uBreakiFix tests sapphire glass against Gorilla glass

With speculation about sapphire glass escalating as the Apple September 9 launch nears, uBreakiFix, a US smartphone and tech repair company, has done some in-house testing on sapphire glass to determine its durability. According to the company, sapphire is remarkably hard, second only to diamonds, it is also remarkably stiff, making it quite brittle.

uBreakiFix has released two separate videos detailing their testing of sapphire. The first is an impact test on the new Kyocera Brigadier, a recently-launched smartphone targeted at adventure enthusiasts. The phone is touted as nearly indestructible by Kyocera, and sports a sapphire display. 

"It was a great opportunity to get our hands on Sapphire in an actual smartphone application," said David Reiff, the company's Co-Founder and Vice President. uBreakiFix tested the phone from 3ft, 4.5ft, 6ft and 8ft (3 ft is nearly 1m), and other than some scuffs on the perimeter plastic the sapphire screen remained intact. 

uBreakiFix says the phone's durability is due to the raised perimeter bezel that protects the screen, not necessarily the sapphire. To prove it, they removed the display assembly from the phone and dropped it on its own. Without the protective bezel, the screen cracked with a drop from only 3ft. "Though Kyocera has built an impressively tough phone, we think the elevated screen bezel and other factors contribute to its impact durability, not necessarily the sapphire screen," concluded uBreakiFix in the drop test video.

In a follow up video that was a bit more thorough, the company stress tested multiple samples of sapphire and Gorilla Glass in a bend fixture. The video gets a bit technical, but the result seems to support the conclusion that sapphire is not a more impact durable material than typically used smartphone glass, though it is certainly harder. In a scratch test using a tungsten carbide scratching mechanism, sapphire was unaffected while gorilla glass and tempered glass suffered deep, visible gashes. 

In a bending test, uBreakFix showed that though failure strength of the sapphire is about 25% higher than glass, it is unable to bend and absorb impact, which could mean impact cracks and shatters. uBreakiFix was quick to point out that this does not necessarily mean a more fragile iPhone 6. 

"Our conclusion is that sapphire alone will not equate to an unbreakable iPhone, in fact the brittleness of sapphire glass poses significant problems for engineers to overcome, and we have serious doubts that it will outperform Gorilla Glass. But, we can't say if an iPhone 6 with a sapphire screen will be more or less durable overall. Clever engineering and protective features may still create a very durable device regardless of the use of sapphire," finished Reiff.

To see the uBreakiFix Sapphire test videos, visit uBreakiFix.com/learn, or click here and here.

First 100 Gbps community network in Southeast Asia is powered by Brocade

The Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) has taken the wraps off the SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX), a 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) community network with a Brocade MLXe-4 router at its core.

SLIX, a collaboration project between SingAREN, A*STAR, NUS and NTU, delivers one hundred times more capacity than SingAREN’s previous generation of network infrastructure, providing stronger support for complex, data- and bandwidth-intensive research in areas such as genome and meteorological studies. 

The new network includes a dedicated dual fibreoptic ring – capable of supporting multiple 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) links – that provides a resilient backbone connecting Singapore’s key research and education sites. This opens up new possibilities as a test-bed for the Singapore research and education community, extending database mirroring services, bilateral disaster recovery, high-performance computing federation and shared services, high volume peering with content data networks, and other value-adding services.
Professor Francis Lee Bu-Sung, President of SingAREN, said the first 100 GbE international connection is likely to be made within the next year as a result of a US funding call for a 100 Gbps research network link to Asia. “We see Brocade as a key technology partner to meet the challenges of building an agile, scalable, high-speed network infrastructure and Internet exchange point,” he said. 

“The Brocade MLXe routers are often the choice for high-performance networks, and we’re very proud of the fact that one has now been deployed as the core of Southeast Asia’s most advanced research and education network,” said Adam Judd, Brocade VP for Asia Pacific. “Apart from the outstanding, non-stop performance and flexibility, a key factor in SingAREN choosing the Brocade solution is our strong support for software-defined networking.”
The MLXe-4 core router provides a clear path for the use of software-defined networking (SDN) in SLIX’s network. According to Professor Lee, SingAREN is already experimenting with the Brocade MLXe-4’s SDN capabilities, which he sees as playing a critical role in the future of SLIX. “SDN will enable the dynamic configuration of connections to deliver fast transit over ‘clean pipes’ for researchers and educators who need to transfer big data payloads across SingAREN and international research networks,” he said.

Riverbed SteelCentral Network Planning and Configuration family gets new functionality

Riverbed Technology, an application performance infrastructure provider, has added new features to the Riverbed SteelCentral Network Planning and Configuration Management (NPCM) product family, which was formerly named OPNET Network Engineering, Operations and Planning or NEOP. 

Source: Riverbed. The new features for NPCM.

SteelCentral NPCM helps to ensure the availability of business-critical network services by detecting network device configuration errors before an outage in business-critical services. In addition, NPCM helps with security standards compliance by discovering and highlighting network configuration errors and differences.

“As performance troubleshooting teams know all too well, relying on out-of-date network change, topology and configuration data while keeping up with business-critical network and application obligations drives high IT operational costs and reduces staff productivity. Businesses need to prevent outages rather than troubleshoot them,” said Nik Koutsoukos, Senior Director, product marketing, SteelCentral at Riverbed. 

“SteelCentral Network Planning and Configuration Management solutions help overwhelmed IT staff keep their network in compliance with an ever-increasing number of regulatory, organisational and security policies. At the same time, the solution reduces outages due to misconfiguration by up to 70% using automated network configuration analysis instead of manual methods.”

“Staying ahead of network capacity, design and configuration issues has never been simple to achieve at enterprise scale. But simple planning and configuration monitoring tools are not enough – you need to align that activity directly with sustained monitoring, so that it’s possible to see the effect of changes as they happen. This is especially critical for the hybrid enterprise, which must deal with both on-premises applications and cloud-delivered services. Riverbed is taking this challenge head on, bringing together visibility and control within the NPCM family, with the aim of improved awareness, more effective incident response and better preventative practices,” said Jim Frey, VP, Enterprise Management Associates.

Existing customers can take advantage of the new product capabilities by trading up to the new NPCM products.

Majority of Asian professionals want either a tablet or a hybrid as their next work computer

Microsoft has announced retail availability of the Surface Pro 3 in nine markets in Asia Pacific. The features of the Surface Pro 3 allow commercial customers to deploy a laptop replacement that delivers the power, manageability and security they need to conduct business with confidence, said the company. 

Source: Microsoft*.

In a recently-commissioned survey of 2,900 working professionals in eight markets across Asia Pacific, 50% of respondents in the region said that they are no longer desk-bound at work. In addition, 79% of working professionals in Asia Pacific own three or more types of devices, and 41% of respondents carry both their tablet and laptop with them at all times.

Source: Microsoft*.

More than four in ten (43%) of respondents felt that they would get the best experience for both work and play from a hybrid or laptop than a standalone tablet. The top three frustrations about a tablet listed are lack of processing power, inability to use a mouse and lack of applications. In fact, three in ten (30%) of respondents chose a hybrid as their preferred device for their next purchase, which was tied in first place with tablet devices (30%) followed closely by laptops (27%).

“Our research is clear: people want just one device that does everything,” said Alvaro Celis, Vice President, Microsoft Asia Pacific “The next era of personal computing is not just about tablets and smartphones, it’s also about powerful devices that harmonise our digital work and digital life. Our vision is that Surface Pro 3 is the tablet that can replace your laptop — packing all the performance and utility of a fully powered laptop into a thin, light and beautifully designed tablet. You’ll love being able to carry one device for your next class, workday or weekend getaway knowing you have all the power you need and the convenience you want.”

In Singapore, the Sentosa Development Corporation has committed to adopting the device for its senior management team. “In moving towards a paperless and mobile work environment, Sentosa Development Corporation invited quotations for a device that would enable our employees to do more while on-the-go. The Surface Pro 3 has shown that it can be a highly portable yet productive hybrid device. We are excited to be one of the first organisations in Asia Pacific to pilot this technology to enhance our service levels and better deliver the Sentosa experience for our guests,” said Eu Kwang Chin, Division Director, IT, Sentosa Development Corporation.

In addition, Asia Pacific organisations such as Coca-Cola Amatil in Australia and Lotte Shopping in Korea are also just a few of the commercial customers who are planning to adopt Surface Pro 3. Globally, companies including the Mandarin Oriental, BMW Group and LVMH – Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton have already committed to purchasing and deploying the device inside their organisations.

The Surface Pro 3 is now available across nine markets in Asia, including Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan, and in 28 markets globally. To support its commercial customers, Microsoft has appointed close to 50 partners in Asia Pacific to support the Surface Pro 3. In Singapore, Microsoft Singapore has appointed four business resellers, AsiaPac Distribution, Dimension Data, SoftwareOne, and UIC Asian Computer Services.

*Results of a survey of 2,900 working professionals in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea and Malaysia. View the full infographic here. 

FICO Falcon Platform for enterprise fraud management now available

FICO, a predictive analytics and decision management software company, has announced the availability of the FICO Falcon Platform for enterprise fraud management. The FICO Falcon Platform gives institutions and their customers real-time protection from fraud across multiple payment channels, products and services.

The FICO Falcon Platform puts the company’s FICO Falcon Fraud Manager technology at the heart of a modular, flexible approach to enterprise fraud protection. Smaller institutions can begin with a rules-based system for detecting transaction fraud in real time and managing suspected fraud cases. Because of the platform’s support for such open source technologies as Linux, startup infrastructure costs can be as little as 1/10th what it has traditionally taken to deploy FICO Falcon Fraud Manager.

“With the Falcon Platform, we believe we are offering businesses the most powerful rules-based solution for fraud detection, as well as the easiest way to move to full analytic protection across multiple transactional channels,” said TJ Horan, VP of fraud solutions for FICO. “The flexible approach makes the platform more affordable for smaller credit grantors, but it gives our customers an easy way to expand protection as their needs evolve.”

For larger credit grantors and current Falcon Fraud Manager clients, the FICO Falcon Platform can substantially reduce the cost of expanding portfolios or extending protection to new products or channels. A credit grantor can systematically add connected levels of protection by deploying fraud analytic modules specifically developed to detect fraud in targeted channels, including checking/ current accounts, e-payments, mobile payments and payment cards. FICO estimates the platform’s flexible architecture could reduce clients’ fraud protection costs by as much as 75%.

Most enterprises today rely on a collection of discrete point systems to protect their bottom line and their customers from fraud,” said Horan. “This is not only a costly approach, it leaves some channels and products less protected than others. At the same time, the ‘monolithic,’ one-size-fits-all enterprise fraud system has been rejected by the market. Banks and other credit grantors want to adopt a scalable, customer-centric approach to fraud detection that works across all portfolios within the enterprise. We’ve taken the market’s most advanced anti-fraud system and adapted it to this challenge.”

The platform’s fraud detection and case management capabilities can be extended with add-on software modules that further reduce the impact of fraud on customers. Many banks are now using FICO software to automatically contact customers on their mobile phone or preferred devices to resolve suspicious transactions instantly. FICO also offers solutions for stopping first-party* and third-party* application fraud as well as bust-out fraud*, using social link analysis. Data management extensions expand the system’s ability to accept and monitor data from outside systems in real time.

FICO recently integrated technology from 41st Parameter to improve the FICO Falcon Platform’s ability to detect card-not-present fraud**, and allow genuine transactions to go through without being blocked.

*First party fraud is committed by someone who applies for a loan, credit card or other account with no intention of paying for anything. Such a fraudster typically provides false information during the application so that he or she cannot be contacted. In third party fraud, the fraudster steals someone else's identity for the application. For bust out fraud, the fraudster opens an account and maintains good behaviour until overdraft limits are raised. The fraudster quickly makes use of the overdraft and then disappears. 

**Card-not-present fraud refers to transactions which are made without the card being physically there, such as with e-commerce.

