An Engineering Company Optimizes Project Administration and Accounting with Sage Accpac ERP.

Dolphin Engineering (m) Sdn Bhd is one of the leading engineering companies based in Selangor. She is the dominant Solution Provider for the Integration oil palm process and palm oil milling industry in the region. Its main business is machinery & engineering and its main product is hydraulic power park system, hydraulic cylinder.

In view of their bushiness growth Dolphin needed to replace their existing local system with a project based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that could give the company detailed control over the administration of complex engineering projects.

Dolphin has strong criteria and narrowed downed its evaluation to the main requirements that are unique to an engineering project based companies. This helps them to eliminate many erp systems that are not geared toward project based and cut short their evaluation process. Careware Systems was selected as it understands and was able to demo the software toward their unique criteria. Sage Accpac ERP will help Dolphin to monitor and track cost from the design, development, manufacture, integration, installation and testing commissioning of their technological products for palm oil milling customers in the region and internationally.

Some of the immediate benefits and clear business advantages by using Sage Accpac are:

• First, all engineering personnel can process their data (time card) directly by logging into the Web-enabled Accpac central server at the headquarters through a through browser, so time cost and finance can immediately be updated on line. Sage Accpac need not be install at the notebook of the engineers who are at site and always on the move.

• Second, project accountants have insight into the progress of projects. During a pre-calculation process, the project managers attribute a number of hours to a given project. Project accountants will know of Time cost, (idle time, split time, chargeable time, and non billable time) of the project. The system also track material and equipments cost and work in progress. The project manager can follow the progress of the project and monitor cost overrun.

• Third, efficient accounting as the system will handle all the difference type of revenue recognition methods and also retaininage accounts. Progress billing and project purchases are charge to the respective job and phase automatically. The old system cannot handle such complexity of accounts. Now every function is fully integrated into one central database that is run on the local Area Network as well as Remote Access via the Web.

With Sage Accpac ERP Dolphin Engineering will be on the pulse of their business and its augurs well for the future.

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About CareWare SystemsThrough its partnership with Sage, CareWare Systems helps small and mid-size companies in Malaysia reach productivity levels at the top of their respective industries. CareWare represents a variety of business management software including Sage Accpac ERP, SageCRM, and MISys Manufacturing Software. For companies interested in growth, profitability and superior software support, CareWare is the Sage business partner for you. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.careware.com.my/.

LOYALTY

IF …

YOU WORK FOR A MAN,

IN HEAVEN’S NAME, WORK FOR HIM;

SPEAK WELL OF HIM AND

STAND BY THE INSTITUITION HE REPRESENTS

REMEMBER …

AN OUNCE OF LOYALTY

IS WORTH A POUND OF CLEVERNESS

IF …

YOU MUST GROWL, CONDEMN AND

ETERNALLY FIND FAULT,

RESIGN YOUR POSITION

AND WHEN YOU ARE ON THE OUTSIDE,

DAMN TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT

BUT …

AS LONG AS YOU ARE A PART OF THE INSTITUITION,

DO NOT CONDEMN IT

IF YOU DO,

THE FIRST HIGH WIND THAT COMES

ALONG WILL BLOW YOU AWAY,

- Elbert Hubbard

BizCloud Overview of Top 10 Security Threats of Cloud Computing

From BizCloud Computing Security Watch: Cloud computing is the next big thing in technology arena and it has the potential to grow immensely thorough continuous innovations which we are still unaware of. It provides tremendous opportunities in reducing the costs as well as helping businesses to concentrate on their core business goals, relying on a third party provider to manage its computing resources.

Even though the potential that cloud computing provides is flourishing the business, there are still mixed feelings among customers about implementing the Cloud, mainly due to the underlying security threats & risks. These cloud security issues if not properly addressed can impact the business in a significant way.

Cloud Security Alliance and Gartner published several research reports addressing cloud computing security issues. There are numerous risks that can hamper the integrity of a Cloud Infrastructure, but here we will focus on those that emerged as the Top 10 Security Threats and Risks of the cloud.

1. Abusive use of Cloud Computing Resources:

Cloud computing technologies can be used as a platform for launching attacks, hosting Spam/Malware, software exploits publishing and for many other unethical purposes. Cloud computing service platforms, especially PaaS with its enhanced service portfolio and the independence, allows anyone to propagate their malicious intent. IaaS based perforations are also picking up pace with PaaS. Cloud computing service providers normally provide literally anyone with a valid credit card to avail their services, thus opening wide horizon of users to facilitate from their platform; malicious hackers & crackers cannot be filtered easily from that large pool of users.

2. Privileged Access & Malicious Insiders:

Cloud computing provides flexibility by outsourcing the services, but it also brings inherent risks of malicious insiders and abusive use of login access by an unauthorized person. The customer’s security controls remain outside the cloud security mechanism and customer has no control over the service provider’s internal security control. This brings substantial risk where any infiltration of such sort can deliver organization a great deal of loss in terms of financial, productive and /or brand image depreciation.

3. Insecure API’s:

Cloud computing vendors provide APIs for customers to interact and avail services and often the customers using these APIs are offering much more services based on them to facilitate their own customer base. Cloud APIs with weak authentication and access control can jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the pertaining customer. As the services are spread over vast domain of users, any vulnerability in the API can be exploited for malicious intents.

4. Shared Technology and Data Segregation:

Public cloud infrastructure components are typically not designed for compartmentalization and are prone to vulnerabilities than can be exploited. There might be scenarios where an attacker tries to gain unauthorized access or excessively use the resources which can affect the performance of other user residing in the same infrastructure. One of the prevailing cloud security issues is the lack of encrypting schemes which can dent the integrity of the data stored and absence of proper controls can make the data totally unusable.

5. Identity or Service Theft:

Account or service credentials if stolen can jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the entire services linked with that account. It’s just like giving the keys of all cloud resources to the attacker. Furthermore cloud computing service theft can be used for array of attacks which take illegal benefit of the user’s cloud infrastructure as their launching platform.

6. Data Loss:

Cloud computing architecture provides greater challenges in controlling and mitigating risks due to its unique framework and operational attributes. Data in the cloud is prone to so many threats, such as deletion of record, loss of encryption key and weak encryption, resulting in corruption of data. Any organization no matter how big or small relies heavily on data, and any puncture, trespassing by an unauthorized person can have devastating impact on business.

7. Forensic Support:

In cloud computing, it’s very difficult to get forensic evidence in case of a breach or incident because your data might be spread across many different hosts & data centers and possibly reside in a multi-tenant environment. Usually the applications deployed on cloud computing service models are designed without data integrity and security in mind hence being left with vulnerabilities & security issues. Contractual support by the provider for investigation on when and where the incident occurred is a must have clause in the Service Level Agreement otherwise a business can be exposed to serious threats.

8. Geographical Location of Data and its Recovery:

There is a big question mark when it comes to geographical location of data in the cloud computing environment. The data can be stored on many severs, in different locations, possibly different cities, even different country or continent. In case of a disaster, systems with no Disaster Recovery Plan and no Business Continuity Plan to ensure that business runs smoothly again are most vulnerable to failure. There might also be legal or government regulations involved in recovering data if the data is hosted in a different country. This can get tricky if there has been a breach or a criminal act associated with that specific data.

9. Regulatory Compliance in Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing services have certain benefits for an end user. But what about the internal control, compliance, internal security procedures and patch updating of all applications? Lack of adherence to regulatory compliance is a serious risk considering that provider is the custodian of your data. In case of an incident, providers who are not complying with regulatory standards and not providing the auditing and logging of data, leave the customer with high risk profile and it’s a cloud computing security issue worth considering.

10. Stability of the Cloud Provider:

Perhaps this is not a security risk but it’s a very threatening risk if the provider is not financially stable enough to sustain the operations as per the goals of the customer. A cloud computing provider if swallowed up by a merger can ring bells for the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. Absence of a Recovery Plan resulting by a disaster or a complete shutdown can affect the operations of the customer until it’s recovered. Any cloud computing provider with meager financial stability, lack of back-up infrastructure and no long terms plans to complement the needs of the customer is a definite risk for any mission critical deployment.

Source : http://bizcloudnetwork.com/2011/bizcloud-overview-of-top-10-security-threats-of-cloud-computing/
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IEV Groups fuel growth by upgrading to Sage Accpac Project ERP for the entire group of companies.

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia – 03 May, 2011: In line with their expansion IEV Group of companies has entered into a ERP implementation engagement with Careware Systems Sdn Bhd the leading Sage Accpac Business partner in Malaysia,

The implementation will cover the entire groups of companies staring from its Head office in Kuala Lumpur and rolling out to other region simultaneously.

IEV group of companies are upgrading from their previous ERP system as it was unable to cater for their unique project requirement in the Oil and Gas industries. According a spokesman Careware was selected as she has established itself as a leading supplier of business solution for the project & engineering based industry based on Sage Accpac Project ERP suites with many successful implementations and references. Careware offer the project based companies a complete and integrated business solution that manages the entire lifecycle of contracts, projects, assets and services.

The major Sage Accpac modules that will be implemented are Financial Management, Project & Cost Management, Materials Management, Assets Management, Sales Distribution Management, Purchasing Management and Sage Accpac Intelligence & Analytics.

With the implementation of Sage Accpac Project ERP, IEV group will significantly realize benefits by improving efficiencies in processes such as “procure for project” and “cost overrun monitoring” which are critical for bringing transparency and efficiency into its business. Significant benefits are also expected through integration of business processes, standardized systems, processes and controls. Being a highly diversified Group, they embarked on this project in order to have a seamless integration across all companies and points of presence for financial consolidation, better control and standardization.
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About IEV Group
IEV Group is one of Asia leading engineering solutions provider to the petroleum and marine industries. The company is presently servicing customers throughout North America, North Sea, West Africa, Middle East and Far East. Its subsidiary IEV Gas is one of Asia’s leading providers of integrated subsea engineering solutions to the oil and gas industries. She is also a leading provider of mobile gas (CNG & LNG) infrastructure in the South East Asia region.

About CareWare SystemsThrough its partnership with Sage, CareWare Systems helps small and mid-size companies in Malaysia reach productivity levels at the top of their respective industries. CareWare represents a variety of business management software including Sage Accpac ERP, SageCRM, and MISys Manufacturing Software. For companies interested in growth, profitability and superior software support, CareWare is the Sage business partner for you. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.careware.com.my/.
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http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/5/prweb8414563.htm

Amazon's cloud nightmare

The exact feature that was supposed to be Amazon EC2's strength -- reliability -- is what failed and brought the cloud low yesterday. Still, cloud computing isn't going anywhere.

By Dan Mitchell, contributor


FORTUNE -- The snafu at Amazon's EC2 hosting service on Thursday, which knocked several big web sites out of service, is being called a "black eye" for the cloud-computing business -- a "we told you so" moment, according to cloud critics. But it could simply be a black eye for EC2.

It seems unlikely that this incident will cause startups to turn away from cloud computing, which for smaller companies is much cheaper than self-hosting. More likely, some of them will think twice about hosting with EC2, one of the industry leaders. That's because this was a particularly nasty, widespread, and long-lasting outage. A whole bunch of sites were thrown totally or partially out of commission for most of the day Thursday, including Quora, Foursquare, Reddit, and HootSuite. (Update: some sites are still down as of midday Friday.)

Technical glitches are bound to happen, of course, whether they're in the cloud or in an expensive, staff-managed corporate server room. Sites go down all the time. But most often, the outages are brief and isolated. Apparently, this one jumped across various parts of Amazon's cloud like lightning – in a way that Amazon had vowed it never could thanks to its "Availability Zones."

"Availability Zones are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones," Amazon (AMZN) says . The zones "protect your applications from failure of a single location."

"It would seem they don't exactly work as they're designed," notes The Register's Cade Metz, who goes on to explain how Amazon's cloud is (or is supposed to be) set up to avoid such failures. The company isn't talking yet, but promises to publish a "postmortem" on the situation.

Some customers and observers said on Thursday that Amazon has a history of cloud trouble, though never anything this bad. Michael Hussey, chief executive of PeekYou, told Dow Jones that he's been "seeing problems all year long" from Amazon's Northern Virginia facility, where the failure occurred. The problems haven't been severe, he said, but they have caused his company to consider moving its data to a different cloud provider.

PeekYou didn't go down, because it also runs many of its own servers. Foursquare was knocked out entirely, but said in a blog post Thursday morning that Amazon is a "usually amazing" provider that was suffering "a few hiccups."

The notion that this outage says anything about cloud computing's utility as a whole seems far-fetched. "We don't think the cloud is enterprise-ready," Jimmy Tam, general manager of Peer Software, told The New York Times. His company provides data-backup services. "Are you really going to trust your corporate jewels to these cloud providers?" he asked.

Well, sure. Why not? Lots of companies have been doing it for years now (since before "cloud computing" became a popular term, as Oracle (ORCL) chief Larry Ellison has noted), with little trouble. And even this glitch, though nasty, didn't put anybody's "corporate jewels" at risk. Many companies, like PeekYou, use the cloud for routine data handling, and keep their more "mission critical" tasks in-house. It all comes down to quality and service -- there's nothing inherent in cloud computing that makes it less reliable than the alternative.

According to the research firm Gartner, the cloud market will grow to $102.1 billion net year, up from $68.3 billion last year. Startups and other companies will continue to weigh the benefits of cloud computing -- mainly, massive cost savings and easy scalability -- against the relatively small risk and annoyance of outages. Risk and annoyance, by the way, that they would likely have to face anyway.

