Basingstoke storage manufactuer, Origin Storage, has been recognised by leading partner, Thecus, for consistent and growing sales of a range of storage devices. During 2006-7 the company increased sales by 300% and they have entered the Thecus top 20 distributors list.

Origin Storage were also recognised for their outstanding marketing effort, having Thecus products reviewed in some of the largest IT magazines in the UK and following the PR up with advertising promoting the Thecus brand.

Stuart Eling, Origin’s Thecus specialist made the following comment:

Thecus are an excellent brand and a great company to work with. I rate their systems above any other in the market, and it is amazing to receive this award and be appreciated for the work we do.

Founded in 2001 and based in Basingstoke, Origin Storage Ltd. is fast becoming one of Europe’s leading IT storage manufacturers. Its wide‐ranging product portfolio includes branded hard disk drive solutions, RAID solutions and OEM parts.

The business has grown year on year and now supplies to main distribution and reseller partners in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Holland and Belgium with many more European countries being introduced over the next year.

Voyager Software, the SME recruitment agency software specialist based in Basingstoke, today announces the senior appointment of Jayne Tanner as Support Manager. Tanner will be responsible for implementing the wave of upgrades to the software suite across all product lines, ensuring Voyager remains on the cutting edge of recruitment technology.

The new appointment bolsters the 34-strong Team at Voyager’s new Head Office in Basing View. Tanner will oversee the team responsible for upgrading the existing Voyager technology, with an eye to developing the next generation of recruitment software for small and medium sized agencies. Tanner said,

Innovation and product enhancements are the lifeblood for our customers as they help them achieve better efficiencies in placing candidates

Paul Thompson, Sales Director at Voyager Software, commented:

The appointment heading the Support team is a strategic decision, re-enforcing the groups continued effort to improve the Customer Experience yet further.

Jayne returned to Voyager having spent recent years working for BT Global and so has hit the ground running. Jayne was originally employed on the Helpdesk department in 2001 so has the experience and knowledge ready to take on this new challenging role. Jayne added,

Supporting 1000’s of customers worldwide on a range of technical platforms has its responsibilities, but we have a great team and skill base. It has been great to see such progress; Voyager is a very different company now.

Story via Online Recruitment

Having already taken steps to reduce its carbon footprint, Leisure operator Bowlplex, is continuing to look for new initiatives to save even more energy.

With the help of partners including the Carbon Trust, Dorset Resource Efficiency Club and Southern Electrical Supplies, Bowlplex has already reduced its environmental impact, and in 2007 £10,000 was invested in changing 34% of the company’s light bulbs to low energy bulbs. This year a further 35% of all lighting will be replaced, and by 2009 all Bowlplex centres will have low energy bulbs.

Ben Carne, Bowlplex safety, health and environment manager said:

Bowlplex is continuing to implement energy saving initiatives in all 16 family entertainment centres throughout the UK.

Southern Electrical Supplies is providing us with low energy ten-pin bowling lane lights and new electrical circuits that will allow us to use lower energy bulbs. By making these simple editions to our centres we can make a huge impact on our energy efficiency, therefore reducing our carbon footprint to help the environment.”

Trevor Dumbleton, managing director of Southern Electrical Supplies said:

Bowlplex is committed to saving energy and reducing their carbon footprint, so by working together our aim is to replace all existing lamps, like for like, with low energy equivalents, using the latest technology in compact fluorescent and LED lamps.

The benefits are almost instant, wattages are lowered, lamp life is almost doubled, and routine maintenance significantly reduced. A particular success was replacing the 400w lamps above the bowling lanes with 200w metal halide arc lamps; this produced the same light output but halved the energy usage.

Rolling this program out across their 16 family entertainment centres nationally, shows their commitment to energy saving.

Bowlplex has 16 total entertainment centres located across the UK, including the site on Basingstoke Leisure Park, providing families with a number of leisure facilities including ten-pin bowling, arcade technology in Video World, Ticket Town - fun redemption games for children, the late-licensed Stadium Sports Bar, grill and the American Pool Pit.

The Basingstoke Gazette reports this morning on intended plans to push forward the redevelopment of The Malls Shopping Centre in Basingstoke town centre.

The centre, which has constant speculation regarding redevelopment, has recently attracted some large names, including Primark, to sit alongside the success of Festival Place, which opened in 2002.

Newly elected Councillor, Andrew Finney, is behind the scheme, and keen to push the major stakeholders, Property company St Modwen, but the local council has concerns that St Modwen is not properly involved in the project.

Cllr Finney indicated St Modwen bosses are unwilling to invest the funds needed for a major rebuild of the centre. He said: “They’re content to hold the investment in The Malls in the form they currently hold it and they are generating the level of return they would want from The Malls in the current climate.”

But he added: “We are confident we are going to get more out of them.”

Basingstoke based De La Rue, the largest printer of paper money, has announced it is in talks to sell its automated teller machine operation, which installed the world’s first ATM in 1967.

The company is seeking a buyer for the Cash Systems division, excluding a unit that makes money-sorting equipment, Chief Executive Officer Leo Quinn said. He declined to provide details of potential bidders or estimate the unit’s value and when the discussions may conclude, but suggested that the decision it for shareholder value.

In the fiscal year ended in March 2007, Cash Systems accounted for 48 percent of sales and 32 percent of operating profit for De La Rue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its processing unit provides money sorters for clients including J Sainsbury Plc.

More on Bloomberg

Basingstoke based test and measurement manufacturer OmniTek has announced that Pepper as purchased four XR image analysis systems for use in its newly refurbished post production facility in Geek Street, London. Pepper, which has recently completed work on ‘Waking the Dead VII and He Kills Coppers will use the OmniTek XRs for integrity checks in various high profile projects. The XR which this year won the Queen’s Award for Innovation has already been used by Pepper on Sky One Drama, The Colour of Magic and the new feature film Three and Out.

We already had OmniTek equipment in place so selecting the XR systems was a logical choice,

confirms Scott Holmgren, head of operations at Pepper.

In addition to familiarity with the user interface, we also liked the flexibility of the XR as it allows our editors and colourists to view the signal however they prefer. Because it is a PC based system, the configuration of the XR also enables us to route through to any of our multiple finishing rooms – effectively giving us a ’scope in each room’ along with the associated cost savings.

The OmniTek XR is the first and only image analysis system specifically designed for colorists and post-production editors working in a high- definition environment. It provides users with compatible monitoring equipment for the HD and High Resolution image formats and colour spaces to offering a detailed analysis of the colourimetry and levels of the specific material processed.

In addition, The OmniTek XR has a number of unique features not available on any other monitoring system, such as “extreme resolution” waveform and vector displays for total image analysis; real-time colour histogram displays in a variety of different gamuts; support for all 2K and dual-link input formats, with user-programmable LUTs to correct for non-linear inputs; support for “XYZ” colour space inputs for users working in digital cinema.

The image formats being handled in post-production are rapidly changing with HD, dual-link, 2k and 4k resolutions are all becoming commonplace, while additional colour spaces such as XYZ are beginning to emerge,

confirms Roger Fawcett, managing director, OmniTek.

We have met the need to monitor these formats and as a result OmniTek’s award winning XR extreme resolution waveform monitor and image analyzer represents the state-of-the-art in waveform and vectorscope monitoring for post-production today.

Across Basingstoke up to 10% of households with a BT line are still unable to connect to Broadband.

In Basingstoke there are about 40,000 lines connected to the BT Exchange and some of these line users are unable to get Broadband, or have a poor connection. The areas that have issues with Broadband connectivity are what we call ‘notspots’ and appear to be clustered around Kempshott and Chineham. We would like to hear from anybody that is having problems with their broadband connection in Basingstoke and Deane.

As the internet has become a key element of life at home and at work, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, in partnership with eHampshire are keen find out about these problems, and would call for those affected by this issue to get in touch.

Residents and businesses can check the service that their phone line should be able to support by visiting Sam Knows Broadband and entering their phone number and post code.

Once you have checked your service, help us to help you by registering these details at www.ehampshire.org/notspots.asp or by calling eHampshire on 01962 846381.

Backed by Strictly Come Dancing star ‘Zoe Ball’ (pictured below), Basingstoke’s Women In Business Group pledged their support for the National Cervical Awareness Campaign ‘Be Cervix Savvy‘ – at a Charity Walk in London last month.

The Be Cervix Savvy campaign has been launched to inform women all over the country about cervical cancer and to ensure they ‘get themselves screened’.

Celebrity television and radio presenter, Zoe Ball, says

“An astonishing 3 women in the UK die from cervical cancer every day! There is a brilliant cervical screening programme in place for women aged 25+ and it’s vital that all us lasses are screened regularly. So tell your girlfriends, mums and daughters, to get involved and Be Cervix Savvy!”

An innovative ad shown on the Be Cervix Savvy website, has been created, interviewing a mix of great looking male actors to help get this incredibly important message across!

Cervical cancer is the most preventable form of cancer, yet it is still the second biggest cancer killer of women aged 30-34 years in the UK. Early detection through screening prevents many cases of invasive cervical cancer, but younger women in particular simply do not know what it is or why they should attend a smear test. It is estimated that 40% of women under the age of 35 do not attend a regular smear test.

In 2006/07 a total of 4.01 million women aged 25-64 years were invited for cervical screening in England, but nearly one million women did not attend. (Reference: Cervical Screening Programme: England 2006-2007, The Information Centre)

Since showcasing their first online booking system at Basingstoke Bowlplex, the family entertainment operator has confirmed its ten-pin bowling bookings have increased as customers enjoy the freedom to book at their own leisure.

Bowlplex introduced the online booking system on the 1st April giving customers the ease of booking ten-pin bowling games from the comfort of their own home. This new convenient way of booking games has seen an increased in popularity as the word has got out that you can bypass the queue and not have the disappointment of being unable to play at the time you wish when the centre is busy.

Vanessa Aylett, general manager at Basingstoke Bowlplex said:

The response from or customers has been fantastic! Everyone loves the convenience of booking a game of ten-pin bowling at any time of the day or night in the comfort of their own home.

It is not just the ten-pin bowling games that are being booked online, the children’s birthday parties and corporate party packages have also been a popular choice for online booking as it can be done so far in advance, for example we are already receiving bookings for our Christmas bowling parties.

Due to the success of Basingstoke Bowlplex’s new online booking system the initiative will be rolled out across the other 15 Bowlplex centres across the UK.

Busy business women in Basingstoke were given a dirty talk by cleaning guru Kim - not the Kim of TV’s ‘Kim and Aggie’ - but our very own Kim Austen, the founder of local cleaning business ‘House Proud Services’ based in Basingstoke.

Invited by The Women in Business Group to talk at their April meeting, held at Basingstoke’s Apollo Hotel, members were treated to an enlightening talk by entrepreneur Kim Austen, who, facing redundancy eight years ago, made a clean sweep and started her own business completely from scratch.

Kim kick-started her cleaning business by placing an ad in a local paper and soon found she had more than enough work to cope with herself, so expanded the company’s capabilities by taking on staff to help her handle the successful rise of the business.

Today, House Proud Services employs 20 part-time cleaners and a full-time manager working for 90 customers in the Basingstoke area, equalling 200 cleans per month. Kim explains:

Cleaning is a very emotive subject. 70% of women work today, yet many business women still find it hard to accept help in their home, feeling failure if they can’t cope with life’s everyday demands of running a home, looking after a family and putting in a full day’s work.

Building her highly successful business over the last eight years, Kim has experienced more than she would sometimes care to.

It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Some women will spring clean before the cleaner turns up, but we’ve also been in houses where the bed-sheets look like they have never been washed and seen animal faeces ground into the carpet from where they have been walked into the house from the back garden …! Some people’s private collections are fairly unusual too, like the young man who took a particular interest in collecting ladies thongs!

Kim concluded,

Don’t be afraid to get a professional cleaner into your home. If you are considering this option, the best way of choosing the right person is by recommendation. At House Proud Services we will come and talk to you about your own personal requirements and then match the right cleaning person for the tasks.

Lindsey Page, President of Women In Business, thanked Kim for her refreshing talk and then introduced Jane Carley, a Fundraising Executive from Wessex Cancer Trust, who gave a short presentation to the Members as this year’s chosen charity.

Jane said she was thrilled that their charity had been chosen, which would greatly help awareness of the Trust and face-to-face networking is a great way of achieving this. They have a strong association with Basingstoke and raise approximately £1million a year to help in a multitude of projects to help the fight against cancer.