• Infor Places Interaction Advisor on Salesforce.com

  January 22, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Infor last week announced that the customer interaction management component of its Epiphany CRM suite, a product called Interaction Advisor, will soon be available on the Salesforce.com platform as software as a service (SaaS) offering. Interaction Advisor is an inbound marketing application that’s designed to allow businesses to predict customer behavior based on their real-time activity and past responses to interactions, while aiming to improve cross-sell opportunities, reduce churn, and bolster the bottom line. The software helps to ensure there’s consistency in the offers and promotions that a company makes to its customers across a variety of IT touch points,

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• JDA Tackles Omni-Channel Challenge with Cloud Offering

  January 22, 2013 Alex Woodie

  JDA Software showed that it’s hip to omni-channel times with the release of Customer Engagement Cloud, a new solution designed to help its traditional retail customers transform themselves into “omni-channel” retailers. In case you missed it, omni-channel was the big buzz word at last week’s National Retail Federation (NRF) conference in New York. The term omni-channel is the next iteration of multi-channel, and refers to the new ways in which retailers are responding to the new ways that consumers are buying stuff. Whereas a multi-channel retailer had to worry about satisfying demand originating from the Web, mail order, phone, and

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• Mainline Buys BI Services Firm

  January 22, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Mainline Information Systems last month acquired Software By Design Inc. (SBDI), a firm that specializes in implementing business intelligence solutions. The acquisition will bolster the Business Analytics group of Mainline, which is one of the largest resellers of IBM Power Systems, mainframes, and System x machines in the country. SBDI has provided business intelligence solutions to customers of all sizes since it was founded in 1999. The company maintains a staff equipped with BI developers and solution architects who are versed in the BI products from IBM (both Cognos and Cognos Express), Oracle‘s SPSS, Microstrategy, and SAP.

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• IBM Taps Ingram Micro, Tech Data To Peddle Power Systems, Storage

  January 21, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is not every week that the Power Systems platform gets big news that is not related to hardware or systems software that has the potential to shake up the competitive position of the Power business, but last week was one of them. We have been telling you about the Power7+ systems and how IBM is looking to better compete against X86 iron. In November, IBM put $4 billion on the table for partner financing to move more iron. And now, Big Blue is tapping Ingram Micro and Tech Data to broaden its channel sales for Power Systems and enterprise

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• Steve Will Keeps His i On The Prize

  January 21, 2013 Dan Burger

  Steve Will was in junior high school when Frank Soltis and a small group of Rochester, Minnesota-based brainiacs were rolling up their sleeves and burning the midnight oil while drawing the blueprints to what would become the Application System/400, the business computer that defined midrange computing. Soltis is an IBM legend–retired but still actively involved in representing IBM and the IBM i-Power Systems platform. Will is considered by many to be a modern day Soltis, but he is having none of it. Replacing a legend is never easy. And it’s not really fair to Will to ask him to carry

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Google Evildoers Filched Funds From My Wallet

  January 21, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  Late last year, Google said its Wallet mobile payment system had completed its larval stage. Google was going to phase out the special debit card used for the launch. The emerging adult Wallet could hold virtual versions of any debit or credit cards the user chose. These cards were wrapped in security and wired into a robust services framework. Wallet looked like another well executed Google launch. But that was before the letters started showing up, the ones talking about a lost or stolen MasterCard the Wallet user had never heard of. The letters came from MetaBank Everywhere Reward Cardholder

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• IBM Doubles Up Rebates On Power Systems Trade-In Deal

  January 21, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I told you so. It is the new year, and as I said in the opening issue of The Four Hundred, IBM would be doing some wheeling and dealing to move Power Systems machinery ahead of the rollout of the rest of the Power7+ systems in 2013. So if you are looking to upgrade a vintage AS/400, iSeries, or System i box, their RS/6000, pSeries, or System p equivalents, or any number of non-IBM server iron, listen up. Because IBM has just doubled up the rebates on its long-running, on-again-off-again, Power Systems Trade-In Program. Actually, if you sift through

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• IBM: I Have Seen the Future And It Works

  January 21, 2013 Dan Burger

  It’s quite a ride from the era of the common man to the era of cognitive systems, but get on board, the Big Blue train is leaving the station. IBM has some fun each year, and creates a little publicity buzz, by mixing budding technologies with market and social trends to whip up what it calls the “IBM Five in Five.” That is, the selection of five innovations made possible by computing and chosen because of their potential to change–within five years–the way humans work and play. According to IBM, we are about to enter the era of cognitive systems.

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• IBM Europe Gives Rebates To Power Resellers Who Push ISV Wares

  January 21, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we report elsewhere in this issue, IBM‘s customers in the United States are being treated to a sweetened trade-in deal if they are buying new Power7 or Power7+ iron and trade-in old Power or non-IBM iron in the process. IBM Europe is taking a slightly different approach in a deal that it announced last week: it will pay Power System resellers an extra rebate it they peddle the boxes with specific software created by third parties. In announcement letter ZA13-1004, which came out on January 15, IBM says that it will pay “business partner solution providers,” perhaps

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• Data Skills Crashes Dice Top Five Hiring Demands

  January 21, 2013 Dan Burger

  The sun has just eased over the horizon of calendar year 2013, but those up-at-the-crack-of-dawn, career-minded folks at Dice are already predicting steady growth in the hiring of tech talent in the first half of the year. Recruiting priorities are essentially unchanged with Java professionals leading the way, but a new skill category has slipped into the top 10. Hiring managers and recruiters say data skills are a hot–and getting hotter–ticket in the job market. Not quite on the radar last year, data wranglers are considered a necessary investment, especially when those talents are tied to communication skills. Just a

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