ------------- --------- -----------
Total Sales           $   300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
                ============= ========= ===========
(a) SCN segment sales are included in geographic categories based on
  the location of the end customer. H-3C segment sales included in
  the geographic categories are based upon the hub locations of OEM
  partners in the case of OEM sales and the location of
  end-customers in the case of direct customer sales
Sales by Product Category
                     Three Months Ended
                --------------------------------------
                September 1,  June 2,  September 2,
                  2006     2006    2005
                ------------- --------- -----------
Networking           $   244,033 $ 198,838 $  127,054
Security                25,462   24,681    16,876
Voice                 15,949   14,532    15,408
Services                8,351   8,757    7,835
Connectivity Products          6,349   8,468    10,463
                ------------- --------- -----------
Total Sales           $   300,144 $ 255,276 $  177,636
                ============= ========= ===========
             3Com Corporation
       Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Operating Loss
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE D
                     Three Months Ended
                  ----------------------------------
                 September 1, June 2, September 2,
                   2006    2006    2005
                  ----------- -------- -----------
GAAP operating loss        $  (20,868) $(20,920) $  (46,685)
 Restructuring              (75)  3,426    3,361
 Amortization of intangible
 assets                12,181   9,317    3,862
 Stock-based compensation expense
 (a)                  3,287   1,686     635
 In-process research and
 development (b)              -    650      -
                  ----------- -------- -----------
Non-GAAP operating loss      $  (5,475) $ (5,841) $  (38,827)
                  =========== ======== ===========
(a) Stock-based compensation expense is included in the following cost
  and expense categories by period (dollars in millions):
          Cost of sales $    0.3 $   - $     -
       Sales and marketing     1.2    0.3     0.1
     Research and development     1.2    1.1      -
    General and administrative     0.6    0.3     0.5
(b) This charge is the recognition of the estimated value of in-
  process R&D recognized from the H-3C 2 percent majority ownership
  acquisition
             3Com Corporation
             Segment Reporting
              (in thousands)
              (unaudited)
               TABLE E
                    Operating Segments
               ---------------------------------------
                   SCN        H-3C
               ------------------- -------------------
                              For the
                Three   Three   Three   Period
                Months  Months  Months  February
                Ended   Ended   Ended  2, 2006
               September June 2,  June 30,  - March
                1, 2006   2006   2006  31, 2006
               --------- --------- --------- ---------
Revenue            $155,823 $165,808 $169,968 $108,290
Gross profit           56,345  59,840  80,084  51,437
Total sales and marketing,
research and development, and
general and administrative
expenses            85,403  88,601  59,788  30,203
Other operating expenses (2)   3,516   7,016   8,590   6,377
Operating income (loss)     (32,574) (35,777)  11,706  14,857
Net income (loss)        (23,375) (28,919)  18,249  21,568
               -------------------------------------
                     Eliminations
               -------------------------------------
                Three Months    Three Months
                 Ended        Ended
               September 1, 2006   June 2, 2006
               -----------------  ----------------
Revenue             $(25,647)(1)    $(18,822)(1)
Gross profit
Total sales and marketing,
research and development,
and general and
administrative expenses
Other operating expenses (2)
Operating income (loss)
Net income (loss)         (8,942)(3)     (7,823)(3)
(1) Represents eliminations for inter-company revenue during the
  respective periods
(2) Represents restructuring and amortization in all periods presented
  plus in-process research and development included in the H-3C
  operating segment of $650 thousand in the two month period
  presented
(3) Represents minority interest of Huawei in the income of H-3C for
  April, May and June of 2006 for the period ended September 1,
  2006 and February and March 2006 for the period ended June 2,
  2006

Storehouse owner files bankruptcy. Check it out:
(Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 20--Furniture manufacturer and retailer The Rowe Companies has filed for federal bankruptcy protection because of rising expenses and declining sales.

The company, based at McLean in Fairfax County, said operations at its plants and its Storehouse retail stores will continue as usual.

But the company said its long-term plan calls for the sale of its Storehouse chain, which Rowe bought in 1999.

Storehouse operates about 70 stores, including seven in Virginia. Two stores are in the Richmond area -- at Stony Point Fashion Park and in Carytown.

The president of the Atlanta-based retailer is Caroline Hipple, a former Richmonder who had been executive vice president of This End Up.

Rowe listed $93.3 million in debts and $130 million in assets. It had losses in six of the past seven quarters. The company blamed lower-priced competition from Asia and a computer system installed in late 2004 as reasons for the filing.



Rowe implemented a number of cost-saving measures and other initiatives in the past year to turn around the business, the company said in court papers.

"Despite the cost reduction initiatives being undertaken, the manufacturing and retail segments have not to date generated sufficient profits from operations to cover their respective shares of interest expense, corporate overhead and capital expenditures," court papers said.

Gerald Birnbach, Rowe's president and chief executive, said the filing was necessary. "We expect that the restructuring steps we are taking, while difficult, will ensure the future of our enterprise and our people," Birnbach said in a statement.

Trading was halted on the American Stock Exchange. Shares have fallen 82 percent in the past year to 43 cents.

Rowe owes General Electric Capital Corp. about $35 million under a 2006 loan. The company's largest unsecured creditor is Carpenter Co. in Richmond, which is owed $793,000.

To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Nokia, Alcatel in pact [Nokia]

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Nokia, Alcatel in pact [Nokia]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Finland's Nokia Corp. Thursday said it will collaborate with France's Alcatel S.A. to extend business telephony by way of the Nokia Eseries range of business devices.

The Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel, is a Nokia offering designed to integrate Nokia Eseries devices into the Alcatel IP Communication server. The collaboration reaffirms both companies' commitment to mobilizing business communications, Nokia said.



Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel capitalizes on the capabilities of the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise as well as the power of Nokia Eseries, the company said.

With the solution, desk phone functionalities are available to the mobile user. For example, employees manage just one business number, and control where and when and on which device they receive their calls.

Additionally, the benefits of the office phone, such as call conferencing, call back, and dial by name are delivered with the ease of use of Nokia Eseries, within the enterprise environment.

While employees enjoy the freedom to work from any location, enterprises can enjoy the increased accessibility of employees and profit from substantial cost savings.

The IP telephony infrastructure enables companies to take advantage of Alcatel's Least Cost Routing capabilities, significantly reducing international mobile calling charges and providing greater control of overall communication costs.

The solution will be available during the fourth quarter of 2006 through Alcatel and Nokia resellers.

The solution brings added transparency to the company's telephony cost structure by making the billing records easily available, and can help companies identify costly elements in their telephony system. The information provided by the solution can assist a company to plan and build the most efficient telephony system for its business.

"Together with Alcatel, Nokia has a great opportunity to expand the adoption of converged mobility solutions," said Scott Cooper, vice-president, Mobility Solutions, Nokia."While enterprise voice solutions from Nokia are designed to work with leading enterprise communications solutions, the introduction of the new solution that integrates Nokia Eseries with the Alcatel OmniPCX is a significant milestone for us. Alcatel and Nokia are at the forefront in bringing solutions to the mobile marketplace that help overcome the barrier between fixed and mobile communications, thus making business communications more efficient both in and out the office."

"Alcatel and Nokia are teaming up to give both the business and the employee greater flexibility in their daily communications," said Jean-Christophe Giroux, president, Alcatel enterprise solutions division."With a business enabled mobile phone, employees have the freedom to work where it is most productive, while enterprises receive the benefits of predictable and controllable communications costs and enhanced customer service, as callers make immediate contact with the right person. Together, Alcatel and Nokia are delivering on our commitment to mobility and the enterprise."

The new Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel offering is part of the Intellisync Mobile Suite from Nokia. The Nokia business portfolio also features the Nokia Eseries devices which combine attractive and easy-to-use designs that appeal to individual business users with underlying technologies that allow IT departments to effectively manage security settings, corporate applications and data, and software that enable mobile applications such as email, enterprise voice and device management.

Alcatel's OmniPCX Enterprise is an integrated, interactive communications solution that delivers Alcatel's Cellular Extension software to enable Intellisync Call Connect.

Currently, Intellisync Call Connect for Alcatel utilizes the cellular network to connect to a company's PBX infrastructure, and will be enhanced to support both cellular and WiFi networks with dual mode phones in the near future.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
TietoEnator wins O2 deal [TietoEnator]. Check it out:
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Finnish information technology company TietoEnator Oyj Thursday said German telecom operator O2 has chosen it to upgrade its current customer service platform by migrating it to Voice over Internet Protocol.



The company said to further enhance customer service excellence by continued integration of all interaction channels, O2 decided to implement an IP contact center suite tightly integrated into its business applications, and that this will help to lower total cost of ownership, and to improve time-to-market for new products and services.

TietoEnator said as general contractor and system integrator, it is going to develop the new innovative customer services IT solution on the basis of network and contact center applications from Cisco and Genesys.

The company said customers use their O2 products at all times of the day and they expect the customer service to be available to match their working patterns and behaviors, and that this includes allowing O2's customers to establish contacts by every media type and receive the same information in any media at any time.

TietoEnator said all customer contact media, such as telephone, customer self-service, e-mail, fax, SMS, MMS, the Internet and written correspondence, will be supported by the IP contact center solution.

Carsten Wreth, vice president of customer services at O2, said:"With the IP-based contact center, O2 will become more flexible and cost effective in delivering the best customer experience and converting every single customer contact into a business opportunity. We decided to develop this together with TietoEnator because we know them as a trustworthy partner and have great confidence in their quality and timely deliverables."

Michael Graben, vice president, TietoEnator Digital Innovations, said:"We are more than proud to help O2 in this challenging and strategic customer service project based on the most advanced technology one can find nowadays. We have to move the traditional telecommunication network world to the IP world. Furthermore, O2 needs a solution which enables interaction between customers and the whole enterprise, not only the contact center, and including resources such as agents, voice portals, etceteras. And then, of course, we have to align the business logic and the underlying business processes."

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd
Oracle Validates DSI's dcLINK(R) Integration With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12; DSI Maintains Continuous JD Edwards Validation. Check it out:
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Data Systems International (DSI) announced today that Oracle has validated the integration of DSI's dcLINK(R) 5.0 automated data capture solution with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12, making dcLINK the only data capture solution to have maintained continuous integration validation with EnterpriseOne software. The 8.12 validation expands DSI's current offerings of validated data collection solutions for Oracle enterprise software.



"Continuous validation assures our customers that dcLINK adds value to their EnterpriseOne application today and will continue to do so in the future. DSI's long-term commitment to providing a continuously validated solution has made dcLINK the preferred data capture solution for EnterpriseOne," said Matt McGraw, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Data Systems International.

DSI's dcLINK is the most comprehensive automated data capture software solution available for tracking inventory, assets, and time in production, at the warehouse, and in the field. dcLINK enables data collection using RFID, bar code, and mobile applications on a single platform with real-time integration into all Oracle enterprise applications.

Oracle validated the dcLINK integration with EnterpriseOne as part of the Oracle Application Integration Initiative, which ensures standards-based integration between Oracle enterprise applications and partner solutions.

"DSI is committed to Oracle's application validation and professional certification initiatives. Validation assures our customers that dcLINK will integrate seamlessly with Oracle. Our investment in Oracle certifications for our personnel assures our customers that their dcLINK implementation will be supported by experts who understand their entire solution," said McGraw.

About Data Systems International

DSI is a trusted automated data capture expert with nearly three decades of experience serving clients worldwide with industry-leading technology solutions. DSI is an Oracle Certified Partner with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Visit DSI's web site at www.DSIonline.com.
Micrel Incorporated and Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. Settle Patent and Trade Secret Litigation. Check it out:
SAN JOSE, Calif. and LOS GATOS, Calif., Sept. 21 -- Micrel Inc., , an industry leader in analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions, and Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. ("MPS") , an industry leader in analog Power Management, announced today that they have reached a settlement of the patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit brought by Micrel in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The patents and alleged trade secrets were related to semiconductor manufacturing processes and semiconductor design elements.



In the settlement, Micrel licensed U.S. Patent Nos. 5,517,046 and 5,556,796 to MPS. The companies agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims in the litigation with prejudice. Micrel also agreed to release MPS and its chief executive officer Michael Hsing and its chief design engineer Jim Moyer from all claims for any alleged trade secret claims based on any confidential information. In connection with the settlement, MPS agreed to pay $3,000,000 to Micrel.

About Micrel, Inc.
Micrel Inc., is a leading global manufacturer of IC solutions for the worldwide analog, Ethernet and high bandwidth markets. The Company's products include advanced mixed-signal, analog and power semiconductors; high performance communication, clock management, Ethernet switch and physical layer transceiver ICs. Company customers include leading manufacturers of enterprise, consumer, industrial, mobile, telecommunications, automotive, and computer products. Corporation headquarters and state-of-the-art wafer fabrication facilities are located in San Jose, CA with regional sales and support offices and advanced technology design centers situated throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. In addition, the Company maintains an extensive network of distributors and reps worldwide. Web: http://www.micrel.com/ .

About Monolithic Power Systems, Inc.
Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (MPS) develops and markets proprietary, advanced analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. The company combines advanced process technology with its highly experienced analog designers to produce high-performance power management integrated circuits (ICs) for DC to DC converters, LED drivers, Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) backlight controllers, Class D audio amplifiers, and Linear ICs. MPS products are used extensively in computing and network communications products, LCD monitors and TVs, and a wide variety of consumer and portable electronics products. MPS partners with world-class manufacturing organizations to deliver top quality, ultra-compact, high-performance solutions through the most productive, cost- efficient channels. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Los Gatos, California, the company has expanded its global presence with sales offices in Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, and Europe, which operate under MPS International, Ltd.Web: http://www.monolithicpower.com/ .

NOTE: Micrel and the Micrel logo are among the registered trademarks of Micrel, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. Monolithic Power Systems, MPS and the MPS logo are among the registered trademarks of Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries.

Micrel Inc.

CONTACT: Vince Tortolano, Vice President, Legal Counsel of Micrel,+1-408-474-1236, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.monolithicpower.com/
Web site: http://www.micrel.com/
Telecom Expense Management Provider Profile: ProfitLine. Check it out:
ProfitLine, a San Diego, CA-based provider of telecom expense management (TEM) services, recently won a contract with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to manage that organization’s local telecom expenses for all locations and branches, on an outsourced basis.


 
To find out more about the significance of this contract in particular, and the company’s TEM services more broadly, TMCnet spoke with two ProfitLine executives: Rick Valencia, founder and chairman; and Stephen Hundley, president and CEO.
 
About ProfitLine
 
Hundley described ProfitLine as a TEM sourcing and category manager, serving Fortune 1000 companies and big government. The company was founded in 1992 and at first offered only sourcing and contract negotiation services.
 
ProfitLine’s bill management services were launched in the late 1990s, initially using a bootstrap platform. In 2002, after the dotcom bubble burst, ProfitLine received its first round of capital funding from Menlo Ventures. That funding was used to establish My Telco Manager, the Web platform used to power all aspects of ProfitLine’s TEM services.
 
The company went through a second round of funding in 2005, and this time the monies were used to establish a TEM solution for mobile telephone services. Today, all of ProfitLine’s services have been integrated into a comprehensive offering covering wireless and wireline.
 
“We're a BPO [business process outsourcing] company that provides an all-inclusive solution from source to pay across the complete telecom lifecycle,” Hundley said.
 
He added: “Government has become a very big market for us.”
 
Government agencies, Hundley noted, have large telecom bills, encompassing both wireline and wireless services.
 
“All that stuff just begs to be managed,” he said.
 
Complete Lifecycle Management
 
Industry surveys, Hundley noted, often point out that a significant amount of “leakage” occurs between the time a particular telecom service is sourced (ordered) and when it is paid for. Estimates of leakage generally are in the 25 percent range.
 
“There's a big gap between what’s negotiated and what gets billed,” Valencia said. He added that ProfitLine acts a policeman for that gap so it can be shrunk down to zero.
 
Because ProfitLine covers the entire TEM spectrum (sourcing to payment), Hundley said it is possible to truly validate what was sourced services against what is being paid for.
 
The company has dubbed a term to describe this full-lifecycle management: telecom 360. In large part because of its broad spectrum of services, on average last year ProfitLine saved its customers 42 percent on telecom spending.
 
“We see demand increasing for TEM services,” Hundley noted.
 
He added that one of ProfitLine’s differentiators is the large database of business intelligence the company has built from all the transactions it has handled over the years. This intelligence can be used on the front or back end to help clients negotiate better prices for telecom services.
 
The USPS Contract
 
ProfitLine’s recent contact with the USPS is noteworthy because of the client’s scale.
 
“The contact is significant because the Postal Service is such a big agency with lots of locations and lots of spend,” Hundley noted.
 
Valencia added that The USPS is the biggest client, in terms of number of locations, ever to sign up with a TEM provider.
 
ProfitLine and TEM Standards
 
ProfitLine has been involved for several years with Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, an organization promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and information technologies industry, Valencia said.
 
Specifically, ProfitLine is involved in helping to develop and promote electronic data interchange (EDI) standards—methods for computer-to-computer exchange of structured information. Valencia said that the company helped drive standards for wireline telecom data, and now is doing the same for wireless.
 
“The goal is to get the bill into the hands of the enterprise in a format that we can audit and pay quickly,” he noted.
 
Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page.
Workstream Inc. Schedules Fiscal 2007 First Quarter Earnings Report and Conference Call. Check it out:
OTTAWA --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Workstream Inc. (NASDAQ - WSTM), a provider of On-Demand Enterprise Workforce Management software, is scheduled to report its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 on Thursday, September 28, 2006 after the close of the stock market.



Management will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, September 28, 2006. The dial in number to participate in the call is 866-696-5910 for North American participants and 800-8989-6336 for those outside of North America. The instant replay number for the call will be available until October 5, 2006 by calling 800-408-3053 access code 3198565#.

About Workstream Inc.

Workstream provides enterprise workforce management solutions and services that help companies manage the entire employee lifecycle - from recruitment to retirement. Workstream's TalentCenter provides a unified view of all Workstream products and services including Recruitment, Benefits, Performance, Compensation, Development and Transition. Access to TalentCenter is offered on a monthly subscription basis under an on-demand software delivery model to help companies build high performing workforces, while controlling costs. With nine offices across North America, Workstream services customers including Chevron, The Gap, Home Depot, Kaiser Permanente, Motorola, Nordstrom, Samsung, Sony Music Canada, VISA and Wells Fargo. For more information visit www.workstreaminc.com or call toll free 1-866-470-WORK.
LABOR-COLOMBIA: GLOBAL UNION GROUPS PRESS FOR LOCAL ILO OFFICE. Check it out:
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
GENEVA, Sep. 20, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- International labor
associations have publicly expressed their support for the call by
Colombian trade unions to quickly establish a local office of the
International Labor Organization (ILO) in that civil war-torn South
American country.

Janek Kuczkiewicz, director of human and trade union rights at
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU),
announced that organization's support for the nationwide protests
that unions in Colombia are planning for next Tuesday.

"We are determined to step up the pressure" on the Colombian
government and business to make them live up to the commitment
assumed with the ILO, Kuczkiewicz told IPS by telephone from
Brussels, where the ICFTU is based.

The trade unionist was referring to the tripartite agreement
signed June 1 in Geneva, in which the Colombian government and
workers' and employers' representatives agreed to a permanent ILO
office in Colombia.

The local ILO office will be in charge of technical cooperation
to promote decent work and the basic rights of workers and their
representatives, with a particular emphasis on protecting the lives
of trade unionists, trade union freedom, freedom of association and
expression, collective bargaining and free enterprise for
employers.

Kuczkiewicz pointed out that labor rights continue to be
routinely violated in Colombia. A total of 74 trade unionists were
killed in 2005 alone, he said, although the government put the
number at 25. "But there are always discrepancies between the
government's figures and ours," he added.

"The Situation Regarding Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws,"
a report released Wednesday in Geneva by the Colombian Commission
of Jurists (CCJ), also states that attacks against labor-union
organizations continue.

Between January 2003 and December 2005, 271 labor activists were
killed, an average of 90 a year, CCJ representative Andrs Snchez
Thorin told IPS.

These abuses occur in the context of more than four decades of
armed conflict between leftist guerrillas and the military, who
were later joined by the ultra-right-wing paramilitary militias,
which are in the midst of a controversial partial demobilization.

Added to the mix are the drug cartels sustained by demand from
the United States, the world's largest market for illegal drugs.

But besides the violence against trade unionists, there is
"structural anti-trade unionism" on the part of the Colombian
government and business, which deny the rights to strike and to
collective bargaining while carrying out major restructurings and
downsizing that are apparently only motivated by one goal: to curb
trade union activity, said Kuczkiewicz.

That includes the restructuring carried out by the state itself,
through, for example, privatizing the postal system and
subsequently dismissing more than 1,000 public employees, Freddy
Pulencio, with the Unin Sindical Obrera de la Industria del
Petrleo (USO) -- Colombia's oil workers' union -- told IPS.

Then there is the imminent dismantling of the Social Security
Institute, and the public tender of 20 percent of the shares of the
state-run Ecopetrol oil company and 50 percent of the shares of the
Cartagena refinery, Colombia's second-largest, said Pulencio.

The privatization initiatives are among the causes of the strike
planned for the morning of Sept. 26 and the protest marches to be
held that afternoon in Bogot and other large Colombian cities.

Another reason is the workers' opposition to the free trade
treaty that the Colombian government of right-wing President lvaro
Uribe is negotiating with the United States, said Pulencio.

Free trade treaties of this kind substantially impact
agriculture due to the surge in imports of subsidized farm products
from the United States or the European Union, which local producers
cannot compete with, said the trade unionist.

With respect to intellectual property, the free trade agreement
would extend the patent rights of foreign drug companies by an
additional seven years, thus effectively eliminating generic drugs
from the market and driving up pharmaceutical prices three- or
four-fold, said Pulencio.

Besides their support for next Tuesday's strike and protests in
Colombia, the international trade union associations will press the
ILO Administrative Council, which meets Nov. 2-17 in Geneva, to
speed up the designation of a representative in Colombia, said
Kuczkiewicz.

"We are going to demand urgent compliance with last June's
agreement, the appointment of a representative, and the opening of
an office in Colombia," he said. "It has to be headed by someone
of stature, who is worthy of the confidence of the regional and
international communities."

Kuczkiewicz said an office will have to be established in
Colombia, because the representative will not be able to do all the
work on his or her own.

The ICFTU representative also said the office must dedicate
itself to the decent work program that the ILO defines as
"productive work in which rights are protected, which generates an
adequate income, with adequate social protection."

"That is why we are talking about a team," he underlined.

He noted, however, that Colombian trade unionists have
complained that the Uribe administration has expressed on several
occasions its opposition to the opening of an ILO office -- a
position that is shared by most employers.

Colombian trade unionists argue that the resistance put up by
the government and business runs counter to the tripartite
agreement reached in June.

An office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights already operates in Colombia, to oversee the country's
compliance with international human rights conventions and
recommendations.

Kuczkiewicz said that despite complaints from the international
community that the UNHCHR office's observations "could be more
severe," the office at least provides a measure of international
oversight in Colombia.

Copyright 2006 Global Information Network
Capio AB acquires French hospital group. Check it out:
(Nordic Business Report Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Swedish healthcare group Capio AB announced on Thursday (21 September) an agreement to acquire French hospital operator Tonkin Group.

The purchase consideration is based on an enterprise value of EUR146m.

Tonkin Group offers medical, surgical and obstetrical care services through three clinics in Lyon and Villeurbanne. The group has 1,000 employees and 310 self-employed physicians. The annual group turnover is approximately EUR105m.

The acquisition increases Capio's French operations by some 30% and strengthens its position in the Rhone-Alpes region.

"The acquisition of Tonkin is in line with our strategy in France, to actively take part in the consolidation of the French healthcare market through regionally complementary acquisitions," said Ulf Mattsson, CEO of Capio.

One euro (EUR) is worth approximately 0.67 British pounds (GBP).

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

Copyright 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Curtis Elementary principal decision possible tonight. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--BEAUMONT -- Beaumont school trustees will consider a request by Superintendent Carrol Thomas today for a more detailed study of the district's facilities, which could be a first step toward another bond issue.



Trustees also are expected to meet in executive session to consider personnel changes, including naming new principals at Sallie Curtis and Fehl elementary schools.

Earlier this week, Thomas met with the district's building and grounds committee, which included trustees Dr. William Nantz, Terry Williams and Woodrow Reece.

He told the group he planned to ask the full board at tonight's 7:15 p.m. meeting to consider a "Level 2" evaluation by 3D/International, which would provide the district with more detailed information on the facilities. The company had done work that formed the basis of the district's 2002 failed bond package. More than 60 percent of voters struck down that proposal.

And in addition to discussing the principals' positions, trustees will consider contract recommendations for counselors, assistant principals and principals.

Last week, some parents were upset after learning that Sallie Curtis Principal Nancy Loyd was being reassigned.

District officials have remained tightlipped regarding why she is being moved to another position.

District spokeswoman Jolene Ortego said interviews have been under way this week for the Curtis slot.

She said Loyd's new position had not been determined. Fehl Principal Lona Alexander is being replaced because she accepted a position in another district.

[email protected]

(409) 880-0729

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Southeast Texas in brief - September 21, 2006. Check it out:
(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--Public hearing on tax rate planned tonight

Jefferson County residents who want to blow off steam after work today can do so by telling elected officials what they think of the county's proposed tax rate.

A public hearing on Jefferson County's proposed rate of 40 cents per $100 valuation will begin at 6 p.m. today in the commissioners courtroom on the fourth floor of the courthouse, 1149 Pearl St. in downtown Beaumont.

This is the third public hearing on the rate, but the only one in the evening.

The rate is 2.5 cents lower than the existing county tax rate, but 2.2 cents higher than what the county would need to generate the same amount of property tax revenue as last year.

Property taxes help support the county budget, which next year will include raises of 5 percent for all county employees and larger raises for most elected officials.

A separate public hearing on the budget will be at 1:30 p.m. Monday at the same location. Commissioners Court will vote on the tax rate and budget at the Monday meeting.

County gets money for use of Ford Park

Ford Park's use as a base camp for Hurricane Rita relief and a shelter for Hurricane Katrina evacuees last year brought in federal dollars Wednesday.

Jefferson County received almost $1.1 million Wednesday from the General Services Administration, County Auditor Patrick Swain said. The payment included $679,370 for Rita and $381,755.75 for Katrina.

The county still hopes to get more money through the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a damaged sign and parking lot and hurricane-related expenses at the park, Swain said.

Wednesday's payment will help offset cash needs at the county-owned park in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, Swain said.

Park officials already have asked for $474,500 to cover park operations for the first three months of the fiscal year, Swain said. The county is budgeting almost $1.8 million to subsidize the park next fiscal year.

PA police arrest man in lounge burglary

Port Arthur police have arrested a man in connection with a burglary at about 1:15 a.m. in the 5800 block of West Port Arthur Road, according to a news release from the department.

The man was found inside a building after police arrived in response to a burglar alarm at The Place lounge, according to police. It did not appear anything had been taken before officers arrived.

The police department's criminal investigation division is following up on the case.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Chinese Small and Medium Banks' (SMBs') Hesitate To Purchase the Overseas Banking Core and Information Management System Products Due To Their High Prices. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42382) has announced the addition of China Small and Medium Banks' Informationization Trend and Market Opportunities 2005 to their offering.



Chinese Small and Medium Banks' (SMB's) Informationization Hardware.

Overseas hardware manufacturers are leading the market in terms of servers, notebook PCs, memorizers, printers, ATMs and network products such as routers, switches and firewalls.

Domestic hardware manufacturers only hold relatively high market shares in a few fields, such as the PC market and certain network products market.

Platforms and Supportive Software

Highly concentrated: database, middleware, network in break testing products, and network management software. Domestic manufacturers' dominant fields: anti-virus software.

Industrial Application Software

Domestic core banking and information management system products are holding apparent superiorities in the SMB market.

Despite some problems, the overseas manufacturers that entered the Chinese market on a large scale have caused comprehensive impact to the construction of the Chinese banking information system. They have also brought considerable pressure to their Chinese counterparts. An increasing number of foreign banking system providers are seeking opportunities to enter the Chinese market.

Chinese SMBs hesitate to purchase the overseas banking core and information management system products due to their high prices.

Chinese software companies may maintain what superiorities they have by improving their software products and services to meet certain SMBs' demands. However their leading positions will inevitably become weakened.

The Topics covered inside this report include:

1 SMB Informationization Research

2 SMB Informationization Demand Hotspots

3 Form Informationization Project suit for SMB' Service Development

4 SMB' Market Opportunity

5 IT Manufacturers Faced to SMB Analyses

6 Findings and Suggestions

Appendix: Author's Data Acquisition Process and Methodology

1 General Introduction

2 Research Method for Consumer Market

3 Research Method for Different Types of Enterprise Markets

Graph Index

Table Index

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42382
Vontoo Debuts First Permission-Based Voice Messaging System; Veteran entrepreneur John Wechsler named president and COO. Check it out:
INDIANAPOLIS --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Marketers now can add the emotion, enthusiasm and energy of the human voice to their cache of marketing tools with the formation of Vontoo (http://www.vontoo.com), the first permission-based, on-demand voice messaging system. Accessible from any web browser, Vontoo enables organizations of all sizes to create, send and track permission-based voice messages to people who want to hear from them.



Unique to the Vontoo system is the ability for subscribers to hear messages specifically tailored to their interests. Vontoo is the only system that employs dynamic content building, allowing marketers to create messages tailored to particular subscribers based on their preferences and demographics. By comparison, in a traditional "blast" voice messaging system, marketers record one message that is sent to everyone.

Vontoo has customers in a wide array of industries, including retail, entertainment, publishing, consumer services, business-to-business, government and non-profit.

The Blues Ball/Memphis Charitable Foundation is the largest annual ball of its kind in America, with more than 2,500 attending. For the past 12 years, the Blues Ball has celebrated the great musical history of Memphis and its contribution to American music culture while raising more than $1 million for charities. While the ball sells out well in advance of the event each year, event founder and organizer Pat Kerr Tigrett turned to Vontoo to add even more excitement to this spectacular event.

"Imagine getting a phone call from soul artist Isaac Hayes reminding you to get your tickets, or Jerry Lee Lewis shouting 'Great Balls of Fire! Only two more days until the Blues Ball!' Hearing about the Ball in the musicians' voices is electric. With Vontoo, those attending the Blues Ball or showing interest in the event now can receive these calls from the legends of Memphis music," said Pat Kerr Tigrett. Subscribers can sign up to receive calls at http://www.bluesball.org.

Experienced management team; new president named

Vontoo was founded by Bob Compton and Dustin Sapp, entrepreneurs with experience starting and growing successful businesses in both the telecommunications and marketing industries.

Bob Compton, chairman and CEO, has a 25-year career creating, financing and managing new ventures including permission-based on-demand email service provider ExactTarget and enterprise marketing management software provider Aprimo. Dustin Sapp, CTO, was co-founder of NoInk Communications, a provider of handheld and web-based software to simplify the field sales process.

Vontoo recently appointed John Wechsler as president and COO. Wechsler most recently was founder and CEO of Wishoo, Inc., Indianapolis, a provider of brand building and lead generation solutions to the world's top consumer brands through the use of photo, video and custom promotion. Wishoo's clients include American Express, Coca-Cola, Revlon, XM Satellite and many others. The company was acquired in 2003. Prior to founding Wishoo, Wechsler was a founding member of the team that launched beenz.com, an ecurrency firm that raised more than $70 million in venture capital. beenz.com was acquired by Carlson Marketing Group in 2001.

Vontoo also announced the addition of Alan Rivers as director of inside sales. Rivers has had a successful career in sales, more recently as inside sales manager for Performance Assessment Network, Carmel, Ind.

"Not every person has ready access to email, but most have a phone that can receive a Vontoo call," said Vontoo CEO Bob Compton. "Our customers find that their current marketing efforts are enhanced when combined with the personal touch of voice that a Vontoo call provides."

Marketers access the Vontoo solution through any web browser, anytime or any where. Online they can import customer lists, create a library of audio messages, schedule delivery and track results. The solution is entirely Do-IT-Yourself Voice Messaging(TM). The product is so easy to use, no training is needed.

The Vontoo system uses voice over IP technology and can send from one to millions of audio messages to any type of phone.

Vontoo brings the emotion, enthusiasm and energy of the human voice to one-to-one communication. The world's first permission-based, on-demand voice messaging system, Vontoo enables organizations to create, send and track voice messages specifically tailored to the recipient's interests. Vontoo is accessible over an Internet web browser, anytime or anywhere, and can send from one to millions of audio messages to any type of phone. The solution is perfect for customers in the entertainment, business, not-for-profit and political industries and for OEM applications. Vontoo is privately owned and headquartered in Indianapolis. To learn more, go to http://www.vontoo.com.
Time Warner Telecom Announces Pricing and Upsizing of Secondary Common Stock Offering by Principal Stockholders. Check it out:
LITTLETON, Colo., Sept. 21 -- Time Warner Telecom Inc. , a leading provider of managed voice and data networking solutions for businesses, today announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 39,660,598 shares of its Class A common stock to be sold by subsidiaries of Time Warner Inc. and by Advance Telecom Holdings Corporation and Newhouse Telecom Holdings Corporation. The sale of Class A common stock, which will be sold to the public at a price of $17.50 per share, is expected to close on September 26, 2006.



The offering was increased by 12,160,598 shares from the originally announced offering size of 27,500,000 shares. The selling stockholders have granted the underwriters an over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional 3,966,060 shares of Class A common stock. The shares to be sold by the selling stockholders represent 90.9% of the shares of the Company held by them, and if the over-allotment option is exercised in full will represent 100% of the shares of the Company held by them. The Company will not receive any cash proceeds from the sale of the shares in the offering.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Lehman Brothers Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. are joint bookrunning managers. Interested parties may obtain a written prospectus from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10020.

The Company has filed a registration statement on Form S-3 (File No. 333-132504) (including a prospectus) with the SEC for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement, the prospectus supplement for this offering and other documents the Company has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the Company and this offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC Web site at http://www.sec.gov/. Alternatively, the Company, any underwriter or any dealer participating in the offering will arrange to send you the prospectus and related prospectus supplement if you request it by calling toll-free 1-800-503-4611.

About Time Warner Telecom
Time Warner Telecom Inc., headquartered in Littleton, Colo., provides managed network services, specializing in Ethernet and transport data networking, Internet access, local and long distance voice, VoIP and security, to enterprise organizations and communications services companies throughout the U.S. As a leading provider of integrated and converged network solutions, Time Warner Telecom delivers customers overall economic value, quality, service, and improved business productivity. Please visit http://www.twtelecom.com/ for more information.

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts may be considered forward-looking statements as that item is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Many of these risks and uncertainties cannot be predicted with accuracy and some might not even be anticipated. Some of the factors that could significantly impact the forward-looking statements in this press release are discussed in the prospectus supplement for this offering and in our reports filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement is qualified by reference to these risks and factors. These risks and factors are not exclusive, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release. Additional information regarding these and other factors may be contained in the Company's SEC filings, including without limitation, the Company's Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2005. You may obtain the Company's filings for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov/ or by visiting the Company's website at http://www.twtelecom.com/.

Time Warner Telecom Inc.

CONTACT: Investor Relations, Carole Curtin, +1-303-566-1000,[email protected], or Media Relations, Bob Meldrum, +1-303-566-1354,[email protected], both of Time Warner Telecom Inc.

Web site: http://www.twtelecom.com/
HK holds forum to provide platform for local enterprises. Check it out:
(Business Daily Update Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Author: d More than 400 representatives from the local manufacturing and services sectors Wednesday attended the "Growth Leadership Forum" organized by the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Under the theme of "Master of the Game", the event provided a platform for local enterprises to share their successful experiences in spearheading their business growth under today's globalized competition. Forum panelists representing business leaders from various industry sectors shared their views on their strategies in market expansion, corporate financing, branding and cost control. The opening ceremony of the Forum was officiated by Clement Leung, Acting Director-General of Trade and Industry, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, and Stephen Lee, acting executive director of HKPC. Speaking at the opening, Lee said, "According to the 'Corporate Growth Survey' conducted by the SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) Center of HKPC in 2005, the major barriers to the development of local enterprises in the coming three years included: difficulties in market expansion, high production costs, problems related to human resources issues and product development, lack of management capabilities and leadership, and financing." "As the majority of Hong Kong's SME manufacturers are still engaging in low value-adding OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing) mode of operation, they are faced with other challenges, including the rising production costs in the Pearl River Delta, stringent environmental regulations, and intensified competition in the international markets," he said. "Amid these challenges, new business opportunities brought by the lowered entry barriers to the Chinese mainland market under CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement), the globalized economy and the electronic trading platform continue to fuel the growth of local enterprises," Lee added. On HKPC's support for local SMEs in corporate development, Lee said, "Through the provision of one-stop consultancy services, HKPC's SME Center offers enterprises with solutions to tackle business operation problems, facilitating their transformation towards high value-adding ODM (Original Design Manufacturing) and OBM (Original Brand Manufacturing), and assisting them to foray into the international market." At the Forum, panelists representing the legal, banking, finance and accounting services also highlighted their SME-specific services.



Copyright 2006 Business Daily Update Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Hugin Ad hoc announcement according to 15 WpHG: Acquisition: R. STAHL AG: R. STAHL acquires Tranberg AS. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Ad-hoc announcement processed and transmitted by Hugin ASA. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- -------------- A firm foothold in the ship building and LNG industries Waldenburg, 21. September 2006 - R. STAHL AG and the shareholders of Tranberg AS of Stavanger, Norway, have entered into a contract of sale transferring title to the enterprise to R. STAHL Technologies with effect of 1 October 2006. The purchase price remains undisclosed. The Norwegian company develops, manufactures, and distributes lighting and signal systems used in ship building and on helicopter landing decks in addition to producing explosion protected heating and control systems for industrial applications. Tranberg employs 60 persons at its Stavanger site and realised some EUR 1m EBT on 2005 sales of EUR 10m. Thanks to the resulting synergy potential, management expects additional global sales growth in the medium term. The new group member will already make a positive contribution to consolidated earnings this fiscal year. R. STAHL is via its existing subsidiary STAHL-Syberg Norway's leading explosion protection supplier. By this transaction the market position will be considerably expanded. Thanks to Tranberg's outstanding position as shipbuilding supplier, R. STAHL now has immediate access to this burgeoning growth sector. Contact: R. STAHL AG Communication / Investor Relations Judith Schauble Am Bahnhof 30, D-74638 Waldenburg, Germany Phone: +49 (7942) 943-1217, Fax: +49 (7942) 943-1364 E-mail: [email protected] --- End of Ad-hoc Message --- WKN: 725772; ISIN: DE0007257727 ; Index: CDAX, CLASSIC All Share, Prime All Share; Listed: Geregelter Markt in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Gate-M in Borse Stuttgart, Geregelter Markt in Borse Stuttgart, Prime Standard in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Freiverkehr in Bayerische Borse Munchen, Freiverkehr in Borse Berlin Bremen, Freiverkehr in Hanseatische Wertpapierborse zu Hamburg, Freiverkehr in Borse Dusseldorf;



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright

R. STAHL acquires Tranberg AS

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R. STAHL acquires Tranberg AS. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Corporate news announcement processed and transmitted by Hugin ASA. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- -------------- Foothold in the ship building industry secured - Heating systems added to product range Waldenburg, 21. September 2006 - R. STAHL AG and the shareholders of Tranberg AS of Stavanger, Norway have entered into a contract of sale transferring title to the enterprise to R. STAHL Technologies with effect of 1 October 2006 .The purchase price remains undisclosed. The Norwegian company develops, manufactures, and distributes lighting and signal systems used in ship building and on helicopter landing decks in addition to producing explosion protected heating and control systems for industrial applications. Tranberg employs 60 persons at its Stavanger site and realised some EUR 1m EBT on 2005 sales of EUR 10m. Thanks to the resulting synergy potential, management expects additional global sales growth in the medium term. The new group member will already make a positive contribution to consolidated earnings this fiscal year. Tranberg made its market debut in 1901 and has since firmly established itself as a quality supplier to the ship building as well as the oil and gas industries. With the integration into the R. STAHL group, one of the global market leaders in explosion protection, the Norwegian enterprise is now tied into the group's international distribution network. Tranberg is going to be an arm's length subsidiary under its legacy management and will serve as R. STAHL Technologies' centre of competence for ship building and heating technology issues. This takeover is a consistent application of R. STAHL's acquisition strategy to optimise its product range: Thanks to the Tranberg's outstanding competence in ship building business, R. STAHL now has immediate access to this growth sector. The demand for petroleum and LNG tankers is wont to rise owing to the increasing way-to-market in this field. In 2005, R. STAHL entered the booming Korean market. Our activities there will greatly benefit from the assortment extension by Tranberg's renowned high-quality products. In addition the R.STAHL product range will be supplemented by heating technology for the process industry. Founded in 1988, R. STAHL subsidiary STAHL-Syberg is Norway's market leader in explosion protection. The company will remain R. STAHL's centre of competence for the group's petroleum and natural gas activities as well as the chemical sector business in Scandinavia as far as the existing product range is concerned. "This acquisition is a major step forward in our growth strategy. We are quite confident that we can successfully integrate Tranberg into R. STAHL Technologies and quickly realise the expected synergy potential," says Martin Schomaker, CEO of R. STAHL AG. Contact: R. STAHL AG Communication / Investor Relations Judith Schauble Am Bahnhof 30, D-74638 Waldenburg, Germany Phone: +49 (7942) 943-1217, Fax: +49 (7942) 943-1364 E-mail: [email protected] --- End of Message --- WKN: 725772; ISIN: DE0007257727 ; Index: CDAX, CLASSIC All Share, Prime All Share; Listed: Geregelter Markt in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Gate-M in Borse Stuttgart, Geregelter Markt in Borse Stuttgart, Prime Standard in Frankfurter Wertpapierborse, Freiverkehr in Bayerische Borse Munchen, Freiverkehr in Borse Berlin Bremen, Freiverkehr in Hanseatische Wertpapierborse zu Hamburg, Freiverkehr in Borse Dusseldorf;



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
Oracle Crows -- and SAP Fights Back. Check it out:
(BusinessWeek Online Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is famous for outrageous cracks and aggressive taunts. So he was true to form on Sept. 19, when he used the occasion of Oracle's stellar first-quarter results to take potshots at archrival SAP. Faced with such outbursts, the German software giant used to take the high road, but not anymore. For much of the past year, SAP has been honing the art of biting back.



At the earnings event, Ellison declared that Oracle's (ORCL) banner results proved it was stealing market share from SAP (SAP) in the lucrative business of big corporate software suites. What's more, he said, Oracle's gains were forcing SAP to rethink its strategy, defer product launches, and step up acquisitions.

SAP's reply: The comments were a "complete misrepresentation." In a statement, the Walldorf [Germany]-based company said that Oracle was being disingenuous about the timing of its own upcoming products, especially the highly anticipated Fusion suite that will combine the pieces of Oracle's $20 billion acquisition spree into a single software offering. The product isn't anticipated before 2008, and some analysts have predicted it could slip later.

WHOSE VERSION?

So who's telling the truth? No question, Oracle has reason to crow right now [see BusinessWeek.com, 9/20/06, "Oracle Divines a Bright Future"]. It has turned in back-to-back strong quarters and seems to have allayed concerns that its buying binge would cause chaos and widespread customer defections. Oracle's revenues from new licenses soared 45% in the quarter organically, and an eye-popping 80% if you factor in acquisitions. SAP showed just 10% license growth in its most recent quarter.

It's true that SAP continues to hold about 43% market share in business-management software, vs. about 19% for its California-based rival, according to estimates from AMR Research in Boston. Ellison "wants to paint SAP as if it's on the ropes, but it's not," says Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley, Calif. "Oracle's success in two quarters doesn't mean it has won the war."

What of Oracle's claim that SAP is undergoing a "major change in direction"? Poppycock, says SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann. "We have a strategy in place and that will not change."

TWO DIFFERENT BETS.

Both companies are currently moving toward what is called a service-oriented architecture [SOA], which gives customers the flexibility to deploy, and reconfigure, the best pieces of software to meet their needs. That migration, among other things, is at the heart of the latest spat.

In its statement, Oracle alleged that SAP had announced a delay in its next version of SOA applications until 2010 -- two years behind Oracle's planned delivery. SAP countered that it has a product on the market right now, which it's steadily enhancing, and that it doesn't need to offer upgrades until 2010. If anything, says SAP, it's Oracle that has fallen behind schedule on Fusion.

But lurking behind all the talk about SOA are two fundamentally different approaches to software going forward. Oracle has cast its lot with the movement toward open standards and programming languages, such as Sun Microsystems' (SUNW) Java. SAP also knows how to talk the open-standards talk, but realistically, the company depends much more heavily on proprietary products.

"UPS THE PRESSURE."

While Oracle clearly has its work cut out drawing its far-flung acquisitions together in Fusion, SAP may face the tougher challenge. The company has an enormous installed base of complex software programs that typically take years for corporate clients to fully incorporate and utilize. It must persuade these clients of the merit of shifting over to its newer software products.

A month from now, all eyes will be on SAP, when it reports third-quarter earnings. Last quarter was a disappointment. And while SAP hasn't cut its forecast for annual revenue increases of 13% to 15%, the latest Oracle announcement "ups the pressure to deliver," said John Segrich, a software analyst at JPMorgan (JPM) in London.

Copyright 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All rights reserved.
KANA to Host SSPA Webinar on Maintaining the Customer Experience Amidst Rapid eChannel Adoption. Check it out:
MENLO PARK, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- KANA Software Inc. (PinkSheets: KANA.PK), a world leader in multi-channel customer service, today announced that it will co-host a Webinar with the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) on Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. Lead by KANA and SSPA Vice President of Research John Ragsdale, the Webinar will examine the tremendous growth and adoption of eChannels, including email, chat and Web self-service, and outline best practices for meeting this increased demand while maintaining an exemplary customer experience.



Who: Charlie Isaacs, CTO at KANA, and John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research at the SSPA

What: Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Ragsdale will present a live Webinar entitled, "eChannel Domination: Chat, Email and Web Self-Service Drive the Customer Experience." According to SSPA research, eChannels currently constitute 49 percent of all service interactions and are expected to bypass phone volume for the first time by the end of the year. This informative Webinar will outline the various factors and trends driving the explosion of eChannel interactions, while exploring channel usage consistency across technology segments and customer demographics. In addition, the two industry experts will offer timely tips and best practices for leveraging eService technologies to effectively manage this growth without increasing costs or impacting the customer experience.

When: Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. PDT/ 2:00 p.m. EDT

Where: Register at: http://www.kana.com/news.php?pressID=261

About the SSPA

Founded in 1989, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) has grown to become the largest and most influential industry trade group for technology service and support professionals. Its nearly 200 member companies represent tech support, field service and customer relations organizations around the globe. Far from being a staid industry association, the SSPA is chartered with bringing together the service and support community's best and brightest minds to deliver a relevant blend of market research, programs, certifications including prestigious J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service & Support, networking, media and analyst relations, education and other information resources. For more information visit www.thesspa.com.

About KANA

KANA is a world leader in multi-channel customer service. KANA's integrated solutions allow companies to deliver consistent, managed service across all channels, including email, chat, call centers and Web self-service, so customers have the freedom to choose the service they want, how and when they want it. KANA's clients report double-digit increases in customer satisfaction, while reducing call volumes by an average of 20%. KANA's award-winning solutions are proven in more than 600 companies worldwide, including approximately half of the world's largest 100 companies. For more information visit www.kana.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

Information in this release regarding KANA's forecasts, projections, expectations, beliefs, and intentions are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to KANA as of the date of this release, which may likely change, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. These statements include statements about demand for multi-channel customer service solutions, and KANA's growth and success. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: competition in our marketplace, including introductions of new products or services, or reductions in prices, by competitors; risks associated with lack of market acceptance of KANA's products or services; inability to enhance and develop our products and services within budget and on schedule; inability to attract and retain qualified employees, to manage cash and expenditures or to expand sales; inability to manage our business in light of recent personnel reductions; KANA's history of losses; the effect of potential military action and terrorist activities; and slow economic conditions, particularly as they affect spending by our prospective customers on SRM and similar enterprise software products. These and other factors are risks associated with our business that may affect our operating results and are discussed in KANA's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

NOTE: KANA is a registered trademark of KANA Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Press Registration Now Open for Business Intelligence Perspectives Conference Sept. 25-27 in Las Vegas; Industry Leaders and Pundits Will Review Issues and Research Around Corporate Business Intelligence Strategies. Check it out:
--(Business Wire)-- Computerworld Business Intelligence Perspectives 2006

WHAT:  Press Registration now open for journalists and industry
    analysts covering topics to the management of IT business
    intelligence. (http://www.biperspectives.com/)
WHY:   A rare opportunity to gain insight on the way some of the
    world's top companies approach their business intelligence
    (BI) strategies in the enterprise. IT executives will join
    thought leaders, key solution providers, and their peers for
    hard look at how companies should approach business
    intelligence.
    The media services offered by BI include: pre-conference
    access to exhibitor list and information, onsite press
    facilities for writing and meetings.
HOW:   To register as press, please contact Bill Wrinn at 781-404-
    2417 or email request to [email protected].
WHEN:  Press Registration is open until 5 p.m. Sept. 21, 2006. On-
    site registration begins at Noon. Monday, Sept. 25. The
    conference will be held Sept. 25-27.
WHERE:  The conference will take place at the Green Valley Ranch
    Resort in Las Vegas, Nev.
    (http://www.greenvalleyranchresort.com/)



Axentis CEO to Speak at Leading Venture Partnering Symposium. Check it out:
CLEVELAND, Ohio --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Axentis, the leading provider of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) management solutions, today announced that Axentis CEO, Robert Hoyt, will participate in a discussion at the IBM Venture Partnering Symposium on Thursday, September 21.



Hoyt will be joining top-tier venture capital partners from around the world, CEOs from their strategic portfolio companies and IBM's industry business leaders to discuss important market opportunities for partnering. The symposium will focus on several key industries including banking, energy & utilities, government, healthcare & life sciences, media & telecom and retail. Hoyt will speak during the Banking Track Sessions regarding Axentis's company experiences as a compliance software industry leader utilizing the Software-as-a-Service model.

What:  Discussion about Axentis experiences as a compliance software
    industry leader utilizing the Software-as-a-Service model
When:  Session 1: September 21, 2006, from 9:15 AM -11:15 AM (EST)
    Session 2: September 21, 2006, from 11:30 AM -1:30 PM (EST)
Where: IBM's research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, New York
Who:  Robert Hoyt, Axentis CEO



About Axentis

Axentis delivers the only on-demand business performance optimization environment that empowers companies to turn governance, risk and compliance initiatives into better business performance and competitive advantage. With its unique software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Axentis Enterprise (Ae) Suite delivers a one-world view of the entire organization for better risk management, mitigation and compliance. Ae is easy-to-use and can be deployed quickly, delivering immediate impact and a quick return on investment (ROI). Axentis was recently named an industry leader by Forrester Research in its "Government, Risk and Compliance Wave Study(TM)" and a "Cool Vendor" by Gartner, which also recognized Axentis in a report titled, "Adoption of Software-as a-Service Is Happening Outside of CRM. " Current Axentis customers include First Data Corporation, ADT and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Axentis is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with data centers in Bolder, CO and Basel, Switzerland. For more information, please visit http://www.axentis.com.
INGENICA's All-New UniPrint Terminal Server Edition for 64-Bit Makes Enterprise-Class Printing a Cost-Effective Reality for SMBs Working Within a 64-Bit Server-Based Environment. Check it out:
TORONTO --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- UniPrint Terminal Server Edition For 64-Bit Simplifies Printing For SMBs Working Within A 64-Bit Microsoft Terminal Server Environment

INGENICA (www.INGENICA.net), the innovative leader in server-based printing, today announced the release of UniPrint Terminal Server Edition (TSE) 64-bit. Developed and priced to enable small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to combine the advantages of the UniPrint printing technology with the more powerful servers and applications in today's 64-bit server-based computing environments, UniPrint TSE 64-bit makes enterprise-class printing a cost-effective reality for SMBs working within a 64-bit Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) Terminal Server environment.



With UniPrint TSE 64-bit, organizations of any size can now eliminate the time and expense associated with managing printer drivers within the Microsoft Terminal Server environment. The UniPrint universal printer driver technology eliminates the need to install specific manufacturer's printer drivers, and makes it easy to print documents from any hosted application. The result is the elimination of printer driver compatibility issues and related help-desk costs, and simplified printer driver management. Users experience immediate productivity gains by being able to simply print without issue. And with UniPrint, users can print to any available printer - in the office, at home, or at a remote site.

Available for download at http://www.uniprint.net/download.asp, UniPrint TSE 64-bit has been designed to simplify printer driver installation and administration, while simultaneously improving performance. UniPrint TSE 64-bit's all-new functionality includes full Active Directory integration to make it simple to configure UniPrint settings using Group Policy, a new MSI install package to allow for application deployment through Active Directory, a new administrator-friendly management console, improved file compression to further reduce print-related bandwidth utilization, and enhanced email features that can support any SMTP server on the network.

When printing, UniPrint TSE 64-bit creates a Portable Document Format (PDF) print job that is returned to the client workstation via UniPrint's private virtual channel, making it simple for users to print automatically, preview, save, or email print jobs. To ensure data security, if the client device has a network printer defined, print jobs are automatically sent to the default printer.

"TSE 64-bit's affordable price point and market-leading functionality has already proven a hit with SMBs," explained Arron Fu, Vice President, Software Development, INGENICA Division. "UniPrint TSE 64-bit makes it possible for smaller companies to benefit from the enterprise-class printing functionality that has previously only been available to larger organizations," Fu continued. "And with the development of TSE 64-bit, INGENICA now provides a printing solution for today's more demanding computing environments."

UniPrint TSE's universal Portable Document Format increases server stability by eliminating printer driver compatibility issues commonly experienced when running different manufacturers' printers within a multi-user server-based computing environment. Also, as PDF files are significantly smaller than other printing formats, UniPrint TSE 64-bit actually reduces printer bandwidth utilization by over 90 percent - resulting in less work for the server, improved application performance, and faster, more efficient printing.

UniPrint TSE 6.0 64-bit can be downloaded from http://www.uniprint.net/download.asp, or purchased through INGENICA's UniPrint resellers worldwide.

About INGENICA

INGENICA (www.INGENICA.net), a division of Bell Business Solutions, a Bell Canada Company (TSX, NYSE:BCE), provides market-leading printing solutions for the server-based computing community. INGENICA's UniPrint, the complete printing solution for the increasingly-mobile server-based enterprise workforce, replaces all manufacturers' printer drivers with a single PDF generator- promoting faster, more efficient printing that enables organizations to improve both productivity and ROI on their IT investments. For additional information on UniPrint, please visit www.uniprint.net.

UniPrint, UniPrint Terminal Server Edition, Gateway Module 5, and Host Module, are trademarks of Bell Business Solutions. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Sonic Foundry Executive to Present at Noble Financial's Ontrack Investment Conference. Check it out:
MADISON, Wis., Sept. 21 -- Sonic Foundry(R) Inc. , a leader in automated rich media communications technology, today announced that chairman and CEO Rimas Buinevicius will be a featured presenter at the upcoming On Track Investment Conference next week at Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte, North Carolina. Using Sonic Foundry's Mediasite(TM) technology, the company will capture the presentations on behalf of Noble Financial for all companies presenting at the event.



Buinevicius will share insights into how Sonic Foundry is transforming the way organizations communicate and share information through Mediasite. With a strong foothold of customers in higher education, government and corporate marketplaces, Sonic Foundry is quickly garnering national attention as a leading company in the web communications industry.

In just a few years since it was first introduced, Mediasite has set the standard as a transformational communication medium for delivering critical information and sharing knowledge. The Mediasite system automates the capture, management and delivery of multimedia presentations (combining audio, video and accompanying graphics) for live or on-demand viewing.

Sonic Foundry's presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 12:00 p.m. Central. For more information on the conference, please visit http://www.ontrack06.com/ .

About Sonic Foundry(R), Inc.
Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry is a technology leader in the emerging rich media communications marketplace, providing enterprise solutions and services that link an information-driven world. Sonic Foundry is changing the way organizations communicate via the web and how people around the globe receive vital information needed for work, professional advancement, safety and education. The company's integrated webcasting and web presentation solutions are trusted by Fortune 500 companies, education institutions and government agencies for a variety of critical communication needs. Sonic Foundry is based in Madison, Wis. For more information about Sonic Foundry, visit http://www.sonicfoundry.com/ .

Press Contact: Investor Contact:
Terri Douglas Rob Schatz
Catapult PR-IR Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates, LLC
303-581-7760 212-370-4500
[email protected]

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sonic Foundry Inc.

CONTACT: Terri Douglas of Catapult PR-IR, +1-303-581-7760,[email protected], for Sonic Foundry Inc.; or Investors, Rob Schatzof Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates, LLC, +1-212-370-4500, for SonicFoundry Inc.

Web site: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/http://www.ontrack06.com/
DSA to Certify and Accredit the Department of Veterans Affairs' Personal Identity Verification (PIV) System; C&A Process Assures Compliance with HSPD-12, FIPS-201 and Related Federal Government Network Security Standards. Check it out:
FAIRFAX, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Data Systems Analysts, Inc. (DSA), a recognized leader in the Certification and Accreditation (C&A) of HSPD-12/FIPS-201 compliant cross-credentialing and identity management solutions, today announced a contract award from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for Certification and Accreditation (C&A) of the VA's Personal Identity Verification (PIV) system.



The C&A will support all instantiations of enrollment and credential issuance stations deployed throughout the VA. The VA's PIV System will be used to issue secure and reliable credentials for access to federally controlled facilities and logical access to federally controlled information systems. The VA's PIV System will be among the first to be certified and accredited as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) and Federal Information Processing Standards 201 (FIPS-201) compliant.

"DSA is very proud to have won this contract, because it reflects a growing awareness of our identity management expertise among Federal agencies as well as complete trust in our capabilities," said Bob Haas, DSA's Director, Network and Information Assurance Practice. "We expect to complete the C&A process before the government's October 26th HSPD-12 deadline."

Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) PIV system is an agency-wide initiative by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Human Resources and Administration that is intended to provide compliance with HSPD-12, FIPS-201 and related standards which address Federal Government-wide needs for an identifying credential for all Federal employees, contractors, and affiliates, to be used for identification and authentication across Federal logical and physical access systems.

In addition to meeting the compliance requirements of FIPS-201, the VA PIV System includes supporting technologies that consider VA business needs and Return on Investment (ROI) that can be provided by such a system.

DSA's VA contract award follows last month's announcement that DSA was chosen to conduct initial and periodic Risk and Security Compliance Assessments of all member companies belonging to FiXs, the Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems. FiXs is a federation of companies working in conjunction with federal partners to provide an end-to-end trusted identity management solution that is HSPD-12 and FIPS-201 compliant. The FiXs contract was also awarded to DSA based on the company's successful track record in information security, which spans over 40 years and includes expertise in risk management, security compliance assessments, application and network security design, implementation and validation, secure operations, and continuity of operations planning.

About DSA

DSA provides strategic, secure, mission critical IT solutions to government and industry through three focused divisions: DSA Federal, DSA Life Science, and DSA Commercial. The company has over 40 years experience in systems and software engineering and integration services specializing in enterprise-wide information technology solutions. DSA is a leader in program management, information security and regulatory compliance. Office locations: Philadelphia, PA (headquarters), Washington, DC, NY Metro and Mid-West. For more information, please visit www.dsainc.com or call toll free to 1-877-422-4DSA.
Cable & Wireless Implements MetaSolv for IP and Next Generation OSS Transformation; MetaSolv Successfully Executes First Phase of Multi-Million Dollar Transformation Project. Check it out:
PLANO, Texas & LONDON --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- MetaSolv Software, Inc., a global leader in comprehensive operations support system (OSS) solutions for next-generation communications service providers, today announced that Cable & Wireless, one of the world's leading international communications companies, has selected MetaSolv for its IP and next-generation OSS transformation. The multi-million dollar agreement provides Cable & Wireless with an integrated next-generation platform for activation, provisioning and configuration management across all service domains.



Cable & Wireless has already successfully deployed the first phase of the project. This phase standardizes two large and disparate MPLS-based IP networks on MetaSolv's next-generation activation platform. This enterprise-wide deployment has enabled Cable & Wireless to quickly derive significant synergies from their recent acquisition of a large European IP VPN service provider and provides the operator with a market-leading and common platform for the future growth of next-generation services.

"MetaSolv's IP provisioning solution has -- within a short time period -- enabled us to rapidly, seamlessly and cost-effectively consolidate two large and highly complex MPLS-based IP networks on a common platform," said Mark Dearnley, Chief Information Officer at Cable & Wireless. "As the implementation progresses, we will achieve significant cost savings through multi-service provisioning automation. It will also allow us to enhance our customers' experience by offering a wide range of differentiated IP services that are delivered more quickly and are more reliable."

After a rigorous selection process which involved several other OSS vendors, Cable & Wireless selected MetaSolv for its pre-integrated OSS portfolio and proven track record in next-generation provisioning. The agreement includes MetaSolv Activation 5, a next generation activation platform that provides activation across all service domains, and MetaSolv Provisioning 5, a next generation back office provisioning platform that manages internal network build-outs and orchestrates the essential tasks required to deliver ordered services to customers.

The transaction also includes MetaSolv Configuration Management - a newly launched product that offers unique advantages when pre-integrated with MetaSolv Activation 5. MetaSolv Configuration Management is a next generation management platform that centralizes and optimizes network control operations for multi-vendor networks by implementing automated, proactive and consistent configuration management practices. When implemented with MetaSolv Activation 5, this value-added combination significantly streamlines operations and enhances service delivery by leveraging the natural synergies that exist between activation and configuration management.

"As operators look to improve customer satisfaction, streamline operations and drive down costs, they need intelligent, automated IP provisioning solutions that are market-ready and provide a rapid return on investment," said David Sharpley, MetaSolv's Executive Vice President of Marketing and Product Management. "By delivering on these key requirements, MetaSolv's innovative pre-integrated IP provisioning platform supports and expands Cable & Wireless' continued business and customer service leadership in IP service offerings."

About Cable & Wireless

Cable & Wireless is one of the world's leading international communications companies. It operates through two standalone business units - International and UK.

The International business unit operates integrated telecommunications companies in 33 countries offering mobile, broadband, domestic and international fixed line services to residential and business customers, with principal operations in the Caribbean, Panama, Macau, Monaco and the Channel Islands.

The UK business unit provides enterprise and carrier solutions to the largest users of telecoms services across the UK, US, continental Europe and Asia, and wholesale broadband services in the UK.

In Asia Pacific, its principal operations are in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to http://www.cw.com.

About MetaSolv

MetaSolv, Inc. (Nasdaq:MSLV) is a global leader in comprehensive operations support system solutions for next-generation communications service providers. MetaSolv automates the order-to-activate provisioning process for traditional and next-generation IP-based wireline and mobile service providers. MetaSolv's multi-service, multi-technology capabilities include order management, inventory management, service activation, configuration management and network mediation. More than 170 global service providers -- including Brasil Telecom, BT, Cable & Wireless, O2, Singtel, Telstra, T-Mobile, UPC, Verizon Dominicana, and Vodafone -- use MetaSolv's solutions to achieve increased revenues, reduced costs, and enhanced customer service. MetaSolv is a global company, headquartered in Plano, Texas. Visit www.metasolv.com for more information.

MetaSolv is a registered trademark. The MetaSolv logo and MetaSolv Solution are trademarks of MetaSolv Software, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Aptify Announces 4.0 Release

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Aptify Announces 4.0 Release. Check it out:

Aptify, a vendor of customer and member relationship management, e-business, education management and other applications, has announced the production release of Aptify Version 4.0, which company officials call "the single largest coordinated product release in Aptify’s history."



The release "showcases several improved functional and architectural capabilities," according to company officials, including "significant enhancements the native business intelligence capabilities and workflow process modeling tools."

The vendor has emphasized the globalization of the technology, including support for localizing the user interface, international sales tax capabilities and improved multi-currency support.

The interactive on-line help system has been much improved as well, Aptify officials say they have added "significant new functionality" to the product's e-business suite of applications, including new capabilities for service tracking and case management and online learning delivery.

Ravi Nagarajan, director of research and development at Aptify, said the product is available through both Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows and "pure-Web user interfaces in 4.0."

Aptify 4.0 uses the latest Microsoft technologies, including the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework and SQL Server 2005, and includes a number of major Aptify Technology Platform improvements.

In June Children International, an international nonprofit humanitarian organization which runs a sponsorship program uniting children and sponsors, went live with Aptify on an enterprise-wide basis.

The Aptify products let CI provide what CI officials hope will be "responsive and personalized service for its sponsors, donors, and field offices worldwide." Established in 1936, Children International aids needy children in 11 countries. Sponsors' contributions help provide poverty-stricken children and families with necessities such as health and dental care, educational assistance, decent clothing and nutritional assistance.

Basically, the charity will use the technology to track marketing campaigns for sponsorships and donations, provide a robust reporting tool set and employ fundraising management to handle donations and in-kind gifts.

Aptify has also announced that the Insurance Institute of Canada, the professional education arm of Canada's property and casualty insurance industry, has selected Aptify as its enterprise-wide customer and member relationship management software.

Through this partnership, IIC hopes to be able to significantly improve many of its business processes and use Aptify to serve as a central data repository for all of its affiliates internationally.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

(Four Out Of Five) Doctors Pick... Pivotal CRM. Check it out:

CRM vendor Pivotal Corporation, the CRM division of China-based CDC Software, the enterprise software company of CDC Corporation, has announced that medical device manufacturer Lake Region Manufacturing is using Pivotal CRM.



Doctors and medical professionals use Lake Region's specialty diagnostic and surgical devices. With what company officials describe as "a diverse customer base and facilities" in both the United States and Ireland, Lake Region provides their devices on a contract and an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) basis.

Lake Region selected Pivotal CRM from CDC Software, adapting it for a variety of purposes, including quotation and contract management. In contrast to the original manual process employed prior to installing Pivotal CRM, Lake Region's quotes and contracts are now completely automated.

In another announcement, CDC Corporation, whose primary focus  is on enterprise software and online games, has announced that as of September 19, 2006, the company has repurchased 6,051,124 common shares, up from 4,430,658 common shares as of July 25, 2006, for a total of $27.7 million as part of the company's stock repurchase programs.

The company completed its initial $20 million repurchase program on August 10, 2006 and the additional $20 million repurchase program announced on July 26, 2006 is now underway.

This past May Pivotal announced that Julius Baer Investment Management LLC, a US-registered investment advisor wholly owned by the Julius Baer Group, has selected Pivotal CRM software.

The company is using the CRM product within its Institutional Asset Management Group to ensure consistent client service.

"Given the scope of our institutional business, using a centralized CRM system is essential," said Tony Williams, chief executive officer for Julius Baer Investment Management LLC.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Selects TriZetto's NetworX Pricer Software to Automate Claims Pricing and Help Manage Costs. Check it out:
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- The TriZetto Group Inc. (NASDAQ: TZIX) announced that CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, the largest health insurer in the Mid-Atlantic region, has purchased NetworX Pricer(TM) to automate the administration of provider contracts and to reduce medical costs. The software automatically prices claims against provider contract terms, to speed the claims process and increase overall efficiency. Using NetworX Pricer, the health plan can automate over 90 percent of claims pricing, and cut in half the time it takes to set up and maintain provider contracts in its system. CareFirst is the thirty-third TriZetto customer to purchase NetworX Pricer.



"With NetworX Pricer, health plans can speed claims processing by eliminating the costs, potential errors and inconsistencies of pricing claims manually," said Jeff Hensley, chief technology officer. "Our software allows customers to use a wide array of discounting methods to better manage medical spending."

NetworX Pricer is a standalone product that can be used with any core administrative system. The software can help customers deliver more predictable results and better manage even the most complex contracts, so they can provide the best value for their members. Health plans can maximize speed and cost savings by using NetworX Pricer in conjunction with NetworX Modeler(TM), software that uses a health plan's real claims data to forecast costs against proposed provider rates and terms, making it easier to negotiate contracts and manage costs. Contracts can be moved electronically between the pricing engine and the modeler system, without being rebuilt.

About TriZetto

Touching more than 35% of the U.S. insured population, TriZetto is distinctly focused on accelerating the ability of healthcare payers to lead the industry's transformation. The company provides premier information technology solutions that enhance its customers' revenue growth, drive their administrative efficiency, and improve the cost and quality of care for their members. Healthcare payers include national and regional health insurance plans, and benefits administrators that provide transaction services to self-insured employer groups. The company's broad array of payer-focused information technology offerings include enterprise and component software, hosting and business process outsourcing services, and consulting. Headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif., TriZetto can be reached at 949-719-2200 or at www.trizetto.com.

Important Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may include statements about future revenue, profits, cash flows and financial results, the market for TriZetto's services, future service offerings, industry trends, client and partner relationships, TriZetto's operational capabilities, future financial structure, uses of cash or proposed transactions. Actual results may differ materially from those stated in any forward-looking statements based on a number of factors, including the effectiveness of TriZetto's implementation of its business plan, the market's acceptance of TriZetto's new and existing products and services, the timing of new bookings, risks associated with management of growth, reliance on third parties to supply key components of TriZetto's services, attraction and retention of employees, variability of quarterly operating results, competitive factors, risks associated with acquisitions, changes in demand for third party products or solutions which form the basis of TriZetto's service and product offerings, financial stability of our customers, the ability of TriZetto to meet its contractual obligations to customers, including service level and disaster recovery commitments, changes in government laws and regulations and risks associated with rapidly changing technology, as well as the other risks identified in TriZetto's SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting TriZetto's Investor Relations department at 949-719-2225 or at TriZetto's web site at www.trizetto.com. All information in this release is as of September 19, 2006. TriZetto undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company's expectations.
NCI, Inc. Schedules Third Quarter Conference Call. Check it out:
RESTON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- NCI, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCIT), a provider of information technology services and solutions to U.S. federal government agencies, announced today that it will issue its third quarter 2006 financial results prior to the market opening on Wednesday, November 1, 2006. Management will then discuss the results in a conference call beginning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.



Interested parties may listen to the conference call by dialing 877-704-5380 (U.S./Canada) or 913-312-1294 (International) with pass code 7275438. The conference call will be webcast simultaneously through a link on the NCI website (www.nciinc.com).

A replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the conclusion of the call through November 15, 2006, by dialing 888-203-1112 (U.S./Canada) or 719-457-0820 (International) and entering pass code 7275438. Below is a summary of the conference call and replay information:

Live Call Date:   Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Live Call Time:   10:00 a.m. ET
Live Call Number:  877-704-5380 (U.S./Canada) or 913-312-1294
          (International)
Passcode:      7275438
Webcast:      www.nciinc.com (investor relations button)
Replay Number:   888-203-1112 (U.S./Canada) or 719-457-0820
          (International)
Passcode:      7275438 (same for both call and replay)



About NCI, Inc.:

NCI, Inc., a Delaware holding company, through its subsidiary NCI Information Systems, Inc., is a leading provider of information technology services and solutions to U.S. federal government agencies. As an ISO 9001 certified company, NCI's award-winning expertise encompasses areas critical to its customers' mission objectives including enterprise systems management, information assurance, network engineering, and systems development and integration. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, NCI has approximately 1,400 employees and 50 locations worldwide. For more information, visit our Web site at www.nciinc.com, or e-mail [email protected].
Aristos Logic Secures $15 Million Funding Round; Top Tier OEM Design Wins Provide Significant Momentum. Check it out:
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Aristos Logic, the industry leader in RAID Storage Processor (RSP(TM)) technology, announced today that it has completed a $15 million Series F funding round. The round was led by a new strategic investor with participation from existing investors Panorama Capital (formerly JP Morgan Partners), TPG Ventures, Woodside Fund and QTV Capital. The round's increased valuation reflects the company's top tier design wins and the strength of the company's fundamental technology.



The Aristos Logic RAID Storage Processor is a purpose built device designed to accelerate the storage data path. Reference designs couple the RSP with enterprise-class Aristos RAID software, and relieve OEMs of the burden of developing their own RAID functionality. Aristos RAID software provides both base RAID functionality and optional advanced features, while providing OEM customers a framework for integrating their differentiating storage management features. The modularity and scalability of the RAID Storage Processor architecture enables a leveraged development path to cost effective Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI, Fibre Channel, and iSCSI based solutions.

"Aristos Logic's design wins with multiple top tier storage OEMs and ODMs signals an important and inevitable storage industry shift towards partnering with third parties for standardized RAID functionality," said Steve Foster of TPG Ventures, speaking on behalf of the existing investor group. "We are extremely pleased with Aristos' progress and are excited to share specifics publicly in the near-term. The Company's high-quality design wins and continued strong traction with multiple tier 1 storage vendors, solidifies our commitment to Aristos Logic and their vision," added Foster.

"Similar to the transition that took place in the computing world, storage OEMs are adjusting their business models to meet the challenge of rapid technology changes and customer price-performance expectations. OEMs that have organically developed RAID in the past, are outsourcing RAID technology to trusted partners," said Anil Gupta, CEO of Aristos Logic. "Product launches by our customers over the next few quarters will elevate Aristos as a formidable player in the storage industry," stated Gupta.

Headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California, Aristos Logic creates special-purpose processors and RAID software that bring new levels of performance, efficiency, features and cost-effectiveness to enterprise storage controllers for networked storage products. The company's dedicated RAID Storage Processors offer unbeatable price-performance for entry-level storage systems with scalability to mid-range systems. Aristos processors, together with Aristos software, provide a complete reference design, including both base level RAID functionality as well as advanced features that system vendors can use as a foundation for their own value-added systems. For further information, please visit our Web site at www.aristoslogic.com.
Network Appliance Receives Distribution Industry's Rising Star Award; Honor Recognizes Fastest-Growing Companies. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), a leader in advanced network storage solutions, today announced that it is a recipient of the Global Technology Distribution Council's inaugural Rising Star Award for outstanding sales growth through IT distributors. The GTDC presented the award to NetApp at its annual summit event, held this year at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel September 19 - 20, 2006 and attended by the world's leading IT vendors and distributors.



The GTDC, whose member distributors represent more than $80 billion in annual sales, created the Rising Star Awards because of the success companies such as Network Appliance are having in partnership with IT distributors. Sales results for Rising Star Award winners are based on actual revenue growth over the past year as reported by consumer and retail information company The NPD Group in its Distributor Track(R) service.

"We decided to create the Rising Star Awards because of the impressive success companies like NetApp are having with IT distributors," said Tim Curran, CEO of the GTDC. "The value proposition of distributors has never been more pronounced, especially considering the renewed industry emphasis on channel services, supply chain efficiency, and cost management. The performance of NetApp not only attests to the quality of NetApp storage systems, but also exemplifies the pivotal role of distributors for company success."

"At NetApp we have focused on building a partner program based on trust and integrity, and our distribution partners play a key role in driving our success," said Leonard Iventosch, vice president, Americas Channel Sales, Network Appliance. "This recognition validates our VIP Program and the channel partners who have chosen NetApp as their strategic partner. The GTDC is a premier organization recognized for its leadership role in the industry, and this award means a great deal to NetApp and our partner community."

About the Global Technology Distribution Council

The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) is a worldwide industry association dedicated to defining and promoting the role of wholesale distribution in a successful and healthy information technology channel. The Council is comprised of the computer industry's top wholesale distributors dedicated to serving "the channel," a network of skilled value-added resellers and retail stores focused on providing hardware, software, and services to businesses and consumers around the globe.

About Network Appliance

Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992, Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner firsts that simplify data management. Information about Network Appliance(TM) solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.

NetApp and the Network Appliance logo are registered trademarks and Network Appliance is a trademark of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
Q4bis Names ICS as Business Partner to Resell its Business Intelligence Software; ICS to Extend ERP and Data Collection Offerings with the Q4bis BI Suite. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Q4bis, producers of an innovative and feature-packed business intelligence (BI) software solution, has named Jacksonville, Florida-based ICS, Inc. as an authorized business partner serving the Southeast sector of the US. This new relationship extends the offerings of ICS for ERP and data collection by adding an integrated business intelligence solution that is easy to use and can be rapidly deployed within any enterprise.



A specific skill set built around data warehousing and analytics knowledge is required of an effective BI solution. A fundamental aspect of the Q4bis Business Intelligence Suite is a unique user interface that dramatically simplifies this process and enables any manager to directly survey, access, massage and leverage information quickly and easily. The BI solution is also designed to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft SQL Server and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) architectures as well as leading ERP packages to enable data extraction from a wide range of sources.

Q4bis runs on any hardware platform, including Wintel PC and IBM iSeries midrange platforms.

For the full release: http://www.q4bis.com/index.php?id=290.

About Q4bis Inc.

Q4bis (www.q4bis.com) is a complete, end-to-end business intelligence (BI) suite of products built around Microsoft's tool set: SQL Server 2005, OLAP technology and Reporting Services. Q4bis has gained a reputation for excellence in developing and providing BI solutions to companies globally. The company has developed unique Rapid Implementation Methodology and Proof of Concept techniques to supplement its reputation for interface intuitiveness. These methodologies provide organizations with a framework for successful first-time implementation and ensure outstanding ROI on their BI investment. Q4bis runs on any hardware platform, including Wintel PC and IBM iSeries midrange platforms. For more information, contact Louis-Philippe Lalonde, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Q4bis Inc., 8 Corporate Park, Suite 300, Irvine, CA 92606, 949-442-8326, [email protected].

Note to Editor

Q4bis executives are available to discuss the significance of extending analytics and reporting for BI to support ERP and Supply Chain Management.
Thunderhead Automates Global Treasury Confirmation Process for UBS Investment Bank. Check it out:
LONDON, September 21 -- Thunderhead, the leading provider of enterprise communications technology, today announced that it has implemented the Thunderhead Document Generation Platform at UBS Investment Bank to automate the creation of its Treasury Exotics trade confirmations.



Thunderhead was selected by UBS following a competitive tender and detailed proof-of-concept process and will support UBS' global trade confirmation requirements.

The adoption of Thunderhead has enabled UBS to implement direct business user control across the development and maintenance of trade confirmations for a large variety of products, requiring either STP or non-STP business processes. Confirmations that require manual intervention are routed through required approval processes using Thunderhead's Review Framework, which has been integrated with UBS' existing workflow application.

In addition, the Thunderhead solution provides a full audit trail to ensure complete transparency of the trade confirm process. Thunderhead's advanced personalization capabilities also allow Operations staff to produce documents with content relevant to their counterparty's language and jurisdiction requirements.

"Thunderhead has proven to be a high quality component for document generation and does exactly what we expect and demand of it," said Gerry Murphy, Executive Director - Head of OTC Operations IT at UBS.

Glen Manchester, Thunderhead's CEO, commented, "The ability to quickly and accurately manage trade confirmations is critical to the operations of an organization such as UBS. As the volume and complexity of Foreign Exchange trades increases, the benefits of implementing a proven document generation platform to handle the trade confirmations will enable UBS to retain its competitive edge while expanding its business into new markets. The ability of Thunderhead to automate the full spectrum of trade confirmations brings immediate business advantage through the reduction of the usual costs associated with manual document creation and management of exceptions."

About UBS
UBS is the world's largest wealth manager, a top tier investment banking and securities firm, and one of the largest global asset managers. In Switzerland, UBS is the market leader in retail and commercial banking.

About Thunderhead
Thunderhead is the leading provider of enterprise solutions for the creation and management of multi-channel business communications.

The Thunderhead platform allows business users to manage the production of both personalized and transaction-driven communications which may be delivered by any number of media channels, including print, fax, web, email, SMS and even industry-specific XML schemas.

Thunderhead's unique combination of user-centric design; an open standards-based core; and broad, enterprise capabilities has enabled it to quickly become the market leader. Thunderhead numbers some of the world's leading financial services organisations as its customers, and services its rapidly expanding customer base from offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

For further information please visit http://www.thunderhead.com/
Thunderhead Ltd

CONTACT: Press Contact: U.S. Media Contacts, Meir Kahtan or MenkaNasta, Meir Kahtan Public Relations, +1-212-699-6065, Email: [email protected]
The Inclusion of Telephony Services in IT Portfolio to Boost Revenues of These Markets. Check it out:
PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 21 -- The telephony services market is likely to experience modest but sustainable growth over the next five to six years. Apart from legacy infrastructure replacement, the major growth driver is the changing structure of the services bundle to include services concerned with other enterprise applications, such as contact center solutions and productivity applications. Within traditional telephony services, excluding additional professional services such as data network evaluation, revenue through upgrades and managed IP telephony services, the old telephony services market including functions such as basic maintenance, is actually not growing much.



New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.enterprisecommunications.frost.com/ ), U.S. Enterprise Telephony Equipment Services Markets, reveals that the market earned revenues of $4.40 billion in 2005 and estimates to reach $4.92 billion in 2012.

If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the U.S. Enterprise Telephony Equipment Services Markets, then send an e-mail to Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications, at [email protected] with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, city, state, country and e- mail address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.

"The growth of the telephony equipment services industry is contingent on the belief that 'where there's mystery there's money'," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Krithi Rao. "As telephony solutions become more complex, customers are increasingly relying on external expertise to facilitate the implementation and management of advanced solutions and to be able to more accurately anticipate related deployment costs."

The fluctuations in the equipment market obviously influence growth in the telephony services market. However, the evolving structure of the service bundle represents another important factor in the telephony service market. For example, services and service revenues related to other technologies and solutions such as contact center applications, productivity applications and data and networking infrastructure, are increasingly infringing on the telephony market. Eventually, unified communications solutions that require management of tightly integrated applications are likely to spur the demand for advanced services.

Demand for basic maintenance and break/fix-type of service is declining as customers rarely experience any major issues with the legacy time division multiplexer (TDM) systems. Moves, adds and changes, on the other hand, are increasingly performed by enterprises themselves as IP gives them high levels of flexibility, independence and control. Therefore, service providers have to invest in advanced technologies such as remote monitoring and diagnostics, and offer maintenance of the data network as part of their services in order to differentiate. Further, they will have to pay close attention to developments in the unified communications space as such advanced solutions will represent both a challenge as well as an opportunity.

"As differentiation through equipment features and pricing is becoming increasingly difficult, vendors and resellers are looking to gain a competitive advantage through services," notes Rao. "However, commoditization of basic maintenance services and installation is forcing service providers to constantly innovate in professional and managed services."

The high costs of training sales forces' services teams and channel partners, finding subject matter experts and retaining them, and investing in remote monitoring technology and business continuity expertise are the major challenges for service providers. It is, therefore, imperative for vendors and resellers to invest in tools/procedures that help reduce costs so that they can turn their focus to introducing enhanced services.

The U.S. Enterprise Telephony Equipment Services Markets is part of the Enterprise Communications Growth Partnership Service, and it evaluates the trends that are impacting service providers in these markets. This study also includes a detailed analysis of the revenues, market size and reviews competitor profiles. It segments the market into the following sectors: installation, maintenance, professional services, managed services related to installation, maintenance, professional services, managed services, Internet protocol-private branch exchange, (IP PBX), time division multiplexer-private branch exchange, (TDM PBX) and IP/digital/analog phones. Interviews are available to the press.

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit http://www.frost.com/ .

U.S. Enterprise Telephony Equipment Services Markets
F899-62

Contact:
Mireya Castilla
Corporate Communications - North America
P: 210.247.3830
F: 210.348.1003
E: [email protected]

Srividhya Parthasarathy
Corporate Communications - Europe
P: + 91 44 42044668
E: [email protected]

Sarah Lourdes
Corporate Communications - Asia Pacific
P: +603 6204 5878
F: +603 6201 7402
E: [email protected]

Sharmin Jassal
Corporate Communications - Australia
P: +61 2 8247 8900
F: +61 2 9252 8066
E: [email protected]

http://www.frost.com/

Keywords in this release: telephony, enterprise telephony equipment, North America, installation, maintenance, professional services, managed services, Internet Protocol-private branch exchange, IP PBX, time division multiplexer- private branch exchange, TDM, PBX, IP phones, digital phones, analog phones, research, information, market, trends, technology, service, forecast, market share

Frost & Sullivan

CONTACT: Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications - North America,+1-210-247-3830, or fax, +1-210-348-1003, or [email protected] , orSrividhya Parthasarathy, Corporate Communications - Europe, +91-44-42044668,or [email protected] , or Sarah Lourdes, Corporate Communications -Asia Pacific, +603-6204-5878, or fax, +603-6201-7402, [email protected] , or Sharmin Jassal, Corporate Communications -Australia, +61-2-8247-8900, or fax, +61-2-9252-8066, [email protected] , all of Frost & Sullivan

Web site: http://www.frost.com/http://www.enterprisecommunications.frost.com/
SYSPRO Customer Success with SOA Chronicled by Leading Analyst Firm. Check it out:
COSTA MESA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- SYSPRO, a leading enterprise business solutions provider, has revealed that a recently published AMR Research case study reports on the success that SYSPRO customers have been experiencing through the adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). In the August 31, 2006 case study, "SOA Starting to Have An Impact With Small Companies," AMR Research Research Director Dennis Gaughan notes, "... we have spoken to a number of small organizations that are using ERP software from SYSPRO to improve their internal operations and lay the foundation for collaboration with customers and suppliers ... These companies often don't have IT shops, so the references were either operations people or business owners themselves ... What was clear, though, was that leveraging a platform that was service-oriented had some real business outcomes that were driving company performance in new ways ..."



Gaughan sites several examples, concluding: "What was clear from the conversations with customers was that SYSPRO's efforts to service-enable its core application platform made it much easier for these customers to extend the base capabilities to meet specific requirements. In each case, the customer, either with help from an implementation partner or on their own, created extensions to core functionality that helped them drive revenue growth or improve operating performance. They spoke about how flexible the system was to integrate new capabilities, and how they were able to do it quickly and with little help -- two of the key value propositions for SOA."

According to Joey Benadretti, president SYSPRO USA, "This acknowledgement illustrates how SOA can achieve significant benefits for companies with annual revenues well under $250 million. In addition, it exemplifies how SYSPRO software enhances the efficiencies of smaller and medium size companies."

About SYSPRO

Since its inception in 1978, SYSPRO has been delivering state-of-the-art business solutions to some of the world's leading companies. As a global leader in the production of world-class ERP software, the company now caters to the specialized needs of 12,000 licensed companies in more than 60 countries worldwide. SYSPRO is marketed globally through regional territory distribution centers and a global reseller network in the US, Canada, Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia and the UK.

SYSPRO is a fully integrated business software solution that provides complete control over the planning and management of all facets of business including accounting, manufacturing and distribution operations in a variety of industries.

For more information, contact Stanley Goodrich at 1-714-437-1000 or email: [email protected].

For additional information on SYSPRO, go to www.syspro.com.
DataDirect Technologies Launches Connection-Based Pricing for Its Industry Leading ODBC Drivers. Check it out:
BEDFORD, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- New Pricing Option to Deliver World Class ODBC Connectivity to Applications of All Sizes

DataDirect Technologies, the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today announced the launch of a new connection-based pricing for DataDirect Connect(R) for ODBC, its fast, feature rich suite of 32-bit ODBC drivers for all major platforms and databases - Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and Informix. The new pricing option, based on the number of simultaneous database connections needed by the application, makes enterprise class data connectivity available for applications of all sizes.



DataDirect Connect for ODBC eliminates complex development and configuration tasks and enables rapid support of new database versions and features. Using its unique wire protocol architecture, DataDirect Connect for ODBC eliminates the need for database client software and libraries, thereby dramatically improving performance and scalability while simplifying configuration and deployment.

"Our customers have consistently asked us for pricing options that fit their application size and scale - now we have it," said John Goodson, vice president of product operations for DataDirect Technologies. "Whether companies are developing large scale, critical systems or smaller applications with lower usage requirements, DataDirect is committed to extending its market-leading technology to those who need it, when they need it."

Product pricing is based on the number of simultaneous connections to the database. Access to DataDirect's Knowledgebase and online forums will be provided for all product licenses. DataDirect's award winning 24/7 telephone support is offered to customers licensing unlimited connections. The current product pricing breakdown follows:

-- Five connections per server, $549 for the first CPU

-- 10 connections per server, $1,000 for the first CPU

-- 25 connections per server, $2,500 for the first CPU

-- Unlimited connections per server, $4,000 per CPU

DataDirect's tiered pricing is now available through its worldwide sales force. More information can be found at http://www.datadirect.com/connection/index.ssp. Later this year, DataDirect Connect for ODBC will be made available via a secure online store on the DataDirect website. DataDirect reserves the right to update the above-described pricing from time to time.

About DataDirect Technologies

DataDirect Technologies is the software industry's only comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world's most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect(R) products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBCTM and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on DataDirect Technologies to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration. DataDirect Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS). For more information, visit www.datadirect.com.

DataDirect and DataDirect Connect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Java and all Java based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Sprint Announces Adoption of ITIL(R) Framework for Managed Services Customers; CA's Process Maturity Assessment Confirms That Sprint Embraces ITIL Best Practices. Check it out:
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Sprint (NYSE:S), a leading provider of managed services responsible for mission-critical enterprise networks, announced today it has completed an assessment of its operations based on the IT Infrastructure Library(R) (ITIL). Sprint engaged CA (NYSE:CA), one of the world's leading IT management software companies, to perform the assessment in conjunction with Sprint's ISO 20000 certification plans.



"The ITIL assessment confirms that Sprint has embraced ITIL and accelerates us toward our ultimate goal of ISO/IEC 20000 certification," said John Montross, vice president, Managed Network Operations for Sprint. "We are committed to exceeding our customers' service requirements for network management, and standardizing on terms and workflows will increase operational efficiencies."

ITIL is a framework of best practices intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology service management. Created by the government of the United Kingdom, ITIL has become widely accepted as the standard for IT service management throughout the world. By embracing ITIL best practices, Sprint is ensuring that it can efficiently fulfill its customers' service level requirements - even in the face of growing network complexity.

ISO/IEC 20000-1 (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission) is a global standard that defines the requirements for a service provider to deliver quality managed services for customers.

"Our customers require compliance and we are delighted to address this need. We're committed to providing the highest level of customer service and this assessment is another step toward the goal of continuous improvement," said Montross. Sprint Managed Services has a long history of managing both commercial and federal networks, offering a broad range of management and security services.

CA offers a complete set of services and software for automating critical ITIL processes. CA Technology Services is performing a Service Management Maturity Assessment at Sprint to evaluate all ITIL "Service Support" and "Service Delivery" processes. These processes include: Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration Management, Availability, Capacity, Service Level, Financial and Continuity Management.

"Sprint is applying ITIL principles to the key processes that impact the reliability and performance of its network environment," said Richard Sills, senior vice president of CA Technology Services. "CA will continue to work closely with Sprint to ensure that its technology, people and processes are tightly aligned with the needs of its global clientele."

Sprint Managed Network Services

Sprint delivers comprehensive solutions universally across secure wireline and wireless networks. Sprint Managed Network Services (MNS) provides a broad range of converged services, including security, voice and data with leading IP GMPLS. Sprint extends the benefits of managed internetworking services, including Sprint facilities-based and third-party transport options, around the globe to more than 700 cities in 100 countries. Today, Sprint has more than 2,000 managed services customers and offers one of the industry's most powerful Web portals for customer transactions and reports. Sprint has been managing customer voice and data networks for more than 25 years.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of communications services bringing mobility to consumer, business and government customers. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks offering industry leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and an award-winning and global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

About CA

CA (NYSE:CA), one of the world's largest information technology (IT) management software companies, unifies and simplifies the management of enterprise-wide IT. Founded in 1976, CA is headquartered in Islandia, N.Y., and serves customers in more than 140 countries. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.

ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are Registered Trade Marks of the Office of Government Commerce, an office of the Treasury, UK, and are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
AVST Unveils CallXpress Speech Server Version 4.8. Check it out:
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies Inc. (AVST) has released a new version of its CallXpress Speech Server that includes a wide range of performance enhancements and new features.

Version 4.8 features a “Call Me Back” command enabling users to dial into the system from any phone and ask it to call back. The system then call the user back at the number allowing the user to communicate with the system while the user’s phone treats it as an incoming call.



In markets like U.K., this feature will result in cost-savings since in these territories incoming cell phone calls are not charged to the user or counted as used minutes.

Another new Text-Reply-with-Voice feature can send preconfigured text messages as e-mails with certain voice commands. The feature which is specifically designed to better communicate with Blackberry users also enables the users to forward e-mails and create new e-mail messages using one of the sorted text messages.

Other key enhancements to CallXpress Speech Server 4.8 include new adaptation to noisy environments, improved grammar commands, and automatic help mode.

AVST designed the new release acting on the specific feedback from AVST’s channel partners and customers. CallXpress Speech Server is based on AVST’s advanced speech module, Seneca. The next-generation unified communications solution is a result of combination of CallXpress 7.8 and Seneca 4.8, and provides speech enabled message access, call completion and personal assistant applications to its worldwide customers.

“Anytime-anywhere communications for the workforce and 24/7 access to the entire enterprise communications infrastructure remain the driving forces behind AVST’s communications applications,” said AVST’s Vice President of Product Management, Tom Minifie in a press release.

“We continue to research and create more features and enhancements that respond to our customers’ demands for the ability to manage all corporate communications via a single interface, whether they are in the office or on the road,” he added.

The solution will be available through AVST’s reseller channels by the end this month. The Company will provide the users of AVST’s XpressCare the upgrade to CallXpress Speech Server 4.8 for free.

Headquartered in Orange County, CA, AVST has facilities in Seattle, WA and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States.

For information, visit AVST.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
Oracle Launches Oracle Remote Data Capture Onsite. Check it out:
Oracle has launched a next-generation electronic data capture (EDC) system “Oracle (News - Alert) Remote Data Capture Onsite.” The system can accelerate and simplify the collection of clinical data and the deployment of EDC studies at clinical trial investigative sites.



Oracle Remote Data Capture Onsite can help to improve site personnel productivity and trial data accuracy. The new interface can be applied on top of Oracle Remote Data Capture v4.5.1, streamlines navigation to patient case report forms (CRF) for accelerated data display and/or update.

Utilizing the highly intuitive data entry interface of the Oracle’s new release, the site personnel can interact with CRFs electronically. The electronic data capture system can also perform robust online edit checks instantaneously in the data entry environment. This capability can invoke a discrepancy management module from the CRF to capture, route and resolve discrepancies.

Since the Onsite interface presents CRF(s) as icons, the Onsite users can now perform a fast, visual inspection of the status of each report form with the graphical illustrations of the status of the CRF data.

Oracle Remote Data Capture Onsite also enables electronic messaging between users, allowing personnel to quickly verify and approve patient data.

Additionally, users can conduct verifications against a group of CRFs or individually, and back up approvals with electronic signatures. These assist in complying with regulations regarding Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures (21 CFR Part 11).

“The environment at many clinical sites is unpredictable, with patients coming in for unplanned visits that require on-the-spot data collection,” said Mychelle Mowry vice president for Global Health Industries at Oracle in a press release.

Mowry continued: “Oracle Remote Data Capture Onsite helps busy clinical trial site personnel manage this unpredictability by accelerating patient identification and data entry. Site personnel can easily locate and update patient information, as well as add unplanned CRF pages and/or patient visits by quickly searching on the patient or drilling down within the study hierarchy.”

Today, Oracle has also announced the general availability of Oracle Content Database and Oracle Records Database to facilitate low-cost management of Office documents, PDFs, image files, and other unstructured content.

Following the implementation, these products can deliver secure, highly usable content management that can be broadly deployed to users who are now dealing with content in largely unmanaged environments. Through a Services Oriented Architecture, these products can also assist content-enabling of enterprise business processes and applications.

For more information, visit Oracle.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
Aspect Software Releases Aspect Quality Management 2.5.1. Check it out:
Aspect Software has announced the general availability of Aspect Quality Management 2.5.1, a solution that simplifies the call recording and quality management process.

The latest release is tightly integrated with Aspect Spectrum ACD, which enables the quality management and full-time recording solution to be available to all users of the Aspect Signature ACDs.

The new integration as well as the existing integration with Aspect CallCenter ACD, provides several benefits to contact centers using the Aspect Software (News - Alert) Signature ACDs.



Benefits include reduced cost of ownership, ease of use, improved partitioning of call access and security, and more power to find calls of interest quickly.

The recording and compression technologies allow capturing of more calls, enabling contact centers to implement 100 percent recording.  The system can also perform audio and screen recording of the full interaction with easy access to all call segments when calls are transferred.

Supervisors can use the Overall Aspect Quality Management to evaluate agent progress.

Additionally, the customers are automatically surveyed after the call, using tools. Since these tools can be administered by any contact center manager, it removes the need for IT resources when new surveys are required.

Other features in the new release include Trunk Tapping Support, Links to Related Calls and Integrated Windows Logins.

With Trunk Tapping Support, recordings can now be conducted by tapping directly into the ACD trunks. The Links to Related Calls playback module offers links to related calls and the Integrated Windows Logins enables standard Windows authentication for user login as an option to using the integrated ACD login.

“We have seen great interest in our quality management product because of the value it provides, as well as the desire for the latest capabilities, such as the tight integration into the automatic call distributors,” said Brian Derr, vice president of quality management solutions at Aspect Software in a press release.

Derr continued: “Being able to configure call recording rules based on existing ACD definitions and then monitor every segment of a call as it is transferred while receiving tightly integrated customer feedback when the satisfaction survey is completed makes it incredibly easy for an organization to single-out exemplary interactions.  It also helps to identify areas for improvement with the agent, the overall interaction process, and the enterprise as a whole.”

Aspect was in news recently when the company released its first "Contact Center Satisfaction Index Europe" survey, conducted by the Leo J. Shapiro and Associates market research firm.

According to the report, consumers gave the contact center industry in Europe a grade of 67 percent.

For more information, visit Aspect Software.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
Digi Launches Wireless WAN Router to Cellular-Enable ATM Machines; New Connect WAN Sync wireless WAN router uses GSM/CDMA to securely network both new and legacy ATM equipment. Check it out:
MINNETONKA, Minn. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Digi International (NASDAQ:DGII) today introduced the Connect WAN Sync, a commercial grade wireless WAN router designed primarily for the automated teller machine (ATM) market. The Connect WAN Sync provides a secure, wireless WAN connection for reliable connectivity to remote ATM machines. It features both a synchronous and an Ethernet port allowing customers to deploy a single solution for new and legacy ATM machines.



"The ATM industry association (ATMIA) estimates that there are more than 1.5 million ATM machines in use today, and the trend is moving towards wireless to enable a large percentage of these devices," said Larry Kraft, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Digi International. "Many organizations charged with managing ATM machines are already realizing the benefits of wire-free networking, such as reduced monthly costs, quicker/easier installation and more freedom to easily re-locate ATM machines. Our solution is secure and easy to use, making it easy for companies to enjoy these benefits for both newer IP-enabled ATMs as well as legacy machines equipped only with a synchronous port. The Ethernet port provides a migration path from a legacy bisync machine to a new IP-based machine without any changes to the network."

One way the Connect WAN Sync can reduce an organization's monthly costs is by eliminating expensive leased line and dial line expenses. Because ATM machines use a very small amount of data per transaction, it allows users to take advantage of the new "pay as you go" data plans offered by wireless carriers. Average ATM machines typically use less than five megabytes per month, which could translate to $15 or less per ATM. In comparison, a leased line could cost $80 per month for low speed frame relay and up to $400 per month for multi-drop lines. Digi combines wireless connectivity and conversion of existing protocols to IP in one box, which provides additional savings by removing the costs for extra conversion equipment.

Because it is wireless, the Connect WAN Sync also makes it easier to relocate ATM machines - organizations can simply move ATM machines anytime to a more desirable high-traffic location. Its small size (about the size of your palm) makes it easy to deploy inside of ATM machines with limited space.

"It is easier to implement a wireless installation than a wired solution," Kraft added. "It can be extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive to run wires to each ATM location. The wiring process typically makes up a high percentage of the total cost of ownership. You also have to wait for the phone company to get everything turned on and then hope it all works. With our solution, installations can take less than an hour. You simply plug the Connect WAN Sync in, and it is ready to go."

The Connect WAN Sync is the newest member of the Connect WAN family of wireless WAN routers. It supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE (worldwide) and CDMA 1xRTT cellular networks. It offers both an Ethernet port for new IP ATM machines and synchronous port with support for Bisync protocol with 3270/3275 emulation for interfacing to legacy devices. It also features advanced security options including integrated VPN using IPSec (DES, 3DES, AES) and SSL, and is ideal for organizations that demand the highest level of secure network connectivity to their remote ATM machines. In addition to standard cellular modem communications, the Connect WAN Sync also offers local intelligence with features such as network routing, SureLink (for persistent connections) and firewall. Advanced features include TCP/UDP, DHCP support, NAT, port forwarding, GRE protocol tunneling and access control lists.

The Connect WAN Sync is supported by the Connectware Manager, an enterprise-class management platform that provides customers with the ability to manage thousands of devices and their wireless connections. Connectware makes it easier to deploy and administer devices over a wireless wide area network, in a secure, easy to use, scalable fashion.

For more information about the Connect WAN Sync, visit http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/digiconnectwanfamily.jsp. For a detailed ATM application, visit, http://www.digi.com/applications/remotedevicemanagement/apps/regional bankatms.jsp. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

About Digi International

Digi International, based in Minneapolis, makes device networking easy by developing products and technologies that are cost effective and easy to use. Digi markets its products through a global network of distributors and resellers, systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

For more information, visit Digi's Web site at www.digi.com, or call 877-912-3444.

All brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
New Syndication Platform Enables Advanced Partners to Dynamically Integrate With SideStep; ForbesTraveler.com the First Partner to Deploy SideStep Platform. Check it out:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- SideStep, Inc., the Internet's leading travel search company, today announced the availability of the SideStep syndication platform, a comprehensive solution for Web site publishers seeking to expand their consumer travel offerings with access to SideStep.com.



SideStep's syndication platform, the first of its kind from a travel search engine, is a simple and easily customizable platform that provides a consistent user experience between SideStep.com and partners who want to incorporate SideStep's award winning travel search technology into their own sites. SideStep's site customization options for premier partners go far beyond traditionally limited banner changes, incorporating colors, navigation, page configuration, and the ability to customize page elements, such as SmartSort defaults and advertising units.

Partners implementing the SideStep syndication platform are able to generate additional revenue from their Web sites without the time, hassle and expense of building their own travel search functionality by utilizing SideStep's proprietary technology and access to more than 600 airlines, 125,000 hotels and 30,000 car rental sites worldwide. ForbesTraveler.com, a new site also announced today, is the first partner to deploy SideStep's extensive platform.

"We've been focusing our technology efforts on building an innovative, industry-leading solution to easily extend world-class partner sites," said John Robison, SVP of Engineering, SideStep, Inc. "The accuracy and stability of our current platform puts SideStep in an excellent position to support some of the Internet's largest Web sites."

"We are excited to partner with SideStep for the comparison travel search feature of our newly launched ForbesTraveler.com," said Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, Forbes.com. "Our new site brings luxury travel information to our readers in a dynamic and sophisticated way -- and SideStep is a great complement to our other site features."

About SideStep

SideStep, the Internet's leading travel search company, delivers the most comprehensive selection of travel choices at the best prices to more than 4.7 million consumers each month. SideStep has been named one of TIME Magazine's "50 Coolest Web Sites" and declared "Best of the Web" by Forbes and BusinessWeek Online. The company has forged alliances with leading travel brands such as Hilton Hotels Corporation, Marriott International, Continental Airlines, JetBlue, Dollar Rent A Car and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, SideStep is privately held and has raised more than $17 million in funding from Trident Capital and individual investors. For more information, visit www.sidestep.com.
Acxiom Direct Partners with Turnkey Sports & Entertainment. Check it out:
Acxiom Direct and Turnkey Sports & Entertainment have partnered to better serve sports and entertainment marketers who want new as well as more loyal fans.

Acxiom (News - Alert) Direct’s database marketing and data management capabilities are combined with Turnkey’s market research and lead generation tools to provide marketers tangible lists of new and prospective ticket buyers. The solution also gives insight into audience preferences.



Turnkey’s market intelligence suite has been directly integrated into Acxiom Direct’s advanced data management, campaign management and database marketing solution.

The integration has resulted in a unified platform to consolidate data from multiple sources. Companies can use this platform to have a more complete, accurate and actionable view of customers and prospects.

“The goal is to get more fans in the seats in a way that serves the fans, the venues and the teams, and this combination of Acxiom’s vast enterprise resource capabilities with Turnkey’s renowned data collection and analytics will make that happen,” said Jay Graves, business unit leader for Acxiom Direct in a press release.

Len Perna, president of Turnkey Sports and Entertainment added that the partnership will enable them to seamlessly build customer profiles, identify the actual new leads, and then manage the direct marketing and sales process.

“Bottom-line, it means more revenue at lower customer acquisition cost,” he said.

Acxiom Corporation recently introduced Acxiom RapidProspects to help mid-tier companies more quickly and cost-effectively acquire new customers.

The new database solution gives mid-tier marketers browser-based access to campaign-ready, demographically enhanced prospects.

Acxiom Direct reportedly services more than 70 sports and entertainment clients across North America.

The Haddonfield, N.J.-based Turnkey Sports and Entertainment provide a pro-active approach to brand management for several teams, properties, sponsors and agencies.

For more information, visit Acxiom Direct or Turnkey Sports & Entertainment.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.
The 451 Group Adds Four More Technology-Industry Veterans to its Analyst Ranks. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 --

New Team Members Contribute to Expanding Coverage of Key Enterprise IT Topics, Including Enterprise Software, Storage, Networks and M&A

The 451 Group - a privately held, New York-based technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation - welcomes four more technology-industry veterans to its ranks. With these latest additions, The 451 Group continues to grow at a rapid pace, responding to increasing demand for its services. Henry Baltazar, former technical analyst for eWeek Labs, joins The 451 Group as a storage analyst. Brenon Daly, previously a reporter for The Deal, joins as a financial analyst covering emerging software companies with a focus on IT merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. Andy Dornan was a former reporter for a number of technology trade publications, and he now joins The 451 Group as an analyst covering network infrastructure. And Kathleen Reidy, independent consultant and writer and former Giga Information Group (now part of Forrester Research) analyst, joins as an analyst covering enterprise software.



"These technology-industry veterans have a combined 32 years of experience, which we are now able to tap into in order to strengthen our coverage of key innovation sectors within enterprise IT, as well as enhance the insight we deliver to our more than 600 clients," said Martin V. McCarthy, chief executive officer of The 451 Group.

Henry Baltazar joins The 451 Group as a storage analyst. Prior to joining The 451 Group, Henry spent nine years working as a technical analyst for eWeek Labs, covering storage, server hardware and network operating systems. He also initiated the testing of various technologies, including data replication, clustering, virtual tape libraries, storage virtualization, SAN management, NAS, iSCSI and email archiving. In addition, Henry was a member of eWeek's editorial board and provided content for the magazine's enterprise storage blog.

Brenon Daly is a financial analyst covering emerging software companies with a focus on IT M&A activity. Before joining The 451 Group, Brenon was a reporter for The Deal, an M&A-focused publication, for which he authored analytical pieces and breaking news stories on the software and Internet sectors. He also previously worked as an analyst at Intellectual Capital Associates /IAB Media, where he generated in-depth research reports on security software and CRM/BI, as well as spot analysis on trends for boutique research firms. Before that, he was a senior reporter at CBS MarketWatch.com covering the software and Internet sectors. In addition, Brenon has written for international financially focused organizations, including The Economist Intelligence Unit, United Press International and Prognosis.

Andy Dornan joins The 451 Group as an analyst covering network infrastructure, including switches, wireless networks and IP telephony. Before joining The 451 Group, Andy spent eight years as a reporter, editor and columnist at technology trade publications Data Communications, Network Magazine, IT Architect and InformationWeek. During that time, he won numerous journalism awards, including two Jesse H. Neal Awards from American Business Media and four Maggie Awards from the Western Publishing Association. He also authored a book, 'The Essential Guide to Wireless Communications Applications,' that is used as a standard text in many college courses.

As an analyst of the enterprise software space, Kathleen Reidy covers content management, search, information retrieval and content-related technologies. She joins The 451 Group after nearly a decade of experience in the content management, portal and search industries. Most recently she has been an independent consultant and writer for publications including Portals Magazine, eContent Magazine and The Gilbane Report, as well as for software vendors including BEA and FatWire. Kathleen previously held product management and product marketing positions in Sun Microsystems' software division, managing search, portal and content management technologies and partners. She also spent four years as an analyst at Giga Information Group (now part of Forrester Research), where she rose to lead Giga's coverage of the enterprise portal, search, content aggregation and information management markets.

About The 451 Group

The 451 Group is an independent technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company's analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company - at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations - rely on 451 insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, London and Boston. The company also operates Tier 1 Research - an independent division of The 451 Group, headquartered in Minneapolis - which analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments impacting public and private companies within the IT, communications and Internet sectors.

For additional information on The 451 Group or to apply for trial access to its services, go to: www.the451group.com
Buying & Selling eContent 2007 Calendar Announcement. Check it out:
MEDFORD, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Information Today, Inc. (ITI) is pleased to announce that its executive conference, Buying & Selling eContent, will once again be returning to Marriott's Camelback Inn Resort, Golf Club, and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz., from March 18 to 20, 2007, following one of its most successful conferences yet in 2006.



Buying & Selling eContent is a conference designed for anyone who buys, sells, distributes, or markets electronic content. The focus of the 2007 conference will be exploring new media models and defining new content markets. Issues to be discussed in 2007 include how to survive and thrive in the content market, Web 2.0, the effects of social networking sites and blogs for serious econtent publishers, and many more.

The 3-day, executive-level event is designed to provide a relaxing environment with networking opportunities such as golf tournaments and dining receptions to be held in conjunction with intense sessions and workshops that will give attendees the chance to learn, listen, and exchange ideas and solutions. Program plans for the upcoming conference are currently underway, with new topics and speakers bringing a fresh outlook to the agenda. The 2007 keynote speaker will be Clare Hart, Executive Vice President, Dow Jones & Company and President, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.

Detailed programming information for the 2007 conference event will be available in December. Keep up-to-date with the latest conference news by visiting http://www.buy-sell-econtent.com.

About Information Today, Inc.

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the library, information, content, and knowledge management industries. The company is widely known as the publisher of premier titles such as Information Today, Computers in Libraries, ONLINE, MultiMedia & Internet@Schools, CRM, Searcher, Speech Technology, KMWorld, Streaming Media, and EContent. In addition to periodicals, ITI publishes books, directories, and market research pertaining to book publishing, library technology and management, knowledge and content management, digital media, and various other technology- and content-related topics. ITI is also the sponsor and organizer of industry conferences, including WebSearch University, KMWorld & Intranets, Internet Librarian, Internet Librarian International, Streaming Media, Streaming Media Europe, SpeechTEK, and Buying & Selling eContent. Divisions of Information Today, Inc. include CRM Media LLC; Streaming Media, Inc.; Online; and Faulkner Information Services.
PanGo Networks Executive Presents at RFID Applications Fall 2006; Sessions Detail the Power of RFID Applications for Real-Time Asset Tracking. Check it out:
WASHINGTON --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- -- Mike Braatz of PanGo Networks, the leader in RFID-based asset tracking solutions, is discussing advanced applications of RFID technology being tapped in two industries - healthcare and defense - to effectively track and manage high-value equipment at the RFID Applications Fall 2006 conference today and tomorrow in Washington, D.C.



In two separate presentations, Braatz will address technologies and use cases for RFID-based asset-based tracking. Attendees will hear how standards-based locationing technologies - including active and passive RFID - provide a dynamic way for organizations to effectively locate critical assets, ensuring equipment is available when needed. Discussions will draw from examples of companies that have deployed RFID asset tracking solutions to achieve bottom-line business objectives: reduce and optimize inventory, improve employee workflow and productivity, and above all, lower operational expenditures.

 WHO:  Mike Braatz, vice president of marketing, PanGo Networks
 WHAT: Hospitals & Healthcare: Real-Time Asset Tracking
    "Creating Value with Standards-based RFID Asset Tracking"
    Defense Systems: Compliance, Identification and Real-Time 
    Locating
    "RFID and WiFi: A Powerful Combination for Asset Tracking"
 WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006 at 4:30 - 5:00 p.m. and
    Friday, Sept. 22, 2006 at 3:15 - 4:00 p.m., respectively
 WHERE: RFID Applications Fall 2006, Washington, D.C.



For more information on conference, visit: http://www.shorecliffcommunications.com/rfid06fall/.

About PanGo Networks

PanGo is the leading provider of a location-aware platform and applications designed for enterprise scale deployment. Its integrated, Wi-Fi-based location management solution allows organizations to transform standards-based wireless networks into a platform for intelligent applications that improve important business processes. With its flagship PanOS Platform(R) and asset tracking applications, PanGo offers the industry's first complete solution for real-time asset visibility and context-aware information delivery. Specializing in a range of markets including healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government, PanGo delivers reliable and accurate information about the location of connected devices, people and assets. For more information, visit www.pangonetworks.com.
Fillmore Technology Group Joins Lombardi's Certified Business Process Management Partner Program; Business Process Management Suites Leader Announces Fillmore Technology Group as Newest Certified Partner. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas & ALAMEDA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Lombardi(R) (www.lombardi.com), the leader in Business Process Management (BPM) suite software for Global 2000 companies, and Fillmore Technology Group, a leading consultancy with in-depth expertise in technologies that support the creation and management of critical business processes, today announced that Fillmore has joined Lombardi's Certified Partner Program to deliver and support customers with complete BPM solutions. The strategic alliance allows both companies to jointly market and sell the advisory and consulting services from Fillmore, combined with the award-winning TeamWorks(R) BPM platform.



Fillmore's managerial, technical, and strategic capabilities help create flexible business process solutions that allow companies to adapt to change quickly and easily. The partnership will initially focus on Fillmore's core clients in industries including financial services, transportation, retail, and energy.

Fillmore has elected to join Lombardi's Premier Certified Partner (www.lombardi.com/bpm-lombardi-partners.php) program to build out its full business process and transformation offerings. Lombardi's Certified Partner Program assists partners in developing their BPM skills and revenue opportunities.

"Ease of use, reliability and scalability are critical to any technology we offer our customers," said David Duignan, Partner at Fillmore Technology Group. "We selected Lombardi as our BPM technology due to the openness of its product architecture, for its vision for the future, and its strong customer and analyst acceptance."

Fillmore Technology Group is the latest company to join Lombardi's rapidly growing portfolio of Certified Partners who are experts in both vertical and horizontal solutions. As the leader in a high-growth software category, Lombardi is experiencing increased demand for skilled business process experts and BPM specialists. The financial services segment of Lombardi's Certified Partner Program has evolved into one of the top partnering opportunities available in today's BPM marketplace.

"We are pleased to be working with Fillmore Technology Group," said Rod Favaron, President and CEO of Lombardi. "Like Lombardi, they are dedicated to helping their customers succeed in becoming more Process-Driven."

