15th March 2012 – Well known Irish television and radio presenter, Miriam O’Callaghan presents award to  inspiring volunteer, Abdul Ali Hassan, at the annual Barnardos Volunteer Awards today, in recognition of his dedication and determination to help make a difference in people’s lives.  Pictured are Miriam O’Callaghan, Abdul Ali Hassan, Jane Lawlor  Director Softech, Fergus Finlay, CEO Barnardos.

Softech is the proud sponsor of the The Barnardos Awards, which celebrate the spirit and contribution of some 300 volunteers of all ages and walks of life who dedicate so much of their time to support Barnardos work with children and families throughout Ireland.

Abdul Ali Hassan won the Helping Hands Young Volunteer award, a special award that recognises the contribution that a young person is making in the community. Abdul Ali Hassan won this award for his great drive and motivation as a volunteer with the SWICN Computer Clubhouse. Abdul engaged in numerous programs as a team leader and mentor with the Clubhouse. In 2010 he worked alongside other mentors to create ‘Dublin 8 is Great’, an event which included a cleaning day in the local area followed by a celebration. He also shared his learning from his engineering course at DCU to support clubhouse members with the construction of a robot for Lego League and was involved in a project aimed at creating space for older adults and young people to exchange their life experiences and opinions.

Speaking at the event Miriam O’Callaghan, said, “I am delighted to be here today to meet the volunteers who so generously give up their time to support Barnardos vital work in communities throughout Ireland. You are an inspiration to us all. Your dedication and commitment brings light and hope to children, families and communities in these challenging times.

All across Ireland, those who volunteer their time, skills and energy are helping to keep doors to support services open in their communities at a time when they are needed most. I know that the contribution of volunteers is of immense value to these organisations and networks, many of whom may otherwise struggle to survive. I applaud each and every volunteer for their dedication and commitment to help make a difference in their community. You are changing lives for the better.”

Fergus Finlay, Barnardos CEO said, “As volunteers, you ensure we rise every time. Each day your dedication and commitment encourages us to move forward, to fight harder, and not to give up. Your belief and support, has ensured children across the country continue to receive the best service possible and you instil hope in the possibility of change.”

“With each one of you by our side, we can continue to provide high quality services and supports to children and families around the country. Together we will continue to highlight the needs of those most vulnerable, and work to change our children’s future.

With you we are stronger.” Fergus Finlay concluded.

Barnardos volunteers make an invaluable contribution to Barnardos work and the delivery of services in more than 40 project centres and in Barnardos network of six charity shops.

Pano Logic, the leader in zero client desktop virtualization, has just announced Pano System 5, its newest zero client desktop virtualization hardware and software solution. Pano System 5 introduces Pano Controller, a new modular architecture that enables flexible deployment options for large heterogeneous virtual environments, and introduces Pano Maestro, to ease device monitoring of distributed zero client endpoints. Additionally, Pano System 5 offers improved user experience and extends support for the most recent VMware releases, vSphere 5 and VMware View 5.

Large distributed organizations deploying virtual desktop infrastructure are challenged to develop a fully centralized environment. The extensive timeline to properly plan and assess the resources required, coupled with hefty price and network limitations have pressed many organizations to centralize the management of desktop computing while leaving compute power at the branch or remote office. This allows IT administrators to take advantage of existing systems, and platform expertise without the high cost of replacement to support one VDI infrastructure versus another. Until today, IT managers could not monitor their devices across all platforms. With Pano System 5, IT administrators can centralize the management of multiple distributed VDI deployments through VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop while significantly reducing the amount of onsite maintenance in each remote office. With Pano Maestro, they can also monitor all of their Pano Zero Client devices through one interface, whether those devices are supported by VMware, Citrix or Microsoft virtualization platforms.

Pano System 5 is built for the future to enable smooth, scalable deployment of large virtual desktop infrastructure with minimal effort. Feature highlights include:

• Pano Controller – This new modular architecture provides a lightweight and flexible virtual appliance that works with the customer’s choice of desktop broker, such as VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop or Pano Virtual Desktop Broker and with preferred hypervisors such as ESX, XenServer or HyperV, enabling platform independence and ease of management for large scale deployments.
• Pano Maestro – An enhanced scale out architecture allows IT administrators to monitor heterogeneous environments across VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop, enabling radical centralization for growing organizations across distributed environments.
• Improved User Experience – Software enhancements enable 30-40 percent reductions in network bandwidth utilization, resulting in a smoother computing experience with office productivity applications and 25 percent better video frame rate quality.

• Enhanced Support for VMware – Pano System 5 supports the newest releases from VMware, vSphere 5 and VMware View 5.

“Large enterprises are realizing the cost, security and management benefits of a centralized virtual desktop infrastructure, but struggle with optimizing deployments across large distributed environments,” said John Kish, CEO, Pano Logic. “Pano Logic continues to advance state-of-the-art desktop virtualization with Pano System 5, which eases the complexity of larger enterprise installations while improving the quality of service for all of our users.”

To learn more about Pano contact John Hosey on 01-2156217

Waterloo, ON. – 2011-08-23 – Following on the heels of the release of OpenText RightFax 10 comes news from Davidson Consulting, a fax industry analyst firm, stating that OpenText Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC) continues to extend its positioning as the world’s leading provider of enterprise fax server software based on 2010 sales.

As detailed in the “Computer-Based Fax Markets, 2010-2015″ report (available at www.davidsonconsulting.biz), OpenText secured a more than 25 percent share of the overall market and notably took over the leadership position in the fast-growing Fax over Internet Protocol (FoIP) segment.

“OpenText is on a roll. The company now offers RightFax 10 and is not only the leader in overall fax, but has taken the lead in IP fax as well. OpenText now has Cisco-compatible offerings that challenge Sagemcom in its area of traditional strength,” Peter J. Davidson, president of Davidson Consulting, writes in the recently released report.

The release of RightFax 10 in June represented a significant milestone in the product’s history. In addition to enhanced support for cloud-based office systems, the new release features a number of enhancements that make it easier, faster and more secure for customers to integrate faxing into their business processes and workflows. These new features include barcode routing, searchable PDF delivery and enhanced Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Lotus Notes 8.5 integration. It also added optional accessibility support that meets mandates under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Davidson report cites OpenText’s innovation and focus on helping customers increase efficiency and lower costs as key factors in RightFax’s growing market acceptance. “RightFax production fax offerings provide electronic document delivery and receipt solutions to reduce costs, speed communications and improve business process efficiency,” Davidson writes.

The report cites a number of factors in the expected fax server market growth including compliance regulations and the need for corporations to track all messages, make them retrievable, and to ensure security and confidentiality; MFP (Multi Function Peripherals) integration with fax servers; and fax enabling Microsoft SharePoint among other factors. The top five industries using fax servers were healthcare, financial services, government, legal and manufacturing.

“OpenText’s emergence as the leader in FoIP and the release of RightFax 10 is a testament to the quality of our products and speaks to the dedication of our team to build and maintain the ongoing trust of our customers,” said Matthew Brine, Vice President, Fax and Document Distribution, OpenText. “While we are pleased with our market results, we’re not slowing down. We will continue to work hard to drive innovation and help our customers to further improve their business processes and lower faxing costs.”

For more information about OpenText Fax Solutions click here

About OpenText

OpenText, a global ECM leader, helps organizations manage and gain the true value of their business content. OpenText brings two decades of expertise supporting 100 million users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts to help organizations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit www.opentext.com.

The new Pano Logic System 4.5 boosts the reduced total cost of ownership, simplified management and strengthened security benefits of its next-generation zero client devices with significant improvements to audio-visual performance and resource consumption. Pano Logic was the first zero client provider to announce support for VMware, Citrix and Microsoft environments, interchangeably with the same device. The new software extends Pano Logic’s independence edict of multi-platform support to XenDesktop 5 running on VMware ESX hypervisors, and offers 64-bit support for Windows 7.

“Most desktop virtualization thin clients and PCs require complex and expensive display protocols that lock customers into one infrastructure over another. Pano Logic’s innovative technology eliminates that requirement, by effectively removing the need for these protocols,” said John Kish, CEO, Pano Logic. “With the Pano Zero client system, improvements to performance are all made through the software residing entirely on the server, allowing users to choose which hypervisor platform and management system they require to support their diverse user base.”

In conjunction with the release of Pano Logic System 4.5, Sarrel Group tested the performance of Pano Logic System 4.5 against thin clients and PCs, demonstrating excellent performance across several key metrics, including:

• Office Productivity – Pano Logic has the lowest CPU utilization, the lowest memory consumption and lowest disk operations during MS Office benchmarking.
• Highest Availability – Pano Logic boots and resets faster than the competition, which enables office workers to start working sooner and remain more productive while working.
• Video Quality – Pano Logic provides a smooth real-time, full-motion and full-screen video experience that surpasses thin clients, and compares to PCs.

Resource Consumption – Pano Logic consumes the fewest server resources, equivalent or better than an average corporate PC, promoting greater server-side scalability.

“Desktop virtualization offers many benefits, but there has always been skepticism that it can deliver an experience similar to a PC,” said Matt Sarrel, principal, Sarrel Group. “However, quantitative analysis of desktop virtualization offerings demonstrates that Pano Logic provides a desktop virtualization experience similar to a PC, but at a fraction of the cost.”

Sarrel Group assessed the performance of CPU utilization, memory consumption and I/O operations per seconds with common office tasks, such as Microsoft Excel data entry and PowerPoint slide scrolling. Subjective video quality tests compared the playback experience of six different formats: 1080p Blu-ray, 1080p MP4, 1080p Flash video, 720p MP4, a medium-quality Flash video and a low-quality Flash video.

For more information on the Pano System please email sales@softech.ie or telephone +353 1 215 6200.

16th March 2011 – Softech was delighted to once again be associated with the annual Barnardos Volunteer Awards. This year a Waterford’s teenager’s green fingers saw him receive a top award, for his role in creating an enchanting garden. John D’Arcy, a sixth year student at St Augustine’s College in Dungarvan, won the Barnardos Helping Hands Award for his work in re-opening the Littlewood garden in Stradbally, Co Waterford. The award ceremony which took place in the Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin, recognises the hard work and commitment of volunteers both young and old.

Softech Congratulates Barnardos Winner John D'Arcy

John embarked on a fundraising project to re-open the Beatrice Norris garden in Stradbally, Waterford. He spent his summer raising funds and driving awareness of his project and he received a huge amount of support, with crowds visiting to see the work done to the garden, which had been closed to the public for eight years. He also raised €1,500 for the Waterford Cheshire.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Fergus Finlay, Barnardos CEO, said; “John displayed great drive and dedication. The judging panel were hugely impressed with his initiative and organisational skills not to mention his energy and sheer determination”

“I’d like to thank Softech who sponsor this award each year, without their support we would not be able to recognise the work of young people like John, who demonstrate that young people of today have not lost the ability to be involved in their communities. By giving their time and energy so freely, they help make their communities a better place to live in.”

The annual volunteer awards hold a special significance for Barnardos as the children’s charity depends on the support it receives through its committed volunteer network. Without the help of over 240 volunteers who raise funds, staff shops, run the board and work alongside staff directly with children and families, the work could not be carried out as effectively and to the same extent.

The other big award winner was Linda Foy, an artist based in Dublin, who received the Barnardos Volunteer of the Year Award for her creative work with the children who attend some of Barnardos projects in the Dublin area.

