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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The New Capabilities IBM Added To Navigator For i
April 23, 2025 Alex Woodie
The addition of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to IBM i 7.6 is the big news with the recent operating system update from IBM. But IBM has introduced new capabilities to other parts of the platform as well, and some of the biggest reside in Navigator for i.
As the strategic Web-based console for administrating the IBM i server, it’s natural that Navigator for i gets lots of attention. Whether you’re looking to monitor or manage the databases, inspect batch jobs, configure security, or monitor performance, Navigator for i is the one central place that lets you do it. You can, of …
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One Big Time-Saving Network Enhancement In IBM i 7.6
April 23, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM i 7.6 brings a host of new enhancements around security and database development, among other areas. But IBM has also brought one big new capability to the operating system’s networking environment that will be worth the cost of an upgrade for some larger IBM i environments.
IBM introduced Ethernet Link Aggregation support in IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 3 (TR3), which shipped way back in 2012. Ethernet Link Aggregation enables several full-duplex Ethernet links to be grouped into a single line description with a single Media Access Control (MAC) address, which can boost reliability as well as throughput. …
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IBM i 7.6 Brings More Security Improvements Than Just MFA
April 14, 2025 Alex Woodie
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the big headliner with IBM i 7.6, which IBM begins shipping at the end of the week. This is good and right, since IBM i customers have been begging IBM to add MFA to the platform for so long. But the new IBM i release brings several other major security enhancements that customers will appreciate too, including a new command to disable non-secure connections, new encryption algorithms, streamlined regulatory compliance, and an easy way to tell what security patches have been applied, among others.
IBM has made it clear that it is taking security seriously on …
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IBM i 7.6 Delivers “Massive Security Improvement” With Built-In MFA
April 8, 2025 Alex Woodie
Big Blue today announced IBM i 7.6, the first new release of the operating system in three years. While version 7.6 brings a range of enhancements, arguably the biggest new feature is the addition of multi-factor authentication directly into the operating system, which will make adopting MFA simple and represent a “massive security improvement” at no additional cost to IBM i shops, the IBM i security architect said.
MFA has emerged as an industry requirement to improve security and prevent unauthorized access to applications and data. Most North American banks require customers to enter additional codes that are texted or …
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Oft-Requested SQL Function Coming In IBM i 7.6
April 8, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM i engineers and product managers have no shortage of feature requests to wade through, some of which make it into the platform and many of which do not. With the upcoming delivery of IBM i 7.6, IBM will be delivering one of the most often requested features: Support for UPDATE and DELETE statements in the data-change-table-reference clause of a SQL statement.
While the capability to update and delete statements with data-change-table-reference may not sound like a big deal, it actually represents a significant improvement that will simplify database programming tasks for developers, according to Scott Forstie, IBM’s Db2 for …
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The Top Ten IBM i Requests From The IBM Ideas Portal
April 2, 2025 Alex Woodie
Big Blue is gearing up for a major new release of the IBM i operating system. We don’t know yet what will be in the release, but we can forge some guesses by checking out what new features the IBM i community is requesting through the IBM Ideas portal, and how IBM reacts to them.
IBM prides itself on being a customer-focused organization, and so it looks to the IBM i community for direction on what sort of features, capabilities, and fixes the IBM i community currently is looking for. That community outreach takes various forms, including the COMMON Americas …
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What’s New With IBM PowerVS In 2025?
April 2, 2025 Alex Woodie
It has been six years since IBM launched IBM Power Virtual Server, its public cloud offering for IBM i workloads. Adoption started slowly but has picked up in recent years as IBM fleshed out the offering and expanded it to more datacenters. As we enter the second quarter, IBM is banking on several new features to help it attract more IBM i customers to PowerVS.
Last October, IBM offered PowerVS in 21 IBM Cloud datacenters around the world, including 650 Power Systems customers. Doris Conti, the vice president of Power Systems product management, told The Four Hundred that IBM had …
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Is IBM i Ready for the Agentic AI Revolution?
March 24, 2025 Alex Woodie
The AI world moves fast. Just when you get your head around large language models (LLMs) and the chatbots and coding co-pilots they enable, the AI world has moved onto something new. In 2025, that something new is the reasoning model, which is enabling autonomous AI agents and the world of agentic AI.
Is IBM i ready for the revolution that’s about to unfold?
By now you have undoubtedly read about LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama. These LLMs are popular ways to power text-based generative AI applications, such as chatbots, coding co-pilots, and question-and-answer …
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Fresche Makes Moves In The Cloud
March 24, 2025 Alex Woodie
Fresche Solutions is well known for IBM i application modernization, a line of business in which it has been successful for many decades. Thanks to its acquisition of OmniData Insights and a new partnership with IBM, the company is launching new ventures in the cloud.
In early March, Fresche Solutions announced a partnership with IBM that will see Fresche managing IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) customers. PowerVS is IBM’s cloud offering, and gives customers the capability to run IBM i, AIX, or Linux operating systems either in IBM datacenters or its partners’ datacenters. The deal with IBM means that Fresche …
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Government Mainframes Versus DOGE: Showdown At The COBOL Corral
March 17, 2025 Alex Woodie
Elon Musk is a force of nature, slashing the federal payroll through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But the government’s IBM mainframes are immovable objects in their own rights, lasting the test of time. If Musk and DOGE are serious about reforming how the government does business, the government’s legacy systems will pose a serious challenge.
As the head of DOGE, Musk has ruffled plenty of feathers with his comments and his actions, including firing federal employees en masse and wielding a large “chainsaw for bureaucracy” given to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, an ally of President Donald …
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