Wordfast Pro 2.3 for Windows

March 17, 2010 · Filed Under Business Software, Productivity Software, Software News, Utilities and Operating Systems · Comment 

Wordfast officially releases Wordfast Pro 2.3 for Windows, with over 100 new features and improvements that address the needs of corporations, language service providers, and individual translators. Mac and Linux versions will follow shortly.

With over 30,000 licenses in active use, Wordfast is the second most widely used translation memory tool in existence and the world’s leading platform-independent translation-related technology.

Wordfast Pro 2.3 New Features:
– Support for PDF files
– Support for MIF files
– Support for TTX files
– Wordfast Aligner(TM) BETA
– Built-In TM administration module
– Machine Translation integration
– User-Defined segmentation
– MS Office Spellchecker option
– Enhanced Search functionality in source and target languages
– Terminology Search

  • To download Wordfast Pro 2.3: http://www.wordfast.com/store_download.html
  • For more information on how existing Wordfast Classic licensees can receive Wordfast Pro for free: http://www.wordfast.com/support_relicensewfp.html
  • Wordfast also offers a beta version of the world’s most advanced free web-based TM tool, featuring complete privacy and confidentiality:http://www.freetm.com/

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Introducing the Fraud Prevention Suite to combat fraud in international eCommerce

March 9, 2010 · Filed Under Business Software, Internet Software, Security Software, Software News · Comment 

Wirecard AG Presents a Further Development in the Field of Risk Management

Munich-based Wirecard AG introduces the Fraud Prevention Suite, a further development within the scope of its risk management product line. By means of a refined analytics system, fraud patterns automatically identified in the field of electronic online payments processing are now directly included in bodies of rules to combat fraud in international eCommerce.

The Fraud Prevention Suite provides merchants with optimum fraud detection facilities, combined with a simultaneous minimization of the number of transactions erroneously categorized as being suspected of fraud. This is because portfolio data is used to optimize sets of rules by means of integrated simulation functions to assess the relationship between identified cases of fraud to rejected, regular transactions.

Not only are merchants operating with an international reach exposed to fraud attempts more frequently; they also have to contend with a larger variety of fraud patterns than merchants trading within a single country. Particularly as far as credit card processing on a global scale is concerned, the challenge is to be able to identify fraud better and faster and to take preventive steps to counteract fraud.

“Online fraud is becoming increasingly sophisticated internationally,” says Heiner Kallweit, Head of Product Line Risk & Fraud Prevention at Wirecard AG. “On the basis of our many years’ experience, in combination with new software developed we have created a solution which, based on extensive possibilities of analyzing inventory data, identifies online fraud before damage or loss can occur,” adding: “In this context, the behavior patterns differ completely from one industry segment to another, making it necessary for industry-specific parameters of relevance relating to fraud to be included in fraud detection as such. In the case of airlines, for instance, these are the route, method of payment, flight class or advance booking periods. The system even identifies complex patterns to distinguish genuine transactions from fraudulent ones.”

Wirecard AG has adjusted its new Fraud Prevention Suite solution to the requirements of the core industries of eCommerce: consumer goods, airlines/tourism and digital goods.

The range on offer from technology services provider Wirecard comprises individually tailored, industry- and customer-specific payment and risk management systems, ranging from special BSP solutions for airlines, tele-shopping and Internet trading all the way through to PoS terminal solutions in the stationary segment. The services of the online-oriented Wirecard Bank complement and extend the array of products and services for business customers to include credit card acceptance agreements (acquiring), banking services and innovative prepaid card products.

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SAP Business One 8.8 beckons new era of software for small businesses

March 2, 2010 · Filed Under Business Software, Software News · Comment 

New Release of SAP(R) Business One Application Features Enhanced User Interface, Embedded Analytics, Business Network Connectivity

SAP AG announced a new release of the SAP® Business One application that accelerates time-to-value, facilitates business adaptability and increases ease-of-use and affordability based on strong co-innovation with SAP partners for small and midsize companies. With thousands of customers in over 80 countries, SAP Business One is designed to enable small business owners to effectively manage their entire business and future growth. The new 8.8 release of SAP Business One includes new innovations and advancements in the areas of functionality, performance and user experience that will improve customers’ usability and productivity. For example, with embedded analytics from the SAP® Business Objects(TM) portfolio, customers can increase transparency of business operations and improve decision-making. The new release also offers enhanced business network connectivity that enables customers’ to quickly and affordably integrate their business partners in the ecosystems, local subsidiaries or branch offices with headquarters running the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP. The announcement was made at the CeBIT trade fair, being held in Hannover, Germany, March 2-6.

SAP Business One 8.8 has been in ramp-up since August 2009 and is planned to be generally available at the end of April 2010. Already, more than 150 customers are experiencing the benefits of the new release, including C&T Network Systems (Germany), Crayola (Costa Rica), Lifepark (Germany), Glowmac Lighting Pvt. Ltd (India), Interadapt Sistemas (Brazil), Orga-Buro (France), Reynolds Logistics (UK), Schulp Vruchtensappen (Netherlands), Skytek Telecomunicazioni Srl (Italy), Solis Import (Panama), SPM Instruments (USA) and Vet’s Sheet Metal Ltd (Canada).

“We produce optically unusual and very individual bikes, which we sell mainly through 19 online shops with integration to SAP Business One and a network of resellers throughout Europe; a delivery time of 12 days from order to delivery is very important,” said Manuel Ostner, managing director, PG Trade & Sales GmbH. “SAP Business One was known to us as one of the best products for these requirements. Since its introduction, we have all orders and inventory in one single system, so we are informed in time about missing parts and have no loss of production anymore. SAP Business One includes everything we need. We can also process new ideas right away.”

The new SAP Business One release accommodates the continuous demands of the changing market by including an upgrade wizard that is simple and straightforward, reducing customer’s downtime to a minimum. In addition, the new release integrates to partner applications and business services. Based on the flexible business platform of SAP Business One, small businesses can quickly start with core business management applications and add additional capabilities over time with easy-to-consume business applications from SAP partners. In the future, customers will be able to more easily extend their solutions with cloud-based applications, mash-ups and mobile integration.

“Innovative solutions whet the appetite, especially if you get benefits at the same time,” said German Mayr, managing director, Part Business Solutions GmbH. “During a presentation of SAP Business One we already saw the iPhone integration with SAP Business One. This was ultimately the impetus for the switch to the new version. While others may have taken the last days of last year as leisure time, PART used the time to migrate our operations to SAP Business One 8.8. The upgrade went smoothly in a very short time. Meanwhile, not only are our ERP processes running on the new platform, but we have also integrated the archive system. It saves time and money when your software helps drive business decisions — and on top of that, is easy to use.”

Additional enhancements in the latest release of SAP Business One include:

  • Universal code base for 40 countries, supporting different time zones and helping to ensure compliance with standard legal requirements;
  • Data archiving to reduce operational cost in growing businesses;
  • A remote support platform for SAP Business One, with embedded product life-cycle support that assists customers and partners in proactive issue diagnostics and resolution and system reliability;
  • DATEV interface for payroll accounting in Germany;
  • Integration to on-demand Web services such as eShops, based on country availability, to reach out to new market segments.

SAP partners are finding that the new release of SAP Business One is making it easier to service their vast array of clients and allowing solution partners to rapidly extend the core solution to meet unique, industry-specific processes and changing needs. SAP Business One 8.8 is able to accommodate customers’ unique needs, whether for brick and mortar, online operations or hybrid business models that need powerful e-commerce connectivity as well as more traditional business management proficiency. In addition, the solution can be quickly implemented. Among partners participating in the ramp-up were Asecom, Vision33, SAND Technologies Limited, and Navigator Business Solutions. SAP and its partners intend to deliver additional innovations for SAP Business One throughout 2010, such as integrated Web 2.0 capabilities and social networking, mobile integration, extended collaboration and integration of cloud-based applications.

“As a SAP Business One solution partner we drive strong co-innovation with SAP to accelerate product innovation for the benefit of customers,” said Manuel Grenacher, CEO, coresystems ag. “SAP has an extremely flexible, sustainable development platform and quality standards to deliver added-value applications for customers. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow our own business in a volume market.”

“The innovations to SAP Business One stand to revolutionize the way small businesses owners manage their businesses,” said Robert Viehmann, head of SAP Business One development worldwide. “With SAP Business One 8.8, we enter into a new era of business software for small enterprises. Small businesses must become empowered to adapt their business models rapidly with a flexible IT platform that adapts to business changes instantaneously. Today, business software allows company owners and managers to accelerate decision making based on true real time insight. Additionally, business software should be more consumable to provide ease of use for users living in today’s web world.”

Viehmann speaks about the new features within the SAP Business One 8.8 application in the video accessible here. To read how the new release of SAP Business One is making it easier for SAP partners to service their vast array of clients, please see “Addendum: SAP® Business One 8.8 Beckons New Era of Software for Small Businesses.” To see the innovations to SAP Business One 8.8 at CeBIT, visit the SAP SME booth A4 in hall 5; the SAP World Tour in halls 19 and 20; and the OS XP Pavilion. SAP partners at CeBIT will also be exhibiting the new release.

Next Major Event: SAPPHIRE® 2010

SAPPHIRE® 2010, SAP’s premier customer conference and networking event, will be held simultaneously in Orlando, Florida, and Frankfurt, Germany, May 17-19, 2010. This year, SAP will utilize several new, unique, and compelling experiences online and at the events to share SAP insights and innovations, and connect customers and partners around the world. As in past years, SAPPHIRE offers the opportunity to meet top SAP customers, partners and executives for in depth discussions, and to experience the latest solutions being offered for today’s business needs. For more information about the Orlando show, visit www.sapandasug.com; for the Frankfurt event, visit www.sap.com/sapphire/emea.

