• Magic Spreads Native .NET with uniPaaS 2.0

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software is giving its IBM i customers a path to generating native Microsoft .NET code with the latest release of its application framework, uniPaaS 2.0, which shipped in July. A new server runtime engine in uniPaaS 2.0 generates fully compliant .NET applications, while reliance on the Windows Forms gives a new look to uniPaaS apps. The publicly traded company also announced a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue. uniPaaS is Magic’s flagship application development tool and runtime environment for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs) that run on IBM i, Windows, Linux, and Unix servers. The tool uses a high-level,

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• Tally Offers Replacement for Withdrawn InfoPrint Printer

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  InfoPrint Solutions‘ recent decision to stop marketing serial and line matrix printers, thermal printers, and workgroup printers by the end of the year, and instead focus on high-end printers has spurred its competitors to fill the gaps. Last week, Dascom Americas announced that it’s ready to fill the void left by the withdrawal of the InfoPrint 4247 printer with the Tally “iSeries” 4247 series. In April, Ricoh, the corporate parent of InfoPrint Solutions (the former IBM printing division) announced its intention to exit the market for lower end and general office printers, and instead focus on making and

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• New Version of AFP Unveiled

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  The AFP Consortium unveiled a new version of the Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) printing protocol this month. IS/3, as the new version is called, features operational improvements, support for new fonts and graphics, and greater interoperability among AFP-using products, the group says. AFP is a high-end printing architecture primarily used by large organizations that need a great deal of control over their high-volume, variable-data printing environments. The software is often driven by IBM mainframe and IBM i servers, although AFP versions also exist for Windows, AIX, and other platforms. At the core of AFP is MO:DCA-P, which stands for Mixed

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• CCSS Gives Pointers on Lights Out IBM i Automation

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  The ongoing economic malaise affecting North America and Europe has put unprecedented pressures on IT staffs to do more with less. Without the luxury of multiple IT operators on hand to baby sit critical servers, IT managers have had to get smart about how to accomplish required tasks. Now, IBM i systems management specialist CCSS is sharing some of the tricks it’s picked up in a recent best practices guide focused on “lights out” automation. In “Lights Out IBM i Automation–Back to Black,” CCSS explores some of the common occurrences that prevent IBM i shops from turning off the lights.

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• ASNA Becomes RPG Open Access Reseller

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  ASNA last week announced that it is now reselling IBM‘s Rational Open Access: RPG Edition technology. The move, which comes on the heel of IBM’s decision to open up the distribution channel for the product known as OAR, will make it easier for ASNA customers to modernize their 5250 apps with ASNA’s Wings software. “It’s true that initially IBM was a little clumsy with the marketing and distribution of Open Access,” ASNA U.S. president Anne Ferguson says in a press release. “But by making ASNA an Open Access reseller, IBM is resolving the problem in the best way possible.”

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• ASCI Delivers More Application Hooks with Job Scheduler

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Advanced Systems Concepts (ASCI) unveiled a new release of its ActiveBatch job scheduler that features better integration with enterprise software from SAP, Informatica, and Zenoss. ActiveBatch is an enterprise job scheduler that helps organizations manage workloads running across IBM i, Windows, Linux, Unix, mainframe, OpenVMS, and Mac OS environments. The software supports time-based and trigger-based scheduling, and features an array of templates designed to simplify implementation. Those templates were refined with the release of ActiveBatch version 8 service pack 2, which ASCI unveiled last week. Chief among the new features is better out-of-the-box integration with several SAP

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• Attachmate Bolsters Security of MFT Offering

  August 16, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Attachmate this month unveiled a new release of its managed file transfer (MFT) offering that can provide secure file transfers among a variety of platforms, including IBM i. With FileXpress version 7.1, Attachmate added another layer of security when using the SSH-based secure file transfer protocol (SFTP). It also bolstered support for AS2, expanded its platform coverage, and added a new smart client. The FileXpress family of products is an Attachmate-branded version of the CyberFusion Integration (CFI) product that was originally developed by Proginet (now part of TIBCO Software). The product uses a proprietary protocol based on UDP and

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• The IBM PC Turns 30

  August 15, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The data center started getting diverse in the late 1970s and has been increasingly heterogeneous for decades. And as the IBM PC turns 30, it is not just ironic, but expected, that the proliferation of processors of all types fronted by pretty little screens and wireless communication chips have not only made our personal computers more numerous, they have put the desktop back in its place: in the office or home office. Toss in compute and storage clouds and we can say that we have finally entered the era of personal computing. For those of you in the System/3X and

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• Proprietary Machines Prop Up Avnet, Arrow Server Sales

  August 15, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The hardware refresh cycle in the wake of the Great Recession and acquisitions have been good for the two master resellers of IT gear, Avnet and Arrow Electronics. Both companies did well in their most recent quarters, but also expressed some concern about downstream customers made jumpy and cautious about a jittery global economy. Avnet finished up its fiscal 2011 year in the first week of July, and in the fourth quarter the company had $6.91 billion in sales, up 32.6 percent compared to the year ago period, and brought $238.8 million to the bottom line, an increase of

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• Resurrect Dead Blue Waters Power7 Supercomputer As IBM iCloud

  August 15, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You need a supercomputer to predict the future, and unfortunately when you are trying to predict the kind of supercomputer you might need to build the supercomputer to predict that future, you can’t have as much knowledge of the future to easily make the predictions. And therefore, sometimes a supercomputer project backed by governments and key IT players gets taken out behind the barn and given the Old Yeller treatment. Such is the case with the technically impressive “Blue Waters” massively parallel machine that was to be built this year by IBM for the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA)

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