Web Development Live

EPAM Systems, a software outsourcing services company, has announced the acquisition of B2BITS, a provider of solutions and consulting services to Capital Markets organizations within the financial services sector. According to the company, with this acquisition, EPAM now covers the entire value chain from domain knowledge and process consulting through customized high-performance architecture as well as development, testing and 24/7 support. Mark Bisker, CEO of B2BITS and industry veteran with over 25 years experience of leading technology development organizations at such companies as Schwab Capital Markets and Lava Trading heads EPAM’s new Competency Center.Competency Center consultants will be located in all major financial centers across the US and Europe, while production and support teams will be tightly linked into EPAM’s distributed development organization in Eastern Europe to combine cost efficiency with domain knowledge and strict SLAs.B2BITS has been delivering pre-built solutions, customizable frameworks, specialized testing tools as well as process consulting for Client Connectivity, FIX, FX, Options, Fixed Income, market data feeds, exchange gateways and electronic payment services since 2000.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has commenced the construction of its largest development centre, TCS Sahyadri Park, in Hinjewadi, Pune, Maharashtra. TCS Sahyadri Park will be developed over 50 acres of land to create a capacity of 20,000 seats with the first phase expected to be completed by March 2009 with 7,000 seats. The entire facility is scheduled to be completed by end of 2010.CS Sahyadri Park will drive the next phase of our growth in this area and help us access the skilled professionals and students from in and around Pune. On completion, the facility will provide direct employment to over 20,000 people as well as indirect employment to many more, said S. Ramadorai, CEO %26 Managing Director, Tata Consultancy Services.

his facility in Pune, is of special significance to us as TCS started its first R%26D centre, TRDDC, in this city well over two decades ago.Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd. has been mandated to develop the facility, while Frank Glynn of El Segundo, California, has been appointed as the principal architect for designing the facility along with Edifice Architects from Pune as the local architects. Frank Glynn was also the architect for the TCS facility in Sholinganallur, Chennai.

Consona Corporation, a provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software and services for the enterprise, recently made an announcement about acquiring substantially all assets of Configuration Solutions. Configuration Solutions, headquartered in Portage, Michigan, is into development of product configuration solutions for to-order manufacturers.Once the acquisition is complete, Configuration Solutions will continue to operate from its headquarters as a product line of Consona ERP, serviced by dedicated sales, support, services and development staff. Consona will maintain the Configuration Solutions brand and product names and remain committed to the ongoing sales, maintenance, support and enhancement of Configuration Solutions product and service offerings to meet the needs of both existing and future customers, said Consona. combining the resources of two leading companies, wel be able to provide more proactive service and support to our shared customers, said Bill Haynes, vice president of sales for Consona ERP.

Haynes added that the acquisition will not impact Configuration Solutions partner relationships with ERP solutions that compete directly with Consona ERP. t is our ongoing objective to provide unsurpassed service and support egardless of the ERP foundation a customer is using, he said.Ryan Colosky, former vice president of sales for Configuration Solutions, has assumed the role of general manager of the product line, reporting directly to Scott Malia, general manager of Consona ERP. After 16 years of focused dedication to the industry, Founder and CEO Dale Colosky has decided to retire.

Yahoo India has recently appointed Ram Narayanan as VP, Product Management, Marketing Products Division (MPD). With Yahoo India, he would be responsible globally for building platforms and products aimed at enabling advertisers to have different customized advertising options.Working closely with Shouvick Mukherjee, a Yahoo veteran, who has recently been given the responsibility of VP, Engineering for the MPD, Ram will be based out of Bangalore and report locally to Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo India Research %26 Development, and functionally to Mark Morrissey, SVP, Product Management, MPD, Yahoo. Prior to joining Yahoo, Ram worked with Microsoft in India as well as Redmond, WA from 2000.

He was the Business Manager and Technical advisor to Chairman, Microsoft India and the founder of the High Performance Computing Group. From 1992 to 2000, Ram was responsible for founding two companies called Innosol Inc. and Engineering Dynamics Inc. in Michigan delivering engineering software and services to the automotive industry.These appointments are in line with the new initiative at Yahoo India to create a CoE (Centre of Excellence) for Mass Market Advertisement (MMA) in Bangalore. Yahoo said that, both Ram and Shouvick will drive the creation of the next generation of Mass Market Advertiser products for Yahoo and create value for the MMA CoE. The MMA CoE will help drive self-serve solutions for advertisers and agencies and the main focus of the team will be to provide small advertisers with a simple advertising platform that drive greater value to their businesses, further added the company.

Synplicity, supplier of solutions for the design and verification of semiconductors, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Synopsys, a provider of software and IP for semiconductor design and manufacturing.

When completed, the acquisition will expand Synplicity product portfolio and extend the market reach of its industry leading products. Under the terms of the agreement, Synopsys will pay USD 8 cash per Synplicity share, resulting in a gross transaction value of approximately USD 227 million, and approximately USD 188 million net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2008, and after the closing, Synplicity will become part of Synopsys, and Synplicity stock will cease trading. ynplicity strong product portfolio, expertise, and customer reach will be ideal complements to Synopsys, said Aart deGeus, chairman and CEO of Synopsys.

he combination will expand our presence in the systems and mid-tier market segments, will support our strategy to provide rapid prototyping capabilities to a broad set of customers to enable much faster software development, and will enhance Synplicity already strong offering in the FPGA implementation market.The acquisition is expected to help the companies accelerate the revenue growth in the rapidly growing market for SoC verification solutions. According to the Synplicity, the acquisition also provides the opportunity to leverage Synopsys advanced IC technology to further improve Synplicity FPGA synthesis products, and Synplicity will gain an expanded product portfolio with which to serve its approximately 1,800 customers.

