• NCR to Buy Retalix for $650 Million

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  NCR has inked a deal with the board of Retalix to buy the retail ERP software maker for $30 per share, or $650 million, the companies announced last week. Retalix develops software that retail chains use to manage their business. The company’s lineup consists of merchandising, point of sale, supply chain, logistics, and marketing components. Many of the company’s offerings are Windows based, including its flagship Retalix 10 in-store management system. However, its Power Enterprise line, which is a distribution-focused ERP solution, runs on the IBM i platform. Some of its offerings are developed in Java. Retalix says its software

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• Magic Teams Up with Samsung in Smartphone Pact

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software last week announced it has hooked up with Samsung, the biggest maker of Android smartphones and tablets, in a bid to gain a share of the booming market for enterprise mobility solutions. Samsung’s Enterprise Alliance Program provides a way for software vendors and integrators to get assistance from Samsung in developing and bringing to market applications for the South Korean company’s successful Galaxy line of Android phones and tablets. There are four levels of membership in the program, including bronze, silver, gold, and platinum levels. Silver partners, such as Magic, gain an advantage in building “differentiated user

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• Lavastorm Rains on Fraudster Parades

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Fraud is big business. It’s tough to pin an exact number on the size of fraud. By one account, fraud commonly accounts for five percent of a company’s annual revenues, or an average of $160,000. Whatever the numbers might be, here’s one thing that’s certain: There is a growing need for companies to protect themselves through the use of fraud management systems (FMS), such as the new Lavastorm Fraud Manager recently released by the smart folks at Lavastorm Analytics. Detecting fraud has been one of the many things you could do with the Lavastorm Analytics Platform, which is sort

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• Software License Audits and Penalties Are Up: True That

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve been asked to “true up” with your software vendor for exceeding your application license allotment following an audit, you’re not alone. According to a recent IDC report commissioned by Flexera Software, software vendors are getting more aggressive and seeking more compensation from customers who use more software than they pay for. According to IDC’s report, titled “2012 Key Trends in Software Pricing and Licensing Survey,” more of what organizations spend on applications is coming in the form of “true up” penalties that they must pay to software vendors following an audit. How much more? By one account,

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• IBM Flexes Its Power Systems Muscle with Wins at Overseas Banks

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform has long been a favorite among midsize American banks and credit unions. But increasingly, IBM is doing a brisk business selling Power Systems servers to banks overseas. Since August, IBM has announced deals in India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Ghana. Not all of these deals are IBM i deals, but Bank Ekonomi Raharja (BER) in Indonesia certainly is. BER is a longtime AS/400 customer that sought to modernize its banking platform following its acquisition by UK banking giant HSBC in 2009. The bank acquired two Power Systems servers, including a Model 770 and a Model

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• SystemObjects Lets You Generate iPad Apps from IBM i

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Here’s a prediction that’s easy to make: The surge of interest in smart phones and tablets that we saw in 2012 will continue into 2013 and beyond. With demand for mobile computing firmly in place, the rush is on for IBM i software vendors to create mobile interface development tools for IBM i. One IBM i software vendor that wants a piece of the mobile action is the French company SystemObjects, which recently launched a new mobile application development tool called SmartPad4i. SystemObjects built its reputation with an AS/400 version of the Delphi RAD tool called Delphi/400, and has

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• Respect My Authority Swapper, Halcyon Says

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Halcyon Software has added new features to its Authority Swapper product that will garner the respect of users in IBM i shops everywhere. Now, when an IBM i user swaps into a powerful user profile to accomplish a task, every screen in the session is diligently recorded by the product, providing an un-contestable trail of the user’s activity while they had the elevated authority. Halcyon unveiled the Authority Swapper two years ago to address concerns about users with elevated authority and the potential abuses that could stem from those powers. Instead of permanently granting users such special authorities as ALLOBJ

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• ARCAD Goes Unicode with ALM, Looks to Asia for Growth

  December 11, 2012 Alex Woodie

  ARCAD Software has achieved Unicode compliance with version 9 of its application lifecycle management (ALM) tools, thereby enabling the French company to address new markets for its IBM i software, particularly China and Japan. ARCAD says the new version is a major milestone for the product, and provides a foundation on which to build new capabilities in the future. Achieving Unicode compliance with ARCAD’s entire suite is a major milestone for the company, ARCAD CEO Philippe Magne tells IT Jungle. The effort took two years, and required changing 75 percent of the code that underlies the IBM i change

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• IT Shops Buy 7.1 Exabytes Of Disk Array Capacity In Q3

  December 10, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you want to break into the disk array business, you better have a strong stomach and a steel spine. It takes more and more capacity to make a little more money, and it is the most competitive part of the IT sector these days. According to the box counters at IDC, disk array sales were up 3.7 percent to $7.87 billion in the third quarter, but to get that revenue, vendors had to push 7,104 petabytes–that’s more than 7 exabytes–of new disk capacity. This is the first time that quarter disk array sales have broken through 7 exabytes,

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• IBM Canada Sweetens Education And Training Deal

  December 10, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue’s subsidiary in the Great White North not only wants you to build your IT skills, it wants to make a little dough helping you do it. But sometimes, if you want to get a little, you have to give a little. And so IBM Canada is offering customers who pre-pay for training slightly higher discounts if they pony up bigger wads of cash–enumerated in loonies, not greenbacks–over the next several months. In announcement letter ENUS312-137, IBM is offering customers who spend between $25,000 or more on Education Packs a 15 percent discount off that training. Under the

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