Tomorrow, iBurst will be launching Data Bonus, which applies to all 24-month contracts. Subscribers will receive an additional 200MB of data free on iGo Lite and iGo contracts, and an additional 500MB of data free on all G1, G3, G6 and G9 contracts. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Royal Bafokeng buys majority stake in MB Technologies
Less than a year after acquiring a 26% stake in the MB Technologies Group, Royal Bafokeng Holdings has announced that it has exercised its option to buy out minority stakeholders and become the group's primary shareholder. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
DBSA invests R50m in iBurst network expansion project
Nashua Mobile Internet to bring choice to SA's Internet market
Nashua Mobile, the independent cellular service provider in the Reunert Group, has signalled its intention to become a major player in SA's broadband and Internet service provider market by launching its Nashua Mobile Internet division. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
KID acquires 49% of 8th Man Consulting
Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID) has acquired 49% of 8th Man Consulting, a relative newcomer to the BI market. The move gives KID access to the local market for Hyperion services. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Zebra signs warranty agreement with Partserve
Zebra Technologies, a global supplier of on-demand printing solutions for business improvement, has signed an agreement with PartServe Channel Support to carry out product warranties throughout the South African region. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Computer Corporation ties up with Altech Autopage Cellular
Franchise IT retailer, Computer Corporation, which currently boasts 25 franchise outlets, has announced that it has signed a hardware distribution agreement with Altech Autopage Cellular. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
ContinuitySA 'provides contact centre on demand'
ContinuitySA has launched a Contact Centre Division as a supplementary service, aiming to offer local businesses the opportunity to expand contact centre operations either in a business continuity emergency or on an as-required basis. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Open Text makes direct investment in SA
Lava Systems Africa, an affinity partner of Canadian-based for Open Text, has announced that the latter has made its first direct investment in SA with the appointment of Peter Dimitriadis as Channel Director: Africa, based in Bryanston. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Microsoft 'leverages IT to enable social and economic growth'
The era of convergence is about to hit SA, as consumer electronics and IT devices come together to make sophisticated entertainment systems easy to manage and deploy, says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Tarsus Technologies and Karabo Data Solutions have announced the successful conclusion of an R8,5m roll-out of HP infrastructure for the Free State Department of Education. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)
Little-known Texas MP3 Technologies is taking on Apple, Samsung Electronics and Sandisk with a patent-infringement lawsuit. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld (US online)
Vista's user interface suffers from more "friction" than its predecessor XP, a French analyst says, and is actually a step back for Microsoft in its pursuit of Apple's Mac OS X. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Partnership to bring technology to developing countries
Members of a special UN group have met with Silicon Valley leaders to explore how the technology industry, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can come together to bolster development around the world. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Sanyo and Lenovo may share cost of battery recall
Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
Japanese electronics company, Sanyo Electric, and computer vendor, Lenovo, are discussing how to pay for the recall of over 200 000 laptop PC batteries, and may end up sharing the burden. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Unisys OASIS 'pioneers the right model for open source services' - Forrester
ICT World exclusive
Forrester Research, the independent technology and market research company, has recognised the OASIS framework from Unisys as a significant breakthrough in deployment of open source software for enterprise computing in a recently published report. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Two surveys from the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), confirm the launch of dozens of new user devices for mobile broadband services enabled by High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), and the rapid evolution of network data speeds. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Most important security threats in 2006 and trends for 2007
BitDefender has announced that the widest spread viruses in 2006 were still the ones propagated via the e-mail, the top 10 of such viruses posing such a big threat that they accounted for 55% of the total number of infections detected by BitDefender. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Green Grid powers up to save energy
Robert Mullins, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
The Green Grid, a group of technology companies collaborating to improve energy efficiency in data centres, is officially open for business. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Bob Brown, Network World (US)
Despite improvements in code quality, Web servers remain at a high risk of being hacked, according to a paper from researchers who use honeypot technologies to examine how hackers tick. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Rodney Gedda, Computerworld Australia
Sydney Children's Hospital at Westmead has completed a trial of integrated wireless networking technologies to streamline manual processes and improve patient care. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Asia-Pac governments support smart homes
In an effort to stay ahead of the technology adoption curve, governments in Asia-Pacific have been actively driving the home networking industry by backing initiatives in home networking research and development (R&D) and deployment of services. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Heather Havenstein, Computerworld (US online)
Pageflakes, which aims to let communities of users create personalised Internet home pages, plans to begin offering a directory of 10 000 "widgets," or small, single-purpose applications that can be used to further customise personal pages. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Heinz chooses Sophos for Web, desktop and application security
Sophos says that global food giant, Heinz, has deployed its security solutions across EMEA and APAC, aiming to protect thousands of employees against malware attacks and unauthorised application use. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Lorge takes SAP operation into Botswana
Mid-market ERP solutions provider, Lorge, is establishing a SAP Business One operation in Botswana to provide financial and business software solutions and services to the growing SME markets in Gaborone, Francistown and other centres. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
ICT World exclusive
Hyperion, locally distributed by Intellient, an EOH company, is to release Hyperion System 9 Smart Space, a composite application environment that is designed to deliver always-on business intelligence (BI) to every user in the organisation. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
'Optimum wireless connectivity for SA homes'
SMC Networks SA, in conjunction with its global holding company, SMC Networks, has released its EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Broadband Router, the SMC2304WBR-AG, to the local emerging corporate wireless network space. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
DCC introduces Poynting antennae
ICT World exclusive
Acceptable reception on mobile phones is becoming increasingly important as functions such as Internet connectivity and access to the corporate network begin to 'converge' on to cell phones. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Esquire Technologies recently introduced the BenQ FP222W LCD monitor, which is said to have the fastest response time among 22-inch wide screen LCD monitors on the market today. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Axiz presents a 'choice in fast, light, reliable, memory'
Axiz has introduced the Flash SSD (Nand Flash-based Solid State Disk) from Samsung Electronics. The SSD serves the same purpose as a hard disk drive i.e. a sophisticated data storage medium, the company says. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Microsoft tool helps plan Office 2007 conversions
Eric Lai, Computerworld (US online)
Microsoft has released the final part of a free tool kit designed to help corporate users to convert their existing Office files to Office 2007's new Open XML file format. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Blade servers: consolidation platform or cost centre?
Nic Shaw, Technology head - advanced infrastructure at Dimension Data SA
Data centre real estate has long been some of the most expensive property in an organisation. To take care of this issue, blade servers were designed. By consolidating servers, IT managers were, essentially, allowed to pack more processing power into a server rack. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Xeon 5300 processor-enabled servers available from Pinnacle
Broad-based ICT supplier, Pinnacle Micro, has announced the local availability of quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 processors for the Supermicro range of dual-processor (DP) server solutions. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Workgroup announces Corel Painter X
Local distribution house, Workgroup, has announced the local availability of Corel's Painter X painting and illustration software upgrade, which, Workgroup says, continues its focus on giving professional artists, designers and photographers a natural painting and illustration experience. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
IBM combines SOA and data integration
IBM says that it is combining its expertise in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and information management to help clients more easily share data and deliver better service by freeing information from individual applications and re-using it throughout their enterprise. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
AMD has introduced the AMD 690 series chipset, which is claimed to bring together the combined strengths of AMD CPU and platform technology with the features of the ATI Radeon X1250 GPU. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
D-Link rolls out next generation Layer 3 Gigabit switches
Distributor Drive Control Corporation (DCC) has signed a distribution agreement with TCL, a Chinese manufacturer of monitors and TVs, to bring its 17-inch LCD monitors into the local market. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Oracle introduces ILM Assistant
Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Information Lifecycle Management Assistant (Oracle ILM Assistant), a free tool which aims to provide customers with a range of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) capabilities for Oracle Database 10g. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Axiz has announced the immediate availability of the Targus Ergo D-Pro and Ergo M-Pro notebook stands. Designed to offer multiple tilt positions to hold a notebook in a vertical position, they aim to allow a notebook LCD to be used as a display. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Scott Bradner, Network World (US)
If you are a Mac or Linux user and need to run an application that works only on Microsoft operating systems in theory, you have a number of options. But Microsoft has decided to make some of the options harder, or at least more expensive, than they should be. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Research highlights local government challenges
While undertaking research into the status and use of ICTs in local government, ICT research and consulting house, ForgeAhead, says that it has identified the seven major issues that metros, municipalities and districts face. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
The future of customer premises equipment providers
As telcos push ADSL broadband to counteract slowing growth in voice income, small and micro businesses will be able to buy an end-to-end broadband, hosting and VoIP service from one provider, carried by one line. Such providers will focus on hosting to get a return on investment. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
Worldwide server shipments experienced 9% growth in 2006 - Gartner
Worldwide server shipments in 2006 totalled 8,2m units in 2006, an 8,9% increase from 2005, while worldwide server revenue in 2006 reached $52,7bn, up by 2% from 2005, according to Gartner. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
IT infrastructure distributor, Axiz, recently announced that all Axiz branded desktops will include a three-year (1095 consecutive days) 'carry in' warranty on all standard Axiz PCs. [Issue:Two hundred and twenty-four (26/2/07 - 2/3/07)]
