• Q4bis Streamlines BPCS Reporting for U-Bix Konica Minolta

  March 29, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Tony Day knows a thing or two about effective use of IT. The general manager of technical services at U-Bix Konica Minolta of New Zealand recently accepted an iSeries Innovation Award at the COMMON conference in Chicago for his company’s capability to hook its back-end BPCS system up to its customers’ copiers in the field, and to its own Palm Pilot-wielding field techs. Day sat down with IT Jungle at the show to discuss another successful IT project: his company’s use of the Q4bis reporting software. The iSeries is critical to U-Bix Konica Minolta, as the platform holds the company’s

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• eStorage Joins the VTL Party with the Maxback 4576

  March 29, 2005 Alex Woodie

  eStorage, the only provider of internal disk for the iSeries line besides IBM, is now in external iSeries disk business, too. The company is now shipping its first virtual tape library (VTL) offering, the Maxback 4576, a disk appliance that, with up to 2TB of storage, will provide a good amount of RAID-protected headroom for small and midsized OS/400 shops looking to augment their current tape backups with faster disk-to-disk technologies. VTLs are the most exciting thing to happen to iSeries backups since the advent of the independent ASP (auxiliary storage pool). By emulating a standard IBM tape

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• BOS Adds Security Features to Emulation Products

  March 29, 2005 Dan Burger

  Security for iSeries 5250 emulation is getting a closer examination as companies are becoming wise to the fact that a majority of security breaches are internal rather than external. To address this issue, Better On-line Solutions (BOS) has enhanced its 5250 Client software, BOSaNOVA TCP/IP, with the added security of 128-bit SSL Encryption, a centralized manager module, and single sign on. The new product is named BOSaNOVA Secure, however, existing BOSaNOVA TCP/IP users can also add the security features to their existing systems. The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption makes use of a private key that allows it to encrypt

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• SPSS Boosts OLAP Performance with ShowCase Suite 7.0

  March 29, 2005 Alex Woodie

  SPSS in April will start shipping ShowCase Suite 7.0, a new version of its collection of business intelligence software for the iSeries server. Based on an OS/400 port of the Essbase 7 multidimensional database that SPSS partner Hyperion first delivered over a year ago, the new ShowCase release is expected to deliver scalability and performance improvements, as well as new data viewing and analysis components to help companies get more usable information out of their data. Running online analytical processing (OLAP) and multidimensional database workloads on iSeries servers has gotten a bit of a bad rap lately. Many customers and

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• Award Ceremony Another Haines Jewel

  March 22, 2005 Alex Woodie

  IBM pulled out all the stops for the first iSeries Innovation Award ceremony at the COMMON conference in Chicago last week. The 100 or so guests of the invitation-only event–including representatives from the five OS/400 shops receiving awards for their innovative use of the server–were treated to a culinary and operatic ensemble from the brain of iSeries chief propagandist Malcolm Haines the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Dance of the Sugarplum Server at the fall 2000 COMMON in Baltimore. Haines kicked off the event with a promise not to inundate guests with long-winded speeches, and they never

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• LXI Launches Virtual Tape Library, Acquires TD Systems

  March 22, 2005 Alex Woodie

  With the market for third-party backup and recovery software waning due to the inclusion of BRMS with new OS/400 licenses, LXI faced a decision: try to compete with IBM‘s free product, or branch out into new market opportunities. The Irving, Texas, company chose the latter, and last week at the COMMON conference in Chicago, the company unveiled its new strategy, announced the acquisition of TD Systems‘ assets, and launched a new virtual tape library (VTL). LXI isn’t necessarily ceding the backup and recovery software market to IBM. It maintains its backup and recovery product for OS/400, MMS, is

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• RJS Unveils New Workflow Product, Cross-Platform Strategy

  March 22, 2005 Alex Woodie

  RJS Software Systems took the wraps off a pair of new products last week at the COMMON conference, including the upcoming Enterprise Workflow and WebSpool products that aim to simplify electronic document routing and viewing. Richard Schoen, the company’s president, also discussed RJS Software’s new Java development strategy that will enable the company to sell products that work across a range of back-office computer platforms, in addition to the iSeries. From its headquarters in Burnsville, Minnesota, RJS Software has focused on developing affordable spool file and document management software for the OS/400 server, and providing support to customers on maintenance.

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• BCD Ships WebSmart 5.1 as IBM Eases Off on WebSphere

  March 22, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Now that IBM has backed off its WebSphere push and started to include tools from BCD Software Int’l and other partners on its iSeries Developer Roadmap, there is expected to be a surge of interest in third-party Web enablement tools for the iSeries platform. BCD is ready to serve any new business that comes its way with a new release of its OS/400 Web application server, WebSmart version 5.1, which it unveiled at the COMMON conference in Chicago last week. It would be difficult to imagine Eric Figura, BCD’s director of sales and marketing, being any happier these days. For

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• LANSA Unveils 2005 Version of IDE

  March 15, 2005 Alex Woodie

  It’s always interesting to see what the wizards at LANSA cook up with new versions of their fourth generation language (4GL) integrated development environment (IDE), because it provides a glimpse into what kinds of programming techniques are hot, and where the pain points lie with current development architectures. LANSA 2005, which the vendor officially unveiled at the COMMON conference in its hometown of Chicago this week, does not disappoint in this respect. LANSA has always billed its IDE as an insurance policy against technology change, and in fact, this is largely a feature of all 4GLs. Since business logic written

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• Jim Sloan’s TAA Toolset Bigger and Better than Ever

  March 15, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Life is good for Jim Sloan these days. The retired IBMer is able to work when he wants, on whatever he wants, and he’s able to get away from Rochester, Minnesota, and spend time in warmer climes, like Aruba, where he recently vacationed. He also enjoys continued success with his business and product, TAA Tools, an ever-growing collection of OS/400 utilities that has helped thousands of OS/400 shops, and which now boasts more commands than OS/400 itself. The history of TAA Productivity Tools holds a unique piece of AS/400 and COMMON lore. During the early days of the

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