Infor provided more answers to questions on how its new Infor Flex program is going to work. The company confirmed that Flex will trade some of Infor’s short-term profits in favor of a better long-term outlook for its business. And while the company is adamant that it’s not imposing a “forced march” on customers, a senior company representative confirmed that a goal of Flex is to consolidate its customers–particularly its 15,000 AS/400 customers–onto a fewer number of strategic ERP applications.

The fact that Infor would like its customer base to upgrade to newer releases of its products should come as

Thales next month will begin delivery of Thales Encryption Manager for Storage (TEMS), a new appliance-based key management offering designed to lower the barriers to encryption by making it easier for organizations to safeguard their encryption keys. By using key management standards, like the new Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) unveiled earlier this year, TEMS will eliminate the need for organizations to use multiple key management systems for different applications and platforms, the vendor says.

With the tide of data breaches and identity theft around the world continuing to rise, IT shops everywhere are looking to encryption as a way

There’s a new security company specializing in helping IBM AS/400 shops deal with their security issues, but there’s no lack of experience in the services it will provide. Many of you know the name John Earl. After 20-some years in the business, he’s one of the AS/400 (iSeries, System i, and IBM i) community’s most familiar faces. He’s a noted speaker, author, and security expert. And now he’s running his own consulting business called iSecurity Experts.

Adding his name to your contact list might be a good idea if your company has been audited or is about to be.

ACOM Solutions last week unveiled a new System i utility that automatically converts i OS spool files to the ASCI format so they can be used more easily in a Windows environment. ACOM sees the new offering, dubbed iBridge, helping to streamline integration activities between System i and Windows systems, particularly for electronic payment activities involving System i applications and its Windows-based EZPayManager software.

iBridge resides on the i OS server and monitors output queues for spool files. When it detects a spool file, it automatically converts the file (which uses the i OS server’s native EBCDIC file structure) into

IBM has the hots for social networking applied to collaboration in the workplace. In the past six weeks or so, IBM announced it will introduce social networking to two of its largest internal groups: the developerWorks and business partner organizations. Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, IBM announced its latest social networking for business tool, LotusLive Connections, which becomes generally available today in a cloud near you.

A product that combines collaboration and cloud computing, LotusLive Connections is an IBM love child. If there’s one thing Big Blue adores more than social networking, it’s cloud computing. Imagine

Trucking outfits that rely on ALK Technologies‘ PC*MILER truck routing software enjoyed the capability to generate routes based on one of several priorities, such as the quickest travel time, the avoidance of low-hanging bridges, or the shortest distance. Now, with the 23rd annual release of the product, ALK is giving customers another option: generating transportation routes based on the least amount of carbon emissions.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) has long been suspected of contributing to the greenhouse effect that is associated with global warming, but until recently, it hasn’t been regulated. That could soon change. Last year, the EPA added

Talend last week unveiled a new version of its extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool that delivers real time integration of connected systems. The new offering, called Talend Integration Suite RTX, allows customers to feed data from one system to another as the data is changed or originated, eliminating the reliance on batch-based data feeds that are hours or days old, and opening up new revenue sources for customers, Talend says.

Talend Integration Suite RTX is the latest iteration of data integration tools from the Los Altos, California, company. The offering builds off the company’s flagship offering, the open source

Companies in the construction industry can get started with Computer Guidance‘s Construction Management System (eCMS) without buying a new IBM i OS-based Power Systems server to run it on now that the software vendor has started selling access to eCMS via the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company also announced two new eCMS customers.

eCMS provides integrated financial accounting, project management, and bidding capabilities to mid- to large-size contractors and other companies in the construction industry. The application runs exclusively on the IBM i (OS/400) platform, which has worked well for Computer Guidance and

Companies that rely on SafeData to keep their System i and Windows backups safe can now use its online storage and disaster recovery offering for their AIX backups, too. The announcement leaves Linux as the only Power Systems operating system not supported by the SafeData/DR offering.

Earlier this month, SafeData announced support for IBM‘s AIX operating system with its SafeData/DR online vaulting offering, which is powered by Seagate ‘s i365 (formerly EVault) agent-based data replication technology. That expands to three the number of operating systems supported by SafeData, including i OS and Windows.

SafeData president Peter Briggs explained the

LANSA yesterday announced “Supply Chain Synchronization: Recession-proof Strategies for Improving Efficiencies,” a new 18-page white paper by System i industry author Nahid Jilovec that explains what technologies and actions are involved in building a synchronized supply chain.

In “Supply Chain Synchronization,” Jilovec, who has been writing in System i trade publications for years, looks at the whole lifecycle of today’s Just In Time (JIT) supply chain world, starting with the customer order and product development activities, and how they relate to procurement, production, and distribution activities.

Over the years, developers have come up with various terms to reflect the need