m-hance Delivery Management* is an integrated mobile delivery management system which enables organisations to drive down distribution costs, improve customer service and better utilise their fleet and resources. The system comprises electronic proof of delivery (ePOD), route scheduling, route compliance analysis and vehicle tracking functionality to provide real-time information and visibility of the whole delivery and collection process, from despatch to the point of delivery or collection.

Andrew Hayward, Managing Director of m-hance, states, “m-hance Delivery Management enables supply chain organisations to streamline the logistics relating to their entire distribution processes in a single, integrated system. By interfacing seamlessly with our core financial applications and mobile devices, the system enables businesses to better plan, schedule and capture real-time information relating to their deliveries and exceed their customers’ expectations for on time, in full deliveries, collections and stock relocation.”

Using GPS technology to combine real-time location and stock keeping unit (SKU) information, m-hance Delivery Management provides full job tracking capability via a PDA or vehicle telematics device, to monitor and manage the ‘On Time In Full’ (OTIF) customer delivery and collection process. The user-friendly system also provides real-time information on the status of the delivery process with tailored views for different job functions to assist with more accurate billing and improve communication and co-ordination between drivers, warehouse managers and office staff.

In addition, m-hance Delivery Management’s advanced reporting enables distribution businesses to easily identify where process enhancements can be made. The system can assist in improving delivery accuracy and ensure that customer-defined time slots can more easily met, whilst providing proactive alerts in instances of delayed deliveries and real-time query handling at the point of delivery to transform customer service levels.

Hayward comments, “Margins are thin in the distribution business and any and all savings count. By enabling businesses to better monitor and react to service issues as they arise m-hance Delivery Management can also help to substantially reduce operating costs, minimise fuel usage and environmental impact as well as maximise driver utilisation.”

Hayward adds, “Typical efficiency savings include up to a 20% reduction in claims and re-deliveries and 10% savings on fuel and vehicle maintenance reduction costs, providing organisations with a rapid return on investment in just six months or less.”

-ENDS-

Notes to Editors

*NB m-hance Delivery Management is powered by VSc Solutions’ TranSend technology

About m-hance www.m-hance.com

m-hance is a UK-based company providing innovative and functionally rich business software solutions to 2400 mid-market sized organisations including Innocent Drinks, RFU, Viridor, Millennium Hotels, Make-A-Wish, Hewden and Endsleigh Insurance. m-hance’s core solutions offering consists of financial management, CRM, enterprise social networking, SharePoint, HR & Payroll, managed services and software development in a variety of vertical markets including distribution, manufacturing, not-for-profit, professional services and infrastructure.

m-hance has been formed following the acquisitions of Calyx Software, Gyrosoft, Trinity Computer Services and elements of MentecPlus, Touchstone Group and Maxima Holdings plc. m-hance is currently supported by 230 staff from offices in Manchester, London, Loughborough, Dublin, Glasgow and the United States. m-hance also has offshore development capabilities in India.

In September 2012, m-hance was ranked in the Tech Track 100 league table as one of the fastest-growing private technology companies in Britain after achieving record sales growth of over 45%.

Press Contact:

Ben Carey, PR Manager

T: 07713 196971 e: ben.carey@m-hance.com

Established in 2003, Databarracks is one the UK’s first providers of managed online back up and disaster recovery services. They have grown rapidly to become one of the most technologically advanced innovators in online backup, virtualisation and the cloud, delivering effective disaster recovery and business continuity solutions to companies of all sizes and complexities - including clients in the defence sector, government and financial institutions.

Why the CIF Code of Practice makes a difference to us

Commenting on the drive to certification, Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks, says: “What stands the CIF Code of Practice apart is the basis of the accreditation. It is independently developed and governed and has clear enforcement of the certification process to maintain standards and integrity. There are lots of standards bodies out there offering accreditations making it easy for organisations to pick and choose standards that require the least investment or the least work. The CIF Code of Practice, on the other hand, is based on established, well-known standards, which many of our customers recognise and indeed expect, so it was an easy choice for us.

“Being certified the CIF Code of Practice (CoP) is further indication that Databarracks is committed to delivering the highest standards of service,” he adds.

Certification Process

Groucutt talks through the process for Databarracks: “When we first started our application for Certification, our main concerns were the time and effort involved. However, as we had just been through ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications we had a number of documented processes in place that matched the scope of services for the Code of Practice.

“As a company, we strive to be open and transparent about our services, however, by working through the process, we realised we were not as explicit as the Code of Practice required in certain areas. They may have seemed small but they make a big difference for our customers.

“CIF’s Cloud Service Provider Code of Practice requires Databarracks to be transparent to customers and prospective customers about certain aspects of our services. We have adopted these elements and clarified them as part of our business offering going forward. Specific company information is also now available on our website alongside the CIF certified logo as our committed mark to quality, rigour and transparency,” he continues.

The benefits

The benefits for the end user are being able to evaluate the certified companies against the guidance and rationale set out in the Code of Practice, thus allowing for a more thorough and informed decision when choosing a supplier.

Groucutt adds: “The big benefit for us is that our customers can see very quickly that we are a trustworthy Cloud Service Provider. By becoming Certified to the Code of Practice, end users can see straight away that we have been judged by an external body to have good business practices in place, solid contracts, honest online sales literature and that we meet the Code of Practice requirements for transparency.”

The CIF Certified logo will be visible on a certified company’s website and hyperlinked to a set of public declarations that set out basic information that any potential customer may wish to know.

“With so many cloud providers in the market place, CIF’s Code of Practice, alongside our certifications for ISO 27001 and ISO 9001, indicates that we have been independently assessed and recognised as a being a responsible, credible and accountable cloud provider by a credible organisation,” Groucutt continues.

The role of APM Group

The entire process is overseen by APM Group, who provide supporting documentation, guidance where required, and assess applications for Self Certification.

Peter Groucutt comments: “When we did have questions about how we needed to present our documentation or clarity over particular areas, APM Group were very quick to help.  We were able to make use of our existing certifications, which helped speed up the process.  We did have a problem with how we presented our evidence of the existing certifications but again APM Group were great communicating what the problems were and how we needed to fix them.”

Richard Pharro, CEO at APM Group, concludes: ”An essential part of the value of CSP Code of Practice is the process. Becoming self-certified to the Code of Practice is rigorous and requires time and effort. That said, we aim to make the process as clear and transparent as possible and provide guidance and care to applicants where needed, during and after.”

-ENDS-

Further Information

Account Assistant
Tel: +44 20 7388 9988
Email: dockar-drysdale@spreckley.co.uk

TERMINALFOUR, a leading web content management company, today announced that it was awarded a framework agreement with the UK Government’s, G-Cloud initiative. In the past year alone, almost 45% of TERMINALFOUR’s new business wins have been cloud based with an increasing number of Government bodies seeking Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions.   

G-Cloud is one of the key initiatives of the UK government’s ICT policy and framework. Through G-Cloud, public sector bodies can buy cloud services which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. It will deliver multi-tenanted cloud services which will significantly reduce cost and will involve both public and community clouds.

TERMINALFOUR is currently one of the leading providers of web content management systems (WCMS) for the UK public sector. It is already helping public sector bodies throughout the UK to provide a range of online services to citizens, improving accessibility and collaboration with the public. 

TERMINALFOUR’s flagship product, TERMINALFOUR Site Manager, can help public sector bodies to create dynamic, agile and modern websites.  It allows them to quickly introduce new online services including paying charges and registering for events through an out-of-the-box eForm builder. This significantly reduces costly offline administrative overheads within the public sector.  The WCMS also facilitates social media integration and publishing to many channels to communicate with all of its stakeholders including the general public, elected representatives and media. 

TERMINALFOUR is enabling UK local councils to provide 24 hour access to an increasing number of services online, enabling citizens to request information or make payments for a wide range of public services, at any time that suits the citizen. This is having the added benefit of reducing administrative costs across the councils as more transactions and tasks can be performed online.  

 Through the G-Cloud Services 2 Framework, public sector bodies can take advantage of new technologies, such as TERMINALFOUR Site Manager, to achieve economies of scale, be more flexible and meet environmental and sustainability targets. They will no longer be locked-in to long-term service contracts, ensuring they can access new, better quality and value solutions at any time, rather than being redistricted by existing old procurement contracts.

Piero Tintori, CEO, TERMINALFOUR commented, “We are delighted to be part of the Government’s G-Cloud Framework. Public sector bodies across the UK are being challenged to do more with less and we have been working with our customers for many years helping them reduce costs and meet eGovernment requirements. We have delivered our web content management system through customer feedback, enabling public sector bodies to deliver websites that empower citizens and streamline the delivery of public services.”

Marie-Helene Durif, Head of Sourcing & Category Management - ICT, at the Government Procurement Service said, “At the Government Procurement Service our priority is to provide procurement savings for organisations across the UK public sector.  The inclusion of TERMINALFOUR to the G-Cloud Services 2 Framework will strengthen our offering and provide public sector buyers with a tried and tested route to achieve value for money.”

TERMINALFOUR Site Manager is now available through the G-Cloud frameworks online CloudStore.

Chippenham, Wiltshire: 15 November 2012 - Arkivum, the digital archiving specialist, today announced a free on-site gateway hardware appliance for all levels of its A-Stor data archiving service.  The gateway appliance acts as a Network Attached Storage device (NAS) and offers between 1 and 30TB of local cache storage depending on the amount of data to be archived.

This takes effect immediately and will run until 31st December 2012, allowing subscribers to store archive data from as little as 8p (GBP 0.08) per GB per Month.

Jim Cook, CEO Arkivum said: “Organisations are struggling to contain and manage data growth and compliance. Using A-Stor we offer a simple, scalable and secure solution to solve storage issues. The move to include a free NAS device within our subscription will allow our customers to implement our solution at an extremely attractive price point”.

Arkivum’s A-Stor digital archiving service is unique, providing the only insurance backed 100% data integrity guarantee; this is achieved by maintaining three copies at all times, two in our data centres and one held offline, locked away in a third party escrow service. This provides peace of mind because customers can be confident they are able to access their data whenever they need it.

Arkivum A-Stor also delivers significant cost savings to businesses and is highly energy efficient. It dramatically reduces customers’ power consumption and heat generation to offer a carbon footprint typically one tenth of a typical in-house solution.

To take advantage of this new offer, email Arkivum today at subscribe@arkivum.com or call +44 1249 405060.

Terms and conditions apply, offer subject to contract and availability.

-Ends-

About Arkivum

Founded in 2011, Arkivum specialises in the management and storage of an organisation's information assets. Arkivum delivers systems that can intelligently manage content to efficiently store and retrieve data over the long term while offering a highly cost effective solution, with low up-front investment and zero risk.

Arkivum was formed as a spin-out from the University of Southampton.  With a world-class reputation in the field of digital preservation, the University has been working for over a decade to develop best practice for the safe keeping of digital data over the long term. With on-going links to the University, Arkivum has direct access to state-of-the-art research and this is complemented with a team that has in-depth experience in datacentre operations and storage system implementation.

Arkivum provides a completely transparent data archiving service and its approach to data safety and security is simple; it keeps multiple copies of customers’ data in secure UK data centres and actively manages its integrity to ensure it remains in bit-perfect condition all the time. Arkivum relies on proven storage technology and open standards to deliver fast and efficient online access. The company’s unique solution is the only system available on the market which guarantees 100% data integrity.

More information can be found at http://www.arkivum.com/

Chippenham, Wiltshire: 22 November 2012 - Arkivum, the archiving specialist, has launched A-Stor Pharma, a digital data archiving service developed specifically to meet the needs of the healthcare and life sciences industries. A-Stor Pharma is a managed and entirely scalable cloud storage service that integrates with the customer’s existing infrastructure and allows them to keep valuable data 100 per cent secure for the long term.

A-Stor Pharma enables life sciences companies to become fully compliant with industry regulations, such as the 21CFR Part 11 and GMP Annex 11 guidelines. It is particularly suited to bio-technology, clinical trial management and pharmacovigilance businesses, where records need to be stored for extended periods of time, but remain accessible at short notice.

Jim Cook, CEO at Arkivum, explained: “Life sciences and large pharmaceutical organisations are experiencing explosive growth in data volumes. This data, typically generated from Trial Master Files (TMF), Next Generation Sequencing, LIMS, GMP, Microarrays and CTMS systems often needs to be stored for up to three generations. This means the cost of primary storage is becoming an ever increasing management challenge. A digital archiving service such as A-Stor Pharma provides a viable and cost-effective alternative while guaranteeing the integrity of the data should it need to be accessed in the future.”

FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11 and EU GMP Annex 11 require all electronic records to be protected and offer proven authenticity, while remaining easy to retrieve throughout the mandatory data retention period. Arkivum offers complete transparency in the processes, technologies and facilities it uses to store data. A-Stor Pharma operates as an open system and by integrating end-to-end checksum technologies, is able guarantee authenticity, confidentiality and data integrity.

Daniel Watkins, Head of Operations and Infrastructure at Institute of Reproductive Sciences —Oxford Fertility Unit said: “Security is of key importance to our business, Arkivum’s A-Stor Pharma service allows us to store our encrypted data for the long term in a cost efficient way that is entirely scalable and reduces pressure on our internal IT infrastructure. Moreover, using electronic records allows us to work much more efficiently, and the A-Stor service ensures we can access that data at short notice, as and when it is required.”

A-Stor Pharma uses LTO/LTFS data tape technology, which costs less than half the price of keeping data on in-house SAN solutions. It also dramatically reduces a customer’s power consumption and heat generation. Arkivum offers the only archiving solution to guarantee 100 per cent data integrity; three copies of the data are maintained at all times – two in Arkivum’s data centres and one held offline in a third party escrow service. This low-risk approach offers a greater level of security to customers, yet does not impact upon accessibility. An A-Stor gateway appliance featuring drag and drop functionality is available on the customer’s own network, enabling quick and simple search and retrieval of data within five minutes.

For organisations required by law or regulation to store all information onsite, Arkivum offers OSCAR (On-Site Cloud Archive), a revolutionary cloud archiving solution. The remotely managed, all-in-one pod solution provides the same 100% data integrity promise and level of service as A-Stor Pharma, but within a corporate firewall.

For more information about Arkivum, please visit www.arkivum.com.

-Ends-

About Arkivum

Founded in 2011, Arkivum specialises in the management and storage of an organisation's information assets. Arkivum delivers systems that can intelligently manage content to efficiently store and retrieve data over the long term while offering a highly cost effective solution, with low up-front investment and zero risk.

Arkivum was formed as a spin-out from the University of Southampton.  With a world-class reputation in the field of digital preservation, the University has been working for over a decade to develop best practice for the safe keeping of digital data over the long term. With on-going links to the University, Arkivum has direct access to state-of-the-art research and this is complemented with a team that has in-depth experience in datacentre operations and storage system implementation.

Arkivum provides a completely transparent data archiving service and its approach to data safety and security is simple; it keeps multiple copies of customers’ data in secure UK data centres and actively manages its integrity to ensure it remains in bit-perfect condition all the time. Arkivum relies on proven storage technology and open standards to deliver fast and efficient online access. The company’s unique solution is the only system available on the market which guarantees 100% data integrity.

More information can be found at http://www.arkivum.com/

November 23rd, 2012 – Guildford, UK Kewill, the leading provider of software for global trade and logistics, has released the latest version of its best-of-breed transportation, warehouse and freight management suite, Kewill Logistics 6.2.2. The new version of the software delivers a broad range of enhancements, including ‘merge in transit’ functionality for improved cross-docking, localisations to meet the specific requirements of Germany and the Nordic countries, and eInvoicing.

‘Merge in Transit’ functionality supports RF-scanning and offers the option of using master shipping units, enables goods which are produced at different plants to be combined and delivered as one complete shipment, or held back for delivery until a pre-defined minimum volume has been achieved for the destinations. This allows logistics service providers to offer a greater deal of flexibility in the services they offer to their customers, and minimise delivery costs. Cross-docking is further supported by the inclusion of unit-based XML messages, enabling seamless integration with third party applications.

The new version has seen a number of localisations made to reflect the specific requirements of the Nordic region and Germany, where Kewill has a growing customer base. These include parameter changes allowing the generation of standard payment references and barcodes in the correct local format for billing documentation, the development of specific message sets to meet local distribution network standards and additional shipment stages for sea freight to support the use of feeder vessels within the East Sea region.

Gerry Daalhuisen, Solution Manager, Global Trade & Logistics at Kewill, comments:  “The country-specific functionality, reporting and compliance changes will streamline operations for users working within these countries, without complicating processes for those in other locations. This demonstrates Kewill’s ongoing commitment to meeting the needs of our existing and future logistics service provider customers, regardless of their current size or geographic location.”

eInvoicing has also been developed and includes a self-billing facility, allowing logistics service providers to send and receive the data required for invoices and credit notes to customers and sub-contractors via XML messaging, improving accuracy, reducing payment cycles and significantly reducing processing costs.

Other improvements delivered by the new release include extended support of the UN-classifications for Dangerous Goods in the master data and documentation and the addition of a new online vendor portal for sub-contractors, enabling the easy update of shipment status and the upload of Proof of Delivery documentation.

Daalhuisen continues:  “The enhancements delivered by the new version of Kewill Logistics span right across the transportation, warehouse and freight management suite, and are indicative of our continuing investment in our product roadmap. Our goal has been to deliver a functionally rich and high quality Kewill Logistics release and much of the new 6.2.2 functionality has already been extensively tested by early adopter customers.”

About Kewill

Kewill is a leading provider of software solutions that enable enterprises and logistics providers to manage the movement of goods and information across the globe.

We deliver innovative software for business-critical global supply chain requirements through our three product suites: Logistics, to support freight forwarding, transport, warehousing and customs compliance; Transportation and Shipping, to enable parcel, LTL, TL and desktop shipping and export trade compliance, and; Business to Business Integration, to drive B2B eCommerce, order management and supply chain integration

Our customers rely on our deep domain knowledge to improve their business processes, exchange information and provide visibility to simplify the management of their supply chains.

Established in 1972, Kewill has over 7,000 customers around the world including Seacon Logistics, Gondrand, ITG Global Logistics, VAT Logistics, Itella, Bayer, Black & Decker, DHL, Hankyu Hanshin, Hitachi, Ingersoll Rand, Mothercare, UPS, Scott’s & Co. and TNT.

www.kewill.com

For additional information, contact:
Tanya Pring
Fieldworks Marketing
Tel. (UK) +44 (0)845 034 5602
tanya@fieldworksmarketing.co.uk

Further Information

Account Manager
Email: zara@fieldworksmarketing.co.uk

D-Link has added a new outdoor camera integrated with cloud technology to its consumer home monitoring family, perfect for homeowners to keep an eye on property or visitors at the front door.

The HD PoE Outdoor Cloud Camera (DCS-2310L) is the first outdoor camera to incorporate mydlink™Cloud Services functionality, which lets users manage their camera and access live video feeds from any Internet-connected computer, Smartphone or tablet running iOS or Android.

The HD PoE Outdoor Cloud Camera offers Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) functionality, meaning users can simply connect a single cable that will carry data and power when connected to a compatible switch. This makes it perfect for homes that suffer from a lot of wireless interference or congestion, or where a power supply is not easily accessible. Designed to handle outdoor life, the model is IP65-rated, signifying that it is completely sealed from dust, and protected against low jets of water and rain.

The camera is high resolution, and uses 1MP CMOS sensors to deliver 720p HD video clarity, ensuring rich detail and crisp image quality. It integrates night vision and PIR motion-sensing technology to ensure it catches every movement and alerts the homeowner when necessary, regardless of the time of day. It includes a microphone and speaker to allow for two-way communication (half-duplex), making it a great asset as an entry system.

In addition to being able to record images to a connected Network Video Recorder (NVR), such as the Cloud Network Video Recorder (DNR-322L), the camera also has a micro-SD slot*, for local recording to a removable card, as well as local storage and/or back-up in the case of a network failure.

The camera comes with D-Link’s Zero Configuration set-up that intelligently configures and syncs cameras automatically when connected to a D-Link Cloud Router. This makes adding the camera to a home network the easiest it has ever been.

Adrian Edwards, Consumer Solutions Manager at D-Link UK & Ireland, commented: "IP surveillance and home monitoring are very fast growing sectors, driven by consumer demand to protect their properties, pets and possessions. The exponential growth in people owning tablets and smartphones has made remote monitoring easy, which is why we have integrated our new outdoor camera with our mydlink™ Cloud Services. As well as fitting seamlessly into the home, the camera provides high definition images and can withstand outdoor environments.”

Pricing

DCS-2310L (RRP) £246.49 inc VAT

END OF ANNOUNCEMENT

* microSD card not included

HD PoE Outdoor Cloud Camera (DCS-2310L)

Key features:

Camera

• 1/4” Megapixel CMOS progressive sensor
• Fixed lens: 3.45 mm F2.0
• IP-65 weatherproof housing
• Built-in microphone and speaker for 2-way communication
• Built-in infrared-cut removable (ICR) filter for all-day surveillance
• Built-in IR LED illuminator for use in dark areas
• ONVIF compliant

Connections

• 10/100 Fast Ethernet port with PoE
• Micro SD/SDHC Card slot for onboard storage

Image & Video

• HD resolution (1280 x 720) and up to 1M (1280 x 800)
• H.264, MPEG-4 and Motion JPEG compression
• ePTZ viewing
• Privacy Mask feature
• Supports multiple access lists
• Built-in Samba client for saving to a NAS Shareport ™ Mobile app for mobile devices to view or back-up files on an iPhone®, iPad® or Android™ device

About D-Link

D-Link is one of the world’s leading networking infrastructure providers, and this marks its 26th year of delivering innovative, high-performing and intuitive products for both businesses and consumers. For a quarter of a century, D-Link has designed, developed and manufactured award-winning networking, wireless, storage, security and IP surveillance solutions. D-Link delivers its extensive range of networking products to organisations and consumers through its global network of channel partners and service providers. D-Link understands the significance of accessing, managing, securing and sharing data and digital content, and has pioneered many IP technologies to deliver a fully integrated Digital Home and business network experience. For more information, please visit www.dlink.com/uk

Media contacts

Woking, Surrey: 23rd November, 2012 - Wick Hill is now shipping beta versions of Imation’s IronKey™ Workspace, certified for deployment of Windows To Go. The IronKey Workspace lets organisations outfit mobile professionals with a secure, fast USB platform to run Windows To Go from a USB stick on multiple compatible PCs, an ideal solution for teleworkers, contractors and those implementing BYOD (“bring your own device”) strategies.

The IronKey Workspace is certified for deployment of Windows To Go, a feature of Windows 8 that lets enterprise users boot a full version of Windows 8 from an external USB drive on compatible host PCs.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group, commented: “Imation’s IronKey Workspace is an ideal solution for organisations to securely provide access for contractors and remote users.”

Organisations running Windows 8 Enterprise Edition can provision a Windows desktop onto the IronKey Workspace to create a PC on a Stick™ – with the operating system and data contained on the USB drive, while still leveraging the host PC’s hardware and resources, such as monitors, cameras, and network connections.

The IronKey Workspace provides a fast, easy, and cost effective way to empower mobile workers with Windows To Go. Features and benefits of the IronKey Workspace include:

Speed: 
The IronKey Workspace drive delivers over five times the minimum read/write performance required for Windows To Go certified devices. Users will experience a responsive and smooth-running system, thanks to USB 3.0 SuperSpeed technology and sequential read performance of up to 400+ MB/second, and sequential write speeds of up to 300+ MB/second.

Security: 
IronKey Workspace protects an organisation’s data by leveraging Windows To Go’s BitLocker password protection capabilities and up to 256-bit AES full disk encryption. Devices, data, and applications are automatically protected the moment a user removes the drive from their host PC.

Capacity options: 
Available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities to meet a range of user needs.

The IronKey Workspace for Windows To Go will be available in the UK in early December through Wick Hill.

Imation’s Mobile Security Solutions 
Imation’s Secure Data, Identity and Mobile Workspace product family helps organisations protect against data loss and supports compliance strategies, providing users secure and convenient access to their data and applications wherever they are, while helping to deliver managed security and ensuring compliance over a range of USB devices and removable media.

Brand-Rex today announced the appointment of Martin Hanchard as its new CEO, effective from 3rd January 2013.  In tandem Paul Lines announced his retirement from the position, which he has held for the past decade.

Martin has a long and successful career in the power and telecommunication cables and systems industry, having been with Pirelli/Prysmian cables for over twenty years, most recently the Chairman and CEO of the company’s North American business.  Martin has also been heavily involved over the years as a member of various industry committees and standards bodies including Europakabel, Eurotelcab and the International Cable Federation.

Incoming CEO, Martin Hanchard said, ‘I have watched with interest as Brand-Rex has restructured and grown during Paul’s tenure and I am very excited to work with both the team at Brand-Rex and the owner Murray Capital.  I see many benefits in the Private Equity business model which has given Brand-Rex a great platform from which to grow and continue to succeed. I am looking forward to the challenge and see a great future for Brand-Rex to continue as the technology leader it undoubtedly is, while extending its existing global footprint.”

Martin concluded, “I take up the post officially on 3rd January 2013 but I am delighted that the board and I have persuaded Paul to remain in the capacity as President of Brand-Rex so that his experience and expertise remains available to the company.  

“Brand-Rex has a great pedigree of technological innovation and commands a leadership position in 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s migration. Our recent carbon neutral achievements have also demonstrated leadership in environmental initiatives. I foresee significant medium and long-term growth potential in our data cabling and specialty cable markets in which we compete.”

Photos Available Here:  http://turt.co/brx0544p | [username: pics | password: pics]Caption: Brand-Rex new CEO Martin Hanchard (left) takes over from Paul Lines (Right)

ABOUT BRAND-REX

Brand-Rex is a global operation, designing, developing and manufacturing the most sophisticated, high performance copper and fibre cabling systems for communications and extreme environment applications.  Headquartered in Scotland, the company is committed to being a trusted market leading provider of best-in-class communications infrastructure solutions. As well as developing products and systems of the highest quality, the company is entirely carbon neutral and offsets all the CO2 created by the manufacture and distribution of its products. For more information visit www.brand-rex.com 

For further press information please contact:

Debby Freeman on:  +44 (0) 1487 843366e-mail:

debby.freeman@turtleconsulting.com

or

Phil Turtle on: +44 (0) 7867 780676

e-mail: phil.turtle@turtleconsulting.com

    Turtle Consulting Group    

A worrying trend is emerging amongst organisations and enterprises that are only concerned with external data breaches, completely ignoring the internal threat. This is according to Simon Bain, CTO of search specialist Simplexo.

“Big Data is very much a hot topic right now. There doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by when we’re not being spoken to, about, or at on the subject. With this in mind, I wanted to conduct a swift survey to see how seriously organisations are taking the threat of data breaches in relation to big data. It was nothing too scientific: a quick internet search of the terms ‘Big Data’ and ‘security’ brought up 53,600,000 results in 0.31 seconds. A positive start, I thought initially, but as I dug deeper my optimism began to fade.

“The results largely featured companies advertising how they can analyse big data sets to see where a threat may arise from. So, in essence, nothing really about security at all, just about how to sell software to analyse web traffic and determine where a hack might occur. Now this might seem all well and good, but when you consider that nowadays the majority of serious attacks are no longer web based but internal, it does raise a few worrying questions.

“Generally, organisations handle web security rather well through DNS traps, firewalls, and various other defences. However, what is harder to prevent is an internal attack. Look at some of the recent examples in the press - the attacks on banks, for example - and you’ll start to see a pattern emerging. This is what I was hoping to see when I started this little experiment. However, with the exception of a few references, there is no suggestion that this is being acknowledged or taken seriously – shocking doesn’t even come close.”

Bain continued: “Security along with accessibility should be at the forefront of all new projects and technologies. Earlier this week, I was thumbing through the newspaper when I came across a startling story about a police officer, with access to license plate surveillance data, who pleaded guilty to bribing people based on their vehicle’s license plate being recorded at various ‘unsavory’ locations. Now, I’m sure that officer did not spend his nights wondering how he could access the system. This view of hackers is so outdated it’s almost Jurassic!

“The focus needs to be on the current bout of attacks, and seeing how these can be prevented or at the very least made harder to execute. This cannot happen until the owners of the data start to take the risks seriously, and also start talking more openly about data breaches. From this we can all then learn from each other’s experiences and mistakes.”

Claranet, one of Europe’s leading managed service providers, has acquired Star, a UK provider of managed technology services. The acquisition creates the largest mid-market provider of integrated hosting and network services in the UK and continental Europe.

Claranet is acquiring STH Limited and its subsidiary, Star Technology Services Limited, in a deal valued at £55 million. The trading entities will be maintained and will become wholly owned by Claranet Limited.

Charles Nasser, CEO and Founder of the Claranet Group, stated: “From a market and customer perspective, this is a great opportunity to bring together the experience and resources of two great companies to deliver a broader service portfolio to benefit our customers. It’s our mission to help our customers make the most of internet-enabled technology, and the acquisition of Star will enable us to continue to deliver on this promise.

“This announcement confirms our ambition to become the clear European leader in the delivery of managed services,” he added. “This is nothing short of a British entrepreneurial success story, as both companies were founded here in the UK.”

Operating under the Claranet brand, the expanded company will have revenues of over £120 million, circa 700 staff, over 4,500 customers, and operations in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Claranet’s customers will include Airbus, Amnesty International, Care UK, Channel 5, Veolia, Signet, CSH, IRIS, De Vere Hotels and Richmond Events.

The new business will have a service portfolio ranging from the data centre to the desktop.  In addition to managed hosting and network services which both companies provide to many customers, Star customers will be able to take advantage of Claranet’s pan-European, award-winning Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering, Virtual Data Centre, as well as advanced managed application hosting services.  Meanwhile, Star’s strength in Unified Communications, remote desktop and advanced security services will complement Claranet’s existing portfolio.

In addition, Star’s customers will be able to take advantage of Claranet’s European operations and benefit from the knowledge that the enlarged company is on a strong financial footing, with far greater purchasing power in the market.

Michel Robert, MD of Claranet UK, added: “Star is a leader in providing managed services in the UK and therefore a natural fit for Claranet.  Star has developed a strong base of customers, has a well-defined service portfolio as well as a talented and dedicated team,”

“It is this very success that makes Star such a logical fit for Claranet and, as part of our continued investment in evolving our services, is one that will directly benefit our customers,” he added.

Ben White, co-founder of Star and a partner at the Cloud-focused venture investor Notion Capital, added: "The cultural and strategic compatibility of the two businesses is second to none and I am confident that the enlarged group will go on to even greater things, creating significant opportunities for customers, partners and staff.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Ares Capital Europe and a minority investment by Abry Partners financed the acquisition. 

Advisors on the transaction are Oakley Capital, acting for Claranet, and Ernst & Young, acting for Star.

Jaspersoft, the intelligence inside apps and business processes, today announced the release of Jaspersoft 5 – the company’s signature reporting and analytics solution. Jaspersoft 5 offers significantly improved data analysis capabilities, including a new, innovative visualization engine that provides business users with a simpler way to interact with data.

The new release bolsters the analytic capabilities of Jaspersoft’s best-in-class reporting and analytics platform and introduces data exploration via intuitive, HTML5-based visualization.

Additional features include:

• Built-in data virtualization to give end users and application developers alike the ability to easily combine disparate data sources into a single metadata view without the complexity of ETL or a data warehouse.
• Powerful columnar in-memory engine to enable terabyte-scale analytics against any type of data, including relational, OLAP and Big Data sources.
• Advanced reporting functionality in the form of personalization that extends beyond column sorting, filtering, table formatting to conditional formatting and cross-tab sorting for greater power and visual impact to reports;
• Expanded OLAP analysis that allows organizations to maintain or extend their existing data investments by broadening XMLA data access to include support for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services;
• Improved administration with server monitoring and diagnostic tools to improve visibility and responsiveness to system health issues and usage patterns; and
• Industry-leading PHP access to REST APIs for extending BI functionality to popular web-based applications.

With version 5, Jaspersoft is uniquely qualified to deliver self-service reporting and analytics for any user, embedded inside applications or as a stand-alone BI environment, thanks to its 100% web-based embeddable architecture and affordable license model.

“Customers at every size and scale use Amazon RDS to manage the databases powering their businesses. They all want to make sense of the data they generate,” said Raju Gulabani, Database Services VP in Amazon Web Services. “Jaspersoft 5 is a compelling choice for our customers looking for a powerful and cost-effective reporting and analytics environment that is easy to use and embed.”

"Capacity, performance and availability reporting of IT infrastructure is critical for our customers because it allows them to proactively resolve issues and to make key business decisions,” said Ken Adamson, Senior Director of Product Management, Nimsoft Monitor at CA Technologies.  “Jaspersoft 5 and its new visual interactivity will make our reporting easier to work with, provide new insight for our customers and make our product more engaging." 

“Jaspersoft has enabled us to streamline our reporting and put the power of generating reports in the hands of the users,” said Sriram Iyer, Senior Application Architect at CustomDataSolutions, Inc. “With the new charting and data exploration capabilities in Jaspersoft 5, we envision that it will play an even bigger role in us enabling our customers to make operational and strategic decisions.”

“The Jaspersoft 5 architecture delivers advanced visualization features much like Tableau, but entirely inside a web browser using HTML5,” said Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft CEO. “Our server is built with pure Java and open standards, and our architecture enables access to virtually any data source as well as easy deployment on-premises and in the cloud. In total, we provide a web-scale reporting and analytics platform that can be delivered inside of any business application or process, on all major devices, and at a fraction of the cost of any major competitor.”

“I’m most impressed by the new data exploration capabilities and the improvements to interactive reporting in Jaspersoft 5,” said Cindi Howson, Founder and Principal Analyst at BI Scorecard. “Jaspersoft understands the full continuum of self-service BI and, with this release, gets some of the highest marks for interactive reporting of any of the vendors we cover.”

See Jaspersoft 5 in action! – Register today for this webinar and get an up close view of all the features this new addition to the solution family has to offer.

Additional Resources

• More information on Jaspersoft 5
• Follow @Jaspersoft on Twitter to stay up-to-date on all of the company’s latest news and product information
• Visit http://community.jaspersoft.com for more information about the Jaspersoft open source community

Bournemouth, UK -  27th November 2012: Data centre and connectivity specialist C4L today announced the launch of its Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Mitigation Service, designed to provide organisations with protection against large-scale DDoS attacks without the need to invest in costly in-house equipment, software or dedicated security staff. Provided in partnership with DDoS experts Webscreen Technology, the new, highly-scalable service means subscribing organisations will be protected from the worst effects of DDoS attacks, as their website traffic is routed through the C4L mitigation service before reaching their own servers. Non-subscribers can also contract the service in an emergency to help speed up recovery from DDoS attacks in the unfortunate event that they are affected.
 
“As organisations increasingly recognise DDoS as a serious and growing threat, they are asking the same question: ‘how can we guarantee effective but economical DDoS protection?’” said Gary Barter, Telecom and Connectivity Product Manager at C4L. “The initial expense of in-house DDoS mitigation can be prohibitive for many organisations in today’s tough economic climate and without proven DDoS protection organisations are always susceptible to being taken off line. By providing DDoS mitigation as an affordable, scalable, always-on service C4L and Webscreen Technology are helping ensure that all organisations can afford fast, effective and economical DDoS protection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
 
C4L’s service diverts traffic for user sites through its own screening service, ensuring that only “clean” requests reach the protected site/s. By analysing all incoming packets and filtering out unwanted and suspicious requests the Webscreen Technology solution constantly learns and adapts, ensuring that potentially threatening packets are identified and blocked.  Webscreen Technology’s heuristic DDoS mitigation software is the most advanced of its type and is proven to detect and mitigate all known forms of DDoS attack vectors. This effectiveness combined with  the speed of C4L’s own dedicated fibre network results in a fast service that is always available to legitimate visitors even when the site/s are being aggressively attacked by DDoS.
 
“Webscreen Technology has always been a pioneer of DDoS mitigation and we are delighted to have this opportunity to work with C4L on the first proxy service to use our advanced heuristic technology,” said Paul Bristow, C.O.O.  of Webscreen Technology. “DDoS attacks are growing in volume, size and sophistication and it’s vital that customers have the ability to keep their businesses running without the threat of DDoS attacks. By offering this service in partnership with C4L we can ensure that all organisations, no matter what their size, have the opportunity to protect themselves 24/7 from this growing and costly risk.”
 
The C4L DDoS Mitigation Service is available immediately. It also provides an emergency recovery service to organisations that are actively under DDoS attack, allowing them to return to operation faster. For more information, please visit www.c4l.co.uk
 
About C4L:
C4L is an internet infrastructure solutions provider and deploys a full range of services in over 40 data centres, including colocation, IP transit, interconnects, data backup, data storage, virtualisation, telecoms, disaster recovery and leased lines, to name just a few. These are all provided with C4L’s commitment to maximum uptime and customer support; featuring a 24/7 network operations centre (NOC) which is manned by trained professionals with Microsoft and Cisco qualifications.
 
C4L’s industry leading data centre connected network, includes sites such as Bournemouth, Slough, BlueSquare Maidenhead, BlueSquare Milton Keynes, Telehouse Metro, Telehouse North, City Lifeline and InterXion. The company is now in its 13th trading year and with a track record of 100% growth every year its client base includes Government, FTSE 250, financial institutions and many of the UK's network carriers. The business is committed to customer satisfaction and quality of service and has achieved certifications such as ISO9001 & 27001. For more information, visit www.C4L.co.uk.
 
About Webscreen:
Webscreen Technology are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) experts. Our head office is in the UK, where we utilise a dedicated 24 x 7 x 365 Security Operations Centre.
 
Since 1999 DDoS has been our exclusive focus and Webscreen Technology sold the world’s first commercial DDoS solution back in 2,000. Today our mission remains the same; it is to provide customers with the most cost effective DDoS hardware, software, services and partner network.
 
Webscreen Technology is trusted the world over by the leading names in online retailing, gaming, electronic payment systems and by some of the world's most powerful media and entertainment organisations. See www.webscreen-technology.com
 
Webscreen Systems Ltd is a subsidiary of Accumuli plc

Reading, Berkshire., - November 27, 2012 - C2C, a leading provider of email, file and messaging management solutions, has announced that Harrow College (an Associate College of the University of Westminster & Middlesex) has achieved full PST Management and control of 350 lecturers’ and staff mailboxes who support the 10,000 strong student population. With email the primary means of communication between staff and students, mailbox management was becoming a burgeoning problem for the College. Dave Young, the College’s Network and Development Manager, elaborates:

”We are seeing vast growth in the volume and size of files that staff share, exchanging invaluable coursework, PowerPoint presentations, images and other high capacity files. On a single day alone, the email system volume reached 50,000 messages indicating the distinct upward trend in volumes.”

Addressing the growth and proliferation of PSTs under Exchange 2003 was another major concern for Dave's team. They suspected widespread use of PST files which are notoriously hard to detect and backup.  In addition, the College implemented the Moodle Course Management System, allowing students to access and submit coursework online with staff returning marked projects via email, necessitating a proof of sending and receipt of work.  A robust, reliable email archiving system was needed to achieve compliance and address the PST management challenge.

“Compliance is a delicate subject within most education establishments. We are dealing with young peoples’ futures, so we are tightly regulated, especially by the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts. Achieving full watertight compliance is tricky with limited budgets, so at Harrow we were looking to achieve a ‘best practice’ approach; one that allows us to secure communications and retrieve relevant data in a timely manner.”

Retrieval requests were complex and could only be achieved through restoration of the Exchange Information Store through indexed tape backup reinstating all the relevant files back onto the live server. After reviewing several vendors, C2C's ArchiveOne was selected.  Coinciding with the move to Microsoft Exchange 2007, the first challenge was to automate the discovery of PST files on servers, desktops and laptops and to report on their age, ownership and content to the administrator. The extensive information provided about PSTs, enabled the team to make intelligent decisions about the archiving policy; setting the policies to automatically archive every email over a year old and identify and reduce mailboxes that were no longer used by students.

Two years into the installation, results remain evident to both staff and the IT management team. Users report no change in email usage and management. Dave expands: “The less we hear from users, the better, it means that the system is working just as we intended – seamlessly managing email in the background – and taking archiving decisions away from staff and placing them into a cohesive infrastructure that achieves compliance.”

