• Qualcomm Sells Omnitracs for $800 Million

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Qualcomm last month sold Omnitracs, its division that develops truck- and trailer-tracking technology that was often integrated with carriers’ dispatching applications running on IBM i servers, to a private equity group for $800 million. Long before CDMA or the Snapdragon processors were a gleam in Irwin Jacobs’ eye, Qualcomm was–if you can believe it–a mainstay in the rough and tumble world of interstate trucking. The tale starts in the glorious year of 1988, when the San Diego, California, company started developing the Omnitracs systems that would combine cellular, satellite, and IBM midrange technology to track and monitor trucks and trailers

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• IBM Revs Cloud-Based Social Business Suite

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM has issued a new release of SmartCloud for Social Business (SC4SB), a collection of cloud-based utilities that allow users to collaborate online via email, instant messaging, file sharing, and more. SC4SB is an IBM-hosted offering that provides users with email, calendar, instant messaging file sharing, forums, and Web meeting functionality from the comfort of a Web browser or an IBM Notes client. IBM rolled out the SC4SB offerings (which previously went by the name LotusLive) in January 2012. IBM sells various bundles and stand-alone services as part of the SC4SB suite. These bundles include: the entry-level SmartCloud Connections

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• BlueWare CEO Arrested in Alleged Kickback Scheme

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  The CEO of BlueWare, a developer of IBM i-based healthcare management applications, was arrested in Florida last month for her alleged role in a kickback scheme with an elected official and a lobbyist, who were also arrested. The CEO, Rose Harr, posted bail and denies all the charges. Harr is accused of funneling money into the 2012 re-election campaign of Mitch Needelman, who was then the Brevard County Clerk of Court, in exchange for Needelman’s assistance in arranging for BlueWare to receive an $8.5 million contract from the county to scan a gymnasium full of paper documents into digital records.

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• Linoma Adds Clustering, Disk Throttling to MFT Products

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that have no tolerance for downtime with their file transfer activities may want to take a look at the latest release of Linoma Software‘s GoAnywhere Director software, which gains support for clustering. The company also issued a new release of its GoAnywhere Services software that allows administrators to limit how much storage and network bandwidth users of the product can consume. Support for “active-active” clustering in version 4.5 puts another feather in the cap of GoAnyhere Director, the most feature-rich member of Linoma’s MFT suite. With this capability, multiple installations of GoAnywhere Director can work together to execute

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• RTC Now Lets You Simulate IBM i Dependency Builds on Windows

  September 10, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i and z/OS shops that use IBM‘s Rational Team Concert (RTC) software to manage their development processes will get a new “simulation mode” that allows time-saving dependency builds to run on any platform, including Windows. The new feature is included in the latest release of RTC, version 4.0.4, which shipped in late August. The new functionality will allow users to run a simulated dependency build for IBM i and z/OS applications on any platform, including Windows, IBM says. “This makes it possible to create all the dependency metadata [build maps and so on] of a build without running

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• 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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