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Harvard Drug Group Opts for Databeacon
Databeacon Inc., a developer of Web reporting
and data analysis software, announced it has been
selected by the Harvard Drug Group, a secondary brand
wholesaler and generic drug and consumer products
distributor, to provide sales reporting and data
analysis capabilities. This win is a result of Databeacon
partner Subject, Wills & Company. "We are expanding
our implementation at the Harvard Drug Group," Andy
Coutts, president and CEO of Databeacon, told 5 Minute
Briefing.
According to Databeacon, by implementing its solution,
the Harvard Drug Group has reduced an estimated 700-plus
hours of manual data entry per year, enabling employees
to focus on more strategic activities. Databeacon targets
mid-market companies that often have limited IT resources. "We
help staff return to normal lives and not have to be
report writers," Coutts said. For more information,
go to www.databeacon.com.
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Breaking News--IBM Unveils Cloudscape
Support; Acquires Venetica
Following its contribution of "Derby," a copy
of its Cloudscape Java-based relational database
to the
Apache Software Foundation earlier this month, today
IBM announced a new, no-cost offering for developers.
The
new resources include articles, technical advice, sample
code and a free downloadable version of the Cloudscape
code. All are now available on IBM's developerWorks
site
at www.ibm.com/developerWorks/cloudscape.
The source code for Derby is available on the Apache
Incubator project Web site at incubator.apache.org/projects/derby.html. "IBM has a strong commitment to the Java community as
well as to continued Java innovation," said Gina Poole,
vice president, developer marketing and Web communities
for ISV and Developer Relations. "By providing resources
on Cloudscape, IBM developerWorks is helping software
developers help our customers and ISVs be more
innovative in developing business applications that
are based on open standards."
In
an unrelated announcement, last week IBM announced it
had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Venetica, a
privately held company based in Charlotte, NC. Venetica
is a leading provider of enterprise content integration
software that enables organizations to access
unstructured information such as business documents,
still images, digital media and Web pages, and integrate
it into existing business processes. "This will help
customers more easily access information regardless of
its format or where it resides," Laura Haas, IBM
distinguished engineer and development manager for DB2
Information Integrator, told 5 Minute Briefing in an
exclusive interview.
Venetica software manages unstructured
information coming from applications such as
EMC/Documentum, FileNet, Hummingbird, Interwoven, Open
Text and Stellent, enabling organizations to leverage
their existing content assets. "The acquisition will
extend Information Integrator's reach into those
systems," Haas said. "It broadens our portfolio of
adapters and styles of integration."
End-users are showing increasing interest in the
integration of unstructured information, Haas noted.
"With the addition of Venetica technology and its
expertise in unstructured data access, IBM is extending
its leadership in helping customers build on their
existing IT infrastructure and reduce the time and costs
associated with integrating their diverse information
assets," said Janet Perna, general manager, IBM Data
Management Software. The acquisition is expected to
close in the fourth-quarter. Financial details were not
disclosed. For more
information, visit www.ibm.com/software/data.
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Breaking News--Florida Supreme
Court Selects Metatomix
Metatomix, Inc., the leader in what is called
Semantic Web-based technology for enterprise resource
interoperability (ERI), today announced that the Florida
Supreme Court, Office of State Courts Administrator, has
selected it to deliver a next-generation Judicial
Integration Solution for the Florida Supreme Court
system. The Metatomix solution enables a seamless,
cross-agency, real-time information-sharing system for
the Florida courts. The system will be used by Florida
judges to achieve a centralized, unified view and
understanding of all pertinent information across
numerous database systems. "We are able to pull together
multiple systems to provide a risk management solution,"
Darren Raybourn, exective vice president of marketing at
Metatomix, told 5 Minute Briefing in an exclusive
interview prior to the announcement.
The
Metatomix system automatically integrates and
streamlines access to data sources across multiple
Florida agencies, providing a unified information set
for Florida judges to use during judicial proceedings,
while also allowing the participating agencies to retain
control of their own data sources. "Multiple agencies
can share information and make better decisions,"
Raybourn said.
Metatomix, Inc. provides what it
calls next-generation Semantic Web-based technology for
enterprise resource interoperability (ERI). Using the
W3C RDF standard, Metatomix technology offers
bi-directional, distributed interoperability platform,
that enables business managers and enterprise IT
professionals to manage their entire resource set and IT
infrastructure assets through a unified view. The
Semantic Web-based intelligence enables the integration,
correlation and automation of data. ERI, said Raybourn,
goes beyond data integration. It allows companies to
correlate information from different data sources and
then implement policies to automatically act on that
data. For more information, go to www.metatomix.com.
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Breaking News--Mortgage Services
Provider Selects Vormetric's CoreGuard
System
Ocwen Financial Corp. announced today that it had
selected Vormetric Inc.'s CoreGuard Data Security System
for the protection and encryption of non-public,
personally identifiable financial information. The Ocwen
REALTrans business-to-business information exchange uses
the CoreGuard solution to secure approximately one
million mortgage-related orders per month for insurance,
appraisals and property data.
"This demonstrates that it is possible to encrypt
data in a high transaction rate database without
crippling performance," Phil Grasso, a founder and vice
president of partner development at Vormetric, told 5
Minute Briefing in a private interview prior to the
announcement. "It also demonstrates that you can take a
running system and encrypt it without rewriting the
application," he added.
CoreGuard's architecture operates at the
file-system level, eliminating the need for
customization of applications or network fabrics.
CoreGuard integrates with Ocwen's IT infrastructure and
its Sybase database management system through VERITAS
Quick I/O. Ocwen uses Vormetric's CoreGuard System to
protect its REALTrans solution, a Web-based,
e-marketplace application that facilitates electronic
ordering of real estate products and services such as
title insurance, appraisals, Broker Price Opinions
(BPOs), FEMA flood hazard determinations, and real
property data from the largest network of vendors
available in the U.S. "Security of our customers'
information is our highest concern," said Dale Pickford,
CIO, Ocwen. "Our technology is used by the nation's
leading mortgage and real-estate companies that
collectively originated 40 percent of all mortgages last
year." More information is available at www.vormetric.com.
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Syware Introduces Northwind Mobile
Traders
Syware, Inc., a developer of intuitive database
tools for business and personal productivity, announced
Northwind Mobile Traders, a software template that
allows the quick and easy creation of data-driven mobile
applications for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs. Northwind
Mobile Traders is modeled after Microsoft's Northwind
Traders sample database software for Windows-based
systems running Access or SQL Server. Syware's new,
mobile edition runs in conjunction with the company's
database and forms development software, Visual CE, and
provides users with pre-built templates that allow for
quick and easy creation of mobile order entry, sales
tracking, and inventory management
applications.
"It
gives you an order entry system right out of the box,"
Frank Yacano, director of business development at
Syware, told 5 Minute Briefing in an exclusive
interview. "This is a product that a high percentage of
our new users requested, and we've listened."
Northwind Mobile Traders works in conjunction
with Syware's Visual CE. Visual CE's drag-and-drop
customization enables the rapid creation of database and
forms applications by programmers and business
professionals alike; no programming is required. Users
decide what information is needed, then drag and drop
controls to create custom electronic forms.
"This is a great solution for companies that
don't have the bandwidth for a dedicated IT staff,"
Yacano added. "They take this out of the box, and they
are already two-thirds of the way
there."
Northwind Mobile Traders is available for
no charge as part of Syware's Visual CE 8 software at www.syware.com/northwind.
Visual CE customers of previous versions can obtain
Northwind Mobile Traders by upgrading to the most recent
version of Visual CE for the normal upgrade cost at www.syware.com/prodlib/win_ce/vce/upgrades.htm.
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Cognos, a leader in business intelligence (BI)
and corporate performance management (CPM), has
announced a $52 million cash offer to acquire all of
Frango, a Stockholm-based company specializing in
consolidation and financial reporting solutions. The
price represents a 63 percent premium over the value of
Frango's shares trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange
when the deal was announced. "This adds to our ability
to address priorities in the office of finance and
bolsters our global product set," Doug Barton, vice
president of enterprise planning product marketing, told
5 Minute Briefing in a private interview when the deal
was announced. Frango offers consolidation and financial
reporting products.
According to Barton, Cognos became interested in
Frango for several reasons. "It has an established track
record and a highly capable product that will give us
best-of-class solutions at every entry point," he said.
Moreover, Frango, one of Europe's leading financial
software suppliers, will bolster Cognos's sales
channels, Barton noted. Frango has more than 1,300
customers worldwide and 230 employees located in 16
countries primarily in Europe and Asia.
According to Barton, the proposed acquisition is
part of Cognos' strategy to supply a larger percentage
of their customers' performance management tools. "This
is a carefully measured step," he said. For more
information, go to www.cognos.com.
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MicroOLAP Launches DBACentral for
MySQL
MicroOLAP Technologies, a provider of database
tools, native connectivity components, and drivers for
database servers, has announced the release of the
microOLAP DBACentral for MySQL, a new generation GUI
front-end tool for the open-source database server.
DBACentral for MySQL provides a Microsoft Access-like
interface paradigm for executing all database operations
over database structure and table data.
Daniil Kovtunovitch, chief developer at
MicroOLAP, told 5 Minute briefing in a private
interview, "We've gotten a very good response so far
from our customers. DBACentral for MySQL extends the
MySQL functionality and provides very useful interface
for executing standard SQL commands and database
operations."
Microsoft Access users can easily migrate to a
native MySQL environment using DBACentral for MySQL with
minimum loss of standard Microsoft Access functionality
as the main principles of working with tables, queries,
and forms are quite similar. Product details are at www.microolap.com/dbacentralmp.htm.
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CNET Networks Taps Netezza for Tera-Scale
Data Warehouse
Netezza Corp. announced that CNET Networks, a
global interactive content company, has selected the
Netezza Performance Server (NPS) appliance for faster
and more comprehensive analysis of massive amounts of
clickstream data. "This shows that it is economically
possible for a wider number of Web sites to do this kind
of analysis," Jit Saxena, co-founder and CEO of Netezza
Corp., told 5 Minute Briefing.
According to Saxena, clickstream analysis
presents several challenges. First, Web sites generate
massive amounts of data. Secondly, for many kinds of
analysis, the data cannot be effectively aggregated.
Finally, the data must be fresh.
By
architecturally integrating database, server and storage
within a single appliance, the NPS system delivers 10 to
50 times the performance at half the cost of traditional
data warehouses. CNET Networks chose the NPS appliance
based on its performance, value and ability to integrate
easily into the company's current MicroStrategy Business
Intelligence environment. "We are adding tier one
customers from a range of vertical markets," Saxena
said. "There is substantial demand for tera-scale
systems that deliver powerful performance at a low total
cost of ownership." For more information, go to www.netezza.com.
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Short
Takes
Birdstep Technology announced General Dynamics UK
Ltd., a part of General Dynamics Corp., has selected
Birdstep's RDM Embedded database management system as a
database agent for network enabled airborne
applications. RDM Embedded will provide database
management for Innovative Concepts' Improved Data Modem
(IDM Technology.) IDM Technology supports the exchange
of tactical data between airborne applications and
ground forces to support enhanced mission execution
capability. More information is at www.birdstep.com.
Jinfonet Software has announced the general
availability of JReport 7, the latest release of its 100
percent J2EE reporting solution. This latest release
combines JReport's embedded reporting capabilities with
ad hoc reporting and analysis. The new release includes
an ad hoc report designer that enables any user,
regardless of skill level, to easily build reports via
the Web. More information is available at www.jinfonet.com.
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