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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Here Come The AI-Based Code Modernization Offerings
April 6, 2026 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that are stuck with old code but don’t have the manpower to modernize it themselves are now considering the use of AI to handle much work. This new era of AI-assisted application modernization that we are now entering has the potential to be a boon for understaffed IBM i shops, but it raises new questions and concerns that IBM i professionals should keep in mind.
The capability of AI to understand, document, and generate computer code has increased significantly over the past year. Thanks to fundamental improvements in large language models (LLMs), we’re now at the point …
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What IBM i Ideas Are Cooking In IBM’s Ideas Portal?
March 30, 2026 Alex Woodie
It is early spring, which means we are getting close to Technology Refresh (TR) time. What new functionality will IBM add to the IBM i operating system and related products? Nobody knows except IBM and its closest business partners, but we can get an idea of what might be cooking in the next IBM i TR by checking out the IBM Ideas Portal.
The IBM Ideas Portal was implemented back in 2022 to replace the IBM Request for Enhancement (RFE) process, which IBM formalized with a Web-based voting and ranking system back in 2016. The Ideas Portal works as …
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Early Bob Excels In Medhost IBM i Tryout
March 30, 2026 Alex Woodie
One of the early testers of the IBM Bob AI tool is Medhost, the longtime developer of an integrated IBM i-based healthcare applications for community and rural hospitals. According to a joint presentation between IBM and the software vendor last week, the beta test was a success, as Bob assisted Medhost in not only understanding its RPG and SQL codebases, but modernizing and enhancing them.
IBM i chief architect Steve Will was joined by Michael Bowen, the senior vice president of technology at Medhost, in a webinar last week to discuss how the provider of electronic health records (EHR) …
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IBM Taps Nvidia GPUs For AI-Turbocharged Data Mart
March 23, 2026 Alex Woodie
Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company thanks to its powerful GPUs, which can be used to train massive AI models containing trillions of parameters. But those GPUs can also be used to accelerate traditional SQL analytics on structured data sitting in a data lake, as IBM’s customer Nestlé found out in a recent deployment.
Nestlé is the world’s largest food manufacturer, with more than 2,000 brands and operations spanning 186 countries. The Swiss company, which recorded revenues of CHF 89.5 billion ($113.5 billion at current exchange rates), operates 335 factories and employs about 271,000 people.
The company, which is …
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Izzi Partners With Capricorn For IBM i Services And Bluehouse For Software Peddling
March 23, 2026 Alex Woodie
UPDATED: Izzi Software has partnered with a pair of companies with connections to IBM midrange and mainframe systems, including Capricorn Information Systems, a New York provider of IBM i technical services, and Bluehouse, a software distributor with a global network of sellers.
Izzi emerged in early 2025 with a goal to buy smaller, founder-led software companies with revenues in the range of $2 million to $10 million who play in the IBM i and System Z markets. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company has made a handful of acquisitions to date, including System Z development tool provider Colesoft in 2025, …
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What Is Threatening IBM i Security Now
March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie
The nature of cybersecurity threats is always changing, which requires constant vigilance by those who value security. IBM i is just as exposed to threats as any other networked operating system on the planet, but it’s also unique in certain ways, which actually makes security harder. To get the lowdown on how these phenomena interrelate in the first quarter of 2026, we turn to renown IBM i security expert Carol Woodbury from Kisco.
Woodbury recently sat down with Justin Loeber, the Kisco owner and head of business development, to present a webinar titled IBM i Threat Landscape 2026: A Fireside …
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GiAPA Tracks SQL Performance Issues On IBM i
March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie
Tracking down SQL performance problems with IBM i applications sometimes can be difficult, thanks to the mysterious ways that IBM’s Db2 query optimizer works. To help shine a light on changes the optimizer may suddenly make to query access plans, the IBM i performance experts behind GiAPA developed a new tool, dubbed SQL Observer.
The Db2 query optimizer is a wonder of software engineering. The IBMers who developed it deserve a ton of credit for creating a smart piece of software that keeps SQL queries running so efficiently. Users simply submit the query they want to run, and the …
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LegacyBridge Uses AI To Automate Data Entry On 5250 Screens
March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that are interested in eliminating manual data entry on 5250 screens may be interested in a new AI-based offering from a startup called LegacyBridge. According to the product’s developer, LegacyBridge uses computer vision and language AI technology not only to understand the information on source documents like PDFs, but also to navigate the 5250 screen and enter the pertinent data into the appropriate field.
You could say that Dmitrijs Tarasovs is an automation afficionado. “I’ve had a thing for automating boring, time-consuming tasks long before the AI boom,” he told IT Jungle in an email interview. “Finding …
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IBM Launches Hybrid Cloud Backup Product With Cobalt Iron
March 9, 2026 Alex Woodie
IBM and its business partner Cobalt Iron last week announced the launch of a new cloud backup product. Dubbed Secure Automated Backup with Compass for IBM Cloud, the new SaaS offering can protect data residing across customers’ landscape, including IBM Cloud, other clouds, and on-prem systems like IBM i.
Cobalt Iron was founded in 2013 with the goal of modernizing backup and recovery. Founder Richard Spurlock saw that companies were spending too much time with platform-specific backup products, so he decided to build a centralized virtual tape library (VTL) solution that could back up and recover data across a range …
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IBM Gets Bob 1.0 Off The Ground
March 2, 2026 Alex Woodie
IBM this month finally will get a coding co-pilot into the hands of its IBM i installed base with the launch of Bob. The general availability of Bob 1.0.0 on March 24 will mark the end of the long wait for IBM i customers – and in particular, the large population of RPG developers – to start using IBM-branded AI software to maintain and develop IBM i software.
The world of generative AI moves quickly, as the large language models (LLMs) from frontier providers improve on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This is both exciting, as the capabilities of …
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