• Admin Alert: Looking for i5/OS Trouble, Part I

  January 7, 2009 Joe Hertvik

  I love stories with Cassandra characters, the slightly crazed player who accurately foresees oncoming doom, only to be mocked or ignored. Like Cassandra, i5/OS systems can also see events that portend system problems, clear omens that can easily be missed or ignored. This week and next, I’ll discuss avoiding doom by monitoring several i5/OS situations that should be checked early and often. Ignore these warning at your own peril!!! Finding Doom On Your Local i Partition Omen hunting on iSeries, System i, and Power i machines is a lot easier if you know where to look. I’ve generally found the

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• Safestone Gives i Security Officers Greater Control

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Despite declining IT budgets, companies should think twice before slashing security spending. Cyber criminals are becoming more proficient by the week, while the poor economy elevates the temptation for insiders to cheat. To that end, i OS security experts Safestone last month rolled out several updates to its DetectIT suite of security software that should give security officers greater control and deeper insight into System i activities. DetectIT is a suite of integrated security tools for the IBM i operating system (IBM i OS). About 500 organizations around the world currently use DetectIT, including well-known firms such as the Royal

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• SPSS to Update ShowCase OLAP Server Technology

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The ShowCase division of business intelligence software maker SPSS is working with Oracle to bring a new release of the Hyperion Essbase OLAP product to the IBM i OS operating system. SPSS says it has been working with Oracle to port the latest release of Essbase, which Oracle has incorporated into its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) product suite, to i OS, with a ship date tentatively set for next quarter. ShowCase is a high-end business intelligence tool designed to deliver powerful online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities to larger companies with terabytes of historical data. The product allows customers to build

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• Rand McNally Keeps Truckers On the Go and In the Know

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Rand McNally is best known for the maps used by millions of Americans each year–you might even have a tattered old road atlas stashed in your car. But the Skokie, Illinois, company is also a software developer, and its digital products are used by some of the biggest trucking fleets in the country. Recently, Rand McNally issued new releases of its i OS-supported IntelliRoute and MileMarker suites that help truckers get to their locations using the fastest, most fuel-efficient routes. Rand McNally’s Commercial Transportation division has been providing North American truckers with maps and other road information since 1936. Its

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• The Who’s and What’s of ESBs and eSBs

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  The software integration business is notorious for its acronyms, and any new integration technology or technique worth its salt must have a compelling TLA (three letter acronym) to go with it. The latest TLA making the rounds is ESB, which stands for enterprise service bus. We asked Jim O’Leary, vice president of product management at integration software vendor EXTOL International to give us a rundown on ESB and its little brother, eSB. Alex Woodie: ESB–that refers to Red Hook Brewery’s award-winning Extra Special Bitter, right? Jim O’Leary: Correct, although eSB (lower-case “e”) tends to be less filling and

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• Mohawk Slashes Report Delivery Times, Thanks to Centerfield

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  A year ago, the folks at Mohawk Fine Papers were thinking about adding a Windows-based system to speed up the delivery of critical reports. The core i5/OS infrastructure was maxed out, they feared, and couldn’t churn out the reports as fast as Mohawk’s business moved. But the company found a better solution by utilizing Centerfield Technology‘s database optimization software, HomeRun, and now those Windows plans are shuttered. Based in Upstate New York, Mohawk Fine Papers makes and sells $300 million worth of paper around the world every year, and is the largest manufacturer of premium paper in the United

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• T.L. Ashford Eases Setup with Barcode400

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  System i barcode specialists T.L. Ashford recently delivered Barcode400 version 3.1, a new release of its barcode label generation utility. The Kentucky company says the new release should speed the product’s setup and its integration with line-of-business applications. Barcode400 is a mature barcode and RFID generation utility that has been working with the IBM midrange server since the S/34 days. The software works by merging product data originating from the core i OS application onto a barcode template, which is created with a Windows label design component. All major barcode standards and printers–including RFID labels and generators–are supported by the

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• Shore Bancshares Licenses i-Based Core System from Jack Henry

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Shore Bancshares has selected the i OS-based SilverLake core banking system from Jack Henry & Associates to provide the underlying computer platform that keeps track of more than $1 billion in assets, the vendor announced recently. Shore Bancshares is small-cap banking company based on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that owns and operates a range of banks, insurance companies, mortgage brokers, and other financial services firms. The company, which reported revenues of $65 million for 2007, owns three banks that operate 17 full-service branches and 21 ATMs and provide a range of commercial and consumer banking products to areas of Maryland and

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• LogRhythm Debuts New ‘Intelligent’ IT Search

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  LogRhythm, a developer of security information event management (SIEM) solutions that support i OS (via a partnership with PowerTech), recently debuted a new feature that seeks to make it easier to piece together events recorded in server logs. Dubbed “intelligent IT search,” the new feature combines several techniques to enable IT and security managers to cut through the clutter and find the veritable needle of data in the log haystack. Log data is notoriously difficult to decipher and understand, and i OS is no different than Unix or Windows in this regard. Correlating events occurring across different platforms

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• Siemens Taps CCSS to Monitor Outsourced i OS Environment

  January 6, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Siemens Healthcare is using system tools from CCSS to monitor and manage a network of System i servers running critical applications for hospitals in a near “lights out” manner, the English i OS utility developer announced late last year. Siemens Healthcare is perhaps best known among System i shops for its i OS-based MedSeries4 suite of enterprise applications that is used by hundreds of hospitals across the country. But in addition to developing a healthcare information system (HIS), the medical giant also runs the MedSeries4 software in its own datacenters for clients that prefer an outsourced environment, or “managed services,”

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