It’s a story that has played itself out at many i/OS shops over the years: Following an acquisition, new management steps in and executes a Windows strategy, to the detriment of the i/OS side of the house and, ultimately, the business itself. Luckily for Island Pacific, a developer of ERP software for retailers, this old story has a new twist: a second acquisition by more enlightened management pulls the i/OS business from the shadows and allows the company to flourish in the sun once again.

Island Pacific was founded by Paul Mickelsen in 1978, the same year that IBM

There’s a school of thought that says open source development yields greater security because the heightened transparency ensures that problems are identified and fixed at a quicker pace. There’s another school of thought that says true security is obtained by building your own stuff and then concealing its existence. Cyber-Ark is an advocate of the second approach with its Digital Vault, which serves as the foundation for a series of security software products, ranging from privileged password management to managed file transfer (MFT).

Cyber-Ark was founded in 1999 by a group of security experts who were tired of security being

Time is money. And when business processes run slow, costs rise. Not just internal costs relating to lost productivity and inability to harness revenue streams, but costs associated with unsatisfactory customer service. Curtailing these business costs has a direct connection to increased profitability. You want an example? The city of Modesto, in Central California, with the help of software vendor S4i Systems, is phasing in document management changes that are simplifying data delivery and saving money.

Mike Bumanlag is one of the IT software analysts responsible for the utilities department’s applications running on a rack-mounted IBM System i 520

When it comes to adding new features to a software product, there are certain directions one can go that are sure to engender success. For starters, you can make it pretty. You can also make it easy to use, and allow it to work in real-time. Software vendor mrc says it’s accomplished all of these feats with a new class of “interactive” reporting templates in m-Power, its Web development tool for i/OS, Windows, Linux, and other servers.

m-Power is a Web application development tool that is used to generate J2EE-based Web portals, e-commerce sites, executive dashboards, business intelligence systems, and

While many i/OS shops in the midrange are scaling back and a few are folding up in the midst of the Great Recession, ERP software developer VAI is ramping up its business, as it senses now is a great time to help others become more efficient through IT automation. The Long Island, New York, company recently announced the addition of two new programmers to its development staff, and says it plans to hire many more through the course of the year.

VAI is an anomaly in many ways. While dozens of smaller ERP software developers in the System i space

Kofax recently issued a new release of Capture, a suite of software that sits next to high-capacity scanners and automates the process of transforming document scans into digital copies that can be easily indexed and retrieved on a computer. With Capture 9.0, the company has bolstered the capability to remotely install and mange the software on Windows machines and added new batch workflow routines to prevent exceptions from gobbling up users’ time and resources.

While Kofax Capture (formerly Ascent Capture) doesn’t run on the i/OS server, the software is in widespread use at i/OS shops, where it is commonly connected

The new release of EZContentManager announced by ACOM Solutions last week contains several new administrative functions that are designed to provide more fine-grained security controls aimed at ensuring the right people have access to the right documents. Several other handy features, such as the capability to roll back a document to a previous version to see changes, also make their debut with version 3.9.

EZContent Manager was launched by ACOM in 2005 to fill what the company saw as a void in the market for affordable and easy to use content management systems. The suite allows users to index and

It was tough to see any indication of the Great Recession in the financial results released last week by data integration vendor Informatica. In addition to recording its fifth consecutive record-breaking year and breaking through the $500 million barrier for revenues for the first time, the vendor announced the acquisition of master data management (MDM) company Siperian for $130 million.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2009, Informatica reported $150.9 million in revenues, including $71.6 million in license revenues, a 25 percent increase from the same quarter in 2008. Net income for the quarter was $25 million, up 19

Spending on IT security will increase this year compared to previous years, Forrester Research said last week. The increase is due to concerns from companies of all sizes over the security threat posed by the fast “consumerization” of technology such smart phones and Web 2.0 interfaces.

About 40 percent of businesses will significantly increase their IT security spending this year, according to Forrester’s survey of more than 2,200 companies in North America and Europe. The group found that 42 percent of larger companies are planning on increasing their spending by 5 percent or more, while 37 percent of small and

Development and integration tool maker Magic Software has inked a deal with the Dutch consultancy Forza Consulting that will see Forza using iBolt at JD Edwards customer sites in Europe, the vendors announced recently.

Based in Soest, The Netherlands, Forza Consulting specializes in providing services around Oracle‘s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP application. The company serves the distribution, manufacturing, and financial services industries, and has offices and customers throughout the Benelux region.

As part of the deal with Magic, Forza will utilize iBolt to facilitate integrations between its customers’ JD Edwards systems and third-party applications. iBolt offers more than 50