For the record 15 January

15-01-2008

by Stephen Errity

Lan Communications completes EUR500k Davy upgrade | Payzone wins online toll payment contract

Lan Communications has completed a EUR500,000 contract with Davy Stockbrokers to upgrade the financial company's voice communication and dealerboard systems. Under the terms of the deal, Lan Communications has upgraded the company's entire voice infrastructure incorporating an upgraded PBX together with a new dealerboard and call recording system. The upgrade was undertaken in tandem with the dealer room's moving to a new floor in Davy's Dublin head office.

Payzone, the company formed from the merger of electronic payments firm Alphyra and British cash machine operator Cardpoint, has won a contract to supply online toll payment services to BetEire, the operator of the proposed barrier-free tolling services on the M50 motorway in Dublin. Barrier-free tolling is scheduled to be introduced in August of this year and users of the motorway will then be able to pay the toll charges at any of Payzone Ireland's network of 2,000 convenience stores, which already offer Payzone's mobile phone top-up and other services.

Nearly 70 percent of IT managers in the public sector have said they will be under pressure to deliver more projects for the same or reduced budget in 2008. This is according to research carried out by independent Irish consulting and technical services company IT Force. In addition, 76 percent of managers said they were unsure of whether they had sufficient skillsets in-house to deliver necessary projects and 91 percent said they were unable to hire any new staff.

Denis O'Brien's Digicel signed up its 6 millionth customer in the Caribbean during 2007, a year which saw it invest USD1.9 billion in the region and win five new operating licences in Honduras, Suriname, Guyana, El Salvador and the British Virgin Islands. The company also expanded its product offerings and announced a strategic partnership with Vodafone to offer roaming services. Digicel is currently taking its first steps in the Pacific Islands market and expects to win several licences in that region in the coming year.

Irish-owned IT services firm C Infinity has been appointed a business partner by IBM. This follows on from the company's appointment as a distributor in Ireland for Iron Mountain Digital, which specialises in online data back-up. At the announcement of the IBM agreement, C Infinity was keen to stress the savings in energy costs that SMEs can benefit from when they outsource IT services.

Christopher Mirabile has been appointed chief financial officer of Iona Technologies. Formerly the company's general counsel, he replaces the retiring Robert McBride in the position. Mirabile joined Iona in 1997, having previously worked as a lawyer at a business law firm in Boston, Massachusetts, where he represented Iona during the service-oriented architecture firm's initial public offering.

Imaging solutions firm FotoNation has debuted new 'smile recognition' technology at the 2008 Photo Marketing Association (PMA) conference in Las Vegas. The 'SmileCheck' software monitors the video preview stream in cameras during framing, first looking for faces in the scene of the photo. Once faces are detected, the software looks for facial features associated with smiles. Once the camera's trigger button is depressed, the shutter is not engaged until smiles are detected on all faces within the frame.

Global shipments of GPS-enabled mobile units are expected to grow from 175 million units in 2007 to 560 million by 2012, according to new research from Berg Insight. The Swedish analysis firm said that rapid adoption of GPS technology in mass-market GSM handsets will be the main driver of this expansion, with a flood of new 'location-based' mobile services coming in its wake offering new localised approaches to search, navigation and social networking.