But Wait, There's More. . .

• On March 4, IBM severely slashed list prices for the Advanced Edition of its WebSphere Development Studio for the iSeries platform. The high cost of these complex IBM application development tools has been a sticking point with OS/400 shops for almost two years, and with the repackaging of the tools on January 28, with the advent of the WebSphere Development Studio Advanced Edition for iSeries (the new host component of WebSphere Development Studio that is expected to start shipping on April 25), customers were particularly irked at prices. So IBM has taken the ax to them. The new prices, as you can see from the table I have built, are as low as one-fifth of the prior charges for some features. WebSphere Development Studio Advanced Edition for iSeries includes RPG and COBOL compilers; Java, CL, and DDS editors; Enterprise JavaBean and XML Web services tools; VisualAge for RPG; CODE/400; and IBM's WebFacing Tool. Customers still have to buy the client side to let their developers get at these tools.
  
  

• If you are trying to keep abreast of what IBM has been doing with PTFs on OS/400 and related systems programs, you have to check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, put together by our partner, DLB Associates:
  
  

• March 8
• March 1
• February 22
• February 15
• February 8

• IBM last week dropped a rebate that it was giving to customers who acquired new iSeries machines, or upgraded to them in conjunction with Hotsite Recovery Services, Business Recovery Consulting Services (Recoverability Healthcheck or High Availability Readiness Review), or Managed Security Services from Big Blue's Global Services unit. The deal also gave rebates to zSeries and pSeries customers buying one of a number of new machines. The rebates ranged from $20,000 to $50,000 under the deal, which was announced on March 26. Two weeks ago, IBM killed off the iSeries High Availability and Implementation Services rebate, which offered customers a 5 or 10 percent rebate if they bought a new iSeries Model 8XX or an upgrade to one in conjunction with a high-availability middleware solution; IBM also tossed in a 50 percent discount on a three-year Software Subscription maintenance contract as part of the deal.
  
  
• LANSA last week received an important certification for a new product that enables manufacturers and distributors to integrate secure AS2 shipping notices in their business transactions. The eBusinessReady certification ensures potential users that LANSA's EDI-INT AS2 Adapter 1.0 has achieved basic, transport-level interoperability with Applicability Statement 2. AS2 (often referred to as an EDI-INT, or EDI over the Internet, standard) is a new standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force that allows EDIFACT, X12, and XML-based business transactions to move securely over the Internet. The fledgling security standard received a boost last year, when Wal-Mart announced that its 10,000-plus suppliers--more than 30 percent of which are OS/400 shops, LANSA says--must implement AS2 notices by October 2003. The eBusinessReady program is run by Uniform Code Council, a standards body, and Drummond Group, an independent testing company. LANSA officials say the company's new industry-specific packaged products, such as EDI-INT AS2 Adapter and similar offerings for the UCCnet Global Registry and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), will see significant growth in 2003.
  
  
• WorksRight Software has received the Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) certification from the U.S. Postal Service for its PER/ZIP4 address verification software, the Madison, Mississippi, company announced last week. By using PER/ZIP4, which runs on OS/400 machines and verifies and updates addresses against the national ZIP+4 postal database, companies can qualify to receive discounts on postage. In addition to USPS, other shippers, including United Parcel Service and FedEx, offer postage discounts to companies that improve the accuracy of their mailing addresses using CASS-certified software such as PER/ZIP4. For more information on PER/ZIP4, go to www.worksright.com.
  
