KUALA LUMPUR, Sunday 27 June: Yasar FC, a joint venture between Malaysian company Dondurma AP Sdn Bhd and Yasar Dondurma of Turkey will introduce the Turkish company's desert cafe chain to Malaysia and the Asia Pacific region.

The agreement was signed at the Bosporus Restaurant, Pavilion shopping mall this afternoon, by MADO group chairman, Mehmet Kanbur and Shaifubahrim Mohd. Salleh and Ameta Kaur on behalf of Dondurma AP, before Her Excellency Serap Ataay, Ambassador of Turkey to Malaysia.

Yasar Dondurma owns the MADO branded cafe chain, Turkey's largest, as well as the MADO ice cream brand made from goats milk and saleb, an orchid extract found in the Marash region of Turkey, which give the ice cream its viscosity and provides an aroma which counters the smell of the goats milk. The ice cream is unique in that due to its viscosity, it's eaten from a plate with a knife and fork.

MADO has been making ice cream for five generations and it positions itself as being family-oriented, with family-oriented service, along with modern facilities such as WiFi, and it combines high European standards with the assurance of halal food.

Yasar FC will use Malaysia as a base for distribution of the MADO brand of ice creams, Turkish coffees, speciality cakes, its range of baklava (a rich, sweet pastry), breads, Turkish pastry's and small pizzas in Malaysia and across the region, and the company expects this to bring in US$100 million in various investments over five years. Dondurma AP owns 51% in Yasar FC, while Yasar Dondurma owns the rest.

KUALA LUMPUR, MARCH 30 - Even with the rise of Internet, certain aspects of society find it difficult to integrate technology into their lives. Education, is one such field, finding itself limited to factors such as equipment costs, electrical capacity and manpower.

In light of this issue, technology manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has come up with a solution: It intends to introduce school students to using thin clients, instead of the more expensive desktop workstations.

KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 - Juniper Networks, an IT and networking products manufacturer, was recently in the capital to talk about the advantages of using cloud computing, and more specifically, its own addition to the technology known as a 'cloud-ready data center.'

At the ‘Data Centre Green Tech’ conference, CK Lam, Enterprise Solutions Marketing Manager for Juniper Networks APAC (picture below), explained that existing networks throughout the world faced the problem of complexity as more users plugged into the Internet.

Kuala Lumpur, 26 January: HeiTech Managed Services, a wholly owned managed services subsidiary of HeiTech Padu, today launched Padu M.O.B.S (Managed Online Backup Services), the first such hosted backup service in Malaysia, designed especially for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs).

The company will initially target the services at its current 40 customers which store their tape backup off-site with it. Most of them are small-to-medium sized manufacturers (SMIs), SMBs and insurance companies.

Based on Avamar technology from EMC Computer Systems (Malaysia), Padu M.O.B.S. remotely stores data backed up from an organisation's servers, desktop & notebook PCs, as well as mobile smart phones onto servers at HeiTech Padu's Tier IV secure data centre in Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam.

Generally available since 1 September, 2009, Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (DB 11g Rel 2) helps organisations reduce their IT costs, according to Mark Townsend, Oracle Server Technology Division vice-president of Product Management.

Its new features include Real Application testing and Active Data Guard which are a boon to database administrators.

“DB 11g Rel 2 reduces hardware capital costs by a factor of five times, storage costs by 10 times, upgrade costs by four times, on the other hand it improves performance by 10 times, database administrator productivity by at least twice, eliminates downtime and unused redundancy, and considerably simplifies customers' software portfolio,” said Townsend in Kuala Lumpur on 3 November.

Firstly, it reduces hardware costs by consolidating all the disparate e-mail, applications, data warehousing and other servers and storage within an enterprise's data centre into a grid comprising an in-memory database cache, a bank of real application clusters and an automatically managed storage farm, all managed from a single location by an enterprise manager.

KUALA LUMPUR, DECEMBER 4 - In a strange bid to make itself more appealing to young Malaysians as well as local stamp collectors, Kaspersky has decided to market itself by bundling its products with their own 1Malaysia stamps.

Encased in a green booklet with Jackie Chan in a white helmet on the cover, the stamps depict blankly-smiling oval-shaped cartoon characters with the 1Malaysia logo. The stamps are valued at 30 cents each, and are represented as a joint effort between Kaspersky and POS Malaysia.

BUKIT JALIL, DECEMBER 3 - Astro has confirmed its intention in making High-Definition Television (HDTV) available to its viewers. Although it has not given a time-frame as to when it will release the service, Astro has confirmed that its intention in providing HD-quality television in Malaysia, which will be known as Astro 2.0. The current implementation that Astro is currently operating on is known as Astro 1.0.

Residents of Kuala Lumpur and its southern outskirts will have a new one-stop centre dedicated to all home-related products and services, entertainment, lifestyle, great accessibility and ample parking when Viva Home mall opens its doors for business in October 2010.

Located along Jalan Loke Yew at the old location of the Uncang Emas 3 (UE3) mall, Viva Home will be accessible via overhead bridges and a walkway linking it to the Taman Miharja light rail transit station.

“We sought out an excellent location. Somewhere visible. Somewhere accessible. Somewhere close to homes,” Yee Ia Howe, chief executive officer of Viva Mall Sdn Bhd said at the Viva Home Retailers’ Launch on 1st December 2009 at the Maya Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

“Jalan Loke Yew is an ideal location in the city, with access to major arteries and the catchment area of Cheras. Better than that, we are creating more access roads in and out of Viva Home so as to make it easier for everyone to get to us. All these pull factors appeal to the end consumer and that benefits you. It is our job to bring the traffic to you and we are confident we will do so," Yee added.

SUNWAY, 17 OCTOBER - Cyber-criminals have stepped up the frequency in attacks across the globe, particularly within the Asia-Pacific region, say officials from Fortinet, a network security and unified threat management solutions provider.