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.
-
Bain Buys Rocket for $2 Billion
October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie
Rocket Software announced yesterday that Bain Capital Private Equity has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the company for $2 billion. The company’s management team will remain intact following the transaction, which is expected to be completed this quarter.
Rumors have been swirling in recent months that Rocket had put itself on the market and was looking to sell itself or its products. The investment by Bain Capital should put an end to the speculation, as Rocket CEO and president Andy Youniss says the company is embarking upon its fourth decade of growth.
“This new relationship will allow us …
Read more -
Modern Lessons From A Fresh IBM i Developer
October 8, 2018 Alex Woodie
Application modernization is a big nut to crack on IBM i. That is to say, there are many ways to tackle the problem, from the code and business logic to the databases and user interfaces. But when it comes to the type of developers you should look for and how they should spend their time, Kody Robinson has a few pointers that may be worth keeping in mind.
Robinson was a member of the first batch of “Fresh Faces” that IBM put forward in 2017 to showcase the fact that young people are building careers on the platform, and that …
Read more -
ARCAD Debuts RPG Code Checker
October 3, 2018 Alex Woodie
If you write RPG, or know somebody who does, then you realize that mistakes can and will happen. However, beyond the obvious syntax errors, which should be detected immediately by the code editor, are instances where the code is sloppy or just poorly written. Those are the instances where ARCAD Software hopes to help with its new CodeChecker offering.
ARCAD-CodeChecker, as the product is officially called, does just that: Detect poor quality RPG code before it makes it into production. If you’ve coded a bug into the program, made a design error, or taken 1,000 lines to write something that …
Read more -
Inking A Solution To Sticky Warehouse Dilemma
October 3, 2018 Alex Woodie
When the forklift drivers at Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems had trouble maintaining a WiFi connection in the warehouse, the company turned to its network supplier. But when the network supplier dragged its feet on providing sessions stickiness, the IT folks at FSIS found their own solution, which involved transforming its IBM i software into a modern Web application.
Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems develops and manufactures a range of inks and consumables for a variety of printing processes, including inkjet, screen, textile, label, and packaging. The UK subsidiary of the Japanese imaging conglomerate designs, manufactures, and ships its ink products from …
Read more -
Cloud Data Migration Service Launched For IBM i
October 3, 2018 Alex Woodie
Companies that want to move data from their IBM i server into the public cloud environment have a new solution available from Accur8 Software, which last week debuted a new data migration as a service (DMaaS) offering based on its integration platform.
According to Accur8 Software, the new Data Migration as a Service (DMaaS) offering provides a way for customers to migrate data from Db2 for i to public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft and Amazon – as well as Google Cloud Compute, often cited as the third main public cloud platform …
Read more -
Can ERP Vendors Deliver On Industry 4.0 Expectations?
October 1, 2018 Alex Woodie
In the IT business, innovation is king. If you fail to keep up, you run the risk of falling behind and becoming stale. There’s where ERP as a product category found itself thanks to the advent of cloud computing, and now we’re on the cusp of finding out if the ERP market can deliver on the next set of emerging capabilities — machine learning, artificial intelligence, and IoT – which industry watchers have termed Industry 4.0.
We’re at an interesting inflection point in enterprise software at the moment, in particular how well-established players react to rapid technological innovation. In the …
Read more -
The Next Performance of Dawn May
September 26, 2018 Alex Woodie
Growing up on a farm in southern Minnesota, Dawn May had dreams of moving to the big city. But life has a funny way of changing the best laid plans, and May ended up spending decades working at IBM’s lab in nearby Rochester. After retiring from Big Blue earlier this year, May is set to start the next phase of her career as an independent consultant.
May moved out of Rochester in 2011, but even then, she never expected to stay in southern Minnesota for so long. “As a farm girl, I always wanted to move away and become a …
Read more -
Trimble Gives IBM i Trucking App Some Love
September 26, 2018 Alex Woodie
Trucking companies that rely on the Innovative IES application from Trimble have a series of new enhancements to work with, including new options for paying drivers, a redesigned risk management app, and a new routing module that gives drivers turn-by-turn directions.
It’s been more than six years since Trimble acquired TMW Systems in a $335-million deal that netted it a handful of transportation management system (TMS) suites, including the TL2000 and IES dispatching applications for IBM i and TMWSuite for Windows, among several other products.
Since then, the publicly traded company, which develops all manner of geospatial products for positioning, …
Read more -
Infor Makes Mobile, Cloud, IoT, and AI Announcements — But Nothing for IBM i
September 26, 2018 Alex Woodie
Infor made several product announcements at its annual user conference this week, including the introduction of a new mobile client program, several cloud announcements, and the GA date for the AI-based assistant it announced last year. But Day One of Inforum 2018 didn’t feature any new or enhanced software for IBM i, where about 18,000 Infor customers continue to run their enterprise software.
Do you like to “seamlessly glide between applications”? If so, then you’re liable to just love the new Infor Go mobile client, which Infor announced yesterday at the Inforum 2018 conference in Washington D.C.
Infor says its …
Read more -
Domino On IBM i Poised For A Comeback
September 24, 2018 Alex Woodie
IBM hasn’t exactly been knocking the cover off the ball lately when it comes to the Domino family of products running on IBM i, or any platform for that matter. But when IBM and its new development partner HCL finally unveil Domino 10 to the world on October 9, it will be the start of a great comeback story.
That’s the prediction of Domino consultant Kim Greene, who has been working with the software on the IBM i platform for many years. Greene has been closely watching events unfold since HCL Technologies partnered with IBM to develop Domino and related …
Read more