Business News Holding

Author: admin

  • 1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube

    YouTube has announced that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution “is on its way.”

    Starting next week, YouTube’s HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

    “As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience,” YouTube software engineer Billy Biggs said in a blog post.

    The company also announced they are in the process of re-encoding all the 1080p videos users have already uploaded.

    YouTube will highlight top HD video snippets on its homepage.

    Here is the 1080p sample video

  • Bringing the Best of the Web to the Phone: Interview with David Mannl, Mippin

    As society becomes more mobile, publishers are looking for ways to make their content accessible to as many people as possible.

    While there are still some that have barely recognized the web as a viable marketplace for their audience, those that have adopted the mobile trends are quickly seeing changes in how their customer base interacts with the products/services offered and shared both on the standard web, and thru mobile technologies.

    Mippin is one such company that specializes in helping users attain access to mobile content, and helping publishers mobilize their content for easy access for their audience.

    Mippin, backed by Refresh Mobile, came to life in 2007. David Mannl, Head of Creative and co-founder of Mippin, states that he and his partner said, "let’s ditch the whole client business for the time being’ and focus only on mobile apps and that’s when Mippin got started and launched as a product."

    He also notes that when they started back in 2007 there were hardly any mobile internet sites around, and left a huge need for publishers and users to have mobile versions of all the web content they could.

    How large is Mippin? "We have 76,000 sites in our system, all of them categorized into various levels of interest," answers co-founder of Mippin David Mannl.

    David Mannl

    Currently there are two ways to mobilize your content via Mippin. The first one is on your mobile phone; just enter the URL into the search box and on the fly Mippin will go out to that website, looks for a RSS content feed, and then creates a mobile version of it which works perfectly across 3,000 devices.

    As for the second option, if you do the same on your computer over at mippin.com, under publisher or blogger tab you go into a flow where the user can do the same thing. Mippin will basically find the RSS feed and then the user can upload their logo, define a color scheme and enter their ad mobile ID. It’s a fairly simple and streamlined process and Mippin has seen much success with.

    TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

    Mippin for publishers

    For a publisher the approach is a simple solution. The publisher comes to the site to mobilize their web content, does not have to have any program skills whatsoever because its a one size fits all solution. You typically will find two types of publishers the first one is where we are the primary mobile solution.

    This means Mippin will work with a lot of blog networks that want to have a wide variety of blogs over 30 to 40 sites and for them its a complete and total package. Each site takes about five minutes to set up and that’s mainly uploading the colors, defining the branding and then they have this huge array of mobile sites. We also have publishers that use Mippin like an additional distribution channel.

    David Mannl shares an example, "we have an agreement with the New York Times and we are allowed to republish their content as well, but of course they already have their own mobile site. For them they have their own platform, they use us as an additional distribution mechanism and then some publishers use us as their only mobile solution."

    Mippin for advertisers

    There are two tiers for advertisers. If you host your ad on Mippin, you keep 100% of the ad revenue and that solution is offered with Ad More because it’s the easiest to implement. An advertiser goes in, there’s a little monetize tab in that mobilization’s log, you put in your own AdMore information and from that moment on Ad More send you money every month as soon as you are over a certain threshold.

    Alternatively, we have what is called Mippin Premium Publishers. For these more premium advertising, Mippin will actually take a little cut from the ad revenue because they have to interact with the ad providers and make sure they always get the best campaigns.

    They also make sure there is more targeted advertising so they will give a lot of information about the site to the advertising network so they can insert more relevant ads into the system or into the partners’ site as well.

    Demographic of users

    The majority of users on the Mippin network are in America, followed by the UK. Demographic wise Mippin does not collect any data with regards to gender or age or income. What we do see are the devices the user is using and the location where they are coming from. Mippin tracks how long users are staying on the system, but they do not collect any more data from the user because its just a mobile internet site and they don’t think its really necessary to register this service.

    "They just want to quickly access every time they have spare time," David Mannl responds with regard to what the end user is looking for.

    What’s interesting about what Mippin can see is what sites are more popular in each country. Mippin has a full time editorial staff that picks the best sites and puts them into categories based on popularity in the country you live in. So if you go to a category on Mippin in America, you will see different sites and different ordering then if you would do the same in the UK.

    Mippin uses a crowd source approach for editorial ordering of content. David notes that one of our biggest successes in America is wrestling, which they were completely surprised about. While in the UK, it’s a lot of tabloids and gossip and of course football (soccer).

    Mippin replacing traditional computing?

    David notes that especially in developing markets where they don’t have access to a laptop, growth has exploded. In Saudi Arabia the average time a user is on Mippin is as high as 20 minutes and that’s just the average. So it’s easy to see, for them, it’s the only way to access the internet. Compared to the UK, where a user will spend 8 minutes on average, and America, 7 to 9 minutes.

    It may be also because Mippin has one of the biggest selection of mobilized content out there. They’ve also built in recommendations into the system which will regularly recommend new content. You can connect with other users on the service, they can recommend you new content, so there are many ways to discover content on Mippin.

    In cultures where desktops and laptops are scarce, services like Mippin seem prime for growth. In cities where many of the populace are constantly on the go, David sees explosive growth continuing, hoping that their service reach more and more people every year. It should be noted that competition in the mobile space is not as it was back in 2007.

    Today competition or attention is fierce and the market is quickly growing. Mippin is now just one of many services that offer mobilized content, but so far David sees the growth of his network remaining strong.

    You can follow David on Twitter @flashy1980. More specifically if you are a user of Mippin, David prides himself on the face that users can always submit feedback to the company for future improvements.

    "Every page on Mippin has a feedback box and we actually read that feedback everyday because that’s part of our company DNA. We listen to our users because we want to keep them entertained and they are what help to make this service better and if we make the service better, we can entertain them better. So there’s a lot of really great dialogue we’re seeing. We are also getting a lot of feedback through the ad store. Its really good to now have the tools to stay in contact with your users and not just be a faceless company," David says proudly.

  • iSuppli: Does Google’s PND App Signal the Swan Song of Dedicated Devices?

    For European Portable Navigation Device (PND) manufacturer TomTom and U.S.-based Garmin, Oct. 29, 2009 will indeed be remembered as the day everything changed.

    “Google’s announcement that it plans to launch turn-by-turn navigation on the Android platform would be enough of a headache in itself, but giving it away for free? Sound the alarm!,” says Richard Robinson, iSuppli analyst.

    There has to be some sympathy for PND and navigation device vendors that have spent the last year redefining their businesses in the light of the economic shock that crunched the world economy beginning in the fourth quarter of 2008.

    “But clearly, the announcement from Google is a bit like arriving at work one day to find one of the biggest brands in the world has moved in next door, and is offering a version of your product to consumers—for free,” Robinson says.

    According to him, what is concerning is that TomTom and other EU-based navigation providers are heavily dependant on the success of their hardware and software products, while for Google, this product will represent yet another very small cog in a much more complex machine that is being built to increase the footfall to their paid advertising.

    “Ironically – he continues – the hang over that awaits existing navigation providers is a slice of history repeating itself. Back in 2004, when TomTom released the first PND into the European market, heads were bowed; particularly in the boardrooms of the Japanese electronics manufacturers that dominated the in-dash navigation market.”

    He claims Japanese Tier-1 companies such as Alpine, Panasonic and Pioneer, as well as Harman Becker in Europe, were simply not able to counter the threat from the much cheaper and more flexible portable device sector that was taking hold in Europe. “While the rest of the world looked on, these new kids on the block cleaned up during the next two to three years, with triple-digit growth the norm for all PND suppliers.”

    “So here we are again, but this time the game has changed for good. Clearly, the take-it-or-leave-it nature of free application downloads will do nothing to boost the image of navigation as a smart product. So it’s no surprise that both TomTom and Garmin’s shares have been badly hit since the announcement on October 28th,” Robinson adds.

    iSuppli analyst thinks both companies during 2009 have indeed staged good recoveries in their fortunes—and share prices—but this is move by Google such a disrupter, that it is difficult to see how these device vendors can add real value in the face of the launch of a free app. “No doubt the initial experience will be less rich compared to a dedicated device, but this will change. And it’s not as though Google will be overloaded with complaints about a free app”.

    According to Robinson, the question now is: Will the PND platform become a footnote in history—a one-hit-wonder?

    “Clearly the PND vendors would like us to think there is more in the locker, but it’s difficult to see the next steps for this dedicated device, particularly in the maturing markets of Europe and the United States,” he concludes.

  • Broadcom Offers Open Source HD Voice

    Broadcom announced that it is offering its BroadVoice family of voice codecs royalty-free and without any licensing fees.

    “As a direct response to customer demand for advanced, high-quality voice solutions and development tools”, Broadcom is releasing its wideband and narrowband BroadVoice codecs in both floating-point and fixed-point C code as open source software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

    According to the company, by eliminating the royalties and licensing fees (required by competitive solutions), Broadcom is driving a cost effective transition to HD VoIP applications by enhancing the quality of voice transmissions enabling a higher quality audio experience.

    The availability of BroadVoice source code, under an open source software license, provides the industry with maximum flexibility in how it can be deployed and has the potential of addressing a wide range of next generation voice-related applications.

    "We are seeing an increase in the number of requests for HD voice support from service providers who want to differentiate their telephony services from their competition. By offering high performance and highly efficient BroadVoice voice codecs royalty-free, we are enabling manufacturers and service providers to transition to HD VoIP as a means to significantly improve their customers’ audio experience,"said Dan Marotta, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group.

    Broadcom developed the BroadVoice family of voice codecs with two variants including a 32 kb/s version called BroadVoice32 for wideband (HD) speech sampled at 16 kHz, and a 16 kb/s version called BroadVoice16 for narrowband telephone-bandwidth speech sampled at 8 kHz.

    The company claims BroadVoice advanced voice codecs reduce the latency, complexity and bandwidth usage on a wide range of wideband and narrowband voice applications including voice-over-cable, voice-over-DSL, Ethernet IP phones, Wi-Fi VoIP phones and software-based VoIP client solutions. Additionally, for VoIP applications, distortion and echo are also reduced.

    BroadVoice is available on Broadcom’s cable, DSL and VoIP system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions.

    When standardized by SCTE and ANSI, the BroadVoice16 and BroadVoice32 codecs are called BV16 and BV32, respectively. BV16 is a standard codec in PacketCable 1.5, PacketCable 2.0, ANSI/SCTE 24-21 2006, and ITU-T Recommendation J.161 specifications. BV32 is a standard codec in PacketCable 2.0, ANSI/SCTE 24-23 2007, and ITU-T Recommendation J.361 specifications.

    BroadVoice16 and BroadVoice32 have very similar codec structures. Both variants share most of the algorithm modules so when implemented together, substantial code sharing and memory reduction can be achieved.

    Now Broadcom is providing both the floating-point and fixed-point C source code of BroadVoice16 and BroadVoice 32 under an open source license (LGPL version 2.1) and on a royalty-free basis.

  • Bringing Content to Cross-Media Platforms: Interview with Thomsen Ghebresellassie, Yukoono

    The digital age has changed everything we’ve known in traditional media, how it’s distributed, but most importantly, how it’s consumed.

    The world is still surging in a sort of Technology Renaissance where innovation is taking off, long standing habits are changing, and media is becoming as consumable as our snacking habits, bit by bit, on the go as much as we are.

    One such company that is ahead of the curve is Yukoono, a digital content portal that is as adaptable as the user is.

    Sales Director of Yukoono, Thomsen Ghebresellassie states that “The idea of Yukoono came up last year in April when the CEO thought about why a user should only have access to certain types of content and certain type of media? If you are browsing on the website, you have to visit several websites in order to get news, videos on YouTube, or a different application in order to get access to content. So we came up with the idea of having one platform which you can think of a big shopping mall.”

