Lixar expands to Nova Scotia

Lixar looks to the East Coast to expand its web technology services by hiring up to 50 full-time jobs in Halifax over the next six years.

"Nova Scotia's talented workforce, geographic location, and competitive environment offers the perfect nearshore location to support Lixar's growth." said Emmanuel Florakas, President, Lixar I.T. Inc.

As part of Nova Scotia Business Inc.'s strategy to grow the IT sector, the agency worked with Lixar to support its expansion to the province.

"Lixar represents a growing number of technology companies choosing Nova Scotia for their growth plans," said Economic Development Minister Angus MacIsaac. "Through NSBI, we're helping create exciting career opportunities for skilled young Nova Scotians."

Nova Scotia's nearshore advantage will help Lixar become more cost-efficient and competitive in the global marketplace.

"Nova Scotia's nearshore advantage is a valuable asset to any company with international growth plans," said Stephen Lund, president and CEO of NSBI. "Lixar is exactly the kind of company we want in our province."

Lixar Photo Gallery helping to support the CMHA Ottawa photovoice project

Lixar is pleased to officially launch the new Lixar Photo Gallery which will be housed in Lixar headquarters located in Ottawa, Ontario.

The new Lixar Gallery will highlight Lixar's own talent by displaying employee photo collections each month. Each collection will consist of ten, twelve by sixteen photographs. Expert and amateur photographers are invited to participate in this initiative.

"The Gallery is an exciting launch for Lixar" said Bill Syrros, CEO, Lixar "...a great opportunity to show staff talent and personality while supporting a worthwhile cause at the same time."

The collection will be displayed for 4-6 weeks and then, another Lixar talent will have an opportunity to show their artistic creations.

Each collection will be auctioned at the end of the exhibit period. The proceeds will go to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Ottawa's photovoice project called Working with the Whole Picture.

This year in Ottawa, 10 people with mental illness were asked to explore and capture their view, feelings, hopes and barriers related to work on film. Unemployment rates are extremely high for people living with serious mental illness and yet the importance of work for recovery and for improved quality of life is well recognized.

The group has titled their project "Working with the Whole Picture", and it covers the themes of stigma and discrimination, personal and external barriers to work and hopes and aspirations for work.

"The exhibit explores the challenges facing people, but it is also very hopeful and conveys the determination of the photographers as they pursue their work goals", commented Lisa Jamieson, the CMHA coordinator for the project.

The group intends to organize a full schedule of exhibits and presentations of their work over the next year, presenting it to policy makers, employers and the general public. The first public showing of the Working with the Whole Picture collection will be displayed at the IPO Gallery located at 110 O'Connor Street, from January 8 to February 6, 2009.

The CMHA Ottawa is a non-profit charitable organization that has been operating in Ottawa for more than 50 years. CMHA offers a wide variety of direct client services for more than 1,000 individuals per year who have serious mental illness and homelessness. For more CMHA Ottawa information please visit www.cmhaottawa.ca.

Eleanor McCain uses Web to sell E-music

The music down-loading revolution is certainly not new but it is changing the way that musicians conduct business. More and more artists are eliminating the middle man by promoting and selling their own songs and albums on-line and on their own sites.

Eleanor McCain, too, wanted to realize the Web's opportunities to promote and sell online her recently released album and MP3 songs from, Bundle of Joy.

Lixar worked with Ms. McCain to ensure that the on-line application had the right balance of administrative site control and functionality. Lixar integrated and implemented a system with both.

The e-commerce site would allow for Eleanor to upload images and new songs with ease and also provided an environment for future on-line growth.

The viewer can listen to various music song samplers, purchase one, two or multiple MP3s and/or purchase the entire CD.

Technically speaking, Eleanor McCain's site went from a mostly static HTML site and converted to PHP5, mySQL, E-cart and a secure payment system to create a dynamic and secure site from beginning to end.

To listen to Eleanor McCain's newly released album Bundle of Joy, please visit her website at www.eleanormccain.ca.

Lixar employees lend support at the Ottawa Mission

Thanksgiving is a time that friends and family come together to celebrate and give thanks. Ahead of this weekend's holiday, a number of Lixar staff recently visited the Ottawa Mission to volunteer some of their time.

The Ottawa Mission works to meet the needs of the homeless and those at risk of being homeless everyday. On average, the Ottawa Mission serves over 1100 dishes per day or 414,500 dishes to hungry clients each year.

To support the Mission in lead up to Thanksgiving, Lixar employees signed-up to serve breakfast and prepare food. On September 29th and October 6, Lixar teams met bright and early to offer their time to support and serve the many faces of hunger and to give back to the community.

Here's how Karl Hollands and Trevor Brimson, Lixar Developers, described their experience:

"This morning I was fortunate to be able to spend 3 hours in the kitchen of the Ottawa Mission working shoulder to shoulder with other new and seasoned volunteers preparing food for the many citizens of Ottawa who benefit from the services of the Mission.

Our coordinator, Megan, was wonderful in making us feel right at home and getting us to work right away. It was a very gratifying to contribute to a very worthy cause and to have the chance to chat with wonderful people I would otherwise likely have never met and who share a desire to give back to our community." said Karl Hollands

"I found my time at the mission to be well spent. I know it's a very worthwhile cause that needs all the help it can get. The people we helped today value greatly that which we take for granted every morning, a good meal. I hope we can do this again in the future" said Trevor Brimson

On Thanksgiving Monday, October 13th, The Ottawa Mission will be providing a special meal to hundreds of men, women and children. They expect that over 2400 meals will be served. To learn more about the Mission or the Mission's Thanksgiving meal, please visit the Mission website at www.ottawamission.com

Lixar Embraces Sharepoint and Adobe Flex

High demand over the last year has Lixar integrating SharePoint with Bell Canada while the popularity of Adobe Flex is catching on with new and current Lixar clients. Lixar's winning SharePoint and Adobe Flex practices are fueling Lixar's growth and recent hiring has allowed for more innovation while also adding senior experience to its growing workforce.

Busy Summer for Lixar

New projects with Bell Canada, Radialpoint, and Combat Networks have Lixar building new cutting edge applications in the telecommunications order systems market. Lixar’s vast experience with telco/ISP’s is the major factor on being chosen to develop provisioning systems, business intelligence dashboards and smart middleware data translation applications.

Lixar on the move ....

The Lixar HQ has moved to a new location. 

Lixar is pleased to announce that effective June 2, 2008 the Lixar HQ is located at 47 Young St., Ottawa. 

"This is an exciting move for the company" said Emmanuel Florakas, President, "We wanted to ensure that there was the right amount of space for our company's level of positive growth".

In keeping with the Lixar environmental philosophy, the three Rs (recycle, reuse, reduce) were applied as often as possible.   With so many really interesting and abundant environmental products on the market, it was so much easier to consider non-traditional options such as, Low VOC paint, Efficient light bulbs (super-efficient CFLs), Adaptive reuse of existing structures, use of Passive Energy and Natural Light for common areas, and Bamboo flooring which is a sustainable material.  

From an environmental perspective, Lixar's flagship "environmental transportation unit (ETU)” is the inside front entrance Bike Rack.  To encourage employees to bike (not drive) to work, a front inside door bike rack was specially designed to store bicycles in a safe, secure and  space-efficient way. 

Lixar is pleased to encourage healthy lifestyles and a reduction in carbon emissions.

Lixar contact information:

Lixar I.T. Inc.
47A Young St.
Ottawa, ON
K1S 3H6

Lixar Wins OCRI 82000reasons YouTube Video Contest

In what is perhaps the first contest Lixar has ever entered, we were able to bring home the gold and win OCRI’s inaugural 82000reasons YouTube video contest.

“I couldn’t believe it when it was announced but then I thought about how hard my team worked to make it happen. They really deserved it.” – Bill Syrros, CEO

The Ottawa region's technology sector has never been stronger. Numbering nearly 82,000 people, its technology workforce is at an all-time high. In the lives and aspirations of those people are 82,000 unique Ottawa technology success stories. OCRI wanted to promote their stories about living, working and playing in a city that celebrates its talent and entrepreneurial spirit like no other.

www.82000reasons.com was launched to gather those stories and present them to the world. Many companies contributed blogs and videos that explained Ottawa's technology advantage.

“You and your staff did an excellent job and hit what we were looking for in 82000reasons right on the head.” - Michael Darch, Executive Director - Ottawa Global Marketing

To see this cool video, see Lixar YouTube offering at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZmqcdbS5h8.

Lixar enters OCRI YouTube Video challenge

Today, Lixar launched “Lixar I.T. Inc” which is Lixar’s online YouTube story “about living, working and playing in a city that celebrates its talent and entrepreneurial spirit like no other”.

Lixar is very excited to participate in OCRI’s 82000 reasons campaign. The Lixar video profiles Ottawa and Lixar primarily through its employee’s eyes. The unfiltered comments highlight why they live in Ottawa and why they work at Lixar. As one candidate said “Lixar walks the talk” and really shows us how to work hard, play hard, keep healthy and stay connected to our community.

As Your Web Technology Services Partner, Lixar strives to Achieve more. Lixar’s aim is to make its clients more competitive, more cost efficient, and more effective. Lixar’s success comes from its ability to adapt, and to be flexible and reliable.

“Lixar’s success comes from our ability to adapt and to think outside the box, to work with many different technologies and languages and to never feel like we don’t have a solution”. Bill Syrros, CEO

Lixar is proud to launch the Lixar I.T. Inc You Tube video – thanks for taking the time to watch the film http://youtube.com/watch?v=vZmqcdbS5h8 . The YouTube submission can also be found by clicking or by searching for the “Lixar I.T. Inc.” video on YouTube or by clicking on www.82000reasons.com.

What is the 82000reasons.com contest?

Ottawa technology companies and employees have taken the proud step to profile themselves via online blogs or You Tube videos. Why you ask? Because Ottawa, based on OCRI’s annual technology survey, showed that over 81,910 people are employed in Ottawa in the tech sector.

To promote this growing sector’s success, OCRI has launched the 82000reasons promotion campaign to encourage companies to record their success via an online record. The purpose is to gather the stories and present them to the world. On April 30, 2008 participating Ottawa companies will be judged on their submissions and winning submissions will be announced.

“… the content will attract both businesses and individuals who will recognize Ottawa’s lifestyle and technology strengths, then decide to locate either their companies or careers in this great city”. Mike Darch, Executive Director of OCRI’s Ottawa Global Marketing.

Lixar Supports national capital race weekend "Run for a Reason"

Lixar hopes to surpass last year and enter over 40 joggers, trotters, runners and walkers in the 2008 Ottawa Race Weekend events. 

Lixar is encouraging employees to participate in the 2008, National Capital Race Weekend which will be held in Ottawa from May 23 to May 25.  Each distance offers its own personal challenge and individuals can register for an event that truly suits them; the 2km, 5km, 10km, ½ marathon and/or marathon.

“At Lixar we wanted to offer our teams the opportunity to train with their colleagues, get out in their community and ultimately achieve their own personal goals – be it a 2km, 5km, 10km, ½ marathon or marathon.  The National Capital Race Weekend is a terrific event which helps our teams stay healthy and active.”   Bill Syrros, CEO

In addition to Lixar team participation, Lixar will also be doing its part to support the Ottawa Hospital Foundation.  For every 2km and 5km Lixar registrant, Lixar will contribute $5; for every 10 km Lixar registrant, Lixar will contribute $10; and for every ½ marathon and marathon Lixar registrant, Lixar will contribute $20 towards the Ottawa Hospital Foundation.

Lixar Ready for the Canadian Ski Marathon

Entering its third year as title sponsor for the Canadian Ski Marathon, Lixar will have a team of 30 employees, clients and friends taking to the hills promoting a spirit of fitness, friendship and fun.

The Canadian Ski Marathon (CSM) was founded in 1967 by former Canadian National Ski team member, Don MacLeod. The annual two-day event features ten sections that span 160 kilometres of tranquility and beauty through the Quebec countryside: from Gatineau (Buckingham sector) to Lachute with an overnight stop in Montebello.

"I'm very happy to be associated with the Canadian Ski Marathon and very proud of my employees that are stepping out of their comfort zone and taking on the CSM challenge. This is a truly unique event and one that really encapsulates the spirit of our company." said Bill Syrros, CEO of Lixar.

Lixar cures headaches for national retailer

A national re-seller of home computer equipment has turned to Lixar to automate its warranty registration process. They have been toiling under a cumbersome manual system for making sure their customers are properly protected by manufacturer warranties. To cure this headached, they have turned to Lixar to apply its business and technical smarts to the problem. The Lixar solution involves setting up regular data feeds that Lixar will translate and then deliver to the right manufacturer. And of course, Lixar's system will generate detailed reports for its clients so they know their customers are being properly served.

This business improvement solution is being delivered in days – not weeks or months. Lixar is working closely with the client on requirements and using its business and technical expertise to deliver the solution quickly and affordably.

Lixar can help your organization achieve more – contact us today with your business challenge, and we'll let you know how we can help.

TrueContext chooses Lixar

Lixar will be working with TrueContext to support the growing demand for implementations of Pronto and mForms - its award-winning mobile business solutions. Lixar is excited about this opportunity as it is consistent with its strategy to partner up with fast growing product based companies, offering strong technical services and saving our partners time and money.

TrueContext Corporation is an award-winning provider of innovative mobile business solutions worldwide.

Lixar Enters 8th Year

Profitable for eight years and now over 50 people in Ottawa and Toronto, Lixar is proud to be diversifying its client base with new projects for TrueContext, McMillan, Bell Canada, BTI Systems, Embotics Corporation and Systemscope.

Lixar’s proven and adaptable web technology services allow our clients to achieve more by addressing their technology and business needs.  Our solutions provide them with real results for real challenges.

Lixar Continues to Grow with Bell Canada

It has been 7 years since Lixar started working with Bell Canada and the relationship continues to grow. Having recently launched a suite of applications within the Sympatico space, Lixar continues to build momentum in winning contracts recently in the Bell SMB, Wireline and Sympatico service lines.

Lixar also qualified for entrance into a select group of companies in the systems integration service area. It has succeeded by being fast, flexible and reliable.

Lixar recently won a bid to build a dashboard user interface utility that will store and maintain a history of Winbacks activity so that trending and analysis can occur. Forecast management functionality will be included to monitor historical trending of actuals while also being able to trigger future forecast 'alerts'.

Ocean Management Research Network Launches Extranet with Lixar

OMRN looked to Lixar for a website that would provide easy information access to its community of researchers – mainly comprised of working group members and students– as well as their Board of Directors. Lixar designed and developed a comprehensive site with a public layer, a member extranet, and a back-end administration for central office and working group chairs to manage the abundance of site content and resources.

Along with the main site redevelopment, Lixar also developed a microsite for the organization's upcoming National Conference that allows users to register and pay online.

OMRN is an independent not-for-profit network located at the University of Ottawa's School of Management. With a distinguished roster of over 500 Canadian researchers, managers, community leaders and agencies, OMRN is uniquely positioned to reach out to those seeking an improved understanding of oceans challenges and a positive framework for addressing them in order to advance strategies and policies for a shift towards a new vision of oceans management.