• Focal Point Buys UCG Technologies, On The Hunt For More IBM i Deals

  January 31, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a wave of acquisitions underway in the managed service provider (MSP) and technical support services businesses of the IBM i market, with companies trying to amass the skillsets to provide a more complete stack of services to IBM midrange shops. The acquisitions are also being fueled by a business model of cross-selling across merged company portfolios and getting the size necessary to expand into new geographies and to find new customers as IBM i shops confront the growing complexity of their infrastructure and looming shortages in skilled IBM i personnel.

  That, in a nutshell, is why Focal Point …

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• Talking Power Systems Deals With The Boss

  October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What a relief when you speak the same language with someone in the business. In any business. But particularly with someone in the AS/400 and IBM i business, who has been at it about the same time as you, has seen the same stuff as you, has the same frames of reference as you, and who knows what the hell you are talking about even if they don’t agree with you all the time.

  That’s how it is with the boss at UCG Technologies, that being president and founder Jim Kandrac, who is proud of his city of Cleveland and …

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• Hit A Fiduciary Home Run With A Backup, DR, Cybersecurity Triple Play

  October 4, 2021 Jim Kandrac

  The old adage that the only secure computer is one that is not networked to anything has never been more true; however, it is also irrelevant even if it is funny. No computer can exist in a vacuum and is only useful if it is connected to other machines – and potentially lots of other machines. The level of malicious activity out there on the networks of the world has never been higher, and you had better get used to the idea that the situation is going to get worse every year, and the IBM i platform is absolutely …

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• Don’t Forget About The Co-Lo Alternative To Cloud

  June 21, 2021 Jim Kandrac

  Cloud is a consumption model, not a panacea. And for a lot of customers, moving some of their applications – or even all of them – to the cloud is something to consider. It might even possibly be the right move, right now. But for many customers who are committed to their applications and therefore to their IBM i platform, the best and lowest cost way to get infrastructure to support those applications is still to put machinery on premises or to have it installed in a co-location facility.

  The numbers bear this out, and as we pointed out before …

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• Ransomware Epidemic Hits Epic Proportions, And IBM i Shops Take Notice

  May 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The ransomware outbreak hit home for millions of Americans last week when attackers shut down a major East Coast pipeline as well as a hospital network on the West Coast. For IBM i shops, the events are a potent reminder to re-evaluate network security and data protection systems to ensure they’re resilient from attack.

  You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching an episode of Mr. Robot last week as news spread of the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline network, which provides 45 percent of the gasoline for the entire East Coast of the United States through 5,500 miles of …

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• Do The Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting For Cost Savings

  April 5, 2021 Matt Paterini

  COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

  “Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in …

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• 2021 Predictions for IBM i, Part 1

  January 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  With an eventful 2020 thankfully in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start thinking about what 2021 might have in store for us. The IBM i community, like most of the world, could use a little bit of hope at the moment. We asked IBM i community leaders to deliver predictions, and they responded.

  Liam Allan, who is a consultant at Seiden Group and the creator of ILE Editor, has a couple of predictions for IT Jungle.

  “My focus is mainly software. I do still predict Node.js gaining traction on IBM i,” Allan writes. “The tooling is really …

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• Disaster Recovery, At Your Service

  November 16, 2020 Matt Paterini

  Every organization needs a sound disaster recovery plan to protect their business from natural disasters, weather events, cyber-attacks, and other unexpected threats. Disaster recovery strategies can take on different forms depending on the requirements of the business, specifically the defined Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

  These RTO and RPO metrics are not precisely the same, but they are interrelated and are part of a complete disaster recovery plan.

  The RTO metric is not just a stopwatch that starts ticking between the time applications go down, for whatever reason, and when they come back again online again. …

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• Taking The Pulse Of The IBM i Market

  October 7, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you want to know what is going on in an economy – what is really happening – you have to not talk to just the people in the state capitals or Washington D.C., but you have to talk to real business people who are out there every day, running businesses and trying to meet a payroll and provide that good or service that keeps the money rolling.

  This is why we like talking to business partners in the IBM i marketplace, because the use of the system cuts across industries and geographies and it gives a real sense how …

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• If You Can’t Get To The Tape, It Doesn’t Matter If It Is Dead Or Not

  August 3, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The coronavirus pandemic has made most IT shops seriously re-evaluate a number of the technologies they have to maintain, operate, backup, and protect their mission-critical applications and their data. And the companies that have IBM i systems as their main platforms are no more insulated from these issues than those who picked other platforms – although it is safe to say that they have very good tools to help with all of the above, and in many cases, these tools are arguably better than – or identical to – what is available for Windows Server, Linux, or other platforms.

  Over …

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