In-Depth
March Industry News
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Allen Systems Group Inc. (ASG) has acquired SISRO of Saint-Cloud Cedex, France and merged SISRO into ASG. SISRO provides conversion software for VSE to MVS conversions, as well as computer automation software for centralized and distributed environments. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition of SISRO is one of several steps in ASG’s strategic acquisition plan to offer a complete enterprise solution. Recently, ASG acquired mainframe management tools divested with CA’s purchase of Platinum Technologies Inc. To comply with U.S. anti-trust regulations, CA was forced to divest specific products that it acquired when CA purchased Platinum Technology International. These products include AutoSys/Zeke for VSE and MVS (including AutoSys/GWS), AutoRerun, AutoMedia and CCC/Life Cycle Manager. ASG estimates these products may bring in nearly $35 million in revenue in 2000.
ASG is headquartered in Naples, Fla., with offices throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as distribution channels in Asia, Europe, Israel, Mexico, North, Central and South America.
For more information, visit www.asg.com.
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E-Mail Growing Pains
Company IT departments are not planning sufficient network bandwidth and storage capacity to handle their growing e-mail traffic, according to a new study from Ferris Research.
In only 12 months, companies can expect their messaging bandwidth requirements to be three to five times that of today. As the number of daily messages grows, and those messages increase in size, organizations may see a growth in storage overhead of 100 percent to 150 percent.
"One of the most surprising findings of the study was that despite the increase in message traffic and the increase in average message size, IT managers only forecast a growth of 50 percent in their message storage requirements over the next 12 months," says David Ferris, President of Ferris Research. "We believe they’re underestimating the impact of growth on their infrastructure." Ferris points out that these growing personal libraries of e-mail messages are gaining the interest of top management, who are concerned about the company’s exposure to costly legal discovery processes.
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QLogic Snares AdaptiveRAID
QLogic Corporation has acquired the AdaptiveRAID technology from Borg Adaptive Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of nStor Corporation, for $7.5 million in cash. As part of the transaction, QLogic will assume a facility lease in Boulder, Colo., where it plans to open a design center.
"By adding the AdaptiveRAID technology and the associated engineers to QLogic’s resource pool, the Company is preparing for the development of new I/O interfaces, such as InfiniBand," reveals H.K. Desai, QLogic’s Chairman, President and CEO. "We expect deployment of InfiniBand-based technologies to occur in the next several years. These new interfaces will require enhanced software and hardware I/O capabilities."
QLogic will account for this transaction in its fourth fiscal quarter, ending in April, and will evaluate the allocation of the purchase price to the assets acquired.
For more information, visit www.qlc.com.
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CrossWorlds Supports XML
CrossWorlds Software Inc. is now providing product support for eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Concurrently, the company announced its membership and support for RosettaNet, an independent consortium dedicated to developing and deploying industry standards for enabling e-business interoperability. With its XML-compliant e-business product, development tools and infrastructure, CrossWorlds will enable companies to conduct e-business transactions in RosettaNet formats.
CrossWorlds is offering an XML Connector, a pre-defined and extensible cross-application interface designed specifically for handling XML-based messages. The Connector allows for the integration of XML data to multiple legacy and packaged front-office, back-office and supply chain applications, including Baan, Clarify, Manugistics, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, Trilogy and Vantive via CrossWorlds’ hub-and-spoke architecture.
CrossWorlds eBusiness provides a platform that supports the technical service components necessary to move information from a company’s application architecture into the RosettaNet Partner Interface Process (PIP) infrastructure. RosettaNet PIPs consist of system-to-system XML-based dialogs that define how business processes are conducted between IT manufacturers, software publishers, distributors, resellers and end users. Using its XML Connector, CrossWorlds will map to specific RosettaNet document type definitions (DTDs) within the PIPs.
For more information, visit their Web sites at www.rosettanet.org, or www.crossworlds.com.
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SoftQuad and Software AG Team
SoftQuad Software Inc. and Software AG have entered a joint initiative to integrate SoftQuad’s XMetaL XML authoring environment and Software AG’s Tamino XML Information Server. The integrated products provide customers with a complete solution for developing, managing and publishing XML content for a wide variety of electronic business applications.
In the first stage of the partnership, Software AG will deliver a Tamino partner solutions CD containing Tamino and XML tools useful for creating XML applications, including Softquad’s XMetaL.
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Bus-Tech Speeds DB2 Access The EnterpriseExpress Adapter for DB2 Access from Bus-Tech is a PCI-compliant ESCON adapter which uses IBM’s Multipath Channel+ (MPC+) protocol to provide the highest possible throughput between Windows NT applications and DB2 Universal Database for OS/390, using IBM’s DB2 Connect.
While mainframe systems manage the data, there is an increasing demand to integrate this data with applications running on Windows NT Servers providing client services to Windows, UNIX, OS/2 and Apple client workstations. EnterpriseExpress Adapter for DB2 Access is a hardware/software solution which provides Windows NT Server applications with access to DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 over a high-performance, point-to-point connection.
Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) Application Requesters, such as IBM’s DB2 Connect, can realize immediate performance improvements when using this solution to provide the server or network clients with access to DB2 data housed on the OS/390. This provides an ideal environment for applications, such as ERP (PeopleSoft), BI (Business Objects, Brio or Cognos), CRM (Siebel), and Web servers (IBM’s WebSphere) that require reliable and fast access to S/390 resident files.
For more information about Bus-Tech, visit www.bustech.com, or call (800) 284-3172.
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Data Quality: Companies’ Top Problem
"The boring detail of poor data quality is likely to get in the way of much that large organizations will want to do over the near term," according to Cutter Technology Council members Tom DeMarco and Ken Orr.
Orr points out that, "Data quality problems (like product quality problems) were largely ignored until recently. The recent emphasis on decision support systems has shown that these systems require better (and different) data than operational systems." Other drivers, Orr adds, include the increased use of database marketing and the Internet.
The Council Opinion’s recommended actions explain how enterprises should:
• Establish a data quality initiative.
• Begin a data quality education program.
• Create a data quality group.
• Identify data quality targets of opportunity.
For information on the Cutter’s Business Technology Trends & Impacts Advisory Service, visit www.cutter.com/consortium.