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.

• Security Still Dominates IBM i Discussion, HelpSystems’ 2018 Survey Reveals

  January 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems released its much-anticipated annual survey of the IBM i installed base this week and the least surprising finding is this: Security remains the biggest concerns of IBM i shops. However, while security dominates the discussion, the survey revealed that most IBM i shops have no concrete plans to do much about it.

  HelpSystems started its annual Marketplace Survey way back in 2014 (with the first survey published in early 2015), and over the years it’s become one of the most cited references for data about the IBM i installed base. Other vendors conduct surveys too, and IT Jungle …

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• Industry Speaks: IBM i Predictions For 2018

  January 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  It may just be another day on the calendar, but there’s something special about January 1. The beginning of a new year gives us a chance to ponder industry trends and anticipate what’s likely to occur over the next 364 days. We’re two weeks into the new year, but it’s not too late to turn the mic over to IBM i industry insiders for their 2018 predictions.

  Here’s what they had to say:

  “Extending and stretching applications is the order of the day. Refactoring and modernizing. More and more shops running legacy apps will come out of the shadows as …

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• Rimini Street Finally Finds Its Way to Wall Street

  January 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  As 2017 was coming to a close, Rimini Street quietly completed its quest to become a publicly traded company. But the firm, which provides third party support for DB2 for i and JD Edwards customers, didn’t go public through an initial public offering. Instead, it landed a listing on the Nasdaq by acquiring a company that already had one.

  In October, Rimini Street completed the merger with GP Investments Acquisition Corp, a so-called “blank check” company that was formed in 2015 specifically for the purpose of effecting a merger or acquisition in the United States or Europe. The company had …

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• Three IBM i Trends To Watch This Year

  January 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Happy New Year! As we roll out of bed and shake off the cobwebs of 2017, it’s worth taking some time to think about what 2018 will bring to the IBM i ecosystem, and what it could mean to IBM i professionals, in hopes of getting off to a hot (or maybe just less cold) start to the new year.

  Here are three big trends to keep an eye on as the months gradually turn into a year. It starts off with everybody’s favorite topic, security.

  1. Focus on Security

  When the calendar flipped to 2017, there was a palpable …

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• Syncsort Strikes Again, Buys Trader’s For HA

  January 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort yesterday announced the acquisition of Trader’s, the French firm behind the Quick-EDD line of high availability software for the IBM i server. It’s the second deal for an IBM i software firm in as many months for Syncsort, which nabbed HA giant Vision Solutions last summer.

  The deal for Trader’s gives Syncsort and Vision Solutions a third major high availability product to sell, in addition to the iTera Availability and MIMIX Availability products. Perhaps more importantly, Trader’s gives Syncsort a stronger global presence, particularly in Europe but also Asia.

  “The addition of Trader’s extends our market-leading position in providing …

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• Syncsort Bolsters IBM i Security Play With Cilasoft Buy

  January 8, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort significantly beefed up its security bona fides last month after we went on holiday hiatus when it acquired Cilasoft, an IBM i security software company based in France that also has a significant North American presence. Syncsort, which bought HA giant Vision Solutions last year, recently shared its security product plans – including the possibility of creating a new IBM i product based on technology from Cilasoft and Enforcive and integration with Splunk – with IT Jungle.

  On December 12, Syncsort announced that it has completed the acquisition of Cilasoft, its products and technology, and its approximately …

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• 2017: An IBM i Year In Review

  December 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  It’s mid-December, which means it’s time to look back upon 2017 and reminisce on the biggest stories of the year for IBM i and the overall midrange community. From a pair of Technology Refreshes and the scheduled demise of IBM i 7.1 to acquisitions and security breaches, there was a lot to take in.

  It all started off innocently enough in…

  January

  IBM has had a good run of not changing the name of the platform. In fact, it hadn’t changed the name since 2008, giving it a line of uninterrupted starts that even Giants quarterback Eli Manning could appreciate. …

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• Trinity Guard Fills Gap In IBM i Network Security

  December 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Trinity Guard, the IBM i security software company founded by the original developers from Pentasafe, this month rolled out TG Secure, a new network security product that addresses a potentially serious gap in exit point coverage that many IBM i shops who use open source software may not be aware of.

  IBM has done a good job of bringing new open source tools, technologies, and applications to the platform. The addition of languages like PHP, Node.js, Ruby, and Python; products like the NGINX Web server, the MySQL/MariaDB databases, and the Git repository; and everything else included in the 5733-OPS open …

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• VAI Covers All the Bases With Modernization

  December 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  There are a lot of ways to “modernize” your IBM i application. You could create Web and mobile user interfaces. You could adopt free form RPG and migrate the database to modern SQL. You could host it all on the cloud. You could integrate analytic capabilities into it. Or, if you’re the IBM i ERP software vendor VAI, you could do all those things.

  VAI has, in fact, done all those things leading up to this year’s release of S2K Enterprise 6.0, and according to CEO and founder Bob Vormittag, the company is reaping big rewards as a result.

  “We’re …

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• Is The ‘Golden Age’ of Computing Leaving IBM i Behind?

  December 4, 2017 Alex Woodie

  About 50,000 people descended upon Las Vegas last week for AWS re:Invent, the biggest cloud computing conference in the industry. And AWS didn’t disappoint, rolling out dozens of new services, including automated machine learning, a multi-master NoSQL database, and even a graph database for finding hidden connections among billions of data points. With all the innovation going on at AWS, it’s worth wondering whether cloud innovation is leaving IBM i customers behind.

  AWS CEO Andy Jassy didn’t mince words in describing what he views as the current computing revolution. “We are going through the biggest transformation of technology in our …

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