• Brooks Revs RPM to Bolster Production Printing

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that print files through the latest release of Brooks Internet Software‘s Remote Print Manager (RPM) will benefit from higher load tolerances, more detailed logging, better scheduling, and the capability to allow third-party apps to control RPM processing and configuration, the Idaho Falls, Idaho, company announced this month. RPM is a Line Printer Daemon (LPD) print server that provides flexibility in the management and handling of the print output of IBM i, mainframe, HP3000, OpenVMS, Unix, and Linux servers. The Windows-based software is commonly used to convert print output from native formats, such as SCS or AFPDS, to more

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• Townsend Gets VMware Certification for Encryption Key Manager

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Townsend Security has achieved VMware Ready status for Alliance Key Manager, its encryption and key management product that works with all major operating systems, including IBM i. The certification should give Townsend customers the confidence to use hybrid deployment techniques for their key management software. Alliance Key Manager is a FIPS 140-2 certified encryption key management solution that is used to create, manage, and distribute 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit AES keys for any application or databases. Townsend provides sample code for implementing key retrieval routines into RPG, COBOL, .NET, C, and Java applications running across a range of operating systems,

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• Spinnaker Nabs More JD Edwards Customers, Unveils Siebel Support Service

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Spinnaker Support recently announced two new customers for its third-party support service for JD Edwards World, including D+M Group, a manufacturer of speakers and stereos, and an unnamed Las Vegas casino. The Denver, Colorado, company also announced the launch of a new support program for Siebel CRM customers. Spinnaker continues to capitalize on the pushback against the expensive fees that Oracle and SAP charge for maintenance and technical support. Oracle charges customers an annual fee of about 22 percent to get support and upgrades, while SAP recently jacked its annual fee to 19 percent. Oracle has given JD Edwards World

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• IEC Protects Internal Systems with Valid Authentication

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to security, there are few groups who take it quite as seriously as the Israelis. And when it came to protecting the systems that control the country’s electric grid, it’s notable that the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC) is using Valid Technologies IBM i-based VSSA technology to provide strong biometric authentication. The principals were not willing to part with much information about the IEC implementation, which Valid Tech announced back in 2009. That’s not surprising, as secrecy is one of the primary tenants of security. “Loose lips sink ships,” after all. But what has been disclosed paints a

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• Infor Gives BI Tool the 10x Treatment

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Infor last week unveiled the 10x release of Infor BI, a business intelligence suite that includes an in-memory OLAP database. The new release brings all of the apparatus associated with Infor 10x, including a shiny new SoHo user interface, mobile capabilities, and hooks into the Ming.le social platform. The company is also close to announcing integration of Infor BI into SkyVault. Infor BI is based on the MIS product formerly sold by Systems Union, a German software company that Infor acquired in 2006 for about $200 million. Infor has about 3,000 customers for MIS (also called Decision Ware), mostly small

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• Curbstone Revamps Card Payment Software to Avoid PCI Exposure

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Curbstone, a developer of credit card payment software for the IBM i server, is rolling out a new software as a service (SaaS) credit card payment solution, called Curbstone CorrectConnect (C3) that will shield customers from the most onerous requirements of the PCI DSS security standard. The new offering, which Curbstone customers are already using, features additional options for Web-based merchants, as well as organizations that take payment information over the phone. We are still in the first decade of PCI DSS compliance, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier for merchants. Besides the upfront costs of

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• Two Decades Later, Microsoft Looks Like Big Blue Of Days Gone By

  July 15, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  An expected and sweeping reorganization at Microsoft last week probably has more than a few IBMers and IBM watchers having not only flashbacks, but also getting a good chuckle as CEO Steve Ballmer is facing his own John Akers moment. So many incumbents in the IT racket have missed the boat on hyperscale web technology to drive search and other application services as well as the transition from PCs to smartphones and tablets as endpoint devices that it is laughable to single Microsoft out for scorn. But the fact remains that Microsoft has spent untold billions trying to build a

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• Leaders, Followers, and Product Development

  July 15, 2013 Dan Burger

  While writing the article about the current scene in the IBM i market as told to me by Stan Staszak, the director of Power Systems solutions at Sirius Computer Solutions, which appears elsewhere in today’s edition of The Four Hundred, I was reminded of something that Steve Will, chief architect of the IBM i, told me when we talked about his view of the IBM i back in April at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in Austin, Texas. His comment was that he often works with companies doing the newest implementations and that “in development, it almost

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• June Brings Jobs To The IT Market

  July 15, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Summer is here, temperatures are rising, and jobs are in the air. That’s right, jobs. The analysts at Janco Associates have released their monthly report on IT job market trends, and the news is, dare I say it, encouraging. The June numbers showed 9,900 IT jobs were added in the United States in June, finally surpassing January’s 9,800 jobs, which had been the best month for IT job creating in the country so far this year. The numbers for IT jobs created in the United States for IT professionals in 2013 have been all over the place. January got us

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• Some More Wheeling And Dealing On Power Systems, Networking

  July 15, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  My intuition keeps telling me that IBM should be doing something dramatic in terms of packaging or pricing or promotions to try to boost sales of Power Systems, but Big Blue keeps on keeping on, as if there is nothing it can do to stop the slide in sales of Power-based servers it has experienced in the past several months. Instead, IBM keeps doing little itty bitty deals that save a few pennies on the dollar for customers who are upgrading their systems. The dealing seems to be most intense outside of the United States and Canada, and the most

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