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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County Battles IBM i Server’s Legacy Image – And It’s a Problem
September 19, 2018 Alex Woodie
Like many municipalities, Grand Traverse County in Michigan relies on an IBM i server to run day-to-day operations. And like many municipalities, it’s encountering a number of challenges as it seeks to modernize core applications, including usability and security concerns. But it’s also battling widely held perceptions that the IBM i platform is old and washed up.
“We live in the computer age, but many of us live in a county that’s more Atari than PlayStation 4,” starts the September 8 editorial in the Traverse City Record-Eagle, a local newspaper that has documented the county’s IT challenges over the …
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Serious Security Vulns Patched In IBM i
September 19, 2018 Alex Woodie
No good deed goes unpunished. Such as it is with cybersecurity, which demands unceasing attention paid to a never-ending stream of flaws and patches as the cost of remaining off the front page. To that end, IBM patched several more security flaws in IBM i last week, including two serious flaws in Node.js, five critical vulnerabilities in Samba, and one moderate flaw in OpenSSH.
It’s easy to get lulled into a false state of security on the IBM i server, thanks to its unique architecture, cryptic file names, and reputation for strong security. It’s hard enough to find programmers, administrators, …
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New Option for 24/7 IBM i Monitoring
September 19, 2018 Alex Woodie
It’s important to keep one’s eyes on IBM i server metrics in order to nip problems in the bud. But hiring a night-shift operator can be expensive, and moving your applications to a private cloud might not be feasible. A third option was presented last week by Data Storage Corporation in the form of IBM Power Monitor 24, a new service that promises to provide continuous 24/7 monitoring of client’s IBM i servers.
Like all cloud service providers, Data Storage Corporation invests in systems monitoring and management. After all, if you’re running critical IBM i servers on behalf of clients, …
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Why Curbstone Picked iSam Blue for HA
September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie
When it comes to picking an IBM i high availability vendor, there are a lot of factors that come into play. Does the product do what I need it to do? Are the license and maintenance fees reasonable? Will the vendor give me the support I need? When the folks at Curbstone considered HA offerings for its IBM i-based credit card authorization portal, all signs pointed to iSam Blue.
Founded in 2002, Curbstone has built a business around credit card authorization software, particularly on the IBM i platform. The company’s founder and CEO, Ira Chandler, wrote the first commercial credit …
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Archive Migration A Success For County Clerk
September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie
A county clerk’s office in Illinois that relies on IBM i-based applications to keep its records straight has successfully migrated its archive from an older Ultra-Density Optical (UDO) setup to a network attached storage (NAS)-based device that utilizes newer optical technology. Best of all, the new storage solution didn’t impact response times on the IBM i server one bit.
The Madison County Circuit Clerk’s Office was up against a mandate to comply with a new State of Illinois law requiring documents in civil court proceedings to be stored electronically and to be available for real-time access. While its JANO Justice …
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IBM Patches Security Flaws In IBM i
September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie
IBM last week shared details of two new OpenSSL vulnerabilities that are impacting all supported versions of IBM i. That came on the heels of two more vulnerabilities that were disclosed last month in IBM i’s Python implementation and the HTTP Server. All of the flaws have been patched by IBM.
IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are impacted by the pair of OpenSSL vulnerabilities disclosed by IBM on August 30. Neither of the flaws, which include CVE-2018-0732 and CVE-2018-0737, are particularly nasty, but they do open gaps in the platform’s security apparatus just the same, so it’s important to …
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IBM Showcases New Crop of ‘Fresh Faces’
September 10, 2018 Alex Woodie
For a computer platform to remain vital, it must have a constant stream of new arrivals. This is just as true for IBM i, which has struggled to retain relevance in an increasingly homogeneous IT world, as it is for every other platform. But give kudos to IBM and its latest batch of “fresh faces” that highlight the fact that millennials are finding their way to IBM i and Power.
While nobody is claiming that younger folks are knocking down the door to get onto IBM i, there nevertheless appears to be a solid group of individuals from the less-than-40 …
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HelpSystems Nabs MPG for Performance Management
August 27, 2018 Alex Woodie
Midrange Performance Group, the Boulder, Colorado-based provider of capacity and performance management software for IBM i, is the latest software vendor to call it quits and join up with HelpSystems. It was HelpSystems first acquisition of the year and 20th since 2006.
For decades, Midrange Performance Group, (MPG) has been one of the most trusted names when it comes to capacity planning and performance management for IBM i and the midrange servers that preceded it. If you want to know how your workload would run on a new Power Systems server from IBM, then you could find out using …
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iSam Blue Offers Choice for IBM i High Availability
August 22, 2018 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops searching for a high availability solution have several options to choose from. One that they might not be familiar with is iSam Blue, a small Utah company that sells a solution called iSB-HA. According to iSam Blue’s president, the company is doing well by competing on affordability and service.
If you’ve followed the history of high availability software on IBM i and its predecessor systems, the name Robert Seal will sound familiar. Before founding iSam Blue, Seal was best known as the original developer for iTera’s data replication software, called Echo2 Seal and iTera parted ways, …
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Debunking Legacy Myths
August 22, 2018 Alex Woodie
In the rush to modernize IT and digitally transform our businesses, legacy systems like IBM i and System z come under increased scrutiny, which is fair. After all, blind loyalty to a particular platform – even Big Blue’s historically stable ones — is a recipe for failure in a dynamic business environment. But when technology providers make questionable claims about the nature of legacy systems in an attempt to sway decision-making, those claims should bear as much scrutiny as the platforms do themselves.
Which brings us to the recent e-book published by First National Technology Solutions and co-sponsored by Dell …
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