The New Nation - Internet Edition

Dgitel Rangpur Centre

Daffodil Grameen IT Education Ltd. (DGITEL) and IT Society, Rangpur recently signed an agreement at the Board Room of Grameen Bank Head Office for establishing "DGITEL Ranpur Center". A. H. M. Abu Syeed, the Chief Operating Officer of DGITEL and Md. Masudur Rahman, the Managing Director of IT Society, Rangpur signed the agreement for the respective side. According to the agreement, the Rangpur Center will provide DGITEL's affiliated Diploma and Certificate courses in Rangpur. As an IT Qualifications Awarding Body, DGITEL is awarding certificates through preparing various ICT & ICT related course specification, assessing & examining quality, working as a quality controller & certifying achievements. Faizur Razzaque, the Chairman of DGITEL and the Managing Director of Grameen Fund and Md. Sabur Khan, the Chairman of Daffodil Group along with other high officials were present on that occasion.

Oracle introduces the HP Oracle Database Machine

In a keynote address to nearly 43,000 OpenWorld attendees, Oracle Chief Executive Officer, Larry Ellison yesterday (September 24) unveiled the HP Oracle Database Machine, a system designed for extreme performance data warehouses.

The HP Oracle Database Machine consists of a grid of Oracle Database Servers and a grid of new Oracle® Exadata Storage Servers packaged in a single rack ordered as a complete system from Oracle.

The latest offering resulting from Oracle's and HP's long-time engineering relationship, Oracle Exadata Storage Servers break the performance bottleneck between database servers and conventional storage by shipping less data through larger pipes.No changes are required to existing queries or business intelligence applications to deliver extreme performance for large Oracle data warehouses.Oracle Exadata Product Family:The product family consists of two components.HP Oracle Database Machine is pre-configured for performance, pre- tuned, and certified for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition tools and Oracle Real Application Clusters. Complete configurations can be ordered from Oracle, with hardware support by HP. The HP Oracle Database Machine is a high-performance system configured for data warehousing that includes a grid of eight database servers featuring: 64 Intel processor cores, and Oracle Enterprise Linux; and a grid of 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers that include up to 168 terabytes of raw storage and 14 GB/sec data bandwidth to the database servers.

HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers are key performance enablers for the database machine and can be ordered separately if customers have an existing data warehouse and merely require the storage enhancements.

Customers can build data warehousing solutions using HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, which feature industry-standard components including two Intel processors, up to 12 TB of raw storage and InfiniBand connectivity delivering 1 GB/sec of data bandwidth per storage server.The HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server uses a massively parallel architecture to dramatically speed up Oracle data warehouses by shifting the data-intensive part of query processing away from Oracle Database Servers and closer to the data.

HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers deliver 10x or more performance improvements in data-intensive query processing, have virtually unlimited I/O scalability, are easier to optimize for data warehousing, and provide mission-critical availability and reliability.

Driving customer-centric communications services

Vivek Srivastava

In today's competitive communications market, service providers are battling for customers and wallet share. In response, many are moving from a network-centric to a customer-centric mindset-to improve customer satisfaction, build brand loyalty, and maximize the profitability of each customer.

In this hyper-competitive communication services market, the battle to win and retain customers has reached new levels of intensity. Customer acquisition and retention costs are overheating as consumers take advantage of the myriad offers and deals available from an ever-growing number of service providers.

In a market where price wars rage and many services are undifferentiated, service providers are turning their attention to the ways in which they serve their customers. They are seeking to differentiate themselves by adopting a customer-centric approach as they design their processes and systems, and by delivering true value for the money.

In March 2008, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), titled "Conquering Convergence," explores why companies are increasing their focus on customer needs in light of proliferating Web technology, which enables customers to exert influence over companies through user-generated content, and drives the ongoing convergence of products, companies, devices, platforms and customer groups. Top line findings of the study include:

Nearly all (92 percent) of the companies surveyed said they have a strategy in place for focusing on customers, while 69 percent said they plan to become even more customer-centric.

Yet less than 15 percent rank their customer focus programs as highly successful. This is due in part to insufficient technology. One-quarter of respondents feel their company's technology is inadequate for staying abreast of customer preferences. Nearly one-third of companies are plagued with inaccurate customer data. Only 25 percent have developed methods to forecast patterns of consumer purchases, and just 26 percent said their company can produce customer analytics that enable up-selling or cross-selling at the time of interaction with a customer.

Just 38 percent of companies said they have a complete or 360-degree view of the customer that includes information on their purchase and contact history, preferences and demographics, and only one-quarter have developed predictive customer buying models.

A customer-centric approach hinges on the broader goal of improving customer satisfaction and reducing customer service costs, resulting in increased profitability and reduced customer churn for the service provider. To realise this ambition, service providers would need to:

- Gain insight at the individual-customer level

- Analyze customer buying behavior

- Make suitable recommendations and offers through multiple customer service channels

Customer data is often fragmented across multiple, disparate systems, limiting your ability to gain one complete, accurate view of the customer. Analyzing customer behavior, understanding customer preferences, and recommending relevant products and services becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Using tried-and-tested industry solutions for customer data integration, the first step toward creating a customer-centric business is consolidating disparate customer information into one complete view. The service provider can then share that information across all systems and make it available and understandable to all authorized personnel.

The key to growing average revenue per user (ARPU) and average margin per user (AMPU) is to offer the right products or service bundles to the right customers at the right time. Using tried-and-test solutions like Oracle's extensive sales, marketing, and analytics solutions, the service provider can

Analyze buying habits and behaviors of individual customers

Make relevant, real-time recommendations through multiple channels, including call centers and Web sites

Enable cross-selling and up-selling of products and services in real time

Improve your success rate over time, with self-learning diagnostic tools

Accurate billing and effective bill presentment are critical to safeguarding the service provider's revenue, as well as to promoting customer satisfaction. With solutions such as Oracle® Communications Billing and Revenue Management, the service provider can build on a proven, real-time billing and revenue management platform already deployed worldwide. A solution as such can improve customer satisfaction by ensuring accurate billing the first time. It also means fewer inquiries to the call center and improved collection rates and fewer payment defaults.

The time and effort it takes a call center to handle a customer query can affect the profitability derived from that customer. Providing excellence in customer service is essential to improving the customer experience, but it must also be efficient. With extensive and powerful customer relationship management software solutions, the service provider can expect to

Improve call center productivity with quicker, better, and more-efficient customer service

Build brand loyalty and strengthen customer relationships with every contact

Close the loop between contact center and field service.

The service provider aside, no one is more concerned about the details of its customers' accounting and billing information than the customers themselves. Using industry's leading solution for self-service account management and bill presentment like Oracle's Siebel Self-Service and eBilling, for instance, many service providers have discovered that online customer self-service account management is the most effective and efficient way to deliver higher levels of customer satisfaction and customer empowerment at a lower cost to the service provider.

Putting the Service Provider in Control

Technology solutions must deliver business value to the Communications industry through a complete solutions portfolio that offers the widest choice of business applications, decision support tools, and middleware and database offerings.

In today's fast changing Communications landscape, technological advances and consumer habits are pulling service providers in different directions. Not only do service providers need to keep up with the changing technology, they face increasing challenges in predicting and identifying the right services for customers as time-to-market is critical. Service providers need to partner with strategic technology partners to ensure that they can gain insight to customer profitability and the overall health of the business. Service providers can then radically improve time to market for new services, build stronger brands, and lower operational costs by managing, realising revenues and maximizing the revenue stream for each customer type, service offering, partner relationship, payment method, business model, or geography.

At the end of the day, service innovation is only as good as the ability to bring the service from concept realisation to cash generation, while keeping consumers satisfied and coming back for more.

Windows 7 gets a name

Wolfgang Gruener

Mike Nash, corporate vice president for Windows product management at Microsoft, had the honor of announcing the official name of the new client Windows: Windows 7. Nash noted that he was excited to show a new product “to the world for the first time” and that he is “very excited about the opportunity to tell [people] more about Windows 7 in the coming weeks.” But clearly there is not much excitement in the name of the new Windows.

According to Nash, the name “Windows 7” is simple: The company decided against a date in the name (such as “Windows 2008”) since the company does not ship a new Windows every year and it decided against an “aspirational” name (such as “XP” or “Vista”) since it is not really an entirely new release, but just an enhancement over Vista.

“Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore "Windows 7" just makes sense,” Nash said.

Ok, we get it. But does it have to be that boring? Is it just us or is this the most boring Windows name since Windows 3.11? Perhaps all of Microsoft’s creativity got stuck in the current $300 million Windows marketing campaign?

If it is simplicity that Microsoft wants to express, “Vista SE” or “Vista Enhanced” would have made more sense. But judging by the speed Microsoft is developing Windows 7 and considering the new name it seems that Microsoft intends to close the Vista chapter as quickly as possible.

We are sure that Microsoft will have no problems to sell the new name, but even for a transitional product that Windows 7 seems to be, the name is a bit out of place and not consistent with anything Microsoft chose for Windows in the past. Nash noted that “While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows.”

Microsoft will provide a first glimpse at Windows 7 at the upcoming PDC 2008 event, at which the company will be handing out pre-beta releases of the software. Windows 7 was originally scheduled to be released in 2010, but apparently has been pulled into H2 2009. According to our sources, Windows 7 will be available in time for the 2009 Christmas season.

We previously learned that Windows 7 will be based on the kernel of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, which is an evolution of the Windows Vista kernel.

Windows 7 will also keep Vista’s driver model. PDC 2008 will have a strong focus on the new operating system: The majority of Windows 7 sessions will discuss graphics topics, performance and energy efficiency as well as communication services.

EU warns youth: Turn your MP3 players down!

Millions of youngsters across Europe could suffer permanent hearing loss after five years if they listen to MP3 players at too high a volume for more than five hours a week, EU scientists warned Monday.

The scientists' study, requested by the European Commission, attacked the concept of "leisure noise," saying children and teenagers should be protected from increasingly high sound levels -- with loud mobile phones also coming in for criticism.

"There has been increasing concern about exposure from the new generation of personal music players which can reproduce sounds at very high volumes without loss of quality," the Commission, the EU's executive arm, said in a statement.

"Risk for hearing damage depends on sound level and exposure time," it said. More and more young people were exposed to the significant threat that leisure noise posed to hearing, it said.

Commission experts estimate that between 50 and 100 million people listen to portable music players on a daily basis.

If they listened for only five hours a week at more than 89 decibels, they would already exceed EU limits for noise allowed in the workplace, they said. But if they listened for longer periods, they risked permanent hearing loss after five years.

The scientists calculated the number of people in that risk category at between five and 10 percent of listeners, meaning up to 10 million people in the European Union. Sales of personal music players have soared in EU countries in recent years, particularly of MP3 players.

Commission experts estimate unit sales between 184 and 246 million for all portable audio devices just over the last four years, of which MP3 players range between 124 and 165 million.

Mobile phones used at excessive volume also came under fire from Meglena Kuneva, the EU's consumer affairs commissioner.

"I am concerned that so many young people t who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably," she said in the statement.

Canadian Operators Switch to WCDMA - Plan LTE Rollout

Canada's two CDMA operators, Telus and Bell have confirmed recent rumours and jointly announced plans to build a WCDMA based overlay on their existing networks. The companies also confirmed a long-term migration path to LTE based services.

Bell says that it will continue to support, and expand, its existing CDMA/EVDO network while it rolls out the WCDMA/HSPA network. Telus said that it plans to support its CDMA and Mike (iDEN) customers for the foreseeable future.

"Bell's transition to the global 4G LTE standard with a combined EVDO and HSPA network path aligns us with more than 30 major carriers worldwide planning a similar move to LTE," said Stephen Howe, Senior Vice President, Wireless Network and Chief Technology Officer for Bell Mobility. "This broad global technology ecosystem will mean a fast, efficient and cost-effective network transition to 4G LTE, and access to the broadest possible range of next-generation phones and data services."

Telus and Bell have had a network infrastructure sharing deal since 2001 - although that was focused on boosting coverage in 2001.

The companies have chosen Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei as infrastructure providers for its national network overlay.

For 2009, Telus said that it expects that its total wireless capital requirements including those related to the HSPA build-out will be temporarily higher than historic levels at approximately $750 million.