• A Power Tool for IBM i User Administration

  December 2, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Managing IBM i users can take a lot of work. Setting up user profiles, granting authorities, and eliminating profiles across multiple environments are critical tasks that administrators must tackle. Now PowerTech is selling a tool that automates much of the grunt work associated with user profile management on the IBM i platform. PowerTech PowerAdmin is designed to take the sting out of user profile management by implementing role-based accessed control (RBAC) for groups of users. Instead of managing all of the settings and access rights involved with each user profile individually, administrators create templates for different roles that exist within

  … Read more

• A ‘FastPass’ to IBM i Password Satisfaction

  December 2, 2014 Alex Woodie

  The need to remember multiple passwords is the source of much stress for today’s modern computer user. Users must remember passwords for systems, passwords for apps, and passwords for phones. One vendor helping to eliminate the password overburden is the Danish company FastPass, which has been supporting IBM i with its password synchronization software for the past four years. FastPass is a software or a service that enables employees to use a single password to access multiple systems. FastPass is based on Microsoft‘s identity management software for Windows, including Active Directory. On top of that, FastPass has built

  … Read more

• Demand Building for Node.js on IBM i

  December 2, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Few of IBM‘s October announcements generated as much excitement as the revelation that Node.js is coming to the platform. The prospect of using JavaScript to build both the client and the server side of a Web application is very intriguing. For those IBM i professionals who have been waiting for the software and the associated documentation to be available, the wait will soon be over. On October 6, IBM announced that IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 9 and IBM i 7.2 TR1 would both contain support for Node.js when the TRs shipped on November 11. Since then, numerous IBM

  … Read more

• IBM Adds Enterprise Power8 Systems To Trade-In Deal

  December 1, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of the launch and now the delivery of the initial models in the Power8-based Power E870 and E880 machines, IBM is adding the high-end boxes to a long-running trade-in deal. The Power Systems Trade-In Program was last modified back in June, when the scale-out variants of the Power8 systems, which have one or two sockets, were added as target machines in the deal, offering customers between $500 and $2,000 if they got rid of ancient AS/400, iSeries, System i machines or any number of other Unix and proprietary machines. The deal also covers customers who want to

  … Read more

• RPG Certification And College Curriculum Revision In The Works

  December 1, 2014 Dan Burger

  COMMON is beginning work on a new RPG certification for college graduates that IBM i shops can use as a yardstick for entry-level talent. The RPG Associate certification is expected to be ready by the next COMMON Annual Meeting (April 26-29 in Anaheim, California). COMMON Certification Steering Committee chairman Randy Dufault explained that the certification will be developed in conjunction with a revised RPG curriculum for colleges participating in the IBM Power Systems Academic Initiative program. The existing RPG curriculum is badly in need of replacement. The most prominent schools teaching RPG are not using the outdated curriculum, which does

  … Read more

• IBM i Total Cost Of Ownership Report Updated

  December 1, 2014 Dan Burger

  ITG is IBM‘s go-to research and analysis firm when it comes to studies comparing IBM i to its competition. These studies zero in on total cost of ownership build a favorable case for IBM’s midrange systems based on costs related to hardware purchase and maintenance; licenses and support for operating systems, databases, and other systems software, systems management and database administration costs; and energy costs. During its most recent comparison, which is dated September 2014, ITG lined up IBM Power S814 and S824 servers against two- and four-socket X86 servers powered by Intel E5 and E7 processors. One of

  … Read more

• Reader Feedback On Microsoft Loves Linux

  December 1, 2014 Hey, Dan

  As you pointed out in your story, in mid-November Microsoft announced that it’s open sourcing its full server-side .NET stack, which thereby, at least in theory, expands the .NET stack to Linux and Mac OS X (which is really Unix) platforms. Here are my six take-aways from that announcement: No surprise. The November 12 announcement wasn’t a surprise as much as it was a reaffirmation of Microsoft’s open source software (OSS) strategy over the last couple of years. Microsoft open sourced some .NET components (including ASP.NET MVC and its Web API) a couple of years ago. This was a

  … Read more

• Mad Dog 21/21: Two Calves And Calves Not

  December 1, 2014 Hesh Wiener

  In Semitic mythology, Jews at the foot of Mount Sinai embraced an invisible God rather than one represented by a golden statue of a calf. From that pivotal moment, the followers of Moses and eventually the other people of the book, Christians and Muslims, vested their faith in software rather than hardware. A couple dozen centuries later, the resultant monotheistic civilization controls the bulk of the word’s wealth and power. This year, one of that civilization’s great industrial institutions, IBM, shifted the burden of its strategic trust from physical hardware to intangible software and cloud computing. For many

  … Read more

• As I See It: Three Blind Vice

  December 1, 2014 Victor Rozek

  “Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.” So said Edward Abbey, and although he wasn’t talking about Silicon Valley, the observation is no less true for that. As the technology sector increases its global dominance, the corruptive application of power is reflective of a changing ethic in the tech community. An ethic marred by success. Leveraging the Disabled I’ll bet you didn’t know that net neutrality hurts disabled people. Me neither. But, hey, if Verizon says so, it must be true. Right? Of what possible use would equal access be to a disabled person? If you’re a disabled American

  … Read more

• IBM i Shops Offloading Infrastructure

  December 1, 2014 Dan Burger

  Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers are gaining ground in the IBM midrange community as more organizations explore the IT strategic plan of outsourcing servers, networking, storage, and data center space. Connectria Hosting, a company with more than 15 years of managed services experience for IBM i, iSeries, and AS/400 customers, is noticing the change. It’s not dependent on existing customers. New customers are coming to the cloud. “Our IBM i business is up 35 percent over last year,” says Connectria CEO Rich Waidmann. On a percentage basis, that’s on par with the 40 percent-plus increase Amazon Web Services

  … Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles