By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Everybody’s Bach, a decent,
backgroundy snippet collection:
Business Objects, a vendor of business
intelligence products, is announcing the
availability of new Integration Kits for connecting the Oracle family of
applications with BusinessObjects XI Release 2.
Business Objects provides customers with access to Oracle’s
products and applications, including Oracle databases, Oracle OLAP
multidimensional cubes, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and Oracle’s e-Business
Suite applications.
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 is described by company officials as providing Oracle
customers with “an insulation layer that protects end-users from any changes
going on behind the scenes with their IT infrastructure.”
By offering a BI product that is separated from the
transactional systems, Business Objects contends, it helps companies avoid
disruptions and “will allow Oracle customers to migrate to Fusion without
impacting reporting and business intelligence access.”
“With the rapid pace of consolidation happening in the market today, a company’s
information infrastructure seems to be in a constant state of flux,” said Rene
Bonvanie, chief marketing officer at Business Objects.
The BusinessObjects XI Release 2 integration kits offer pre-built integration
for faster time to benefit and feature native drivers and security plug-ins
that use the existing security infrastructure. The integration kits employ secured
reporting, interactive dashboards and scorecards.
Business Objects officials say the BI platform is embedded across all of Oracle’s
PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications. In addition, Business Objects already
supports Oracle Fusion Middleware -- the foundation for future Oracle
enterprise applications.
…
Zingo, Inc., an IP communications service
provider servicing residential and commercial clients worldwide, is announcing
that ZingoTel US and Canada customers
can now reach a Public Safety Answering Point if needed for 9-1-1 assistance.
Basic 9-1-1 services provide the caller’s telephone number
in most cases, but not the address location information, to PSAP. Basic 9-1-1
callers are required to give address location to dispatch 9-1-1 assistance if
needed.
Zingo Telecom is presently testing E911 in United States service
markets accessible to VoIP providers through E911 access routers under its
current 9-1-1 service provider’s agreements. Testing is expected to be completed
by April 1st, 2006, and once operational, company officials say it will “provide
approximately 60 percent of the US market with E911 service.”
E911 provides the caller’s number and address location
information with the call to PSAP.
Zingo announced last month that it has reached over 2,000
subscribers, a milestone company officials attribute “largely to aggressive
online marketing over the past four months.”
ZingoTel will automatically upgrade customers with basic 9-1-1 to E911 service
as they are available in the customers’ markets.
Frank Babusik, COO, Zingo Telecom said the company is “moving
steadily to provide 100 percent access for E911 services to every US customer
as these markets become available to Zingo Telecom directly or indirectly with
local PSAP router access.”
…
Globe Composite Solutions, Ltd. has announced
that it has developed what it calls the
industry’s first 100 percent non-metallic roller and conveyor side frame system
to enhance the performance of RFID-enabled material handling applications.
The new patent-pending conveyor system, NMR-6689TM, is
described by company officials as eliminating potential interference from
metallic components, “thereby increasing read-rate accuracy and allowing
clients to use multiple RFID systems within close proximity without misreads or
double counts.”
The first NMR-6689TM system is scheduled to be delivered for
initial product testing early next week.
Non-metallic conveyor products are the standard for RFID use since metallic
conveyors and components create interference and potentially compromise RFID
tag readability. Globe’s Brandonite non-metallic conveyor systems are widely installed
in US airports.
“We have heard loud and clear from the marketplace about the need to improve
the performance of RFID-enabled material handling systems”, said Carl W.
Forsythe, President and CEO of Globe.
Users can now place the RFID antennae directly underneath the
conveyor to obtain “true 360-degree coverage to accurately read RFID tags, even
on higher speed conveyor systems,” according to Brian C. Evans, Vice President of
Design Engineering at Globe.
…
Here’s a switch: Other
countries outsourcing their call center work to the United States. The Las
Cruces (New Mexico) Sun-News is
reporting that a Canadian company “plans to locate a new call center in Las
Cruces that could eventually provide hundreds of jobs.”
ClientLogic will hire “150 to 200 employees”
before training starts in April, according to a company news release, and “plans
to hire nearly 600 employees, most full-time with benefits” the newspaper
quotes, company spokesman Stephen McClure said.
ClientLogic provides customer service and technical support services for other
companies. For example, the newspaper says, “if the company contracted with
Sony and someone called a technical support number for help using a DVD player,
the caller could be calling an employee of the Las Cruces facility.”
Aspect Huntley is reporting that Iress Market Technology’s XPLAN
“has entered into a four-year agreement
with Genesys Group for provision of software for its adviser technology
platform.”
XPLAN will be deployed to Genesys member firms during the
remainder of 2006, as a 100 percent web-based product. The company believes
that web-deployment means reductions in costs, infrastructure requirements and
workload for end users.
…
Interestingly, Siebel is the only company in the “leader quadrant” in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service and Support
Applications, 2006,” according to industry observer Colin
Beasty.
Gartner states that Siebel’s Version 7.7 “continues
to demonstrate the highest complexity and broadest functionality in the
industry,” Beasty reports, “and is the only system in the market to demonstrate
the ability to support large-scale implementations.”
Michael Maoz, vice president and research
fellow at Gartner, says that if Siebel wants to remain the leader of this
market, it must “focus on delivering more intelligence to the desktop by ‘delivering
decision support for the interaction with that customer,’” in Beasty’s words.
Siebel’s strongest competition, according to the report,
comes from niche players such as Amdocs and SAP AG and the likes of Onyx
Software, Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies, and Salesforce.com.
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