BIZTECH

Microimage moving to new markets

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

The high-end enterprise class products have a growing demand in the global market and Microimage will position to cater to this demand. These products are ideal for developed countries and the company will expand its presence in the global arena, Microimage Chief Executive Officer Harsha Purasinghe told Daily News Business.

"We see a growth in the overseas markets and will be expanding current penetration in seven countries such as Singapore, Brunei, Maldives, India, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. We are looking at the Middle East region and the East Asia at present," he said.

The company will develop new products to meet different customer requirements. With plans to capture wider share in the Middle East market the company will also focus on other mature markets. "There is a technology shift in the world. People are moving towards a paradigm shift to cloud computing and enterprise class software to utilize these facilities. The local market is more technology driven and require solutions targeting high efficiency and effectiveness," he said.

The cloud computer solutions are ideal for small and medium enterprises as it is cost effective. These modules are expected to have a high demand. These technologies are used in the country's apparel sector at present.

"Sri Lanka needs to have proper telecommunication infrastructure facilities for effective use of broadband services. These facilities should be upgraded to access software as a service model.

Our younger generation is computer savvy and they have numerous career opportunities to develop. It is important to select the right IT career from different segments such as designing, network and graphics," Purasinghe said. Microimage started moving in to the global market in 2005 with its products launched first in Maldives followed by Malaysia. The company will be looking at different business models to reach wider market segment.

At Colombo EDEX exhibition:

SLASSCOM launches IT-BPO career documentary

Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa launching the SLASSCOM IT- BPO career documentary at EDEX Colombo Exhibition. SLASSCOM Chairman, Dinesh B. Saparamadu and EDEX Chairman, Kamal Abeysinghe look on

At the EDEX expo SLASSCOM launched a short documentary on the careers in IT-BPO industry to showcase the exciting opportunities in the IT-BPO field to guide new entrants who are looking to enter the industry. The documentary is produce by YATV with the endorsement of the Higher Education Ministry, Education Ministry and ICTA. The FutureCareers documentary will highlight the work opportunities and experience from young people employed within the IT-BPO industry across a wide spectrum of jobs to give potential new entrants to the industry an overview of the opportunities. The FutureCareers documentary features some of big names in the IT and BPO industry namely Virtusa, IFS, Aegis, Eurocentre, eCollege, R R Donnelley, Orion City, Amba Research, HSBC, Zone24/7 and Eureka Technologies. The documentary features many success stories in this most advanced and fast growing industry in Sri Lanka which is setting professional standards recognized internationally.

One of the company executives interviewed from IFS in the documentary said "When I was 10 years old I got my first computer and I was really interested in the subject so I represented my school and then my country in various programming competitions. After my 'ALs Thank god IFS gave me a fully paid scholarship so I joined them as a full time employee."

"I started off with a degree program in information systems, I graduated that about 10 years ago, since graduating I worked in several places but finally settled in Virtusa seven years ago.

And since then I had a phenomenal ride. I started off at Virtusa as a business analyst, And since then played a various roles such as project manager, program manager, account manager, client services manager etc.

Microsoft Lync now in Sri Lanka

Microsoft Sri Lanka has released Microsoft Lync, the next generation of communications that connects people in new ways.

Starting last Tuesday, Lync is available to all business customers in the country. Recently released by Microsoft Corp. in the US markets, Lync is a single platform that integrates instant messaging, presence, audio, video and web conferencing and voice to bring people together in the ways they communicate best.

Lync provides one interface that works with applications that businesses know and use today, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange.

Microsoft Lync is now known as the new family brand for the products formerly known as Microsoft Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Communicator which now also includes Microsoft Lync Web App and Microsoft Lync Online.

"Lync delivers on Microsoft's vision to unify all of the areas of modern business communication, giving people a more collaborative experience with features like HD video conference recording activity feeds," Microsoft Sri Lanka SMS&P Director Pubudu Basnayake said.

"In addition to transforming how people communicate, IT departments can also benefit from Lync and evolve their infrastructure while enhancing or eliminating their traditional PBX systems, saving time and money," he said.

Microsoft Lync can make every engagement a virtual face-to-face meeting, because any interaction can include video and audio conferencing, application and desktop sharing, instant messaging, and telephony.

Lync has been designed from the ground up to work with Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Exchange, which helps reduce end-user adoption hurdles and increase return on investment.

People can also stay connected to others on a wide range of devices while away from the office and manage their communications and calls in new ways, such as easily moving a call from a PC to a mobile device while leaving the office without disrupting the conversation.

Microsoft Lync is now available as a hosted solution. Microsoft recently announced Office 365, an always-up-to-date cloud service that brings together Lync, SharePoint, Exchange, and Office. IM, presence and conferencing will be available in Office 365 via Lync Online, which will be available later this year. Office 365 gives people the power of Office with the capabilities of Microsoft's market-leading servers - all in a single cloud service. Office 365 is considered to be a new approach to cloud applications altogether. It brings Office desktop software and Office Web Apps to business cloud services for the first time. It also entails more complete versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync and a new platform with single sign in, federated identity, scripting and more. The Lync Web App is a browser-based application that enables people to either join a meeting through the browser or download the client to their desktop. Lync Online is a rich application that includes IM, Presence, web conferencing and peer-to-peer audio (PC to PC). It has all of the Lync Server functionality (integration into Office, SharePoint, and Exchange) and collaboration tools (desktop sharing, document sharing, whiteboard, etc.).

In order to make Microsoft Lync as user friendly as possible, today, Lync is already available on IE, Safari and Firefox. Microsoft pledges that it will continue to evaluate other browsers based on customer demand so that Lync can be used on competitive browsers as well. In keeping with the intention of being user friendly Microsoft Lync is available for business customers worldwide in over 150 countries and in more than 38 languages.

Microsoft Lync 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 is available for purchase in Sri Lanka.

Mobile 'apps' to be $ 58 b market

Mobile applications downloaded from online stores will be a $58 billion worldwide business by 2014, as tablet computers such as Apple's iPad stoke the surging market, a new study said Monday.

The figure marks a huge increase on the $5.2 billion spent on mobile applications in 2010, technology consultancy Gartner said, predicting there will be 17.7 billion application downloads this year, more than double the 8.2 billion in 2010.

By the end of 2014, Gartner forecasted that over 185 billion applications will have been downloaded since 2008.

Gartner added that while the average number of downloads to mobile phones will remain stable, "it must be assumed that media tablets will drive more downloads from consumers, boosting the overall average downloads per device."

Mobile application revenue was generated both by fees paid for the downloads and developers' advertising revenue, it said.

The soaring growth in the market was partly driven by new alternatives to Apple's well-known App Store, with Nokia and Blackberry maker Research in Motion among those unveiling competing offerings.

Free downloads are forecast to account for 81 percent of total mobile application store downloads in 2011, Gartner said, adding that paid for applications will rise as people "become more trusting of billing mechanisms." AFP

Google dethrones Nokia with top smartphone platform

Google's smartphone operating system Android has passed Nokia's Symbian and become the global smartphone market leader, market research company Canalys said Monday.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, 32.9 million phones running Android were shipped compared to 31 million handsets running Symbian, according to Canalys.

Based on shipment figures, Google's percentage of the smartphone market share leapt from 8.7 percent in 2009 to 32.5 percent, while Nokia's shrank from 44 percent to 30.6 percent.

"But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smartphone vendor, with a share of 28 percent," the Canalys report added.

Nokia's smartphone market share has been undermined over the past two years by the stellar rise of Apple's iPhone, RIM's Blackberry and phones running Android such as those produced by Samsung and HTC.

According to Canalys, Apple's market share remained around the same, at 16 percent at the end of 2010, while RIM came in fourth place with 14.4 percent and Microsoft brought up the rear with 3.1 percent.AFP