News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Lawson Software is now shipping a new release of its OS/400-based ERP software, Lawson 8.0, the company announced last week. The release of the RPG IV-based suite has been a long time in coming for Lawson and its OS/400 customers. In May 2002, Lawson committed to delivering Lawson 8.0 on the iSeries (see "Lawson Tells OS/400 Users It's Committed to the Platform"), which would bring the iSeries version in line, functionally, with the Lawson 8.0 release that the St. Paul, Minnesota, software company delivered for Unix and Windows users in April 2001. In addition to the general availability of Lawson 8.0 for iSeries, Lawson's close iSeries partner, DigiTerra, announced that it has lined up two more OS/400 shops to be beta sites for Lawson 8.0 on iSeries. Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States, and White River Medical System, the principal healthcare organization serving North Central Arkansas, will be early adopters of Lawson 8.0 on iSeries servers, the Denver company announced. These two new Lawson 8.0 beta sites join DigiTerra's first beta upgrade customer, the North Carolina State Ports Authority.
  
  

• American Camping Association's bookstore has successfully deployed the DPS Flash application from DPS to streamline the process of, as well as to cut costs associated with, taking orders over the phone and the Web, DCS reports. The bookstore was already running the DPS Extend distribution system on an iSeries server when it realized it needed to automate order-taking on its "virtual bookstore," which had sales of between $550,000 and $750,000 but required five full-time employees to rekey orders coming in from the telephone and a hosted Web site. The Martinsville, Indiana, company decided to stick with DCS, an OS/400 software vendor headquartered in Indianapolis, and try the DPS Flash extension to the core DPS Extend product. DPS Flash provides much of the e-commerce infrastructure that an organization like the ACA bookstore would need, such as multiple order processing features, customer self-service, and integrated security. The ACA bookstore deployed DPS Extend on a new iSeries server with WebSphere Application Server Express. As a result, the ACA bookstore is now operating "lights out" (which means the data-entry positions have been eliminated) and orders are up by 20 percent, DPS says. Other benefits of DPS Flash include the capability of bookstore staff to update information themselves, more detailed descriptions for most products, and a better understanding of which customers qualify for discounts.
  
  
• So you've decided to do e-business on your iSeries. Where do you start? Which technology do you choose? Manta Technologies, a provider of computer-based training on OS/400 topics, says that the problem with the term "e-business" is that there seems to be as many definitions as there are software vendors and technologies that will take you there. To shed some light on all the confusion, Manta last week announced the availability of a new six-course educational series, called eBusiness for iSeries Programmers, which, Manta says, covers everything a programmer needs to know in order to implement a Web-based application on an OS/400 server. The courses include Coding HTML and XHTML: Basic Elements; Coding HTML and XHTML: Advanced Elements; Coding JavaScript; Using JavaScript to Enhance Web Pages; and Writing a CGI Program in RPG. The entire course takes 12 to 16 hours to complete, Manta says, and a single-user license can be purchased for $954. Individual courses can be purchased for $179 or taken online for $99. A student reference guide is also available for an additional $55.
  
  
• California Software has announced the second major release of BABY/OLAP, its OS/400-based business-intelligence software. BABY/OLAP is a multidimensional visualization, analysis, and reporting application that allows companies to better utilize information residing in their DB2/400, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server databases, using extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tools, a multidimensional database generator, tools for ad-hoc queries, and a browser-based interface. With BABY/OLAP 2.0, the Irvine, California, software company has completely rebuilt the product's query engine to make it much faster, and it also has built a new user interface, says Ariel Iriarte, the company's manager for South America, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the announcement was made.
  
  
• Internal Engine Parts Group, which operates nine distribution centers across the South, has successfully completed the first roll-out phase of DMS Systems' e-WD Business Suite on iSeries hardware at its warehouses, the software vendor announced last month. Internal Engine Parts Group has run the DMS Distribution/Express System for years and is now buying more software from the Rocky Mount, North Carolina, vendor so that it can to achieve better inventory turns and higher employee productivity, it says. The e-WD Business Suite components that Internal Engine Parts Group is installing are the Qwik-Order Customer Web Ordering service and the Qwik-Scan Wireless Warehouse Barcoding system. Other components of the suite include a business intelligence EIS dashboard and an electronic catalog product.
  
  
• Integrated Barcoding Systems recently announced the availability of QuikTrac 5.1, the latest release of its screen integration tool for enabling OS/400 applications to support wireless barcode scanners. QuikTrac allows AS/400 and iSeries shops to map their OS/400-based ERP and MRP to a wireless fixed or portable data collection device without requiring modification to the core application. The company has made several enhancements with QuikTrac 5.1, including allowing the QuikTrac Development module to support scrolling, SQL interfaces, and grouping of users on a project, the company says. This release also gives greater control over which user, or groups of users, are authorized to sign in to the QuikTrac Manager component, the Adrian, Michigan, company says.
  
  

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