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Tag: award

  • IFA 2009: IDAPT Presents Universal Desktop Charger for All Devices

    VIDEO INTERVIEW. At IFA 2009 in Berlin, Biz-News.com reporters interviewed Jacques Giribet, CEO & Founder of IDAPT.

    He showed us the company’s star product – a universal desktop charger that allows to charge several portable devices (such as mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, PDA notebooks, GPS, Bluetooth devices, game consoles, etc.) at the same time, through a system of interchangeable tips. According to the company, it’s compatible with over 3000 devices.

    The IDAPT has been nominated for Plus X Award as one of the most innovative products at IFA 2009.

    IDAPT is the concept of INOITULOS, the high tech start-up company located in Barcelona.

    Introduced to the market in 2006, the Universal Charger is now available in 25 countries on 6 continents in electronics and department stores such as MediaMarkt, Wal-Mart, Carrefour or Orange shops.

    In 2008 IDAPT won “HEC Start-up of the Year” award from HEC Paris. It was also designated an “Innovative Enterprise” by Barcelona Activa during the Mobile World Congress 2009.

  • Vopium Picks Up Innovation Award; Extends App to iPhone


    Vopium has become the latest mobile VoIP provider to introduce an iPhone application.

    The addition to its supported handsets comes as the company was named winner of this year’s European Mobile VoIP Technology Innovation Award by Frost & Sullivan.

    The annual award is presented by the growth consulting company to the company that has demonstrated technological superiority within its industry.

    Luke Thomas, programme manager with Frost & Sullivan, said that by offering a cost-effective service, Vopium was able to enhance customer loyalty and confidence in its applications.

    He said this had enabled the firm to create a sustainable competitive advantage over other mobile VoIP providers.

    "Considering that Wi-Fi is not as ubiquitous as cellular networks today, Vopium has also made provisions for users to automatically connect to a 3G network when Wi-Fi is not available within a particular location," he said.

    Vopium has expanded rapidly in the last six months, launching its free software programme using mobile VoIP and Wi-Fi technology to reduce the cost of international phone calls in 16 countries, including the UK, Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain.

    Tanveer Sharif, Vopium’s CEO

    The company also recently became the first mobile VoIP provider to offer mobile backup – a free service which allows Vopium customers to store their address book contacts and calendar securely online.

    Vopium’s iPhone app is now available in the App Store. Users will receive 30 minutes of free calls and 30 text messages to get started.

    Tanveer Sharif, Vopium’s CEO, said support was being extended to the iPhone to enable "millions of consumers and businesses to transform the powerful mobile device into the only solution they’ll ever need to call the world at a fraction of traditional mobile operator costs".

  • Restorepoint Winner of Storage-biz.news' Product of the Year Award


    Tadasoft’s RestorePoint integrated hardware and software back-up solution is the winner of storage-biz.news’ Product of the Year 2008 award.

    With 45 per cent of the nominations, the solution for network administrators was the clear winner in a field that included Fujitsu, Dell, Compellent, Brioo, Akorri and cloud storage specialists Asankya.

    RestorePoint automatically backs-up and stores the configuration of your network devices and restores it when needed.

    The solution has established itself as a vendor-independent appliance and Tadasoft says it is the first product to address this "commonly overlooked" issue.

    Its simplicity is a major selling factor – it is managed from one convenient central location with an easy to use web interface.

    In collecting the most votes RestorePoint also got some strong endorsements from readers.

    One voter described RestorePoint as "unique", stressing the appliance-based solution’s ability to automatically backup configs from multi-vendor devices.

    "It will also alert the admin if any change has been made to the config and detail this change," said the storage-biz.news reader.

    "The admin can then on the fly roll back the config by restoring the master copy template or one of the other back ups from a previous hour/day/week/month."

    Another factor that garnered support was the fact RestorePoint supports numerous devices, including Cisco, Brocade, Juniper, Blue Coat, Proofpoint and HP Procurve.

    While cost and ease of use were highlighted, one voter pointed to RestorePoint’s ability to increase network management productivity.

    "It can also help towards gaining or maintaining the complex PCI DSS compliance standard," said the voter.

    Among the other nominations, Dell-EqualLogic’s PS Series of virtualized iSCSI SAN were singled out for attention.

    They were described as the clear leader in the midrange (1-500TB) iSCSI SAN space – a market that includes EMC, NetApp, IBM and Hitachi.

    Areas where the PS Series impressed included ease of use, flexibility, performance and overall value.

    Compellent’s SAN was also highly recommended, not least for its space reclamtion offer and being the only SAN in the market with Automated ILM.

    Storage-biz.news would like to thank everyone who took the effort to nominate a product and to cast a vote.

  • Cypress Communication's Frank Grillo Wins voip-biz.news' Person of the Year Award


    Frank Grillo, Cypress Communication’s executive vice president of marketing, is the winner of the voip-biz.news’ Person of the Year award.

    In nominating him for the title, the telecoms professional was described as a "visionary executive" and "innovative thinker" with "technical acumen".

    Grillo joined Cypress Communications in August of 2005 and was responsible for taking C4 IP, Cypress’ hosted VoIP and hosted unified communications solution, from inception to launch.

    Praising Grillo’s handling of the process, a voter said: "C4 IP is a technically challenging configuration and took Frank Grillo’s visionary leadership, technical acumen and foresight to launch.

    "It is the only integration of two traditionally disparate platforms: the carrier class softswitch, Nortel CS 2000, with the powerful multimedia server, MCS 5200.

    "With the successful integration of these platforms, Cypress became the only company in the USA, and only one of three in the world, to accomplish this feat.

    "To date, the C4 IP solution has won 10 awards for product innovation, and under Grillo’s leadership, C4 IP now has over 6,000 installed seats and is credited with the largest hosted VoIP/unified communications installation in the US."

    Prior to joining Cypress, Grillo was senior vice president of business services for Z-Tel and senior vice president of global business markets for MCI WorldCom.

    From 1995 to 2000 he was vice-president of marketing for LDDS.

    Voip-biz.news would like to thank everyone who took the effort to nominate a product and to cast a vote.

  • MyGlobalTalk and IPsmarx's SIP-based Calling Card Platform Share voip-biz.news Product of the Year Award


    Two innovative products dominated voting to share the honours in voip-biz.news’ Product of the Year 2008 competition.

    With 33 per cent of the nominations, MyGlobalTalk’s VoIP calling solution earned praise for its sound quality and call rates, as well as features such as no contract being required, no connection fees and no minimums.

    Launched as a BETA version in June 2008, MyGlobalTalk now works on any cell phone, land line or computer.

    The company, which is part of i2Telecom, is preparing a widgets launch which will enable MyGlobalTalk to be used from Outlook, iGoogle or Facebook.

    In the many comments of recommendation, voters also highlighted customer service and ease of use as reasons for their satisfaction with MyGlobalTalk.

    Sharing this year’s award is IPsmarx’s SIP-based calling card platform, which eliminates the need for a VoIP gateway and PSTN lines using DID technology.

    Fully over IP, the calling card solution offers a range of advanced features.

    So much so that the product was described by voters as "the platform of the future", "user friendly" and having a "great technical support team".

    One reader said: "I am extremely impressed with IPsmarx’s ability to think outside the box and eliminate common problems that exist in the calling card space."

    To take this year’s award, the joint winners saw off a large field which included well-known names including Mobivox, Ifbyphone, XConnect, Skype, Fring, ShoreTel, Cypress communications and HelloSoft.

    Voip-biz.news would like to thank everyone who took the effort to nominate a product and to cast a vote.

  • OnRelay's Ivar Plahte Wins Smartphone-biz.news' Person of the Year Award


    A true visionary, a trend spotter, truly innovative and the driving force behind OnRelay.

    Just some of the plaudits from those that voted OnRelay’s CEO and co-founder Ivar Plahte as smartphone-biz.news’ Person of the Year 2008.

    In second place was Ofer Tziperman, president and co-founder of LocatioNet, the mapping and location applications company.

    As CEO of OnRelay for the past seven years, Plahte has established himself as a key thought leader in the Fixed Mobile Convergence space.

    Prior to OnRelay, Plahte was director of IP telephony at Telenor, where he created and was the general manager of the Telecom over IP business unit.

    Ivar Plahte, CEO OnRelay

    His team produced several world-first launches and was among the first public operators worldwide to establish a voice over IP based revenue stream.

    Before Telenor, Plahte was Ericsson’s global product manager for IP Services.

    He has a BSc in Electrical Engineering and an MSc in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

    Voters who recommended Plahte spoke of his vision and drive.

    "Ivar has been at the forefront of Mobile telephony for his entire career," said one reader.

    "He founded OnRelay to develop cellular FMC and only recently has the market managed to get over the WiFi hype and start to take the cellular option seriously.

    "Ivar has been there all along, and now has his company well positioned to capture the market as it looks for the right solution."

    Others described him as a "telecoms pioneer" whose vision predicted FMC shift back in 2000 and did something about it – "picking the right tech and staying at it".

    The last word must go to one supporter, who simply said "he rocks". Praise indeed.

    The runner-up, Ofer Tziperman, has over a decade of extensive experience in international business and in the marketing of high-tech products.

    LocatioNet provides mapping and location enabled applications to tier one telecom and defense customers around the world.

    Under Tziperman’s guidance the company has become one of the leading technology providers in the LBS and C4I markets, with an international presence in Europe, USA, Latin America and Asia.

    Prior to establishing LocatioNet, he served as VP Marketing for OTI, a public high-tech company listed in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and NASDAQ that specializes in contactless smart card technology.

    Tziperman played a major role in turning OTI from a young start-up company to an international organization with subsidiaries and front offices around the world.

    An attorney who practiced commercial and business law, he holds an LLB degree from the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University and is a graduate of the Israeli Naval Officers Academy.

  • Final Chance to Nominate Storage Person/Product Of The Year


    The new year is firmly underway and time is running out for you to submit your nominations and votes for storage.biz-news’ 2008 Man and Product of the Year awards.

    But with voting expected to be close in both award categories there’s plenty of opportunity for latecomers to make their mark.

    In the product section, submissions can be made for anything storage-related that has particularily impressed in 2008.

    Among the leading contenders in this category are Compellent (SAN with automated ILM), Akorri (BalancePoint), TADASoft (RestorePoint), Dell (EqualLogic), Texas Memory Systems (RamSan-440) and Brioo (Brioo Live Backup).

    EMC also gets nominated for a couple of its products – the CLARiiON AX4 networked storage solution and its Enterprise Flash Drives.

    The former is described simply as "mind blowing". Heady stuff.

    For Person of the Year, StorageRap’s Marc Farley is among the contenders.

    He is praised for his insightful and witty handling of some of the "hot button issues" facing the industry.

    Also up there is Adam Fox, a senior systems engineer at NetApp.

    But there’s still time for other names to be put forward.

    But please don’t delay – we need your product or person nominations before the end of January.

  • Final Chance to Nominate HDTV Person/Product Of The Year


    The new year may well be firmly underway but there’s still plenty of time to submit your nominations and votes for hdtv.biz-news’ 2008 Man and Product of the Year awards.

    With voting expected to be close in both award categories there’s plenty of opportunity for latecomers to make their mark.

    In the product section, submissions can be made for any hardware launched in 2008 that has particularily impressed.

    Alternatively, nominations can be made for anything else HDTV-related – from content providers to software applications.

    For the Person of the Year, there can be no shortage of likely candidates – whether its an innovative industry leader or a colleague who made waves in 2008.

    But please don’t delay – we need your product or person nominations before the end of January.

  • Nominations Open For The Outstanding Smartphone Person and Product Of 2008


    With 2008 fast drawing to a close biz-news.com is seeking YOUR help in choosing outstanding candidates for the titles of Man/Woman of the Year and Product/Service of the Year.

    We would like you to nominate an individual and/or product/service that you feel has contributed greatly to the Smartphone sector over the past 12 months.

    The winner will be selected from the nominations submitted by our readers – professionals and technology enthusiasts in the industry.

    Obviously, as this is a crowd-sourcing survey, we need your participation.

    Spreading word of this survey to friends and colleagues will also ensure a wider participation in the poll and will give a much more accurate result.

    If you have more than one nomination for either category you can make multiple submissions – but you can only vote once for any person or product.

    We will publish the results in early 2009 and share the raw data with the community. (Personal information about contributors will not be disclosed).

    After a year like 2008 there are plenty of good candidates – so please give it some thought and send your Man/Woman and/or Product nominations to us.

  • Nominations Open For The Outstanding HDTV Person and Product Of 2008


    With 2008 fast drawing to a close biz-news.com is seeking YOUR help in choosing outstanding candidates for the titles of Man/Woman of the Year and Product/Service of the Year.

    We would like you to nominate an individual and/or product/service that you feel has contributed greatly to the HDTV sector over the past 12 months.

    The winner will be selected from the nominations submitted by our readers – professionals and technology enthusiasts in the industry.

    Obviously, as this is a crowd-sourcing survey, we need your participation.

    Spreading word of this survey to friends and colleagues will also ensure a wider participation in the poll and will give a much more accurate result.

    If you have more than one nomination for either category you can make multiple submissions – but you can only vote once for any person or product.

    We will publish the results in early 2009 and share the raw data with the community. (Personal information about contributors will not be disclosed).

    After a year like 2008 there are plenty of good candidates – so please give it some thought and send your Man/Woman and/or Product nominations to us.