News Briefs and Product Shorts

GST's New SAIT Tape Library Holds Up to 343 TB

GST is shipping a new automated tape library for its line of super advanced intelligent tape (SAIT-1) tape drives. Expandable from 43 TB (compressed) to 343 TB of data, and capable of transferring data at speeds up to 2.2 TB per hour, with a full complement of GST's SAIT drives from Sony, the SAIT Enterprise Library supports all major platforms, including OS/400, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows NT, and is an excellent choice for backup consolidation for small and midsized businesses, GST says. The SAIT Enterprise Library is equipped with Qualstar's TLS robotics and management software, and, with Sony's Remote-sensing Memory-in-Cassette (R-MIC) media interface system, enables application of the write once, read many (WORM) data management capability, required by new government regulations. Pricing for the SAIT Enterprise Library starts at $22,100 for a single-drive setup and ranges up to $189,350 for an eight-drive system.

Evergreen Adds XML Support to iSeries Report Downloader

Evergreen Interactive Systems is now shipping iSeries Report Downloader 10.0, a Windows application that lets users browse iSeries spool files and then convert the data into Excel, PDF, HTML, or plain text for PC-based manipulation. With Version 10, the Washington state company adds XML to the list of supported conversion protocols and delivers several other new features, such as support for OS/400 V5R2 security, the capability to sort spool files by multiple attributes, or to name files based on iSeries user data attributes. Better support for Lotus Notes, improved performance, and better spool file content flexibility round out the new release of this product, which starts at $395 per seat for TCP/IP-connected PCs, and $149 for clients connected via SNA.

IBM Announces WORM Support with 3592 Tape Drives

As we told you earlier this year, IBM has been working to bring write once, read many (WORM) capabilities to its line of 3592 tape drives in order to satisfy its customers' requirements for regulatory compliance (see "New WORM Technology Makes Its Way to the iSeries"). Last week, IBM announced that the WORM-compatible version of its 3592 tape drive, which is the kicker to its high-end "Magstar" drive that the company announced last year, will ship on May 21. Firmware changes made to the Enterprise Tape Drive 3592 Model J1A will be enable it to write to IBM's new WORM tape cartridges, which the company also announced last week, and which also will ship on May 21. This media will be available in 60 GB and 300 GB capacities, and IBM will offer each cartridge in blank or pre-labeled or pre-initialized formats. The 60 GB "Economy WORM" tape will be available in 20-packs for $2,757, while the 300 GB "WORM" tape will be available in 20-packs for $4,460.

Terminix Enables Mainframe Migration with LANSA

When Terminix moved its core applications from a mainframe to a 24-way iSeries Model 890, the pest control company's chief information officer, Lee Crump, faced a decision. "There wasn't a good software packaged solution for us to use," he says. "We needed to develop one." Following the recommendation of IBM, Crump investigated LANSA and liked what he saw in the fourth-generation language. "We liked LANSA's speed of development, but, more important, a LANSA solution would give us a single source set without tying us to a single platform or database." Eight months after choosing LANSA, Terminx's developers had used Visual LANSA and LANSA for iSeries to write a new enterprise application that had 700 database files and more than 2,500 functions. And with LANSA for the Web, the company a created thin-client application that lets 100 Terminix employees at the company's call center in Memphis, Tennessee, access data, make service requests, and schedule appointments, in real time, from the iSeries.

PKWARE to Support OS/400 with New SecureZIP

PKWARE last week announced a new security product line based on its PKZIP compression software, called SecureZIP. Like PKZIP, the new SecureZIP product allows users to compress and encrypt files, using AES or 3DES encryption standards, and to rely on either passwords or Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates for authentication. But rolling out a PKI-enabled encryption solution should be easier with SecureZIP, thanks to hooks that PKWARE has built for the PKI certificate repositories companies keep in Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP directories. PKWARE expects SecureZIP to compete with e-mail security protocols, such as SMIME and PGP, which, company officials say, are needlessly complex and incompatible among the different platforms. SecureZIP is available now for Windows platforms, for about $100 per seat (MSAD and LDAP integration costs extra) and will become available later this year for Unix, Linux, mainframe, and OS/400 platforms.

Weber Finds *noMAX the Right Fit for iSeries DR

When you run out of propane for your gas grill, it can be a hassle to find a fresh bottle, especially with hungry guests breathing down your neck. But when your iSeries server runs out of gas, you'll have more than a few hungry guests to deal with, if you haven't taken precautions for real-time disaster recovery. Soon Weber-Stephen Products Co., manufacturer of the world-famous Weber gas and charcoal grills, won't have to worry about either kind of outage--propane- or server-based. The Palatine, Illinois, company, which uses MAPICS ERP software, recently signed a license to install Maximum Availability's *noMAX high availability software to replicate data between its two iSeries servers. The *noMAX installation at Weber, which is being handled by IT Solutions Group of Chicago, is the latest in a string of successes in the United States for New Zealand-based Maximum Availability, which says 10 of the 19 new customers it signed in the fourth quarter of last year were in the United States.