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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UNICOM Nabs Versant for Object-Oriented Databases
October 23, 2012 Alex Woodie
UNICOM expanded into the object oriented database data realm this month when it announced plans to buy Versant, a publicly traded developer of several object-oriented databases, for about $32 million.
Founded in 1988 as Object Sciences Corp., Versant was an early proponent of object oriented databases, which store data as objects. Object database management systems (ODBMS) bring performance advantages over relational database management systems (RDBMS) in powering applications that are written in object oriented languages and require storing of complex objects.
Versant’s first product was the Versant Object Database (VOD), which began to gain steam in the early 1990s
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Help/Systems Buys CCSS For Systems Management Expertise
October 22, 2012 Alex Woodie
Help/Systems last week bought CCSS, the developer of systems monitoring and performance management tools for the IBM i server. Minnesota-based Help/Systems plans to keep all CCSS employees and its offices in North Carolina, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and run the company as a completely separate entity, representatives with CCSS and Help/Systems say.
Ray Wright founded CCSS and built it into a successful business developing, selling, and supporting IBM i systems monitoring and management tools. The company’s three products–QSystem Monitor, QMessage Monitor, and QRemote Control–help companies and cloud service firms run their IBM i servers in a more efficient
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Database Modernization: A Matter of Survival for IBM i ISVs
October 18, 2012 Alex Woodie
In the discussion of database modernization, the question inevitably comes up: What are IBM i independent software vendors (ISVs) doing to modernize their databases? The answer, according to database modernization experts at Databorough, Resolution Software, and TEMBO, is they aren’t doing much. The vast majority of IBM i ISVs continue to use traditional DDS and ISAM database technology and aren’t moving quickly to modern SQL and DDL. Eventually the ISVs will need to invest in database modernization if they want to keep the applications relevant in an SQL world.
Database modernization has been on the technology docket
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EMC and IBM Extend Pact, Unveil New IBM i Storage Technology
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
IBM and EMC yesterday announced an extension of their partnership concerning the IBM i server through 2017. The companies also announced a new D910 interface that allows IBM i shops to utilize the latest Virtual Partitioning and Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST VP) technologies in the EMC VMAX disk array, without running into limitations that previously were there.
IBM and EMC have worked together to support EMC’s external disk arrays on the IBM i platform since the companies laid down arms and signed a partnership deal in 2006. In 2010, the companies signed another five-year extension of that deal
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Infor SEC Filing Hints at IPO
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Infor made in August in connection with the refinance of old debt suggests the company is getting its affairs in order in anticipation of an initial public offering (IPO) of stock in the near future. The prospectus included with the filing detailed the company’s business strategy, but made no mention of IBM i or Infor’s many applications for the platform.
The 409-page S-4 filing dated August 23 contained a detailed prospectus, and was made in concert with an exchange offer that Infor recently made with nearly $2 billion in privately
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Agilysys Kills Guest360 Hotel System, Launches New Project
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
Agilysys has killed Guest360, its next-generation property management system that was originally designed to help Agilysys sell software to midsize hotels and casinos. With the Guest360 code firmly in the can, Agilysys executives have given the green light for a new group of developers to create a new property management system for midsize properties, most likely using Java.
Agilysys revealed Guest360 to the world more than four years ago. The software, which was being developed primarily in the Visual LANSA fourth generation language (4GL) development environment from LANSA, was slated to provide a multi-platform alternative to Agilysys’ IBM
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Arpeggio Launches Free Encryption and SFTP Tools for IBM i
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
Organizations looking to encrypt and move their IBM i backups offsite have another option to accomplish those tasks using new software from Arpeggio Software. The company is rolling out two new products, including an SSH-based FTP product called ARP-SFTP and an encryption and compression product called ARP-SAVE, that together can be used to protect IBM i data and backups. Best of all, the native IBM i software is entirely free.
ARP-SAVE replaces the save and restore commands of IBM i OS with new save and restore commands that execute Arpeggio’s encryption and compression routines. It is built on the
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LiveRebel 2.5 Accelerates the Java Deployment Cycle
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
ZeroTurnaround recently announced LiveRebel 2.5, a new release of its continuous integration enablement tool for accelerating the Java application deployment cycle in agile development environments.
LiveRebel provides the “last mile” connectivity for continuous integration and agile development environments. Once an agile team has finished its latest scrum, the software takes the Java code from there, and automates the process of setting up a test bed, running test scripts, and finally promoting the software into production.
Agile is great, because developers bring new features to market quickly, “rather than hiding under a blanket for two or six months before coming out
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Fresh App Certs Posted at PureSystems Centre
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
IBM i ISVs are gradually gaining certifications that ensure their software can run on the new PureSystems computers from IBM.
When IBM launched PureSystems back in April, there were about 150 applications certified to run on the PureFlex and PureApplication machines. Many familiar IBM i-based enterprise apps made the first cut, including those from Fiserv, HarrisData, Infor, Information Builders; Siemens Medical Solutions, and VAI. There were also some development and high availability tools from LANSA, Vision Solutions and Rocket Software.
Today, the PureSystems application roll call has grown to 242
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Halcyon Signs European Sales Partner
October 16, 2012 Alex Woodie
IBM i utility developer Halcyon Software is expanding its presence in Germany and Eastern Europe with a new partnership with pheron technologies.
Based in Frankfurt, Germany, pheron technologies provides a range of software and services for IBM i and X86 platforms, including security, compliance, disaster recovery, and business service management. The company is an IBM business partner, and also runs its own channel of partners in Germany and Eastern Europe.
The company will now be offering to European customers the breadth of Halcyon offerings, including its job scheduler, audit journal manager, authority swapper, storage manger, document management, message monitor,