Kenro appoints Sales Office Manager

Release Date: 15 April 2009 Kenro Ltd

Kenro, one of the leading suppliers of photographic accessories to UK retailers, has appointed Simon East to the newly created role of Sales Office Manager.

Simon joins the company with a solid photo industry CV. He began his career with Camera Exchange's Cotswold group of stores in 1988 prior to their re-unification with the London Camera Exchange Group. Following his relocation to Scotland in 1995, Simon was appointed manager of the J.Lizars Ltd (now Black & Lizars) Edinburgh store's photographic dept. During this time he developed exhibition and field events experiences as well as in-store retailing skills.

In 1997 Simon joined the field sales team at Leica Camera Ltd and for a decade managed the southern territory for photographic, sport optics and projection products.

Simon is looking forward to his new role at Kenro: "I am really excited to be joining a company with such a strong reputation within the imaging industry. I have already met many people from the company and the team at Kenro have great strength in depth, this demonstrates to me why the business remains such a competitive outfit after almost four decades of trading."

He continued: "I will be assisting the company in its plans to continue modernising its technical operations, drive efficiencies, develop provisions for e-commerce, improve technical support as well as manage its customer relationship strategy, I know I am joining a future-focussed, growing business."

Kenro managing director, Paul Kench, feels Simon's appointment is a positive move for the company: "Everyone at Kenro is determined to continue our expansion and build on the strengths of our key brands; Tokina lenses, Nissin flash, Marumi accessories, our own ranges of studio lighting, frames and albums, plus the selection of Kenair products. Simon's arrival at the company will help us to not just consolidate, but increase our standing in the photographic trade."

Simon can be contacted on the main Kenro switchboard, 01793 615836 or via email, simon@kenro.co.uk

ENDS

Kenro Ltd
Greenbridge Road
Swindon
SN3 3LH
Tel: 01793 615836
Fax: 01793 530108
E-mail: sales@kenro.co.uk
Web: www.kenro.co.uk



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Data Robotics unveils DroboPro

London, UK – 7th April, 2009 –

THE FIRST SMB DATA STORAGE SYSTEM THAT MANAGES ITSELF


Scalable BeyondRAID Platform Eliminates Capacity Over-Provisioning and RAID Lock-In

Data Robotics, the company that is changing the way the world stores and protects digital content, today introduced DroboPro, the first business class storage array that manages itself. DroboPro delivers a radically simplified storage experience enhanced by advanced self-monitoring and self-healing functionality that enables small and medium businesses (SMBs) to maintain uptime in the face of constant data growth. Built on the company’s award-winning BeyondRAID™ virtualised storage platform, DroboPro provides enterprise-level business continuity features – including protection against multiple concurrent drive failures and no-downtime capacity expansion with thin provisioning – while eliminating the lock-in of traditional RAID configurations.

DroboPro with BeyondRAID offers IT managers the unprecedented flexibility to replace failed disks, upsize the capacity of disks, and with one click switch between single and dual disk redundancy without costly downtime. Providing the most straightforward user experience ever designed for business class storage, DroboPro enables companies to devote more resources to business growth and significantly less time and money to managing their storage. With DroboPro IT managers no longer have to make difficult and confining choices upfront about how to provision capacity for the future.

“At many businesses, IT managers are responsible for much more than just storage, let alone having to predict the future of their company’s business and dynamic storage needs,” said David Reinsel, group vice president, storage and semiconductors, at industry analyst firm IDC. “A forward-thinking approach to flexible and highly available data storage, like Data Robotics’ DroboPro, not only should save IT managers capital and administrative costs, but also should provide them more time to focus on managing their front-end applications, such as Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange.”

“It’s critical that our company’s data is always accessible. Devoting time and resources to manage our storage is challenging, especially as our data continues to grow each year. The ability to survive two drive failures and DroboPro’s high-speed iSCSI interface make it the ideal primary storage for our mission-critical applications server,” said Wayne Titus, owner, AMDG Financial. “Because DroboPro manages the RAID levels automatically, we no longer need to buy more storage than we need today in anticipation of estimated future requirements. As our business grows, DroboPro grows with us. We can add additional drives as needed, and the new capacity is instantly available. With DroboPro, we have a high-performance storage solution our business can afford, with the features, functionality, and ease of use that are ideal for any small business.”

DroboPro Features and Benefits


Up to 8 Disks for Instant Expansion to 16TB and Beyond

Customers can grow storage in line with their data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, customers simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all eight disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found in DroboPro enables IT managers to efficiently mix and match disk brands, capacities and speeds, enabling continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. With DroboPro expansion is automatic and instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.

No Headache Dual Disk Redundancy

The DroboPro Dual Disk Redundancy option protects against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard disks. Customers can engage this option with a single click, without ever losing access to their data. When it runs out of capacity, customers can switch DroboPro back to single disk redundancy with a click. Unlike moving between RAID 5 and RAID 6, there’s no need to reformat or migrate data off of the array, potentially saving hours or days.

The Virtues of Smart Volumes

Smart Volumes allow customers to create new volumes in seconds and manage 16TB volumes over time with ease. The timesaving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboPro allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of disks rather than a specific physical disk allocation. The labour of resizing and migrating volumes is replaced with the simplicity of intelligent engineering.

Triple Interface Featuring iSCSI

DroboPro attaches directly to a server or workstation that requires storage, or to a shared server or workstation on a network that can provide access to multiple clients. Interface options include iSCSI (using Gigabit Ethernet), FireWire 800, and USB 2.0. DroboPro reduces the complexity of iSCSI by introducing zero configuration connection establishment for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet

DroboPro fits into a rack mount environment or can sit on a desktop. Dual smart fans automatically manage their speed to optimise both cooling and operating noise. (DroboPro rack-mount sold separately.)

