The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a fine old Eric Clapton rocker, "Tulsa Time." It's hard for me to call Clapton the greatest rock guitarist ever, as many would like to do. Jeff Beck was more brilliant, Jimmy Page harder, Steve Howe more technically accomplished, Jimi Hendrix more inventive, Eddie Van Halen flashier and the best guitar attack in all rock is the Keith Richards-Ronnie Wood two-headed monster for the Stones. Clapton? Probably the best mix of all the above in one package:
Composite Software has announced that the nation's fourth largest bank, Wachovia Corporation (well, fourth largest after its merger with Wells Fargo & Company), has selected its Composite Information Server. Wachovia officials say the Composite software will be put in its Corporate Investment Banking line to help with holdings and offerings information for customers.
Composite's data virtualization layer is intended to simplify "the complexity of accessing siloed and disparate data sources," according to the Compositians, who say the technology "reaches data where it is" and "federates the disparate data into services and views."
The server's ability to "cache our data from multiple federated sources" was one of the key selling points, according to Sid Vyas, managing director, Corporate and Investment Banking Technology, Wachovia. "Our data federation platform supports product and client data as well as the transaction data reporting and analytics."
When dealing with data integration, "there is a difference between art and execution," adds Sanjay Mishra, director of data architecture at Wachovia. "We need to get the execution right."
Additionally, Composite Software's technology plays an integral role in service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives that support delivery of best practices in shared services. These initiatives will accelerate applications' time to market, therefore realizing their business value sooner.
Founded in 2002, Composite is a privately held, venture-funded corporation based in
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Melissa Data's Data Quality Suite has been adopted by Las Vegas-based Clairvoyix, a consumer data management and direct marketing firm.
Melissa officials describe the toolkit as a contact data verification product.
Clairvoyix performs data hygiene and data enhancement services, counting La Quinta Inns and Suites - described as "limited-service hotels," First Coffee wasn't aware that was a service category. I guess it pretty well describes what to expect, though.
Mike Schmitt, CEO of Clairvoyix, said one factor in choosing Melissa was that the company "has the highest value-to-price ratio in the industry." Schmitt added that his company's clients "see the benefit of targeted marketing, especially in a down economy."
Clairvoyix integrates the Data Quality Suite into the marketing automation product it provides to its clients. For La Quinta Inns and Suites, Clairvoyix manages the complete history of guest records while capturing a file of guest checkout records nightly. The company "verifies, validates and standardizes the checkout data at night, in a lights out, automated environment that is part of their Software-as-a-Service marketing automation product.
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TreeHouse Interactive, a vendor of on demand partner relationship management and other technology products, has announced it closed 2008 with a 35 percent increase in annual revenue and a 30 percent expanded customer base.
TreeHouse officials believe companies are looking at the SaaS model more seriously than ever these days. According to a CMS Watch 2009 IT predictions report cited by the TreeHousers, companies will "look more to their SaaS product providers to offer a full suite of tools and capabilities."
"While economic conditions are challenging in today's market, our customers are more concerned than ever about market penetration and how to expand sales through their partner network," said Erich Flynn, CEO of TreeHouse Interactive.
In a down economy, company officials believe, firms look for tools that can increase revenue and market penetration without increasing costs. What happens many times is they simply turn to their existing partner sales channel to try to do this without incurring the direct costs associated with adding dedicated sales people. TreeHouse's Reseller View product would probably be attractive to companies looking to shave costs by automating partner applications, deal registration, and other scalable partnership management duties.
According to Simplyhired.com, a job search engine and recruitment advertising network, the number of marketing automation and demand generation jobs have increased 262 percent in the last 18 months. So yes, companies are still investing in areas that will advance the sales and marketing process for stronger pipelines.
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Research announced by The Data Warehousing Institute is said by company officials to indicate what they term "an increasing adoption of columnar databases as the platform of choice for data warehousing and analytic applications."
Company officials attribute the rise to the products' ability to deliver fast query response and "compress and provide access to large amounts of detail data."
According to Philip Russom, senior manager, TDWI Research, a common complaint that TDWI hears from BI workers is that their data warehouse platform consists of a traditional DBMS and SMP hardware, both designed for transaction processing, not data warehousing. "Users are spending a significant amount of time and energy tweaking transactional platforms to get adequate performance for the type of queries and data volumes common in today's data warehousing environments," he said.
He says the search for something different "has led many of them to explore columnar databases, especially when they can be deployed in a Massively Parallel Processing architecture."
"It is clear why companies are adopting columnar database technology. Our survey research aligns with TDWI findings and indicates that more than 50 percent of companies have significant performance and scalability issues with their data warehousing and business intelligence applications," noted ParAccel Vice President of Marketing Kim Stanick.
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Bridgeline Software, a vendor of SaaS-based Web application management software and apps, has announced that a
The iAPPS Framework and Product Suite are SaaS products that unify Content Management, Analytics, eCommerce, and eMarketing capabilities.
Targeted to a customer base that includes homeowners, businesses, and contractors, the site provides users with a place to pay bills online and access other self-service tools, as well as learn about various energy efficiency tips to help reduce household energy usage.
The site's energy efficiency section includes energy saving programs, do-it-yourself project information, and other resources. Company officials say the energy-efficient house interactive tool available on the site "allows users to see how they can realize energy savings at home in a real-world setting and apply those techniques to their own energy profile." The site also includes dedicated content and tools for the commercial user such as rebate information.
There's also integrated functionality like online bill pay, offered in both English and Spanish on the site.
Bridgeline Software is headquartered near
Last week Bridgeline announced that what company officials refer to as "a leading National Football League franchise" selected Bridgeline to develop an eCommerce application for their online business and the public Web site.
And speaking of the NFL, here's what you need to know for this weekend's games:
