In-Depth

Industry News

• 02/01/1999

The Chicago-based law offices of Gold & Rosenfeld and the Massachusetts-based law offices of Gogel, Phillips and Garcia, LLP, filed a class action suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against IBM and its business partner Medic Computer Systems, Inc. The suit asserts claims on behalf of all persons and entities who purchased a computer solution containing hardware and software manufactured and/or sold by IBM and Medic, (the "Bundled Solution"), either directly or indirectly, from IBM and/or Medic, which the suit maintains is not Year 2000-compliant.

The class action is brought on behalf of Mario C. Yu, M.D., a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, on behalf of all similarly situated persons and/or entities who purchased the Bundled Solution comprised of IBM's RISC 6000 computer system containing the AIX o/s v. 4.1 and the Medic application software v. 7.0 dated July 7, 1997, among other things.

The Complaint alleges that the IBM and its partner either knew or should have known that the Bundled Solution was not Y2K-compliant, and that as a consequence of the Y2K defect, the thousands of health care providers using the Bundled Solution face the possibility of a substantial interruption to their medical practices.

The Plaintiff seeks to recover compensatory, punitive and injunctive relief on behalf of all class members. The Plaintiff seeks an injunction ordering the Defendants to give effective and meaningful notice to all registered licensees of the defect, and to provide a "patch," at the Defendants' cost, fixing the problem.

To help usher in the Year 2000, Branco International is offering the Official CountDown Watch, which not only tells analog time, but also simultaneously counts down the hours, minutes and seconds digitally to the year 2000. What's more, the watch can be easily set to any other target date, such as project deadlines, anniversaries, vacation or retirement.

The dial on the CountDown Watch shows the three globes of the sun, earth and moon, and is available in either black or white and features a Quartz 3 ATM Swiss movement and a padded leather band. The Official CountDown Watch is available for $59.95. Contact Branco International at (516) 544-4604 or at branco2000@hotmail.com.

Do you still need a way to convey how critical the Year 2000 situation is to your managers and VPs? Try using the JTB Millennium Bug, a soft, plush little critter that sits on monitors, chairs, desks, etc. Here are a few ways in which you can use the JTB Millennium Bug:

• Limited Infestation: Spread the bugs throughout a department or site ignorant to the severity of the Year 2000 to give these folks a wake-up call.
• Infestation: Get a swarm of them and place them in plain view in as many places as they can fit. This will surely get everyone's attention to the problem.
• Sales Incentive: Distribute the Millennium Bug among customers, clients or prospects to grab their attention and bring a sense of reality to the situation.

Contact JTB at (800) 397-0915.

MicroEdge, a provider of multi-platform enterprise development tools, announced the formation of the S/390 VAR Partnership Program. The program is offered to IBM Business Partners involved in marketing and distributing S/390 solutions. MicroEdge's S/390 VAR program provides IBM Business Partners with a powerful, graphical development tool that significantly enhances their S/390 solution. The scope of the VAR program is global, recognizing the numerous opportunities that exist in North America, as well as Europe and Asia Pacific on the S/390 enterprise server. Anyone interested in the S/390 VAR Partnership Program should contact MicroEdge at (800) 934-3348, x 3010.

Computer Network Technology (CNT) has acquired IntelliFrame which develops technology for legacy systems integration with client/server and Internet technologies. CNT is purchasing IntelliFrame for $2.0 million in cash. The purchase price will be paid in two installments of $1.0 million each in January 1999 and 2000.

In connection with the acquisition, CNT expects a one-time, unspecified charge against earnings in the fourth quarter of l998 for purchased in-process research and development. Products based on the combined capabilities of IntelliFrame and CNT are anticipated in mid-1999. IntelliFrame employees will be relocated to CNT's Massachusetts facility. Visit www.cnt.com or call (800) 638-8324.

MVS Solutions, a provider of automated batch workload management solutions for JES2, made an agreement with IBM to integrate its batch management products with IBM's OS/390 SystemPac. Through the agreement, MVS Solutions' ThruPut Manager and its family of optional components are now available for S/390 customers. ThruPut Manager automates the management of batch workload standards, batch throughput, resource dependency and resource utilization for MVS and OS/390 installations with JES2. Thruput Manager simplifies Parallel Sysplex implementation and enhances the recent batch facilities of Workload Manager introduced with OS/390 Version 2.

SystemPac is a fee-based service which provides users with a customized and integrated OS/390 system, including associated subsystems and independent software vendor products, complete with current maintenance upgrades. Contact MVS at www.mvssol.com or at (905) 940-9404.

Ardent Software has completed the development of the first set of five MetaBrokers, software products designed to exchange meta data among a broad spectrum of warehouse tools. The first set of MetaBrokers will provide enterprise meta data exchange among Erwin from Platinum Logicworks, ER/Studio from Embarcadero Technologies, Impromptu from Cognos, DataStage from Ardent and Business Objects.

Ardent MetaBrokers are the result of Ardent's MetaConnect Cooperative, a meta data integration program involving several data warehouse tool vendors. At the core of each MetaBroker is an advanced technology that enables the decomposition and recomposition of meta data into simple units of meaning. This semantic translation facilitates the most complete exchange of meta data between extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), business intelligence, and data modeling tools. By breaking down and recombining data at this level, each tool is able to more completely communicate the complex meaning of its own meta data. Ardent's MetaBrokers are product independent and based on an architecture that does not rely on the structure of the data store or on the repository format. Contact Ardent at (508) 366-3888 or at www.ardentsoftware.com.

StreamServe, a provider of Intelligent Output Management solutions, today announced that its solution has been certified by Baan Company's Certified Applications Provider Program (BaanCAPPS). The StreamServe Connectivity Pack for Baan (www.streamserve.com/partners/erp/baan/) is a modular solution that integrates with Baan IV through a straightforward interface. The resulting output can be provided in print-ready form, such as PostScript, AFPDS or PCL5 format, and then printed and/or converted to PDF, HTML or XML documents, e-mailed, faxed or distributed for further processing by third-party solutions such as EDI translators or output delivery and distribution environments.

SQRIBE Technologies, The Enterprise Reporting Company, has joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as part of a broad technology initiative to embrace XML (Extensible Markup Language) for open exchange of enterprise reports and corporate data. XML-enabled reporting solutions allow companies to better manage content and integrate data from disparate sources - including ERP systems, data warehouses, desktop applications and legacy systems - by providing a vendor-independent data interchange format.

Originally created as a tag language to describe and encode information for the Web, XML is emerging as a flexible way of exchanging data between different applications and databases while allowing for different forms of data presentation. For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, visit www.w3.org/ or contact SQRIBE at www.sqribe.com.

Microsoft and DataChannel are providing the Beta 2 version of the XML Java parser (XJ2). Beta 2 of the XML Java parser co-developed by Microsoft and DataChannel include: XSL support, XQL Querying of XML Data, XML Document Object Model (DOM), a high-performance, validating XML engine, XML Schemas, and Server-side XML, XSL and XQL.

Using the DataChannel XML framework through DataChannel RIO and XJ2, corporate developers can take their existing IT infrastructure (i.e., legacy data, document and knowledge management systems, and data-warehousing systems) and integrate this infrastructure with a standards-based Internet protocol (XML) to Web-enable their enterprises. Contact DataChannel at (425) 974-4109 or at www.DataChannel.com.