The board of directors of the Oracle Applications Users Group has elected Margaret Wright as its 2013 president and also chosen the organization's executive committee.
Posted February 12, 2013
Oracle announced the general availability of the MySQL 5.6 open source database. According to Oracle, with this version, users can experience simplified query development and faster execution, better transactional throughput and application availability, flexible NoSQL access, improved replication and enhanced instrumentation.
Posted February 06, 2013
Oracle president Mark Hurd and Oracle executive vice president of product development Thomas Kurian recently hosted a conference call to provide an update on Oracle's cloud strategy and recap of product-related developments. Oracle is trying to do two things for customers - simplify their IT and power their innovation, said Hurd.
Posted February 06, 2013
Oracle VM Release 3.2, a key component in Oracle's desktop to data center virtualization portfolio, is now available. There are two main themes to the new release, Adam Hawley, senior director of desktop and server virtualization product management at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. One main area of emphasis is to provide a richer, more diverse set of deployment options for customers. The second major collection of enhancements is around allowing users to more easily and efficiently manage larger environments.
Posted February 06, 2013
HP announced two new software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions intended to speed application delivery and improve visibility, collaboration and agility across often siloed or geographically dispersed application development and operations teams. HP Agile Manager accelerates application time to market with an intuitive, web-based experience that offers visibility for planning, executing and tracking Agile development projects; and HP Performance Anywhere helps resolve application performance issues before they impact business services by providing visibility and predictive analytics.
Posted February 05, 2013
Dell Inc. announced it has signed a definitive merger agreement under which it will be acquired by Michael Dell, Dell's founder, chairman and CEO, in partnership with global technology investment firm Silver Lake. The transaction will be financed through a combination of cash and equity contributed by Michael Dell, cash funded by investment funds affiliated with Silver Lake, cash invested by MSD Capital, L.P., a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, as well as financing from other sources. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the second quarter of Dell's FY2014.
Posted February 05, 2013
Big data platform vendor DataStax has announced the early adopter program (EAP) of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) 3.0, providing core security capabilities to the entire Cassandra community, as well as advanced data protection in an enterprise-grade database. This allows modern enterprises to confidently adopt NoSQL databases as they scale their big data infrastructure.
Posted February 05, 2013
Hortonworks, a leading contributor to Apache Hadoop, has released Hortonworks Sandbox, a learning environment and on-ramp for anyone interested in learning, evaluating or using Apache Hadoop in the enterprise. This tool seeks to bridge the gap between people who want to learn Hadoop, and the complexity of setting up a cluster with an integrated environment that provides demos, videos, tutorials.
Posted February 05, 2013
IT management company ManageEngine has announced that its on-premise application performance monitoring solution, Applications Manager, now supports NoSQL databases Apache Cassandra and MongoDB. This solution monitors application performance and provides operational intelligence for NoSQL technologies in addition to support for traditional relational databases such as Oracle, MySQL and memcached.
Posted February 05, 2013
Objectivity, Inc., a provider of the object and graph databases, has announced the availability of a new version of its flagship product, Objectivity/DB. Version 11.0 adds new enhancements for deployment, querying, and object clustering for improved big data analysis. Objectivity/DB is deployed in multiple verticals with customers including the U.S. Department of Defense, Ericsson, Siemens and X. "There are really two sets of new features," Leon Guzenda, founder of Objectivity, tells 5 Minute Briefing. One is more about tools and the placement of objects, and the other is heavily query-oriented.
Posted February 05, 2013
Attachmate announced MobileNow, the company's new mobile strategy that is intended to optimize the company's line of enterprise software products so that mainframe and legacy applications can be extended to mobile devices. Attachmate MobileNow delivers corporate data while providing tools for encrypting data, controlling access and monitoring for fraudulent use. The MobileNow approach does not require critical mainframe and legacy applications to be re-factored for mobile, resulting in quicker time-to-market and lower costs, according to Tom Bice, vice president of marketing and product management at Attachmate.
Posted February 04, 2013
IBM reports a surge in mainframe sales in the most recent quarter, surpassing all previous quarters. This announcement was part of the company's release of quarterly and annual results. Overall, total quarterly revenue was down 1% from last year, and down 2% for the year.
Posted February 04, 2013
HP introduced the new HP StoreEver Storage tape portfolio featuring sixth-generation Linear Tape-open (LTO-6) technology that the company says delivers twice the capacity and 44% faster performance than LTO-5 in the same footprint. HP StoreEver Storage integrates HP's tape products and technologies with HP Converged Storage, HP Data Protector and third-party backup software. According to HP, this integration, coupled with new LTO-6 capabilities, enables HP StoreEver Storage to deliver reliable long-term data protection and retention in a format that meets the needs of nearly any environment.
Posted February 04, 2013
William Data Systems (WDS) will showcase the latest release of ZEN TRACE & SOLVE (ZTS) for z/OS mainframe networks at SHARE in San Francisco this week. ZTS, formerly known as EXIGENCE, provides new features to help z/OS sites deliver more, in a shorter time, using fewer resources and with less cost. According to the company, the main advantage of ZTS's latest release is its advanced web-browser interface with flexible data presentation for easier use and more intuitive ways of working. In addition to helping more experienced technicians to solve network problems even faster, ZTS also short-cuts the network tracing learning curve for less experienced technicians. The biggest challenge for less experienced technicians is knowing what part of a network to trace and then interpreting the results of the trace so a problem can be averted or network bandwidth restored, Graham Storey, vice president of marketing, at William Data Systems, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 04, 2013
GT Software, a provider of enterprise modernization solutions, announced the general availability of its NEO Suite family of products. The release features updates that improve user experience and includes splash screens, user interfaces and documentation enhancements. With the release of NEObatch v3.2, NEOkicks v3.2, and NEOdata v2.1, the NEO suite of products is now compatible with Microsoft Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, and the .NET 4.0 and 4.5 frameworks. The new product versions are also compatible with the recently released Fujitsu NetCOBOL for .NET v5.0 compiler and runtime, which allows customers to also take advantage of Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.
Posted February 04, 2013
Compuware Corporation, a technology performance tools company, has made enhancements to the Compuware Workbench, a standardized point-and-click mainframe application development interface. The Workbench is now configured to deliver faster and more efficient file and data management capabilities, the vendor says. This includes the ability to edit complex IMS databases, as well as debugging functionality, all designed to significantly boost developer productivit
Posted February 04, 2013
Heirloom Computing Inc. has formed a new partnership with Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider CloudBees to speed the transition of mainframe workloads to the CloudBees PaaS. With the partnership, Heirloom will deploy COBOL-based mainframe workloads to the cloud, using Heirloom Elastic COBOL and the CloudBees Platform.
Posted February 04, 2013
SilverSky, a provider of information security solutions, is combining the assets of Perimeter E-Security and USA.NET into a unified brand focused on delivering an advanced security-as-a-service platform. SilverSky manages, secures and monitors corporate information assets with a portfolio of software and managed services, delivered through its unified policy-aware platform.
Posted February 04, 2013
TransLattice has joined the Cisco Developer Network as a registered developer within the Physical Infrastructure technology category. In addition, two products, TransLattice Application Platform v.2.5 and TransLattice Elastic Database v.2.5, have successfully completed interoperability testing with Blades (B-series). The TransLattice Application Platform (TAP) creates a high-performance computing fabric from a cluster of affordable commodity servers that work cooperatively to ensure applications and associated data are always available.
Posted February 04, 2013
IBM has signed an agreement to acquire the software portfolio of Star Analytics Inc., a privately held business analytics company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Financial terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2013, were not disclosed. According to IBM, Star Analytics software helps organizations automatically integrate essential information, reporting applications and business intelligence tools across their enterprises, on premise or from cloud computing environments. The software removes typical custom coding for specialized sources that are hard to maintain, and also eliminates manual processes that are cumbersome and time-consuming.
Posted February 01, 2013
UnboundID, a platform provider for identity data, has released Version 4.0 of the UnboundID Identity Data Platform, providing data unification, greater security, and real-time scalability to manage the rapidly growing volume and transactions of identity data. The new release expands the UnboundID solution for helping some of the world's largest telecommunications, financial services, enterprise, mobile, and cloud services companies manage their core asset in the identity economy: customer identity data. UnboundID is a privately held company based in Austin, Texas, and is funded by Silverton Partners and OpenView Venture Partners.
