• Valid Puts i OS Security Expert Botz on Loan to COMMON Membership

  May 5, 2009 Alex Woodie

  What more can you get from your COMMON membership dues? Consider this: Valid Technologies will shortly announce a new promotion whereby they will send renowned i OS security expert Pat Botz–a recent addition to the Valid consulting crew–to the shop of any COMMON member, au gratis, for an onsite assessment of Valid’s i OS-based biometric authentication technology. Travel expenses must be paid, but that’s quite a deal, nonetheless. Botz formerly was the lead architect for OS/400 security at IBM, and also worked in other customer-facing capacities within IBM’s services group. He left IBM in 2007 to help found security

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• PGP Launches Encryption Product for i OS

  May 5, 2009 Alex Woodie

  PGP last week announced PGP Command Line for IBM Power Systems, a newly named version of its encryption software designed specifically for IBM i (i5/OS) environments. The product replaces a previous product that ran in the System i server’s Linux environment. PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is an open-source encryption program developed by Phil Zimmermann in San Francisco in the early 1990s. The software was originally used for securing e-mail messages, but has since found its way into many aspects of IT besides e-mail. The widespread adoption of PGP beyond the United States led the Federal Government to

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• RJS Goes Cross-Platform with Report Delivery Tool

  May 5, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Companies that are looking to consolidate their report delivery mechanisms for multiple operating systems may want to check out DeliverNow, a new cross-platform tool released by RJS Software last week at the COMMON tradeshow in Reno, Nevada. With the capability to monitor, convert, and distribute reports from System i, Linux, AIX, and Windows servers, DeliverNow gives customers a powerful tool for automating processes in the data center, and saving money along the way. RJS has been working for the last four years to overhaul and streamline its diverse collection of document output management tools. Instead of building and maintaining separate

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• COMMON Announces Speaker Awards for 2008 Conference

  May 5, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Thirty-five System i experts, including IT Jungle‘s own Ted Holt, were given awards by COMMON last week at its annual meeting and expo in Reno, Nevada. The awards were for sessions presented at the 2008 conference in Nashville, Tennessee. COMMON divides its Speaker Hall of Fame (formerly called the Speaker Excellence Awards) into eight categories. The best of the best receive Gold Medal awards, while Silver and Bronze Medals round out the general purpose awards. COMMON also gives awards fore Best New Speaker, Best New Session, Best Traditional Lab, Best Open Lab, and Best IT Executive Session. Winners of

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• Door Manufacturer Consolidates Data Processing with VAI

  May 5, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Lynden Door and its sister company, Alliance Door Products, have tapped VAI for an upgraded suite of ERP products, the software vendor announced last week. The implementation of S2K Enterprise 5.0 has enabled the company to consolidate the IT services from several locations onto a single System i server running S2K. Based in Lynden, Washington, Lynden Door is a small company that has developed a reputation for manufacturing premium residential, commercial, and architectural flush wood doors. The company’s products are distributed through Alliance Door Products, which operates several wholesale distribution sites and warehouses throughout the Pacific Northwest. The company has

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• New Power6+ Iron: The Feeds and Speeds

  May 4, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I gave you the scoop on the Power6+ rack, tower, and blade server announcements that Big Blue was making at the COMMON midrange trade show out in Reno, Nevada. A lot of the details about the new machines were not available at the time, and I have done some digging to get you more information on the new boxes. (That story talked about a lot more than the new boxes, so if you missed it, you should check it out here.) You will recall that IBM announced that it was

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• COMMON Exceeds Expectations in Reno, But Group’s Future Uncertain

  May 4, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Looking back, we’ll likely view the 2009 COMMON conference held last week as a turning point for the user group, and perhaps the midrange industry as a whole. Despite the significant drop in attendance compared to last year’s show, conference-goers expressed a glimmer of optimism that things are about to get better. And while COMMON coped admirably after being dealt a mixed hand in Reno, the group’s financial situation means significant changes are likely before the group’s big 50th anniversary show a year from now in Orlando. By most accounts, the System i industry’s biggest conference of the year, which

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• Bettin’ on the Blade

  May 4, 2009 Dan Burger

  Will the BladeCenter serve the IBM i community along the same lines as the AS/400 served the System/38 community? It could happen. And if you are Ian Jarman, manager of Power Systems software, you make the crossing from “could happen” to “will happen.” Moving from the current BladeCenter on i installed base of several hundred to thousands and tens of thousands seems like a long row to hoe, but Jarman says the pieces are coming together. In typically IBM i fashion, there’s no rush in putting all the pieces on the table. After all, the i community does not welcome

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• Mad Dog 21/21: The Age of Acquire Us

  May 4, 2009 Hesh Wiener

  It looks like Oracle is going to buy Sun Microsystems. This will probably happen soon, but it’s hard to be sure. Not long ago it looked like IBM was going to buy Sun, at least according to a passel of ace reporters, but it didn’t happen. However as events unfold, one thing seems clear: Sun’s role in computing is huge. For an America suffering economic collapse, Sun is a necessity, which makes it a mother of invention. Sun is akin to hope, that strange invention, which may have feathers. And we need hope so much right now.

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• Power Systems Finally Get Solid State Disks

  May 4, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As readers of The Four Hundred have been anticipating for more than a year, IBM has finally gotten around to adding flash-based solid state disks, or SSDs, to the Power Systems lineup. SSDs are all the rage because of the much higher data transfer rates they offer compared to traditional hard disk drives and the lower prices they have relative to main memory, which is still considerably faster than flash. For this reason, all the cool servers are getting flash-based SSDs. Flash-based disk drives fill a gap between disk and main memory speeds, much as Level 1, 2, and 3

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