NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 19 January
19-01-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
StreamServe to create Galway jobs | RBS cuts tech staff
US business communications firm StreamServe is to set up a customer care centre in Galway, creating 20 jobs in the process. An IDA announcement on Tuesday said that StreamServe will initially employ 20 people at the Galway operation in areas such as sales, maintenance renewals, and customer care operations, servicing both the US and EMEA markets.
Royal Bank of Scotland, the owner of Ulster Bank, is cutting 221 jobs across Ireland. Some 196 technology services staff in Dublin and 25 in Belfast will be laid off. The bank said some roles will be transferred to other locations in the UK and elsewhere. RBS said it hopes that the number of compulsory redundancies will be minimal.
Meanwhile, Belfast IT firm Parity Solutions is to create 94 new jobs. The company will establish a Microsoft centre of excellence in the city, providing online business productivity packages. Software development and consultancy roles will be filled over the next three years.
Senior executives at Irish SMEs are more confident about their prospects in 2010 than they were this time last year, according to O2's annual business survey. The number who are more confident about the New Year has more than doubled, from 12 percent last year to 26 percent. There was a sharp decline in those who are less confident, from 59 percent to 26 percent. Meanwhile, 34 percent of SMEs surveyed expect revenues to rise in 2010, up from 24 percent last year. Some 12 percent of more than 300 SME owners or director-level executives who responded to the survey were from the tech sector. And the tech sector is the most confident that the global recession has bottomed out.
Irish property website Daft.ie has launched in the Polish market with Daft.pl. The new site has around 60,000 properties covering every major city and town in Poland. The company said it hopes to "benefit from the positive brand recognition of Daft.ie amongst the hundreds of thousands of Polish people who came to work and live in Ireland during the last ten years". The Polish market is approximately ten times larger than the Irish market, with a population of 38 million.
The 'prosumer' -- professional consumer -- will have a major impact on companies' IT purchasing decisions this year, according to the latest study from the Deloitte Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Industry Group. Predicting the top trends for the technology, media and telecoms industries for 2010, Deloitte says that employees who buy technology devices for both work and play will exercise their influence this year, with more and more companies likely to allow staff to choose their own phones. IT vendors will need to alter their sales techniques, Deloitte says, and IT departments will have to become more flexible to respond to this trend.
The new Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Bill 2010, published on Tuesday by Justice Minster Dermot Ahern, will see the establishment of a national DNA database in Ireland. When the bill becomes law, everyone who is arrested for a serious offence can be required to give a DNA sample. A profile generated from the sample will be placed on a database, along with samples collected at crime scenes. The analysis of the material on the database may indicate a link between the person and other offences where he was previously involved but no link had previously come to light. A separate part of the database will be available to help trace and identify missing or unknown persons. Fine Gael spokesperson for Justice Charlie Flanagan broadly welcomed the new bill but expressed disappointment that it took the Government over five years to produce it.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 