• Manufacturing Automation At A ‘Crossroads’ For IBM i Shops

  July 13, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Manufacturers across the country rely heavily on their MRP or ERP systems to automate the handling of resources. That’s what the “R” stands for, after all. But it turns out that MRP and ERP systems leave a whole lot to be desired when it actually comes to managing resources–including raw materials and labor–on the shop floor. That’s where companies like Crossroads RMC and its manufacturing execution system (MES) comes into play. Crossroads RMC was founded more than 20 years ago to develop automation solutions for the factory floor. The Lisle, Illinois, company originally developed its Crossroads MES solution in the

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• IBM’s Migration Plan To PurePower Systems

  July 13, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  More than anything else, IBM is a systems company, and it always has been. We could argue about whether or not Big Blue should have ever exited the application software business, as it started to do in the late 1980s and finished off doing in the early 1990s, but I don’t think there would be much of an argument that IBM has been and should continue to be a supplier of full systems of servers, storage, networking, and systems software like operating systems, middleware, and databases. Thankfully, even IBM does not seem to be of two minds about this, as

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• LANSA Guides Mobile, Portal, Integration Project To Success

  July 13, 2015 Dan Burger

  The proving ground for significant IT projects is far less about speed than it is about endurance. And when you can hear about a project that was completed, it’s so much more interesting than listening to a sales pitch for technology that can take you someplace that no one has yet to travel and may be a place no sane person wants to go. Tried and tested beats new and full of promise for a lot of people despite the drumbeating that is designed to defeat anything that adheres to a slow-growth philosophy. This story is about a six-year-old project.

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• As I See It: The Improbable Conference

  July 13, 2015 Victor Rozek

  Where IT is concerned, the United States has functioned as a nurselog for India’s booming IT sector. Soon after American management discovered that India’s cheap, plentiful, educated labor could produce cheap, plentiful, sophisticated software, so began the greatest job migration since clothing manufacturers fled the country. The skies over India darkened with incoming hardware, software specs careened off satellites, and Tower-of-Babel help desks were born. It was a rocky start, marked by resentment from threatened American workers, and cultural and language incompatibilities that plagued their Indian counterparts. But eventually everyone settled into the new normal. American IT moved on, specializing

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• IBM i Access Turns Its Attention To Database

  July 13, 2015 Dan Burger

  It’s been just about two years since IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) was introduced. IBM didn’t make a lot of noise about it. Maybe that’s because IBM doesn’t market products. It markets ideas. On the other hand, it might be because ACS delivered system administration with navigation features that most people have been working with for 10 to 15 years–features such as the capabilities to drag and drop, scroll down a page, and use a mouse instead of F keys. IBM i Access Client Solutions is a replacement for the severely haggard iAccess for Windows, a product with thousands

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• What’s Legacy Now: WSDLs and Stored Procedures

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Thanks to the breakneck speed that information technology is evolving, the definition of what is “legacy” in computing is constantly changing. For example, 10 years ago, organizations that were coding stored procedures into their databases and exposing mainframe business logic as WSDL-based Web services were following best practices in development. But some people are now lumping those objects into the legacy computing camp, along with old RPG and COBOL programs. The folks at OpenLegacy aren’t interested in starting a war by labeling stored procedures and first-generation WSDL-based Web services as legacy. The software modernization vendor–which last week announced a new

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• IBS Sold To Marlin

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  A new chapter in the saga of International Business Systems began Friday when the Swedish company announced that the California-based private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners has signed a definitive agreement to acquire IBS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Once a widely respected software company with 5,000 customers running on RPG or Java versions of its IBM i-based ERP system, IBS has struggled recently. But things appear to have stabilized of late under CEO Doug Braun’s leadership. At its annual user conference in May, the company announced that it signed 200 contracts during 2014, which it said counted

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• Magic Goes In-Memory With App Framework

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software recently launched a new release of its application development and runtime framework that features in-memory data grid (IMDG) technology. The IMDG–which will eventually support IBM i–will bolster the scalability, stability, and elasticity of applications developed with xpa Application Platform 3.0, the company says. Scalability is one of the most common worries that keep enterprise application architects up and night, especially in this age of big data. What happens to the app if I add 1,000 more users? What about 100,000? Can my database handle more data? Will I need to redesign the application using non-relational technology? What is

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• Vendor Patches VTLs So You Don’t Have To

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that don’t have the time to properly patch and update their virtual tape libraries (VTLs) may be interested in a new service unveiled by Dynamic Solutions International (DSI). For a small fee, the Colorado company will patch and update its Linux-based VTLs in customer accounts, leaving IBM i admins to focus on other things. IBM i shops may not be doing all they can to secure their environments, but they’re usually pretty good about applying integrity PTFs from IBM and loading them onto their Power Systems servers. But when it comes to applying security updates and patches

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• cozTools Brings Subscription Pricing To Software Licensing

  July 1, 2015 Dan Burger

  Cozzi Productions, maker of the SQL Query File software, is now offering a monthly software license option with a cancel anytime feature. Rather than paying the entire software license fee up front, as is traditionally done with software purchases, the subscription-based model lowers the entry point cost for software acquisition. There is no money down and the first three months are free for new customs who sign up before the end of the year–December 31, 2015. The value proposition of subscription-based pricing varies from company to company. But one of the factors that are most commonly cited is the

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