Ooredoo welcomes millionth customer in Myanmar in first three weeks of operations

Ooredoo has amassed over one million customers in its newest market, Myanmar, less than three weeks after going live with its services. Since the launch of Ooredoo in Myanmar, the company has seen unprecedented demand for its mobile phone and Internet services, with people queuing overnight to purchase a low-cost Ooredoo SIM. 

Source: Ooredoo. From left: H.E. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman Ooredoo Group; H.E. U Soe Thein, Union Minister President Office; H.E. U Myat Hein, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology; and Dr Nasser Marafih, Group CEO Ooredoo at the Ooredoo Myanmar Launch Celebration Gala on August 20, at Nay Pyi Taw.

Demonstrating the potential for growth and strong appetite for data services in Myanmar, many customers are using mobile and accessing the Internet for the first time. 

H.E. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman, Ooredoo Group, revealed the milestone in the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where he thanked the people of Myanmar for their warm welcome, and stressed the company's commitment to serving the country.

"Mobile communication enriches people's lives. It connects job-seekers with new opportunities, unites families who are separated by geography, enables teachers to access learning resources, farmers to track market demand, and entrepreneurs to connect with new suppliers, which is why we have continuously pushed to enable people's access to these life chances. I am humbled by the warm welcome we have received from the people of Myanmar, and by their dedication to improving their lives with technology. We are committed to continuously improving our service so we can meet our promise of giving people better life chances," he said.

Ooredoo has invested and installed the world's first next-generation purely UMTS900 network throughout Myanmar, which will provide fast Internet and is primed to enable a smooth transition to a 4G LTE network in the future.

H.E. U Myat Hein, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said: "Over the past few years, the Union Government and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have worked hard to lay the foundations for the creation of a competitive telecommunications landscape that truly serves our people and we are closer than ever to achieving this."

Aziz Al-Uthman Fakhroo, Ooredoo Group Board Member and Chairman of Ooredoo Myanmar, said: "This has been a challenging greenfield launch, where we have needed to counter a number of logistical and technological challenges to deliver a world-class network for the people. We have overcome these challenges with the help of local partners and communities, and have become the first international communications company to operate in Myanmar. We will continue to strive to offer the very best services for our customers."

Speaking of the challenges faced during the development stage, Ross Cormack, CEO Ooredoo Myanmar, praised the 1,000 employees of the Ooredoo Myanmar team, and stated that – in keeping with the company's tradition of hiring local talent – 800 of these team members are Myanmar people. Alongside traditional sales and services jobs, which cover 6,500 dealers at launch and 30,000 points of sale for top-ups, the company estimate through the distribution network alone Ooredoo has already supported approximately 50,000 new jobs for the people of Myanmar.

Cormack commented: "This wonderful nation's pent-up demand for mobile communication services has surpassed even our expectations, and as our reach expands across the country these opportunities will increase. This growth will enable more people to experience our life-enriching services and see the life changing opportunities technology can bring."

Looking ahead, Ooredoo highlighted that the network will rapidly extend to include 25 million people by the end of 2014, as the company brings the benefits of connectivity to the population as fast as is possible.

Nexmo extends reach to Indonesia via Telkomsel

Nexmo, a cloud communication API company, has partnered with Indonesian telco Telkomsel to provide two-way cloud-based communications in Indonesia.

"Telkomsel is pleased to partner with Nexmo and have the ability to offer our customers access to enhanced mobile messaging communications," said Edward Ying, Telkomsel's Director of Planning and Transformation. "Nexmo is an innovative cloud communication company that understands both the advanced technology as well as the local requirements in Indonesia that are necessary to meet customer demands."

Nexmo will provide enterprises and app developers in Indonesia and Southeast Asia with access to Telkomsel via its advanced SMS outbound text messaging solutions. In working with Telkomsel, Nexmo is reducing the number of "hops" for customers by expanding its network of direct carrier connections. This provides better messaging quality by reducing messaging latency for customers. 

Propelled by a surge in demand for Internet-enabled and mobile devices, Telkomsel has over 138 million subscribers, the largest subscriber base in Indonesia.

"Through our new partnership with Telkomsel we are expanding our direct access and connectivity to the largest market in Southeast Asia, opening a direct link to this lucrative business market for enterprises worldwide," said David Vigar, Nexmo's Director of Carrier Relations.

Nexmo's cloud-to-mobile solutions provide cloud APIs that enable app developers and enterprises to reach customers globally via mobile text-messaging and voice experiences. Companies and apps such as Airbnb, Alibaba, Line, Viber, and WeChat use Nexmo for their communication needs. The company's reach extends to 235 territories worldwide, and over 1,700 carriers, offering reliable access to the majority of the world's population.

TCS forms world's largest cluster of Cloudera Certified Professionals

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an IT services, consulting and business solutions organisation has inked an agreement with Cloudera, an enterprise analytic data management provider powered by Apache Hadoop, to certify TCS' global team of big data experts through the Cloudera Certified Professional (CCP) programme. 

TCS' products are also validated through the Cloudera Certified Technology Program (CCTP), which was created to simplify technology buyers' adoption of Apache Hadoop platforms and applications that have been tested, validated and certified to work with a Cloudera enterprise data hub.

"In our client engagements and market research, we find that Big Data is playing a central role in helping enterprises reimagine their businesses. Hadoop is fast becoming the platform of choice for Big Data analytics. We have seen Cloudera's pioneering contributions to the Hadoop ecosystem right from 2008 and have been partnering with them in several client engagements across several industries in the last few years," said Dr Satya Ramaswamy, Global Head for TCS Digital Enterprise. 

TCS enables its customers to fully leverage Cloudera Enterprise data hubs through its extensive range of big data solutions, including strategy definition, use case identification, infrastructure setup and management, application development and maintenance, testing, advanced analytics, and predictive modelling. 

"TCS has invested in Cloudera by forming the world's largest group of Cloudera Certified Professionals, while also developing capabilities on Cloudera Enterprise," said Tom Reilly, CEO of Cloudera. "Together, we have a strong track record of delivering results to customers on their big data journey. By working with TCS, customers can be confident that they have the right foundation and capabilities to reach success. We are proud to be partners with TCS and continue our combined growth in the years ahead."

HP Business Intelligence Modernization Services address new big data challenges

HP has announced HP Business Intelligence Modernization Services, which are designed to help enterprises leverage their data to create opportunities for clients to deliver value through lower, predictable costs and an increased ability to focus on innovation and differentiation.

“Quickly defining an analytics and big data strategy is an essential step for companies to remain competitive in an environment where the amount of data being collected is outpacing their ability to leverage it,” said Srinivas Kompella, GM for Information Management and Analytics, Enterprise Services, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. “We deliver solutions with flexible consumption models to enable our customers to start focusing immediately on the opportunities that data creates to improve their business.”

Most existing business intelligence environments can provide analytics and reporting, but fall short when they encounter new formats and higher volumes of data. Enterprises today are being challenged to process unstructured data and vast amounts of sensor data in real time and on an industrial scale, especially with the new Internet of Things that is emerging.

In the “BI Analytics, Q3 2013” TechRadar report, Forrester Research authors Holger Kisker, VP and Research Director, and Charles Green, Analyst wrote: “As the amount of data grows and companies’ ability to harness and create value from that data improves, firms will be able to optimise almost all aspects of business operations, including sourcing, logistics and the customer experience. In addition, major dynamics like the digital revolution are upending whole industries; as a result, data-driven insights will become critical to business survival. Therefore, BI analytics are, and will continue to be, one of the main focus areas for companies’ investments and business strategies.”

HP Business Intelligence Modernization Services is a suite of software, hardware and consulting services designed to help clients integrate big data analytics into their existing environments to address new analytics requirements. 

The new HP Business Intelligence Modernization Services address three major service needs to support a client’s journey to become more data-driven and agile:

· Discovery environments: “Data lakes,” data visualisation tools and services enabling rapid, enterprise-wide data sharing and analytic discovery collaboration.

· Analytics solutions: Addressing specific analytics needs to run the business better.

· Hybrid data management: Enabling enterprises to deliver production-grade analytics integrated into business processes and systems that leverage relevant data.

With the new services, available immediately, enterprises can choose from various scalable consumption models, including as-a-service, private cloud, hosted and on-premises solutions.

VMware, NVIDIA and Google preview graphics-rich applications on enterprise cloud desktops

VMware, NVIDIA and Google have announced a collaborative effort at VMworld 2014 to deliver high-performance virtual desktops and workstation-class graphics to Google Chromebooks.

Source: NVIDIA. An Acer Chromebook 13 running a cloud-based
desktop and apps using NVIDIA GRID technology.

The solution demonstrates the next generation of VMware Blast Performance and NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology to satisfy customers' most demanding visual computing needs. The joint effort is expected to expand the hardware options for high-performance virtual desktops, enabling customers to select their system of choice without compromise.

"We are breaking down traditional barriers to adopting virtual desktops and offering new economics for the delivery of graphics-intensive applications through the power of the cloud," said Sanjay Poonen, Executive VP and GM, End-User Computing, VMware.

The joint solution optimises the performance of virtual graphics applications at scale. NVIDIA GRID vGPU shares GPU acceleration between multiple virtual desktops. Combined with VMware Horizon in the data centre, the solution will optimise graphics and CPU performance to allow more desktops and applications to be deployed on a single server.

VMware BLAST Performance technology in the data centre and in firmware residing on Chromebooks will deliver a great end-user experience, graphics-rich applications with high fidelity, and extended battery life by up to 50% using NVIDIA Tegra technologies*. This makes graphically demanding applications, such as Adobe Illustrator CC, Autodesk AutoCAD® and productivity applications like Microsoft Office work much more smoothly. NVIDIA Tegra K1-powered Chromebooks will be among the first Chromebooks to take advantage of this future technology.

"This collaboration will offer customers all the performance, stability and compatibility of NVIDIA hardware-accelerated graphics, with the added flexibility, mobility and security of a virtual environment," said Jeff Brown, VP and GM, Professional Solutions Business, NVIDIA.

"Chromebooks were designed to bring a new approach to many of the problems with traditional computers," said Caesar Sengupta, VP of product management, Google. "Imagine manufacturers designing complex 3D models and sharing them with engineers around the globe, or physicians taking medical imaging out into the community, rather than being tethered to high-end workstations."

NVIDIA and VMware customers who would like to experience VMware products with NVIDIA GRID vGPU can register for an early access programme from today at www.nvidia.com/grid-vmware-vgpu. The programme will be available for selected customers in Q4 2014.

*Battery life is estimated based on data collected at NVIDIA.

Fortinet announces new R&D Center in Singapore

Fortinet, which provides high-performance network security, plans to establish a regional centre in Singapore this year to conduct network security research and development, and help extend its innovation lead in the marketplace to better protect enterprises and service providers amidst escalating cyber security threats. 

Source: Fortinet. Xie.

Along with the setting up of this R&D facility, Fortinet intends to leverage local high-quality talent to boost its regional technical support, marketing, finance and legal employee base in Singapore.

To be located in Fortinet's Asia Pacific headquarters at Beach Road, this centre will house security research and development professionals to extend collaboration on threat intelligence and provide emergency threat response to customers. The facility will complement and extend Fortinet's existing R&D centres, including FortiGuard Labs, primarily located in the US and Canada. 

The company also expects those additional resources to help support its growth. Fortinet increased its worldwide billings by 33% year-over-year, and 22% in Asia Pacific, during Q2 2014. The company is recognised as the no. 2 network security appliances vendor by factory revenue market share in Asia Pacific, according to data from IDC's quarterly network security appliances tracker.

"The Singapore government's vision to make the republic a cybersecurity business and research hub drew us to set up an R&D base here," said Michael Xie, Fortinet's Founder, President and CTO. "The abundance of well-trained IT professionals here gives us ready access to a deep talent pool, while the country's strong cybersecurity ecosystem and regional hub status gives us synergy and immediate connectivity to fast growing Asia Pacific markets."

