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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IBM i’s TCO Advantage Widens, According to Reports
September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie
IBM recently published a new report that claims the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an IBM i server over three years is dramatically lower than the equivalent Windows or Linux setups. It’s not the first such study IBM has done over the years, but what’s interesting is the gap appears to have widened considerably compared to a similar study six years ago.
In the latest TCO study, research and management consulting firm Quark + Lepton measured how much it would take hypothetical businesses to buy and manage three sets of servers: a Power Systems server running IBM i 7.3 …
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How SAP Complexity Impacts Performance on IBM i
September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie
The IBM i server and SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a powerful combination that propels thousands of businesses around the world. The duo’s success is apparent to those who pay attention, even if it’s not widely acknowledged. But ensuring smooth SAP operations on IBM i is not always as straightforward as it could be, especially for those uninitiated with the complexity of this setup.
The fact that SAP has its own way of doing things is nothing new. Ever since a group of five former IBMers from Germany led by Hasso Plattner formed up to create the …
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IBM Flashes the Cache On External Storage
September 11, 2017 Alex Woodie
IBM put more a little flash in its storage, specifically its high-end DS8000 arrays, which got new solid state drive options that will boost raw flash storage close to 3 petabytes in a single installation. Big Blue also cached in with its Storwize V7000, which now features up to 256 GB of RAM, among other new features.
Let’s begin the news with the Storwize V7000, which is an X86-based storage system that’s becoming increasingly popular among midsize and large IBM i shops that are looking to consolidate storage but who can’t justify the added expense and complexity of the high-end …
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IBM i Salaries Drop Vs. Other Platforms, But It’s Not All Bad
September 6, 2017 Alex Woodie
Time was, working on IBM i and its predecessors earned you a premium on your salary compared to other platforms. That’s not the case in 2017, as equivalent jobs on the Linux, Unix, Windows (LUW) front delivers better pay. But the news on the job front is not all doom and gloom, according IBM i staffing expert Bob Langieri, who keeps a close watch on this sort of thing.
Across the board, IBM i professionals earned lower salaries than their LUW colleagues for various IT positions, with a few exceptions. That’s according to an analysis of IBM i salary data …
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IBM i Vulns Spotted in Node, BIND and HTTP Server
September 6, 2017 Alex Woodie
IBM last month moved to patch several critical security vulnerabilities related to the BIND service in IBM i that could allow attackers unauthorized access to IBM i servers running any release of the OS from IBM 6.1 to 7.3. Security glitches were also patched for the IBM i implementation of Node.js, the HTTP Server bundled with IBM i, the hardware management console (HMC), and WebSphere.
Both ISC BIND vulnerabilities work in a similar way and enabled similar paths into affected systems – namely by allowing an attacker to craft a specially crafted request packet to bypass authentication and therefore gain …
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Where’s the ‘Coleman’ for IBM i?
August 30, 2017 Alex Woodie
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that’s bringing automation to places where it never existed, including ERP software. The latest entry into the field is Infor, which turned heads last month with a new AI bot dubbed Coleman. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your views on AI – Coleman won’t be coming to IBM i.
Infor, which owns the biggest collection of IBM i application software on the planet, has slyly positioned itself as a scrappy alternative to Oracle and SAP in the enterprise software space. While the giants …
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Syncsort CEO Discusses Vision Deal, Product Plans
August 28, 2017 Alex Woodie
Josh Rogers isn’t one to get overly animated, at least in an over-the-top “Ra Ra” kind of way. But in a conversation with IT Jungle last week, there was no disputing the Syncsort CEO’s excitement at closing the acquisition of Vision Solutions and the prospect of delivering big data integration products to a new pool of IBM i customers.
To quickly recap: In early July, Centerbridge Partners, a large equity capital firm, acquired controlling stakes in both Vision Solutions and Syncsort, and announced plans to merge the two companies under the Syncsort brand. Two weeks ago, the vendors formally …
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Firm Brokers MuleSoft’s Passage Into IBM i World
August 16, 2017 Alex Woodie
Open source is not the best model for everything in the computing world. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a better use for open source than data and application integration, which are notoriously messy, expensive, and brittle. Which is why, if you’re not familiar with MuleSoft, you likely will be in the future.
MuleSoft got its start over 10 years ago when Ross Mason decided to start developing an open integration platform. Mason thought: Why should developers toil to build custom-coded integrations over and over again when it could be built correctly one time and then shared with the world? …
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Does IBM i Need More Databases?
August 14, 2017 Alex Woodie
There are many things that differentiate IBM i from other platforms, including its storage, security, and programming models. But one of the most unique aspects of the IBM i platform is its integrated DB2 database, which is used exclusively by practically all IBM i customers. You just don’t find this on other platforms. But perhaps it’s time for IBM i to diversify its database support?
In many respects, DB2 for i is the platform’s greatest strength. IBM i is renowned for its transaction processing prowess that drives ERP and other line of business applications, and DB2 for i (formerly DB2/400, …
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IBM Boasts of Big Tape Breakthrough
August 9, 2017 Alex Woodie
Reports of tape’s death have been greatly exaggerated in recent years. But if IBM Research can turn a technological breakthrough it made with Sony in the lab into an actual product, tape will remain relevant for decades to come.
IBM last week announced that it set a new record for areal density on magnetic tape when it achieved 201 gigabits per square inch with a prototype for a new “sputtered” magnetic tape format, which it says is 20 times the areal density used in current state-of-the-art commercial tape drives. The achievement could enable the production of a tape cartridge that …
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