Alex Woodie
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The Science and Art of Price Optimization
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreAs a retailer, you strive to get top dollar for every item. But you also realize that setting the price too high will cut into sales. Finding that happy medium can be a difficult experience, fraught with false starts, lost profits, and alienated customers. For price optimization service provider Revionics, which just signed a prominent IBM i-based multi-channel retailer to a contract, finding that perfect price involves a lot of science–and a little bit of art, too.
You’d think it would be fairly easy to set the correct price for a given item. Potato chips, for example, ship from
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Oracle Dives into Health and Safety at JDE Summit
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThe JD Edwards partner ecosystem convened last week in Broomfield, Colorado, for the fourth annual JD Edwards Summit. Oracle used the gathering to launch new software for EnterpriseOne, including a new Health and Safety Incident Management module for tracking incidents, and a related reporting tool for complying with government mandates. Big Red also announced that One View, the EnterpriseOne reporting tool launched last year, will be available to customers running version 9.0, in addition to the current 9.1 release.
The new Health and Safety Incident Management application is a component of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne version 9.1, which Oracle announced last
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Kawasaki Saves a Bundle with LANSA-Based eKanban System
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThe American consumer products division of Kawasaki is saving $3,500 per day as a result of its new electronic Kanban (eKanban) system that combines IBM i and iPad technology. The manufacturing system replaces a traditional card-based Kanban system, and was developed using the LongRange mobile development tool from LANSA, according to a new case study posted to the software company’s website.
The consumer products division of Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. U.S.A. (KMM) manufacturers a range of products in its Lincoln, Nebraska, facility, including ATVs, Jet Skis, recreational utility vehicles, and wheels. The company has been a LANSA customer for
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Cloud and SaaS ERP Surges, Along with Tier II Providers, Panorama Says
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreWe are constantly bombarded with hype about the cloud and software as a service (SaaS) business model, but all too often, the data backing up the tall claims is slim. But according to a recent study by Panorama Consulting Solutions, the market share of cloud- and SaaS-based ERP systems grew from 6 percent in 2011 to 18 percent in 2012, which spells trouble for traditional, tier-one ERP providers.
Panorama is an ERP consulting company that does market research, training, and conferences as well. The Denver, Colorado-based company was founded in 2005, and has been putting out its annual ERP
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VAULT400 Called On to Protect Distributor
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreBerjé, a New Jersey-based distributor of aromatic chemicals, has selected United Computer Group‘s online backup solution, VAULT400, to protect the data residing in its IBM i ERP and WMS systems, UCG announced last week.
Berjé is a global distributor of essential oils and aromatic chemicals to companies in the food, fragrance, and pharmaceutical industries. The company maintains more than 3,000 items in inventory in three distribution centers, located in New Jersey, Illinois, and California.
In support of Berjé’s unique business are IBM i applications from VAI, including a manufacturing-focused ERP system installed in 1997 and a WMS package
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ACOM and Bally Hook Up to Automate Casino Environments
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreDocument management software provider ACOM Solutions and Bally Technologies, a developer of slot machines and casino management systems, have partnered to provide ACOM’s automation solutions to Bally’s IBM i customer base in the gaming industry.
Bally’s ACSC is used by many of the world’s largest casinos to automate their gaming activities. The IBM i-based solution includes modules, such as Slot Management System (SMS) and Casino Management System (CMS), which are critical for tracking play and integrating with hotel and lodging systems, also running on IBM i.
As a result of the partnership, ACOM’s form and document management systems will
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QualiTest to Provide QA Test Services for Magic xpa Customers
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreSpeed has always been an essential element of Magic Software‘s development tools. With its metadata-driven development and runtime framework, called xpa, Magic enables customers to quickly roll out modern, multi-channel business apps that run on a variety of servers, including IBM i. Thanks to its new partnership with QualiTest, Magic customers won’t have to short cut QA in their quest for application awesomeness.
QualiTest bills itself as the second largest independent provider of application testing and quality assurance (QA) services. Its focus is not making and selling testing software, but providing testing services, which are carried out by
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Quantum Launches ‘Pay As You Grow’ Dedupe Boxes
February 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreQuantum last week launched the DXi6800, a new deduplication appliance designed to allow customers to start small and gradually grow their investment over time.
The new DXi6800 scales from 13 TB to 156 TB of storage, which Quantum says gives the device three times the scalability of comparable products from Data Domain, the market leader in data de-duplication.
Quantum also claims that its DXi6800 line, which uses 3 TB drives that are self-encrypting, consumes half the power and data center floor space as the Data Domain boxes. For example, a DXi6802 equipped with 3 PB of storage capacity requires
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The IT Revolution May Be Over, But It’s Still A Jungle
February 4, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreA JPMorgan Chase analyst recently made headlines with a paper that noted the price of computer equipment and software is decreasing at the slowest rate in a generation, which is interpreted to reflect a notable downturn in IT industry innovation. With the heyday of rapid IT innovation and easy productivity gains behind us, the question now becomes: What drivers will emerge to shape the $4 trillion information economy?
JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael Feroli made interesting observations in his two-page paper US: is IT over?, which starts on page 13 of JPMorgan Chase’s recent Global Data Watch economic research
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AIX Service Provider Starts Up An IBM i Practice
February 4, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreFor 17 years, Evolving Solutions has met the AIX and System x needs of its customers in the Upper Midwest. Many of its customers also ran IBM i gear, but Evolving didn’t have the expertise to help them. However, with the recent hire of a former IBMer out of the Rochester, Minnesota, lab, Evolving has seen the light and begun an IBM i practice.
Evolving Solutions is a full service IT provider based in Hamel, Minnesota, that caters to the needs of mid-size and large companies ($500 million to $5 billion) in the five-state region. Areas of expertise include high