• Trimble to Buy Trucking Software Firm TMW Systems for $335M

  September 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Trimble Navigation Limited, a publicly traded provider of positioning solutions used by government and industry, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire trucking software developer TMW Systems for $335 million. The deal will net Trimble several IBM i-based enterprise trucking software systems, and hundreds of IBM i customers. TMW had consolidated much of the market for dispatching and fleet management solutions since being acquired by two private equity firms, Wachovia Capital Partners and Peppertree Capital Management, back in September 2005. At that time, TMW was just one of the players in the trucking ERP business, and peddled two core

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• Maxava Taps Baseline to Resell HA in the Cloud

  September 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Baseline Data Services, an Indiana IT services firm that specializes in disaster recovery and data storage, has partnered with IBM i high availability software developer Maxava. Baseline will use Maxava HA to replicate customer data to the IBM i backup servers it runs in its data center. The cloud land grab is in full swing in the IT world. While non IBM i customers appear more willing to run production apps in a cloud provider’s data center, few IBM i customers appear willing to make that jump. There is one area, however, where the cloud has generated a

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• IBM i Excel Spreadsheet Generator Now Unicode Compliant

  September 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

  iDATA Development recently delivered a new release of iEXL, its Excel spreadsheet generation software that runs on IBM i. With V3R2, the software is now Unicode compliant, which will enable Asian IBM i shops to take advantage of iEXL. iEXL is an IBM i program that generates Excel spreadsheets directly from DB2/400 files. The software is used by employees and managers who prefer to see and work with company data within the comfort of Microsoft Excel, as opposed to any of the other myriad ways of getting at the data, such as canned reporting tools, ad hoc query tools, or

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• Security Bundle Blocks Unwanted Web Traffic from Reaching IBM i

  September 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

  IT professionals who are concerned about hackers pinging their exposed IBM i Web or FTP servers for security holes and configuration problems may be interested in a new security solution from KDP Software. The English firm is in the process of rolling out Perimeter Security for IBM i, a bundle of security tools that almost immediately blocks unwanted traffic at the network firewall, helping to shield not only the IBM i server but any other server sitting behind the firewall. Perimeter Security for IBM i, which is still in beta, is composed of several pieces. At the center of

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• The Ethernet Switch Market Is Booming

  August 27, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The server market has stalled a little bit as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, Oracle, and Fujitsu are in various stages of processor transitions. But the Ethernet switch market is going gangbusters as companies begin the transition to from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching in the data center. According to the box counters at IDC, the worldwide market for Layer 2 and 3 switching gear that adheres to the Ethernet protocol accounted for $5.52 billion in revenues, an increase of 8.5 percent year-over-year across all Ethernet port speeds. At Layers 3 through 7 in

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• Vallee To Retire From Avnet As Revenues And Profits Weaken

  August 27, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In his 35 years at master reseller Avnet, Roy Vallee has spent 13 of them as chief executive officer and 14 of them as chairman, and he has seen many ups and downs in the systems and components rackets. And Vallee also knows that Avnet can roll with the punches and will do so after he retires from the company. Avnet has been working on a succession plan for a number of years, tapping Rick Hamada last July to be CEO and a few weeks ago tapping board member William Schumann, executive vice president at FMC Technologies, to

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• ECS Sales And Profit Bump Can’t Offset Components Slump At Arrow

  August 27, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the economy slowing down in Europe and China, it is not an easy time in either the electronic components or IT systems business, as the most recent financial results from Arrow Electronics show. In the second quarter ended in June, Arrow’s revenues dropped 7 percent, to $5.15 billion, and even with lower cost of sales and other expenses, net income for the company fell 26.8 percent to $114.4 million. Arrow simply needs a higher volume of business to make its numbers, but to be fair, if it did not have $13.3 million in restructuring charges in the quarter, the

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• Join John Earl’s Battle

  August 27, 2012 Dan Burger

  The IBM midrange community has known John Earl for a long time. He has guided several of the top security ISVs in the IBM midrange and is one of the most well-known, well-liked, and well-respected security subject matter experts in our industry. He has also served as a director of COMMON and has shared his knowledge and advice with tens of thousands of AS/400, iSeries, and IBM i enthusiasts while speaking at local user group meetings and writing hundreds of technical articles. Earl stepped away from his role as president and CEO of Townsend Security in March 2012 for medical

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• More Reader Feedback On Big Blue Gives A Solid Installed Base Number

  August 27, 2012 Hey, TPM

  Well I, for one, am glad IBM put an actual figure to their active customer base, machines, and/or customers. At least it is 150,000 active paying businesses using the AS/400-i and gives me some credence for continuing to develop on them. I have five AS/400-i’s laying around and too many PCs. None of them are on maintenance, so the active figure maybe a tad low on those with used machines and no maintenance. And yes, I actively use only two of those i machines, and for development only. –TS To be precise, and as I said in my previous comment

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• IBM Touts PureSystems Uptake For PoCs, In Emerging Markets

  August 27, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been four months since IBM launched its Flex System modular systems and the management and cloudy infrastructure software that turns the server, network, and storage in the machine into a PureSystems box. The software vendors are lining up behind the machine, and the first customers are starting to buy boxes to kick the tires and see how they might work in production. As of early August, IBM had an ecosystem with over 700 business partners, mostly independent software vendors (ISVs) and system resellers, who were certified to peddle the boxes, and over 160 software packages have been put

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