• Free Tool from Nastel Identifies MQ Performance Problems

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Nastel Technologies recently announced MQSonar, a free tool designed to detect possible performance problems in IBM MQ environments. Nastel is giving away MQSonar with the hopes that it will entice users to step up to its full IBM MQ monitoring and management product, Autopilot, which is used by some of the biggest financial services and healthcare firms with MQ running across mainframe, IBM i, and distributed platforms. MQSonar works by sending “pings” out across a WebSphere MQ environment and measuring how long it takes to come back. Just as real SONAR in the open ocean can help determine the size,

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• Xperia Overhauls GUI in ERP System with looksoftware Tools

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Xperia Solutions has updated its IBM i-based ERP application for small and medium sized businesses. Earlier this year, the company delivered Xpressiv, a new version of its Comprehensiv software that features a new GUI designed to streamline user interaction. The new GUI was developed using re:new, a looksoftware screen modernization product for IBM i applications. Allentown, Pennsylvania-based Xperia develops software used by SMBs in the apparel and soft goods industries. The company, which formerly went by the name Online Data Systems, counts some well-known companies as customers of its COBOL-based suite of supply chain planning, production management, and customer relationship

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• SAS to Run IBM i Servers for North Carolina Schools

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  SAS is best known for its business analytic software. But the company is showing off its range with a recent customer engagement in its home state, where it is helping the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) consolidate more than 100 iSeries servers down to four servers, which will run in SAS’ “cloud” data centers. SAS last week announced that the NCDPI picked it for a large server consolidation project that will eventually involve 115 iSeries servers used by local education agencies (LEAs), or school districts, in North Carolina. Instead of each LEA running its own iSeries server, which

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• Infor Delivers New Marketing App Based on Salesforce

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Infor last week announced the availability of Inforce Marketing, the latest software as a service (SaaS) application to come out of the ERP software company’s partnership with online CRM provider Salesforce.com. The new offering is designed to help organizations manage their marketing activities, such as setting budgets and executing multi-channel campaigns, and integrates directly with Infor ERP systems via Infor’s ION middleware. Inforce Marketing is a native Force.com application, which is to say that it was built on the Salesforce.com platform, and is accessed by users through their Salesforce application. The software has four main areas of focus, including

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• Friedman Nabs CORESense as Constellation’s Umbrella Grows

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Friedman, the IBM i-ERP software vendor owned by Constellation Software, has acquired CORESense, a developer of retail management and ecommerce software. Also, another Constellation subsidiary recently acquired IBM i software developer Wynne Systems. CORESense is a Saratoga Springs, New York, company that develops a cloud-based ERP system called the Integrated Retail Management System that’s used by customers throughout North America, primarily among companies in the fashion and apparel, aftermarket automotive parts, and sporting goods businesses. The company’s software is written in PHP and runs on an open source stack, including Linux, Apache Web server, and MySQL

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• InsightSoftware.com Delivers JD Edwards Upgrade Tool

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  JD Edwards users who are pondering the jump to a recent release from their codemaster Oracle may be able to make the move a little less painful using the new Insight Upgrader tool from InsigthSoftware.com. ERP upgrades, just like ERP installations, are notorious consumers of time and money, and sometimes even take their share of blood and tears. Just as an ERP rollout takes careful foresight and planning to go smoothly and avoid excessive downtime, so, too, do ERP upgrades. “Industry studies have shown that up to 90 percent of ERP implementations and upgrades result in budget and schedule

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• TMW Hooks IES Suite to Rand McNally Trucking Devices

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  TMW Systems, the trucking software company that’s being acquired by Trimble, announced a new release of its IBM i-based Innovative IES suite that’s pre-integrated to work with in-cab computing systems manufactured by Rand McNally. Innovative IES R9.5 brings out-of-the-box integration with two Rand McNally devices designed to keep truckers in communication with their dispatchers, including the TND 760 and TPC 7600. The TND 760 is a small computer that includes a GPS receiver, cellular and WiFi cards, and a color display. It provides access to a range of software and electronic services, including Rand McNally’s IntelliRoute GPS

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• Oak Bank Looks to Grow with New Fiserv Banking System

  September 25, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Oak Bank plans to grow its business thanks to a new core banking system and a range of add-ons from Fiserv. The Chicago bank chose Premiere, a powerful IBM i application that will form the foundation for a digital banking overhaul that should improve the way customers interact with the $218 million institution. Fiserv sells core banking systems that run on a variety of platforms, including IBM i, AIX, Windows, and IBM zSeries and the Unisys Clearpath mainframes. But it’s Premiere, which was ported from the Unisys platform to i5/OS (the old name for IBM i) in 2004, that

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• Power7+ Systems Due To Launch October 3

  September 24, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Ladies and gentlemen, start your checkbooks. We’ve been telling you all about the impending Power7+ processors and speculating on the related servers for so long you probably think they are already here and can’t figure out why they aren’t available from IBM‘s business partner channel. It looks like we won’t have to wait much longer to see what Big Blue is going to do to ratchet up its assault on Oracle and Hewlett-Packard in the RISC/Unix racket while preserving its IBM i platform and keeping the X86 legions at bay. It’s a delicate bit of maneuvering that IBM has

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• Python On IBM i: Why?

  September 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Why might you want to run Python on the IBM i platform? According to the folks at iSeries Python who manage the port of the open source language to IBM i, Python is so readable and easy to learn that it gives programmers a big boost in productivity when they use it, particularly for reporting purposes. And with the recent completion of the port of the Django framework to IBM i, there is one more reason to consider adding Python to your quiver. The iSeries Python project, which is the brainchild of Per Gummedal, began around 2004. Since then, Gummedal

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