Private equity firm Thoma Cressey Bravo has been driving a wave of consolidation in the market for high availability and data replication software in the i5/OS and OS/400 server market since last fall, having acquired three of the four biggest players and merging them under Vision Solutions. In a surprising move yesterday, IBM, which has always been a strong partner with the makers of HA software for its proprietary server line, acquired the fourth big player in this market, DataMirror, for $161 million.

DataMirror is based in Markham, Ontario, which is fairly close by IBM’s Toronto software

While it may sound trite, there’s an element of truth to the expression “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and it may hold more significance when it comes to business intelligence roll-outs at smaller businesses. To get customers through the knowledge gap, New Generation Software has created a series of solutions, called Decision Assist, that deploy quickly and, perhaps more importantly, allows customers to disassemble and figure out how they work so that additional BI capabilities can be developed.

“The biggest challenge in business intelligence is customers don’t have a concrete idea of what they want, or the ones

Kisco Information Systems put the peddle to the metal with the latest release of SafeNet/400, its security tools for OS/400 and i5/OS servers. With version 8, the company entirely rewrote the product’s kernel, providing a performance kick of as much as 2,000 percent on certain workloads, Kisco says. A text-based security report was also introduced.

Kisco introduced the SafeNet/400 network security utility in 1996, when the Internet first started to take off. At that time, the product, which is developed by MP Associates of Westchester (Kisco provides sales and marketing) was the only network security product of its kind, according

System i shops that prefer Mozilla‘s Firefox to Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer Web browser will rejoice at the latest news from ACOM Solutions, which recently started shipping a new release of EZContent Manager that supports Firefox. Version 3.1.1 also includes improvements in the area of encryption, document retention, and electronic shredding.

ACOM launched EZContent Manager in early 2006 to fill a void for what the company viewed as a lack of low-cost (starting at $10,000) and easy-to-use content management systems for iSeries and System i shops. “Why buy the Rolls-Royce when the Hyundai will do?” said Gregory Church,

Curious how the cost-benefit analysis will weigh out with your legacy modernization project? After all, a positive analysis could mean the difference between becoming the hero of your IT department and being forced to update your resume. LANSA, a purveyor of i5/OS development tools, last week announced a new ROI Calculator that should help users put hard numbers to their software plans.

LANSA’s new ROI Calculator is an Excel spreadsheet that identifies the costs and prospective savings from a modernization project. By providing figures specific to one’s business–such as the number of full-time vs. casual users, the amount of

IBM last week announced the 3996, a new series of optical libraries that use the latest generation of 5.25-inch Ultra Density Optical (UDO) drive technology developed by IBM partner, Plasmon.

The IBM 3996 Optical Library is a large-scale, externally attached device that offers multiple UDO storage technology options. There are three models of the 3996 Library, including the Model 032, the Model 080, and the Model 174. All models ship with the 30 GB UDO Gen 1 drives, but can be ordered with the newer 60 GB UDO Gen 2 drives, if specified.

The Model 032 has one optical

Third-party maintenance service provider netCustomer is offering all J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft customers one free support issue this month as part of its “Independence Day” offering.

NetCustomer launched its cafeteria-style menu of maintenance and support services for users of J.D. Edwards World and EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft Enterprise ERP applications about 16 months ago. Instead of a one size fits all approach, the San Jose, California-based company allows its customers to pick from an assortment of maintenance services, such as regulatory and tax updates, as well as customization and development services.

On July 3, NetCustomer announced a special deal designed

IBM last week announced a new half-height Linear Tape Open (LTO) 3 Ultrium drives, the IBM System Storage TS2230, which connects to System i servers, among other servers.

The TS2230, which carries a list price of $3,645 and becomes available August 3, can be used in a stand-alone or mounted in an industry-standard 19-inch rack. It supports serial-attached SCSI (SAS) or low-voltage differential SCSI attachments to i5/OS, AIX, Unix, Linux, and Windows servers.

Due to its smaller size, the TS2230 offers slightly slower data transfer rates than other LTO 3 gear–60 MB/sec, compared to the spec’s native 80 MB/sec top

BOSaNOVA customers will soon be able to connect up to four monitors to a single thin client workstation thanks to a distribution deal it signed with Matrox Graphics this month.

While big flat panels are all the rage these days, users can absorb just as much information, if not more, by using multiple monitors to interact with host applications via thin client emulators. This is a niche that Matrox Graphics has specialized in for the past three decades, as its products have been embedded into solutions for the financial and healthcare industries, as well as for CAD and dispatch solutions.

Infor recently launched a new version of the enterprise asset management (EAM) application that it obtained with its $216 million acquisition of Datastream last year. With this release, Infor has renamed the Datastream 7i application as Infor EAM Enterprise Edition, and added a new feature designed to streamline the management of configurations.

As a class of product, EAM is designed to help customers manage their large capital assets, such as factories, truck fleets, and machinery. By automating the maintenance schedules for these pieces of equipment, tracking their usage, monitoring their state, and maintaining a tight grip on any warranty claims,