• IBM i Options for Open Source E-Commerce

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to powering e-commerce Web sites on the IBM i platform, there are a handful of options that will set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars. For those looking to take the open source route, there is Magento, a PHP-based ecommerce framework that’s owned by EBay. Magento is an open source e-commerce Web application that launched in 2008. Like other open source products that have been successfully commercialized, Magento relies on a core group of developers to develop basic functionality, and taps into a larger network of developers for add-on capabilities. Magento itself doesn’t run

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• A Big Blue Cloud of Clouds

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced that is brainiacs in research have come up with new cloud storage software that provides a simple way to migrate data across multiple clouds, while keeping it confidential and secure. According to IBM, companies want to move their applications to the cloud but are scared off by poor security and reliability, and the utterly horrifying specter of vendor lock-in. The solution, according to IBM, is its patent-pending “cloud of clouds” approach. In the Big Blue cloud of clouds, organizations can “invoke the resilience of separate clouds to offer stronger protection against service outages and data loss

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• m-Power Gets Responsive with Screen Design

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  As a high-powered business executive, you expect to access the same application from multiple devices without any issues. However, requiring developers to maintain multiple versions of an application for PCs, Web browsers, smartphones, and tablets would be a giant waste of your awesome powers. With the latest release of its m-Power application development tool, mrc adopted the concept of responsive design, enabling the same GUI to automatically adapt to all of your varied devices. If only business cards could automatically adjust from portrait to landscape mode. From the perspective of a master of the universe, the concept of responsive design

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• Surround Tech Takes .NET Development Further for IBM i Shops

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Surround Technologies last week unveiled Accelerator for .NET Version 4.3, the latest release of its .NET-based application framework that for rapidly developing Web, Windows, and mobile front-ends for new or existing applications running on IBM i. Surround Tech bolstered its wizard and code-generation capabilities with this release, and also unveiled a beta of a new query tool. Accelerator for .NET includes a set of prebuilt components and wizard-driven code generators that plug into Microsoft‘s Visual Studio development environment. Surround Tech’s software has traditionally been heavily focused on bridging the gap between existing business logic residing in DB2/400 with Microsoft’s

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• CM First Strengthens Mobile App Story for IBM i

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  CM First Group is looking to make it easier for IBM i shops to create compelling mobile apps with the latest release of its CM WebClient add-on for CA Plex tools. With support for the latest OSes from Microsoft and Blackberry, the latest iOS themes from Apple, and native device integration with Apache Cordova, generating mobile front-ends for backend IBM i apps is less scary than ever. “CM First knows how intimidating mobile can be to a company just beginning the journey,” says Christoph Heinrich, the CEO of CM First, in a press release. “CM First developers felt

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• The New Math of DRaaS

  December 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  In the last several years, a whole new spectrum of possibilities has opened up for disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) in the midrange. The combination of inexpensive virtual tape libraries (VTLs), online backup to the cloud, and the managed service provider (MSP) business model puts in place the building blocks for vendors in the IBM i market to offer fully integrated DRaaS with 24-hour recovery time objectives (RTOs) for prices starting at $1,000 per month. In the past, if a company wanted a full service DRaaS, they would call on IBM Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (BCRS) or Sungard

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• Technically Speaking, SMBs Struggle To Compete

  December 9, 2013 Dan Burger

  The inability to afford many of the new information technologies and lacking the skills to implement those they can afford is a tightening rope around the neck of many small to midsize companies. It certainly contributes to the lack of application modernization projects that are discussed in two other articles I’ve written in this issue. Any organization, but especially the small to midsize organizations, looks at IT investments in terms of spending money to save money. That’s pretty much a universal business fact in these times of fast-paced IT evolution. For every operational efficiency promised, there needs to be a

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• Big Blue Buys Another Cloud-Ish Business

  December 9, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM has promised Wall Street that it will have a $7 billion cloud business by the end of 2015, and it has gotten out the checkbook once again to help it along its way to that goal. Last week, IBM said that it has inked a deal with Dexia, a financial services company based in Brussels, Belgium, to take over the operations of its Associated Dexia Technology Services unit. ADTS is a service company not unlike IBM’s own Global Services that provides services to Belfius Bank, Belfius Insurance, International Wealth Insurers (IWI), Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), Dexia and Dexia

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• IBM Gooses DS8870 Disk Array With Power7+ Chips

  December 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month unveiled a refresh of its high-end DS8870 SAN disk array that features the latest Power7+ processors, which Big Blue says will deliver a 15 percent increase in data throughput for transactional workloads. The refreshed SAN also features a pair of new hard drive options, new security features, and new optimizations for Flash drives. IBM first rolled out the DS8870 over a year ago to serve the data storage needs of its most demanding customers. Users can mix and match a variety of different drives to house hot and not-so-hot data–up to 2.3 PB of it when four

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• IT Hiring And Salaries On The Rise For 2014

  December 9, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is that time of the year again, when all of us look at how we did this year and wonder if we are going to better than this next year. For the IT departments in the United States, the outlook is a good one, according to the latest data coming out of Computer Economics. The company has just completed its annual survey of 140 IT shops in the United States, and it looks like companies are expecting that inflation will go up a tiny bit in 2014. Inflation will be kept in check by the relatively high unemployment

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