Lawson Software has developed new technological plumbing for M3 (Make, Move, Maintain), formerly the Movex suite from Intentia, that should make future upgrades easier, streamline the move to a service oriented architecture (SOA), and pave the way toward “Landmark,” Lawson’s next-generation ERP suite. In addition to announcing the Lawson M3 System Foundation, the OS/400 ERP software giant also announced an expansion of its partnership with IBM to better serve small and mid size businesses in specific industries.

Lawson, which completed its acquisition of Intentia last year, is currently in the middle of a technological overhaul of its two main product

Meet AdventureTech Group, an IT vendor specializing in OS/400 software and services. You may not have heard much (or anything) about this crew, but that’s soon to be changed, as the Olathe, Kansas, company continues to gain customer wins with iSafari, its Web-enablement software for iSeries servers, and iConga, a two-way message management utility that offers capabilities unmatched by some larger competitors.

iSafari is a sockets-based Web-enablement program for developing two-tier Web applications that push and pull data to and from back-end OS/400 servers. The product includes an RPG component that sits behind the firewall and responds to requests

The brave new world of biometric authentication may be closer than you thought. As organizations struggle with identity management and password headaches, the promise of a simple way to authenticate users through a practically unspoofable tactic–reading their fingerprints–holds great possibility. And one vendor helping to drive the uptake of biometric authentication, Valid Technologies, just expanded its reach.

Valid Tech’s biometric offering, called Valid Secure System Authentication (VSSA), is designed to be the backbone of an enterprise-wide, two-factor authentication system that simplifies user log-ons by eliminating reliance on passwords, and decreases help desk cost due to forgotten passwords.

The product

They may not be pretty to look at, but sometimes you need to see the raw output of i5/OS spool files to see what they’re doing. To that end, Gumbo Software, a developer of OS/400 spool file management tools, is now offering to enterprise computing users a freeware utility called Dumpster.

According to Gumbo, Dumpster is the same tool that it uses to dissect and parse the inner world of OS/400 spool files and print resources. “The output isn’t pretty but with it you can gain insight into the inner workings of i5/OS spool support,” the company says on

Compared to the mysterious and daunting nature of Sarbanes-Oxley, the technical steps that companies must take to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard are crystal clear. Just the same, questions on PCI remain. As of last month, thanks to the creation of the PCI Security Vendor Alliance, there’s an organization dedicated to providing answers.

In 2005, the card payment industry started implementing minimum security guidelines that companies must follow to ensure the safety of sensitive data included in credit, debit, gift, and point of sale (POS) transactions. A vendor that failed to adopt the guidelines–first

Have trouble dealing with incoming invoices? A solution may be in the cards from nuBridges, which last week launched its Incoming Invoice Management (IIM) offering for existing customers that use its EDI software across a value added network (VAN).

For some companies, it may be too expensive or too time consuming to install separate software or manually deal with incoming invoices. With nuBridges new IIM offering, customers can now leverage their existing EDI capability (using nuBridges AS2 or FTP software) to automate the invoicing and payment process.

“The key word is management,” says nuBridges director of e-business solutions, Tiyash

In 1996, sporting goods manufacturer Escalade Sports chose Extol to help it automate its EDI processes. Now, more than 10 years later, Escalade’s decision is continuing to pay off as the company makes acquisitions and prepares for new industry mandates, Extol announced last week.

It’s quite easy to add new trading partners and EDI document types using Extol OS/400-based EDI translation software, called Integrator, says Pam Dallmeier, electronic commerce coordinator with Escalade, one of the largest table tennis equipment makers in the world.

“Extol does not require programming, which is fabulous,” Dallmeier says. “I can on-board trading partners and customize

Do you deal with customers in the Canada? If you do, you probably want to know exactly where they are, to minimize costs. WorksRight Software, which develops address verification software for the U.S. and Canadian marketplaces, last week announced a new edition of its OS/400-based software for assigning and validating Canadian postal codes, called CPC.

WorksRight’s CPC product serves several functions, and is typically used to eliminate data entry errors and boost customer service. The software includes a searchable database that returns city names, province names and abbreviations, area codes, latitude and longitude information, time zones, and daylight savings

Agilon, a developer of campaign management software based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has tapped Linoma Software to provide encryption for Agilon clients sending reports across the Internet, it was announced last month.

Agilon, which was founded in 2005, develops a collection of J2EE-based applications designed to help higher education and nonprofit organizations manage their fundraising activities, including targeting prospects, managing memberships, and running scholarships and events. A key aspect of the Web-based One software suite is helping users develop and maintain life-long relationships and communications with their constituents, which is where Linoma’s Transfer Anywhere tool, also written in Java,

Companies that use XAware‘s software to link business applications into a service oriented architecture (SOA) will find it easier using a more mature release of XA-Suite, which was recently announced by the Colorado company.

XA-Suite was developed to simplify the reuse of existing business logic and data in new SOA applications. Instead of writing one-off integration points from scratch in Java or another language, XA-Suite users take a configuration-driven approach, highlighted by its use of “executable XML,” which improves reproduction and better return on investment, the company says.

The Java-based XA-Suite is composed of the XA-Designer development environment, the