• BCD Bolsters RPG OA Support in Presto 6

  February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  BCD Software has been supporting the RPG Open Access technology in its Presto modernization tool for less than a year, and it’s safe to say that most Presto customers are still using the traditional 5250 access method. But the software vendor is moving strongly to cement its capabilities in the RPG Open Access arena with some slick new features in Presto 6, which was just released. Presto, if you’re unfamiliar, is a tactical modernization tool that automatically transforms green screens into Web interfaces that can be accessed from any Web browser. BCD ships a number of pre-defined “skins” that give

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• Chrono-Logic Change Management Software Targets IBM i

  February 4, 2015 Dan Burger

  Business-focused application development is what IBM midrange programmers do. That part hasn’t changed. How they do it has changed quite a bit, particularly since organizations have gained a greater awareness of the business benefits of modernization. This goes beyond the beautification of green-screen apps and digs much deeper into the functionality of the business logic and includes database modernization, too. And it shines a light on change management software and what it adds to the modernization effort. We are seeing change management software vendors become more active in telling the modernization story. They are making investments in their products and

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• How Trek Solved Its IBM i-to-Cloud Data Integration Challenge

  February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When the bicycle manufacturer Trek started looking for a CRM system several years ago, the cloud beckoned loudly. While the company has happy with its on-premise ERP system running on IBM i hardware, the new CRM would live in the cloud. But getting data back and forth between the two systems wouldn’t be easy. Luckily, the company found a tool that made data integrating cloud and on-prem data simple. From its headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin, Trek Bicycle Corp. makes and sells hundreds of thousands of bicycles every year to customers around the world. The privately held company, which in 2006

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• REST Services For IBM i In developerWorks Spotlight

  February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  One of the exciting new features added to IBM i in late 2014 is support for REST-based Web services. The rest of the world has accepted REST services as the de-facto integration standard on the Web, and now this approach is being supported within IBM i too. But how do you actually go about building and managing REST services in IBM i? Let the smart IBMers at developerWorks show you how. REST services are very new to IBM i, having been announced by IBM just four months ago and delivered in late December 2014 with the various HTTP Group

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• Infor Cloud EDI . . . DocOrigin Replaces JetForm . . . Empowered with Web Services . . .

  February 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Infor takes a very industry-focused approach to software, and that is no different with its latest EDI cloud offering. If you’re looking for document management software to replace Adobe JetForm, DocOrigin would like to speak with you. Web services are popping up everywhere these days, including in the application development power tool from mrc. Infor Launches EDI Cloud for Auto Manufacturing Infor last month unveiled EDI Managed Service, a cloud-based EDI offering designed specifically for companies in the automotive supply chain. According to Infor’s announcement, the new service combines an EDI translator from its partner Rocket Software along with its

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• DB2 Enhancements, Free Form RPG, Modernization Top Rowe’s ‘Big Hits’ List

  February 2, 2015 Dan Burger

  If you build it, they will come. It was a prophecy that came to be in a movie called Field of Dreams, but it’s no guarantee in the world of business computing and software development. Sometimes customers come and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come, but it’s at a pace that makes tortoise racing seem like speed skating. So I asked a guy who is up to his ears in IBM i software development what he thought were IBM‘s biggest success stories. The guy I went to was Tim Rowe, IBM i business architect for application development and

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• A Peek Inside IBM’s Merchant Power8 Processors

  February 2, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue may have sold off its IBM Microelectronics chip making division to GlobalFoundries, but it is still in control of the Power8 processor and it is still very much interested in creating and selling merchant versions of the Power8 processors that it has created for its own Power Systems server lineup. A new report released from chip industry watcher The Linley Group has taken a look at these merchant-class Power8 chips and how they fit into the systems market. Someday, a machine that an IBM i customer buys could end up coming from a third-party vendor, not from

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• IBM i Marketplace Survey Fills In The Blanks

  February 2, 2015 Dan Burger

  The IBM midrange community has a reputation for maintaining the status quo. But that doesn’t mean it’s immune to change. Shifts in the economy, the increasing pressures from business managers to do more with less, and the realization that competitive advantage comes with modernization combine to disrupt status quo thinkers. But does it really? Statistics that pertain to IBM i shops are almost non-existent. A new stack of information coming from a survey conducted by HelpSystems changes that. The complete results of the survey have yet to be made public. But I’ve learned a few things that are surprising. For

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• As I See It: Asking The Big Question

  February 2, 2015 Victor Rozek

  Before she became an activist intent on changing the medical system, my wife’s doctor was so unhappy that she once thought about killing herself. And for doctors, that’s not unusual. Although it’s not widely publicized, physicians commit suicide at an alarming rate. By profession, they have the highest rate in the nation. Almost every physician has either thought of suicide, or knew a colleague who took his or her own life. For Dr. Pamela Wible, the source of their common misery was not hard to identify: Their purpose has been corrupted. Most aspiring physicians enter the profession as idealists, intent

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• IBM Redpaper Guides You To IBM i Modernization Tools

  February 2, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to building modern IBM i applications, there’s no shortage of tools available on the market. Depending on your requirements–whether you’re staying in the comfy confines of RPG or are comfortable with something like .NET, whether you’re looking just for Web tools or adding mobile too–there are different directions you can go. A recently published IBM Redpaper can help guide you to a better understanding of the third-party tools on the market. IBM put a big focus on IBM i application modernization last year. After months of work and collaborating with the top experts in the field, it

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