Business Intelligence News

OSSI turns to Jaspersoft for expertise in government open source Business
Intelligence deployments

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ — GOSCON — Jaspersoft, provider of the
world’s most widely used business intelligence (BI) software, today announced
that it is joining the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) to support its
mission of extending the benefits of open source software to government
agencies and academic organizations. Paul Loeffler, director of government
programs at Jaspersoft, is joining the OSSI Advisory Board.

The OSSI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the development
and implementation of open source software solutions within U.S. federal,
state and municipal government agencies.

The U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Federal
Reserve Bank and USDA are among the federal government agencies today using
Jaspersoft in mission-critical applications.  For more information about
Jaspersoft’s Federal programs and customers, please visit:
www.jaspersoft.com/government-bi.

“The maturity of open source software along with the economic factors that
weigh heavily on CIOs today are together making open source software more
compelling for government IT customers than ever before,” said Brian Gentile,
CEO of Jaspersoft. “Our OSSI membership demonstrates Jaspersoft’s commitment
to collaborating with industry colleagues and government customers to make
open source software a consideration for every project.” 

“We are thrilled to announce that Jaspersoft has joined OSSI,” said John
Weathersby, executive director of the Open Source Software Institute.
“Jaspersoft has established a tremendous reputation as the leading provider of
open source business intelligence systems.  We have worked with the Jaspersoft
team for a while now and look forward to sharing their expertise with our
contacts within the federal, state and municipal government agencies.”

With hundreds of state, local and federal government agencies on its customer
roster, Jaspersoft’s OSSI membership is a natural move for the company. It
will share its experiences and best practices with government customers and
suppliers in order to accelerate deployments that are critical to agency
operations.

“Business intelligence is a top priority for government CIOs at the local,
state and federal levels. IT informs their most important decisions regarding
funding, prioritization and serving citizens,” said Deb Bryant, founder and
organizer, GOSCON. “We’re happy to see companies like Jaspersoft play a
significant role in open source adoption in government and glad to see their
return to GOSCON for the third year in a row and their membership in OSSI.”

Open source software use is a growing trend among government IT departments
and Gartner reports that more than 25 percent of government vertical,
domain-specific applications will either be open source, contain open source
application components or be developed as community source by 2011. Recently,
WhiteHouse.gov moved to an open source content management system for its
website.

About Jaspersoft Corporation
Jaspersoft’s open source business intelligence suite is the world’s most
widely used BI software, with more than 9 million product downloads worldwide
and more than 11,000 commercial customers in 96 countries. The company’s
Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite provides a web-based, open and modular
approach to the evolving business intelligence needs of the enterprise.
Jaspersoft’s software is rapidly updated by a community of more than 100,000
registered members working on more than 350 projects, which represents the
world’s largest business intelligence community. More information is available
at www.jaspersoft.com and www.jasperforge.org.

About Open Source Software Institute
The Open Source Software Institute (www.oss-institute.org) is a non-profit,
membership-based organization whose mission is to promote the development and
implementation of open source software solutions within U.S. Federal, state
and municipal government agencies.

    Media Contact

    United States
    Jennifer Cloer
    Page One PR for Jaspersoft
    Jennifer@pageonepr.com
    +1-503-746-7577

IRVINE, Calif.–(Business Wire)–
Strategy Companion Corporation, a leading provider of Business Intelligence (BI)
software for SQL Server, today announced that Tectura has selected the company`s
Analyzer solution as its Business Intelligence platform for reporting,
analytics, dashboarding, and scorecarding.

“After an extensive search and evaluation of BI solutions, Tectura has selected
Strategy Companion as the analytics platform which we feel will benefit our
customers the most,” said Frank Wilson, Technology Services Product Manager at
Tectura. “We have been impressed with Strategy Companion`s focus on keeping
Analyzer both very easy to learn and use but also quite powerful.”

