The market for data warehouse appliances - solutions consisting of integrated software and hardware - is heating up, with new twists emerging from both established and new appliance vendors. Netezza, an early proponent of the appliance approach, was acquired in November 2010 by IBM. Here, Phil Francisco, vice president, product management and marketing for IBM Netezza, shares his views on what's changing and what's ahead. Going forward, Francisco sees very specific, vertically-oriented solutions that are built on appliances, whether it be for Telco, retailers, or financial services. "These appliances will take into account the kinds of data models that are required, but also the kind of functionality that is required for those industries and relieve even more of the day-to-day administration requirements," he notes.
Posted February 01, 2011
Maponics, a provider of location-based data for businesses, has introduced the latest version of its Neighborhood Boundaries product, which now includes over 120,000 neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada.
Posted January 31, 2011
Quest Software, Inc., maker of the Toad product suites, has broadened its support for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the beta kick-off of Toad for Sybase, a new, integrated Sybase ASE management tool that improves Sybase ASE performance and boosts DBAs' productivity. The beta is currently available for download on Toad World, Quest's one-stop destination to read about Toad and learn new tips and tricks from top database experts. According to Quest, Toad for Sybase aims to give DBAs the most important functionality for Sybase database administration and development, carefully selected based on customer feedback.
Posted January 28, 2011
ISUG, the leading users group of Sybase database professionals, has kicked off a new survey regarding management of security risks within database environments. The results of the study will help ISUG better serve its members, and gain insights into the upgrade challenges encountered at Sybase sites.
Posted January 28, 2011
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, has released version 4.1 of its Hedgehog Enterprise database security suite, a fully integrated database activity monitoring and vulnerability assessment solution for enterprise organizations.
Posted January 28, 2011
Oracle has announced a suite of analytics tools intended to help organizations derive greater insight from information in their SAP systems. The new product, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, is now part of the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications product family. "What we're announcing is the availability of the first one of those also with out-of-the-box connectivity to SAP R3 and ECC," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "These BI apps have a source-specific understanding of all those thousands of complex SAP tables, along with a pre-built ETL built on top of Oracle Data Integrator."
Posted January 28, 2011
Astera Software, a provider of data integration solutions through its Centerprise Data Integration platform, has announced the beta version of Centerprise Data Integration Real-Time Edition (RTE). According to Astera, Centerprise RTE version 5.1 brings real-time change data capture (CDC), built-in web services, and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration approach to enterprises of all sizes, allowing them to deliver the most accurate and relevant business information where it is needed, when it is needed.
Posted January 28, 2011
Rocket Software recently held a UniVerse Fundamentals class with the students located from New Jersey to China. Rocket's Instructor-Led Online Training (ILOT) allows students to save on the cost of travel while still participating in a real classroom. Registration is now open for additional Rocket Software webinars.
Posted January 27, 2011
The Revelation Users' Conference will be returning to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, later this year. The conference dates are Tuesday, October 4th through Friday, October 7th, 2011. Revelation Software has also announced that OpenInsight 9.2.1 is in the final stages of beta testing and is scheduled for release in February 2011.
Posted January 27, 2011
The development team at BlueFinity International has released a new version of its toolset designed for creating Microsoft .NET- based applications requiring access to MultiValue logic and databases, mv.NET 4.2.2. mv.NET enables software designers to combine the power and flexibility of proven MultiValue technology with the feature-rich Microsoft .NET environment. Its seamless integration with Visual Studio provides a rapid application development environment fine-tuned for the MultiValue developer. "The ongoing development work on the mv.NET product range demonstrates BlueFinity's determination, commitment and ability to provide the MultiValue community with industry leading development tools for the Microsoft .NET environment," explains David Cooper, lead developer at BlueFinity.
Posted January 27, 2011
After a successful meeting in Atlanta at the Atlanta Area Pick User Group (AAPUG) on January 25, BlueFinity International will be on the road again to meet with two additional MultiValue community groups. David Cooper, chief architect at BlueFinity International, will meet with the Texas MultiValue Users Group (TEXMUG) on January 27, and the Colorado MultiValue Users Group (CMUG) on February 1.
Posted January 27, 2011
HP and Microsoft have announced four new converged application appliances that combine applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system. In addition, there is the previously-announced HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, an enterprise-level mission-critical system. Now available with a starting price of $2 million, the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is said to deliver up to 200 times faster queries and 10 times the scalability of traditional SQL Server deployments."Our appliances have been engineered from the beginning with time to solution in mind," Fausto Ibarra, senior director of Business Intelligence at Microsoft, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We are really offering a unique value proposition."
Posted January 25, 2011
DBTA Webcast on How to Improve DB Security with Virtual Patching Now Available on Demand
Posted January 25, 2011
Quest Software has announced the addition of a wizard-based workload replay feature to its database performance testing tool, Benchmark Factory for Databases, enabling users to easily and cost-effectively capture production workload and replay it in a testing environment. "It is a solution that is really made very easy for the user so they can use it at any point in the process but ideally we would see it used before changes are deployed out to production so they can get an idea of what the effect of those changes will be," Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 25, 2011
EnterpriseDB, the largest independent PostgreSQL open source database company, has announced the availability of three components, adding security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication Server. The add-on modules, now available with a subscription to Postgres Plus Standard Server, make PostgreSQL more secure and supply data integration capabilities between multiple PostgreSQL servers as well as between PostgreSQL and Oracle.
Posted January 25, 2011
Jaspersoft today released software to support a variety of Big Data sources for business intelligence reporting. With the release of more than a dozen connectors as part of its open source "Big Data Reporting" project, as well as beta connectors for selected Big Data proprietary databases, Jaspersoft delivers native reporting for Hadoop, NoSQL and MPP analytic databases.
Posted January 25, 2011
Red Gate Software has released ANTS Memory Profiler 7, a new tool that makes finding and fixing memory problems simpler in .NET applications."Without paying proper attention to memory usage, developers will find their applications use more resources than necessary, significantly degrading performance for the end user or even causing application crashes," Mel Harbour, project manager for .NET Developer Tools at Red Gate Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 25, 2011
Magic Software Enterprises Ltd., a provider of cloud and on-premise application platform and business integration (BI) solutions, has signed a global alliance agreement to resell software from MicroStrategy Inc., a worldwide provider of BI software, enabling the delivery of an integrated BI solution that will allow business users to turn raw data from various sources in the enterprise for improved decision making.
Posted January 25, 2011
BMC Software announced a workload automation solution that enables business users to manage their own workloads without requiring the intervention of IT departments. The new tool, BMC Control-M Self Service, enables users check the status of their work, make workload processing changes for their business transactions and access a service catalog of predefined workloads. "BMC Control-M Self Service is arming business users with more control over their IT environment," says Bill Miller, president of mainframe service management for BMC Software. "The lines between IT and business users are being blurred and BMC is seeking to provide a clear vision with easy-to-use tools that empower them to play a leading role in delivering their end product."
Posted January 24, 2011
Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions, and NEON Enterprise Software, a provider of mainframe solutions, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enterprise security solutions for monitoring database activity on the mainframe. The "compliance tidal wave" that has been hitting IT is now crashing on the mainframe, Josh Shaul, vice president product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. As open systems have succeeded in becoming "much more locked down," regulators are naturally expanding the breadth of their audits to include mainframes to ensure that proper controls are there as well, he explains. And while it is very hard to hack into mainframe systems, Shaul notes, for authorized users the potential for abuse exists on the mainframe in the same way as it does in distributed systems.
Posted January 24, 2011
Symantec Corp. has introduced two new appliances designed to provide customers with a more flexible delivery model for its data protection, storage management and security solutions. The Symantec FileStore N8300 is a scale-out, clustered network attached storage (NAS) appliance designed to help customers address the business challenges associated with building out cloud storage, managing large volumes of data and controlling the associated storage costs. The NetBackup 5200 appliance series helps customers expand their data protection infrastructure with an all-in-one hardware and software backup solution that integrates deduplication to reduce storage.
