VAI last month announced a new release of S2K, its line of IBM i-based ERP software. S2K Enterprise Release 5.0.4 brings dozens of enhancements and fixes across all functional areas of the package, including order entry, purchasing, warehouse management, and CRM. The New York company has also signed the Complete IT Store as its latest reseller.

S2K Enterprise Release 5.0.4 (or PTF04 for Release 5.0) is the fourth minor release since VAI shipped the monumental S2K version 5.0 back in 2008. With a brand new GUI, a new portal framework, and support for smart phones, version 5 marked a major

Raz-Lee Security last week unveiled DB-Gate, a new database connectivity product that gives IBM i applications direct access to other databases using native IBM i SQL commands and procedures. The vendor, which is best known for its security software, claims its new patent-pending product is revolutionary because it accomplishes something that previously was difficult to do without using complicated middleware or proprietary interfaces.

For all the talk of openness and adherence to standards, the IBM i platform is surprisingly shut off when it comes to enabling IBM i applications to have direct, real-time access to foreign databases. It’s not really

Quadrant Software today is expected to launch QuadraDocV, a new fax over IP (FoIP) software offering for IBM i shops. The new FoIP software runs inside a VMware virtual machine and offers the same fax capabilities that Quadrant has delivered for years with its hardware-based FastFax line of products. Customers are expected to gain by eliminating hardware from their data centers and canceling subscriptions for analog phone lines.

Following the success of voice over IP (VoIP), FoIP is now gaining steam in business environments. Many organizations have already installed VoIP-enabled network switches from the major manufactures, such as Cisco or

Zend Technology is about two weeks away from announcing the general availability of DBi, its drop-in replacement for the MySQL database running on the IBM i, which is important for running PHP apps on the platform. The company had expected to ship the software months ago. But an extra round of testing was done to ensure that the much-anticipated product would work as advertised.

DBi is the result of a collaboration between Zend and IBM to address the problem created when Oracle dropped MySQL support for the IBM i OS in late 2010. MySQL support on the IBM i platform

The ABSTRACT suite of cross-reference and documentation tools is now accessible from within the IBM i platform’s main development tool, Rational Developer for Power Systems (RDP). The new feature, which was included with the ABSTRACT version 10.27 released by Help/Systems last week, will make it easier for IBM i programmers to foresee the impact their changes may have on other programs without leaving the RDP environment.

ABSTRACT is a powerful utility that provides IBM i programmers with critical information about their applications. The software builds an IBM i-resident database of system objects and procedures, and through this database, the software

Open source business intelligence software developer Jaspersoft has added new tools for accessing “big data” sets through Jaspersoft ETL, the extract, transform, and load (ETL) software that it OEMs from Talend. The latest release of the company’s tools includes better support for the Apache Hadoop big data framework.

As one of the latest big trends in IT, big data refers to the problems organizations face as they attempt to store, manage, and process huge amounts of data. While the bottom and upper limits vary depending on the application, many midsized businesses will struggle when faced with tens or hundreds

Paper-based processes are no longer the productivity bottleneck they once were at the Chicago-based Greek food company Grecian Delight Foods. Thanks to the WebView software from ACOM Solutions, the company has transitioned from paper- and fax-based processes to electronic document distribution, which has freed more time for Grecian to concentrate on customer service.

Pushing the paper was becoming a burden for the folks at Grecian Delight Foods, which ships specialty Greek and other ethnic cuisine across the country via a network of 400 distributors and 50 brokers. Jerry Czupryn, the company’s IT manager, explained the problem in a recent

IBM i shops are notoriously lean when it comes to the efficiency of their operations. And while the Great Recession forced many of us to find new and creative ways to further slash costs to the bone, a new “cheat sheet” from CCSS shows there’s still some fat to be trimmed when it comes to systems management.

“Quite often it can feel as though all the fat has already been trimmed and there is simply no excess or flexibility with which IT managers can make further changes,” CCSS president and CEO Ray Wright says in a press release. “It requires

Development tool maker mrc last week announced the addition of two new templates–the cross-tab report template and the data upload template–to its flagship product, m-Power.

m-Power is a Web application development tool that uses a template-based approach to enable rapid delivery of new programs and functionality. After configuring new programs from pre-defined templates, m-Power generates Java code that runs on IBM i and all Java-enabled platforms.

The new cross-tab report template makes it easy for developers to create a special type of report that combines row data with user-selected column data. The vendor says these types of reports are great

Dell swooped in yesterday and acquired Wyse Technology, the well-known provider of thin clients and desktop virtualization products to companies around the world. If approved, the deal will give Dell’s desktop virtualization business a shot in the arm and bolster its existing OptiFlex thin client business. It will also give Dell 180 patents.

According to Dell, Wyse ranked number one in thin client unit shipment volume during the fourth quarter of 2011, and has more than 20 million thin client units in the field, where they are used by 200 million people around the world every day. The San