looksoftware’s Version 8 rollout to include Offline Support

Miami, FL, USA – September 19, 2006. looksoftware announces it’s Version 8 rollout of new and enhanced products which includes Offline Support for its premium rich client offering, smartclient. smartclient’s new Offline Support allows core System i applications to be utilized when a host connection is not available.

Marcus Dee said, “looksoftware’s focus is delivering value by improving the potential for reuse of existing System i investments. Our Offline Support is a perfect example of non-invasive enrichment of core System i applications to support new technologies. Offline Support can eliminate the need for a System i customer having to buy, build or duplicate functionality in order to support mobile workers.”

Adding Offline Support to a System i application requires no changes to the application itself, and can support local caching, web services and additional business logic. Once a host transaction is recorded using Version 8’s transaction recorder, it can then be used offline for remote workers. Multiple offline transactions can then be recorded for later playback when connection with the host application is available. For example, a sales person may visit customer sites where web access is not available, but can still enter orders using smartclient in offline mode. Once back in the office, and connected to the System i application, the sales person can then ‘play back’ all those transactions directly into the unchanged host application.

Offline Support can therefore eliminate the requirement for duplicating existing code or developing new code to cater for mobile workers or when a host connection is not available.

Offline Support is scheduled to be available later in 2006 as part of looksoftware’s Version 8 rollout. Previously announced new products, lookdirect and liteclient are the first Version 8 products to be released.

lookdirect takes full advantage of POWER5™ System i5 technology from IBM by eliminating 5250 OLTP costs when modernizing System i applications with the looksoftware suite. liteclient is a low-cost, rich client offering, that includes a subset of looksoftware’s premium smartclient features.