SKA to boost local skills

Secure mobile workstyles drive desktop virtualisation

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: According to a new global market study commissioned by Citrix, securing the explosive growth of mobile workstyles is on pace to drive a significant spike in demand for desktop virtualisation over the next two years.  The survey reveals that 55% of companies surveyed expect to roll out new desktop virtualisation deployments for the first time by 2013, with 86 percent citing security as a primary driver “Desktop virtualisation delivers centralised control and management of [...]

Absa warns customers of banking fraud

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: With 2011 drawing to a close, Absa has urged customers to exercise vigilance when transacting this festive season. Traditionally, banking fraud spikes over the holidays as more South Africans vacation and spend money. Customers need to be mindful of, and protect themselves against a few key scams. Phishing Phishing pertains to emails, purportedly sent by your bank (but in fact sent by fraudsters) requesting you to click on links and attachments, the link or [...]

Absa kicks-off NFC trial for mobile payments

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: Absa has announced the launch of a live user trial of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology on mobile phones. The trial will kick off in mid-December and involve 500 of the bank’s own staff members, operating in a live commercial environment. “Absa is the first institution in South Africa to bring Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities with an EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) card payment application to a handset,” says Arrie Rautenbach, head of [...]

Watershed year for SMS approaching

2012 is the year the electronic communications opt-in vs opt-out debate is going to come to a head, and the fallout is going to have a significant impact on both businesses and consumers.

Related telecommunication regulatory decisions are going to affect both the price of SMS, as well as the amount of SMS spam consumers receive every day – directly impacting the efficacy of the medium.

So, an important year for both SMS as a channel, particularly when used as an alert service, as well as consumers and their exposure to SMS spam.

Consolidating your infrastructure

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: Lower costs and greater efficiency have long been common refrains in IT, and will continue to be. But with IT becoming more central to a business’s ability to launch new products and deliver services, CIOs and IT leaders have become increasingly concerned with their infrastructure’s ability to execute — and are more concerned that IT isn’t fast enough to meet the goals of the business. Versatility Today IT is expected to be a vital [...]

Mimecast introduces mobile archiving for iPhone

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based email archiving, continuity and security for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365 - announced that it has extended its mobile services to the iPhone. With the Mimecast iPhone App, employees gain a bottomless mobile inbox, and the ability to search and access archived emails from their mobile device.  The new Mimecast iPhone App is free and available now for download from the App Store. The company’s new Mobile Access licensing plan, [...]

2011: the year of big data

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: This was the year of big data. In the last two to three years we have accumulated more data than ever before[1]. This provides both a challenge and an opportunity for companies, and the ones who get it right fastest are going to lead the pack. There are three trends related to this growth in big data – both contributing to the growth but also providing part of the solution to managing such large [...]

2011: the year social went mobile

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: The most significant communication trend to emerge in 2011 was mobility, which is beginning to drive major changes in the way the global economy operates. There are other important development emerging that demand attention, however my best bet is it that mobility will remain a dominant force in 2012. Mobile social media Social media has been around for years, but 2011 was the year in which it began to re-shape the global economy. The [...]

FNB enhances eWallet Solution

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: First National Bank (FNB) today announced that it has enhanced its eWallet solution with two new features – enabling users to pay money from eWallet directly to a bank account, and allowing users to pay bills from their eWallet.   ‘When we created the eWallet, recipients were only able to send money to another cellphone.  With this enhancement, eWallet users are able to pay funds directly into an individual’s bank account at any of the [...]

Tech boost for cash-strapped NGOs

Archived; click post to view. Excerpt: Prefix Technologies says it will make its bulk email communication software, pMailer, available to South African Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which face budget constraints.  Through SANGOTeCH –a technology donation and discount portal created by TechSoup Global and the Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) – the network hopes to help NGOs leverage their scarce resources more effectively. “NGOs have always played a key role in helping South Africa’s marginalised population groups to turn their lives around. [...]