IBM last week announced the withdrawal from marketing and discontinuance of support for Secure Perspectives, an i OS security tool introduced two years ago with the goal of allowing nontechnical people to define and implement an object-level security policy using nontechnical words and phrases. However, the product will continue to be available as a custom offering, as will updates that allow it to work with future releases of IBM i OS.

Unveiled in April 2007 and shipped a month later, IBM introduced Secure Perspectives as a way to get more i5/OS shops to implement object-level security on their System i

Dealing with daily tape backups is an IT department ritual. Despite the labor-intensive, processes, the risk of media and drive breakdowns, and the archiving and retrieval jumbles, most companies persist with this tradition. Jenson USA, an IBM iSeries user, wanted an option and got it with electronic vaulting. Disaster recovery, security, and concerns about transferred data clogging the network pipeline were each resolved. And, switching the company database to the vault was made in one day.

Jenson USA is a marketer of bicycles, parts, accessories and apparel, headquartered in Ontario, California. It has a brick and mortar presence there and

The Merchandise Management System is the i OS application that gets the bulk of attention at JDA Software Group. But with 400 loyal customers and a 20-year development history, the E3 collection of inventory management products has become a reliable part of JDA’s business, too. And as a recent briefing by JDA for IT Jungle shows, JDA has plans for the continued development of these products.

JDA acquired E3 in September 2001 to further its expansion into the market for collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) tools. At the time of the acquisition, E3 had about 500 customers, including

Quadrant Software added a number of new capabilities with Formtastic version 5.4.3, which was recently unveiled. The new release brings close integration with Infor XA (MAPICS) and the capability to automatically e-mail XA-generated spool files as PDF files. This release brings a number of other useful enhancements, including support for the 4-State barcode, new auto-merge functions, better duplex printing, new e-mail APIs, and improvements to the signature capture module.

Formtastic is a suite of software products that make spool file output from i OS applications more attractive and more flexible. The suite includes a Windows-based form design tool, templates for

Kisco Information Systems customers can now audit for unauthorized or unexpected changes to i OS data files from the comfort of a Web browser interface with the latest release of iFileAudit . With iFileAudit Release 3, the product is no longer tied to the 5250 interface, a change that will be most helpful in setting up the product’s filtering mechanisms. Also, Kisco recently celebrated its 25th anniversary in the IBM midrange business.

iFileAudit is a handy journaling tool launched several years ago by Kisco, a developer and provider of security, reporting, and communications tools based in Upstate New York. iFileAudit

System i shops that rely on the QMessage Monitor from CCSS to automate the handling of System i messages can now export those messages to third-party products as a result of the recently announced support for the Syslog message format. This will give QMM customers the capability to use cross-platform security event and information management (SEIM) products to keep watch over their entire IT environment, among other uses.

QMessage Monitor is a message management solution for single- and multi-site OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i OS implementations. The software constantly watches a variety of system messages, logs, and journals so operators

nuBridges has recently entered into partnerships with two i OS security vendors, Raz-Lee Security and Safestone Technologies, to provide those vendors’ i OS customers with encryption and tokenization solutions that, among other things, will help to satisfy PCI DSS requirements.

The deals with Safestone and Raz-Lee involve nuBridges Protect, a Java-based encryption tool that works with System i and other server platforms. Much of the excitement appears to be over the Token Manager module that nuBridges launched in April at an initial cost of $50,000 per server.

Tokenization is viewed as the next big thing in encryption. Instead of

Rimini Street, a third-party provider of software maintenance and support for JD Edwards and other enterprise software packages, last week announced that it has sold a portion of the rapidly growing company to Adams Street Partners, a private equity firm with nearly $20 billion under management. Rimini says it will use the money to expand in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

Las Vegas-based Rimini Street says business has been booming lately. While the global recession has punished enterprise software companies by putting the kibosh on new ERP projects, the gloomy financial outlook has actually been a boon for third-party

Zobrist Consulting, an expert in IBM WebSphere implementations on i OS and other platforms, recently announced a new service to make URLs from dynamically created Web pages more friendly to search engines.

If you’re serious about selling stuff over the Web, chances are good you’re dynamically creating your Web pages against a central product database. After all, it’s practically a requirement for e-commerce Web sites with any kind of scalability.

But one of the drawbacks of the dynamic approach is the resulting URL that accompanies dynamically generated pages. Instead of URLs that are understandable and resemble the English language

AIG-Israel, an insurance company affiliated with the global financial services giant AIG, will be protecting its System i servers with the iSecurity software suite from Raz-Lee Security, the software vendor announced last week.

iSecurity is a comprehensive collection of security tools for i5/OS and i OS environments that is composed of more than 15 modules that accomplish tasks ranging from exit point control and analysis of i OS’s audit journal to virus scanning and password enforcement.

AIG-Israel chose Raz-Lee for i OS security tools as a result of its previous experience with Raz-Lee’s products and the recommendation of independent