In today’s Bulldog wrapup:

  • An autonomous car goes cross-countr
  • Red Hat bolsters JBoss with more big data
  • Windsor Circle unveils new product
  • SciQuest forms a new partnership for transportation services
  • ChannelAdvisor hands out awards at its annual showcase

The details:

  • Autonomous car completes 3,400-mile US road trip

An autonomous car’s recent 3,400-mile U.S. road trip proves there’s at least one thing computers do better than humans: Follow the speed limit.

Auto supplier Delphi Corp. fitted an Audi Q5 with radar, cameras and laser sensors to navigate the 15-state journey from San Francisco to New York, mostly traveling on highways. The car drove itself 99 percent of the time, Delphi said Thursday.

Along the way, the autonomous Audi never drove above the speed limit, even when everyone else did. As a result, other drivers subjected the car — and its human occupants — to “a few hateful gestures,” said Jeff Owens, Delphi’s chief technology officer Jeff Owens.

The person sitting in the car’s driver seat intervened once when traffic was weaving around in a construction zone, and again when the car didn’t want to move into a busy left lane to avoid police stopped on the right shoulder. The car also got a little skittish when it was next to semi-trailer trucks, edging over to avoid them. But for the most part, it easily navigated bridges, traffic circles and open highways, even in heavy rain, Owens said.

  • Red Hat boosts JBoss offerings

Raleigh-based Red Hat is adding new releases that it says will help “enterprises get even more out of their big data solutions to make better and faster business decisions. Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6.1 and Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 6.4, … address specific challenges related to integrating big data environments for faster and more accurate application data feeds.”

To help companies organize and capitalize on big data, making it “actionable,” Red Hat is introducing:

“JBoss Data Virtualization is a data integration and services solution designed to unify multiple data sources to provide the right data, in the right form, at the right time, to applications and users. Building on its ability to integrate popular data sources such as Hadoop with relational and other data types, JBoss Data Virtualization 6.1 expands support of JBoss Data Grid as a data source with the ability to perform writes in addition to reads as well as provide an embedded cache in addition to the remote cache capability previously available. The update also expands the range of integrated and supported data services to include Cloudera Impala, Apache Solr, and MariaDB, and introduces various enhancements to development and deployment productivity capabilities.

“JBoss Data Grid, Red Hat’s high-performance in-memory data store, is now fully supported with the bi-directional read/write integration in the JBoss Data Virtualization 6.1 release. The enhancements allow the integration service to take advantage of library mode in JBoss Data Grid, enabling use either as an embedded cache or as a remote cache to bring real-time data closer for high performance, real-time data integration.”

  • Windsor Circle showcases at SEVC

Windsor Circle showcased advances in its customer retention marketing software at the Southeast Venture Conference in Charlotte earlier this week.

“The Advanced Segment Builder enables retailers to build sophisticated customer segments leveraging a wide range of data sets and parameters. The feature simplifies the creation of customer segments, using profile data, purchase history, product attributes, coupon use, scoring models, and more. Using Windsor Circle’s intuitive interface, retailers can then export the segment into their email marketing software for more targeted campaigns,” the company says.

  • ChannelAdvisor awards innovative customers

Ecommerce services provider ChannelAdvisor, which is based in Morrisvlle, handed out a host of awards this week in Las Vegas at its annual Catalyst show in Las Vegas.

Winners:

  • Channel Explorer Award: Seismic Audio, a pro audio equipment retailer
  • GMV Trailblazer Award: AmaBay, an agency that represents Wisconsin Harley-Davidson
  • Savvy Retailer Award: Street Moda, a high-end apparel and footwear retailer
  • Community Contributor: Lynne Auletta, Sports Agency International, an auto parts retailer

​Notes ChannelAdvisor: “The Channel Explorer Award is presented to a company that has done an exceptional job setting new goals, repositioning their brand and selling on new online channels. The GMV Trailblazer Award recognizes exceptional year-over-year growth in gross merchandise value (GMV). The Savvy Retailer Award acknowledges a customer that consistently demonstrates a high level of knowledge about the e-commerce space while sharing that knowledge with ChannelAdvisor and industry peers. The Community Contributor Award honors the individual who has most actively contributed consistent and valuable content to ChannelAdvisor’s Strategy & Support Center.”

  • SciQuest’s new partnership

Morrisvillle-based SciQuest, an eprocurement services firm, is partnering with MercuryGate, a transportation management system firm, to provide transportation management services.

”SciQuest and MercuryGate have very complementary offerings and we serve a common customer base,” said Jeremy Becker, Vice President – Business Development at SciQuest. “This partnership is designed to promote SciQuest’s Advanced Sourcing Optimizer to MercuryGate Customers in need of strategic transportation sourcing while promoting MercuryGate’s Transportation Management System to SciQuest Customers who are in need of execution systems.”