• Cloud-Based Email Migrations Keep IBM i Vendor Busy

  July 11, 2016 Dan Burger

  As more businesses migrate email services from desktops to the cloud, users at IBM i shops look for the tools that allow them to work quickly, efficiently, and securely. You can’t stay mired in the past. You have to adapt. That’s what BVSTools has done with its latest enhancement of GreenTools, which integrate with Microsoft Office 365’s Outlook and Google‘s Gmail for Business, two popular business email options. “We are noticing a lot of our current customers, when moving to the cloud for email, are choosing Microsoft Office 365 in greater numbers than those using Google’s Gmail for Business

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• IBM i Open Sourcerers

  July 11, 2016 Dan Burger

  Who will inherit the IBM i? And what will that business computer look like? My crystal ball is in the shop, so I’ll have to rely on what is currently going on and make some projections based on that. Collaboration would seem to be the key. Even without my crystal ball, I see new technologies being explored and applied. For IBM i to be relevant to future generations, open source software and the collaboration with other innovation teams needs to take place. Development of the IBM i platform is not happening on its own island anymore. It’s an integrated world.

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• IBM i Skills Shortage A Barrier To Digital Transformation

  July 11, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Quick–what’s the top barrier to achieving digital transformation in your shop? If you said “IBM i skills,” then you’re in good company. In a recent informal poll conducted by SoftLanding Systems, a majority of IBM i professionals cited a lack of IBM i skills (taken to mean RPG programming expertise in particular) as the number one impediment to implementing projects such as development of Web and mobile interfaces and electronic document management. SoftLanding operations manager Jim Fisher admitted that he wasn’t expecting a lack of IBM i skills to be the number one answer to a question about barriers

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• What Price Power (Eight And Maybe Nine)?

  July 11, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Call me old school if you want, but I believe in Moore’s Law and I believe that IT vendors have to keep giving customers more bang for the buck if they want organizations to keep investing in technology. There are basically only two levers to help push a new technology into the market, and that is increasing the performance of a device or lowering its price, the latter hopefully occurring if the cost of production comes down but sometimes not as vendors seek to maximize their profits and make it up with performance leaps. This has certainly been the case

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• Flynet Pivots To Catch IBM i Web Business In U.S.

  June 27, 2016 Alex Woodie

  There’s scarcely any new project for the IBM i these days that doesn’t involve the Web in some way, shape, or form. Mobile front-ends, application modernization, Web services–heck, even the lowly terminal emulator has become a Web app these days. One IBM i software vendor that is positioned to capitalize on this trend is Flynet, which sells a single product that can address multiple Web initiatives for IBM i shops. You may have never heard of Flynet, but the company, which is based in the United Kingdom, is by no means new to this sector. In fact, Flynet has

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Jimmy Choo Hill

  June 27, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  In the American West during the last quarter of the 19th century, quite a few people died with their boots on, thereby ending up in Boot Hill. These days, few people die in a saddle. Some die in gunfights. Plenty die at their desks, the way Bat Masterson did in 1921. A boneyard whose occupants expired at work wouldn’t be called Boot Hill anyway. Instead, particularly if it catered to the computer business with its many women executives, it would be named Jimmy Choo Hill. Boot Hill: Quite a few graveyards were named Boot Hill; the one in Tombstone

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• Fresche Partner Plan Aims At Expanded Reach

  June 27, 2016 Dan Burger

  Just two weeks ago, the company now known as Fresche (formerly Fresche Legacy) announced it was purchasing Quadrant Software and its key IBM i application modernization subsidiary BCD Software. The combination of BCD and Fresche’s previous acquisition of looksoftware puts a smorgasbord of modernization choices on the Fresche menu, including an instrumental application analysis tool. The latest news from Fresche is the rollout of a global partner program. The company hopes to attract a mix of IBM i independent software vendors (ISVs), value added resellers (VARs), independent consultants, and system integrators to its newly minted Power Partner Program. It

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• Advice For IBM i Shops: Balance The Old With The New

  June 27, 2016 Dan Burger

  Most C-level managers realize that progress is impossible without change. Yet making changes can be so damn difficult. Realizing that there has to be some changes made is a good start, but it’s taking that next step when companies actually achieve progress that leads to long-term success. And in the middle of it all is IT. How do companies with legacy IT systems change to keep up with progress? “One of the considerations that I feel is important is longevity,” says Steven Wolk, chief technology officer at the appliance and electronics chain store PC Richard & Son. “We’re used to

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• Power Systems GM Weights In On AS/400 Birthday

  June 27, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Any business unit within a conglomerate as vast and changing as fast as Big Blue needs to have a strong advocate as well as core financial performance that contributes to both the top and bottom line. The good news about the IBM i platform is that it has such a strong advocate in Doug Balog, general manager of the Power Systems business for the past several years. While Balog has been instrumental in pushing Linux on Power and putting together the OpenPower Foundation that is seeking to expand the Power ecosystem beyond the walls of IBM, he has not

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• Remain Software Pursues 2E Users, Expands Asian Partnerships

  June 20, 2016 Dan Burger

  Loyalty to IBM‘s midrange computer systems is a strong bond for many companies. Those with CA 2E application development environments are a great example. 2E, originally known as Synon, was one of the most successful fourth-generation language (4GL) development environments on the platform and that community continues to number in the thousands. Like other IBM midrange shops, they are concerned with application development, maintenance, and modernization. Last week, Remain Software released a CA 2E interface for its IBM i Application Lifecycle Management tool, TD/OMS. The new release supports management of business applications built with the CA 2E case tool

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