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.

EXTOL Finds New Partners for EDI

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

EDI and B2B integration software developer EXTOL International recently announced the establishment of relationships with three new business partners, including Effective Data, Primeur, and Melissa Data. The partnerships are expected to widen the breadth of services available to EXTOL’s largely IBM i-oriented customer base.

Melissa Data is a provider of cloud-based data quality tools, which EXTOL customers now have access to through the new partnership announced last month. According to Pennsylvania-based EXTOL, its customers can now use Melissa’s services to cleanse, validate, and enhance their data as it’s being transformed, which will better enable customers to perform

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IBM i: Still a Great Fit for Manhattan Associates WMS

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

When it comes to tier-one ERP, IBM i still has some solid packages, but the platform has slipped a bit in the rankings compared to open systems. But when it comes to the warehouse management systems (WMS) that run the country’s biggest distribution centers, IBM i is still top of the heap, largely due to the work of Manhattan Associates. And with its new omni-channel capabilities, the WMS looks to stay there for a while.

Founded 24 years ago in the California city of Manhattan Beach, Manhattan Associates specializes in the development and support of supply chain execution and

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Rocket Battles Dropbox Creep with R/Link MFT

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

Dropbox is a huge temptation for business users, but it’s a security no-no in most organizations. One Dropbox alternative you might want to consider is Rocket Software‘s R/Link. The Java-based product, which Rocket launched a year ago, provides robust managed file transfer (MFT) capabilities and a nifty HTML5 interface that lets users securely move files across multiple devices, from smartphones and tablets to IBM i servers and mainframes.

R/Link started life as an idea on Steve Bireley’s whiteboard. Rocket’s managing director of R&D liked the ease-of-use of the popular file sharing service, but its mounting security problems led him

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Need Apps for IBM i 7.2? Check the GSD

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

IBM i version 7.2 has been out for about a month now, providing more than 100,000 users of the midrange server with a variety of helpful new features, not to mention all fixes to date. While IBM doesn’t run a certification program for the new OS, ISVs are expected to begin listing their IBM i 7.2-compatible applications on the Global Solutions Directory (GSD) website.

IBM runs the Global Solutions Directory effectively to provide a searchable index of solutions designed to run on its various platforms. Business partners maintain their own listings in the directory, so it’s not the same as

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An IBM i Client for Every Administrative Occasion

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

Anybody remember OpsNav? The Windows-based client from IBM seemed to provide every function a system administrator could ask for. Well, we’ve come a long way since 1999, and today’s administrators have a new crop of needs, which are served by a veritable army of IBM i clients from IBM.

Tim Rowe, IBM’s business architect for application development, provided an excellent rundown of the various IBM i client options available in a recent article published at System i Developer, where Rowe’s regular column landed after iPro Developer folded up its tent.

There are no fewer than five IBM i clients

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IBM Connections Gets Business Social Makeover

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

IBM made lots of midrange shops happy last year when it offered its flagship business collaboration software, called IBM Connections, on its IBM i platform. With the introduction of IBM Connections 5 this month, the company has enhanced the capability of its customers to collaborate with all relevant stakeholders, including those inside and outside the organization.

IBM Connections is a Web-based product that IBM originally launched as Lotus Connections in 2007.The software is designed so teams of users can collaborate through Web spaces, blogs, wikis, forums, and shared libraries (file syncs). The software sports hooks into the Lotus email, contacts,

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Intellinx Updated with Big-Data Fraud-Fighting Power

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

The Israeli security software company Intellinx is now supporting the distributed Hadoop file system with its flagship insider fraud detection solution, which also supports IBM i and the System z mainframe.

Intellinx is used by a number of large institutions and banks to keep a watchful eye on the activities of employees. The offering uses an agent-less approach to capture application data directly from the network, which provides a very detailed forensic audit trail into user activity. In IBM i and System z environments, its capability to view user activity and keystrokes by tapping directly into the 5250 and 3270

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Mesa Group Inks Exclusive Deal with IBS

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

IBS last month tapped the Texas IT consultancy The Mesa Group to be its exclusive distributor in the Americas. It’s the latest in a series of moves by the Swedish ERP developer to solidify its business.

The Mesa Group specializes in providing a range of IT-related services for Windows and IBM i systems, particularly in the fields of distribution, supply chain management, e-business, and customer service. The company, which is based near Dallas, sports partnerships with IBM i stalwarts like Linoma Software and GXS (formerly Inovis). Now you can count IBS as one more.

“Our alignment with The Mesa Group

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m-Power Gains New ETL Capabilities

July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

The m-Power development tool from mrc is gaining new extract, transform, and load (ETL) features with the goal of giving customers better business intelligence capabilities.

Despite the growth of “big data” and the accelerating pace of development of big data solutions, nothing so far has replaced good old ETL when it comes to moving data from transactional systems into data warehouses for analysis. In fact, if anything, the need for ETL has increased due to the ever-growing volumes of data organizations are tasked with managing.

The folks at mrc are looking to give their customers a leg up on ETL

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