• Discriminating IBM i Shop Taps Quiterian for Marketing Analytics

  March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Station Casinos knows a thing or two about the IBM i server. The company has used the platform for the last 20 years to run its collection of casinos (currently 18) in the Las Vegas area. So when one of its most experienced RPG programmers praised predictive analytics software developer Quiterian, it made the news, so to speak. Station Casinos was on the hunt for new data analytics and mining tools so it could do more profiling of its customer base and craft more profitable marketing campaigns. The company, which runs its core property management, gaming, and financial systems

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• Solarsoft Gets Boost from Tech Eval.com

  March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Prospective ERP buyers who use Technology Evaluation Center‘s helpful website to research ERP products will now see Solarsoft‘s IBM i-based ERP software listed among the available options. Last week, Solarsoft announced that TEC has certified iVP, its RPG-based ERP system designed for discrete manufacturers. Certification by TEC verifies that iVP “supports industry-specific standard business processes chosen by TEC analysts, and that TEC analysts have reviewed Solarsoft iVP RFI data against known benchmarks,” the software vendor says. This could give iVP a needed visibility boost. Compared to its tier-one competitors like Infor and Oracle, Solarsoft doesn’t immediately ring

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• SEEBURGER Runs MFT Software on Amazon’s Cloud

  March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  SEEBURGER last week announced that SEEBURGER File Exchange (SEE FX), its managed file transfer (MFT) software that creates a Web portal for file sharing, is now available to run on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. As a component of the SEE MFT suite, SEE FX delivers fairly typical MFT capabilities, including encryption, authentication, full auditing and logging, checkpoint restarts, Web browser and Outlook interfaces, and unlimited file sizes. SEE MFT (and thus SEE FX) also supports the movement of IBM i files. The big difference with SEE FX compared to SEE MFT is that SEE FX creates a secure

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• EXTOL Updates ERP Adapters, Enhances AS2 Software

  March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

  EXTOL International issued updates to its adapters for Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP‘s ERP suite. The Pennsylvania company also updated its AS2 software, and hired a new sales manager. EXTOL is a company that has its roots in EDI and the AS/400, but which has broadened its reach in recent years to support other platforms and business integration methods. Its flagship product today is the Java-based EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI), a multi-purpose suite of integration broker tools that supports IBM i and other major platforms. The company recently updated two of its ERP-specific EBI adapters. The new adapter for

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• JDE Throwdown: IBM i Versus Oracle Stacks

  March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last fall, I told you all about Oracle‘s database appliances and its desire to pitch its new Sparc T4 series of Solaris servers running its eponymous database against various IBM Power-based midrange gear. Oracle, as the owner of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne suites, is particularly interested in pitching the Sparc T4 machines against entry and midrange Power7 iron running IBM i. So how does Oracle stack up? I promised that I would try to figure this out back in October, when Oracle launched the eight-core Sparc T4 processors and the servers that use them. The Sparc T4 machines come

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• Five Handles For The Mobile Application Pot

  March 26, 2012 Dan Burger

  Developing mobile applications that access IBM i data have caused a wheel to come off more than one development team wagon. If it’s happened to you, you’re not alone. The widespread popularity of smartphones and tablets in the business world has violated the comfort zones of countless IT departments in the IBM midrange. Enough so that the debris and the success stories can be assembled into an article, which managers can use to better plan future projects. Consider this as a five-step problem-solving exercise. Begin with the belief that this can be done and should be done from an IBM

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• The Definite Article, No Doubt About It

  March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  People are hierarchical beings, and they definitely have patterns in their speech that are tell-tale signs of deference and respect. So here’s a funny question for the day: How many products can you think of where the name of the object has the definite article “the” in front of it? He isn’t just the Pope because there’s only one, and someday some general won’t grumble, “Get me the President,” just because she is the one who was elected and lives in the White House. People called the first practical car the Model T, and in my family at least, its

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Mobile IBM Has Apps, But With Gaps

  March 26, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  In February, IBM bought Worklight, an outfit that has a multi-platform mobile applications development system used to build, deploy, and manage their mobile apps. IBM expects Worklight’s technology to help it sell mobile solutions to a market moving faster than a certain elephant has been dancing. IBM acted just in time. It desperately needs first class mobile apps to keep its Lotus division from getting crushed by competitors and to reinforce a number of its other division’s offerings, too. Big Blue’s big problem won’t be easy to solve. IBM’s current roster of mobile apps is good in an unforgiving

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• Server Transitions Give Internal Storage Arrays Sales A Breather

  March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I walked you through the latest statistics from Gartner regarding sales of external disk arrays. Gartner’s public information only covers outboard storage arrays, not the internal disk arrays that are still common among SMB customers. IDC‘s public data covers total storage array sales as well as external array sales, which means we can calculate what’s happening with internal arrays. Let’s start with the broadest data and drill down from there. IDC reckons that in the fourth quarter, across all array types and no matter where they are located–under a server’s

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• COMMON Reactivates RPG Certification

  March 26, 2012 Dan Burger

  Ever since IBM dropped its RPG certification program in 2009, the IBM i community has had one of the few programming languages without an official marker for technical proficiency gained through education and experience. So after instigating a certification program more than three years ago and rolling out two business computing professional certifications, COMMON decided to update the abandoned RPG certification and make it available once again. It is expected to be available for the first time at the upcoming COMMON 2012 Annual Meeting and Exposition scheduled for May 6 through 9 in Anaheim, California. COMMON has appointed a group

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