As the world’s largest gathering of IBM i professionals, COMMON‘s Annual Meeting and Expo is a natural place to announce new products. This year’s event in New Orleans, Louisiana, is no different, as IBM i vendors unveiled new and improved wares across a range of product categories. We’ll dive into more depth on most of these products in future issues of The Four Hundred, but for now here’s a quick run-down on the products turning our heads at the show.

Fresche Legacy “Heatmap” tool

Before embarking upon an application modernization project, it’s good to know how the existing

The field-level encryption capability that IBM introduced with IBM i 7.1 is a powerful tool for securing sensitive data. However, IBM i shops that have not modernized their legacy RPG applications with SQL access methods find it difficult to use. That should change with new technology coming out of Townsend Security this week at the COMMON conference in New Orleans.

The DB2 field procedure exit point that IBM launched in 2010 helped a lot of IBM i shops to encrypt their data on a field-level. The capability to encrypt pieces of sensitive data residing in particular parts of their DB2

When Hoffmaster finally flipped the switch on its ERP migration at the end of February, IT director Rick Dittberner was nervous. Not only was the paper-goods supplier consolidating a manufacturing site on Infor ERP LX, but it was also replacing an old shop floor reporting system with a new one from Crossroads RMC. There was a lot that could go wrong for the IBM i shop.

Hoffmaster is a half-a-billion-dollar manufacturer of disposable tabletop paper products, including plates, cups, cutlery, napkins, placemats, and table covers. You can find products from the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, company’s consumer division in stores such

Rocket Software is launching a new tool that simplifies the management and distribution of mobile application source code. Called Rocket Lifecycle for Mobile, the new software is designed to make it easier for IBM i shops to manage the DevOps lifecycle for today’s modern applications, which involve not only closely administered servers but also widely dispersed smartphones.

Mobile application development continues to be a hot trend in the IBM i space, as smartphones become more woven into our personal and professional lives. Four out of 10 IBM i shops have a mobile computing initiative, according to HelpSystems‘ 2016 IBM

It’s really difficult to overstate the importance of application development to any organization. It’s a simple tool, but it needs to be the right tool. When done right, it’s crucial to business efficiency. Getting it right and keeping it simple is the target, yet somehow the aim differs wildly from the result. Shoot fast but shoot straight. Don’t just hit the target. Hit the bull’s eye.

BCD Software is one of several application development vendors in the IBM midrange market that can help application developers shoot fast and straight. The company has a new release of its desktop and mobile