• JDA Unveils New Cloud-Based Supply Chain Platform

  April 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  JDA Software last week unveiled JDA eight, a new cloud-based platform designed to help companies with a range of supply chain activities, including planning, forecasting, optimization, analytics, and logistics. JDA eight is based on 30 pre-existing products from JDA, including software from its E3, i2, and Manugistics acquisitions. JDA rewrote the products for delivery via the cloud and to give them new “consumer-level” interfaces. JDA CEO and president Hamish Brewer provided some insight into JDA eight in a video posted to the JDA website. In the video, Hamish says JDA eight is “much more than a typical product release,”

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• Quadrant Adds QR Code Support to Formtastic

  April 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Quadrant Software recently issued a new release of its forms management software that supports the Quick Response (QR) codes that can be used to communicate Web hyperlinks through a camera on a smart phone. Quadrant says that QR code support was added to Formtastic version 5.4.5, which shipped more than two years ago. Formtastic can now add QR codes to forms generated from IBM i spooled files, thereby boosting internal and external communications. Quadrant also announced that it has improved its intelligent mail barcode functionality to comply with a requirement by the United States Postal Service for customer eligibility

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• Help/Systems Gets Its Splunk On with ‘InterMapper’ Launch

  April 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i systems management software developer Help/Systems last week unveiled InterMapper App for Splunk Enterprise, a network analytics and visualization tool designed to work with the data collection software from Splunk. Splunk is an up-and-coming company based in San Francisco that develops software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing big data. The company’s main product, also called Splunk, helps organizations to capture, index, and correlate large amounts of data, and use it to develop graphs, reports, alerts, and dashboards, all from a Web-based interface. Help/Systems’ product builds on the core data collection and manipulation capabilities of Splunk by delivering network

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• AURA Equipements Touts its SQLiPlug

  April 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  One AURA Equipements product you will be hearing about more in the future is SQLiPlug, a piece of software that allows IBM i applications to access external databases in real time. SQLiPlug is not a new product, and it hasn’t been enhanced lately. But according to AURA Equipements CEO Sylvain Rubele, AURA will be doing a lot of work with SQLiPlug in the future, as the company looks to enable database access to and from the IBM i server. SQLiPlug runs the on IBM i server and facilitates a direct connection between DB2 for i and third-party databases, such as

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• Midrange Power7+ Servers: The IBM Sales Pitch

  April 8, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I have spent the past several weeks analyzing the price/performance of the hardware, software, and maintenance for the new Power7+ midrange machines, the Power 750+ and Power 760+. And this week, after looking at prices for various hardware configurations and for raw computing capacity set up with IBM i and Software Maintenance, we take a look at the sales pitch that IBM is giving to business partners and resellers to help them peddle the new iron to existing IBM i shops and against competitive products out there in the midrange. Just to keep it all clear in your head how

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• IBM i Looks For ‘Social Security’ On Silver Anniversary

  April 8, 2013 Dan Burger

  IBM is planning a 25th anniversary celebration for IBM i and it begins now. It’s sort of a surprise party (at least the timing is a surprise), because the celebration is beginning almost 11 weeks in advance of the official anniversary date, which is June 21. Colin Parris popped the first cork April 7 during the opening session of the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in Austin, Texas. However, it was Steve Will who strategically leaked the information last week in his blog. It is fitting that the chief architect for the IBM i should open the door to this

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• IBM Lets MSPs Have Utility-Priced IBM i 6.1 For Clouds

  April 8, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you want to build a cloud and charge utility style pricing, it is very tough to come up with the capital ahead of time to get the hardware and software to build that cloud and then wait patiently as you find customers to pay monthly fees to use that infrastructure. IBM Global Financing has always offered financing on new machines at fairly attractive prices, but to go after managed service providers and help them build cloudy infrastructure based on IBM i, Big Blue has been giving deep discounts to MSPs for specific hardware and also providing utility pricing on

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• As I See It: Rigging Reputation

  April 8, 2013 Victor Rozek

  In Atlanta, the teachers cheated so the students didn’t have to. It was an imperfect solution to be sure, designed to relieve the pressures of standardized testing, an unintended consequence of No Child Left Behind, otherwise known as “Are our children learning?” Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of educators were involved over the span of a decade. As of 10 days ago, 35 have been indicted, including former superintendent Beverly Hall, charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. Can you spell “prison time?” As test scores miraculously soared even in the poorest, most challenged districts, it became evident

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• The 21 IBM Fellows Who Helped Build The IBM i Server

  April 8, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM celebrates two major milestones this spring: the 25th anniversary of the launch of the AS/400, as well as the 50th anniversary of the IBM Fellows program. With help from IBM, we filled in the areas where these two programs overlap, and identified a list of the 21 Fellows who applied their brilliant brains to developing some aspect of the AS/400 or its successors and related technologies. IBM launched its Fellows program in 1963. The idea behind the program, as envisioned by CEO Thomas Watson Jr., was to give accomplished scientists, engineers, programmers, and architects the freedom to explore their

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• Reader Feedback On Oracle Takes On IBM Power With New Sparc T5 Systems

  April 8, 2013 Hey, TPM

  I won’t say “Is this a joke?” although it is very tempting. I enjoy reading your articles, even though I had only a light period with managing any OS/400 (V4R2 days). My focus is AIX and Unix, since 1979 actually. When you test these systems look closely at the specs for transfer between chips and cores. My experience with AIX and Power is that customers do not like doing the planning required to get the most out of the box. NUMA is “boring,” and planning your workloads to work with it is a headache for some; not doing the planning

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