But Wait, There's More

Magic Says SAP Integration Project Took Just Three Days

An amazing tale of a three-day enterprise application integration (EAI) installation is coming from IFCO Systems, a Houston provider of logistics services. Magic Software says that once IFCO Systems and its systems integrator, Express Information Systems, decided to adopt Magic's iBOLT integration platform, as a means to extend the processes and workflows from its SAP BusinessOne ERP implementation, installing the software and completing the project was only a three-day affair. Nina Clark, a financial systems analyst at IFCO Systems, says the iBOLT software "has enabled us to jump past months of development time and fulfill eight projects in 2004 that directly affect the way we communicate with our customers." Among the projects is a new e-mail notification system that sends e-mail messages about orders to both customers and carriers. The implementation also connected disparate databases and applications at IFCO, which implemented the BusinessOne ERP package on a Windows server running SQL Server.

Arkeia Backs Up SQL Server Data to Linux with New Plug-In

Windows shops have a new way to back-up their SQL Server data stores--to a Linux box. Last week, Southern California software developer Arkeia announced a new plug-in that enables its Network Backup product to support data residing on a Microsoft SQL Server database. Windows data can be backed up to Linux or Unix backup servers using Arkeia Virtual Device Interface technology, which allows users to create their own backup policies and to implement them for automatic, manual, or point-in-time recoveries, down to the machine, database instance, file group, or individual file levels. Arkeia's SQL Server plug-in costs $990 and supports SQL Server Version 7 and SQL Server 2000 on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 platforms.

Farabi's HostFront All Ready for Windows XP SP2

Farabi Technology, a developer of software for accessing mainframe, OS/400, and Unix hosts from Windows PCs, announced last week that its HostFront software is now compliant with Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2. The firewall and other security features put in place by Windows XP SP2 cause problems for many older programs, particularly the host access software on millions of desktops around the world (see "Programs 'Seem' to Break Under Windows XP SP2, Microsoft Says"). Farabi, based in Montreal, Quebec, said tests demonstrate XP SP2 compatibility with the latest releases of its software, which are the Versions 3.5.3 or later releases of HostFront for the Mainframe, HostFront for the AS/400, and HostFront for Unix.

Microsoft Bows to European Ruling to Unbundle Media Player from Windows

A Windows Media Player-less PC in Europe is a certainty now that Microsoft has decided to forgo its right to appeal a court ruling last month. The Court of First Instance, Europe's second-highest court, dismissed a request that Microsoft made last month to suspend the order that it offer a version of Windows that doesn't automatically come with the Media Player. Microsoft said such a version of Windows was already available to manufacturers, and that consumers would be able to it purchase it in about two weeks. Microsoft said it will continue its appeal of the European Commission's antitrust ruling last March, however, a process that could last several years.

PC Shipments Up 15% in 2004, but Boom Times Are Over, IDC Says

The market for PCs continued its comeback and grew by nearly 15 percent in 2004, with strong demand among small and midsized businesses and consumers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, market researcher IDC said last week. In the most recent quarter, shipments increased by a solid 13.7 percent, to 51.5 million units, as a result of strong demand among small and midsized businesses and holiday shopping. Shipments for all of 2004 reached 177.5 million units, an increase of 14.7 percent, which to date represents the height of the recovery following the market contraction of 2001, and 26 percent more PCs than shipped in all of 2000, IDC says. After accurately predicting the growth of PC sales by volume in 2004 to within two-tenths of a percent, IDC says it expects growth of roughly 10 percent in 2005, before shipment growth slows to single digits in the following years.

Wary CIOs to Spend 2.5 % More on IT in 2005, Says Gartner

The analysts at Gartner have dusted off their crystal balls and finally joined the shrinking crowd of analysts (last year Forrester bought GIGA and Gartner bought META Group) in prognosticating about IT spending growth in 2005. According to a survey of 1,300 chief information officers, who have a combined spending budget of $57 billion (or about $44 million each, on average), across a cross section of industries that is representative of the worldwide economy, IT budgets are expected to rise only 2.5 percent in 2005. This is considerably lower than all but the most pessimistic estimates for IT spending growth that came out as 2004 was coming to a close, which had growth pegged at somewhere between 5 and 7 percent.

The respondents of the Gartner survey showed why the budget numbers were lower than expected, and why that number is increasingly irrelevant. First and foremost, two-thirds of the CIOs polled say that there is a disconnect between what they believe and what their CEOs believe they can and need to do with IT systems, and these CIOs portrayed themselves as being "at risk" because of the way CEOs view the performance of their IT departments. And while CIOs ranked business process engineering (BPO), beefing up security, cutting operating costs, supporting the competitive advantages of their business, and revenue growth as key business factors, the top IT priorities do not map one-to-one, with IT executives saying that they want to have better security tools, more business intelligence and analytics, wireless and mobile access to systems for the workforce, and ERP upgrades. There is a big disconnect here, and that does not bode well. The other disconnect, which companies like IBM and Accenture are hoping to exploit, is one between the skill sets for business process engineering (which involves a rethinking of the processes that get automated into systems to simplify business and streamline the applications that support those processes) that companies have in IT and other departments and the skills that IT directors believe they will need to do BPO. Some 61 percent of IT executives polled said they did not have the skills they needed in general, and of those who ranked BPO in the top five of priorities for this year, 80 percent said they didn't have the skills to actually do BPO. Yikes.

HiT Software Hooks Up with MySQL for More Open Database Connectivity

HiT Software, the developer of tools that eliminate tedious database application programming, has entered into a partnership with MySQL, lead developers of the popular open-source relational database management system. As a member of the MySQL Partner Program, HiT Software plans to support the MySQL database with some of its offerings, including its DBMoto data replication tool, where it will be used as a data target from Microsoft's SQL Server, Oracle, and IBM's DB2 UDB and DB2/400. The partnership will also see collaboration with Allora, which uses XML to enable data exchange among different systems.