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.
  
  

• June 14
• June 7
• May 31
• May 24
• May 17

• The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation of IBM, but exactly what it is looking for is unclear. Investors, jumpy after the collapses of Enron, MCI/Worldcom, and myriad dot-coms in the past few years, dumped IBM's shares, which knocked $10 off the share price. But the shares have regained half that loss already, as IBM is hinting in its only public statement about the matter that it "believes" the investigation is a secondary investigation by the SEC into IBM's revenue recognition practices related to sales of retail and point-of-sale equipment in 2000 and 2001--a matter the SEC has already apparently examined. IBM is the number-one vendor of such retail systems in the world, with about $600 million in sales in 2002. Whether the SEC's investigation will go beyond retail systems is unclear, and that was initially what Wall Street was worried about.
  
  
• Colin Wells, managing director of FAST400, which sells software that circumvents the 5250 green-screen governors inside OS/400, is entering its first month of renewals for its subscription-based product. The company recently raised the price of its software from $1,000 to $1,500 per AS/400 or iSeries processor, a stunning 50 percent increase, but Wells says that the company has been able to renew 97 percent of its subscribers at that higher price. The reason is simple, he says: Companies that use FAST400 save big bucks on interactive feature cards, and $500 per processor is nothing compared with the cost of IBM's interactive feature cards for AS/400 and iSeries servers. Wells also said that FAST400 has signed up two customers with 24-way Model 840 servers, dispelling the notion that FAST400 is only being used by companies with small AS/400 and iSeries machines. FAST400 has historically sold its governor-buster tool to a few hundred new customers each month. That should put sales at an annual rate of between $3 million and $10 million at the old $1,000 per processor rate, depending on the average number of AS/400 and iSeries processors customers using FAST400 install. At the new prices, the company should be bringing in between $5 million and $15 million in annual subscriptions. It's hard to determine how much revenue IBM has lost because of FAST400's tools, but it is very likely to be at least an order of magnitude more money than FAST400 has brought in thus far.
  
  
• Nothing is easy in this world. Just ask Oracle, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards. PeopleSoft and JDE agreed three weeks ago that PeopleSoft would acquire JDE for $1.7 billion in stock. A few days later, Oracle launched a $5.1 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft to try to secure its number-two spot in the applications software market, which it will lose to PeopleSoft if the JDE acquisition goes ahead. PeopleSoft's board of directors last week resoundingly and unanimously rejected the Oracle bid. None of PeopleSoft's employees, partners, or customers like Oracle's idea of putting PeopleSoft's applications on mere life support and trying to get the PeopleSoft installed base to move to Oracle's applications, which is what Oracle CEO and chairman Larry Ellison said he would do if he took over PeopleSoft, saying that this was a better idea than trying to keep the PeopleSoft and JDE product lines distinct and alive. Adding more drama to the situation, JDE late last week sued Oracle for $1.7 billion in compensatory damages; the suit also seeks punitive damages from Oracle. The JDE suit alleges that Oracle is engaging in unlawful and anticompetitive business practices, and JDE is seeking a court order to stop Oracle from trying to buy PeopleSoft shares on the open market to gain control of the company. Oracle has $5.5 billion in the bank, and PeopleSoft has a market cap of $5.64 billion. If PeopleSoft shareholders want to sell, Oracle can certainly scrape up the dough to do it. Other bidders could emerge in the mess. Microsoft could, for instance, buy PeopleSoft and JDE with pocket change and still have tens of billions of dollars in the bank. A buyout of Oracle, which has a market cap of $69 billion, would be tough for Microsoft, but then again it has a market cap of $254 million and could use a combination of stock and cash to buy Oracle, PeopleSoft, and JDE, if it really wanted to. No one is suggesting that Microsoft will do this, of course. But tongues are wagging, as usual. Even IBM has been cited as a possible white knight in a takeover of one of these three companies.
  
  
• It seemed like business as usual at J.D. Edwards Quest user conference last week, at least from an outsider's perspective. The company--which surprised the industry when it announced plans to be acquired by PeopleSoft two weeks ago, only to have the wind blown out of its sales thanks to an unsolicited bid by Oracle to buy PeopleSoft, sans JDE--used the conference to showcase its technology and to make a number of forward-looking announcements that seemed to defy the present uncertainty facing the company and its customers. Hearkening back to its roots, JDE announced a new iSeries performance benchmark and a bundled package of hardware and software offering, called Rapid Start, which streamlines buying, installing, and running J.D. Edwards 5 software on an OS/400 server. Hewlett-Packard is planning a similar offering with JDE, called Customer Choice, which includes prepackaged JDE applications running on Microsoft's SQL Server database and HP ProLiant DL580 and DL380 Wintel servers (more on that in next week's issue). JDE also launched a new advisory service to help customers comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and announced that the country's largest consumer bank, Bank of America, is entering the fourth phase of a JDE CRM software implementation that will see the number of the bank's users grow to 8,500. Think that's enough for one user conference? JDE also detailed its activities in the life-sciences industry and announced plans to deliver new features for this vertical, with a third-quarter release of its core ERP and supply chain management applications. Speaking of the new J.D. Edwards 5 suite, the company announced a major update of its CRM product and announced that is has set a record (of which type, we're not yet sure) by introducing the greatest number of enhancements in the newest release of its supply chain management application. The company also highlighted the successes it's having in certain market sectors (industrial manufacturing and distribution and consumer processed goods), it says it has strengthened its market position with a new alliance in China, and that it will establish a development center in India through Covansys. But wait, there's more! The company also announced "Team J.D. Edwards," a joint venture with the company's consulting partners--Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Deloitte & Touche, Hitachi Consulting, and IBM Business Consulting Services--to offer education, implementation, training, and support. Lastly, JDE announced a new program with IBM called Global Business Value, which will bring a series of industry-specific packages to small and midsized businesses, including two programs called Automotive for SMB and J.D. Edwards WorldSoftware Conversion for SMB.
  
  
• ASNA has signed on another consultant to provide Microsoft .NET application development services to the OS/400 server installed base. net Fusion Services, a Tempe, Arizona, consultant and professional services firm, last week announced that it has formed a strategic alliance with ASNA, the San Antonio, Texas, company that develops the ASNA Visual RPG (AVR) development environment for OS/400 and Windows platforms. As part of the alliance, net Fusion Services will use ASNA's version of AVR for Microsoft's .NET platform, called AVR for .NET, to transform its clients' traditional RPG-based OS/400 applications into .NET-enabled applications. The target market for the privately held consultancy is midmarket companies. Some of its customers include Children's Healthcare of America, Kraft, Credit Suisse, and Mitsubishi Fuso.
  
  
• EXTOL announced last week that its Applicability Statement 2 software has been certified as e-business ready by the Uniform Code Council (UCC) and the Drummond Group, which jointly operate the secure EDI certification program. The certification provides assurance that AS2 transactions can be securely managed by EXTOL Secure, an EXTOL product that can connect to OS/400, Windows, and Unix servers through EXTOL's EDI Integrator product. Applicability Statement 2 is a draft standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force that describes how EDI and other data can be transmitted securely over the Internet using the HTTP protocol. Often referred to as an EDI-INT (EDI over the Internet) standard, Applicability Statement 2 enables users to connect, deliver, and reply to data securely and reliably, and is increasingly being used in the B2B supply chains of major retailers, such as Wal-Mart. EXTOL was the first OEM customer to be certified as e-business ready under the UCC and Drummond Group program, the company claims.
  
  

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