• Thoroughly Modern: The Real Top 5 Challenges For IBM i Shops Today

  May 9, 2022 Christine McDowell

  The only way to really find out what is on people’s minds is to ask them, and maybe you need to ask them two or three times and take an average. As a supplier of development, modernization, and security tools and services, we ask a lot of questions and we do a lot of assessments for IBM i customers, and we look at any and all surveys that anyone does and synthesize this to help drive our business.

  We have been through a series of surveys of our own as well as ones that we have helped promote or sponsored …

  Read more

• Thoroughly Modern: Improving The Digital Experience With APIs

  April 11, 2022 Marcel Sarrasin

  The world is an ever-changing place, and that means there is always something new that needs to be done to either improve applications running on the IBM i platform or to integrate them with other applications or interfaces on new kinds of devices. This is an important aspect of modernization, and one that often bridges the back-end databases and applications and the front-end interfaces through which end users access those applications – both of which need to be modernized, and often independently.

  This is made possible by having application programming interfaces, or APIs, and if IBM i customers have tens …

  Read more

• How Fresche Fills Security Gap with Trinity Guard

  March 21, 2022 Alex Woodie

  We live in a world full of security threats. Black hat hackers – some working for themselves and some working for the governments of China and Russia – are constantly probing the Internet, looking for weak links in the information supply chain. With its acquisition of Trinity Guard, Fresche Solutions is determined to prevent your IBM i server from being one of them.

  It can be hard to fathom the impact that cybersecurity attacks have on the world, and the enormous pains that some organizations are taking to thwart them. In 2021, ransomware grabbed our attention thanks to large attacks …

  Read more

• Fresche Takes On IBM i Security With Trinity Guard Acquisition

  March 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are things that you worry about that you can’t do anything about, and there are things that you worry about that you actually can do something about – and have a fiduciary responsibility to do. Death and taxes are in the former category, and the security of mission-critical IT platforms are in the latter.

  Fresche Solutions, which expanded from its core application and database modernization business with the acquisition of Abacus Solutions last October, has been on the hunt to do more deals to help IBM i customers tackle the hard problems they face and give them new …

  Read more

• Thoroughly Modern: IBM i Security Is No Longer Set It And Forget It

  March 14, 2022 Amal Macdonald

  For most IBM i shops, who are busy creating and maintaining the applications that run the business and who are not just chronically understaffed but structurally understaffed, the smartest thing they can do when it comes to security is give up.

  You heard that right. They need to put their arms in the air and surrender, absolutely and completely.

  No, we don’t mean they need to open all of the ports on their server, turn off the firewall, and let the ransomware and malware in and let the hackers and phishers do whatever they will. What we do mean by …

  Read more

• Thoroughly Modern: Taking Charge of Your Hardware Refresh in 2022

  February 14, 2022 Peder Lundblad

  IBM i shops are well known for paying a premium for their systems because they are worth it, but they are also just as well known for hanging onto aging hardware a bit past its prime, which has its own kinds of economic costs in higher maintenance and operational costs as well as the risk of a failure in some key component of the hardware or of having an older operating system release that does not have a key security vulnerability or bug patched.

  IBM does a very good job of keeping hardware technology cycles regular, and so there is …

  Read more

• IBM i Community Predictions For 2022, Part 3

  January 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Due to an unprecedented response from the community, we are running a third installment of 2022 predictions. The third (and final) round of predictions kicks off with an optimistic prophecy from Charles Guarino, the president of Central Park Data Systems, who has a very bright outlook for the year ahead in IBM i land.

  “As business confidence and optimism rallies, IT budgets will become less restrained,” Guarino tells IT Jungle. “Even those with the least maintained and enhanced legacy systems will experience modernization pressure. This will come from all sources, internal, external and industry compliance, all demanding swift …

  Read more

• Thoroughly Modern: Building Organizational Resilience in the Digital Age

  January 17, 2022 Maxime Leclair

  There is so much change happening in the world and technology is playing a critical role. Organizations must use modern digital solutions if they want to survive and thrive amid uncertainty and accelerate growth in an aggressively competitive business landscape.

  Climate change, COVID-19, global and financial crises, among other things, have exposed vulnerabilities in businesses and accelerated the need for new digital capabilities, modern systems, and processes as well as optimized and transformed legacy systems. According to research, 63 percent of organizations flag digital transformation, including building up technological infrastructure and data analytics as top strategic priorities for the …

  Read more

• IBM i Community Predictions for 2022, Part 2

  January 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The new year is upon us, which means it’s time for predictions. We continue where we left off on Monday with our second installment of predictions from the IBM i community.

  The way Fresche Solutions Chief Product Officer Marcel Sarrasin sees it, 2022 will be a period of heightened competition in the business jungle.

  “Technology advancements and changing markets will drive new competitive threats in 2022, creating the urgent need for new digital solutions to help companies thrive, survive and grow,” Sarrasin says. “Focus will be on new IT products and applications that will deliver improved business processes, pave the …

  Read more

• Want to Modernize? Great! Now Get to Work

  December 8, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Application modernization has been one of the more popular topics through the course of 2021. After the initial scare of COVID-19 wore off and the pandemic wore on, many companies came to the conclusion that older applications were hobbling their ability to compete in an increasingly digital world. While it’s clear the desire for modernization in the cloud is building, what’s unclear is the extent to which that will translate into action at IBM i shops.

  The COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdowns rewarded two groups: companies that had largely digital business plans, and those who could run their applications in …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles