La Brea Bakery Picks Global for Movex Reporting

What's the first thing you do after successfully installing an ERP package? If you're La Brea Bakery, the famous Los Angeles bread maker, you install some business intelligence software to watch your demand grow, of course. Global Software announced last week that La Brea Bakery has picked its Spreadsheet Server software to power Excel-based reporting from the bakery's new Intentia Movex ERP application. "As soon as we saw the Spreadsheet Server for Movex application, we knew we had to have it," said Hovik Abrahamyan, La Brea Bakery's IT manager. "This product is a perfect fit for us."

Toolmaker Finds the Right Stuff in LANSA

Hand tool maker Klein Tools has had good results with LANSA development tools for Windows and OS/400. The Illinois manufacturer began two years ago with Visual LANSA and LANSA for the Web, which it used to develop a front-end security system and a menu system for applications running on iSeries and Windows 2000 servers. Then, in the winter of 2002, the company started scoping out how it would deploy a new customer and employee extranet. "After assessing whether to buy an off-the-shelf solution or build it from scratch, we chose to purchase LANSA Commerce Edition," says Tom Hupp, vice president of IT at Klein Tools. With assistance from Silveredge Consulting, Klein Tools developed several other programs with LANSA tools, including using LANSA Commerce Edition to link into its PRMS and WarehouseBOSS ERP applications; a new Web-based product catalog using LANSA for the Web; and a method to exchange product data with an industry group using LANSA AS2 Direct. All told, Klein Tools is running more than a dozen applications developed on LANSA's technology.

PeopleSoft Selects Motive for Automated Support System

All of PeopleSoft's customers will soon be using a new automated support system developed by Motive. PeopleSoft plans to incorporate Motive's automated customer self-service capabilities directly into its PeopleTools suite, which will give customers the power to discover, compare, and respond to changes across all of PeopleSoft's ERP suites, including Enterprise first, then EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World, a PeopleSoft spokesperson said. "By incorporating Motive's self-management intelligence in its applications, PeopleSoft will help its customers lower their total cost of ownership, while achieving greater adaptability in support of ongoing change across their enterprises," says Scott Abel, vice president of Motive's enterprise business unit.

Motive's software and services have been used in a variety of high-tech industries, including consumer products, broadband, and enterprise hardware and software vendors. For enterprise software vendors, it says its offerings help create applications that are more self-managing and reduce overhead costs. One of PeopleSoft's competitors, Lawson Software, for instance, replaced its phone-based customer support with an electronic support model that would allow more customer self-service. "Electronic support tells us what steps constituents have tried before they contact us," Cole Orndorff, Lawson's vice president of global support, told Forbes. "It gives us a baseline of information that allows us to respond quickly; we don't have to start the support experience from scratch."

Ingrian Networks Considering Other DB2 Flavors for Cryptographic Appliances

Companies looking to shore up their internal corporate data can now use Ingrian Networks' DataSecure devices against DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server databases. In late August, the Redwood City, California, company finalized its support for SQL Server, giving it coverage over the three main database management systems (see "Ingrian Adds SQL Server Support to Cryptographic Appliance"). Currently, the company does not support the flavors of DB2 IBM has running on its mainframe or OS/400 servers, although officials with the company say they have been approached by mainframe shops and are considering making the changes necessary to support DB2 for z/OS. The changes necessary to support these devices--which work by intercepting calls from an application for data encryption and then routing that data to its Intel-based appliance, before sending the encrypted data back to the database via a connector--with DB2 for z/OS or DB2/400 are probably minimal, and all it would take would be the right client, with the right need.

Hummingbird Announces Release of Connectivity 10

The challenges of connecting heterogeneous legacy infrastructures to Windows desktops to meet business continuity and government compliance requirements has many companies searching for solutions. Everyone wants simplified software management, increased employee efficiency, and a favorable outlook for return-on-investment. Unfortunately that goal can be quite elusive. Hummingbird Connectivity 10, which became generally available within the past two weeks, is a suite of products that supports all the major network connectivity requirements, including OS/400, Unix, mainframe, Windows (32- and 64-bit), Citrix MetaFrame, and Windows Terminal Server.

In Hummingbird's nomenclature, the main components of Connectivity 10 are HostExplorer, Connectivity Secure Shell, Exceed, and NFS Maestro. HostExplorer allows organizations to access mission-critical data on iSeries or AS/400 systems as well as Unix and mainframe systems. It offers settings and user interface themes for terminal emulation software such as Attachmate Extra!, NetManage Rumba, IBM Personal Communications, and WRQ Reflection. Hummingbird Security supports a range of key industry security protocols, including SSL, Kerberos, and Secure Shell 2. It also has support for Axalto and ActivCard smart cards and the Safenet iKey USB authentication device. Also noteworthy is a desktop- and browser-based secured terminal and file transfer feature. The component called Exceed pertains to Windows PC X Servers. Its Desktop Sharing feature extends collaborative capability to X applications so that workers can share their X Window environment with other employees, partners, or suppliers, regardless of their location. NFS Maestro is a PC Network File System that supports the latest version of the open-source NFS protocol, NFSv4.