“DroboPro was built on the belief that there is no reason that storage should be complex or expensive in order to be effective. We’ve taken storage to a level that is truly simple and straightforward without losing the necessary features that businesses need,” said Dr. Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics. “Leveraging the capabilities that are built into DroboPro, businesses can quickly take advantage of this robust, cost-effective storage solution to ease the burden of nonstop data growth.”

Price and Availability

DroboPro is currently available starting at an entry price of £1,099 MSRP with multiple configurations to £3,299 MSRP for a 16TB rack-mountable solution. DroboPro is available now from authorised partners worldwide. For a list of partners or to learn more about DroboPro, please visit www.drobo.com/drobopro.

About Data Robotics

Data Robotics, the company that is changing the way the world stores digital content, develops automated storage products designed to ensure data is always protected, accessible and simple to manage. The award-winning Drobo ® storage arrays are the first to provide the protection of traditional RAID without the complexity. The revolutionary BeyondRAID technology frees users from making the difficult and confining choice of “Which RAID level to deploy?” by providing an unprecedented combination of advanced features and automation, including single and dual disk redundancy, instant expansion, self-monitoring, data awareness, self-healing, and an easy-to-understand visual status and alert panel. For more information, visit Data Robotics at www.datarobotics.com.


Visitors, users and viewers of the foregoing content may copy and re-use it in other internet content sites on condition the source of all material so used is acknowledged with the attachment of the following.
www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com 2009.
www.ajaxnetphoto.com 2009.
This content may NOT be used in any media made available for commercial resale.
The products and companies named in this website content are trademarks , registered trademarks or servicemarks of their respective owners or licensed user.

KODACHROME, EKTACHROME and TAKUMAR Lenses

Another recent rummage through the shelves of used bookshops - which, incidentally, seem to be diminishing in number around these parts - turned up another collection of Cowboy pictures; that's if you can call a few pages devoted to the subject a collection.

This notwithstanding, the book in which they feature was something of a find for several reasons.

Entitled, America, I love You, the author, the Swiss dentist and amateur photographer Milan Schijatschky, takes the reader on an extravagent pictorial tour of the USA; a selection of photographs edited from his several trips by car, coach and train criss crossing North America over several years.



Another great find! Milan Schijatschky's America, I Love You.

The book is in landscape format, about A3 plus in size. That means a double page spread is A2. Printed and published in 1988 with film separations and litho work on semi gloss paper in Germany, the book showcases some excellent repro becoming available at the time.



Just a few pages, but worth a look. The 50mm SMC Pentax lens has been added to give an idea of page size.

But more fascinating perhaps for some, will be the fact that a high proportion, or possibly all, of the images featured in this tome were originally shot on Pentax cameras and lenses using Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Tri-X film. The author is not specific about which Pentax models were used, although it seems fairly certain from close examination of the reproductions, the original images were exposed on 35mm film. One or two suffer a little from shake, but those which are free of it used across two pages show beyond any reasonable doubt what great lenses Asahi Pentax used to turn out and how well Milan used some of them.



All the colour pictures in this book were shot on Kodachrome or Ektachrome film stock; the few b+w images on Kodak Tri-X.

Pentax aficionados might be able to throw more light on the following, but I recall reading somewhere many years ago the company decided on the name Takumar for their lenses in honour of a great Japanese watercolour painter. They were not wrong in their assimilation and I have always thought their early glass computations held the promise of something special. It is epitomised in this book where the characteristic Takumar colour rendering is very well portrayed. The large scale reproductions are also a terrific example of the magical effect film lends to the image aesthetic, a synthetic version of which I have only seen so far on a small number of dslrs.



It looks straightforward, but exposure timing for this frame was spot on. Just shows what can be done with a great eye, simple kit and Pentax lenses. The spread is very sharp so I'd speculate the lens used might have been the SMC Takumar 24mm f/3.5.

Having reviewed and tested several of the modern digitally compatible Pentax objectives, I remain to be convinced they are all as good as some of the older mechanical lenses. A recent simple test using a 20 year old 50mm f/1.7 SMC Pentax-A lens on a Pentax K10D body completely rubbished the fine detail resolving ability of a modern standard Pentax SMC DA 18-55 f/3.5 - 5.6 AL zoom kit lens while the newer SMC PENTAX -DA* 1:2.8 16-50mm ED AL(IF) SDM faired only marginally better at the 50mm setting. It will be interesting to see how both the modern and older designs fare on the Pentax K20D with it's higher resolution.



And it's not just scenics. Seems Milan could turn his hand to just about anything. The Jazz and Gospel sections are a mix of colour and b+w, probably Kodak Ektachrome for the colour, but he doesn't specify.

America, I Love You by Milan Schijatschky, was published in 1988 by Edition Q, Berlin and printed by Industrie und Presseklischee, Berlin. ISBN 3 9801163 4 4.

Other works previously mentioned on this blog include,

Vanishing Breed - Photographs of The Cowboy and The West by William Albert Allard was published in 1982 by the New York Graphic Society, Little Brown & Co., Boston and printed by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Italy. ISBN 0 8212 1505 1.




Cowboys - A Vanishing World, photographs by Jon Nicholson, was published in 2001 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd, London and printed by The Bath Press in the UK. ISBN 0 333 90208 4.





Visitors, users and viewers of the foregoing content may copy and re-use it in other internet content sites on condition the source of all material so used is acknowledged with the attachment of the following.
Copyright; Jonathan Eastland
www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com 2009.
www.ajaxnetphoto.com 2009.
This content may NOT be used in any media made available for commercial resale.
The products and companies named in this website content are trademarks , registered trademarks or servicemarks of their respective owners or licensed user.