Fergus Finlay concluded; “Irish society would be a poorer place without the dedication and commitment of people – who give so freely of their time to make their community a better place to live in. It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that Barnardos’ volunteers have helped make a real difference to the lives of those less fortunate, not only now but in the future too.”

The Barnardos Helping Hands Award, aims to promote the spirit of volunteering among young people under the age of 25, and encourage them to get involved in volunteering activities in their area.

Add to this the unseen costs that relate to manual fax machines. Costs such as support and maintenance, toner, paper, recycling and secure shredding, rental for dedicated phone lines, the high cost of running manuals fax machines is plan to see. By retiring those manual fax machines (there are many still out there in the wild), a business can very quickly achieve cost reductions while increasing productivity. We hope you enjoy the video and that it helps to illustrate just some of the many benefits of OpenText RightFax.

For more information, please contact Kieran Lane on 01 215 6200 or email sales@softech.ie

Why Pano System 4 and improved desktop virtualization should matter to you:

• Eliminate vendor lock-in with hypervisor independence: Choose the hypervisor platform(s) best suited for your business or truly leverage your legacy systems. Plug and play the same device in the platform of your choice.
• Interoperate with your existing infrastructure and desktop management systems: Pano Manager has built-in flexibility to integrate an interoperate with platform management tools like VMware vCenter, Microsoft SCVMM and Citrix XenDesktop. It’s your choice.
• Eradicate data theft and security breaches at the endpoint: Since the Pano Zero Client is stateless and has no local storage there’s never a risk of data theft/loss or malware infection in the endpoint. You shouldn’t have to worry about endpoint security, focus on the data center. Pano Logic offers a true zero client device with no endpoint management. Download our Zero versus Thin Client whitepaper.
• Broaden user communications: With added support for video conferencing, audio recording/playback and VOIP via isochronous USB audio/video peripherals like USB headsets/speakers, USB microphones and webcams driven by software like Skype, Google Talk, Cisco Unified Communications, and Rosetta Stone.
• Reduce your energy consumption by as much as 95%: With no moving parts, there’s no cooling necessary and the Pano Zero Client only consumes 6 watts of energy. Pano System 4 provides a green IT solution for a variety of industries.
• Improve VDI (virtualized desktop infrastructure) user experience: You no longer need to rely on complex, costly remoting or display protocols, client side compute processing or convoluted proprietary chips to deliver a PC-like user experience.

For more information

If you would like some more information on how Pano System 4.1 can help you to acheive your Desktop Virtualisation goals contact sales@softech.ie or phone +353 1 215 6200.

With Pano System 3.5, IT managers can finally choose the hypervisor platform that best meets the requirements of their diverse end user audience and existing infrastructure without having to factor in endpoint device compatibility. This solves a significant challenge IT managers face when moving to desktop virtualization, alleviating the management drain, complexity and creeping costs associated with reconfigured terminal services technology. Today’s thin clients, veiled as zero clients, still contain firmware at the endpoint, and are built to support a protocol that is tied to a specific hypervisor platform, limiting end user choice and flexibility. This neither delivers on the promise of virtualization nor cloud computing, and it locks customers into complex, short term solutions.

With the zero client Pano Device, which contains no operating system, software, storage or moving parts and is purpose-built for virtualization, the IT manager may change the supporting hypervisor, yet utilize the same device and the same desktop virtualization software. Pano System 3.5, which includes the zero client device and all the software needed to support the device, can support both Hyper-V and VMware hypervisors, provided each is hosted in a separate server environment.

In addition, by adding support for Hyper-V to its software, Pano Logic is able to bring the benefits of zero client computing to a broader set of customers and markets while leveraging the Microsoft services and support channels valued by many end users. Pano System 3.5 also enables end users to build upon their prior experience with a specific platform or continue to leverage licenses they have already purchased.

