| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
The following is a company announcement issued by Datatrak Holdings p.l.c. in compliance with Chapter 9 of the Listing Rules.
Interim Directors Statement
As anticipated in the Companys half yearly statement announced on 27th August 2007, Datatrak Holdings plc, through its subsidiary, Datatrak Solutions Ltd registered further progress in its Market penetration efforts in the Italian Market. Whereby apart from signing up a further two sales channel partners for the Italian Territory, namely Tudor SRL and Teleclient SRL, the company also signed a preliminary agreement for the setting up of a Joint Venture company, to be registered in Italy and covering the whole spectrum of the Italian Market. More importantly, Datatrak Solutions Ltd also registered its first client in Italy, namely Bari based ACS, a lifts maintenance company which acquired 25 DispatchIT Licenses. Moreover, further prospects are approaching the contract stage with live trials of DispatchIT and RouteIT with DYLOG (an Italian Systems Integrator), Aremol (an infomobility company for the public transport of the Lazio region) and Poste Italiane (Italys national postal operator).
In the UK, Datatrak Solutions Ltd continued steady progress with implementation efforts at GeoPost UK, whilst the first phase of the implementation of DispatchIT at Euro Car Parts Ltd has been completed with success, thus moving on to the second and final phase which will see 450 mobile devices running DispatchIT. The AVL solution running in the UK, Datatrak On-line (DOL), has just been enhanced and face-lifted to version 4.0, which will allow Omnibridge UK to migrate further clients on to DOL, thus augmenting the over 7,000 install base to 12,500 vehicles.
Meanwhile, Omnibridge UK and Datatrak Solutions Ltd initiated talks for the nationwide marketing of DispatchIT through Omnibridge UKs sales force.
The Groups Maltese tracking operator, Datatrak Systems Ltd, marginally incremented its total vehicle tracked population, notwithstanding the entry into the market of competing companies. Moreover, Datatrak Systems Ltd is completing the Euro Conversion exercise of taxi meter devices. Datatrak Systems Ltd also introduced its new GPS/GPRS tracking locator in the Maltese market.
Notwithstanding the cautionary statement issued by the Directors in the mid-yearly company statement, during the period August to November 2007, Datatrak MENA Ltd continued talks in Nigeria with Datatrak Nigeria Ltd and Nigerian financial institutions with a view of reaching an agreement on the terms for the financing facility for the implementation of two LF networks in Abuja and Lagos. Currently, a technical pilot exercise using Datatraks new GPS/GPRS tracking locator is running in Tripoli, Libya, in order to assess the technical and commercial viability of selling tracking solutions in Libya. However, the pilot is still in its kick-off stages and thus it is too early to determine whether such a market will be tackled in 2008.
Overall, the operational performance of the Group for 2007 remains on the forecasted targets which were announced in the mid-yearly financial results announced on the 27th August 2007.
Louis de Gabriele
Company Secretary
Friday 30th November 2007
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Datatrak Solutions Ltd, ACI Informatica and Dylog to form Joint Venture Company in Italy.
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Resignation of Director |
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Changes in substantial shareholding of the company.pdf |
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Interim Financial Results 2007.pdf |
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Changes in substantial shareholding of the company.pdf |
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CI OMNIBRIDGE ACQUIRES SIEMENS VDO FLEET TELEMATICS
CI Omnibridge Siemens.pdf |
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Engineering the Maltese information society, (Times of Malta)
by Martin Debattista, iTech, Times of Malta , 21 st June 2007
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The role of engineers in building the Maltese information society and knowledge economy is being recognised.. |
The term "information society" has long come of age, defining the moment in history when computers became the drivers of our lifestyles. How many of us would give due credit to the role of the engineer in creating the information society and the so-called 'knowledge economy our country is striving to compete in?
This was the theme of the 16th annual engineering conference of the Malta Chamber of Engineers which focused on the role of the engineer in creating our information and communication technology-dependent world.
"What is important to realise is that the knowledge economy is not just ICT. It is also about creating knowledge and using knowledge to improve the quality of life," according to Robert Ghirlando, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Malta . "ICT is important because it is a very powerful tool that greatly improves our capacity for creating, storing and generally dealing with knowledge. But knowledge is also about research, development and innovation."
Prof. Ing. Ghirlando told-i-Tech engineers have more sophisticated tools to work with.
"When I was a student, I was using a slide-rule for most of my calculations. Today's students are all using laptops."
He puts engineers in a privileged and responsible position.
"Engineers are the professionals responsible for building much of the infrastructure necessary to maintain the knowledge economy, whether it is the engineer at the power station generating the electricity that powers the economy, or the engineer maintaining the communications system. But engineers also create knowledge with their designs, research and development. Clearly the environment and energy are two areas that are providing some very interesting challenges to engineers."
Speaking of power stations, one of the speakers during the conference was Sean Barbara, ICT department manager at Enemalta Corporation, who spoke about a vital piece of engineering in our lives: Production of electricity.
He explained how Enemalta intends to enter into a strategic partnership with a number of solution providers to invest in an automated metre infrastructure solution integrated with a customer relationship management ICT system.
The "old" electricity metres present a host of problems that effect Enemalta's way of doing business, one of them being accessibility. In fact 35 per cent of premises are found closed on the first visit and around 15 per cent of metres remain unread throughout the year.
"Our solution envisages connecting the current water metres with the smart meter to enable transmitting both water and electricity readings," he explained. "Data concentrators will be housed in our 1,200 substations around the island. Transmission of data from concentrator to a centralised system could be done through a secure ADSL connection."
These smart metres can store a large registry of readings as well as other data such as outage data and can be remotely switched off and on without any on-site intervention. Defaulters can see their electricity supply reduced but not cut off completely. More important, these metres make it possible to apply different tariffs throughout the year or even throughout the day, rates which better reflect the cost to provide the electricity consumed during a particular period and which should influence general energy habit use, possibly smoothing out demand peaks and shifting consumption to non-peak hours.
While Enemalta is exploiting ICT to get on a more solid commercial footing and provide a better service, Malta is regarded as being in a good position to export its own local ICT knowledge internationally.
" Malta has two competitive advantages: the quality of its ICT resources and a lower labour cost compared with other EU countries," according to Reuben Portanier, the chief officer for strategy and business development at Datatrak Solutions. "These two comparative advantages are not enough though. I believe that Maltese ICT enterprises need to identify specialised niches in which they can flourish and grow and that will initially not be overcrowded in terms of competitors."
Mr Portanier says that apart from Datatrak Solutions there are companies registering international success in security solutions, hosting services of online betting companies, retail solutions, e-business systems, specialised call centre services and mobile solutions, amongst others.
"However, I believe that as a local ICT industry, we have more potential that can be exploited. There is no particular magic formula. Datatrak's success on the international front is based on four prongs. The first is to be aware of your strengths and cultivate those strengths in order to achieve a competitive edge. The second is to study the market and identify a niche which fits in with the corporate strengths. The third is to be creative and invest in innovation in order to be one or two steps ahead of competition. And lastly to have a corporate ethos of perseverance and believing in ones capabilities."
The local ICT industry is being credited with bringing massive changes in the local ICT infrastructure in recent years.
"The key challenges were multiple and significant. Credit has to go to those operators who kept faith in the potential of the local and international market and upgraded accordingly," insists Colin Camilleri, chief technical officer at the Malta Communications Authority (MCA). "Examples of these challenges include obtaining the necessary investment, taking a "go/no go" decision in the face of rapidly changing technologies, adapting to evolving legal and regulatory environments and coping with added competition."
Prof. Ing. Camilleri explained how this new infrastructure has changed the lifestyle of Maltese citizens, in some areas beyond recognition, with cheaper fixed-line and mobile phone communication, more pervasive and mobile internet access, and an impressive take up of cable and terrestrial digital TV.
"All this, and more, led to driving Malta to become ever more successful in terms of achieving an information, or better knowledge, society," adds Prof. Ing. Camilleri.
He revealed that in the next few months the country should expect developments, especially in the wireless sector. A third mobile operator could be launched, broadband wireless internet should begin to come on stream, and digital radio should also put in an appearance. Unfortunately, lack of usable UHF spectrum is holding the country back from trying out new video technologies such as HDTV and mobile TV.
The full presentations of the conference can be downloaded from
http://www.coe.org.mt |
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Datatrak Solutions Ltd Best ICT Company in 2007!
The Computer Society (Malta), during its annual ICT awards ceremony held on the 24th May 2007, awarded Datatrak Solutions Ltd with two prestigious awards: the Merit Award for Research and Development in ICT and the Best ICT Company for 2007.
Datatrak Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Datatrak Holdings plc was short listed in three categories: Best ICT Product, with its innovative DispatchIT, Merit Award for R&D, with its cutting edge dynamic route optimization solution RouteIT and Best ICT Company for 2007.
Receiving the Merit Award for R&D on behalf of Datatrak Solutions was Mr Paul Borg Costanzi, Chief Operations Officer and head of Innovation at Datatrak. On receiving the award, Mr Borg Costanzi thanked the CSM for recognizing innovation efforts carried out by Maltese ICT enterprises and thanked the development team at Datatrak that worked long hours for over a year in order to come up with this innovative product which is already in use today in the UK.
The highlight of the awards ceremony was the announcement of the winning company as Best ICT Company for 2007, whereby Dr Austin Gatt, Minister for Investments, IT and Industry, presented the prestigious award to Mr Reuben Portanier, Chief Officer for Strategy and Business Development on behalf of Datatrak. Addressing the ICT community present for the ceremony, Mr Portanier thanked the CSM, all the Datatrak stakeholders, including the Chairman and Board of Directors for their continuous support, the CEO of Datatrak Solutions Ltd for his inspiring vision and all the Datatrak employees who are the pillar of the company in achieving local and international success.
Commenting immediately after the event, Mr Joe Fenech Conti, CEO of Datatrak Solutions Ltd said Receiving the Merit Award for R&D is yet another confirmation of the innovation applied by Datatrak, as this award complements the award received by Datatrak from SAP in December 2006 as being the Most Innovative Maltese Company in 2006. Being awarded as the Best ICT Company is however a very prestigious recognition that rewards our companys ethos as continuously seeking to be the best in all that we do.
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UKs leading car parts distributor selects Datatraks DispatchIT as its supply chain management solution
Euro Car Parts Ltd, one of UKs leading car parts distributors reached an agreement this month to run datatraks flag ship solution, DispatchIT on their fleet of distribution vehicles and mobile sales force. The multi-year deal will see over 450 mobile devices running the advanced job dispatch solution, including the mobile sales force version of DispatchIT which will be used by 80 mobile sales men across the UK.
Euro Car Parts is one of the most prominent UK enterprises in the field of supply of car and LCV parts to UK Independent Garages with over 54 braches spread across the British Isles. Established over 25 years ago, Euro Car Parts today employs 1,500 people with annual sales in excess of 120 million.
Mr Reuben Portanier, Datatraks Chief Officer for Strategy and Business Development remarked that the selection process adopted by Euro Car Parts was very tough, as the company is very attentive to value added, detail and results. It is thus with great satisfaction to note that our solution passed with flying colours through such a rigorous assessment and managed to oust other competing solutons.
We are very glad to be associated with a company with such an important market history of 25 years, a remarkable market position today, and with forecasted progressive growth rates for the coming years.
Mr Mahesh Shah, Commercial Director at Euro Car Parts said that Euro Car Parts required a mobile job management solution, based on GPS/GPRS that could be used for both the sales and distribution processes of our car parts for the UK territory. Following to a request for proposals process, datatraks DispatchIT was chosen due to its versatility, cost effectiveness and rich functionality.
Mr Roland Scerri, datatraks UK Country Manager, who was instrumental in bringing to fruition this agreement thanked both datatraks and Euro Car Parts teams who worked with so much dedication in order to produce a win-win business relationship.
Datatrak Solutions Ltd is a subsidiary of Datatrak Holdings plc, and has offices in Malta, UK and Italy. DispatchIT is an advanced and innovative mobile job dispatch solution which facilitates clients to manage their fleets and mobile sales force more effectively, whilst it also offers a job workflow solution which is fully integrated with Satellite Navigation and which can integrate seamlessly with back office and ERP systems. Mr. Joe Fenech Conti, datatraks CEO expressed his satisfaction datatraks significant investment in Research & Development is the foundation of our commercial success. The Euro Car Parts contract not only added another prestigious name to our UK client list but also confirms that our product development strategy is right on target. |
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| COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT
Annual General Meeting.pdf |
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| Datatrak Holdings plc
Preliminary Statement of Operations.pdf |
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| Datatrak Holdings plc
Annual Report 2006.pdf |
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| Board Meeting to be held on the 24 th April 2007
Board Meeting 24 th April 2007.pdf |
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| New electronic inventory will be 'a museum without walls'
The Times full article |
