Heather Havenstein

NASA is testing an application that uses Web services and enterprise information integration (EII) technology to aggregate data from disparate sources in order to diagnose and resolve problems detected on the International Space Station.

Merrill Lynch & Co. has sold a mainframe Web services tool set that processes 1.5 million transactions per day to SOA Software Inc., a service-oriented architecture management and governance vendor. SOA Software, which announced the deal last month, has rebranded the products and plans to market them as tools that allow mainframe applications to expose and consume Web services.

The spread of Web services has forced IT managers to seek out new tools to ease the cumbersome process of managing policies like security and performance. A pair of vendors this week will be unveiling tools that promise to automate the process of managing Web services.

Harrah's Entertainment Inc. uses SAS 9 analytical tools with proprietary algorithms running on a Teradata data warehouse. The system links information gathered about customer spending from its Total Rewards customer loyalty program to campaign management and revenue management programs.The company uses analytics to segment customers based on spending behaviour and offer deals based on predictions for profitable future spending.

Companies are manoeuvering more and more to use embedded business intelligence to help frontline workers make decisions that affect operations. But embedding BI data into the processes for these users often involves more cultural challenges than technical issues, said users during a panel discussion at Computerworld's Business Intelligence Perspectives conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

To keep up with competitors, enterprises increasingly are demanding operational business intelligence -- analytics embedded into processes to handle exceptions and make real-time decisions.

IT shops are increasingly embracing new business intelligence tools that aim to forge a balance between strident user demands for spreadsheets and corporate requirements that financial data be consistent and accurate.

IBM has acquired DataPower Technology Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that markets appliances to boost the security and performance of message traffic flowing through service-oriented architectures.