CDC Software to Acquire a Supply Chain Event Management and Business Activity Monitoring Provider
CDC Software, a provider of industry-specific enterprise software applications and business services, has signed a binding term sheet to acquire WKD Solutions Ltd., a provider of supply chain event management and business activity monitoring (BAM) solutions that helps enterprises improve their supply chain visibility and support their governance, risk and compliance requirements.
Privately-held WKD Solutions markets its products under the Categoric Software brand. This acquisition is subject to several standard closing conditions including the receipt of approval from the Board of Directors of CDC Software and the satisfactory completion of due diligence by CDC Software. Under an OEM agreement, Categoric’s supply chain event management technology has been used in CDC Software’s Catalyst product line for several years.
In the event the acquisition is completed, Categoric’s solutions, including real time alerting, process automation, corrective action tracking and key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards, are expected to be integrated into the CDC Supply Chain solutions. CDC Software believes these solutions will help enterprises make better informed business decisions, quickly address problem areas and allow them to fully-exploit emerging business opportunities. Categoric solutions specifically provide real time information about the status and results of various operations, help predict issues before they arise, and alert users on exceptions or problems, such as delayed shipments and damaged goods, so corrective action can be taken immediately.
“We are excited to be pursuing this acquisition since we took a break to concentrate on integrating our prior acquisitions and rightsizing our platform,” said Peter Yip, CEO, CDC Software. “We believe now is the time to return to our prior 'focus, acquire and grow strategy' through mergers and acquisitions that help expand the breadth of our enterprise applications and fill the technology opportunities in our product roadmap. This planned acquisition makes good business sense given the significant success we have already enjoyed under our OEM relationship with WKD Solutions and its strategic fit in our product strategy.”
Adobe and Intuit Increase Product Donations to Non-Profits Despite Economic Downturn
In the throes of a global recession, two technology companies are increasing the amount and scope of their software donations to non-profits. Silicon Valley giants Adobe Systems, Inc. and Intuit have stepped up their giving programs through local technology non-profit TechSoup Global (TSG).
TSG’s product donation service makes technology available and affordable to other non-profits and NGO’s around the world with the support of more than 35 donor partners. TSG’s highly trafficked website, www.techsoup.org, collects requests for software, hardware and services from other non-profits, qualifies potential recipients, processes the requests and monitors shipping or downloads for a nominal administrative fee. Its website also provides technology articles and community forums to help non-profits make the most of the products they receive. This saves the donor companies’ time, money and manpower and saves non-profits thousands of dollars in IT costs.
Adobe recently increased its donations to US–based non-profits by 50 percent through TSG’s service. According to Adobe, non-profits use the company’s creative design tools to raise awareness of services and outreach to the people who need the services, as well as to recruit potential donors, volunteers and supporters.
“The non-profit sector is an important sector of our economy providing critical services to people in need,” said Michelle Mann, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Adobe. “We know the non-profit community is dealing with a lot of challenges, especially in today’s economy. Through TechSoup, we can partner with non-profits to address these challenges. Last year, we donated software with a fair market value of $27.9 million.”
Intuit’s decision to increase donations came after seeing a tremendous swell in demand for their software by non-profits. The company will be increasing its product donations this year by 250 percent over 2008. Intuit’s focus is on providing software to organizations aimed at financial literacy training for the disadvantaged as well as small business development and workforce development training.
San Francisco-based TechSoup Global provides technology information to individuals and organizations in more than 190 countries, has provided consulting services in more than 50 countries and, through its global network of capacity building NGOs, manages product donations to more than 80,000 organizations in 22 countries. The product donations program has enabled organizations to save more than $1.2 billion in expenses as of September 2008.
VMLogix Adds Application Lifecycle Management to Citrix Virtualization Solutions
VMLogix, Inc., a provider of virtual machine management solutions designed for software companies and IT organizations, has announced a strategic OEM agreement with Citrix Systems, Inc. that will bring VMLogix application lifecycle management capabilities to its new Citrix Essentials product line for XenServer and Hyper-V, providing users with a broad range of capabilities and the freedom to develop, test and stage software on multiple virtualization platforms.
“VMLogix has been a value-added partner on the XenServer platform for years, and this agreement is a natural extension of our valued and mutually-beneficial relationship,” said Lou Shipley, group vice president and general manager of the XenServer product group at Citrix. “We selected VMLogix because they deliver the best-in-class solutions in their market and their hypervisor-agnostic architecture aligns well to our desire to provide customers with an open, non-proprietary virtualization platform and management portfolio. Integrating VMLogix technology into the new Citrix Essentials product line will provide our customers with a robust, flexible, feature-rich solution offering critical application lifecycle management capabilities, and offer our channel partners a broader solution set.”
