• IBM Teams with Lawson for HR Management

  February 10, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM and Lawson Software extended their partnership last week with the introduction of a new batch of software and services targeting the human resources departments of small and mid size companies (SMBs). As part of the deal, IBM will market and sell components of Lawson’s Strategic Human Capital Management suite along with consulting from IBM Global Services. The software will target several HR processes, including payroll, benefits, recruiting, talent management, employee self-service, and succession planning, and it can be deployed in-house or hosted remotely. The Strategic Human Capital Management is a relatively new offering from Lawson, and comprises the third

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• Payback Is Not Sweet for RFID, ABI Research Says

  February 10, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Only 37 percent of organizations deploying radio frequency identification (RFID) expect to get a return on their investment within a year, according to a new report unveiled by ABI Research yesterday, giving more ammunition to critics who say RFID is not worth the investment. ABI Research asked individuals from 185 organizations last summer about their RFID plans and expectations, and published the results in its Annual RFID End User Survey. The company, which makes money selling its research, provided a summary of its findings in a press release. According to ABI, nearly 37 percent of the respondents said they did

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• i OS Vendors Take Different Approaches to Poor Economy

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  As the economic tsunami ripples across the globe, companies in almost every industry are hunkering down in an attempt to survive. In many industries, IT budgets are getting slashed to basic maintenance levels, and big projects are cancelled or put on hold. Despite the doom and gloom and the undeniable impact the economy is having on millions of people’s lives, business in the System i market continues to move forward as vendors try to adapt to the situation–in particular, the need for financing. Privately held VAI is better suited than many application vendors to weather the current storm. While the

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• RPG Gets Mixed Up in EGL Jam

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Will EGL generate RPG? That was one of the requests that trickled out of the EGL Jam, the ongoing online brainstorming session IBM started last month to stir up ideas from users about where to take the fourth-generation language. While there have been several requests recently to have EGL generate RPG as well as COBOL and Java, the decision to go in that direction has not been made yet, according to one an IBM-Rational program director involved in the Jam, which will continue through the week. The EGL Jam so far has been a big success and is helping to

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• Vault400 Debuts Tiered DR and Managed HA Services

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Vault400 is rolling out a series of new disaster recovery (DR) and managed high availability (HA) services aimed at giving Power Systems server customers a recovery time that’s tailored to their needs. Depending on the service selected, Vault400’s new Tiered Recovery offering guarantees that customers will have their complete System i environments back online within either 24 hours, 12 hours, or 1 hour. That’s a huge improvement over the quickest recovery time Vault400 previously offered. As a data vaulting company, Vault400 provides a safe repository for customers’ data, and helps them eliminate their reliance on tape. The company, which was

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• Zend’s PHP to be Preloaded Onto IBM i OS

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Every shipment of IBM i OS 6.1 and i5/OS V5R4 now include a fully functional version of Zend Technology‘s Zend Core PHP environment, the companies will announce later this week. The move will make it easier for System i customers to get the popular PHP development tool, which has already been downloaded by System i customers more than 12,000 times. It also comes with basic maintenance and support from the Silicon Valley software company. While Zend Core for System i was already a free download from Zend’s Web site, officials with the companies felt that this was a hindrance

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• Bring Your IT Ideas to Life, mrc Says

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  For years, American consumers were asked to explore the magical world of electricity with General Electric’s “We bring good things to life” campaign. Now, mrc is taking a page out of GE’s playbook and encouraging System i developers to dream up the next killer app with its new “Bring your ideas to life” offer. Best of all, it comes with free services from mrc. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. As part of the “Bring your ideas to life” campaign, mrc is committing to work with any customer to build a Web application with m-Power, the company’s

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• Poor Economy Driving DR Business, SafeData Says

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The global recession is wreaking havoc across all sorts of markets these days, including the market for IT goods and services. But one area of the $3 trillion IT juggernaut that is humming along quite nicely is managed disaster recovery services, according to SafeData, which says its customer base for virtual DR offerings for Windows and System i more than doubled last year. SafeData has been selling its managed DR services for System i and Windows, called SafeData/DR, since it was spun off from parent company Application Design Services in 2005. Since then, the company has been growing quickly,

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• Strange Days in Norway for Lawson

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Lawson Software last week announced two System i deals, both of which licensed Lawson’s M3 ERP suite, or an M3 variant. The customers include two units of Stangeland Group, a Norwegian construction company, and J. Barbour & Sons Ltd., a British clothing manufacturer. ERP upgrades were on the books last year for two units of the Stangeland Group, including Stangeland Maskin, which provides earth moving and excavation services, and Stangeland Kran, which provides heavy duty cranes and transportation services along the entire craggy coast of Norway. Stangeland Maskin has been a Lawson customer since 1996, and it planned to begin

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• BluePhoenix Signs Modernization Deals

  February 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

  BluePhoenix Solutions, which bought System i modernization vendor ASNA in 2007, has closed two major new IT modernization deals–one involving System i and one mainframe–which should bring in at least $1.4 million for the business, the company announced last week. The System i deal involves an unnamed wealth and asset management company that wants to migrate its RPG applications to Microsoft .NET. Purported benefits of the project include reduced costs, better integration with other IT systems, and “overcoming the challenges associated with a dwindling pool of RPG-trained resources,” BluePhoenix says. The mainframe deal involves an unnamed life insurance and

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