As Superstorm Sandy battered the east coast of the US, Epicor announced a new System Backup & Recovery solution.  The solution is designed for small and midsize businesses that require an alternative to costly and complex backup and recovery solutions. The solution is available to Epicor ERP, Epicor Vantage, and Epicor Vista customers running Microsoft SQL Server. Read the rest of this entry »

In late October 2012, the price management solution developer Vistaar Technologies announced today that Beam Inc. has completed the third major phase of the Vistaar beverage alcohol pricing solution implementation. The latest phase should allow Beam to increase visibility across its entire value chain while managing multiple pricing protocols for 3,500 unique stock-keeping units (SKUs) across the company’s 75 US distributors. Read the rest of this entry »

Many enterprise software events that I have recently attended have discussed the intersection of the following forces and IT trends:

• cloud computing, the benefits and caveats of which have been talked about ad nauseam, but the major premise is remote access for users via a mere Internet connection
• the so-called big data explosion in terms of volume, variety, and velocity (thus sometimes even referred to as “fast data”) and the advent of related high-performance data discovery, data crunching, and data analysis tools for mitigation
• social collaboration for both individuals and businesses, whereby companies should listen closely to their customers’ needs and opinions, and analyze these for deciding on the best possible course of action
• mobile computing, which allows access to data from virtually anywhere and on virtually any device Read the rest of this entry »

During its first customer conference, YamJam’12, Yammer announced the Enterprise Graph—a new app directory and platform. The intended customers for this product are enterprise software vendors. Given the current social surge, software vendors are seeking to integrate social features into their products. Read the rest of this entry »

Halogen Software and SHL announced their partnership in an attempt to provide improved customer experience in key talent management areas. SHL’s talent measurement tools combined with Halogen’s talent suite aim to complement each other in talent acquisition, leadership development, career development, and succession planning. Read the rest of this entry »

Dyer Engineering, a UK-based sub-contract fabrication and specialist engineering company, has apparently selected the Epicor next-generation enterprise resourcing planning (ERP) solution to replace its existing local ERP solution. Dyer Engineering claims to have always been an early adopter of advanced technology, and the company has used its existing ERP solution since 1999. While ERP is already embedded in all departments there were areas of missing functionality, and the software was unable to perform in the way the management team required to aid in reaching the company’s growth target. In other words, spreadsheets were “supplementing” the ERP system. The competition for a new ERP system included a global mid-market and another local British competitor of Epicor. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Corporation has just announced the availability of Windows 8. With more than 1,000 PCs and tablets already certified, Microsoft expects to fasten their users to transition to this new operating system (OS).  Read the rest of this entry »

RDO Equipment distributes, sells, services, and rents construction and agricultural equipment. The company operates the largest network of John Deere retail stores in the United States, and it also sells Vermeer and Topcon equipment, with customers in more than 60 locations across the US. The company has announced that it is leveraging the UltiPro human capital management (HCM) solution for increased employee engagement, HR operational effectiveness, and strategic workforce analytics and reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, at the HR Tech Europe Conference & Expo 2012, SAP announced the availability of a package of user experience enhancements for the SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution. According to the press release the user experience capabilities of the product have been advanced.

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In a flurry of product announcements at the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden, last week, IFS announced the launch of it reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) toolkit. Based on IFS’ long experience and heritage in asset-intensive industries, the solution is optimized for any industry that implements complex or capital-intensive assets and is delivered through a flexible cloud-based model. Read the rest of this entry »

During the Sitecore Symposium North America, Sitecore presented two new applications aimed at marketers interested in integrating customer engagement management with website content management (WCM). Social Starter Kit combines online communities delivered by Telligent with Sitecore’s customer engagement platform and WCM. This addresses a challenge that marketing professionals are facing because, as a rule, they are using separate software solutions to coordinate their websites and online communities. The other product launched at the same event, the Sitecore Social Connected Module, is a free add-on that connects the websites created by using the Sitecore WCM with social platforms. The application allows for mutual exchange between websites and social networks, as social content can be shared on websites and vice versa. Another capability worth underlining is the automated social site user authentication, which is much appreciated by users, as they want to avoid having to create and remember new credentials.

The marketing automation provider Marketo introduces Marketo Program Exchange, a new addition to its Marketing Nation platform. Marketing Nation is a free-of-charge network that can be joined by any Marketo customer. Marketo Program Exchange provides users with access to a pre-built marketing programs library. These templates have been created and deemed as best-of-breed by Marketo customers.

The press release states that the templates were verified and optimized based on the experience of 21,000 users who engaged with them. The members of the network can either use the existing content or further develop it. With this offering, Marketo acknowledges the importance of a collective that includes its customers as active contributors to product and service development. So far, more than 2,000 companies have joined the Marketo network.

During its annual Partners event, Teradata, an important data warehouse and analytics provider, introduced its new Analytic Architecture Services that will aid in accelerating deployment of the Teradata Unified Data Environment, a framework that will enable organizations to work with a wide variety of data within Teradata’s environments. By combining its analytic platform Teradata Aster offering and the implementation of the open source big data platform Hadoop in the Teradata Unified Data Environment through the Analytic Architecture Services, the data warehousing company will be able to offer its users access to a wide variety of data sources (both structured and multi-structured) and allow analysis using a single platform. Read the rest of this entry »

During the recent Teradata Partners User Group Conference & Expo, Teradata announced the release of new Teradata Database capabilities with the release of Teradata Data Lab with Smart Loader, Teradata Studio, and Teradata Virtual Machine Edition. Read the rest of this entry »

E2open is a provider of cloud-based software solutions enabling enterprises to procure, manufacture, sell, and distribute products more efficiently through collaborative execution across global trading networks. Brand owners can use E2open solutions to gain visibility into and control over their trading networks through the real-time information, integrated business processes, and advanced analytics that E2open provides. Read the rest of this entry »