News Briefs and Product Shorts

Midrange Resources Selling Native OS/400 Replication Software That's Affordable

One of the great things about going to COMMON is the chance to meet new vendors and see what kind of innovative new products they have for the iSeries. One of the new vendors at last week's show was Midrange Resources, a small Tulsa, Oklahoma, IBM advanced business partner that has a high availability solution, made up of two products, called Simple Data Replicator (SDR) and Simple Object Replicator (SOR). Released less than a year ago, these products use OS/400 journaling to create mirrored copies of data and objects in a separate library on the same, or a second, iSeries server. When used on a stand-alone system in conjunction with existing backup software, it can help eliminate downtime due to backup requirements, while SDR and SOR running on two iSeries can provide an affordable high availability system, the company says. Both products work with OS/400 V5R1 and higher. Pricing starts at around $5,000 for SDR, which the company says will get support for IFS later this year. For more information on these products and trial downloads, go to www.sdr400.com or www.sor400.com.

Metafile Gets SaaS(y), Rolls Out Hosted Content Management Service

Recognizing that it can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor for a midsized OS/400 shop to implement its own content management and imaging system, Metafile Information Systems last week unveiled at COMMON a new program to access enterprise content management capabilities as a service. The new program, which the Rochester, Minnesota, company dubbed Software as a Service (SaaS), combines a hosted implementation of the MetaViewer server, which captures the print stream from iSeries (and other hosts) and then full-text indexes it, and its MetaViewer client software. The company that Metafile has partnered with to host the MetaViewer server software for its customers is Berbee, which is headquartered in nearby Madison, Wisconsin, and also has offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota. With the Metafile SasS offering, OS/400 shops can trade the risks and implementation timeline associated with installing content management software for a quick, hosted implementation and fixed monthly payments.

TriAWorks Partners with NetManage for OS/400 Single Sign-On

NetManage and TriAWorks last week announced the formation of a new partnership to help iSeries shops enable single sign-on (SSO) and reduce the frequency of forgotten passwords and password resets. The partnership builds on NetManage's recent announcement that upcoming releases of its host access products, RUMBA 7.4 and OnWeb 7.2, will support Kerberos, which is a key authentication ingredient for enabling SSO on iSeries, along with IBM's Enterprise Identity Mapping (EIM) technology. TriAWorks develops a software product called TriAWorks Identity Manager for Single Sign-On (TIM SSO) that simplifies the process of creating associations within the EIM. The companies say they have entered into a "marketing partnership" to enable RUMBA and OnWeb users to implement SSO. Managing access to back-end servers, without compromising network security, is more important than ever before, says Jack McAfee, president of TriAWorks. "TriAWorks solutions…allow NetManage's enterprise customers to eliminate the need for multiple passwords to access different iSeries, while still maintaining a high-level of security and simplifying the end-user experience," he says.

SaveMart Gets Smart with the ShowCase Analytical Suite

How does an independent chain of supermarkets in California remain competitive against supply chain giants like Albertson's, Kroger, and Safeway? If you're Modesto-based Save Mart Supermarkets, you use powerful multidimensional analytical software running on an iSeries server to provide an edge. Last week, business intelligence software maker SPSS announced that SaveMart has grown to rely on its ShowCase Suite of OS/400-based analytical software to help make decisions about how to run various aspects of its $2-billion-a-year, 120-store operation. What began as a tool used to help with a Y2K remediation project has turned into a key differentiator for SaveMart, which has used ShowCase in nearly every facet of its operations--including finance, operations, accounting, and merchandising--according to Sandy Strube, Save Mart financial analysis manager. ShowCase has helped SaveMart assess each store's performance and make decisions about inventory, pricing, and promotional activities that will benefit each store. "With us facing tough competition from national supermarket chains, it's critical that we immediately understand how each store's categories are being affected by market changes," Strube says. "SPSS enables us to make quick, informed decisions and plays a large part in keeping Save Mart ahead of our competition."

NetIQ's iSeries Security Tools Gain ServerProven Status

OS/400 shops, like the state of Illinois, can now get hardware discounts and other incentives when they run NetIQ's security software on new iSeries servers, because NetIQ's security software is now ServerProven. NetIQ, the Silicon Valley outfit that bought PentaSafe Security Technologies a couple of years ago, used last week's COMMON conference in Chicago as a forum to announce its inclusion in IBM's ServerProven program, and to showcase how one of its customers, the state of Illinois, is benefiting from NetIQ's OS/400 security software to implement strong access controls at both the network and object-security levels. "In our iSeries environment, it is crucial to be able to quickly identify, assess, and report on security vulnerabilities in minutes, not days," says Scott Farley, information systems analyst for the state of Illinois. "NetIQ enables me to maintain business continuity across all of our iSeries servers, at all times."

GeneXus, looksoftware Latest to Jump Aboard IBM's Developer Roadmap

Since IBM opened its iSeries Developer Roadmap to third-party ISVs earlier this year, there's been quite a rush to join. Last week at the COMMON show in Chicago, two more ISVs, looksoftware and GeneXus USA, announced their acceptance by IBM onto the Roadmap. Australia-based looksoftware makes GUI development and integration tools, called newlook and centric, that enable OS/400 screens and data to be exposed as Web services. GeneXus USA markets and sells a fourth-generation language (4GL) called GeneXus that's developed in Uruguay by ARTech, and which can generate both Java and .NET code.