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DBI Technologies Inc., the leading provider of scheduling and UI design component software for Windows Development is proud to announce the release of dbiCalendarWPF.  Through many months of developer and customer consultations along with intensive research and development these activities are now showcased in a new 3-in-1 Scheduling product for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application development.

Straight forward and to the point – Scheduling and Calendar presentations for WPF application development – now in one, fully customizable control.  dbiCalendarWPF combines three controls;  a Multi Column Day/Resource View, a Month Calendar View and a Week Calendar View, into one compact, feature rich, royalty free WPF component software product.  The goal for this product is to help developers manage; Appointments, Contacts, Locations and Tasks, from local to global perspectives, in one fluid, drag and drop, context menu driven scheduling control.

Gone are the days of developers having to create data entry dialogues and then separately having to manage collections of Appointments, Contacts, Locations and Tasks. dbiCalendarWPF incorporates all of the necessary entities and data management features for building outstanding Schedule and Calendar functionality in a fraction of normal development time.

Great developer and user scheduling experiences start right here with dbiCalendarWPF. Direct appointment creation and inline editing features that include setting appointment attributes via built-in, customizable context menus offer .NET developers the control for building elegant scheduling interfaces and smooth Calendar navigation.

“DBI has reset the bar once again when it comes to providing Windows developers with functional, get the job done Scheduling component software. They’ve taken their time to properly research and implement functionality and data management capabilities that will allow developers to intuitively support their global software development needs” said Craig Gluck, VP of commercial product development.  “From being able to sort and group local and global appointments based on Contact, Location and /or Task will make conference call coordination and corporate resource scheduling a snap.”

Full, 30 day evaluation licenses are freely downloadable from the product detail web page or from DBI’s general download site.  A single , royalty free developer’s license of dbiCalendarWPF starts at $399.  All DBI .NET component products come with sample applications and demo’s written in C# (C Sharp) and VB .NET. Technical support is provided at the code level and each new product license includes one year of full subscription product upgrade and component update services.  DBI component products may be purchased directly from DBI or from any one of DBI’s registered value added resellers serving all four corners of the globe.

New market research conducted on behalf of PayPal Canada by Leger Marketing shows that 56 per cent of Canadians are comfortable with never having to handle cash to make a purchase and many would prefer the use of a digital wallet to give money to others or pay for items when shopping. PayPal accounts have always provided digital wallet functionality. PayPal is Canada’s most trusted digital wallet and provides its more than four million Canadian customers the ability to pay and get paid using their bank account, credit cards or PayPal balance from their computer, smartphone or virtually any Internet-connected device.

Given the choice, 34 per cent of survey respondents would rather carry a mobile phone to make a payment than a pocket full of change. The survey also indicates that 36 per cent of Canadians would make mobile payments for a wide variety of purchases, on average, saying they would use their mobile device to buy something as expensive as an iPod ($272.30) or as inexpensive as a latte ($5.50). As consumers continue to transition to smartphones and get more comfortable shopping and paying with their mobile phone, PayPal, which reported $750 million in mobile payment volume in 2010 anticipates the company’s mobile payment volume should increase by the end of 2011 to $3 billion globally. In Canada, a PayPal mobile transaction happens once almost every minute.

Canadians are also looking for an easier and faster way to give money to others. Almost 40 per cent of survey respondents say using a mobile phone to make a payment would be more convenient because they can make transactions whenever and wherever they want and 60 per cent of respondents would find it appealing to not have to find a bank machine every time they need to pay someone back. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are hesitant to harness the power of the cloud, in large part because they find it difficult to keep pace with rapid technology advancements, according to a survey conducted by Leger Marketing and commissioned by Microsoft Canada.

The study found that although nearly 73 per cent of SMBs understand that cloud-based technology offers a cost-effective means of accessing the latest technology, just 30 per cent are currently investing in cloud services.

“We all know that with great technology, you are at a better business advantage. Yet with 83 per cent of SMBs finding it hard to keep pace and 79 per cent settling on old tech even though they know there are better options, it is clear that Canadian businesses require simple and cost-effective cloud-based services to drive productivity, efficiency and give them the competitive edge,” says Eric Gales, President of Microsoft Canada. “Three-quarters of Canadian SMB are ready to invest in their own growth, but they want to invest smartly in technology that is going to work for them. This is why we’re so excited to announce the launch of Office 365 to meet Canada’s SMB technology needs.”

Office 365 brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always-up-to-date service, with a predictable monthly cost that starts at just $7 per user, per month.

Moving to the cloud with Office 365 doesn’t require a team to change the way it works, because the service is based on familiar tools people know and trust, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and more. Employees get new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device or mobile phone, and businesses get the reliability, security and IT controls they need in the cloud, even without a dedicated IT staff.

