Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Asseco Group Buys Formula Systems, and Therefore Magic Software
September 13, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn the IBM midrange, it is hard to know who owns whom when it comes to the hardware and software players, and not just because the vast majority of the players in the midrange are privately held. It is sometimes hard to reckon what’s going on with the publicly held ones, too.
So it is with Magic Software Enterprises, which makes application development and integration tools for the IBM i platform and which has just changed hands and now has a new grandparent holding company.
As The Four Hundred has previously explained, Magic Software is owned by Formula
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IBM i 7.1 Gets Support for PCI Express Crypto Co-Processor, LTO-5 Tapes
September 13, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you want to augment the encryption and decryption capabilities of your Power Systems servers or add LTO-5 tape drives and libraries to machines, the IBM i 7.1 operating system now supports these features.
As the The Four Hundred previously reported in the wake of the April Power Systems announcements (when the Power7-based blade servers were launched), the new PCI-Express cryptographic co-processors are more sophisticated than using software-based encryption and using the AltiVec vector math units to do the encrypting and decrypting heavy lifting. The cryptographic co-processors that IBM is now selling, which are known as features 4807, 4808, and
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CIOs Are a Little More Optimistic About IT Hiring–But Not Much
September 13, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe high-tech headhunters at Robert Half Technology have done their latest surveys of IT shops to try to take the pulse of the job market, and it looks like the situation is improving, but is still not great.
RHT did its quarterly survey of over 1,400 IT shops in the United States, asking them what their hiring and firing plans were for the fourth quarter that starts in a couple of weeks. The IT labor market seems to have softened in the past quarter, with everyone worried about the economy possibly slipping back into recession, but the situation is still
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Companies Buy Lots of Disk Storage–At Cheap Prices–in Q2
September 13, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe faltering economy hit the storage market almost as hard as it hit the server racket, but both have recovered to reasonable levels as 2010 has progressed. According to the latest numbers coming out of IT market researcher IDC, the appetite for internal and external disk storage rebounded in the second quarter. Storage didn’t bounce as high as servers did in the quarter, but then again, storage was not hit as hard during the Great Recession last year, either.
The IDC box counters believe that companies consumed some 3,645 petabytes of disk capacity across both internal disk arrays tucked
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IBM Adds New SSD and Fat SFF Disk to Power Systems
September 13, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreLike most of you, I am still chewing through the latest Power Systems announcements from IBM. We covered the five new systems that Big Blue announced on August 17 in as much detail as was possible on announcement day, and followed up with detailed price and performance information in the weeks following the announcement. We’ve also gone into pricing for IBM i on the boxes, and the deals the company is making on software to encourage shops to upgrade to new Power7 iron.
Now is the time to drill down into some important storage announcements that were buried in
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Admin Alert: Placing Additional Restrictions on i/OS Passwords
September 8, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read morei/OS password security is very robust and you can set up a number of password composition rules by using it. But sometimes you need to step outside the normal boundaries of password system values and enforce additional restrictions that can’t be created only with standard i/OS password security. That’s where a password approval program comes in handy.
A password approval program is a custom-written program that runs after a newly created user password has been validated by your normal password security system values. An approval program is valuable in that it can add organization-specific password validation tests to your system.
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Avoid an Unnecessary CPYF Error
September 8, 2010 Ted Holt
… Read moreHey, IBM i Professional:
I’ve heard it said that it’s the little things that kill you. Maybe so. I am certain that little errors in computer programs can ruin a good night’s sleep. Today’s tip is an easy one that I’ve published before, but not in this newsletter. I’m running it today because an FHG reader recently told me that this simple, easily avoided error had occurred in the shop where she works. Everyone who writes CL programs needs to know this one.
The malfunctioning program had a Copy File (CPYF) command that looked like this:
CPYF FROMFILE(AAA) TOFILE(BBB) MBROPT(*REPLACE)
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Get Thee to the Web, Part 1
September 8, 2010 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreTo the traditional IBM i programmer, the Web can be a strange and scary place. It is full of new mysterious terminology and seems to be populated by 12-year-olds.
But the reality is that the Web now plays an integral part in our applications, whether it is in providing a company face to the world or simply for internal systems. So, like it or not, it is a world we have to come to grips with.
In this series of three articles, I hope to help you to navigate your way to the Web, understand some of the
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Magic Builds Out Partner Network in Europe
September 7, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs this newsletter reported a month ago, revenues and profits for Magic Software were both up sharply in the second quarter, with sales up 58 percent, to $21.5 million, and net income more than doubled to $3.8 million. And part of that success has come through an expanded reseller channel for the company’s iBOLT and uniPaaS application development tools.
The company said that in the second quarter it added ViCi Consulting in the Netherlands, Osiatis in France, Wizrom Software in Romania, and Connect Distribution in Poland to its partner rolls. In July, Magic Software said that it had expanded into
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Jack Henry Ends Fiscal 2010 on High Notes
September 7, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe big banks may have taken it on the chin during the economic meltdown, but smaller regional banks and credit unions that are commonly customers of Jack Henry & Associates did comparatively better, and the software company’s numbers for the fiscal year ended in June show it.
In the final quarter of the fiscal year, Jack Henry said that it posted sales of $227.8 million, up 18.7 percent over the year-ago period. Net income rose by a skinnier 7.9 percent, hitting $30 million flat. License revenues plummeted by 29 percent in the quarter, to $12.4 million, and hardware sales (including