• Web Portal Not An IBM i Modernization Bit Player

  January 25, 2016 Dan Burger

  The portal piece of modernization projects seldom gets top billing. All eyes are on the graphical user interface and efforts to scour the green screen out of sight from those who believe it is the work of the devil. But dagnabbit, it’s the portal that unifies information and applications from a galaxy of diverse sources and displays it in an orderly fashion. It’s the key to proprietary information that’s shared among authorized users. “We see a lot of B2B companies building portals,” says Marcel Sarrasin, vice president of marketing at Quadrant Software, the parent company of BCD Software, one of

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Pythia And The Two-Legged Pig

  January 25, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  The great temple of Apollo stands at Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. Centuries ago, an elder priestess at this temple, yclept Pythia, was an oracle, offering prophecies to those able to correctly interpret her words. Today, Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is IBM’s largest shareholder, is called the Oracle of Omaha. Buffett looks the part, resembling a benign grandma. He has more money than all of Greece, although right now plenty of people enjoy that distinction. Like Pythia the Oracle, Buffett can be baffling; less gifted people cannot understand why Buffett is up to his ears in IBM

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• Baseline Data Boss Predicts Steady Stream Of Outsourced Production Environments

  January 25, 2016 Dan Burger

  If there is a demand for managed services in the IBM midrange market, you can begin measuring it 20 years ago. It’s not a new thing, but some of the services are new. For many companies, those contracting for managed services as well as those that provide the services, the managed services relationship has been long established. Usually it’s based on a disaster recovery service. But what about the new demand? We’ve written about this before in IT Jungle articles. When will the managed services business become more than the disaster recovery business? It already has. Nearly every managed service

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• Carbonite Nabs EVault to Build One-Stop DR Shop for SMB Masses

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Carbonite is buying the EVault data protection business from Seagate for $14 million in cash, the companies announced last month. While the deal marks a nearly 10x decline in valuation for EVault, the folks at Carbonite are clearly happy to get their hands on EVault’s disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) business, which it sees pairing up nicely with its existing products for small businesses and consumers. EVault began developing its online data protection business way back at the dawn of the commercial Internet in 1997. By backing up its clients’ data over the Web to centrally located servers, the

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• Micro Focus Debuting Native 5250 Emulator for iOS

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IT pros who want to access an IBM i server directly from their iPad or iPhone will soon have another way to do that thanks to Micro Focus, which is rolling out a new 5250 emulator that runs natively on iOS devices. The new product, which IT Jungle has learned will be called Reflection for TN3270 and TN5250, will be available soon from the Apple App Store for less than $50 per device. Micro Focus is arguably the largest provider of terminal emulation software outside of IBM itself. The company acquired NetManage and its popular RUMBA (nee, Rumba) product

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• Round Three of IBM i Predictions for 2016

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  The one constant in this universe is change, and the IBM i business is no different. The server platform is now in its fourth decade of service, counting go back to the System/3 days, and the pace of technological change in the business IT sector demands agility at many levels. In our third and final installment of our annual IBM i predictions, we have predictions from five IBM i pros about the changes we can expect this year. Bob Langieri director of IT recruiting at Excel Technical Services “I continue to see a slow but demeaning departure of some longtime

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• Object Replication at the Touch of a Button

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IBM i professionals who struggle to distribute objects across multiple IBM i systems for patching, testing, or other purposes may be interested in a new product from Shield Advanced Solutions. The software, dubbed RE4i, can automatically distribute practically any type of IBM i object to one or more remote systems with the press of a button, thereby saving time and reducing hassle for programmers and administrators alike. Most midrange administrators use a combination of FTP and save/restore commands to distribute and apply objects–such as PTFs or application changes–to remote IBM i servers. The admins probably don’t view the manual

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• IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power . . . Auto-Approval Brings Time Savings to Document Workflows . . . User-Defined Dashboards Get Power Boost from mrc . . .

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power IBM is now shipping a third version of its Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA. Last week’s announcement of a new solution edition based on its Power E880 server should give larger customers more options for running the in-memory database on IBM gear. For the low low price of $177,357, customers can get started in a nicely equipped Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA that features a 40-core Power8 processor module running at 4.19 GHz and 2 TB of RAM, along with Power IFL and SuSE

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• The Data-Centric Depiction Of IBM i

  January 18, 2016 Dan Burger

  You have data. You’ve been collecting it in pretty much the same fashion for years. The only thing that has changed is you have more of it. But are you getting more out of it? I’m not talking about data analytics. The world doesn’t need another person talking about data analytics. This is about improving business information integration and the role IBM‘s DB2 for i has played and will play in the future. Data-centric development is not a new concept. It hovers in the background of the IBM i roadmap, but is maybe the most critical element to the

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• 2016 Predictions for IBM i: Round Two

  January 18, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Last week, we ran our first roundup of 2016 predictions from various CEOs and other prominent members of the IBM i community (see “2016 Predictions For IBM i: Cautious Optimism”). As promised, here we go for a second round, which continues the optimistic note, for both the platform and the community as a whole. Jim Oberholtzer, CEO at Agile Technology Architects “I think the biggest play for IBM in the new year will be the open source movement on Power, and specifically on IBM i. IBM has been laying the groundwork for a major push in those technologies

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