• VAI Experiments With Watson

  November 15, 2017 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard not to hear about Watson these days, especially since IBM changed the name of its Power Systems division to Cognitive Systems. But what can the cognitive service bring to pragmatic IBM i shops who are wary of change? The ERP software company VAI is at the forefront of experimentation.

  According to VAI CIO Kevin Beasley, VAI started working with Watson in 2016. A lot of the early work that year involved manually uploading a bunch of ERP data into Watson, mixing it with data supplied by IBM, and then seeing what Watson came up with.

  One of …

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• HVR Data Integration Has A Place For IBM i

  November 8, 2017 Dan Burger

  Data integration is powering changes in enterprise computing. And although it doesn’t get talked about a lot, relational databases are major factors in the enterprise business analytics. Transactional processing systems that are the workhorses of enterprise applications such as ERP are rock solid and critical to data analytics regardless of the hoopla and hyperbole that “modern” databases create.

  Fitting a relational database into a heterogeneous environment that is pumped full of continuous data integration from a variety of sources can be a problem, but lessons are being learned as data integration becomes more platform inclusive at more companies.

  HVR Software …

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• Database Modernization: Methodology To Solve Problems

  November 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  Innovation is a combination of tools and processes. Big mistakes get made when there is too much emphasis on the tools and too little on the processes. Innovation in a can, a bottle or a box isn’t reality-based strategy, although it’s often thought of that way, particularly at the executive level where the goal of competitive advantage is sometimes tied to specific products and technologies.

  Tools and processes support innovation. They aren’t the innovation. Not at the individual business level where competitive advantage is differentiated and honed with years of experience. Too often experience is discounted or even disregarded when …

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• TRs for IBM i 7.3 and 7.2: Enhancements, No Big Surprises

  October 4, 2017 Dan Burger

  With each Technology Refresh, we are reminded that the pace of enhancements IBM brings to its IBM i operating system and related software products is significant and that certain areas are more significant than others. So, the IBM i community is either aligned with these upgrades and eager to put them to use or it’s not yet ready, willing or able to be technologically current. As usual, there are IBM i shops watching as the enhancements unfold and making decisions on whether the enhancements can deliver benefits to their business in terms of productivity and solving business challenges.

  Steve Will, …

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• Evaluating Your IBM i Encryption Options

  September 25, 2017 Alex Woodie

  In the wake of the Equifax breach, companies are taking a hard look at their security practices, including the use of encryption that renders data unreadable. While database encryption is not a panacea for securing a Db2 for i database – especially if there are other vulnerabilities in an IBM i system – it can play an important role in protecting sensitive data from leaking out into the world.

  Encryption has emerged as a topic in the wake of the massive data breach at Equifax, which lost critical data like names, addresses, and Social Security numbers for 143 million Americans, …

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• How SAP Complexity Impacts Performance on IBM i

  September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server and SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a powerful combination that propels thousands of businesses around the world. The duo’s success is apparent to those who pay attention, even if it’s not widely acknowledged. But ensuring smooth SAP operations on IBM i is not always as straightforward as it could be, especially for those uninitiated with the complexity of this setup.

  The fact that SAP has its own way of doing things is nothing new. Ever since a group of five former IBMers from Germany led by Hasso Plattner formed up to create the …

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• DB2 For i Support Now Offered by Rimini Street

  June 26, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops now have another option for obtaining technical support and maintenance services in support their DB2 for i environment: Rimini Street. And in some cases, owing to the uniquely integrated nature of this platform, the vendor will even provide support for the IBM i operating system as well.

  Earlier this month, the Las Vegas, Nevada, company announced that it’s now offering third-party support services for all three versions of IBM‘s DB2 database – DB2 for i, DB2 for z/OS, and DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (a.k.a. “Cousin LUWy”), in addition to the SQL Server database from …

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• A New Data Connection From IBM i To Watson Analytics

  June 14, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Big data analytics is everywhere these days. It simply can’t be helped. And now that IBM is supporting the capability to load DB2 for i data directly into the Watson analytics service, it could be worth your IBM i time to check out what IBM has cooking in Cognitive.

  IT Jungle recently checked in with Steve Sibley, IBM’s vice president and business line executive in charge of systems, to talk about the latest developments with Watson, including the new DB2 for IBM i Connect tile on BlueMix.

  The new tile “is designed to make it easier for our clients to …

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• CNX Kickstarts Development with Valence 5.1

  May 24, 2017 Alex Woodie

  A new release of the Valence Framework from CNX will enable IBM i shops to get more Web programming and modernization work done with even less effort than before.

  The Chicago-based company has been speaking the “less is more” mantra since the 2014 launch of Valence 4.0, one of the first releases that included Nitro add-on tools that handle tasks on behalf of the user. After all, why should the user get bogged down in the intricacies of coding JavaScript when software can do it instead?

  Nitro’s auto-coding capabilities are once again front-and-center in Valence 5.1, which CNX launched …

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• Secrets Of IBM i Magic Act Revealed

  April 17, 2017 Dan Burger

  Can IBM i shops find a way to replace their RPG-oriented staffs with magicians? The answer, in many cases, is that they already have. The RPG staff members are the magicians. They’ve abra-ka-dabra-ed their way to doing more with less for something like 30 years. The clever companies employing these magicians have parlayed this IT staff magic into new technology investments that perpetuate the more for less phenomenon.

  One of those technologies is the modern managed services provider, which causes system management to disappear and gives the IT magicians something new to work on . . . like database modernization, …

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