Attendance is up over last year as user group adjusts to a new economic reality.

Written by Chris Smith

The 50th anniversary of COMMON celebrated in Orlando earlier this month with the annual conference and expo was a dignified yet upbeat event that commanded the attention and support of users and IBM alike, an event by its attendance alone that suggests IBM i will evolve and remain a vital part of the IT landscape for quite some time to come.

Three years ago, I wrote that COMMON reminded me of a Vietnam War veterans' convention for the lack of youthful participants. Not true this year, for the mix of older and younger attendees was evident, and the resultant energy could be felt in every hallway. The confluence of iManifest representatives from Japan, Europe, and the U.S. refocused attention on business users' determination around the world to promote the IBM i operating system as a rock-solid, virus-free, and cost-efficient platform. Coming on the heels of IBM's announcement the prior month of the release of IBM i 7.1, which embraces new features of the POWER7 chipset as well as solid-state disk storage and connectivity and management enhancements, COMMON was by all accounts the foam cresting on a curling wave.

The combined attendance of 1,121 certainly wasn't close to the glory days of 5,000, when the application development challenge and operations requirements on the AS/400 brought in many talented developers and administrators. But the figure produced a sigh of relief after the shocker of last year's reduced Reno attendance of only 958, which spurred fear that numbers would rapidly dwindle to such a low figure that vendors would fail to support the show. Generating enough leads and follow-up sales from the users coming to the educational conference is an important ingredient in funding the conference, though user registration fees could, if pressed, keep the lights on if the expo shrank into oblivion. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to be happening, though there were only 72 exhibiting vendors present this year compared to 81 last year in Reno. Vendors nevertheless were scrambling to figure out how to downsize their large and costly booths from prior years in order to accommodate today's leaner economy and smaller shows.

Seminar attendance varied depending on the topic, but the revised curriculum with its focus on new technology was a winner among attendees. Some sessions, such as those on PHP and the new RPG Open Access had overflowing crowds. Author and programmer Jeff Olen reported that one session he gave on PHP development on IBM i had so many attendees that people had to be turned away for lack of room. The session titled "What's New with Development Tools and Compilers from Rational" by George Farr and the "Application Development with Rational Tools" open lab led by Farr, Linda Cole, and Satish Gungabeesoon also generated much interest, as did many others.

Following a day of optional workshops and labs on Sunday, the conference kicked off Monday with an energetic start in the form of a COMMON Cares 5K Run/Walk and a blood drive to support the local community. The entire conference was a day shorter this year than prior conferences, and the number of sessions had to be trimmed due to cost-cutting initiatives by the COMMON Board. The Expo was open for what seemed like just a few hours each day, and attendees had to pay for any alcohol consumed at the cash bar, though food was usually served to help attract and satisfy conference-goers.

The opening session enthusiastically emceed by outgoing COMMON President Wayne Madden was a real morale-booster to the sometimes skeptical IBM i crowd concerned about whether IBM would shrink from its years-long support of the proprietary operating system. None other than Sam Palmisano, president, CEO, and Board chairman of IBM, spoke to the assembled crowd via a videotape specially produced for COMMON attendees. The message of encouragement and support was so important to Palmisano that he came into work in order to make the tape, even though he reportedly had been working at home while recovering from a bad cold. Such gestures of support to developers from IBM's top management meant a lot to the rank and file and helped reassure those who stretched the company's training budget to attend the conference that they were in the right place at the right time.

Madden singled out IBM's retiring liaison to COMMON, Sandy Cureton, for an outstanding job over the years and credited her with getting things done that would have been impossible to accomplish by anyone less talented and committed to the COMMON organization. Guy Havelick will be the new IBM liaison to the Board.

Ross Mauri, general manager of the Systems and Technology Group, appeared on stage live this year after an embarrassing absence from last year's COMMON caused by a weather malfunction on his way to China. His presentation on the features and benefits of the Power Systems line of servers sporting the powerful new POWER7 chip reinforced to the audience that IBM is once again king of the hill when it comes to hardware technology. Nothing on the market today can touch the POWER7 chip, Mauri said, and engineers already are well along on their way to developing the next generation POWER8 processor, he told MC Press Online at a media gathering later. Mauri promised a line of blades and smaller Power Systems POWER7 servers for the SMB market later this year, an assumption most users already had made but not heard yet directly from management.

At the press briefing later, Mauri dispelled once and for all the tantalizing notion that Windows might someday run on POWER when he announced that Microsoft had finally decided it was not interested. "We have made proposals to them, but they have chosen not to run on POWER," he said. The disappointment is particularly acute since the technical challenge of running on POWER is completely surmountable, he confirmed. Mauri added that from his and IBM's point of view, the more operating systems running on POWER, the better it would be for IBM, not to mention IBM customers. Nevertheless, having three major ones—IBM i, AIX, and Linux—gives users some nice options for consolidation and virtualization.

The new COMMON Certification Program was also discussed during the opening session. The program includes two levels of certification: COMMON Business Computing Associate and COMMON Certified Business Computing Professional. For the first time, exams for the COMMON Business Computing Associate credential will be administered at the COMMON conference. Attendees who pass the exam will return home with that certification in hand.

Attendees and members of COMMON were voting online during the three days of the conference to select a new board of directors and president. Pete Massiello, a current Board member and president of iTech Solutions, an IBM Business Partner focused on the iSeries and Power Systems, will be the new president of the organization, replacing Wayne Madden, who now will be immediate past president. Massiello has held executive positions in various user groups; has been an active volunteer on many committees at COMMON as well as a writer in COMMON Connect and a speaker; and is a past member of the COMMON Board. Massiello says his combination of both technical and business skills, including marketing, strategic planning, and financial expertise, make him ideally suited for the top spot in the organization. Members elected Pete Helgren and Kevin Mort to the Board for three-year terms and returned Jim Oberholtzer for another term. Former COMMON President Randy Dufault and Board member Jeff Carey are off the Board but are said to likely remain active in the organization. Board candidate Ron Pilcher gets to keep his powder dry for another run next year.

Massiello will lead the effort to organize the new COMMON 2010 Fall Conference and Expo October 4-6 at the Crowne Plaza Riverwalk in San Antonio. He also will oversee COMMON's 2011 Annual Meeting and Exposition May 1-4 in Minneapolis.

Following is a summary of the vendor announcements that author Joel Klebanoff and I collected from press releases and meetings during the course of the COMMON conference.

10ZiG

BOSaNOVA, a 10ZiG company, announced the release of BOSaNOVA Secure V8, which is now compatible with Windows 7. Secure is a secured TN5250 emulation solution for the desktop that provides SSL and SSO (single sign-on) with Kerberos. The company also said that 64-bit is available for those companies that may need it. Secure 8 requires IBM i V3R2 or higher, V5R2 or higher for SSL and SSO. It is fully compatible with IBM i 7.1.

"We have invested time and resources into our BOSaNOVA System i connectivity products since acquiring them last year," said Martin Pladgeman, BOSaNOVA president. "We are excited about this new release and anticipate other developments with our BOSaNOVA product line this year," he said. The upgrade to Secure 8 is free for customers currently under maintenance.

BCD

DCS, a privately held corporation based in South Carolina that markets software solutions for public safety, detention centers, and prisons in the United States and the Caribbean, won an IBM Innovation Award, and the company credits BCD Software for providing the tools that made the accomplishment possible.

DCS is a premier BCD business partner that uses WebSmart ILE to program its solutions that are designed to support government law enforcement agencies and detention facilities. DCS' award-winning solution was developed for the West Haven (Connecticut) Police Department (the actual contest entrant), which stores its records on an IBM i server.

At COMMON, BCD formally announced the second major release of Presto application modernization tool, which the company notes adds a "wow factor" to Web-enablement and simplifies customizing Web-enabled 5250 screens. Presto 2 gives users a more modern look, reduces the learning curve to make screen customizations with a new Visual Screen Editor, and renders all screens with perfect alignment.

Presto dynamically presents RPG and COBOL programs and operating system screens as Web pages that are accessible by popular browsers. In less than an hour, users can install Presto and instantly Web-enable all their green-screen applications, menus, system screens, and third-party software. Presto does this without making any changes to, and without needing to recompile, the RPG, COBOL, or DDS code. V2.0 of Presto is now available for evaluation or as an upgrade.

BCD announced recently introduced new features of its latest version of Nexus Portal, V3.6. Nexus Portal provides fast, secure, and controlled access to Web applications, documents, dashboards, menus, and user tools through a Web browser. The new version offers a Google Search Appliance portlet that lets users apply the flexibility of Google searching and indexing to their own content, full support for Firefox users, and a major revision to the code that improved page load times by up to 40 percent. BCD offers Nexus Portal licenses free with paid maintenance.

BCD also announced new releases of its entire WebSmart family of products. The new versions—WebSmart ILE 8.2, WebSmart PHP 3.2, and Clover Query 2.0—include product-specific features, such as gradient charts, new XML functions, Oracle templates, and the flexibility to schedule reports. New XML functions simplify XML document processing and parsing. SmartCharts is a set of data-graphing Flash charts that is included at no charge with all three products. Support for Local Variables has been added, allowing developers to write more clear, precise, and modular code. The SQL templates provided with WebSmart ILE offer flexible filtering options. Scheduling of Reports is now possible in Clover through Clover's ability to create a non-CGI program.

Bsafe

Bsafe Information Systems announced just prior to COMMON the Bsafe/PCI Accelerator Package. The PCI Accelerator Package is an add-on module to Bsafe/Enterprise Security for IBM i 6.1 and Bsafe/Policy Compliance Manager. It provides a set of predefined reports, alerts, and Policy Compliance Manager templates that reduce project timelines to accelerate compliance with PCI DSS.

Reports in the PCI Accelerator Package can be easily copied, customized, categorized into policy groups, and defined to run across multiple IBM i servers or partitions. The PCI Alerts are SNMP-enabled, allowing them to be forwarded to third-party software packages. In addition, alerts can be set up as proactive triggers and react to undesirable transactions (e.g., to revoke special authority or disable user profiles) or prompt the execution of a custom program.

Crossroads

Crossroads announced that its new virtual tape appliance, SPHiNX, has been tested with and now supports not only the IBM i environment but AIX and Windows as well. At COMMON, Crossroads demonstrated SPHiNX for Power Systems, a dedicated virtual-tape appliance that delivers data protection and resiliency for IBM Power Systems environments. Since its launch at the COMMON Directions and Focus 2009 event in Indianapolis, SPHiNX has enjoyed significant growth and interest among COMMON members due to its ability to improve performance and storage capacity while leveraging existing investments in disk and tape-backup infrastructures.

"Crossroads has signed several new resellers, established a strategic partnership, and seen a surge of customer interest surrounding SPHiNX for Power Systems," said Glenn Haley, senior product manager at Crossroads Systems. SPHiNX delivers functionality, quality, and a price point that has not been available through other virtual tape appliances servicing the Power Systems space, he said. Three of Crossroads' partners, Help/Systems, 10ZiG, and CIBER, exhibited at COMMON.

Databorough

Databorough announced the release of X-2E, a tool for graphical analysis, documentation, design recovery, and migration to Java, EGL, or C# for CA 2E SYNON applications.

"By listening to our CA 2E SYNON customers, we realized that there was an increasing appetite for an alternative development ecosystem," said Stuart Milligan, vice president of business development for Databorough. "After having extracted the data model from CA 2E for many years, it was a natural extension for us to extract the complete CA 2E model directly. Not everybody wanted to migrate off the platform in the first instance, so we created two versions; one for analysis and documentation of the model, and the other for complete rebuilds in modern technologies and languages. What's unique about our approach is that we use the model itself and not the generated code at all. This reduces the resulting code base by at least 100 to 1, and it provides CA 2E developers insight into architecture they understand."

X-2E Professional automatically extracts a complete CA 2E model definition to extend Databorough's analysis and documentation tool X-Analysis. Users can visualize, analyze, and document the CA 2E data model, action diagrams, and functions in an interactive and graphical manner.