SAP® Business One is a single solution that integrates the entire business across financials, sales, customer relationships, inventory and operations. It is best-fit for small businesses that have outgrown their accounting-only systems and are looking to streamline business operations with an integrated, on-premise solution. With SAP Business One, small businesses can streamline end-to-end operations, get instant and complete information and accelerate profitable growth. SAP Business One offers over 550 add-on solutions, many industry-specific, that can extend the core functionalities of SAP Business One to meet specific business processes and fast-changing needs. Since 2007 SAP has doubled its SAP Business One customer base. Available in over 80 countries and in 26 different languages, SAP Business One is sold and supported through the extensive network of authorized SAP channel partners, and is trusted by thousands of customers worldwide. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/smallbusiness.

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Microsoft study reveals small and midsize businesses using hosted services have better financial performance

February 4, 2010 · Filed Under Business Software, Internet Software, Productivity Software, Software News · 1 Comment 

Research suggests correlation between IT usage and business growth.

Microsoft released its global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010,(1) which investigates how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) across multiple segments fared during the recession and how they use technology. The research finds that businesses that value IT as an enabler for better business productivity and effectiveness and those that use hosted services performed better fiscally than those that do not.

IT Critical to Revenue Growth

Despite the global recession, more SMBs surveyed in 2010 reported an increase in revenue than in 2008. Those that reported growth view IT as critical to their business success.

– In the past 12 months, 52 percent of SMBs reported an increase in revenue, up from 39 percent in 2008.(2)
– Increasing 20 points since 2008, 55 percent of SMBs view IT as critical to their business.
– Of the SMBs that view IT as critical, 60 percent saw revenues grow over the past 12 months. In contrast, among SMBs that stated IT is not important, less than 29 percent saw revenue increase.(3)

SMBs Moving Toward Cloud Computing

The 2010 index indicates SMBs are beginning to see the benefits of cloud computing; more than 40 percent of the respondents that use hosted or cloud technology reported revenue rises of 30 percent or more compared with 90 percent of respondents not using hosted technology that saw decreases in revenue. The advantages of hosted or cloud technology are viewed as reduced cost and IT management and maintenance, as well as increased business value, productivity and competitiveness.

– Awareness of hosted services is increasing with 65 percent of SMBs using hosted software to some extent, while 73 percent of the remainder have considered it, compared with only 44 percent in the 2008 Index.
– SMBs are beginning to understand the value of “renting” IT as a service — 36 percent said a pay-as-you-go model would be attractive.

Cloud computing has become a watchword for the IT industry as software and services such as e-mail, Web sites and e-commerce are increasingly available in an on-premises, off-premises or hybrid model depending on business need.

“Over the last five years, we have seen nearly 40 percent growth in usage of hosted services,” said Michael Korbacher, director of EMEA Software plus Services in the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “Using pay-as-you-go cloud technologies, small and midsize businesses can now afford and easily have access to enterprise-class, secure services across any platform.”

Correlating Business Performance With Technology Usage

The findings from the research were concluded by analyst firm Freeform Dynamics Ltd., which independently assessed the SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010 to ascertain to what degree IT adoption is driving revenue growth specifically within the SMB community.

The SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010 commissioned by Microsoft researched 3,193 SMBs in a cross section of private industries in 15 countries. Overall, the findings show greater awareness of the benefits of IT among SMBs and a high reliance on IT across all industries and geographies. The findings indicate a clear path toward better financial performance than for those not currently taking advantage of IT advances such as hosted services.

“Our assessment of the report tells us that an increased focus on IT correlates with good performance in all of the size categories surveyed,” said Dale Vile, research director of Freeform Dynamics. “This whole picture corroborates the notion that technology and hosted services can provide tangible business advantage, even for smaller companies, and it’s not surprising to see that investment in IT and hosting goes hand in hand with good financial performance.”

Role of IT Within Business and Revenue Change

It’s critical to our business; we cannot work without it.
– 14.38 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 34.01 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 11.56 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 25.49 percent – No change in revenue
– 14.55 percent – Decrease in revenue

It’s very important for the majority of our activities.
– 8.86 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 28.32 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 8.65 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 40.16 percent – No change in revenue
– 14.01 percent – Decrease in revenue

It’s important but not essential to the running of the business.
– 8.21 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 18.48 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 8.21 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 46.33 percent – No change in revenue
– 18.77 percent – Decrease in revenue

It complements our business but is by no means essential.
– 7.41 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 13.89 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 7.41 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 42.59 percent – No change in revenue
– 28.70 percent – Decrease in revenue

The IT Services Outlined in the Research Are as Follows

E-mail
– 67 percent SMBs have on site
– 29 percent SMBs have hosted
– 4 percent SMBs don’t have


File sharing/collaboration
– 56 percent SMBs have on site
– 23 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have

Backup
– 71 percent SMBs have on site
– 22 percent SMBs have hosted
– 7 percent SMBs don’t have

CRM
– 52 percent SMBs have on site
– 31 percent SMBs have hosted
– 17 percent SMBs don’t have

Webconferencing
– 40 percent SMBs have on site
– 39 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have

Web site
– 49 percent SMBs have on site
– 39 percent SMBs have hosted
– 12 percent SMBs don’t have

Server
– 59 percent SMBs have on site
– 28 percent SMBs have hosted
– 13 percent SMBs don’t have

E-commerce
– 46 percent SMBs have on site
– 33 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have

The Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2010 research report was executed by Vanson Bourne  between November 2009 and January 2010. The research questioned 3,193 small and midsize businesses (up to 500 employees) across 15 countries worldwide: Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

(1) 3,193 SMBs surveyed in France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, U.K., U.S., Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in a cross section of different industries. Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2010 available on request.

(2) Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2008. Available on request.

(3) Table showing correlation between the role of IT within businesses and revenue change

Source: Microsoft Corp.

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IBM delivers Enterprise Secure Mail for Android, iPhone, Nokia Symbian smartphones

January 21, 2010 · Filed Under Business Software, Communications, Internet Software, Security Software, Software News · Comment 

General Motors Goes Mobile with IBM Lotus Collaboration

IBM announced a major expansion of IBM Lotus collaboration software and delivery of enterprise secure mail for Android, the iPhone and Nokia Symbian smartphones.

“We believe IBM has taken a leadership position in providing the broadest mail and collaboration support for mobile devices,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president, messaging and collaboration, IBM.

General Motors (GM) is playing an innovative role in extending mobile collaboration into the automotive industry. Recently, GM’s Chevrolet and OnStar unveiled the auto industry’s first smartphone application that will allow Chevrolet Volt owners 24/7 connectivity and control of vehicle functions and OnStar features remotely. OnStar’s Mobile Application will allow drivers to communicate with their Volt from devices such as the Apple iPhone. It uses a real-time data connection to perform tasks like setting the charge time and unlocking the doors.

“As we reinvent GM, we’re giving our employees the same agility that we give our cars,” said Kirk Gutmann, chief strategy and technology officer of General Motors. “We’re building a workforce that’s mobile, connected and equipped for anything, anytime, anywhere. We have thousands of people on iPhone and BlackBerry® devices tying into their Lotus collaboration tools while in motion, increasing their productivity. The capabilities of Lotus Notes Traveler bring IBM’s enterprise-grade messaging to the iPhone, Symbian and later, Android-based phones, a big plus for those who want one device for their personal and business lives. Downloading the Lotus Notes Traveler Companion app from the Apple App Store is great news, as is getting IBM social software on the BlackBerry.”

As the collaboration leader, IBM is the first to announce plans to expand its enterprise mobile messaging offering in a future release of Lotus Notes Traveler. This will include mail, calendar and contacts support for versions 2.0 and 2.1 of Google’s Android mobile operating system.

Lotus Notes Traveler is no-charge software that can be downloaded by Lotus Notes customers and provides two-way, over-the-air synchronization of information between Lotus Domino data and mobile devices.

In addition, IBM’s new application for the iPhone is called IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Companion, a plug-in to view encrypted mail on the iPhone. Available now in the App Store, the Lotus Notes Traveler Companion download allows Lotus Notes users who synchronize their mail, calendar, contacts and Domino mail via Lotus Notes Traveler to view encrypted mail such as confidential business and personal data on the iPhone. The application requires Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 software.

IBM’s partnership with Nokia has led to a broad spectrum of collaboration capabilities on Nokia’s smartphones including IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, IBM Lotus Mobile Connect, IBM Lotus Sametime and IBM WebSphere Portal, as well as XPages-based applications built with IBM Domino Designer developer software. IBM’s Lotus Connections software also works with Nokia Symbian smartphones, enabling users to collaborate with social networks, update information and access shared files while on the go.

A future version of Lotus Sametime software for the Nokia Symbian smartphone devices is planned to offer users presence awareness and Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony click-to-call capabilities in the native address book on the device. This new Lotus Sametime functionality on Nokia devices is planned for commercial availability by the end of this year.

The Lotus Notes Traveler software also supports Windows Mobile devices.

More than half of the largest global 100 corporations use IBM’s flagship collaboration offerings, Lotus Notes and Domino. These clients include the top aerospace and defense organizations; the top nine automotive firms; the top eight banks; the top four makers of consumer products; the top seven electronics firms; the top eight insurance companies; the top seven pharmaceutical organizations; and the top nine telecommunications carriers.

The Lotus Notes Traveler Companion application is available from the App Store on iPhone or at www.itunes.com/appstore/. For more information for Nokia visit www.nokia.com.

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IBM introduces new software to accelerate workload movement to System z

November 23, 2009 · Filed Under Business Software, Productivity Software, Software News · Comment 

IBM announced 10 new software products to help companies lower application management costs by optimizing the System z mainframe for more workloads, such as data analytics, collaborative application development, application maintenance and other key business processes.

Given System z’s ability to reduce costs through server consolidation, IBM and the industry have aggressively extended the breadth of new workloads for the mainframe via 3,800 z/OS-based and 3,000 Linux-based applications. The unique ability of the mainframe to host many application services on one system has helped System z achieve one of the industry’s lowest application costs per user. Minimal application costs are important for companies which rely on multiple applications to run their business.

