The digital business week

12 Apr 2010

A digest of the top business and technology news stories from the past week.

VMware on a mission to transform boardroom agenda

Beyond cloud computing and server/desktop virtualisation, the big picture for the enterprise computing world is transforming how IT services are delivered to the business and the individual, says VMware’s regional director Mark Newton.

Newton said that the enterprise computing world’s big agenda for the past two years – and no doubt aided by the recession and the contrasting digital boom – has been getting IT onto the boardroom agenda as an enabler for boosting revenues, serving customers and meeting green objectives.

“When a business gets a new idea or opportunity, there’s always some form of intellectual property underpinning it. For many businesses though, it takes at least nine months to deploy new infrastructure and the prerequisite IT they are looking for.

MXSweep is elevated to the cloud computing superstore

A Cavan-based cloud software company has been selected to join the influential SaaSplaza incubation centre in the Netherlands – a key location bringing together buyers and suppliers of software-as-a-service technologies.

MXSweep, a leading provider of online email security services, and SaaSplaza has revealed the MXSweep services will be available immediately for resale through SaaSplaza global SaaS Platform.

SaaSplaza is an open SaaS platform and a global operating Microsoft S+S Incubation Center and brings together software suppliers and implementation partners for the transparent supply of Software-as-a-Service. It is accessed by 90,000 businesses throughout the world.

Second Irishman promoted to vice-president of Intel

The plant manager of Intel’s Fab 24 chip manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Eamonn Sinnott, has become the second Irishman after country manager Jim O’Hara to be made a vice-president of Intel, a major honour for the local operations.

Sinnott has been named vice-president, Technology and Manufacturing Group, and plant manager of Fab 24 in Leixlip, Ireland.

He is responsible for all operational aspects of Fab 24, Intel’s first 300mm facility outside of the United States.

Sinnott joined Intel Corporation in 1991 as manufacturing shift manager in Ireland. He has held a variety of factory management positions in Ireland, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Portland, Oregon.

Sinnott became factory manager for the 300mm start-up and ramp of Fab 24 in 2001 before taking over as plant manager in 2006 when he successfully ramped the facility to 65nm technology.

175 tech jobs available at East Point Business Park

Tech multinationals at Dublin’s East Point are on the lookout for 175 candidates for vacant jobs at the docklands office park. The jobs span IT, telecoms, customer service, HR, consultancy and pharmaceuticals.

Five multinationals at East Point – Oracle, Conduit, Citrix, Quintiles and Peninsula – are targeting graduates and experienced professionals for roles in sales, finance and business development, as well as technical support, customer service with languages, and life science graduates for clinical and commercial operations.

Recently, Citrix revealed it is creating 30 new jobs at its EMEA Customer Technical Support headquarters in Dublin. This is in addition to the 20 new jobs announced late last year.

The vast majority of the vacancies are for full-time positions; a small number of part-time, evening and weekend customer service roles are also available.

Publishers must stand up to Google, Murdoch says

News Corp chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has said that newspaper publishers should stand up to Google and others to stop them from reproducing their content without paying for it.

In an interview with journalist Marvin Kalb for The Kalb Report at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Murdoch said that search advertising had produced a “river of gold” for Google, but that “those words are being taken mostly from the newspapers”.

“We’re going to stop people like Google and Microsoft and whoever from taking our stories for nothing,” he said.

Once pay walls are put up around his titles, he said that access to his newspapers by content aggregators like Google could be limited to a headline and a couple of sentences. He said that most newspapers in the United States would also be put up pay walls for online content.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Eamonn Sinnott, Intel vice-president, Technology and Manufacturing Group

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com