Romney wins Most Mentioned Politician status in spam

SYDNEY & AUCKLAND – February 10, 2012 – Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who’s leading polls in the race to become the Republican Party’s nominee for the US presidency, is also the favourite politician of spammers touting knockoff drugs and dubious bargains in junk email.

Romney is mentioned in 45 per cent of spam messages that reference US politics, ahead of second-placed Republican Newt Gingrich, who scored 33 per cent, according to a Bitdefender analysis of 8 million unsolicited messages spread in January.

Romney’s name was most often used in scam messages that advertise low-interest loans or free credit score analysis while Gingrich was mentioned in junk mail promoting miraculous energy saving devices that almost certainly don’t exist. Most of these offerings actually redirect the unwary user to survey site scams or knockoff drugs for sexual dysfunctions.

US Republican hopeful Ron Paul came third in the spammers’ list, with 12.18 per cent. The most popular politician outside the Republican race that caught the spammers’ attention this year was Bill Clinton, with 3.99 per cent.

“Winning Most-Mentioned Politician in Bitdefender’s spam survey is probably not an honour that many politicians want,” said Bitdefender E-Threats Analyst Bogdan Botezatu, who coordinated the spam study. “And I don’t think we’ll see spammers suddenly turning into political pundits. But the results could tell us which politicians spammers think are most likely to get a reaction from random email readers. Spammers are, ultimately, after money and they’re essentially making a bet on popularity when they favour one politician’s name over another.”

Spam messages frequently use names of celebrities or politicians in fragments of news items in an attempt to give credibility to the message and to trick antispam filters that look for the percentage of links versus other words in the message. Only a small portion of the spam analysed in the Bitdefender study – or about 0.24 per cent – mentioned US politicians at all.

In the overall analysis of spam – not filtered to include only political references – the Republican politicians were handily beat by celebrities including Jay Leno, Eva Longoria, Kobe Bryant, and even political commentator Rush Limbaugh.

For more information on Bitdefender’s spam survey, see http://www.malwarecity.com.

The Darkness™ returns with Quad-Wielding™ combat and four-person cooperative play

Sydney, Australia – February 10th, 2012 – 2K Games announced today that The Darkness™ II, the sequel to the hit 2007 title, The Darkness™, is now available in Australia and New Zealand for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC*. Inspired by the comic book series created by Top Cow Productions, Inc., and developed by Digital Extremes, The Darkness II continues the story of Jackie Estacado, head of a New York crime family and wielder of an ancient and brutal force of chaos and destruction known as the Darkness. Introducing unique Quad-Wielding™ combat and four-person cooperative gameplay distinct from the first-person campaign, The Darkness II breaks the mold of traditional first-person shooter titles.

A playable demo** of The Darkness II is broadly available worldwide for Xbox 360, PS3™ and Windows PC. The Darkness II is rated MA 15+ by the OFLC. For more information on The Darkness II, please visit www.embracethedarkness.com.

FANGO delivers on Social TV
Social influence, apps and companion experiences are changing the viewing experience 

Sydney, Australia, 10 February, 2012 – Australians have a healthy appetite for social TV according to Yahoo!7, with the release of new research demonstrating that viewers are increasingly using mobile devices and social media to enhance their TV experiences while shows are airing.

The research, conducted by Yahoo!7, sampled 7,741 people from around Australia and polled them on their viewing habits, activities undertaken while watching TV and the influence of social media on viewing habits. 

Top Line Social TV Research Results

• 41 percent of people reported posting on Facebook while watching TV
• 36 percent of respondents are using a mobile phone to text or call friends and family while watching TV
• People are more likely to use social media during or after a show
• Nearly 72 percent of people watch TV shows live on TV as they are airing
• 90 percent of people prefer to watch TV on a traditional TV set 

These statistics support how people are using FANGO – Yahoo!7’s social TV app. FANGO has secured over 200,000 downloads since launch, averaging over 10,000 downloads each day. FANGO for iPhone was App of the week in the iTunes App store and FANGO for iPad reached the number one ranking in the iTunes App store. 

With FANGO, people can check-in to their favourite TV shows including all free-to-air programs from 3pm-12am. They can let their friends know what they are watching; chat about shows and see what other people are saying on FANGO, Facebook and Twitter. FANGO offers show-related trivia, topical polls and gives viewers the ability to earn points and badges to reward their engagement. 

During the Australian Open, FANGO brought together like-minded viewers with 100,000 fan check-ins during the tournament and the Hewitt vs. Djokovic match clocking up the highest number of check-ins. During the tournament one of the popular interactive elements of FANGO was ‘Open Mic’, the ability to send questions to Jim Courier to ask players during post match interviews. 

Yahoo!7’s Social TV research also showed that online social circles influence our choice in programming with 27 percent of those surveyed saying that they have watched a TV show based on a recommendation from a friend via a social networking site. Similarly, 26 percent of respondents said that they had been made aware of a TV show because of something they saw on a social networking site. 

“The research clearly shows that Australians love to watch appointment-based TV. The success of FANGO demonstrates a new way in which Australian television viewers can engage with shows FANGO brands and other fans, as the show is airing,” said Kristin Carlos, Head of TV, Yahoo!7. “FANGO makes it easier for viewers to engage with their favourite TV shows.” 

According to Tim Worner, CEO of Seven Network Television: “Viewers are changing the way they watch TV and we’ve changed the way we produce shows to cater for this. Social and interactive elements aren’t an afterthought anymore, we are integrating them into the making of our shows. 

“The initial numbers for FANGO during the tennis were very strong, and this enthusiasm has carried right on into My Kitchen Rules. At Seven, we’ve made it a priority to keep innovation at the very heart of our business and FANGO is yet another example of this,” he said. 

The companion TV experience that Seven and Yahoo!7 are offering with FANGO will no doubt continue to influence the way in which television is produced in this country with more interactive and social elements being introduced into programming. We’re leading the next wave in TV innovation.”

FANGO is available now for iPhone and iPad. To download the latest version of the FANGO app, please visit the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/id475261145?ls=1&mt=8  or visit: yahoo7.com.au/fango

CAPTAIN MORGANE AND THE GOLDEN TURTLE SETS SAIL ON

16^TH MARCH 2012 

To land-lubbers and Sea Dogs alike – the preparation is over, the sun is rising over the yard arm and the main sail is set – Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle hits the high seas – and the stores – on Playstation 3, PC,  Nintendo Wii and DS on Friday 16^th March 2012. 

Packed full of mystery, intrigue, puzzles and over 40 characters (some of whom won’t be friendly), Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle promises to show off what Pirates of the Caribbean were really about!

This fun and feisty adventure game from premier writer Steve Ince and developer Wizarbox, is the follow-up to their hit-game So Blonde and tells the story of the Caribbean’s first female captain, Captain Morgane, and her adventure in her search for the treasure of the Golden Turtle! 

With an immersive storyline with over 40 unique characters in 50 locations on five islands, all developed in 1080p HD beauty, Captain Morgane is set to enthral adventure gamers and casual gamers alike. 

For more information on Captain Morgane visit www.captainmorgane.com and to receive all of the latest updates for its launch, join Morgane’s Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Captain-Morgane-And-The-Golden-Turtle/191022037610365. 

Ahoy me hearties! Your Caribbean adventure starts here! 

Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle is launched Friday 16^th March 2012

SYDNEY, Australia – 9 February 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced Backup Exec 2012 to help users eliminate complexity, perform backups in 100 percent virtualised environments and deliver instantaneous and cloud-based recovery through a single solution. As part of the new release, Symantec transformed Backup Exec’s user interface and configurability to provide a significantly simpler customer experience. Symantec is also expanding its leading technology to small businesses with Backup Exec Small Business Edition, enabling growing organisations to back up their information in three simple steps in less than 10 minutes.

“Backup is a critical part of a protection strategy, and with mounting digital assets and shrinking IT budgets, growing organisations need to find a way to keep costs down without compromising availability of their information,” said Amit Walia, vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec. “With close to two million businesses worldwide trusting in Symantec Backup Exec, it is our responsibility to help IT professionals and small business owners become backup heroes.”

Backup Exec Portfolio Now Includes:

• Backup Exec V-Ray Edition: Backup Exec V-Ray Edition will give virtualisation architects the option of having industry leading Backup Exec technology protect their 100 percent virtualised environment and the option to easily extend protection to physical environments, if needed, without having to buy a separate solution.
• Backup Exec Small Business Edition: In three simple steps, Backup Exec 2012 Small Business Edition will install and configure backups so small businesses with limited IT experience can protect their data with ease. Backup Exec Small Business Edition will bundle Symantec’s data and system recovery technology into one affordable solution with a single license that’s designed specifically for businesses with up to three servers.

Backup Exec 2012 will deliver the following benefits:

• Eliminate Backup Complexity with a New Administration Console: A newly redesigned administration console will provide users with fast, concise management, simplified experience, and monitoring capabilities. The new user interface will also automatically configure the most common and successful policies and settings, drawn both from Symantec’s many years of experience and from the Backup Exec community, to allow for quick configuration of systems and protection of data and applications with minimal effort.
• Unite Virtual and Physical: Powered by Symantec V-Ray technology, Backup Exec 2012 enables visibility across both virtual and physical environments for fast and efficient backup and recovery while eliminating the need for specialised point products. Backup Exec 2012 will also provide true single file recovery, deduplication and backup management for VMware, Hyper-V or physical servers in a single product enabling significant storage and management savings.
• Integrated Disaster Recovery: With Backup Exec’s integrated bare metal and “no hardware disaster recovery,” organisations will be able to easily recover a failed system to a physical server, or to a Hyper-V or VMware guest. Backup Exec’s powerful and patented recovery capabilities enable granular restore of entire virtual machines, single files, Active Directory objects, Exchange Emails, or SharePoint Documents from any single-pass physical, VMware or Hyper-V backup.

Availability
Symantec Backup Exec 2012 will be generally available for purchase in spring 2012 through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorised resellers, distributors and systems integrators or directly.

Supporting Quotes
“When we deployed Backup Exec 2012 in production, it immediately reduced our backup window by almost 24 hours every week. Backup Exec 2012 has afforded us the ability to base weekly full backups from an enumerated virtual machine image thereby providing best in class data protection. The simplicity of the new user interface has streamlined the process for setting up new backup jobs in our environment and saves an immense amount of time,” said Brandon Mosak, Network Manager, Task Force Tips, Inc.

“Symantec Backup Exec 2012 is a user friendly solution that maintains the highest degree of data protection.  The first time I saw Backup Exec’s new user interface, I knew it was going to revolutionise how I manage our backup environment,” said David Lewis, LAN administrator, Health New England. “Backup Exec’s P2V recovery will be the biggest time saver for disaster recovery.”

“Our IT environment is 90 – 95 percent virtualised, and we continue to leverage this technology to reduce costs and the number of physical servers,” said Jason Drake, director of Infrastructure and Security, Premiere Global Sports. “We have trusted Backup Exec to backup our data for several years and the transition from a physical server infrastructure to virtual infrastructure didn’t change our choice in a data protection solution. Symantec’s V-Ray technology embedded in Backup Exec allowed us to easily expand to a virtual environment and feel confident in our decision.”

Related

• Press Kit: Symantec Delivers Better Backup for All
• Webcast: Better Backup for All
• Webcast: BackupExec 2012 Technical Deep Dive
• SlideShare: Better Backup for All
• Blog Post: Virtual Visibility: Why you need X-Ray Vision to Backup Virtual Machines
• Survey: Broken Backup Environments Need New Approach
• Website: Countdown to Better Backup
• Video: Managing and Reducing Costs of Enterprise Data Protection Video featuring Dave Russell, Gartner and Brian Dye, Symantec

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec on Twitter
• Follow BackupExec on Twitter
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• View Symantec’s SlideShare Channel
• Subscribe to Symantec News RSS Feed
• Visit Symantec Connect Business Community

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management,  archiving, eDiscovery, backup & recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

New survey data reveals that the current approach to backup modernisation is broken

SYDNEY, Australia – 9 February 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced it will deliver a new approach for modernising backup and recovery, a process that has become unnecessarily complicated and expensive as organisations’ data stores grow exponentially. Compared to traditional backup, Symantec’s approach enables 100 times faster backup, eases management and simplifies recovery if a disaster occurs, helping customers realise significant cost savings while better protecting their business information. Over the last 20 years data has exploded, virtualisation has become widely adopted and service level agreements (SLAs) have become near impossible to meet. These challenges also affect the smaller businesses that struggle with backup complexity and are at risk of data loss due to a disaster. The current approach to modernisation introduces an ever-growing collection of point solutions resulting in added complexity, increased costs and headaches for backup administrators, network administrators and executives.

“The single most dramatic change is scale – or volume – of data, applications and virtual machines which cannot be processed by current backup environments. Organisations have increased service level agreements, rising expectations of availability and the need to run in a 24/7 business model. When combined with trying to integrate new technologies, it adds up to a disruptive environment with a huge impact on IT teams. Organisations small and large need a holistic protection strategy, a single platform or solution, to handle the variety of data types and workloads as opposed to integrating a number of disparate point solutions, which proves to be costly and time consuming,” said Dave Russell, vice president of Storage Technologies and Strategies, Gartner.

“Today, Symantec unveils a radical new plan to modernise data protection that will drive out 80 percent of the operating costs associated with backup over the next five years,” said Deepak Mohan, senior vice president of Symantec’s Information Management Group. “Symantec is announcing a new set of solutions that address the problems in backup – from the most complex of enterprise data centers requiring a true tiered-recovery strategy to the smallest business that needs the confidence that they can easily recover their data.”

Symantec recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals worldwide on their backup practices and their ability to recover information in the event of a disaster. The findings reveal that traditional approaches to backup are broken and a new approach is vitally needed:

• 49 percent of respondents can’t meet service level agreements (SLA’s) due to too much data
• 72 percent of respondents would switch backup product if speed doubled
• 28 percent say they have too many backup tools
• Organisations average four backup solutions to protect physical systems, and three for virtual
• 42 percent of respondents believe that their virtualisation backup is not adequately or perfectly working
• More than a third (36 percent) of respondents would not bet their paychecks that 100 percent of backed-up data could be recovered

According to Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, SMBs are not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. Half of respondents do not have a plan in place and 41 percent said that it never occurred to them to put together a disaster recovery plan. The survey data reveals that the cost of not being prepared is high, putting an SMB at risk of going out of business.

Key components to Symantec’s unique approach to data protection are the NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012, designed to help Symantec’s more than two million backup customers address backup issues common to companies all over the world. Symantec’s strategy focuses on the following areas:

• Change the Operating Model of Backup: Symantec’s strategy is to eliminate 80 percent of the operating cost of backup by delivering an integrated platform that replaces multiple solutions typically used in backup today. Symantec backup appliances can drive down costs even more than traditional appliances by combining backup software and deduplication into a single solution supported by a one vendor, that is fast to deploy and easy to manage.
• Break the Backup Window: 100 times faster backup with NetBackup 7.5, compared to traditional approaches, means organisations can complete full backups at the speed of incremental backups without sacrificing recoverability to meet critical service levels.
• Fight Infinite Retention: Too many organisations keep backups for too long. Knowing when information can be deleted can significantly reduce costs and management burdens on IT. New backup search capabilities in NetBackup give IT the ability to separate out what is relevant to legal or compliance investigations while keeping the rest of the backup infrastructure running on a more typical 30-60-90 day backup cycle. Infinite retention is infinite waste for IT and infinite risk for legal.
• Unify Snapshots and Backup: A snapshot without NetBackup is just a snapshot. A snapshot with NetBackup is data protection, manageability and recoverability. Unifying snapshots and backup with NetBackup gives organisations the speed of snapshots with the recoverability of backup.
• Stop Putting Tapes on Trucks: With the help of Symantec NetBackup technology, organisations can modernise their disaster recovery strategies and stop the practice of shipping tapes by truck. Symantec NetBackup Auto Image Replication (AIR) allows customers to eliminate volumes of physical assets and prioritise files that can be sent over the network, while significantly reducing the chance for human error.
• Unite Virtual and Physical Backups: Reduce operating costs around virtualisation with patent pending Symantec V-Ray technology that enables organisations to have deeper visibility into their VMware and Hyper-V machines for virtual backups with a single product. Integrated in NetBackup and Backup Exec, V-Ray delivers load balanced virtual machine backups to eliminate backup storms, improve virtual machine performance and reduce storage by deduplicating data everywhere, whether it is on VMware, Hyper-V or physical servers resulting in up to 90 percent storage reduction.
• One Product for Any Recovery: Symantec provides one solution for all backups whether they are based on tape, disk, or in physical or virtual environments. Customers can recover any application or system to a virtual machine whether they have the hardware or not. Physical to virtual recovery is now included for free in Backup Exec, simplifying disaster recovery by automatically creating a virtual machine when recovery is needed. New backup to virtual (B2V) technology is also available to accelerate the migration from physical to virtual servers as part of the backup process.
• Eliminate Complexity: Backup Exec has eliminated backup management complexity by simplifying the user interface, utilising insights from millions of users, policies and licensing. This allows IT administrators and SMB owners to have a professional data protection strategy without being backup professionals.
• Easy Backup: Symantec introduces Backup Exec Small Business Edition ensuring smaller companies can set-up proper data protection in less than 10 minutes and in three simple steps.

Related

• Press Kit: Symantec Delivers Better Backup for All
• Webcast: Better Backup for All
• Webcast: NetBackup 7.5 Technical Deep Dive
• Webcast: BackupExec 2012 Technical Deep Dive
• SlideShare: Better Backup for All
• Blog Post: Virtual Visibility: Why you need X-Ray Vision to Backup Virtual Machines
• Blog Post: NetApp Storage Efficiency Insights
• Survey: Broken Backup Environments Need New Approach
• Website: Countdown to Better Backup
• Video: Managing and Reducing Costs of Enterprise Data Protection Video featuring Dave Russell, Gartner and Brian Dye, Symantec

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec on Twitter
• Follow NetBackup on Twitter
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• Join NetBackup on Facebook
• View Symantec’s SlideShare Channel
• Subscribe to Symantec News RSS Feed
• Visit Symantec Connect Business Community

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world both on-premise and in the cloud with storage management, archiving and eDiscovery, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

SYDNEY, Australia – 9 February 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the latest edition of Symantec NetBackup 7.5 to help enterprise organisations overcome their data protection challenges.  The current approach to backup modernisation offered by other vendors is broken. Data growth has been exponential while backup performance gains thus far have been incremental. At the same time, backup teams are frustrated with missed backup windows and non-integrated solutions for physical and virtual backups, deduplication and snapshots. Ultimately, organisations face a situation where recovery, the end goal of why backups exist, is complex and unnecessarily expensive.

