• Drummond Submits AS4 Requirements to OASIS

  April 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Buoyed by the success of AS2 and the need to streamline business document exchange via Web services, EXTOL International, Sterling Commerce, Cisco Systems, and the interoperability testing firm Drummond Group submitted a list of functional requirements to the standards body OASIS last week for the creation of a new B2B protocol, called AS4, that would adopt AS2 for use with Web services. With the acceptance of the ebXML Messaging Services (ebMS) 3.0 as a full standard last fall, the OASIS Messaging Services Technical Committee approved the creation of a subcommittee to develop a “profile” of ebMS 3.0

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• IBM Incorporates DataMirror Into InfoSphere Software

  April 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Users of DataMirror’s old data integration tools, including the popular Transformation Server, were finally given an upgrade last week when IBM delivered InfoSphere Change Data Capture version 6.2. The software giant also launched InfoSphere Change Data Capture for Oracle Replication version 3.1, an update on DataMirror’s old iReflect integration tool specifically for Oracle database environments. When IBM bought DataMirror last year, it primarily did so to get its hands on Transformation Server, which had built up a solid following for its strong showing in the field of real-time data integration and transformation. While DataMirror also had a large base

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• Alpharma Expands Use of iQ4bis BI Solution

  April 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Alpharma has decided to expand the use of iQ4bis‘ Windows-based business intelligence tools to pull more actionable information out of its back-office systems, including the System i-based JD Edwards World ERP system, iQ4bis announced recently. Based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Alpharma develops, markets, and manufactures drugs for humans and animals, including morphine-based pain pills and anti-inflammatory patches for humans, and medicated feed additives and water soluble therapeutics for farm animals. Supporting this global operation is a collection of back office ERP systems, including JD Edwards World, which is used at company headquarters, as well as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which

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• Island Pacific to Continue Selling Help/Systems BI Tools

  April 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Island Pacific will continue to market and sell an OEM version of Help/Systems‘ SEQUEL business intelligence software to users of its i5/OS-based Merchandising suite, the companies announced last week. The deal could also be extended to include Help/System’s Robot suite of systems management tools. Island Pacific has been selling its own branded version of SEQUEL called Island Pacific Viewpoint for some time. Following the sale of the division that developed the Merchandising suite to Australia’s 3Q Holdings last year, that relationship was up in the air for a bit. But the companies eventually found each other again and renewed

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• Dextron Supports Java with Data Modeling Tools

  April 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The Dutch company Dextron recently launched a new release of its data modeling tool, called Agile System Environment (ASE), that supports Java in addition to Microsoft .NET. As a result, the tool can now work with Java-supported operating systems, including the IBM System i. Dextron’s ASE serves as a data intermediary of sorts that sits between an ERP system and a business intelligence or CRM system. By manipulating and preparing data (often unstructured) that’s sitting in one application or database for its new role in the system, ASE eliminates the need to make changes in the host or target application,

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• IBM Expands VIP to All Systems for Precision Sales

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of the merger of the System i and System p Power-based server lines over the past several months, IBM is taking its Vertical Industry Program, or VIP, marketing approach from the former System i division and applying it as a strategy to peddle the entire portfolio of servers and storage through its newly constituted Business Systems division. Business Systems, you will remember, was created in January 2007 as the marketing machine aimed at small and medium businesses. The System i adopted the VIP approach to sales, which has very precise application providers working very precise geographies to

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• Power Systems Adds New Choices for IBM’s Academic Initiative

  April 21, 2008 Dan Burger

  If you want to recruit fresh young talent to careers in information technology, you have to show them where the jobs are. No jobs. No students. It might sound like fun to be a blacksmith, but there just hasn’t been much of a calling for those skills in the past 100 years or so. The idea of a high-demand career is very much colored by the local business community. And IBM is well aware of this, being both a global and local IT supplier. The reality is that a lot of students want to stay in the communities where they

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• IBM’s Q1 Driven by Mainframes, Unix, Services, and the Weak Dollar

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  That good ole annuity-style revenue stream, which accounts for a little more than half of IBM‘s sales in any given quarter, was gurgling and burbling along in the first quarter of 2008, helping to float the company’s product sales and delivering pretty hefty overall revenue and profit increases considering the shaky nature of the economy in the United States. And lucky for Big Blue, three-quarters of its revenues come from outside the United States, which means the weak dollar amplifies overseas sales when they are brought back to IBM HQ. Look at how much the weak dollar helps. Sales

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• The X Factor: Everybody Wants Citrix Systems?

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the economy bumping along, sometimes up and sometimes down, depending on the metrics you want to use, and big IT suppliers looking for rich, new markets to mine, every time someone gets bored and the news gets a little slow, out comes another merger and acquisition rumor. In recent weeks, the chatter out on there on the Internet and at the water coolers of IT suppliers looking for a deal and Wall Street banks looking for some good news (and visa versa) is that Citrix Systems, which itself just last year spent a fortune to acquire server and

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• HP Goes Visual with Application Modernization Tools

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The product side of Hewlett-Packard launched its umpteeth assault on the IBM mainframe and AS/400 server base a year and a half ago, and last week HP Services, which actually does server migrations on behalf of customers, announced its companion set of service offerings for legacy application migration, collectively known as the Modernization Factory. The neat bits of the Migration Factory offering are the tools that HP has created to analyze legacy applications to help customers figure out where and what to modernize. HP is always chasing mainframe and AS/400 accounts to try to talk them into moving to Unix,

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