• Halcyon’s Extends SLA Tracking Tool to AIX and Linux

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that adopt the newest version of Halcyon Software‘s Advanced Reporting Suite can use the software to report on the performance of their AIX and Linux environments, not just IBM i and Windows, the company announced last month. Advanced Performance Suite is a Windows- and SQL Server-based tool that Halcyon launched two years ago to generate performance reports for IBM i and Windows server environments. The software collects and collates various systems management metrics of production server environments, such as percentage performance against SLAs, processor loading, CPU, memory and disk, SAN utilization, performance response times, and resource utilization. The

  … Read more

• SkyVault to Go Active in Early 2014, Infor Says

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Infor has delayed its new hosted SkyVault business analytics offering, and now plans to launch it in early 2014, the company said last week. The offering–which combines Amazon‘s Redshift database and Infor’s own BI, dashboard, and data integration tools–is a key part of Infor’s big data analytics strategy, and Infor expects it to bolster the big data strategies of its big ERP customer base, too. Infor originally announced SkyVault at the Inforum 2013 conference in May, when the company said it expected the hosted offering to debut by the end of the year. That original GA date has apparently

  … Read more

• iAdvocacy Resources On Demand

  November 5, 2013 Dan Burger

  The IBM midrange community, as a group, can be influential. But many individuals are unaware of the power of advocacy and what it can mean for their own organizations. Like a flashlight in a dark cave, advocacy for the IBM i system can prevent companies from making uninformed decisions. There are proven advocacy successes, but there are also instances when the lack of advocacy results in the IBM i becoming a forgotten entity, a misunderstood system, and the black sheep of the IT department. It’s fair to say that too often the information about the i is locked up in

  … Read more

• Presto Change-O: BCD Unveils New Modernization Tricks

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  It’s an IT truism that the easier and more intuitive one makes a user interface, then the more likely users will be to actually use them. This was the big problem with the first generation of screen scrapers, which created awful looking screens that didn’t work much better than the green screens they replaced. The new generation of 5250 screen converters, such as the Presto offering from Business Computer Design Int’l., are heads above what was possible a decade ago. Presto is an on-the-fly GUI generator for green-screen interfaces that BCD debuted in 2008. It works by intercepting the

  … Read more

• Profound UI’s Rich New Language Options

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Multinational companies that need their IBM i applications to support users in multiple languages may fine the latest Web enablement software from Profound Logic to their liking. With Profound UI version 4.7, which debuted last week, Profound is including a new translation database that makes it easier to support multiple languages in the same application. A new code editor and the capability to persist grid changes from session to session round out the release. With around 200 paying Profound UI customers and about 500 installations around the world, Profound Logic’s developers are keeping busy with fixes, updates, and change requests

  … Read more

• IBM Cuts Storwize Array Disk And SSD Prices

  November 4, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The new Storwize V5000 arrays were just announced, as we reported elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, and IBM is already tweaking the prices on disk and flash drives for the machines. IBM has also cut prices on disks and SSDs for its V7000 arrays and for SSDs used in the SAN Volume Controller and the Flex System V7000 array. The price cuts were revealed in announcement letter 313-103. As usual, I have plowed through the IBM Sales Manual to figure out what features are affected by the price changes: IBM did not cut prices on

  … Read more

• IBM To Move SmartCloud Enterprise Customers to SoftLayer

  November 4, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM launched its SmartCloud Enterprise infrastructure cloud service back in the spring of 2011, and it was at that time five years behind industry juggernaut Amazon Web Services. In part to make good on its promises to grow cloud revenues and in part to get a broader set of customers and technologies, IBM bought cloud provider SoftLayer in June. And now it is warning customers that they will have to move to SoftLayer clouds. The rumors about the transition from SmartCloud Enterprise to SoftLayer popped up late last week after some industry analysts caught wind of the forced–and entirely expected–migration

  … Read more

• Big Data Means Big Growth For Microsoft And SAP

  November 4, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Just like companies using other platforms, big data is nothing new to IBM i shops, who are also struggling to keep up with their growing volume of data. This was demonstrated by the enhancements Big Blue promises to deliver this month with IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 7 (TR7), which we told you about last month in The Four Hundred. So when IDC released the latest results from its Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker on enterprise software growth, we were not surprised to see that big data played a role in determining which companies saw growth in the first six

  … Read more

• Arrow’s Q3 Financials Flat Not Fat

  November 4, 2013 Dan Burger

  Arrow Electronics, known to the IBM i community because of its Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) group that moves a ton of IBM gear, delivered its third quarter financial report that puts the overall company revenue at $5 billion. The ECS group contributed $1.6 billion to that amount. In addition to being a top IBM reseller, Arrow ECS also resells products for fifty of the largest IT companies in the world. The overall company revenue showed no gain in revenue compared to the same quarter in 2012. The same was true for the ECS group. Company executives provided some details

  … Read more

• Talking IBM i With Power Systems Marketing Chief

  November 4, 2013 Dan Burger

  Seldom is heard an encouraging word about IBM Power Systems marketing. That’s the cold hard facts when you talk with the IBM i community. It’s an old complaint, much like the name change that remains a burr under the saddle of some folks. I’d like to see some i-specific marketing done to grow the market as much as any of the world-class complainers in the IBM i community, but this is quite obviously and assuredly not a IBM priority. At the recent Enterprise2013 conference, I had a meeting with IBM’s vice president of worldwide marketing, Lisa Johnston, who reports directly

  … Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles