Alex Woodie
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Power Systems: The Secret To SMB Innovation?
March 18, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreTechnological innovation is viewed today as a necessary ingredient for business success in many industries. Fail to keep up with pace of change, and your business will begin to stagnate and eventually be overtaken by more innovative competitors. In an online roundtable discussion last week that was, in and of itself, a symbol of innovation, IBM helped to share the innovation stories of two Power Systems shops that fall into the small and midsize business (SMB) category.
Of course, the Power Systems server running the IBM i operating system isn’t the source for all technological innovation in the world. Some
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ABL Takes a Fresh Approach to Modernization with RolePlay
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreADVANCED BusinessLink (ABL) is close to shipping a potentially disruptive new modernization tool called RolePlay. The new software, which is in restricted availability, helps eliminate the menu-based system common to IBM i-based ERP systems, and present information to users according to the role they play within the organization. It’s a novel approach to the modernization dilemma, and it could help IBM i ISVs compete more effectively with the role-based ERP systems from SAP and Oracle, and Microsoft.
There are many aspects of an IBM i business system that set it apart from the so-called “mainstream” X86 systems that
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Infor ION: More Than 900 Loosely Served
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreInfor says ION, its loosely coupled, XML-based integration platform, has been adopted by more than 900 customers around the word. In fact, Infor says the two-year-old product is selling so well that it’s currently the top selling and fastest growing product in the entire Infor lineup. To help drive ION’s growth going forward–especially with integrations to social and mobile solutions–Infor hired former Oracle executive Steve Moroski to manage the ION program.
ION, which stands for Intelligent Open Network, is a middleware stack designed to help Infor customers integrate their Infor ERP systems with other Infor products, such as Infor’s mobile
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Anatomy of a (Successful) Cloud DR Test
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreYou understand that it’s critical to test your disaster recovery (DR) plan on a regular basis. You also understand that a real disaster will bring surprises, and that practicing DR will increase your company’s chances of overcoming those inevitable challenges. The folks running the VAULT400 cloud backup and recovery service understand this, too. But according to VAULT/400, most companies don’t realize what it actually takes to successfully complete a full DR test, let alone do it in a real disaster.
VAULT400 is an online vaulting and DR service started seven years ago by United Computer Group (UCG), a Cleveland, Ohio-based
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Retracted: PlanetJ Helps New York Cops Nab a Killer
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreEditor’s Note: This story has been retracted at the request of the Clarkstown Police Department.
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Halcyon Gets Its Task On
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreHalcyon Software last week introduced new software that helps IT departments organize the tasks that must be executed on a daily basis. Whether it’s checking DASD consumption on an IBM i server, preparing Windows machines for backups, or checking the log for network errors, Halcyon’s new Task Supervisor will provide a central repository for storing and working with the various IT-related tasks performed by data center employees and products every day.
Task Supervisor runs on a SQL Server database and delivers Web-based interfaces that IT employees can use to view lists of tasks that need to be performed. The software,
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Mrc Gives i Web Dev Tool More Smarts
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreLast month mrc added several new features to its flagship Web application development tool, m-Power, that should help customers in several ways, including easier updating of CSS themes, the capability to generate event-triggered messages from m-Power apps, and improvements to how customers document and promote changes to their applications.
The new message triggering functionality in m-Power has several uses. For starters, it could be used to automatically send an email or a SMS message when a certain event occurs on the system, such as completion of a form on a customer website, or the cancellation of a customer account.
Message
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Attunity Pushes Data into Amazon Redshift
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreThe partnership between Amazon and Attunity reached a new level last month when Attunity announced that its Databeam data integration service can now pump data into RedShift, the new cloud-based data warehouse Amazon recently made available.
RedShift is a big data analysis service first unveiled by Amazon Web Services (AWS) last November, and released to wider availability in February. The offering gives customers access to database hosting services that are cheap and readily available. For example, a user will pay about $1,000 per year to host 1 TB of data in RedShift–much less than it would cost to provision and
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Rimini Touts EMEA Growth, Shrugs Off Loss of GM
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreDespite losing its top European executive to its closest competitor in February, third-party maintenance provider Rimini Street nearly doubled the number of customers in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region in 2012, the company announced last week.
Rimini Street’s EMEA business did well in fiscal 2012, according to several metrics published by the firm, which expects to go public later this year or next year. The company says that it doubled new client sales, that it grew new client invoicing by 117 percent, and that it had $42 million in new sales bookings, which is a 175 percent
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Cloud Adoption Increases Steadily, According to Reports
March 12, 2013 Alex Woodie
… Read moreNearly 40 percent of organizations are running or implementing cloud solutions, according to the results of a survey by IT reseller CDW. Meanwhile, another survey by security firm SilverSky found that organizations have moved 25 percent of their business functions to the cloud.
In its 2013 State of the Cloud Report, CDW found that 39 percent of organizations are implementing or maintaining cloud solutions. That’s an 11 percent increase from 2011. The survey, which involved 1,242 IT professionals in the United States, also found that more than half of organizations are migrating or planning to migrate specific applications or