Seagull, CCSS Tout ServerProven Seals of Approval from IBM

It is probably safe to say that IBM‘s ServerProven system certification and co-marketing campaign for its eServer brands has been one of the most successful and useful tools that Big Blue has created for its community of software partners. That’s why we hear so many software vendors making sure that we all know that they are ServerProven. Seagull Software and CCSS last week said that some of their products had received the ServerProven seal of approval.

IBM’s ServerProven rating means a particular piece of software has been tested by IBM and its ISV partner to ensure it works properly on the latest server and operating system releases in the eServer portfolio and is installed and running in at least one real-world account. IBM gives ISVs with ServerProven status co-marketing and advertising money, plus rebates to end users who buy these solutions. All through last year–and presumably still in 2006–IBM’s North American unit was offering rebates of between $250 and $68,000 for end-user companies that buy ServerProven software on a new iSeries or i5 machine; additionally, in Europe, when pushing certain ServerProven applications, both the customer and the ISV each get the rebate in U.S. dollars, which obviously has the effect of making the ISVs extremely motivated to sell a new solution on a new server to a new customer.

Seagull Software said last week that its LegaSuite Integration Engine software, which is a piece of middleware that links legacy applications running on OS/400, mainframe, and Windows servers to the Web and to other Web-services style applications, has received ServerProven validation. LegaSuite joins Segull Software’s BlueZone terminal emulator, its J Walk Web extender for 5250 applications, and its LegaSuite GUI (formerly known as WinJa) as ServerProven. You might be thinking: legacy Windows applications, what are those? Well, those are old client/server architectures that have no idea what a Web browser is, just like the 5250 datastream on the OS/400 platform hasn’t a clue what it is until it is extended. LegaSuite runs on iSeries, zSeries, and xSeries servers and has the ServerProven status on all three platforms.

CCSS, which sells an iSeries tool called the QSystems Management Suite, said last week that IBM has renewed the ServerProven status of this software and has also renewed the Advanced Business Partner status that CCSS has held in the past. That status gives CCSS advanced access to future iSeries hardware and software (such as the impending i5/OS V5R4) so CCSS can make sure its tools stay competitive. The QSystems Management Suite consists of QSystem Monitor, which does real-time monitoring and reporting on system performance; QMessage Monitor, which automatically sorts through system messages to admins and sorts out the unimportant stuff for later review, and QRemote Control, which allows an iSeries to be monitored and managed from a cell phone.