Roundup: Eclac, Sandisk, True Access, ITLA, Quark

Latin America has lost the opportunity after five years of economic stability to invest in IT, Mexican paper El Universal quoted Mario Cimoli, economic affairs officer at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( Eclac), as saying. "The opportunity has been lost to make industrial policy" and drive knowledge-based production, he said on a presentation in Mexico City about lessons learned from globalization. The official admitted that IT budgets often compete with other areas such as education, but said "too little" had been spent on technology. *** US flash memory card producer SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) has appointed Fabiano Cotait as the manager of Brazil's large retail channels, Reseller Web reported. Cotait, who worked with products and channels for Epson for 11 years, is the second executive to be hired in Brazil, following country manager José Roberto Santos. The Brazilian unit, created in June, is the first in Latin America and is expected to correspond to 50% of the company's revenues in the region. *** Brazilian information security consultancy True Access has hired Wagner Dantas Senna as director of operations, Computerworld reported. With over 20 years of experience, Senna has worked for companies including Serpro, ITI, Cobra Tecnologia, MSA Infor, ATTPS Informática and Andima. He has technical certification in areas such as digital cryptography, database administration and ITIL. *** The Dominican Republic's Instituto Tecnológico de Las Américas ( ITLA) has opened a campus on Second Life, making it the first educational institution to register in this virtual 3D world, newspaper Hoy Digital reported. With the move, ITLA follows the lead of colleges in the US, such as Harvard, Stanford and MIT. *** The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced publishing software firm Quark as the newest member of its Latin American committee to promote a safe and legal digital world.