November’s ICT journal saw two articles by blue-infinity’s Fabrice Perrin and Jérôme Lorido.

In ‘5 Digital Strategies for Luxury brands’, Fabrice explains how luxury brands have become champions of rich media, B2C, one-to-one and innovative iPad applications, and looks at some of the digital strategies used by these companies.

In ‘Sales and After-Sales Services: when Technology helps Luxury Business’, Jérôme outlines two examples of how luxury brands are benefiting from technological advancements in the world of IT; whether it be to increase operational performance, or perhaps reinforce the position of a brand.

Click here to read the original articles (in French) 

The International Academy of the Visual Arts honours blue-infinity with three W3 Awards for outstanding web design

Up against competition from over 3’000 other entries submitted by small creative firms to the largest agencies, our work for Vacheron Constantin, Mavic and Clinique La Prairie has been recognised by the International Academy of the Visual Arts as outstanding examples of creative excellence on the web.

Whilst we have already been honoured with awards for our development of the Mavic and Clinique La Prairie websites, this is the first time we have won an award for the Vacheron Constantin mini-site.

blue-infinity was asked by Vacheron Constantin to produce a promotional website for their ”Treasures of Vacheron Constantin’ exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. The website incorporated an innovative layering effect upon scrolling, displaying a selection of the items on exhibition against an eye-catching, dynamic background.

Aside from a focus on the exhibits, the site offers practical information on the event, and is geared up to encourage sharing across social media sites.

Take a look at the Treasures of Vacheron Constantin site here

For our work on Mavic, click here, and Clinique La Prairie, here.

For the second year running, blue-infinity has been honoured with an award in the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAwards.

The WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition which names the best websites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web development.

This year, our work for the Clinique La Prairie on the development of their new site has received the ‘Medical Standard of Excellence Award’, which recognises outstanding web design and development in the medical industry.

Our development team utilised a number of cutting edge technologies to realise the project, and the site features some exciting design features, which are talked about in our previous article on the launch of the website.

In addition to being honoured with an award, the Web Association’s judges noted that our website for the Clinique offered ‘beautiful design that captures the essence of the company’, and that it ‘captures the brand’s character’.

We would of course like to agree; but to judge for yourself, visit http://www.laprairie.ch

The internet has become an extremely competitive space to market products, so how do you stay ahead of the competition? Without physical sales people, how do you encourage visitors to click on the oh-so-important “add to basket” button?

These were just two of the issues addressed by blue-infinity at this year’s “Salon eCom”, which took place on the 24^th May at the Ramada Hotel in Geneva. Laetitia Giannettini, Lead User Experience Consultant, and Guillaume Arluison, Open Source Solutions Practice Manager, teamed up for a presentation on how to optimize product landing pages to convert visitors into buyers. To illustrate this, Laetitia and Guillaume discussed usability best practices across different e-commerce sites, which included the often overlooked work that goes into attracting people to your product page – effective SEO.

The Mavic website, created by blue-infinity, has once again won an award for outstanding web-design. This month, blue-infinity was awarded Gold at the prestigious 41st Creativity International Awards – the shortlist of which can be viewed here

To view our work for Mavic, please visit www.mavic.com

blue-infinity designs website and adapts logo

February 2011 saw the launch of Clinique La Prairie’s new website, just in time for their 80th birthday celebrations.

Situated in Montreux, on the shores of Lac Leman, Clinique La Prairie is a world renowned medical clinic known for regeneration and cosmetic surgery. The Clinique offers a wide range of medical and paramedical services, and is the recipient of numerous awards relating to its outstanding spa treatments.

With a desire to update their website, La Prairie chose blue-infinity as their new web agency due to its track record in designing and implementing complete web solutions for a number of high-profile luxury brands. In addition to blue-infinity’s award winning experience in web design, our advanced content management system also proved to be a major attraction for the client.

