IBM Updates iSeries Financing Deferral Deal

IBM has reinstituted a low-rate financing deal for sales of new second-generation iSeries machines (Models 810, 825, 870, and 890) and the eServer i5s (Models 520 and 570) or upgrades to these machines. This low-rate financing promotion, which expires on September 30, has been combined with a deferred payment plan. Last week, IBM added the i5 Model 550 to the deal. Customers have to spend between $25,000 and $1 million before the end of September, and they can finance their hardware and software for either 24- or 36-month terms and get deferred payments until January 2005, interest free. Customers must install their equipment by October 31.

Seagull Targets Offshored iSeries with Indian Reseller Partnership

Seagull Software has formed a partnership with an Indian software house to tackle the growing market for legacy modernization software on the populous Asian subcontinent. Bangalore-based Select Software will market, distribute, and support LegaSuite, Seagull's suite of software for modernizing OS/400, MVS, OpenVMS, and Unix applications with service-oriented architectures and composite application development technologies.

Indian businesses did not widely adopt mainframes or minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s, because of trade restrictions, which paved the way for Windows and Unix to gain an upperhand in the indigenous market. However, more mainframe and AS/400 servers and jobs are making their way to India as a result of offshoring, a trend that has become more identifiable in the IT industry of late. "India is an obvious market for our legacy liberation technologies," said Don Addington, president and chief executive of Seagull. "Many enterprises have outsourced their legacy systems operations to India, and we want to capitalize on the growing opportunities there."

Select Software sells more than 40 different programs, ranging from the Crystal Reports package from Business Objects to terminal emulators from Attachmate, Hummingbird, and WRQ. Seagull, a Dutch company with U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, will manage its Select Software relationship out of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Australia. That office is also responsible for a new relationship Seagull formed recently with Imon Technology, an IT consulting firm based in China.

ACS Snaps Up ERP Outsourcer BlueStar

Affiliated Computer Services, the $3.7 billion provider of IT outsourcing services, boosted its ERP management capability in August with the acquisition of BlueStar Solutions for $73 million. Cupertino, California, based Bluestar Solutions has expertise on multiple platforms (OS/400, Unix, and Windows servers) and ERP packages (including those from J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Lawson, Oracle, and SAP) in addition to expertise on Microsoft Exchange and IBM Domino messaging platforms. BlueStar provides Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services with three data centers, in Arizona, Texas, and South Carolina, which support more than 120 BlueStar clients, 60,000 ERP users, and 100,000 messaging users across 80 countries. "This is a win-win solution, not only for both companies but also for clients," says BlueStar's vice president of sales and marketing, Russell "Rusty" Harris, who will become managing director of Affiliated Computer Services' new Application Managed Services division.

Get Your Vote On: COMMON Board Election Ends Tomorrow

Time is running out for COMMON members to vote for the group's 2005 board members. Tomorrow is the last day members will be allowed to cast their votes electronically on the group's Web site. Four people are seeking to fill three spots on the board for 2005, including Dan Kimmel of MSI Systems Integrators; Leo Lefebvre, president of the Toronto Users Group; Wayne Madden, publisher of iSeries Network; and Peter Massiello, with OS Solution International.

Leaving the board, following the fall 2005 conference in Toronto, to be held October 17 through 21, are COMMON's executive vice president, Rares Pateanu, who will have served the second of his two terms and will step down, and its current president, Bob Boyson, who has chosen not to defend his spot on the board but will remain on the board as immediate past president, COMMON says. Massiello is seeking a second term. For more information on the candidates and to cast your vote, go to www.common.org/2004election.

Original to Host Its First Testing Conference in U.S.

Original Software, the British developer of iSeries testing tools, will be holding its first software testing conference in the United States on September 20 and 21. The one-and-a-half day event is intended for managers, developers, and testers and will included a handful of sessions covering Original's TestBench for iSeries, Extractor for iSeries, and other test products for PCs. Original representatives will include product architects George Wilson and Stewart Bishop, who will make presentations on existing and new product functionality, as well as Mitchell Fink, an expert on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, who will provide information about compliance. There is no charge to attend the conference, which will be held near Original's North American headquarters in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Original has held several conferences in England, and the decision to bring a software test conference to the United States bodes well for the software vendor, which is considered one of the premier providers of testing tools for the OS/400 server.

GST to Source LTO Drives from Well-Known Tape Drive Maker

Tape subsystem maker GST has chosen Certance to be its LTO tape drive supplier, the Southern California company announced last week. As part of the agreement, Certance, which was better known when it was called Seagate (a name it used up until April 2003), will immediately provide GST with first- and second-generation LTO Ultrium tape drives and will deliver enhanced (half-height) second- and third-generation LTO Ultrium technologies later this year, the companies announced. GST sells an array of tape drives, autoloaders, and libraries that connect to a range of servers, including direct connectivity to the iSeries server, which is one of GST's specialties.

GST officials say they chose Certance, one of the original developers of the open LTO tape format, for several reasons, including the capability to deliver LTO Ultrium3 technology before other providers. "Our engineers tested Certance drives extensively and found them to outperform all other LTO drives when the brakes were taken off in our lab," said GST chairman and chief executive David Breisacher. "The quality of these LTO drives is the highest we've seen, and the drives' operating characteristics were superior to other LTO drives we tested."