Global mobile network provider Truphone, has transformed its customer experience as it prepares for rapid growth, with NewVoiceMedia’s true cloud contact centre solution ContactWorld for Service. The company, which has built a mobile network without country borders that keeps international business executives better connected, is now able to offer a completely unique, personalised service tothousands of customers around the world.

Currently operating in eight countries, Truphone was recently shortlisted for the Best Enterprise Mobile Service at the Global Mobile Awards (part of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona). In the same week, it was voted best MVNO at the Telecoms.com awards, held in the same city. The business has grown significantly in recent months and is now ranked 10th of 2,272 global telecommunications providers¹. With further customer growth predicted in the next year; Truphone needed a global contact centre solution that could handle its rapid expansion, while offering the latest features.

ContactWorld for Service, with Salesforce integration, gives Truphone complete scalability as the business grows, enabling new functionality and consultants to be added in minutes. The company operates a 24/7 multilingual operation across multiple call centres and its highly trained, knowledgeable agents, which are set to increase from 75 to 300 this year, need to be supported with a continually evolving knowledge base and the up-to-date status of mobile networks around the world.

Truphone now benefits fromimmediate access to a customer’s entire history of interactions from one screen and the ability to manage multiple languages. Its advisors provide service in six languages and ContactWorld directs the caller to the right agent every time. Real-time monitoring means calls can be switched between the contact centres to make the most of resources, minimising costs. Customer service consultants are also able to make calls directly from within Salesforce with the click-to-dial function, saving time and improving call connections.

As users log into the same system wherever they are, agents can work from any location, with everything being managed through a real-time window into the entire contact centre operation.

Rod Sheriff, Executive Director of Customer Service at Truphone, comments, “NewVoiceMedia has provided us with a reliable contact centre solution that can easily scale as the business grows, while enabling us to greatly improve our customers’ satisfaction. Customers now benefit from a completely personalised experience every time and we’re pleased to have reduced our average call waiting time to 13 seconds. We’re now looking forward to deploying additional technology from NewVoiceMedia, including social media routing, which will enable us to route callers based on social media data. This will provide us with a more holistic view of the customer and enable us to provide a better quality of service”.

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, comments, “With offices in four continents, our true cloud technology is ideal for delivery of a consistent level of service, while being flexible and easily scalable as the business grows. We’re delighted that Truphone has made such significant improvements since implementation”.

For further information, download the case study at www.newvoicemedia.com

¹ SIGNL, January 2014

Further Information

Communications Manager
Tel: 07500 006 458
Email: nicola.brookes@newvoicemedia.com

Siemon, a leading global fibre optic network infrastructure specialist, has launched LightStack™, an ultra high density plug and play fibre system.  This end-to-end fibre system is claimed to combine superior performance and density with unmatched accessibility in a sleek, modern enclosure.  It has been designed to support advanced data centre and storage area network environments and to provide a fast, seamless migration to advanced 40 and 100 Gigabit applications.

LightStack features a unique patent-pending enclosure that has the capacity to house 144 LC fibres or 864 MTP fibres in a single rack unit. Its revolutionary horizontal cable management accommodates both traditional and uni-tube jumpers and features easy-unlatch, swing-open management clips for full access.  Innovative swivel cable tie-down points on the rear of the enclosure maintain proper bend radius.

With a rear bottom tray that slides inward for easy access to the connectivity while the enclosures are stacked on top of each other, LightStack offers best-in-class accessibility. In the out position, the rear tray acts as a cable partition between stacked enclosures. Low-loss plug and play modules are also easily inserted or removed from either the front or rear of the enclosure and the aesthetically appealing easy-open magnetic door eliminates harmful pinch points and offers high-visibility drop-down labeling.

Available in OM4 multimode and singlemode, the ultra-slim LightStack LC-to-MTP low-loss plug and play modules offer the industry’s lowest loss performance of 0.35dB for flexible fibre channels. Fully ready to support 40 and 100 Gigabit applications, LightStack low-loss 0.2dB MTP pass-through adapters are available in two, four and six port designs and they are offered in both aligned and opposed key orientation to accommodate all polarity methods. Unlike other fibre solutions on the market, LightStack also supports 12-fibre LC pass-through adapter plates for current 10 Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel SAN applications.

“As today’s high-density data centres migrate from 10 to 40 and 100 Gigabit speeds, they require low-loss fibre connectivity to support multiple mated connections for flexible patching options over a wide range of distances and configurations, whilst remaining within link loss budgets. At the same time, these connections need to be easily accessed and managed to quickly and effectively make changes,” explains Charlie Maynard, fibre optic product manager at Siemon’s global headquarters. “With superior best-in-class features, our new LightStack ultra high density fibre system is uniquely positioned to overcome current and future fibre connectivity challenges.”

For backbone links, the LightStack fibre system includes next generation and traditional MTP trunk cables, available in OM3 and OM4 bend insensitive multimode and singlemode fibre.  Siemon’s LC BladePatch, featuring its revolutionary push-pull boot design, perfectly complements the ultra high density of the new LightStack system, improving accessibility even further. Ideal for connecting to active equipment from interconnects or cross connects such as in SAN applications, LightStack also offers LC BladePatch®-to-MTP hybrid trunks for precise control and easy insertion and removal. LC BladePatch jumpers and trunks utilize a smaller diameter uni-tube cable design which reduces cable pathway congestion, improving airflow and increasing energy efficiency, whilst simplifying overall cable management. The low loss 12-fibre LC BladePatch®-to-MTP hybrid trunks are available in both multimode and singlemode, as well as in a variety of staggered lengths to support a multitude of active equipment including Cisco Nexus, Cisco MDS and Brocade.  

For more information on the revolutionary LightStack ultra high density fibre system, visit: www.siemon.com/LightStack . 

About Siemon
Established in 1903, Siemon is an industry leader specialising in the design and manufacture of high quality, high performance, low voltage infrastructure solutions and services for data centres, LANs and intelligent buildings. Headquartered in Connecticut, USA, with global sales, technical and logistics expertise spanning over 100 countries,   Siemon offers the most comprehensive suite of copper and optical fibre cabling systems, cabinets, racks, cable management, data centre power and cooling systems and intelligent infrastructure management solutions.  With over 400 patents specific to structured cabling, Siemon Labs invests heavily in R&D and the development of industry standards, underlining the company’s long-standing commitment to its customers and the industry.

www.siemon.co.uk

Further Information

marketing consultant
Tel: 07728016633
Email: debbie@doubledaylight.co.uk

London – April 29, 2014 – Skyscape Cloud Services Limited, the easy to adopt, easy to use and easy to leave Assured Cloud Services Company today announced that it has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the Cool Vendors in the European Cloud Computing Market report* by Gartner Inc.

According to the report: “European customers, but also customers in other areas of the world, who are looking to leverage cloud computing for their success should focus on targeted solutions (such as those delivered by the European vendors that are profiled here in areas such as supply chain control, cloud management or delivering public services) that are geared toward solving particular problems over trying to pick generic horizontal platforms that might one day become industry standards.”

“We consider our inclusion in the Cool Vendor report by Gartner to be a huge win for us as a company, recognising all the hard work we’ve put into making Skyscape the provider of choice on G-Cloud,” said Phil Dawson, CEO, Skyscape Cloud Services. “We have designed a cloud platform that is specifically tailored to meet the demanding needs of the UK public sector, capitalising on the government shift to cloud computing and its Cloud First policy which aims to drive wider adoption of cloud computing by the public sector through the G-Cloud Framework.”

Skyscape’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service solutions have helped to transform the provision of IT solutions into a lean, elastic, assured green utility by providing a genuine on-demand cloud computing service. The company’s success to date includes winning a number of high-profile contracts with public sector organisations including the Cabinet Office, Home Office, HMRC and MOD.

Selling directly as well as partnering with channel partners, including most leading system integrators, managed service providers and independent software vendors, enables Skyscape to not only meet the needs of the UK public sector but also rapidly develop value-added services.

Skyscape services are delivered with leading technologies from Skyscape Cloud Alliance Partners: QinetiQ, VMware, Cisco, EMC and Ark Data Centres.

* Cool Vendors in the European Cloud Computing Market by Gregor Preti, Tiny Haynes and Milind Govekar, April 2014

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

Reading, 29th April 2014, Global multichannel customer interaction software company Eptica today announced its highest ever Q1 revenue, up 21% on the same period in 2013. Revenues for Q1 2014 were $3.1 million (£1.85m), driven by worldwide demand for its innovative, linguistic-powered customer engagement software. Performance is accelerating, following record financial results for 2013, where turnover grew by 18% to $10.6m (£6.5m).

