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
Luminex Software Inc., a provider of mainframe virtual tape for data deduplication storage systems, announced Luminex Tape Monitor software (LTMON) for mainframe virtual tape systems, part of its family of Channel Gateway mainframe virtual tape products. Luminex also announced its High Availability Grid (HA-Grid) functionality, which provides highly available and redundant mainframe virtual tape storage.
Posted January 10, 2011
Red Gate Launches Data Compare for Oracle
Posted January 05, 2011
At Oracle OpenWorld in Beijing, Oracle announced Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Apparel Management, a new module within Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 portfolio, aimed at optimizing the management of products that consist of a variety of different attributes including styles, colors and sizes. To meet increasingly volatile and specific consumer expectations, manufacturers and distributors need to be able to streamline the management of complex multi-attribute items, Lyle Ekdahl, Oracle group vice president of JD Edwards, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We definitely wanted to carve out a niche for apparel because of the growth of apparel manufacturing and distribution in emerging markets, but when you take a look at the overall global economy, we think that there are a lot of good uses for the product," says Ekdahl, pointing out that the capabilities of the module can be applied to any industry that deals with multi-attribute items.
Posted January 05, 2011
Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0. Part of Oracle's portfolio of virtualization solutions, Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple guest operating systems simultaneously, allowing users to get higher flexibility and utilization out of their PCs, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris.
Posted January 05, 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). Historically, Centerprise has been a batch-oriented platform for moving data in batches at specified times, but with Centerprise Data Integration Real-Time Edition (RTE), Ibrahim Surani, CEO of Astera Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing, the company is adding the capability to move data in real time. The benefit to customers is that they can achieve better operational reporting or improved operational effectiveness as a result of multiple systems being in sync, and without the need to write custom programs, he notes.
Posted January 05, 2011
IOUG ResearchWire has announced the winner of the 2010 IOUG Cloud Computing Survey sweepstakes - William Moshier, director of engineering, Absolute Analysis. Moshier, who has been a member of the IOUG for the past 5 years, will receive an Apple iPad 16GB with WiFi.
Posted January 05, 2011
Informatica Corporation, a data integration software provider, has launched Informatica Cloud Express, a cloud data integration service with usage-based pricing. Informatica Cloud Express pricing will start at $99 per month, which the company says will open the door for organizations of all sizes for access to data integration capabilities of Informatica Cloud. Informatica Cloud Express is initially targeted at Salesforce.com customers, Darren Cunningham, vice president of cloud marketing for Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "For more complex requirements, including Salesforce integration with ERP applications, we offer Informatica Cloud Basic, Standard and Enterprise. We may extend usage-based billing to these other editions and to other vendors over time, but our initial focus is Salesforce.com as that is where we've seen the most demand."
Posted January 04, 2011
Red Gate has launched Data Compare for Oracle, a new tool that compares database table contents, highlights differences, generates SQL scripts to match the tables up, and automatically aligns them if desired. With Data Compare, deployment is done automatically in minutes, says Tom Harris, head of Red Gate's Oracle tools division. "After making database changes, the last thing you want is to spend hours deploying them."
Posted January 04, 2011
Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration and event capture software, has entered into a new, multi-million dollar OEM agreement with Microsoft Corporation to provide Attunity's change data capture (CDC) in Microsoft's next version of SQL Server. The integration of Attunity CDC into SQL Server will support customer requirements in strategic markets including cloud computing and real time business intelligence (BI). This OEM agreement represents an important turning point for Attunity, says Shimon Alon, Attunity's chairman and CEO, "Aside from the strategic importance of this 5-year agreement, we expect to receive a significant portion of the payments during 2011 and the balance in quarterly payments starting toward the end of 2012. This will enable us to strengthen our cash position and accelerate our growth by making additional investments in sales, marketing and R&D, as well as target high growth markets such as cloud computing."
Posted January 04, 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).
Posted January 04, 2011
DBTA Webcasts Available on Demand
Posted January 04, 2011
Oracle has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5. The new release delivers enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X. MySQL 5.5 is the first major MySQL server release which has been done under Oracle's reign and it is also represents the first time the InnoDB team, which was acquired by Oracle back in 2005, and the MySQL team worked together to create a new release, Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted December 21, 2010
Karmasphere has introduced Karmasphere Analyst, productivity software for data professionals working with massive data sets. "Karmasphere is focused on providing software for developers and analysts to work with Big Data in Hadoop clusters. Over the past 12 months, we have been introducing products specifically focused on developers who are early adopters of Hadoop and are working on Big Data in Hadoop, but what we have heard time and time again from enterprise organizations is the need to unlock access to data in Hadoop clusters for enterprise analysts," Martin Hall, CEO of Karmasphere, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted December 21, 2010
QSM Associates is shipping an updated version of the SLIM software lifecycle management solution, which incorporates support for Agile software development methodologies. A product of McLean, Virginia-based QSM, Inc., the new release, SLIM Suite 8.0, addresses development concerns with Agile methodologies, which emphasize iterative approaches working as small teams with business users.
Posted December 21, 2010
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization software, has introduced its new Advantage Partner Program to provide Queplix partners, including value added resellers (VARs), independent software vendors (ISVs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and system integrators and professional services (SIPS), with access to its data virtualization technology, training, marketing and customer support programs. According to Mark Cashman, CEO, Queplix, "The goal of the Advantage Partner Program is two-fold: to help our partners capitalize on and benefit from the next wave of virtualization by providing access to the training and certification needed for rapid implementation of our technology across a broad spectrum of data discovery, data integration, data migration and master data management projects; and in addition, enable customers to move faster to complete successful implementations and realize the return on investment they expect."
Posted December 21, 2010
MarkLogic Corporation, whose flagship product is a purpose-built database for unstructured information, has announced that it was selected as the database of choice after a proof of concept that included a migration of the existing catalog content in less than four days.
Posted December 21, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, said it has secured $6 million in a Series C funding round. The round included participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Stata Venture Partners, as well as a new strategic investment from Juniper Networks, through the Junos Innovation Fund. The financing will allow Sentrigo to increase global sales and marketing activities in support of its rapid revenue growth rate, as well as to continue expanding its database security and data integrity solutions for the cloud.
Posted December 21, 2010
Sybase, an SAP company, recently announced its support for a new managed mobility offering from Verizon Business that aims to reduce the complexity in developing and deploying mobile applications running across a variety of back-end enterprise systems and mobile device types. Verizon's new Mobile Services Enablement Platform (MSEP) leverages Sybase Managed Mobility as well as the Sybase Unwired Platform and can be fully integrated with existing Verizon Managed Mobility Solutions modules.
Posted December 15, 2010