SugarCRM last week passed another milestone on its quest to gain the respect and business of IBM i customers and business partners when it announced a joint solution edition with IBM at its SugarCon user conference. The Silicon Valley firm also announced new social media extensions for Sugar version 6, as well as the acquisition of iEnterprises‘ iExtensions, which gives SugarCRM new integration points with Lotus Notes.

Like it does for other enterprise software companies that participate in the Solution Edition program, the new IBM i Solution Edition for SugarCRM offering is designed to make it easier and less

IBM and Zend Technologies are expected to formally announce a new open source PHP Toolkit for IBM i at the COMMON conference in Minneapolis next month. IBM claims the new toolkit, which is currently in beta, will do a better, more transparent job of connecting PHP applications with IBM i programs and services than the old toolkit–an assertion that is rejected by the developer of the old toolkit, AURA Equipments.

The PHP Toolkit for IBM i is a set of classes that allows PHP programs to interact with native IBM i services, applications, and data. This includes making RPG

Despite the unsolicited offer from Infor that’s looming over the heads of the company and its customers, Lawson Software tried its best to have a normal user conference last week in Boston, Massachusetts. Lawson responded to the challenge in the same way that many software companies would: it introduced new software and services, including an application marketplace, a new business intelligence tool, and the new tool for creating composite applications without coding.

Lawson CEO Harry Debes did his best to break the ice during his keynote speech that kicked off CUE 2011 last Monday. The executive flashed a picture of

IBM i operators gain new insights into the state of their job scheduling environments with the latest release of Robot/SCHEDULE from Help/Systems. With version 11, the vendor has made several changes in the graphical Schedule Activity Monitor (SAM) that will enhance the capability of operators to oversee jobs running across IBM i, Windows, Linux, and Unix environments.

SAM is a graphical console that gives operators and administrators critical pieces of information about the state of Robot/SCHEDULE. In the summary screen, SAM displays all the past, present, and future jobs. On the left of SAM’s summary screen is a column

Customers who use the JAMS job scheduler from MVP Software Systems can benefit from a more robust IBM i agent that delivers better monitoring, logging, and integration with jobs on other platforms, the software vendor announced last week.

JAMS (Job Access Management System) is a .NET-based job scheduler that’s heavily focused on helping to automate production Windows environments. However, not all of MVP’s 750-plus customers are using the software in Windows-only environments, and a fraction of them also use JAMS in Linux, Unix, OpenVMS, and IBM i environments. MVP rolled out support for the IBM i platform in 2009.

Last

Actuate last week announced the availability of X2BIRT, a new offering that enables customers to load static data sources, such as statements, bills, and mainframe reports, into the BIRT business intelligence suite, where it can be used with in-memory data cubes and dashboard displays.

BIRT is an open source suite of BI tools that began as an Eclipse-based reporting tool project back in 2004. Today, the BIRT suite has gone far beyond ad hoc reporting, and now provides more advanced BI functions, like in-memory analytics and Web-based dashboard capabilities, which are sold under BIRT’s fee-based products, called ActuateOne.

The

When Robbins decided to upgrade from BPCS to ERP LX version 8 in the early 2000s, the wood flooring company faced some challenges relating to its barcode system. Part of the solution was to install the automated data collection (ADC) solution from OrbeSoft, which enabled Robbins to keep business logic within its Infor ERP system. Today, Robbins has widened its use of the Orbesoft software to include almost all inventory transactions, the software vendor announced yesterday.

OrbeSoft is a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based developer of ADC products that integrate with a wide range of IBM i-based ERP systems, including BPCS, ERP

IBM i shops that are looking for a way to integrate Web content into their RPG, COBOL, or CL applications may want to take a look at WebClip/400, a new product that was recently launched by MB Software and Consulting.

The new WebClip/400 product basically provides an API that can be used in RPG code to integrate any Web content into the IBM i program, according to Mike Boadway, the principal of MB Software and Consulting, which is based in Baldwinsville, New York.

When provided with a URL, WebClip/400 can automatically extract data, such as PDFs or JPGS, and

ASNA last week announced that next month it will be holding two half-day workshops covering Wings, its new IBM i modernization tool that’s based on IBM‘s Open Access: RPG Edition technology. The workshops–scheduled for Chicago on May 18 and New York City the following day–will be led by Roger Pence, who promises not to bore you to death with PowerPoints.

Wings, which ASNA unveiled about five months ago and shipped in January, is one of the first application modernization tools to use IBM’s RPG Open Access technology. ASNA uses the software to convert DDS display files into ASP.NET-based

IBM i customers who use WebSphere MQ for inter-server messaging and Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct for B2B file transfers can now integrate those two environments with a new release of WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition introduced by IBM last week.

WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition offers MFT capabilities in addition to including a full copy of WebSphere MQ, the underlying messaging platform that provides integration capabilities for many IBM i and z/OS shops. The capability to handle both server-to-server messaging and ad hoc MFT in a single product drove the creation of WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition, which runs on IBM