Cognos software goes mobile with BlackBerry launch
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Cognos Inc. CSN.TO COGN.O is   preparing to unplug its business analysis software from the   desktop PC and make it mobile, with plans for its first launch   on BlackBerry devices in early 2007.
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Last November, we wondered what IBM expects to come out of its acquisition of Canadian business intelligence software provider Cognos. This morning we found out, as Big Blue enters the "business optimization" business.
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Vodafone have today announced a new form of BlackBerry, the 7100v. It has been designed with the BlackBerries creator, RIM (Research In Motion) and will be the first release of a new form factor.
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Microsoft Corp. introduced software on  Monday to manage advanced mobile phones much like personal  computers, taking aim at a business dominated by Research in  Motion's BlackBerry.
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Last November's buyout by IBM of SOA software provider Cognos is already having a major impact on businesses that use vertical market software. That impact is being felt in the way these businesses warehouse and access their data.
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EGNOS is a satellite navigation network currently being implemented all over Europe.
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Gwava, a developer of security software, plans to introduce on Monday a new product that lets enterprises easily track and find text messages and phone calls that BlackBerry users send and receive.The software should appeal to enterprises that need to comply with regulations that require them to track employee communications. Key to the Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is that it doesn&#39;t require any client software. That means an IT administrator can manage it fully from the back end.The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which companies use to let workers send and receive corporate e-mail on their BlackBerry devices, already logs data about SMS (Short Message Service) text messages and e-mails sent and received. However, users must view the data in a giant Excel spreadsheet where each row is one transaction, said Mitch Lauer, director of business development for Gwava. &quot;It&#39;s extremely difficult to utilize,&quot; he said.&quot;Our software goes into the BES and makes sense of all these logs,&quot; he said. Retain shifts the data to a SQL database. IT administrators can then manipulate the data using a viewer that can be accessed on multiple workstations.On the viewer, an administrator sees a list of BlackBerry users and can view their history of e-mails, text messages and phone calls. The list of e-mail and text messages includes the actual messages as well as who sent and received them. The phone call list includes the phone number of the person who called or was called and the length of the call.Enterprises using BlackBerry phones can already easily audit e-mail messages because they run through a separate e-mail server, such as Microsoft Exchange. But tracking text messages is harder, and Retain lets administrators see e-mail, text messages and voice logs in a single view.The software also tracks Pin messages, which are text messages that BlackBerry users can send to each other in a slightly different way than text messages offered by mobile operators.IT administrators can also view data such as the top ten users of phone calls in chart form. To further analyze or investigate an issue, an administrator can also export the information into Excel.Retain for BlackBerry can also send alerts to administrators when specified keywords appear in user text messages.Gwava envisions many reasons that an enterprise might want to use the software, including to comply with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to investigate human-resources issues such as sexual harassment, or to pursue legal problems such as intellectual property leaks, Lauer said.While similar offerings exist, Retain for BlackBerry has an advantage because it doesn&#39;t require any software for the BlackBerry phones, Lauer said. That makes it easier for IT administrators to manage, and also means that the capability is transparent to end-users. &quot;The biggest value proposition, besides the amount of work for IT to deploy the software, is that the device user can&#39;t alter or delete a phone call or SMS or Pin message at the device level,&quot; he said.Retain for BlackBerry costs 40 percent as much as an enterprise pays for its BES server, so users can take advantage of discounts that they may have realized when buying their BES, such as volume processing.&#160;
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E-mail platform vendor Visto said Monday that it has released software that enables wireless operators to provide real-time e-mail service similar to that provided by Good Technology and Research In Motion&#39;s BlackBerry platform.
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InfoWorld - Research in Motion (RIM)Â is stepping up its game against Microsoft, Nokia, and other rivals with several enhancements to its BlackBerry software that it will showcase at Lotusphere this week.
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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd    has launched Facebook software designed  especially for its smartphones to make it easier for users to  browse the popular social networking Web site.
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The company seems to be focused on developing a solution that would enable users to access complete directions and maps using a portable device.
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Software giant Cognos Inc. continued to strengthen its sales channel in Europe on Tuesday with the acquisition of a small operation located in Madrid, Spain.
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On Tuesday, Cognos unveiled Cognos 8 BI v3, most likely the last upgrade before the acquisition by IBM is final. The Cognos board ratified the acquisition earlier this week.However, Version 3 was under development long before IBM made its offer, according to officials.While the new capabilities in release 8.3 are meant to attract a wider group of knowledge workers, it is also meant to reassure IT executives, wary of having to support an ever increasing number of business managers, that version 8.3's new features will make it is easier to monitor and manage BI performance.The new, richer administrative capabilities will allow IT to take a snapshot of the BI environment in real time and identify everything from a runaway query to what reports are waiting in the queue. The admin tool can reprioritize jobs and rerun reports before a user even realizes there is a glitch in the system."Now a system administrator can be more proactive before someone calls in to the help desk," said Harriet Fryman, executive vice president of product marketing at Cognos.Using an administrative console, IT can monitor metrics and step up the thresholds to say what is acceptable behavior before action is required.IT will also be able to build its own set of reports and analyses to understand how well the system is functioning, including how the servers are performing and whether more need to be brought up, said Fryman."It will help IT make decisions on how they want to run the BI environment," Fryman said.The driver behind the additional administrative capabilities comes out of the realization that IT always worries whether too many people using the system will overwhelm the help desk, or whether users could shut down the system if they have too much functionality available to them, said David O'Connell, a senior analyst with Nucleus Research."IT might be overconcerned. They want to keep down how much they let BI get out there. They worry about a runaway query. Now they have less reason to fear," said O'Connell.Version 8.3 also makes it less costly to administer and manage, all of which will goes toward easing IT's reluctance to take on more users.Cognos 8 BI v3 is available now.
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TechWeb - The Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint provides a performance-management framework for building multi-dimensional, product-level profitability plans and forecasts aligned with risk-management strategies.
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BusinessWeek Online - Time was, if you wanted to use the global positioning system to get from one place to another, you had to spend $500 to $1,000 for a standalone dashboard-mounted unit from vendors such as Garmin (NasdaqGS:GRMN - News), TomTom, or Magellan. But lately, GPS is becoming a must-have feature on cell phones, with device makers including Research In Motion (NasdaqGS:RIMM - News) happy to oblige. RIM&#39;s BlackBerry 8800, for instance, includes a GPS chip that allows navigation from the palm of your hand.
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Cognos on Tuesday unveiled the third release of its Cognos 8 BI tools, which have been updated to provide more targeted performance management information to a broader set of users.Cognos, whose shareholders voted Monday to approve IBM&#39;s proposal to buy the Ottawa-based BI vendor for US$5 billion, said that Cognos 8 v3 includes new features that can help enterprise and mid-sized companies analyze transactional data from ERP systems to help front-line workers and executive make better decisions.The updated software includes a self-service reporting interface to help finance and business analysts better access financial and operational data sources and create financial statement-style reports.For business groups, the updated tool set now allows users to create and manage their own perspectives of performance information by creating new OLAP cubes with consistent information from company-wide enterprise BI tools, Cognos said. Business analysts, for example, can now build smaller, faster data sets of very specific business performance information for more targeted exploration.A new Cognos BI portal-based dashboard lets business users and executives access all of the strategic management and scorecard information of their company in one view, the company added.Finally, the software includes a feature called Briefing Books, which allows IT administrators to more easily respond to requests from senior management for a comprehensive view of performance information. Cognos said Briefing Books provides a way for executives to easily navigate multi-page reports with business data.Other new features for administrators include:-- Support services to help reduce the time required to build data models;-- Tools to create a snapshot view of system health to give administrators a single, consolidated view of the status of an entire system; and-- The ability to view multiple system metrics and set thresholds to monitor them.&quot;The broad system management advances we&#39;ve tested in Cognos&#39; enterprise platform help us speed development and overall productivity to achieve and exceed service commitments,&quot; said Thomas Haag, project manage of data warehousing and business intelligence at Lufthansa, in a statement. &quot;The administrative enhancements let our operations team proactively monitor the overall system health in real time, easing repetitive questions and speeding decisions, on peak usage days in particular.&quot;Cognos 8 v3 is now available.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Samsung Electronics today introduced its latest Windows Mobile smartphone, a slim and trim handheld designed for mobile professionals needing access to next-generation wireless data networks and support for business communications applications.