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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.

  • IBM i Security Concern Hits All-Time High, But Solution Adoption Lags, Fortra’s Marketplace Study Shows

    February 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Security is the number one concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s Marketplace Study, the seventh straight year that security has topped the charts. More survey respondents chose security as their top concern than any other year. Despite the growing security concern, there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding increase in adoption of security tools, the survey data show.

    Fortra released the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Study last month, representing the 10th straight year that the company (formerly HelpSystems) has conducted the survey and published the findings. Last fall, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world, …

    Read more
  • 2024 IBM i Predictions Part 3 – The Final Chapter

    February 5, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog who forecast an early spring on Friday, is said to have a long-term success rate of about 31 percent with his forecasts. What’s the accuracy rate of the IBM i experts who contribute to these yearly predictions? To borrow a line from the Magic 8 Ball, the answer is hazy at the moment. But one thing is clear: The IBM i ecosystem as a whole maintains an unabashedly optimistic and sunny disposition.

    One of the brighter stars in the IBM i galaxy, Connectria regional sales director Peg Tuttle sees several trends emerging in the …

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  • New IBM Champion Class Grows Nearly 40 Percent

    January 29, 2024 Alex Woodie

    IBM unveiled a new crop of IBM Champions this month, and the first thing that stands out is the size of the 2024 IBM Champions class. Big Blue gave the honor to 1,155 individuals this year, a 38 percent increase over last year. Just about everyone who applied was named an IBM Champion, says Libby Ingrassia, the IBM program director, who also noted there was considerable overlap between IBM Champions and the new IBM Rising Champion Advocacy badge program.

    IBM launched its IBM Champions program back in 2008 as a way to boost the visibility of customers and business partners …

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  • 2024 IBM i Predictions, Part Deux

    January 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

    How will 2024 unfold? Nobody knows the answer to that. But that’s not stopping members of the IBM i community from taking some swings. It’s not only a good Bayesian exercise to think through the probabilities of what may occur, but it’s often a bit of fun, too.

    Our second batch of 2024 predictions starts with IBM distinguished engineer Steve Will, who, as the IBM i chief technology officer and IBM i chief architect, doesn’t need to guess where the platform is going, since he’s literally leading the creation of it. Instead, his prediction focuses on the community.

    “2024 will …

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  • Top Priorities in 2024: Security and AI

    January 17, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Two sometimes opposing forces will be at play in 2024: the threat of cybersecurity breaches on the one hand and the promise of tech disruption thanks to AI on the other. Tech leaders, including IBM i professionals, who chart a course through these obstacles will be well-positioned to help their companies and their careers in the years to come.

    First, let’s cover security. It’s no secret that cybercriminals have been ramping up their game over the past few years. Since the Covid-19 pandemic gave online activity a turbo-boost four years ago, cybercriminals have been having a field day with people’s …

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  • IBM i Community Shares 2024 Predictions

    January 15, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Spaceship Earth has completed another trip around the Sun, which means one thing: Time for 2024 IBM i predictions! Hopefully you enjoy this year’s predictions, which seem to sport a good mixture of optimism and realism.

    The future for IBM i is wide open – open source, that is, says Liam Allan, the creator of Code for IBM i and a software developer for IBM i.

    “My prediction is pretty simple. Businesses will continue to invest in themselves through the power of open source,” Allan says. “Whether it be using dev tools, open source runtimes like Node.js, or even newer …

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  • IBM i Chief Architect Will Gives N2i Some Platform Pointers

    January 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

    It’s hard to find someone more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the IBM i platform than Steve Will, who holds CTO and chief architect titles at IBM. So when Will accepted an invitation from COMMON’s N2i (New to IBM i) group to speak to IBM i newcomers this week, it was a good chance to pick up something new.

    One of the first things that IBM i newcomers will notice about the IBM i is that it’s an unusual platform, in several regards. For starters, it’s older than many platforms, being able to trace its lineage back to …

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  • IBM Patches a Slew of Security Vulns in Db2 Web Query

    January 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

    If you haven’t started your migration off Db2 Web Query, you might want to accelerate your planning, as IBM last week disclosed a slew of security vulnerabilities in the soon-to-be-discontinued product, two of which are the critical variety and four of which have high severity ratings. IBM has issued patches for all of the flaws for the product running on IBM i 7.4 and 7.5.

    On January 3, IBM disclosed a total of eight security vulnerabilities in Db2 Web Query, the IBM i-based data warehousing and business analytics tool that it OEM’ed from TIBCO’s Information Builders subsidiary, and which …

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  • 2023: An IBM i Year in Review

    December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

    With another year nearly in the books, it’s time to take a stroll through the IT Jungle archives and reconsider some of the 728 stories we published in 2023. Here’s a look back at the biggest IBM i news stories of 2023.

    January

    The top concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Study, was once again security, a position it has held for six straight years. The latest crop of IBM Champions unveiled in January featured about 90 members from the IBM i community, out of a total of 839 for the year. Is …

    Read more
  • Rocket Launches CM-Kit for Continuous Modernization

    December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

    You’ve read about continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI-CD. Now Rocket Software wants you think about a related topic called continuous modernization, which refers to an uninterrupted re-invention of your applications via Web enablement and APIs. It recently launched a new suite of software, called the Continuous Modernization Kit, to help customers deliver that on their IBM i servers.

    Web-enablement of greenscreen 5250 applications has been a thing since at least the late 1990s, when the dot-com boom drove the initial commercialization of the Internet. That was followed closely by mobile enablement, which Apple turbocharged with its 2007 launch …

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