The JSE-listed Datatec Group announced today that its local operations will merge with African Legend Technologies to form an R800m-a-year IT company. The Datatec businesses should contribute R500m to the combined entities revenue, while the African Legend businesses are estimated to contribute R300m. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
In one of the largest outsourcing deals in SA in recent months, Absa and GijimaAst have signed a contract worth R960m over five years for distributed computing support. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Virgin Mobile arrived barely a month ago and was the first to claim that so-called 'freebie' mobiles were in fact rip-offs being used to lock customers into long-term contracts. Virgin Mobile has now welcomed the current scramble by its competitors to retain customers by offering better deals. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Absa has put in place further security measures to protect customers from Internet fraud. The functionality to buy prepaid cellphone or Telkom airtime on the Absa Internet Banking Web site will now also be protected by the automatically generated one-time password or Random Verification Number (RVN) service. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Hard on the heels of the launch of SA's first online shopping search engine in May, Jump Shopping (www.jump.co.za) has created a local consumer forum dedicated to online shopping and e-commerce. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Membership of the South African Oracle User Group (SAOUG) is said to have increased significantly over the last two years, as a result of Oracle's acquisitions, and, according to Ian Child, SAOUG conference director, its 8th annual conference and product showcase, is the first real opportunity the organisation has to reflect its larger user base. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Business process management specialist, Emerge Africa, has teamed up with mobile office provider Mobile-Sat, aiming to provide a simple solution to the problem of capturing identity data from millions of cellphone users scattered across the country. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Tibco Software, a business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business, has announced results for its second fiscal quarter ended June 4. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Data security breaches continue to vex the majority of business technology professionals from around the globe, even though most do not acknowledge their own vulnerability to malicious attacks, according to results of the 2006 Global Information Security Survey published by InformationWeek and Accenture. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Paul Meller and Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (Brussels Bureau)
The European Commission has fined Microsoft 280,5m euros ($357m) for failing to comply with the terms of a March 2004 antitrust judgement against it, the Commission says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
Growth in China's semiconductor market slowed dramatically in 2005 after years of big gains, according to market researcher iSuppli. Demand for chips in the country increased by 12,8% year-on-year to $37bn in 2005, far slower than the 34,9% increase of a year earlier, iSuppli says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
SAP AG announced today that after a preliminary review of its 2006 second quarter results, it expects second quarter 2006 software revenues to be approximately 621m euros, representing an increase of 8% compared to the second quarter of 2005. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
CA has acquired privately-held XOsoft, a provider of continuous application availability solutions that minimise application downtime and accelerate time to recovery. The acquisition is claimed to enable CA to offer a complete recovery management solution that allows customers to minimise the risk of data loss, reduce the time spent on back-ups and expedite recovery of critical business services. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Logitech has announced a co-marketing agreement with YouTube, a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, which aims to make it easier for people using Logitech QuickCam webcams to upload their videos to the Internet. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
McAfee has announced its re-emergence in the field of vulnerability discovery and disclosure as a way to raise public awareness of potential points of attack. Using McAfee Avert Labs' security research expertise, and the guidelines set forth by the Organisation for Internet Safety (OIS), McAfee will work with affected vendors immediately upon vulnerability discoveries so they can begin working on solutions. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Over the last 32 days, the converged communication network from Avaya, an official partner of the 2006 Fifa World Cup, handled over 21 trillion bytes of data and achieved 99.999% availability, without a single major outage and free of errors, the company says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Microsoft has announced Mike Cathie's promotion to group marketing director for the Middle East and Africa region. Cathie, who joined Microsoft in 1998 as consumer group director, enjoyed great success in his time with the SA subsidiary, progressing to the position of marketing director, and later to the role of business and marketing officer. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Intrusion prevention and security risk management company, McAfee, has announced automated online virus scanning for the Symbian Signed mobile application certification programme. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Canon recently celebrated the cumulative production milestone of 30m interchangeable EF lenses, in less than twenty years since the launch of Canon's EOS camera system and the EF lens mount. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Pinnacle Micro has announced the availability of D-Link's DPH-50U, a Skype USB phone adapter that is designed to allow users to employ existing phones for use with Skype. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
If you are used to sharing data over the Internet or your enterprise's intranet, apply caution! A network worm that will bring dangerous Trojans to your computer is on the prowl. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
