• Manager And Programmer Ratios In IT Shops

  April 28, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  How many IT managers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Hopefully not more than one at most IBM i shops, and in many cases the IT manager does double-duty as a system administrator and sometimes triple-duty as a programmer at IBM i shops. That is the great thing about the IBM i platform: It takes very few people to get a lot of application work done, making it a perfect platform for small and medium businesses who wanted to be experts in their businesses, not in hardware and systems software. That doesn’t mean there are not big

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• Unions Criticize IBM’s Earning Per Share Focus

  April 28, 2014 Dan Burger

  Workforce rebalancing, IBM‘s term for erasing higher paid and higher skilled employees in more economically advanced regions while adding to its workforce with lower skilled and lower paid employees from less economically advanced regions, is a short-term win that leads to a long-term loss. And that loss could be the disappearance of IBM as we know the company today. That’s the warning message being delivered to the IBM board of directors just ahead of the stockholders’ meeting Tuesday, April 29. The message, which calls for a reorientation of IBM, comes from an amalgamation of employee advocacy groups: the Global

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• Avoiding Application Modernization Disasters

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to colossal IT screw-ups, there may be no better way to infamy than to bungle an application modernization project involving an IBM mainframe, AS/400, or other legacy host. It may not be the fastest approach, considering the years that are typically involved, but it will successfully leave the customer millions in the hole and feeling utterly helpless about the future. Miten Marfatia, CEO of legacy application modernization specialist EvolveWare, shared his secrets to avoiding the headlines. Marfatia has seen his share of modernizations gone awry as the chief executive at EvolveWare, a Santa Clara, California, company

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• PHP Developer Chooses WebSmart to Build His ‘Scaffold’

  April 22, 2014 Dan Burger

  Central Semiconductor needed Web applications that its customers could access from desktops and mobile devices. The customers were engineers searching for semiconductor devices and the search needed to be fast and easy and the navigation smooth. “My goal is to give people a tool to find what they’re looking for quickly. If customers can find the product they’re looking for, hopefully they’ll order a sample and be happy with the product,” says Web developer Rob Binetti. Binetti was hired by Central Semiconductor to lead the Web development efforts. He was an experienced PHP Web developer who had worked with RPG-based

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• Arpeggio Goes for the ‘Hacker Shutdown’ with 2FA Offering for IBM i

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  If you haven’t heard of Arpeggio Software, you’re missing out on cool stuff for your IBM i server. The latest batch of mostly free goodness comes in the forms of ARP-SMS, which provides an IBM i interface for sending messages via the Short Messaging Service. It’s also gearing up ARP-AUTH, which uses that SMS function to implement two-factor authentication on your lovely, lonely server. Arpeggio unveiled ARP-SMS in late March to enable organizations to effectively “use their IBM i like a smartphone,” the company says. The software integrates with Twilio‘s cloud-based service, and provides an IBM i version

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• Get Your IBM i Training Online

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Compared to commodity Wintel boxes, the IBM i server practically runs itself. That’s not to say there aren’t some specific technical skills required to operate the machine efficiently. Organizations have several choices when it comes to obtaining IBM i training for their IT professionals, including a growing number of online courses. Among the IBM business partners offering IBM i-specific training, Avnet Academy appears to offer the most number of courses. The educational arm of the server distributor offers a wide range of online and onsite training courses for many IBM i topics. The website currently lists about 55 IBM i-specific

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• HelpSystems Launches Mobile Initiatives, Acquires NAI for Workflow Automation

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems last week debuted Robot/NETWORK Web UI, the first of what is expected to be many mobile interfaces for its extensive IBM i product suite. The company also announced the acquisition of Network Automation Inc. (NAI), which develops the AutoMate line of workflow mapping and automation software. While it has been possible to access HelpSystems’ Web-based product screens from a smartphone or a tablet, the company hasn’t had a mobile strategy per se. That is changing with the launch of Robot/NETWORK Web UI, a new offering that allows users to see IBM i server performance information from the comfort of

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• Astro-Med Antes Up with PureFlex Upgrade

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  We haven’t seen a big rush to adopt the PureFlex server among the IBM i user base. But some companies are making the transition to IBM‘s all-in-one integrated system, including Astro-Med, a Rhode Island manufacturer that relies on a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP system. Astro-Med was drawn to PureFlex for several reasons. For starters, it was looking to simplify its IT infrastructure, shrink its data center footprint, and adopt a more modular and pay-as-you-grow IT environment. But according to an IBM case study on Astro-Med’s PureFlex implementation, that was just the beginning. “The solution needed to deliver high

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• Mrc Seeks Application Vendors in New Partner Program

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Web application development toolmaker mrc launched a new business partner program this month in the hopes of attracting more application software vendors to use its flagship product, m-Power. According to mrc, application software vendors (think ERP systems on the IBM i platform) are having a tough time attracting and keeping customers because of the difficulty in keeping up with rapidly changing technology, including cloud and mobile offerings. These application vendors have trouble attracting new customers because, when they go into a demo with a customer, they often realize what the customer was looking for only after the demo is over.

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• Tributary Bolsters VTL Software with NDMP Support

  April 22, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Virtual tape library (VTL) software maker Tributary Systems is now supporting Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) with a new release of its Storage Director VTL offering, which works with IBM i and other server types. The version 4.2 release also brings other NAS and data-pinning capabilities designed to streamline backups. When installed on a X86 server or appliance, Storage Director enables customers to back up data from practically any host, including proprietary IBM Power Systems, System z mainframes, and HP NonStop machines, as well as industry standard Windows, Linux, and Unix systems. In IBM i environments, Storage Director emulates an

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