Catalonia Awards HP US$40 Million Contract for Applications Services

The Generalitat de Catalunya, an institution of the Government of the Spanish Province of Catalonia, has signed an agreement valued at US $40 million for HP to modernize its application environments, supporting economic growth in the region. Under the six-year agreement, HP will provide application services that will improve efficiency and productivity, transforming the way in which the organization delivers, manages, and evaluates its applications. More

IBM Advances Software-Defined Environment, Boosts Network Performance, Scalability, & Management

IBM has announced software to make it easier for organizations to set up, manage, and scale virtual networks for faster delivery of cloud, analytics, mobile, and social business services. Software Defined Networking (SDN) moves the control of network switches from the hardware switch to an extensible software platform with open interfaces. This makes it much easier for administrators to manage and change switch priorities remotely to accelerate, moderate, or block certain types of data. The IBM Software Defined Network for Virtual Environments (SDN VE) is a virtual overlay network solution that automates and speeds the process of setting up SDN networks, enabling administrators to cut the time needed for  traditionally time-consuming tasks such as network provisioning from days to hours. More

Keystone Bank Adopts IBM Smarter Computing to Drive Business Transformation

Keystone, a private bank based in Lagos, Nigeria, is transforming its business using state-of-the-art technology from IBM, supporting an innovative service delivery culture and customer-centric operations. Keystone Bank deployed a list of IBM software and hardware, significantly upgrading its computing and service delivery capabilities. Its back-end operational processes have significantly improved to higher efficiency levels hitherto unseen in the history of the bank. The new IBM systems deliver a 90% increase in process performance and have resulted in a 60% reduction in operating costs for the bank. More

IBM Team Provides Social Business Roadmap to Pahang State Government

IBM volunteers have presented  recommendations that will enable the Kauntan Municipal Council (MPK) and Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) in Pahang, Malaysia, to formulate tangible social business strategies to improve their efficiency and engagement with citizens. Over the last decade Pahang has grown to become a key trade and tourism center — including hosting major global events such as the annual Formula 1 race — leading to greater demand from local authorities for more effective communication channels with residents as well as with a growing number of international investors. A team of IBM volunteer specialists from Brazil, USA, Mexico, Poland, Austria, Canada, Colombia, India, and China — IBM’s eighth team to Malaysia since 2008 — developed the digital roadmap to allow the MPK and UMP to take advantage of the changing economic landscape. More

Sri Lankan Telco Operator Lanka Bell Transforms IT and Customer Experience with IBM

Lanka Bell, a leading telecommunication service provider, has adopted IBM SmartCLoud to transform its existing infrastructure to drive higher efficiency, manage costs, and increase speed-to-market. The private cloud environment will help Lanka Bell improve customer experience and equip the company to offer cloud-based infrastructure and storage services to clients. More

Dell Announces Enterprise Forum

Dell has formally announced that the Dell Enterprise Forum is scheduled for June 4-6 in the San Jose Convention Center. The event will span Dell’s end-to-end enterprise portfolio, including a broad set of systems to address convergence, data center transformation, and data insights. It will include an interactive learning experience for technical users, keynotes, super-sessions, more than 100 breakouts, hands-on labs, and open access to Dell’s top engineers and architects. More

Microsoft Hires Judson Althoff to Lead NA Sales & Marketing

Microsoft Corp. has announced the appointment of Judson Althoff to the role of president, North America Sales & Marketing and corporate VP. Althoff will manage the sales, marketing, and services team across the United States and Canada, within a division that was a significant contributor to Microsoft’s US$73 Billion FY2013 revenue. More

Governments Adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Improve Citizen Service Delivery

Microsoft Corp. has announced four Microsoft Dynamics Customer Excellence Award winners and showcased eight unique customer approaches to using Dynamics in state and local governments. Overall more than 500 state and local government organizations in the U.S. are using Dynamics CRM to save money, streamline operations, and transform the delivery of citizen services. More

Ten K-12 School Districts and Higher Education Institutions Sign on to Win 8

Ten K-12 school districts and higher education institutions have signed up to use Windows 8 for more than 540,000 students and faculty to prepare students for college and careers. The expanding educational community of Windows 8 adopters now includes Apollo Group, Atlanta Public Schools, Barry University, Fargo Public Schools, Fresno Unified School District, Jackson-Madison county School System, Pace University, San Antonio Independent School District, Thomas College, and Tuckahoe Common School District. More

Cisco Redesigns Certifications to Support Next-Generation Job Roles

Cisco has announced a redesign of the Cisco associate-level certification programs and evolution of the CCNA certification to CCNA Routing and Switching certification. While more than 99 percent of things in the physical world today are still not connected to the Internet, the “Internet of Everything” will soon wake up everything imaginable. As the network becomes more sophisticated, the job roles of network engineers will change. The CCNA Routing and Switching refresh aligns certification and training curricula to evolving job roles and provides the skills that networking pros will need for the future. More