Alex Woodie
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Surround Tech Goes Up The Stack
June 17, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreSurround Technologies is a well-known provider of .NET-based tooling for modernizing IBM i applications. If you want to outfit your 5250 application with Web, Windows, or mobile clients using Microsoft technologies, its flagship Accelerator series can provide that. But with the latest version, Surround Tech is going up the stack by offering pre-built apps for things like document management, content management, and even human resources.
Modernizing legacy IBM i applications and moving from 5250 to modern Web and mobile apps is one thing, says Surround Tech CEO Lee Paul. But what IBM i shops need these days goes beyond application
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Reader Feedback On Should We Just Call It Power i Now?
June 15, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreLast week’s story “Should We Just Call It Power i Now?” generated a mix of responses. While some thought the name Power i was an improvement on the status quo, others were hesitant to endorse yet another name change. Here are the top reader responses, edited for clarity.
IBM has done a really good job of confusing not only current system owners but everybody else as to what the system should be called, apparently even their own business leaders aren’t even sure anymore. Why can’t they just leave it be? Pick something, anything and just leave it for crying out
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Should We Just Call It Power i Now?
June 8, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read more“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare wrote so eloquently hundreds of years ago. “That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” Words may be imperfect representations for the things we encounter in real life, but even the Bard realized that words nonetheless carry a certain power and have a certain life of their own. And when it comes to the midrange server platform that we all know and love, what we call it is a discussion all its own.
The platform’s official name, per IBM, is “IBM i on IBM Power Systems.” This name
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For OpenLegacy, Modernization Is All About the APIs
June 1, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreModernization means different things to different people. For some in the IBM i space, being modern means adopting a model-view-controller architecture or having a Web user interface, while for others it may mean having a “mobile first” development strategy or using SQL in the database. For the folks at OpenLegacy, modernization means exposing existing business processes using the emerging lingua franca of network-powered computing: The API.
While OpenLegacy is, ostensibly, a provider of open source legacy modernization tools for IBM i and z/OS shops (it’s right there in the name), the path to modernization that it prescribes is by
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Hadoop and IBM i: Not As Far Apart As One Might Think
May 20, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThe worlds of IBM i and Apache Hadoop appear to be diametrically opposed. One is a proprietary, RISC-based platform used primarily to run transactional systems. The other is an open source, X86-based platform used primarily for big data analytics. But as far apart as the two platforms seem to be, at least one IBM i software vendor, mrc, is aiming to find some common ground between them.
Hadoop is a distributed data storage and processing framework that engineers and researchers at Yahoo and Google are credited with helping to create. While indexing the Internet was Hadoop’s first use case,
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Shield Goes Lean and Mean with HA Software
May 20, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreShield Advanced Solutions is shipping a new release of its IBM i high availability software that weighs significantly less than previous releases, and should consume fewer resources as well, thereby boosting performance. The HA audit and role swap processes were also enhanced with HA4i version 7.2, and the user interface also saw some improvements.
IBM remote journaling, which forms the basis for the majority of HA products on the market, is a fantastic technology, as it moves the replication of database files underneath the operating system layer, and in the process makes it nearly foolproof to use. But the flipside
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Kisco Rolls with 2FA, Revs Network Security Tool
May 20, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreData security isn’t just nice to have–it’s the law in most industries. One of the best ways to keep unauthorized users from snooping where their snouts don’t belong is two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires users to have two pieces of identifying credentials before being granted entry. A new 2FA solution for IBM i was launched recently by Kisco Information Systems, which also updated its exit point monitoring program for IBM i.
Kisco’s 2FA solution, called i2Pass, puts a roadblock in front of attempts to access IBM i assets. If the users have the correct credentials–which is the combination of
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BCD Tweaks Web Dev Tools. . . Focal Point Updates DR FlashCopy. . . Boadway Puts IBM i Performance Data on the Cloud. . .
May 20, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreRounding out our IT Jungle coverage of the recent COMMON conference held at Disneyland last month, we bring you product news from three IBM i software companies focusing on Web development and modernization, hosted high availability and disaster recovery, and IBM i performance tuning.
BCD Tweaks Web Dev Tools
by Alex Woodie
BCD Software used the recent COMMON conference as a launch pad for new releases of two key Web development tools: Presto 6.1 and WebSmart 10.8.
BCD ships two editions of WebSmart, including ILE RPG and PHP editions, but the features in version 10.8 focus mainly (though not entirely)
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State of IBM i Security? Still Horrible, After All These Years
May 18, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreWhen you talk to IBM about the IBM i-on-Power platform, the word “security” is used extensively, and appears frequently next to other power words like “reliability” and “availability.” But when you talk to the security software vendor PowerTech about the state of IBM i security, you might be surprised to hear words like “wide open” and “breach fatigue.” Then again, if you have been an IT Jungle reader for very long, you may not.
Last month, PowerTech released its 12th annual State of IBM i Security Study. The 25-page report, which you can download from the company’s website,
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Where IBM i’s Double-Digit Growth Is Coming From
May 11, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIBM just completed the best quarter for IBM i revenue in recent memory. While Big Blue no longer releases hard sales figures for the platform, the company did let it be known that the IBM i side of the house enjoyed double-digit revenue growth during the first quarter, which is great news for the platform. You might be wondering where that growth is coming from, and so are we.
With support for i5/OS V5R4 (finally) winding down and Power8 servers ramping up, now is as good a time as any for IBM i shops to get current with their setups.