Dramatic leaps made in satellite technology over the past ten years will soon translate into an affordable, high-speed broadband Internet service for South Africans no matter where they live, says Jacques Visser of Vox Telecom. “Many people in rural areas and small towns, where there is no ADSL or 3G service, have had to accept [...]

Dramatic leaps made in satellite technology over the past ten years will soon translate into an affordable, high-speed broadband Internet service for South Africans no matter where they live, says Jacques Visser of Vox Telecom.

“Many people in rural areas and small towns, where there is no ADSL or 3G service, have had to accept slow, unreliable Internet connections,” says Visser. “Their only alternative was a very expensive satellite connection, which few could afford. The new satellite technology being launched next year will change all that.”

YahClick, the satellite service that Vox Telecom is due to launch in mid 2012, is based on Ka band (19 to 40GHz) technology that has only recently become available to the public. “Ka band satellites transmit many highly focused, overlapping ‘spot beams’, each covering a relatively small area,” explains Visser. “That means you get a more powerful signal and much greater bandwidth at a lower price, even in the most rural and rugged areas.”

“Previous satellite systems based on C band and Ku band technology needed large dishes and were expensive to install and run,” adds Visser. “With Ku band technology, for example, the satellite’s footprint – the area covered by its transmissions – is the whole of South Africa. That delivers a much more diluted signal than you can achieve with Ka band spot beams.

Vox’s YahClick service will cover most of South Africa, with the exception of the westernmost part of the Northern Cape. “The biggest benefit of the service is that, for the first time, you can get fast, affordable internet even if there’s no landline service available,” says Visser. “ASDL is not available at all in many small towns and rural areas, and even in cities it can take weeks or months to get a service. YahClick provides the same or better bandwidth, at a comparable cost, in a couple of days.”

There is a further advantage, says Visser, of particular interest to those who use a lot of international bandwidth: “The satellite base station is in Europe and is plugged directly into their Terabit backbones,” he says. “That means you’re not constrained by the bandwidth available in South Africa – and if an undersea cable has a problem, you are not affected at all.”

Visser believes because of the added reliability, Vox’s satellite service YahClick will also be an attractive back-up option for those who already have fixed-line broadband. “If you’re a business reliant on your ADSL connection, the fact that there’s no guaranteed service is a risk. Using satellite as a backup or add-on service will enable people to avoid business interruptions caused by communication failures.”

FaxTrax  from Vox Amvia, remotely monitors RightFax system performance for South African corporates – and allows instant troubleshooting to ensure business continuity. RightFax enables companies to send, receive, track and manage thousands of fax messages a day – but, says Vox Amvia Head of Sales & Marketing Boudje Giljam, it’s important to manage fax server [...]

FaxTrax  from Vox Amvia, remotely monitors RightFax system performance for South African corporates – and allows instant troubleshooting to ensure business continuity.

RightFax enables companies to send, receive, track and manage thousands of fax messages a day – but, says Vox Amvia Head of Sales & Marketing Boudje Giljam, it’s important to manage fax server performance.

Keep system performance within defined thresholds

“There are always going to be busy times when capacity is under strain,” says Giljam. “Maybe your ERP system suddenly issues a thousand purchase orders, or there’s a month-end spike in loan applications. You need to know when your communications channels are tied up and people start getting busy signals. FaxTrax constantly monitors the status of your fax server and issues an alert the moment a specified threshold is exceeded.”

Use diagnostics to pinpoint problem areas

Armed with information, customers can actively manage their system resources to ensure communications are not interrupted. “The aim is always to avoid service interruptions happening in the first place, rather than trying to fix a problem after it’s happened,” says Giljam. “Active monitoring and management with FaxTrax enables a business to decide exactly how long they will permit a fax to stay in a queue before it’s sent, or how many minutes a month their customers will get busy signals.”

Better system management helps to keep costs low, adds Giljam. “Regular detailed reports and daily snapshots of system health and performance help managers allocate their resources more efficiently and plan for future use.”

