SmithKline Beecham unveils new hepatitis A vaccine: SmthKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, has introduced the world's first hepatitis A vaccine, `harvix' in India. The new vaccine, which is available in easy-to-follow schedule, provides protection to children of one year and above and it isestimated that the full course will ensure immunity against the disease for at least 20 years. The vaccine is licensed in about 50 countries with more than 30 million doses administered worldwide.

Hewlett-Packard announcement: Hewlett-Packard Company has announced a record-setting benchmark for the SAP R/3 application suite. The HP 9000 V2250 supported 6,750 sales and distribution (SD) benchmark users, with an average dialog response time of 1.95 seconds. The benchmark was run with SAP R/3 release 3.1H on an Oracle8.0.4 database system. These results extend HP's lead over other leading high-end enterprise computing platforms. They also reinforce HP's position as a leading platform provider for R/3, with more than 4,500 installations worldwide.

Kemna Electronics laser-related products: Kemna Electronics, a part of the multi-billion Kemna group launched its range of laser related products in Bangalore on Monday. Group vice-president NP Meegoda said the company has big plans in India as it is ahuge market and the product is new. According to him the estimated investment in India in the first phase is $35 million for the assembly plant.

Cognizant Technology selects partner: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (CTS) has been chosen by CCC Information Services Inc, the leading provider of solutions for the automotive claims industry, as its applications development and maintenance partner. "When we looked for an applications development partner, we needed a company that could provide high quality service and take a project from start to finish," CCC senior vice-president (product engineering) Rich Rumple said.

Micro Focus year 2000 test suite: The Bangalore-based Micro Focus has announced its new year 2000 test suite, a comprehensive testing environment that thoroughly and accurately tests Y2K-remediated cobol code. The year 2000 test suite, which consists of micro focus touchpoint and micro focus winrunner 2000, gives IT professionals the technology and systematicmethodology that can help them to reasonably ensure Y2K compliance. Test organisations have been forced to adopt a triage process of selecting only a limited number of applications that will go through system, integration or unit test processes due to time and resource constraints.

Birla 3M product: Birla 3M has launched a photodyne brand 800XGT fibre indentifier designed to locate any particular fibre line or non-obtrusively identify live fibres to determine the amount of traffic present. The fibre identifier is designed to eliminate user error and reduce the chance of fibre damage and wiring service interruptions. The identifier can be used on fibres used for construction or maintenance of telecommunication networks, outside plant interconnections, cable television (CATV) connections, wiring for local area network or premises applications.

Acer Peripherals appoints Godrej Pacific as distributor: Acer Peripherals on Tuesday appointed Godrej Pacific Technology as the authorised distributorfor marketing monitors, keyboards and Cd-rom drives in the country. Godrej Pacific will coordinate the logistics and marketing activities through Servex, the 100 per cent subsidiary of Acer Peripherals Inc.

Hindustan Organic gets export house status: Hindustan Organic Chemicals Ltd (HOCL) has been conferred the export house status, having recorded an export growth of 187 per cent at Rs 20.22 crore during the financial year 1997-98. HOCL expects to increase export earnings to 25 per cent of the turnover by the end of the Ninth Plan, a release said.