Revelation Software Purchases Freedombase Web Ready
Revelation Software has announced that it has purchased Freedombase Web Ready, a Web development suite from Freedomsoft, for inclusion into its OpenInsight database development product. Freedombase Web Ready represents a quick and easy way to add Web front ends to existing OpenInsight applications, providing a cost-effective means of rejuvenating existing or legacy systems. Freedomsoft has offices in New South Wales, Australia.
“Today’s software user expects to be able to run applications in a browser, whether from a PC or mobile devices,” stated Mike Ruane, president, Revelation Software, in making the announcement. “By purchasing the Freedombase product, we’re able to give our developers and users the most efficient path for doing so.”
During a roundtable of about a dozen of Revelation's VARs and developers,
it became clear that “one of the capabilities they really wanted improved upon inside of OpenInsight was the Web publishing functionality,” Ruane told 5 Minute Briefing. “We have very good Web database capabilities,” Ruane noted, but when it comes to applications in OpenInsight and moving them easily to the Web, he said, “we could do it - but it was very crude. It was technology that is almost 8 or 10 years old now.”
Revelation began to explore possible solutions, said Ruane. “We looked around and we saw that Freedomsoft had done an incredible job with what they had done.” They have provided the capability to take an existing OpenInsight application and move it to the Web without changing forms or changing code, Ruane explained.
Revelation plans to rebrand the purchased Freedombase product as “WebOI” in order to eliminate any confusion between the two products. Revelation is in the process of tightly integrating the acquired product with its software and will have that ready for OpenInsight 8.1 which is expected to be released in June of this year, said Ruane.
Further information can be found at Revelation Software's Web site. More information about Freedomsoft can be found here.
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In-Depth Tutorials and Vendor Fair Under Consideration for U2 University 2008; UniData 7.2 Soon to be Released in Beta
IBM's U2 group is considering changes to this year's U2 University based on the success of last year's events as well as customer and partner feedback. “I can tell you that we have not had such accolades from the customer over anything else we have done in recent history. It is like it has reinvigorated the customer base to have that much information delivered,” Susie Siegesmund, director, U2 Data Services, IBM Information Management, told 5 Minute Briefing, referring to the 2007 U2U series. “A lot of people said they would come next year but they would make sure more people from their organization came as well because it was so valuable.”
Among the changes, said Siegesmund, “is that we are planning to offer some tutorials - likely some fairly detailed ones - on the day before the actual U2U starts and maybe the morning - because our format was to start at noon. We were specifically asked for that,” said Siegesmund. Some customers for example "were not using our Web services tools and didn't understand how they could take a UniBasic subroutine and wrapper it and turn it into a Web service. The existence of that and why they would do it was educational for customers,” said Siegesmund of feedback to last year's U2U. In-depth tutorials this year would enable customers to take “a deep dive” on a subject such as this and offer step by step information, explained Siegesmund. Additionally, some regular sessions may be revamped to be more hands-on, she added.
“We have the new System Builder XA product that will be out at the end of Q2 of this year. SBXA is SystemBuilder Extensible Architecture. It basically replaces the two-piece product of SystemBuilder Runtime and a SystemBuilder Client with a more tightly integrated product that leverages Windows Vista,” Siegesmund said. “How you would get from where you are today to where you can go with that product will be something we obviously will have some very dedicated sessions on,” she added.
A vendor fair is also being considered for U2 University this year, possibly to be held over one day or two evenings. “Last year, we had multiple vendors who sell products that layer onto the U2 products asking us if they could have a booth,” said Siegesmund, explaining that was not possible because space was very limited. “This year, we are going to look to having that.”
As reported in the December 2007 issue of 5 Minute Briefing, in 2008, U2 University will be held in two locations in the U.S., on the east and west coasts, as well as one location in Europe and one in Australia. More details are expected to available by the end of next month.
According to Siegesmund, UniData 7.2, still in Early Adopter Program release, will be going to beta in February. Key features of UniData 7.2 include encryption of data at rest; the EDA (external database access) API; online resize (a Unix only feature); replication enhancements; U2 Developer; as well as an extensible admin tool. With this release, “I really think we are doing a lot for the customer in terms of security, high availability and manageability of data servers,” Siegesmund told 5 Minute Briefing.
IBM's U2 group started the Early Adopter Program (EAP) to allow customers an opportunity to provide feedback before a product reaches code freeze. “We’ve had two EAP releases for UniData 7.2. The first included most of the functionality for data encryption, while the second added more features of data encryption along with the U2 Developer. Resize online is such a big project that it won’t be available until the beta release.” For more information about IBM's U2 product family, go here.
