|
But Wait, There's More
Get the Latest OS/400 PTF Guide
Teamstudio Sells Screensurfer Line to Inventu
Application development tool maker Teamstudio sold its Screensurfer line of Web-to-host integration tools last week to Inventu, a company founded by the original programming and support team that created Screensurfer, at a company called Intelligent Environments, which rolled out the product in 1998 and which Teamstudio acquired in 2001.
Screensurfer is a middleware program that runs on Windows platforms that can intercept 5250 OS/400 and 3270 mainframe green-screen protocol data generated by OS/400 and mainframe server applications and render them as HTML Web pages. Last year, Teamstudio, based in Beverly, Massachusetts, added support for Unix and VMS servers and applications that use the popular VT100/102 terminal protocol, which is akin to an IBM green screen.
Before acquiring the Screensurfer line, Teamstudio created application development tools for the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino platform. By divesting itself of the Screensurfer line, Teamstudio CEO Nigel Cheshire says that the company can better focus on its Notes/Domino and new Java tools for application developers. Inventu, based in Augusta, Maine, provides consulting services for Web-to-host integration and has been a reseller of a set of tools from British software company Flynet, which has created a set of tools for moving legacy AS/400, Unix/VAX, and mainframe applications to the Microsoft COM and .NET programming models. With the Screensurfer acquisition, Inventu can cover generic Web and Microsoft front ends.
JDA Says Revenues Up, Profits Down in Q4
Retail application software maker JDA Software Group, which sells ERP-style software specifically aimed at retailers that runs on OS/400, Unix, and Windows platforms, said last week that software sales and profits will be lower than expected because some deals the company had expected to close in the final quarter of the year did not. Despite this, however, JDA's overall sales will be up.
According to a statement released by the company as it enters its quiet period before announcing its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2003 on January 20, JDA anticipates that total revenues for the quarter will come in at about $55 million, up 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2002, but software license sales will be only $16.9 million, down 6 percent. The company expects to either break even or post a 1 cent per share net income, compared with 3 cents per share a year ago. JDA said that the deals that did not close in the fourth quarter have not been lost to competitors but are merely still open. The company elaborated a bit, adding that business in the fourth quarter in the Americas was up, while sales in Europe and in the Asia/Pacific region were down "substantially," compared with the third quarter of 2003. With the sales cycles across all industries being extended and many economies floundering, it is hard to say what this might mean for sales in future quarters for JDA. But JDA has no debt, is widely respected, gets 70 percent of its business from inside its 4,600-company strong installed base, and is a strong partner of both IBM and Microsoft.
Open Source Databases Picking Up Steam, Says Evans Data
According to the latest survey of database developers performed by Evans Data, which regularly queries application and database developers on the issues they are facing, the use of open-source relational databases has grown significantly in the past six months. However, Microsoft's Access and SQL Server databases still dominate the installed base.
Specifically, Evans Data found that the use of the open-source MySQL database has grown by more than 30 percent in the past six months. The use of Access and SQL Server in aggregate only grew by 6 percent in the same time. Joe McKendrick, the database analyst at Evans Data, said in a statement accompanying the survey results that reliability, lowest total cost of ownership, the ability to integrate with existing environments, performance, and scalability were the top five concerns of database programmers as they selected a product. Total cost of ownership has been the number-two issue in the database surveys for the past three semi-annual surveys. For the past three years, reliability has been the number-one issue. So the move to open-source databases by some companies does not seem to be a reflection that they are willing to forgo reliability to cut cost, but it seems to indicate that companies feel that open-source programs, like MySQL and PostgreSQL, have come of age and are sufficiently robust to be used in production environments.
Evans Data's characterization of database preferences is based on a survey of 550 database developers. According to the survey, some 62 percent of developers say that they would (not did, but would) expect to save some money by moving to a Linux environment; however, about 38 percent of the respondents did not expect to save money if they made such a move. And those that did expect to save money did not necessarily expect to save a lot. Some 23 percent of respondents said that they would not anticipate saving any more than 10 percent out of current IT expenditures; another 27 percent would expect between 11 and 50 percent savings; while 8 percent expected savings of 51 to 75 percent.
Other interesting tidbits in the survey: Only 12 percent of companies surveyed said they have deployed grid computing in some fashion, with only another 9 percent saying they will do so in the next two years. Also, only 14 percent of respondents said that they could restore the mission-critical information in their databases, if a server crashed, in under 5 minutes. The survey results showed a somewhat bumpy bell curve, with respondents on one side saying they could restore such information in under one minute and those at the other saying it would take more than 24 hours. The median appears to be a few hours.
Intentia to Sell 26% Share to California Venture Firm Headed by Former i2 Execs
Intentia International, one of the largest OS/400 ERP software vendors, recently announced plans to sell a 26 percent stake in the company to a Palo Alto, California, software investment firm for about $36 million. The plan calls for Symphony Technology Group to purchase 38.8 million shares of Intentia stock, which is traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, for 256 million Swedish Kronor, or $35.9 million at current exchange rates, with an option to buy enough additional shares in the next four years to own 37.1 percent of the company. Intentia CEO Björn Algkvist, a major shareholder, said the move will strengthen Intentia's position in a "rapidly consolidating market" and will bolster its management and product development. If approved by shareholders at a meeting on February 6, the agreement will make Symphony Intentia's largest shareholder and will give it three seats on the board of directors, as well as the right to appoint a chairman. Symphony is headed by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, founder and former chairman and CEO of Aspect Technologies, which was sold to i2 Technologies for $9.3 billion in stock just before the market collapsed in 2000.
RFID Spending to Grow Rapidly Through 2005, Says IDC
Spending on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology will escalate rapidly through 2005 as manufacturers comply with RFID mandates of retailers, like Wal-Mart, and the Department of Defense, according to IDC. After 2005, the Massachusetts research firm predicts that growth in RFID spending will slow until the next RFID tagging wave hits, which will be item-level tagging. IDC said $91.5 million was spent on RFID technology last year, and that RFID spending will hit the $1 billion mark in 2007 and will increase to $1.3 billion in 2008, which equates to a dotcom-like compound annual growth rate of 262 percent. At first, most of the spending will be on RFID hardware and services. However, RFID middleware sales will increase toward the end of the five-year period as companies seek to get a better handle on their RFID processes, the research firm says.
COMMON Setting Up Booths at J.D. Edwards User Group and LinuxWorld Conferences
COMMON will be looking to expand its sphere of influence by setting up booths at two industry events. This month the Chicago-based OS/400 users group will be attending the Quest Midwest and LinuxWorld shows. Quest Midwest, being held today through Wednesday in Rosemont, Illinois, is an international group of PeopleSoft World and EnterpriseOne (formerly J.D. Edwards World and OneWorld) users, while LinuxWorld, scheduled for January 20 throught 23 in New York City, is billed as the world's largest gathering of open-sources advocates and Linux-minded individuals. COMMON will be holding its own conference from May 2 through 6 in San Antonio, Texas, and from October 17 through 21 in Toronto, Ontario.
Critical Vulnerability in Linux Discovered by Polish Researchers
There is a critical vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could enable an attacker to take over an affected machine, iSEC Security Research announced last week. The Polish Internet security firm reports that a flaw in the Linux kernel that controls memory resources could allow an attacker to cause an infected machine to crash. Researchers at iSEC said they have developed test code to exploit the vulnerability in the "mremap" area of the kernel. According to iSEC, attackers would need local user access to the vulnerable machine but would not need any special privileges to exploit the hole. The vulnerability affects all releases of the open-source operating system up to and including Linux version 2.6, which was released in mid-December. As of last Thursday, the major Linux distributors had not addressed the issue on their Web sites.
|
WORKSRIGHT SOFTWARE
