In late October 2012, Emcien was named the 2012 Supplier of the Year in the software as a service (SaaS) Solution Provider category, presented at the NCR IT Supplier Summit. The award is a reflection of the strong working relationship between NCR and Emcien, as NCR IT Services voted on those vendors that are most strategic and valuable to the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

I have attended several enterprise software events in recent months that discussed trends and changes in IT, with big data, mobile computing, social collaboration, and cloud computing at the top of the list. For instance, at its recent SAP Retail Forum North America, SAP announced the availability of a retailing solution built on SAP NetWeaver Cloud (part of the SAP HANA Cloud platform) that effectively combines these trends.

How these current IT trends are converging was also highlighted at the keynote presentations session on the first day of the recently held TUCON 2012 conference, titled “Everything is Different.” 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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

PROACTIS now helps more than 120 public sector organizations managing £15 billion of public sector spend in the UK and over 100,000 suppliers to streamline their source-to-contract and purchase-to-pay processes to achieve better value and control. The most recent win was at the Flintshire Council,  and now 20 out of 22 local authorities in Wales use PROACTIS.  Read the rest of this entry »

What was alluded to at the Inforum 2012 conference back in April 2012 (and talked about for the last several months in the media) finally took place on October 18, 2012, when Infor announced the grand opening of its new headquarters in New York City. This move not only announced the vendor’s new “digs,” but also introduced Infor’s new brand. The related press release briefly touched on Hook & Loop—Infor’s new in-house design agency. In addition, Infor revealed the launch of a new ION Experience Center at the operations center in Alpharetta, Georgia, its former HQ. Read the rest of this entry »

Rosslyn Analytics recently launched RAPid Spend Analysis – Professional, the cloud-based tool for decision-makers and knowledge workers at organizations running SAP to automatically extract, classify, and share business intelligence (BI) on-demand. SAP customers can use Rosslyn’s RAPid cloud enterprise data enrichment to perform advanced data analysis using pre-built dashboards and reports. Read the rest of this entry »

While day 1 of the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden was mostly about mobility, day 2 expanded into some other interesting themes and topics. IFS has long positioned itself as a single-instance global enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution alternative to SAP and Oracle. The realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) presents notable challenges for organizations due to the intricacy of global and local laws and regulations and the difficulty in navigating them. In his keynote presentation (which he mostly repeated in his subsequent presentation to the press/analysts), IFS CTO Dan Matthews pointedly stated that CSR is difficult to manage at a global level. Read the rest of this entry »

Those folks who might have been led to believe that Microsoft Dynamics has lately been focusing solely on one or two particular products (with a global enterprise appeal) at the expense of the others (that are more local and niche) will have been disabused of their notions in early October 2012. Specifically, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 in 15 markets. With deep investments in significant new capabilities and improvements across the product, this launch was hailed as the most significant release yet of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Read the rest of this entry »

What Siemens alluded to us at its two-day Siemens PLM analyst summit in early September 2012 is now official—the vendor has announced that its flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) software Teamcenter is available on the cloud, adding another platform option for Teamcenter customers. Teamcenter on the cloud delivered through an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model extends Siemens PLM Software’s “platform of choice” strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

At the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden, it was interesting to notice that Microsoft was the diamond sponsor of the conference, while IBM and Oracle were platinum sponsors.

Currently, IFS Applications runs solely on Oracle database, while the presentation (client) side and prepackaged business intelligence (BI) are Microsoft-centric (the IFS Web client also supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome browsers). Where IFS offers more openness and choice is in the middleware/app server layer by supporting IBM WebSphere, Oracle Weblogic, and Red Hat’s JBoss products based on the Java Enterprise Edition standards. Microsoft Windows, Unix, and Linux are supported OS platforms. Read the rest of this entry »