When CDW needed a way to encrypt the data in its i5/OS business applications, the computer retailer turned to Linoma Software and its Crypto Complete offering. While the product provided a relatively straightforward method for automating the encryption of fields in DB2/400, the real challenge for CDW was determining which System i programs and users should have access to the decrypted data.

CDW is a longtime and satisfied user of the IBM System i midrange server. The company, primarily operates as an a direct sales, Internet sales, and catalog retailer of technology solutions for business, government, and education, shipping hundreds

Users of Vision Solutions‘ high availability software can now manage their HA and clustering setups through IBM‘s Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS console, the vendor announced last week. By integrating Vision Cluster1 with the new Web-based management console, Vision has allowed its customers to mange more of their critical operations from a single console, rather than jumping around to different interfaces.

Systems Director Navigator for i, which debuted earlier this year with the launch of i5/OS V6R1 (now simply i 6.1), is the new Web browser-based console for managing all types of operations and administration functions on System

If imitation truly was the sincerest form of flattery, the IT industry would be awash in butterflies and rainbows. But it’s not, and instead imitation is a tool in the Darwinian quest for survival. One of today’s top imitators is Genuitec, which sells a development environment that seeks to deliver all the features of IBM‘s Rational Application Developer, but at a lower price. Last week Genuitec announced a new partnership with i OS modernization experts Databorough that should yield product by early 2009.

To call Genuitec an imitator of IBM is correct, but it’s not the whole story.

Every company that manufactures stuff tries to accurately predict demand for their products. But for companies in the food and beverage industry, the equation is riddled with additional variables, such as the relatively short shelf life of products, that make the process more difficult. To that end, Lawson Software last week announced two new demand planning applications for its M3 ERP suite to help customers juggle these variables. It also announced a new business intelligence solution for food and beverage customers.

The two new products unveiled last week, called Lawson Planning Workbench for Food and Beverage and Lawson Stock Build

Shop-Vac, the Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of wet-dry vacuum cleaners and one of Wal-Mart’s 600 biggest suppliers, recently ditched a non i OS-based RFID application from IBM in exchange for CYBRA‘s native System i-based RFID software, the New York software vendor announced last week.

When it came time for Shop-Vac to comply with Wal-Mart’s RFID mandate several years ago, the well-known manufacturer of blue-collar tools figured it could do much worse than turning to Big Blue itself. After all, IBM developed the robust midrange server that ran Shop-Vac’s critical business applications, including Infor‘s BPCS (ERP XA) for manufacturing and Manhattan

System i reseller and software developer Agilysys took drastic action to cut costs amid a worsening economic climate last week when it fired three senior managers with 90 years of collective experience and hired a new CEO and president to replace the previous chief, who stepped down.

The swirl of activity started when the public company’s board of directors voted Martin Ellis, previously its CFO and executive VP, to be Agilysys’ new president and CEO. Ellis replaces Arthur Rhein, who retired last week as president, CEO, and chairman of the board. Director Keith Kolerus was named non-executive chairman of the

When the large New Zealand dairy company Fonterra upgraded its System i servers recently, it decided to implement a data replication system along the way. The company and its systems integrator, EDS, recently completed the HA setup, and Maximum Availability, which provided the replication software, says the installation was one of the smoothest ever.

Backed by more than 11,000 New Zealand and Australian dairy farmers, Fonterra is the world’s largest exporter of dairy products. Each year, the company produces about 3.7 billion gallons of milk, bringing the company about $7.5 billion in annual sales. With such a large

PlanetJ recently unveiled a new component of its Web Object Wizard (WOW) for iSeries suite of products that enables customers to search across multiple databases, including DB2/400, with a single query, and to have the results returned to a Web page.

One of the first customers to use the new component, called WOW for Multi-System Query, is the sheriff’s department of Rockland County in New York. The department implemented the solution to streamline data sharing among neighboring counties as part of a Department of Homeland Security project.

The new system enables users to perform a single query to search multiple

A new Unified Communication (UC) software implementation at Global Hyatt is expected to yield greater collaboration among the hotel conglomerate’s 25,000 employees around the world, IBM announced last week. The implementation will include Lotus Notes, Domino, and Sametime products, and provides the Hyatt chain with e-mail, instant messaging, Web conferencing, document sharing, and calendaring capabilities.

With “the desktop of the future” as its goal, Global Hyatt set out to create a technological path that would get it there. The company settled on a platform of IBM products, headlined by Lotus Notes version 8, which is being rolled out to Hyatt’s

Global Software last week unveiled a new version of its Executive Dash reporting tool, which is used to create dashboards for consumption by managers and executives. With version 12.1, Global Software has overhauled the product to make it more like Excel, and easier to use.

Executive Dash is an Excel-based tool that enables users to create dashboard interfaces that graphically depict key performance indicators (KPIs) based on financial data pulled in real-time (or near real-time) from a variety of ERP systems. Global Software calls Executive Dash (which is often deployed with Global’s flagship Spreadsheet Server) a “buffet-style” analysis tool, a