• IBM i Apps on iPads Energize BakerCorp

  June 12, 2012 Dan Burger

  Go mobile or go home. It’s almost come to that. If the face of your company, the folks who interact with customers and prospects, can’t access real-time information on a smartphone or a tablet, they aren’t dressed for success and your company loses a competitive edge. BakerCorp saw this situation unfolding and, to its credit, did something about it. BakerCop’s ERP system is green-screen based and the person in charge of mobilizing some key applications knew almost nothing about the software or the system that ran it. Sounds like trouble, but it’s not. Early in the process of figuring out

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• HarrisData to Take on ADP with Cloud-Based Payroll

  June 12, 2012 Alex Woodie

  HarrisData, a developer of IBM i-based ERP software, will soon unveil a cloud-based version of its human resources and payroll product. The offering, which is the Wisconsin software company’s first foray into selling cloud-based services, will include an Apple iPad to function as the client, and will specifically target the popular hosted payroll offerings from the likes of ADP, Ceridian, and Paychex. Michael Mallen, the executive vice president for HarrisData, has never understood the draw of outsourcing payroll processing. “One of my frustrations has always been, why would people want to spend all this money on

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• Supply Chain Gets Item-Level Tagging Standards

  June 11, 2012 Dan Burger

  Tracing individual products as they move through the global supply chain is on the verge of becoming as easy as tracing a truckload of vegetables on its path from Fresno to Philadelphia. We’re not there yet, but the wheels are in motion. For IT Jungle readers and IBM midrange systems users in the apparel or food and beverage industries particularly, the evolution of electronic product codes (EPCs) to item-level tracking is a sooner rather than later proposition. Most supply chain-driven companies have systems in place that are error prone, inefficient, and sometimes in the food and beverage business run afoul

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• IBM Serves Up Private Cloud At The 2012 French Open

  June 11, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  To fans of the 2012 French Open tennis tournament, cloud technology might be as interesting as a rain delay. But those same fans would be the first to go all John McEnroe on the closest computing device if they couldn’t access the real-time action or the latest data on their favorite player. Fan interest in the French Open, which wrapped up on June 10, was anticipated to drive a visitor surge of 100 times normal traffic to the tournament Web site at www.rolandgarros.com, which is impressive on its own. Traffic on the Roland-Garros site has been growing consistently year-to-year,

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• NetApp Shoots By IBM For Number Two Spot Behind EMC In Disk Arrays

  June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Difficulties in obtaining disk drives of specific type and capacity are still affecting the PC, server, and disk array businesses, but the problem is much less severe than it was a year ago, and the external controller-based disk array business seems to have largely recovered. According to the latest statistics from Gartner, file-based and block-based external storage array sales combined for $5.44 billion in sales in the first quarter, and 8 percent increase over the sales level in the first quarter of 2011, when the disk shortages, caused by the flooding in Thailand, where about a quarter of the

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• Exiting Hardware Business, Agilysys Positions For Future Profits

  June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This time last year, Agilysys, known mostly for its application suites for managing hotels and casinos, sold off its Technology Solutions Group hardware reseller business for $64 million in cash to OnX Enterprise Solutions, bidding good riddance to the low-margin iron services business and allowing it to focus on its software business. Agilysys has just closed out its fourth fiscal fourth quarter and is still writing down intangibles and taking restructuring charges from its hardware and services exit, but the company says it is positioning itself to be profitable in the future. Agilysys ends its fiscal year in

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• CIOs Tenures Shorten, IT Salaries Flatten, Says Janco

  June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You might think that being a chief information officer gives you the best job security in the IT department, but research from Janco Associates suggests otherwise. Janco, which monitors the job market and other compensation and worker issues in the IT sector, is putting together its mid-year IT salary survey, which comes out at the end of June, and did a survey of 438 companies in the United States, Europe, and South America to gauge the length of employment and salary levels of IT personnel. Janco put out a little teaser of information regarding CIOs to pique the interest of

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• Why IBM Is Trying To Surf The Linux Wave With Power Systems

  June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are wondering why IBM is all hot-to-trot with its new PowerLinux machines, which are Power Systems servers tweaked to only run Linux and with lower hardware and software prices than regular Power Systems iron that runs AIX and IBM i, then you need look no further than the latest server numbers from IDC. Sales of Linux-based machines shot up like a rocket, thanks to some big supercomputer and hyperscale cloud deals and are outpacing the market substantially. The PowerLinux machines made their debut back in April and offer customers who only run Linux on the machines substantial

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• As I See It: Bad Boys Rising

  June 11, 2012 Victor Rozek

  A few decades back when Stanford University decided to drop its mascot moniker “Indians,” the administration held a naming contest open to the student body. Students were encouraged to submit suggestions, and the most frequently chosen name would win. Things were progressing nicely until someone decided to check the tally. The students, evidently inspired by the business practices of the university’s founder Leland Stanford, voted to replace the politically incorrect “Indians” with the economically incorrect “Robber Barons.” The contest was quickly retired and some quivering bureaucrat selected “Cardinal” as the new mascot–the color, mind you, not the bird. Probably didn’t

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• Upward Mobility: Taking Your IBM i With You

  June 11, 2012 Dan Burger

  Discussions about mobile computing in the enterprise are over. The discussions you should be having are about getting mobile computing into your enterprise. You may have noticed employees are already using their personal smartphones and tablets for work purposes, but when it comes to leveraging mobile devices and enterprise data that’s a short stick. Getting mobilized means making some wise decisions to get onboard quickly and be prepared for the long run. It’s alarming when you think about how many mobile computing projects are being jump started with little or no direction beyond “We need it. Get it done.” Come

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