News Briefs and Product Shorts

• There will be less on-site footwork for the iSeries operations team at Maxwell Shoe as a result of its recent QSystem Management implementation, reports CCSS, a British systems management software vendor. Maxwell Shoe, whose brands include such familiar names as Mootsies Tootsies, Anne Klein, Dockers/Khakis, Sam & Libby, and Joan & David, has implemented the entire QSystem Management suite, which includes the QSystem Monitor, a performance monitoring and reporting system, QMessage Monitor, for message escalation and management, and QRemote Control, for managing OS/400 servers from mobile phones, in order to manage its financial and warehouse management applications running on an i820 and an i830 located near Boston. The company says it expects to reap the benefits of the systems automation solution by not requiring operations staff to be tied down to a PC (QRemote Control works with GSM mobile phones) and by monitoring iSeries resource usage more accurately in preparation for an iSeries upgrade in a year and a half.
  

• Figgins Holdings, one of Australia's oldest and largest providers of quality footwear, has chosen to implement Island Pacific's OS/400-based wholesale and distribution application. Family owned Figgins, which operates more than 140 stores across the country that sell such shoe brands as He Shoes, Scooter, Mollini, Evelyn Miles, Midas, Florsheim, Emporio, and Shoo Biz, has been producing footwear since the days of the Australian gold rush in the early 1800s. Last week, Island Pacific announced that Figgins will be implementing the Irvine, California, software company's Direct module on an iSeries server. Direct will integrate with Figgin's existing iSeries system and provide the shoemaker with one-to-one customer order fulfillment capabilities spanning order entry, order processing, customer service, and inventory planning. The system is expected to improve processes, including reservation of stock for customer orders, visibility of available inventory, and the accuracy of invoicing, says Norm Bateman, Figgins IT manager.
  
  
• FormScape, a vendor of document output management software, hopes to improve its traction among the J.D. Edwards installed base as a result of two companies it signed as new software partners last week. CD Group is an Atlanta company that specializes in integration and consulting services for J.D. Edwards shops. As a FormScape software partner, CD Group will provide a full range of sales, service, and support to FormScape customers who want to add document output management to their WorldSoftware or OneWorld implementations. Aellius Professional Research & Consulting is a Parker, Colorado, consultancy that specializes in J.D. Edwards ERP implementations, remote administration, database design, and enterprise integration. As a FormScape partner, Aellius will integrate FormScape software with OneWorld implementations and provide service and support. FormScape, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, says it has 500 J.D. Edwards customers with its FormScape line of products, which has been certified by J.D. Edwards to work with its ERP software.
  
  
• Infinium Software, which recently agreed to be acquired by SSA Global Technologies, last week announced the general availability of Daily Operations Manager 6.0, a financial analysis and reporting solution for the hospitality industry that serves as a central collection point for daily revenues, budget data, and daily expenses, and integrates with Infinium General Ledger. The application uses Infinium's Corporate Performance Management application to give employees throughout an organization the capability to monitor and manage business performance at many levels. At, for example, Colonial Williamsburg, the "world's largest outdoor living history museum," in Virginia, Daily Operations Manager is used to judge how operational influencers such as special promotions or the weather impact financial results, says Douglas Marty, the organization's IT director. "We anticipate that Infinium Daily Operations Manager will help us to improve our day-to-day decision making, as well as our strategic planning," he says.
  
  
• The iSeries is one of the most secure business computing platforms available today. Nevertheless, OS/400's support for open industry standards such as TCP/IP, FTP, and ODBC can make it vulnerable. This openness was the primary reason why Legal & General, a life insurance company in The Netherlands, chose to secure its iSeries network using software from SafeStone Technologies. "Because of the increasing openness of the iSeries platform, security has become a bitter necessity," says Alastair Kirkman, Legal & General's IT department supervisor. Legal & General recently implemented components of SafeStone's DetectIT suite of OS/400 security software suite--including DetectIT Client Server, Examiner, and Audit--SafeStone announced earlier this month. The company uses DetectIT Audit to filter through the thousands of iSeries system messages to find the important ones, while DetectIT Client Server is used to monitor and protect the exit points that are susceptible to security breaches as a result of the company's use of Windows PCs as clients. DetectIT Examiner lets the company create new security polices that are modifications of the software's default policies. Legal & General reported excellent service from SafeStone, which is based in the United Kingdom and has its U.S. headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey.
  
  
• Business is brisk for high availability software, says DataMirror, which announced a slew of customer wins recently. Companies that have recently bought OS/400 high availability software from the Toronto, Ontario, company include Almo Corporation, Ethical Funds, Garan Inc., Lloyds TSB Bank Argentina, Motor Club of America Insurance Company, Omer DeSerres Inc., Prudent Publishing Company, Robert Weed Plywood, and The Gray Insurance Company. DataMirror says many companies have adopted its iCluster high availability software as a result of its "Simple HA for Under $60K" price promotion, which the company introduced following IBM's GreenStreak hardware discount promotion earlier this year. Last month DataMirror extended its promotion through January 21, 2003. The GreenStreak promotion ended last Friday.

Sponsored By FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400?? What is Fast400? You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy anther interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net. Why Fast400? A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system. The result Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair. The similarity IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries? The future The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!! For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.