Accenture Ranked as Top IT Services Vendor in Life Science Industry By Independent Research Firm

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Accenture Ranked as Top IT Services Vendor in Life Science Industry By Independent Research Firm; Second Year in a Row

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March 29, 2012

Accenture Ranked as Top IT Services Vendor in Life Science Industry

By Independent Research Firm; Second Year in a Row

NEW YORK; Mar. 29, 2012 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been ranked as the number one life science information technology (IT) services vendor in a survey conducted by IDC Health Insights. This is the second year in a row that Accenture has received this ranking.

The ranking was contained in a February 2012 report titled, “Perspective: IDC Health Insights' Top Preferred Life Science Technology Vendors for 2012” which documents results from IDC Health Insights’ Leading Indicators in Life Science IT Spending Survey.”¹ The IDC Health Insights survey indicates that respondents expect to contract Accenture during the next 12 months for IT services. Click here for a link to the report.

Anne O’Riordan, global managing director of Accenture’s Life Sciences practice, said, “For the second consecutive year, Accenture is honored to receive this recognition by IDC Health Insights. This designation further highlights Accenture’s ability to provide the life sciences industry with the best IT services solutions to gain better business insight, deliver better business outcomes and create greater value.”

The IDC Health Insights report is a biannual IT budget-tracking survey of several hundred life science companies. The survey, which polled 115 industry leaders on planned IT budgetary spend, technology priorities and vendor preference, asked participants to identify which vendors servicing the life science market they expect to spend money with on software, hardware, and IT services over the next 12 months.

[1] IDC Health Insights: “Perspective: IDC Health Insights' Top Preferred Life Science Technology Vendors for 2012,” Document # HI233255, February 2012, Eric Newmark.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 246,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.  Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.  The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011.  Its home page is accenture.com.

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Compuware Publishes New Whitepaper: "How End-User Experience Affects Your Bottom Line"

Paper Explains the Business Impact of Application Performance and Why End-User Experience is the Ultimate Measure of an Application's Success

DETROIT, March 22, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), the technology performance company, today announced that it has published a new whitepaper titled: "How End-User Experience Affects Your Bottom Line." The paper explores the business impact of application performance and explains why end-user experience is the ultimate measure of an application's success that can affect an organization's bottom line.

Applications don't always perform optimally — especially now that they're increasingly delivered via the cloud and accessed from a variety of devices and platforms. Worse yet, the majority of problems go undetected until end users complain. The result is a major hit to productivity, customer loyalty and the bottom line.

This white paper outlines:

·         why applications often perform poorly and need to operate at peak performance;

·         how successful companies manage their applications; and

·         how organizations can ensure optimal application performance by using an application performance managementsolution that monitors the entire application delivery chain.

·          

To download the whitepaper, click here.

The Compuware Gomez^® platform is the industry's leading solution for optimizing the performance of Web, non-Web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications. Driven by end-user experience, Gomez provides a unified view across the entire application delivery chain, from a user's browser or mobile device, across the Internet or a corporate WAN, in the cloud, to inside the data center, eliminating blind spots from the First Mile to the Last Mile.

Compuware is recognized as a leader in the "Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring" report. To view and download a complimentary copy of the report, click here.

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Dell Launches ITNinja to Provide Best Online Community Experience for IT Administrators

Dell Launches ITNinja to Provide Best Online Community Experience for IT Administrators

Date : 3/21/2012

Round Rock, Texas

·         As part of Dell’s new Software Group, ITNinja will serve as a product-agnostic go-to resource for front line IT administrators with over 200,000 software application topics

·         ITNinja will build on the success of AppDeploy, the leading community for application and OS deployment.

Dell Software Group in conjunction with Dell KACE announced today that it will upgrade and expand its popular online IT community site, AppDeploy.com, under the name, ITNinja. The new community reaffirms Dell’s commitment to providing forums for the community to engage and share ideas; and validates the results of a new Dell KACE sponsored Dimensional Research survey, “The Value of IT Communities,” which revealed a vast majority of IT professionals are turning to online communities to help do their jobs more efficiently.

The announcement marks a significant milestone for the Dell KACE AppDeploy.com community, one of the leading IT community resources for software deployment best practices, with more than 450,000 monthly visitors, and a community knowledge base that is continually updated by IT professionals. The community will continue to be one of the only product-agnostic communities where anyone can join and share information and answers to the thousands of common problems that make critical IT decisions and support tough.

ITNinja is a deep, content rich community with a strong focus on software topics such as application deployment techniques, configuration settings, and management solutions. Users will be able to leverage the community to find answers and best practices on a range of complex issues.

“ITNinja builds on Dell’s established social media success to deliver a valuable community hub in which IT professionals can not only share tips and information but also form new connections with their industry colleagues,” said John Swainson, president, Software Group at Dell. “With one of the largest knowledgebases of software application topics on the Web, ITNinja will help the IT community find the answers to their software questions quickly so they can focus on innovation and do more.” 

The launch of ITNinja comes at a time when online communities, particularly within IT enterprise, have never been stronger. An online survey of IT professionals sponsored by Dell KACE in February 2012 revealed 80 percent of IT professionals engage in online communities with 70 percent of them visiting several times a week.^[1] And 95 percent of front-line professionals say they save time and do their job more efficiently by using these same online IT communities.^[2] As online IT communities have extended their connections through social media networks, they have become an easy, cost-effective way for IT professionals to engage with companies, access support and knowledge and participate in relevant discussions with peers. 

Content from ITNinja can also be leveraged by Dell KACE customers directly through the Dell KACE Appliance Management Console, providing expertise contextually saving IT teams time on common computer administration tasks.

"ITNinja is like having a subject matter expert available 24/7. I use it every day to figure out how to solve common systems management challenges and get even more value out of our Dell KACE Appliance,” said Matt May, service desk analyst with Black Diamond Equipment. “It’s extremely rewarding to be part of such a passionate community exchanging ideas, tips and information to help us all do our jobs better, it’s truly a value add to being a Dell KACE customer.”

The new ITNinja upgrade will expand the features and scope of the original AppDeploy community making it easier for users to share and find information, including:

·         An ever-growing database of hundreds of thousands of software applications serving as topics of discussion for users wanting to contribute questions, deployment tips, shared links and blog posts.

·         A new activity feed highlighting users’ contributions and providing a customized view of all software, topics, contributors and blogs that they follow to keep them up-to-date on the content they care about most.

·         An engaging user reputation management system with gamification elements that reward users with points and prizes for their contributions (past and present). Points determine one’s “belt” level which is attached to their identity on the site.

·         A new Q&A system that includes rich features for crowdsourcing solutions to technical issues faced by IT professionals.

·         Integration with Dell KACE Appliances - Any systems administrator, regardless of what tool they may use, can access this information through ITNinja.com, but KACE customers can access the same information directly through the interface of their KACE Systems Management Appliance Console offering users a quick reference for common system administration tasks.

To learn more about ITNinja and the impact of online IT communities, join ITNinja’s founder Bob Kelly for a free, introductory webinar, “Introducing ITNinja.com: Community-Enabled Solutions for IT Pros” scheduled for March 22 at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT. Register here.

Adobe Drives Personalized Web, Mobile and Social Engagement with Web Experience Management Solution

March 21, 2012 12:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time 

Adobe Drives Personalized Web, Mobile and Social Engagement with Web Experience Management Solution

Adobe CQ 5.5 Now Available; Integrated with Digital Marketing Suite to Build Brand and Drive Demand

Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) today announced the availability of a major update to its Web Experience Management(WEM) solution, part of the Adobe® Digital Marketing Suite. At a time when marketing budgets are under intense scrutiny and a one-size-fits-all approach to reaching customers is no longer acceptable, the WEM solution helps organizations drive engagement by delivering more consistent, contextually relevant experiences on the Web, mobile devices and social media.

Through a unique combination of the latest Adobe Digital Marketing Suite products and services, Adobe WEM empowers marketers, in partnership with IT, to quickly personalize brand and e-commerce experiences, optimize landing pages and micro sites, and engage in social communities and conversations. The latest solution consists of:

• Easy-to-use, unified Web Content Management (WCM) that helps marketers leverage customer context to personalize online experiences and better reach digitally immersed customers
• Innovative HTML5 Mobile Application publishing support for the rapid, simultaneous launch of content across websites, mobile sites and smartphone and tablet apps
• Enterprise-class Digital Asset Management (DAM) intuitively integrated with Adobe creative tools and the forthcoming Adobe Creative Cloud™ to streamline creation and re-use of rich media

At the heart of the WEM solution is Adobe CQ, a recognized industry leader in WCM software built on open standards. The new Adobe CQ 5.5, available today, significantly builds on this leadership position through several innovations, as well as integration with other products in the Digital Marketing Suite, including Insight for analyzing large volumes of data in real-time; Scene7® for converting rich media to dynamic content optimized across channels; Search&Promote for targeted site search and surfacing relevant product and content matches; SiteCatalyst® for actionable online analytics; and Test&Target™ for website optimization and personalization. In addition to new e-commerce capabilities delivered via an open framework and partnership with market-leader, hybris (see separate release), Adobe CQ 5.5 advances include:

• Client Context—Deliver contextualized content and consistent brand experiences as customers move from channel-to-channel and device-to-device. Harnessing rich profile, segmentation and analytics data from the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, Client Context empowers digital marketers to create, preview and optimize the personalized experience of target customer audiences.
• Mobile App Development—Empower marketing to rapidly create HTML5-based mobile apps through new integration with PhoneGap, Adobe’s standards-based framework for building cross-platform apps. Intuitive, drag-and-drop functionality takes full advantage of device features, such as the accelerometer, camera and GPS.
• DAM—Enable collaboration on rich media assets, including video, beyond the borders of the organization. Marketers can easily find, share, add comments to, and revise and publish assets regardless of format, speeding time to market on digital campaigns. Now includes integration with Adobe Creative Suite® tools, as well as Adobe Creative Cloud, which is expected in the first half of 2012.
• Cloud Manager (beta)—Ensure optimal performance during peak customer demand by eliminating bottlenecks and accelerating time-to-market on new campaigns. New cloud service enables marketers to take control of fluctuating peak customer traffic while minimizing turnaround time of key online initiatives.

Quotes

Kevin Cochrane, vice president of Product Strategy and Solution Marketing, Adobe

• “Web Content Management as we’ve known it just doesn’t cut it any longer. Not for CMOs tasked with enhancing corporate image and contributing to the bottom line in an age when the expectations of the CEO and customer have never been greater. And certainly not for consumers who expect highly pertinent information at the right time, whether on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Our Web Experience Management solution and Adobe CQ 5.5 were built with this in mind, and provide today’s digital marketer the power to personalize each experience, across channels, to build brand, drive demand, and reach new audiences.”

Dan Check, director of Technology, Slate

• “On any given day, Slate.com may be required to serve over a million page views per hour. Simply put, we need to trust that our Web Content Management system is rock solid, and Adobe CQ has been just that. Advances in the latest version and the WEM solution will help businesses such as ours go even further in terms of analyzing and optimizing content for readers. And with mobile delivery a must-have, the ability to quickly publish HTML5 apps to all platforms will be huge.”

Matt Leopold, director of Customer Experience, TE Connectivity

• “As a multi-billion dollar company with many audiences and hundreds of websites worldwide, it’s critically important for us to deliver a unified experience to our customers, regardless of where and how we engage. We also need to ensure the content we provide is relevant to who they are and what they need to accomplish with us. It’s no small feat, but it’s also a requirement. Adobe WEM and CQ 5.5 are truly enterprise class and rise to this challenge.”

Andy Jacobs, executive vice president and chief technology officer, MRM

• “MRM’s strong belief is that the day a site launches is ‘Day 1.’ The real benefits of an enterprise content management system deployment are realized after the launch via an intelligent understanding of the visitors’ site behaviors and the continual optimization of the site’s content and user experience. The WEM solution and integrations with other Adobe technologies give us and our clients the power to focus our marketing optimization efforts truly on the customer, continually delivering the best possible customer experience within the most aggressive timelines and budget.”

