News Briefs and Product Shorts

• SSA Global Technologies wasn't in Denver for the COMMON conference last week, preferring instead the warm environs of Las Vegas, where it held its annual user conference, the SSA GT Global Client Forum. However, the Chicago ERP vendor's absence at the largest iSeries industry event didn't put a damper on new product announcements, which came fast and furious last week. The company introduced three new business-intelligence modules for BPCS, a new line of portals that will integrate with multiple ERP applications, and a new scaled-down ERP system that runs on Windows and Unix operating systems. SSA GT turned to Cognos, a business intelligence software vendor, to help develop Enterprise Performance Analytics, a collection of three modules: Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Procurement Analysis. The OEM relationship with Cognos has already yielded Sales, General Ledger, and Inventory Analysis extensions to BPCS in the last year. SSA GT also pre-announced a series of role-based portal offerings that it plans to begin shipping early next year. These Java-based portals, which SSA GT is developing in-house, will be designed to help employees working in specific departments within a company to access the back-end computing resources they need, particularly if the functionality spans two or more applications. SSA GT plans separate portal offerings for customer service representatives, sales representatives, material planners, transportation planners, and department managers. The first portal, Order Inquiry, is expected to ship next February. Also on the list of new products announced at the user conference is SSA GT MAX+, an ERP package designed for smaller manufacturing or distribution organizations seeking a less expensive and less complex alternative to larger ERP systems. SSA GT MAX+ runs on Windows 2000 or Unix operating systems and the Oracle database management system, and it includes built-in warehouse management, CRM, and business intelligence capabilities. The software is generally available now and will be sold and locally supported through SSA GT's global sales channel.

• Castel, the Beverly, Massachusetts, call-center solutions provider, announced a new switching device at the COMMON conference in Denver last week that is designed to "intelligently" link a telephone network and OS/400 call center with CRM applications. The new TelePeripheral switch sits between OS/400 applications and the public telephone network. It routes calls--both inbound and outbound--connecting customers and service representatives. Castel said the intelligence in its TelePeripheral device is derived from its capability to communicate directly with the public switched network "at the command and control level," which means that TelePeripheral can read the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) number from incoming calls, match it against a company's customer database, identify the calling party, and automatically route the call, with its associated data screen, to a specific person in the company. On the outbound side, TelePeripheral can help customer service reps contact a group of customers on a list with automatic dialing and pick-up features. TelePeripheral automatically sorts out the busy and no-answer calls and passes live contacts--with its associated account screen--to the representative, in time to hear the first hello, which is a big benefit in light of the recent state and federal regulations regarding nuisance telemarketing calls. "With the TelePeripheral, you can add intelligent call processing capabilities to your iSeries or AS/400 server environment without having to create new database structures or reprogram applications," said Larry Huag, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Castel. For more information on TelePeripheral, go to www.castel.com.
  
  
• Elite Documents Solutions has announced that it has added a new e-mail module to its eliteSUITE collection of document management and forms software for OS/400. The new software, called Email Applications, allows users to e-mail OS/400 spool files as PDF attachments, complete with overlays, logos, signatures, and other graphical enhancements that are usually the realm of complete forms packages. However, Email Applications is a stand-alone application and does not require users to purchase the complete eliteFORM package to benefit from those features. In fact, the only difference between eliteFORM and Email Applications is that eliteFORM supports printing, the company said. Incorporated into Email Applications is a technology the Lake Forest, California, company calls DirectPDF, which automatically generates secure (128 bit encrypted) PDF documents for e-mailing, for posting to a Web site, or for storage in the OS/400 Integrated File System. For more information, go to www.elitedocuments.com.
  
