See you in 2013

Chris and Adi , would like to wish all our listeners from around the world  a happy Christmas and a happy new year for 2013. Thanks guys and girls for all your support and love in 2012  , we appreciate it! See you in the new year. The MHF Tech Network Bigger and Better in 2013….Reporting tech first. Watch those skies and back up your data.

If you need an entry player in the wonderful world of Blu-ray.And your on abudget well the then the Sony blu-ray 185 is the player for you! Watch your blu-ray collection in full HD 1080p it also up-scales your DVD collection to a high never seen before. The picture is amazing, crisp and clear, the sound is rocking . The size of the player is also so small  290mm wide by 430mm so compact! ideal if space is limited.

You also get get smart TV built in which give you access to host of services such as  BBC  iPlayer/Lovefilm/Youtube/FiveLive/SkyNews/ The Sony Entertainment channel and so much more. The player also features USB Playback – Enjoy music/Pictures/Movies from your memory stick. It also has a  wide range of file types that  supported including Xvid HD and MKV format so you can easily share entertainment from all over the home.

You can pick up this bad boy in the UK  for -

So why wait? I would give this a 4 out of 5 MHF stars and a buy it! This would make an ideal Christmas present for the techie in you life.

Technical SpecificationsBDP-S185

Well folks, it looks like those genius at Apple will be releasing a 7 inch rival to Google nexus 7 tablet and the kindle HD. Let battle commence !

For those of you not in the know, Virgin Media have finally started rolling out Wi-Fi in the London Underground tube network here in London, UK.  It’s already in over 40 stations in the network and it should be in 120 stations by the end of 2012. It’s free to all tube users until the end of the Olympics. Of course, I’ve had a chance to use it and I have to say that it is pretty darn quick.

In my tests, I’ve been using it and the speeds are just ridiculous. I’ve been able to get 20Mbps(megabits per second) download speed and approximately 20Mbps upload speed.  At the most, I’ve seen someone getting speeds of 30Mbps download and upload speeds.  Now that is just ridiculous. Now of course, I could just be faking it, but I always try to be honest with my reporting. So, here are a few screenshots from my phone of a few speed tests that I have done. When I downloaded a song from iTunes, it downloaded in just 2 seconds. I downloaded an app from Apple’s app store, it got downloaded in less than 10 seconds. These kind of speeds are a lot faster than what a lot of us could afford to have in our homes.

One of the major issues facing healthcare providers is that of the huge volume of electronic patient records and the need to move to a more localised management solution that can demonstrate value for money. Cloud technology is an obvious answer, but recent research from Alcatel-Lucent shows that the healthcare industry is one of the key sectors where reluctance to embrace the cloud is highest.

While this is partially due to concerns about safeguarding confidential patient information, many healthcare IT departments are burdened with outdated legacy systems. Manish Sablok, Head of Marketing for CNE Europe at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, takes a look at the issues facing many healthcare providers and their networks in particular, and examines one example of how a private cloud approach to infrastructure had a positive impact on patient care.

An IT infrastructure that supports local decision-making needs to be able to meet the challenges facing healthcare organisations today – multiple critical life-saving applications which are constantly being used by different employees in different departments, all at the same time. Applications such as patient records, payroll, patient billing, telemedicine, patient care monitoring applications and laboratory results all require the same level of access and performance simultaneously. Meanwhile, in such care applications, downtime cannot be tolerated, and high availability is required at all times.

Add to this the increase in the use of multiple devices across healthcare organisations and there is a clear need for improved technology.

A delicate balance between network security, usability and cost
So there is the ever increasing need for bandwidth, storage, and the availability of more flexible network services so that healthcare employees can respond with agility and for controlling capital expenses.

The cloud, where information is stored on an external network of servers and accessed via the web, is becoming a very attractive solution in many industries. But in the healthcare industry it is a very forward concept, especially for large hospitals, where concern over security breaches is paramount, as well as the need for a fast and reliable Internet connection.

Cloud is certainly an option and there are now a number of healthcare organisations using cloud-based solutions to very good effect. Not only can a hospital reduce IT capital costs, as well as energy consumption, but fewer IT resources are also required to maintain and operate the IT infrastructure. And information stored across disparate information systems can be shared in real-time, freeing up IT staff to attend to more critical tasks in an efficient and cost-effective manner. New applications and services can be added quickly, reducing deployment time from months to minutes, and can be scaled up and down easily and instantly, based on demand.

Advocate Health Care opt for a private cloud
Advocate Health Care (AHC) is the largest healthcare system in Illinois. It offers the largest emergency and Level 1 trauma network in the state, and has more than 250 sites of care including 10 acute-care hospitals, and two children’s hospitals.

With over 37,000 people employed at AHC at the various facilities, a large, complex voice, data, and computing infrastructure exists. AHC soon realised that their existing solution lacked the scalability and standardised service delivery required in light of the increase in personal devices and consequent need for increased bandwidth. The organisation was in the situation where it had to refresh its hardware once a year because of the lack of scalability and latency issues. In such a large organisation that becomes very expensive. AHC started looking beyond proprietary protocols because they were keeping them from expanding beyond one geographical site and being able to deploy new technologies.

Its solution was to consolidate its data centres and create a private cloud to drive down costs.

AHC selected Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Fluent Network solution to consolidate its data centres, and now benefits from centralised management, virtualised IT functions, and lower costs from significantly reduced power consumption. Advocate Health Care is able to use all of its applications, from patient care and the whole administrative process involved with that care, such as email and unified communication through something called a virtual network profile (vNP) which provides an ‘application-aware’ network and the ability to manage applications as a service with automatic performance tuning.

The best of all clouds
A vNP also allows the switches to enforce defined application profiles to prioritise, establish quality of service, attach security parameters and provision the appropriate bandwidth levels and capacity for specific virtual machines and different applications. This means that their network is ready for public, private or hybrid cloud-based service.

Any shiny new CT scanner a healthcare organisation deploys immediately has the ability to share seamlessly and securely its images outside radiology and across the network. The network is integral to enabling effective communication and collaboration across the hospital, and the ability to upgrade and extend existing technology through the cloud could be a game-changer for healthcare providers.

Brussels, 17 July 2012 - Ogone, the specialist in the online support of payment services, mobile payments pioneer Tunz.com, and telecom, IT & Media specialist Belgacom Group have signed a strategic agreement in which Ogone acquires 100% of ownership of Tunz.com and which states that the three companies will further develop their cooperation in the domain of electronic and mobile payments. Belgacom had a 40% stake in Tunz.com and is a longtime partner of Ogone.

The acquisition of Tunz.com means that the Ogone platform now includes a regulated e-money institution.  In other words: it enables theOgone group to offer all the services for which a license as an e-money institution or a payment services provider is required in the European Union. In addition to its existing portfolio, the Ogone group will be able to provide numerous international financial services to its e-merchants looking to sell cross-border with just one simple contract, as well as offering a complete end to end environment for mobile payment. The Ogone group has more than 35,000 e-merchant clients worldwide.

The acquisition is an important milestone in Ogone’s growth strategy, increasing both its breadth of services and its geographical reach by enabling its e-merchant clients to enhance their cross border sales significantly. Ogone will be able to offer its e-merchant clients more than 80 different international payment methods with a single, simple contract, enabling them to sell to millions of new customers and helping them to avoid the administrative hassle of opening foreign accounts and organizing contracts with several acquirers.

The takeover is also inspired by the huge mobile growth in the current e-payment market and Ogone’s subsequent continuous search for ways to enrich its range of solutions. Via Tunz.com, Ogone will be able to provide a complete end to end environment for mobile payment to banks and mobile operators, as well as support online merchants who want to create and store funds in virtual wallets.

“Now is the time to invest in bullet proof innovative mobile e-payment solutions. Our choice to acquire Tunz.com was therefore a natural one: the company has a solid track record in this space and it also provides one-stop solutions for financial services, both of which will represent tremendous added value to our trusted clients. A great example is its successful co-development  in Belgium with Belgacom onPingPing, Belgacom’s brand of mobile payment, that allows consumers to pay for public transport, postal services, web services, vending machines, selected enterprise restaurants, etc.,” explains Peter De Caluwe, chief executive of Ogone.

“Combining our capabilities with Ogone, which is one of the leading specialists in technological online payment solutions in Europe and whose offer is perfectly complementary with ours, will not only enhance the reach of our services but will strengthen our activities, as well as open the way for future developments to improve the comfort of online consumers everywhere in the world,” adds Jan Van Wijnendaele, managing director of Tunz.com.

“The agreement with Ogone will consolidate our successful partnership of these last three years and allow us to continue to expand our services,” concludes Bart Van Den Meersche, executive vice-president, Enterprise Business Unit at Belgacom. “Both leaders in our market segment, we have a mutual understanding about the growing need for intuitive and efficient mobile payments for services and for physical purchases. Belgacom and Ogone, through the agreement with Tunz.com, are partnering to enrich our technological mobile payment solutions for consumers and merchants. The potential of today’s mobile payment services in terms of users and applications is huge.”

It is promising to witness such a constructive synergy in the heart of the European Union which is currently so much investing in the digital agenda. This three-way achievement can only benefit the e-commerce industry and its end customers.

In accordance with the current legislation, the deal will become effective upon approval by the National Bank of Belgium.

About Ogone (www.ogone.com):

Ogone is a leading provider of payment solutions with international reach. More than 35,000 businesses worldwide trust Ogone to manage and secure their online payments, help prevent fraud and drive their business. The company is headquartered in Belgium, has operations in India through its acquisition of EBS in 2011 and maintains regional sales offices throughout the world, with offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, UAE and the US.

