The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, is launching the OAUG Educational Series 2011, a virtual learning series offered to OAUG members from Aug. 8-19, featuring the most popular presentations from the COLLABORATE 11 - OAUG Forum.
Posted July 25, 2011
SafeNet, Inc., a provider of information security solutions, has announced that Sentinel Cloud is now supported by the Dell Boomi AtomSphere cloud integration platform, enabling cloud service providers to easily connect SafeNet's licensing and entitlement management services with their existing on-premise or cloud-based back-office systems.
Posted July 25, 2011
IBM announced a new zEnterprise System - the z114 - intended for adoption in small to medium-size businesses, and designed to consolidate workloads from hundreds of x86 servers. The new machine, with a base price of $75,000, offers significant improvements over the IBM z10 BC system, the company says. In addition, IBM also announced the ability to integrate and manage workload on select IBM System x servers running Linux as part of the zEnterprise System. Support for Microsoft Windows on select System x servers will follow, IBM says.
Posted July 25, 2011
CA Technologies' Mainframe Security Management products have met the requirements of Common Criteria, an independent security certification recognized by governments in more than 26 countries, including the United States. "CA ACF2 and CA Top Secret are widely used by enterprise level customers, both government and commercial customers, and it's incumbent on us to be diligent in keeping the products current with the most rigorous global security standards," Mark Combs, distinguished senior vice president, mainframe at CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 25, 2011
SUSE, an enterprise Linux operating system provider and division of The Attachmate Group, says it is shipping the latest update to its development platform for building, updating and managing application images across x86, public cloud and IBM System z deployments. SUSE Studio Version 1.2 is designed to provide the ability to assemble, build and maintain complete portable application stacks quickly across a range of platforms. SUSE Studio also is intended to bridge x86 microprocessor architectures and mainframes by simplifying the creation, testing, maintenance and deployment of software applications on the mainframe. The toolset supports hundreds of mission-critical Linux images on mainframes, accessible by an interface for building mainframe workloads.
Posted July 25, 2011
HP announced a series of new software solutions designed to improve collaboration among application development and delivery teams. The new HP ALM software solutions include HP Service Virtualization 1.0, HP Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI), and HP Agile Accelerator 5.0. The new product updates are designed to help deliver cloud computing applications and complex business processes. Applications, once monolithic, are now architected on connected services and developed in rapid cycles. These composite applications can create crippling challenges for organizations as they struggle to quickly deliver applications, while still managing quality, performance andsecurity risks within heterogeneous development environments.
Posted July 25, 2011
IBM announced second-quarter revenues grew by 12% over the same period last year, propelled by mainframe revenues, which grew and a frenetic pace of more than 60%. Overall, IBM's 2011 net income for the second quarter was $3.7 billion, compared with $3.4 billion in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 8%. Total revenues for the second quarter of 2011 of $26.7 billion, an increase of 12% from the second quarter of 2010. "Hardware, software and services revenue grew at double digits, and we achieved strong profit and free cash flow growth," says Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.
Posted July 25, 2011
TransLattice, which calls itself "the geographically distributed application company" for enterprise, cloud and hybrid environments, has announced the availability of TransLattice Application Platform 2.0. "We allow you to build a large enterprise system processing critical data out of identical components that are spread across geographies, spread across either your physical data center, across cloud computing providers, or both," Mike Lyle, president and CTO of Translattice, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 25, 2011
Oracle has announced Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1. The latest release provides capabilities to increase the usability and flexibility of the product by introducing a new virtual machine cloning facility, enhanced large system support, improved remote access, and expanded platform and application support. "By significantly enhancing the world's most popular cross-platform virtualization software for the second time within a year, Oracle is clearly demonstrating its commitment to both the desktop virtualization market and the open source community," said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle.
