• OpenLegacy Partners with ‘Nearshore’ IT Services Provider Softtek. . . Linoma Adds 2FA from RSA to GoAnywhere MFT Suite. . . RVI Partners with Accounting Software Maker. . .

  April 13, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  OpenLegacy Partners with ‘Nearshore’ IT Services Provider Softtek OpenLegacy, a provider of legacy modernization solutions for IBM i and mainframe shops and their applications, this month unveiled a partnership with Softtek, a provider of outsourcing services headquartered in Mexico. The partnership gives OpenLegacy customers access to the development resources of Softtek, a Monterrey-based IT services provider with 30 offices around the world, including United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, China, and India. The company, which trademarked the term “Global Nearshore,” positions itself as a closer provider of outsourced IT services than those based in India. “Our strategic partnership

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• IBM i 7.3 Arrives April 15; 7.2 TR4 Follows in May

  April 12, 2016 Dan Burger

  It’s here. Today is IBM‘s announcement day for i 7.3, which becomes available Friday, April 15. The Technology Refresh, TR4 for i 7.2, arrives May 20. A new OS release is a glimpse of the future. For some of you, the future is now. You’re the early adopters–the people who put the bug in IBM’s ear several years ago about expanding analytical capabilities and help getting a handle on the security problem that is crying for attention. This release fits into the long-term strategy of Chief Architect Steve Will by providing more options for those who want to develop

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• IBM Puts Future Power Chip Stakes In The Ground

  April 12, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two important things happened at the OpenPower Summit last week. One of them concerns IBM i shops directly and the other one affects them indirectly and perhaps more importantly. The first is that IBM rolled out an official roadmap for Power chip development for the next five-plus years. The second was that search engine giant Google and cloud operator Rackspace Hosting said that they were collaborating on a design of a future system based on the Power9 chip. Google has been experimenting with Power8 chips for at a couple of years, and we suspect (without any corroborating evidence at all

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• Spreading A Wider IT Net At UCG Technologies

  April 12, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Selling boxes in the midrange isn’t easy. A shrinking customer base, falling margins on hardware sales, and tight IT budgets combine to put the squeeze on even the best-run reseller outfits. For longtime IBM business partner Jim Kandrac, the shift was palpable enough to lead him to rename his Cleveland, Ohio-based company from United Computer Group to UCG Technologies. It’s notable that “computer” is no longer in the name of Kandrac’s company. Are computers no longer important to the business? “The word computer is becoming more passé,” he says. “They’re still important, but they’re less important.” In the heyday

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• Testing For Security Inadequacies

  April 12, 2016 Dan Burger

  Organizations are often reluctant to admit that they have inadequate system security. Quite possibly they may not even realize it. That’s not uncommon, particularly in the IBM midrange community, where we know there’s a false sense of security deeply rooted in the conviction that IBM i is inherently secure. Nothing could be further from the truth, although thinking any system is inherently secure is an equally foolish mistake. It’s all a matter of understanding how to manage security on a system. Preconceived notions that the IBM i platform is some sort of superhero in a box is one of the

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• Thank You, IBM

  April 12, 2016 Brian Kelly

  The IBM Corporation was run as a benevolent dictatorship through 1971. Thomas Watson Senior, and then Thomas Junior, ran IBM as if they owned it. They both had an entrepreneurial flair and few would deny that when they were in charge of IBM, they ran the company as if it were a sole proprietorship. They had many wonderful policies such as taking care of the people so that the people would take care of the business, and of course the classic: “Respect for the Individual.” IBM believed in Wild Ducks and chairman Watson Junior wrote about them. He was not

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• X Marks The Spot

  April 4, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Just because IBM sold off its System x X86 server business to Lenovo Group does not mean magically that X86 servers are no longer relevant to Power Systems customers. As far as we can tell, Big Blue’s exit from this business has had no measurable impact on the use of X86 iron at IBM i shops, although the brand of machines that IBM i customers might choose in their next X86 upgrade cycle might change if they had not already been using gear from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise or Dell, the dominant suppliers of X86 gear in the datacenter. Last week,

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• IBM i Shops Behind The Customized ERP Eight Ball

  April 4, 2016 Dan Burger

  We are not sheep. What we do with our ERP software is our own business and our widget business is not going to be run like all other widget businesses. And we don’t all jump when the ERP software vendor says jump. Most IBM midrange shops are running packaged ERP software and quite a few have customized them to get what they really want. Until it’s time to upgrade, that is. Software upgrades, even when the software is not customized, can be a pain in the patootie. Whether that’s a dull pain or a sharp pain is often related to

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• MariaDB Dropping In On IBM i To Replace MySQL

  April 4, 2016 Alex Woodie

  When Oracle dropped support for IBM i with its MySQL database five years ago, it effectively slammed the door shut on a promising path to rejuvenate the IBM i ecosystem with an open source of applications. But soon that door will re-open via MariaDB, a fork of MySQL that is a drop-in replacement for Oracle’s open database. Zend‘s PHP-on-IBM i guru Mike Pavlak gives IT Jungle the scoop on what’s about to happen. According to Pavlak, work is under way to get MariaDB running on IBM i, which it will do in the same manner that MySQL came

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Wintel Overture

  April 4, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  In 1981, IBM caused a tectonic shift in computing by announcing its PC. IBM ultimately failed in the PC business, but it spawned an industry segment that still stands on the PC’s two pillars: Intel chips and Microsoft software. Thirty-five years later, however, most clients are mobile, with ARM chips and ‘nix variant software. Meanwhile, enterprise Wintel and Lintel have been enlisted by Microsoft for a fresh assault on the glass house archipelago. To avoid a debacle, IBM must reinvent its Power and mainframe platforms on the ground and in the cloud. IBM appears vulnerable, adding to customers’

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