Vodafone speeds up cost cut plan

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Mobile phone operator Vodafone is to speed up its £1bn cost-cutting plan - as economic pressures weigh heavily on its European operations.

The Newbury-based firm wants to save about £650m by March 2010 - up from the £500m it had earlier suggested.

Vodafone was forced to write-off £5.9bn in the 12 months to the end of March - mostly related to its Spanish business.

That was largely responsible for pre-tax profits falling 53.5% to £4.2bn ($6.5bn) from £9bn a year earlier.

Sales rose by 15.6% to £41bn, helped by the weakening pound against the euro and growth in emerging markets, it said.

Like its rivals, Vodafone is concerned about a fall in consumer spending hitting sales.

Vodafone, which has cut its sales forecasts twice in the last year, did not give an exact sales forecast for the 12 months to March 2010.

The firm has been targeting emerging markets to compensate for slower growth in Europe - making acquisitions in countries such as Turkey, India and Ghana.

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Virtela Is The “Super” Virtual Network Operator

Today's global CIO is continuously challenged to do more with less; less staff, less time, and smaller budgets. That’s why Virtela has taken the VNO model to the next level.

Known as the “Super” Virtual Network Operator, they go far beyond simply providing network sourcing. They design, build and manage complete network solutions to meet customers’ global requirements in the most competitive ways possible.

Virtela enhances the way their customers do business by customizing a solution which fully integrates into existing network architecture.

Through Regional Policy CentersSM (RPCs) located around the world, Virtela's customers reap the benefits of a traditional VNO, a large network integrator and managed service provider (MSP). Virtela packages our industry expertise with the cost benefits of a traditional VNO, all while providing each customer the advantages of our intelligent multi-carrier routing for the best global performance and resiliency.

Virtela leverages industry-leading hardware and software resources to provide a wide variety of managed network services tailored to each customer. These include:

• Enterprise Network Services
• Enterprise Security Services
• Remote Access Services
• Device Monitoring & Management
• Converged Services

Virtela's Super VNO advantage is just one more way Virtela combines our knowledge with vast global resources to offer one-of-a-kind solution development, network integration and managed services. It’s your key to best-in-class performance and a more powerful competitive edge.

Give Away Software! Are You Crazy?

Image via CrunchBase

Crazy like a fox.

With the economy in such tough shape, with customers on the sidelines with no budget to buy software, maybe now is the perfect time to embrace a Freemium software strategy. This concept was originally proposed by a venture captialist named Fred Wilson, the founder of Union Square Ventures.

This became really clear to me over the past 6 months that this trend towards free software might be the future. Initially I read a great article entitled Free! is the Future in Wired magazine (make sure you watch the Chris Anderson video), which I thought presented a very clear argument for free.

Think of all of the free software and services business models that went bust during the Internet Boom. But then again there have been many businesses that were built using a free business model including Google, Yahoo!, Skype, eBay, and Craigslist just to name a few. Some of the new kids on the freemium block include Facebook, LinkedIn, SimplyHired, Kijiji, 37signals and many of the open source software players.

My second realization of the power of free was using 37signals BaseCamp project management product. It was a great example of providing a free product that you liked so much that you had to buy into their paid version. If you need a project management tool, this one is worth a subscription and you may end up pulling out your credit card like me.

Then my third reason why I thought freemium could really be the future of software is based on working with a great company, MrTed, who makes Applicant Tracking or ATS software for large companies. MrTed just recently launched their new Small and Medium business freemium offering, SmartRecruiters, which is an Open SaaS product, which is a mashup of Open Source and SaaS business concepts. This Open SaaS model was developed by Jerome Ternynck MrTed’s CEO and founder. SmartRecruiters like many other freemium offerings is based on the development of a strong and passionate user community, who ultimately become the revenue engine for these companies. SmartRecruiters will monetize their business model by offering a collection of value-added services that are bundled with their free software.

As companies look at their 2009 business strategies, they need to balance gaining marketshare while keeping customer acquisition costs (CAC) as low as possible. By deploying a freemium software strategy now you might be considered crazy in 2009 but be laughing all the way in the not too distant future.

Some other FREE ATS providers include: JobScore and CATS Software, Inc.

The Social Media Job Search Engine

New Twitter Phenomenon Debuts at SXSWi - TwitterJobSearch Goes Where Google Doesn't and Makes Sense of Social Media with Semantic Search

AUSTIN, Texas and LONDON, March 18, 2009 -- Rounding off the buzz at this year's SXSWi is the launch ofhttp://www.TwitterJobSearch.com, the first "smart" search engine that extracts meaning from Twitter content to create a real-time, global online resource of all jobs posted onto the platform. Using relevancy algorithms developed by Workhound (http://www.Workhound.co.uk), the UK's largest job search engine, the technology will build out into further social media channels and topics, providing semantic intelligence capabilities for social media platforms, business and consumers.

"TwitterJobSearch is an early example of how social media search needs to evolve and signals how solid business models can be built," commented Howard Lee, CEO of Workhound. "The pronounced shift into social media and cloud computing is already changing the Internet landscape and evolving consumers' expectations. Search and social network providers are in real danger of losing their relevance and traction unless they can get this right."

According to GigaTweet, there have been over 1.3 billion tweets posted, yet this wealth of raw data has previously only been searchable via keywords, trends or popularity. "If the value of Twitter is going to extend beyond one's social graph, better search tools are required," added William Fischer, Director of Workhound. "By applying contextual search to billions of really quite random tweets, we're helping social networks to evolve from communication tools to become powerful publishing platforms."

TwitterJobSearch looks at the content of every tweet in context to determine its intent and break out filterable data. Getting beyond the 140-character limit, the technology also looks at biography information and crawls destination URLs to find additional information. The real-time relevancy engine and algorithms determine whether the post was a feed, retweet or original message, what language was used, whether the tweeter has previously posted job vacancies and how words used categorize the content. Additional context is added wherever possible to ensure the tweet appears in search results if it is missing vital data such as location. As an example, "Sales director London job" on search.twitter.com brings back 4 results, while the same search onhttp://www.TwitterJobSearch.comprovides 6202 opportunities, while "Marketing manager New York job" provides 19 and 4122 respectively.

This initial launch means that anyone online can now access the wealth of job opportunities posted onto Twitter, regardless of whether they are a member. There were 26,090 unique English language vacancies posted onto Twitter over the last 7-day period, which equates to around 3% of live vacancies. TwitterJobSearch requires no registration and is free to use.

About TwitterJobSearch

TwitterJobSearch (http://www.TwitterJobSearch.com) is the new service from Workhound (http://www.Workhound.co.uk), the UK's leading job search engine. As part of its aim to organize the world's online recruitment data, Workhound identified Twitter as a growing recruitment channel and created a contextual search-based technology to analyze, organize and extend the reach of job opportunities posted onto the micro-blogging platform.

Job market in Dubai still offers plenty of opportunities

The total number of jobs lost in the country is not alarming and there are still many positions that need to be filled even today, say experts.

According to Stanton Chase, nearly 100,000 to 150,000 people have been out of jobs in the country since October 2008, excluding the labour class. However, this is not a figure that should cause panic. According to Ian Giulianotti, Associate Director, HRM Consulting at Nadia Recruitment, the number of dubai jobs lost in the country is not alarming. "Even if we go by the figure [100,000 to 150,000 since the beginning of October], it's not one that would cause me alarm. We see jobs being lost even during good times. There are people who are still hiring and there are jobs to be filled even today," he told Emirates Business.

"Yes, there is slowdown in recruitment and companies are going for options like unpaid leave and working for shorter hours for less money but the figure of jobs being completely wiped out is reasonable under the current circumstances," he further added.

Stanton Chase believes that people are concerned about their jobs. "People are very concerned on the job front and we would say that one out of two people are concerned about their jobs. This does not mean the fear of losing jobs alone, it also includes prospects about which way their company will go, how things will take shape and so on so forth," the company revealed.

One of the bright spots in Dubai job market is Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC - du. du has position itself for growth in 2009 and plans to reaffirm its employment brand in the gulf as employer of choice. Last month Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (“du”) announced its first profitable full year to 31 December 2008, recording a net profit before Royalty of AED 8 million less than two years after launch and well ahead of analysts expectations.

du is always looking for talented people to join their team. So if you’re interested in learning more about how to become member of du familiy please feel free to visit du Career Page. Further more du steps up Emiratisation drive by joining ‘Ershaad’ as the Official Technology Partner. In continuation of its strategy to support Emiratisation efforts in UAE, du, announced its support for Ershaad, the national initiative for recruiting and guiding talented UAE nationals from fresh graduates, mid level management to senior executive candidates.

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How To Deliver Bad News

Whether it's layoffs, salary reductions, or the loss of a large client, delivering bad news is difficult for everyone. Ease the blow by preparing ahead of time, getting to the meat of the message quickly, and even practicing with a trusted colleague. But remember that after your announcement, it's not over—check in with each team member to see how you can help them deal with the news.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.