A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Winners of IBM awards announced
IBM has honoured the first winners of its Innovate Ireland. The employee initiative, which the group intends to make an annual event, recognises outstanding ideas from employees in the areas of shareholder value, customer satisfaction, technical improvement, partnership and the workforce.
The overall winner, Orla Doyle, was chosen for suggesting an upgrade of a system forecasting orders from IBM suppliers that has resulted in liability savings of $64 million (€49 million) a year.
Groups neglecting online presence
A survey of more than 300 business websites in the northeast shows that companies are failing to fully utilise their online presence. The survey by PraxisNow shows that the vast majority of websites generate a tiny amount of visitor traffic, score very poorly in search engine placement, fail to capture usable visitor information and almost completely ignore the need to provide "value and not just information".
"Only a handful demonstrated any understanding of what is required to increase their visibility on the internet," said John Coburn, one of two brothers behind PraxisNow, which is running a seminar on internet marketing in Dundalk on May 25th.
New Clearstream products unveiled
AIM-listed medical devices group Clearstream Technologies is launching three coronary care products. The Enniscorthy-based company will unveil a new stent, catheter and guidewire product at the Paris Re-vascularisation Congress next week.
The Paris event is Europe's largest international event for interventional cardiology.
Clearstream will launch the Intrepide Drug Eluting Stent system, a ClearGuide M3 guidewire and an upgraded version of its Nimbus Pico PTCA Catheter, which aims to challenge the market dominance of Boston Scientific's maverick product and Medtronic's stormer.
Three new deals for software firm
IT services and consultancy company Version 1 Software has marked its first decade in business with three new deals in the financial services sector worth more than €1 million.
The company, which hopes to hit turnover of €10 million this year, has secured contracts with Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and IIB Bank.
"Financial services now accounts for 15 per cent of our business," said managing director Justin Keatinge, who added that the group was seeing a lot of growth in this sector.
PC Cubed wins excellence award
PC Cubed has been named specialist distributor of the year at the annual ICT Excellence Awards.
