• LANSA Taps Former SoftLanding CEO to Be New President

  October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

  LANSA yesterday announced that Steve Gapp, the former president and CEO at change management software vendor SoftLanding, will take over the president’s chair when its current president, John Siniscal, retires at the end of the year. You could call it a “soft landing” of sorts for Gapp, the English native who was presiding over New Hampshire-based SoftLanding when it was acquired by Unicom Systems almost a year ago. A number of SoftLanding employees were either fired or quit following the acquisition by Unicom, which has been criticized for its handling of the deal. Gapp’s tenure as SoftLanding’s leader also

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• Help/Systems Updates DB2/400 Utility

  October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Help/Systems yesterday announced the launch of EASY VIEW 8.0, a new release of its database file display utility for DB2/400. With this release, the company has expanded the product’s export and transfer options, improved its scan management capabilities, and added new options for viewing records. EASY VIEW is a programmer’s productivity utility that enables users to view any data file stored in DB2/400. EASY VIEW eliminates the need for IBM‘s Data File Utility (DFU) to dig deep into records, particularly useful during debugging. With version 8.0, users can now export files to the IFS, where they can be read

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• IBM Supports System i with E-Forms Offerings

  October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week started shipping new versions of Lotus Forms and Lotus Forms Express (formerly Workplace Forms and (formerly Workplace Forms Express), software products designed to allow companies to create Web-based electronic forms applications, without coding. With the new version 3.0 releases, IBM has added support for System i (via the PASE runtime) and streamlined the creation of forms for use in Web 2.0 environments. Lotus Forms and Lotus Forms Express help mid size organizations create and manage electronic forms. The products, which are based on the open source XForms standard, provide everything needed to create the user-facing form on

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• CA Plex Users to Get New Web Deployment Tool

  October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Companies that use the CA Plex development environment from CA will soon be presented with a new option for Web-enabling their applications. In December, two companies heavily involved in the CA Plex and CA 2E communities, ADC Austin and Websydian, plan to ship Websydian Web Developer+. According to the companies, the new development tool will enable CA Plex customers to deploy their existing Plex applications to the Web without any additional development work. By tapping into the control panel layout specified in the Plex panel designer, and through a set of HTML templates and advanced patterns, Websydian Web Developer+

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• Online Backup and Recovery Goes Virtual

  October 2, 2007 Dan Burger

  Ensuring business uptime through business continuity is one of the top priorities for many businesses. Productivity is directly related to the ability (or inability) to access data. Because of increasing emphasis on data protection and data availability, we’ve also witnessed a growth in licensed software and managed services related to this environment. One company that is developing online backup and recovery software for the iSeries installed base is EVault, which this week announced enhancements to its disaster recovery platform for physical and virtual environments. EVault brought online back ups and recoveries to the IT industry in 1997 and came

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• Laserfiche Scales to Meet Content Management Needs of i5/OS Shop

  October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

  When Marina Medical Billing Service contacted Laserfiche about setting up a document scanning and retrieval system, the emergency medical care billing agency based near Los Angeles, California, had concerns about the scalability of the Laserfiche system. Following a demonstration, the i5/OS shop decided the Windows-based Laserfiche could handle its high-volume environment. Before making its selection, Marina Medical Billing Service required Laserfiche to prove that it could handle not only its current workload, but twice the highest load forecast generated in its upcoming expansion plans. For Marina Billing, which uses CPU Medical Management Systems‘ core i5/OS-based billing and practice management

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• State of the System i: What’s Going On in the Market?

  October 1, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The System i market has had to absorb a lot of changes in 2007 so far and is coping with other changes that are on the horizon. IBM has announced user-based pricing on entry System i5 models, has introduced a Power6-based machine with a new pricing model, and i5/OS V6R1 and a more complete Power6 line–including a blade server, finally–are on the way. In addition, there is no System i division any more, with the line being split into Business Systems at the low end and merged into the Unix business as Power Systems at the high end. The economy

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• Summit Partners Sells Help/Systems to Audax Group

  October 1, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Help/Systems, one of the old-time software tool makers in the System/3X and AS/400 market based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has been acquired by a private equity firm based in Boston and New York named Audax Group. Help/Systems was formerly owned by another private equity and venture capital firm, Summit Partners, which has offices in New York, London, and Palo Alto. The financial terms of the acquisition by Audax of Help/Systems were not disclosed, since all companies involved in the matter are private. It may come as a surprise to many of you that Help/Systems was owned by

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• Reader Feedback on EGL: At Least It’s Not Java, But It Ain’t RPG, Either

  October 1, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, as you might have expected, Brian Kelly has once again struck a chord with some of the RPG faithful. Several readers who are unhappy about IBM‘s plan to use its Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) as a bridge between legacy RPG applications on i5/OS and OS/400 and the Web took the time to respond, at length, to Kelly’s article that appeared in last week’s issue. And, if the past is an indicator, then it is also reasonable to assume that Big Blue was none too happy about his criticism of the plan to promote the use of EGL

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• IBM Helps Users Migrate to Power6-Based System i Boxes

  October 1, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, IBM‘s Global Services group announced a new service for selected System i customers that may not only help Big Blue get some extra services dough, but may also grease the skids a little bit to help the company sell more of its Power6-based System i 570 servers, which were announced on July 24 and which started shipping on September 14. With the Migration Services for System i offering, which was announced on September 25 and which is available worldwide beginning that day, IBM is offering customers with Power4, Power4+, Power5, and Power5+ machines some assistance in moving

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