    Thomsen Ghebresellassie

    A shopping mall of sorts is what Yukoono became. The application stands as a global portal with access to all content due to partnerships based on shared distribution. Each of these “stores in the mall” are called channels and partners offer up their content to be accessible via these channels increasing exposure, visibility, and consumption of what they are creating.

    As sales director for Yukoono, the task of global responsibility for product placement and sales teams is a daunting task, but Thomsen relies on his years of experience in the music industry to help him build Yukoono’s reputation as a recognizable brand familiar to all.

    The Platform Explained

    The very beneficial thing about this platform is that Yukoono guarantees the user a convergence of mobile app and TV. If you’re watching a movie on your handset while you’re traveling, come back home, you turn on your TV or your laptop, you log in and you can watch the movie where you just stopped, it’s bookmarked.

    This is a simple explanation about the benefits of the platform. The concept was to create an information entertainment platform which you can access from different platforms – mobile, web and TV (3 screens).

    Due to the fact that we are now living in an area where mobile content is extremely necessary and more popular, people are using their iPhones, for example, to access even more applications online.

    “Facebook for example, the social community, everyone is updating their status via mobile phone. It’s just a matter of time where there’s also access to different video on demand platforms where they can watch movies. As you can see, in the Asian market so far the user is far far away from where we are right now, we’re just in the [infant] stage, Thomsen says of those consuming digital content.

    Interestingly, it’s been shown that the user right now in the Asian market is spending two and a half hours a day watching movies and its content on his mobile. Thomsen is very correct when we look at how certain cultures, such as our Asian counterparts, expect to consume their media.

    The mobile industry, the mobile internet is getting more and more important for delivering, accessing news and information for the user.

    Yukoono Has Focus

    “I believe that everyone is focusing on the iPhone right now. It is one of the most popular handsets on the market right now but if you see the coverage from a global base, iPhone is just one out of two and a half thousand handsets worldwide. So the focus on our platform is not the iPhone, its nice to have, but we are attempting to provide service to more regular handsets on the market,” asserts Thomsen.

    It’s a known fact that the iPhone has dominated much of the Western world in terms of usage and infiltration into our culture, but worldwide, there are many more phones to take advantage of. Developing a mobile platform is very expensive and not something that every mobile platform company is willing to spend the time and resources to build out.

    This is where Yukoono steps in as the aggregation and accessibility across all three screens. It’s a process that is simplified for all the labels, especially for the publishers.

    Quality Encourages People to Move

    Recently at IFA Berlin, this past September, big TV manufacturers were displaying their new screens, unique platforms all connecting to services such as YouTube, Twitter, and other social network platforms. Thomsen shares that a big question at the event was “Why don’t you link?” He admits it’s a fair question, but the answer is equally simple.

    “It’s a simple fact that if you link to different websites that means you don’t have any influence about the quality of the content. As you know on YouTube where a user generated content has to be uploaded, quality cannot be guaranteed. You don’t have any influence on that and we want to guarantee 100% HD quality for our users. The second is thinking on TV platform, not only are the younger users using it to watch TV, but also the older generation. So if you link to different websites that means that the user has to adjust himself all the time to the navigation structure of these different platforms and this is going to be quite difficult.”

    That’s why Yukoono worked hard to have one surface in all different platforms so no matter where the user logs in, it all is set up you can browse through all the different platforms and it’s guaranteed to all be the same.

    “I cannot believe that five years ago that you had to be sitting on the laptop or even writing and sending letters by hand. The communication is getting shorter and shorter and it has to be more quicker and faster and as you can see there are a lot of online platforms, storage especially where you don’t have to keep things on your laptop anymore or on your mobile device. You just put it online and you have access to it all different ways,” Thomsen shares.

    This digital revolution is truly driving us to change our habits and ensuring quality encourages the prospective audience to trust the platforms and make that change. There’s no telling where we will be within the next five or ten years, but there’s no doubt that most of our life interactions will be taking place online.

    The line between online and the privatization of our own lives, work and stuff, is melting together. There is no difference between what we say to our friends or what we say to the world on the internet.

  • Report: Worldwide VoIP Market Grew to $20.7 Billion; Strong Demand Continues

    Infonetics Research released its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report, which tracks business and residential/SOHO voice over IP services and includes a North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix that analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the VoIP business services market.

    The research shows IP connectivity services currently make up about a third of total VoIP business service revenue, growing to 40% of the total by 2013 (managed IP PBX services and hosted VoIP and UC services make up the balance).

    The current sweet spot of the North American IP Centrex market is small business (those with fewer than 100 employees). Roughly two-thirds of all IP Centrex seats sold in the first half of 2009 went to small businesses.

    The report shows that demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow even as spending in other communication areas tightens. For the first half of 2009, the worldwide VoIP services market grew to $20.7 billion. Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008.

    “On the business VoIP side, while managed IP PBX revenue growth has slowed in line with IP PBX shipments, we are expecting IP Centrex and hosted UC service revenue to grow 26% year-over-year in 2009,” explains Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

    While the largest VoIP services opportunities are in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), demand for VoIP services is growing fast in Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America.

    For the first half of 2009, Japan’s NTT, France Telecom, and Comcast in North America retain their leadership as the world’s largest residential VoIP service providers, together holding nearly 20% of the world’s VoIP subscribers

    Infonetics forecasts the number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers will reach 225 million by 2013.

  • Empirix VoIP Monitoring Now Avaya Compliant

    Empirix, a provider of VoIP monitoring solutions, announced that its products are now compliant with key contact center solutions from Avaya.

    The Empirix Proactive Communications Assurance solution is now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with Avaya AuraTM Communication Manager on Avaya S8700 servers with MCC1 Media Gateways and Avaya Proactive Contact with PG230RM.

    The company says this solution gives organizations the ability to test their outbound contact center from end-to-end thus enabling companies to ensure performance, a high quality end-user experience and compliance with government regulations.

    Empirix is a Platinum member of the Avaya DevConnect program—an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company’s investment in its network.

    As a Platinum member of the program, Empirix is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab in Basking Ridge, N.J. There a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant.

    Doing so ensures businesses can confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure—speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs, the company says.

    “Earning the Avaya compliance accreditation is important because it gives customers a cost effective, comprehensive approach to ensuring the performance of the Avaya solutions in their unique environments from end-to-end,” said Tim Moynihan, vice president, marketing for the enterprise business unit at Empirix.

    “Combined with innovative products, such as Avaya Proactive Contact and Avaya Aura, Empirix Proactive Communications Assurance gives organizations confidence that their business-critical outbound infrastructures will deliver the most business value in the least amount of startup time,” he added.

    According to Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya, the companies that are members Avaya’s DevConnectprogram are able to use Intelligent Communications to connect employees and customers to information from wherever they are, over whatever device they have available – “getting more out of their multivendor network and delivering new value to their bottom line.”

    Widely acclaimed Empirix Hammer Test Engine, with more than 30 patents, is the acknowledged global standard for validating the quality of IP networks, systems and applications.

  • Compuware Expands SaaS Portfolio With Gomez Acquisition

    Compuware, software and consulting provider, announced it has completed its acquisition of Gomez, one of the two major forces in web application monitoring services that has a leading SaaS solution for desktop/laptop web application monitoring.

    “This is a very interesting and potentially game changing move in both the end user experience monitoring and the application performance management (APM) markets,” Jean-Pierre Garbani wrote on the Forrester Blog for Vendor Strategy Professionals.

    The closure of the $295 million cash transaction brings about 270 new employees to Compuware, including the complete Gomez leadership team. Jaime Ellertson will remain with the organization and serve as President of Gomez, the Web Performance Division of Compuware.

    "IDC believes the Gomez/Compuware marriage is a good match with little overlap and lots of upside," wrote Mary Johnston Turner, Tim Grieser and Melinda-Carol Ballou of IDC in a report titled Compuware Expands SaaS Portfolio With Gomez Acquisition.

    "With the completion of the acquisition, Compuware will be able to address a customer’s full range of in-house and internet-based application performance management requirements on an end-to-end basis," the report says.

    Compuware will retain the Gomez brand, technology portfolio and business model while moving purposefully to achieve additional technical, sales and marketing synergies. The firm says they expect the acquisition to be operationally accretive this fiscal year.

    The combination of the companies’ significant SaaS revenues makes Compuware the world’s leading SaaS infrastructure management provider, as the company claims.

    "We’re thrilled to welcome the Gomez team to Compuware," said Compuware President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Paul.

    "Together, Compuware and Gomez will-through a solution that features rapid time-to-value, ease of use and real-time answers-give IT and business executives the optimal application performance they need to drive brand image, customer loyalty and revenue."

    Gomez, the Web performance division of Compuware, provides the platform of Web application experience management solutions used by organizations to optimize the performance, availability and quality of their Web and mobile applications, and proactively identify business-impacting issues.

    The on-demand Gomez platform integrates solutions for Web load testing, Web performance management, cross-browser testing and Web performance business analysis that test and measure Web and mobile applications from the "outside-in" – across all users, browsers, devices, and geographies – using a global network of over 100,000 locations.

    According to the company, over 2,500 customers worldwide, ranging from small companies to large enterprises – including 12 of the top 20 most visited US Web sites – use Gomez solutions to “increase revenue, build brand loyalty, and decrease costs.”

  • Taking Technology to Higher Level: Interview with Manoj Bhoola, Country Manager at HP

    Does your organisation need technology products, solutions and services that drive innovation and rapidly scale up or down to meet changing times?

    Well, look no further than HP, the world’s largest technology company, says Manoj Bhoola, Country Manager, HP Enterprise Severs, Storage and Networking, HP Enterprise business.

    HP has unleashed new products onto the market, among them HP Neoview Advantage, an enterprise data warehouse platform which supports real-time insight and decision making, allowing customers to respond to business events faster.

    This release offers dramatic improvements in perfomance, capacity, footprint and manageability, says Bhoola.

    HP Neoview Advantage is also designed to reduce the cost of ownership with industry-standard components and prebuilt, pretested configuration optimised for warehousing.

    Manoj Bhoola

    "The HP Neoview Advantage solution is flexible to be used for a very large data warehouse solution, as well as a data warehouse that is much smaller, but requires high through-put.

    "This is an enterprise solution based on our robust Non-Stop architecture within a bladed solution," says Bhoola.

    HP has also launched the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture, a solution which delivers a technology environment that rapidly adjusts to meet organisation’s changing needs.

    HP Converged Infrastructure addresses IT sprawl, the main cause of technology spend being focused on maintenance instead of innovation.

    "Technology is a fundamental contributor to business innovation," says Bhoola.

    "With HP’s portfolio of products, services and solutions, organisations can build technology environments that deliver the outcomes that matter today and tomorrow," he adds.

    For customers who do not want to build infrastrature themselves, HP Enterprise Services provides a full range of IT outsourcing services to deliver an HP Converged Infrastructure.

    Organisations can outsource all or part of their infrastructure based on their business needs.

    HP also offers flexible financing solutions for customers deploying an HP Converged Infrastructure through HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and life cycle asset management services subsidiary.

    HP Financial Services makes it easy for customers to deploy technology that meet their rapidly changing business needs.

    Asked if the global recession had anything to do with the timing of the launch of the new products, Bhoola said it was important for companies to be proactive to survive difficult times.

    "During an economic downturn organisations look towards all areas within their business to either reduce costs or find new innovative ways to increase profits.

    "HP has an ideal solution that will reduce costs by implementing a converged infrastructure, as well as make organisations data warehousing more effective by providing a solution that is built on their Non-Stop architecture with the flexibility of a bladed system," says Bhoola.

    New research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than 90 percent of business decision makers believe business cycles will continue to be unpredictable in the next few years. As a result, 80 percent recognise a need to be far more flexible in their approaches to business and technology.

    And given this situation, how is HP responding to ensure that it is always on top of the situation?

    "Products are continually innovated and updates are provided to meet certain business requirements.

    "HP’s solution offerings has evolved with the current unpredictable market conditions in mind, and launched products that will assist organisations to become more flexible to adjust to their business requirements.

    "Businesses more than ever need to have the ability to see around the corner, and a strong Business Intelligence (BI) solution will assist with this.

    "The HP Neoview Advantage will provide a robust infrastructure that will support these requirements," says Bhoola, who has a background in computer science and marketing and has been in the IT industry for over 25 years.

    Bhoola attributes HP’S success to continuous investment in its people and innovation.

    "Many organisations have reduced product lines to reduce costs and cut back on innovations.

    "HP continues to improve solution offerings to better optimise customer infrastructure by leveraging off of industry standards and providing unified management software to enable improved elasticity of customers’ infrastructure investment.

    "HP is unique in that they have continued to invest in innovation and continually update their product offerings responding to the market requirements," says Bhoola.

    Although the African continent is a huge growth area for HP, Bhoola says South Africa remains the major driving force of technology.

    "Many organisations still set up offices in South Africa and then launch their Africa business from SA. Doing business in Africa is becoming much easier in that the infrastructure is being addressed and matches many first world countries," adds Bhoola.

  • ZiiLABS Introduces 1080p Blu-ray Quality Handheld Media Processor

    ZiiLABS announced the ZMS-08, its 3rd generation media-rich applications processor that brings 1080p Blu-ray quality H.264 decode to low-power devices.

    ZMS-08 delivers the low-power, high performance processing required of next-generation connected devices such as web tablets, netbooks, connected TVs, video conferencing systems and home media hubs.

    ZiiLABS says the ZMS-08’s proven StemCell Computing array provides the media processing capabilities to deliver full HD 1080p high-profile H.264 video decode, simultaneous H.264 encode and decode at 720p, 1080p 24fps encode, accelerated OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics at up to 1 Gpixels/sec, 2D processing, compositing, image processing and advanced Xtreme Fidelity X-Fi Audio effects.

    With the low-power ARM Cortex processor running at up to 1GHz, the ZMS-08 is aimed at small form factor devices that enable content currently accessed via the PC to spread to mobile and low-energy devices.

    "Combining advanced ARM technology with their own media processing IP has enabled ZiiLABS to deliver the high performance and low-power consumption required to enable the next leap in the mobile internet revolution" said Ian Drew, EVP marketing at ARM.

    Full HD video playback at 1080p supporting H.264 High Profile at up to 40Mbps means users can experience Blu-ray quality video playback direct to their 1080p TV utilizing the integrated HDMI controller.

    Block Diagram

    Support for OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and 1 Gpixels/sec fill rate enable a new class of user experiences including enhanced user interfaces, PC-like 3D gaming and Adobe Flash 10.

    The tightly coupled 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 provides a secure, high performance main CPU that features a 256K L2 cache, NEON, TrustZone security technology and 1 GByte addressable RAM.

    According to the company, dual USB 2.0 OTG controllers with PHY and ULPI interfaces provide direct connection to USB hosts, peripherals and high-speed modems. Four HD video processing units support camera and display input and output processing with the integrated HDMI and Analog video encoders supporting HD-TV 1080p output at 60fps.

    The secure Boot ROM, three SDIO/MMC ports, UARTs, SPI, GPIO and 64-bit and 32-bit memory controller supporting mDDR and DDR2 at up to 333MHz provide the interfaces and memory bandwidth required for today’s media rich connected devices.

    The ZMS-08 is sampling to certain customers now and is scheduled for volume shipment in the 1st quarter of 2010. The chip is housed in a 13x13mm, 424-pin FBGA package.