Archive for August, 2011

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Ultimate Software Opens New Offfice

August 31st, 2011
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Florida-based Ultimate Software (ULTI – Snapshot Report) recently announced that the company opened its new office in Santa Ana, CA.

The new office is expected to accommodate more than 100 Ultimate Software personnel which primarily consists of customer support, payment services and consulting services staff along with John Stauffer, vice president of payment services, and Ted Malley, vice president and general manager for regional services in the western U.S. In addition, the new office includes a 30-person training facility located for Ultimate Software’s west coast customers.

Management stated that the expanding presence in the west coast of the country continues to be key priority for the company as it grows its business.

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Weston, Florida, Ultimate is a leading provider of unified human capital management (HCM) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for global businesses.

Earlier, premier financial services and insurance company – Lincoln Financial Group selected the UltiPro solution from Ultimate Software. Lincoln, which has over $164 billion in assets, selected this solution for comprehensive people management through the convenience of Software as a Service (SaaS) and to better meet strategic business objectives.

Coyote Logistics LLC also selected UltiPro Workplace from Ultimate Software to manage the rapid growth of its workforce. Coyote Logistics offers supply-chain solutions across North America and Europe. This includes truckload, intermodal, less-than-truckload, and ocean- and air-based services.

First Air, Canada’s foremost Arctic air carrier, also selected the UltiPro solution as its single HCM system of record to improve the quality and analysis of its employee data.

Meanwhile, second quarter results missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by $0.03. We continue to have an Underperform recommendation on Ultimate Software. Our recommendation is supported by Zacks #4 Rank which tranlastes into a short-term rating of Sell.

Source:http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/59973/Ultimate+Software+Opens+New+Offfice

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nFocus Software Deploys Solutions to Raise Community’s Graduation Rates

August 31st, 2011
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nFocus Software, the leading provider of performance management and outcome measurement software to the public sector, has been selected by United Way of Forsyth County and the Community Education Collaborative in Winston-Salem, N.C., to deploy a community data system that will help evaluate and support student progress and other initiatives.

The Collaborative was founded in 2008 by Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, United Way of Forsyth County, the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, Graduate. It Pays., and various community leaders to coordinate and strengthen strategies on academic achievement and high school graduation rates. It now includes a broader constituency, including representatives from the faith-based community and grass-roots organizations.

The dropout rate was nearly 71 percent when the group was created. The graduation rate has since improved to nearly 80 percent and the goal is to reach 90 percent by 2018.

“This requires us to strengthen our efforts to reach that 2018 goal and increasing our data management capacity is a key element,” said Eric A. Aft, Chief Operating Officer, United Way of Forsyth County. “We need a partner that will help assure greater effectiveness for our community initiatives and funders need data to evaluate how best to achieve the greatest return on our investment. nFocus will help us to ensure we are reaching our students in the best way possible and helping them build a path for success.”

nFocus will implement TraxSolutions, a system that ensures data is shared and analyzed on an ongoing basis by various community partners to support decision making and deliver positive outcomes. A program manager, hired by the Collaborative’s partner, Forsyth Futures, will manage the new system, which will initially gather data from 14 sites. Forsyth Futures’ expertise in data management and analysis, along with its focus on coordinating projects with shared goals, is a vital asset to the project.

Ananda Roberts, President of nFocus Software, said, “Winston-Salem is entrusting us with their mission to reverse adverse trends and identify service gaps. Only through such a collective vision and measuring outcomes will the community achieve its goals.”

TraxSolutions is scheduled to begin to go live with local partners this fall.

About nFocus Software

nFocus Software is the leading provider of performance management, training, and outcome measurement software to the public sector. For more than 17 years, the company’s youth and education solutions tracked and measured outcomes for more than 3.8 million children in all 50 states and Canada including nonprofit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and city, state, and federal government.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nfocus-software-deploys-solutions-to-raise-communitys-graduation-rates-2011-08-30

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Microsoft Donates $8M Software Grant to Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Raising Partnership Gift Total to $29M

August 31st, 2011
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Microsoft Corporation’s renewed partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) has hit the $29 million mark, providing software for TMCF’s 47-member network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

This most recent partnership resulted in an $8 million software grant from the Redmond, WA-based company to help support TMCF-member schools. Over the past seven years, Microsoft has provided TMCF-member schools with $21 million in software. This new grant brings the total to date to $29 million. “Microsoft has always been committed to working with colleges and universities to help students achieve the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in a competitive industry. These grants have been a major contributor to facilitate capacity building for our network of schools,” said TMCF President & CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

The new $8 million software grant will allow TMCF to continue its ongoing IT initiative to strengthen the IT capacity of its member schools, broaden the institutions’ instructional and communications capabilities, and work to build sustainable learning environments.

Dr. Ronald J. Langley, managing director of the Educational Consulting Foundation of Bakersfield, CA., and a long-standing member of Microsoft’s Technology Advisory Committee, viewed the ongoing Microsoft/TMCF partnership as “a continuation of a very successful program that has been beneficial to the TMCF schools, and will continue to provide the institutions with up-to-date software and enable them to enhance their instructional support and programs.”

Everette J. Freeman, president of Albany State University of Albany, GA, added that “we will make intelligent and effective use of the resources the grant will provide to continue to graduate the best and the brightest — for our students, faculty and staff.”

The Microsoft/TMCF partnership has been and continues to be part of TMCF’s long-term Technology Initiative.

“Access to technology, and the skills to use that technology opens up new opportunities for communities and people around the world,” according to Akhtar Badsha, senior director of global community affairs at Microsoft. “We’re proud of our longstanding partnership with TMCF and our shared commitment that all students today have access to the tools and skills required for tomorrow’s careers.”

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-donates-8m-software-grant-to-thurgood-marshall-college-fund-raising-partnership-gift-total-to-29m-2011-08-30

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Libs slam govt on Software Qld resignation

August 31st, 2011
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Mills resigned from the board of Software Queensland in order to avoid having a role in the Queensland ICT Industry Workgroup, which Software Queensland takes part in.

He had resigned after feeling pressured indirectly by IT Minister Simon Finn, because Mills’ critical blogs about government IT policies clashed with his role in the workgroup.

Mills has criticised the government on multiple subjects such as the reasoning behind the decision to create a new, powerful state government CIO position and the selection process for the planned position.

The minister’s office said there were no truth in the claims and declined to comment further.

Yet Bates has taken Mills’ comments to heart.

“All he wanted to do was to assist the State Government to improve service delivery of ICT projects, bring them in on budget and ensure Queenslanders received value for money,” Bates said.

“But instead of listening to experts in the industry — the minister has simply forced him out.”

Bates then spoke about some of Queensland’s troubled government IT projects, such as the Queensland Health payroll issue and the recent delay in rolling out the OneSchool financials system, Agresso.

“This government simply can’t afford to lose valuable advice — frankly, it needs all the help it can get,” Bates said.

Software Queensland chair John Vickers said in a blog post that he was sorry Mills had decided to resign, adding that if he was “ever in a trench on the front line, Bruce is the kind of guy I would choose to stand next to me”.

He also criticised the OneSchool project, saying that the delays were the price of “acquiring a solution without a robust tender acquisition process, with overseas development activity taking place (always a bad idea), and perhaps too much complexity for schools”.

He repeated previous comments that he would like to see policy changes, where direct government departments share the products they use before they buy Australian products. Vickers thought it should happen before they buy international products, with building products being a last resort.

Professional project management was also required to stop the “plethora of failures and mishaps”, he said.

“We want to attract the youngsters to a vibrant, galvanising industry, not one which looks like a basket case,” he said. “Above all, we want to be the ‘Smart State’ once more, and hold our heads high on the international business stage.”

Source:http://www.zdnet.com.au/libs-slam-govt-on-software-qld-resignation-339321402.htm

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Dell Offers Hosted Apps for SMBs

August 31st, 2011
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Just one day after Dell announced its first infrastructure-as-a-service offering, the company is jumping deeper into the cloud. Dell will offer a family of hosted software applications for small and midsized businesses, through partnerships with Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Intuit and others, the computer maker announced Tuesday.

