It’s mid-March in Southern California during La Nina, which this year means you need snow chains. Walk into any major sporting goods store, and you’ll be bombarded with swimming trunks and boogie boards, despite the fact that the ocean is 50 degrees and the mountains are still covered in snow. But with the upcoming release of a new i5/OS-based supply chain planning application from JDA Software Group, hopefully retailers will see better accuracy in their prediction for demand of “slow and erratic” items, like snow chains.

Forecasting demand in the consumer supply chain is a notoriously fickle business. While

A business intelligence system can have access to hundreds of terabytes of data, but if a user can’t find what she needs in a timely manner, the system has failed. To speed the absorption of BI data, many companies today are turning to graphical dashboards, which boil large amounts of data down into easy-to-comprehend graphics. Last week, Help Systems announced it has joined the ranks of the Web-based graphical dashboard vendors with a new release of its SEQUEL Web Interface offering.

Help/Systems has been in the business intelligence business since it purchased Advanced Systems Concepts nearly a year and a

IBM will ship i5/OS V6R1 next month, but System i customers may have a bit longer to wait before third-party software developers can roll out support for the new operating system. More than half of the software vendors contacted by IT Jungle for an informal poll on V6R1 readiness said they would be ready for the new operating system at general availability. But questions remain about the readiness of the other 40 percent of vendors, particularly the ERP application vendors.

When IBM ships i5/OS V6R1 next month, it will mark only the third time in the history of the platform

IBM has issued a patch for a cross-site scripting security vulnerability in Lotus Quickr for i5/OS, the computer security research and development company Secunia reported last week. The flaw was given a “less critical” rating. Meanwhile, another security flaw in i5/OS reported earlier this month has been partially patched by IBM.

According to a Secunia advisory published last week, a security vulnerability in Lotus Quickr for i5/OS version 8 can be exploited by hackers to conduct cross-site scripting attacks. The problem is the result of not properly validating certain input before it’s returned to a user when anonymous access

BOSaNOVA last week announced that it has added SSL encryption capabilities to the 5250 emulation running on its thin clients. The technology was added to help customers comply with the Payment Cardholder Industry (PCI) mandates, according to the company, which has been moving strongly into the IT security arena over the last year.

Twin-ax controllers were once a big part of BOSaNOVA’s business. But today, you’re more likely to call the Phoenix, Arizona, company to beef up your IT security than you are to squeeze more life out of your aging SNA architecture.

A year ago, the company started down

A more attractive pricing model was one of the key reasons the Symtrax electronic forms package was selected by Andrews Sykes Hire, an English company that rents heaters, air conditioners, and other equipment manufactured by its parent company, according to a recent Symtrax case study.

MapForm is an electronic document management system that allows users to move away from preprinted forms and print business output on standard laser printers. The software works by applying document overlays to output from a variety of systems, including i5/OS servers, and then either distributing the final document via e-mail or sending it to a

There are lots of benefits to implementing a service oriented architecture (SOA), according to iWay Software, which is in the SOA middleware business. Unfortunately, streamlining the transfer of files in enterprise environments is not one of those benefits. In fact, SOAs tend to complicate the matter. That’s why last week iWay added a new file transfer option to its suite of SOA software.

As SOA adoption creeps forward, organizations begin learning what works and what doesn’t work in an SOA. Apparently, there is quite a bit of work to do in enterprise file transfer in SOA frameworks, according to

Magic Software last week announced plans to deliver a new set of development tools aimed at helping independent software vendors (ISVs) deliver their applications using the software as a service (SaaS) approach. The Israeli company also delayed filing of its quarterly and year-end financial results by a week.

Magic says it has already completed a round of beta testing for its new offering, called the SaaS Enabled Application Platform, or SEAP, and plans to officially roll it out later this year, starting in Japan.

SEAP is based largely on eDeveloper, the 4GL-based integrated development environment (IDE) for i5/OS and Windows

Informatica last week launched a new suite of software and services aimed at migrating data among enterprise systems. The offering, called the Data Migration Suite, includes specially packaged versions of Informatica’s popular data integration and data quality tools, along with professional services.

Moving large amounts of data among critical business systems can be a harrowing task. Whether it’s for a new ERP application implementation, a consolidation of enterprise systems, or as part of a merger or acquisition, a data migration project should be planned well in advance to minimize the chance of errors.

But that’s not how organizations typically approach

Data integration tool vendor HiT Software last week revealed a series of new partners who will represent the Silicon Valley company in the burgeoning South American IT market. The company also hired a Latin American sales manager, and translated sections of it Web site into Spanish.

HiT Software develops a series of tools designed to make it easier for companies to move data among their major relational databases (including DB2/400), XML, and Windows and Java applications using an assortment of .NET, OLE DB, ODBC, and JDBC techniques.

Interest in HiT’s tools among South and Central American organizations has increased considerably