StepUp teams with HES
San Francisco-based
StepUp Commerce Inc., an Internet shopping service, announced a
partnership with Home Entertainment Source (HES), the specialty audio
and video division of the Brand Source buying group, to provide
localized merchandising services to more than 450 of its home
electronics dealers. Information on home electronics dealers' products
will be automatically delivered to local Internet shoppers on sites like
Google and SuperPages.com, allowing customers to find products in their
local area.
StepUp will create 450 individual dealer Web pages,
each of which will include detailed information on the specific audio
video equipment available at each of those stores. StepUp will
distribute detailed and accurate product information from each dealer to
Google, SuperPages.com, and other web destinations, helping consumers
all over the Web to find products online but purchase them locally.
Customers: Support is No. 1
As business
executives debate the importance of customer service in board rooms
around the nation, new research conducted by the nonprofit Information
Technology Solution Providers Alliance (ITSPA) and Yankee Group
validates those discussions by identifying technical support as the
service area with the widest performance gap in customer satisfaction
between leading computer hardware manufacturers.
HP ranked
highest in support across all the product categories and was rated at or
above all competitors across a variety of performance, reliability and
service factors. Lenovo also did very well, in a statistical dead heat
with HP, but Dell trailed significantly in several categories.
Port to use Accela product
San Ramon-based Accela
Inc., which makes government enterprise management software, said the
Port of San Francisco selected Accela Automation as its new permit and
land management solution. The solution will be utilized by the Port's
Engineering Division Permit Group (EDPG) to provide a system for its
staff with reporting analysis on all permitting related to piers and
other port-owned property.
Thirty end-users in the EDPG will
transition from a paper-based, spreadsheet process to Accela's Web-based
solution for recording and tracking all building permits and enforcement
fees, coordinating building plan reviews, recording and tracking
inspections, code enforcement, complaint tracking, and building code
compliance.
Users main culprit in security breaches
Organizations are doing little to address the most serious
threat to their information security and technology infrastructure,
according to new research released by the Computing Technology Industry
Association (CompTIA).
Human error was responsible for nearly 60
percent of information security breaches experienced by organizations
over the last year, according to the fourth annual CompTIA study on
information security and the workforce. That figure is significantly
higher than one year ago, when 47 percent of security breaches were
blamed on human error alone.
Yet despite the prominent role that
human behavior plays in information security breaches, just 29 percent
of the 574 organizations that participated in the survey said that
security training is a requirement at their company. Only 36 percent of
organizations offer end-user security awareness
training.
IT worker confidence on the rise
Worker confidence among IT professionals increased in July,
as the sector's Hudson Employment Index rose 4.3 points to 112.5. The
latest reading is higher than last July, when the sector's index was
109.9. Based on responses from approximately 9,000 workers nationwide
across all industries, the composite Index held steady, inching down .5
points to 101.9.
The Hudson Employment Index for IT workers also
showed:
* The number of workers who expected their firms to hire
rose six points to 40 percent in July. This is the most optimistic IT
workers have been in this respect so far in 2006.
* The number of
employees who rated their finances as excellent or good rose four points
in July to 56 percent. There was also a seven-point increase to 49
percent in the number of workers who indicated their financial situation
was improving.
* Three-quarters (74 percent) of the work force was
happy with their job in July, up from 71 percent the previous
month.
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