Safestone Technologies last week unveiled a new System i security product aimed at reducing the risk posed by users with excessive authorities. Called Powerful User Passport, or PUP, the new software gives administrators a way to grant users powerful authorities for a short period of time, and then force them back to a user profile with less authority when they have completed the tasks requiring special powers.

“This particular product addresses the problem of powerful users on the System i,” says Terry Heath, chief operating officer for Safestone, which is based in the UK and has an office in Seattle,

Infor last week announced that it’s creating a new division that will be entirely dedicated to serving its installed base of 15,000 System i customers. The division, which will be headed by former IBMer Mark Wright, will result in the separation of System i-related sales, support, and most development resources within Infor. The move was made as recognition of the uniqueness of the System i platform and the special skills and knowledge that it demands.

As senior vice president and general manager for the System i organization within Infor, Wright becomes the most visible head of the largest System

When FMS Solutions set out to find a Web-based reporting tool to support its customers in the grocery and supermarket industry, the application service provider (ASP) had a few key requirements. First and most importantly, FMS needed a tool that didn’t charge by the seat, which would get prohibitively expensive. It also needed support for System i and Windows databases, and it needed to be easy enough for its customers to use. The company found an answer to all of these needs with the m-Power product from mrc.

From its headquarters near Baltimore, Maryland, FMS Solutions provides financial management

looksoftware last week announced the forthcoming release of a new product called Snap for the Cloud that will provide a cloud computing interface for System i and System z developers. The first release of Snap for the Cloud, which is slated for GA in June, will work with Google‘s Internet-based applications, with support for cloud offerings from Microsoft, Amazon, and others arriving later.

For the last few years, Australia-based looksoftware has rolled out new interfaces that allow enterprise AS/400 and mainframe shops to use some of the latest technology and gadgets. For example, last summer, look released

“No log left behind.” That’s the motto that LogLogic lives by as it seeks to build its business around the management and monitoring of corporate log data. The company came three steps closer to reaching that goal this week when it unveiled three new applications that each address one element of the log management puzzle, including a security information and event management (SIEM) offering, a graphical compliance dashboard, and a database activity monitoring solution.

Thousands of terabytes of log data are generated every day by servers, PCs, network gear, printers, and anything else that keeps a record of its activities.

Business software giant SAP is pilfering the customer and partner ranks of Infor, picking off the best and brightest prospects as a result of its superior products and partner structure. Or at least that’s what the company claimed last week in a press release.

In its announcement, SAP America, a subsidiary of SAP, claims that “an increasing number of growing businesses and reseller partners are switching from Infor products to SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies.” The ERP behemoth says the customers are moving to SAP to “avoid being tied to a single vendor,” due to SAP’s

During these tough economic times, we all do what we can do to get by. Centerfield Technology, the System i performance tuning experts from Rochester, Minnesota, last week announced it will try to help System i shops by dropping the cost of its HomeRun suite of tools.

As part of its stimulus package, CenterField is lowering the price on HomeRun from $18,000 per logical partition to $18,000 per system. For most companies that run applications in multiple LPARs, this will significantly lower the cost of acquiring and using HomeRun to boost the throughput and performance of their i OS

You’ve probably heard of MySpace. Your children might have used Facebook to stay in touch with friends. Now behold the Inovis Social Network, a new online entity unveiled last week by B2B software provider Inovis to help supply chain members stay in touch.

You might think that social networking sites like Facebook are primarily used by teenage girls to post pictures of themselves, talk trash about their teachers, and gossip about the new clothing store that just opened at the mall. But you would be wrong. In addition to serving the social needs of millions of teenage girls across

System i shops using BOSaNOVA‘s terminal emulators will soon find another piece of software residing in the package: the Connection Broker from Leostream. The OEM deal announced by the companies last week is intended to make it easier for BOSaNOVA customers to manage their virtual desktop infrastructures, or VDIs.

BOSaNOVA kicked off its VDI initiative less than a year ago after rolling out its first round of virtualized thin clients. By preloading Citrix Systems‘ XenDesktop virtualization software on its Windows and Linux thin clients, BOSaNOVA hoped to help streamline the provisioning and management of thin client infrastructures,

Stay-Linked, a developer of terminal emulation software for thin client computers, has teamed up with Pragma Systems to deliver Telnet and SSH (Secure Shell) servers to Stay-Linked customers.

As part of the licensing deal with Pragma, Stay-Linked customers who buy 20 or more licenses for the thin client emulator will receive a free license for Pragma’s Windows-based SSH and Telnet server software from Stay-Linked. The license covers Pragma software running on servers with up to eight CPUs, as well as the first year of maintenance. All told, the deal is worth $1,400, Stay-Linked says.

“Pairing Stay-Linked with Telnet or