• Meet IBM’s New Security Architect for IBM i

  June 17, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Security isn’t just a feature of the IBM i operating system. It’s a fundamental concept that all IBM engineers share as they go about their business building and maintaining the system that’s used by over 120,000 organizations around the world. But when it comes to bringing it all together, there’s one person in charge of ensuring the operating system is as protected as it can be: the security architect.

  The security architect job has been held by several folks in the IBM Rochester lab over the years, including Patrick Botz, Carol Woodbury, and Jeff Uehling. Botz and Woodbury now work …

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• SEA Adapts Messaging App For MSPs

  January 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to managing workloads and applications, managed service providers (MSP) have a unique set of requirements. Due to these requirements, MSPs that run IBM i workloads often end up building their own systems management and monitoring software. With a new release of its message management software, Software Engineering of America (SEA) now has an out-of-the-box solution for MSPs.

  Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady uptick of interest in private cloud environments hosted by MSPs. In the IBM i space, there are now dozens of MSPs operating in the market, including many former IBM business partners …

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• Open Source Is the Future, So Where Does IBM i Fit In?

  December 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server reached a milestone this year when it turned 30 years old, an amazing feat for a remarkable system that continues to provide computational value to tens of thousands of organizations around the world. But another birthday was celebrated this year that the IBM i community should take note of: The 20th anniversary of the beginning of the open source movement.

  Now, this birthday is a little bit questionable because open source software existed before 1998, of course. But the time is worth marking because an important meeting took place in Palo Alto, California, where the phrase …

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• Skytap Says It’s Building a ‘True Cloud’ Offering for IBM i

  December 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have a multitude of managed service providers (MSPs) to choose from for private cloud capabilities, but those looking for a public, AWS-like cloud experience are out of luck. Now an outfit called Skytap is looking to change that by providing a “true cloud” experience that lets IBM i customers scale up and down capacity from a Web GUI.

  Skytap was founded in Seattle, Washington, about 12 years ago to facilitate the development, testing, training, and modernization of enterprise applications destined to run in the public cloud. The venture-backed outfit used its expertise in virtualization to help customers …

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• MB Software Gets A Handle On Remote SQL Jobs

  November 28, 2018 Alex Woodie

  System administrators who get frustrated with the inability to see which SQL jobs coming in through ODBC are causing problems on their IBM i server may be interested in a product called Work with Active SQL (WRKACTSQL) from MB Software and Consulting, which recently announced the tool will be free through the end of the year.

  SQL is just about as close to a universal language for business as you can get. While there are other (i.e. “native”) methods of fetching data from Db2 for i, nearly three-quarters of IBM i developers report using SQL, making it the number two …

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• Scaling Up For Cyber Monday With IBM i

  November 26, 2018 Alex Woodie

  A fulfillment company that’s expected to process millions of transactions on an IBM i server today will lean heavily on a slim layer of RPG-based Web services technology to keep the commerce flowing for its large clients. But there’s nothing stopping the middleware, dubbed iWebSrv, from simplifying data integration for clients in other industries.

  Retailers work all year to ensure they’re ready for the massive surge of traffic that springs up after Thanksgiving. For bricks-and-mortar types, Black Friday is their make-or-break day, while those with an omni-channel bent have Cyber Monday prominently circled on their calendars.

  Consumers are expected to …

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• No Room For Cloudy Thinking When Moving To The Cloud

  October 15, 2018 Doug Mewmaw

  With new IT innovation, comes new IT thinking. That’s the way it’s always been.

  Right now, that new shiny IT toy that everyone must have is the cloud. In fact, the global market for managed services will grow from $107 billion in 2014 to $193 billion by 2019. As a result, Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are trying to convince CIOs to not only outsource their data center administration, but to trust them that they can manage their entire IT enterprise cheaper and more efficiently.

  Unfortunately, they both may just have their head in the clouds. You see, I’ve been here …

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• New Option for 24/7 IBM i Monitoring

  September 19, 2018 Alex Woodie

  It’s important to keep one’s eyes on IBM i server metrics in order to nip problems in the bud. But hiring a night-shift operator can be expensive, and moving your applications to a private cloud might not be feasible. A third option was presented last week by Data Storage Corporation in the form of IBM Power Monitor 24, a new service that promises to provide continuous 24/7 monitoring of client’s IBM i servers.

  Like all cloud service providers, Data Storage Corporation invests in systems monitoring and management. After all, if you’re running critical IBM i servers on behalf of clients, …

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• Budget Relief For IBM i Monitoring Software

  March 14, 2018 Dan Burger

  Keeping it simple isn’t always so simple. But creating efficiency at a low cost without adding layers of complexity and extra features (often unused) is a product attribute that gets a lot of attention. A good example of this is Kisco Information Systems’ event monitoring software: iEventMonitor.

  Kisco just released Release 3 of iEventMonitor, a tool that monitors prominent IBM i job and message queues plus storage and CPU. It sends out alerts when things go astray. Because of its simplicity the price of iEventMonitor R3 is just $495 for a single LPAR or $795 for an unlimited number of …

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• BRMS Cloud Backups Get Recovery Teeth

  February 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use Backup, Recovery and Media Services for i (BRMS) have been able to save their backups to the cloud for over a year. However, they faced restrictions when it came to restoring those backups to a system that wasn’t the originating server, which made the feature less useful in real-world disaster. Now IBM and its development partners are removing that restriction with the latest batch of IBM i tech refreshes.

  We touched on the new BRMS capability last week in our round-up story about IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 4 (TR4) and IBM i 7.2 TR8. …

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