News Briefs and Product Shorts

PowerTech's AuthorityBroker to be Distributed with New Copies of i5/OS

Organizations loading i5/OS onto their iSeries machines will get the chance to try out PowerTech Group's new AuthorityBroker software. Last week the Kent, Washington, software company announced that IBM has agreed to distribute a 30-day trial version of AuthorityBroker with copies of i5/OS. AuthorityBroker, which PowerTech launched earlier this year, enables OS/400 system administrators to eliminate virtually all need to provide potentially dangerous special authorities, such as All Object (ALLOBJ) authority, to users and programmers. Jim Herring, IBM's director of product management and business operations for the iSeries, says AuthorityBroker makes controlling powerful users easier. "Whether it's enhancing business controls or data management to help customers comply with Sarbanes-Oxley or their corporate security policy, IBM and its partners enable iSeries security as one of the industry's best," Herring says. For more information on AuthorityBroker, including pricing information, see our story "New PowerTech Product Cracks Down on Special Authorities" in the January 18 issue of this newsletter.

AS/400 Report in the Middle of U.S. Olympic Committee Steroid Scandal?

It's no surprise that the iSeries is relied upon to do many different jobs by various branches of our government (see "Exercises In Simplicity for a case study on the maintenance of the USDA's network of 2,441 AS/400s). According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News last week, the venerable OS/400 server is also used by the United States Olympic Committee's (USOC) Drug Control Administration to tabulate and store results of drug tests on our nation's top amateur athletes. The Merc reported that Wade Exum, who was director of the USOC's Drug Control Administration from 1991 until he resigned in 2000, is pushing the USOC to release the report, which he says contains the names of all American athletes who tested positive for banned substances from 1985 to 2000. "I printed out a complete results report from the AS/400 database and turned it over to the USOC," the Merc quoted him as saying. Exum listed the report, which some say is about 150 pages, in a lawsuit he filed against the USOC in Colorado last week. Exum is accusing the USOC of covering up steroid use by American athletes. While the courts have dismissed two similar lawsuits against the USOC by Exum, who claims he was recriminated against by his colleagues for speaking out on drug use, none of the previous lawsuits made mention of the AS/400 report.

Agilysys Unveils iSeries Solution Edition for LMS

Agilysys, the Cleveland-based iSeries distributor, last week unveiled a new iSeries Solution Edition for the hospitality and casino industries. The new iSeries Solution Edition will bundle an i5 550 server with a preloaded copy of the successful Lodging Management System (LMS), which Agilysys bought from Inter-American Data in 2003. The OS/400-based LMS provides just about all the software that casinos need to run their businesses, including reservation and credit card processing, accounting, housekeeping, activities scheduling, attraction ticketing, itinerary planning, remote check-in and check-out---even spa scheduling. "We are proud to roll out this new customized solution on the iSeries server, which has long been a favorite platform in the hospitality industry," says Bill Lashley, senior vice president and general manager of the Hospitality Solutions division at Agilysys.

TomorrowNow Expands Third-Party J.D. Edwards Support to Europe

J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft maintenance provider TomorrowNow is expanding into Europe and Singapore, the SAP subsidiary announced last week at SAP's annual user conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company unveiled plans to offer third-party maintenance and support services to users of J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft ERP software from three offices in Amsterdam, the UK, and Singapore, in seven languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. TomorrowNow also announced it has signed its first European J.D. Edwards client, Yazaki Europe, a manufacturer and distributor of vehicle power and distribution systems. Yazaki, which currently uses a J.D. Edwards application at installations in eight countries across Europe, is migrating to a new mySAP ERP implementation as part of the SAP Safe Passage Program. TomorrowNow got into the third-party maintenance business for J.D. Edwards World and OneWorld applications in January, shortly before being acquired by SAP.

California Software Partners with Indian Offshoring Firm

Two members of Microsoft's Midrange Alliance Program--California-based California Software and Sonata Software of Bangalore, India--have hooked up to bring service oriented architectures (SOA) and Windows to iSeries and mainframe shops. As part of the deal, the offshore outsourcing provider plans to use California Software's Infinite Net and LPS product lines to help integrate the OS/400 and mainframe applications of its customers with Windows, with the eventual goal of migrating those applications to Windows. "We are excited about this alliance with California Software, and the possibility to offer iSeries/AS400 customers with solutions for enhancement, integration, and migration to Windows," says B. Ramaswamy, Sonata's president and managing director.

Cruise Ships: the Choice for New Offshore Programming Havens

While some American companies continue to successfully cut costs by outsourcing high-paying programming jobs to low-cost providers in Russia, China, and India, two entrepreneurs from San Diego are working to build a new model for offshore work. David Cook and Roger Green founded SeaCode with the idea of housing up to 600 foreign programmers on a cruise ship parked three miles off the coast of Los Angeles. By classifying the programmers as "seaman" and having the work done outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law, Cook and Green figure they can avoid the nasty little requirement for foreign technology workers to have H1B visas, while still keeping the programmers within a half-hour water taxi ride of shore, where they can visit clients, if need be, and blow off some steam (and some cash) during shore leave. "We're not a slave ship," Cook told Forbes. "It's like the International Space Station," Green said. The two men are reportedly close to buying a used cruise ship, and could begin staffing the ship with programmers within months. Once on board, the programmers, who will be paid salaries of about $21,000, will work in eight- or 10-hour shifts, enabling work to get done 24 hours a day. "Try to get American software engineers to work at night," Cook says.