iTWire - Virtualisation

Castlepoint co-founder and CEO Rachel Greaves named RegTech Female Entrepreneur of the Year with company named Australia’s best

2022-11-01T10:06:08+11:00

COMPANY NEWS: Artificial intelligence compliance software specialist Castlepoint Systems co-founder and CEO Rachael Greaves has been named the RegTech Female Entrepreneur of the Year.

Greaves’ award was one of two presented to Castlepoint Systems, with the company awarded RegTech of the Year (Australian founded).

Announced at the RegTech Awards Gala Dinner, the Awards underpin The RegTech Association's mission to create a global centre of excellence and to accelerate RegTech adoption across regulated eco-systems.

Judged by expert cross-industry panel, the Awards celebrate the association’s members who have achieved the greatest impact over the last year.

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“I am thrilled to be named the Female Entrepreneur of the Year for 2022,” said Greaves.

"The awards are a great honour and it’s a real privilege to be named a winner and recognised for our business growth, innovation, contribution and our active participation that benefits the entire RegTech community.”

“I am also very proud of our Castlepoint team, our company and our mission, and to be recognised by the judges as the Australian Founded RegTech of 2022 is very humbling and rewarding.”

The RegTech Association encourages more women into RegTech and by giving the Female Entrepreneur Award they play an active role in ensuring increased gender equity.

"We must strive to achieve an equitable gender balance and employ people who represent community demographics, including younger and older people, indigenous people, migrants, people with a disability, and LGBTQIA+ people,” adds Greaves.

“We must actively approach people who represent diverse attributes for consideration in our recruitment activities, to ensure the candidate pool is representative of the community. Although hiring decisions resulting from these activities will be based on merit, if women and other minorities are not represented in the recruitment round, none of their inherent merit can be noticed or nurtured.

Greaves also feels men must be supported to help challenge outdated and damaging ideas about parenting, care, and service in the community.

“When men are not empowered and encouraged to take leave for these reasons, women in their families are left to carry the weight, perpetuating the cycle of exclusion from the workplace,” she says.

“We must also support men to carry their share of emotional labour in the workplace, including working to make all their colleagues feel included and valued.”

“It may seem counterintuitive, but my advice for other women in my position is to keep doing what we have always done—expend some of our time and bandwidth helping others. Our investment in the next generation of men and women in RegTech will pay dividends in the future."

A full list of the RegTech Award winners can be found here.

About Castlepoint Systems
Castlepoint is a software solution that manages all the information in an organisation’s business systems. It automatically registers every digital record regardless of location or format and uses Artificial Intelligence to classify it against rules and regulations (including secrecy provisions, privacy rules, and Records Authorities for example) and apply appropriate lifecycle controls.

It acts as a single interface to find, relate, manage, and audit every record in an organisation’s network, no matter what system it is stored in, and it does this without any impact on existing systems or users, and without complex rules engines. This allows governance teams to finally have a complete view across the whole environment, and to apply security, discovery and compliance processes to every single system from a single interface.

Augmented reality brings life to regular product packaging

2022-10-05T11:42:14+11:00

App monetisation platform Displai harnesses augmented reality and smartphone technology to transform regular product packaging into video-enabled interactive packaging—opening doors for brands to engage consumers.

“We’re thrilled to launch Displai—it’s an exciting opportunity for brands to engage their customers directly from product packaging,” said Displai founding partner Dave Chaffey.

How it works
Smartphone users scan product packaging, activating an augmented reality experience which seamlessly overlays video content, animation, images, and clickable links, as if part of the packaging.

According to Displai, the concept is like Facebook filters, which enables users to change the appearance of their faces, overlaying an augmented reality mask.

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“It’s an absolute showstopper for consumers,” said Chaffey. “It’s such a compelling experience - the product they’re holding in their hands comes to life. Jaws literally drop.”

“It enables brands to create connected experiences that cut through—that is, that get more people noticing, trying, and buying products. And ultimately, it helps build engagement and deeper connection—the foundations of great brands,” claimed Chaffey.

Accessible technology
While augmented reality has been available for a few years, it has been out of reach for most businesses.