Lombardi TeamWorks (www.lombardi.com/bpm-software-products.php) is the leading BPM software platform for designing, executing, and improving business processes. The product is built on open standards and provides ongoing process visibility and control, increasing the speed and flexibility with which organizations can manage process activity and decision-making. TeamWorks includes a rich, cohesive Eclipse-based modeling environment for building all aspects of a business process, a highly collaborative web-based work portal for process participants, and provides industry-leading optimization technologies for analyzing and improving business processes.

To learn more about the Lombardi Certified Partner Program, as well as to apply to be a partner, go to: www.lombardi.com/bpm-lombardi-partners.php.

About Fillmore Technology Group

Fillmore Technology Group is a leading professional technology consulting firm that partners with organizations to develop and manage key business processes by delivering enterprise-class software solutions. Fillmore Technology Group automates and integrates workflow process and digital content into scalable, easy to use applications. Fillmore's trusted solutions enable customers to become agile, process-centric organizations by streamlining operations, reducing costs, improving productivity and addressing governance, risk and compliance. More information about Fillmore Technology Group is available at www.fillmoretech.com or by calling 510-864-0740.

About Lombardi

Lombardi is a leader in business process management (BPM) suite software for Global 2000 companies as recognized by both Gartner and Forrester Research, in the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites, 2006, and Human-Centric Business Process Management Suites, Q1 2006 research reports respectively. Lombardi offers award-winning technology, know-how and services to help its customers become Process-Driven. Lombardi's TeamWorks(R) is built on open standards and provides ongoing visibility and control of business processes, increasing the speed and flexibility with which organizations can manage their process activity and decision-making. Lombardi customers include Allianz Life, Applied Materials, Dell, Hasbro, Renault F1 Team, Sprint, T-Mobile, Universal Music Group and the U.S. Government. For more information, visit www.lombardi.com.

Lombardi and TeamWorks are registered trademarks and TeamWorks Process Optimizer, TeamWorks Portal, TeamWorks Rule Service and Lombardi for Office 2003 are trademarks of Lombardi Software, Inc. All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Camilion Solutions Announces ProductAuthority V5.1; Leverages SOA and Standards to Enable Easy Integration of Product Data and Rules into Back-end Systems for Agility and Speed to Market. Check it out:
TORONTO --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Camilion Solutions, the leading provider of product management, underwriting and online sales solutions for the insurance industry, today announced the release of ProductAuthority(TM) V5.1, the company's flagship enterprise product management solution. ProductAuthority V5.1 now incorporates the foundational standards - WSDL, SOAP and UDDI - to make the solution fully Web Services compliant, and incorporates a key ACORD XML Life and Annuity Specification to improve efficiency and manage risk in the annuity sales process.



ProductAuthority V5.1 enables insurers using an open Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to more easily and cost effectively integrate product data and rules into their operational systems, including policy administration systems. Product data and rules are stored in the central repository of ProductAuthority's "pure" product configurator where they can be exposed as Web Services to all back-end systems that need to be 'product-aware'. This not only eliminates the hard-coding of product data and rules into multiple systems, but also results in systems with unprecedented agility, allowing insurers to implement or change products in days.

This new version also includes a new testing facility to allow insurers to thoroughly test products before they are launched. Insurers can now test all product rules; define, store and manage test suites; and share or re-use test suites across products. The result is substantial improvements in product quality and reduced development and implementation time.

With the incorporation of ACORD's XML Life and Annuity Specification Policy Product Transmittal No. 1201, ProductAuthority also now automatically generates a standard definition of a Product Profile for Annuities (PPfA), which includes the basic set of information and business rules necessary to submit a properly qualified and complete application for variable and fixed annuity products. These PPfAs are then exposed to other product-aware systems as Web Services. The annuities sales process is now more efficient and has less risk because product errors are significantly reduced and the product information shared between an insurer, its selling partners and the end customer is consistent.

"If an insurer really wants the agility to drive their products to the marketplace ahead of the competition, they need to leverage SOA, build on a modern technology platform and stop hard-coding product information into all their back-end systems, like policy administration," said Ross Orrett, Camilion's President and CEO. "However, the full benefit of SOA cannot be realized until 'Product' is separated from 'Process'. Product data and rules must be externalized in a solution like ProductAuthority where they can be exposed as Web Services and enable legacy systems to easily adapt to constantly changing products."

About ProductAuthority

Built to capitalize on an open Service-Oriented Architecture, ProductAuthority(TM), fundamentally changes the way insurers develop and implement products by completely separating product from process. ProductAuthority's "pure" product configurator externalizes all product data and rules from multiple, hard-coded operational systems into a central repository where business users can build and modify their own products. These reusable product definitions include all important product information, including market eligibility, packaging, underwriting rules and forms management - not just pricing or calculations - and using Web Services are easily integrated with important legacy applications that need to be 'product-aware', such as underwriting and policy administration.

About Camilion Solutions, Inc.

Camilion Solutions, Inc. (www.camilion.com) is the leading provider of product management, online sales and underwriting solutions for the insurance industry. Camilion's solutions enable insurers to launch new or modified products more quickly and efficiently than competitors, automate underwriting, enable straight-through processing, and deploy a flexible platform to support current and future growth - all without requiring the replacement of existing policy administration systems. Designed to capitalize on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Camilion's comprehensive solution suite is open, scalable, and confirms to key technology and insurance industry standards. Founded in 2000, Camilion Solutions is a privately owned corporation with offices in Toronto, New York and California.

ProductAuthority(TM) and related names are trademarks of Camilion Solutions, Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Redline Named the Second Fast Growing Technology Company in Canada by the Deloitte Canadian Technology Fast 50 Program; Company places first in rankings for Central Canada, second in the country. Check it out:
TORONTO --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Redline Communications, a leading provider of advanced broadband wireless access and backhaul solutions has been named to Deloitte's prestigious Canadian Technology Fast 50, the annual program which recognizes excellence, innovation and the fastest growing tech companies in Canada. Redline placed second in the rankings for all of Canada and first among companies in the Central Canadian region. Rankings are based on percentage of growth in fiscal year revenues over five years, from 2001-2005.



"Redline's growth over the last five years has been driven by our commitment to delivering the wireless broadband technologies that our customers need to meet their business goals," said Majed Sifri, President and Chief Executive Officer, Redline Communications. "Redline's success is also due to the tremendous contributions of our employees, our valued Redline Certified Partner community, and our global network of wireless network operators that are true innovators in bringing advanced broadband services to International markets with Redline's industry leading products."

Redline's wireless broadband products include its RedMAX family of WiMAX products, which includes the world's first complete WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) system deployed by telecommunications carriers and other service providers around the world to bring broadband wireless connectivity to business and residential users. Redline's product offering also includes a full suite of wireless infrastructure products, which are used by carriers, service providers and enterprise network operators to establish high-bandwidth connections for wireless backhaul and access applications.

"To rank on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50, companies must have phenomenal revenue growth over five years," said John Ruffolo, National Leader, Technology, Media & Telecommunications, Deloitte. "Redline has proven to be one of the fast-growth success stories in Canada, and we applaud their success and vision." Winners of the 15 regional Technology Fast 50 programs in the United States and Canada are automatically entered in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks North America's top 500 fastest growing technology companies. For more information on the Fast 50 or Fast 500 programs visit www.fast50.com or www.fast500.com.

Redline's RedMAX(TM) Family

Redline's RedMAX family of WiMAX solutions is the world's first complete system to receive the WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) mark for conformance to the WiMAX standards for performance and interoperability. Redline's carrier-class RedMAX Base Station (AN-100U) supports voice, video, and prioritized data traffic, enabling long-range, high-capacity wireless broadband networks. Redline's WiMAX products also include the RedMAX Indoor Subscriber Unit (SU-I) and Outdoor Subscriber Unit (SU-O) designed for enterprise and residential services. The RedMAX Management Suite enables operators to monitor and control the network, ensuring high service availability. Redline is maintaining its WiMAX leadership with the expansion of its RedMAX family to include products for additional frequency bands, applications and standards.

Redline's WiMAX Leadership

Redline is the first in the world to receive WiMAX Forum Certification(TM) for a complete WiMAX system, and its RedMAX family of products have been deployed by carriers and other major operators throughout the world. Redline is continuing to work with major WiMAX chip vendors and other wireless companies to expand its product offerings and evolve with the WiMAX ecosystem.

About Redline Communications

Redline Communications is the leading provider of standards-based wireless broadband solutions. Redline's WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) systems and award-winning backhaul and transport products enable service providers and other network operators to cost-effectively deliver high-bandwidth services including voice, video and data communications. Redline is committed to maintaining its wireless industry leadership with the continued development of WiMAX and other advanced wireless broadband products. With more than 30,000 installations in 75 countries, and a global network of over 100 partners, Redline's experience and expertise helps service providers, enterprises and government organizations roll out the services and applications that drive their business forward. For more information, visit www.redlinecommunications.com.

NOTE: All registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.

Linder's likes La Quinta

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Linder's likes La Quinta. Check it out:
(Furniture/Today Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) La Quinta, Calif. Top 100 company Linder's Furniture has opened its second Rooms Express store here, looking to expand its market share in a tough business climate.

Linder's hired Connie Post Cos. to design a difficult project a 35,000-square-foot space that originally was intended to be an upscale movie theater. High ceilings, sloped floors and other structural issues posed challenges, "but Connie Post did a great job and it turned out fantastic," said Eric Foucrier, Linder's president, adding the result appeals to female consumers. Post described the format as open.



"The showroom was designed to utilize the high vertical spaces with large architectural elements and oversized graphics," she said.

Features in the midpriced room package store include two home theater rooms with marquee entrances like a movie theater to display cinema seating, flat-panel TVs and wall units.

(At the company's Linder's stores in Orange County, the TV delivery service includes hanging the big screens on the wall for free. Foucrier said the unusual perk has been a big boost to business, and is something Rooms Express will offer.)

A Legacy Showcase gallery of "designer furniture for less," with free home design consultation, is another new feature for Rooms Express. Sofas in the showcase start at $999 rather than the $399 typical starting point for the rest of the store.

Key suppliers to the new store include Universal, Legacy Classic, Modus, Wynwood, Berkline/ BenchCraft; Guildcraft of California, Lifestyle Enterprise and Futura/Superb Leather. Key bedding suppliers are Sealy and Tempur-Pedic, with their offerings shown in an outdoor garden-like setting with fountains and trellis-style architecture.

Foucrier said the store is Linder's largest improvement project to date at an investment of more than $1 million.

And the company is spending more money to launch the new store with a bang. At the Sept. 14 grand opening, it kicked off a giveaway of 50 rooms of furniture in 50 days. At more than $100,000 in goods, it's one of the biggest furniture giveaways in industry history, Foucrier said.

Garden Grove, Calif.-based Linder's acquired the two-store Legacy Home Furnishings/ Rooms Express from the Belinsky family this summer in a deal that expanded Linder's reach beyond Los Angeles east into the Coachella Valley.

Foucrier said Legacy and Rooms Express combined control the second-largest market share in the area after Mathis Bros.

The new store is one of two that Linder's is adding this month. It's also opening a 25,000-square-foot Linder's in Murrieta, Calif., this Thursday.

Foucrier wouldn't give projected sales for the new stores, but said they should help push the company's furniture, bedding and accessory sales past $100 million in 2007. Linder's was a newcomer to the Top 100 this year with estimated furniture, bedding and accessory sales of $74 million in 2005.

Like many retailers, Linder's has seen business slow down this year. Same-store sales have declined, although not in double- digit figures like Foucrier said he's heard about from others in the industry.

La Quinta, home of the new Rooms Express, is one of the fastest-growing communities in California, he said, adding, "We couldn't think of a better location for our new store."

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. All Rights Reserved.
NetQoS Addresses WAN Application Delivery Challenges in Podcast Series; Inaugural NetQoS Podcast Installment Features Industry Analyst Jim Metzler Discussing Need for Improved Networked Application Performance Management. Check it out:
AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Network engineers faced with the challenges of application performance across the wide area network (WAN) gained a new resource with the NetQoS Performance Edge Podcast Series debut. The first installment features an interview with industry analyst Dr. Jim Metzler about the network engineer's evolving role in optimizing application performance.



During the podcast, Dr. Metzler, president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, will discuss the state of the industry in managing the delivery of application services over enterprise networks and the basis of his forthcoming multi-client study on "Defining the Application Delivery Value Chain." According to Dr. Metzler, while a defined process exists for application development, many IT organizations have less well-defined responsibilities for application delivery and ownership of application performance. As application delivery over the WAN becomes more complex, the responsibility for application performance is increasingly falling to network engineers, who should take the lead on it.

"Unfortunately, the days of throwing bandwidth at a problem in hopes that it will go away haven't changed much, and end users still tend to notice issues before IT does," said Dr. Metzler. "My aim with this study is to give network engineers and other IT professionals a clear idea of how the various aspects of application delivery fit together and what information they need to improve application performance."

Podcast Title: Higher Calling: The Network Engineer's Evolving Role 
        in Optimizing Application Performance
When: September 21, 2006 - AVAILABLE NOW ON DEMAND
URL: www.netqos.com/podcasts/Metzler-application-delivery
Speaker: Dr. Jim Metzler, Industry Analyst with Ashton, Metzler &
    Associates
Key topics:
  -- The role of the networking organization in ensuring
    application performance
  -- Modeling the application delivery value chain
  -- The relationship between components of the application
    delivery value chain
  -- Organizational challenges and opportunities
  -- Stepping stones for putting this framework into place
Sponsor: NetQoS, Inc.



To reserve a free copy of Metzler's study, "Defining the Application Delivery Value Chain," visit www.netqos.com/network-performance-report

About Dr. Jim Metzler

Jim Metzler is widely recognized as an authority on network technology and its business applications. In over 30 years of professional experience, he has helped more than one hundred enterprises evolve their network infrastructure, numerous vendors refine their product strategies, and multiple service providers deploy technology and services.

About the NetQoS Performance Edge Podcast Series

The NetQoS Performance Edge Podcast Series focuses on trends and technologies in network performance management. Listeners will learn from industry thought leaders and technologists about the shifts taking place in the way IT organizations manage the delivery of critical application services over their enterprise networks.

About NetQoS Inc.

NetQoS software and services help large organizations -- including 8 of the Fortune 12 -- improve the delivery of applications over wide area networks by enabling them to monitor application service levels, troubleshoot problems quickly, and plan for change. Representative NetQoS customers include Chevron, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Hilton Hotels, Siemens, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, NASA, and Barclays Global Investors. For more information, visit http://www.netqos.com or call 877-835-9575.

NetQoS and SuperAgent are registered trademarks, and ReporterAnalyzer is a trademark of NetQoS Inc. All other trade names, trademarks, and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Speech Analytics Market Could Benefit from Partnerships with Complementary Technologies. Check it out:
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42413) has announced the addition of Datamonitor's new report: Speech Analytics: Go-to-Market Strategies (Strategy Focus) to their offering.



Patterns for the use of speech analytics have not yet solidified within organizations, and there is opportunity for alert vendors to influence user behavior. Speech analytics solutions are beginning to differentiate in this early stage, as vendors become interested in partnering with other types of business functionality.

Scope of this title:

-- Outlines key inhibitors for purchasing speech analytics and methods for vendors to directly address them.

-- Examines potential patterns of use within organisations that are purchasing speech analytics, and outlines promising avenues for partnership.

Highlights of this title:

-- Vendors should directly address the factors inhibiting pragmatist manager's investment.

-- Vendors should bear in mind how their solution will be used within an organization, and strategise accordingly.

-- Vendors should select complementary types of functionality with which to partner in order to access larger markets

Reasons to order your copy:

-- Details critical issues in potential clients understanding of speech analytics, and provides solutions

-- Delivers practical insights into enterprise requirements

-- Identifies key areas for integration

OUR VIEW

CATALYST

SUMMARY

METHODOLOGY

ANALYSIS

APPENDIX

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42413

Source: Datamonitor
Siemens Building Technologies Signs Agreement to Acquire VistaScape Security Systems; Intelligent Surveillance Technology Now Protecting Major Airports, Facilities and Sensitive Commercial Sites. Check it out:
BUFFALO GROVE, Ill. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Siemens Building Technologies, Inc., announced today it has signed an agreement by which it intends to acquire VistaScape Security Systems Corp., of Atlanta, as a wholly owned subsidiary.



VistaScape is a leading developer of automated video analytic technology designed to protect critical infrastructure from a broad spectrum of threats. Its customers include major U.S. airports, government facilities and sensitive commercial sites. The transaction, which is expected to close within 30 days, is subject to approval by regulatory authorities.

"VistaScape provides a platform to deliver integrated surveillance applications that enhance the value and effectiveness of the entire security infrastructure. This is a core enabling technology for security integrators globally," says Jens Michael Wegmann, global head and president of the security systems division for Siemens Building Technologies. "VistaScape and its solutions providers have done a phenomenal job delivering this technology in the U.S. and Siemens is committed to helping grow this business--globally and in North America."

Founded in 1999, VistaScape pioneered the use of geospatial-aware intelligent video surveillance technologies that provide responders with real-time situational awareness about the nature and location of potential security violations. The company's flagship product, SiteIQ(TM), is a policy-based software solution that combines these capabilities together with input from other field devices, like intrusion sensors and access control, for proactive alerting and enterprise-wide security management.

"With Siemens, VistaScape's potential to secure and protect critical infrastructure will expand exponentially," says Glenn McGonnigle, chairman and CEO of VistaScape. "At all levels it is a strategic and technological win for both companies. It's a smart match. Siemens gains access to VistaScape's proven security intelligence platform and we secure access to unmatched R&D resources and global security systems integration experience that few companies can match."

As a leading provider of building controls, fire safety and security system solutions, Siemens Building Technologies, Inc., makes buildings comfortable, safe, productive and less costly to operate. With U.S. headquarters in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Siemens Building Technologies employs 7,200 people and provides a full range of services and solutions from more than 100 locations coast-to-coast. Worldwide, the company has 28,000 employees and operates in more than 42 countries.

For more information on Siemens Building Technologies, visit: www.siemens.com
Zetera Makes Top Ten Startups List; Byte & Switch Names Storage-over-IP Innovator as a Company to Watch. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Zetera Corporation, a developer of breakthrough network storage technology, today announced that it has been selected by Byte & Switch, a TechWeb publication, as one of the storage industry's "Top 10 Startups to Watch." Zetera views the recognition as a positive addition to the many accolades and endorsements it has received since its Z-SAN(TM) Storage-over-IP (SoIP) SAN technology was introduced to the consumer and business markets over the last year.



When compiling its ten startups list, Byte & Switch editors looked for companies that offer game-changing ideas about storage, the data center and content management, and might be spawning the next big innovation. Other criteria included Series A funding within the last two years and a "really interesting gamble or a creative take on the myriad of technologies that inhabit the storage market."

"The industry has been buzzing with excitement about Z-SAN since we first announced the technology to the public less than two years ago," said Chuck Cortright, Zetera's president and CEO. "Part of our success stems from the rapid adoption of its Z-SAN technology, mostly due to the high performance, scalability, ease of use and affordable cost it brings to storage devices. The other part is due to our devoted team and talented inventors who created a stunning new architecture that is well on its way to transforming the storage market."

This year has marked several significant milestones in the adoption of Z-SAN, as evidenced by Zetera's recent announcement that more than 100,000 SAN devices based on its technology have shipped worldwide since their debut in September 2005; as well as the building of a 1.4 petabyte storage array for a research project at MIT which uses the same low cost Z-SAN enclosures that are being sold to the small business market.

Z-SAN helps manufacturers take full advantage of the digital media revolution, which is fueling rapid growth in the storage sector. Unlike any other storage technology in the market, Z-SAN simultaneously optimizes the four fundamental factors that drive the success of a network storage system - scalability, performance, reliability and cost. As home and business users demand solutions that make storing, sharing and protection of their growing volume of digital content easier and less expensive, Z-SAN enables OEMs to build products that deliver all of the benefits of an enterprise-level SAN without the expense or complexity.

Byte & Switch's "Top 10 Startups to Watch" can be read in its entirety at http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=103313.

About Zetera Corporation

Zetera Corporation is the developer of Z-SAN(TM), a SoIP (Storage over Internetworking Protocol) technology that enables networked storage to be realized at unprecedented price-performance levels. The technology was invented by the creators of the IDE and ATAPI disk drive standards, which have shipped in billions of disk drives. Leveraging the latest IP advances, Zetera has created a new class of network storage technology that is superior in performance, cost, scalability and compatibility to all other types of network storage. Based in Irvine, California, Zetera licenses its technology to leading storage, computer, peripheral and device manufacturers worldwide, including NETGEAR and Bell Microproducts. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.zetera.com.

Zetera(TM) and the Zetera logo are trademarks of Zetera Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

(C) 2006 NETGEAR, Inc. NETGEAR and the NETGEAR logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NETGEAR, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Information is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved.
Object Management Group Joins RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition as Premier Association Co-Sponsor; International Standards Body Joins Technical Design and Development Event for Building Commercial Robotic Systems. Check it out:
UPTON and FRAMINGHAM, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Robotics Trends and IDG World Expo today announced that the Object Management Group has joined the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition as the Premier Association Co-Sponsor. The RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition (www.robodevelopment.com) will be held December 12-13, 2006 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara California.



"I am delighted that the Object Management Group has joined the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition as the event's Premier Association Co-Sponsor," said Dan Kara, conference co-chairman and President of Robotics Trends. "The dearth of standards in the robotics field could limit the potential of this exciting new market. The OMG is leading international efforts to bolster the development of robotics systems through the adoption of open standards."

Dr. Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group notes, "The OMG believes that the robotics industry is poised for tremendous growth. Like other technological revolutions, that growth will be led by technical professionals, who will design and develop a new generation of robotics products and technology. This is also the target audience of the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition. The Object Management Group looks forward to meeting with roboticists and other technical professionals, and working with them to deploy standards that will speed the development, as well as increase the robustness, of their robotics designs."

About the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition

Robotics Trends' RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition is a multifaceted educational forum and trade show dedicated to addressing the technical issues involved with the design and development of commercial robotic products. The RoboDevelopment exposition hall provides attendees with hands on access to the latest design and development solutions for producing mobile robotics and intelligent systems technology, while the RoboDevelopment keynotes and general sessions are specifically designed to impart to technical professionals the information they need to develop the next generation of personal, service and mobile robots. Tracks in the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition include:

-- Design, Development and Standards,

-- Tools and Platforms, and

-- Enabling Technology.

About the Object Management Group

OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies, including: Real-time, Embedded and Specialized Systems, Analysis & Design, Architecture-Driven Modernization and Middleware and an even wider range of industries, including: Business Modeling and Integration, C4I, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Legal Compliance, Life Sciences Research, Manufacturing Technology, Robotics, Software-Based Communications and Space.

OMG's modeling standards, including the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)) and Model Driven Architecture(R) (MDA(R)), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management. OMG's middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA(R)) and support a wide variety of industries.

More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org. OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA.

About Robotics Trends, Inc.

Robotics Trends, the world's first integrated media firm serving the burgeoning personal, service and mobile robotics marketplace, services their clientele through three major business divisions:

-- Robotics Trends Publishing, which produces www.roboticstrends.com, an online news, information and analysis portal focused on business and technology trends for people who build, buy, invest in, and seek to understand the personal, service, mobile and military robotics market;

-- Robotics Trends Events, which produces the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition (www.robobusiness2006.com) and the RoboNexus Conference and Exposition (www.robonexus.com); and

-- Robotics Trends Analyst Services serving the strategic consulting needs of leading emerging robotics manufacturers.

About IDG World Expo

IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com) produces technology-focused tradeshows, conferences and events for professionals seeking world-class education, peer-to-peer networking and one-stop comparison shopping. As the leading technology event management company, IDG World Expo leverages its experience and knowledge of technology-focused events and conferences, enabling technology companies to capture the attention and loyalty of influential buyers. IDG World Expo's portfolio of conferences and events includes Macworld Conference & Expo(R), LinuxWorld Conference & Expo(R), LinuxWorld(R) OpenSolutions Summit, Wireless Sensing Solutions(TM), GridWorld(TM), Syndicate(TM), SaaScon(TM), OSBC(R), Digital ID World(R), RoboBusiness and RoboNexus. IDG World Expo is a business unit of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research and event company.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Umatilla County OKs enterprise zone. Check it out:
(Tri-City Herald (Kennewick, WA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--PENDLETON -- Umatilla County commissioners on Wednesday approved an extended enterprise zone for a planned distribution center at the Port of Umatilla.

The approval exempts the business, Columbia River Logistics Service Co., from taxes for the first five years of operation, instead of three years. The exemption does not apply to taxes accrued during the construction phase.

The zone had to be approved before the company broke ground on the land it purchased from the port, said Umatilla City Administrator Larry Clucas.

Once the distribution center is operating, it could employ up to 20 people, he said.

The distribution center's parent company, Seattle-based James Farrell Co., ships a variety of products internationally, including powdered milk, forage and grains.

Umatilla County Commissioner Dennis Doherty said he thought the enterprise zone was part of the overall strategic plan the port has been following to attract new customers.

"This is an important part and you have to connect the dots," he said.

Normally a project needs a minimum $25 million investment before it qualifies for the five-year exemption. The distribution center is expected to be a $1.5 million investment.

In addition to the enterprise zone, the Port of Umatilla built a $10,000 transload facility for the company, although it can be used with other freight. The port also received a $4.7 million ConnectOregon grant that will pay for rail and dock improvements and help excavate the site for the new distribution center.



The extended enterprise zone still needs state approval.

In other business, commissioners lifted a temporary burn ban because cooler and wetter weather has reduced the fire risk. County residents still need to make sure a burn is authorized before starting any fires.

Commissioners also set a public hearing to discuss a petition for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to withdraw from a special tax district intended to raise money for the Umatilla County Sheriff's Office. The tax will be on the November ballot and applies only to people living outside city limits.

The hearing will be 10 a.m. Tuesday in Room 114 at the courthouse, 216 S.E. Fourth St., Pendleton.

Copyright (c) 2006, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
BayBio Adds Location Management Services for Expanding Life Sciences Industry; BayBio Members to Save on, Manage Location Costs Through Incentives Negotiation and Management Program Offering. Check it out:
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Location Management Services (LMS), a leading provider of world-class site selection, incentive negotiation and compliance services, announced today a partnership with BayBio to provide incentives negotiation and management benefits to BayBio members. LMS will assist BayBio members in securing state, local, and federal credit and incentive programs that will substantially offset the cost of expansion or new construction in the rapidly growing biotechnology industry.



While traditionally the partnered level of incentive negotiation services was only conducted for the largest companies, all members of BayBio will now have access to these services offered by LMS at no upfront cost. Customary incentive packages for the biopharmaceutical industry typically include state and federal programs such as Empowerment Zone tax credits, Federal Renewal Zones, New Market Tax Credits and grants toward new construction, state investment and abatements, as well as job creation programs. Further special incentive programs exist at all levels of government for biotech companies.

"We are pleased that BayBio has chosen LMS as its partner," said Jim Renzas, Chief Executive Officer of Location Management Services. "We look forward to saving its members millions of dollars in their expansion efforts, and are excited that our expertise and experience can help BayBio members take their businesses to the next level."

"While competition for our member companies heats up, with proverbial carrots dangling all over the place, a membership in BayBio now also provides equal negotiation power, especially for life sciences companies that need all the support they can get on their arduous path to delivering cures to patients," commented Matt Gardner, President of BayBio.

About Location Management Services

Location Management Services, founded in Mission Viejo, California, is a leading provider of world-class site selection, incentive negotiation and compliance management services for companies considering new facilities, expansions, consolidations, dispositions, and relocations.

LMS has cumulatively realized more than $2 billion in job creation and investment incentives for its clients as a result of incentives negotiations and compliance management. During the last three years alone, LMS completed more than 700 site selection and incentive negotiation projects.

About BayBio

BayBio is Northern California's life sciences industry association. We support the regional bioscience community through advocacy, enterprise support and the enhancement of research collaboration. Our members include organizations engaged in, or supportive of, research, development and commercialization of life science technologies. BayBio is the regional affiliate for Northern California of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

For more information please visit www.baybio.org or call (650) 871-7101.
Managing $2.1b for Only $2000! No Way.. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The government is once again up in arms against the Daily Monitor over a story that President Yoweri Museveni told his cabinet that he wants an improvement of his salary.

The President, according to the story, told his 'colleagues' that he expected an improvement in his remuneration when an enabling law is in place. Mr Museveni earns a paltry Shs3.6 million (about $2,000) a month.

As a citizen and a patriotic one at that, I see absolutely no problem with a Chief Executive Officer of a four trillion shillings (about $2.159 billion) enterprise also known as the Republic of Uganda earning a befitting salary.

CEO Museveni not only pulled this country out of a seemingly bottomless pit but has also successfully turned it round to a profit-making giant in the Great Lakes Region.

Besides, the President has always argued that managing the affairs of Uganda is a sacrifice; he has not taken leave ever since he started the struggle some good 40 years ago.

He's been the most loyal servant of all that the country has had in its 43 years of independence, of which he has been driver for 20 solid years and still countinuing.

Over the 20 years he has been the president you find that nearly 20 of the 24 hours that make a complete day, Museveni shuttles from one corner of the country to another without showing signs of fatigue and has never mumbled in discomfort.



Who then deserves a pay rise more than Museveni? Compare his Shs3.6 million salary to the work he does, the dedication and passion with which he pursues it and you will know that either he does not know his rights or we, his employers, are blind to rewarding good service.

When the elections of 2001 came, many of his supporters urged us to give him a "thank you" term in office. This, they argued, was necessary as a bonus for his dedication to serve.

Surprisingly today these are the same people struggling to outdo each other in denying that our most loyal worker has asked for recognition of his efforts by improving his paycheck!

There is no dispute that Museveni's current salary is far lower than that of many an executive in this City whose companies are surprisingly worth much less.

I would have expected all the Kajuras, the Nsibambis and the Kabushengas to be demonstrating in support of Museveni's salary increment and the "Yellow Girls" threatening to strip themselves naked if the President were not rewarded accordingly, rather than waste the country's scarce resources and time attacking a poor journalist and newspaper for raising this matter of great national importance.

I am certain that the CEO of the Red Pepper tabloid earns much more than our President's Shs3.6 million, so why the hullabaloo?

Is it not a fact that poor remuneration demotivates workers and tempts those who control resources to abuse them? Is it also that poor pay is responsible for the high rate of brain drain? Cut the crap and support our President; give him a salary rise. It has been overdue.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media

Anti Fraud Software Launched

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Anti Fraud Software Launched. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A NEW computer system that will help internal auditors to curb financial fraud has been launched in Uganda.

The new software system known as Pro Audit/Advisor (ACL), was launched at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel on September 15 by CQS Technology Holding (pty) Ltd, a South African - based company.

Officials told journalists at a press conference that the system makes it easier for internal auditors to conduct an audit, and faster to generate report and graphically present audit results on daily, weekly or monthly basis.

The Business Development Manger of CQS Technology Holding (pty) Ltd, Ms Keren Williams said: "Using ACL technology to access and analyse unlimited volumes of data from virtually any enterprise applications, organisations can quickly identify suspicious transactions that may represent fraud, error, and abuse and close control loopholes before fraud escalates."



She said through efficient ACL scripting capabilities, internal auditors could capture key analytic tests, and then schedule them to run automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so as to get timely insights into areas of potential risk for fraud and control them.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media
No 50p tax rate, but a pension raid instead. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SIR Menzies Campbell saw off a rebellion from MPs at his first party conference as leader yesterday and dropped plans to hit high earners with a 50p top rate of tax.

But in its place was a package of proposals which would eat into the pensions, assets and holidays of the middle classes.

Senior party figures said the plans were designed as a 'tax hike for the rich'. Even Sir Menzies admitted: 'We are not penalising ambition or achievement, we are penalising wealth.' In a move which would raise GBP 10billion, tax relief on pensions for higher earners would be slashed - leaving someone on GBP60,000 a year with GBP1,000 less annually in their pension pot. Meanwhile, higher levies would be imposed on the sale of second homes and shareholdings.



A further GBP8billion would be raised from 'green taxes' to encourage environmentallyfriendly behaviour - including GBP2,000 car tax for 4x4s and GBP1,500 for family vehicles, and new levies on aviation which would signal an end to cheap flights.

The GBP18billion raised would be spent on removing income tax for the lowest earners, slashing 2p off the basic rate and raising the higher rate threshold to GBP50,000.

Sir Menzies insisted that the new tax plans would see only the top ten per cent of earners worse off. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies said this would include a couple with two children on a combined after-tax income of GBP53,400.

And experts pointed out that if the green taxes changed people's behaviour, there would eventually be less revenue - creating a 'black hole' in the nation's finances.

Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said voters had to accept 'policies that hurt' if they were to prove themselves serious about tackling climate change.

He added: 'We have now got a very good radical tax package, tax cutting for millions of people, a great commitment to a green switching tax, taxing the very wealthy.' Sir Menzies had faced the first major challenge to his leadership when a dozen MPs and peers staged a revolt against abandoning the 50p top rate policy.

But to widespread relief in the Campbell camp, mutiny was snubbed by a wide margin of activists.

Frontbencher Evan Harris, who led the rebellion, told delegates to applause: 'I support-Ming Campbell, we all do, but this is not just his party it's yours.' Malcolm Bruce, MP for Gordon in the Scottish Borders, said scrapping the 50p rate left the party 'in danger of undermining what we have been saying for the last two decades'.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'The LibDems are right to axe the commitment to a 50p top rate of tax and they are right to call for tax thresholds to be raised. Both of these will be popular moves.

'But it's a real shame they are undoing the good work by committing to a massive increase in green taxes which will hit huge numbers of ordinary families across the country.' Shadow Local Government Minister Eric Pickles said: 'Whatever they claim and whatever they say, Liberal Democrat plans mean just one thing - higher taxes.

'They want to shift the tax burden on to everyday families and working couples, by hiking rates of income tax. They fail to understand that raiding Britain's pay packets each month punish hard work and enterprise.'

POLITICAL gossip websites were rife with speculation last night after LibDem MP Lembit Opik told a radio interviewer that politicians have a right to secrets. In the 'honesty booth' feature on Victoria Derbyshire's Radio 5 Live show, he was asked: 'Does that mean you have a personal secret that you are hiding from the electorate?' He replied: 'We have the right to not expect the media to always poke around in them (secrets).' Mr Opik who is engaged to weather presenter Sian Lloyd, said he had complained to the BBC about the line of questioning.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

BUSINESS BRIEFING

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BUSINESS BRIEFING. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CORPORATE identity theft is on the increase and is set to cost businesses GBP700 million a year by 2020. Big companies, and those based in London, are likely to suffer the greatest losses, according to a study by insurer Royal & SunAlliance.



But smaller companies are warned that the cost to them is greater per employee than a larger business and can cause greater damage.

Scotland Yard estimates that fraudsters who steal companies' identities to order goods and services in their name cost businesses GBP50 million a year.

But firms employing between ten and 19 staff could find their share of the cost soaring to GBP125 million a year by 2020 if this type of organised crime goes unchecked.

.. POLITICAL parties are failing to get their enterprise message across to small companies and most bosses do not know which MPs are responsible for small business issues.

The Forum of Private Business found that only a third of small firms knew that Margaret Hodge was the Minister for Industry and the Regions, responsible for small businesses. One in five bosses of small firms had never heard of her.

Only eight per cent were aware that Mark Prisk is the Conservative spokesman for business and enterprise. And the Liberal Democrats' small business spokeswoman Lorely Burt only registered with four per cent of small business owners.

Forum spokeswoman Victoria Carson says: 'As the party conference season begins, this is a timely reminder to politicians that a vast number of voters who own smaller businesses are being left out in the cold.'

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.

Deals: M&A

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Deals: M&A. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) . Olswang advised private equity firm Graphite Capital on its backing of the 86m management buy-out of global technical recruitment business NES Group from its founder and majority shareholder Bridgepoint. Private equity partner Fabrizio Carpanini ( pictured) led the Olswang team. Travers Smith senior associate Ian Shawyer advised Bridgepoint and DLA Piper advised the NES management.



. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Woolworths Group on its acquisition of investment holding company AMP Enterprises from 3i for 20m. Corporate partner Andrew Hutchings led the team. Eversheds corporate associate Catherine Eley advised the management and Wragge & Co private equity head Maurice Dwyer advised the seller.

. Pinsent Masons is advising building products distributor Heywood Williams on its 48m acquisition of Carlisle Brass Group. The Pinsents team was led by Manchester corporate partner Helen Ridge, while the vendor, Robin Graham, is being advised by Dickinson Dees corporate partner Simon Watts.

. SJ Berwin corporate finance partner Jonathan Djanogly has advised Pipex Communications on its acquisition of Bulldog's residential and small business broadband customer base and related intellectual property for approximately 12m. Allen & Overy corporate partner Anna Buscall advised the sellers, Cable & Wireless.

. Howard Kennedy head of corporate Alan Banes has advised the shareholders of property consultant Chantrey on the sale of 50% of its business to Australian property and funds management group Mirvac for 2m. Clayton Utz acted for Mirvac.

. White & Case New York corporate partner Ward Atterbury is advising Lehman Brothers Co-Investment Partners on its agreement to co-invest in Firth Rixson alongside The Carlyle Group. Latham & Watkins corporate partner Mike Bond is advising The Carlyle Group. Ashurst head of finance Nigel Ward advised Lehman Brothers as lenders to the agreement. The management of Firth Rixson was advised by DLA Piper corporate partner Andrew Holt.

. Baker & McKenzie Zurich-based corporate partner Martin Frey and banking partner Marcel Giger have advised 3i and Star Capital on the SFR1.6bn (686m) sale of SR Technics. Clifford Chance London private equity partner Simon Cooke acted for the acquiring consortium, made up from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, Mubadala Development and Istithmar. Swiss firm Niederer Kraft & Frey advised SR Technics management.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
Digital Dictation: Seamless Solution. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Recent technological developments in communication have created considerable opportunities for law firms to allow fee earners to be more flexible in their work patterns, while also improving business continuity, reducing client service times and achieving overall cost reductions.



Larger law firms are able to cut costs by seeking the economy of global teleworking, outsourcing and decentralised structures. Smaller firms are now able to afford systems to provide all the information and resources their fee earners require to deliver client service and reassurance at all times.

The growing need to flex and react quickly to meet clients' expectation for a quick response also underpins the growing appetite among law firms to seize the technological advantage.

Law firms may have good reason to invest in communications technology, but to achieve the benefits they must work closely with their communications suppliers. However, with so many hardware options and service providers to choose from, all of which are floating their own agendas, it is no easy task.

The challenge law firms face, therefore, is in navigating the best solutions and integrating these against the current of change on which the convoys of competing providers and specialists float and battle.

Improved efficiency

One firm that has taken advantage of these improvements in communications technology is media specialist firm Wiggin. With offices in Cheltenham and London and a specific focus on a sector that is changing with incredible speed, it has long recognised the importance of keeping up to date with what communications technology can offer a law firm.

A state-of-the-art integrated communications infrastructure has been developed to enable users to increase productivity and service. This comprises the Interwoven Document Management System, Elite Practice Management, Elite Apex CRM, client extranets and internal intranets, the internal Wiggin system, the LANs and WANs, the global (i.e. mobile) IP links and ADSL/SDSL leased line links.

A direct result of this has been a reduction in the ratio of support staff to lawyer, from 2.5:1 to 1:1. The productivity of Wiggin's 35 lawyers has also increased; while they can be more flexible by working at home when needed, they can now work as efficiently whether in transit, in the office or at home.

These achievements have been attained through a team effort comprising IT manager, Graham Ferrer, chief operating officer, John Banister, and their communications supplier, Cheltenham-based Total Telecommunications Limited (TTL).

Banister explains: "It is all about building a technical infrastructure and support system that allows our fee earners to focus on their work and clients without having to worry about technical hiccups. We do not claim to be market leaders in this area, although I doubt that there are many firms of our size with as sophisticated systems.

"Naturally, things do go wrong occasionally and ideas, systems and processes can hit a temporary brick wall. At these times we work with our suppliers to identify options and generally are very successful in finding and building ways to work around problems."

Convergence

Ferrer sees communications technology not as a cost to slice but a solution to exploit. He believes too many law firms evaluate communications one dimensionally, although he admits: "It is hardly surprising considering the array of sup-pliers on the market. With each supplier offering endless packages, options and offers, you could end up so confused you lose sight of the solution.

"So, we took a different route. I wanted to integrate all our voice and data networks into one true converged IP solution to improve service and reduce costs."

Ferrer did a cost and efficiency audit to support his thinking and he was able to justify Wiggin procuring all its requirements from one independent supplier. He was then able to develop a close relationship with that supplier to steer in integrated changes he wanted across the range of media.

Law firms present great opportunities to adopt technology advantage because of the need for flexible work patterns and the value placed on their lawyers' time; a point Banister explains: "The other issue has been the need to manage this integration and system development and delivery to a budget. We are not blessed with the massive IT resources of many of our larger competitors. In this respect we have been very reliant on our in-house expertise and knowledge of the market provided by TTL."

TTL is able to supply one clear, itemised bill, with a range of reporting options, for all Wiggin's communications spend.

IP telephone system

Considerable improvements in client performance and staff reduction have been achieved by Wiggin's investment in a new telephone system. The old system, an Ericsson MD110, offered inflexible traditional telephony.

Ferrer made a comparison between retaining and upgrading the existing infrastructure versus the outlay for a new full IP system over five years. When taking into account reduced maintenance costs, savings relating to moves, adds and changes and the opportunity to replace the CISCO routers and related overheads with a converged solution between London and Cheltenham, the cost of implementing the new system was calculated to be less than that to upgrade the Ericsson technology.

The system now provides seamless communication between Cheltenham and London, with identical logon, voice-mail and fax integration. Recorded calls and voicemail create media files that can be routed to the digital dictation system.

So successful is this that they have added another 2MB link between Cheltenham and London. The new link was chosen to give increased bandwidth to cater for increased traffic as well as resiliency.

An alternative supplier was chosen so in the event that the original link fails, the second link could take the strain and vice versa, also by the use of duplexing hardware when both links are available a seamless 4MB connection between Cheltenham and London is in effect.

Business continuity

Wiggin maintains its own disaster recovery suite, which enables it to provide everyone within Wiggin with a means to stay productive. The 4MB inter-office link has enabled all data to be seamlessly mirrored to the firm's London office.

A case in point was a major power failure recently, which lasted a couple of days. The recovery systems were activated and worked flawlessly. Users worked via virtual private network (VPN) tunnels and GPRS cards from wherever they were, and client service was not interrupted.

Mobility, all the time

Banister explains the importance of mobility: "We have managed very successfully to put systems in place which enable our fee earners to be able to communicate and have access to all the information and resources they need, when they need them"

. at home

Every partner's house is provided with broadband, a router and VPN and a home office PC so they are able to work as efficiently from home as they can in the office.

. in the car

Partners regularly need to travel between the Cheltenham and London offices, a journey that can take three hours. This dead time has been turned into work time. Chauffeurs are employed so each partner can work using their laptop equipped with 3G data cards to enable high-speed connectivity via their laptop.

These work by providing a fast wireless connection allowing access to voice-mail, the internet and email. Charging is based on data transferred rather than connection time, enabling a cost-efficient way of accessing larger volumes of data on the move.

. on the move

Wiggin has also invested in the Black-Berry Enterprise Solution. The firm switched from XDAs to BlackBerry devices because of user preference for its intuitive functions and its `push' technology enabling emails to arrive without the need to dial up. An unexpected user benefit has been the extended battery life, performing twice as long as the XDA.

The BlackBerry has fast become a favourite device with law firms, not least because of its security virtues. It is one of the leading devices for mobile security for IT policies and encryption, using AES and Triple DES.

Many deployment tasks including activation, termination and upgrades can be undertaken by Ferrer `over the air'. According to TTL, this is key to protecting lawyers' data should a device be lost or stolen.

While none of this will appear revolutionary to many in the large City firms, the key for a small niche firm such as Wiggin has been to get all these individual elements of the system to work together. This, in turn, provides fee earners with the technical excellence and, ultimately reassurance, that they require in their delivery of client services.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
Digital Dictation: Rise Of The Bespoke System. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With business process management (BPM) moving up the IT agenda and into the mainstream, the battleground is becoming increasingly competitive as established vendors reposition themselves to try to capture a share of this growing market.



As practice management, document management and other suppliers move to offer enhanced workflow features within their core products, how will this impact on the requirement for BPM solutions within law firms?

The idea of traditional line-of-business suppliers incorporating workflow extensions into their applications is not new. While some legal sector vendors are enhancing their workflow functionality, the real change is the shift in marketing strategy to attempt to go head-to-head with enterprise BPM solutions.

The fact that some practice management systems (PMS) vendors are claiming their systems now remove the need for standalone BPM solutions is a key development.

These types of workflow extensions are not, however, a substitute for enterprise BPM. While these enhancements can improve process flows, we believe they are generally ineffective when support is required for new processes or for actions where users need to step outside the core system in question.

Condition process flows

Ian Beck, head of IT at Scots firm Tods Murray, supports this stance. He says: "There are broad differences between investing in a BPM product as compared to traditional in-built PMS and document management systems (DMS) workflow add-ons. Only enterprise BPM provides an independent data services layer that can condition process flows based upon the values of data within a completely new composite application. This leverages the value of data held in disparate systems, ensuring efficiencies, quality, cost-effectiveness and compliance."

In addition to the specialist legal sector vendors, general industry giants such as Microsoft have similarly extended their support for process auto-mation with development tools such as BizTalk Server, InfoPath and now Windows Workflow Foundation.

These development tools assist organisations, or law firms with a large internal development resource, to develop bespoke code for individual process solutions. However, although recent announcements represent a measurable technical advance, these offerings do little to eliminate the key challenges of development projects. They do not solve issues such as maintaining multiple technical development tools, over-runs, ongoing maintenance costs and an inability to quickly evolve and react to change.

Major software company

As a Microsoft Gold Partner and software solution developer, FloSuite - where appropriate - makes full use of Microsoft's latest toolsets. But these tools only form a part of what is still a technically complex development environment. FloSuite's customers clearly share this view of reality, which is why they do not wish to take on the responsibilities of trying to be a major software company.

Peter Wonson, IT director at City firm Mishcon de Reya, supports the theory that enterprise BPM is a broader, more flexible option than the market alternatives. He says: "BPM offers excellent opportunities for long-term development and management of core processes within law firms."

For example, he adds: "Through the flexibility and ease-of-use of its Micro-soft Visio-based process modelling tools, FloSuite allows rapid deployment and evolution of sophisticated solutions all within the one easy-to-use development environment."

One of the factors fuelling demand for BPM within the legal sector is an increased interest in driving efficiency and reducing costs through IT strategy. With the advent of the post-Clementi era, interest is growing among business decision-makers - not just the tech-nologists - as partners and managing partners look for new ways to protect their competitive advantage in an increasingly liberalised market, where national and international brands such as Tesco and the RAC plan to offer packaged legal services.

It seems likely that high street law firms will have more to fear than larger corporate law firms - the most likely areas for new entrants to focus on being high-volume processes, such as residential property conveyancing and personal injury claims. However, there are also implications for the medium - and maybe even larger - firms which have departments focused on low-value, high-volume processes.

So, as firms wish to manage increasing compliance requirements and prepare their plans to contest a competitive landscape, which practice areas should they consider for BPM projects? Where are the greatest benefits to be gained?

FloSuite has found that clients most often target initial roll-outs at administrative procedures that involve updating information held in multiple computerised systems, rather than focusing BPM on one practice area or department.

Client matter inception

"The most visible BPM opportunity for a legal firm is, without question, client matter inception," says Beck. "This process is not simply focused on assisting the fee earner in completing money laundering, conflicts or client engagement letters but extends the process reach to the many other silos of information such as client relationship management (CRM), systems, DMSs, case management and human resources systems."

This opinion is supported by practical evidence of the priorities that legal sector clients typically set for deployment of BPM solutions. According to FloSuite, new client matter inception - and other administrative procedures such as cheque request - are indeed a current `hot spot' among medium and large-sized firms in the UK and internationally.

Mishcons, for example, focused its initial FloSuite deployment on this process. The firm's implementation included a number of key areas: integration of key applications - in Mishcons' case, this included InterAction, CMS.NET, Interwoven WorkSite and Microsoft Exchange; money laundering procedures; credit checking; conflict of interest checking; letter of engagement production; and approval processes based on values and data.

"Improving adherence to best-practice processes and increasing the quality of data collected as part of a new client or matter inception is a logical place to start with BPM. It is, after all, the initial process that all others flow from and, if not managed correctly, can cause problems throughout many stages of the entire client interaction," says Wonson.

He continues: "In medium to large law firms, multiple application environments are the norm and so they need the flexibility and reach of a BPM solution that can quickly bring together all of the elements of enterprise application integration, data modelling, rules management and user interface design within a single framework."

While compliance has been a major driver for many firms adopting BPM, improved client services, data and cost reduction are also key factors. Operational efficiency savings of up to 50% have been reported by some legal firms as a result of successful BPM deployments.

As it looks certain that PMS and other vendors in the legal marketplace will continue to enhance their products' pre-built workflow capabilities, the enterprise BPM players will have to really sell their distinct business case to ensure they continue to differentiate themselves in this increasingly competitive marketplace. But this increased competition does not signal the end for enterprise BPM providers - as one senior figure from a PMS supplier recently commented. Rather, the market hype only serves to increase user awareness of the issues the legal profession needs to over-come to continually improve its service offerings and efficiency. This, in turn, is driving demand for applications that meet these requirements.

What the PMS, DMS and other general vendors are offering is once again just `application-based workflow' with similar limitations to previous versions. The future for BPM is bright.

Russell Wood is vice president of sales for FloSuite.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

What's next on the menu?

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What's next on the menu?. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MAMMA Mia, what an appetite these private equity funds have! As Cinven prepares to gobble up Pizza Express owner Gondola, traders are already on the lookout for another high-street takeaway.

Garfunkel's owner Restaurant Group was one of a number of catering and pubs groups that set record highs yesterday.

The shares added 246p, up 131/2p or 5.8pc, after Panmure Gordon analyst Douglas Jack predicted the firm's strategy of cornering captive markets, such as airports and leisure parks, could help deliver over 20pc growth in the medium term.

But speculation that the likes of Cinven or Wagamama owner Lion Capital could snap up another restaurant player is also helping to keep valuations plump.

Despite the best efforts of Jamie Oliver, Britons are dining out like never before, making companies such as Restaurant Group, Whitbread (off 2p to 1288p), and pub firms such as Enterprise Inns (up 61/2p to 1052p) tasty morsels for cash-rich funds.



One analyst said: 'There's a lot of consolidation going on. Restaurant Group is being associated with potential corporate activity, though it would be a shame to see that growth story taken away by a bid.' In the betting sector, hedge funds are firmly in the driving seat after the US legal turmoil drove private investors to safer shores.

The latest shock was Friday's arrest of the two Austrian heads of bwin.com, formerly BetandWin, over alleged breaches of French gaming laws.

Despite signs that the online legal mire is extending to Europe, the big UK players bounced back yesterday as hedge funds covered their short positions.

PartyGaming rose 6p to 1063/4p, topping gains among the biggest 100 UK stocks. 888 Holdings climbed 71/4p to 149p.

Hopes that Senate majority leader Bill Frist will fail in his attempts to smuggle an antionline gambling bill into a piece of defence legislation also pushed shares higher.

The Footsie 100 climbed 13.2 points to 5690.2, recouping some of its recent losses.

Resource stocks were the toast of the town, boosted by a vintage story about Royal Dutch Shell buying BG Group, up 10p to 650p. Both firms declined to comment on market chatter about a bid of up to 750p by Shell, 12p higher at 1740p. Premier Oil, another alleged object of Shell's affections, advanced 29p to 1037p.

South American mine workers are becoming more and more restive, which is good news for metals prices.

The cost of copper bounced, helping propel the likes of Anglo American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton to the head of the Footsie 100 leaderboard.

Strikes at big mines in Peru and Chile over wages fuelled fears of supply disruptions and helped copper snap three days of declines.

Kazakhmys advanced 59p to 1266p on optimism it will deliver a gleaming set of earnings today, boosted by its proximity to China and its easy access to rich mineral pickings in the happy hunting grounds of Kazakhstan.

On the bond markets hints from Chancellor Gordon Brown of higher rates sent investors in a spin, pushing yields to their highest since August 2004. A rare call by the Confederation of British Industry for a hike added to the gloom.

Banks such as Barclays (off 9p to 671p) and HBOS (15p lower to 1035p) took a hit as traders argued higher borrowing costs could hit the mortgage and credit card market.

Cadbury Schweppes lost some of its fizz after bottler PepsiAmericas spewed out a profit warning, pushings its shares sharply lower in the US. Cadbury, whose American brands include Dr Pepper and 7 Up, was 41/2p flatter at 5571/2p.

Pearson shed 5p to 743p after the Financial Times publisher was downgraded by Lehman Brothers, which said its valuation was 'difficult to justify'.

Pure Wafer, which specialises in reused silicone for the computer chip industry, added 13p to 2461/2p.

Chairman Giles Clarke, best known for founding Majestic Wine in 1981, splashed out GBP282,000 on 120,000 of the company's shares, at 235p each, bringing his holding to 1pc of the stock.

The firm reported its first ever pretax profit of GBP2m and predicted 'another year of significant growth'.

DESIGNER Vision, which supplies rear-seat car entertainment systems, slid 1/4p to 61/4p, bringing its decline in the past month to 18pc. The shares could be set to get a kick as the firm is believed to be on the cusp of announcing an order worth almost GBP3m for MP3 players from an unidentified retailer.

Earlier this month the digital minnow announced its maiden operating profit of GBP294,000.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Year of exits

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Year of exits. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) 2006 has been a successful year for Israeli venture capital. With just over two months to go to the end of the year, the number of exits recorded by the funds is reminiscent of another period, even though the sums this time round are a lot lower. If we had told venture capital fund executives a few years ago that the funds of the 1999-2000 vintage would produce the impressive list of exits we are seeing today, they might not have believed it.



The "Globes" Ten Most Promising Start Ups of 2006

Actimize - Operational-risk management software

Xeround - Data systems for telecommunications companies

Metacafe - Video sharing technology

Zend - PHP development language

Gamida Cell - Stem cell therapy technologies

Siano - Silicon receivers for mobile digital TV

SuperDerivatives - Options pricing system

GI View - Advanced endoscopic devices

Business Events - Business intelligence solutions

dbMotion - Medical informatics

One thing that venture capital funds learned to do during those tough times at the beginning of the decade was to examine the companies in depth and only invest in them after a meticulous review of the technology and the management team. This, of course, does not guarantee a fund a high return on its investment but it does at least lower the risk. Funds in Israel are set to implement the conclusions they drew from such examinations with the $2.2 billion estimated to be available for venture capital investment in the Israeli economy.

The current list of promising companies was chosen by partners from dozens of venture capital funds. Each participant was asked to choose three companies (of which only one could be from his or her own portfolio), based on the following criteria: promising and innovative technology; at least one successful financing round; sales of up to $10 million; a promising management team; a large target market, and the potential to become a market leader.

This year's list is most notable its diversity. Topping the list is a software company which focuses on data analysis, primarily for the financial market. In second place is a company which develops databases for telecommunications companies, while third place goes to an Internet company whose users are mainly private customers. Further down the list are companies specializing in business, financial and medical information, medical equipment companies, a biotechnology company, and a chip company.

But if you insist, the choice this year pointed to one trend: databases. Four companies in the list have developed technologies for database management: Actimize Inc., selected as the most promising company for 2006, develops operational risk management solutions for financial enterprises; Xeround Systems, which came next, develops flexible database technology for integration in the systems of telecommunications giants; dbMotion Inc., develops web-based information sharing technology for the healthcare industry, and Verix (formerly Business Events) has developed a technology for identifying and monitoring factors affecting substantial business changes.

Actimize: Minimizing business risk Xeround gets the big players interested Metacafe: Going head-to-head with Google

This year's list of exits also has a clear connection with databases and enterprise infrastructure related activity, a field that has become especially significant in light of the increasing competition between the sector's giants, and the intense wave of mergers and acquisitions.

This year's acquisitions have left investors with more than $2 billion, and the potential for many more acquisitions. Zend Technologies Inc., for example, was a candidate for acquisition by Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) for $250 million. Actimize has confirmed that it has been inundated with offers, while Verix and Xeround are still too young, but they clearly have potential.

The companies selected this year are the product of funds that have reached maturity. Most of them are stable companies that have established themselves and talk about success regardless of buyers. Time will tell whether any of them of will become a company with billion dollar price tag, if at all.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 20, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Hyundai Motor to Build R&D Center in India. Check it out:
(Korea Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) By Kim Yon-se

Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo said the carmaker is willing to build an auto research and development (R&D) center in India.

Chung called for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to support Hyundai's plan to increase investment in the country, saying the investment will involve the establishment of an R&D center and engine transmission plant.

``The R&D center will upgrade the automobile industry of India,'' he said. ``We will try to become an enterprise which contributes to India's economic growth.''

Singh said the Indian government is aiming to foster the automobile sector as the country's main growth engine. The prime minister also said he wishes for continuous investment by Hyundai Motor.

The carmaker's plant near Chennai boasts some of the most advanced production, quality and testing capabilities in the country. In continuation of its investment in providing the Indian customer global technology, Hyundai is building its second Indian plant, which will produce 300,000 units per annum, raising its total production capacity to 600,000 per year in 2007.



Hyundai has won many awards in India. Recently its Sonata Embera won ``Executive Car of The Year 2006'' award by Business Standard Motoring Magazine and its Tucson has been declared ``SUV of The Year'' by NDTV Profit-Car & Bike awards 2006.

The mid-size sedan Accent won two awards from TNS _ the Accent Petrol-No 1 Entry mid-size car and Accent Diesel-No 1 mid-size diesel car. Hyundai was declared a ``Star Company'' by Business Standard this year.

Click (branded Getz there) got the coveted car of the Year 2005 award by both Business Standard Motoring and the CNBC-TV18 Autocar Auto awards.

Copyright 2006 Korea Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Why gym'll fix it in bid to break down racial prejudices. Check it out:
(The Star (Sheffield) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A mum-of-four has launched a business venture to provide Muslim women with a safe place to socialise outside the home. She spoke to Jane Cartledge EVER since she was a little girl Safiya Saeed's mother's living room has doubled as an impromptu hair salon.



Aunties, cousins, sisters and grandmothers all styled each other's beautiful long, dark hair in the only way they knew.

A trip to the hairdressers or a preening session at the salon were off limits by virtue of their Islamic faith.

The women would quite literally let their hair down in the privacy of their own home when the men were out of sight and the curtains were closed.

Some of the younger women, with a more westernised attitude, may have been confident enough to take a trip to the hairdressers and remove their Hajib headscarf.

But they quickly realised that most mainstream hairdressers weren't sensitive to their culture or religion.

Safiya, a Somalian mum of four who moved to Sheffield aged 13, says she knows many young women who have infuriated their stylist after demanding their hair be covered up the moment the hairdryer is switched off.

It's for these reasons that 34-year-old Safiya decided to open her own women-only salon and gym in Burngreave. But there's much more to this feminine oasis than just straighteners and Swedish massage.

Safiya's dream has survived prejudice from her own community to become a reality and Saf Saf's on Spital Hill is now a thriving drop-in centre for hundreds of women who, until now, have been isolated in the home.

"The high street in Burngreave is completely male orientated from the cafes to the shops," says Safiya, who can't resist a smile knowing she's making long-awaited in-roads into a male dominated culture.

"The women don't have anywhere to go socially. There's nothing for teenage girls apart from Surestart and not everyone wants to have kids or study. I've opened this building as a haven for women and I say 'come in an have a cup of tea, have a chat'.

"Just because a woman wears a Hajib it doesn't mean she should feel bad about herself or let her health and beauty regime go." Safiya, fully supported by her family and second husband Fahad Bagadai, has completely renovated a dilapidated old building overlooking Spital Hill.

It's small but well equipped gym, airy lilac beauty room and chintzy salon below with old fashioned freestanding hairdriers can't be accessed from the main road - but that's the whole point.

"We keep the doors locked and the blinds can be pulled for ultimate privacy. That way, women can relax, take off their scarves and talk about things they can't talk about elsewhere." Safiya's project has been made possible by investment from social entrepreneur charity Unltd but securing finance hasn't been her only obstacle.

"As a woman in this community, it's really difficult to be taken seriously . When you break out and do a so called Western idea then people say 'why do you want to do that?'. Then they try the guilt trip saying 'why do you want to leave your children and start a business?' "If I didn't do it someone else would and I tell them that my children are going to grow up whether I'm working or not.

"At the end of the day it starts with me. If I'm happy and content, they will be too.

"I needed to be a fantastic example to my children and I needed to be able to show people and the community I could do something, particularly after my divorce." Safiya's business has the blessing of her parents and shopkeeper husband who himself works seven days a week.

Her mum looks after her four children - the youngest is just 12 months - while the business gets off the ground.

She says she can count on one hand the number of successful Muslim businesswomen but that doesn't dampen her infectious enthusiasm.

"I need to help people and benefit people, it's in my nature," says Safiya, flashing another broad, lipsticked smile.

"I sleep smiling at night - stressed, migraine? Probably. But I sleep soundly knowing it's mine and it's down to my hard work." Safiya worked solidly for three months getting Saf Saf's ready for the women of Burngreave and surrounding areas.

Then she spent six weeks on an intensive training course for women in business.

The result is that Safiya knows what it takes to make a business succeed.

Saf Saf's is a social enterprise as well as a business and her staff are self employed. For GBP22 a month women get access to the gym, a relaxing meeting space, a sewing room where they can work on dresses and can book into the beauty salon or hairdressers.

"We're starting free counselling sessions with a qualified counsellor and I'm hoping one day to have a sauna and Moroccan scrub.

"A lot of the elderly Asian and African women miss the sun so saunas are great for their arthritis.

"There are great health benefits to this project and it's not just about providing women with a space to meet, it's about providing a service and empowering them." Safiya's loyal team speak no less than six languages between them meaning no one is left out.

"We're getting the boys ringing up and booking their mums in," says Safiya, who lives in Sharrow and attended Abbeydale Grange.

"They say she's worried about coming down because she doesn't speak English but to us that isn't a problem at all. We're here for all women of all ages." Saf Saf Hair and Health can be found at 149a Spital Hill, Burngreave. Telephone 0114 273 0248.

What do you think:

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.
Senate resolution seeks investigation on EO 558. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Senate economic affairs and trade committee chairman Manuel A. Roxas II filed a resolution last Sept. 18 that urged the banks and economic affairs committees to investigate an executive order (EO) that re-allows direct micro-enterprise lending by government non-financial agencies (GNFAs) and government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs), thereby threatening to distort the country's microfinance market.



Malacanang earlier issued EO 558, which effectively repealed EO 138 issued in 1999 by then President Joseph E. Estrada, and re-allowed GNFAs and GOCCs to subsidize credit programs, which the Estrada order limited to government financial institutions. The halt in direct lending is believed to have encouraged private financial lending and the growth of microfinance in the country.

Also, international funding institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank have warned of the possible impact of EO 558, noting that GOCCs and GNFAs are ill-equipped for this task, including in collecting loans.

But the Palace had defended the move, arguing that the poor had no access to credit programs in private financial institutions.

"Failure to reach the intended beneficiaries, misallocation of resources, fiscal hemorrhage, and damp [sic] economic growth are some of the ills of direct credit," a statement yesterday quoted Mr. Roxas as saying.

"Instead of repealing EO 138, there is a need to assess current lending and livelihood programs and to reconcile all existing laws to effectively establish an environment responsive to small and medium enterprises' [SMEs] problems," he added.

He said the government should not junk "tried-and-tested" policies to improve SME credit and financing. Mr. Roxas noted that SMEs account for over 99.6% of the country's registered companies, generating about 69.1% of the country's total employment. "SMEs are indispensable to the country's overall economic growth. We have to push for their development by improving their access to financing through credit guidelines and programs," he said.

Sen. Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the committee on government corporations, earlier said he would also file a resolution to investigate EO 558 amid suspicions that the system could be used to channel funds for next year's elections.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Ericsson to start offering MX-ONE. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Telecom gear maker Ericsson is going to start offering locally its MX- ONE, the latest upgrade to its converged IP-based multimedia communications system.

This will consolidate in just one solution applications and services such as voice, instant messaging, video, push e-mail and other business applications.

Designed for enterprise clients, Ericsson Southeast Asia Vice- President for systems integration and enterprise Tomas Ageskog said the solution will enable their clients such as tele-com companies to offer value-added applications for their mobile subscribers.



"SMS [short messaging service] is dominant here,but e-mail is equally important. This will enable clients to start integrating enterprise applications," Mr. Ageskog said.

Further, with the new solution, Ericsson said analog, digital, mobile and IP phones can be used interchangeably, enabling businesses to benefit from fixed-mobile and voce data convergence.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
BEA executives preach atop SOA 360 soapbox. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEA Systems on Wednesday continued to promote SOA 360, its newly announced SOA platform, at the BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco conference. The company is making SOA, in which applications are offered as componentized services and combined for new applications, its focal point. BEA officials touted SOA 360, announced Tuesday and featuring BEA AquaLogic, WebLogic, and Tuxedo product lines, as well as a collaborative tooling environment called WorkSpace 360. Also critical to SOA 360 is BEA's microService Architecture (mSA), featuring the concept of a service network and notification services for publishing and discovering modular components.



"BEA is taking SOA to its very core," said Paul Patrick, chief architect for BEA AquaLogic. "We're taking SOA into the heart of what we do [on] a day-to-day basis in the way we build products."

"Over 1,000 of our customers have SOA solutions in production," said Mark Carges, executive vice president of BEA's Business Interaction Division. BEA views business process management as a business driver for SOA, he said.

BEA's Bruce Graham, vice president of World Wide Professional Services at BEA, cited six initiatives crucial to SOA:

* Defining and capturing benefits.

* Establishing an enterprise architecture.

* Making services engineering a discipline.

* Aligning the organization for shareholder value.

* Building a stream of connected projects.

* Connecting the business to the capability.

"If your company is going to be successful, we believe that these are things that youre going to have to take on," Graham said. BEA in November plans to offer a series of service offerings providing guidance on service engineering, he said.

Even an attendee at the conference who is not currently using SOA was sold on the concept.

"I think we're headed in that direction," said Louis Leon, manager of Web services at a nonprofit organization, the name of which Leon preferred to keep anonymous. "It's an architectural strategy at this point."

SOA offers a more scalable alternative to point-to-point interfaces, Leon said.

Part of BEA's mSA plan involves modularizing BEA products, including its WebLogic Server Java application server. Functions of the application server such as its security apparatus could be separated from the core product and offered in a modular fashion, said Blake Connell, director of product marketing for WebLogic Server. Asked when BEA would be announcing formal plans for modularizing the application server, Connell said, "Stay tuned."

BEA, meanwhile, is in discussions with a car company to service-enable cars with an in-vehicle application server for high-level automotive services, said Larry Cable, BEA chief architect for WebLogic. Possible applications emanating from this arrangement could include a system that generates e-mail notifications when a car's oil needs to be changed or an application notifying drivers of available parking spaces nearby, Cable said.

Also at the conference, Connell lauded an upcoming Evans Data survey that says WebLogic Server is the top choice for developers.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Dell, Symantec product will control e-mail for SMBs. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dell Inc. and Symantec Corp. launched a joint product Wednesday to control e-mail security and data archiving for small and medium businesses.

Secure Exchange is a combination of Dell hardware and Symantec software that adds enterprise IT capability to basic Microsoft Corp. Exchange and Active Directory mailboxes.

Facing a swelling tide of e-mail volume and viruses, small companies can use the product to deploy antivirus and antispam shields, and archive and retrieve their e-mail, said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell's Product Group.

Dell's mail servers classify 94 percent of the 17 million e-mail messages received every day as spam, and the company's firewalls deflect about 400 million potential intrusions every day, he said. Small businesses don't have the resources to handle that workload.



So Dell is selling Secure Exchange to companies with 500 to 2,000 e-mail users. The package also includes Dell training services and Platinum Plus service contract.

"Customers have told us that messaging and e-mail are the lifeblood of their organizations," said Francis deSouza, vice president of enterprise messaging management at Symantec. "So you don't just drop Exchange in there and have it run your e-mail naked, but you need an ecosystem around it, providing security, availability, compliance and mailbox management."

As their businesses grow, customers can adjust the package to emphasize frequent backup or fast performance, a typical engineering tradeoff in mail systems, he said.

Dell decided to partner with Symantec after the success of past technology bundles such as its Oracle Database configurations and High-Performance Computing Cluster equipment stacks, said Judy Chavis, Dell's director of business development and global alliances. The company launched its Platinum Plus services package in June as part of an effort to supplement slumping profits from PC sales.

Dell is selling Secure Exchange for US$54,678 for the 500-seat version of a package including the Dell PowerEdge 1950s server, PowerVault 110T and M1000 storage, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, and Symantec Backup Exec. Larger customers can scale up with Dell/EMC Clariion storage products, Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series, Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange and Enterprise Vault. For more information,go here.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle releases content management add-ons. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oracle is making content and records management tools available to users of its database in a bid to gain share in the base-level content management software market.

Released Wednesday, Content Database (Content DB) and Records Database (Records DB) are optional add-ons to Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition. The tools are designed to help Oracle customers and partners securely manage unstructured content such as Microsoft Office documents, PDF (portable document format) files, document images and graphics.



Oracle firstannounced the two offeringsin June, positioning them as part of the company's plan to bring content management to the masses. Using the tools, users can capture, classify, retain and then get rid of content based on internal corporate policies.

Content DB allows organizations to consolidate their unstructured content into an Oracle Database repository, while Records DB manages the storage and disposal of content.

On a Tuesday conference call to discuss Oracle'sfirst-quarter fiscal 2007 financial results, Charles Phillips, company co-president, singled out Content DB and Records DB as future revenue generators for Oracle.

Oracle doesn't view Content DB and Records DB as replacements for enterprise content management (ECM) software from the likes of EMC's Documentum, FileNet, IBM, Interwoven, and Open Text. Instead, Oracle has positioned its tools asproviding more basic functionality, while the traditional ECM companies focus on offering more sophisticated capabilities.

However, moves by Oracle and Microsoft to enter the lower levels of the content management market are one of the factors leading toconsolidation in the ECM market. Last month, IBM announced a bid toacquire FileNet for $1.6 billion, while Open Text moved in on ECM rival Hummingbird making a$489 million offerfor the company. With Open Text publicly supporting the June unveiling of Content DB and Records DB and increasing its closeness to Oracle, some analysts are predicting the database and applications vendor may end up acquiring Open Text for its ECM expertise.

Users can download Content DB and Records DB from Oracle's Web site. Both tools are priced at $50,000 per processor. The two products run on most Oracle Database platforms including Linux, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, Sun Microsystems' Solaris, and IBM's AIX5L. There's also a client version of Content DB which runs on Microsoft's Windows.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle celebrates strong Q1 with some SAP bashing. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As Oracle executives patted themselves on the back for their company's reporting another strong financial quarter, they also couldn't resist having a go at prime applications rival SAP.

"Oracle had another very strong quarter," Safra Catz, co-president and chief financial officer at Oracle, said Tuesday during a conference call with analysts to discuss the vendor's fiscal 2007first-quarter results. "We had our strongest first-quarter license growth in more than five years by gaining market share," she added.



Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, said the company had won 88 deals going head-to-head with SAP during the quarter, including customer wins with Electrolux, Lockheed Martin, and U.S. Steel. Some of the business is what he termed "winbacks" of business Oracle had previously lost to SAP, including a strategic win at Wal-Mart Stores.

In recent months, the bittercompetitive back-and-forthbetween Oracle and SAP has reached a crescendo. Oracle jumped on SAP's July announcement oflower than expected salesand cited it as proof that the applications vendor's growth had stalled. SAP retorted that the results were a slight blip and not indicative of a major issue with its performance, which it believes remains strong.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive officer, cites two factors that he believes are working in Oracle's favor over SAP: its Java-based middleware and its aggressive focus on getting industry-specific expertise and products through acquisitions.

Ellison claimed that Oracle's Fusion middleware is "years ahead" of SAP's NetWeaver integration platform.

"NetWeaver is still relatively new and still incomplete," he said.

Oracle's so-called "hot pluggable" or component-based Fusion middleware strategy is paying off, Phillips said. Typically, the company sells one or two of its middleware components into a customer account with the hope that over time that customer will expand their use of Oracle's middleware.

Turning to applications, Ellison criticized SAP's recent decision toretain the current versionof its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, mySAP ERP 2005, through 2010 and provide new functionality through regularly issued optional enhancement packages.

"SAP has delayed the next release of its applications until 2010," he said. "They'll be two full years behind our Fusion release." Oracle is working on a new suite of enterprise applications, known as Project Fusion, which is due out in 2008.

By contrast, SAP executives have positioned the company's move to a more modular approach to product upgrades as being driven by customers' demands to pick and choose functionality.

This quarter will be the last time Oracle provides separate database and middleware growth figures, Catz said. In the first quarter, database revenue grew 10 percent, while middleware rose 56 percent. In future, Oracle will adopt the practice of IBM and Microsoft and not break out those sales, she said.

Looking to the second quarter, Catz expects Oracle's net income to grow by between 13 percent and 17 percent as revenue increases by 22 to 24 percent. She forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $0.22. Those predictions don't take into account any specific charges likely to occur in the quarter.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
ABN AMRO TO RAMP UP HEADCOUNT TO 5,000 BY NEXT YEAR (also considering opening units in Tier-II cities and other State capitals). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ABN Amro Central Enterprise Services (ACES), the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) subsidiary of the ABN Amro Bank, is planning to increase the staff strength in its three centres.

ACES has branches in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. By Jun 2007, it wants to increase the staff strength to 5,000 in the three locations from 3,700 at present. It has invested $40-50 million in the three centres.

It is also considering opening units in Tier-II cities and other State capitals. These three BPO units looked after back office transactions of ABN Amro Bank in over 60 countries.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
LIBERTY-PANTALOON JOINT VENTURE FOR FOOTMART RETAIL (the enterprise has already opened a factory each in Ahmedabad and Bangalore). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Liberty of Karnal in Haryana has formed a joint venture with Pantaloon Retail, called FootMart Retail India. The joint venture has already opened a factory each in Ahmedabad and Bangalore with an initial investment of Rs30 crore. The joint venture proposes to launch a branded footwear retail chain with stores measuring between 10,000 square feet and 20,000 square feet in metros and sub-metros.



FootMart proposes to open stores in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad by Dec 2006.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
INFOSYS DEPLOYS PEOPLESOFT 8.8 AT NISSAN UNITS (to give employees greater visibility into their payroll benefits). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Infosys Technologies Ltd has deployed PeopleSoft 8.8 at five facilities of Nissan North America Inc in the US, Canada and Mexico.

The company initially had implemented the multi-lingual, multi-currency software solution at Nissan North America in Jan 2005.

The solution includes PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Resources, Base Benefits, Benefits Administration, ePay, eProfile, eCompensation, eBenefits, eRecruit and eDevelopment. The solution is expected to give employees greater visibility into their payroll benefits and human resource information.



Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Brit Scientists Attack Exxon Mobile's Support of Global Warming Deniers. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 21, 2006 (financialwire.net via COMTEX) --September 21, 2006 (FinancialWire) Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) is under sharp fire from Britain's national academy of science, the Royal Society, which is accusing the U.S. oil giant of misleading the public into thinking that the role of humans in climate change is still in doubt. The Royal Society has written to Exxon asking it to halt support for groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change."



In this week's letter, the Royal Society objected to an Exxon Corporate Citizenship document that described "gaps in the science" of climate change, casting doubt on the link between global warming and the greenhouse gases which humans produce by burning fossil fuels.

"I am writing to express my disappointment at the inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change that these documents present," Ward wrote in the letter.

Exxon issued a statement responding to the Royal Society's letter saying that it did accept the contribution of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to climate change.

"Contrary to The Royal Society's assertion, Exxon Mobil recognizes... CO2 emissions are one of the contributing factors to climate change," it said.

Exxon Mobil has apparently backed away from funding a global warming denier group it had previously funded, giving $270,000 as recently as 2005.

The oil company donated no money to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2006, which ran ads on American television touting the benefits of carbon dioxide in May with the catchphrase: "Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life."

Carbon dioxide, produced when fossil fuels are burned, has been shown to be linked to global climate change.

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As of Sunday, 09-17-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert,
an automated pattern recognition system, indicated a DOWNTREND on
08-31-2006 for XOM @ $67.93.

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Copyright 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved.
Award bosses aim to celebrate diversity. Check it out:
(Leicester Mercury Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Organisers of Leicestershire's annual celebration of business success say they hope to see diverse entries.

The Leicestershire Business Awards 2007, in association with the Leicester Mercury, was launched at Walkers Stadium yesterday in front of 170 people.

Awards chairman Chris Corbin called on companies of all sizes, sectors and backgrounds to enter. "Leicestershire is a diverse county, in geography, population and type of businesses," he said.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase as many of these businesses as possible. I'd ask you not to be intimidated." Jeff Kindleysides is co-founder of Cossington design firm Checkland Kindleysides, which was named Leicestershire Business of the Year 2006 in April. At the launch, he said winning had been a boost to the company and helped it grow.



"It was important that we got that togetherness and drive in our businesses," he said.

Jeff Court, managing director of electronic display manufacturer Infotec, of Ashby, which won this year's Enterprise Through Innovation award, said the prize had brought a lot of positive publicity.

"After winning the award, we ran an open day for recruits," he said. "It was more successful because we won, and people thought we were the best." Leicester Mercury editor Nick Carter said finalists would be featured in the newspaper's business pages, which are read by 150,000 people each day.

The categories are: New Business, sponsored by Harvey Ingram; Sales and Marketing, sponsored by De Montfort University; Investing in Leicestershire, sponsored by Leicestershire County Council; Success Through People, sponsored by Oval; Enterprise Through Innovation, sponsored by KPMG; Contribution to the Community, sponsored by Ashfield, Entrepreneur of the Year, sponsored by Vantis and Leicestershire Business of the Year, sponsored by Alliance & Leicester.

The sponsors are Tenon, RBS and Leicester Shire Economic Partnership.

The event is supported by Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce, the Leicester Mercury and Business Link.

Annette Fitzgerald, commerce and marketing manager, at Twycross Zoo, near Ashby, said it was considering entering the Sales and Marketing category.

"We have lots of exciting things happening," she said.

The deadline for entries is November 24. The 24 finalists (three in each category) will be announced on January 24. The awards ceremony takes place at De Montfort Hall on April 20. For more details and help with entries call 0845 130 2866. To enter online go to:

Copyright 2006 Northcliffe Newspapers Group Ltd
Investigation sought into practices of supermarkets in Ireland. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Blatantly anti-competitive behaviour by large supermarket chains should be investigated by the Competition Authority as a matter of urgency, according to a report from the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business.



The report, drafted by Fine Gael Senator Paul Coghlan, analysed the development of the retail sector in Britain in recent years and the role of planning, predatory pricing and the treatment of suppliers in the retail sector in the UK.

Senator Coghlan said last night that the UK authorities had asked their Competition Commission to investigate allegations that grocery multiples were abusing their market dominance and he said the Oireachtas Committee was concerned that similar abuses may be taking place in Ireland.

"I have just completed a report on the UK grocery trade which has identified anti-competitive behaviour by the major grocery multiples. This report records there is clear evidence of price-fixing by large retailers in the UK, as well as price-flexing, in which small retailers are forced to pay more for the same products. The dominance of major multiples in the UK market has resulted in the closure of 2,760 small shops in the past four years.

"The Competition Authority in Ireland must now launch its own investigation into competition in the retail grocery sector, particularly since some UK retailers are major operators in the Irish market. In particular, the authority should use some of its extensive powers to obtain information on turnover and profitability which have been used effectively by its equivalent in the UK, but which have not been used in Ireland," he said.

Some of the other key recommendations in the report are that: n The Competition Authority should examine the extent to which large multiple retailers have bought up large banks of land in particular locations in order to prevent competitors entering the market;

n A prohibition on the enforcement of restrictive covenant by retailers who leave a particular site, preventing another food store from opening at the old location;

n The reform of planning laws to ensure to take place so that competition in the groceries trade is addressed when considering planning applications;

n A census of local retailers by the Central Statistics Office to give an overview of the market;

n A Revenue Commissioners' examination of the extent to which multiples are manipulating transaction costs to reduce any value added tax liability;

n Greater transparency in the grocery sector to force multiples to disclose information on turnover and profitability with legislation to compel disclosure if necessary.

"As well as evidence of price fixing by multiples in the UK, my report has noted evidence of price flexing. This occurs where a multiple retailer takes a large order from a particular supplier on condition that the supplier makes other retailers pay more for the same product," said Senator Coghlan.

"Consumers have a right to a wide range of goods at the lowest possible prices."

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Carlow-based engineering firm to expand South African operations. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Carlow-based engineering firm BMA GeoServices is set to double the size of its operations in South Africa after securing a major coal mining exploration contract.

The geological consultancy firm will earn 20 million South African rand (2.1 million) over three years under the agreement with NewCoal, the country's fourth-largest coal mining group.

Bernard Murphy, who founded BMA GeoServices 10 years ago, announced details of the contract yesterday on Enterprise Ireland's trade mission to South Africa, which is being headed by Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Micheal Martin.



The Irish company will provide geological, environmental and geotechnical services to NewCoal in 146 licensed sites in Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The South African firm was recently set up under the country's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) scheme by a number of local mining giants, including Anglo-American and Billiton.

BMA GeoServices has been operating in South Africa since 2001, and has interests in Angola, Namibia, DR Congo and Cameroon. In June 2005 the company set up a subsidiary firm with five staff in South Africa - a country Mr Murphy described an attractive investment location, given its "natural resources, stability and economic maturity".

"It's very exciting for us to be here. It's a very dynamic country and I think the pace of development is accelerating," he said. "We can also use the country as a base for further expansion into Southern Africa."

The company's local experiences are a telling example of the pluses and minuses of investing in South Africa. Mr Murphy said stringent exchange controls meant it was difficult to get funds into the country. "We have not tried to get them out yet," he added. There was also a "very confused picture" around BEE obligations. The black empowerment initiative, which seeks to redress some of the injustices of the apartheid era, places certain obligations on companies operating in South Africa - including, in some instances, quotas for black shareholding.

Mr Murphy said "the intention is that our ownership structure would change" to allow for staff to have a stake in the local company. In the meantime, BMA GeoServices was meeting BEE requirements by facilitating charities in the provision of water for poor communities, specifically by supplying its services "at cost".

Mr Murphy said new legislation was needed to ensure everyone "knew the rules" on BEE. "In some areas, they make up their own rules."

Like many other foreign companies, the firm has lost tenders because of the uncertainty surrounding the issue. Some local administrators have equated BEE exclusively with black ownership, and consequently demand that all investors demonstrate a suitable black shareholding.

Mr Murphy said this "presents a difficulty for Irish firms" because it meant they almost had to "cross the hurdle" of finding a local partner before they started operations. "It's critical to find a good local partner; that is the key to success [ in South Africa]," he added.

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
AMD Announces Socket Compatibility Plans to Drive Industry Collaboration; Sun Microsystems, Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, Dell and IBM Endorse Open Collaboration through AMD Torrenza Initiative to Enable Socket-Compatibility. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport(TM) technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.



Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.

"This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure."

The Torrenza Advantage

The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design documentation.

"As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative approach to innovation," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "By working with AMD and joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach."

"Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines," said Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they require."

"When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments," said Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division, HP. "The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need."

"Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus innovation," said Jan Silverman, Cray's senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "Our Adaptive Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the realized performance people have come to expect from Cray."

"Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMD's Torrenza initiative, and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza," said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves customers' server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership."

"Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD Opteron processor are powerful," said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology Officer, Dell. "The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our enterprise customers."

Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.

About the AMD Opteron(TM) Processor

Today, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Advanced Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Ericsson to supply mobile health solution to Changi General and Gleneagles hospitals in Singapore. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), Parkway Hospital and SingHealth have signed a collaboration agreement to deploy Ericsson Mobile Health solution for the remote patient monitoring in the Changi General and Gleneagles Hospitals in Singapore. Under the project Ericsson will supply and manage its mobile health solution that will be trialed at some of the hospitals' Acute Care Wards, specialized in patients that require round-the-clock monitoring due to chronic illnesses such as stroke, asthma and diabetes. The solution will enable automated collection and real-time monitoring of the patients' vital signs, such as heart and breathing rates, oxygen saturation and blood pressure. The precision and timeliness of this information will enable hospital staff to provide appropriate medical assistance to the patients. The patients only need to be fitted with lightweight and wearable health sensors that will collate and securely transmit the required data via Bluetooth to a communication module, which is connected to the hospitals' servers using WLAN technology. The information stored in the servers can be conveniently accessed by designated hospital staff from their workstations. This will significantly increase the productivity and efficiency levels of both hospitals' staff as they are now able to keep track of patients' well-being and evaluate the support required in real time, remotely and quickly. Kenneth Thean, General Manager of Information Systems, Parkway Hospitals Singapore, says, "This project will help us be more effective in deploying the nursing staff and at the same time improving the quality of patient care." Ang Boon Hock, Changi General Hospital's Assistant Director of Nursing, says: "The mobile health monitoring project can improve the timeliness in recording vital signs and can alert doctors and nurses quickly of any changes in a patient's condition." Ann Emilson, President, Ericsson Singapore, says, "Derived from one of the healthcare initiatives driven by IDA (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore), this venture is the first step towards making hassle free medical services possible to Singaporeans. Ericsson is proud and happy to be given the chance to support the local government's initiative in ensuring the well-being of its citizens." The Ericsson Mobile Health solution can also be deployed on wireless networks, allowing patients to receive medical care and assistance anytime, anywhere. Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world. Read more at http://www.ericsson.com/press FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Ericsson Media Relations Phone: +46 8 719 6992 E-mail: [email protected] About Ericsson Enterprise Mobility Solutions (EMS) For the past 30 years, Ericsson has been supplying businesses with world-class communication solutions. In order to address the market in the most appropriate manner, Ericsson's global enterprise activities and expertise have now been integrated into Ericsson's core business. Ericsson has as identified mobility as the key enabler for new, more flexible ways of working. Enterprise mobility solutions have been developed to improve enterprise productivity and enhance customer service. Enterprise-focused end-user applications for both voice and data such as mobile centrex, mobile push mail and mobile access to corporate applications provide unlimited mobility and accessibility to all mobile professionals. In addition, industry segment solutions that enable mobilizing business processes have also been developed for selected segments such as healthcare, utilities, public safety and transportation. The remote patient monitoring system is one of the applications of the Ericsson Mobile Health solutions. About Changi General Hospital Changi General Hospital (CGH) is a 776-bed restructured hospital located in the east of Singapore. A merger of Toa Payoh Hospital and Changi Hospital, CGH is designated to serve as a healthcare hub for the community in the east. It offers a comprehensive range of medical and paramedical services which include general medicine, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, emergency medicine, radiology, anaesthesia, urology, geriatric medicine, rehabilitation medicine, ENT, eye, gastroenterology, psychological medicine, neurology, dermatology, oral & maxillofacial surgery, neurosurgery, obstetrics & gynaecology, breast surgery, laboratory medicine, psychological medicine, multiphasic health screening and sports medicine. CGH is a member of the SingHealth cluster. About Parkway Hospitals Singapore Parkway Hospitals Singapore owns East Shore, Gleneagles and Mount Elizabeth Hospitals. Its parent company, Parkway Holdings is one of Asia's most prominent healthcare organisations with an extensive network of hospitals and integrated healthcare facilities in the region. Gleneagles Hospital is a 380-bed private tertiary acute care hospital. It provides a wide range of medical and surgical services for the total management of patients.



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
BEA looks to gain ground versus IBM, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft in the competitive SOA market.. Check it out:
(www.aspnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
BEA Systems ( Quote , Chart ) took a step in its evolution as a pure service-oriented architecture (SOA) vendor this week, tucking its Tuxedo , WebLogic and AquaLogic product lines under a new umbrella it calls SOA 360 .

Like all SOA ( define ) strategies, the technology package aims to match software with business processes to help customers save money on software development and integration.

The SOA 360 platform, which BEA is touting at its BEAWorld event in San Francisco this week, is supported by BEA's microservice architecture (MSA).

BEA said in a statement MSA combines the tenets of SOA ( define ) and the concept of a service network, or a modular and lightweight separation of concerns instead of point-to-point integration.

MSA is driven by events in a business process, using notification services to publish and discover components or services.

MSA will also work with open source containers and presentation services, a continuation of BEA's blended strategy for combining commercial and open source technologies.

SOA 360 is supported by BEA's new SOA tooling environment, BEA WorkSpace 360, which is designed to allow business analysts, architects, developers and IT professionals to collaborate on software creation.

BEA said it expects WorkSpace 360 to roll out throughout 2007.

In a multi-billion-dollar SOA market that includes giants IBM ( Quote , Chart ), Microsoft ( Quote , Chart ), Oracle ( Quote , Chart ) and Sun Microsystems ( Quote , Chart ), BEA said SOA 360 is a "competitive weapon that will enable the company to deliver innovation that can adapt faster and more flexibly to changing business conditions."



But with SOA software already a fixture in the portfolios of many leading software vendors, most experts agree the new challenge is refining them and adding new levels of granularity.

This basically means perfecting the software services to do more of what customers need them to do, including facilitating Web services ( define ) interaction across disparate computer systems.

As one of the last remaining, large independent SOA players with this focus, BEA hopes SOA 360 will help the company turn the corner in the SOA arms race.

To support SOA 360, BEA today announced the BEA SOA for Executives, a suite of SOA consulting and education services for senior IT executives, and the Guardian Support Service, an automated maintenance tool that scans, analyzes and diagnoses networks for potential problems.

BEA also released AquaLogic Enterprise Repository (ALER) 2.5, a re-branded product culled from the integration of BEA's acquisition of Flashline and its metadata repository.

The software tracks and analyzes SOAs to give customers a better idea of how their software services are behaving.

BEA also upgraded AquaLogic Data Services Platform (ALDSP) 2.5 to better support Web services and reporting tools with a native engine to both XQuery and SQL.

ALDSP now supports Microsoft Excel to bring live data to users via Web services within Excel from multiple data sources.

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Capio acquires hospital group Tonkin in France. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Capio has signed an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of the French Tonkin Group. The turnover rate for Tonkin is EUR 105 M (SEK 965 M). Formal takeover is foreseen to take place on or about October 31, 2006. Through this acquisition, Capio will increase its French operations by about 30% and strengthen its position in Rhone-Alpes, the second main economic region in France. Capio has signed an agreement to acquire 100 percent of the Tonkin Group. The Group has three clinics located in Lyon and Villeurbanne: Clinique du Tonkin, Clinique La Sauvegarde and Clinique Saint Louis. The clinics offer medical, surgical and obstetrical care services. The Tonkin Group has a strong regional position and is well-known for its high level of professionalism. The transaction is contingent upon the approval of the French competition authorities. "The three hospitals provide high-quality care services with significant growth potential, offer opportunities for achieving synergies and scale advantages with our existing operations. We will strengthen our position in the Rhone-Alpes region and become an even more important player in the French healthcare market," says David Hiller, Head of the Capio Healthcare France business area. "The acquisition of Tonkin is in line with our strategy in France, to actively take part in the consolidation of the French healthcare market through regionally complementary acquisitions", says Ulf Mattsson, CEO of Capio group. "We were looking for an industry professional to acquire Tonkin hospital group. We are pleased to associate Tonkin Group with the European leader in healthcare. Capio, as a specialist in hospital management, is very well positioned to develop further the medical projects of our three clinics" says Jean-Louis Oger, Chairman of Marcel Merieux Laboratory (the seller). Gothenburg, September 21, 2006 Capio AB (publ) For more information, please contact: David Hillier, SVP and Head of the Capio Healthcare France business area +33 4 37 47 16 50 Ulrika Stenson, SVP Corporate Communications, Capio AB +46 31 732 40 04, +46 70 590 0723 Facts on the Tonkin Group - The turnover rate for Tonkin is EUR 105 M (SEK 965 M), with an EBITDA level of EUR 14 M. - 1 000 employees, 310 self-employed physicians. - The enterprise value amounts to EUR 146 M (SEK 1,350 M). - The three hospitals had total 604 beds. - The Tonkin Group was founded in 1974 by a group of practitioners from the public university hospital of Lyon. - The Clinique du Tonkin is the largest unit (302 beds) and is a point of reference in the Lyon area, able to provide a large range of different medical, surgical and obstetrical services which ensure a ranking amongst the best clinics in France. - The Clinique de la Sauvegarde is the main medical and surgical hospital of the West of Lyon. The clinic is well-known notably for its medical and surgical cardiology care, digestive surgery, urology, ENT, orthopaedics and oncology. The patient recruitment extends beyond the local catchment area. - The Clinique Saint Louis is a surgical hospital, specialising particularly in ENT, gastroenterology, urology and thoracic surgery. Capio Group is one of the leading providers of healthcare services in Europe and operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. The Capio Group has annual net revenues of approximately SEK 13,000 M (EUR 1,400 M), with some 15,000 employees. Capio is established in France since 2002, Capio owns 21 hospitals with more then 3,500 beds, 4,500 employees and 1,000 self-employed physicians. It has an annual turnover of EUR 300 M. Attachments/Links:http://hugin.info/133237/R/1076917/185406.pdf



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
iWays & IRCTC to Enable Online Rail E-Ticket Reservations against Cash Payment; Sify Ties up with IRCTC to Enable This Service from over 3400 iWays across 154 Cities in India. Check it out:
NEW DELHI, India --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Sify Limited (Nasdaq:SIFY), a leader in Consumer Internet and Enterprise Services in India with global delivery capabilities, today, announced its tie-up with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to make their online railway ticketing services available at over 3400 iWay cyber cafes across 154 cities in the country with cash payments. A pilot project at 10 iWays in Delhi has started today. This is expected to revolutionise the way railway ticketing is done, with never-before convenience with neighborhood access for the common man.



Online railway ticket bookings on the IRCTC site has been available to customers who either have a credit card or a net banking facility, limiting the number of people who could actually use this convenient facility. The vast majority of Indians however, still prefer to make cash payments for tickets, goods or services. So it was imperative that a means be found for the large number of Indians without a credit card or a net banking facility to be able to make online rail ticket reservations and pay cash.

Commenting on the tie-up, Mr. P K Goel, Managing Director, IRCTC, said, "This path-breaking initiative is aimed at making railway e-ticketing easier and convenient for our customers across the country. For they no longer have to worry about using credit cards or having a net banking facility which is restricted to those with access to computers at home or in the office. Instead, they can simply make the online bookings and make convenient cash payment at Sify's iWays. We are very pleased to be able to make this very successful facility available to all our customers to with the help of Sify iWays. The reach and network of Sify's iWays is sure to make a difference by enabling access to this online service to the masses."

Speaking on the occasion of this landmark tie-up, Mr. Raju Vegesna, MD & CEO, Sify Limited, said, "This is a tie-up that will make the online rail ticketing facility of the IRCTC accessible and available to the common man through our wide reach of over 3400 iWays cyber cafes across 154 cities. I believe that this will become a landmark event in the growth of online ticketing in the country by not only making it widely available to everyone, but by overcoming the barrier of online payment with convenient cash payments. It is innovative solutions like this that will grow e-commerce in India, and I am extremely pleased that we have been able to work with the IRCTC to make this possible. This is only the first of many new initiatives planned to transform our iWay cyber cafes from being points for Internet access, to what we like to call 'eStores', with all manner of electronic distribution and fulfillment of services."

So one no longer needs to travel to a railway booking counter, stand in queues or look for a travel agent any longer. All it requires is a visit to the neighborhood Sify iWay, where the cafe administrator can book the railway ticket online. He or she sits inside the cool ambience of the Sify iWay, and finalises the itinerary based on availability. The customer pays cash against the ticket and collects the ticket printout. In case of ticket cancellations, the customer will follow the standard cancellation process of the IRCTC, after which the customer gets cash against the cancellation.

So, the next time you need to take a train journey, head straight to the nearest Sify iWay to make your bookings!

About Sify Limited:

Sify is among the largest Internet, network and e-Commerce services companies in India, offering end-to-end solutions with a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common Internet backbone infrastructure. This Internet backbone reaches 171 cities and towns in India. A significant part of the company's revenue is derived from Corporate Services, which include corporate connectivity, network and communications solutions, security, network management services and hosting. A host of blue chip customers use Sify's corporate service offerings. Consumer services include broadband home access, dial up connectivity and the iWay cyber cafe chain across 154 cities and towns. The company's network services, data center operations and customer relationship management are accredited ISO 9001:2000.

For more information about Sify, visit http://www.sifycorp.com/

Forward Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Sify undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

For a discussion of the risks associated with Sify's business, please see the discussion under the caption "Risks Related to Our Business" in the company's report on Form 6-K for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 which has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is available by accessing the database maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov.

About IRCTC

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) is a public sector company set up and fully owned by the Ministry of Railways. The Internet Rail Ticketing program for India is being handled by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). On August 3, 2002 the facility for Internet ticketing was launched for public. Through www.irctc.co.in the tickets for Rail journeys can be booked on the Internet by any user. IRCTC delivers the tickets in 212 cities of India. IRCTC also provides the facility to book e-ticket i.e. just book your ticket and take print out and travel with your photo ID. Apart from this the timing for booking online tickets are from 0500 hrs to 2330 hrs Monday to Sunday.

IRCTC has now allowed RTSAs, IATA agents & TAAI members to book the tickets online, in the same process, IRCTC has tied up with Sify to provide its users the much easier reach to book the Railway tickets.
Minority-biz panel meets rarely: City watchdog commission often is unable to muster a quorum. Check it out:
(Arizona Daily Star, The (Tucson) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--A city of Tucson commission that is supposed to be a watchdog for minority-owned businesses has met only three times this year because it can't get a quorum, records show.



The Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission is supposed to be an independent, third-party monitor for the city's Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program. The all-volunteer group, created by the City Council in 1990 to monitor and increase minority-owned business participation in city contracts, hasn't been able to get much done this year.

Even when it does meet, the information the members need to do their jobs is typically unavailable, members say.

The group met once in January and once in June. Five other monthly meetings were canceled for lack of quorum.

One commissioner, Carmen Pettiti, recently was excused from her position after she missed 40 percent of the meetings or four meetings in a row, the rule that automatically removes a person from a city commission.

Pettiti, owner of Que Bonita, an import retail store, said, "I hardly saw anything that was productive" at the meetings, adding that she wasn't notified of the locations of some meetings.

Pettiti said she never got an answer from the city staff about how many local businesses benefited from the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program, which encourages the city to do business with minority- and female-owned firms. She said she was excited about being a part of the group but was disappointed by its inability to act.

Another part of the problem was vacancies after the November City Council election. Since members are appointed by their council member, some seats turned over. Four of the current commissioners were newly appointed in the past 12 months.

The commission seat for Ward 3 remains empty. Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said she hasn't appointed anyone to the position because her staff has been interviewing applicants. She wants to make an appointment in the next few weeks, she said.

A new attendance problem could begin when four of the commissioners' terms expire at the end of 2007.

When four members gathered Monday, the group elected officers, a task it was supposed to complete in January.

They elected new member Clarence Boykins to chair the group. Boykins is executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce and a former director of the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program.

A lengthy agenda that rehashes old issues has held up progress for the group, he said.

"I would like for us to be able to send a report to the mayor and council, monthly or quarterly at the very least, saying this is what we have accomplished," Boykins said.

Holding meaningful meetings that lead to successes will solve the attendance problem, he said.

The group also elected new member Walter Soto, owner of Soto Construction Co. and a vocal critic of the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program, to be vice-chair.

The fact that the Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission hasn't met often doesn't mean the commission isn't needed, Soto said.

"The reason we have this commission is to create a watchdog for the city and the way they do business with the underrepresented parts of our community," he said.

Soto said he joined the commission because of its attendance problem. He started going to meetings as a concerned business owner a couple of years ago and realized most of the meetings were canceled.

Soto was disenchanted with the program and said he won't do business with the city until it changes what he calls discriminatory behaviors.

Being a commissioner is not an easy job. The group deals with "very tangled procurement issues" and legal topics, Soto said. Among the items on its agenda are hot-topic reports on nonretaliation procedures and subcontractor bid listing.

The commission's inactivity is partly the city's fault, too.

In June 2005, the commission requested reports on city payments for goods and services to see how much money the city spends with minority-owned businesses and whether it meets goals for that spending.

Because of problems gathering the data, staff members produced the first-ever, albeit incomplete, report of this type at Monday's meeting. The reports are mandated by the city's own ordinance, Soto said.

Because the data isn't available, the commission really has no way to check the system it is supposed to scrutinize, he said. And the city can't know whether its ordinance is working effectively.

The city's Office of Equal Opportunity Programs also has been asking for the reports, and staff members have made the reports a new priority, said Liana Perez, who directs that office.

City of Tucson's Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission

--Marlene Ashton, president of Southern Arizona Paving & Construction Co., appointed in 2003.

--Clarence Boykins, executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce, appointed in March.

--Thomas Curley, owner of Curley's Downtown Barber Shop, appointed in 2003.

--Andee Leisner, president and CEO of Southern Arizona Electric, appointed in December.

--Eddie Muniz, owner of Sol Design, appointed in June.

--Walter Soto, owner of Soto Construction Co., appointed in April.

--Contact reporter Becky Pallack at 573-4224 or at [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
CRM Help From Bigcheeseware, Callidus and Thrivent, Hansen and Sarasota, Aspect 2.5.1. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis' landmark jazz album "Bitches Brew." It's considered a "landmark" by critics, personally I like what he did before this album better than what he did after it.



Bigcheeseware has announced a 30-day trial for businesses of what it calls its "Total CRM Design."

As more and more online consumers take advantage of free trial services, Bigcheeseware officials say, Internet-based businesses like to offer free trial sessions.

Some more "free" than others, of course, in First Coffee's opinion the truly devious ones are like Sports Illustrated saying "Four Free Issues!" and it turning out that if you subscribe first, they'll throw on four free issues at the end of your subscription term, not that they'll give you four free issues to decide if you like the magazine or not.

"Free trials differ in terms of use and the period of use," Bigcheeseware officials note. "From kids and adults computer games to anti-virus software and CRMs, free trials are one way of taking hold of a business target market."

Which of course is what Bigcheeseware is doing. "Bigcheesewares countless features make it one of the most powerful tools in live chat support software," company officials claim, saying it's also "packed with features absent in other support software," to wit, Instant Message and Email Notification of Dropped Chat and Chat on Queue, a Web Call Back System, Live customer support agents -- hey, there's a new one!

There's a Customizable Proactive Chat Total CRM Solution, as well as a Real Time Agent Performance Reporting, which lets you "evaluate your live support agents with Bigcheesewares Performance Agent Scores feature."

Bigcheesewares promotional 30-day free trial registration runs on secure pages, company officials say, adding that registration information is kept private and is used only for verifying purposes. Bigcheeseware free trial is enhanced with the most basic live chat features.

Bigcheeseware combines voice, e-mail and chat technology with real live customer support agents in real-time interaction.


Callidus Software Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management, has announced that Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which calls itself -- and First Coffee has no reason to disagree -- "the nation's leading fraternal benefit society with nearly 3 million members," has selected Callidus' TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules to "automate the organization's administration, reporting and analysis of incentive compensation."

Thrivent Financial officials says they chose the Callidus Software to "reduce operating costs and to improve time to market with new products and compensation changes." The organization will implement Callidus Software's TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules for its 2,500 financial representatives.

Thrivent and its subsidiaries offer financial services including insurance, annuities and mutual funds, as well as a broad range of educational and volunteer opportunities.

"We believe that the TrueComp EIM software will provide better support for our sales teams, support our cost reduction goals and provide significantly improved reporting and analysis capabilities to help us better monitor our business," said Mark Coleman, vice president, field administration of Thrivent Financial.

EIM software products are used to allow employees and channel distribution partners to be compensated accurately and on time.

"Thrivent Financial is positioned to achieve improved alignment of incentive compensation with member engagement, a key metric for a fraternal benefit society," explained Leslie Stretch, senior vice president worldwide sales for Callidus Software.


Hansen Information Technologies, a vendor of software for the public sector market, has announced that it has been awarded a $1.1 million contract to provide the Hansen 8 Community Development and Regulation product to the City of Sarasota, Florida.

The four phases of the CDR solution will include Licensing and Escrow, Code Compliance, Building and Permits, and Development Application Review.

Also included in the deployment plan will be a mobile product and Hansen's DynamicPORTAL. DynamicPORTAL will give the citizens of Sarasota the ability to input service requests, apply for permits, schedule inspections, and more.

"Our previous system was expensive and difficult to use, and limited both our reporting ability and our capacity to adapt to change," said Kevin Wells, Manager of Electronic Government Services for the City of Sarasota. So in February 2005 the city began searching for a CDR product.

The business of government is increasing, evidently, and much to the chagrin of us civil libertarians everywhere: The City of Sarasota serves over 58,000 citizens and 22,000 properties. In 2005, the City issued over 5,600 permits, managed over 2,300 code enforcement cases, and processed over 6,100 occupational licenses -- up from 5,300 permits, 1,800 cases, and 5,800 licenses in 2004.

The city expects the Hansen product to help streamline the permitting process and make information transparent and directly accessible to developers, contractors, and owners. City officials also hope it will reduce the total cost of construction by reducing downtime from inspections, and increase the effectiveness of citizens' tax dollars by automating routine tasks, and that it will "significantly" decrease the cost and increase the effectiveness of governance by integrating information across the city.


Aspect Software, Inc., has announced the general availability of Aspect Quality Management 2.5.1, a product billed as "simplifying the call recording and quality management process."

The latest release of Aspect Quality Management includes a tight integration with Aspect Spectrum ACD, which means the quality management and full-time recording is available to all users of the Aspect Signature ACDs, including Aspect CallCenter ACD.

Aspect Quality Management, from the company's Contact Center Performance Optimization product line, provides capabilities for recording, reviewing and reporting on customer interactions. Many companies use that information to help improve agent performance and job satisfaction, increase customer satisfaction and revenue generation, and better manage overall costs.

The new integration with Aspect Spectrum ACD, as well as the existing integration with Aspect CallCenter ACD, can probably benefit contact centers using the Aspect Software Signature ACDs, including lower cost of ownership, ease of use, improved partitioning of call access and security, and more power to find calls of interest quickly.

The recording and compression technologies used in such products do make it possible to capture considerably more calls, allowing contact centers to implement 100 percent recording. Such systems perform audio and screen recording of the full interaction, with easy access to all call segments when calls are transferred to observe the complete customer experience.

Good systems (such as this one) even allow for the customer to be automatically surveyed after the call, using tools that any contact center manager can administer, removing the need for IT resources when new surveys are desired.

Brian Derr, vice president of quality management solutions at Aspect Software explained that being able to configure call recording rules based on existing ACD definitions, and then monitor every segment of a call as it is transferred "while receiving tightly integrated customer feedback when the satisfaction survey is completed," helps to identify areas for improvement with the agent, "the overall interaction process, and the enterprise as a whole."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

Happy Birthday!

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Happy Birthday!. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) This section is free of charge, and aimed to help companies promote their trademarks, build corporate prestige, and expand production as well as business

HOA BINH CONSTRUCTION & REAL ESTATE CORP.

DOE: Sept. 27, 1987

General director: Le Viet Hai

Add: 235 Vo Thi Sau St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9325030

SOB: industrial and civil construction, real estate.

SAIGON PURE WATER PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

DOE: Sept. 26, 1992

Director: Le Nhu Ai

Add: 9 Quang Trung St., Go Vap Dist., HCM City

Tel: 8941466

SOB: producing purified drinking water; trading in equipment.

VIB BANK

DOE: Sep. 18, 1996

General director: Le Dinh Long

Add: 64-68 Ly Thuong Kiet St., Hoan Kiem Dist., Hanoi

Tel: 04.9426919

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

MEKONG DELTA HOUSING DEVELOPMENT BANK

DOE: Sep. 18, 1997

General director: Nguyen Phuoc Hoa

Add: 9 Vo Van Tan St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9302501

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

V-TRAVEL CO., LTD.

DOE: Sep. 18, 2001

Director: Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet

Add: 797 Le Hong Phong St., Dist. 10, HCM City

Tel: 8620015

SOB: inbound tours, air booking, transport, advertising and business management consulting services.

TECHCOMBANK

DOE: Sept. 27, 1993

General director: Nguyen Duc Vinh

Add: 15 Dao Duy Tu St., Hoan Kiem Dist., Hanoi

Tel: 04.8243941

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

CONTINENTAL HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 27, 1880

Director: Vuong Anh Tuan

Add: 132-134 Dong Khoi St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8299201

SOB: providing hospitality services.

INVESTCONSULT GROUP

DOE: Sept. 26, 1989

Director: Nguyen Tran Khanh

Add: 15-17 Nguyen Thi Dieu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9304868

SOB: legal, investment and management consulting; trademark registration, industrial design, intellectual property right and technology transfer.

DONG AN HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 27, 2003

Director: Tran Minh Trinh

Add: 5 Cua Dai, Hoi An, Quang Nam Province

Tel: 0510.927888

SOB: hospitality services; inbound tours.

SAIGON CONSTRUCTION CORP.

DOE: Sept. 28, 1999

General director: Dang Thi Hoang Phuong

Add: Lot 9, Road C, Tan Tao IP, Binh Tan Dist., HCM City

Tel: 7507777

SOB: industrial and civil construction; warehouses and offices for lease; producing concrete structures, iron and steel building components.

CENTRAL HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 25, 1999

Director: Tran Van Thanh

Add: 784 Quang Trung St., Quang Ngai Town, Quang Ngai Province

Tel: 055.829999

SOB: providing hospitality services.

ATI CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 21, 1994

General director: Nguyen Anh Tuan

Add: 201 Ly Tu Trong St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8277997

SOB: business management solution consulting; PCs and equipment; IT services.

NGON RESTAURANT

DOE: Sept. 20, 2001

Director: Duong Tan Hoai

Add: 138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8257179

SOB: providing restaurant services.

AGREX SAIGON

DOE: Sept. 22, 1976

Director: Nguyen Thanh Son

Add: 58 Vo Van Tan St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9306606

SOB: exporting agro-aqua products; importing equipment and materials; import and export.

ANH THE CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 18, 1999

Director: Tong Quang Lam

Add: 110 Nguyen Thi Nho St., Dist. 5, HCM City

Tel: 8567289

SOB: producing stainless steel screws, bolts and nuts; consignment agent.

DETAIL ARCHITECH CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 20, 2005

Director: Nguyen Duy Doan

Add: 22A Nguyen Thi Dieu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9303321

SOB: design consulting; interior decoration.

JAPAN VIETNAM FERTILIZER CO.

DOE: Sept. 27, 1996

General director: Masanori Nakatsuka

Office: 182 Dien Bien Phu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 2905069

SOB: producing and trading in NPK fertilizers.

FUJITSU COMPUTER PRODUCTS OF VIETNAM INC.

Date of establishment (DOE): Sept. 22, 1995

General director: Keiji Tanaka

Add: No. 31, Road 3A, Bien Hoa II IP, Dong Nai Province

Tel: 061.836563

Scope of business (SOB): producing printed wiring boards, assembling printed circuit boards for hard disks, laptops, automobiles, digital video cameras and printing laser machines.

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
09/13 Obagi Medical Products Inc. (Long Beach, CA) $86.2
Is a specialty pharmaceutical company.
09/12 Transforma Acquisition Group Inc. (New York, NY) $172.5
Is a blank check company.
09/12 Universal Power Group (Carrollton, TX) $27.6
Supplies and distributes portable power supply products.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
Alcatel and Nokia announced today that they have entered into an agreement whereby users of Alcatel’s OmniPCX series of enterprise IP PBX solutions can extend their office telephony services to mobile workers via Nokia’s E Series handsets.
 
This is the latest deal where enterprise users can take advantage of available technology to maintain connectivity to their office phone systems while ‘going mobile.’
 
Early last year, TMC’s Greg Galitzine wrote about Nortel and 3Com and their respective deals with RIM to make their PBX features available via the Blackberry 7270 device, which at the time was the first BlackBerry handheld to feature VoIP and WLAN support.

Anti Fraud Software Launched

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Anti Fraud Software Launched. Check it out:
(The Monitor (Uganda) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A NEW computer system that will help internal auditors to curb financial fraud has been launched in Uganda.

The new software system known as Pro Audit/Advisor (ACL), was launched at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel on September 15 by CQS Technology Holding (pty) Ltd, a South African - based company.

Officials told journalists at a press conference that the system makes it easier for internal auditors to conduct an audit, and faster to generate report and graphically present audit results on daily, weekly or monthly basis.

The Business Development Manger of CQS Technology Holding (pty) Ltd, Ms Keren Williams said: "Using ACL technology to access and analyse unlimited volumes of data from virtually any enterprise applications, organisations can quickly identify suspicious transactions that may represent fraud, error, and abuse and close control loopholes before fraud escalates."



She said through efficient ACL scripting capabilities, internal auditors could capture key analytic tests, and then schedule them to run automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so as to get timely insights into areas of potential risk for fraud and control them.

Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)

Copyright 2006 All Africa Global Media
No 50p tax rate, but a pension raid instead. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SIR Menzies Campbell saw off a rebellion from MPs at his first party conference as leader yesterday and dropped plans to hit high earners with a 50p top rate of tax.

But in its place was a package of proposals which would eat into the pensions, assets and holidays of the middle classes.

Senior party figures said the plans were designed as a 'tax hike for the rich'. Even Sir Menzies admitted: 'We are not penalising ambition or achievement, we are penalising wealth.' In a move which would raise GBP 10billion, tax relief on pensions for higher earners would be slashed - leaving someone on GBP60,000 a year with GBP1,000 less annually in their pension pot. Meanwhile, higher levies would be imposed on the sale of second homes and shareholdings.



A further GBP8billion would be raised from 'green taxes' to encourage environmentallyfriendly behaviour - including GBP2,000 car tax for 4x4s and GBP1,500 for family vehicles, and new levies on aviation which would signal an end to cheap flights.

The GBP18billion raised would be spent on removing income tax for the lowest earners, slashing 2p off the basic rate and raising the higher rate threshold to GBP50,000.

Sir Menzies insisted that the new tax plans would see only the top ten per cent of earners worse off. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies said this would include a couple with two children on a combined after-tax income of GBP53,400.

And experts pointed out that if the green taxes changed people's behaviour, there would eventually be less revenue - creating a 'black hole' in the nation's finances.

Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said voters had to accept 'policies that hurt' if they were to prove themselves serious about tackling climate change.

He added: 'We have now got a very good radical tax package, tax cutting for millions of people, a great commitment to a green switching tax, taxing the very wealthy.' Sir Menzies had faced the first major challenge to his leadership when a dozen MPs and peers staged a revolt against abandoning the 50p top rate policy.

