VAI Selects Valence to Add Web 2.0 Features to its ERP Suite

November 4, 2010

Chicago, IL.  VAI (Vormittag and Associates, Inc.) has selected CNX Corporation’s Valence Framework to provide Web 2.0 technology to future updates of its S2K ERP software suite.  The Ronkonkoma, NY-based company officially announced the release of S2K Enterprise version 5.3 at its annual user conference today in Lake Buena Vista, FL.  They used the occasion to provide a sneak peek to some of the Valence-enabled features currently in development for V.5.0 and future releases.

“Valence is the ideal framework for our IBM i customer base,” said VAI President Bob Vormittag.  “The Framework uses platform-independent standards for deploying browser applications with a rich user interface.  It’s really the best of both worlds.”

Vormittag believes S2K users will be quick to notice the interface improvements as they roll out. “With the Web 2.0 components provided through Valence, users will gain tremendous flexibility in how they retrieve and manipulate their ERP data.  Everything from moving columns around, resizing them, downloading to Excel – all this and more will be supported for the ultimate in ease of use.”

Software Engineers from VAI have been working with the development team at CNX to integrate the Valence framework with S2K.  This process entails creating action-based RPG functions to handle any kind of S2K request from a browser or other devices.  “With this design methodology there’s really no limit to the kinds of devices S2K can support,” said Vormittag.

“We’ve got quite a growing community of enthusiastic developers that are excited to work with IBM i applications using Valence,” explains Richard Milone, Chief Technology Officer of CNX.  “The recent explosion of Web 2.0 is not limited to Windows and Unix machines.  In fact, with its rock solid reliability and scalability, the IBM i platform provides an excellent way to deliver these kinds of dynamic browser applications to users.  It’s just a matter of IBM i shops making the commitment to embrace the technology and apply Web 2.0 standards to their applications.  And that’s what VAI has done with this announcement.”

About VAI

Headquartered in Ronkonkoma, NY, VAI is an IBM Premier Business Partner specializing in the development of customer-driven enterprise management software for IBM Power Systems. Used by companies around the globe, VAI's S2K Enterprise Software focuses on manufacturing, distribution, retail, metals, food and related service industries.  Advanced applications such as Warehouse, EDI, CRM and e-Business provide VAI customers maximum value for their information technology investment.  For additional details, please visit www.vai.net.

About CNX

Headquartered in Chicago, IL, CNX Corporation develops and markets the Valence Web Application Framework for IBMi.  Designed from the ground‐up explicitly for RPG programmers, Valence employs Ext JS JavaScript components on the front‐end and communicates directly with RPG business logic on the back-end.  Valence runs entirely through the IBM i’s integrated Apache server -- no additional severs or hardware is required.  Valence is available for free under the terms of a Community Developer License, or can be commercially licensed under either a Professional Developer or OEM Developer license.  For additional details, please visit www.cnxcorp.com.