There are 343 applications from 121 independent software vendors (ISVs) that run on and officially support IBM i 7.1, according to a recent tally from the IBM Global Solutions Directory. The list indicates that developers of IBM i management tools and utilities have been quick to adopt the new OS with their wares. But the absence of big-name ERP packages on IBM i 7.1 raises questions.

It’s been six months since IBM i 7.1 became generally available, which is not much time at all in the server OS adoption game. Nevertheless, with the big annual fourth-quarter buying binge about

A voice-directed picking solution from Numina Group has led to big productivity gains at Demco, a Wisconsin distributor of library supplies. By boosting the pick accuracy of warehouse workers to close to 100 percent, Demco justified the elimination of eight order checking positions, savings in excess of six figures. Big savings were also realized by integrating Numina’s worker tracking function into its IBM i database, which allowed Demco to ditch an expensive manual information collection process.

The Great Recession has forced companies to find ways to boost productivity and re-tool existing business processes for greater efficiency. While a pro-labor argument

With about 2,500 customers running its IBM i-based ERP suite, HarrisData may be the biggest mid-size software company you have never heard of. In a super-competitive industry that often gets carried away with hype-driven marketing, HarrisData is an anomaly–it doesn’t even post press releases to its website. Despite its low-key approach, the Brookfield, Wisconsin, company is busy these days with the upcoming roll-out of version 5.0 of its ERP suite, which features a new CRM system, real-time analytics, and numerous PHP-driven Web interface enhancements.

HarrisData’s business model represents a pleasant change of pace in a chaotic and cutthroat B2B business

The RPG Next Gen project is looking to add automated unit testing to its repertoire of open source capabilities for RPG developers. In a blog posting earlier this month, RPG Next Gen founder Mihael Schmidt discusses his plans for integrating the existing unit test capabilities of the RPGUnit project at Sourceforge.net with his Eclipsed-based alternative to IBM‘s development environments for IBM i, including the current RDp and older versions, RDi and WDSc.

Schmidt launched the open source RPG Next Gen project in 2009. The German’s main goals with launching the project were to provide a free and lightweight alternative

If Chuck Norris were in charge of your backups, what would they look like? They would most likely be conducted as fast and orderly as possible, because Mr. Norris would want it that way. One could make the argument that ExaGrid, the developer of disk-to-disk backup devices, has found a Norris-like technology in DeltaZone, its new data deduplication feature that doesn’t sacrifice scalability for applicability.

OK, so DeltaZone is not the same thing as Delta Force, the action-packed 1986 movie that features the versatile and always-deadly Norris. While the movie follows the actions of a crack team of U.S.

Binary Tree, a developer of utilities that streamline the management and migration of major e-mail and collaborative groupware environments, will no longer help customers migrate to Google‘s e-mail service, the vendor announced recently, citing its customers’ experience that Gmail offers “less functionality,” substandard security, and a poor overall experience.

Time was, IT vendors down the food chain would bend over backwards to please the industry’s market makers, such as IBM and Microsoft. Today, Google is the pre-eminent force for all things Web, and many vendors spend a lot of time and money to build relationships with the

Preferred Strategies, a provider of business intelligence solutions to JD Edwards and SAP customers, has tapped change data capture (CDC) specialist Attunity to help it create real-time data warehouses for JDE customers.

Based on the Santa Cruz County coastline in central California, Preferred Strategies has built a living around speeding the deployment of the popular Crystal Reports product, as well as the full Business Objects BI suite, both which are now owned by the German ERP giant SAP. The firm’s offering, called BI Quick Launch, combines pre-defined reporting templates for Crystal Reports deployments, and so-called “Universes” to get BO’s

Support for Unicode within the new Remote Print Manager Elite version 5.1 will allow Brooks Internet Software to support customers in Asia, the company announced last week. The printer utility, which works with IBM i servers, mainframes, and other hosts, also got a boost in the PCL processing department.

RPM Remote Print Manager is a Line Printer Daemon (LPD) print server designed to provide more flexibility in the management and handling of the print output of IBM i, mainframe, HP3000, OpenVMS, Unix, and Linux servers. The Windows-based software can perform various functions after intercepting print jobs from hosts, including converting

MVP Systems Software is now shipping the version 5.1 release of Job Access and Management System (JAMS), a Windows-based job scheduling utility that supports the coordination of jobs running on IBM i, among other platforms.

JAMS is written in .NET and runs in the Windows environments, where the majority of its 500-plus customers run. However, the software also includes agents that allow JAMS to control and coordinate jobs executing on IBM i, Unix, Linux, and OpenVMS servers. rnWith version 5.1, MVP added a number of new features, including better support for running jobs across different time zones. Customers also get

Better fraud detection is one of the key new features in Signature version 10.1, the new release of the IBM i-based core banking system unveiled yesterday by Fiserv. The company also updated Aperio, a “customer interaction management” product designed to be deployed with Signature.

Detection of fraud has been enhanced in Fiserv 10.1. The company says the Fraud Risk Manager component is better able to detect potential fraud by incorporating non-financial event information streams into the decision engines that continually scan for signs of fraud. The software looks for fraud in both internal and external users.

Fiserv also updated