• Silvon Re-Emerges with Update to Stratum BI

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Silvon, the Chicago, Illinois, software company that has a long history in the AS/400 market. While the company’s CEO, Mike Hennel, says Silvon never wavered from product development and support commitments, he says it’s now putting more focus on marketing and press relations. This is how we found out about the recently shipped version of its BI product, Stratum version 6, which brings improvements in the areas of user interaction, performance, and advanced analytics for manufacturers and distributors. Silvon didn’t exactly go into stealth mode the last few years, but it’s

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• DR Testing an Integral Part of RES-Q’s Services

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to disaster recovery, preparation is everything. Most organizations realize that a disaster could happen, which leads them to adopt a tape-based backup solution, at the very least. But a failure to regularly practice the disaster scenario and perform recovery drills will usually result in glitches and gotchas if the real thing were to happen. One IT vendor that is putting a strong emphasis on DR testing and preparation is the RES-Q division of Corus360, which recently expanded its recovery center near Atlanta. Corus360 is a value added reseller (VAR) for all the big tier-one systems manufacturers,

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• LaserVault Launches Hybrid Cloud Backup Appliance for IBM i

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  LaserVault recently introduced a new hybrid cloud backup solution for IBM i shops that utilizes a Fibre Channel-connected, Windows-based storage appliance and replication of deduplicated data to Rackspace‘s storage cloud. Called the UBD Cloud, LaserVault says the new offering will appeal to IBM i shops that have large volumes of data to protect, relatively small backup windows, and require off-site storage for disaster recovery purposes. The UBD Cloud is based on the Universal Backup Device, which LaserVault first introduced in late 2010. Priced at about $15,000, the UBD is a Windows Server 2008 box housed with up to

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• iWay Detects Business Events in Social Network Feeds

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  New software from iWay Software can combine events occurring on multiple systems, such as an IBM i ERP system and a particular Facebook page or Twitter feed, to trigger the execution of a third event, such as the generation of detailed sales leads from a business intelligence system. The rapid proliferation of social networking websites and technologies is changing how business gets done. Particularly for salespeople, working email and the phone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Potential customers are spending more time with social networking channels, making it a logical place for salespeople and customer support personnel to reach them.

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• Amazing i Server Survival Story from Australia

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve been involved with the IBM i platform for any length of time, you’ve probably heard stories about the incredible abuse that the AS/400 and its successors can take. Whether it’s water, wind, neglect, or dust, the server just seems to go right on ticking. Now we’re hearing of another amazing feat of disaster recovery from the floods in Australia earlier this year. According to a July 5 posting on the website of the daily newspaper The Australian, a group of employees for a furniture retailers staged a daring rescue of two iSeries servers that were located in

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• Informatica Addresses the Big Data Problem

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Informatica is the latest tools vendor to come out with a suite of tools that help address the problem of “big data.” Last month, the Redwood City, California, company debuted Informatica 9.1, which introduces a number of improvements designed to help companies make sense of massive amounts of data. IBM i shops may know Informatica best for PowerCenter, its extract, transform, and load (ETL) too. The Informatica “platform,” on the other hand, refers to a collection of point tools that address a range of data integration concerns, including master data management (MDM), complex event processing (CEP), B2B data exchanges, cloud-based

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• Roto Rooter Taps Quadrant for IBM i Fax Solution

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Roto-Rooter has successfully started using a new fax solution from Quadrant Software, the vendor announced last week. Roto-Rooter was forced to look for a new fax solution after its old product, IBM Domino Fax for i5/OS, was pulled from the market. IBM announced last October that it would stop selling Domino Fax for i5/OS on January 14, 2011, and stop supporting the offering on April 30, 2012. The announcement provided an opening for vendors like Quadrant Software to fill the void left by IBM’s departure from the market. Quadrant’s replacement for the Domino fax product is FastFax for Domino

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• Attachmate Updates Fraud Fighting Software

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Attachmate recently launched the version 4.2 release of Luminet, its enterprise fraud management (EFM) solution that watches every move that users make on an organization’s servers. The new release should be easier for non-technical personnel to use, and be more accurate in identifying the bad guys. There is an epidemic of fraud in this country that is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Whereas the morally corrupt may have picked up guns to rob a bank in the old days, today the bad guys are using computers to steal money. And while there will always be some criminal element in human

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• Helzberg Diamonds Expands Use of Original Testing Tools

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Helzberg Diamond Shops has been using testing tools from Original Software since Y2K. More recently, the Kansas City-based chain of jewelry stores has expanded its use of the tools to help ensure the smooth operation of additional applications, including a new ERP system, a point of sale (POS) system, and an ecommerce website. With the iconic “I Am Loved” buttons that accompany each piece of jewelry, Helzberg has become one of the most recognized chains of jewelry stores in the country. The company, which was founded 96 years ago, is now owned by Berkshire Hathaway, and counts 234 stores in

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• PostgreSQL, Progress DB Now Supported on mrc’s m-Power

  July 12, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Users of mrc‘s m-Power application development tool can now deploy their creations atop the PostgreSQL or Progress OpenEdge databases, the vendor announced last week. The tool already supported most other major databases, including DB2/400. The capability to support PostgreSQL is a major milestone for m-Power, a template-based Web application development tool that generates J2EE. While m-Power already supported the capability to run on and access a slew of popular databases, including DB2/400, DB2 for LUW, SQL Server, MySQL, the Oracle database, IMS, Access, and Informix, the addition of PostgreSQL support will give mrc more play in the open

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