FHS Volume: 4 Archives - Page 13 of 20

PeopleSoft Attacks Wintel ERP with World Express Bundle

May 11, 2004 Alex Woodie

The most widely used and trusted ERP package for OS/400 is now available preloaded on a new eServer i5 server, starting at $50,000. Last week PeopleSoft announced its new World Express bundle, which includes a full license for World that’s customized for the buyer’s industry, a new i5 Model 520 server, and implementation services from a certified partner. Executives say the bundle offers small and midsized businesses a good alternative to Wintel applications.

“Why would you have the same operating system you use to play solitaire run your enterprise?” Dave Siebert, PeopleSoft’s World manager, asked his audience at the COMMON

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Framework Systems Launches Web Enablement Tool

May 11, 2004 Alex Woodie

One of the software vendors making its debut at the COMMON conference in San Antonio last week was Framework Systems, a Danish company that has developed a Web-enablement toolset for OS/400 applications. The iSeries2web contains a collection of XML-based built-in functions that let companies separate presentation logic from business logic in RPG applications. As a result, users can interact with OS/400 applications from practically anywhere, through standard HTML screens, instead of 5250 displays.

The OS/400 server’s tight integration has been considered an advantage since it debuted. With an integrated relational database, lighting-quick execution of RPG business logic, and lightweight

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iTera Beefs Up iSeries HA App with MQ, Auditing Features

May 11, 2004 Alex Woodie

Companies with a need for OS/400 high availability software that supports WebSphere MQ can now add iTera to their list of potential providers. Last week at the COMMON conference in San Antonio, iTera announced the general availability of Echo2 V4R1, which, in addition to supporting WebSphere MQ, includes a redesigned auditing process that iTera says is so advanced that it can’t say much about it, for fear of helping its competitors.

Echo2 is one of the new breed of OS/400 high availability software products that rely entirely on IBM‘s remote journaling technology as its underlying replication method. Since Salt

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PFSweb Launches E-Commerce App for iSeries Shops

May 11, 2004 Alex Woodie

PFSweb, a $280 million provider of fulfillment services for Pfizer, Shell, and other companies, is now selling licenses for the software it uses to build integrated ecommerce Web sites for its clients, the company announced last week at COMMON. GlobalMerchant CommerceWare 2.0 pairs a Windows-based e-commerce engine with a set of tools and templates specifically designed to extend data from RPG and COBOL ERP applications to the Web sites.

As a business process outsourcer (BPO) with a huge distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee, and call centers at various locations, PFSweb likes to call itself “the brand behind the

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MPG’s Capacity Planning Tool Is Ready for i5

May 4, 2004 Alex Woodie

When IBM‘s new Power5-based i5 servers (formerly iSeries) ship next month, users will be exposed for the first time to strange new “on demand” technologies, such as the Virtualization Engine, support for up to 10 partitions per processor, and “weighted priority” for partitions with automatic processor and memory balancing. With products like Midrange Performance Group‘s Performance Navigator, announced this week, users will be able to see how their particular workloads will run on the new i5 boxes.

The new i5 servers and the new release of OS/400, called i5/OS V5R3, announced today, feature new virtualization and on-demand technologies

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Profound Logic Updates IDE for RPG-based Web Applications

May 4, 2004 Alex Woodie

Profound Logic Software launched its integrated development environment (IDE) for RPG-based Web applications, called RPG Smart Pages (RPGsp), at the spring 2003 COMMON conference. This week, at the spring 2004 COMMON conference in San Antonio, Texas, the company will be talking about its experiences over the last year, and promoting an updated version of RPGsp that it says makes Web development for RPG programmers even faster.

With RPGsp, Profound Logic sought to eliminate the hassle of using two separate code editors–one for RPG and one for HTML–when developing RPG-based Web apps, while providing a speedy CGI-based runtime environment that uses

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LXI Introduces Off-Site Tape Management Appliance

May 4, 2004 Alex Woodie

With today’s shrinking backup windows and new government regulations mandating certain data storage processes, keeping close tabs on backup tapes is more important than ever, yet more complicated as well. LXI, a developer of backup software for iSeries, Unix, Linux, and Windows, last week launched OffStor, a new off-site, PC-based media management appliance designed to give organizations more visibility and control over the backups they make, regardless of the computer platform.

The key ingredient in the new OffStor appliance is Tape Tracker, LXI’s cross-platform vault management solution, which runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux operating systems. Tape Tracker’s database

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JBM Systems Adds Form Design Tool to Document Suite

May 4, 2004 Alex Woodie

JBM Systems is taking its spool management and PDF conversion capabilities to the next level. The Massachusetts company recently launched a suite of document management software, called OctoTools, which combines the company’s PDF conversion capabilities with a new drag-and-drop, Windows-based forms design tool, called OctoDesign. JBM’s iSeries spool file connectivity is still provided through integration with a third-party product.

OS/400 shops looking for an inexpensive solution for replacing their pre-printed forms with electronic documents may want to check out JBM Systems’ newly released OctoTools suite. With a starting price of $2,995, OctoTools can be several times cheaper than other well-known

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RPG Conversion Tool from ASC Now Supports XML, C#

April 27, 2004 Alex Woodie

OS/400 shops looking for a way to transition to Microsoft‘s .NET development tools and runtime environment may want to check out the latest release of Advanced Systems Concepts‘ RPG Into Objects, or RIO, code translator. RIO Version 5.4, which ASC announced last week, can now translate RPG into C#, in addition to Java, and it also has the capability to generate XML for Web browser GUIs.

While RPG has proved itself to be an excellent language for writing business applications–particularly when paired with the OS/400 server’s stability and ease of use–the language, which was originally developed for punch-card

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JR Wood Reduces Data Errors with EXTOL’s UCCnet Solution

April 27, 2004 Alex Woodie

Like all companies involved in supply chains, JR Wood experiences a certain rate of errors in its product data. The $135 million grower and manufacturer of frozen fruit products used a “rip and read” EDI system that required manual data entry into its J.D. Edwards ERP application. Last year, the company replaced its old EDI system with a new one from EXTOL, which improved its workflow and allowed it to synchronize its product data with its customer, Wal-Mart, via UCCnet.