Tectura`s evaluation process began with the formation of a BI Committee of eight
representatives from product management, sales, pre-sales, and marketing. Then a
larger enterprise-wide BI Focus Group of 40 Tectura employees was formed. This
was followed by a survey of all Dynamics BI vendors, resulting in a list of
eight vendors for detailed evaluation. After a lengthy and comprehensive
evaluation process, the BI Focus Group recommended Strategy Companion`s Analyzer
solution, which was approved by the Committee.

“Tectura customers have already provided very positive feedback on Analyzer and
its ability to bring true BI to their entire user base. We`re excited to
continue providing our customers with best-of-breed business and technology
solutions in partnership with companies like Strategy Companion,” said Wilson.

“Strategy Companion has worked closely with the Tectura team during their
evaluation process and we will continue to make sure our partnership moves
forward successfully to provide their diverse markets with a complete Business
Intelligence solution. We are pleased to have Analyzer become part of the
Tectura offering and are looking forward to a successful alliance,” said Robert
Sterling, Strategy Companion`s VP of Partner Alliances.

About Tectura

Tectura is a worldwide provider of business consulting services delivering
exceptional service and sustainable value through consulting, software and IT
implementation. Tectura`s diverse clientele includes mid-sized companies and
divisions of larger enterprises in the aerospace, life sciences, manufacturing
and distribution, retail, and services industries.

With more than 1,800 team members in 20+ countries, Tectura applies its industry
knowledge and best practices philosophy to provide Microsoft Dynamics ERP, CRM
and technology solutions throughout the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. A
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Tectura maximizes their vast technology
resources and deep Microsoft expertise to deliver increased efficiency, project
acceleration and a competitive edge. Learn more at www.tectura.com.

About Strategy Companion

Strategy Companion Corporation (www.strategycompanion.com) is a leading provider
of Enterprise, SaaS, and OEM Business Intelligence solutions focused solely on
the Microsoft SQL Server platform. Its Analyzer solution provides an intuitive
and powerful front end for the latest SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI)
capabilities. Fortune 500 companies and other large and mid-sized businesses are
enhancing their competitiveness and revenue streams by leveraging Analyzer`s
proven, mission-critical BI capabilities. Founded in 2001, Strategy Companion is
headquartered in Irvine, California with offices in London UK, China, Taiwan,
and India.

Strategy Companion will be exhibiting at Booth 306 at the Professional
Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Nov. 2-5, 2009.

All brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective
holders.

Brandi Penza
STRATEGY COMPANION
714-460-8398 ext.125
brandi.penza@strategycompanion.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009

Leading French Retailer Uses MicroStrategy 9 for Reporting and Analysis

MCLEAN, Va., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — MicroStrategy® Incorporated
(Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI)
software, today announced that Systeme U has selected MicroStrategy 9 as its
enterprise business intelligence platform to support its Information Decision
Support System Group.

Systeme U decided to consolidate its BI applications within a central Decision
Support Information System Group to develop an integrated architecture. The
procurement, inventory, and sales departments will be the first departments to
use MicroStrategy 9. Systeme U expects more than 1,500 employees in the group
purchasing organizations (GPOs) and 1,000 stores will benefit from the
MicroStrategy platform.

The new BI system will allow Systeme U to:
    –  Measure the progress of the company’s strategic objectives with
        information dashboards
    –  Manage operational activities with operations dashboards
    –  Develop a consistent foundation to meet the BI requirements of the
GPOs

    –  Pool BI technical resources by providing centralized, hosted IT
        assistance

To select a BI platform to meet its requirements, Systeme U conducted an
extensive three-month survey of various BI tools. The company searched for a
BI platform that offered a portal with access to group information, public and
personalized reports, monitoring applications, and external links; an
interface to effectively present and visualize data; and the ability to
conduct multi-dimensional analyses of the company’s enterprise data.

“We took a classic tender approach where each BI vendor was given a chance to
demonstrate its products,” said Fabrice Blondeel, responsible for the decision
support applications at Systeme U Centrale Nationale. “The working sessions
conducted by the project team helped narrow our choices. A key requirement was
to demonstrate, through a proof-of-concept (POC), what our end users could
expect from the different products and the technical capabilities for our
technical team to review. Although already known to Systeme U, MicroStrategy
proved the value of its products, including the capabilities available in
MicroStrategy 9.”

“We already use MicroStrategy products across four of our regional GPOs, with
a decentralized architecture partially consolidated across the country,” said
Antoine De Vaux, Director of the IT Services at Systeme U Centrale Nationale.
“The goal of reorganizing our BI enterprise and sales applications in a
centralized architecture led us to question our current products and seek a BI
partner with which to move forward. MicroStrategy demonstrated the technical
value of its offering and addressed our scalability and data source issues. We
also redefined our relationship with MicroStrategy to help establish an
effective and sustainable partnership.”

“We are delighted that Systeme U selected MicroStrategy for a strategically
important enterprise BI project,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO.
“Despite the competitive evaluation process, Systeme U decided to consolidate
its decision support systems on MicroStrategy.”

About Systeme U
Systeme U is a french cooperative of independent retailers with more than 900
U stores (Hyper U, Super U, Marche U, and U Express) and a staff of
approximately 60,000 people.

About MicroStrategy
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a global leader in business intelligence
(BI) technology.  MicroStrategy provides integrated reporting, analysis, and
monitoring software that helps leading organizations worldwide make better
business decisions every day.  Companies choose MicroStrategy for its advanced
technical capabilities, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user
scalability. More information about MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is available
at www.microstrategy.com.

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy 9, and MicroStrategy Business Intelligence
Platform are trademarks or registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated
in the United States and certain other countries.  Other product and company
names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

    Contact:
    Wende Cover
    MicroStrategy Incorporated
    703-770-1646
    wcover@microstrategy.com

MSTR-G

SOURCE  MicroStrategy Incorporated

Wende Cover of MicroStrategy Incorporated, +1-703-770-1646,
wcover@microstrategy.com

Tue Nov 3, 2009 9:02am EST

Fieldglass Business Intelligence Fuels Best in Class Contingent Labor and
Services Programs
New Solution Reveals Actionable Information for Smarter Decision Making

CHICAGO, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ — Fieldglass, Inc., provider of the leading
unified platform for acquiring contingent workers, services and direct hires,
today announced its comprehensive business intelligence suite, arming
companies with the information necessary to create more strategic and
cost-effective workforce programs. Using Fieldglass Business Intelligence,
customers can uncover program data, identify trends and anomalies and
benchmark against the industry.

“Fieldglass’ business intelligence offerings provide HMS with insight into
spend, potential compliance risks and the overall efficiencies of our
program,” said David Barrows, director of talent acquisition, HMS. “The
benchmarking component allowed us to see how our program stacks up against the
industry average, giving us a level of detail we could not achieve on our own.
This is especially critical information in the context of today’s economy.”

Current research findings suggest a business intelligence solution is
important to any labor program’s success.

“In our most recent contract talent research study, nearly every interviewee
spoke about the importance of reporting. In fact, one respondent went so far
as to say that this was the single greatest ROI his organization realized in
moving from decentralized to centralized contingent workforce management,”
said Amy Lewis, director of Talent Acquisition Community, Human Capital
Institute. “Better data leads to better reports, on which to make better
decisions.”

Fieldglass Business Intelligence provides a unique level of analysis to all
users to improve day-to-day performance and ultimately helps companies make
better hiring decisions in line with company goals through:

    –  Reporting. Fieldglass offers a broad collection of second-generation
        standard reports, ad-hoc reports based on user-defined criteria and
        scheduled reporting. Fieldglass Analyzer features drill-down analysis
        and charting capabilities that allow non-technical users to easily
        interpret large volumes of data in real-time.
    –  Fieldglass Visualizer. This new feature displays program data in a
        series of interactive graphs and dashboards. Visualizer proactively
        detects emerging trends regarding key performance indicators and
        identifies other anomalies and outliers. Users can immediately drill
        into the appropriate place within the Fieldglass application to take
        action or research areas of concern.

