Unilever achieves €1bn in savings, IT plays major part

SAP consolidation programme on course and cuts fat from food maker expenditure

Mark Chillingworth, CIO

Restructuring plans centred on the ‘One Unilever’ business transformation programme are reaping benefits, the Anglo-Dutch food and household goods maker Unilever. In its fourth quarter and annual results for 2007, Unilever stated that the ‘One Unilever’ strategy of IT and manufacturing streamlining, and other cost reduction programmes had delivered €1bn in savings.

Unilever said it achieved underlying sales growth of 5.5 per cent in 2007, with an underlying sales growth of 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter. “The fourth quarter was a strong finish to a good year,” said Patrick Cescau, group chief executive. “2007 marks the third successive year of accelerating sales growth and came with an underlying improvement in margin.

“The reshaping of the business and the acceleration of our change programme are bringing real benefit,” Cescau said of the ‘One Unilever’ programme. Highlighting its benefits, the annual report states that in Europe the roll out of a single SAP enterprise resource management (ERP) system continues and that two-thirds of Europe is on the platform, and full implementation will be completed by the end of 2008.

‘One Unilever’ aims to make Unilever a simplified organisation to work within, with a single converged IT platform. It will also standardise business processes across the three operating regions of Unilever: Asia/AMET (Africa, Middle East and Turkey), Europe and Americas. It is hoped ‘One Unilever’ will increase revenue growth and operational abilities.

In the Americas ‘One Unilever’ saw Argentina, Brazil and Mexico consolidate operations into a single head office in 2007, a move that will be followed this year in the US. In 2007 the US went over to a single SAP system, following in the wake of the Latin American countries. Four of the countries in the Asia/AMET region have also adopted the SAP platform.

The restructuring of Unilever cost €875 million (£655 million) in 2007, with ‘One Unilever’ consuming £405 million. A further £130 million was invested in restructuring the European supply chain. “In 2008 we expect to see a further underlying improvement in operating margin,” Cescau said.

In May 2007 Unilever signed a Global Enterprise Agreement with SAP, which gives the maker of Dove Soap and Knorr soups greater access to SAP technology, as well the opportunity to collaborate on best practices. “This agreement enables us not only to accelerate business transformation, but also drive significant IT simplification as we move toward our destination IT architecture,” Neil Cameron, Unilever CIO told IDG reporters in May.

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QTRAX V.2 Beta launches - sees 61,000 unique users per hour

New York, (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - Midem Conference - QTRAX (www.QTRAX.com) - the world's first free and legal peer-to-peer music service announced that at today's V.2 Beta launch, its ground-breaking service had approximately 61,000 unique users per hour (between 7am and 1pm EST). This translates to approximately 1,464,000 unique users per day.

QTRAX believes that a significant percentage of users were unable to access the site due to this massive demand and has now dramatically increased its download capacity.

"The response to the service is clearly unprecedented. We launched at MIDEM, the leading music industry conference, precisely because of the degree of support we have had and continue to enjoy from rights holders," said QTRAX President and CEO Allan Klepfisz.

"We believe the exact nature of that support will be publicly clarified within a very short time. As the world's first free and legal P2P service that has chosen to spend 4.5 years on licensing and not to violate IP rights, we have decided that we will provide activation keys shortly upon final execution of all pertinent contracts."

In the meantime, users will be able to enjoy all other functionalities of the QTRAX browser including importing and playing their existing music, browsing the vast and rich content, purchasing artist merchandise and tickets, and, for the first time, enjoying a fully integrated browsing and music experience.

The activation keys will enable users to experience full QTRAX V.2 Beta functionality, including search, download, access content, and play.

QTRAX has created a dynamic new music distribution model that represents a paradigm shift in the way people consume music, how the industry can monetize their catalogs and how artists get paid.

The application download is available immediately at www.QTRAX.com About QTRAX QTRAX (www.QTRAX.com) is the world's first legal and free peer-to-peer music service. Showcasing an innovative ad-supported downloading model that easily directs revenue back to artists and rights holders, QTRAX is the first P2P to be embraced widely by the music industry. QTRAX is a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation (OTC: BLLN.PK), a publicly traded technology holding company.

SOURCE QTRAX

CONTACT: Justin Kazmark, +1-212-561-7466, justin.kazmark@morris-king.com, or Jennifer Moses, +1-315-212-4408, jennifer.moses@morris-king.com, both of The Morris + King Company; or Rich Schineller of Perception Management, +1-941-726-9090, rich@prmgt.com; or Shamin Abas of Shamin Abas PR, +1-561-366-1226, Shamin@shaminabaspr.com; or Deborah Gray of Big DGPR, +1-646-247-3094, +61(0)414-911-111, debjgray@hotmail.com/

Web site: http://www.QTRAX.com

Scientists make unique knee-brace power generator

Thu Feb 7, 2008 5:38pm EST

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Talk about a knee-jerk reaction. Scientists in the United States and Canada said on Thursday they have developed a unique device that can be strapped on the knee that exploits the mechanics of human walking to generate a usable supply of electricity.

It generates enough power to charge up 10 cell phones at once, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Researchers have been working on ways to harness the motion of the human body to create power. A shoe-mounted device was nice and light, but did not generate much electricity. A backpack device that generated power as it bounced up and down while a person walks generated a lot of electricity, but was heavy to lug.

The new energy-capturing knee brace, its inventors said, seems to find a happy medium -- generating decent amounts of power while still being relatively light.

The scientists envisioned numerous applications for such a device. It could be of value to hikers or soldiers who may not have access to electricity, they said. It also could be built into prosthetic knees or other implantable devices whose users occasionally must undergo surgery for a battery replacement.

Arthur Kuo, a University of Michigan mechanical engineer who worked on the device, said it works similarly to the way that regenerative braking charges a battery in hybrid cars.

These regenerative brakes collect kinetic energy that normally dissipate as heat when the car slows down. The knee device collects energy lost when a person brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step, the researchers said. "It generates a fairly substantial amount of power compared to previous devices and it does so in a way that doesn't affect the user very much," Kuo said in a telephone interview.

"You could easily power 10 cell phones at once. There are some low power computers that you could power. You could imagine devices like GPS locaters, satellite phones," he said.

With a device placed on each leg, volunteers walking on treadmills generated about 5 watts of electricity walking at a leisurely 2.2 mph (3.5 kph). Each of the devices weighs about 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg), which Kuo said was still too unwieldy.

"Even though we've demonstrated this new way to generate power, we don't mean to say this is a usable product at this time. The principle limitations are that our prototype is pretty heavy and bulky," Kuo said, adding that he thinks it can be made smaller and more practical.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Eric Beech)

Amazon.com adds web services to its offerings

CNN

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts.

Amazon.com employees pack books for shipment in July at the company's facility in Fernley, Nevada.

In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Media sales now total in the billions each quarter, and third-party merchandise, more profitable for Amazon than its own wares, makes up nearly a third of everything sold through the site.

Now, Amazon is making an even greater stretch -- selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services.

The venture, which Amazon expects will grow into a significant business segment, could help keep the company strong if retailers get hit by an economic downturn.

More broadly, Amazon Web Services, as the business is called, could improve chances for a new generation of Web startups by slashing how much they spend up front on costly infrastructure.

MileMeter Inc., a Dallas-based startup that plans to sell auto insurance by the mile, started out running its own server in a data center. Recently, it moved most of its applications onto virtual computers in Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast.

"I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant."

Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house.

"Now, unless that is your core business ... it's a liability."

Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.

"We want to let developers innovate and make money," he said.

Amazon is certainly not the only player. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Akamai Technologies Inc., Enki and Terremark each offer at least a portion of the Web services Amazon is selling. IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer pricier versions aimed at big businesses, while Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are thought to be working on services similar to Amazon's.

Amazon comes closest to utility-style billing, Staten said. Most competitors demand a contract or minimum payments.

Read More ....

Yahoo Offer Is Strategy Shift for Microsoft

By Steve Lohr, The New York Times

Published: February 2, 2008

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft and a global philanthropist, called upon fellow business leaders at the World Economic Forum last week to pursue a kinder form of capitalism.

But on Friday, the brand of capitalism practiced by his company’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, came with a decidedly hard edge.

Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, pushed by Mr. Ballmer, was hostile. And during a conference call Friday with analysts and in a subsequent interview, he never once uttered the word “Google,” referring to the Internet search giant that has humbled Microsoft only as “the leader” in the online world.

Mr. Ballmer, 51, is a famously fierce competitor. To him, failure is never an option. “If we don’t get it right at first, we’ll just keep coming and coming and coming and coming,” he said in an earlier interview.

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is thus a tacit, and difficult, admission that the company did not get its online business right. The bid also represents a sharp departure from Microsoft’s well-thumbed playbook of building new businesses on its own. In the past, when Microsoft moved beyond its stronghold in desktop computer software — and into areas like video games and data-center software — it has done so mainly with in-house investment, patience and tenacity.

Read More ....

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion

Friday February 1, 6:58 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technology giant Microsoft Corp (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News) said on Friday that it had offered to acquire Internet media company Yahoo Inc (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News) for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

Microsoft said it had offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, which it said represented a 62 percent premium above the company's closing stock price on Nasdaq on Thursday.

"We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

Yahoo was not immediately available for comment.

Microsoft said it had identified four areas that would generate at least $1 billion in annual synergies for the combined entity.

Yahoo shares rose 56 percent to $29.95 in premarket trading on Friday following the announcement. U.S. stock index futures also jumped after the news was released.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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Garmin Adds A Cell Phone To Its GPS Device

The nuvifone's built-in camera takes pictures that are automatically tagged with latitude and longitude.

By Elena Malykhina, InformationWeek

January 31, 2008 02:35 PM

First Apple came out with the iPhone, then Google announced its mobile-phone software development platform, and now GPS maker Garmin is entering the mobile phone market with a hybrid device called the nuvifone.

The nuvifone is the first mobile phone by Garmin, featuring GPS, a touch screen, and a Web browser.

(click for image gallery)

The nuvifone, which Garmin unveiled this week, combines a cell phone, a Web browser, and GPS. Its slim form factor, 3.5-inch touch screen, and on-screen keypad resemble another device that took the mobile market by storm last year: the iPhone.

"This is the breakthrough product that cell phone and GPS users around the world have been longing for -- a single device that does it all," said Cliff Pemble, Garmin's president and COO, in a statement.

Unlike the iPhone, the nuvifone is a GPS personal navigator and has built-in third-generation cellular technology for high-speed data access. The home screen features three icons: call, search, and view map for simple access to the phone's functions. Additionally, the phone's GPS works with the built-in camera to take pictures that are automatically tagged with latitude and longitude. Users can e-mail pictures to others, who can then navigate to the location where it was taken, said Garmin.

Once the nuvifone is docked onto a vehicle mount, the GPS turns on automatically, the navigation menu is activated, and a person is then able to make hands-free calls while simultaneously using the navigation function, according to Garmin. The phone comes with maps of North America and Europe, as well as a built-in database with millions of points of interest. It works just like Garmin's standard GPS devices, offering turn-by-turn audible directions.

The nuvifone is also Garmin's first device with the Google local search application, which serves up nearby venues based on a person's current location.

Garmin said the nuvifone will be available in the third quarter of this year, but didn't provide details on specific markets and pricing.

There were over a billion mobile phones shipped last year, according to ABI Research. GPS, digital cameras, media players, and other capabilities are being integrated into phones to create multifunctional devices. Garmin, Google, Apple, and others see the mobile phone market as the next big opportunity, even though the companies are not traditional telephony players.

Internet failure hits two continents

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.

India's Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.

Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.

Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure.

An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed that a boat's anchor may have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed, AP reported. He added that it might take up to a week to repair the fault.

Rajesh Chharia, president of India's Internet Service Providers' Association, explained that some firms were trying to reroute via Pacific cables and that companies serving the eastern US and the UK were worst affected, AP added.

Besides the Internet, the outage caused major disruption to television and phone services, creating chaos for the UAE's public and private sectors.

There were contradicting reports on the real cause behind the disruption, but Du, a state-owned Dubai telecom provider, attributed it to an undersea cable cut in the Mediterranean Sea between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Italy.

A Du internal memo, obtained by CNN, called the situation in Dubai "critical" and stated that the cable's operators did not know when services would be restored.

"This will have a major impact on our voice and Internet service for all the customers," the memo stated. "The network operation team are working with our suppliers overseas to resolve this as soon as possible."

The outage led to a rapid collapse of a wide range of public services in a country which proudly promotes itself as technological pioneer.

Sources from Emirates Airlines confirmed to CNN Arabic that the outage did not affect its flight schedules -- a statement which assured hundreds of travelers worried after rumors about the possibility of rescheduled flights due to the faults.

However, Dnata, a government group in charge of providing air travel services in the Middle East and ground handling services at Dubai International Airport, acknowledged facing problems because of the outage, sources from its technical department confirmed to CNN Arabic.

The outage heavily crippled Dubai's business section, which is heavily reliant on electronic means for billions of dollars' worth of transactions daily.

Wadah Tahah, the business strategies and development manager for state-owned construction company EMAAR, told CNN Arabic that it was fortunate the outage started Wednesday, when there had been only moderate activity in the UAE markets. He said that softened the blow to business interests.