VMware has recently announced a multi-year initiative aimed at expanding its India-based research and development (R%26D) operations. VMware president and CEO Diane Greene announced the initiative at a news conference in Bangalore. With this initiative VMware plans to invest USD 100 million (4 billion Indian Rupees) in India by 2010, build a new, state-of-the-art 82,000 square foot development center in Bangalore and double the company India-based engineering organization to more than 1,000 people in the next two years.

The new Bangalore development center expands on existing R%26D operations in Bangalore and Pune. The center supports new and ongoing research and development across the company entire portfolio of solutions for datacenter and desktop virtualization. The new 82,000 square foot development center is located in South Bangalore and includes a 4,000 square foot computer lab.reat products are built by great people. India has both an excellent technical education infrastructure and outstanding people. We highly value our Indian citizen employees,” said Greene. “India is also one of our fastest growing markets and where we have increasingly important system integrator partners. For these reasons, we are now substantively increasing our investment in India.VMware already has a strong presence across India with offices in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai. VMware entered India in 2004. according to VMware, the company has more than 300 customers and more than 160 channel partners in the country.

With offices in 5 cities, VMware employs nearly 700 people, including more than 500 developers, across India. It has established strong ties to local universities in India including IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, NIT Trichi, NIT Surathkal, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the RV College of Engineering.

Intalio, the Open Source Business Process Platform Company, has announced support for the Business Process Modeling Notation version 1.1 (BPMN 1.1), which was recently ratified by the Object Management Group (OMG). Intalio|Designer is the first process modeling tool to support the new notation.

“As an Open Source vendor of BPM and SOA platforms, it is imperative for us to adhere to industry standards,” noted Intalio Founder and CEO Ismael Ghalimi. “Standards present Open Source companies with a way to tap into a larger community that brings weight to its initiatives. Standards also give companies using these tools an insurance policy that any development investments can be maintained throughout the foreseeable future.” According to the company, BPMN 1.1 provides several benefits over the previous version, clearing up ambiguities between throwing and catching events, and adding new notation specifications, such as the Signal event.

Signal increases efficiency and loose coupling by broadcasting the event to any event listener, either within the process or in another process. Previously, the process designer had to send a separate message or error event for each specific target. Now, that can be taken care of with a single call, says the company.

BALTIMORE A prominent public health school has restored the word “abortion” as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site funded by a federal agency that restricts references to abortions.The move by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health follows criticism from some health advocates and librarians that the restriction amounted to censorship.The restriction on the POPLINE Web site - “population information online” - had been put in place after inquiries by the United States Agency for International Development, which funds the site, according to a statement from Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school.USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a methods of family planning in other nations. The policy was started under President Ronald Reagan and was revived when President Bush took office in 2001.”I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately,” Klag said in a statement. “The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”USAID officials did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment Saturday.POPLINE is a free database containing citations and abstracts of scientific articles, reports and books about population, family planning and related health issues. It contains nearly 360,000 records.Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, applauded Klag’s action, saying the restriction denied “researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information.”Wayne Shields, president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, said in a statement that restricting access to the information could possibly jeopardize patient care, because it prevented doctors and women from linking to scientific literature on the topic.”Removing abortion as a search term on a publicly funded reproductive health database is clearly a decision driven by ideology - and not based on the medical or scientific needs of the reproductive health professional community the database exists to serve,” Shields said.

BALTIMORE A prominent public health school has restored the word “abortion” as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site funded by a federal agency that restricts references to abortions.The move by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health follows criticism from some health advocates and librarians that the restriction amounted to censorship.The restriction on the POPLINE Web site - “population information online” - had been put in place after inquiries by the United States Agency for International Development, which funds the site, according to a statement from Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school.USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a methods of family planning in other nations. The policy was started under President Ronald Reagan and was revived when President Bush took office in 2001.”I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately,” Klag said in a statement. “The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”USAID officials did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment Saturday.POPLINE is a free database containing citations and abstracts of scientific articles, reports and books about population, family planning and related health issues. It contains nearly 360,000 records.Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, applauded Klag’s action, saying the restriction denied “researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information.”Wayne Shields, president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, said in a statement that restricting access to the information could possibly jeopardize patient care, because it prevented doctors and women from linking to scientific literature on the topic.”Removing abortion as a search term on a publicly funded reproductive health database is clearly a decision driven by ideology - and not based on the medical or scientific needs of the reproductive health professional community the database exists to serve,” Shields said.

Intalio, an Open Source BPMS company, has announced a partnership with Alfresco Software, the Open Source alternative for Enterprise Content Management. The integrated offering of Intalio|BPMS and Alfresco ECM aims to allow users to manage advanced document-centric workflow processes and support the collaborative development of complex business processes.

“Our partnership with Alfresco serves as a foundation for building BPM into something larger a true Business Process Platform (BPP),” states Intalio CEO and Founder, Ismael Ghalimi. According to the company, document-centric workflow processes provide for automation of business communications, allowing documents to be transmitted to the right people based on complex rules. For example, insurance companies can use workflow processes to handle end-to-end policy management processes and provide better visibility to customers regarding the processing of claims.

The integrated solution also allows Business and IT to collaboratively document complex business processes, making it easier to understand business requirements and the rational behind new procedures. The Alfresco integration project was funded under the Demand Driven Development (D3) model introduced by Intalio in 2006, which allows customers to direct Intalio’s product development roadmap in specific directions, then participate in the overall development process through syndicated funding.