With most enterprises and data centers deploying more than one virtualization platform, hypervisor-agnostic application lifecycle management tools will become essential to managing the virtual infrastructure. VMLogix products are hypervisor-agnostic and offer a number of benefits including:
VMLogix LabManager: allows customers to consolidate and automate lab IT infrastructure in order to deliver and maintain software applications more quickly, cost-effectively and reliably. LabManager allows development, test and support teams to build, snapshot, share and deploy production-like environments on-demand across virtualization platforms. Companies can dramatically reduce the manual effort, time and IT resources required to develop and maintain higher quality software applications by using comprehensive automation capabilities, advanced team management and seamless integrations with leading solutions from HP and IBM.
Novell Announces Broad Collaboration with VMware to Build SUSE Linux Enterprise Appliances on VMware ESX
Novell has announced a broad collaboration with VMware to help independent software vendors (ISVs) build fully supported SUSE Linux Enterprise-based virtual appliances. This joint collaboration offers ISVs using VMware Studio a free evaluation redistribution of appliances built on fully supported SUSE Linux Enterprise, a unique offering that helps them streamline and simplify the process of creating virtual appliances. In addition, the companies are jointly working with ISVs to develop VMware Ready virtual appliances powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise. As a result, ISVs can offer their customers a complete, out-of-the-box solution that requires minimal installation and configuration, thus significantly reducing cost and complexity.
With VMware Studio, ISVs can use VMware-based tools to build an appliance optimized for the VMware ESX platform. VMware Studio complements Novell’s own SUSE Studio, which will enable ISVs to build appliances powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise and optimized for multiple platforms, including VMware ESX.
“VMware is helping thousands of enterprises do more with less by reducing complexity, improving the manageability of data centers, and reducing capital and operating costs,” said Parag Patel, vice president of alliances for VMware. “VMware is delighted to work with Novell to help customers transform their IT infrastructures. Both companies have made investments that provide customers with better performance, scalability, timekeeping and security when using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in VMware virtual machines or for developing virtual appliances. As more and more customers seek to achieve full virtualization, including mission-critical applications such as SAP, we expect our collaboration to yield increasing value.”
In addition, Novell, VMware and SAP are collaborating to deliver support for SAP customers migrating from Unix to VMware virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise. Launching March 18 via a joint webinar, this solution meets the demand for a cost effective and agile solution to support core business systems. |
SaaS 2G & SLAM 2009, April 28-29, Boston
Discounted registration ends March 13th for the SaaS 2G & SLAM 2009 conference, being held April 28-29 in Boston. Register by March 13th and save $300. Register two or more people and save even more.
SaaS 2G & SLAM 2009 is focused on developing, managing and expanding software as a service strategies and the successful business development models, sales strategies, growth opportunities and marketing issues facing software companies. This two-day conference is designed for CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, division directors and managers of SaaS and software companies.
The SaaS 2G (second generation) tracks are designed for companies that are looking to improve and expand their SaaS operations, providing in-depth topics and strategies. The SLAM (Sales, Licensing, Alliances & Marketing) track will provide insights and plans for action to increase business and revenue.
The conference will focus on increasing SaaS adoption, capabilities and revenue as well as successful business development models, sales strategies, licensing technologies, partnering, channel development, growth opportunities and marketing issues facing software companies. The sessions are designed to help grow and improve your company's revenues, opportunities, profits and operations.
Click here to view the conference program.
Software Business 2009, September 29-30, San Diego
The Software Business 2009 Conference committee is currently accepting abstracts. Being held September 20-30 in San Diego, Calif., the 2009 event will focus on current strategic business, financial and technology issues and growth opportunities facing executives and managers of small to mid-level software companies.
Some of the new topics for 2009 include:
• Angel Funding
• Mobile Applications
• Platform as a Service
• Virtualization The conference provides an excellent forum to discuss new developments and trends in technology, market conditions and end-user requirements that are driving innovation, capabilities and features, application trends and performance improvements. Attendees will include owners, chief executives, presidents, vice presidents and division directors or department managers of small to mid-sized SaaS and Software companies, as well as ISV executives and managers. There are only a limited number of speaking slots in each track, so it is imperative that you submit an abstract before the deadline on April 6th. For more information on submitting an abstract, including details on presentation topics, please visit the Web site or contact Shannon Given, program manager, at 800 803 9488, ext. 104 or shannong@infowebcom.com.
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