Dan Burger
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Aberdeen Examines BI in the Supply Chain
May 23, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreBusiness intelligence has to do with brains, but what about the bucks? If you ask supply chain executives about the value that business intelligence brings, it’s clear the two can’t be separated. But business value is not necessarily concordant with big software investments. And companies with an IBM i platform running their critical supply chain applications have the same issues related to organizational and process management, along with technology management, as any other organization.
What’s hoped for in a business intelligence solution and what’s getting accomplished often isn’t within shouting distance of one another. And that’s why analyst firms such
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looksoftware Expanding RPG Open Access Use
May 17, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhen looksoftware hitched its application development wagon to Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, it was well aware of the work that needed to be done. In the past year it has RPG OA-enabled its most popular green-screen alternative and is now poised to do the same with the remainder of its multi-channel approach. Last week, at the company’s annual user conference, which it calls lookahead, the company talked about soon-to-be GA products and what it will take to spark application modernization projects in IBM midrange shops.
“One of the things we are really focusing on is providing environments that support
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Rapid Data Recovery on a Budget
May 17, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreHigh availability and disaster recovery solution provider iSam Blue is determined to make a name for itself by driving down the cost of HA-DR for IBM i shops. As companies depend on the Internet for their livelihood, business continuity becomes a growing issue and downtime becomes increasingly costly. For a fee starting at $50 a day iSam will provide a recovery point within minutes and a recovery time of four hours or less.
If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because iSam Blue president and CEO Robert Seal was working at iTera five years ago when that company made
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Quadrant Adds Upgrades to Formtastic Product
May 17, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreReplacing pre-printed forms with internally created company documents, laser MICR checks, and barcode or thermal labels has been a popular cost-cutting measure in IBM midrange shops for many years. And for 20 years Quadrant Software has been cranking out integrated applications that have pleased a boatload of customers. One of the company’s flagship products, Formtastic, has recently been enhanced and released as version 5.4.5. The announcement was made at the COMMON 2011 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Minneapolis.
Topping the list of improvements are improvements in printer routing, document merge processes, the E-Mail Gateway, barcode creation fields, and support for
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looksoftware Looks Ahead
May 16, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreYou may get into some rather heated debates about whether the IBM i platform deserves to be branded as legacy or modern, but what that really comes down to is how it is being used. There’s no question a lot can be learned about the platform, and that can be said for a lot of folks who are its staunchest supporters, where it sometimes can be said that love is blind. Brendan Kay is not blind. He sees a lot of potential and, more importantly, he sees ways to put the IBM i platform to good use.
Kay is the
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Vision Solutions Launches HA Appliance
May 10, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreHigh availability systems bring to mind the promise of near zero downtime. They also stretch the imagination in terms of cost and complexity. Both those potential obstacles are becoming less of a factor, however. The most recent example was announced last week by Vision Solutions. It’s a pre-installed high availability package on IBM Power Systems and System x servers.
For organizations operating in 24×7 modes without high availability, Vision’s just-announced Availability Appliance is worth noting. It has multiple configuration options that include IBM i, AIX, Windows, and Linux operating systems; the backup hardware, the HA software, plus installation services
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Customized Green Screens Key to BCD’s Web Enablement
May 10, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreIf you’re an application developer on a project that involves converting RPG and/or COBOL green-screen apps to Web pages, you hate being handcuffed with limited screen customization choices. When Business Computer Design (BCD) introduced its Presto software in October 2008, it realized a great many application modernization projects would sink or swim depending on the capabilities of its visual editor. Now in its third release, Presto continues its emphasis on screen customization and user-friendly interfaces.
The newest release of BCD Presto goes hand-in-hand with the announcement of the latest version of BCD’s Nexus Portal, where comparisons to the previous portal
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New i Manifest Americas Marketing Director Seeks Volunteers
May 9, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreShaking off the effects of losing its most effective recruiter and marketing savant just one month ago, IBM i Manifest Americas has found a new volunteer to lead the organization’s efforts to increase awareness and build membership. Last week, during the COMMON 2011 Annual Conference and Expo, it was announced that Jennifer Phillips had volunteered to move into the marketing director position at i Manifest, which includes multiple responsibilities.
Phillips is a veteran of the IBM midrange community and currently has the marketing director position at Quadrant Software, a document management company with its headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Text Messaging Leads to COMMON-IBM Innovation Award
May 9, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreBecause text messaging is the communications lifeline for college students, this communication technique is a natural for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. It only makes sense for FIDM to reach its students via text. Not only is it smart communications, it’s smart marketing. And as it turned out, it was a very good way to win an award for innovation, which is annually presented by IBM and COMMON.
“We needed a way to get in touch with students via the medium they use to communicate,” Roxanne Reynolds-Lair told me on the phone Friday. “They don’t answer emails
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RPG Skills, LANSA Tools, Plays Well for Music Industry Licensing Company
May 3, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreRPG programmers often have to deal with cobwebs and skeletons in the closet. Their companies have them locked away doing maintenance work on legacy code. Days are filled with routine tasks to keep applications up and running and repairing breaks in code when things go wrong. Frequently their knowledge and skills are vastly underutilized. At the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), a couple of IT managers decided the RPG resources were far too great to squander.
The development team at the nation’s leading provider of rights management, licensing and royalty services for the music industry rose to the occasion when the