NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 11 May
11-05-2009
by Bryan Collins
UK firm acquires ICS Computing | Android shipments to surge
UK firm Equiniti has acquired Belfast-based software and services provider ICS Computing. Equiniti said the acquisition will enable it to develop its business process outsourcing and IT services offerings in Ireland and abroad. ICS employs 300 people at its offices in Belfast, Newbury and Chennai, India. It has 270 clients and recently won 'Deloitte's Best Managed Business' award. Equiniti said the acquisition should also create expansion opportunities for ICS. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
DSG Retail Ireland, the trading company behind PC World and Currys, has again called on the Government to bring Ireland's VAT rate in line with the UK's. The electrical goods company highlighted the savings Irish customers can make by shopping in the North where the VAT rate stands at 15 percent compared to 21.5 percent in the Republic. "Cross-border shopping in our stores in Northern Ireland alone costs this country EUR2 million in VAT income. The human and financial cost to the country in both lost VAT and retail jobs is mounting monthly," said Declan Ronayne, managing director of DSG Retail Ireland. Currys is currently absorbing the price difference in its stores and will provide the Government with a report on the effect of this initiative in June.
Software services company Qpercom has been spun out of NUI Galway and has launched a range of online assessment tools to medical schools across Europe. The company, which is based in NUI Galway's business incubation facilities, has signed up the Medical School at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, NUI Galway's School of Nursing and Midwifery, and its School of Medicine as customers. Qpercom hopes to replace the practice of recording the performance of medical students on paper and believes its clients can reduce administrative costs by up to 70 percent.
E-learning company SkillSoft is providing free limited trial access to its courses on pandemic flu, disaster preparedness and emergency planning. These courses are normally available through SkillSoft's Environmental Safety and Health (ES&H) collection and can be viewed at www.skillsoft.com/online/preparedness. "Highly public events like the outbreak of the H1N1 [swine flu] virus are a reminder of the importance of training and preparedness, as well as the value of high-quality authoritative content that is available on-demand when it is most needed," said Norm Ford, director of compliance solutions for SkillSoft.
BT has named Colm O'Neill as managing director of its telecom's business division. Since 2006, O'Neill had been employed as country manager for EMC Ireland. He also held several roles in Fujitsu Services over the years, including account director and head of outsourcing. He graduated with an honours degree in computer science and maths and holds a certified diploma in accounting and finance from UCD as well as a diploma in professional selling from DIT.
Companies can use specialised forensic tools and techniques if they're concerned about ex-employees competing against them, according to Espion. The IT security company recently helped a law firm in the UK prove that three former staff members had copied sensitive data and used this to launch a rival product. The law firm was subsequently able to force the employees to cease and desist. "Relatively low-level events such as contractual and employment disputes and data theft are very common and, if not handled properly, can cause considerable direct and indirect losses to organisations," said Colm Murphy, technical director with Espion.
Global Android smartphone shipments will grow by a massive 900 percent in 2009, according to research from Strategy Analytics. The market intelligence firm believes healthy support from operators, vendors and developers is currently driving uptake of Google's operating system for mobile phones. The Apple iPhone OS will be the next fastest-growing smartphone operating system in 2009, with a growth rate of just under 80 percent. "Android is expanding from a low base and it is consequently outgrowing the iPhone OS from Apple, which we estimate will grow at a relatively lower 79 percent annually in 2009," said Tom Kang, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.
A new search engine for academics is to be made public next week. Well-known mathematician Stephen Wolfram created the WolframAlpha search engine and it is regarded a complementary tool to Google, rather than a competitor. The search engine differs from Google by using a knowledge base and an artificial intelligence system rather than crawling through web-pages looking for keywords. It can also answer questions such as "How many Americans live within a mile of a 40-storey building", by providing a small report rather than a list of web-pages. Wolfram says he plans to seek advertising and sponsorship for the search engine and may offer a premium version with extra features to researchers.
Employees believe flexible working conditions profoundly affect levels of employment. That's according to research from Dynamic Markets, commissioned by Avaya, which revealed that 85 percent of those surveyed believe flexible working conditions create new jobs, keep people in employment and provide opportunities for people to return to work. The 'Flexible Working 2009' research surveyed the attitudes of over 3,500 workers across France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia and the UK and also found that 35 percent of respondents think flexible workers save their employer money by not being in the office or on-site full-time.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 