Kiren Kumar, Director of the Infocomms and Media Division at the Singapore Economic Development Board, said: “We warmly welcome Fortinet’s decision to establish its network security R&D Centre in Singapore. Fortinet is a well respected innovator and worldwide leader in network security, and its decision to invest in its presence in Singapore offers strong validation of Singapore's growing position as a regional hub for cybersecurity solutions in Asia Pacific. Cybersecurity companies like Fortinet can leverage Singapore's strong connectivity to regional markets and access to a diverse talent pool to develop new capabilities that help their customers navigate a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape.”

OpenText renews partnership with Hong Kong's ezTRADE

OpenText, which provides enterprise information management (EIM) tools, is powering Hong Kong's ezTRADE with the OpenText Trading Grid. 

EzTRADE is a B2B e-commerce platform that facilitates paperless trading by enabling efficient, accurate transmission of commercial documents to trading partners along the supply chain using electronic data interchange (EDI) messaging formats. The platform has close to 2,000 users in Hong Kong and the South China region, spanning industries such as supermarkets, pharmaceuticals, food services and healthcare and including small business, enterprise and government organisations. 

Now part of OpenText's Information Exchange portfolio of products, Trading Grid is the world's largest integration cloud. Built on OpenText Trading Grid, ezTRADE not only facilitates transactions seamlessly but allows the use of integrated smart mobile devices for EDI document exchange processes to enable real-time event notifications, transaction status inquiries and visibility to analytics.

GS1 Hong Kong, an industry-led organisation committed to enhancing Hong Kong enterprises' competitiveness through the provision of global supply chain standards, oversees ezTRADE. OpenText, through its GXS acquisition, has been providing trading grid services to ezTRADE members since 2000 and has just renewed the existing contract with GS1 to continue its ezTRADE partnership.

Anna Lin, Chief Executive of GS1 Hong Kong, said: "In this Internet age, an efficient B2B e-commerce platform is essential to help businesses meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. GS1 HK is committed to enabling our business partners to capture the infinite possibilities with this unique product code spanning the entire supply chain, and to facilitate our members to be more efficient and more competitive in the e-commerce world."

ezTRADE customers include Watson's Group, Dairy Farm Group, DKSH and the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. "ezTRADE is a platform that we have relied on to connect with our suppliers since 1996. It streamlines our business processes by allowing us to transmit mission-critical commercial data efficiently to our suppliers' computer systems," said Wendy Lam, Head of IT Services of the Wellcome supermarket chain, whose parent company is the Dairy Farm Group.

"ezTRADE is an important building block in our supply chain management solution. It enables us to become more responsive to our customers' demands and manage inventory more efficiently," added Ada Wong, Manager, IT Applications, DKSH Hong Kong.

Financial firms continue to outsource IT services to slash costs

Source: TechNavio.

TechNavio, the independent tech-focused global research firm, has published a report on the Global Outsourcing Market in the banking and financial services (BFS) sector from 2013 to 2018, which it says is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.07% over the forecast period.

Against a background of rising demand in the mortgage market, credit cards and commercial lending, the BFS sector worldwide is increasingly outsourcing both regulated and non-regulated activities to third parties, TechNavio says. Commonly outsourced IT service requirements include application development, programming and coding, specific operations related to finance and accounting, back-office activities and processing, as well as administration and contract functions.

“High-quality service at low cost is the main criteria for outsourcing services. The low cost of labour in many developing economies is driving the outsourcing market in the BFS sector,” says Faisal Ghaus, Vice President of TechNavio.

Key drivers for this market include the need for more cost-effective operations, shorter time to market, compliance in the face of swiftly changing regulations, as well as the need for process standardisation, TechNavio said.

Four Pacnet data centres receive PCI DSS 2.0 certification

Pacnet, a provider of integrated technology solutions in the Asia-Pacific region, has received PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) 2.0 certification and attestation of compliance for its CloudSpace data centres in Sydney (SYCS1); Hong Kong (HKCS1 and HKCS2); and Singapore.

Classified by the standards council as a Level 1 service provider, Pacnet attained PCI DSS 2.0 certification in recognition of its data centres' strict adherence to the standards and guidelines that protect customers' sensitive financial data and safeguard credit and debit card transactions through advanced technical and security measures.

"In addition to being a key differentiator for Pacnet in the APAC region, earning PCI DSS compliance upholds our pioneering market standing and commitment to the adoption of global data security standards," said Giles Proctor, Vice President, Data Center Services, Pacnet. "The accomplishment also underscores Pacnet's dedication to data protection, investment in secure infrastructure and delivery of proven services to protect the interests of customers who process credit card transactions within our data centres."

The PCI DSS accreditation, published by the PCI Security Standards Council, is an internationally-recognised data security standard to enhance the protection of consumer credit card information, assist in prevention of identity theft and fraud, and promote payment data security across the globe. 

Pacnet's PCI DSS assessment, completed between January 23, 2014 and June 10, 2014, included an in-depth review of various aspects of each data centre, including physical data centre security management, IT security policies and procedures, as well as organisation vulnerability management.

Amongst the customers benefitting from Pacnet's PCI DSS certification is one of the world's largest hosting brands, LeaseWeb. The company's Asia Pacific subsidiary recently launched a data centre operation based at Pacnet's flagship Singapore CloudSpace II facility (SGCS2).

Bas Winkel, Managing Director at LeaseWeb Asia Pacific said ,"Customers worldwide expect consistent enterprise-grade security, redundancy, scalability and compliance from the LeaseWeb brand. Partnering with data centre operators that have been proven to meet the highest industry standards such as Pacnet is therefore essential to LeaseWeb's hosting offerings. The PCI DSS 2.0 certification of Pacnet's data centre facilities means that even our most demanding customers in Asia-Pacific are well served and can rest assured that their sensitive data is hosted in a safe environment."

Pacnet builds and manages a network of interconnected data centres across Asia, linking 15 cities and 10 countries. Offering a broad range of facility specifications to meet the hosting needs of carriers and enterprises, Pacnet's facilities adhere to a wide range of global standards in data centre design, construction and operation, including ISO 9001 and ISO 2700 compliance and LEED Gold Certification. In addition to PCI DSS compliance, Pacnet's SGCS2 facility is Singapore's first data centre to earn Tier III Design Certification from the Uptime Institute. The data centre was also recently recognised for environmental sustainability with a BCA-IDA Green Mark GoldPLUS Award for Data Centers.

