• Databeam Adds Security Component to Suite

  April 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Databeam, a Rochester, Minnesota-based developer of power tools for the IBM i server, last month unveiled version 3 of its software suite. The new version of Databeam includes updates to existing tools, dataCapture and dataAlert. The company has added a new component, called dataSecurity, which alerts administrators to potential security breaches. Databeam unveiled its first IBM i offerings about a year ago when it launched version 1 of its eponymous Databeam Suite. The software, which it developed with fellow Rochester developers at Centerfield Technology , is a tool that has two components: dataCapture, a query and filter tool for

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• STORServer Launches Entry-Level Backup Appliance

  April 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  STORServer last week unveiled a new backup appliance for smaller organizations and offices that want to protect between 1 and 7 TB of data. The entry-level BA series can back up different types of servers, including IBM i, thanks to its use of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) software. The new BA 851 is a 2U appliance that features a six-core X86 processor, 15 TB of SAS disk, and 32 GB of memory. On this frame sits Windows Server 2008 R2, a copy of TSM 6.x, and the STORServer software and GUI console (TSM’s GUI leaves much to be desired).

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• Lavastorm Signs On as QlikTech Partner

  April 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Lavastorm Analytics, a developer of tools that helps users understand how data flows across their business, has joined QlikTeck‘s partner program. While neither vendor’s software runs on IBM i, they are widely used by customers in the midrange space. QlikTech has made a name for itself over the last several years with its focus on developing low-cost business intelligence tools that are easy to use. The success of its flagship QlikView product line helped fuel the recent resurgence of in-memory analytic products–and also helped drive an IPO on Nasdaq. While the company’s software runs on Windows, it is

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• Kronos Takes iSeries Central on the Road, Gets SMART

  April 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Kronos‘ iSeries Central suite has a seat on the Customer Experience bus as it embarks today on a 20-city road show across North America to showcase Kronos. The Massachusetts software vendor also announced the acquisition of SMART, a U.K.-based developer of workforce management software. The iSeries Central suite doesn’t always get top billing in the Kronos scheme of things, as the company prefers to lead with Workforce Central, which runs on open systems like Windows and Linux. That’s a shame, as the suite, which is composed of iSeries Scheduler, iSeries Timekeeper, iSeries Absence Management, iSeries Activities, and iSeries Gaming,

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• AWS/400: Amazon Builds An AS/400-oid Cloud

  April 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  OK, there is no such thing as AWS/400, but conceptually speaking, the collection of 30 cloud services are the modern analog to the simplification and integration philosophies built into the AS/400 many years ago, all souped-up for a modern, Webby world. Or, at least that is what I kept thinking as I attended the AWS Summit in New York City last week. AWS is, of course, short for Amazon Web Services, and it is the cloud computing subsidiary of online retailing giant Amazon. We have two main jobs here in the Four Hundred stack of newsletters. The first, of

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• IBM Loses Money On Hardware In Q1

  April 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM may have a new president and CEO, but you would be hard-pressed to find any difference between the numbers turned in by Ginni Rometty in her first quarter at the helm of Big Blue and those of her predecessor, chairman Sam Palmisano, in his last quarter standing at the wheel in the fourth quarter of 2011. To many, this makes IBM almost boring in its predictability, but if you are counting on rising earnings driving a rising stock price as well as dividends, this is probably the kind of hum-drum thing you like. In the first quarter ended in

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• Summit Partners Acquires Control Of Help/Systems–Again

  April 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  “In the private equity world, you rarely double in on a company,” explains Mark Ties, chief financial officer at Help/Systems, the maker of automation tools for IBM i, Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms. But doubling in, as Ties called it, is precisely what private equity giant Summit Partners did on April 17 when it bought the majority stake control of Help/Systems. Summit Partners was founded in 1984 and has raised more than $14 billion in capital from investors in those ensuing 28 years, which has been invested in more than 340 companies in North America, Europe, and Asia. Of

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Drivers Of The Purple Sage

  April 23, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  In the old days, to print a document you had to have driver software on your computer that matched an attached or nearby printer. In offices with a diversity of computers and printers, this was a nightmare. New applications, new types of documents, new clients, or new printers meant finding new paths through the thicket of operating systems, networks, drivers, and page description languages. These days you can let your printer vendors deal with linkage. You can even consider tossing out those persnickety PCs and riding out on the new frontier where the mobile clients range. Some of the inspiration

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• Third Party’s A Charm For JDE Maintenance Contracts

  April 23, 2012 Dan Burger

  Like a fur coat on a hot summer day, the cost of software maintenance is making a lot of companies sweat. Maintenance has always been a factor whether it relates to purchased or home-grown software, but in recent times its shadow grew while budgets were pinched. Nowhere in the IBM i community has this issue been more apparent than among JD Edwards users. JDE apps have a large installed base, and ever since Oracle took over JDE, it has become the lightning rod example. On average, the annual software maintenance fees come in at around 20 percent of the total

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• IT Spending Projections Crimped For 2012

  April 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The strengthening U.S. dollar and slightly higher spending last year on hardware, software, and services as well as a reduction in projected spending by companies have combined to make Gartner revise its IT spending expectations for 2012 downward a bit. Here’s the deal. Gartner reckons that IT spending was a little bit stronger in 2011 than its projections earlier this year pegged it, with sales of $3,661 billion worldwide across all categories of IT spending, including computing hardware, enterprise software, IT services, telecom hardware, and telecom services. In January, just after 2011 had ended but before many of the IT

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