  
• looksoftware and Clear Technologies announced a partnership last week whereby Clear Technologies will use looksoftware's integration and screen-rejuvenation products to connect its CRM software to customers' back-office and ERP systems. "Our customers need to integrate our CRM application with their other applications, and they don't have the time or skills to learn the more complex alternatives," says Van Symons, Clear Technologies' president. For example, companies may want to connect their Butler and Curless Associates ec21 order-entry system, or their Stratum business intelligence software from Silvon Software, to their new Clear Technologies C2 CRM system, looksoftware officials say. With centric, the new integration middleware that looksoftware ships this month, and newlook, the Australian company's refacing and screen-design software, companies implementing a C2 CRM will be able to repurpose business processes and create new composite screens within the customer's new C2 environment. Under terms of the reseller agreement, which was announced at the COMMON conference in Indianapolis, services professionals for Coppell, Texas, based Clear Technologies will perform the initial integration, and C2 users will be able to modify that work, if they want, using the looksoftware tools.
  
  
• DataMirror has completed interoperability testing between its iCluster OS/400 high availability software and IBM's Enterprise Storage Server (Shark) storage area network (SAN) disk array, and is offering a discount to early adopters of the associated product, iCluster for IBM ESS. While IBM's Shark array was designed with data redundancy features--including Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC), which backs up a primary Shark-resident volume of data to a second Shark, and FlashCopy, which creates a second backup volume from the initial recovery volume on the second Shark--iCluster for IBM ESS allows for even higher levels of availability by providing a second recovery option that uses an entirely different mirroring technique. Whereas Shark-to-Shark mirroring via PPRC uses Fibre Channel (which has distance limitations), iCluster for IBM ESS uses TCP/IP, which provides redundancy should one data pipe go down. The latest iCluster for Shark offering is practically identical in features and business benefits as iCluster for EMC Symmetrix, which the Toronto, Ontario, company announced last May. Last week, at the COMMON conference in Indianapolis, DataMirror announced that IBM had awarded its TotalStorage Proven certification for iCluster for IBM ESS. The company also announced that customers who purchase a license for iCluster for IBM ESS before July 31 can get 15 percent knocked off the purchase price.
  
  
• Vision Solutions last week announced that it has been awarded TotalStorage Proven certification from IBM, ensuring interoperability between its suite of OS/400 high availability software and IBM's Enterprise Storage Server (Shark) SAN disk array. Vision Suite Enterprise Edition (VSSE) 8.0 received the IBM certification, which entails using the OMS/400 component of VSSE to mirror data files, data areas, data queues, and Integrated File System objects, and the ODS/400 component to mirror non-data objects. Vision claims mirroring speeds in excess of 5 million transactions per hour during the tests. "Enterprise customers with SAN fabrics often want to utilize Sharks for storage of iSeries data," said David Wegman, a Vision Solutions executive. By achieving the TotalStorage Proven certification, Vision Solutions "assures customers that using Shark in this environment with Vision Suite will work well and deliver the performance and additional availability they require." Companies implementing VSSE 8.0 in a SAN environment can expect to see several benefits, including avoiding downtime associates with FlashCopy, resolving Integrated File System challenges, eliminating the 60-mile distance barrier of Fibre Channel-connected Sharks, lessening the chance of picking up damaged objects, and avoiding an abnormal IPL when switching to a redundant iSeries or Shark in the event of an unplanned outage. Vision claims it was the first high availability software provider to achieve TotalStorage Proven certification, although its rival DataMirror announced its TotalStorage Proven certification for Shark a day earlier.
  
  
• Companies developing cross-platform Java applications using IBM's WebSphere Studio suite of development tools can now benefit from MKS's change management software. Last week the Waterloo, Ontario, company announced that Source Integrity Enterprise Edition 8.3, its software change management program for C++ and Java-based applications on Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms, has been validated by IBM for interoperability with WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.0. This validation gives companies that rely on the Eclipse-based integrated development environment the capability to track and control the development of Java applications for Unix and Windows environments using MKS software. Since Source Integrity Enterprise Edition is closely tied to Implementer, the MKS change management offering for AS/400 and iSeries servers, the IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.0 certification gives companies operating a range of platforms a better reason to use MKS for WebSphere development. The certification also covers IBM's upcoming release of WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries 5.0, which is scheduled to ship in April, MKS says.
  
  

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