The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee this morning, and the music is a faux-live album from the Grateful Dead, Europe '72. The band used the live performances from their tour of Europe mainly as a way to get basic tracks down on a bunch of new songs, mostly of the laid-back country style which comes off better live than in the studio. They came back and recorded the fills and overdubs in the studio and ended up with a pretty good album, as long as you're not under the impression it's a "live album."
Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software has announced the newest version of its Customer Data Quality Platform. With what company officials describe as "enhanced support for global data, access to value-add services in Software-as-a-Service or hybrid deployments, integration of data quality into existing CRM investments and enhanced support for data governance functionality," the CDQ Platform v5.6 is billed as a product for data quality and "geospatial enrichment."
The CDQ Platform is designed to let organizations "reduce data management costs and provide customer insight."
According to Gartner research, the volume of enterprise data doubles every 18 months, as you would imagine making it increasingly difficult to create a single, 360-degree view of each customer.
The CDQ Platform "provides support for data governance through profiling and monitoring, access to enterprise data in a federated approach, cleansing, validation, deterministic and probabilistic matching, consolidation and geospatial enrichment," according to company officials.
The single integrated platform is delivered via a service-oriented architecture in real-time, batch or SaaS. The technology lets organizations to unify enterprise data, eliminate redundancies and expand overall customer knowledge, company officials say.
New features in the CDQ Platform v5.6 include an openpParser, multi-domain, culture and language specific or agnostic grammar giving users control, visibility and insight into modifying and defining patterns for data cleansing of unstructured and mismatched content and metadata.
DMC Software, a Sage, Dell and Microsoft Gold Business Partner, has developed Link 200 to keep companies from suffering "the imminent redundancy of particular Sage software, such as SalesLogix version 6.2," according to DMC officials.
The York, England-based firm notes that software "evolves and develops, junior versions are inevitably phased out and this is true of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software SalesLogix version 6.2, by Sage, which has been surpassed many times over with the current version at SalesLogix 7.5."
As version 6.2 is eliminated "so is any relevant support and Application Integration Support with Account software Sage MMS 2.2, now known as Sage 200," the firm's officials say.
DMC officials warn that this redundancy will be an issue for those using SalesLogix version 6.2 and AIS, as "they will either suffer with deleted integration between software or an unsupported version of SalesLogix."
Link 200 provides businesses with processes allowing data sharing and faster administration, freeing up time to focus on strategy and decisions. As of January 2009 a new version of Link 200 is available, with integration between SalesLogix and Sage 200, correlation between accounts information and client history, compatiblity with SalesLogix version 7.2.x through to 7.5.x, drill-down on Sage 200 Sales & Purchase Orders from SalesLogix and other functions.
DMC Software offers bespoke CRM software products and financial software as well as professional services.
Regal Beloit Corporation, a manufacturer of electrical and mechanical motion control products, has deployed Oracle Business Intelligence Applications to "improve visibility into business operations and enhance decision-making enterprise wide," Oracle officials say.
Headquartered in Beloit, Wisconsin, Regal Beloit is a global manufacturer maintaining facilities in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia. The company sought a business intelligence (BI) product that would help them better understand business performance across such functions as orders, sales, inventory and receivables.
In late 2007, Regal Beloit initiated a five-month BI software vendor selection and evaluation process that culminated in the selection of Oracle. Criteria included ease of integrating data from different source systems, adapters for multiple data sources, ease of customization of ETL and front-end, capability of business users to develop reports and dashboards and having pre-built content for multiple functions.
Regal Beloit initiated its deployment of the packaged, role-based Oracle Business Intelligence Applications in approximately 75 days from start to finish. The company's IT staff estimated that building a custom BI product would have taken them more than a calendar year.
Built on Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus, Oracle's BI applications use the platform's hot-pluggable capabilities to extend intelligence capabilities to a range of data sources including the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle's Siebel CRM, and SAP.
Regal Beloit's BI system incorporates data from disparate sources including two instances of the Oracle E-Business Suite, specifically the Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning module, SAP, legacy applications, and flat files.
Kerensen Consulting officials say they have partnered with Informatica On Demand to "accelerate Salesforce.com implementation."
Kerensen and Informatica On Demand have agreed to join their offer on the Cloud Computing market. With Informatica's on-demand integration application and Kerensen's Salesforce experience, officials of both firms believe they now can offer Salesforce.com customers "a complete package for their CRM needs."
This technology and services joint offering will allow Salesforce.com customers to maximize the value of their Salesforce product, officials of both firms believe, as Informatica brings its integration expertise to the Cloud Computing market with an on demand integration application that is priced to appeal to "companies of all sizes," company officials say, so they can "achieve the benefits of SaaS integration."
Kerensen Consulting will provide implementation services as part of the joint offering.
"We look forward to extending our integration product to even more Salesforce.com customers through Kerensen's professional technology consultants," said Jarrod Buckley, Informatica's Director Channel Sales - On Demand.
Veramark Technologies, which sells Telecom Expense Management products, has announced that Ralph Rodriguez, an MIT Research Fellow with over 20 years of experience in IT management and entrepreneurship, has joined the Veramark Board of Directors.
"Telecom expense management is undergoing a dramatic evolution, harnessing new technologies and delivering new capabilities," says Rodriguez. "We're in the midst of a communications technology revolution, and one manifestation is the rapid growth of unified communications, with all the opportunities and challenges it presents."
He said the "need to manage the cost and complexity of converged networks" is driving change across the industry.
"Having looked at Veramark's strategy, technology and services capabilities," Rodriguez pronounced himself "excited to have the opportunity to help Veramark lead the industry through this transformation."
"We are thrilled to have Ralph on our board and we look forward to his contributions," said Tony Mazzullo, Veramark President and CEO.
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