News Briefs and Product Shorts

• In a victory for iSeries enthusiasts everywhere, clothes maker Woolrich recently announced that it has moved its Web site from an out-sourced Windows box to an in-house iSeries. Officials with the Woolrich, Pennsylvania, company--a longtime OS/400 shop--say the move was driven primarily by the company's desire to get its hands on its own Web site, so it could make updates faster. Woolrich tapped two technology companies, LANSA and Weidenhammer Systems, a Reading, Pennsylvania, consultancy, to help with the move. David Yorks, director of MIS, and his staff used LANSA for the Web to begin the site migration from Windows. Then LANSA Commerce Edition was brought in to duplicate the old site's look and feel, as well as adding a few other enhancements. For example, Commerce Edition's cataloging facility has enabled Woolrich's old static Web pages to become table driven. Company officials say they are very happy with the new solution, and that response time has improved, as well.
  
  

• Bytware recently rolled out new releases of its Messenger systems-management software that give OS/400 shops a new way to monitor and manage their OS/400 servers via cell phone. With the Version 5.56 releases of MessengerPlus and MessengerConsole, Bytware is now supporting the Short Message Service paging protocol, used with the Global System for Mobile Communication cell phone system. The Reno, Nevada, company said this change was driven by AT&T's discontinuance this summer of the older Telocator Alphanumeric Protocol for the Time Division Multiple Access cell phone system. Companies will be able to use their GSM-enabled cell phones as modems, to connect to their OS/400 servers, and reply to pages or issue commands, via Bytware's Messenger products. Another benefit that GSM support brings, Bytware says, is that Short Message Service messages can be sent to any phone or pager, without the need for multiple gateways.
  
  
• Trend Micro will soon start shipping a new release of its ScanMail antivirus software for OS/400-based Domino e-mail servers running Domino Version 6.5. ScanMail for Lotus Notes uses pattern-recognition and rule-based technologies, along with virus behavior analysis, to detect and remove viruses sent to a Domino server. The software scans Domino databases and replication environments, and can also detect viruses sent via Sametime and Quickplace. ScanMail can be upgraded to provide spam- and content-blocking capabilities through an interface to Trend Micro's eManager product. The Cupertino, California, company is already shipping versions of ScanMail that support Domino 6.5 on the Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems. Support for Domino on OS/400, AIX, and mainframe servers should become available in early October, the company said.
  
  
• Island Pacific, which develops and sells OS/400 merchandise management systems to multichannel retailers, has formed a partnership with Advanced Systems Concepts, to integrate and resell its OS/400 reporting tool. The new Island Pacific product, called IP ViewPoint, is based on Advanced Systems Concepts' SEQUEL reporting tool and integrates with Island Pacific's OS/400 merchandise management system, out of the box, eliminating the time and expense of hiring somebody to do the integration, the company says. IP ViewPoint can be used to develop customized reports from a merchandise management system database, including sales summaries and reports based on purchase orders and inventory status. An IT manager at Brookstone, which uses Island Pacific's software as well as SEQUEL, says the reporting tool has been instrumental in writing many different utilities that let users do their job better. "SEQUEL's many features, both the modules I use and the non-module-related features, make me fall more in love with this product every day," said Rick Kazanjian, a product support manager for the retailer. Island Pacific is hoping other retailers will get even more benefit out of the pre-integrated version of SEQUEL that it is selling.
  
  
• Symbol Technologies yesterday introduced its latest "ruggedized" mobile computer, the Symbol MC9000-G. With a battery-friendly 400 MHz Intel XScale processor, an advanced "fuzzy logic" scan engine running on either the Windows Embedded CE. NET or Windows Mobile 2003 operating system from Microsoft, and embedded support for RS232/USB client and wireless networking, Symbol says the MC9000-G is advanced and flexible enough for a variety of industries, including manufacturing, retail, wholesale/distribution, and third-party logistics. "We believe the Symbol MC9000-G shows great promise as the key component of an overall solution to help our global customers streamline their businesses," says Bill Morris, a hardware systems director at Symbol partner Manhattan Associates. The Symbol MC9000-G is currently undergoing field tests in Europe and North America and is expected to ship in November.
  
  
• Jacada shipped a new version of its terminal emulation software last week. One of the new features in Jacada Terminal Emulator 5.0 is a new thin-client Java FTP client, which, Jacada says, gives users the capability to transport files between supported mainframe OS/400, Unix, and Windows hosts, without the hassle of a full blown, fat-client FTP program. This version also has support for the Java 2 platform, which, Jacada says, has resulted in additional font support, keyboard functionality, faster runtime performance, and improved security. Also, Jacada Terminal Emulator can now be run as a Java application, in addition to a Java applet, which, according to the company, provides additional stability and security. Other enhancements include support for VT340 Unix emulation and expanded language support for German, Spanish, and English languages. Lastly, several usability enhancements have been rolled out with this release, including automatic proportional sizing of fonts and the ability to implement hotspots.
  
  

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