After a bitter 18-month battle, PeopleSoft‘s board of directors agreed today to be acquired by Oracle for $26.50 per share, or $10.3 billion. While the agreement will end an extremely unpleasant period for the companies and their customers, it raises new questions about the future of some of PeopleSoft’s products, particularly the World ERP line, which runs only on IBM iSeries servers and is heavily relied upon by thousands of companies across the world.

The merger agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies and should close by early January. As part of the deal,

OS/400 shops looking to get the most 5250 performance out of their boxes may want to check out Kisco Information Systems‘ new GoFaster product, which the company introduced last week. Kisco says that GoFaster implements a simple software change that overcomes the CFINT interactive governor to allow users to access the full power of their OS/400 server for 5250 sessions. The software was developed in Europe and is now available in the United States for the first time through Kisco.

IBM didn’t entirely eliminate the 5250 interactive governor with the new iSeries packaging it introduced in January 2003, but

A new CRM system is paying dividends at Sons of Norway. By integrating Touchtone‘s Wintouch eCRM system with its OS/400 membership database, the Minneapolis organization has given its members Web-based self-service and has made its office staff’s job easier at the same time. Wintouch users like Sons of Norway will also benefit from new workflow enhancements Touchtone included in Wintouch eCRM Version 6.3, which was released last month.

Sons of Norway is a 109-year-old organization dedicated to the preservation of Norwegian and Scandinavian culture. It operates 420 lodges, publishes Viking Magazine and the Sons of Norway Web site,

Centerfield Technology is rolling out new OS/400 software called delta/TRACKER, which is intended to help administrators keep track of changes made to their systems over long periods of time and to prepare for regulatory compliance audits. The promising plug-in for iSeries Navigator already features 41 different pre-configured reports, which cost only $60 each, and Centerfield wants your ideas for more reports that it can build into the product.

As a plug-in for IBM‘s iSeries Navigator GUI systems management product, Centerfield’s new delta/TRACKER product sends agents to the iSeries server to gather a variety of system-related information, which it digests