X-2E Enterprise bypasses the generated RPG/COBOL code and uses the CA 2E model as a specification to automatically refactor and generate an MVC Web application using OO methods in Java, C#, .NET, or EGL. Silverlight UI options are being introduced third quarter 2010. The tools can be used against an entire system, user-defined application areas, or individual functions as part of an ongoing modernization/migration effort. This provides more flexibility and control to the user and helps reduce risk and overall cost, while maximizing productivity with user-driven automation.

Halcyon Software

Halcyon Software announced at COMMON the release of two completely new versions of its IBM i and mixed system network monitoring suites—Halcyon Operations Center and Halcyon Network Server Suite.

Halcyon Operations Center V3.0 represents a complete rewrite of the company's state-of-the-art flagship solution for monitoring and automating IBM Power Systems running IBM i. The company's proven system monitoring solution, Network Server Suite 7.1, has been upgraded to include a new Linux Server Manager component.

The new modules contained within Halcyon Operations Center V3.0 provide administrators with advanced job scheduling, system message handling, automation of manual tasks, performance management, disk and spool file management as well as impressive updated graphical user interfaces and additional reporting features. The product ships with more templates than previous versions to include easy monitoring of typical ERP solutions such as JDE, Lawson, and SAP. Designed to appeal to individual data centers and managed services companies, Halcyon Operations Center's cost-effective and feature-rich systems management software addresses real business needs, particularly with companies that must reduce operational costs and prove a return on investment to senior management.

Network Server Suite has been redesigned to fully support the latest technology for IBM Power Systems by providing a native solution for any platforms running on the server, and the new Linux Server Manager integrates with existing Windows or IBM i monitoring tools, eliminating any future need for multiple screens to monitor different environments or platforms.

HiT Software

Data integration specialist HiT Software announced at COMMON it had been acquired by BackOffice Associates, LLC, a Massachusetts-based data migration and governance firm. HiT Software founder Giacomo Lorenzin told MC Press Online that the two companies were completely complementary and, combined, could sell into a much larger market with an extremely well-rounded data integration/migration product line.

"The combination of BackOffice Associates' extensive solutions and HiT Software products will give customers more innovative and far-reaching capability than ever before," said Lorenzin.

With the acquisition, BackOffice gains a robust suite of change data capture and data access products to integrate with its master data management, data migration, and data governance solutions. HiT Software will have BackOffice Associates' highly regarded CranSoft platform that the company uses to support its services but, according to Lorenzin, is "five to 10 years ahead of other providers in the marketplace."

Lorenzin said the combined technical expertise of the two companies will output products to the marketplace "that customers only dream about today."

BackOffice Associates offers, among other things, products and services that support ERP solutions for global customers. It specializes in smooth startups for companies implementing new ERP solutions.

Lorenzin, who will continue in his role leading HiT Software as managing director, said HiT will remain in its San Jose, California, location as the West Coast office of BackOffice Associates.

looksoftware

looksoftware announced at COMMON a new application development toolset that it's calling re:new. The toolset will enable IBM i customers to extend existing applications and also rapidly deliver new functionality that leverages the .NET framework, according to Marcus Dee, looksoftware CEO. The resulting applications may blend existing and new functionality, with the automated development process being five to 10 times faster than traditional manual coding, he said.

Using re:new, companies can reduce time to value by leveraging framework-based generation to provide pure SOA-based applications. Developers can now modernize existing systems, build new ones, or produce a mixture of both. re:new supports multi-channel User Experience (UX) delivery, including a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)-based rich client and the cross-platform Web-based Silverlight RIA.

"looksoftware has traditionally offered IBM i customers the opportunity to preserve their legacy assets via reuse" said Dee. "Our Path Forward announcements extend our reuse focus to include integrated support for new development to provide our customers and ISV partners with long-term paths forward."

re:new allows developers to quickly and easily provide integration and interoperability with existing IBM i applications. It produces loosely coupled, agile, service-oriented software that includes backend operational management, security, and authentication. This ensures best practices and dramatically reduces programming time throughout the development lifecycle.

re:new leverages Surround Technologies' development framework, together with looksoftware's soarchitect, and existing support for multi-channel clients to provide an effective UX.

Maximum Availability

Maximum Availability announced the release of MAXView, a real-time mobile technology that brings greater flexibility and control to the management of Maxava's *noMAX Garrison product.

Maxava's *noMAX High Availability Suite protects data and applications by creating a real-time copy of production data that is always available. Providing a flexible and convenient way to monitor critical IBM i application resilience was a key driver for Maxava in creating this new mobile technology.

MAXView is browser-based technology that has initially been optimized for Apple Safari on the iPhone and iPad and Google Chrome on the PC. Support for other browsers and mobile devices will be rolled out over the coming weeks. The MAXView browser displays the status of the *noMAX HA environment in real-time as well as IBM i system, job, and disk summary details.

MAXView also comes with a PC Widget for the desktop toolbar and allows access to the visual monitor, which shows alerts as appropriate. Maxava demonstrated MAXView at COMMON and is promoting the new technology by offering a free iPad to all new customers who purchase *noMAX Garrison by August 31. MAXView is available free to existing *noMAX Garrison customers.

mrc

Business analysts and managers are familiar with pivot tables through their experience with Microsoft Excel. Pivot tables allow them to extract, summarize, and drill down into data to make more productive use of the enterprise's databases.

Coincident with COMMON, michaels, ross & cole, ltd. (mrc) announced a pivot table reporting class for its m-Power development tool suite. Using this new reporting class, m-Power users can quickly create Web-based pivot tables. m-Power users access pivot tables in any Web browser. The browser-based pivot table function displays buttons for each available data field. Users can then drag and drop those buttons to create the row and column dimensions for the pivot table.

m-Power builds pivot tables by accessing data directly from a database. mrc's history is on the IBM i platform, but m-Power, including its new pivot table reporting class, can create applications that run on any platform that supports Java. It is able to access data stored in most major databases, including DB2/400, Oracle, MySQL, and MSSQL.

New Generation Software

New Generation Software (NGS) announced at COMMON it would soon have a new release of SmartView that will greatly expand a user's ability to create and customize analytical reports. The new release gives users the ability to create calculated fields from data fields and display them in different views, including sophisticated charts and graphs. The calculated fields function is important because some values—for example, average order quantity or average order amount by product and territory—need to be calculated after being delivered to the SmartView user. Users might use SmartView, however, to quickly determine gross margins, averages, totals, percentages of totals, and other types of information that may not be furnished in their production database or underlying query. The module is designed to complement the high-level analysis provided by NGS-IQ Business Performance Dashboard module and the Web-based reporting supported through the IQ Server module.

nuBridges

nuBridges announced at COMMON that it has enhanced support for IBM i organizations to further simplify the adoption and implementation of tokenization as a data-centric information security strategy. nuBridges Protect, the company's award-winning encryption, tokenization, and key management solution, now offers a native IBM i adapter to handle Web services-based communication with nuBridges Protect Token Manager, which runs on distributed platforms. This allows enterprises to reduce the risk of a security breach on IBM i applications that use confidential and sensitive information and take IBM i systems out of scope for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance and audits.

The nuBridges Protect Adapter for IBM i handles all of the front-end Web services communications between IBM i applications and nuBridges Protect Token Manager for all Token Manager functions. It also exposes back-end callable RPG, COBOL, and C APIs so it is easy for IT to connect IBM i applications to the adapter via familiar technologies.

Profound Logic

On April 15, 2010, Profound Logic announced the release of Profound UI, its high-performance graphical user interface platform for IBM i. Today at COMMON, less than three weeks after that announcement, Profound Logic announced enhancements to Profound UI.

The most exciting news is the inclusion of an RPG Preprocessor. IBM's recent announcement of RPG Open Access, which opens RPG up to a wide range of user interface devices, caused a lot of excitement, but it requires IBM i 6.1 or higher. Profound Logic recently conducted a Webinar that drew an audience of more than 400. If a survey conducted at that time is representative of the full IBM i community, that means that about 75 percent of IBM i shops can't use RPG Open Access.

The RPG Preprocessor that Profound Logic announced at COMMON gives shops running V5R3 or V5R4 access to RPG Open Access functionality by automatically inserting direct calls to Profound UI. This will make it easy for customers to start adopting Rational Open Access for RPG, even before they migrate to IBM i 6.1 or higher.

Profound Logic offers its preprocessor only on IBM i releases that do not support Open Access. The annual fee for the preprocessor is similar to the price of IBM's RPG Open Access. Profound Logic will provide a credit to customers that later upgrade to 6.1 or higher and obtain Open Access.

Profound Logic recently launched a micro site that provides resources for Profound UI. The micro site is still being populated, but you can already find considerable information there. Registration is required to use some of the features of the micro site.

ProData

The COMMON Annual Meeting is a popular time for vendors in the IBM i market to announce new products and releases. ProData Computer Services used the occasion to announce the upcoming release of DBU 9.0, the newest version of its database utility. Version 9.0 of DBU adds a plug-in that allows developers to access DBU from any computer running a standard Web browser. This new DBU/RDB remote database access plug-in includes performance and connectivity improvements.

DBU 9.0 also adds Double Byte Character Set (DBCS) support. In addition, it provides the ability to execute DBUJRN in batch; execute exit programs for field-by-field data encryption or other data processing; capture data area and user space modifications in audit logs and journals; perform searches on user spaces; and use a wizard-based DBU access and security facility. DBU 9.0 is compatible with i5/OS and IBM i versions from V4R2 up to 7.1.

Quadrant Software

Quadrant Software announced the release of its latest version of the IntelliChief paperless process management solution. IntelliChief Version 3.0 brings architectural changes to the product based on customer feedback and on the need for faster deployment timeframes. Highlights of this new release include the following:

• Environments Administration—there are now three separate environments within the system: development, test, and production environments.
• Promotion Control—with Environments Administration, Promotion Control helps users identify the elements that will be promoted from Development to Conference Room Pilot, and from Conference Room Pilot to Production. Users can see on the screen each element and decide, with a mouse-click, which ones to promote. This gives users more control over what to change in their IntelliChief system and how such changes will affect the overall use of the product.
• New Management Console—Access to system configuration, including servers, services status, configuration options, and more, is now easier with a new management console screen that centralizes common system administration tasks in one single place. This speeds up IntelliChief system administration and provides an easier way for IntelliChief administrators to configure the system.
• Windows 7 Support—The new IntelliChief Release 3.0 is fully compatible with Microsoft Windows 7, both 32- and 64- bit versions.

Quick-EDD

Quick-EDD/HA high availability software for the IBM i has added graphical console, map drop mode, and continuous data protection (CDP) features to its suite known for its speed, ease of use, reliability, and low cost of ownership. The graphical interface allows for monitoring and administering the HA environment from a single dashboard with an ability to drill down when needed. The Map Drop Mode is a new function that allows the user to perform real-time data transformation to another IBM i. The process transforms the data as it is modified or created on the source system. CDP allows for enhanced save/restore capabilities to a specific point in time. Any object can be easily saved during batch or online sessions allowing the user to do a restore to a specific point in time.

RJS Software

On April 29, RJS Software Systems announced the release of SignHere, a solution for digitally capturing signatures and applying them to documents that are typically managed within an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution. SignHere was officially launched at COMMON's Annual Meeting and Exhibition.

RJS has its own ECM solution, the core of which is WebDocs, but the company has taken an open approach for its signature capture product. SignHere digitally captures signatures; applies them to documents created from an ERP solution, an IBM i spool file, a Windows application, or just about any other report or forms software; and then stores the signed documents in any vendor's ECM.

SignHere offers two ways to capture and use a digital signature. It can employ a signature pad device, such as those commonly used by overnight delivery services, to capture signatures and apply them to documents. Under this scenario, the system can be set up such that when someone signs his or her name on the signature pad, the signature automatically appears on the document displayed on a screen in front of the signer.

SignHere also offers a PIN-code approach to applying signatures. In this case, captured signatures are stored in a company's signature database along with the signer's PIN code. To apply a stored signature to a document, the authorized "signer" simply enters his or her PIN code.

Raz-Lee Security

Raz-Lee Security, which provides a suite of security software solutions called iSecurity, maintains a U.S. office and corporate headquarters in Nanuet, New York. The company does its research and development in Herziliya, Israel. The company made the trek to Orlando, Florida, to show off its wares and announce an enhancement to its feature-rich, SOX- and PCI-compliant file editor, FileScope.

FileScope allows users to view, scan, print, apply global and local updates, perform data conversions, and create test data for a wide variety of files, including those maintained by SAP, JDE, MOVEX, BPCS, and others.

At a press conference, the CEO/CTO of Raz-Lee, Shmuel Zailer, announced that his company had added full Unicode (UTF-16, UCS-2) support to FileScope. Raz-Lee believes that, to date, it is the only file editor vendor to provide full Unicode support in the IBM i market.

To help celebrate COMMON's 50th anniversary, Raz-Lee is offering the Gold version of FileScope for free, including free maintenance for up to three months. The company expects that after trying FileScope, many customers will want to upgrade to the Platinum version of the product, which adds enhanced SOX/PCI compliance, XML support, a report generator, and a full-screen update facility.

Vision Solutions

Vision Solutions announced the release of RecoverNow V5.1. RecoverNow protects businesses by automatically capturing data and object changes that occur between tape saves, continuously saving them on local or remote disk storage devices. These Continuous Data Protection (CDP) "rewind" capabilities make it possible to recover damaged or deleted data at any point in time.

RecoverNow leverages and extends the capabilities of IBM i journaling, but that all happens under the covers. Use of the product does not require any journaling expertise. IT headcounts tend to be low in small to medium-size businesses, which is a primary market for IBM i. Consequently, solutions that improve the productivity of the IT staff are always appreciated. Version 5.1 of RecoverNow addresses this concern by providing a new recovery assistant that automates and simplifies recovery operations.

"RecoverNow makes protecting data fast, easy, and affordable by saving information on current storage devices, including those connected to Windows, Linux, or UNIX environments," says Craig Johnson, vice president of research and development, Vision Solutions. "The upgraded software solution enables data and objects to be brought back to near the point of failure, or to any point in time after the last tape save, using powerful Continuous Data Protection [CDP] capabilities, dramatically reducing the amount of data a customer could potentially lose if they were only using a tape-based data protection scheme."

Many vendors write and distribute case studies that illustrate how customers use and benefit from the vendors' products and services. That's not new, but Vision Solutions has taken a novel approach to creating case studies that is much livelier than the traditional text-based versions.

Vision sends Flip Digital Video Cameras and a few questions to customers willing to produce video testimonials. The customers then set up the cameras and tell their stories. When they are done, the customers send their videos to Vision and keep the cameras. The result is customer stories that are told with a very down-to-earth, real-world feel.

You can find the Vision Solution video testimonials in either of two places. The Case Studies page on Vision Solution's Web site contains a list of available case study documents. Below some of the listed case studies, you'll also find a "watch video" link. Vision has also created a YouTube channel that contains the video testimonials and some entertaining promotional videos.

Chris Smith was the Senior News Editor at MC Press Online from 2007 to 2012 and was responsible for the news content on the company's Web site. Chris has been writing about the IBM midrange industry since 1992 when he signed on with Duke Communications as West Coast Editor of News 3X/400. With a bachelor's from the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in English and minored in Journalism, and a master's in Journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Chris later studied computer programming and AS/400 operations at Long Beach City College. An award-winning writer with two Maggie Awards, four business books, and a collection of poetry to his credit, Chris began his newspaper career as a reporter in northern California, later worked as night city editor for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and went on to edit a national cable television trade magazine. He was Communications Manager for McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, Calif., before it merged with Boeing, and oversaw implementation of the company's first IBM desktop publishing system there. An editor for MC Press Online since 2007, Chris has authored some 300 articles on a broad range of topics surrounding the IBM midrange platform that have appeared in the company's eight industry-leading newsletters. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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