Posted July 20, 2011
Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.0 and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional 11.0, easy-to-use and comprehensive content development, deployment and maintenance platforms for increasing productivity and adoption for Oracle, third-party and custom applications projects. "The biggest feature set that is going out in UPK 11 is around the ability to add conceptual-type questions to the product as well as more easily link in conceptual information," Trish Trolley, according to senior director, Oracle User Productivity Kit Product Management, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 20, 2011
Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management solutions, and Fortrex Technologies, Inc., a provider of services and systems for IT security, operational risk, and compliance, have formed a strategic partnership to address the needs of organizations facing regulatory compliance data protection requirements, including the HITECH Act and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). With this partnership, Fortrex, a certified assessor for the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) Common Security Framework (CSF) and PCI DSS Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) company, will offer Vormetric Data Security. "To have a partnership between an encryption vendor and a certified assessor means that the assessor has reviewed the technology and made sure that all of the features within the technology fit all the detailed requirements under the regulations - and there are quite a few," Gretchen Hellman, vice president of marketing and product management, Vormetric, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 19, 2011
Melissa Data Corp, a developer of data quality and address management solutions, has announced that its Address Check Web Service is now available on Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket for Microsoft's Data Quality Services (or any client that embeds the API). Address Check provides real-time address verification and standardization for U.S. and Canadian addresses. Users, from both small and large businesses, can easily add Address Check to their applications to save money on postage and reduce undeliverable mail and shipments by cleaning up inaccurate, incomplete, or undeliverable addresses at point of entry. "It is basically on demand. As they need a service they can use Microsoft's Data Quality Services to link up to the marketplace and pick and choose the types of services almost on an à la carte type of menu," Greg Brown, director of marketing for Melissa Data, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 19, 2011
EnterpriseDB, a provider of PostgreSQL and Oracle compatibility products and services, announced general availability of Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.0. featuring improvements such as enriched database performance and availability, and increased Oracle compatibility.
Posted July 19, 2011
Dataguise, a provider of enterprise security intelligence solutions, has announced a high performing database cloning privacy solution to support test, development and analytic uses in data warehousing environments. According to Dataguise, its sensitive data discovery and masking solutions complement NetApp's solution for rapid cloning of large Oracle data sets to enable efficient and secure distribution when running on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) platform.
Posted July 19, 2011
BackOffice Associates, LLC, a provider of ERP data migration, data governance and master data management solutions for SAP, Oracle and other ERP vendors, announced the release of a new data quality as a service offering, QCloud.
Posted July 19, 2011
BMC Software and Unisys Corporation have formed a joint initiative to deliver and manage advanced cloud solutions. The two companies are basing their joint solutions on BMC's second-generation Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) offering combined with Unisys' cloud advisory, implementation and management services portfolio. The BMC and Unisys initiative will address strategy, planning, design, implementation and operational management of cloud computing solutions to make it possible for customers to realize both immediate and long-term business value through a disciplined approach to cloud computing.
Posted July 15, 2011
Unisys Corporation has introduced a range of value-added services that enable providers to integrate voice-based services with social media channels to drive new sources of revenue and enhance the user experience of their subscribers. The new services, available on the Unisys VoiceSource Express (VSE) 400 Series platform, benefit customers who use smartphones and feature phones - less fully configured mobile phones - by innovative, easy-to-use voice and data applications directly to their devices. The Unisys VSE 400 Series platform, a "fit for purpose" computing appliance, is based on a Unisys ClearPath system using Intel Xeon x64 processors.
Posted July 15, 2011
Attachmate Corporation announced it has begun shipping Attachmate Reflection for the Web 2011 R1, the latest version of its web-to-host tool for connecting local and remote users to legacy applications on a variety of host platforms. The latest release includes new support for multiple platforms and browsers.
Posted July 15, 2011
Oracle has introduced the Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Rack to offer customers a cost-effective way to add storage to an Oracle Exadata Database Machine. "There are customers, earlier Exadata Database Machine customers, that have now started to fill up the disks that they have on the Database Machine and they are starting to look for ways to expand their storage capacity, and so this is going to be really welcome for them," says Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle.
Posted July 12, 2011
Cloudera Inc., a provider of Apache Hadoop-based data management software, released a solution intended to simplify the process of running and managing Hadoop throughout the operational lifecycle of a system. The new release, Cloudera Enterprise 3.5, includes new automated service, configuration and monitoring tool,s and one-click security for Hadoop clusters. The software is targeted at enterprise data sites of all sizes, Charles Zedlewski, VP of product management for Cloudera, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Cloudera Enterprise was developed to help businesses run Apache Hadoop use cases in production at all scopes of scale and criticality," he says.
Posted July 12, 2011
DBTA Sweepstakes Winner Announced
Posted July 12, 2011
Sybase, an SAP company, has announced the general availability of Sybase IQ 15.3, which aims to help enterprise IT departments overcome the scalability limitations of many data warehouse approaches. By implementing a business analytics information platform that allows sharing of computing and data resources through the new Sybase IQ PlexQ technology, the company says enterprises can break down user and information silos to increase analytics adoption throughout their entire organization. There is a lot of talk about big data, but how to manage it and analyze it is only half the problem, observes David Jonker, senior product marketing manager of Sybase IQ. "The other half is how do you make it more pervasive throughout the enterprise and from our perspective that is where a lot of the existing data warehousing solutions fall down."
Posted July 12, 2011
Datameer, Inc., a provider of end user analytics solutions built on Apache Hadoop, has announced its partnership with MapR Technologies Inc., and support for the MapR distribution for Apache Hadoop. The partnership will include joint technology and marketing efforts designed to accelerate the adoption and usage of Hadoop-based analytics. As part of the partnership, a full-featured, trial version of the DAS will be included in the MapR distribution and will be available for download.
Posted July 12, 2011
Symantec Corp. announced that privately-held Clearwell Systems Inc., is now part of Symantec. The acquisition agreement between Symantec and Clearwell was announced on May19, 2011. According to Symantec, the acquisition of Clearwell brings together leading archiving, backup and e-discovery offerings to provide customers with a comprehensive information management solution.
Posted July 12, 2011
Attachmate Corporation announced the availability of Attachmate Luminet 4.2, an enterprise fraud management solution that helps thwart insider fraud and abuse. Luminet's ability to reveal user activity across enterprise applications and score risk in real-time to flag questionable activity patterns helps transform data into actionable intelligence. The latest Luminet version offers the option of a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 validated cryptographic module to conform to certain federal government requirements. The FIPS module is critical for federal government installations for making sure that they are meeting FIPS requirements, and allows Attachmate to add to the product's specific vertical appeal," Christine Meyers, senior product marketing manager for Attachmate Luminet, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 11, 2011
CA Technologies announced a series of enhanced mainframe-oriented products and programs aimed at reducing costs, simplifying management and improving operational efficiency. The upgraded products include Application Performance Management, DB2 for z/OS management tools, CA IDMS database management, CA Endevor Software Change Management, CA Mainframe Software Manager (CA MSM) and 84 other new additions to the Mainframe 2.0-enabled Mainframe Software Stack. CA has recently seen a shift in its mainframe base to greater consolidation of IT resources, Mark Combs, distinguished SVP for mainframe at CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing. This is seen particularly with "consolidating from Unix and Linux on distributed platforms onto Linux for System z," he says. "For quite a while, some customers had been moving Linux on mainframe, but not in large numbers. In the last year to 18 months, we have starting to see many more actual funded projects resulting in production deployments on mainframe, particularly among some of our larger customers, along with interest in our infrastructure management solutions to manage that environment."
Posted July 11, 2011
Romonet introduced Prognose, what it calls one of the world's first predictive modeling software suites for designing, building, operating and managing data centers and IT facilities. "Data center operators around the world are under increasing pressure to reduce business risk, control operational cost and maximize capital asset utilization while at the same time facing rising energy costs and increasing compliance regulations," says Zahl Limbuwala, CEO of Romonet.
Posted July 11, 2011
Oracle has agreed to acquire Pillar Data Systems, a provider of scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems. The acquisition will help Oracle deliver a complete line of storage products that runs Oracle software faster and more efficiently, the company said. Oracle president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle, followed up the announcement with a webcast last week in which they elaborated on Oracle's storage strategy and the importance of the capabilities that Pillar adds. They were joined by Phil Bullinger, senior vice president, Storage, at Oracle.
Posted July 11, 2011
CA Technologies announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO, Inc. (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction. "The addition of ITKO to CA Technologies will extend our ability to deliver a complete set of capabilities to help our customers and partners to increase their adoption and value from cloud-based applications," says David Dobson, executive vice president, Customer Solutions Group, CA Technologies.
Posted July 11, 2011
Oracle has agreed to acquire Pillar Data Systems, a provider of scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems. The acquisition will help Oracle deliver a complete line of storage products that runs Oracle software faster and more efficiently, the company said. Oracle president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle, followed up the announcement with a webcast last week in which they elaborated on Oracle's storage strategy and the importance of the capabilities that Pillar adds. They were joined by Phil Bullinger, senior vice president, Storage, at Oracle.
Posted July 06, 2011
Oracle has announced the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition. The aim of the new Oracle VM Template for MySQL is to help eliminate manual configuration efforts and risks by providing a pre-installed, pre-configured and certified software stack that includes Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and MySQL Enterprise Edition. "By using the Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, organizations do not have to spend the time downloading, installing, configuring and testing all the components together before deploying in production," an Oracle spokesperson tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 06, 2011
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of administration tools for database platforms, is shipping a new version of its DB PowerStudio suite that includes new capabilities within its multi-DBMS management suite. Enhancements include features for optimizing SQL with fewer clicks, new database and schema change management functionality, improved reporting features and faster performance across all tools. Together, these enhancements make it easier for DBAs and developers to improve database performance and to carry out their work with greater efficiency. "With our XE2 database products, we're giving database professionals, especially those tasked with working in multi-DBMS environments, a set of tools that enables them to get their job done faster, more efficiently, and with higher dependability and quality," Scott Walz, senior director of product management for Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 06, 2011
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of administration tools for database platforms, is shipping a new version of its DB PowerStudio suite that includes new capabilities within its multi-DBMS management suite. Enhancements include features for optimizing SQL with fewer clicks, new database and schema change management functionality, improved reporting features and faster performance across all tools. Together, these enhancements make it easier for DBAs and developers to improve database performance and to carry out their work with greater efficiency. "With our XE2 database products, we're giving database professionals, especially those tasked with working in multi-DBMS environments, a set of tools that enables them to get their job done faster, more efficiently, and with higher dependability and quality," Scott Walz, senior director of product management for Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 05, 2011
Expressor Software, a provider of data integration software, has announced the general availability of Expressor 3.3, the third enhancement release of the Expressor Data Integration Platform since the launch of Expressor 3.0 in December 2010. Expressor 3.3 features a new extensibility framework that enables third-party developers, ISVs, and end user organizations to build connectors to web-service-based SaaS and cloud applications and to integrate Expressor with in-house systems and applications.
Posted July 05, 2011
The big data playing field grew larger with the formation of Hortonworks and HPCC Systems. Hortonworks is a new company consisting of key architects and core contributors to the Apache Hadoop technology pioneered by Yahoo. In addition, HPCC Systems, which has been launched by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, aims to offer a high performance computing cluster technology as an alternative to Hadoop.
Posted July 05, 2011
SQLVOX LLC has announced that it has filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to cover the methods and techniques developed by the company that facilitate the integration of third-party technologies with Oracle databases. SQLVOX LLC is the publisher of SQL*VOX, an Oracle-based computer telephony integration and telecommunications development platform.
Posted July 05, 2011
CA Technologies announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO, Inc. (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction. "The addition of ITKO to CA Technologies will extend our ability to deliver a complete set of capabilities to help our customers and partners to increase their adoption and value from cloud-based applications," says David Dobson, executive vice president, Customer Solutions Group, CA Technologies.
Posted June 29, 2011
Kognitio today launched a new family of data warehouse appliances designed to let companies choose the model best suited to their specific data analysis speed and volume needs. "We have always offered a software-only database prepackaged on industry-standard hardware as an appliance for a turnkey solution. What we are doing today is basically giving customers more choice," Sean Jackson, vice president of marketing, Kognitio, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Kognitio has named the three new appliance varieties Rapids, Rivers and Lakes - which the company says are metaphors for the variety of performance and capacity issues that customers must consider.
Posted June 29, 2011
Vertica, an HP company, has announced the availability of Vertica 5.0, the latest version of the MPP columnar Vertica Analytics Platform. Vertica 5.0 offers a new software development kit (SDK) that provides the ability to customize and insert customer- and use case-specific query logic into the Vertica database for fully parallel execution. "The three tenets of Vertica have been its speed, scalability and simplicity and we have continued to further the industry-leading aspects of all three of those tenets of the system," Scott Howser, vice president of product marketing, HP Vertica, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2011
Pentaho, a provider of business intelligence software, announced a new release of its business intelligence toolset that incorporates interactive reporting and enhanced visualizations for business end users. Pentaho BI 4 Enterprise Edition includes an interactive, web-based report designer that provides more intuitive report-building capabilities for non-technical business users to serve their own reporting requirements without relying on IT. Pentaho BI 4 also includes a new visual interface designed to make BI more appealing and consumable by all users from developers, to power users, to non-technical business users. To a large extent, Pentaho BI 4 functions as an enterprise data mash-up tool, but with greater front-end capabilities, Ian Fyfe, chief technology evangelist for Pentaho, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 28, 2011
The PASS Summit 2011 Community Sessions have been finalized. Details on all community sessions, including four new half-day sessions, are now accessible on the PASS website. There are only a couple of days left to take advantage of savings on PASS Summit 2011. PASS is encouraging attendees to register by June 30 before the rate increases.
Posted June 28, 2011
IBM has announced new cloud services designed to enable clients to protect, store and retrieve their most critical data quickly after a disaster. The new IBM SmartCloud Resilience services enable companies to protect their data and applications in a more efficient manner than with traditional disaster recovery centers, the vendor says. "Now more than ever, companies are relying on a massive amount of data to run their businesses, storing it longer and retrieving it as needed," says Rick Ruiz, general manager of IBM's Business Continuity and Resiliency Services. "This creates a need for a business resilience strategy that will ensure continuous operation and create a competitive advantage to enable growth opportunities."
Posted June 27, 2011
IBM has released the latest version of its transaction server software for z/OS environments, which includes additional support for event processing, Java, and the CICS Explorer. The new update, CICS Transaction Server for z/OS (CICS TS) V4.2, builds upon the new and enhanced capabilities developed and delivered in V4.1, to enable companies to compete in the marketplace, comply with standards and regulations, and control IT processes.
Posted June 27, 2011
Symantec Corp. has introduced the latest version of Symantec ApplicationHA, Symantec's high availability solution for VMware virtual environments that supports customers' ability to virtualize their business-critical applications. As customers move from virtualizing peripheral applications to more core mission-critical apps, virtualization adoption declines because they tend to be more cautious and risk-averse, Don Angspatt, vice president of product management for Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "No one wants to stake their career on whether SQL, Oracle, SAP, and Exchange can be running all the time and be up all the time in a virtualized environment."
Posted June 27, 2011
Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management software, has introduced Vormetric Data Security for SAP, a comprehensive solution that protects data in SAP environments with transparent, high-performance encryption. According to Gretchen Hellman, vice president of product management at Vormetric, SAP modules often contain sensitive data that is under the jurisdiction of the growing numbers of internal governance mandates and external regulations, and so require advanced protection from insider abuse and external breaches. The solution can encrypt, protect and control access to both structured as well as unstructured data - including SAP reports, archives and database extracts. "It is comprehensive protection for SAP data," says Hellman.
Posted June 27, 2011
BMC Software has acquired the portfolio of IMS (Information Management System) database products and customers from NEON Enterprise Software, a mainframe management software company. According to BMC, adding NEON Enterprise Software's IMS products to its existing offerings will satisfy the critical need organizations have for industry-leading, high-performance solutions that not only help manage, optimize and support IMS environments, but also reduce operating costs and improve business service delivery. All told, BMC is acquiring more than 20 products through the acquisition, says Robin Reddick, director of MSM Solutions Marketing at BMC Software.
Posted June 27, 2011
Dataguise, a provider of enterprise data privacy solutions, has introduced its latest generation of database security solutions for sensitive data discovery, masking and sensitive data risk management. DgSuite 3.5 provides proactive risk-based enterprise security intelligence and solutions for transparently securing personally identifiable information (PII), payment card industry (PCI) data, information covered by HIPAA regulations and other sensitive data located in structured database repositories across distributed enterprise environments. The new release features the new DgDashboard for actionable intelligence that enables executives, information security professionals, compliance and infrastructure managers to better understand shared responsibilities for protecting data. "It is the first time that CIOs and CISOs have a control board that they both can access to view what is going on in their enterprise," Allan Thompson, executive vice president of Dataguise, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 24, 2011
VoltDB, a provider of high-velocity data management systems, has announced the release of VoltDB Integration for Hadoop. The new product functionality, available in VoltDB Enterprise Edition, allows organizations to selectively stream high velocity data from a VoltDB cluster into Hadoop's native HDFS file system by leveraging Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH), which has SQL-to-Hadoop integration technology, Apache Sqoop, built in. Because Volt is special purpose-built around high velocity data "we need to be very good at integrating with analytic databases so that customers that have high throughput, high velocity requirements on the front end, can then also take that data and move it into a long-term data store where they can get their deep analytics," VoltDB CEO Scott Jarr tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 24, 2011
Representing a continued expansion of its big data analytics portfolio, IBM has introduced a new addition to the Netezza product family of analytics appliances that is designed to help organizations uncover patterns and trends from extremely large data sets. The appliance is the first to be delivered by IBM since it acquired Netezza in November 2010. According to IBM, using the new appliance, businesses can now more easily sift through petabytes of data, including banking and mobile phone transactions, insurance claims, electronic medical records, and sales information, and they can also analyze this information to reveal new trends on consumer sentiment, product safety, and sales and marketing effectiveness. "This new appliance takes the scalability to a completely new dimension," says Razi Raziuddin, senior director of product management at IBM Netezza.
Posted June 24, 2011
Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management software, has introduced Vormetric Data Security for SAP, a comprehensive solution that protects data in SAP environments with transparent, high-performance encryption. According to Gretchen Hellman, vice president of product management at Vormetric, SAP modules often contain sensitive data that is under the jurisdiction of the growing numbers of internal governance mandates and external regulations, and so require advanced protection from insider abuse and external breaches. The solution can encrypt, protect and control access to both structured as well as unstructured data - including SAP reports, archives and database extracts. "It is comprehensive protection for SAP data," says Hellman.
Posted June 23, 2011