• Apple’s AuthenTec Buy Validates Biometrics, Valid Tech Says

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  The folks at IBM i biometric software maker Valid Technologies were heartened by the recent bid by Apple to buy biometric chip maker AuthenTec for $356 million. The CEO for Valid Tech, which uses AuthenTec’s fingerprint matching technology in its flagship IBM i-based VSSA product, says the deal could help spur the adoption of biometric authentication. Greg Faust, the founder and CEO of Boca Raton, Florida-based Valid Technologies, says its partnership with AuthenTec shouldn’t be affected by its deal with Apple. Faust says he sees no reason why Apple wouldn’t accept revenue from companies like Valid that OEM AuthenTec’s technology–in

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• Robot/CONSOLE Gets Smarter with Jobs

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  In a perfect world, IBM i jobs would always behave as expected. They would start on time, interact with other resources in a predictable way, and promptly end when they’re supposed to. Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, and IBM i jobs don’t always behave predictably. Thanks to recent enhancements in Help/Systems‘ Robot/CONSOLE message management software, wild jobs can be tamed in an automatic fashion. Robot/CONSOLE alleviates the burden and potential for error introduced by relying on human eyes to filter through thousands of messages generated daily by IBM i servers. The little digital helper does

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• EXTOL Puts EDI ‘Patterns’ in the Cloud

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  EXTOL last week announced the Integration Pattern Repository (IPR), a searchable, cloud-based resource where customers can peruse and download pre-defined EDI maps to accelerate the configuration of their EDI or data integration projects. IPR is included with the latest version 2.6 release of EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI), the company’s flagship, Java-based EDI and enterprise integration broker software for IBM i and other platforms. EXTOL has long been a proponent of making EDI and data integration mapping as painless as possible. That’s because the process of mapping–or matching outputs from one application to the expected inputs of another–is the most crucial

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• IBM i Playing a Role in Rocket’s Ambitious Growth Strategy

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has quietly built itself a comfortable position in the IBM i business. Since its acquisition of Seagull Software in 2006, the company has added two more major players in the industry, including Aldon in 2011 and iCluster earlier this year. The acquisitions will continue over the next several years, as Rocket aims to triple the size of its overall business by 2017. The IBM i portion makes up a sizable fraction of Rocket Software’s total business, and is on the order of $65 million per year across 9,000 customers (see full analysis on the size of Rocket’s IBM

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• Oracle Unveils New JDE EnterpriseOne Reporting Tool

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Oracle is rolling out a new suite of reporting tools for its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers. The software giant says JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting for Service Management is designed to help companies in the service business improve their customer interactions and boost profitability. One View Reporting for Service Management is the latest addition to Oracle’s One View Reporting suite, and includes 38 new pre-built reports across eight new reporting applications. The new software is designed to help employees accomplish tasks such as analyzing service contracts for profitability, gaining visibility into equipment availability and performance, and better management of

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• Third-Party ERP Maintenance Firms Report Record-Setting Revenues

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Rimini Street and Spinnaker Support–the two largest providers of third-party maintenance for ERP systems–say their businesses are thriving, as ERP customers continue to look for ways to cut costs. Spinnaker Support, which provides third-party maintenance of Oracle JD Edwards and SAP ERP systems, says that its revenues for the first half of 2012 were 44 percent higher than they were for the first half of 2011. Its sales bookings were 48 percent higher at the halfway mark of 2012 than they were last year. And the number of customer transactions it has finalized is up 55 percent from last

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• UC4 Sold to Private Equity Firm for $270 Million

  August 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  UC4 Software has been acquired by a European private equity group for $270 million, it was announced yesterday. The deal gives a big return for The Carlyle Group, a global asset management giant with $159 billion under management, which sold the business automation software specialists to EQT Partners, a Swedish private equity group with €18 billion in assets. UC4 makes enterprise job scheduling software that’s used to manage applications running across a wide range of operating systems, including IBM i, z/OS, Unix, Windows, Linux, MPE, BS2000, OpenVMS, and many other “legacy” platforms, not to mention the cloud and

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• Power7+ Chips Juiced With Faster Clocks, Memory Compression

  August 13, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I have my ticket booked to head west to the Hot Chips 24 conference hosted by Stanford University, where IBM, Oracle, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel are expected to talk about just announced and impending processors. But Big Blue seems unable to contain its enthusiasm for the Power7+ chip that it will talk about alongside its next-generation zNext processors for its System z mainframes. A little more than a month ago, I told you about some of the details on the forthcoming chip that could be scrounged from poking around the Intertubes. From a die shot of

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• Windows Replaced By IBM i, Hosted Software, And Web Portal

  August 13, 2012 Dan Burger

  Getting something for free sounds good until you discover that it’s worth pretty much what you paid for it. In this case, Windows-based Web applications are delivered as a free hosted service. Some of the users would pay to have a better alternative. And that’s where Nathan Andelin steps in. Andelin writes applications in RPG and hosts them on an IBM Power Systems 720 running IBM i. And he’s found customers who will give up their free option for something better. Even though the hosted service Andelin offers has a fee, that is not a deterrent. It’s a matter of

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• IDC Says Power Systems Trumps X86 In Resiliency

  August 13, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Productivity losses due to unexpected downtime were six times higher in X86 environments than Power Systems environments says a study by IDC. The study, which was commissioned by IBM and turned into a white paper that was recently posted to the IBM website, found that the cost of IT staff responses to downtime was 10 times more in the X86 environments than it was in IBM Power Systems environments. In recent months, IBM has posted a slew of new white papers on its website that highlight the server platform and its competitive advantages. In addition to the 13-page white

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