Informatica will support FCL’s Foundation for Analytics program, a multi-year initiative to ensure the accurate and consistent use of information as it flows into the enterprise and is used across all applications and processes. With big data flowing from multiple sources, FCL needs to transform the data into meaningful information for business analytics.

“Our Foundation for Analytics program will allow FCL to manage data as an asset and grow the value of that asset,” said Faramarz Farahani, vice president of Information Technology for FCL. “Working with Informatica, we will be able to improve decision making and business development initiatives through effective management of trusted, easily accessible information. Our goal is to modernize legacy applications and support new enterprise applications.”

The Informatica platform will replace hand-coded data integration interfaces; transform and migrate supply chain, sales, finance, member, and other business data from a legacy mainframe platform; bi-directionally synchronize data between the new and legacy environments; and integrate complex binary mainframe files in days instead of weeks.

“Business transformation projects typically hinge on being able to more efficiently access, integrate and deliver data throughout the enterprise,” said Todd Goldman, vice president and general manager of Enterprise Data Integration for Informatica. “Informatica empowers enterprises to make optimal use of their data, regardless of source, complexity, volume or velocity.”

Organizations like FCL are able to leverage a single data integration approach, resulting in:

Higher value data – Easy access to complete, timely and relevant data will enable faster and more effective business decisions and improved operational performance.

Lower cost of data – Integration routines that once took months and considerable expense to write manually can now be created in a matter of days or hours.

Rapid time-to-value – As operations expand and evolve, new data sources can be quickly added to its analytic environment and new data types can be easily accommodated to create new business value.

When launched later this year, the Informatica platform will serve as the unifying data integration and movement engine for FCL’s new systems environment, which includes an enterprise data warehouse and analytics data warehouse. These systems will support a variety of front-end applications and business intelligence tools that will be used by hundreds of employees.

Source: Informatica

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Collaborating with IBM, Dublin’s road and traffic department is combining real-time data streaming with traffic information from a variety of sources, including road sensors, videocameras and GPS updates from the city’s 1,000 buses. Traffic controllers use the data to overlay real-time locations of Dublin’s buses on a digital map of the city.

The traffic management system, based on IBM’s InfoSphere Streams technology, allows Dublin’s traffic managers to quickly visualize potential problems in the city’s bus network. For instance, officials can pinpoint an area experiencing delays and identify the source of the problem before it spreads to other routes.

The city’s traffic controllers work with local transit providers to monitor and manage a vast network of bus lanes, roads and tramways.

According to Naveen Lamba of IBM’s Smarter Government team for transportation and public safety, the Dublin system demonstrates the value of actionable, real-time information.

“A big part of our solution is the predictive element. You can influence the outcomes as opposed to reacting to what’s happening out there,” said Lamba in a phone interview with InformationWeek.

“The value of this data is high as soon as it’s produced,” he added. “Five to 15 minutes later, the value goes down drastically, and 10-minute old traffic information is of very little use, other than to go back and analyze what happened.”

Managing public transportation in a densely urban area can be a real headache if not handled in real time. Archiving data from a variety of sources for later analysis, for instance, won’t help alleviate traffic problems that are happening now.

“There are all these field devices — GPS, cameras, all sorts of things that are producing data,” said Lamba. “We’re pulling all of that data together from all these disparate sources and creating a composite view.”

Real-time information can also help Dublin traffic planners answer longer-term questions, such as where to add additional bus lanes, or whether bus start times need to be changed.

By using analytics on data collected on each bus run, Dublin officials, bus operators and IBM researchers have been able to determine that buses departing at later times during rush hour were passing some buses that had departed earlier. They’re now trying to determine why this occurs, and what steps are needed to correct the problem, according to IBM.

By collecting and merging real-time data from a variety of sources, Dublin officials hope to solve this and other traffic-related problems in a timelier manner.

“Until recently we had a fragmented view of the overall health and real-time status of Dublin’s transport network, making it very difficult to identify traffic congestion in its early stages because the causes of a delay had often moved on,” said Brendan O’Brien, head of the DCC’s technical services, roads and traffic department, in a statement.

DCC and IBM Research are involved in other traffic control projects as well, including one that brings meteorological data into the system to enable operators to limit the impact of extreme weather conditions on commuters. “We’ve not gone very deep quite yet, but weather is one of the inputs in identifying how traffic would be impacted,” said Lamba.

The collaboration between IBM and Dublin began in 2010, when the company built its Smarter Cities Technology Centre in the Irish capital. The IBM lab there focuses on big data, analytics and optimization research to develop intelligent urban and environmental systems, the company said.

Source: Information Week

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The investment comes from SAP Ventures and Toba Capital, a new firm founded by former Quest Founder and CEO Vinny Smith. Quest sold to Dell last year for $2.4 billion. Total funding for Alteryx is now $18 million. SAP also participated in the first round.

The Alteryx platform streams data into a data engine. The analyst then packages apps and publishes to the cloud. The analyst works with data behind the firewall, pulling in third-party information such as social streams. MongoDB, the NoSQL database, is used to serve up data to the app gallery.

The apps are pretty easy to use once set up for the user. I tried the service when I looked at the company late last year.

Alteryx plays in a very hot market. President Chief Operating Officer George Mathew said the business intelligence sector is estimated to be $10 to $12 billion by IDC. It’s evident in the news of the past week with Tableau having a very successful IPO.

Alteryx sees the market as defined by the total number of data analysts, which is estimated at 3 to 4 million. In contrast, there are only 200,000 data scientists.

Alteryx compares itself to products such as SAS and Tibco Spotfire, which Mathew says takes more time to integrate than its platform.

There is a reason why the business intelligence market is growing at such a clip. It’s the volume and velocity of data that requires tools that can get to the data fast and be accessible so the analyst can package it and provide to the end-user.

Source: Tech Crunch

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Unified Office, of Portsmouth, N.H., is now marketing an open systems-based managed service platform that delivers a virtual office environment that can span a wide range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Dubbed “Total Connect Now,” the offering is being positioned as a solid story for managed service providers seeking to capitalize on the BYOD trend.

“BYOD has evolved into an important technology issue for managed service providers, as well as for the channel at large,” said Ray Pasquale, CEO and founder of Unified Office. “Employees want to be able to access company resources using their own devices. Meanwhile, management and IT administrators are looking for effective ways of managing those devices and providing the necessary levels of security needed to protect the company. So, we are answering that need with secure, private cloud office virtualization suitable for small to medium businesses.”

Features include voice mail, audio/video conferencing, instant messaging, fax and a virtual receptionist.

“This is a full range of features that extends capabilities to SMB customers that were previously reserved for enterprise customers,” Pasquale said. “We also provide backup and system monitoring to ensure that our customers are always up and running.”

Pasquale added that the channel for this product is in a state of “flux,” which is leading him to focus on a subset of the channel that he did not anticipate would be best positioned to lead the charge from a sales point of view.

“The group that I thought would be my primary route to market was the PBX reseller,” he said. “The rationale was that they would be looking toward technologies that are more advanced. But, I’m starting to see more traction with the IT managed service providers, the data guys, if you will. They seem to be the ones who are now functioning as the trusted advisors to the customer. If you’re a data guy, you probably already know a lot about IP networks. And if that’s the case, getting trained on our solution is a chip shot.”

During a new partner’s first 30 days, the Unified Office team spends four to six hours per week assisting with both sales and technical training. The team is also willing to attend the first several customer meetings, according to Pasquale.

The system supports the WebRTC and HTML5 standards, and it can be used over mobile and broadband connections.

Source: CRN

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The board of Sprint Nextel has the right to terminate its existing merger agreement with SoftBank, subject to certain requirements, to accept a “Superior Offer,” the company said in a statement late Monday. The board has not determined that the Dish offer is in fact superior, and has not changed its recommendation with regard to the SoftBank offer, it added.

SoftBank of Japan announced in October last year that it had reached a deal to acquire a 70 percent stake in Sprint for US$20 billion. Dish, a satellite TV service provider, made a $25.5 billion counter-bid to acquire Sprint last month.

The Japanese company said on Monday that it had given Sprint a waiver of certain provisions under the merger agreement including allowing Sprint to give Dish access to certain non-public information for due diligence purposes, and to negotiate with the rival bidder.

