• InterForm Keeps Automotive Data On The Straight and Narrow

  January 24, 2018 Alex Woodie

  In the massive automotive supply chain, barcodes and EDI are part of the daily grind. Warehouse workers and drivers have no choice but to assume the barcodes are correct. But what happens when the barcode is wrong? That’s a situation that InterForm, a provider of electronic forms management software, is addressing with a new solution.

  The penalties for bad data can be severe. If you’re dealing with a big OEM like Ford or General Motors, the penalties can approach $300 per incident. Some of the European manufacturers that InterForm A/S CEO Peter Sørensen works with pay penalties of €3,000 per …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 24

  January 24, 2018 Dan Burger

  This week, Monitor connects you with an article that covers the latest version of RDi, IBM’s tool of choice for modern application development. Don’t miss the 60-day trial download from IBM.

  Also within reach are articles about an open source integrated development environment for IBM i created by the energetic and community-minded Liam Allan; today’s artificial intelligence reality and tomorrow’s expectations as an IT workhorse; and IBM’s haul of patents in 2017 that are well represented by AI intellectual property. Also look for the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey in the Resources section. Plus, updates to the events calendar worth …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 3: Important Update For Spectre/Meltdown

  January 22, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  There has been an important development in the area of the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities as it relates to Power Systems. As you can see from this follow-on notice from January 15, IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has these vulnerabilities classified as “High Severity,” which is more a reflection about the potential threat they represent, given the nature of speculative execution of Power (and other) processors, rather than because of an actual exploit that is in the wild that is using these vulnerabilities to get access to unauthorized information on systems.

  We have a little more …

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• The IBM i Base Is Ready To Move On Up

  January 22, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Even the most eager hyperscaler or cloud builder in the world has to let a server sit in place, running workloads, for at least three years to get good value on the dollar spent, and in many cases, machines are repurposed to be in the fleet for longer than that. And no company can accept the risk of changing all machines at the same time, for obvious reasons other than cost, because such a change could be very disruptive to any business. Enterprises tend to have less spare iron and fewer techies, and so they are even more conservative, and …

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• Investment And Integration Indicators For IBM i

  January 22, 2018 Dan Burger

  Steve Will can talk a blue streak. IBM, sometimes referred to as Big Blue, pays Will to do that. As chief architect of the IBM i operating system, he has a lot of other responsibilities, too. One of them is to listen. He travels around the world talking with and listening to IBM i customers.

  Last week, Will stopped by Southern California to attend the OCEAN user group meeting in Orange County. In his keynote session, he talked about IBM i strategy (that’s a bigger part of his job than listening), investments, and commitment to the future of the platform. …

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• Guru: Using Curl To Interact With Web Services

  January 22, 2018 Jacob Holt

  There have been times where I have had to collect or enter data into vendor websites. While usually this was not a hassle, it was an uncommon function of my job. However, it wasn’t long before the standard business process got unbearable. I began looking for ways to automate those tasks by using the command-line program Curl to get and post data to vendor web services.

  Curl is an open-source program that supports a plethora of internet protocols for transferring data. With its wide-ranging parameters, this program offers much power for automating tedious tasks. But just like other highly flexible …

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• Syncsort Finds Security Key To Business Resilience

  January 22, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort is keeping up the tradition started 10 years ago by Vision Solutions, which it now owns, by publishing a State of Resilience report. This year’s report focuses the spotlight heavily on one particular aspect of IT operations that’s on everybody’s minds following a turbulent 2017: security.

  After surveying 5,632 IT professionals from January through July of last year, Syncsort found that security was the initiative at the top of most IT pros’ minds. Looking out over the next 24 months, security emerged as the top initiative, accounting for 49% of the votes, followed by high availability.

  Specifically, IT professionals …

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• IBM’s Systems Group On The Financial Rebound

  January 22, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We like to start with the good news here in 2018, and the good news is that IBM had a very good quarter in its systems business, so we can all start breathing a little easier and Hitachi can put that checkbook away because Big Blue ain’t going to be selling off its System z and Power Systems business any time soon.

  (We are joking there. We think. . . . and hope.)

  In the final quarter of 2017 ended in December, the mainframe saw sales shoot up 71 percent thanks to the System z14 refresh that started in …

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• Security Still Dominates IBM i Discussion, HelpSystems’ 2018 Survey Reveals

  January 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems released its much-anticipated annual survey of the IBM i installed base this week and the least surprising finding is this: Security remains the biggest concerns of IBM i shops. However, while security dominates the discussion, the survey revealed that most IBM i shops have no concrete plans to do much about it.

  HelpSystems started its annual Marketplace Survey way back in 2014 (with the first survey published in early 2015), and over the years it’s become one of the most cited references for data about the IBM i installed base. Other vendors conduct surveys too, and IT Jungle …

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• Industry Speaks: IBM i Predictions For 2018

  January 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  It may just be another day on the calendar, but there’s something special about January 1. The beginning of a new year gives us a chance to ponder industry trends and anticipate what’s likely to occur over the next 364 days. We’re two weeks into the new year, but it’s not too late to turn the mic over to IBM i industry insiders for their 2018 predictions.

  Here’s what they had to say:

  “Extending and stretching applications is the order of the day. Refactoring and modernizing. More and more shops running legacy apps will come out of the shadows as …

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