For the record 10 June

10-06-2008

by Bryan Collins

EU to double its R&D investment in robotics | US ISPs to block child pornography newsgroups

The EU is to double investments supporting European robotics research until 2010. The European Commission made the announcement at the AUTOMATICA 2008 international trade fairs in robotics and automation in Munich. The news of the EUR400 million investment came as the Commission called on the European robotics industry to intensify production of critical components in Europe to combat competition from Asia.

ESB Independent Energy, a subsidiary supply company of ESB, has signed a EUR9 million contract with BT Ireland. ESBIE will supply electricity to 72 BT sites in the Republic and 189 sites in Northern Ireland includes an additional 3,000,000KWh of green energy generated from renewable sources. The contract should see a significant reduction in BT's Irish carbon footprint of 618 tonnes of CO2 gas per year.

Companies are missing out on the benefits of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) because they believe that integration with existing legacy systems such as Oracle, SAP or Sage is overly complex or time consuming. Frank McCracken, a founder and executive vice president of Irish-owned Saaspoint, made the comments when he spoke at the SIIA OnDemand Europe conference in Amsterdam on Tuesday. "The war of words between SaaS and traditional on-premise software may have led some to believe that it's a case of one or other. It's not. Traditional software can live with on-demand if you approach it intelligently,” he said.

Some 96 percent of European business leaders believe that running a sustainable business is an absolute necessity for human survival, according to new research released by Xerox and Forum for the Future. At Xerox's European Leadership Summit, held in Dublin late last month, 95 percent of those surveyed claimed that businesses are not doing nearly enough to address social and economic problems. "We need to find new ways to reduce carbon emissions, manage our natural resources. And we need to do this quickly -- we have around 15 years to respond to climate change," said Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future.

Internet service providers Sprint Nextel, Verizon Communications, and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block internet newsgroups and websites that circulate child pornography. The plan will see Usenet newsgroups known to traffic illegal images shut down, and follows on from discussions with New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo.

HP Outsourced Services has extended its deal with dairy food company Glanbia. The company will supply and support the SAP system Glanbia uses for its worldwide operation. The extended deal will last for a further five years and includes the monitoring of an extra 200 servers. "If there is stock missing at a customer site the system not only allows us to find out what the problem is but to fix it," said Fergal Wall, technology services manager with Glanbia.