Additional Features of Pano System 3.5:

The new release continues to strengthen Pano Logic’s integration with VMware. Pano System 3.5 supports the latest version of VMware vSphere 4.1 and includes support for ESX/ESXi 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1. Enhancements include improved idle time and disconnect timeout behavior, and closer integration with vCenter Server and View Connection Server.

The 3.5 release also adds new capabilities for Pano Remote, a secure USB drive that enables end users to access their desktop virtual machines using any computer with an internet connection. Users who have been provided with multiple virtual desktops may now select a specific DVM when utilizing Pano Remote.

Supporting Comments:

“With the addition of Hyper-V support, we’re now able to respond to an entirely new segment of customer demand for the huge reductions in computing TCO that Pano Logic delivers,” said Aaron Schneider, Principal of Helixstorm, a Pano Logic reseller. “Microsoft has achieved significant traction with Hyper-V and businesses are seeking to extend to the desktop the savings and simplicity they’re now enjoying with their new virtualization infrastructures. Adding this support alongside VMware, and supporting them simultaneously if the customer requires it, opens up a whole new ballgame.”

“Pano Logic built its technology to accommodate expanded end user choice and laid the foundation from the beginning to support the leading hypervisors based on customer demand,” said John Kish, CEO of Pano Logic. “We’re fielding accelerated interest from Hyper-V users in our solution and we responded with support. What this means is that with our Pano System, the endpoint device no longer dictates the infrastructure decisions IT managers must make when deciding what’s best for their organizations. Allowing desktop and infrastructure independence makes deploying and managing desktop virtualization even simpler.”

“Pano System 3.5 delivers on the promise of cloud computing by removing the endpoint device from the equation, while paving the way for a PC-like end user experience,” continued Kish. “Ubiquitous computing that enables users to access processing from a range of devices means the device should be independent of the supporting infrastructure. Pano Logic has taken the first meaningful step toward providing the architecture that accomplishes this.”

Pano Logic Zero Client Computing:

• Pano Logic solves major problems created by distributed PCs, limited terminal services, and repurposed thin clients or related architectures, while providing end users with the best possible user experience, and IT managers with a simple, open hypervisor-agnostic platform to deliver desktop computing.

• End users connect to their virtual machine via a zero client that contains no processor, no operating system, no memory, no drivers, no firmware, no software and no moving parts. This represents a major paradigm shift away from highly complex and costly PC and thin client architectures.

• Pano Logic’s patent-pending technology, Pano Direct, simplifies a very complex desktop computing environment by virtually stretching the I/O connection over the network enabling the desktop virtual machine to deliver a native Windows desktop, eliminating the need for costly, failure-prone protocols.

• Radical centralization using the Pano Logic zero client platform drastically reduces computing TCO by as much as 80 percent by completely eliminating endpoint management and security risks, and reducing energy consumption by as much as 95%. As a result, companies adopting it can tackle both budgetary and green IT initiatives.

• The Pano zero client platform delivers on the promise of cloud computing by opening the way for a PC-like user experience on endpoints that are completely independent of processor architectures, protocol limitations, and unmanageable software stacks.

The Pano System is a complete end-to end virtual desktop solution which includes the Pano Manager, a virtual machine manager and connection broker, the unique Pano zero client device, and Pano Direct, providing the connection to completely centralized virtual desktops. The Pano System starts a $319 per seat and is also available in a pre-configured, pre-loaded all-in 50-user suite, Pano Express, combining VMware vSphere™ Essentials, Microsoft Windows 7/XP licenses, and HP server and storage hardware with Pano Logic’s award-winning zero client platform.

• Evaluation and piloting of virtual desktops
• Deployment planning
• User and IT training
• Pano System deployments and upgrades
• Ongoing service and management of your Pano Systems

VDI delivers major benefits for organisations by simplifying administration, increasing security and reducing ongoing operational and support costs. Savings of up to 80% over a traditional desktop PC’s power consumption can be achieved making a compelling Green Technology argument.

For further information contact Kieran Lane on +353 1 215 6200

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