Birst Inc., a leading provider of on-demand solutions for business intelligence (BI) and analytics, recently announced the availability of Birst 4 Spring Release. Birst 4 Spring Release is the latest update to Birst 4, a comprehensive business intelligence solution that features rapid deployment and high ROI. The new features made available in the Birst 4 Spring Release include more powerful, interactive dashboards for business users, the introduction of geographic mapping with Birst Maps, and new connectors for Hyperion Essbase and Microsoft Analysis Services cubes.
"The Spring Release showcases some very powerful new features that not only empower business users with unprecedented self-service capabilities, but also make it easier for IT to deliver business visualization of critical business data. These new capabilities further demonstrate why Birst is the leader in on-demand business intelligence and analytics," said Stefan Schmitz, Senior Director of Products at Birst.
New and Improved Dashboards and Business Visualization
* BI for Everyone with Improved Interactive Dashboards - new Interactive Dashboard capabilities empower business users to conduct drill-down ad-hoc reporting and analysis from within the dashboard view -- making it even easier to explore key data and make critical business decisions, without ever having to leave the dashboard.
* One Step Further in Business Visualization with Birst Maps - the power of Birst analysis can now be visually mapped to where companies do business. Triggers can be set so that regions crossing critical limits are automatically highlighted with color; business managers can see the status of their region with one glance. With the click of a mouse, users can also drill down into specific geographic areas for detailed information.
* New Connectors for Hyperion Essbase and Microsoft Analysis Services - Birst 4 Spring enables full querying of cube data via XMLA connectors. Using Birst's data federation capabilities, cube-based data sources can be combined with other data sources, either on premise or loaded into Birst, for new types of analysis.
* "The Birst 4 Spring Release takes a great solution and makes it even better for the business user," said Rick Clements, President of Spartan Technologies, a Birst partner. "No other business intelligence solution, either traditional or on-demand, comes close to Birst's easy to use and powerful self-service capabilities. Our customers are really looking forward to this release."
http://www.birst.com/
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Phocas Launches New Microsoft Dynamics Reseller Program
US partners to benefit from GP2010-ready BI software to deliver additional revenue streams
Microsoft Convergence, Atlanta, USA April 27, 2010: Phocas, the global provider of simple, intuitive Business Intelligence software (BI), today launched its first channel program for the North American market, aimed at Microsoft Dynamics resellers.
“Because Phocas is built on Microsoft technologies including SQL and .NET resellers can expect to make the same margins as they do with their existing Microsoft Dynamics solutions,” said Phil Dodds, director, Phocas. “With these sales margins and the validation of our recent Microsoft Gold Certification, we expect to add at least 50 new resellers through our channel program over the next 18 months.”
The new program, which has already seen great success in Australia since its launch in Q4 2009, will offer a secure online portal for resellers. This will include access to a comprehensive suite of product information, training material and technical and marketing collateral that enables them to integrate Phocas as part of their Microsoft Dynamics range. Phocas is also set to announce a similar program for the UK and European markets in the near future.
Over 600 companies and 5000 users worldwide are using Phocas BI solutions, spanning a wide range of vertical markets including manufacturing, electrical, automotive, plumbing, building, industrial and medical.
Phocas’ BI solution is a direct add-on to the Microsoft Dynamics platform, enabling resellers to cross-sell to existing customers already using Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV and CRM, or to deliver additional value with the latest edition of Microsoft Dynamics’ ERP release - GP2010.
A framework that is customizable to suit business needs, Phocas enables business users to easily access and analyze real-time data across the suite of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. Microsoft Dynamics Resellers therefore have the opportunity to make fast returns by providing their customer base with a solution to delivers immediate ROI and enables them to make future business decisions that improve profitability and performance.
Dodds commented: “The launch of the Microsoft Dynamics Program in the US market represents an exciting step forward for Phocas in the US, complementing our existing direct sales model in the region.”
Phocas is exhibiting at Microsoft Convergence 2010, April 24-27, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, booth 1044.
About Phocas
Phocas is simple, intuitive business intelligence software that unleashes companies business potential. A framework that is customizable to suit business needs, Phocas reveals opportunities that deliver immediate impact and helps companies make future business decisions that improve profitability and performance.
Phocas delivers simplicity and usability to a complex data landscape, created by existing ERP and CRM systems. Whereas traditional Business Intelligence and software tools focus on turning data into information, Phocas has been specially designed to help business users turn information into results.
For more information, please visit www.phocas.biz.
Editorial contact:
Chris Martin
Waggener Edstrom
+44 (0)20 7632 3857
Microsoft Convergence, Atlanta, USA April 27, 2010: Phocas, the global provider of simple, intuitive Business Intelligence software (BI), today launched its first channel program for the North American market, aimed at Microsoft Dynamics resellers.
“Because Phocas is built on Microsoft technologies including SQL and .NET resellers can expect to make the same margins as they do with their existing Microsoft Dynamics solutions,” said Phil Dodds, director, Phocas. “With these sales margins and the validation of our recent Microsoft Gold Certification, we expect to add at least 50 new resellers through our channel program over the next 18 months.”
The new program, which has already seen great success in Australia since its launch in Q4 2009, will offer a secure online portal for resellers. This will include access to a comprehensive suite of product information, training material and technical and marketing collateral that enables them to integrate Phocas as part of their Microsoft Dynamics range. Phocas is also set to announce a similar program for the UK and European markets in the near future.
Over 600 companies and 5000 users worldwide are using Phocas BI solutions, spanning a wide range of vertical markets including manufacturing, electrical, automotive, plumbing, building, industrial and medical.
Phocas’ BI solution is a direct add-on to the Microsoft Dynamics platform, enabling resellers to cross-sell to existing customers already using Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV and CRM, or to deliver additional value with the latest edition of Microsoft Dynamics’ ERP release - GP2010.
A framework that is customizable to suit business needs, Phocas enables business users to easily access and analyze real-time data across the suite of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. Microsoft Dynamics Resellers therefore have the opportunity to make fast returns by providing their customer base with a solution to delivers immediate ROI and enables them to make future business decisions that improve profitability and performance.
Dodds commented: “The launch of the Microsoft Dynamics Program in the US market represents an exciting step forward for Phocas in the US, complementing our existing direct sales model in the region.”
Phocas is exhibiting at Microsoft Convergence 2010, April 24-27, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, booth 1044.
About Phocas
Phocas is simple, intuitive business intelligence software that unleashes companies business potential. A framework that is customizable to suit business needs, Phocas reveals opportunities that deliver immediate impact and helps companies make future business decisions that improve profitability and performance.
Phocas delivers simplicity and usability to a complex data landscape, created by existing ERP and CRM systems. Whereas traditional Business Intelligence and software tools focus on turning data into information, Phocas has been specially designed to help business users turn information into results.
For more information, please visit www.phocas.biz.
Editorial contact:
Chris Martin
Waggener Edstrom
+44 (0)20 7632 3857
Monday, April 26, 2010
Florida State U Transforms Reporting with Business Intelligence
By Dian Schaffhauser
Michael Barrett came to Florida State University in 2003 to manage a conversion to a new enterprise resource planning suite that was being implemented as a joint project among Financial Operations, Human Resources, and ITS. The university's move off of IBM's DB2 and onto Oracle's PeopleSoft software was driven by a 2002 Florida state constitutional amendment that mandated creation of a statewide board of governors responsible for the university system. Suddenly the state universities had to get off state-run systems that handled processing for finance and HR operations. The Tallahassee-based institution, with 40,000 students, is now running PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 as the replacement platform.
Online Management of Networked Information, or OMNI, the university's name for its ERP system, consists of an enterprise portal, financials, HR and payroll, and enterprise performance management. That word, "online," is revealing. Beginning in March 2008 Florida State has been in a continuing process to move off of third-party BI vendor and legacy tools for reporting and to open up its data systems to 1,500 active users on campus through several analytics tools provided in Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (OBIEE). These include a query system; dashboards; Microsoft Office-integrated analytics; and "ibots," e-mail alerts sent when specific user-set conditions in the data occur.
The university estimated that it has saved $360,000 in license and maintenance fees as well as infrastructure and administrative support costs. Recently, Barrett--now the university's CIO and associate vice president for IT Services--discussed the business analytics aspects of the project he's been involved with for the last seven years.
Prior to that we were in a typical IT report shop mentality, where people would line up wanting reports, which we would deliver to them six months or a year later, depending on the workload and availability of resources. People couldn't be dynamic about the things they wanted. They had to think about them way in advance.
With business intelligence, a lot of offices go off and do their own reports. If it's not terribly complex, they can get some assistance from us, but they can turn things around in a day or two in a lot of cases. Before, it might have taken them months.
Schaffhauser: Had dashboards been in use at the campus before they were introduced with this latest initiative?
Barrett: Not really. It evolved from printed reports, of course--delivered printed reports. Then with the use of computers, it became more: Run your report and print it from there. We just distributed the printing functions out to the individuals who needed it. Then it became online viewing of reports with more flexible parameters with the ability to put in a search function and get a specific report so you didn't have to print out everything. But dashboards weren't really there. We didn't have software that provided them.
And I have to tell you, when we first started the project, a lot of people thought about it as reporting. We actually talked about it as a reporting tool, not a business intelligence tool, because the culture wasn't really ready to even think about what business intelligence meant and what the dashboards would mean. Now everybody uses dashboards, and it's just second nature.
Schaffhauser: What kind of training did you put users through?
Barrett: For developers and people who were going to be developing report queries, we did a series of offsite and onsite training sessions--generally about a week for people who were going to be doing a lot of query and report development.
For end users in the field, we just provided amphitheater type of training, where we invited large numbers of people and we just showed them the features on a big screen. We produced some training materials online that showed them how to click the buttons and some of the basics. "Here's what the new dashboards look like. Here are the reports. You used to get these before by going directly into the system and running a report. Now you're going to get it by clicking this button." Then we offered workshops to handle any issues where people thought they got it but were still having a little bit of an issue. They could drop into a lab-setting and get some help. We did that for about a month.
Schaffhauser: After you made the shift to PeopleSoft tools, did the reports your crew was generating simply emulate the previous generation of reports?
Barrett: They did to a large extent. We were driven by that because it's what people knew. That was part of the difficulty. A lot of what made the reporting difficult was that the particular format didn't lend itself well to the new PeopleSoft data structure. Things were very different once we implemented PeopleSoft. That created a situation where the old style reports--while it made sense to people in the old days and gave them a new sense of comfort--really didn't apply in the new world. But nobody stepped back to take a look at it and say, "What do we really need? What's the information content that's important to us?" That was a good bridge, because it helped people with a little bit of a comfort level from the old to the new. But now with the new dashboards, we're really providing information in a much more tabular fashion, more graphics, more pivot tables, and other types of analytical approaches that we never had before in the old system.
In fact, we used to generate those by downloading the data into Excel spreadsheets and providing those. We're actually going out ahead of what people were already doing in some cases anyway. When people saw [the dashboards], they recognized them: "Oh, I already do that today, manually. This is great. Now I just push a button and get it."
Schaffhauser: How did you establish the parameters for what those dashboards would consist of?
Barrett: We had a focus group team. Our governance is multi-faceted. We have people from our research office, administration, our financial group, our academic side. We got all those people together and talked about, what are the priorities? Our first phase with OBIEE had concentrated on a set of 12 or 13 subject areas and about two dozen dashboards we rolled out. That was our first phase. We said, if we get those out, that would satisfy about 80 percent of the needs of the average person in the university who just needs access to the data--if we could do that and be successful, then we'd move on and fine-tune some other areas, which is what we did.
Schaffhauser: It sounds like IT is still kind of in charge of setting up the dashboards.
Barrett: IT definitely has the warehouses and transformation logic to get the logic into the data warehouse. And that has to be decided by committee, and they need to know what the data looks like in the warehouse to get the data they want. That's one thing we definitely want. IT is responsible for the met a-data or data definition, which is what makes that data available to the end users. We're responsible for that.
We take care of making sure that everything runs. These things update generally every night, though some are real time. We do all the troubleshooting and make sure things run properly. Making sure all the data reconciles. The data has to be accurate, otherwise, people won't trust it. All of that we do in IT. Then we do the complex dashboard development for big projects, and we do the support for people when they want help doing their own dashboards.
Schaffhauser: Have people experienced dashboard fever?
Barrett: In some pockets, yes. Right after that initial rollout, we got people who were really excited about it and really wanted to push things in their research area. We did a big phase of rolling out a bunch of things in the research reporting area. We do a lot of grants and contract processing here. That's a little different from your day to day business of educating students.
More recently, we've really gotten involved in our student information systems. That was really the last leg of the three-phase project. We're actually finishing that up right now. We've created about 20 or so dashboards already for them in the last six months. It's expanding quite a bit.
Schaffhauser: Do you find the dials are getting smaller and smaller--to accommodate the growth of KPIs that need to be monitored?
Barrett: In the student information area, there are so many that we created a dashboard of dashboards. We have a main dashboard, and we split it up into 20 different subject areas, almost like a menu. From that dashboard you click and you go into another area that's more focused. There isn't a lot of need to cross over. The graduate waiver data doesn't need to cross over on the same dashboard with information on undergraduate admission. They're inherently different subject areas. So we tend to work from subject area approach. We try to keep them focused on the information they're trying to convey. Once users know generally what subject they're interested in going into, then when they get into there, there are dashboards that have multiple content that are related to one another that they might want to see on the same screen.
Schaffhauser: Is there still room at the university for traditional reporting?
Barrett: The other product we got with OBIEE is [Business Intelligence] (BI) Publisher. That created the one missing component--the ability to produce what we call traditional production reports and distribute them in various ways. We needed good quality and control of the output to make it look just a certain way. We have several reports that are like that. We use the BI Publisher tool for that.
All in all, [the business intelligence system] has become a one-stop shop for people to do everything from traditional dashboarding and queries to what I'd call production reports, as well as moving into the area of online or operational analytics. We're actually looking at real-time data directly from our transaction system using the dashboards because it provides a convenient tool to be able to look at it that way. We've got enough flexibility in the system to do that. People don't have to know where it's pointing. They just have to know the subjects areas and why they care about looking at that data.
Schaffhauser: Do you have any advice for making sure that the project is staying in alignment with the initial business requirements--those initial business goals?
Barrett: Certainly, if you have multi-disciplinary inputs in this, you need a strong steering committee or governance body to get updates from the project team and to take into account things that are changing and to make sure things stay on course, and to effect communications with all the stakeholders. I think that's very important.
Also the thing we did that I think made it successful was that we limited our scope in the early days. We had tons of ideas, but we said, "We've picked these 13 subject areas because they represent about 80 percent of our needs." If we could get 80 percent of our needs out in a reasonable project in less than a year and have it out in the field where people were using it, then we'd consider that success, and the rest would come in time. We didn't try to boil the ocean in this initial project, where it would have taken us years to get it out of the door, and frankly people would have forgotten why we were even doing it by the time we were done. So pick a reasonable scope that offers meaningful success and focus on that. Then use your governance to keep you focused on that through the project.
Schaffhauser: Eighty percent seems ocean-like.
Barrett: Twenty-six dashboards may seem like a lot. But, we felt, this is really going to have widespread university impact. It's going to go across a lot of areas. It really did. I was very surprised. The end user adoption of it was almost a non-event. We showed people the reports. We showed them the dashboards. They got on and just started using them. We didn't get pushback. We didn't get a whole lot of complaints. We had a couple of problems starting up, like anyone does. And we had to do performance tuning here and there, and the usual things you get into when you scale something up into an enterprise level.
But we've got a fairly sizable group of people using it on a fairly regular basis. We don't have a whole lot of support type issues with it. Most of the support issues we have are in the background. They have to do with data transformation. The users don't even see that. We just have to respond to them and fix them. That's not really about the tools. That's about data quality, and the issues you get into in general when you're dealing with large quantities of data and somewhat changing rules.
Overall, though, it's been very well received. And that's why we're moving ahead into our student area. We kept that for last because student-related information is our most critical from a business standpoint. We figured, if we could it from an administrative area like finance and HR, and it worked well there, then we'd get grounded in our experience and we could go and hit the student area. They wouldn't be the guinea pigs, so to speak.
Schaffhauser: So that's what's next?
Barrett: It's on going right now. We're due to get that third phase done around the end of June this year. That'll complete our initial suite. From there on out, it'll just be incremental improvements as needed.
Source:campustechnology.com
Michael Barrett came to Florida State University in 2003 to manage a conversion to a new enterprise resource planning suite that was being implemented as a joint project among Financial Operations, Human Resources, and ITS. The university's move off of IBM's DB2 and onto Oracle's PeopleSoft software was driven by a 2002 Florida state constitutional amendment that mandated creation of a statewide board of governors responsible for the university system. Suddenly the state universities had to get off state-run systems that handled processing for finance and HR operations. The Tallahassee-based institution, with 40,000 students, is now running PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 as the replacement platform.
Online Management of Networked Information, or OMNI, the university's name for its ERP system, consists of an enterprise portal, financials, HR and payroll, and enterprise performance management. That word, "online," is revealing. Beginning in March 2008 Florida State has been in a continuing process to move off of third-party BI vendor and legacy tools for reporting and to open up its data systems to 1,500 active users on campus through several analytics tools provided in Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (OBIEE). These include a query system; dashboards; Microsoft Office-integrated analytics; and "ibots," e-mail alerts sent when specific user-set conditions in the data occur.
The university estimated that it has saved $360,000 in license and maintenance fees as well as infrastructure and administrative support costs. Recently, Barrett--now the university's CIO and associate vice president for IT Services--discussed the business analytics aspects of the project he's been involved with for the last seven years.
Prior to that we were in a typical IT report shop mentality, where people would line up wanting reports, which we would deliver to them six months or a year later, depending on the workload and availability of resources. People couldn't be dynamic about the things they wanted. They had to think about them way in advance.
With business intelligence, a lot of offices go off and do their own reports. If it's not terribly complex, they can get some assistance from us, but they can turn things around in a day or two in a lot of cases. Before, it might have taken them months.
Schaffhauser: Had dashboards been in use at the campus before they were introduced with this latest initiative?
Barrett: Not really. It evolved from printed reports, of course--delivered printed reports. Then with the use of computers, it became more: Run your report and print it from there. We just distributed the printing functions out to the individuals who needed it. Then it became online viewing of reports with more flexible parameters with the ability to put in a search function and get a specific report so you didn't have to print out everything. But dashboards weren't really there. We didn't have software that provided them.
And I have to tell you, when we first started the project, a lot of people thought about it as reporting. We actually talked about it as a reporting tool, not a business intelligence tool, because the culture wasn't really ready to even think about what business intelligence meant and what the dashboards would mean. Now everybody uses dashboards, and it's just second nature.
Schaffhauser: What kind of training did you put users through?
Barrett: For developers and people who were going to be developing report queries, we did a series of offsite and onsite training sessions--generally about a week for people who were going to be doing a lot of query and report development.
For end users in the field, we just provided amphitheater type of training, where we invited large numbers of people and we just showed them the features on a big screen. We produced some training materials online that showed them how to click the buttons and some of the basics. "Here's what the new dashboards look like. Here are the reports. You used to get these before by going directly into the system and running a report. Now you're going to get it by clicking this button." Then we offered workshops to handle any issues where people thought they got it but were still having a little bit of an issue. They could drop into a lab-setting and get some help. We did that for about a month.
Schaffhauser: After you made the shift to PeopleSoft tools, did the reports your crew was generating simply emulate the previous generation of reports?
Barrett: They did to a large extent. We were driven by that because it's what people knew. That was part of the difficulty. A lot of what made the reporting difficult was that the particular format didn't lend itself well to the new PeopleSoft data structure. Things were very different once we implemented PeopleSoft. That created a situation where the old style reports--while it made sense to people in the old days and gave them a new sense of comfort--really didn't apply in the new world. But nobody stepped back to take a look at it and say, "What do we really need? What's the information content that's important to us?" That was a good bridge, because it helped people with a little bit of a comfort level from the old to the new. But now with the new dashboards, we're really providing information in a much more tabular fashion, more graphics, more pivot tables, and other types of analytical approaches that we never had before in the old system.
In fact, we used to generate those by downloading the data into Excel spreadsheets and providing those. We're actually going out ahead of what people were already doing in some cases anyway. When people saw [the dashboards], they recognized them: "Oh, I already do that today, manually. This is great. Now I just push a button and get it."
Schaffhauser: How did you establish the parameters for what those dashboards would consist of?
Barrett: We had a focus group team. Our governance is multi-faceted. We have people from our research office, administration, our financial group, our academic side. We got all those people together and talked about, what are the priorities? Our first phase with OBIEE had concentrated on a set of 12 or 13 subject areas and about two dozen dashboards we rolled out. That was our first phase. We said, if we get those out, that would satisfy about 80 percent of the needs of the average person in the university who just needs access to the data--if we could do that and be successful, then we'd move on and fine-tune some other areas, which is what we did.
Schaffhauser: It sounds like IT is still kind of in charge of setting up the dashboards.
Barrett: IT definitely has the warehouses and transformation logic to get the logic into the data warehouse. And that has to be decided by committee, and they need to know what the data looks like in the warehouse to get the data they want. That's one thing we definitely want. IT is responsible for the met a-data or data definition, which is what makes that data available to the end users. We're responsible for that.
We take care of making sure that everything runs. These things update generally every night, though some are real time. We do all the troubleshooting and make sure things run properly. Making sure all the data reconciles. The data has to be accurate, otherwise, people won't trust it. All of that we do in IT. Then we do the complex dashboard development for big projects, and we do the support for people when they want help doing their own dashboards.
Schaffhauser: Have people experienced dashboard fever?
Barrett: In some pockets, yes. Right after that initial rollout, we got people who were really excited about it and really wanted to push things in their research area. We did a big phase of rolling out a bunch of things in the research reporting area. We do a lot of grants and contract processing here. That's a little different from your day to day business of educating students.
More recently, we've really gotten involved in our student information systems. That was really the last leg of the three-phase project. We're actually finishing that up right now. We've created about 20 or so dashboards already for them in the last six months. It's expanding quite a bit.
Schaffhauser: Do you find the dials are getting smaller and smaller--to accommodate the growth of KPIs that need to be monitored?
Barrett: In the student information area, there are so many that we created a dashboard of dashboards. We have a main dashboard, and we split it up into 20 different subject areas, almost like a menu. From that dashboard you click and you go into another area that's more focused. There isn't a lot of need to cross over. The graduate waiver data doesn't need to cross over on the same dashboard with information on undergraduate admission. They're inherently different subject areas. So we tend to work from subject area approach. We try to keep them focused on the information they're trying to convey. Once users know generally what subject they're interested in going into, then when they get into there, there are dashboards that have multiple content that are related to one another that they might want to see on the same screen.
Schaffhauser: Is there still room at the university for traditional reporting?
Barrett: The other product we got with OBIEE is [Business Intelligence] (BI) Publisher. That created the one missing component--the ability to produce what we call traditional production reports and distribute them in various ways. We needed good quality and control of the output to make it look just a certain way. We have several reports that are like that. We use the BI Publisher tool for that.
All in all, [the business intelligence system] has become a one-stop shop for people to do everything from traditional dashboarding and queries to what I'd call production reports, as well as moving into the area of online or operational analytics. We're actually looking at real-time data directly from our transaction system using the dashboards because it provides a convenient tool to be able to look at it that way. We've got enough flexibility in the system to do that. People don't have to know where it's pointing. They just have to know the subjects areas and why they care about looking at that data.
Schaffhauser: Do you have any advice for making sure that the project is staying in alignment with the initial business requirements--those initial business goals?
Barrett: Certainly, if you have multi-disciplinary inputs in this, you need a strong steering committee or governance body to get updates from the project team and to take into account things that are changing and to make sure things stay on course, and to effect communications with all the stakeholders. I think that's very important.
Also the thing we did that I think made it successful was that we limited our scope in the early days. We had tons of ideas, but we said, "We've picked these 13 subject areas because they represent about 80 percent of our needs." If we could get 80 percent of our needs out in a reasonable project in less than a year and have it out in the field where people were using it, then we'd consider that success, and the rest would come in time. We didn't try to boil the ocean in this initial project, where it would have taken us years to get it out of the door, and frankly people would have forgotten why we were even doing it by the time we were done. So pick a reasonable scope that offers meaningful success and focus on that. Then use your governance to keep you focused on that through the project.
Schaffhauser: Eighty percent seems ocean-like.
Barrett: Twenty-six dashboards may seem like a lot. But, we felt, this is really going to have widespread university impact. It's going to go across a lot of areas. It really did. I was very surprised. The end user adoption of it was almost a non-event. We showed people the reports. We showed them the dashboards. They got on and just started using them. We didn't get pushback. We didn't get a whole lot of complaints. We had a couple of problems starting up, like anyone does. And we had to do performance tuning here and there, and the usual things you get into when you scale something up into an enterprise level.
But we've got a fairly sizable group of people using it on a fairly regular basis. We don't have a whole lot of support type issues with it. Most of the support issues we have are in the background. They have to do with data transformation. The users don't even see that. We just have to respond to them and fix them. That's not really about the tools. That's about data quality, and the issues you get into in general when you're dealing with large quantities of data and somewhat changing rules.
Overall, though, it's been very well received. And that's why we're moving ahead into our student area. We kept that for last because student-related information is our most critical from a business standpoint. We figured, if we could it from an administrative area like finance and HR, and it worked well there, then we'd get grounded in our experience and we could go and hit the student area. They wouldn't be the guinea pigs, so to speak.
Schaffhauser: So that's what's next?
Barrett: It's on going right now. We're due to get that third phase done around the end of June this year. That'll complete our initial suite. From there on out, it'll just be incremental improvements as needed.
Source:campustechnology.com
Friday, April 23, 2010
Ascentium Sells CRM Unit to Focus on Creative Technology, New Strategies for Crafting Client-Consumer Connections
SEATTLE, April 23 - Ascentium, The Experience Agency™, today announced a formal agreement to sell its U.S. Microsoft Dynamics CRM business to Avanade Inc. Terms of the transaction are undisclosed.
Ascentium CEO and Co-founder Curt Doolittle said the sale reflects the firm's growing focus on using emerging technologies to develop new creative strategies for clients and build powerful and lasting relationships between clients and consumers.
"For several years, digital firms have evolved in ways that place them in competition with traditional agencies," said Doolittle. "Ascentium's evolution is extraordinary. Our history reflects a singular expertise in innovative uses of digital technology. We combine this experience with new creative ideas and are increasingly in a position to provide creative leadership by developing meaningful, dramatic experiences for clients and consumers."
Doolittle believes misunderstandings of marketing industry changes have hampered the progress of many modern agencies.
"Too many firms have been mired in a debate over the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional and digital agency models," said Doolittle. "This is the wrong debate. The agency of the future will apply appropriate technologies across multiple channels to create integrated, cross-media experiences that unite both the physical and virtual worlds."
As The Experience Agency™, Ascentium combines strategic brand ideas, consumer intelligence, and creative and emerging technologies to deliver interactive products and breakthrough experiences that inspire consumers. The benefit to Ascentium's clients is connected, interactive and responsive brands that build deeper and more loyal relationships.
Ascentium has evolved from implementing pure technological solutions to a mix of strategy, technology, creative, and experience design that enables clients to maximize their relationships with their customers.
"This divestiture allows us to focus our investments on the creative application of technology to build better consumer experiences and let the multinational consulting firms deliver services for IT," said Doolittle.
Ascentium President and Co-founder Steven Salta said the firm will continue its commitment to being a thought leader in both technology and user experience.
"Our core strength has always been execution," said Salta. "The Forrester Wave™ awarded Ascentium the highest client satisfaction score of any agency, and we believe the key reason is that we generate great ideas and deliver on our promises. This is a differentiator in the agency industry today and one that we believe positions Ascentium to realize its vision of setting a new standard for the agency model."
"The agency landscape is dynamic and ever-changing, and Ascentium is committed to leading the way," said Salta. "We will continue to expand the breadth of our offerings and adjust our model with the needs of our clients, the marketplace and consumers, while retaining our focus on technology, strategic partnership with our clients, and flawless execution and delivery of innovative marketing solutions."
Ascentium expects the sales of its US CRM business to be completed within 90 days, subject to closing conditions.
About Ascentium:
Ascentium, The Experience Agency™, delivers unmatched user experiences and innovative business solutions by fusing strategic account planning, cutting-edge use of emerging technologies, and world class creative ideas to create multichannel connections between consumers, brands, and businesses. With offices in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and London, Ascentium provides transformative ideas and results for some of the world's top brands. In 2009, Ascentium was singled out by Forrester Research as the agency with the "highest client satisfaction" on the Forrester Wave™ of Top Interactive Agencies.
SOURCE Ascentium
Ascentium CEO and Co-founder Curt Doolittle said the sale reflects the firm's growing focus on using emerging technologies to develop new creative strategies for clients and build powerful and lasting relationships between clients and consumers.
"For several years, digital firms have evolved in ways that place them in competition with traditional agencies," said Doolittle. "Ascentium's evolution is extraordinary. Our history reflects a singular expertise in innovative uses of digital technology. We combine this experience with new creative ideas and are increasingly in a position to provide creative leadership by developing meaningful, dramatic experiences for clients and consumers."
Doolittle believes misunderstandings of marketing industry changes have hampered the progress of many modern agencies.
"Too many firms have been mired in a debate over the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional and digital agency models," said Doolittle. "This is the wrong debate. The agency of the future will apply appropriate technologies across multiple channels to create integrated, cross-media experiences that unite both the physical and virtual worlds."
As The Experience Agency™, Ascentium combines strategic brand ideas, consumer intelligence, and creative and emerging technologies to deliver interactive products and breakthrough experiences that inspire consumers. The benefit to Ascentium's clients is connected, interactive and responsive brands that build deeper and more loyal relationships.
Ascentium has evolved from implementing pure technological solutions to a mix of strategy, technology, creative, and experience design that enables clients to maximize their relationships with their customers.
"This divestiture allows us to focus our investments on the creative application of technology to build better consumer experiences and let the multinational consulting firms deliver services for IT," said Doolittle.
Ascentium President and Co-founder Steven Salta said the firm will continue its commitment to being a thought leader in both technology and user experience.
"Our core strength has always been execution," said Salta. "The Forrester Wave™ awarded Ascentium the highest client satisfaction score of any agency, and we believe the key reason is that we generate great ideas and deliver on our promises. This is a differentiator in the agency industry today and one that we believe positions Ascentium to realize its vision of setting a new standard for the agency model."
"The agency landscape is dynamic and ever-changing, and Ascentium is committed to leading the way," said Salta. "We will continue to expand the breadth of our offerings and adjust our model with the needs of our clients, the marketplace and consumers, while retaining our focus on technology, strategic partnership with our clients, and flawless execution and delivery of innovative marketing solutions."
Ascentium expects the sales of its US CRM business to be completed within 90 days, subject to closing conditions.
About Ascentium:
Ascentium, The Experience Agency™, delivers unmatched user experiences and innovative business solutions by fusing strategic account planning, cutting-edge use of emerging technologies, and world class creative ideas to create multichannel connections between consumers, brands, and businesses. With offices in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and London, Ascentium provides transformative ideas and results for some of the world's top brands. In 2009, Ascentium was singled out by Forrester Research as the agency with the "highest client satisfaction" on the Forrester Wave™ of Top Interactive Agencies.
SOURCE Ascentium
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Microsoft rolls out update to Dynamics ERP
Microsoft has updated its Dynamics GP enterprise resource planning application for medium-sized businesses, adding features to streamline day-to-day tasks.
In addition, Dynamics GP 2010, introduced on Tuesday, is the first to include integration with Dynamics CRM, the company said.
A number of the new streamlining features allow processes to be set up more easily. For example, the software includes personalised 'role centres', which customise the product for different types of users. It also provides more than 400 built-in Microsoft SQL Server reporting services and Excel reports.
GP 2010 also includes built-in workflow processes such as forms for creating invoices through Microsoft Word, and other features for simplifying setup and IT administration processes, Microsoft said.
"By combining the power of business applications and productivity applications, we're able to support how people really work in their everyday jobs," said Crispin Read, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics ERP, in a statement.
Dynamics GP is based on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from Great Plains, which Microsoft acquired in 2001. Microsoft has estimated that about 300,000 businesses use its Dynamics product line, which is sold through a network of about 10,000 reseller partners.
The update improves interoperability with Microsoft Office Unified Communications, as well as with SharePoint and the PowerPivot business intelligence (BI) tool for Excel 2010, the company said.
The update is scheduled for release on 1 May in most countries, including the UK, with French Canadian and Latin American Spanish versions coming in the second half of the year.
Microsoft said it will offer on-premises and subscription-based hosting models for GP, but said it has no plans to offer a multi-tenant hosted version of the product.
Under multi-tenancy, a single instance of the application is shared by several companies in order to cut costs, with the drawback that the product cannot be customised for individual customers. Microsoft said it will continue to sell the product through its reseller network, with resellers offering customisation services.
Last month Microsoft invited developers from 400 companies to participate in a community technical preview of the next version of Dynamics CRM, codenamed CRM5. The company said early in the development process that CRM5 would include advancements in solution management and better deployment of secure code on the server.
Dynamics CRM will also be offered in either on-premises or hosted editions.
Source:zdnet.co.uk
In addition, Dynamics GP 2010, introduced on Tuesday, is the first to include integration with Dynamics CRM, the company said.
A number of the new streamlining features allow processes to be set up more easily. For example, the software includes personalised 'role centres', which customise the product for different types of users. It also provides more than 400 built-in Microsoft SQL Server reporting services and Excel reports.
GP 2010 also includes built-in workflow processes such as forms for creating invoices through Microsoft Word, and other features for simplifying setup and IT administration processes, Microsoft said.
"By combining the power of business applications and productivity applications, we're able to support how people really work in their everyday jobs," said Crispin Read, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics ERP, in a statement.
Dynamics GP is based on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from Great Plains, which Microsoft acquired in 2001. Microsoft has estimated that about 300,000 businesses use its Dynamics product line, which is sold through a network of about 10,000 reseller partners.
The update improves interoperability with Microsoft Office Unified Communications, as well as with SharePoint and the PowerPivot business intelligence (BI) tool for Excel 2010, the company said.
The update is scheduled for release on 1 May in most countries, including the UK, with French Canadian and Latin American Spanish versions coming in the second half of the year.
Microsoft said it will offer on-premises and subscription-based hosting models for GP, but said it has no plans to offer a multi-tenant hosted version of the product.
Under multi-tenancy, a single instance of the application is shared by several companies in order to cut costs, with the drawback that the product cannot be customised for individual customers. Microsoft said it will continue to sell the product through its reseller network, with resellers offering customisation services.
Last month Microsoft invited developers from 400 companies to participate in a community technical preview of the next version of Dynamics CRM, codenamed CRM5. The company said early in the development process that CRM5 would include advancements in solution management and better deployment of secure code on the server.
Dynamics CRM will also be offered in either on-premises or hosted editions.
Source:zdnet.co.uk
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Health IT M&A: Impact of Oracle Acquisition of Phase Forward
The Health IT market is consolidating. E-Clinical Data Management demands all but force R&D, as well as post-market prescription and OTC product surveillance, into digital domains. Robust database applications are needed to support these applications and systems. Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP are the three dominant players in the space.
Oracle has been on a steady acquisition spree for some time and has just strengthened its position further. The Oracle Health Sciences (OHS) unit, created in 2008, acquired safety and pharmacovigilance specialist Relsys (makers of Argus Safety) in April 2009. Past Oracle acquisitions of Siebel Systems (Siebel Clinical CTMS - Clinical Trial Management System) complimented the Oracle Remote Data Capture (RDC) application that is widely used for Electronic Data Capture throughout the industry.
Today, Oracle announced the $685 Million (€507m) acquisition of Phase Forward, the leader in the EDC market, having as much as 70% market share, including as many as 15 out of 20 of the top pharma and biotech. More companies use Phase Forward's EDC applications than use Oracle's RDC applications. However, the landscape has now changed. This move adds Phase Forward’s broad range of EDC, CTMS, and other key products to Oracle’s existing offering, thus elevating its position profile in a market that Forrester Research recently predicted will be worth $26 Billion before the end of 2010.
Combined with Oracle's seamless integration of leading sales CRM software (Salesforce.com) and visual Business Intelligence (Hyperion), Oracle has widened the gap in the eClinical space. In order to keep up, Microsoft will certainly have to consider either building a new application in-house, or buying one of the 3-4 other products on the market that currently have any significant market share. Other players in the EDC space include Meditata Systems (Makers of Rave), OmniComm Systems (Makers of TrialMaster), TrialStat (owned by Indian giant, Jubilant Organosys), and Perceptive Informatics (A Parexel company) Clinphone/Datalabs EDC and CTMS applications. Another potential target is Aris Global (perhaps the #1 competitor of Relsys; makers of ARISg safety and pharmacovigilance software). Similarly, SAP will have to take a hard look at the industry as well. The result could be a bidding war for the last remaining players in what was a fragmented EDC landscape.
Novella Clinical, a North Carolina -based eClinical Contract Research Organization (CRO), has been using Phase Forward EDC software for over a decade. Having demonstrated successful cross-platform integration resulting in smooth and seamless global operation, impressive ISO compliance validated by world renown Underwriters Laboratories, and being named to the Deloitte Fast-50 list of the 50 fastest growing companies, Novella is the paradigm example of integrative workability and the gold standard of eClinical quality. Many companies seek to do what Novella has done. The components of their successful Health IT platform offering is a great model regarding what can be developed next.
Accordingly, safe bets for the next waves of acquisition likely focus squarely on the makers of Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) software, and makers of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Electronic Health Records (EHR), and Personal Health Records (PHR) applications. Leaders in the ePRO space include InVivo Data, PHT, and eResearch Technology (ERT). In fact, based on Phase Forward's July 2009 acquisition Maaguzi, it would appear Oracle is already poised to be in the ePRO space. Along the health record lines, Microsoft already has a strong edge in the EMR/EHR/PHR space. For Oracle to capture significant market share, it would likely need to target a company like Madison, Wisconsin -based Epic Systems, or perhaps even go after Cerner, another market leader.
For SAP, the uphill battle will be even steeper. Any decision not to yield market share will require expedited aggressive acquisition and integration efforts. While some high level integration consultants say that SAP products are more advanced, the fundamental lack of leading applications specific to healthcare currently leaves them almost entirely out of the market.
Benjamin Williams, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Catholic Healthcare West (CHW; owners of the Mercy Hospitals in the Sacramento region), is in his third year of technology implementation, consolidation, and integration at the organization's 42 hospitals across California, Nevada, and Arizona. He oversees business intelligence, clinical information systems, and the entire IT infrastructure. This includes oversight of Care Connect, CHW's EHR system. What is Care Connect? The names often seem to come out of left field. It is a uniquely branded and customized version of Epic software.
Further investigation reveals what most already know, the EMR space is even more fragmented than EDC. There are many more players, and many more uniquely branded products. Even the iconic General Electric is in the space. GE Healthcare owns Centricity, an enterprise class EMR application in use in over 200 hospitals around the country. Both Centricity and Care Connect have been used by Providence Healthcare hospitals in various locations. Providence is regarded much like CHW. They have approximately 35 hospitals in their system.
Perhaps the newest and most interesting market participant is a company called Eclipsys. The Atlanta, Georgia -based company has just unveiled its new Sunrise 5.5 enterprise class EHR suite. According to the company, this new version includes an open architecture platform designed to improve the exchange of data between the various layers of software technology being used inside an institution, while simultaneously lowering the total cost of license or ownership. Furthermore, the new solution is said to include smart alert functionality, embedded clinical documentation interoperability by way of of industry-standard vocabularies that allows for smooth data exchange, enhanced documentation of allergies, intolerances and other adverse events that affect patient quality of life, as well as their uniquely branded clinical analytics technology that helps make complex data easier to understand and use.
Ultimately, that's the goal. Make data transferable, visible, able to be understood, and able to be used, all while being securely protected from malicious misuse and public view. Pine Bluff, Arkansas -based Jefferson Regional Medical Center will be the first Eclipsys client to deploy Sunrise 5.5 perhaps as soon as next week. Surely many eyes will be monitoring changes in efficiency, quality, and cost management. Positive results may lead Eclipsys near the front of acquisition target lists.
Interestingly, Kaiser recently completed its system-wide national deployment of ambulatory and in-patient EMR on March 2, in Vallejo. The systems are live in every location, including 21 hospitals in Northern California alone. Kaiser uses Epic. Their system is customized and is called Health Connect.
The last of our major regional healthcare service providers is Sutter Health. Sutter CIO, Jonathan Manis, is an industry veteran with over 20 years of healthcare IT leadership experience, and a background that includes education at the United States Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. With Sutter, he oversees over $1 Billion in IT infrastructure. Given that sutter will spend perhaps as much as halfa billion dollars between now and 2015 on system-wide EHR implementation, Sutter CEO, Patrick Fry, says Manis' experience is crucial to Sutter's continued success. Sutter uses Epic software.
Clearly, all eyes should be on Epic. If the Sacramento valley and the Northern California region are any indication, Epic is to EMR what Phase Forward is to EDC: the gold standard. While CHW, Sutter, and Kaiser may compete for patients, members and service utilization, they all agree on one thing: the goals of technology implementation are clear: increase efficiency, reduce administrative processing time, expedite critical information availability, reduce medical error, increase communication, lower costs, and improve the quality of care that people in the community receive. Looking at Oracle's acqisition of Phase forward, a well-known and highly regarded industry veteran opting to remain anonymous says the following, "This provides an opportunity for better integration into the majority of backbones for data warehousing throughout the healthcare sector. It's good for Phase [Forward] and it's great for Oracle, who, by the way, has been calling themselves an eClinical software and service provider for months." It is with this in mind that market consolidating acquisitions must be carefully examined, because compromising any of the above is rarely - if ever - in the public interest.
Source:sacramentopress.com
Oracle has been on a steady acquisition spree for some time and has just strengthened its position further. The Oracle Health Sciences (OHS) unit, created in 2008, acquired safety and pharmacovigilance specialist Relsys (makers of Argus Safety) in April 2009. Past Oracle acquisitions of Siebel Systems (Siebel Clinical CTMS - Clinical Trial Management System) complimented the Oracle Remote Data Capture (RDC) application that is widely used for Electronic Data Capture throughout the industry.
Today, Oracle announced the $685 Million (€507m) acquisition of Phase Forward, the leader in the EDC market, having as much as 70% market share, including as many as 15 out of 20 of the top pharma and biotech. More companies use Phase Forward's EDC applications than use Oracle's RDC applications. However, the landscape has now changed. This move adds Phase Forward’s broad range of EDC, CTMS, and other key products to Oracle’s existing offering, thus elevating its position profile in a market that Forrester Research recently predicted will be worth $26 Billion before the end of 2010.
Combined with Oracle's seamless integration of leading sales CRM software (Salesforce.com) and visual Business Intelligence (Hyperion), Oracle has widened the gap in the eClinical space. In order to keep up, Microsoft will certainly have to consider either building a new application in-house, or buying one of the 3-4 other products on the market that currently have any significant market share. Other players in the EDC space include Meditata Systems (Makers of Rave), OmniComm Systems (Makers of TrialMaster), TrialStat (owned by Indian giant, Jubilant Organosys), and Perceptive Informatics (A Parexel company) Clinphone/Datalabs EDC and CTMS applications. Another potential target is Aris Global (perhaps the #1 competitor of Relsys; makers of ARISg safety and pharmacovigilance software). Similarly, SAP will have to take a hard look at the industry as well. The result could be a bidding war for the last remaining players in what was a fragmented EDC landscape.
Novella Clinical, a North Carolina -based eClinical Contract Research Organization (CRO), has been using Phase Forward EDC software for over a decade. Having demonstrated successful cross-platform integration resulting in smooth and seamless global operation, impressive ISO compliance validated by world renown Underwriters Laboratories, and being named to the Deloitte Fast-50 list of the 50 fastest growing companies, Novella is the paradigm example of integrative workability and the gold standard of eClinical quality. Many companies seek to do what Novella has done. The components of their successful Health IT platform offering is a great model regarding what can be developed next.
Accordingly, safe bets for the next waves of acquisition likely focus squarely on the makers of Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) software, and makers of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Electronic Health Records (EHR), and Personal Health Records (PHR) applications. Leaders in the ePRO space include InVivo Data, PHT, and eResearch Technology (ERT). In fact, based on Phase Forward's July 2009 acquisition Maaguzi, it would appear Oracle is already poised to be in the ePRO space. Along the health record lines, Microsoft already has a strong edge in the EMR/EHR/PHR space. For Oracle to capture significant market share, it would likely need to target a company like Madison, Wisconsin -based Epic Systems, or perhaps even go after Cerner, another market leader.
For SAP, the uphill battle will be even steeper. Any decision not to yield market share will require expedited aggressive acquisition and integration efforts. While some high level integration consultants say that SAP products are more advanced, the fundamental lack of leading applications specific to healthcare currently leaves them almost entirely out of the market.
Benjamin Williams, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Catholic Healthcare West (CHW; owners of the Mercy Hospitals in the Sacramento region), is in his third year of technology implementation, consolidation, and integration at the organization's 42 hospitals across California, Nevada, and Arizona. He oversees business intelligence, clinical information systems, and the entire IT infrastructure. This includes oversight of Care Connect, CHW's EHR system. What is Care Connect? The names often seem to come out of left field. It is a uniquely branded and customized version of Epic software.
Further investigation reveals what most already know, the EMR space is even more fragmented than EDC. There are many more players, and many more uniquely branded products. Even the iconic General Electric is in the space. GE Healthcare owns Centricity, an enterprise class EMR application in use in over 200 hospitals around the country. Both Centricity and Care Connect have been used by Providence Healthcare hospitals in various locations. Providence is regarded much like CHW. They have approximately 35 hospitals in their system.
Perhaps the newest and most interesting market participant is a company called Eclipsys. The Atlanta, Georgia -based company has just unveiled its new Sunrise 5.5 enterprise class EHR suite. According to the company, this new version includes an open architecture platform designed to improve the exchange of data between the various layers of software technology being used inside an institution, while simultaneously lowering the total cost of license or ownership. Furthermore, the new solution is said to include smart alert functionality, embedded clinical documentation interoperability by way of of industry-standard vocabularies that allows for smooth data exchange, enhanced documentation of allergies, intolerances and other adverse events that affect patient quality of life, as well as their uniquely branded clinical analytics technology that helps make complex data easier to understand and use.
Ultimately, that's the goal. Make data transferable, visible, able to be understood, and able to be used, all while being securely protected from malicious misuse and public view. Pine Bluff, Arkansas -based Jefferson Regional Medical Center will be the first Eclipsys client to deploy Sunrise 5.5 perhaps as soon as next week. Surely many eyes will be monitoring changes in efficiency, quality, and cost management. Positive results may lead Eclipsys near the front of acquisition target lists.
Interestingly, Kaiser recently completed its system-wide national deployment of ambulatory and in-patient EMR on March 2, in Vallejo. The systems are live in every location, including 21 hospitals in Northern California alone. Kaiser uses Epic. Their system is customized and is called Health Connect.
The last of our major regional healthcare service providers is Sutter Health. Sutter CIO, Jonathan Manis, is an industry veteran with over 20 years of healthcare IT leadership experience, and a background that includes education at the United States Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. With Sutter, he oversees over $1 Billion in IT infrastructure. Given that sutter will spend perhaps as much as halfa billion dollars between now and 2015 on system-wide EHR implementation, Sutter CEO, Patrick Fry, says Manis' experience is crucial to Sutter's continued success. Sutter uses Epic software.