But to widespread relief in the Campbell camp, mutiny was snubbed by a wide margin of activists.

Frontbencher Evan Harris, who led the rebellion, told delegates to applause: 'I support-Ming Campbell, we all do, but this is not just his party it's yours.' Malcolm Bruce, MP for Gordon in the Scottish Borders, said scrapping the 50p rate left the party 'in danger of undermining what we have been saying for the last two decades'.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'The LibDems are right to axe the commitment to a 50p top rate of tax and they are right to call for tax thresholds to be raised. Both of these will be popular moves.

'But it's a real shame they are undoing the good work by committing to a massive increase in green taxes which will hit huge numbers of ordinary families across the country.' Shadow Local Government Minister Eric Pickles said: 'Whatever they claim and whatever they say, Liberal Democrat plans mean just one thing - higher taxes.

'They want to shift the tax burden on to everyday families and working couples, by hiking rates of income tax. They fail to understand that raiding Britain's pay packets each month punish hard work and enterprise.'

POLITICAL gossip websites were rife with speculation last night after LibDem MP Lembit Opik told a radio interviewer that politicians have a right to secrets. In the 'honesty booth' feature on Victoria Derbyshire's Radio 5 Live show, he was asked: 'Does that mean you have a personal secret that you are hiding from the electorate?' He replied: 'We have the right to not expect the media to always poke around in them (secrets).' Mr Opik who is engaged to weather presenter Sian Lloyd, said he had complained to the BBC about the line of questioning.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

BUSINESS BRIEFING

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BUSINESS BRIEFING. Check it out:
(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CORPORATE identity theft is on the increase and is set to cost businesses GBP700 million a year by 2020. Big companies, and those based in London, are likely to suffer the greatest losses, according to a study by insurer Royal & SunAlliance.



But smaller companies are warned that the cost to them is greater per employee than a larger business and can cause greater damage.

Scotland Yard estimates that fraudsters who steal companies' identities to order goods and services in their name cost businesses GBP50 million a year.

But firms employing between ten and 19 staff could find their share of the cost soaring to GBP125 million a year by 2020 if this type of organised crime goes unchecked.

.. POLITICAL parties are failing to get their enterprise message across to small companies and most bosses do not know which MPs are responsible for small business issues.

The Forum of Private Business found that only a third of small firms knew that Margaret Hodge was the Minister for Industry and the Regions, responsible for small businesses. One in five bosses of small firms had never heard of her.

Only eight per cent were aware that Mark Prisk is the Conservative spokesman for business and enterprise. And the Liberal Democrats' small business spokeswoman Lorely Burt only registered with four per cent of small business owners.

Forum spokeswoman Victoria Carson says: 'As the party conference season begins, this is a timely reminder to politicians that a vast number of voters who own smaller businesses are being left out in the cold.'

Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday.

Deals: M&A

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Deals: M&A. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) . Olswang advised private equity firm Graphite Capital on its backing of the 86m management buy-out of global technical recruitment business NES Group from its founder and majority shareholder Bridgepoint. Private equity partner Fabrizio Carpanini ( pictured) led the Olswang team. Travers Smith senior associate Ian Shawyer advised Bridgepoint and DLA Piper advised the NES management.



. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Woolworths Group on its acquisition of investment holding company AMP Enterprises from 3i for 20m. Corporate partner Andrew Hutchings led the team. Eversheds corporate associate Catherine Eley advised the management and Wragge & Co private equity head Maurice Dwyer advised the seller.

. Pinsent Masons is advising building products distributor Heywood Williams on its 48m acquisition of Carlisle Brass Group. The Pinsents team was led by Manchester corporate partner Helen Ridge, while the vendor, Robin Graham, is being advised by Dickinson Dees corporate partner Simon Watts.

. SJ Berwin corporate finance partner Jonathan Djanogly has advised Pipex Communications on its acquisition of Bulldog's residential and small business broadband customer base and related intellectual property for approximately 12m. Allen & Overy corporate partner Anna Buscall advised the sellers, Cable & Wireless.

. Howard Kennedy head of corporate Alan Banes has advised the shareholders of property consultant Chantrey on the sale of 50% of its business to Australian property and funds management group Mirvac for 2m. Clayton Utz acted for Mirvac.

. White & Case New York corporate partner Ward Atterbury is advising Lehman Brothers Co-Investment Partners on its agreement to co-invest in Firth Rixson alongside The Carlyle Group. Latham & Watkins corporate partner Mike Bond is advising The Carlyle Group. Ashurst head of finance Nigel Ward advised Lehman Brothers as lenders to the agreement. The management of Firth Rixson was advised by DLA Piper corporate partner Andrew Holt.

. Baker & McKenzie Zurich-based corporate partner Martin Frey and banking partner Marcel Giger have advised 3i and Star Capital on the SFR1.6bn (686m) sale of SR Technics. Clifford Chance London private equity partner Simon Cooke acted for the acquiring consortium, made up from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, Mubadala Development and Istithmar. Swiss firm Niederer Kraft & Frey advised SR Technics management.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
Digital Dictation: Seamless Solution. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Recent technological developments in communication have created considerable opportunities for law firms to allow fee earners to be more flexible in their work patterns, while also improving business continuity, reducing client service times and achieving overall cost reductions.



Larger law firms are able to cut costs by seeking the economy of global teleworking, outsourcing and decentralised structures. Smaller firms are now able to afford systems to provide all the information and resources their fee earners require to deliver client service and reassurance at all times.

The growing need to flex and react quickly to meet clients' expectation for a quick response also underpins the growing appetite among law firms to seize the technological advantage.

Law firms may have good reason to invest in communications technology, but to achieve the benefits they must work closely with their communications suppliers. However, with so many hardware options and service providers to choose from, all of which are floating their own agendas, it is no easy task.

The challenge law firms face, therefore, is in navigating the best solutions and integrating these against the current of change on which the convoys of competing providers and specialists float and battle.

Improved efficiency

One firm that has taken advantage of these improvements in communications technology is media specialist firm Wiggin. With offices in Cheltenham and London and a specific focus on a sector that is changing with incredible speed, it has long recognised the importance of keeping up to date with what communications technology can offer a law firm.

A state-of-the-art integrated communications infrastructure has been developed to enable users to increase productivity and service. This comprises the Interwoven Document Management System, Elite Practice Management, Elite Apex CRM, client extranets and internal intranets, the internal Wiggin system, the LANs and WANs, the global (i.e. mobile) IP links and ADSL/SDSL leased line links.

A direct result of this has been a reduction in the ratio of support staff to lawyer, from 2.5:1 to 1:1. The productivity of Wiggin's 35 lawyers has also increased; while they can be more flexible by working at home when needed, they can now work as efficiently whether in transit, in the office or at home.

These achievements have been attained through a team effort comprising IT manager, Graham Ferrer, chief operating officer, John Banister, and their communications supplier, Cheltenham-based Total Telecommunications Limited (TTL).

Banister explains: "It is all about building a technical infrastructure and support system that allows our fee earners to focus on their work and clients without having to worry about technical hiccups. We do not claim to be market leaders in this area, although I doubt that there are many firms of our size with as sophisticated systems.

"Naturally, things do go wrong occasionally and ideas, systems and processes can hit a temporary brick wall. At these times we work with our suppliers to identify options and generally are very successful in finding and building ways to work around problems."

Convergence

Ferrer sees communications technology not as a cost to slice but a solution to exploit. He believes too many law firms evaluate communications one dimensionally, although he admits: "It is hardly surprising considering the array of sup-pliers on the market. With each supplier offering endless packages, options and offers, you could end up so confused you lose sight of the solution.

"So, we took a different route. I wanted to integrate all our voice and data networks into one true converged IP solution to improve service and reduce costs."

Ferrer did a cost and efficiency audit to support his thinking and he was able to justify Wiggin procuring all its requirements from one independent supplier. He was then able to develop a close relationship with that supplier to steer in integrated changes he wanted across the range of media.

Law firms present great opportunities to adopt technology advantage because of the need for flexible work patterns and the value placed on their lawyers' time; a point Banister explains: "The other issue has been the need to manage this integration and system development and delivery to a budget. We are not blessed with the massive IT resources of many of our larger competitors. In this respect we have been very reliant on our in-house expertise and knowledge of the market provided by TTL."

TTL is able to supply one clear, itemised bill, with a range of reporting options, for all Wiggin's communications spend.

IP telephone system

Considerable improvements in client performance and staff reduction have been achieved by Wiggin's investment in a new telephone system. The old system, an Ericsson MD110, offered inflexible traditional telephony.

Ferrer made a comparison between retaining and upgrading the existing infrastructure versus the outlay for a new full IP system over five years. When taking into account reduced maintenance costs, savings relating to moves, adds and changes and the opportunity to replace the CISCO routers and related overheads with a converged solution between London and Cheltenham, the cost of implementing the new system was calculated to be less than that to upgrade the Ericsson technology.

The system now provides seamless communication between Cheltenham and London, with identical logon, voice-mail and fax integration. Recorded calls and voicemail create media files that can be routed to the digital dictation system.

So successful is this that they have added another 2MB link between Cheltenham and London. The new link was chosen to give increased bandwidth to cater for increased traffic as well as resiliency.

An alternative supplier was chosen so in the event that the original link fails, the second link could take the strain and vice versa, also by the use of duplexing hardware when both links are available a seamless 4MB connection between Cheltenham and London is in effect.

Business continuity

Wiggin maintains its own disaster recovery suite, which enables it to provide everyone within Wiggin with a means to stay productive. The 4MB inter-office link has enabled all data to be seamlessly mirrored to the firm's London office.

A case in point was a major power failure recently, which lasted a couple of days. The recovery systems were activated and worked flawlessly. Users worked via virtual private network (VPN) tunnels and GPRS cards from wherever they were, and client service was not interrupted.

Mobility, all the time

Banister explains the importance of mobility: "We have managed very successfully to put systems in place which enable our fee earners to be able to communicate and have access to all the information and resources they need, when they need them"

. at home

Every partner's house is provided with broadband, a router and VPN and a home office PC so they are able to work as efficiently from home as they can in the office.

. in the car

Partners regularly need to travel between the Cheltenham and London offices, a journey that can take three hours. This dead time has been turned into work time. Chauffeurs are employed so each partner can work using their laptop equipped with 3G data cards to enable high-speed connectivity via their laptop.

These work by providing a fast wireless connection allowing access to voice-mail, the internet and email. Charging is based on data transferred rather than connection time, enabling a cost-efficient way of accessing larger volumes of data on the move.

. on the move

Wiggin has also invested in the Black-Berry Enterprise Solution. The firm switched from XDAs to BlackBerry devices because of user preference for its intuitive functions and its `push' technology enabling emails to arrive without the need to dial up. An unexpected user benefit has been the extended battery life, performing twice as long as the XDA.

The BlackBerry has fast become a favourite device with law firms, not least because of its security virtues. It is one of the leading devices for mobile security for IT policies and encryption, using AES and Triple DES.

Many deployment tasks including activation, termination and upgrades can be undertaken by Ferrer `over the air'. According to TTL, this is key to protecting lawyers' data should a device be lost or stolen.

While none of this will appear revolutionary to many in the large City firms, the key for a small niche firm such as Wiggin has been to get all these individual elements of the system to work together. This, in turn, provides fee earners with the technical excellence and, ultimately reassurance, that they require in their delivery of client services.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications
Digital Dictation: Rise Of The Bespoke System. Check it out:
(Legal Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) With business process management (BPM) moving up the IT agenda and into the mainstream, the battleground is becoming increasingly competitive as established vendors reposition themselves to try to capture a share of this growing market.



As practice management, document management and other suppliers move to offer enhanced workflow features within their core products, how will this impact on the requirement for BPM solutions within law firms?

The idea of traditional line-of-business suppliers incorporating workflow extensions into their applications is not new. While some legal sector vendors are enhancing their workflow functionality, the real change is the shift in marketing strategy to attempt to go head-to-head with enterprise BPM solutions.

The fact that some practice management systems (PMS) vendors are claiming their systems now remove the need for standalone BPM solutions is a key development.

These types of workflow extensions are not, however, a substitute for enterprise BPM. While these enhancements can improve process flows, we believe they are generally ineffective when support is required for new processes or for actions where users need to step outside the core system in question.

Condition process flows

Ian Beck, head of IT at Scots firm Tods Murray, supports this stance. He says: "There are broad differences between investing in a BPM product as compared to traditional in-built PMS and document management systems (DMS) workflow add-ons. Only enterprise BPM provides an independent data services layer that can condition process flows based upon the values of data within a completely new composite application. This leverages the value of data held in disparate systems, ensuring efficiencies, quality, cost-effectiveness and compliance."

In addition to the specialist legal sector vendors, general industry giants such as Microsoft have similarly extended their support for process auto-mation with development tools such as BizTalk Server, InfoPath and now Windows Workflow Foundation.

These development tools assist organisations, or law firms with a large internal development resource, to develop bespoke code for individual process solutions. However, although recent announcements represent a measurable technical advance, these offerings do little to eliminate the key challenges of development projects. They do not solve issues such as maintaining multiple technical development tools, over-runs, ongoing maintenance costs and an inability to quickly evolve and react to change.

Major software company

As a Microsoft Gold Partner and software solution developer, FloSuite - where appropriate - makes full use of Microsoft's latest toolsets. But these tools only form a part of what is still a technically complex development environment. FloSuite's customers clearly share this view of reality, which is why they do not wish to take on the responsibilities of trying to be a major software company.

Peter Wonson, IT director at City firm Mishcon de Reya, supports the theory that enterprise BPM is a broader, more flexible option than the market alternatives. He says: "BPM offers excellent opportunities for long-term development and management of core processes within law firms."

For example, he adds: "Through the flexibility and ease-of-use of its Micro-soft Visio-based process modelling tools, FloSuite allows rapid deployment and evolution of sophisticated solutions all within the one easy-to-use development environment."

One of the factors fuelling demand for BPM within the legal sector is an increased interest in driving efficiency and reducing costs through IT strategy. With the advent of the post-Clementi era, interest is growing among business decision-makers - not just the tech-nologists - as partners and managing partners look for new ways to protect their competitive advantage in an increasingly liberalised market, where national and international brands such as Tesco and the RAC plan to offer packaged legal services.

It seems likely that high street law firms will have more to fear than larger corporate law firms - the most likely areas for new entrants to focus on being high-volume processes, such as residential property conveyancing and personal injury claims. However, there are also implications for the medium - and maybe even larger - firms which have departments focused on low-value, high-volume processes.

So, as firms wish to manage increasing compliance requirements and prepare their plans to contest a competitive landscape, which practice areas should they consider for BPM projects? Where are the greatest benefits to be gained?

FloSuite has found that clients most often target initial roll-outs at administrative procedures that involve updating information held in multiple computerised systems, rather than focusing BPM on one practice area or department.

Client matter inception

"The most visible BPM opportunity for a legal firm is, without question, client matter inception," says Beck. "This process is not simply focused on assisting the fee earner in completing money laundering, conflicts or client engagement letters but extends the process reach to the many other silos of information such as client relationship management (CRM), systems, DMSs, case management and human resources systems."

This opinion is supported by practical evidence of the priorities that legal sector clients typically set for deployment of BPM solutions. According to FloSuite, new client matter inception - and other administrative procedures such as cheque request - are indeed a current `hot spot' among medium and large-sized firms in the UK and internationally.

Mishcons, for example, focused its initial FloSuite deployment on this process. The firm's implementation included a number of key areas: integration of key applications - in Mishcons' case, this included InterAction, CMS.NET, Interwoven WorkSite and Microsoft Exchange; money laundering procedures; credit checking; conflict of interest checking; letter of engagement production; and approval processes based on values and data.

"Improving adherence to best-practice processes and increasing the quality of data collected as part of a new client or matter inception is a logical place to start with BPM. It is, after all, the initial process that all others flow from and, if not managed correctly, can cause problems throughout many stages of the entire client interaction," says Wonson.

He continues: "In medium to large law firms, multiple application environments are the norm and so they need the flexibility and reach of a BPM solution that can quickly bring together all of the elements of enterprise application integration, data modelling, rules management and user interface design within a single framework."

While compliance has been a major driver for many firms adopting BPM, improved client services, data and cost reduction are also key factors. Operational efficiency savings of up to 50% have been reported by some legal firms as a result of successful BPM deployments.

As it looks certain that PMS and other vendors in the legal marketplace will continue to enhance their products' pre-built workflow capabilities, the enterprise BPM players will have to really sell their distinct business case to ensure they continue to differentiate themselves in this increasingly competitive marketplace. But this increased competition does not signal the end for enterprise BPM providers - as one senior figure from a PMS supplier recently commented. Rather, the market hype only serves to increase user awareness of the issues the legal profession needs to over-come to continually improve its service offerings and efficiency. This, in turn, is driving demand for applications that meet these requirements.

What the PMS, DMS and other general vendors are offering is once again just `application-based workflow' with similar limitations to previous versions. The future for BPM is bright.

Russell Wood is vice president of sales for FloSuite.

Copyright 2006 Legal Week Publications

What's next on the menu?

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What's next on the menu?. Check it out:
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) MAMMA Mia, what an appetite these private equity funds have! As Cinven prepares to gobble up Pizza Express owner Gondola, traders are already on the lookout for another high-street takeaway.

Garfunkel's owner Restaurant Group was one of a number of catering and pubs groups that set record highs yesterday.

The shares added 246p, up 131/2p or 5.8pc, after Panmure Gordon analyst Douglas Jack predicted the firm's strategy of cornering captive markets, such as airports and leisure parks, could help deliver over 20pc growth in the medium term.

But speculation that the likes of Cinven or Wagamama owner Lion Capital could snap up another restaurant player is also helping to keep valuations plump.

Despite the best efforts of Jamie Oliver, Britons are dining out like never before, making companies such as Restaurant Group, Whitbread (off 2p to 1288p), and pub firms such as Enterprise Inns (up 61/2p to 1052p) tasty morsels for cash-rich funds.



One analyst said: 'There's a lot of consolidation going on. Restaurant Group is being associated with potential corporate activity, though it would be a shame to see that growth story taken away by a bid.' In the betting sector, hedge funds are firmly in the driving seat after the US legal turmoil drove private investors to safer shores.

The latest shock was Friday's arrest of the two Austrian heads of bwin.com, formerly BetandWin, over alleged breaches of French gaming laws.

Despite signs that the online legal mire is extending to Europe, the big UK players bounced back yesterday as hedge funds covered their short positions.

PartyGaming rose 6p to 1063/4p, topping gains among the biggest 100 UK stocks. 888 Holdings climbed 71/4p to 149p.

Hopes that Senate majority leader Bill Frist will fail in his attempts to smuggle an antionline gambling bill into a piece of defence legislation also pushed shares higher.

The Footsie 100 climbed 13.2 points to 5690.2, recouping some of its recent losses.

Resource stocks were the toast of the town, boosted by a vintage story about Royal Dutch Shell buying BG Group, up 10p to 650p. Both firms declined to comment on market chatter about a bid of up to 750p by Shell, 12p higher at 1740p. Premier Oil, another alleged object of Shell's affections, advanced 29p to 1037p.

South American mine workers are becoming more and more restive, which is good news for metals prices.

The cost of copper bounced, helping propel the likes of Anglo American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton to the head of the Footsie 100 leaderboard.

Strikes at big mines in Peru and Chile over wages fuelled fears of supply disruptions and helped copper snap three days of declines.

Kazakhmys advanced 59p to 1266p on optimism it will deliver a gleaming set of earnings today, boosted by its proximity to China and its easy access to rich mineral pickings in the happy hunting grounds of Kazakhstan.

On the bond markets hints from Chancellor Gordon Brown of higher rates sent investors in a spin, pushing yields to their highest since August 2004. A rare call by the Confederation of British Industry for a hike added to the gloom.

Banks such as Barclays (off 9p to 671p) and HBOS (15p lower to 1035p) took a hit as traders argued higher borrowing costs could hit the mortgage and credit card market.

Cadbury Schweppes lost some of its fizz after bottler PepsiAmericas spewed out a profit warning, pushings its shares sharply lower in the US. Cadbury, whose American brands include Dr Pepper and 7 Up, was 41/2p flatter at 5571/2p.

Pearson shed 5p to 743p after the Financial Times publisher was downgraded by Lehman Brothers, which said its valuation was 'difficult to justify'.

Pure Wafer, which specialises in reused silicone for the computer chip industry, added 13p to 2461/2p.

Chairman Giles Clarke, best known for founding Majestic Wine in 1981, splashed out GBP282,000 on 120,000 of the company's shares, at 235p each, bringing his holding to 1pc of the stock.

The firm reported its first ever pretax profit of GBP2m and predicted 'another year of significant growth'.

DESIGNER Vision, which supplies rear-seat car entertainment systems, slid 1/4p to 61/4p, bringing its decline in the past month to 18pc. The shares could be set to get a kick as the firm is believed to be on the cusp of announcing an order worth almost GBP3m for MP3 players from an unidentified retailer.

Earlier this month the digital minnow announced its maiden operating profit of GBP294,000.

Copyright 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

Year of exits

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Year of exits. Check it out:
(Israel Business Arena Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) 2006 has been a successful year for Israeli venture capital. With just over two months to go to the end of the year, the number of exits recorded by the funds is reminiscent of another period, even though the sums this time round are a lot lower. If we had told venture capital fund executives a few years ago that the funds of the 1999-2000 vintage would produce the impressive list of exits we are seeing today, they might not have believed it.



The "Globes" Ten Most Promising Start Ups of 2006

Actimize - Operational-risk management software

Xeround - Data systems for telecommunications companies

Metacafe - Video sharing technology

Zend - PHP development language

Gamida Cell - Stem cell therapy technologies

Siano - Silicon receivers for mobile digital TV

SuperDerivatives - Options pricing system

GI View - Advanced endoscopic devices

Business Events - Business intelligence solutions

dbMotion - Medical informatics

One thing that venture capital funds learned to do during those tough times at the beginning of the decade was to examine the companies in depth and only invest in them after a meticulous review of the technology and the management team. This, of course, does not guarantee a fund a high return on its investment but it does at least lower the risk. Funds in Israel are set to implement the conclusions they drew from such examinations with the $2.2 billion estimated to be available for venture capital investment in the Israeli economy.

The current list of promising companies was chosen by partners from dozens of venture capital funds. Each participant was asked to choose three companies (of which only one could be from his or her own portfolio), based on the following criteria: promising and innovative technology; at least one successful financing round; sales of up to $10 million; a promising management team; a large target market, and the potential to become a market leader.

This year's list is most notable its diversity. Topping the list is a software company which focuses on data analysis, primarily for the financial market. In second place is a company which develops databases for telecommunications companies, while third place goes to an Internet company whose users are mainly private customers. Further down the list are companies specializing in business, financial and medical information, medical equipment companies, a biotechnology company, and a chip company.

But if you insist, the choice this year pointed to one trend: databases. Four companies in the list have developed technologies for database management: Actimize Inc., selected as the most promising company for 2006, develops operational risk management solutions for financial enterprises; Xeround Systems, which came next, develops flexible database technology for integration in the systems of telecommunications giants; dbMotion Inc., develops web-based information sharing technology for the healthcare industry, and Verix (formerly Business Events) has developed a technology for identifying and monitoring factors affecting substantial business changes.

Actimize: Minimizing business risk Xeround gets the big players interested Metacafe: Going head-to-head with Google

This year's list of exits also has a clear connection with databases and enterprise infrastructure related activity, a field that has become especially significant in light of the increasing competition between the sector's giants, and the intense wave of mergers and acquisitions.

This year's acquisitions have left investors with more than $2 billion, and the potential for many more acquisitions. Zend Technologies Inc., for example, was a candidate for acquisition by Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) for $250 million. Actimize has confirmed that it has been inundated with offers, while Verix and Xeround are still too young, but they clearly have potential.

The companies selected this year are the product of funds that have reached maturity. Most of them are stable companies that have established themselves and talk about success regardless of buyers. Time will tell whether any of them of will become a company with billion dollar price tag, if at all.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 20, 2006

Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

Copyright 2006 Globes. Source : Financial Times Information Limited.
Hyundai Motor to Build R&D Center in India. Check it out:
(Korea Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) By Kim Yon-se

Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo said the carmaker is willing to build an auto research and development (R&D) center in India.

Chung called for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to support Hyundai's plan to increase investment in the country, saying the investment will involve the establishment of an R&D center and engine transmission plant.

``The R&D center will upgrade the automobile industry of India,'' he said. ``We will try to become an enterprise which contributes to India's economic growth.''

Singh said the Indian government is aiming to foster the automobile sector as the country's main growth engine. The prime minister also said he wishes for continuous investment by Hyundai Motor.

The carmaker's plant near Chennai boasts some of the most advanced production, quality and testing capabilities in the country. In continuation of its investment in providing the Indian customer global technology, Hyundai is building its second Indian plant, which will produce 300,000 units per annum, raising its total production capacity to 600,000 per year in 2007.



Hyundai has won many awards in India. Recently its Sonata Embera won ``Executive Car of The Year 2006'' award by Business Standard Motoring Magazine and its Tucson has been declared ``SUV of The Year'' by NDTV Profit-Car & Bike awards 2006.

The mid-size sedan Accent won two awards from TNS _ the Accent Petrol-No 1 Entry mid-size car and Accent Diesel-No 1 mid-size diesel car. Hyundai was declared a ``Star Company'' by Business Standard this year.

Click (branded Getz there) got the coveted car of the Year 2005 award by both Business Standard Motoring and the CNBC-TV18 Autocar Auto awards.

Copyright 2006 Korea Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited.
Why gym'll fix it in bid to break down racial prejudices. Check it out:
(The Star (Sheffield) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) A mum-of-four has launched a business venture to provide Muslim women with a safe place to socialise outside the home. She spoke to Jane Cartledge EVER since she was a little girl Safiya Saeed's mother's living room has doubled as an impromptu hair salon.



Aunties, cousins, sisters and grandmothers all styled each other's beautiful long, dark hair in the only way they knew.

A trip to the hairdressers or a preening session at the salon were off limits by virtue of their Islamic faith.

The women would quite literally let their hair down in the privacy of their own home when the men were out of sight and the curtains were closed.

Some of the younger women, with a more westernised attitude, may have been confident enough to take a trip to the hairdressers and remove their Hajib headscarf.

But they quickly realised that most mainstream hairdressers weren't sensitive to their culture or religion.

Safiya, a Somalian mum of four who moved to Sheffield aged 13, says she knows many young women who have infuriated their stylist after demanding their hair be covered up the moment the hairdryer is switched off.

It's for these reasons that 34-year-old Safiya decided to open her own women-only salon and gym in Burngreave. But there's much more to this feminine oasis than just straighteners and Swedish massage.

Safiya's dream has survived prejudice from her own community to become a reality and Saf Saf's on Spital Hill is now a thriving drop-in centre for hundreds of women who, until now, have been isolated in the home.

"The high street in Burngreave is completely male orientated from the cafes to the shops," says Safiya, who can't resist a smile knowing she's making long-awaited in-roads into a male dominated culture.

"The women don't have anywhere to go socially. There's nothing for teenage girls apart from Surestart and not everyone wants to have kids or study. I've opened this building as a haven for women and I say 'come in an have a cup of tea, have a chat'.

"Just because a woman wears a Hajib it doesn't mean she should feel bad about herself or let her health and beauty regime go." Safiya, fully supported by her family and second husband Fahad Bagadai, has completely renovated a dilapidated old building overlooking Spital Hill.

It's small but well equipped gym, airy lilac beauty room and chintzy salon below with old fashioned freestanding hairdriers can't be accessed from the main road - but that's the whole point.

"We keep the doors locked and the blinds can be pulled for ultimate privacy. That way, women can relax, take off their scarves and talk about things they can't talk about elsewhere." Safiya's project has been made possible by investment from social entrepreneur charity Unltd but securing finance hasn't been her only obstacle.

"As a woman in this community, it's really difficult to be taken seriously . When you break out and do a so called Western idea then people say 'why do you want to do that?'. Then they try the guilt trip saying 'why do you want to leave your children and start a business?' "If I didn't do it someone else would and I tell them that my children are going to grow up whether I'm working or not.

"At the end of the day it starts with me. If I'm happy and content, they will be too.

"I needed to be a fantastic example to my children and I needed to be able to show people and the community I could do something, particularly after my divorce." Safiya's business has the blessing of her parents and shopkeeper husband who himself works seven days a week.

Her mum looks after her four children - the youngest is just 12 months - while the business gets off the ground.

She says she can count on one hand the number of successful Muslim businesswomen but that doesn't dampen her infectious enthusiasm.

"I need to help people and benefit people, it's in my nature," says Safiya, flashing another broad, lipsticked smile.

"I sleep smiling at night - stressed, migraine? Probably. But I sleep soundly knowing it's mine and it's down to my hard work." Safiya worked solidly for three months getting Saf Saf's ready for the women of Burngreave and surrounding areas.

Then she spent six weeks on an intensive training course for women in business.

The result is that Safiya knows what it takes to make a business succeed.

Saf Saf's is a social enterprise as well as a business and her staff are self employed. For GBP22 a month women get access to the gym, a relaxing meeting space, a sewing room where they can work on dresses and can book into the beauty salon or hairdressers.

"We're starting free counselling sessions with a qualified counsellor and I'm hoping one day to have a sauna and Moroccan scrub.

"A lot of the elderly Asian and African women miss the sun so saunas are great for their arthritis.

"There are great health benefits to this project and it's not just about providing women with a space to meet, it's about providing a service and empowering them." Safiya's loyal team speak no less than six languages between them meaning no one is left out.

"We're getting the boys ringing up and booking their mums in," says Safiya, who lives in Sharrow and attended Abbeydale Grange.

"They say she's worried about coming down because she doesn't speak English but to us that isn't a problem at all. We're here for all women of all ages." Saf Saf Hair and Health can be found at 149a Spital Hill, Burngreave. Telephone 0114 273 0248.

What do you think:

Copyright 2006 Johnston Press Plc.
Senate resolution seeks investigation on EO 558. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Senate economic affairs and trade committee chairman Manuel A. Roxas II filed a resolution last Sept. 18 that urged the banks and economic affairs committees to investigate an executive order (EO) that re-allows direct micro-enterprise lending by government non-financial agencies (GNFAs) and government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs), thereby threatening to distort the country's microfinance market.



Malacanang earlier issued EO 558, which effectively repealed EO 138 issued in 1999 by then President Joseph E. Estrada, and re-allowed GNFAs and GOCCs to subsidize credit programs, which the Estrada order limited to government financial institutions. The halt in direct lending is believed to have encouraged private financial lending and the growth of microfinance in the country.

Also, international funding institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank have warned of the possible impact of EO 558, noting that GOCCs and GNFAs are ill-equipped for this task, including in collecting loans.

But the Palace had defended the move, arguing that the poor had no access to credit programs in private financial institutions.

"Failure to reach the intended beneficiaries, misallocation of resources, fiscal hemorrhage, and damp [sic] economic growth are some of the ills of direct credit," a statement yesterday quoted Mr. Roxas as saying.

"Instead of repealing EO 138, there is a need to assess current lending and livelihood programs and to reconcile all existing laws to effectively establish an environment responsive to small and medium enterprises' [SMEs] problems," he added.

He said the government should not junk "tried-and-tested" policies to improve SME credit and financing. Mr. Roxas noted that SMEs account for over 99.6% of the country's registered companies, generating about 69.1% of the country's total employment. "SMEs are indispensable to the country's overall economic growth. We have to push for their development by improving their access to financing through credit guidelines and programs," he said.

Sen. Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the committee on government corporations, earlier said he would also file a resolution to investigate EO 558 amid suspicions that the system could be used to channel funds for next year's elections.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
Ericsson to start offering MX-ONE. Check it out:
(Business World (Philippines) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Telecom gear maker Ericsson is going to start offering locally its MX- ONE, the latest upgrade to its converged IP-based multimedia communications system.

This will consolidate in just one solution applications and services such as voice, instant messaging, video, push e-mail and other business applications.

Designed for enterprise clients, Ericsson Southeast Asia Vice- President for systems integration and enterprise Tomas Ageskog said the solution will enable their clients such as tele-com companies to offer value-added applications for their mobile subscribers.



"SMS [short messaging service] is dominant here,but e-mail is equally important. This will enable clients to start integrating enterprise applications," Mr. Ageskog said.

Further, with the new solution, Ericsson said analog, digital, mobile and IP phones can be used interchangeably, enabling businesses to benefit from fixed-mobile and voce data convergence.

Copyright 2006 BusinessWorld (Philippines). Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.
BEA executives preach atop SOA 360 soapbox. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEA Systems on Wednesday continued to promote SOA 360, its newly announced SOA platform, at the BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco conference. The company is making SOA, in which applications are offered as componentized services and combined for new applications, its focal point. BEA officials touted SOA 360, announced Tuesday and featuring BEA AquaLogic, WebLogic, and Tuxedo product lines, as well as a collaborative tooling environment called WorkSpace 360. Also critical to SOA 360 is BEA's microService Architecture (mSA), featuring the concept of a service network and notification services for publishing and discovering modular components.



"BEA is taking SOA to its very core," said Paul Patrick, chief architect for BEA AquaLogic. "We're taking SOA into the heart of what we do [on] a day-to-day basis in the way we build products."

"Over 1,000 of our customers have SOA solutions in production," said Mark Carges, executive vice president of BEA's Business Interaction Division. BEA views business process management as a business driver for SOA, he said.

BEA's Bruce Graham, vice president of World Wide Professional Services at BEA, cited six initiatives crucial to SOA:

* Defining and capturing benefits.

* Establishing an enterprise architecture.

* Making services engineering a discipline.

* Aligning the organization for shareholder value.

* Building a stream of connected projects.

* Connecting the business to the capability.

"If your company is going to be successful, we believe that these are things that youre going to have to take on," Graham said. BEA in November plans to offer a series of service offerings providing guidance on service engineering, he said.

Even an attendee at the conference who is not currently using SOA was sold on the concept.

"I think we're headed in that direction," said Louis Leon, manager of Web services at a nonprofit organization, the name of which Leon preferred to keep anonymous. "It's an architectural strategy at this point."

SOA offers a more scalable alternative to point-to-point interfaces, Leon said.

Part of BEA's mSA plan involves modularizing BEA products, including its WebLogic Server Java application server. Functions of the application server such as its security apparatus could be separated from the core product and offered in a modular fashion, said Blake Connell, director of product marketing for WebLogic Server. Asked when BEA would be announcing formal plans for modularizing the application server, Connell said, "Stay tuned."

BEA, meanwhile, is in discussions with a car company to service-enable cars with an in-vehicle application server for high-level automotive services, said Larry Cable, BEA chief architect for WebLogic. Possible applications emanating from this arrangement could include a system that generates e-mail notifications when a car's oil needs to be changed or an application notifying drivers of available parking spaces nearby, Cable said.

Also at the conference, Connell lauded an upcoming Evans Data survey that says WebLogic Server is the top choice for developers.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Dell, Symantec product will control e-mail for SMBs. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dell Inc. and Symantec Corp. launched a joint product Wednesday to control e-mail security and data archiving for small and medium businesses.

Secure Exchange is a combination of Dell hardware and Symantec software that adds enterprise IT capability to basic Microsoft Corp. Exchange and Active Directory mailboxes.

Facing a swelling tide of e-mail volume and viruses, small companies can use the product to deploy antivirus and antispam shields, and archive and retrieve their e-mail, said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell's Product Group.

Dell's mail servers classify 94 percent of the 17 million e-mail messages received every day as spam, and the company's firewalls deflect about 400 million potential intrusions every day, he said. Small businesses don't have the resources to handle that workload.



So Dell is selling Secure Exchange to companies with 500 to 2,000 e-mail users. The package also includes Dell training services and Platinum Plus service contract.

"Customers have told us that messaging and e-mail are the lifeblood of their organizations," said Francis deSouza, vice president of enterprise messaging management at Symantec. "So you don't just drop Exchange in there and have it run your e-mail naked, but you need an ecosystem around it, providing security, availability, compliance and mailbox management."

As their businesses grow, customers can adjust the package to emphasize frequent backup or fast performance, a typical engineering tradeoff in mail systems, he said.

Dell decided to partner with Symantec after the success of past technology bundles such as its Oracle Database configurations and High-Performance Computing Cluster equipment stacks, said Judy Chavis, Dell's director of business development and global alliances. The company launched its Platinum Plus services package in June as part of an effort to supplement slumping profits from PC sales.

Dell is selling Secure Exchange for US$54,678 for the 500-seat version of a package including the Dell PowerEdge 1950s server, PowerVault 110T and M1000 storage, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, and Symantec Backup Exec. Larger customers can scale up with Dell/EMC Clariion storage products, Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series, Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange and Enterprise Vault. For more information,go here.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle releases content management add-ons. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oracle is making content and records management tools available to users of its database in a bid to gain share in the base-level content management software market.

Released Wednesday, Content Database (Content DB) and Records Database (Records DB) are optional add-ons to Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition. The tools are designed to help Oracle customers and partners securely manage unstructured content such as Microsoft Office documents, PDF (portable document format) files, document images and graphics.



Oracle firstannounced the two offeringsin June, positioning them as part of the company's plan to bring content management to the masses. Using the tools, users can capture, classify, retain and then get rid of content based on internal corporate policies.

Content DB allows organizations to consolidate their unstructured content into an Oracle Database repository, while Records DB manages the storage and disposal of content.

On a Tuesday conference call to discuss Oracle'sfirst-quarter fiscal 2007 financial results, Charles Phillips, company co-president, singled out Content DB and Records DB as future revenue generators for Oracle.

Oracle doesn't view Content DB and Records DB as replacements for enterprise content management (ECM) software from the likes of EMC's Documentum, FileNet, IBM, Interwoven, and Open Text. Instead, Oracle has positioned its tools asproviding more basic functionality, while the traditional ECM companies focus on offering more sophisticated capabilities.

However, moves by Oracle and Microsoft to enter the lower levels of the content management market are one of the factors leading toconsolidation in the ECM market. Last month, IBM announced a bid toacquire FileNet for $1.6 billion, while Open Text moved in on ECM rival Hummingbird making a$489 million offerfor the company. With Open Text publicly supporting the June unveiling of Content DB and Records DB and increasing its closeness to Oracle, some analysts are predicting the database and applications vendor may end up acquiring Open Text for its ECM expertise.

Users can download Content DB and Records DB from Oracle's Web site. Both tools are priced at $50,000 per processor. The two products run on most Oracle Database platforms including Linux, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, Sun Microsystems' Solaris, and IBM's AIX5L. There's also a client version of Content DB which runs on Microsoft's Windows.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
Oracle celebrates strong Q1 with some SAP bashing. Check it out:
(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) As Oracle executives patted themselves on the back for their company's reporting another strong financial quarter, they also couldn't resist having a go at prime applications rival SAP.

"Oracle had another very strong quarter," Safra Catz, co-president and chief financial officer at Oracle, said Tuesday during a conference call with analysts to discuss the vendor's fiscal 2007first-quarter results. "We had our strongest first-quarter license growth in more than five years by gaining market share," she added.



Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, said the company had won 88 deals going head-to-head with SAP during the quarter, including customer wins with Electrolux, Lockheed Martin, and U.S. Steel. Some of the business is what he termed "winbacks" of business Oracle had previously lost to SAP, including a strategic win at Wal-Mart Stores.

In recent months, the bittercompetitive back-and-forthbetween Oracle and SAP has reached a crescendo. Oracle jumped on SAP's July announcement oflower than expected salesand cited it as proof that the applications vendor's growth had stalled. SAP retorted that the results were a slight blip and not indicative of a major issue with its performance, which it believes remains strong.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive officer, cites two factors that he believes are working in Oracle's favor over SAP: its Java-based middleware and its aggressive focus on getting industry-specific expertise and products through acquisitions.

Ellison claimed that Oracle's Fusion middleware is "years ahead" of SAP's NetWeaver integration platform.

"NetWeaver is still relatively new and still incomplete," he said.

Oracle's so-called "hot pluggable" or component-based Fusion middleware strategy is paying off, Phillips said. Typically, the company sells one or two of its middleware components into a customer account with the hope that over time that customer will expand their use of Oracle's middleware.

Turning to applications, Ellison criticized SAP's recent decision toretain the current versionof its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, mySAP ERP 2005, through 2010 and provide new functionality through regularly issued optional enhancement packages.

"SAP has delayed the next release of its applications until 2010," he said. "They'll be two full years behind our Fusion release." Oracle is working on a new suite of enterprise applications, known as Project Fusion, which is due out in 2008.

By contrast, SAP executives have positioned the company's move to a more modular approach to product upgrades as being driven by customers' demands to pick and choose functionality.

This quarter will be the last time Oracle provides separate database and middleware growth figures, Catz said. In the first quarter, database revenue grew 10 percent, while middleware rose 56 percent. In future, Oracle will adopt the practice of IBM and Microsoft and not break out those sales, she said.

Looking to the second quarter, Catz expects Oracle's net income to grow by between 13 percent and 17 percent as revenue increases by 22 to 24 percent. She forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $0.22. Those predictions don't take into account any specific charges likely to occur in the quarter.

Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
ABN AMRO TO RAMP UP HEADCOUNT TO 5,000 BY NEXT YEAR (also considering opening units in Tier-II cities and other State capitals). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) ABN Amro Central Enterprise Services (ACES), the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) subsidiary of the ABN Amro Bank, is planning to increase the staff strength in its three centres.

ACES has branches in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. By Jun 2007, it wants to increase the staff strength to 5,000 in the three locations from 3,700 at present. It has invested $40-50 million in the three centres.

It is also considering opening units in Tier-II cities and other State capitals. These three BPO units looked after back office transactions of ABN Amro Bank in over 60 countries.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
LIBERTY-PANTALOON JOINT VENTURE FOR FOOTMART RETAIL (the enterprise has already opened a factory each in Ahmedabad and Bangalore). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Liberty of Karnal in Haryana has formed a joint venture with Pantaloon Retail, called FootMart Retail India. The joint venture has already opened a factory each in Ahmedabad and Bangalore with an initial investment of Rs30 crore. The joint venture proposes to launch a branded footwear retail chain with stores measuring between 10,000 square feet and 20,000 square feet in metros and sub-metros.



FootMart proposes to open stores in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad by Dec 2006.

Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
INFOSYS DEPLOYS PEOPLESOFT 8.8 AT NISSAN UNITS (to give employees greater visibility into their payroll benefits). Check it out:
(India Business Insight Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Infosys Technologies Ltd has deployed PeopleSoft 8.8 at five facilities of Nissan North America Inc in the US, Canada and Mexico.

The company initially had implemented the multi-lingual, multi-currency software solution at Nissan North America in Jan 2005.

The solution includes PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Resources, Base Benefits, Benefits Administration, ePay, eProfile, eCompensation, eBenefits, eRecruit and eDevelopment. The solution is expected to give employees greater visibility into their payroll benefits and human resource information.



Copyright 2006 Silverline Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. Source : Financial Times Information Limited
Brit Scientists Attack Exxon Mobile's Support of Global Warming Deniers. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep 21, 2006 (financialwire.net via COMTEX) --September 21, 2006 (FinancialWire) Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) is under sharp fire from Britain's national academy of science, the Royal Society, which is accusing the U.S. oil giant of misleading the public into thinking that the role of humans in climate change is still in doubt. The Royal Society has written to Exxon asking it to halt support for groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change."



In this week's letter, the Royal Society objected to an Exxon Corporate Citizenship document that described "gaps in the science" of climate change, casting doubt on the link between global warming and the greenhouse gases which humans produce by burning fossil fuels.

"I am writing to express my disappointment at the inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change that these documents present," Ward wrote in the letter.

Exxon issued a statement responding to the Royal Society's letter saying that it did accept the contribution of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to climate change.

"Contrary to The Royal Society's assertion, Exxon Mobil recognizes... CO2 emissions are one of the contributing factors to climate change," it said.

Exxon Mobil has apparently backed away from funding a global warming denier group it had previously funded, giving $270,000 as recently as 2005.

The oil company donated no money to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2006, which ran ads on American television touting the benefits of carbon dioxide in May with the catchphrase: "Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life."

Carbon dioxide, produced when fossil fuels are burned, has been shown to be linked to global climate change.

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Award bosses aim to celebrate diversity. Check it out:
(Leicester Mercury Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Organisers of Leicestershire's annual celebration of business success say they hope to see diverse entries.

The Leicestershire Business Awards 2007, in association with the Leicester Mercury, was launched at Walkers Stadium yesterday in front of 170 people.

Awards chairman Chris Corbin called on companies of all sizes, sectors and backgrounds to enter. "Leicestershire is a diverse county, in geography, population and type of businesses," he said.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase as many of these businesses as possible. I'd ask you not to be intimidated." Jeff Kindleysides is co-founder of Cossington design firm Checkland Kindleysides, which was named Leicestershire Business of the Year 2006 in April. At the launch, he said winning had been a boost to the company and helped it grow.



"It was important that we got that togetherness and drive in our businesses," he said.

Jeff Court, managing director of electronic display manufacturer Infotec, of Ashby, which won this year's Enterprise Through Innovation award, said the prize had brought a lot of positive publicity.

"After winning the award, we ran an open day for recruits," he said. "It was more successful because we won, and people thought we were the best." Leicester Mercury editor Nick Carter said finalists would be featured in the newspaper's business pages, which are read by 150,000 people each day.

The categories are: New Business, sponsored by Harvey Ingram; Sales and Marketing, sponsored by De Montfort University; Investing in Leicestershire, sponsored by Leicestershire County Council; Success Through People, sponsored by Oval; Enterprise Through Innovation, sponsored by KPMG; Contribution to the Community, sponsored by Ashfield, Entrepreneur of the Year, sponsored by Vantis and Leicestershire Business of the Year, sponsored by Alliance & Leicester.

The sponsors are Tenon, RBS and Leicester Shire Economic Partnership.

The event is supported by Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce, the Leicester Mercury and Business Link.

Annette Fitzgerald, commerce and marketing manager, at Twycross Zoo, near Ashby, said it was considering entering the Sales and Marketing category.

"We have lots of exciting things happening," she said.

The deadline for entries is November 24. The 24 finalists (three in each category) will be announced on January 24. The awards ceremony takes place at De Montfort Hall on April 20. For more details and help with entries call 0845 130 2866. To enter online go to:

Copyright 2006 Northcliffe Newspapers Group Ltd
Investigation sought into practices of supermarkets in Ireland. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Blatantly anti-competitive behaviour by large supermarket chains should be investigated by the Competition Authority as a matter of urgency, according to a report from the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business.



The report, drafted by Fine Gael Senator Paul Coghlan, analysed the development of the retail sector in Britain in recent years and the role of planning, predatory pricing and the treatment of suppliers in the retail sector in the UK.

Senator Coghlan said last night that the UK authorities had asked their Competition Commission to investigate allegations that grocery multiples were abusing their market dominance and he said the Oireachtas Committee was concerned that similar abuses may be taking place in Ireland.

"I have just completed a report on the UK grocery trade which has identified anti-competitive behaviour by the major grocery multiples. This report records there is clear evidence of price-fixing by large retailers in the UK, as well as price-flexing, in which small retailers are forced to pay more for the same products. The dominance of major multiples in the UK market has resulted in the closure of 2,760 small shops in the past four years.

"The Competition Authority in Ireland must now launch its own investigation into competition in the retail grocery sector, particularly since some UK retailers are major operators in the Irish market. In particular, the authority should use some of its extensive powers to obtain information on turnover and profitability which have been used effectively by its equivalent in the UK, but which have not been used in Ireland," he said.

Some of the other key recommendations in the report are that: n The Competition Authority should examine the extent to which large multiple retailers have bought up large banks of land in particular locations in order to prevent competitors entering the market;

n A prohibition on the enforcement of restrictive covenant by retailers who leave a particular site, preventing another food store from opening at the old location;

n The reform of planning laws to ensure to take place so that competition in the groceries trade is addressed when considering planning applications;

n A census of local retailers by the Central Statistics Office to give an overview of the market;

n A Revenue Commissioners' examination of the extent to which multiples are manipulating transaction costs to reduce any value added tax liability;

n Greater transparency in the grocery sector to force multiples to disclose information on turnover and profitability with legislation to compel disclosure if necessary.

"As well as evidence of price fixing by multiples in the UK, my report has noted evidence of price flexing. This occurs where a multiple retailer takes a large order from a particular supplier on condition that the supplier makes other retailers pay more for the same product," said Senator Coghlan.

"Consumers have a right to a wide range of goods at the lowest possible prices."

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Carlow-based engineering firm to expand South African operations. Check it out:
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Carlow-based engineering firm BMA GeoServices is set to double the size of its operations in South Africa after securing a major coal mining exploration contract.

The geological consultancy firm will earn 20 million South African rand (2.1 million) over three years under the agreement with NewCoal, the country's fourth-largest coal mining group.

Bernard Murphy, who founded BMA GeoServices 10 years ago, announced details of the contract yesterday on Enterprise Ireland's trade mission to South Africa, which is being headed by Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Micheal Martin.



The Irish company will provide geological, environmental and geotechnical services to NewCoal in 146 licensed sites in Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The South African firm was recently set up under the country's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) scheme by a number of local mining giants, including Anglo-American and Billiton.

BMA GeoServices has been operating in South Africa since 2001, and has interests in Angola, Namibia, DR Congo and Cameroon. In June 2005 the company set up a subsidiary firm with five staff in South Africa - a country Mr Murphy described an attractive investment location, given its "natural resources, stability and economic maturity".

"It's very exciting for us to be here. It's a very dynamic country and I think the pace of development is accelerating," he said. "We can also use the country as a base for further expansion into Southern Africa."

The company's local experiences are a telling example of the pluses and minuses of investing in South Africa. Mr Murphy said stringent exchange controls meant it was difficult to get funds into the country. "We have not tried to get them out yet," he added. There was also a "very confused picture" around BEE obligations. The black empowerment initiative, which seeks to redress some of the injustices of the apartheid era, places certain obligations on companies operating in South Africa - including, in some instances, quotas for black shareholding.

Mr Murphy said "the intention is that our ownership structure would change" to allow for staff to have a stake in the local company. In the meantime, BMA GeoServices was meeting BEE requirements by facilitating charities in the provision of water for poor communities, specifically by supplying its services "at cost".

Mr Murphy said new legislation was needed to ensure everyone "knew the rules" on BEE. "In some areas, they make up their own rules."

Like many other foreign companies, the firm has lost tenders because of the uncertainty surrounding the issue. Some local administrators have equated BEE exclusively with black ownership, and consequently demand that all investors demonstrate a suitable black shareholding.

Mr Murphy said this "presents a difficulty for Irish firms" because it meant they almost had to "cross the hurdle" of finding a local partner before they started operations. "It's critical to find a good local partner; that is the key to success [ in South Africa]," he added.

Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
AMD Announces Socket Compatibility Plans to Drive Industry Collaboration; Sun Microsystems, Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, Dell and IBM Endorse Open Collaboration through AMD Torrenza Initiative to Enable Socket-Compatibility. Check it out:
SUNNYVALE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport(TM) technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.



Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.

"This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure."

The Torrenza Advantage

The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design documentation.

"As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative approach to innovation," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "By working with AMD and joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach."

"Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines," said Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they require."

"When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments," said Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division, HP. "The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need."

"Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus innovation," said Jan Silverman, Cray's senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "Our Adaptive Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the realized performance people have come to expect from Cray."

"Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMD's Torrenza initiative, and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza," said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves customers' server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership."

"Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD Opteron processor are powerful," said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology Officer, Dell. "The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our enterprise customers."

Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.

About the AMD Opteron(TM) Processor

Today, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Advanced Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Ericsson to supply mobile health solution to Changi General and Gleneagles hospitals in Singapore. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), Parkway Hospital and SingHealth have signed a collaboration agreement to deploy Ericsson Mobile Health solution for the remote patient monitoring in the Changi General and Gleneagles Hospitals in Singapore. Under the project Ericsson will supply and manage its mobile health solution that will be trialed at some of the hospitals' Acute Care Wards, specialized in patients that require round-the-clock monitoring due to chronic illnesses such as stroke, asthma and diabetes. The solution will enable automated collection and real-time monitoring of the patients' vital signs, such as heart and breathing rates, oxygen saturation and blood pressure. The precision and timeliness of this information will enable hospital staff to provide appropriate medical assistance to the patients. The patients only need to be fitted with lightweight and wearable health sensors that will collate and securely transmit the required data via Bluetooth to a communication module, which is connected to the hospitals' servers using WLAN technology. The information stored in the servers can be conveniently accessed by designated hospital staff from their workstations. This will significantly increase the productivity and efficiency levels of both hospitals' staff as they are now able to keep track of patients' well-being and evaluate the support required in real time, remotely and quickly. Kenneth Thean, General Manager of Information Systems, Parkway Hospitals Singapore, says, "This project will help us be more effective in deploying the nursing staff and at the same time improving the quality of patient care." Ang Boon Hock, Changi General Hospital's Assistant Director of Nursing, says: "The mobile health monitoring project can improve the timeliness in recording vital signs and can alert doctors and nurses quickly of any changes in a patient's condition." Ann Emilson, President, Ericsson Singapore, says, "Derived from one of the healthcare initiatives driven by IDA (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore), this venture is the first step towards making hassle free medical services possible to Singaporeans. Ericsson is proud and happy to be given the chance to support the local government's initiative in ensuring the well-being of its citizens." The Ericsson Mobile Health solution can also be deployed on wireless networks, allowing patients to receive medical care and assistance anytime, anywhere. Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world. Read more at http://www.ericsson.com/press FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Ericsson Media Relations Phone: +46 8 719 6992 E-mail: [email protected] About Ericsson Enterprise Mobility Solutions (EMS) For the past 30 years, Ericsson has been supplying businesses with world-class communication solutions. In order to address the market in the most appropriate manner, Ericsson's global enterprise activities and expertise have now been integrated into Ericsson's core business. Ericsson has as identified mobility as the key enabler for new, more flexible ways of working. Enterprise mobility solutions have been developed to improve enterprise productivity and enhance customer service. Enterprise-focused end-user applications for both voice and data such as mobile centrex, mobile push mail and mobile access to corporate applications provide unlimited mobility and accessibility to all mobile professionals. In addition, industry segment solutions that enable mobilizing business processes have also been developed for selected segments such as healthcare, utilities, public safety and transportation. The remote patient monitoring system is one of the applications of the Ericsson Mobile Health solutions. About Changi General Hospital Changi General Hospital (CGH) is a 776-bed restructured hospital located in the east of Singapore. A merger of Toa Payoh Hospital and Changi Hospital, CGH is designated to serve as a healthcare hub for the community in the east. It offers a comprehensive range of medical and paramedical services which include general medicine, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, emergency medicine, radiology, anaesthesia, urology, geriatric medicine, rehabilitation medicine, ENT, eye, gastroenterology, psychological medicine, neurology, dermatology, oral & maxillofacial surgery, neurosurgery, obstetrics & gynaecology, breast surgery, laboratory medicine, psychological medicine, multiphasic health screening and sports medicine. CGH is a member of the SingHealth cluster. About Parkway Hospitals Singapore Parkway Hospitals Singapore owns East Shore, Gleneagles and Mount Elizabeth Hospitals. Its parent company, Parkway Holdings is one of Asia's most prominent healthcare organisations with an extensive network of hospitals and integrated healthcare facilities in the region. Gleneagles Hospital is a 380-bed private tertiary acute care hospital. It provides a wide range of medical and surgical services for the total management of patients.



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
BEA looks to gain ground versus IBM, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft in the competitive SOA market.. Check it out:
(www.aspnews.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
BEA Systems ( Quote , Chart ) took a step in its evolution as a pure service-oriented architecture (SOA) vendor this week, tucking its Tuxedo , WebLogic and AquaLogic product lines under a new umbrella it calls SOA 360 .

Like all SOA ( define ) strategies, the technology package aims to match software with business processes to help customers save money on software development and integration.

The SOA 360 platform, which BEA is touting at its BEAWorld event in San Francisco this week, is supported by BEA's microservice architecture (MSA).

BEA said in a statement MSA combines the tenets of SOA ( define ) and the concept of a service network, or a modular and lightweight separation of concerns instead of point-to-point integration.

MSA is driven by events in a business process, using notification services to publish and discover components or services.

MSA will also work with open source containers and presentation services, a continuation of BEA's blended strategy for combining commercial and open source technologies.

SOA 360 is supported by BEA's new SOA tooling environment, BEA WorkSpace 360, which is designed to allow business analysts, architects, developers and IT professionals to collaborate on software creation.

BEA said it expects WorkSpace 360 to roll out throughout 2007.

In a multi-billion-dollar SOA market that includes giants IBM ( Quote , Chart ), Microsoft ( Quote , Chart ), Oracle ( Quote , Chart ) and Sun Microsystems ( Quote , Chart ), BEA said SOA 360 is a "competitive weapon that will enable the company to deliver innovation that can adapt faster and more flexibly to changing business conditions."



But with SOA software already a fixture in the portfolios of many leading software vendors, most experts agree the new challenge is refining them and adding new levels of granularity.

This basically means perfecting the software services to do more of what customers need them to do, including facilitating Web services ( define ) interaction across disparate computer systems.

As one of the last remaining, large independent SOA players with this focus, BEA hopes SOA 360 will help the company turn the corner in the SOA arms race.

To support SOA 360, BEA today announced the BEA SOA for Executives, a suite of SOA consulting and education services for senior IT executives, and the Guardian Support Service, an automated maintenance tool that scans, analyzes and diagnoses networks for potential problems.

BEA also released AquaLogic Enterprise Repository (ALER) 2.5, a re-branded product culled from the integration of BEA's acquisition of Flashline and its metadata repository.

The software tracks and analyzes SOAs to give customers a better idea of how their software services are behaving.

