Newspaper Finds Windows-based Circulation Software Runs Quite Well on AS/400

Published: January 24, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Harris & Baseview, a provider of software for publishers, last week announced it has signed The Bangor Daily News as a new user of its CirculationPro software, which helps companies distribute publications to customers. The daily newspaper cited CirculationPro's capability to run on their OS/400 server as a primary reason--even though it wasn't using the "OS/400" part of the OS/400 server.

"We found (that) Circulation Pro offered us a visionary and quite flexible browser-based solution that was deployable across multiple platforms," said Mike Fern, director of circulation. "In our case, we were able to use our existing AS/400 legacy system, through the addition of a Blade Xeon server, to give us a Windows-based system that uses the ordinary Internet protocol for communication that is accessible from anywhere."

What's more, other signs of the "legacy" of the previous OS/400-based circulation software are diminishing. Fern says the newspaper has virtually eliminated its use of green-bar paper and custom-printed forms. "The software seems to run very well on our IBM Windows 2003 server," Fern says. That doesn't sound too surprising, considering OS/400 servers have proven themselves to be very reliable Windows guardians.