Symantec is delivering a new approach to data protection and introducing NetBackup 7.5 with new options, including NetBackup Accelerator to speed backups by up to 100 times while delivering “Instant Full Recovery” capability, NetBackup Replication Director to integrate NetApp® Snapshots™ with backup, and NetBackup Search to allow simple search and recovery of backup data and selective legal hold. Unlike other backup technology that relies on the IT team to integrate multiple disparate backup solutions, NetBackup is available as a single integrated appliance for the data centre, remote office and virtual environments, providing customers with simplified deployment and operations.

Read more detailed blog post: Taking the Pain out of Backup

Symantec is also announcing an expanded partnership with NetApp to integrate with NetBackup Replication Director, enabling customers to unify Snapshot and backup management, and remove the cost and risk associated with multiple backup and recovery tools. Replication Director enables organisations to reduce costs and complexity by recovering and managing backup and replicated Snapshots from a single, NetBackup management console.

“Just as 911 is the single point of contact for police, fire or medical emergency support, NetBackup is the single point of recovery for tape, disk, physical, virtual, snapshot or cloud backups,” said Simon Jelley, senior director, Information Management Group, Symantec. “Symantec NetBackup 7.5 will speed backups by up to 100 times, unify snapshots and backup, and unite physical and virtual protection. The days of running seven different backup solutions are numbered, and the task of making it all work together no longer falls on the backup administrator.”

NetBackup 7.5 will deliver the following benefits:

• Break the Backup Window with 100 Times Faster Backups: According to a recent Symantec survey of 1,425 enterprises, 72 percent of respondents stated that they would switch backup products if backup speeds doubled. NetBackup Accelerator delivers 100 times faster backup with “Instant Full Recovery” through a single click in NetBackup’s management console. This gives backup administrators the speed of incremental backups with the benefits of a full backup without the overhead and cost at recovery time.
• Unify Snapshots and Backup: NetBackup 7.5 includes NetBackup Replication Director to centralise management and speed the recovery of hundreds of replicated Snapshots. Replication Director leverages NetBackup’s 10 years of experience with snapshots and the advanced API in Symantec’s popular OpenStorage (OST) interface that can integrate with storage-efficient NetApp Snapshots and replication (SnapVault® and SnapMirror®) for faster backup and recovery. Replication Director gives organisations the speed of Snapshots with the centralised management and recovery capabilities of NetBackup.
• Fight Infinite Retention: Many businesses have tremendous legal risk and cost exposure resulting from over retention of backup tapes. NetBackup Search ends infinite retention by helping organisations identify what information to archive and what to delete based on relevance to legal discovery or compliance cases. This reduces the time and cost IT spends on eDiscovery and eliminates the need to keep backups forever.
• One Product for Any Recovery: Survey results showed that the average enterprise is running seven different backup solutions, which creates operational complexity. Symantec NetBackup is the single point of control for backup, deduplication and recovery whether from tape, disk, virtual machines, physical machines or cloud. Symantec is also the only vendor to integrate all of these solutions on a single NetBackup appliance. To reduce capital expenses NetBackup has added support for cloud storage from AT&T, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, in addition to its existing partnership with Nirvanix.  Enhanced WAN optimisation and encryption in NetBackup enable these partners to deliver cloud storage for backup as a cost effective alternative to tape.
• Unite Virtual and Physical with V-Ray: NetBackup 7.5 powered by Symantec V-Ray offers X-Ray like visibility into VMware VMDK files and Hyper-V VHD files to deliver true granular recovery without copying or mounting the data. Patent-pending V-Ray technology also enables deduplication across physical and virtual environments from a single solution. NetBackup’s Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy (VIP) automatically detects and protects new, moved or cloned virtual machines and load balances backups for optimum performance.
• Stop Putting Tapes on Trucks: NetBackup 7.5 simplifies disaster recovery by providing Auto Image Replication (AIR). AIR automates backup and replication between multiple NetBackup domains or locations and allows customers to eliminate volumes of redundant data and prioritise files that are sent over the network for disaster recovery purposes. AIR also removes the need to rely on physical movement of backup images via tape and eliminates the risk of disaster recovery not being possible due to human error. This offers a significant advantage over traditional tape-based off-site storage in which backups must be duplicated to tapes that are then shipped to the disaster recovery site, a time consuming and costly activity with the added risk that tapes could be lost or stolen in transit.

