Innovation Advisors – BusinessWeek.com

Oracle: Consolidation Catalyst?
Also on the block could be Teradata, a maker of data warehouse systems that is being spun off by parent NCR Corp. (NCR). And OutlookSoft, a Stamford (Conn.) maker of software for planning budgets and forecasting financial results that's backed by funding from General Electric (GE), Merrill Lynch (MER), and Greylock Partners, is "ripe for acquisition," says Brian Farrar, a managing director at Innovation Advisors, a Chicago investment bank that advises technology companies on mergers and acquisitions.
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NEC – Red Herring

Green Card Required
NEC’s display unit worked with suppliers, wrote new procurement specifications, and began redesigning all its products. One big problem, as it is for many electronics makers, was solder, the metal glue that holds the bits of a circuit board and other parts together. Lead solder is widely used, and RoHS banned lead in many applications. So NEC switched to a tin and silver alloy, and then had to tweak different bits to bring everything back to original performance levels.
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GlobalSpec – Sales and Marketing Management

Done Deal – Blogs Can Provide Testimonials
Earlier this year, sales executives at GlobalSpec Inc., in Troy, N.Y., had their eye on a "major fortune 500 software company" but weren't sure how to close the deal. One element on their side was that GlobalSpec wasn't new to the client—they'd worked with them before. But GlobalSpec, a search engine for engineers that offers online marketing and catalogs to companies, wanted to increase their sales with this client. How to prove that GlobalSpec's tools and services would be used by that client's end users remained elusive to Brian Carter, GlobalSpec's vice president of sales and planning, until he turned to what in hindsight seemed to be obvious—blogs.
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CompTIA – RFID Product News

Growing Pains – A discussion on the state of RFID
According to research results from Frost & Sullivan, the total North American RFID market for manufacturing and logistics is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20% over the next six years. Dave Sommer, Vice President, Electronic Commerce for CompTIA, shares his take on these results, the difficulties it may present, and how CompTIA will be involved with this growth.
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Junction Solutions – Manufacturing Business Technology

Enhanced customer service, flexibility, accuracy put dental supplier on growth curve
The company chose Junction Solutions' JunctionMCRT, a multi-channel ERP system built on a Microsoft Dynamics AX platform that includes demand planning, job scheduling, shop-floor management, and product configuration. Distribution features include warehouse management, order handling, order promising, and lot-number tracking.
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