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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Another GenAI-Powered Testing Tool Comes to IBM i
November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM says it’s bringing a new AI accelerator to the Power line to drive compute-hungry generative AI workloads, such as the new RPG coding assistant that it’s also developing. But IBM won’t be the only source of such GenAI-powered coding assistants, as a company called Abstracta recently announced another one.
There’s a lot of interest in the Spyre accelerators that IBM announced earlier this year for the System z mainframe and which IBM announced last month during its TechExchange conference will be coming to Power. Considering the massive demand for Nvidia GPUs, which could plug into past generations of Power …
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Slicing and Dicing the Future of the Cloud ERP Market
November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie
The cloud looms large in the world of enterprise software. Nearly all ERP vendors offer their software in the cloud, and some, such as SAP, are even planning to end support for on-prem deployments. But how big is the market for cloud ERP, who are the leading providers, and what does it all mean for IBM i customers?
For starters, how big is the global ERP market? This is an important question, but there is no exact answer. The definition of what is enterprise resource planning software is a little bit amorphous, and amortization schedules can make assigning spending to …
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IBM Unveils ‘Migrate While Active’ Cloud Offering, HA Subscriptions
October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM yesterday announced new subscription offerings for its continuous availability and high availability products for IBM i, Db2 Mirror and PowerHA, respectively. It also announced a “migrate while active” program to move IBM i installations to servers running in IBM’s PowerVS cloud or other Power-based clouds.
For the past two-and-a-half years, IBM has been moving its IBM i software stack, including the operating system as well as supporting facilities, like BRMS, and Cloud Storage Solutions, away from perpetual licenses and toward subscriptions. At the same time, it’s been simplifying the stack by including more utilities, such as Performance Tools and …
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What’s New on PHP? Seiden Delivers the Goods
October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie
PHP has been around so long on the IBM i server that it’s practically a legacy technology at this point (not that that’s a bad thing). But if you haven’t looked at PHP lately, you might be surprised at what’s going on with the newer releases. PHP guru Alan Seiden recently brought us up to speed with the Web development language with a webinar sponsored by TUG.
Seiden has been involved with PHP on IBM i for about 20 years. He was playing around with the open source language even before IBM and Zend worked together to bring the first …
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IBM Bolsters Db2 for i With Tech Refreshes
October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM is delivering a handful of new database capabilities with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including new function to create Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), new capabilities for the security data mart, and various enhancements to SQL-based IBM i Services.
A UUID is a random 36-character, 128-bit alphanumeric string that can be used to identify something, such as a row or table in a database, with near certainty that the identifier is unique, has never been used before, and will never be used again.
The UUID system was first implemented by the Open Software …
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IBM Nears The End of the Road for Server Reliability Improvements
October 21, 2024 Alex Woodie
Reliability has always been one of the hallmarks of IBM big iron, the midrange and mainframe systems hundreds of thousands of companies run their businesses on around the world. These sturdy systems simply don’t go down very often, certainly less frequently than “industry-standard” (i.e. Intel-based) systems. In fact, the System z and Power systems are so reliable that, statistically speaking, there’s very little room for improvement.
For data on uptime and reliability, we turn to Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC), which is led by longtime IT industry analyst Laura DiDio. ITIC has been conducting an annual server and operating system …
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Big Blue Bolsters Navigator For i With New Stuff
October 14, 2024 Alex Woodie
Changes are afoot with Navigator for i, the Web-based administrative tool for the IBM i platform, which gains a range of new capabilities with the latest Technology Refresh. Some of the more visible additions to Navigator include complete support for the Advanced Job Scheduler and expanded support for new security journal data mart. But not to be overlooked are the retirement of the old Web Admin GUI (with replacements in Navigator), and enhancements to PDI.
Navigator for i is IBM’s strategic Web-based console for administrating the IBM i server. The product enables administrators to monitor and manage various components of …
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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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