The Nation Newspaper

Tag: MANAGEMENT

  • Eaglets beat Youth Sport Management team 3-0

    Eaglets beat Youth Sport Management team 3-0

    Nigeria’s U-17 team, Golden Eaglets on Wednesday defeated Youth Sport Management Team 3-0 at the NFF\FIFA Project Pitch in Abuja.

    The match against the Lagos-based side was Golden Eaglets’ 35th friendly match with local teams with an impressive record of 31 wins; three draws and a loss. It was also an opportunity for new -found recruits to contest for places in the 2015 World Cup-bound squad.

    Ginger -haired Gavin Thompson grabbed a 30th minute opener, and his first goal in national team colors, albeit from the spot kick after Akanni Sodik was brought down in the box. Taofeek Jibril doubled the lead for the Golden Eaglets 15 minutes later when he flicked a header into the net after a goal -mouth melee.

    Coach Emmanuel Amuneke brought a new set of players including Captain Kelechi Nwakali and striker Victor Osimhen in the second stanza. In the 63rd minutes, Osimhen floated a through pass to Nduka Ebere who rounded off his marker before burying the ball beyond goalkeeper Adebayo Adeleye.

    Amuneke described the performance of his wards as reassuring, adding that competition amongst the old and new players is exciting.

    “This was a good match for us though we arrived early this morning from Lagos for the match,” said Ita Bassey, Chief Scout of Youth Sport Management. The Golden Eaglets had a better performance and we pray they do even much better in Chile.”

    The 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup will be held between October 17 and November 8 in Chile, South America.

  • Firm faults management of residents’ registration

    Criticisms have continued to trail the management of the residents’ registration being undertaken by the Lagos State Residents’ Registration Agency (LASRRA).

    The registration has been bogged down by “the Nigerian factor,” de spite the project being a major policy of the  Babatunde Fashola administration.

    The distribution of identification cards to residents who have registered is expected to begin next month.

    But  an  Information Technology (IT) group, Oracle Data Resort, expressed doubts about the efficiency of the agency in carrying out the assignment.

    In a statement, its Operations Director,  Nkenna Osuji,  said: “The residents’ cards project is a good idea even when it has proved to be a duplication of already existing data initiatives of the national identity card project, the data captured in the driver’s licence through the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)-ordered banks’ biometric and data collation initiative, among others.

    “The idea will ensure even distribution of the needs of the populace, despite the reality that the governor wields awesome discretion in the areas of giving priority to projects.

    “The N7billion so far expended on the initiative is not commensurate with the paltry 168,000 residents’ cards produced in three years.”

    The statement also criticised “the purported suspicious disappearance of the residency cards of the Governor Babatunde Fashola and Governor-elect Akinwunmi Ambode when the vehicle of the agency’s head was purportedly attacked by robbers”.

    The resort’s spokesman ,  Gboyega Alebiosu, said:  “The activities of the agency had not been up to the standard practice of monitoring by the outgoing administration.

    “Why is the ineptitude (of this agency) being kept away from the prying eyes of relevant government officials and the public?”

  • ‘Project management build’s competitive advantage’

    The value of project management can never be overemphasised especially as it relates to the burning issues of maximising profits and budget optimisation by organisations in the face of cut-throat global competition.

    For the purpose of this article, we will define organisation in a broader sense and it includes both public and private sectors of the economy. This evolution, our definition of organisation is contrived to focus on project execution and national development as both private and public organisations collaborate together to execute grandstanding projects in the form of joint ventures and public private partnership. However, this collaboration will not achieve any meaningful impact without the overriding influence of project objective as the dominant motivator.

    For the benefits of readers who are new to the field, project management is defined as the application of skills, tools and techniques to achieve project objectives. The size, business needs and complexity of the project determine how much skills, tools and techniques are deployed to deliver on project objectives.

    The values of project management cover many important aspects of project delivery that meet customers’ expectations and project objectives. These important aspects include risk, communication and time management, just to mention a few.

    Risk management involves risk identification and control systems; and the value of proper risk management lies in exploitation of risks identified (positive risks) or elimination of unwanted risks, thereby contributing to the project being delivered on time, on budget and within scope. This is possible with the deployment of project management skills that are proportionate to the size, complexity and the needs of the project.

    The role of project management to competitive advantage is inherent in the number of projects completed on time, on budget and within scope while meeting the project objectives.  When projects deliver on objectives at no extra material and human cost; no additional capital and labour intensity, organisations operating this tight control deliver superior performance compared to their contemporaries who do not have any control on budget, time, scope and even quality.

    Successful completion of projects improves operating effectiveness and competitive advantage by fostering confidence in strategic business execution. The effects are innumerable, especially as globalisation has become a business denominator across the globe, breaking international barriers and business monopoly.

    The study is clearly indicative of the pivotal role project management plays in helping high performing organisations achieve their strategic objectives through a combination of key fundamentals which are instrumental in establishing project management practice in organisations. These basic fundamentals, according to the study conducted by Project Management Institute, are listed below:

    Culture:

    High-performing organisations fully understand the value of project management and are creating a project management mindset across their respective organisations. It is a cult-like culture where adherence to project management is obvious even in the process of project selection. This project management culture or mindset is supported and lived by the management of any given organisation. So it is quite easy for employees to adapt the culture; and the mindset becomes the mantra of such an organisation.

    Talent:

    High-performing organisations are significantly more likely to focus on talent management, establishing ongoing training, formal, and effective knowledge transfer. This is especially important in project management where technical skills are enhanced by the leadership, strategic and business management capabilities that are nurtured through experience.

    Again, high performing organisations also realise that employee turn-over erodes operating effectiveness in the interim and competitive advantage in the long haul. Therefore, the nature of the project content and design provides satisfying motivation if they are properly crafted. Process:

    High-performing organisations support project, programme, and portfolio management through standardised practices by aligning projects and programmes to the organisation’s strategy. Any organisation’s initiative depends on its strategic objectives; moreover, such initiatives are implemented in the service of the strategic objectives.

    Finally, high-performing organisations continue to buttress the well known facts: adhering to proven global project management standards without elimination of native knowledge and local relevance reduce risks, optimise cost and improve success rate of projects. This success is evident in both shareholders satisfaction and employees’ motivation leading to improved instrumentality or line of sight.

    – Oluwatosin is Managing Partner, Checkmate Business Communication

  • Foreign varsities designate Onalo professor of credit management

    Foreign varsities designate Onalo professor of credit management

    Professor Chris Onalo, Registrar/Chief Executive Institute of Credit Administration (ICA), has been designated a professor of credit management by two prestigious universities including the American University of London, UK and the International University of Panama, (IUP)in the Republic of Panama.

    The recognition by the two universities is coming three months after the London Postgraduate Credit Management College (LPCMC) UK, in collaboration with its affiliate universities appointed Onalo as professor of credit management.

    In two separate letters of recommendation signed on behalf of the American University of London by its President, Prof. Michael Nimier and his counterpart at the International University of Panama, Prof. Dr. Jorge Laurencena, they acknowledged Onalo’s unparallel commitment towards the growth of credit and financial management in Nigeria, and the globe at large as what earned him the well-deserved recognition.

    Specifically, Professor Nimier said, considering the enormous contribution to the body of knowledge in the area of credit management, Onalo has earned his place in the history as someone whose interest in the development and growth of credit management is unwavering and therefore worthy of recommendation.

    On his part, Professor Laurencena said the governing council of IUP was persuaded to recommend Onalo for professorship owing to his industry and devotion to the scholarly growth and development of credit management.

    The governing council of IUP, Laurencena said, would formally recognise Onalo on June 10th 2015, in Panama.

  • MainOne urges outsourcing of data management

    MainOne urges outsourcing of data management

    MainOne’s new subsidiary, MDX-I, has urged major firms in the country to leverage on outsourced Data Centre services to drive down costs and optimise operational efficiency.

    Convinced about the cost-efficiency of outsourced data, MDX-I and its parent company, MainOne a breakfast seminar in Lagos targeted at senior level IT managers to discuss strategies for companies that require improved data centre capacity. This session revealed valuable global insights from leading IT research company, the International Data Corporation (IDC), and global Cloud specialist, EMC2 Corporation, in addition to specialists from MainOne.

    MainOne’s Head of Marketing, Jumoke Akande, said the recent macro-economic issues in the country and fluctuating global oil prices necessitated the need for companies to use the session to explore how they can utilise Cloud and other Data Centre hosted-business applications to enhanced productivity at reasonable costs.

    With leading data experts from IDC and EMC2 Corporation as speakers, the session shed light on global trends in Data Centers, planning issues to consider, and the case for businesses to co-locate in commercial data centers which offer extraordinary levels of performance, as against building in-house data center facilities from ground up.

    Ms. Akande stressed that high level of attendance at the seminar with “Making the business case for data centre Migration” as its theme revealed the enlightened perspectives that IT managers in Nigeria are adopting to withstand economic pressures and reduce costs.

  • No fee increase in ABUAD, says management

    No fee increase in ABUAD, says management

    Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), has debunked rumours making the rounds on some social media and dailies that the university has increased its tuition for the 2014/2015 academic session.

    The university described the rumour as coming from some mischief makers, who are bent on discrediting the university’s achievements within the five years of its existence.

    “For the record, we would like to say unambiguously that very much to the contrary, we have not increased our school fees regime for the university,” said the university’s image maker, Tunde Olofintila.

    In a statement, Olofintula said there was no increase in fees in all the school’s programmes as being rumoured.  He, however, said there was an increase strictly for Medicine students proceeding on clinical training.

    “All we have done in tandem with standard practice everywhere in the world was a marginal increase in the school fees of our medical students, who, after recording 94 per cent success in their first MBBS examination, would be proceeding on clinical studies at the ultra-modern Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti, where we have committed over N2.5 billion to upgrade facilities,” the statement said.

    “The point must be made here that medical students, who are proceeding on clinical studies have not paid any fees since the beginning of the ongoing academic session because we have  to be sure of the number that will be proceeding on clinical training to determine the fee that will be applicable to each and everyone. It was the 94 per cent of the students that made it to the clinical class that were handed the new school fees in tandem with the new status and peculiarity of their training and no other student in any programme whatsoever,” he said.

    Olofintula noted that it is common knowledge that medical training, because of its peculiar nature, is expensive all over the world.

    “In order to stay in line with the established tradition of excellence for our clinical study, like every other part of academic programme, we required new laboratory equipment and additional consultants/ teachers as a result of which we have to increase faculty staff in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences from 35-112. To add more, our modern equipment were all ordered from overseas at the time that naira crashed so badly in the capital market as a result of which prices have almost doubled,” the statement added.

    However, when viewed comparatively with other private universities offering Medicine in Nigeria, Olofintula maintained that ABUAD fees still rank the least because of the N400.00 subsidy the Founder, Aare Afe Babalola, offers each student. When compared with overseas institutions, Olofintula put the difference at 60 per cent less.

    “The university wishes to assure all parents and other stakeholders that it will relentlessly seek ways of providing globally competitive education at the most minimal cost.

    “Like any good material, quality education is costly. All the same, ABUAD is prepared to consider hardship peculiar to any individual and work out payment schedule that will mitigate such peculiar hardship,” he said.

    According to him, the university has a culture of offering scholarships to children whose parents either lose their jobs, or die while studying in ABUAD. He admonished parents to take advantage of the annual scholarship scheme where students, who made a Cumulate Grade Point Average of 5.0,  go home with N500.00 while their counterparts with CGPA 4.8 get N200.000.

    “The fee for our students going on clinical training is not peculiar to ABUAD as all other private universities, who are striving for excellence. But one thing is sure: you will get value for every naira you spend here,” he said.

  • Improper management of e-waste harmful, say MTN, Ericsson

    Improper management of e-waste harmful, say MTN, Ericsson

    MTN and Ericsson have said electronic waste or e-waste not recycled properly is an under acknowledged environmental hazard around the world, lamenting that Africa, particularly West Africa, is one of the more highly affected continents.This is because large quantities of end-of-life materials from around the world end up at dumps in the sub-region.

    The two firms said they have partnered to jointly step up awareness campaign about the health hazards improperly managed e-waste potentially has on man and the environment.

    Ericsson said it has partnered the telco under the Ecology Management Programme, to launch the first electrical and electronic equipment waste (e-waste) collection and awareness drive in Benin. This campaign is geared towards creating awareness and minimising the potential environmental impact associated with the disposal of decommissioned electrical and electronic equipment in the country.

    This project provides a sound platform for raising awareness and discussing these issues and proffering solutions to how best they could addressed.

    MTN Benin CEO, Malik Melamu, said global e-waste level is expected to increase 33 per cent by 2017.

    He said:  “Research shows that the world’s e-waste level reached 48.9 million tons during 2012 and is expected to increase 33 per cent by 2017. With our company’s commitment to being socially responsible, this challenge has caught our attention. We are leveraging on Ericsson’s wealth of experience in electronic waste management to not only evacuate the waste but also educate the general public and all key stakeholders about the importance of proper disposal of the growing electronic waste in the country and the world.”

    According to the firms, a collection depot with a 20-foot container has been opened at Stade de l’Amitié de Kouhounou, Cotonou, Benin Republic. It will be operational for one month with the invitation to the general public to use the opportunity to properly dispose off  all forms of electronic waste.

    MTN will dispose off all e-waste including old equipment purchased from Ericsson and at the close of the campaign, collected e-waste will be transported to an Ericsson-approved recycling partner in Durban, South Africa.

  • ‘Nutrition is key to diabetes management’

    ‘Nutrition is key to diabetes management’

    Diabetes sufferers have been advised to take bitter kola, okro and cucumber, among others to lower their blood sugar level.

    According to a naturopath, Dr Gilbert, Ezengige, regular consumption of these natural plants will help in stabilising their glucose level. “Medicinal plants possess the ability to re-generate pancreatic beta cells, promote insulin release and fight the problem of insulin resistance,” he added.

    Ezengige said bitter kola (garcinia kola) known as Orogbo in Yoruba and Aki-ilu in Igbo and bitter leaf’s extract (Vernonia amygdalina) can lower blood sugar level.

    “It contains a bioflavonoid that has a blood sugar lowering property,” he said.

    He said okro (Abelmoschus esculentus) improves insulin sensitivity, adding that cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is one of the most important vegetables for diabetics because “it regenerates the pancreas.”

    Also, guava (Psidium guajava) which is rich in fibers lowers glycemic index, thus, makes it a perfect fruit for diabetics.

    He said cashew (anacardium occidentale) should be taken due to its hypoglycemic property.

    “Fluted pumpkin known botanically as telfaria occidentalis and Ugu in Igbo has efficacious properties to help the recovery of a diabetic.

    “The water extract from its leaves as well as cooked seeds of Ugu have antihyperglycaemic property which makes it beneficial to diabetics,” he said.

    The natural medicine practitioner recommended groundnut because of its blood sugar level lowering ingredients. Consumption of peanut and peanut butter daily is important, he added.

    Diabetics, he said, should eat raw onions and garlic, adding that they are good as they possess anti-hyperglycemic properties.

    “Ginger too can be eating because it increases insulin sensitivity. It also has antihyperglycaemic property.

    “Water extract of basil (scent leaf) known botanically as Ocimum gratissimum; Efirin in Yoruba, Nchuanwu in Igbo lowers blood glucose level.

    “Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) seeds flour known in Igbo as fio-fio; Otili in Yoruba are very effective too.”

    The alternative medicine practitioner also recommended boiled “unripe” plantain because of it lowers glycemic figure.

    Diabetics, Ezenige said, should take Vitamin B complex, Vitamin B6 (50mg – 100mg per day improves glucose tolerance), adding that coenzyme Q10 (100 mg/day may stabilise blood sugar in some diabetics.

