Unitrends Adds OS/400 Support to D2D Backup Appliances
by Alex Woodie

Unitrends, a company with a history of developing Unix backup utilities, last month announced it will soon deliver support for OS/400 with its disk-to-disk (D2D) backup and recovery appliances. With its new agent for OS/400, Unitrends is able to support the iSeries and System i with its Rapid Recovery system, a series of rack-mountable appliances that provide speedy backups and recoveries for local offices, as well as for off-site locations. READ MORE >

IBM, Oracle Go After Wintel Boxes with an i5 520 Solution Edition
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

For a decade, many of us in the OS/400 community have correctly explained to IBM that if it wants AS/400, iSeries, and System i5 to thrive, then it has to compete head-to-head against Microsoft's Windows platform and X86 (and now X64) iron. And it has to use the close affinity the OS/400 platform has with applications to its advantage. Today, IBM and Oracle are launching a new Solution Edition, based on the i5 520 entry server, that the two hope will make i5/OS and the i5 a better competitor to the Wintel combination. READ MORE >

Vision Continues Outward Transformation with ORION SE 6.4 Launch
by Alex Woodie

Vision Solutions is on a quest. After more than a year of silence, the Southern California software company is now making announcements seemingly every week. Yesterday, the company shipped ORION Standard Edition (SE) version 6.4, a new release of the OS/400 high availability and systems management software acquired from OS Solutions last year. Vision's parent company also issued a warning to stockholders in June that it is in discussions with another company, a strong indication of pending M&A activity. READ MORE >

GeneXus 4GL Environment Continues to Evolve
by Alex Woodie

While the bulk of the software development world concentrates on the battle between Java backers and Microsoft's .NET strategy, a small software house from Uruguay continues down its own path, adding new functionality to its fourth-generation language (4GL) environment called GeneXus. ARTech, which develops the IDE, isn't hurting the big players in the development tool market, but with more than 50,000 licenses sold over the past 25 years--about half of them OS/400 shops--GeneXus is a success story few know about. READ MORE >