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.
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SkyVault to Go Active in Early 2014, Infor Says
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Infor has delayed its new hosted SkyVault business analytics offering, and now plans to launch it in early 2014, the company said last week. The offering–which combines Amazon‘s Redshift database and Infor’s own BI, dashboard, and data integration tools–is a key part of Infor’s big data analytics strategy, and Infor expects it to bolster the big data strategies of its big ERP customer base, too.
Infor originally announced SkyVault at the Inforum 2013 conference in May, when the company said it expected the hosted offering to debut by the end of the year. That original GA date has apparently
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Halcyon’s Extends SLA Tracking Tool to AIX and Linux
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Organizations that adopt the newest version of Halcyon Software‘s Advanced Reporting Suite can use the software to report on the performance of their AIX and Linux environments, not just IBM i and Windows, the company announced last month.
Advanced Performance Suite is a Windows- and SQL Server-based tool that Halcyon launched two years ago to generate performance reports for IBM i and Windows server environments.
The software collects and collates various systems management metrics of production server environments, such as percentage performance against SLAs, processor loading, CPU, memory and disk, SAN utilization, performance response times, and resource utilization. The
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Magic Conjures Up an In-Memory Data Grid
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Magic Software last week announced that it has added an in-memory data grid element to xpi, its application integration platform. Magic’s IMDG, as it calls the new grid living in the Magic xpi Server software, will deliver higher performing integration services required by new cloud, mobile, and big data applications.
Magic designed xpi (formerly iBolt) so non-programmers could build real-time connections between two or more applications in a loosely coupled manner. The software uses a combination of graphical business process modeling, application-specific adapters, and wizards to create composite applications that connect processes residing in a variety of systems, including IBM
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HiT Certifies DBMoto for Google Cloud
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Developers who are writing applications that use Google Cloud SQL and the App Engine Datastore for Google can now use HiT Software‘s DBMoto data replication tools to hook into “legacy” data stores (such as IBM i apps) and feel good about it because they’re certified.
The certification performed by HiT for its DBMoto and DBMoto cloud G Edition is key, as it added visibility to the pool of developers who are riding “the Big G’s” cloud platform. This is good news for HiT Software, the BackOffice Associates subsidiary that moves data to and from DB2 for IBM i databases,
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ASTI Buys UDO Distribution Business of Verbatim
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Alliance Storage Technologies (ASTI), which bought Plasmon’s Ultra Density Optical (UDO) business in 2009, bolstered its grip on the worldwide market for UDO products last month when it completed the acquisition of the UDO distribution business of Verbatim, which continues to manufacture UDO media.
UDO may be dead in many people’s eyes. After all, Plasmon, which developed the technology with the idea of serving the long-term data storage needs of IBM mainframe and IBM i customers in heavily regulated industries, couldn’t make a viable business out of it and called it quits.
But the folks at ASTI–in particular its CEO,
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Fiserv Expands Footprint in Banks That Use IBM i
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Fiserv doesn’t often advertise it, but it is a big driver of IBM servers with a pair of core banking applications, Signature and Premier, that run on the IBM i OS. Lately, the Brookfield, Wisconsin, software company has been selling lots of add-on solutions to these IBM i customers.
In September, Fiserv announced that The First National Bank of Long Island implemented its Common Origination Platform to help price and write consumer, business, and mortgage lending needs. FNBLI has run the Signature application on IBM midrange gear since 1987, and will begin using the Common Origination Platform in application service
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Mobile Apps Get More Native-Like with Sencha Touch Update
November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie
Sencha last month rolled out an update to its Sencha Touch framework that makes it easier to develop HTML5 applications that work more like native mobile apps written for iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry devices.
Sencha (formerly ExtJS) develops a JavaScript library for developing touch-enabled apps that execute in browsers running on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. The framework uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to create user interface “themes” that make apps look like they were developed for specific operating systems.
With the Sencha Touch 2.3, the software offers support for additional themes, including iOS 7, previous iOS versions, Android, Windows
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IBM Storwize V5000: A SAN For The SMB Masses
November 4, 2013 Alex Woodie
IBM has introduced a new member of its Storwize family of storage arrays designed for use by small and midsized businesses, including those running IBM i on Power Systems. The Storwize V5000 sits happily in the “Goldilocks” zone between the V3700 and V7000 arrays, and provides some high-end features, such as support for IBM’s Easy Tier, Flash Copy, SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and remote mirroring for high availability.
The V5000 looks to have many features that will make it popular among IBM i shops. Anecdotal evidence indicates that IBM i shops are increasingly adopting storage arrays to get a handle
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Actifio Supports IBM i with Copy Data Solution
October 29, 2013 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that are struggling to store and manage copies of their production data may be interested in a new solution unveiled this summer by Actifio. With the launch of Actifio version 6, the company added native IBM i support to its eponymous copy data software, which is a storage controller designed to centralize the storage of data, and thereby eliminate the need to copy and replicate data all over the place for various needs.
Many IT organizations today are struggling to cope with ever-increasing storage demands. In many cases, it’s not the production data that’s eating an
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Bytware Fights Advanced Security Threats with McAfee Update
October 29, 2013 Alex Woodie
Bytware has updated its IBM i malware detection software with the latest security technology from its business partner, McAfee. By adding the latest McAfee 5600 series engines to its StandGuard Anti-Virus offering, Bytware is giving IBM i shops the tools to detect the latest blended security attacks that combine multiple attack vectors, including viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, spyware, and other advanced persistent threats.
It’s a well-known fact that Windows viruses and other assorted pieces of malware can reside in the IFS portion of an IBM i server. While the malware can’t infect the IBM i OS directly, the IFS