The IT-Finance Connection

Introducing The IT-Finance Connection Partnership Pages

Carl — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:30:29 +0000

The IT-Finance Connection Partnership Pages give vendors and service providers control of their own specially-designed page at our site. The company can display its logo, company information and the first paragraphs of press releases, white papers, Q & As, podcast introductions and other content. The balance of each document is hosted by the customer, which ensures that all traffic ends up at its site.

There are two goals. The pages generate traffic via the links from The IT-Finance Connection to the client’s site. The Partnership Page also serves as the base from which The IT-Finance Connection proactively reaches out to business-oriented social networking sites and services on the client’s behalf.

The idea is described more fully below. Please take a look at the post and click on the icons for brief verbal explanations.

Introduction: Download audio file (promointro0706x.mp3)

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What are The IT-Finance Connection Partnership Pages? The IT-Finance Connection Partnership Pages are pages we create at our site for your company. Here’s how it works:

A company’s Partnership Page includes the logo, corporate description and contact information. Teaser copy–a paragraph or so of the content — starts on the Partnership Page and links visitors to the bulk of the document or podcast at your site.
The launch of the Partnership Page and subsequent updates are promoted on The IT-Finance Connection site and in its newsletters.
The launch and updates also are promoted at the growing number of social network sites and services that cater all or in part to businesses. They work differently, so it’s impossible to say precisely what we’ll do. What we can say is that we won’t take a cookie cutter approach. A strategy will be set during an initial consultation based on what your company does, its social networking goals and where the desired audience is likely to be found. Examples of things we’ll offer is to Tweet our followers, suggest post topics for LinkedIn groups, update our Facebook page with your updates and Digg new content. The program will be customized for each client.

The Offer: Download audio file (theoffer0708.mp3)

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Social Network Sites and Services to be Accessed by The Partnership Pages: Outreach to social networking sites is the differentiating component of the Partnership Pages. Here is a partial list of the sites and services that are used by the business intelligence community and may be accessed by The IT-Finance Connection on behalf of its Partnership Page clients:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Ning
CIOZone
Tech Pitch
Analytic Bridge
Technorati
Flowing Data
Reddit
IT Toolbox
IT Specialist

Many Choices: Download audio file (0703slide3.mp3)

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The IT-Finance Connection’s Editorial Environment: The IT-Finance Connection is a thriving site. A steady stream of posts, podcasts and newsletters has enabled us to create a significant niche in the BI media. Here is a partial list of companies with which the site has done podcasts.

Analytix on Demand
IBM Cognos
Tableau
Pentaho
MeLLmo
Metastorm
Star Analytics
Data Direct
LucidEra
Microgen
MicroStrategy
Archer Technologies
Veramark
The Butler Group
GridApp
Nigel Pendse
The Aberdeen Group
Expert System
QlikTech
Archer Technologies

Why Us? Download audio file (promoslide40706.mp3)

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Pricing

The IT-Finance Connection Partnership Page, including associated social networking efforts, is $150 per month.
We also offer writing and podcast services. The content can be used at The IT-Finance Connection and elsewhere. The cost for writing is $1.25 per word and podcast production is $50 per 10 minutes.

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Contact

I’m Carl Weinschenk. I can be reached at (516) 621-2978 or carlw@it-financeconnection.com.

Podcast: BI on the TEM Team

Carl — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:19:17 +0000

Listen to Tony Mazzullo Discuss TEM and BI: Download audio file (0702veramarkx.mp3)

The current economic downturn has many companies scrambling to reduce expenses. As a major expense for most companies today, telecommunications has become a target for cost-cutting efforts. Solutions for Telecom Expense Management, or TEM, have proven highly effective in reducing telecom costs without impacting services or capabilities. TEM solutions that incorporate business intelligence (BI) leverage the power of telecom expense management to provide greater visibility into organizational spending and habits than previously available. They provide strategic and tactical decision support, as well as operational support, generating actionable business intelligence to guide telecom and IT investment decisions.

BI tools that are embedded into TEM solutions are most effective in analyzing usage and controlling spend. According to the Aberdeen Group in a June 2009 Market Alert, “enterprises are more likely to use pre-integrated BI in enterprise applications and these BI capabilities are capable of reducing telecom and other IT expenses …[such solutions] maximize the value of the highly granular and detailed telecom expense information collected through telecom expense management systems.”

BI offers advanced analytics, graphical analysis, and budgeting/planning capabilities. It multiplies the ability of TEM to help organizations improve efficiencies, do more with less, become more agile and flexible, and align operations with the enterprise business strategy. Corporate executives know that BI can help them make the best use of their telecom data and resources, optimize business performance, and gain control over telecom expenses. Integrated TEM/BI solutions deliver these benefits “out of the box,” facilitating rapid deployment and ROI.

As a result, Aberdeen is making a strong recommendation to customers: “develop or acquire a full telecom lifecycle management/TEM solution to manage enterprise telecommunications and network deployment. … [and] choose a solution with a pre-integrated BI solution in place. This pre-integration will allow the organization to achieve the level of adoption … and … improve the organization’s ability to provide automated reporting capabilities to display the summation of thousands of telecom invoices without requiring significant manual processing.”

The tremendous value that TEM is bringing to so many organizations today hints at the much greater savings that can be obtained from solutions aimed at IT expense management, or iTEM. In most organizations, IT expenses – and potential savings – are three times greater than those experienced with telecom. As TEM evolves to iTEM, and more organizations – large and small – harness the power of iTEM and enhance that power with business intelligence and workflow solutions, dollars will flow from operational spend to capital investment. There’s no doubt that BI will also be a key component of the leading iTEM solutions, delivering business intelligence to support expense management decisions across the entire IT landscape.

–Tony Mazzullo, CEO, Veramark

The IT-Finance Connection Newswire for July 1

Carl — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:32:59 +0000

ParAccel Introduces Next Generation Analytic Database: ParAccel, Inc., today introduced version 2.0 of the ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB), the latest version of the company’s high-speed, low-effort, massively parallel (MPP) columnar database management system (DBMS) for data warehousing and analytics. PADB 2.0 tackles the most complex business questions even faster by leveraging dozens of new features and enhancements, including patent-pending innovations in query optimization and SAN integration. PADB’s new Omne query optimizer enables previously unseen levels of performance and sophistication in addressing demanding analytic workloads. In addition, PADB 2.0 offers breakthroughs in enterprise readiness and operational continuity for business critical applications. Read More…

Scout Analytics Platform Aims to Drive Subscription Revenues for Online Services: Scout Analytics debuted its next-generation platform today to help online services maximize the lifetime value of subscribers. The first-ever subscription analytics platform enables online services across diverse markets to aggregate, analyze and act upon untapped revenue opportunities. Scout Analytics helps an online service monetize unlicensed service use, maintain customer loyalty and optimize recommendations for up-sell. In its first six months of service, Scout Analytics has been selected to optimize revenue from more than 150,000 subscribers across multiple verticals. Read More…

Oracle Launches Insurance Insight 6.0: Oracle Insurance (Oracle) has announced the availability of Insurance Insignt 6.0. Its an insurance specific data warehouse that leverages its business intelligence enterprise edition for dashboards and analytics. According to Oracle, the Insurance Insight 6.0 contains the transactional data warehouse model as well as the line-specific data mart structures. It is expected to enable insurance companies to conduct policy, claims and customer analysis. Read More…

Aegis Analytical’s Conference: “The Business Case for Manufacturing Intelligence”: Aegis Analytical Corp., the leading provider of Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) software solutions, announced today that its annual user conference, Aegis Discover 2009, will be held Oct. 5-8 at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder, Colo. This year’s conference theme - Making the Business Case for Manufacturing Intelligence - will bring together Aegis’ partners, customers and prospects from leading life sciences companies. Companies such as Abbott Labs, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Genzyme and Merck Serono rely on Aegis’ Discoverant(R), an EMI solution, to realize additional returns on their process IT investments. They increase profits by improving process predictability, quality and yield and accelerating technology transfer using a proven approach to data access, aggregation, analytics and visibility. Read More…

Calabrio’s Performance Management Model Provides Customers Choice: Calabrio, Inc., a leading provider of workforce optimization and unified desktop software for IP-based contact centers, announced today that they are providing integration between the software components of the Calabrio One suite and third-party products that were designed for contact center and enterprise performance management reporting and analytics. Customers will be able to incorporate relevant metrics from Calabrio Workforce Management and Calabrio Compliance Recording and Quality Management software within the performance management and analytics reports of reporting partners, including Aceyus, Cisco, and Exony. Read More…

Aster Data Systems Announces Massively Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance: Aster Data Systems, a proven leader in high-performance database systems for data warehousing and analytics, today unveiled the first-ever massively parallel (MPP) data warehousing appliance starting at $50,000, fundamentally changing the economics of data warehousing by providing the industry’s most ‘compute rich’ appliance on a lower-cost architecture that is also cheaper to administer and operate. Read More…

Intel Capital Leads Series B Funding for Sense Networks: Sense Networks, Inc., provider of the world’s only real-time location analytics platform, today announced its Series B financing round led by Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization. “Intel Capital, with its global reach and depth of technology understanding, makes an ideal investor for us,” said Greg Skibiski, Founder and CEO of Sense Networks. “This funding will allow us to accelerate growth and capitalize on significant domestic and international market opportunities in the fast-moving location industry.” Read More…

WIND Telecom Enhances Business Intelligence with Netezza: Netezza Corporation (NYSE: NZ), the global leader in data warehouse and analytic appliances, today announced that leading Italian triple-play telecommunications provider, WIND Telecomicazioni SpA, has migrated its business intelligence (BI) analysis to Netezza’s leading data warehouse appliance platform. The move away from the previous technology was driven by WIND Telecom’s desire to significantly enhance performance while controlling costs. WIND Telecom is also evaluating Netezza for other data warehousing initiatives. Massimo Pistoni, Business Intelligence manager at WIND Telecom, explained, “As we approached 10 terabytes of data, we started to experience performance issues with the legacy systems, and decided to search for an alternative. We evaluated platforms such as those offered by IBM, Sybase, Teradata and Netezza and ultimately selected Netezza’s platform for its compelling price/performance ratio. The data was quickly migrated to the Netezza system, and we use Business Objects and SPSS Clementine to perform the analysis. We already have about 500 users who are accessing the new business intelligence system with great satisfaction.” Read More…

Motio, Vitria Deliver Unified Dashboard and OI Capabilities to IBM Cognos Users: Vitria Technology, Inc., today announced a partnership with Motio, Inc., that will enable IBM Cognos users to seamlessly integrate their Business Intelligence content along with other data sources into customizable and flexible dashboards generated by Vitria’s Operational Intelligence (OI) software. Together, Motio’s MotioADF and Vitria’s M3O Operations Book enable organizations with existing IBM Cognos 8 deployments to quickly surface powerful analytics by combining BI Content with other operational and business data sources into a single unified dashboard. Vitria’s M3O Suite delivers a powerful Operational Intelligence platform that analyzes business activities in real time and enables users to take action before opportunities have faded or problems have escalated. Read More…

NICE Scores in Datamonitor Report: NICE Systems, a leading global provider of advanced solutions that enable organizations to extract insight from interactions to drive performance, today announced that leading industry analyst firm Datamonitor recognized NICE’s worldwide leadership position in its 2009 contact center analytics market report “Decision Matrix: Selecting a Contact Center Analytics Vendor (Competitor Focus); Analytics and reporting as differentiators in a difficult economy.” NICE’s contact center analytics offering, which includes its performance management and interaction analytics solutions, achieved high scores for every category in the technical assessment section, coming in significantly ahead of its competitors, with consistent technical excellence. NICE also achieved top ratings for its significant market impact, high rating by customers, and has been placed in the highest ranked ’shortlist’ category. Read More…

Analog Devices Opts for MetricStream Solution for Managing Quality Issues: Analog Devices, a provider of semiconductors for signal processing applications, has selected MetricStream’s governance, risk, compliance and quality management software platform for managing customer quality issues and related workflow systems for the company. MetricStream has said that its software solution will support quality issue logging and routing, failure analysis, investigation workflows, corrective and preventive actions and action item tracking in a collaborative fashion involving users from various geographies and functions within Analog Devices. Read More…

Flurry Launches Channel Partner Program: Flurry, the leading cross-platform mobile application analytics provider, today announced the establishment of a channel partner program. The company’s partners are focused on driving implementation of Flurry’s award-winning analytics services within the rapidly growing mobile applications market. Inaugural companies joining Flurry’s Partner Program include Atimi, Five Mobile, and MobileCDN. Flurry’s Partner Program provides contracted software development firms the unparalleled ability to communicate performance and usage insights to their clients. With Flurry analytics data, development companies can monitor, identify and assess future development opportunities to grow a client’s mobile application business. Flurry offers channel partner revenue share possibilities, technical support and joint marketing. Read More…

Baseline Consulting and Broadstreet Data Announce Strategic Partnership: Baseline Consulting Group, one of the industry’s premier IT services firms, and Broadstreet Data, one of Canada’s leading data solutions consulting firms, today announced they are partnering to provide full lifecycle management consulting services for Data Governance, Master Data Management, Business Intelligence, and Data Warehouse and Data Mart implementations within the Canadian provinces. The announcement was made at the MDM Summit, taking place in Toronto, Ontario. The combination of Baseline Consulting’s management consulting experience in the areas of Business Intelligence and Master Data Management and the implementation services offered by Broadstreet Data will enable organizations to assess their current business and technical environment, and architect, develop, and implement their required solutions. The benefit of the partnership to IT organizations is a complete service offering from assessments to architecture and design to implementation - from one vendor, under one contract, with Broadstreet Data. Read More…

Heartland Payment Systems Selects MicroStrategy for Enhanced Reporting: MicroStrategy Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that Heartland Payment Systems has selected MicroStrategy to enhance reporting and analysis capabilities for its customers. Heartland is the nation’s fifth largest payments processor, providing card processing, payroll, check management, and other payments solutions. “MicroStrategy will enable us to enhance the reporting and analytics we provide to our merchants, giving them greater insights into their businesses,” said Alan Sims, chief technology officer at Heartland. “After conducting an evaluation of numerous reporting and analysis products, we selected MicroStrategy because of its integrated platform, scalability for large volumes of data, and easy-to-use reporting capabilities for our diverse user population.” Read More…

‘Growing Pains’ Eased with ClickBase for AccountMate: AccountMate Software Corporation and ClickBase Corporation have partnered to offer clients tightly integrated Business Intelligence (BI) for more effective decision making with the ClickBase for AccountMate BI module. BI allows organizations to measure and monitor their performance with dashboards to track key metrics that support better business decisions. Reporting and analysis of information from across the organization is presented to employees to monitor results, recognize trends and identify inconsistencies. Effective BI ensures that people within an organization have the tools to enable them to focus on those measurements that are key to the success of their department, division or region. Read More…

Podcast: Using Semantics to Make More Sense of BI

Carl — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:28:21 +0000

J. Brooke Aker Talks Semantics: Download audio file (0611semanticsx.mp3)

Semantics is the science of having a computer read and understand the context of words. This is far different than what we all experience today when we search the web. That is keyword technology and it cannot distinguish between a new set of clothes, legal matters, or the kind of cards you are playing in poker when you search using the word “suit.” But semantics can.

So why does this technology signal something new for business intelligence? Simple, 80% of the world’s information comes in a written, unstructured form, not a structured set of data. But with semantics you analyze for context every word, paragraph and document and save the (XML, RDF, etc.) markup in a database. What business intelligence could not use is now usable.

What do you get from semantics fused with BI? Now that is where the fun comes in. How about collecting, analyzing, tallying and displaying the sentiment consumers express on the web about your company’s products or services? Try this site from the 2,000 daily blogs post on automobiles to see how this works. How about analyzing the financial health, technology, partnerships and deals of your suppliers? How about tracking and understanding the ever changing regulatory or legal environment your company must navigate?

Semantics is the key to turning your sea of documents, email, spreadsheets, presentations and frankly the whole web into a BI accessible source. Now you can think about BI’s role in a web that answers questions directly and accurately - about the hours at the library, instructions for home repair, and how to operate one of your complicated electronic devices. Now you can think about BI’s role in a web that monitors and prevents fraud or helps solve crime, protects the homeland, saves energy, and discovers new medicine. BI just took a big leap forward.

–J. Brooke Aker, CEO, Expert System’s U.S. subsidiary

The IT-Finance Connection Newswire for June 25

Carl — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:27:14 +0000

Automated Equity Finance Markets and Data Explorers Working Together: Automated Equity Finance Markets (AQS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Quadriserv, Inc., today announced a new agreement under which its AQS securities lending marketplace will integrate with unique securities lending data and analysis products from Data Explorers (www.dataexplorers.com). Customers from both organizations will benefit from productivity tools that enhance securities lending portfolio management, including new market data and analytical capabilities. Read More…

Meeting Set on Gaining Visibility via Dashboard and Toolkits: Business Intelligence Collaborated is having its first event in Philadelphia. The organization connects IT professionals in the Greater Philadelphia/NY area. Mike Masciandaro, the former Director of Business Intelligence at Rohm and Haas will give a presentation, with a discussion to follow. Read More…

Panorama NovaView 6 Introduced: Panorama Software is proud to announce the release of Panorama NovaView 6! NovaView 6 adds the following improvements to the previous versions of NovaView:

– New Dashboard User Interface
– Streamlined installation and upgrade (new setup)
– More robust (through the inclusion of the latest fixes we accumulated into the server)

4 optional new products:

? NovaView Flash Analytics
? Relational Data Connector (will be available in RC2 in May)
? Executive Dashboard
? NovaView SharedViews

Views on the News: More Reaction to LucidEra’s Demise

Carl — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:36:15 +0000

The end of LucidEra clearly is a milestone in the overlapping business intelligence and software-as-a-service sectors. Following is the analysis of five bloggers on the news:

From myDIALS’ CEO Wayne Morris:

What does the demise of LucidEra really mean?

It was with mixed emotions that I read about LucidEra shutting down. If you are not familiar with LucidEra, they are a SaaS BI company heavily focused on delivering sales analytics and are closely aligned with salesforce.com. The mixture of emotions was because there is overlap between what myDIALS offers and what LucidEra has offered. While one less competitor is good, at the same time knowing how hard it is to create a new company, I feel somewhat sad that they are closing their doors and it also seems appropriate to examine why that might be.

Read More…

From Dave Kellogg at Mark Logic CEO Blog:

Au Revoir LucidEra

I’ve always thought BI was a particularly difficult category “to SaaS” for a number of reasons:

The dependency on external data. Operational apps (e.g., NetSuite, Salesforce) inherently have data associated with them, data that gets loaded initially when you configure the app, and data that gets supplemented every day when you use it. BI is a blank slate that requires data to be useful.
The variability of user requirements. There are only so many ways to call a lead, pay an invoice, or promote an employee (i.e., implement use-cases in transactional apps). In BI, just about any question you can imagine is fair game and different people think about things in different ways. This is one reason why BI has seemed to defy “applicationization,” despite repeated attempts from multiple vendors. While you certainly can package some common reports and dashboards, my guess is you’re grabbing only 20% of the requirements, not the 80% you grab when package up transactions.

Read More…

From Christina Torode at SearchCIO:

SaaS BI vendor LucidEra’s demise harkens to ASP downfalls

When my inbox began filling up with all the theories of why BI SaaS vendor LucidEra is expected to close down by month’s end, I couldn’t help thinking that the more things change (in name, at least), the more they stay the same.
LucidEra is in part a victim of a down economy, just as application service providers (ASPs) were in the late ’90s/early 2000s when the dot-com bust happened and VC funding started to dry up.

Like ASPs USinternetworking and Corio, LucidEra was one of the first to the SaaS BI parade. It had to lay new ground in many ways: The Web technologies that today’s SaaS vendors tap into weren’t around when LucidEra got started, so the company had a bigger learning curve and had to do lot of the development itself.

Read More…

From Roman Stanek’s Push-Button Thinking:

LucidEra: the People Express of On-Demand BI?

I am not happy to see LucidEra disappearing. It is not a good sign for the SaaS BI market in general and the startups in our space specifically. And I still believe Rob Ashe (IBM/Cognos) was wrong when he said that “BI doesn’t lend itself to SaaS”.

Read More…

From Doug Henschen at Intelligent Enterprise:

Is the LucidEra Over?

Chris Kanaracus of The Industry Standard reported yesterday that SaaS-base BI vendor LucidEra is set to shutter the business and put all assets up for sale. The story named only “a person familiar with the company’s situation” as the source. There’s no official word on the Web site and all my attempts to reach the company have failed thus far.

[Update: Darren Cunningham, LucidEra's VP of Marketing, responded to inquiries 6/23 at 3:40 pm ET with the following e-mail message:

All that I can say at this time is that our product and pipeline were both stronger than they'd ever been. Customer adoption was growing, which was reflected in the 20+ 5-star reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange since January. We got hit by just really, really bad timing to have to be raising our next round of funding in this economic climate.

Right now, various options are being looked at in the best interest of our creditors, customers, employees, and shareholders. There should be resolution for everyone involved soon so there is an orderly transition.]
Competitors including Birst and MyDials have used this news as an opportunity to launch PR campaigns picking over the carcass. It escapes me why some vendors and PR people think a dose of Schadenfreude is a good way to raise the stature and profile of your own company/client. Whether it’s a bankruptcy, poor quarterly earnings or other bad news, I seldom see how it says anything positive about (or should invite comment from) a competitor. Ford, in contrast, is riding a tide of favorable press and public sentiment these days not because it is out there saying “our competitors are bankrupt, here’s where they went wrong and here’s what we’re doing right.” Rather, Ford has focused solely on its own positive story in the midst of an otherwise unfavorable business climate.

Archer’s Walter: Platforms Trump Point Products

Carl — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:33:37 +0000

Listen to David Walter discuss the benefits of using platforms instead of point products for GRC initiatives: Download audio file (0611archer.mp3)

It seems that everyone is talking about cost-cutting initiatives. Whether the conversation is personal or business, there’s plenty of discussion about dealing with uncertainty and how to simply do more with less. You are bound to read stories about how it is “cool” to be thrifty in the newspaper or see a “Top Ten Ways to Save” piece on your favorite web site or TV news show. Even the airwaves on Twitter are overloaded with comments on the topic.

But is all cost cutting good? Is it strategic? And at what point are cost reductions short sighted? I hear many veteran business professionals talk about how the smartest companies take market share during a downturn. The prescription they often use is to make the right decisions, employ long-term thinking and often, simply be aggressive.

I talk almost daily with clients and partners of Archer Technologies, as well as my peers in the industry, about the importance of strategic thinking when evaluating IT budgets. As a former CFO for a publicly traded company and in my current role as senior product manager and client consultant, I like to think I have a dual qualification and can see both sides. Increasingly — and not surprisingly — I’m asked about return on investment (ROI) metrics for certain tools and technologies. The conversation then typically migrates to the issue of minimizing reliance on disparate point solutions and the importance of focusing budget dollars on flexible platform technologies that can address multiple business objectives.

One reason CFOs struggle with IT budgets is that CIOs tend to “collect” specific, niche tools when times are good. The challenging year of 2009 is not the time for an overabundance of tools that IT isn’t fully utilizing. Consolidating these tools can be a daunting task for the CIO: While saving money is important, companies need to have the proper technologies to achieve, if not exceed, their business objectives.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, so please let me know your thoughts on how the CIO and CFO can work better together to address IT budget constraints.

–David Walter, Director of GRC Product Development, Archer Technologies.

Five Minutes of News: QlikView Version 9

Carl — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:26:31 +0000

Listen to Anthony Deighton describe QlikView 9: Download audio file (0609qlikviewx.mp3)

Radnor, PA – June 10, 2009 – QlikTech, the world’s fastest-growing Business Intelligence (BI) company, today announced the immediate availability of QlikView Version 9, its flagship BI product that accesses and analyzes real-time operational data to provide meaningful business answers. QlikView has set the standard for BI simplicity, usability and time to value. Now, QlikView 9 builds on that success as the first and only BI tool that meets the needs of all business and power users, works equally well in any-size deployment and on any platform, and can be accessed anywhere, anytime—including on-premise, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device. QlikView 9 also raises the bar with significantly enhanced enterprise manageability, performance and scalability, real-time data, and reporting capabilities.

Highlights of QlikView 9 include:

Enterprise Manageability—Supports large deployments, data sets, real-time data and PDF reporting

Cloud Availability—Through Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Web service

QlikView Mobile—Launch of Java Mobile and iPhone clients

QlikView Personal Edition—Free downloadable developer tool for personal use

Usability and Simplicity—Enhanced visualization and search capabilities

“The BI industry in the midst of a major transition,” says Lars Björk, CEO of QlikTech. “Time to value and usability are now the defining forces influencing adoption. Our dramatic growth to date is a testament to that fact. In contrast, traditional BI providers are experiencing significant revenue declines, and surviving on maintenance and services fees. QlikView 9 is ideal for companies frustrated with failed attempts to implement BI from vendors such as SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos and Oracle. More and more understand the value of switching to QlikView because of its dramatically higher project success rate.”

The IT-Finance Connection Newswire

Carl — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:33:31 +0000

Apollo Data Technologies Launches Automated Predictive Analytics: Apollo Data Technologies, a leader in predictive analytics, has developed a groundbreaking portfolio of web-based healthcare software solutions that turn the arduous process of analyzing patient, clinical, and financial data for billing inaccuracies into a streamlined, proactive and profitable system. The new software automates the detection of missing charges, sniffs out underpayments, and continually flags claims that can increase revenue for cash-strapped hospitals. Based on proven, predictive analytics technology developed for Fortune 100 companies, the Apollo Data Technologies automated solutions increase provider profitability by turning data into a revenue-generating, time-saving resource that can yield hospitals and health systems a net revenue increase of 1 to 2 percent on average. Read More

Skandinavisk Data Center Purchases Teradata Active Data Warehouse: Teradata Corporation, the world’s largest company solely focused on data warehousing and enterprise analytics, today announced that Skandinavisk Data Center (SDC) purchased a Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse platform for its banking data center in Denmark. The data center supports more than 140 financial institutions in Scandinavia - Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Read More..

Acxius Strategic Consulting and Aster Data Systems Partner: Acxius Strategic Consulting, a management consulting and systems integration company today announced a strategic partnership agreement with Aster Data Systems, a proven leader in high-performance database systems for data warehousing and analytics. The two companies will leverage this partnership to target “big data” analytic solutions for customers in the insurance, financial services, healthcare and other industry verticals. Acxius will offer the Aster nCluster database to work in conjunction with Acxius clients’ existing data integration products, to enable their joint customers to rapidly collect and analyze high volumes of data for deep analysis and reporting. Acxius’ Enterprise Data Warehouse and Data Mart Services have helped customers in this effort by creating high-performance and scalable data warehousing solutions to achieve their enterprise decision management (EDM) goals, thus taking their business to the next level in the process. Read More…

Biz IT Pro Expands Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Competencies: Business IT Professionals, Inc. (Biz IT Pro), a North Carolina-based customer relationship management solution provider, has announced that the firm has added competencies in Business Intelligence and Data Management to their Microsoft Gold Certified Partnership. Business Intelligence partners are fully equipped to help customers leverage the data they’re already collecting to build more-effective business strategies. For customers, accurate business intelligence often equals a competitive advantage, which is why robust business-intelligence solutions are always in demand. Read More…

Washington Trust Commences Second Phase of BI Platform Rollout: Washington Trust Wealth Management and UNAPEN, Inc. are pleased to announce the second phase of an enterprise rollout of UNAPEN’s CLIENTLOGIX CRM and Business Intelligence platform. Washington Trust’s Wealth Management division chose UNAPEN’s flagship CLIENTLOGIX platform in late 2007 to integrate all of its sales and client service activities across its four wealth management divisions: Washington Trust Investors (WTI), 1800 Asset Management (1800), Weston Financial Group, Inc. (Weston) and Trust & Estate Services. The first phase of the system went live at 1800, WTI and Trust & Estate Services in the spring of 2008. Read More…

Experian Portfolio Management Identifies Risks for Small-Business: Experian, a global information services company, today announced the launch of three highly predictive credit scores that enable members of its Small Business Credit Share program to quickly identify financial accounts that are most likely to become delinquent. Powered by Experian’s extensive business data and advanced analytics capabilities, the new portfolio risk scores help clients reduce costs and maximize revenue by allowing them to address accounts that could pose future business risks. Read More…

Knoa Drives Resolution of Application, End-User Performance Issues: Knoa Software, the leading provider of end-user experience and performance management software, today announced significant enhancements to its family of Experience and Performance Management solutions for corporate software applications. Available today, Version 5.5 of Knoa Experience and Performance Manager (EPM) provides total monitoring coverage of end-user behavior and experience across enterprise applications, such as SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Siebel CRM, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft Enterprise Suite, Amdocs, as well as other major application vendors and custom applications. Knoa EPM monitors application execution at the end-user level, and provides precise metrics about the user experience as well as measurements on how effectively people execute when working with enterprise applications. Knoa provides the most accurate metrics possible on the actual application performance experienced by real end-users and an unprecedented level of visibility into end-user performance with the application. Read More…

Quantivo and Webtrends Announce Partnership: Quantivo, the leader in on-demand behavioral analytics, and Webtrends, a global provider of world-class data collection and analysis, today announced a new partnership that will enable Webtrends customers to quickly gain deep insights into the online behaviors of their site visitors. Through this partnership, joint customers can effortlessly extend their existing Webtrends Analytics with Quantivo’s market-leading on-demand behavioral analytics to better understand, segment, and convert web traffic into revenue dollars.Read More…

Otto International Upgrades With Hyperion Applications to Pentaho BI: BrainChild, a leading IT services provider and Pentaho Gold Reseller and Pentaho Corporation, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), today announced that Otto International, a leading B2B services company, has finished replacing legacy Hyperion applications and manual data integration jobs with Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition. The project was managed by BrainChild in Hong Kong, with both the migration and new features delivered in only four months. OTTO International (OI) is a service company with decades of experience in purchasing and procurement. The worldwide OI network comprises a total of 26 locations, offering B2B clients the full process chain, from purchasing and retail-based services such as transport logistics, financial services and product design through to quality control. Read More…

Cincom’s BI Module Allows Quick Performance Evaluation: CINCOM has released a new Business Intelligence module to support real-time analytical reporting for its Enterprise Compliance and Quality Management suite. Cincom says the Compliance and Quality Business Intelligence module enables users to drill down into underlying data generated by the operational Cincom ECQM applications and other supporting external systems. Cincom claims the Business Intelligence module allows data to be analysed, reported and exported efficiently, so as to improve compliance and profitability. Users can quickly evaluate enterprise-wide quality performance by accessing key metrics and compliance key performance indicators. Read More…

SAS Still Tops in Operational Risk Management Report: For the fifth consecutive year, SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, continued its reign as the leader by Chartis Research in its Operational Risk Management Systems 2009 report. Since 2005, Chartis has positioned SAS OpRisk Management in the top spot for “completeness of offering” and “market share potential.” Chartis forecasts the worldwide operational risk management (ORM) market to grow to US$1.68 billion by 2013. The Chartis report looks at both the demand and supply sides of the market and covers the main market and regulatory requirements as well as the competitive landscape. The evaluation examined a vendor’s core functionality, data management capability, vendor characteristics, implementation process, user friendliness, complexity, customizability/flexibility and costs. Read More…

NWP Services Introduces BI Data Warehouse for Utility Management: NWP Services Corporation (NWP), the leading provider of financial transaction processing solutions for the multifamily housing industry, today introduced a new Business Intelligence Data Warehouse, called ConsumptionSmart, now available as a value-added feature of the company’s award-winning UtilityPay Manager product offering. Read More…

Kickfire, Sun and Kimball Group to Deliver Data Warehousing Webinars: Kickfire, Inc., innovator of the first high-performance analytic appliance for the mass market, today announced a new series of webinars for the data warehousing mass market, co-presented with Sun Microsystems and the Kimball Group, the definitive source for dimensional data warehousing expertise. The data warehousing mass market is comprised of deployments in the gigabytes to low terabytes which, according to an IDC/ComputerWorld survey, represent over three-quarters of the total market. The webinar series will begin on June 25th at 1:00 pm PDT and will introduce the audience to data warehousing concepts and best practices. More specifically, the series will cover the history and evolution of data warehousing; will provide an overview of dimensional modeling; and review the full life cycle of designing and implementing a data warehouse. To register for this webinar, go to http://tinyurl.com/kgwebinar. Read More…

IDC: Info, Data Management Software in Asia Grows 8 Percent: The Information and Data Management Software (IDMS) market in Asia Pacific continued to grow 8.02 percent year-on-year in 2008 to an estimated US$2,107.99 million, said IDC Wednesday. The IDMS market includes RDBMS, and non-relational databases management systems as well as data integration and database tools, according to the research firm. The market grew on the back of maintenance revenue stream, and on-going implementations and other projects that were approved pre-crisis. This includes those that were pulled through by application deployments and data warehouse implementations, IDC noted. Read More…

BIReady Releases Version 4: BIReady is executing the next phase of the global roll-out of its standardized data warehouse automation solution. The mass market introduction of this business intelligence automation software is triggered by the successful implementations of the BIReady product. Following a two year evaluation period starting in 2005, the tried and tested application has been installed at the heart of the business intelligence applications of a number of customers; organizations in various industries - including health care, insurance, government and durable consumer goods - acknowledge the benefits flagged by domain experts and industry analysts. Read More…

Podcast: Clear Peak’s Strategy is to Start With Targeted Projects

Carl — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:21:32 +0000

Listen to a chat with Clear Peak’s Brad Cowdrey: Download audio file (0605clearpeak.mp3)

As if economic times haven’t changed, many analysts and investors are continuing to dole out the same advice: buy hardware, new software or implement new systems as a solution for technical, financial and operational problems. It’s a frustrating recommendation for cost-conscious IT departments under the budget microscope. Instead of this “buy-it-to-fix-it” approach, companies can often avoid major capital expenditures by working smarter with what they’ve got. A trusted BI counselor can help companies navigate today’s highly complex technology landscape and engineer solutions to create value.

An audit to evaluate existing systems, people and processes is an important first step in re-engineering value. This allows decision-makers to re-purpose, optimize and re-deploy current hardware, software and systems. An analysis of day-to-day operations to identify opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness should be part of this audit.

Additionally, hardware and software vendors may not be eager to reveal this fact, but the economic environment puts IT departments in the driver’s seat. Vendors are quite willing to re-negotiate existing contracts providing companies with long-term savings. Existing software can also be re-leveraged to extract additional value by getting creative with the use of existing licenses.

A knowledgeable advisor can bring a fresh perspective to an IT audit and make create recommendations to re-engineer value. One with strong vendor contacts and negotiation skills can offer companies immediate ROI by arranging more favorable contract terms.

Brad Cowdrey, senior partner and founder of Clear Peak – a management, technology and IT consultancy in Denver.