Before embarking upon a legacy modernization project, it’s important to do your homework. Not all IBM i screens are equal, but figuring out which ones are the most widely used is neither easy nor straightforward. This is the challenge that application modernization vendor Fresche Legacy hopes to resolve with the new heatmap solution that it’s building for its Newlook modernization suite.

Guessing how users interact with legacy IBM i applications can lead to erroneous conclusions about how to proceed with legacy modernization. Instead, Fresche says the new heatmap software it’s developing will allow customers to gather usage data from the

We’re hearing a lot about Node.js as open source topics are discussed with greater frequency in the IBM i community. On the other hand, COBOL gets far less attention than it deserves considering that 80 percent of enterprise business applications run on this sturdy code. Profound Logic, one of several IBM i vendors leading the way in modernization efforts, is including both these languages in its product roadmap. Profound’s CEO Alex Roytman explains why and why now.

Let’s begin with Node.js. IBM i support for open source software has increased in recent years, but open source is not new

Look out: CNX is going global. The Chicago-based provider of IBM i development tools just signed a partnership deal with Sencha that will see the Silicon Valley firm distributing Valence around the world. CNX also just released Valence version 5, which brings a number of new features, including a stronger focus on modernizing RPG applications.

Scott Mullarkey, Sencha’s vice president of global alliances and professional services, says CNX’s desire to have a global footprint led to an extension of the OEM partnership the two companies signed in 2008.

“Ninety-five percent of their [CNX’s] business is U.S.-based. They do not have

If you could improve your application and systems software management, what would be the overall effect on your organization be? Greater efficiency and higher productivity come to mind. And the ripple effect touches nearly every employee, customer and business partner. In organizations that depend on the IBM i running on Power Systems, the focus typically begins on the system and on technical components. For the greater good, a multi-platform approach that focuses on functions is the better choice.

Application development is the backbone of many IBM midrange shops and managing that function has led to greater efficiencies through the planning,

The Internet continues to present powerful and compelling new capabilities that many organizations are leveraging to their advantage. But all too often, the tantalizing digital future remains out of reach for IBM i and mainframe shops due to the difficulty–either real or imagined–of engineering those new capabilities to work with legacy systems. Helping organizations overcome those challenges is one of the goals that OpenLegacy has set for itself.

OpenLegacy CTO Hans Otharsson has spent most of his career working with enterprise systems, including banking systems running on IBM i servers and mainframes, and knows firsthand the massive amount of ingenuity,