SAP made a major splash in the IT world last week when it announced that its HANA in-memory database can now be used to power not just analytical workloads, but transactional workloads in its ERP suite, too. It’s a notable technical achievement for the German software giant, but it left SAP’s IBM i customer base with little to applaud, since HANA currently runs only on X86 servers. But that could change if the work that SAP and IBM are doing to get HANA running on Power pans out.

During last week’s webcast from Palo Alto, California, SAP technology and innovation

IBM i shops looking for managed file transfer (MFT) products may want to add another vendor to their list of potential suppliers: bTrade. The Southern California company, which has a long history supplying EDI and data integration tools to IBM i and mainframe shops, in December unveiled TDAccess version 3.2.1, a new release of its MFT tool that adds support for IBM i 7.1.

TDAccess is one of several MFT solutions sold by bTrade, and the only one listed on its website that supports IBM i. The software (which runs on all other major operating systems as well) supports

RevSoft, an Australian developer of job schedulers and management tools for IBM i and other platforms, has signed a partnership deal with fellow Aussie firm Kantion IT to set up channels and sell RevSoft products around the world. Putting Kantion in charge of singing up resellers in international markets frees RevSoft to make a bigger push into the US market this year.

Kantion IT managing director Richard Bryett knows a thing or two about IBM i management tools. From 2005 to 2011, Bryett sold Help/Systems products, first as a sales associate at eveLogic, and then as managing director of

Linoma Software has rolled out a new release of its managed file transfer (MFT) software that supports clustering across two or more MFT servers. GoAnywhere Services version 3.1 implements an “active-active” cluster that improves resiliency of MFT activities, while a new load balancing feature promises to give customers better performance when using multiple MFT servers with a gateway. In other news, Linoma is working on a new Android app expected next month.

Developing a cluster-capable version of Linoma’s MFT product was a high priority, according to Bob Luebbe, chief architect of the Ashland, Nebraska, company. “We had lost a couple

Today marks the general availability of Jitterbit 5, a new version of the data and application integration toolset from commercial open source software vendor Jitterbit. The company says Version 5 will make it easier for customers to build, test, and deploy integration processes that connect front- and back-office applications, including popular ERP systems and cloud services.

Jitterbit is a data and application integration tool that’s been used by more than 20,000 customers, according to the company. The product started out as an open source product in 2005, but in 2011 the Oakland, California, company moved away from its open

ARCAD Software recently rolled out a new piece of freeware that might interest RPG programmers who use Rational Development for Power Systems (RDp). The new product, called Data Area Editor, provides a way for RDp users to edit data area objects within the Eclipse environment.

According to ARCAD, the new Data Area Editor allows programmers to edit data area objects that belong to an IBM i project, or directly from the Remote Systems Explorer (RSE). The software supports the editing of character, decimal, and logical data area objects, and supports insert mode, fixed-size line editing, and search and replace functions.

AURA Equipments has introduced three new database connectors for Launcher/400, an IBM i utility that enables users to output DB2 for i data in different formats. With the latest release of Launcher/400, the company now gives users the capability to pull data from Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL databases, in addition to DB2 for i.

The new connectors enable Launcher/400 to reformat data sitting in Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL databases in much the same way they have been used to transform data from DB2 for i into other formats, such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, or distribute them via

Oracle last week debuted new LTO 6 drives, as well as the capability to hook the new drives into StorageTek libraries via Fibre Channel.

Oracle sells four StorageTek LTO 6 tape drives, full-height and half-height drives with either SAS or Fibre Channel interfaces. The drives can be implemented as stand-alone devices, or installed in an autoloader or tape library configuration. The drives can be used with the full range of supported servers, including those running IBM i, mainframe, Unix, Linux and Windows operating systems.

LTO 6 drives offer a maximum data transfer rate of 160 MB/sec, up from 140 MB/sec

Raz-Lee Security last week announced that its iSecurity suite of security software has been certified to run on IBM‘s PureSystems. The Nanuet, New York, company also received certifications in Security Intelligence, Tivoli, and Power Systems.

IBM last year launched its new PureSystems line of “expert-integrated” systems, which combine servers, storage, networking, virtualization, and management into a single box (sort of like a “magic box”). The PureSystems lineup consists of three servers, including PureFlex, PureApplication, and PureData.

In addition to rethinking the hardware, IBM rethought how software will run on the systems. Instead of applications or tools, software is considered

Dell‘s Wyse group last week took the wraps off Project Ophelia, a new thin client computer that’s about the size of a USB memory stick. The device is designed to allow consumers and employees who don’t have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop to still access to their computing environments by plugging into monitors and keyboards they stumble across in the wild.

Project Ophelia is the latest brainchild of Dell’s “cloud client computing” group, which is composed in part of the Wyse organization that the Round Rock, Texas, company bought last spring. The idea behind the project, which will