This is a guest post from Eoin Brazil (Dr), Technology Transfer Lead,  Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)

Register for the free Financial Industry and High Performance Computing on eventbrite. Date: Tue March 13th.

ICHEC are hosting a free workshop for financial sector companies where invited speakers will outline the rapid changes in hardware technology and where computing can utilise this hardware to have a profound impact on their business. From front to back-office, from portfolio construction to trade execution, from data capture to quarterly reports – there are business processes that are inherently parallel and amenable to high performance computing.

The financial industry, like other industries is increasingly concerned about the transfer of data into information, information into action, and action into profit. There are two forces acting upon the financial industry, firstly the need to reduce the time to get things done and secondly the need to expand the amount of work done in that time.

This seminar will introduce how your company can leverage current off-the-shelf hardware to tackling uncertainty. It does so by highlighting where and how this has already done with practical examples. International speakers will discuss where this technology is:

• Reducing risk (by knowing more, by providing more detail, by dealing with larger amounts of data)
• Getting to answers faster (this can be reducing cost or dealing faster with market uncertainties)
• Making better utilisation of existing IT infrastructures (leveraging existing hardware resources more efficiently and more effectively to tackle problems)

The aim of this breakfast briefing is to highlight the potential benefits of this technology to the Irish Financial industry as one means of achieving business innovation. More information about the programme is available here

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This EU subsidised Gateway to Japan ICT trade mission scheduled for December might be of interest to you.   The deadline for application is July 15th. For more details see Gateway to Japan – ICT Trade Mission in December

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Seminars on Data Protection Legislation in Limerick and Athlone, May 12th and 13th

You are no doubt aware of the recent increase in the number of data breaches that have been headline news. 61% of respondents in a recent survey carried out by the Irish Computer Society said that their organisation had not fully considered the costs of data breaches in their security and privacy policies. 45% of respondents were not aware that mandatory reporting of data breaches has now been introduced in Ireland. 

In association with the ICS, leading Irish Data Protection and Security Experts, Hugh Jones and Daragh O’Brien, will deliver 2 one-day seminars, in Limerick and Athlone to address these issues. Aimed at management and senior staff from organisations who handle and process sensitive information about clients, employees or staff, the seminars will provide an overview of data protection legislation in Ireland and your organisation’s obligations under this legislation, as well as cover questions from participants on topics of particular interest.

The day will be split into two modules:

• a 3-hour training module to provide an overview of the legislation
• a ‘clinic’ session to allow attendees to raise questions of particular interest to themselves

For registration please use the  following links:

Limerick Seminar

Athlone Seminar

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I visited DERI, located in NUI Galway, for their open day on April 6th 2011. Minister Sean Sherlock, TD, Minister for Research and Innovation, and himself a graduate of NUIG, opened proceedings with Professor Jim Browne, President of the University.

DERI is home to 140 research staff, half of whom are PhDs. The focus is web science research to enable networked knowledge across a variety of key sectors such as eHealth, eLearning, eGovernment, eBusiness and more. In the words of DERI researcher Dr. Giovanni Tummarello ‘we are drowning in information’. His research is making advanced contributions to tidy this up and make it easier to consolidate and access relevant information by creating a state of the art infrastructure that consolidates billions of pieces of metadata under one coherent umbrella. In my understanding, current search engines deliver links to different sources of information, DERI’s search engines deliver the consolidated information. See Sig.ma for more information.

Another area of particular interest to me is the application of DERI’s expertise to healthcare, a sector for which the Galway region is well known. The enablement of data integration a lá DERI can raise the efficiency of clinical research, and enable the self-management of disease by the patient through telehealth. Current projects tackle issues such as integration of sensor data with patient record systems, enablement of plug and play electronic patient records, and interoperability of eHealth systems.

The centre is buzzing with young researchers, appropriately interspersed with some elder lemons. The atmosphere in DERI is well summed up by Ronan Fox, who heads up the eHealth division of DERI:

“The DERI team is young, bright and enthusiastic. They want to change the world for the better and so do I!”

Enterprise Ireland works with a number of companies active in the IT for Health sector, please have a look at the directory if you’re interested in finding out more about them.

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See the coverage in the Irish Times today on cyber security. This is an important and growing cluster in Ireland which will play a key role in the global evolution of IT security. It is of  particular relevance, but not limited, to the growing demand for cloud based solutions and Ireland’s unrivalled opportunity in Cloud Computing, recently highlighted by Microsoft.

ISI (InfoSecurity Ireland), a forum of 6 indigenous Irish companies, promotes Ireland as an important source of IT security technology and plays a key role in drawing  industry, academia and government together into a cohesive  cluster in order to position Ireland as the centre of excellence in cyber security.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0128/1224288456514.html

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Software as a Service (SaaS) is being viewed by many as every CIO’s dream – a low cost, convenient application of software that enables a company to focus on its core business by outsourcing all its IT.  But can this model support mission-critical systems effectively? And will the one size fits all approach work for companies looking to differentiate themselves with distinctive products and services?

One of my client companies, Exaxe, recently published a white paper which examined the use of SaaS within the life and pensions industry. While recognising the benefits of SaaS in terms of economies of scale, a usage-based cost, outsourcing maintenance and the appeal of ‘anywhere’ access, it highlights the fact that in order to maximise benefits, users are restricted to the range of possibilities that are provided by the software and its standard configurable options.

The paper argues that the primary benefit of SaaS wihin a life and pensions organisation comes from removing only utility support systems from the internal IT department, allowing them to concentrate on the core mission-critical systems.

The white paper, “Software As a Service – A Model For Life Assurers?” is available here (PDF, will open in a new browser window).

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A world first announced by an Irish software company today: iQuate‘s software inventory tool, iQSonar, is the first third-party tool to be verified by Oracle’s License Management Services (LMS) group. The tool automates the process of uncovering all information on installation and usage of Oracle database software, options and management packs across physical and virtual/partitioned Unix and Windows platforms in complex IT networks, establishing an accurate inventory of Oracle software in use.

This ensures that you only pay for software in use and don’t unintentionally use software you haven’t paid for, reducing cost and risk. This formal verification by Oracle LMS assures customers that the information on Oracle software deployment and usage produced by iQSonar will be accepted by Oracle as accurate and comprehensive.

Founded in 2002, iQuate is supported by Enterprise Ireland. For further details, see the full press release, with details regarding an upcoming webinar.

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