• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact

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.

  • PSPS: The Latest Threat To Business Continuity

    November 6, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Businesses in Northern California learned about a new threat to business continuity in October: the Public Safety Power Shutoff, or PSPS. With weather conditions ripe for the rapid spread of wildfire, Pacific Gas and Electric de-energized thousands of miles of power lines, sending thousands of homes and businesses into disaster recovery mode.

    In late September, as weather conditions turned dry, hot, and windy, PG&E warned that it would have to cut power across large swaths of its Northern California service territory, potentially shutting off power to 2.4 million people. In the wake of power line-sparked wildfires that destroyed tens of …

    Read more
  • Microsoft Elaborates On Its IBM i-Azure Strategy

    November 4, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Microsoft has launched various efforts over the years to entice IBM midrange users to adopt their products. The fledgling multi-user operating system, Windows NT, was the target of those first efforts, followed by ever-more-capable versions of Windows Server. Now the software giant is holding its Azure cloud as the destination for IBM i shops. The big question is: Will IBM i shops make the move?

    Last week, IT Jungle talked with Eric Lockard, the Microsoft corporate vice president in charge of Azure Dedicated, a department within Azure that focuses on hosting non-standard platforms in the cloud. The company has found …

    Read more
  • Blockchain, Fine Wine, And The IBM i

    November 4, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Of all the overhyped technologies in the world today – and there are many of them – blockchain may be the most overhyped of all. Despite that dismal honor, the distributed ledger technology has already found its way onto an IBM i server. What’s more, the blockchain application implemented by a wine retailer actually makes sense.

    As a technology, you know you’ve ventured into dangerous territory when the comic strip Dilbert hops on the bandwagon. Such is the case with blockchain, which has been the subject of many of Scott Adams’ strips in recent years. The pointy-haired boss doesn’t understand …

    Read more
  • IBM to Kill DeveloperWorks Connections Site

    October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

    IBM announced last week that it’s planning to sunset the developerWorks Connections website and developerWorks Connections applications on December 31, 2019. The company is planning to launch new websites and apps to host community discussions around its platform. The IBM i community reacted poorly to the announcement.

    IBM started warning developerWorks users about the pending change on October 14. On a FAQ page, IBM stated:

    “As part of the overall IBM effort to reduce the number of duplicate client interaction portals and simplify the user experience with the digital side of IBM, we are sunsetting the developerWorks Connections platform …

    Read more
  • IBM i TRs Bring Database Enhancements, Too

    October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

    The heart of the IBM i server is its database, so it’s natural that we would see some enhancements to Db2 for i with delivery of IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 1 and 7.3 TR 7 next month. The new features may not be earth-shaking, but they deliver some useful functionality nonetheless.

    Let’s start with some foundational changes to the database itself, including the way that database engineers architect the tables that store information in the database. With 7.4 TR1, IBM i shops can now add a new child table to the database without having an exclusive lock on the …

    Read more
  • Revenge Of The Zombie Green Screen

    October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Don’t look now, but command line interfaces – which were supposed to have been killed off years ago at the hands of superior graphical user interfaces (GUIs) – are making a comeback in the general IT scene. And the command line love appears to be spilling over into the IBM i.

    Command line interfaces, or CLIs, never completely disappeared from the scene. Even Windows 10 users can summon the dark magic of the DOS prompt with a few tactical clicks of the keyboard, mouse, or (God forbid) touchscreen. But like crazy uncles and credit card debt, the CLI has largely …

    Read more
  • How The Latest TRs Bolster HA/DR And Security

    October 28, 2019 Alex Woodie

    High availability, disaster recovery, and security are more important than ever, as enterprises look for ways to eliminate risks to their operations, applications, and data. To that end, it’s not surprising that IBM bolstered the HA/DR and security capabilities in IBM i with the latest Technology Refreshes that are slated to begin shipping November 15.

    Let’s start with the new HA features in Db2 Mirror for IBM i, the new business continuity offering that implements an active-active database cluster atop two unique IBM i logical partitions. Db2 Mirror, you’ll remember, was delivered with IBM i version 7.4, so it’s …

    Read more
  • Digging Into the Latest IBM i TRs

    October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

    The fall batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) have been revealed, and as expected, there’s a bit of new functionality available for customers who use IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. In this story, we’ll tackle enhancements in open source, systems management and monitoring, and development, which means we’ll dive deeper into other areas, like database and HA/DR, in a future story.

    Let’s start with the fun stuff: open source. With IBM i 7.3 TR7 and 7.4 TR1, IBM has brought support for two prominent open source projects, including ZeroMQ and Redis.

    ZeroMQ is a universal messaging library that allows users to …

    Read more
  • Java License Fallout Continues Impacting IBM i Shops

    October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Oracle’s decision to restrict the previously free distribution of Java version 8 tools and runtimes is impacting the entire IT industry. In our little neck of the woods, the decision to charge businesses for using Oracle’s Java has forced IBM i shops to take a hard look at the technology platform, and in some cases look for alternative solutions.

    Oracle ruffled feathers in the Java community in 2017, when it made substantial changes to its Java roadmap. The company announced that Java Standard Edition (SE) version 8, which is a legacy version of Java but is still in widespread use, …

    Read more
  • Data Protection in the New Regulated Era

    October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Companies must protect their data from all sorts of threats these days, including power outages, failed servers, and drive crashes. But one of the most important aspects of data protection today is ensuring the security and privacy of data, which is mandated by a slew of emerging data regulations.

    In May 2018, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a far-reaching new law that gave people sweeping new rights over their data. While GDPR ostensibly just impacts EU citizens, many large companies in the U.S. and other countries adopted new security and privacy processes to ensure consistence …

    Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • The Turning Point For Power Systems Is Here, And Now
  • How IBM i Users Can Compete In The Digital Era With Composable Commerce
  • IBM Streamlines Data Migration With New Partition Mirror Tech
  • Profound Logic Adds MCP To IBM i AI Tool
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 29
  • Power11 Entry Machines: The Power S1124 And Power L1124
  • BRMS Isn’t The Only Backup Product With A Security Problem
  • Guru: A Faster Way To Sign A JWT
  • Maxis Adds IBM i Support To Database Modernization Tool
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 28

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2025 IT Jungle