With ArchiveOne in place, the team can retrieve files quickly using specific search terms, including phrases and general conversation topics. And the infrastructure as a whole is easier to manage. With a clear email management structure in place, the team are not faced with a spiralling system that exhausts costly primary storage.

"C2C’s ArchiveOne has benefited the college tremendously, supplying a major part of the enhanced email infrastructure that we now provide. It provides us with the functionality and confidence that we could no longer be without."

Dave Young, Network and Development Manager, Harrow College

A live online demonstration, references from ArchiveOne users, and a 30-day trial are available at: http://uk.c2c.com/resources. 

About C2C
C2C Systems has earned the trust of its four million software users since 1992 by consistently delivering high-value, dependable core messaging system enhancements. Microsoft® Exchange, SharePoint®, and Windows® File Server form the heart of C2C's commercial and governmental customers’ businesses worldwide. C2C’s ArchiveOne® product family is the trusted choice for email and file archiving, eDiscovery, compliance management, legal forensics and storage management tools to enhance these platforms. For more information about the Company, visit http://www.c2c.com/.

Contacts:
C2C
E: press@c2c.com

Sharon Munday
On Your Case Ltd
P: +44 7787 566382
E: sharon@onyourcase.co.uk

Eurostop, a leading supplier to the fashion, footwear and lifestyle sectors has launched a new m-commerce solution.  The new solution is fully integrated with Eurostop’s other retail management solutions, and provides a single point for managing all e-commerce and m-commerce operations.  Eurostop’s m-Commerce uses fluid layout and responsive design principals so that the website is automatically optimised to fit any screen size, from smartphones such as iPhones and Android devices, up to iPads, other tablet devices and desktop computers.   The new solution also includes Guest purchase, so that customers do not need to set up an account in order to make a purchase (which can be slow and cumbersome using a mobile device) and the facility to use PayPal, as well as the usual secure payment options.

By providing one website that adapts depending on the device through which it is accessed, retailers need only maintain product and customer information once.   The benefit to the shopper of this approach is that whatever device they use, their customer details follow them.  The system also includes a store locator that either uses postcode to locate the nearest store, or GPS proximity search.  Click to Call and Click to Email buttons, and links to social media ensure that customers are able to communicate directly from their device.

Deborah Loh, e-Commerce Manager at Eurostop said, “Research has shown that people like to access their favourite websites from a variety of different devices at different times of day.   With this in mind we have developed the Eurostop m‑Commerce solution so that no matter what device customers use to access our clients’ websites, they will find it easy to view products, search and to purchase.  Even though the mobile website designs are significantly simplified to aid navigation, design criteria and brand values are maintained, ensuring that the customer has a seamless shopping experience, whatever the device.”

Notes to Editors

About Eurostop
Founded in 1990, with operations in London, Singapore and Shanghai, Eurostop provides complete solutions for Retail Management for the Fashion, Footwear and General Merchandise sectors encompassing both hardware and software.

Eurostop’s flagship products consist of:

e-rmis: A suite of head office management applications.

e-pos: EPOS system for standalone shops, concessions and franchises that can be easily integrated with e-rmis for larger users.

e-commerce: Custom e‑commerce solutions for Independent retailers that provides a hosted and fully integrated service.

e-data: The collection of tenants’ data from Shopping Malls for multi-purpose use.

e-cubes: Data Mining.  A bespoke reporting tool which allows the slicing and dicing of data as well as selective publication of results and graphical representation.

e-time: The capture of staff working hours which aids in monitoring both stores’ and staff performances and productivity.

e-fulfilment: Intelligent optimisation of e-commerce orders for multi-channel retailers.

All Eurostop’s solutions can be fully integrated with other management and business systems, and all major ERP systems.

As well as advising on and supplying suitable hardware, Eurostop also undertakes training, support and custom development.  Its systems are available in several different languages including Chinese.

Eurostop has accreditation for Chip and PIN solutions, and together with partner Anderson Zaks provides a Chip and PIN managed service.

High profile customers include:  Ann Summers, Ben Sherman, Cult Clothing, Daks, Firetrap, Full Circle, Ghost, Joseph, Joy, Long Tall Sally, Lotus Cars, Matches, Oliver Sweeney, Paul & Joe, Pavers Shoes, Pentland Brands Plc, Punkyfish, Sonneti, Speedo, Trespass and many more.

For more information visit: www.eurostop.co.uk or contact:

Editors’ Contacts
Phillip Moylan
Eurostop Limited
Tel: 020 8991 2700
Email: phillipm@eurostop.co.uk

Andreina West
PR Artistry Limited
Tel: 01491 639500
email: andreina@pra-ltd.co.uk

27 November, 2012 – London, UK – Acronis®, a leading provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, has been selected by Kent Police to supply a fast, flexible and efficient disaster recovery and data protection system to protect more than 500TB of data created, stored and used by its 6,000 employees.

Kent Police had previously relied on multiple backup and recovery platforms to protect data across a heterogeneous mix of more than 500 physical and virtual Windows®, Linux and VMware® servers.  Andy Barker, IT director at Kent Police, said: “Regular bomb threats, protests, cyber attacks and viruses are just some of the reasons why we needed a more robust but easier to manage backup and recovery plan.  With ready access to data a critical requirement throughout the Force, we also had to drastically cut previously slow recovery times.” 

After extensive evaluation, Kent Police found that only Acronis Backup & Recovery® 11 Advanced Server could fully address its heterogeneous, physical and virtual server needs within a single platform.  Acronis Backup & Recovery is a unified solution for data and application databases backup, it dramatically reduces the management burden of procuring, learning and integrating additional products as networks evolve, thereby reducing time and cost with one solution that can be managed across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Kent Police purchased 140 Acronis Backup & Recovery physical server licences as well as 25 virtual edition licences to back up the virtual machine hosts and the VMs on them. It has also opted to use data de-duplication technology embedded within Acronis Backup & Recovery to shrink backups by up to 80 percent.  Not only does this save space needed for backups, initial testing indicates that recovering data, a task that used to take up to three days with the previous solution, can now be accomplished within the hour.  Kent Police estimates that de-duplication alone will save at least £13,000 annually in storage costs.

Granularity of recovery was another high priority for Barker’s team. The catalogue and search capabilities in Acronis Backup & Recovery give Kent Police granular restore access, so a corrupted, deleted or lost file can be recovered individually. The IT team can drill down to file level, pick out the necessary file and recover it, usually in a matter of minutes.  With its migration capabilities, the team also plans to use ABR whenever a system needs to be upgraded.  By taking a full image of the system prior to any upgrade so that, if the upgrade goes wrong for any reason, the IT department can simply rollback the server to its original healthy state.

Barker says that, following the deployment at Kent Police; he also expects to roll out Acronis Backup & Recovery at the Essex Police force.  He explains: “This is part of a wider strategy to form a combined IT department, pool resources for greater efficiency and cut IT costs for both police forces even further.”

Alan Laing, Vice President EMEA, Acronis, concludes: “Like more organisations today, Kent Police, is faced with growing volumes of data but tightening budgets which is introducing new challenges. As a result, it needed an uncomplicated and flexible solution for its data protection and storage optimisation. Acronis Backup & Recovery is a single solution that works across every environment, giving the team at Kent the confidence that whatever network development they may face easy access and availability of their protected data, no matter where it resides, is achievable.” 

About Acronis
Acronis is a leading provider of next generation data protection and disaster recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. With Acronis' backup, disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users can better protect and maintain availability of critical servers and data to achieve recovery point (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) while reducing total cost of ownership. With over a decade of investment in research and development, Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit http://www.acronis.co.uk. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

Acronis® and Acronis Backup & Recovery® are registered trademarks of Acronis International GmbH in the United States and/or other countries.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. 

Press Contacts:
Emily Gallagher / Laura White
Touchdown PR
+44 (0) 1252 717040
acronis@touchdownpr.com

Bolzano, Italy and Reading, UK. – November 27, 2012 – DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualisation software, today announced that information and communication technology (ICT) company Brennercom has attained a new level of business continuity and performance for its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and cloud services using the DataCore™ SANsymphony™-V Storage Hypervisor.

