Archive for the ‘Enterprise IT’ Category

SingAREN launches region’s first 100Gbps community network in Singapore

Thursday, August 28th, 2014

SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX) will boost international collaborations for Singapore’s research and education community.

SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX)

SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX)

Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) has announced the launch of SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX), the first 100Gbps community network to be set up in the Southeast Asia region.

“SingAREN is proud to be the first to launch a 100 Gbps research and education network in the region. By increasing the network speed by ten-fold and with our suite of value-added services, SingAREN aims to facilitate collaborations amongst our local research organisations and with their international counterparts,” said A/Prof Francis Lee Bu Sung, President of SingAREN.

With SLIX, Singapore’s Research and Education (R&E) community will gain seamless access to a super high speed network with a hundred times more capacity than before; and enjoy bandwidth fully dedicated to their use.

Built on an optical fibre core comprising dark fibres, SLIX allows resiliency, future capacity upgrade, and technology-proof network connectivity.

The new network also opens up new possibilities as a test-bed, extending database mirroring services, bilateral disaster recovery, high performance computing federation and shared services, high volume peering for content data networks and other value-adding services to the R&E community.

In addition, SLIX will also enable research organisations to test different protocols for interconnections such as the Infiniband; and optical network researchers to carry out their experiments.

SLIX Ring Setup

SLIX Ring Setup

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Trend Micro exposes undetectable malware against bank session tokens

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014

Are your devices infected? “Operation Emmental” is a new criminal operation which targets banks that use session tokens such as Short Message Service (“SMS”) for authentication purposes – to steal customers’ online banking credentials to gain full access and control of their bank accounts.

A comparison between the two-factor authentication process in uninfected and infected computers with Operation Emmental.

A comparison between the two-factor authentication process in uninfected and infected computers with Operation Emmental.

Like Swiss Emmental cheese, the ways in which your online banking accounts are protected might be full of holes, or rather loopholes.

Commenting on today’s rampant mobile cybercrimes, Paul Oliveria, Technical Communications Manager of Trend Labs, Trend Micro shared: “Monetary benefits remain the biggest motivation for cybercriminals. Based on Trend Micro TrendLabs 1Q 2014 Security Roundup report, the number of online banking malware detections in the first quarter reached roughly 116,000 showing a steady increase from the same quarter in 2013.”

Cloud security experts Trend Micro warns of “undetectable” malware infection that targets mobile banking users.

Currently prevalent in Austria, Sweden and Switzerland, this cybercrime has reached Japan, leaving the Asia Pacific region at greater risk of a similar attack.

Mobile devices are also increasingly being included in cross-platform threats.

With mobile devices no longer being just phones and serve as computer substitutes in their own right, users are often connecting their mobile devices to their home/work systems to sync their files and documents.

This link between the devices is what threats use to jump across.

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Palo Alto Networks on protection against IE vulnerabilities

Sunday, July 20th, 2014

Earlier this month, Palo Alto Networks discovered ten critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer browsers, underlining the importance for businesses to focus on knowing the risk of running vulnerable software.

Check out five core concepts on how to protect your organisation against vulnerabilities.

Check out five core concepts on how to protect your organisation against vulnerabilities.

Sharat Sinha – Vice President, Asia Pacific for Palo Alto Networks – shares his views on how businesses and organisations can protect themselves against malicious attacks and avoid compromises to their network security.

Below are Sinha’s views.

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Parallels Automation powers new Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program

Wednesday, July 16th, 2014

Parallels launches SmartStart program for any size service provider to deliver the full range of Microsoft cloud solutions.

“SmartStart is an exciting new program that lowers the barrier to entry for service providers to take advantage of cloud services offered by Microsoft. Service providers will now future proof their Microsoft investments by having access to the latest innovations as soon as they become available,” said Birger Steen, chief executive officer, Parallels.

“SmartStart is an exciting new program that lowers the barrier to entry for service providers to take advantage of cloud services offered by Microsoft. Service providers will now future proof their Microsoft investments by having access to the latest innovations as soon as they become available,” said Birger Steen, chief executive officer, Parallels.