Availability
Symantec NetBackup 7.5 will be generally available for purchase in spring 2012 through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorised resellers, distributors and systems integrators or directly.

Supporting Quotes

“NetApp and Symantec are focused on collaborating to help customers manage growing data volumes, drive greater efficiencies and reduce overall costs,” said Tim Russell, vice president, Data Lifecycle Ecosystem Group, NetApp. “Customers are increasingly turning to NetApp Snapshots and replication for faster backup and recovery and meet demanding business requirements. The expanded integration is a major step in enabling customers to simplify management of Snapshots, replication, backup and recovery and maximise their investments in NetBackup and NetApp storage systems.”

“Organisations are running out of space to store information from both a budget and physical data centre perspective. Rackspace’s partnership with Symantec NetBackup will allow customers to move backup data into the cloud for a less expensive tier of storage to address data growth in an effective way,” said Chris Cochran, vice president of strategy, Rackspace.

“We run full backups over the weekend which takes 48 hours to backup more than 500 GB and 4.4 million files. NetBackup Accelerator will save us a fortune on bandwidth and tapes we ship around the country to replace faulty ones and will reduce time spent on backups. We look forward to implementing the new version of NetBackup 7.5 with NetBackup Accelerator option to achieve 100 times faster backups so I can use that time on other priorities,” said Neil Evans, technical support manager, MM Electrical Merchandising.

Related

• Press Kit: Symantec Delivers Better Backup for All
• Webcast: Better Backup for All
• Webcast: NetBackup 7.5 Technical Deep Dive
• SlideShare: Better Backup for All
• Blog Post: Virtual Visibility: Why you need X-Ray Vision to Backup Virtual Machines
• Blog Post: NetApp Storage Efficiency Insights
• Survey: Broken Backup Environments Need New Approach
• Website: Countdown to Better Backup
• Video: Managing and Reducing Costs of Enterprise Data Protection Video featuring Dave Russell, Gartner and Brian Dye, Symantec

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec on Twitter
• Follow NetBackup on Twitter
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• Join NetBackup on Facebook
• View Symantec’s SlideShare Channel
• Subscribe to Symantec News RSS Feed
• Visit Symantec Connect Business Community

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management,  archiving, eDiscovery, backup & recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

A new survey by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has revealed that over 1.6 million Australians (or 14% of pet owners) would rather spend Valentine’s Day with their pet than their partner. 

The results also revealed that over 400,000 Aussies would prefer to spend 14 February with their pet than anyone else. 

The survey was commissioned by WSPA to support the Collars not Cruelty campaign, www.collarsnotcruelty.org.au, a campaign that aims to help the situation in which the fear of rabies drives the slaughter of 38 dogs every minute around the world.  

The omnibus survey also found that 360,000 Australian pet owners (3 percent) are planning on purchasing a present for their pet this Valentine’s Day. 

The survey findings supplement the 2011 WSPA survey which found that more than three in five dog owners say they like their dog more than their grandfather (68%) and grandmother (63%). It also found that many dog owners like their dog more than their brother (53%) and sister (53%), whilst almost one in five Aussies preferred their dog to their partner. We truly are a pet-loving nation! 

WSPA estimates that approximately 400 million dogs around the world suffer on the streets. A dog is killed every two seconds. One of the main reasons is to control rabies but WSPA believes that culling is inhumane and it won’t work. 

Emily Reeves, Regional Director of Programmes for Asia Pacific: “Australians clearly love animals! So we need to step up to the plate as hundreds of dogs are being killed throughout the world because of a fear of rabies. WSPA’s pioneering rabies vaccination program in Bali has prevented the inhumane culling of over 300,000 dogs on the island. It has demonstrated that mass vaccination is the humane and effective way to protect communities from the disease. 

