• LANSA Introduces eLearning Option of Education and Training

  March 24, 2009 Dan Burger

  Continuing education and training for employees hasn’t disappeared, but we will likely see it taking some different directions. With budgets pinched in the Vice Grips of upper management’s cost-cutting raids, companies are looking for training alternatives that maintain commitments to educating IT personnel. At IBM i tools vendor, LANSA, that means a greater reliance on its eLearning curriculum, an on-demand training program that covers the company’s line of application development, modernization, and integration products. Shortly after hatching the eLearning early-adopter program in 2009, LANSA users started signing up. “Response to the early-adopter program was excellent, but not surprising,” said

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• Aldon Stresses Importance of End Users with Updated Help Desk

  March 18, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Aldon recently launched a new version of its help desk solution that should better connect an organization’s IT help desk with its end users. With Community Manager version 9, Aldon has worked on supporting ITIL version 3, the recently released set of IT standards that focuses much more on end users. As a result, Community Manager will enable end users to browse a catalog of available services, such as resetting a password, and then execute that service automatically through the portal. Community Manager is a Windows-based help desk application that allows users to submit requests to their IT department, such

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• Codelyzer Offers Relief from Application Maintenance Burdens

  March 17, 2009 Dan Burger

  For as long as programs have been written there has been program maintenance. And for as long as there has been program maintenance, there has been a laundry list of fixes and patches and revisions that over many years have made application maintenance into something like being in a row boat in the middle of a very large lake and having only one oar. It’s not unique to the IBM i environment, but it is a frequent occurrence. Maintenance programmers sometimes struggle with the structure of programs that have had numerous changes during many years in service. Often those changes

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• Raz-Lee Summarizes i OS Security Settings in New Compliance Product

  March 17, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The IBM System i is a notoriously difficult nut for auditors to crack. Accustomed to “standards-based” Windows and Unix systems, auditors sometimes struggle to make their way around a subject’s i OS-based computer. To help alleviate the pain of hunting for security data for auditors and IT managers alike, i OS security software developer Raz-Lee Security last month launched a new product called Compliance Evaluator that seeks to include the most relevant compliance-related security information in a concise, one-page summary. Raz-Lee, which is based in Israel and has its U.S. offices near New York City, has plenty of experience with

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• Tape Backup Recovery Points Improved With RecoverNow

  March 17, 2009 Dan Burger

  The importance of a dependable backup system is often taken for granted. Many organizations are relying on conventional tape-based processes that have been in place since Day One. For those looking beyond the short-comings of the 100 percent taped-based backup system, it’s the capability to quickly and properly restore backups and do so within a reasonable budget that avoids the pain. Reducing recovery point objectives (RPOs) is a big issue for many IBM i shops and it’s exactly why Vision Solutions has introduced RecoverNow. The primary benefit of RecoverNow is the capability to recover data (one or many files, objects,

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• Upstart i Developer Brings AS/400s to the Cloud

  March 17, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What are the first two letters in “cloud computing?” Why, CL of course. And wouldn’t it be neat if there were a set of CL commands that let AS/400, iSeries, and System i machines reach out across the cosmic Ethernet and make use of cloud-based services? Well, thanks to programmer Garry Taylor, you can do just that. I have no idea who Garry Taylor is, and the Whois database has no idea where his site, PinkDirtyNeon, is located on the Internet, but Taylor sent me an email yesterday announcing the launch of a beta program for two cloud computing

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• Financial System Outsourcer Taps UC4 to for Job Automation

  March 17, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Computer Research Inc. (CRI), which develops and runs financial services software for its clients, has licensed the Workload Automation Suite from UC4 Software to help it manage its System i environment more proactively, UC4 announced last week. CRI develops a range of financial management products for its customers, which tend to be banks, broker dealers, bank brokerage subsidiaries, treasury operations, mutual funds, and other companies that need a way to maintain their portfolios, as well as their clients’ portfolios. The systems developed by CRI encompass a variety of needs, including trading stocks, bonds, futures, and other financial instruments; hooking into

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• Malaysian Bank Invests $5.5 Million in Power Systems Upgrade

  March 17, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The EON Bank Group has implemented a new core banking system that consists of Silverlake Group‘s software running on i OS-based IBM Power 550 Express hardware, the IT vendors announced last week at a press conference in Malaysia. With deposits of RM41.5 billion (or about $11.5 billion at current exchange rates), EON Bank Group is one of Malaysia’s largest banks. The bank employs more than 5,000 people, who serve more than a million consumers and business from 136 branches across the nation. Recently, the bank has been implementing strategic changes to its underlying organizational structure and process as part

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• No Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for Island Pacific, 3Q Says

  March 17, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Australia-based 3Q Holdings Limited took the unusual step of clarifying the health of one of its assets, i OS merchandise management system (MMS) developer Island Pacific, last week to head off any confusion surrounding the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Retail Pro, which sold Island Pacific to 3Q more than a year ago. Retail Pro, a developer of Windows-based point of sale (POS) software that’s based in San Diego, California, filed for bankruptcy protection on January 10. In addition to Retail Pro, several Retail Pro subsidiaries, including Page Digital, IP Retail Technologies International, and Sabica Ventures, were also included

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• Mid-Market Companies Want to Be Green, Too

  March 17, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While it may be true that the largest companies in the world have the most immediate need to get their energy and cooling houses in order, so to speak, a new study of mid-sized businesses commissioned by IBM shows that midrange companies want to be green, too. The study, which was done by Info-Tech Research Group and which you can read at this link, was put together based on interviews with over 1,000 IT executives who work at companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees. The companies were located in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Norway,

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