Posted January 24, 2011
IBM has announced a new tool feature designed to provide improved data access by simplifying and automating the process of cloning entire IBM IMS subsystems or databases. The IBM IMS Cloning Tool employs storage processor fast-replication facilities to clone IMS systems and refresh databases. IMS Cloning Tool simplifies, automates, and speeds up IMS system cloning and database refresh operations, while at the same time using fewer CPU, I/O, and storage resources than traditional methods by offloading the copy process to the storage processor.
Posted January 24, 2011
Veryant, a COBOL-to-Java vendor, has released vCOBOL Enterprise, a platform to migrate legacy COBOL applications off IBM mainframes. vCOBOL includes an optimized compiler and COBOL-to-Java runtime technology. "vCOBOL software's strong compatibility with legacy COBOL dialects, combined with the ability to natively call COBOL programs directly from Java it enables, makes the technology a natural choice for mainframe modernization initiatives," Dovid Lubin, vice president of technical operations for Veryant, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 24, 2011
3X Systems has released version 3.0 of its 500 and Tera Series remote backup appliances, capable of automatically backing up Microsoft Windows-based servers, workstations, and laptops over the internet to a central storage device that delivers data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. The new features in version 3.0 of the appliances provide more flexibility for users, Alan Arman, CEO, 3X, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "You utilize one console to back up your servers, your virtual environment, your laptops in the field, and back up remote offices, all managed under a policy-based back up. That saves administrators quite a bit of time."
Posted January 24, 2011
IBM announced bullish fourth-quarter and 2010 year-end results for software and solutions sales, marking an acceleration in the resurgence from the recent economic slump. The company said its fourth-quarter net income was $5.3 billion, an increase of 9% over $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2010 were $29 billion, an increase of 7%. Revenues from System z mainframe server products increased 69% compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 58%.
Posted January 24, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, says that in benchmark tests of its latest software release, MicroStrategy 9.0.2, the software can support more than 100,000 active users while delivering average response times under two seconds. During the test sequence, the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server demonstrated a proportional increase in capacity as additional server nodes were added to the clustered configuration. In single-node operation with eight CPU cores, the server supported traffic volume for more than 26,000 active users. With two nodes, the server with 16 CPU cores supported traffic volume of approximately 51,000 active users, MicroStrategy says. The traffic volume supported bumped up to 76,000 users for a three-node configuration containing 24 CPU cores.
Posted January 19, 2011
Oracle has announced a suite of analytics tools intended to help organizations derive greater insight from information in their SAP systems. The new product, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, is now part of the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications product family. "What we're announcing is the availability of the first one of those also with out-of-the-box connectivity to SAP R3 and ECC," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "These BI apps have a source-specific understanding of all those thousands of complex SAP tables, along with a pre-built ETL built on top of Oracle Data Integrator."
Posted January 19, 2011
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, has released version 4.1 of its Hedgehog Enterprise database security suite, a fully integrated database activity monitoring and vulnerability assessment solution for enterprise organizations.The suite now provides additional platform support of MySQL and Sybase databases in Hedgehog DBscanner - the enterprise-class vulnerability assessment and security scanning solution the company introduced in September, 2010.
Posted January 19, 2011
Oracle has unveiled new versions of Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management that provide enhanced fleet management, transportation sourcing, transportation business intelligence, transportation planning, small parcel transportation, rail transportation, dock scheduling, product classification and trade control determination. The Transportation Management product helps companies manage the movement of physical goods in their supply chain such as local deliveries to end customers, or imports from suppliers overseas, Derek Gittoes, Oracle vice president, Logistics Product Strategy, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The Global Trade Management product, a relatively new product that was first released a year ago, is designed to help companies manage the regulatory compliance aspects of shipping products internationally, such as compliance with U.S. export controls and required documentation to make sure products are classified for trade compliance purposes.
Posted January 19, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, says that in benchmark tests of its latest software release, MicroStrategy 9.0.2, the software can support more than 100,000 active users while delivering average response times under two seconds. MicroStrategy's high performance and scalability tests consisted of a four-node clustered configuration of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server containing a total of 32 CPU cores, running on commodity Intel-based hardware with the Red Hat Linux ES operating system. A query volume of 560,000 round-trip queries per hour was sustained while supporting over 100,000 active users, which can be extrapolated to a total user population of 500,000 people, the vendor says.
Posted January 18, 2011
Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance (SRC) solutions for the enterprise, and NEON Enterprise Software, a provider of solutions for mainframe customers, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enterprise SRC solutions for monitoring database activity on the mainframe. The "compliance tidal wave" that has been hitting IT is now crashing on the mainframe, Josh Shaul, vice president product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. As open systems have succeeded in becoming "much more locked down," regulators are naturally expanding the breadth of their audits to include the mainframes to ensure that proper controls are there as well, he explains. And while it is very hard to hack into mainframe systems, Shaul notes, for authorized users the potential for abuse that exists on the mainframe is the same as in distributed systems.
Posted January 18, 2011
DBTA Hosts Live Webcast on Effectively Managing the Database Patching Cycle this Thursday
Posted January 18, 2011
Queplix Corp., a data virtualization software vendor, has introduced three new Application Software Blades in Virtual Data Manager enabling companies to integrate social media data with internal corporate systems. Companies can now automatically capture information from FaceBook, LinkedIn and Google Contacts and harmonize it with their own corporate data. According to Queplix, companies typically struggle with how to incorporate and leverage the data within social media communities for business gain. "The value of social media and its potential to enhance corporate initiatives is widely recognized, yet barely tapped," said Mark Cashman, chief executive officer, Queplix. With the new integration capability, Queplix allows organizations to combine data from social media sources with internal information, thus providing a new layer of intelligence to business-supporting functions.
Posted January 18, 2011
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), a community of more than 20,000 international database and technology professionals, announced it has formed the MySQL Council to address the interests and needs of the broader community of MySQL users serving IOUG constituencies. Initial areas of focus for the MySQL Council will include providing technical articles for the peer-reviewed SELECT Journal, facilitating the development of online education as well as supporting COLLABORATE 11, the annual Oracle user group conference taking place April 10-14 in Orlando, Florida.
Posted January 18, 2011
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) will present the first event in its 2011 conference series February 13-18 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with the theme "Building An Enterprise Data Strategy: A Framework For Consistent Information Across The Enterprise." The aim of the 6-day event is to provide attendees with the education they need about how to inventory, govern, integrate, and exploit their data assets. Organizations have "massive amounts of data" as well as a variety of different databases and duplicates of databases, and, as a result, people are not aware of all the data they have and how they can utilize it, Paul Kautza, director of education of TDWI, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The conference will provide classes on how to gain critical executive sponsorship, connect point projects into a unified data management approach, and define and implement a true corporate data strategy that will deliver consistent information across an enterprise.
Posted January 18, 2011
Teradata has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aprimo, a provider of cloud-based integrated marketing software for approximately $525 million. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter. Aprimo will be integrated into Teradata's operations and will continue to market its products and services under the name Aprimo. Once the acquisition is complete, Aprimo will support the strategy of Teradata's analytic and applications business, including development, marketing, sales, and services going forward.
Posted January 18, 2011
Unisys Corporation has added the Security Event and Log Management solution to its Unisys Managed Security Services (MSS) offering. This new solution gives clients enhanced capabilities to identify and deflect potential cybersecurity breaches as they emerge from anywhere in the enterprise IT infrastructure, as well as to create and maintain the detailed audit trails of threats and responses increasingly required by regulatory and industry bodies.
Posted January 12, 2011
UNITE's series of Best of UNITE Conference webcasts continues. Topics of upcoming webcasts include: Using - Really Using - COBOL-85; How to Secure a ClearPath OS 2200 Server,;and An Agile Business Suite User Case Study.
Posted January 12, 2011
The Hyatt Regency Orange County has provided an online link for reserving a room at the UNITE rate.
Posted January 12, 2011
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, today announced version 4.1 of its Hedgehog Enterprise database security suite, a fully integrated database activity monitoring and vulnerability assessment solution for enterprise organizations. The suite now provides additional platform support of Sybase and MySQL databases in Hedgehog DBscanner - the enterprise-class vulnerability assessment and security scanning solution the company introduced in September, 2010. As part of v4.1, Hedgehog DBscanner now conducts checks for nearly 4,000 potential weaknesses, including tests for operating system-level configuration aimed at identifying potential vulnerabilities that stem from the installation and setup of the database management systems, and not necessarily from the DBMS software itself. These OS-level checks further automate the process of achieving compliance for key security benchmarks.
Posted January 11, 2011
Jaspersoft, a provider of business intelligence software today announced the general availability of Jaspersoft 4, a complete commercial open source BI suite designed for web applications.Jaspersoft 4 leverages a new modular UI architecture to deliver a best-in-class environment for building and deploying BI. By separating the content and presentation layers in line with today's web application standards, Jaspersoft 4 aims to accelerate the process of bringing BI to users. Featuring a new GUI for rich visual dashboarding and self-service features, this latest release of the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite is intended to overcome traditional barriers to adoption of BI, the company says.
Posted January 11, 2011
DBTA to Host Live Webcast for DBAs on Tools and Techniques for Database Patch Management - Thursday, January 20 at 11 am PT/ 2 pm ET
Posted January 11, 2011
Oracle has announced a suite of analytics tools intended to help organizations derive greater insight from information in their SAP systems. The new product, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, is now part of the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications product family. "What we're announcing is the availability of the first one of those also with out-of-the-box connectivity to SAP R3 and ECC," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "These BI apps have a source-specific understanding of all those thousands of complex SAP tables, along with a pre-built ETL built on top of Oracle Data Integrator."
Posted January 11, 2011
Quest Software, Inc., maker of the Toad product suites, has broadened its support for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the beta kick-off of Toad for Sybase, a new, integrated Sybase ASE management tool that improves Sybase ASE performance and boosts DBAs' productivity. The beta is currently available for download on Toad World, Quest's one-stop destination to read about Toad and learn new tips and tricks from top database experts. Toad for Sybase aims to give DBAs the most important functionality for Sybase database administration and development, carefully selected based on customer feedback. Toad for Sybase will be released initially as a freeware product in March 2011, with a commercial release coming out later in the year in Q2, Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 11, 2011
Health Insights has signed a partnership agreement to deploy its popular MedicaPlus Hospital and Clinical Information System on the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance object database. Health Insights' decision to partner with InterSystems follows the successful port of MedicaPlus to run on CACHÉ and a series of tests using industry-standard SQL database queries. By using CACHÉ, Health Insights has boosted the scalability and performance of its applications.
Posted January 11, 2011
Vertica Systems, a provider of real-time analytics platforms, has announced that AOL Inc., has selected the Vertica Analytics Platform as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance its business intelligence and reporting solutions across AOL. "With Vertica, AOL will be able to further enhance the timeliness of data and equip analysts and customers with the information they need to make decisions quickly," states Mark Ettrich, senior technical director, AOL. "In today's information economy, faster access to massive amounts of data is critical to success. We see Vertica becoming an important part of AOL's data architecture."
Posted January 11, 2011
Software Diversified Services (SDS), a mainframe tools vendor, announced it has made PGP Corporation's data encryption platform available for IBM z/OS systems. The offering, PGP Command Line for IBM Mainframes, integrates into existing mainframe processes and provides compression and encryption for data at rest, in transmission, and in archival backups, SDS says.
Posted January 10, 2011
At HP Software Universe in Barcelona, HP introduced a new release of its configuration management tool, incorporating a module for policy-based topology and inventory configuration analysis, as well as greater integration with the vendor's discovery and mapping platform. HP's UCMDB-Configuration Manager (UCMDB-CM) is an instant-on module that is part of the UCMDB product delivered with UCMDB 9.10.
Posted January 10, 2011
GT Software, a provider of mainframe integration solutions, announced that the company's flagship product, Ivory Service Architect, has released version 4.3 that adds the REST architecture as a new interface option.
Posted January 10, 2011
Attachmate Corporation says it is now shipping a solution that helps securely connect local and remote users to legacy applications on a variety of host platforms including IBM, HP, Unisys, UNIX and OpenVMS. The new release, Attachmate Reflection for the Web 2008 R3 is designed to help administrators use LDAP and Active Directory services to centrally install, deploy and control access to legacy applications. The new release also provides support for emerging platforms such as Linux on System z, Google Chrome and the latest versions of Java.
Posted January 10, 2011