Six vendors that develop products to extend and enhance JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne ERP environments have banded together and created a new group called the JDE Alliance to boost their marketing and sales activities, the new group announced last week.

The six founding member of the newly formed JDE Alliance and their specialties include:

• Arctools: data archiving and purge
• Image Integration Systems (IIS): document management and workflow
• InsightSoftware.com: reporting and analytics
• RF-SMART: barcoding and automated data collection
• Q Software: security and compliance
• WTS: application hosting and disaster recovery

The vendors decided to form the

Capitalizing on the explosive growth of social networking has become the new gold rush in the high tech field. While everybody scrambles to “monetize the opportunity,” SugarCRM appears to be on the right track with the latest release of its CRM system, which not only pulls contacts, relationships, and comments from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn into the CRM system, but it allows customers to use services like Twitter and YouTube as part of their outgoing sales and marketing campaigns.

The nature of computing is changing, once again, right before our very eyes. Just as last generation’s Gen Xers grew

Inventu launched a new product last month aimed at making it easier for developers to integrate IBM i data and applications into Microsoft SharePoint portals. Flynet Viewer 2010, along with Inventu’s SharePoint Host Access Web Part component, provide several ways for hooking into 5250, 3270, and VT green screens and making the host data and workflows accessible from SharePoint portals, lists, and other assets.

With the launch of SharePoint 2010 earlier this year, Microsoft set out to change how the product is perceived–and, indeed, used–by customers. Whereas earlier releases of SharePoint focused primarily on file sharing, Microsoft intends SharePoint 2010

How does hiring an RPG programmer at $25 per hour sound to you? With the new IBM i development and application support practice announced last week by the Indian IT services company Mindfire Solutions, that’s about what a senior developer will cost you. In addition to RPG, COBOL, Java, CL, and Synon programming expertise, Mindfire says its consultants have experience supporting JD Edwards and implementing MIMIX.

Mindfire Solutions was founded in the Indian capital of New Delhi about 10 years ago, just as dot-com bubble was crashing, and business process outsourcing (BPO) was heating up. The company began providing

Kisco Information Systems has added a tweet scheduler to SNDTWEET, an IBM i utility that turns the Twitter messaging service into a system monitoring and communication tool for System i and Power Systems shops. Version 3, which debuted last week, also supports the new authentication mechanism mandated by Twitter, as well as other new functionality.

SNDTWEET, which Kisco launched a year and a half ago, allows IBM i users to make novel use of Twitter, the social networking service that has taken the world by storm, and now rivals Facebook in social media import.

While many people use Twitter to

EXTOL recently introduced a new release of its Java-based suite of business integration middleware, EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI). Version 2.5 introduces features designed to eliminate much of the manual steps required for setup. EBI customers can also benefit from a new product integration with EXTOL partner S4i Systems that enables S4i’s document management software to automatically distribute, archive, and retrieve documents arising from EDI and related transactions.

EBI is the foundation of EXTOL’s expansive suite of business-to-business (B2B) integration functionality. Through EBI and a collection of optional add-ons, EXTOL helps customers define integration points; map the transactions; execute the exchanges;

Michaels, Ross and Cole (mrc) recently unveiled an enhancement to its m-Power development tool that makes it easier to create and customize executive dashboards. The improvements exist in m-Painter, the drag-and-drop screen editor that ships with m-Power.

In late October, mrc announced an enhancement to m-Painter, which allows users to create interfaces to m-Power applications in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) fashion.

Thanks to a new import panel, m-Painter gives users a wizard-like approach to importing applications (such as reporting applications generated with m-Power) into their executive dashboards.

The Chicago-based developer also introduced a new widget panel that gives users more options

ProData Computer Services will be adding the IBM i-based document management products from the Danish companyInterForm A/S to its menu of solutions as the result of a new partnership the two companies announced last week. The deal will also expand the sales channel for ProData’s offerings in the EMEA market.

InterForm develops a range of utilities that improve the printing and electronic distribution capabilities of IBM i servers. The company’s software used to be distributed by the Danish company Intermate A/S, until Kodak acquired Intermate in 2008.

However, Kodak was mainly interested in the IPDS and AFPDS transformation capabilities

Dell last week announced a plan to buy Boomi, a developer of Java-based business-to-business (B2B) integration tools that had a decent base of customers on the IBM i platform. Dell expects to leverage Boomi’s expertise in helping customers integrate cloud-based application with on-premise ones.

Boomi’s offerings blurred the (already somewhat blurry, and always too hairy) lines separating traditional forms of application and data integration, with expertise spreading from EDI and AS2 management, to MQ orchestration and document management, to data synchronization and XML-based Web services.

The graphical drag-and-drop design studio sported by the company’s Boomi Integration Platform helped business

Attachmate last week announced a partnership with Mercator, the IT division of the Dubai-based airline Emirates Group, that will see Mercator using Attachmate’s terminal emulation software to securely access host systems.

Under the partnership, Mercator will use Attachmate’s Reflection for the Web 2008 Airlines Edition to connect to various host systems, including IBM‘s Transaction Processing Facility (TFP) and Airline Control System (ALCS), older Unisys hosts, and z/OS, IBM i, and Unix applications access via 3270, 5250, and VT protocols.

Security was one of the main reasons that Mercator chose Attachmate for the project, according to Raajeswaran M, a