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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SrinSoft CEO Ram Hari’s Long Road on IBM i
February 9, 2022 Alex Woodie
Ram Hari has had the sort of IT career that many dream of. Hired in the late 1990s as a Y2K programmer, the India native climbed the corporate IT ranks, and today runs his own 500-person consulting company called SrinSoft. The New York City-based company offers a range of IT services, but with interest in IBM i modernization and migrations spiking during COVID, Hari is finding it hard to satisfy demand.
Hari’s career started in 1995, soon after earning an undergraduate degree in computer science and electric engineering from a university in India. After getting his RPG certification, he was …
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Digital Integration Hubs Emerge To Accelerate Transformations
February 7, 2022 Alex Woodie
A new design pattern called a digital integration hub is emerging to help organizations with legacy applications reap the benefits of digital transformation — not by moving off battle-hardened platforms and legacy ERP systems, but by piping data from them into a fast, new data store that interfaces with Web services.
Former Gartner analyst Massimo Pezzini is credited with popularizing the digital integration hub (DIH) concept in 2019. The DIH essentially is a fast database, often implemented atop in-memory technology, that stores the data required to serve new applications implemented as part of a digital transformation project, such as big …
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Security Again Top Concern in HelpSystems Marketplace Study
February 2, 2022 Alex Woodie
If you’re concerned about cybersecurity in your organization, you’re not alone. According to the latest IBM i Marketplace Study from HelpSystems, cybersecurity and ransomware were the top concern of IBM i customers, beating out HA/DR, application modernization, and IBM i skills.
About 450 IBM i shops from around the world participated in HelpSystems 2022 IBM i Marketplace survey, the eighth year in a row the survey has been conducted. Security has been the number one concern of survey-takers for the past five years, during which security has garnered anywhere from 69 percent to 75 percent of respondents’ votes.
For the …
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Infor Touts Benefits of Industry-Specific ERP
February 2, 2022 Alex Woodie
Infor executives took to the digital airwaves last week to discuss the company’s strategy for delivering industry-specific ERP solutions, which they claimed can deliver better functionality to customers in less time, with lower costs and fewer risks.
The fear of time-consuming, expensive, and risky customizations is palpable among enterprises, Infor CEO Kevin Samuelson said during a roundtable with fellow Infor executives at last week’s Inforum Digital event.
“The reality is, when we go in to talk to a customer, they’re nervous because there’s a reputation for projects taking too long, costing much more than expected, and companies ultimately not getting …
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No Kyndryl Involved in IBM i Tech Support, Jarman Says
February 2, 2022 Alex Woodie
The org chart has been on an extended spin cycle lately at IBM, with the spin out of the Global Technology Services (GTS) business into Kyndryl as well as the merging of IBM Lab Services and the Services and Support Group. But unless you’re signed up for its IBM i cloud service or had some other arrangement with GTS, you likely won’t be calling on Kyndryl for technical support.
The question of Kyndryl’s current role with the IBM i customer base came up during the recent webinar HelpSystems held to discuss its 2022 IBM i Marketplace Report. Ian Jarman, …
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DSC Bullish On IBM i Cloud Growth
January 31, 2022 Alex Woodie
You may know Data Storage Corporation as the company that provides hosted high availability and disaster recovery services. But the New York company has moved beyond its roots in data storage with its fast-growing cloud hosting business, where it runs hundreds of IBM i environments on behalf of its customers. With the great cloud migration just starting for Power customers, there’s a considerable upside for companies like DSC.
Data Storage Corporation was one of the first IBM business partners to get into the cloud business. It started building its IBM i cloud in earnest in late 2012, and launched it …
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Is COBOL on IBM i Experiencing a Renaissance?
January 26, 2022 Alex Woodie
There is no doubt that RPG is the dominant language when it comes to IBM i development. But there are some indications that more interest in COBOL may be brewing in IBM i circles, particularly among customers of a certain size and industry segment.
COBOL has been on the mind of Dan Magid, the CEO of data integration software developer Eradani. That will happen when large banks come out of the blue and ask you to support COBOL in your product, which Eradani did with its data integration middleware for IBM i.
“What’s been interesting for us is, we …
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Midrange Optimism for In-Person Events in 2022
January 26, 2022 Alex Woodie
If you’re hankering to reconnect with your IBM i colleagues in person this year, we have good news for you: In-person events are set to make a comeback in 2022. COMMON’s annual POWERUp conference in New Orleans in May tops the list, but many other groups are making their physical comebacks, too.
COMMON president Gordon Leary is eager to bring the world’s largest IBM i user group back into the physical fold starting May 23, when the POWERUp 2022 conference kicks off at the New Orleans Marriott. So are a lot of COMMON members who haven’t seen each other in …
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Companies Still Grappling with Economic Woes
January 26, 2022 Alex Woodie
We’re nearly 23 months into the pandemic, but COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on how we work and play. Companies that make and move goods — a core constituency of the IBM i installed base — have been hit particularly hard by the COVID-induced kink in the supply chain, but rising prices and inflation aren’t far behind.
The United States is in the middle of a remarkable economic period that few experts (if any) predicted. For that, you can thank your friendly neighborhood coronavirus, which put into motion a series of events, many with unforeseeable consequences, that continues to ripple …
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EvolveWare Sees Growing Demand for Application Rehoming
January 24, 2022 Alex Woodie
The COVID-19 pandemic has acted like an accelerant for IT modernization, as companies seek a better technical base upon which to launch new digital initiatives, often from the cloud. At EvolveWare, which specializes in migrating applications, 2021 brought a flood of business migrating applications off legacy systems, including big iron systems from IBM, and 2022 looks to be just as busy.
Miten Marfatia founded EvolveWare back in 2001 to address what he predicted would be a surge in application modernization in the new millennium. Marfatia had put quite a bit of thought into the company’s business model, and figured there …
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