But Wait, There's More. . .

• 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 Oct. 12. An archive of OS/400 PTF Guides is also available on our site.

• Clear Technologies, which, along with Touchtone, is one of the software vendors driving CRM applications on the OS/400 platform, two weeks ago announced the addition of industry veteran Van Symons to its executive team. Symons is an award-winning IBMer who held various sales and marketing positions during his 25 years with Big Blue, including stints with the AS/400 team, IBM's business intelligence offerings, and, most recently, Big Blue's Project eLiza. At Clear Tech, Symons takes the position of vice president of sales, where he will lead efforts to sell the company's suite of CRM modules, called C2, into the midmarket. This is the second career move in two months for Symons, who is 47. In early September, Think Dynamics, a Toronto, Ontario, company that writes software to help manage data centers, announced that Symons had joined its team and would share his insights with Think Dynamics, through an advisory position.
  
  
• Sirius Computer Solutions last week signed a definitive agreement to acquire iSeries reseller Strategic Systems, the San Antonio reseller's second purchase of a regional value-added reseller in two weeks. As a premier IBM business partner in Houston, Strategic Systems primarily serves its customers in the Houston metropolitan area, Sirius said. While Strategic Systems' specialty is iSeries servers, it also sells a range of other IBM products, including Intel-based xSeries servers, disk arrays, tape subsystems, and desktop and laptop PCs, as well as Cisco Systems networking equipment and Powerware uninterruptible power supplies. Strategic Systems has expertise and partnerships with several OS/400 software vendors and their applications, including ERP vendor Vormittag Associates, business-intelligence software provider Silvon Software, and labor-management software provider Kronos. Strategic Systems also has a relationship with DataMirror, a Toronto, Ontario, high-availability software vendor. Sirius is the top business partner of Lakeview Technology, one of DataMirror's rivals. The situation Sirius faces with Strategic Systems' DataMirror partnership is similar to the situation it faces with the close partnership that Symatrix Technology--the Beaverton, Oregon, iSeries reseller that Sirius acquired earlier this month--has with Vision Solutions, the third major vendor of OS/400 high-availability software. It is practically unheard of for major resellers such as Sirius--which lays claim to being the biggest iSeries reseller in the world--to have partnerships with more than one of the fiercely competitive high availability vendors. Spokesmen for Sirius and Symatrix said the companies would address the partnership question by December.
  
  
• Touchtone's OS/400-based CRM application, Wintouch eCRM, was given ServerProven validation by IBM in September. The Costa Mesa, California, software company hopes that the stamp of approval from Big Blue will help drive up software sales, especially in the small to midsize business market, where analysts say CRM apps could generate $40 billion over the next two years, but only if customers aren't turned off by the complexity of the applications. Touchtone said its Wintouch is an ideal solution for small and midsize business customers looking for a native OS/400 application, with solid RPG code powering the server-side of the application and lightweight Java applets facing the customer. "Touchtone is finding an increasing need among businesses who have chosen the iSeries as their enterprise platform and want a CRM solution built specifically for that platform," said Rich Hall, vice president of sales and marketing for Touchtone. Moreover, Touchtone spokespeople say native CRM applications such as Wintouch and two or three others available on the market are poised for the demand they expect to build following rumors of Siebel Systems' departure from the OS/400 market. A spokesman for Siebel could not comment on the speculation that the company is leaving the OS/400 space, citing preparations Siebel executives are making for the company's annual user conference this week. For more information on Touchtone, go to www.wintouch.com.
  
  
• At the COMMON conference last week, Lakeview Technology announced its new Information Availability Institute, a series of classes on general availability issues and on specific Lakeview products that the company will be sponsoring throughout the world. The classes that Lakeview will be offering can be divided into three general areas. The first seven classes are provided by Lakeview personnel and cover general topics ranging from contingency strategies to optimizing databases for availability and storage resiliency. The second set of classes Lakeview is offering were developed by IBM under the Education Card Program and focus on general iSeries skills. The third set of classes are specific to MIMIX, Lakeview's high-availability software for OS/400 and Windows environments running underneath OS/400, and are given by Lakeview's experts. These five classes cover basic and advanced MIMIX topics, such as managing MIMIX clusters, incorporating WebSphere MQ (formerly MQSeries) into a MIMIX environment, running MIMX with J.D. Edwards' OneWorld, and using MIMIX to bolster the availability of Microsoft Windows applications running on Integrated xSeries Servers or Integrated xSeries Adapters. Lakeview's classes vary in length from one to five days. The cost of the classes varies from $1,000 to $1,750. Lakeview said all of the classes are available at each Information Availability Institute location, including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Minneapolis, Arlington, Rochester, and Atlanta, as well as in Belgium and Hong Kong. For more information, go to www.mimix.com/events/training.asp. In other Lakeview news, the Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, company announced Integrated Distribution Solutions, an Omaha, Nebraska, software company that develops the PowerEnterprise application for customers in the grocery, food service, and convenience store industries, has successfully achieved IBM's ClusterProven validation for its OS/400 application. Integrated Distribution Solutions worked with Lakeview business partner Application Design Services, of Providence, Rhode Island, to modify PowerEnterprise to use OS/400's clustering capabilities, as part of Lakeview's FastPath program for independent software vendors.
  
  

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