By making use of the SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor, corporate data is centrally administrated on a variety of different hardware storage solutions and all of it is protected by DataCore’s synchronous mirroring capability. The virtualisation software from DataCore required only a quarter of the investment that would have been needed for a hardware-based SAN to provide a stable, high performance VMware View VDI for 160 desktop platforms, in addition to supporting the storage needs for all of its virtual machines running on VMware vSphere.

"The virtualisation and common central management provided by the DataCore storage hypervisor considerably reduced our IT division's work load. New systems can now be fully set up for users within 10 minutes, unlike the laborious, many hours and days set-up required to install physical server storage systems in the past. Fast provisioning and capacity expansions can now be easily implemented via the central console with a few mouse clicks in the event of an acute need for storage," explained Roberto Sartin, head of Technical Division at Brennercom.

Establishment of Virtual Desktop and Cloud Infrastructure

At Brennercom, internal IT services are provided by the IT Management Division. The Division decided to extend its existing virtual VMware server infrastructure and to establish a VDI and cloud services based on VMware. To handle the expansion, it was decided that a new approach to managing data storage was needed.

The primary drivers were two-fold: First, Brennercom needed to expand its external computer centre to accommodate new cloud computing services. Central and efficient system administration was a core objective of this extension. Second, Brennercom needed greater high-availability due to the increased business continuity requirements that would result from its move to centralization. The project plan and investments also encompassed the need for a later partial move of a number of the systems to a second location in Trento (about 31 miles away) to ensure that the immediate, high-availability system could be backed up by a two-site disaster recovery model for the purposes of required ISO audits.

The company also had to consider the planned consolidation of its current, heterogeneous IT landscape at the Bozen site. While the central computer center services were based on a fiber channel infrastructure, some divisions were making use of iSCSI storage. Apart from vSphere virtual machines, Citrix XenServer was also used in some areas.

Cost-effective VDI with 160 desktops
The VDI with VMware View is based on an integrated system supporting virtualized storage and virtualized servers. The decision to use this platform was taken after the positive experience gained with the VMware hypervisor. The 160 desktops are successfully being migrated to the notebooks or thin clients of the field workers and the helpdesk, using the centralized infrastructure. The long-term benefits of VDI lie in the lower costs and the less cumbersome, centralized administration needed when it comes to the setup, updating and maintenance of these virtual desktops.

"On the storage side, the VDI and the virtual servers are supported by DataCore’s round-the-clock, failsafe storage infrastructure and  performance has been enhanced by intelligent caching, fulfilling all our expectations," comments Sartin. "By using the DataCore storage hypervisor, we were able to integrate a technically complex solution with a universal range of services to meet the short-term performance and high-availability requirements of our VDI needs. In addition, the integrated migration and replication features have created the basis for efficiently implementing the planned model we need for disaster recovery."

Flexible Infrastructure for Cloud Services
The next large-scale project to be concluded by year-end 2012 is dividing and synchronizing the existing systems between the computer centres in Bolzano and Trento so that operations can continue at one location in the event of a catastrophe.

"As is the case in other industries, business continuity is an absolute necessity for us. By making use of the DataCore solution within the virtual infrastructure created by VMware vSphere and VDI, we cannot only ensure that we meet these corporate requirements, but also guarantee optimal cost efficiency as a result of the hardware independence of the solution. This affects both the direct investment and the indirect and long-term cost of refreshes, expansions and added hardware acquisitions. We have thus created the technical basis for our external IT services, and within this framework we are creating the most flexible and varied range of cloud services possible," concludes Brennercom CEO, Dr. Karl Manfredi.

To read more regarding this deployment, please access a complete case study concerning DataCore’s implementation at Brennercom: Brennercom SpA Case Study.

Full link for download purposes: http://www.datacore.com/Testimonials/Brennercom.aspx

The case study covers:

• How DataCore enabled High-Performance Shared Storage
• How Brennercom is now benefiting from High Speed Mirroring for High Availability
• What is behind Brennercom achieving Optimized Resource Utilization

About Brennercom SpA
Brennercom S.p.A. is an innovative hi-tech company in the ICT industry. With headquarters in Bolzano (North of Italy) and branch offices in Trento and Verona, Brennercom works along the Milan-Munich axis, proposing itself to companies as the only partner capable of developing complete, customized solutions for any business need and a proprietary fiber optic network with the highest levels of security, greatest bandwidth, and lowest latency times. For more, go to http://www.brennercom.it and http://www.brennercom-tirol.at.

About DataCore Software
DataCore Software develops storage virtualization software for high availability, fast performance and maximum utilization from storage in virtual and physical IT environments. DataCore SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor is a comprehensive, hardware-independent solution that fundamentally changes the economics of provisioning, replicating and protecting storage in large enterprises and small to midsize businesses. For additional information, visit the DataCore website at http://www.datacore.com or call (877) 780-5111.

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.

Media Contacts:
Sharon Munday
KPR Global
Tel. +44 7787 566382
E-mail: smunday@kprglobal.com

-- or --

Stuart Smith
DataCore Software
954-377-6032
stuart.smith@datacore.com and publicrelations@datacore.com

-- and --

JaeMi Pennington
Davies Murphy Group (DMG)
781-418-2401
datacore@daviesmurphy.com

November 27th, 2012 - TopicLogic, a company supported by the SETsquared Partnership, has been announced as a winner at the nationwide Discovering Start-Ups 2012 competition. TopicLogic was one of five wireless entrepreneurs who were recognised by leading venture capitalists, angel investors and wireless industry experts at the awards.

As well as prestigious Discovering Start-Ups trophies, the five winners each get a year’s free membership to SETsquared. They were also presented with £500 cash prize sponsored by Qualcomm Ventures and a free delegate ticket to Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona provided by UKTI, along with the opportunity to present at the Future of Wireless International Conference next July organised by Cambridge Wireless - a total value of around £5,500.

“We are delighted to have received an award at a presitigous event such as this,” said Sebastian Toke-Nichols, CEO at TopicLogic. “People are facing an increasingly hard challenge to manage and share their information from multiple sources such as email, folders and the cloud - TopicLogic will complement services such as Dropbox, Box and Google Drive to make organising files as easy as searching for them.”

“From chips to social media apps, the quality and diversity of finalists in this year’s Discovering Start-Ups clearly impressed the experienced panel of judges who had a tough job choosing five deserving winners from the 20 different pitches,” said Simon Bond, Founder of the Silicon South West industry network and director of the Bath SETsquared centre. “Discovering Start-Ups is a great showcase for emerging wireless technology and talent and we are already looking forward to next year’s competition.”

The winners were chosen from 20 finalists from across the UK who pitched their innovative technologies and business plans to a panel of some 20 judges, including senior executives from Broadcom, Vodafone Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Google, Orange, TTP Ventures, Cambridge Business Angels and Silicon Valley Bank.

The five 2012 Discovering Start-Up winners were:

Anvil Semiconductors from Coventry: using patented technology to develop Silicon Carbide power semiconductor devices for the same price as Silicon technology. www.anvil-semi.co.uk

D-RisQ from Malvern: automation of Formal Methods techniques to reduce the development cost of complex systems and software by up to 80% while maximising compliance. www.drisq.com

Skin Analytics from Cambridge: cloud-based service that uses smart phones for monitoring small changes in moles to detect melanoma skin cancers. www.skinanalytics.co.uk

Smart Antenna Technologies from the University of Birmingham: innovative single-antenna technology for portable devices including 4G handsets.

TopicLogic from Bath: web service to help busy professionals instantly find and share their files wherever they are. www.topiclogic.com

Now in its third year, the Discovering Start-Ups 2012 competition has been run by Cambridge Wireless in partnership with Silicon South West. The finals took place at the London headquarters of legal firm Taylor Wessing and were sponsored by Google, Rohde & Schwarz and SETsquared Partnership.

