Because things are looking up, Seagull has negotiated a new $2 million line of credit with Silicon Valley Bank. Seagull had a $1.5 million credit line, which it established in 2002 and never accessed. "The best time to establish a line of credit is when you don't need it," explained said Don Addington, Seagull's CEO and president. "This expanded line of credit also includes more favorable terms that will make it easier to utilize the facility if the need for additional working capital emerges over the coming years."

Intentia Appoints New CEO, Says ERP Spending Improving But Still Tough

Swedish ERP software maker Intentia International is not just one of the biggest software companies in Europe, it is also key player in the OS/400 application market. Like many ERP vendors in the midrange, Intentia has struggled to cut costs as license and services sales have declined over the past several years. Intentia's first quarter that ended March 31 was no different, except that the company's top brass believe that the ERP spending climate is improving a bit.

But the first quarter was still not a lot of fun for Intentia. (The company reports its financial results in Swedish krona, but we have converted the figures to U.S. dollars at current exchange rates in the following comparisons.) License sales dropped by 23 percent, to $20.6 million, in the quarter, and services sales dropped by 12 percent, to $61.8 million. The company did nearly double sales of other products to $1.9 million, which cushioned the blow a bit. Because of cost controls, Intentia reported a loss in the first quarter of 2004 of just under $15 million, compared with a loss of $16.4 million this time last year.

Bjorn Algkvist, president and CEO of the company, said in the financial statements that there were signs that the ERP market is stabilizing and improving. "However, great uncertainty remains about short-term trends." With that, Algkvist stepped down as president and CEO, after holding the position for several years, and Intentia brought in Betrand Sciard, a former executive vice president at Canadian ERP powerhouse Geac, to take over that position. Sciard hails from the former JBA piece of Geac, and has run up against Intentia many times in the past. Algkvist is a large shareholder in Intentia and says he will be active on the company's board.

Partnerships! Partnerships! Partnerships!

The last couple of weeks have seen an upwelling in the formation of new partnerships involving OS/400 software vendors. Here are several of the latest. ERP software provider Lawson Software and Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services replaced their 10-year reseller agreement with a new partnership that will see Siemens become Lawson's preferred partner for hosting Lawson software applications within the U.S. healthcare market, while Lawson becomes Siemens' preferred ERP vendor for healthcare. LANSA, meanwhile, has tied the knot with Mainline Information Systems, the Florida eServer reseller, which will sell LANSA's software and development tools for customers in a variety of industries. Quadrant Software, the New England developer of fax and document management solutions for OS/400 shops, and Cforia Software (formerly Crimson Software), which develops credit, collections, and deduction add-ons for OS/400-based ERP applications, have agreed to integrate their FastFax and MC2 products respectively. Global Software and Computer Configuration Services also announced a new partnership. CCS, the Southern California iSeries reseller, will become the exclusive provider of Spreadsheet Server, the North Carolina company's analytics package for ERP applications, for installations of Intentia's Movex ERP application in the United States. IBS, which, like Intentia, is a Swedish developer of OS/400 ERP software, has extended its agreement with Varsity Logistics of San Francisco and has declared Varsity as its sole provider of shipping software. IBM, the world's largest computer company, and SAP, the world's largest ERP software vendor, also got in on the partnership act by announcing an expansion of their global alliance to target the retail industry with end-to-end solutions.

Aldon Announces New Name and Software Brand

'Tis the season for name changes in the OS/400 marketplace, and we have the latest from Aldon Computer Group. The Northern California developer of change management software for AS/400, iSeries, eServer i5s, and other platforms last week announced that has changed the name of the company and unified its products under a new umbrella brand. The company has shortened its name to Aldon and introduced the Aldon Application Lifetime Management Suite, which includes three components it calls the Aldon Lifecycle Manager, the Aldon Deployment Manager, and the Aldon Community Manager. These products cover the full lifecycle of application development tracking, including inventory management, automated development process control, version and release management, issue tracking, and collaboration technologies, and replace Aldon's previous brands, Aldon/CMS (its core OS/400 change management product) and Affiniti (its open systems change management product). Aldon, which has been in business for 25 years and has attracted 1,300 customers, says the changes reflect "Aldon's leadership position in the rapidly growing market for comprehensive, enterprise-wide, multi-platform application change management solutions."

Forrester Says IT Spending Picking Up

IT spending has inched up at large North American companies so far in 2004, Forrester Research says. The Massachusetts market research firm says a study of 870 CIOs and IT decision-makers indicates that the total spending increase this year, compared with 2003, will amount to 2.4 percent, up from the 1.7 percent figure Forrester predicted in December. Companies with the most growth in their IT budgets are in the transportation, construction, consulting, and financial services industries, where the increase in total IT spending is expected to top 4 percent this year, the research firm says. Forrester says IT shops are using their 2004 budgets to "get back to basics" and are upgrading core technologies, like those for security, applications, and PCs. Mobile technology spending is also up, and so is ERP-related spending for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Forrester also sees more spending going to portals, content management systems, and business intelligence software, while spending has leveled off for SCM, CRM, and procurement software products.

Agilysys Reports Increase in Year-End Revenues

Revenue and profit are up for iSeries distributor Agilysys, which last week announced its fourth-quarter and year-end results for fiscal 2004. The Cleveland, Ohio, distributor reported net income of $4.8 million on sales of $371.6 million for the quarter ending March 31, a 42 percent increase in revenue from a year ago. The company, which acquired Kyrus Corporation and Inter-American Data during the year, reported total revenues of $1.4 billion, a 20 percent increase, and net income of $8.7 million for the year, which compares nicely with the $42.1 million loss it took last year. Arthur Rhein, chairman, president, and chief executive of Agilysys, indicated the fourth quarter results were a bit of a surprise. "We experienced strong sales performance across all customer segments, well beyond the strength we typically see in our fourth quarter," he said. The company expects to grow revenues between 13 and 18 percent in 2005.

New Offerings from UCCnet and EPCglobal

Industry bodies UCCnet and EPCglobal recently made two incremental steps toward the Holy Grail of universal collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR). EPCglobal, which is hashing out the data standards to be used with radio frequency identification (RFID) smart tag implementations, will provide oodles of RFID education at its first annual EPCglobal US Conference 2004, which will be held September 28-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Meanwhile, UCCnet, which, like EPCglobal, was cofounded by the Uniform Code Council, released UCCnet GLOBALregistry Version 2.3, the latest iteration of the product data synchronization registry that is available to up to 3,000 UCCnet subscribers. With backing from major retailers, like Wal-Mart, RFID, UCCnet, and related technologies are increasingly vital components of CPFR in the consumer goods supply chain.

OS/400 PTF Guide Moves to Four Hundred Guru Newsletter

For many years now, our partner DLB Associates has been creating the OS/400 PTF Guide to help you suss out the patches to OS/400. The OS/400 PTF Guide has appeared in this last section of this newsletter, and we hope it has been useful to you. The guide will now appear in Shannon O'Donnell's "OS/400 Alert" column in Four Hundred Guru on Wednesdays.