Ogone is connected through certified links with more than 200 different banks and acquirers and hence is able to provide over 80 international, alternative and prominent local payment methods in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Ogone’s portfolio of payment solutions helps online businesses to expand reach and increase checkout conversion. Additionally, companies benefit from the platform’s transactional functionalities, extensive back-office capabilities and advanced fraud prevention systems as well as future-proofing their business as Ogone is committed to providing new payment solutions as consumers adopt them.

A number of major organisations have also opted to use Ogone to handle their payments. These include Friends Provident, Tui, Thomas Cook, Halfords, Just Eat, Bose, Opodo, Club Med, DHL International, Viking Direct/Office Depot, Thalys International, Misco and CenterParcs.

Ogone is an independent company with Summit Partners as majority stakeholder and partner of the management team.

About Tunz.com (www.tunz.com):

Founded in January 2007, Tunz.com owns an e-Money issuer license which was granted by the National Bank of Belgium (BNB). As a licensed e-Money issuer, Tunz.com may collect monies in exchange for the issuance of electronic money recorded in e-Money accounts with Tunz. Thanks to its European passport, Tunz.com is also able to provide its services in all the 27 European Union member states.

The company has clearly developed a leading expertise in the field of mobile payments and is able to assist clients in the go-to-market and operational activity. All the technological solutions are developed entirely in house, which guarantees a total control of the platform.

In February 2009, Belgacom Group took a 40% stake in the company and entrusted Tunz with the entire technical and financial management of its brand of mobile payment solution: Ping-Ping. 2012 Tunz.com was acquired by Ogone.

About Belgacom Group (www.belgacom.com):

Belgacom is a sustainable, innovative and customer centric service company operating in telecom, IT, and media.

As a responsible company, Belgacom wants to be the preferred provider of intuitive end-to-end solutions combining fixed and mobile telecom, IT and media, thereby empowering its customers to master and enrich their professional and private lives in a sustainable way.

Avere further extends Edge-Core architecture with new FXT Series model ideal for remote office storage

PITTSBURGH- July 17, 2012 Avere Systems today introduced its latest FXT Series Edge filer, designed to bring the benefits of NAS Optimization to remote office environments by allowing companies to centralize resources and reduce the amount of infrastructure at remote locations while providing the ability to run mission-critical applications outside of the data center and across a WAN without performance degradation.

The Avere FXT 3100 Edge filer contains 48GB of DRAM and 1GB NVRAM to accelerate the read, write and metadata performance of most active data. It contains 2.4TB of 10k SAS HDDs to store a large working set of recently active data. FXT 3100′s 2x 10GbE and 6x 1GbE ports allow connectivity to clients and servers for high performance access to active data and to Core filers for infrequently accessed data. Each unit can be clustered to other FXT Edge filers with scaling of up to 50 nodes for linear performance and HA failover.

“Organizations have experienced numerous challenges in delivering corporate applications and/or IT services to remote locations – challenges related primarily to poor application performance, slow file transfer speeds, and WAN bandwidth costs. More than half of respondents in a recent ESG survey indicated that remote application access challenges have been the cause of dissatisfaction among end-users,” said Terri McClure, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Avere’s FXT 3100 Edge filer is an example of a product that can help solve this problem while also helping address the cost and manageability challenges tied to remote storage deployments.”

Built on the latest Avere Operating System (AOS), the Avere FXT 3100 Edge filer enables automatic tiering of data for optimal performance, advanced monitoring to provide deep visibility into the entire NAS environment and a global namespace for managing all storage as a single pool. Optional software enhancements include Avere FlashMove(tm) that takes the pain out of NAS data migrations and accelerates the performance of data; and FlashMirror(tm), heterogeneous NAS replication software that provides a flexible and high-performance solution for implementing comprehensive data protection across a NAS infrastructure.

“While all organizations can benefit from the improvements in performance and reduction in footprint that our FXT Series Edge filers offer, enterprises with remote or branch offices face a unique situation with sprawling NAS environments that require additional capital and operation investments,” said Ron Bianchini, President and CEO of Avere Systems. “Our new FXT 3100 Edge filer helps take the sting out of these deployments by providing global data access and visibility of data as part of a single logical pool, alleviating the need for duplicate storage infrastructure in remote offices and provides a form factor suitable for branch offices.”

Pricing and Availability

The FXT 3100 Edge filer starts at $42,500. It is expected to be generally available within 30 days. Additional information about the FXT series is available at http://www.averesystems.com/Products_FXT.aspx

About Avere Systems

Avere Systems brings to the market NAS Optimization solutions designed specifically to scale performance and capacity separately and take advantage of new storage media using real-time tiering. Avere’s FXT Series Edge filers allow organizations to achieve unlimited application performance scaling, free applications from the confines of the data center by eliminating latency and cut storage costs by more than half. Learn more at www.averesystems.com, and you can follow the company on Twitter.com/averesystems.

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