News Briefs and Product Shorts

New $1-Billion Casino Resort Near Niagara Falls Chooses iSeries

The grand spanking new $1-billion Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort has decided which IT system it will bet its business on, and, not surprisingly, it's the iSeries, which really isn't much of a gamble at all. Like many of its gaming brethren out west in Las Vegas, the Niagara Fallsview--which opened in June and features a 30-story, 368-room hotel; a 200,000-square-foot casino; 50,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space; and 10 restaurants--will run its day-to-day operations on a suite of hospitality software products from Cleveland, Ohio, based iSeries distributor Agilysys. At the core of Niagara Fallsview's new IT system is the OS/400-based Lodging Management System (LMS), which Agilysys bought from Inter-American Data in 2003, and which is used at many of the top casinos in the country. Other Agilysys products purchased include the OS/400-based Materials Management System (MMS), which provides inventory control, as well as the open platform Document Management System (DMS), a document imaging and archiving system. Niagara Fallsview's executive director of information technology, Bill Candow, said the new resort, which is located in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and is owned by the Canadian government, wanted an IT system management that was designed for large casino resorts. "We needed robust systems, and the Agilysys hospitality solutions offered us the functionality that was best suited for our requirements," he says. "LMS, MMS, and DMS are leaders in the gaming industry." Niagara Fallsview is the newest and largest casino to open in an area that gaming industry experts predict is on the cusp of a boom in gaming.

Stonesoft Extends Corporate Firewall to Mobile Notebook Users

Stonesoft recently updated its StoneGate Firewall and VPN software to boost the security of notebook PCs connected to the Internet over public WLANs. The rapid roll-out and availability of public "hotspots" in airports, hotels, and coffee shops across the world has made it much easier to hit the Web from practically anywhere, but it has also created a security nightmare for corporate network administrators, because there's no way to tell who's providing the 802.11 signal and who might be listening in. With StoneGate Firewall and VPN Version 2.5, which Stonesoft announced last week, network administrators should be able to sleep better when their mobile employees venture out. "The new release enables administrators to force all mobile Internet traffic to go through the corporate firewall," says Ilkka Hiidenheimo, Stonesoft's chief executive. "It means that all unencrypted traffic going in or out of the laptop is eliminated, and the corporate security policy can be enforced to all traffic." Stonesoft, based in Finland, introduced iSeries support to its StoneGate Firewall and VPN earlier this year (see "Stonesoft to Launch Firewall and VPN for iSeries"). The product provides integrated firewall and VPN capabilities either from a "hardened" Linux partition running on an iSeries or from a stand-alone, Linux-based appliance.

Get Your Free OS/400 Stuff from Kisco

Paying license and maintenance fees for OS/400 software can be a real drag. For shops that feel inclined to use free software, Kisco Information Systems recently reintroduced its three-part "free stuff" software giveaway program. The flagship freebie here is Create Duplicate Spool File (CRTDUPSPLF), "the command that IBM left out of OS/400," Kisco says. CRTDUPSPLF creates an exact copy of any printer spool file type, including IPDS and AFP spool files, and lets the user route the spool file copy to any output queue. Other free Kisco utilities include Smarttn, a green-screen desktop organizing utility that places a calculator, a calendar, a personal note pad, and a personal phone list on the user's OS/400 terminal. Finally, there is CPYFSEL, which Kisco bills as a variation of IBM's CPYF command that allows the user to make file copies based on field selection rules, allows complex "and/or" logic and is less CPU-intensive than CPYF. To download any of these free OS/400 utilities, go to www.kisco.com/fs.htm.

PeopleSoft Launches New 'Rapid Start' Bundles for EnterpriseOne

PeopleSoft introduced two new prepackaged software bundles using its EnterpriseOne line of ERP software last week. The embattled software vendor now offers Customer Relationship Management and Human Resources Rapid Start programs, in addition to existing Rapid Start programs using the Financial, Distribution, and Manufacturing components of the EnterpriseOne product line. The PeopleSoft Rapid Start program combines applications, consulting, education services, hardware, and financing into a single bundle that makes it easier for users and PeopleSoft business partners to buy, sell, install, or implement. PeopleSoft now offers five Rapid Start bundles based on EnterpriseOne Version 8.11, which it announced in August (see "PeopleSoft Rolls Out a Host of New EnterpriseOne Applications"). The two new CRM and HR Rapid Start bundles will be available in December and, like all EnterpriseOne applications, will ship on iSeries, Unix, Windows, and Linux servers.

New Wizards with HiT's XML to Relational Database Data Converter

HiT Software recently launched Allora 4, a new version of its software suite for transforming data from XML format to major relational database formats, and then back again, without using SQL or XSLT style sheets. With Version 4, HiT Software introduces a new wizard-driven code-generation tool that creates executable code that performs the XML-to-RDB and RDB-to-XML transformations. Allora 4 also now supports mapping with XML documents and stored procedure parameters or result sets, in addition to previously available support for mapping between XML schemas or document type definitions (DTDs) and tables or SQL query results. HiT has also added lookup, or substitution, rules, as well as increased support for advanced features and data types of XML schemas and database structures. Allora integrates with major Java-based development environments and Web application servers and includes its own runtime component and APIs for the execution of data transformations.

RUMBA Gets an Update from NetManage

NetManage announced last week that it is shipping a new release of RUMBA, the company's desktop terminal emulation product for OS/400, mainframe, Unix, and VAX systems. The Cupertino, California, software vendor says the new version (which it didn't specify) offers a new monitoring and reporting capability that allows administrators to capture host connect and disconnect events and then store them in a database for analysis. In terms of new custom development possible with RUMBA, NetManage says it now supports Microsoft ActiveX controls for "more efficient development and deployment" of custom applications. It also adds "VBA-type" scripting support to RUMBA with this release, which allows users to write scripts to automate repetitive activities. Finally, NetManage says it is introducing new "high-powered" security functions with this release, including "seamless" connectivity to any host security type, network security settings, firewalls, and virtual private networks. The last new release of RUMBA was Version 7.1 in April 2002.