The upcoming release of Systems Director Virtualization Manager version 1.2 from IBM will allow System i shops to manage and control virtual machines created with a variety of virtualization solutions, including VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, and Xen‘s XenSource offering, from a single location. However, it doesn’t offer System i users the same degree of control over their virtual assets as it does to their Windows and Linux brethren.

Last week, IBM announced that on September 28, Systems Director Virtualization Manager will become available. The software, which is available as a free add-on to IBM Director, allows

The number of 5250 emulation packages supporting Windows Vista has almost doubled recently, with NetManage announcing support for Vista with RUMBA earlier this month, and Zephyr‘s PASSPORT 2007 finally shipping by the end of September. But users may be surprised at the lack of support of many emulation features on the new operating system, particularly with IBM‘s iSeries Access, by far the most popular emulator in the midrange.

If your organization’s PCs are getting a bit long in the tooth, you’re probably contemplating a PC upgrade. And when you finally do pull the trigger, chances are good that

NetCustomer grew its third-party maintenance and consulting business by a factor of four last year, and it spent practically nothing on advertising to do it. Instead, the young company capitalized on the dissatisfaction that many J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft customers have with software giant Oracle. One such company is TNT Fireworks, which tapped NetCustomer after it experienced difficulty upgrading its i5 server to EnterpriseOne.

“Business has been good,” says Punita Pandey, chief executive of NetCustomer, which is based in San Jose, California, and keeps a development and support center in India. From modest beginnings in March 2006, the

Infor shared details about its service oriented architecture (SOA) roadmap at its annual user conference, Inforum 2007, in Las Vegas last week. While much of the attention regarding Infor’s “Open SOA” strategy went to its open (or non-System i) products, users of Infor’s two major i5/OS products–ERP LX, the former BPCS product, and ERP XA, the former MAPICS product–should start benefiting from Infor’s Open SOA strategy over the next 14 months.

With 70,000 customers using dozens of different products, Infor has its work cut out for it in the customer service department. Making matters tougher is a pledge the company

Microsoft this week officially announced the general availability of BizTalk Server 2006 Release 2 (R2), a new release of its core enterprise application integration (EAI) offering. With this release, Microsoft has introduced “native” support for business-to-business technologies such as EDI, AS2, and RFID, and also delivered a new low-cost version designed for installation in branch offices.

BizTalk Server is Microsoft’s core integration platform for connecting customers’ enterprise applications, including those running on IBM System i servers, with the enterprise applications of their partners. The product is used quite often in the retail supply chain, as it automatically whisks purchase orders,

TMW Systems, the Cleveland, Ohio-based developer of enterprise i5/OS and Windows applications for the trucking industry, continued its acquisition spree yesterday when it announced the purchase of Integrated Support Decision Corporation (ISDC), another software company developing solutions for the trucking industry.

Since it was founded 28 years ago, ISDC, which is based in Richardson, Texas, has been developing software products designed to help companies in the transportation industry minimize their costs and maximize their profits. Its products, which support every major platform including i5/OS, help users achieve higher revenue per loaded mile, control the route, and minimize fuel and

United Computer Group, the Cleveland, Ohio, company behind the VAULT400 online backup offering, received a big stamp of approval from IBM this month when it was awarded a “value added enhancement,” or VAE, in the managed services category.

VAEs are highly coveted certifications that bestow upon the holder the right to conduct business in highly competitive reseller channels. As such, they can make or break a company’s entire existence in certain business segments. In this case, the VAE allows UCG to sell a range of IBM equipment, including System i, System p, System z, and SurePOS point-of-sale hardware.

“The

Document management software provider Quadrant Software recently boosted its position among manufacturers in Wisconsin that use the XA ERP system by partnering with Information Systems Engineering (ISE), an IBM business partner firm with a 23-year history in the state.

Quadrant’s document and content management systems enable users to fax, e-mail, archive, and retrieve purchase orders, invoices, and other documents directly from their applications screens. Quadrant also provides workflow functionality to streamline the approvals process, and as such, it often categorizes its products, led by IntelliChief, FastFax, Formtastic, and eDocMail, as paperless process management, or PPM solutions.

Quadrant’s products support the

Having trouble getting Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) installed correctly on your i5/OS, z/OS, Unix, Linux, or Windows system? Then you might want to give the new AFP Resource Installer, announced last week by IBM, a shot at managing the files needed to print high-quality AFP documents.

The new AFP Resource Installer manages the files that you need for color and monochrome printing, and also allows you to install AFP resources in folders and directories on your local and remote servers. It includes three types of installers, including a color management resources (CMR) installer, a data object installer, and a

Orchestration Director Engine (ODE), the open source business process management system (BPMS) developed by Intalio, has graduated from being an incubator project within the Apache Software Foundation to being a full “top level project,” Intalio announced last week.

Intalio makes development and runtime tools that allow business analysts to extract business processes from existing systems (including OS/400 servers), standardize them using the business process execution language (BPEL), and expose them to outside systems for the purpose of application integration. BPMSs can also play critical roles in the development and deployment of service oriented architectures (SOAs).

ODE is the core