Don’t ask RevSoft president John Massey about “lights out” data processing. Sure, his company’s suite of systems management tools free up time for operators and admins for other tasks or even some golf. But it’s the bells, whistles, and lights, served up through a bright GUI best viewed on a flat panel big screen, that helps people understand exactly what’s going on with their servers. That sets the RevSoft suite apart, but Massey doesn’t like the term “lights out.”

2006 was a busy year for RevSoft. The Australian software house was coming off a nasty break-up with New York-based Software

Oracle unveiled major new releases of four out of its five application lines last week, including new releases of the J.D. Edwards World that is popular among users of the IBM iSeries platform. The software giant also backed off a bit on Fusion, its next-generation unified ERP platform, as it emphasized how responsive and flexible it’s being to its customers’ near-term needs.

It might be a stretch to call it a “kinder, gentler” Oracle, but there was an unmistakable shift in the software giant’s rhetoric last week as it unveiled J.D. Edwards World A9.1, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, PeopleSoft

LogLogic is preparing a new release of its log management offering aimed at helping IT professionals and end users alike. When version 4 of its software ships by the end of the quarter, it will include a new indexing engine, which should make it easier for users to search through the millions of log messages generated by servers, applications, and network devices. It will also include a new Web portal interface designed to empower end users to do their own log research instead of taking up all of IT’s time.

LogLogic ships prepackaged reporting software with its collection of rack-mountable,

Halcyon Software, a U.K.-based developer of OS/400 systems management tools, recently updated its product offerings with new releases of its cross-platform Enterprise Console and its Intel-oriented Network Server Suite. The company also started the move into the on-demand world by giving customers in Europe the option to rent software, instead of paying large upfront licensing fees.

Halcyon’s Enterprise Console is a graphical, PC-based product that automates the task of gathering and sorting through messages generated from iSeries and Windows servers (although it supports any source of SNMP traps, according to Halcyon). By color-coding the various messages it receives

IBM iSeries users who are also part of the Lotus Notes/Domino installed base, particularly those where Domino applications are considered mission critical, are taking an infrastructure streamlining approach as they upgrade to newer versions of N/D and the System i. It’s not a universal occurrence, but could be considered a trend according to Jean Heidelberg, an IBM executive with knowledge of both the Lotus and the System i sides of the business.

“It aligns with doing Domino release upgrades,” Heidelberg says of the infrastructure streamlining. “People step back and say this would be a good time to simplify an infrastructure

iSeries development tool maker LANSA and the analyst firm Aberdeen Group are hooking up to deliver a Webcast this week on the topic of System i modernization. The Webcast, titled “Business Drivers, Benefits and Recommendations for System i Modernization,” will start at noon EST Thursday.

Peter Kastner, a vice president and research director with Aberdeen Group, will host the event with David Brault, product marketing manager for LANSA Americas. Kastner, you will remember, was the author of the Aberdeen report issued this past October, which looked at application modernization trends among companies of all sizes (see “Legacy Application Modernization Strategies

COBOL modernization tool maker Acucorp has joined Microsoft‘s Midrange Alliance Program, the software vendor announced last week.

Acucorp develops a suite of development tools called Acucorp-GT that’s designed to help organizations with COBOL applications extract the underlying business functionality, make the COBOL applications behave better when integrating with C, Java, and XML code, and migrate the applications to new applications. According to the San Diego, California, company, its version of the COBOL language is the most portable of all COBOL languages, and its “single-source, compile-once” deployment supports 600 different operating systems..

Microsoft’s Midrange Alliance Program (MAP) director, Spyros Sakellariadis,

Testing automation software developer Parasoft recently unveiled SOAtest version 5.0, a suite of tools for ensuring that applications delivered using service oriented architecture (SOA) technology are secure, reliable, and compliant. The new version is easier to use and spots problems faster than previous versions, the company says.

SOAtest is a collection of test and analysis tools designed to help users and developers ensure new SOA applications are ready to do real work in the enterprise. The software performs Web Services Description Language (WSDL) validation, schema validation, functional testing of the client, functional testing of the server, performance testing, and the

Alfa-Bank, one of Russia’s largest privately owned banks, has implemented Lakeview Technology‘s MIMIX ha1 for i5/OS software to protect itself from both planned and unplanned outages, the software company announced recently.

Alpha-Bank operates 121 branches and subsidiary banks across Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Netherlands, and maintains assets of $9.8 billion. The bank is progressive, in that it’s one of a handful of Russian banks to adopt Western accounting standards. For the past three years, it’s also headed the list of the “best IT banks in Russia,” an annual survey conducted by an independent Russian research group.

However, despite

J.D. Edwards shops looking for a document management software provider may want to check out Bottomline Technologies, whose document management software products were recently certified to work with Oracle‘s J.D. Edwards ERP software, as well as the E-Business Suite, via Oracle’s Fusion Middleware.

Bottomline Technologies sells document and payment management solutions that work with a number of legacy ERP systems. The New Hampshire company developed a special affinity for the J.D. Edwards product line largely through the acquisitions of two companies Create!form International (in 2003) and FormScape (last October) that developed electronic output management solutions commonly used in