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.
  
  

• August 23
• August 16
• August 2
• July 26
• July 19

• Maybe grid computing is not such a good idea after all? New York City is getting used to blackouts. There was one that lasted three days in July 1999 that was worse than the one that shut down the Northeast for the better part of two days a little more than a week ago. The power went off in our office in Inwood (at the northern tip of Manhattan) at about 4:15 p.m. on Thursday. Our UPS batteries kept us running for a while, and we did an orderly shut down with no loss of data. The power came back on at 8:25 a.m. Friday, and we were live a few minutes later. We can't say the same thing for the power grids in the United States or for the Internet as a whole. While most press reports indicated that the Internet survived the power outage with aplomb, as a publisher of e-mail newsletters we can tell you that thousands of companies were not as fortunate as we were here at Guild Companies. Whole chunks of the Internet took days to clear out their clogged arteries and let information flow through reactivated lines. As for the power grid, we have zero confidence that anyone will do anything to fix it. There's no money in it, and therefore nothing will be done but the making of a lot of noise and hot air. We think getting a wind generator and some solar panels for our building is a better idea.
  
  
• SAP, the largest application software vendor, has acquired a 5 percent stake in rival German ERP software maker DCW Software. The company, which has expertise in the beverage distribution application software business, sells an application portfolio that runs on OS/400. DCW has over 900 customers worldwide. SAP declined to comment on the value of the 5 percent stake, but apparently the company is as interested in DCW's Java and C programmers as it is in the applications they have created. SAP also has gained the majority voting rights in DCW and the option to buy the entire company, which means SAP controls what DCW does from here on out. This is probably not a prelude to an acquisition binge like PeopleSoft and Oracle have undertaken in recent months.
  
  
• It's not entirely unreasonable that Microsoft is a little hesitant to discuss the iSeries, considering the company's embarrassing struggle to move its ERP system from AS/400s to Wintel servers in the 1990s, and the rumors that Microsoft is still reliant on OS/400 applications refuse to go away. But when it comes to the Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision division, we're at a loss to explain the company's unwillingness to talk about its OS/400 development strategy. Guild Companies has learned that Navision has indeed made its ERP package available on the iSeries, as it said it would do nearly two years ago. At the time, Microsoft had not yet acquired the Danish ERP software developer, and IBM was encouraging Navision to port its Attain suite to run natively in OS/400, to provide a much-needed, cost-effective, and integrated ERP stack to go after the small and midsized market. In May 2002, Microsoft bought Navision, which put the OS/400 port in limbo. It would have made good business sense for Microsoft to kill the port, considering an OS/400 version of Attain would not help sales of Microsoft's Windows and SQL Server database. But, as reasonable as that scenario sounds, that's apparently not what happened. A spokesman for Navision last week said the OS/400 port did indeed go through, but that the OS/400 version of the software is available only in Canada and Europe, not the United States. Microsoft's Navision unit would not elaborate last week on the strategy behind this move. We'll keep leaning on them to get them to tell us why.
  
  
• Fresh from its acquisition of Baan, SSA Global Technologies last week launched its bid for EXE Technologies, a struggling developer of supply chain management software. SSA GT is offering $7.10 per share, or about $47 million, for the Dallas company. That's about an 18 percent premium over the market capitalization of EXE before the takeover move by SSA GT. EXE has about 450 customers, most of which run on Unix and S/390 platforms. In 2001, EXE ported its COBOL-based warehouse management system from the mainframe to OS/400, but sales of that product have been lackluster. SSA GT says it expects the deal, which is subject to a vote of shareholders and to regulatory approval, to close within 75 to 100 days. Backing the deal is Ray Hood, EXE's chairman and chief executive, who happens to hold about 6 percent of the company's stock, which is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange. General Atlantic Partners, which, along with Cerebrus Group, is financing SSA GT's acquisition strategy, also holds 30 percent of EXE, reports the Dow Jones Newswire. SSA GT, a private company, plans to make EXE a subsidiary when the deal goes through.
  
  
• There will be two fresh faces on COMMON's board of directors in 2004. Last week the user group announced the results of the recent elections held in June. Randy Dufault and Gary Lagarde were elected to the board for the first time, and Janet Krueger was re-elected to her second three-year term. Dufault works for Minneapolis-based MBS Technologies and is a frequent presenter at COMMON and other conferences. Dufault campaigned on the platform that COMMON should take a more active role in advocacy, and supports the user group's Requirements and Global Top Concerns programs. Lagarde is a director of development for Chicago-based Lakeview Technology and has years of experience on the midrange platform. In his position statement, Lagarde pointed to several areas that are important to him, including the continued fiscal viability of COMMON, the "graying" of COMMON members, outreach to local user groups, and support of the Top Concerns program. Krueger, an ex-IBMer and a full-time student at the St. Thomas School of Law, in Minneapolis, has been speaking at COMMON for 24 years. In her position statement, Krueger said COMMON is at a crossroads and must focus on a clear vision for the future, specifically regarding its relationship with IBM and the potential for Internet-based education between conferences. Lagarde and Dufault will replace Bob Cozzi and Janice Caldwell, both of whom could not run for re-election because of COMMON's two-term limit.
  
  
• SunGard last week appointed Gil Santos as president of HTE, the developer of software for governmental agencies that SunGard acquired last winter for $121 million. Santos was previously a vice president and chief technology officer for HTE, based in Orlando, Florida, and writes for the OS/400 and Windows platforms. In his new role, Santos will report to Bob Clarke, group chief executive officer of SunGard's Public Sector and Nonprofit Systems.
  
  

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