News Briefs and Product Shorts

• MediNomics was so happy with its AS/400 system that it insisted on keeping the box when it upgraded its practice management system. The company, which provides accounts-receivable-management services for doctors in Louisiana and Texas, had used the AS/400 since it was founded in 1994, and saw no reason to try anything else. But buying a new application was something else entirely. That's why CPU Medical Management Systems' "try and buy" program, which allows potential clients to use the software in application service provider (ASP) mode, was a crucial selling point for MediNomics. "Purchasing a system is an extremely daunting project in the accounts-receivable-management business," says MediNomics chief executive officer Patrick Lukacs. "It was an incredible opportunity for our staff to try the system on to ensure that it was an appropriate fit for the cultures of our staff and our clients." This February, MediNomics went live on MED/FM 5.1, the OS/400-based practice management system sold by San Diego, California, based CPU Medical Management Systems.

• The ImageSoft Technologies subsidiary of financial services software giant Fiserv last week announced new software to help root out check fraud. The FraudGuard suite provides three techniques to detect check fraud and can be integrated with Fiserv's OS/400-based Comprehensive Banking System suite. FraudGuard's first component, called Positive PayPLUS, automatically reviews payee line, check number, and dollar amount information on a check and compares it with the "checks issued" file provided by a financial institution's customer. The second component, Positive PayPLUS with Secure Seal, boosts the standard positive pay function by embedding file information directly on a check, on a "secure seal" logo. During processing, information from the seal is compared with the check image, thereby discovering forged checks. The third component of the FraudGuard suite, Digital Signature Verification, amasses a database of signatures and uses an algorithm to detect forged signatures. Decision Support integrates with the three other FraudGuard applications to provide online viewing of exceptions generated by their denying payment of a check. Users can choose to run FraudGuard applications themselves or outsource it to Fiserv.
  
  
• Engineered Business Systems last week announced a new release of Automated Compliance and Evaluation System GOLD, a mortgage quality-control solution for OS/400 and other platforms that helps mortgage bankers audit their loans and detect fraud. With this release, EBS says, it is helping customers become "lean, clean, and green," which basically means it streamlined the loan review process, tightening security in some areas, and eliminating some paper-based forms. EBS says the updated loan review process, which includes new electronic or Internet-based-forms distribution techniques, lets users spot risk factors more quickly and is friendlier to the environment. The capability to use the Internet to securely deliver merged credit reports, which contain confidential consumer information, also reduces the risk of doing business with Automated Compliance and Evaluation System 6.2, the company says. Another improvement includes new analytical features to help banks more accurately identify their target markets.
  
  
• eIQnetworks last week launched the 3.5 release of MailAnalyzer, a browser-based mail server analysis and reporting utility that works with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, and Sendmail e-mail servers. MailAnalyzer's 70 prebuilt reports help users identify e-mail usage patterns and regain unused mail resources, and is often used as an analysis tool in mail migrations. With this release, eIQnetworks has made a number of enhancements, including a new executive summary report and other new reports, an improved user interface, the addition of installation and configuration checkers to speed implementations, a new App Status feature to check the status and behavior of the application, and what the company claims is a 100 percent performance improvement in log file, user data collection, and data updating. MailAnalyzer costs $495 for a single user license.
  
  
• E-mail security software company GROUP Technologies recently launched a new services organization to help companies using IBM Lotus Domino to get a handle on e-mail security and fight spam. As part of the new GROUP Professional Services organization, announced at the recent VIEW Administration Conference for Notes and Domino Professionals in Las Vegas, Nevada, GROUP technologists will monitor a company's e-mail traffic. GROUP will then generate a report that includes information about the size and number of non-business-related e-mail attachments; the types and amounts of offensive e-mails and attachments; the attachment number, size, and types; the number and size of e-mails transmitted; the size and number of hourly transmissions; and the threshold counts and sizes. After going over the results with the client, GROUP will typically recommend one or more of its suite of tools to address the problem areas. "This is no cookie-cutter approach to solving e-mail security and management issues," says Jürgen Wege, GROUP Technologies founder and chief executive. GROUP's software targets Domino and Microsoft Exchange e-mail servers, and has seen numerous deployments in iSeries-Domino environments.
  
  
• Logility last week announced Version 7.0 of its flagship ERP system, Logility Voyager Solutions, at its annual user conference in Atlanta. The Logility Voyager Solutions suite, which the software company ported from Windows to OS/400 in 2001, offers manufactures and distributors a collection of supply chain planning capabilities. Key new features to be delivered when Version 7.0 ships later this summer include new views of the real-time status of the supply chain using key performance indicators, and a new alerting system; enhancements to the forecasting engines for single-enterprise and multi-enterprise planning processes; new planning capabilities to simulate and execute on a variety of planning strategies; enhancements to its sourcing capabilities; new Web services that provide access to the suite's ordering and inventory management functions; a new transportation planning optimizer; new "best practices" templates for warehouse management; and support for Microsoft's .NET platform.
  
  

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