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 26
• July 19
• July 12
• July 5
• June 28

• Baan officially became a subsidiary of SSA Global Technologies last week. Last month, the Cerebrus Group and General Atlantic Partners bought the once-proud ERP software company from Invensys for $135 million (see "Invensys Sells Baan to SSA GT, Keeps Marcam Unit"). In last week's announcement, the Chicago EPR software conglomerate announced plans to consolidate certain Baan departments, including its financial, legal, IT, and human resources teams, into the overall SSA GT superstructure, while retaining some autonomy for the Baan sales, marketing, and development teams. Heading the new Baan subsidiary will be SSA GT executive vice president Graeme Cooksley, whom SSA GT chief executive Michael Greenough said will also retain his old duties. Greenough said SSA GT's strategy of providing extension products to customers of core ERP products will continue with Baan, providing both Baan and SSA GT users (read: BPCS, PRMS, and Infinium ERP users) value in the areas of logistics, supply chain management, CRM, corporate performance management, and enterprise integration. The acquisition is expected to bring SSA GT's annual revenues to $610 million, making it the fourth-largest ERP company behind SAP, PeopleSoft-J.D. Edwards, and Oracle, in that order. In addition to its acquisition of Baan last week, SSA GT completed its acquisition of Elevon, a San Francisco, California, based provider of collaborative commerce and knowledge management software. Originally announced in May, SSA GT last week finalized its acquisition of Elevon, whose stock is traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board. SSA GT acquired 100 percent of Elevon stock for $1.30 each, for a total cost of about $22.5 million.
  
  
• Companies continued to spend less on IT in June than they had budgeted for, according to a Gartner report. Every week, Gartner polls IT decision makers at small, midsized, and large businesses around the United States, to find out at what rate they're using up their allocated budget for IT. In June, the Gartner Technology Demand Index reported an aggregate total of about 90 percent (a 100 percent total would mean businesses spent exactly what they had budgeted for the month). Certain areas reported higher totals on the index, such as networking and telecommunications, which scored a 93 for June. Other areas were well below the 90-mark, including T Services, which came in just under 81, and software, which scored an 84.25. Gartner also used its survey to gauge what effect Oracle's hostile takeover bid of PeopleSoft, and PeopleSoft's planned merger with J.D. Edwards, was having on the overall market in June. Not much, Gartner found. More than 80 percent of the 559 IT decision-makers polled said the actions of the ERP heavyweight would have no effect on their buying, while just 12 percent said they would hold off on purchases.
  
  
• IBM recently acquired a privately held Australian software company called Aptrix to bolster its Lotus Web content management offering. Presence Online, which does business as Aptrix, had been a close partner of IBM's for years, and the two had marketed the Aptrix Content Server software, which provides users with an easy way to publish and manage Web content based on pre-defined templates, as an IBM product called the Lotus Web Content Management Solution. IBM has big plans for Aptrix now that it owns the software. The plans include rolling out a new suite of software called Lotus Workplace Content Development, which is based on the Aptrix code. This goal of this software is to make it even quicker and easier to create, publish, manage, and archive Web-based content within a networked environment. Additionally, IBM intends to use the Aptrix software as a critical link in its Lotus Workplace initiative, which seeks to blend the established workflow capabilities of the Notes/Domino platform with other IBM offerings, including WebSphere Portal and DB2 Content Manager. Lotus Workplace Content Development software is available now.
  
  
• LTO is here to stay. Last week, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Certance (formerly Seagate), the three technology providers for the Linear Tape-Open standard, announced that more than 10 million LTO tape cartridges have been shipped since LTO products started shipping in September 2000. The three companies say shipments of LTO cartridges have grown at about 20 percent quarter over quarter since 2002, and that the total combined capacity of all LTO drives shipped is about 2,000 petabytes--or enough data to fill 50,000 years' worth of DVD movies. The companies also report that 350,000 LTO drives have also shipped. Competitively speaking, LTO drive shipments have outsold DLT and SDLT formats by two to one since 2001, according to market researcher Gartner. There are also about twice as many LTO drives shipped in automated tape libraries than the DLT formats, according to Gartner.
  
  
• California Software has tapped industry veteran Richard Hadley to head a new London sales office, the company announced last week. The Irvine, California, based provider of iSeries migration, legacy extension, and banking software has been expanding globally in 2003, says Carol Conway, the company's president, with new offices opened this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Singapore. The new office in London bolsters California Software's presence in Western Europe, which today includes a sales office in Paris, France, and a support center in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Hadley previously worked at Advanced BusinessLink, a provider of legacy extension software based in Washington state, and will primarily be involved in selling California Software's baby.NET legacy extension software in the United Kingdom and Ireland, says company chief executive Bruce Acacio.
  
  
• JDA Software, a provider of enterprise software to retail and distribution companies, last week reported financial results for its second quarter, which ended June 30, 2003. The Scottsdale, Arizona, company reported $15.5 million software license fee revenue and $53 million in total revenue for the quarter, for a net income of $1.3 million. These are better numbers than most analysts expected, and much better numbers than JDA put up for its dismal first quarter, which led JDA to tout a 102 percent sequential increase in revenue from software licenses. The increase in sales has not, however, come from software license fees, which actually declined by 15 percent for the quarter. In the big picture, however, JDA appears to be improving its business, which has been hit hard by the sputtering global economy in the United States, a weak retail sector worldwide, and the SARS outbreak in the Asia-Pacific region, which, JDA says, contributed to a 54 percent decline in total sales last quarter. Picking up the slack for JDA were the U.S. and Canadian markets, where software license revenues increased by 141 percent, or $6.5 million--the first year-over-year increase in five quarters. Other indicators of improving health include days sales outstanding (DSO)--or the capability to close a deal--and the number of deals worth more than $1 million. JDA's DSO number declined from 100 days a year ago to 56 days last quarter, and the company closed four deals worth $1 million or more. Some of the large companies buying JDA software last quarter include Miller Brewing, Dollar Tree Stores, Booker Cash and Carry, and Telstra.
  
  

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.