IIJ Global offering CA Nimsoft Monitor in Singapore

The Singapore subsidiary of Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) Group, one of Japan’s leading Internet-access and network solutions providers, has added CA Nimsoft Monitor from CA Technologies to its range of cloud solution offerings for small and medium businesses.

With CA Nimsoft Monitor, IIJ Global Solutions Singapore can now provide its customers with comprehensive 24-hour monitoring and reporting services. This unified monitoring platform provided by CA Nimsoft Monitor enables IIJ Global Singapore to help its customers better optimise resources, planning and investments while also reducing time spent troubleshooting.

“We see more and more of our customers showing an interest in deploying cloud services due to its flexibility and cost-effectiveness. However, many hesitate because they fear losing control of their IT systems,” said Osamu Ono, MD, IIJ Global Singapore. 

“By providing CA Nimsoft Monitor with our cloud solution, we have been able to address these concerns. And, we are giving our customers visibility into their IT environments. This can help support their efforts to manage and improve the productivity and efficiency of their operations.”

CA Nimsoft Monitor provides proactive IT monitoring coverage through a single, unified architecture that supports traditional data centres, as well as virtualisation and cloud environments. It delivers the scalability and multi-tenancy required by enterprises and managed service providers – all on a single code-base, allowing IT operations teams to quickly adopt and manage new customer-centric services, applications and technologies.

“Due to the nature of today’s complex IT environments, it is very important for organisations to measure the impact and success of their IT deployments – no matter where they reside,” said Stephen Miles, VP, Enterprise Management, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

“Through service providers like IIJ Global Singapore, we are able to offer the enterprise class unified monitoring capabilities of CA Nimsoft Monitor to even more businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan. With CA Nimsoft Monitor, IIJ Global Singapore’s customers have the control they need and demand to maximise the value of their IT operations to help grow their businesses.”

IIJ and its group companies provide total network solutions that mainly cater to high-end corporate customers. IIJ's services include high-quality systems integration, cloud computing/data center services, security services, and Internet access. Moreover, IIJ has built one of the largest Internet backbone networks in Japan that is connected to the US, the UK and Asia.

Micron21 leverages the NSFOCUS Anti-DDoS System to identify new DDoS technique

NSFOCUS, provider of distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation solutions, has announced that its Anti-DDoS System (ADS) has been instrumental in assisting Australian data centre Micron21 to detect and mitigate an emerging type of  DDoS threat, which Micron21 calls a 'combination distributed reflective denial of service (CDRDoS)'.

On August 2, 2014, Micron21 detected a threat that targeted one of its customers and reached speeds of 40+gbits internationally and over 1.2gbits within Australia. The company believes it represents the beginning of what is to be expected in the future of denial of service attacks. The CDRDoS attack uses a combination of UDP* attack vectors simultaneously, from a single attack tool. This includes NTP*, DNS*, SSDP* and CHARGEN* reflection amplification traffic that targets a single host. The company suspects the addition of SNMP will be added to further increase attack capacity in the near future.

Micron21 relies upon the NSFOCUS ADS for DDoS protection services. In response to ongoing threats, Micron21 expanded its portfolio to include a DDoS Protection as a Service programme in early 2013. The company provides a variety of data scrubbing options for its clients and has integrated the ADS family of products into its service model to assist them in detecting and mitigating against DDoS threats.

To fight against volumetric and sophisticated attacks, NSFOCUS provides an "all-in-one" anti-DDoS solution for small to medium businesses (SMBs) and integrated protection solutions for hosting service providers, Internet data centres such as Micron21, and large enterprises.

Terence Chong, Solutions Architect, NSFOCUS, said: "In order to stay ahead of the ongoing threats perpetrated by aggressive hacker groups, hosting providers and Internet data centres are looking for solutions that not only protect customer data but also their own brand reputation. Micron21 is a perfect example of how data centres can supplement their offerings by incorporating DDoS-mitigation-as-a-service to increase ROI and ensure customer loyalty."

James Braunegg, Managing Director of Micron21 Datacentre, said: "By proactively monitoring our infrastructure and customer networks, we can provide around-the-clock protection and support to adapt to threats dynamically as they occur, with real-time visibility. By integrating the NSFOCUS anti-DDoS system into our platform, our staff is able to monitor and resolve issues before they are noticed and provide the ability to react within seconds of being alerted to any threat across our network."

*Character generation protocol, or CHARGEN, is meant for testing and measurement but can be abused by hackers.

Domain name server, service, or system, abbreviated DNS, is how the Internet translates names into IP addresses.

NTP, network time protocol, synchronises times from one computer to another.

SSDP, simple service discovery protocol, maintains a list of available network services.

UDP stands for user datagram protocol, a method of exchanging messages across the Internet.

Cross-platform mobile development tools market begins to stall

Reportbuyer.com has added the Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools: Market Analysis & Forecast - Third Edition report to its portfolio. Authored by Smith's Point Analytics, the report notes that the market is beginning to mature as revenue growth slows. 

Cross-platform mobile development tools enable developers to write applications, using a variety of languages that run on multiple mobile operating systems with minimal code changes. The report points out that enterprises are still struggling with quickly building mobile apps, driving demand for cross-platform tools. 

As IT departments are challenged to fulfill line-of-business managers' requests for apps, application development is becoming more distributed with less control centred in the IT department. This shift is requiring unique strategies to target both the IT managers and line of business developers. Vendors are evolving business models and distribution strategies to better reach and serve diverse buyers and influencers across the enterprise. 

