The ICT Journal and ALP ICT have released their 2011 study on employment within the IT industry sector in Western Switzerland. IBM, HP and SITA stand at the top of the list as multinationals. blue-infinity is ranked 4th, but is the largest independent local employer. Read the full article, written by Rodolphe Koller, that provides very interesting statistics on the evolution of the industry, including lack of IT resource, outsourcing strategies, mobile technologies, cloud computing and the economic climate.

A few facts that you will not find in the article which have fuelled blue-infinity’s growth:

• Ability to provide fully managed services in the areas of support, infrastructure and large-scale migrations
• One of the largest Microsoft and J2EE development teams in the regions, delivering both custom and packaged solutions for enterprise
• A team of ERP experts to complete teams on the ground
• Cost-effective Open Source solutions for collaboration and e-commerce
• Focus on Information Architecture, Usability and User Interface Design for enterprise applications
• Focus on mobile technologies for consumer and enterprise applications
• A digital marketing agency to optimize brand visibility, convert customers and manage reputation
• An internal PMO, with solid methodologies and tools
• Continuous training and certification of our teams
• Partnerships with leading software providers
• A flexible, creative and fun work environment, focused on the employee
• Realising that we need to improve every day

And most importantly, we could not do it without our talented and hard working teams, and our clients who give us the opportunity to work on great projects!

In conjunction with Visilab, Ted Baker’s new campaign is now online: http://ted-visilab.ch/index_jeu.php.

 Visilab asked blue-infinity to conceptualise and develop an online campaign.

 If you want a chance to win a weekend in London for two, visit the website and join the game!

La Praille recently launched its new website: www.la-praille.ch, with the aim of providing better service and information to their customers.

The site, which was completely designed and developed by blue-infinity, provides practical information on shopping, leisure, promotions, events, opening times, how to get there, etc..  You will also find information on the Stadium, the Ramada Encore Hotel and the Event Centre, all part of the complex.

“La Praille is a modern complex with a wide range of activities and services. The website needed to reflect both the modernity and warmth of La Praille, while providing each store the ability to promote its brand”, says Pierre Leroux, Art Director. “We used big images so that the user is instantly transported into the environment. The mega-navigation is a modern way to give quick access to information.”

“The project required close collaboration between our UX, design and development teams. In addition, we provided a solution so that the site can easily be updated with new promotional content”, adds Julien Lechenne, Project Manager.

Isabelle Desbeaumes, Communication Assistant, La-Praille. “We were congratulated by management and the stores. The website definitely fulfils our objectives: a modern image, as well as good functionality, clarity and interactivity for our customers!”

TOP 100 is a study conducted by the ICT Journal in conjunction with Alp ICT. This is the first year the study has been conducted, with the participation of nearly 300 IT companies from all sectors the Suisse romande Region.

Some facts (source ICT Journal):

• The participating companies employ a total of 11’000 staff
• They created 472 jobs between 2009 and 2010, averaging a growth of 4.39%
• 82% of the companies employ 50 or less staff

blue-infinity was ranked  3rd largest Swiss employer in Suisse romande, as well as the the 4th largest job-creator and the 6th largest employer in the IT sector in the Suisse romande region.

Our success is truly dependent on the talent of our employees. We believe in continuous training and reward our employees who gain certifications. We try to improve  and invent new mechanisms to foster a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship and team-spirit.

Pierre Aebischer, Managing Partner, also stated that blue-infinity’s ability to combine the talents of IT , User Experience Design and Marketing experts will continue to be a key differentiator to areas both business and consumer applications.

Jean-Claude Mermoud, Conseiller d'Etat, chef du Département de l'économie du canton de Vaud

Rodolphe Koller, Chief Editor, ICTjournal

blue-infinity is an integration partner for nlyte Software in Switzerland and EMEA.

nlyte Software, a a provider of performance-focused solutions for Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM), , has been recognized for its commitment to sustainable IT initiatives.  The US-headquartered company which has its European headquarters in London, has received the ‘One to Watch Product’ award at the prestigious Green IT Awards 2010.

Rising energy costs, space limitations, consolidations, migrations, and impending government legislation are the leading pressures for companies to seek comprehensive solutions for optimizing data centre power, cooling and space. Consequently, data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions are becoming recognized as one of the best ways to help Data Center and Facilities Managers drive down both energy consumption and carbon emissions.

nlyte’s Data Center Performance Management (DCPM) suite achieves this by helping companies make more intelligent capacity planning decisions leading to the optimal placement of data centre assets and up to a 20% annual reduction in energy costs.

blue-infinity helps companies implement and integrate nlyte’s software, offering 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.

I asked Jorge Pablo Gonzalez about the strengths of nlyte’s solutions: “Today most companies use Excel and Visio to list their assets and map out their data centres.  The challenge lies in having reliable, accurate and up-to-date information to manage a data centre’s real-time infrastructure evolution.

nlyte’s solutions enable intelligent capacity planning, resulting in the most efficient use of power, cooling and space through the optimal placement of data center assets.  The web interface shows a detailed inventory of hardware assets and combines them 1:1 with logistical, environmental and electronic information to produce a 3D view of the data centre. The user friendly interface and simple navigation allows IT support to quickly retrieve critical information to identify causes of incidents. The efficiency of installation, upgrades and maintenance is ensured through its remote solutions. Ease of integration into existing ticketing systems is also a big plus.”

For more information, contact Juan-Manuel Garrote (juan-manuel.garrote at b-i.com)
or call him on +41 58 307 7022

For more information about nlyte visit www.nlyte.com

           HR Access  is a leading global provider of HR and Payroll solutions with over 600 customers in more than 54 countries, managing over 9 million employees and pensioners worldwide.

blue-infinity is a major HR Access partner in Switzerland, providing experienced IT integration skills backed by experience and knowledge in the HR sector.

This partnership strengthens blue-infinity’s portfolion of  HR solutions that includes a proprietary solution, Central HR. Central HR, a workforce intelligence tool,  is being used to manage over 100′ooo employees by companies such as HP, Agilent and Avago.

blue-infinity has just won the award for Outstanding Website for it’s work on the website for the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB).

Our team did an entire rebranding exercise for the company, which was also given a Rebrand award of Distinction.

Visit the SIB website: http://www.isb-sib.ch/

View the before/after case study: http://www.rebrand.com/2010-distinction-swiss-institute-of-bioinformatics

blue-infinity has increased its portfolio of open-source publishing solutions with Drupal. We are also now a Drupal Association Member.

Our Open Source Practice has already been serving clients namely with Joomla! and Typo 3. Through Drupal, our teams hope to bring even more functionality to clients who wish to implement a solid solution for digital media, as well as take advantage of the very complete social media solutions, which include multi-user blogs, wikis and community networks.

The Drupal social publishing system has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception.  Assisted by a thriving ecosystem of consultants and developers, a diverse list of organisations are using Drupal including SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, New York Observer, Forbes, Hachette Filipacchi Media, NYU Langone Medical Center, Columbia University, Allied Advertising, New York State Historical Association and Amnesty International. A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of active contributors to the open source technology, including nearly 2000 community-developed modules for extending Drupal functionality.

Our teams have already had successes with Drupal both in the Consumer and Government sectors.

For more information on the right publishing system for you please contact Guillaume Arluison (guillaume.arluison at b-i.com).

blue-infinity is once again a proud sponsor of LIFT. 

Lift10 will explore the most overlooked aspect of innovation: people.

Known in techno-parlance as users, consumers, clients, participants, prosumers, citizens or activists, they ultimately define the success of all technological and entrepreneurial projects. A decade after the rebirth of user-centered design and innovation, it is time to explore the myths and uncover the reality behind the “connected people”.

Lift10 will give you insights on how people behave online, the various usages of social media, and the differences between generations. Learn how to leverage the power of millions of supporters from a member of Obama’s social media team (Rahaf Harfoush), hear the story of the “pirate party” who made it to the European parliament with the help of online communities (Amelia Andersdotter). Listen to Catherine Lottier, head of TV program foresight at France’s most innovative TV channel, talk about the media of the future. Hear Katrin Verclas explain how mobile phones can have a bigger social impact. Jamais Cascio, who has just been named one of the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy “for being our moral guide to the future” will join biologist Aubrey De Grey who treats age as a disease and wants you (yes, you!) to live well beyond the normal 100 years or so.

For more information, please contact Sonia Nair (sonia.nair at b-i dot com).

For more information on the event, visit www.liftconference.com

blue-infiniy is now an official Attivio partner.

Our new partnership with Attivio enables us to offer clients the third major solution on the market today, adding to our offering of Autonomy and Fast.

Through our dedicated teams we have successfully ensured proper definition of user, technical and infrastructure requirements as well as configuration, deployment and knowledge transfer, with business continuity being a priority throughout the project life-cycle.

Our usability experts champion user requirements, leveraging them to design clear interface designs and task flows.

blue-infinity is now an official partner of Atlassian. This partnership supports the growing portfolio of collaboration solutions that blue-infinity provides to its clients.

Atlassian provides an alternative set of tools that blue-infinity can now share with their clients to  manage and run Agile Developments.  This includes a complete set of modules, namely JIRA, for project and development teams to manage Agile planning, with customizable workflow and a pluggable integration framework. In addition, Continuous integration brings faster feedback to your development process, preventing bugs from piling up and reducing the risk of project delays.

An integrated part of the tools is CONFLUENCE, a flexible wiki with over 200 plug-ins, that enables teams to share information rapidly without the bottleneck of publishing.  In addition, it is easily integrated with Sharepoint.

With more than 11’000 customers, Atlassian’s products are being used by companies from the technology sector, such as Agilent or even Adobe to the banking sector, with actors such as HSBC.

 blue-infinity’s team has successfully used Agile methodologies and tools for various large-scale clients and projects in across the banking and government sectors.

 For more information please contact Pierre-Alexandre Riera.

The entire would like to thank our clients  for letting us work on such great projects.

blue-infinity is a Microsoft BPOS partner. Valérie Alonso, blue-infinity’s Microsoft expert,  will present Microsoft’s Online Services at Microsof Connection Days in Lausanne on Friday 2nd October 2009.

Contact Valérie Alonso for more information.

Gartner has named virtualization as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009.

Virtualization has emerged as a key technology for reducing IT capital costs as well as improving operational flexibility and reliability.

Server virtualization enables consolidation, highly leveraged development and test environments as well as disaster recovery/business continuity scenarios. With a more dynamic infrastructure comes an increased rate of change, which in turn needs to be controlled through management software tools and standardized processes that favour automation.

Experts at blue-infinity have helped clients at different stages of a project, from virtualizing hundreds of servers in a global data centre to defining the architecture and deployment roadmap for different components of an infrastructure, as well as providing packaging for end-user desktops and training. Our teams work with an array of different products, from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V and management tools such as Altiris.

b-i has recently one two more awards at the 13th WebAward event. We would like to thank the teams who have worked so hard on these sites and thank our clients for giving us the opportunity to help promote their excellent brands.

Vacheron Constantin: Outstanding Website award

Lombard Odier: Standard of Excellence award

Some words about the WebAwards: “The Web Marketing Association is the producer of the WebAward Competition. Now in its 13th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development. But more than just an award program that Internet marketing experts use to increase website visibility, the WebAwards provides a benchmark by which all Website development can be judged. More than a decade’s worth of judging scores defines what Internet marketing professionals should strive for in their website marketing and design efforts. These historical results are now used to provide a point of reference and feedback to website marketing professionals who enter.”

The magazine Bilan recently did a full write-up on social networking, interviewing key actors in the domain, including blue-infinity. What are the 10 reasons that make social networking indespensable today? According to Bilan:

1. to expand your network
2. using your friends’ friends
3. market to your community
4. access a gold mine of information
5. understand your counter-part
6. watch your competition
7. create your own opportunities
8. discover the “one-in-million”
9. manage your image
10. use it within the company

Read the full article is in French.

Social Networks Statistics 2008 by ethority.net

blue-infinity spoke at the E-Commerce Conference in Geneva (28 May) about e-business trends in 2009, listing a host of examples of innovation, successes, failures and what this all means for the next 18 months.

In the current economic climate many organizations are redirecting budgets to on-line marketing. Read our white paper (in French) to gain a better understanding of what can be done and learn about the opportunities in this domain.

Contact us for a full copy of the presentation.

blue-infinity’s Valérie Alonso and Michel Aguilera gave a pretty thorough presentation to an audience of nearly 200 people on Windows 7 security features and administration during the Microsoft TechDays 09 that took place on April 01-02, 2009 in Geneva.

Microsoft has made many improvements to increase Windows 7 usability. Although Vista is a great system, it has sometimes been difficult to use and manage.

During the presentation, following topics have been presented: the Action center, a new central location for dealing with system messages and starting troubleshooting – the User Account Control, and improvements that have been made to make it more user-friendly while keeping it full secure – New features around network security and access, such as directaccess – BitLocker improvements and BitLocker to go to encrypt a USB flash drive – AppLocker to allow or deny applications that users might try to install and finally new support tools such as Problem Steps Recorder.

This is not an exhaustive list of the new features of Windows 7, so we encourage you to have a look at the  the video  (presentation in French).

Contact Valerie Alonso for more information.