• Happy Holidays From IT Jungle

  December 9, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The weather may not know it in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but the holiday season will soon be fast upon us and that means it is time to put away the pens and keyboards here at IT Jungle and to spend some time with family and friends. The Four Hundred has been a part of the IBM midrange community almost as long as the AS/400 and its progeny have been around, and like the AS/400 itself, The Four Hundred has antecedents that have an even longer history. The point is, we have been listening and learning about the IBM

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• 2015: An IBM i Year In Rear View

  December 9, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Here we are, at the end of the year, and the last issue of The Four Hundred for 2015. We can all celebrate the fact that the IBM i platform and community survived another 12 months in a ruthless IT market that’s hell-bent on disrupting entire industries. So give yourself a pat on the back, sit down and get ready to revisit the highs and lows of the IBM i platform and community over the past year. January The new year began with–what else?–another IBM reorganization. CEO Ginni Rometty decided to make IBM Systems group a single unit that included

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• The Secret to Award-Winning IBM i App Development

  December 9, 2015 Alex Woodie

  The British software house Proximity recently won a second industry award for its IBM i-based application, called STREAM. With demand for its modern logistics software growing, Proximity appears to have hit upon a winning formula that blends PHP, HTML, IBM i, and RPG. But what is the company’s secret to success? Proximity’s managing director Dave Pickburn recently shared the goods. Proximity first caught the eye of IT Jungle earlier this year when the company won the SHD Logistics Award 2015 for STREAM, the IBM i application that it developed and implemented for Scandinavian House, a small European furniture company. This

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• Modernization or Migration? Survey Aims to Sort Out the Direction

  December 9, 2015 Dan Burger

  When the IBM i Redbook on modernization was released in March 2014, it became the “all you ever wanted to know” guidebook for modernizing everything about an aging, neglected system–a road map for migrating IT environments designed for the world as we knew it 20 years ago to IT environments for 2015, 2020, and beyond. Where are we now? That’s what IBM i ISV Profound Logic hopes to answer with a new modernization survey for IBM midrange shops. There’s no one size fits all or a single way to do modernization that each organization can follow. There are many choices

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• Clearing Up IBM i Security Confusion

  December 9, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM i is a mature operating system that gives enterprises several ways to accomplish tasks. But sometimes this richness can generate confusion over the best way to accomplish something. For example, when should you use adopted authority in your applications, and when should you use user profile swapping? IBM i security expert Carol Woodbury recently addressed some of these questions. “I will often get questions about things like adopted authority or swapping profiles, and what’s the difference or are they the same,” Woodbury, the former OS/400 security architect at IBM, said in a recent “Coffee with Carol” Webinar hosted

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• Happy Holidays From IT Jungle

  December 9, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The weather may not know it in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but the holiday season will soon be fast upon us and that means it is time to put away the pens and keyboards here at IT Jungle and to spend some time with family and friends. The Four Hundred has been a part of the IBM midrange community almost as long as the AS/400 and its progeny have been around, and like the AS/400 itself, The Four Hundred has antecedents that have an even longer history. The point is, we have been listening and learning about the IBM

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• A Rising Tide

  December 7, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The system business is roaring along in 2015, and it looks like the industry might devour a historic number of machines this year, if the first three quarters are any indication. The amount of capacity that companies are consuming is staggering, and not something the analysts at IDC or Gartner talk about when they put out their quarterly figures. But we like to think these things through. It looks like Power Systems sales are on the rise, too. So maybe, just maybe, a tide is rising that will lift all boats a little. (Provided interest rate increases or some other

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• Fresche Legacy Gets $6 Million Infusion To Expand

  December 7, 2015 Dan Burger

  It might surprise some people to read about companies that are investing in the IBM midrange platform. After all, at least one of the top research and analysis firms has had IBM i, and before that the iSeries, and before that the AS/400, on a death watch for something like a dozen years or so. Not everyone believes that. And here’s a $6 million reason why the IBM i market is worthy of investment. When IBM i ISV Fresche Legacy looked for an investor that could give the application modernization software company a lift, it found rather quickly what it

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• ISVs In Denial About Software Licensing

  December 7, 2015 Alex Woodie

  “The only constant. . . is change.” That cliché is enough to induce a vigorous eye roll from hardened IT pros, but it’s actually apropos for the IT industry, which feeds off disruption like the Kardashians feed on media attention. Now, a pair of new studies indicate a large number of software vendors are ill equipped to handle the current round of cloud- and mobile-induced IT chaos. The rise of powerful smartphones and tablets has eliminated the need to have a Windows PC or laptop to access many enterprise software applications. That’s a huge win for enterprise software users and

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• As I See It: Revolving Door

  December 7, 2015 Victor Rozek

  Just when you think the excesses and oddities of the Internet can no longer surprise, along come reports of an online ISIS “help desk”–24/7 assistance for the budding jihadist. Well, it turns out the reports were inaccurate. It’s not a single point of contact, but a “decentralized, multi-platform recruit outreach,” according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. Regardless, trolling for expendable volunteers willing to detonate themselves for your cause certainly marks a departure from the ordinary array of bile-flavored hate sites. Suicide bombers originate in many countries, and are subject to a variety of cultural influences. But if they have

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