But Tahah warned that if the outage continued, "such a situation could create problems between brokers, companies, and investors due to loss of control."

SMBs to drive Indonesia ICT spend

By Lynn Tan, ZDNet Asia, Monday, January 28 2008 08:21 PM

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Indonesia are projected to spend about US$7.2 billion on infocomm technologies (ICT) in 2008, according to a new market report.

In its study released Monday, AMI-Partners said Indonesian SMBs are projected to grow their ICT expenditure by some 11.2 percent over last year, fueled by a boom in the overall economy and a surge in the number of small-sized businesses.

Prasannavadan Gaitonde, a Singapore-based research manager at AMI-Partners, said in a statement: "In Indonesia, more than 99 percent of SMBs are [small-sized businesses], and they account for about 78 percent of the total ICT spend."

Gaitonde noted that approximately 80 percent of these small-sized businesses--defined as having fewer than 100 employees--are startups, or are staffed with between one and four employees. He added that these companies will account for 50 percent of the overall small-sized business expenditure in 2008.

According to AMI-Partners, Indonesia has a "young and dynamic" business environment. The average age of business owners and managers is 33 years, and over 66 percent of these professionals have a graduate degree or higher education qualifications.

Gaitonde said this pool of young decision makers, along with a burgeoning domestic demand, has resulted in a "positive" environment with over 40 percent of SMBs expecting growth of between 15 percent and 20 percent in 2008.

"This optimism is also prodding more SMBs to consider hiring more people, [and] that will help relieve pressure on an otherwise high unemployment rate in Indonesia," he said. "The wage pressures are expected to remain flat through 2008."

Growth potential is also encouraging Indonesian SMBs to increase branch locations, where over 25 percent plan to add one to two branches this year, AMI-Partners noted.

As such, connectivity between branch offices and remote locations will be a top priority for SMB IT decision makers this year, the research house said. It added that the highest growth is expected in data security deployments at 33 percent, followed by data storage at 26 percent and Internet-related implementations at 24 percent.

Gaitonde said Indonesian SMBs will depend more on the Internet in 2008, adding that this increase in online usage will prod more SMBs to invest in basic security tools.

Mobility is another "hot" area because Indonesian SMBs are at the "cusp" of broader adoption of mobility-enabled devices, AMI-Partners said, driven by a desire to improve productivity of their mobile workforce.

For instance, the awareness of WiMax in Indonesia is "very high" and uptake of the technology could accelerate rapidly if the "right" products are offered at the "right" price points, AMI-Partners said.

The analyst company added that VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) and IP telephony tools are still "attractive" alternatives to reduce calling costs.

"Indonesian SMBs expect telecom service providers to play a stronger role in offering them various bundled solutions especially for voice-related services, [and] it is important that service providers rise to fulfill this need of a growing market," Gaitonde said.

Lynn Tan is a freelance IT writer based in Singapore.

SAP brings hosted ERP to Asia

By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia, Tuesday, January 29 2008 07:30 PM

SINGAPORE--SAP has brought its hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite to the region.

Announced Tuesday, the company is releasing its Business ByDesign product to Singapore--the sixth country globally to receive it. The product is currently available in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China.

Hans-Peter Klaey, president of SAP's SME division, said at the launch event that Singapore was chosen because many regional offices are headquartered in the country.

SAP is targeting the suite at SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) employing between 100 to 500 staff.

Klaey said that a hosted solution "makes the most sense" for an SMB, because it takes the burden of building expensive infrastructure off the shoulders of the companies that may not have the capital freely available.

Historically, SAP has been in favor of on-premise installations. However, it launched a hosted CRM service in 2006, in a bid to capture the growing hosted CRM market.

Similarly, the company is eyeing the growing SMB SaaS market, which it estimates to be worth some US$15 billion.

According to Klaey, 74 percent of SAP's customers are SMBs, with this proportion expected to go up in the years to come. Having offered only on-premise ERP products till this, Klaey said that he expects this to fill the void in the market for a hosted ERP service that is "end-to-end".

Eric MacDonald, SAP Asia-Pacific and Japan president and CEO of South East Asia, said: "[Business ByDesign] addresses the 'testing out' market--the users who don't have the bandwidth to take on huge IT projects but are interested in trying out a product which gives them improved control."

Klaey did not comment on whether SAP's acquisition of Business Objects would see business intelligence functionality added to the product.

Presently, users' data on the system is hosted in Waldorf, Germany with prices beginning at US$149 per user, per month, for a minimum of 25 users.