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.
  
  

• July 5
• June 28
• June 21
• June 14
• June 7

• IBM told attendees at its iSeries technical conference in Las Vegas that it will extend support for OS/400 V5R1 and V5R2, as we told you last fall it was contemplating doing. According to a presentation made by IBM at the conference, the support date for OS/400 V5R1 has been pushed out a minimum of one year, to May 5, 2004, and the end-of-support date will be announced at least 12 months beforehand. OS/400 V5R2 was due to have support cut off just after OS/400 V5R3 was announced with the 64-way "Squadron" Power5 servers. Those Squadron servers will require OS/400 V5R3, and OS/400 V5R2 was expected to have its support end on September 30, 2004. Now OS/400 V5R2 will be supported at least until September 30, 2005, but the actual support end date also will be announced at least 12 months prior. With the new open-ended support, IBM can respond better to its customers' need to keep older releases supported. In the past, IBM has used the lack of OS/400 support to try to get people to move to new iron, but this tactic is driving applications that might otherwise be on an iSeries to other platforms that have similar functionality to the most current OS/400 releases. Moreover, a 12-to-18-month announcement schedule was more than most customers wanted to cope with. Once they get their machines installed and working, they are loathe to mess with them. With this extended support, IBM can sell customers upgrades on their old iron without forcing a simultaneous upgrade to new iron and new OS/400 releases, just to add capacity.
  
  
• iSeries report and output management software maker Symtrax is interested in finding beta customers to test its new StarQuery product. StarQuery extracts information from a variety of databases, using Microsoft's OLE DB protocol, and imports that information into Excel spreadsheets. Symtrax says that the product is more than eight times faster than Microsoft's equivalent products. If you are interested in being a beta tester, go to Symtrax's Web site and fill out the form. Symtrax will take beta testers until the end of July.
  
  
• The FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is flowing thickly around the J.D. Edwards-PeopleSoft-Oracle debacle, and Intentia intends to make the most of it. Last week the Swedish software house announced plans to capture customers from JDE, its rival in the market for midrange ERP software. Intentia outlined a three-point plan to create a "safe haven from FUD" for JDE shops, including an accommodating pricing program, a conversion lab, and a "knowledge capital preservation program." "We see this as a significant opportunity to better service the JDE customer base, due to the upheaval typically caused by these mergers," says Intentia Americas president Linus Parker, based in Schaumberg, Illinois. As Oracle, PeopleSoft, and JDE--considered the world's second, third, and fourth largest ERP software companies respectively--sort out who owns whom, Intentia--currently the fifth largest ERP software company--plans to become the largest ERP software company devoted to serving the midmarket, a position that JDE is usually credited with.
  
  
• Consolidation among software makers continued last week as Geac announced plans to buy business intelligence software vendor Comshare. The Southborough, Massachusetts, company's flagship product is Comshare MPC, a Windows-based corporate performance management suite that allows customers to run budgeting, forecasting, planning, and consolidation applications from a single shared database. Geac, which develops the OS/400-based System 21 suite of ERP applications, as well as ERP applications for mainframe and other platforms, plans to offer Comshare's software to its base of 5,000 customers, as well as to new customers. Geac, based in Markham, Ontario, announced plans to standardize on MPC for its internal operations as well. The two companies signed an agreement that calls for Geac to purchase shares of Comshare, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, for $4.60 per share, or $52 million, a 31 percent premium. Geac expects the deal to close by August.
  
  
• CSG Systems is now offering outsourced access to ICMS, the OS/400-based customer care and billing application for telecommunications providers that it bought from IBM last year. CSG Systems already offers Kenan, its Unix-based customer care and billing package, formerly owned by Lucent Technologies, in outsourced mode, and says its latest move demonstrates its commitment to offer both major packages via traditional licensing as well as an outsourced service. The Englewood, Colorado, company also announced its first outsourced ICMS customer. FairPoint Communications, a $236 million telephone company servicing 29 rural areas in 18 states, signed a five-year contract for CSG Systems to run its new ICMS application as well printing and mailing monthly statements to customers. CSG Systems has already begun migrating FairPoint to the ICSM application and expects the company, which is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, to go live in 2004. plaNet Consulting, a subsidiary of CSG, is leading the FairPoint implementation at its data center facility in Omaha, Nebraska.
  
  
• Optimum Solutions, a developer of payroll and human resources software for OS/400 and Windows, was recently accepted into MAPICS's certified partner program. To become a certified MAPICS partner, Optimum's software was tested for interoperability with MAPICS ERP software, which also runs on OS/400 and Windows. Now that Optimum is a partner, the Nashville, Tennessee, company gains greater visibility at companies that use MAPICS software. For its part, the Atlanta ERP software vendor says that its customers who choose Optimum's software will find it easier to execute, manage, and access payroll benefits and human resources data and processes. MAPICS formed its certified partner program in May to provide a standardized method for assessing third-party applications that complement MAPICS software. As part of the process, MAPICS requires its certified partners to pass interoperability tests either for its OS/400 or for its Windows ERP systems. Today, MAPICS counts 26 certified partners.
  
  
• Vision Solutions is ratcheting up the activity surrounding Orion, its multiplatform high availability software, in lieu of its third-quarter release. Last week, Vision established the Orion Solutions Lab, a room full of servers at the company's headquarters in Irvine, California, where business partners and prospective customers can get hands-on testing and training with the product. The lab includes two large iSeries servers, each with its own switchable disk tower, and multiple logical partitions running both OS/400 and Linux. Connected to each iSeries server is an xSeries server, via the integrated xSeries adapter (IXA) card. This complicated OS/400-Windows-Linux high-availability environment is managed by ORION Navigator, which runs on six iSeries workstations that Vision has located in the room. Vision has already had several of its partners spend a week in residence at the new lab, and the company says the lab will play a big roll in a future certified partner program for Orion. Vision has been working on Orion for at least two years, and it expects the software to ship before fall. Orion is designed to provide high-availability failover protection for OS/400, Windows, and Linux environments, including support for applications running on various versions of databases such as IBM DB2, Oracle 8i and 9i, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase Adaptive Server.
  
  

Sponsored By FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400?? What is Fast400? You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy another interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net. Why Fast400? A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers' software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system. The result Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair. The similarity IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries? The future The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!! For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.