• Logistics Company Likes UC4 for Job Scheduling Software

  June 9, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Inmar, a provider of reverse logistics solutions for more than 1,700 companies, has licensed UC4 Software‘s Workload Automation Suite to help it streamline job scheduling activities across i5/OS, Windows, and Unix servers. From its headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Inmar and its various subsidiaries provide a range of logistics, reverse logistics, and promotions management solutions. The company operates more than 3 million square feet of warehouse space at 40 facilities across the continent, and counts retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers among its customers. One of Inmar’s subsidiaries, Stratapult, provides IT hosting and custom development services for Inmar clients. Stratapult runs

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• nuBridges Nabs TradeTrans for Supply Chain Intelligence

  June 9, 2009 Alex Woodie

  B2B software developer nuBridges last week announced the acquisition of TradeTrans, which develops a business intelligence tool designed to provide greater visibility into supply chain activities, and to defend against chargebacks. nuBridges plans to sell access to TradeTrans’ tool, called TradeSmart, as a subscription-based hosted offering. TradeSmart monitors and analyzes a customer’s supply chain transactions (EDI, AS2, FTP) as they occur. The offering is designed to give customers additional visibility into variables such as the volume, value, and frequency of purchase orders, invoices, advanced shipping notices (ASNs), and other transaction types. This information is delivered over the Web in

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• IBM Updates InfoSphere Data Architect

  June 9, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced InfoSphere Data Architect version 7.5.2, a new release of its data design tool for helping organizations model and standardize data residing in different databases, including DB2/400. Previously known as Rational Data Architect, InfoSphere Data Architect is a component of IBM’s Optim family of tools for managing diverse groups of data. The software can create logical, physical, and domain models for DB2/400, DB2 UDB, Informix Dynamic Server, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, MySQL, and Teradata databases. It is commonly used in business intelligence, master data management, test data creation, and service oriented architecture projects. With InfoSphere Data Architect

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• Application Modernization is Top Software Priority, Forrester Says

  June 9, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Modernizing key legacy applications is the top software initiative for businesses this year, according to Forrester Research‘s annual survey on software adoption trends, “The State Of Enterprise Software,” which was unveiled yesterday. Forrester says that updating “key legacy” applications was cited as the top initiative for 64 percent of enterprises and 55 percent of small and mid size businesses. More than 25 percent of enterprises and 20 percent of SMBs said that updating and modernizing key legacy applications is “very important,” Forrester says. Both enterprises and SMBs cited cost savings as the main reason for pushing for application modernization,

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• With No Power6 QCMs, IBM Waits for Power7

  June 8, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Prior to the launch–or rather, relaunch–of the Power6+ processors in selected entry and midrange Power Systems iron at the end of April, I was suggesting that given the competitive pressure that was being brought to bear by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices with their latest X64 chips, now might be a good time to take a play out of the summer 2006 System p playbook and create quad-core modules (QCMs) for using the Power6+ chips and thereby take the fight to Intel and AMD. The QCMs, you will remember, were based on IBM’s dual-core Power5+ processors, and they put two

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• Gartner Confirms Server Sales Were Awful in Q1

  June 8, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you were hoping that the market researchers at Gartner would somehow have a rosier opinion of how the server market did in the first quarter of 2009–or would somehow forecast that the year would get better than its rival IDC said it would do in last week’s issue–well, you can just forget it. Gartner has been tracking the server racket for longer than IDC, and said the first quarter was the worst one in the history of the business. By Gartner’s math, the server business took a 24 percent haymaker to the cut, dropping revenues to $10.1 billion,

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• Manufacturers to ERP Vendors: Give Us More Functionality

  June 8, 2009 Dan Burger

  When it comes to making ERP software decisions, the choices are: increase the functionality, lower the cost, and improve the integration with applications and data that reside outside the ERP system. You can hope for all three, but your luck probably won’t be that good. Given one choice, the winner is functionality. That’s part of what I learned from the Aberdeen ERP in Manufacturing 2009 report that I peeked at in advance of its release on June 30. In light of the current emphasis on cost cutting and downsizing, it might seem that the most popular choice would be cutting

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• As I See It: Smarten Up

  June 8, 2009 Victor Rozek

  IBM is worried about the world. Like a parent with an underachieving child, IBM thinks it’s time to sit the world down and have a serious conversation. So listen up world, the computer maker wants you to get smarter, because apparently you’re none too bright at the moment. In contrast to the fried philosopher Timothy Leary, however, who memorably urged the world to “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” the great thinkers at IBM have come up with a slightly less catchy dictum. They’re calling on the world to get “instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.” Keep still my beating heart.

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• IBM Helps Customers Understand the Cost of Paper

  June 8, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The average office worker uses about 40 pieces of paper per day, or 10,000 sheets per year, according to IBM. Instead of cutting down those trees and shuffling all that paper, many organizations would be better off, operationally and ecologically, migrating their paper-based processes to electronic content management (ECM) solutions. IBM announced two new service engagements last week aimed at helping users understand how to move to ECM. There are numerous disadvantages to relying on paper, according to IBM, not the least of which is the impact paper has on the environment. Long lead times are often required to

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• More Power Systems Price Changes and Tweaks

  June 8, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  OK, IBM, this is getting to be a habit. Last week, IBM once again tweaked the pricing on a bunch of upgrade features for its Power Systems lineup, once again cutting prices pretty dramatically. The price changes, which went into effect on June 2, are shown in the table below: From To List Price Price Machine Feature Machine Feature Description Old New Change 9119 7667 9119 4754 2.1 GHz Power5+ to 4.2 GHz Power6 $16,550 $16,500 -0.3% 9119 7667 9119 4755 2.1 GHz Power5+ to 5 GHz GHz Power6 $24,735 $19,485 -21.2% 9119 7925 9119 4754 p5 595 book

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