• Parasoft Unveils SOAtest 5.0

  February 6, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Testing automation software developer Parasoft recently unveiled SOAtest version 5.0, a suite of tools for ensuring that applications delivered using service oriented architecture (SOA) technology are secure, reliable, and compliant. The new version is easier to use and spots problems faster than previous versions, the company says. SOAtest is a collection of test and analysis tools designed to help users and developers ensure new SOA applications are ready to do real work in the enterprise. The software performs Web Services Description Language (WSDL) validation, schema validation, functional testing of the client, functional testing of the server, performance testing, and the

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• Russian Bank Adopts MIMIX for i5/OS

  February 6, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Alfa-Bank, one of Russia’s largest privately owned banks, has implemented Lakeview Technology‘s MIMIX ha1 for i5/OS software to protect itself from both planned and unplanned outages, the software company announced recently. Alpha-Bank operates 121 branches and subsidiary banks across Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Netherlands, and maintains assets of $9.8 billion. The bank is progressive, in that it’s one of a handful of Russian banks to adopt Western accounting standards. For the past three years, it’s also headed the list of the “best IT banks in Russia,” an annual survey conducted by an independent Russian research group. However, despite

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• Bottomline Hooks Into J.D. Edwards Via Oracle Fusion Middleware

  February 6, 2007 Alex Woodie

  J.D. Edwards shops looking for a document management software provider may want to check out Bottomline Technologies, whose document management software products were recently certified to work with Oracle‘s J.D. Edwards ERP software, as well as the E-Business Suite, via Oracle’s Fusion Middleware. Bottomline Technologies sells document and payment management solutions that work with a number of legacy ERP systems. The New Hampshire company developed a special affinity for the J.D. Edwards product line largely through the acquisitions of two companies Create!form International (in 2003) and FormScape (last October) that developed electronic output management solutions commonly used in

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• IBM Upgrades System i5 Disk Controllers, Adds Enclosures

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As this newsletter reported the company would do several weeks ago, IBM will this week launch a new disk controller for the System i5 line that has more performance and fatter read and write caches. IBM is also announcing a new means of providing much denser disk array packaging based on a method currently in use on the System p5 Power-based and System x X64-based server lines. The expected LTO tape library was not announced this week, but it is probably due any day now. There are several variants of the new disk controller card, which changes a little depending

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• IBM and ISVs Launch VIP Program to Reinvigorate System i5 Sales

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As last year was coming to a close, executives at IBM said that in 2007 the company would be cooking up some sales and marketing schemes to bolster the System i5 channel and do a better job pushing the box and the solutions that run atop of it. Last Friday, IBM announced the Vertical Industry Program, or VIP, which is a fine-grained operation that will target very specific industries in various geographies to marry customers looking for applications to the independent software vendors who have the software they need. According to Kevin Patterson, director of worldwide System i sales at

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• Sundry Other System i5 Announcements

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In anticipation of upcoming storage announcements for the System i5 product line, which I told you about a few weeks ago and which IBM will be making officially on February 6, the company last week made a bunch of relatively minor System i5 announcements. While not earth-shattering, these announcements are nonetheless important for OS/400 and i5/OS shops who are looking at their 2007 budget plans. IBM has announced two rebate deals relating to the System i5 and made modifications to a bunch of existing deals. The first new deal has to do with the System i5 Capacity BackUp (CBU) servers,

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• The X Factor: One Socket to Rule Them All

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Vendors in the information technology business talk about standards more than just about anything else, something that the advent of the open systems business and Unix taught them to do two decades ago. But from their point of view, standards are a terrible thing–unless you happen to own one. We have standards for operating system features–POSIX and TCP/IP being two big ones–and standards for networking–Ethernet of ever-increasing speed–for storage–PCI, PCI-X and now PCI-Express peripheral slots and SCSI, SATA, and SAS disks–and for main memory–FB-DIMM and DDR2 modules. And now, perhaps, is the time for a standard CPU socket and interconnection

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• Vanguard Systems Buys Elite Document Solutions

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Vanguard Systems, a supplier of document management, workflow, and related storage applications for the i5/OS and OS/400 platform, continues to grow through acquisitions, and last week it bought one of its partners, Elite Document Systems. Vanguard sells an electronic document management solution called IMS/21, which runs on i5/OS and OS/400. IMS/21 is commonly used in insurance, healthcare, financial services, and distribution companies that also rely heavily on documents to do their business. The IMS/21 software keeps electronic versions of all of the fax, invoice, statement, and other reports that i5/OS and OS/400 applications generate; it allows the scanning

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• Will 45 Nanometer Chips Make Two Warring Camps?

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Chip makers IBM and Intel have announced their research efforts to push the boundaries of chip making processes as they try to keep the Moore’s Law price/performance curve alive. IBM and Intel both divulged some of the techniques that they will employ in their 45 nanometer chip making processes, trying to steal headlines from the other. But that may not be the real story. It probably won’t be long before there are only two organizations in the world with the resources to extend chip technology and push Moore’s Law. One of these companies will be Intel, of course, and the

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• Vision Solutions Boasts of Financial Results Post iTera Merger

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  High availability software vendor Vision Solutions says that the first 60 days of business since it completed its merger with former rival iTera have gone really well–and perhaps even better than anticipated. Vision Solutions used to be a public company, which meant that it published financial results for investors and the broader market to see. But Vision Solutions was taken private when it was acquired by Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in a number of high-tech companies, in September 2005. iTera was a privately held upstart, taking on the Big Three in the HA

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