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.

• Security Vendor Shopping Spree Continues for HelpSystems

  June 9, 2021 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems quietly nabbed two more security software vendors last month, Agari and Beyond Security, just days after it brought on a new investor, a private equity firm called Harvest Partners Structured Capital.

  The deal to bring in Harvest Partners SCF, LP was announced on May 6, when HelpSystems announced that a definitive agreement has been signed for HP SCF to take a minority stake in the company, joining existing investors TA Associates, Charlesbank Capital Partners, HGGC, and HelpSystems employees.

  HP SCF principal Chris Peyser, who will take a place on HelpSystems board, lauded the Eden Prairie, Minnesota, company for its …

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• Forrester Consulting Weighs Costs, Benefits of IBM i

  June 7, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i supporters often cite the low cost of ownership, integrate nature, and self-management features of the platform as key advantages over competing systems. To try to put some actual data behind those assertions, IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting, which recently presented its findings in a report titled “The Total Economic Impact of IBM i.”

  To get an understanding of the IBM i server’s unique financial characteristics, Forrester Consulting, which is an offshoot of the main tech analyst firm called Forrester Research based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, interviewed four current users of the system. It collected data about the relative costs and …

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• Modern Tools For A Modern IBM i

  May 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops may be in for a rude awakening when they suddenly realize their applications are not keeping up with the times. How can these IBM i shops get on the right track in the modernization department? A trio of IBMers offered some tips.

  Brad Bentley, Tim Rowe, and Kris Whitney took to the virtual airwaves last week to present “IBM Tools for Modernizing Your IBM i Applications,” a one-hour webinar from IBM. Application modernization is an extremely broad topic, as the 266-page IBM Redbook of the (almost) same name will attest to, so they obviously didn’t cover …

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• Keeping Up With Open Source Security Updates

  May 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Open source is a source of technological innovation on IBM i, in multiple respects. But it also opens the platform up to additional security vulnerabilities. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of security patches, for the core operating system as well as the open source technologies that are helping to transform it.

  IBM does a good job of keeping up with security vulnerabilities are found in the operating system as well as the multitude of open source technologies that are included with it. In the last five weeks, IBM has issued several security bulletins for core open source …

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• PHP Decisions Loom as Original Distro Reaches End of Life

  May 24, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have five more weeks until Zend Server Basic, the PHP runtime used by thousands of IBM i shops over the years, reaches end of life and will no longer be offered, supported, or updated with security fixes. Customers that want to continue using PHP safely beyond July 1 will need to obtain a new license or move to a new PHP runtime.

  The long history of Zend Server Basic stretches all the way back to 2006, which was the year when the PHP runtime became one of the first open source technologies to be adapted to run …

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• COMMON Heads To Ohio With Hybrid NAViGATE Event

  May 24, 2021 Alex Woodie

  COMMON this week is welcoming members back to its first in-person event in over a year. The physical fun will commence in Columbus, Ohio, where it will hold its NAViGATE conference for both in-person and online attendees this Monday through Wednesday.

  More than 250 sessions will be presented by 100-plus IBM i experts during COMMON’s three-day show. Each session will take place live (as opposed to being pre-recorded, which became quite common during COVID-19) and will be available to folks who travelled to the Columbus venues as well as to people logging in over the Internet.

  The NAViGATE schedule …

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• Ransomware Epidemic Hits Epic Proportions, And IBM i Shops Take Notice

  May 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The ransomware outbreak hit home for millions of Americans last week when attackers shut down a major East Coast pipeline as well as a hospital network on the West Coast. For IBM i shops, the events are a potent reminder to re-evaluate network security and data protection systems to ensure they’re resilient from attack.

  You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching an episode of Mr. Robot last week as news spread of the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline network, which provides 45 percent of the gasoline for the entire East Coast of the United States through 5,500 miles of …

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• Precisely To Bolster Data Governance With Infogix Buy

  May 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The private equity groups that own Precisely (formerly Syncsort) last week announced a plan to acquire Infogix, a provider of data governance software and related tools designed to boost trust in data. While there is some overlap with Precisely’s current software, particularly in data quality, the company says Infogix’s offerings will bolster its overall data integrity story. For IT Jungle readers, the fact that Infogix has IBM i software may be of interest.

  Infogix has a long history in the IT business going back to 1982, when Madhaven Nayar founded the company in Naperville, Illinois as Unitech Systems. For decades, …

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• RPG Gets the ‘Splits’ with Latest TRs

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 wasn’t a barnburner by any means. But the twice-yearly update brought a little bit of new stuff for everybody, including RPG programmers, who gain three new built-in functions, one of which is called %SPLIT.

  RPG remains the most popular language on the IBM i platform, with a solid 87 percent share, according to the recent HelpSystems Marketplace Report, nearly twice the share of Java and over four times the share of COBOL. Good old Report Program Generator, for what it’s worth, is the closest thing to the …

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• Guardicore Extends Zero-Trust Security to IBM i

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Guardicore, which is trying to shake up the firewall market with its “micro segmentation” security solution, recently announced that it has extended its “zero-trust” approach to the IBM i platform. The offering will help IBM i shops close blind spots in their security posture by monitoring the server for signs of problems, the company says.

  Guardicore develops a software-based security solution called Centra that uses a micro segmentation approach to protecting IT assets from evolving security threats. Micro segmentation is a relatively new approach to cybersecurity that revolves around the concept of breaking the network down into multiple segments or …

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