Read the rest of this entry »

blue-infinity is now an integration partner of Sinequa, further expanding the range of Enterprise search solutions that we can offer our clients, which already include Microsoft Search Server Express, Microsoft SharePoint Server, FAST Search Server as well as Autonomy and Attivio.

blue-infinity’s new partnership with Sinequa will enable us to continue to provide the most effective and cost efficient Enterprise Search solutions, tailor-made to our clients’ needs.

Sinequa’s all-in-one solution is built around a customizable search engine that incorporates linguistic and semantic analyses and can take a user’s business context into account, enabling organisations to tame complexity and handle large volumes of heterogeneous data.

More than 250 companies, some of them amongst the largest international corporations and the biggest consumers of information and data, already use solutions from Sinequa, such as Crédit Agricole, Siemens, Bouygues Construction, SFR, EADS, Mercer and the French Ministry of Defense, just to name a few.

Juan Manuel Garrote, Partner at blue-infinity, states that ‘We are really excited about this new partnership, and are sure that this will continue to strengthen our position as Switzerland’s number one provider of Enterprise Search solutions.’

For more information about Sinequa’s solution, please visit http://www.sinequa.com/

Our website for Mavic has just been awarded the Official Honoree in the Retail category in the 15^th Annual Webby Awards.

This Official Honoree distinction is presented to the top 10% of the 10,000 pieces of work that were entered into this year’s awards, and aims to celebrate remarkable achievement, and honor an outstanding caliber of work in this international competition.

See http://www.mavic.com/fr

Once again, blue-infinity will be an official speaker at the TechDays conference taking place in Geneva on April 5th-6th. We will be presenting two sessions; the first of which will detail the search capabilities of SharePoint 2010, where we will be discussing the different search options available in each version. We will then examine ways to extend the search, using integration methods, search federation and customization.

The second session will focus on identity management and federation through Active Directory Federation Services Version 2. Initially developed to enable trust relationships with external entities, ADFS is becoming more crucial as it allows federation of identity within the enterprise and in the cloud.

Over the past six months, blue-infinity has felt the strong buzz of activity within our clients. And in order to support our customers’ projects in Asia, we have opened a branch office in Hong Kong this week. Already present in the Czech Republic and in neighbouring France, blue-infinity continues its growth, supported by 300 employees; of whom 200 work in Geneva. “In 2010, we achieved a turnover of 42 million Francs” reports Pierre Aebischer, one of blue-infinity’s three partners.  “We still see our growth in Switzerland”, he continues, “but, today, we need to look at opportunities for growth abroad. Asia is an interesting market for our clients within the banking and luxury sectors.”

blue-infinity hopes to benefit from a return to the decentralization of IT within enterprises. “The support required from providers such as ourselves therefore becomes even more crucial”, concludes Pierre Aebischer.

For more information, please contact Sonia Nair

Take a look at the articles on our expansion in the La Banque Suisse, ICT Journal, Le Temps, market.ch, PME Magazine and the Tribune de Genève - in French.

The LIFT11 Conference in Geneva is an annual event, bringing together a community of pioneers to explore the social implications of new technologies. The three-day conference offers insights and discussion into the current and emerging usage of digital technologies, with a big emphasis on online communities and social media.

blue-infinity’s VIP lunch at  LIFT11 was led by our special guest Tiffany St James, the former Head of Public Participation for the UK Government. Tiffany specialises in digital strategy and training, and helps organisations to better understand and engage with social media.

Tiffany St James with blue-infinity's Sonia Nair and Pierre Aebischer

Tiffany’s open discussion session with our audience of Swiss-based business leaders focused on how the way we communicate through media has changed, with a shift of power towards the consumer – thanks to social media. The importance of having a solid social media strategy was highlighted, with key elements being those of both engagement and monitoring. 

During the session, we showcased our new Social Media Lab and our cutting edge monitoring and engagement services. Our team of expert social media analysts monitor social networks on behalf of our clients, feeding back important intelligence through periodic reports. Depending on their brief, they may focus on quickly identifying and relaying the development of potential crisis, researching what consumers think of a brand (through sentiment analysis) or producing in depth reports to give a detailed view of how a brand is perceived throughout the social media landscape. Through our Lab, our social media analysts are also equipped to engage with consumers, building trust and strengthening relationships with a brand.

