• IBM Connections Gets Business Social Makeover

  July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

  IBM made lots of midrange shops happy last year when it offered its flagship business collaboration software, called IBM Connections, on its IBM i platform. With the introduction of IBM Connections 5 this month, the company has enhanced the capability of its customers to collaborate with all relevant stakeholders, including those inside and outside the organization. IBM Connections is a Web-based product that IBM originally launched as Lotus Connections in 2007.The software is designed so teams of users can collaborate through Web spaces, blogs, wikis, forums, and shared libraries (file syncs). The software sports hooks into the Lotus email, contacts,

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• An IBM i Client for Every Administrative Occasion

  July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Anybody remember OpsNav? The Windows-based client from IBM seemed to provide every function a system administrator could ask for. Well, we’ve come a long way since 1999, and today’s administrators have a new crop of needs, which are served by a veritable army of IBM i clients from IBM. Tim Rowe, IBM’s business architect for application development, provided an excellent rundown of the various IBM i client options available in a recent article published at System i Developer, where Rowe’s regular column landed after iPro Developer folded up its tent. There are no fewer than five IBM i clients

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• Need Apps for IBM i 7.2? Check the GSD

  July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

  IBM i version 7.2 has been out for about a month now, providing more than 100,000 users of the midrange server with a variety of helpful new features, not to mention all fixes to date. While IBM doesn’t run a certification program for the new OS, ISVs are expected to begin listing their IBM i 7.2-compatible applications on the Global Solutions Directory (GSD) website. IBM runs the Global Solutions Directory effectively to provide a searchable index of solutions designed to run on its various platforms. Business partners maintain their own listings in the directory, so it’s not the same as

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• Rocket Battles Dropbox Creep with R/Link MFT

  July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Dropbox is a huge temptation for business users, but it’s a security no-no in most organizations. One Dropbox alternative you might want to consider is Rocket Software‘s R/Link. The Java-based product, which Rocket launched a year ago, provides robust managed file transfer (MFT) capabilities and a nifty HTML5 interface that lets users securely move files across multiple devices, from smartphones and tablets to IBM i servers and mainframes. R/Link started life as an idea on Steve Bireley’s whiteboard. Rocket’s managing director of R&D liked the ease-of-use of the popular file sharing service, but its mounting security problems led him

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• IBM i: Still a Great Fit for Manhattan Associates WMS

  July 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to tier-one ERP, IBM i still has some solid packages, but the platform has slipped a bit in the rankings compared to open systems. But when it comes to the warehouse management systems (WMS) that run the country’s biggest distribution centers, IBM i is still top of the heap, largely due to the work of Manhattan Associates. And with its new omni-channel capabilities, the WMS looks to stay there for a while. Founded 24 years ago in the California city of Manhattan Beach, Manhattan Associates specializes in the development and support of supply chain execution and

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• IT Does Its Part For U.S. Job Growth In June

  July 7, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is nothing quite like an economy to send mixed signals. The growth rate in gross domestic product was estimated to grow at an anemic one-tenth of a point in the first quarter when the Bureau of Economic Analysis put out its initial figures in April, numbers that were revised two weeks ago to a decline of 1 percent. Declines in exports and inventories accounted for most of that fall, and it is not clear yet what, if any, effect this will have on the jobs market. Thus far, this signal does not appear to have gotten through the system.

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• Gartner Shaves IT Spending Projections For 2014 Again

  July 7, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Every year starts out anew with its own optimism and then the reality of the year gradually becomes apparent. It may seem like it has been a long time since a year of spending in the IT sector started out strong and got stronger as the year progressed, but it has happened, in 2010 as the world started to come out of the Great Recession. But in recent years, as in lingering recessions of years gone past and during major transitions in the IT sector itself, it does seem like forecasts of IT spending growth get cut as the year

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• Modernization Redbook: The Time Has Come

  July 7, 2014 Dan Burger

  I’d like to tell you Modernizing IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between is on the IT Jungle Best Seller List. But we don’t have a best seller list and if IBM knew how many of these Rebooks were being downloaded, it’s against Big Blue’s better judgment to release such information. You’ve heard about this Redbook before if you are a regular reader of The Four Hundred. It was a monumental effort that was first released as a Draft Redbook (Danger: Typographical errors and other bugs have yet to be thoroughly

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• Mountains Of Data Bring Recovery Issues

  July 7, 2014 Dan Burger

  If IBM pushed any harder on promoting “The Cloud,” it would rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Investments have been made in technologies such as PowerVM, SmartCloud management products, and Live Partition Mobility. And you can’t undervalue the investments from the managed service providers (MSPs) and the independent software vendors (ISVs). “We see a revenue shift from the traditional buy/sell business to ‘the cloud’ and managed services,” says Jim Kandrac, who makes his living selling cloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability. Kandrac’s business model relies a combination of IBM Power Systems

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• Reader Feedback On Power S814 Power8 Running IBM i

  July 7, 2014 Hey, TPM

  Thank you for the news stories and industry commentary. Coming back to the IBM i fold after eight years, this is exactly what I need. I have a comment on your P05 Power8 story though. You mention that the memory cap is the same as IBM put on the Power7+ P05 machine, which is not what I have encountered. I have just installed a Power7+ 710 Express and it has a 256 GB memory limit but is a P05 box. Kind regards, –Matthew That cap is only on the Power 720 and Power 720+, which has room for expansion for

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