Piyush Patel, director of Technology, SapientNitro

• “With the release of CQ 5.5 and the latest WEM solution, Adobe has created a more integrated digital marketing offering, allowing our Idea Engineers to design, create, deliver, and measure these experiences in real-time, and giving our clients the competitive edge necessary in a rapidly changing economy. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Adobe on this game-changing advancement and looking forward to working together to deliver innovative and measurable results for our joint clients.”

Helpful Links

• Twitter
• Blog
• Introducing Adobe CQ 5.5 Webinar
• Adobe CQ Developer Center
• Adobe CQ Forum

Availability

Adobe WEM and Adobe CQ 5.5 are immediately available on a worldwide basis.

About the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite

The Adobe® Digital Marketing Suite offers an integrated and open platform for online business optimization, a strategy for using customer insight to drive innovation throughout the business and enhance marketing efficiency. The Suite consists of integrated applications to collect and unleash the power of customer insight to optimize customer acquisition, conversion and retention efforts as well as the creation and distribution of content. For example, using the Suite, marketers can identify the most effective marketing strategies and ad placements as well as create relevant, personalized and consistent customer experiences across digital marketing channels, such as onsite, display, e-mail, social, video and mobile. The Suite enables marketers to make quick adjustments, automate certain customer interactions and better maximize marketing ROI, which, ultimately, can positively impact the bottom line.

Adobe Partners with hybris on Commerce for Web Experience Management

Adobe Partners with hybris on Commerce for Web Experience Management

For immediate release

Adobe Solution to Enable Optimized Shopping Experiences Across Multiple Online Channels

SALT LAKE CITY, Adobe Digital Marketing Summit — March 21, 2012 — Adobe Systems Incorporated(Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced it is partnering withhybris, a leading provider of multichannel commerce and communication software, to provide digital marketers comprehensive commerce capabilities as part of Adobe’s solution for powering online customer experiences. The integration of hybris technology with Adobe® Web Experience Management (WEM), part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, is designed to deliver marketers and retailers an enterprise-class offering to manage and optimize the online buying process, from brand engagement to immersive shopping experiences to checkout.

“The ability to rapidly create great online experiences and deliver them across multiple channels is a key competitive advantage for businesses today,” said Kevin Cochrane, vice president of Product Strategy and Solution Marketing, Adobe. “And the pressure to differentiate from competition through the buying experience is enormous. From navigating on a desktop, smartphone or tablet to sharing product experiences on social media, e-commerce today is increasingly interactive and content-rich. Adobe WEM will help marketers and retailers rise to the increasing expectations of consumers.”

As part of the integrated offering, Adobe WEM, and its core, newly available Adobe CQ 5.5 software (see separate release), will deliver capabilities for both the front-end shopping experience and back-office merchandising and marketing publishing processes. This includes storefront content delivery capabilities, search and navigational elements, as well as checkout pages, product detail and imagery powered by hybris commerce functionality. Additionally, hybris Product Content Management software will drive product information and options, in addition to order fulfillment. The Adobe solution will also have ready access to online analytics, via the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, to enable marketers to rapidly optimize content and maximize return on investment.

“Our partnership with Adobe will help close the gap between acquisition and checkout, providing our customers a platform to create consistent brand experiences across channels,” said Carsten Thoma, chief operating officer, hybris. “hybris’ modular design and use of industry standards enables customers to deploy solutions rapidly with a superior total cost of ownership.”

The ease-of-use of the integrated WEM solution will allow marketers to author and publish content, which lowers development costs, increases productivity and shrinks the time to go live. The feature-rich development environment will help IT be more agile, empowering them to rapidly develop and deploy new templates, designs and Web components to business users.

“Our digital strategy required building a robust brand platform engaging a large network of independent salons and professional hair stylists sitting seamlessly with international commerce,” said Stuart Spiegel, chief digital officer, ghd, a world leading professional hair styling brand. “We needed a solution that would scale to support our brand innovation requirements, present and future, and the combination of Adobe WEM and hybris provided that foundation. We are proud that key brand advocates, professional hair stylists and salons will now have unique tools to engage their clients.”

"Collaborating with ghd, we completed one of the early implementations of the combined Adobe WEM and hybris multi-channel commerce offering,” said Chris Andrasick, chief executive officer, Tacit Knowledge, a digital commerce consultancy. “A key differentiator was the pace with which ghd was up and running with a robust commerce site before peak period. The solution we've built will enable global expansion as needed."

Adobe and hybris sales and marketing teams will jointly sell and promote the integrated solution to customers worldwide. The companiesplan to work with global agency and system integrator partners, such as Acquity Group, Deloitte, SapientNitro, and Tacit Knowledge, to provide implementation services.

“Through our long-term work with Adobe and hybris, we know the significant strengths both provide for online experiences,” said Matt Schmeltz, chief marketing officer, Acquity Group. “The combination will offer customers best-in-class, integrated Web experience management and multi-channel business-to-business and business-to-consumer commerce capabilities unmatched in the marketplace today. The integrated solution will dramatically speed our ability to bring customers to market.”

Availability
Integrated e-commerce capability as part of Adobe WEM is available now in beta and is targeted for general availability in the second calendar quarter of 2012.

About the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite
The Adobe® Digital Marketing Suite offers an integrated and open platform for online business optimization, a strategy for using customer insight to drive innovation throughout the business and enhance marketing efficiency. The Suite consists of integrated applications to collect and unleash the power of customer insight to optimize customer acquisition, conversion and retention efforts as well as the creation and distribution of content. For example, using the Suite, marketers can identify the most effective marketing strategies and ad placements as well as create relevant, personalized and consistent customer experiences across digital marketing channels, such as onsite, display, e-mail, social, video and mobile. The Suite enables marketers to make quick adjustments, automate certain customer interactions and better maximize marketing ROI, which, ultimately, can positively impact the bottom line.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

News Release from Compuware - Fewer Online Purchases

Poor Web Performance Results in Tablet Users Less Likely to Make Purchases Online

DETROIT, March 13, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), the technology performance company, today published the findings of the first global study of tablet users' web experience expectations. The survey reveals that global tablet users have high expectations for web experiences and a third are less likely to make purchases online from companies that don't meet those expectations.

Tablet users expect websites and transactions to work flawlessly. Their expectations have been shaped in part by years of using powerful PCs to access fast websites delivered by Internet leaders like Amazon and Google. The survey reveals that users expect tablets to perform as fast, or faster, than on a desktop or laptop computer at home.

However, the new global survey titled "Engaging the Tablet User: What They Expect from Websites," reveals that four out of ten global tablet users have experienced a problem when accessing websites. Among those that experienced a problem, two-thirds reported slow load times, and more than four out of ten experienced website crashes or problems with website functions.

Key survey findings include:

Poor web experiences on tablets impact the bottom line.

·         A bad website experience will also drive 46 percent of tablet users to competitive web sites; 35 percent are less likely to visit the problematic web site on any platform; and 33 percent are less likely to purchase from that company.

·         Nearly half of tablet users will retry a web site only once or twice if it did not work initially.

Tablet users' web experience expectations are high.

·         Almost 70 percent of tablet users expect a web site to load in two seconds or less.

Website issues are common for tablet users.

·         Among those who have experienced a problem, slow load times are the most frequently cited issue (66 percent), followed by site crashes (44 percent), problems with site functions (42 percent) and issues with site format (40 percent).

·          

"Consumers and enterprises have embraced tablets in large numbers for everything from web browsing and social networking to key business applications that increase employee productivity and drive revenue," said Steve Tack, CTO of Compuware APM. "However, based on the survey results, companies are not meeting tablet users' web experience expectations. Tablet users represent a coveted audience that in general tends to spend more per order, so organizations that ignore tablet users do so at their own peril."

To view a summary of the key survey findings in an interactive graphic, go to http://ow.ly/9Bmcp

To read the full survey findings, go to http://ow.ly/9Bi1Z

The Compuware Gomez platform is the industry's leading solution for optimizing the performance of web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications. Driven by end-user experience, Gomez provides a unified view across the entire application delivery chain, from a user's browser or mobile device, across the Internet or a corporate WAN, in the cloud, to inside the data center, eliminating blind spots from the First Mile to the Last Mile.

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·          

Compuware Corporation

Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company, provides software, experts and best practices to ensure technology works well and delivers value. Compuware solutions make the world's most important technologies perform at their best for leading organizations worldwide, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: http://www.compuware.com.