• A New IBM i Team Is Needed

  August 5, 2013 Dan Burger

  Sparks will fly when application development teams get this news. Someone set the stun gun for high voltage. Let the yowling begin. Management has decided that following an IT strategy that was begun in the last century is not appropriate for this one and a decision has been made to move from application centric development to data centric development. IBM midrange shops shudder at the thought of this, but here’s a scenario where it could come to pass. Mergers and acquisitions have put a small to midsize company into a much bigger arena. And in this hypothetical situation let’s say

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• Big Blue Chops PureSystems CPU And Memory Prices

  August 5, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power Systems business and the System x business not growing in the most recent quarters, I have been expecting IBM to start testing the elasticity of pricing on its plain vanilla Power and X86 boxes as well as on the PureSystems modular systems to stimulate a little business. IBM has not made a lot of pricing changes this year, but did last week on its PureSystems line as part of a third quarter push. Specifically, in announcement letter 313-060 on July 31, IBM tweaked the prices on X86 processors used in the Flex x220, x240, and x440 processor

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• IBM Dresses Up The Power 750+ In A Linux-Only Tuxedo

  August 5, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue wants a much bigger piece of the $10 billion annual Linux server business, and it is rolling out a fatter version of its Power7+ server lineup in the PowerLinux line to chase big Java, database, and analytics workloads. The new machine, called the PowerLinux 7R4, is a Linux-only version of the four-socket Power 750+ server that was announced back in February along with a revamped entry Power7+ server line and an even fatter Power 760+ machine. Like other PowerLinux machines, the new PowerLinux 7R4 is designed specifically to compete head-to-head with Intel Xeon E5 and E7 machines in

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• SafeNet Claims Usage-Based Licensing Breakthrough For On-Premise ISVs

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  For the last several years, the software licensing experts at SafeNet have helped software as a service (SaaS) vendors sell their stuff based on what features their customers use and how often they use them. With a recent update to its Sentinel Cloud license management and software monetization offering for software publishers, SafeNet says it can now provide on-premise software vendors with access to the same usage-based licensing and pricing capabilities as their SaaS cohorts have enjoyed. Sentinel Cloud was originally developed for SaaS vendors, but the need for a usage-based pricing model for ISVs who sell on-premise software was

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• Focus on Network Security Overlooks Importance of Protecting Data, Oracle Study Finds

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  In a new study commissioned by Oracle, researchers found that more than two-thirds of a typical organization’s IT security resources are allocated to protecting the network layer, leaving less than one-quarter of the resources to address the security needs of core infrastructure components, such as servers, applications, and databases. The study involved more than 110 companies that were contacted by CSO Custom Solutions Group on behalf of Oracle. The study asked the companies how they allocate their resources, including money and staff time, to address security concerns. Despite the fact that a breach of a database would be potentially

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• Maxava Customer Installs HA Software Just In Time

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  It didn’t take long for Smith Brothers Stores to realize a return on its investment in Maxava‘s high availability (HA) software. Just two weeks after going live on Maxava Enterprise+, the UK-based industrial supply company leaned heavily on the software to save it from a potentially devastating situation. Smith Brothers Stores sells a range of products to construction firms in the UK, including pipes, fittings, valves, HVAC equipment, tools, and other items. The 116-year-old company sells its products from nine locations across the country, as well as through an e-commerce website. Supporting the 100-person business is the IBM i-based

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• UCG Launches VAULT400 Reports

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  United Computer Group this month launched VAULT400 Reports, a new offering that will give VAULT400 customers access to reports that detail the state of their backups and storage utilization on the VAULT400 cloud. UCG last week mailed out notices to its VAULT400 customers to let them know about the new service and to provide them with security credentials to log onto the VAULT400 Web portal. The reports will be available to VAULT400 customers at any time, and the company will email the reports every quarter. UCG is making three sets of reports available to its customers. The Backup Status report

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• ASNA Touts Customer’s Success with RPG-to-.NET Conversion Tool

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  ASNA is talking up the recent awards won by its customer Retail Assist, the UK-based developer of multi-channel retail management software, as well as one of Retail Assist’s customers, which successfully implemented the browser-based, .NET version of its formerly RPG-only suite. ASNA says that Retail Assist chose ASNA Monarch several years ago to modernize its RPG-based multi-channel retail management suite, called Merret. The application automates many tasks for the multi-channel retailer, including purchasing, warehousing, replenishment, inward and outward distribution, retail financials, planning, and CRM data capture. Merret was originally developed to run on the AS/400, but Retail Assist wanted

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• Halcyon Bolsters IBM i Process Automation Solution

  July 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are tired of paying IT personnel to manually submit jobs on the system may be interested in the latest product news from Halcyon Software. The UK firm last week unveiled a new version of Record and Playback, a utility that automates routine tasks and processes in IBM i environments. With version 11, Halcyon has added a new screen capture capability that should enable even more automation of tasks, as well as better diagnoses of errors. IBM i shops are notorious for having slim IT staffs, and for having IT personnel that wear multiple hats. This

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• PowerTech Delivers IBM i Security Data to HP ArcSight SIEM

  July 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  PowerTech, one of the security software divisions under the Help/Systems umbrella, has taken another step toward multi-platform interoperability with its recent announcement that it has received Hewlett-Packard ArcSight Common Event Format (CEF) certification. Interact allows users to monitor, capture, and send security-related events from IBM i servers to the HP ArcSight platform. This capability allows HP ArcSight users to correlate event data in real time from several sources including the IBM i security audit journal (QAUDJRN), the IBM i operating system, Apache Web logs, and PowerTech Network Security & Authority Broker, which runs on the IBM midrange platform. The

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