IBM Lotus has every intention of using Britney Spears. Not as a spokesperson, for God sakes, but as an example. Spears dominates the social networking phenomenon like Big Blue wishes it could. Specifically, Lotus wants to apply social networking to business processes and team collaboration efforts. Not that Britney doesn’t mean business, but IBM has very different ideas about putting social networking tools into the hands of business professionals in organizations around the world.

In the words of Michael Rhodin, general manager at IBM Lotus, the collaborative capabilities of social software–portals, e-mail, integrated document collaboration, and unified communications–are “enterprise-ready.” That’s

An affordable OS/400 encryption solution was launched last week by Applied Logic Software, an Oregon-based developer of several IBM midrange utilities. With Pro/Encrypt 1.4, i5/OS and OS/400 shops gain the capability to encrypt DB2/400 data, thereby paving the way toward compliance with new laws, while making it more unlikely that sensitive data falls into the wrong hands.

You can scarcely open your e-mail inbox these days without reading of the latest data breech. Ten million people here, 75,000 people there, another 50 million people there–you can’t help but wonder what company identity thieves are going to target next, and

Thin client news has been arriving fast and furious from BOSaNOVA lately, and the pattern continued during the last couple weeks, as the Phoenix, Arizona, company announced four new thin clients–including two additions to its slim and sleek “Rabbit” line of thin client devices, and two members of its new 1300 Series line of high performance terminals.

Leading things off are the two new Rabbit terminals, the RBT-802 and the RBT-820, which run Linux and Windows operating systems, respectively. These devices are similar in many ways. They feature nearly identical hardware, including AMD LX 800 processors, up to 128 MB

GT Software recently issued a new release of Ivory VisualConnect, a software product for converting 5250 and 3270 screens into Web-based interfaces. With version 5.3, the company has boosted the product’s integration with Ivory Service Architect, its primary service oriented architecture (SOA) development tools, making it easier to create Web services from applications that have also been re-faced with Ivory VisualConnect.

GT Software is one of a number of software companies based in Atlanta that focuses on helping OS/400 and OS/390 shops open up access to their legacy applications. While the company’s primary focus is developing software for the IBM

OS/400 ERP developer Vormittag Associates (VAI) and United Computer Group (UCG), a provider of an online backup service, announced a partnership last week that will see VAI marketing UCG’s VAULT400 service to its installed base of iSeries customers.

UCG launched VAULT400 about a year ago to serve the growing market for online backup and disaster recovery solutions from its Ohio-based data centers. VAULT400 is a private-label version of EVault‘s backup technology, which has supported the OS/400 server since 2004. EVault was acquired by disk maker Seagate Technology in late December, but it appears that it has not affected EVault’s

ERP software from Xdata Solutions is being utilized to automate several processes at the Kansas Correctional Industries (KCI), a program managed by the state’s department of corrections that puts inmates to work at various tasks, including helping to tame wild mustangs rounded up on the prairie.

Last week, Xdata announced that KCI has gone live with its Graphical Xdata (GXD) suite of ERP software, which runs on OS/400 and Windows servers. According to Xdata, the software has streamlined various business processes at KCI, including order-entry, manufacturing order generation for KCI’s metal products, chemicals, and clothing business units; materials transfers; and

Aldon has joined the growing ranks of OS/400 ISVs aligned with Microsoft‘s Midrange Alliance Program (MAP), the software company announced last week.

Aldon, which is based in Emeryville, California, says joining the MAP will further the company’s goal of helping customers bridge the gap between their IBM iSeries and Microsoft Windows applications.

“Joining the MAP solidifies Aldon’s strategy to help our customers get more from their existing investments while providing increased interoperability between various platforms and technologies,” says Matt Scholl, Aldon’s chief operating officer. “We look forward to working with Microsoft on driving many successful platform integration projects for

Midrange ERP giant Infor unveiled new supplier relationship management (SRM) software last week. SupplyWEB version 10 includes new features designed to improve collaboration between customers and suppliers, and brings new tools designed to enhance data accuracy and demand and order management.

SupplyWeb is an internally developed product that’s based on technology Infor obtained in its June 2003 acquisition of Future 3 and its December 2002 acquisition of BRAIN North America, an automotive ERP software company, according to Kevin Piotrowski, the company’s director of industry and product marketing for the automotive sector. It runs on Windows and Linux, but supports OS/400

nuBridges this month launched a new business-to-business (B2B) file transfer product called Secure Transaction Manager that’s designed to transmit data over practically any protocol, including AS1, AS2, AS3, HTTP, HTTP/S, FTP, and FTP/S, using SSL2, SSL3, or TSL1.

nuBridges launched STM to fill what it perceived as a gap in the market for file transfer products. “Moving information isn’t getting any easier, or any safer,” says Gary Palgon, a product manager with Atlanta-based nuBridges. “Whether between companies, branch offices, or even departments in the same enterprise, it’s a challenge exchanging data with so many varying transfer protocols and file-size limitations.”

When you think about “open source software,” chances are good the word “Linux” is lurking close by. That’s a mindset that Microsoft would love to change, and it got some help in that regard this week when product lifecycle management (PLM) software developer Aras announced that its flagship Windows-based Innovator product suite is now available, free of charge, under an open source licensing model.

Aras is a Lawrence, Massachusetts, developer of tools designed to help programmers and managers maintain their existing systems and build new functionality without stepping on each other’s toes, going over budget, missing deadlines, or bungling project