IBM Lotus Notes is now available on Linux, and aims to provide millions of Lotus Notes users worldwide with software that enables an open desktop alternative to proprietary desktop operating systems. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Gigabyte Technology, together with official local distributor, Rectron, is offering a free evaluation period of the Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0 bundle with selected Gigabyte motherboards. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Said to represent the cross-pollination of automotive and IT innovation, Thermaltake's Kandalf LCS (Liquid Cooling System) now features a radiator built into the front of the chassis, the company says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Kaplan IT Learning has announced the launch of the latest version of its simulation and documentation authoring tool, STT Trainer. Version 4.3 is intended to focus on improving the quality and speed with which organisations can generate end-user training content, to decrease the number of calls made to technical support desks and call centres for end-user support, and to increase the return on investment for enterprise systems, such as SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
CyberMatrix has released version 6 of Pro Schedule, a Windows-based application for group appointment scheduling. Using this solution, appointments can be cut and pasted from person to person or day to day, the company says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
As part of Stockholm Transport's focus on public safety, it has decided to install network cameras in all its buses, to increase security of both passengers and staff. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
CA has announced the release of its CA-IDMS and CA-Datacom mainframe database management systems that aim to enable customers to support high-volume processing requirements - including online transactions, batch job activity, and transactions from diverse distributed-platform applications. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Softworx, regional SSA Global master distributor and member of the EOH Group, has launched SSA Business Intelligence (SSA BI), a solution that aims to deliver reporting, analysis, monitoring and notification functionality in a single, easy-to-integrate solution. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Lexmark International has introduced the Lexmark X642e monochrome laser multifunction product, which is said to copy at speeds up to 43 pages per minute. It includes legal-size, simplex scanning and fax capabilities as standard, the company says. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
McAfee Avert Labs, which added the 100 000th threat to its database in September 2004, officially released protection this week for the 200 000th threat in its database. This translates into a 60% decrease in the amount of time it took to double the number of threats in the database since September 2004. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
"The implementation of a time and attendance and payroll software package can be the most effective means of managing HR and payroll related logistics and administration within a business. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Pinnacle Micro has announced the local availability of Canon's Digital IXUS Wireless, a wirelessly enabled camera that aims to offer users photographic freedom throughout the home and office. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Official local distributor, Corex, has introduced Thermaltake Technology's Muse eSATA and USB 2.0 dual-interface external hard drive enclosure. They are claimed to conform to eSATA standards and to support the traditional SATAII connectors inside the enclosure. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
IT distributor, Comztek, is looking to leverage the rapid growth of the SME market in Africa through the Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) brand. "FSC offers a range of servers, desktops, notebooks and accessories, forming part of the Tier 1 product offering, which Comztek is aiming squarely at SME resellers and end-users," explains Kobus Kitshoff, product manager for Comztek Consumer Electronics division. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Intel has announced a storage server hardware platform that, it says, can be customised for SMEs. System builders and integrators can couple the Intel Storage System SSR212CC with various software solutions to create a network attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) appliance, the company adds. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Distributor of building blocks to the local ICT market, Annex Distribution, is to stock the full range of product supporting AMD's Socket AM 2. This technology is designed to enable support for DDR 2, which aims to improve the overall performance of infrastructure by ensuring that virtualisation becomes better optimised. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
A report by independent market analyst, Datamonitor - 'Understanding IT budget trends' - reveals that IT budgets have grown in 2006, and that the outlook for 2007 is also optimistic. According to the report, whilst increases are not proving even across the board - with variations by geography and type of expenditure - relatively stable economic conditions are having a positive effect on enterprises' IT investments in the US and Western Europe. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
While computers and so-called fancy software have been around for years now, the corporate world has, nonetheless, battled to gain expedient access to all its information when needed, due to the fact that many companies have their information locked up in different information 'silos'. But the arrival on the scene of software developed with service-orientated architectures (SOA) will herald a new era. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Universal password authentication systems, which allow users to log in once and then hop between Web sites, may just be the answer for those who are unable to remember the various user names and passwords that they have established to access different sites on the 'Net. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
While cellular phones remain immensely popular there is a growing trend for consumers to revert to hands-free kits, or better still, Bluetooth hands-free kits, as the marketplace and the authorities become more safety conscious. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
Unless the networking skills shortage is addressed urgently, by 2009 demand for networking skills in SA will exceed supply by 24%, and there will be a shortage of more than 113 900 skilled people required to help drive economic growth. [Issue:One Hundred and ninety four (10/7/06 - 14/7/06)]
