Industry Implementations

InfoManagement Direct, September 2007

Information Management Editorial Staff

Lane Company Selects Clarity 6 to Enhance Corporate Performance Management

Clarity Systems announced that Lane Company, a full-service multifamily real estate business, has selected Clarity 6 software as an enterprise-wide platform to manage budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting.

After assessing other corporate performance vendors, Lane Company has selected Clarity 6 because of its Excel look and feel interface and its ability to work with its existing Microsoft SQL Server database. Lane Company's selection of Clarity Systems includes the firm in a large group of real estate and property management firms that use Clarity 6 to successfully streamline their CPM processes.

"We are confident in our choice to go with Clarity Systems as they recognized our needs and could demonstrate how their solution would fit our business processes," says Dan Haefner at Lane Company. "Their software, coupled with their expert advice, gave us the complete package we needed to optimize our financial and budgeting processes. With Clarity, we can personalize the application according to our needs."

The unified approach to delivering several applications on a single platform offers Lane Company the opportunity to enhance its CPM initiative. This is important to Lane as it is constantly expanding to different areas of real estate and Clarity 6 was the software solution that could keep up with the growing business.

Cambridge University Geography Department Chooses RELDATA to Extend its Storage Networking Infrastructure

RELDATA announced that the Geography Department at the University of Cambridge has chosen its unified storage solution as the most cost-effective to extend its storage infrastructure and fulfill future storage demands. The Department chose RELDATA's unified storage gateway for its ability to deliver block-level (application) storage, NAS shared files and sophisticated data replication from a single device. In addition, the RELDATA gateway offers open storage connectivity, which allows the Department to reuse existing storage investments as a part of the new unified storage network and frees it from vendor lock-in for future capacity upgrades.

With research demanding the regular use of files over 100MB in size, the Geography Department has extensive storage demands. Initially the Department had considered installing either an enterprise NAS device or a traditional fiber channel SAN, but after exploring the possibilities, Mike Bithell, the department's assistant director of research in computing, decided that iSCSI technology offered a more flexible and cost-effective alternative.

"iSCSI is extremely practical: it enables us to use our current Ethernet network to provision fast, flexible storage across our existing server infrastructure. We do not need to invest heavily in the hardware and new skills needed for FC SAN, and we are not tied to using machines which we can't afford to connect to the FC network," explains Bithell.

The Department has started by using the RELDATA device to consolidate new and existing storage into a single pool from which it delivers fast iSCSI storage to an existing Linux file server. For the future, the gateway offers the option to remove load from the file server by provisioning file storage directly using its built-in NAS (NFS and CIFS) functionality. It also provides both block- and file-level snapshots and block-level replication services to give the department a broad range of options to backup and protect data.

Astoria Software and Collabis Partner

Astoria Software and Collabis Corporation announced a partnership that further expands the Astoria On-Demand universe to include a professional services organization. Now, customers can turn to Collabis for help accelerating their Astoria On-Demand implementations and streamlining their product documentation workloads.

Astoria On-Demand customers who engage Collabis will find the company has a wealth of expertise in Astoria's on-demand solution for structured content management as well as expertise with a variety of content authoring tools, including Arbortext, WordML and XMetaL. Collabis is also highly skilled in technical writing and authoring to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture(DITA) standard. Manufacturers, in turn, have an Astoria-endorsed partner they can rely on to augment their internal documentation teams when necessary, thereby reducing overall documentation costs.

Intellitactics Ahead of the Game in IPv6

Intellitactics announced it has successfully deployed Intellitactics Security Manager in a landmark 'proof-of-concept' project conducted by a prominent systems integrator for a major civilian agency to collect, consolidate, analyze and report on Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) data from endpoint security devices, the volume of which is anticipated to be in the billions.

Intellitactics Security Manager was selected following a rigorous competitive evaluation. Selection was based on extensive support of IPv6 protocol in both the current and planned product releases; flexible and scaleable product architecture; multidimensional Security Data Warehouse enabling high-performance data storage and access; and comprehensive security event management and reporting functionality. Also based on the product's performance during a proof of concept, Intellitactics Security Manager will be featured in the integrator's Center of Excellence lab, which will showcase IPv6-compatible solutions to government agencies.

IPv6 is a massive upgrade to the existing IPv4 standard, which has been in use since 1973. In addition to providing significant improvements in Internet security, network security, and interoperability, IPv6 increases the number of IP addresses available for networked, mobile phone and mobile electronic devices. Further, the enhanced addressing scheme and security improvements serve as underlying components of networks that can meet the mobility, collaboration and performance requirements of existing and future government applications. With significant benefits to be gained, the Department of Defense and the OMB (Office of Management and Budget of the White House) has mandated the adoption of IPv6 for the entire federal government by June, 2008.

McPherson Oil Products Selects RedPrairie to Support Rapid Growth

RedPrairie Corporation announced that McPherson Oil Products has selected RedPrairie Warehouse Management to support its rapid expansion and increase customer satisfaction. McPherson, a Southeast distributor of industrial lubricants and a full service petroleum products and services company, plans to implement the RedPrairie solutions at their two Regional Distribution Centers. McPherson will implement RedPrairie at itsWesternRegionalDistributionCenter located in Trussville, AL and at itsEasternRegionalDistributionCenter located inAtlanta, GA beginning in the fall of 2007. In phase two of the implementation, McPherson will implement the RedPrairie solution at local warehouse locations throughout the Southeast.

McPherson has experienced rapid growth in recent years and in response to this growth is making significant technology investments to enhance infrastructure and to support aggressive growth targets for the future. McPherson's inventory management and distribution operations are highly complex due to the fact that they are a multi-branded distributor of petroleum products. The RedPrairie warehouse and enterprise solutions are expected to improve operational efficiencies and productivity, increase inventory turns and increase customer satisfaction.

McPherson chose RedPrairie over the competition because RedPrairie's best of breed solution offered the best fit in functional capabilities that were critical to the McPherson operation, including ease of integration with their existing technology infrastructure. In addition, RedPrairie's 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year customer support model was an important consideration for the McPherson team.

According to President Ken McPherson, "Consolidation in the industry is driving significant growth opportunities for McPherson. The RedPrairie solutions will be an essential component of our strategy to respond to growth while continuing to deliver industry leading customer satisfaction programs."

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