In This Issue:

Acucorp Announces Planned Support for IBM CICS on Linux

Acucorp’s IBM eUpdate provides timely service, solution, and training updates to IBM employees and business partners. For more information about Acucorp’s extend® modernization solutions for IBM 32- and 64-bit platforms as well as Acucorp’s interoperability with IBM WebSphere, CICS, MQ Series, DB2, Informix and Rational ClearCase, please visit our Web site.

Acucorp Announces Planned Support for IBM CICS on Linux

Acucorp recently announced its intention to support IBM’s planned release of CICS on the Linux platform. This announcement was made shortly after IBM published its statement of direction.

Acucorp’s extend solutions currently support distributed CICS (also known as IBM TXSeries for Multiplatforms) on AIX 5L. With this support, corporations, government end users, and independent software vendors (ISVs) can exploit the flexibility and cost savings inherent in IBM’s distributed environments. They can also rejuvenate their business applications while still preserving their investments in CICS.

“Our premier TXSeries technologies and Acucorp’s COBOL modernization solutions have made it possible for IBM enterprise-class customers to have a low-cost, high-performance method for maintaining and modernizing their mission-critical mainframe applications,” explains Robert Elder, IBM’s TXSeries Development and Services Manager. “Not only will these customers benefit from the familiarity of CICS and the scalability of TXSeries, but they will also have the tools necessary to greatly enhance the COBOL programs that are vital to their organizations.”

For more information about Acucorp’s support for CICS, please visit the IBM and Acucorp Web sites.

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First COBOL on Linux, Only COBOL on Linux on All IBM eServers

With Acucorp’s extend, software developers can combine the benefits of the Linux environment with the strength of proven applications and data. Acucorp officially announced its support for Linux in 1995, making it the first company to offer a COBOL compiler and runtime for the “little known” Linux platform. Since then, Acucorp has continued to support Linux and its growth. When IBM announced the availability of Linux across its entire enterprise eServer line, including the IBM eServer zSeries, Acucorp followed suit. In addition, Acucorp was one of the first companies to participate in the IBM eServer Application Advantage for Linux (Chiphopper) program—IBM’s program to support vendors porting to IBM eServer and middleware platforms on Linux. As a result, we are currently the only COBOL solutions provider to support Linux on all IBM eServer servers—xSeries, pSeries, iSeries, and zSeries. In addition, our Linux support spans almost every distribution of Linux. Acucorp runs on SuSE Linux Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Turbolinux Enterprise, UnitedLinux, and many others. Visit our Web site for additional information. You can also read more on the optimization of Acucorp’s extend solutions for Linux on POWER by clicking here.

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Thames Water Makes a Big Splash with COBOL, CICS, DB2 and WebSphere Integration

“By integrating our business-critical systems, we were able to improve productivity, reduce errors, and improve responsiveness to customers. In a business like ours, customer responsiveness is key.”
— Steve Moore, Head of Street Works, Thames Water

As the largest water company in the United Kingdom, Thames Water is responsible for scheduling more than 80,000 installation and maintenance jobs each year as well as coordinating these jobs with over 100 different local street authorities. For job scheduling, it runs its Work Management System (WMS) on an IBM mainframe accessing DB2 data and using CICS and WebSphere MQ to manage transactions. To coordinate with street authorities, it uses a UNIX-based application from Symology Ltd. written in Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT®. Thames needed to integrate these two systems and provide real-time business on demand, so it adopted IBM WebSphere along with Acucorp technology. Today, users can access both the mainframe and UNIX applications from the same user interface. For the full story, please visit our Web site.

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Unparalleled Portability Made Possible with COBOL Virtual Machine™

Acucorp’s COBOL Virtual Machine makes it possible for organizations to run their business-critical legacy applications on a wide variety of IBM platforms, without having to recompile them. Following are just a few of the IBM eServers and operating environments supported by extend:

Operating System	IBM eServer
AIX 5L (32- and 64-bit)	pSeries iSeries
Linux: •SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7, 8 and 9 •Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2 and 3; x, p, and iSeries available in 32- and 64-bit; zSeries available in 31- and 64-bit	xSeries pSeries iSeries zSeries
Windows (32-bit)	xSeries

For a complete list of supported ports for Acucorp’s entire product suite, please visit our Web site.

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Moving to Linux on IBM zSeries Was Easy for Suomen Cobra Systems

“We must deliver our application on many different platforms, and Acucorp offers the best solution for that. We can develop on one platform, and run programs on others without recompiling.”
— Pekka Mäkelä, Managing Director, Suomen Cobra Systems, Ltd.

