• Lawson Debuts Another M3 BI Tool

  February 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Lawson Software recently rolled out two new packages of business intelligence and performance management for users of its M3 suite of ERP products, which are typically deployed on IBM System i servers. The new offerings, M3 Analytics and M3 Analytics for Manufacturing, carry the promises of quick implementations and improved decision making for manufacturers and distributors. The new M3 Analytics product contains about 70 pre-built key performance indicators (KPIs) and 50 scorecards for basic business processes encountered in manufacturing and distribution businesses, including sales, finance, procurement, and warehousing and logistics. Customers that choose the M3 Analytics for Manufacturing get additional

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• XAware 5.3 Goes GA, Opens Up to the WSDL

  February 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Open source integration tool developer XAware yesterday announced the general availability of version 5.3 of its eponymous integration toolset. Better support for Salesforce.com‘s on-demand CRM software and enhanced support for Web Service Description Language (WSDL) files headline the new offering. XAware is a Java-based data integration tool suite that allows users to create reusable logic to move data among disparate systems, including the System i. The product, which plugs into the Eclipse development framework, promotes a high-level configuration-based approach to data integration that relies heavily on the reuse of components and the avoidance of low-level programming. It went open

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• New InfoPrint 5000 Printers Unveiled

  February 24, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM and its printing partner, Ricoh, last week unveiled three new models in the InfoPrint 5000 family of full color, continuous web printers. The new models feature double the speed and greater print data stream compatibility compared to previous models, which should be welcomed by the printer’s demanding customers. Driven by the POWER processor architecture, the InfoPrint 5000 has defined IBM’s high-end printing solutions since it was unveiled. The platform was specifically designed for companies that place very high demands on their printing environment, such as service bureaus, direct mailers, and book printers. With the introduction of the InfoPrint

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• Colonizing Endicott

  February 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  “All politics is local.” That was the lesson that Tip O’Neill, the legendary Speaker of the House of Representatives, learned when he lost his first political battle, which was to try to get onto the Cambridge, Massachusetts city council. It was the only election O’Neill ever lost, and he had pretty good job security in his district and in Washington until he retired in 1987. Like many of you in the IT sector, I am beginning to wish that all employment was local. And it just isn’t. Get some coffee, put on your walking shoes, and take a walk with

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• PHP Forges Ahead; Consultant Propels Multiple Projects

  February 23, 2009 Dan Burger

  PHP has had a place at the IBM System i table for the past three years and somewhere close to 12,000 System i application developers have sat down to taste the popular Web-enablement language. Some are eating it up. Last week, I spoke with Larry Nies, president of NSC, a company with a System i focus and a flair for PHP application development that depends on the Zend Framework. Dan Burger: How did PHP come onto your radar? Larry Nies: We were working on a customer site. We work with a number of foundries in the United States. In

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• i Shops Get Some Power Rewards Action, Finally

  February 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here’s a special deal for Power Systems i shops that you can only know about if you are talking to high-level IBMers from time to time, as I get to do in the course of my job. I haven’t seen an announcement letter on any of this out of IBM, but the deal I am about to tell you about went into effect on February 10 in conjunction with the Dynamic Infrastructure extravaganza that I told you about last week. As I explained last April in the wake of the Power Systems launch and the convergence of the

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• As I See It: A Novel Idea

  February 23, 2009 Victor Rozek

  As the Feds apply money like defibrillation paddles to the chest of the seizing economy, some still-healthy bystanders (think IT vendors) are openly wondering why they don’t just let the patients die. Of course, the onlookers wouldn’t phrase it so fatalistically, but they question the strategy of rewarding failed companies for their greed and stupidity. As anyone who has ever played a team sport knows: When the game is on the line, you don’t call on your weakest player. And if you play with the big boys at the professional level, you understand that no one in their right mind

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• Virtualization Takes Off on Entry Power Systems

  February 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like server virtualization really is heading to the mainstream on Power Systems machines, if some figures provided by the top brass at IBM are any indication. While logical partitioning has been available on OS/400-based servers since V4R4 was launched with the Northstar PowerPC servers back in 1999, it has been embraced mostly by big shops with big iron even as Linux and AIX partitions were added to the logical partitioning mix. But not so any more, says Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM’s Power Systems division. Handy keeps track of the attachment rate of

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• Ask TPM: IBM’s Dependence on Hardware for Software and Services

  February 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The experts who put together Four Hundred Guru answer a lot of tech questions for the i community about programming and administering IBM midrange gear. But some of your questions are of a strategic or tactical nature, having to do with broader issues in the information technology space or with the i platform in particular. If you have a question you want to get my take on–or you want to use me to get a straight answer out of the people in IBM who know what is going on–then send me an email and I will see what I can

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• COMMON Takes a Trip to DisneyWorld for 2010

  February 23, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s a little too early to book your plane tickets, make your hotel accommodations, and dust off your mouse ears, but it is never too early to tell your kids or grandkids that the COMMON midrange expo and conference is going to be hosted in Orlando, Florida in 2010. My daughter, Ellie, and my son, Hank, have fond memories of when COMMON was last in Orlando, back in 2005. They bug me every couple of months about when my next business trip will take us down south toward the House of Mouse, or any place interesting, for that matter. (When

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