You don’t need an expert economist to see that the AS/400 midrange market is not what it used to be. A once thriving market, it’s now maybe a tenth of its previous size, and more resellers and software vendors leave every day. One of the former IBM AS/400 business partners that has evolved its business plan to suit the times is Randr, Inc., which has made a clean break with the traditional midrange, and moved to open source software.

While Randr made its final break with IBM last month, when it was removed from the rolls of the IBM

Krengel Technology is days away from formally launching DB2 Web Service Enabler, a new piece of middleware designed to help System i (AS/400) shops expose DB2/400 data using XML. By doing the dirty work of handling outside XML-based Web services requests, converting them into SQL statements, and returning XML data via HTTP communication, Krengel Tech hopes the new software will make DB2/400-resident data more accessible to programs written in Java, PHP, and .NET–without a lot of programming.

In today’s heterogeneous IT shops, System i professionals are typically in the minority. Whether it’s because the System i is no longer politically

Whether you are being overwhelmed by compliance regulations and the costs of tweaking IT systems to accommodate audits or are concerned about projects that lack the type of management controls to keep them on time and under budget, Aldon‘s just-released report management solution is worthy of a closer look. Viewing and tracking application development is browser based and includes the capability to drill down for specific details.

If you know what it’s like to depend solely on the green-screen views of the IBM AS/400 (iSeries, System i, and IBM i) to attain information on the application development process, the

When IBM launched its in-memory multi-dimensional analysis Cognos Express product several weeks ago, it was paying a compliment of sorts to QlikTech, which has been tremendously successful selling its in-memory multi-dimensional BI product, QlikView, to small and mid size companies. But the folks at QlikTech do not sound tremendously worried that IBM is going to gobble up its share of the mid market any time soon, especially with the type of success that Hampton Hydraulics, an AS/400-based JD Edwards user, is having with QlikView.

In many ways, Hampton Hydraulics is a typical AS/400 shop. The mid size company, which

The wine industry just might be ripe for cloud computing. Patrick Oates, CEO of Wine Management Systems is sure of it. He sees on-line hosted applications as the perfect solution for small to mid size wine producers struggling to get a better grip on the data that goes along with such things as vineyard and grower management, production and bottling, inventory and allocations, regulatory compliance issues, point of sale, and all the related financial ties.

In Oates’ view, wine makers just want to make wine. His plan is to help them do just that by eliminating, or greatly diminishing, the

For less money than a fancy Starbucks caffe mocha and presumably no long line to wait in, IBM will serve you its LotusLive iNotes e-mail every month. Perhaps an indication that coffee at Starbucks is overpriced, but more likely that IBM is hoping that a price cut will put the brakes on Lotus e-mail customers moving to no-cost alternatives where Big Blue points out that some have endured service outages, an intrusion of annoying advertisements, and/or security and privacy irritations “that can impact employee productivity and confidence.”

Hmmm. It’s true that free does not always guarantee freedom from pain.

“E-mail

Systems Maintenance Services (SMS), a provider of IT and data center maintenance services, will soon expand its coverage of System i, System p, and System z servers as the result of two major deals: the pending merger with Top Gun Technology and the purchase of QSGI‘s data center maintenance business.

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, SMS has made a name for itself by providing data center and server maintenance services for Fortune 1000 companies. Before the recently announced deals, the company operated 41 service centers around the country, where it serviced 1,500 customers. These service centers are essentially data

Delta Software, a British developer of warehouse management systems, has acquired the key assets of another British company, PLW Associates Limited, which develops an OS/400-based WMS product. The acquisition was first publicized at Logistics Manager.com.

Logistics Manager.com quoted a Delta Software manager as saying that the acquisition of PLW Associates’ OS/400-based warehousing software, called DWMS, will fill a “technology gap” in Delta’s current lineup for companies that “demand the reliability and performance of the AS/400 platform.”

Delta’s core product, called DeltaWMS, runs on the Windows Server operating system and SQL Server database. The company claims to be the

Island Pacific recently announced several new customers–including two British retail chains and one American retail chain–to software license deals for Island Pacific Planning, the core element of its suite of software for multi-channel retailers.

White Stuff, a British clothing retailer with 60 stores, will implement Island Pacific Planning to help it keep track of merchandise across all channels: retail, Web, mail order, and wholesale. The company plans to integrate Island Pacific Planning, which runs on System i servers, with its ERP system.

White Stuff realized it needed a more automated and centralized way of keeping track of its merchandise when

Safestone Technologies announced last week that it’s giving away complimentary evaluation versions of its i OS password software, Password Self Help, which allows System i users to reset forgotten passwords by themselves, without involving the help desk or IT personnel.

It is no secret that forgotten passwords are a huge burden for organizations of all sizes. Among companies big enough to have a help desk, Gartner calculates that 30 percent of help desk calls are for password resets. Considering that each internal password reset costs $70 (according to Forrester Research), the cost of forgotten passwords can add up quickly.