NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 14 December
14-12-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Derry company cuts call centre workers | Interxion creates construction jobs
US-headquartered company Stream International is to make more than 300 staff redundant at a call centre in Derry. The company provides support services for technology firms. In August, staff at the Derry facility were given 90 days' notice.
Data centre operator Interxion has said its new EUR12 million data centre in Dublin will be completed early next year. The company said on Monday that 90 construction jobs have been created as building firm StructureTone works to complete the project. The company said it was building the new data centre to meet growing customer demand for energy-efficient, high-power-density data centre infrastructure and outsourced managed services.
In other data centre news, Microsoft has announced it is to acquire IT process automation firm Opalis Software. Microsoft said the acquisition would expand its data centre capabilities, as Opalis makes software that automates the tasks involved in running a data centre, such as virtual machine lifecycle management. The terms of the deal were not revealed.
Telecoms regulator ComReg has released additional spectrum in the 10.5GHz band for Fixed Wireless Access Local Area (FWALA) broadband services. ComReg says that two separate spectrum allocations will be released, increasing the amount of spectrum available for FWALA broadband in the 10.5GHz band by 33 percent. Twenty-eight MHz of spectrum is being released in Dublin and Cork, and 56MHz is being released for operation on a national basis. ComReg is now inviting applications for this spectrum. For more details, see ComReg.ie.
Financial software provider Norkom has announced that its financial crime and compliance solutions will be rolled out by Finnish financial services firm OP-Pohjola Group. The Finnish group has more than 4 million customers, and Norkom's analytics solutions will help the group detect, investigate, manage and report suspicious activities by monitoring and analysing customer transactions. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Irish hosting provider LetsHost says it has dropped the price of registering a dot-ie (.ie) domain by 50 percent. The Dublin-based firm says it is now charging EUR9.99 to register a new domain name. The offer is available until the end of December.
Broadband provider Magnet Networks says it closed new deals worth a total of EUR9 million across its business and residential divisions in 2009. New customers include Concern, advertising agency McConnells and furniture retailer Instore.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 