NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 11 November
11-11-2009
by Emmet Cole
Derry to get 150 new jobs | Microsoft bans some Xbox Live gamers
Northern Ireland Enterprise Minster Arlene Foster has welcomed the announcement by Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) company FirstSource that it intends to create 150 new jobs in Derry. The new jobs include customer support advisors and operations management positions. Firstsource's clients include FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 banks, telecommunications companies and healthcare companies. The company already employs over 700 people at a site on Northland Road in Derry and a further 500 in Belfast.
Irish supply management solutions company Supplierforce has announced five new contracts with Irish and UK organisations including An Post, Bord Na Mona, Woking Borough Council, Calerdale Council and Norland Managed Services. The combined value of the deals is over EUR600,000. Speaking at the Supplierforce conference, CEO Declan Kearney, said that a strategic approach to procurement delivers optimum results in terms of sustainable cost savings and risk mitigation. According to Supplierforce, Norland Managed Services has already realised direct cost savings of over STG2 million as a result of Supplierforce sourcing technology and professional services.
Meanwhile, Irish enterprise software implementation company Aspera Solutions has announced it signed seven multi-year enterprise resource planning (ERP) contracts worth more than EUR2 million in the UK and Ireland in the last quarter. The new UK customers include food processors Wyke Farms and Troy Foods, and manufacturers HTA Precision and Permastore. Growth in its Irish market has been particularly pronounced in this quarter, with new clients including One51, Smithstown Light Engineering and AgriHealth. These new client wins represent a trebling of growth in new business in this period and follows Aspera's launch of a UK sales and customer service operation in Solihull earlier this year. The company is now engaged in the process of recruiting 10 new full-time employees.
NovaUCD is holding an event on 18 November that offers a 'first look' at UCD's latest high-tech ventures. The event will showcase the 15 new ventures participating in this year's Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP). Each company will deliver a short 'elevator pitch' and three shortlisted ventures, selected by an independent evaluation panel, will then present their business plans in more detail. The evaluation panel will select an overall winner who will be presented with the NovaUCD 2009 CCDP Award. See the full list of companies here.
Games development studio Turbine is set to use Irish games middleware company Havok's Cloth product in a forthcoming massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Cloth is a software development kit and toolset designed to increase the realism of game characters and environments by enabling character designers to add motion to garments, environmental objects and other items like capes, hair, and tails. Details of the new game have not been released.
Mobile operator Meteor has launched its online music store, which will offer access to over 1.4 million tracks. Meteor customers will be able to access the Meteor Music Store on their PCs and handsets. Individual tracks will cost EUR1.50, and can be downloaded to phones and PCs (or both) for the same price. Songs downloaded to PCs can be copied, shared, and played on any MP3 player.
Ireland needs to focus on developing an entrepreneurial economy, according to the Minister for Trade and Commerce, Billy Kelleher. Speaking at Tuesday night's National Enterprise Awards 2009, in Dublin Castle, Kelleher pointed out that the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report for 2008 indicated that an average of 2,800 people establish business in Ireland every month and that, at 4.3 percent, the Irish entrepreneurial start-up rate is higher than the EU or OECD average. The overall award was scooped by Callan Technology from Co. Clare, which designs, manufactures and exports industrial motors. Taoglas in Wexford, which provides radio frequency solutions for the wireless communications industry, took the runner-up award.
Irish compliance technology firm Norkom Technologies has been ranked 88th on the FinTech 100 list of top financial technology providers in the world. In 2008, the company took 95th place in the list. The annual FinTech 100 rankings list is published by American Banker and IDC Financial Insights to recognise the leading 100 global technology and service providers that derive more than one-third of their revenue from the financial services industry. On Tuesday, Norkom posted a 2 percent year-on-year increase in revenue, to EUR24.6 million, in the six months to 30 September.
Microsoft has banned an estimated 600,000 of its 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide from the online gaming service for modifying their consoles to play pirated games. Modifying an Xbox 360 console by installing chips or software to enable the playing of pirated games violates the service's terms of use, according to a statement from Microsoft. Microsoft has not revealed how it was able to determine which gamers to disconnect.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 