The first service, Salesforce.com’s CRM (customer relationship management) system, is available through Dell now, the company said. Next year Dell will offer hosted versions of Microsoft’s Dynamics GP ERP (enterprise resource planning) software and Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting software, as well as other services, it said.

Dell’s pitch is that it will tie the services together on the back-end using its recently acquired Boomi integration software, so that a customer’s CRM software can talk to its accounting software, for example. It says it will integrate both cloud and on-premise applications. That’s something smaller businesses, without large IT departments, may not want to do themselves.

Dell will also offer, by the middle of next year, a hosted analytics service that works across all its hosted applications, providing managers with a “unified view” of their business through a “cross-platform dashboard,” Dell said in a statement.

The services are a smart move for Dell, said industry analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. They allow the company to draw on its large base of small and midsized business customers to build a software hosting business.

“A lot of SMBs aren’t going to want to do the integration of all these different applications in the cloud, so Dell is putting together a package that does it for them,” Wang said.

The services, called the Dell Cloud Business Applications, are being announced in conjunction with Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. They will be Dell-branded and delivered with “business grade single sign-on and security,” Dell said.

It’s Dell’s second major cloud announcement in as many days, as it tries to expand beyond PCs and into the more profitable software and service markets. On Monday, Dell said it would offer a cloud infrastructure service later this year, targeted at large and midsize enterprises.

Package pricing for the CRM service, including Salesforce.com and the Boomi integration, starts at US$565 per month, Dell said. Implementation service packages start at $5,000, it said.

Dell acquired Boomi, which makes software for integrating cloud-based applications, late last year for an undisclosed sum.

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/239121/dell_offers_hosted_apps_for_smbs.html

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Oracle fires back at HP in Itanium suit, doesn’t mince words

August 31st, 2011
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Oracle filed a cross complaint against HP in the ongoing court battle over support for Intel’s Itanium platform.

In June, HP filed a civil lawsuit in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara to force Oracle to support the Itanium platform. In March, Oracle said that it would stop supporting HP’s Itanium platform because Intel planned to shut it down in the long run. HP and Intel both denied Oracle’s claims. The two parties last month exchanged courtroom jabs over Itanium support. In the meantime, HP’s high end server business is getting whacked. HP CEO Leo Apotheker noted on the company’s latest conference call that Oracle’s moves have frozen sales.

In the lawsuit, HP has done most of the talking—until today. Oracle blasted HP. The short version:

HP and Oracle issued a press release emphasizing that the two companies would work together and the database and application giant supported Itanium.
That press release arrived with news that HP and former CEO Mark Hurd settled a lawsuit.
However, Oracle didn’t know that HP was about to hire Apotheker, a move that would have scuttled a deal. It didn’t help that HP made Ray Lane, former operating chief at Oracle, chairman of the board.
Add it up and HP allegedly used fraudulent means to procure its Itanium deal.
Among the choice quotes from the complaint via AllThingsD:

This Cross-Complaint arises out of HP’s efforts to induce Oracle into an apparently perpetual and cost-free software development commitment for the Intel Itanium platform, supposedly implicit in a public reaffirmation of a colloquial “partnership,” while HP concealed that it was days away from hiring a new board chairman, Ray Lane, and new CEO, Léo Apotheker, who HP knew Oracle distrusted so completely—and justifiably—that “partnership” would be impossible. It also arises from HP’s numerous acts of disparagement and libel when, in March 2011, Oracle announced that—like most other major software vendors before it—it was discontinuing all new software development on the Intel Itanium platform. Subsequent to that announcement, HP has, among other things, falsely blamed Oracle for Itanium’s demise and the disruption to customers that unavoidably will occur when customers eventually migrate to newer platforms, and falsely claimed that Oracle has refused to provide ongoing software support and bug-fixes for Oracle’s current customers.

This meritless litigation further damaged HP’s relationship with Oracle. As Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison stated at the time: “Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner . . . . By filing this vindictive lawsuit . . . the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”

Léo Apotheker had previously been the CEO of Oracle’s biggest applications software competitor, SAP AG. Mr. Apotheker knew next to nothing about HP’s core businesses, so the only logical explanation for his hiring, now affirmed by HP’s recent business announcements, was that HP wanted to change direction and become more of an enterprise software company like IBM or Oracle. HP knew that Mr. Apothecary’s software background would signal to Oracle that the old relationship based on complementary interests was over. But even more importantly, HP knew that Oracle held Mr. Apotheker personally responsible for the widespread theft of Oracle’s intellectual property by an SAP subsidiary—an admitted and long-lasting theft that resulted in a $1.3 billion jury verdict against SAP in November 2010.

Source:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/oracle-fires-back-at-hp-in-itanium-suit-doesnt-mince-words/56819

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The Apache Software Foundation Announces 10th Anniversary of Apache POI

August 31st, 2011
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The Apache Software Foundation (ASF),the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced the 10th anniversary of Apache POI. First created in 2001, Apache POI’s cross-platform Open Source Java APIs allow users to read and write various file formats from the Microsoft Office suite of applications, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Visio, and Publisher.

Apache POI is deployed in many highly-visible environments including CERN, Deutsche Bank, Freddie Mac, IBM, J.P. Morgan, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA, SAP, and Siemens, among others. In addition, Apache POI is also used in Open Source projects such as Alfresco, JasperReports and Apache Tika.

“Apache POI’s powerful solutions give users the ability to create and maintain many Office OpenXML (OOXML) and OLE2-based file formats,” said Yegor Kozlov, Vice President of Apache POI. “With POI, you can do almost anything that you can with Microsoft Office products, only using Java.”

The latest stable release of the project is v3.8beta4 (August 2011). Highlights include:

- the ability to read and write OLE2 files, including .xls, .doc, and .ppt, as well as MFC serialization API based file formats;

- the ability to read and write OOXML files, including .xlsx, .docx, and .pptx;

- a low-level API to support Open Packaging Conventions using openxml4j;

- highly-developed Java APIs for Excel workbooks, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations;

- support for Outlook messages and attachments;

- converters for Excel and Word documents to streamline document production and consumption in HTML and XSLF-FO formats; and

- porting other OOXML and OLE2 formats

“Apache POI is a vital component of WSO2’s Middleware Platforms and Open PaaS. WSO2 Governance Registry makes use of Apache POI to extract keywords to build its search index for MS Office Documents stored within the resource repository. Meanwhile, WSO2 Data Services Server relies on Apache POI to access MS Excel spreadsheets as Data Sources; making it possible to read data from any Excel Sheet and expose them through Data Services.” said Senaka Fernando, Apache Member and Governance Registry Product Manager at WSO2.

In addition, POI’s robust spreadsheet API enables advanced formatting, graphics, conditional formatting, data validations and evaluation of Excel formulas. Its streaming spreadsheet API increases performance when used for very large spreadsheet production with limited heap space.

“The spreadsheet libraries in Apache POI have been invaluable in our efforts to streamline workflows for renewable-energy infrastructure modeling and analysis,” said Brian Bush, Principal Engineer, Energy Forecasting & Modeling Group, US Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The clean and robust API that POI provides made it easy for us to embed externally provided spreadsheets within our applications and to evaluate the formulae within those spreadsheets as part of a larger set of analytic computations. We also found that POI opened new avenues for exposing spreadsheets as Web services and for Apache Ant-based regression testing of spreadsheets.”

To improve functionality, the Apache POI project often collaborates with other Apache projects and Open Source communities that include Apache Cocoon, Lucene, OpenOffice, and Tika.

“We’ve donated components directly to those projects for POI-enabling them, and welcome additional contributions,” added Kozlov.

Availability and Oversight As with all Apache products, Apache POI software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-apache-software-foundation-announces-10th-anniversary-of-apache-poi-2011-08-30

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