Lifecycle management is intertwined with business process management, which is another way of saying best practices for project management. It supports organizational structure and skill requirements through procedures that control IT department processes and change by monitoring workflow and the quality of service. We’ve come a long way from software change management, which is hugely important in application development environments, but just one aspect of lifecycle management the way it is viewed by Matt Scholl, president and COO at Aldon, which announced one new and two upgraded products last week.

“The IBM AS/400 (IBM i, System i, iSeries) has

Former Magic Software CEO and president Eitan Naor will be in Israeli court today in an attempt to regain his position following his abrupt dismissal last month. Naor, who was hired less than a year ago as part of an executive shake-up at the troubled software vendor, was ousted in late April following a disagreement with the board. Meanwhile, the company tried its best to move forward by announcing that its iBOLT integration software can now be purchased online at Salesforce.com‘s AppExchange marketplace.

Magic announced April 30 that Naor was no longer acting as its CEO and chairman. That

MKS this month released a new version of its change management solution for the IBM i OS, Implementer 2008. Making the software easier for developers to use was the main focus of this release, which brought more than 200 changes, including support for IBM’s latest i OS development tools, and the elimination of system state programs. The company also warned investors that its revenues jumped more than 66 percent in its most recent quarter, largely the result of one big deal.

MKS develops application lifecycle management (ALM) tools that automate the management of development and configuration of tasks that programmers,

INGENICA last week introduced a new release of UniPrint Host Edition, its universal print driver that enables users of host systems such as mainframes, Unix servers, and i OS-based Power Systems servers (formerly System i) to print using inexpensive Windows servers, as opposed to expensive dedicated host printers. With the new release, hosts no longer need a separate Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Server machine to process the print jobs, making the printing process smoother and less complex.

Installed on a Windows server, UniPrint Host Server enables any mix of mainframes and Power Systems servers running i (formerly i5/OS) and AIX

Organizations that house mainframes to process their data can now test their 3270 applications using tools from Original Software, the software company announced last week. Demand for mainframe support among its customers led Original to support IBM big iron hardware, the company says.

TestDrive-Assist, which Original formally launched about 14 months ago, enables organizations to test their software using a mix of manual and automated processes. With the software, much of the development of actual test scripts is still coded directly by hand, which for years has been the traditional way of performing functional and regression tests.

But

Interpec, a developer of i OS-based quality assurance software used by pharmaceutical, chemical, food, and beverage manufacturers around the world, has licensed Valid Technologies i OS-based VSSA biometric authentication system to help its customers in the pharmaceutical industry comply with the digital signature requirements of FDA 21 CFR 11, the companies announced last week.

Valid Tech, which is based in Boca Raton, Florida, develops and sells a biometric authentication system called Valid Secure System Authentication (VSSA) that’s designed to be the backbone of an enterprise-wide strong authentication system. By using VSSA running on an IBM i OS-based Power Systems

i OS (formerly i5/OS) software developer nuBridges has formed a partnership with Chilli IT, an English consultancy that specializes in i OS-based Power Systems servers (formerly System i), that will see Chilli IT reselling its suite of security and compliance solutions, nuBridges announced last week.

The partnership is centered on nuBridges’ Data Secure software, an integrated encryption, key management, and logging package designed to secure data in fields, databases, and applications across multiple operating systems, including i OS, z/OS, Unix, Linux, and Windows.

Data Secure will provide Chilli IT’s customers with the encryption capabilities they need to

When Wilson Sporting Goods went looking for a supply of RFID printer/encoders for its new supply chain project, it didn’t have to look far. The IT director picked Zebra Technologies based on previous experience with the company, and as a result Wilson is now using Zebra’s devices to create RFID tags from its OS/400 ERP applications.

It didn’t take long for Ed Matthews, director of information technology for Wilson, to select a vendor to assist with its requirement to implement RFID Gen 2 encoding at the manufacturer. “I had worked with Zebra before and knew their equipment was very reliable,”

Vision Solutions, a developer of high available and systems management tools for i (formerly i5/OS) has launched a new blog at visionsolutionsinc.blogspot.com where it will dispense technical tips and advice for managing i OS-based Power Systems servers (formerly System i).

i OS, which celebrates its 20th birthday this year, is a mature and stable operating system with a rich collection of commands and controls for manipulating nearly every aspect of i-based Power Systems servers. In many circumstances, the operating system provides multiple ways to accomplish a given task, each with its own benefits and caveats.

That richness can complicate

SugarCRM, developer of the popular open source CRM software that runs in the i-based Power Systems server, is enabling users to wirelessly access Web-based reports using their smart phones and SugarCRM 5.1, the company announced recently. While SugarCRM highlighted the capability to work with BlackBerrys and iPhones–the smart phones packing the most panache with business users and consumers these days–company officials confirmed the CRM system also works with Windows Mobile smart phones, too.

The Cupertino, California, software company unveiled a collection of wireless mobility and business intelligence enhancements with the release of version 5.1 last week. At the top