Pep Boys software

Transplace, a provider of transportation management services and logistics technology solutions, relationship with Pep Boys has been extended through a full contract extension. The partnership continues Pep Boys’ use of the award-winning Transplace Transportation Management System (TMS) and its business intelligence analytics. Pep Boys has approximately 6,000 service bays and nearly 600 stores across the United States and Puerto Rico. Since 2006, the company has utilized Transplace to manage inbound transportation from domestic vendors to its distribution centers and crossdocks. Transplace gives Pep Boys and its suppliers the Web-based application technology and business intelligence tools needed to network, monitor and optimize shipments. Pep Boys has the ability to access real-time reports and the drill-down capability to see information needed to run a business effectively. (Joshua Dolan, director of Global Logistics and U.S. Customs Compliance at Pep Boys. Vice President of Distribution and Logistics for Pep Boys, Stuart Rosenfeld.)

Statewide Other Services (OS) contract

DLT Solutions, Inc., a value-added reseller of information technology (IT) products and services, has been awarded a statewide Other Services (OS) Contract for software products and services by the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR). This contract, TX DIR-SDD-917, enables the State of Texas to purchase technology solutions and products from Red Hat, Nexaweb, Solarwinds and ScriptLogic.

Online security for students

Bemidji Area Schools is using DeepNines' iTrust solution to control their Internet traffic and provide better online security for their students. DeepNines iTrust provides granular, application-level control of Internet traffic. It fully integrates with identity management solutions so that rules on Internet traffic and applications can be applied to specific user groups. This allows administrators to control traffic for specific user groups in order to ensure that critical traffic and online applications are always accessible. (Tony Andrews, technology coordinator for Bemidji Area Schools.)

One-to-Watch: Spysure's PC product helps protect children from paedophiles and blocks adult content. It monitors and views activities and tells you what is happening online. http://www.spysure.com

Critical care manager

Picis has been awarded a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contract for the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 12, also known as the Great Lakes Health Care System. In a competitive selection process, the system selected Picis Critical Care Manager, part of the CareSuite family of high-acuity solutions, to provide intensive-care unit (ICU) clinicians with the point-of-care information they need to help make well-informed treatment decisions and ultimately help improve patient care. With more than 30,000 admissions and 2.5 million outpatient visits per year, the VA’s Great Lakes Health Care System decided to deploy a comprehensive critical care system across its six VA medical centers to better manage patient information and the complex workflow of its ICUs.

Picture Archive Communication System

Health Diagnostics, a national provider of outpatient diagnostic services is to implement Aspyra’s AccessNET Picture Archive Communication System (PACS) solution. With thirty-four locations throughout four states – California, New Jersey, New York and Florida - Health Diagnostics collectively provides a full array of advanced medical imaging technologies, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Multislice CT (Computed Tomography), PET (Positron Emission Tomography), Ultrasound, Mammography, and Nuclear Medicine. Health Diagnostics offers every type of MRI scanner – High-Field MRI (1.5T & 3.0T), Open MRI, and the latest MRI innovation, Stand-Up MRI, which allows patients to be scanned in virtually any position, including weight-bearing positions. (Mark Cooper, Health Diagnostics’ Chief Information Officer.)

Dairy Queen reaches consumers

Mobile Posse, Inc., the provider of idle screen content and advertising for mobile, is helping Dairy Queen reach consumers on-the-go through their mobile phones. Starting in March, Dairy Queen and digital agency space150 piloted Mobile Posse’s idle screen advertising platform to promote its new Sweet Deals value menu. Consumer response to Dairy Queen’s campaign was outstanding, with click-through-rates averaging more than 22 percent. These results raise the bar for mobile campaign performance and demonstrate the ability of mobile advertising to effectively engage U.S. consumers.

Dairy Queen’s campaign drove awareness of its Sweet Deals value menu among value-conscious consumers. Delivered at 5 p.m., as people start to think about dinner plans, the advertisement promoted meal options from $3 to $5 . The Sweet Deals value menu was also promoted through sponsorship of daily weather forecasts. Click-through-rates for the Sweet Deals advertisement averaged a remarkable 22 percent. The campaign was also very effective at engaging unique mobile users, with nearly 54 percent of all Mobile Posse users electing to view Dairy Queen’s Sweet Deals advertisement via the idle screen banner or through the application’s Recent Offers Menu. In addition, more than 69 percent of all Mobile Posse users viewed the Dairy Queen sponsored weather forecast at least once during the campaign.

