But Wait, There's More. . .

• If you are trying to keep up with PTFs on OS/400 and related systems programs, check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, put together by our partner DLB Associates.
  
  

• March 29, 2003
• March 22, 2003
• March 15, 2003
• March 8, 2003
• March 1, 2003

• SSA Global Technologies announced last week that General Atlantic Partners has taken a $75 million stake in the Chicago-based ERP software company. General Atlantic Partners is based Greenwich, Connecticut, private equity investment firm that specializes in late-stage investments in established IT and communications companies. The company usually makes investments between $25 million and $100 million, and does not usually seek control of the companies it invests in. That profile seems to square with the actions taken with SSA GT, which already has solid backing from its primary owners, New York City-based Cerberus Capital Management, and is looking to continue its growth through acquisition. Cerberus still maintains a majority interest in SSA GT, which chief executive Michael Greenough said earlier this year is on track to reach $255 million in revenues. As a result of the $75 million investment, General Atlantic Partners has placed two of its representatives, William Ford and Marc McMorris, on SSA GT's board of directors. In a statement, McMorris said that General Atlantic looks forward to working with SSA GT's management team and to helping it expand its already-growing market position.
  
  
• Help/Systems and ACOM Solutions last week announced they have formed a technical alliance to increase each other's market share among their respective customers. Help/Systems, which develops systems management and operations automation software for OS/400 servers, will also become a referral partner for ACOM, which develops document management software for OS/400 servers and other systems. While Help/Systems' extensive Robot suite of automations tools already offers some of the capabilities that ACOM's document management suite specializes in, the alliance also gives Robot users access to ACOM's financial offerings, including MICR laser check-writing applications, electronic Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, and EDI and XML connectivity to trading partners. While there will definitely be cross-selling as a result of the new partnership, it may also lead to joint marketing activities, says Tom Huntington, Help/Systems' vice president of technical services.
  
  
• Better On-line Solutions, the public holding company for AS/400 and iSeries connectivity supplier BOScom, was granted a temporary reprieve by the Nasdaq listing board last week. The Israeli company, which was first notified in January that it wasn't meeting Nasdaq's minimum bid price and shareholders' equity requirements, satisfied the stock market's listing board that it had a plan to rectify the problems. The stock market is giving B.O.S. until this Friday to file formal plans to get its stock above the $1 mark and to boost its shareholder equity to above $10 million, the minimum requirements for continued listing on the Nasdaq stock market. B.O.S. must also meet two other deadlines, in May and June, to keep its symbol listed on the prestigious technology-oriented stock market. In other B.O.S. financial news, the company announced it has closed the previously announced transaction with Catalyst Investments, and that Catalyst has also purchased additional shares from an independent investor to become the single largest B.O.S. shareholder. In the Catalyst transaction, B.O.S. traded more than 2.5 million shares, or 16.6 percent of the outstanding shares of the company, to Catalyst Investments in exchange for most of Catalyst's shares in Surf Communications, a developer of modems that B.O.S. has been involved with for the last five years. B.O.S. is also now the largest shareholder in Surf. In a separate transaction, Catalyst has purchased an additional 1.5 million shares of B.O.S. at 47 cents per share, giving the company ownership of just shy of 25 percent of the outstanding shares.
  
  
• ASNA and Force12 Solutions have formed a partnership to sell and develop software that integrates OS/400 applications with other applications within the Microsoft .NET development framework. Under the terms of the agreement, ASNA, the San Antonio developer of ASNA Visual RPG and the soon-to-be-released AVR for .NET development environment, will license the business process management software of Dallas-based Force12. Force12's software is based on the .NET Framework and is used by small and midsized businesses to create new business processes that can connect common desktop applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, with back-office systems. "Our approach provides visibility and control to chief information officers and CFOs and makes things more efficient for IT operations in general," says Robin Griffiths, Force12's chief executive. "Integrating the AS/400 into this framework can be a crucial part of maintaining the value of legacy systems." The partnership covers both North America and Europe.
  
  
• JDA Software Group announced its preliminary first quarter financial results last week, and they weren't pretty. The company, which develops OS/400-, Unix-, and Windows-based ERP software for retailers and distributors, and had record revenues of about $220 million last year, expects revenues for the quarter, which ended March 31, to total $41 million, a 30.6 percent drop from the same period last year. What's worse, the company says the un-audited results show that software license revenue dropped by 59.6 percent to just $7.7 million for the quarter. The company stated that no large deals of $1 million or more were signed during the quarter "due to growing uncertainty about global economic conditions and increased international tensions." Official first quarter results will be announced April 21. In a separate announcement, the Scottsdale, Arizona, company said Wayne Usie, formerly JDA's senior vice president of product development, has been promoted to senior vice president of the Americas, while Fred Baumann, a senior director who came over with the E3 acquisition in September 2001, has been promoted to vice president of collaborative solutions.
  
  
• An iSeries-based administration application for schools that was developed using tools from LANSA was nominated by IBM for a Beacon Award this winter as one of the three-best WebSphere-based solutions on the planet, LANSA announced last week. LANSA business partner Sundata developed the browser-based accounting and administration application, called QUAD, using LANSA's eBiz Accelerator, an XML-based application and development framework that works with LANSA for the Web and is designed for repurposing green-screen line-of-business applications for the Web. Sundata Director John Hutson says the attributes of LANSA's tools--easy-to-use, enforcement of discipline on the developers, and consistency from application-to-application--helped shorten QUAD's development time significantly. "With eBiz Accelerator, what would have taken us two years took us about eight months," he says. The IBM Beacon Award for best WebSphere e-business solution went to Digital Union, a Guildford, United Kingdom, software company that used WebSphere Commerce Suite in part to develop the World Wide Retail Exchange.
  
  

Sponsored By KISCO INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Protect your iSeries or AS/400 from unwanted network intrustions The iSeries 400 (AS/400) has changed much over the last few years. In the process, it has changed its role in most organizations from a centralized processor to a decentralized server. In the old days, you could easily point to the wealth of data security features built into OS/400. This gave you a feeling of confidence in the integrity of your data. With the recent changes, your confidence may not be as high, and rightly so! Most iSeries installations support attached PCs in some form of Client/Server function. For some shops, this takes the form of PC's that are simply running terminal and printer emulation. Many more shops are running a variety of Client/Server functions on these PCs. Neither of these arrangements bodes well in the area of network security; read on. Did you know . . . Many Client/Server functions bypass traditional OS/400 security checking unless you have fully implemented object level security. Without this same full implementation of object level security, a PC-based Client database tool, such as Microsoft Access, can ACCESS any data file on your system. That same MS Access user can UPDATE any data file on your system. The same MS Access user can even DELETE records or files on your system. SafeNet/400, from Kisco Information Systems, protects your iSeries system from unwanted and unauthorized access via network connections, including the Internet. It lets authorized users do the work they need while keeping unauthorized users out. Modern network connections, like Client Access/400, FTP, ODBC and others, can leave the information on your AS/400 exposed. SafeNet/400 closes this exposure, and it does it without forcing you to change the way you already have your system set up. For more information, visit www.kisco.com/safenet. Go to www.kisco.com/tips for free helpful advice about configuring security on your system.