Contact us for more information on our pragmatic and cost-effective start-up package.

Read the ICTJournal’s coverage of blue-infinity’s service (article in French).

The ICT Journal and ALP ICT, the cluster of information technology and communication in Western Switzerland, have released a study on employment within the computer industry sector in Western Switzerland.

In this study, blue-infinity has been ranked as the 6^th largest IT employer in Suisse Romande, and also the 4^th largest recruiter. With 280 employees, and 30 new recruits in 2010, blue-infinity is a prime example of how Swiss IT companies are significant players in terms of job creation.

In addition to hiring the best people for our projects, blue-infinity also invests highly in training and personal development, with over 75 professional certifications being awarded to our consultants on average every year.

Additional facts from the article:

In 2010, the 297 companies that participated in this survey employed a total of 11,230 people. At the time, they had recruited 765 staff for 293 renewed positions, leaving a balance of 472 new positions – representing growth of 4.39%. It also appears that it is the Swiss firms (60% of total) who are the most active in terms of job creation.

These figures are encouraging, but they mask certain realities. First, the technology sector in Switzerland is aging: 60% of employees in the industry are over 40 years old, according to the latest study by Swiss ICT and the GRI. In addition, demand outweighs supply at all qualification levels. The growth of IT recruitment could be even greater if this sector that represents 5% (25 billion) of the Swiss GDP could find enough suitable personnel.

For more details, please click below to read the full article by Fabrice Delaye.

Please click here to read the full article (in French)

2010 was the 6^th year of the prestigious Davey Awards, which recognise outstanding achievements in creativity worldwide.

The awards, sanctioned by the International Academy of Visual Arts attracted around 4000 entries this year, and the competition to win the much sought after gold award was fierce.

Thanks to the creative excellence, hard work and passion of our teams, b-i  was awarded three gold awards this year. Take a look at the winning projects below:

Mavic

Our website for Mavic won two gold awards in the Consumer Products and Sports categories. Using OpenSource and Flash technologies, our team created a flawlessly efficient and user-friendly website featuring product presentations and sections relating to athletes, equipment, servicing and other company information. The team also created a social media strategy and functionalities which will enable Mavic to connect and interact with its customers. Click on the screenshot below to visit the website.

Mavic Website by blue-infinity

Vacheron Constantin

Also the recipient of last year’s WebAward, our website for Vacheron Constantin received a gold award in the Consumer Products/Services category at this year’s Davey Awards. Constantly evolving, the site utilizes Flash, AS3, Flex, PHP, mySQL and XML technologies to offer such features as an interactive watch selector, which communicates the beauty of Vacheron’s watches, whilst retaining the all important aspect of functionality. Our creative team also produced  greetings cards and a separate rich media website for Quai de L’ile – which allows users to personalise their watch online.

The website for Vacheron Constantin can be accessed by clicking below.

Vacheron Constantin Website by blue-infinity

This year’s WebAwards, from the Web Marketing Association celebrate outstanding achievements in Website development and Internet marketing.

For our work with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, we received an outstanding achievement award for their new website, which was part of an organisation-wide rebranding campaign.

The previous SIB website did not have a CMS. The client requirements were for internal, non-tech staff to be able to update and create web content. Joomla was the ideal choice as it is open source, flexible and makes for easy customisation.

 The site consists of news articles, scientific research papers, information about up-coming meetings and seminars and is a communication platform for everyone working at SIB

Below are some before and after shots of our work:

Before:

After:

Previously, our work with the SIB also received a Rebrand Award of Distinction. 

For a closer look, visit the SIB’s website

blue-infinity is now certified to provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM products and services.

With Dynamics, our Microsoft-based clients can enjoy the benefits of its easy integration with other Microsoft solutions such as Analysis Services, Reporting Services and Sharepoint. In addition, its integration with Outlook facilitates adoption of the tool by users, who can manage customer relationships through their email.

