BIZ TECH

With Microsoft, Sarvodaya - Fusion:

HSBC presents IT scholarships

HSBC recently presented IT scholarships to deserving youth in the South of the country to equip them with essential skills needed to increase their knowledge capacity and enhance their employability.

The presenting of these fifty scholarships in partnership with Microsoft and Sarvodaya-Fusion, is part of an ongoing corporate sustainability initiative started in November 2009.

Currently fifty scholarship recipients are being trained in acquiring ICT skills in Jaffna. The project plans to enter the East, with the provision of scholarships to youth in the near future.

While the project seeks to empower 200 youth in the North, the East and the South with scholarships, 25 computers were also donated by HSBC to the Jaffna Sarvodaya Centre to enable the learning process of village students in these areas. The project is expected to benefit 1950 youth in the country with information technology skills; thereby enhancing their employability and bettering the chances that the lives once torn apart by conflict can find empowerment and stability.

HSBC has been a true advocate of Corporate Sustainability, having implemented several long-standing projects in the area of education, such as entrepreneurship education, English language training, undergraduate scholarship programs and computer literacy programs. This project further manifests the banks commitment and engagement with the communities it operates in and is part of its global business philosophy.

Janashakthi innovates promotional drive

With social media and e-marketing:

Janashakthi Insurance PLC’s promotional drive has taken on a totally innovative and dynamic twist with the launch of a free fuel promo to its Facebook fans.

As part of the revolutionary FaceBook promo, a direct mailer has been sent out to a few thousand Facebook users. All they need to do is to join the Janashakthi Facebook Fan Page before 31 August 2010. Subsequently, winners will be chosen through a draw and they will stand the chance to win 30 litres of fuel each, for free.

Janashakthi Insurance PCL Marketing Head Paddy Weerasekera said with its more than 500 million active users as at July 2010, Facebook is by far the world’s most effective social networking site.

“With its massive growth across the world the USA enjoys the largest membership of Facebook in the world. Marking it Asian presence, Sri Lanka is also an active part of this vibrant global phenomenon with several thousands of people, both young and old getting onto the band wagon”, he said.

It is said that Facebook’s market share of page views has also trebled over the last five years. There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages) while more than one million websites have integrated with the Facebook Platform.

“We’re happy to re-define the paradigms of customer interaction by harnessing the phenomenal popularity of Facebook. This is undoubtedly a magical cocktail of innovation and dynamism which takes the entire concept of marketing and promotions to the next level”, he said.

Janashakthi’s Facebook fan page - “Janashakthi Full Option” - offers its fans a wide range of updates on motor-related tips, safety tips, sports updates etc. Promotional activities will be conducted through this Facebook fan page as well. Facebook users still have the chance to join this fan page before August 31 and win 30 litres of fuel.

Partnering with Siyatha FM, Janashakthi also conducted a promo at ten IOC filling stations around Colombo and suburbs. A winner was chosen from each of the ten filling stations with all of them getting 30 litres of fuel each for free.

The winners in this promo were Indunil Dhanushka, T D Mahesha, M Shazal Ghany, Shalani Rajapakse, S Sachchi, W S Hashanthi, R A D M D Wijesinghe, T H Jagath Kumara, Maheshan Wijeyerathne and N M Subramanium.

Similarly a well patronized e-mail marketing campaign was also conducted whereby a mailer was sent to a 75,000 strong database.

The three winners of this campaign - Nalin de Silva, Ruwan Athukorala and Malaka Udawatte - received 30 litres of fuel each.

“These three endeavours have attracted an unprecedented response from the target audience and are indicative of the attraction and popularity of such forays into unconventional communication. This has spurred us on to venture into social marketing with greater zeal, with more such promotional campaigns in the future”, Weerasekera said.

Virtusa supports One Laptop per Child Program

Virtusa Corporation has initiated a novel pilot program towards supporting the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, a UN endorsed Open Source project. Through the Virtusa Tech Reach initiative, the company is leveraging its Quality Assurance (QA) expertise and practices to help improve overall product stability of OLPC laptops at zero cost to the OLPC initiative.

Open source software is a software whose source code is openly published, often developed through voluntary efforts and is usually available at no charge under a licence. However, many software testing teams are paying over the odds for highly priced software test automation tools.

As part of the support, Virtusa has done a combination of both software and hardware testing on the new XO-1.5s laptops, and multiple versions of their customized Redhat-based operating system. The team has worked on 12 laptops by dedicating 40 man-months so far. The testing has resulted in 800+ test scenarios for the laptops.

According to Internet Telecommunication Union (ITU), India and Sri Lanka have a low internet penetration of about 7 percent and 5.5 percent respectively.

With an objective to reduce this digital divide, the OLPC program provides each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful and self-empowered learning. Targeted at children from ages 5 to 12, the open source software provides them an opportunity to fully own the laptop, which is an open source machine. The children and their teachers-will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware and content.

Therefore, OLPC will not only revolutionize the way children learn, but will also scale up the eco-system of sharing between diverse set of communities existing in these countries.

IDM, CHARTIS launch education protection scheme

Gayan Kanchana

IDM Affiliated University, one of the largest IT education providers in the country and CHARTIS Inc worldwide property-casualty and general insurance operator launched an education protection scheme for the students and parents for first time in Sri Lanka recently in Colombo.

CHARTIS Sri Lanka Acting Managing Director Deepthi Lokuarachchi said, ‘We are happy to partner with IDM, the premier IT education institution of the country to bring about solution to deal with uncertainties associated with students’ education.

We believe that, these solutions will be served the best interest of the students and IDM as a whole. This insurance scheme will be provided free of charge for students at their enrolment to IDM.

Foundation Diplomas and first year BSc students will enjoy insurance cover value of Rs 50,000.00.

Second year BSc students will be benefited insurance cover of Rs 150,000. Final year BSc/MSc students will enjoy an insurance cover worth of Rs 250,000 and students also will enjoy accidental medical reimbursement amounting to 10 percent of the total cover,” he said.

Schols for SLIIT students

Nine SLIIT students were recently awarded part-scholarships worth $ 3000 by Southeast Missouri State University (SEMU) to pursue degrees in IT, Computer Science, and Information Systems.

Having completed the first two years of their degree at SLIIT, students were then granted scholarships to complete the final two years of study at SEMU, one of the many pathways provided by SLIIT to prestigious foreign universities.

The next batch of students will benefit with the introduction of an electrical engineering program, channelling them towards a robust and thriving industry.

This collaboration was facilitated through Progressive Academy (Pvt) Ltd.

Intel to buy McAfee

Intel is buying Internet security firm McAfee for 7.68 billion dollars, as the computer chip giant seeks to expand its reach to mobile and wireless devices.

Intel, whose processors power nearly 80 percent of computers worldwide, has arranged to pay 48 dollars per share for all of McAfee’s common stock, a 60 percent premium on the security vendor’s closing value Wednesday.

Panda Security chief executive Juan Santana welcomed the Intel move as good news for the industry and said he suspected that a factor in McAfee’s decision to sell was increasingly tough competition in the market.

“As we have been saying all along, security has to be a pillar in next-generation computing,” Santana said. “Time will tell if the acquisition is good news or not for McAfee and Intel’s users, partners, employees and shareholders; but I agree that it is clearly elevating the importance of IT security to new heights.”

Intel had also been eyeing McAfee technology for keeping data secure in “cloud computing,” a growing trend for applications or information storage to be hosted as services on the Internet, according to Santana

Boards of directors for both companies have unanimously approved the take-over, which is still subject to approval from regulatory authorities.

AFP