The market is forecast to grow from US$3.2 billion in 2013 to US$3.6 billion in 2014, a 14% growth rate. Although growth is robust, this is a significant decrease from the 97% growth rates in 2013. Contributing factors include:

• More native apps – Developers are still struggling with the limitations of cross platform development. The performance of web technologies and access to device level functionality are cited by developers as significant challenges, pushing them toward native app development.
• Few new mobile developers – The percentage of mobile developers with less than a year of experience is decreasing, indicating the rate at which new developers entering the field is decelerating.
• Diminishing productivity returns – Developers are reporting less efficiency gains when using cross platform mobile development tools compared to previous years. The drop is eroding the perceived value of tools.
• Expenditure per developer – The investment made on mobile development tools on a per developer basis has dropped over the past 14 months.

From a geographic perspective, the large and increasingly technical populations in the Asia Pacific region present the greatest opportunity for mobile development tools vendors. 

Cross-platform development tool vendors are also expanding their portfolio of offerings. Vendors can no longer focus on a single development approach but need to embrace various tools and services to support users with a range of skills. 

As vendors embrace multiple approaches they are also bringing to market a variety of auxiliary services to support their clients in building, supporting, managing, and improving their cross-platform apps. These services include analytics, testing services, back-end services, model view controller (MVC) and model/view/viewmodel (MVVM) frameworks, and enterprise mobility management services.

Acceptance of cloud based tools is also growing. Vendors began offering cloud service a few years ago and enterprises initially were hesitant to risk managing data and software in the cloud. As the general cloud trend takes hold across the enterprise, progressive companies are embracing the cloud model for cross-platform mobile development tools and services.

New entrants and open source frameworks are also emerging providing lighter frameworks built from scratch for mobile app development. Ionic Framework is one tool that is gaining significant traction in the market.

Prakash Mallya is now Intel's MD for Southeast Asia

Intel has named Prakash Mallya Managing Director for Southeast Asia. In this role, Mallya oversees all of Intel’s sales, marketing and enabling of Intel products across Southeast Asia.

Source: Intel. Mallya.

“With a young population and a rising middle class, Southeast Asia is an important growth market for Intel. Prakash has the vision and experience to lead Intel’s growth across this dynamic region,” said Gregory Bryant, VP and GM, Intel Asia-Pacific and Japan.

“As the country manager for sales and marketing for both Malaysia and Singapore, I have personally seen how quickly the market has grown and how far we have come in terms of technology and look forward to leading my team and Intel in the region to greater heights of success,” said Mallya, who will continue to be based in Singapore.

Mallya joined Intel in 2000 as a Business Development Manager in India. Most recently, he served as Intel’s Country Manager for Malaysia and Singapore. Mallya is an REC Trichy graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and holds an MBA in marketing management from BIM Trichy. 

Australia's RackCorp plans for future demand with Brocade Ethernet implementation

High-end hosted services provider RackCorp, based in Sydney, Australia, has started transitioning its data centre operations to a new network foundation based on Brocade's advanced Ethernet fabric. The company operates from 21 data centres in nine countries, and has settled on the software-defined networking (SDN) capable family of Brocade VDX switches and VCS Fabric technology to meet the high-availability and increasingly high-bandwidth requirements of its global client base.

"The primary driver for a new network was the ability to plan for more bandwidth. Whilst the RackCorp network is not currently experiencing large loads that impact performance, we could see that our previous capacity would be under stress within the next two to three years. This is a purely strategic deployment now to move to Brocade solutions that offer valid features and provide a roadmap for the future," said RackCorp Director and Network Operations Manager Stephen Dendtler.

"We have a renewed focus on the data network volume market and we need to scale up to cater for high volumes. This means moving to a 10 GbE footing, with the Brocade Ethernet fabric solution. We probably underestimated the significant benefits of Brocade fabric technology and now have a greater appreciation of how much easier it is to add more switching capacity and cloud-centric capabilities. As it is basically plug-and-play, this is going to be a significant benefit for RackCorp going forward as we scale our networks and it will also provide us the ability to deliver more complex customer solutions in an automated manner."

Dendtler said that the Brocade solution was selected because it provides the highest performance in its price range, which allows the company to sell at a better price point resulting in better outcomes on both sides. "It also provides a greater incentive to grow our content delivery network and high-volume network services," he said.

The SDN capabilities of the Brocade VDX switches were another key consideration in RackCorp's decision. The company has been running an internally developed SDN system since 2004 to automate its network operations in Australia. Dendtler said that, since the new Brocade switches were integrated into the existing network, the time to propagate configuration changes has fallen from seconds to milliseconds.

"There's a lot of talk in the market about SDN but a lot less productive use of the technology thus far," said Gary Denman, Senior Director for Australia and New Zealand, Brocade. "RackCorp's deployment of the Brocade VCS fabric shows Brocade's SDN implementation is mature enough to support dynamic 24×7 software-as-a-service capabilities, with millions of dollars per hour being transacted by financial service clients."

With the help of Brocade architecture planning, initial fabric deployments have been made at RackCorp data centres in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth in Australia as well as in Hong Kong to support dedicated server, virtual server, and cloud computing services. RackCorp will continue to deploy Brocade VDX switches throughout its global data centre network. 

Brocade VDX 6710 switches on top of server racks each provide 48 ports for low-latency wire-speed 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) access, with six 10 GbE ports available for uplinks to support high-bandwidth virtual server hosts. Brocade VDX 6740 switches provide 10 GbE connectivity between the rack-top switches, data centre routers, and upstream Internet transits, with VCS Fabric technology combining all the Brocade devices into an automated, efficient, highly available, and VM-aware network fabric.

Frost & Sullivan names Telstra, InterCall and NTT Communications as champions for UCaaS

The Unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) market has been experiencing tremendous growth in the Asia-Pacific region and is expected to remain so till 2018, helped by strong growth in verticals that have highly mobile workforces, says Frost & Sullivan, including the high tech, professional services, logistics, travel and hospitality services sectors.

The UCaaS market is defined as an integrated communications and collaboration environment that combines or unifies voice, video and text communications delivered through hosted, cloud, and managed services. In Asia Pacific, UCaaS market is expected to grow from US$1.67 billion in 2013 to US$2.98 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 12.4%.

