Morpheus e-Business Solutions is on a mission to take IBM's Rational message to the UK's i users.

The Bracknell, Berkshire-based web specialist is holding a series of workshops on application development with Rational Developer for System i (RDi), Rational Business Developer for SOA Construction, Host Access Transformation Server (HATS) and the all-important Enterprise Generation Language (EGL).

In February, IBM called time on both WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC) and its Advanced equivalent and replaced them with the Rational-branded products. It also broke up WebSphere Development Studio into three separate components. As if that wasn't enough, Big Blue changed the licensing model for its i developer products. Such details are worth watching out for, according to Morpheus's Bleddyn Williams.

"Now, depending on the machine that you’ve got, you’re allowed to have a number of developers on that machine, which is a big change," he points out. "So those people who went out and bought a P10 machine for doing their development are now limited to the number of developers that they can have on there."

Licensing issues aside, long-time i-oriented web wizard Williams is enthusiastic about the new Rational toolset.

"I think if you can get past how you get the upgrade and get the licenses you need, you should definitely be moving to this as your development environment," he says. "It’s much easier to identify straight away what you want to be doing and I think anyone who’s from an RPG background would get to grips with this pretty quickly."

No doubt irked by Microsoft's boasts about Notes-to-Exchange conversion last month, Big Blue has fired a salvo of facts and figures that it says point to a resurgence in its Notes/Domino business in the world's emerging markets.

IBM issued its retort after Kevin Turner, Microsoft COO, told financial analysts that his firm had sold 4.86 million SharePoint, Exchange and Office seats into Lotus Notes accounts in the last year. Over the next year it planned to win five million.

Although it was noticeably light on such stark numbers, IBM's statement said: "Led by strong sales of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 in the second quarter of 2008, IBM's Lotus software business outgrew Microsoft by winning millions of customer seats worldwide in direct competition with Microsoft, aided by key wins over its Redmond-based rival in emerging markets."

It cited Lotus' largest Asian customer to date as "a major bank licensing 300,000 Lotus Notes seats as well as Lotus Symphony, IBM's free personal productivity software based on the OpenDocument Format". Unfortunately, it would seem that Asian bankers are as light-lipped as their Western counterparts about their IT infrastructures and IBM's press office were unable to actually name the customer.

Business Computer Design has enhanced the WebSmart PHP web application development tool that it first released twelve months ago. UK distributor is SoftLanding Europe.

A new wizard in version 2.0 of the solution eliminates the need to code the many lines of PHP required to call existing RPG programs. The wizard guides developers by prompting them for the program name, library and parameters and generates the PHP code.

On September 3, IBM will launch Enhanced Technical Support -- gateway for Power Systems and System i users with Software Maintenance, Support Line or Hardware Maintenance contracts on the UK mainland.

The improved service includes a personalised portal that will provide proactive online or email notification regarding a system's maintenance, security and performance. IBM says that the portal can provide graphs and detailed information on server performance and forecast performance bottlenecks before they happen. It can also provide reports that compare the fixes installed to a server with the available HIPER, PE and cumulative levels and also web views and reports with detailed configuration data information.