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Aptron and Entrinsik Partner to Bring Web-Based Reporting to the Higher Education Market
Aptron Corp., a leading provider of comprehensive enterprise systems for colleges and universities, and Entrinsik, producers of Informer Web Reporting software, have announced a partnership providing Aptron customers with an intuitive Web reporting tool for accessing data in real time.
“Informer allows users to drill down and find information in an ad hoc fashion,” Doug Leupen, president of Entrinsik, told 5 Minute Briefing. This is particularly critical because “so many of the people working in colleges deal with information. Whether it is the registrar's office, a financial aid or a student assistance office, whatever office involved in a college, they are working with data, so whenever you have that environment it is important for them to be able to mine the data that they need to solve today's problem.”
With the partnership, Aptron customers will experience a full integrated, familiar, intuitive platform for reporting, enabling them to easily and securely access data directly from Aptron applications on demand and view the data in HTML, Excel or PDF formats, according to Entrinsik.
Entrinsik's VAR Toolkit “allows a company like Aptron to take our Web reporting tool and adapt the look and feel and make it part of Aptron' application, so from an end-user perspective they can't tell where their application ends and Informer starts,” said Leupen.
The VAR Toolkit is intended to make it simple for VARs and resellers to customize Informer both visually, such as changing the look and feel of the application and the installer, and programmatically, such as adding custom authentication drivers, settings and embedding default configuration settings. It also includes a build script to automatically bundle customized drivers, settings, and data elements such as default reports into a new point and click type installer that can be distributed to customers.
“We are delighted to have Aptron as a partner,” said Leupen. “We have been developing solutions for the higher education market for over 20 years and we are confident that Informer will add tremendous value to Aptron's already robust enterprise management platform. We look forward to working with them to enhance their customers' capabilities to turn raw data into valuable information where and when they need it. For more information on Entrinsik, go here.
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MITS Announces Major New Investor, Redeems Shares
Management Information Tools, a Seattle-based provider of business intelligence and operational reporting software solutions, has announced that a combination of continuing management and Bellevue-based Trilogy Partnership has redeemed the shares of founder Pat Gilbrough and recapitalized the company to position it for continued profitable growth.
Fred Owen, MITS president and CEO since early 2006, will continue in his role as CEO and significant shareholder. Peter van Oppen, former chairman and chief executive at data storage systems provider ADIC, and Chuck Stonecipher, former ADIC president, will represent Trilogy on the MITS Board of Directors.
According to the vendor, the series of moves comes at a significant time in MITS’s evolution. Version 6 of the MITS Discover OLAP Business Intelligence System, released late last year, has gained significant new traction in the space it already dominates - business intelligence for the MultiValue database market - with improvements in performance and usability, the company said. Additionally, MITS has introduced MITS Report, a new product which enables enterprises using a range of technology platforms to deploy and begin using a complete operational reporting environment within a matter of days.
“Trilogy’s business vision to bring the resources necessary to build long-term value aligns very well with MITS’ operating principles. The timing couldn’t be better,” Owen said at the time of the announcement. “The ability to draw on the experience and the contacts of Peter, Chuck, and the other partners will significantly strengthen our efforts to open up our proven solutions to new markets.”
“The MITS investment represents some broadening of Trilogy’s investment portfolio but is consistent with our goal of investing in businesses where our people, in this case Peter and I, have relevant experience,” stated Stonecipher. “We are extremely impressed by the track record of this management team in building a profitable enterprise software business and we hope to help them further that success.” For more information about MITS, go here.
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DesignBais Announces Series of Webinars For January and February
DesignBais has announced a series of free Webinars to be held in 2008, with the goal of providing an additional education resource to DesignBais developers around the globe. There will also be some complete overviews of the DesignBais offering for those thinking about using DesignBais for their browser-based application development.
The Webinar series kicks off on January 29 with an overview of the features of the latest release of DesignBais in version 4.23, including Report Cabinets; DesignBais eXpress Ad-hoc report generator, an ad hoc report generator designed with the end-user in mind; File Transfer; End of Period Processing; and Change Tracking.
A DesignBais Demonstration Webinar providing participants with an overview of DesignBais features will be held January 30, and a DesignBais eXpress and Cabinets Webinar on January 31 will take an end-user-based journey through the DesignBais eXpress interface, as well as explore the fundamentals of setting up the DesignBais eXpress environment at a technical level.
Additional Webinars are scheduled for February.
DesignBais is available on a range of platforms, including CACHÉ, D3, jBASE, OnWare, OpenInsight, QM, Reality, UniData and UniVerse. For details about each of the individual Webinars and registration information, go here.
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