IBS Updates Integration Tool, Board of Directors

November 16, 2010 Alex Woodie

International Business Systems, the embattled ERP software company based in Sweden, last week unveiled a new release of IBS Integrator, a multi-faceted integration tool used by many of its customers. The company says the new version 6.7 release will bring enhancements in the areas of scalability, performance, security, and administration. The company also unveiled the results of its recent meeting regarding the resignation of two board members.

IBS touts Integrator as a powerful tool for integrating applications and data, regardless of platform. Considering that most IBS customers are running their IBS software on the IBM Power Systems-IBM i platform, it is a good bet that the Windows-based integration tool is often called on to ensure that IBM i applications and data are appropriately synched with internal and external programs running on other platforms.

Integration version 6.7 brings several notable enhancements in performance and usability. Large organizations that are using XML-based Web services will appreciate the support for load balancing of Web services. The capability to duplicate integration services and then run them individually will also help scalability. Also, support for failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 will allow customers to keep Integrator up and running during disruptions.

This release also brings support for StaX, which stands for Streaming API for XML. This will allow the product to handle larger XML files, the company says. In other Web services news, version 6.7 introduces a new wizard that automatically generates Web service description language components (WSDLs) based on the URL of the target Web service, the vendor says.

Administrators will benefit from new job sorting capabilities in IBS Integrator, including new drill-down and side-by-side viewing options, and the ability to clone and customize commonly used services. This release also keeps separate logs for each service, which allows for deeper inspection of business activities. New monitoring and alerting functions are designed to keep administrators notified of errors, while another new feature allows the administrator to customize how Integrator responds to file transfers that end abnormally.

On the security front, version 6.7 introduces support for SSH-based FTP, or SFTP. This comes on top of pre-existing support for FTP and SSL-based FTP, or FTPS. This release also makes it configure Web sites to use SSL encryption; users can turn SSL on by configuring the applications’ properties, IBS says.

In other company news, IBS announced the results of a November 4 meeting held in the wake of the sudden resignation last month of two members of the board, including the company’s chairman.

IBS will operate with just three board members, instead of finding replacements for the two members who resigned, the company says. The board members consist of Vinit Bodas, Christian Paulsson, and Ulf Eriksson. Paulsson is also running the company as acting CEO and president until a permanent chief can be hired.