• Infor Buys Workbrain for About $200 Million

  April 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Infor yesterday announced plans to acquire Workbrain, a publicly traded developer of workforce management software, for about $227 million (or $196 million in U.S. Dollars). Workbrain, which is based in Toronto, Ontario, was founded seven years ago, and quickly became one of the leading developers of software that helps big companies manage workforce processes. Its Windows- and Unix-based offerings included labor forecasting, employee schedule optimization, time and attendance, workforce analytics, and employee self-service, and it counted several large companies as customers, including British Airways, General Mills, and Target. While Workbrain grew revenue and profits consistently over its seven-year life,

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• Quadrant Addresses Canadian Check Requirements

  April 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Are you feeling challenged by the Canadian Payments Association’s (CPA) new check specifications, and the “strong suggestion” to meet them by June 30? If so, you might want to check out Quadrant Software, which last week released a new ChecksPack that enables companies to generate CPA-compliant checks from the Formtastic electronic forms software running on OS/400 and i5/OS servers. The CPA is making several changes to its standards for check (or “cheques,” as the organization calls them), to boost the capability to electronically capture check images, and to increase security. The CPA’s changes include adoption of one of three

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• IBM Delivers New Release of RFID Software

  April 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Integration through open standards and service oriented architecture (SOA) is the name of the game for IBM, which last week updated its WebSphere RFID Premises Server. With version 6, IBM has delivered a new “device model” based on Eclipse that should widen the range of compatible radio frequency identification (RFID) readers. At the same time, IBM has delivered a new SOA “foundation” that should make it easier to feed RFID data into business applications. RFID Premises Server functions as the brains of an RFID implementation, providing the filtering and correlation necessary to make sense out of the tidal wave

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• Esker Launches Fax Services for SAP

  April 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Esker last week unveiled Esker Fax Services for SAP, a new on-demand offering designed to enable SAP ERP users to send faxes directly from their SAP screens, without buying any hardware or software. With Esker Fax Services for SAP, users can fax directly from their Business Workplace workflow inbox, or set up automated production faxing from any SAP module. When a fax command is sent from Business Workflow or one of the modules, the documents are securely transmitted (over the Internet) to one of three Esker production facilities, where the faxes are actually sent. All fax activity is tracked by

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• Make That Three 5250 Emulators Supporting Vista

  April 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Zephyr is close to gaining certification from Microsoft that its PASSPORT 2007 host emulation software–due for release this summer–is compatible with the new Windows Vista operating system, the vendor announced this week. PASSPORT is one of a number of terminal emulation programs that enable users to access AS/400, iSeries, and System i programs from Web, Windows, and mobile interfaces. In addition to 5250 support, PASSPORT supports mainframe (3270), and UNIX (VT, SCO ANSI, and Wyse) connectivity, and comes with its own FTP client. When PASSPORT 2007 ships later this year, it will be certified for Vista. Currently, only two other

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• ProData’s Hartley a Split Second from Milestone Victory

  April 3, 2007 Dan Burger

  ProData Computer Services owner Allen Hartley’s hobby of racing one of the world’s fastest vehicles put him and the Hartley Racing Team in the racing world’s spotlight last weekend. Hartley’s son, Joe, drove their top fuel dragster to a second place finish at the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston, Texas. Hartley came within a whisker of making the winner’s circle–losing in the final round by only 4/100ths of a second. Hartley’s quarter-mile time was 4.645 seconds and his top speed was 307.79 mph compared to 4.603 and 313.80 mph for the winner, J.R. Todd. The Hartley racer qualified ninth

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• Next Up on the System i5: Native GNU g++ and IBM XL C/C++

  April 2, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While the Java and C# programming languages and their respective Java Virtual Machine and Common Language Runtime environments for executing Java and C# programs get a lot of the glory these days, and there’s plenty of excitement around PHP (also an interpreted language) as it moves into the commercial world from the Web, the simple fact remains that an awful lot of very good systems and application programs are still written in the C or C++ language. And that is why I think that IBM should offer support for a native, open source GNU g++ compiler on the System i.

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• WDSc V7.0: Componentization of Advanced Edition Is Not Enough

  April 2, 2007 Bruce Guetzkow

  Over the past few weeks, there has been much discussion in this newsletter and elsewhere regarding IBM‘s announcement of the latest release of WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc), version 7.0. Most notable has been the ruckus caused by the deprecation of the CODE/400 toolset and the limiting availability of Screen Designer and Application Diagram to the costly Advanced Edition. The deprecation of CODE was not a surprise. In fact, it was expected that when comparable tools were added to WDSc there would no longer be a need for CODE. What has shocked most developers is the timing. CODE will

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• Gartner Says It Was “All Over” the Virtualization Effect

  April 2, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two weeks ago, IDC announced that it has revised its server sales forecasts to take into account the future effect that server virtualization (carving up a physical machine into multiple virtual ones) and multicore processors (putting two, four, or eight cores in a single CPU socket) will have on shipments in the market. The server box counters at Gartner took exception to our contention that IDC was the first to make such changes to server revenue and shipment models. While Gartner did not, like IDC, issue a press release to discuss its thinking on the virtualization effect on the server

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• Kronos To Be Taken Private Through a $1.8 Billion Buyout

  April 2, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Several weeks ago, when this newsletter reported on the very good financial results that workforce management software maker Kronos posted in its fiscal first quarter, I quipped that Kronos has come to dominate its niche software market and the only question about its future was why Oracle, Infor, or SAP had not acquired it yet. Last week, private equity firm Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners (H&F) shelled out $1.8 billion to take Kronos private and to keep keeping time all to itself. Through several key acquisitions over the past decade as well as through organic growth, Kronos has

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