• Cloud Integration Issues Loom on Horizon, EXTOL Says

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  What’s your cloud integration strategy? If you’re like most IBM i shops, much of your data interchange is handled via good old EDI or flat file transfers. But the rapid spread of cloud services is hastening the move to more sophisticated forms of data and application integration and interchange. According to EXTOL, which develops integration broker software for IBM i and other platforms, the day is fast approaching when companies will need new techniques for integrating cloud services into their business processes. IT Jungle caught up with EXTOL vice president of product management Jim O’Leary telephonically as he attended

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• 3M and Infor in Legal Dispute Over 3rd Party ERP Support

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  A dispute over third-party support for BPCS and Infinium software has landed 3M and Infor in a Minnesota courtroom. Last month, 3M filed a complaint against the ERP giant for allegedly demanding about $21 million in exchange for allowing a third-party to service and support the heavily modified versions of BPCS and Infinium for 3M. According to the original complaint filed by 3M on November 23 in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, 3M originally licensed the AS/400-based software from SSA Global in 1997. Along with a perpetual license, 3M bought a support agreement from SSA to obtain

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• Symtrax Unhooks Web Reporting Tool from Excel

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Symtrax last week unveiled StarQuery Web, a new addition to its StarQuery suite that enables users to create and access reports through a Web browser, without the need for Excel. The software replaces StarQuery for the Web, which required a copy of Excel to be on hand. With StarQuery Web, Symtrax has put a complete report-authoring tool online for the first time. Users no longer need to work within the constraints of Excel or other spreadsheet software, as was the case with the company’s previous Web interface for its StarQuery suite, called StarQuery for the Web. Working with StarQuery Web

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• ‘Shoot-Out’ Shows Promise of Architecture Replacement Over Screen Scraping

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  What could be faster than screen scraping? According to development tool maker mrc, which participated in the recent “Application Modernisation Shoot Out” in the U.K., it was able to completely re-architect a system in less time than it would have taken to simply screen scrape a green-screen app into a GUI. Mrc was one of six vendors participating in the Shoot Out, which was hosted last month at the COMMON GB event put on by National iSystems User Group (NiSUG). Each of the six vendors–including Attachmate, CoralTree, Utilties400, SpaceTec , and Logicmate–used a different approach

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• BitRock Supports IBM i with InstallBuilder

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  BitRock now supports IBM i with InstallBuilder, a software installation utility that’s used by software developers and vendors to create native install packages that work across all major platforms, as well as creating DVDs and CD-ROMs. The company also released InstallBuilder version 8. InstallBuilder is a time-saving utility that allows developers to create cross-platform installers, native packages, and DVDs and CD-ROMs. The software creates native binaries for all supported platforms, including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, and now IBM i. It uses an XML-based project format that allows for collaborative development, version control, and integration

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• Raz-Lee Gets Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Certification

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Raz-Lee Security‘s IBM i security suite is now certified to work with another IBM operations management suite, this time Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus. Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus provides real-time service management for data centers, network operations centers, and IT domains. The software is particularly attuned to working in large and complex networks that involve tens of millions of events per day, where it gives users the capability to ignore the non-critical problems, isolate the faults that could lead to downtime, and begin the problem escalation process. With iSecurity, Raz-Lee will handle the identification of important messages and logs originating in the IBM i

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• Citizen Finds Cyber Monday Success with Quadrant

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  In the cutthroat retail business, one company’s IT challenge is another’s opportunity. So when clothing retailer Kohl’s presented Citizen Watch Company with new document requirements to be used when drop-shipping timepieces purchased at Kohl’s website, the 93-year-old watch company responded to the challenge with an IBM i development effort utilizing the Formtastic package from Quadrant Software. Kohl’s hoped to have many of its suppliers up to speed with its new drop-shipment program in time for Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, which officially kicks off the western world’s annual end-of-the-year consumption binge. Citizen was asked to create customized

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• SAP to Buy Cloud HCM Vendor for $3.4 Billion

  December 6, 2011 Alex Woodie

  SAP last week announced plans to buy SuccessFactors, a cloud-based provider of human capital management (HCM) software. The $3.4 billion deal is expected to close in early 2012, and provide a long-term boost to SAP’s cloud strategy. SuccessFactors is a major player in the cloud services arena, with a reported 15 million subscribers to its HCM services across 3,500 customers in 168 countries. The publicly traded company, which has more than 1,450 employees, recorded $206 million in revenue last year, and has recently seen quarterly revenues jump 77 percent. The San Mateo, California, company has not yet been profitable,

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• Blade Servers Barely Nick IBM i Market

  December 6, 2011 Dan Burger

  After nearly four years of sales, IBM finds itself with a blade server for the IBM i-based Power Systems midmarket that is unwanted and as yet unable to build a following. Adjustments have been made, incentives have been provided, but this product still seems destined to be ignored by a large majority of users. Why? The answer is complex. This product is too complex compared to the servers the community is familiar with and has come to count on. I don’t believe this is simply a case of not enough IBM i shops with a forward-thinking approach to IT. There

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• TSM and IBM i: Not What It Could Be

  December 5, 2011 Alex Woodie

  It is not unusual in the IBM i world to discover that IBM as a whole pays more attention and spends more time developing solutions and utilities that run on and support third-party operating systems rather than its own IBM i OS. Call it the nature of i beast. But when it comes to IBM’s strategic backup and recovery product, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), at least one IBM business partner wonders whether it’s time that IBM i becomes a fully supported TSM client. For years, STORServer has been in the business of packaging, selling, and supporting backup appliances based on

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