Manufacturing Business Technology

• Solutions buyers kick the tires of the software-as-a-service model
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is like that stylish car you notice once, and then start seeing it everywhere. With SaaS, the appeal is not having to buy the “car,” but paying only to drive it. SaaS also has unlimited passenger capacity. The fundamental concept isn't new. SaaS is based on the original time-share model created when computers first went commercial in the 1950s.
  
• B2B integration platform makes linking partners' systems as easy as connecting the dots
  
  By Malcolm Wheatley, senior contributing editor, June 1, 2007
  When UTi Worldwide, Rancho Dominguez, Calif., signs a new customer, the $3 billion-a-year logistics service provider's first goal is integrating that customer's systems with its own. That step is essential to UTi's ability to move the customer's inventory—and to keeping the customer apprised of all inventory movements.
  
• Specialists share transformation models with tech providers, industry peers
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Manufacturers were well represented among the 400 attendees at The Hackett Group's 17th Annual Best Practices Conference. Hackett, an Atlanta-based strategic advisory firm, is known for its best practice research and benchmarking in procurement, IT, finance, and HR. Senior executives from Textron, Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, Unilever, and others shared transformation stories and analyzed th...
  
• Autodesk partnership with GlobalSpec extends component search to design teams
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  The wall between design and sourcing just got less formidable thanks to a partnership between Autodesk and GlobalSpec that will permit extended design team members—including purchasing agents—to launch component part searches from Autodesk Design Review, a tool within the Autodesk Inventor 3D design application.
  
• “New-gen” remote management takes customer experience to new level
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  The idea is simple: drive asset utilization via the Internet. The goal is threefold, and more complex: What was remote diagnostics is emerging as the tremendous growth-potential market known as remote product services (RPS). Among the vendors supplying this technology is Axeda, founded in 1999 on the premise that there was a market to be tapped.
  
• Acceleration appliance vendors targeting specific verticals, functional areas
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  At times it seems as if IT and business strategies are moving in opposite directions. For example, as manufacturers adopt business models that call for operating multiple plants and collaborating with numerous partners around the globe, they also are exhibiting a greater appetite for standard business applications that can be managed from central data centers.
  
• Object-oriented databases the next wave in complex data management
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  “Manufacturers want to connect their factory-floor operations and their production systems up to the top of the enterprise, into their upper business systems,” says Dick Slansky, senior analyst, product life-cycle management (PLM) & discrete industries for Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group .
  
• Traditional technology vendors want to pushGoogle out of the workplace
  
  By Hope Neal, contributing editor, June 1, 2007
  Google is, by far, the world's most widely used search engine. But that doesn't automatically make it a good business tool. “Google works well on the World Wide Web because it bases a document's relevancy on how often it's referenced by other people,” says Jim Murphy, a director with Boston-based AMR Research.
  
• SaaS, Google, and Salesforce.com
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Reports out of ComputerWire in late May suggest Google and Salesforce.com may be ready to form an anti-Microsoft alliance that could result in an on-demand service that integrates Google's online services—e.g., email and instant messaging—with that of Salesforce.com. For Google, such a partnership could be part of a long-range plan to counter Microsoft's emerging software-as-a-serv...
  
• Worksoft expands functional testing tools to SAP systems users
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 1, 2007
  Worksoft, a tools provider focused on functional testing, is extending its coverage from internally developed Java and Microsoft .NET applications to enterprise system packages. Its initial target is the SAP R/3 enterprise system. Worksoft aims its test tools at business users rather than software developers.
  
• For Windows/Linux interoperability, Novell, Microsoft operating systems now share the same space
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Microsoft and Novell—long considered the bitterest of rivals—are cooperating on an initiative that will make it easy for enterprises to run both Windows and the SUSE Linux operating systems on a single server. This effort is part of a broad-ranging agreement to promote Windows and Linux interoperability that the two vendors reached last November.
  
• Briefly...
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Dell will help migrate users to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server via Interoperability Workshops, Migration Proof of Concepts, and Migration Services. Says Rick Becker, a Dell company VP, "Dell is the first major systems provider to align with Microsoft and Novell in this collaboration, and we intend to lead in this space.
  
• Emerson lauded for wireless innovation
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Emerson Process Management earned its fourth consecutive Company of the Year award for industrial automation and process control from New York-based consultancy Frost & Sullivan. “Emerson has always been on the forefront of technological innovation—most recently illustrated by the company's introduction of its revolutionary Smart Wireless automation solutions,” says Frost ...
  
• Oracle sets its sights on “enterprise PLM”
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Oracle will acquire product life-cycle management (PLM) vendor Agile Software for approximately $495 million, signaling Oracle's newest front in the battle against rival SAP. PLM is an enterprisewide discipline that spans product design systems, and interacts with a wide range of enterprise applications.
  
• Verano makes it clear what it does
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Verano has renamed itself as Industrial Defender, concurrent with the launch of a new integrated cyber security solution called Cyber Risk Protection Lifecycle. The solution offers a three-component “Defense in Depth” approach to securing real-time process control/SCADA environments. To assess risk, Industrial Defender offers comprehensive cyber security consulting services, coupled...
  
• Savi pushes the envelope for worldwide wireless
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Savi Networks is on track in its quest to wire the shipping ports of the world, recently adding the Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest and a gateway to more than 1,000 ports worldwide; three container terminals at the Port of Charleston, South Carolina, the fourth busiest U.S. eastern port; and Modern Terminals Limited facilities in Hong Kong.
  
• Service skills seen as the next competitive differentiator for best-in-class companies
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  While most companies believe they are customer-friendly, many do not consider their service skills to be a competitive differentiator. With the right service-management applications in place, improved customer service can translate into increased profits. “In some sectors—such as automotive—it is common for some equipment to be in service for 20 to 30 years.
  
• Pelion Systems + JCIT = DemandPoint, and the road to lean efficiencies
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  In light of current studies coming out of Boston-based AMR Research, news of the merger of Pelion Systems with JCIT “makes a lot of sense,” says Colin Masson, an AMR director for manufacturing. “It's clear there is a major disconnect between lean manufacturing efficiency and the demand side of the equation,” Masson says.
  
• U.S. manufacturers failing to maximize returns from investments in emerging markets
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  The value of emerging economies isn't found simply in cheap labor, but in emerging product markets. But to be successful, U.S. manufacturers have to do more than simply export the prevailing business models used in developed markets. So says a new study by New York-based Deloitte Global Manufacturing Industry Group, whereby only half of companies that are tapping emerging markets view themselve...
  
• Rockwell/Cisco reference architectures result in best practices for EtherNet/IP
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2007
  Automation vendor Rockwell Automation and network hardware supplier Cisco will create reference architectures using standard networking technologies, and hold educational forums to advance process optimization based on greater information sharing and access at all levels of the organization. According to Beth Parkinson, Rockwell's director of strategic alliances, “We've jointly engaged...