    –  Benchmarking. The benchmark reports compare a company’s rates, cycle
        times and supplier performance with Fieldglass’ broader data supply -
        the industry’s largest aggregated pool of contingent workforce data.
        Delivered as a service through the program office, the reports
identify
        patterns, best practices and strengths and weaknesses. The normalized
        market data can be filtered by, for example, industry or
geo-population
        tiers to provide customers insight into their program’s operations.

“It remains a challenge to evaluate human capital management programs in a
meaningful way,” said Jai Shekhawat, CEO, Fieldglass. “Alongside Fieldglass’
decision support capabilities and other built-in predictive functionality such
as real-time alerts, the new business intelligence tools will prove to be
invaluable to our partners and customers and help them positively transform
their businesses.”

ABOUT FIELDGLASS, INC.

Fieldglass, Inc. provides the leading unified technology platform for
acquiring all human capital, including contingent workers, services and direct
hires. Its award-winning, on-demand product suite helps companies determine
the right worker composition across all labor types and tap into known talent
resources, such as alumni, retirees and interns. Using Fieldglass, global
companies can reduce hiring cycles, enforce compliance and control spend to
remain competitive.

Customers representing Global 2000 firms, including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson &
Johnson, Monsanto, Salesforce.com and Wyeth, use the Fieldglass solution to
manage contingent workers in a variety of categories, including light
industrial, IT and administrative, and the procurement of projects, offshore
and deliverables-based work. For more information, visit www.fieldglass.com.

SOURCE  Fieldglass, Inc.

Stephanie Pietrzak of Fieldglass, Inc., +1-312-279-8081,
spietrzak@fieldglass.com

Enables Timely and Relevant Business Insight Through Consulting Expertise and Validated Solutions for Presenting, Analyzing, and Cost Effectively Managing Data HOPKINTON, Mass., Nov. 4

HOPKINTON, Mass., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ — EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced expanded services and solutions for Microsoft Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse and Mission-Critical SQL Server environments. The new offerings demonstrate EMC’s commitment to helping organizations fully leverage their information for better insight, decision making and competitive advantage.

“The performance and stability of applications — whether line of business, transactional or business intelligence — hinges in part on the smooth integration between the information platform and information infrastructure on which it is deployed,” said Tom Casey, general manager for SQL Server at Microsoft Corp. “The combination of Microsoft software with EMC services and solutions makes it more predictable and more cost effective for customers to deploy these technologies as a scalable information asset in their IT organizations.”

New Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence and Contact Center Services and Solutions
New services and solutions from EMC provide customers with a more robust portfolio of offerings to enable relevant data insight and analysis, as well as increased efficiency managing and storing their enormous volumes of data. EMC Consulting helps organizations maximize the benefits of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, a scalable Business Intelligence (BI) platform, through expanded BI framework offerings, including pre-built data models to support Microsoft Fast Track data warehouse configurations. This powerful combination accelerates the time to information and analysis, while reducing costs, increasing productivity and reducing risk. EMC Consulting also announces the availability of additional services focused on delivering analytics and insight for infrastructure and storage management and contact center management.

