With 331 different products for every major platform, it’s sometimes easy to forget that BMC Software is actively developing OS/400 software, too. In fact, the Houston, Texas, software giant has some pretty sophisticated products, namely PATROL for iSeries–Predict, a capacity planning tool, which IBM sells with its own part number, as well as PATROL for iSeries, a systems management product. BMC recently introduced new releases of both of these products.

If you’re looking for “lights out” automation of your multi-platform data center, BMC’s PATROL series should be on your short list. The PATROL series allows administrators to monitor many servers

Profound Logic Software is now shipping a new version of its RPG Smart Pages (RPGsp) development environment that further simplifies Web development for OS/400 servers. New templates, wizards, and code snippets in RPGsp version 4.0, as well as an improved RPG and DDS code converter and the capability to run queries in a browser, help RPG programmers create powerful iSeries-based Web applications more quickly than previous releases, company officials say.

Since RPGsp was first delivered about two years ago, Profound Logic and its chief technology officer, Alex Roytman, have been working to build on that initial release, which had the

Integrated Print Solutions unveiled a new product last week that allows companies to use standard Windows-connected printers to print Advanced Function Printing (AFP) jobs originating on iSeries and mainframe servers. By encapsulating AFP’s Intelligent Print Data Stream (IPDS) into good old Internet Protocol (IP) packets, OnePrint G2 for Windows enables users to gain the benefits of IBM‘s high-end AFP architecture, but without the high cost of AFPDS printers.

IPS has been in the IPDS-conversion business for some time. The Richardson, Texas, company has a couple of hundred customers using its OnePrint ServerExpress appliance, which combines IPDS print conversion with

NetManage revealed a new middleware product last week designed to help organizations quickly roll-out new applications for accessing host data from handheld computers. The new software, called OnWeb Mobile, enables users to present data from iSeries and other hosts as a Web service running on personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, and other handheld computers.

The popularity of mobile e-mail applications, particularly Research In Motion‘s BlackBerry devices, has led a resurgence of interest in mobile corporate computing, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the initial dot-com frenzy in 1999 and 2000. While that initial enthusiasm in mobile