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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.

  • Do These Four Things to Avoid ERP Project Failure

    May 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Nobody wants to be part of an ERP project failure, but the fact is that these implementations rarely go perfectly smooth. There’s a wide spectrum of things that can go wrong in these massive projects, ranging from taking a little too long and going a smidgen over budget, to serious operational issues and even outright failure. It’s also the topic that the folks at Third Stage Consulting analyzed in a recent study.

    What makes The 2019 Digital Transportation, HCM, and ERP Report different from other reports on enterprise software implementations is the data-driven approach to understanding the deployments from quantitative …

    Read more
  • These POWERUp Sessions Are About the Recent IBM i Announcement

    May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Disneyland didn’t complete construction of Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in time for next week’s POWERUp conference. But luckily for you, IBM did finalize its IBM i announcement soon enough for COMMON’s annual extravaganza, making next week’s show in Anaheim, California, a great chance for you to learn about the new releases of the operating system, including IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 TR6.

    According to COMMON’s online session guide, there are at least 16 sessions at POWERUp 19 having to do with IBM i 7.4, IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6), or the new software that will arrive with …

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  • IBM Bolsters ACS with Database and Administrative Goodies

    May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Amid the many enhancements that IBM has delivered with IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3 TR6 is a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), which has become the go-to client interface that many IBM i professionals use to access the system for a variety of tasks. Database engineers and system administrators are the big winners with this release.

    There’s no denying that IBM delivered a whopper of release with IBM i 7.4 and its sidekick, IBM i 7.3 TR6. There’s been so much news – starting with the availability and security enhancements in Db2 Mirror and Authority Collection …

    Read more
  • Raz-Lee Offloads Virus Scanning from IBM i with ICAP

    May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Raz-Lee Security is providing IBM i shops another option when it comes to anti-virus software by offering an ICAP client that offloads CPU-intensive virus scanning activities to an external server. The new solution is being sold as an extension to Raz-Lee’s existing Anti-Virus solution.

    While the IBM i operating system is essentially immune to PC viruses, they still pose a threat to IBM i shops, which typically have a smattering of Windows desktops and servers on the network. The problem is that Windows viruses (and assorted other malware) can infect the IBM i server’s Windows-like Integrated File System (IFS), where …

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  • IBM Bolsters RPG And COBOL Development

    May 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Amid the many and varied enhancements that IBM rolled out last month for its IBM i operating system was a collection of improvements for its core development tooling, including the Eclipse-based Rational Developer for i (RDi) as well as Rational Development Studio for i, which contains the RPG and COBOL compilers.

    Let’s start with the RPG and COBOL compilers in Rational Development Studio for i, since updates to these strategic pieces are more infrequent than the updates to RDi, which shares a common base with integrated development environments (IDEs) for other operating systems and therefore updated more frequently.

    The biggest …

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  • Does Db2 Mirror Kill The Market for Third Party HA?

    May 6, 2019 Alex Woodie

    IBM launched Db2 Mirror for i two weeks ago to great acclaim, as the clustering technology puts IBM i on par with how most other major systems provide continuous availability. But will Db2 Mirror destroy the platform’s heritage of high availability solutions? IT Jungle asked IBM and the biggest providers of logical replication solutions, and the answer is no. Here’s why.

    The first thing to understand about Db2 Mirror is that, at heart, it’s a database clustering technology. IBM figured out a way to make a single instance of Db2 for i run on two separate systems, in an active-active …

    Read more
  • How IBM i 7.4 Improves Security

    May 1, 2019 Alex Woodie

    The unveiling of Db2 Mirror may have gotten the lion’s share of attention with last week’s introduction of IBM i enhancements. But IBM has also given its customer base some significant security upgrades with the new releases of IBM i, including enhancements to the Authority Collection and support for the latest over-the-wire encryption protocol.

    “Our big things are around those two main themes – availability as well as security,” says Alison Butterill, IBM i product offering manager at IBM. “Those are the two main themes. But we have lots of things across the board.”

    IBM gave customers significant new user-focused …

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  • R Comes To i

    May 1, 2019 Alex Woodie

    IBM is now officially supporting the language R with its IBM i operating system, the company announced last week. The open source language, which has long been a favorite of data scientists, statisticians, and others involved with scientific computing, gives IBM i an immediate boost when it comes to data mining and machine learning.

    The R language was originally developed 25 years ago by a pair of computer science professors, Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The software, which was developed largely in C and Fortran, was based largely on S, a programming language …

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  • Original Refocuses on IBM i Test Automation

    May 1, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Original Software never left the IBM i software market, though it might have seemed that way to some people. But thanks to a new website devoted to exploring issues, challenges, and solutions on the topic of IBM i test automation, the British software company is redoubling its efforts around the midrange platform.

    “We really never un-engaged with it, to be fair,” says Original Software COO George Wilson says of IBM i. “We’ve kind of widened the radar a bit. That was probably 15 years ago. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to the IBM midrange marketplace. What we’ve just done …

    Read more
  • Club Alan: Seiden Signs Liam, Corners Youth Market

    April 29, 2019 Alex Woodie

    The Seiden Group solidified its position in the futures market this month by signing the young British-born IBM i phenom Liam Allan to a long-term employment contact that will see him involved in training and open source development work, among other activities.

    Allan’s signing with Seiden Group is a reunion of sorts for Allan and Alan Seiden, the company’s founder and CEO. Allan credits Seiden with roping him into the IBM i gig via Club Seiden, an intersectionalist group devoted to exploring emerging digital and social connections involving the IBM i operating system and the open source ecosystem.

    “The …

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