REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 15, 2013 — The Texas Department of Information Resources is moving to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 as part of a statewide IT modernization strategy. Office 365, an always-up-to-date cloud productivity service, will streamline and improve the state’s communication and collaboration capabilities for more than 100,000 employees, making it the largest statewide deployment of email and collaboration services in the U.S. Office 365 has already been deployed across multiple state agencies, including the Health and Human Services System, Department of Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Information Resources, and Department of Insurance, with the Department of Criminal Justice and Alcoholic Beverage Commission coming on board soon. The move to Office 365 offers the state significant savings in IT spending because of greater efficiencies and increased capacity.

“No other solution provides the rich capabilities of Office 365, including webconferencing, real-time collaboration, and document and calendar sharing,” said Todd Kimbriel, director of E-Government for the Texas Department of Information Resources. “Office 365 will increase efficiency and help our agencies better serve the needs of citizens without compromising on security or privacy.”

Compliance was an important factor in the state’s selection of Office 365. Several agencies, including Texas’ Department of Criminal Justice, Alcoholic Beverage Commission, Department of Insurance, and Health and Human Services System, require access to data that is subject to complex security and privacy regulations.

Texas Department of Information Resources and Microsoft Corp. worked together to support the state’s requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS), in order to maintain the state’s compliance posture and high standards for security and privacy. Microsoft has made a contractual commitment to the Texas Department of Information Resources by signing the CJIS Addendum in addition to a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. As a result of this partnership, jurisdictions at all levels within the State of Texas, including cities and counties, will be able to take advantage of Office 365.

“Microsoft has been a long-standing strategic partner with a commitment to understanding and addressing the unique requirements law enforcement and health care practitioners must meet,” said Karen Robinson, Department of Information Resources executive director and State of Texas chief information officer. “The enterprise-class capabilities of Office 365 and Microsoft’s proven track record gave us the confidence we needed to move to the cloud.”

“We’ve worked hard to provide security and privacy solutions the State of Texas can trust,” said Michael Donlan, vice president for Microsoft’s State and Local Government business. “The familiarity of Office backed by deep investments in cloud security, privacy and compliance play an important role in how Microsoft is enabling city, state and federal agencies to move to the cloud.”

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

The ultimate database test data generation tool for PostgreSQL is better than ever.

Version 5 of Datanamic Data Generator for PostgreSQL has been redesigned. The tool has a complete new user interface. The new version generates test data faster and generates better sample data, has a new "test run" option and has new generator settings such as the "synchronized selection" option for generators which get data from external sources. Test data generation for MS SQL Server 2012 and SQLite (version 3) databases is supported now also.

This is not all. There is more. A complete list of changes can be found at on our website at:

Datanamic Data Generator for PostgreSQL product page.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA)

• Full-year revenue increased 7.1 percent to a record $4.28 billion
• Quarterly revenue decreased 8.1 percent sequentially to $1.11 billion; year on year, revenue was up 16.1 percent
• Quarterly GAAP diluted EPS of $0.28, off from $0.33 in Q3; non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.35, off from $0.39 in Q3
• Quarterly GAAP gross margin of 52.9 percent; non-GAAP gross margin of 53.2 percent

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue for fiscal 2013 ended Jan. 27, 2013, of a record $4.28 billion, up 7.1 percent from $4.00 billion in fiscal 2012.

SQL Maestro Group announces the release of AnySQL Maestro 13.2, a powerful tool for managing any database engine accessible via ODBC driver or OLE DB provider (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Access, etc).

The new version is immediately available at
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/anysql/maestro/.

AnySQL Maestro comes in both Freeware and Professional editions.

Top 10 new features:

1. The software has been optimized to work with some popular DBMS including PostgreSQL.
2. Updated Connection String Reference.
3. Enhanced Get SQL Dump wizard.
4. New Start Page with quick access to recently connected databases and latest company news.
5. Improved SQL Editor.
6. Highlighted key and required columns and multi-column lookup editors in the data grids.
7. Data import from CSV files containing multi-line strings.
8. Data Export: support for custom separators.
9. Colored profiles in Database Explorer.
10. New modern progress windows.

There are also some other useful things. Full press release is available at the SQL Maestro Group website.

R EDMOND , Wash. — Feb . 13 , 2013 — Today the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) and Microsoft Corp. announced the successful implementation of the Offender-360 project, a cloud-based criminal justice information system built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The solution directly supports legislation signed by Gov. Pat Quinn that aims to improve Illinois public safety and criminal justice for the future.

“This cutting-edge technology will give Illinois one of the most advanced criminal justice information systems in the country,” Quinn said. “It will save Illinois’ taxpayers millions of dollars while increasing public safety throughout the state.”

In 2010, the state evaluated its technology landscape for managing its 49,000 inmates and 28,000 parolees with the goal of transforming the Illinois DOC by improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring unwavering corrections operations. As a result of the evaluation, Illinois charted a course toward replacing a large 1980s mainframe system and 41 disparate offender management applications that had become outdated and costly to use and maintain.

After evaluating 20 possible solutions — including an option that would have cost taxpayers upward of $100 million — Illinois DOC selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage its statewide criminal justice population as a modern case management solution that will transform DOC business and extend the mission of citizen safety. Illinois DOC is undergoing a phased rollout, anticipating 5,500 users of Offender-360 by the summer of 2013. The solution centralizes all information and intelligence on offenders to help staff make more effective and informed decisions regarding placement, rehabilitation and release.

“The open architecture in Microsoft Dynamics lets us create a solution that enables analysis to more effectively serve our offender population,” said Steven Matthews, chief information officer, Illinois DOC. “Because of budget constraints and a shortfall of infrastructure and personnel resources to support this enterprise-level application, we launched the state’s first cloud initiative. This allows us to cut costs while continuing to achieve the mission with a security-enhanced solution.”

With guidance from Tribridge, 2012 Microsoft Dynamics State and Local Government Partner of the Year, the Illinois DOC was able to configure, develop and deploy the robust and flexible architecture of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online through trained and certified union members, significantly reducing the Offender-360 solution cost and deployment timeframe. The use of union workers helped Illinois avoid hiring contractors, gave union employees advancement opportunities and drove revenue back to the state by using an Illinois-based union workforce.

“Illinois is leading the nation in adopting a statewide, cloud-based solution that will effectively manage the offender population and ultimately better protect its citizens,” said Amir Capriles, general manager, U.S. Public Sector Dynamics at Microsoft. “Illinois is a leader among its peers, demonstrating that criminal justice programs across the country can be transformed by modernizing legacy systems with cloud-based solutions while supporting necessary security, business processes and legislation.”

Faced with fiscal challenges and resource constraints, federal agencies, state governments, localities and education institutions throughout the U.S. are looking for alternatives to high-cost legacy systems. The Illinois DOC cited the Microsoft Dynamics CRM offering as an application platform that can support modernization initiatives and still achieve impactful, low-cost results.

Adopting a next-generation enterprise-ready application platform is becoming increasingly common among criminal justice agencies seeking to transform and modernize their operations. The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania is following the example of Illinois DOC with a similar modernization approach on behalf of that state’s 67 counties, while INTERPOL Washington is more effectively investigating fugitives, financial fraud, drug violations, terrorism and violent crimes.

More information about Illinois DOC can be found at http://www.illinois.gov/idoc. More information on Microsoft corrections solutions is available at: http://microsoft.com/corrections.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.