Bug Busters Software Engineering last month issued a major release of its flagship product, Remote Software Facility version 8.1, that can replicate nearly every type of object on the i5/OS platform, including user profiles and data queues. And with a price tag of about $10,000, the number of reasons for not considering RSF–still used primarily by ISVs for distributing software updates to customers–for an i5/OS high availability project just dropped again.

For the past 15 months, Bug Busters has been turning RSF into a real-time data and object replication engine that can be used by System i shops to avoid

LANSA this month plans to ship Composer, a new business process integration (BPI) solution that allows nontechnical workers to build automation into business process workflows, such as automatically alerting customers of an unexpected hiccup in delivery schedules, thereby freeing programmers for other tasks. Such BPI solutions are common in large companies, which can afford costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. With a price tag in the low tens of thousands, LANSA is betting Composer will be a hit among small and mid size System i shops.

LANSA Composer is a design and execution platform for integrating business activities

As the 21st Century dawned, management at the Santa Margarita Water District concluded that paper-based record-keeping no longer satisfied either its mandated compliance and freedom of information responsibilities or its own voluminous record-keeping and disaster recovery requirements. The utility struck what appeared to be a great deal for a record-retention solution, but three years of struggles put a damper on the deal. However, in early 2007 a replacement document management system from ACOM Solutions was implemented that is expected to save as much as $250,000 over the next five years.

The 42-year-old Santa Margarita Water District provides water and wastewater

When it comes to running warehouses, it seems as if newer technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID) get all the good press. But the fact remains that the bulk of automation, and therefore the bulk of the return on investment (ROI) of technology purchases, lies among older technologies such as RF barcoding, and even integrated voice response (IVR). VAI manufacturing segment manager, Pete Zimmerman, who will speak at APICS (the Association for Operations Management) later this month, recently gave IT Jungle an overview of the state of the art in warehousing technologies.

Alex Woodie: So I hear that you’re going

LANSA yesterday announced that Steve Gapp, the former president and CEO at change management software vendor SoftLanding, will take over the president’s chair when its current president, John Siniscal, retires at the end of the year.

You could call it a “soft landing” of sorts for Gapp, the English native who was presiding over New Hampshire-based SoftLanding when it was acquired by Unicom Systems almost a year ago. A number of SoftLanding employees were either fired or quit following the acquisition by Unicom, which has been criticized for its handling of the deal. Gapp’s tenure as SoftLanding’s leader also

Help/Systems yesterday announced the launch of EASY VIEW 8.0, a new release of its database file display utility for DB2/400. With this release, the company has expanded the product’s export and transfer options, improved its scan management capabilities, and added new options for viewing records.

EASY VIEW is a programmer’s productivity utility that enables users to view any data file stored in DB2/400. EASY VIEW eliminates the need for IBM‘s Data File Utility (DFU) to dig deep into records, particularly useful during debugging.

With version 8.0, users can now export files to the IFS, where they can be read

IBM last week started shipping new versions of Lotus Forms and Lotus Forms Express (formerly Workplace Forms and (formerly Workplace Forms Express), software products designed to allow companies to create Web-based electronic forms applications, without coding. With the new version 3.0 releases, IBM has added support for System i (via the PASE runtime) and streamlined the creation of forms for use in Web 2.0 environments.

Lotus Forms and Lotus Forms Express help mid size organizations create and manage electronic forms. The products, which are based on the open source XForms standard, provide everything needed to create the user-facing form on

Companies that use the CA Plex development environment from CA will soon be presented with a new option for Web-enabling their applications. In December, two companies heavily involved in the CA Plex and CA 2E communities, ADC Austin and Websydian, plan to ship Websydian Web Developer+.

According to the companies, the new development tool will enable CA Plex customers to deploy their existing Plex applications to the Web without any additional development work. By tapping into the control panel layout specified in the Plex panel designer, and through a set of HTML templates and advanced patterns, Websydian Web Developer+

Ensuring business uptime through business continuity is one of the top priorities for many businesses. Productivity is directly related to the ability (or inability) to access data. Because of increasing emphasis on data protection and data availability, we’ve also witnessed a growth in licensed software and managed services related to this environment. One company that is developing online backup and recovery software for the iSeries installed base is EVault, which this week announced enhancements to its disaster recovery platform for physical and virtual environments.

EVault brought online back ups and recoveries to the IT industry in 1997 and came

When Marina Medical Billing Service contacted Laserfiche about setting up a document scanning and retrieval system, the emergency medical care billing agency based near Los Angeles, California, had concerns about the scalability of the Laserfiche system. Following a demonstration, the i5/OS shop decided the Windows-based Laserfiche could handle its high-volume environment.

Before making its selection, Marina Medical Billing Service required Laserfiche to prove that it could handle not only its current workload, but twice the highest load forecast generated in its upcoming expansion plans. For Marina Billing, which uses CPU Medical Management Systems‘ core i5/OS-based billing and practice management