Dan Burger
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Conference Puts IBM i System Management In Spotlight
February 16, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreSystem management skills on IBM i have never been showcased in their own conference, but that’s about to change. A two-day conference co-hosted by the COMMON user group and i In the Cloud, a managed service provider, is scheduled for March 3 and 4 in suburban Chicago. The session agenda includes two tracks: one is straight-forward systems management while the other is specific to virtualization skills. Instruction is being handled by system admin subject experts Larry Bolhuis and Pete Massiello.
Technologies such as virtualization, the cloud, analytics, and mobile and social front-ends each require a good grasp of the
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Remain Software ALM Tool Gets CA Plex Interface
February 11, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreIndependent development environments such as CA Plex have their own model-based and pattern-driven development techniques to modernize legacy IBM midrange applications as they run across multiple platforms as well as move them to the Web and to SOA environments. And as IBM i shops take on modernization projects, change management software is integral to the process. As an example, Remain Software that is announcing its application lifecycle management software, TD/OMS, has a new interface for CA Plex users.
The integration is the result of cooperation with Stella Tools, a CA Plex open source initiative.
“The way the two tools
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Surrounding The IBM i
February 9, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM has a plan for the IBM i operating system. It sounds slightly ominous and it might even cause some of the IBM i advocates to lock the doors to the server room. It’s not a secret. In fact, some say the idea is gaining support. The idea is to surround the i. Surround it with new Linux workloads, primarily analytics workloads, which to a large degree involve mobile and, to a lesser degree, social applications.
Maybe you don’t give a flying flapjack about Linux. Maybe, from your point of view, it’s still not ready for enterprise operating system duty
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Security Risks Avoided By The Development Team
February 9, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreSome ideas need to be told and retold before the concept is fully grasped and action results. This isn’t the first time outspoken IBM i security expert Pat Botz has warned developers about dangerous security assumptions. This advice comes periodically, and it demonstrates how people hear without listening. That’s maybe a bit too harsh because there are indications it’s become more widely recognized that programmers have a role in data security at the application level.
“You can’t secure a system these days without the programmers knowing about security,” Botz says. “Programmers can’t write programs that make data available to anyone
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Chrono-Logic Change Management Software Targets IBM i
February 4, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreBusiness-focused application development is what IBM midrange programmers do. That part hasn’t changed. How they do it has changed quite a bit, particularly since organizations have gained a greater awareness of the business benefits of modernization. This goes beyond the beautification of green-screen apps and digs much deeper into the functionality of the business logic and includes database modernization, too. And it shines a light on change management software and what it adds to the modernization effort.
We are seeing change management software vendors become more active in telling the modernization story. They are making investments in their products and
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DB2 Enhancements, Free Form RPG, Modernization Top Rowe’s ‘Big Hits’ List
February 2, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreIf you build it, they will come. It was a prophecy that came to be in a movie called Field of Dreams, but it’s no guarantee in the world of business computing and software development. Sometimes customers come and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come, but it’s at a pace that makes tortoise racing seem like speed skating. So I asked a guy who is up to his ears in IBM i software development what he thought were IBM‘s biggest success stories.
The guy I went to was Tim Rowe, IBM i business architect for application development and
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IBM i Marketplace Survey Fills In The Blanks
February 2, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe IBM midrange community has a reputation for maintaining the status quo. But that doesn’t mean it’s immune to change. Shifts in the economy, the increasing pressures from business managers to do more with less, and the realization that competitive advantage comes with modernization combine to disrupt status quo thinkers. But does it really? Statistics that pertain to IBM i shops are almost non-existent. A new stack of information coming from a survey conducted by HelpSystems changes that.
The complete results of the survey have yet to be made public. But I’ve learned a few things that are surprising. For
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Profound Logic, ARCAD Partnership Targets Modernization Projects
January 26, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreModernization strategies in the IBM midrange community are inevitable because the future is not exactly hospitable to those who cling to the past. At some point, the risk of doing nothing exceeds the risk of moving forward with new plans. Last week, Profound Logic and ARCAD Software announced a partnership that signals more activity in the modernization arena. It is not the first ISV action relative to modernization and it won’t be the last.
Profound Logic is one of the leaders in the application development tool business. ARCAD is a major player in the change management field. Both companies have
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Capturing Data, Not Just Documents
January 26, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere is a pretty good chance that content management systems are not what you think they are. Preconceived notions and unwarranted conclusions are a dime a dozen. CMS, in the minds of most people, is about scanning and capturing reports. Or it is about going paperless and abandoning the old metal filing cabinets. But if that’s all you think it is, you are missing the big picture. Mobile and analytics technology have altered how data is captured and how it is used.
The shift that has occurred in content management is not insignificant. Mobile and analytics have converged at a
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Barcode Company T.L. Ashford Introduces Forms Generation Software
January 21, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreConversion of IBM i spool files to a format that readily fits into a business workflow process is a great idea. Lots of companies have done this successfully by starting with a clear and well defined business problem to solve. And now T.L. Ashford, a company best known for its IBM i-compatible barcode software, is in the electronic forms business with a new product called TLA Forms.
The software is designed to extract data from IBM midrange systems’ spool files and place it into a custom designed form as text, barcodes, or graphics. The spool files are what drives