Users can sign up for free access during a 60-day trial period.

Written by Chris Smith

IBM is aggressively moving forward with its Lotus-based social networking and collaboration offerings, but it seems the company continues to ignore hundreds of thousands of IBM i customers it apparently believes are fat, dumb, and happy using yesterday's legacy Lotus Notes and Domino solutions.

IBM i Solution Edition delivers integrated functionality and rapid implementation for cost savings and efficiency.

Written by International Business Systems

Editor's Note: This article is an extract of the white paper "IBS and IBM Optimize ERP for Midmarket Distributors" available for free download from the MC White Paper Center.

Wholesale distribution is a balancing act. Midsize distributors must walk a careful line between satisfying manufacturers as well as customers—and remaining profitable. If a distributor increases its prices too much, the manufacturer may choose to sell its products through a competing distributor or directly. And if the distributor substantially lowers its prices, the organization risks going out of business.

Is controlling documents properly called document management, content management, records management, or something else? And can the market meet the future under this cloud of confusion?

Written by John Ghrist

Next to money itself, documents are the lifeblood of virtually every enterprise. Whether they are electronic or paper, documents help businesses keep track of what they are doing and where they are going. But ironically, despite this importance, document management as a product type seems to be suffering from an identity crisis.

Distributing Windows software never felt so easy—or worked so well—as when downloaded using AppWave from Embarcadero.

Written by Chris Smith

What if you could try an application without the expense of purchasing it or even the hassle of downloading and installing it? What if you could easily share that application with your colleagues and users through a URL while inviting them instantly to comment on the app's features, benefits, or shortcomings? What if you could do all this before you or your company committed to anything—from providing a credit card number to raising a salesperson's hopes or even giving your mailing address? Life would be better, wouldn't it?

Groupware applications, project tools, Web portals, and other apps for IBM i facilitate messaging and collaboration between employees.

Written by John Ghrist

Teamwork is essential to successful businesses, and teamwork can't thrive without information sharing. Particularly among workers with similar jobs in the same organization, staying abreast of what one's counterparts are up to, what they've recently learned, and what new policies and practices the enterprise is following can all be key pieces of data on any given day.

What's the best way to plan for and estimate the ROI of a virtualization project? Find out in this article.

Written by Mickey Iqbal, Dr. Mithkal Smadi, Chris Molloy, Jim Rymarczyk

Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from the book IT Virtualization Best Practices, published by MC Press.

Virtualizing IT resources can lead to savings of over 50 percent in hardware, maintenance, and energy costs in a data center. The transitional cost of virtualizing large-scale IT infrastructures is hard to estimate, however. If not planned correctly, it can often outweigh the benefits of virtualization for several years. This chapter outlines a "divide and conquer" approach to planning and cost estimation for virtualization transformations. This enables an organization to plan and execute complex virtualization transformations while maximizing its return on investment (ROI) within a favorable payback period.

Learn how to create a roadmap to a hosted IBM i cloud.

Written by Symmetry Corp.

Editor's Note: The following article is an extract from the white paper "Driving IT Value from the Cloud—Creating a Five Phase Roadmap to a Hosted IBM i Cloud" available for download free from the MC White Paper Center.

For many IT departments, recent years have seen a shift in focus. Limited resources have left staff spending more time and effort maintaining old systems while project work remains on hold, often to the detriment of the entire business. IT directors are faced with the challenge of transforming their departments from a perceived cost center back to a value add, an innovation powerhouse that contributes to the organization's success.

IBM's Infoprint Server is a powerful tool that is inexpensive, tightly integrated with i5/OS, and complements all of your legacy applications.

Written by Westley Curtiss

Do you know whether Infoprint Server for iSeries (LPP 5722IP1) is installed on your system? You may want to check. If it is, you probably have more functionality than you think, just waiting to be utilized. If you don't have it, read this article and find out more about this relatively inexpensive but oh-so-useful product.