News Briefs and Product Shorts

Elite Partners with Symbol for Electronic Signature Capture

OS/400 shops looking to integrate electronic signature capture into their document management systems may want to check out Elite Document Solutions, which recently formed an alliance with Symbol Technologies. Elite says OS/400 shops can eliminate the paper chase by replacing multi-part forms with a mobile document management system that uses a pressure-sensitive tablet to record signatures for point-of-sale or delivery transactions. As a part of the alliance with Symbol, images of the signatures can be captured into Elite's OS/400-based document management software, called eliteSUITE, where it can be archived or delivered via print, e-mail, or fax. Merchants who use point of sale systems backed up by OS/400 servers have a lot to gain with electronic signature capture, says Jack Hipp, Elite's iSeries analyst. "With this software, the merchant has the ability to produce a laser-printed hardcopy for the customer at the sales counter, and the flexibility to also distribute a copy of the transaction to the customer's accounting department via email or fax simultaneously," he says.

iSeries Delivers Online Tax Filing for Ohio Town

The citizens of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, are benefiting from a new iSeries application the city recently implemented, IBM announced last week. Software from HTE has enabled the city to offer online bill paying through its www.cityofcf.com Web site. So far, the city's 50,000 residents are able to enter income tax information and generate a City of Cuyahoga Falls Income Tax return for the April 15 deadline. Later this year, the HTE application, in conjunction with WebSphere software, will bring new options, including the ability to view and pay utility bills; apply, pay for, and view building permits; schedule inspections; purchase passes for its aquatic center; make reservations and enroll in classes at the city's recreational facilities; and reserve tee times at a local golf course. The city has been an OS/400 shop since the early 1990s, and is now running an eServer i5 550 running i5/OS and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, in addition to Tivoli Access Manager and WebSphere 5.02.

Railroad, Diesel Equipment Distributor Go Global

This week's installment of "Global Software News" takes us to the Great White North--and beyond! The first new customer is the Markham, Ontario, subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturing giant Kubota Canada, which distributes compact diesel tractors and construction equipment across Canada via three regional distribution centers and 150 dealerships.

Kubota Canada chose three Global products, including Spreadsheet Server and Budget Manager for BPCS, and the Executive DASH, which enables users to build dashboard type views of business data in its SSA Global ERP application. "The seamless integration of the Excel-based tools makes the learning curve easier than other proprietary reporting and analysis applications," says Costa Nicolaidis, Kubota Canada's controller. "We are very pleased with this tool set." The other new customer of the Raleigh, North Carolina, software company is the Alaska Railroad, which runs 1,625 freight cars, 42 passenger cars, and about 60 locomotives on 611 miles of track from Fairbanks to the Gulf of Alaska, and is now using Global's Spreadsheet Server for Infinium to access financial data in its SSA Global ERP application. "This product is great and saves us a tremendous amount of time when we complete our financial reporting," says Pamela Means, the railroad's director of information services.

NetIQ Partners with Realtech for SAP Management App

NetIQ and German software developer Realtech have teamed up to offer a new management utility for SAP ERP systems. Called theGuard! Module for SAP, the new software plugs into NetIQ's AppManager Suite and enables AppManager users to view and manage SAP availability, performance, error detection, and service levels from the same Windows-based management console they use to manage other systems and applications. The new plug-in supports SAP implementations running on a variety of platforms, including OS/400.

Lymeware Delivers Telecom-Grade EDI for Linux on Power

Lymeware, an Old Lyme, Connecticut, developer of secure messaging solutions for the telecommunications industry, announced last week that its IAgent3 Interactive Agent now supports Linux across IBM's eServer line, including iSeries. The Lymeware IAgent3 product implements secure EDI across the Internet using SSL and TLS standards, and conforms to Telecommunications Industry Forum (TCIF), a standard that enables Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLECs) to perform wholesale ordering and pre-ordering of services and network elements from the big guys, or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs). IBM and its eServer Application Advantage for Linux, or Chiphopper, program, were instrumental in helping Lymeware to port its software to the eServer, says Michael Kobar, chief technology officer for Lymeware. IAgent3 runs on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Symbio Launches Boot Appliance for Diskless Thin Clients

Symbio Technologies says customers implementing diskless thin client workstations can save a bundle with its new Symbiont Boot Appliance (SBA), which it unveiled last week. When hooked up to certified thin clients (such as Symbio's Linux-based line of Network Terminals), the SBA handles the initial start-up of the thin client and directs it to the appropriate application server, which could be an iSeries, zSeries, Unix, Linux, or Windows server. Symbio supports a range of emulations, including 5250, 3270, Citrix, Microsoft RDP, and X-Windows. The SBA is available in 10- and 20-seat table top models, and various rack-mounted models that support 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 100, 150, and 200 users. "As the famous TV chef Emeril Lagasse might say, we have clearly 'kicked it up a notch'," says Gideon Romm, co-founder and CTO of Symbio Technologies, which is based in New Rochelle, New York.