Actuate's Reports, Iowa Power Fund, Caimant and Infonetics, Health Games, China's Power Grid, Fortinet on NASDAQ

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Actuate's Reports, Iowa Power Fund, Caimant and Infonetics, Health Games, China's Power Grid, Fortinet on NASDAQ

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the third installment of War of the Records. After The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers's surprise victory over Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited in yesterday's clash of the titans, we have a bit more eclectic affair today -- Warren Zevon's impeccable songwriting on Excitable Boy goes up against Ol' Blue Eyes's impeccable vocals on the breezy Sinatra classic Come Fly With Me.
 
First up: Zevon. Johnny, strike up the band.
 
A note on the coverage: We're ranging a bit afield from straight CRM-call center reportage today, happy Thanksgiving to you, too:

Actuate Corporation, the good folks who brought you BIRT, is announcing that it has made available for download five detailed open source reports featuring the results from the fourth annual Actuate Open Source Survey.
 
"For the first time," company officials say, "the survey includes results from China, in addition to North America, the UK, Germany and France."
 
It features the responses of almost 1,500 respondents spanning several verticals and features an overview of attitudes and trends in open source growth and adoption for each region. Sounds like actually one of the more comprehensive studies of its kind, as company officials claim.

"With world leaders from the US, France and the UK among others, actively calling for the widespread use of open source, the 2009 Actuate Annual Open Source Survey continues to chart this movement's increased adoption and acceptance," says Nobby Akiha, senior vice president marketing, Actuate Corporation.

The 2009 survey, conducted in June, tracked the adoption of open source software in regions across the globe. It found that Europe "continues to capitalize on its early recognition of open source software's potential for reducing IT's cost of ownership and enabling rapid application delivery that allow organizations to hone their competitive edge."

Each regional report is downloadable at no cost from the link above. They feature an in-depth look at open source adoption trends in the selected region -- North America, China, the UK, France and Germany -- as well as highlights for the other four regions surveyed, charts and graphs. All the good stuff.

Company officials say they've seen good response rate in the financial services, telecommunications and manufacturing verticals as well as the public sector.

Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project, a development environment for Rich Information Applications, described by Actuate officials as a place to "develop Web 2.0 applications" for customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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Excitable Boy wins points for the best use of alliteration in pop music in "Werewolves of London:" "Little old lady got mutilated late last night."
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Iowa's Office of Energy Independence has announced the launch of a new community grants program to "promote ways to reduce energy bills through energy efficiency practices and renewable energy use," according to OEI officials.
 
OEI will administer the program funded through the Iowa Power Fund. The Office of Energy Independence will accept applications from $1,000 to $50,000 under this new program.
Office officials say local governments and community-based organizations are "ideal groups to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, particularly as they assist Iowans in navigating difficult economic conditions."
 
The idea behind the program is that creating local programs that focus on managing energy use "will help to create good local jobs and allow Iowans to reduce their energy costs." The Office of Energy Independence's mission is to "set the strategic direction for Iowa's clean energy future by identifying goals to achieve desired results."

A little background: During the 2009 session of the 83rd Iowa General Assembly, a new grant program was established, funded through four percent of the annual appropriation of the Iowa Power Fund. So for the fiscal year 2010 the Power Fund was appropriated $21.6 million, which allows up to $864,000 available for this program. 

Cities, counties and non-profit organizations are eligible to apply for funding to support community based programs. Examples of qualified programs would be along the lines of promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy locally, training for or creating jobs in the energy arena, establishing a community energy efficiency plan, creating public awareness about energy issues or helping community members understand how to identify and implement energy improvements.
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Camiant, a vendor of policy control and application assurance technology, has once again been named a leader in the Policy Server market by Infonetics Research in its "Policy Servers Biannual Worldwide and Regional Market Share, Size, and Forecasts" report.
 
In 2008 the policy server market saw a 67 percent year over year increase to $169.8 million, and Infonetics Research is projecting similar growth in 2009.
 
"Camiant's pure play policy management is a market differentiator," says Shira Levine, Directing Analyst, Next Gen OSS and Policy, Infonetics Research, adding that the company continues to grow its market share, diversify and grow its business, particularly in Europe.
 
By comparison, Infonetics officials are projecting a 2.8 percent downturn in worldwide carrier capex in 2009, followed by a flat 2010, demonstrating, in their analysis, that "the value of policy control is allowing it to defy the general downturn in telecom market."

According to the report, managing bandwidth consumption and dynamically pricing resource usage continue to be the greatest drivers for policy server demand. Infonetics expects these factors will be joined by "new drivers," including bandwidth guarantees for specific services and branded content, more targeted advertising and promotional campaigns, over the air provisioning and on-demand services.

Susie Kim Riley, Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Camiant, says operators are "struggling to meet the burgeoning demand for bandwidth. In recent weeks we have seen several large operators confirm that without the proper management of their networks, they will not be able to continue to provide a consistent user experience across their networks."

 
Camiant's Policy Control platform is fully compliant with 3GPP's Policy and Charging Rules Function specifications, company officials say, adding that the product is a "component of the broadband network, providing real-time intelligence and management of network resources."
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Excitable Boy having staked its claim with a a truly blistering "Lawyers, Guns and Money" finale, Frankie warms up the vocal cords, struts out on stage and tears into "Come fly with me..."
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Nearly $2 million in grants were awarded to nine research teams to help "strengthen the evidence base that supports the development and use of digital interactive games to improve players' health behaviors and outcomes," according to officials of Health Games Research.
 
If you missed the event you can catch a streaming audio replay of the news at the site linked above. The grantees were be announced during a live, phone-based news event with a full Q&A.
This is the second round of grants to be awarded from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Health Games Research national program, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
 
Funded studies explore topics ranging from how dance pad games may help Parkinson's patients reduce the risk of falling to whether the Nintendo Wii can make a difference in lowering BMI for overweight high school students.
 
News event speakers included Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., communication researcher, Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Paul Tarini, team director, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio.
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Sinatra's in the groove now... out of China across the bay, on the road to Mandalay... man, he can bring it.
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"Low-carbon economy" refers to an economy advocating low power consumption, low pollution and low emission, aiming at energy conservation and emission reduction. Seems like everything's low-carb these days, doesn't it?
 
One way to get closer to that is advanced automation technology: "There is huge market potential in the development of low-carbon economy that favors the automation enterprises to actively expand to the sectors of smart grid, energy and electrical energy conservation," say officials of China's 2010 International Exhibition of Electric Power Automation Equipment & Technology.

In the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan," -- and here you thought five-year plans went out with the Soviet Union, didn't you? -- the Chinese government has determined that investment in the power grid will be, in technical parlance, "huge."
 
As the demand for power transmission and electric power automation equipment is expected to sharply increase, Chinese officials expect that the total investment by the two largest grid corporations in China will reach $1.4 trillion in the next 3 years. As government officials note, most likely correctly, "this spells a prosperous development for electric power automation manufacturers."

EPA 2010 officials say they want to provide a business platform for automation enterprises to open up the electricity market. EPA 2010 will be held concurrently with "The 13th International Exhibition on Electric Power Equipment and Technology" next year, October 19 - 21, 2010 at China International Exhibition Center in Beijing.
 
Event officials say ABB, Siemens, Chint, Schneider, Metso, Beijing Richang-Science, Phoenix Contact, Beijing Creative, Hitachi, Toshiba, Hyundai and others will participate. 

Last year's event, titled "International Conference on Smart Grid Technology," dealt with the topic of the smart grid, and specialists from the State Grid Corporation of China, China Southern Power Grid Corporation Ltd, China Guodian Corporation and Southeast University "gave the Chinese perspective on the prospect of smart grid development in China."
 
Sessions included "Green Industrial Revolution -- Energy Conservation & Emission Reduction Automation Technology Forum," presented by specialists from the Chinese Automation Association Advisory Working Committee.

For more show information, please visit EPA 2010 at or EP China 2010: www.epchinashow.com
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Lovers love London by night, Frankie sings... there's a common theme of alliterating London in both records... this will be a difficult decision.
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Fortinet, which sells network security appliances and unified threat management tools, has announced its initial public offering of 12,500,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $12.50 per share.
The shares will begin trading on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol FTNT.
 
Of the shares in the offering, 5,781,683 shares are being offered by the company and 6,718,317 shares are being offering by selling stockholders. In addition, Fortinet has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,875,000 shares of common stock to cover over-allotments, if any.
 
Fortinet will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. are acting as joint book-runners for the offering. Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, RBC Capital Markets Corporation, ThinkEquity LLC, JMP Securities LLC, and Signal Hill Capital Group LLC are acting as co-managers.

The offering of these securities will be made only by means of a prospectus, copies of which may be obtained from Morgan Stanley.
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Again, it was close, but the nod has to go to Sinatra.


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