• WorksRight Address Verification Software Receives USPS Certification

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Companies that rely on i OS address verification software from WorksRight Software can rest assured that they can continue to use the software into the new year–and get bulk-mailer discounts from the US Postal Service–as the result of USPS certification of WorkRight’s PER/ZIP4, announced last week. PER/ZIP4 is a batch-oriented i OS software product that analyzes address files and automatically fixes them to adhere to standards. At the same time, the software can also cross check the address to assign a five-digit ZIP code, and can even add four-digit ZIP code extensions. It can also be used interactively to provide

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• SafeData Delivers Backup Appliance for System i and Windows

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  SafeData yesterday unveiled SafeData Vault, a new appliance designed to back up and restore data to and from System i and Windows servers. In addition to storing the backups locally, the new device sends backups across the Internet to SafeData’s data center, providing customers with an off-site backup that can be used in the event of a disaster. SafeData is no stranger to disaster recovery and high availability services. The Warwick, Rhode Island, company began courting iSeries shops with hosted DR in 2005, when its principal, Peter Briggs, established SafeData after serving for a time as a Lakeview Technology business

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• IBM Updates Host Access Components with HIS 7.6

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced a new release of Host Integration Solution (HIS), the amalgamation of various programming tools for modernizing and accessing applications running on IBM i OS, among other platforms. With HIS version 7.6, IBM has updated the package with the most current releases of its various components, some of which were also announced last week. HIS is a sprawling suite of products (actually, two suites of products) that IBM put together to serve the needs of large organizations that need Telnet access to a variety of hosts, along with modernization tools to enable the modernization to Web-based GUI

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• 10ZiG Doubles Down on Dual-Monitor Setups

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Thin client distributor 10ZiG Technology (formerly BOSaNOVA) recently introduced a novel utility that makes it easier to manage dual-monitor setups. Called the Dual Monitor Utility, the software delivers helpful features that allow dual-monitor users to overcome some of the common headaches of managing two monitors connected to the same thin client CPU. The availability of cheap and plentiful LCD screens has sparked a bit of a real-estate boom on the desks of millions of office workers around the globe. Workers were once able to get by with a single, bulky 15-inch CRT screen on their desks. But no longer. Today,

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• IBM Rolls Up an i 6.1.1 Dot Release

  October 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The word on the street a little more than a year ago was that Big Blue would be packaging up some feature enhancements and patches and would roll out an interim i 6.1.5 interim release of the venerable OS/400 operating system sometime in the first half of 2009, maybe in May, to be followed up with an i 6.2 full release in early 2010, perhaps in January. This information came out of people attending the i variant of the Power Systems Technical University in Chicago last September, and was reasonably credible. It also turned out to be untrue, inasmuch as

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• The Curtain Rises a Bit on the Next i OS, Due in 2010

  October 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week was a big week for operating systems. Microsoft delivered Windows 7 for desktops and started shipping Windows Server 2008 R2 for servers. And IBM, as The Four Hundred reports about elsewhere in this issue, put out a dot release of its current i 6.1 platform, which is called i 6.1.1, and started talking about the next major release of the i platform, which is due next year. Getting information about the future i release has not been easy, but The Four Hundred is the only place where you can find this information for the past year–unless

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• IBM Taps New Server GM in Wake of Scandal

  October 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, in the wake of an insider trading scandal that has implicated Bob Moffat, senior vice president and general manager of IBM‘s Systems and Technology Group, the company rejiggered its executive ranks after putting Moffat on a leave of absence as he copes with his legal issues. Big Blue quickly named a new head of STG and acted like nothing at all had happened, which is the best and really only course of action that it could take. “In view of the U.S. Federal investigation into his personal activities,” explained Ed Barbini, a spokesperson from IBM, “Mr. Moffat

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• As I See It: The Salary Reduction Plan

  October 26, 2009 Victor Rozek

  Jobless recoveries, working retirees, and President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. We live in a land of contradictions. For fans of the oxymoron, it’s a target rich environment. Leaders who don’t lead, lenders that don’t lend, and health care so expensive it makes you sick. We’re heading toward Halloween and there’s plenty of things out there to scare us. Haunted houses worth less than their mortgage, skeletal 401(k)s, and a vampire financial system designed to suck every last dollar from your wallet. Oh, and by the way, the ghouls who helped orchestrate the Great Recession are now running the

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• Various Power Systems I/O and Storage Enhancements

  October 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While the i 6.1.1 interim operating system release and the future i 6.2/7.1 major release was the Power Systems i news as part of the quarterly Dynamic Infrastructure announcements from IBM, there were a bunch of storage and networking announcements that are probably equally important to i shops. First up, a patch for i 6.1 and the new i 6.1.1 interim release supports the feature 5903 SAS disk controller that was announced back on April 28 for AIX and Linux operating systems, fulfilling a statement of direction to support this controller on the i platform. Feature 5903 is a

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• IT Spending to Bounce Back Some in 2010, Says Gartner

  October 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s the fall, and that means that most of us are starting to look forward to the holiday season and better prospects for the next year. It would be hard to have a worse year than 2009 for a lot of companies and a lot more people, and everyone seems to be ready for some kind of rebound, a return to something called normal, in our work and financial lives. Last week, the analysts at Gartner offered some glimmer of hope that 2010 would be better, at least in terms of IT spending, than 2009. By the way, Gartner is

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