The new products span IBM’s software portfolio to provide a range of benefits for System z customers. The benefits include optimal application connectivity, productivity, security and data management.

The new offerings complement IBM’s recent announcement of seven integrated hardware, software and services packages — IBM System z Solution Editions — to help customers deploy new enterprise workloads, such as data warehousing, electronic payments and disaster recovery.

The new products include:
– IMS 11 provides direct SQL access to IMS data from any distributed platform. This simplifies and speeds the process of connecting applications and data, while also enabling easier data replication and change capture processes. Enhanced Java support expands the number of developers available to support IMS applications and business services.

– New products from WebSphere to enhance business process management, connectivity and integration including: WebSphere Process Server for z/OS V7, IBM WebSphere ILOG Business Rule Management Systems, WebSphere MQ for z/OS V7.0.1, WebSphere Message Broker for z/OS V7.0, and IBM Problem Determination Tools V10. These products are designed to help clients discover insights that enable innovation, maximize the value of business interactions, and optimize productivity and resources. For a full list and description of the new WebSphere products visit: www.ibm.com/smartwork/businessagility

To help clients cut application maintenance costs, IBM offers:
– IBM Rational Developer for System z version 7.6 provides a modern GUI development environment, to increase developer productivity and lower the costs associated with maintaining and building multi-platform applications. The new offering helps attract next-generation workers, consolidates multi-language development into a single environment and dramatically reduces CPU usage of up to 50 percent, minimizing budget
expenditures.
– IBM Rational Team Concert for System z version 2.0 uses a new common repository to help teams to work together, share assets, automate processes and deliver software faster. The software expedites response times and cuts costs by consolidating disparate development team infrastructures and automating software development across multiple platforms, which is important for tiered applications.

– An enhanced set of IBM Rational Compilers for C/C++, COBOL and PL/I reduce application MIP requirements, while increasing developer productivity and reducing both capital expense and overall development costs.

To help clients gain better insights about enterprise assets and lower network management costs, IBM offers:

– Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS removes unused and obsolete software and helps determine software usage to plan effectively for the future and to run smarter systems.
– IBM Tivoli NetView for z/OS 5.4 improves network and automation control for data centers and change management. It provides an understanding of how network availability and events impact the business, helping customers deliver smarter, more automated systems.
– IBM Tivoli zSecure provides a mainframe security solution for automated analysis and reporting of mainframe events and compliance dashboards that lower auditing costs helping companies run a smarter more cost effective system.

Telcordia, Sodifrance and HVB Unicredit are among the companies worldwide already benefiting from the long-term economics of the System z platform.

“Telcordia’s data systems are designed to provide consistently high throughput all the time. Each system averages five million transactions per day, supporting an average of 250 gigabytes of active data,” said Paul Gandolfo, a senior technical specialist in application development and performance at Telcordia. “Our customers bet their businesses on the services we provide, and we bet our service performance and reliability on IBM’s Information Management System. Downtime is not an option.”

“Building an agile development team requires a multiplatform approach and Sodifrance uses Rational Developer for System z and Rational Team Concert for System z to help application teams synchronize their efforts and improve collaboration,” said Hugh Smith, project manager of Sodifrance. “Rational on System z offers a powerful and valuable combination for any company that wants to boost its development team’s productivity.”

“Programmers that are using Rational Developer for System z have found that development is more comfortable than with our existing set of development tools,” says Almut Geiger of HVB Unicredit. “Debugging in particular is much faster. Features like syntax checking, content assist, multiple views and error identification make development easier. For example, when there were coding errors before, a developer had to find the correct line number in the code and then try to determine what was wrong with the code. Now they just click on an icon, and they are led directly to the position of the error. It takes people some time to get familiar with a new environment, but when they become familiar with Rational Developer for System z, we are seeing an estimated 15 percent increase in development efficiency and a 10 percent increase in testing efficiency.”

System z, visit http://www.ibm.com/mainframe

System z software, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz

Source: IBM

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IBM announces new software for managing data centers

October 20, 2009 · Filed Under Business Software, Productivity Software, Software News · Comment 

IBM  introduced ground-breaking new software for managing data centers. The new technology has the potential to dramatically cut the cost of operations while speeding the deployment of new applications from weeks to minutes.

The introduction of IBM’s new VMControl product for enterprises, combined with IBM Tivoli software, gives businesses for the first time a single point of control across multiple types of IT systems and virtualization technologies. It spans UNIX/Linux, mainframe, x86 and storage systems and networks.

VMControl helps companies that have turned to virtualization – the creation of multiple virtual servers or storage on a single physical system – to reduce infrastructure costs, but have encountered new struggles as they try to manage enterprises made up of disparate platforms, each with their own virtualization technology.

VMControl allows combinations of physical and virtual IBM servers to be managed as a single entity. This approach – known as system pooling – expands the benefits of virtualization by helping corporate data centers simplify complex management functions and better share and prioritize use of critical resources such as processing power, memory and storage.

