News Briefs and Product Shorts

SSA Global Strikes Again, Announces Two Acquisitions, Including Epiphany CRM

Following a 13-month dormant period, the SSA Global acquisition machine has returned to its buying ways. Over a span of five days, the Chicago ERP software house announced the acquisitions of two Silicon Valley firms, including Epiphany, a well-respected developer of CRM software, and Boniva Software, a developer of human capital management applications. The Epiphany acquisition, the larger and more significant of the two acquisitions, should go far in bolstering SSA's strategy for CRM software, an area that SSA has been largely reliant on OEM agreements and partnerships. SSA says it has signed a definitive agreement with Epiphany, which is traded on the NASDAQ National Market, for $4.20 per share, or $329 million, a slight premium over the company's share price before the acquisition, and significantly more than the $79.3 million in revenues the company brought in during fiscal 2004. Details of the acquisition of Boniva Software, which is based in Santa Clara, California, were not announced. Both Epiphany and Boniva use Java to write their software, which SSA pointed out is the same language that it uses for its recently unveiled SSA Technology Architecture, a middleware layer that SSA wants its customers to use to integrate applications.

HiT Software Bolsters DB2/400 Access for .NET Developers with Ritmo for iSeries 3.0

HiT Software unveiled a new version of its data middleware for DB2/400 systems last month. Ritmo for iSeries is intended for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET developers who are building Windows applications that access iSeries data. With Ritmo for iSeries version 3.0, the developers can stay within the Visual Studio .NET environment the entire time, the San Jose, California, company says. This release also brings new graphical tools, including designer and code-generation wizards, a command editor, a data-connections explorer, and a new navigation window that provides a treelike structure for working with iSeries databases and database objects. Ritmo for iSeries 3.0 also integrates with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, including the Report Server and Report Designer components, which enables users to generate reports using DB2/400 data. Other enhancements with Ritmo for iSeries 3.0 include: unified support for both .NET Frameworks 1.0 and 1.1; the capability to manage SQL packages within the Ritmo toolbox application; support for Unicode (UCS-2) SQL statements; and support for Catalog functions using the new method "GetSql400SchemaTable()" of the Sql400Connection object. HiT Software chief executive Giacomo Lorenzin says the robustness, speed, and security of Ritmo for iSeries make it the best DB2/400 data provider for .NET development. "As the .NET platform gains momentum, we see a lot of companies that rely on the IBM iSeries developing .NET Framework-based applications to access their corporate data," Lorenzin says. Pricing for Ritmo for iSeries begins at $249 per Windows client and $1,495 per Windows server.

The Bankers Bank Banks on OS/400 Solution for $1 Billion Growth Plan

The Bankers Bank of Atlanta has selected an OS/400-based core processing system called HORIZON from Fidelity Information Services that it hopes will provide the foundation to help it grow its assets by $1 billion, Fidelity announced last week. As one of the 21 "bankers banks" in the United States chartered specifically to serve the needs of community financial institutions, The Bankers Bank currently has more than $1.9 billion in assets and a customer base of more than 1,100 community financial institutions. "Our vision is to be a $3-plus billion institution by 2008," says Tom Bryan, president and chief executive officer for The Bankers Bank. "We believe that HORIZON has the breadth and depth of functionality--especially as it relates to its robust lending capabilities--we need to fully serve our bankers' needs and to successfully position our organization for this type of growth." The HORIZON Banking System includes general ledger, transaction processing, relationship management, and deposit- and loan-management capabilities. The bank will also use the ACquire document management system and the ALLink middleware solution for interfacing existing ancillary solutions with the HORIZON platform. The Bankers Bank will use HORIZON on an outsourced basis, with the data being processed in Fidelity's data center in Albany, New York. The implementation is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2005.

IBM Partners with Alien for Intelligent RFID Solution

Alien Technology and IBM have teamed up to deliver a new RFID solution based on the Gen2 EPC tag spec required by Wal-Mart and other channel masters. Last week the two technology providers announced a special version of Alien's new ALR-9800 RFID reader--which Alien bills as the first RFID reader designed from the ground up for Gen2 RFID environments--that incorporates IBM's WebSphere RFID Device Infrastructure (WRDI) middleware. WRDI is a client-side Java application that runs on the RFID reader and provides several key functions beyond simple data capture, such as performing RFID data filtering at the point of collection, and acting as an RFID controller for aggregating multiple RFID readers into a logical data collection point for integration with the IBM WebSphere Premises Server. The combination of this WRDI-based version of the ALR-9800, together with IBM's WebSphere RFID Premises Server--a Web services-oriented application that's designed to integrate with ERP and supply chain execution--can provide companies with the capability to read RFID tags in a high-volume environment, and correlate that proximity data into supply chain operations for greater efficiencies, which, after all, is the whole point of RFID in the first place (besides pleasing your channel master, of course). The Alien ALR-9800 Reader with WRDI will be available in production quantities in September.

OnWeb Mobile Streamlines Ordering Process at Spanish Meat Processor

The sales people and customers of Embutidos Estevez, a Spanish processor and distributor of pork and poultry products, are no longer crying foul when it comes to placing and checking orders using the company's iSeries server. Embutidos Estevez had used a tedious process that required sales people to enter orders through the point of sales (POS) systems of their customers. This system left much to be desired, including the capability to place orders in real-time, and customers' ability to check on orders. A solution was found in NetManage's OnWeb Mobile software, which enables the sales force to access the iSeries ordering process from mobile devices. "Our previous ordering process was inefficient and error prone," says Miguel Angel Torres, IT director at the Madrid company. "With NetManage's OnWeb Mobile, we have optimized our ordering process and simplified overall sales transactions by reducing the time required to place an order and increasing the accuracy of our clients' requests." OnWeb Mobile is a customizable solution that enables users to access OS/400, Unix, and mainframe applications from a variety of mobile devices, PDAs, Blackberry devices, cell phones, and other devices through SSL protected HTML and WML data streams.

Music Company Picks Attunity to Help Connect Bricks with Clicks

EMI Music North America had considered writing its own adapter to connect its OS/400-based warehouse management system and logistics applications with its Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 implementation, which forms the hub of its digital content distribution system. But after seeing Attunity's adapter for IBM's venerable midrange server, it decided to buy instead of build, according to Attunity, which announced EMI Music as a customer last week. "We wanted an AS/400 adapter that would work with BizTalk 2004, so we selected Attunity because it also enables us to automatically capture DB2 data changes on the AS/400, which helps us to pass key data to BizTalk," says Len Leach, director of application services for EMI Music North America. "Rather than developing a solution in-house, we were able to integrate and deploy the Attunity solution rapidly. It also gives us a migration path for future BizTalk-AS/400 deployments." Several years ago, EMI Music launched a new digital content distribution system that enables consumers to use the Internet to preview its catalog of more than 6,000 CDs, and then place their order. While that system is based on Microsoft digital rights management technologies and infrastructure products, including Windows Server, SQL Server, and BizTalk Server, its existing infrastructure for moving CDs across the country is largely based on the iSeries server.