    “Vitamin C should be taken daily to improve glucose tolerance reducing insulin while vitamin E with mixed tocopherols prevents vascular complications and as such improves glucose tolerance.

    Taking chromium daily, he said, can restore normal glucose utilisation and promotes efficacy of insulin.

    “Daily magnesium intake improves insulin production while regular consumption of zinc helps to lower blood sugar levels,” he said.

    Many people, Ezengige said, are suffering from diabetes without knowing how to manage it.

    He said nutrition can help to effectively check the disease, stressing that diabetics should not depend on drugs and insulin to manage the disease as adequate nutritional support would help in the management of the disorder.

    Ezengige, who is the General Secretary, Natural Integrative Medicine Practitioners Association (NIMPA), said food is medicine and medicine is food.

    He described diabetes mellitus as a medical condition characterised by persistent high level of sugar in the blood.

    This, he said, was occasioned by inadequate secretion of the hormone, insulin or the ineffectiveness of the body cells to efficiently utilise insulin.

    The natural medicine practitioner said people should know their Fasting Blood Sugar (FBS) by having a test to confirm whether their blood sugar is high or not.

    He identified frequent thirst, hunger and urination, as well as weight loss as symptoms.

    Others are body weakness, itching and tingling as well as numbness and blurred visions.

    Ezengige said there are three types of diabetes mellitus (DM). They are insulin-dependent DM (IDDM), which is also called type 1 or  juvenile-onset diabetes; non-insulin dependent DM (NIDDM) known as type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes (Pregnancy induced diabetes).

    Diabetes, he said, is a serious metabolic disorder across the world.

    He said about 90 per cent of people living with diabetes mellitus have type 2 (NIDDM), adding that half of them may not know they have it.

    “Studies show that an estimated 2.8 per cent of the world population is affected by diabetes mellitus and that this figure may cross 5.4 per cent by the year 2025,” he said.

    Nigeria, he said, is among the top five countries that have the highest number of people affected by type 2-diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa. It has about 1.2 million people living with the disorder; South Africa, 841,000; the Democratic Republic of Congo, 552,000; Ethiopia, 550,000 and Tanzania, 380,000,” he said.

    He listed social structure, obesity and hormonal imbalance as factors influencing diabetes.

    Others are heredity and psychic stress.

    Ezengige said there are six tastes in foods, such as bitter, sweet and sour. Also on the list are salty, pungent and astringent.

    He said: “Modern day eating habits largely overlooks the simple fact that the six tastes in foods affect our physiology. The consumption of artificial sweet foods is prevalent and as such is detrimental of other foods’ tastes.” This, he said, is contributing to various ailments affecting people, especially diabetes.

    He identified bitters as an important food for diabetes mellitus treatment and management.

    “The physiological effects of bitters among other benefits are body tonics, which tones the pancreas. Bitters increase secretion of digestive juices,” he said.

  • Ensuring security of information at data management centres

    Ensuring security of information at data management centres

    Technological innovations are designed to provide solutions to various challenges facing mankind. A  data centre is one such innovation. It is becoming the vogue with so many of them springing up in the country despite fears about security of data. While some of these data centres have their servers in the country, others have theirs offshore. LUCAS AJANAKU reports that managers of data centres must take extra steps to ensure security of clients’ data.

    Today’s information technology (IT) business leaders, need to have command and control insight on all operations that support the data centres housing their critical business infrastructure. They need to monitor, coordinate and optimise multiple interconnected systems to ensure that their data center operations are running at optimal levels to prevent any failures from any adverse externality.

    The solution to this is the deployment of sophisticated data centre management systems that address the myriad of issues associated with data centre operations. These Data Center InformationManagement systems, monitor power, cooling, computing resources, security and environmental variables to enable personnel to efficiently maintain the high performance required of all subsystems in the data center to work together seamlessly. These systems have come to the market at a time when the rapid growth of large commercial data centers have made it imperative to adopt more efficient management techniques.

    According to research conducted by Gartner in 2010, Data Center Infrastructure Management, integrates facets of system management with building and energy management, while ensuring that a bridge is built between IT asset and physical infrastructure monitoring. These tools reduce operating costs, improve IT efficiency and enable sophisticated infrastructure analytics, extending the life of data centers by years.

    The traditional approach to data center management and facility monitoring in earlier data center implementations, required manual intervention and collaboration between various technical teams. These collaborative activities were highly inefficient, leading to poor utilisation of resources and eventually inefficient data centre operations.

    First generation data center infrastructure monitoring systems were developed to monitor equipment availability and provide a complete view of data center infrastructure. These systems had the ability to measure and display real time equipment performance measurements using graphical display interfaces. However, they lacked the ability to monitor multiple interdependent systems in parallel, or even go as far as reporting on total system performance using aggregated input from all these sub systems.

    Modern data center infrastructure management solutions have evolved to automate a variety of tasks critical to data centre operations. At a high level, the software manages and displays all physical assets in a single graphical interface, while providing the capability to automate commissioning tasks, capacity planning and other time consuming manual tasks.

    This level of software intelligence, enables data centers operate at levels of efficiency previously thought to be impossible to achieve.

    Commenting on Intelligent Infrastructure Management for Data Centers, RiT Technologies, President and CEO, Motti Hania,  said these systems are described as best practice platforms that reduce operational costs significantly by enhancing ongoing operations, security and scalability. They enhance operations by continuous monitoring of a “self-aware” network, power and environmental apparatuses, which together determine network and operational status in real time.

    Chief Executive Officer, MainOne Cable Company, Ms. Funke Opeke, said in line with this global trend and with the increasing demand for content across Africa, the MainOne data centre has deployed an intelligent infrastructure management system that proactively monitors the facility environment and the equipment in it.

    She said: “Our intelligent infrastructure management system ensures a highly optimised data centre environment that guarantees best performance of all collocated equipment.”

    Chief Executive Officer, Venema Advies Nigeria Limited, Dick Venema said turning to the use of data centre could reduce operating cost for big corporations and SMEs by more than 30 per cent.

    He said: “What we see in Nigeria is that everybody is still using the break-fix model which means something is broken, they are going to fix it. And the solution we always see that is offered when it’s broken is that they buy new equipment. They install it and it works again. This is not how it works, most times, the equipment is not broken, it’s just bad maintained, no technical knowledge of IT consultants and bad advice from the IT company.”

     

    Top issues in data centre management

    According to the Chief Marketing Officer, FieldView Solutions, Sev Onyshkevych in the past, managing a data centre was pretty straightforward.  But due to the inexorable trend of processing more and more data, the management of these facilities grew in complexity. Complicating the situation, operational decisions at the data centre now include such factors as power, cooling, rack space and CPU availability. This is in addition to other information gleaned from IT systems, and related to the facility infrastructure components such as UPS devices, PDUs, chillers, HVACs, generators, branch circuits and others. He wrote via Data Centre Knowledge, an online platform.

    FieldView Solutions, a Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solutions provider, identified the following as top issues in efficient data centre management

     

    Energy Efficiency

    Data centres are increasingly under attack for their energy consumption and costly operations.  According to a 2011 New York Times-sponsored study by Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Stanford University, titled “Growth in Data Centre Power Use 2005 to 2010,” United States’ data center power consumption increased by 36 per cent over that period. Electricity used in global data centers in 2010 likely accounted for between 1.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of total electricity use, respectively. For the United States, that number was between 1.7 and 2.2 per cent.

    Cutting energy usage will help organisations save significant money, while changing the public perception of data centers being “energy hogs” with a “greener” impression.  To reduce energy consumption, it must first be accurately measured.  The measurement must start with a baseline view of what energy every part of the data center is actually consuming.  And to be accurate, this view must include all areas such as IT equipment, power distribution infrastructure, and ventilation/cooling infrastructure. This is an often time-consuming and manual data extraction process to which nobody looks forward.

     

    Monitoring

    No doubt, day-to-day system failures have underscored the need for proactive response to potential data centre uptime threats.

