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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2025 IBM i Predictions, Part Three
January 27, 2025 Alex Woodie
What will happen this year in the little neck of the IT wood that we call the IBM i community? It’s hard to say for sure, but one thing is certain: It sure a lot of fun guessing what might happen or what could happen! And who knows? Some of these predictions may actually come true.
After 20 years with IBM i software vendor PKS Software, Heidi Schmidt has seen a thing or two in the midrange. There have been many ups and downs over the years, and a wide array of names. But Schmidt is bullish that the …
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2025 IBM i Predictions, Part Two
January 20, 2025 Alex Woodie
With new wall calendars and a new (old) guy in the White House, change is in the air as we start off 2025. That much was obvious from the first installment of IBM i predictions, which ran last week. This second batch of predictions may be even bolder than the first.
We’re in the midst of a shakeup in the tech job market, thanks to several years of elevated inflation, emergence of cloud computing, and new technologies like AI. How does that impact the IBM i job market? For insight, we turn to Bob Langieri, the owner of Excel Technical …
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Beta For RPG Coding Assistant On Track for 2Q25
January 20, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM is ramping up development of the AI-based RPG Code Assist and expects to have a working prototype ready for testing by the end of the first quarter, IBM i chief technology officer Steve Will said in a webinar last month. The goal is to have a beta ready for during the second quarter and general availability hopefully in the second half of the year, he added.
Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini have taken the world by storm, and companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the nascent tech to gain …
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2025 IBM i Predictions, Part One
January 13, 2025 Alex Woodie
The new year is shaping up to be a big one for IBM i. A new release of the operating system is expected, as is a new processor and new servers built with them. Old utilities are slated to get the axe, but no one is quite sure how far IBM will cut. And then of course there’s what will happen in the IBM i community, which is where we turn for insight into what comes next.
We start this year’s batch of IBM i predictions with Charlie Guarino, the president of Central Park Data Systems and the resident expert …
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IBM Pulls Back The Covers On Migrate While Active
January 13, 2025 Alex Woodie
Last month, IBM began selling subscriptions to Migrate While Active, a new offering designed to speed and simplify the migrations of IBM i workloads from customers’ on-prem installations to Power Virtual Server running in IBM Cloud. Big Blue also last month hosted an online Guided Tour webinar that provided some much-needed answers to questions about the new offering.
IBM launched the Migrate While Active in late October, a couple of weeks after unveiling the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5. IBM didn’t provide a lot of initial information on the new offering, which was designed to …
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How ERP Giants Are Building GenAI Into Their Products
December 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
We are still near the top of Gartner’s hype curve when it comes to generative AI. Larger companies that have discipline and money, and startups with time and ambition, are finding success with GenAI, but many organizations are still in the planning and roll-out phase. The same could be said for ERP vendors, who have started their GenAI journeys but are expected to ramp up adoption significantly in the years to come.
Since the dawn of the mainframe age, computers have automated the work that was previously done by people. Large armies of file clerks were no longer needed once …
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2024: An IBM i Year In Review
December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie
It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to a close. As 2024 rolls to its merciful end, it’s time for us to take stock of the major events and announcements that impacted the IBM i community.
January
News broke in late January that revenue in IBM’s Power Systems business grew for the second year in a row in 2023. TPM’s model showed $1.53 billion in external Power Systems sales for the year, which was a hair above the 2022 figure, which was a hair above the 2021 figure. It’s not 2010-era numbers, when the figure was north …
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Security Top of Mind as Massive Hacks Continue
December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie
The calendar indicates peace and joy, but instead a sense of dread and fear permeates business, as the number and scope of security breaches grows and new regulations loom on the horizon. Ransomware, in particular, is proving itself to be a thorny issue for companies of all sizes, including IBM i shops.
The latest mega-hack involved Chinse state actors infiltrating the American telecommunications backbone, where they not only accessed huge numbers of call detail records (CDRs) – which they used for counter-espionage purposes – but also read text messages and listened to Americans’ phone calls.
Known as Salt Typhoon, the …
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Stop Coding In C and C++, Feds Say
December 2, 2024 Alex Woodie
Two federal agencies asked the IT world last month to stop developing applications in memory unsafe languages like C and C++ and to come up with roadmaps to migrate existing apps. While the security alert is unlikely to have a major impact on IBM i application development, the C family of languages does have a presence on the IBM midrange server that will be very tough to remove.
Organizations should immediately stop developing new applications written in memory unsafe languages like C and C++, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) warned last …
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IBM’s Fall 2024 Code for IBM i Enhancements
November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie
Adoption of Code for i continues to soar among IBM i developers, as they shift from heavy, expensive integrated development environments (IDEs) to lighter, open-source options. With the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i, IBM is making the VS Code plug-in even more useful for RPG and COBOL developers.
Code for IBM i is the brainchild of Liam Allan, the midrange wunderkind with an intense aversion to Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), IBM’s Java-based flagship IDE for IBM i. As adoption of the VS Code extension grew in the summer of 2022, IBM smartly hired Allan as a …
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