Magic Software announced last week it will give away copies of eDeveloper, its development environment for writing applications for Windows, the Web, and i5/OS servers, as part of an effort to boost the product’s visibility, especially among young programmers and students. The company also announced a contest to see who can create the “coolest” applications with eDeveloper, with the winners receiving Apple iPods, which are undeniably cool.

Times have been rough recently on Magic Software, a publicly traded company based in Israel with U.S. headquarters in Irvine, California. Following poor financial results and management missteps in Europe, the company embarked

When executives at Fujifilm U.S.A. looked at the way backup tapes were being transported, they weren’t impressed. They found instances of backup tapes falling out the backs of trucks, putting millions at risk of identity theft. They’ve heard horror stories of tapes being jostled to death in transport, rendering their data unreadable . . . or tapes being ruined when shipped in containers that were left out in the rain . . . or disgruntled employees or snooping couriers getting their hands on tapes . . . maybe your tapes.

In short, they found a critical business process rife with

Vision Solutions last week announced the availability of iTera High Availability version 5.0, the first new product from i5/OS software house since the merger with former competitor, iTera, was finalized in November. iTera HA 5.0 marks the beginning of an ambitious, multi-year transition for Vision Solutions, which is seeking to move its legacy installed base to the remote journaling-based iTera product line while simultaneously keeping its large customers happy and opening new markets with a low-end HA offerings.

Before we get into Vision’s current and future product plans and how the iTera products fit into it all, let’s recap the

Aside from salaries and related people costs, real estate typically accounts for the biggest expense on most companies’ balance sheets. However, most ERP suites lack the capability to bring all the necessary elements together to get the most out of their investments in buildings and land, according to Accruent, a real estate performance management (RPM) software developer. Now Accruent says it’s on the cusp of taking RPM to the next level thanks to the new graphics capabilities in Windows Vista.

There are several factors driving the adoption of RPM software like Accruent’s, says Steven Wong, director of technology for

Have an i595 on the horizon? Then you’ll absolutely need a dedicated Hardware Management Console (HMC) to manage its partitions. Even if you’re not in the market for the biggest i5/OS server on the market, you might be interested in the newest rack-mounted HMC model 7310-CR4 announced by IBM last week.

IBM introduced the HMCs for iSeries nearly three years ago when it launched its Power 5-based “Squadron” servers, including the model 520 and model 570 iSeries servers. The HMCs, which before that had been used to manage pSeries and zSeries machines, were needed to eliminate a potential failure

Group 1 Software recently launched Address Quality Hub, a new address-cleansing product that will help users get the maximum allowable postal discounts from the U.S. Postal Service. Group 1 says the new product will be good to have this summer, when the USPS is scheduled to impose stricter postage discount rules.

This August, the USPS will implement more stringent postage discount rules designed to reduce undeliverable-as-addressed, or UAA, mail. The USPS fails to deliver about 350 million pieces of mail every year due to address-related errors, costing the government about $60 million annually.

The USPS hopes to improve address accuracy

Banks and credit unions are snapping up Opening Act, a new program for banks that allows customers to set up accounts and apply for loans over the Internet, says Jack Henry & Associates, a Missouri developer of banking software.

“Today’s convenience-driven consumers expect their financial institutions to host Internet banking sites that allow them to securely access their accounts, initiate transactions, and conduct research 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week,” says Tony Wormington, president of Jack Henry. “Opening Act, a production-proven addition to our Internet banking platform, is a Web-based origination system that enables consumers to seamlessly originate deposit accounts, consumer and mortgage

Seagull Software, a developer of refacing and application modernization tools for the i5/OS platform, has been accepted into a new service oriented architecture (SOA) program from IBM, called the IBM SOA Specialty, the software vendor announced last week.

The IBM SOA Specialty program was created to help separate the wheat from the SOA chaff. IBM business partners must meet technical and business requirements to be accepted into the program. Once they’re in, they gain the SOA backing of Big Blue, and get to participate in the IT goliath’s SOA-oriented sales and marketing programs.

Kim Addington, Seagull’s executive vice

Students who are participating in the System i Innovation Challenge now have free access to a range of software products from ProData Computer Services. The Nebraska software vendor also announced a contest of its own, topped with a $1,000 prize.

Last month, IBM and the online iSociety community announced the System i Innovation Challenge. This contest is designed to spur interest in the i5/OS platform among college students in the U.S. and Canada. The students who develop the best viral video about the System i and the best System i application win a trip to Nintendo headquarters in Redmond,

Need to secure those backup tapes? If your shop is big enough, you might be in the market for IBM‘s latest backup technology, the TS3400 tape library, which packages high-end, hardware-based encryption capabilities in a midrange body.

The TS3400 is a compact, 5U device that supports up to two TS1120 tape drives. These are the drives, introduced last fall, that use IBM’s proprietary 3592 linear Serpentine tape format (which it used to call “Magstar,” but doesn’t anymore).

With up to 18 cartridges stored in two magazines, the TS3400 offers up to 12.6 TB of native capacity, or 37.8 TB