• Fresche Legacy Debuts with Newly Acquired Code Converter for IBM i

  March 20, 2012 Alex Woodie

  The company formerly known as Speedware is today officially changing its name to Fresche Legacy. CEO Andy K. says the new name better reflects the new direction the Montreal, Quebec, company has taken in recent years. Along with the name change, Fresche Legacy today is expected to announce the acquisition of the iModernize suite of RPG migration tools from the German company Sykora. The name Fresche Legacy is officially one day old, but the company behind it has an eventful 36-year legacy. Originally founded as Info-Boutique and later called Infocentre, the company focused on developing applications for travel

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• PSGi Unveils Customer Support Lifeline for Aged IBM i ERP Systems

  March 20, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Companies that find it increasingly difficult to get good help for their old, unsupported, or heavily customized IBM i-based ERP systems may be interested in a new offering recently unveiled by Precision Solutions Group (PSGi). The company is expanding its existing technical support business, which covers the PRMS, PRISM, and JDE World systems, to include just about any manufacturing- or distribution-focused ERP system that runs on the IBM i platform. The rise in popularity of the third-party maintenance business is directly tied to the lack of value that customers perceive they get from ERP vendors. Third-party support providers like Rimini

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• Disk Array Sales Keep Expanding Despite Drive Shortages

  March 19, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The relentless pace of disk capacity improvements and the impressive price/performance gains with every new generation of disk were more than offset by rapacious demand for storage to help the disk array business grow in the final quarter of 2011. And despite disk shortages due to the flooding in Thailand (where about a quarter of the world’s disks are made) and jittery economies in the United States and Western Europe. According to the box counters at Gartner, sales of external disk arrays that make use of controllers (as distinct from internal disk arrays like those inside of many X86

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• IBM Starts Refurbishing Power Systems Machines In China

  March 19, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM makes Power Systems machinery in China to sell to customers in certain parts of the globe, and now the company has opened up a refurbishing center that will be taking back machines in trade and refurbishing them for resale in the country. IBM has opened up a server and PC refurbishing center near one of its factories in Shenzhen, China, which will be run by the company’s Global Asset Recovery Services division, part of its Global Financing group. The facility is starting out modestly and will only represent a tiny portion of the iron that Global Asset Recovery Services

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• Obama Encourages Engineering Students To Stay With It

  March 19, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  Getting an engineering degree is hard. The work involved in obtaining one is not to be taken lightly, but the rewards awaiting graduates are worth the effort required. That was the consensus among panel members at a live Facebook Webcast last week, which was held in conjunction with the launch of Stay With It, an online resource to support engineering students in an effort to increase the number of engineering graduates from U.S. universities and colleges. The Stay With It program is the result of an initiative from the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, in partnership with Intel,

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• Quadrant And Mainline Seal Partner Deal

  March 19, 2012 Dan Burger

  Quadrant Software, makers of document management and fax products for IBM i and other platforms, and Mainline Information Systems, one of the largest resellers of IBM Power Systems, mainframes, and System x machines in the United States, have a new partnership. Mainline gains a product line that fits in well with the infrastructure its customers have in place and that will meet customer needs relating to business process issues, productivity, improved efficiencies and lower costs. Quadrant benefits by gaining access to a new and quite large customer base that has come to trust the Mainline name and way

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• Townsend Security CEO John Earl Steps Down

  March 19, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, security software vendor Townsend Security said that John Earl, the company’s president and CEO for nearly three years and a beloved and well-known OS/400 and IBM security expert, had to step down for health reasons from those positions. Many of you know Earl from his years at PowerTech and all of the work he has done for COMMON and other local user groups over the years, and it goes without saying that Earl is one of the most important and influential people in our IBM i community. This is why he ended up running Townsend Security. Patrick Townsend,

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• COMMON Turning Up the Value

  March 19, 2012 Dan Burger

  Whenever you think about the community of IBM i users who are not only advocates of the IBM midrange platform, but are also advocating training and education that keeps up with technology, the COMMON user group comes to mind. COMMON has had its ups and downs and has had to make adjustments, just like the individuals and the companies in the community have to. In about six weeks COMMON will host its annual conference. The organization’s president, Pete Massiello, promises it will once again showcase the positive turnaround. Registrations are exceeding what was on the books for the 2011 conference

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• As I See It: No, It’s Not Painless

  March 19, 2012 Victor Rozek

  In the hierarchy of bad work days, having a colleague hurl herself out of a fourth story window ranks right up there near the top. Though thankfully rare, workplace suicide is on the rise, a reflection of mounting desperation as, for many, economic options run out. A single telecommunications company in France (the former employer of the fourth floor flyer) had a horrific, mind-boggling string of 23 employee suicides. The company had been busy restructuring–a pallid euphemism for discarding workers–and apparently forgot it was altering lives as well as spreadsheets. Back home, where compassion and corporation have become all but

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• IBM Looks Back At 2011 And Forward To 2015

  March 19, 2012 Alex Woodie

  One hundred was IBM‘s lucky number for 2011. For starters, last year was the 100th year that Big Blue has been in business. The company also got back to the $100 billion revenue mark for the first time since the economy imploded in 2008. In its recently released annual report, IBM discusses how it intends to replicate the market success that IBM had in 2011, and keep it going through 2015. In her introductory letter to shareholders, new IBM CEO Ginni Rometty touted IBM’s recent success. She threw out a lot of numbers that undoubtedly impress stock analysts,

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