Parallels, a platform provider for cloud service delivery, today announced it is the first company to support the new Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program with Parallels SmartStart for Office 365.

“The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program will enable a broad set of partners to offer Microsoft cloud services. We are excited Parallels, a leading enabler of Microsoft’s Office 365 syndication program, is committing to support the Microsoft cloud distribution ecosystem,” said Mark Rice, senior director, Operator Channel, Microsoft.

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program, announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, expands the opportunity for Microsoft’s channel to resell Microsoft Office 365.

The SmartStart program gets Microsoft-approved partners up and running in less than 80 days.

SmartStart is a low-cost, fixed-price implementation of Parallels Automation that includes user training and certification, reference service plans and a customized storefront.

Parallels Automation is the only proven platform for service providers to sell and deliver differentiated portfolios of hosted and syndicated services with every Office 365 subscription.

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Red Hat launches open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Tuesday, July 8th, 2014

Red Hat’s new Enterprise Operating System is now generally available, and offers a single platform for enterprises to converge their computing across the open hybrid cloud, from bare metal and virtual machines to the cloud.

Red Hat's latest release of its flagship platform - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 promises dramatic improvements in reliability, performance, and scalability.

Red Hat’s latest release of its flagship platform – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 promises dramatic improvements in reliability, performance, and scalability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the latest major release of the company’s flagship platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 not only lays the foundation for the open hybrid cloud and serves enterprise workloads across converged infrastructures, but it also pushes the operating system beyond today’s position as a commodity platform.

Built to meet modern datacenter demands along with next-generation IT requirements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 powers the spectrum of enterprise IT, from application containers to cloud services.

Bare metal servers, virtual machines, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) are converging to form a robust, powerful datacenter environment to meet constantly changing business needs.

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Palo Alto Networks on the Personal Data Protection Act in Singapore

Tuesday, July 1st, 2014

The Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) comes into force in Singapore tomorrow (Wednesday, July 2). Sharat Sinha – Vice President, Asia Pacific for Palo Alto Networks –  shares his views on what this means for businesses in Singapore and how this relates to cybersecurity.

“Following the Singapore Government’s introduction of its five-year National Cybersecurity Masterplan last year, the introduction of PDPA will work to further strengthen Singapore’s position and reputation as a trusted, world-class hub for business,” says Sinha.

“Following the Singapore Government’s introduction of its five-year National Cybersecurity Masterplan last year, the introduction of PDPA will work to further strengthen Singapore’s position and reputation as a trusted, world-class hub for business,” says Sinha.

The PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act), which comes into force on Wednesday July 2, aims to safeguard individuals’ personal data against misuse by regulating its management by companies.

The Act is based on the understanding that individuals have the right to be informed of the purposes for which organisations are collecting, using or disclosing their personal data, giving individuals more control over how their personal data is used.

It recognises both the rights of individuals to protect their personal data, including rights of access and correction, and the needs of organisations to collect, use or disclose personal data for legitimate and reasonable purposes.

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Factoid: How often do Millennials (or Gen Y) use Social Media?

Saturday, May 24th, 2014

Was having lunch last week with John Ruthven, Eugene Ho of SAP, Bob Aubrey of Mazars and a few other journos from the media – when Bob mentioned a study that Mazars did in 2013 about Millennials.

If you’re a “Millennial”, how often do you use social media? Click on image to view enlarged version.

If you’re a “Millennial”, how often do you use social media? Click on image to view enlarged version.

The study was conducted in 2013 and approached 6,900 Millennial employees in 64 countries worldwide, out of which 3,010 responded – that’s a remarkably high return rate.

Bob Aubrey is a Partner & Practice Leader, People Development Consulting at Mazars.   With more than 20 years’ experience in leadership and people development consulting, Dr Aubrey is also an entrepreneur, writer and professor.

Bob Aubrey, Partner & Practice Leader, People Development Consulting, Mazars. With more than 20 years’ experience in leadership and people development consulting, Dr Aubrey is also an entrepreneur, writer and professor.

