Alex Woodie
Alex Woodie is Senior Editor at IT Jungle. He was previously editor of two of IT Jungle's main newsletters, Four Hundred Stuff and The Windows Observer. Prior to joining Midrange Server (as Guild Companies was formerly called) in October 2001, Alex was a products editor at now defunct publisher Midrange Computing, where he was first introduced to the AS/400 and covered hardware, software, and services for Midrange Technology SHOWCASE magazine. Before joining Midrange Computing, Alex was a staff writer for The Insurance Journal and a reporter and columnist with The Paradise Post newspaper. Woodie obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism from Humboldt State University in 1997. Upon graduation, Alex intended to make his way onto a major daily newspaper, but in 1999 he found himself drawn to the high-technology industry, where his background in science and engineering has suited him well. He lives in Northern San Diego County. When he is not writing next week's newsletters, Alex can be found in his favorite chair reading the day's paper, in the kitchen, or at the beach.
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Surprise! It’s 2024 Fall TR Time for IBM i
October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM announced the Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i version 7.5 and 7.4 yesterday, bringing a host of new capabilities to the proprietary operating system. As expected, the surprise update covers a range of IBM i facilities, including Db2, Navigator, ACS, PowerHA, and the development tools.
Navigator gets several more enhancements with the new TRs, including: a new dashboard with software licensing information; Web-based administration of network facilities; support for monitoring of Java 11 and Java 17 jobs; enhancements to the Performance Data Investigator (PDI); and new options for working with audit journals, among other capabilities.
IBM also includes the …
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Eradani Taps GenAI for IBM i Integration Boost
October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
Eradani introduced a new product last month that uses the power of generative AI to simplify the development of code for integration projects involving IBM i. The company says the new product, dubbed Eradani Assist, will allow customers to use natural language to tell the product to build specific application and data integrations, and the product will leverage one or more large language models (LLMs) to generate the integration code.
Eradani calls its flagship product, Eradani Connect, an “integration hub” that manages communication into and out of the IBM i platform. The software supports application and data integration projects that …
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IBM Preps Delivery of 10th-Gen DS8000 Array
October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM is gearing up to begin delivery of the tenth generation of the DS8000, its high-end storage arrays for IBM i, AIX, z/OS, and other servers. Due to ship October 25, the upgraded DS8000 features a number of features designed to enhance data storage in z/OS mainframe environments, but IBM i shops will also see some benefits, too.
Now in its 20th year, the DS8000 still roams the highest echelons of storage area networks (SAN) for large enterprises. Built with high availability and performance in mind, the DS8000 is designed to power the most important applications for the biggest companies …
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The Many Faces Of IT Modernization
October 7, 2024 Alex Woodie
The clarion call of modernization has been heard loud and clear among IBM i and System z shops for decades. Old IT is hampering your competitiveness, they’re told, and something must be done about it. In reality, there’s no single path to modernization, which is a multi-faceted phenomenon that can have wide ranging impacts on the business, Rocket Software says in a new report.
Business transformation is separate from IT transformation, but the two are linked, according to Rocket Software’s new study, titled IT Modernization Without Disruption, which is based on a survey of 309 decision-maker at System …
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Inside Avatier’s Goals to Modernize Identity Management
September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie
When Nelson Cicchitto founded Avatier back in 1997, the company focused on providing identity management and access for a single platform: Windows NT. Nearly three decades later, the company’s core goals around enabling identity management and access haven’t changed, but the its platform reach and technical capabilities certainly have grown, as Cicchitto said in an exclusive IT Jungle interview.
You may not have heard much about Avatier, the small Pleasanton, California-based developer of identity and access management solutions that’s been quietly building a base of 500 customers around the world. As far as IBM i vendors goes, the company …
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Shield Revs HA Software for IBM i
September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie
Companies protecting their IBM i servers with Shield Advanced Solutions’ HA4i will enjoy several new capabilities when they upgrade to the latest release, including faster save while active processing, improved object compression, and new Nagios monitoring functions, among other enhancements.
Shield Advanced Solutions has been developing and selling an IBM i high availability solution since 2007, when it rolled out Receiver Apply Program/400 (RAP/400), which it dubbed “DR for the masses.” In 2010, the Toronto-area company overhauled that product and debuted its replacement, HA4i at version 6.1. Over the ensuing years, Shield steadily added new features to the …
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GenAI Is Now Creating Malware Delivery Vehicles
September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie
As if the threat posed by human bad actors wasn’t enough to admins up at night, security professionals are now tasked with preparing defenses for AI actors, including malware created by generative AI. That’s the takeaway from a new report published this month by HP that documents GenAI-generated malware. IBM i security professionals should take note.
The September 2024 edition of the HP Wolf Security Threat Insights Report brought some concerning news around GenAI. While the HP Wolf Security team had seen convincing phishing lures created by GenAI, it hadn’t seen any actual malicious code written by GenAI before.
But …
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Making Basic IT Services Great Again
September 23, 2024 Alex Woodie
The focus of the tech world has been squarely on generative AI since ChatGPT descended the golden staircase and entered our hearts and minds in late 2022. Since then, building GenAI apps and services has become the number one priority for businesses around the globe. Unfortunately, the GenAI fixation has come at the detriment of basic IT services, a recent IBM study suggests.
The level of hype for generative AI the past two years has been off the chart. Not since the initial dot-com boom of the late 1990s has a new technology triggered such a tsunami of interest, some …
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GenAI Interest ‘Exploding’ for Modernization on IBM i and Z, Kyndryl Says
September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie
There’s been an explosion of interest in using generative AI on IBM i and System Z servers, according to Kyndryl’s latest report on mainframe modernization. Hybrid IT, security, the skills gap, and observability round out the top five trends impacting the IBM midrange and mainframe platforms.
Last year, Kyndryl contracted with Coleman Parkes Research to survey about 500 senior IT leaders at IBM i and System Z mainframe shops around the world. That effort turned into the 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which we covered here.
Many of the same modernization trends that the former IBM Global …
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Remain Bolsters Development Options with TD/OMS
September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie
Remain Software recently rolled out a major upgrade to its change management software for IBM i. The big enhancements with TD/OMS 16.1 include the availability of Remain’s Web-based development framework, dubbed Octo, as well as support for the popular Web-based IDE, VS Code.
Remain Software introduced Octo more than two years ago as a lightweight Web-based framework to unite its various IBM i offerings. Short for Open Core for Technology Orchestration, Octo was initially put forward as a way to integrate and display information from other Remain Software applications, such as TD/OMS, Gravity, API Studio, and MiWorkplace, its lightweight, Web-based …
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