Tech Briefs

INTUIT'S 2Q REVENUES UP 15 PERCENT: Intuit Inc. announced that its second-quarter revenues for the 2006 fiscal year had increased 15 percent over last year's numbers, to $742.7 million.The company said that growth was driven by strong sales of QuickBooks software and add-on solutions and TurboTax products and services. Revenue growth also benefited from changes in the TurboTax offering and pricing, which shifted approximately $35 million of revenue into the second quarter that in prior years would have been recognized in the third quarter. Without the timing shift, Intuit estimated that revenue would have increased 9 percent.

Other second-quarter highlights, compared to the year-ago quarter, included:

* Net income of $184.9 million, up 26 percent;

* QB-related revenue of $259 million, up 16 percent;

* Consumer Tax revenue of $190.3 million, up 35 percent (due to changes in TurboTax offerings, though discounting those changes, revenue would still have increased 10 percent); and,

* Intuit-Branded Small Business revenue of $69.6 million, up 15 percent.

AVANQUEST RELEASES SMALL BUSINESS PRO: Avanquest Software has released the latest version of its small business finance and customer relationship management suite, Small Business Pro. The software is designed to fill the needs of businesses with one to 25 employees that are looking for help managing a wide range of business tasks. The product was designed to remain easy to use and affordable.

Small Business Pro operates on a database capable of simplifying a range of key business tasks, including a general ledger feature, as well as other tools, such as customer relationship management, financial reporting, sales forecasting, business plan creation and inventory management.

Small Business Pro also incorporates two of Avanquest's small business marketing applications, Design and Print Business Edition and Web Easy Professional 6. The programs allow small businesses to design and print marketing materials such as brochures, newsletters and business cards, and to create customized Web sites. The software is priced at $89, and Avanquest is offering a free 30-day trial at www.avanquestusa.com.

MOVARIS JOINS XBRL CONSORTIUM: Risk management and compliance software provider Movaris has joined XBRL International, the nonprofit consortium of roughly 350 companies working on developing and supporting the Extensible Business Reporting Language. As a consortium member, Movaris will lend technical development assistance, while working to integrate its flagship OneClose product to XBRL.

XBRL is a technology that tags financial information through disparate applications and carries it through the business reporting chain. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission expanded its voluntary program for receiving financial information using XBRL. As part of that initiative, the SEC also issued a request for information from the software industry in October, to assist the SEC staff in identifying ways to receive, store, view and analyze interactive financial data.

E&Y WARNS CLIENTS AFTER LAPTOP THEFT: Big Four firm Ernst & Young warned some San Francisco-area clients that it had lost some sensitive data, including Social Security numbers, which could be possibly be used by identity thieves. Ernst & Young warned clients that their Social Security numbers were on a laptop stolen from an employee's locked car. The firm has declined to say how many clients might have been affected. A statement from the firm did say that the laptop was password protected, though the files were not encrypted, and that the theft appeared to have been random. There is no indication that the lost information has been used for fraud, according to Ernst & Young, which has offered the affected people free credit monitoring and other services to help them watch out for such fraud.

CARTESIS NAMES CFO: Cartesis, a high-volume provider of business performance management software, said that Bruno Combe has joined the company as chief financial officer. Combe will lead the finance, legal, administration and information services functions at Cartesis. Previously, Combe was executive vice president at Ingenico, a provider of secure transaction solutions for the banking and retail industries.

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