• Oracle’s Withdrawal of JDE ‘Blue Stack’ Raises Questions

  December 27, 2010 Alex Woodie

  You kind of expected this to happen. Earlier this year, Oracle quietly announced it will no longer sell the “Blue Stack” set of tools that makes it more convenient for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers to run their ERP system on IBM platforms and middleware, including IBM i. Instead, it will only offer the Red Stack, which is based on (you guessed it) Oracle platforms and middleware. While Oracle has confirmed that it will continue to support EnterpriseOne on IBM i, its decision provides a strong incentive for customers to move to the Red Stack. Just prior to its Oracle Open

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• Top 10 IBM i Product and Technology Trends for 2011

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  2010 has come and (mostly) gone, and the good news is the business outlook has improved. Compared to the dark days of December 2008, we are in a veritable wonderland of positivism. However, while spending is up and companies are plotting for growth, IT budgets are still guarded, and boosting operational efficiency reigns supreme. With those thoughts in mind, here are 10 IBM i product and technology predictions for 2011. Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) SaaS and cloud computing may be the long-term savior of the IBM i platform. Many big ISVs that struggle to sell an

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• Innovatum Bolsters Auditing Tool with FTP Monitoring

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops will be able to monitor for potentially damaging FTP sessions involving their DB2/400 databases with an update to Innovatum‘s auditing tool. New FTP exit points have been added to DataThread, Innovatum’s IBM i auditing tool, which is regularly used for regulatory compliance. The company also added new printing functionality to ROBAR, a barcode and RFID labeling product used by companies in the pharmaceutical supply chain. DataThread is a powerful real-time change monitoring solution designed to work with the IBM i audit journal and the DB2/400 database. The software complements native IBM i capabilities by providing filtering

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• Progress Adds DB2/400 Support to .NET Data Integration Tool

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Organizations can now connect DB2/400 databases to .NET applications using a new data provider from Progress Software. Last month, the company unveiled a new release of DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET, its managed code data provider designed to make it easy for developers to connect data sources to .NET applications. With version 3.5, Progress added support for DB2/400, among other data sources. Anybody who’s developing new Windows applications should be aware of the benefits of managed code. By developing in the .NET Framework’s managed code environment, developers can be assured that their Common Language Runtime (CLR) code will see fewer

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• RPG & DB2 Summit Emphasizes Improved Skills to Defend IBM i

  December 14, 2010 Dan Burger

  RPG & DB2 Summit Emphasizes Improved Skills to Defend IBM i The workforce in the IBM i community is facing some serious challenges. It’s a rapidly changing world and enterprise computing isn’t just going along for the ride; it’s driving the bus. The same old IT answers aren’t cutting it any longer. To survive you have to adapt. For RPG developers and DB2 engineers, that means expanding skills and learning to exploit the capabilities that are built into the IBM i operating system running on Power Systems servers. Education and training have never been more important. Some people and some

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• DST Launches Hosted File Archiving Service

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  DST Systems, the Kansas City, Missouri, company that runs two large IBM i data centers for clients in healthcare, financial services, and other industries, last week unveiled Electronic File Solution (EFS), a new software as a service (SaaS) offering for handling the storage, retrieval, and retention of its clients business records. DST is opening up its considerable investment in IBM i servers, optical storage systems, and IBM tape libraries with its new EFS offering. With EFS, customers get a Web-based interface for uploading, managing, and retrieving documents that DST will store. Customers get 24/7 access to their documents, and

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• Chrono-Logic Simplifies LANSA Deployment

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Chrono-Logic last week unveiled a new version of iAM for End Users, an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool used in Visual LANSA environments. With version 3, the new product simplifies large deployments of client-server applications developed with LANSA‘s development tools. iAM for End Users was created to automate the task of distributing client-side Visual LANSA code to Windows workstations. Every time a user logs in, iAM for End Users checks for updates to Windows objects and DLLs, and automatically installs them if there are any. The software is used in conjunction with two other Chrono-Logic products, including iAM for

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• IBM Touts Power Server Deals with Russian Banks

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Two Russian Banks will install new Power7-based servers to run their operations, IBM announced last week. One of the banks, Alfa-Bank, will run IBM i applications on its servers, while the other, Rosbank, will run AIX. Alfa-Bank is upgrading from an older model of System i, iSeries, or AS/400 server to a pair of new Power7 servers that provide the processing overhead for future growth. The company, which uses the IBM i-based Equation banking system from Misys, started with the IBM midrange platform 10 years ago. Since then, it has grown significantly, and now counts 4.1 million private clients

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• ExaGrid Shrinks Size of D2D Appliances, Boosts Performance

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  ExaGrid System‘s updated line of disk-to-disk (D2D) and de-duplication appliances will fit into smaller spaces, consume less energy, and consume data faster than the previous generation of appliances, the vendor announced last week. ExaGrid’s line of EX appliances is designed to provide mid-sized companies with a scalable disk-based backup and recovery infrastructure. The Linux-based devices feature quad-core Intel Xeon processors and RAID6-protected SATA drives that attach over standard Gigabit Ethernet links. The devices are typically fed with backups from the major Windows and Linux players like Symantec and CA; IBM i customers can move the data using the

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• Attachmate Updates Reflection Suites

  December 14, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Attachmate is shipping new releases of two suites of its Reflection emulator software, including Reflection for the Web 2008 R3, an update to its Web-based emulator, and Reflection Suite for X 2011, its X Server product used primarily for accessing Unix and Linux hosts from Windows desktops. Reflection is one of three families of terminal emulation software offered by Attachmate. Its EXTRA! line of emulators is most often used by Attachmate’s IBM i customers, while the Reflection line (obtained with its acquisition of WRQ) sees more use in Unix environments. Nonetheless, the Reflection products do contain 5250 emulation capabilities, and

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