Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) Readers of The Four Hundred, newsletter were the first to pick up on the screwy bean counting that IBM is reporting in conjunction with revenues attributable to Power Systems. Now that some of those readers have written their own stories that chide Big Blue for kicking dirt on the System i, you might be asking yourself who's doing the math on this revenue? IBM is cantankerously calculating about the info it releases, and would be prone to sweep more details under the rug if not pushed by someone who drills deeper into the available data. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) At the local Dan's Supermarket--or whatever grocery store you patronize--you'll find some products that have deftly avoided price increases by repackaging the goods in smaller amounts and hoping buyers don't notice they are paying the same for less. Paying attention to what you are buying and how much it cost last time you shopped is good advice. That advice also applies to such things as the pricing and bundling of application development tools. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Inside the IBM camp, service oriented architecture is seldom mentioned without WebSphere being part of the conversation. But WebSphere has never been all that seductive to the Average Joe System i User. So what does a large ERP software vendor with almost 20,000 System i users do? It designs an SOA plan that has nothing to do with WebSphere. READ MORE >

(NYTimes) This is an unusual place to find a story about the demise of a local user group in Cleveland, Ohio, but it's a sign of the times we live in and it could have happened anywhere. In fact, it did not so long ago in Denver and Phoenix. The Application Systems User Group of Greater Cleveland, once a thriving little community of AS/400 professionals, is a casualty of the Web. Yes, ease of networking and problem solving seems to be favored over the once-a-month get together. READ MORE >

(Search400) Mercifully, the political debating season is all but concluded. But it remains open season (forever and always) in the war of the words that erupt among the platform zealots that we all know and love. In this parody that spoofs Obama vs. McCain, we get DB2 taking on Oracle in the mother of all database debates. Well, maybe not, but it's enjoyable reading. READ MORE >

(ZDNet) In the bi-polar personality that is Lotus Notes before and after version 8.0, it's clearly a legacy world on one side of the divide and a Web 2.0 world on the other. A large portion of the Lotus installed base is something beyond large--even beyond extra large. These are sprawling corporations that require collaboration software that can scale mightily. Coincidentally, they also struggle mightily when it comes to upgrading and serving their massive installed bases of users. READ MORE >

(InformationWeek) IBM had its head in the clouds last week when it announced a hosted version of Lotus Notes. You could buy into this e-mail as a service at a cost that varies between $8 and $18 per month and get the spam monkey off your back along with virus filtering, backup and recovery, and the back-end administration. Just don't expect access to Notes applications and databases. Not yet, anyway. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) Integrated systems management is one of the features that makes IBM System i stand out in comparison to many better-publicized alternatives. Although it is often put to more use in complex data centers that include heterogeneous environments, the Systems Director manages business applications, systems, networks, storage, and databases for basic IT infrastructure as well. It also includes the management of third-party software. A good example is high availability. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Rational Application Developer--IBM's own environment for designing, constructing, testing, profiling and deploying applications--does not have a reputation for being easy on IT budgets. Companies looking for alternatives with smaller price tags are not without their choices. For those in the Eclipse and WebSphere development environments, here's a choice that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Businesses in the food and beverage industry are forever caught between a rock and a hard place. In this instance, the rock is forecasting demand and the hard place is dealing with the relatively short shelf life of their products. Accurately maintaining inventories across multiple facilities while juggling production capacity, seasonal demand, and the cost of labor and ingredients does not lend itself to hunches and seat of the pants flying. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) System i users will almost always choose software that runs native on their servers. In an RFID environment there are good reasons for this. They begin with a direct interface with ERP systems running on i, and they include platform strengths such as generating EPC codes, printing RFID smart labels, generating manifests, defining business rules, and storing configurations. Makes sense because the System i is where the order and product information is located. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Pricing for the Power Systems i and System i product line was nudged down a few rungs last week on the Power Systems Power 520 i Edition and the converged i-AIX-Linux box. That's good, right? Well, those price reductions were offset by increases for accessories such as the desk-side covers and the rack-mount drawer rail kits. But you probably didn't need those anyway. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(Vision Solutions) IT departments are learning the hard way about the risks imposed by downtime and data loss. Added stress to the system comes from a 24x7 operating environments with no "off hours" to perform regular system and database maintenance. This white paper provides effective strategies and technologies that focus on fast recovery from downtime including a discussion about lost or corrupted data due to accident or malicious action. READ MORE >

(Aldon) Companies with IT departments that incorporate multiple platforms and diverse software applications are putting themselves in a better position to be agile and capable of making better IT decisions because they have more choices. Building a multi-platform development process around the System i platform represents a unique opportunity for IT to combine the platform's traditional strengths of reliability, security, development productivity, ease-of-use, and management with new technological advances including WebSphere, Java, Linux, SOA and more. READ MORE >

(IBM) A combination of System i hardware and Classic Software has The Iowa 80 Group miles ahead of its competitors. Here's a case study that demonstrates how IT success is a key component in business success. The highlights include financial application software that communicates to and from remote locations, banking partners, customers, vendors, and government entities. The software also interfaces with more than 1,200 point-of-sale locations producing accurate electronic financial transactions and allowing them to be communicated immediately. READ MORE >

(LANSA) As organizations plot strategies that make use of existing applications while meeting modern technology and business challenges, application modernization initiatives are becoming more common. Generally these projects are weighed against the prospect of total system replacement and application rewrites. This white paper, written by Paul Conte, provides guidelines for dealing with the challenges, requirements, and demands that come along with application modernization. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/fhm/fhm-calendar.html

October 30 -- Webinar - This session on Web-enabling existing 5250 applications with no changes to RPG, COBOL, or DDS files will feature BCD's WebSmart Presto. The presentation includes topics such as including menus, subfile, and single-record programs and window look-ups in your Web-enabled applications, configuration options for professional applications, the use of images, drop-down lists, and other graphical features, and incorporating Web-enabled applications with other Web apps and Web content using BCD's Nexus Portal. This is a technical session. It begins at 1:30 p.m. EDT. LEARN MORE >

October 30 -- Hartford, Connecticut - When you look at your warehouse operations, do you see inefficiency, costly mistakes, and the potential to increase productivity? The Inventory Management EXPO is a half-day conference stacked with workshops aimed at warehouse operations improvements. Topics include managing risk, creating operational efficiencies, supply chain trends, optimizing warehouse space, radio frequency solutions, and improving the bottom line. The event is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to noon. LEARN MORE >

November 4 -- Webcast - The modernization of mission-critical RPG and COBOL applications is happening every day. This online session, hosted by LANSA Product Manager David Brault, presents the real-life stories of how a university and an agricultural software company are modernizing legacy applications without changing a line of code. Both organizations have modernized applications using LANSA's RAMP to increase productivity. And in each case, the applications can execute against IBM i, Windows, Unix, or Linux servers, or in a Web browser. The session, titled "Companies Discover the Hidden Value of their Legacy Applications," begins at 11 a.m. CDT. LEARN MORE >

November 6 -- Webinar - As FTP becomes more widely used to exchange sensitive data with customers, banks, vendors, and other trading partners, the security risks become a bigger issue as well. FTP can also become programmer-intensive and unmanageable as more and more FTP scripts have to be written and maintained. This session by Linoma Software's Chief Architect Bob Luebbe will feature Linoma's Go Anywhere secure FTP product and will cover topics such as simplifying and automating FTP transfers without programming, encrypting FTP transfers, managing keys and certificates, creating detailed and understandable logs, and providing automatic error notifications. The session begins at 11 a.m. CST. LEARN MORE >