Four Irish companies are getting ahead by finding technical solutions to a range of everyday problems from event management to blocking pornography
PIXALERT: A Picture perfect result
IT IS often said porn is the only industry that truly makes money from the internet, but internet porn is proving to be a headache for most other businesses and could result in them losing money.
The presence of pornographic images on corporate computers and dissemination through a network can have severe consequences, including exposure to criminal and civil litigation, brand damage, financial loss and breach of corporate policies.
Audits on over 125 corporate and public-sector networks last year by Irish specialist risk-mitigation software vendor PixAlert found 25.8 per cent of the 10,000 PCs scanned contained digital pornography or inappropriate images.
E-mail accounts and file server shares were similarly affected. "The issue of pornographic or inappropriate materials on networks is pervasive," explainssays Colm Doherty, chief executive of PixAlert. "In the history of PixAlert only one company we scanned did not have inappropriate material and that was a church. We will always find material."
Pixalert's software monitors all sources of data for inappropriate and illegal images.
"Generally speaking companies will try to take precautions at the gateway and try to block certain sites," says Doherty.
"That is very ineffective and very crude because there are up to 160,000 new sites coming on to the internet every week, so it's like trying to hold back the tide."
The only effective way to detect, manage and eliminate these images is by using powerful network audit or real-time monitoring solutions to enhance the traditional gateway solutions, he says.
Using a high-speed image analysis engine, the new PixAlert Auditor 3.4 rapidly identifies digital pornography in over 150 different file types on PCs, file servers, email servers, etc.
"Our software will audit at the gateway and also audit in the network and will correctly identify material," says Doherty.
"If the company wishes we can automatically remove that or we can give them an audit trail if they want to conduct an investigation," he explains.
BIANCAMED: Home is where the health is
INCREASING HEALTHCARE costs coupled with the rise in chronic conditions, soaring obesity and the rapid aging of the population suggests health management will soon need to shift from traditional institutional settings to people's everyday environments, including the home.
BiancaMed, a health technology spin-out from UCD's school of electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering, is at the forefront of developing technology to enable personal health monitoring and to allow patients to be cared for from home.
At the core of its product platform is a motion sensor that can wirelessly detect heart rate and respiration, without having to touch a person, up to a distance of two metres.
The sensor is combined with BiancaMed's sophisicated health analysis software to provide total solutions to monitor and help improve sleep, respiration and fitness and the health of a patient's heart.
"Whatever technology we develop is part of a person's life. It fits in with their lifestyle," says Dr Conor Hanley, who co-founded BiancaMed with Prof Conor Heneghan and Dr Philip de Chazal in 2003.
BiancaMed's first product, LifeScreen Apnea, sold in Argentina, Ireland, the UK and the US, uses a standard outpatient electrocardiogram to to identify people with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is the most common form of sleep disordered breathing.
Dr Hanley says health monitoring at home will result in huge cost savings for the healthcare industry and allow for early detection of illness. It will also result in a decreasing risk of infection and allow people identify harmful lifestyle choices early on and change them.
EVENTZNET: Having the best laid plans
WHEN SARAH Carroll set up Eventnetz in 2002, it's goal was the first Irish company to develop and market software for event planning and management for small and medium-sized enterprises. It brought event planning and organisation into the price range of smaller event organisers and companies that would host events on only a handful of occasions. "We provide what was normally out of the reach of smaller event organisers. They wouldn't have had the money, the time, or the expertise to bring in one of the expensive organisations," says Carroll.
Eventznet also provides customised solutions and websites for event managers and associations. Eventznet version two is a comprehensive system that allows users to take registrations and bookings online. Customers using Eventznet include the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Enterprise Board, ChangingWorlds, Ulster Bank and Bord Iascaigh Mhara.
In 2005, Eventznet launched a network for event organisers in Ireland. Called NEO Ireland, this virtual and physical network is designed to provide the fragmented events industry in Ireland with a voice. It also provides event organisers with a searchable database of suppliers, a discussion forum and a regular e-zine. Suppliers can enter their own listings, and keep them up to date. They can avail of the opportunity to promote new products or special offers to the NEO Ireland membership. Eventznet recently received funding from the National Training Fund to research and subsequently develop the country's first events industry skillnet.
TRADE CERT: Exporting in the fast lane
THE EU exported $1,170.8 billion (€815.9 billion) worth of goods to non-EU countries in 2005- up 20 per cent from 2003 to 2004 and up a further 8 per cent from 2004 to 2005. All of those goods must be formally certified to comply with customs requirements in importing states. The key piece of documentation is a certificate of origin which proves the place of growth, production or manufacture of goods. In Ireland it is provided by a local chamber of commerce, but until now getting a certificate of origin has been a time-consuming manual process.
"Companies were sending couriers, messengers and taxis down to chambers of commerce with certificates, waiting for them to be stamped and signed and physically bringing them back," explains Tom Kelly of Trade Cert, a Galway-based company that plans to revolutionise the process.
Trade Cert developed an online system which provides an automated solution to exporters, agents and authorising bodies for the certification of trade documents.
"It is all web-based so the exporter or the chamber of commerce don't need to download any software," says Kelly. "Through user names and passwords and through secure websites and encryption, the exporter can log in and apply for his certificate of origin.
That goes to the chamber of commerce which will either verify it or reject it if there is a problem. "
The Trade Cert electronic system provides a speedier process, lower rejection rate, cost savings on courier services and the ability to store, archive and retrieve documentation.
"It's a big improvement from the exporters point of view in terms of time," says Kelly.
