News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Elite Documents recently launched VisuaLink400, a new module of the company's eliteSUITE of forms management software designed to provide a "print preview" of the finished form before committing the change to the OS/400 server. The way the process worked before VisuaLink400 was available, eliteSUITE users didn't actually see how a new or redesigned form would look after populating it with OS/400 spool data, unless that data was pulled from the OS/400 server. VisuaLink400 is a complementary module to Elite's PC-based design tool, eliteForm Designer, which allows users to visually link their form application and spool file data to their form overlay without having to download sensitive data from the AS/400 or iSeries server. The new module lets users make changes to fonts and spacing, or rearrange blocks of data, with a few clicks of the mouse. When the document appears ready for implementation, an automatic FTP utility transfers the appropriate files to the OS/400 server for use with eliteFORM integration software.

• Clear Technologies last week announced support for the DB2/400 database with its C2 CRM line of customer relationship management software. The new support for DB2/400 will benefit C2 CRM users who must maintain very large customer databases and need the higher scalability and performance of DB2/400. C2 CRM originally was built on IBM Lotus Notes/Domino technology and relied on the Domino database for data storage across all supported platforms, including iSeries, Unix, and Windows servers. However, some iSeries customers required a more scalable database, so Clear Technologies has modified C2 CRM to be able to read and write transactional data into a DB2 database, while using the Domino database to store unstructured data. Clear Technologies officials say C2 CRM users will be able to migrate Domino data to DB2/400 dynamically, saving them time and money, and they will also benefit from the variety of reporting tools available for DB2/400. Support for DB2/400 will be delivered as an additional module and is expected to be delivered in the second half of this year.
  
  
• GO Software, the subsidiary of Return On Investment (ROI) that develops and sells credit card software, made a flurry of announcements last week, including a new contract with Eastman Kodak, direct connectivity to the American Express payment network, and the milestone of reaching 85,000 licensees of its credit card software products. The license with Kodak involves incorporating GO Software's Windows-based payment processing product, called PCCharge, into its KODAK Picture Maker line of kiosks. GO Software also announced that, as a result of its agreement with American Express, it will begin offering the credit card issuer's Plural Interface Processing interface with PCCharge Pro, the server version of the desktop PCCharge product. The PIP interface allows merchants to send credit card transactions directly to American Express for settlement, thereby avoiding fees charged by third-party processors for routing these transactions. Finally, the Savannah, Georgia, software maker announced it has surpassed 85,000 users of its credit card software, including the PCCharge line and RiTA Server, its platform-independent, Java-based payment processing product. (ROI's old JavaCard, designed originally as a Java version of the OS/400-based ROI Card, which was released in 1993, was merged into RiTA following the acquisition of GO Software by ROI in 2001.) GO Software has been selling credit card processing software since 1991.Its customers include Martin Guitar, BIC USA, Cinemark Theaters, and Kampgrounds of America.
  
  
• SEAGULL last week launched SEAGULL Secure FTP Pro, a new utility for securely transferring files from OS/400 and mainframe hosts over the Internet using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Secure FTP Pro makes regular FTP more secure by adding Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, digital certificates for authentication, and HTTPS tunneling through firewalls and proxy servers for extranet access. The utility provides additional OS/400-centric functionality by transferring iSeries data to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Secure FTP Pro is available now for $19.99 per seat. The utility is available for purchase on SEAGULL's Web site, at www.seagullsw.com.
  
  
• Stiefel Laboratories, the world's largest privately held pharmaceutical company specializing in dermatology, is in the middle of a "shared services" rollout of an iSeries-based ERP system that spans the globe. The company, which is headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, and develops products for skin disorders, has gone live on Intentia's Java-based Movex ERP system at manufacturing sites in Ireland, Singapore, and Brazil, and it is currently working on its shared services rollout for sites in Europe and Asia. Stiefel's chief financial officer says the company expects a sizable savings and increased productivity by consolidating financial, logistical, and administrative information systems for the multi-national sites in Europe and Asia. Stiefel has more than 30 wholly owned subsidiaries around the world, including manufacturing facilities in six countries and research and development centers on three continents. Intentia is headquartered in Sweden and has U.S. headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois.
  
  
• Courion last week delivered AccountCourier 3.0, the latest release of the company's account provisioning and identity management software for OS/400, Unix, Windows, and Linux platforms. AccountCourier provides a centralized way to manage which applications, server, and portals the user's employees, customers, and business partners have access to. With Version 3.0, the Framingham, Massachusetts, company has made it easier to manage groups of people, with new features like bulk operations, which lets authorized IT staff create, enable, disable, change and delete accounts for many users in a single operation; change action, which is designed to make it easier to modify fine-grained attributes of accounts, including group membership, based on policies; and user "re-modeling," which lets administrators "clone" the accounts of one or more user. Other new features include an XML interface, a new status queue, and support for Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Novell NDS.
  
  

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