• Profound Updates RPG OA Screen Modernization Tool

  March 13, 2012 Alex Woodie

  With nearly two years of use in the field, Profound Logic is getting good feedback from customers about the changes it would like to see in Profound UI, the 5250 screen modernization tool that uses the Rational Open Access: RPG Edition (RPG OA) technology from IBM. Many of those changes are being showcased in Profound UI version 3.3, which the vendor unveiled in January. But the biggest changes are being prepped for launch at the May COMMON show. When it shipped in April 2010 Profound UI was the first commercially available screen modernization tool to use the RPG Open

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• ASNA ‘Bulks’ Up with Wings 5.2

  March 13, 2012 Alex Woodie

  When customers started using Wings, ASNA‘s new screen modernization tool for IBM i applications, the company was in for a bit of a surprise. While the company expected customers to modernize more than one screen at a time, it wasn’t expecting customers to tackle thousands of screens simultaneously. This led to one of the major new features in the just-released Wings 5.2, called “Flight Plans,” which enables users to track their progress with the ASNA tool. Wings is one of a new class of Web-based modernization tools that uses Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, the IBM technology that debuted

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• The New England Guide To IBM i

  March 12, 2012 Dan Burger

  The annual training and education event known as the Northeast User Groups Conference has been an IBM midrange tradition in New England. It draws primarily from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine. And it’s unique because it combines the several active local user groups from New England along with devoted volunteers from areas where local user groups no longer exist. This year’s conference is scheduled for April 2 through 4. As anyone who is connected with a local user group knows, it takes a group of dedicated volunteers to row the boat. In this case, they’ve been

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• IBM Is Betting On The Power Of Cloud

  March 12, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  “Get your head into the clouds and get back to work!” If your boss has recently issued you this order, you are not alone. There was a time when being accused of having your head in the clouds meant you were spending too much time daydreaming and not enough time producing real work. But, according to a recent IBM study, the number of companies turning to cloud computing is expected to more than double in the next three years. The study, titled The Power of Cloud: Driving business model innovation, surveyed 572 business and technology executives worldwide. The goal

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• SUSE Linux 11 SP2 Tuned For Power And System z

  March 12, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are a Linux user on IBM‘s Power Systems or System z mainframe servers, then you might want to take a gander at the latest Enterprise Server release from SUSE Linux, the commercial Linux distributor owned by software conglomerate Attachmate since last year. SUSE Linux has puts out Service Pack 2 for its Enterprise Server 11 variant of Linux, basing it on the new Linux 3.0.10 kernel, as you can read in the release notes for SP2. The update to the new Linux kernel also includes updates to the key portions of the open source stack,

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• Take The 20i2, Year Of IBM i Un-i-ty, Survey

  March 12, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As The Four Hundred explained three weeks ago, Trevor Perry, IBM i advocate extraordinaire, is once again trying to shepherd the IBM i community for its own good, and is on a mission to understand how people talk about the platform formerly known as the AS/400. And he needs you to take a survey, so why don’t you help out? Several weeks ago, Perry has launched www.ibmi2.com, a site that has a mission of building unity in the IBM i community. Just like you and me, Perry wants to help the IBM i community, and he’s one of

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• Judge Tentatively Rules For Vision In Maxava False Advertising Suit

  March 12, 2012 Alex Woodie

  As the false advertising lawsuit brought by Maxava against Vision Solutions slogs into its third year, the Federal judge overseeing the case has issued a tentative ruling on a preliminary matter. Judge George Wu in December rejected Maxava’s summary judgment motion, and stated he remained open to Vision’s summary judgment arguments. The jury trial originally scheduled to begin last November was delayed, and there’s no trial date currently on the docket. IBM i high availability software maker Maximum Availability (as the company was then called) filed a civil lawsuit against its larger rival Vision Solutions in December 2009, alleging that

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• The Abacus IBM i Test Drive Gains Renewed Relevance

  March 12, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Catching product transitions to conduct a little bit of new business is a tricky thing, and it is particularly difficult when the product transition that you are trying to take advantage of moves suddenly and unexpectedly. Just ask Abacus Solutions, which launched a virtual test drive service for IBM i 6.1 at the end of 2009 just as IBM was getting ready to stop selling i5/OS V5R4. And then Big Blue, at the request of customers facing the Great Recession, changed its mind and kept selling V5R4 a little longer. The idea behind the test drive service was simple

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Kenya Hear Me Now

  March 12, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  How do you win a war no matter how it turns out? You sell weapons to all sides. That is what IBM is doing in Kenya, where Vodafone’s Safaricom runs the fabulous M-Pesa mobile payment system. M-Pesa’s transaction volume dwarfs that of Kenya’s banks, five of which have now hired IBM to help them get a piece of the action. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel, also powered by IBM, has similar ambitions in mobile telephony and micropayment. M-Pesa is an offspring of Islamic hawala funds transfer; this worries Interpol as it fascinates the Gates Foundation and cheers IBM. Everyone in

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• Where Did The Midrange Go?

  March 12, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There’s not much of a midrange server business left, if the latest numbers from IDC are any indication. If you were thinking that the server business was shaped like a multi-layer cake, with each layer representing the revenues from small, midrange, and high-end machines, that is not the case any more. The midrange–or what we used to think of as the midrange–is being pulled apart by Moore’s Law. By IDC’s definition, a midrange box is one that costs somewhere between $25,000 and $250,000, including a server with base memory and disk capacity and an operating system. In the fourth quarter,

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