For more information on the finalists and winners and a full list of judges, please visit: www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/dsu

About Cambridge Wireless:
Cambridge Wireless is a leading industry forum and vibrant community with a rapidly expanding network of companies actively involved in the development and application of wireless technologies. In addition to high level networking dinners and events, a strong educational programme and business development activities, Cambridge Wireless runs the annual Future of Wireless International Conference along with the prestigious Discovering Start-Ups programme and competition to support emerging, innovative wireless companies. Over 15 Special Interest Groups focused on specific technologies and market sectors, also provide opportunities for members to meet, form partnerships to exploit new commercial opportunities, and share knowledge and information about the latest industry trends and hot topics. Cambridge Wireless has partnerships with other leading industry clusters and organisations around the world to extend its international reach and to keep members up to date with the latest global developments and business opportunities. For more information, please visit www.cambridgewireless.co.uk

About Silicon South West:
The Silicon South West network provides regular networking events, news and national and international promotion for the South West of England’s world class microelectronics design cluster. Over 100 companies connected to the microelectronics sector are concentrated in a region which includes the key towns & cities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Plymouth, and Southampton & Swindon. For further information please visit www.siliconsouthwest.co.uk

About the SETsquared Partnership:
www.setsquared.co.uk
Twitter: @SETsquared

The SETsquared Partnership (http://www.setsquared.co.uk) is the enterprise collaboration of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. Together, the universities employ 8,500 academic staff; earn £450m of the UK’s higher education research budget; and produce 11% of all UK university patents.

The partnership has a 10-year track record of supporting companies through its innovation centres, which provide access to industry specialists, investors and experienced entrepreneurs. SETsquared currently supports over 250 early stage high-tech, high growth potential businesses, and 90% of its incubated companies are still in business three years on. In the past five years, nearly £0.75bn in investment funding has been raised by spin outs and incubated companies.

SETsquared supports its student population of over 92,000 graduate and undergraduates to gain hands on business skills and entrepreneurial training through experiential inter-university activities. The Partnership also provides opportunities for industry to access academic ideas with commercial potential and develops collaborative R&D relationships. The Partnership seeks to promote the impact, economically and socially, of its institutions’ research and enterprise activities.

Further information:
Nick Daines, Lumen PR
nick[at]lumenpr[dot]com
Tel: +44 (0)115 8412109 / +44 (0)7958 534731

Distributed on behalf of SETsquared by NeonDrum news distribution service (http://www.neondrum.com)

Further Information

Director
Tel: +44 7747 017654
Email: nicky@evokedset.com

Lindon, Utah – 27th November 2012 - AccessData, a leading provider of digital forensics, cyber security and e-discovery software, has become a Corporate Member of the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA).

The ICSPA is a business-backed not-for-profit organisation that provides assistance to countries and their law enforcement agencies to fight cybercrime and protect critical national infrastructures. The Alliance is sponsoring Project 2020, a global study of emerging cyber threats undertaken by Europol, the EU agency that was recently tasked to establish the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).  The ICSPA was launched in July 2011 with the backing of UK Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The ICSPA’s objective is to provide law enforcement bodies with funding, expertise and additional resources from the private sector, to assist them in combating cybercrime worldwide. The Telegraph recently reported that the UK government’s intelligence services had confirmed that UK IT systems are attacked by malware and hackers up to one thousand times an hour, with cost of cybercrime to the UK estimated at £27 billion annually.

Commenting on the partnership with ICSPA, Tim Leehealey, CEO, AccessData said, “AccessData is a global company specialising in digital forensics, incident response and e-discovery technologies that are used to detect and respond to attacks that traditional preventive and alerting solutions miss. Our Cyber Intelligence and Response Technology (CIRT) allows the world’s leading organisations to more quickly identify, analyse and remediate cyber attacks, thereby preventing widespread damage. In addition, CIRT provides centralised coordination for cyber security teams. The partnership with ICSPA enables AccessData to bring industry-leading experience to the prevention of cybercrime on a global scale.”

The Chief Executive of the ICSPA, John Lyons, said: “To fight cybercrime successfully, many law enforcement agencies and governments will benefit from the broad and deep knowledge of our member companies. The forensic expertise of AccessData is a most welcome addition to the Alliance’s industry knowledge.

As part of its Corporate membership, AccessData will support Project 2020 by working with Alliance partners to analyse, report on and predict the likely development of cybercrime over the next eight years, to assist 27 EU Member States in developing cybercrime mitigation plans. Project 2020 is supported by 17 ICSPA partners, Europol, The City of London Police and ENISA.

Reference:
The Telegraph, 22nd October, Tom Whitehead, “Britain is target of up to 1000 cyber attacks every hour” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9624655/Britain-is-target-of-up-to-1000-cyber-attacks-every-hour.html

About AccessData
AccessData Group has pioneered digital investigations and litigation support for 25 years. Its family of stand-alone and enterprise-class solutions, including FTK, SilentRunner, Summation and the CIRT security framework, enable digital investigations of any kind, including computer forensics, incident response, e-discovery, legal review and compliance auditing. More than 130,000 users in law enforcement, government agencies, corporations and law firms worldwide rely on AccessData software solutions and premier digital investigation and hosted review services. AccessData is also a leading provider of digital forensics and litigation support training and certification. www.accessdata.com

Contact:
Nicole Reid,
International Marketing Manager
AccessData
nreid@accessdata.com
+44 (0) 207 010 7800

About The ICSPA
The International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) is a business led, not-for-profit organisation. The ICSPA (www.icspa.org) chaired by the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, a Member of the UK Parliament and previous UK Home Secretary, celebrated its first anniversary just this July. 

Its mission is to enhance the online safety and security of business communities, by helping to deliver resources and expertise from the private sector to support both domestic and international law enforcement agencies and governments in their task of reducing harm from cybercrime. 

ICSPA is leading Project 2020, a global study of forthcoming trends in cyber security, which brings together the expertise of law enforcement agencies like Europol and City of London police, governments, businesses and the cyber security industry.

During the past 12 months the ICSPA has been growing its membership, started work on its first international assignment in Africa with the Commonwealth Secretariat’s ICT Foundation, Comnet, and is now conducting a Cybercrime Study in Canada in conjunction with the Canadian Government and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

For more information visit www.icspa.org

For press inquiries and requests for interviews with ISCPA, please email icspa@arpartners.com or contact:
Tom Barnett: +44 20 3047 2147
Tim Weber: +44 20 3047 2487
Rishi Bhattacharya: +44 20 3047 2361

hybris, the top-rated provider of omni-channel commerce software, today further strengthened its position of offering the most agile, most modern commerce platform by announcing important new features that empower publishers of books, magazines, games and software, as well as other service providers, to sell more digital goods, content and services online.

“Digital products are different from physical products.  They’re alive,” stated Ariel Ludi, CEO of hybris. “Using the internet to stay connected after the initial sale, offering related or next-in-series products in context, gives publishers of any digital goods or content the ability to have high-value perpetual digital relationships with their customers.  hybris helps them create – and grow – those relationships.”

A host of new enhancements to the hybris Commerce Suite, purpose-built to support the sale of non-physical products, enables online sellers to offer a variety of flexible recurring pricing models.  In addition, merchandisers can easily construct complex bundles of products, with sophisticated rule-based discounts, and give their customers the power to create their own packages with a modern guided-selling user experience. 

For all publishers of digital goods and content, the result is higher conversion rates, higher average order value, higher lifetime customer value, a recurring revenue stream and much better ability to monetize their long tail of previously issued products. 

For book and magazine publishers, hybris’ new capability makes it possible to sell individual chapters or articles, or bundle them on the fly.  Software and game publishers can leverage the new features to more easily sell add-ons, upgrades, subscription renewals and downloadable content (DLC).

In addition to the new capabilities, hybris Commerce Suite offers proven tools for personalization, merchandising for cross-selling and up-selling, a highly-acclaimed master data management / product and service catalog and order orchestration capabilities, all delivered on a single, modern, integrated technology stack.  This capability is unique among commerce platforms.

hybris also delivers powerful technology (known as a REST API) for implementing “headless commerce”, where the product itself – the book, magazine, game or application – is the commerce front-end, and transactions are effected in-context, greatly increasing conversions.  This technology also makes it much easier for publishers to support the complex array of different and constantly changing devices. 

“As the shift from paper and CDs to downloaded or streaming content accelerates, companies are increasingly experimenting with innovative selling models. hybris supports these initiatives with an agile selling platform that is engineered for extension, expansion, and innovation,” said Moritz Zimmerman hybris Chief Technology Officer. “With these new capabilities publishers selling to consumers, professionals, academics or industry will get much faster time to innovation and a much better total cost of ownership.”

Further Information

Consultant
Tel: 07956 955625
Email: jkirby@ascendcomms.net