Think Twitter is just for tweens and people without enough real work to do? Think again. Kisco Information Systems last week unveiled a new product that turns Twitter into a communications and systems management tool for the IBM Power Systems server (AS/400). Kisco’s new product, called SNDTWEET, introduces several practical real-world business uses for the new social networking service that is sweeping the nation like a nasty virus.

If you’ve watched the news lately, you’ve noticed that everybody seems to be all atwitter over Twitter. For those uninitiated or over 30, Twitter is all about answering the question “What are

System i security software vendor nuBridges last week unveiled a new product called nuBridges Protect Token Manager that puts a different spin on the problem of encryption in dispersed corporate environments. Instead of encrypting data as it rests in a company’s various databases and applications, the product replaces the critical data values with a token that points back to a single database, thereby providing a more secure repository for sensitive data, as well as preserving data formats.

nuBridges is well versed in the field of encryption. The Atlanta, Georgia, software company, which targets the IBM Power Systems server as well

Some people would have you believe they just can’t wait until tomorrow because IT technology gets better looking every day. But it’s not the leaps and bounds type of advancements that it’s often made out to be. It’s a process of continual, but gradual, enhancements. Because BCD is trumpeting improvements in its IBM i application modernization suite this week at the COMMON Conference in Reno, Nevada, it makes for a good example.

BCD’s modernization suite includes products that can instantly Web enable 5250 RPG and COBOL applications without coding; develop Web application in either RPG CGI or PHP; and build

Guardium has added support for DB2/400 (DB2 for i) with its database security software, the company announced this month. Guardium’s software monitors all major database management systems in real time for signs of unauthorized or malicious activity from internal and external threats, such as malevolent DBAs and SQL injection attacks. The software does not affect database performance and provides another layer of protection for critical business systems on top of traditional network security tools, the company says.

As a follower of strong IT security practices, you know that nothing can protect you from all threats, and therefore you must build

Things seemed a bit slower for Lawson Software last week at its annual conference and user exchange, CUE 2009, which was held near IT Jungle‘s West Coast headquarters in sunny San Diego, California. Chalk it up to the record-breaking heat wave and the recession, which caused attendance to drop by about half. But instead of lying down in a shady spot and waiting for better times, Lawson executives outlined a multi-pronged plan for driving the company forward and reconnecting with customers.

Compared to past years, when Lawson would take over entire blocks in the nearby Gaslamp District to hold

Two IBM i programmers can be given the same task and see the steps that need to be taken in entirely different ways. Add IT management, other departmental management, and executive management to a discussion about application development, application modernization, or application integration and the degree of difficulty shoots through the roof. You need options from simple refacing to more complex composite apps. That seems to be why LANSA acquired the intellectual property of the aXes suite of products from Arterial Software.

The aXes product suite is a set of native IBM i software solutions that Webfaces existing 5250 business

Symtrax this month announced the availability of a new product called Compleo for XML that’s designed to take spool files from i OS applications and convert them into structured XML documents that can be used elsewhere. The French company originally announced Compleo for XML last year, but it is just now being introduced to the North American market through Symtrax offices in Boston and Los Angeles.

Compleo is a suite of output management tools that is well-established in the AS/400, iSeries, and System i community. The software has traditionally been used to convert spool files from IBM i, i5/OS, and

When System i batch jobs run longer than they’re supposed to, there can be serious consequences. Users may not be able to log in. Backups may not run. Industry regulations may not be followed. Last week, CCSS announced a new run time monitor in its i OS systems management tool, QSystem Monitor, that alerts administrators and operators to long-running jobs before they can cause these problems.

According to CCSS, System i shops that use job scheduling software are the most susceptible to rouge jobs that run too long. The complexity of modern job schedulers means that jobs can run at

Sun Microsystems took a moment last week, as it was getting prepared to be eaten by Oracle, to announce a new release of MySQL, the open source relational database management system it bought for $1 billion just over a year ago. MySQL 5.4 brings scalability enhancements for X64 and Chip Multi-threaded (CMT) servers, while general performance enhancements will help users running the software on all types of servers, including IBM Power Systems boxes.

When paired with the InnoDB storage engine, which coincidentally is owned by Oracle, MySQL 5.4 can really scale. With InnoDB powering MySQL, Sun says, the duo

QlikTech last week announced QlikView for iPhone, a free piece of software that allows customers to access their QlikView business intelligence data on the go from the comfort of their Apple mobile phone. The software offers some nifty features, such as support for the iPhone’s integrated GPS receiver to create location-specific data, which QlikTech says gives it the edge over other mobile BI offerings, specifically Oracle‘s.

QlikView for iPhone provides users with access to a series of reports, dashboards, KPIs, graphics, and other BI consumables from the iPhone. Like the standard QlikView interface, QlikTech’s iPhone interface gives users the