• FalconStor Casts a Wider De-Duplication Net

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  FalconStor next week is expected to unveil a new data de-duplication product that will work with a greater number of applications than its first-generation de-duplication software. As opposed to its virtual tape library (VTL)-based de-duplication technology, which has been around for two years and only works with tape-based backup systems, the new File-interface De-duplication System (FDS) will work with any CIFS- or NFS-storage resource, such as disk-to-disk backup products, archiving systems, and even System i data. As the volume of data generated by businesses continues to grow, companies are coming under increasing pressure to keep a handle on the sizes

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• Help/Systems Extends i OS Job Scheduler to Linux and Unix

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Interested in scheduling and controlling jobs for AIX, Solaris, and Linux servers from the comfort and security of your System i? Now you can, thanks to Help/Systems, which last week launched a new product called Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise. The new product extends to open systems (and soon Windows and HP-UX) the features that made the standard version of Robot/SCHEDULE so popular among AS/400 shops over the last decade, including event-driven job scheduling. Open systems folks and AS/400 types are worlds apart when it comes to job scheduling and batch job management, says Tom Huntington, vice president of technical services for

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• Shield Adds More Smarts to Budget HA Software

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Users of Shield Advanced Solutions‘ budget-minded high availability (HA), called Receiver Apply Program (RAP), gained several new features this week with the launch of RAP version 4.1. The most exciting new capability is automated object replication, which the company heralded as the last hurdle preventing the two-year-old RAP from being recognized as a “true” HA product. The product update also gains new job monitoring capabilities. Shield Advanced Solutions launched the first version of RAP way back in 2007 to show the midrange world how a bare-bones data replication solution could be built for the AS/400. The product was based

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• Appian Expands Web-Based Reporting GPS Tracking for Fleets

  March 24, 2009 Dan Burger

  Fleet routing technology has come a long way since the days of using push pins and strings to plot routes on a wall map. With the latest generation of geographical data, companies can apply highly detailed street networks, landmarks, and specific road attributes, to plan effective routes from a computer. A good example is Appian Logistics‘s Direct Route software that now incorporates GPS tracking in the latest release of DRTrack 2009. Companies such as Google, Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ, and others are amassing data using fleets of vans armed with sophisticated camera, video, GPS, elevation, and geographic

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• m-Power Gets Calculation Enhancements

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  System i shops using the m-Power development tool from mrc will find several new enhancements added in recent weeks, including a completely refreshed calculation screen that looks and functions just like a programmable calculator, and better overall performance, the vendor says. m-Power is a Web development tool used to build Web portals, dashboards, business intelligence programs, and other Java-based applications. The software, which utilizes a model-based development approach, automatically generates SQL, thereby minimizing the level of user technical skill required, no matter which platform the data resides on. Last week, Chicago-based mrc announced an update to m-Power that improves several

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• Meridian and Varsity to Go After IBM i Shops Together

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Meridian IT, an IBM reseller and IT consultancy based in Deerfield, Illinois, has entered into a partnership with Varsity Logistics, the provider of System i shipping software from Northern California. Together, the two companies plan to provide supply chain solutions to System i shops around the country. Meridian IT is a 30-year-old company that sells a range of IBM products, including i OS, AIX, xSeries servers, and storage, and provides IT consulting work for its customers. The company is one of the holdings of conglomerate Meridian Group International, and employs 500 people in 33 offices scattered across the

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• SoftTree Updates SQL Assistant

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  SoftTree Technologies recently launched a new release of SQL Assistant, a programming tool designed to speed the programming of SQL. With version 4.6, the tool gains new time-saving devices, including real-time syntax lookup and visual bookmarks for code editors. Writing SQL code can be a pain in the you know what. Many application developers avoid getting their hands dirty with low-level SQL programming by basically outsourcing its generation to automated development tools. One of those tools is SQL Assistant, which SoftTree says supports all major databases, including DB2 for i (DB2/400). SQL Assistant cuts development time through an array of

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• Lotus Symphony Gets Visio Alternative with SmartDraw Plug-In

  March 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Users of IBM‘s Lotus Symphony software got a new visualization aid last week when SmartDraw.com announced that its SmartDraw plug-in for Symphony is now available. The plug-in will make it easy for Symphony users to add a variety of graphics to their business documents, in a manner similar to what Microsoft Visio does for Office documents, but without the expense, the company says. SmartDraw is a Windows-based graphics application that includes a library of more than 100 pre-built templates for various flowcharts, timelines, floor plans–even astronomy maps–that users can customize to fit their needs. The San Diego, California-based company

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• LANSA Introduces eLearning Option of Education and Training

  March 24, 2009 Dan Burger

  Continuing education and training for employees hasn’t disappeared, but we will likely see it taking some different directions. With budgets pinched in the Vice Grips of upper management’s cost-cutting raids, companies are looking for training alternatives that maintain commitments to educating IT personnel. At IBM i tools vendor, LANSA, that means a greater reliance on its eLearning curriculum, an on-demand training program that covers the company’s line of application development, modernization, and integration products. Shortly after hatching the eLearning early-adopter program in 2009, LANSA users started signing up. “Response to the early-adopter program was excellent, but not surprising,” said

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• Wall Street Makes IBM, Sun Strange Bedfellows?

  March 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The details are sketchy, and the two companies are not confirming or denying that something is going down, but the Wall Street Journal broke a story last Tuesday, right smack dab in the middle of the opening session of Sun Microsystems‘ CommunityOne East developer conference in New York, that IBM was in talks to shell out between $7.4 billion and $8.2 billion to acquire Sun. People familiar with the negotiations, which were apparently still going on as I write this on Thursday afternoon, leaked the fact that there were talks to the Associated Press and Reuters. Personally, I blame

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