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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.

  • Inside Avatier’s Goals to Modernize Identity Management

    September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie

    When Nelson Cicchitto founded Avatier back in 1997, the company focused on providing identity management and access for a single platform: Windows NT. Nearly three decades later, the company’s core goals around enabling identity management and access haven’t changed, but the its platform reach and technical capabilities certainly have grown, as Cicchitto said in an exclusive IT Jungle interview.

    You may not have heard much about Avatier, the small Pleasanton, California-based developer of identity and access management solutions that’s been quietly building a base of 500 customers around the world. As far as IBM i vendors goes, the company …

    Read more
  • Shield Revs HA Software for IBM i

    September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Companies protecting their IBM i servers with Shield Advanced Solutions’ HA4i will enjoy several new capabilities when they upgrade to the latest release, including faster save while active processing, improved object compression, and new Nagios monitoring functions, among other enhancements.

    Shield Advanced Solutions has been developing and selling an IBM i high availability solution since 2007, when it rolled out Receiver Apply Program/400 (RAP/400), which it dubbed “DR for the masses.” In 2010, the Toronto-area company overhauled that product and debuted its replacement, HA4i at version 6.1. Over the ensuing years, Shield steadily added new features to the …

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  • GenAI Is Now Creating Malware Delivery Vehicles

    September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie

    As if the threat posed by human bad actors wasn’t enough to admins up at night, security professionals are now tasked with preparing defenses for AI actors, including malware created by generative AI. That’s the takeaway from a new report published this month by HP that documents GenAI-generated malware. IBM i security professionals should take note.

    The September 2024 edition of the HP Wolf Security Threat Insights Report brought some concerning news around GenAI. While the HP Wolf Security team had seen convincing phishing lures created by GenAI, it hadn’t seen any actual malicious code written by GenAI before.

    But …

    Read more
  • Making Basic IT Services Great Again

    September 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

    The focus of the tech world has been squarely on generative AI since ChatGPT descended the golden staircase and entered our hearts and minds in late 2022. Since then, building GenAI apps and services has become the number one priority for businesses around the globe. Unfortunately, the GenAI fixation has come at the detriment of basic IT services, a recent IBM study suggests.

    The level of hype for generative AI the past two years has been off the chart. Not since the initial dot-com boom of the late 1990s has a new technology triggered such a tsunami of interest, some …

    Read more
  • GenAI Interest ‘Exploding’ for Modernization on IBM i and Z, Kyndryl Says

    September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

    There’s been an explosion of interest in using generative AI on IBM i and System Z servers, according to Kyndryl’s latest report on mainframe modernization. Hybrid IT, security, the skills gap, and observability round out the top five trends impacting the IBM midrange and mainframe platforms.

    Last year, Kyndryl contracted with Coleman Parkes Research to survey about 500 senior IT leaders at IBM i and System Z mainframe shops around the world. That effort turned into the 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which we covered here.

    Many of the same modernization trends that the former IBM Global …

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  • Remain Bolsters Development Options with TD/OMS

    September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

    Remain Software recently rolled out a major upgrade to its change management software for IBM i. The big enhancements with TD/OMS 16.1 include the availability of Remain’s Web-based development framework, dubbed Octo, as well as support for the popular Web-based IDE, VS Code.

    Remain Software introduced Octo more than two years ago as a lightweight Web-based framework to unite its various IBM i offerings. Short for Open Core for Technology Orchestration, Octo was initially put forward as a way to integrate and display information from other Remain Software applications, such as TD/OMS, Gravity, API Studio, and MiWorkplace, its lightweight, Web-based …

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  • Summer of IBM i Vulnerabilities

    September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

    IBM has patched more than two dozen software vulnerabilities in the IBM i stack over the past few months, including flaws in Merlin, MQ, OpenSSH, the Java stack, Db2, Performance Tools, and the HTTP Server (the one powered by Apache). Nine of the security vulnerabilities carry CVSS Base scores of 7 or higher, while one is above 8, making these serious security threats. If you haven’t applied the patches yet, you’re encouraged to do it soon.

    Working backwards from the most recent security bulletins, we start with September 5, when IBM issued patches for three vulnerabilities in Merlin, which officially …

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  • Ethical Hackers Discuss Penetration Work On IBM i

    September 16, 2024 Alex Woodie

    The IBM i server is heralded as a secure platform, but in reality, it is susceptible to a range of attacks, including common ones and others that are unique to the platform. To help push the security ball forward and encourage secure IBM i configurations, researchers from Silent Signal recently discussed their latest work during a European ethical hacking conference.

    In just a few years working on IBM i, Bálint Varga-Perke and Zoltan Panczel, the co-founders of the Hungarian company Silent Signal, have identified a handful security vulnerabilities on the platform, including a moderate security flaw in DDN in …

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  • IBM Clarifies Where It’s Going with IBM i Subscriptions, Product Realignment

    September 11, 2024 Alex Woodie

    As an avid IT Jungle reader, you’re probably aware that IBM is moving its IBM i software stack from a traditional licensing scheme to one based on subscriptions. The company is in the middle of the move at the moment, and it’s also in the middle of a product realignment, which has been the source of some confusion. IBM hosted a webinar recently that helped to clarify where it’s at now with the shift to subscriptions and the product realignment, and where it’s going in the future.

    IBM first announced back in May 2022 that it was shifting to subscription-based …

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  • COMMON to Kick Off First of Two Fall NAViGATE Shows

    September 11, 2024 Alex Woodie

    What’s better than having one fall COMMON conference to learn new IBM i skills and meet with other midrange folks? The answer, of course, is to hold two NAViGATE shows – one in sizzling Florida next week, followed by a second event in November in the cooler climate of Toronto, Ontario.

    The IBM i community will converge on the Gulf Coast of Florida next week for NAViGATE 2024 Bonita Springs, which is being held at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point from Monday September 16 through Wednesday September 18.

    Hundreds of attendees are expected at the fall COMMON conference next week, …

    Read more

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