SPSS and its ShowCase division today announced the general availability of Essbase 11 for IBM i , the latest release of its powerful OLAP software for the Power Systems i server. With this release, SPSS has made several big changes to the way it handles time, which is one of the most essential–and challenging–elements to creating and maintaining multidimensional data “cubes.” Now, Essbase for IBM i users don’t have to choose between including time as a dimension in a cube, or sacrificing the inclusion of detailed data.

Hundreds of System i shops rely on the ShowCase suite of tools for

JD Edwards outsourcing specialist WTS is expanding its managed disaster recovery (DR) services. As part of the new offering unveiled last week, WTS will provide the data center space, the System i hardware, and the human IT expertise needed to get a customer’s critical i OS (i5/OS) applications and data back online and functioning in the event of an outage. The company will support any i OS applications–not just JD Edwards–and offers several ways to transmit data, depending on specific recovery objectives.

WTS was founded in 1997 by Tom Hughes, an influential JD Edwards customer, to do one thing: be

SunGard‘s Availability Services unit last week launched Secure2Disk, a new online solution designed to back up and store data from i OS, Windows, Unix, and Linux servers. The new appliance-based offering helps protect vital customer data by storing de-duplicated and encrypted copies of backups at SunGard facilities, and costs about the same as a tape-based backup system, the software and services giant says. SunGard also announced its top 10 tips for dealing with hurricane season.

While disk-based backup has been widely used in the larger IT market for years, there appears to be a surge of interest in the

Help/Systems last week unveiled an update to its cross-platform job scheduler, Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise, that supports Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. The update follows the introduction of Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise less than three months ago, and allows Help/Systems customers to monitor and control jobs on Windows servers using the same i OS-based software they use to control jobs on their System i, Unix, and Linux servers.

Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise is a special version of Help/System’s popular i OS-based job scheduler, Robot/SCHEDULE, that was launched in March. The Enterprise version allows i OS (i5/OS) shops to manage their AIX, Solaris, and Linux servers

i OS security software developer Patrick Townsend Security Solutions (PTSS) recently announced it’s working with managed service provider Solutionary to help organizations bring their System i (AS/400) servers into compliance with PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA regulations.

In addition to developing i OS encryption tools and encryption key management tools, PTSS writes software that translates critical i OS messages from the System i format into the universally understood syslog format. In this manner, messages from System i systems can be collected and parsed with messages from other systems as part of an organization’s overall security and regulatory compliance imitative.

Now PTSS

Sun Microsystems took a bite out of Apple‘s playbook last week when it unveiled the Java Store, a new online repository for Java applications that looks suspiciously like the Apple App Store, the über hip outlet where you can buy programs for your iPhone. It’s still in beta, but is expected to go live later this year.

The hype surrounding the iPhone’s launch two years ago was thick enough to cut with a knife. Critics were right when they said that, while the device was super cool and undeniably awesome, it didn’t include any technology that was necessarily “new”

Inmar, a provider of reverse logistics solutions for more than 1,700 companies, has licensed UC4 Software‘s Workload Automation Suite to help it streamline job scheduling activities across i5/OS, Windows, and Unix servers.

From its headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Inmar and its various subsidiaries provide a range of logistics, reverse logistics, and promotions management solutions. The company operates more than 3 million square feet of warehouse space at 40 facilities across the continent, and counts retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers among its customers.

One of Inmar’s subsidiaries, Stratapult, provides IT hosting and custom development services for Inmar clients. Stratapult runs

B2B software developer nuBridges last week announced the acquisition of TradeTrans, which develops a business intelligence tool designed to provide greater visibility into supply chain activities, and to defend against chargebacks. nuBridges plans to sell access to TradeTrans’ tool, called TradeSmart, as a subscription-based hosted offering.

TradeSmart monitors and analyzes a customer’s supply chain transactions (EDI, AS2, FTP) as they occur. The offering is designed to give customers additional visibility into variables such as the volume, value, and frequency of purchase orders, invoices, advanced shipping notices (ASNs), and other transaction types. This information is delivered over the Web in

IBM last week announced InfoSphere Data Architect version 7.5.2, a new release of its data design tool for helping organizations model and standardize data residing in different databases, including DB2/400.

Previously known as Rational Data Architect, InfoSphere Data Architect is a component of IBM’s Optim family of tools for managing diverse groups of data. The software can create logical, physical, and domain models for DB2/400, DB2 UDB, Informix Dynamic Server, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, MySQL, and Teradata databases. It is commonly used in business intelligence, master data management, test data creation, and service oriented architecture projects.

With InfoSphere Data Architect

Modernizing key legacy applications is the top software initiative for businesses this year, according to Forrester Research‘s annual survey on software adoption trends, “The State Of Enterprise Software,” which was unveiled yesterday.

Forrester says that updating “key legacy” applications was cited as the top initiative for 64 percent of enterprises and 55 percent of small and mid size businesses. More than 25 percent of enterprises and 20 percent of SMBs said that updating and modernizing key legacy applications is “very important,” Forrester says.

Both enterprises and SMBs cited cost savings as the main reason for pushing for application modernization,