You might chalk it up to RevSoft managing director John Massey’s dislike of “lights out” computing, or his preference for “colorful computing.” Whatever the source, the new releases of the RevSoft product suite–including job scheduler, message management, and file transfer utilities for System i, Windows, and Linux servers–are more colorful than ever thanks to a new GUI console built with Microsoft .NET. The goal was to make it easier for operators to understand and respond to server activities, and it works.

RevSoft is a developer of multi-platform systems management tools that’s based in Australia. The company grew up on the

System i ERP giant Infor recently launched a new marketing campaign attacking its two biggest competitors, SAP and Oracle. With the Web site www.downwithbigerp.com, a virally “Declaration of Software Independence,” and a pointed keynote speech by CEO Jim Schaper, Infor is painting “big ERP” vendors as slow-moving relics that suck the life out of customers with slow implementations, high maintenance fees, and software of dubious value. “We’re on a journey to change the way things are done in the software industry,” Schaper said.

At first blush, the idea that Infor would attack “Big ERP” might seem contradictory. After

For the first time, RPG and PHP developers can access change management functionality from the same screen and the same integrated development environment (IDE). Thanks to a new Eclipse plug-in released last week by Aldon, developers won’t need to jump back and forth between IDEs from Zend Technologies and IBM. Instead, they can view code and change management tools for PHP and i OS languages like RPG, from either Zend Studio or WDSC.

Aldon has been at the forefront of the System i community’s attraction to PHP as a route to application modernization. For some time, it has

Simple I like because simple I understand. Does it have to be simple for me to understand? No, not necessarily. But simple definitely makes my life a whole lot easier. The simpler something is, the better I like it. Complexity makes me uneasy. In fact, more often than not, complexity tends to make my life a nightmare. But, like most people, I simply choose to ignore it in hopes that it just somehow goes away. But it doesn’t. It won’t. And, it never will. Not unless I do something about it.

Every day I find myself surrounded by dozens of

Attachmate yesterday announced the general availability of FileExpress, the new managed file transfer (MFT) tool for i OS, z/OS, Unix, Linux, and Windows. The software, which Attachmate announced a couple of months ago, allows users to conduct file transfers with the confidence of knowing that encryption, authentication, and auditing is handled by the software.

Attachmate picked well when it selected Proginet to partner with for its new MFT product. As an OEM version of Proginet’s CyberFusion Integration (CFI) suite, FileExpress builds on a proven product with a good reputation.

In its recent Magic Quadrant on the MFT space, Proginet

System i shops that do a lot of work in Excel may be interested in hearing about a new offering from Pagos designed to improve collaboration by enabling users to simultaneously access spreadsheets over the Web. SpreadsheetLIVE is free for now, and Pagos will be selling on-premise and SaaS licensees to the product when the beta ends this month.

Spreadsheets are notoriously difficult to track. One version quickly begets another one, and soon enough, changes are missed, revisions are overlooked, and the process breaks down. Housing spreadsheets on a server instead of distributing them through e-mail helps reduce the jumble

The folks at Sherrill Furniture are singing the praise of a new dealer Web portal developed using software from Surround Technology. The company used Surround Tech’s Accelerator for .NET software to augment a System i application with a front-end built using Microsoft Silverlight technology.

Surround Tech launched Accelerator for .NET earlier this year as the latest in a series of packaged offerings designed to speed up Web development for LANSA customers. The software does the low-level grunt work involved in generating the necessary code to deploy Silverlight and .NET applications, thereby allowing LANSA developers to concentrate on core skills.

Waterford Bank NA, a fast-growing commercial bank based in Toledo, Ohio, is using the Premier core banking system from Fiserv, the vendor announced last week. Like many Fiserv customers, Waterford outsources management of the application and underlying servers to Fiserv and its extensive network of data centers. The bank also uses several add-on solutions that allow it to offer a full range of financial services to customers.

Founded just two years ago, Waterford Bank has impressed onlookers with explosive growth that has culminated with nearly $200 million in deposits, despite the recession. The bank attributes its rapid growth to

System i shops that are looking for Windows 7 compatible emulators were given another option last week when Rocket Software announced that versions 5.0 and 5.1 of its BlueZone emulator are certified for Microsoft Windows 7.

BlueZone is a family of terminal emulators designed to run on a variety of clients, including PCs, Web browsers, and mobile clients. The core BlueZone offering, called BlueZone, supports 5250, 3270, T27, UTS, and VT emulations, and also provides a Secure FTP client. The company also sells a three-tiered Web-based emulator called BlueZone Access Server, a dedicated BlueZone Secure FTP product, and an X

Conceptualizing the flow of jobs in an enterprise environment is a difficult task. Tens of thousands of jobs might run across many platforms in a single day, with dependencies and file transfers linking them. To help IT managers get a better handle on their enterprise job flows, job scheduling vendor UC4 Software last week announced PrintView, a new reporting tool that generates graphical views of job flows.

PrintView, which was developed in concert with the German company APS|ENTERprise, outputs graphical files to a variety of formats, including .jpg, .png, .gif, .tif, and .bmp. Files can be imported into Visio,