CISCO LEADS SALES FOR FOURTH STRAIGHT YEAR
Strong demand for its routers helped Cisco Systems top worldwide sales of network security appliances and software products for the fourth consecutive year. Infonetics Research said the global network security appliances and software market touched US$4.3 billion last year, up 15 per cent from US$3.7 billion in 2004. Networking giant Cisco led all vendors with its 34 per cent revenue market share, which it has, more or less, maintained since 2002, according to Infonetics Research. Check Point Software Technologies was No2 in the market, with a 10 per cent share, while Juniper Networks was third with an 8 per cent share. 'As the network continues to be a mission-critical business system for organisations of all sizes, a top priority for customers is securing their information assets and minimising the impact of viruses and worms,' said John Chambers, president and chief executive of Cisco Systems. Infonetics Research ranked Internet Security Systems, McAfee (formerly Network Associates), Nokia, Nortel Networks, SonicWALL and Symantec as 'strong second-tier players'.
SUBSIDIARY OF SYBASE UPDATES KEY SOFTWARE
With the worldwide mobile workforce continuing to expand, Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere last week unveiled a major revamp of its software that is used to deploy enterprise applications on portable devices. The new M-Business Anywhere 6.0 comes with support for double-byte Asian languages and applications, web services integration, remote upgrades, a new management user interface, on-device content password protection and three server caching options. Horace Chow Chok-kee, vice-president at Sybase Asia Pacific, said: 'Developers can create mobile web applications for personal digital assistant devices, smartphones, laptops and tablet personal computers using an always-available architecture.' Stephen Drake, programme director for mobile software research at International Data Corp (IDC) said organisations were making concerted efforts 'to mobilise their assets to improve employee productivity, create additional business efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction and provide return on investment for its business'. IDC has forecast that the global mobile workforce will increase to more than 850 million by 2009 from 650 million in 2004.
HK SWEEPS TECHNOLOGY AWARDS AT APICTA SHOW
Two leading universities, the MTR Corp and the government spearheaded Hong Kong's victory at the Asia-Pacific Information and Communications Technology Awards (APICTA) in Thailand last month. Hong Kong representatives won six prizes and an award of merit at the event held in Chiang Mai, where about 15 top awards were up for grabs. There were 164 entries from across the region. The Immigration Department won an award in the e-government and services category for its face recognition system. In the health-care category, the Hospital Authority took the award for its electronic patient record with radiological image distribution project. Local firm iTechnology received a merit award for its Hua Tuo chinese medical clinical management system. The MTR Corp and City University won in the industrial applications category for their engineering works and traffic information management system. In research and development, Chinese University won for its virtual Acupuncture project. Local firm eBroker Systems took the prize in financial applications for 'eBrokerSys', an intelligent global trading system. The best start-up company award was given to mobile game and community platform services provider Green Tomato. APICTA was initiated by the Multimedia Development Corp of Malaysia in 2001. Macau is scheduled to hold this year's edition of the awards.