“WSPA programs deal with immediate issues like these, as well as addressing the root causes of poor dog welfare. Community education programs across some of our global projects, for example, help ensure long-term change and encourage neighbouring communities and governments to take lasting action.” 

The WSPA Valentine’s survey was a nationwide poll of 1010 (683 pet owners) Australians aged 18 and over, commissioned by WSPA and conducted by Lonergan Research in January 2012. We asked pet owners who they would rather spend Valentine’s Day with and who they would buy a Valentine’s gift for. 

Other results:  

• Two in five (42%) Australian pet owners rated their pets in the top three of whom they would like to spend Valentine’s Day with (the list included son, daughter, partner, parent, no-one, friends)
• Those aged 45 years or more (6%) are more likely to have their pets as their most preferred Valentine’s Day company than those aged 44 years or less (1%).
• Women (18%) are more likely than men (10%) to prefer to spend this Valentine’s Day with their pets over their partner.
• The majority (80%) prefer to spend this Valentine’s Day with their pets than spend it alone
• 58% prefer pets to their parents as their Valentine’s Day companion.
• More than two in five (43%) prefer to spend this Valentine’s Day with their pets over their son or daughter, whilst 37% want to spend this Valentine’s Day with their pets more than their friends.
• Single men (12%) are more likely than single women (5%) to plan on buying their pets a Valentine’s Day gift.

Second generation Joybee GP2 Mini Projector – with Apple certified docking station now available
Australia, January 2012: Packed with multimedia connectivity applications to support just about any home entertainment and personal media device, designed to process a variety of multimedia formats from video, photos and music files to MS office and PDF documents, this new little mini projector from BenQ is the home theatre enthusiast’s dream-come-true.

A revolutionary mobile entertainer, Joybee GP2 is the ultimate in audiovisual multimedia enjoyment.

Advanced features include an all-in-one Apple iPhone / iPod compatible dock, highly power-efficient 3LED projection technology, 720p HD-ready short-throw projection, 200 ANSI lumen brightness, superior multimedia connectivity (compatible to Apple iPads and other tablet computers via HDMI), multiple format support, SD card slot, USB Reader, 2W stereo speakers and will even accommodate File Transfer up to 2GB to its onboard memory.

Light and compact at a mere 565 grams, this palm-sized device is simple to operate offering ‘plug ‘n’ play’ installation and is completely portable. The dock does indeed simultaneously charge the iPhone or iPod while stationed ensuring the fun never ends.

Joybee GP2 means videos, movies, photos and games can be shared with family and friends effortlessly on a brilliant 160? cinematic display, or simply entertain with a tune or two via the music playback function.

Says Chee F. Chung, BenQ’s general manager for Australia, “The Joybee GP2 is about providing the consumer with a user friendly experience like no other – it is unique to the market via the Apple docking station, unparalleled connectivity applications and size. It is so small and light it truly fits in the palm of your hand making it totally portable and easy to transport. For added versatility, GP2 comes with an optional battery pack which conveniently attaches to the base of the unit, offering up to three full hours of big picture fun at 100 ANSI lumen brightness when a power point is not available.

“Take it camping or present to a corporate delegation on a boat – the options are limitless. The USB Display feature allows users to connect their computers to the GP2 using a USB cable with no driver required, while the USB File Transfer function enables the transfer of files to the 2GB onboard memory storage for light travelling,” said Chung.

“This projector will throw a 44” display at one metre (1.13:1 throw projection ratio) providing a real cinematic big-picture experience in the comfort of the family lounge room, or any room for that matter,” she continued.

Designed for business and personal use, the Joybee GP2 will be available in Australia from February and will retail for $699.00.

For further information on Joybee GP2, visit www.BenQ.com.au or call (02) 8988 6500 or to purchase online visit the BenQ store.