• Midrange Dynamics’ Change Management Enhancements a Matter of Perspective

  February 18, 2014 Dan Burger

  A sequel to Escape from Alcatraz, that great old Clint Eastwood movie, is taking shape in IBM midrange shops. It’s called Escape from Green Screens. The plot is still being written and it won’t be done any time soon, but there are more shops using RDi with Remote System Explorer for editing source code. And the new free-form RPG coding is allowing RPG developers to escape green-screen development. A change management system (CMS) that works well in a modern development environment is a big advantage over CMSes that don’t–or no CMS at all. Midrange Dynamics, for example, is

  …

  Read more

• Enforcive Gives Security Policy Checks a Graphical Makeover

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  You can have the best IBM i security in the world, but unless you have a way to prove it to auditors and other interested parties, the security solution is not complete. With the latest release of Enforcive Systems‘ flagship Enterprise Security suite, the company has added a graphical overlay to the security policy assessment component, thereby providing customers and auditors with an easy way to ascertain the strength of an IBM i security configuration. Enforcive/Enterprise Security offers a breadth of enterprise security features for the IBM i platform, including exit point management, object authority management, IP packet filtering,

  …

  Read more

• BCD Lets the Mobile Flow with WebSmart 10.1

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When developing mobile applications, the attentive developer must take into account the size of the mobile device’s screen to ensure a good experience for her users. With the latest release of its WebSmart development environment, BCD Software (now a part of Quadrant Software) added new capabilities designed to maximize the limited available real estate on mobile screens. BCD unveiled WebSmart version 10.1 just prior to being acquired by Quadrant in early February. The big new feature in the interim release is a new mobile reflow table template that improves the functionality of Web applications that present data in sortable

  …

  Read more

• Remain Software Confirms Latin American Partner

  February 18, 2014 Dan Burger

  Remain Software, a Dutch company specializing in application lifecycle management (ALM) products for IBM midrange shops, is introducing its product line to Latin America through a business partner arrangement with Green Light Technology. Green Light has business partners in several South and Central American countries, and is based in Orlando, Florida. The partnership includes promotion, distribution, consultancy, and technical support for Remain Software products: TD/OMS, a software change management tool; TD/OMS Compact, software change management tailored for small teams; and Gravity, an ALM workflow management product. Jaime Penagos, a project manager at Green Light, says the Latin American

  …

  Read more

• Hail Cesar: Italian Manufacturer Modernizes with looksoftware and RPG OA

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Europeans who are remodeling their kitchens may be familiar with Cesar, an Italian manufacturer of modular kitchen components. While Cesar improves the look and utility of 11,000 kitchens per year, the company was struggling to manage orders effectively due to an aging IBM i-based application. After adopting modernization tools from looksoftware, the company is concentrating on kitchens again. Like many small and midsize Italian firms, Cesar developed its own IBM i application with good old RPG. Its homegrown ERP system handles most aspects of Cesar’s operations, including all accounting and customer, product, and order information. While the ERP system

  …

  Read more

• OpenText Buys GXS for $1 Billion

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Canadian enterprise software giant OpenText last month got a little bigger when it completed its $1.06 billion acquisition of EDI and B2B integration software and cloud services provider GXS. For IBM i shops, the deal is noteworthy in that it includes the TrustedLink EDI software that traces its roots back to Inovis, Harbinger, and Peregrine Software. But this deal is all about the cloud. When GXS merged with Inovis in 2009, it created a B2B behemoth. At the time, GXS was considered by Forrester to be the top B2B service provider in the world, with more than 8

  …

  Read more

• Essextec Buys Gemini Systems

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Essex Technology Group (Essextec) last month acquired Gemini Systems, a fellow IBM business partner with clients in the Northeast. Based in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, Essextec sells IBM hardware, including Power Systems, Pure Systems, and storage gear, and provides technical expertise in the area of security, high availability, and cloud delivery. The company has offices throughout the Northeast, and has customers in a variety of industries. Gemini Systems, meanwhile, was founded by Simon Leung in 1987 and is focused on providing IBM solutions to midsize and large companies. Essextec president Jim Torney says the combination of Essextec’s infrastructure and

  …

  Read more

• ASCI Ramps Up Migration Effort for Job Scheduler

  February 18, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to IBM i job schedulers, there are a few well-known entities that consistently make the shortlist during product bake-offs. The ActiveBatch offering from Advanced Systems Concepts Inc. (ASCI) is not a regular on that list. But the company says it’s having success moving users from IBM job schedulers to its own. And with the newly launched migration service, it hopes to have more. ActiveBatch is an enterprise job scheduler that helps organizations manage workloads running across IBM i, Windows, Linux, Unix, mainframe, OpenVMS, and Mac OS environments. The software supports time-based and trigger-based scheduling, and features an

  …

  Read more

• IBM Pushes Performance Up, Energy Down With Power8

  February 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The IEEE hosted its International Solid-State Circuits Conference last week in San Francisco, which is generally loaded with coming out parties for all kinds of server processors. IBM‘s top techies from the Power Systems division were on hand to show off some more of the feeds and speeds of the forthcoming Power8 chips, expected sometime around the middle of this year. Many of the feeds and speeds of the Power8 chip were divulged last year at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, which The Four Hundred reported on at the time. Some more details of the Power8

  …

  Read more

• Big Blue’s Chip Business Is Probably On The Block

  February 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This rumor, should it turn out to be true, will not come as much of a surprise to IBM i shops that read The Four Hundred. Time and time again, as I have watched IBM‘s quarterly financial results, I have wondered at what point the chip manufacturing business would be too expensive for Big Blue to stay in. We may be approaching that point. Tongues have been wagging for a long time on this issue, particularly in the wake of IBM’s decision to sell of its System x X86 server business to Lenovo for $2.3 billion a few

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles