KEY VERTICALS FOR IT SPENDING ARE BANKING, GOVERNMENT, MANUFACTURING: Information technology spending by businesses in the United States will increase at a compounded annual rate of 4.9 percent through 2007 and will vary widely among sectors, according to International Data Corp.
Its most recent study of vertical industry buying found that manufacturing and financial industries will account “for almost half of the IT opportunity,” while the biggest increases will be felt in the government, discrete manufacturing and resource sectors.
The largest verticals for overall IT spending are discrete manufacturing, banking, government and services, where many players “need to replace legacy applications with packaged applications and Web-enabled business processes,” according to the Framingham, Mass.-based technology industry watchers.
FORMER EXACT CHAIRMAN LEAVES RETIREMENT TO JOIN RESELLER: Bruce Hollinger, the former chairman of manufacturing industry business management software developer Exact Software North America, has left retirement to become the chairman of Inspired Solutions, an Exact reseller in Atlanta.
Hollinger, who retired last August, joined Inspired at the same time as that company’s merger with two other Exact resellers, M2 Business Solutions Inc., of Raleigh, N.C., and Martin Software Associates, of Huntsville, Ala. Inspired said that the deals make it Exact’s largest partner in the Southeast.
Hollinger retired after more than 20 years with Exact Software North America and its predecessor, the former Macola Software, which was acquired by Exact’s European parent, Exact Holdings NV, in 2001. Hollinger founded Macola.
FENIMORE DEPARTING CPASOFTWARE: Eight months after his company was sold to Best Software, Mark Fenimore is leaving accounting firm management software developer CPASoftware.
In early May, Best appointed Ray Jimison, the former general manager of its BusinessWorks group, as vice president and general manager for CPASoftware, and head of its Accountants Network program. Fenimore, who had been CPASoftware’s president, is “ leaving to pursue other opportunities, but will remain at CPASoftware indefinitely to assist during Jimison’s transition,” Best said.
Jimison, who reports to Himanshu Palsule, general manager of Best’s Specialized Business Solutions unit, will oversee development, distribution and marketing of all CPASoftware products.
NEC TO BECOME WORLDWIDE XBRL PROVIDER: Technology giant NEC Corp. has launched an effort to implement XBRL technology for customers worldwide by developing an XBRL-based international trading system for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. in its home country of Japan.
NEC, a Fortune 500 company, said that it plans to “strengthen its system integration businesses worldwide, leveraging XBRL technology.” XBRL is a derivation of the extensible markup language, an Internet-industry language framework that allows for more rapid access to specific information in structured documents.
An accounting-industry-led consortium of businesses, which has been developing XBRL since 1998, has identified banking as a key industry to tap. NEC said that the worldwide banking industry’s movement toward enhanced financial report disclosure requirements could drive demand for its XBRL services.
At Mitsui, NEC said that it’s implementing a “global e-trade service” platform to “digitalize” all documents and business processes, including the issuing of letters of credit and bills of lading. “This system is based totally on XBRL, which means that our customers’ systems can do their trade-related activities much more easily, with more reliability, and cost-effectively,” said Atsushi Suzuki, an electronic commerce banking executive at Sumitomo Mitsui.
-- Compiled by John M. Covaleski
