• VAI Gives Berk Enterprises a New Analytic View

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Berk Enterprises, an Ohio-based distributor of paper goods and disposable cutlery, is getting good dividends with S2K Analytics, the Cognos-powered line of business intelligence tools from VAI. The folks at Berk cite the ease of use of S2K Analytics and the capability to make modifications as the biggest draw, followed closely by the polished look and feel of reports. Berk serves a country-wide base of nearly 5,000 customers from its headquarters in Warren, located about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburg. The company distributes a variety of food service disposables to stadiums, festivals, and other outdoor venues. It imports the

  …

  Read more

• Tango/04 Lunches Alignia to Simplify Corporate Monitoring

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Tango/04 Computing Group last month unveiled Alignia, a new IT- and business-monitoring solution designed to make it easier for an organization to monitor events that can have an impact, not only on their businesses but their customers and suppliers as well. Tango/04 has worked extensively in the IBM i world, and supports the IBM i platform (among others) with its flagship VISUAL Message Center product. In recent years the Spanish company has looked to reposition its offerings as the distillation of knowledge, such as with its September 2012 launch of the Operations Knowledge Module for IBM i. Alignia is a

  …

  Read more

• S4i Goes IASP with Document Management Tool for HA Protection

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  S4i Systems is now supporting independent auxiliary storage pools (IASPs) with S4i Express, its electronic document management and distribution tool for the IBM i OS. Running S4i Express within an IASP will give customers new options in the area of disaster recovery (DR), the company says. S4i Express is a native IBM i program that helps reduce users’ reliance on pre-printed forms while transitioning them to paperless business processes. The software monitors IBM i print queues, processes the output using report-segmenting or bundling rules, converts it into PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, CSV, or plain text format, and then distributes it

  …

  Read more

• LaserVault DMS10 Unchains Your Documents

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Want to break free from your desk and roam the country wild? If your company adopts the latest release of the LaserVault Document Management Solution from Electronic Storage Corp., you’ll be able to conduct business wirelessly thanks to the new DMS client interface that runs on Android and iOS tablets and smartphones. Lately, LaserVault has been focused on solving its IBM i customers’ backup and storage needs with its Universal Backup Device (UBD) series, which allow users to replace tape libraries with an appliance or any old NAS array that supports a CIFS, NFS, or iSCSI connection. But you

  …

  Read more

• SoftLanding Repositions TurnOver for Database Conversions

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  It’s been a while since we had any product news out of SoftLanding, the developer of the TurnOver change management tool that was acquired by Unicom Global nearly eight years ago. But earlier this month, we were apprised of a new release of TurnOver that introduces functionality in an area of IBM i development that’s starting to get some traction: DDS-to-DDL database conversions. Undergoing a conversion from the old DDS data type to the newer DDL data type and SQL is not for the faint of heart. The vast majority of IBM i applications were originally developed with the

  …

  Read more

• Nice Form! Quadrant Boosts Automation and Control in Formtastic

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that rely on Quadrant Software‘s Formtastic to automate the generation and distribution of electronic documents no longer have to wonder who’s modifying form templates thanks to a new change management feature the vendor has added. Quadrant also added a new automated purge function to the popular product. For each document generated by Formtastic, the software retains some data about the document, such as what forms were merged with which spool file, where it went, and when it was submitted. This is not a big deal for small shops. But Quadrant has some customers who generate upwards of 50,000

  …

  Read more

• DRV Unveils Fresh New Mobile Apps for Message Management

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  DRV Technologies recently unveiled new mobile apps that allow administrators to view and respond to IBM i messages and jobs from the comfort of their iOS or Android mobile devices. The apps were unveiled as part of a major update to DRV’s FlexTool suite. In July, DRV unveiled FlexTool version 6, which includes new releases of the SpoolFlex, FormFlex, Secure Checks, DBXFlex (formerly DataFlex), and MessageFlex components. The company markets them as a bundle but sells the products separately. MessageFlex V2 The update brings a new mobile interfaces to MessageFlex, a message automation solution that automatically monitors IBM i message

  …

  Read more

• Zend Peers Deep into Your Code with Z-Ray

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Do you ever wish you had X-ray goggles to see what’s going on inside your applications? Something that cuts through the clutter and highlights bad code pronto? The folks at Zend Technologies are including something like that in the latest release of Zend Server. The company calls it Z-Ray and, if the claims are accurate, it may actually make debugging fun. According to Zend, the new Z-Ray feature “gives unprecedented, in-context visibility inside apps by showing in real time exactly what happens to construct each page.” The software, which Zend announced last month in the version 7 release of Zend

  …

  Read more

• Kisco Solidifies Self-Service Password Reset Tool

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Kisco Information Systems has significantly improved its self-service password reset tool for IBM i, iResetMe. With version 2, unveiled this month, Kisco has made the tool more automated and easier to use. And by adding support for stronger passwords and by encrypting challenge questions, it has made it much more secure as well. iResetMe is designed to allow users to reset their own passwords, thereby alleviating the IT help desk from the oft-requested task. The Kisco tool, which debuted in January of this year, lets a user establish a new password after verifying his identify by successfully answering up

  …

  Read more

• Townsend Looks to Spread 2FA Far and Wide

  August 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Under normal circumstances, user authentication products don’t attract a lot of attention. But thanks to Russian hackers, the Heartbleed vulnerability, and Target’s security breach, millions of people are wondering if their passwords are safe (newsflash: they’re probably not). With these security fears as a backdrop, Townsend Security is looking to accelerate the adoption of its new IBM i two-factor authentication (2FA) software. Last month, Townsend made two announcements that demonstrate its plans for Alliance Two Factor Authentication, the IBM i-based 2FA software that it introduced in January. The 2FA offering prevents a user from logging onto the IBM i

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles