The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Al Stewart's latest album, Sparks of Ancient Light. The usual eclectic Stewart song subject selection - President McKinley, Elvis, sixth-century BC explorer Hanno the Carthaginian, the Shah, Lord Salisbury, the Eisenhower years in America, dissipated international embezzlers and the like. You know, typical rock'n'roll stuff:
Mobile Web tech vendors Bango say they see that the opening-up of mobile traffic channels - paying for on-deck links to off-deck sites and mobile advertising through Yahoo! and Google - as an indication that content providers are acquiring customers through the mobile Internet rather than via PC Web affiliate programs.
"WAP billing is now the preferred way to sell content to customers acquired through mobile marketing," says Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango, adding that they predict this "e-commerce for the mobile Web" will "dominate how subscriptions are marketed and sold in the US within the next 12 months."
Subscriptions tend to be the mainstay of the mobile content market in the US. Bango's MMA-compliant WAP-based mobile subscription service is designed to eliminate the need to send text messages to make a purchase - "the price, subscription time period and T&Cs are clearly displayed on-screen before consumers click to purchase," according to the Bangovians.
A recent update to the Bango mobile subscription service provides an API so content providers can see the status of their subscriptions. "Bango re-bills consumers on their behalf once the subscription period has finished, notifying the user by text," Malhotra explains.
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The WAP model "capitalizes on this year's surge in mobile Web browsing," Malhotra says. "We anticipate US mobile operators will support more flexibility around subscription pricing models next year with the introduction of weekly subs, at price points other than $9.99."
Bango has offices in USA and UK and is quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
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Jenzabar, a vendor of software for higher education, has announced that it is supporting the Association of Commonwealth Universities' Conference of Executive Heads, to be held at the end of November in Hyderabad, India.
The event will bring together participants from higher education worldwide, including ACU member institutions and vendors. Jenzabar Vice President of Client Relations Sashi Parthasarathi will speak on how technology can be used for enrollment, retention, and advancement.
The conference is organized around the theme of "Dazzling technologies: Seismic shifts in higher education in a fast-changing and unequal world."
The Jenzabarbarians say the conference's attendance of heads of tertiary education institutions from across the British Commonwealth is expected to be "one of the largest gatherings of university heads ever held."
The first ACU Conference of Executive Heads was held in Bristol, England over 60 years ago. Established in 1913, the Association of Commonwealth Universities is reputedly the oldest inter-university network in the world. The ACU's 500 members are spread across five continents.
It serves as, among other things, a forum for universities in Australasia, Canada and the UK to benchmark their research contract and grant activity, and for those in Africa and South Asia to compare their extension work programs.
Jenzabar is headquartered in Boston, with regional offices located across the United States.
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Pronto Software, an Australian vendor of enterprise software products, has inked a deal with Heritage Seeds, an Australian seed company, to roll out its flagship ERP product, Pronto-Xi for the company's manufacturing operations.
Melbourne-based Heritage Seeds is part of the Royal Barenbrug Group which last year generated 212 million euros in sales. The company sells seed products including ryegrass, alfalfa and tropical and turf grasses to farmers across Australia through wholesale distributors such as Elders and Murray Goulbourn.
It also exports to 50 countries and has a 70-hectare seed research facility. The company will roll out Pronto-Xi across its four branches nationally, and has selected modules including Financials, CRM and Manufacturing.
The company plans to go live in April 2009 in time for its peak autumn season. Heritage officials are hoping the Pronto-Xi will allow greater efficiency throughout its manufacturing operations.
"Pronto-Xi will streamline and automate our manufacturing processes which are currently manual-based. With Pronto-Xi, we'll be instantly alerted to low stock levels and know which materials need to be ordered in, which will feed into our back ordering process," company officials say, adding that such capability is "important in our industry, which can be affected by unpredictable conditions such as drought or crop disease."
Pronto Software's Managing Director David Jackman got in a good line, saying says Heritage Seeds "will be able to reap the benefits of an ERP product fast."
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Parallels officials have announced an enhancement to the company's Parallels Operations Automation 2.8 software in the form of a SaaS module, which uses the Application Packaging Standard.
Parallels Operations Automation is described by company officials as "an operations support system for enterprises and service providers to automate the delivery of server-based applications and resources."
The new SaaS Module lets service providers offer third party applications to their end-user customers. New features built into the operations system provide a platform. This new version 2.8 release of Parallels Operations Automation, company officials say, "incorporates 210 new features and functional improvements."
Parallels Operations Automation is designed to improve server provisioning and datacenter management, reduce operational costs and reduce service delivery errors. Company officials say they feel that the new SaaS capabilities make it easier for service providers to offer a wide range of applications, including CRM.
"Parallels Operations Automation lets customers manage their operations and provide new services such as SaaS applications into a business software market expected to reach $40 billion by 2011," said Jack Zubarev, President, Service Provider Worldwide, Parallels.
According to recent research from Saugatuck Technology, companies with fewer than 500 employees are a key growth area for SaaS. In addition, the research firm says, new SMBs are foregoing traditional IT and from the start using SaaS and Cloud-based IT.
Founded in 1999, Parallels has 800 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.
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Veryant, a COBOL and Java tech firm, has announced that Softwrx has selected the isCOBOL Application Platform Suite for its suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Nashville-based Softwrx sells software products for a variety of business needs, including accounting and financial management, business analysis, inventory management, and customer relationship management (CRM).
The company initially developed and deployed its products on ACUCOBOL-GT, but company officials say difficulties with performance, file structure, graphical controls, and long-term portability "created challenges for Softwrx in supporting its customer base."
"We were experiencing frustration with support delivery, product weaknesses, and high costs so we decided to look for an alternative COBOL product," said John Jackson, president of Softwrx. "We knew we wanted a product that was more functional, stable, and direct, with good documentation and a high level of support."
Softwrx found isCOBOL APS to be more streamlined and efficient than its previous COBOL platform and company officials say the firm was able to move nearly 800 COBOL programs to isCOBOL APS "in one week."
Veryant is headquartered in Phoenix.
