• ARCAD Protects Test Data with Anonymizer

  October 7, 2014 Alex Woodie

  The specter of Russian super hackers breaking into corporate servers may be enough to give your CIO the willies. But there are many other ways data can walk away from your headquarters, including poorly protected test environments. Now ARCAD Software is helping IBM i developers secure that sensitive test data with a new product called Anonymizer. The new ARCAD-Anonymizer product does pretty much what its name implies–it anonymizes data. It’s designed to be used in test environments where developers often use copies of production data because it closely replicates the real-world conditions the application will see when it completes testing.

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• Single-Level Store Redux In New Power-Flash Hybrids

  October 6, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the System x division now in the hands of Lenovo Group, IBM is being more aggressive about promoting its Power Systems lineup and, in particular, a new machine that brings Power processors together Tesla GPU coprocessors from Nvidia and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) from Altera to create hybrid computing platforms. The immediate benefit of these technologies are not apparent to IBM i shops, who run mostly RPG and Java code, but such hybrid machines will very likely be more common as GPU-accelerated Java comes to market in the next couple of years–perhaps next year, perhaps the year

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• Open Source Lures The Killer App Closer

  October 6, 2014 Dan Burger

  Open source software is not exactly a hotbed of activity in the IBM i community. You can find all sorts of examples of it. You can find window shoppers, tire kickers, and sandbox playmates, but it’s more closely related to a small scoop of ice cream than it is to meat and potatoes. A comment like that will draw some fire from IBM. Big Blue has megabucks invested in Linux and is tooting the Eclipse horn to prove its openness in developing software such as Rational Developer for i. Zend Technologies has had success with PHP, as has other

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• Maxava Doles Out $52,000 In iFoundation Grants

  October 6, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  High availability software maker Maxava has awarded the next round of its iFoundation grants to help promote the IBM i platform. Founded in 2011, the Maxava iFoundation provides non-profit organizations that are promoting and expanding the IBM i community a grant of up to $2,000 to help in their efforts in the IBM i cause. The iFoundation grants are a perfect example of enlightened self-interest, as is, I must add, the support we get from Maxava in our Four Hundred stack of newsletters. Without companies like Maxava supporting our newsletters, user groups like COMMON, and other national, regional, local

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• Where’s Your Next RPG Programmer Coming From?

  October 6, 2014 Dan Burger

  Employers expect that programmers can learn to work in most environments. And sometimes expectations are unrealistic. It depends on the environment as much as it depends on the programmer. IBM midrange shops are in a battle as they search for RPG programmers. Organizations that are dependent on old, fixed-form RPG find themselves in an environment with limited ability to attract replacement programmers from the small pool of those know and understand a language that doesn’t fit with today’s IT. And organizations with modern, free-form RPG development environments similarly discover new programmers in limited supply. Expecting programmers to learn an unfamiliar

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• Soltis Picks Trends for Future IBM i On Power

  October 6, 2014 Dan Burger

  You can’t look to the past to predict the future. But most forecasts take into account a portion of historical data. At least those that do would have a higher degree of probability. I kept that in the back of my mind as I listened to Frank Soltis on a webcast last week. Soltis played a starring role in the development of the AS/400; he retired as IBM‘s chief scientist and is not shy about forecasting the future of the platform. “First of all, this system is not going away.” Soltis got that off his chest at the top

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• Security Breaches Reminder For IBM i Shops To Up Their Games

  October 6, 2014 Alex Woodie

  The recent revelation that cybercriminals compromised more than 80 million JPMorgan Chase accounts and 56 million Home Depot accounts is a stark reminder that cyber criminals have upped their game and that even the biggest corporations must adapt to survive. It should also serve as a warning to smaller companies, including IBM i shops, security experts say. Russian hackers are believed to be behind a massive data breach at JPMorgan Chase that began over the summer and was first revealed to the public last month. The company last week admitted that hackers accessed contact information, such as name, address, and

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• As I See It: Lip Service

  October 6, 2014 Victor Rozek

  What if there was a bodily function that could help make or break your career? Sounds improbable since bodily functions are generally involuntary and occur outside our conscious awareness. But even though it is chemically induced in the brain, this particular function can also be initiated volitionally. And, when appropriately applied, it is socially welcome which, as we all know, cannot be said for all corporal processes. Yet for all its promise, it remains vastly undervalued. In a tome on the subject Angus Trumble called it the “fabulously versatile contortion.” Indeed, with only subtle variances, it is capable of communicating

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• Lenovo Deal Done, Power Systems Takes Center Stage

  October 6, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, the deal is done, and IBM is completely and finally out of the X86 server business now that it has sold off the System x division to Lenovo Group. Or, to be more precise, has sold off the System x business in most of the major countries where IBM and Lenovo both had operations and could do the transfer and get the approval of regulators. Now, we find out exactly how committed Big Blue is to the Power Systems platform. Ever since the homogenization of the server lines that started at the end of the 1990s when Sam

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• Report Writing Punishes IBM Power i Shops

  October 6, 2014 Dan Burger

  Report writing is a peculiar skill for an IT department. The technical skills to get it done are unquestionably the responsibility of IT, but the actual report generation should be in the hands of the person needing the information–the business analyst, the marketing or financial personnel, and even the C-level decision makers. It takes reporting tools to make this happen, and not the tools that IBM Power Systems shops used 10 or 20 years ago. Allowing end users to run reports is one of the targets of organizations with the aim of better aligning business requirements and IT optimization. It

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