Windows Vista Poses Challenges to Emulation Vendors
by Alex Woodie

The number of 5250 emulation packages supporting Windows Vista has almost doubled recently, with NetManage announcing support for Vista with RUMBA earlier this month, and Zephyr's PASSPORT 2007 finally shipping by the end of September. But users may be surprised at the lack of support of many emulation features on the new operating system, particularly with IBM's iSeries Access, by far the most popular emulator in the midrange. READ MORE >

NetCustomer Capitalizes on Dissatisfaction with Oracle
by Alex Woodie

NetCustomer grew its third-party maintenance and consulting business by a factor of four last year, and it spent practically nothing on advertising to do it. Instead, the young company capitalized on the dissatisfaction that many J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft customers have with software giant Oracle. One such company is TNT Fireworks, which tapped NetCustomer after it experienced difficulty upgrading its i5 server to EnterpriseOne. READ MORE >

Infor Provides Details on SOA Roadmap
by Alex Woodie

Infor shared details about its service oriented architecture (SOA) roadmap at its annual user conference, Inforum 2007, in Las Vegas last week. While much of the attention regarding Infor's "Open SOA" strategy went to its open (or non-System i) products, users of Infor's two major i5/OS products--ERP LX, the former BPCS product, and ERP XA, the former MAPICS product--should start benefiting from Infor's Open SOA strategy over the next 14 months. READ MORE >

Microsoft Ships BizTalk Server R2
by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week officially announced the general availability of BizTalk Server 2006 Release 2 (R2), a new release of its core enterprise application integration (EAI) offering. With this release, Microsoft has introduced "native" support for business-to-business technologies such as EDI, AS2, and RFID, and also delivered a new low-cost version designed for installation in branch offices. READ MORE >