Renee Boucher Ferguson

The concept of automating business-to-business invoicing and payments over the Internet may be easy to grasp, but uptake of software to do it has been slow. Developers ranging from Avolent Inc. and Xign Corp. to SAP AG and PeopleSoft Inc. are rolling out software to close the electronic invoicing-to-payment loop. The past several years have […]

Ironside Technologies Inc. on Tuesday will announce the release of a new online electronic catalog designed to help manufacturers and distributors augment product information within their enterprise resource planning systems. Ironsides Quick Search Catalog helps manufacturers and distributors give their customers access to enterprise data. Part of Ironsides Order Management Solutions, the Quick Search Catalog […]

In what looks to be a toe-to-toe face-off with Microsoft Corp., IBM will announce Thursday the first of several software products aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., offers its SharePoint Portal Server to the SMB market. And through its Business Solutions division, Microsoft also offers business applications to SMBs. IBM is […]

At the SAP Tech Ed conference in Bremen, Germany, Tuesday, BMC Software Inc. announced new Control-M batch scheduling functionalities for SAP AGs software. The Control-M for SAP software provides automation and integration of business processes–both within and outside the SAP environment–and handles SAP jobs and data archiving processes like regular batch jobs. Control-M also integrates […]

BMC Software Inc. is adding help desk capabilities to its line of systems management software through its purchase of the Remedy assets of Peregrine Systems Inc. BMC last week said it will pay $350 million in cash, plus assume the liabilities of the Remedy unit. As part of the agreement, Houston-based BMC agreed to provide […]

Following the lead of smaller developers such as Ariba Inc. and CascadeWorks Inc., enterprise software developers Oracle Corp. and PeopleSoft Inc. are each readying products to help companies define, track and analyze procurement and sourcing costs. Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., is focusing on spend management from a business process perspective with a tool called […]

While browsing through a bookstore in Santa Clara, Calif., Daniel Austin spotted a book on IT Model Driven Architecture written by Richard Hubert, founder and president of InterActive Objects Software GmbH. The decision by Austin, senior technical architect at W.W. Grainger Inc., to buy “Convergent Architecture, Building Model-Driven J2EE Systems with UML” set him on […]

EDS PLM [product lifecycle management] Solutions on Wednesday will announce the release of its Teamcenter High Tech Electronics [THTE] software, designed to help manufacturers stay ahead of competition as they develop new products more rapidly. THTE provides engineers with industry-specific, configurable solutions in the form of templates for streamlined, repeatable business processes. Overall, the templates […]

Enterprise resource planning software vendor J.D. Edwards & Co. on Wednesday announced the release of a new iteration of its eXtended Process Integration (XPI) middleware. Essentially integration software, XPI helps companies collaborate with suppliers, partners and customers. The latest release of XPI, which wasnt given a version number, includes two major enhancements for sharing business […]

Workflow automation software maker Ultimus on Monday will introduce the latest iteration of its Ultimus Workflow Suite. The biggest add to the Workflow Suite, version 5.0, is a new Process Designer tool that gives users—business process owners, analysts and IT professionals—the ability to design, model, optimize, document and deploy business processes. By having the ability […]