JASTEC Co., a Japanese custom software development and systems integration company, announced that its 100% U.S. subsidiary, JASTEC International Inc., had acquired 100% of the stock of LTU Technologies, the image mining visual search engine software. LTU Technologies will continue to operate as an independent company, with the management team, vertical markets and product development roadmap unchanged. LTU Technologies addresses several vertical markets, including Law Enforcement, Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Corporate search, and online search and filtering. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. http://www.ltutech.com
Day: April 17, 2005
Verity Inc. announced availability of a business process management (BPM) solution with enterprise-class, full-text search for immediate access to time- sensitive content across the entire business process lifecycle. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 has built-in capability to search, evaluate and monitor in-process content and other information. The delay to get to crucial information until a business process has run its course and is placed in a data repository is eliminated. Expanded tracking and auditing capabilities log system administrator activities such as changing rights and permissions in the management console as well as every time a user accesses or views form-based content. The Verity BPM solution securely connects all people across the enterprise and geographies with information and processes, whether inside or outside the enterprise firewall. Verity LiquidOffice also includes several new features that optimize designer productivity and accelerate deployment of processes. The Form Designer feature supports Unicode character sets. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 is the first BPM solution to result from the company’s acquisition of Cardiff Software and Dralasoft. It is currently available from Verity and its global network of sales partners.
ClearStory Systems announced the release of the Radiant Enterprise Media Server (EMS) 2.0, an enhanced version of its media services software platform. Radiant EMS features functionality for managing complex video, graphics, compound documents, and other rich media; and a flexible foundation for enterprise content management (ECM). A J2EE system with services-oriented architecture (SOA), Radiant EMS offers advanced capabilities for the management of rich media, providing deployment flexibility; alignment with current best practices in IT infrastructure; and the ability to integrate with and leverage a broad array of third party and open source media processing tools. Radiant EMS supports complex file types with the ability to ingest and manage links between related files. File types supported include all encoded video formats as well as specialized metadata types such as vdf. Radiant EMS offers compound document capabilities for complex file types like Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress. Enhanced taxonomy, metadata, and security features provide modeling flexibility. Radiant EMS supports asset-level security and permissions. APIs allow for creation of new applications, and integration with new or existing workflow.
Onfolio, Inc. announced the general availability of Onfolio 2.0, a complete PC solution built into the browser with integrated tools for reading RSS news feeds, collecting and organizing online content and publishing to email, weblogs and web sites. Built for people who rely on the web as a research platform, Onfolio 2.0 lets users: efficiently keep up with new information on topics of interest, capture all types of web content into a searchable database on a local PC, organize web research thoroughly without slowing down the pace of that research, and share information publicly or privately as it is gathered. New features in Onfolio 2.0 include: integrated, fully-featured RSS feed reader, integration with Firefox, workgroup collaboration using shared Onfolio Collections, more flexible publishing options including structured web reports and blog posting, complete website capture, multi-part article capture and silent capture, Microsoft Outlook integration for email capture, searching in Onfolio for documents and link targets by content and searching for items by properties, and save searches as folders, and integration with Thomson ResearchSoft’s EndNote 8. Onfolio 2.0 is now available for trial and purchase. A free, fully-functional 30-day trial version can be downloaded. Onfolio is available for purchase in two editions: Onfolio Professional Edition at $99.95 and Onfolio Personal Edition at $29.95. A promotional upgrade rate is available for Onfolio 1.0 users and Beta testers. http://www.onfolio.com
Digital Harbor announced the availability of Enterprise Designer, a modeling environment for composite applications that combines Enterprise Information Integration (EII), Business Process Integration, and Event Integration in a single graphical environment. A key component of Digital Harbor’s composite application platform, PiiE, Enterprise Designer is a graphical tool that logically links pieces of information from disparate systems as if they were one. Enterprise Designer enables developers and business analysts to use pre-existing models created in ErWin or Rational Rose as a starting point, and leverages the concept of a business ontology to reach across systems to link and relate different types and sources of information in real-time. Enterprise Designer offers a unified environment for development, integration, deployment, and end user interfaces, and supports the Ontology Web Language (OWL) standard, published by the W3C, to describe relationships at a higher logical level of abstraction. The model — or ontology — created using Enterprise Designer can be exported to other OWL-compliant modeling tools, or it can be deployed directly in Digital Harbor’s run-time environment. Enterprise Designer is available now.
Adobe Systems Incorporated announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. The combination of Adobe and Macromedia will provide customers a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Together, the two companies will meet a wider set of customer needs and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets, particularly in the mobile and enterprise segments. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adobe’s and Macromedia’s closing prices on Friday, April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock. Upon the close of the transaction, Macromedia stockholders will own approximately 18 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis. In the combined company, Chizen will continue as chief executive officer and Shantanu Narayen will remain president and chief operating officer. Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Macromedia, will join Adobe as president of worldwide field operations. Murray Demo will remain executive vice president and chief financial officer. Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Charles Geschke will remain as co-chairmen of the Board of Directors of the combined company and Rob Burgess, chairman of the Macromedia Board of Directors, will join the Adobe Board. The two companies are developing integration plans that build on the cultural similarities and the best business and product development practices from each company. Adobe also announced its Board of Directors has approved a post-acquisition stock repurchase program of $1 billion. The repurchase program is in addition to the Adobe’s existing stock repurchase programs and is expected to commence following the completion of the acquisition. The repurchases will be funded from available working capital. http://www.adobe.com, http://www.macromedia.com
