But Wait, There's More. . .

• As IBM readies Domino 6 for the market, we have caught wind of an impending announcement of a new iSeries "Bumblebee" Dedicated Server for Domino based on the "Regatta-H" Model 890 server. Apparently IBM will not go so far as to announce a yellow-badged Bumblebee box, as it has done in the past, but will offer two Model 890 Bumblebees on a special-bid basis. According to our sources, RPQ #847163 creates a 32-way Bumblebee with an appropriate memory and disk configuration to support native Notes clients, and RPQ #847164 will support clients using the iNotes Web interface into Notes/Domino. Presumably these special-bid machines will have significantly lower prices than regular Model 890s, which is what Bumblebees are all about. There's nothing stopping iSeries customers from using the Model 890 to support large numbers of Notes or iNotes users right now. This announcement is all about price.

• Storage Solutions Group, the marketing company based in the Isle of Man that peddles the FAST400 OS/400 green-screen governor buster, announced last week that its software now supports the new OS/400 V5R2, as well as two earlier releases of OS/400, V4R2 and V4R3. Until now, FAST400 worked only on OS/400 V4R4 through V5R1. The expanded support makes the FAST400 tool able to run on a much larger portion of the AS/400 and iSeries installed base, which numbers just under 500,000 machines worldwide. OS/400 shops interested in FAST400 can download a trial version at www.fast400.net for all supported OS/400 releases except V5R2. The V5R2 version is not available as a demo; presumably this is part of the cat-and-mouse game that is going on between IBM, which makes the green-screen governors, and Storage Solutions Group, which gets around the governors with each iteration of FAST400. Companies with V5R2 have to contact Colin Wells, the marketing director at Storage Solutions Group, at cwells@fast400.net. FAST400 costs $1,000 per AS/400 or iSeries processor per year, regardless of AS/400 or iSeries vintage.
  
  
• If you are trying to sort out the latest PTFs for OS/400 and its related systems programs that IBM has released, you need to check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, which our partner, DLB Associates, has compiled for you. The latest OS/400 PTF Guide is for Sept. 28. An archive of OS/400 PTF Guides published to date is also available on our site.
  
  
• IBM has formed new strategic partnerships with two OS/400 application vendors, Clear Technologies and MAPICS. The partnership with Clear Technologies involves C2 CRM, a 30-module, Domino-based customer-loyalty application that helps organizations to better support their customers, partners, and employees. IBM and Dallas, Texas, based Clear Technologies sales reps will sell it, bundled with iSeries, xSeries, or pSeries servers, to North American midmarket customers in the wholesale distribution, industrial, and services industries. IBM's agreement with MAPICS involves the Alpharetta, Georgia, software vendor's ERP software, which runs on OS/400, Linux, and Windows and is closely tied to the WebSphere Application Server and the WebSphere MQ messaging software. The two companies will market the ERP software together with iSeries or xSeries hardware and IBM implementation services. The target markets for the MAPICS solution will be midmarket manufacturers in the electronics, automotive, heavy equipment and industrial equipment industries.
  
  
• CYBRA, the Yonkers, New York, developer of barcode label software for OS/400, announced last week that it has struck a reseller deal with Avery Dennison Printer Systems America. As part of the deal, Avery Dennison will offer CYBRA's MarkMagic/400 and SM@RT Forms software and services to AS/400 and iSeries customers, and CYBRA will become a reseller of Avery Dennison's high-end thermal barcode printers. CYBRA's software allows users to build forms and labels by linking label format fields to the appropriate OS/400 database file, and it is the barcode label engine inside popular ERP packages such as PkMS from Manhattan Associates and PRMS and BPCS from SSA Global Technologies. Avery Dennison's newest line of thermal label printers, the 64-XX family, uses 64-bit processors to speed label processing. An Avery Dennison spokesman said these 64-bit printers are especially useful at companies using complicated labels with more than one barcode, or where the new two-dimensional barcodes are being used. The 64-XX family prints labels at speeds of up to 12 inches per second, at resolutions of up to 300 dots per inch, with printable-area widths varying from 4.2 inches to 7.3 inches, depending on the model.
  
  
• Jack Henry & Associates, the banking software provider, and PentaSafe Security Technologies announced last week that Jack Henry will use PentaSafe's security software to secure its AS/400 and iSeries outsourcing operations. Missouri-based Jack Henry runs a large data center in Dallas, Texas, in support of its customers who use Jack Henry's flagship banking suite, Silverlake, which runs on OS/400. The data center opened two years ago, and since then the company has experienced unexpected demand for the service, especially among larger banks, company officials said in an April conference call. PentaSafe consultants will work with data center managers to install PentaSafe's VigilEnt Security Manager, VigilEnt Policy Manager, VigilEnt Security Agent for Windows NT, and the three OS/400-centric security agents for OS/400: PSAudit, PSDetect, and PSSecure, which includes the exit-point tool and the inactive session monitor. The software and services will streamline the center's overall security implementation and procedures, and will improve Jack Henry's ability to run specific auditing reports for its customers, PentaSafe said. As part of the deal, Jack Henry is giving exclusive marketing rights to PentaSafe to sell the security software to Jack Henry's entire installed base, which numbers 2,800 community banks and credit unions nationwide.
  
  
• Two more companies, MKS and Hewlett-Packard, were given voting rights in IBM's Eclipse open-source development tools effort last week. MKS, which develops software configuration management (SCM) tools to allow groups of developers to code more collaboratively and efficiently, has been an early adopter of Eclipse and claims to have been the first iSeries SCM vendor to provide an integration with the Eclipse Workbench in early March. The significance of MKS's participation in Eclipse was overshadowed, however, by the addition of Hewlett-Packard in the loosely knit group's Board of Stewards. HP, which bills itself as the fifth largest provider of software in the world and a strong supporter of open standards and multi-platform environments, has earned the ire of many customers with its decisions to end the HP 3000/MPE and AlphaServer/VMS-Tru64 midrange platforms in favor of running Linux, Unix, or Windows operating systems on the 64-bit Itanium processors that it codeveloped with Intel. HP says it plans to offer integrated developer tools frameworks based on Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, and says "the future of application development lies at the intersection of Java and .NET interoperability."
  
  
• Micromuse, a systems management software vendor that introduced its first native OS/400 utility earlier this year, announced last week that it has joined IBM's self-managing, self-healing computer initiative, also referred to as "Project eLiza." The San Francisco company joins a list of other OS/400 software vendors in the new "self-managing systems" segment of IBM's tools network for integrated application servers (where "integrated application server" is a euphemism for "iSeries"). Other companies in the same category include Altaworks, Global Maintech, H.A. Technical Solutions, Help/Systems, Lakeview Technology, System Management ARTS, SafeStone Technologies, Tango/04, Vision Solutions, and Wily Technology. Micromuse and many of the vendors listed above are also listed in the systems management category for the Unix and Intel-based tools networks. There is also a category for mainframe tools.
  
  
• Magic Software, the Irvine, California, vendor of applications and development tools for OS/400 and other platforms, last week announced the creation of the CoreTech Consulting Group. CoreTech Consulting has been providing IT services since 1992 and became a subsidiary of Magic Software Enterprises in September 2001. Today the company provides services to customers in the financial services and life sciences through partnerships with Aurum Technology for the financial services industry, Taratec for life sciences, and others. A statement issued by Magic Software said the group's new organizational structure, as a limited liability corporation, will allow the company to have as many partners as warrants, while enabling Magic to retain its ownership interest. CoreTech Consulting is based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and should not be confused with Core Technology Corp., the Lansing, Michigan, software company that develops a range of tools for accessing applications and data residing on OS/400, mainframe, Unix, and other host platforms.
  
  

Sponsored By FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400?? What is Fast400? You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy anther interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net . Why Fast400? A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system. The result Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair. The similarity IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries? The future The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!! For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.