News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Like many of you out there in OS/400 land, the Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative, in scenic Ashton, Idaho, runs its core business apps on homegrown software. More than 11,000 co-op members, spread across the Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana countryside, rely on this do-it-all organization for its electricity, propane, surge protectors, and long-distance and cellular phone service (as well as loans and VISA cards). While these customers may be a hardy group of Americans, like all good consumers, they appreciate it when Fall River's services are online, and, unfortunately, that was becoming a problem, because its iSeries application was experiencing periods of, uh, how should we say, unpleasantness. The hitches had to do with record locks, which would sometimes stall or crash the Fall River client apps several times a day. The co-op planed to eliminate this problem by migrating to a more stable, prepackaged application at some point, but until then, the IT staff was suck with trying to manually track down those record locks by scrolling through a bunch of screens. That's why Fall River brought in an automated utility called lock/DETECTOR from Centerfield Technology. Since then, according to Fall River's iSeries manager, Larry Stone, the length of his users' "unexpected coffee breaks" has greatly diminished.

• Comergent Technologies last week announced a scaled-down midmarket version of its enterprise-strength, sell-side e-business platform, which it calls its Mid Market offering. With its core catalog and order-management capabilities, Mid Market allows companies to offer their customers access to customized products or services from Web browsers. Comergent's applications are based on a three-tiered architecture, are written in Java, and are therefore platform-independent. The Redwood City, California, company says it offers a series of connectors for integrating its software with its customers' ERP and AS/400 systems.
  
  
• IBM's aggressive plan to go after the HP3000 customers that Hewlett-Packard is abandoning looks to be paying off. Sometime in 2001, Prolog4, a British provider of payroll software and solutions, successfully migrated the HP3000-based software it ran as an outsourcer to an iSeries. The company didn't move all 12 of its outsourced client base, which included large companies such as McDonalds UK, all at once, but did it over a period of time. Along the way, the company built a new Web interface for the payroll application using software from SEAGULL, which has also helped the company to sign new clients. Without the power of the company's new iSeries server, Prolog4 just wouldn't have been able to handle the processing load of an additional 13,000 new users it committed to when it signed a contract with BSkyB, Britain's largest pay-TV provider. "The iSeries has been so successful in generating new business that we now need to implement a second to handle the thousands of additional users," Prolog4's managing director, Glyn King, said. Prolog4's migration was featured in a special iSeries edition of "The e3000 News Wire," which Big Blue will be distributing this week at the HP World user conference in Los Angeles to try to lure more disgruntled HP3000 users to the OS/400 platform.
  
  
• Surprise, surprise: Financial executives are not entirely happy with the quality of their ERP and accounting systems, according to a new survey (see PDF file) by Business Finance magazine. The magazine's 2002 business information solutions survey found that the suits' biggest sore spots with their companies' IT systems were their inability to meet primary business objectives (which was normally cost reduction). Other areas that need improvement are business process management and integration with other systems, the survey of 875 finance, IT, and business unit executives found. Some interesting ERP vendor rankings also emerged from the survey's question: "Which vendor package would you buy today if you were implementing a completely new system?"
  
  
• Rejbi is releasing more free OS/400 software. Rejbi, the freeware development arm of iSeries consultants Technology Solutions, of Perrysburg, Ohio, released an error management utility called Rejbi:EM on September 1, and has plans to release two more freeware utilities by November, according to its Web site. Rejbi:EM helps developers track down errors by trapping program and job information when a program generates an error, before users have a chance to cancel the job. Rejbi:EM also provides a "work with" interface to review open errors, assign errors, and track resolutions, and includes an API for inclusion in subroutines. Rejbi also plans to release an e-commerce middleware package called Rejbi:ECI later this month. Rejbi:ECI will provide an interface between application software and OS/400-based EDI translator software, allowing users to import trading partners' transaction definitions and perform inquiries into document information. Rejbi released its first OS/400 freeware product, a utility called Rejbi:Trigger Integration Management that provides an interface for working work with AS/400 database triggers, in 1998. Rejbi:TI was followed by an OS/400 menu and management utility called Rejbi:MS last October and a database design utility called Rejbi:DM earlier this year. The company plans to release a collection of basic accounting applications called Rejbi:BA this November, and an application for housing and urban development departments of local governments called Rejbi:HA early next year. The company does not charge anything for its software but charges anywhere from several hundred to several thousands dollars a year for maintenance.
  
  
• Embattled OS/400 software developer Peregrine Systems filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. At the same time, the San Diego, California, software developer, which became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation this year, after accounting irregularities totaling hundreds of millions of dollars were unearthed, announced its intention to file a $250 million civil lawsuit against its former auditor, Arthur Andersen, claiming the accounting firm was "negligent, engaged in fraud, and breached their audit and accounting duties and responsibilities." Meanwhile, Peregrine continued to unload its assets yesterday, announcing a deal to sell its Remedy help desk software unit, which it acquired in August 2001 for about $1 billion, to BMC Software for $350 million. In June Peregrine sold its line of supply chain software, which included OS/400 EDI translation software it acquired in its 2000 purchase of Harbinger, to Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco technology management firm. Gold Gate Capital plans to rebuild the supply chain software business, along with help from its partners, Cerberus Capital Management and Parallax Capital Partners. Cereberus is the New York City firm that took a majority ownership stake in OS/400 ERP vendor SSA Global Technologies following its bankruptcy.
  
  

Sponsored By COMMON

COMMON IT EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE Tell your IT Directors about the three-day event that is specially designed for them. Held October 13-15, 2002, in Denver, the IT Executive Conference will give iSeries Directors the opportunity to network and learn from well-known speakers in the iSeries environment, and receive new strategies for optimizing operations. To find out more, go to: www.common.org/executive