The new Access Client Solutions (ACS) bundle of tools became generally available as part of IBM‘s refresh of the OS refresh in late May. One of the biggest changes IBM made between the tech preview and the GA release is the capability to migrate your existing 5250 settings–including all of your custom macros–into the new Java-based emulator.

ACS is the new Java-based member of the IBM i Access product family that IBM delivered last year as a technology preview along with IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh (TR) 4.

IBM i shops that are looking for a better disaster recovery (DR) solution than tape may want to check out the latest virtual tape library (VTL) software from VRTech. VTLBackup4i, which was unveiled in 2012, allows organizations to back up their IBM i libraries to another IBM i server, or to a Windows network drive or network attached storage (NAS) device, using the FTP protocol. The offering provides faster backups than tape, and delivers geographic separation for disaster protection.

While disk-to-disk (D2D) backup solutions are growing in popularity, tape is still the most prominent DR protection method. Although use

IBM i shops that are interested in pumping their latest DB2/400 database transactions into a Vertica data warehouse for analysis may want to check out the latest release of DBMoto from HiT Software. The San Jose, California, company added Vertica Analytics Database, Hewlett-Packard‘s big data platform and Hadoop killer, as a supported target with version 8 of DBMoto.

Vertica is a column-oriented database designed to manage large volumes of data as part of a data warehouse or other query-oriented workload. HP bought the company behind the product for an undisclosed sum back in 2011 to go up against

Cilasoft, an international software company based in France that specializes in security, audit, and compliance software for the IBM Power Systems running the IBM i operating system, is reporting a 20 percent gain in revenue in 2012, according to company president Guy Marmorat.

A growing portion of the increases comes from companies already equipped with security software. These replacement deals, which Marmorat estimated were responsible for one-fifth of all sales in 2011, have increased to more than one-third of Cilasoft sales in the first quarter of 2013. To better accommodate IBM i shops that are unhappy with their previous

JD Edwards World shops that make a lot of customizations and modifications to their ERP environments may be interested in knowing that ARCAD Software just announced that its application lifecycle management (ALM) tool is fully compatible with World A9.3, the latest release from Oracle.

ERP modifications are a two-edged sword. While they can give your organizations an edge on the one hand, they can also complicate future maintenance work and upgrades on the other. For this reason, most modern-day ERP vendors strongly discourage their customers from modifying the code.

But modifications have been a tradition for JD Edwards World

Organizations will no longer have to choose between flexibility and control when deploying business intelligence reporting tools according to Symtrax, which last week unveiled a new release of its StarQuery BI solution that it says will eliminate compromises.

All too often, organizations are forced between a rock and a hard place when deploying business intelligence. Strong central control is viewed as a necessary element for organizations that value knowing who is accessing what data, when they access it, and how often they access it. On the other end of the spectrum are on-demand and Web-based BI tools that give

Document management software vendor RJS Software Systems is teaming up with security software developer Global Velocity to build data loss prevention (DLP) technology into the IBM i and Windows versions of RJS’ WebDocs.

Global Velocity builds and sells a DLP solution, called rapidDLP, which helps protect data by detecting and blocking unauthorized attempts to access data or documents. The St. Louis, Missouri, company starts by indexing all of the content under protection. Then it uses proprietary pattern-matching algorithms to detect whenever that content is moved across the network.

The offering, which deploys as a Wintel- or Lintel-based appliance, works well

In the event of a disaster, your chances of recovery are only as good as your last test. Thanks to the testing work that Atlas Paper Mills did with IBM i cloud backup and disaster recovery (DR) services provider VAULT400, its chances of surviving a disaster are better.

Testing is a critical element of a complete disaster recovery plan. But all too often, tests don’t go deep enough or last long enough to truly simulate bringing a system back online following a disaster. Short tests may allow organizations to check “DR test” off their list and make happy with

Xperia Solutions, a provider of IBM i-based ERP software for the apparel industry, is now working with the managed service provider (MSP) Software Information Systems (SIS) to provide hosted high availability (HA) and software as a service (SaaS) options for its customers.

Xperia develops and sells a COBOL-based suite of supply chain planning, production management, and customer relationship management software used by small and midsized businesses in the apparel and soft goods industries. The company, which formerly went by the name Online Data Systems, counts OshKosh B’Gosh, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Converse as customers.

In May, Xperia announced a new

Infor last week divulged some preliminary, non-binding financial results that show steady sales growth for its fourth quarter of 2013, which ended May 31. According to the company, it grew software license fees and subscription revenues by about 10 percent during its quarter compared to the same quarter in 2012.

The company didn’t divulge much beyond that, except to say that, at constant currency, the growth rate for the fourth quarter will likely be about 9 percent instead of 10, and that non-GAAP license fee and revenue figures will be 9 percent at both constant currency and actual rates. Infor