But Wait, There's More

Rumor Has It That CGIDEV2 Will Live On

If the rumors I am hearing are true, then the CGIDEV2 open source development tool that has been available through IBM will continue to be available and supported by IBM in some manner even though the key people behind the project have retired from Big Blue.

As we reported last week, CGIDEV2 enthusiasts were upset about the limbo status of the tool after Giovanni Perotti, who managed the Easy400 site where CGIDEV2 was distributed and provided technical support for the program, retired from IBM Italy at the end of June. (See "iSeries Programmers Irate Concerning CGIDEV2 Limbo" from last week's issue.) Perotti started a campaign to try to get IBM to fully open source the program and allow a community organization to enhance and support it. As we go to press, we do not know how IBM will continue to update and support CGIDEV2, but one source, which is someone in the know, said IBM had definitely made a decision to not just walk away from CGIDEV2 and let it die. We'll see if this rumor pans out and how IBM moves forward with the program--if indeed it does.

CGIDEV2 Is Not the Only CGI Game in Town on the iSeries

While the open source CGIDEV2 development tool was making lots of headlines in the iSeries press last week, this program is certainly not the only game in town when it comes to using Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs to take RPG-based legacy applications and turn them into Web-enabled applications. There are a lot of screen scraping tools that provide similar functionality without using CGI programming techniques, and products like Business Computer Design's WebSmart and michaels ross & cole's mrc-Productivity Series both offer CGI-based programming for the iSeries.

While mrc has created a subset of its mrc-Productivity Series program called m-Power that is Java-based and that generates Java applications, it is still supporting the mrc-productivity Series, which can generate RPG code as well as CGI applications written in RPG. This CGI capability was added to mrc's tools in October 2000, but since that time, a lot of application development outside of the iSeries market has shifted to Java and some of it inside the iSeries market has as well. The company has signaled that m-Power is its preferred product to push and that the future of the mrc-Productivity Series will be determined by the needs of the market--meaning that if demand for the CGI tools dries up, mrc will stop supporting it.

Eric Figura, BCD's sales and marketing manager, says that CGI is far from dead, and is in fact alive and well if demand for WebSmart, which generates both CGI and Java, is any indication. He says WebSmart is absolutely neutral about whether or not it generates Java or CGI to Web-enable OS/400 applications, but that 95 percent of the customers who choose WebSmart use CGI, not Java. The reasons are complex, but familiarity with CGI and better performance are in CGI's favor; the lack of familiarity with Java at many iSeries shops as well as the performance penalty of running interpreted rather than compiled code work against Java.

The main point is that CGIDEV2 had an informal, albeit generous support structure, and that these commercial tools offer CGI capabilities as well as full tech support. However, you don't have access to the source code behind the tool and you do have to pay for that support.

IBM Raises Two i5 520 Express Prices a Smidgen

As part of the July iSeries announcements a few weeks ago, IBM snuck in a small price increase for two configurations of the i5 520 Express setups that are aimed at small and medium businesses.

Specifically, i5 520 Express Edition configuration #3, which is designated by the i5 model number 9405-7392, has increased in price from $21,860 to $22,900. Configuration #3 comes with 2 GB of main memory, two mirrored 35 GB disk drives, a 30 GB quarter-inch cartridge tape drive, a DVD, and a twinax adapter. The i5 520 Express configuration #5, designated by 9405-7394, now costs $28,617, up 3.8 percent. In both cases, the price has gone up by $1,040. It is unclear what is driving the price increase. Configuration #5 offers 2 GB of main memory as well, throws in a RAID 5 disk controller and two more 35 GB disks. Both machines have 1,000 CPWs of raw computing power and 60 CPWs of 5250 interactive processing capability.

JDA Sees Sequential Sales Growth in Latest Quarter

Retail application software specialist JDA Software has been trying to boost sales and get its costs in line so it can turn a bigger profit, and it seems to have done all of this in its second quarter ended June 30.

JDA, which sells retail applications on OS/400 and Windows platforms, saw software revenues rise by 8.5 percent to $15.3 million and overall sales rise by 1.5 percent to $54.9 million. While the overall sales at JDA did not rise all that much compared to this time last year, the company has tightened its belt and in the second quarter of this year, $3.6 million dropped to the bottom line (12 cents a share) compared to $604,000 (2 cents a share) in the second quarter of 2004. JDA said it had exited the quarter with a good pipeline of new deals, and it was able to convert on them. The company sold software licenses to 78 companies in the quarter and 78 percent of software license revenues came from existing JDA accounts. While JDA has continued to sell and support its RPG-based MMS retail suite, the company's new .NET-based Portfolio applications for Windows servers are somewhat ominously getting strong customer reactions, according to JDA. Continuing to support something is not the same thing as selling it.

Aldon Partners with Telelogic for Project Compliance

Software change management vendor Aldon has partnered with Telelogic, a supplier of requirements management applications, and the two companies integrate their solutions.

Telelogic sells an application suite called DOORS, which is used to create a catalog of requirements that are specified for applications prior to their development and then keeps tabs on how those requirements are being met as the applications are created and changed. Aldon will be working with Telelogic to integrate DOORS with the Aldon Suite, which is comprised of Aldon Lifecycle Manager, Aldon Deployment manager, and Aldon Community Manager. Ironically, Telelogic offers its own software change management software, called SYNERGY, and Aldon's eponymous suite also has modules for requirements management. So the partnership is a reflection that many customers want to pick and choose different development tools and that vendors--even those that offer a full suite of products that are well integrated--often have to partner to serve the needs of their customers. In the end, both the customers and the vendors win, and that is what is important.

IBM Bolsters iSeries Sales Team in Europe

SMBs Highly Vulnerable to Internet Threats, CA Report Finds

Small and medium size businesses (SMBs) are highly vulnerable to a variety of Internet-based threats, according to a study conducted by Quocirca for Computer Associates. CA says some of the factors contributing to the vulnerability among SMBs are complicated multiplatform environments, poor patch management, a lack of automated backup processes, and reliance on non-experts for IT management. Some of the more alarming statistics have to do with SMB's backup procedures. According to CA, only 25 percent of SMBs are using automated software to manage their backups, and approximately 20 percent of them have no backup capabilities at all. Of the SMBs that do back up their servers, nearly one third of them haven't checked their ability to recover files in more than a year. "These studies reveal that while SMBs continue to embrace technology, a disturbing number lack the resources necessary to protect their IT assets in a sufficiently organized manner," says Bob Tarzey, Quocirca's service director.