• Services a Priority at ASNA after Merger with BluePhoenix

  September 4, 2007 Dan Burger

  When mainframe application modernization/migration software vendor BluePhoenix Solutions decided to expand to the IBM OS/400 and i5/OS market, it found a willing partner in ASNA, a company with more than 25 years in the midrange. For BluePhoenix, which announced the completion of the ASNA merger August 17, it gains RPG-to.NET technology, a trusted brand, an experienced workforce, and a base of customers from which it can work. The upside for ASNA is much deeper pockets with which to build the services side of its business. Anne Ferguson, the owner and president of ASNA, explained the BluePhoenix merger with her

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• The Data Quality Inflection Point

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Got data quality issues? If you’re like many businesses that have struggled with the exponential growth of data over the last few years, you have a fair share of bad data hiding across your servers. But that shouldn’t relegate you to living in the gray world of questionable data, argues Arvind Parthasarathi, a senior director of solutions at data management tool vendor Informatica. In fact, we find ourselves currently at an inflection point that allows us to take control and turn the data quality problem around, Parthasarathi explains in this Q&A. Alex Woodie: Do you get the sense that

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• Global Supports Infor ERP XA and SyteLine with Spreadsheet Server

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Global Software recently added support for Infor‘s SyteLine and ERP XA (formerly MAPICS) applications with Spreadsheet Server, its Windows-based application that allows users to interact with data housed in their ERP systems from the comforts of Excel spreadsheets. Global Software previously supported a range of OS/400- and i5/OS-based ERP systems with Spreadsheet Server, including J.D. Edwards, BPCS, Lawson, Infinium, and Jack Henry, as well as PeopleSoft Enterprise ERP systems. Now, the Raleigh, North Carolina, company is branching out to support the extensive MAPICS and SyteLine user bases with the launch of a new product, called Spreadsheet Server

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• New ESB from iWay Deploys on J2EE App Servers

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  iWay Software is shipping a new enterprise service bus (ESB) that can be deployed from any Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server. The updated ESB, called the iWay Service Manager, is part of the new suite of integration tools called iWay 2007 that the company announced last week. ESBs are becoming increasingly popular in the corporate data center because of the crucial role they perform as a foundational tool for building service oriented architectures (SOAs) and for stringing together Web services and other application integration protocols. With its historical focus on enterprise application integration and building adapters and connectors,

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• Sterling Gives Peek at Next Release of Gentran

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Sterling Commerce will focus on boosting business integration capability for certain horizontal industries with the next release of its Gentran Integration Server, which is slated for general availability next month. With GIS version 4.3, the Ma Bell subsidiary plans to add support for the B2B exchange standards adopted by several industries, including the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX), Petroleum Industry Data Exchange (PIDX), Open Applications Group (OAGi), and the Global Upstream Supply Initiative (GUSI). “Standards are a critical component of our customers’ integration strategies because they must have the flexibility to interoperate with all trading partners across various industries and

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• Gate Petroleum Licenses Boomi for AS/400 Integration

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Gate Petroleum Company, a multifaceted business based in Jacksonville, Florida, has licensed Boomi‘s application integration software to make it easier to connect to its OS/400-based back office and retail systems, and to drive its B2B initiatives, Boomi announced last week. Gate Petroleum Company is a diverse company that started out operating service stations in the 1960s. Since then, it’s expanded to more than 200 gas stations and convenience stores in several southeastern states, and offers other fleet services to truckers. But Gate has other varied interests, including a series of private clubs and resorts, a real-estate development business, and

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• Insurance Company to Install Lawson S3 on System i

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  American Safety Insurance Services (ASI) has licensed Lawson Software‘s S3 Financial Management Suite to replace a 15-year old legacy system that relied on inefficient paper-based processes. The new system, which will be installed on IBM System i hardware, is predicted to decrease the amount of time ASI personnel spent on key processes by up to 40 percent. ASI is a Bermuda-based company that sells various insurance and reinsurance products and solutions to small and mid size businesses in Bermuda and in the U.S. The company, which is publicly traded and had $171 million in revenues for its last fiscal

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• Expand Bolsters Network Acceleration Devices

  September 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Expand Networks last week launched four new network acceleration devices designed to boost the available bandwidth between data centers and branch offices. The new devices deliver better support for wide area file services (WAFS), smarter acceleration of TCP traffic, and dynamic bandwidth throttling. Expand launched two acceleration devices intended for smaller branch offices, the 4830 and 4930, and two devices for larger regional offices, the 6830 and 6930. For each pair, Expand offers one device that includes a hard disk–which is necessary to support Windows WAFS services over a network, but which also introduces a security liability–and one device that

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• IBM Explains Its Domino 8 on DB2/400 Spike

  September 4, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, this newsletter told you about how IBM had decided to not support DB2/400, the relational database at the heart of the i5/OS and OS/400 operating systems, as a data store for the new Notes/Domino 8 groupware that was launched weeks ago. This snub of the System i platform has annoyed many and will probably affect the Notes and Domino plans of some System i shops. Since this decision was made by IBM’s Software Group, not the Power Systems division that controls the System i platform now, it has been tough to get an explanation. The Systems and Technology

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• Consumers Create a Feedback Loop into IT

  September 4, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, the corporate data centers of the world lead when it comes to the adoption of new information technologies, and sometimes they lag. And when IT is lagging, and a hot new technology is being picked up by tech-savvy consumers in their personal lives, it usually doesn’t take long for these people, who are end users as far as their employers are concerned, bring that technology into the workplace. And that is where the IT organization’s headaches begin. Two new reports, one from Yankee Group and the other from IDC, examine the issue of the consumerization of the data

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