Short takes on this week's news
Unilever first with RFID supply chain
standard
Unilever is to be the first company to use a new radio frequency
identification standard developed by IBM and T3Ci. The Electronic
Product Code Information Services (Epcis) standard is designed to
help organisations throughout the supply chain avoid information
overload and share information to improve business processes.
Treasury saves £412m with e-procurement
New electronic procurement systems, such as web auctions,
enabled Treasury buying agency OGCbuying.solutions to save a total
of £412m last year. In its annual report, OGCbuying.solutions said
the £412m in savings were delivered on £2.7bn of public sector
expenditure, and exceeded government targets of £400m.
Microsoft tool lets users delay Explorer 7
roll-out
Microsoft has released a tool that will allow enterprises to
postpone upgrading to the new Internet Explorer 7 browser via
Microsoft's automatic update distribution services. The tool will
allow users to test the browser in their own time before rolling it
out across the business. IE7 for Windows XP is currently in beta
and the browser will be distributed with the Windows Vista
operating system from the end of this year.
Number of firms with a dedicated IT director
falls
The number of organisations with dedicated IT directors has
fallen over the past five years from 27% to 21%, the National
Computer Centre's Benchmark of IT Strategy 2006 has found. However,
board-level representation of the IT function has climbed from 61%
five years ago, according to responses from 288 IT user
organisations.In brief
IBM to base software charges on chip speed
IBM plans to charge for its software based on how fast it runs
on users' systems. The supplier currently charges double for its
software if a dual-core chip is based on the IBM Power
architecture, but it does not charge extra for software running on
dual-core x86 chips. In future, it plans to simplify the costs by
setting licence charges according to the performance of the
processors running the software.
Intel cuts prices as processor war
continues
Intel has slashed the prices of some of its high-performance
chips as part of an ongoing price war with AMD. The price cuts
offered to PC manufacturers should eventually lead to cheaper
computers for users. AMD also cut prices for some of its processors
last week.
Ransomware increases encryption to 660-bit
Security software may be powerless to tackle a new generation of
Trojans that encrypt data files before demanding payment in return
for a decryption key. Previously, this "ransomware", used 56-bit
encryption, which could easily be tackled by security software. But
a report from security firm Kaspersky Lab said public key
encryption of up to 660 bits is being used by the Gpcode malware
family.
Government announces latest plans for WEEE
The government has announced its latest implementation plans for
the delayed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive. It
will now come into force on 1 July 2007, with the aim of ensuring
that all electronic hardware that is no longer wanted is disposed
of in an environmentally-friendly way.
Spar ready for first remote Epos upgrade
Convenience store group Spar is planning to remotely upgrade its
electronic point of sale software for the first time following the
deployment of new hardware in its stores. The Epos hardware, from
supplier Digipos, was rolled out to Spar outlets because the
previous tills had reached the end of their life and the chain
wanted to achieve efficiencies from conducting system updates
remotely.
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