• Admin Alert: Strategically Using Power Systems’ Processor Trial Capacity On Demand

  November 28, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  IBM Power system customers usually buy more capacity than they need. A customer may buy an eight processor Power 720 machine but only activate five processors, leaving the additional processors for future growth. Because it’s expensive to activate Power system processors, IBM offers a program called Trial Capacity on Demand (TCoD) that allows you to test whether additional processors will alleviate system bottlenecks before you purchase. What Is TCoD? Trial Capacity on Demand (TCoD) is an IBM program that allows you to activate already existing system processors for 30 days at no charge. The intent is to allow users to

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• BVS Unveils Jabber-Based Messaging Tool for IBM i

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  BVS Tools is rolling out GreenJab, a new utility that enables two-way communication between the IBM i server and any client device that supports the Jabber (XMPP) instant messaging (IM) protocol. The product, which is entering beta, will give administrators another way to get critical alerts from the IBM i server, and even to submit commands or execute other tasks on the IBM i server. Jabber, officially known as Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), is an open source, XML-based IM protocol that’s also an official IETF Internet standard. There are more than 100 XMPP/Jabber clients available on the market,

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• CNX Ships IBM i Administrator App for Smart Phones

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  CNX this week introduced a new mobile application called Nitro iAdmin that lets administrators monitor and manage their IBM i servers from the comfort of their iOS, Android OS, and Blackberry smartphones. The modern looking Web app lets administrators deal with common IBM i tasks, such as responding to jobs in MSGW status, re-enabling user profiles, and moving spool files to different printer queues. There’s even a red button that will IPL the server. Ever since pagers started to become popular in the 1970s, system administrators have looked for ways to stay hooked into their servers while outside of the

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• VAI Promises New User Experience with S2K 5.4

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  VAI is nearing completion of S2K Enterprise 5.4, its IBM i-based ERP offering for small and midsize companies in the manufacturing, distribution, and retail industries. With version 5.4, VAI will be delivering a new Web client that, for the first time, will offer function parity with VAI’s Windows client, and look and feel exactly like other VAI products. Integration with IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business is another feature in this release. For many years, VAI has offered a Web client for its S2K software to go along with Windows and 5250 interfaces. However, the old HTML interface didn’t offer

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• Vision Preps New Release of iTera Availability

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Vision Solutions is gearing up to deliver a new release of its iTera Availability high availability software in early 2013. iTera Availability 6.1 is already in limited release, and when it becomes generally available next quarter, it will bring enhancements in several areas, including faster replication through expanded use of remote journaling, new auditing and reporting features, and improved installation and configuration processes, Vision representatives say. iTera Availability is one of three high availability products for IBM i servers offered by Vision Solutions. The remote journaling-based product is geared toward the small and midsize business (SMB) end of the market,

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• Staples Finds Its Own Easy Button with Help/Systems

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Staples, the $25 billion office supply retailer, has simplified the jobs of its IT help desk staff by using IBM i automation software from Help/Systems, the software vendor announced last week. Before implementing Help/Systems products, Staples’ IT staff struggled to do anything beyond day-to-day maintenance tasks. The company relied on an operations run book to guide Staples’ IT staff through the manual steps required to maintain 34 IBM i LPARs, which house critical applications, including point of sale, credit card authorization, inventory, and warehouse management. Using a run book wasn’t a particularly efficient form of management, especially considering the

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• Liaison Connects to Clouds with Updated EAI Offering

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Liaison Technologies is close to shipping new versions of Electronic Commerce Server (ECS) and Delta, two components of its enterprise application integration (EAI) offering. The big feature here is a new cloud connector in ECS 7.0 that will simplify the process of integrating cloud-based applications and data with on-premise resources. ECS and Delta offer complementary capabilities in the area of application integration, and together make up a complete EAI solution. ECS is the engine that moves data across platforms and protocols; it also includes managed file transfer (MFT) functionality. Delta, meanwhile, is a universal data mapping and translation solution that

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• Vacation Plans Get in the Way of Maxava v. Vision Trial

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  A pre-paid vacation has gotten in the way of the trial scheduled to begin next April in Maxava‘s trade libel case against Vision Solutions. The two-and-a-half week vacation for a lawyer for Sirius, a co-defendant in the case, caused the parties to delay the trial date from early April to late May. In a status conference on September 17, lawyers for Maxava, Vision, and Sirius agreed to a trial date of April 2, and a pretrial conference date of March 21. However, the trial date conflicted with the pre-paid, two-and-a-half week vacation of Sirius lawyer Friedrich Seitz.

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• STORServer Updates GUI Management Console for Backup Offering

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  STORServer, a developer of backup arrays based on Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), recently unveiled a new release of its GUI console used for managing its backup offerings and controlling the TSM environment. The new console features support for client-node replication, among other features. STORServer sells a line of integrated backup appliances that include all the X64 hardware and TSM software needed to back up data residing on a variety of servers, including the IBM i server. The STORServer offerings also include a GUI called the STORServer Console (SSC) that simplifies TSM tasks that otherwise would require the use of

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• m-Power Tested in NiSUG’s Mobile Challenge

  November 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  The folks at mrc‘s U.K. office are talking up the mobile prowess of their m-Power tool after participating recently in an IBM i development challenge sponsored by NiSUG. NiSUG (National iSeries User Group) held its first annual development challenge, called the “Application Modernisation Shoot Out,” at the COMMON GB event it put on in October 2011. Six vendors participated in that challenge, including mrc, which was very vocal about its success, along with competitor Profound Logic. When the NiSUG held another IBM i challenge at the 2012 International Power event in London earlier this month, mrc was

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