News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Wynne Systems announced last week that RentalMan/400, its ERP software for companies in the equipment rental industry, has been integrated with the new wireless equipment management technology that Qualcomm announced last week. Qualcomm's new GlobalTRACS system provides wireless access to equipment engine hours and location data, allowing fleet and rental managers to track where its equipment is being used and how much actual use it's getting. The GlobalTRACS system incorporates Qualcomm's CDMA wireless technology and uses ruggedized hardware that can be installed on any make and model of equipment. By integrating RentalMan/400 directly with the GlobalTRACS system, RentalMan users are now able to incorporate accurate and timely equipment operating information into their operations system, without the need for new IT infrastructure. RentalMan/400 was developed in the early 1990s specifically for the AS/400 platform, and today it is used by four out of five equipment rental and leasing companies, says Long Beach, California, based Wynne Systems.

• Cabela's has chosen webMethods as its application integration software provider, the Fairfax, Virginia, software company announced last week. While the giant direct-mail retailer of outdoor and hunting equipment runs its core merchandise management system on OS/400 servers, like most shops these days, it relies on a mixture of different computer systems to manage different aspects of its business, and that's why it needed a high-end integration broker platform like the one offered by webMethods. The first webMethods Integration Platform implementation project at Cabela's involves connecting its back-end JDA Software-based ERP software to 12 different point-of-sale systems running at its recently opened retail outlets. As a result of this first webMethods project, the company expects to garner greater data quality and accuracy, better control of message fail-over, and faster view of data. Overall, the company's goal is to move away from point-to-point integration and standardize the interfaces between all of its disparate systems on a single platform, which will lower the maintenance effort of Cabela's IT staff and improve the company's efficiency. The company also hopes to automate its product forecasting and planning in real-time.
  
  
• Island Pacific has chosen application integration software from Bostech to be the foundation on which it will seek to integrate its OS/400-based merchandise management software with the range of adjunct partner products it is now offering to its customers. The two companies last week announced a product distribution agreement whereby Island Pacific will embed and private-label Indianapolis, Indiana, based Bostech's ChainBuilder integration platform, code named "IP-Integrator," as a component of its merchandise management system. Island Pacific says it is making this move to simplify the upgrade path for the 130 retailers that use its merchandise management system. Island Pacific, headquartered in Irvine, California, recently signed a slew of partnerships with third-party software providers to extend its ERP system. See "Island Pacific Welcomes 2003 with a Torrent of Announcements" for more information about those partnerships.
  
  
• Gumbo Software has new releases of its SpoolMail and Spool-a-Matic utilities for OS/400 servers. SpoolMail lets users take spooled output from OS/400 servers, convert it to a generally accepted file format, such as Adobe PDF, RTF, or HTML, and send it to practically any e-mail client. With SpoolMail Version 1.8, Gumbo has made improvements in the way it creates e-mails, handles delivery confirmations, and deals with address parameters, among numerous other changes. Spool-a-Matic is similar to SpoolMail, except that it places the converted spool file in OS/400's Integrated Files System, instead of sending it through e-mail. In Spool-a-Matic Version 1.6, Gumbo has made many changes, including improving its color PDF processing and overlays and adding several new commands, among various other changes. Licenses for both Gumbo spool products start at $695 for tier-based pricing or $625 for partition-based pricing.
  
  
• Companies looking to move their COBOL applications off the OS/400 server have new migration options from PKS Software. This month the company announced a new release of its migration software, AX/ware Version 4.03, which supports the migration of OS/400 Cobol applications in the same manner that it supports RPG and ILE RPG applications. In previous releases, AX/ware transformed OS/400 COBOL code into Micro Focus COBOL, which allowed it to run on Windows and Unix machines. With AX/ware 4.03, PKS Software now supports OS/400 COBOL applications with its integrated development environment for ongoing support of migrated applications, Visual OCC, which PKS Software announced last year. As a result of supporting OS/400 COBOL applications with Visual OCC, PKS Software is now able to compile the OS/400 COBOL applications into C or C++, just as it supports RPG and CL.
  
  
• Neller Software, an Australian provider of iSeries, Unix, and Windows software, has successfully transformed its HR/payroll application into a Web-enabled product that it is now delivering via the application service provider (ASP) mode. In 2001, Neller Software began searching for an advanced development environment that it could use to rapidly Web-enable its application. It considered several tools on the market, including Magic Software's eDeveloper and Borland's Delphi, but the company eventually went with LANSA, which helped it to Web-enabling its application. Eighteen months ago, Neller launched a subsidiary, Preceda eBureau, which runs the Web-enabled HR/payroll package on an iSeries and offers the application as a service to companies in Australia. Since Precede eBureau's launch, the subsidiary says it has recorded more than $1 million in revenues and that it expects to double again in the next 12 months.
  

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