Salvus will replace the organisation’s existing manual Excel spreadsheet, database and paper-based system for recording workplace incidents and hazards which was unable to keep up with the company’s fast paced growth. At the same time, Salvus will enable Kordia to efficiently handle the tracking of incident and hazard reporting on behalf of its workforce, many of whom are located in regional and remote areas.

“We selected Salvus following a comprehensive market review and recognised that it was the clear leader in terms of its rich functionality, ease of use and support for overall WHS compliance.  We also realised the positive impact which Salvus has achieved for complementary industry organisations and concluded that it would be a perfect fit for a telecommunications company,” says Richard Nederkoorn, National QSE (Quality, Safety and Environment) Manager, Kordia Solutions.

Once fully deployed, Salvus will provide Kordia management with increased visibility into incident reporting which will greatly improve corporate governance, reduce the possibility of negligence or potential litigation, and maintain compliance with work safety practices and quality standards accreditation. These include Kordia’s compliance with existing accreditations to ISO 9001 Quality, ISO 14001 Environment and AS 4801 OHS management systems.

Salvus provides a singular format to assess risk and capture incident details, including mandatory fields to guarantee information validity.  Its ad hoc reporting and graph generators provide for fast, custom reporting.  The software also includes a central system that provides access to documents from remote locations.

Senior management will benefit from being able to access up-to-date information at any time, a direct result of the more timely reporting of QSE incidents. Salvus also automatically notifies designated divisional staff to an incident or hazard when necessary, so they can then analyse the quality, safety and environment issues at hand, in terms of where incidents arise and take steps to mitigate any incidents or hazards.

Kordia specialises in designing, building and maintaining challenging and critical telecommunications systems and employs more than 750 engineers, operations and maintenance experts. It also has access to more than 1,000 contractors across Australia.  The company intends to recruit hundreds of new staff in the next few months.

“Salvus is a product from a reputable, successful company and is an integral part of our strategy to become Australia’s leading service provider of telecommunications and wireless network services. Ultimately, it will give management greater visibility into the overall WHS performance of the business with senior directors getting instantaneous information on operations. We have a solid track record of innovative, industry-recognised solutions and Salvus will assist us to maintain our market leadership moving forward,” says Mr Nederkoorn.

Kordia will commence deployment of Salvus in early 2012.

About ComOps Limited
ComOps Limited has a 39-year history in the IT industry in Australasia and listed on the ASX in 1999. The company develops, sells, implements, hosts and supports software solutions in the ERP, Business Intelligence, Mobile Sales Force Automation, eCommerce, Retail, Risk Management & Safety Compliance, Workforce Management and Human Capital Management markets.

These solutions are used by a range of blue chip clients such as Toll Transport, Sensis, RACQ, Steinhoff Asia Pacific (Freedom Furniture), Heinz, Australia Post, Toshiba, Dulux, Canon, Queensland Government, NSW Lotteries, DP World, Virgin Blue and Commonwealth Bank to name just a few.

ComOps is a Microsoft Gold Partner, Progress Premier Partner, is ISO 9001:2008 Quality Accredited and Government Endorsed.

“Websense foresaw that web security, email security, and data loss prevention are inextricably linked. And the integrated Websense® TRITON™ technology was built to address all three as ‘content security’,” said Phil Hochmuth, program manager of Security Products at IDC. “The company’s web security leadership has been solidified by continued innovation and commitment to security effectiveness.”

The IDC report notes that Websense has:

·      Definitive market leadership, with 18 percent web security market share, which is more than twice the nearest competitor.

·      The number one share in web security software and appliances.

·      Mastered the integration of the three pillars of content security - web, email/messaging, and data loss prevention (DLP) - with its TRITON platform, through which each respective content security feature can be deployed and centrally managed.

·      Superior web security intelligence for inbound threats and outbound risks with the Websense Advanced Classification Engine <http://www.websense.com/content/websense-advanced-classification-engine.aspx?cmpid=prnr2.9.12> and the Websense TRITON solutions <http://www.websense.com/content/TRITON-solutions.aspx?cmpid=prnr2.9.12> .

Tens of thousands of customers worldwide rely on Websense content security. The company’s flagship Websense TRITON solutions offer unified web, email, and data security together or as standalone packages. The TRITON solution is available in enterprise-grade appliances, as cloud-based services, and as powerful and efficient hybrids of on-premise and cloud elements working together. Only Websense supports a hybrid cloud/on-premise architecture that features unified threat analysis and a single management console with unified inbound and outbound controls. No other vendor offers a similar level of security effectiveness and ease of deployment and use.

For more information about Websense TRITON solutions and Websense Web Security Gateway, please visit: http://www.websense.com/content/TRITON-solutions.aspx

About Websense, Inc.
Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN), a global leader in unified web security, email security, and data loss prevention (DLP) solutions, delivers the best content security for modern threats at the lowest total cost of ownership to tens of thousands of enterprise, mid-market and small organisations around the world. Distributed through a global network of channel partners and delivered as appliance-based software or Security-as-a-Service (SaaS), Websense content security solutions help organisations leverage web 2.0 and cloud-based communication, collaboration, and social media, while protecting from advanced persistent threats and modern malware, preventing the loss of confidential information, and enforcing internet use and security policies. Websense is headquartered in San Diego, California with offices around the world. For more information, visit www.websense.com.

Follow Websense on Twitter: www.twitter.com/websense <http://www.twitter.com/websense>  
Join the discussion on Facebook: www.facebook.com/websense

For more information:

• www.websense.com/content/websense-advanced-classification-engine.aspx?cmpid=prnr2.9.12
• www.websense.com/content/TRITON-solutions.aspx?cmpid=prnr2.9.12
• www.websense.com/content/TRITON-solutions.aspx
• www.twitter.com/websense

Gigamon’s flagship line of products, the H Series, represents the latest generation of purpose built technology to handle millions of traffic flows each second, delivering them intelligently to the appropriate infrastructure security or managing systems. The launch of a new H Series chassis, the GigaVUE-HD4, and new software update for the entire H Series, continues to enable network architects and engineers to respond to the need to provide pervasive visibility to network traffic.

Ted Ho, Gigamon CEO, SAID: “A significantly increasing challenge facing IT professionals is to maintain accurate and pervasive management and monitoring of the rapidly rising volumes of traffic traversing the enterprise infrastructure. The past approach – to connect monitoring and management tools into specific segments or domains of the network – will not scale into the future. A new approach is required, and we believe the Visibility Fabric architecture represents a compelling solution.

“Without the Visibility Fabric in place, network managers lack the ability to ensure pervasive visibility that enables management tools to effectively monitor this increasing volume of traffic.

“By expanding Gigamon’s H Series family and increasing the scale, performance and density of the Visibility Fabric, we provide our customers with a solution to enable complete traffic visibility and manageability of their infrastructure; leading to lower operational cost, reduced risk and far fewer outages.”

GigaVUE-HD4

To broaden and diversify the portfolio of visibility fabric nodes, Gigamon has introduced the GigaVUE-HD4. This is a high density chassis that uses Gigamon’s FlowMapping technology to intelligently filter, forward, replicate and manage the flow of traffic from production networks to management, monitoring and security tools. The GigaVUE-HD4 offers users a smaller form factor of the successful and first-to-market GigaVUE-HD8 chassis, with the new GigaVUE-HD4 delivering a 1.3Tb of connectivity in a data-center-ready 5RU form. The combination of the two chassis products and the multiple line-card configurations allows enterprises and data centers of all sizes and scale to operate a powerful Visibility Fabric, resulting in lower operational costs, higher infrastructure flexibility and improved organisational agility.

H Series v2.3

To allow architects, engineers and operators to design and deploy highly available and resilient Visibility Fabrics, Gigamon has released an upgrade to the H Series software for all products within the family. The new release, v2.3, allows architects to create a ‘Master/Slave’ control-plane clustering structure within the fabric to include multiple H Series visibility nodes. For added resiliency, secondary nodes can assume the role of ‘master’ if connectivity is lost to the original master. Additional capabilities and functionality has been added in the form of a graphical user interface (GUI) specifically designed to efficiently manage and control the many hundreds of ports contained across a Cluster of H Series nodes.

About the Visibility Fabric

At Gigamon we realised that delivering the visibility essential to operate, secure and maintain the complex system that is the IT infrastructure requires a new approach. With millions of traffic flows across thousands of endpoints, visibility needs to be pervasive, intelligent and dynamic. Using our patented, unique technology, we created a new approach and a new solution for delivering this visibility, called the Visibility Fabric. This new approach is intelligent and versatile in its ability to enable visibility into the network. For more information visit http://www.gigamon.com/visibility-delivered.

About Gigamon

Gigamon® provides intelligent Traffic Visibility Networking solutions for enterprises, data centers and service providers around the globe. Our technology empowers infrastructure architects, managers and operators with unmatched visibility into the traffic traversing both physical and virtual networks without affecting the performance or stability of the production environment. Through patented technologies, the Gigamon GigaVUE® portfolio of high availability and high density products intelligently delivers the appropriate network traffic to security, monitoring or management systems. With over seven years’ experience designing and building intelligent traffic visibility products in the US, Gigamon serves the vertical market leaders of the Fortune 1000 and has an install base spanning 40 countries.

For more information

Danny Keung

Gigamon

Phone: +61.3.9803 6789 or +61 (0) 488 788 705

Email: danny.keung@gigamon.com

David Frost

PR Deadlines, for Gigamon

Phone: +61.2.4341 5021 or +61 (0) 408 408 210

Email: davidf@prdeadlines.com.au

For more information:

• www.gigamon.com

The Advanced Monitored ePDUs include features such as highly accurate kilowatt-hour monitoring, and the Switched ePDU enables remote shut-off and restart of data centre equipment. Managed ePDUs combine the features from Switched and Advanced Monitored for total control.

“Two key trends have emerged in the data centre: the demand from today’s IT equipment for higher availability, and the increasing costs of powering that IT equipment. Data centre managers are facing growing pressure to manage and optimise their available power for growth, at the same time as managing the increasing associated costs while maintaining reliability.,” says Ciaran Bolton, Product Manager for Eaton’s Distributed Power Quality business, APAC.

“Eaton ePDUs allow users to track and monitor power right down to the server level including volt, ampere, watt and kilowatt-hour measurements.  This granular level of monitoring empowers users to make more informed decisions on capacity and power usage by gaining a comprehensive view of their rack power distribution.”

Designed for the needs of the modern data centre, Eaton’s intelligent ePDU models monitor down to the individual server with one per cent accuracy (over 2 amperes), to provide complete control over individual outlets. They also allow switching and sequencing of outlets and outlet groups. The outlet number identifications are colour coded to match the outlet section to the appropriate circuit breaker.

An optional Environmental Monitoring Probe is available to track temperature, humidity and contact closure at the rack level. Temperature monitoring can be used to identify hot spots and reduce cooling costs. Each model also features a new advanced pixel LCD display that provides local readings for phase balancing and loading. The display allows for multiple lines of text to view outlet information and configuration through the menu interface.

All Eaton ePDUs are fully integrated into Eaton’s Intelligent Power Manager monitoring software, so that the user can monitor and trend right down to the individual outlet from a single interface – and view the whole data centre at one glance.

Eaton ePDUs are designed specifically for the data centre environment to provide maximum availability and to fit into industry-standard IT racks. They will fit any rack, thanks to Eaton’s patented mounting system.

Competitively priced, the new ePDUs are now available.

For more information, visit www.eaton.com/epdu

Eaton’s electrical business is a global leader in power distribution, power quality, control and automation, power monitoring, and energy management products and services. Eaton is positioned, through its Cutler-Hammer®, Moeller®, Powerware®, Holec®, MEM® and Santak® global electrical product series, to answer today’s most critical electrical power management challenges.

Eaton Corporation is a diversified power management company with more than 100 years of experience providing energy-efficient solutions that help our customers effectively manage electrical, hydraulic and mechanical power. With 2011 sales of $16.0 billion, Eaton is a global technology leader in electrical components and systems for power quality, distribution and control; hydraulics components, systems and services for industrial and mobile equipment; aerospace fuel, hydraulics and pneumatic systems for commercial and military use; and truck and automotive drivetrain and powertrain systems for performance, fuel economy and safety. Eaton has approximately 73,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 150 countries. For more information, visit www.eaton.com

MEDIA RELEASE: SBDC Releases Native IPv6 for all it Broadband Users
4^th Feb 2012:

Smelly Black Dog Internet is proud to announce that the company has signed up for Simtronic Technologies new wholesale broadband service as an early adopter, and by doing so has access to the Simtronic IPv6 Transit. Colleen Scafe (Director of Smelly Black Dog) states that the company chose Simtronic Technologies over other providers, as Simtronic Technologies is a technologically progressive company and shares the same goals as Smelly Black Dog. Smelly Black Dog Internet now provides IPv6 access for not only business but for all broadband users in all parts of Australia. This means that for all Australians that native IPv6 connectivity is now more accessible than ever before.

"With easy access for all our broadband customers, backed up by the network stability that Simtronic Technologies provides, we expect future growth of all IPv6 services to the Australian public", said Smelly Black Dog Director, Colleen Scafe. "We are one of the first providers in Australia to offer native ipv6 services to all customers, as well as Dual Stacked DNS, VoIP, Mail and Webservers. Our NOC Staff has worked with Simtronic Technologies to deliver a cost effective solution that has the real benefit of ipv6 access to all users regardless of size"

All our servers can be reached easily via IPv6, said Ms C Scafe, "and the availability of the ipv6 connectivity with Simtronic Technologies allows for faster and more reliable access, wherever we are in the global village. While the need for IPv6 was growing and all internet users where generally well aware of ipv6, the problem that existed for many was knowing where to begin. Ms Scafe states we have put a lot of effort into making the connection to ipv6 as simple as possible, so we can offer ipv6 to any user with a compatible router/modem without any fuss."

For more information on Smelly Black Dog, see: www.smellyblackdog.com.au
For more information on Simtronic Technologies, see: www.simtronic.com.au

-

For more information:

• www.smellyblackdog.com.au/
• www.smellyblackdog.com.au/blogView.html?blogId=7
• bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-1190-12/ip-networks-sbdc-soho-region-2.htm
• www.smellyblackdog.com.au/

Mobile management company, Mobile Mentor, have launched a comprehensive BYOD solution for mobile to assist enterprises and government agencies who are facing an influx of BYO smartphones and tablets.  The new solution covers mobile policy, security enforcement, device management, user support, personal spend management and governance.

‘CIOs understand that there is a lot more to a BYOD strategy than simply deploying a Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool to manage non-Blackberry devices’, Denis O’Shea, Mobile Mentor CEO, says. ‘It is about creating a policy that defines the rules of engagement between the employee and the company in a BYO setting. It is also about making sure you can support a fragmented fleet of devices and make equitable decisions when accounting for personal use and business use.’

As part of its BYO mobile solution, Mobile Mentor advises customers on best practices around management and security and works alongside them to write policy, deploy MDM and Personal Spend Management tools and then implement the appropriate level of reporting and governance to the stakeholders in IT, HR and Finance.

Mobile Mentor’s BYOD solution is an extension of its current management service, which covers mobile user support, mobile asset management, expense management as well as consultancy, implementation and training services for enterprise mobile. Mobile Mentor assists IT departments to regain control of their mobile environment and maximise workforce productivity.

Through two acquisitions and upcoming releases of existing SolarWinds products, the company now offers a more comprehensive suite of highly regarded, highly effective products for sysadmins in organisations of all sizes.

“Over the past year, we’ve extended our reach into the server and app management market by leveraging our unique and disruptive business model to sell easy to use, powerful, and affordable products directly to system administrators,” said Kevin Thompson, president and CEO, SolarWinds. “Our goal in this market is to provide sysadmins with the tools they need to get their jobs done faster and easier, at a price they can afford.”

Throughout the first quarter of 2012, SolarWinds will focus on expanding the number of problems its systems management portfolio can solve for sysadmins through the integration of newly acquired products in the systems management space:

• In December 2012, the company acquired certain assets of DameWare Development LLC, a Louisiana-based company that built its brand and reputation on delivering low-cost, high-powered server and PC remote control tools to sysadmins.

• The addition of DameWare, with its more than 40,000 customers and hundreds of thousands of users, should help SolarWinds to significantly expand its mindshare with sysadmins, much like Engineer’s Toolset did in the network management market during the company’s early days.

• Just recently, the company completed the transaction to acquire certain assets of EminentWare. The four-year old company, based in Houston, TX, is a provider of patch management tools focused on Microsoft Windows server and workstations.

• These newly acquired products all share the fundamental characteristics that users have come to expect from SolarWinds; they are easy to install, quickly solve everyday problems, and are very affordable.

DameWare Tools and EminentWare’s patch management products will join SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor and SolarWinds Synthetic End User Monitor to form a product portfolio that addresses the needs of the sysadmin – from tools that deal with every day troubleshooting to patch management and performance monitoring.

“While there are many existing products in the systems management market, they have been aimed at driving a C-suite vision and suffered from weak investment, resulting in products that are underpowered, overpriced, unnecessarily hard to use, or all of these at the same time,” continued Thompson. “By contrast, the goal of every SolarWinds systems management product is to meet the day-to-day needs of the IT professional and offer a unique combination of power, usability, and enterprise scalability, all at an affordable price.”

SolarWinds Systems Management Portfolio

DameWare NT Utilities and Mini Remote Control

• DameWare’s NT Utilities and Mini Remote Control are trusted, indispensable, daily administrative tools for tens of thousands of system administrators.

• DameWare NT Utilities (DNTU) provides an integrated collection of Microsoft Windows administration utilities within a centralized interface for remote management of Windows servers, workstations, desktops, and laptops. NT Utilities is $349 per license.

• DameWare Mini Remote Control (MRC) delivers one of the most comprehensive feature sets for Windows remote management in the industry, with a price point that makes it one of the most affordable as well. MRC is $99.

• Both products are available for purchase via the DameWare site.

SolarWinds Patch Manager

• Based on EminentWare’s server-based products, SolarWinds Patch Manager makes the time-intensive, error-prone chore of patching Microsoft Windows servers and workstations simpler, faster, and more reliable.

• SolarWinds Patch Manager allows sysadmins to automate patching applications across tens of thousands of servers and workstations and receive automatic notifications of new third-party patches from leading vendors like Adobe®, Apple®, Google®, Mozilla®, and Sun Microsystems®.

• Patch Manager starts at $1195 for 100 nodes, including the first year of maintenance. More information about the new SolarWinds Patch Manager is currently available via the EminentWare website.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

• Later this quarter, SolarWinds expects to re-launch and will rename its Application Performance Monitor (APM) to SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM).The new name more accurately reflects the product’s value for monitoring server and applications.

• Server & Application Monitor is a comprehensive server and application management product that enables monitoring of Windows, Unix, and Linux servers, and provides visibility into the performance of critical IT services, the underlying application components, the operating system and server resources on which they run.

• The new SAM introduces several key features including a server hardware health monitor, and a real-time process explorer.

• SolarWinds SAM starts at $2495 for 50 monitors, including first year of maintenance.

SolarWinds Synthetic End User Monitor

• SolarWinds Synthetic End User Monitor (SeUM) delivers affordable cloud-based and internal web application monitoring, as well as external website monitoring, that allows users to respond to transaction problems before customers see them. It monitors web applications through synthetic user tests, reporting on duration and success.

• The latest version, available later this quarter, introduces the SeUM Cloud Player Portal to greatly simplify the process of running synthetic playbacks from the cloud.

• This release adds capabilities to recognize & validate images and record/playback rich Internet content for interactive web plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight.

• SolarWinds Synthetic End User Monitor starts at $1995 for five recordings, including first year of maintenance.

