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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IBM Delivered An RDi Update, Too
November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie
Next week, IBM is planning to deliver the PTFs that include the functionality contained in the Technology Refreshes it just unveiled for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 last month. You will want to stay on the lookout for those updates. But some of the capabilities that IBM “announced” in the TRs shipped months ago, including those for Rational Developer for i (RDi).
The latest release of RDi, or version 9.6.0.8, was included as a feature for IBM i 7.3 TR9 and IBM i 7.4 TR4. IBM, of course, announced those TRs on October 6 and says it plans to …
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Racksquared Is Another Option For IBM i Private Cloud
November 2, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that are looking for a private cloud to run their IBM i applications may want to check out Racksquared. The Columbus, Ohio-based managed services provider rents Power and IBM i resources to its clients, who, the company says, turn to it because of the increasing difficulty in finding IBM i expertise.
Racksquared was founded in 2011 when a 118-year-old restaurant supply distributor called the Wasserstrom Company spun out its IT department into a separate entity. Wasserstrom had outgrown the server room at its headquarters, so it bought and renovated an old AT&T Wireless data center in downtown …
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FalconStor Offers ProtecTIER Migration Deal to IBM i Shops
October 28, 2020 Alex Woodie
FalconStor Software is ramping up a new program to help IBM i shops migrate away from their IBM ProtecTIER virtual tape library (VTL) devices, which IBM has killed. The migration program essentially provides an extra 12 months of support for ProtecTIER devices for $999 per month, giving IBM i shops more time to make the switch to FalconStor’s own StorSafe offering.
On February 13, 2018, IBM announced a statement of direction to cease support for various ProtecTIER hardware devices and the software that runs on them. IBM’s plan called for it to stop selling the devices in in June 2018, …
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Kisco Locks Down IBM i Report Distribution
October 28, 2020 Alex Woodie
Users will gain more control over how their IBM i spool files are distributed and displayed, with a new release of WebReport/i, which is Kisco Information Systems’ spool file utility automatically reformatting and distributing spool files.
WebReport/i can reformat IBM i spool files in a variety of different ways. It can change them into HTML, RTF, PDF, XLS, XLSX, TIF or CSV formats, and it can also distribute them via HTTP, FTP, email, Google Drive, Dropbox, and even fax.
With Release 14, which was unveiled earlier this month, Kisco has shored up the security of the product. Specifically, when posting …
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Tech Refresh Brings New RPG Features
October 26, 2020 Alex Woodie
There’s no denying that IBM has a soft spot for open source these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s given up on the ILE environment. In fact, IBM gave RPG programmers something to cheer about by including several new features in the language in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes.
IBM introduced over a dozen new open source capabilities with the IBM i 7.3 TR9 and 7.4 TR3, which IBM unveiled earlier this month and which will ship in a few weeks. That new tech will definitely help IBM i shops tackle their business challenges, says Steve Will, the chief …
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Profound and Connectria Hook Up in Cloud-Modernization Push
October 21, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i modernization tool provider Profound Logic and Connectria, one of the biggest private cloud providers for IBM i, announced a strategic partnership last week. The goal of the union, representatives with both companies say, is to give their respective IBM i customers a leg up as they seek to streamline their IT systems.
Matt Biegacki, the vice president and chief marketing officer for Connectria, and Michael Killian, the vice president of strategic accounts for Profound Logic, shared their thoughts on the partnership during a call with IT Jungle this week.
From Profound Logic’s perspective, the partnership with …
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Recovery Point Provides Another Option for Full-Service DR
October 21, 2020 Alex Woodie
When it comes to full-service disaster recovery firms, most IBM i shops are aware of IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services (BCRS) and Sungard, the two giants of the space. But there’s a third, slightly smaller option that nevertheless should be on their list: Recovery Point Systems of Germantown, Maryland.
Recovery Point was formed nearly four decades ago to serve the document storage needs of businesses and organizations near the nation’s capital. As tape storage took off, the company evolved its business plan and served as secure repository for tape storage, sort of a regional Iron Mountain.
Today, Recovery Point …
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Big Blue Bolsters IBM i High Availability And Data Resiliency
October 19, 2020 Alex Woodie
High availability and data resiliency are critical topics in the minds of business owners these days, especially in light of the summer’s disasters, both natural and manmade. To that end, in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, IBM has bolstered the services that provide high availability and data resilience in IBM i, PowerHA, and BRMS.
Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) is the licensed product that thousands of IBM i shops use to automate their backups and recoveries. Those backups usually involving tape, which was cited by 48 percent of IBM i shops in the 2020 IBM i Marketplace Survey …
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Fresche Unveils X-Replay for 5250 Testing
October 14, 2020 Alex Woodie
Fresche this week rolled out X-Replay, a new tool designed to automate the testing of 5250 greenscreen applications. Unlike other tools that work on screengrabs or X-Y coordinates, X-Replay software works at the field-name level, which makes test scripts more resilient to change, according to Fresche, which now boasts a complete lineup of IBM i testing tools.
Fresche has been providing tools for IBM i testing for a while now, mainly with X-Analysis, its cross-reference analysis tool, as well as X-Dataset, which ensures good management and security of data involved in testing. However, when it comes to testing 5250 screens …
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IBM Brings More Open Source to IBM i
October 14, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM has brought an array of new open source packages to its IBM i operating system with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, including tools for application developers and systems administrators. It’s all part of IBM’s strategy to keep IBM i on the cutting edge through open source, says IBM’s business architect Jesse Gorzinski.
Before IBM unveiled IBM i 7.4 TR3 and 7.3 TR9 last week, we’d already written extensively about many the open source package that IBM has brought to the platform. For instance, we told you earlier this year how Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper were running on …
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