There’s nothing wrong with being “green.” Indeed, some people today see being green as a mandate from Mother Earth. But for human resources managers who must train and retain employees, the AS/400’s character-based “green-screen” interface is a giant turn off and an obstacle to be overcome. To that end, Kronos, which knows a thing or two about human resources, delivered a new release of its iSeries Central suite of HR apps last year that features HTML screens throughout.

You wouldn’t know about iSeries Central version 6 by watching for Kronos announcements or monitoring industry publications, because the Chelmsford, Massachusetts,

Varsity Logistics last week unveiled a collection of new business analytics products that are aimed at putting more usable information into the hands of shipping operations managers. The new products include TransData, a prebuilt data mart designed to crunch historical shipping data that runs in the IBM i (OS/400) environment, and ShipView Plus, a browser-based reporting tool that includes dashboards and drill-down capabilities.

Varsity has been working with System i business intelligence software developer New Generation Software for the past year in the creation of ShipView Plus, which was originally scheduled for release last summer. As software development projects often

One of the problems with running your business on Excel is that it introduces collaboration challenges. When spreadsheets are e-mailed around, data gets corrupted, the security of proprietary formulas gets compromised, and “cut and paste” becomes a business process. One vendor that has come up with a novel solution is eXpresso, which hosts an Excel-like product that multiple parties can access at the same time through a browser. Earlier this month, eXpresso became available through the industry portal Covisint, where it targets the auto industry.

Despite the investment of billions of dollars into product lifecycle management (PLM) and

SunGard‘s Availability Services business unit last week launched a new reseller partner program to augment its direct-sales approach and expand its offerings to small and mid size businesses. The new program covers all of the company’s offerings–everything from traditional tape-based backup to hot site recovery and full high availability (HA) replication–and is aimed at generating referrals from resellers and “white box” versions of SunGard’s services that partners can resell themselves.

SunGard has always sold its disaster recovery (DR) and HA services using a direct-sales model. Considering that a good percentage of SunGard’s customers are big, Fortune 500-size companies, it’s

Version 8 of TMW Systems‘ TL2000 suite of trucking software started shipping at the end of 2008. And in the next few weeks or months, the product’s IBM System i user base can expect to receive several updates in the form of .NET-based Web components originally developed for TMW’s Windows trucking software.

TMW announced the general availability of TL2000 version 8 late last year. The new release brings several functional enhancements, including error-checking for driver-entered data in mobile communications, easier edits to correct dispatch data, and tighter menu-level security.

The new release also gets integration with ISDC ExpertFuel fuel-optimization

S4i Systems last week announced the availability of a new subscription model for its DASD optimization products for the IBM Power Systems (System i) server. For as little as $350 per month, customers can get access to DASD-Plus, DASD-Plus Chart, and DASD-Plus Alert, the former Centerfield Technology product previously known as disk/HUNTER.

S4i System’s trio of DASD optimization products cover many aspects of System i care and feeding. General housekeeping is the domain of DASD-Plus, which automates tasks such as clearing history logs, compressing data, resizing libraries, and reorganizing physical file members. DASD-Plus Chart gives a graphical view into the

The economy may be weighing down some software companies. But VAI appears to be cruising right along, continuing to build on the momentum from a solid 2008 sales year. Last week the New York company announced two new customers for its i OS-based ERP suite, including Well-Pict, a berry grower in California and SPRO Corp., a fishing tackle company in Georgia.

Founded in 1997, SPRO Corp. is a manufacturer, importer, and distributor of fishhooks, lures, jigs, snells, rigs, swivels, and other sportfishing products. The Kennesaw, Georgia, company counts several large chain stores, wholesalers, dealers, and consumers like you among its

IBM last week unveiled an update to its Lotus Web Content Management software that includes a second HTML editor that users can access from a Web browser. The new editor that ships with version 6.1 is an OEM’ed version of an Ephox product called EditLive that is designed to be easier to use by non-technical users.

According to Ephox, its IBM Lotus Web Content Management (LWCM) provides a Word-like interface “that is easy for business users who know nothing about HTML and want to keep it that way.”

IBM says the software will free users from relying on technical staff

Solimar Systems last week unveiled a new release of its flagship print management software, called Print Director Enterprise, and unveiled a preview of a new product called SOLitrack that’s designed to help track print jobs in busy, high-volume environments.

Solimar Print Director Enterprise, or SPDE, is a collection of Windows-based products aimed at centrally managing the production print environment. The software enables practically any printer to support practically any host, including proprietary environments like i-based IBM Power Systems servers or mainframes that rely on the AFP and IPDS print architectures.

With SPDE version 7.0, Solimar has brought support for 64-bit

Spending on RFID–including transponders, readers, software and services–will amount to $5.6 billion, ABI Research said last week. While the number is lower than ABI had previously predicted, it doesn’t mean the wireless technology is in a state of “despair or turmoil,” the research group said.

It’s been just a few months since ABI released its prediction that RFID would grow 15 percent annually to reach $10 billion by 2013. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now tell that those November predictions were slightly rosy, as overall IT spending has dipped southward along with the poor economy.

“The recession has