News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Create!form International is set to be acquired by Bottomline Technologies, the companies announced last week. Create!form, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, develops OS/400- and Windows-based document, forms, and check-management solutions. The company has a significant J.D. Edwards installed base, totaling about 1,100 JDE shops, and enjoys an exclusive partnership with the ERP vendor to provide certified document management solutions. Bottomline Technologies is a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, developer of financial resource management solutions, which includes disbursements and collections, as well as shrink-wrapped and outsourced banking solutions. Bottomline counted JDE as a partner between 1996 and 2002, and supported both WorldSoftware and OneWorld customers with its solutions. But Bottomline no longer lists the Denver ERP giant, which has been acquired by PeopleSoft, as a partner on its Web site. Bottomline's stock is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock market. Financial terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of this month, were not announced.
  
  

• One of the biggest drawbacks of using scripts to automate application testing has been the need to update the scripts whenever the application is changed. Original Software, a provider of application-testing tools, announced last week that it has addressed this well-known problem with Self-Healing Script technology. With SHS technology and a new "intelligent" screen-matching algorithm, called PowerPLAY, OS/400 green-screen scripts can be run over new versions of applications, without tedious and time-consuming maintenance. PowerPLAY works by automatically identifying and highlighting any changes made on the screens when an older script is applied to a changed application, and compensating for those changes without interrupting the script run. "SHS technology means that scripts can now grow and develop automatically with applications, with all the pain of script maintenance removed," says Colin Armitage, Original Software's chief executive. "We are proud to be the first to offer a comprehensive solution to this problem. . . . It is a development that has the potential to be revolutionary to software testing." The new PowerPLAY technology is currently available only with the latest release of Original's OS/400 testing solution, TestBench for iSeries Version 3.2. The company plans to soon make the technology available on its platform-neutral testing solutions, TestGUI and TestWEB.
  
  
• KOCH Entertainment, the country's largest independent music distributor, with approximately 1.0 percent of the market, has selected DataMirror's high availability software to protect its mission-critical OS/400 servers. The distributor, which is the exclusive licensee for such well-known record labels as Death Row Records (Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac) and the U.K.'s popular Music For Nations (Opeth, Cradle of Filth), will implement DataMirror's iCluster software to reduce server downtime, both planned and unplanned. "Prior to selecting iCluster, we had to force employees off the system for three hours each night, and five hours once a week, to run our dedicated backup," says Eileen Loh, KOCH Entertainment's network services director. "With iCluster, we can role-swap when necessary to ensure rapid recovery from downtime, and offload our backup servers for more efficient media processing and workload distribution."
  
  
• Business Computer Design Int'l issued a new release of its File-Flash Plus database editor at the recent COMMON show. With File-Flash Plus Version 4.2, BCD added the capability to convert DB2 formatted data to comma-delimited data with a single command, thus streamlining the process of loading DB2/400 data into other applications, such as Microsoft Excel. There is also a new mass delete command to complement the product's mass update feature. With this feature, users can easily select thousands of files for deletion simply by a defining field and a value range. Other enhancements include new compatibility with limits dictated by OS/400 V5R2, such as an increase in the maximum number of keys from 32 to 120; an increase in the maximum key length from 99 to 2,000; and a change in the maximum record length from 9,999 to 32,766, BCD says. Licenses for File-Flash Plus range from $750 to $1,050, depending on the server size.
  
  
• A recent stress test of JDA Software Group's store replenishment system at IBM's testing center in Rochester, Minnesota, shows the software is capable of handling the high transaction rate required by tier-1 retailers. Tests of Advanced Store Replenishment by E3 Version 2003.6.0, which was requested by a tier-1 retailer, were performed on a 12-processor iSeries Model 890. JDA says the revamped, multi-threaded Store Replenishment system set a new standard in handling a daily replenishment cycle for a 149 million SKU/Location database in 70 minutes, equaling more than 2 million transactions per minute on the partitioned server. "What makes the benchmark so impressive," says JDA's senior vice president of marketing and chief product officer, Peter Charness, "is that our Store Replenishment software achieved these results using only 33 percent of the server's capacity." The new release of Store Replenishment was made generally available on August 19. The Scottsdale, Arizona, company also released Advanced Warehouse Replenishment by E3 and Vendor Managed Replenishment by E3 in August.
  
  
• At the EPC Symposium in Chicago last week, Zebra Technologies announced three new printer/encoder products that will support the production of radio frequency identification (RFID) smart labels, which are expected to offer higher efficiencies and to begin replacing traditional barcode labels in warehouse environments in the near future. When it ships, in 2004, Zebra's new R110Alchemy engine will let companies generate smart labels on-demand, from within a printer, via both 13.56 MHz and UHF RFID transponder inlays, as well as printing traditional barcodes on label stock. Zebra also announced two new versions of a tabletop RFID printer/encoder at the show. R4Mplus can be ordered to Class 0 or Class 1 UHF EPC specifications, depending on user requirements. At the show, the company also demonstrated its integration with Manhattan Associates' "RFID in a Box" solution.
  
  
• Redding Bank of Commerce, in California's northern Sacramento Valley, has decided to replace its in-house banking system with a packaged OS/400 application from Aurum Technology, the software company announced last week. The Aurum Banking System was designed around the DB2/400 database and provides a range of core banking capabilities, including loan, account, and teller management, and can be expanded to support check imaging, Internet banking, and business intelligence. Redding Bank of Commerce has assets totaling $370 million and caters primarily to small and midsized businesses and high-net-worth individuals. The bank plans to begin implementation of the Aurum Banking System on an iSeries server this fall.
  
  

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