Located in Helsinki, Finland, Suomen Cobra Systems, Ltd. provides software and service for the food processing industry. Its COBOL application, ALPHA MANAGER, handles a variety of sales, production, and accounting functions for the organization. With its customer base growing rapidly, Suomen Cobra needed to move ALPHA MANAGER from its existing HP ProLiant server to a platform that could better scale with its business needs—so it selected the IBM eServer zSeries running SuSE Linux. The move was seamless and Suomen Cobra and its customers now have better platform reliability and stability. In fact, 12 Acucorp customers have since moved from other platforms to the IBM zSeries. To read the full customer success story, click here.

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Calling All IBM Pacbase Customers

Acucorp, in cooperation with IBM, is offering VisualAge Pacbase v3.5 customers the opportunity to select Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT development system as their COBOL of choice. Once programs have been compiled using ACUCOBOL-GT, they can be moved from one platform to another without any changes or recompilation. ACUCOBOL-GT supports more than 600 platforms; provides graphical user interface (GUI) design options and thin client interfaces; and offers COBOL connectivity to relational database management systems (RDBMSs). Free 60-day evaluation copies for Pacbase customers are available by going to our Web site.

In addition to Acucorp’s free evaluation copy of ACUCOBOL-GT, IBM is now offering a one-user evaluation copy of Pacbase v3.5 on Windows to existing Pacbase customers. This software version has been compiled with ACUCOBOL-GT and a free, evaluation copy of Acucorp’s development system on Windows can be downloaded by clicking here.

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Tower Records Doesn't Miss a Beat with IBM and Acucorp

“With Acucorp’s tools, we were able to manage our COBOL code much more effectively than ever before. We not only made our project deadline, but we beat it by a couple of weeks.”
— Paul Grant, Director of Application Development, Retail Systems, Tower Records

Popular music retailer, Tower Records, was using an in-store processing (ISP) system to manage all point-of-sale transactions for its U.S. stores. The company then purchased the source code, written in Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT, and customized it, adding credit- and debit-card functionality, providing stock transfer and automated inventory features, and implementing a stored value card program. The development of additional industry-leading enhancements, however, was hindered by the fact that Tower's retail outlets and headquarters were running the system on different platforms: Apple network servers versus IBM's eServer pSeries with AIX. In order to move forward with its technology plans and have its retail stores and headquarters on the same platform, Tower Records chose to phase out its Apple terminal servers and replace them with pSeries servers running AIX 5L and accessing an Informix database. To read more, click here.

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During the first quarter 2005, Acucorp crisscrossed the globe in support of IBM at various events worldwide. These conferences and trade shows included:

January
IBM Systems & Technology Group University (STGU)
San Diego, California: January 16-19
Barcelona, Spain: January 24-27
Acucorp exhibited its solutions on IBM eServers in the Solutions Center.

February
LinuxWorld
Boston, Massachusetts: February 15-18
Acucorp exhibited on a zSeries partner pedestal in the IBM booth.

IBM Business Partner Meet & Greet
Costa Mesa, California: February 16
Denver, Colorado: February 16
Acucorp met with local IBM software sales representatives to learn how we could collectively shorten sales cycles and close deals.

SHARE Technology Exchange
Anaheim, California: February 28-March 2
Acucorp exhibited in the Conference Expo and participated in the SHARE-sponsored Passport Program.

March
CeBIT
Hannover, Germany: March 9-15
Acucorp presented its solutions for IBM in the IBM booth.

April
UNIX in Focus
Montpellier, France: April 12-14
Acucorp presented its COBOL solutions for IBM pSeries hardware.

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LinuxWorld Canada Conference and Exhibition
Toronto, Canada: April 18-20

As the leading provider of legacy application extension solutions running on Linux, Acucorp is exhibiting in the IBM booth at LinuxWorld Canada. In addition to demonstrating our support for Linux on IBM platforms, Acucorp is providing more detailed information on its COBOL-based solutions for interoperability, Internet deployment, GUI development, distributed computing, data access, and programmer productivity.

Linux on Wall Street Show and Conference
New York, New York: April 20

Acucorp has been invited to exhibit at the IBM customer reception at IBM’s Linux Center of Competence for Wall Street following the Linux on Wall Street show.

WAVV - World Alliance of VSE and VM Users' Group Conference
Colorado Springs, Colorado: May 20-24

Acucorp will exhibit and present at the upcoming WAVV Users Group meeting for VM and VSE customers in Colorado Springs.

IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2005
Las Vegas, Nevada: May 22-26

Acucorp will present Save Your Software Investments Through Service-Oriented Architectures at the upcoming IBM Rational Software Development Conference. The session will explore how enterprises can use composite architectures and key technology components to transform their legacy applications and deliver service-oriented, business-critical applications for the on-demand enterprise. It will also demonstrate how deployment in a SOA can reduce the inherent risks of modernization. The presentation is scheduled for 2:45 p.m. on Monday, May 23.

SHARE Technology Exchange
Boston, Massachusetts: August 21-26

Acucorp will again exhibit at the SHARE Technology Exchange later this year at Booth #528. More information will be available soon.

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