Aziz Pipes holds 34th annual general meeting

Aziz Pipes Ltd chairman Md Abul Hossain presided over the 34th annual general meeting of the company at Abacus Convention Centre in Dhaka recently. (Source: Press Release)

Shareholders Satisfied with the Progress of Shwapno

42nd Annual General Meeting of ACI was held at Officer’s Club recently. In the meeting, shareholders made positive remarks about Shwapno and the progress made so far. Shwapno already contributes significant revenue to ACI, and will continue to play a major role in ACI’s future growth.

Shareholders expressed an ambitious vision for the company, highlighting Shwapno’s potential for growth. They were pleased learn from the briefing of the Managing Director Dr. Arif Dowla that Shwapno’s outlet space has increased by more than 40%, registering a significant growth in revenue in 2014.

Retail is one of the largest sectors of the global economy; in the context of the country’s rapid economic growth, modern retail will continue gaining popularity. Shareholders were optimistic that Shwapno will lead the way in this transformation, as a one stop solution to serve a wide variety household and lifestyle needs, and reshape the shopping habits of mass consumers. (Source: Press Release)

MJL Bangladesh Limited holds 17th annual general meeting

The 17th Annual General Meeting of MJL Bangladesh Limited was held at the Krishibid Institution Complex (Khamarbari), Farmgate, Dhaka-1215 on June 16, 2015 at 11.00 am.

The meeting was presided over by the Chairman of the company Mr. Md. Abubakar Siddique.

Managing Director, Mr. Azam J Chowdhury and Board of Directors Mr. Abdul–Muyeed Chowdhury, Mr. Md. Aminur Rahman, Mr. Tanjil Chowdhury, Mr. Md. Masudur Rahman and Independent Directors Dr. Md.  Tamim & Mr. Q.M Shariful Ala FCA were present in the meeting. Among others, CEO of the company Mr. Kh Sanaul Haque, CFO Mr. Mohammad Tipu Sultan FCA, Executive Director & Chief Engineer Mr. M. Mukul Hossain, Head of Human Resources and Company Secretary Mr Ahmad Munir Hossain FCS , high officials of MJLBL and a good number of shareholders attended the meeting. The meeting started with recitation from the Holy Quran. During the year 2014, the company earned gross sales revenue of BDT 9,299 million and net profit after tax BDT 1,102 million.  15% cash & 15% stock dividend were approved by the shareholders in the AGM. Chairman made his opening address giving a brief outline about company’s activities, performance for the year under review and about progress of implementation of the projects undertaken by the company in the AGM. Later the Managing Director addressed the shareholders of the company and he also responded to most of the issues raised by the shareholders up to their satisfaction level. The Chairman, the Managing Director and the Board of Directors expressed their gratitude towards the shareholders and all regulatory bodies for their continuous support and co operation.  A huge preparation was taken by the management beforehand and the employees of MJLBL also worked hard to organize the program smoothly. (Source: Press Release)

Hitachi Data Systems, Tech Valley Networks Ltd Introduces Powerful Lineup of SDI Solution in Bangladesh

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), and its partner in Bangladesh, Tech Valley Networks Ltd. Has announced leap forward in its technology leadership for delivering software-defined infrastructures that enable customers in Bangladesh to simplify IT and free data from traditional hardware and location constraints, making it more accessible for all existing and new analytics-driven workloads. This was announced yesterday at an event organized at The Radisson, Dhaka. These new and enhanced offerings have been designed to help customers achieve greater levels of information access through virtualized, hyper-converged and scale-out platforms that are built to accelerate the journey to IT as a service (ITaaS) through application-led, software-defined architectures.

To effectively unlock the value of a software-defined infrastructure, technology must simplify operations through automation, drive insight through better access to information, and improve agility through abstractionthat turns fixed assets into flexible resources.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)is delivering on those goals by:

•             Extending its Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) to an expanded Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) family

•             Expanding the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) familyto cover core to edge or small to large converged and hyper-converged infrastructure models

•             Introducing the Hitachi Hyper Scale-OutPlatform (HSP) forfast-growing data analytics workloads

•             Bringingto market new software to automate the provisioning and protection of application environments

“The IT sector in Bangladesh is going through tremendous changes, and we are excited to be a part of these changes. Bangladesh has a great potential for industry growth and

facilitating inclusion, and we look to partner and collaborate to make the Digital Bangladesh initiative a success,” said Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, Indiaand Bangladesh. “As the fundamentals of IT evolve rapidly, HDS is delivering a new generation of software-defined technologies built to support the changing needs of customer application environments to deliver on those goals and connect what works today with what’s next.”

Ghulam Rasool, CEO, Tech Valley Networks Ltd. said “As a service provider of IT infrastructure, we welcome Hitachi Data Systems’ new step towards simplifying IT through its software-defined infrastructure. We are excited to partner with HDS to deliver the right solutions that simplify access to data, and provide holistic insights that bring transformative results for our customers,” he added, “With the latest line of solutions from the company, mid-sized businesses customers will have access to high- level performance and scalability at an attractive price, enabling them to do more by paying less.”

Asif Mahmood, Chairman, Tech Valley Networks Ltd., Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, India and Bangladesh and other senior officials from HDS, TVNL and group were present in this launch event.

Storage Virtualization to the Masses

With the newest additions to the Hitachi VSP family – the G200, G400, G600 and the upcoming G800 – Hitachi Data Systems is the only IT vendor to address customer workload requirements from entry to the mainframe with a single software stack.Extending the reach of powerful software capabilities that are built into Hitachi SVOS allows the entire VSP family to offer native heterogeneous storage virtualization and multi-site active-active storage – as well as fully compatible data migration, replication and management. Customers now have the ability to choose systems based on the necessary capacity, performance and pricerequired to meet their business goals, not because of functional difference.

Customers looking at smaller systems will now get access to the same virtualization technology that has existed in prior HDS high-end systems that have achieved the highest overall product and use-case specific scores within Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Arrays . These proven capabilitiesprovide a leap forward in consolidating and simplifying user environments of all sizes and allow simpler migrations, easier management and full resiliency without the complication of appliances.

Best of Breed Converged Platforms for Any Workload

The Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) portfolio has been expanded with new hyper-converged and converged infrastructure models that now cover customers’ needs to rapidly and more easily support core to edge IT workloads. The latest additions to the UCP family include the hyper-converged Hitachi UCP 1000 for VMware EVO:RAIL, and the converged Hitachi UCP 2000, both use new rack servers and target small to medium or remote or branch office environments. The Hitachi UCP 6000 converged model integrates the recently launched Hitachi CB 2500 blade servers, and delivers unmatched price-performance for mission critical workloads. The UCP family, with industry leading Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Director infrastructure automation software, allows customers to drive operational efficiencies through rapid deployment and provisioning of infrastructure for managing an agile data center, prepared to change workloads to match business needs.

Creating the Active Data Lake for Big Data Analytics

The hyper-converged architecture of the new Hitachi Hyper Scale-Out Platform (HSP) provides cost-effective compute performance and on-demand capacity. Capable of ingesting massive amounts of mixed data types across a distributed, clustered architecture, the simple, automated management of HSP allows elastic data growth by using Hitachi file system technology with open source management and virtualization software. HSP is the ideal scale-out platform for Hadoop environments, allowing users to analyze data in place and eliminate the need to move large data sets to perform analytics functions for big data.

Automated, Application-Led Storage Provisioning and Data Protection

HDSis also introducing and enhancing a wide range of software tools that will help users build the ITaaSinfrastructure they desire, while delivering greater self-service capabilities to internal users. These new application-aware solutions offer greater automation of, and protection for, critical customer workloads, reducing costs and complexity while increasing efficiency in software-defined environments.

Hitachi Automation Director, a new application that works with the Hitachi Command Suite management infrastructure, provides configurable best-practice-based service templates for simple, application-specific provisioning of storage resources to databases, applications and VDI environments. Built-in support for role-based access control means that, once established, these templates can be used by business users in a move to self-service provisioning.

As a lightweight complement to Hitachi Command Suite, Hitachi Infrastructure Director is a new storageconfiguration and management application that uses the new VSP systems’ APIs to provide simple, intuitive management, guided by a built-in recommendation engine, for environments in which simplicity is more important than the need for manual control of every detail. Hitachi Infrastructure Director gives users the power to direct simplified management operations to rapidly deploy new storage systems and services for the new models in the VSP family.

With the ability to automate data protection and provide granular control of storage-based copies, Hitachi Data Instance Director simplifies data protection through automation and orchestration of Hitachi storage-based snapshot, clone and replication technologies, in addition to live backup, continuous data protection, and archive capabilities under a single platform. Data Instance Director provides a simple interface that matches data protection service levels to business priorities using a unique, whiteboard-style interface.

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., builds information management and Social Innovation solutions that help businesses succeed and societies be safer, healthier and smarter. We focus on big data that offers real value – what we call the Internet of Things that matter. Our IT infrastructure, analytics, content and cloud solutions and services drive strategic management and analysis of the world’s data. Only HDS integrates the best information technology and operational technology from across the Hitachi family of companies to deliver the exceptional insight that business and society need to transform and thrive. Visit us at HDS.com.

About Hitachi Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society’s challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company’s consolidated revenues for fiscal 2014 (ended March 31, 2015) totaled 9,761 billion yen ($81.3 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials and components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website athttp://www.hitachi.com.

© Hitachi Data Systems Corporation 2015. All rights reserved. HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. Innovate with Information is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.

About Tech Valley Networks Ltd.

Incorporated in 1993, TVNL has been serving various sectors & sub sectors of local IT market and has over the years shown exponential growth and expansion in service ranges, as well as client base.Being a pioneer, Tech Valley Networks Limited (TVN) today is recognized as a leading comprehensive IT Solution & Service provider in Bangladesh, which works in all IT mediums. TVN helps its clients to plan, build, support, improve & manage their IT infrastructures in networking, security, data centre, storage, integration and managed service business   through its certified professionals.

In addition, TVN today works closely with its other sister concerns, ADN (Advanced Data Networks Limited), ADN Telecom and InGen which complement   services of TVN even further. (Source: Press Release)