Agresso and Stratus Break New Ground

Unit 4 Agresso N.V. announced a new talent management product while Stratus Technologies unveiled a new high availability software product that runs on industry standard servers.

Focal Points:

• Unit 4 Agresso, a provider of agile ERP solutions, expanded its offerings to include its new Agresso Talent Management solution. The talent management plug-in is an add-on module to the Agresso Business World HR platform. It adds capabilities to capture employee skills, assessment and performance review information on an individual, role, or organizational level. The solution is available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis and is a derivative of its Nextlearn acquisition in 2007. The offering is targeted at medium to large enterprises with distributed and global operations.
• Stratus Technologies, an Investcorp Company, moved into a new market segment with the announcement of its Stratus Avance software, the company's first high availability software offering. Avance uses embedded virtualization on commodity x86-architected servers to provide an availability level of more than 99.99 percent for Linux and Microsoft Corp. Windows applications. The Avance virtualization platform is based upon the Citrix Systems Inc. XenServer virtualization platform. The list price per server is $2,500 and includes the Citrix platform. According to the company, no on-site IT personnel is required to support the platform and all office servers could be combined onto a single high availability system, which consists of a pair of standard x86 servers using the Avance software.
• The Avance solution provides transparent fault handling for faults such as cables, controllers, fans, memory, network interface cards, storage, and switches, company officials claim. The system will automatically migrate the applications, report the fault, initiate the repair process, and resync the systems once the defective parts have been replaced. The system handles embedded storage mirroring, includes fault predictive analytics, allows up to eight virtual CPUs, and leverages multi-core processor technology. The software comes with online upgrades, maintenance, and support, with the support services available in a standard coverage package and an enhanced package for 24x7 business critical systems.

Experton Group believes the availability, management, and retention of skilled resources will become more problematic over the next three to five years as baby boomers retire, existing talent moves into other fields, and the next generation produces fewer IT professionals. Companies will have to devote more energy into planning and strategy to ensuring they have the resources needed to meet current and future business objectives. Executives will need to find ways to satisfy business requirements using in-house resources, business partners, a contingent workforce, and outsourcing as well as more advanced products and tools that simplify resource requirements. IT executives should seek to simplify operations and reduce costs by use of managed services and SaaS offerings, where appropriate, especially in areas that are not business differentiators or corporate crown jewels.