“We believe that this is the first truly accessible solution for product packaging,” claimed Chaffey. “The platform makes it simple for brands to connect virtual experiences to their products.”

“It can be set up and activated across millions of products in days and will even work with the products currently in the supermarkets and sitting on kitchen shelves in homes.”

Cryptocurrency being less talked about in social media, according to GlobalData

2022-07-01T11:41:37+10:00

The volume of discussions about cryptocurrency led by social media influencers (on Twitter and Reddit) fell by more than 25% in Q2 2022 (April-June) compared to the previous quarter, reveals data analytics company GlobalData.

Global cryptocurrency market has been hit by several factors such as an increase in interest rates, surging inflation, and heightened recession fears, forcing investors to stay away from riskier assets earlier this year, according to GlobalData .

“Most of the cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have incurred consecutive losses in their market price due to macroeconomic factors, including the mounting pressure of the recession. Several Twitter influencers expect the bear market for crypto assets to continue as the multi-trillion-dollar crypto bubble is imploding,” comments GlobalData social media analyst Smitarani Tripathy .

On the contrary, a sharp recovery in influencers’ sentiment was noticed in the third week of June with a marginal recovery in crypto prices. Some influencers suggest investors to remain bullish on cryptocurrencies as they expect the market to recover in the near term.

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GlobalData’s social media analytics platform rounds up the most popular influencer opinions:

Europac chief economist and global strategist Peter Schiff
“Long-term Bitcoin #HOLDers aren't worried as they've been through 73% declines before. But previous declines didn't involve anywhere near the total market cap lost during this decline, nor did they involve massive leverage. This crash is just beginning. #Bitcoin will not recover.”

OptionsHawk founder Joe Kunkle
“Wait..there appears to be a large contingent of people that don’t realise crypto is worthless and was just a fun bubble trade.”

TradingWithCody hedge fund manager Cody Willard
“I've been saying for the last year or two that 99.99% of the 19,000+ cryptocurrency tokens out there are silly, stupid or fraudulent and are headed to $0. The Great Crypto Bubble is itself starting to unwind. The Luna Terra UST stable coin Algo silliness... 1/”

Crypto Analyst Il Capo
Il Capo of Crypto, Crypto Analyst:
“I've been checking dozens of charts and all I see is bearish retests/liquidity take. Confluence for the bearish main targets is insane, and that would be 40-60% down for altcoins. Hidden bearish divergences everywhere on htf. No reasons to be bullish yet.”

Roubini Macro Associates CEO Nouriel Roubini
“Bitcoin now below 19k, a 72% crash from its all-time high in November 2021. 1000s of other shitcoins have lost 99% of their value and disappeared. And even the other Top 10 ‘cryptocurrencies’ have lost 80-90% of their value from their ATH. This Ponzi house of cards is collapsing.”

WazirX founder Nischal Shetty
“Bull market pushes your confidence through the roof Bear market pulls your confidence down to the ground Once you go through both, your confidence will find its middle ground That’s the right place to be If this is your first bear, stay strong. #Crypto #Cryptocurrency”

Crypto advisor Quinten Francois
“While the world is laughing at us for being ‘wrong’, we stack more #Bitcoin and are cheering at these opportunities.”

INX chief business officer Douglas Borthwick
“I think we can all acknowledge that when things happen in #Crypto they happen quickly. Whether a new innovation or a dramatic implosion. This makes me believe that we won't see a #cryptowinter but rather we will see a significant move higher once forced selling ends.”

Parallels Desktop for Mac hits 15th year of virtualising Windows

2021-06-23T00:54:26+10:00

Parallels revolutionised the industry giving Mac users the world's first virtualisation software for Intel-based Macs way back in 2006. 15 years later the product is still going strong, and Parallels is offering a 25% discount to celebrate.

Parallels Desktop for Mac has continued evolving and innovating through its 15 years, helping Mac users run over 200,000 Windows applications on their devices, side-by-side with Mac apps. There’s no need to choose one operating system over the other like with Boot Camp, or a need to constrain virtualised apps all into a single desktop window together.

