intelligence

Sybase earnings sail past Street's expectations

Correction: Sybase reported a 13 percent increase in license revenue, based on constant currency.

Update at 7:49 a.m. PST, with comments from the conference call.

Sybase posted fourth-quarter results on Wednesday that sailed past Wall Street's earnings expectations.

With earnings driven by strong growth in its core database business, company shares jumped 7.8 percent to $27.87 in early-morning trading.

Revenues during the quarter rose to $305.1 million, up 3 percent over the same time a year ago. Wall Street was expecting the enterprise software company to make $300.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters. … Read more

Military challenge: Make spy data more accessible

Action spy dramas increasingly feature a computer geek character who accesses everything from satellite imagery to floor plans to convenience store security cameras, then feeds the data to his team, saving the day. This type of work, it turns out, is easier said than done.

Two agencies are trying to make it easier to access and blend Web-based snoop-scoop. The U.S. Joint Forces Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are sponsoring an annual demonstration called Empire Challenge, which "seeks to improve interoperability of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities" among end users.

One of last year's Challenge … Read more

Why caring robots should be controlled

About 5.5 million robots were sold this year.

This figure doesn't refer to the sort of robots that build cars, refuse to live in Detroit, and rarely lose their jobs. There are only about 1 million of those. Rather, it refers to the sales of so-called professional and personal-services robots.

You know, the sort that play games with your kids, scare your cats as they scrub your floors, and feed and bathe your doddering granny. You don't have a personal-services robot yet? Well, recession does have it uses.

However, professor Noel Sharkey believes now is the time … Read more

Business intelligence and the consumerization of information

As information proliferates, so does the need to understand what it means. Business intelligence has long played a role in discerning customer behavior and defining how businesses define metrics.

But, BI is typically pretty boring (if not an oxymoron)--that is until you start applying the techniques and software to information that's interesting.

JasperSoft CEO Brian Gentile provided some insight into the opportunities available for upstart vendors to take advantage of consolidation as well as the "consumerization of information" -- where users expect to have their business info available just as they would any other internet-based data. … Read more

Actuate revs its business with version 10

In a week that saw open-source ERP vendor Openbravo pull in its millionth download and SugarCRM taking it to Salesforce at its DreamForce Conference, it seems that momentum is growing for open-source applications.

Highlighting this apparent trend, Actuate, an open-source Business Intelligence vendor, has announced version 10 of its product, as well as significant momentum to go with it, as the Actuate team discussed with me by phone:

Over five million downloads in the past three years; $8 million in revenue last year and $10.5 million in the first nine months of 2008. Despite the slowing economy, Actuate has … Read more

Pentaho accelerates its business, upgrades its board and executive team

Life sounds sunny for Florida-based Pentaho, a leading open-source Business Intelligence vendor. The company just announced a string of big-name customer wins, including Delta Dental, Mozilla, and a $1 million deal with a "major European retailer."

The company also announced that Lars Nordwall, former head of Sales for SugarCRM, has joined as senior vice president of Business Development. I know and like Lars and think he'll be a great fit for Pentaho. It's also a chance for him to work on his tan this winter, since the Bay Area is so cold.... :-)

Lastly, Pentaho has … Read more

Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm

In the midst of the financial meltdown and a contentious upcoming election, you might think the U.S. government and taxpayers are just funding wars, bank bailouts, and bridges to nowhere or somewhere. But this is the same government that funded the Internet way back when and is also funding the next generation of technologies that will make the current Internet seem like a Model-T.

Over the last several years, the U.S. government--via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grants--has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in PAL, an acronym for "Personalized Assistant that Learns." Smarter software … Read more

'Intelligent Heat' knows your hands better than you do

If you're reading this while rubbing your hands together and blowing hot breath into them (remember, the wider your mouth when you blow, the warmer the heat), well you should probably turn on the radiator or put on some gloves. If you already have gloves on and are still rubbing your hands together, keep reading.

Aevex announced on Monday that its Intelligent Heat technology can now be found in winter gloves from Mountain Hardwear and Outdoor Research. Not to be confused with the Cooling Glove (not sure why you would be, but I just wanted to get that link … Read more

Google's quest for the intelligent cloud

Google is publishing a series of brief articles during September by 10 of its top scientists on how the Internet will evolve in the next 10 years. In the first article, Alfred Spector, a vice president of engineering, and research scientist Franz Och, outline how Google's search engine will evolve over the next decade.

Traditionally, systems that solve complicated problems and queries have been called "intelligent", but compared to earlier approaches in the field of 'artificial intelligence', the path that we foresee has important new elements. First of all, this system will operate on an enormous scale … Read more