Virtual Riot IT

Mike Smith and Michael Mainelli spent a week in Oman at the Arabian Telecom conference through Arabian Expo. The conference, which was attended by several thousand people, bought World-Wide-Web access to Oman for the very first time. Mike and Michael led discussions and presentations on the internet and the World-Wide-Web. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to explain the technical content of some of the Z/Yen presentations. Nevertheless, the conference was a great success and many considered Z/Yen’s contributions to be the highlights.

May The Force Be With You

Z/Yen is delighted to announce that it has won a contract to provide office and administrative services to Taskforce 2000. Led by Robin Guenier, Taskforce 2000 has been initiated by the Department of Trade and Industry to spread the word about the potential IT problems faced by organisations when the date changes to the year 2000. Services already provided by Z/Yen include telecommunications, secretarial, financial systems and processing, voicemail and PC networking (so we ‘d better get our year 2000 compliance sorted out). Roxane Recordon is managing the services.

Give Me Shelter

Shelter, the National Campaign for Homeless People has chosen Z/Yen to help it develop a long term IT strategy. Z/Yen has also been selected to assist with the evaluation, selection and implementation of new financial systems. Z/Yen has been selected through a competitive process which included nine firms. Shelter described the main reason for Z/Yen’s selection as the professionalism of the approach. The IT strategy should be completed this autumn while new financial systems are scheduled for implementation next spring. The team includes Ian Harris and Teresa Bestard.

Comments on Now and Z/Yen, as always, are welcomed. Please fax articles and ideas through for the next issue (copy date 31 October). See you all, Z/Yen!