Briefs
Staff -- Purchasing, 5/16/2002
- Auto industry exchange Covisint has restructured in an attempt to improve its efficiency, services and profitability. Covisint has split into two units, one for portal development and communications and the other for strategic sourcing to oversee online auctions involving suppliers of materials, parts and services. Covisint has added 14 people to sales positions and laid off 50 employees in other departments, including 25 temporary contract people. A spokesman said that Covisint has approximately 355 employees and is on course to meet one of its goals: Turning a profit by the last quarter of this year. Covisint's new Industry Portal unit will be responsible for portal development and collaboration tools to eliminate the need for companies dealing with automakers to access multiple Web sites. The Strategic Sourcing unit is responsible for handling online auctions with suppliers as well as providing electronic catalogues and sourcing services.
- A recent AMR Research poll finds that 42% of companies across all industries have specific budgets for development of portal frameworks but only 11% of these companies view it as one of their top three IT priorities for the year. According to the findings in AMR's survey, Plumtree, Epicentric, and Vignette offer the most comprehensive portal products today, but other vendors such as Oracle, BEA Systems, PeopleSoft, and SAP Portals are gaining momentum in the market.
- The year-end SEC filing for supply-chain-software provider i2 Technologies does not paint a rosy picture. The filing discussed the negative impact of the slumping software market today, but specifically noted that one of its largest customers, Siemens, has "asserted certain claims against us regarding issues they claim to have experienced with respect to some of our software products and services. Whether customer claims of this type are founded or unfounded, if such claims are not resolved in a manner favorable to us, they may affect the market perception of our company and our products." According to news reports, the claims stem from a problem at the Florida-based Siemens ICN division, which could not get a particular i2 order-tracking tool to work and had to develop an in-house solution instead.
- The software industry will not survive the next 20 years with only applications built by a few big companies, according to Hasso Plattner, CEO and cofounder of German software giant SAP. Speaking at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Plattner said software has become so big that no company can do everything alone. Plattner disagrees with the idea that one software provider can provide everything from databases to sales tools and all functions in between. Plattner says standards must be adopted to drive a variety of different software makers to provide the parts needed to quickly build a sophisticated software system.
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