Sentillion this week introduced a new single sign-on (SSO) product designed to be easier to install and more affordable than traditional SSO products. When it ships in November, the new offering, called expreSSO, will provide a centralized sign-on and authentication process that organizations can install in just five days for as little as $35 per user, according to Sentillion.

Since it was founded in 1998, Boston-based Sentillion has developed a strong reputation in the healthcare field. About 450 hospitals around the country have adopted the company’s flagship product, a sophisticated suite of identity and “context” management software called Vergence.

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The notion of vaulting is really rather enticing. For a nominal monthly subscription fee, you can transmit critical business data securely over the Web to a backup site that is carefully maintained on your behalf. But what about the security and speed of the Web? Is it robust enough for enterprise-level backup? Furthermore, do vaulting solutions offer support for the increasing number of IT departments that use other platforms in addition to System i boxes?

Compared to traditional backup methods that involve tape, vaulting solutions support recovery point objectives that are relatively short. Vaulting solutions fall into a class of

Earlier this month, Bsafe Information Systems introduced a new security product that provides IP packet filtering for System i servers. Called IP Packet Lockdown, the new product gives users more control over exactly which IP addresses, and through which ports, are allowed access to the system. The new product will provide another layer of security, especially when coupled with i5/OS’s exit-point security.

IP packet filtering is a security technique that is often used inside firewalls to block unwanted Internet traffic. It’s a platform-neutral technology that doesn’t have anything to do specifically with the System i server, but it can be

System i shops struggling to comply with the onrush of new laws and rules affecting security will find it easier to track the computer-related components of those rules thanks to a new release from Raz-Lee Security. In late August, Raz-Lee announced the launch of iSecurity Audit version 8.2, which adds more than 200 new pre-defined compliance reports, and brings several other new features designed to help customers with their compliance initiatives.

The number of new laws and industry guidelines that companies must deal with today is unprecedented in this country. Whether it’s Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, PCI, Basel II, the

Excel Program Inventions, an IBM business partner based in Southern California, is taking over North American sales of CenturioDB, a tool that provides i5/OS applications with very quick access to data residing off the platform. EPI also announced a new release of CenturioDB, which was developed and released in 2006 by a German company of the same name

A year ago, the German programmer Markus Litters launched the first release of CenturioDB. The software was designed to allow System i users and applications to access external databases interactively, directly from the 5250 green screen, via SQL commands, without

T.JOIN Transportation Company, Taiwan’s largest freight forwarder and logistics company, has adopted MIMIX ha1, the former Lakeview Technologies high availability product now sold by Vision Solutions, the software company announced recently.

T.JOIN used to have difficulty satisfying customer demand for information about its stuff. This was largely due to the company’s reliance on a decentralized collection of 60 computers. At any given time during the day or night, one or more of the computers would be offline for routine maintenance or backups, taking the information they contained offline, as well.

The decentralized computing structure made other tasks difficult too,

IBM completed its $161 million acquisition of i5/OS high availability software provider DataMirror last week. The IT giant also announced that DataMirror will be integrated into its Information Management software business, which includes the DB2 database and related products.

IBM announced its intention to buy DataMirror in mid July, just after DataMirror’s competitor, Vision Solutions, shocked the industry by acquiring Lakeview Technologies, also a big player in the high availability market.

While DataMirror’s reputation as a major player in the i5/OS high availability market had waned over the years as a company named iTera (since acquired by Vision

Jack Henry & Associates has struck a deal with HealthEquity, a provider of health savings account (HSA) solutions, to provide outsourced HSA administration services to banks and credit unions that rely on Jack Henry’s software, the software company announced last week.

Jack Henry has been successfully developing software for community banks since it was founded more than 30 years ago. Over the years, the company has expanded through organic growth and acquisition, and today the $668 million company offers a wide range of software and services to about 8,700 customers through three divisions, including Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and

IBM‘s former printing division, which it now operates as a joint venture with Ricoh called the InfoPrint Solutions Company, announced a new developer program this week to allow its partners and customers to test their new printing environments–particularly high-end jobs using Advanced Function Presentation (AFP)–before going live.

For the last nine months, InfoPrint Solutions and a select group of partners–including Exstream Software, GMC Software, Pitney Bowes’ subsidiary Group 1, PrintSoft, and XMPie–have been piloting a new program called the InfoPrint Solutions Developer Program. Under the pilot program, these partners gained access to printing

For years, IBM–and especially the IBM Web site–have been criticized as being slow, cumbersome, and difficult to navigate. With last week’s introduction of four new “gizmos” for IBM’s popular developerWorks Web site, Big Blue is showing that it’s not a technological dinosaur and that it has a few Web 2.0 moves of its own.

Last week IBM announced it is using syndication technology to allow Yahoo!, Google, and NetVibes subscribers to easily access any podcast, forum, blog, wiki, story, briefing, or tutorial hosted on developerWorks. The new content delivery mechanism hooks into Yahoo!’s Widget, Google’s Gadget, and