BIZTECH

SLIIT partners IBM Sri Lanka

The Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), making IBM, the Sri Lankan arm of the global giant, the institute’s primary and preferred technology provider for software and IT services.

Country Manager, Academic Initiative, Developer Works and Globalization IBM Software India/South Asia Himanshu Goyal and President/CEO, SLIIT Professor Lalith Gamage.

The MoU was signed a few days back at the Institute’s Campus in Malabe with Country Manager, Academic Initiative, Developer Works and Globalization IBM Software India/South Asia Himanshu Goyal signing on behalf of IBM Software for India and South Asia and President/CEO, Professor Lalith Gamage representing SLIIT. Among the distinguished gathering were ten participants from IBM worldwide.

This is the first time that SLIIT has entered into a partnership of this magnitude with a service provider and the MoU is a significant milestone in its history illustrating the institute’s commitment to high calibre technology that keeps pace with emerging IT trends and developments. The MoU is not only for the IBM Software which will be provided for students to use and learn IBM software but also extends to training for all interested students of SLIIT.

Post training, IBM will also facilitate the certification process of all the interested students through a third party Prometric test which will help these students achieve the certification on the IBM softwares. IBM anticipates SLIIT to achieve 100 unique student certifications within one year of accomplishing the required criteria specified in the curriculum for 2009 and 2010. Software provided will be strictly used for non-commercial, academic use.

Speaking at the occasion, Goyal said: “IBM is pleased to enter into an agreement that will greatly uplift the IT standards in Sri Lanka through IBM certified trainers, faculty and student development programs that comes free of cost because IBM would like to be a partner in helping SLIIT to take the IT studies imparted to students being taken to a much higher level in Sri Lanka.”

Chairman of SLIIT Professor S. Karunaratne said: “SLIIT provides students with cutting edge educational resources and this is a vital step in strengthening our resources. Ours is the largest degree-awarding institute in Sri Lanka. The industry needs the manpower that we will produce with IBM’s assistance.”

Professor Lalith Gamage, said “This is a proud milestone for us as the premier degree awarding institute in IT in the country with over 4,000 students enrolled for our degree courses and professional development programs. Our endeavour to enhance our capability will provide the knowledge and expertise corporate companies need.”

Dialog, first to obtain PCMM-III Standard

Dialog Telekom announced its Certification of Compliance at Level III to the People Capability Maturity Model (People-CMM), becoming the first Sri Lankan company to achieve the prestigious international certification.

PCMM is an organisational change model, developed by the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. Dialog received certification at Maturity Level III for demonstrated compliance with the international standard, by way of establishing and maintaining best practices with respect to the management and development of its workforce in the sphere of service delivery.

Dialog is the first company in Sri Lanka to be assessed for PCMM Level III standard and now joins the league of top companies practising People-CMM across the globe, such as Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Citibank and Ericsson to name a few from the regional and global arena. This achievement reinforces Dialog’s continued commitment to develop and enhance skills and capabilities of its service personnel.

From a national perspective, the certification also brings to focus the capabilities of Sri Lankan Service Delivery professionals and the regional competitiveness of the country’s IT-Enabled Services (ITES) sector lead by SLASSCOM (Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies) of which Dialog is a member. In achieving PCMM Level III standard, Dialog was supported by SLASSCOM and the ICTA, both organisations being active in motivating and elevating Sri Lanka’s ITES/BPO sector to internationally competitive competency standards.

Microsoft, Yahoo! change search landscape

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft’s competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.

Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world’s favourite online destinations and Web products.

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. “Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides.

Advertisers will also benefit from the scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities, and mobile experiences.”

Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search.

With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.

Intel launches new Server Processors

Intel Corporation introduced 17 enterprise-class processors recently, led by the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series. They are Intel’s most revolutionary server processors since addressing the market with the Intel Pentium Pro processor almost 15 years ago.

The new enterprise-class chips can automatically adjust to specified energy usage levels, and speed data centre transactions and customer database queries. They also will play a key role in scientific discoveries by researchers who use supercomputers as their foundation for research, whilst delivering great energy efficiency for reduced electricity costs.

The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, previously codenamed “Nehalem-EP,” offers several breakthrough technologies that radically improve system speed and versatility. Technologies such as intel turbo boost technology, Intel hyper-threading Technology, integrated power gates, and next-generation Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) improved through extended page tables, allow the system to adapt to a broad range of workloads.

“The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series is the foundation for the next decade of innovation,” said Country Business Manager, Intel EM Ltd,. Sri Lanka Liaison office Indika de Zoysa. “These chips showcase groundbreaking advances in performance, virtualization and workload management, which will create opportunities to solve the world’s most complex challenges and push the limits of science and technology.”

As use of the Internet expands toward Intel’s vision of 15 billion connected devices, the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series will also power an upcoming transformation for the Internet’s infrastructure.

The high-tech industry has rallied around a goal to run applications from optimized processors and computing hardware that are available on-demand and scalable to the masses. Often called cloud computing, this vision could flourish helped by the adaptability, capability and intelligence of the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series.