• EMC Data Warehouse Services — Enable organizations to create the most effective methods for collecting, consolidating, and organizing the business-critical data that is required for business intelligence and pervasive analytics. EMC consultants expand Microsoft Fast Track implementations using EMC’s BI Accelerator Framework, which dramatically reduces development time and effort. The Framework contains prebuilt and predesigned industry data models that present data to users in a way that is consistent with how they view their business, dramatically improving user adoption rates. EMC can configure databases for OLAP cubes that quickly provide answers to multi-dimensional analytical queries and eliminate wait time on report queries, enabling easy root cause analyses.
• EMC Business Intelligence for Infrastructure Service — Improves decision making by providing real-time visibility into the infrastructure that runs the business. I  provides a business intelligence system that extends current I  reporting and analysis systems b  providing clients with the ability t  perform key performance indicator (KPI)-based reporting, analytics, and alerting o  storage, database, operating system and networking metrics.  Using Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft PerformancePoint Server, EMC consultants integrate these metrics and analyze performance and capacity data over time, incorporating KPI-based trend analysis and forecasting capabilities t  measure data collected against business goals.
• EMC Contact Center Services and Solutions — Provide a holistic view of contact management operations by helping organizations to clarify their contact center strategy and business goals and then deploy a roadmap to realize these goals. Benefits include optimized contact center performance and process improvement, real-time visibility and improved decision making, and increased productivity.

“Working together, Microsoft and EMC bring SQL Server to mission-critical computing environments helping customers regain control of their infrastructure,” said EMC’s Dave Cox, Vice President, EMC Consulting. “EMC consultants have years of experience helping customers achieve their business objectives by combining Microsoft and EMC technologies, providing unparalleled Microsoft subject-matter expertise, and proven methodologies to address the challenges of managing complex environments and maximizing the value of their information.”

EMC Proven(TM) Solutions increase infrastructure efficiency and lower TCO

EMC is also expanding its portfolio of EMC Proven Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to enable customers to address their requirements for lower TCO, consolidation, virtualization, performance, scalability and availability. EMC Proven Solutions are rigorously tested, end-to-end solutions designed to address the most pressing IT problems — from universal challenges like business continuity to specialized application requirements. Each solution is built, tested and documented for a broad set of common customer workloads and uses cases ensuring fast, predictable, and measurable results. One new solution shows how organizations can leverage storage tiering to keep frequently used data on the fastest enterprise Flash drives, and move infrequently used data to less expensive SATA disk drive types — while protecting the SQL databases – all without impacting the host CPU cycles. This allows for maximum performance for mission-critical data, keeps the storage footprint and power consumption to a minimum, and reduces the total cost of ownership.

EMC is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with eleven competencies, a Global Systems Integrator, a Global Alliance Partner, a Worldwide ISV and a winner of 20 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards.

About EMC Consulting

EMC Consulting provides the strategic guidance and technology expertise organizations need to manage their business and information infrastructure challenges and derive the maximum value from their information assets and investments. EMC Consulting helps customers, including more than half of the Global Fortune 500 Companies, leverage information in new ways to navigate challenging market conditions and excel in the information economy. By offering broad consulting expertise across organizations’ business, applications and infrastructure architectures, as well as industry expertise in Financial Services, Life Sciences, Communications/Media/ Entertainment, Retail, and innovative user experience and design, EMC Consulting delivers the transformational thinking and execution required to turn the potential of information into actionable strategies and business results.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC and EMC Proven are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE EMC Corporation

SAN DIEGO, CA — (Marketwire) — 11/03/09 — SharePoint360, the premier provider of business productivity consulting and hosting solutions, today announced it has been accepted into a Microsoft early adoption program, allowing Microsoft partners to obtain real-world customer feedback on Microsoft pre-release products.

While early adoption programs span many technologies and generally only engage Microsoft customers, SharePoint360 was selected as a result of its work in highlighting Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 within Microsoft SharePoint Server. The company was chosen for its proposed budgeting project for customer Gafcon, bridging the gap between information inside and outside the firewall.

In preliminary work with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SharePoint360 notes this update strengthens Microsoft BI in many ways, now aligning it with larger BI providers’ offerings, ensuring that BI is accessible to information workers who are not BI software analysts. Coupled with Office 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2’s advanced BI functionality is complimented by SharePoint’s collaboration capabilities, fostering collaboration around BI data. Main updates to the product include:

“Given the extensive work we’ve completed for our customers with SharePoint BI, we are pleased to be a part of this exclusive program and have the opportunity to work directly with Microsoft on the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 release,” said Jenifer Underwood, BI solution lead at SharePoint360. “As a company, we fully support Microsoft’s vision of empowering front line information workers with the ability to quickly and easily analyze the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.”

For more information about SharePoint360’s services, please visit: http://www.sharepoint360.com.

About SharePoint360

Headquartered in San Diego, SharePoint360, LLC is a leading SharePoint consulting, hosting and business intelligence solutions provider. Founded in 2006, the company is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, whose team of software industry expert have completed have completed a variety of collaborative technology implementations for Fortune 500 Companies, small businesses and government agencies in the U.S. and internationally. More information about SharePoint360 is available at http://www.sharepoint360.com.

Media Contact:
Andrea Ragni
SHIFT Communications
415-591-8478
Email Contact

Mon Nov 2, 2009 9:13am EST

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(Business Wire)–
InterSystems Corporation today announced reseller agreements with two new
InterSystems application partners. Management Information Tools, Inc. (MITS) and
LifePoint Informatics have partnered to help medical laboratories provide
timely, accurate reporting services to healthcare providers.

InterSystems develops innovative database, integration, and business
intelligence products. Known worldwide as a highly scalable object database for
transactional systems, InterSystems CACHÉ handles SQL queries faster than
relational databases and enables rapid Web application development.

MITS develops and markets Online Analytical Processing and business intelligence
solutions. LifePoint`s clients use its services to transmit lab test results and
related data through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions developed and hosted
by LifePoint. These Web-based solutions are built on InterSystems CACHÉ.
LifePoint has added MITS Report, an operational and ad hoc reporting solution
designed for a wide range of MultiValue and relational databases, to its
solution suite.

“LifePoint serves both medical providers and clinical medical laboratories,”
said LifePoint Chief Technical Officer Preston Law. “We`re in the business of
exposing test results data, produced by the labs, to the health care providers.”
As a result, providers who once relied on fax and mail can now quickly obtain
test results online.

In addition to individual test results, both labs and providers must analyze and
report aggregated test and test results data for reasons ranging from trend
analysis to Medicare reimbursement reporting. “That`s why we`ve added the MITS
Report capabilities to our offerings,” said Law. “And, we`re encouraged by early
reaction to the new report capabilities.”

MITS President Fred Owen shares Law`s optimism. “LifePoint`s large, expanding
client base presents significant revenue opportunities for all sides of this
partnership,” he pointed out. “This is our first sizable sale involving a
CACHÉ-based application,” Owen said. “And, because it will serve a large user
base via the SaaS model, we think other CACHÉ users will be very interested in
this offering.”

Owen underlined the importance of CACHÉ to the MITS long-term strategy.
“Thousands of companies use CACHÉ because it provides advanced capabilities for
Web-based development along with massive scalability and high-performance
transaction processing. People need reporting and business intelligence
solutions for large data volumes, so the substantial CACHÉ installed base
represents a significant market for MITS Report.”

According to Owen, the new LifePoint implementation also demonstrates key
strengths of MITS Report: the ease with which it can be private-labeled for
resale and integration into other software solutions, and its high suitability
for use in the SaaS solution delivery model.

“InterSystems is very pleased to be working with MITS and LifePoint to make
MITS` advanced reporting capabilities easily accessible within LifePoint`s SaaS
solutions,” said Matthew Nee, InterSystems Vice President of North American
Sales. “InterSystems has strong working partnerships with both companies and
it`s gratifying to see them leverage CACHÉ to deliver these innovations within
the high-growth SaaS-focused business sector.”

About MITS

MITS is the leading developer of Advanced Reporting and Business Intelligence
for the MultiValue database market. The MITS product line contains both the MITS
Discover OLAP Business Intelligence suite as well as the new report tool, MITS
Report. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company’s
technologies are used by organizations, resellers, and systems integrators
worldwide. MITS products are firmly entrenched in a wide range of business
areas, including manufacturing, distribution, retail sales and services,
education, government, healthcare, and insurance as well as in many other
industries. For more details on MITS software solutions, contact a MITS
representative at info@mits.com or visit the MITS Web site at www.mits.com.

About LifePoint Informatics

LifePoint Informatics provides Web-based, Windows-based, SaaS, and lab-hosted
physician connectivity systems exclusively to the healthcare industry across the
US and Canada. LifePoint helps hospital-based and commercial labs enhance their
brands and reputation while reducing bad debt, delivery costs, medical errors
and compliance risks associated with traditional paper based systems. The
company`s solutions, which may be private-labeled, help labs win and retain
clients, reduce medical errors and improve client service. For more details on
LifePoint Informatics healthcare connectivity and integration solutions, visit
www.lifepoint.com.

About InterSystems

InterSystems Corporation is the worldwide leader in software for connected
healthcare. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 22
countries, InterSystems provides innovative products that enable fast
development, deployment, and integration of enterprise-class applications.
InterSystems CACHÉ is a high performance object database that makes applications
faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble is a rapid integration and
development platform that enriches applications with new functionality, and
makes them connectable. InterSystems HealthShare is a platform that enables the
fastest creation of an Electronic Health Record for regional or national health
information exchange. InterSystems DeepSee is software that makes it possible to
embed real-time business intelligence in transactional applications, enabling
better operational decisions.

InterSystems is the world`s #1 vendor of database and integration technologies
for healthcare applications. InterSystems products are used by thousands of
hospitals and labs, including all 21 hospitals on the Honor Roll of America’s
Best Hospitals as rated by U.S. News and World Report. For more information,
visit InterSystems.com.

Shoor & Company
Rita Shoor, 803-699-0710
rshoor@shoorpr.com
or
InterSystems Corporation
Maureen Flaherty, 617-621-0600
pr@intersystems.com
or
MITS-Management Information Tools
Mickey Lass, 206-789-8313, ext. 2278
mickey@mits.com
or
LifePoint Informatics
Charles Stanback, 317-840-1505
cstanback@lifepoint.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009

Posted by Loraine Lawson Nov 2, 2009 5:04:05 PM

Despite economic concerns, analysts predicted business intelligence would be a top tech priority this year. And apparently, it has been.

But it’s fall, and with fall comes the harvest and even though modern business isn’t what you’d call an agrarian pursuit, inevitably, there comes a time to ask: Are we reaping what we’ve sown?

When it comes to BI investments, it seems harvest isn’t turning out as well as many hoped when the year began.

A recent report from the UK shows that companies there aren’t very happy with the yield of their business intelligence investments. Data technology research company Kognitio found that a majority of the 200 companies it surveyed spent at least half a million pounds ($819,000) on BI implementations. One in four actually spent more than a million pounds (that’s approximately 1.6 million dollars).

Yet – these investments aren’t providing the expected value, according to the survey. It’s one thing to disappoint, but 62 percent fessed up to receiving “a barrage of complaints from their business users.”

Now that’s what my grandparents would have called “a bad crop.”

What’s wrong?

IDC analyst Dan Vessett says part of BI’s problem is a people issue, not a technology issue. “The technology has been around for a long time. It’s the people that often get in the way,” Vessett said during a speech at Computerworld’s Business Intelligence Perspectives. He identified a number of cultural factors that can contribute to BI’s success or failure, including the involvement of non-executive employees and user satisfaction with the dashboard.

After reading the Kognitio UK survey, David Linthicum expressed a similar view:

Linthicum offers four steps IT can take to foster BI success:

1. Understand the business users’ needs – and in detail.
2. Resolve data quality issues.
3. Focus on master data management as an ongoing effort.
4. Delight users by going above and beyond.

