• IPS Acquires OnePrint Software from LogNet

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Integrated Print Solutions of Texas has acquired all the rights to OnePrint, a print protocol converter that it’s distributed for the last 14 years, from its former business partner LogNet Systems of Israel. OnePrint is a Windows-based print protocol converter that enables customers to print documents from IBM i and mainframe servers on standard, inexpensive printers, and eliminates the need for customers to purchase or maintain expensive AFP and IPDS printers from IBM. The software works by converting the high-end AFP and IPDS output from IBM servers into standard printer data streams–including Printer Control Language (PCL) and PostScript, as well

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• Pharmaceutical Firm Connects ERP Systems with Magic iBOLT

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Stallergenes, the second largest maker of allergy medicine in Europe, has tapped Magic Software and its iBOLT software to integrate a Lawson M3-based purchasing system running on an IBM i server into its SAP financial system, the software company announced last week. Stallergenes is a biopharmaceutical company based in France that is a leader in the manufacture of sublingual immunotherapy medicines for allergic respiratory diseases, such as rhinoconjunctivitis and allergic asthma. The company markets its Stalair-branded products in 50 countries across the world, and recorded €216 million in revenues for 2010. Stallergenes runs a mix of various computer systems to

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• RJS Lashes WebDocs to WebForms

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  RJS Software Systems, which has been on a product integration kick of late, last week announced that a new release of its Windows-based WebDocs document management and routing software can now be used directly with WebForms, its online forms offering, resulting in heightened usability. Prior to the release of WebDocs–Windows Edition version 1.4, RJS customers who were also running WebForms had no obvious, out-of-the-box way to hook the two products together. This was unfortunate for RJS customers, as the two products offer complementary capabilities in the area of capturing data from people via online forms (WebForms) and managing and

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• T.L. Ashford Ships New Forms Overlay

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  T.L. Ashford & Associates last week unveiled a new overlay utility for Barcode400, its IBM i forms and barcode labeling software. The new utility is much easier to use and will make Barcode400 users more productive, the company says. Barcode400 is an electronic forms and labeling package that supports the generation of all types of barcodes and radio frequency identification (RFID)-encoded tags, including compliance labels. The software runs natively on the IBM i server and integrates with existing RPG, COBOL, and CL applications without any programming, the company says. The software outputs labels in Printer Control Language (PCL) and AFP

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• IBM Slashes Some Power7 Processor Prices

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The new year is well under way and IBM, as we report elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, has closed out last year and is facing whatever new challenges it has. The big one is that new Opteron 6200 processors from Advanced Micro Devices and Sparc T4 processors from Oracle are out, and the even bigger problem is that the Xeon E5 processors from Intel are shipping under NDA to selected customers and are expected to launch this quarter. And so, IBM is tweaking its Power Systems Power7 processor pricing a little bit to blunt the

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• Power Systems Eating Into Mainframe Sales

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM closed out 2011 on a somewhat somber note in terms of hardware sales, but not because of the Power Systems line. That’s good news for any customer that relies on Power Systems, and so is the fact that Big Blue is stealing away business from Unix rivals Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, and so is IBM’s frank admission that Power7-based machines are also taking share away from System z mainframes in the enterprise segment of the server racket. IBM reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011 after the market closed last Thursday, and because of currency fluctuations

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• IBM Unveils New Social Media Solutions at Lotusphere

  January 23, 2012 Alex Woodie

  IBM is moving its LotusLive hosting service for Notes onto its SmartCloud infrastructure and calling it SmartCloud for Social Business, the company announced at last week’s Lotusphere. The company also unveiled several new software and services that will be sold under the SC4SB umbrella, including new releases of its flagship social networking platform IBM Connections; an embeddable version of the Lotus Notes social networking features; a new productivity suite called IBM Docs; and new clients for Blackberrys and the new Windows Phone. Business software vendors like IBM are trying mightily to hook their horses to the social media train that

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• As I See It: The Second Concern

  January 23, 2012 Victor Rozek

  Recently, I contacted a number of colleagues around the country to find out what concerns occupy their quiet moments. Not surprisingly, at the top of the list was keeping or, in one case, finding a job. Most reported working for years with no prospect of a raise, and several whose spouses were no longer employed had been forced to make lifestyle adjustments. But close behind employment was the desire to maintain or find affordable healthcare. There is an ironic timeliness to their concern. Every January many Americans try to preempt the need for healthcare by getting fit. After a holiday

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• Dawn of the Dead: Portals’ Revenge

  January 23, 2012 Dan Burger

  Portals are not dead. They’ve just been sleeping. Almost all highly hyped technology eventually moves into reality, where the effects of market consolidation and sometimes technology commoditization can dull a formerly bright star. But this could be a better time and place for portals thanks to social media and cloud computing. The big guys–IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and a few others are poised. While some smaller vendors are featuring lighter weight and lower cost products. We’re still in the midst of a major hype storm that’s dumping huge amounts of propaganda concerning social media and

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• Reader Feedback On Control Your Code, Control Your Costs And Destiny

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hi Timothy, Thanks for the article on home-grown RPG software. The company I work for is still running the software we wrote on the System/38 and we continue to enhance it daily. I believe it has given us an edge over many packaged software customers. We don’t have to ask for changes, we make them. Yes, we too have looked into replacing our systems several times, but haven’t found packages doing things the way we have done for 27 plus years! I just need to find some young talent that wants to learn RPG and doesn’t mind the green screen.

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