Eptica’s multilingual Customer Engagement Suite transforms customer service by applying linguistics and natural language processing across all digital channels. New clients include Singapore Power Services, City & Guilds via partner Azzurri Communications in the UK and a major French-based bank, which is deploying Eptica’s software to 16,000 users across the organisation. In addition, many existing customers have upgraded to Eptica Engagement Suite 9.0, which enables businesses to harness the power of linguistics to achieve operational excellence, increase satisfaction and deepen customer engagement.

In the UK, Eptica has strengthened its management team with the recruitment of Julian Sammells as Sales Director, UK & Ireland, along with several new hires within Sales, Pre-Sales and Marketing. With almost 25 years experience in enterprise software sales, Julian is responsible for accelerating Eptica’s growth in the UK and Ireland, building on the company’s blue chip customer base and increasing channels to market. Previous experience includes senior roles at linguistic/structured search vendor Wordmap and enterprise feedback management provider CDC/Respond.

As well as new UK staff, Eptica reinforced its global team during the quarter. Laurence Chami was promoted to the role of Managing Director, with a mission to drive revenue growth, retain Eptica’s position at the forefront of technology innovation and to ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

"2013 saw major growth for Eptica and this has accelerated as we move into 2014, with revenues increasing at an even faster rate. This demonstrates the strength of our strategy and our focus on helping our clients to engage more closely with their customers, across every channel and every interaction,” said Olivier Njamfa, CEO, Eptica. “With major new clients joining in all of our key territories of the UK, France and Asia-Pacific and many others upgrading to the latest Eptica platform, this has been an extremely positive three months. Additionally, we have strengthened our global management team and structure, positioning the company for future growth. We expect the same strong level of expansion in Q2 as we continue to outperform the software market.”

About Eptica
Eptica is the European leader in multichannel and multilingual customer interaction management software, covering the email, web, social media, web chat and agent channels. Available on premise or as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, the Eptica Customer Engagement suite enables organisations to improve engagement with customers, increase efficiency and drive sales by delivering fast, consistent and personalised responses to their queries, through their channel of choice. 

The Eptica customer engagement platform is designed around a central knowledgebase, powerful workflow and Eptica Linguistic Services™, advanced linguistic capabilities that enable organisations to quickly understand the tone, sentiment and context of digital interactions and automatically deliver personalised service.

Today, more than 400 organisations across all industries and in 15 countries rely on the power of Eptica’s platform. They include Axa, Dixons, Domestic & General, AirAsia, Hastings Direct, L’Occitane, TUI, Debenhams, Capita and Ageas Insurance Solutions. Eptica’s continuing innovation and strong performance has resulted in the company’s inclusion in Gartner’s last 3 consecutive Magic Quadrants for Web Customer Service.

For more information visit www.eptica.com, connect with us on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or read our blog.

For further information, please contact:
Measures Consulting
Chris Measures
+44 (0) 7976 535147
chris@measuresconsulting.com 

Reading, UK, 29 April 2014 - SureCloud®, a supplier of Cloud-based Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions, today announced its agile GRC SaaS platform. The SureCloud Platform differs from other solutions by giving organisations immediate visibility of the status and greater overall control of their risk and compliance programmes. Faster to implement than conventional eGRC solutions and featuring more real-time intelligence than home-grown systems, the SureCloud Platform gives organisations unprecedented insight into their current risk exposure and the flexibility to respond swiftly to changes in the compliance landscape such as PCI DSS 3.0 and the EU's new tougher data protection laws.

For reasons of cost and complexity, adoption of sophisticated GRC systems has been slow and they have yet to prove themselves from an ROI point of view. Instead firms frequently opt to meet their compliance obligations by developing their own spreadsheet-based methods. In practice neither eGRC nor home-grown solutions are capable of meeting what organisations most need - namely an easy-to-implement compliance system that supports existing processes (rather than re-engineering them) and in-built analytics for informed decision-making about corporate exposure to risk.

The SureCloud Platform automates and radically simplifies risk and compliance processes without forcing organisations to adopt entirely new practices. SureCloud's flexibility allows them to automate any GRC process including Compliance Audits, Policy Management, Risk Assessments or Third Party Assurance programmes. The SureCloud Platform supports an agile approach to implementation and includes pre-built templates, which means that the solution can be deployed quickly to deliver immediate value.

"Our ability to take a customer's existing risk and compliance processes and incorporate them quickly into our own frameworks is a real gamer-changer," said Richard Hibbert, CEO, SureCloud. "Without asking our customers to re-invent the wheel we are giving them a crystal clear picture of their risk exposure at all times - allowing them to prioritise steps to reduce risk, swiftly deliver measurable results and painlessly adapt to new regulatory requirements."

"We needed to find a more efficient way to manage our IT compliance processes across many business units instead of using spreadsheets," said Jeff Jenkins, IT Compliance Manager at TUI Travel PLC. "We were attracted to SureCloud for its centralised management capabilities, its cost-effectiveness, its adaptable approach and because we wanted an automated platform in which to build additional compliance initiatives in the future."

Key features of the SureCloud Platform are:

• Ability to implement your own processes or leverage SureCloud's process frameworks;
• Fine grained permissions to provide different Form views based on Role;
• Integrated Task Management to alert users to events such as compliance certificate expiry, or to allocate activity to internal or external stakeholders;
• Grouping structures to organise internal users or external parties such as suppliers;
• Interfaces with Microsoft Office;
• Dashboards and reporting to provide real-time updates on progress;
• Analytics to identify patterns such as common areas of failure, top 5 suppliers.

Finally, because the SureCloud Platform is priced per user it dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership for customers.

At 14:40 on Tuesday 29th April, SureCloud customer Jeff Jenkins, IT Compliance Manager for TUI Travel PLC, will present a session in the Business Strategy Theatre entitled - ‘TUI Travel PLC tackling compliance on a global scale: Shepherding cats in a changing landscape'.

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

London - April 29th, 2014 – Hornbill today launched Service Manager, its flagship collaborative service management application, together with the Hornbill collaboration platform. Service Manager represents a fresh approach, designed to allow organisations of any size to modernise and invigorate their IT service management operation by introducing collaboration tools built around the way people actually work. Hornbill Service Manager has been designed for collaboration; using principles made familiar by consumer social media tools to ensure workers can easily and naturally share information and follow best practices. Built for ease of implementation, customisation and use, and with a flexible cost model that allows organisations to pick exactly what they need when they need it, collaboration within the service desk is simpler than it’s ever been.

“There has been little innovation within the ITSM market, both in terms of tools and processes,” said Gerry Sweeney, founder and CEO of Hornbill. “IT has a unique and influential role in business but is often accused of treading water and being the blocker for progress; ultimately left firefighting minor issues instead of adding business value. We believe that whilst best practice and process is important, nothing can be made to work properly until you have your people engaged and working effectively. If organisations can enable teams to work in a familiar and easy way, and have them implicitly follow well thought out and well-designed business processes without needing to actually be aware of those processes, guaranteeing best practice and processes becomes far simpler. By designing Service Manager to be a familiar, enjoyable and easy to use experience, that’s precisely what we at Hornbill have created.”

Service Manager is available today in Hornbill’s App Store. Key features include:

Automated Management: Service Manager is designed to make dealing with ITIL-aligned incidents, problems, change, service requests and assets as streamlined as possible. An intuitive call logging process allows service desks to identify and track customers throughout the lifecycle procedure, whilst Progressive Capture functionality improves the ease of data capture, making life much easier for analysts. A powerful but easy to configure graphical workflow engine drives processes forward, visualised for analysts in a clear “where am I?” innovative heads up display.

Information at a glance: Service Manager provides service all the information needed to help customers and deliver first-class customer service. The Service Desk Dashboard allows incidents and requests to be viewed at a glance; all incidents and requests assigned to an analyst or analyst group can be viewed with My Requests; and updates to active calls are aggregated on the Analyst’s News Feed.

Self-Service: Service Manager’s self-service capabilities allow users to both get updates and find solutions either directly or through interaction with peers. Users can see and add their own assets; identify and join workspaces to discuss issues; and help direct their peers towards useful solutions.

Language and Culture: Service Manager is multi-language, supporting not only a multiple language user interface but also real-time content translations, allowing users to exchange ideas and information whether in multiple languages or their native tongue.

Mobile: Hornbill’s native mobile app enables Service Manager users to access the application from any device, at any time and from anywhere.

Easy-to-use customisation: Service Manager can be customised to suit an organisation’s exact business processes, using a simple graphical interface to make changes to process, form design and progressive input capture. Every customisation or change made is guaranteed to be retained after platform or application upgrades.

Always-up-to-date: Upgrades are delivered continuously, thanks to the agile development methodology we employ called Continuous Delivery designed to ensure a continuous flow of feature enhancements are delivered to our customers. As a result Hornbill is always up-to-date and always being enhanced and improved.

Service Manager builds on Hornbill’s proven ITSM expertise, allowing organisations to support ITIL processes to ensure they are providing the best service possible to end-users. The ways of working and collaboration tools Service Manager and Hornbill introduce, such as timelines, workspaces and news feeds, will be familiar to service customers from personal devices and applications: making them as easy to use as possible and allowing users to concentrate on their key tasks.

Data from Forrester Research, revealed in its Benchmarking Technology's Effect on Employee Engagement report (July 2013), shows a majority of the engaged workforce uses at least one social tool (53%) and/or one communication and collaboration tool (83%). TJ Keitt, the report’s author, wrote: “We're beginning to see the benefits workers receive from these tools: 85% of social software users say they know how their work contributes to the company's mission. Furthermore, these tools help build community, as the bulk of those using communication and collaboration tools say their colleagues do the same."

Duncan Brown, Head of IT at UK and European Patent and Trade Mark Attorney firm JA Kemp, stated: “The IT service desk is vital to our business operations. The simplicity and flexibility of Service Manager, coupling familiar social media tools and concepts with the ability to adapt to our own business processes, has helped the service team be more productive and also more proactive in the way that it communicates with the business. Ultimately this helps us in our drive to move away from reacting to incidents and firefighting to focusing on service improvement and driving our business forward.”

Hornbill Service Manager is available immediately. For more information, visit http://hornbill.com/

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

Annual global survey reveals widespread uncertainty about cloud security and negative impact on security posture

InfoSecurity Europe, London and Plantation, Fla – April 29, 2014 – Thales, a world leader in Critical Information Systems and Cybersecurity announces the cloud is losing the ‘scare factor’ for businesses, according to its latest report – Encryption in the Cloud. The study reveals that more and more organizations are transferring sensitive or confidential information to public cloud services even though more than a third expect a negative impact on security posture. In response, the use of encryption is increasing but more than half of respondents still admit their sensitive data goes unprotected when it is stored in the cloud, despite data security topping the global news agenda.

The independent global study of more than 4,000 organizations conducted by the Ponemon Institute reveals differing opinions over who is responsible for security in the cloud – the cloud provider, or the cloud consumer and how best to protect the sensitive data that is sent there. The report explores the impact on security posture of moving to the cloud, the transparency of cloud providers, how organizations are treading the line between trust and control with regard to encryption and how encryption keys should be managed.

Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute, says: Staying in control of sensitive or confidential data is paramount for most organizations today and yet our survey shows they are transferring ever more of their most valuable data assets to the cloud. It is perhaps a sign of confidence that organizations with the highest overall security posture were most likely to use the cloud for operations involving sensitive data and it is encouraging to find that significantly fewer respondents believe that use of the cloud is weakening their security posture. However there are still concerns that many organizations continue to believe that their cloud providers are solely responsible for protecting their sensitive data even though the majority of respondents claim not to know what specific security measures their cloud provider is taking.

Richard Moulds, vice president strategy, Thales e-Security, says: Encryption is the most widely proven method to secure sensitive data in the enterprise and in the cloud, and yet more than half of respondents report that sensitive data in the cloud goes unprotected. Those that are using encryption have adopted a variety of deployment strategies but once again a universal pain point is key management. Very often, the way that keys are managed makes all the difference with poor implementations dramatically reducing effectiveness and driving up costs. Key management is a critical control issue for respondents, who are increasingly focused on retaining ownership of keys as a way to control access to data. Deployed correctly encryption can help organizations to migrate sensitive data and high risk applications to the cloud, allowing them to safely unlock the full potential for economic benefit the cloud can deliver.

Key findings:

• Cloud security is here to stay: The use of the cloud for processing and storing sensitive data seems inevitable. More than half of all respondents say their organization already transfers sensitive or confidential data to the cloud and only 11 percent say that their organization has no plans to use the cloud for sensitive operations, down from 19 percent only two years ago.
• Cloud confidence is on the up, but at what cost? Although nearly half of respondents believe that their use of the cloud has had no impact on their overall security posture, those that believe it has had a negative effect (34 percent) on their security posture outnumbered those that experienced a positive effect (17 percent) by a factor of two to one.
• Where does the security buck stop? The perceived responsibility for protecting sensitive data in the cloud is very dependent on the type of cloud service in question. In software-as-a-service (SaaS) environments more than half of respondents see the cloud provider as being primarily responsible for security. In contrast, nearly half of infrastructure-as-a-service/platform-as-a-service (IaaS/PaaS) users view security as a shared responsibility between the user and cloud provider.
• Visibility improves but gaps remain: The good news is that visibility into the security practices of cloud providers is increasing with 35 percent of respondents considering themselves knowledgeable about the security practices of their cloud providers compared with 29 percent only two years ago. But, half of SaaS users still claim to have no knowledge of what steps their providers are taking to secure their sensitive data.
• Encryption usage increases but data still exposed: The use of encryption to protect sensitive or confidential data stored in the cloud (data at rest) appears to be increasing. For SaaS users we see an increase from 32 percent in 2011 to 39 percent in 2013 and for IaaS/PaaS users respondents report an increase from 17 percent to 26 percent over the same period, but still, more than half of respondents report that their sensitive data is in the clear and therefore readable when stored in the cloud.
• Treading a line between trust and control: There is currently an almost equal division in terms of how stored data is encrypted while in the cloud. Of those respondents that encrypt stored data just over half apply encryption directly within in the cloud with just over 40 percent elect to encrypt the data before it is sent to the cloud.
• Who holds the key? When it comes to key management there is a clear recognition of the importance of retaining ownership of encryption keys with 34 percent of respondents reporting that their own organization is in control of encryption keys when data is encrypted in the cloud. Only 18 percent of respondents report that the cloud provider has full control over keys.
• Standards enable trust in a shared environment: The need to share keys between organizations and the cloud highlights the growing interest in key management standards – in particular OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) – where 54 percent of respondents identify cloud based applications and storage encryption as the area to be most impacted by the adoption of the KMIP standard.

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

55 percent of European financial organisations believe third party contractors pose the biggest risk; 52 percent find insider threats harder to detect than last year

London - April 29, 2014 - Vormetric, a leader in enterprise data security for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced further analysis of its ‘Insider Threat' report, conducted in 2014 with industry analyst firm Ovum. Focusing on just those responses from IT decision-makers at financial services organisations in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (a total of 92 responses), the research reveals how firms in the financial sector are evaluating their exposure to insider threats, and the steps they are taking in order to mitigate the risks.

The nature of insider threats today has shifted to include malicious privileged insiders as well as the compromise of privileged user accounts by advanced malware. The research shows that controlling legitimate network access by third party contractors is a primary concern within the sector, as 55 percent of IT decision-makers at financial organisations rate this type of user as posing the biggest risk. Other types of users that were isolated as posing the biggest threat to financial organisations include ‘privileged users' - such as IT and network administrators - at 43 percent, and non-technical employees with legitimate access to sensitive data and IT assets, also at 43 percent.

Click to Tweet: #InsiderThreat: 3rd party contractors pose biggest risk for financial sector, finds @Vormetric and @OvumICT report http://bit.ly/1nYr41d

Other key findings from the report for financial services organisations:

• 76 percent of financial services organisations plan to increase spending specifically to address insider threats
• The top driver for this spending increase is compliance (45 percent), with protecting reputation and the implementation of best practices the next greatest areas of concern
• Just over half (52 percent) are finding insider threats harder to detect than last year
• Cloud computing technology was a big concern, with 45 percent of European financial organisations finding insider threats harder to detect because of increasing use of cloud resources

The objective of the report is to establish the impact that insider threats are having on organisations. Insider threats involve the abuse or compromise of legitimate access to company data. This threat is forcing organisations to introduce privileged user data access policies to reduce the risk of hackers and APTs successfully using compromised administrator credentials to steal data. It also significantly limits the potential for abuse and data theft by privileged users such as root users and contract administrators.

