• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Synergivity Brings i/OS Change Management to US Market

    June 15, 2010 Alex Woodie

    There is a new name in the i/OS change management market: Synergivity Software. The New Hampshire-based company was founded recently to be the U.S. distributor for i/OS change management tools developed by Midrange Dynamics, which is headquartered in Switzerland. In addition to change management, Synergivity sells impact analysis and auditing software developed by Midrange Dynamics–and hopes to add other security, testing, and high availability tools to its portfolio in the future.

    Synergivity Software’s flagship offering is MDCMS, the i/OS change management system developed by Midrange Dynamics. MDCMS helps customers streamline various application development lifecycle tasks, including everything from source code and object management for RPG, COBOL, and Java, to automated code distribution and installation on production servers.

    Surrounding MDCMS are four additional tools. These include MDXREF, an impact analysis and cross-reference tool for i/OS; MDSEC, an application security and auditing tool; a Web-based project manager that tracks development activities across all stages of the application lifecycle; and a new open systems connector that allows MDCMS to integrate with other version control systems such as CVS and Subversion.

    MDCMS, which Midrange Dynamics started developing 12 years ago, has been deployed at 85 customers, including a large number of financial institutions in Europe. But it is relatively unknown in the North American market. Synergivity hopes to change that.

    Marty Kilgallen, one of the founders of Synergivity, says that, in his 20 years in the AS/400 change management space, he has never seen a product that’s as straightforward and easy to use as MDCMS.

    “Midrange really has a fresh approach to change management, very clean. It’s easy to follow, implement, and learn,” he tells IT Jungle. “It has no strange quirks. It makes change management easy. If someone was converting from another change management system, they would find that this adds no additional complexity to the task of change management, and possibly decreases the complexity.”

    Synergivity also hopes to draw customers with a clean and simple pricing structure. List price for a perpetual license for MDCSM (which includes the MDSEC and MDXREF components) starts at $25,000, with no limits on the number of users, the size of the server, or number of LPARs. For another $14,000, customers can add the product management and open systems connector, providing a full-featured change management suite for less than $40,000. Annual maintenance fees amount to 15 percent of the perpetual license.

    That’s a bit less than what other change management software vendors are charging, according to Synergivity co-founder Mary Langen, who also has experience working for other change management vendors–including two other vendors that continue to operate out of the i/OS change management hotspot of Peterborough, New Hampshire.

    “We just want people to know that we’re out there, and this is available, and there are a lot of reasons right now why people might be looking to investigate change management systems,” Langen says. “We think we have a compelling case in terms of what the product offers, and also in terms of price and total cost of ownership.”

    Synergivity is particularly excited over the new open systems plug-in for MDCMS, called MDOpen, which the company formally announced late last week. “If you’re using open systems tools like Subversion or CVS or [Microsoft tools for .NET,] it gives you a nice intuitive interface and great functionality,” Langen says. “All of the awesome change management functionality that you have for the i–such as deployment, rollback, workflow management, audit capability, and reports–are available for the open systems platforms too.”

    Says Kilgallen: “This open systems approach is the most logical thing I have seen, and that ranges across companies I’ve worked for and companies I’ve competed against. A lot of companies in the change management business had almost what you would call proprietary approaches to doing open systems. They develop a product that only worked with their systems, and didn’t interface to all the other products out there.” The open systems connector for MDCMS, by contrast, interfaces with any change management system.

    MDCMS and the MDOpen plug-in are designed to be used with any Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE). The products are already proven compatible with Rational Developer for Power Systems Software (RDP), the follow-on IDE to Rational Developer for i (RDi), and are currently being used with RDP and the Rational ClearCase change management software in Europe, Kilgallen says.

    Synergivity hopes that the company’s recent launch at the COMMON conference in Orlando, Florida, will coincide with an uptick in IT spending by System i shops this summer. While the founders do not deny they are interested in the replacement business, they say there are still plenty of “green field” sites that are looking for change management tools.

    “There is still a considerable amount of open market there for change management,” Kilgallen says. “It’s pretty amazing, after all these years, that they’re starting to come out of the woodwork.”

    Synergivity’s third co-founder is Rafael Cano, who lives in France and suggested that Kilgallen and Langen speak with Michael Morgan, the American citizen who founded Midrange Dynamics in Switzerland, about a partnership. Synergivity, which has a fourth employee who works on the West Coast, will focus on sales and marketing of the Midrange Dynamics products for now; technical support for Synergivity’s U.S. customers will be handled out of Switzerland, where Midrange Dynamics has about 20 employees, for the time being.

    Kilgallen and Langen have high hopes for creating a diverse i/OS software house in Synergivity. The two are actively seeking developers–in the U.S. or elsewhere–who need marketing, sales, and administrative support for their i/OS security, testing, or high availability software products.

    “We realized over last year that we have a great experienced, technical, sales, and support organization in New Hampshire that could basically take any product for the i market and beyond, and bring it to market pretty successfully,” Langen says.

    For more information on the products, visit the two companies’ websites at www.synergivity.com and www.midrangedynamics.com.



                         Post this story to del.icio.us
                   Post this story to Digg
        Post this story to Slashdot

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags:

    Sponsored by
    New Generation Software

    Free NGS-IQ Webinar: A Better Way to Connect IBM i Data and Microsoft 365 Users.

    Business users rely on Excel, SharePoint, Access, and other Microsoft tools to view, analyze, and share data. But what if your data is too sensitive and complex to simply open up to non-technical users via ODBC and Microsoft 365’s query functions?

    Attend our webinar on June 22, 2022, and see how you can make the people you support smile even as you centrally manage and secure IBM i data access.

    www.ngsi.com– 800-824-1220

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Sponsored Links

    looksoftware:  Recreate your IBM i applications with re:new! Free Webinar!
    Shield Advanced Solutions:  Receiver Apply Program ~ affordable availability for the IBM i
    COMMON:  Join us at the Fall 2010 Conference & Expo, Oct. 4 - 6, in San Antonio, Texas

    IT Jungle Store Top Book Picks

    Easy Steps to Internet Programming for AS/400, iSeries, and System i: List Price, $49.95
    The iSeries Express Web Implementer's Guide: List Price, $49.95
    The System i RPG & RPG IV Tutorial and Lab Exercises: List Price, $59.95
    The System i Pocket RPG & RPG IV Guide: List Price, $69.95
    The iSeries Pocket Database Guide: List Price, $59.00
    The iSeries Pocket SQL Guide: List Price, $59.00
    The iSeries Pocket Query Guide: List Price, $49.00
    The iSeries Pocket WebFacing Primer: List Price, $39.00
    Migrating to WebSphere Express for iSeries: List Price, $49.00
    Getting Started With WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries: List Price, $89.00
    Getting Started with WebSphere Express for iSeries: List Price, $49.00
    Can the AS/400 Survive IBM?: List Price, $49.00
    Chip Wars: List Price, $29.95

    Apple’s iOS 4: That’s Exactly What I Was Thinking! Shield Unveils New DR Solution for i/OS

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Volume 10, Number 22 -- June 15, 2010
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY:

LANSA
Help/Systems
Patrick Townsend Security Solutions
DRV Technologies
Shield Advanced Solutions

Table of Contents

  • Shield Unveils New DR Solution for i/OS
  • Synergivity Brings i/OS Change Management to US Market
  • Centerfield Makes SQL Tuning Easier with HomeRun 7.0
  • Linoma Beefs Up MFT Offering
  • VAI Unveils New SaaS Option
  • TMW Updates i/OS-Based Trucking Software
  • Under Armour Taps Manhattan Associates for WMS
  • Agilysys Tapped for CityCenter Project in Vegas, Reports Numbers
  • RTC Touts POS Install at JDA Shop
  • Bug Busters Updates Menu and Security System

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • IBM i 7.3 TR12: The Non-TR Tech Refresh
  • IBM i Integration Elevates Operational Query and Analytics
  • Simplified IBM i Stack Bundling Ahead Of Subscription Pricing
  • More Price Hikes From IBM, Now For High End Storage
  • Big Blue Readies Power10 And IBM i 7.5 Training for Partners
  • IBM Delivers More Out-of-the-Box Security with IBM i 7.5
  • Groundhog Day For Malware
  • IBM i Community Reacts to IBM i 7.5
  • Four Hundred Monitor, May 11
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 19

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2022 IT Jungle

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.