SoftBank continues to believe that its transaction “creates substantially greater value and provides far greater certainty for Sprint shareholders.” The company anticipates closing the deal on July 1 or soon after, subject to meeting closing conditions.

Dish has focused on its higher bid and its advantages as a U.S. company for clinching the Sprint deal. In filings to the Federal Communications Commission, it has argued that its merger proposal was better for U.S. national security than the proposal from SoftBank. It also said that the proposed merger would put more U.S. spectrum than anyone else holds in the hands of a single, foreign-owned company.

SoftBank in contrast claims greater experience in mobile and broadband networks, which the company already runs and operates in Japan.

Sprint received clearance from SoftBank earlier this month to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with Dish to get further information from it regarding its offer. Sprint was, however, barred from disclosing any non-public information to Dish or to negotiate terms for a future deal.

Source: IT World

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“Why is the midmarket so important to Avaya and so important to our business? There’s really a very simple answer to that: It’s an $8 billion-plus market,” said Murray. “And quite frankly, a year ago, we did not serve that market well.”

Murray, speaking to a crowd of nearly 200 solution providers at this week’s Catalyst Telecom conference in Savannah, Ga., attributed Avaya’s lateness to the midmarket largely to its IP Office unified communications suite being — up until last year, at least –too narrowly focused on smaller organizations. Prior to the launch of IP Office 8.1 last July, IP Office had a single-site user capacity of 384 users.

With the launch of IP Office 8.1, however, the software can scale out to support up to 1,000 users, an update meant to broaden its appeal to midsized customers. According to Murray, upping the user capacity for IP Office has paid off, with sales of IP Office 8.1 – particularly for the Server Edition, which doesn’t require any proprietary Avaya hardware to run – taking off.

“Thanks to this room, we have been doubling our Server Edition volume every quarter,” Murray told solution providers.

Karl Soderlund, vice president, Americas Channel Sales at Avaya, echoed Murray’s message in an interview with CRN, admitting that, up until IP Office version 8.1, Avaya didn’t have a solid strategy around the midmarket space. He noted that Avaya’s Aura Communication Manager product for UC was targeted more at the enterprise, while IP Office, particularly in its early days, was really focused on shops with 250 or fewer users, but there was nothing for customers that fell in the middle of the two.

“It wasn’t even that we didn’t have the best rep [in the midmarket]. We had a product line gap,” Soderlund said. “Traditionally, IP Office went to up 250 users and then Communication Manager went down to 1,000 users. So that 250-user to a 1,000-user was a gap for us, and that’s really where companies like ShoreTel thrived.”

Also like Murray, Soderlund referred to IP Office 8.1, and particularly Server Edition, as being one of Avaya’s fastest-growing product lines across the globe. “It’s taken off like a rocket,” Soderlund said.

Ed Dolan, executive vice president of DJJ Technologies, an Islandia, N.Y.-based solution provider, called IP Office 8.1 a “game changer,” and said he’s been winning midsized accounts that wouldn’t have been possible without the increased user capacity.

“We truly have a midmarket offer that is feature rich and cost effective,” Dolan said. “We just won an 800-user IP Office [deal] that would have been impossible in the past.”

Bill Xydias, director of marketing at Integration Partners, a Lexington, Mass.-based solution provider, agreed that the latest version of IP Office allows his company to target a broader base of customers than earlier versions of the software.

Xydias said the earlier, SMB-focused versions of IP Office didn’t fit the go-to-market strategy for Integration Partners, which focuses largely on the enterprise space.

“Now that IP Office has grown with functionality and capacity, and its pricing plays well in the midmarket, it’s very compelling,” Xydias said. “For a customer that may fall into this medium-sized space, it’s a homerun.”

Xydias emphasized that it’s not just the additional user capacity of IP Office 8.1 that makes it a better fit for Integration Partners; it’s the enhanced functionality, as well. Unlike prior versions of the software, IP Office 8.1 offers integration with Avaya’s Scopia video platform, more robust security features, and other enhancements that make it synch well with Integration Partners’ traditional customer base.

“It’s really just in a different league now,” Xydias said.

Source: CRN

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The new Directive aims to establish a common system of taxation on all financial transactions between financial institutions, particularly regarding the buying and selling of products in Member States.

The Law Society has however released its findings to the February 2013 proposal, citing concerns over the increase in tax ultimately being passed on to the end user, incompatibility with enhanced cooperation treaties and the knock-on effects on non-financial institutions.

The Society has also criticised a lack of explanation about how the taxation will be collected and enforced, underlining the failure ‘to provide the necessary clarity on a number of practical, yet important, issues.’

The proposed implementation of the FTT through Enhanced Cooperation Procedures (ECP) – which aim to mobilise EU Member States if some countries abstain from particular EU policies – has been labeled ‘incompatible’ due to ‘the considerable extra-territorial effects of the tax’.

It believes this could ‘make entities in non-participating Member States subject to the FTT to an extent far beyond transactions with a genuine economic link to one of the territories of a participating Member State’.

A report from the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has also warned against the implementation of the tax, stating the ‘negative impact of deterring financial transactions that bring benefits to the wider economy.’

Pension funds are likely to suffer the most if the tax is to go ahead because they would achieve lower returns on the transactions they carry out throughout Europe.

Brtiain has objected to the implementation of the FTT, despite the cooporation of 11 Member States, a move supported by a recent report, which estimates it could lead to a £4 billion rise in the cost of issuing debt.

Source: ICSAGlobal

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Google announced no major upgrades to its Android mobile operating system. But from a security standpoint, that may be a good thing — fragmentation of the open-source mobile platform has led to vulnerabilities that make Android anathema to most enterprises.

According to F-Secure’s mobile threat report for the first quarter, 136 of 149 new families and variants of malware — that’s 91.3% — identified by the security vendor targeted Android. The other 13 targeted the Symbian OS. None targeted iOS, Windows Mobile or BlackBerry. That’s the kind of data that catches an IT professional’s attention.

The reason Android gets targeted by hackers is simple — it’s an easy target. Forty percent of Android devices now being used are at least three years old. In a report last month, mobile analytics vendor Mixpanel said the 10 most-activated Android devices account for only 21% of total activity.

The end result: Millions of older, unsupported Android devices aren’t getting security updates to protect against an endless and growing stream of malicious software. They’re sitting ducks.

That may be behind Google’s decision not to rush out Android 5.0, or Key Lime Pie, which many industry observers expected to be announced during I/O. Indeed, as Ars Technica reports, fragmentation and its negative effects were on the minds of Google developers and audience members at one conference session, prompting Android engineering director Dave Burke to assert, “This is something we think about a lot.”

So do millions of people confused about which Android device they should buy. So do developers trying to figure out which platform they should be writing for. And so do enterprise pros trying to determine exactly what it is they’re letting connect to their network.

Burke told session attendees that his Android team is now layering code in a way that allows silicon vendors to make their hardware more compatible with the software without breaking apart the kernel.

That won’t do much to help with the fragmentation problem in the short-term, nor will it compensate for Android’s fundamental lack of meaningful security features, a flaw vendors such as Samsung and even BlackBerry have tried to compensate for and exploit. Samsung has created security platforms (SAFE and KNOX) for its Android-powered devices, while BlackBerry just last week announced its Enterprise Server would extend security features to Android.

By making itself the only Android manufacturer to create special security features for the enterprise, Samsung has become the only major Android presence in the workplace. But Samsung devices such as the Galaxy III smartphone still trail several models of iPhones and iPads. Now BlackBerry is challenging it for what in essence is a small piece of the enterprise market.

Google seems content to let hardware manufacturers and mobile device management vendors tackle the thorny issue of securing enterprise data on an open-source device. While it’s costing the company in the enterprise market, Android’s success with mobile consumers — 70% market share — can’t be denied. And it’s worth remembering that Google’s game is advertising –

But emerging threats noted by F-Secure might make it even harder for enterprise pros to give Android a chance. Android attacks no longer are confined to malicious apps a user might download from Google Play or a third-party source.

“Q1 saw the first Android threat distribution outside of apps via email spam, the first targeted Android attacks, and the first Android advanced fee fraud scam,” F-Secure said.

