But Wait, There's More

Agilisys Not to Be Confused with Agilysys Anymore

We will no longer confuse Agilisys, the Atlanta-based ERP software provider, with Agilysys, the iSeries master distributor from Cleveland, Ohio, because Agilisys has changed its name to Infor Global Solutions, the name of a German software vendor it acquired in February. "In the past 24 months, we have grown our revenue and successfully completed numerous acquisitions that we believe have strengthened our position in the markets we serve," says Jim Schaper, chairman and chief executive of Infor, which is now about a $300-million-per-year company. "Our new name represents the company's on-going mission of solving the essential issues of select vertical markets."

Apparently, Infor officials believed that "Agilisys" was just too close to the spelling of several other vendors, according to reports. Actually, you didn't have to look any farther than Lake Erie to find a billion-dollar company with a name that sounds identical (and looks identical on screen, save for some "i"s and "y"s). In the tightly knit OS/400 community, which both companies serve, the similarity was enough to send the spelling challenged into full-blown identity crises when trying to determine which agile acquirer had bought daly.commerce and which had bought Inter-American Data. (For the record, Agilisys bought daly.commerce, in March 2004, while Agilysys, which went by the name Pioneer-Standard in a previous life, bought IAD, in 2003.)

DataMirror Partners with Tokyo Firm for Push into Japanese Market

DataMirror is moving into the Japanese software market. The software developer, headquartered near Toronto, Ontario, last week announced it has formed a partnership with General Business Kitakanto Solution (GBKIT), a Tokyo service provider, to sell localized versions of its clustering, data integration, and auditing software for OS/400 and other platforms. Under the agreement, GBKIT, a division of Solpac, and DataMirror will collaboratively market and sell Japanese versions of Transformation Server, LiveAudit, and iCluster products, and GBKIT will provide frontline support. As a first step, these products have already been adapted for the double-byte character set used by the Japanese language. "The localization of DataMirror's . . . software will create substantial demand for their solutions within the Japanese market," says Hiroshi Watanabe, director and division manager of Solpac. "We are pleased to be affiliated with a company that has a strong reputation for quality products and solid expertise." GBKIT was founded as an affiliate of IBM Japan in 1992. Its parent, Solpac, offers products from a number of other OS/400 software providers, including Maximum Availability, Seagull, and Bytware, among others.

eSP OEMs 5250 Software to AML

eBusiness Solution Pros, developer of terminal emulation software for handheld computers, has formed an OEM partnership with AML, a manufacturer of barcode and data collection devices. Under the agreement, announced at the Frontline conference in Chicago last week, eSP's Stay-Linked software will be pre-loaded onto AML's M7100 Series wireless data collection terminals, providing M7100 users with access to ERP, supply chain, and warehousing applications running across OS/400, mainframe, Unix, Windows, and Linux servers. In addition to a thin client component that resides on the handheld device, the Stay-Linked solution requires software to be installed on the host server, which, eSP claims, helps to eliminate the problem of dropped sessions. The company eSP has similar agreements for Stay-Linked with other handheld device makers, including market leader Symbol.

Seagull Closes Irish Development Lab As Part of Reorganization

Dutch software developer Seagull is closing its Irish development lab and has laid off about 25 workers as part of a company-wide realignment and cost-reduction plan. "Following a thorough product portfolio analysis, we are reorganizing our R&D resources and tuning the rest of the organization to optimize alignment with our business plans," says Don Addington, Seagull's chief executive and president. Besides moving all of Ireland's development projects to The Netherlands, Seagull plans to combine its quality assurance functions into its customer care unit. It will also spend more money on integration products, which, Seagull says, are "showing solid growth and market interest." Its BlueZone emulator business, based in Manassas, Virginia, is also growing, and Seagull says it plans to continue to support it.

Seagull says the consolidation of labs and other departmental functions, combined with "organizational tuning," will result in a 15 percent reduction in the company's 180-person workforce. The layoffs of developers will help Seagull to return to historical levels of R&D spending, says Seagull's chief financial officer, Mory Motabar. "We expect R&D investment to be approximately 18 percent of revenues for fiscal year 2005, as compared to 23 percent for fiscal year 2004," he says. Seagull, which is publicly traded, expects to take a one-time charge of $700,000 to $1 million related to severance payments and costs associated with closing the Ireland facility.

Geac Reports Big Jumps in License Fees, Net Income

Geac's net income increased by 44 percent last quarter on the back of a healthy jump in software license revenue and a steady increase in maintenance streams, the ERP software developer has announced. New software sales for the first quarter of Geac's fiscal year 2005, which ended July 31, amounted to $15.5 million, about a 21 percent increase over the first quarter of 2004, while a healthy 6 percent increase in support and maintenance revenue, to $89.5 million, helped to offset a steep decline in hardware sales, which dropped by about $4 million, to about $2 million, for the quarter. Total revenue increased about 5 percent, to $107 million, for the quarter, while pre-tax profit jumped from $9.4 million to $13.5 million. Among the significant milestones for the quarter: sales of System21 continued to grow, as software license revenue for the upgraded OS/400-based ERP suite, called Aurora, increased more than 18 percent, compared with 2003, and Geac landed its first deal in France.

Lawson Warns of Big Declines in License Fees, Net Loss

Traders pushed Lawson Software's share price down 13 percent last week, following the release of the company's preliminary first quarter results, which, needless to say, were not good. The St. Paul, Minnesota, company, which recently recommitted to developing and marketing OS/400 ERP software, said it expects total revenue for the quarter to be about $82 million, which would be about a 7 percent decline from the $88 million it posted for the first quarter of fiscal 2004, which ends August 31. That translates into a one to two cent loss using the GAAP method. Perhaps more worrisome is the paltry $13 million in software license revenues Lawson expects for the quarter, a 43 percent drop from the $22.7 million it recorded for the quarter last year. Lawson CEO Jay Coughlan said there were many causes for the shortfall, including industry consolidation, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and the Department of Justice's lawsuit again Oracle, which Oracle won and which should bolster Lawson's argument that it's a tier-one player that can hang with the big boys. "Lawson experienced what many other enterprise software companies have recently announced: lower business activity, longer customer decision cycles, and contract deferrals," Coughlan says. He added that he is committed to cost cutting and keeping Lawson profitable for the year--on a non-GAAP basis, anyway. Final financial results will be announced September 30.

Meta Says Passwords Aren't Effective

Passwords have failed as an effective identity management tool, according to a new report from the META Group. Before saying to yourself, "Well, duh," and slinking off to read more "obvious" news reports on www.fark.com, consider this: the problem with passwords is not the sheer number of passwords you must memorize, as your experience may have led you to (mistakenly) believe. No, the problem is actually due to a lack of respect for the sheer level of access and authority that passwords afford, META says. Or, as Earl Perkins, vice president with META's security and risk strategies advisory service, puts it: "The issue with password protection isn't just a number issue. Rather, from a cultural standpoint, many individuals do not believe the value of the password reflects the value of the assets it protects."

So how best to resolve this password conundrum? Whatever it is, it ain't single sign-on, which, META says, will just "inject new problems regarding the balance between authentication and authorization." Instead, META says, the "ultimate solution" (which we understand has not yet been finalized) to this password problem will be based on these three facts: that people want to know their identity is secure, they want to identify themselves easily, and want to know the value of what they're accessing, based on how they access it. After running this through our cultural translation device, the answer is actually quite simple: biometric brain implants! And just think of how easy it will be to check out at Wal-Mart. Okay, you can go back to www.fark.com now.