• Value Stream Management: Bringing Lean Manufacturing Techniques To IBM i Development

  September 20, 2021 Andrew Ireland

  When resources are tight, it is important to optimize their usage and maximize the business value they deliver. This is the very foundation of what is called lean manufacturing or just-in-time manufacturing, which more than a few IBM i shops know a thing or two about because this platform has been used for decades by process and discrete manufacturers to automate their businesses.

  The move toward DevOps has allowed software engineers to adopt many of the best practices developed by manufacturing over the last 100 years. These include automating the flow of code, a repository of standard components and a …

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• Quest For The Hybrid Grail: Getting To A Frictionless Cloud

  August 16, 2021 Satya Sharma

  Grail quests have always been a motif in literature and entertainment, and they most always come about because of an existential threat to the heroes seeking the mystical relic. In many ways, grail quests are also equally common in the business world. Businesses have found that a highway to accelerate their quest is embracing hybrid cloud, which recent studies have shown to offer 2.5 times greater value than a public cloud only deployment. But not all hybrid cloud platforms are created equal.

  In an IDC post titled The Road to Hybrid Multicloud, the market researcher explains that “the Holy …

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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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• In The API World, Nobody Knows You Are An IBM i

  August 2, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the earliest memes of the early years of the commercial Internet was captured in a famous cartoon in The New Yorker magazine penned by Peter Steiner and showing a dog at a computer, which quipped: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

  Somewhere back in the archive – it was in September 1997, which is not online because we were a paper, subscription publication for the first seven years of The Four Hundred – we did a riff on this meme with a lead essay called, On The Net, No One Knows You Are An AS/400. …

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• In Search Of Next Gen IBM i Apps

  June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  What will become of our RPG and COBOL applications? If IBM i chief architect Steve Will has his way, the core elements of them will evolve into what he calls “next gen” applications that can run in the cloud, if necessary.

  “We are not just focusing anymore on trying to help clients get past green screens to mobile interfaces or Web interfaces,” Will said during his recent COMMON NAViGATE session, titled IBM i PLUS Cloud is the Answer. “There are still clients and applications that need to get there. We understand that. But you can’t just stop there now. …

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• Get A Move On To Learn More About Moving To Git Source Control On IBM i

  June 21, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Time is running out if you want to hear about how you can move to modern DevOps technologies and merge them with your IBM i platform, bridging the gap between new and legacy. (We don’t use the word old around these parts.)

  On June 24, ARCAD Software will be highlighting the how BWI Companies, which is based in Nash, Texas, has adopted Git source control on the IBM i platform, bridging the transaction processing systems behind its lawn, garden, animal health, agriculture, landscape, and pest management products distribution business. BWI was founded in 1958 by Bob and Betty Bunch …

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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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• Moving To Git Source Control On IBM i

  June 14, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is one thing when vendors create tools that help users do things, but quite another when users talk about how they use those tools and how well they work.

  On June 24, ARCAD Software will be highlighting how BWI Companies, which is based in Nash, Texas, has adopted Git source control on the IBM i platform, bridging the transaction processing systems behind its lawn, garden, animal health, agriculture, landscape, and pest management products distribution business. BWI was founded in 1958 by Bob and Betty Bunch as a seed retailer based in Texarkana, Texas, and in 1972 started wholesale …

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• Modern Tools For A Modern IBM i

  May 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops may be in for a rude awakening when they suddenly realize their applications are not keeping up with the times. How can these IBM i shops get on the right track in the modernization department? A trio of IBMers offered some tips.

  Brad Bentley, Tim Rowe, and Kris Whitney took to the virtual airwaves last week to present “IBM Tools for Modernizing Your IBM i Applications,” a one-hour webinar from IBM. Application modernization is an extremely broad topic, as the 266-page IBM Redbook of the (almost) same name will attest to, so they obviously didn’t cover …

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• Weighing The Hidden Costs Of Open Source

  February 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  One of the perceived benefits of using open source software is cost. It’s often free to obtain, and users can get technical support au gratis through community supported websites. But what is often missing from that equation are hidden costs associated with running that software in production environments. An IDC report commissioned from IBM seeks to put a number to those costs.

  In production environments, where the risk of a business interruption due to IT issues is high, companies must make the conscious decision to dedicate some of its staff’s time to supporting a given piece of open source software, …

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