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prairieFyre Software has completed verification field trials of its prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft^© Lync™ and the AudioCodes SmartTap Lync call recording solution. The combination of AudioCodes SmartTap and the prairieFyre Contact Center solution provides sophisticated contact center functionality for the Lync 2010 unified communications (UC) platform.

The prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync is a modular software suite developed on the Voice-over-IP and UC architecture of Microsoft Lync Server 2010. The prairieFyre Contact Center is ideal for those organizations that wish to leverage the advanced enterprise voice features of the Lync UC platform and require a comprehensive contact center solution.

“As an early adopter of Microsoft’s United Communications platform, prairieFyre has taken a lead position in providing an innovative, presence-aware contact center solution.” Said Nimrod Borovsky, Vice President of Marketing at AudioCodes. We are very pleased to complete interoperability testing, and partner with prairieFyre to provide Microsoft Lync customers with a feature rich contact center solution.”

AudioCodes, known in the industry for providing best-in-class VoIP technology, has extended their product offering to include a complete call recording solution for Microsoft Lync. SmartTap is a fully IP-centric application that utilizes open standard protocols to record both internal and external calls for compliance regulations, dispute resolution, customer satisfaction and public safety requirements.

“Our prairieFyre Contact Center in conjunction with AudioCodes SmartTap provides a complete, scalable solution for those customers who have chosen Lync for their enterprise voice solution.” said Chris Courneya, CEO, prairieFyre Software. “The SmartTap solution is compelling in an ACD environment because it records calls without consuming valuable Lync resources such as conferencing services. Instead, it deploys a certified plugin on the Lync server that decrypts SRTP signaling while preserving the data integrity and quality of the conversation.”

With its broad functionality and modular design, the prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync can be tailored to businesses of any size or industry in departmental, standalone, or geographically dispersed deployments.

The prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync will be on display at prairieFyre’s booth, #1135, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, July 10^th to 14^th, 2011.

prairieFyre Software has deployed contact center solutions to over 8,000 customers in over 70 countries worldwide. They have leveraged this experience to create an affordable yet feature-rich solution that is ideal for enterprises looking for a contact center designed to work with Lync Server 2010.

Sand Technology Inc., provider of an advanced column store database, has announced that Sand Analytics has passed MicroStrategy’s comprehensive test suite, certifying it as a supported database for the MicroStrategy platform.

“Sand and MicroStrategy are the ideal combination for enterprises that need to handle big data for big user populations,” said Richard Grondin, CTO and VP of R&D and Deployment at Sand. “Sand has worked with MicroStrategy for years, but official certification means even greater support for MicroStrategy’s large end-user BI community, and industry leading integrated reporting, analysis, and monitoring software. In return, Sand’s massive, concurrent user scalability and the ability to efficiently drill down to detail data and execute large summarization, perfectly fits MicroStrategy environments.”

“With social data, machine data, and structured data being an increasing competitive requirement for Enterprise, you need an analytic database that can support multiple new data types,” said Mike Pilcher, Chief Operating Officer of Sand. “Further, that database needs to scale to support everyone in the enterprise – thousands to tens of thousands of concurrent users – with tools to mine the data. Together, Sand and MicroStrategy customers get best-of-breed reporting and analytics, at lower cost, with less effort, and scalability unmatched by any other solution.”

“We are pleased with Sand’s official certification as a MicroStrategy partner,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. “MicroStrategy’s high performance BI platform helps companies with some of the largest data volumes in the world gain valuable insights and make informed business decisions.”

Constellation Software Inc. has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Harris Computer Systems, a provider of financial, customer and student information management software solutions for utilities, local governments and school districts, purchased Pennsylvania-based ProSoft Technologies, Inc.

ProSoft offers a complete portfolio of products and services for Pennsylvania school districts including: student management, scheduling, human resources, payroll, fund accounting, and student activity fund management, and tax management for local municipalities. As a result of the transaction, ProSoft will be consolidated within Harris School Solutions, the Harris operating division focused on administrative solutions for K-12 school districts throughout North America.

Jerry Canada, General Manager of Harris School Solutions commented, “ProSoft is the continuation of the Harris School Solutions growth plan as it strengthens our market share in key states such as Pennsylvania. We will look to complement the ProSoft product portfolio with our own solutions and continue to grow our presence in the state.” Harris will continue to develop, service, and support the ProSoft product line from the current Bethel Park, PA office.

“Harris brings additional resources that will enhance our continuing commitment to our clients. We are pleased to join the Harris family and look forward to supporting and growing our customer base under their depth of experience within the K-12 market”, said Scott Anderson, President of ProSoft.

Meanwhile, another wholly-owned subsidiary of Constellation, Gary Jonas Computing Ltd., has completed the acquisition of Youbill Inc. (dba Member Solutions), also based in Pennsylvania. The Member Solutions acquisition expands Jonas’ presence in the Fitness market and more specifically the Marital Arts segment.

“Member Solutions is a leading provider of software and full service billing and collections services in their target market, within the United States and Canada,” said Barry Symons, CEO of Jonas. “We are excited to welcome the Member Solutions’ customers and employees into the Jonas family.”

Member Solutions’ CEO, Steve Pinado stated “The entire Member Solutions’ team is excited to be joining the Jonas family. Teaming up with a company that understands vertical market software, and which has a long track record of success, presents a unique opportunity for our customers, our employees and our business partners.”

Earlier this month, Jonas also completed its acquisition of Fitronics Ltd. Based in Bath, England, Fitronics Ltd., which operated under the name “The Retention People” is a leading provider of software to the Fitness & Leisure market, worldwide. Fitronics Ltd. uses detailed market research to drive product development into solutions, processes and training packages to improve the customer experience, creating promoters of fitness & leisure brands and increasing customer loyalty.

Cloud-based point of sale (POS) company ISISPOS recently received $2 million in funding from Canadian communications giant CaTech Systems. ISISPOS develops software that operates on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, is a leader in the hospitality industry and is also backed by top technology companies Apple and Amazon.

ISISPOS offers portable restaurant software using devices such as iPad and iPhone, creating innovative and efficient ways for restaurants to do business. Its iPad restaurant POS solution has made it possible for servers to take orders right at the table, transmit those orders directly to the kitchen, show customers a visual of what they’re ordering, or get instant pairing recommendations to increase sales. By using the iPad tablet and this point of sale solution, servers can accept credit card payments, split checks, void items, and reward repeat customers with coupons without walking to and from crowded computer stations.

ISISPOS assembled a team of executives with over 50 years of combined experience in the POS industry. The team also has substantial restaurant experience in everything from waiting tables to management to owning and/or operating, therefore understanding the need for innovative software and a better guest experience. ISISPOS assigns as many as 13 programmers to development projects at once. With over 20 years of experience, CaTech Systems consists of a team of certified technicians, network specialists, wireless specialists, and certified project managers. The combined industry expertise of these two companies should prove successful for future software endeavors.

ISISPOS is a global operation; its installations are also established in Europe, Asia, and Australia. With this application, restaurants in any location have the opportunity to go totally wireless. “We offer a truly anyplace, anywhere, anytime environment and eliminate the need for restaurant-based, back office computers,” says EVP of ISISPOS, Paul Perri.

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Make Technologies has launched its innovative Make Technologies ISV Suite for independent software vendors. ISV Suite includes everything a software company needs to reinvent its products and stay ahead in its market.

Many software vendors have built their products on legacy platforms that are as much as 25 years old. This makes it difficult to improve their feature sets, integrate with other products and to take advantage of modern technologies such as cloud and mobile. As a result, these vendors are losing market share to more nimble competitors that are better able to embrace cutting-edge technologies. These vendors have a critical choice to make: rejuvenate legacy platforms through a modernization initiative or face market share erosion.

With the Make Technologies ISV Suite, independent software vendors can revitalize their product offerings and give their customers all the advantages of a modern technology stack. With ISV Suite, vendors get:

• Cloud enablement: to transform the way products are delivered to customers by creating a cloud-ready software package
• Rich user experience: to provide easy-to-use interfaces in a variety of environments, including mobile devices, to streamline user training and improve productivity.
• Global reach: to increase market coverage by adding full internationalization and improved extensibility.

The Make Technologies ISV Suite uses TLM® 6, the proven modernization platform, to cover the three key components of the product modernization lifecycle:

1. Application re-architecture: Make Technologies conducts an in-depth analysis of every aspect of a legacy product; including functionality, source code and data structures. Next we help determine which functionality can be slimmed down, reused or eliminated as the product transitions to a modern architecture. Make Technologies ensures valuable intellectual property built up in the code base over time is safely retained while still adopting a new state-of-the-art, cloud-enabled platform.
2. New module development: ISVs can leverage Make Technologies’ TLM Application Design and Collaboration tools to define and build the new features and modules of the modernized product. This allows software vendors to deliver the improvements their customers have been asking for at a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches while ensuring that the new functionality is seamlessly integrated with the modernized functionality.
3. Customer roll-out: Make Technologies provides the tools needed to automatically and smoothly upgrade an ISV’s customers to its modernized system. ISVs can use Make Technologies’ TLM Code and Data Analysis products to identify not just custom modifications to source code but also the business impact of those changes. TLM Data Migration uses the transformation rules created during modernization to automatically migrate customer data to the rearchitected system.

“To keep pace with changing customer needs, every independent software vendor needs to add new features and improve the functionality of their products,” says Bill Bergen, President and CEO of Make Technologies. “The only way to do this is through a highly scalable, modernized architecture. The Make Technologies ISV Suite lets you leapfrog your competition and set a new standard in your market.”

Register now to participate in a hosted webinar about the Make Technologies ISV Suite will be presented on Wednesday July 13, 2011 at 8:30am PDT.

DBI Technologies Inc., the leading provider of scheduling and UI design component software for Windows Development is proud to announce the release of dbiCalendarWPF.  Through many months of developer and customer consultations along with intensive research and development these activities are now showcased in a new 3-in-1 Scheduling product for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application development.

Straight forward and to the point – Scheduling and Calendar presentations for WPF application development – now in one, fully customizable control.  dbiCalendarWPF combines three controls;  a Multi Column Day/Resource View, a Month Calendar View and a Week Calendar View, into one compact, feature rich, royalty free WPF component software product.  The goal for this product is to help developers manage; Appointments, Contacts, Locations and Tasks, from local to global perspectives, in one fluid, drag and drop, context menu driven scheduling control.

Gone are the days of developers having to create data entry dialogues and then separately having to manage collections of Appointments, Contacts, Locations and Tasks. dbiCalendarWPF incorporates all of the necessary entities and data management features for building outstanding Schedule and Calendar functionality in a fraction of normal development time.

Great developer and user scheduling experiences start right here with dbiCalendarWPF. Direct appointment creation and inline editing features that include setting appointment attributes via built-in, customizable context menus offer .NET developers the control for building elegant scheduling interfaces and smooth Calendar navigation.

“DBI has reset the bar once again when it comes to providing Windows developers with functional, get the job done Scheduling component software. They’ve taken their time to properly research and implement functionality and data management capabilities that will allow developers to intuitively support their global software development needs” said Craig Gluck, VP of commercial product development.  “From being able to sort and group local and global appointments based on Contact, Location and /or Task will make conference call coordination and corporate resource scheduling a snap.”

Full, 30 day evaluation licenses are freely downloadable from the product detail web page or from DBI’s general download site.  A single , royalty free developer’s license of dbiCalendarWPF starts at $399.  All DBI .NET component products come with sample applications and demo’s written in C# (C Sharp) and VB .NET. Technical support is provided at the code level and each new product license includes one year of full subscription product upgrade and component update services.  DBI component products may be purchased directly from DBI or from any one of DBI’s registered value added resellers serving all four corners of the globe.

Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are hesitant to harness the power of the cloud, in large part because they find it difficult to keep pace with rapid technology advancements, according to a survey conducted by Leger Marketing and commissioned by Microsoft Canada.

The study found that although nearly 73 per cent of SMBs understand that cloud-based technology offers a cost-effective means of accessing the latest technology, just 30 per cent are currently investing in cloud services.

“We all know that with great technology, you are at a better business advantage. Yet with 83 per cent of SMBs finding it hard to keep pace and 79 per cent settling on old tech even though they know there are better options, it is clear that Canadian businesses require simple and cost-effective cloud-based services to drive productivity, efficiency and give them the competitive edge,” says Eric Gales, President of Microsoft Canada. “Three-quarters of Canadian SMB are ready to invest in their own growth, but they want to invest smartly in technology that is going to work for them. This is why we’re so excited to announce the launch of Office 365 to meet Canada’s SMB technology needs.”

Office 365 brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always-up-to-date service, with a predictable monthly cost that starts at just $7 per user, per month.

Moving to the cloud with Office 365 doesn’t require a team to change the way it works, because the service is based on familiar tools people know and trust, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and more. Employees get new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device or mobile phone, and businesses get the reliability, security and IT controls they need in the cloud, even without a dedicated IT staff.

“I’m a road warrior and my office is a coffee shop, a hotel room or my clients’ board room” said James Won, founder of Servant4Stewards, a financial planning consultancy. “Office 365 gives me the power to work anywhere with full access to my documents on my computer and my mobile phone. The best thing about Office 365 is the fact that I can collaborate with clients and third-parties, revising, sharing and updating documents seamlessly in the cloud.”

Microsoft is building a massive partner ecosystem around Office 365, which includes new ways of partnering with service providers such as telecommunications and hosting firms around the world. Bell, Canada’s largest communications company, is the first Canadian syndication partner.  Bell will be offering Office 365 bundled with their communication services, creating a one-stop-shop for small and midsize businesses.

“Bell and Microsoft have worked closely for years to help Canadian businesses with their collaboration needs, and we’re happy to partner with Microsoft to bring Office 365 to the Bell cloud portfolio,” said Strahan McCarten, Director of Product Management, Hosting & Cloud Computing, Bell Business Markets, Bell Canada. “With Office 365, Bell customers can reduce their costs and maximize their IT productivity whether they’re starting a new business venture or enhancing their existing technology operations.”

Intranet Connections has announced the latest release of their social intranet software. Intranet Connections v11 builds on employee participation and engagement via your intranet by giving users the power to embrace and share company culture with innovative tools that are out of the box.

“Our intranet software helps to connect employees by information and knowledge sharing, online collaboration and the enhancement of your company culture,” says Carolyn Douglas, CEO of Intranet Connections. “We added dynamic tools such as our new Application Builder, allowing you to easily create any type of application you need for your intranet. We want to provide tools that help improve your business, through your employees and the intranet.”

Application Builder gives you the power to be creative when building applications. You have complete control over input forms, fields, and layout screens. Intranet Connections has harnessed AJAX drag and drop, creating an easy to use and dynamic application-building experience, with collaborative social elements such as employee tagging, comments, ratings and widgets.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Binary Stream Software and Corporate Renaissance Group (CRG) recently partnered to bring a new innovative and streamlined approach to multi-entity implementation projects.  The recent release of CRG’s Company Combiner brings Microsoft Dynamics GP users a new company consolidation option that will bring significant value to these users during their implementations.

“With the complementary combination of Corporate Renaissance Group’s Company Combiner and Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management we are very excited to be able to provide the Microsoft Dynamics GP community with an incredibly easy way to set-up and start managing their entities with our solution,” said Lak Chahal, President and CEO of Binary Stream Software.

Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management solution has long been the primary multi-entity solution for the Microsoft Dynamics GP channel. By enabling companies to work securely from one consolidated company set-up, this solution has enabled organizations worldwide to effectively manage and report on their multiple locations, subsidiaries and corporate entities with ease. Now with CRG’s Company Combiner, existing Microsoft Dynamics GP users can cut down their data conversion costs by over 50% and streamline the overall go-live process.

CRG’s Company Combiner gives Microsoft Dynamics GP users the ability to efficiently and easily consolidate companies with identical charts of accounts.  By reducing the risk of database consolidations, this solution bridges the divide between the essential consolidation steps involved in Multi-Entity Management set-ups and enables companies to quickly gain efficiencies in their launch processes.

“CRG and Binary Stream are long time Dynamics GP ISVs with great solutions.  We are thrilled to now offer a complementary product.  With both solutions, organizations will be able to get to their optimum configuration quicker and become more efficient with their use of Dynamics GP.  As organizations continue to get lean, we see the need of our solutions even more over the next few years,” said Dr. Vijay Jog, President of Corporate Renaissance Group.

The new release of the Company Combiner is currently available from the Corporate Renaissance Group team.

OpenText’s Metastorm business, a leading provider of business process management (BPM), business process analysis (BPA), and enterprise architecture (EA) software for business transformation, today announced that it has been recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Business Process (BP) Platforms Report.

The report, released annually by industry analysts at IDC, evaluates the relative capabilities of vendor solutions to support people-centric process applications based on the complexity, abilities and strategy of the solutions. OpenText Metastorm was rated above average and received top scores across IDC’s product, customer and business assessments.

“Metastorm’s view of how work management is evolving is sophisticated, and this shows up in its product,” the IDC MarketScape report states. OpenText Metastorm’s BP portfolio earned high scores for its cost management strategy, ROI planning capabilities, and portfolio strategy, including its technical platform and the vision around integration and content management. The portfolio’s Metastorm ProVision®, an enterprise and business architecture suite which enables process discovery and business process analytics, was identified by customers as a deciding factor for deployment of Metastorm solutions.

The product assessment also examines out-of-the-box functionality around identification of the appropriate worker for a task, prioritization and task assignment. OpenText Metastorm’s Smart Business Workspace was awarded high scores for innovation. It is a composition or “mashup” environment that combines work management and social capabilities to allow for communication and collaboration across workers during process design and as on-going as work is being performed. OpenText Metastorm also received top scores for out-of-the-box business runtime capabilities, technology platform and development environment.

“We are confident that our position as a leader in IDC’s MarketScape report on Business Process platforms further validates our ability to provide consistent and innovative software products that allow customers to align business strategy and execution to improve process and drive meaningful results,” said Kevin Haugh, Vice President of Product Marketing and Management at OpenText Metastorm. “OpenText Metastorm is committed to product excellence and customer service and continues to evolve and improve our offerings.”

As part of the IDC MarketScape report, customers were interviewed about their use of OpenText Metastorm products and customer support, and identified faster install time, quick process development time, graphical design, low and flexible pricing, and governance tools as reasons they selected the provider. OpenText Metastorm received top scores for customer references, reflecting the company’s ability to provide service excellence and the company’s commitment to developing best-of-breed solutions.

OpenText Metastorm is known for its ability to provide a comprehensive and highly-proven BP solution that allows organizations to quickly implement, manage, monitor, and analyze core business processes. In addition, the Metastorm BPM® suite’s seamless integration as part of the Metastorm Enterprise platform – which includes the Metastorm ProVision® software for EA and BPA – enables effective alignment of process execution activities with business goals at all levels of the organization. The Metastorm Business Transformation Practices Framework leverages the entire Metastorm software portfolio and industry templates to provide organizations with a successful methodology for managing change and achieving successful, ongoing transformation to meet key strategic and operational objectives.