• Touchtone Boosts Communication in i5/OS CRM

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  For many businesses, customer contact is managed and executed through e-mail systems like IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook. When these businesses seek to upgrade to a CRM system to increase the effectiveness of their customer contacts, it behooves them to work with these e-mail systems in close concert. That’s largely what Touchtone has done with the latest release of its i5/OS CRM system, Wintouch eCRM version 7.0, which will also soon gain VoIP support. Wintouch eCRM is a suite of interconnected modules designed to help System i shops better manage several aspects of their businesses, including customer service, sales,

  …

  Read more

• NGS Delivers Prebuilt BI for Healthcare

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  New Generation Software (NGS) has delivered yet another addition to its Decision Assist line of prebuilt business intelligence (BI) applications for various industries. With Decision Assist–Healthcare, NGS is enabling hospitals and other healthcare organizations that rely upon the System i server to quickly set up dashboards, portals, multidimensional models, and other elements of a BI solution that would normally take a considerable amount of development. While the market for ERP software is not expected to increase as quickly in 2008 as it did in previous years, there are some IT industry pockets that are forecasted to improve. BI and CRM

  …

  Read more

• SafeData Launches Telecom Recovery Service

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  For two-and-a-half years, SafeData has provided a service to help customers get their System i applications back online during and after disasters. Last week, the Rhode Island company launched a new hosted service that aims to keep the calls coming in, even when their primary phone system goes down. While much emphasis has been placed on building resiliency into servers through disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) solutions, never overlook the importance of the phone system to conducting business. After all, if customer service representatives can’t field phone calls from customers, a percentage of transactions will be lost. SafeData

  …

  Read more

• Patch Available for Lotus Notes Security Flaw

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  IBM is helping to distribute a patch for a security vulnerability discovered in a Lotus Notes file viewer that could allow an attacker to take full control of an affected computer. IBM says the flaw, which was disclosed last week by Core Security Technologies, only affects the Lotus Notes client, and not the Domino server. A patch is available for Notes version 7 and 8. Sebastián Muñiz from the Core Impact Exploit Writers Team (EWT) at CorernSecurity Technologies is credited with discovering a buffer overflow vulnerability in a third-party file viewer that’s used to open Lotus 1-2-3 e-mail attachments.

  …

  Read more

• Utah Distributor Picks IBS for Supply Chain Management

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Superior Care Pharmacy will install a suite of i5/OS-based supply chain management software from International Business Systems (IBS) to help it manage its distribution business, IBS announced last month. Superior Care Pharmacy was founded in 1988 as a long-term care pharmacy, and added medical supplies, oxygen tanks, and an equipment rental division four years later. Today, the Salt Lake City, Utah, company has grown to supply about 2,000 nursing facilities, hospitals, and rehabilitation facilities around the country with supplies, oxygen, over-the-counter drugs, and nutritional supplements. Recently, the company set out to find a software solution that could help the company

  …

  Read more

• Link Likes look for System i Modernization

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Link Computer, a Pennsylvania IT consultancy, has partnered with the Australian software vendor looksoftware for its System i application modernization tools, the companies announced last week. Many of Link’s 350 customers in the mid-Pennsylvania region use the System i server, and are now considering their options for modernizing their key applications without extensive redevelopment or replacement, says Tim Link, president and CEO of Link Computer Link assisted its customers in this modernization quest, which had been mostly fruitless, up to this point. “We’ve trialed all the key alternatives in a practical evaluation and implementation process,” Link says. Then Link

  …

  Read more

• New World Sells an i5/OS Solution–And 13 More for Windows

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Like many ISVs, government software provider New World Systems offers versions of its applications that run on i5/OS and Windows, enabling it to meet the needs of customers with different server preferences. While the i5/OS version of its Logos and Aegis suites of software used to be pretty popular among county and city governments, lately the Windows-based versions of those products have been about 13 times more popular. New World, a privately held company based in Troy Michigan, is very good about posting new customer wins on its Web site (unlike some ISVs). From the beginning of October to the

  …

  Read more

• Calypso Sings Praise of Inovis for EDI

  December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  English soft drink manufacturer Calypso has tapped Inovis to supply Internet-based EDI capabilities enabling Calypso to streamline its order-taking process, Inovis announced last week. According to Inovis, the 129-year-old drink maker based in Tattenhall, Cheshire, relies heavily on its Value Added Network (VAN) to funnel orders into its i5/OS-based System21 ERP system. However, the previous VAN used by Calypso was slow and unreliable, and that put the company’s business at risk. “EDI is a business critical system for Calypso,” says James Holmes, Calypso’s IT and CRM director. “Over 80 percent of our orders by volume are received by EDI, with

  …

  Read more

• State of the System i: How 2007 Went for Tool Vendors, and How 2008 Is Looking

  December 3, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in October, I did two stories that gauged the pulse of the System i business among resellers of new equipment and then dealers of second-hand servers. In this third installment of the State of the System i series, I want to look at how one of the bedrocks of the IBM midrange–application development tool providers–are faring in 2007 and how they expect to do in the coming year. (This story, by necessity, offers the viewpoints of several of the dozens of dominant application development tool providers, which are but a subset of the hundreds of companies that provide some

  …

  Read more

• Emerging Markets and Virtualization Drive Q3 Server Sales

  December 3, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Server lines, perhaps with the exception of IBM‘s System z and System i servers, did pretty well in the third quarter, according to the latest market share statistics from Gartner. The upgrade cycle in data centers and departments for 64-bit, energy-efficient, and virtualization-capable servers, coupled with raw growth in processing capacity in emerging markets like China, India, and Russia, boosted both server shipments and revenues in the third quarter on a global basis. As previously reported in their financial filings, Hewlett-Packard had a very good quarter for server sales in its fiscal fourth quarter ended October 30, Dell

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles