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Iomega SMB Storage Seminar

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Iomega is hosting a free SMB storage seminar next month for channel partners in Sydney and Auckland.

The seminar, Storage! Selling into the SMB,  will cover broad themes such as how best to maximise sales in this sector in addition to some more focused product discussion, particularly around the company’s flagship REV drive. The seminar will feature a keynote presentation from Michael Schwend, New Business Development Manager, Iomega International.

The seminar, which will begin in Sydney before moving on to Auckland, will provide participants with the opportunity to expand their skill set in selling to the SMB storage market; gain a thorough understanding of the Iomega storage solution range from keynote speaker, Michael Schwend; and acquire insight into how best to serve existing customers and address new market segments with news from Computer Associates and Microsoft.

To register or find out more information please visit https://www.conveneit.com/secure/iomega/storage_apr_06/?pg=1.

 

Sydney – 5th April
Intercontinental Sydney
Cnr Bridge and Phillip St
8:30am registration

Auckland – 7th April
Stanford Plaza Auckland
22 Lower Albert St
8:30am registration

 

Engin Posts Wider Loss

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Despite posting a wider loss that the prior period, Voice over Internet service provider engin is “pleased” with its results thanks to some benchmarks indicating it’s on its way to profitable trading.

Compared to the first half of 2005, the period ending December 31, 2005 showed that subscriber growth is accelerating with new sign-ups in the first two months of this year showing even more promise.

In the middle of last year, engin had achieved only 5,800 sign-ups but by the end of the calendar year, that number had grown to 18,100 subscribers. Already, this year, by the end of February more than 24,000 customers had signed up to engin’s service, a 30 per cent increase in only two months.

Revenues were looking healthier too. A 143 per cent increase from $1.25 million in the first half of calendar 2005 to $3.03 million for the July to December half, however failed to help the company reach breakeven.

The half year loss after tax of $3.75 million (EBITDA loss $5.13 million) was in fact higher than the half year ended June 2005 when the company lost only $3.41 million (EBITDA loss $3.79 million).

However, CEO Ilka Tales is confident the company has sufficient cash reserves to see it through to break even thanks to a capital raising last August which saw 29.5 million add more than $4million to the company’s balance sheet. The company’s cash reserves now stand at $5.70 million.

Higher subscriber numbers pushed the number of voice minutes carried to 6,600,000 minutes for the month of December, but with infrastructure in place operational costs will not grow as fast.

CEO Tales said: “We are pleased with our progress, all our business drivers indicate we are on target to meet our business goals. The results show that our growth has been significant and we have balanced this growth with operational effectiveness. We look forward to making even greater strides in 2006 and delivering further savings to Australian consumers and businesses using broadband telephony”.

Tales points out that metric such as number of subscribers per employee and customers acquisition costs will ultimately drive efficiency into the organisation.

Marketing cost per new subscriber line fell from $245 in the first half of last year to just $95 by the second half. Similarly, the number of paying subscriber lines per employee rose from 111 to 241 between the two periods.

www.engin.com.au

Leap Forward In Scanning Technology

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Epson has introduced a dual lens scanning technology that ups the ante for dedicated scanner devices.

The Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner is the first scanner to feature a Dual Lens System capable of scanning at up to an unprecedented 6400dpi for optical film scanning resolution using the device’s Super Resolution lens. With the High Resolution Lens, normal scanning on reflective media produces a resolution of 4800dpi.

The lens technology and an Epson Matrix CCD sensor afford the Perfection V700 with the highest resolution seen in its class. The quality is said to rival that found with many drum scanners, according to Epson.

The Perfection V700 Photo has a high optical density rating of 4.0Dmax which allows greater tonal gradation and creates more colours in the scanned image.

Speed is also enhanced thanks to the dedicated ASIC processor built into the device rather than relying on the processing capabilities of the attached PC. This makes it faster than the leading competitors in almost all scan settings taking a mere 91 seconds to complete a high resolution negative film scan at 6400dpi.

A versatile film scanner, the Perfection V700 Photo features an 8 inch by 10 inch transparency unit. Four height adjustable film holders lock into the transparency unit to streamline and simplify scanning film.

Aimed at the professional market, the scanner comes with an impressive array of bundled software including Epson’s own Digital ICE pre scan editing technology.

Included with the scanner are programs such as SilverFast SE 6, a powerful pre-scan editing tool that removes unwanted imperfections. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 for professional Photoshop that tweaks scanned images, and ABBYY Fine Reader 6 for advanced character recognition when scanning in OCR. Purchasers also get Epson’s Creativity suite and Epson Scan.

DiData Gets $40m SA Gov Contract

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The South Australian Government has signed up Dimension Data to deliver Managed Network Services.

The contract will see Dimension Data called upon to manage monitoring, break/fix services, administration and support for the Government’s network and firewall infrastructure.

Approximately 200 metropolitan and regional government agencies will also see Dimension Data looking after their intrusion detection and prevention, network and security consulting and advisory services, threat analysis and response and vulnerability assessments.

“During the bid process, we were able to demonstrate our proven expertise and industry leadership in the areas of managed network and security services. As part of the core managed service, we are providing government agencies with real-time visibility of their networks and the status of key devices – which proved to be a really influential offering in our proposal,” said Steve Nola, Australian CEO, Dimension Data.

“Also, one of the key elements of the contract is that it has been written in terms of ITIL (the IT Infrastructure Library) for service management. Dimension Data’s global services centre, which will provide the centralised support for the network, is structured based on ITIL principles, aligning the South Australian Government’s service expectations with the services delivered by Dimension Data,” continued Nola.

Grant Hawksworth, Dimension Data’s South Australian State Manager, said: “Dimension Data first established an office in Adelaide in 1991, so we are seen as having a strong and ongoing commitment to South Australia’s IT industry. This contract will have a positive impact on the growth of our South Australian operations, and also promote strong growth in the local IT industry.

“Already, in preparation for this, we have initiated a scholarship scheme to provide successful applicants with Cisco certified training, with the opportunity for employment in a number of positions with Dimension Data.”

Viiv Quick Resume A Fake

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Intel is touting an instant on technology it calls Quick Resume, but in fact it’s more like always on.

 

According to this page on the Intel website, the technology makes a PC behave like a consumer electronic device. It really should say makes it “looks” like it behaves as a consumer electronics device.

In reality, the Quick Resume driver does nothing more than stop the output of video and audio. The PC continues running.

The hard drives could keep spinning, the CPU will continue to cycle away ineffectively and the system fans will add a pleasant hum to your lounge room evermore.

 

Apart from chewing through your electricity bill, the system may not even give the appearance of having switched off!

 

When video output is stopped some monitors may display “no input” when in Quick Resume mode, says Intel.

 

Exabyte Cutting Tape Pricing

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Exabyte is taking the red marker to its automated tape back-up systems reducing prices by as much as 28 per cent.

The company says it is trying to drive price parity between a standalone tape drive and its automated tape sub-systems.

Accordingly it has reduced pricing on its automated tape backup solutions by up to 25 percent in order to drive adoption into the SMB and branch office markets. Among Exabyte products seeing lower prices, the Magnum 1×7 Tape Autoloader with LTO-3 technology is now available for $7985.

Prices are reduced on Exabyte’s VXA systems and Magnum Autoloaders which use LTO (Ultrium) technology, including Exabyte’s newest product, the award-winning VXA-320 PacketLoader, which delivers up to 3.2TB of backup for $3,899 (RRP $A inc tax). For smaller business Exabyte has reduced the price of the VXA-2 based PacketLoader to $2398 from the previous price of $3,350. Exabyte will also reduce media prices accordingly.

“With this price drop, we can respond to challenges from our reseller partners to provide automated backup that satisfies the affordability needs of their customers as well as provide motivation for smaller organisations to move away from low-capacity CD/DVD backup or dead-end DDS/DAT hardware,” said Richard Giddey, country manager ANZ, Exabyte.

The company points out that IDC rates the VXA and LTO technologies as bright spots in tape storage market, with shipments of both formats showing increases year over year and outpacing their closest competitors.

Palm To Add BlackBerry Connect To Treo 650

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Palm has announced it will bring the BlackBerry Connect push email service to its popular smartphone range, the Treo 650.

Future iterations of the Treo will also be BlackBerry enabled. Palm worked in conjunction with Research In Motion to bring BlackBerry Connect to the Palm Treo 650 smartphone and the two expect the solution to be available in the US and internationally early in calendar 2006.

The solution will enable the following:
– push-based email using BlackBerry Connect with Palm’s VersaMail email client;
– support for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino;
– wireless calendar synchronisation;
– remote address lookup of corporate email directory;
– convenient email-attachment viewing;
– Triple DES encryption; and
– IT policy enforcement and commands (such as remotely disabling or wiping email and PIM data from a device in the event it is lost or stolen).

However exact availability and functionality will depend on local telco roll-outs. Currently Telstra and Vodafone both support BlackBerry services.

“Treo 650 has earned accolades as the best fully featured smartphone available, and we’re thrilled to make it even better by answering customer requests and offering RIM’s BlackBerry email solution for businesses,” said Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer of Palm, Inc. “Our news today demonstrates Palm’s promise to offer flexible mobile-computing solutions with world-class, enterprise-strength partners, delivering what we’re convinced is the best email experience to the broadest set of customers – all on Treo smartphones.”

“The BlackBerry architecture and infrastructure are recognised around the world as secure, manageable, reliable and scalable, and we are extremely pleased to broaden the choice of BlackBerry-enabled handsets with the Treo 650,” said Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-CEO at RIM. “We have already seen significant customer interest in this powerful combination, and we look forward to building on our relationship with Palm.”

Disney Buys Pixar

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In a deal with more than US7.4 billion, Disney plans to quieten recent critic Steve Jobs.

The deal, approved by both boards and subject to various anti-trust approvals, also requires shareholder approval, Apple CEO and Pixar Chairman and CEO, Steve Jobs, owns slightly less than 1 per cent of the company and has agreed to cast 40 per cent of the company’s shares in favour of the deal.

 

In return, Jobs gets a seat on the Disney Board.

 

The transaction includes no cash, except the US1 billion cash Pixar has in the bank, which will transfer to the combined entity. Under terms of the agreement, 2.3 Disney shares will be issued for each Pixar share pricing the company at around US$6.3 billion net of Pixar’s cash.

 

A deal has been rumoured for months with Jobs going on the record as being interested in a Pixar sale last October. The two companies have worked in partnership for 15 years. But Jobs has been a recently vocal critic of the Disney animation studios which produced its first 3D computer animation feature “Chicken Little” following a major refit of the Disney studios.

 

“Disney and Pixar can now collaborate without the barriers that come from two different companies with two different sets of shareholders,” said Jobs. “Now, everyone can focus on what is most important, creating innovative stories, characters and films that delight millions of people around the world.”

 

The acquisition brings to Disney the talented creative teams behind the tremendously popular original Pixar blockbusters, such as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

 

Apart from the creative genius and content creation abilities, Disney also buys rights to the catalogue allowing it to capitalise on the franchises on high-growth digital platforms such as video games, broadband and wireless, as well as traditional media outlets, including theme parks, consumer products and live stage plays.

 

Disney first entered into a feature film agreement with Pixar in 1991, resulting in the release of Toy Story, which was hailed as an instant classic upon its release in November 1995. In 1997, Disney extended its relationship with Pixar by entering into a co-production agreement, under which Pixar agreed to produce on an exclusive basis five original computer-animated feature films for distribution by Disney.

 

Pixar is currently in production on the final film under that agreement, Cars, to be distributed by Disney on June 9.

 

Churn And Burn Retailers Leave Customers Fuming

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According to a new online satisfaction report released yesterday, more than half of the consumers surveyed have ceased buying products and services from a company due to poor customer service and a high number felt that the supplier didn’t know it had lost their business.


Click to enlarge
courtesy: www.newli.com

In fact, only half of the companies aware of the loss of business had attempted to win the business back, the survey found, with the worst offenders being telcos, ISPs and online retailers.  

Prepared by StollzNow Research and commissioned by RightNow Technologies, a provider of on demand customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions, the report’s findings are proof that the impact of a poor customer experience can directly affect a company’s bottom line.  

According to Neil Stolznow, head of StollzNow Research, the report proves that “Australian companies devote far too much time to customer acquisition and nowhere near enough time in customer retention”.

Furthermore he says that the “long term brand health of companies was at stake” if they didn’t become more customer-responsive.

Despite the high cost of customer acquisition relative to customer retention, organisations appear to be content with a proportion of customer churn based on poor customer experiences. Two-thirds of respondents in Australia and New Zealand said they had experienced poor customer service at some time during their relationship with companies in one of the seven targeted industries.

 

The telecommunications industry was the worst offender with 62 per cent of respondents indicating they had experienced poor service. Next were ISPs with 52 per cent followed by finance (46 per cent), travel and hospitality (31 per cent), online retail (30 per cent), and insurance and utilities (28 per cent).

A high proportion of respondents (65 per cent) indicated they had stopped doing business with a telecommunications provider due to poor customer service, and 44 per cent believed their provider hadn’t realised they were no longer a customer.
The survey also investigated consumer opinion about experiences when shopping online. 

Consumers were asked what they found to be the most frustrating aspects of the experience. Areas for improvement included transparency about delivery charges before reaching the ‘check out’ as well as better information about products and the ability to ask questions during the purchasing process.

All of these areas of frustration are solvable with technology readily available today, said Stolznow.