Alex Woodie
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Where Have All The IBM i ISVs Gone?
September 22, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreAmerican-style capitalism is a rough-and-tumble sport where new markets and businesses are seemingly created out of thin air, and disappear just as easily. The IBM‘s midrange marketplace, as a whole, has been remarkably resilient to change. But the list of vendors that have gone out of business or been acquired is long and getting longer every year, and today we’re likely down to fewer than 1,000 vendors.
There usually isn’t a lot of fanfare when a company goes out of business. No press releases are issued after the money has run out, and CEOs aren’t eager to get on
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LTO Roadmap Extended To Gen 10
September 15, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThe companies that make up the Linear Tape Open consortium last week announced the ninth and tenth generations of the open standard. When the first drives based on LTO Gen 10 technology start shipping–ostensibly around the year 2020, if the historical release pace holds up–the drives will be able to write data at the rate of more than 1 GB per second and hold more than 120 TB on each cartridge.
The current LTO Gen 6 drives started hitting the market in late 2012, about 24 months after the LTO Gen 5 drives appeared. They offer a native capacity of
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Will IBM Get Its ‘i’ Back After Apple Ditches Letter?
September 15, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreApple’s big launch last week delivered the expected goodies, including the new Apple Watch and Apple Pay. But there was also something missing–namely, the letter “i.” The company is dropping the “i” from new products as part of CEO Tim Cook’s strategy to begin a new era for the company. But will the move give IBM the headroom it needs to finally begin heavily marketing its venerable IBM i platform before it’s too late?
The “i” has been a staple of Apple products since it launched iTunes and iPod in 2001. The ninth letter was heavily featured in Apple’s 2007
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Actifio Takes Unique Storage Approach to the Cloud
September 11, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreActifio is carving out a niche in the backup and data de-duplication market with its unique Copy Data Storage (CDS) approach that eliminates the need for companies to store multiple copies of data. This summer, the vendor announced that its pushing the core CDS technology into the cloud to enable disaster recovery (DR) in enterprise applications, and it’s already being adopted by a major DR service provider, Sungard Availability Services.
Companies typically have many copies of their data floating around in various silos, including production, backup, archive, data warehousing, development, test, and more. Millions are spent keeping up with
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Actifio Takes Unique Storage Approach to the Cloud
September 11, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreActifio is carving out a niche in the backup and data de-duplication market with its unique Copy Data Storage (CDS) approach that eliminates the need for companies to store multiple copies of data. This summer, the vendor announced that its pushing the core CDS technology into the cloud to enable disaster recovery (DR) in enterprise applications, and it’s already being adopted by a major DR service provider, Sungard Availability Services.
Companies typically have many copies of their data floating around in various silos, including production, backup, archive, data warehousing, development, test, and more. Millions are spent keeping up with
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SunGard Gives IBM i App New Life with LANSA
September 9, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThere was a concern among the executives at SunGard Public Sector that the IBM i-based NaviLine product line was getting a bit long in the tooth. Customers were complaining about tired UIs, the company had just rolled out a new Windows app that does pretty much the same thing, and there was some hesitation to invest in it. But now that the first round of a major rewrite using Visual LANSA is complete, it’s apparent that the sturdy old app has some life left in it after all.
Development on the NaviLine public sector application goes back decades at SunGard
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Rocket Schemes DevOps Serenity with Aldon ALM Hub
September 9, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreMany organizations–even IBM i shops–are adopting agile development methods. While this approach has advantages, it creates friction with the operations folks tasked with getting changes into production. Last month, Rocket Software‘s Aldon division started rolling out its new ALM Hub functionality to help the two sides collaborate more effectively while still respecting separation-of-duty requirements.
The two sides of the DevOps equation must work closely to successfully implement changes. Given the complexity and interconnectedness of today’s enterprise systems and the penalties for screwing up, collaboration is absolutely critical. And yet, developers and operators are mandated by laws like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA,
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Quadrant Debuts New BI Bundle: Business i
September 9, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreQuadrant Software last week unveiled Business i, a new bundle of business intelligence and reporting tools aimed at IBM i shops. The new offering, which has its roots in the BI tools of BCD Software (now a Quadrant subsidiary), helps users extract data from DB2 for i and other sources, create ad hoc reports, and deliver them via secure Web-based dashboards–all without requiring much involvement by the IT staff.
Business i provides a collection of BI and reporting tools aimed at helping connect business people with the data they need to make decisions. The software features a Web-based interface that
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IvanDoc Gives IBM i Documentation Tool a Web Interface
September 9, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreEarlier this year, a Malaysian software company by the name of IvanDoc Software Services completed the first implementation of IvanDoc Documentation, its IBM i cross-referencing and documentation tool that generates HTML output. The company is looking to get traction with IBM i shops around the world as they embark upon application modernization projects.
Documentation tools are indispensable for programmers that need to develop or maintain IBM i applications, especially when they confront an unknown IBM i application that lacks good documentation. Knowing how the internals of an RPG or CL application work and the various dependencies that may exist can
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MPG Squeezes Entire IBM i Server Lineup Into Mobile App
September 9, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIf you sell IBM Power Systems hardware or are doing any kind of capacity planning on them for customers, Midrange Performance Group‘s new Power Systems Navigator might just be the must-have mobile app of the year. The free app lets you browse the entire library of Power Systems hardware and see the dirty details on each one. For $20 more, you get to compare the servers to your current one.
The new app, dubbed Power Systems Navigator by MPG, runs on iOS and contains a database of information about 1,802 different Power server configurations–basically every AS/400, iSeries, System i,