The IBM i predictions for 2015 keep rolling in, this time from the folks at Raz-Lee Security. The folks at VAI have a lot of experience with application modernization, but you’ll never guess which technology they’re using now. We’ll also take a look at some of the IBM i topics that will be covered at IBM’s upcoming InterConnect 2015 conference.

VAI Rides Rocket to the Web. . . and Beyond

Over the years, VAI has tried many different technologies to modernize the user interface of its RPG-based ERP application. Not all have panned out, and today it appears it has

OK, so you’ve API-enabled your IBM i applications and joined the ranks of modern applications. You are definitely going to benefit from simplified integration for both data and application. But now there’s a bunch of SOAP and REST calls flying all around, and it’s getting hard to keep track of them. That’s an area that CM First Group is hoping to address with a new business process management (BPM) tool imported from Europe.

CM First is now reselling the Axon.ivy BPM Suite, a business process modeling and management tool originally developed by its business partner, AXON IVY of Germany. The

IBM is crowing like a chanticleer about its recent ranking as the top provider worldwide for both hybrid and private cloud infrastructure for 2014. The latest research shows that Big Blue is growing more or less at the same pace as the overall cloud, but it is a distant third behind the industry juggernaut, Amazon Web Services, and is growing at half the rate of the industry upstart, Microsoft Azure.

IBM has staked a big part of its future on the cloud and ponied up $1.2 billion last year to build out existing datacenters operated by its Global

The cloud has become pervasive in the business IT world at most organizations. However, the rise of “shadow IT” services living on the cloud threatens to undermine companies’ data and application resilience strategies, particularly in light of the increasingly complex, hybrid cloud/on-premise setups that are becoming popular today, Vision Solutions says in its annual State of Resilience report 2015.

According to Vision’s survey, 62 percent of IT executives report using cloud services at their organization. Apparently, the old debate about whether an organization should adopt “the cloud” is over. Cloud-based services are clearly popular and are here to stay, and

Independent 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