Revelation Software Plans to Unveil OpenInsight 8.1 at Upcoming Users Conference
Revelation Software plans to introduce a new version of OpenInsight, at its upcoming users conference, Vegas 2008, which will be held at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on May 13 through May 16. OpenInsight, Revelation's flagship product, is a repository-based applications development environment that enables development teams to work collaboratively to design, develop, deploy and scale high-performance business solutions.
“We will give attendees the first look at the next major release of OpenInsight, which is version 8.1, and within 8.1, we have a number of new tools for developers,” Mike Ruane, CEO and president, Revelation Software, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We have really been listening to what they want and have come up with a new editor, new form designer, a brand new interface to using the application - so our whole initial look and feel has been modernized.”
Revelation also plans to highlight products that have been released since the 2007 Revelation users conference, said Ruane. Earlier this year, Revelation announced that it had purchased Freedombase Web Ready, a Web development suite, from Freedomsoft, for inclusion in OpenInsight. Representing a quick and easy way to add Web front ends to existing OpenInsight applications, the product has been rebranded as “WebOI” by Revelation. The company also will be showcasing Arev32, and new networking products such as the Universal Driver 4.0, as well as other product advancements.
“We continue to go with the flow,” said Ruane. “As technology changes and emerges, we are just showing that Revelation software and our products continue to change and emerge as well.”
In addition, the conference will provide an opportunity for users to share problems, get technical tips and techniques and be trained by knowledgeable Revelation experts. The vendor fair and exhibition will spotlight some of the best products, tools and consultants in the Revelation world, according to the company. Partners exhibiting at the conference include DesignBais, SRP Computer Solutions, VSI Technologies, Sprezzatura Group, “and our consulting side of the house which is WinWin Solutions,” said Ruane. A presentation will also be made by Michael Byrne, a senior IT specialist at IBM who works with U2 partners and end-users.
“The conference will not only be a gathering place for learning about new products and programming techniques but it is also geared to be a networking conference where we are going to have fun as well,” observed Robert Catalano, director of sales for Revelation. In that spirit, as part of the dinner event at this year's conference, Revelation has reserved a 10-lane bowling alley located in the hotel.
Despite the state of the economy, a number of sites that use Revelation are looking to increase their staffs. This is the case in New Zealand and Australia, and VARs in the U.S. are also in the same situation, said Ruane. “Some of the people who are looking to hire will be at the conference.” To help connect people to employment opportunities and vice versa, the conference will provide a bulletin board for prospective employers and employees, said Ruane. There is also a section on the Revelation site called Developers' Network, where information on jobs wanted or help wanted can be posted.
The room block with special rates for attendees of the conference closes April 28. Attendees who are staying onsite at the Rio will be invited to an early registration cocktail party on the evening of Tuesday, May 13. For more information about Revelation's Vegas 2008 conference, go here.
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IBM Plans Four U2 University Conferences in 2008
IBM is planning four U2 University conferences for 2008, including two in the U.S., Susie Siegesmund, director, U2 Data Services, IBM Information Management, told 5 Minute Briefing. The conferences are planned for the week of August 4 in Sydney, Australia, at IBM's offices in Darling Harbour; the week of September 15 in San Diego, CA, at the U.S. Grant Hotel; and the week of October 6 in Atlanta, GA, at the Hilton Atlanta Airport Hotel. The date and location for a fourth U2U conference to be held in the U.K. will be announced later.
With updated U2 products being released in general availability over the next few months, Siegesmund observed that the features and functionality of these releases will be a key focus at the upcoming conferences. The U2.NET product as well as UniData 7.2 are coming to the end of their beta cycles, with U2.NET slated for general release on May 27 and UniData 7.2 planned for release on July 31. Additionally, the beta cycle for System Builder XA has concluded and it will be released in general availability on June 30.
In addition to tutorials presented by IBM staff, this year, U2U will include vendor tables and sponsorship opportunities for IBM partners. For more information on the IBM U2 family of products, go here.
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RATEX Business Solutions Adds MITS Report to its Retail Management System
RATEX Business Solutions (RBS), a provider of comprehensive inventory management and point-of-sale business solutions to university bookstores has announced the addition of MITS reporting technology to its retail management system, VisualRATEX.
VisualRATEX is an end-to-end solution that handles all major aspects of retail bookstore operations, including product ordering, product sales, general ledger, and accounts receivable. As part of its initiative to provide superior business consulting, software, hardware, training, and support across all aspects of collegiate retailers’ information systems, RBS is offering MITS Report as an additional technology to meet its customers’ reporting needs. Through MITS Report, RBS clients have additional tools necessary to access the data in their VisualRATEX system and report on that data quickly and easily.
With the VisualRATEX system running on IBM UniVerse, RBS had been relying on the use of basic reporting facilities to complete query statements, according to the companies. “We wanted to provide our clients with a more powerful, state-of-the-art way to generate ad hoc reports,” said Jere Warner, CEO of RBS, at the time of the announcement. “In cooperation with MITS, we were able to integrate a successful method of utilizing the data contained in our system. MITS Report makes it possible to create a variety of customized reports where users, on the fly, can manipulate the format of the report while maintaining the data integrity.”
For more information about MITS, go here.
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Registration Open for Entrinsik Webinar on April 29
Entrinsik will hold its next free Web event on April 29 featuring Kevin Houk, applications systems analyst at Carson-Newman College. The April event is the third in a series of Entrinsik Webinars this year featuring customer-driven product demonstrations of the Web-based reporting tool Informer.
Informer is a fully integrated platform for reporting, and to easily and securely access data in real time directly from UniVerse and UniData databases. Houk will discuss how and why his organization chose Informer as their UniData reporting solution and will provide a demonstration of how they implemented Informer into their Datatel environment, including Web server specs, and working with files.
In a Webinar that aired in January, Regina Lopez from Barry University discussed how her organization uses Informer. Lopez described how Informer’s LIVE Excel feature enabled her to access student and faculty data in real time and, using Informer as the conduit for the data, instantly update information in documents she maintained on her desktop. And in a February Webinar, Christopher Adams, Datatel programmer/project manager in the IT department at Dean College, discussed why his organization chose Informer as their UniData reporting solution. The Webinar included a demonstration of how they are using Informer to create canned financial reports, schedule capacity reports, and secure data access. To view Entrinsik's archived Webinars, go here.
To view Entrinsik's archived Webinars, go here.
To register for Entrinsik's April 29 Webinar event featuring Kevin Houk of Carson-Newman College, go here.
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Case Study - Nebraska Furniture Mart's Database Migration to Reality Goes Smoothly
When planned events go as expected, some might say that there is no news to report. But in the world of database migrations, when there are no problems, that is something to talk about.
Northgate Information Solutions and the Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) have announced the successful migration of NFM's retail applications for its Kansas, MO, and Omaha, NE, locations to Reality, a MultiValue relational data management system provided by Northgate. For more than 60 years, NFM has sold a wide range of goods, including furniture, appliances, electronics, computers and flooring. Northgate assisted NFM in migrating nearly a billion data records together with the suite of sophisticated in-house retail applications used by NFM, the largest home furnishings store in the U.S.
Founded in 1969, Northgate has over 6,000 staff and operates in 46 counties across five continents. Before switching to Northgate's Reality, NFM had been using mvEnterprise.
NFM initially sent out its request for bids on their database upgrade to many vendors in early 2005, John Seaman, Reality sales director, told 5 Minute Briefing. He said that NFM put vendors through a rigorous process which included calling the IT vendors' customers. By the end of the first-round of evaluations, Northgate was on a short list of two. Feedback from existing users helped with the selection process.
According to David Ragan, NFM's senior database administrator, a key point that emerged from conversations with customers was that Reality users couldn't remember the last time their system crashed.
And in fact, the wisdom of the choice of Reality was confirmed after the process of going live was deemed a non-event, according to Seaman. When the new system went live at NFM at the end of October 2007, the transition was so smoothly that users didn’t noticed the cut-over. “It was very interesting. They have over 2,000 users on this system. It is an enormous store,“ Seaman said. Following the switch to the new system, “when they opened the doors, everybody expected problems, “ Seaman added, recalling that NFM and Northgate staff were standing by to field calls and deal with any issues if needed, but the calls never came.
An even tougher
test of Reality's resilience came on Black Friday, when sales volumes
is greater than on any other day of the year, and peak-time crowds
can reach 3,000 in a single store location. On Black Friday at NFM,
said Seaman, “foot traffic goes up 10 times.” But the
retailer got through the challenge and headed full steam into the
holiday season.
According to Northgate, its engineers also speeded up the data change-over process by pioneering a new technique that took completed transactions from the live mvEnterprise system and dropped them into the waiting Reality database, resulting in a near-real-time copy of the live database. The technique cut switch-over down-time to less than an hour.
The takeaway from the implementation, Seaman said, “is that other people who are large users of MultiValue, and who are on an aging version of one kind or another, should consider Northgate and Reality as an option when they are thinking about making a change for the future.” It is not only for small organizations, he said. As the NFM implementation shows, large organizations “should not be concerned that Reality cannot support them,” he said.
For more information about Northgate, go here or email John Seaman at realityusa@northgate-is.com.
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