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. We work to put our users first and remove the obstacles that have become “status quo” in traditional enterprise software. SolarWinds products are downloadable, easy to use and maintain, and provide the power, scale, and flexibility needed to address users’ management priorities. Our online user community, thwack, is a gathering-place where tens of thousands of IT pros solve problems, share technology, and participate in product development for all of SolarWinds’ products.

SolarWinds, SolarWinds.com, thwack and the SolarWinds' logo are registered trademarks of SolarWinds. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contacts

Tiffany Nels

SolarWinds

Phone: +1.512.682.9545

pr@solarwinds.com

David Frost

PR Deadlines for SolarWinds

Phone: +61.2.4341 5021

davidf@prdeadlines.com.au

For more information:

• www.solarwinds.com

Business rules are the key day-to-day policies, constraints and know-how that, for example, allow insurance companies to determine premiums, telecommunication carriers to determine call spends and banks to authorise credit. As such, business rules are one of an organisation's most valuable, yet least leveraged assets. They are strategic to the successful operation of all organisations.

Common Knowledge provides both developers and business-users with the means to define, manage and modify the business logic behind complex applications by altering the rules alone. Common Knowledge gives you the power to change the rules without resorting to costly changes in application code so the whole business can work as a team.

In keeping with the Common Knowledge philosophy, that no single format can adequately represent all business rule requirements, Common Knowledge 4.0 includes a range of new rule formats and features that move business rules management well and truly into the 21st century.

In addition to the traditional decision tables, decision grids, decision trees, workflows, rete rules and scripting formats, Common Knowledge 4.0 delivers a new world of opportunity with the introduction of visual scripts and test suites. These new formats, in conjunction with existing formats, ensure that the business rules designer has a rich set of tools available for the construction of expressive and effective corporate solutions.

Business rules built using Common Knowledge Designer can be integrated directly into your software systems using the Common Knowledge SDK. The Common Knowledge SDK is a comprehensive business rules authoring and execution API which now provides 32 and 64 bit support for all .NET languages, as well as native 32 and 64 bit support for all major versions of Delphi, including XE2.

Common Knowledge 4.0 can be downloaded from the evaluation download page on the Object Connections website. The Common Knowledge 4.0 Evaluation download is a fully functional Corporate Bundle installer.

What's New?

Common Knowledge 4.0 introduces a range of new and improved features. These include:

• Many UI improvements, including a versatile ribbon toolbar and improved docking control
• Optional tabbed and MDI based views
• Embedded viewers for documentation and code generation
• Integrated file and samples browsing
• Visual Script rule format allows integration of forms with business rules
• Test Suite rule format allows the integration of test cases and scenarios
• Common Knowledge Launcher, a standalone business rules execution micro-server
• SDK support for 32 and 64 bit .NET and Delphi environments
• Support for all major versions of Delphi including XE2
• A flexible pricing model with free SDK runtimes

For more information:

• www.objectconnections.com
• www.objectconnections.com/products
• www.objectconnections.com/common-knowledge
• www.objectconnections.com/evaluation

BRISBANE, Queensland - MITIGATE 2012, Australia's premier IT risk seminar, today added Daniel Burrus to the list of speakers that will tour Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth from late August through early September 2012.

MITIGATE Seminar Director Gilad Sadan, "The rate at which technology changes is a risk that affects every Australian organisation."

"Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists. Now more than ever Australian businesses and government entities are expected to do more with less. Technology enables this to occur, but making big technology decisions can be risky. Daniel helps organisations lessen this risk by explaining how they can see the hidden opportunities available to them and begin to actually innovate instead of just trying to catch up." said Sadan.

"MITIGATE 2012 is the most important business seminar of the year. As we announce each of our speakers we continue to prove our commitment to bringing the best presenters in the world on IT risk to Australia."

Daniel Burrus is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients better understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal best seller "Flash Foresight: How To See the Invisible and Do the Impossible" as well as the highly acclaimed "Technotrends".

"I'm really looking forward to MITIGATE 2012 and helping Australian organisations with powerful, practical guidance for turning rapid technology-driven change from a risk into a competitive advantage." said Burrus.

Daniel joins previously announced "Hackers" speaker Kevin Mitnick on the six city tour. Mitnick is the world's most famous (former) hacker, and will share his expertise with Australian organisations through MITIGATE to help them reduce their risk of compromise by cybercriminals.

For more information:

• www.mitigateseminar.com
• www.linkedin.com/company/mitigate-seminar/
• facebook.com/mitigateseminar/
• twitter.com/mitigateseminar/

The New Normal of Mainframe

Under the New Normal, the surge in mobile banking and other types of e-commerce has made mainframe applications key to connecting businesses with customers. This means IT organisations must integrate new cloud and mobile applications with legacy mainframe applications at a record pace – often in a specialised development environment – while ensuring those applications deliver superior quality and performance.

At the same time, as mainframe applications become more customer-facing, complex and thus difficult to maintain, the mainframe technology industry faces a critical skills shortage. This puts businesses at risk for costly and reputation-damaging application failures. According to a recent independent research study into mainframe use conducted by Vanson Bourne*, 71 percent of CIOs are concerned that the looming mainframe skills shortage will hurt their business. Specifically, CIOs are concerned this will result in increased application risk (58 percent), reduced productivity (58 percent) and more project overruns (53 percent).  

"Mainframe usage continues to increase with the addition of new customer-facing applications – often connected to the Web and mobile devices – plus growth in existing workloads. This growth is producing sizeable increases in MIPS consumption and in deployed application complexity,” said Tim Grieser, Program Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC. “Compuware’s modernised mainframe tools can help enterprises address their mainframe skills requirements needed to develop, maintain, extend and manage the performance of these increasingly business-critical applications.”

Addressing the Business Risks of the New Normal

For 35 years, Compuware Mainframe Solutions <http://www.compuware.com/mainframe-solutions/>  have enabled developers to efficiently support critical applications -- from analysing code, optimising test data and testing and debugging, to pinpointing problems, validating quality, and tuning applications and performance.

The Compuware Workbench <http://www.compuware.com/mainframe-solutions/workbench-mainframe-modernization.html> , a modernised, open framework development environment, provides new, less-experienced developers with the leading-edge products they need to work productively and with fewer errors, mitigating the risks created by the New Normal.

Now, Compuware’s Mainframe Solutions have been enhanced to include the following:

Increasing Developer Productivity

·       Workbench 3.1.6 now includes fast, easy access to MVS data. The Workbench now features File-AID for MVS browse and edit capabilities. This enables quick and convenient access to data and file types that are critical for large enterprise application development and testing, boosting the productivity of mainframe application developers. Key business risks addressed: low developer productivity; and controlling test data management and execution costs.

·       Quick, effective debugging capabilities. The new Workbench also includes an enhanced Xpediter debugging capability enabling IT staffers without advanced application knowledge to get into an interactive test session with minimal effort to quickly and confidently move applications into production.   Key business risks addressed: lost application knowledge; low developer productivity; and reduced efficiency moving from the problem identification phase to the solution phase.

·       Enabling enterprises to quickly resolve application faults with Abend-AID 12.2.The industry’s leading mainframe application fault resolution tool further extends its diagnostic capabilities, enabling users to deliver outstanding service. New features include a COBOL PERFORM trace, consolidated displays of IMS and DB2 data to speed access to crucial information, and easier access to Abend-AID reports. Key business risks addressed: reduced time-to-market delivery; poor application quality; and missed service levels.

Enhancing Application Performance Management

·       Automating the ability to eliminate costly performance creep with Strobe 4.3 . Strobe, the industry’s premier mainframe application performance management solution, now includes the ability to automatically measure batch jobs that exceed dynamically calculated thresholds. Other new capabilities include: integration with existing monitoring tools, improved CICS transaction reporting, and new views of DB2 accounting statistics.  

With iStrobe 4.3 customers can now view historical performance data from a variety of perspectives, including the ability to establish baseline performance benchmarks. In addition, Strobe can now easily initiate measurements from within Compuware’s Workbench as part of the development process. Key business risks addressed: not meeting user expectations; reduced competitive advantages; and excessive CPU consumption resulting in reduced revenue.

“Mainframe applications power the top retailers, banks, insurance companies, telecommunications and manufacturing companies worldwide. At the same time, as experienced developers retire, fewer developers are acquiring the mainframe skills needed to maintain these complex applications. This puts enterprises at significant risk for financial losses,” said Kris Manery, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mainframe Solutions Business Unit, Compuware. “It’s never been more important to have the tools and people in place to ensure mainframe applications deliver superior quality and performance.”

*Commissioned by Compuware and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne, the survey consisted of 520 CIOs in large enterprise organisations with over 1,000 employees. Specifically, the study included 100 CIOs each in the UK, France, Germany and the U.S. along with 30 CIOs each in Italy, Benelux, Japan and Australia.

About the Compuware Mainframe Solutions
Compuware’s market-leading Mainframe solutions, Abend-AID, File-AID, Xpediter, Hiperstation and Strobe, help organisations maximise developer productivity, minimise costs and deliver better service. The Solutions are available in the traditional TSO/ISPF environment, or within the Compuware Workbench, an open development environment that features an intuitive modern interface. The Workbench makes application development, testing and tuning faster and simpler to perform for both experienced mainframers as well those new to mainframe, enabling companies to develop new services faster, more efficiently and with higher quality utilising existing resources.

Compuware Corporation
Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company, provides software, experts and best practices to ensure technology works well and delivers value. Compuware solutions make the world’s most important technologies perform at their best for leading organisations worldwide, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: http://www.compuware.com

For more information:

• www.compuware.com/mainframe-solutions/
• www.compuware.com/mainframe-solutions/workbench-mainframe-modernization.html
• www.compuware.com

VERS, which stands for Victorian Electronic Records Strategy, is a globally respected standard for capturing, managing and preserving electronic records and most Australian corporations and government agencies require that records management solutions achieve certification. VERS consists of a framework of standards centred around the goal of reliably and authentically archiving electronic records. In order to be certified, products must undergo rigorous, independent testing by the VERS organisation and demonstrate that all requirements of the standard are fully met.

Meets Global Requirements

Introduced last year, OpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 provides integrated end-to-end management of SharePoint 2010 sites and documents across an entire enterprise. With VERS certification along with existing U.S. Department of Defense 5015.02-STD v3 certification for this solution, organisations can now confidently deploy SharePoint 2010 with the knowledge that regulatory and legal requirements for records management around the globe are being fully addressed.  

A globally managed, strategic Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, OpenText has a close working relationship with Microsoft. As detailed in the online resource centre at www.Better-Together-Central.com, Microsoft and OpenText are working closely to help companies around the world enable an effective and holistic compliance framework to address information spread across the enterprise. OpenText was named 2011 ISV Line of Business Partner of the Year in Australia and was a finalist for 2011 Global ISV Partner of the Year.

“For customers in highly regulated industries and government agencies, compliance with major standards for records management and archiving is critical to their ability to deploy SharePoint 2010 strategically across the enterprise,” said Gianpaolo Carraro, Director, Microsoft Australia. “By taking on the effort to achieve VERS certification, OpenText demonstrates the value of a strong ecosystem in helping customers get maximum benefit from their investment in the Microsoft platform.”

Take Control of SharePoint Sites

Through use of OpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft SharePoint 2010, enterprises can take control over SharePoint sites to enforce broader compliance and archiving policies and lower ongoing administration and storage costs. It also helps to improve user productivity by opening access to all enterprise content from within SharePoint, ultimately increasing the value of content by giving corporations a robust, well-managed long-term corporate memory

“With the volume of content continuing to expand at an alarming pace, information governance and records management has taken on an increasingly vital role within organisations. As the clear market and technology leader in information governance, OpenText places a high priority on meeting the full spectrum of global standards,” said Graham Pullen, Vice President and General Manager, Asia-Pacific for OpenText.

This latest certification detailed here <http://210.8.122.120/vers/assessment/certifiedv2.asp>  reinforces, extends and complements other information governance certifications for OpenText offerings, including:

- U.S. Department of Defense 5015.02-STD v3 certification, including Classified Records
- OpenText Records Management
- OpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft® SharePoint®
- OpenText Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions
- OpenText Records Management with eDOCS 5.2
- The National Archives Electronic Records Management Systems certification – UK Governments 2002 req
- ISO 15489 compliance
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration 21 CFR Part 11 compliance
- U.S. Section 508 compliance
- SEC 17a-4 compliance

Follow OpenText on Twitter @OpenText <http://www.twitter.com/opentext>  and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/opentext

About OpenText
OpenText, a global ECM leader, helps organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content. OpenText brings two decades of expertise supporting 100 million users in 114 countries.  Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts™ to help organisations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit www.opentext.com

For more information:

• 210.8.122.120/vers/assessment/certifiedv2.asp
• www.twitter.com/opentext
• www.facebook.com/opentext

Following a network upgrade cycle, higher speed, low-utilisation ports created a challenge as the volume of traffic could not justify the higher-speed physical connectivity into a Visibility Fabric. The launch of two new products which combine to create a powerful aggregation solution, addresses this challenge.

The products double the density for the H Series family and deliver 40Gb connectivity in preparation for the next upgrade cycle and higher speed monitoring tools in the future.

“Over the past few years, the exponential growth in communications has created traffic visibility problems for enterprises and data centres. What they cannot see, they cannot measure, and what they cannot measure, they cannot manage,” said Ted Ho, Gigamon CEO.

“Our customers have been asking for a traffic aggregation solution to consolidate low-utilisation connections before entering an intelligent Visibility Fabric, and in parallel the industry has been asking for a 40G solution to address the new backbone traffic visibility challenges. By expanding our existing Visibility Fabric solutions, Gigamon provides enterprises and data centres with a broad portfolio of solutions that can scale to accommodate virtually any current or future networking requirements they have.”

GigaVUE-TA1

Gigamon’s popular family of GigaVUE traffic visibility nodes that create an intelligent and pervasive Visibility Fabric to deliver traffic flows from across broad networks to appropriate, centralised management, monitoring or security systems, now include a solution designed specifically to aggregate traffic from low-utilisation links.

The GigaVUE-TA1 node consolidates multiple low utilisation ports into “gateway” ports that connect directly into a Visibility Fabric. As enterprises and data centres transition from 1Gb to 10Gb networks, many upgraded ports continue carry traffic below the 1Gb links originally replaced and often run at 5 per cent utilisation or lower. Aggregating data from these lower utilisation ports typically has been inefficient, resource demanding or costly, making the task difficult or even impossible to justify. When multiplied across numerous similar characteristic ports, the challenge can lead to a significant gap in network visibility.

With the arrival of the Gigamon GigaVUE-TA1 node, traffic from low utilisation ports are aggregated in advance of connection into the Visibility Fabric, allowing for pervasive visibility and, as a direct result, improved measurement and management of an enterprises’ network.

The GigaVUE-TA1 is ready for high availability and demanding deployments by delivering 640Gb of connectivity in 1RU, having front-to-back cooling and options for hot-swap power and fan trays.

New high-density GigaPORT Blade

With the arrival of the GigaPORT-Q02X32 H Series line-card, Gigamon expands its first-to-market terabit Visibility Fabric solution built around the H Series of chassis products. The new blade offers a full 320Gb of connectivity in a single chassis slot through 24 ports of 10Gb and 2 ports of 40Gb.

This blade almost triples the connectivity density of the H Series while also providing high-speed traffic ingress from SPAN ports, inter-node stacking and aggregation uplinks at up to 40Gb. The blade also future proofed as it allows monitoring, management and security tools to be attached at 40Gb when the need arises. The GigaPort line card is compatible with all H Series products that are ready for data centre deployments with front-to-back cooling, redundant power and fan, and offer high-density connectivity.

About the Visibility Fabric

At Gigamon we realised that delivering the visibility essential to operate, secure and maintain the complex system that is the IT infrastructure requires a new approach. With millions of traffic flows across thousands of endpoints, visibility needs to be pervasive, intelligent and dynamic. Using our patented, unique technology, we created a new approach and a new solution for delivering this visibility, called the Visibility Fabric. This new approach is intelligent and versatile in its ability to enable visibility into the network. For more information visit http://www.gigamon.com/visibility-delivered.

About Gigamon

Gigamon® provides intelligent Traffic Visibility Networking solutions for enterprises, data centres and service providers around the globe. Our technology empowers infrastructure architects, managers and operators with unmatched visibility into the traffic traversing both physical and virtual networks without affecting the performance or stability of the production environment. Through patented technologies, the Gigamon GigaVUE® portfolio of high availability and high density products intelligently delivers the appropriate network traffic to security, monitoring or management systems. With over seven years’ experience designing and building intelligent traffic visibility products in the US, Gigamon serves the vertical market leaders of the Fortune 1000 and has an install base spanning 40 countries.

For more information

Danny Keung

Gigamon

Phone: +61.3.9803 6789 or +61 (0) 488 788 705

Email: danny.keung@gigamon.com

David Frost

PR Deadlines, for Gigamon

Phone: +61.2.4341 5021 or +61 (0) 408 408 210

Email: davidf@prdeadlines.com.au

For more information:

• www.gigamon.com

The latest backup solutions, which make ‘office to home’ offsite backups possible, eliminate many of the barriers, expenses and difficulties of setting up and managing an effective offsite backup solution.

Until recently, the ultimate solution to avoid major disaster was to build an offsite disaster recovery centre with duplicate computing equipment and dedicated staff – an unaffordable option for smaller businesses.

Some businesses typically do not have an offsite backup plan or at best physically transport their backup media between offices and home to maintain an offsite copy - a tedious and risky manual process that makes the copy more vulnerable to loss or damage. Outsourcing the transport or storage of backup media is also costly and involves complex security issues SMBs do not typically have the resources to address.

Karl Sice, General Manager – Pacific at Acronis, said: “With the amount of new data SMBs create each day, businesses that are not backing up information to a separate location from their office are asking for trouble. They could lose that data forever in the event of a disaster such as theft, fire, flood, earthquake or system failure.

“While many SMBs are struggling with backup requirements because they believe it is too complex and costly, changes in technologies have presented them with new options – including the ability to simply back up office files to their home devices using a stable Internet connection.”

All SMBs need to create this ‘office to home’ offsite backup is reputable backup software that supports FTP (file transfer protocol), such as Acronis Backup & Recovery^® 11 software, a reliable Internet connection (with a router provided by your ISP) and Network Attached Storage (NAS), which provides the storage location for the backup. And once it is set up, the Acronis software will automatically do backups on schedule, so business owners no longer have to remember to do it themselves.

The ease and affordability of this office to home-style backup is an important development for smaller business owners who do not have the financial resources or trained IT managers to deal with the technical complexities of some other types of backup solutions.

“Now SMBs can back up their business-critical data anywhere, anytime via inexpensive broadband connections that are commonly available - and probably already in place at many SMBs’ locations. It is a time-saving, low cost and easy way to provide offsite protection for vital business data,” Sice added.

Notes To Editors:

¹Acronis Disaster Recovery Index, February 2011

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com.au. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.

For further information, please contact:

Jessie Jin, Acronis on +61 2 8458 0845. Jessie.Jin@acronis.com

Shuna Boyd, BoydPR on +61 2 9418 8100. shuna@boydpr.com.au

Acronis^®, Acronis Compute with Confidence^®, Acronis^® Backup & Recovery™ and the Acronis logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Acronis Inc.in the U.S. and other countries.

For more information:

• www.acronis.com.au/backup-recovery/

BRISBANE, Queensland - MITIGATE 2012, Australia's premier IT risk seminar, was announced today and will be held in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth from late August through early September 2012.

MITIGATE Seminar Director Avi Lewin, "It's time for Australian businesses and government entities to truly understand their IT risk exposure."

"MITIGATE 2012 is a one day seminar focused around the five biggest IT risks to an organisation - Hackers, Fraud, Disasters, Change, and ROI. We are bringing in a renowned expert to talk about each risk, and there is no one better to talk about hackers than Kevin Mitnick." said Lewin.

"Interest at the executive level in this area increased dramatically in 2011 as the rate and visibility of IT system compromises was splashed across the media. Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into taking action willingly, and as Microsoft noted in their recent Security Intelligence report it is now the most common method used by hackers to infect IT systems. As the person who is most often credited with popularising the concept of social engineering, Kevin Mitnick will share his expertise with Australian organisations through MITIGATE to help them reduce their risk of compromise by hackers."

Mitnick's hobby as an adolescent consisted of studying methods, tactics, and strategies used to circumvent computer security, and to learn more about how computer systems and telecommunication systems work. As the world's most famous (former) hacker, he has been the subject of countless news and magazine articles published throughout the world and was recently featured on the Nine Network's "60 Minutes" program. The 2012 MITIGATE tour marks Kevin Mitnick's first visit to Australia since 2005.

"I've spoken all over the world about hacking and Information Security. MITIGATE 2012 is special because it's not just about the risks themselves - it's about bringing IT professionals and business people together to better understand the risks." said Mitnick.

For more information:

• www.mitigateseminar.com
• www.linkedin.com/company/mitigate-seminar/
• facebook.com/mitigateseminar/
• twitter.com/mitigateseminar/

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Virtual Edition supports Windows and Linux servers and all major virtualization solutions including VMware^® vSphere™, Microsoft^® Hyper-V™ and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 in one solution, with unlimited P2V and V2V migrations included.

Acronis' integration of its Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Virtual Edition with the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization API enables new capabilities for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 and will help to accelerate and simplify the journey to a Red Hat open source virtual environment. This includes the remote installation of Acronis agents onto Linux machines and the automatic discovery and display of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 virtual machines in the Acronis Management Server. This makes it easier for Red Hat customers to provide comprehensive disaster recovery and data protection for their whole Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment. Acronis is the only backup and recovery vendor to have achieved Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0-Certified status at the time of launch.

Karl Sice, General Manager, Pacific at Acronis, said: “Acronis has been part of the Red Hat ISV ecosystem since 2006, and we continue to see a growing demand for our solutions on the Red Hat platform. By achieving certification on this new platform, we can give enterprise customers the tools and the confidence to migrate data over to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3, knowing that it can be protected immediately.”

“Red Hat is focused on providing value and choice to enterprises adopting a server virtualization strategy,” said Navin Thadani, senior director, Virtualization Business at Red Hat.  “Our customers have benefitted from the migration, disaster recovery and data protection capabilities within Acronis Backup & Recovery, and now we can help accelerate their journey to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 through our continuing relationship with one of the leading vendors in this market.”

The new version of Acronis Backup & Recovery^® 11 Virtual Edition for Red Hat^® Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 and the free 15 day trial is available via the Red Hat Market Place http://marketplace.redhat.com/rhev. To download a free, fully supported 60-day trial of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, visit www.redhat.com/rhev3.

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com.au. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.

Acronis®, Acronis Backup & Recovery® and the Acronis logo are registered trademarks of Acronis Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

For more information:

• marketplace.redhat.com/rhev
• www.redhat.com/rhev3
• www.acronis.com.au/
• twitter.com/acronis

To cope with constant change, organisations have implemented an array of monitoring and management tools to inform and enable their staff to keep the network running. For Cisco networks, tools such as SPAN (Switch Port Analyzer), RSPAN (Remote Switch Port Analyzer), ERSPAN (Encapsulated Remote Switch Port Analyzer), and VACL (VLAN Access List) can aid network professionals in isolating and troubleshooting network issues. But these are all limited in the numbers of ports that can be monitored and effectively managed by the various IT departments (e.g., network operations, security, and application performance).

Today’s high density data environments require more than these tools alone can deliver: enter Gigamon. To manage a network effectively requires that the right network data gets to the right IT department(s). Gigamon’s Traffic Visibility Fabric can deliver the requisite management data to the appropriate analysis tools.

The Gigamon solution is a combination of out-of-band traffic filtering and management in addition to intelligent flow mapping. Data acquired from multiple SPAN ports or taps can be multicast to multiple tools, aggregated to a few consolidated tools, and/or filtered or divided across many instances of the same tools. Gigamon’s solution may be thought of as a ‘traffic cop’ that provides immediate access for ad hoc tool deployment without impacting the production network.

Jim Berkman, Director of Worldwide Channel Marketing, and Anoop Kartha, Technical Marketing Engineer, explains what Gigamon’s solutions do: “Our visibility fabric allows you to connect more than the two tools that you would normally be able to connect to SPAN ports, so we are able to provide pervasive visibility across the network.

“In general we solve a problem that every Cisco user has. There are only so many SPAN ports available to send traffic to the analytical tools ports. We sit in the middle, collect aggregate information flowing through the production network, tap into that information, replicate it, filter out the unwanted data, and then send it to the appropriate tools.

“By filtering the data we’re ensuring that the various tools are not inundated by unwanted and unnecessary data. We can also aggregate information from different parts of the network so that the different tools can be consolidated in one location and don’t have to be spread all across the network. Gigamon can also replicate the information so that it can be sent to multiple locations for redundancy/back-up, etc.”

Recently Gigamon released new technology and software that enable users to capture data flowing between two different Cisco switches (Nexus 5000 and 7000) by stripping out VLAN and MPLS tags then sending this traffic data to analytical tools.

Jim Berkman explains: “We provide a lot of flexibility to manipulate the data beyond simply stripping out the header information before sending it on to the analytical tools. This also is helpful in compliance situations (e.g., HIPPA and PCI) where sensitive data needs to be protected. Additionally, we can reduce the amount of storage space required for keeping management data.”

With over seven years’ experience designing and building intelligent traffic visibility products in the US, Gigamon now serves market leaders within the Fortune 1000, has an installed base spanning 40 countries, and is still growing.

For more information

Paul Hooper, Gigamon

Cell: +1 (408) 828-6338 | Office: +1 (408) 493-1337

Email: paul.hooper@gigamon.com

http://www.gigamon.com

For more information:

• www.gigamon.com
• www.gigamon.com/

During the last 12 months, Acronis has continued to strengthen its portfolio of products, partnerships and alliances and has received recognition for its success. For the fourth time, Acronis was included in the Inc. 500I5000 list of fast growing private companies in America. Acronis was also recognized for the third consecutive year by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. In June 2011, Acronis launched its Global Partner Program to better serve the needs of its partner ecosystem and has added a further 3000 partners to its portal in the last six months, bringing the total to over 25,000 partners worldwide.

