Zenith Infotech Joins Hands With Tech Data

India’s Zenith Infotech has signed up with Tech Data, which is the world’s second largest distributor providing hosted managed services platform to solution providers in US. The distributor intends to offer: 24×7 monitoring of Windows servers, desktops as well as notebooks for spyware detection and anti-virus updates; monitored and administered data backup and restoration; and also help desk support for end users having desktop, server or network problems.

The company has positioned itself on the basis of quality and price. Currently it has about 500 Zenith PC Worlds, which are retail outlets that are owned by the company. It also has around 900 dealers across the country. It intends to increase the strength of its channel partner and PC Worlds by 40 per cent. It also plans to launch more laptops for SMEs.

According to Joe Quaglia, senior vice president of US Marketing at Tech Data, SMBs do not have the technology, or the resources to do these things. Zenith has the capability to provide these effortlessly. Tech Data also provided remote-monitoring managed services access according to an agreement with N-able Technologies. It has also signed a deal to offer print managed services through FMAudit.

CIO Connect Undergoes Management Buyout

A management-led buyout team has taken over IT management networking organization CIO Connect from the National Computing Centre. The entire buyout process was led by CIO Connect CEO Nick Kirkland and aided with investment from Shackleton Ventures. The new owner promised to invest further in order to enhance the value of the organization devoted to CIOs and their teams. The price of the buyout was not disclosed. The buy out was helped by investment from Shackleton, who focuses in direct secondary venture capital investments.

Michael Gough, NCC’s CEO, revealed that he expects the extra investment in CIO Connect to enable the organization to grow to the subsequent level and concentrate on upholding the cause of “professional management of IT within the UK”. Hugh Stewart, a managing partner with Shackleton, will be a part of the CIO Connect board.

Nick Kirkland, the Chief Executive of CIO Connect is happy about the fact that he was now free to make extra investment in the network towards improvement. He believes that the success of organization will depend on the success of the members. The NCC Board wished CIO Connect all the success and best wishes as it starts its journey towards the next stage of its growth.

Launch Of Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008, the long awaited server operating system of Microsoft, yet again proves that the company is aware of the customer needs and wants. Critics might feel that the new operating system is not too great a step but many small changes can mean that it is considerable development on its predecessor, Windows Server 2003.

Roy Illsley,a senior research analyst at Butler Group, believed that the availability of a main version of the operating system could be a noteworthy advantage, as it will need less number of patch updates and be easier to administer, as a result of its smaller footprint. This could save a lot of time and effort. Yet another important feature is the role-based access where people only have access to only those parts of the operating system that is required for them to do the job.

Mike Davis, a senior analyst at Ovum, believed that Windows Server 2008 does not in any way stand for an enormous change, as a variety of the features have been offered to the user through Windows Server 2003 service packs. He believed that there will be a mere two to three percent take-up on the first year after its release. So in order to generate demand, Microsoft will require providing tremendous detail.

Taylor Wimpey Signs A £30m Deal With Logicacmg

UK’s largest house builder Taylor Wimpey has outsourced the managing of all its IT systems to LogicaCMG for a sum worth £30m. Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey had joined last year to form Taylor Wimpey. The five-year deal of outsourcing involves the management of all the IT systems of the merged company. LogicaCMG won the contract on the basis of the work it has done with George Wimpey over the past six years. It was doing data centres, desktop services, service desk and remote infrastructure management. It delivered good results and that is what worked in their favor.

The new contract will supposedly result in cutting the costs by around 20 per cent with the help of a common infrastructure that is created all across the merged Taylor Wimpey organization. The deal is designed in a way in order to develop the overall IT services function of the firm as a whole. It is supposed to the entire IT system of Taylor Wimpey, including the project and hosting services. The focus will also be on general infrastructure services all across the merged organization. Apart from the IT outsourcing deal, Taylor Wimpey has also made LogicaCMG a member of its IT leadership team.

iPhone Making Users Happy

O2 is focused on its iPhone efforts on customers. But if research is to be believed, it should not ignore business users who are fond of the touch screen interface. As per a research of enterprise smart phone users by ChangeWave Research, iphone beats all competition where user satisfaction is considered. Almost 59 per cent iPhone users were really satisfied with the device. They were happy with all that it had to offers.

RIM’s BlackBerry - which has the major share of the enterprise market – was second in line as far as customer satisfaction was concerned. Around 47 per cent of the respondents said they were “very satisfied” with their phone. Nokia ranked third with 40 per cent votes. It was followed by Samsung getting 30 per cent votes, Motorola getting 25 per cent votes and Palm securing 10 per cent votes.

Alastair Behenna, CIO of Harvey Nash, believed that the product is quite interesting and the price will surely come down once the product has settled down. If not anything, it will definitely be worthwhile to track the evolution. O2 is in talks with Apple for preparing a business tariff that they can launch in the year itself.

HP Releases Storage System For SMEs

HP has relesed its StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array, that is targeted at providing enterprise-class storage to small and medium-sized companies having small budgets. It has various features that are usually related with high-end systems like dual-redundant hardware architecture and support for remote replication software. The EVA 4400 has a 99.999 percent uptime for up to 96TB of data.

HP is happy with the success it has received from selling its systems and storage products in entire Europe. As per the company’s SAN marketing director, Kyle Fitze, HP has experienced a 15 percent growth in the storage products last year in Africa, Europe as well as the Middle East. It had shipped 40,000 of the past models in the mid-range EVA line-up. EMC, IBM and Sun all have mid-range storage systems to balance their high-end and mainframe systems.

HP also said that the EVA 4400 would be obtainable with an 8Gb Simple SAN Connection, which will be suitable for companies that are planning for huge growth of their Storage Area Network environments. This will be suitable for Fibre Channel networks. It will also include software that targets to simplify connections. HP also claims that the mid range systems are basically smaller versions of the storage arrays.

Long Working Hours Hit Tech Culture

Working long tiring hours is proving a bane for many UK tech workers. These long hours hit their morale and eats into their important relaxation time. As per a research done by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), roughly 83 per cent of managers in the IT sector work much more than their official working hours. On an average, IT managers work one hour and eighteen minutes more than their official requirements per day. This adds up to about 40 days per year.

Around fifty one percent of the respondents believed that the long-hours culture prevalent in the UK affects productivity to a great extent. Around 42 per cent believed that unnecessary long working hours hit employee morale. Around 66 per cent say that by being stuck in the office hinders their exercise time. Fifty eight percent of the respondents said long hours boils down to the fact that they do not have time to develop any new skills.

It is not that the techies work long hours out of choice. They mostly do that due to compulsion of meeting their deadlines. They also say that they are not pressurized by their seniors to work longer. They do so on their own in order to remain ahead in the work front.

Working long hours isn’t out of choice either, with just a quarter of respondents saying they choose to and 49 per cent saying they work longer hours to meet deadlines or deal with their volume of work. The report also says that women are better managers of time and very few of them work overtime.

Elonex Launches ‘One’ Laptop

Elonex, the PC maker and services company is about to launch a £99 laptop that is targeted at the students category. The UK manufacturer will release the ‘One’ laptop at The Education Show that will be held in Birmingham from 28 February to 1 March, 2008. According to Elonex, this new Linux-based laptop will have a three-hour battery life, a flash-based hard drive, wi-fi, a “hard-wearing case” as well as a “wireless music server”. It will weigh much less than one kilogram. However, the company is not too keen on releasing any hard specifications for the device before the launch.

The ‘One’ laptop removes the cost obstacle that had prevented the students from obtaining their own laptop. As per a spokesperson of Elonex, the company is not too keen on revealing the hard specifications before the show as the essence of the entire One project is not about its specs. The main proposition is the cost factor. It is extremely cheap and reasonable for students to buy. The fact that the company is not using Windows does bring down the cost. Apart from the cost factor, the decision was also influenced based on government guidelines.

The One laptop is not the sole cheap laptop that is tageted at the educational market - Asus’s Eee PC, the One Laptop per Child project’s XO device and Intel’s Classmate PC all fall under the same category. But, as of now, the Elonex machine seems to be the cheapest alternative for UK customers.

Recycling Is The Key

Organizations nowadays are recycling their old IT equipments by donating them to various schools and other charitable places. Allan Paterson, the director of the IS division for the Isle of Man government says that they believe in recycling the old as much as possible of the old. They donate them to Island charities or third-world. All the machines are cleaned forensically before leaving the. The recycling trend is not only limited to donating the kit to charitable causes but also extends its useful life within the organization.

Gavin Whatrup, group IT director for advertising and marketing agency Creston, reveals that they either reprocess it within the organization, for not so complicated tasks, or takes the help repurposing companies, to recondition and ship them to various national or international destinations. There are problems involved too. At times, the batches are restricted at the customs offices for a variety of reasons and are lost forever. Also there is the issue of what happens later in the recycle chain.

David Supple, head of IT, marketing and creative services for Ecotec research and consulting, reveals that they pay for all equipments that need to be recycled. He too is concerned about how long the recycled equipments ‘live’ and what happens after their useful life is exhausted.

Mobile Signals On The Moon

Mobile phones have captured the most remote corners of the earth. Now they are aiming for the moon - literally. Now, the ringtone will break the silence of space. Nasa and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) is preparing a trial of the mobile phone network for the moon. So now, all the astronauts who will explore the moon will be contactable by text messages as soon as the system goes live. The satellite system will ensure a packed four-bar signal for lunar explorers. There was an initiative to get the mobile signal on top of Mount Everest. But this initiative tops the list.

The joint Nasa/BNSC MoonLite mission is due to be released after 2012. Nasa has decided to test a prototype version of the satellite phone network on Earth. During the MoonLite mission a lunar astronaut can utilise the technology to broadcast information regarding the composition of the moon back to earth with the help scientific instruments that are buried in the lunar soil. The initial version of lunar system will be equivalent to the “satellite phone network of the 1980s and 1990s on earth”. The explorer would have to depend on the knowledge of BNSC satellite specialists from Guildford. These specialists have to their credit, 27 satellites till date. The final system would be served by one or two satellites in the beginning and will provide exposure of the south pole. It will have more scope for satellites to be added as and when greater range is essential.

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