Infor Cloud EDI . . . DocOrigin Replaces JetForm . . . Empowered with Web Services . . .

February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

Infor takes a very industry-focused approach to software, and that is no different with its latest EDI cloud offering. If you’re looking for document management software to replace Adobe JetForm, DocOrigin would like to speak with you. Web services are popping up everywhere these days, including in the application development power tool from mrc.

Infor Launches EDI Cloud for Auto Manufacturing

Infor last month unveiled EDI Managed Service, a cloud-based EDI offering designed specifically for companies in the automotive supply chain.

According to Infor’s announcement, the new service combines an EDI translator from its partner Rocket Software along with its ION middleware, which provides connectivity to the latest releases of Infor’s top enterprise applications.

Infor touts several benefits of EDI Managed Service compared to on-premise EDI systems. For starters, it claims customers will get better integration between ERP, supply chain, and financial systems. Because the solution is hosted, it will cost less than running it yourself, and scale more easily, the ERP vendor says.

The availability of pre-built trading partner maps–dependent on XML-based business object documents (BODs) defined in ION–will also simplify the startup processes for enrolling new trading partners in complex North American and Europe auto supply chains, the company says. Finally, Infor says central hosting will simplify the management of frequently changing EDI maps.

Infor already had a partnership with Trubiquity before Rocket Software acquired the company in April 2014. At the time, it didn’t appear that Trubiquity’s software was used in many IBM i engagements. However, the fact that Infor is now using ION as the lubricating integration layer via XML and BODs suggests Infor EDI Managed Service will work with Infor’s extensive collection of IBM i-based ERP systems.

Rocket Nabs Trubiquity for MFT

DocOrigin Now Available from Datamax-O’Neil

DocOrigin, an IBM i-compatible forms software package from Eclipse Corp., is now available through Datamax-O’Neil, a Florida-based provider of printers, the companies announced last week.

DocOrigin is a server-based forms management application designed for high-volume environments. The software enables customers to take document input in a variety of formats, including XML and spool files, merge them with high-resolution graphic files, and output them to a large number of production printers.

DocOrigin works with a variety of ERP systems from IBS, Infor, Oracle, SAP and other vendors, says Thomas Brahm, product manager of the stationary business unit for Datamax-O’Neil. “DocOrigin accepts all popular data file formats and prints them out on standard HP-compatible language (PCL) printers like our Workstation Series,” Brahm says.

DocOrigin was created by the original developers of JetForm Central, Tom Hicks and Wayne Hall, Eclipse says. DocOrigin (a play on the “origin of documents”) was designed to replace JetForm, which Adobe will cease supporting in June 2016.

It was also built to exceed its capabilities. The company says version 3.0, which was released in 2013, offers merge speeds for batch production runs that are 200 percent to 260 percent faster than the latest release of JetForm Central, called Adobe Central Pro.

DocOrigin also boasts some IBM i bona fides. On its website, Eclipse says its DocOrigin team consists of the developers that “created the IBM AS/400 version of JetForm Central for AS/400 and PDF Wizard for Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.”

m-Power: Now with Web Services

The m-Power development tool from mrc was originally designed a decade ago to create Web applications that run on i5/OS, as the IBM i operating system was then known. Last month, the company announced that m-Power can now generate an entirely different type of Web interface: Web services.

Web services, of course, are data or application services that can be called over HTTP. Commonly invoked through SOAP or REST code, Web services have skyrocketed in popularity on the backs of the Web 2.0 and mobile revolutions.

In the early days of XML and SOAP, coding a Web service was a tedious and time-consuming task. Thanks to the power of automation, the complexity curve has come down. Chicago-based mrc (formerly Michaels, Ross, and Cole) is now automatically generating Web services at the same time that it generates the actual user interfaces for Web applications.

The software company sees a lot of uses for Web services. Web developers could call external Web services to tackle certain tasks, such as calculating sales tax or shipping fees based on ZIP codes. The company also sees Web services helping to extend the life of older systems. In this manner, core business processes living on IBM i servers could be exposed as a Web service. The cloud also figures to play heavily in Web services and software as a service (SaaS) business models, mrc says.

“As businesses use an increasing number of services and applications, they need a way to tie everything together,” says Tyler Wassell, mrc’s manager of software development. “This new enhancement gives m-Power users a simple method to quickly integrate their apps with other applications and systems.”

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