Organizations looking to buy and implement a managed file transfer (MFT) product to drive better security and governance of file transfer activities may want to consult the recent Gartner report on the product category. In its September Magic Quadrant, the analyst group sliced and diced nearly four dozen vendors and their MFT offerings. As expected, the vendors that Gartner considers leaders, including Axway and Proginet, touted their place in the rankings.

MFT refers to a relatively new class of products that are designed to manage, secure, centralize, and automate the transfer of files inside and outside of an organization.

A pair of new cloud storage services that work with i OS data were announced last week by Kisco Information Systems and IBM. Kisco’s new offering, called i2S3, is tailor made for System i environments, and utilizes Amazon‘s S3 storage cloud offering to store i OS backups. Meanwhile, IBM’s new offering, called the Smart Business Storage Cloud, supports a variety of file systems, and would require System i shops to have implemented an XIV disk array.

Kisco’s new i2S3 is aimed at making it inexpensive and easy for a System i shop to get started with a storage

IT organizations that use MKS‘ application lifecycle management (ALM) software can now count on the vendor to handle one more aspect of their day-to-day business: test case management. With the recent releases of MKS Integrity 2009, the Waterloo, Ontario, company has delivered a framework that makes software testing–including setting test criteria and storing test results–just another part of an overall ALM strategy.

The way MKS iSeries product manager Marty Acks sees it, there are certain tasks and procedures that IT personnel do that belong on something he calls the “ALM bus.”

When a bug is reported and a request

A pair of free tools unveiled by Vision Solutions last week will help i OS and AIX customers maximize the performance and uptime of their critical Power Systems-based information systems. The tools, called iSCORE and the Availability ROI Tool (ART), will be discussed in a Webinar this Thursday that features former IBM chief scientist Frank Soltis, who now works as a consultant to Vision Solutions.

With most things in life, there is a direct relationship between performance and cost. If you want higher performance, it’s going to cost more money. The equation is also applicable to the Power Systems server,

Supply-chain managers live in a snake pit. They try to synchronize data so trading partners have current information in their systems, but they forever wrestling with data quality and data classification issues that result in errors, inefficiencies, and sometimes regulatory compliance issues. Those working in this environment are familiar with the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) and its standards that make data synchronization a reality. That makes GDSN certification a big deal, especially in companies that have multi-platform systems based around Oracle software or the IBM AS/400.

Last week, LANSA introduced a version of its Data Sync Direct software that’s

Phantom Fireworks will be better able to track its inventory and financial data as the result of an upgrade to S2K 5.0, the latest release of VAI‘s ERP software for i OS. The implementation was completed earlier this year at B.J. Alan Company, Phantom’s parent company, with additional point-of-sale functionality expected to be rolled out in 2010.

From its headquarters in Youngstown, Ohio, Phantom Fireworks has grown into one of the largest distributors and retailers of consumer fireworks in the United States. The privately held company operates more than 50 stores, while its products can be found at more

Wavelink recently issued an update to its Terminal Emulator (TE) product line, which connects wireless barcode scanners to ERP and WMS systems running on System i, System z, Unix, and VMS servers. The new release, Wavelink TE version 7.2, features enhancements in the areas of the user interface, voice features, scripting tools, and better support for wireless wide area network (WWANs).

Wavelink is a Midvale, Utah, provider of terminal emulators and other software that allows users of mobile devices (such as barcode scanners) to connect to host applications via 5250, 3270, VT100, and other common emulation protocols. The company claims

IBM last week delivered a slew of updates to various WebSphere products that are broadly aimed at helping customers take advantage of business performance management (BPM) functionality in the context of a service oriented architecture (SOA). The newly announced products run the gamut from infrastructure components, such as a new release of WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus to industry “content packs” aimed at providing BPM templates for companies in specific industries.

The WebSphere product lineup has never been easy to understand. There are at least 40 different products in the WebSphere family, and at least two or three times more when

Organizations looking for the type of functionality one would get with a “big four” systems management tool, but don’t want to pay a premium price, may want to check out the new pricing scheme laid out last week by GroundWork Open Source, which develops commercial open source software for managing heterogeneous computing environments.

GroundWork develops open source systems management tools that can be used to monitor and manage tens of thousands of devices. The company’s products are largely based on dozens of different open source products and standards, including the Ganglia grid and cluster management software, the Nagios systems

Sparxent recently announced the release of XAware version 5.4, a new release of its open source, Java-based data integration tool. Notable features in the release include a new data transformation wizard, support for the JSON data format, and support for Max OS X.

XAware is a data integration tool suite that allows users to create reusable logic to move data among disparate systems, including System i, Windows, Unix, and Linux servers. The product, which is composed of an Eclipse plug-in and a server component, promotes a high-level, configuration-based approach to data integration that relies heavily on the reuse of components