Alex Woodie
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OAuth 2.0 Makes Its Way Onto the IBM i
March 18, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreDon’t look now, but OAuth, the open standard for authentication first described by Twitter for allowing people to share data without using a password, is making its way into the enterprise. It’s even becoming adopted in the IBM i ecosystem, where a number of vendors, including BVS Tools, are adopting it as a standard authentication system for IBM i communication utilities.
The folks at Twitter initially started developing OAuth nine years ago to provide a way to share files over the Web without passing user IDs and passwords. Instead of sharing credentials, the OAuth protocol allows users to approve
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Kisco Debuts Sub-$400 Message Monitor
March 18, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreOrganizations that are looking for an affordable way to monitor their IBM i servers may want to check out the new iEventMonitor product unveiled this month by Kisco Information Systems. For less than $400, the software will automatically send an alert to administrators when it detects potential problems, as manifested through message queues.
Many of the tasks that humans used to do have been automated. For example, stock brokers and assembly line workers have largely been replaced by computers and robots, respectively. In the IBM i world, the entry-level job of system operator has largely fallen by the wayside,
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Splunking Through IBM i Log Mysteries
March 16, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreTracking down problems in the modern data center can be an exercise in extreme patience. Today’s mantra of “loosely coupled yet tightly integrated” sounds great theoretically, but doesn’t give you much to go on things start to fail. When the going got tough for one multi-billion-dollar ecommerce operation that relies heavily on the IBM i server, it turned to Splunk to sort it all out.
Splunk made a name for itself as a provider of next-gen power tools that enable IT administrators to collect, analyze, and search vast sums of log files generated by a multitude of systems. Instead of
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SMA Aims To Grow IBM i Automation Biz In The U.S.
March 9, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreDespite being based in Texas, SMA Solutions and its systems automation software for IBM i are not particularly well-known in the United States. However, the company has enjoyed success recently in the European IBM i market, and now SMA’s owner and CEO, Michael Taylor, has tasked his European managers with accelerating growth in IBM i market stateside this year.
Taylor admits that he would rather spend money on R&D and customer support, as opposed to investing in marketing. “The average iSeries reader is going to say, who the heck is SMA? They’ve got no clue,” Taylor tells IT Jungle.
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There Is No Lack Of RPG Programmers, IBM i Community Contends
March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreBalderdash! That’s the general response to a story we ran two weeks ago in this newsletter about Computer Sciences Corp. blaming its earnings miss in part on an RPG programmer shortage. “There is no shortage of RPG programmers,” says one RPG programmer in the Northeast, “but there is a shortage of RPG programmers who will work at 1985 wages.”
CSC said a lack of RPG talent was partly to blame for the company’s $230 million revenue shortfall during in the fourth quarter. “RPG is not a programming language where a lot of people are learning it today, so there is
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HANA On Power Marches Toward GA
March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreSAP is now inviting its Power customers to participate in the final beta program to harden the HANA-on-Power code before it’s released to production. IBM Power Systems and IBM i customers are said to be “champing at the bit” about the prospect of using a single in-memory database to power both transactional and analytic applications in a single server.
SAP officially unveiled its plans to get HANA running on Power last June at its Sapphire conference in Orlando. Over the summer, less than 10 joint IBM-SAP customers participated in a tightly controlled “test and evaluation” program that involved the first
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Where Have All The QSYSOPR Messages Gone?
March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIn the old days, you could rely on IBM i applications to always send error codes to a predictable place, such as QSYSOPR. But with the proliferation of newer Web-based applications and apps developed in Java, PHP, and other languages, that is no longer the case. HelpSystems is addressing this dilemma with a new release of its Robot/CONSOLE message monitoring software that looks for errors and alerts that IBM i admins may otherwise miss.
While RPG remains by far the most popular language for developing IBM i applications, the number of IBM i apps written in more “modern” languages like
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Linoma Unveils GoDrive, A Private Dropbox-Like Service
March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreOnline file sharing services like Dropbox have been readily adopted by companies in some fields, but security concerns make them a no-no in regulated industries. That’s created a gap that vendors like Linoma Software are looking to fill with so-called on-premise cloud storage solutions, such as the new IBM i-supported GoDrive offering that Linoma unveiled last week.
GoDrive is a new module that Linoma added to GoAnywhere Services 4.0, which the company formally announced yesterday. Linoma says GoDrive is a secure on-premise solution that provides enterprise file sync and sharing (EFSS) services for authorized users. In other words, it provides
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Top 9 New Features In Kronos iSeries Central 7
March 2, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIt might seem there’s only so much you can do in the field of time and attendance (T&A) management. But in fact, there’s always something new. “Just when we think we’ve done it all, there’s always somebody saying, ‘Hey what about this?’ and down the path we go,” says Kronos vice president Barry Moore. That path was remarkably fruitful with the recent delivery of iSeries Central suite version 7.0.
While the Windows-based Workforce Central suite gets all the attention and glory at Kronos headquarters in Chelmsford, Massachusetts (look, a cloud version!), the rock-solid iSeries Central suite continues to be relied
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Five IBM i Facts That Will Surprise Your CIO
February 18, 2015 Alex Woodie
… Read moreTrying to keep the IBM i relevant in your organization? It probably seems like an uphill battle at times, especially if you have a CIO who knows next to nothing about the platform. Here are five fun facts that may help save the platform at your organization, or at least get the CIO to give it a second look before he kicks it to the curb.
Fact 1: IBM i on Power is cheaper in the long run than Windows or Linux on Intel
The sticker shock associated with the acquisition of a new IBM i server can be damaging