"Acronis has built its reputation on providing easy-to-use, cost effective solutions for data protection, backup and disaster recovery for government organizations, businesses and home users worldwide,” commented Alex Pinchev, President and CEO at Acronis. “As we enter the next phase of the company's growth, we have a very strong customer base, a great partner ecosystem, talented team and a portfolio of intellectual property that will be leveraged to take advantage of the growing opportunity within the virtualization and cloud markets.”

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com.au. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

For more information:

• www.acronis.com.au/
• twitter.com/acronis

SEEK operates Australia’s most widely-used job search site, seek.com.au. To keep the site fresh, fast and functional, SEEK employs a team of developers, who are engaged on numerous concurrent enhancements. These developers used a source code repository tool for version control, but found it increasingly difficult to use, partly because it restricted them from working on the same section of code at the same time.

“We have a constant pipeline of development projects,” says Shane Lavelle, Deployment
Manager, SEEK. “That means we need robust source control systems. These systems manage the code that each developer works on and ensure we don’t develop version control conflicts.

In addition, downloading code from the repository took a lot of time, with some developers had to wait 45 minutes before they could resume work, which slowed our development time. What we really wanted was a closer fit with our integrated development environment (IDE) to enable us all to work more seamlessly.”

Working together with Readify, SEEK deployed Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. Readify helped integrate this with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN, and trained developers in how to work with it. This solution comprises a variety of source code development features, including Version Control, Work Items Management, Continuous Integration and Reporting Tools. More sophisticated version control means developers can work closely with each other without disrupting each other’s code. And the ability to complete and deploy enhancements faster has helped with the company’s move to Agile Software Development.

After deployment, the immediate response from SEEK developers was overwhelmingly positive, and Team Foundation Server is now being used to help manage all development projects.

Integration with Visual Studio Ultimate has increased productivity by providing developers with single step compiling capabilities and better source code version control and tracking.

“Ultimately Team Foundation Server speeds our time to delivery,” says Lavelle. “When we want a new feature, we can have it built, tested and operating on the SEEK Web site much faster.”

For more information:

• readify.net/our-experience/seek
• readify.net/resources/guidance/what-art-thou,-agile

Now Australian mobile phone users can measure radiation levels coming from their phones as they use it.  Today tawkon Ltd., the creator of the tawkon app for Android, launched its mobile radiation detection app in Australia. Supporting over 100 Android-powered devices, the app tracks and rates a phone’s level of mobile radiation exposure (low, moderate or high) and suggests situation-specific adjustments for lowering it to safe levels during a call. tawkon is currently undergoing tests for FCC certification.

tawkon runs quietly in the background, alerting users during a call only when it detects an increase in radiation exposure. During the course of a given day, mobile phones are exposed to conditions that might raise or lower the SAR, or Specific Absorption Rate — the universal measure for the amount of radiation being absorbed by the user. The free application also creates personal, local radiation map of a user’s everyday locations –neighborhood, commute, office or school – enabling users to choose to initiate calls in locations that keep them furthest from harm.

The technology behind tawkon utilizes complex algorithms that consider factors like connection quality, antenna orientation, phone model, proximity to the face, and even travel speed. By extracting data from the device, the app tracks phone transmission levels, headphone usage, user’s location and movements, and other factors. With that information, Android and Blackberry users can make changes to keep their radiation exposure low. tawkon technology is tested in an FFC-certified US lab.

“Our goal is not to keep you from using your phone,” adds Friedlander, “Quite the opposite: tawkon serves as a personal guide, empowering you to minimize radiation exposure and talk on, for as long or short as you always have. We’re helping you track your habits and location so that when it becomes necessary, you know what to do to make it safer.”

For more information:

• www.tawkon.com
• market.android.com/details?id=com.tawkon

Sydney, Australia, – BigHand, the leading voice productivity vendor in the legal community supporting over 142,000 professionals globally, today announced South Australian law firm Bartel & Hall has replaced its legacy dictation system with BigHand’s latest v4.2 Voice Productivity technology for iPhone and Android with the firm reporting an immediate increase in chargeable hours and a higher level of client service through improved firm-wide administrative efficiency.

The progressive law firm had been frustrated with the limitations of their traditional tape based system, as dictations regularly had to be re-dictated due to damaged tapes, with some inadvertently erased. One of Bartel & Hall’s employees had used digital dictation in a previous firm and recommended Bartel & Hall also consider switching to a digital system with a view to improving work flow and efficiency.

Kym Bartel, Partner at Bartel & Hall, assessed a variety of systems in the firm’s efforts to replace its aging tape system, which it had used since it was founded in 1979. BigHand was the winner following a product comparison and also was recommended by another similar firm in the region: “It became obvious that the old tape-based dictation system was restricting our potential as a leading firm. BigHand was the clear front-runner for us as we wanted to adopt the latest and best technology in digital dictation workflow to further elevate Bartel & Hall as one of South Australia's leading regional law firms. Ensuring we attract and retain the right level of talent was also part of the strategy, as we recognise the importance of giving our staff the right tools to get the job done as efficiently as possible for our clients.”

Lawyers can now submit dictations into the office via their iPhone or Android device wherever they are in the world, via a Wi-Fi connection or a mobile phone signal with no docking required, and also track the current progress of their client documentation. This along with advanced workflows and the potential for speech recognition BigHand has revolutionised the way Bartel & Hall operates. Kym Bartel adds:

“Using BigHand is far more efficient than using tapes, with much greater control and accuracy. Productivity has improved due to an increase in the number of dictations submitted, coupled with a decrease in document turnaround time. Work from our three branch offices is sent back to our main office via the Smartphones. No time is wasted physically coming back to the office with tapes. This enables our lawyers to record and capture more chargeable time than they could ever have done with tapes. We opted for Smartphones as a dictation device rather than new digital recorders as the option to work anytime, anywhere, and have dictations delivered immediately to support staff was very attractive to our lawyers, who now say they can’t live without this technology. The win-win is that it is also more cost effective, as the firm is not paying for multiple devices.”

The transition from the old tape system to the new digital system was seamless. Kym comments:
“Although some staff were initially skeptical about the change, they all found it went surprisingly easily. The BigHand installation and training was excellent. We experienced minimal disruption and the BigHand team was friendly, patient and professional at every stage. All staff were happy with the system from day one and continue to be. It’s very easy to use with very few, if any, system issues. Overall we are extremely happy with the results we have seen in such a short space of time since adoption in November.

For more information:

• www.bighand.com.au
• eu.vocuspr.com/Url.aspx?529252x3777x126054