Posted January 31, 2013
Actian Corp. and Pervasive Software Inc. have entered into a definitive merger agreement through which Actian will acquire all of Pervasive's outstanding shares for $9.20 per share. Actian products include Action Apps, Vectorwise, the analytical database, Ingres, an independent mission-critical OLTP database, in addition to the Versant Object Database, which Actian added to its portfolio through another recent merger in which Actian acquired all the outstanding shares of Versant Corporation. According to the company, the deal values Pervasive at $161.9 million and will accelerate Actian's ability to deliver its vision of providing organizations with the capability to take action in real time as their business environment changes.
Posted January 31, 2013
EMC Corporation has updated its appliance-based unified big data analytics offering. The new EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA) Unified Analytics Platform (UAP) Edition expands the system's analytics capabilities and solution flexibility, achieves performance gains in data loading and scanning, and adds integration with EMC's Isilon scale-out NAS storage for enterprise-class data protection and availability. Within a single appliance, the DCA integrates Greenplum Databases for analytics-optimized SQL, Greenplum HD for Hadoop-based processing as well as Greenplum partner business intelligence, ETL, and analytics applications. The appliances have been able to host both a relational database and Hadoop for some time now, Bill Jacobs director of product marketing for EMC Greenplum, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The significance of this launch is that we tightened that integration up even more. We make those two components directly manageable with a single administrative interface and also tighten up the security. All of that is targeted at giving enterprise customers what they need in order to use Hadoop in very mission-critical applications without having to build it all up in Hadoop themselves."
Posted January 31, 2013
The latest version of the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app allows users to visualize, explore, collaborate from within the app and share business performance through personalized and simple views in a secure environment designed natively for iPad.
Posted January 30, 2013
IBM has announced that IBM SmartCloud for SAP Applications, an enterprise service unique to IBM, is available globally. The new service, IBM SmartCloud for SAP Applications, aims to automate and standardize provisioning of IT environments, and can accelerate service delivery with expert certified staff. According to the companies, SmartCloud services for SAP applications delivers 99.7% availability based on a global delivery model to support cloud-based systems around the clock. This service is available for SAP Business Suite software and the SAP BusinessObjects solution portfolio as an enterprise-class, fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering for running SAP solutions in a production environment.
Posted January 30, 2013
Application and data integration vendor Jitterbit has released a new, easy-to use-integration solution for high-volume data transactions, Jitterbit 5. Simplifying complex process integration, the latest release from Jitterbit features enhanced connectivity to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and SAP, and supports large volume cloud APIs for high performance.
Posted January 30, 2013
SAP announced a new option for SAP Business Suite customers — SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA — providing an integrated family of business applications that captures and analyzes transactional data in real time on a single in-memory platform. With Business Suite on HANA, "SAP has reinvented the software that reinvented businesses," stated Rob Enslin, member of the Global Executive Board and SAP head of sales, as part of his presentation during the company's recent launch event.
Posted January 30, 2013
Software AG has agreed to sell its SAP-service operations in Canada and the USA to itelligence, a full-service provider of IT solutions for the SAP market with approximately 2,700 employees in 21 countries. Its headquarters are in Bielefeld, Germany. The transaction closing is scheduled for January 16 and according to the companies the purchase price will not be disclosed. The transaction includes all of Software AG's SAP product-specific services in Canada and the U.S., which are coordinated from Toronto and Reston, Virginia respectively. In addition, itelligence plans to acquire the majority of around 80 employees as of January 16.
Posted January 30, 2013
Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, has announced the release of Attunity RepliWeb for Enterprise File Replication (EFR) 6.0, which is designed to allow organizations to quickly and easily replicate data files to and from Apache Hadoop. According to Attunity, the ability to move large amounts of data in and out of Hadoop is especially beneficial to industries that need to process big data on a regular basis such as e-commerce, healthcare, infrastructure management and mobile.
Posted January 29, 2013
Oracle VM Release 3.2, a key component in Oracle's desktop to data center virtualization portfolio, is now available. There are two main themes to the new release, Adam Hawley, senior director of desktop and server virtualization product management at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. One main area of emphasis is to provide a richer, more diverse set of deployment options for customers. The second major collection of enhancements is around allowing users to more easily and efficiently manage larger environments.
Posted January 29, 2013
Today's data warehouse environments are not keeping up with the explosive growth of data volume (or "big data") and the demand for real-time analytics. Fewer than one out of 10 respondents to a new survey say their data warehouse sites can deliver analysis in what they would consider a real-time timeframe. Nearly 75% of respondents believe that in-memory technology is important to enabling their organization to remain competitive in the future. Yet, almost as many also indicate they lack the in-memory skills to deliver even current business requirements. These are among the findings of a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). The survey was underwritten by SAP Corporation and conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.
Posted January 29, 2013
Web-based business intelligence provider LogiXML has released Logi Info v11, an information platform for embedding analytics directly into business processes, systems and applications. This makes it easier for business people to understand their data and it put information to work directly inside their applications. "Logi Info v11 allows our customers to get their analytics in a more interactive way with better visualizations, interactivity, and great mobile as well," Brian Brinkmann, LogiXML's VP of product management, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 29, 2013
Rapid-I, a provider of open source predictive analytics, data mining, and text mining solutions, has released RapidMiner 5.3. This solution features data integration, ETL, data analysis, and reporting in a single application, with a drag and drop visual environment for designing and deploying customized analytical processes. "In our most recent release we have added full integration with our marketplace. People can search and discover new extensions and install them straight from the application without having to go a web browser, download it, and manually install it," Giuseppe Taibi, CEO of Rapid-I, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 29, 2013
Databases are hampered by a reliance on disk-based storage, a technology that has been in place for more than two decades. Even with the addition of memory caches and solid state drives, the model of relying on repeated access to the permanent information storage devices is still a bottleneck in capitalizing on today's "big data," according to a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the IOUG. Nearly 75% of respondents believe that in-memory technology is important to enabling their organization to remain competitive in the future. Yet, almost as many also indicate they lack the in-memory skills to deliver even current business requirements. The research results are detailed in a new report, titled "Accelerating Enterprise Insights: 2013 IOUG In-Memory Strategies Survey."
Posted January 23, 2013
Oracle has introduced StorageTek LTO 6 Tape Drives with Fibre Channel connectivity for its StorageTek SL8500 and SL3000 Tape Libraries. The new drives offer increased capacity for better with 2.5 TB native storage capacity on a single tape cartridge, enabling customers to process more data in less time, while driving down the cost of tape operations.
Posted January 23, 2013
Melissa Data, a provider of contact data quality and direct marketing solutions, has unveiled a new program to increase access to Melissa Data's products, training and expertise, and help share information about data quality tools for Oracle deployments. The MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Program is specifically geared to Oracle ACEs and other credentialed industry experts and community leaders, and provides full access to Melissa Data core data quality tools for Oracle technologies.
Posted January 23, 2013
BlueFinity is planning a webinar showcasing mv.NET Solution Objects, which enables developers to create new application interfaces using industry-standard RIA technology - HTML5, Silverlight, ASP.NET, WPF and any other .NET enabled Microsoft environments, servers and applications. Native applications can be produced for iPhone/iPad/iPod or Android using a common C# based development environment. Browser-based applications can be created using ASP.NET and HTML5 that adapt themselves to the appearance of native platforms. In addition, according to the company, mv.NET enables developers to address both of these requirements without learning multiple mobile platform skill sets, and it is not necessary for .NET developers to have MultiValue knowledge to produce applications.
Posted January 23, 2013
Revelation Software has announced Revelation Universal Driver Heavy (UDH) v.4.7. The UDH is client/server software designed to allow real-time mirroring of Revelation linear hash data. The UDH enables a business to switch immediately if needed from a primary server to a secondary, which is essential for companies with 24 x 7 operations, Robert Catalano, director of sales at Revelation, tells DBTA.
Posted January 23, 2013
Entrinsik has launched a traveling road show to provide Informer training. The idea for the Informer Power Users Road Show grew out of the success of the ICON Informer user conference and the feedback Entrinsik was receiving about the Informer customer service team's on-site work with individual clients, Sharon Shelton, vice president of marketing at Entrinsik, tells DBTA. "The road shows are really an answer to the question: How do we provide this service for more of our client base - especially those who can't make it to ICON, or don't have the resources to afford implementation and training services on-site. We are trying to get the best information out to customers in a way that is cost-efficient for them and for us," Shelton says.
