News Briefs and Product Shorts

• As the top tennis players in the world advanced through the Wimbledon tournament this week, the grass courts remind us of the way tennis used to be played, years and years ago. While the playing surface may not have changed in many a decade, the All England Lawn Tennis Club's IT systems certainly have. This year the club updated its computers and software to allow attendees to purchase tickets over the Internet for the first time. The club's enterprise software provider for the last decade, Geac, developed the Web-browser front-ends to the club's ticketing and debenture systems, which are connected to the club's System21 financials application, running on a new iSeries Model 270. Geac, based in Studley, England, used Jacada's Web-enabling software to develop the browser interfaces to the OS/400 ticketing and debenture applications. The company also streamlined Wimbledon's ticket-scanning process, whereby stewards scan people's tickets as they leave the grounds and hand them a freshly printed resale ticket, which allows visitors with ground passes to get into the Centre and No. 1 courts (for a small additional fee). The applications use IBM WebSphere Application Server running on Windows 2000.

• Supply chain execution software provider EXE Technologies has caught the Linux bug. The struggling Dallas software company announced last week that it will port its entire EXceed line of applications to the Unix-like operating system over the next year. The first products to be penguin-ized will be EXE's flagship Warehouse Management System, followed by its Perpetual Inventory Tracking application. EXE's Linux supply chain solutions will be delivered on preconfigured Linux servers from its partner, IBM. The move gives EXE much-need support from IBM, which holds Linux as a critical component in its On Demand software delivery strategy, and also gives EXE a price edge over other applications that require expensive operating systems, such as Unix, OS/400, or z/OS. (EXE ported its mainframe-based EXceed WMS system to OS/400 several years ago, but has had dismal sales.) EXE is one of just a handful of enterprise-class software developers that has committed to delivering core modules on Linux. The move is intended to give EXE a leg up on archrival Manhattan Associates, to which it has lost considerable market share to over the last few years.
  
  
• Companies that rely on CCSS's QMessage Monitor for AS/400 and iSeries message management and escalation can rest easy, knowing the software will work as advertised in a high-availability or clustered environment. Last week, CCSS announced QMessage Monitor has been awarded ClusterProven status, a certification from IBM that says the software has proved itself to be interoperable with OS/400's clustering and replication facilities, as well as third-party cluster middleware applications, such as Lakeview Technologies' MIMIX software. The English systems management software company took QMessage Monitor to IBM's labs in Rochester, Minnesota, where it was subjected to a barrage of high-availability tests. The tests prove that the software's duties--including advanced escalation procedures, management of internal authorization lists, event monitoring, restricted state processing, calendar processing, looping job monitoring and PC maintenance facilities--are unaffected by automatic failovers or roll-swaps between clustered OS/400 servers. When the primary machine goes down, tests show QMessage Monitor will automatically transfer control to the nominated backup system, and when the primary system is back online, an operator can easily transfer control back to the original iSeries server. Ray Wright, CCSS managing director, says the benefits of QMessage Monitor are particularly pronounced in replication and clustering environments. "The last thing any organization needs is for problems that could pose a threat to one system, to be duplicated onto another," he says. QMessage Monitor is the first message management application to be awarded ClusterProven status, CCSS says. Now, all of CCSS's products are ClusterProven.
  
  
• HiT Software last week announced new versions of JDBC/DB2 and JDBC/400, database access software for Java developers writing to open systems and OS/400 servers. With Version 3.1 releases of these two products, the San Jose, California, company has delivered a variety of enhancements that allow Java developers to keep up with enhancements that IBM has added to its DB2 database software. For example, the new savepoint support gives developers greater control of complex transactions by separating transaction into steps that can be rolled back. The new connection pool lets developers fine-tune connection properties to maximize performance, while the new ParameterMetaData helps to ensure accurate data type processing. Developers can also speed application performance through the new holdable cursor support, which enables result set processing even after a transaction has been committed. HiT says the products further simplify SQL programming by allowing the auto-generated or auto-incremented key fields to be retrieved, using a simple flag in the Execute method. Other enhancements include support for Boolean data types and updatable BLOB/CLOB fields. In addition, JDBC/400, HiT's OS/400-specific product, also now supports retrieval of auto-generated keys, ARRAY and REF data types, and database metadata APIs, the company says. For more information or free trials, go to www.hitsw.com.
  
  
• Invensys last week introduced new radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for its PRISM suite of OS/400 ERP software. Invensys Production Solutions, a subsidiary of Invensys, announced PRISM RF, a new module for the PRISM enterprise suite that incorporates wireless, barcode, and electronic product code technologies. PRISM RF is a rebranded version of RF for PRISM Integration, which was developed by Solzon, a Pembroke, New Hampshire, company that also develops wireless add-ons for MAPICS ERP software. The new PRISM RF module allows the direct integration of RF devices to PRISM, and supports all of the ERP suite's receiving, inventory, manufacturing, cycle counting, and shipping functions. The software is compatible with RF equipment from major vendors and supports traditional barcode scanning, in addition to more advanced technology, like voice-directed systems and RFID. The adoption of RFID is expected to accelerate in the wake of Wal-Mart's recent statement that it will require all of its suppliers to support RFID technology by January 2005.
  
  
• Surround Technologies is rebranding its product line. As of July 1, the Scotch Plains, New Jersey, company's software products will be grouped into the Envision suite. Among the nine products being rebranded are Surround's flagship Windows development tool, Frameworks for Windows, which is based on LANSA's Visual LANSA development environment. Frameworks for Windows is now called Envision Visual LANSA Accelerator. Another product getting a new name is Universal FTP Interface System, which will now be marketed as Envision Universal FTP. Eric Banta, the company's vice president of business development, says Surround Technologies decided to rebrand its products because many of its customers used a variety of the company's products but were unaware that they could be integrated and work together. "For example, the Envision Contact Management product is based on the Envision Visual LANSA Accelerator Foundation, and that allows companies to easily integrate the system into any other Envision Visual LANSA Accelerator-developed product," he says.
  
  

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