News Briefs and Product Shorts

Look for the 'Four Hundred 2005 Special Report' on December 15

Another year is winding down, and all of us are looking ahead to 2005 and beyond. So what does the future of the IT market in general and the iSeries market in particular hold? What are the products and policies that OS/400 shops would like to see IBM and its partners implement in the iSeries? Find out in the "Four Hundred 2005 Special Report," which will be published on December 15. You don't have to do anything special to receive this report. We are sending it free to all subscribers to our OS/400 newsletters as a holiday gift.

Smart Client Technology from looksoftware Is Now Shipping

Companies are starting to develop "smart client" interfaces for their OS/400 applications using new tools that looksoftware made generally available this month. Smart clients (sometimes called rich clients) are a new breed of interface that give programmers the power of fat client (Win32)-like development controls but offer the ease-of-deployment of their thin-client counterparts, as well as the capability to consume XML-based Web services. The new smart client capabilities can be found within the Version 7 release of looksoftware's newlook and centric, the Melbourne, Australia, software developer's respective screen rejuvenation and integration software (see "Newlook Software Builds Smart Clients from iSeries Apps" for our first take on the new duo).

Beta tests for this major new software release lasted a bit longer than anticipated, looksoftware managing director, Marcus Dee, tells us. But the software is ready and is already being put to use by several iSeries ISVs, including the large Dallas-based IT software and services firm Affiliated Computer Services, which is using the new Web deployment technology from looksoftware to streamline the quarterly distribution of updates for its OS/400-based NewVision application to more than 300 local government customers. Another early adopter is Application Solutions, the Markham, Ontario, developer of the Maestro warehouse management system, which is using the software to develop a smart client scoreboard application that accesses iSeries programs and databases and to provide real-time information through sophisticated "data grid" UI controls that can be customized by users, according to Application Solutions' Kent Knapp. "Newlook and centric 7 is an outstanding product, miles ahead of the competition," he says.

'The Dawg' Chases Away Bad Decisions for Trucking Companies

Hide your cats and chickens, for "The Dawg" is on the loose. TMW Systems, a developer of OS/400 and Windows fleet management software for the trucking industry, has unveiled a new business activity monitoring tool called The Dawg, which scans every transaction and automatically flags exceptions so that managers can take immediate corrective action. The Dawg works with another new TMW product called ResultsNow, which constantly measures and reports the carrier's performance versus established key performance indicators. Together, the two products can give trucking companies greater control over field activities. For example, The Dawg could be programmed to send a real-time alert (via e-mail or a pop-up message) if the accumulated empty miles for a dispatched truck is going to exceed 400 miles. Management could then opt to revise the load plan to make the trip more profitable. "The Dawg acts as a safety net that catches human errors before they lead to unnecessary expenses," said Tom Weisz, president and chief executive of TMW Systems.

Sunbeam Regains That Healthy (Wal-Mart) Glow with LANSA's UCCnet Solution

This spring Sunbeam went live with a product data synchronization solution designed to help it satisfy Wal-Mart's UCCnet requirement. However, the initial UCCnet solution required too much manual data entry, so the Boca Raton, Florida, consumer goods manufacturer ripped out the first UCCnet installation and decided to go with a more automated solution from LANSA, called Data Sync Direct. "We had already cleaned our data and wanted a process to get data from our JDE [J.D. Edwards] system rather than type it in whenever we had a customer request," says Randy Sinclair, Sunbeam's director of EDI and e-commerce. "We have 7,000 active SKUs, so you see how necessary an automated approach is to forward that data to the Global Registry." Today, LANSA's OS/400-based Data Sync Direct interacts with Sunbeam's JDE World application, running on an iSeries Model 830, and users access UCCnet data through Windows XP clients. Sunbeam initially published 400 GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) to Wal-Mart, but after implementing the LANSA software, it's now publishing specific GTINs to Wegmans, Ace Hardware, Lowe's, The Home Depot, and other businesses participating in the UCCnet program. LANSA says its software features pre-built interfaces for more than 20 popular ERP systems on the OS/400 platform.

BaByliss Follows in Footsteps of Parent, Implements Manhattan Associates WMS on iSeries

Like father, like son, as the saying goes. BaByliss, the French division of American consumer goods manufacturer Conair, recently went live with Manhattan Associates' OS/400-based Warehouse Management software, and it has high hopes for the iSeries-based enterprise system that Conair has grown to appreciate in the United States. BaByliss is using the industry's leading WMS (on the platform that put Manhattan Associates on the map) to manage all continental European distribution activities from its 100,00 square-foot warehouse in the Northern France city of Iwuy. The new system, which is made up of the Manhattan Associates WMS, an ERP system from SAP, and radio-frequency technology from Psion, replaces the old ERP-based system, which couldn't handle the growing fulfillment activity at the BaByliss distribution center. Starting next year, BaByliss transportation service partners will have a direct link to the WMS, which will allow the company to transfer order information to carriers via EDI, to automatically generate carrier-specific barcode labels, and to keep track of transportation costs through the freight rate engine. Six months after implementing the WMS at Iwuy, the whole fulfillment operation is running smoothly, says Yvan Petit, logistics director at BaByliss. "Thanks to the upcoming integration of our carrier partners, the solution will soon bring us even more value, by giving us complete visibility into our outbound distribution operation," he says.

Jinfonet Improves Drill-Down Capability in JReport 7.1

Jinfonet Software recently announced a new release of its Java-based reporting solution, JReport version 7.1. The new release of JReport, which provides a Java-implementation of a reporting tool that's similar in functionality to Crystal Reports, allows users to drill down into report details with a single click, through the new "master/detail" link. There are also new interactive controls, such as radio buttons, drop-down lists, and checkboxes, built directly into the Web-based interface with this release. The new features build off the Version 7 release of JReport, which Rockville, Maryland, based Jinfonet shipped in August (see "Jinfonet Delivers Easier-to-Use Java Reporting Tool").

Micromuse Boosts Network Event Handling with Netcool/OMNIbus 7

Micromuse has announced the Version 7 release of Netcool/OMNIbus, its application for monitoring the transactional performance of networks and servers to identify potential problems before they cause downtime. In Netcool/OMNIbus Version 7, users will find greater event-handling powers that allow IT operators to more efficiently access, manipulate, visualize, and report on the raw data, the San Francisco company says. Micromuse customers, like EarthLink, will be better able to manage and meet service quality levels through the new intelligent event reduction feature, as well as through new advanced procedural language and support for database triggers, which allow for batch processing and more complex data manipulations. About 1,800 customers around the world use Netcool/OMNIbus, which features an array of modules for collecting and consolidating fault information from more than 1,000 environments, spanning security, voice and IP, DSL/broadband, wireless, switches and routers, and enterprise management systems and applications. Micromuse first introduced OS/400 support in Netcool/OMNIbus in the fall of 2001.