Many fire service trainers are faced with having unreliable resources to produce relevant and competency based classroom training for their fire officers and firefighters. StageIT is an innovative product created by Action Training Systems, which provides realistic training in tactical decision making. It allows training officers to use photos or video clips of actual buildings and sites located in their response area. Its realistic quality and capacity to create multiple stages for an incident allows the training officer to change the fire conditions in the classroom based upon the tactical decisions made by company officers and their crews.

Fire service trainers now have the tool to create real world situations which will enhance your student’s tactical decision making ability and help prepare pre-incident planning for fire, HAZMAT, terrorism and WMD situations. StageIt can also be used for promotional testing.

If the fire scene can be visualized, StageIT can build it. This is both a cost-effective solution for creating simulations for the classroom and an affordable networking solution. It is now possible to keep response areas staffed while training by remotely running simulations out to networked locations. The instructor will have the ability to change the student’s simulation screen and view what the student is seeing on the instructor module. StageIT also allows you to project a full-screen image of the scenarios without the instructor controls being visible to the student. This keeps the student focused on the scenario presented to them instead of being disrupted by what the instructor is doing behind the scenes.

StageIT Effects: Module I (Advanced Smoke and Backdraft) is an enhancement that adds even more realistic effects to the simulation. Module I includes backdraft explosions, directional fire, column smokes with added colors, puffing smokes and added glass effects. A remarkable 40 additional animations and seven still effects in all!

The properties of each effect in StageIT may be layered to blend effects, edit them for size, transparency, speed or fade in and out giving you an almost unlimited ability to match the effects to your photos.

This training simulator is as close to reality as you can get. That’s what makes this software so unique – its authenticity and the realism in the training content with actual photos of local buildings and sites and as well as the ability to import your own video and sound files. With StageIT’s Windows based file and folder design, you simply drag and drop effects, making it simple to use.

Another feature which makes StageIT a flexible training tool is the ability to use scenarios in PowerPoint® presentations. The separate stages of a scenario are automatically published as independent Windows Media Video [.wmv] files, which are easily imported into PowerPoint presentations. No additional software is needed to import a movie created in StageIT into a PowerPoint® presentation.

Action Training Systems provides high quality video demonstrations on DVD and interactive CBT (computer based training) programs and simulator programs on the Iluminar Learning Management System (LMS) software platform. All programs are reviewed by renowned subject matter experts aiding in content creation through the production of multimedia training tools, which is why ATS has been recognized for their high standard of exceptional real life content.

Source:http://www.prweb.com/releases/firesimulator/firesimulationsoftware/prweb8755667.htm

Below are the top five companies in the Systems Software industry as measured by their Debt To Equity ratio. The Debt/Equity ratio measures a company’s leverage and a high level often implies that a company has financed much of its growth with debt.

TeleCommunication Systems (TSYS) has a Debt/Equity ratio of 0.91x based on total debt of $183.5 million.

Oracle (ORCL) has a Debt/Equity ratio of 0.53x based on total debt of $17 billion.

Websense (WBSN) has a Debt/Equity ratio of 0.46x based on total debt of $70 million.

Symantec (SYMC) has a Debt/Equity ratio of 0.42x based on total debt of $1.9 billion.

Rovi (ROVI) has a Debt/Equity ratio of 0.33x based on total debt of $524.2 million.

Source:http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Newsfeed/Article/120844181/201010231047/TeleCommunication-Systems-is-Among-the-Companies-in-the-Systems-Software-Industry-With-the-Highest-Debt-To-Equity-Ratio-TSYS-ORCL-WBSN-SYMC-ROVI-.aspx

I guess today’s topic gets most business managers interested. Systems are never an issue until they stop running. So keeping them running is critical. This week we continue briefly with our discussion of disaster recovery and prevention, and then turn to high availability systems.
In many cases, an organisation may elect to use an outsourced disaster recovery provider to provide a stand-by site and systems rather than using their own remote facilities.

In addition to preparing for the need to recover systems, organisations must also implement precautionary measures with an objective of preventing a disaster in the first place. These may include some of the following:

Local mirrors of systems and/or data and use of disk protection technology such as RAID
Surge protectors — to minimise the effect of power surges on delicate electronic equipment
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and/or backup generator to keep systems going in the event of a power failure
Fire preventions — alarms, fire extinguishers
Anti-virus software and other security measures

Fortunately, as a Mac user I don’t need to worry about Anti-virus software. On Windows you will need the latest and the greatest to prevent attack.

But lets focus on high availability, and again I quote from Wikipedia:

“High availability is a system design approach and associated service implementation that ensures a prearranged level of operational performance will be met during a contractual measurement period.”

Users want their systems, for example wrist-watches, hospitals, airplanes or computers, to be ready to serve them at all times.
Availability refers to the ability of the user community to access the system, whether to submit new work, update or alter existing work, or collect the results of previous work. If a user cannot access the system, it is said to be unavailable. Generally, the term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable.

A distinction can be made between scheduled and unscheduled downtime. Typically, scheduled downtime is a result of maintenance that is disruptive to system operation and usually cannot be avoided with a currently installed system design. Scheduled downtime events might include patches to system software that require a reboot or system configuration changes that only take effect upon a reboot.

In general, scheduled downtime is usually the result of some logical, management-initiated event. Unscheduled downtime events typically arise from some physical event, such as a hardware or software failure or environmental anomaly. Examples of unscheduled downtime events include power outages, failed CPU or RAM components (or possibly other failed hardware components), an over-temperature related shutdown, logically or physically severed network connections, catastrophic security breaches, or various application, middleware, and operating system failures.

Many computing sites exclude scheduled downtime from availability calculations, assuming, correctly or incorrectly, that scheduled downtime has little or no impact upon the computing user community. By excluding scheduled downtime, many systems can claim to have phenomenally high availability, which might give the illusion of continuous availability.”

We will continue to explore high availability systems next time, just note already that costs of availability are extremely high and increase exponentially with an increase in availability. Not only because multiple redundant systems are necessary but also because of higher staff costs to manage such systems. This is where SAAS has so many advantages.

But lets discuss this next time, and remember……keep it (A)FRESH!

Source:http://www.economist.com.na/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22394:hard-facts-on-software-a-fresh-look-at-high-availability-systems&catid=570:columns&Itemid=66