Remote access for hassle-free administration

FaxTrax also offers secure remote access for the Vox Amvia Support Desk, enabling remote troubleshooting for customers who have SLAs. “We can also remotely deploy software and service releases so customers always have access to the latest version of the system, with no maintenance effort required.”

Security is ensured through a combination of secure communications protocols (SSL/TLS), robust authentication and intrusion resistance. In addition, FaxTrax offers a full audit trail of activity.

“Fax remains a critical part of business processes for many large organisations because it has a unique legal status,” says Giljam. “As a point-to-point communications medium it is extremely secure and preserves a clear audit trail including proof of delivery. That’s why large companies still use it for any document that forms part of a contract, like a purchase order or loan application form. FaxTrax makes it easier to maintain the best possible performance from these complex systems.”

Progress Software has divested some of its products to focus on the cloud. Rick Parry of AIGS, the Sub Saharan distributor of Progress Software, shares his insights on what this will mean for their channel partners in South Africa.

Progress Software, one of the IT firms credited with inventing the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), has announced that it will divest multiple on-premise SOA product lines and focus on cloud-enabled IT as part of the company’s commitment to continuous innovation and advancement.

From on-premise to the cloud
According to CEO Jay Bhatt, Progress will focus on cloud-based development to meet the growing demand for the creation, migration and adoption of SAAS and cloud services. The company will divest products such as Actional, Artix, DataXtend, FuseSource, Savvion, Shadow and Sonic by 2013 as part of a new strategic plan to lead computing evolution from on-premise SOA to the cloud.

The strategy is in line with reports by a leading independent IT research and advisory company that found that by 2015 most enterprises will have part of their business software running in the Cloud, and that Cloud-based solutions will be growing at a faster rate than on-premise solutions. Reports also show that very few organisations are effectively collecting and analysing Big Data in real time. Progress will meet this gap in the market by focusing on a singular, unified product offering which enables customers and partners to deploy, access and analyse applications on any platform, any device and any Cloud with the industry’s fastest time-to-value.

The effect on local market
Rick Parry, Managing Director of AIGS, Progress’ Distributor for Sub Saharan Africa is enthusiastic about the new strategy and fully supports the decision made by Progress, and has stated that AIGS aims to continue distributing the divested products to the local market in its own capacity.

“All of the products that Progress is divesting are ‘best in class’ and rated extremely highly by analysts and the market as a whole. Even though Progress is divesting themselves of, among other products, Sonic and Actional, as far as AIGS is concerned, it is “business as usual,” Parry has stated.

As a result, the Progress Africa Conference to be held at Legend Golf and Safari Resort in June will still feature the divested products as scheduled.

Parry emphasises that the change in focus will not negatively impact users. “I am assured by Progress that they will be paying extremely careful consideration to ensuring that the same high standard of support and maintenance our customers currently enjoy will continue after acquisition.”

Going back to the foundation

Under the new plan, Progress will unify the capabilities of OpenEdge, the Progress Arcade portal, DataDirect Connect, Apama Analytics and Decisions complex event processing capabilities, Corticon Business Rules Management Solution (BRMS) and the Progress control Tower, in the Cloud. As a result, Progress is poised to create the industry’s most capable and language-agnostic aPaas offering with multi-tenancy, Big Data connectivity, and real-time analytics in a new generation category.

“With this decision, we have decided to go “all in” with the cloud,” Progress VP for SaaS Colleen Smith stated. Smith described the new approach as “a hybrid IT model that will be the next generation aPaas”. Progress aims to provide simple and powerful application development tools to help ISVs migrate their applications easily and cost-effectively to the cloud, let start-up Saas firms quickly design and deploy new cloud-based applications, and provide a reliable SaaS platform for deployment, operations and management.

Smith remains adamant that the company is not walking away from connectivity by selling its enterprise infrastructure. “I don’t want anyone to believe anyone that says on-premise is dead or that it’s going away,” Smith stated. “What we’re seeing is a shift to more cloud-based investments and we need to make sure we bridge between on-premise and the cloud for IT.”

QlikView Business Discovery platform empowers humanitarian organisations to deliver more efficient, effective outcomes in serving the world’s most vulnerable people QlikTech, (NASDAQ: QLIK) a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), announced that its global corporate social responsibility program, Change Their World, has awarded 50 grants in 18 countries on 6 continents since [...]

QlikView Business Discovery platform empowers humanitarian organisations to deliver more efficient, effective outcomes in serving the world’s most vulnerable people
QlikTech, (NASDAQ: QLIK) a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), announced that its global corporate social responsibility program, Change Their World, has awarded 50 grants in 18 countries on 6 continents since launching in February 2010. Nonprofit organisations can apply for a QlikView Change Their World grant to receive free QlikView licenses, deployment and training to help them gain visibility into data sources that can accelerate outcomes, connect donors with recipients, and make their good work better. Change Their World’s growth proves that QlikView is opening up infinite possibilities for advancing causes for the greater good.

Humanitarian and community-based grant recipients range from those that:
• Support those impacted by AIDS: HopeHIV (UK) and Star for Life (Africa)
• Help the poor: Christian Revival Centre (Uganda), World Vision (in APAC and US), and
Caritas Spain
• Promote and defend children’s rights: Plan International Spain and Plan Norge
(Norway)
• Empower women and girls in Africa: Zabuntu Zambia
• Provide community services: Darussafaka Cemiyeti (services for orphans in Turkey),
Handicap International (services for the disabled in Germany), SHEKEL (special needs services in Israel), Sunshine Inc (services for disadvantaged and special needs children in US), and Haus der Barmherzigkeit (care for the elderly in Germany)
• Provide emergency support: Huntingdon County Emergency Management Agency
(US) and Swedish Sea Rescue

“We are thrilled with the momentum of our Change Their World grant program,” said Lars Björk, CEO at QlikTech. “In tandem with an overwhelming response from QlikTech partners and employees, we have created a powerful community of giving that is empowering organisations at the forefront of charitable causes with an effective solution that allows them to focus on and carry out their good work.”

Additional organisations that are leveraging QlikView grants include:
• Doctors Without Borders (Sweden) is an international humanitarian medical organisation with the mission to save lives and alleviate suffering. The organisation’s most valuable use of QlikView has been to visualize a five-year perspective, allowing them to compare the past to the future to more strategically make campaign decisions.

• KIPP New Orleans, the Knowledge Is Power Program, (USA) is a national network of free open-enrollment college preparatory schools dedicated to preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and life. KIPP New Orleans deployed QlikView to over 190 teachers who are now able to input data about each student classroom performance, analyse it, and then quickly act on it.

• HOPEHIV (United Kingdom) is helping some 50,000 vulnerable children and young people in 26 partner organizations across sub-Saharan Africa. Through its use of QlikView, HOPEHIV is starting to gauge how effective and efficient its fundraising strategies are. to make better decisions about how to allocate critical funds.

• The Shift Project (France), a think tank centered on climate change and energy issues, required a tool that allowed users to not only analyse but visualize global energy statistics. The organisation integrated QlikView into its data portal, and has been able to create a user-friendly source of improved data for the public as well as implement QlikView in human resources.

• The Philadelphia Youth Network (USA) is a workforce development organization for local youth. PYN deployed QlikView to support its finance, workforce development, student payroll, and student activities departments. In employment costs alone PYN has been able to save to $30,000-$75,000 a year.

• AIDS Accountability International (Sweden) holds its stakeholder’s accountable through rating tools to increase transparency and empower advocacy for an improved response to AIDS. AAI launched the “Workplace Scorecard” which enables companies to monitor and benchmark their HIV/AIDS strategies and activities in the workplace. QlikView is used to help aggregate the data collected from the various organisations, identifying which need to improve their initiatives.
Philanthropic organisations interested in applying for a Change Their World grant for free QlikView software and services can visit http://www.qlikview.com/changetheirworld.