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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.

  • What’s New with Db2 Mirror, PowerHA, and BRMS

    November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

    There’s something for everyone in the new releases of IBM i that IBM will be shipping later this month. For administrators who revel in having well-run high availability, continuous availability, and tape backups, the new releases will not disappoint.

    The most substantial enhancements appear to have been saved for Db2 Mirror for i, which is IBM’s continuous availability solution for IBM i. The new management and monitoring features should bring some major improvements to how customers interact with the product.

    Some of the biggest changes are due to the addition of the new “Health Center” component to the Db2 Mirror …

    Read more
  • Remain Bolsters TD/OMS in v16 Release

    November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

    Rogue or uninformed programmers will be shut out of making negative code changes to their IBM i applications with TD/OMS V16.0 Milestone 1, the inaugural release of the next major version of Remain Software’s IBM i change management software. New dashboards, training, and ChatGPT integrations also grace this new release.

    According to Remain Software CTO Wim Jongman, the new arbitrary code execution protection feature delivered with TD/OMS V16.0 last month was developed in response to customers that were suffering when programmers exploited their freedom to do not-so-smart things with the organization’s IBM i code.

    Sometimes, the freedom is necessary. “For …

    Read more
  • ATS Bolsters Power Cloud, IBM i Data Collection Suite

    November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

    ATS Group announced yesterday that it has expanded its Power Cloud, the IBM Power-based private cloud that offers IBM i, AIX, and Linux runtimes. The company also announced that it has enhanced the IBM i data collection capabilities in Galileo Suite, its collection of IT monitoring and observability.

    ATS Group is an IBM business partner based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The company says it has managed thousands of customer environments in its Power Cloud, which is spread across four geographically separate data centers.

    In a blog post yesterday, the company announced that it has expanded its private cloud offering. The company …

    Read more
  • Kyndryl Inspects The Modernization Plans Of IBM i And Mainframe Shops

    November 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

    What paths are IBM i and mainframe users taking in terms of application modernization and digital transformation, and what sorts of results are those efforts producing? Those are good questions, and they are ones that Kyndryl, the former IBM Global Technology Services arm, provides some answers to in a new report.

    Kyndryl commissioned Coleman Parkes Research to survey 500 IBM i and mainframe shops from around the world about their plans for application modernization and transformation. The survey results form the basis for its appropriately named 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which you can download here. …

    Read more
  • IBM, TIBCO Remain Mum on Db2 Web Query Future

    November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

    While Db2 Web Query users are left hanging in the wind without any official way forward to protect their investments in the product, IBM and TIBCO have yet to make any public announcements about how to support these IBM i customers moving forward.

    IBM shocked the midrange last month when it announced the sudden end of life of Db2 Web Query, the IBM i-based analytics tool that was largely based on an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version of the WebFOCUS product originally developed by Information Builders and now owned by TIBCO.

    The October 10 announcement – the same day …

    Read more
  • Skytap and Precisely in Azure HA Hookup

    November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

    Skytap customers running on IBM i servers in Microsoft Azure data centers can now utilize MIMIX high availability software from Precisely (formerly Vision Solutions) as a result of a partnership the two vendors unveiled this month. Customers also get access to consumption-based pricing in the Azure Marketplace as a result of the new deal.

    While Azure and all public clouds are predominantly composed of standard Intel servers, Skytap has developed a specialty of integrating non-standard computing environments, like IBM i, with public cloud infrastructure.

    The Seattle, Washington-based company has an agreement with Microsoft to manage IBM Power servers running IBM …

    Read more
  • Spooky New Security Vulns Lurking on IBM i

    November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

    Halloween has come and gone, but the scares will stick around for a while for IBM i administrators, who have been given more than a dozen fixes by IBM to address some pretty serious security vulnerabilities recently revealed in the heart of the operating system, including in spooky old friends Java and OpenSSL.

    On October 27, IBM issued a security bulletin for two CVEs, including CVE-2023-40685 and CVE-2023-40686, which describe two separate but related security flaws in the Management Central component of IBM i Navigator in IBM i versions 7.2 through 7.5.

    The first privilege escalation vulnerability, CVE-2023-40685, could …

    Read more
  • RDi and RPG Enhancements in the 2023 Fall TRs

    October 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

    RPG developers will see some compelling new features coming out of the recent Technology Refresh (TR) announcement from IBM, including enhancements to the RDi development environment as well as new capabilities in the RPG language itself.

    RPG is nearly 65 years old, but like old dogs, the programming language can learn new tricks. The enhancements that IBM has brought to its venerable language with IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9 continue a strong run of improvements, according to IBM i Product Manager Alison Butterill.

    “Every one of the TRs since we announced 7.5 has had at least some RPG …

    Read more
  • Four Cybercrime Trends for Security Pros to Watch Now

    October 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

    If you’re a cybercriminal, congratulations! You’ve selected a high-growth field that’s expected to generate $14 trillion in criminal value by 2028. But that growth in digital criminality is a problem for the rest of us, who must cope with increasingly sophisticated schemes.

    Cybercrime was relatively slow-growing industry, generating a mere $1.2 trillion in costs to society globally in 2019, according to Statista. But something snapped in the collective criminal mind in 2020, and cybercrime has been riding an elevated growth curve ever since. Between 2017 and 2028, Statista projects cybercrime will enjoy a 28 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). …

    Read more
  • Db2 Web Query Customers Left In The Lurch

    October 23, 2023 Alex Woodie

    The sudden collapse of the OEM agreement between IBM and TIBCO for Db2 Web Query has left users of the product in a difficult position. Where will they get technical support, updates, and fixes? Should they abandon the software? Can they sue somebody if something happens to their systems?

    These are some of the questions that IBM i shops who adopted Db2 Web Query are asking themselves in the wake of IBM’s stunning October 10 announcement to kill off the product. Effectively immediately, IBM stopped marketing and selling the IBM i product, which was an OEM version of Information …

    Read more

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