• LANSA Unveils Free Mobile App to Audit GS1 Product Data

  June 18, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Ensuring that real-life products in the consumer goods supply chain match their digital GS1 records can be a time-consuming and error-prone job. To speed up the task of executing data quality audits, LANSA last week unveiled DQ Inspector, a free mobile iOS app that streamlines the work of recording physical attributes of goods and verifying that they match GS1 records. The GS1 organization is dedicated to helping businesses and consumers by driving standards into processes. In the consumer goods supply chain, the organization sets standards over the use of Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) and the synchronization of related product

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• Information Builders Bolsters Data Asset Management Strategy

  June 18, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Information Builders is in the process of overhauling its iWay data integration tools as part of a new focus on data asset management. With the new strategy, the company is looking to tie the disciplines of data integration, quality, and master data management (MDM) closer together. The new iWay 7 suite is the result of this strategy, and will be rolled out over the next 18 months. The market for data integration tools has changed dramatically over the years, according to Dennis McLaughlin of Information Builders. Instead of trying to hook together disparate databases or utilize application-level adapters–as was traditionally

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• It Could Be Worse: OpenVMS Users Aren’t Getting Latest Itanium Iron

  June 17, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  After all of these years and so many battles in the Minicomputer Wars and the Midrange Wars, the OpenVMS operating system is more a friend of the IBM i platform than a foe, particularly with common enemies swarming the data center landscape from the warring tribes of Windows and Linux. So it is important not to gloat as we get what is very likely the final roadmap out of Hewlett-Packard for the venerable OpenVMS. On June 6, Ric Lewis, general manager of HP’s Enterprise Servers division, which is in charge of its Itanium-based systems, sent a letter to OpenVMS shops

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• IT Jobs Market Goes Flat

  June 17, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  There’s no sugar coating this one. The IT jobs market has hit the skids. At least that is what the latest report from Janco Associates, whose analysts keep an eye on IT market trends, is saying. “Based on our interviews with over 90 CIOs in the last 30 days, we concluded that CIOs are not in a great hurry to hire new staff,” said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco. “In addition, a number of CIOs do not see any real push to expand staffing over the next 12 months.” This comes on the heels of the latest jobs report

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• Microsoft Readies R2 Update For Windows Server 2012

  June 17, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Version changes between operating systems have been getting stretched out across all platforms for the past several years because most of the major OSes have reach a certain level of maturity and customers are loathe to go through qualification processors at a rapid pace for very little change in functionality. And so the industry has split the difference, doing more frequent updates that add functionality without messing with runtimes and therefore application compatibility. And so it is with Microsoft‘s Windows Server 2012, which had a Release 2 (R2) preview down in New Orleans in early June, showing off some

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• Industry-Driven Training Aims At Skills Gap

  June 17, 2013 Dan Burger

  The skilled workforce is a big concern for all companies. In the IBM midrange community, you won’t find many people who believe it isn’t a problem. Potential entry-level employees with IBM i skills are scarce. And companies that are hiring tend to be particular about that. In most instances, organizations are not looking for one-dimensional individuals. Broad-based skills, including multiple languages and operating systems, are more the norm. What’s being done to address this? Some companies have found success when the IT and HR departments work together on a recruitment strategy that has close ties to colleges where IBM i

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• Abacus Wants You To Run In Its Cloud–And For Your Health

  June 17, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When something works in a small venue, you try to take it to a big venue in the big cities and see if it will play even bigger there. And so it is with a promotion that Abacus Solutions tested out at the COMMON midrange user group and expo back in early April. And now, it is open to all of you members of the IBM i community. The theme is running on the cloud, and there’s some double, and maybe triple, entendre in there, since athletic footwear maker Brooks Sports, a $425 million company that runs on IBM

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• IBM Improves Private Cloud Control With SmartCloud 3.1

  June 17, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops and managed service providers that adopt the latest release of IBM‘s SmartCloud Entry for Power software will gain several new points of control over their private cloud environments, including the capability to start and stop workloads at any time, and the capability to deploy multiple copies of an image simultaneously. IBM also divulged pricing details with the SmartCloud Entry for Power version 3.1 announcements, and made a statement of direction regarding “adopting a common technology base” rooted in open standards for SmartCloud Entry. SmartCloud Entry for Power is a lightweight (for IBM anyway), AIX-based software product

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• As I See It: Looking Through the PRISM

  June 17, 2013 Victor Rozek

  Christoph Meili was a security guard who worked the night shift at the Union Bank of Switzerland. One night while making his rounds, he discovered that the management of UBS was doing naughty, naughty things in the dark. There’s no pretty way to put this: they were working overtime to cheat the families of dead people. But not just people who died in the normal scheme of things. Oh, no. These people happened to be Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. UBS probably didn’t want to disturb their descendants by digging up all those painful memories, so

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• Dell Goes After SMBs With Data Center In A Box

  June 17, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the ever-increasing miniaturization of electronic components, it should be easy to cram a baby data center into a box that does not make a lot of noise and is therefore suitable for small and midrange businesses to park in their offices or for larger companies to plunk in their remote offices. Six years ago, Hewlett-Packard jumped in with its variant on the theme with the “Shorty” BladeSystem c3000 system and a few weeks later IBM countered with its BladeCenter S baby blade server. Now Dell is taking a run at SMBs with a new system it is calling

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