LANSA is shipping a new release of its aXes Web enablement software that’s designed to turn IBM i server environments into private and public clouds, including a platform for software as a service (SaaS). The vendor’s new aXes-Cloud software, which ships with aXes version 2.0, enables organizations to make multiple IBM i server applications available to any browser-supported device. Version 2.0 also includes new query and spool file capabilities that IBM i users may find useful.

There’s no denying the fact that “cloud” is extremely hot at the moment. Regardless of what the term actually means or whether it represents

Centerfield Technology is best known for its IBM i performance tools. But this spring, the Rochester, Minnesota, company is turning over a new leaf with the launch of two data auditing tools for IBM i, called dataCapture and dataAlert. The new offerings–developed in partnership with Centerfield’s new partner, Databeam–are designed to keep managers abreast of changes to data on the IBM i servers, which could indicate anything from a security risk to new customer activity.

DataCapture is a Windows-based power tool designed to simplify the task of querying the IBM i audit journal, since raw journal data can be difficult

The huge earthquake and tsunami that struck off the coast of Japan last month caused massive devastation and loss of life that will scar the country for decades. While most of the physical damage was contained along Japan’s northeast shoreline, the disaster continues to reverberate within the world’s supply chains, as companies scramble to find new sources of automotive, electric, and computer parts. These events have highlighted the importance of assessing the risk that manufacturing and distribution companies are taking within their supply chains, and the tools that can help automate these assessments.

Nobody could predict that a 9.0-magnitude earthquake

Tributary Systems has served the storage and archive needs of Hewlett-Packard NonStop customers for years with its Virtual Integrated Tape and Library (ViTAL) offering. Since acquiring the virtual tape library (VTL) assets from Gresham Enterprise Storage a year-and-a-half ago, Tributary has added IBM Power Systems expertise to its enterprise storage repertoire.

Tributary Systems was founded in 1990 to address the backup storage needs for users of the NonStop fault-tolerant computing platform that was first developed by Tandem, then acquired by Compaq and HP. For the last 15 years, the Bedford, Texas-based company has been an OEM supplier of backup solutions

Walkers Shortbread, a Scottish baker of cookies and other treats, recently executed an emergency failover using Maxava‘s IBM i high availability, Maxava announced last week. The company was able to keep its ERP system online for three days after a late season snowstorm knocked out power to its primary Power Systems server.

Walkers recently implemented Maxava’s high availability solution at its main offices in Aberlour, Scotland, which is located about 20 miles inland from the North Sea. The implementation, which was completed by regional Maxava business partner Onyx Group, includes an older Model 520 server that was relegated

QlikTech began delivery of a new iPad interface that turns the popular Apple device into a truly interactive client for working with QlikView business intelligence applications. The new product represents a big improvement over the static “dumb pads” that characterized first-generation attempts to build BI clients for the iPad, a QlikTech executive says.

“First-generation iPad BI apps turn iPads into ‘dumb pads’,” says Anthony Deighton, QlikTech senior vice president of products for the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based BI software company. “They may have good-looking visuals, but their limited views, predefined paths, pre-canned reports, and lack of up-to-date data mean they aren’t always

The Australian clothing retailer Stafford has gone live with looksoftware‘s Open Access, RPG Edition (OAR) handler offering, the software company announced last week. According to Stafford’s IT manager, the OAR software will make it much easier for the company to adopt new e-commerce channels in the future, without being hindered by the limitations of 5250.

Stafford wishes it had adopted lookserver for Open Access a little sooner than it had. That’s because the JD Edwards World shop spent a good deal of time and money creating a special version of its online order processing application that was optimized for

Hewlett-Packard doesn’t usually come to mind as a go-to provider of solutions for IBM i customers–unless they’re thinking of moving off the platform. But the company says its newly released tools for helping customers transform to cloud computing is applicable to legacy RPG programs, just as it is to the large global supply of aged COBOL and PL/1 software.

When embarking upon an initiative to modernize IT systems using the cloud, it’s important not to go into it with a pre-determined point of view, says Paul Evans, the worldwide lead for application transformation solutions in HP’s enterprise computing division.

For

Spinnaker Support, a provider of third-party maintenance and support services, doubled the number of JD Edwards shops it does business with last year and expects the pace of growth to continue this year, the company announced at the recent Oracle user conference.

Denver, Colorado-based Spinnaker Support provides consulting and third-party support services to companies running the JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne ERP systems that are now owned by Oracle. Like several other third-party support providers, Spinnaker Support has capitalized on the high cost of Oracle maintenance agreements, which is typically equal to an annual payment of 22 percent of

The Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) recently signed new multi-year contract to upgrade its computer systems to handle an expected increase in ship traffic in the coming years. The contracts, which are worth about $3 million over three years, include an IBM i-based container terminal control system from the Belgium company Cosmos and a new financial reporting system from California-based Oracle.

The PAJ is upgrading its computer systems to handle an expected increase in traffic as a result of the ongoing widening of the Panama Canal, according to an article in Sunday’s issue of the Jamaica Gleaner. (Here’s