• cozTools Brings Subscription Pricing To Software Licensing

  July 1, 2015 Dan Burger

  Cozzi Productions, maker of the SQL Query File software, is now offering a monthly software license option with a cancel anytime feature. Rather than paying the entire software license fee up front, as is traditionally done with software purchases, the subscription-based model lowers the entry point cost for software acquisition. There is no money down and the first three months are free for new customs who sign up before the end of the year–December 31, 2015. The value proposition of subscription-based pricing varies from company to company. But one of the factors that are most commonly cited is the

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• Vendor Patches VTLs So You Don’t Have To

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that don’t have the time to properly patch and update their virtual tape libraries (VTLs) may be interested in a new service unveiled by Dynamic Solutions International (DSI). For a small fee, the Colorado company will patch and update its Linux-based VTLs in customer accounts, leaving IBM i admins to focus on other things. IBM i shops may not be doing all they can to secure their environments, but they’re usually pretty good about applying integrity PTFs from IBM and loading them onto their Power Systems servers. But when it comes to applying security updates and patches

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• Magic Goes In-Memory With App Framework

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software recently launched a new release of its application development and runtime framework that features in-memory data grid (IMDG) technology. The IMDG–which will eventually support IBM i–will bolster the scalability, stability, and elasticity of applications developed with xpa Application Platform 3.0, the company says. Scalability is one of the most common worries that keep enterprise application architects up and night, especially in this age of big data. What happens to the app if I add 1,000 more users? What about 100,000? Can my database handle more data? Will I need to redesign the application using non-relational technology? What is

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• IBS Sold To Marlin

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  A new chapter in the saga of International Business Systems began Friday when the Swedish company announced that the California-based private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners has signed a definitive agreement to acquire IBS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Once a widely respected software company with 5,000 customers running on RPG or Java versions of its IBM i-based ERP system, IBS has struggled recently. But things appear to have stabilized of late under CEO Doug Braun’s leadership. At its annual user conference in May, the company announced that it signed 200 contracts during 2014, which it said counted

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• What’s Legacy Now: WSDLs and Stored Procedures

  July 1, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Thanks to the breakneck speed that information technology is evolving, the definition of what is “legacy” in computing is constantly changing. For example, 10 years ago, organizations that were coding stored procedures into their databases and exposing mainframe business logic as WSDL-based Web services were following best practices in development. But some people are now lumping those objects into the legacy computing camp, along with old RPG and COBOL programs. The folks at OpenLegacy aren’t interested in starting a war by labeling stored procedures and first-generation WSDL-based Web services as legacy. The software modernization vendor–which last week announced a new

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• Reader Feedback On The AS/400 Turns 27, And Still Has Much To Teach IT

  June 29, 2015 Hey, TPM

  It’s unreal how often I keep bumping into you. I was intrigued by the title of the article in the attached note, followed these links, and again found an article by you. (And thanks for the reference.) I’ve shared your emotions about IBM and this system, with ever increasing sadness, from the inside. Still, you laid down a challenge and that reminded me of something I was asked to review by an IBM friend named Phil Vitale. He asked me to review and comment on a paper he had read named The CHERI capability model: Revisiting RISC in an age

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• Infor Readies IBM i Cloud

  June 29, 2015 Dan Burger

  ERP in the cloud . . . would you go for such an idea or not? If Infor didn’t think some IBM midrange shops were ready, it wouldn’t be offering this option to its discrete manufacturing customers. Infor’s Cloud Suite has been available to customers on other platforms for more than a year. We’re about to see how its IBM i shops take to the cloud. The official announcement of Infor’s Cloud Suite for IBM i is still several weeks away, but the company already has a few shops operating in the cloud. At a gathering of Infor XA, LX,

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• Take A Peek Inside PurePower Converged Systems

  June 29, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When IBM sold off the System x division to Lenovo Group, one of the things that went with it was the modular Flex System chassis. Yes, IBM said it would source the machines from Lenovo and, yes, IBM said that it would continue to make and sell Power-based nodes for the Flex Systems to make its PureApplication converged systems for those customers who want them. But the fact that there are, a year after the Power8 chips first came to market, no Flex System nodes based on the Power8 speaks volumes about just how IBM is really thinking about

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• Advice From The Mavens Of Modernization

  June 29, 2015 Dan Burger

  You don’t have to stretch your IBM midrange imagination too far to understand that today’s app dev decisions will have a great impact on tomorrow’s IT success. Some things never change. And that’s one of them. But situations change and doing business changes. The trick is to integrate the past–keep the valuable experiences and toss the excess baggage–with the present to prepare for the future. Technology is almost always disruptive. How you deal with that, how you make it work for your career success and the success of your organization is the on-going challenge until you decide to hang up

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• Top Five New Technologies On IBM i

  June 29, 2015 Alex Woodie

  One of the great things about the IBM i server is it adapts to the times. While the platform often gets tagged with the “legacy” name, that’s merely because there’s still a lot of vintage iron running antique software in the real world. But the little elves way up north in IBM‘s Rochester toyshop have been hard at work bringing new capabilities to the platform. Here are the top five new things that IBM brought to the IBM i platform in 2014 and 2015: 1. Native Flash Storage IBM added support for native flash storage in the latest round

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