• ManageEngine Pushes the Systems Management Envelope

  April 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

  If you’re in the market for systems management software, but can’t swallow the big license fees and long implementation times of the Big 4, you might want to check out ManageEngine, which purports to offer 80 percent of the functionality of its larger competitors at about 20 percent of the cost. But one functional area where ManageEngine may have an advantage is in the adoption of new technology, such as social media and mobile computing, which ManageEngine is embedding into its products. IBM i shops may know ManageEngine for Applications Manager, which offers the capability to monitor a range

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• Help/Systems Widens the Robot’s Reach

  April 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use more than one Help/Systems tool to automate data center operations can now view the status of multiple Help/Systems products from a single screen, called the Product Metrics Dashboard, which shipped last month with Robot/NETWORK version 11. The company also unveiled a new release of its cross-platform job scheduler, Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise, that can control batch jobs running on Microsoft SQL Server. Robot/NETWORK is the digital glue that unites various Help/Systems products running on one or multiple IBM i severs. From one instance of Robot/NETWORK, administrators can send out instructions to–and receive feedback from–multiple IBM i servers,

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• Connectria Hosting Unveils an IBM i Cloud

  April 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Connectria Hosting, a longtime provider of IBM i server outsourcing services for some very big names, last week announced that it’s making the leap to hosting public and private IBM i clouds. By early June, the St. Louis, Missouri-based company expects its first IBM i cloud offering, dubbed the Silver Cloud, to be ready for new clients, with rates starting at $495 for one/tenth of a processor on a brand-spanking new Power Systems Model 720 running IBM i 6.1 or 7.1. Connectria Hosting knows a thing or two about running production IBM i environments. For the last 14 years,

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• VAI Announces S2K Enterprise Release 5.0.4, Signs New Reseller

  April 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

  VAI last month announced a new release of S2K, its line of IBM i-based ERP software. S2K Enterprise Release 5.0.4 brings dozens of enhancements and fixes across all functional areas of the package, including order entry, purchasing, warehouse management, and CRM. The New York company has also signed the Complete IT Store as its latest reseller. S2K Enterprise Release 5.0.4 (or PTF04 for Release 5.0) is the fourth minor release since VAI shipped the monumental S2K version 5.0 back in 2008. With a brand new GUI, a new portal framework, and support for smart phones, version 5 marked a major

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• IBM Codes History Of Modern Math iPad App

  April 9, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  On April 7, 1964, two weeks before the World’s Fair opened up in Flushing, Queens, one and a half borough hops from where I sit as I write The Four Hundred each week, IBM announced a machine that still, to a large degree, defines what a system is. It was the System/360 mainframe, of course, and we sometimes forget how exotic computers were at the time, and indeed mathematics and information theory as well. By the way, the 1965 Ford Mustang–the only car I ever really want to own, if I ever do own a car again, and make mine

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• Avnet Jumps For WebSphere, Rational Services Provider

  April 9, 2012 Dan Burger

  Mastering the mechanics of managing information technology investments to be properly aligned with business goals is a skill that won’t go unrewarded. Ascendant Technology has done a pretty good job with that. Avnet, one of the giant master resellers in the IT business, took notice. Last week Avnet announced it was acquiring Ascendant, a move that emphasizes the importance of services in the current and future IT market. “Avnet’s acquisition of Ascendant Technology is expected to accelerate our global solutions distribution model,” said Phil Gallagher, global president of Avnet Technology Solutions. “It supports our strategic focus on enhancing our

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• Job Growth Stalls In March, IT A Mixed Bag

  April 9, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Is the economy doing better or worse? Is the monthly jobs report that comes out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics any kind of real indicator, or is it massaged so much with seasonal adjustments and other stat tricks that it is more like an impressionist painting of the economy than a picture? I don’t know, but I sometimes have my doubts about what is going on with the unemployment rate and job counts that the Department of Labor puts out after it surveys 160,000 businesses and 60,000 homes each month to find out who is employing and who is

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• Infor Raises More Money, Finally Completes Lawson Transaction

  April 9, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Infor last week announced that it has fulfilled all of the financial requirements to finalize the acquisition of Lawson Software, which up to this point has been an Infor “affiliate” tucked away in an Infor subsidiary. While the $1.83 billion deal has been “done” since last July, when Infor officially announced the acquisition was complete, there were still some small details related to paying off Lawson’s old debt. Infor made its first unsolicited bid to buy Lawson (then a public company) for $11.25 per share back in March 2011, and the boards of the two companies came to

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• Reader Feedback On IBM i Versus Oracle JDE, Smart IBM i Shops Get Connected

  April 9, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Just wanted to note that for current IBM i customers like me, the Power 750 comparison doesn’t ring true. I have JDE World (yes, World) running on two IBM i machines, a System i 550 and a Power 720. We’re looking at new ERP systems for one of the companies right now but I doubt whether I can use any of this info because our upgrade path for the System i 550 box is a Power 720 with four to eight processors, not a Power 750. We’re currently running the company comfortably on four Power6+ processors so we wouldn’t even

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• Maxava iFoundation Renews Grant Funding For Second Year

  April 9, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  It is not hard to get a room full of IBM i advocates to agree that more needs to be done to support and promote their beloved platform. But agreeing on the best ways to further the IBM i community can result in heated debate. Rather than jump into the fray, IBM i high availability and disaster recovery software developer Maxava decided to give nonprofit groups the means to offer some solutions, in the form of cold hard cash. Maxava launched the iFoundation in March 2011 with the mission of offering financial assistance to front-line, not-for-profit organizations in their work

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