Events & News 4/3/01 - Sunday Herald Article is on existing web pages 1/7/01 E-Business week EQSN are

e pleased to announce that they have been given responsibility by Scottish Enterprise to host the registration, diary and management web site for the forthcoming Winners at the Web 2001 competition. The site will comprise of Compaq DS20 servers, disc crate and tape backup device to be used by all interested parties and potential visitors to the seminars and presentations over the Scottish Enterprise event. 1/4/02 Edinburgh Evening News The sixth annual Evening News Lothian Business Excellence Awards 2002 took place in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The prestigious event is backed by Lloyds TSB Scotland, BT Scotland, EQSN, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothians, the Evening News and Edinburgh City Council. Record levels of entries were received, signalling the increasing importance the community places upon the Awards and demonstrating the desire to be benchmarked against its peers. Judges say the standard of entrant has been excellent across all categories, making the selection for overall Company of the year all the more difficult. The categories contested are; Innovation/Technology, Media, Public & Voluntary, Retail, Small Business, Tourism and Professional. 20 Companies made it to the final stages, each one hoping to emulate the success of lat years overall winner, United Central Bakeries of Bathgate, a company which turned itself around from the verge of bankruptcy and later underwent a management buy-out. Fred MacAulay, one of Scotlands leading comedians, returned with his own brand of humour to fulfil the role of Awards host for the third year in succession. The contenders for glory were;

and the winners were; Lothian company of the Year: Northcross Innovation/Technology: Rhetorical System Ltd. Media: Bigmouthmedia Public/Voluntary: Waterfront Edinburgh Retail: Medusa Hairdressing Small Business: European Gas Consultancy Tourism: Scottish Seabird Centre Professional: Northcross

5/4/02 Edinburgh News The title of Media Company of the Year went to Bigmouthmedia, which is currently reaping huge success through its ability to drive internet surfers t o the websites of its clients, which include Visit Scotland, MTV, the Comic Releif campaign and drug giant Pfizer. Below is a picture of Heather Luscombe and Steve Leach receiving their award from Operations Director of EQSN, hosting, colocation and managed services specialists, EQSN.

Bigmouthmedias role in a business world that is increasingly moving online is to get its client names at the top of the growing raft of internet search engines and thereby drive traffic to their websites. In technical terms, the company founded in 1996 by Steve Leach and Heather Luscombe, specialises in online brand placement, positioning and protection. To date, the company says it has driven tens of millions of internet users to its clients websites. 15/3/02 Investors in People EQSN pickup their award for attaining Investors in People

24/3/02 Scotsman Seek out the Specialists for the perfect web host The last thing a company wants, once it has attracted a quorum of loyal users, is for its site to become unavailable, or slow down to the point where it irritates users and loses the firm valuable business. Co-locating with an organisation that provides access to multiple telcos is a fundamental requirement of quality hosting and co-location. As David Reilly, Chief Operations Officer at EQSN, explains, the presence of multiple telecoms gives his firm the ability to build resilient networks for its clients. It can combine services from three or four providers, so that if one telecom fails for a time, the network automatically switches to another. No company operating from its own premises other than one of the largest blue-chip organisations is likely to have this kind of capability. Then there is the ability to run a 24/7 operations. As Reilly notes: In many organisations the ebusiness side works an eight-hour day, the same as the rest of the business. Where the service is a fundamental revenue generator with overseas customers, you dont want it to close down when you go home. We can build a suitable service level agreement with the client company that will match importance of the web site to their operation. It can be continuously available to anyone anywhere around the world. The day-to-day operations management of a web server is another specialist area, best not attempted by companies which do not have the managing of such systems as their core business. Reilly said: We put monitors and alarms on the system so that every web server is monitored around the clock. Depending on the criticality of the e-business service to the client, we can offer a service that will send immediate alerts to the clients staff, or our staff can provide immediate fixes. Another area where a good web hosting provider can help is in constructing flexible agreements with its clients over bandwidth utilisation. Not every site needs hug bandwidth all the time. Customers can come onto our site as a specific bandwidth, which can be as low as 128 kilobits per second. If they get a surge of demand perhaps following a marketing campaign we can let the traffic for their site burst right up to 45 megabits per second, Reillly said. In Reillys view, most Scottish businesses are still in a learning phase when it comes to web services and e-business. Companies are now getting much more realistic about e-business and the benefits they can expect. We are seeing much more integration with client databases to provide real-time transaction capabilities. This kind of complexity needs a managed service operation, he concluded.

06/02 Winners at the Web 2002 The Gala Awards Ceremony that is Winners at the Web 2002 is now in its fifth year. This is Scotlands annual contest to find and honour the countrys brightest e-business practitioners. And this year weve surpassed even last years record with more than 440 entries in all categories. What is so remarkable is that so many companies almost 680 registered their on-line interest in the Competition. And that was in a year which saw serious retrenchment in the e-business sector worldwide. That clearly hasnt ruined any appetite for competition and recognition among Scotlands own lively and vigorous e-businesses. The judging panel consisted of Caroline Robertson, e-advisor Oracle; Charlie Watt, Senior Director eBusiness Scottish Enterprise; Gerry Docherty, Managing Director Real Time Engineering Ltd.; David Reilly, Operations Director EQSN Ltd., Ian Ritchie Director of Coppertop among other distinguished personalities.

The Categories and finalists are; Best Micro Business Award Global Recycle Ltd, GlobalWhiskyshop.com, Map Maker Ltd., Worldonaplate.com (Sponsor Scottish Enterprise) Best Small Business Award Henderson Travel Worldchoice, Loch Torridon Country House Hotel, Peddie Smith Maloco,RGK UK Ltd. (Sponsor BT Scotland)

Best e-trading award Alaris Ltd, Robertson Electrical, Surveys online Ltd., worldonaplate.com (Sponsor Scottish Enterprise)

Best e-supplier award Cedalion, Civic Computing, Elevation Networks, Run Deep (Sponsor EQSN Ltd.)

Best Medium Business Award Arran Aromatics, Barrhead Travel International, Robertson Electrical Ltd., Sercom Solutions (Sponsor BT Scotland)

Best Not for Profit Award Volunteer centre Edinburgh, Glasgow Light Opera Club, Scottish Childminding Association, SCVO (Sponsor Scottish Enterprise)

Best Large Business Award Mackays Stores Ltd., The Robert Gordon University, Scottish Provident, Willis Ltd. (Sponsor Tidalfire)

UK Online for e-business UK Online for Business, Ecommerce Awards 2002, InterForum

The W@W Award Sponsor Oracle.

22/01/02 Alan in number 10 Downing Street

22/1/03 - Band-X Telecoms Trading Exchange EQSN were mentioned in the following publications; The Scotsman Newspaper, The Glasgow Herald, Light Reading, VoIP Watch, Computer Headline. The launch came aboard HMS Royal Yacht Britannia when the announcement was made to the collected prominent parties of the Internet and ISP community. Richard Elliot of Band-X described the road to the delivery of the Telecoms Trading Exchange and the benefits it brings before introducing David Reilly of EQSN to reveal why EQSN have signed up as the first customer and what

it means to them and their customers. Next Charlie Watt of Scottish Enterprise provided an overview of the project and where it is headed. Selection of pictures from the evening: