Cloud-based customer experience company RightNow, a member of the Reddix Group’s CIO-SP3 team, has been acquired by Oracle Corporation for $1.5 billion.

From RightNow’s press release:

“The Board of Directors of RightNow Technologies has unanimously approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close by late 2011 or early 2012, subject to RightNow stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

‘Oracle is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud Solutions including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud,’ said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development. ‘RightNow’s leading customer service cloud is a very important addition to Oracle’s Public Cloud.’

‘RightNow’s products add leading customer experience capabilities that help empower companies to interact with and provide a consistent experience to customers across channels,’ said Greg Gianforte, CEO and founder, RightNow. ‘We look forward to combining our complementary capabilities along with maintaining and expanding our presence in Bozeman, Montana in order to better service our customers.’”

Reddix Group CIO-SP3 contract team member Bartron recently received a Maryland Incubator Company of the Year Award from the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation.

On June 2, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and the Maryland Technology Development Corp. announced the winners at the Center Club in Baltimore, Maryland. The winning companies were selected based on the organization’s goals and success in achieving its objectives.

Judges considered factors such as technology and product development; intellectual property; increase in employee numbers; growth in revenue or earnings; engagement of significant customers and strategic partners; receipt of awards or grants; attraction of outside investors; innovation; self-sufficiency; impact on the region and usage of the incubator’s services.

Unatek Inc., an information technology consulting firm, was named Homeland Security Company of the Year. The firm has established itself as a market leader in cyber security solutions. Bartron Medical Imaging Inc., a bio-technology medical device manufacturer, was named “Technology Transfer Company of the Year.” The company focuses on software development, research and development using a technology licensed from NASA Goddard’s Space Flight Center.

Whitehouse.gov, built with advisory services from team member Acquia, was recently recognized by Information Week magazine as one of the 12 best government Web sites.

Acquia, selected to help create the White House Web site as a sole-source contractor, provided essential expertise in the open source Drupal content management system.

According to Information Week, the development team “added easy, clear navigational capabilities and links to numerous social media outlets, and puts the top White House priorities front and center where nobody can miss them.”

Read the Information Week citation >>

Kaiser Permanente recently agreed to donate its CMT medical terminology system to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Team member CollabNet is playing a primary role in the integration of this system.

The system isn’t software, but rather an XML data standard. It’s being integrated into HHS IT systems using the TeamForge platform—the same product upon which DISA’s Forge.mil development environment is based.

Kaiser operates the world’s largest private-sector electronic health records system, and uses CMT as an interoperable source for clinical definitions, billing codes and language.

Read an article about the project >>

Team member Bartron Medical Imaging recently had its MED-SEG medical imaging system cleared for use by the FDA. The system was created using technology developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Research Center. It was originally intended to analyze Earth-imaging data from NASA’s Landsat and Terra spacecraft.

Bartron took the technology and adapted it to medical imaging. “I never thought it would be used for medical imaging,” said its inventor, Dr. James C. Tilton. “The cell features stood out real clearly and this made me realize that Barton was onto to something.”

MED-SEG’s most immediate application is improving mammography as a diagnostic tool for detecting breast cancer.

Read the full NASA feature >>

“Federal agencies could soon be able to use the same high-tech tools for collaboration and information sharing that have worked for the military, a senior General Services Administration official said today.

David McClure, GSA associate administrator, said his organization wants to use the Defense Information Systems Agency’s forge.mil project governmentwide. The secured computing environment built for cooperative software development, project management and information sharing is currently available only to the military.

‘It’s time to create a forge.gov,’ McClure said. Basic services ‘would be available to federal agencies for free. It would provide no-cost development and code repository support for open-source applications.’”

Read the whole article >>

“CollabNet®, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (Agile ALM) in the Cloud, today introduced CollabNet Subversion Edge, an industry-first distribution that combines Subversion®, Apache, and ViewVC with a powerful, Web-based management interface. The graphical user interface greatly simplifies installation, administration, use, and governance of the entire software stack. A built-in update mechanism notifies users when new software components are available and allows users to install the updates directly from the Web-based UI.

CollabNet Subversion Edge provides the fastest and easiest way to deploy a new Subversion server and greatly reduces ongoing administration time, saving tens of thousands of dollars per year. The intuitive graphical user interface eliminates administration errors, enables easy and secure management of employee and external partner development teams, and provides critical operational analytics.

CollabNet Subversion Edge is open source software that is licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv.3), an approved open source license. Free downloads of the beta version are available immediately at www.collab.net/svnedge. General availability is expected later this summer.”

Read the whole release >>

“CollabNet® announced today a collaboration with HP that will provide customers with an end-to-end Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution that supports software application development from requirements definition, through development and testing, to release.

The solution enables business analysts, project managers, developers, and quality assurance teams to collaborate in defining, developing, and testing applications in a distributed environment while working with their choice of tools. At the heart of the solution is the CollabNet TeamForge™ platform’s technical integration with HP Quality Center. The integration provides bi-directional synchronization of requirements, epics, user stories, defects, tests, and more. The CollabNet TeamForge platform will be offered via referral or co-sell in the HP MarketPlace Referral Program. Certified integration software is available as a free open-source download at www.collab.net/HP.

The integration with the CollabNet TeamForge platform includes HP Quality Center’s Requirements, Defects, and Test Management Modules. The CollabNet TeamForge Connector Framework provides real-time synchronization between the products, associating requirements, defects, tasks, and other development artifacts directly with source code.”

Read the whole release >>

“Today Acquia, the enterprise guide to social publishing, announced it now offers complete Drupal support and hosting for OpenScholar, a tool developed by The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. The new pre-packaged Drupal distribution is designed to speed the creation, use and management of personal academic and research websites.

‘As Drupal becomes a go-to platform for social websites, the need for distributions that expedite site design and development is at an all-time high,’ said Tom Erickson, Acquia CEO. ‘For Drupal users in higher education and academia, OpenScholar is a fast and simple way to launch great personal research sites with minimal effort. OpenScholar and other distributions such as OpenPublish have allowed us to introduce Drupal to a host of new users and markets and we look forward to expanding that reach even further.’

Created by The Institute for Quantitative Social Science, OpenScholar allows academics to create dynamic and customizable websites in a matter of seconds. By combining Acquia’s administration, hosting and search services, OpenScholar sites are now fully supported from design stage through maintenance and expansion.”

Read the whole release >>

“Prometheus Research today released the latest version of HTSQL, software that simplifies web access to data for both businesses and developers, by providing support for the most popular databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and SQLite.

The new HTSQL release, which already supports PostgreSQL and Oracle Database, includes a refactoring of the entire product to enhance performance and provide a platform for expanding features in future releases.

‘This release makes the power and simplicity of HTSQL available to a much wider audience,’ said Dr. Leon Rozenblit, Prometheus Research founder and president. ‘As of today, HTSQL is the easiest way to access three-quarters of the world’s databases, including the most widely used commercial and open source databases.’”

Read the whole release >>