News Briefs and Product Shorts

Quadrant Ships FormsPack for VICS Bill of Lading

Quadrant Software last week announced a new document template that will help OS/400 shops comply with the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards, or VICS, standard for Bills of Lading (BOL). By adding the VICS BOL template to its FormsPack for eBusiness, Quadrant is providing users of its OS/400-based document management system, called Formtastic Fusion5, with the capability to comply with the VICS BOL standard, which ensures that all parties involved in LTL and truckload transport, including the shipper, the carrier, and the customer, have access to all the information they need. Quadrant offers FormsPacks for a range of popular OS/400-based ERP systems, for standard forms and labels, for MICR check printing, and for electronic output.

Alabama Truckers Prefer Lawson for HR, Financials

An Alabama trucking firm has selected Lawson Software running on an iSeries server to replace an outdated mainframe system, Lawson announced last week. AAA Cooper Transportation (ACT) of Dothan, Alabama, is a less-than-truckload (LTL) freight company with 5,000 employees and 80 terminals that serves 12 Southern states and the Upper Midwest industrial corridor. "Our old mainframe system was out-of-date, providing no automation and limited reporting functionality," says Brook Meadows, the company's director of human development. "We needed a more advanced system and evaluated the different software offerings available, narrowing our choice to two vendors. Lawson offered a very solid software and services package as well as a commitment to the iSeries platform." ACT began implementation of Lawson's popular HR application in January, and will begin implementation of its financials, procurement, and reporting suites in early 2006. When the ERP upgrade is all said and done, ACT expects to provide decision makers with better ways to gather, analyze, share, and act on business data, from a company-wide and departmental level.

Vision Bolsters Data Replication Software with New Wizards, Performance Increases

Vision Solutions ramped up its pursuit of the lucrative small and medium size business (SMB) market last week with the release of Orion Integrator version 2.1, an update of its database replication tool for DB2/400, DB2 UDB, Sybase Adaptive Server, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server database management systems. With version 2.1, Vision has changed its user interface to make it look and feel similar to Windows XP, and it has also built many new wizards, including a new mapping wizard that can automatically build replication definitions between source and target databases. Transferring large amounts of data is also easier with Integrator 2.1, Vision says, thanks to new mass transfer options and support for table level replication control, which allows users to activate individual mappings for replication. All in all, replication performance has been improved by 250 percent, according to Vision. The Irvine, California, company will be demonstrating Integrator 2.1 around the country with the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Roadshow, which opened April 19 in Boston, and will make five more stops, including Anaheim, California, April 26; San Francisco, April 28; Chicago, May 12; Houston, May 17; and Dallas, May 19.

Magic Streamlines Data Mapping with iBOLT 2.5

Magic Software last week unveiled a new release of its iBOLT integration middleware for iSeries and other servers. With iBOLT version 2.5, Magic has enhanced the product's Data Mapper component with new features, such as support for ODBC, the capability to map data to HTML-type destinations, and new drag-and-drop capabilities, which the company says will enhance the product's out-of-the-box data transformation and integration capabilities. Another key enhancement is support for component development using Microsoft's .NET tools, not just Java-based development tools, or Magic's own eDeveloper environment, which were previously the only options. Magic has also made it easier for OEMs to customize a "special edition" of iBOLT that Magic first developed for SAP and its BusinessOne program. Finally, Magic is providing new training materials, including a self-paced course that developers can use to train themselves to use iBolt in just 40 hours. This new iBOLT version is very much user driven, says Avigdor Luttinger, iBOLT's lead developer. "Version 2.0 was a breakthrough in empowering business users and architects, and we received a lot of feedback that was translated back into this version," he says. Magic made the iBOLT 2.5 announcement at Gartner's Application Integration and Web Services Summit in Los Angeles.

U.S. Foodservice Aims to Boost AR, Collections with Spescom Content Management System

U.S. Foodservice, one of the largest food service providers in the country, has picked Spescom Software to provide a content management system that will streamline access to various pieces of structured and unstructured data, including output from its OS/400 business applications. If effective, the implementation of the eB content capture and management system from San Diego-based Spescom could contribute directly to the bottom line of U.S. Foodservice, which employs nearly 30,000 people and sells 43,000 different food-related products to more than 250,000 customers. According to Spescom, U.S. Foodservice will use the eB Report Capture option to capture all customer invoices and related data generated from its AS/400s, while it will use the eB Image Capture module to enable scanning of paper invoices and checks into the eB system. Once all this data is captured in a central repository, U.S. Foodservice personnel will have faster and easier access to it, which should be a boon for customer service inquiries--as well as collections and settling accounts receivables.

Jack Henry, Fidelity Score Customer Wins in De Novo Banking Sector

If the hype from IT providers can be believed, the de novo banking sector is booming. Last week Jack Henry & Associates, the Monett, Missouri, titan of community banking systems, announced it has signed 14 new de novo banks in 14 weeks. Nearly all of them chose to let Jack Henry run and manage their banking systems for them, while Community First Bank--Chicago decided to implement CIF 20/20, a core processing system for community banks that runs on the iSeries. What's spurring the creation of de novo banks? Jack Prim, Jack Henry CEO, explains: "During the past two decades, thousands of banks were acquired or merged. In response to the growing demand for service-oriented, community-based banks, de novo institutions are emerging nationwide." Fidelity's Integrated Financial Solutions division, one of Jack Henry's competitors in the banking arena, is also having success in the de novo sector, with five banks choosing its PC-based BancPac system, the company announced last month. "To achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, de novo banks must have all the sophistication of the larger institutions in their market areas," said Jim Susoreny, executive vice president of client relations for Fidelity's IFS division. "But typically they operate with a limited number of employees initially, so they need technology that's easy to use, fast, accurate, and affordable."