Editor’s Note: This story was written by Maxava and submitted to IT Jungle less than two weeks after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22 caused extensive damage and killed at least 160 people in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Little did anyone know that northeast Japan would be hit by an even more devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Our hearts go out to the survivors and emergency responders involved in both disasters.

When IT managers and executive management discuss the concept of risk management and disaster recovery, each side has a different opinion of what constitutes

China is often thought of as a powerhouse of manufacturing that is using its superior efficiency and innate competitiveness to win jobs from other countries and eventually dominate the global market. While some of that view may have truth, the reality is more complicated than that. According to a recent IDC report, Chinese manufacturers currently trail their American and Western European competitors in adoption of IT systems and business processes that will be critical to efficiently growing their operations.

For starters, let’s blow away the myth that China dominates the global manufacturing industry. The U.S. remains the biggest manufacturing country

Profound Logic Software has released an integral piece of its native graphical user interface platform built around IBM‘s Rational Open Access. The Profound DDS Conversion Module converts existing DDS source members to native IBM i objects that support a graphical user interface. It does this without relying on the green-screen protocol, a distinguishing factor compared to other application modernization methods. Profound is one of several IBM i ISVs making use of RPG Open Access.

The DDS Conversion Module is an important piece of the Dayton, Ohio, software company’s Profound UI suite of application development tools designed for Web formats.

People have been predicting the demise of tape for a long time–just about as long as they’ve been predicting the end of proprietary IBM midrange and mainframe servers. But today, tape remains a vital component of data center activities, just as companies continue to rely on the IBM i and z/OS platforms to run critical business applications. And if the folks behind the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format have their way, tape will continue to stubbornly defend its niche for decades.

It’s been just over a year since the LTO Consortium unveiled the specifications for the fifth generation of the Linear

A safe bet is the holy grail for most Las Vegas gamers. But when Station Casinos began looking for solutions to link data from all 18 of its casinos and hotels in and around the Las Vegas area, they weren’t about to take any gambles with their critical information. Informatica, as it turned out, dealt a winning hand.

Station Casinos, is a long-time IBM i user, first adopting the then-called AS/400 platform in the early 1990s. The company uses a mix of IBM i applications that are commonly found in casinos around the world, including Agilysys for hotel operations

Ever wonder exactly how a programming or operating system change has impacted the performance of specific IBM i jobs? Or whether adding new disk arms has really made a significant impact on wait times? These are some of the questions that Midrange Performance Group is now enabling its customers to answer with the new Power Navigator analytical tools, which became available this month in Performance Navigator version 15.

PerfNav is a Windows-based performance management and capacity planning tool designed to help larger IBM i shops and IBM i resellers track the performance of their servers over time, and more accurately

Hospitals that are struggling to complete backups on time may be interested in the new Legacy Performance Enhancement Program (PEP) offering unveiled last month by Legacy Data Access (LDA). The Georgia company, which specializes in maintaining data from soon-to-be-retired hospital information systems (HIS) running “legacy” platforms like i5/OS and OS/390, launched LegacyPEP to give hospitals a secure and compliant way to offload rarely used data from production systems.

LDA specializes in maintaining the data held in legacy computer systems used in hospital settings. The company’s CEO, Shelly Peters, founded the company in 1999 after volunteering to hold onto the backup

The IBM i Solution Edition program provides an opportunity for companies to save some money on a new Power7 server when paired with the purchase of an IBM-certified, third-party ERP software that runs on that server. Last week, New Generation Software‘s business intelligence software was added into the package, giving companies that are happy with their current ERP an opportunity to upgrade to Power7 while increasing their BI capabilities.

New Generation Software’s business intelligence software, NGS-IQ, covers a lot of territory. It includes ad hoc query; production and Web reporting; online analytical processing (OLAP); business performance dashboards; summary-to-detail

EXTOL International yesterday announced a new adapter that should streamline the adoption of EDI by trucking companies that use TMW Systems‘s new Innovative Enterprise Software (IES) Release 9.

EXTOL says it worked with TMW in development of an Enterprise Adapter for Innovative IES Release 9. The Adapter works in conjunction with EXTOL’s flagship IBM i-based EDI product, called EDI Integrator for i, to facilitate the rapid roll-out of EDI functionality, the company says. EDI is an optional component in an Innovative IES environment, and is used by larger trucking outfits to communicate load tenders, status updates, freight bills, and

So many companies are looking to streamline disparate systems into one integrated system, particularly when it comes to tightening supply chain management.

VAI, a company known for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that runs on the IBM i platform, seems to have a talent for helping distribution, manufacturing, retail, and service companies tie up the loose ends inherent in those multiple silo nightmares.

Its most recent call to aid came from a hydraulic and industrial hose distributor with an 80,000 square foot facility in Spokane, Washington.

Spokane House of Hose needed one centrally managed and scalable ERP system