• Info Builders Prophesizes World Series Winner with Predictive Analytics

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to making predictions, there are as many techniques as there are people. Some may involve a twig, a piece of string, and a really strong hunch, while others use giant supercomputers and trillions of bytes of data. One company trying to democratize the data-driven approach is i OS business intelligence software vendor Information Builders, which recently crunched baseball statistics to come up with the most probable winner of the World Series. Hint: the winner’s initials start with “LA,” not “NY.” Unlike any other sport, baseball is a game deeply rooted in statistics. More than one hundred

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• Oracle Encourages JD Edwards Customers to Hang Tight

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Ever since Oracle obtained JD Edwards several years ago, some JD Edwards customers have been skeptical about Oracle’s commitment to the products, its commitment to customers, and its business application roadmap. Last week at the Oracle OpenWorld 09 conference in San Francisco, the software giant did its best to turn the skeptics into believers when it committed to supporting JD Edwards products for a decade, and promised to deliver the next-generation Fusion applications next year. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is not normally known for being the touchy-feely type. His hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in 2004 was both brutal and personal,

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• HiT Adds Traceability to Data Transformation Software

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  HiT Software last week launched a new version of its data transformation software, Allora, that should help organizations in highly regulated industries keep better track of their data. Customers also gain new scripting capabilities and more automated management of data transformations with Allora version 6. HiT Software bills Allora as a data transformation product with a special aptitude for XML. With its capability to generate XML from any database, and, in turn, write XML element and attribute values back into any database, the product eliminates the need to hire or train an XML guru to do hand coding for data

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• AquaFold Makes It Easier to Reverse Engineer and Migrate Databases

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  People normally take the term “database replication” to mean that data is being replicated from one database to another. But as the result of new entity relationship modeling and reverse engineering capabilities that AquaFold recently rolled out with Aqua Data Studio version 8.0, database replication can also mean replicating the entire structure of one’s database to another database management systems, which the company says will make it easier than ever for users to migrate from, say, Oracle or SQL Server to DB2/400 or MySQL. Aqua Data Studio is a $399 utility that allows developers, administrators, and analysts to visualize, maintain,

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• Computer Guidance Lands First Hosted Customer for Construction App

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Computer Guidance has landed its first customer for the application hosting service it announced in May. Republic Investment Services, a real estate management company based in Arizona, selected the hosted i OS software due to the promise of a quick implementation with low upfront IT costs and the capability to scale usage as needed. Computer Guidance partnered with IBM server distributor and fellow Arizona company Avnet in the roll-out of its eCMS hosting service earlier this year. As part of the deal, Tempe-based Avnet supplies the data center and System i hardware, while Scottsdale-based Computer Guidance provides the IT

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• Big Rig Dealer Streamlines Payments with ACOM Software

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Worldwide Equipment, a big rig dealer with more than 30 locations, expects to save a lot of money and time as the result of a new payment system it implemented with the help of ACOM Solutions. The company used several ACOM offerings, including EZPayManager and the new iBridge spool file conversion tool, in the roll-out of the ACH payment network and check-printing system. Worldwide Equipment sells, leases, and services medium- and heavy-duty trucks and trailers from manufacturers like Mack, Volvo, Kenworth, GMC, Hino, and Benson. The company, which is based in Prestonburg, Kentucky, operates 32 locations through five states

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• Kronos Acquires Time and Attendance Software from Paychex

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Human capital management software vendor Kronos last week announced it has acquired the assets of Stromberg, a developer of time and attendance software and related products that was bought by Paychex in 2004. The acquisition is expected to boost Kronos’ position in the market for time and attendance software for small and mid size businesses. Stromberg has been developing time and attendance software since it was founded in Florida in 1989. After selling its Windows-based Time In a Box time and attendance package to Paychex in 2003, the payroll and human resources giant decided to buy the whole Stromberg outfit

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• IBM Dynamic Infrastructure Announcements Due October 20

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The details are not clear, but it looks like IBM is getting ready for another slew of server, storage, and systems software announcements on October 20, all being done under the Dynamic Infrastructure umbrella that Big Blue has been using since last year. According to this note on Arrow Electronics‘s Enterprise Computing Systems site, “IBM will introduce expanded capabilities to help organizations move toward a more dynamic infrastructure–with emphasis on new workload-optimized systems, new service management capabilities, and new Information Infrastructure offerings that enable clients to reduce costs and drive information-led transformation.” On IBM’s own educational site, there is

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• Steady as She Goes for IBM’s Third Quarter

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If there is an economic meltdown, the top brass at IBM seem to be relatively unaffected by it, at least based on its increasingly profitable financial situation. Last Thursday, Big Blue reported that once again its revenues had dropped compared to the prior year, but thanks to cost cutting it was not only able to report very good profit growth but also is raising its profit guidance for 2009 for the third time. In the third quarter, IBM’s total revenues were $23.6 billion, down 6.9 percent compared to the year-ago period. Gross profits were down 3 percent to $10.6 billion,

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• IBM i Access to Support Windows 7 on December 1

  October 19, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM will support its IBM i Access (formerly iSeries Access) suite of products on the new Windows 7 operating system starting December 1, company officials said. On that date, IBM plans to have a service pack available for download that allows the version of i Access that shipped with i 6.1 to run on Windows 7, although AFP drivers will take a little longer to support. Customers running older versions of the i client will be encouraged to upgrade to i Access 6.1. Microsoft is set to formally launch Windows 7 this Thursday, October 22. As is the case with

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