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Alex Woodie

Alex Woodie is Senior Editor at IT Jungle. He was previously editor of two of IT Jungle's main newsletters, Four Hundred Stuff and The Windows Observer. Prior to joining Midrange Server (as Guild Companies was formerly called) in October 2001, Alex was a products editor at now defunct publisher Midrange Computing, where he was first introduced to the AS/400 and covered hardware, software, and services for Midrange Technology SHOWCASE magazine. Before joining Midrange Computing, Alex was a staff writer for The Insurance Journal and a reporter and columnist with The Paradise Post newspaper. Woodie obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism from Humboldt State University in 1997. Upon graduation, Alex intended to make his way onto a major daily newspaper, but in 1999 he found himself drawn to the high-technology industry, where his background in science and engineering has suited him well. He lives in Northern San Diego County. When he is not writing next week's newsletters, Alex can be found in his favorite chair reading the day's paper, in the kitchen, or at the beach.

  • Avatier Bolsters Self-Service Password Reset with MFA

    April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Self-service password reset cuts both ways. On one hand, users want convenient ways to reset passwords they invariably will forget. On the other, events like the recent MGM cyberattack show that more thorough user authentication is required. The folks at identity management solution provider Avatier think they have come up with a novel way to satisfy both camps – without getting cut in the process.

    You might not have heard about Avatier, but the Pleasanton, California, has been quietly serving the single sign-on (SSO) and identity management needs of IBM i shops for the past 24 years. It’s integrated …

    Read more
  • ZendHQ Now Runs Fully on IBM i

    April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

    IBM i shops running the ZendPHP distribution of the open source programming language and runtime will be interested to know that Perforce Software recently added full support for IBM i with ZendHQ, the extension for ZendPHP that provides observability and orchestration functionality for PHP-based applications. Previously, IBM i shops had to run part of ZendHQ on Linux or Windows.

    Perforce Software originally launched ZendHQ back in June 2022 to give ZendPHP customers more visibility and control of their increasingly complex PHP environments. ZendHQ is a superset of functionality that bundles existing tools that were originally developed for Zend Server customers, …

    Read more
  • Precisely Streams IBM i Data Into Amazon’s New Db2 Service

    April 8, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Amid the torrent of news that Amazon Web Services unveiled at its re:Invent show four months ago was RDS for Db2, a new hosted relational data service based on IBM’s database. Amazon Web Services offers the Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW) variant of Db2, but thanks to a new connector unveiled by Precisely last week, IBM i and mainframe shops have a way to replicate their data into it.

    Amazon RDS is among the cloud giant’s most popular services, and likely one of the most popular IT services ever created. According to one estimate, Amazon RDS brings in $7 billion …

    Read more
  • What’s Up with Open Source on IBM i?

    March 27, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Open source software has become a steadfast component of the IBM i stack. But what open source software are IBM i shops using today? Results from Fortra’s recent IBM i Marketplace Survey provide answers.

    It may seem odd now, but open source hasn’t always been a staple of the IBM i server’s software diet. Until PHP arrived on the platform two decades ago, proprietary software was the only option for IBM i shops.

    But today, IBM i shops have hundreds of open source products to choose from. Thanks to the IBM i server’s openness, just about any product that can …

    Read more
  • Shield Adds HMC, Security PTFs to Nagios Monitoring Solution

    March 27, 2024 Alex Woodie

    If you’d like to know what’s going on with your Hardware Management Console (HMC), you can do so through the updated Nagios offering from Shield Advanced Solutions. Version 2.1 of the company’s bundled AAG and NG4i offering also will automatically notify you when IBM has submitted security PTFs for the operating system or licensed products, and even download them for you.

    After initially trying to use IBM’s open source Nagios software to monitor their customers’ high availability software environments, the folks at Shield Advanced Solutions took it upon themselves to develop their own Nagios distribution for the IBM i server, …

    Read more
  • Cybercriminals Targeting American Water Infrastructure, Feds Say

    March 27, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Overseas cybercriminal groups are ramping up their attacks on American infrastructure, including drinking water and wastewater systems, the White House Government warned last week. Considering that many local water districts rely on the IBM i server, this should serve as a wakeup call for them to bolster security before it’s too late.

    In a letter addressed to the governors of all 50 states, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, warned that government security professionals have detected attacks on water systems coming from China and Iran.

    One of the attack vectors was …

    Read more
  • Ibi Reaches Out to D2b Web Query Customers, Discusses Cause of Breakup

    March 25, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Nearly six months after ibi and IBM abruptly ended their OEM relationship, ibi is now reaching out to Db2 Web Query customers and encouraging them to license the business intelligence product it was based on, its own WebFOCUS suite. An executive with ibi also provided IT Jungle with some insight into the source of the breakup and what its IBM i customers can expect going forward.

    On the same day that IBM was unveiling the Fall 2023 Technology Refresh last October, it made an unexpected announcement that shocked the IBM i community: It would no longer sell Db2 Web …

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  • Raz-Lee Adds Zero-Trust Features To IBM i Firewall

    March 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

    IBM i shops that are looking to implement a zero-trust security posture in their IBM i systems may want to check out Raz-Lee Security. The software company has added micro-segmentation capability to its iSecurity Firewall product, giving IBM i shops another level of control over their networks.

    Zero-trust is one of the more promising methods to secure an internal network these days, as it requires users to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before being granted access to internal applications or data. It has been widely adopted in corporate networks as one aspect of a strong defense, particularly in Windows …

    Read more
  • What the 2024 Marketplace Report Says About IBM i App Dev, Language Use

    March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

    What languages, development environments, and tools are IBM i developers currently using to create new applications? How many users are still on SEU? And how are VS Code and Merlin faring among Web-based development tools? Fortra sought to answer those questions with its IBM i Marketplace Survey for 2024, and the results may surprise you.

    In late 2023, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world for the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Survey, which it published in January. You can download the report here.

    For the most part, Fortra asks the same questions every year, which is …

    Read more
  • If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

    March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

    The information technology industry has a “newness” bias. It always has, and probably always will. But when it comes to the systems for processing business transactions, decision makers need to think carefully about what they’re doing, as ditching “legacy technology” for a shiny new one doesn’t always deliver the promised upgrade.

    The cloud is currently the hot new thing in IT. Even though it’s not necessarily “new,” and not necessarily “a technology” (it is a collection of technologies and a platform and a business model…), business owners are under tremendous pressure to “get to the cloud” by whatever means necessary. …

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