IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power . . . Auto-Approval Brings Time Savings to Document Workflows . . . User-Defined Dashboards Get Power Boost from mrc . . .

IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power

IBM is now shipping a third version of its Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA. Last week’s announcement of a new solution edition based on its Power E880 server should give larger customers more options for running the in-memory database on IBM gear.

For the low low price of $177,357, customers can get started in a nicely equipped Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA that features a 40-core Power8 processor module running at 4.19 GHz and 2 TB of RAM, along with Power IFL and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11. Customers can add more processor and memory options as needed.

This is the third SAP HANA solution edition from IBM. In May, IBM officially launched its first two solution editions for HANA, including an entry-level machine based on the Power System Model S824 server and a bigger machine based on the Power System Model E870 server. The S824 features 24 Power8 cores and 512 GB to 2 TB of memory, while the E870 features from 40 to 80 Power8 cores and from 1 to 8 TB of memory.

At this point, IBM is only supporting HANA Business Warehouse workloads on the Power machines. That means OLTP workloads, such as those from the core ERP suite from SAP that are quite popular to run on IBM i, are not supported. Companies that want to run both analytic and transactional workloads on the same SAP HANA instance–which was one of the important features touted by SAP in the delivery of HANA several years ago, and which was finally enabled last year with the delivery of SAP’s new S/4 suite–can only do so on Intel X64 systems.

You can see the IBM hardware announcement in PDF format here.

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Auto-Approval Brings Time Savings to Document Workflows

IntelliChief has rolled out a new Auto-Approve mode to its paperless processing and workflow system that can automatically approve selected documents, thereby eliminating the time and expense of manually approving each document.

IntelliChief, which was spun out of Quadrant Software five years ago, develops a Windows-based content management and routing system that is widely used among IBM i shops. The Florida company markets its eponymous product as a paperless processing system, as it can automate the full gamut of related activates, from ERP screen integration and batch paper scanning to inter-department workflow automation and electronic document delivery.

The new Auto-Approve feature will help customers by automatically approving certain documents. It will enable, the company says, “pass-through approval of a company’s standardized and validated documentation, for all selected projects and transactions.”

A customer obviously wouldn’t want to use Auto-Approve on a million-dollar contract or on a salary change request. There are certain items that absolutely demand the scrutiny of a top executive. But most businesses generate their fair share of somewhat meaningless paperwork (even if it’s electronic), and the Auto-Approve function can save tired eyes from that particular form of drudgery.

The company notes that every Auto-Approval is captured in the Document Approval History utility, thereby providing an audit trail that can be rebuilt if needed down the line. This security feature should be used as a substitute for careful implementation, as care must be taken in picking the cases where Auto-Approval should be used.

But in many ways, the Auto-Approval gives us the digital equivalent of a rubber stamp–a quick way to grant approval of standard day-to-day bookkeeping, and keep the business flowing.

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User-Defined Dashboards Get Power Boost from mrc

Static reports may have been acceptable in 1990, but they’ve long since fallen by the wayside. Today, business pros demand the capability to tweak the views to their hearts’ content. To that end, mrc recently announced changes to how its user-defined dashboards work.

User-defined dashboards, which mrc first released in 2013, enable a developer to create a single report for a group of users, who can then tweak it to fulfill their every data desire. The developers still must do the work of preparing the graphs and metrics for consumption within the templates provided by m-Power (knowledge of Java doesn’t hurt), but the final look and feel of the resulting dashboards can be customized by each individual user.

In December, mrc announced several improvements to m-Power’s user-defined dashboard capability. For starters, the software now automatically generates tablet presentation layers, not just those for PCs or phones. The Web-based dashboards also work across different mobile OSes, and are enabled for touch-based interfaces.

The new release also brings better graphing capabilities, such as faster loads and support for new chart types, like the Single Value Doughnut. The software also now has support for graph themes, enabling users to create a consistent look and feel across all their applications.

“Since its release, the user-defined dashboard quickly became one of the most popular features within the m-Power platform,” says Tyler Wassell, mrc’s manager of software development. “This new enhancement improves dashboard accessibility, and makes dashboards even more powerful.”