IBM Officially Announces i/OS 7.1
by Alex Woodie

After months of speculation, IBM today formally made its announcement for the version 7.1 release of i/OS, which will become available Friday, April 23. The new release brings lots of goodies in a variety of areas, including enhancements to the PowerHA high availability software, native support for storing XML and column level encryption in DB2/400, and the new Open Access capability that will provide a new route for modernizing user interfaces for RPG applications. READ MORE >

Zend Server for i/OS Now Available
by Alex Woodie

Zend Technologies yesterday announced the general availability of Zend Server 5.0 for i/OS, bringing the most complete stack yet of PHP software to the IBM midrange platform. With Zend Server running under i/OS, customers gain more streamlined implementation and deployments, application monitoring and optimization, error detection, security, and compliance. Two editions of Zend Server are available for i/OS, and Zend and IBM will begin phasing out older PHP stacks. READ MORE >

Information Builders Seeks to Democratize BI with WebFOCUS 8
by Alex Woodie

Information Builders unveiled a new release of its flagship business intelligence platform WebFOCUS yesterday that could change how its customers view business intelligence (BI) applications and data. For starters, the company will give non-technical users access to pseudo ad hoc reporting tools. Customers will also get the capability to customize and share their BI apps and creations--including predictive analytics built with the newly integrated open source R engine--while new data quality tools will keep an eye out for bad data. READ MORE >

Purchase-to-Pay Vendor Sets Up Shop in U.S.
by Alex Woodie

Organizations that are looking to streamline their purchasing and invoice reconciliation activities by adopting purchase-to-pay (P2P) processes may want to consider b-pack, a French developer of P2P and purchasing software that has enjoyed success in Europe over the last decade. The company recently established a North American office in Atlanta, Georgia, to sell and support its P2P software, which is delivered as a service over the Web, or installed locally on System i and other servers. READ MORE >