Maybe technology isn’t the problem. But his last item makes me wonder if technology could be part of the solution.

After all, Vessett points out that design quality is a key component of BI success:

This made me think that perhaps, just perhaps, a big part of this problem could be solved by making integration and reports easier for business users. In fact, data integration was one of the two reasons companies had to get a grip on BI costs, according to a 2008 Aberdeen Group survey. The second issue:
delivering BI tools to end users.

Both of these are issues that mashups purport to do, which leads me to this question: Could mashups play a role in making BI more successful?

Last week, I wrote about how companies are applying mashups to BI, but what really made me ask the question was IBM’s recent release of IBM Cognos 8 Mashup Service and an updated version of IBM Mashup Center.

The IBM Cognos 8 Mashup Service is an API that “exposes content from IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence as a Web service for use in other operational applications, business processes and mashups,” according to this eChannelLine report.

As for the updated IBM Mashup Center, it sounds like it could be more user-friendly. It includes a new browser tool that lets users create their own widgets. Additionally, it will support integration with RESTful services and include connections with new data sources, eChannelLine reports.
You can read more in an excellent roundup of IBM’s new mashup offering by my colleaque, Ann All.

Of course, IBM isn’t the only company in the business of melding mashups with BI – it’s just most recently in the news. As I shared last week, more companies are applying mashups to BI and, as a result, more mashup success stories are emerging, including how the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency uses JackBe’s mashup tool to map strategic information and how Pfizer Pharmaceuticals uses Composite Software’s Composite Information Server for mashups.

Businesses now demand more information, they want it sooner, and they are delivering more analytics to an ever-widening set of users and applications. The sizes of data warehouses are growing exponentially and more business processes are becoming automated, while more data is collected on more granular levels. This white paper provides an overview of Oracle’s capabilities for data warehousing, and discusses the key features and technologies by which Oracle-based business intelligence and data warehouse systems easily integrate information, perform fast queries, scale to very large data volumes and analyze any data.

Issue Date: CSP Daily News, November 2, 2009

Shorter to lead new charge
CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Trackmax Solutions, a provider of business-intelligence software solutions for foodservice manufacturers, is taking its commitment to manufacturer profit optimization up a notch.

After 14 years of success in the contract and rebate-management space, the company recently introduced Trackmax Insight, the business intelligence software that increases performance and profitability by measuring all critical business metrics and key performance indicators. Insight is a fully integrated software system that can be easily added to Trackmax Trade Spend Profit Optimizer, a powerful, centralized tracking system, designed specifically for manufacturers. Additionally Trackmax Insight may be used as a standalone business-intelligence system integrated with a current ERP and trade-spend system.

To help customers reap the financial benefits of these proven solutions, the company announced the addition of trade management software pro, Tim Shorter. Shorter joins Trackmax as director of foodservice profit optimization and will show food manufacturers how to improve return on investment from their trade promotion spend and optimize profits with Trackmax Insight and Trade Spend Profit Optimizer.

“Tim Shorter knows food manufacturing, and has sold software that does part of the job,” said Trackmax vice president, marketing & business development, Jerry Peacock. “We’re excited to have someone of his experience on board to take our customers all the way to profit optimization.”

Trackmax Trade Spend Profit Optimizer captures all “at invoice and after invoice” manufacturer trade-spend dollars, identifying profitable on-margin products and customers. With highly detailed tracking—of trade spend vs. budget vs. time elapsed, on a by-time, brand, category and total basis—companies can manage trade spend more effectively at the customer, broker, regional sales manager and field sales levels.

Shorter has 15 years industry focus on food manufacturing and deep knowledge of enterprise software solutions.

Trackmax Solutions, Cape Coral, Fla., is a provider of transactional-based tracking, forecasting and analytical software solutions that optimize profit for manufacturers and distributors in the foodservice industry.