• eConnect Shines a Light on Casino Fraud

  October 1, 2013 Alex Woodie

  A security software company called eConnect is gaining traction in the competitive casino industry with software that combines a casino’s video surveillance system with its computer systems, including those that manage gaming devices, retail point of sale (POS), and back-office financial systems. Because many of the world’s top gaming institutions rely on the IBM i server, eConnect finds itself working there. eConnect describes its flagship Casino Connect system as a “visual and behavioral intelligence tool” that helps casino operators spot gaps in their security systems, and to detect theft, cheating, and collusion on the casino floor. It does this by

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• Power8 And The Potential Oomph In Midrange And Big Boxes

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did a little thought experiment about how the Power8 processors from IBM would affect the entry part of the Power Systems market. I also talked about how a 12-core processor spinning in excess of 4 GHz was a lot of machine for an entry IBM i shop running a database and ERP applications. But, the good news is that IBM wants to sell Power-based systems more effectively against X86 machinery, and that means the performance is going up and the price per unit of performance is coming down. But what

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• Just Watching Or Making An IBM i Modernization Plan?

  September 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  Move deliberately. Move carefully. But for the love of Frank, just move. Get started with an application modernization project. Evolve or dissolve might be putting it a little too harshly, but there are plenty of business reasons for modernization. Three that come to mind are data integration, data accessibility, and a user interface that promotes the first two. The IBM midrange community–known by the greater IT community as “those legacy dinosaurs,” has a boatload of successful app modernization achievements. The majority of the boats are still at the dock, unfortunately. “A lot of our IBM i companies are bleeding edge.

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• Something New For Enterprise Mobile

  September 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  One of the reasons companies shy away from projects such as mobile computing and application modernization is because they don’t have the skills and/or the time to devote to the project. It’s a fairly common occurrence given that most IT departments are short-staffed and modern skills training doesn’t fit into the schedule or the budget. And if you think that only happens in small and midsize organizations, you haven’t talked with ClearBlade‘s Eric Simone. Simone works with large enterprises–mostly in the banking, insurance, and healthcare fields–that depend on big iron: Power Systems and mainframes. Many of these, he explains,

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• Mad Dog 21/21: I Think We’re All Bezos On This Bus

  September 30, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  During the next two years, IBM hopes to boost its cloud computing revenues to $7 billion. About $4 billion would come from existing operations, in part a consequence of reclassifying activities. The remaining $3 billion would be new, mainly from acquisitions. IBM’s key cloud rivals, Microsoft, Google and notably Amazon, provide everything from client devices to apps to platforms. IBM falls short; its cloud has vast gaps. Consequently, whenever IBM’s customers or IBM’s own personnel, even CEO Ginni Rometty, go mobile, they are obliged to use other vendors’ equipment and services. When it comes to gappy cloud offerings,

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• Cloud Computing Enters The Growth And Innovation Phase, IDC Says

  September 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  If you thought this whole cloud thing was just a passing fad, you’d be wrong–at least according to the industry watchers at IDC, which this month made some pretty tall predictions concerning the size, scope, and growth of the cloud computing phenomenon. According to IDC, spending on public cloud computing (as opposed to private cloud services) will grow from $47.3 billion this year to $107 billion by 2017. That represents a 23.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which is more than five times the rate of growth for the IT industry as a whole. As the “3rd Platform”

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• Reader Feedback On The Possibilities With IBM i Entry Systems Sporting Power8

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Great article Tim, you are definitely on the right track . . . but, I believe, you need to take it one step further. We need to develop the successor to the IBM i operating system. (No, Linux is not the answer.) While incorporating all the truly wonderful aspects of i, (single level storage, SLIC, etc.), it needs to be designed from the ground up as a 2D and 3D graphical system. Likewise, we need a new event-based, object-oriented programming language. (No, not Java). ASNA‘s Visual RPG would make a fine starting point. Then, if done right, instead

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• IBM i Squeezes Into Arkansas Tech Curriculum

  September 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  For many schools in the IBM Academic Initiative program the amount of IBM i-specific training is minimal. There are two-year technical colleges and four-year programs with multiple IBM i courses in programming, administration, and networking, but it’s not unusual to find a single course that introduces the IBM i platform along with other enterprise business computing systems. “We have a lot of students who have gotten jobs because of this one course,” says Sarah Robison, an instructor at Arkansas Tech University. “It’s an advantage over other schools that don’t have anything like it. Businesses are having problems finding graduates

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• Sundry Power Systems And PureSystems Announcements

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is the fall, and in fact, this is the end of the third quarter, so if there is going to be some wheeling and dealing so IBM can turn in a good finish to 2013, I would expect that to start this week. That said, Big Blue tweaked a few things here and there that you should be aware of before the fourth quarter push gets underway. First, in announcement letter 213-434, you will see that IBM has updated the PureApplication System W1500 machines, which are clusters based on Intel‘s Xeon processors, and the W1700 machines, which

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• Proprietary Machines Show Some Growth In Q2, Says Gartner

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is tough out there in ServerLand these days, and if you need to add capacity to your systems or get whole new systems, you can probably get some pretty eager salespeople to come and visit you. While the situation is not nearly as bad as during the Great Recession, the server market is itself in recession, as the latest numbers from Gartner show. In the second quarter ended in June, the pattern is much as we have seen for the past several years. X86 systems squeak out some growth, the RISC/Itanium Unix market declines, and mainframes do their ups

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