• Symtrax Refreshes Output Management with Compleo 5

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Symtrax last week unveiled Compleo Suite 5, a major new version of its line of output management software for IBM i and other platforms. With version 5, Symtrax has added a Web-based interface for the first time, providing an alternative to its Windows-based client. Better backups of critical documents, workflow capabilities, and new support for inputting additional document types round out this release. Compleo is a suite of output management tools that is well-established in the IBM i community. The software offers a range of document-related capabilities, the biggest being the conversion and distribution of spool files from IBM i

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• Raz-Lee Gives Away IBM i Antivirus Software

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  You can’t beat free. Earlier this month, Raz-Lee Security announced that it’s giving away copies of its IBM i antivirus software, which is based on the open source ClamAV engine. The free version doesn’t include some of the more advanced features that are available in the enterprise version of the software, but it will help IBM i shops detect and eliminate Windows malware that can infect and be distributed via the Integrated File System (IFS). The IBM i OS is rightfully hailed as one of the most secure, commercially available operating systems ever created. Properly configured, the OS will thwart

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• TECA Data Safe Gives IBM i Customers a DR Lifeline

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Being prepared for a disaster makes good business sense, especially with the recent spate of major disasters occurring recently in the United States. For IBM i shops, disaster preparedness requires a little extra planning and capability. One company that’s growing its specialized IBM i disaster recovery (DR) service business is TECA Data Safe, which provides everything a company needs to recover its IBM i environment, including servers, bandwidth, and–most importantly–experienced staff. TECA Data Safe first began providing DR in the mid-2000s as a value-added service for customers who purchased System i servers from its sister companies, VIS of Minnesota

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• Pitcher’s Lotus-on-IBM-i Campaign Pays Dividends

  January 24, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Steve Pitcher has a major beef with IBM. No, it’s not about the confusing naming schemes that Big Blue has cooked up for his beloved IBM i platform (that’s just a minor beef). The big one has to do with the fact that some key IBM Lotus Notes and Domino software doesn’t run on the IBM i platform. But instead of quietly stewing about it, Pitcher has set out to change things, and judging from his experience at last week’s Lotusphere conference, he’s having success. In his day job, Pitcher is the enterprise systems manager for Scotsburn Dairy Group

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• IBM Gives The 7042-CR6 HMC Another Execution Stay

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM just can’t seem to kill the 7042-CR6 hardware management console, or HMC. It has now had its second stay of execution. The HMC is on its way out over the long haul, of course, as The Four Hundred explained back in April 2011, which IBM announced the Systems Director Management Console, or SDMC. While the HMC was tied to Power Systems iron, managing its PowerVM hypervisor, the SMDC, which runs a new suite of tools for managing Power Systems, System x, and BladeCenter iron and their respective hypervisors. The SDMC tool itself runs on Power Systems machines with

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• Big Blue Expands Power Systems Recycling Deal

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  An enterprise server is almost as hard to get rid of as it is to get the bean counters to pay for it in the first place. That is why server makers sometimes sweeten their new server acquisition deals by agreeing to take back old boxes when customers buy new boxes. Way back in September 2007 when the new machines were the Power6-based System i machines, IBM launched an AS/400 and eServer iSeries no-charge removal program, which has been updated numerous times over the years. In announcement letter 311-182, IBM has tweaked the no-charge removal the deal one more

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• IBM Squeezes Magnetic Memory Bit Down To A Dozen Atoms

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM has revealed one possible contender for data storage that we might see far into the future. In a paper presented by techies from the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, Big Blue is showing off that it can encode a bit of data in a dozen iron atoms using antiferromagnetic properties of the atoms. In the most capacious hard drives used in PCs and servers today, it takes about 1 million atoms to encode a bit of data using disk heads that employ giant magnetoresistance to encode and read data on the platter of a disk drive. IBM

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• IT Salaries, Staff Counts Reflect Weak Economy

  January 23, 2012 Dan Burger

  The eagle flies on Friday is an old-time euphemism for Friday is payday. For a lot of folks these days, the eagle doesn’t fly as high as it once did. And others aren’t so sure that eagle isn’t really a vulture circling overhead. Whether you are an IT pro with a paycheck or a resume in your hand, IT salary reports like the one just released by Computer Economics makes for interesting reading. The same is true if you’re expanding an IT staff or looking for a baseline to compare your IT salary budget with the numbers Computer Economics is

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• Reader Feedback On Control Your Code, Control Your Costs And Destiny

  January 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hi Timothy, Thanks for the article on home-grown RPG software. The company I work for is still running the software we wrote on the System/38 and we continue to enhance it daily. I believe it has given us an edge over many packaged software customers. We don’t have to ask for changes, we make them. Yes, we too have looked into replacing our systems several times, but haven’t found packages doing things the way we have done for 27 plus years! I just need to find some young talent that wants to learn RPG and doesn’t mind the green screen.

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• Dawn of the Dead: Portals’ Revenge

  January 23, 2012 Dan Burger

  Portals are not dead. They’ve just been sleeping. Almost all highly hyped technology eventually moves into reality, where the effects of market consolidation and sometimes technology commoditization can dull a formerly bright star. But this could be a better time and place for portals thanks to social media and cloud computing. The big guys–IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and a few others are poised. While some smaller vendors are featuring lighter weight and lower cost products. We’re still in the midst of a major hype storm that’s dumping huge amounts of propaganda concerning social media and

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