Clearly, all eyes should be on Epic. If the Sacramento valley and the Northern California region are any indication, Epic is to EMR what Phase Forward is to EDC: the gold standard. While CHW, Sutter, and Kaiser may compete for patients, members and service utilization, they all agree on one thing: the goals of technology implementation are clear: increase efficiency, reduce administrative processing time, expedite critical information availability, reduce medical error, increase communication, lower costs, and improve the quality of care that people in the community receive. Looking at Oracle's acqisition of Phase forward, a well-known and highly regarded industry veteran opting to remain anonymous says the following, "This provides an opportunity for better integration into the majority of backbones for data warehousing throughout the healthcare sector. It's good for Phase [Forward] and it's great for Oracle, who, by the way, has been calling themselves an eClinical software and service provider for months." It is with this in mind that market consolidating acquisitions must be carefully examined, because compromising any of the above is rarely - if ever - in the public interest.
Source:sacramentopress.com
Monday, April 19, 2010
Altosoft Introduces Business Service Management for Microsoft System Center and Opalis
LAS VEGAS, NV, Apr 19, 2010 -- Altosoft, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a leading provider of process-aware business intelligence solutions, today announced its Insight Dashboard for System Center. With this introduction Altosoft extends its suite of solutions for System Center and Opalis to provide a comprehensive Business Service Management (BSM) solution for users of Microsoft's /quotes/comstock/15*!msft/quotes/nls/msft (MSFT 31.32, +0.28, +0.91%) powerful suite of IT infrastructure and server management solutions.
"BSM tools can associate events from underlying IT infrastructure elements and IT operations availability and performance tools to provide a more holistic, business-oriented IT services view," said David Williams, research vice president for Gartner. "Through integration with performance-monitoring tools, they can associate an event with a broader service impact and enable IT operations personnel to proactively address a performance-based service degradation issue in-line with business priorities."
Altosoft's Insight Dashboard for System Center is built on Altosoft's process-aware business intelligence platform. The power of the Altosoft platform allows IT personnel to quickly and easily integrate IT operational data with underlying business process data to achieve deep insights into the impact and value of IT operations. This insight allows IT staff to fully understand the precise business impact of IT investments on a company's ability to meet its performance goals related to Service Level Agreement (SLA) obligations and the result of any deviation from these targets.
The Insight Dashboard for System Center joins Altosoft's existing Insight Dashboard for Opalis introduced in December following Microsoft's acquisition of Opalis. The latest product extends Altosoft's solution to include pre-built dashboards with access to a rich set of pre-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) utilizing data from the System Center Operations Manager's data warehouse and System Center Configuration Manager. Users can modify or extend these KPIs using any data from System Center or Opalis as well as any other data source without requiring any coding of any kind.
"The ability to combine IT operational data with real business data will be critical to the success of IT operations in the next decade," said Scott Opitz, CEO of Altosoft Corporation. "All areas of business, including IT must be able to demonstrate a clear ROI from their IT investments and be able to proactively demonstrate a direct business benefit. Our goal is to provide tools which empower IT professionals to achieve global visibility over their entire operation with a detailed understanding of how each system impacts the company's top and bottom lines."
"Altosoft's System Center solutions allow Microsoft's customers to realize even greater value from their investment in System Center," said Warren Talbot, director of product planning, Management and Services Division, Microsoft Corporation. "Altosoft's ability to quickly combine data from System Center, Opalis and other line of business data sources and make it available in an operational dashboard gives our customers great levels of visibility into their IT infrastructure and its value to the business's overall performance."
Based on the Microsoft .NET platform, Altosoft solutions leverage a variety of Microsoft technologies. Altosoft supports native dashboard and report development both independently using Altosoft's dashboard server or natively in the SharePoint Portal or System Center Operations Manager dashboard environments.
The Altosoft Insight Dashboard for System Center is available immediately. For more information go to: http://www.altosoft.com/products.
About Altosoft Altosoft empowers organizations with the ability to deliver powerful dashboards, reports and analysis to any business user, on demand. Altosoft eliminates the cost and complexity of ordinary BI by automatically gathering data from any source, converting it dynamically to business metrics, and storing it in an intelligent, optimized data mart. Altosoft also goes beyond other business intelligence solutions by enabling users to monitor, analyze, and optimize their business process performance and quality.
For more information, please visit http://www.altosoft.com.
For inquiries please contact:
Scott Opitz
(484) 427-2821
SOURCE: Altosoft Corporation
"BSM tools can associate events from underlying IT infrastructure elements and IT operations availability and performance tools to provide a more holistic, business-oriented IT services view," said David Williams, research vice president for Gartner. "Through integration with performance-monitoring tools, they can associate an event with a broader service impact and enable IT operations personnel to proactively address a performance-based service degradation issue in-line with business priorities."
Altosoft's Insight Dashboard for System Center is built on Altosoft's process-aware business intelligence platform. The power of the Altosoft platform allows IT personnel to quickly and easily integrate IT operational data with underlying business process data to achieve deep insights into the impact and value of IT operations. This insight allows IT staff to fully understand the precise business impact of IT investments on a company's ability to meet its performance goals related to Service Level Agreement (SLA) obligations and the result of any deviation from these targets.
The Insight Dashboard for System Center joins Altosoft's existing Insight Dashboard for Opalis introduced in December following Microsoft's acquisition of Opalis. The latest product extends Altosoft's solution to include pre-built dashboards with access to a rich set of pre-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) utilizing data from the System Center Operations Manager's data warehouse and System Center Configuration Manager. Users can modify or extend these KPIs using any data from System Center or Opalis as well as any other data source without requiring any coding of any kind.
"The ability to combine IT operational data with real business data will be critical to the success of IT operations in the next decade," said Scott Opitz, CEO of Altosoft Corporation. "All areas of business, including IT must be able to demonstrate a clear ROI from their IT investments and be able to proactively demonstrate a direct business benefit. Our goal is to provide tools which empower IT professionals to achieve global visibility over their entire operation with a detailed understanding of how each system impacts the company's top and bottom lines."
"Altosoft's System Center solutions allow Microsoft's customers to realize even greater value from their investment in System Center," said Warren Talbot, director of product planning, Management and Services Division, Microsoft Corporation. "Altosoft's ability to quickly combine data from System Center, Opalis and other line of business data sources and make it available in an operational dashboard gives our customers great levels of visibility into their IT infrastructure and its value to the business's overall performance."
Based on the Microsoft .NET platform, Altosoft solutions leverage a variety of Microsoft technologies. Altosoft supports native dashboard and report development both independently using Altosoft's dashboard server or natively in the SharePoint Portal or System Center Operations Manager dashboard environments.
The Altosoft Insight Dashboard for System Center is available immediately. For more information go to: http://www.altosoft.com/products.
About Altosoft Altosoft empowers organizations with the ability to deliver powerful dashboards, reports and analysis to any business user, on demand. Altosoft eliminates the cost and complexity of ordinary BI by automatically gathering data from any source, converting it dynamically to business metrics, and storing it in an intelligent, optimized data mart. Altosoft also goes beyond other business intelligence solutions by enabling users to monitor, analyze, and optimize their business process performance and quality.
For more information, please visit http://www.altosoft.com.
For inquiries please contact:
Scott Opitz
(484) 427-2821
SOURCE: Altosoft Corporation
Monday, April 12, 2010
Basis Technology Expands Linguistic Technology Support for Bing Web Search
Basis Technology Corporation announced today that it has entered in an extensive, long-term licensing agreement with Microsoft Corp. to provide advanced linguistic technology for Bing web search. The company's Rosette(R) Platform is used in Bing search to identify and analyze text in several languages, enabling the creation of a high quality index, which in turn contributes to a high quality search experience. The Rosette Platform is also used to locate entities within web documents such as people, places and organizations. The entity identification is used by Bing's clustering algorithms to automatically categorize news topics, enabling users to find relevant news topics.
Under the new agreement, Bing will have access to the latest version of this platform, Rosette 7, recently announced by Basis Technology. Rosette 7 has enhanced entity extraction accuracy, as well as expanded language coverage, cross-language name matching and translation. Basis Technology will collaborate closely with Microsoft to continually improve and expand the features of Rosette to meet the demanding requirements of large scale web search applications.
Rosette is a high performance linguistic analysis platform that has been deployed in hundreds of text solutions around the world to classify, standardize and process unstructured text so it can be used for analytic and intelligence purposes. It includes support for dozens of world languages, including languages of Europe, East Asia, the Mideast, and Central Asia. Basis Technology has been delivering Rosette to OEM, SaaS and enterprise users since 1997.
"Basis Technology has been a great partner for Microsoft and Bing," said Harry Shum, corporate vice president for Search Product Development at Microsoft. "We selected the Rosette Platform to enhance the precision of our Web search results, and found the quality of the software and support from Basis Technology to be excellent."
"Microsoft is a sophisticated user of the Rosette Platform," said Steve Cohen, COO of Basis Technology. "We're focused, along with Microsoft, on delivering the best linguistics and the best relevance to Bing users in all locales. We look forward to helping Microsoft deploy Rosette 7 and meeting the increased demands that Bing search will place on the platform."
About Basis Technology Basis Technology (www.basistech.com) provides software solutions for text analytics, information retrieval, and name resolution in over twenty languages. Our Rosette(R) Linguistics Platform is a widely-used suite of interoperable components that power search, business intelligence, e-discovery, and other enterprise applications. Our company is at the forefront of applied natural language processing using a combination of statistical modeling, expert rules, and corpus-derived data.
Leading software vendors, content providers, financial institutions, and government agencies rely on Basis Technology's solutions for Unicode compliance, language identification, multilingual search, entity extraction, name matching, and name translation. Our products and services are used by over 250 major firms, including Cisco, EMC, Endeca, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle, and Symantec. Our text analysis products are widely used in the U.S. defense and intelligence industry by such firms as CACI, Lockheed Martin, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and SRI. We are the top provider of multilingual technology to web search engines, such as Amazon.com, Ask.com, Bing, Google, and Yahoo.
Company headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with branch offices in San Francisco, California; Herndon, Virginia; and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, visit www.basistech.com or call 800-697-2062.
For more information:
Basis Technology Corp.
Miryon Pak, 617-386-2050
SOURCE: Basis Technology Corporation
Under the new agreement, Bing will have access to the latest version of this platform, Rosette 7, recently announced by Basis Technology. Rosette 7 has enhanced entity extraction accuracy, as well as expanded language coverage, cross-language name matching and translation. Basis Technology will collaborate closely with Microsoft to continually improve and expand the features of Rosette to meet the demanding requirements of large scale web search applications.
Rosette is a high performance linguistic analysis platform that has been deployed in hundreds of text solutions around the world to classify, standardize and process unstructured text so it can be used for analytic and intelligence purposes. It includes support for dozens of world languages, including languages of Europe, East Asia, the Mideast, and Central Asia. Basis Technology has been delivering Rosette to OEM, SaaS and enterprise users since 1997.
"Basis Technology has been a great partner for Microsoft and Bing," said Harry Shum, corporate vice president for Search Product Development at Microsoft. "We selected the Rosette Platform to enhance the precision of our Web search results, and found the quality of the software and support from Basis Technology to be excellent."
"Microsoft is a sophisticated user of the Rosette Platform," said Steve Cohen, COO of Basis Technology. "We're focused, along with Microsoft, on delivering the best linguistics and the best relevance to Bing users in all locales. We look forward to helping Microsoft deploy Rosette 7 and meeting the increased demands that Bing search will place on the platform."
About Basis Technology Basis Technology (www.basistech.com) provides software solutions for text analytics, information retrieval, and name resolution in over twenty languages. Our Rosette(R) Linguistics Platform is a widely-used suite of interoperable components that power search, business intelligence, e-discovery, and other enterprise applications. Our company is at the forefront of applied natural language processing using a combination of statistical modeling, expert rules, and corpus-derived data.
Leading software vendors, content providers, financial institutions, and government agencies rely on Basis Technology's solutions for Unicode compliance, language identification, multilingual search, entity extraction, name matching, and name translation. Our products and services are used by over 250 major firms, including Cisco, EMC, Endeca, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle, and Symantec. Our text analysis products are widely used in the U.S. defense and intelligence industry by such firms as CACI, Lockheed Martin, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and SRI. We are the top provider of multilingual technology to web search engines, such as Amazon.com, Ask.com, Bing, Google, and Yahoo.
Company headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with branch offices in San Francisco, California; Herndon, Virginia; and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, visit www.basistech.com or call 800-697-2062.
For more information:
Basis Technology Corp.
Miryon Pak, 617-386-2050
SOURCE: Basis Technology Corporation
DundeeWealth Selects Oracle(R) CRM On Demand as Core Platform
DENVER, April 12 -- Decentrix, Inc. today announced their new Master Data Management tool called BIAnalytix™ MDM Mapper, which targets mapping large amounts of historical data within a warehouse to master data lists. For corporations with large amounts of historical data that has been collected in a data warehouse, the BIAnalytix™ MDM Mapper software is truly a major breakthrough to transform this asset so that meaningful reporting and analysis can take place.
"Media Companies, Telecommunication companies and Advertising Agencies today are overwhelmed by the challenge of the large amount of data they collect about their business on a daily basis and their inability to readily access that data in a meaningful and strategic way," said Wayne Ruting, CEO and President of Decentrix. "In order to access these strategic insights that lie buried in the data, it is necessary to transform the granular historical database to conform to master data naming conventions. This is precisely what Mapper does. What historically may have taken years to accomplish, can now be accomplished very rapidly with the BIAnalytix™ Mapper tool."
"We use the Decentrix Mapper Tool here at Comcast and it has solved, in just a few short weeks, a very challenging problem that we have wrestled with for many years," said Bob Rittler, VP of Information Systems and Technology. "The amount of data elements we deal with are massive and Mapper deals with this elegantly and easily."
"Decentrix is a great example of how partners are utilizing Microsoft technologies to power solutions that solve real business needs for their customers," said Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director for the Media & Entertainment business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. "Solutions such as BIAnalytix MDM Mapper provide media and entertainment companies with the level of insight necessary to compete in today's market."
Decentrix is a technology and consulting company specializing in Media Business Intelligence (MBI™) and Media Data Warehouse Solutions tailored specifically to the needs of Media, Telecommunications and Advertising companies. Founded by technologists with decades of experience in media transactional systems, Decentrix offers a fast track, fully working solution for Media BI built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The BIAnalytix(TM) Solution was purpose built to help media companies solve the challenge of readily accessing the large amount of data locked up in their "transactional" systems, in a fast, meaningful and strategic way, by consolidating that data into a single corporate media data warehouse.
For more information visit www.BIAnalytix.com or call Nancy Pennica at 303-899-4000 x 200.
Contacts:
Nancy Jean Pennica
Executive Vice President
303 899 4000 x200
npennica@decentrix.com
"Media Companies, Telecommunication companies and Advertising Agencies today are overwhelmed by the challenge of the large amount of data they collect about their business on a daily basis and their inability to readily access that data in a meaningful and strategic way," said Wayne Ruting, CEO and President of Decentrix. "In order to access these strategic insights that lie buried in the data, it is necessary to transform the granular historical database to conform to master data naming conventions. This is precisely what Mapper does. What historically may have taken years to accomplish, can now be accomplished very rapidly with the BIAnalytix™ Mapper tool."
"We use the Decentrix Mapper Tool here at Comcast and it has solved, in just a few short weeks, a very challenging problem that we have wrestled with for many years," said Bob Rittler, VP of Information Systems and Technology. "The amount of data elements we deal with are massive and Mapper deals with this elegantly and easily."
"Decentrix is a great example of how partners are utilizing Microsoft technologies to power solutions that solve real business needs for their customers," said Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director for the Media & Entertainment business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. "Solutions such as BIAnalytix MDM Mapper provide media and entertainment companies with the level of insight necessary to compete in today's market."
Decentrix is a technology and consulting company specializing in Media Business Intelligence (MBI™) and Media Data Warehouse Solutions tailored specifically to the needs of Media, Telecommunications and Advertising companies. Founded by technologists with decades of experience in media transactional systems, Decentrix offers a fast track, fully working solution for Media BI built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The BIAnalytix(TM) Solution was purpose built to help media companies solve the challenge of readily accessing the large amount of data locked up in their "transactional" systems, in a fast, meaningful and strategic way, by consolidating that data into a single corporate media data warehouse.
For more information visit www.BIAnalytix.com or call Nancy Pennica at 303-899-4000 x 200.
Contacts:
Nancy Jean Pennica
Executive Vice President
303 899 4000 x200
npennica@decentrix.com
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