Autonomy pushes its head into the cloud with bank offering

Autonomy pushes its head into the cloud with bank offering
By Geoff Nairn

Published: May 12 2009 12:22 | Last updated: May 12 2009 12:22

Autonomy, the search specialist based in the UK, has launched a cloud-based compliance solution for banks and others that do business on the web.

The offering takes “snapshots” of the dynamic content served up by websites and so helps firms comply with regulatory requirements.

It stems from Autonomy’s recent acquisition of content management specialist Interwoven and uses Digital Safe, Autonomy’s cloud-based archive service, which is already used by several financial firms.

• Sterling Commerce, specialist in e-commerce software, has jumped into business process integration with the Sterling Business Integration Suite.

This focuses on the business-to-business market and Sterling says it can reduce the cost and complexity of linking IT systems. In one of those unlikely acquisitions made in the dotcom boom, the company was bought by SBC Communications and is now part of AT&T.

• More on the business integration front, this time from Microsoft, which has released BizTalk Server 2009. It sports 25 adapters to connect to the enterprise software suites of rivals such as Oracle and SAP, and supports Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualisation software. It also embraces the latest standards for data from radio frequency ID (RFID) tags.

• SugarCRM, the pioneer of open-source customer relationship management, unveils Sugar Express, a cloud-based version of its software aimed at small businesses. As well as core CRM features, it has plug-ins for Microsoft Office and “cloud connectors” to link data from sites such as Hoover’s business information. Subscriptions start at $499 a year for up to five users.

• EDS, the services arm of Hewlett-Packard, has struck a deal with Microsoft jointly to sell the software giant’s hosted communication offerings. The Microsoft Productivity Online Suite includes online versions of Exchange and SharePoint as well as Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. Unlike rivals such as Google, Microsoft is unwilling to put the full suite of productivity software online so as to protect its packaged software business.

• Sun Microsystems is making some of its open-source software available via the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. The product families are the GlassFish application server and OpenSSO, Sun’s open-source offering for identity management. With many IT budgets frozen, Sun says EC2’s hosted infrastructure allows IT departments to kick-start projects that would otherwise experience hardware requisition delays.

• IBM has teamed up with MarketShare Partners, a specialist in marketing analytics, to target the media industry.

Based on the Cognos business intelligence software, which IBM acquired in 2007, the offering is designed to help media companies monitor key performance indicators and consumer behaviour across different channels, and so maximise advertising revenues.

• It is not just media folk who need help understanding their business. IBM plans to open a network of analytics solution centres around the world, with the first five about to open in Beijing, Tokyo, London, Washington DC and New York. IBM says economic stimulus measures will drive demand in areas as diverse as financial risk management and electronic medical records.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009