• As I See It: Permissionless Neutrality

  November 18, 2013 Victor Rozek

  It happened to radio, it happened to television, and there is no reason to believe it won’t happen to the Internet. Communication media–at least in their infancy–have always been idealized for their potential to serve our better angels. But in the end, the hopes of visionaries are reduced to a single dominant construct: entertainment. And the more successful the medium, the more vacuous the entertainment. Once the potential for revenue is evident, the medium quickly becomes co-opted, and the greatest good for the greatest number devolves to the greatest profit for the fewest number. For all its flaws, the Internet

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• In The Shadow Of Database Hype

  November 18, 2013 Dan Burger

  It always chaps a few hides in the IBM midrange community when a technology gets hyped by another company as being shockingly innovative when it has been part of the IBM midrange systems for many years. In-memory database processing is one of those provoking topics. It’s a great idea for cranking up database performance, but how about giving credit where credit is due? This is about setting the record straight. Six weeks ago, Mike Cain, a member of IBM’s senior technical staff for DB2 on i, wrote about this topic in his blog with the no-nonsense name DB2 for i

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• Abacus Offers IBM i Performance Assessment

  November 18, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Power Systems reseller and IBM i cloud provider Abacus Solutions wants to help you figure out the performance bottlenecks in your system. To that end, the company is partnering with Midrange Performance Group to use its Performance Navigator performance monitoring and capacity planning tool to help IBM i shops figure out what is keeping their systems from optimal performance and then using its own systems expertise to make recommendations about what to do to improve performance. The answer, says Patrick Schutz, director of managed services and support at Abacus, is not to do what Big Blue often does, which is

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• October News Grim For IT Jobs Prospects

  November 18, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Depending on who you ask, the jobs report for October was good news or another in a long line of disappointments. With the federal shutdown and all the government shenanigans, last month was a crazy time and most economists didn’t have much hope for job growth. But in the end, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported 204,000 new jobs across a wide spectrum of industries in October. But when you talk to Victor Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco Associates who makes it his business to stay on top of trends in the IT ecosystem, the latest BLS data paints

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• Watson Apps Ready To Change The World

  November 18, 2013 Dan Burger

  The promise is that with technology comes change. The reality is that technology sometimes arrives alone. Cognitive computing, formerly known as artificial intelligence (old names are seldom used to market new ideas), is ready for its next chance at changing the world. IBM‘s Watson, remembered for its Jeopardy! conquest, but so much smarter than that famous game show gladiator, is ready for another step into the spotlight. Are you ready to make that step, too? Imagine cognitive computing–the capability to think things through and provide advice that is better than the best decision makers–as a development platform in the

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• Magic Software Scores Another Quarterly Revenue Success

  November 18, 2013 Dan Burger

  The revenue trajectory for IBM i development tool maker Magic Software Enterprises continues to soar posting a third quarter revenue gain of 9 percent in year-to-year comparisons and topping its previous quarterly revenue by $1.2 million. Revenues for the first nine months of 2013 reached $103.8 million. In the third quarter of 2013, which ended September 30, Magic Software’s revenues grew to $35.6 million compared to $32.6 million for the same quarter in 2012. The Q3 revenue incline topped Q2 revenue by 6 percent. So far in 2013 the quarterly revenue ramp has climbed from $33.4 million to $34.8 million

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• Chaos Creates Living Hell For Workers

  November 18, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Crushing deadlines, never-ending overtime, agonizing interruptions and broken processes, and famine of recognition and purpose. No, we’re not talking about the seventh level of hell, we’re talking about your job. Hopefully, this doesn’t sound like a familiar scenario to you, but according to an enterprise work management survey conducted by AtTask, a large percentage of workers do compare their job to a living hell. It seems obvious that not every job would leave workers feeling fulfilled and rewarded, but it is a little surprising to learn how the daily grind of avoidable work issues and interruptions wear down employees,

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• Power Systems Provisioning For Enterprise-Level Academics

  November 14, 2013 Dan Burger

  The IBM Power Systems Academic Initiative dishes out some serious enterprise-level computing to colleges around the world. Handling most of the load is a Power 770 box with a whole lot of partitioning and virtualization going on. Dialing up multi-tiered architectures with three operating systems (IBM i, AIX, and Linux) plus a variety of software combinations, and delivering functioning systems to hundreds of colleges with thousands of students is not a trivial achievement. Kevin Langston is the principal architect in the Phoenix, Arizona, facility known as the Power Systems Hub. The Power 770 that handles the bulk of the workloads

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• What Does ‘Big Data’ Mean for IBM i?

  November 12, 2013 Alex Woodie

  When IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 7 (TR7) ships on Friday, it will contain several updates to the DB2/400 database designed to help it handle big data, including an expansion of SQL indexes, easier movement to SSDs, and tools to track the growth of tables over time. But what exactly does big data mean on the IBM i? We set out to find some answers. The traditional definition for big data has to do with the three “Vs,” which refer to the volume, velocity, and variety of data types. IBM sometimes likes to add a fourth “V” to the mix

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• Mobile Password Management App Supports IBM i

  November 12, 2013 Alex Woodie

  The bring your own device (BYOD) movement is freeing users from the bounds of cubicle land. However, forgotten passwords remain a problem and keep users tied to the help desk. Last week, ManageEngine announced a new Apple iOS app for its self-service password reset software, called ADSelfService Plus. It also announced that, with ADSelfService Plus version 5, the software now supports IBM i, giving users the capability to reset their IBM i passwords from iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. Forgotten passwords remain a big problem. ManageEngine says that 40 percent of help desk tickets are for password resets, and take

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