ExaGrid Systems now supports the IBM i server with its disk-to-disk (D2D) and data de-duplication appliances, the company announced last week. The product news gives IBM i customers another path for adopting a modern, platform-independent D2D backup, de-dupe, and data replication infrastructure, and another reason to say goodbye to the hassles, expense, and slowness of tape-based backups.

ExaGrid developed its EX series of appliances to provide mid-sized companies with a scalable disk-based backup and recovery infrastructure. The Linux-driven, Intel-powered appliances are equipped with RAID6-protected SATA drives that attach over standard Gigabit Ethernet links and appear as network attached storage

Among ISVs, few put as much emphasis on independence as UNIT4 CODA. The CODA group, which was bought by the Dutch firm UNIT4 two years ago, has more than 30 years of experience developing what it considers the industry’s best stand-alone financial software package, and delivering it on the most popular server platforms of the day. Recently, the company’s financial software was certified on the latest release of IBM i, which it has supported from the very beginning.

UNIT4 CODA, although fiercely independent, has one thing in common with another IBM i ISV Infor: they both rail against

The new release of Bug Busters Software Engineering‘s high availability software for IBM i features new “self-awareness” features that could come in handy. For example, the software can automatically respond to a problem with data replication by alerting IT managers with e-mails. This may lack the pizzazz of, say, Skynet becoming self-aware, but then again, nobody has to worry about the IBM i server launching missile attacks on people, either.

OK, so the Skynet computer featured in the hit movie “Terminator” is a work of science fiction that has remained science fiction. While the U.S. military has invested heavily

“Trust, but verify.” Former president Ronald Regan was referring to the Soviet Union when he made that remark more than 20 years ago. But the idea applies just as well to the sometimes rocky relationship between employers and the people who are paid to run the business. For companies that rely on the IBM i server to manage data, a new DB2/400 auditing tool from Kisco Information Systems can go far trusting employees to do their jobs, while verifying that they aren’t sampling sensitive data on the side.

There is no way around the fact that, to some extent, companies

SkyView Partners last week officially unveiled Audit Journal Reporter, a new utility aimed at making it easier to pull data out of the IBM i audit journal. The new product includes pre-built reports for common IBM i events that administrators and auditors want to know about, and allows them to build their own custom reports, too.

Audit Journal Reporter includes more than two dozen preconfigured templates that, when run against the IBM i audit journal, will generate reports that give a detailed look at the IBM i server’s current state of security and compliance.

Examples of reports include: invalid sign-on

IBM i shops that use the QMessage Monitor (QMM) tool from CCSS recently gained access to several new capabilities that will improve the way they monitor important processes, including high availability, BRMS-based backups, and security events. The new features stem from the product’s better understanding of events tracked in the IBM i audit journal.

Quicker resolution of a problem with IBM i high availability replication is one of the goals of a new feature CCSS built into QMM. The company says the product now has the capability to access more data from the audit journal than it previously could, and

CRM software developer SugarCRM and cloud-based data protection provider i365 both unveiled new programs last week aimed at getting other software vendors to adopt and embed their wares within their own products.

SugarCRM last week unveiled a new original equipment manufacturer (OEM) version of its CRM suite, fittingly called the OEM Platform Edition. The goal with the new OEM software is to get other software vendors to embed SugarCRM, which is written in PHP, into their products.

To that end, SugarCRM, which does support the IBM i environment with its software (customers running SugarCRM on IBM i will typically also

Pandol Bros., a central California fruit distributor, has successfully deployed a new application that allows its partners to view the latest inventory and sales data from the comfort of the Web. The new app was developed with Web Object Wizard (WOW), a Java-based reporting tool developed by PlanetJ, and brought to Pandol through its work with CYBRA.

Pandol Bros. has a reputation for providing fresh table grapes and other fruit to North American stores all 12 months of the year. The company, which is headquartered in the San Joaquin Valley city of Delano, can do that by working

Organizations that rely on disk-to-disk (D2D) backup devices from Crossroads Systems to manage backups of IBM i, AIX, and Windows servers can now use the devices to back up their Windows-based PC desktops as well, according to an announcement the Texas company made at the COMMON conference yesterday.

Crossroads’ SPHiNX line of virtual tape libraries (VTLs) are dedicated backup appliances designed to bolster customers’ data management policies. The devices, which scale from about 3 TB to more than 10 TB, connect to servers via SCSI or Fibre Channel, and emulate the tape libraries they’re replacing.

In addition to offering advanced

The product news might have tapered off from Tango/04 Computing Group, but the Spanish developer of systems management software for IBM i and other platforms is gaining steam in the sales department, according to the company, which recently announced that sales exploded in the first six months of the year.

Tango/04, which has a U.S. office in Peterborough, New Hampshire–the former headquarters of its former business partner, Softlanding Systems–says that sales for the first half of 2010 grew by 41 percent compared to the same period in 2009, which by all accounts was an abysmal stretch for all