In-Depth

February Industry News

• 02/01/2000

MAPICS Inc. has signed an agreement to acquire Pivotpoint, a privately held applications provider headquartered in Woburn, Mass. This move expands MAPICS’ offerings across multiple platforms, including Windows NT, UNIX, Linux and AS/400. In return, Pivotpoint gains access to MAPICS’ network of affiliate sales organizations. Terms of the acquisition include the purchase of all Pivotpoint shares and payment of certain Pivotpoint debt, for a total of $48 million in cash. Closing remains subject to certain conditions, including regulatory clearance and approval of the acquisition by Pivotpoint stockholders.

Steve Haley, Pivotpoint’s President and CEO, will assume the new position of CEO of MAPICS. Haley will have worldwide responsibility for product development, marketing, sales and customer service. Plans call for products from both organizations to be sold and implemented by the MAPICS affiliate network. Pivotpoint’s direct sales and service professionals will team with MAPICS’ affiliates and its Major Accounts organization that works with large, multi-site and multinational customers.

Related to this acquisition, MAPICS has received a commitment for a new $55 million credit facility. MAPICS reported revenues of $134.7 million for their fiscal year, ending September 30, 1999, while Pivotpoint anticipates total revenues of more than $25 million for the calendar year of 1999. During the quarter in which the acquisition is recorded, MAPICS expects to record one-time charges of $8 to $13 million before taxes, consisting primarily of non-cash items.

For more information, visit MAPICS at www.mapics.com, or visit Pivotpoint’s Web site at www.pivotpoint.com.

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IntelliCorp, a provider of ERP lifecycle management products and services, has released LiveInterface 2000.1. The new version, which includes links to IBM’s MQSeries, designs, builds, monitors and manages interfaces into R/3.

LiveInterface 2000.1 can access any SAP R/3 data transaction, IDOC and BAPI, so users can integrate data with other applications. Operating within the SAP R/3 environment, LiveInterface uses the SAP’s infrastructure to augment its data validation, processing functionality, security, monitoring, tuning, migration and scalability capabilities. LiveInterface 2000.1 is compatible with SAP R/3 4.6a. When coupled with LiveInterface Adapter for MQSeries, LiveInterface developers can write messages to MQSeries without programming.

LiveInterface’s ALE/IDOC support has also been extended for both inbound and outbound interfaces to automatically map portions of IDOCs, syntax-check IDOC structures, and dynamically control the ALE Partner Profiles which direct the transportation and processing of IDOCs within ALE.

For more information, visit IntelliCorp’s Web site at www.intellicorp.com.

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Farber/LaChance Online is a central source for the IT disciplines of enterprisewide automation and unattended operations, which delivers technical, management and business information to desktop computers and provides a method for providing continuing education to data center staff members.

Farber/LaChance Online captures information through free registration and a requirements survey. "We’re asking people to tell us what issues are most important to them so that we can deliver education and information based on data center priorities," says Arnold Farber, President of Farber/LaChance Inc.

News related to data center automation and unattended operations began to appear on the site in early January, and the first education courses will be delivered this month. "Education will be delivered through the site in two fashions," says Rosemary LaChance, Partner at Farber/LaChance Inc. "One method will be interactive, self-paced courses ... The other method will be interactive, instructor-led courses delivered by Farber/LaChance."

For more information, visit Farber/LaChance Online at www.farberlachance.com, or contact Managing Partner Phil Courtney at (570) 588-4653.

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Information Builders has joined the E-Infostructure Developers Program of EMC Corporation. Information Builders’ EDA middleware, which offers access to more than 80 disparate data sources, will be extended to support SymmAPI-Sockets to provide high-speed data movement through Symmetrix Enterprise Storage Systems and Enterprise Storage Networks. The combination of these technologies will allow EMC customers to rapidly access and/or move large volumes of data via EMC protocols. In addition, Information Builders’ Copy Manager and Data Migrator will enable EMC Symmetrix Storage System users to populate and refresh data warehouses and ERP databases five-to-10 times faster than using traditional network transport and ETL technologies.

For more information, visit their Web site at www.informationbuilders.com.

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Informatica Corp. has acquired Influence Software, a provider of analytic applications for e-business, in a stock transaction valued at roughly $80 million. The transaction will be treated as a pooling of interests.

The combination of the two companies’ products will enable Informatica to deliver an analytic solution to address the multichannel requirements of business-to-business (B2B) e-businesses. According Forrester Research, the overall e-business market is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion in 2003. Informatica’s new analytic applications will help large, multichannel corporations gain insight into the performance of their e-business value chains, including the productivity, efficiency and quality of their buying and selling relationships with customers, suppliers, marketplaces and trading partners.

Informatica’s PowerCenter and PowerMart data-integration software has already been integrated with Influence’s applications as part of an OEM agreement.

For more information, call (650) 687-6200, or visit www.informatica.com.

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Deutsche Telekom AG has chosen DeTeCSM and IBM as the platform supplier for their new data warehouse systems. DeTeCSM will run the data warehouse, which will begin with roughly 25 terabytes of data stock in the initial phase, and increase to a planned 100 terabytes in the final phase. IBM’s RS/6000 SP Servers and the DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Extended Edition (EEE) will be the platform upon which the data warehouse runs. Deutsche Telekom will use IBM hardware and software in their own Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Projects for their subsidiaries throughout the group.

The data warehouse was conceived and developed by T-Nova, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, who will integrate the application and platform as a general contractor. Within the Telekom Group, T-Nova is responsible for the development of information systems, products and services, and corresponding research. T-Nova also offers support for launches and operations. The initial stage of the operation is planned for the third quarter in 2000.

For more information on the deal, visit www.detecsm.de, or www.software.ibm.de.