Virtualisation has long gone from being relegated only to servers with so many good reasons to run virtualised operating systems. You might write cross-platform software, you might need the flexibility of your own computer while still fitting into a corporate Windows-based Active Directory environment, or you might even want to play some games or other apps that only exist on Windows. Whatever the case, Parallels has provided solutions to over seven million customers who rely on the product each day.

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Here are some highlights across Parallels Desktop's 15-year history:

The first five years: 2006 to 2011

The product first launched on June 15, 2006, and unveiled Coherence Mode on February 27, 2007. This gave customers the option to hide the Windows desktop and instead use Windows apps in the Mac environment in just another window as if they were native Mac apps. This remains today as the most popular way for people to use Parallels.

Support for Apple trackpad gestures and keyboard actions was added on November 4, 2009, 64-bit mode on September 14, 2010, and then the business volume-licensing edition in June 2011 allowing Parallels Desktop deployment and activation at scale.

The second five years: 2011 to 2016

As Parallels enjoys its fifth anniversary, NASA itself was seen to be using Parallels Desktop on its MacBook laptops on November 6, 2011, as part of the project that saw the Curiosity Rover land on Mars.

Direct X 10 and Bluetooth support was added on September 4, 2012, and Parallels Access saw the light of day on August 28, 2013. This provides fast remote access into a Windows or Mac system from iOS and Android devices, as well as through a browser.

August 19, 2015, saw the release of Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition, delivering an advanced version for power users and developers. It also brought the world’s first voice-activated personal assistant on the Mac through Windows 10’s Cortana. It wasn’t until later that Siri itself came to the Mac.

The third five years: 2016 to 2021

August 18, 2016, saw the release of Parallels Toolbox for Mac, a standalone product with 25 single-purpose tools to reduce common Mac tasks to a single click. The product now offers 40 unique tools and was so popular, Parallels Toolbox for Windows followed on June 29, 2017.

August 13, 2019, brought support for Direct X 9, 10, and 11 on Apple hardware, allowing much more demanding Windows programs like CAD apps and games on a Mac.

Parallels Desktop for ChromeOS was released on October 20, 2020 - the world’s first software to run Windows directly on enterprise Chromebooks. The Chromebook, a light and simple web-browser based operating system now genuinely can execute native Windows apps like Microsoft Office through Parallels.

This year on April 14, 2021, the current release of Parallels Desktop 16.5 for Mac launched with full native support for the Apple M1 chip accelerating performance even further.

That's the history of Parallels Desktop in a nutshell, but the product continues to evolve and innovate and provide users of all capabilities and needs worldwide with the freedom of choice of operating system and application while running on solid Mac hardware with its crisp Retina display and intuitive touchpad.

You can be part of the next chapter in Parallels history: 2021 to the future

To celebrate the 15th birthday Parallels is providing 25% off Parallels Desktop for Mac until 4:59 pm on July 2nd, 2021. The discount is available to new customers or those with a lapsed subscription, or who have not previously had a Parallels subscription and are on an earlier version. The discount applies to the first year for a new subscription. Active subscribers are unable to use it to renew their subscription. The promotion is available for purchases directly from Parallels, and third-party retailers are not included.

Total bitcoin value exceeds cash in UK, Canada, Australia

2017-12-07T06:26:16+11:00

The current value of the digital currency bitcoin is estimated at US$180 billion, exceeding the total cash in circulation in the UK and a number of other countries including Australia, it has been claimed.

The British comparison website SmallBusinessPrices.co.uk said the estimate was made at the current price of bitcoing which was US$10,765.

The UK had US$103 billion of cash in circulation, Canada had US$59 billion and Australia US$55 billion, the website said.

This made bitcoin the world's sixth most valuable currency based on the amount of cash in circulation.

{loadposition sam08}The site said that while bitcoin was the only digital currency in the top 10, both bitcoin cash and ethereum were in the top 20, based on their current value.

Ian Wright, the founder of SmallBusinessPrices.co.uk said: “Bitcoin’s continued and dramatic price rise has received much press attention, but this research gives us insight into the sheer scale of the industry."

The data for current digital currency prices and total market cap were taken from Coinmarketcap.com.

