Alex Woodie
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SAP HANA Now Available On IBM Power
May 6, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreAfter years of discussion and months of testing, SAP‘s HANA in-memory database is now officially supported on IBM‘s Power servers, giving joint SAP-IBM customers an alternative to running HANA on X86. IBM on Monday officially launched two special editions of its Power Systems servers designed to run HANA Business Warehouse software this week, while an announcement from SAP is expected soon.
“I don’t think it’s a big shock to anybody that we’re entering the HANA space and that we’re doing it with a processor that was designed for big data and analytics,” says Vicente Moranta, IBM’s director and
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BCD Cranks Up Its PHP Engine
May 6, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIt’s no secret that BCD Software likes PHP. The company, owned by Quadrant Software since February 2014, has supported the Web application programming language since it rolled out a special PHP version of WebSmart back in 2007. But with the recent launches of two new PHP bundles aimed at IBM i shops, as well as support for Zend‘s Z-Ray functionality, the company is taking its affinity for PHP to a whole new level.
BCD used last week’s COMMON conference as a springboard to launch two new software bundles that combine the WebSmart development tools and Zend’s PHP software for
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Profound Gets A Handle On Subfiles In Screen Scraper
May 6, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreWhen it comes to IBM i application modernization, subfile programs can present a dilemma. If you’re going the whole-hog route and getting rid of all 5250 and DDS underpinnings, you can convert subfiles into modern tables or grids. But what if you’re aiming for just a quick Web-enablement with screen-scraping tools? Keeping track of shifty subfiles here can be a challenge, but Profound Logic recently tackled the issue in an update to Genie.
Genie is Profound’s fast and easy Web-enablement tool for 5250 interfaces. The company is not shy about calling Genie a screen scraper, which is exactly what it
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Maxava Building Its Own Cloud For IBM i High Availability
May 6, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreMaxava is no newbie in the cloud. Indeed, it counts hundreds clients whose IBM i data and applications are protected by business partners who run Maxava’s high availability software in their own data centers. But those business partners don’t provide complete coverage around the world, and so Maxava is building its own HA cloud to serve them.
“We’re filling a bit of a gap,” Peter Kania, director of technical services and development, said at a press conference during the COMMON conference held at Disneyland last week. “We’re starting to get into that space ourselves.”
The New Zealand company is installing
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Head Power Sales Honcho Fires Up The IBM i Base
May 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIBM i professionals are an unusually passionate and loyal group of customers, but you don’t typically hear much emotion from the IBM executives in charge of steering the ship. So when IBM’s top Power Systems salesman took the podium at last week’s COMMON conference and fired up the base with a rousing keynote address, it was a rare treat.
After taking care of business and handing out the awards in a fairly full conference room at the Disneyland Hotel last Sunday, COMMON president Pete Massiello turned the microphone over to Alex Gogh, the vice president of global sales for IBM
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Cautious Optimism Pervades COMMON
May 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIt’s tough to have a bad day at Disneyland, which is officially “The Happiest Place On Earth.” But the IBM i community carries a lot of baggage, and some of it is blacker than a Maleficent curse. So when 1,000 of the community’s staunchest supporters descended upon the hallowed grounds of childhood dreams last week, unfettered joy was not a preordained outcome.
But, as it turns out, the COMMON conference that took place at the Disneyland Hotel last Sunday through Thursday came off better than expected, at least as far as the future of the platform is concerned. While nobody
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IBM Blocks ‘Bar Mitzvah’ Attack In SSL/TLS
April 27, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIBM recently issued a security bulletin for a newly discovered security vulnerability–a weak cryptography algorithm in the SSL/TLS protocol stack–that could allow hackers to steal data. That vulnerability was dubbed the “Bar Mitzvah Attack” by the security researcher who discovered it because it uses a 13-year-old weakness in the RC4 algorithm.
The Bar Mitzvah flaw was first described by Itsik Mantin, director of security research with Imperva, at the Black Hat Asia security event held in Singapore last month. The attack stems from a weakness in the way that the RC4 stream cipher creates encryption keys, which could allow
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IBM i A Vital Part Of This Staffing Franchise
April 20, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreBy 2020, it is predicted that temps, freelancers, and independent contractors will compose 40 percent of the U.S. workforce, a substantial increase over today’s figures. One company ready to capitalize on that tectonic shift in employment trends is AtWork Group, a Tennessee-based franchisor that oversees dozens of independent staffing firms around the country. With the temp business booming, AtWork is counting on its IBM i platform to help its business grow.
The franchise model has been a core part of AtWork Group’s strategy since John D. Hall Jr. founded the Knoxville, Tennessee, company back in 1992. The CEO’s goal
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IBM i and the IoT
April 15, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreBy now you’ve probably heard of the Internet of Things (IoT), or as some overzealous marketers like to call it, the Internet of Everything. By instrumenting data-emitting sensors into everyday items such as toasters, watches, and shirts, we’ll be able to glean much more insight into the real-time state of ourselves and our world. It may sound heavy on the hype and light on substance today, but there’s a good chance that the IoT could impact your standard business systems–including enterprise applications systems running on the IBM i platform.
IBM made a big IoT splash recently when it announced it’s
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On the Bleeding Edge of MIMIX Adoption with APL Logistics
April 15, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreMost IBM i shops, by and large, are conservative entities that adopt new releases of software only after extensive beta testing by others. But occasionally one encounters an early adopter that’s willing to be on the bleeding edge of development–in exchange for certain benefits, of course. You can count the Arizona company APL Logistics in the latter category when it comes to its MIMIX high availability software from Vision Solutions.
APL Logistics is one of two subsidiaries of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines, the other being the ocean liner company American President Lines (APL). From its headquarters in Scottsdale, the