• IBM i Software And Power Systems Upgrades Keep Rolling Forward

  January 18, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  During tough economic times, I am fond of reminding people – and especially myself as I try to remain calm in a recession or whatever the heck this is we are dealing with now during the coronavirus pandemic – that business, in the aggregate, never goes to zero. No matter how bad it gets, thus far in the modern era starting perhaps with the Renaissance and maybe even longer but certainly since the agricultural and industrial revolutions in the 1700s, people still need stuff and they need people to grow or make it.

  That doesn’t mean it is easy, however. …

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• Preparing For What’s Next In A Thoughtful, Structured Way

  January 18, 2021 David Wright and Albert Swett

  January is the time for New Year resolutions – pausing and reflecting, taking stock, reassessing, and for deciding the most important things to focus on in the year ahead. This is no less true for IT leaders as 2021 dawns.

  Not only is there a need for the usual annual planning efforts but the coming year will require managing all the uncertain outcomes and consequences of the COVID epidemic. Some unexpected IT priority changes will probably persist – enabling remote working, accelerating digital business, and increasing cloud usage. Other things may slowly return to “normal” – dusting-off postponed projects, reducing …

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• Guru: Fall Brings New RPG Features, Part 3

  January 18, 2021 Jon Paris

  In my previous tips (see Related Stories below), I covered the new BIFs and op-code options added with this release. This time I’m going to discuss a couple of new compiler options that focus on the conversion of character data to numeric.

  While you may not have needed these capabilities to date, it is highly likely that you will in the near future. Why? Because of the rapid growth in the use of web services in the IBM i world. I don’t think I have talked to a single client in the last 12 months who was not already providing …

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• ARCAD Plugs IBM i DevOps Suite Into Microsoft Azure

  January 18, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers can now leverage a collection of DevOps tools on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, courtesy of a new integration announced in December 2020 by ARCAD Software.

  Azure DevOps is an end-to-end DevOps environment that provides a range of project management services for developers who are building software to deploy on Azure or other platforms.

  Microsoft ostensibly introduced the software as a service (SaaS) offering back in October 2018. But in reality, Azure DevOps is the latest name of a product that can trace its lineage back to 2006, when Microsoft launched Visual Studio Team System.

  Through its …

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• Park Place Buys Curvature To Become Maintenance Goliath

  January 18, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The big tend to get bigger, and this is certainly happening in the third-party maintenance (TPM) business for IT equipment. We didn’t catch this when it happened, but back in November, Park Place Technologies acquired rival Curvature for an undisclosed sum. Both companies have substantial businesses supporting IBM Power Systems customers, although they are by no means exclusively focused on providing alternative hardware support for these platforms alone.

  We did a story about using third party maintenance providers back in April 2019, and followed it up in September 2019 as Power7 and Power7+ iron was coming to the end …

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• 2021 Predictions for IBM i, Part 1

  January 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  With an eventful 2020 thankfully in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start thinking about what 2021 might have in store for us. The IBM i community, like most of the world, could use a little bit of hope at the moment. We asked IBM i community leaders to deliver predictions, and they responded.

  Liam Allan, who is a consultant at Seiden Group and the creator of ILE Editor, has a couple of predictions for IT Jungle.

  “My focus is mainly software. I do still predict Node.js gaining traction on IBM i,” Allan writes. “The tooling is really …

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• West Four Stands Out With On Demand Color Label Printing

  January 13, 2021 Phil Andrianos

  West Four Group is a family owned, multi-industry business hailing from the northern reaches of Canada. Focused on a number of industries including door manufacturing, building security supplies, and even creative services, West Four serves hundreds of customers across Western Canada.

  With offices in Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Regina, West Four’s properties include four diverse brands. Madero Distribution is a manufacturer of residential and commercial doors and hardware. Penner Doors and Hardware provides customers with a full line of architectural hardware, doors, frames and building specialties, to general contractors and institutional projects. Security Building Supplies has been supplying lumber and …

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• HelpSystems Acquires Data Security, File Transfer Companies

  January 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems started 2021 just like it ended 2020: by acquiring a software company.

  Two days before Christmas, HelpSystems acquired Vera, a developer of digital rights management software that is based in Palo Alto, California. Then on January 4, it struck again, acquiring FileCatalyst, an Ottawa, Ontario provider of software for accelerating file transfers.

  Both acquisitions fit neatly into HelpSystems’ existing strategy for helping its customers securely and efficiently move and manage data, as well as with other recent acquisitions that the company has made, says Jim Cassens, HelpSystems president.

  The FileCatalyst software is used to accelerate the transfer …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 13

  January 13, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  Despite the fact that much of the world is still shuttered as we desperately look forward to a time beyond the pandemic, we must forge ahead with our initiatives and projects in the new year. But where should you concentrate your focus to succeed in 2021? We don’t have a crystal ball, but we do have Alex Woodie, who talked with leaders in the IBM i community to get their predictions of what the trends will be in the coming months. One thing it’s probably safe to predict is anything “virtual” is going to be a hot topic, as we …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 2

  January 13, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  It was a pretty quiet week on the PTF front, which is pretty much expected from the IBM i community about this time of the year. Still, there were some tweaks here and there that you need to have on your radar.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • High Availability for IBM i
  • IBM HTTP Server for i

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • High Availability for IBM i
  • IBM HTTP Server for i

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • High Availability for IBM i
  • IBM HTTP Server for i

  PTF Groups 7.1:

  • Not much happening here.

  … Read more

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