Other findings by the website were:

Currently 54% of the world’s population lives in countries with currencies in circulation worth less than the value of bitcoin.
If the price of bitcoin rises to $15,000 it will overtake the value of all Indian rupee banknotes and coins in circulation to become the fifth most valuable currency. Given its recent growth rate this could happen within the next month.
However, bitcoin’s price needs to increase to a staggering US$72,300 to overtake the Euro and become the second most valued currency.
To beat the US dollar, in terms of circulation value, it would need to increase in price to at least US$85,160.
At a price of US$458.82 the total market cap of ethereum stands at US$44 billion, making it the 17th most valuable currency, worth more than the value of all banknotes and coins in circulation of countries such as Turkey (US$36 billion) and Singapore (US$27 billion).
Bitcoin cash’s current price of $1,425.21 gives it a market cap of US$24 billion, making it the 20th most valuable currency, worth more than all Swedish Krona (US$9 billion) or South African rand (US$6 billion) banknotes and coins.
Ripple just missed the top 20 with a value of US$10 billion, but was ahead of krona or rand.

Digital currency exchange users unable to withdraw money

2017-12-07T05:55:56+11:00

Users of the Las Vegas-based digital currency trading platform Bittrex have been unable to withdraw money from the company, and are complaining that they have no idea why. Bittrex trades in a number of digital currencies, including bitcoin.

A report in Business Insider said it had received complaints from a number of Bittrex customers. Complaints had also been voiced on Twitter and Reddit.

The major issue with withdrawing money appears to be the difficulty in verifying identity.

While Bittrex admitted that there were what it called "significant delays" in attending to issues faced by customers, it said that these issues only affected a small percentage of its customers.

{loadposition sam08}The company, which is claimed to have daily trading volumes of about US$1 billion, said in a statement that the change in ID procedures was in order to comply with banking regulations and protect its customers from theft and fraud.

It issued a detailed statement about the problem on Wednesday.

The problems at Bittrex have been going on for about 30 days, according to one customer from Florida who contacted BI.

The man, who went by the name Andrew, said: “I, along with a lot of other users, have funds stuck with Bittrex and [am] unable to take them out due to what Bittrex calls ‘Verification Issues'.

“Bittrex has 2 levels of verification. Basic Verification, which I completed, but it said it could not find any public record to match what I entered. Then [it] gives you the option to submit what they call Enhanced Verification where you have to submit Gov ID, Passport, Selfie etc. I, in turn, did this, but that one also failed, saying ‘Name Mismatch Error'. To top it off, they do not provide any settings page to correctly make the name change if [there] truly is a name mismatch.

“The next step is for you to submit a Support Ticket, which I then completed. My Support ticket was opened on November 6 with not a single response from anyone at Bittrex. This is going on for almost 30 days now. I updated the ticket many times to no avail.”

On its Twitter feed, Bittrex has not said anything directly related to the customer issues but notes that due to user growth, it has had to update its back-end systems, with short outages expected due to this.

On 24 November, the company also noted that it had suffered a distributed denial of service attack.

VIDEO Interview: Huang’s Greely good Remote Application Server parallels greatness

2016-06-23T11:27:37+10:00

If you need a great solution for virtual application and desktop delivery to any kind of device and operating system, Parallels wants to be by your side.

Last month, well-known virtualisation company Parallels appointed a new vice-president and general manager for the APAC region, Jerry Huang.

Huang was in town to talk about Parallels’ Remote Application Server, and he met the media alongside Kevin Greely, Parallels’ country manager for Australia and New Zealand, to talk about it.

iTWire colleague Stephen Withers covered the announcement of Huang’s appointment in an article entitled "Huang hangs up his shingle at Parallels" but I decided to do a video interview with both Huang and Greely, which is embedded below, to get a lot more detail that a face-to-face affords.

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Here’s the video interview with Huang and Greely, with the questions I asked listed below – please read on!

I started by introducing Huang, and Greely to the audience.

I then asked Huang and Greely to tell us a little about themselves and their history in the tech industry.

Both gentlemen then told us about how the Parallels business is going in Australia and the APAC region.

They then shared their "insights on the company’s regional plan and the challenges for IT departments in effectively scaling IT infrastructure, especially in a mature and dynamic market such as Australia".

We looked at how Parallels Access is an important part of the Parallels business today, and looked at trends in enterprise mobility in Australia and the rest of the region they could share, and how that dovetails with Parallels Access usage.

Next up was a look at the new Parallels Remote Application Server.

I then asked about the kind of costs businesses are looking at in implementing the Parallels Remote Application Server, and the experiences of users.

We delved into Parallels' distributor relationship in Australia, peeked into hints about the next version of Parallels Desktop, explored the best piece of advice both gentlemen had received to help them get where they are today, crystal-balled a look at the future, and listened to the final messages both had for iTWire viewers and readers, and for Parallels’ current and future customers.

JAMF now integrates with Apple School Manager

2016-05-21T15:40:51+10:00

JAMF is an Apple-only implementation and management company that helps enterprise, business and education integrate Apple products into their environment.

Its key product is Casper and it now supports Apple School Manager – a single portal allowing system administrators to create Apple IDs, purchase apps, and prepare devices for MDM (mobile device management). By integrating with Apple School Manager, JAMF improves deployment workflows and adds photo support for both Apple’s Classroom app and Shared iPad feature. Schools get a single reference point for all of their device deployment and ongoing management needs, while enabling teachers and students with the best technology for learning.

Dean Hager, chief executive, JAMF Software said: “Apple School Manager is a game-changer because it automates and simplifies Apple ID creation and the deployment of devices and apps. By integrating seamlessly with all of the native technology from Apple, including Apple School Manager, JAMF ensures when schools are ready to take advantage of Apple’s new education capabilities, they have the best possible education technology experience.

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Casper Suite’s integration with Apple School Manager gives schools:

The ability to dynamically update user information for students, teachers, and staff, and organise classes. For example, schools can enable their teachers with class-specific apps and content to guide students through a personalised lesson plan.
A simplified and automated workflow for device enrolment, deployment, and app configuration. For example, a new iPad can be pre-configured using Casper Suite, automatically equipping students with all the apps and settings they need.
The ability to associate and display student photos in Apple’s Classroom app and on a Shared iPad login screen, making it is easier for teachers to identify students in Apple’s Classroom app and for students to find and log in to their iPad.

"Having worked in education for the past 30 years, you discover that the most important things are students and teachers. It is our responsibility in IT to empower them through the resources of technology,” said Larry Stegall, senior systems engineer, Killeen ISD. “Apple School Manager and JAMF allow our teachers to can focus on the real challenges which face them, educating our children for an ever-changing world. Management of 25,000 desktops and 10,000 iOS devices would be impossible without JAMF. Now with Apple School Manager, we can see the promise of a personalised experience for our students while using a shared device.”

VCE VxRack fills gap between converged blocks and appliances

2015-05-05T09:22:48+10:00

The new VCE VxRack hyper-converged systems scale from dozens to thousands of servers with tens of petabytes of storage.

VCE's new VxRack hyper-converged systems are aimed at enterprises and service providers planning the deployment of next generation scale out mobile, cloud and distributed Tier 2 applications.

VxRack fits between Vblock and the company's converged appliances. It is initially offered as compute-intensive or storage-intensive nodes, and the minimum configuration occupies a quarter of a rack.

Multiple VxRacks can be connected using Vscale technology.

{loadposition stephen08}VxRack can be loaded with different software stacks for different purposes. The first offering allows a choice of hypervisor including Vmware, but around August a second configuration will be offered specifically for VMware environments and will include a fully integrated VMware stack based on VMware’s EVO:RACK technology and VMware Virtual SAN.

“Over the past five years, customers have trusted VCE to enable them to rapidly deploy data center scale converged infrastructure so they can focus on delivering next-generation IT services to their businesses," said VCE CEO Praveen Akkiraju.

"This customer trust combined with our deep experience delivering simplified, operationally efficient solutions positions VCE perfectly to redefine the hyper-converged segment with the scale out VxRack engineered systems.

"The VxRack systems are purpose built to enable enterprises and service providers to support existing Tier 2 and emerging born in the cloud applications with massive scale capability and cost optimisation.”

Akkiraju stressed that VCE would continue to invest in Vblock. VCE positions VxRack as being complementary to the Vblock and VxBlock platforms for tier 1 applications, and EMC’s VSPEX Blue appliance for departmental applications and SMEs.

Dimension Data chief product officer of cloud solutions Shelley Perry said "Since the VxRack is completely modular, it really allows us to enter at a lower price point, or a smaller footprint, and easily scale up over time to build our solutions with improved OPEX for our clients.

"Additionally, since the Dimension Data Cloud is application driven, the VCE VxRack System and the Vscale Architecture enables our clients to move important workloads and core systems improving time to value for business transformation."

VxRack deliveries will begin in the third quarter.

Disclosure: The writer attended EMC World 2015 in Las Vegas as a guest of the company.

SimpliVity promises simpler, cheaper virtualisation

2015-04-30T16:10:42+10:00

SimpliVity's hardware accelerator based approach eliminates the need for special-purpose appliances, the company claims.

SimpliVity's goal is to "simplify data centre IT infrastructure" and reduce the TCO for midsize and larger organisations, the company's vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan Scott Morris told iTWire, adding that organisations with as few as 10 virtual machines can benefit.

This is achieved by removing the need for the various appliances that are often installed in data centres to support traditional or converged systems - WAN optimisation, deduplication and archiving, backup, second and third tier storage, flash arrays and so on.

Not only do they take up space, they also represent a significant administrative load, and firms such as Gartner and IDC have found they occupy as much as 80% of operations time, Morris said.

{loadposition stephen08}Even the arrival of what he calls "true convergence" - generic blocks, each with plenty of memory and storage, assembled with software that presents them as one big resource pool - might have saved data centre real estate and reduced the number of points of management, it didn't remove the need for specialist appliances.

SimpliVity's founder - chairman and CEO Doron Kempel - realised this proliferation was a problem, and that the real challenge was to deliver the amount of I/O required across the whole system, Morris said.

The answer was to combine commoditised x86-based building blocks (each with its own processor, memory, storage and networking; available from SimpliVity [pictured] or Cisco) with SimpliVity's OmniStack PCIe accelerator card and management software that works with vCenter.

The accelerator takes care of the deduplication, compression and optimisation of data, "once and forever across the entire global federation of SimpliVity technology," he said, without using server resources.

This means there is no need for storage deduplication (that was taken care of before the data was stored), WAN optimisation (again, compression and deduplication has already been done), backup deduplication, and so on.

So rather than being a large file, each VM is just a map pointing to deduplicated blocks. This means VMs can be backed up, cloned or recovered extremely quickly, even between sites.

Morris pointed to the experience of customer Dairy Farmers of America, which went from 1PB of backups to 3PB in just six months, yet the physical storage used grew by just 2TB.

Dairy Farmers of America also reports that a 1.5TB VM can be backed up or restored in less than a minute rather than the eight to 10 hours previously required.

Furthermore, an entire system - even one that is spread across multiple sites - can be completely managed by a single administrator within vCenter.

SimpliVity's VM-centricity means the administrator is not concerned with LUNs, volumes and so on, and the attributes and policies associated with a virtual machine follow it wherever it runs.

This leads to "massive operational savings" allowing staff to be redeployed to more valuable work.

SimpliVity's approach also reduces the data centre footprint - a rack of equipment can be replaced with gear that takes just 4U or 6U - with corresponding power and cooling savings.

"It is an enterprise-class building block" and "a true revolution," claimed Morris, offering as much as a threefold reduction in total cost of ownership compared with traditional architectures.

The ease of expansion - buy the next block and "it's up in three hours" - makes SimpliVity a true pay-as-you-grow approach, he said, as customers do not need to size systems to accommodate future growth. And by buying extra nodes as required, customers stand to get the benefit of the ongoing improvement in hardware price/performance ratios.

While SimpliVity is applicable to almost any vertical, early adopters in Australia have largely been in the manufacturing, financial services, education, and services sectors. In the Asia Pacific region, government, telcos and cloud services companies can be added to that list, Morris said.