SOA, What's The Big Deal?
by Alex Woodie

No disrespect to cavemen, but unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, there's no way you could have missed the IT industry's intensifying infatuation with SOA, or service oriented architecture. Like new and revolutionary computing architectures that came before it, SOA is the wonder tonic that promises to cure IT's troubles, once and for all. Or at least that's what the vendors say. The problem is, with everybody and his grandmother now riding the SOA bandwagon, the wagon is losing its identity and direction. READ MORE >

Asigra Debuts Remote, Agent-Less Backup for iSeries
by Alex Woodie

Asigra this month unveiled a new release of its remote disk-to-disk (D2D) backup solution that offers improved support for the iSeries server. With Televaulting version 6.2, Asigra hopes to persuade multi-site iSeries shops to drop the tape juggling act and make the switch to a network-based backup solution that it claims simplifies and speeds the backup process.READ MORE >

Lawson Updates ERP, Unveils SaaS Plans at User Conference
by Alex Woodie

Lawson Software announced a new release of its M3 (formerly Movex) ERP application suite that addresses performance concerns last week at its annual user conference, held in San Diego. The software giant also outlined its plans for the ERP hosting and software as a service (SaaS) market, added more OEM'ed WebSphere components from IBM into its technology stack, unveiled a new version of Lawson Business Intelligence, and expanded its network of partners, among other announcements.READ MORE >

Attachmate Moves SOA Strategy Forward with Veratream 6.5
by Alex Woodie

As is the case in all mergers and acquisitions, the union of Attachmate and WRQ last year resulted in some product overlap. As a result, Attachmate had to make some tough decisions regarding its strategic product for composite application development and service oriented architectures (SOAs). Last month it started shipping Verastream Host Integrator version 6.5, a new release of the WRQ product that's intended to help bridge the gap for users of Attachmate's old Synapta product.READ MORE >