Developing enterprise-strength service desk software is not an easy task. Just ask Microsoft, which recently delayed the roll-out of System Center Service Manager to 2010, a two-year setback. Luckily, there is an established alternative for System i shops looking for ITIL-certified software to help them run their IT service desks: LiveTime Software, which recently received verification from IBM that its J2EE-based software is good to go on the i5/OS server.

In information technology, it’s a fact of life that things break. Even in the System i world, where hardware is designed to go months, or even years, without

RPG development is not what it appears to be. Or maybe it is. There are at least two ways to look at it, and whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on where you sit and perhaps what you are sitting on. For some people it’s like sitting on a comfortable old sofa. They don’t want to get up. For others, it’s more like sitting on a tack. They don’t stay seated for very long and they have a lot to say.

What it is and what it isn’t is the subject of many truths, half-truths, and

The state of automated testing in the IT industry is so laughably bad, it almost makes you want to cry. According to statistics provided by testing tool specialist Original Software, organizations that bought automated testing tools have only managed to automate, at most, the testing of 20 percent of their applications. The other 80 percent is done the old fashioned way: by hand. While Original doesn’t have a silver bullet for this problem, it claims its blended approach to testing could provide a solution.

In its new whitepaper, “The Great Software Testing Swindle,” Original Software makes a compelling case

IBM unleashed a torrent of new storage products last week. Big Blue had a little something for everyone, including new USB-connected tape drives for X64 servers, new policy-based data management features in its popular DR550 archiving array, a major upgrade to its high-end SAN switch, and significant enhancements to its N Series SAN arrays.

Half-Height LTO Drives

Leading things off is IBM’s new System Storage TS3100 and TS3200 “Express” lines of tape libraries, which can now be outfitted with half-height LTO 4 drives. These new tape libraries, which support up to 19.2 TB across 24 cartridge slots and two drives

Have you done anything particularly impressive with your System i machine lately? Or perhaps you know somebody who has? If so, you have exactly 10 days to submit a nomination for a 2008 i5/OS Innovation Award, which will be presented during the upcoming 2008 COMMON Annual Meeting and Expo in Nashville, Tennessee.

COMMON, which judges the contestants and puts on the ceremony with IBM, announced last week that five winners across three categories will be recognized during the fourth annual awards ceremony next month in Nashville. Two awards will be given out for the small and mid size business

System i developers can now utilize Touchtone‘s database application maintenance tool, called QuestView, from the comfort of their IBM-sanctioned, Eclipse-based development tool, whether it’s Rational Developer for System i (RDi) or WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc), the company announced last week.

QuestView is a programming utility that provides fast access to DB2/400 for the purpose of maintaining or debugging existing applications, quickly creating new interactive inquiry applications, or similar such activities. Traditionally accessed from a 5250 interface, the product provides single or multiple- record viewing, search and replace, undelete, JD Edwards data dictionary support, support for Unicode, hex

i5/OS document management software developer S4i Systems has formed a partnership with Tallega Software, which resells and implements scanners, imaging, and content management solutions, the companies announced recently.

S4i Systems helps System i shops modernize their forms and documents with S4i Express, its main offering. This document management system monitors System i print queues, processes the output with segmenting or bundling rules, converts it into PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, CSV, or plain text format, and then distributes it electronically (via e-mail, fax, FTP, or the Web), prints it, or archives it.

Thanks to its new deal with Tallega, S4i

CHH Consulting, a System i consultancy based in Manchester, England, will resell the HomeRun suite of DB2/400 database tools developed by Centerfield Technology, the companies announced recently.

CHH Consulting assists System i shops in England with several aspects of their chosen IT environment, including application modernization, security, virtualization, high availability, and systems management. For each of these areas, CHH provides the implementation expertise, while System i ISVs, such as Barsa Consulting Group, Bytware, Goering iSeries Solutions, and looksoftware, provide the software.

Now you can add Centerfield to that list. CHH chose Centerfield for its

The Reflection and EXTRA! collection of emulators from Attachmate has achieved compliance with the Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC), a new standard that government agencies must adopt to ensure their Windows XP and Windows Vista desktops are configured securely.

The FDCC, in case you’re not aware, is a guideline created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that defines more than 700 specific settings in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Internet Explorer 7.0 that governmental agencies must use to properly secure their desktops. The initial deadline for FDCC compliance was February 1, but

Group 1 Software recently launched a new release of Sagent Data Flow, a product that provides extract, transform, and load (ETL) functionality, as well as some business intelligence features. With version 6.5, the Pitney-Bowes subsidiary has delivered a new graphical interface, in addition to other new features.

Sagent Data Flow is a suite of integration software that programmers and business analysts can use to access, integrate, and analyze data residing across a variety of applications, databases, or data file formats. The software is capable of performing tasks such as joining information from multiple data sources, transposing data sets, performing time-data