CAF gets self-service HR

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has signed a five-year contract with NorthgateArinso to implement its Web-enabled HR and payroll system, states Employee Benefits.

The system's self-service functionality will enable employees to manage some of their own affairs, such as booking holidays and reporting sickness.

Managers are also encouraged to take responsibility for HR procedures in their own team, using the self-service elements to access information instantly and update the system with new information.

Groupon has released a Merchant Centre for Groupon Stores, its new self-service platform for businesses to set up virtual storefronts to promote and run their own deals, says Media Post

The implementation of the product indicates that this will compete with the likes of Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla and Google when it comes to attracting small business attention.

While there are no up-front fees, Groupon plans to take a 10% commission for non-promoted deals, and 30% for promoted deals - compared to its standard commission of at least 50%.

Jamcracker, a unified cloud services delivery and management company, and Eucalyptus Systems, makers of an open source private cloud platform, are joining up to provide self-service infrastructure clouds, writes Integration Developer News.

The Jamcracker-Eucalyptus partnership will integrate technologies that make it easier to centralise resource provisioning, creation, and management of private and hybrid clouds - both of which can also safely and reliably tap immense computing resources available in the public cloud, execs from both companies explained.

The integration of both platforms enables organisations to procure through Jamcracker all the resources they need to implement scalable infrastructure-as-a service-style private and hybrid clouds using the Eucalyptus platform, they added.