"Typically, financial services firms' very business is built on generating and processing the kind of data that cybercriminals dream of," said Alan Kessler, CEO at Vormetric. You may remember the case of the Korean Credit Bureau in January this year, when financial data belonging to a staggering 20 million South Koreans - 40 percent of the country's entire population - was stolen as a result of insider theft. In this instance a third party contractor tasked with improving security systems is thought to have smuggled the data out using USB sticks, later selling the information to phone marketing companies. Organisations are struggling to know exactly who has access to what data at any one time - if you don't know this you can't make any assurances of its security."

The adoption of Cloud computing was also a top concern of European financial organisations, with 45 percent feeling it to be the leading cause of additional insider threat risk. These organisations have long used Cloud resources to enhance their raw compute power for analysing financial markets and investments, but continue to grow cloud usage in other areas as well.

"Enterprises grow their use of cloud computing to take advantage of the business flexibility and financial advantages it brings," said Daniele Catteddu, Managing Director EMEA for Cloud Security Alliance. "The research shows that they feel that there are additional security risks from this growth, and details how cloud providers can enhance their offerings to better meet enterprise security needs for offsetting insider threats."

The report also details top concerns with big data initiatives, a technology area where financial services firms are leading adopters. 69 percent of European financial services organisations cited the security of reports from big data projects that may include sensitive data as their leading big data concern.

"Organisations are moving ahead with big data implementations - both to drive business advantage and to enhance security," said Matt Asay, VP of Marketing and Business Development at MongoDB - a company whose technology supports big data implementations and a partner of Vormetric. "Results of the insider threat report show that organisations are clearly looking for solutions that can detect, defend and control access to digital assets from malicious and unauthorised individuals. MongoDB is enabling organisations to build modern applications for fraud detection, cyberthreat analysis, anti-terrorism and compliance."

To find out more about the risks posed by insider threats and for additional findings from the research with Ovum, visit the Vormetric website: http://bit.ly/1nYr41d

The 2014 Vormetric Insider Threat Report focuses on Europe's three largest technology and business markets - France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK). Across these three markets 540 senior IT professionals and business managers, over 80 percent from mid-to-large enterprise organisations, were interviewed on the impact that insider threats have on their organisations and on how prepared they are to deal with insider activity.

This report was conducted by Ovum Research on behalf of Vormetric and with cooperation from Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), MongoDB, OASIS, Total Device, Security Innovation Network and Field Fisher Waterhouse.

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

ZTE Corporation, leading global provider in telecommunications equipment and network solutions, is the latest member to join UPnP Forum’s Steering Committee. Responsible for making key decisions driving the success of UPnP technology, the Steering Committee plays a vital role in the governance of the Forum.

UPnP Forum has paved the way for seamless connectivity between billions of home networked devices, and for more than a dozen years, UPnP technology has offered unique capabilities for consumer electronics and computing devices. Members contribute to the work of the Forum by participating in Technical Working Committees, sharing their knowledge, experience and expertise to create common, agreed protocols, processes and best practice recommendations for use by the industry and for standards and other related industry bodies.

ZTE has joined UPnP Forum’s Steering Committee as it looks to strengthen its work towards standardization and interoperability, particularly within the new Man-to-Device Interaction (MDI) Task Force. Established leaders in technological innovation, ZTE will lead the MDI Task Force in introducing new models of interaction between users and UPnP devices, allowing them to control and interact with each other or services in the home network by simple gestures or voice instructions.

Changle Zou, Senior Standard Research Engineer at ZTE, and newly appointed Board Director says: “We are delighted to join the UPnP Forum Steering Committee and to lead the Man-to-Device Interaction Task Force as it provides us with the perfect opportunity to impart our knowledge, learn from other members and participate in driving technological innovation. The Forum holds a wealth of knowledge and expertise with its vast range of members so we look forward to working together. Our main focus will be to contribute towards setting standardization to enrich services and networks in the home environment.”

Alongside collaborating with other members to develop device interoperability, ZTE hopes to introduce a new type of user-to-device interaction to UPnP Forum through the work of the MDI Task Force. Effectively this will enrich content delivery, entertainment sharing and appliances usage.

Scott Lofgren, President of UPnP Forum, says: “We look forward to working closely with ZTE and welcome the company’s experience in interaction between users and devices. The MDI Task Force will open doors to further device interoperability and will have a positive impact on the rate that technologies enter the market.”

UPnP Forum welcomes interested companies to join the Steering Committee to help drive the leadership and business decisions to oversee the governance and operation of the Forum. If your company is interested in serving this important role, please visit http://upnp.org/membership/join_steering/ for more information.

To view UPnP Forum’s full membership, please visit: http://upnp.org/membership/list/. You can also view the Forum’sYouTube video, which highlights the key benefits of becoming a member. For further information about UPnP Forum, to find out how to become a member, or for general enquiries, please e-mail upnpadmin@forum.upnp.org. Alternatively, you can follow the Forum on Twitter @UPnP Forum or join the Forum’s Facebook community. 

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

Baar, Switzerland, April 29, 2014

Click to Tweet: Veeam Wins 100,000th Customer and Posts Record Revenue in Q1 2014

Veeam® Software, innovative provider of solutions that deliver Availability for the Modern Data Center™, today announced that it won its 100,000th customer and posted record revenue results for the first quarter of 2014. Veeam closed Q1’14 with 48 percent year-over-year growth of new license bookings. In addition, total bookings revenue growth for Q1 2014 was 56 percent for the same period, marking Veeam’s 25th consecutive quarter in which quarterly total bookings revenue has grown by more than 50 percent over the same period during the previous year.

“Veeam continues to bridge the gap between the requirements of the Always-On Business™ and IT’s ability to effectively deliver business continuity and IT resilience to the majority of businesses,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam. “Businesses are facing challenges such as data loss, long recovery times, unreliable data protection and a lack of visibility into their IT environments. Advanced data protection from Veeam, combined with virtualization, the cloud and other enabling technologies, completes the modern data center and ensures that the critical applications of our more than 100,000 customers remain always on from any place, at any time, on any device.  Our recent partnership with NetApp as a part of Veeam Backup & Replication v8 is a testament to our ongoing mission to enable the Always-On Business by providing advanced data protection to the modern data center.”

Additional highlights of Q1’14 include:

• Customer Growth: More than 9,400 new customers were added in Q1, surpassing the milestone of 100,000 paid Veeam customers. Veeam continues to acquire new customers at a rate of 3,000 each month. This customer momentum has also led to Veeam’s first flagship event, Veeam ON: The World’s Premier Data Protection Event, taking place October 6–9, 2014 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, NV. Veeam will bring together industry-leading experts and Veeam customers to learn how to enable the Always-On Business.
• Veeam Cloud Provider (VCP) Program: To better serve the growing number of managed service providers (MSPs) who use Veeam Backup & Replication™, Veeam joined the Kaseya Technology Alliance Program and developed an add-on for Kaseya Virtual System Administrator (VSA).

“We are thrilled to have Veeam join the Kaseya ecosystem. The Veeam add-on dramatically simplifies management of joint customers’ virtualized environments by exposing Veeam data within the Kaseya management console,” said Don LeClair, EVP, Product Management at Kaseya. “Simplified, centralized management of cloud, on-premise, virtualized and distributed environments is Kaseya’s focus, and this integration with the virtualized backup market leader adds great strength to our offering.”

Veeam also added two new VCP rental aggregators in Q1: Insight (U.S.A.) and ECS (China).

• New Partner Margins and Growth: As a 100 percent channel-based organization, Veeam increased incentives and support to its worldwide partner base of 25,000 ProPartners. Veeam also launched its Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) certification, enabling partners to build professional services and solutions around Veeam within their own virtualization practices.
• State, Local and Higher Education (SLED) team: In response to Veeam’s continued growth of the SLED market, a team devoted specifically to this segment in North America has been created. This dedicated team understands the specific needs, demands and potential of this vertical. Veeam’s newly created SLED team will work closely with the public sector to ensure the challenges they face in maintaining an Always-On Business are supported and delivered.

Veeam received a number of prestigious industry honors during Q1’14, including the following:

• InfoWorld 2014 Products of the Year: Veeam Backup & Replication v7 was named a winner among the best hardware, software, development tools and cloud services of the year.  
• 2014 Virtualization Review Readers’ Choice Awards and Ultimate Buyers’ Guide:Veeam was named a finalist in two categories: Veeam Management Pack™ in the Virtualization Management and Optimization category and Veeam Backup & Replication in the Business Continuity category.
• CIO 50 Award: Veeam customer ARGAS, which is based in Saudi Arabia, won as a high-performer IT organization.
• Channel Partner: Veeam’s ProPartner Program was recently awarded the top spot in a comprehensive comparative study of backup vendor channel programs conducted by Insalcon, a sales consulting firm, in partnership with Channel Partner, a German publication.
• Storage Magazine Products of the Year: Veeam Backup & Replication v7 was named 2013 Product of the Year in the Backup and Disaster Recovery Software and Services category.
• CRN Data Center 100: Veeam has been recognized in the CRN Data Center 100 annual list, featuring technology vendors whose solutions are vital for powering today’s data center.
• CRN 2014 Partner Program Guide: Veeam has been awarded a 5-Star rating in the CRN 2014 Partner Program Guide. The annual directory offers the information solution providers need to evaluate IT vendors they work with or are considering working with.

About Veeam Software
Veeam® enables the Always-On Business™ by providing solutions that deliver Availability for the Modern Data Center™. Veeam recognizes the challenges in keeping a business up and running at all times and addresses them with solutions that provide high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance, verified protection, risk mitigation and complete visibility. Veeam Backup & Replication™ leverages technologies that enable the modern data center, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, NetApp storage, and HP 3PAR StoreServ and StoreVirtual Storage, to help organizations meet recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPOs and RTOs), save time, mitigate risks, and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs. Veeam Backup Management Suite™ provides all of the benefits and features of Veeam Backup & Replication along with advanced monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for the backup infrastructure. Veeam Management Pack™ extends Microsoft System Center monitoring to enterprise vSphere environments and also offers monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure. The Veeam Cloud Provider Program (VCP) offers flexible monthly and perpetual licensing to meet the needs of hosting, managed service and cloud service providers. VCP currently has more than 4,500 service provider partners worldwide. Monthly rental is available in more than 70 countries from more than 50 Veeam aggregators.

Founded in 2006, Veeam currently has 25,000 ProPartners and more than 101,000 customers worldwide. Veeam’s global headquarters are located in Baar, Switzerland, and the company has offices throughout the world. To learn more, visit http://www.veeam.com.

Reading, UK., April 29, 2014– Amidst the ever growing demand for enterprise-grade virtual SANs and the need for cost-effective utilisation of Flash technology, DataCore, a leader in software-defined storage, today revealed new virtual SAN functionality and significant enhancements to its SANsymphony™-V10 software – the 10th generation release of its comprehensive storage services platform. The new release significantly advances virtual SAN capabilities designed to achieve the fastest performance, highest availability and optimal use from Flash and disk storage directly attached to application hosts and clustered servers in virtual (server-side) SAN customer cases.

DataCore’s new Virtual SAN is a software-only solution that automates and simplifies storage management and provisioning while delivering enterprise-class functionality, automated recovery and significantly faster performance. It is easy to set up and runs on new or existing x86 servers where it creates a shared storage pool out of the internal Flash and disk storage resources available to that server. This means the DataCore™ Virtual SAN can be cost-effectively deployed as an overlay, without the need to make major investments in new hardware or complex SAN gear.

DataCore contrasts its enterprise-class virtual SAN offering with competing products which are incapable of sustaining serious workloads and providing a growth path to physical SAN assets, and inextricably tied to a specific server hypervisor, rendering them unusable in all but the smallest branch office environments or non-critical test and development scenarios.

The Ultimate Virtual SAN: Inexhaustible Performance, Continuous Availability, Large Scale
There is no compromise on performance, availability and scaling with DataCore. The new SANsymphony-V10 virtual SAN software scales performance to more than 50 Million IOPS and to 32 Petabytes of capacity across a cluster of 32 servers, making it one of the most powerful and scalable systems in the marketplace.

Enterprise-class availability comes standard with a DataCore virtual SAN; the software includes automated failover and failback recovery, and is able to span a N+1 grid (up to 32 nodes) stretching over metro-wide distances. With a DataCore virtual SAN, business continuity, remote site replication and data protection are simple and no hassle to implement, and best of all, once set, it is automatic thereafter.

DataCore SANsymphony-V10 also resolves mixed combinations of virtual and physical SANs and accounts for the likelihood that a virtual SAN may extend out into an external SAN – as the need for centralised storage services and hardware consolidation efficiencies are required initially or considered in later stages of the project. DataCore stands apart from the competition in that it can run on the server-side as a virtual SAN; it can run and manage physical SANs and it can operate and federate across both. SANsymphony-V10 essentially provides a comprehensive growth path that amplifies the scope of the virtual SAN to non-disruptively incorporate external storage as part of an overall architecture.  

A Compelling Solution for Expanding Enterprises
While larger environments will be drawn by SANsymphony-V10’s impressive specs, many customers have relatively modest requirements for their first virtual SAN. Typically they are looking to cost-effectively deploy fast ‘in memory’ technologies to speed up critical business applications, add resiliency and grow to integrate multiple systems over multiple sites, but have to live within limited commodity equipment budgets.

“We enable clients to get started with a high performance, stretchable and scalable virtual SAN at an appealing price, that takes full advantage of inexpensive servers and their internal drives,” said Paul Murphy, vice president of worldwide marketing at DataCore. “Competing alternatives mandate many clustered servers and require add-on flash cards to achieve a fraction of what DataCore delivers.”

DataCore virtual SANs are ideal solutions for clustered servers, VDI desktop deployments, remote disaster recovery and multi-site virtual server projects, as well as those demanding database and business application workloads running on server platforms. The software enables companies to create large scale and modular ‘Google-like’ infrastructures that leverage heterogeneous and commodity storage, servers and low-cost networking to transform them into enterprise-grade production architectures.

Virtual SANs and Flash: Comprehensive Software Stack is a ‘Must Have’ for Any Flash Deployment
SANsymphony-V10 delivers the industry’s most comprehensive set of features and services to manage, integrate and optimise Flash-based technology as part of your virtual SAN deployment or within an overall storage infrastructure. For example, SANsymphony-V10 self-tunes Flash and minimises flash wear, and enables flash to be mirrored for high-availability even to non-Flash based devices for cost reduction. The software employs adaptive 'in-memory' caching technologies to speed up application workloads and optimise write traffic performance to complement Flash read performance. DataCore’s powerful auto-tiering feature works across different vendor platforms optimising the use of new and existing investments of Flash and storage devices (up to 15 tiers). Other features such as metro-wide mirroring, snapshots and auto-recovery apply to the mix of Flash and disk devices equally well, enabling greater productivity, flexibility and cost-efficiency.

DataCore’s Universal End-to-End Services Platform Unifies ‘Isolated Storage Islands’
SANsymphony-V10 also continues to advance larger scale storage infrastructure management capabilities, cross-device automation and the capability to unify and federate ‘isolated storage islands.’

 “It’s easy to see how IT organisations responding to specific projects could find themselves with several disjointed software stacks – one for virtual SANs for each server hypervisor and another set of stacks from each of their flash suppliers, which further complicates the handful of embedded stacks in each of their SAN arrays,” said IDC’s consulting director for storage, Nick Sundby. “DataCore treats each of these scenarios as use cases under its one, unifying software-defined storage platform, aiming to drive management and functional convergence across the enterprise.”

Additional Highlighted Features
The spotlight on SANsymphony-V10 is clearly on the new virtual SAN capabilities, and the new licensing and pricing choices. However, a number of other major performance and scalability enhancements appear in this version as well:

Scalability has doubled from 16 to 32 nodes; Enables Metro-wide N+1 grid data protection

• Supports high-speed 40/56 GigE iSCSI; 16Gbps Fibre Channel; iSCSI Target NIC teaming
• Performance visualisation/Heat Map tools add insight into the behavior of Flash and disks
• New auto-tiering settings optimise expensive resources (e.g., flash cards) in a pool
• Intelligent disk rebalancing, dynamically redistributes load across available devices within a tier
• Automated CPU load leveling and Flash optimisations to increase performance
• Disk pool optimization and self-healing storage; Disk contents are automatically restored across the remaining storage in the pool; Enhancements to easily select and prioritise order of recovery
• New self-tuning caching algorithms and optimisations for flash cards and SSDs
• ‘Click-simple’ configuration wizards to rapidly set up different use cases (Virtual SAN; High-Availability SANs; NAS File Shares; etc.)

