• Magic Raises $17 Million in Sale of Subsidiary

  January 8, 2008 Alex Woodie

  System i development tool maker Magic Software has sold its Advanced Answers on Demand (AOD) subsidiary to Fortissimo Capital for $17 million, the software company announced in late 2007. AOD develops a suite of applications, also called AOD, that are targeted at the long-term care industry, including retirement and continuing care facilities, home health, and rehabilitation agencies. The AOD suite was developed in Magic’s fourth-generation language, eDeveloper, and runs on Windows servers. AOD is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while Magic Software is headquartered in Israel, and has U.S. headquarters in Irvine, California. The sale of the AOD subsidiary to

  …

  Read more

• LANSA Modernizes 5250 Logistics App for eSipo

  January 8, 2008 Alex Woodie

  eSipo Technology, a Mexican developer of i5/OS-based ERP applications, has tapped LANSA and its RAMP suite of tools to help it modernize its 5250 applications. eSipo Technology, which is based in Monterrey, Mexico, develops a suite of business applications called eSipo Logistic that is aimed at meeting the warehousing, logistics, and distribution needs of manufacturers and other companies. Some of the companies using eSipo Logistics include Logisti, Grupo Onest, Best Logistics Group (BLG), Oko, Ferraro de Mexico, and Grisi Hermanos. Eduardo Esquivel, president of eSipo Technology, says his customers have grown tired of the green screen. “The main motive

  …

  Read more

• New AS2 Certifications on Tap from Drummond

  January 8, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Companies looking to implement an AS2 EDI communications system in 2008 would be wise to check out the latest round of certifications from the Drummond Group, a private company that tests third-party EDI and business communication products for accuracy interoperability. Twice a year, Rik Drummond and his team at Drummond Group load the latest AS2 products sent to them by software vendors, and tests them to make sure they accurately encode, transmit, and unpack the EDI transactions as they’re sent over the HTTP/S protocol. In late December, Drummond Group posted the results for the test conducted during the third

  …

  Read more

• A New Year, A New IBM Systems and Technology Group

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM‘s desire to get a much larger share of IT sales to small and medium business (SMBs) and the company’s heavy reliance on the financial sector for core software and system sales has compelled the company’s top brass to reorganize its Systems and Technology Group. Bill Zeitler has managed IBM’s server and systems unit for so long that no one can remember his predecessor–hint: there wasn’t one–and last Thursday he told STG employees about the final phase of a year-long transformation that has been underway in the group. A year ago, IBM carved out a new SMB-focused division called

  …

  Read more

• Rocket Software Buys NetManage for $69 Million

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Rocket Software, a privately held maker of mainframe and System i tools based in Newton, Massachusetts, has made the shareholders of NetManage an offer they probably will not refuse. After IT Jungle went on holiday in December, Rocket Software said that it was willing to pay $7.20 a share, or $69 million, to acquire publicly held NetManage, which makes host connectivity and legacy application modernization software for mainframe and System i gear and which is based in Cupertino, California. The acquisition puts to rest any chatter in the past two years about how NetManage would compete against larger and

  …

  Read more

• Servers Get Their First Power and Performance Benchmark

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the first 40 years of the systems and server market, price/performance was basically the only metric that mattered within a given class of machines. But in the 21st century, when power and cooling issues are thwarting the attempts of companies to continue adding computing capacity at the rates they did in years gone by, there will be a new metric that people will start to pay attention to: performance/watt. To that end, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation has just release its first benchmark that gauges the performance and power consumption of servers. You can expect many more such power-sensitive

  …

  Read more

• Mad Dog 21/21: Motherboarding

  January 7, 2008 Hesh Wiener

  In 1995, IBM shifted its proprietary midrange systems from CISC to RISC processor technology. Today, the System i is to a considerable extent a variation of the System p–or visa versa, depending on how you want to look at it. Last year, IBM sent a processor guru out to talk about a chip called z6, a sibling of the new Power6 chip that executes mainframe instructions. IBM will soon announce z6 mainframes that share a lot more than just some processor technology with the System p. They could easily be more than 50 percent System p, by weight. The z6

  …

  Read more

• IDC 2008: It’s Post Disruption, the Aftermath of Webification

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Art had post modern. Politics and economics had post history. Naturalist Euell Gibbons had Post Grape Nuts, at least until he died in 1975, when he became, like all of us, compost. And now information technology in 2008 appears to have something that the propellerheads at IDC are labeling post disruption. This seems to be another way of saying cleaning up the loose ends in Web-style computing, which is what IDC expects for IT vendors and IT buyers to worry about this year. Usually, the key IT industry analysts make bold proclamations about the coming year as another spending binge

  …

  Read more

• Q&A with Marc Dupaquier, Former GM of IBM Business Systems

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Q&A with Marc Dupaquier, Former GM of IBM Business Systems Just about a year ago, in an effort to more purposefully and efficiently provide hardware, software, and services for small and medium businesses around the globe, IBM created a new division called Business Systems. Marc Dupaquier, a long-time executive in Big Blue’s Software Group and a one-time AS/400 sales rep from the days of the AS/400 launch two decades ago, was tapped to be general manager of this new division. And last week, IBM reshuffled the GM chairs in the Systems and Technology Group, moving Dupaquier out of that role,

  …

  Read more

• Software AG Buys Jacada’s Legacy App Modernization Biz

  January 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  German database and SOA tool maker Software AG is paying $26 million to take a portfolio of application modernization tools off the hands of Jacada, which has been trying to boost its presence in the System i market for the past decade against some pretty tough competitors. Software AG, which is best known for its Adabas database for IBM mainframes, its Tamino XML database and middleware for SOA-style applications, and its Natural development language for Web applications, has been gradually transforming itself into a contender in SOA development and integration. In April last year, Software AG shelled out $546

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles