The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market will see strong growth in 2013, experts predict. The increase in spending will represent a 24.5-percent increase from 2012, with revenue forecast to reach $462.3m in 2013, according to Gartner. The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market is forecast by the research group to grow 13.4 percent in 2012 to total $371.2m, compared to $110bn worldwide.

Accellos, a vendor of supply-chain execution software, has achieved compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, for the latest releases of AccellosOne Collect and AccellosOne EDI (electronic data interchange).

Oracle Corp. has introduced two applications for managing health and safety incidents, within version 9.1 of its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software suite.

Itelligence, a provider of SAP-based services for small and medium-sized businesses, has purchased the SAP consulting, license and maintenance operations of Software AG in the U.S. and Canada.

QAD Inc. has developed new demand-planning capabilities as an add-on to it its QAD Enterprise Applications suite.

aPriori, a vendor of software for product cost management, has released an update of its platform. The tool aids in cost control by providing design, engineering, sourcing and manufacturing professionals with knowledge and technology infrastructure, helping them to determine the cost of a part or complete product.

IFS has created a new software module to aid in export compliance in the aerospace and defense market.

RedPrairie Corp. has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding shares of common stock of JDA Software, at a price of $45 per share. The deal is valued at approximately $1.9bn, and will create a software company with combined revenues of more than $1bn.