The level of cost savings from moving to the cloud depends on all kinds of variables, of course -- from the size of the enterprise to the nature of the data being handled. But just for example, a 2009 study by Booz Allen Hamilton, "The Economics of Cloud Computing," found that "the benefit-to-cost ratio of a non-virtualized 1,000-server data center could reach 15.4:1 after implementation, and total life cycle cost may be 66% lower than maintaining a traditional data center." In other words, Amazon and its cloud customers will learn from this outage, but those savings are simply too great to dismiss.

It's unknown how much Foursquare, for example, has saved by operating from the cloud. But if the savings are typical, it's probably worth the occasional annoyance of its users being temporarily unable to become mayor of their local coffee shop.
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Source : http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/22/amazons-cloud-nightmare/?iid=EAL

Read  also :
Why Amazon's cloud Titanic went down

Amazon EC2 outage downs Reddit, Quora

Dubious Awards in Asia.

So you want to get an award to boost your company or your own image. There are many in the market: Golden XXXX awards; Entrepreneur of the year for difference level; Brand awards & “C” level executive awards of the year. It is easy and the public is none the wiser. And the event organizer move on to various countries in Asia.
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Dubious awards: 'Winning' firms asked to provide sponsorship

PETALING JAYA: Winning an award may not be all that good as some companies have found out.

The practice of dishing out awards has become a lucrative business with the “winning” companies being asked to provide sponsorship or buy tables during lavish presentation ceremonies.

Starprobe discovered that this form of sponsorship can range between RM4,000 and RM30,000, with the “winners” being made to understand that if they fail to fork out the money, they may lose out to business rivals.

Some companies have admitted to being forced to pay up, calling this an “investment” for their business.

Industry players, concerned that such dubious awards may be jeopardising the country's competitiveness and misleading the public, want more transparent and better methods in the selection of winners.

They also call on all parties to work together in stamping out such awards.

Source : http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/25/nation/8347889&sec=nation

Related Stories:
Winners' say they were forced to foot hefty bill for brand awards presentation

CareWare Systems Teams up with Sage to Announce Launch of Sage ERP Accpac 6 and SageCRM v7 in Malaysia

Top Sage ERP reseller in Malaysia organizes a Sage solutions seminar for Sage ERP Accpac customers and prospects at The Garden City Hotel in Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia – February 28, 2011 – CareWare Systems Sdn Bhd (http://www.careware.com.my), Sage’s top business software reseller in Malaysia for 2010, teamed up with Sage to hold a seminar and announce the launch of Sage’s latest product upgrades: Sage ERP Accpac 6 and SageCRM v7.

“Rapid advances in technology are driving major gains in efficiency for small and medium sized businesses across Malaysia,” says Robert Tan, Managing Director of CareWare Systems. “Our close partnership with Sage on the Accpac 6 and SageCRM v7 launch in Malaysia was a way to showcase Internet-based solutions that are available today to help our customers and prospects be more successful.”

The seminar hosted at The Garden City Hotel featured two separate meeting tracks focused on Project & Job Costing and Manufacturing. “We have a concentration of customers in manufacturing and the construction and engineering industries,” Tan says. “We were able to show how technology can make an important contribution to successful performance in those highly competitive industries. From real-time reporting dashboards to automated transaction processing, many SMB companies have much to gain by keeping up to date on technology.”

According to Tan, Accpac 6 and SageCRM v7 form a seamless platform to provide an unprecedented level of integration and information sharing between sales, operations and accounting departments. “Accpac 6 marks an important development in the way an ERP system can functionally integrate with CRM as one integrated suite to help SMB companies achieve new levels of visibility to business performance,” he says.

Unlike most traditional ERP applications used by SMB companies in Malaysia, Accpac 6 and SageCRM v7 operate over the Internet in a browser environment. “Sage’s new Internet-based approach helps companies organize their ERP activities based on roles assigned to employees, a fact which makes it even easier for us to deploy Sage solutions for our customers,” notes Tan. “For instance, accounts receivable clerks, general ledger accountants and controllers will have separate and unique roles with pre-assigned access to their respective functions in Accpac. This degree of operational functionality and productivity represents a huge leap forward for many SMB companies looking to compete and win in today’s marketplace.”

About CareWare Systems

Through its partnership with Sage, CareWare Systems helps small and mid-size companies in Malaysia reach productivity levels at the top of their respective industries. CareWare represents a variety of business management software including Sage Accpac ERP, SageCRM, and MISys Manufacturing Software. For companies interested in growth, profitability and superior software support, CareWare is the Sage business partner for you. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.careware.com.my/.