• Zend Adds Mobile, Problem-Resolution Features to PHP Stack

  February 12, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Zend Technologies today is expected to announce the general availability of its latest PHP stack, including Zend Server version 6 and Zend Studio 10. The development tool gains new mobile tooling, specifically the inclusion of the PhoneGap mobile app framework. The Zend Server runtime, meanwhile, brings new features to help programmers and operators work together more efficiently to track down problems in production PHP apps. The IBM i version of Zend Server, when it ships, will have a new edition as well. Consider these sobering statistics, which Zend chief marketing officer Elaine Lennox shared with IT Jungle last week: 50

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• January Sees North America IT Jobs Explosion

  February 11, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  The folks at Janco Associates have some good news for IT job seekers. According to a new Janco report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the IT job market exploded with 73,500 new jobs in January. Even with the unemployment rate rising to 7.9 percent in 2013, Janco is seeing the number of new jobs for IT professionals is at levels high enough for IT mid-level manager and developers to say IT is in full recovery mode. According to data Janco extracted from the January jobs report from the BLS, there were 73,500 more IT professionals employed

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• Wisconsin Tech Conference A Smart Move

  February 11, 2013 Dan Burger

  There is a strong win-win for the attendees of the annual technical conference hosted by the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professionals Association and the companies that send IT staff to the two-day educational conference. You could call it leading IT in leaner times, or leveraging human resources, or better investing in IT as a company asset. There’s a payoff for smart employees and smart companies. WMCPA has chosen a session agenda made up of lectures and labs and keynote addresses that covers topics that the majority of IBM i shops want and need to hear about with a lineup of speakers

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• Jack Henry’s Fiscal Winning Streak Continues

  February 11, 2013 Dan Burger

  Jack Henry & Associates, the banking software and payment processing services provider that is a well-known vendor in the IBM midrange, has tacked on healthy increases in revenue for its fiscal second quarter of 2013. The financial report, released last week, showed a revenue spurt of 9 percent compared to the first fiscal quarter of 2012. Net income was bumped up 5 percent in the same year-to-year comparison. For the first six months of the company’s fiscal 2013, revenue increase maintains that 9 clip and net income increases are on an 11 percent gain. Closely shadowing Jack Henry’s established

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• Storage, Software, And Services Drive Up Arrow’s Systems Biz In Q4

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Enterprise Computing Solutions group of master distributor Arrow Electronics ended the fourth quarter on a high, with business being brisk enough to almost make up for decline in the component business that is the other engine of Arrow and its main competitor in the distribution racket, Avnet. In the quarter ended in December, overall sales at Arrow fell by just under 1 point to $5.4 billion, and if you look at it in local currencies, sales were actually off 3 percent. So the weakening dollar helped the numbers a bit. Sales at the ECS group rose by 11

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• IBM Puts On A Very Slick Power7+ Web Event

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As an IT journalist, I have to sit through more webcasts, interviews, and presentations than most of you have to sit through meetings. Some people put on a better show than others, and what I can tell you about the Webcast that the Power Systems division put together last Tuesday is by far the slickest thing I have seen in a long time. We’re talking Hollywood production values here, and to be honest, I was a bit surprised. If you didn’t catch the webcast for the February 5 announcements, you can catch the replay here, and it was a

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• Recognition Of IBM i Begins With Teamwork

  February 11, 2013 Yvonne Enselman

  Events keep reinforcing my opinion that it is imperative to address team building and communication between IT teams. Recently, I was talking to a friend about his frustration regarding his career as a developer. He has advanced skills and has been successful for more than 30 years on IBM midrange platforms. But he also has the feeling his every misstep will be used by the non-IBM i people in his organization as justification to move away from the platform. For the past 10 years, developers working on all platforms and languages have been hammered about modernizing skills to remain marketable.

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• As I See It: The Next Big (Destructive) Thing

  February 11, 2013 Victor Rozek

  If you’re an unemployed software engineer, I have good news and bad news for you. There are people hiring, but they go by the name of Al Qaeda. Welcome to the worm-eat-worm world of Cyber Warfare. It is the Next Big Military Thing, and everybody is gearing up to smite their godless foes without firing a shot. According to Jeffrey Carr, head of the digital security firm Taia Global, and author of Inside Cyber Warfare, Al Qaeda released a video last year in which they recruited hackers to better attack critical infrastructure. You have to wonder what inducements they

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• TR6 Brings Assorted Tech Goodies To IBM i

  February 11, 2013 Alex Woodie

  On February 5, IBM unveiled IBM i 7.1 TR6, the sixth Technology Refresh since IBM shifted to the agile development model for the OS in 2010. TR6 introduces a range of new technologies, including DB2 for i enhancements, support for USB flash drives, and support for the latest SSL standard, among others. Better manageability, high availability, and set-up capabilities round out the release. During the much-anticipated announcement day, most eyes were on the new Power7+ servers, including the sub-$6,000 Power Systems Model 710, the Power 720, the Power 730, the Power 740, the Power 750, and the Power 760. You

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• IBM Beefs Up The Power7+ Midrange With Double-Whammy Sockets

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While the entry part of the Power Systems market has been awaiting its Power7+ refresh, putting new processors and fatter memory and disk drives into essentially the same enclosures that were refreshed at the end of 2011, the midrange of the Power Systems line has been getting a little long in the tooth and was perhaps more in need of some re-engineering. And luckily for customers using midrange Power iron, that is precisely what IBM has done as part of the February 5 announcements. Not only is the Power 750+ getting a complete revamp while holding the core count steady,

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