• Kisco’s i OS Twitter Product Gets Two-Way Communications

  June 23, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Kisco Information Systems last week unveiled an update to SNDTWEET, its novel utility that turns the social networking tool into a communication and system management tool for the System i. Now, with version 1.03, Kisco is enabling customers to reply back to the System i using Twitter, instead of just enabling the System i to send “tweets” through the service. In just a week and a half, thanks to a contentious election in Iran and the crackdown on mainstream media that has followed, Twitter has gone from being the poster child for everything that’s wrong with the social networking movement

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• Magic Delivers Stronger .NET Client with uniPaaS 1.8

  June 23, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software yesterday launched uniPaaS version 1.8, a new edition of its framework for developing and running rich Internet applications that live in the cloud, in the customer’s data center, or a combination of the two. With this release, the Irvine, California, software company is offering new integration points with Microsoft .NET, which Magic says will enrich the user experience, particularly for Windows Mobile apps. First unveiled in early 2008 as G5, uniPaaS is Magic’s new flagship platform for rich Internet applications and the software as a service (SaaS) delivery mechanism. It borrows heavily from the rapid application development expertise

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• Bytware Updates Anti-Virus to Support Domino 8.5

  June 23, 2009 Alex Woodie

  System i shops that rely on Bytware‘s StandGuard Anti-Virus software to protect their i OS and Domino environments from becoming infested with Windows viruses and other pieces of malicious code will be happy to hear that the software vendor now supports Domino 8.5, which was released by IBM last month. For the last six years, Bytware has been developing and selling StandGuard Anti-Virus for the IBM i (OS/400) platform. While the Power Systems (eServer iSeries) platform is generally regarded to be highly resistant to security threats that commonly afflict the Windows operating system, the i OS server can be

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• Cleo Adds Automation to B2B Software

  June 23, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Companies that use Cleo Communications‘ VersaLex software to drive B2B transactions among System i, Unix, Windows, and Linux servers will gain new automation capabilities with version 4.1 of the product, which was announced last week. VersaLex is the core Java-based communications engine that’s behind several products used to send and receive EDI documents over the Internet using standards such as AS2, AS3, ebXML, HTTP/S, FTP/S, and WebSphere MQ. Other products that use this core engine (and are members of Cleo’s VersaLex Suite) include VersaLex Trader (VLTrader), a managed file transfer solution; LexiCom a secure file transfer agent; VersaLex Proxy

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• Rational and Happy: IBM Wins Evans’ Development Tool Survey Again

  June 23, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM‘s Rational products are happier with their integrated development environments (IDEs) than customers of other development toolmakers, including Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and a handful of other vendors, according to a new report from Evans Data. It was the second straight victory in the annual survey for IBM’s Rational tools, and the third in four years. For the last four years, Evans Data has surveyed scores of developers across the land to get an idea of what they’re working on, what tools they like, and what they don’t like. Evans Data used to call this

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• AS/400: Still Kicking After 21 Years

  June 22, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The AS/400, in its current incarnation as the Power Systems server platform running the i 6.1 operating system and the DB2 for i integrated database, turns 21 this week. I think that means it can finally buy hard liquor and have a stiff drink, which is something that such a venerable platform as the AS/400 certainly deserves. I think it is safe to say that you old timers, the AS/400 faithful who predate whippersnappers like me (with only 20 years in the market) all need a good stiff drink, with the global economy in the state that it is in

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• Power Systems i Weather Report: Partly Cloudy Soon

  June 22, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power Systems i platform is going into the clouds. As part of its CloudBurst cloud infrastructure launch last week, IBM said that it will eventually build cloud setups, both for sale by IBM to run inside corporate data centers as well as those it runs with rented capacity, based on its X64, Power, and mainframe iron. As you might expect, given the buying proclivities of the relatively few cloud customers today, IBM’s CloudBurst products are starting out on X64 iron. Everybody in the server racket wants to make a big deal about cloud computing these days, but the cloud

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• IBM i Manifest Takes Root in Japan

  June 22, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Does today’s Power Systems server provide a viable and healthy platform on which companies should bet their business? Companies around the world have been asking themselves this question since the platform was born more than 30 years ago when the System/38 debuted. Now, a group of AS/400 vendors and customers in Japan, not content to rely on IBM to promote the platform, are taking matters into their own hands and promoting the platform themselves through a movement they call the IBM i Manifest. The roots of the IBM i Manifest, or iManifest, go back more than a year, when a

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• Help Wanted: AS/400 Advocate

  June 22, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The iManifest coming out of a group of business partners is Japan, which you can read about elsewhere in this edition of The Four Hundred, has stirred up a lot of thought and talk in the AS/400 market (yes, I said it that way on purpose) concerning who is to be responsible for the safeguarding of the present and the future of the AS/400 platform. This is all healthy and good, but it doesn’t solve the central problem the AS/400 faces: It has no advocate inside of IBM. As we know all too well, IBM has made many, many

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• COMMON Europe: Doing the Math on Top i Concerns

  June 22, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  COMMON Europe, the European affiliation of midrange user groups for i communities in various countries, has closed out its annual Top Concerns survey and has some initial results that it wants to share with readers of The Four Hundred. The Top Concerns survey ran from the beginning of April through the end of May and was designed to get a sense of the issues that i shops all over the world–not just in Europe–are concerned with in these trying days. For all of the readers of The Four Hundred who saw the solicitations to participate in the survey

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