• looksoftware Talks Implementation and Invigoration

  May 8, 2012 Dan Burger

  If there were flags for RPG and IBM i, looksoftware would be waving them. At its annual user conference, which is cleverly named “lookahead,” there was plenty of “can do” for the IBM midrange advocates in attendance. CEO Brendan Kay was noticeably energized during his closing session Thursday and it carried over to our conversation afterward as he spoke in glowing terms about the IBM i platform, RPG programmers, and the projects completed and under way at looksoftware customer sites. Accomplishments rather than a new product focus dominated at the conference. Kay was obviously pleased that with the last major

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• Halcyon Ships Document Management Software, Updates 2 Others

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Halcyon Software yesterday unveiled its Document Management System, a new product designed to streamline the creation, distribution, and archiving of content from IBM i servers and help customers move to a paperless office. The vendor also used the COMMON conference taking place this week in Anaheim, California, as a springboard to launch new versions of its job scheduler and system monitoring tool for the IBM i server. Document Management System 3.0 Halcyon’s new Document Management System gives users a way to transform raw IBM i spool file content into more refined-looking documents. Once the spool files have been transformed, they

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• ASG Has One Foot on Premise, One Foot in the Cloud

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Over the past three decades, ASG Software Solutions has built a solid reputation as a provider of infrastructure automation software, primarily for IBM mainframe environments, which constitutes 90 percent of its customer base. Thanks to several recent acquisitions, the software company is now providing solutions to help customers automate their cloud environments, too. The roots of ASG trace back to 1981, the year that former Marine and General Motors system analyst Arthur Allen retired to Naples, Florida, after a 25-year career that culminated in selling his first company, Allen Services Corporation, for $18 million. But instead of playing tennis all

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• Data Protection Costs US $400 Million a Year, EVault Says

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Surprisingly poor data protection strategies are costing companies big bucks, according to a recent survey commissioned by EVault. The Seagate subsidiary found that most of the data loss instances, which can cost a company tens of millions of dollars, could have been prevented with an investment in better data protection. EVault’s survey, which was conducted in the U.S., the U.K., and France, generated some interesting factoids about the state of data protection and data loss. For example, it found that 20 percent of organizations that manage between 2 TB and 7 TB of data suffered a data loss in

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• JReport 11 Brings New Dashboard, Mobile Options

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Jinfonet Software last month unveiled JReport 11, the newest version of its Java-based reporting software, which can run on the IBM i server. Version 11 introduces new data visualization capabilities, new dashboard options, and the capability to view reports on iOS devices. JReport is a lightweight suite of business intelligence tools that, up to this point, included three core modules, including a drag-and-drop report designer, a report distribution and management tool, and an ad-hoc reporting and multi-dimensional module. The software runs on any Java-based Web application server, and is typically utilized as an embedded reporting tool for other Web applications.

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• FalconStor Adds Inline Dedupe to VTL

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that back up their data using FalconStor Software‘s virtual tape library (VTL) can now deduplicate their data as the backup is executing, thanks to newly introduced support for inline deduplication with FalconStor VTL 7.5. FalconStor VTL is a backup and recovery solution that it sells either as a pre-configured appliance (or a cluster of appliances), or as software that customers install on their own X86 servers. By backing up to disk instead of tape, the VTL offering helps speed its customers’ backups and also provides more flexibility. The product supports the Power Systems server and IBM i environments,

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• Safestone Updates Cross-Platform Compliance Tool

  May 8, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Safestone Technologies recently added support for Linux with its Compliance Center for IBM Power Systems. The audit and compliance reporting tool now works across all three Power Systems operating systems: IBM i, AIX, and Linux. Safestone originally launched its Compliance Center software for IBM i back in 2010. The software takes the grunt work out of sifting through server logs and configuration settings, gathering the pertinent data, stripping out the unimportant stuff, and arranging it into an acceptable report format to hand to your auditor to prove compliance with a range of industry regulations. The U.K. security software company followed

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• Apps And IBM i Evangelism

  May 7, 2012 Dan Burger

  “You’re only as old as your apps feel.” I can’t get that thought out of my head. Thank you, Trevor Perry. Of all the things that were said Friday by Preacher Perry and the other ordained evangelists at the iBelieve revival meeting, those few words summed it up best for me. If the IBM i is going to escape eternal damnation in some IT closet in Hades, application developers are going to be responsible for saving its soul. Old applications, dependent on and limited by the 5250 data stream and green type on a black background must go. I can

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• Abacus Solutions Puffs Up An IBM i Cloud

  May 7, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You can find a million places that offer you cloudy instances of Windows or Linux operating systems on X86 servers running out there on the Internet, but finding similarly cloudy slices of Power-based machinery sporting the OS/400 or IBM i operating systems can be a challenge. Especially if you don’t want to make long-term commitments and only want to buy a relatively small slice of a machine. But this week at the COMMON midrange trade show, Abacus Solutions is throwing its data center in the ring with its i in the Cloud offering. Yeah, it would be better if they

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• ‘New’ Infor’s Cloudy IPO Picture

  May 7, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Will the “new” Infor go public, or will it not? There are indications both ways. The location of its new headquarters, which is currently under construction a few blocks from Wall Street, sure seems to say yes. But a recent equity investment by Summit Partners casts some doubt on an initial public offering by Infor. Infor was well on its way to an IPO of stock several years ago, former CEO Jim Schaper confirmed in press interviews. However, the economy imploded in late 2007, causing companies of all stripes to hunker down to weather the downturn in the hopes of

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