Pricing and Availability
Typical multi-node SANsymphony-V10 software licenses start in the 8.000 to 20.000 euro range. The new Virtual SAN pricing starts at 3.300 euros per server. The virtual SAN price includes auto-tiering, adaptive read/ write caching from DRAM, storage pooling, metro-wide synchronous mirroring, thin provisioning and snapshots. The software supports all the popular operating systems hosted on VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Simple ‘Plug-ins’ for both VMware vSphere and Microsoft System Center are included to enable simplified hypervisor-based administration. SANsymphony-V10 and its virtual SAN variations may be deployed in a virtual machine or running natively on Windows Server 2012, using standard physical x86-64 servers.

General availability for SANsymphony-V10 is scheduled for May 30, 2014.

About DataCore
DataCore is a leader in software-defined storage. The company’s storage virtualization software empowers organizations to seamlessly manage and scale their data storage architectures, delivering massive performance gains at a fraction of the cost of solutions offered by legacy storage hardware vendors. Backed by 10,000 customer sites around the world, DataCore’s adaptive and self-learning and healing technology takes the pain out of manual processes and helps deliver on the promise of the new software defined data center through its hardware agnostic architecture. Visit http://www.datacore.com or call +44 (0) 118 949 7024 for more information.

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANsymphony are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

For media & PR inquiries:
KPR Global
Sharon Munday
44 7787 566382
smunday@kprglobal.com

Recognising the opportunity to offer customers worldwide the ability to automate the execution of a broader range of service and support tasks through their comprehensive FrontOffice request management portal, Biomni have worked with thoughtonomy to integrate the FrontOffice portal with thoughtonomy’s innovative and highly flexible robotic automation solution for service and support operations. With the integrated offering, a vast range of typically complex, time consuming, manually intensive and/or error-susceptible processes  across all manner of systems and applications can be initiated and fully executed from Biomni’s secure user self-service portal.  Because thoughtonomy use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate service and support tasks, any structured manual task across any type of system, application or interface can be automated without any need for complex change programs, API development, deployment of agents or connectors, or redesign of existing processes. As a result, automation benefits of cost efficiency, compliance and error reduction can be realised in a matter of weeks. 

Speaking of the partnership, Biomni’s CEO Angus Gregory said “By offering customers the option of using robotic automation for request execution, regardless of the system, application, technology or interface in use, we can now deliver a broader range of activity automation much more rapidly, and without the need to develop custom APIs or connectors for each application or platform we interface to.”

“We are delighted to be working with Biomni, and to be able to offer clients an integrated solution for self-service execution of automated processes,” said Terry Walby, Chief Executive of thoughtonomy. “Once our virtual workforce has been taught a process, the FrontOffice portal can be used to offer end-users, customers or partners the ability to initiate process execution at the click of a button. Whether that is user admin tasks like resetting passwords, provisioning tasks like adding or increasing capacity, data gathering tasks like consolidating and reporting, incident management tasks like running diagnostics and tests, or many more besides, the FrontOffice platform can be configured to allow those actions to be requested, approved and completed, end to end, with minimal or no human touch.”

The partnership agreement is a bi-directional go to market, with Biomni offering robotic automation as an optional module alongside their FrontOffice application, and thoughtonomy offering the FrontOffice portal as an add-on to their core automation platform.

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

The survey reveals that employees across the region are granted excessive privileges – such as ‘admin rights’ beyond the requirements of their roles and that as a result, are exacerbating the ‘insider threat’ risk.

“This latest survey shows that the problem of excessive privilege continues to be a major problem and while organisations are aware of the issue, they are still failing to address it,” says Brent Thurrell, VP EMEA and India.  “The tools are there to manage privilege – which can be the cause of many unnecessary security vulnerabilities – so organisations are putting themselves at risk unnecessarily.  More companies need to start prioritizing privilege management.”

Privilege beyond their needs
Over a third of respondents say that they have access rights not necessary for their current roles.  When asked what information could be accessed, 44 per cent cited financial reports, privilege passwords, email server accounts, R&D plans.

On a more positive note, over 60 per cent have controls to monitor privilege access, though just over half believe that either they or colleagues have the ability to circumvent these controls.  When asked to rate what kind of information is most of risk, respondents stated 45 per cent of general business information, 34 per cent of customer information and just over 12 per cent of financial information.  

Curiosity is putting sensitive and confidential information at risk
Over half of all respondent believe employees are likely or very likely to access sensitive or confidential information out of curiosity.  Indeed, over a third of respondents admitting to retrieving information not relevant to their jobs.  It is encouraging that over half of all organisations do not allow sensitive data to be stored on employees’ workstations or laptops, but not such good news that over 43 per cent confessed that their organisations do allow this to happen. 

Future indications
Over a third believe that it is likely or very likely that their organisations will assign privilege access rights that go beyond the individuals’ roles and responsibilities, with only 32 per cent saying that this would be unlikely. 45 per cent expect the risks around privilege management to increase within the next few years.

Survey information
The survey reflects responses from over 100 IT decision makers across Europe, including security managers, and network and systems engineers across a number of industries including financial services, manufacturing, and government.  Please see Appendix A for a full breakdown of the results.

At its International Partner Conference, Unify, formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications, today announced that it has accelerated efforts to dramatically increase the business it conducts globally through channel partners. At the event, attended by hundreds of channel partners from across Europe and Asia, Unify executives outlined a series of improvements to its partner programs while demonstrating moves already made that evidence Unify’s commitment to a successful channel strategy.

Jon Pritchard, executive vice president of worldwide channels who joined the company earlier this year in the newly created role, outlined the company’s updated business strategy that puts channel success at the top of the priority list.  “Let me be clear: we are putting the industry and our competitors on notice that we are absolutely serious about positioning Unify as the partner of choice for the communications and collaboration industry.  As we transform to a software-centric company and prepare for the availability of Project Ansible later this year, we need the right partners to help fulfill our growth aspirations,” said Prichard. “Our CEO, Dean Douglas, announced earlier this year that growing revenue through indirect channels is one of our highest priorities and we are not wasting any time to make this a reality. We are 100 percent focused on recruiting and working closely with the best channel partners globally.”

Company reshapes executive team with channel experience
In a move to highlight direct evidence of the strategic priority on a renewed channel focus, the company introduced a number of executive hires, each with deep channel experience. Beginning with CEO Dean Douglas who joined in January, the company has strengthened the leadership team with executives with decades of combined channel experience at IBM and Westcon. 

“This is the year that we change the industry view point of Unify and become the first choice for the channel,” said Pritchard. “We are not only strengthening our channel, we are completely reworking our strategy, business model and programs to have a channel-first sales approach.  The foundation of a channel business is the product and at Unify, we have an outstanding portfolio that we will continually develop – including an expanded OpenScape Business line and OpenScape Enterprise Express.  The incremental opportunity for Project Ansible is huge for the channel and we will work in partnership with our channel to ensure a rewarding sales model.”

Upgraded go forward channel program and partner recruitment drive underway
In support of its channel strategy, the company announced plans to enhance the Go Forward partner program to make it even more attractive for partners. The program will now offer differentiated partner benefits based on the established accreditation structure, better access to accreditation for new and existing partners, increased marketing support and first class access to Unify support teams to propose, sell and implement solutions.

A partner recruitment drive was also kicked off at the event with a call out for new partners from across all geographies to meet with Unify and sign on. This drive comes as Unify is moving quickly into the SaaS space and getting its channel ready for the launch of Project Ansible in autumn 2014. Project Ansible is a new solution for secure and engaging communications and collaboration that enables companies to deliver a new way to work (#NW2W).

OpenScape portfolio expands, services take on a channel focus and project ansible readies for market
Unify continues to innovate and expand its products, solutions and services portfolio to fulfill its role as trusted advisor to the thousands of small to mid-size to enterprise customers around the world. The company recently announced a focus on the SMB segment with an enhanced OpenScape business portfolio and introduced the OpenScape Business X1 appliance — an all-in-one solution that brings the benefits of a professional voice and unified communications (UC) solution to small and medium businesses (SMBs), regardless of the company size or telephony infrastructure.

Unify also has a full portfolio of services offerings, including managed services, professional services, maintenance and support and security solutions. Unify is committed to leveraging these capabilities to support our channel partners and works with partners to identify those opportunities where we can best support them with services.

Earlier this year the company announced further details of Project Ansible, a completely new and innovative software offering designed to extend beyond the promises of unified communications (UC) supporting recognised industry megatrends like bring your own device (BYOD), addressing the role of millennials in the workforce, their requirements of mobility and the rise of the Anywhere Worker.  Project Ansible will empower teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations across virtually any communications channel or device resulting in dramatically improved team productivity.  Developed with a user-centric approach over two years in collaboration with frog, a world-leading design consultancy firm, Project Ansible is an immersive solution that erases the boundaries of multiple communication channels and business process applications and integrates them into an intuitive ‘single pane of glass’ user experience, providing visibility across a workgroup, an enterprise and the Web, and transcending the mobile workforce.   Project Ansible delivers on user expectations by truly redefining “unified” and, at the same time, brings this experience to the growing mobile workforce without sacrificing functionality. Project Ansible will be available to customers in Fall 2014.

Did you know that you’re responsible for protecting all your customers’ card data and payment details? Unless you’re able to prove you handle payments and store data in a way that’s PCI DSS compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), the payment card companies won’t underwrite any fraudulent losses. That can be an expensive mistake!

Earlier this year, the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), offered guidance for securing payment card data in cloud environments. More than 100 global organisations, including a range of technology vendors, came together to help businesses identify and address the security challenges for different cloud architecture and models, and understand their PCI DSS responsibilities when implementing these solutions.

So what should you look for when selecting a cloud PCI vendor?

It’s not enough just to get their certificate. As the report recommends, companies that have undergone PCI DSS compliance assessment and validation, will be able to provide clients with proof of compliance documentation, such as the Attestation of Compliance (AOC) and appliance sections from the Report on Compliance (ROC), including the date of assessment. They should also be willing to share evidence of system components and services that were excluded from the assessment.

Specific due-diligence processes and goals will vary for each organisation, but typically, it is recommended that you look for the following:

• A history of sound work practices and ethical behaviour
• Potential risks with the provider that may impact your business
• Areas of the service that need to be clarified and included in the service agreement
• Assurance that the provider is compatible with your business image and risk profile

If you are taking credit card orders, or if your customer service agents are exposed to your customers’ credit card information, it’s so important to take a hard look at your contact centre vendor. They really do need to be a PSI DSS tier 1 validated service provider, as that means they have been externally audited rather than self-certified. After all, do you really want to trust your customers’ card details with someone who has marked their own homework?

Find out more at http://www.newvoicemedia.com

Further Information

Communications Manager
Tel: 07500 006 458
Email: nicola.brookes@newvoicemedia.com

Amplidata, a leader in object-based software defined storage, and Avere Systems, a leading provider of enterprise storage for cloud-enabled data centers, today announced a partnership to deliver a high performance, massively scalable and efficient storage solution for cloud-enabled data centers. The combined solution offers organizations cloud-scale economics with the security, performance and flexibility of their data center. The solution is ideally suited for many industries including: life sciences, oil and gas, media and entertainment, R&D and service providers.

Changing workloads and the ever-increasing volume and value of data continue to challenge even the most efficient IT organizations. Traditional RAID-based architectures are no longer viable for today's big data scale due to increased risk of data loss when using multi-terabyte hard drives. To address these challenges, many organizations are embracing cloud-scale storage solutions that provide high levels of durability, scalability and efficiency at a lower price point.

With this partnership, Amplidata and Avere Systems have redefined high performance massively scalable storage by combining Amplidata's Amplistor® with Avere FlashCloud™ on FXT Series Edge filers. Organizations can now have a cost effective solution that offers the best of both worlds - superior performance with massively scalable and durable storage in a single global namespace.

Avere demonstrated scalable NFS performance on Amplidata's object storage technology, using SPECsfs2008, the storage industry's most popular NAS benchmark. A three-node FXT 3800 cluster achieved 180,229 ops/sec throughput and minimal latency of 0.95ms overall response time (ORT) with an Amplistor system. The secure AmpliStor system could be deployed across three geographically dispersed sites.

Find Avere's latest SPECsfs2008 NFS testing results on the SPEC website at:www.spec.org/sfs2008/results/sfs2008nfs.html

AmpliStor ingests data at line speed and delivers 3GB/s of sustained aggregate throughput from a base configuration with three controllers. Performance scales linearly with additional controllers, as each controller can saturate a 10GbE connection to deliver an extra 1GB/s throughput. The full performance report is atwww.amplidata.com/download/amplistor-performance-validation-report/

The combined solution significantly improves the total cost of ownership as performance and capacity can be easily scaled independently. AmpliStor's patented BitSpread® and BitDynamics® software runs on Intel*-based commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and can scale to store exabytes. AmpliStor protects data with fifteen 9s durability. With GeoSpread, data is dynamically spread across multiple sites using 65 percent[1]* less capacity than RAID 6 with replication and keeps data safe and accessible even if an entire site becomes unavailable.

Increasing capacity is as simple as adding a single storage node. Changing the configuration or durability levels after the system has been deployed requires only an online update to the policy. The system dynamically rebalances data across all nodes and sites without having to touch the data.

"We are thrilled to partner with Avere to offer customers a cost effective cloud-scale storage solution that combines high performance file access with massive scalability," said Mike Wall, chairman and CEO of Amplidata. "This solution is ideally suited for customers with big data demands who are looking to keep more data online in order to extract value and use it as a competitive advantage."

"Avere has been at the forefront of enabling enterprises with large NAS deployments to leverage object storage without having to rewrite existing applications or compromise on performance," said Ron Bianchini, president and CEO of Avere Systems. "The combined solution with Amplidata provides a new, dynamic architecture that combines the best of both worlds by allowing customers to scale NAS performance with dense storage capacity and achieve new economies of scale in storage infrastructure."

Further Information

Service Delivery Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1522 883640
Email: enquires@realwire.com

Hudson, MA – April 28, 2014 – Corero Network Security (LSE: CNS), a leading provider of First Line of Defense® security solutions, has found that the inability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer secure Internet services is contributing to continued exploits of OpenSSL and Network Time Protocol (NTP) for cyber attacks. While organisations continue to spend millions of dollars on remediation and defences against these threats, their efforts lack any significant assistance from their ISPs. Security minded ISPs should share the responsibility for protecting against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and cyber threats by mitigating obvious attack traffic before it reaches their corporate customers’ networks.

 One of the greatest security risks companies face is connecting their essential business infrastructures and applications to raw, unsecured Internet feeds. Even with traditional technologies and solutions in place, companies are still at risk from malicious traffic delivered by their ISPs. Technology exists to remove many known threats while they are still in transit, unfortunately, most ISPs have business models based on the volume of bandwidth they deliver rather than its quality or security. As a result, enterprises are left with no choice but to fend for themselves. In fact, most ISPs are still delivering Heartbleed-related requests and NTP amplification attacks to corporate networks, undermining their customer’s ongoing efforts to remediate and defend against these very same threats.

 The recent Heartbleed (OpenSSL) cyber threat and Network Time Protocol (NTP) DDoS attacks are just two examples where pervasive Internet technologies were hijacked for nefarious goals. “These attacks are most certainly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ever-present threat of damaging Internet exploits. Ubiquitous-access and Net-neutrality do not constitute a justification for not discriminating between good and bad traffic,” said Ashley Stephenson, CEO, Corero Network Security.

 Since the discovery of the Heartbleed vulnerability, many corporations have been on high alert, frantically testing and patching every potentially vulnerable OpenSSL system within their diverse online enterprises. In the process, they have spent millions of dollars on remediation and still do not know the true cost of responding to this exploit or if their systems are now secured. Meanwhile ISPs could have inoculated their customers against Heartbleed by inspecting for and blocking Heartbleed request and response traffic in the very Internet feeds they are paid to deliver.

 “It is time for a cyber revolution. Instead of taking an ‘every man for himself’ approach to battling cyber attacks, Internet Service Providers need to step forward and deliver protected Internet services that remove the known malicious traffic before it impacts their enterprise customers,” said Stephenson. “Many organisations understand the value that their ISPs could provide – beyond simply delivering bandwidth – and are willing to pay a fair price for the benefit of having known bad traffic removed from their business critical Internet feeds.”

 Corero recognises the need to provide businesses with secured Internet services. The company recently introduced its SmartWall Threat Defense System (TDS) that enables service providers of all types to deliver always on threat protection and visibility as a security service to their customers. This is a critical next step for service providers to regain control of their networks from the cyber criminals who seek to exploit them. Enterprise customers will benefit from having malicious traffic intercepted before it hits their important online infrastructure, leaving them free to focus on delivering innovative and profitable new services to their customers.

 Corero also confirmed that its First Line of Defense solutions are not impacted by the Heartbleed vulnerability. A protection pack PP-2014-04-09-03 addressing Heartbleed was first released on April 9, 2014. The company has also provided additional protection and detection capabilities for suspicious Heartbleed request and response traffic in software release versions V6.80.049 and V6.61.031. The specific rules allocated to Heartbleed detection are tln-106850 and tln-106852 for Corero DDS and IPS.

The Corero First Line of Defense solutions demonstrated live at Stand B68 during Infosecurity Europe this week.

 About Corero Network Security
Corero Network Security, an organization’s First Line of Defense® against DDoS attacks and cyber threats, is a pioneer in global network security. Corero products and services provide Online Enterprises, Service Providers, Hosting Providers and Managed Security Service Providers with an additional layer of security capable of inspecting Internet traffic and enforcing real-time access and monitoring policies designed to match the needs of the protected business. Corero technology enhances any defense-in-depth security architecture with a scalable, flexible and responsive defense against DDoS attacks and cyber threats before they reach the targeted IT infrastructure allowing online services to perform as intended. For more information, visit www.corero.com.

Perforce Software today announced it selected Lunchtime Studios, creators of the game Lords of New York, as the winner of its 20/20 Game Innovators Contest. The contest recognizes innovative game development among game developers using Perforce 20/20, the free 20-user edition of Perforce’s popular version management system. .

“It’s widely known that all of the AAA gaming companies are run on Perforce, so I was ecstatic when I learned that Perforce is free for indie companies and other small shops,” said Dan Higgins, founder and lead programmer of Lunchtime Studios. “We wanted to build our game right from the start so we’re grateful that Perforce gives back to the community in this way. The fact that they’re now helping us promote our game as well is icing on the cake.”

Perforce is popular with game developers due to its speed, ease of use and ability to manage any type of file—including large binaries, such as the artwork used in games. The Perforce 20/20 Program allows startups and small companies to take advantage of Perforce’s versioning and collaboration solutions. All Perforce products are available free of charge for up to 20 users or 20 workspaces, and an unlimited number of files. The thousands of companies using Perforce free of charge have access to the same award-winning technical support as paid customers, which include an impressive roster of Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders from around the world.

Additionally, Perforce is available at no cost for use in open source projects and to educational institutions.

"Perforce was launched in my garage, so I know what it’s like to be passionate about an idea and give it your all to bring it to fruition. That’s why I’m passionate about our 20/20 Program and helping companies get off the ground,” said Christopher Seiwald, founder and CEO of Perforce. "We looked at a lot of great new games built on Perforce and Lords of New York truly impressed us.”

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Cambridge, UK, 29 April 2014, Undo Software today announced a third funding round of $1.25 million, which will be used to scale the business and support the growing adoption of its UndoDB record-and-replay reversible debugging software. Investment comes from existing backers within the Cambridge Angels group and new investors, including Jaan Tallinn, one of the original founders of Skype and Kazaa, and now co-founder of the University of Cambridge-based Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. The oversubscribed funding round closed in April 2014.

Undo provides solutions for reversible debugging of Linux and Android software, enabling developers to record their program’s execution and then rewind their code in real-time to find bugs more quickly, saving time and reducing cost. Its performance is several orders of magnitude better than open source solutions, with significantly improved memory consumption.

“What attracted me to Undo was the sheer usefulness of its software, combined with the strength of the management team’s vision for growing the business,” said Jaan Tallinn, investor and part of original founding team of Skype and Kazaa. “In my career as a developer I’d have loved to have had access to UndoDB, and with software now critical to the world around us, the addressable market for this technology is potentially huge.”

In January 2014 the company announced plans to expand its workforce by over 30% and moved into new Cambridge offices, which are four times larger than the previous headquarters. This builds on several major milestones achieved in 2013. ARM integrated the company’s UndoDB software into ARM DS-5 Professional Edition, its flagship software development studio; sales expanded within multiple markets, including enterprise, design automation and scientific computing, and the company launched UndoDB version 4, which supports ARM processors and Android Native. 

“Undo is at an exciting time in its development, and this oversubscribed funding round demonstrates the potential for the business,” said Greg Law, CEO and co-founder, Undo Software. “The support of our investors will enable us to scale the company and expand operations, grow our customer base and help more businesses speed up software development and reduce their costs.”

According to recent Cambridge University research, the global cost of finding and removing bugs from software has risen to $312 billion annually – and that it makes up half of development time of the average project. As software becomes more complex, and its use extends further to control everything from cars to cash machines, the consequences are now potentially even more serious, both financially and to company reputation.

About Undo Software
Undo Software is the leading commercial supplier of Linux and Android software development solutions for record-and-replay reversible debugging. Practical in execution time and easy to integrate, UndoDB improves productivity, time to market, and brand reputation while increasing the ingenuity of developers during debug. Customers across multiple vertical market segments use UndoDB to reduce software development debug from weeks to minutes. Undo Software is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, UK. For more information, see: http://undo-software.com/ or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@undosoft.

Apigee, developer of the leading platform for digital acceleration, today announced the completion of a $60 million round of financing. Pine River Capital Management and Wellington Management Company participated as new investors in this round, along with current Apigee investors Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Bay Partners, Third Point LLC, SAP Ventures, funds managed by BlackRock, Focus Ventures, and Accenture. With this financing, Apigee has raised $171 million to date.  Apigee will use the funds to accelerate across all areas of its business to keep up with demand for APIs and big data analytics, as enterprises increasingly embrace these technologies for digital business.

“We’ve had a phenomenal year, and our momentum is accelerating as companies digitally transform to delight customers and grow with unprecedented speed and scale,” said Chet Kapoor, Apigee CEO. “Our investors now include three crossover firms and two of the largest public investors in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a strong validation of our technology, opportunity and business model.”

“Apigee continues to build on its API leadership to drive digital business transformation,” commented Robert Schwartz, managing partner, Third Point Ventures. “Today, every enterprise is racing to leverage data to fundamentally improve the value they bring to customers. This is the sort of transformation that Third Point seeks for investment. Apigee has the API infrastructure to deliver digital services and the analytics to make each interaction valuable and relevant. In our view, Apigee is uniquely positioned for digital business enablement, and it has the team, timing and momentum to capture this opportunity.”

The increasing sophistication of digital technology and customer expectations for hyper-personalized and relevant information is creating new demands for business in every industry. Organizations that are embracing digital to do business at new levels of speed, scale and agility are seeing significant advantages. A study by McKinsey calculates that adapting digital innovations in terms of apps, marketing and business processes can, on average, lower costs nine percent. McKinsey also reported that they have found that on average, digital transformation can boost the bottom line by more than 50 percent over the next five years for companies that pull all transformation levers. Additionally, digital leaders are on average growing their digital sales at 2.5 times that of their sector peers.[1]

Apigee enables businesses to adapt and accelerate for a mobile-first digital world. With the company’s market-leading Apigee Edge API platform, enterprises can quickly build end-to-end mobile and digital initiatives using APIs, apps and data. Apigee Insights delivers big data predictive analytics to make every digital interaction individualized, at scale.  Used together, APIs and predictive analytics can create an adaptive cycle of continuous improvement – and the faster an enterprise goes through this cycle, the faster it can innovate, adapt and accelerate its digital business.

Built from the ground up for the requirements of modern apps and APIs, Apigee supports secure scaling of up to billions of APIs, with high availability globally. Today, many of the world’s largest and most respected organizations have selected Apigee to enable digital business, including 20 percent of the Fortune 100 and 25 percent of the world’s most admired companies.[2] 

“APIs provide the infrastructure for today's data-driven, connected world, and Apigee has established itself as a clear API technology leader. This significant infusion of funding is just another key indicator that this market has become extremely strategic to today’s leading enterprises,” said Promod Haque, senior managing partner at NVP. “APIs allow businesses to better serve their customers through digital interactions. At the same time, big data predictive analytics can make each interaction smarter. Apigee is uniquely combining these two technologies and delivering a powerful platform to help businesses understand customers in new ways and then adapt and take action to deliver real value.”

Apigee recently announced a major new version of Apigee Insights, its big data analytics platform that includes advanced, actionable predictive analytics.  

About Apigee
Apigee provides the leading technology platform for digital acceleration. Through APIs and big data, Apigee delivers the scale, insight and agility any business needs to compete in today’s digital world.  Apigee customers include global enterprises such as Walgreens, eBay, Shell, Live Nation, Kaiser Permanente and Sears. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, California. To learn more, go to apigee.com.

Connect with Apigee

• Apigee blog: https://blog.apigee.com/
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Apigee
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/apigee

[1] McKinsey & Co, “Finding your Digital Sweet Spot,” Nov. 2013

[2] Fortune 2014 list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies”: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/most-admired/2014/list/?iid=wma14_sp_full