• PowerTech Updates Compliance Manager

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  System i shops looking for a powerful, System i-based security compliance reporting product may want to check out the new release of Compliance Monitor unveiled by PowerTech Group last week. With the capability to process bigger chunks of security log data from more systems into plain English results that are easier to understand, Version 2.0 promises to be the nontechnical security auditor’s best friend. Debuting as “ComplianceMonitor” in October 2005, Compliance Monitor is designed to help System i shops satisfy the security audit components of regulations like PCI, SOX, and HIPAA. By interrogating the i5/OS QAUDJRN security log and

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• IBM Comments on iSeries Access and Windows Vista

  October 9, 2007 Linda Hirsch

  IBM‘s iSeries Access (now called “System i Access” but still commonly called “Client Access”) added support for Windows Vista in the Windows client in December of 2006. Alex Woodie’s September 18 Four Hundred Stuff article, “Windows Vista Poses Challenges to Emulation Vendors”, listed the various problems and restrictions that System i Access had documented at the time of the article. Since then, the documentation has been updated. Here is the current status of System i Access for Windows on Vista. Alex’s article compared 5250 emulation packages. The PC5250 emulator in System i Access for Windows is fully supported

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• Update on Virtualization Manager’s i5/OS LPAR Capabilities

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Several weeks ago, we ran a story, “IBM Preps Update to Virtualization Manager”, that was critical about the lack of support for the i5/OS operating system’s native virtualization technology, called Logical Partitioning, or LPAR, within the product. As it turns out, we were wrong on some of the technical details when it comes to Virtualization Manager’s support for i5/OS LPAR. You can, indeed, create LPARs with Virtualization Manager. You just can’t deploy them. IBM launched Virtualization Manager about a year ago to give system administrators a single place where they can monitor and control the virtual machines and virtual

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• Raz-Lee Supports SSL in i5/OS Firewall

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Raz-Lee Security has added support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption in iSecurity Firewall, the firewall component of its iSecurity suite that controls access to OS/400 and i5/OS assets via exit points, object-level security, IP packet filtering, user- and group-level security, and other techniques. Support for SSL encryption will make it easier to incorporate iSecurity into the corporate data center without degrading performance, according to Raz-Lee. Earlier this month, Raz-Lee announced that support for SSL in iSecurity Firewall will bring several advantages, the most important being that users can now adopt specific user-to-port network rules for users of common network

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• Inventive Designers Launches DTM for iSeries Version 3

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Inventive Designers recently launched a new release of Data/Text Merge (DTM) for iSeries, version 3. With this release, the OfficeVision/400 replacement gains better interoperability with Scriptura, the Belgium company’s multi-platform document reformatting and routing engine, as well as compatibility with Word 2007 as a front-end interface for designing documents. DTM for iSeries allows users to automate the generation of business correspondence through the use of generalized “skeleton documents” and specific customer information stored in DB2/400 or other i5/OS data sources. The software also allows users to replace the OS/400 commands used by OfficeVision/400 with DTM for iSeries commands, if they

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• Optio Software Saves Manufacturer from the Paper Chase

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  A new system that electronically captures and stores business documents has saved Legend Valve, a Macomb, Michigan, manufacturer of valves and fittings, hundreds of hours of paper shuffling, according to the company that developed the solution, Optio Software. Before installing the Optio solution, locating and retrieving paper-based documents was a big part of what Legend Valve’s customer service representatives did. Each member of the 13-person staff would be required to pull up, on average, about 10 documents per day, accounting for many hours over the week. Following the implementation of Optio’s document repository and data capture solutions with Legend’s

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• IBM Preps Update to Virtualization Manager

  October 8, 2007 Alex Woodie

  The upcoming release of Systems Director Virtualization Manager version 1.2 from IBM will allow System i shops to manage and control virtual machines created with a variety of virtualization solutions, including VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, and Xen‘s XenSource offering, from a single location. However, it doesn’t offer System i users the same degree of control over their virtual assets as it does to their Windows and Linux brethren. Last week, IBM announced that on September 28, Systems Director Virtualization Manager will become available. The software, which is available as a free add-on to IBM Director, allows

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• IBM Offers System i Blade Deal, Nixes i5 550 in Upgrade Deal

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The fourth quarter is now well under way, and if there is one thing that is surprising right now, it is the dearth of special deals from IBM to help bolster sales of the System i. IBM likes to close the year on a high note, and the fourth quarter has often been a very good one for the AS/400, iSeries, and System i family of machines. In no small measure thanks to wheeling and dealing by IBM and its reseller channel, which pushes the vast majority of System i machinery. It is hard to say why more System i

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• IBM Tweaks BladeCenter S for the Office, Preps Power6 Blades

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in June, IBM previewed a blade server chassis aimed at moving blades from the data centers of the world’s largest organizations, who have been trying to cram as much computing power as they can in as small a space as possible, to small and medium businesses, who want integrated systems that fit in a closet, in a corner, or under a desk. The BladeCenter S was IBM’s initial foray, and now that Hewlett-Packard has announced its “Shorty” BladeSystem c3000 chassis, IBM has rejiggered the BladeCenter S chassis to better compete in the SMB space. The BladeCenter S chassis that

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• Growing Businesses, Upgrades Drive IT Hiring in Q4

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Fears of recession subsided last week thanks to a mediocre jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department that said employers added 110,000 jobs in September and 89,000 jobs in August, despite a slowdown in the construction and manufacturing sectors and jitters in the stock and mortgage markets. People were cheered last week–particularly on Wall Street–because jobs grew even though the economy seems to be slowing down a bit. So far, if surveys by Robert Half Technology are any indication, IT managers are still optimistic about the hiring they planned to do in the remaining three months of 2007. RHT is

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