"The necessity of having a highly mobile workforce aided by the increased usage of UCaaS solutions delivered through hosted/ cloud and managed platforms has been a boon for enterprise mobile collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region," says Jessie Yu, Industry Manager, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. "Enterprises are also actively looking to integrate UC (Unified Communications) applications to reduce costs and complexities, and offer greater flexibility for their operations."

The telephony services segment is the most widely adopted market, and it is likely to maintain its prominence in the future. Although the audio conferencing services segment has matured, it is expected to remain an important segment throughout the forecast period. Mobility, video-as-a-service (VaaS), web conferencing and cloud contact centre services are expected to be the key growth service segments during the forecast period.

In order to capitalise on the growth opportunities, the service providers are strengthening their service offerings. Frost & Sullivan has evaluated the top 10 service providers in the Asia Pacific region and assessed them using the Frost Industry Quotient (Frost IQ) matrix, a proprietary Frost & Sullivan vendor assessment tool that captures the merits and challenges faced by technology vendors in their respective segments and geographies. The tool aims to provide key decision makers with a localised yet objective perspective of the industry by dividing service providers into four categories: champions, challengers, defenders and explorers.

In the Frost IQ for Asia-Pacific Unified Communications-as-a-Service Providers 2014, Telstra, InterCall and NTT Communications have been positioned in the champions' quadrant, based on a combination of market share performance and future growth strategies as determined by Frost & Sullivan research studies. In total, the top three vendors accounted for approximately 25% of the revenue generated in the segment, helped by strong partnerships as well as investments in new UCaaS technology.

Frost & Sullivan recognises the efforts made by BT, Orange Business Services, Verizon, China Telecom, Tata Communications and AT&T in the market and has placed them into the Challenger quadrant. These providers have set up the necessary infrastructure to deliver a full suite of UCaaS solutions to both large and SMB customers and are expected to move to the champions quadrant subjected to their success in acquiring new customers.

Despite the dominant position of the top three service providers, many local service providers are steadily emerging in the Asia Pacific region. This includes SingTel, which also features in the Frost IQ.

The evolution and convergence of ICT have blurred the lines of various communication platforms such as voice, video, and data. In light of this convergence, various participants in the UCaaS market, such as telecom operators, pure-play service providers or system integrators are gradually establishing their compelling positions in the marketplace with respective service offerings and targeted customer segments.

"Key challenges include the ability to offer feasible and sustainable business model, telecommunication regulatory barriers in some developing countries, and the increasing competition," cautions Yu.

Wipro, CA Technologies working together on DevOps

Wipro, an IT, consulting and business process services company, has expanded its strategic partnership with CA Technologies to jointly deliver next-generation DevOps solutions for testing. DevOps is a way of developing software that emphasises a win-win collaboration between software developers (the 'dev' part of DevOps) and IT operations staff (the 'ops' part of DevOps).

The partnership will enable Wipro to leverage the expanded portfolio of CA Technologies, including service virtualisation, release automation/continuous delivery, continuous validation and continuous monitoring solutions to help customers streamline their application development and delivery processes with a DevOps strategy.

"Our customers can benefit greatly from our expanded partnerships with Wipro," said Shridhar Mittal, GM, Application Delivery, CA Technologies. "All companies face tremendous pressure to deliver higher quality applications faster at lower cost than ever before, so they look for solutions that can address their challenges - especially testing - which has always been the biggest bottleneck for the systems development lifecycle. Our solutions can help optimise the entire process by removing the bottlenecks."

"We have seen tremendous success and benefits through implementation of CA Service Virtualization offerings across a large set of our customers. Our joint DevOps Center of Excellence will help our customers further leverage CA's Release Automation, Pathfinder and Datafinder suites. 

"Wipro will leverage the DevOps COE to build capability and competency, develop Proof of Concepts to address customer needs and deliver services in line with customer requirements," said Kumudha Sridharan, VP and Head, Testing Services, Wipro. "Wipro's Testing services packaged with CA's DevOps suite will offer a comprehensive and compelling solution to customers worldwide."

Wipro's website states that it has over 55 dedicated Centers of Excellence for emerging technologies. In October 2013, the company launched the Wipro Mobility Center of Excellence with Kony in Hyderabad, India.

Rally Software teams up with SRN Info in China

Source: SRN Information Technology
Shanghai website.

Rally Software, a global provider of enterprise-class software and services solutions to drive business agility, has appointed solutions provider SRN Information Technology Shanghai (SRN Info), as its first key partner for the China market.

This is the first step taken by Rally Software towards building a network of partners in China to expand the adoption of Agile practices as a business methodology. 

"Rally Software set foot in Asia in late 2013 with a team focused on supporting regional customers. We are now expanding our presence in China with progressive industry leading partners keen to leverage the knowledge and expertise of Rally Software, and building a local team of pre-sales, sales and technical support staff," said Bryan Tan, Regional Vice President of Asia, Rally Software. 

"SRN Info is our first key partner in China. Together, we will help more enterprises improve performance, reduce time to market, enhance business agility and deliver business value faster."

Agile concepts are a field- and time-proven way to design, develop and implement products and software. Faced with rapid changes in the market, increasing complexity, and higher customer expectations, businesses need to respond quickly to stay afloat. IT teams in enterprises such as banks, e-commerce, telecommunications, independent software development and manufacturing are pressured to develop better and faster solutions for their companies.

Agility is the key to keeping a competitive edge. MIT Sloan has reported that shows Agile firms growing revenue 37% faster and generating 30% higher profit.

Rally Software offers software and services solutions that drive agility, allowing companies to innovate and create products and software efficiently and reduce time to market. By integrating software, coaching and Agile practices, a field and time-proven approach for effective software application development processes, Rally Software and its partners can provide companies with solutions to build products quickly and cost-effectively, to compete confidently in the global and domestic markets, which are advantages especially relevant in the maturing and rapidly growing mainland Chinese market.

"The colossal market of mainland China is clearly ready to (move) to even greater heights of business profitability and efficiency. SRN Info is committed to providing cutting-edge and proven IT solutions to help our enterprise clients realise higher productivity, increase the utilisation of existing systems and resources, and achieve greater returns on investment," says Eric Kee, Managing Director, SRN Info.