International Dairy Queen (IDQ), develops licenses and services a system of more than 5,600 Dairy Queen stores.

Caterpillar equipment dealer

Wheeler Machinery Co. (Wheeler), a U.S.-based Caterpillar equipment dealer, has licensed the Lawson for Equipment Service Management and Rental Suite to help support the company’s long-term growth plans. The equipment distributor will use the Lawson solution, designed for equipment dealers and the service management & rental industries, to help support integration with Caterpillar, enhance customer service, gain organization-wide visibility into business processes and create a reliable, consolidated source of information. Wheeler will also use the Lawson Human Resource Management Suite to help optimize its workforce. (Rob Campbell, president of Wheeler.)

Online community

The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) has selected KickApps (www.kickapps.com), the on-demand social media, video player and widget platform, to power its online community, myMDA (www.mda.org/mymda). myMDA is a place for people whose lives have been affected by muscular dystrophy and associated diseases to gather and share their experiences and get support from each other. (Gerald C. Weinberg, MDA president and CEO.)

Disparate HIS and EMR systems

Clara Maass Medical Center (CMMC), has implemented Axolotl’s Elysium Exchange, “Clinically Networking” disparate HIS and EMR systems so that patient information is available when and where it is needed. Clara Maass is part of the Saint Barnabas Health Care System, New Jersey’s largest integrated health care delivery system. (Donald Lutz, Chief Information Officer, Clara Maass Medical Center.)

Global freight blog

Global freight management company Langham Logistics has selected Compendium Blogware, the search-driven business blogging software platform, to drive its search engine marketing efforts. (Cathy Langham, CEO of Langham Logistics.)

$20 million workforce project

The Iowa Workforce Development (IWD), a state agency that links job placement and skill development into a system of lifelong learning and opportunity, has leveraged iRise on a $20 million project to modernize the state tax system for unemployment insurance. The new Web-based application replaces a legacy mainframe system and is designed to help employers, accountants and payroll firms manage unemployment insurance tax accounts. The new system also gives internal IWD employees an easier way to access and manage the unemployment insurance tax system. (Erich Grubert, Business Project Director at IWD.)

$340,000 media management contract

DigitalPost Interactive has signed a $340,000 contract to install a custom-designed interactive- media management system for a leading Internet search company providing instant rich media Internet visibility for their business partners.

Laser-generated patient identification wristbands

LaserBand, LLC has renewed a sole-source contract with HealthTrust Purchasing Group (HPG), one of the health care industry’s largest group purchasing organizations (GPO), to provide 1,300 hospitals and other health care organizations with the latest laser-generated patient identification wristbands and companion products that improve patient safety, streamline workflow and productivity, and increase printer and patient ID functionality. This agreement is now is extended to include HPG’s newest equity owners Consorta and Universal Health Services (UHS). All of LaserBand’s wristbands feature a unique, patented self-laminating technology, which protects patient information at the point of care and preserves the data for longer wristband usability and the prevention of re-banding. HPG supports over 1,300 not-for-profit and for-profit acute care hospitals, including HCA, HMA, Community Health Systems, Consorta, UHS, and LifePoint Hospitals, as well as over 3,000 ambulatory surgery centers, alternate care sites, and physician practices.

Chicago Board Options Exchange

Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is home to a uniquely dynamic trading environment. Alongside the iconic images of frenzied hand signals and open-outcry trading, CBOE leverages a state-of-the-art electronic trading. The largest U.S. options exchange, CBOE’s daily trading volume has totaled nearly 10 million contracts at its peak. Consequently, the Exchange relies heavily on a strategic IT management approach that not only supports high availability and performance, but also allows CBOE to continuously enhance its trading platform, expand customer reach and grow its competitive position. “Open outcry trading is still here, but an increasing amount of our actual trades and income is derived from the electronics side of our business,” said John Strege, director of systems software at CBOE. “Standardizing on BMC Software’s Business Service Management platform gives us a comprehensive, business-service view that significantly enhances the efficiency of our IT organization, enabling us to roll out new and enhanced functionality more quickly.

55 million catalogs

FootSmart, the largest direct retailer of foot and lower body healthcare products in the U.S., has chosen ExactTarget to power its personalized email marketing campaign aimed at America’s baby boomers. The direct retailer of products ranging from shoes and socks to back braces will use ExactTarget’s content and email segmentation tools coupled with their customer browsing and purchase history to build personalized offers for its growing list of more than 1 million email subscribers. Through ExactTarget’s integration with FootSmart.com’s customer database and Web analytics provider Coremetrics, the company will develop a profile of each customer based on their online browsing and purchase history coupled with their offline purchases from FootSmart’s catalog mailings. FootSmart will use the combined customer profile to automatically control which offers and news to include in emails it sends to subscribers. The move by FootSmart to integrate online and offline data to power its online customer communications is a first for the company that mails more than 55 million catalogs every year. (Kim Gnatt, vice president of FootSmart.)

Public Sector Report

California’s Contra Costa County is among the first to implement the complete jail management system from L-1, Omni Jail Management System (Omni JMS), and Missouri’s Jasper County jail implemented Offender-ID for immediate and accurate identification of offenders. The L-1 solutions are highlighted this week at the American Jail Association’s 28th annual training conference and jail exposition in Louisville, Kentucky. L-1 Identity Solutions' iris-based identifications replace traditional methods such as name, designated number, wristband or photo, with an on-the-spot, non-intrusive scan of the subject’s iris, an identifier that is unique to each person and therefore inherently more accurate. With L-1, an arresting or pre-booking officer can quickly and accurately determine the identity of a subject prior to incarceration, and with powerful and time-saving workflow tools like Omni JMS, they can customize and streamline every step of the inmate management process from identification, intake, custody, and eventual release. The Contra Costa Office of the Sheriff (CCC) is a pre and post sentence detention operation with over 2,050 inmates across four facilities. The operation sought a jail management system that could address the need for fast and accurate identification of inmates and control over workflows with a robust system capable of accommodating the flow of arrestees and inmates throughout all its facilities. (Captain Sean Fawell of the Technical Services Division of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office.) Jasper County Jail in Missouri first installed L-1’s Offender-ID in August of 2007 and has enrolled nearly 7,000 offenders into their database. (W. Archie Dunn, Sheriff of Jasper County, Missouri.)

Life sciences platform for Merck

NextBio, provider of a platform that enables life science researchers to search, discover and share knowledge within public and proprietary data, has reached a licensing agreement with Merck & Co., Inc. NextBio offers the life sciences enterprise secure data access, knowledge discovery and collaboration tools, and enterprise integration capabilities for seamless correlation of internal research data. NextBio is delivered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution resulting in quick deployment and rapid return on investment. NextBio is used by over a million researchers and has been deployed at Burnham Institute for Medical Research, Celgene, Eli Lilly, Genzyme, Johnson & Johnson, Regeneron, Scripps Research Institute, Stanford University, and Takeda, among many others. http://www.nextbio.com.

Kodak’s global e-commerce operations

Digital River, Inc., a provider of global e-commerce solutions, is expanding its relationship with Eastman Kodak Company to manage Kodak’s global e-commerce operations. Under the agreement, Digital River will be providing a full range of e-commerce and e-marketing services to support all consumer online sales of Kodak’s innovative line of digital cameras, digital video cameras, digital picture frames, all-in-one inkjet printers, film and accessories across multiple countries in North America and Europe.

CDMA roaming service

On Waves Ehf, a maritime mobile services provider, has entered into an agreement with MSC Cruises to provide CDMA roaming service across their entire cruise line fleet. The agreement covers 10 vessels and as well as future new-builds. On Waves’ CDMA service offer will include voice, text messaging and mobile data service while the vessels operate at sea. On Waves’ launch CDMA roaming partner is Verizon Wireless, the leading U.S. mobile phone operator, whose customers can now enjoy seamless voice and SMS roaming while vacationing with MSC Cruises. (Emilio La Scala, General Manager of MSC Cruises.)

Technology Law Conference

The International Technology Law Association (ITechLaw; http://www.itechlaw.org) will hold its 2009 World Technology Law Conference and Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA, May 14-15, at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. ITechLaw is an organization for lawyers in the technology sector worldwide. The annual conference (http://www.itechlaw.org/seattle2009/) draws attendees from around the globe, and features international speakers on current important topics in technology law, including e-commerce, intellectual property, outsourcing models, data privacy, open source, Internet gaming, Internet and telecommunications convergence, and the effects of the financial services sector's recent instability on technology law practice.