    Proper monitoring also helps enable an effective call-to-action. In the event of a pending issue, alarms can be sent via e-mail, phone or pager, allowing proactive steps to be taken to correct problems before they become critical. In addition, continuous logging of all alarms and alerts empowers data center operators with a chronological, forensic, review of events to strengthen the infrastructure and improve disaster recovery plans.

     

    Capacity Planning

    It’s no secret that many data centre managers lack the systems visibility to determine if their facilities are truly running at peak capacity.  Traditionally, operators have left plenty of room for error so uptime isn’t interrupted—a strategy known as “capacity safety gap,” or “over-provisioning.”  This strategy wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars of unused space – not to mention wasting power and cooling.  In a day and age of chief financial officers (CFOs) deferring capital expenditure budgets, many data centre managers’ expectations of having additional data center construction have been unfulfilled, leaving about 30 per cent of data centre managers worried about running out of capacity.

     

    Performance Management

    One of the greatest challenges facing data centre operators is ensuring that power and cooling is operating at its highest energy efficiency.  One of the best methods to maintain this accuracy is via accessing a real-time data source that provides up-to-the-minute metrics such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE).

     

    Real-Time Reporting

    Without a real-time reporting system, operators may find it a challenge to make informed decisions.  Manual readings taken weeks ago on a static report are no longer valid for today’s complex data centre operations – where workloads, power consumption and temperatures vary widely throughout the day, and from day to day.

    Up-to-the minute information also allows for the optimisation of power loads and overall capacity trending.  Additionally, a dashboard view that spans across various monitoring and control systems is a necessity for accurately tracking energy efficiency across single rooms, complete floors, an entire data center  or multiple data centers—domestically and globally.

    Onyshkevych said the continued proliferation of applications, data and platforms such as mobile devices will ensure that data centres continue to grow.  This, in turn, will strain the data centre’s processing power and drain enormous additional amounts of energy from the grid.  As data centres evolve, so too should the tools that manage them.  The antiquated methods of storing vital operational data within individual software “silos” impedes the efforts of data centre facility managers and IT managers to optimise their operations properly and avoid potential downtime.

  • Firm launches court management software

    Nigeria’s foremost legal technologies company, Grace InfoTech Limited has launched its latest initiative in courts technologies, the enhanced LawPavilion Court Management Software. The product was unveiled at the E-Courts Conference in West Charlestown, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States (US).

    The e-courts conference brings together stakeholders in legal technologies as they relate to courts, court processes and records as well as court management/administration.

    The enhanced LawPavilion Court Management Software is first of its kind as it boasts of several innovative features, which make its functionality sheer pleasure.

    It has two unique features namely:The Judicial Performance Management Support Module and the Court Rules Compliance Management Module.

    The Judicial Performance Management Support Module, according to Grace Info Tech Limited Managing Director, Ope Olusaga, offers ease and convenience to individual judicial officers, Heads of Courts (such as Chief Judges) and the National Judicial Council (NJC) in collating, analysing and evaluating performance of judicial officers/workers within a specified period.

    Olugasa said: “Research has shown all around the world that efficient performance review and evaluation of judicial officers are best done using available technology, which can sift through thousands of records and generate a pictorial view by means of graphs to depict performance for reward and promotion

    “This enhanced module will assist judicial officers to quickly compile their periodic reports with minimal inconvenience because as judicial officers give their rulings or judgments, such rulings or judgments are automatically populating the judicial returns form, which has been integrated into the module.

    “The Judicial Performance Management Support Module will also assist decision makers in the judiciary to verify the volume of cases pending within the entire court system at any point in time, whether at the state or Federal levels. This will greatly assist in appropriate manpower planning for the Judiciary and eventually speed up the process of adjudication and justice delivery in Nigeria.”

    The Civil Procedure Rules Compliance Module was designed with judicial officers in mind. It is a simple interface within the court manager software, which has been populated with the relevant civil procedure rules of the applicable court where the judicial officer is sitting. It is specifically customised for each court’s use in accordance with the applicable rules of court for that court.”