The “Millennials” or, otherwise known as Gen Y (Generation Y) are defined in this study as young people born between the beginning of the 1980s and the mid-90s.

Since the Gen Y will account for a huge chunk of the world’s population and workforce in the near future, the demography is relevant to global companies such as SAP that provides business IT solutions to large enterprises and organisations employing these Millennials.

Currently, Millennials make up more than half of our workforce. This is expected to increase to 75% in 2025.

It would be interesting to watch how these statistics change over time to observe the underlying trend, although the result would not be surprising, given the increasing popularity of social media amongst the increasingly IT-savvy working population.

Here are some additional statistics surrounding Millennials.

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Singapore CIOs ahead in digital transformation with prompt investments

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Singapore CIOs are well ahead in maturity and adoption level of digital transformation with prompt investments to support top-line growth while driving productivity and innovation developments to meet demands.

Findings of NCS SURF Emerging Technologies Maturity Index 2014, a research commissioned by NCS (conducted by IDC) to evaluate Singapore companies’ adoption of emerging technologies in Big Data, Digital Engagement and Smart Computing (M2M).

Findings of NCS SURF Emerging Technologies Maturity Index 2014, a research commissioned by NCS (conducted by IDC) to evaluate Singapore companies’ adoption of emerging technologies in Big Data, Digital Engagement and Smart Computing (M2M).

Digital transformation – how it is managed and applied is becoming increasingly important to how business succeed in today’s economy.

“CIOs need to work closely with business stakeholders to increase work space productivity and collaboration. They should take advantage of real time intelligence to enhance service delivery and operational excellence,” said Lai Weng Yew, Vice President of Business Application Services of NCS.

A recent survey from NCS’ SURF Emerging Technologies Maturity Index 2014 polled 240 senior information technology (IT) executives found that a majority (75%) of their organisations are well ahead of technology investments, citing Digital Transformation as an extremely important or important contributor of their companies’ worldwide strategy.

Singapore businesses acknowledged the benefits of using multiple technology assets.

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New arrivals: Samsung MultiXpress CLX-9301 color and SCX-8128 mono series MFP

Thursday, May 15th, 2014

Samsung Electronics Singapore has unveiled its A3 mono and colour copiers for the Singapore SMB market.

MultiXpress SCX-8128NX Mono Multi-Function Printer (left) and CLX-9301NA A3 Colour Multi-Function Printer (right).

MultiXpress SCX-8128NX Mono Multi-Function Printer (left) and CLX-9301NA A3 Colour Multi-Function Printer (right).

Samsung has also appointed Docu ConneX as the authorised distributor of Samsung enterprise solution printers and copiers in Singapore.

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Epicor announces availability of Epicor ERP version 10

Monday, May 12th, 2014

Epicor aims to transform the business relationship with ERP to drive growth and opportunity through a more responsive solution, designed for device mobility, deployment choice and social collaboration.

Epicor ERP version 10 is immediately available in 35 languages and 26 countries worldwide.

Epicor Software Corporation is a global leader in business software solutions for manufacturing, distribution, retail and services organisations.

Epicor Software Corporation is a global leader in business software solutions for manufacturing, distribution, retail and services organisations.

Epicor has announced the availability of Epicor ERP version 10 to customers in Asia.

“Epicor ERP version 10 represents the evolution of our innovative technology platform to support today’s business imperatives – social collaboration, deployment flexibility, broad device accessibility, with ease of use and accelerated performance,” said Craig Charlton, senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific Operations for Epicor.

The next generation ERP solution from Epicor promises the transformation of business software to bring true value to today’s information-driven business environments.

The new offering is a blend of rich global functionality built on agile technology that eliminates complexity for use.

Epicor boasts that ERP Version 10 is easier to use, more collaborative and more responsive than other enterprise resource planning solution of its class and supports today’s business imperatives: social collaboration, deployment flexibility, accelerated performance and broad device accessibility.

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