Incubator facility boon for SMEs

An incubator being established by the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates Public Establishment for Industrial Estates at the Knowledge Oasis Muscat for Omanis who want to start up their own small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will have several facilities, says Zawya.

The SME incubator facility will provide comprehensive training and consulting support to budding Omani entrepreneurs, said Shaikh Salah al Maawali, director general for the development of SMEs.

The type of assistance to be provided at the upcoming SME Incubator Facility will focus on how to prepare and implement a business plan; how to effectively start up and/or manage a business; how to engage in strategic business planning; how to manage employees, operations and inventory; how to evaluate and effectively use technology; and legal advisory information.

Dell has unveiled its first desktop targeted at the small business user, which employs Intel's new second-generation Core processors, also known as Sandy Bridge, writes Tech Watch.

Sandy Bridge aims to offer integrated graphics with some 'oomph' built into the processor, along with technology for faster video conversion and other goodies. However, Vostro 460 buyers get a discrete graphics card with their system anyway, oddly enough.

The range starts at £399 (without VAT or shipping), which gets you an Intel Core i5-2400 running at 3.1GHz, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 420 graphics card.

WAN optimisation and Web security vendor Blue Coat has unveiled its ProxyOne appliance, an SME-focused version of its ProxySG security product, reveals eChannel Line.

"With ProxyOne, we take the technology from our enterprise experience and have created a purpose-built appliance with a low touch and easy to use format," says Sasi Murthy, senior director of product marketing at Blue Coat. "It is targeted at smaller businesses who don't have much IT expertise."

Blue Coat's Web security business is one of the three components of its offerings, along with WAN-optimisation and Application Performance Monitoring. Their flagship ProxySG box has both a broad customer and channel base for its combination of WAN-optimisation and Web security, which includes Web filtering as well as inline malware and anti-virus scanning.