But Wait, There's More

IBM Allows Education Vouchers from i5 Sales to Be Used at COMMON

Since the revamping of the iSeries line in January 2003, IBM has been giving customers who buy fairly large iSeries systems education vouchers worth several thousand dollars when they buy a new box. Right after they were announced, attendees at the Spring 2003 COMMON user group meeting complained that these vouchers were only good toward IBM education and training offerings, and in that sense, were a direct competition for the training that people might otherwise get at COMMON. It has taken a while, but IBM has done something about this.

According to Beverly Russell, COMMON's president, IBM is now allowing the education vouchers that come as part of an iSeries deal to be used to pay for the registration fee to attend COMMON. Apparently IBM and COMMON piloted this voucher-for-registration at the Spring 2004 COMMON, but I have never heard of the pilot, which leads me to believe that people who were squeaky wheels about it got their wheels greased, and that constituted the pilot. No matter. What is important is that this is now permanent for all COMMON attendees. So, if you have an unredeemed education voucher, contact Darla Erdmann at IBM Rochester and she will take care of that for you.

ERP Vendor IBS Acquires Quatro

International Business Systems, the Swedish ERP software maker that is one of the few remaining pure-play iSeries application providers in the world and one of the dominant ERP companies in Europe, last week acquired Spanish software company Quatro Information Systems. Quatro, which has 95 employees and 500 customers located in Spain and Portugal, has 250 employees, who will be merged into the IBS Iberia unit. After the acquisition, IBS will have offices in Lisbon and Porto in Portugal and in Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, with a total of 250 employees in that area and 850 customers. Quatro had sales of 9 million euros in 2004, and the purchase price is an algorithm based on how well the IBS Iberia unit does over the next four years. IBS expects the addition of Quatro to boost its profits in the second half of 2005 by 400,000 euros. Quatro sells supply chain management software.

iTera Expands Further into the Asia/Pacific Market

iSeries high availability software maker iTera continues to push into the Asia/Pacific region, which is one of the hotspots for iSeries growth, as it has signed up a bunch of new resellers and partners in that part of the globe. These partners have been tapped to sell iTera's Echo2 high availability clustering software as well as its Guardian/Save disaster recovery software.

Specifically, iTera has tapped Easy Systems, a value-added reseller of IBM iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries server products founded in 1992 and based in Korea, to peddle its products. In the Philippines, iTera has partnered with Elitus Technologies, a management consultancy founded in 1998 that has subsequently branched out into the IT services arena in that country. Elitus specializes in outsourcing, tech support, system integration, business process re-engineering, and telecommunications, and as such, has a broad customer base--many of whom have chosen the iSeries platform. In Indonesia, iTera has partnered with Mitra Infosarana, which was established in 1992 as USI Jaya as a joint venture with IBM Indonesia. Today, Mitra Infosarana sells the all of IBM's eServer platforms and software. In Thailand, iTera has signed up Pro-Line, a much more established IT player that was founded in 1987; Pro-Line has operations in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and is an IBM partner that peddles iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries platforms. And finally, iTera has signed up THE System Decision International, and IT consultancy based in New Zealand that is both a partner of IBM and of ERP heavyweight Infor, which recently ate MAPICS.

Back in May, iTera inked deals with Cavu of Singapore, Intelli Computer of Indonesia, Integrated Global Solutions in Malaysia, and Jardine OneSolution in Hong Kong to distribute Echo2. Cavu is an IBM reseller in Singapore, founded in 1999, that peddles the iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries machines. Intelli Computer is an iSeries reseller in Indonesia that was founded in 1997. Hong Kong's Jardine is a much larger IT services company, and Malaysia's Integrated Global Solutions is also a big reseller of IBM server products in that region.

DataMirror Warns of Slippage in Fiscal Second Quarter

DataMirror is one of the few publicly traded software companies in the OS/400 software market, and only one of two of the six high availability clustering software suppliers in the iSeries market that is public (the other being Idion Technology Holdings, which is the parent company of Vision Solutions). Being traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ exchange here in the States, DataMirror has to report its results quarterly; under the rules of the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa, Idion only reports financial results twice a year, and the other privately held HA vendors do not report financial results at all--although they will sometimes talk up their sales if they are doing well. To say that there is low visibility in the iSeries HA software market is something of an understatement, but this area continues to be one of the main drivers of iSeries sales, as it has been for more than a decade.

Last week, DataMirror said its second fiscal quarter ended on July 31 would be below the guidance it has been giving Wall Street. Specifically, the company said that sales would be in the range of $9.8 million to $10 million, with net income in the range of 7 cents to 9 cents a share. "License revenue in the second quarter was disappointing and was approximately $1.0 million below expectations," explained Nigel Stokes, DataMirror's chief executive officer. "Procurement cycles were longer than anticipated and, as a result, several large deals which were expected to close within the quarter slipped into our third quarter. Also, due to transitions in the sales team and other factors we experienced execution issues during the quarter in some regions. Despite the revenue shortfall, we were able to generate profit levels close to expectations and maintain our strong balance sheet." The company's stock, which had been trading in the $9 per share range, dropped and stabilized at $7.35 by the end of business on Friday.

For its year ended December 31, 2004, Idion reported sales of $31.3 million and a net loss of $771,000, but it amortized $2.2 million in goodwill and booked a small loss on the sale of a subsidiary, which brought what South Africa calls "headline earnings" to $1.48 million. Idion attributed the 5 percent decrease in sales in 2004 to a 16 percent drop in licensing revenue because of a soft IT market, particularly in North America, where competition has been fiercest among the iSeries HA software vendors. Sometime soon, Idion will report its results for the first six months of 2005, and we can see how they compare to what DataMirror has seen.

ASNA Gets on the Developer's Roadmap

Another key player has been added to the iSeries Developer's Roadmap, and ASNA, that new player, could not be happier.

The iSeries Developer's Roadmap, which is the official seal of approval that IBM gives to application development tools for the OS/400 platform, has become a hot topic lately since IBM has been more open than in the past on who can get onto the roadmap. ASNA, which has made no secret about its strong partnership with Microsoft and its desire to bridge the gap between the iSeries platform and the .NET development environment that Microsoft has created for Windows, is obviously pleased that .NET has been invited to the iSeries party--particularly since ANSA has bet its company on .NET.

"IBM clearly recognizes the success and adoption of .NET amongst enterprises with iSeries systems, often at the expense of WebSphere/Java," explained Anne Ferguson, president of ASNA, in a statement accompanying the announcement. "And that's okay, because by adding ASNA, IBM covers all bases in the interests of its customers. ASNA products support RPG programs and development environments while enabling modern .NET-compliant program development, something no one else is capable of delivering to the market."

Infor Joins IBM's ISV Advantage Program

IBM has added another key iSeries player to its ISV Advantage program: Infor.

The ISV Advantage program was launched in April 2003, and it is basically a mutual back-scratching deal between the ISV and IBM. If you agree to promote IBM's server and software platforms ahead of others, IBM will agree to promote an independent software vendor's products in specific geographies and vertical niches on those platforms. If ISVs agree to standardize on IBM's middleware stack, they get all kinds of assistance from IBM's techies, too. (You can find out more about ISV Advantage at this link.) ISVs have to make a two-year commitment to the program.

The iSeries Developer's Roadmap, which is the official seal of approval that IBM gives to application development tools for the OS/400 platform, has become a hot topic lately since IBM has been more open than in the past on who can get onto the roadmap. ASNA, which has made no secret about its strong partnership with Microsoft and its desire to bridge the gap between the iSeries platform and the .NET development environment that Microsoft has created for Windows, is obviously pleased that .NET has been invited to the iSeries party--particularly since ANSA has bet its company on .NET. "IBM clearly recognizes the success and adoption of .NET amongst enterprises with iSeries systems, often at the expense of WebSphere/Java," explained Anne Ferguson, president of ASNA, in a statement accompanying the announcement. "And that's okay, because by adding ASNA, IBM covers all bases in the interests of its customers. ASNA products support RPG programs and development environments while enabling modern .NET-compliant program development, something no one else is capable of delivering to the market."

Google Has a Sense of Humor, But It Doesn't Read Very Well

When I was writing the lead story for our new Big Iron mainframe newsletter last week, I could not remember the code name of the zSeries 890 mainframe that was announced--well, I couldn't remember when that was, either, or where I wrote that story, now that I think about it. Because much of my work is published on the Internet in different places, I can use (some might say I have to use) Google as a sort of memory extension, and I often do since I added the Google toolbar to my Internet Explorer browser. So I typed "zSeries 890 prickett" into the tool bar, and Google said back:

Did you mean: iseries 890 prickett

What? I'm not allow to write about anything other than the iSeries?

If Google were smart, if would be able to read text rather than just index it. The second item on the list was a story I wrote, and the very section that it indexed from one of my stories was "The new zSeries 890 (not to be confused with an iSeries Model 890) . . . " Google should learn how to read. Then again, if it can read, it can write, and I am in no mood to be replaced by a computer.