For the record 9 April

09-04-2008

by Ciara O'Brien

Sogeti to brainstorm with cloud computing | Green market set for growth in Dublin

The IBM Cloud Computing facility is already being put to use, with Sogeti Group hosting its first online collaborative brainstorm at the Dublin-based facility. The IT services provider is planning a 72-hour online collaborative brainstorm on the company's future for 18,000 Sogeti employees in 14 countries, including Ireland, kicking off on 15 April. Employees will come up with new ideas, discuss and collaborate online with colleagues on four themes: Clients, People, Technology and Corporate Social Responsibility. The best ideas from the session will be debated, developed and refined in the following months.

Companies don't have very much faith in the security of their applications, with a new survey revealing that 75 percent think they have security holes that could potentially be exploited by criminals. The Infosecurity Europe study also found that chief security officers in large companies were "very concerned" about application code security and many would like an awareness-raising initiative to educate the developer community. Work carried out by developers on critical web applications outsourced to third parties rated high among the list of top concerns.

Hostelworld.com and boo.com have been named as Official Honorees by the Webby Awards, an honour that recognises work exhibiting "remarkable achievement". Both sites are Web Reservations International brands, making the company the only one in the travel category to scoop two of the top honours. The Webby Awards recognise excellence on the internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and travel sites. The awards, which have been running for 12 years, had almost 10,000 entries from over 60 countries this year.

NovaUCD-headquartered firm Duolog Technologies has appointed Silicon Valley veteran Gary J. Johnson as the company's Senior Vice-President of worldwide sales and marketing. Johnson has been appointed in a bid to boost sales and expand the firm's markets. Duolog Technologies is involved in collaborative design automation, and develops groundbreaking EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools to enable the integration of complex SoC (System on Chip), ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) designs. Johnson previously held top positions at companies including Procera Networks Berkeley Software Design, Click Software and Convergent Technologies, now Unisys. Duolog Technologies currently employs 75 people.

A newly-formed Irish renewable systems company is expecting its sales to hit EUR1 million, thanks to a blooming green market. Dublin-based QRS Renewable Systems offers products and services for the supply of energy from renewable and sustainable energy resources for households and businesses. Its services include energy audits, design, installation, training and maintenance of the systems, as well as supplying domestic and business customers with Photovoltaics (PV), solar thermal heating/cooling systems, biomass heating systems, wind turbines and ground source heating systems. The company estimates that just 1 percent of the Dublin market would add up to EUR19 million worth of sales of renewable systems, and new legislation rating buildings according to their energy efficiency could lead to a dramatic shift in how households source their energy.

New Joint National Internet Research (JNIR) figures have placed RTE.ie as Ireland's top media website for the period July to December 2007. During the six months, RTE.ie had 167,000 users each week. Almost 60 percent of the weekly users were male, with 69 percent of users in the 19-to-44-year-old age group. Over half were from Dublin.

Meteor and 3G Mobile have inked a deal which will see them link up until June 2010. As part of the deal, Meteor will become 3G Mobile's prime mobile partner, gaining a significant retail presence in the chain of stores. 3G Mobile is in the process of expanding its store count from 23 to 30. Meteor, meanwhile, has 972,000 customers and opened 17 of its own stores in the last two years.

Worried about the security threat posed by mobile devices? One company, SIMchronise, is hoping to ease concerns with its new SecurePhone solution, which essentially allows firms to manage data and the applications on the devices through a remotely managed interface. SIMchronise is collaborating with Swedish firm Densitet to roll out the service. The new service will allow companies to place restrictions on how their mobile devices can be used. Remotely wiping sensitive data can also be enabled.

Kerry-based Altobridge has won a three-year contract with Mongolian mobile communications provider MobiCom Corporation. Under the deal, Altobridge will help provide communications across rural Mongolia using its GSM architecture to help operators to cut the costs of delivering communication services, particularly to rural areas.