One added advantage is that Dynamics is available as an online solution, providing a cheaper alternative to housing the solution internally.

Stephane Huck, head of blue-infinity’s Microsoft Solution Practice adds,

As the number 1 ranked Microsoft Gold Partner in Switzerland, we are extremely happy to be officially certified by Microsoft to bring this solution to clients. Our Microsoft team works closely with our marketing experts to ensure that customer acquisition, engagement and retention objectives across all channels are correctly understood and implemented in order to maximize return from the tool.

As a certified Microsoft Partner, blue-infinity can now offer SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) to Microsoft customers wishing to use their Software Assurance Benefits.

SharePoint Deployment Planning Services provide your company with a collaborative consulting engagement based on leading practices from Microsoft. They allow customers to leverage best practices and plan for the effective deployment of SharePoint server 2010/2007. SPDS also lets customers plan their upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010, or plan their deployment of Sharepoint for internet sites.

The planning services offered by b-i will help you to optimize the effectiveness of SharePoint capabilities, lower the cost of deployment, and improve the productivity of your organization.

Depending on your level of Software Assurance coverage, we can offer engagements lasting over 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15 days.

For more information on SPDS, you can download the brochure from Microsoft by clicking here

blue-infinity partner Pierre Aebischer, and Engagement Manager Luc Maciejewski, recently gave an interview to Le Temps newspaper on Business Intelligence.

The article, published on the 27th September as part of a special insert called ‘Progiciels’, examines the role of Business Intelligence in today’s organisations.

The article (in French) can be viewed by clicking here.

nlyte signs blue-infinity as Regional Implementation Partner and launches partnership at Geneva event with Dutch Police spokesperson

LONDON, UK September 28, 2010 – Following the appointment of Grant Bilbow as Vice President of France and Southern Europe in July 2010, nlyte Software, the only provider of performance-based solutions for Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM), has signed blue-infinity (b-i) as the region’s main implementation partner.  blue-infinity will work alongside nlyte and BMC, nlyte’s global reseller partner to implement and integrate nlyte’s software across the region.

To launch the partnership, nlyte and b-i will be holding the first ever DCIM event in Switzerland supported by Jan Wiersma Data Centre Evangelist – Dutch Police Force and International Director: EMEA for Data Center Pulse (DCP).  The event, to be held in Geneva on Wednesday 27^th October, 2010, will outline how DCIM solutions can help data centre and facilities managers to address the challenges of rising energy costs, space limitations, data centre consolidations and migrations and actual or impending government legislation.   

“I am pleased to be able to attend the nlyte and b-i event to explain how the use of nlyte’s DCIM solution is helping the Dutch Police Force to manage its 18 data centres, 6,000 servers and 1,500 plus applications that support the day-to-day work of 55,000 employees” said Wiersma.  “It is vitally important that such a complex, public sector environment is managed in the most optimized environmentally friendly manner and nlyte’s DCIM software helps us to do this”.  

“The data centre market in Europe is very dynamic and we are seeing some clear trends emerging such as data centre consolidation and a move towards more efficient and responsible use of space and energy” commented Simon Webster, Vice President and General Manager of EMEA Operations.  “Adding blue-infinity to our network of partners and being supported by The Dutch Police Force to launch our partnership, will allow us to continue to grow and raise awareness of our European presence and to respond to the current and future needs of the market.”

According to Jorge Pablo Gonzalez, Practice Manager at blue-infinity “our partnership with nlyte is an ideal complement to blue-infinity as we will be able to help companies implement and integrate nlyte’s software within their data centres, and to offer support and advice throughout the complete project lifecycle; from project management and application roll-out to change management, internal audit support, training, reporting, process management and capacity planning”.

“We are looking forward to introducing the nlyte solution to our European customer base and to hearing the Dutch police story at our event in October” added Gonzalez.

Recently, Pierre Aebischer, Managing Partner at blue-infinity, spoke to jobtic.ch about the company and in particular its Human Resources. Click here to read the full article in French.