Posted January 23, 2013
MultiValue technology veteran Mark Pick recently launched a new company, Pick Cloud, Inc. Here, Pick - whose father Dick Pick is widely credited as having been a founding father of MultiValue software - discusses the reasons he embarked on the new venture and his goals for the company. "A lot of people worry about latency issues in moving to the cloud, but of all the applications that exist out there, a traditional Pick application is very thin, very low bandwidth so that wasn't going to be an issue," Pick tells DBTA. "And, when we go down the list of things that we can provide for our customers, number-one, it is fast and easy to deploy."
Posted January 23, 2013
VoltDB has announced the immediate availability of the newest version of its flagship offering, VoltDB 3.0. VoltDB is an in-memory relational database that aims to address a common problem for enterprises - the ability to build applications that can ingest, analyze and act on massive volumes of data fast enough to deliver business value. According to Bruce Reading, CEO and president of VoltDB, in order for big data to achieve its full value, developers must be able to solve the data velocity problem.
Posted January 22, 2013
DBTA's Big Data Boot Camp Is Calling for Speakers
Posted January 22, 2013
Distributed relational database technology vendor GenieDB has launched v 1.0, a MySQL storage engine plug-in that is intended to simplify and accelerate the distribution of mission-critical enterprise applications across multiple data centers and clouds, regardless of location. According to the company, the GenieDB solution provides peak application performance and resiliency and is cost-effective as it eliminates the expenses of switching to a NoSQL solution.
Posted January 22, 2013
On-Demand Webcast on How to Gain Value from Big Data with Graph Technology
Posted January 22, 2013
Application and data integration vendor Jitterbit has released a new, easy-to use-integration solution for high-volume data transactions, Jitterbit 5. Simplifying complex process integration, the latest release from Jitterbit features enhanced connectivity to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and SAP, and supports large volume cloud APIs for high performance.
Posted January 22, 2013
MetricStream, a provider of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) and quality management solutions, has announced a new big data analytics capability that provides greater visibility and transparency into organizations' risk profile. This capability will allow customers to more effectively manage the ever-increasing volume, velocity, and variety of data and help them overcome their risk management and regulatory compliance challenges.
Posted January 22, 2013
For the 20th year in a row, IBM topped an annual list of U.S. patent recipients. The company received 6,478 patents in 2012 for inventions that will enable advancements in areas including analytics, big data, cyber security, cloud, mobile, social networking and software defined environments, as well as industry solutions for retail, banking, healthcare, and transportation. IBM's motivation extends beyond simply achieving high numbers of patent filings, Graham Mackintosh, program executive for social analytics at IBM, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We care about the innovation. The patent activity is a byproduct."
Posted January 22, 2013
OpenText, a provider of reporting software, says it is shipping a new interface that extends its enterprise information management reporting capabilities to mainframe-generated content by making it available to users of OpenText Content Server, OpenText eDOCS, and Microsoft SharePoint. "The Report & Output Management interface now allows mainframe output and content to be included as a source within the enterprise," Jason Likins, vice president of report and output at OpenText, tells 5 Minute Briefing. This includes business-centric information captured from mainframes, he says.
Posted January 22, 2013
Kroll Ontrack, a provider of information management tools, has announced a software tool that enables overwrite erasure of data on hard drives within VMware environments to ensure security and that drives can be repurposed. Version 4.0 of Ontrack Eraser provides expanded drive wiping capacity, VMware eraser capabilities, and new reporting and security management functionality. "The industry is struggling with being able to confirm that VMDKs (virtual machine disks) are wiped securely," Abhik Mitra, data recovery product manager at Kroll Ontrack, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "It is a very manual, mundane process today."
Posted January 22, 2013
Verizon Terremark announced it is enhancing its Enterprise Cloud service in terms of increased availability, security and flexibility. Enterprise Cloud computing platforms are being expanded in two of the company's data center facilities located in Dallas and London, Tony Savoy, senior director, Product Management, Verizon Terremark, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Verizon Terremark operates about 50 data centers worldwide, and of those a portion are what the company calls cloud-enabled to support its delivery of cloud family products to clients. The expansion in Dallas extends Verizon Terremark's presence in the central U.S., where it already has a Denver, Colorado, facility. The facility in London is Verizon Terremark's second in the EMEA region.
Posted January 22, 2013