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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Samba Patch Caps Busy Year for IBM i Security
December 4, 2019 Alex Woodie
IBM last week patched a moderately severe security flaw in IBM i’s Samba implementation that could enable hackers to access data they really shouldn’t be able to access. The disclosure caps a rather busy second half of the year for security patches on IBM i that saw 26 emergency PTFs and Yum updates for Node.js, Python, the Apache HTTP Server, OpenSSL, ISC Bind, IBM Navigator, and even Db2 Mirror for IBM i.
On November 26, IBM issued this security bulletin to let people know about the new flaw in the Samba client. The flaw could allow a hacker to not …
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Converge Technology Emerges As Reseller Powerhouse
December 2, 2019 Alex Woodie
Here’s a computer company you may not have heard about: Converge Technology Solutions. Over the past two years, the publicly traded Toronto, Canada-based company has completed numerous acquisitions of value added resellers (VARs) and private cloud providers that ply the IBM Power Systems waters – including Key Information Systems, Corus360, and Essex Technology Group, to name a few – and there’s no reason to think it will stop in 2020.
Converge Technology Solutions was founded in 2017, when it began executing its goal to acquire a number of smaller VARs and consolidate the “fragmented” reseller landscape, according to chief executive …
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No developerWorks Content Will Be Left Behind, IBM Promises
November 25, 2019 Alex Woodie
IBM faced a stiff backlash last month when it announced plans to shut down a popular developerWorks portal, leaving it up to content owners to find a new home for their content. Since then, the company has taken steps to reassure worried customers that no content will be lost as part of the move.
IBM hasn’t significantly changed its plans, which call for the developerWorks Connections website and all developerWorks Connections applications to be taken offline or deactivated on December 31 of this year. All of the content that is hosted there – including thousands of blogs, files, forums, wikis, …
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How Infor’s Coleman Strategy Is Evolving, and How IBM i Fits In
November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie
It’s been more than two years since Infor unveiled Coleman, the company’s AI platform which became generally available earlier this year. It’s not on the roadmap for IBM i just yet, according to Infor. That may not sound ideal for Infor’s IBM i customers, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Coleman was unveiled by ERP software giant Infor in 2017 primarily as a digital assistant, which is a fancy way of saying a chatbot. Just as Siri and Alexa can answer questions about the weather or sports, Coleman could answer basic questions about the business, and even handle some …
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Latest TRs For IBM i Now Available
November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie
IBM last week delivered the latest IBM i operating system Technology Refreshes, giving good IBM i boys and girls around the world early Christmas presents in areas like programing, operations, database, and security. Here’s a quick recap of the new stuff in IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7.
There were several general enhancements with IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7. For starters, administrators gained more control over resources available to the Integrated Web Server (the one powered by Apache) with the new capability to install it the Web server in a user-specified sub-system. Admins also get new functions …
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Who’s Watching i? The Kisco, Kid
November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie
Administrators today don’t have the time to sit at their consoles, waiting for things to happen. That’s a luxury that few are afforded. Instead, admins want to be notified when something happens – good, bad, or otherwise. One of the tools that makes this happen is Kisco’s iEventMonitor, which was recently upgraded with several new watch functions.
Kisco Information Systems launched iEventMonitor several years ago as an affordable utility for keeping an eye on IBM i job and message queues, as well as storage and CPU usage. When things start to go wrong on a monitored IBM i server, iEventMonitor …
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Microsoft Wants to Migrate Your IBM i Code to Azure
November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie
Microsoft is executing a plan with its partner Skytap to bring IBM i into its Azure cloud, as we’ve previously told you about. But another group within the technology giant has plans of its own to migrate IBM i applications to languages that can run natively on X86 servers and integrate more easily with Azure services.
We caught wind of this group’s code migration plan a month ago when one of the technical specialists in the Microsoft Azure Global Customer Advisory Team (CAT) wrote a blog entry about the work they do. IT Jungle followed up with the IBM i …
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Remain Hooks Change Management System Into GitLab
November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that manage their code using Remain Software’s change management software just gained a slew of new ways to hook their system into GitLab, an independent Git-based provider of DevOps solutions. The new software, TD/OMS V12 Milestone 1, also brings better integration with unit testing and cross referencing, while a new release of Remain’s Gravity bolsters management of cross-platform development projects.
With a steady cadence of quarterly updates and one big release per year, Remain Software is endearing itself to IBM i developers who like predictability and perseverance. IBM i technology may not be moving incredibly fast at …
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Db2 Web Query Lives On (Just Not V2.1)
November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie
There have been some rumors that IBM is going to sunset Db2 Web Query for i, or replace it with Cognos. Neither of those rumors is true, according to IBM, which recently made some changes to Db2 Web Query support.
Db2 Web Query for i, of course, is the OEM version of Information Builders flagship BI and analytics tool, WebFOCUS, that IBM brought to market in the 2007 timeframe. The Java-based tool enables users to write queries for the Db2 for i database (and other databases) and view the results in a variety of pre-canned and custom dashboards and reports. …
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On Your IBM i Radar Now: CCPA
November 11, 2019 Alex Woodie
Companies in the United States were understandably hesitant to comply with a European law dictating how they collect and use data about customers, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But American companies won’t so easily overlook the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), a GDPR-like law that goes into effect in 2020.
According to HelpSystems‘ 2019 IBM i Marketplace study released earlier this year, 28 percent of IBM i shops adhere to GPDR. That was up significantly from 2018 (the year when GDPR went into effect), when just 12 percent of IBM i shops followed the law. GDPR was the …
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