Technology

Experts focus on IT for business promotion

IT departments should be close to the CEOs of the companies and the CIOs should be an important source of information in the decision making process in all levels of the business said the experts at the BCS CEO panel discussion held last week.

The panel discussion was held on "Synchronizing Business Solutions for Business" where over 125 business leaders participated at the event.

The panellists were: former CEO of the NDB Bank Ranjith Fernando, Senior Vice President of the IFS group Thomas Peterson and CIO of MAS Holdings Jay Keller.

Peterson said that IT will completely change the competitiveness landscape in industrial and service establishments.

IT is used as a competitive weapon by the managers of the companies and I have experience of how the mid size companies all over the world use IT to face the challenges.

Mid size companies compete with big global companies.

When they want to expand their business, go global they face a lot of challenges.

They may have to expand the supply chain, supply to the markets where they don't know, to unknown customers.

These companies have a moderate size management team and they have to go global with these constraints. They come to us and ask solutions to change. IT solutions solve most of these problems. Companies can have close contact with the customers and get market information. Tools such as supply chain management will solve most of the problems the mid size companies face in expansion. ERP solutions have evolved and small and mid size companies can start with most important modules instead of purchasing whole solutions.

Ranjith Fernando said that the IT strategy of a company should be closely aligned with the business strategy of IT and the management should be very closely involved. The gap between the technical side, the technical management of the IT system and the business should be bridged. In a business there are three levels of decision making: operational, managerial and strategic level. IT should cater all these three levels of decision making. The IT department should be a part of the business and not the finance department, Fernando said.

Keller said that CEOs should team up with his CIO and then he will give all the information he needs on the business at his finger tips. CIO should be in the board right next to you,he said. He said that business professionals trained on IT is better than the pure IT professionals for a business.

(GW)

Millennium IT unveils trading platform

Millennium Information Technologies (MillenniumIT) unveiled a revolutionary new release of its trading platform this week.

It possesses ultra fast order processing capabilities, making it the world's fastest trading platform.

During the project, MillenniumIT collaborated with Intel Corporation to achieve a 130 micro second order latency using the Intel(r) Xeon(r) 5500 processors. These tests were conducted at Intel's fasterLAB facility near London UK.

Today, exchanges must cope with the rapid rise in volumes of high-frequency trading.

In the US, trading volumes attributable to high-frequency trading have grown to 73 percent from 40 percent a year ago.

This means that exchanges having trading systems with the lowest latency - the time between when an order is received, processed and an acknowledgement sent - will retain and grow market share. Traditional approaches to trading system design cannot deliver the required extreme low latency and high volumes at commercially viable cost points.

MillenniumIT's unique rule-based event processing pipeline enabled the system to be deployed and run on inexpensive volume-produced two socket servers, far surpassing the performance of traditional trading systems.

"We registered a 130 micro second order latency in the first benchmark run, and expect this figure to drop by another 40 micro seconds when the final platform specific tuning is done" said Ajit Samaranayake, Chief Scientist at MillenniumIT.

The latency measurements were conducted using a day's orders and trading rules from a tier 1 stock exchange.

Nigel Woodward, Global Director Financial Services at Intel, comments: "Working to optimize latency performance in the venue space is a natural extension of our lab-based work to date around sell-side functions.

Our engineers worked closely to ensure that the features of the processor could be utilized by Millennium software.

The results coming out of this iterative activity prove the importance of this technical collaboration where we have worked with the highly threaded code across multi-core processors to achieve both latency and throughput.

IIT offers BSc in Info Systems

"Cutting Edge" is an annual exhibition which showcases innovative state-of-the-art IT and Business Solutions researched and developed by the final year students of Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT).

Informatics Institute of Technology offers the BSc (Hons) Information Systems with Business Management degree program in collaboration with the University of Westminster, UK. It is a requirement that all students in the final year undertake a research project. Selected final year projects were displayed at Cutting Edge 2009. These span a range of topics which fall into the categories of Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, Sales and Marketing, Finance, Management Information Systems, E-commerce, Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) and Health Care. Experts from the field of business were invited to judge the best projects that were presented at the exhibition.

Deshabandhu Surath Wickramasinghe, Chairman of the Institute presented the trophies for the Business Innovation award. Established in 1990, IIT is the pioneer and the oldest private tertiary education institution offering British university undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in IT and Management. IIT plays an important role in the national IT capacity building effort. Since its inception, a large number of Sri Lankan students have had an affordable opportunity to access and successfully obtain world class British undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications while in Sri Lanka. IIT is a member of the Informatics Group of Companies which was founded in 1983 by its Managing Director, Dr. Gamini Wickramasinghe. Informatics Group consists of seven operating companies with a work force of over 600 employees. Informatics has one of the largest IS organisations in Sri Lanka with ISO 9001:2000 and SEI CMM - Level 4 accreditation. It has developed Software of international repute for Telecom, Insurance, Banking, Government, E-business and the Retail Industry.

Bill Gates impressed over President's vision on IT

Remarks by Bill Gates Hello. It's a great privilege to join you by video to celebrate the "Year of English and IT Services" in Sri Lanka. I was very excited to learn about plans for the year which has a clear focus on IT, because this initiative demonstrates that His Excellency, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his government recognize the extraordinary potential that information technology has to dramatically improve people's lives in the country. Some of you may know that I now focus my full time work on the foundation. But I'm still very connected and very excited about the work going on at Microsoft. As I reflect on these thirty-three years of great innovation since Microsoft was started,I am amazed at how far we've come and the many ways in which IT is transforming how people live and work all over the world and the pace of progress continues to increase. The personal computer we have today is already over a million times more powerful than the original PC that Microsoft wrote software for back in 1981.

Sri Lanka has an advantage, with a government that's committed to investing further in IT, as outlined in President Rajapaksa's vision statement.

Like President Rajapaksa, I am optimistic that the country is poised for greater economic growth and development, and much of that will be fueled by the use of software and the power of IT.

The country's IT literacy rate is nearing 20%, which represents a significant jump from 8% only a few years ago. English language speaking skills are also a crucial part of the foundation for future growth.

Through our Partners in Learning and Community Technology Skills Programs and our other initiatives, Microsoft has partnered with educational and non-governmental organizations in Sri Lanka to bring IT skills and training to over a million people across the country.

These efforts have reached students, teachers, academia, rural communities, IT professionals, and migrant workers.

EAsia 2009 at BMICH from Dec. 2 to 4

EAsia 2009, the fourth in the series of the eAsia annual events organised by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) and Elets Technomedia, will be held from December 2 to 4 2009 at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka will be the host organisation.

EAsia 2009, is the annual international Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for development event that provides opportunity for all stakeholders in the ICT arena to come closer and share a level-playing ground through active conferencing and networking. Spanning over three days, the event will comprise unique thematically inter-related conferences, in the domains of e- Governance, Digital Learning, e-Health and Telecentres.

Sri Lanka is poised to fuel the national economy and leverage its global competitiveness in the emerging knowledge economy. Recognising the importance of rapidly creating a knowledge society, the Sri Lankan Government has declared the Year 2009 as the Year of English and IT. Considering the present time as the beginning of this journey towards national prosperity, there is an obvious need for the Sri Lankan Government to foster international collaboration, develop strategic partnership and promote the national cause among people, organisation and enterprises - from both within and outside the country.

With the objective of reinforcing technology and knowledge-centric growth needs of Asia vis-...-vis Sri Lanka, through capitalisation of market economy and boosting human development, eAsia 2009 - Opportunities for Digital Asia will provide the right opportunity for all stakeholders to come closer and share a level-playing ground through active conferencing and networking.

The threedays of conferencing will consist of a number of plenary and technical sessions, focused workshops, seminars, discussion round tables and a full-fledged exhibition, providing excellent opportunity for showcasing projects, programs and initiatives of government and private sector agencies/corporations, as also for demonstrating innovative ICT products, solutions and applications for various domains covered under the scope of the event.

The speakers and attendees will include policy-makers, senior government officials, industry leaders, international development agencies, civil society, academia, and investors.

eAsia 2009 will thus be a unique networking and learning opportunity for one and all.