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Demand for System21/Aurora Drives Good Quarter for Geac

Strong demand for System21/Aurora, an OS/400-based ERP software package, helped drive Geac's third-quarter revenues, the Markham, Ontario, company announced last week. Geac reported $116.2 million in revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2004, which ended January 31, for an increase of $13.6 million, or 13.3 percent, compared with the third quarter of fiscal year 2003, and an increase of $4.7 million from its second quarter of 2004. Much of the increase can be attributed to a 63 percent increase in sales for System21/Aurora, the next-generation ILE RPG-based ERP suite, which Geac launched in April 2003. With 23 System21/Aurora implementation projects currently underway across the world, Geac says, its investments in the line are paying dividends. "This business has made great strides since our difficult acquisition of JBA five years ago," stated Geac chief executive Charles Jones. "By altering our strategy and competitive position, with key investments and developments in this product line, our management team has enabled our System21 customers to extend the life of their existing systems." The company's net income was $14.4 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared with net income of $12 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, in the third quarter of last year.

SSA Global Says Total Revenues Rose 138%

SSA Global last week announced a 138 percent increase in revenues for its second quarter ending January 31. The Chicago ERP software conglomerate is privately held and is therefore not required to disclose financial results, but the company elected to announce results regardless. Of the total $155.1 million in revenue it reported for the quarter, software license fees accounted for $38 million, a 83 percent increase from the second quarter of 2003, the company says. (The company did not disclose how much of that was from new license fees versus maintenance fees.) Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) were $27.9 million, compared with $11.8 million last year, a 138 percent increase, the company says. SSA Global attributed the increase in revenue to organic growth, as well as its acquisitions (in the last year it has completed acquisitions of EXE Technologies, Baan, and Ironside Technologies). "Our integration of acquired companies has proceeded as planned, and this helps contribute to the profitability of the company," SSA Global chief executive Michael Greenough stated. The company, which says it has 16,000 customers and 121 offices around the world, gained 46 new customers during the quarter.

Intel Cranks Up Xeon Clocks, Caches

Intel has delivered a new "Gallatin" Xeon MP processor for high-end servers with a larger 4 MB, L3 cache memory and a 3 GHz clock speed. The chip maker has also announced three new "Prestonia" Xeon DP processors, which are used in two-way entry machines, like the IBM Integrated xSeries Server coprocessor for the iSeries.

This is the end of the line for Gallatin, which will be followed by the "Potomac" 64-bit Xeons, in early 2005. These peppier Gallatins, announced yesterday, will plug right into any machine that uses this family of Xeon MP processors. This includes four-way machines made by the big tier-one suppliers--Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM, and Fujitsu Siemens--as well as myriad white-box vendors that compete vigorously for business in the midrange X86 Linux and Windows server markets. These Xeon MPs are also used in machines that couple 8, 16, or 32 processors together in a giant SMP cluster. They are not used in smaller two-way or uniprocessor machines, which have their own Xeon DP and Pentium 4 variants that run faster and offer better bang for the buck.

According to Alan Priestly, strategic marketing manager for Intel in the United Kingdom, Intel does not have any plans to add new Gallatin processors to the Xeon line in 2004 beyond these three new processors, all of which have 400 MHz front-side buses, like the other Gallatin and "Foster" Xeon MPs. (Foster was the original Pentium 4 Xeon chip for high-end servers.) The new 3 GHz/4 MB, L3 cache Gallatin replaces the 2.8 GHz/2 MB Gallatin, and has the same list price, at $3,692 each, in 1,000-unit quantities. Intel is also announcing a 2.7 GHz/2 MB part, which, at $1,980 each, in 1,000-unit quantities, is half the price of the 2.8 GHz/2 MB part. A new 2.2 GHz/2MB part costs $1,177, less than one third the price of the 2.0 GHz/2 MB Xeon MP, which was the top-end machine 18 months ago. While the performance boost is always a welcome thing at the high end of the Xeon MP range, the price/performance increases for slower chips is what makes Xeon MP processors affordable for a growing number of companies. At these prices, four-way computing with powerful machines is an option for companies that could not even have pondered it a few years ago.

Priestly says that customers moving from 2.8 GHz/2 MB Gallatin parts up to 3 GHz/4 MB Gallatins should see about a 15 percent performance boost on Java and other threaded applications, and about a 25 percent performance on ERP-style workloads that are sensitive to cache memory. In general, the other two Gallatins offer about 10 to 15 percent more performance than the Gallatins they replace, at the same price point but with lower clock speeds and 1 MB L3 caches.

According to benchmark results shown by Intel, the larger cache on the new Gallatins can increase the effectiveness of HyperThreading by a few percentage points, because the cache decreases latencies in gathering data. HyperThreading boosted the performance of the TPC-C transaction processing benchmark by 10 percent on a four-way Foster Xeon MP running at 1.6 GHz and with a 1 MB L3 cache. On the 3 GHz/4 MB Gallatin, HyperThreading boosted performance on this box by 13 percent. On the SAP R/3 S&D benchmark, that same Foster machine saw only a 5 percent performance boost with HyperThreading activated, but the Gallatin 2.8 GHz/2 MB machine saw a 14 percent increase. Presumably a 3 GHz/4 MB part might see an even higher HyperThreading increase. On the SPECjbb2000 Java benchmark, the Foster chips saw a 19 percent increase in performance, while the Gallatin 3 GHz/4 MB with nearly twice the clocks and four times the L3 cache only saw a 16 percent gain from HyperThreading.

On the Xeon DP front, Intel has three new parts: a 2.4 GHz/1 MB chip, a 2.8 GHz/1 MB chip, and a 3.2 GHz/2 MB chip. Like the other past generations of Prestonia chips, these have a 533 MHz front-side bus. The top-end 3.2 GHz/2 MB Prestonia has about a 10 percent performance benefit, compared with the 3.06 GHz/1 MB Prestonia, according to Priestly, and at $1,043 each, per 1,000-unit quantities, it carries a hefty 51 percent premium compared with that slower Prestonia, which costs $690. The new 2.8 GHz/1 MB Prestonia costs $455, the same as its 3.06 GHz/512 KB predecessor, while the new 2.4 GHz/1 MB Prestonia costs $316, the same as a 2.8 GHz/512 KB part.

This is the last in the line for the Prestonia chips, too, by the way. The next stop on the Xeon DP train is the "Nocona" Xeon chip, which is due in the second quarter and will be the first Xeon chip to implement 64-bit extensions.

It will be interesting to see if IBM adopts the 64-bit Xeons for the Integrated xSeries Server, or tries to convince customers to move everything to Linux partitions. And with a Linux partition that can emulate Windows applications, IBM could do away with the Integrated xSeries Server concept entirely. Now there's a thought.

Next-Gen ATMs Available from IBM and Jack Henry

IBM, banking software provider Jack Henry, and ATM manufacturer Wincor-Nixdorf have formed a new relationship to sell a new generation of advanced, Web-enabled ATM machines. The companies see new government and industry mandates related to accessibility and security creating an opportunity to provide a higher level of personalization and new services, such as check image capturing, with ATM machines. The new integrated offerings, which will pair Wincor-Nixdorf's PC1500xe, PC2150xe, and PC2250xe ATM machines with Jack Henry's PassPort EFT switch technology, is now available from IBM Global Services and Jack Henry.

Study: False Positives a Growing Problem for Spam Filters

Are your spam filters running amok? According to a new study by Return Path on the effects of spam filter technology, spam filters falsely identify nearly one in five legitimate e-mails as spam. Return Path, which has provided e-mail "change of address" and other e-mail related services to its clients since its founding in 1999, found that almost 19 percent of e-mail sent by its customers during the second half of 2003 never reached the inboxes of intended recipients and that spam filters were the main culprits. This represents a 3.7 percent increase in false positives compared with the same period in 2002, according to an AP story.

ClientSoft and TQuist Partner for Legacy Integration

Integration middleware provider ClientSoft has partnered with consultant TQuist to help OS/400 and mainframe shops extend their legacy systems using J2EE and Microsoft .NET development architectures. The companies' new partnership, announced last week, will initially target large companies in the insurance and utility industries, and will eventually be expanded into other verticals. TQuist, based in Stamford, Connecticut, provides both J2EE and .NET development, and it also has proficiency with IBM's midrange and mainframe platforms. ClientSoft, based in Miami, Florida, sells the Service Builder development and runtime environment.

Get the Latest OS/400 PTF Guide

Our partner DLB Associates has been keeping track of IBM's PTF updates to OS/400 and its related programs. Here are the latest OS/400 PTF Guides:

February 14

February 21

February 28

March 6

March 13