  
• The Original Software Group last week released TestGUI 3.0, the latest version of its GUI testing program for applications running on OS/400 and other operating systems. With TestGUI 3.0, Original Software now provides the capability to check the GUIs of PC applications for errors. Earlier versions of the product were designed strictly for testing the GUIs of iSeries server-side applications. The English company said TestGUI 3.0 is able to recognize and interrogate the classes of a new set of high-level development languages, including Computer Associates' Cool:Plex, Borland's Delphi, and LANSA's VISUAL LANSA. TestGUI already supported all Microsoft Visual Basic, C++, and SEAGULL JWalk object classes, the company said. TestGUI 3.0 also has support for an entirely new class of GUI objects that are compatible with the Microsoft Active Accessibility IAccessible interface. Following a collaboration between Original Software Group, Microsoft, and Videosoft, TestGUI is able to use IAccessible methods and properties to obtain information about an application's user interface and data, the company said. TestGUI 3.0 is shipping now.
  
  
• Symtrax has issued new portal software specifically designed to improve a company's ability to store and access reports generated by applications running on OS/400 servers and other platforms, and to cut down on printing. The Symtrax Portal runs on a Microsoft Windows 2000 server, and captures and indexes output from ERP applications and virtually any other type of application, the company said. Input may arrive in a variety of formats, such as PDF, ASCII, or HTML. For reports generated on OS/400 systems, Symtrax Portal indexes spool reports in their native binary format, Symtrax said. The portal compresses report data and makes reports available for searching and viewing by users or groups of users, according to the level of access determined by user profiles. Users can search reports by using a straightforward search engine, or they can conduct a more complex, query-like search using attributes such as job name, file name, and file creation time. Users may customize their portal interface with news, forums, or lists of new reports, and they can pull reports through their portal for viewing in special viewer software. Symtrax Portal integrates with the Los Angeles company's other OS/400 document management software, Cardinal and Compleo, and is currently available. For more information, go to www.symtrax.com.
  
  
• GO Software, an ROI company, announced new credit card processing software, RiTA Server 2.0, at COMMON last week. RiTA Server is a Java application that merchants can run to process credit card transactions, through a third-party "gateway" processor or directly through the credit card companies and banks. With this release of the software, GO Software adds new functionality that clearly shows RiTA Server is the strategic credit card processing engine at the company, and not JavaCard, which ROI developed before acquiring GO Software and its RiTA Server software in 2001, and which runs only on OS/400 (the company also supports the PCCharge credit card software for Windows systems). While GO Software doesn't plan to end support for JavaCard any time soon, it would like its OS/400 customer base to consider RiTA Server as an alternative. To that end, GO Software built OS/400-centric features into RiTA Server 2.0 that allow the software to use the platform's data queue API, enabling OS/400 application to integrate more easily with RiTA Server. The other enhancements delivered in this release are mostly centered on compliance with the clearance systems operated by a range of third-party gateways.
  
  
• New OS/400 backup and recovery software is on its way from LXI, the Irving, Texas, company that develops Media Management Services, a utility that helps AS/400 and iSeries shops keep track of tapes; schedule and execute backups; and assist in recovery. Media Management Services 4.5.3, currently in beta, will bring new intelligent automated backup capabilities by eliminating the previously manual process of building and maintaining backup policies, lists, and procedures. This new release will also feature a new library prioritization capability that makes sure the most frequently used data is always backed up first, and that the most frequently used libraries are the first to be recovered. Another new feature of Version 4.5.3 is support for customized recovery lists, which will allow users to build an unlimited number of recovery lists for critical applications. LXI, which said these capabilities cannot be found in any other iSeries backup utility, expects Media Management Services 4.5.3 to become available November 22.
  
  

Sponsored By KEY INFORMATION SYSTEMS

New e-Lab on Backup from Key Improve your tape backup and archiving practices with Key's e-Lab. There are useful references to current thinking on data safety. Get helpful materials for planning better backup/archiving scenarios using latest tape technologies. Visit www.keyisit.com/tapeanalysis for a FREE ANALYSIS  of your own backup strategy from an IBM Certified Storage Specialist at Key. You can also call 1-877-442-3249 to speak to a Specialist.