BEA also upgraded AquaLogic Data Services Platform (ALDSP) 2.5 to better support Web services and reporting tools with a native engine to both XQuery and SQL.

ALDSP now supports Microsoft Excel to bring live data to users via Web services within Excel from multiple data sources.

Internet.com Corp.

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Capio acquires hospital group Tonkin in France. Check it out:
(Hugin Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Capio has signed an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of the French Tonkin Group. The turnover rate for Tonkin is EUR 105 M (SEK 965 M). Formal takeover is foreseen to take place on or about October 31, 2006. Through this acquisition, Capio will increase its French operations by about 30% and strengthen its position in Rhone-Alpes, the second main economic region in France. Capio has signed an agreement to acquire 100 percent of the Tonkin Group. The Group has three clinics located in Lyon and Villeurbanne: Clinique du Tonkin, Clinique La Sauvegarde and Clinique Saint Louis. The clinics offer medical, surgical and obstetrical care services. The Tonkin Group has a strong regional position and is well-known for its high level of professionalism. The transaction is contingent upon the approval of the French competition authorities. "The three hospitals provide high-quality care services with significant growth potential, offer opportunities for achieving synergies and scale advantages with our existing operations. We will strengthen our position in the Rhone-Alpes region and become an even more important player in the French healthcare market," says David Hiller, Head of the Capio Healthcare France business area. "The acquisition of Tonkin is in line with our strategy in France, to actively take part in the consolidation of the French healthcare market through regionally complementary acquisitions", says Ulf Mattsson, CEO of Capio group. "We were looking for an industry professional to acquire Tonkin hospital group. We are pleased to associate Tonkin Group with the European leader in healthcare. Capio, as a specialist in hospital management, is very well positioned to develop further the medical projects of our three clinics" says Jean-Louis Oger, Chairman of Marcel Merieux Laboratory (the seller). Gothenburg, September 21, 2006 Capio AB (publ) For more information, please contact: David Hillier, SVP and Head of the Capio Healthcare France business area +33 4 37 47 16 50 Ulrika Stenson, SVP Corporate Communications, Capio AB +46 31 732 40 04, +46 70 590 0723 Facts on the Tonkin Group - The turnover rate for Tonkin is EUR 105 M (SEK 965 M), with an EBITDA level of EUR 14 M. - 1 000 employees, 310 self-employed physicians. - The enterprise value amounts to EUR 146 M (SEK 1,350 M). - The three hospitals had total 604 beds. - The Tonkin Group was founded in 1974 by a group of practitioners from the public university hospital of Lyon. - The Clinique du Tonkin is the largest unit (302 beds) and is a point of reference in the Lyon area, able to provide a large range of different medical, surgical and obstetrical services which ensure a ranking amongst the best clinics in France. - The Clinique de la Sauvegarde is the main medical and surgical hospital of the West of Lyon. The clinic is well-known notably for its medical and surgical cardiology care, digestive surgery, urology, ENT, orthopaedics and oncology. The patient recruitment extends beyond the local catchment area. - The Clinique Saint Louis is a surgical hospital, specialising particularly in ENT, gastroenterology, urology and thoracic surgery. Capio Group is one of the leading providers of healthcare services in Europe and operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. The Capio Group has annual net revenues of approximately SEK 13,000 M (EUR 1,400 M), with some 15,000 employees. Capio is established in France since 2002, Capio owns 21 hospitals with more then 3,500 beds, 4,500 employees and 1,000 self-employed physicians. It has an annual turnover of EUR 300 M. Attachments/Links:http://hugin.info/133237/R/1076917/185406.pdf



Copyright 2006 All Material Subject to Copyright
iWays & IRCTC to Enable Online Rail E-Ticket Reservations against Cash Payment; Sify Ties up with IRCTC to Enable This Service from over 3400 iWays across 154 Cities in India. Check it out:
NEW DELHI, India --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 21, 2006 -- Sify Limited (Nasdaq:SIFY), a leader in Consumer Internet and Enterprise Services in India with global delivery capabilities, today, announced its tie-up with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to make their online railway ticketing services available at over 3400 iWay cyber cafes across 154 cities in the country with cash payments. A pilot project at 10 iWays in Delhi has started today. This is expected to revolutionise the way railway ticketing is done, with never-before convenience with neighborhood access for the common man.



Online railway ticket bookings on the IRCTC site has been available to customers who either have a credit card or a net banking facility, limiting the number of people who could actually use this convenient facility. The vast majority of Indians however, still prefer to make cash payments for tickets, goods or services. So it was imperative that a means be found for the large number of Indians without a credit card or a net banking facility to be able to make online rail ticket reservations and pay cash.

Commenting on the tie-up, Mr. P K Goel, Managing Director, IRCTC, said, "This path-breaking initiative is aimed at making railway e-ticketing easier and convenient for our customers across the country. For they no longer have to worry about using credit cards or having a net banking facility which is restricted to those with access to computers at home or in the office. Instead, they can simply make the online bookings and make convenient cash payment at Sify's iWays. We are very pleased to be able to make this very successful facility available to all our customers to with the help of Sify iWays. The reach and network of Sify's iWays is sure to make a difference by enabling access to this online service to the masses."

Speaking on the occasion of this landmark tie-up, Mr. Raju Vegesna, MD & CEO, Sify Limited, said, "This is a tie-up that will make the online rail ticketing facility of the IRCTC accessible and available to the common man through our wide reach of over 3400 iWays cyber cafes across 154 cities. I believe that this will become a landmark event in the growth of online ticketing in the country by not only making it widely available to everyone, but by overcoming the barrier of online payment with convenient cash payments. It is innovative solutions like this that will grow e-commerce in India, and I am extremely pleased that we have been able to work with the IRCTC to make this possible. This is only the first of many new initiatives planned to transform our iWay cyber cafes from being points for Internet access, to what we like to call 'eStores', with all manner of electronic distribution and fulfillment of services."

So one no longer needs to travel to a railway booking counter, stand in queues or look for a travel agent any longer. All it requires is a visit to the neighborhood Sify iWay, where the cafe administrator can book the railway ticket online. He or she sits inside the cool ambience of the Sify iWay, and finalises the itinerary based on availability. The customer pays cash against the ticket and collects the ticket printout. In case of ticket cancellations, the customer will follow the standard cancellation process of the IRCTC, after which the customer gets cash against the cancellation.

So, the next time you need to take a train journey, head straight to the nearest Sify iWay to make your bookings!

About Sify Limited:

Sify is among the largest Internet, network and e-Commerce services companies in India, offering end-to-end solutions with a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common Internet backbone infrastructure. This Internet backbone reaches 171 cities and towns in India. A significant part of the company's revenue is derived from Corporate Services, which include corporate connectivity, network and communications solutions, security, network management services and hosting. A host of blue chip customers use Sify's corporate service offerings. Consumer services include broadband home access, dial up connectivity and the iWay cyber cafe chain across 154 cities and towns. The company's network services, data center operations and customer relationship management are accredited ISO 9001:2000.

For more information about Sify, visit http://www.sifycorp.com/

Forward Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Sify undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

For a discussion of the risks associated with Sify's business, please see the discussion under the caption "Risks Related to Our Business" in the company's report on Form 6-K for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 which has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is available by accessing the database maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov.

About IRCTC

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) is a public sector company set up and fully owned by the Ministry of Railways. The Internet Rail Ticketing program for India is being handled by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). On August 3, 2002 the facility for Internet ticketing was launched for public. Through www.irctc.co.in the tickets for Rail journeys can be booked on the Internet by any user. IRCTC delivers the tickets in 212 cities of India. IRCTC also provides the facility to book e-ticket i.e. just book your ticket and take print out and travel with your photo ID. Apart from this the timing for booking online tickets are from 0500 hrs to 2330 hrs Monday to Sunday.

IRCTC has now allowed RTSAs, IATA agents & TAAI members to book the tickets online, in the same process, IRCTC has tied up with Sify to provide its users the much easier reach to book the Railway tickets.
Minority-biz panel meets rarely: City watchdog commission often is unable to muster a quorum. Check it out:
(Arizona Daily Star, The (Tucson) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 21--A city of Tucson commission that is supposed to be a watchdog for minority-owned businesses has met only three times this year because it can't get a quorum, records show.



The Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission is supposed to be an independent, third-party monitor for the city's Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program. The all-volunteer group, created by the City Council in 1990 to monitor and increase minority-owned business participation in city contracts, hasn't been able to get much done this year.

Even when it does meet, the information the members need to do their jobs is typically unavailable, members say.

The group met once in January and once in June. Five other monthly meetings were canceled for lack of quorum.

One commissioner, Carmen Pettiti, recently was excused from her position after she missed 40 percent of the meetings or four meetings in a row, the rule that automatically removes a person from a city commission.

Pettiti, owner of Que Bonita, an import retail store, said, "I hardly saw anything that was productive" at the meetings, adding that she wasn't notified of the locations of some meetings.

Pettiti said she never got an answer from the city staff about how many local businesses benefited from the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program, which encourages the city to do business with minority- and female-owned firms. She said she was excited about being a part of the group but was disappointed by its inability to act.

Another part of the problem was vacancies after the November City Council election. Since members are appointed by their council member, some seats turned over. Four of the current commissioners were newly appointed in the past 12 months.

The commission seat for Ward 3 remains empty. Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said she hasn't appointed anyone to the position because her staff has been interviewing applicants. She wants to make an appointment in the next few weeks, she said.

A new attendance problem could begin when four of the commissioners' terms expire at the end of 2007.

When four members gathered Monday, the group elected officers, a task it was supposed to complete in January.

They elected new member Clarence Boykins to chair the group. Boykins is executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce and a former director of the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program.

A lengthy agenda that rehashes old issues has held up progress for the group, he said.

"I would like for us to be able to send a report to the mayor and council, monthly or quarterly at the very least, saying this is what we have accomplished," Boykins said.

Holding meaningful meetings that lead to successes will solve the attendance problem, he said.

The group also elected new member Walter Soto, owner of Soto Construction Co. and a vocal critic of the Minority and Woman-Owned Business Program, to be vice-chair.

The fact that the Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission hasn't met often doesn't mean the commission isn't needed, Soto said.

"The reason we have this commission is to create a watchdog for the city and the way they do business with the underrepresented parts of our community," he said.

Soto said he joined the commission because of its attendance problem. He started going to meetings as a concerned business owner a couple of years ago and realized most of the meetings were canceled.

Soto was disenchanted with the program and said he won't do business with the city until it changes what he calls discriminatory behaviors.

Being a commissioner is not an easy job. The group deals with "very tangled procurement issues" and legal topics, Soto said. Among the items on its agenda are hot-topic reports on nonretaliation procedures and subcontractor bid listing.

The commission's inactivity is partly the city's fault, too.

In June 2005, the commission requested reports on city payments for goods and services to see how much money the city spends with minority-owned businesses and whether it meets goals for that spending.

Because of problems gathering the data, staff members produced the first-ever, albeit incomplete, report of this type at Monday's meeting. The reports are mandated by the city's own ordinance, Soto said.

Because the data isn't available, the commission really has no way to check the system it is supposed to scrutinize, he said. And the city can't know whether its ordinance is working effectively.

The city's Office of Equal Opportunity Programs also has been asking for the reports, and staff members have made the reports a new priority, said Liana Perez, who directs that office.

City of Tucson's Minority and Women Business Enterprise Commission

--Marlene Ashton, president of Southern Arizona Paving & Construction Co., appointed in 2003.

--Clarence Boykins, executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce, appointed in March.

--Thomas Curley, owner of Curley's Downtown Barber Shop, appointed in 2003.

--Andee Leisner, president and CEO of Southern Arizona Electric, appointed in December.

--Eddie Muniz, owner of Sol Design, appointed in June.

--Walter Soto, owner of Soto Construction Co., appointed in April.

--Contact reporter Becky Pallack at 573-4224 or at [email protected].

Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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CRM Help From Bigcheeseware, Callidus and Thrivent, Hansen and Sarasota, Aspect 2.5.1. Check it out:
By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis' landmark jazz album "Bitches Brew." It's considered a "landmark" by critics, personally I like what he did before this album better than what he did after it.



Bigcheeseware has announced a 30-day trial for businesses of what it calls its "Total CRM Design."

As more and more online consumers take advantage of free trial services, Bigcheeseware officials say, Internet-based businesses like to offer free trial sessions.

Some more "free" than others, of course, in First Coffee's opinion the truly devious ones are like Sports Illustrated saying "Four Free Issues!" and it turning out that if you subscribe first, they'll throw on four free issues at the end of your subscription term, not that they'll give you four free issues to decide if you like the magazine or not.

"Free trials differ in terms of use and the period of use," Bigcheeseware officials note. "From kids and adults computer games to anti-virus software and CRMs, free trials are one way of taking hold of a business target market."

Which of course is what Bigcheeseware is doing. "Bigcheesewares countless features make it one of the most powerful tools in live chat support software," company officials claim, saying it's also "packed with features absent in other support software," to wit, Instant Message and Email Notification of Dropped Chat and Chat on Queue, a Web Call Back System, Live customer support agents -- hey, there's a new one!

There's a Customizable Proactive Chat Total CRM Solution, as well as a Real Time Agent Performance Reporting, which lets you "evaluate your live support agents with Bigcheesewares Performance Agent Scores feature."

Bigcheesewares promotional 30-day free trial registration runs on secure pages, company officials say, adding that registration information is kept private and is used only for verifying purposes. Bigcheeseware free trial is enhanced with the most basic live chat features.

Bigcheeseware combines voice, e-mail and chat technology with real live customer support agents in real-time interaction.


Callidus Software Inc., a vendor of Enterprise Incentive Management, has announced that Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which calls itself -- and First Coffee has no reason to disagree -- "the nation's leading fraternal benefit society with nearly 3 million members," has selected Callidus' TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules to "automate the organization's administration, reporting and analysis of incentive compensation."

Thrivent Financial officials says they chose the Callidus Software to "reduce operating costs and to improve time to market with new products and compensation changes." The organization will implement Callidus Software's TrueComp Manager and TrueInformation software modules for its 2,500 financial representatives.

Thrivent and its subsidiaries offer financial services including insurance, annuities and mutual funds, as well as a broad range of educational and volunteer opportunities.

"We believe that the TrueComp EIM software will provide better support for our sales teams, support our cost reduction goals and provide significantly improved reporting and analysis capabilities to help us better monitor our business," said Mark Coleman, vice president, field administration of Thrivent Financial.

EIM software products are used to allow employees and channel distribution partners to be compensated accurately and on time.

"Thrivent Financial is positioned to achieve improved alignment of incentive compensation with member engagement, a key metric for a fraternal benefit society," explained Leslie Stretch, senior vice president worldwide sales for Callidus Software.


Hansen Information Technologies, a vendor of software for the public sector market, has announced that it has been awarded a $1.1 million contract to provide the Hansen 8 Community Development and Regulation product to the City of Sarasota, Florida.

The four phases of the CDR solution will include Licensing and Escrow, Code Compliance, Building and Permits, and Development Application Review.

Also included in the deployment plan will be a mobile product and Hansen's DynamicPORTAL. DynamicPORTAL will give the citizens of Sarasota the ability to input service requests, apply for permits, schedule inspections, and more.

"Our previous system was expensive and difficult to use, and limited both our reporting ability and our capacity to adapt to change," said Kevin Wells, Manager of Electronic Government Services for the City of Sarasota. So in February 2005 the city began searching for a CDR product.

The business of government is increasing, evidently, and much to the chagrin of us civil libertarians everywhere: The City of Sarasota serves over 58,000 citizens and 22,000 properties. In 2005, the City issued over 5,600 permits, managed over 2,300 code enforcement cases, and processed over 6,100 occupational licenses -- up from 5,300 permits, 1,800 cases, and 5,800 licenses in 2004.

The city expects the Hansen product to help streamline the permitting process and make information transparent and directly accessible to developers, contractors, and owners. City officials also hope it will reduce the total cost of construction by reducing downtime from inspections, and increase the effectiveness of citizens' tax dollars by automating routine tasks, and that it will "significantly" decrease the cost and increase the effectiveness of governance by integrating information across the city.


Aspect Software, Inc., has announced the general availability of Aspect Quality Management 2.5.1, a product billed as "simplifying the call recording and quality management process."

The latest release of Aspect Quality Management includes a tight integration with Aspect Spectrum ACD, which means the quality management and full-time recording is available to all users of the Aspect Signature ACDs, including Aspect CallCenter ACD.

Aspect Quality Management, from the company's Contact Center Performance Optimization product line, provides capabilities for recording, reviewing and reporting on customer interactions. Many companies use that information to help improve agent performance and job satisfaction, increase customer satisfaction and revenue generation, and better manage overall costs.

The new integration with Aspect Spectrum ACD, as well as the existing integration with Aspect CallCenter ACD, can probably benefit contact centers using the Aspect Software Signature ACDs, including lower cost of ownership, ease of use, improved partitioning of call access and security, and more power to find calls of interest quickly.

The recording and compression technologies used in such products do make it possible to capture considerably more calls, allowing contact centers to implement 100 percent recording. Such systems perform audio and screen recording of the full interaction, with easy access to all call segments when calls are transferred to observe the complete customer experience.

Good systems (such as this one) even allow for the customer to be automatically surveyed after the call, using tools that any contact center manager can administer, removing the need for IT resources when new surveys are desired.

Brian Derr, vice president of quality management solutions at Aspect Software explained that being able to configure call recording rules based on existing ACD definitions, and then monitor every segment of a call as it is transferred "while receiving tightly integrated customer feedback when the satisfaction survey is completed," helps to identify areas for improvement with the agent, "the overall interaction process, and the enterprise as a whole."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.

Happy Birthday!

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Happy Birthday!. Check it out:
(Saigon Times Magazine Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) This section is free of charge, and aimed to help companies promote their trademarks, build corporate prestige, and expand production as well as business

HOA BINH CONSTRUCTION & REAL ESTATE CORP.

DOE: Sept. 27, 1987

General director: Le Viet Hai

Add: 235 Vo Thi Sau St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9325030

SOB: industrial and civil construction, real estate.

SAIGON PURE WATER PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

DOE: Sept. 26, 1992

Director: Le Nhu Ai

Add: 9 Quang Trung St., Go Vap Dist., HCM City

Tel: 8941466

SOB: producing purified drinking water; trading in equipment.

VIB BANK

DOE: Sep. 18, 1996

General director: Le Dinh Long

Add: 64-68 Ly Thuong Kiet St., Hoan Kiem Dist., Hanoi

Tel: 04.9426919

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

MEKONG DELTA HOUSING DEVELOPMENT BANK

DOE: Sep. 18, 1997

General director: Nguyen Phuoc Hoa

Add: 9 Vo Van Tan St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9302501

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

V-TRAVEL CO., LTD.

DOE: Sep. 18, 2001

Director: Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet

Add: 797 Le Hong Phong St., Dist. 10, HCM City

Tel: 8620015

SOB: inbound tours, air booking, transport, advertising and business management consulting services.

TECHCOMBANK

DOE: Sept. 27, 1993

General director: Nguyen Duc Vinh

Add: 15 Dao Duy Tu St., Hoan Kiem Dist., Hanoi

Tel: 04.8243941

SOB: providing finance and banking services.

CONTINENTAL HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 27, 1880

Director: Vuong Anh Tuan

Add: 132-134 Dong Khoi St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8299201

SOB: providing hospitality services.

INVESTCONSULT GROUP

DOE: Sept. 26, 1989

Director: Nguyen Tran Khanh

Add: 15-17 Nguyen Thi Dieu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9304868

SOB: legal, investment and management consulting; trademark registration, industrial design, intellectual property right and technology transfer.

DONG AN HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 27, 2003

Director: Tran Minh Trinh

Add: 5 Cua Dai, Hoi An, Quang Nam Province

Tel: 0510.927888

SOB: hospitality services; inbound tours.

SAIGON CONSTRUCTION CORP.

DOE: Sept. 28, 1999

General director: Dang Thi Hoang Phuong

Add: Lot 9, Road C, Tan Tao IP, Binh Tan Dist., HCM City

Tel: 7507777

SOB: industrial and civil construction; warehouses and offices for lease; producing concrete structures, iron and steel building components.

CENTRAL HOTEL

DOE: Sept. 25, 1999

Director: Tran Van Thanh

Add: 784 Quang Trung St., Quang Ngai Town, Quang Ngai Province

Tel: 055.829999

SOB: providing hospitality services.

ATI CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 21, 1994

General director: Nguyen Anh Tuan

Add: 201 Ly Tu Trong St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8277997

SOB: business management solution consulting; PCs and equipment; IT services.

NGON RESTAURANT

DOE: Sept. 20, 2001

Director: Duong Tan Hoai

Add: 138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia St., Dist. 1, HCM City

Tel: 8257179

SOB: providing restaurant services.

AGREX SAIGON

DOE: Sept. 22, 1976

Director: Nguyen Thanh Son

Add: 58 Vo Van Tan St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9306606

SOB: exporting agro-aqua products; importing equipment and materials; import and export.

ANH THE CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 18, 1999

Director: Tong Quang Lam

Add: 110 Nguyen Thi Nho St., Dist. 5, HCM City

Tel: 8567289

SOB: producing stainless steel screws, bolts and nuts; consignment agent.

DETAIL ARCHITECH CO., LTD.

DOE: Sept. 20, 2005

Director: Nguyen Duy Doan

Add: 22A Nguyen Thi Dieu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 9303321

SOB: design consulting; interior decoration.

JAPAN VIETNAM FERTILIZER CO.

DOE: Sept. 27, 1996

General director: Masanori Nakatsuka

Office: 182 Dien Bien Phu St., Dist. 3, HCM City

Tel: 2905069

SOB: producing and trading in NPK fertilizers.

FUJITSU COMPUTER PRODUCTS OF VIETNAM INC.

Date of establishment (DOE): Sept. 22, 1995

General director: Keiji Tanaka

Add: No. 31, Road 3A, Bien Hoa II IP, Dong Nai Province

Tel: 061.836563

Scope of business (SOB): producing printed wiring boards, assembling printed circuit boards for hard disks, laptops, automobiles, digital video cameras and printing laser machines.

Copyright 2006 The Saigon Times Magazine. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire

Recent IPO Filings

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Recent IPO Filings. Check it out:
(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Filing Est. Amt
Date Company Name (Mil.)
------ ------------ --------
09/20 Paradigm Ltd. (George Town,Grand Cayman, ) $200.0
Is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions.
09/19 Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. (Los Angeles, CA) $500.0
Is a self-managed, full-service real estate company.
09/19 Danaos Corp. (Piraeus, ) $259.3
Is an international owner of containerships, chartering our
vessels to the largest liner companies.
09/15 ASAlliances Biofuels Inc. (Dallas, TX) $300.0
Is a development-stage ethanol company.
09/15 Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, CA) $80.0
Develops and provides the leading software solutions for
digital investigations. EnCase Enterprise.
09/14 Western Union Co. (Englewood, CO) $93.5
Is a leader in global money transfer.
09/13 Petrie Parkman & Co. Inc. (Denver, CO) $115.0
Is an investment bank specializing in the energy industry.
09/13 Obagi Medical Products Inc. (Long Beach, CA) $86.2
Is a specialty pharmaceutical company.
09/12 Transforma Acquisition Group Inc. (New York, NY) $172.5
Is a blank check company.
09/12 Universal Power Group (Carrollton, TX) $27.6
Supplies and distributes portable power supply products.
# # #
This information is provided AS-IS, without any warranty of any kind.
IPO Monitor makes no claims concerning the accuracy or validity of the
information, and shall not be held liable for any errors, delays,
omissions or use thereof.

Copyright 2006 (c) IPO Monitor. All rights reserved.
Former Leadership Team of Adventis Corporation Joins Monitor Group Core Strategy Team. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 --

Strategic Additions Reflect Monitor's Emphasis on Serving the Needs of Telecommunications, Media and Technology Companies During Period of Fundamental Industry Change

Monitor Group, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based international advisory firm with affiliated investment funds, today announced that the former North American leadership team of Adventis Corporation is joining its strategy practice effective immediately. Joining Monitor are Ford Cavallari, former worldwide head of the broadband and media practice of Adventis Corporation; Andy Belt, co-founder and former enterprise/telecom practice head of Adventis Corporation; and John Ryan, one of the three founders of RHK, Inc. and an industry expert in technology and network issues. Adventis Corporation, a North American-based strategic consulting firm, focused its services on telecommunications, media and technology.



Based on its longstanding work in the area, Monitor sees a fundamental redefinition of telecom, media, and technology companies now occurring. Whereas the "legacy" challenges for each separate sector comprised mainly the standard customer acquisition/retention and cost control issues, a new set of "converged" challenges for all three sectors has emerged, driven by increasingly blurred industry boundaries and renewed growth imperatives. These critical challenges include the management of new and disruptive business models (e.g. VoIP, VoD), the definition and control of the "home of the future", and the rationale for innovations and capital investments in new, multi-player consumer and business markets. With the addition of its new team members, Monitor is well positioned to build on its historical strength in strategy consulting to IT and international telecom clients, and to deploy the robust set of growth-oriented client services required in this space.

"These new colleagues bring expertise and insight in telecommunications, media and technology to enhance Monitor's strategic advisory business," said CEO Joe Fuller. "We are pleased to have this accomplished group joining our core strategy team."

Founded in 1983 by six entrepreneurs, including Harvard's Michael Porter and the company's current Chairman Mark Fuller, Monitor Group has 28 offices worldwide and offers a portfolio of strategic consulting services to clients who seek to grow top-line revenue, shareholder value, and individual and organizational capabilities. The firm works with the world's foremost business experts and thought leaders to help major multinational companies, governments and philanthropic institutions develop specialized capabilities in areas including competitive strategy, marketing and pricing strategy, innovation, national and regional economic competitiveness, non-profit management, technology/e-business, organizational design and development, and scenario planning. Monitor Group's separate merchant banking division consists of investment funds (both venture capital and private equity) as well as an M&A advisory service.
LumenVox Releases Speech Tuner v7.0. Check it out:
Provider of speech recognition technology, LumenVox, announced today, the release of Speech Tuner version 7.0.
 
The latest release of Speech Tuner, a GUI based tool for end-users that aids in the maintenance and tuning of speech applications is now available in a beta version for windows.
 
The Tuner provides speech solution developers with the tools they need to enhance speech recognition technology right from in-house. This eliminates the need to hire professional services since tuning, transcription and instant parameter, grammar and version upgrade testing are all included in Speech Tuner.


 
New features included in version 7.0 were outlined in a news release:
 
-Faster, more user friendly database loading
 
-Sophisticated filtering tools gives users the power to pinpoint specific calls or those matching certain user-defined criteria.
 
-Updated Call Browser quickly grants users the ability to choose and listen to a specific interaction, and export the audio file—all from one window.
 
-Improved statistics, control panel interface, and shortcuts contribute to a 10 percent performance increase of the new Transcriber
 
-Revised Grammar Tester allows users to see instantly how proposed changes to grammar or speech engine configurations will affect the results of speech application.
 
Jim Blake, CTO of LumenVox commented in a statement to the press, "By improving call analysis and granularity we offer the market a significant speech application tuning tool that instantly validates changes made during the tuning process."
 
Just last week, LumenVox made news when they announced a new speech solution for Asterik. As per the announcement, Asterik-based applications can now be integrated with the LumenVox Speech Engine, which provides the technology needed for the recognition of words and phrases—offering a new host of options and capabilities.
 
For more information, please visit: www.lumenvox.com
 
 
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006.  See you in San Diego.
*Be sure to visit LumenVox at the show, booth #330!
 
 
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Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page
SMC's Commitment to VoIP Shows in New and Upcoming Products; Across the Office, Across the Campus or Across the Ocean, Ready Communication is Easier and More Economical with SMC's Comprehensive Solutions Set for IP Telephony. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- SMC(R) Networks (www.smc.com) today reaffirmed its commitment to VoIP, showcasing its comprehensive portfolio of IP telephony solutions for the office and the road. The company's solid line of network switches, enterprise wireless products and phones -- wired and Wi-Fi -- complemented by its IP-PBX and Wireless Travel Voice Gateway round out a solid overall VoIP solution for today's globally oriented business.



VoIP provides an economical alternative to traditional telephony and is emerging as a practical way for businesses to communicate -- within the office building, across the campus or around the world. SMC's VoIP solutions work for today's businesses, where global communication is the norm, and communicators are not tied to their desks. Built on the philosophy that IP telephony will coexist with traditional analog telephony, SMC Networks' solutions accommodate that synergy. The company's products for VoIP communication include IP-based PBX devices; enterprise network switches; desktop phones that support PoE for easy plug-and-play use; portable phones that let busy workers' extensions operate around the office or at any hotspot; and gateway devices that make it possible to use any analog telephone phone as an IP phone.

As VoIP becomes more widely adopted, several usage models are emerging, and SMC Networks' products are designed to make VoIP work in a multitude of scenarios. In a hotel environment, an IP PBX connects calls to rooms, while facilitating free calling by guests and employees to central reservations and other hotel properties. In each room, the desktop IP phone provides broadband access and telephone services to guests, all from a single connect point. In a multinational company, the cost-savings can be huge when companies set up VoIP connections to branch and division offices overseas. With an IP PBX, dialing a colleague in Asia can be as simple as dialing an extension number. And, the benefits aren't just long distance: Employees who spend a lot of time away from their desks can carry their portable Wi-Fi phones with them, thus bettering response times and generating savings on cellular and pager fees. SMC considered frequent travelers, too, when designing its portfolio of VoIP-enabling equipment. The company's all-in-one travel VoIP networking kit, the SMCWTVG, makes VoIP communication easier and more accessible -- from anywhere. Integrating the functions of a wireless gateway and a Voice over IP analog telephone adapter (ATA) in one compact device, it is a high-speed broadband router that is capable of delivering Internet access to several users via built-in NAT functionality with wireless features that can be used in either of two different operating modes: as an 802.11b/g access point providing service to wireless clients or Wi-Fi phones or as a wireless client itself for PC and analog phone connections to other Wi-Fi networks. And, with the two built-in RJ-11 ports, it can be used as an analog telephone adapter, allowing callers with standard analog phones to enjoy the advantages of VoIP while still receiving regular PSTN calls. Another great tool for those on the move, SMC's Skype-enabled 802.11g phone, WSKP100, lets travelers make and receive calls from hotspots, airports, or branch offices -- without the need to drag out the laptop.

SMC's growing portfolio of VoIP products includes a host of network-building switches, routers and adapters, as well as many specialized devices that are available now. Those specialized devices that are available now include the SMC7908VoWBRA, a Wireless ADSL router with built-in Voice over IP gateway; the SMCWTVG Wireless Travel Voice Gateway, which integrates the function of a wireless gateway and a VoIP ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) into a compact, take-along device; and the recently introduced WSKP100 Wireless Internet Phone for easy, portable, computer-independent Skype calling. In Q4, 2006, SMC will add to its line of VoIP products by shipping a desktop, SIP-based IP phone and a full-featured IP PBX. The IP PBX integrates analog trunk and extension call management with Standard Internet Protocol (SIP) trunk and extension management in an all-in-one PBX unit that is scalable to multiple sites and extensions. And, its ability to support wireless or wired devices makes the reality of a mobile office seamless as users move between mobile and desk-based phones. The Desktop IP phone will feature an intuitive LCD display, programming via the keypad or built-in Web interface, and two 10/100 Ethernet ports for connecting the phone to the local LAN and to a PC for added convenience.

"As a global company, we know firsthand the huge benefits of VoIP," said Tony Stramandinoli, SMC Networks' vice president of global marketing. "We've been our own best beta test site, using IP telephony to make co-workers in Taiwan, Spain and the U.K. just an extension away. The high quality and ease of use, combined with cost savings, make colleagues across the globe as accessible as colleagues down the hall."

For more information about SMC Networks, SMC's broad line of products for VoIP, or others in its full complement of networking products, visit www.smc.com, or call 800-SMC-4YOU (800-762-4968).
MySQL Expands Telecom Consulting & Services to Meet Growing Demand for Its Open Source Database; MySQL and MySQL Cluster Selected by Industry's Top Carriers & Network Management Vendors. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced that it is expanding its telecom-specific services and consulting offerings to meet increased industry demand for MySQL(R)-powered software. MySQL's momentum in the networking and telecommunications industry has been growing as a number of the industry's top carriers, operators and infrastructure ISVs select the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases for low-cost, reliable and carrier-grade data management.



Today, over 50 of the world's leading networking and telecom companies employ MySQL for critical database applications, including Alcatel, Clarus Systems, Crannog Software, Critical Path, Empirix, Ericsson, Micromuse (IBM), Nokia, Nortel, Telio and Tellme Networks.

MySQL Cluster is a special high-end version of the MySQL database specifically designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical applications that need strict scalability and high-availability, as are common in the communications industry. The high-performance MySQL Server and MySQL Cluster are used for a wide range of networking and telecommunications applications, including those for enterprise network management, Home Location Registry (HLR), and Voice over IP (VoIP).

"As the telecom and networking markets are converging, companies are being forced to operate more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction," said Ulf Sandberg, MySQL AB's vice president of worldwide services. "Our company offers a strong, focused competency in telecom data management. As these industry leaders are experiencing, MySQL can play a successful role in building high-performance, high-availability infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary software."

"MySQL is the high-performance data management engine powering Clarus Systems' IP telephony productivity solutions for integrators and enterprises," said Brendan Reidy, CEO at Clarus Systems. "MySQL's reliability and speed have helped us develop software that maximizes the availability and performance of enterprise telephony networks, even for very large, distributed deployments. MySQL's affordability and straight-forward licensing made it an easy choice."

MySQL Expands Services for Telecom Customers

MySQL has expanded its telecom-specific industry services and consulting to address the increased demand for the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases. Telecom customers can now choose from a range of MySQL consulting and services, including:

-- MySQL Cluster Jumpstart Packaged Consulting: MySQL consultants use proven methodologies and expertise in database clustering, replication, fail-over, fault-tolerance and other high availability techniques to "jumpstart" telecommunications database projects.

-- Custom Telecom Consulting: For large telecommunications projects or those with company-specific requirements, MySQL AB can deliver a custom team of experienced MySQL certified consultants to successfully implement MySQL and MySQL Cluster-based projects, including on-site projects.

-- MySQL Certified Support: Database experts with telecom-specific competencies can provide 24x7 technical services to telecommunications customers to maintain their critical always-on systems.

For more information about MySQL in the networking and telecommunications industry, please go to http://www.mysql.com/industry/telecom. For more information about MySQL services and consulting for telecommunications applications, please go to http://www.mysql.com/consulting.

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company's flagship product is the MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 10 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.

With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Cedar Point Completes Interop Testing with Interactive Intelligence. Check it out:
DERRY, N.H., Sept. 19 -- Cedar Point Communications, Inc., the worldwide leader in integrated VoIP switching technologies for the telecommunications industry, today announced that it has completed interoperability testing with Interactive Intelligence Inc.'s enterprise messaging software, Communite(R).



The result combines carrier-class, highly scalable multimedia IP switching from Cedar Point with enhanced messaging applications from Interactive Intelligence to give even the largest of organizations a comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective enterprise communications system.

The testing, which was conducted at Cedar Point's headquarters facility in New Hampshire, successfully proved compatibility between Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System and Communite, a voicemail replacement and messaging system that provides unified messaging, find-me/follow-me, presence management, and other applications ideal for large and distributed organizations, such as higher education institutions.

"As we grow our higher education and enterprise activity beyond our initial deployment with the University of Massachusetts, it will be important that we work with proven enterprise solutions," said George Kassas, founder and executive vice president, business development for Cedar Point Communications. "The high degree of confidence that major universities have placed in Communite, and Interactive Intelligence's ability to expand our menu of business features make the company a valuable ally in this space."

"Like Cedar Point, we are committed to providing solutions that reduce complexity and cost, and increase results for our customers," said Paul Weber, vice president of North American sales for Interactive Intelligence. "By certifying interoperability between our two products, we can help our mutual customers accelerate the rollout of simpler, more cost-effective voice services that are configured to meet the needs of the higher education environment."

Earlier this year, Cedar Point announced an agreement with the University of Massachusetts for the deployment of SAFARI C(Cubed) to a base of more than 30,000 users on the University campus.

Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System, the only totally integrated carrier-class VoIP switch that incorporates all of the components that make up the voice switching infrastructure, provides SIP-based features and seamless evolution to an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture. SAFARI C(Cubed) provides superior performance and reliability, significantly reducing capital expenditures, system integration and operations costs for IT departments and network operators offering telephony services while increasing network integrity, security and privacy.

Interactive Intelligence, a global provider of software and services for contact center automation and enterprise IP telephony since 1994, developed Communite as an alternative to multi-box, proprietary messaging systems. Communite offers a unique single-platform, LDAP-based architecture with a single message store and common directory for simplified set-up, maintenance and administration, and scalability up to hundreds of thousands of users across distributed sites. As a software system based on open standards such as SIP, Communite also provides maximum interoperability and long-term investment protection with a cost-effective, incremental migration path from TDM to VoIP, including support of hybrid environments. Adding to deployment flexibility are Communite's unique universal ports, which enable organizations to run voice mail, unified messaging, fax, IVR and other applications on the same port and on the same platform, thus providing cost-effective and manageable "choose-by-function" options to serve even the most diverse user communities.

About Cedar Point Communications
Cedar Point Communications' totally integrated voice and multimedia switch provides IT departments and network operators with cost-efficient, less complex voice-over-IP alternatives to distributed soft-switching and legacy PBX telephony options. Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Media Switching System supports legacy circuit and packet-based voice services, as well as delivering core IMS capabilities today that support the anticipated migration to an IMS architecture for converged networks. The company is based in Derry, NH. For more information, please visit http://www.cedarpointcom.com/.

Cedar Point Communications

CONTACT: Paul Schneider of PSPR, Inc. for Cedar Point Communications,+1-215-702-9784, +1-215-817-4384 (Mobile), [email protected]

Web site: http://www.cedarpointcom.com/
Citrix Access Gateway Receives Frost & Sullivan's 2006 Award for Best Product Line Strategy; Award Underscores Citrix's Competitive Advantage Based on Product Synergies. Check it out:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), today announced that Frost & Sullivan has chosen Citrix as the winner of the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award for Product Line Strategy. The award specifically recognizes the Citrix Access Gateway(TM), for its record growth in the SSL VPN market and the rising importance of secure, remote access to today's global enterprise.



Citrix offers a comprehensive range of SSL VPN solutions that make secure application access easy for all organizations, from small businesses to the most demanding global enterprises. Citrix Access Gateway is a complete line of universal SSL VPN appliances providing a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to an organization's applications and data.

"Frost & Sullivan gives the Product Line Strategy Award to a vendor who has demonstrated an astute understanding of its marketplace through its product positioning along with a cohesive vision for its collective offerings," said Rufus Connell, research director, Frost & Sullivan. "With the combination of its dynamic product features, new resources and synergy gained from recent acquisitions, Citrix has positioned itself as one of the most important competitors in the SSL VPN market in an extremely short period of time."

According to Frost & Sullivan, there is a growing recognition among corporate decision makers that there are real cost and time efficiency benefits with a remote workforce. This has lead to an increasing demand for SSL VPN solutions that can provide workers with the information they need while keeping corporate networks secure from malicious attacks and network breaches. In addition to the traditional benefits that SSL VPN technology provides, enterprises are demanding products that offer granular, user-specific access to designated applications within the enterprise network.

"Citrix has always prided itself on strong market leadership, and the Citrix Access Gateway is no exception. Organizations today need highly granular policy-based access to their applications, and Access Gateway delivers that with our innovative SmartAccess capability," said Phil Montgomery, director of product marketing, Citrix Systems. "This award from Frost & Sullivan is an incredible validation of our experience and commitment towards truly enabling remote workers to securely and easily access the applications they need to be productive."

To select each Best Practices Award recipient, Frost & Sullivan uses interviews with all market participants and extensive secondary research of proprietary data to track competitor revenue and market share within the industry. The competitors are then compared and ranked. In addition, factors such as feasibility of product launch, likelihood of customer acceptance and acceptance rates, and estimated time to market are taken into consideration.

About Citrix Access Gateway

Citrix Access Gateway is a line of universal SSL VPN appliances that provide a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to all applications and protocols, including multimedia and voice-over-IP (VoIP). The Access Gateway product line has all of the advantages of IPSec and SSL VPNs, without their costly and cumbersome implementation and management. Unlike traditional SSL VPN products, Access Gateway includes Citrix(R) SmartAccess technology that gives administrators fine grained control over what actions users can take with the applications they access -- such as view, edit, save or print -- based on who they are, where they are located, and what kind of device they are using.

For more information about the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards, please visit http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/meawards-overview.pag.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and Citrix Access Gateway(TM) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Citrix Sets New Standard in Web Application Delivery with NetScaler 7.0; New Citrix NetScaler Release Delivers 150 New Features, Including Enhanced Scalability, Improved Application Fluency and Unprecedented Manageability. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) today announced the latest upgrade to its popular Citrix(R) NetScaler(R) product line. The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release again raises the bar for web application delivery, making it dramatically easier for enterprises to accelerate the performance of business-critical web applications, secure sensitive application data and lower the cost of delivering web applications to any user, in any location.



The Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release builds on the product's widely-recognized success in delivering the world's largest and most demanding web applications, improving the web experience of an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day. Since acquiring the NetScaler product line last year, Citrix has introduced the benefits of NetScaler to companies of all sizes through its extensive worldwide channel, resulting in one of the fastest growth rates in the web application delivery market(1).

"Citrix NetScaler pioneered the web application delivery market and is making it increasingly easy for enterprise customers to upgrade from first-generation load balancers to highly integrated NetScaler systems that dramatically improve the performance, security and cost of delivering web applications," said Wes Wasson, corporate vice president, product marketing and strategy, Citrix Systems. "This latest release of Citrix NetScaler extends our leadership in this market and further advances state-of-the-art web application delivery."

150+ New Capabilities for Web Application Delivery

The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release adds more than 150 new capabilities designed to meet the increasing web application delivery demands of enterprise customers across all functional areas, including:

-- Record Application Scalability - Now supports up to 15,000 servers supported in a single application environment - a three-fold increase over Citrix's already record-level scalability. Advanced management of policy elements also allows automated configuration changes to be made across large numbers of objects, such as servers and application services.

-- More Powerful Application Policy Management - Adds numerous enhancements to Citrix NetScaler's application policy management framework, AppExpert(TM), including an enhanced ability to rewrite HTTP headers for highly complex Web applications. Additional enhancements include full bi-directional rewriting of headers and URLs, allowing organizations to more rapidly integrate independently-developed applications while publishing a single, consistent Web URL address to all users.

-- Improved Application Availability - More sophisticated application health monitoring capabilities that provide early warnings of potential problems with critical transactional elements in complex web applications.

-- Expanded Application Security - Additional capabilities that protect sensitive internal details of an application infrastructure, such as IP addresses, internal URLs and directory files. The new release also incorporates numerous additional security capabilities, including enhanced management of access control lists (ACLs) that simplify the control of traffic permitted within a trusted application environment.

-- Enhanced Ease of Configuration and Management - Substantial improvements in ease-of-use across the entire product line, including new configuration wizards that automate set-up tasks and substantially reduce deployment times for both network administrators and channel partners. The new release also includes multiple advances to NetScaler's graphical user interface (GUI) and command-line interface (CLI), making policy management even more intuitive and enabling application delivery policy management by non-networking specialists.

-- Simplified SSL Security Management - Simple, wizard-driven creation of SSL certificates that are used to encrypt sensitive web application data. Strong security and continuous application availability is maintained with automated warnings of SSL certificates about to expire.

-- Support for New Application Types - Expanded support for application traffic such as voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) through capabilities like load balancing for session initiation protocol (SIP) servers.

Pricing and Availability

Citrix NetScaler 7.0 is available immediately. Pricing begins at $17,499 per system.

About Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System

Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System optimizes the delivery of web applications -- improving performance up to 15x, increasing security, and potentially doubling web server capacity at half the cost -- ensuring the best total cost of ownership (TCO), security, availability, and performance for web applications. Citrix NetScaler System is a comprehensive network system that combines high-speed load balancing and content switching with state-of-the-art application acceleration, layer 4-7 traffic management, data compression, static and dynamic content caching, SSL acceleration, numerous network optimizations, and robust application security into a single, tightly integrated solution. Deployed in front of application servers, the system significantly reduces processing overhead on application and database servers, reducing hardware and bandwidth costs.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and NetScaler(R) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

(1) "Citrix NetScaler Gains Share in Web Application Delivery Market with Fastest Revenue Growth Rate Among Market Share Leaders" http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=26024.
Our 100th Issue of IP Communications Thought Leadership. Check it out:
A modified version of this article will appear in the October issue if Internet Telephony magazine.
 
 
100 issues — wow — it has been an amazing ride. If you can believe it, the magnitude of this issue didn’t hit me until I sat down and started to write this column. As many of you know, in 1997 when we decided to launch a magazine titled Internet Telephony most people thought we were crazy. They told us outright that we were nuts. Certainly this attitude in the market was a bit scary when starting a new magazine as the vendors who were mocking us were the exact ones we were supposed to be writing about.


 
In fact in hindsight, we were probably crazier than we realized, because without hundreds of companies to write about it really is difficult to sustain a business-to-business trade magazine.
 
There were a few companies that were courageous enough to realize we were onto something and there are also some individuals that stood out in my mind as being instrumental to the success of the IP communications market as well as the success of this magazine and the associated expo by the same name.
 
As this is a top 100 Voices of IP communications issue, some of the people in this column will be from this list. Many of the people I write about here are worth sharing with you because they were instrumental in the industry or they impressed me on some level over the years. We are truly indebted to all of the people who have played a crucial role in making IP communications as successful as it is today.
 
To get the ball rolling I decided to start with someone who isn’t on the list (I won't comment on whether anyone else in this column made it). Chris Ward was working in the marketing department of Natural MicroSystems at the time of this magazine’s inception and when we announced our plans to launch, he and his management team were so ecstatic, it really gave us here at TMC a moral boost and reaffirmed our belief that we were doing the right thing. Hats off to Brough Turner and Mike Katz, who also work at NMS, for playing instrumental roles in bringing the world’s first VoIP gateways to fruition.
 
From here it makes sense to go to VocalTec — who really popularized the softphone and IP telephony gateway — and Elon Ganor, the company’s leader who, when looking at the first issue of this magazine, lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I know because I personally handed him the first issue at the Computer Telephony Expo in March 1998. In fact, at that time the company’s CTO, Lior Haramaty, knew more about VoIP than just about anyone else, and we were fortunate to have him as a columnist in this magazine for a number of years.
 
Jeff Pulver was certainly another colorful figure in the world of VoIP. Jeff’s VON conference became a gathering of industry insiders trying to figure out what to make of this whole VoIP phenomenon. The event became a good partnering venue and to this day it’s still a good partnering locale for companies in the VoIP space. Jeff has also played a big part in the legal scene, advocating that VoIP should have minimal regulation.
 
Another unforgettable figure in the world of VoIP is Andy Voss who worked for Nuera when I met him back in the mid-nineties. Andy has a unique sense of humor and knows the communications market inside and out. He tells it like he sees it and I always learn something when I speak with him. After working for Nuera he went off to start the session border control company Sansay and is still the CEO of this successful endeavor.
 
Jon Shapiro is larger than life. He runs Alliance Systems (News - Alert) and his company was instrumental in building ruggedized PC platforms for the PC PBX, IP PBX and Internet Telephony gateway markets over the years. Jon has been a good friend and has offered solid advice over the years and the industry is better off for having him in it. I am looking forward to him being back in the public spotlight the way he was in the nineties. He was a great force in the communications market of the last decade and his knowledge and experience is precious and worth sharing.
 
Another person of note is Gordon Payne who was the face of Tundo — an early IP PBX player. Gordon did a great job at Tundo but when the bubble burst and Tundo ran out of funding he decided to take some time off and then joined Net6 where he focused on bringing intelligence to IP phones — allowing them to access applications and content. Net6 later was purchased by Citrix.
 
Tundo’s failure is sad because at a few Internet Telephony EXPOs after the company folded I was fielding questions from Fortune 100 companies as to why Tundo was no longer around. If they had held out a bit longer they might have become a major player in the space.
 
Jeffrey Citron of Vonage gets lots of credit for many things in the VoIP market. He was the visionary that decided to make Vonage a consumer VoIP play. He single-handedly scared the living daylights out of the RBOCs and cable companies, forcing them to develop VoIP strategies. This spurred billions of dollars of communications investment. He delivered on the promise of VoIP for the masses. He didn’t do anything technically spectacular — Net2Phone did more or less the exact same thing many years before Vonage — he just was able to put together a company that knew how to market to consumers and he backed it up with enough investment to get millions of people to try VoIP. As they say, timing is everything and Citron probably had the critical mass of broadband subscribers needed to get his service to take off rapidly. Also, while branding Vonage, his company’s marketing caused the enterprise and SMB VoIP markets to grow more quickly and also made sure virtually everyone in the U.S. knew what Vonage and VoIP was.
 
It turns out this was a positive thing for VoIP until the Vonage IPO which tanked and now all the companies that pointed to Vonage as a role model are trying to explain to their investors how their business model differs from the orange-logoed broadband phone company. Still, Citron should be commended in a major way for what he did — he brought widespread understanding to the world of VoIP and educated the entire U.S. population on what was once an esoteric and exclusive technology. Thanks Jeffrey.
 
It is interesting that Vonage first started out life as a company focusing on selling VoIP service to cable companies. When the telecom bubble burst in 2001 there was a bitter struggle to determine what the company should do. Citron bet on becoming a phone company and made at least one enemy in the industry by taking this course. He obviously made the right bet — but many in the industry believe the company can be even more successful if Vonage was to focus more on profitability and less on market share.
 
While Citron battled for control of Vonage, a strategy shift was taking place at 8x8 (News - Alert) and the company made a similar bet that selling to consumers their Packet8 service made the most sense. It would seem that CEO Bryan Martin’s decision paid off and even though the company’s stock price has been hammered lately — in sympathy with Vonage it seems — I am impressed with the company’s branding and the fact they were able to hang on in the most difficult telecom environment in history. Unlike Vonage the company was already public and did not have access to hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding — they had to make it through the turbulent telecom waters with limited resources.
 
Another major influence in the market came from Niklas Zennstrom who co-founded Skype and has changed the world’s appreciation for what IP communications can do for you. Hundreds of millions of people have downloaded this software and Skype may be one of the most viral software packages ever created. Much credit goes to Zennstrom for educating the world about VoIP and more importantly doing such a great job that Meg Whitman’s eBay — decided to purchase Skype for more than 2 billion dollars. As time goes on I expect to see tighter integration between Skype and eBay’s services and as the two companies work more closely together we can expect both to do even better.
 
Many in the industry think eBay overpaid for Skype — I still believe eBay made a very smart decision to purchase the VoIP software leader and although the price was high they will recoup this money more rapidly than people think.
 
Michael Powell was another major force in the VoIP market and under his tenure frequencies were freed up to allow WiFi to become reality. This in and of itself is of major importance to wireless VoIP or WiFi telephony, but more importantly Powell was a huge proponent of VoIP and really seemed to care about allowing consumers access to the best service at the lowest prices. In fact, at his keynote at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO — his first after stepping down as chairman — it become apparent that he would liked to have made more consumer-friendly pro-VoIP changes at the FCC but just wasn’t able to.
 
From regulation we go to the world’s largest web portal and you should know I am impressed by Yahoo’s Jeff Bonforte because he is not only a brilliant entrepreneur launching i-drive.com in the bubble days, he is also amazingly witty. I am sure working with him on Yahoo’s VoIP initiatives is a unique experience. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him at Andy Abramson’s recent birthday party and he made a fun dinner that much better.
 
Hats off to Seamus Hourihan who was a driving force behind Acme Packet’s (News - Alert) ascent into the session border control market. The company came on the scene post telecom bubble — many thought the timing would limit their success — and was able to become a major supplier to equipment manufacturers and service providers in a very short time.
 
Robert Messer of ABP (News - Alert) is another important industry voice who is passionate about building the VoIP reseller channel. Without resellers the VoIP market would have taken much longer to get off the ground. Perhaps no other person has been as passionate about VoIP resellers as Robert.
 
Mark Spencer is yet another important name in the industry and without his efforts the open source communications market may have begun much more slowly. He and Bill Rich of Pingtel have been major players in this market. Similarly David Mandelstam of Sangoma has made it a business to equip Asterisk (News - Alert) servers with high-end, high-quality boards allowing Asterisk systems to scale very nicely.
 
Terry Matthews, the communications industry’s most successful serial entrepreneur. The number of companies he has founded is awe-inspiring. He has picked virtually every niche in communications and launched a successful company in it. He should write books on how to launch and run communications businesses.
 
Two other people that are helping grow the IP communications market are Shrihari Pandit of Stealth Communications and Hunter Newby from Telx. The two have been instrumental in building the VoIP Peering Fabric, a widely used fabric with billions of minutes of VoIP traffic flowing across it. VoIP peering is one of the biggest things to happen to the VoIP market and it is worth noting that in the last week XConnect, a peering competitor, has made big news by acquiring a peering company and in doing so raising its profile in the voice peering community.
 
Sphere is the company that invented the IP PBX but at the time (the mid-nineties) it decided to use ATM instead of IP. They were at least five years ahead of their time. Todd Landry has been a steady voice at the company and even now Sphere is a telecom leader with their focus on leading-edge SOA technology.
 
Manuel Vexler and Michael Khalilian have been two of the major voices in the world of IMS with their exemplary and tireless IMS Forum work; the pair has worked tirelessly along with the rest of the forum to ensure IMS can continue to excel as a framework for next-generation communications.
 
Ben Guiderian is the most significant voice in the world of WiFi telephony and his company SpectraLink has been at the forefront of this technology. Hassan Ahmed is just one of the faces of Sonus Networks, a company that was the premier IP communications company of the pre-meltdown days with a stock that skyrocketed beyond anyone’s expectations. The company has made it through the dark times and is doing much better now as they position their products to be leaders in the IMS market.
 
Few people in the market are as knowledgeable about enterprise VoIP as Mark Straton who represents Siemens. Expect to see great things from him. Similarly, Harald Braun is one of the best champions of IMS I have met. Harold by the way is also as dynamic as they get and is able to speak to you about technology in an animated fashion you wouldn’t expect from someone so technical. No offense intended towards technical people mind you, but I am an engineer so I think I can comment safely on the matter.
 
Quintum’s Chuck Rutledge is soft-spoken but as the company spokesperson Quintum has launched a raft of new products and continues to do well in the market competing against some true IP communications giants.
 
Thanks to all of the people that have contributed to the IP communications market. it has been a wild ride. I am proud to be in the company of such an important group and most importantly I am humbled by your support over the years.
 
Thank you my loyal readers who read my columns and give me so much feedback on what you agree with and what you think I am wrong about.
 
It is because of all of your efforts that this publication is consistently the most successful and thickest magazine in the communications market. Many have told me that Internet Telephony is as thick or thicker than just about any technology magazine they subscribe to. Magazine thickness by the way is generally the gauge of a magazine’s success level. We could not be where we are without all of the support from the IP communications community. Once again, thank you.
 
I have always believed that as communications transitions to the world of IP, new and exciting possibilities await us all. The last 100 issues are just the beginning. We have only achieved a small part of the industry’s potential. In the future, communications will become a more and more integral part of business and our lives. We will see IP communications as a more and more strategic part of enterprise and service provider investments. Technologies like WiFi, WiMAX, IPTV, SIP and IMS will only allow us to have greater impact on the world with the new ideas that continue to come out of some very bright industry minds.
 
The next ten years will see more and more communications innovations from traditional communications companies but we need to remember that telecom is also now part of the computing world. What this means is that we will not only see innovation from the likes of such companies as Lucent and Avaya, we will see more Skypes pop up around the world too. This means the pace of innovation in IP communications will likely continue to grow and this will lead to more and more choice for the companies looking to take advantage of all that the IP communications market has to offer.
 
Personally I look forward to helping to provide clarity in this new world of IP communications for another 100 issues and more. I look forward to sharing the journey with you.
 
/////////
 
This article will appear in its entirety in the October issue of Internet Telephony magazine, which will be distributed at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. From what I’ve been hearing, the whole industry will be in San Diego from October 10–13.
 
Of course, if you’re looking ahead, the world’s best attended IP communications event is coming to Florida in January. Yes, I am talking about Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East and you can expect a collocated IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 conference there as well. There will be a tremendous focus on open source, cable technology, conferencing and collaboration, VoIP security, OSS/BSS, IPTV, voice peering and wireless technologies. We recently put together the tracks for this show and without a doubt this will be the best conference in the world for IP communications. The sheer volume of sessions will ensure that regardless of whether you are a service provider, enterprise or developer there will be enough high-quality, unbiased content to not only educate you but ensure that you become an expert in your topic(s) of interest.
 
Please mark your calendar now for January 23-27, 2007 and book your hotel immediately as this is peak vacation season and this event continues to quickly sell out every hotel in its area, months in advance.
GENBAND and Resolute Announce Pseudowire Interoperability for End-to-End Circuit Emulation Solutions. Check it out:
ATLANTA & PLANO, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- GENBAND(TM) Inc., a leading provider of IMS-based telecommunications applications and infrastructure products enabling converged IP multimedia services, and Resolute Networks, a leading provider of circuit emulation pseudowire sub-system and technology solutions, today announced that the two companies have successfully completed extensive interoperability testing between Resolute's CMX-1614 Circuit Emulation Component Module and GENBAND's G6(R) Universal Media Gateway.



The GENBAND and Resolute interop validation was triggered by specific requests from Tier 1 network equipment providers. Pseudowire solutions preserve profitable legacy services while enabling the creation of a truly next-generation network. It allows an operator to package any service, legacy or emerging, and send it into the network in a common format that both preserves the service's original features and delivers the values of end-to-end OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning). By using Resolute's CMX-1614 at the remote site with GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway as the central site circuit emulation aggregator, network equipment providers can realize the benefits of pseudowire by giving service providers an open/standards-based platform that can be quickly deployed to address the needs for such services.

"The proving of interoperability between Resolute and GENBAND is an early indication of a trend that will have significant implications for the Circuit Emulation Services (CES) market," states Don Sparks, vice president of product management and architecture at GENBAND. "The rapid growth in packet-based infrastructure means that CES is ever more important to service providers that have decided to converge all their voice and data services. The huge installed base of TDM-based customer equipment and the increasing pressure to keep capex as low as possible means that forklift infrastructure replacement of enterprise voice and data equipment is a central concern for operators' customers. By using CES in the access network, service providers support their customers using existing equipment while utilizing new high performance access network infrastructure."

"This is another example of the maturity of the SAToP and CESoPSN circuit emulation standards," adds Ron Cohen, CTO of Resolute Networks. "The standardization work of the last few years at the IETF, ITU-T, MEF and MFA on circuit emulation services is now allowing service providers to choose the optimal packetized voice solutions, whether it is VoIP or CES, from a variety of vendors, to suit the needs of their specific networks and applications."

Following this announcement, Resolute's Network Equipment Provider customers supporting the major access markets including Carrier Ethernet, PON, DOCSIS cable and fixed wireless, will now be able to offer service providers direct interconnection for millions of TDM voice customers using high performance access networks directly into carrier networks via GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway and without needing to replace their existing, fully featured PBX implementations.

About Resolute Networks

Resolute Networks Ltd. is a leading provider of standards-compliant sub-system and OEM solutions for circuit-emulation applications. Resolute's solutions are based on the company's silicon and module technology optimized to support high performance converged telecommunication services over Ethernet, MPLS and IP infrastructures. The company offers circuit emulation solutions for both access and aggregation rates of up to OC-3/STM1 (155Mbps). Based in Modi'in, Israel, Resolute Networks has a worldwide presence and markets its products in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.resolutenetworks.com.

About GENBAND(TM)

GENBAND is the leading supplier of IP multimedia application and infrastructure products and solutions for a diverse set of VoIP and IMS networks worldwide. These IMS-ready applications and solutions enable wireline, cable, and wireless service providers to rapidly deploy new multimedia services, while providing a foundation to transition legacy networks to next generation networks. GENBAND has deployed its IP Multimedia products and technology to over 100 customers with more than 750 deployments, across three continents. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, GENBAND has research and development facilities in Fremont, California; Austin and Plano, Texas; and New Delhi, India. Additional information is available at www.genband.com.
SPi to Provide Advanced Publishing Services with PTC's Arbortext. Check it out:
SPi to Provide Advanced Publishing Services with PTC’s Arbortext
 
SPi, a provider of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) solutions, has expanded its deployment of PTC solutions to include its Arbortext publishing solution. This automated publishing engine produces professional, high-quality print and PDF documents that require complex layouts.


 
PTC, the Product Development Company, made the announcement today that SPi has increased its PTC offerings. SPi offers IT-enabled content transformation, structuring and processing solutions that enable companies in the legal, healthcare and financial services markets meet their content and data management needs.
 
SPi focuses its strategies on achieving a shortened lead-time for publishing its customers’ complex printed documents. By incorporating Arbortext, SPi anticipates that its should be able to provide an automated publishing approach that enables its customer to reduce publishing time, save production costs and deliver better customer experiences through timely, accurate information.
 
According to Ian Bellord, executive vice president, SPi, the company looked at a number of available products on the market and chose PTC because Arbortext is the most mature software package supporting dynamic publishing. Arbortext provides for high quality, consistency and fast output which are critical elements in the Journal and Book production. Bellord also noted that SPi’s purchase of additional licenses from PTC is a testament to their superior product and customer care.
 
Beyond expanding its relationship with PTC as a customer, SPi also plans to integrate its extensive publishing solutions with PTC’s content management and publishing solutions in order to create business opportunities for both companies.
 
PG Bartlett, vice president product management for Arbortext products, PTC, contributed that Arbortext enables SPi’s Publishing group to automate its print composition process so that they can boost productivity while also increasing responsiveness to customer and market demands. As a result, SPi is able to deliver high-quality, professional composition services to its customers, while simultaneously improving its production costs and turn-around times.
 
Fully owned by ePLDT, SPi is a full-service Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider with 11,000 employees delivering on a wide range of call center and knowledge-based outsourcing solutions to diversified markets.
 
PTC Publishing enables companies to automate the assembly and publishing of product or service information in multiple languages and formats. Solutions are made up of the Arbortext product family and are used by 30 percent of Fortune 500 companied in the manufacturing, life sciences, publishing, government, insurance and financial services industries.
 
In the products and services markets, time to delivery for the customer can make the difference between the sale and a lost opportunity. By providing its customers a powerful solution that enables them to quickly perform necessary publishing duties, SPi is ensuring better growth for its customers by enabling them to provide a better experience for the end user. In a competitive environment, that is often the only differentiator that a company has to ensure its own success.
 
 
 
Special Attractions
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Rocket Software Acquires Three Products from Telcordia. Check it out:
 
Rocket Software, a developer of enterprise infrastructure products, has acquired three software products from Telcordia Technologies. Telcordia supplies software and services for IP, wireline, mobility and cable networks. The purchase closed at the end of last quarter and bolsters Rocket’s offerings in the database management market.


 
The acquisition includes the Information Management System Workload Router, Information Management System DRC Facility and Information Management System Y2K Exit Point Routine. It was advised by Chris McKinzie of Fluid Innovation Group in Austin. Customers already using the three products sold in the transaction will continue to receive product upgrades and support from Rocket. 
 
Telcordia was originally founded as Bellcore in 1984, providing research and development to the seven Baby Bells. It now serves wireline, mobile, cable, government and equipment supplier markets throughout the world. Telcordia software handles all toll-free phone traffic in the U.S., and the company holds more than 560 patents and 330 foreign patent equivalents.
 
Rocket is a global development firm that builds enterprise infrastructure products for OEMs, networks and software companies. The company’s lines of business complement and extend strategic OEM offerings in the areas of enterprise and mobile security, relational databases, mobile and wireless computing and OSS.
 
“We are delighted to take over the development and support of software products developed by Telcordia, a pioneer in the field of telecommunications applications,” said Andy Youniss, CEO of Rocket Software. “The addition of these products will further strengthen Rocket's commitment to our global customer base, which includes the world's top software companies, equipment manufacturers, wireless equipment manufacturers and carriers."
 
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Laura Stotler writes about IP Communications and related topics for TMCnet. She has covered VoIP and related technologies for seven years, contributing to Internet Telephony magazine and TMCnet, and as a freelance writer. To see more articles, please visit: Laura Stotler’s columnist page.
The TAS Group Launches Intelligent Sales Effectiveness Platform to Leverage OnTarget Purchase. Check it out:
 
An Intelligent Sales Effectiveness Platform (ISEP™) has been launched by the TAS Group. This platform is a combination of proven sales methodologies, implementation best practices and the intelligent Dealmaker™ software application.


 
The TAS Group was formed as a result of Select Selling purchasing OnTarget — the sales methodology division of Oracle. The multi-million dollar investment in ISEP was a result of the TAS Group’s drive to fundamentally change the approach of sales organizations worldwide by adopting sales training and sales methodology by putting technology at the core of the implementation.
 
Many sales methodologies are complex, making them difficult to use. Because of this difficulty, many sales teams won’t regularly use them. Through a combination of world-class sales methodologies and easy-to-use software, ISEP guides sales professionals through the sales methodology intelligently, offering interactive feedback along the way.
 
The TAS Group has positioned ISEP as the first sales effectiveness solution that incorporates sales methodologies into an efficient and effective software environment. For existing OnTarget users, they are promised an easier realization of the value of their previous investments. For new methodology customers, ISEP is meant to accelerate the methodology’s benefits and adoption.
 
According to Donal Daly, CEO of the TAS Group, the measure of the successful implementation of a sales methodology is an increase in revenue. The key to achieving that in a sustainable way is to deliver a solution that sales professions will want to use because it actually helps them sell more without increased effort. When that happens, everybody wins – the sales professional gets increased sales and the sales manager gets increased sales, along with accurate sales forecasts, sales process compliance and great metrics to manage the business.
 
The ISEP components consist of Dealmaker, which is a software application that is designed to integrate sales methodologies with CRM systems for a customizable enterprise-wide solution. The underlying sales process intelligence engine learns about what works, encapsulates best practices guidelines, reinforces sales effectiveness learning and provides a superior ROI on both CRM and sales training investments. As a result, Dealmaker should provide accurate forecasts, deal clarity and pipeline visibility.
 
Proven methodologies from the Target Account Selling solution have been incorporated into ISEP, including Portfolio Management, Account Planning, Opportunity Management, Individual Sales Effectiveness and Channel and Partner Management. Successful adoption is driven through the TAS Group’s six-point implementation ‘best practice’ service.
 
As a former OnTarget user, I can attest to the shortcomings that the solution originally possessed in relation to its usability. As a sales professional at the time, I was not interested in implementing information into a complicated system that took away from my time in the field. Along with many of my colleagues, I viewed the system as something the company provided to ensure that the sales team was working instead of out golfing.
 
When sales systems became easier to use, however, their attributes did become more appealing. The ability to properly store information in a system that would also organize it for me was very attractive — especially if it led to increased sales. The most important element, however, was not whether or not the sales teams were using it to their benefit, but rather if the corporation was requiring it in their reporting. If no one else used the system to its full potential, why take valuable field time to input data?
 
The TAS Group is doing well to focus on user-friendly features while also making sure the solution appeals to all those in the sales chain of command. Without adoption and promotion from the top, these solutions will really just take up more hard drive space.
 
 
  
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
GENBAND and Resolute Complete Interoperability Testing for Next-Gen Network Solutions. Check it out:
 
 
GENBAND Inc. and Resolute Networks have completed extensive interoperability testing between the Resolute CMX-1614 Circuit Emulation Component Module and GENBAND’s G6 Universal Media Gateway (News - Alert). GENBAND is a provider of IMS-based telecommunications applications and infrastructure products to enable converged IP multimedia services, while Resolute provides circuit emulation pseudowire sub-system and technology solutions.


 
The interoperability validation was initiated by specific requests from Tier 1 network equipment providers. Pseudowire solution preserve legacy services while also enable the creation of a next-generation network. They enable an operator to package any service, legacy or emerging, and send it into the network in a common format to preserve the original features while delivering end-to-end OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning).
 
The Resolute CMS-1614, when used at a remote site with the G6 Universal Media Gateway as the central site circuit emulation aggregator, enables network equipment providers to realize the benefits of pseudowire. They may give service providers an open/standards-based platform for quick deployment to address a variety of needs for such services.
 
The announce will enable Resolute’s network equipment providers to offers service providers direct interconnection for millions of TDM voice customers using high performance access networks directly into carrier networks. They may do this via the G6 gateway, and without the need to replace their existing PBX (News - Alert) implementations. Resolute customers support a number of major access markets including carrier Ethernet, PON, DOCSIS cable and fixed wireless.
 
"The proving of interoperability between Resolute and GENBAND is an early indication of a trend that will have significant implications for the Circuit Emulation Services (CES) market," said Don Sparks, vice president of product management and architecture at GENBAND. "The rapid growth in packet-based infrastructure means that CES is ever more important to service providers that have decided to converge all their voice and data services. The huge installed base of TDM-based customer equipment and the increasing pressure to keep CAPEX as low as possible means that forklift infrastructure replacement of enterprise voice and data equipment is a central concern for operators' customers. By using CES in the access network, service providers support their customers using existing equipment while utilizing new high performance access network infrastructure."
 
"This is another example of the maturity of the SAToP and CESoPSN circuit emulation standards," said Ron Cohen, CTO of Resolute Networks. "The standardization work of the last few years at the IETF, ITU-T, MEF and MFA on circuit emulation services is now allowing service providers to choose the optimal packetized voice solutions, whether it is VoIP or CES, from a variety of vendors, to suit the needs of their specific networks and applications."
 
For more information about VoIP, IMS and next-generation services and interoperability, check out the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO WEST. The event is the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance; the leading IP Communications event for exhibitors in terms of lead generation; and the VoIP industry event which features special attractions for service providers and resellers. The event runs October 10-13, 2006 in San Diego.
 
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Laura Stotler writes about IP Communications and related topics for TMCnet. She has covered VoIP and related technologies for seven years, contributing to Internet Telephony magazine and TMCnet, and as a freelance writer. To see more articles, please visit: Laura Stotler’s columnist page.
MySQL Expands Telecom Consulting & Services. Check it out:

INTEROP 2006, NEW YORK – September 19, 2006 – MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced that it is expanding its telecom-specific services and consulting offerings to meet increased industry demand for MySQL®-powered software. 



MySQL's momentum in the networking and telecommunications industry has been growing as a number of the industry's top carriers, operators and infrastructure ISVs select the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases for low-cost, reliable and carrier-grade data management.

Today, over 50 of the world's leading networking and telecom companies employ MySQL for critical database applications, including Alcatel (News - Alert), Clarus Systems, Crannog Software, Critical Path, Empirix (News - Alert), Ericsson (News - Alert), Micromuse (News - Alert) (IBM (News - Alert)), Nokia, Nortel, Telio and Tellme Networks.

MySQL Cluster is a special high-end version of the MySQL database specifically designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical applications that need strict scalability and high-availability, as are common in the communications industry. The high-performance MySQL Server and MySQL Cluster are used for a wide range of networking and telecommunications applications, including those for enterprise network management, Home Location Registry (HLR), and Voice over IP (VoIP).

"As the telecom and networking markets are converging, companies are being forced to operate more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction,” said Ulf Sandberg, MySQL AB’s vice president of worldwide services. “Our company offers a strong, focused competency in telecom data management. As these industry leaders are experiencing, MySQL can play a successful role in building high-performance, high-availability infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary software.”

"MySQL is the high-performance data management engine powering Clarus Systems' IP telephony productivity solutions for integrators and enterprises," said Brendan Reidy, CEO at Clarus Systems. "MySQL's reliability and speed have helped us develop software that maximizes the availability and performance of enterprise telephony networks, even for very large, distributed deployments. MySQL's affordability and straight-forward licensing made it an easy choice."


MySQL Expands Services for Telecom Customers

MySQL has expanded its telecom-specific industry services and consulting to address the increased demand for the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases. Telecom customers can now choose from a range of MySQL consulting and services, including:

• MySQL Cluster Jumpstart Packaged Consulting: MySQL consultants use proven methodologies and expertise in database clustering, replication, fail-over, fault-tolerance and other high availability techniques to "jumpstart" telecommunications database projects.
• Custom Telecom Consulting: For large telecommunications projects or those with company-specific requirements, MySQL AB can deliver a custom team of experienced MySQL certified consultants to successfully implement MySQL and MySQL Cluster-based projects, including on-site projects.
• MySQL Certified Support: Database experts with telecom-specific competencies can provide 24x7 technical services to telecommunications customers to maintain their critical always-on systems.

For more information about MySQL in the networking and telecommunications industry, please go to http://www.mysql.com/industry/telecom. For more information about MySQL services and consulting for telecommunications applications, please click here

About MySQL
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company's flagship product is the MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 10 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.
With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit the company's Web site.

# # #
MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Former Leadership Team of Adventis Corporation Joins Monitor Group Core Strategy Team. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 --

Strategic Additions Reflect Monitor's Emphasis on Serving the Needs of Telecommunications, Media and Technology Companies During Period of Fundamental Industry Change

Monitor Group, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based international advisory firm with affiliated investment funds, today announced that the former North American leadership team of Adventis Corporation is joining its strategy practice effective immediately. Joining Monitor are Ford Cavallari, former worldwide head of the broadband and media practice of Adventis Corporation; Andy Belt, co-founder and former enterprise/telecom practice head of Adventis Corporation; and John Ryan, one of the three founders of RHK, Inc. and an industry expert in technology and network issues. Adventis Corporation, a North American-based strategic consulting firm, focused its services on telecommunications, media and technology.



Based on its longstanding work in the area, Monitor sees a fundamental redefinition of telecom, media, and technology companies now occurring. Whereas the "legacy" challenges for each separate sector comprised mainly the standard customer acquisition/retention and cost control issues, a new set of "converged" challenges for all three sectors has emerged, driven by increasingly blurred industry boundaries and renewed growth imperatives. These critical challenges include the management of new and disruptive business models (e.g. VoIP, VoD), the definition and control of the "home of the future", and the rationale for innovations and capital investments in new, multi-player consumer and business markets. With the addition of its new team members, Monitor is well positioned to build on its historical strength in strategy consulting to IT and international telecom clients, and to deploy the robust set of growth-oriented client services required in this space.

"These new colleagues bring expertise and insight in telecommunications, media and technology to enhance Monitor's strategic advisory business," said CEO Joe Fuller. "We are pleased to have this accomplished group joining our core strategy team."

Founded in 1983 by six entrepreneurs, including Harvard's Michael Porter and the company's current Chairman Mark Fuller, Monitor Group has 28 offices worldwide and offers a portfolio of strategic consulting services to clients who seek to grow top-line revenue, shareholder value, and individual and organizational capabilities. The firm works with the world's foremost business experts and thought leaders to help major multinational companies, governments and philanthropic institutions develop specialized capabilities in areas including competitive strategy, marketing and pricing strategy, innovation, national and regional economic competitiveness, non-profit management, technology/e-business, organizational design and development, and scenario planning. Monitor Group's separate merchant banking division consists of investment funds (both venture capital and private equity) as well as an M&A advisory service.
SMC's Commitment to VoIP Shows in New and Upcoming Products; Across the Office, Across the Campus or Across the Ocean, Ready Communication is Easier and More Economical with SMC's Comprehensive Solutions Set for IP Telephony. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- SMC(R) Networks (www.smc.com) today reaffirmed its commitment to VoIP, showcasing its comprehensive portfolio of IP telephony solutions for the office and the road. The company's solid line of network switches, enterprise wireless products and phones -- wired and Wi-Fi -- complemented by its IP-PBX and Wireless Travel Voice Gateway round out a solid overall VoIP solution for today's globally oriented business.



VoIP provides an economical alternative to traditional telephony and is emerging as a practical way for businesses to communicate -- within the office building, across the campus or around the world. SMC's VoIP solutions work for today's businesses, where global communication is the norm, and communicators are not tied to their desks. Built on the philosophy that IP telephony will coexist with traditional analog telephony, SMC Networks' solutions accommodate that synergy. The company's products for VoIP communication include IP-based PBX devices; enterprise network switches; desktop phones that support PoE for easy plug-and-play use; portable phones that let busy workers' extensions operate around the office or at any hotspot; and gateway devices that make it possible to use any analog telephone phone as an IP phone.

As VoIP becomes more widely adopted, several usage models are emerging, and SMC Networks' products are designed to make VoIP work in a multitude of scenarios. In a hotel environment, an IP PBX connects calls to rooms, while facilitating free calling by guests and employees to central reservations and other hotel properties. In each room, the desktop IP phone provides broadband access and telephone services to guests, all from a single connect point. In a multinational company, the cost-savings can be huge when companies set up VoIP connections to branch and division offices overseas. With an IP PBX, dialing a colleague in Asia can be as simple as dialing an extension number. And, the benefits aren't just long distance: Employees who spend a lot of time away from their desks can carry their portable Wi-Fi phones with them, thus bettering response times and generating savings on cellular and pager fees. SMC considered frequent travelers, too, when designing its portfolio of VoIP-enabling equipment. The company's all-in-one travel VoIP networking kit, the SMCWTVG, makes VoIP communication easier and more accessible -- from anywhere. Integrating the functions of a wireless gateway and a Voice over IP analog telephone adapter (ATA) in one compact device, it is a high-speed broadband router that is capable of delivering Internet access to several users via built-in NAT functionality with wireless features that can be used in either of two different operating modes: as an 802.11b/g access point providing service to wireless clients or Wi-Fi phones or as a wireless client itself for PC and analog phone connections to other Wi-Fi networks. And, with the two built-in RJ-11 ports, it can be used as an analog telephone adapter, allowing callers with standard analog phones to enjoy the advantages of VoIP while still receiving regular PSTN calls. Another great tool for those on the move, SMC's Skype-enabled 802.11g phone, WSKP100, lets travelers make and receive calls from hotspots, airports, or branch offices -- without the need to drag out the laptop.

SMC's growing portfolio of VoIP products includes a host of network-building switches, routers and adapters, as well as many specialized devices that are available now. Those specialized devices that are available now include the SMC7908VoWBRA, a Wireless ADSL router with built-in Voice over IP gateway; the SMCWTVG Wireless Travel Voice Gateway, which integrates the function of a wireless gateway and a VoIP ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) into a compact, take-along device; and the recently introduced WSKP100 Wireless Internet Phone for easy, portable, computer-independent Skype calling. In Q4, 2006, SMC will add to its line of VoIP products by shipping a desktop, SIP-based IP phone and a full-featured IP PBX. The IP PBX integrates analog trunk and extension call management with Standard Internet Protocol (SIP) trunk and extension management in an all-in-one PBX unit that is scalable to multiple sites and extensions. And, its ability to support wireless or wired devices makes the reality of a mobile office seamless as users move between mobile and desk-based phones. The Desktop IP phone will feature an intuitive LCD display, programming via the keypad or built-in Web interface, and two 10/100 Ethernet ports for connecting the phone to the local LAN and to a PC for added convenience.

"As a global company, we know firsthand the huge benefits of VoIP," said Tony Stramandinoli, SMC Networks' vice president of global marketing. "We've been our own best beta test site, using IP telephony to make co-workers in Taiwan, Spain and the U.K. just an extension away. The high quality and ease of use, combined with cost savings, make colleagues across the globe as accessible as colleagues down the hall."

For more information about SMC Networks, SMC's broad line of products for VoIP, or others in its full complement of networking products, visit www.smc.com, or call 800-SMC-4YOU (800-762-4968).
MySQL Expands Telecom Consulting & Services to Meet Growing Demand for Its Open Source Database; MySQL and MySQL Cluster Selected by Industry's Top Carriers & Network Management Vendors. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced that it is expanding its telecom-specific services and consulting offerings to meet increased industry demand for MySQL(R)-powered software. MySQL's momentum in the networking and telecommunications industry has been growing as a number of the industry's top carriers, operators and infrastructure ISVs select the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases for low-cost, reliable and carrier-grade data management.



Today, over 50 of the world's leading networking and telecom companies employ MySQL for critical database applications, including Alcatel, Clarus Systems, Crannog Software, Critical Path, Empirix, Ericsson, Micromuse (IBM), Nokia, Nortel, Telio and Tellme Networks.

MySQL Cluster is a special high-end version of the MySQL database specifically designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical applications that need strict scalability and high-availability, as are common in the communications industry. The high-performance MySQL Server and MySQL Cluster are used for a wide range of networking and telecommunications applications, including those for enterprise network management, Home Location Registry (HLR), and Voice over IP (VoIP).

"As the telecom and networking markets are converging, companies are being forced to operate more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction," said Ulf Sandberg, MySQL AB's vice president of worldwide services. "Our company offers a strong, focused competency in telecom data management. As these industry leaders are experiencing, MySQL can play a successful role in building high-performance, high-availability infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary software."

"MySQL is the high-performance data management engine powering Clarus Systems' IP telephony productivity solutions for integrators and enterprises," said Brendan Reidy, CEO at Clarus Systems. "MySQL's reliability and speed have helped us develop software that maximizes the availability and performance of enterprise telephony networks, even for very large, distributed deployments. MySQL's affordability and straight-forward licensing made it an easy choice."

MySQL Expands Services for Telecom Customers

MySQL has expanded its telecom-specific industry services and consulting to address the increased demand for the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases. Telecom customers can now choose from a range of MySQL consulting and services, including:

-- MySQL Cluster Jumpstart Packaged Consulting: MySQL consultants use proven methodologies and expertise in database clustering, replication, fail-over, fault-tolerance and other high availability techniques to "jumpstart" telecommunications database projects.

-- Custom Telecom Consulting: For large telecommunications projects or those with company-specific requirements, MySQL AB can deliver a custom team of experienced MySQL certified consultants to successfully implement MySQL and MySQL Cluster-based projects, including on-site projects.

-- MySQL Certified Support: Database experts with telecom-specific competencies can provide 24x7 technical services to telecommunications customers to maintain their critical always-on systems.

For more information about MySQL in the networking and telecommunications industry, please go to http://www.mysql.com/industry/telecom. For more information about MySQL services and consulting for telecommunications applications, please go to http://www.mysql.com/consulting.

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company's flagship product is the MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 10 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.

With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Cedar Point Completes Interop Testing with Interactive Intelligence. Check it out:
DERRY, N.H., Sept. 19 -- Cedar Point Communications, Inc., the worldwide leader in integrated VoIP switching technologies for the telecommunications industry, today announced that it has completed interoperability testing with Interactive Intelligence Inc.'s enterprise messaging software, Communite(R).



The result combines carrier-class, highly scalable multimedia IP switching from Cedar Point with enhanced messaging applications from Interactive Intelligence to give even the largest of organizations a comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective enterprise communications system.

The testing, which was conducted at Cedar Point's headquarters facility in New Hampshire, successfully proved compatibility between Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System and Communite, a voicemail replacement and messaging system that provides unified messaging, find-me/follow-me, presence management, and other applications ideal for large and distributed organizations, such as higher education institutions.

"As we grow our higher education and enterprise activity beyond our initial deployment with the University of Massachusetts, it will be important that we work with proven enterprise solutions," said George Kassas, founder and executive vice president, business development for Cedar Point Communications. "The high degree of confidence that major universities have placed in Communite, and Interactive Intelligence's ability to expand our menu of business features make the company a valuable ally in this space."

"Like Cedar Point, we are committed to providing solutions that reduce complexity and cost, and increase results for our customers," said Paul Weber, vice president of North American sales for Interactive Intelligence. "By certifying interoperability between our two products, we can help our mutual customers accelerate the rollout of simpler, more cost-effective voice services that are configured to meet the needs of the higher education environment."

Earlier this year, Cedar Point announced an agreement with the University of Massachusetts for the deployment of SAFARI C(Cubed) to a base of more than 30,000 users on the University campus.

Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System, the only totally integrated carrier-class VoIP switch that incorporates all of the components that make up the voice switching infrastructure, provides SIP-based features and seamless evolution to an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture. SAFARI C(Cubed) provides superior performance and reliability, significantly reducing capital expenditures, system integration and operations costs for IT departments and network operators offering telephony services while increasing network integrity, security and privacy.

Interactive Intelligence, a global provider of software and services for contact center automation and enterprise IP telephony since 1994, developed Communite as an alternative to multi-box, proprietary messaging systems. Communite offers a unique single-platform, LDAP-based architecture with a single message store and common directory for simplified set-up, maintenance and administration, and scalability up to hundreds of thousands of users across distributed sites. As a software system based on open standards such as SIP, Communite also provides maximum interoperability and long-term investment protection with a cost-effective, incremental migration path from TDM to VoIP, including support of hybrid environments. Adding to deployment flexibility are Communite's unique universal ports, which enable organizations to run voice mail, unified messaging, fax, IVR and other applications on the same port and on the same platform, thus providing cost-effective and manageable "choose-by-function" options to serve even the most diverse user communities.

About Cedar Point Communications
Cedar Point Communications' totally integrated voice and multimedia switch provides IT departments and network operators with cost-efficient, less complex voice-over-IP alternatives to distributed soft-switching and legacy PBX telephony options. Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Media Switching System supports legacy circuit and packet-based voice services, as well as delivering core IMS capabilities today that support the anticipated migration to an IMS architecture for converged networks. The company is based in Derry, NH. For more information, please visit http://www.cedarpointcom.com/.

Cedar Point Communications

CONTACT: Paul Schneider of PSPR, Inc. for Cedar Point Communications,+1-215-702-9784, +1-215-817-4384 (Mobile), [email protected]

Web site: http://www.cedarpointcom.com/
Citrix Access Gateway Receives Frost & Sullivan's 2006 Award for Best Product Line Strategy; Award Underscores Citrix's Competitive Advantage Based on Product Synergies. Check it out:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), today announced that Frost & Sullivan has chosen Citrix as the winner of the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award for Product Line Strategy. The award specifically recognizes the Citrix Access Gateway(TM), for its record growth in the SSL VPN market and the rising importance of secure, remote access to today's global enterprise.



Citrix offers a comprehensive range of SSL VPN solutions that make secure application access easy for all organizations, from small businesses to the most demanding global enterprises. Citrix Access Gateway is a complete line of universal SSL VPN appliances providing a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to an organization's applications and data.

"Frost & Sullivan gives the Product Line Strategy Award to a vendor who has demonstrated an astute understanding of its marketplace through its product positioning along with a cohesive vision for its collective offerings," said Rufus Connell, research director, Frost & Sullivan. "With the combination of its dynamic product features, new resources and synergy gained from recent acquisitions, Citrix has positioned itself as one of the most important competitors in the SSL VPN market in an extremely short period of time."

According to Frost & Sullivan, there is a growing recognition among corporate decision makers that there are real cost and time efficiency benefits with a remote workforce. This has lead to an increasing demand for SSL VPN solutions that can provide workers with the information they need while keeping corporate networks secure from malicious attacks and network breaches. In addition to the traditional benefits that SSL VPN technology provides, enterprises are demanding products that offer granular, user-specific access to designated applications within the enterprise network.

"Citrix has always prided itself on strong market leadership, and the Citrix Access Gateway is no exception. Organizations today need highly granular policy-based access to their applications, and Access Gateway delivers that with our innovative SmartAccess capability," said Phil Montgomery, director of product marketing, Citrix Systems. "This award from Frost & Sullivan is an incredible validation of our experience and commitment towards truly enabling remote workers to securely and easily access the applications they need to be productive."

To select each Best Practices Award recipient, Frost & Sullivan uses interviews with all market participants and extensive secondary research of proprietary data to track competitor revenue and market share within the industry. The competitors are then compared and ranked. In addition, factors such as feasibility of product launch, likelihood of customer acceptance and acceptance rates, and estimated time to market are taken into consideration.

About Citrix Access Gateway

Citrix Access Gateway is a line of universal SSL VPN appliances that provide a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to all applications and protocols, including multimedia and voice-over-IP (VoIP). The Access Gateway product line has all of the advantages of IPSec and SSL VPNs, without their costly and cumbersome implementation and management. Unlike traditional SSL VPN products, Access Gateway includes Citrix(R) SmartAccess technology that gives administrators fine grained control over what actions users can take with the applications they access -- such as view, edit, save or print -- based on who they are, where they are located, and what kind of device they are using.

For more information about the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards, please visit http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/meawards-overview.pag.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and Citrix Access Gateway(TM) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Citrix Sets New Standard in Web Application Delivery with NetScaler 7.0; New Citrix NetScaler Release Delivers 150 New Features, Including Enhanced Scalability, Improved Application Fluency and Unprecedented Manageability. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) today announced the latest upgrade to its popular Citrix(R) NetScaler(R) product line. The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release again raises the bar for web application delivery, making it dramatically easier for enterprises to accelerate the performance of business-critical web applications, secure sensitive application data and lower the cost of delivering web applications to any user, in any location.



The Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release builds on the product's widely-recognized success in delivering the world's largest and most demanding web applications, improving the web experience of an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day. Since acquiring the NetScaler product line last year, Citrix has introduced the benefits of NetScaler to companies of all sizes through its extensive worldwide channel, resulting in one of the fastest growth rates in the web application delivery market(1).

"Citrix NetScaler pioneered the web application delivery market and is making it increasingly easy for enterprise customers to upgrade from first-generation load balancers to highly integrated NetScaler systems that dramatically improve the performance, security and cost of delivering web applications," said Wes Wasson, corporate vice president, product marketing and strategy, Citrix Systems. "This latest release of Citrix NetScaler extends our leadership in this market and further advances state-of-the-art web application delivery."

150+ New Capabilities for Web Application Delivery

The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release adds more than 150 new capabilities designed to meet the increasing web application delivery demands of enterprise customers across all functional areas, including:

-- Record Application Scalability - Now supports up to 15,000 servers supported in a single application environment - a three-fold increase over Citrix's already record-level scalability. Advanced management of policy elements also allows automated configuration changes to be made across large numbers of objects, such as servers and application services.

-- More Powerful Application Policy Management - Adds numerous enhancements to Citrix NetScaler's application policy management framework, AppExpert(TM), including an enhanced ability to rewrite HTTP headers for highly complex Web applications. Additional enhancements include full bi-directional rewriting of headers and URLs, allowing organizations to more rapidly integrate independently-developed applications while publishing a single, consistent Web URL address to all users.

-- Improved Application Availability - More sophisticated application health monitoring capabilities that provide early warnings of potential problems with critical transactional elements in complex web applications.

-- Expanded Application Security - Additional capabilities that protect sensitive internal details of an application infrastructure, such as IP addresses, internal URLs and directory files. The new release also incorporates numerous additional security capabilities, including enhanced management of access control lists (ACLs) that simplify the control of traffic permitted within a trusted application environment.

-- Enhanced Ease of Configuration and Management - Substantial improvements in ease-of-use across the entire product line, including new configuration wizards that automate set-up tasks and substantially reduce deployment times for both network administrators and channel partners. The new release also includes multiple advances to NetScaler's graphical user interface (GUI) and command-line interface (CLI), making policy management even more intuitive and enabling application delivery policy management by non-networking specialists.

-- Simplified SSL Security Management - Simple, wizard-driven creation of SSL certificates that are used to encrypt sensitive web application data. Strong security and continuous application availability is maintained with automated warnings of SSL certificates about to expire.

-- Support for New Application Types - Expanded support for application traffic such as voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) through capabilities like load balancing for session initiation protocol (SIP) servers.

Pricing and Availability

Citrix NetScaler 7.0 is available immediately. Pricing begins at $17,499 per system.

About Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System

Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System optimizes the delivery of web applications -- improving performance up to 15x, increasing security, and potentially doubling web server capacity at half the cost -- ensuring the best total cost of ownership (TCO), security, availability, and performance for web applications. Citrix NetScaler System is a comprehensive network system that combines high-speed load balancing and content switching with state-of-the-art application acceleration, layer 4-7 traffic management, data compression, static and dynamic content caching, SSL acceleration, numerous network optimizations, and robust application security into a single, tightly integrated solution. Deployed in front of application servers, the system significantly reduces processing overhead on application and database servers, reducing hardware and bandwidth costs.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and NetScaler(R) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

(1) "Citrix NetScaler Gains Share in Web Application Delivery Market with Fastest Revenue Growth Rate Among Market Share Leaders" http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=26024.
Our 100th Issue of IP Communications Thought Leadership. Check it out:
A modified version of this article will appear in the October issue if Internet Telephony magazine.
 
 
100 issues — wow — it has been an amazing ride. If you can believe it, the magnitude of this issue didn’t hit me until I sat down and started to write this column. As many of you know, in 1997 when we decided to launch a magazine titled Internet Telephony most people thought we were crazy. They told us outright that we were nuts. Certainly this attitude in the market was a bit scary when starting a new magazine as the vendors who were mocking us were the exact ones we were supposed to be writing about.


 
In fact in hindsight, we were probably crazier than we realized, because without hundreds of companies to write about it really is difficult to sustain a business-to-business trade magazine.
 
There were a few companies that were courageous enough to realize we were onto something and there are also some individuals that stood out in my mind as being instrumental to the success of the IP communications market as well as the success of this magazine and the associated expo by the same name.
 
As this is a top 100 Voices of IP communications issue, some of the people in this column will be from this list. Many of the people I write about here are worth sharing with you because they were instrumental in the industry or they impressed me on some level over the years. We are truly indebted to all of the people who have played a crucial role in making IP communications as successful as it is today.
 
To get the ball rolling I decided to start with someone who isn’t on the list (I won't comment on whether anyone else in this column made it). Chris Ward was working in the marketing department of Natural MicroSystems at the time of this magazine’s inception and when we announced our plans to launch, he and his management team were so ecstatic, it really gave us here at TMC a moral boost and reaffirmed our belief that we were doing the right thing. Hats off to Brough Turner and Mike Katz, who also work at NMS, for playing instrumental roles in bringing the world’s first VoIP gateways to fruition.
 
From here it makes sense to go to VocalTec — who really popularized the softphone and IP telephony gateway — and Elon Ganor, the company’s leader who, when looking at the first issue of this magazine, lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I know because I personally handed him the first issue at the Computer Telephony Expo in March 1998. In fact, at that time the company’s CTO, Lior Haramaty, knew more about VoIP than just about anyone else, and we were fortunate to have him as a columnist in this magazine for a number of years.
 
Jeff Pulver was certainly another colorful figure in the world of VoIP. Jeff’s VON conference became a gathering of industry insiders trying to figure out what to make of this whole VoIP phenomenon. The event became a good partnering venue and to this day it’s still a good partnering locale for companies in the VoIP space. Jeff has also played a big part in the legal scene, advocating that VoIP should have minimal regulation.
 
Another unforgettable figure in the world of VoIP is Andy Voss who worked for Nuera when I met him back in the mid-nineties. Andy has a unique sense of humor and knows the communications market inside and out. He tells it like he sees it and I always learn something when I speak with him. After working for Nuera he went off to start the session border control company Sansay and is still the CEO of this successful endeavor.
 
Jon Shapiro is larger than life. He runs Alliance Systems (News - Alert) and his company was instrumental in building ruggedized PC platforms for the PC PBX, IP PBX and Internet Telephony gateway markets over the years. Jon has been a good friend and has offered solid advice over the years and the industry is better off for having him in it. I am looking forward to him being back in the public spotlight the way he was in the nineties. He was a great force in the communications market of the last decade and his knowledge and experience is precious and worth sharing.
 
Another person of note is Gordon Payne who was the face of Tundo — an early IP PBX player. Gordon did a great job at Tundo but when the bubble burst and Tundo ran out of funding he decided to take some time off and then joined Net6 where he focused on bringing intelligence to IP phones — allowing them to access applications and content. Net6 later was purchased by Citrix.
 
Tundo’s failure is sad because at a few Internet Telephony EXPOs after the company folded I was fielding questions from Fortune 100 companies as to why Tundo was no longer around. If they had held out a bit longer they might have become a major player in the space.
 
Jeffrey Citron of Vonage gets lots of credit for many things in the VoIP market. He was the visionary that decided to make Vonage a consumer VoIP play. He single-handedly scared the living daylights out of the RBOCs and cable companies, forcing them to develop VoIP strategies. This spurred billions of dollars of communications investment. He delivered on the promise of VoIP for the masses. He didn’t do anything technically spectacular — Net2Phone did more or less the exact same thing many years before Vonage — he just was able to put together a company that knew how to market to consumers and he backed it up with enough investment to get millions of people to try VoIP. As they say, timing is everything and Citron probably had the critical mass of broadband subscribers needed to get his service to take off rapidly. Also, while branding Vonage, his company’s marketing caused the enterprise and SMB VoIP markets to grow more quickly and also made sure virtually everyone in the U.S. knew what Vonage and VoIP was.
 
It turns out this was a positive thing for VoIP until the Vonage IPO which tanked and now all the companies that pointed to Vonage as a role model are trying to explain to their investors how their business model differs from the orange-logoed broadband phone company. Still, Citron should be commended in a major way for what he did — he brought widespread understanding to the world of VoIP and educated the entire U.S. population on what was once an esoteric and exclusive technology. Thanks Jeffrey.
 
It is interesting that Vonage first started out life as a company focusing on selling VoIP service to cable companies. When the telecom bubble burst in 2001 there was a bitter struggle to determine what the company should do. Citron bet on becoming a phone company and made at least one enemy in the industry by taking this course. He obviously made the right bet — but many in the industry believe the company can be even more successful if Vonage was to focus more on profitability and less on market share.
 
While Citron battled for control of Vonage, a strategy shift was taking place at 8x8 (News - Alert) and the company made a similar bet that selling to consumers their Packet8 service made the most sense. It would seem that CEO Bryan Martin’s decision paid off and even though the company’s stock price has been hammered lately — in sympathy with Vonage it seems — I am impressed with the company’s branding and the fact they were able to hang on in the most difficult telecom environment in history. Unlike Vonage the company was already public and did not have access to hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding — they had to make it through the turbulent telecom waters with limited resources.
 
Another major influence in the market came from Niklas Zennstrom who co-founded Skype and has changed the world’s appreciation for what IP communications can do for you. Hundreds of millions of people have downloaded this software and Skype may be one of the most viral software packages ever created. Much credit goes to Zennstrom for educating the world about VoIP and more importantly doing such a great job that Meg Whitman’s eBay — decided to purchase Skype for more than 2 billion dollars. As time goes on I expect to see tighter integration between Skype and eBay’s services and as the two companies work more closely together we can expect both to do even better.
 
Many in the industry think eBay overpaid for Skype — I still believe eBay made a very smart decision to purchase the VoIP software leader and although the price was high they will recoup this money more rapidly than people think.
 
Michael Powell was another major force in the VoIP market and under his tenure frequencies were freed up to allow WiFi to become reality. This in and of itself is of major importance to wireless VoIP or WiFi telephony, but more importantly Powell was a huge proponent of VoIP and really seemed to care about allowing consumers access to the best service at the lowest prices. In fact, at his keynote at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO — his first after stepping down as chairman — it become apparent that he would liked to have made more consumer-friendly pro-VoIP changes at the FCC but just wasn’t able to.
 
From regulation we go to the world’s largest web portal and you should know I am impressed by Yahoo’s Jeff Bonforte because he is not only a brilliant entrepreneur launching i-drive.com in the bubble days, he is also amazingly witty. I am sure working with him on Yahoo’s VoIP initiatives is a unique experience. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him at Andy Abramson’s recent birthday party and he made a fun dinner that much better.
 
Hats off to Seamus Hourihan who was a driving force behind Acme Packet’s (News - Alert) ascent into the session border control market. The company came on the scene post telecom bubble — many thought the timing would limit their success — and was able to become a major supplier to equipment manufacturers and service providers in a very short time.
 
Robert Messer of ABP (News - Alert) is another important industry voice who is passionate about building the VoIP reseller channel. Without resellers the VoIP market would have taken much longer to get off the ground. Perhaps no other person has been as passionate about VoIP resellers as Robert.
 
Mark Spencer is yet another important name in the industry and without his efforts the open source communications market may have begun much more slowly. He and Bill Rich of Pingtel have been major players in this market. Similarly David Mandelstam of Sangoma has made it a business to equip Asterisk (News - Alert) servers with high-end, high-quality boards allowing Asterisk systems to scale very nicely.
 
Terry Matthews, the communications industry’s most successful serial entrepreneur. The number of companies he has founded is awe-inspiring. He has picked virtually every niche in communications and launched a successful company in it. He should write books on how to launch and run communications businesses.
 
Two other people that are helping grow the IP communications market are Shrihari Pandit of Stealth Communications and Hunter Newby from Telx. The two have been instrumental in building the VoIP Peering Fabric, a widely used fabric with billions of minutes of VoIP traffic flowing across it. VoIP peering is one of the biggest things to happen to the VoIP market and it is worth noting that in the last week XConnect, a peering competitor, has made big news by acquiring a peering company and in doing so raising its profile in the voice peering community.
 
Sphere is the company that invented the IP PBX but at the time (the mid-nineties) it decided to use ATM instead of IP. They were at least five years ahead of their time. Todd Landry has been a steady voice at the company and even now Sphere is a telecom leader with their focus on leading-edge SOA technology.
 
Manuel Vexler and Michael Khalilian have been two of the major voices in the world of IMS with their exemplary and tireless IMS Forum work; the pair has worked tirelessly along with the rest of the forum to ensure IMS can continue to excel as a framework for next-generation communications.
 
Ben Guiderian is the most significant voice in the world of WiFi telephony and his company SpectraLink has been at the forefront of this technology. Hassan Ahmed is just one of the faces of Sonus Networks, a company that was the premier IP communications company of the pre-meltdown days with a stock that skyrocketed beyond anyone’s expectations. The company has made it through the dark times and is doing much better now as they position their products to be leaders in the IMS market.
 
Few people in the market are as knowledgeable about enterprise VoIP as Mark Straton who represents Siemens. Expect to see great things from him. Similarly, Harald Braun is one of the best champions of IMS I have met. Harold by the way is also as dynamic as they get and is able to speak to you about technology in an animated fashion you wouldn’t expect from someone so technical. No offense intended towards technical people mind you, but I am an engineer so I think I can comment safely on the matter.
 
Quintum’s Chuck Rutledge is soft-spoken but as the company spokesperson Quintum has launched a raft of new products and continues to do well in the market competing against some true IP communications giants.
 
Thanks to all of the people that have contributed to the IP communications market. it has been a wild ride. I am proud to be in the company of such an important group and most importantly I am humbled by your support over the years.
 
Thank you my loyal readers who read my columns and give me so much feedback on what you agree with and what you think I am wrong about.
 
It is because of all of your efforts that this publication is consistently the most successful and thickest magazine in the communications market. Many have told me that Internet Telephony is as thick or thicker than just about any technology magazine they subscribe to. Magazine thickness by the way is generally the gauge of a magazine’s success level. We could not be where we are without all of the support from the IP communications community. Once again, thank you.
 
I have always believed that as communications transitions to the world of IP, new and exciting possibilities await us all. The last 100 issues are just the beginning. We have only achieved a small part of the industry’s potential. In the future, communications will become a more and more integral part of business and our lives. We will see IP communications as a more and more strategic part of enterprise and service provider investments. Technologies like WiFi, WiMAX, IPTV, SIP and IMS will only allow us to have greater impact on the world with the new ideas that continue to come out of some very bright industry minds.
 
The next ten years will see more and more communications innovations from traditional communications companies but we need to remember that telecom is also now part of the computing world. What this means is that we will not only see innovation from the likes of such companies as Lucent and Avaya, we will see more Skypes pop up around the world too. This means the pace of innovation in IP communications will likely continue to grow and this will lead to more and more choice for the companies looking to take advantage of all that the IP communications market has to offer.
 
Personally I look forward to helping to provide clarity in this new world of IP communications for another 100 issues and more. I look forward to sharing the journey with you.
 
/////////
 
This article will appear in its entirety in the October issue of Internet Telephony magazine, which will be distributed at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. From what I’ve been hearing, the whole industry will be in San Diego from October 10–13.
 
Of course, if you’re looking ahead, the world’s best attended IP communications event is coming to Florida in January. Yes, I am talking about Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East and you can expect a collocated IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 conference there as well. There will be a tremendous focus on open source, cable technology, conferencing and collaboration, VoIP security, OSS/BSS, IPTV, voice peering and wireless technologies. We recently put together the tracks for this show and without a doubt this will be the best conference in the world for IP communications. The sheer volume of sessions will ensure that regardless of whether you are a service provider, enterprise or developer there will be enough high-quality, unbiased content to not only educate you but ensure that you become an expert in your topic(s) of interest.
 
Please mark your calendar now for January 23-27, 2007 and book your hotel immediately as this is peak vacation season and this event continues to quickly sell out every hotel in its area, months in advance.
GENBAND and Resolute Announce Pseudowire Interoperability for End-to-End Circuit Emulation Solutions. Check it out:
ATLANTA & PLANO, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- GENBAND(TM) Inc., a leading provider of IMS-based telecommunications applications and infrastructure products enabling converged IP multimedia services, and Resolute Networks, a leading provider of circuit emulation pseudowire sub-system and technology solutions, today announced that the two companies have successfully completed extensive interoperability testing between Resolute's CMX-1614 Circuit Emulation Component Module and GENBAND's G6(R) Universal Media Gateway.



The GENBAND and Resolute interop validation was triggered by specific requests from Tier 1 network equipment providers. Pseudowire solutions preserve profitable legacy services while enabling the creation of a truly next-generation network. It allows an operator to package any service, legacy or emerging, and send it into the network in a common format that both preserves the service's original features and delivers the values of end-to-end OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning). By using Resolute's CMX-1614 at the remote site with GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway as the central site circuit emulation aggregator, network equipment providers can realize the benefits of pseudowire by giving service providers an open/standards-based platform that can be quickly deployed to address the needs for such services.

"The proving of interoperability between Resolute and GENBAND is an early indication of a trend that will have significant implications for the Circuit Emulation Services (CES) market," states Don Sparks, vice president of product management and architecture at GENBAND. "The rapid growth in packet-based infrastructure means that CES is ever more important to service providers that have decided to converge all their voice and data services. The huge installed base of TDM-based customer equipment and the increasing pressure to keep capex as low as possible means that forklift infrastructure replacement of enterprise voice and data equipment is a central concern for operators' customers. By using CES in the access network, service providers support their customers using existing equipment while utilizing new high performance access network infrastructure."

"This is another example of the maturity of the SAToP and CESoPSN circuit emulation standards," adds Ron Cohen, CTO of Resolute Networks. "The standardization work of the last few years at the IETF, ITU-T, MEF and MFA on circuit emulation services is now allowing service providers to choose the optimal packetized voice solutions, whether it is VoIP or CES, from a variety of vendors, to suit the needs of their specific networks and applications."

Following this announcement, Resolute's Network Equipment Provider customers supporting the major access markets including Carrier Ethernet, PON, DOCSIS cable and fixed wireless, will now be able to offer service providers direct interconnection for millions of TDM voice customers using high performance access networks directly into carrier networks via GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway and without needing to replace their existing, fully featured PBX implementations.

About Resolute Networks

Resolute Networks Ltd. is a leading provider of standards-compliant sub-system and OEM solutions for circuit-emulation applications. Resolute's solutions are based on the company's silicon and module technology optimized to support high performance converged telecommunication services over Ethernet, MPLS and IP infrastructures. The company offers circuit emulation solutions for both access and aggregation rates of up to OC-3/STM1 (155Mbps). Based in Modi'in, Israel, Resolute Networks has a worldwide presence and markets its products in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.resolutenetworks.com.

About GENBAND(TM)

GENBAND is the leading supplier of IP multimedia application and infrastructure products and solutions for a diverse set of VoIP and IMS networks worldwide. These IMS-ready applications and solutions enable wireline, cable, and wireless service providers to rapidly deploy new multimedia services, while providing a foundation to transition legacy networks to next generation networks. GENBAND has deployed its IP Multimedia products and technology to over 100 customers with more than 750 deployments, across three continents. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, GENBAND has research and development facilities in Fremont, California; Austin and Plano, Texas; and New Delhi, India. Additional information is available at www.genband.com.
SPi to Provide Advanced Publishing Services with PTC's Arbortext. Check it out:
SPi to Provide Advanced Publishing Services with PTC’s Arbortext
 
SPi, a provider of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) solutions, has expanded its deployment of PTC solutions to include its Arbortext publishing solution. This automated publishing engine produces professional, high-quality print and PDF documents that require complex layouts.


 
PTC, the Product Development Company, made the announcement today that SPi has increased its PTC offerings. SPi offers IT-enabled content transformation, structuring and processing solutions that enable companies in the legal, healthcare and financial services markets meet their content and data management needs.
 
SPi focuses its strategies on achieving a shortened lead-time for publishing its customers’ complex printed documents. By incorporating Arbortext, SPi anticipates that its should be able to provide an automated publishing approach that enables its customer to reduce publishing time, save production costs and deliver better customer experiences through timely, accurate information.
 
According to Ian Bellord, executive vice president, SPi, the company looked at a number of available products on the market and chose PTC because Arbortext is the most mature software package supporting dynamic publishing. Arbortext provides for high quality, consistency and fast output which are critical elements in the Journal and Book production. Bellord also noted that SPi’s purchase of additional licenses from PTC is a testament to their superior product and customer care.
 
Beyond expanding its relationship with PTC as a customer, SPi also plans to integrate its extensive publishing solutions with PTC’s content management and publishing solutions in order to create business opportunities for both companies.
 
PG Bartlett, vice president product management for Arbortext products, PTC, contributed that Arbortext enables SPi’s Publishing group to automate its print composition process so that they can boost productivity while also increasing responsiveness to customer and market demands. As a result, SPi is able to deliver high-quality, professional composition services to its customers, while simultaneously improving its production costs and turn-around times.
 
Fully owned by ePLDT, SPi is a full-service Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider with 11,000 employees delivering on a wide range of call center and knowledge-based outsourcing solutions to diversified markets.
 
PTC Publishing enables companies to automate the assembly and publishing of product or service information in multiple languages and formats. Solutions are made up of the Arbortext product family and are used by 30 percent of Fortune 500 companied in the manufacturing, life sciences, publishing, government, insurance and financial services industries.
 
In the products and services markets, time to delivery for the customer can make the difference between the sale and a lost opportunity. By providing its customers a powerful solution that enables them to quickly perform necessary publishing duties, SPi is ensuring better growth for its customers by enabling them to provide a better experience for the end user. In a competitive environment, that is often the only differentiator that a company has to ensure its own success.
 
 
 
Special Attractions
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Rocket Software Acquires Three Products from Telcordia. Check it out:
 
Rocket Software, a developer of enterprise infrastructure products, has acquired three software products from Telcordia Technologies. Telcordia supplies software and services for IP, wireline, mobility and cable networks. The purchase closed at the end of last quarter and bolsters Rocket’s offerings in the database management market.


 
The acquisition includes the Information Management System Workload Router, Information Management System DRC Facility and Information Management System Y2K Exit Point Routine. It was advised by Chris McKinzie of Fluid Innovation Group in Austin. Customers already using the three products sold in the transaction will continue to receive product upgrades and support from Rocket. 
 
Telcordia was originally founded as Bellcore in 1984, providing research and development to the seven Baby Bells. It now serves wireline, mobile, cable, government and equipment supplier markets throughout the world. Telcordia software handles all toll-free phone traffic in the U.S., and the company holds more than 560 patents and 330 foreign patent equivalents.
 
Rocket is a global development firm that builds enterprise infrastructure products for OEMs, networks and software companies. The company’s lines of business complement and extend strategic OEM offerings in the areas of enterprise and mobile security, relational databases, mobile and wireless computing and OSS.
 
“We are delighted to take over the development and support of software products developed by Telcordia, a pioneer in the field of telecommunications applications,” said Andy Youniss, CEO of Rocket Software. “The addition of these products will further strengthen Rocket's commitment to our global customer base, which includes the world's top software companies, equipment manufacturers, wireless equipment manufacturers and carriers."
 
-----
 
Laura Stotler writes about IP Communications and related topics for TMCnet. She has covered VoIP and related technologies for seven years, contributing to Internet Telephony magazine and TMCnet, and as a freelance writer. To see more articles, please visit: Laura Stotler’s columnist page.
The TAS Group Launches Intelligent Sales Effectiveness Platform to Leverage OnTarget Purchase. Check it out:
 
An Intelligent Sales Effectiveness Platform (ISEP™) has been launched by the TAS Group. This platform is a combination of proven sales methodologies, implementation best practices and the intelligent Dealmaker™ software application.


 
The TAS Group was formed as a result of Select Selling purchasing OnTarget — the sales methodology division of Oracle. The multi-million dollar investment in ISEP was a result of the TAS Group’s drive to fundamentally change the approach of sales organizations worldwide by adopting sales training and sales methodology by putting technology at the core of the implementation.
 
Many sales methodologies are complex, making them difficult to use. Because of this difficulty, many sales teams won’t regularly use them. Through a combination of world-class sales methodologies and easy-to-use software, ISEP guides sales professionals through the sales methodology intelligently, offering interactive feedback along the way.
 
The TAS Group has positioned ISEP as the first sales effectiveness solution that incorporates sales methodologies into an efficient and effective software environment. For existing OnTarget users, they are promised an easier realization of the value of their previous investments. For new methodology customers, ISEP is meant to accelerate the methodology’s benefits and adoption.
 
According to Donal Daly, CEO of the TAS Group, the measure of the successful implementation of a sales methodology is an increase in revenue. The key to achieving that in a sustainable way is to deliver a solution that sales professions will want to use because it actually helps them sell more without increased effort. When that happens, everybody wins – the sales professional gets increased sales and the sales manager gets increased sales, along with accurate sales forecasts, sales process compliance and great metrics to manage the business.
 
The ISEP components consist of Dealmaker, which is a software application that is designed to integrate sales methodologies with CRM systems for a customizable enterprise-wide solution. The underlying sales process intelligence engine learns about what works, encapsulates best practices guidelines, reinforces sales effectiveness learning and provides a superior ROI on both CRM and sales training investments. As a result, Dealmaker should provide accurate forecasts, deal clarity and pipeline visibility.
 
Proven methodologies from the Target Account Selling solution have been incorporated into ISEP, including Portfolio Management, Account Planning, Opportunity Management, Individual Sales Effectiveness and Channel and Partner Management. Successful adoption is driven through the TAS Group’s six-point implementation ‘best practice’ service.
 
As a former OnTarget user, I can attest to the shortcomings that the solution originally possessed in relation to its usability. As a sales professional at the time, I was not interested in implementing information into a complicated system that took away from my time in the field. Along with many of my colleagues, I viewed the system as something the company provided to ensure that the sales team was working instead of out golfing.
 
When sales systems became easier to use, however, their attributes did become more appealing. The ability to properly store information in a system that would also organize it for me was very attractive — especially if it led to increased sales. The most important element, however, was not whether or not the sales teams were using it to their benefit, but rather if the corporation was requiring it in their reporting. If no one else used the system to its full potential, why take valuable field time to input data?
 
The TAS Group is doing well to focus on user-friendly features while also making sure the solution appeals to all those in the sales chain of command. Without adoption and promotion from the top, these solutions will really just take up more hard drive space.
 
 
  
What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
GENBAND and Resolute Complete Interoperability Testing for Next-Gen Network Solutions. Check it out:
 
 
GENBAND Inc. and Resolute Networks have completed extensive interoperability testing between the Resolute CMX-1614 Circuit Emulation Component Module and GENBAND’s G6 Universal Media Gateway (News - Alert). GENBAND is a provider of IMS-based telecommunications applications and infrastructure products to enable converged IP multimedia services, while Resolute provides circuit emulation pseudowire sub-system and technology solutions.


 
The interoperability validation was initiated by specific requests from Tier 1 network equipment providers. Pseudowire solution preserve legacy services while also enable the creation of a next-generation network. They enable an operator to package any service, legacy or emerging, and send it into the network in a common format to preserve the original features while delivering end-to-end OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning).
 
The Resolute CMS-1614, when used at a remote site with the G6 Universal Media Gateway as the central site circuit emulation aggregator, enables network equipment providers to realize the benefits of pseudowire. They may give service providers an open/standards-based platform for quick deployment to address a variety of needs for such services.
 
The announce will enable Resolute’s network equipment providers to offers service providers direct interconnection for millions of TDM voice customers using high performance access networks directly into carrier networks. They may do this via the G6 gateway, and without the need to replace their existing PBX (News - Alert) implementations. Resolute customers support a number of major access markets including carrier Ethernet, PON, DOCSIS cable and fixed wireless.
 
"The proving of interoperability between Resolute and GENBAND is an early indication of a trend that will have significant implications for the Circuit Emulation Services (CES) market," said Don Sparks, vice president of product management and architecture at GENBAND. "The rapid growth in packet-based infrastructure means that CES is ever more important to service providers that have decided to converge all their voice and data services. The huge installed base of TDM-based customer equipment and the increasing pressure to keep CAPEX as low as possible means that forklift infrastructure replacement of enterprise voice and data equipment is a central concern for operators' customers. By using CES in the access network, service providers support their customers using existing equipment while utilizing new high performance access network infrastructure."
 
"This is another example of the maturity of the SAToP and CESoPSN circuit emulation standards," said Ron Cohen, CTO of Resolute Networks. "The standardization work of the last few years at the IETF, ITU-T, MEF and MFA on circuit emulation services is now allowing service providers to choose the optimal packetized voice solutions, whether it is VoIP or CES, from a variety of vendors, to suit the needs of their specific networks and applications."
 
For more information about VoIP, IMS and next-generation services and interoperability, check out the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO WEST. The event is the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance; the leading IP Communications event for exhibitors in terms of lead generation; and the VoIP industry event which features special attractions for service providers and resellers. The event runs October 10-13, 2006 in San Diego.
 
-----
 
Laura Stotler writes about IP Communications and related topics for TMCnet. She has covered VoIP and related technologies for seven years, contributing to Internet Telephony magazine and TMCnet, and as a freelance writer. To see more articles, please visit: Laura Stotler’s columnist page.
MySQL Expands Telecom Consulting & Services. Check it out:

INTEROP 2006, NEW YORK – September 19, 2006 – MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced that it is expanding its telecom-specific services and consulting offerings to meet increased industry demand for MySQL®-powered software. 



MySQL's momentum in the networking and telecommunications industry has been growing as a number of the industry's top carriers, operators and infrastructure ISVs select the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases for low-cost, reliable and carrier-grade data management.

Today, over 50 of the world's leading networking and telecom companies employ MySQL for critical database applications, including Alcatel (News - Alert), Clarus Systems, Crannog Software, Critical Path, Empirix (News - Alert), Ericsson (News - Alert), Micromuse (News - Alert) (IBM (News - Alert)), Nokia, Nortel, Telio and Tellme Networks.

MySQL Cluster is a special high-end version of the MySQL database specifically designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical applications that need strict scalability and high-availability, as are common in the communications industry. The high-performance MySQL Server and MySQL Cluster are used for a wide range of networking and telecommunications applications, including those for enterprise network management, Home Location Registry (HLR), and Voice over IP (VoIP).

"As the telecom and networking markets are converging, companies are being forced to operate more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction,” said Ulf Sandberg, MySQL AB’s vice president of worldwide services. “Our company offers a strong, focused competency in telecom data management. As these industry leaders are experiencing, MySQL can play a successful role in building high-performance, high-availability infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary software.”

"MySQL is the high-performance data management engine powering Clarus Systems' IP telephony productivity solutions for integrators and enterprises," said Brendan Reidy, CEO at Clarus Systems. "MySQL's reliability and speed have helped us develop software that maximizes the availability and performance of enterprise telephony networks, even for very large, distributed deployments. MySQL's affordability and straight-forward licensing made it an easy choice."


MySQL Expands Services for Telecom Customers

MySQL has expanded its telecom-specific industry services and consulting to address the increased demand for the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases. Telecom customers can now choose from a range of MySQL consulting and services, including:

• MySQL Cluster Jumpstart Packaged Consulting: MySQL consultants use proven methodologies and expertise in database clustering, replication, fail-over, fault-tolerance and other high availability techniques to "jumpstart" telecommunications database projects.
• Custom Telecom Consulting: For large telecommunications projects or those with company-specific requirements, MySQL AB can deliver a custom team of experienced MySQL certified consultants to successfully implement MySQL and MySQL Cluster-based projects, including on-site projects.
• MySQL Certified Support: Database experts with telecom-specific competencies can provide 24x7 technical services to telecommunications customers to maintain their critical always-on systems.

For more information about MySQL in the networking and telecommunications industry, please go to http://www.mysql.com/industry/telecom. For more information about MySQL services and consulting for telecommunications applications, please click here

About MySQL
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company's flagship product is the MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 10 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.
With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit the company's Web site.

# # #
MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Former Leadership Team of Adventis Corporation Joins Monitor Group Core Strategy Team. Check it out:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 --

Strategic Additions Reflect Monitor's Emphasis on Serving the Needs of Telecommunications, Media and Technology Companies During Period of Fundamental Industry Change

Monitor Group, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based international advisory firm with affiliated investment funds, today announced that the former North American leadership team of Adventis Corporation is joining its strategy practice effective immediately. Joining Monitor are Ford Cavallari, former worldwide head of the broadband and media practice of Adventis Corporation; Andy Belt, co-founder and former enterprise/telecom practice head of Adventis Corporation; and John Ryan, one of the three founders of RHK, Inc. and an industry expert in technology and network issues. Adventis Corporation, a North American-based strategic consulting firm, focused its services on telecommunications, media and technology.



Based on its longstanding work in the area, Monitor sees a fundamental redefinition of telecom, media, and technology companies now occurring. Whereas the "legacy" challenges for each separate sector comprised mainly the standard customer acquisition/retention and cost control issues, a new set of "converged" challenges for all three sectors has emerged, driven by increasingly blurred industry boundaries and renewed growth imperatives. These critical challenges include the management of new and disruptive business models (e.g. VoIP, VoD), the definition and control of the "home of the future", and the rationale for innovations and capital investments in new, multi-player consumer and business markets. With the addition of its new team members, Monitor is well positioned to build on its historical strength in strategy consulting to IT and international telecom clients, and to deploy the robust set of growth-oriented client services required in this space.

"These new colleagues bring expertise and insight in telecommunications, media and technology to enhance Monitor's strategic advisory business," said CEO Joe Fuller. "We are pleased to have this accomplished group joining our core strategy team."

Founded in 1983 by six entrepreneurs, including Harvard's Michael Porter and the company's current Chairman Mark Fuller, Monitor Group has 28 offices worldwide and offers a portfolio of strategic consulting services to clients who seek to grow top-line revenue, shareholder value, and individual and organizational capabilities. The firm works with the world's foremost business experts and thought leaders to help major multinational companies, governments and philanthropic institutions develop specialized capabilities in areas including competitive strategy, marketing and pricing strategy, innovation, national and regional economic competitiveness, non-profit management, technology/e-business, organizational design and development, and scenario planning. Monitor Group's separate merchant banking division consists of investment funds (both venture capital and private equity) as well as an M&A advisory service.
Cable and Wireless International Selects Sonus Networks for End-To-End IP-Voice Network. Check it out:
CHELMSFORD, Mass., Sept. 19 -- Sonus Networks, Inc. , a leading supplier of service provider Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions, and Cable & Wireless International, the world's pre-eminent full service telecommunications provider in small to medium sized markets, today announced that Cable & Wireless International has selected Sonus Networks as the supplier of its next-generation IP-voice network. Cable & Wireless International plans to deploy one of the world's largest IP-voice networks delivering primary line local, long-distance and international telephony service. Operating in 34 countries around the world, including 14 islands in the Caribbean, Cable and Wireless will initially deploy its Sonus-based network to support the Caribbean Islands and Bermuda. In select markets, Cable and Wireless plans ultimately to replace its infrastructure with Sonus' award-winning IMS-ready access solution.



"Cable & Wireless International's decision to replace its legacy infrastructure with a next generation, end-to-end network from Sonus is one of the most aggressive decisions by an incumbent carrier to date," said Hassan Ahmed, chairman and CEO, Sonus Networks. "Sonus is proud to be recognized as one of the only vendors in the world capable of providing such a robust solution, delivering a unique combination of enhanced localized call features and services, a variety of legacy signaling variants, as well as a platform for future next-generation features."

Cable & Wireless is deploying a complete suite of Sonus' IMS-ready solutions including both the GSX9000(TM) and GSX4000(TM) Open Services Switch, the PSX(TM) Call Routing Server, the ASX(TM) Access Server, the Network Border Switch(TM) for IP-to-IP peering and security, and the Sonus Insight(TM) Management System for advanced OSS and billing support. With the Sonus foundation in place, Cable & Wireless is positioned to take advantage of emerging IMS standards and to rapidly integrate and deploy next generation, IMS-based services, one of the key competitive differentiators in the Sonus-based platform.

"Cable & Wireless aims to maintain its strong leadership position by embracing new technologies that give our customers access to unparalleled services and features," said Harris Jones, CEO Cable & Wireless International. "Cable & Wireless is committed to being a leading force in the evolution towards the all IP network, and we feel Sonus is the right partner to help us get there."

Frank Mount, Chief Technology Officer, Cable & Wireless International said, "We are pleased to have selected Sonus after a rigorous technical and commercial evaluation. The Sonus architecture provides us with the services, scale and ease of operation to transform our networks. We look forward to continuing the excellent working relationship established."

Cable & Wireless also selected Sonus to deliver a full range of professional services, such as design consulting; managing and supporting a full turnkey deployment including Engineering, Furnishing and Installation (EF&I) services; leading the migration from legacy to a Sonus-based network; and providing in-country operations support to enable rapid turn-up and operational readiness of the next generation network. Sonus Networks' comprehensive service and support organization is experienced in the rapid deployment of packet voice solutions for some of the world's most discerning operators.

About Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless is one of the world's leading international communications companies. It operates through two stand alone business units -- International and UK.

The International business unit operates integrated telecommunications companies in 34 countries offering mobile, broadband, domestic and international fixed line services to residential and business customers, with principal operations in the Caribbean, Panama, Macau, Channel Islands and Monaco.

The UK business unit provides enterprise and carrier solutions to the largest users of telecoms services across the UK, US, continental Europe and Asia, and consumer and small business broadband services in the UK through Bulldog.

For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to http://www.cw.com/.

About Sonus Networks

Sonus Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions for wireline and wireless service providers. With its comprehensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution, Sonus addresses the full range of carrier applications, including residential and business voice services, wireless voice and multimedia, trunking and tandem switching, carrier interconnection and enhanced services. Sonus' voice infrastructure solutions are deployed in service provider networks worldwide. Founded in 1997, Sonus is headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Additional information on Sonus is available at http://www.sonusnet.com/.

This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to the "Risk Factors" section of Sonus' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, dated May 8, 2006, filed with the SEC, which identifies important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Risk factors include among others: the impact of material weaknesses in our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting on our ability to report our financial results timely and accurately; the unpredictability of our quarterly financial results; risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's announced review of its historical stock option grants and accounting, including any potential impact of the Company's financial statements or results, the Company's inability to timely report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company's potential inability to meet NASDAQ requirements for continued listing, potential investigations or litigation arising out of the review or any restatement; risks associated with our international expansion and growth; consolidation in the telecommunications industry; and potential costs resulting from pending securities litigation against the company. Any forward-looking statements represent Sonus' views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing Sonus' views as of any subsequent date. While Sonus may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Sonus specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.

Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

For more information, please contact:

Sonus Investor Relations: Sonus Media Relations:
Jocelyn Philbrook Sarah McAuley
978-614-8672 212-699-1836
[email protected] [email protected]

Sonus Networks, Inc.

CONTACT: Jocelyn Philbrook (Investor Relations), +1-978-614-8672,[email protected], or Sarah McAuley (Media Relations), +1-212-699-1836,[email protected], both of Sonus Networks, Inc.

Web site: http://www.sonusnet.com/http://www.cw.com/
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Family with Performance-Enhanced Multiservice Access Routers; New Devices Surpass Leading Competitor with Wire-Speed Performance Bringing Added Benefit for Bandwidth-Intensive Applications. Check it out:
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- ADTRAN(R), Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN), a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, today announced the introduction of the NetVanta(R) 3400 Series of Multiservice Access Routers. These powerful platforms outperform competing models in their class by delivering up to two T1s of wire-speed performance, even with advanced services like Firewall, Access Control Lists (ACLs) and IPSec Virtual Private Networking (VPN) enabled.



The NetVanta 3400 series includes the NetVanta 3448 and 3430, each a modular, 1U-high, rack-mountable metal chassis. These products are designed for Small and Medium Business (SMB) or enterprise applications requiring high-performance throughput for bandwidth-intensive applications. Each offers a single-slot to house any of the NetVanta Network Interface Modules (NIMs) for WAN access and Dial Backup Interface Modules (DIMs) for disaster recovery applications, two 10/100Base-T Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) interfaces that allow for broadband backup or DMZ, CompactFlash(R) for configuration backup and storage of multiple firmware revisions and support for up to 500 simultaneous VPN tunnels. Each is RoHS compliant making it ideal for both domestic and international applications.

The NetVanta 3448 is differentiated by the addition of a fully managed, non-blocking, eight-port 802.3af-compliant Power over Ethernet (PoE) Switch delivering a full 15.4 watts of power per port. This provides the ability to power any PoE device, including SIP phones, wireless access points or security cameras. The platform's compact size and flexibility (IP router, dial backup, LAN connectivity and managed Ethernet/Power over Ethernet switch) also make it a perfect solution for retail applications.

Recent independent third-party testing conducted by The Tolly Group showed that ADTRAN's NetVanta 3400 Series platforms provide significantly better performance when compared to the Cisco(R) 1841 and 2811. "Tests of the NetVanta 3430 passing data across two simulated T1s shows that the ADTRAN router was the only device tested that achieved wire-speed, zero-loss throughput, even when subjected to taxing 64-byte packets," said Kevin Tolly, president/CEO/founder of The Tolly Group. "The Cisco products that we tested struggled with 64-byte packets, while the NetVanta 3430's performance shows that the product's design has the processing power to handle high packet rates, even when security services are active and vying for processor cycles."

Like all members of the NetVanta family, the NetVanta 3448 and 3430 are based on the ADTRAN Operating System (AOS), which provides a wealth of features and benefits to users including a user-friendly Command Line Interface (CLI) and Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI), NAT-compatible SIP ALG for VoIP applications, Quality of Service (QoS) for delay-sensitive applications, and Virtual Private Networking (VPN). These products also offer a five-year warranty and free firmware upgrades for the life of the unit.

"As the demand for bandwidth-intensive applications continues to grow so does the need for greater throughput and processing speed," said Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager, ADTRAN Enterprise Networks Division. "The NetVanta 3400 Series clearly addresses these needs by allowing businesses to fully utilize a complete arsenal of security and performance features without degrading throughput performance."

The NetVanta 3430 has a list price of $895, while the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $1,045. Both models are currently shipping. The Power over Ethernet option for the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $345 and will be available in Q4. Enhanced VPN capabilities can be activated through a software upgrade for $395. For a limited time, U.S and Canadian customers purchasing a NetVanta 3400 Series Multiservice Access Router will receive a one-year ADTRAN Custom Extended Services (ACES) 5x8xNext Business Day Maintenance agreement at no additional charge. For more information on this offer, visit www.adtran.com/FreeService.

About ADTRAN

ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, with an 18-year history of profitability and a portfolio of more than 1,400 solutions for use in the last mile of today's telecommunications networks. Widely deployed by carriers and enterprises alike, ADTRAN solutions enable voice, data, video, and Internet communications across copper, fiber, and wireless network infrastructures. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by every major U.S. service provider and many global ones, as well as by thousands of public, private and governmental organizations worldwide.

About The Tolly Group

The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL., offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies. For more information on The Tolly Group's services, visit its Web site at http://www.tolly.com, E-mail [email protected], call (561) 391-5610, or fax (561) 391-5810.

For more information, contact the company at 800 9ADTRAN (800 923-8726) or via email at [email protected]. On the Web, visit www.adtran.com.
ADTRAN Expands NetVanta Router Family with Cost-Effective, Fixed-Port, Broadband Routers; New Devices Target Carrier Service Offerings for Small- and Medium-sized Business (SMB) Customers. Check it out:
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- ADTRAN(R), Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN), a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, today announced the introduction of the NetVanta 3100 Series of fixed-port IP access routers. These devices are designed to address the needs of SMBs for secure cost-effective Internet access and corporate connectivity using carrier-supplied broadband services such as DSL or cable.



The NetVanta 3100 Series consists of the NetVanta 3120 and NetVanta 3130. The NetVanta 3120 is a fixed-port Ethernet router with an integral four-port managed Ethernet switch, a single 10/100Base-T Ethernet WAN interface, and an analog modem for dial-backup or remote management. The NetVanta 3130 is a fixed-port ADSL access router with an integral four-port managed Ethernet switch, a single ADSL WAN interface, and an analog modem for dial-backup or remote management. In addition to ADSL and ADSL2, the NetVanta 3130 supports today's most advanced ADSL technology, ADSL2+, for applications with the ability to take advantage of its greater reach and higher bandwidth (up to 25Mbps).

Each of these devices offers a variety of standard features including: standards-based routing/switching protocols; stateful inspection firewall for network security; IPSec VPN for secure corporate connectivity across the Internet; a familiar Command Line Interface (CLI) that eliminates re-training of technical personnel; a user-friendly Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI); NAT-compatible SIP ALG for VoIP applications; Quality of Service (QoS) for VoIP and other delay-sensitive applications; and an analog dial-backup interface for disaster recovery/mission critical applications or for remote management by the carrier.

"The NetVanta 3100 Series addresses the needs of our carrier customers for cost-effective, business-class routers that offer proven reliability and remote management capability," said Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager, ADTRAN Enterprise Networks Division. "SMBs benefit from versatile customer-premises devices that offer flexibility and security with a built-in switch, VPN for data protection, firewall for denial of service attacks, and dial-backup for disaster recovery, all provided as a cost-effective, secure DSL/cable bundle from their carrier."

The NetVanta 3120 and 3130 are priced at $595 and $645 respectively, and are currently shipping.

About ADTRAN

ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, with an 18-year history of profitability and a portfolio of more than 1,400 solutions for use in the last mile of today's telecommunications networks. Widely deployed by carriers and enterprises alike, ADTRAN solutions enable voice, data, video, and Internet communications across copper, fiber, and wireless network infrastructures. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by every major U.S. service provider and many global ones, as well as by thousands of public, private and governmental organizations worldwide.

For more information, contact the company at 800 9ADTRAN (800 923-8726) or via email at [email protected]. On the Web, visit www.adtran.com.
SMC's Commitment to VoIP Shows in New and Upcoming Products; Across the Office, Across the Campus or Across the Ocean, Ready Communication is Easier and More Economical with SMC's Comprehensive Solutions Set for IP Telephony. Check it out:
IRVINE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- SMC(R) Networks (www.smc.com) today reaffirmed its commitment to VoIP, showcasing its comprehensive portfolio of IP telephony solutions for the office and the road. The company's solid line of network switches, enterprise wireless products and phones -- wired and Wi-Fi -- complemented by its IP-PBX and Wireless Travel Voice Gateway round out a solid overall VoIP solution for today's globally oriented business.



VoIP provides an economical alternative to traditional telephony and is emerging as a practical way for businesses to communicate -- within the office building, across the campus or around the world. SMC's VoIP solutions work for today's businesses, where global communication is the norm, and communicators are not tied to their desks. Built on the philosophy that IP telephony will coexist with traditional analog telephony, SMC Networks' solutions accommodate that synergy. The company's products for VoIP communication include IP-based PBX devices; enterprise network switches; desktop phones that support PoE for easy plug-and-play use; portable phones that let busy workers' extensions operate around the office or at any hotspot; and gateway devices that make it possible to use any analog telephone phone as an IP phone.

As VoIP becomes more widely adopted, several usage models are emerging, and SMC Networks' products are designed to make VoIP work in a multitude of scenarios. In a hotel environment, an IP PBX connects calls to rooms, while facilitating free calling by guests and employees to central reservations and other hotel properties. In each room, the desktop IP phone provides broadband access and telephone services to guests, all from a single connect point. In a multinational company, the cost-savings can be huge when companies set up VoIP connections to branch and division offices overseas. With an IP PBX, dialing a colleague in Asia can be as simple as dialing an extension number. And, the benefits aren't just long distance: Employees who spend a lot of time away from their desks can carry their portable Wi-Fi phones with them, thus bettering response times and generating savings on cellular and pager fees. SMC considered frequent travelers, too, when designing its portfolio of VoIP-enabling equipment. The company's all-in-one travel VoIP networking kit, the SMCWTVG, makes VoIP communication easier and more accessible -- from anywhere. Integrating the functions of a wireless gateway and a Voice over IP analog telephone adapter (ATA) in one compact device, it is a high-speed broadband router that is capable of delivering Internet access to several users via built-in NAT functionality with wireless features that can be used in either of two different operating modes: as an 802.11b/g access point providing service to wireless clients or Wi-Fi phones or as a wireless client itself for PC and analog phone connections to other Wi-Fi networks. And, with the two built-in RJ-11 ports, it can be used as an analog telephone adapter, allowing callers with standard analog phones to enjoy the advantages of VoIP while still receiving regular PSTN calls. Another great tool for those on the move, SMC's Skype-enabled 802.11g phone, WSKP100, lets travelers make and receive calls from hotspots, airports, or branch offices -- without the need to drag out the laptop.

SMC's growing portfolio of VoIP products includes a host of network-building switches, routers and adapters, as well as many specialized devices that are available now. Those specialized devices that are available now include the SMC7908VoWBRA, a Wireless ADSL router with built-in Voice over IP gateway; the SMCWTVG Wireless Travel Voice Gateway, which integrates the function of a wireless gateway and a VoIP ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) into a compact, take-along device; and the recently introduced WSKP100 Wireless Internet Phone for easy, portable, computer-independent Skype calling. In Q4, 2006, SMC will add to its line of VoIP products by shipping a desktop, SIP-based IP phone and a full-featured IP PBX. The IP PBX integrates analog trunk and extension call management with Standard Internet Protocol (SIP) trunk and extension management in an all-in-one PBX unit that is scalable to multiple sites and extensions. And, its ability to support wireless or wired devices makes the reality of a mobile office seamless as users move between mobile and desk-based phones. The Desktop IP phone will feature an intuitive LCD display, programming via the keypad or built-in Web interface, and two 10/100 Ethernet ports for connecting the phone to the local LAN and to a PC for added convenience.

"As a global company, we know firsthand the huge benefits of VoIP," said Tony Stramandinoli, SMC Networks' vice president of global marketing. "We've been our own best beta test site, using IP telephony to make co-workers in Taiwan, Spain and the U.K. just an extension away. The high quality and ease of use, combined with cost savings, make colleagues across the globe as accessible as colleagues down the hall."

For more information about SMC Networks, SMC's broad line of products for VoIP, or others in its full complement of networking products, visit www.smc.com, or call 800-SMC-4YOU (800-762-4968).
MySQL Expands Telecom Consulting & Services to Meet Growing Demand for Its Open Source Database; MySQL and MySQL Cluster Selected by Industry's Top Carriers & Network Management Vendors. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced that it is expanding its telecom-specific services and consulting offerings to meet increased industry demand for MySQL(R)-powered software. MySQL's momentum in the networking and telecommunications industry has been growing as a number of the industry's top carriers, operators and infrastructure ISVs select the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases for low-cost, reliable and carrier-grade data management.



Today, over 50 of the world's leading networking and telecom companies employ MySQL for critical database applications, including Alcatel, Clarus Systems, Crannog Software, Critical Path, Empirix, Ericsson, Micromuse (IBM), Nokia, Nortel, Telio and Tellme Networks.

MySQL Cluster is a special high-end version of the MySQL database specifically designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical applications that need strict scalability and high-availability, as are common in the communications industry. The high-performance MySQL Server and MySQL Cluster are used for a wide range of networking and telecommunications applications, including those for enterprise network management, Home Location Registry (HLR), and Voice over IP (VoIP).

"As the telecom and networking markets are converging, companies are being forced to operate more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction," said Ulf Sandberg, MySQL AB's vice president of worldwide services. "Our company offers a strong, focused competency in telecom data management. As these industry leaders are experiencing, MySQL can play a successful role in building high-performance, high-availability infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary software."

"MySQL is the high-performance data management engine powering Clarus Systems' IP telephony productivity solutions for integrators and enterprises," said Brendan Reidy, CEO at Clarus Systems. "MySQL's reliability and speed have helped us develop software that maximizes the availability and performance of enterprise telephony networks, even for very large, distributed deployments. MySQL's affordability and straight-forward licensing made it an easy choice."

MySQL Expands Services for Telecom Customers

MySQL has expanded its telecom-specific industry services and consulting to address the increased demand for the MySQL and MySQL Cluster databases. Telecom customers can now choose from a range of MySQL consulting and services, including:

-- MySQL Cluster Jumpstart Packaged Consulting: MySQL consultants use proven methodologies and expertise in database clustering, replication, fail-over, fault-tolerance and other high availability techniques to "jumpstart" telecommunications database projects.

-- Custom Telecom Consulting: For large telecommunications projects or those with company-specific requirements, MySQL AB can deliver a custom team of experienced MySQL certified consultants to successfully implement MySQL and MySQL Cluster-based projects, including on-site projects.

-- MySQL Certified Support: Database experts with telecom-specific competencies can provide 24x7 technical services to telecommunications customers to maintain their critical always-on systems.

For more information about MySQL in the networking and telecommunications industry, please go to http://www.mysql.com/industry/telecom. For more information about MySQL services and consulting for telecommunications applications, please go to http://www.mysql.com/consulting.

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company's flagship product is the MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 10 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.

With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Cedar Point Completes Interop Testing with Interactive Intelligence. Check it out:
DERRY, N.H., Sept. 19 -- Cedar Point Communications, Inc., the worldwide leader in integrated VoIP switching technologies for the telecommunications industry, today announced that it has completed interoperability testing with Interactive Intelligence Inc.'s enterprise messaging software, Communite(R).



The result combines carrier-class, highly scalable multimedia IP switching from Cedar Point with enhanced messaging applications from Interactive Intelligence to give even the largest of organizations a comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective enterprise communications system.

The testing, which was conducted at Cedar Point's headquarters facility in New Hampshire, successfully proved compatibility between Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System and Communite, a voicemail replacement and messaging system that provides unified messaging, find-me/follow-me, presence management, and other applications ideal for large and distributed organizations, such as higher education institutions.

"As we grow our higher education and enterprise activity beyond our initial deployment with the University of Massachusetts, it will be important that we work with proven enterprise solutions," said George Kassas, founder and executive vice president, business development for Cedar Point Communications. "The high degree of confidence that major universities have placed in Communite, and Interactive Intelligence's ability to expand our menu of business features make the company a valuable ally in this space."

"Like Cedar Point, we are committed to providing solutions that reduce complexity and cost, and increase results for our customers," said Paul Weber, vice president of North American sales for Interactive Intelligence. "By certifying interoperability between our two products, we can help our mutual customers accelerate the rollout of simpler, more cost-effective voice services that are configured to meet the needs of the higher education environment."

Earlier this year, Cedar Point announced an agreement with the University of Massachusetts for the deployment of SAFARI C(Cubed) to a base of more than 30,000 users on the University campus.

Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Multimedia Switching System, the only totally integrated carrier-class VoIP switch that incorporates all of the components that make up the voice switching infrastructure, provides SIP-based features and seamless evolution to an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture. SAFARI C(Cubed) provides superior performance and reliability, significantly reducing capital expenditures, system integration and operations costs for IT departments and network operators offering telephony services while increasing network integrity, security and privacy.

Interactive Intelligence, a global provider of software and services for contact center automation and enterprise IP telephony since 1994, developed Communite as an alternative to multi-box, proprietary messaging systems. Communite offers a unique single-platform, LDAP-based architecture with a single message store and common directory for simplified set-up, maintenance and administration, and scalability up to hundreds of thousands of users across distributed sites. As a software system based on open standards such as SIP, Communite also provides maximum interoperability and long-term investment protection with a cost-effective, incremental migration path from TDM to VoIP, including support of hybrid environments. Adding to deployment flexibility are Communite's unique universal ports, which enable organizations to run voice mail, unified messaging, fax, IVR and other applications on the same port and on the same platform, thus providing cost-effective and manageable "choose-by-function" options to serve even the most diverse user communities.

About Cedar Point Communications
Cedar Point Communications' totally integrated voice and multimedia switch provides IT departments and network operators with cost-efficient, less complex voice-over-IP alternatives to distributed soft-switching and legacy PBX telephony options. Cedar Point's SAFARI C(Cubed) Media Switching System supports legacy circuit and packet-based voice services, as well as delivering core IMS capabilities today that support the anticipated migration to an IMS architecture for converged networks. The company is based in Derry, NH. For more information, please visit http://www.cedarpointcom.com/.

Cedar Point Communications

CONTACT: Paul Schneider of PSPR, Inc. for Cedar Point Communications,+1-215-702-9784, +1-215-817-4384 (Mobile), [email protected]

Web site: http://www.cedarpointcom.com/
Citrix Access Gateway Receives Frost & Sullivan's 2006 Award for Best Product Line Strategy; Award Underscores Citrix's Competitive Advantage Based on Product Synergies. Check it out:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), today announced that Frost & Sullivan has chosen Citrix as the winner of the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award for Product Line Strategy. The award specifically recognizes the Citrix Access Gateway(TM), for its record growth in the SSL VPN market and the rising importance of secure, remote access to today's global enterprise.



Citrix offers a comprehensive range of SSL VPN solutions that make secure application access easy for all organizations, from small businesses to the most demanding global enterprises. Citrix Access Gateway is a complete line of universal SSL VPN appliances providing a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to an organization's applications and data.

"Frost & Sullivan gives the Product Line Strategy Award to a vendor who has demonstrated an astute understanding of its marketplace through its product positioning along with a cohesive vision for its collective offerings," said Rufus Connell, research director, Frost & Sullivan. "With the combination of its dynamic product features, new resources and synergy gained from recent acquisitions, Citrix has positioned itself as one of the most important competitors in the SSL VPN market in an extremely short period of time."

According to Frost & Sullivan, there is a growing recognition among corporate decision makers that there are real cost and time efficiency benefits with a remote workforce. This has lead to an increasing demand for SSL VPN solutions that can provide workers with the information they need while keeping corporate networks secure from malicious attacks and network breaches. In addition to the traditional benefits that SSL VPN technology provides, enterprises are demanding products that offer granular, user-specific access to designated applications within the enterprise network.

"Citrix has always prided itself on strong market leadership, and the Citrix Access Gateway is no exception. Organizations today need highly granular policy-based access to their applications, and Access Gateway delivers that with our innovative SmartAccess capability," said Phil Montgomery, director of product marketing, Citrix Systems. "This award from Frost & Sullivan is an incredible validation of our experience and commitment towards truly enabling remote workers to securely and easily access the applications they need to be productive."

To select each Best Practices Award recipient, Frost & Sullivan uses interviews with all market participants and extensive secondary research of proprietary data to track competitor revenue and market share within the industry. The competitors are then compared and ranked. In addition, factors such as feasibility of product launch, likelihood of customer acceptance and acceptance rates, and estimated time to market are taken into consideration.

About Citrix Access Gateway

Citrix Access Gateway is a line of universal SSL VPN appliances that provide a secure, always-on, single point-of-access to all applications and protocols, including multimedia and voice-over-IP (VoIP). The Access Gateway product line has all of the advantages of IPSec and SSL VPNs, without their costly and cumbersome implementation and management. Unlike traditional SSL VPN products, Access Gateway includes Citrix(R) SmartAccess technology that gives administrators fine grained control over what actions users can take with the applications they access -- such as view, edit, save or print -- based on who they are, where they are located, and what kind of device they are using.

For more information about the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards, please visit http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/meawards-overview.pag.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and Citrix Access Gateway(TM) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Citrix Sets New Standard in Web Application Delivery with NetScaler 7.0; New Citrix NetScaler Release Delivers 150 New Features, Including Enhanced Scalability, Improved Application Fluency and Unprecedented Manageability. Check it out:
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) today announced the latest upgrade to its popular Citrix(R) NetScaler(R) product line. The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release again raises the bar for web application delivery, making it dramatically easier for enterprises to accelerate the performance of business-critical web applications, secure sensitive application data and lower the cost of delivering web applications to any user, in any location.



The Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release builds on the product's widely-recognized success in delivering the world's largest and most demanding web applications, improving the web experience of an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day. Since acquiring the NetScaler product line last year, Citrix has introduced the benefits of NetScaler to companies of all sizes through its extensive worldwide channel, resulting in one of the fastest growth rates in the web application delivery market(1).

"Citrix NetScaler pioneered the web application delivery market and is making it increasingly easy for enterprise customers to upgrade from first-generation load balancers to highly integrated NetScaler systems that dramatically improve the performance, security and cost of delivering web applications," said Wes Wasson, corporate vice president, product marketing and strategy, Citrix Systems. "This latest release of Citrix NetScaler extends our leadership in this market and further advances state-of-the-art web application delivery."

150+ New Capabilities for Web Application Delivery

The new Citrix NetScaler 7.0 release adds more than 150 new capabilities designed to meet the increasing web application delivery demands of enterprise customers across all functional areas, including:

-- Record Application Scalability - Now supports up to 15,000 servers supported in a single application environment - a three-fold increase over Citrix's already record-level scalability. Advanced management of policy elements also allows automated configuration changes to be made across large numbers of objects, such as servers and application services.

-- More Powerful Application Policy Management - Adds numerous enhancements to Citrix NetScaler's application policy management framework, AppExpert(TM), including an enhanced ability to rewrite HTTP headers for highly complex Web applications. Additional enhancements include full bi-directional rewriting of headers and URLs, allowing organizations to more rapidly integrate independently-developed applications while publishing a single, consistent Web URL address to all users.

-- Improved Application Availability - More sophisticated application health monitoring capabilities that provide early warnings of potential problems with critical transactional elements in complex web applications.

-- Expanded Application Security - Additional capabilities that protect sensitive internal details of an application infrastructure, such as IP addresses, internal URLs and directory files. The new release also incorporates numerous additional security capabilities, including enhanced management of access control lists (ACLs) that simplify the control of traffic permitted within a trusted application environment.

-- Enhanced Ease of Configuration and Management - Substantial improvements in ease-of-use across the entire product line, including new configuration wizards that automate set-up tasks and substantially reduce deployment times for both network administrators and channel partners. The new release also includes multiple advances to NetScaler's graphical user interface (GUI) and command-line interface (CLI), making policy management even more intuitive and enabling application delivery policy management by non-networking specialists.

-- Simplified SSL Security Management - Simple, wizard-driven creation of SSL certificates that are used to encrypt sensitive web application data. Strong security and continuous application availability is maintained with automated warnings of SSL certificates about to expire.

-- Support for New Application Types - Expanded support for application traffic such as voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) through capabilities like load balancing for session initiation protocol (SIP) servers.

Pricing and Availability

Citrix NetScaler 7.0 is available immediately. Pricing begins at $17,499 per system.

About Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System

Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery System optimizes the delivery of web applications -- improving performance up to 15x, increasing security, and potentially doubling web server capacity at half the cost -- ensuring the best total cost of ownership (TCO), security, availability, and performance for web applications. Citrix NetScaler System is a comprehensive network system that combines high-speed load balancing and content switching with state-of-the-art application acceleration, layer 4-7 traffic management, data compression, static and dynamic content caching, SSL acceleration, numerous network optimizations, and robust application security into a single, tightly integrated solution. Deployed in front of application servers, the system significantly reduces processing overhead on application and database servers, reducing hardware and bandwidth costs.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 180,000 organizations around the world rely on Citrix to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2005 were $909 million. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

Citrix(R) and NetScaler(R) are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

(1) "Citrix NetScaler Gains Share in Web Application Delivery Market with Fastest Revenue Growth Rate Among Market Share Leaders" http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=26024.
Our 100th Issue of IP Communications Thought Leadership. Check it out:
A modified version of this article will appear in the October issue if Internet Telephony magazine.
 
 
100 issues — wow — it has been an amazing ride. If you can believe it, the magnitude of this issue didn’t hit me until I sat down and started to write this column. As many of you know, in 1997 when we decided to launch a magazine titled Internet Telephony most people thought we were crazy. They told us outright that we were nuts. Certainly this attitude in the market was a bit scary when starting a new magazine as the vendors who were mocking us were the exact ones we were supposed to be writing about.


 
In fact in hindsight, we were probably crazier than we realized, because without hundreds of companies to write about it really is difficult to sustain a business-to-business trade magazine.
 
There were a few companies that were courageous enough to realize we were onto something and there are also some individuals that stood out in my mind as being instrumental to the success of the IP communications market as well as the success of this magazine and the associated expo by the same name.
 
As this is a top 100 Voices of IP communications issue, some of the people in this column will be from this list. Many of the people I write about here are worth sharing with you because they were instrumental in the industry or they impressed me on some level over the years. We are truly indebted to all of the people who have played a crucial role in making IP communications as successful as it is today.
 
To get the ball rolling I decided to start with someone who isn’t on the list (I won't comment on whether anyone else in this column made it). Chris Ward was working in the marketing department of Natural MicroSystems at the time of this magazine’s inception and when we announced our plans to launch, he and his management team were so ecstatic, it really gave us here at TMC a moral boost and reaffirmed our belief that we were doing the right thing. Hats off to Brough Turner and Mike Katz, who also work at NMS, for playing instrumental roles in bringing the world’s first VoIP gateways to fruition.
 
From here it makes sense to go to VocalTec — who really popularized the softphone and IP telephony gateway — and Elon Ganor, the company’s leader who, when looking at the first issue of this magazine, lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I know because I personally handed him the first issue at the Computer Telephony Expo in March 1998. In fact, at that time the company’s CTO, Lior Haramaty, knew more about VoIP than just about anyone else, and we were fortunate to have him as a columnist in this magazine for a number of years.
 
Jeff Pulver was certainly another colorful figure in the world of VoIP. Jeff’s VON conference became a gathering of industry insiders trying to figure out what to make of this whole VoIP phenomenon. The event became a good partnering venue and to this day it’s still a good partnering locale for companies in the VoIP space. Jeff has also played a big part in the legal scene, advocating that VoIP should have minimal regulation.
 
Another unforgettable figure in the world of VoIP is Andy Voss who worked for Nuera when I met him back in the mid-nineties. Andy has a unique sense of humor and knows the communications market inside and out. He tells it like he sees it and I always learn something when I speak with him. After working for Nuera he went off to start the session border control company Sansay and is still the CEO of this successful endeavor.
 
Jon Shapiro is larger than life. He runs Alliance Systems (News - Alert) and his company was instrumental in building ruggedized PC platforms for the PC PBX, IP PBX and Internet Telephony gateway markets over the years. Jon has been a good friend and has offered solid advice over the years and the industry is better off for having him in it. I am looking forward to him being back in the public spotlight the way he was in the nineties. He was a great force in the communications market of the last decade and his knowledge and experience is precious and worth sharing.
 
Another person of note is Gordon Payne who was the face of Tundo — an early IP PBX player. Gordon did a great job at Tundo but when the bubble burst and Tundo ran out of funding he decided to take some time off and then joined Net6 where he focused on bringing intelligence to IP phones — allowing them to access applications and content. Net6 later was purchased by Citrix.
 
Tundo’s failure is sad because at a few Internet Telephony EXPOs after the company folded I was fielding questions from Fortune 100 companies as to why Tundo was no longer around. If they had held out a bit longer they might have become a major player in the space.
 
Jeffrey Citron of Vonage gets lots of credit for many things in the VoIP market. He was the visionary that decided to make Vonage a consumer VoIP play. He single-handedly scared the living daylights out of the RBOCs and cable companies, forcing them to develop VoIP strategies. This spurred billions of dollars of communications investment. He delivered on the promise of VoIP for the masses. He didn’t do anything technically spectacular — Net2Phone did more or less the exact same thing many years before Vonage — he just was able to put together a company that knew how to market to consumers and he backed it up with enough investment to get millions of people to try VoIP. As they say, timing is everything and Citron probably had the critical mass of broadband subscribers needed to get his service to take off rapidly. Also, while branding Vonage, his company’s marketing caused the enterprise and SMB VoIP markets to grow more quickly and also made sure virtually everyone in the U.S. knew what Vonage and VoIP was.
 
It turns out this was a positive thing for VoIP until the Vonage IPO which tanked and now all the companies that pointed to Vonage as a role model are trying to explain to their investors how their business model differs from the orange-logoed broadband phone company. Still, Citron should be commended in a major way for what he did — he brought widespread understanding to the world of VoIP and educated the entire U.S. population on what was once an esoteric and exclusive technology. Thanks Jeffrey.
 
It is interesting that Vonage first started out life as a company focusing on selling VoIP service to cable companies. When the telecom bubble burst in 2001 there was a bitter struggle to determine what the company should do. Citron bet on becoming a phone company and made at least one enemy in the industry by taking this course. He obviously made the right bet — but many in the industry believe the company can be even more successful if Vonage was to focus more on profitability and less on market share.
 
While Citron battled for control of Vonage, a strategy shift was taking place at 8x8 (News - Alert) and the company made a similar bet that selling to consumers their Packet8 service made the most sense. It would seem that CEO Bryan Martin’s decision paid off and even though the company’s stock price has been hammered lately — in sympathy with Vonage it seems — I am impressed with the company’s branding and the fact they were able to hang on in the most difficult telecom environment in history. Unlike Vonage the company was already public and did not have access to hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding — they had to make it through the turbulent telecom waters with limited resources.
 
Another major influence in the market came from Niklas Zennstrom who co-founded Skype and has changed the world’s appreciation for what IP communications can do for you. Hundreds of millions of people have downloaded this software and Skype may be one of the most viral software packages ever created. Much credit goes to Zennstrom for educating the world about VoIP and more importantly doing such a great job that Meg Whitman’s eBay — decided to purchase Skype for more than 2 billion dollars. As time goes on I expect to see tighter integration between Skype and eBay’s services and as the two companies work more closely together we can expect both to do even better.
 
Many in the industry think eBay overpaid for Skype — I still believe eBay made a very smart decision to purchase the VoIP software leader and although the price was high they will recoup this money more rapidly than people think.
 
Michael Powell was another major force in the VoIP market and under his tenure frequencies were freed up to allow WiFi to become reality. This in and of itself is of major importance to wireless VoIP or WiFi telephony, but more importantly Powell was a huge proponent of VoIP and really seemed to care about allowing consumers access to the best service at the lowest prices. In fact, at his keynote at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO — his first after stepping down as chairman — it become apparent that he would liked to have made more consumer-friendly pro-VoIP changes at the FCC but just wasn’t able to.
 
From regulation we go to the world’s largest web portal and you should know I am impressed by Yahoo’s Jeff Bonforte because he is not only a brilliant entrepreneur launching i-drive.com in the bubble days, he is also amazingly witty. I am sure working with him on Yahoo’s VoIP initiatives is a unique experience. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him at Andy Abramson’s recent birthday party and he made a fun dinner that much better.
 
Hats off to Seamus Hourihan who was a driving force behind Acme Packet’s (News - Alert) ascent into the session border control market. The company came on the scene post telecom bubble — many thought the timing would limit their success — and was able to become a major supplier to equipment manufacturers and service providers in a very short time.
 
Robert Messer of ABP (News - Alert) is another important industry voice who is passionate about building the VoIP reseller channel. Without resellers the VoIP market would have taken much longer to get off the ground. Perhaps no other person has been as passionate about VoIP resellers as Robert.
 
Mark Spencer is yet another important name in the industry and without his efforts the open source communications market may have begun much more slowly. He and Bill Rich of Pingtel have been major players in this market. Similarly David Mandelstam of Sangoma has made it a business to equip Asterisk (News - Alert) servers with high-end, high-quality boards allowing Asterisk systems to scale very nicely.
 
Terry Matthews, the communications industry’s most successful serial entrepreneur. The number of companies he has founded is awe-inspiring. He has picked virtually every niche in communications and launched a successful company in it. He should write books on how to launch and run communications businesses.
 
Two other people that are helping grow the IP communications market are Shrihari Pandit of Stealth Communications and Hunter Newby from Telx. The two have been instrumental in building the VoIP Peering Fabric, a widely used fabric with billions of minutes of VoIP traffic flowing across it. VoIP peering is one of the biggest things to happen to the VoIP market and it is worth noting that in the last week XConnect, a peering competitor, has made big news by acquiring a peering company and in doing so raising its profile in the voice peering community.
 
Sphere is the company that invented the IP PBX but at the time (the mid-nineties) it decided to use ATM instead of IP. They were at least five years ahead of their time. Todd Landry has been a steady voice at the company and even now Sphere is a telecom leader with their focus on leading-edge SOA technology.
 
Manuel Vexler and Michael Khalilian have been two of the major voices in the world of IMS with their exemplary and tireless IMS Forum work; the pair has worked tirelessly along with the rest of the forum to ensure IMS can continue to excel as a framework for next-generation communications.
 
Ben Guiderian is the most significant voice in the world of WiFi telephony and his company SpectraLink has been at the forefront of this technology. Hassan Ahmed is just one of the faces of Sonus Networks, a company that was the premier IP communications company of the pre-meltdown days with a stock that skyrocketed beyond anyone’s expectations. The company has made it through the dark times and is doing much better now as they position their products to be leaders in the IMS market.
 
Few people in the market are as knowledgeable about enterprise VoIP as Mark Straton who represents Siemens. Expect to see great things from him. Similarly, Harald Braun is one of the best champions of IMS I have met. Harold by the way is also as dynamic as they get and is able to speak to you about technology in an animated fashion you wouldn’t expect from someone so technical. No offense intended towards technical people mind you, but I am an engineer so I think I can comment safely on the matter.
 
Quintum’s Chuck Rutledge is soft-spoken but as the company spokesperson Quintum has launched a raft of new products and continues to do well in the market competing against some true IP communications giants.
 
Thanks to all of the people that have contributed to the IP communications market. it has been a wild ride. I am proud to be in the company of such an important group and most importantly I am humbled by your support over the years.
 
Thank you my loyal readers who read my columns and give me so much feedback on what you agree with and what you think I am wrong about.
 
It is because of all of your efforts that this publication is consistently the most successful and thickest magazine in the communications market. Many have told me that Internet Telephony is as thick or thicker than just about any technology magazine they subscribe to. Magazine thickness by the way is generally the gauge of a magazine’s success level. We could not be where we are without all of the support from the IP communications community. Once again, thank you.
 
I have always believed that as communications transitions to the world of IP, new and exciting possibilities await us all. The last 100 issues are just the beginning. We have only achieved a small part of the industry’s potential. In the future, communications will become a more and more integral part of business and our lives. We will see IP communications as a more and more strategic part of enterprise and service provider investments. Technologies like WiFi, WiMAX, IPTV, SIP and IMS will only allow us to have greater impact on the world with the new ideas that continue to come out of some very bright industry minds.
 
The next ten years will see more and more communications innovations from traditional communications companies but we need to remember that telecom is also now part of the computing world. What this means is that we will not only see innovation from the likes of such companies as Lucent and Avaya, we will see more Skypes pop up around the world too. This means the pace of innovation in IP communications will likely continue to grow and this will lead to more and more choice for the companies looking to take advantage of all that the IP communications market has to offer.
 
Personally I look forward to helping to provide clarity in this new world of IP communications for another 100 issues and more. I look forward to sharing the journey with you.
 
/////////
 
This article will appear in its entirety in the October issue of Internet Telephony magazine, which will be distributed at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. From what I’ve been hearing, the whole industry will be in San Diego from October 10–13.
 
Of course, if you’re looking ahead, the world’s best attended IP communications event is coming to Florida in January. Yes, I am talking about Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East and you can expect a collocated IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 conference there as well. There will be a tremendous focus on open source, cable technology, conferencing and collaboration, VoIP security, OSS/BSS, IPTV, voice peering and wireless technologies. We recently put together the tracks for this show and without a doubt this will be the best conference in the world for IP communications. The sheer volume of sessions will ensure that regardless of whether you are a service provider, enterprise or developer there will be enough high-quality, unbiased content to not only educate you but ensure that you become an expert in your topic(s) of interest.
 
Please mark your calendar now for January 23-27, 2007 and book your hotel immediately as this is peak vacation season and this event continues to quickly sell out every hotel in its area, months in advance.
GENBAND and Resolute Announce Pseudowire Interoperability for End-to-End Circuit Emulation Solutions. Check it out:
ATLANTA & PLANO, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 19, 2006 -- GENBAND(TM) Inc., a leading provider of IMS-based telecommunications applications and infrastructure products enabling converged IP multimedia services, and Resolute Networks, a leading provider of circuit emulation pseudowire sub-system and technology solutions, today announced that the two companies have successfully completed extensive interoperability testing between Resolute's CMX-1614 Circuit Emulation Component Module and GENBAND's G6(R) Universal Media Gateway.



The GENBAND and Resolute interop validation was triggered by specific requests from Tier 1 network equipment providers. Pseudowire solutions preserve profitable legacy services while enabling the creation of a truly next-generation network. It allows an operator to package any service, legacy or emerging, and send it into the network in a common format that both preserves the service's original features and delivers the values of end-to-end OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning). By using Resolute's CMX-1614 at the remote site with GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway as the central site circuit emulation aggregator, network equipment providers can realize the benefits of pseudowire by giving service providers an open/standards-based platform that can be quickly deployed to address the needs for such services.

"The proving of interoperability between Resolute and GENBAND is an early indication of a trend that will have significant implications for the Circuit Emulation Services (CES) market," states Don Sparks, vice president of product management and architecture at GENBAND. "The rapid growth in packet-based infrastructure means that CES is ever more important to service providers that have decided to converge all their voice and data services. The huge installed base of TDM-based customer equipment and the increasing pressure to keep capex as low as possible means that forklift infrastructure replacement of enterprise voice and data equipment is a central concern for operators' customers. By using CES in the access network, service providers support their customers using existing equipment while utilizing new high performance access network infrastructure."

"This is another example of the maturity of the SAToP and CESoPSN circuit emulation standards," adds Ron Cohen, CTO of Resolute Networks. "The standardization work of the last few years at the IETF, ITU-T, MEF and MFA on circuit emulation services is now allowing service providers to choose the optimal packetized voice solutions, whether it is VoIP or CES, from a variety of vendors, to suit the needs of their specific networks and applications."

Following this announcement, Resolute's Network Equipment Provider customers supporting the major access markets including Carrier Ethernet, PON, DOCSIS cable and fixed wireless, will now be able to offer service providers direct interconnection for millions of TDM voice customers using high performance access networks directly into carrier networks via GENBAND's G6 Universal Media Gateway and without needing to replace their existing, fully featured PBX implementations.

About Resolute Networks

Resolute Networks Ltd. is a leading provider of standards-compliant sub-system and OEM solutions for circuit-emulation applications. Resolute's solutions are based on the company's silicon and module technology optimized to support high performance converged telecommunication services over Ethernet, MPLS and IP infrastructures. The company offers circuit emulation solutions for both access and aggregation rates of up to OC-3/STM1 (155Mbps). Based in Modi'in, Israel, Resolute Networks has a worldwide presence and markets its products in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.resolutenetworks.com.

About GENBAND(TM)

GENBAND is the leading supplier of IP multimedia application and infrastructure products and solutions for a diverse set of VoIP and IMS networks worldwide. These IMS-ready applications and solutions enable wireline, cable, and wireless service providers to rapidly deploy new multimedia services, while providing a foundation to transition legacy networks to next generation networks. GENBAND has deployed its IP Multimedia products and technology to over 100 customers with more than 750 deployments, across three continents. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, GENBAND has research and development facilities in Fremont, California; Austin and Plano, Texas; and New Delhi, India. Additional information is available at www.genband.com.
CHELMSFORD, Mass., Sept. 19 -- Sonus Networks, Inc. , a leading supplier of service provider Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions, and Cable & Wireless International, the world's pre-eminent full service telecommunications provider in small to medium sized markets, today announced that Cable & Wireless International has selected Sonus Networks as the supplier of its next-generation IP-voice network. Cable & Wireless International plans to deploy one of the world's largest IP-voice networks delivering primary line local, long-distance and international telephony service. Operating in 34 countries around the world, including 14 islands in the Caribbean, Cable and Wireless will initially deploy its Sonus-based network to support the Caribbean Islands and Bermuda. In select markets, Cable and Wireless plans ultimately to replace its infrastructure with Sonus' award-winning IMS-ready access solution.



"Cable & Wireless International's decision to replace its legacy infrastructure with a next generation, end-to-end network from Sonus is one of the most aggressive decisions by an incumbent carrier to date," said Hassan Ahmed, chairman and CEO, Sonus Networks. "Sonus is proud to be recognized as one of the only vendors in the world capable of providing such a robust solution, delivering a unique combination of enhanced localized call features and services, a variety of legacy signaling variants, as well as a platform for future next-generation features."

Cable & Wireless is deploying a complete suite of Sonus' IMS-ready solutions including both the GSX9000(TM) and GSX4000(TM) Open Services Switch, the PSX(TM) Call Routing Server, the ASX(TM) Access Server, the Network Border Switch(TM) for IP-to-IP peering and security, and the Sonus Insight(TM) Management System for advanced OSS and billing support. With the Sonus foundation in place, Cable & Wireless is positioned to take advantage of emerging IMS standards and to rapidly integrate and deploy next generation, IMS-based services, one of the key competitive differentiators in the Sonus-based platform.

"Cable & Wireless aims to maintain its strong leadership position by embracing new technologies that give our customers access to unparalleled services and features," said Harris Jones, CEO Cable & Wireless International. "Cable & Wireless is committed to being a leading force in the evolution towards the all IP network, and we feel Sonus is the right partner to help us get there."

Frank Mount, Chief Technology Officer, Cable & Wireless International said, "We are pleased to have selected Sonus after a rigorous technical and commercial evaluation. The Sonus architecture provides us with the services, scale and ease of operation to transform our networks. We look forward to continuing the excellent working relationship established."

Cable & Wireless also selected Sonus to deliver a full range of professional services, such as design consulting; managing and supporting a full turnkey deployment including Engineering, Furnishing and Installation (EF&I) services; leading the migration from legacy to a Sonus-based network; and providing in-country operations support to enable rapid turn-up and operational readiness of the next generation network. Sonus Networks' comprehensive service and support organization is experienced in the rapid deployment of packet voice solutions for some of the world's most discerning operators.

About Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless is one of the world's leading international communications companies. It operates through two stand alone business units -- International and UK.

The International business unit operates integrated telecommunications companies in 34 countries offering mobile, broadband, domestic and international fixed line services to residential and business customers, with principal operations in the Caribbean, Panama, Macau, Channel Islands and Monaco.

The UK business unit provides enterprise and carrier solutions to the largest users of telecoms services across the UK, US, continental Europe and Asia, and consumer and small business broadband services in the UK through Bulldog.

For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to http://www.cw.com/.

About Sonus Networks

Sonus Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions for wireline and wireless service providers. With its comprehensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution, Sonus addresses the full range of carrier applications, including residential and business voice services, wireless voice and multimedia, trunking and tandem switching, carrier interconnection and enhanced services. Sonus' voice infrastructure solutions are deployed in service provider networks worldwide. Founded in 1997, Sonus is headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Additional information on Sonus is available at http://www.sonusnet.com/.

This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to the "Risk Factors" section of Sonus' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, dated May 8, 2006, filed with the SEC, which identifies important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Risk factors include among others: the impact of material weaknesses in our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting on our ability to report our financial results timely and accurately; the unpredictability of our quarterly financial results; risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's announced review of its historical stock option grants and accounting, including any potential impact of the Company's financial statements or results, the Company's inability to timely report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company's potential inability to meet NASDAQ requirements for continued listing, potential investigations or litigation arising out of the review or any restatement; risks associated with our international expansion and growth; consolidation in the telecommunications industry; and potential costs resulting from pending securities litigation against the company. Any forward-looking statements represent Sonus' views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing Sonus' views as of any subsequent date. While Sonus may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Sonus specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.

Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

For more information, please contact:

Sonus Investor Relations: Sonus Media Relations:
Jocelyn Philbrook Sarah McAuley
978-614-8672 212-699-1836
[email protected] [email protected]

Sonus Networks, Inc.

CONTACT: Jocelyn Philbrook (Investor Relations), +1-978-614-8672,[email protected], or Sarah McAuley (Media Relations), +1-212-699-1836,[email protected], both of Sonus Networks, Inc.

Web site: http://www.sonusnet.com/http://www.cw.com/

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