• AquaFold Makes It Easier to Reverse Engineer and Migrate Databases

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  People normally take the term “database replication” to mean that data is being replicated from one database to another. But as the result of new entity relationship modeling and reverse engineering capabilities that AquaFold recently rolled out with Aqua Data Studio version 8.0, database replication can also mean replicating the entire structure of one’s database to another database management systems, which the company says will make it easier than ever for users to migrate from, say, Oracle or SQL Server to DB2/400 or MySQL. Aqua Data Studio is a $399 utility that allows developers, administrators, and analysts to visualize, maintain,

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• Computer Guidance Lands First Hosted Customer for Construction App

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Computer Guidance has landed its first customer for the application hosting service it announced in May. Republic Investment Services, a real estate management company based in Arizona, selected the hosted i OS software due to the promise of a quick implementation with low upfront IT costs and the capability to scale usage as needed. Computer Guidance partnered with IBM server distributor and fellow Arizona company Avnet in the roll-out of its eCMS hosting service earlier this year. As part of the deal, Tempe-based Avnet supplies the data center and System i hardware, while Scottsdale-based Computer Guidance provides the IT

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• Big Rig Dealer Streamlines Payments with ACOM Software

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Worldwide Equipment, a big rig dealer with more than 30 locations, expects to save a lot of money and time as the result of a new payment system it implemented with the help of ACOM Solutions. The company used several ACOM offerings, including EZPayManager and the new iBridge spool file conversion tool, in the roll-out of the ACH payment network and check-printing system. Worldwide Equipment sells, leases, and services medium- and heavy-duty trucks and trailers from manufacturers like Mack, Volvo, Kenworth, GMC, Hino, and Benson. The company, which is based in Prestonburg, Kentucky, operates 32 locations through five states

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• Kronos Acquires Time and Attendance Software from Paychex

  October 20, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Human capital management software vendor Kronos last week announced it has acquired the assets of Stromberg, a developer of time and attendance software and related products that was bought by Paychex in 2004. The acquisition is expected to boost Kronos’ position in the market for time and attendance software for small and mid size businesses. Stromberg has been developing time and attendance software since it was founded in Florida in 1989. After selling its Windows-based Time In a Box time and attendance package to Paychex in 2003, the payroll and human resources giant decided to buy the whole Stromberg outfit

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• IBM Dynamic Infrastructure Announcements Due October 20

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The details are not clear, but it looks like IBM is getting ready for another slew of server, storage, and systems software announcements on October 20, all being done under the Dynamic Infrastructure umbrella that Big Blue has been using since last year. According to this note on Arrow Electronics‘s Enterprise Computing Systems site, “IBM will introduce expanded capabilities to help organizations move toward a more dynamic infrastructure–with emphasis on new workload-optimized systems, new service management capabilities, and new Information Infrastructure offerings that enable clients to reduce costs and drive information-led transformation.” On IBM’s own educational site, there is

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• Steady as She Goes for IBM’s Third Quarter

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If there is an economic meltdown, the top brass at IBM seem to be relatively unaffected by it, at least based on its increasingly profitable financial situation. Last Thursday, Big Blue reported that once again its revenues had dropped compared to the prior year, but thanks to cost cutting it was not only able to report very good profit growth but also is raising its profit guidance for 2009 for the third time. In the third quarter, IBM’s total revenues were $23.6 billion, down 6.9 percent compared to the year-ago period. Gross profits were down 3 percent to $10.6 billion,

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• IBM i Access to Support Windows 7 on December 1

  October 19, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM will support its IBM i Access (formerly iSeries Access) suite of products on the new Windows 7 operating system starting December 1, company officials said. On that date, IBM plans to have a service pack available for download that allows the version of i Access that shipped with i 6.1 to run on Windows 7, although AFP drivers will take a little longer to support. Customers running older versions of the i client will be encouraged to upgrade to i Access 6.1. Microsoft is set to formally launch Windows 7 this Thursday, October 22. As is the case with

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Oy, Cloudy Us!

  October 19, 2009 Hesh Wiener

  Enterprising folk whose livelihood is derived from the applications of hydroponics technology to cannabis farming will find some excellent clues to opportunity in the October 10 New York Times or right on IBM’s own Website. In both places, IBM makes its pitch for what it calls smart cities. One featured burg is Dubuque, Iowa, where electronic gadgets will soon replace all the municipal employees who read power and water meters. Jump those meters and nobody’s going to stumble onto your skunk farm. IBM calls this brainstorm Smart Cities, and does it so deftly that even a good reporter who

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• IBM Slashes i Compiler and Rational Tool Prices

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM‘s Software Group has finally figured out that pricing on compiler software that used to come bundled on AS/400s in the operating system is a sticking point for customers who want to upgrade to modern Power Systems i machinery and the i 6.1 operating system. And to boost sales in the fourth quarter, Big Blue is giving shops a pretty good rebate on the i compiler sets, provided they agree to also take some Rational Developer for i companion tools as part of the deal. With the Rational Developer for i and WebSphere Development Studio for

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• Reader Feedback on Sundry Recent Stories

  October 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We got some more feedback on the core, thread, and parallelism issue that I brought up in The Four Hundred, which I thought I would share with you. I don’t claim to have all the angles covered, and readers seem to understand that I was just bringing up a potential problem I see on the horizon as the Power7 chips are packed with lots of threads and cores. We also got some feedback on the iManifest effort in the United States and Big Blue’s big bet on the mainframe in April 1964. Feedback on Moore’s Law and the Performance

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