Wal-Mart’s UCCnet compliance deadline of January 1 has come and gone, but you should still be able to find your dog’s favorite Booda Bone snacks at your friendly neighborhood superstore. In late December, Booda Bone maker Aspen Pet Products connected its product data to the UCCnet GLOBALregistry, using software from Inovis. This put Wal-Mart and Aspen on the same page about details of Booda Bone shipments, but more important, it kept the tail of the world’s largest retailer wagging.

Wal-Mart doesn’t have to come out and say it, but its suppliers know the deal: Comply with our (AS2, UCCnet, RFID)

As expected, IBM has eliminated Host Publisher with the latest release of the iSeries and multiplatform editions of WebSphere Host Integration Solution. Host Publisher was the odd tool out as IBM sought to simplify a confusing array of competing Web-enablement tools. This paves the way for Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) to become the true Blue aficionado’s tool of choice for screen rejuvenation jobs, for legacy OS/400 and Unix applications.

WebSphere Host Integration Solution is a collection of software for accessing, integrating, and publishing application screens for OS/400, Unix, and mainframe applications. While Host Integration Solution contained other Web-enablement tools,

IBM sought to improve the iSeries’ image as a stodgy legacy server over the Christmas holiday, when it announced that more than 300 applications were ported to the iSeries by independent software vendors during 2003. While traditional RPG and COBOL applications make up the vast majority of workloads on the OS/400 server, the 300 new applications IBM helped bring to the iSeries are Java and Linux applications, including a new transaction processing system from S2 Systems.

At one point, the AS/400 was reported to have something on the order of 30,000 applications, a number that IBM touted as the

Quadrant Software, a provider of electronic document distribution systems for OS/400 servers, is rolling out a new line of rack-mountable FastFax servers that include high availability features such as RAID disk protection and redundant power supplies. FastFax implementations typically include a Wintel box on which Quadrant preloads the FastFax fax and e-mail software. With the new line, the boxes have been beefed up to cope better with failed disk drives and power supplies.

Faxes and e-mail have become critical means of communications for many businesses. According to a recent survey by e-mail security services firm Postini, more than