• Izzi Taps Virtutem To Modernize Infor LX Environments With Valence

  January 19, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Izzi Software entered the IBM i market in 2025 with cash for acquisitions, and promptly landed CNX and its Valence application modernization tool. Fast forward to 2026, and Izzi has formed a strategic partnership with longtime Infor partner Virtutem to sell and support Valence to users of Infor LX and other IBM i-based ERP systems.

  Virtutem founder and chief executive officer Alwyn Francis has a long history with the IBM i platform and the BPCS product from Infor. He was an RPG II programmer working on System/3, System/34, and System/36 before joining an SSA partner based in the United …

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• Where Infor Is Headed With Its ERPs For IBM i

  November 17, 2025 Alex Woodie

  As the largest provider of IBM i-based ERP systems that isn’t named Oracle or SAP, Infor wields a significant amount of influence over the midrange marketplace. Companies that run XA, LX, and System 21 rely on Infor to keep their ERP systems up-to-date and viable with changing business and technology requirements. To that end, Infor shared some of its roadmap items with the user community during the recent inPOWER 2025 event.

  More than 450 people attended the inPOWER 2025 conference, which took place in late September in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The event was sponsored by the XA, LX, System 21, and …

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• Maybe Stopgap Your Legacy Data Issues And Wait for What’s Next?

  September 29, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The temptation to move off legacy systems like IBM i and System Z is overwhelming for some companies. First, there are business issues, such as enabling data integration and real-time capabilities, that older systems legitimately struggle with. Plus, the siren call from Kubernetes and microservices is getting louder. But the longer you can hold on to current systems and wait for next-gen AI-powered systems to emerge, the better off you will be.

  That’s the advice being proffered by the folks at Adeptia, a 20-year-old Chicago-based technical services firm that has worked on data integration issues with many Fortune 500 …

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• Stelo Touts Data Replication For IBM i In Azure Cloud

  September 29, 2025 Alex Woodie

  If you are in the market for data replication software for IBM i, you might want to check out Stelo (formerly StarQuest). The company has supported the IBM i server for many years, and recently announced that its software is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

  Stelo got its start back in 1992, when Paul Rampel founded StarQuest to develop data connectivity tools for IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems environments. The company launched the Host Data Replicator (HDR) product in 1998, when was adapted with real-time capabilities to become the StarQuest Data Replicator (SQDR) product in 2001.

  In 2022, StarQuest …

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• Crossroads RMC Shows Off New AI Dashboard at inPOWER 2025

  September 22, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Crossroads RMC will be showing off its new AI-powered dashboard at Infor’s inPOWER 2025 event this week in Wisconsin. The new offering, dubbed the NextTrack Analytics Dashboard, allows users to ask questions about data residing in ERP database using plain English, thereby broadening the availability of actionable information to new groups of users.

  Crossroads RMC has built a name for itself within the Infor ERP community thanks to its solutions for manufacturers. The company’s manufacturing execution systems (MES) offering sit comfortably atop ERP LX, M3, and other ERP systems, providing access to shop floor scheduling capabilities that do not exist …

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• NAViGATE, inPower 2025 On Tap for September 2025

  September 15, 2025 Alex Woodie

  As the summer turns to fall, IBM i professionals will be turning out to a pair of events being hosted in the Midwest, including Infor’s imPower 2025 conference in Wisconsin, and COMMON’s NAViGATE conference taking place in Pennsylvania. Both shows are expected to draw hundreds of participants.

  NAViGATE 2025 takes place this week in Pittsburgh. COMMON is hosting about 110 sessions on IBM i topics across the three-day event, including sessions on application development, security, high availability, and administering the system.

  Tim Rowe, an IBM architect for application development, and Julia Yan, the lead developer of Navigator for i, will …

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• AI Is Coming for ERP. How Will IBM i Respond?

  September 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  A wave of artificial intelligence is beginning to wash over the enterprise resource planning software market, changing the nature of how businesses process automation gets done. IBM i has been a solid platform for running ERP systems for decades. But how will the new generation of AI-enabled enterprise apps get to IBM i?

  When it comes to automating business processes, ERP packages have been the primary means for achieving it for the past four decades. The big monolithic apps from SAP, Oracle, Infor, and dozens of others have driven trillions of dollars in value by providing a …

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• 2025 IBM i Predictions, Part Two

  January 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

  With new wall calendars and a new (old) guy in the White House, change is in the air as we start off 2025. That much was obvious from the first installment of IBM i predictions, which ran last week. This second batch of predictions may be even bolder than the first.

  We’re in the midst of a shakeup in the tech job market, thanks to several years of elevated inflation, emergence of cloud computing, and new technologies like AI. How does that impact the IBM i job market? For insight, we turn to Bob Langieri, the owner of Excel Technical …

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• How ERP Giants Are Building GenAI Into Their Products

  December 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  We are still near the top of Gartner’s hype curve when it comes to generative AI. Larger companies that have discipline and money, and startups with time and ambition, are finding success with GenAI, but many organizations are still in the planning and roll-out phase. The same could be said for ERP vendors, who have started their GenAI journeys but are expected to ramp up adoption significantly in the years to come.

  Since the dawn of the mainframe age, computers have automated the work that was previously done by people. Large armies of file clerks were no longer needed once …

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• Slicing and Dicing the Future of the Cloud ERP Market

  November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The cloud looms large in the world of enterprise software. Nearly all ERP vendors offer their software in the cloud, and some, such as SAP, are even planning to end support for on-prem deployments. But how big is the market for cloud ERP, who are the leading providers, and what does it all mean for IBM i customers?

  For starters, how big is the global ERP market? This is an important question, but there is no exact answer. The definition of what is enterprise resource planning software is a little bit amorphous, and amortization schedules can make assigning spending to …

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