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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.

  • POWERUp Delivers A Virtual Shot in the IBM i Arm

    September 21, 2020 Alex Woodie

    The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused COMMON to cancel its in-person conference – twice – but it couldn’t stop the group from bringing the IBM i community closer together. Thanks to modern video conferencing technology and the last-minute efforts of volunteers and staff members, COMMON pulled off what may be the group’s most unique annual meeting in its 60-year history.

    COMMON president Larry Bolhuis certainly earned his keep as the head of the national IBM i user group during the tumultuous past six months. The leader, who doesn’t actually get paid for his work with the Chicago, Illinois-based organization, helped …

    Read more
  • LTO-9 Specs Reveal Compromise

    September 16, 2020 Alex Woodie

    The three companies behind the linear tape-open (LTO) tape standard released the specifications for LTO-9 last week. Those looking for a doubling of capacity over LTO-8, which was the plan according to the group’s product roadmap, will be disappointed.

    Tapes based on the just-released LTO-9 specification will be able to store 18TB without compression and 45TB of data with 2.5-to-1 compression turned on, the LTO Program announced last week.

    Those capacities represent just a 50 percent increase over LTO-8’s specifications. However, according to the LTO Program roadmap published in 2017, the group had been targeting 30TB of native capacity and …

    Read more
  • OpenLegacy Expands Big Data Partnerships

    September 16, 2020 Alex Woodie

    Over the past few months, OpenLegacy has established new partnerships with a handful of tech firms patrolling the big data waters, including Talend, Collibra, and BigID. According to the legacy application modernization specialist, it’s all part of an effort to help its IBM i and mainframe customers upgrade their applications and experiences.

    OpenLegacy is unique among IBM i modernization vendors in its approach. The company’s software allows customers to expose legacy applications, such as those written in RPG, via APIs and Web services.

    Now the company is bringing several partners into that API-driven approach. For instance, its partnership with Talend …

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  • Jenkins Gets Closer IBM i Hooks, Courtesy Of ARCAD

    September 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

    For some time, IBM i shops have been behind the curve when it comes to using modern DevOps and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) technologies and techniques. ARCAD Software has been working to close that gap through its work with Git and Jenkins, and thanks to its new integration with an enterprise version of Jenkins from CloudBees, the gap is pretty much closed — at least from a technology point of view.

    Jenkins, if you don’t know yet, is a popular open source project that allows DevOps professionals to build, test, and deploy their software as part of a CI/CD …

    Read more
  • A Guide To This Week’s Virtual POWERUp 2020

    September 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

    Sidelined by the COVID-19 epidemic, POWERUp 2020 takes flight today as a virtual conference. COMMON, which is celebrating its 60th birthday this year, has put together hundreds of sessions over the next four days to help its IBM i user base get the latest out of IBM technology. And with many sessions taking place live, there will be lots of chances to go one-on-one.

    In a typical year, POWERUp would be the biggest event on the IBM i schedule, a place to meet a thousand of your closest IBM i friends and get up-to-speed with the latest tech from IBM …

    Read more
  • Apache Kafka And Zookeeper Now Supported On IBM i

    September 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

    IBM quietly added support for two open source technologies, Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper, on IBM i. Both projects are critical elements of emerging distributed computing frameworks in the big data space, although they have very different uses.

    Apache Zookeeper is a core underlying technology for enabling distributed computing and ensuring that applications running atop Zookeeper are highly resilient. The software functions as a centralized service for keeping track of nodes in a cluster, and for synchronizing data and services among the different nodes.

    All of the nodes in a Zookeeper cluster have access to a shared hierarchical namespace. If …

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  • COVID-19 Delivers 2020 Clarity for Omnichannel

    September 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

    The viral pandemic is impacting society in profound and multi-faceted ways. In the consumer goods supply chain, which includes a good chunk of IBM i shops, COVID-19 is forcing manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to get a lot nimbler in a hurry — particularly as it relates to diversifying sales channels and embracing omnichannel fulfillment strategies.

    Ecommerce has exploded during COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns, as consumers elect to make purchases online instead of venturing into stores, which raises the risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus. According to Adobe Analytics’ Digital Economy Index, ecommerce spending surged by 78 …

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  • JD Edwards Co-Founder McVaney Leaves A Legacy

    September 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

    Ed McVaney, who emerged from a frugal childhood in Nebraska to eventually lead one of the most successful enterprise software companies in the world, died this past June at the age of 79.

    McVaney is best remembered as the co-founder and CEO of JD Edwards, the Denver, Colorado-based company that would become known as the gold-standard for ERP software on the AS/400 and its predecessor and successor machines. In 2016, more than a decade after JD Edwards was sold to PeopleSoft, McVaney founded NextWorld, a cloud ERP software company that is run by his daughter, Kylee.

    McVaney was the …

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  • Visual LANSA Customers Can Now ‘Portalize’ Their Apps

    September 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

    LANSA is well known to IBM i shops for its low-code developer tools. But the company also has its share of shrink-wrapped applications. With the recent launch of pre-build Web portal called Portalize, it’s added another to its collection.

    Portalize is a portal framework that Visual LANSA customers can use to get a secure Web portal up and running with a minimal amount of effort. The product, which LANSA introduced in June, supplies the core components that an organization would need to get a portal off the ground, such as security, account creation, authentication, and logging capabilities.

    The software, which …

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  • CNX Releases Beta of Valence 6.0

    September 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

    CNX last week announced the beta release of Valence 6.0, the newest version of its Web development framework and portal for IBM i. Valence 6.0 brings a whole new look and feel to Web applications created with Valence, as well as updates to administrative functions, the data access layer, and more.

    Valence is a set of tools for creating Web and mobile applications that run under IBM i’s Apache Web server and access existing RPG business logic. The product has several components, including a JavaScript library; a set of RPG procedures for integrating various JavaScript libraries (Ext JS, React, or …

    Read more

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