• Vision Touts Cloud Readiness of MIMIX DR

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  MIMIX DR is ready to start protecting IBM i customers from the cloud. That’s the message coming from Vision Solutions, which is ramping up its marketing machine in the hopes of sparking cloud sales of the remote journaling-based disaster recovery (DR) solution for itself, and its managed service provider (MSP) partners, too. MIMIX DR is a new piece of DR software that Vision unveiled in May. The software is nearly identical to the full MIMIX product that has been synonymous with high availability since the days of the AS/400, except for the lack of an automated failover process

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• IBM Data Studio Deserves a Closer Look

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Good developers are always on the hunt for new tools that allow them to accomplish their everyday tasks faster, cheaper, or better. For IBM i developers who like to stay within the comfy confines of Eclipse, there’s a little-known database management utility called IBM Data Studio that could become a go-to tool, particularly when it comes to graphically debugging SQL and Java stored procedures on the IBM i server. IBM Data Studio is a free graphical development tool based on Eclipse that previously went by a couple of names, including IBM DB2 Developers Workbench and IBM DB2 Development Center. The

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• How Does The Flex System Stack Up Against Cisco’s UCS?

  September 9, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM‘s Flex System modular machines were without a doubt a reaction to the success in the data center of the Unified Computing System converged platforms from Cisco Systems. But how do the two machines stack up against each other? According to a recent report (PDF) from Clabby Analytics that is published on the IBM Flex Systems website, there are some significant advantages with the Flex System iron from Big Blue. One of them is that the chassis allows for storage arrays to be embedded into the chassis and accessed locally instead of using external storage area networks as

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• IBM i Tech Books Available Through BookHawkers

  September 9, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For many years, IT Jungle operated a bookstore on Yahoo and then eBay that featured technical manuals by several of our authors. We shut that bookstore down at the end of last year because it was more grief than it was worth–others have long since cornered the market in IBM i publishing–but you can still get many of the titles we used to carry elsewhere. Specifically, if you are looking for the Pocket Guides and other programming manuals and tutorials from author Brian Kelly, he has started his own virtual bookstore at BookHawkers. His inventory of IBM i-related titles is

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• RPG & DB2 Summit Registrations Rise, Signals Progress In IBM i Shops

  September 9, 2013 Dan Burger

  RPG & DB2 Summit Registrations Rise, Signals Progress In IBM i Shops The skills gap for IBM midrange professionals may be narrowing. At least there’s an indication that may be true. Tech conferences in general have reported attendance as mostly flat over the past several years and more are shriveling than blossoming. But at the same time, companies are scrambling to solve business issues and looking to IT for the answers. Solutions, in many cases, require new skills. In-house IT investment can’t be overlooked. The most promising indicator of an upswing in skills comes from System i Developer, the

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• A Cloud Falls Over The U.S. Open

  September 9, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Tennis fans might think of clouds as being a bad omen. Rain delays can put a quick stop to the action on the court. But clouds mean something different to those of us in computing circles, and fans of this year’s U.S. Open Championships might be surprised to learn that clouds actually had a big hand in creating a better tennis experience. The USTA has been partnering with IBM for more than 20 years, and in that time the technology has changed a lot. Today’s tech savvy fan, whether part of the 700,000 crowded into the USTA National Tennis Center

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• Servers Sales Swoon A Little From April Through June

  September 9, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With so many transitions going on in the server racket these days, it is hard to say if the ups and downs of revenues for each quarter are a leading indicator for the overall IT market anymore. But a lot of people believe server sales do portend future budgets in data centers, and so when the numbers head south, as they did again in the June quarter according to IDC, people take notice. It is best to keep perspective. There is a lot going on in Server Land, to say the least. And the pace of change is not

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• IBM Re-Emphasizes Software And Services To The Channel

  September 9, 2013 Dan Burger

  In his keynote address at the Avnet and IBM Executive Directions meeting last month, Steve Mills told a roomful of folks in the sales channel that their greatest opportunities for future success would be in software and services. That’s not a new tune the general manager in charge of the converged Software and Systems Group was singing, but in this business setting where hardware sales is the sentimental favorite, Mills would like to make sure the choir is singing his song. Mills carefully built a bridge that connected the old reseller sales approach that led with hardware sales by saying

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• As I See It: Motivate This

  September 9, 2013 Victor Rozek

  I’m about a week away from heading up to Banff and Jasper for a little mountain madness and, as departure time draws near, my motivation to work is draining faster than sinuses under a pollen attack. Like God, motivation is a universal concept, individually applied. With the exception of survival, few, if any, motivators can guarantee to consistently move the productivity needle. And those that do, won’t necessarily do so for long. For people who have already achieved a comfortable baseline and don’t aspire to piggish levels of consumption, motivation is like the tide–it comes and goes. Mine was waning

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• SaaS HR And Payroll Powered By i Proves Popular

  September 9, 2013 Dan Burger

  Making the choice to deliver its human resources and payroll application in the software as a service (SaaS) package was a gamble for NorthgateArinso (NGA), but the idea has fit the bill for thousands of companies that are attracted by the software features and the SaaS subscription-based replacement for software licensing. Most of these companies have no idea the software runs on the IBM Power7 hardware and the IBM i platform, but it has worked out well for NGA. Renting rather than buying mission-critical applications is still pretty rare in the IBM midrange community, but it is not the IBM

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