But Wait, There's More. . .

• We spent a lot of time last week building the monster upgrade spreadsheet to show you how to get into the revamped iSeries product line and what it would cost you. (See New iSeries Upgrade Guide, Part 3.) We needed to do this to reckon the relative bang-for-the-buck of each upgrade. However, if you just want to play around with what your options are and what the base upgrades cost (without all of the analysis), you can use a Java-based Web tool that IBM calls its Find and Compare Tools for the iSeries and zSeries platforms. You can get all kinds of information about new systems and upgrades on IBM's FACT Web site. This is a great resource, something that no other server vendor offers. Whoever pushed this through IBM deserves an award.
  
  

• IBM and Michigan State University are launching a new research project to develop advanced supply chain management technologies. IBM and Michigan State's Eli Broad College of Business are collaborating on developing the Center for On Demand Supply Chain Research, a laboratory that will serve as an environment for modeling and analysis of an on-demand supply chain. As part of the project, IBM has given the university a Shared University Research award, and will donate servers, storage hardware, and software (including the AIX operating system and WebSphere) to the Broad School. In the future, IBM and the college plan to develop an advanced computing grid in which it will link the Michigan State supply chain project with similar projects at other universities.
  
  
• Crimson Software and ASNA recently announced a technology alliance that has helped Crimson develop native OS/400 capabilities. Claremont, California, based Crimson develops a Microsoft Windows program called Managing Credit and Collections (M2C), which is designed to improve a company's cash flow and reduce its exposure to bad debts. Crimson used ASNA's development tools to program a native OS/400-based interface to iSeries financial applications, such as those from J.D. Edwards, SAP, SSA Global Technologies, and MAPICS. "Our customers' success is defined by our ability to deliver a solution that is native to the AS/400," said Chris Caparon, Crimson's president. "ASNA gives us the ability to build applications fast, build them once, and deploy across Windows, Web and .NET." Crimson recently started shipping M2C 4.0. ASNA says the joint ASNA-Crimson solution has already been deployed at customer sites.
  
  
• Tangent Solutions last week announced that two of its applications have been certified by IBM for the iSeries and will receive the value-added enhancement (VAE). Tangent's first product to receive the VAE certification, Automated Compliance and Evaluation System (ACES), is a mortgage quality control solution that helps mortgage bankers audit their loans and detect fraud. Tangent's other application, EBS iXchange, lets bankers pull credit histories from the three major credit agencies and deliver reports in a variety of ways. The Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, company announced last fall that it was working to port the two applications, which were originally developed in the Windows environment, to OS/400, along with an integrated fingerprint checking application, the Ethentica Biometric Trust Engine. ACES and the integrated fingerprint checking engine will become available soon, while EBS iXchange is already available. By receiving the VAE from IBM, Tangent will allow customers that install the software on iSeries servers to get discounts on the hardware from IBM.
  
  
• ValiCert, which last year introduced a secure FTP-based document transfer system for the iSeries, last week announced plans to be acquired by Tumbleweed Communications, which develops software for securely exchanging information via e-mail. Leaders of the two companies acknowledged that their secure data transfer technologies are adjacent and complement each other, and they anticipate that nothing will block the merger. Both companies are publicly traded on the Nasdaq, and the merger has been approved by the board of directors of both companies. The transaction entails Tumbleweed purchasing all outstanding shares of ValiCert's stock, which amounted to $14.3 million the day the merger was announced. For more information on ValiCert's OS/400 solution, see "ValiCert Introduces OS/400 Client for Secure File Transfers."
  
  
• Three new additions to the Express family of infrastructure products were announced last week at IBM's PartnerWorld event. The new offerings apply to DB2, Lotus, and Tivoli. IBM says they will be generally available in the second quarter. IBM expects the Express products to be instrumental in its bid to fight Microsoft in the small and midsized business (SMB) market, where smaller IT staffs struggle to develop complex Web applications, and price, ease of use, and manageability are a key considerations. Pricing for DB2 Express is yet to be determined, although at least one industry source reports that it will be less than $500 per CPU. IBM clearly intends DB2 Express to be price-competitive with both Oracle and Microsoft. Ease of installation and use, and manageability, are issues with which IBM intends to make points in the marketplace. Despite being a scaled-down database, DB2 Express boasts high-end features, like self-healing and self-tuning capabilities, which should gain the support of system administrators in the SMB market. The initial offering will run on Windows and Linux. Later this year, probably in the fourth quarter, an OS/400 version will become available. Lotus Domino Collaboration Express will combine the Domino Server collaboration and mail software, with the option of either the Notes or the iNotes client, and access to collaborative applications via a Web browser or a separate Notes client. Enterprise-quality messaging, group calendaring, and off-the-shelf or custom application support is also part of the Express deal. Tivoli Storage Resource Manager Express Edition is designed to help SMBs better manage their storage through increased capacity utilization and simplified administration. It is designed to deploy on single-processor desktops. WebSphere Application Server Express, which became available in December 2002, was the first of the Express family of open infrastructure software. It will be joined by WebSphere Portal Express for Linux and Windows in the second quarter. IBM, just days ago, added support for WAS Express on iSeries, and it promises support for AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX in the second half of 2003. WebSphere Portal Express for iSeries is forecasted for general availability near the end of 2003.
  
  
• IBM has announced the TotalStorage Linear Tape-Open Ultrium 2 drive, an LTO tape system that IBM claims is the fastest LTO tape drive performance available, with more than double the capacity and speed of the previous models for archiving and disaster recovery. It is currently available in the UltraScalable Tape Library 3584 and as the Ultrium External Tape Drive 3580. The new tape drives double the capacity (up to nearly a petabyte of compressed data in the 3584) and more than double the performance over the first generation of IBM Ultrium offerings. Other notable points of comparison include 200 GB Ultrium 2 cartridge capacity (400 GB at 2:1 compression); 35 MB/sec data rate (70 MB/sec at 2:1 compression); switched fabric Ultrium 2 Fibre Channel drives; and control Path Failover for the UltraScalable Tape Library. IBM is also adding new autonomic computing enhancements to the UltraScalable Tape Library 3584 to include control path failover, where one communication path is substituted for another in the event of a disruption. The new drives can read and write to first-generation Ultrium cartridges, which protects customers' investments in LTO technology. In addition, the Ultrium 2 tape drives can process first-generation Ultrium tape cartridges at improved performance rates, up to 20 MB per second. That's a 33 percent performance improvement, according to IBM computations. IBM also announced that Tivoli Storage Manager now supports Ultrium 2 tape drives as well as all IBM tape libraries that currently support IBM Ultrium 2 tape drives. Also available from IBM and its U.S.-based business partners is the Cisco MDS 9216 and 9509 for enterprise-class storage networks. The new LTO tapes and libraries are supported on OS/400, Unix, Linux, and Windows servers that offer SCSI connections to peripherals.
  
  

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.