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  • IBM i Skills Shortage A Barrier To Digital Transformation

    July 11, 2016 Alex Woodie

    Quick–what’s the top barrier to achieving digital transformation in your shop? If you said “IBM i skills,” then you’re in good company. In a recent informal poll conducted by SoftLanding Systems, a majority of IBM i professionals cited a lack of IBM i skills (taken to mean RPG programming expertise in particular) as the number one impediment to implementing projects such as development of Web and mobile interfaces and electronic document management.

    SoftLanding operations manager Jim Fisher admitted that he wasn’t expecting a lack of IBM i skills to be the number one answer to a question about barriers

    …

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  • IBM i Open Sourcerers

    July 11, 2016 Dan Burger

    Who will inherit the IBM i? And what will that business computer look like? My crystal ball is in the shop, so I’ll have to rely on what is currently going on and make some projections based on that. Collaboration would seem to be the key. Even without my crystal ball, I see new technologies being explored and applied. For IBM i to be relevant to future generations, open source software and the collaboration with other innovation teams needs to take place.

    Development of the IBM i platform is not happening on its own island anymore. It’s an integrated world.

    …

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  • Cloud-Based Email Migrations Keep IBM i Vendor Busy

    July 11, 2016 Dan Burger

    As more businesses migrate email services from desktops to the cloud, users at IBM i shops look for the tools that allow them to work quickly, efficiently, and securely. You can’t stay mired in the past. You have to adapt. That’s what BVSTools has done with its latest enhancement of GreenTools, which integrate with Microsoft Office 365’s Outlook and Google‘s Gmail for Business, two popular business email options.

    “We are noticing a lot of our current customers, when moving to the cloud for email, are choosing Microsoft Office 365 in greater numbers than those using Google’s Gmail for Business

    …

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  • Maxava Opens Up Bidding For iFoundation Grants

    July 11, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    For the sixth year running now, high availability software maker Maxava is putting its money where its mouth is in the IBM i community and donating a big bag of cash through its Maxava iFoundation to causes that benefit the maintenance and expansion of the IBM i community.

    Maxava launched its first iFoundation grants back in April 2011, promising to pay up to $50,000, in increments of up to $2,000 a pop, to organizations in the IBM i community that could use a little extra help in fulfilling their missions. Every little bit helps, in the first year $45,000

    …

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  • Power Systems GM Weights In On AS/400 Birthday

    June 27, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Any business unit within a conglomerate as vast and changing as fast as Big Blue needs to have a strong advocate as well as core financial performance that contributes to both the top and bottom line. The good news about the IBM i platform is that it has such a strong advocate in Doug Balog, general manager of the Power Systems business for the past several years. While Balog has been instrumental in pushing Linux on Power and putting together the OpenPower Foundation that is seeking to expand the Power ecosystem beyond the walls of IBM, he has not

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  • Advice For IBM i Shops: Balance The Old With The New

    June 27, 2016 Dan Burger

    Most C-level managers realize that progress is impossible without change. Yet making changes can be so damn difficult. Realizing that there has to be some changes made is a good start, but it’s taking that next step when companies actually achieve progress that leads to long-term success. And in the middle of it all is IT. How do companies with legacy IT systems change to keep up with progress?

    “One of the considerations that I feel is important is longevity,” says Steven Wolk, chief technology officer at the appliance and electronics chain store PC Richard & Son. “We’re used to

    …

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  • Fresche Partner Plan Aims At Expanded Reach

    June 27, 2016 Dan Burger

    Just two weeks ago, the company now known as Fresche (formerly Fresche Legacy) announced it was purchasing Quadrant Software and its key IBM i application modernization subsidiary BCD Software. The combination of BCD and Fresche’s previous acquisition of looksoftware puts a smorgasbord of modernization choices on the Fresche menu, including an instrumental application analysis tool. The latest news from Fresche is the rollout of a global partner program.

    The company hopes to attract a mix of IBM i independent software vendors (ISVs), value added resellers (VARs), independent consultants, and system integrators to its newly minted Power Partner Program. It

    …

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  • Mad Dog 21/21: Jimmy Choo Hill

    June 27, 2016 Hesh Wiener

    In the American West during the last quarter of the 19th century, quite a few people died with their boots on, thereby ending up in Boot Hill. These days, few people die in a saddle. Some die in gunfights. Plenty die at their desks, the way Bat Masterson did in 1921. A boneyard whose occupants expired at work wouldn’t be called Boot Hill anyway. Instead, particularly if it catered to the computer business with its many women executives, it would be named Jimmy Choo Hill.

    Boot Hill: Quite a few graveyards were named Boot Hill; the one in Tombstone

    …

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  • Flynet Pivots To Catch IBM i Web Business In U.S.

    June 27, 2016 Alex Woodie

    There’s scarcely any new project for the IBM i these days that doesn’t involve the Web in some way, shape, or form. Mobile front-ends, application modernization, Web services–heck, even the lowly terminal emulator has become a Web app these days. One IBM i software vendor that is positioned to capitalize on this trend is Flynet, which sells a single product that can address multiple Web initiatives for IBM i shops.

    You may have never heard of Flynet, but the company, which is based in the United Kingdom, is by no means new to this sector. In fact, Flynet has

    …

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  • The AS/400 At 28: A HENRY, Not A DINK

    June 20, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    A lot of people get credit for the work that went into creating IBM midrange systems over the decades, and rightfully so since the creation of such machinery, including the hardware and the software, takes many hundreds or thousands of individuals with each successive generation. It is appropriate to think about them as the AS/400, the forebear of the current Power Systems IBM i system, turns 28.

    That is a long time in a human life, and an even longer time in computer history, where a generation has spanned from 12 to 24 months instead of decades. The funny bit

    …

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