• IBM Grabs Q1 Labs and Creates New Security Division

  October 10, 2011 Jenny Thomas

  If the security of your company’s data isn’t a top item on your priority list, it’s becoming clear that IBM thinks it should be. Big Blue’s recent announcement of its acquisition of Q1 Labs, a provider of security intelligence software, is another in a string of clues that IBM is going to be putting a lot of emphasis on security. Another clue is that with the Q1 acquisition, IBM also revealed a new Security Systems division that aims to blend security and analytics. According to IBM estimates, the Security Systems division will target a $94 billion opportunity in security

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• IBM’s Wheels And Deals On 10 Gigabit BNT Switches

  October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM is a relative re-newcomer to the switch market, and it is trying to pump up sales of its Blade Network Technologies top-of-rack switches. Back in July, in announcement letter 311-101, IBM gave a 38.5 percent discount on the RackSwitch G8052, a 48-port Gigabit Ethernet switch with four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (commonly used for uplinks but also available for 10GE connectivity). IBM cut the tags on this switch from $8,949 to $5,500, a 38.5 percent slash, if customers bought them from the IBM web store. (You would think this would annoy the heck out of IBM’s channel partners,

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• Future Tivoli Tools Extend SSO To Clouds, Analyze Services

  October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Password management and the security issues (mostly human) that surround it continue to be a bone in the throat of IT departments. Having established standards like Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and OpenID to control how users access applications within the network and behind the firewall, now app-crazed employees want to roam outside the firewall and use the same single sign-on (SSO) tools that they have for enterprise apps to get them access to the cloudy apps. The good news is this is exactly what IT departments want to have happen, too. So IBM is starting to tell customers about

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• IBM Offers Tech Support Try-and-Buy Services

  October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM‘s Global Services unit down in Australia and New Zealand is trying to coax customers who have been off maintenance to come back in to the Big Blue fold. In announcement letter ZA11-1049, IBM is offering customers who have been off Enhanced Technology Support contracts since October 2010 a chance to come back, and is willing to give them three-months of service under a try-and-buy program if they sign up between October 6 and December 31. The tech support contract is administered through tier 1 and tier 2 channel partners and can be canceled at any time during

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• Call Again and Again and Again…

  October 5, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In programming terms, recursion is the process whereby a function may call itself. Traditionally, this is something we are not used to in RPG. Programs and subroutines cannot call themselves. Or if you did somehow manage it (and you could), you would get unpredictable results. But the introduction of subprocedures opened up the possibility of using recursion because subprocedures can call themselves. It is usually very difficult to come up with practical examples of using recursion, and most of those examples are usually very specific to an application.

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• Another Way to Pass Parms to SBMJOB

  October 5, 2011 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A couple of years ago I needed to develop a process where a group of items could be selected from a screen and a report listing those items could be generated. On the surface, a simple task. Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie, they’re going to want a glass of milk, or another report. . . and another. Again, not too complicated. All that should be needed is a way to submit a call to a variable list of programs. As long as each program

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• Admin Alert: How to Retrieve Password Parameters for Auditors

  October 5, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Your organization’s fiscal year may have ended on September 30. Meaning you could soon be visited by auditors looking for information on how your organization operates its AS/400-class machine (iSeries, System i, Power i). Your auditors will be particularly interested in your password configuration parameters and whether they meet standards. To that end, here’s a quick drill for retrieving password setup values at audit time. What Auditors Want Auditors generally require you to provide the following sets of password related parameters. Your password configuration parameters–The rules users follow for creating passwords. Configuration and program code for Password Validation Program

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• Call Again and Again and Again…

  October 5, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In programming terms, recursion is the process whereby a function may call itself. Traditionally, this is something we are not used to in RPG. Programs and subroutines cannot call themselves. Or if you did somehow manage it (and you could), you would get unpredictable results. But the introduction of subprocedures opened up the possibility of using recursion because subprocedures can call themselves. It is usually very difficult to come up with practical examples of using recursion, and most of those examples are usually very specific to an application.

  …

  Read more

• Another Way to Pass Parms to SBMJOB

  October 5, 2011 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A couple of years ago I needed to develop a process where a group of items could be selected from a screen and a report listing those items could be generated. On the surface, a simple task. Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie, they’re going to want a glass of milk, or another report. . . and another. Again, not too complicated. All that should be needed is a way to submit a call to a variable list of programs. As long as each program

  …

  Read more

• Admin Alert: How to Retrieve Password Parameters for Auditors

  October 5, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Your organization’s fiscal year may have ended on September 30. Meaning you could soon be visited by auditors looking for information on how your organization operates its AS/400-class machine (iSeries, System i, Power i). Your auditors will be particularly interested in your password configuration parameters and whether they meet standards. To that end, here’s a quick drill for retrieving password setup values at audit time. What Auditors Want Auditors generally require you to provide the following sets of password related parameters. Your password configuration parameters–The rules users follow for creating passwords. Configuration and program code for Password Validation Program

  …

  Read more

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