The concept of “big data” is set to alter the relationship of data to information consumption forever, he explains. “Amidst all of this transformation, there is one certainty: it will be mandatory – not optional – for organisations to plan information management strategies to absolutely address and embrace these trends.”

“According to Gartner and IDC, employees within an organisation generate more than 3GB of data each year and this is set to increase by more than 600 percent over the next five years. The effect of this is that 30 percent of a typical working day will be spent looking for information or documents, meaning that a company with 1,000 employees could spend around R40 million in lost productivity.

“Many organisations are hoping that a combination of knowledge workers, innovation and better access to information and expertise will get them through the current recession and into the next economy. Not only is this forcing business to be leaner than ever, but it is also stressing the need for a concise, accessible view of information in order to stay productive amid the constant challenge of information overload.”

These requirements, together with the New Companies Act and the King III Report, are creating a greater focus on governance and risk management and how companies manage their information, processes and documents than ever before. This is known today as Enterprise Information Management (EIM).

“The impact on the IT environment is that it now needs to boost productivity, create value with automation, reduce costs and simplify the environment for end users,” Joubert explains.

“The Datacentrix Business Solutions division has carried out extensive market research on how best to achieve this and has found a key area to help drive these aspects with local companies, taking particular consideration of how much is spent on the licensing, support, training and maintenance of various tools for content and document management, workflow, reporting and collaboration.”

In order to deliver what it believes to be the most complete EIM solution on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Platform, Datacentrix Business Solutions has partnered with Nintex, Panorama and ecspand.

“Nintex, a leading SharePoint workflow company, with more than 3,000 customers in 90 countries, has just signed a partnership agreement with Datacentrix Business Solutions, while Panorama has partnered with the company for several years now, delivering BI solutions for the Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platforms. Panorama’s Necto is the first socially enabled BI solution to be interoperable with the Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Denali platforms while supporting both OLAP and BISM modes.

“ecspand turns Microsoft SharePoint into a complete EIM solution capable of offering DMS, imaging and document capture, rendering, compliance, advanced storage management, e-mail management, as well as integration with ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics and SAP.”

As a result of these partnerships, Datacentrix is now a certified value-added reseller and preferred implementation partner of these technologies, offering the South African market the most integrated, affordable and complete EIM solution.

Take advantage of Datacentrix’ free BI or workflow proof of concept offerings by contacting Paul Viviers on 072 143 7289 or pviviers@datacentrix.co.za.

Źródło: Big data = big chaos

“Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications and customisation – adding a powerful new way of communicating and sharing,” says Craige Fleischer, Director of Mobile Communications for Samsung Electronics SA. “It’s easy to see why our local Samsung GALAXY S II users are eager to get their hands on the ICS platform.”

“Given the high demand, users may struggle to upgrade immediately due to the limited capacity on the FOTA servers, but we urge GALAXY S II users to keep trying. We also encourage users to upgrade via Kies, as not only is it easy and simple, but as it is done via the PC, it has unlimited server capacity and as such, during this initial period of high demand is the preferred download method.”

Źródło: High Demand for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Upgrade for GALAXY S II, says Samsung

Cybergeddon Directed by Diego Velasco (The Zero Hour)

Anthony E. Zuiker, the visionary creator of the CSI franchise and his production company Dare to Pass, along with Dolphin Digital Media, revealed the director and full cast for Cybergeddon, a ground-breaking digital event about the growing threat of cybercrime, identity theft and vulnerabilities in our highly connected lives to be released exclusively on Yahoo!. Cybergeddon, now in full production in Toronto, Canada, will star Olivier Martinez (Unfaithful) as the elusive cybercriminal Gustove Dobreff, and Missy Peregrym (“Rookie Blue”) as FBI agent Chloe Jocelyn. Manny Montana (“Breakout Kings”) and Kick Gurry (Speed Racer) are also attached and will play FBI Agent Frank Parker and former cybercriminal turned good-guy Chase ‘Rabbit’ Rosen respectively. Award-winning director Diego Velasco (The Zero Hour) has also signed on to bring the story to life.

The story follows agent Chloe Jocelyn as she investigates a slew of seemingly unrelated cyber-attacks with fellow agent Frank Parker and incarcerated master hacker Chase ‘Rabbit’ Rosen. Chloe and her team must crack the worldwide cybercrime ring led by Gustove Dobreff before it is too late. In a world where everyone is connected, everyone is at risk. Norton by Symantec consulted directly with the projects’ creators to lend credibility and technical insights that helped inform the narrative and led to the creation of a cybersecurity character in the film.

“I could not be happier with the talent level for Cybergeddon. Missy, Manny, and Kick are such gifted actors and a dream trio for us, and Diego is a dynamic shooter and visceral storyteller. Adding Olivier Martinez to the mix puts this movie over the top,” says creator Anthony E. Zuiker.

Cybergeddon, the 2.0 version of crime fiction, will premiere globally on Yahoo! in September 2012 as a series of sequential instalments that will engage Yahoo!’s worldwide audience of more than 700 million unique visitors through an immersive storytelling, social media and gaming experience.

Written by Miles Chapman (The Tomb), Cybergeddon executive producers include Anthony E. Zuiker, Matthew Weinberg, (President, Dare to Pass) and Bill O’Dowd, (CEO, Dolphin Digital Studios). Progressive financing and distribution company Dolphin Digital Media backed the project in a deal brokered by Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

“Dolphin’s commitment to bringing best in class original scripted programming to the Internet starts with the combination of the best talent and the budget to execute their vision. Anthony E. Zuiker is a world class storyteller and it is a testament to his vision for Cybergeddon that we are able to attract Olivier, Missy, and such an amazing cast.”

Please visit Cybergeddon on Facebook or follow @cybergeddon on Twitter.

Źródło: First-Of-Its-Kind Digital Motion Picture Event – Cybergeddon

CSPs can increase customer loyalty and reduce churn by approaching CEM in a holistic way, creating a positive overall experience by understanding customer needs and perceptions and improving all customer “touch points” or interactions.  

HP Solutions Consulting Services has released a customer experience white paper that shows how a holistic approach can yield real-world benefits.

HP announced new CEM capabilities for solutions within the HP OSS Transformation portfolio:

• The HP Customer Experience Assurance Solution (HP CEA) provides continuous, real-time analysis of large volumes of structured and unstructured data to help CSPs gather useful insights that can:
  • improve the quality of experience by ensuring that customers consistently receive all the services they have paid for and the quality they expect
  • optimise network investment and capacity planning by generating information on how the network and resources are being used by customers.
  • HP Unified Correlation Analyser (HP UCA) enhances the customer experience with new, automated tools that accelerate problem identification and resolution. The tools inter-operate across multiple technology domains to provide an umbrella correlation solution over fault and performance management systems.
  • HP Service Activator (HP SA) includes capabilities to streamline the entire customer order-to-service delivery process—and accelerate time to revenue. HP SA 6.0 exhibits dramatic performance improvements with new cluster architecture, fully supports LTE, and provides enhanced prepackaged solutions for virtual private network and mobile customer activation.

HP also announced CEM-related enhancements for solutions in the HP Actionable Customer Intelligence portfolio:

• HP Subscriber, Network and Policy (HP SNAP) allows CSPs to make available to customers personalised offerings that differentiate their service experience. HP SNAP version 2.4 improves the integration between policy and charging rules and campaigns and promotion management.  Using HP SNAP studio, CSPs can easily define personalised service offerings with innovative charging models and directly promote them to specifically targeted customer segments.
• HP Ad Experience Personalisation helps CSPs deliver targeted, customised campaigns to their mobile customers.   Based on opt-in profile information from customers, CSPs can collaborate with “over the top” providers and marketing partners to generate new revenue streams.  Mobile customers benefit by receiving offers that are tailored to their behaviors, interests and potential needs. HP Ad Experience Personalisation is based on the HP Smart Unified User Profile (HP SUUP) solution, and is powered by high-performance analytics from HP Vertica, an HP Company, and the HP Internet Usage Manager mediation solution.

The HP Targeted Innovation portfolio is enhanced with new capabilities:

• HP Revenue CentralView Fraud Risk Management protects CSP customers from fraud activities, such as SMS spamming, callback fraud, identity theft and PBX hacking, with new monitoring features that improve fraud detection
• HP Revenue Leakage Control solutions provide more accurate billing by adhering to TM Forum guidelines to implement all recommended key performance indicators for revenue assurance.

The HP Universal Service Level Agreement Manager solution has been selected as a finalist for TM Forum’s Solution Excellence Award at Management World 2012. Additionally, the HP Executive Scorecard solution has successfully completed product certification of as part of the TMF Business Metrics Automation project.

 More information about HP solutions for CSPs is available at www.hp.com/go/csp.

Źródło: HP Enhances Solutions to Help Service Providers Improve Customer Experience Management

“As computing and networking have evolved, the requirement for ever faster datatransfer speeds has grown too. Mellanox products have, over the past few years, been fine-tuned to meet these changing needs, and their connectivity equipment has been implemented extensively on a global scale. We are pleased to be able to bring these specialised solutions to the South African market,” says Raul Del Fabbro, Manager: Storage Solutions Division at DCC.

DCC will be distributing the entire product range, including:

• Adapter cards – designed to drive the full performance of high-speed InfiniBand and 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet fabrics.
• InfiniBand switch systems – deliver high-bandwidth and low-latency to Enterprise Data Centres, High-Performance Computing and Embedded environments.
• Ethernet switch systems – more scalable, lower latency, and virtualised fabric with lower overall fabric costs and power consumption, greater efficiencies, and simplified management.
• Gateway systems – enable data centres to operate in high-performance 40Gb/s network speed on the hosts, while at the same time, connect to lower speed Gigabit and 10GigE LAN networks and 2, 4, 8Gb/s Fibre Channel SAN networks, providing I/O consolidation.
• Management software – provides an innovative application-centric approach to bridge the gap between servers, applications and fabric elements.
• Acceleration software – reduce latency, increase throughput, and offload CPU cycles, enhancing the performance of applications while eliminating the need for large investments in hardware infrastructure.
• Software drivers and tools – high performance interconnect software for HPC and enterprise data centres.
• Cables – a cost-effective solution for connecting high bandwidth fabrics, extending the benefits of Mellanox’s high-performance InfiniBand and 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet adapters throughout the network.
“We took on this product range after receiving several requests from system integrators for high speed network components for their customers. After sourcing these products and implementing them in several local applications, we received positive feedback from clients on the success of the installations and decided to pursue a direct distributorship,” Del Fabbro explains.

“We met with the team from Mellanox, who felt there was much synergy between our organisations, given our skills in storage area network (SAN) solutions and that we are an existing distributor for one of Mellanox’s major Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Mellanox was also satisfied that we have the focused capability and specialist skills necessary to apply their products to the solutions our partners deliver,” he adds.

The Mellanox range complements DCC’s existing SAN solutions offering and opens up new avenues and markets, enabling the distributor to address a niche in the market and take advantage of growing opportunities in the high performance networking space. Mellanox’s range also meets another growing requirement of going green and implementing more energy efficient solutions, thanks to their smaller physical footprint, higher port density and lower energy consumption when compared to standard networking products.

“There are a number of opportunities and applications for the Mellanox range, and we expect that these products will see strong growth in the future, although because of its specialised nature this may not be an overnight occurrence. We will be working to create awareness for the brand over the next few months, providing training for selected resellers and later in the year hosting a comprehensive product launch,” says Del Fabbro.

The Mellanox range is available immediately from selected system integrators and resellers.

Źródło: DCC delivers high performance switching and network connectivity with Mellanox

Ruckus Wireless have announced that it is demonstrating new wireless technology that revolutionises connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots – making it as easy, seamless and secure as today’s cellular experience.

This new technology, is based on a framework of features and specifications, defined within the Wi-Fi Alliance. The technology will be released in June 2012 as the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint certification program from the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Says Michael Fletcher, Sales Director for Ruckus Wireless Sub-Saharan Africa; “Historically, to connect to a hotspot, users have had to perform the arduous task of manually selecting from a number of Wi-Fi networks that may or may not be able to provide them service and perform the tedious process of logging in with their user credentials. Using Passpoint-certified devices, this process will be completely automated. Passpoint-certified mobile devices automatically select a Wi-Fi hotspot based on information advertised by Passpoint-certified Wi-Fi access points. While roaming, mobile devices can identify hotspots supporting roaming with the user’s home service providers. If it is, the device automatically connects to the hotspot, securing the link with advanced Wi-Fi security.”

According to Informa Telecoms and Media, the number of hotspots worldwide is expected to more than double from 2.1 million in 2012 to over 5.8 million by 2015. And in a January 2012 study, Mobia found nearly 70% of smartphone-originated data traffic was over Wi-Fi, compared to 30% over cellular technology.

One of the first to integrate 802.11u within its Smart Wi-Fi access points, Ruckus has successfully completed interoperability testing with several operators and handset manufacturers around the world. Support for 802.11u and the technology tested by the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint certification program will be available as a no-cost software upgrade on Ruckus ZoneFlex access points by the end of this year.

Many mobile device manufacturers and infrastructure suppliers, including Ruckus Wireless, are implementing these new Wi-Fi capabilities within their equipment and have participated in trials under the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s Next Generation Hotpots (NGH) initiative.

The Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0Specification that underlies the first phase of the Passpoint program includes the automation of three typically manual processes:
1. Discovering and selecting a Wi-Fi network,
2. Authenticating the user and device using the internal SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card found in many mobile devices (as well as support for non-SIM devices) and
3. Securing the connection of each device using WPA-2 Enterprise encryption and authentication.

Operators around the world are embracing Wi-Fi as means to inject much needed capacity into their mobile networks caused by the flood of data from new smart mobile devices. The use of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint equipment will benefit service providers in a number of ways such as accelerating the offload of data from cellular networks to Wi-Fi and reducing operational costs by providing a single Wi-Fi network that can advertise support for multiple operators.

A leader in the market for carrier Wi-Fi systems used for reliable Wi-Fi public access, mobile data offload and wireless backhaul, Ruckus has worked closely with the Wi-Fi Alliance to help advance the Passpoint program.

“Support for Pass point within mobile devices and infrastructure is essential for making the widespread use of Wi-Fi valuable to carriers and their customers,” said Steve Martin, vice president of engineering for Ruckus Wireless. “By automating and streamlining the process of connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot, service providers can look to advanced Wi-Fi systems as a viable way to offload traffic and deliver high-bandwidth services – while subscribers will no longer have to face the frustration and aggravation of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots.”

“The Wi-Fi Alliance has made significant progress in transforming and improving users’ Wi-Fi experience, and we are happy to see suppliers, such as Ruckus Wireless, demonstrating the benefits of all this work,” said Wi-Fi Alliance Marketing Director Kelly Davis-Felner. “We believe this is the first step in what will be a welcomed transformation of how users and operators interact with Wi-Fi.”

Źródło: Ruckus Wireless Revolutionises How Users Connect to Wi-Fi Hotspots Using New Technology that Automates Everything

One of the most topical issues in call centres currently is the “on-demand call centre”. It implies being able to grow and shrink your agent pool in line with the ebb and flow of demand, without being concerned with details like being under- or over-provisioned with resources (bandwidth and scale of application support).

“In short,” explains Rob Lith, Director of Connection Telecom, “Resourcing mustn’t be a worry and it must happen seamlessly. Required changes must happen at the speed of business, and you most certainly don’t want to be charged for excess capacity or ever be left under-resourced.”

The efficiency of this model promises significant savings. Nevertheless, buyers should carefully scrutinise the offer on the table: does it give you all the possible benefits of an on-demand call centre, and at what cost and compromise?

Identifying true ODCCs
The example of Takealot.co.za, an online retailer, serves to illustrate what a true on-demand call centre entails:

‘Elasticity’
Takealot’s promise to customers is to deliver any orders placed before 1pm on the same day. To handle the spike in demand, the company has to sharply increase its normal capacity before 1pm and back down again shortly afterwards. This must happen quickly and seamlessly – an infrastructural delivery capability best described as “elastic”.

Several things work in concert to make elasticity possible. The seamlessness of the variation is firstly the result of delivering bandwidth and application resources as a managed service – that is, in the background.

Virtualisation of the computing infrastructure is another contributing factor. As an architectural design feature that separates the customer’s requirement for capacity from physical infrastructural resources, virtualisation makes it easier to deliver just enough capacity.

By contrast, non-virtualised call centres are by their very nature over-provisioned to cater for times of peak performance. They are therefore routinely underutilised, as their spare capacity cannot be divorced from the underlying infrastructure to be put to better use elsewhere. All this happens at immense upfront capital expenditure and on-going operations and maintenance cost over multiple years.

Alacrity
Takealot’s other non-negotiable requirement was speed of provisioning, as it needed to be up and running in six weeks.

The way to achieve this is through a standards-based hosted call centre platform that can easily and quickly be made to slot into the customer’s call environment. With a standards-based platform, all the customer needs is an Internet Protocol-based broadband connection to be up and running in no time.

Non-standard platforms, on the other hand, cannot claim to be on-demand, as they require an immense upfront integration effort, leaving the provider powerless to deliver much this side of six months.

Frugality
ODCCs are also typically not as expensive as their proprietary counterparts. Such systems are notorious for requiring that customers buy the entire spectrum of functionality of the platform, including some it will never use.

By contrast, a true ODCC based on an open-source software-based system offers core functionality at per-extension pricing that is close to a normal telephony service. At a reasonable additional cost, extras like dialling campaigns, agent queues and reporting can be included.

In the example of Takealot, for instance, call centre management was provided with reports of peak-time call distribution across agents to enable it to ramp up resources when necessary. Caller ID functionality revealed missed-call numbers, allowing the service-obsessed company to phone back customers it missed.

However, should a call centre not have use for this functionality, it need not procure it.

Built for purpose
In short, an ODCC can rapidly meet the core functionality and capacity needs of the average call centre, by virtue of being hosted, virtualised and standards-based. This can greatly shorten the time to market for new call centres and decrease their cost, provided the buyer carefully scrutinises the contract.

Caveat emptor!

Źródło: Is your on-demand call centre the real deal?

The BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution from RIM is the only mobile solution approved by CESG to protect material classified up to and including ‘Restricted’.

Stephen Bates, UK Managing Director, RIM, said: “We’re pleased to see CESG taking such positive steps to help ensure UK government workers have access to the latest suite of BlackBerry 7 smartphones. Thanks in part to our industry leading security credentials, BlackBerry smartphones are widely deployed in UK public sector organisations including the Ministry of Defence (MoD), most of Central Government and more than half of the UK’s police forces, NHS and local government organisations. BlackBerry smartphones are enabling greater efficiencies and improved citizen service by providing access to data such as patient records, the Police National Computer and other government systems at the point of need.”

Using the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution has led to striking savings and improved citizen service across many public sector bodies, including UK police forces who are using BlackBerry smartphones to increase productivity amongst officers and to enable them to spend more time on the streets and less time in the station.

BlackBerry smartphones currently available in the UK and covered by the new approval from CESG include the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry® Torch™ 9810, BlackBerry Torch 9860, BlackBerry® Curve™ 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380.

Źródło: BlackBerry 7 OS Approved by CESG for Government Use

The two day event brings together a range of quality speakers and delegates, both local and international, to explore new ideas and build lasting relationships with people that count. This event will provide a platform for open thinking, unconstrained discussion, valuable networking and absolutely no sales pitches.

Says Richard Mullins, director at Acceleration: “Marketers and publishers have to redefine their worlds and accelerate their digital initiatives, as their consumers become more digitally engaged. This event will provide them with inspiring ideas that will help them to drive the marketing, publishing, mobile and social strategies to succeed in the digital space.”

South Africa’s leading marketing portal BizCommunity is the official media partner for the event.

With a client base that includes many of the world’s top digital marketing and publishing brands, Acceleration is uniquely positioned to facilitate this meeting of the minds. A global service business spanning four continents, Acceleration combines 12 years of specialist technical expertise with the latest business consulting knowledge to help clients improve their digital brand experience.

Don’t miss this opportunity to accelerate your digital world.

Event Details

Where: Cape Town, South Africa: Cape Winelands (http://www.lefranschhoek.co.za/)
Dates: Tuesday, 12 June to Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Costs: Costs will cover travel from Cape Town or Johannesburg to the venue, one night accommodation, all food and beverages as well as attendance of all presentations and workshops

• Cape Town: R6,000 ex vat
• Gauteng: R8,000 ex vat

For more information please contact Jacqueline Boulos at Idea Engineers on 011 803 0030 or Jacqueline@ideaengineers.co.za

Źródło: Accelerate your digital world with Acceleration’s Digital Ignition Symposium

That’s according to Robyn Milham, Head of Sales for Southern Africa at Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry® solution. She says that most organisations are managing a chaotic mix of mobile devices as a result of an increasingly mobile workforce and consumerisation of IT in the form of Bring Your Own Device policies that allow employees to bring their own devices into the workplace.

Milham says that against this backdrop, companies need to invest in MDM solutions that offer centralised device management, remote device provisioning and end-to-end security and control to keep control over their data while giving end-users the flexibility they need to be productive and mobile.

Recognising the challenge consumerisation places for IT departments, RIM has created solutions such as BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion, a next-generation MDM solution for enterprise customers.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion consolidates the management of smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry® OS (including support for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets and future BlackBerry® 10 smartphones) as well as Google Android™ and Apple iOS.

It provides a single, unified console for easily managing all devices. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion integrates the features and security architecture of BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. It provides advanced IT management and controls, a single outbound security connection, enforceable IT policies, and over-the-air app and software installation capabilities for BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

“It goes right to the heart of the biggest challenges CIOs face: securing and managing heterogeneous smartphones and tablets as a result users bringing their own devices to work,” says Milham. “With BlackBerry Mobile Fusion in place, CIOs can govern the mobile environment effectively without restricting user choice and flexibility.”

Because many users will use want to the same device for personal and work tasks, RIM has developed the BlackBerry® Balance™ technology to enable BlackBerry smartphones and tablets to be used for business and personal purposes without compromise. BlackBerry Balance technology provides secure access to corporate applications, while allowing users to enjoy personal apps on their smartphones.

Across all supported mobile devices, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion offers features such as asset management, configuration management, security and policy definition and management, remote wiping and locking of lost or stolen devices, and application and software management.

Źródło: Consumerisation, mobility turn cross-platform MDM into a business essential