For less sophisticated or wary mobile device users, a fake email from the Internal Revenue Service — such as the Android trojan known as Stels — could leave their devices vulnerable to criminals stealing sensitive information, including enterprise data.

As F-Secure security adviser Sean Sullivan puts it, “Until now, I haven’t worried about my mother with her Android because she’s not into apps. Now I have reason to worry because with cases like Stels, Android malware is also being distributed via spam, and my mother checks her email from her phone.”

As do a lot of enterprise employees. But I/O has come and gone, and Google did little to allay the concerns of IT pros responsible for the data on these workers’ devices.

Source: Cite World

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One of the big concerns for IT admins attending BlackBerry’s user conference here this week was they need several tools to manage a mixed mobile device environment. Lots of organizations rely on a combination of BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) to manage older BlackBerry devices and another mobile device management product for iOS devices or bring your own device (BYOD).

Toss in the possibility of adding yet another vendor tool for mobile application management and it’s easy to see why organizations with BES investments would just want to upgrade to BES 10, said Scotty Hartman, head of enterprise app engineering at Towers Watson, a professional services firm headquartered in New York.

BES 10 provides a single admin console to manage a range of devices and mobile applications, plus the ability to deploy Secure Work Space.

“The container approach is really intriguing for us since we’re trying to adapt to more of a [corporate-owned personally enabled] model with our mobile efforts,” said Melanie Seekins, mobile architect for a financial services company headquartered in New York.

The only difference between Secure Work Space and BlackBerry Balance, the native dual container for BlackBerry devices, is Balance doesn’t create a strict separation between work and personal. The unified view in Balance is more akin to a one-way valve, making it possible for users to access the personal container data and apps from within the business container, but not vice versa.

BlackBerry’s new offering is intended for companies that support BYOD or ones in heavily regulated industries that need extra security measures, the company said during a session on multi-device management.

“Dual personas are a good option for us and for our users,” Hartman said. “Especially once [BlackBerry] rolls out the ability to route email traffic for Android and iOS through its [network operations center].”

The container approach only really works, however, if the user experience is good enough for employees to keep using it. It also needs to be available for all devices and carriers, and simple enough for IT to oversee, said Geoff Gordon, head of IT for an investor relations and strategic advisory firm based in New York.

Not only that, but dual containers might be overkill for companies truly concerned with mobile security, said an IT admin for the United States Marines who requested anonymity. Despite personally liking the concept of dual containers, he said the military branch doesn’t allow outside devices to access network resources. Because the mobile devices are managed, locked down and owned by the organization, there isn’t much point to add a personal component to the device, he added.

“We’re unique, obviously, but if users want a personal device, they will probably be carrying a second phone,” he added.

Dual persona options increase with VMware Horizon Mobile

BlackBerry isn’t the only big vendor pushing dual persona containers. Samsung has made dual work spaces the signature feature of its KNOX initiative, AT&T offers Toggle, and companies such as Good Technology Inc. and Enterproid Inc. have offered a dual container approach for several years.

This week, VMware Inc. joined that group with the release of the long-in-development Horizon Mobile for Android on two phones from Verizon — the LG Intuition and the Motorola RAZR M. The mobile virtualization platform first began development in 2008, and some expected it to launch with Horizon Workspace earlier this year.

Horizon Mobile remains dormant on the user’s device unless they download the Switch App from the Google Play store. Users log in with their corporate credentials. Behind the scenes, IT can provision and manage the container with various applications and policies.

Out of the box, IT admins will be able to provide users with a securely managed workspace that includes email, contacts, a browser, calendar and any other Android app can be deployed into the container.

There is limited single-sign on capabilities for the apps that will be improved over time, said Srinivas Krishnamurti, senior director of mobile product management at Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware.

The company is working with Verizon to push a software update to Android devices on the carrier’s network and expects a majority of devices to be Horizon Mobile capable by the year’s end. A similar container for iOS is “a few weeks out,” Krishnamurti said.

“We’re just finalizing the last capabilities and loose ends for when that will be ready,” he added.

Further, they are currently working to bring Horizon Mobile to other carriers, but declined to say which ones.

VMware Horizon Mobile is available immediately with perpetual licensing starting at $125 per user.

Source: Tech Target

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