• Reader Feedback On: The Application RISC Machine System/500

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Interesting article. . . . Your comment: “But so were the IBM Fort Knox and Future Systems projects, too.” They both failed big time. I’m not sure if younger readers know this. I can’t address all the features you discussed. My hang-up has always centered around programmers and operators (in the loosest sense) who keep getting themselves in trouble and it takes too much time and money to pay a consultant to pull them out of a ditch. We (IBM) should have learned by now how to properly instrument, analyze, and recommend “fixes” before they become problems, not after the

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• IBM’s Spring Ritual: Job Cuts

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  It’s almost a traditional rite of spring at IBM. Call it spring house cleaning . . . if you have a gallows sense of humor. Jobs were on the chopping block last week as Big Blue added slightly more than 1,200 employees to the unemployment statistics, according to statistics provided by Alliance@IBM, an IBM employee advocate group that is aligned with the Communications Workers of America trade union. The Global Technology Services (GTS) division received the deepest cuts, with 691 jobs eliminated. The Application Management Services (AMS) division was trimmed of 118 jobs. The Systems Technology Group (STG)

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• IBM i Is Looking Very Collegiate

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  Last week I was talking with Jim Buck, who heads up the IBM i curriculum at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Each year the best of the Gateway graduates find their way into jobs with IBM i shops. It’s a credit to Buck’s dedication and understanding of the importance of blending specialized training with the ability to solve business problems. He’s very well networked in the business and education communities, and supports COMMON as a volunteer on educational committees. Buck’s efforts have been rewarded with the COMMON Education Foundation Scholarship Award and the System i Innovation Award for Education

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• IBM Helps Open Schools For The Next Generation Of IT Workers

  March 5, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  The importance of a good education is universally accepted, but it is no longer a guarantee of a good job. In fact, in many instances, a degree doesn’t guarantee any type of job these days. Which is why we should all be happy to hear that IBM is looking to change the odds of America’s students landing a job after graduation. Last week, IBM released a “playbook” to help educators and business leaders in IT build schools specifically designed to connect public education to employment. At the same time, IBM announced a plan developed with the City of

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• Reader Feedback On Thinking Strategically About IT As A Service

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hi, Dan: There’s too much talk about the dollars and cents equation. If all of IT is reduced to the budget equation, as CFOs can and often do, then the ability to use IT as a resource to gain and keep a competitive edge is lost. Outsourcing, SaaS, cloud, GUI, web, and so on are all used as market buzz by vendors looking to sell. I especially tire of rags constantly quoting vendor staff when it’s obvious where the spin lies. Not all of IT can be reduced to an enterprise application solution or even a web-enabling green screen tool.

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• IBM Winds Down Power7 Gen 1 Entry Servers

  March 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As soon as the Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 machines were updated with slightly different processors, more memory capacity, and PCI-Express 2.0 peripherals last October, you knew that they were not going to be long for the IBM catalog. In announcement letter 912-016, IBM said that it would stop selling the original Power 710/730 (machine number 8231-E2B), Power 720 (machine number 8202-E4B), and Power 740 (machine number 8231-E6B) on May 25. The company has also pulled the plug on the 7402-C08 deskside Hardware Management Console (HMC), which is used to manage PowerVM logical partitions on Power Systems

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• Tenable Adds IBM i Support to Security and Configuration Tool

  February 28, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Tenable Network Security recently added support for the IBM i OS with Nessus Scanner, a tool that analyzes server and network systems for security holes and lax configuration settings. The new plug-ins will enable IBM i shops to do one of two things: discover shortcomings in their security configurations, or document their adherence to IBM‘s security standards for the purpose of regulatory compliance. Tenable claims that Nessus is the world’s most widely deployed vulnerability and configuration assessment product, and that it has become the de facto standard tool in its class among security professionals, network penetration testing teams, and

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• CFXWorks and Subuno Team Up to Fight Credit Card Fraud

  February 28, 2012 Alex Woodie

  CFXWorks and Subuno have integrated their respective products to develop a secure credit card processing solution for the IBM i server and other platforms. The integration, which includes fraud detection software from Subuno and payment software from CFXWorks, allows merchants to automatically screen card transactions for potential fraud before submitting them across the payment network. CFXWorks has a long history of developing card solutions for the IBM i server, and has more than 100 clients running its payment gateway software on the esteemed platform. The company’s flagship product is NovaXpress 400, while its CreditCardXpress offering is a version of NovaXpress

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• Innovatum Makes ROBAR Labeling Solution Available to IBM i

  February 28, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Innovatum recently announced that its ROBAR labeling solution is now available for the IBM i OS. The Windows-based offering, which is used to print labels, barcodes, and RFID tags for GS1 compliance and ePedigree mandates of FDA-regulated companies, isn’t running directly on the IBM i server. But thanks to the development of a middleware component called iROBAR, the labeling solution can now be driven by RPG applications on the IBM i server. ROBAR is a barcode and RFID label solution built primarily for pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology manufacturers companies that are regulated by the Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA).

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• Linoma Adds Secure Mail Module to MFT Tool

  February 28, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Linoma Software last week unveiled Secure Mail, a new component of its GoAnywhere Services managed file transfer (MFT) tool that allows users to send documents securely via email. The software, which Linoma is demonstrating at this week’s RSA conference, will be particularly useful in unplanned, ad-hoc file transfer scenarios. Secure Mail works similar to regular email, with one big exception. Like regular email, users can send multiple files to one or more recipients. However, instead of actually attaching the document to the email, Secure Mail replaces the attachments with a unique URL that the recipient can use to download the

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