SunGard has released a new online tax calculation service for benefit administrators requiring federal and state tax withholding support for qualified and non-qualified pension, 401(k), 403(b), SEP, Simple and individual retirement account (IRA) plan distributions. As the latest of a series of wealth management solutions delivered on-demand in a Software-as-a-Service* (SaaS) environment via SunGard’s Infinity storefront, SunGard’s Omni Tax Calculator helps to provide improved efficiency, fast implementation and automatic updates to tax withholding tables.

Retirement plan administrators and financial institutions making distributions on retirement plan accounts need a simple and accurate way of calculating withholding taxes on pension distributions. SunGard’s Omni Tax Calculator provides a fast and efficient method of accessing current withholding tax tables via data entry or system-to-system connectivity for numerous distribution transactions. As a SaaS solution delivered on a “pay as you go” basis, Omni Tax Calculator provides customers with automatic changes to federal and state tax withholding tables every time the government updates them, as well as updates to software functionality. It helps administrators reduce manual processes and avoid the cost of additional hardware or technical expertise to maintain the system, scales automatically to usage volume and activity and provides faster and more reliable service to their clients.

Kevin Rafferty, president of SunGard’s wealth management business, said, “SunGard is committed to continued investment in the benefit administration space in order to provide innovative, Web-based solutions to help businesses manage pension recordkeeping and administration. Omni Tax Calculator provides an intuitive and simple way for customers to get the software they need quickly and easily without the need for additional hardware and IT staff.”

* SunGard Financial Systems is pursuing a visionary initiative to transform some of the key functionality of its core systems into components creating SaaS solutions. Infinity uses SunGard's Infinity Application Framework (IAF), a service-oriented architecture (SOA) development framework, its business process management (BPM) platform and a virtualized, software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure to form a new software development and on-demand delivery environment.

 

Bamboo® Solutions, the leading provider of technologies that enhance Microsoft® SharePoint®, announced today that it has launched BambooPM™, a SaaS-based project management solution based upon Microsoft SharePoint. With BambooPM, project teams can collaborate and communicate more effectively with team members located around the globe, and without the requirement to install, configure or manage in-house servers. Available via a monthly subscription service, BambooPM allows project managers to lead project teams and collaborate on projects of any type for any industry.

The BambooPM software-as-a-service offering is based upon Bamboo’s popular Project Management Central™ software, launched in May of 2009 for project teams who have Microsoft SharePoint deployed in-house. Now offered as an on-demand service, BambooPM allows teams to become immediately productive through a self-provisioning user interface that lets users join projects from anywhere around the globe in just one minute. Teams benefit from seeing real-time project status of their entire project portfolio while enforcing uniform data control over all project data. Users can track, organize, maintain and report status, tasks, risks, resources and issues:

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Birst, a leading provider of on-demand solutions for business intelligence (BI) and analytics, has announced that Citrix Systems has gained real-time visibility into its entire supply chain using Birst. Citrix is leveraging this new insight to increase its on-time delivery rate, product reliability, and inventory turns, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and improved profitability.

“We tried every BI tool under the sun, but they didn’t work out for a variety of reasons,” said Fred Tiso, Group Director of Hardware Operations, Citrix Systems. “Then we found Birst and knew it had all the features we needed and was easy to get up and running, with low implementation and support costs.”

Appian, the global innovator in enterprise and on-demand business process management (BPM) technology, today announced that Appian Anywhere leads the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) BPM market both is features/functionality and in enterprise -- and SMB-level adoption.

As demand continued to rise through 2009 for the cost reduction and agility benefits of the Appian BPM Suite, more and more companies opted for the Appian Anywhere low-cost, low-risk “BPM in the Cloud” subscription delivery model.

According to the September 2009 “SaaS BPM: Silencing the Skeptics” report from Ovum/Datamonitor, “The ongoing recession has helped the cause of both SaaS and BPM. The SaaS model has endeared itself to customers that are wary of upfront capital investments, while BPM has helped businesses adapt quickly to the massive changes in the external environment... Datamonitor believes that this is the right time for BPM to take its SaaS strategy mainstream.”

Chainalytics LLC, a supply chain consulting firm focused on enabling fact-based supply chain decisions, announced today a partnership with Oco, Inc, a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of business analytics solutions, to provide supply chain performance, customer analysis and product profitability analytics.
Chainalytics will utilize Oco’s solutions to help clients analyze customer performance and better manage their product portfolios. Oco’s solution will incorporate data from across the extended supply chain.
The combination of Oco’s insightful analytics and Chainalytics’ deep supply chain expertise will provide a comprehensive cost-to-serve solution that identifies unprofitable products and customers, provide visibility to the root causes of variances, and ultimately increase profitability.

“In today’s economic environment, companies can’t afford to have unprofitable customers,” said Tim Brown, Principal, Supply Chain Strategy, Chainalytics. “Oco’s interactive scorecards, what-if dashboards, and drillable reports will help our clients identify opportunities to improve profitability and overall performance.

Chainalytics’ supply chain strategy services have always helped our clients mitigate risks, optimize assets, reduce costs, and incorporate sustainability. Now, clients can utilize our services to not only define, but also enable ongoing processes that support profitable growth.”

Pacific Timesheet has announced that it has significantly enhanced its support for California labor rules such as meal penalty rules and split shift premium rules.

The state of California requires that certain classified non-exempt or hourly employees are paid a meal penalty equal to one regular hour of pay if they miss a meal after more than five hours of continuous work. In addition, California requires employers to pay non-exempt or hourly employees a premium if the time that lapses between shifts is more than one hour.

Jim Dickerson, VP of Operation stated, "The challenge of complying with California labor laws is not just how they are defined today. Ongoing cases each year have made complying somewhat of a moving target. Pacific Timesheet's highly configurable support for complying with these laws has been an advantage our customers with operations in California have been looking for."

Jigsaw, a leader in data as a service (DaaS) today was honored with one of salesforce.com's AppExchange Best of '09 Awards. In receiving this customer choice award for sales intelligence, Jigsaw joined all the winners in receiving recognition for their ability to take customer success to new levels in satisfaction and application excellence.

Jigsaw received the Best of AppExchange award for Jigsaw Prospector, its unique sales intelligence solution that provides salespeople with the tools they need for effective and efficient sales prospecting and marketing efforts. With Jigsaw Prospector, customers have access to more than 19 million accurate and up-to-date business contacts within minutes.

"We are honored to be recognized by salesforce.com customers as the best sales intelligence application," said Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw. "At Jigsaw, we are committed to providing sales and marketing teams with the most cutting edge tools for facilitating business transactions and generating high-quality leads."