• New OpenLegacy Product Creates ‘Tech-Agnostic’ Services

  November 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  OpenLegacy recently announced OpenLegacy Hub, or OL Hub, a new offering designed to help customers create technology agnostic digital services from existing legacy applications and infrastructure. The offering supports IBM i and z/OS assets, among other platforms that are commonly grouped under the “legacy” banner.

  Since it appeared on the midrange scene back in 2015, OpenLegacy has been looking to help IBM i and mainframe customers extend their existing systems in new and profitable ways. Led by tech veterans from IBM and Software AG, the Israeli company created a development environment that could analyze legacy programs, such as 5250 …

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• Rocket Maps IBM i Apps for Modernization Ventures

  September 29, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Many IBM i shops want to start modernizing their applications, but they don’t know where to start. One possible beginning is a new software offering called Rocket Process Insights that that documents how IBM i applications work, and provides a heatmap and statistics that show which screens are the most commonly used.

  The new offering, which Rocket Software unveiled last week, has been a long time in coming, according to Chris Wey, the president of the company’s Power Systems Business Unit. “It’s a brand-new solution from the company and we’re really excited about it,” he told IT Jungle. “It’s …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Making Quick Wins Part Of Your Modernization Strategy

  August 9, 2021 Chris Koppe

  IT leaders are being asked to do way more than keep the lights on these days. For many, the recent pandemic has exposed the need for organizations to provide effective digital experiences and enable remote work. At the same time, many industries experienced revenue loss and as a result, have fewer resources.

  Understanding where to focus efforts can be key in helping you drive the best value and stay aligned with company goals. Success often lies in striking a delicate balance between addressing modernization needs and working within reduced budgets.

  The path to modernizing IBM i applications is paved with …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Clearing Up Some Cloud And IBM i Computing Myths

  June 14, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We hear a lot of talk about cloud these days, but who is walking the walk? The coronavirus pandemic made a lot of companies take a hard look at how they were doing business, and hardware wasn’t excluded from this conversation. Businesses are now saying, with so many cloud options available, where and how can they start getting their feet wet?

  We certainly all know that the IBM i community is dramatically different from most other platforms in the IT space, and has been since Day One. For household names such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, …

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• Guru: QCMDEXC Makes A Good CPP

  March 22, 2021 Ted Holt

  I’m a fairly decent typist, and chances are you are, too. A person doesn’t sit at a keyboard for decades and not improve. At the same time, I don’t get paid to type, and I do everything I can to reduce the number of keystrokes I have to produce while carrying out the duties of the job.

  If you find yourself keying the same old long commands over and over — and who doesn’t? — I’ve got a tip for you. I have an easy way to reduce long commands to just a few keystrokes. Maybe it will save you …

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• Strengthen IBM i Password Security With Multi-Factor Authentication

  March 15, 2021 Bill Hammond

  As stories of data breaches caused by exploited credentials continue to make headlines, basic password protection mechanisms are no longer good enough. Organizations require an additional layer of protection that is also easy to use and doesn’t impose an additional burden on administrators.

  IBM i systems contain the data that drives your business, including financial transaction information, healthcare records, and other personally identifiable information for customers, partners, and employees. Much of this data is subject to regulations such as SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR. Therefore, any data breach can result in regulatory fines, lost revenue, remediation costs, legal fees, …

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• Guru: Getting Yum And Bash Up And Running

  March 15, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In the March 1 edition of The Four Hundred, I noted that an emphasis on things like system/application modernization and open source solutions gives IBM i newcomers a degree of comfort with the platform. I also made the point that no matter how long you or I have been at this, there are always people, young or not so young, who are new to the platform and come to this site seeking introductory information about various tasks and capabilities.

  With this in mind, I want to delve further into open source for those who are new to it. As …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Running CA 2E Applications? It’s Time To Modernize The UI

  March 8, 2021 Nick Hampson and Scott Gingerysty

  While CA 2E, formerly known as Synon, isn’t discussed as frequently in the IBM i space as RPG or COBOL, customers tell us that it provides tremendous value and competitive differentiation for their organization. In many cases, these applications have been reliably running mission-critical business applications for decades.

  However, Synon also comes with risks, such as a shrinking pool of Synon resources. Classically trained Synon programmers are scarce and most programmers who are working with Synon today have picked it up from someone else. Sure, they can build a business application, but when they go outside the basics of the …

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• SoftLanding Adds Support for Source Stream Files

  February 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops developing in a mix of open source and native languages can now manage all of their development projects together in a new release of SoftLanding Systems’ TURNOVER software. The big change that enables that open source support is how SoftLanding adapted its change management software to support stream files on the IFS. The company also took the opportunity to add a new Web interface and rebrand its entire TURNOVER suite of products.

  First, let’s clear up the name changes. TURNOVER Lifecycle Manager is the new name of the change management software that used to go by TURNOVER …

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• COVID-19: A Great Time for Application Modernization

  February 1, 2021 Alex Woodie

  If your IT department has been waiting for the right time to start your digital transformation, then you’re in luck: With hundreds of millions of folks around the world stuck in their homes and largely limited to interacting via the Internet, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdown represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build new digital channels to reach them.

  COVID-19 is taking a brutal toll on our country in terms of lost lives and lost livelihoods. There’s no upside to that, no way to spin that into a positive. But for IBM i shops that, for whatever reason, have resisted …

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