• Arrow And Avnet Ride System Upgrade Waves In Recent Quarter

  February 20, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Despite some issues in the European economy and stalled shipments of disk drives due to the flooding in Thailand, the two biggest master resellers of IT gear–Arrow Electronics and Avnet–turned in improving profits in their most recent quarters. But the revenues were a bit choppy. In the quarter ended December 31, Arrow’s Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) had just under $2 billion in revenues in the quarter, up 5.4 percent, and operating income hit $106.4 million, up a very tidy 19.5 percent. Arrow’s electronic components distribution business only grew 3 percent, to $3.4 billion, and the operating income for

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• Old School COBOL Gets New School Twist From Manta

  February 20, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  Most everyone in the computing industry can appreciate new technology, but let’s face it, there are some standards that never go out of style. COBOL, RPG, CL, DB2 are ubiquitous when it comes to the IBM i platform, which explains why the newest addition to Manta Technologies‘ online training curriculum, isn’t new to the midrange. “When we ask people for feedback, one of the things that customers have said consistently over the years is: ‘You’re perfect except I don’t use RPG, I use COBOL,'” said Bill Hansen, president of Manta. “So the COBOL training has been on our list

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• 20i2, A Year Of IBM i Un-i-ty

  February 20, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Trevor Perry is one of the staunchest advocates of the IBM i platform out there, and if Big Blue had any, er, budget, they would hand him whatever piles of cash they have allocated to platform evangelization and just let him do what he does. It’s a new year–welcome to 20i2–and one in which Perry 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 to that end, Perry has launched www.ibmi2.com, a site that

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• YouTube Follies: Windows On Power Systems-IBM i

  February 20, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I don’t get out much, and I certainly don’t claim to know everything that everyone is doing out there on the Wild Wild West and Intertubes. And unlike my children, and probably your children or grandchildren, I don’t have a lot of free time to browse YouTube for interesting videos. But I ran across a couple of IBM i-related videos showing Windows and Excel running on an IBM i box and thought you would also be amused. The videos–which show Microsoft‘s Windows XP and then the Excel spreadsheet program running on an i5/OS V5R4 (sometimes called IBM i 5.4)

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• As I See It: Overrated

  February 20, 2012 Victor Rozek

  There are places in Hawaii where paradise still looks like paradise should. Even on the Western side of the Big Island where massive lava flows blanket miles of once-verdant land, there are small surviving oases where blue water laps against white sand beaches dotted with arching palms. These are the spots coveted by luxury hotel developers. One such beach is ringed by manicured lawns and flowering plants masking a discrete open-air restaurant with a full bar to help the wealthy keep their levels up. Behind lush greenery, bungalows rent for $4,000 a night, which is one reason I don’t belong

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• looksoftware Completes RPG OA Roadmap

  February 20, 2012 Dan Burger

  The RPG Open Access product roadmap at looksoftware continues to unfold. When last we heard from this application tool vendor, it had two products enhanced using RPG OA technology–one generally available and the other in beta testing. That was May 2011. Two other products were in the pipeline. Last week, I learned the final pieces in the IBM i tool maker’s RPG OA efforts are buttoned up and testing has been completed. If you’re like a lot of people in IBM midrange shops who are thinking about the future of their application development programs, the latest news from looksoftware should

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• Big Blue Pulls The Plug On IBM i Discount Deal

  February 20, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM, like most retailers of capital goods, has to use a combination of carrots and sticks to encourage customers to spend money on new systems or upgrades, particularly when the economy is as dicey as the current ones in parts of North America and Europe still seem to be. Sometimes there’s a real stick–like the threat that an operating system will no longer be available–and sometimes there’s the withdrawal of the carrot, which feels like a stick when it hits you. In the wake of IBM’s announcement last week of the sunsetting of the i5/OS V5R4 operating system release

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• IBM i Tech Refresh Coming This Spring

  February 20, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If this were a normal and historical operating system update for OS/400 or i5/OS, this lead story in The Four Hundred would be talking about how AS/400 and iSeries shops would have to brace themselves for a new operating system version that is coming out. But as it turns out, IBM‘s new Technology Refresh approach to sliding in new features and hardware support for IBM i is a lot less dramatic. That doesn’t mean Technology Refreshes, of which we have had three in the past year and a half or so, are unimportant. You can be important without being

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• FormSprint Now Does QR Codes

  February 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  The capability to generate Quick Response (QR) codes on business correspondence is increasingly becoming a requirement for document management solutions. To that end, Integrated Custom Software (ICS) now supports QR codes in its document management software for IBM i, called FormSprint. FormSprint is a suite of software that enables IBM i shops to transition away from printing spool files using expensive pre-printed forms, and to dynamically generated documents that can be printed on any standard laser printer or distributed electronically. The modules that compose the suite include a PC-based form design tool, PDF/TIFF converter, email, fax, and signature capture. Barcodes

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• CCSS Locks Down Message Management Tool

  February 14, 2012 Alex Woodie

  CCSS has added a new layer of access controls to its real-time message monitoring solution for IBM i, called QMessage Monitor (QMM). Using the new features, organizations can be assured that only authorized personnel are accessing or changing QMM functions, such as security alerts and escalation procedures. QMM is a powerful tool that automates many aspects of IBM i monitoring. Instead of manually watching the various message queues, such as QAUDJRN, an organization can set up the software to keep an eye out for critical events, such as looping jobs, high DASD utilization, or unauthorized access of DB2/400. When a

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