One of the vendors displaying at the COMMON conference for the first time last month was Gresham Enterprise Storage, an Austin, Texas, business that develops and sells a virtual tape library (VTL) appliance called Clareti Storage Director. Gresham recently installed the Clareti storage appliance at its first System i shop, and now the company is building its business in the System i marketplace, which is ripe for more VTL options besides FalconStor, officials with Gresham say.

Clareti Storage Director was developed in-house by Gresham Enterprise Storage, which is the U.S. arm of Gresham Computing, a U.K. company

Security negligence is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter if your IT projects are leading edge or whether IT has been in status quo mode since Frank Soltis was a pup. Security flaws can bring you to your knees quicker than plugging in an electric fan while standing a bucket of water. And the difference between being security smart and security stupid is just about as obvious. It’s not the IBM AS/400. It’s the way you use it.

The way you don’t use it more accurately describes this appalling level of carelessness. Apparently there are no questions on the IT

System i shops that rely on New Generation Software‘s NGS-IQ suite for business intelligence and reporting functionality are about to gain several new Web features with version 7, which is due to ship in June. Customers get a new Web interface that supports the capability to drill down into reports, as well as new Web report design features that make it easier to spruce up reports with logos and hyperlinks. Other components of the NGS-IQ will see enhancements, too.

Before we get into the version 7 enhancements, let’s take a look at the entire NGS-IQ suite and see how

Raz-Lee Security unveiled a new release of its iSecurity GUI at the recent COMMON conference in Nevada. The security software vendor says the enhancements to its Windows-based console–including drill-down capabilities, role-based access trees, and new filters–will make it easier for administrators and auditors to manage and verify the security of their i OS environments.

Raz-Lee’s iSecurity suite is a comprehensive collection of security tools for i5/OS and i OS environments. The suite is composed of more than 15 modules that accomplish tasks ranging from exit point control and analysis of i OS’s audit journal to virus scanning and password enforcement.

System i developers who have adopted the latest version 7.5 release of the Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) development environment can now take advantage of Aldon‘s change management software for i OS. Last week, Aldon announced the availability of a plug-in that integrates its Aldon Lifecycle Management (ALM) functionality within the RDi interface.

Aldon, like most of the change management vendors targeting the System i market, has taken advantage of the openness of Eclipse to develop plug-ins that allow users to access their change management functionality from within the friendly confines of the Eclipse development framework.

It’s a

It’s easy to forget that Vision Solutions has other products besides i OS high availability software, considering the company has become by far the biggest i OS HA software vendor. But the Southern California company sells other products, too, including software for optimizing DASD, and last week it announced a deal with Australian Pharmaceutical Industries for Vision’s Data Manager software.

Data Manager is a data archiving and DASD optimization tool that Vision obtained in its March 2005 acquisition of British OS/400 software house OS Solutions. The tool brings routines that help administrators to identify and purge old and obsolete data

K.Lund Offshore, a Norwegian company that rents equipment to oil and gas operations, will install and run Lawson Software‘s M3 Equipment Service Management and Rental Suite on IBM System i hardware, the application vendor announced last week.

K.Lund Offshore supplies and rents compressors and lifting equipment to the Norwegian and international oil and gas industry. The company is based in Sola, Norway, and also has regional headquarters in Brazil and the Persian Gulf, two of the world’s most active oil and gas producing regions. In 2007, K.Lund employed 50 people and had revenues of €15 million, according to its

i OS ERP and CRM software developer HarrisData yesterday announced a partnership with IT services giant SunGard to provide managed hosting for HarrisData’s customers. The partnership was announced at HarrisData’s annual user conference, which is being held this week in the company’s hometown of Brookfield, Wisconsin.

HarrisData has about 2,500 customers using its RPG-based ERP suite, and another untold number of customers using CRM software developed by its subsidiary, RTI Software, which is based in Lisle, Illinois. The new partnership with SunGard’s AdvancedHosting unit announced on Monday is aimed at providing a place to run the RTI CRM apps,

New construction is slow as molasses across North America at the moment, due to the global economic crises. But thanks to a new module that supports payroll processing for Canadian construction firms, construction industry ERP software developer Computer Guidance Corporation will be ready when business starts flowing like, ah, maple syrup.

CGC is a Scottsdale, Arizona, software company that develops a construction management system (eCMS) used by mid- and large-size contractors and other companies in the construction industry with revenues of more than $100 million. eCMS delivers a variety of financial accounting, project management, and bidding capabilities, and runs exclusively

IBM last week unveiled the beta of Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1, a new release of the push e-mail offering for mobile smart phones. With version 8.5.1, IBM is offering support for the Apple iPhone, via Microsoft ExchangeServer’s ActiveSync protocol. This is good news for mobile professionals who want faster access to their Lotus Notes mail, calendar, and contacts from iPhones.

Lotus Notes Traveler was unveiled by IBM last year to provide more mobile options for Lotus Notes users. Traveler fills the gap between the full Notes client, which can be run on laptops, and the ultralight iNotes client, which runs