• eCMS Gets an Interface to Vehicle Scales

  February 23, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Users of the i/OS-based Construction Management System (eCMS) from Computer Guidance now have the capability to integrate vehicle scales directly with their eCMS software. According to Computer Guidance, whose software powers some of the biggest construction and engineering companies in the country, the scale interface will simplify transactions involving loaded trucks. The calculation of load weights using vehicle scales and tare weights (or the vehicle’s unladen weight) is critical to companies in the transportation and construction industries, which handle large amounts of raw materials. Bulk deliveries of asphalt for a new roadway, for example, will be priced according to the

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• i/OS Shops to Wait Another Quarter for Power7 Compilers

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  The excitement over the new Power7 servers announced by IBM last week was palpable. Big Blue managed, once again, to deliver huge increases in the AS/400 line’s price/performance, providing compelling evidence of the platform’s decades-old capability to protect investment in RPG development. But i/OS shops that are eager to take advantage of the four-fold increase in the number of processor threads available to them with the new Power7 chips will have to wait until next quarter–and likely the announcement of i 7.1–for IBM to make its statement regarding the availability of new i/OS compilers. There was some confusion last week

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• Technology Mashup Yields an iPhone App for BPCS Data

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  When application development specialist Alan Batchelor learned that management at his company, glass machine manufacturer Emhart Glass, would be adopting the iPhone for the sales force, he jumped into action. But instead of creating an iPhone app from scratch, Batchelor–who is not a Web programmer, but a fiddler of sorts–combined various bits pulled off the Web within mrc‘s mPower development framework, and in the end demonstrated the power of modern day mashups for mobile computing. Emhart Glass is a leading manufacturer of the machines that create glass bottles (what’s called the “hot end” of the business), as well as

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• SharePoint Gets Its Own iBOLT for ERP Integration

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  An explosion in Microsoft SharePoint installations across the land has IT administrators scrambling for solutions to get the suddenly popular Web-based collaboration tool under corporate control. One of the vendors offering solutions is Magic Software, which says the new special edition of its iBOLT integration suite, due next month, will drastically cut the amount of manual coding needed to feed data from ERP systems, such as JD Edwards, into SharePoint. Microsoft SharePoint consists of two products, including Windows SharePoint Services, which is included with Windows Server licenses, and Office SharePoint Server, a separately licensed product that adds a range

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• Datawatch Adds Goodies to Data Warehousing Software

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Datawatch–the business intelligence software vendor that uses existing reports to get at data–last week launched a new release of Monarch BI Enterprise Server, its top-of-the-line product for creating data warehouses. With version 5, the vendor has sweetened the deal by incorporating several options that previously were priced as add-ons to the base product. Datawatch, you will remember from our article last month, is unique among business intelligence software in that it uses a customer’s existing reports as the basis for its product suite. Instead of forcing customers to buy ETL tools, set up large-scale transformations, and worry constantly

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• ACOM Streamlines Access to Content in EZCM and SharePoint

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  ACOM Solutions last week announced a new version of its EZRetrieve software that makes it even easier to access documents stored in its Windows-based content management system, EZContentManager (EZCM). With version 2 of EZRetrieve, users now have one-click access to content by either pressing a hot key, or by clicking a button in the Windows taskbar. The new version also brings support for Microsoft SharePoint. EZRetrieve is one of several optional add-ons for EZCM, the budget-priced content management and workflow system that runs on Windows and is used by a good number of ACOM’s loyal base of System i customers.

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• WebLayers Watches for Poorly Configured WebSphere MQ

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  WebLayers, a developer of software that helps to automate customers’ governance initiatives–particularly as it relates to IBM middleware–this month unveiled new IT governance software aimed at ensuring customers’ WebSphere MQ deployments are conducted in accordance with guidelines and best practices. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based WebLayers develops an array of products designed to align the business-level governance mandates with a company’s actual IT resources and development activities. The company, which packages and sells this expertise through its WebLayers software, boasts of having the largest collection of “governance policies in the industry. When it comes to WebSphere MQ, WebLayers offers more than 90

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• Mulesoft Debuts ‘Cloudcat,’ or Tomcat in the Cloud

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  i/OS developers are among those who can benefit from MuleSoft‘s launch last week of Cloudcat, a hosted version of Apache‘s Tomcat Web application server. By hosting Tomcat in the cloud, Mulesoft aims to make it easier for developers and quality assurance professionals to test their Java-based Tomcat applications prior to making them live. San Francisco-based Mulesoft is rapidly gaining momentum among the open source community–even within the progressive branch of the i/OS development community, which is beginning to adopt and deploy open source technologies in System i applications. Some i/OS shops are even running Mulesoft products on their

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• Stonebranch Taps Cleo for B2B Expertise

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Cleo Communications, the Loves Park, Illinois, developer of B2B and EDI solutions for i/OS and other platforms, is hooking up with Stonebranch, the developer of file transfer and job scheduling software. Last week–just in time for Valentine’s Day–the companies announced a strategic partnership that involves Cleo providing some of the file transfer brains for Stonebranch’s Infinitran suite. Cleo Communications is a well-known player in the market for B2B and EDI software. The privately held company boasts more than 100,000 installations around the world with VersaLex, the core business communication software that supports more than 30 types of communications

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• SunGard Makes the Case for Outsourced DR

  February 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Does your IT department have what it takes to recover from a disaster? That’s the question that SunGard Availability Services is asking customers to ask themselves. Because without the proper investments in equipment and skills, many organizations’ disaster recovery (DR) plans are doomed to failure, the IT megavendor says. SunGard–which offers outsourced DR and high availability services for customers’ System i applications, as well as nearly every other platform–came up with a list of five areas that it says differentiate organizations that are well-prepared to weather a disaster, versus those whose tents will collapse at the first sign of trouble.

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