Centralizing control of virtualized environments brings new intelligence to data center operations. Companies can manage their vast pools of information and processing resources and parcel them out to applications when and where they’re needed. This breakthrough capability not only increases the overall capacity utilization of the IT infrastructure to lower capital, operational and energy costs, and improves application availability, but gives IT managers the flexibility to adapt to new demands being prompted by the surge of data from internet-connected devices.

VMControl will also accelerate the deployment of new IT delivery models, like cloud computing, which allows information and processing resources to be tapped from afar.

“IBM has provided Winn-Dixie with many innovative solutions to help us increase productivity, maximize our resources and save money for more than 15 years,” said Charlie Weston, Group Vice President, Information Technology for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based grocer. “We are extremely confident that the launch of the VMControl product will be equally as successful for IBM’s customers.”

The new product, together with IBM Tivoli software, helps companies address and improve service and reduce cost and risk. IBM today announced a new version of Tivoli Provisioning Manager that provides enhanced automation of the manual tasks of provisioning and configuring servers, operating systems, middleware, software applications, storage and network devices.

Whether businesses are moving to the cloud or looking to deliver IT within the data center as cloud services, the sheer scale and velocity of data growth as well as the now-permanent reality of having to do more with less make VMControl essential for data centers. The combination of VMControl and Tivoli offers several benefits, such as:

Faster response to business needs: A reduction in the skills, tools and tasks required to deploy new workloads. With VMControl, companies can offer rapid deployments of new workloads (from weeks to minutes) while maintaining control over IT resources. Businesses can adapt to changing business needs and support new and diverse types of workloads in accordance with service-level agreements.

More efficient use of resources: To configure, operate and monitor physical and virtualized resources across multiple IBM hardware platforms would otherwise require as many as dozens of different management techniques. Buying, building and maintaining disparate management tools take up significant portions of IT budgets. VMControl reduces the management tools to one, cutting costs of operations.

Awareness, consistency and predictability of operations: Business can monitor, maintain and adjust the service levels required by each computing workload handled by the pool of IT resources. It also can help predict and react to system problems. By moving workloads away from failing systems, VMControl can ensure workloads maintain application availability and avoid unplanned down time.

Enabling Smarter Systems: VMControl’s ability to dynamically move workloads and make adjustments allow IBM systems to be more effectively utilized, use less power and cooling and provide a much more resilient infrastructure.

The new product — IBM® Systems Director VMControl(TM) Enterprise Edition — supports IBM’s PowerVM and z/VM as well as x86 virtualization technologies such as VMWare, Hyper-V and open x86 virtualization solutions. VMControl Enterprise Edition will be available on IBM Power Systems running AIX in December, 2009. Additional support for other platforms is planned for next year as part of a dynamic infrastructure.

For more information: http://www.ibm.com/dynamicinfrastructure

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Teradata Enterprise Analytics Cloud extends architectural flexibility and business agility

October 19, 2009 · Filed Under Business Software, Internet Software, Productivity Software, Software News · Comment 

First public and private Cloud Computing offer for rapid analytics

Teradata Corporation, the world’s largest company solely focused on data warehousing and enterprise analytics, announced that the Teradata Enterprise Analytics Cloud(TM) provides Teradata customers architectural flexibility, which enables them to meet their expanding analytic needs by leveraging cloud computing technologies. Initial offerings include the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud, Teradata Express on Amazon EC2, and Teradata Express for VMware Player.

For the business user, public and private clouds provide flexible, self service for the rapid building of short term analytic data marts, allowing users to pay only for the computing power actually used. More importantly, these cloud solutions offer business users and developers another means of improving decision making with agility and speed.

Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud

The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud, Teradata’s entry into private Cloud Computing, is a unique set of products, capabilities and services designed to enable agile analytics in a Teradata private cloud environment. This allows for rapid development and sandbox-style analytics. Business users can create data marts inside their Teradata system within minutes. This eliminates the need to build separate, costly physical data marts, because the production data can be accessed directly, without data movement or duplication. Built on the proven Teradata Database and platforms, the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud combines advanced workload management, the new Teradata Elastic Mart Builder tool, and a services methodology to enable business users to rapidly exploit data marts inside their Teradata System. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is a Teradata Viewpoint self-service portlet that makes it easy to create data marts for application development. It is flexible and allows external data to be combined with existing data facilitating the discovery of new insights. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is being released as a free tool to be deployed through Teradata Developer Exchange. Teradata Active System Management, the company’s flagship workload management product, is a key enabler because it optimizes priorities between experimental analytics and production workloads.

The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud allows the business user to rapidly analyze data and respond to market opportunities with speed and confidence. This solution helps chief information officers control data mart proliferation, reduce costs for software licenses and servers, and lower training and labor costs.

“Many IT organizations are under-resourced and under tremendous pressure to cut costs, driving some business users to create their own ’shadow IT’ organizations to meet their needs,” said Scott Gnau, chief developer officer, Teradata Corporation. “These shadow IT groups create conflict between the business users and IT groups. The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud helps to eliminate the conflicts and brings business and IT together, saving money and enriching their analytical insights.”

Teradata Express Cloud Offerings

The two new Teradata Express cloud offerings are built on Teradata Express, which is a free, non-production version of Teradata Database software intended for developers and evaluation scenarios. The cloud versions of Teradata Express support up to one terabyte of data and are powered by Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Teradata Express on Amazon EC2

Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 is available on the flexible Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). This prepackaged edition is a free developer version of the Teradata Database for use in the scalable, robust Amazon EC2 environment. Customers can quickly launch Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 and begin their collaborative work from any location in the world. Customers benefit from the easy self-service, flexible configurations, and the cost effective Amazon Web Services infrastructure, resulting in faster time to value and the quicker completion of projects.

Teradata Express for VMware Player

Teradata Express for VMware Player delivers a fully configured Teradata Database bundled for private cloud analytics. Once VMware software is installed, the Teradata Database can be loaded in minutes, taking advantage of the many features of VMware. For the Teradata Database, VMware is an important stepping stone towards delivering internal private clouds for developers and information technology operations managers. The value for customers will be the easy creation of Teradata test and development environments with a significant reduction in capital costs from server consolidation.

According to Gnau, “Teradata is all about choice that no other vendor can offer. Teradata’s advocated architecture is an integrated data warehouse, but we offer the flexibility for customers to leverage the power of Teradata in any architecture they chose to meet their business need. Our entry into loud Cloud Computing is one alternative and an extension to our Platform Family, which positions ‘Teradata for all your analytical needs.’”

Teradata is the only vendor to offer a broad family of platforms with price and performance that spans the unique business and analytical data warehouse needs of companies, making Teradata suitable to be everywhere in the enterprise. The family is supported by the high performance and dependable Teradata 13 Database, the most significant and technically advanced database for analytics.

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IBM launches new Storage Cloud Solution for the enterprise

October 7, 2009 · Filed Under Business Software, Internet Software, Productivity Software, Software News · Comment 

Offers Highest Performance, Scalability and Full Standards Support in a Private Cloud Model

At its Information Infrastructure Analyst Summit IBM announced its intention to enter the cloud storage space with the launch of the IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud, IBM Information Archive and new consulting services.

Traditional storage cloud solutions have piqued the interest of many enterprise clients for their very low price points, but these systems have mostly been limited to ’sandbox’ use cases for secondary or tertiary copies of data or for use in development and test environments in which data does not have to be frequently accessed and does not tend to grow into large scales.

The IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud is a private cloud offering that utilizes low cost components in a true scale-out clustered model not offered by its competition. Hallmarks of the solution include support for multiple petabytes of capacity, billions of files, and scale-out performance previously limited to the largest ‘high performance computing’ systems.

Industry-leading technologies like IBM’s General Parallel File System have been combined with the latest advances in storage, virtualization and server technologies like XIV and BladeCenter to provide performance and scalability all under one globally addressable namespace. The solution is highly secure and built to make use of a client’s existing security and authentication infrastructure. In addition to this, IBM offers tightly coupled services for implementation support and an optional ongoing lightweight managed service to help clients manage their cloud environment on an ongoing basis.

Many clients have also expressed concern about vendor lock-in with currently available cloud solutions, especially for data storage where migration costs into and out of the cloud can be costly. IBM has paid careful attention to these concerns and is offering full support for standard file access protocols so that moving data into and out of their storage cloud is as simple as a file copy operation.

Kantana Animation Studios Co., Ltd, one of the leading entertainment companies in Thailand, found that its animation processes were putting increasingly heavy demands on its data storage infrastructure. “Katana has greatly benefited from IBM’s storage services – our animators are now able to gain access to team projects faster and easier,” said Auchara Kijkanjanas, Managing Director of Kantana Animation Studios Co., Ltd. “We also benefit from greatly reduced operational costs and better business flexibility and productivity, critical drivers in a competitive and growing industry.”

IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud is the first of IBM’s cloud-based storage solution, built to be implemented either on the client premise or as part of its strategic outsourcing capabilities. The company will continue to build out this area of the portfolio, including a business-grade public cloud for storage, which will be offered with flexible consumption models and a self-service user interface to fully abstract the technology from the end user.

For clients looking for a single unified platform for information retention, IBM is announcing a new Smart Business System called IBM Information Archive. This integrated hardware and software solution helps organizations address their complete information retention needs, including business, legal and regulatory, and enables organizations to leverage different tiers of storage, including disk and tape, with policy-based management that automatically moves less active information to more cost-effective storage systems. Using a customizable “collections-based” approach, the archived data can be accessed in a private cloud computing environment, even if it’s stored on tape media. This capability is critical as an increasing amount of data is expected to exist in archived formats.

With key contributions from IBM Research, IBM Information Archive addresses one of the key promises of cloud computing; to provide seamless access to information, including archived data, no matter where it resides.

In addition, IBM Global Business Services is adding three new cloud consulting offerings to its business and IT consulting portfolio. These new offerings provide flexible entry points based on client needs, and are priced and delivered for near-term ROI. They are designed to help clients who are looking for an end-to-end cloud business-based IT strategy or to help clients select the right cloud delivery model for their business.

– Strategy and Change Services for Cloud Adoption – IBM consultants can help firms determine how to get started with cloud adoption by quickly identifying priority business areas; acknowledging key gaps in processes, technology, organization and governance; and evaluating the range of new cloud-based delivery models in order to develop a roadmap for piloting cloud.
– IBM Strategy and Change Services for Cloud Providers - For firms looking to enter the cloud provider market, IBM can help define an in-depth roadmap that treats cloud as a new operating model rather than just a method of IT delivery — an essential step in business model evolution.
– IBM Testing Services for Cloud – IBM can also help companies build a business case that quantifies the cost, schedule and quality improvements associated with pursing a cloud application test environment. This can help reduce capital expenses by provisioning test servers on demand, decreasing the cost of test setup and tear-down and associated defects, while shortening overall cycle time.

In June of this year IBM unveiled its cross-company strategy to capture the enterprise cloud computing market, helping clients attack rising costs and complexity by workload. Since then many products and services from the portfolio have entered the market, including Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud, which began its public beta on October 1, 2009.

The company will continue to offer clients more cloud consumption and delivery options to balance the advantages of the cloud model (massive scalability at low and flexible costs with little capital expense) with the need for service levels that are enterprise grade; meaning secure, governable, reliable and address operational expense to lower costs over time.

For more about IBM’s cloud computing efforts, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud

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Microsoft unveils Microsoft Project 2010

September 17, 2009 · Filed Under Business Software, Software News · Comment 

Part of the next wave of Office-related products, Microsoft Project 2010 helps customers reduce costs, improve efficiency, and simplify project and portfolio management.

Microsoft Corp. announced that the public beta of Microsoft Project 2010 will become available later this year, and revealed the product’s enhanced project and portfolio management features for the first time. Microsoft also disclosed packaging information that streamlines the number of Microsoft Project editions from four to three. Starting today, customers can pre-register for the Microsoft Project 2010 beta at http://www.microsoft.com/project/2010.

“Microsoft Project 2010 is the most significant release of Microsoft Project in over a decade,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. “The fresh, simple and intuitive features of Microsoft Project 2010 will enable teams and organizations of all sizes to select and deliver the right projects on time and on budget.”

Microsoft Project 2010 builds on the Microsoft Office Project 2007 foundation with flexible work management solutions and the right collaboration tools for occasional and professional project managers, and includes a pathway to more advanced project and portfolio management capabilities as business needs evolve.

The release of Microsoft Project 2010 comes at a time when the industry is gaining steam. According to IDC, the project and portfolio management market will see growth as companies will rely on project and portfolio management tools to analyze their current and future project performance.*

Microsoft Project 2010 helps organizations reduce costs by enabling smarter and more informed decisions about budgeting and resource allocation. Through a dramatically enhanced user experience, Microsoft Project 2010 also drives team productivity with integration across familiar Microsoft technologies including Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. This integration allows a powerful business collaboration platform and proven project and portfolio management to result in a familiar, connected environment for customers to manage the simplest or the most complex projects.

Microsoft will release three editions of Microsoft Project: Microsoft Project Standard 2010, Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010. Key enhancements designed to appeal to both IT administrators and end users include these:

– Unified project and portfolio management with a common user interface and experience across the project life cycle; improved workflow controls that can be customized; better demand management to capture all types of work requests across an organization; and powerful reporting and business intelligence capabilities
– Improved productivity with effective collaboration built on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010; enhanced collaboration and reporting; integration with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010; and simplified time reporting
– Enhanced user experience and adoption with the familiar Microsoft Office Fluent user interface and new intuitive design; user-controlled scheduling for greater flexibility when creating simple or detailed project plans; the addition of a new timeline view for sequential overview of project schedules; and new Web-based project editing
– A scalable and connected platform with integration across related Microsoft technologies for connected and familiar work management on the PC, mobile phone and browser; better interoperability with third-party systems from updates to the Project Server Interface; 64-bit compatibility for performance improvement; and removal of ActiveX dependency for improved security and ease of deployment across an organization

Microsoft Project 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products, which includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010, and is designed to give people a consistent experience across devices, making it easier to create and edit documents and collaborate from any location.

Availability

All Microsoft Project Conference registered attendees will receive a free licensed copy of Microsoft Project Professional 2010 after launch; more information is available at http://www.keystoneondemand.com/tour/content/microsoft_project_2010_training. Microsoft Project 2010 will be available in the first half of 2010. More information about Microsoft Project 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/project.

* Source: IDC: “Worldwide Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Applications 2009-2013 Forecast: PPM Remains a Profitability Engine in Recession,” Doc # 219381, August 2009

Source: Microsoft Corp.

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