Key Information Solutions has won an award from IBM for a video about how it helped recycling company Recology implement an IBM i application that helps it achieve its mission of reducing waste in San Francisco.

Recology has contracts with the City by the Bay to collect recyclable materials from homes and businesses. Every week day, fleets of Recology trucks span out across the hilly town, picking up used bottles, cans, paper, and vegetable material and food scraps. The trucks haul the materials back to Recology’s sorting plant, where it is turned back into 16 different raw materials that are

Infor is using this week’s user conference in Denver, Colorado, as a coming out party to reintroduce its customers to the company. During his opening keynote yesterday, CEO Charles Phillips explained to several thousand Infor and Lawson attendees how dramatically Infor has changed over the last 18 months, and told them to expect a rapid period of product development in the near future, with a strong focus on standardization across ERP product lines.

“This is really kind of a unique event because you’re really being introduced to a new company. . . called Infor,” Phillips said during his keynote. “I

Oracle yesterday unveiled new releases of both JD Edwards ERP suites, including JDE World version 9.3 and JDE EnterpriseOne 9.1, at the vendor’s Collaborate 2012 conference in Las Vegas. The new releases contain hundreds of enhancements, with an emphasis on user interface improvements, enhancements to industry- and process-specific functionality, and continued regulatory compliance. EnterpriseOne also gets a new operational reporting tool, called OneView, while World now requires IBM i 7.1.

The simultaneous launch of new releases of both major ERP suites is a first in JD Edwards history, according to Lyle Ekdahl, group vice president and general manager of Oracle’s

If your IBM i shop is like most, it uses some type of business software, such as an ERP system built atop DB2/400, to process transactions. And while it may excel at processing data quickly and efficiently, the setup is not ideal for answering detailed questions that a manager may have about the business, i.e. running analytical workloads. For various reasons, a separate data warehouse will be a far superior solution–especially if it’s implemented on an IBM i server, says data warehousing expert Alan Jordan.

There are lots of good reasons to run a data warehouse. Perhaps the most obvious

Enforcive (formerly Bsafe Information Systems) last week unveiled a new release of its IBM i security suite, called Enforcive/Enterprise Security. With version 7.2, the company delivered support for monitoring interactive SQL queries in real time, providing a way to monitor the execution of both written and embedded SQL statements. This release also brings enhancements to file integrity monitoring, auditing, and alerting features of the suite.

Enforcive has helped IBM i customers keep an eye on SQL for some time. The company’s SQL monitor looks for SQL activity, including interactive SQL statements submitted by users and statements embedded in RPG, DRDA,

Kisco Information Systems last week unveiled SafeNet/i 9.0, a new version of its IBM i network security tool, which used to go by the name SafeNet/400. The new version uses IBM journaling to keep irrefutable logs of system activity. Other areas of enhancement include support for new IBM exit points, IFS object checks, user profile security, and a GUI redesign.

SafeNet/i is a network security tool that uses IBM exit points to lock down potentially dangerous routes of access to the IBM i server, such as ODBC and FTP connections. It has been said over and over again, but it’s

Databeam, a Rochester, Minnesota-based developer of power tools for the IBM i server, last month unveiled version 3 of its software suite. The new version of Databeam includes updates to existing tools, dataCapture and dataAlert. The company has added a new component, called dataSecurity, which alerts administrators to potential security breaches.

Databeam unveiled its first IBM i offerings about a year ago when it launched version 1 of its eponymous Databeam Suite. The software, which it developed with fellow Rochester developers at Centerfield Technology , is a tool that has two components: dataCapture, a query and filter tool for

STORServer last week unveiled a new backup appliance for smaller organizations and offices that want to protect between 1 and 7 TB of data. The entry-level BA series can back up different types of servers, including IBM i, thanks to its use of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) software.

The new BA 851 is a 2U appliance that features a six-core X86 processor, 15 TB of SAS disk, and 32 GB of memory. On this frame sits Windows Server 2008 R2, a copy of TSM 6.x, and the STORServer software and GUI console (TSM’s GUI leaves much to be desired).

Lavastorm Analytics, a developer of tools that helps users understand how data flows across their business, has joined QlikTeck‘s partner program. While neither vendor’s software runs on IBM i, they are widely used by customers in the midrange space.

QlikTech has made a name for itself over the last several years with its focus on developing low-cost business intelligence tools that are easy to use. The success of its flagship QlikView product line helped fuel the recent resurgence of in-memory analytic products–and also helped drive an IPO on Nasdaq. While the company’s software runs on Windows, it is

Kronos‘ iSeries Central suite has a seat on the Customer Experience bus as it embarks today on a 20-city road show across North America to showcase Kronos. The Massachusetts software vendor also announced the acquisition of SMART, a U.K.-based developer of workforce management software.

The iSeries Central suite doesn’t always get top billing in the Kronos scheme of things, as the company prefers to lead with Workforce Central, which runs on open systems like Windows and Linux. That’s a shame, as the suite, which is composed of iSeries Scheduler, iSeries Timekeeper, iSeries Absence Management, iSeries Activities, and iSeries Gaming,