News Briefs and Product Shorts

IBM to Launch New Express Products, Ad Campaign

As part of its renewed focus on small and midsized businesses, IBM last week launched three new Express products, including one for the iSeries, and disclosed plans for a $200 million advertising push for its Express product line. The new Process Integration Solution Express offering includes the WebSphere Business Integration Server Express product preinstalled on an iSeries or xSeries server for as low as $2,259 per month. The new Integrated Platform Express for Web Application Serving is designed to help customers develop, deploy, and manage dynamic Web sites and includes WebSphere Application Server Express running on a pSeries server, with the option to buy a TotalStorage disk array and a DB2 database. The Workplace Services Express includes IBM's WebSphere collaboration and portal server offerings pre-loaded on a Windows or Linux server (which could include xSeries, pSeries, or iSeries servers; IBM did not say). Pricing for and availability of these three new offerings, all of which include the option of IBM financing or Global Services, will be announced later this year.

IBM, which has a policy of not advertising specific eServers, except for its "standards-based" xSeries with Intel processors located inside, also announced that it is investing $200 million in a new advertising campaign to alert small and midsized businesses to its 70-offering strong Express Portfolio. IBM says the SMB segment of the overall IT market is worth $300 billion per year and is both the largest and the fastest growing segment of the market. IBM also launched a flashy new Web site dedicated to its Express Portfolio.

Invenso's XML/400 Software Deployed At Large Mortgage Company

National City Mortgage has selected Invenso's XB Suite 2004 data exchange software as the primary technology for generating XML data from its OS/400 applications, Invenso's U.S. reseller, eCube Systems, announced last week. As the ninth largest mortgage originator in the nation, National City Mortgage needs to exchange data every day with several third-party vendors to complete the loan verification process. Because some of these vendors require slightly different versions of XML, National City Mortgage wanted XML software that was easy to learn and flexible enough to adapt to these different XML dialects, which it found in the XB Suite. "Often, our vendors require data delivered in slightly different versions of XML," said Scott Woodard, team leader for the iSeries group at National City Mortgage. "This product has helped to improve productivity in this portion of our business." Invenso, which is based in Belgium, launched its XB/400 product in the United States about a year ago (see "Invenso Brings XML-to-DB2/400 Conversion Tool to U.S. Market"). Software reseller eCube Systems, which has offices in Texas and Europe, partnered with Invenso to resell the XB Suite in February.

B2B Middleware Product Enjoying Success At OS/400 Shops

The E2open B2B Client integration software product has been installed at 200 businesses in North America and the Asia Pacific region since it became available in March, E2open announced last week. Among the new users is Panasonic Industrial Sales Taiwan, which is using the E2open B2B Client software to integrate with customers and bring orders directly into its OS/400 server, E2Open says. "The E2open solution, including the E2open B2B Client, acts as our RosettaNet gateway for the order process, including new purchase order, order confirmation, order change, advanced ship notice, and invoice," said Richard Shiau, chief information officer at the Panasonic company. "By conducting the translation and transformation to RosettaNet, E2open shifts all the B2B complexity outside of our enterprise." E2open gives away licenses for E2open B2B Client to customers that use its flagship E2open B2B software, which combines process management workflows, decision support tools, exception management capabilities, and an open integration platform. E2open can be purchased either via traditional software licensing or via the "software as a service" method. E2open is a privately held software company based in Redwood City, California. The company specializes in solving the multi-company process management needs of small and midsized manufacturers, especially electronics makers, in North America and Asia Pacific.

WAN Compression Helps with Server Consolidation, VoIP Projects

Brenntag Nordic, a subsidiary of the German chemical distribution company Brenntag, has deployed a slew of Expand Networks' Accelerator WAN compression devices to ease congestion across 11 sites in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The company deployed Accelerator 4800 devices as part of roll-out of a voice over IP (VoIP) system, but the quality of its WAN had started to wane before that. In addition to the new VoIP system, Brenntag Nordic reports that the previous consolidation of 49 Intel-based servers onto two iSeries servers had also put strain on the network, which is used to provide employees with access to critical Lotus Notes and SAP applications. Instead of throwing more bandwidth at the problem, Brenntag Nordic took the advice of its IBM Global Services consultants and installed the IP compression and acceleration devices from Roseland, New Jersey, based Expand Networks. "At 30 percent less the cost quoted by our telco, and 100 percent to 1,000 percent traffic acceleration on top of the granular QoS functionality, the Expand Accelerators were a winner for our business," said Jacob Nielsen, Brenntag Nordic's network administrator. The Accelerator devices, which have shown a special affinity for compressing the 5250 datastream at high rates, are also sold by Lakeview Technology, which formed an OEM agreement with Expand in February to resell the devices for use in high availability and data replication deals involving OS/400 and other operating systems.

Acclaim Software Announces Availability of 2004 Tax Year Forms

There are two months left in 2004, and you know what that means: it's time to start Christmas shopping. It's also time to start thinking about tax forms. To assist you with the latter, Acclaim Software recently announced the availability of the 2004 versions of its W-2 Magnetic Media and 1099 Magnetic Media OS/400 applications. Both RPG programs feature interactive data entry, help screens, verification reports, generation of transmittal forms, and output to PC diskette, tape, and e-filing. Alternatively, the programs will print out your employees' tax forms, on preprinted continuous or laser forms, or on blank perforated laser tax forms using form overlays, which are included with the software. An import program makes it easy to bring existing employee data into Acclaim's W-2 or 1099 packages. Both packages cost $695 each.

Intellisync 6.0 Supports New Domino on iSeries E-Mail Functions

Intellisync last week announced the availability of Intellisync Mobile Suite Version 6.0, which features new e-mail "push" and personal information manager (PIM) synchronization capabilities for companies running Domino on iSeries and pSeries servers, among other new capabilities. Intellisync enables organizations to allow remote or traveling employees to use a range of mobile devices to access server-based data and applications, including e-mail and groupware programs like Domino and Exchange, and even ERP programs. Mobile Suite 6.0 has a slew of new enhancements, including push e-mail support on IMAP clients, support for SyncML 1.2, "background" synchronization on Palm OS devices, new XML connectors, support for French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and the capability to support Asian languages through its new Unicode support.