One of the latest trends in business application interface design is less is more. The fewer computer screens your users need to learn and use, the faster they pick it up and the greater their productivity. To that end, many business application vendors, such as Microsoft and SAP, have started enabling access to ERP functions from within Microsoft Office. Now System i application modernization specialist looksoftware is offering similar capabilities with version 8.1 of its modernization suite.

Australia-based looksoftware is really starting to push the envelope of 5250 application modernization. Over the past several years, look has assembled a

For a lot of companies, the reality of an overworked IT department doesn’t mesh well with the idea of an application modernization project. Where does the time to modernize fit into a schedule that keeps the staff humping just to do the day-to-day stuff? If you are a development tool vendor, like LANSA, you upgrade your products to improve performance and productivity so that modernization projects become less of a workforce burden.

LANSA introduced RAMP, its Rapid Application Modernization Process, in March 2006, and the product was first shipped to customers in June. RAMP was designed to be a

RJS Software Systems announced two new products at the recent COMMON conference Anaheim, California. The first is iForms, a new electronic forms and reporting tool that runs on the System i and works with all kinds of databases. The second is iPDF, an application programming interface (API) that RPG programmers can use to automatically generate PDF documents from RPG applications.

With iPDF, RJS is providing a tool that System i shops with RPG programming expertise can use to generate PDF documents directly from their RPG applications. iPDF creates true PDFs that are searchable (as opposed to graphics-based PDFs), and supports

There is no sense in denying it: Microsoft Office–not a 5250 screen–is the interface that the majority of people feel the most comfortable using. With this sentiment in mind, System i business intelligence software vendor New Generation Software unveiled a new product called Qport Office that gives users of Excel, Word, and even PowerPoint quick and easy access to DB2 data and queries. Best of all, NGS is giving away the new entry-level BI product to the first few hundred customers.

“Microsoft Excel is the de facto standard for business data analysis in companies of all sizes,” says Bernard Gough,

Bsafe Information Systems recently introduced a new Policy Compliance Manager product designed to help System i shops design, implement, enforce, and fix their security policies. The new module was delivered with Bsafe Enterprise Security version 5.5, which became available last month.

The new Policy Compliance Manager is designed to help i5/OS and OS/400 shops maintain the security of their IT assets by handling the full circle of security policy compliance. This includes everything from template-based policy generation and security term mapping to checking for compliance and running deviation reports to keep an enterprise secure.

The intended users of Bsafe’s new

Stonesoft, the Finnish provider of security software and appliances, last week unveiled a new line of firewalls and intrusion protection systems (IPSs) that will provide additional head room for customers making the move to the latest Gigabit networking topologies.

Stonesoft’s StoneGate firewalls provide packet filtering, stateful connection tracking, and application-level security of Internet traffic, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), as well as support for whitelisting and blacklisting, and Quality of Service (QoS) bandwidth management. The StoneGate IPS provides an active defense against worms and other malicious threats. Last week, Stonesoft refreshed its entire line of StoneGate firewall and IPS appliances,

Intellinx last week announced the launch of a new version of its fraud-detection solution, which supports the System i and other back office platforms commonly used in the financial services industry. The new release of the product features better case management capabilities, among other features, the company says.

Intellinx’s software is designed to allow large enterprises to track all user activity occurring on back-office systems, including System i, System z, and other transactional servers. The product does this by capturing all screen displays, keystrokes, and messages communicated between workstations and servers, which is then compressed and stored on an Intel

Cybra is now shipping MarkMagic 6, the latest release of its software for creating barcodes and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags from i5/OS data and i5/OS servers, the company announced yesterday. The new release features better support for RFID and fax.

Cybra first announced its MarkMagic 6 software nearly eight months ago at the COMMON conference in Miami Beach, Florida.

Among the new features is better support for RFID, an optional rule-based print manager, a new administration menu designed to boost security over MarkMagic operations, support for fax with the PDF e-mail option, support for the latest Paxar-Monarch handheld label

CGI Group, one of Canada’s biggest IT services and outsourcing companies, has signed a long-term deal with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) for, among other things, management of its AS/400 environment, the IT services firm announced last week.

As a wholly owned entity of the Government of Canada, BDC’s goal is to support the development and growth of the Canadian small and mid size business (SMB) sector through free financial, investment, and consulting solutions. True to that calling, the organization outsources some functions so it can better focus on serving its constituents.

Last week, CGI Group announced

Lawson Software last week rolled out a new IT software and services program designed to cut the implementation time of its M3 (Make, Move, Maintain) suite of Java-based ERP software for companies in the distribution industry. Called QuickStep for Distribution, the new program includes pre-configured ERP software, and follows other similar programs offered by Lawson for other industries. The company also launched S3 in Asia for the first time.

According to Lawson, the new QuickStep for Distribution program will cut in half the time it takes to complete an M3 implementation for today’s demanding distribution environment, which is faced with