• LANSA Offers ROI Calculator for Legacy Modernization Projects

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Curious how the cost-benefit analysis will weigh out with your legacy modernization project? After all, a positive analysis could mean the difference between becoming the hero of your IT department and being forced to update your resume. LANSA, a purveyor of i5/OS development tools, last week announced a new ROI Calculator that should help users put hard numbers to their software plans. LANSA’s new ROI Calculator is an Excel spreadsheet that identifies the costs and prospective savings from a modernization project. By providing figures specific to one’s business–such as the number of full-time vs. casual users, the amount of

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• IBM Launches New UDO Gen 2 Optical Jukebox

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced the 3996, a new series of optical libraries that use the latest generation of 5.25-inch Ultra Density Optical (UDO) drive technology developed by IBM partner, Plasmon. The IBM 3996 Optical Library is a large-scale, externally attached device that offers multiple UDO storage technology options. There are three models of the 3996 Library, including the Model 032, the Model 080, and the Model 174. All models ship with the 30 GB UDO Gen 1 drives, but can be ordered with the newer 60 GB UDO Gen 2 drives, if specified. The Model 032 has one optical

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• NetCustomer Discounts Third-Party Support Offerings for J.D. Edwards Shops

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Third-party maintenance service provider netCustomer is offering all J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft customers one free support issue this month as part of its “Independence Day” offering. NetCustomer launched its cafeteria-style menu of maintenance and support services for users of J.D. Edwards World and EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft Enterprise ERP applications about 16 months ago. Instead of a one size fits all approach, the San Jose, California-based company allows its customers to pick from an assortment of maintenance services, such as regulatory and tax updates, as well as customization and development services. On July 3, NetCustomer announced a special deal designed

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• IBM Introduces Half-Height LTO 3 Tape Drive

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced a new half-height Linear Tape Open (LTO) 3 Ultrium drives, the IBM System Storage TS2230, which connects to System i servers, among other servers. The TS2230, which carries a list price of $3,645 and becomes available August 3, can be used in a stand-alone or mounted in an industry-standard 19-inch rack. It supports serial-attached SCSI (SAS) or low-voltage differential SCSI attachments to i5/OS, AIX, Unix, Linux, and Windows servers. Due to its smaller size, the TS2230 offers slightly slower data transfer rates than other LTO 3 gear–60 MB/sec, compared to the spec’s native 80 MB/sec top

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• BOSaNOVA Offers Fat Visuals for Thin Clients

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  BOSaNOVA customers will soon be able to connect up to four monitors to a single thin client workstation thanks to a distribution deal it signed with Matrox Graphics this month. While big flat panels are all the rage these days, users can absorb just as much information, if not more, by using multiple monitors to interact with host applications via thin client emulators. This is a niche that Matrox Graphics has specialized in for the past three decades, as its products have been embedded into solutions for the financial and healthcare industries, as well as for CAD and dispatch solutions.

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• Infor Re-Brands Datastream EAM, Adds New Feature

  July 17, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Infor recently launched a new version of the enterprise asset management (EAM) application that it obtained with its $216 million acquisition of Datastream last year. With this release, Infor has renamed the Datastream 7i application as Infor EAM Enterprise Edition, and added a new feature designed to streamline the management of configurations. As a class of product, EAM is designed to help customers manage their large capital assets, such as factories, truck fleets, and machinery. By automating the maintenance schedules for these pieces of equipment, tracking their usage, monitoring their state, and maintaining a tight grip on any warranty claims,

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• The Database Is the Computer

  July 16, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  So many smart technologies have been created for and embodied in the successive generations of IBM‘s midrange platforms over the past four decades that it is hard to single out any particular idea of merit. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose, I would probably ask for the ability to single out one hardware idea and one software idea, which is a kind of cheating, I admit. But what else would you expect? On the hardware side, I think that single-level storage, which masks the complexities of where data is in cache and main

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• Another i5 Pricing Tweak: No User Cap on i5 515s

  July 16, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM continues to tweak and tune its pricing for the new user-based pricing model that is embodied in the System i5 515 and 525 servers. Back in May, IBM shifted from counting all users that access the system as users to merely counting concurrent users on the system, thereby making the pricing more accurately reflect how customers use the machine. On July 8, IBM made further changes to the user pricing on the entry i5 515 server, which will remove some complaints by customers looking to acquire that box. Back in April, when the i5 515 was announced, the base

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• System i Skills: Building Bridges Over the Generation Gap

  July 16, 2007 Dan Burger

  Jim Buck is an IBM AS/400 and RPG veteran. He’s an old school guy with a career timeline that parallels OS/400 development. Five years ago, he was a one-man IT department at a small hospital in Iowa where he minded two 400s. His boss, the hospital’s chief executive officer, saw no reason to invest in upgrading technology or Buck’s education and training. Buck felt differently, so he left. His belief in technology and education are being applied to the System i curriculum at Gateway Technical College. Gateway Technical College (GTC) is tucked into the northwest corner of Kenosha, Wisconsin,

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• Mad Dog 21/21: To Avatar and Avatar Not

  July 16, 2007 Hesh Wiener

  In the Hindu tradition, an avatar is the physical manifestation of a god; the principal avatars are incarnations of Vishnu, but there are others, too. Similar concepts exist in other religions, even ones that are not dharmic. In computing, an avatar is an animated sprite or icon that represents a real or invented player in a virtual amusement such as Second Life. In finance, an avatar is what IBM set up in Holland to obtain favorable tax treatment for a $12.5 billion stock repurchase, provoking the IRS to ban future incarnations of that particular caper. So,

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