“I’m a road warrior and my office is a coffee shop, a hotel room or my clients’ board room” said James Won, founder of Servant4Stewards, a financial planning consultancy. “Office 365 gives me the power to work anywhere with full access to my documents on my computer and my mobile phone. The best thing about Office 365 is the fact that I can collaborate with clients and third-parties, revising, sharing and updating documents seamlessly in the cloud.”

Microsoft is building a massive partner ecosystem around Office 365, which includes new ways of partnering with service providers such as telecommunications and hosting firms around the world. Bell, Canada’s largest communications company, is the first Canadian syndication partner.  Bell will be offering Office 365 bundled with their communication services, creating a one-stop-shop for small and midsize businesses.

“Bell and Microsoft have worked closely for years to help Canadian businesses with their collaboration needs, and we’re happy to partner with Microsoft to bring Office 365 to the Bell cloud portfolio,” said Strahan McCarten, Director of Product Management, Hosting & Cloud Computing, Bell Business Markets, Bell Canada. “With Office 365, Bell customers can reduce their costs and maximize their IT productivity whether they’re starting a new business venture or enhancing their existing technology operations.”

A major report released today by Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) says that harnessing an excellent talent pool is the key to lifting Canada into the top tier of innovation leaders.

State of the Nation 2010: Imagination to Innovation – the second public report from STIC – charts progress from a baseline set in 2008 and compares Canadian performance to global science, technology and innovation leaders. The report also proposes a core list of 20 indicators for future monitoring. The list covers talent, science and technology and other innovation indicators.

The report shows that Canada’s strengths are a strong talent pool and a robust public research capacity. Its two main challenges are to increase private sector investment in innovation and to improve Canada’s capacity to transfer knowledge into the marketplace. State of the Nation 2010: Imagination to Innovation shows that Canada is settling in as a mid-level player despite having an excellent talent pool.

Canadian talent and Canada’s funding for R&D and higher education research continues to rank near the top; young Canadians excel in science, math and reading; Canada is attracting international talent, and innovative excellence can be found in virtually every region and economic sector.

Our challenges include reversing the trend of Canadian industry investing less in R&D than our key global competitors.  Despite some real Canadian success stories, low levels of collaboration among companies and between companies and researchers in universities, colleges and government laboratories continue to limit our business potential.

A less innovative economy results in fewer ideas transferred into the marketplace, lower productivity rates and less economic and social benefits for Canadians.

Canada has strong public research capacity

• Canada ranks # 1 in the G7 in terms of research and development performed by the higher education sector (HERD), as a percentage of GDP.
• Canada has a strong international reputation and is attracting new talent.

Canada’s talent pool is holding its own

• Our young people continue to outperform most countries in reading, math and science.
• Among economically advanced countries, Canada has had one of the highest growth rates in university graduates in science and engineering, especially at the doctoral level.
• Canadian universities rank well in lists of the world’s top institutions.

Canada must increase investment in innovation

• Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD), as a percentage of GDP lags behind the G7 and other leading innovators. It declined from 2006-08.
• 8 out of 16 Canadian industry sectors had lower R&D intensity (BERD) than the OECD average.
• Over the 2000-07 period, machinery and equipment investment was less than 75% of US levels and ICT investment was less than half US levels.
• Although Canada is a global leader in indirect support for industry R&D (through tax credits), it ranks low in terms of direct support for business R&D.

Canada must strengthen knowledge transfer

• Business financing of R&D performed by universities has grown substantially but knowledge transfer indicators such as contract research, licence applications and spin-off companies could be better measured to benchmark future performance.
• In 2009, venture capital to support small companies was the lowest since 1996 ranking 7^th in OECD with lower rates of return than US.
• Canada must measure collaboration between private and public sector.
• Fostering research collaboration between the public and private sectors will help ensure that Canada’s world-class public research can be successfully translated into benefits for Canadians.

STIC members span business, academia and government.  Members said the following about the State of the Nation 2010 report:

“Canada’s biggest opportunity lies in our excellent talent pool. We score very highly in a number of education related indicators. The challenge is how companies and government can deploy and empower our people so we can win in the knowledge economy.” – Dr. Howard Alper, Chair of STIC. Read the rest of this entry »

A $302,525 federal investment will support Simon Fraser University (SFU) in delivering the BC-India Innovation, Exchange and Mobility Initiative. The project will facilitate partnerships between the two regions that will lead to collaborative research, trade and investment activities.

“Investments like this are crucial to strengthening Canada’s international linkages, promoting our educational institutions, and helping maintain British Columbia as the ideal place to invest,” said the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification (WD). “Today is an important step toward creating economic opportunities, while increasing Western Canada’s international visibility and reputation.”

Over two years, SFU students will be placed within Indian organizations, Indian professionals will visit B.C. and sector-focused workshops will be hosted in both B.C. and India. The clean energy, health and life sciences, and new media/film sectors will be targeted.

“Undergraduate and graduate students benefit tremendously from work terms in India. This program will elevate SFU’s efforts to connect companies and organizations in India and Canada by means of exchanges as well as Indian visitors and workshops,” said SFU president Andrew Petter. “Through this funding support and that of our India Advisory Council, SFU is well-placed to play a major role in India’s declared Decade of Innovation.”

India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and is projected to be the world’s third largest economy by 2050. WD and SFU see this as a fitting time to undertake activities that capitalize on the emerging opportunities India presents.

With eight faculties across three campuses in Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey, Simon Fraser University currently has more than 30,000 students, 110,000 alumni, and over 900 full-time faculty members. Student-centered, research-driven, and community engaged, SFU is Canada’s leading comprehensive university. In 2006, SFU was the first Canadian university to launch an India Strategy which has its secretariat at SFU Surrey and is guided by an India Advisory Council comprised of leading community and business leaders.

WD works with the provinces, industry associations and communities to promote the development and diversification of the western economy, coordinates federal economic activities in the West and advances the interests of western Canadians in national decision making.

A recent Vendor Landscape report evaluating dedicated Secure Socket Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) appliances published by the Ontario-based Info-Tech Research Group ranked WatchGuard, SonicWALL and Barracuda as Champions in the space. All three vendors were recognized for offering significant value for money.

“As workers become more and more mobile, SSL VPN is becoming a de facto requirement for every enterprise,” said James Quin, Lead Research Analyst for Info-Tech Research Group. “SSL VPN is critical for organizations that employ remote or mobile workers or aim to increase productivity by providing 24×7 corporate network access.”

According to Info-Tech Research Group, organizations looking to purchase a dedicated appliance based SSL VPN solution will get best value for money by selecting any of the three Champions in the report. WatchGuard received the “Best Overall Value Award” with SonicWALL trailing by just one point. Both earned high marks because of their rock bottom pricing along with broad feature sets. Barracuda Networks narrowly missed finishing in the top two spots on the Value Index. Their solution is also available at a great price, but offers less functionality for now. Mobile device support is not currently available with Barracuda Networks, but the vendor has plans for its availability in an upcoming release.

Array Networks and Juniper Networks are “Innovators” in the SSL VPN market according to the report. Their products both scored exceptionally well in the evaluation and as their presence in the market grows, both are poised to become Champions in the space.

Intranet Connections has announced the latest release of their social intranet software. Intranet Connections v11 builds on employee participation and engagement via your intranet by giving users the power to embrace and share company culture with innovative tools that are out of the box.

“Our intranet software helps to connect employees by information and knowledge sharing, online collaboration and the enhancement of your company culture,” says Carolyn Douglas, CEO of Intranet Connections. “We added dynamic tools such as our new Application Builder, allowing you to easily create any type of application you need for your intranet. We want to provide tools that help improve your business, through your employees and the intranet.”

Application Builder gives you the power to be creative when building applications. You have complete control over input forms, fields, and layout screens. Intranet Connections has harnessed AJAX drag and drop, creating an easy to use and dynamic application-building experience, with collaborative social elements such as employee tagging, comments, ratings and widgets.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Binary Stream Software and Corporate Renaissance Group (CRG) recently partnered to bring a new innovative and streamlined approach to multi-entity implementation projects.  The recent release of CRG’s Company Combiner brings Microsoft Dynamics GP users a new company consolidation option that will bring significant value to these users during their implementations.

“With the complementary combination of Corporate Renaissance Group’s Company Combiner and Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management we are very excited to be able to provide the Microsoft Dynamics GP community with an incredibly easy way to set-up and start managing their entities with our solution,” said Lak Chahal, President and CEO of Binary Stream Software.

Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management solution has long been the primary multi-entity solution for the Microsoft Dynamics GP channel. By enabling companies to work securely from one consolidated company set-up, this solution has enabled organizations worldwide to effectively manage and report on their multiple locations, subsidiaries and corporate entities with ease. Now with CRG’s Company Combiner, existing Microsoft Dynamics GP users can cut down their data conversion costs by over 50% and streamline the overall go-live process.

CRG’s Company Combiner gives Microsoft Dynamics GP users the ability to efficiently and easily consolidate companies with identical charts of accounts.  By reducing the risk of database consolidations, this solution bridges the divide between the essential consolidation steps involved in Multi-Entity Management set-ups and enables companies to quickly gain efficiencies in their launch processes.

“CRG and Binary Stream are long time Dynamics GP ISVs with great solutions.  We are thrilled to now offer a complementary product.  With both solutions, organizations will be able to get to their optimum configuration quicker and become more efficient with their use of Dynamics GP.  As organizations continue to get lean, we see the need of our solutions even more over the next few years,” said Dr. Vijay Jog, President of Corporate Renaissance Group.

The new release of the Company Combiner is currently available from the Corporate Renaissance Group team.

OpenText’s Metastorm business, a leading provider of business process management (BPM), business process analysis (BPA), and enterprise architecture (EA) software for business transformation, today announced that it has been recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Business Process (BP) Platforms Report.

The report, released annually by industry analysts at IDC, evaluates the relative capabilities of vendor solutions to support people-centric process applications based on the complexity, abilities and strategy of the solutions. OpenText Metastorm was rated above average and received top scores across IDC’s product, customer and business assessments.

“Metastorm’s view of how work management is evolving is sophisticated, and this shows up in its product,” the IDC MarketScape report states. OpenText Metastorm’s BP portfolio earned high scores for its cost management strategy, ROI planning capabilities, and portfolio strategy, including its technical platform and the vision around integration and content management. The portfolio’s Metastorm ProVision®, an enterprise and business architecture suite which enables process discovery and business process analytics, was identified by customers as a deciding factor for deployment of Metastorm solutions.

The product assessment also examines out-of-the-box functionality around identification of the appropriate worker for a task, prioritization and task assignment. OpenText Metastorm’s Smart Business Workspace was awarded high scores for innovation. It is a composition or “mashup” environment that combines work management and social capabilities to allow for communication and collaboration across workers during process design and as on-going as work is being performed. OpenText Metastorm also received top scores for out-of-the-box business runtime capabilities, technology platform and development environment.

“We are confident that our position as a leader in IDC’s MarketScape report on Business Process platforms further validates our ability to provide consistent and innovative software products that allow customers to align business strategy and execution to improve process and drive meaningful results,” said Kevin Haugh, Vice President of Product Marketing and Management at OpenText Metastorm. “OpenText Metastorm is committed to product excellence and customer service and continues to evolve and improve our offerings.”

As part of the IDC MarketScape report, customers were interviewed about their use of OpenText Metastorm products and customer support, and identified faster install time, quick process development time, graphical design, low and flexible pricing, and governance tools as reasons they selected the provider. OpenText Metastorm received top scores for customer references, reflecting the company’s ability to provide service excellence and the company’s commitment to developing best-of-breed solutions.

OpenText Metastorm is known for its ability to provide a comprehensive and highly-proven BP solution that allows organizations to quickly implement, manage, monitor, and analyze core business processes. In addition, the Metastorm BPM® suite’s seamless integration as part of the Metastorm Enterprise platform – which includes the Metastorm ProVision® software for EA and BPA – enables effective alignment of process execution activities with business goals at all levels of the organization. The Metastorm Business Transformation Practices Framework leverages the entire Metastorm software portfolio and industry templates to provide organizations with a successful methodology for managing change and achieving successful, ongoing transformation to meet key strategic and operational objectives.

A Toronto local of the Teamsters Union is asking the Ontario Labour Relations Board to declare that the Teamsters not be barred from organizing crew members who provide location and transportation services for the movie industry in Ontario.

In an issue going back to 2002, Teamster Local 847 is scheduled to present its case at the OLRB on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, at 505 University Avenue, beginning at 9:30 a.m.

In 2002, the Teamster local signed up the employees of two companies providing location and transportation services for seven movies being shot in Toronto at the time and asked the producers to accept the certification.

The companies were Cheyenne Support Service Inc. and Bogeyman Locations but only Cheyenne, owned by Bob Watson and Ron Marki, is pursuing the case before the OLRB.

The Directors Guild of Canada, Directors Guild of Ontario (DGCO) and the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) opposed the Teamster involvement and after the Teamster certification at the two companies the DGCO required the crew members to sign a Guild “deal memo” if they wanted to perform work on a film set.

The employees of the two companies refused and, as a result, were fired from the set – in one case being escorted off by an armed Toronto Police Service officer. Prior to the Teamster move, the security employees were not asked to sign such a memo.

Neither of the two companies have been employed by producers since. Bob Watson and Ron Marki, the owners of Cheyenne, who also provided labour for the film shoots have also not worked in the industry since.

The Teamsters filing with the OLRB also alleges unfair labour practices by the Directors Guild and the producers’ association. The lawyers for Teamster local 847 and Cheyenne argue that employees should have a right to choose the union of their choice.

The employees had no voice in selecting the DGCO as their union. The production company allegedly voluntarily recognized the DGCO prior to contracting with Cheyenne, the security company, and then required its employees to sign up with the DGCO. Thus the employees had no say in whether they wanted to be represented by the DGCO or the Teamsters as their union.

Under their non-union status the guards were paid $11 to $13 an hour and were scheduled as needed without any limitations on hours or turnaround time.

Since the cased started, there have been numerous personnel changes at the OLRB and a number of preliminary motions by both sides.