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Thoroughly Modern: More Than Just A Pretty Face
December 9, 2019 Greg Patterson and Mike Pavlak
The most difficult, thorny, and intractable problems can sometimes be effectively addressed, if not outright fixed, by breaking them down into smaller problems that can be addressed tactically while also hewing to a broader and deeper strategic plan.
That, in a nutshell, is the issue facing most IBM i shops that have not done much application modernization above and beyond pushing the display part of the code to a 5250 green screen emulator or maybe doing a little screen scraping to gussy it up a little bit. The reality is there are still an awful lot of IBM i shops …
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Thoroughly Modern: Driving Your Synon Applications Forward
November 25, 2019 Chris Koppe
CA 2E, formerly known Synon and still called that by many, is a highly specialized programming language and a productive 4GL development environment. Used by a small number of IBM i shops, Synon has enabled organizations to rapidly create complex applications and systems that run the core of their business operations. These applications are often homegrown and serve as the backbone of business processing while providing organizations with differentiation against their competition.
Although Synon applications provide great value, they are inherently difficult to access and share information with the organization. In many cases, these operations ecosystems are 15 to 25 …
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Thoroughly Modern: What To Pack For The Digital Transformation Journey
October 16, 2019 Emmanuel Tzinevrakis
Welcome to a new column called Thoroughly Modern. The name is meant to convey the idea that we need to define the desired – if ever-evolving – end state of our businesses and the people, processes, and programs that encapsulate how everything works when we get there.
It is a given that everyone understands that digital transformation is sweeping every industry, with incumbents being challenged by upstarts – and each other – as they try to create new and better ways to provide products and services to customers in a modern, digital world. We accept this as a first …
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Is That What You Think Modernization Means?
January 16, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
When most IBM i shops think about “modernization,” what they are talking about is taking legacy applications and in some fashion – and quite possible with many different methods – making those applications work better on newer kinds of clients and/or using newer front-end technologies to make them function better or look better. The researchers at IDC have a more expansive definition of modernization, at least according to a whitepaper that the market researcher recently did on behalf of the Power Systems line at IBM.
That whitepaper, entitled The Key Requirements of Modernization and the Role of IBM Power10, …
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Modern Tools For A Modern IBM i
May 26, 2021 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops may be in for a rude awakening when they suddenly realize their applications are not keeping up with the times. How can these IBM i shops get on the right track in the modernization department? A trio of IBMers offered some tips.
Brad Bentley, Tim Rowe, and Kris Whitney took to the virtual airwaves last week to present “IBM Tools for Modernizing Your IBM i Applications,” a one-hour webinar from IBM. Application modernization is an extremely broad topic, as the 266-page IBM Redbook of the (almost) same name will attest to, so they obviously didn’t cover …
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ARCAD Sets Out To Modernize German Midrange
January 11, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreIn theory, modernization is an ongoing process. It’s the opposite of aging. And as we all know, getting old sucks. There are a lot of successful companies that have managed to postpone IT modernization. But eventually age takes its toll and that’s what we see happening in IBM midrange shops, where IT modernization is a big concern. Helping companies modernize is the reason ARCAD Software, the IBM i software vendor, is opening a subsidiary office in Germany.
The IBM i market in Germany is estimated to be the largest in Europe. It is largely defined by a half dozen
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Modernization Redbook: The Time Has Come
July 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreI’d like to tell you Modernizing IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between is on the IT Jungle Best Seller List. But we don’t have a best seller list and if IBM knew how many of these Rebooks were being downloaded, it’s against Big Blue’s better judgment to release such information.
You’ve heard about this Redbook before if you are a regular reader of The Four Hundred. It was a monumental effort that was first released as a Draft Redbook (Danger: Typographical errors and other bugs have yet to be thoroughly
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Dropping Soon: IBM’s Big Application Modernization Redbook
February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreLast year in Rochester, before the Polar Vortex swooped down and turned vast stretches of the Upper Midwest into arctic tundra, IBM convened a meeting of the minds like no other. Big Blue flew in dozens of IBM i modernization experts from all over the world to work on a forthcoming Redbook, with the idea of putting down on paper a complete guide for how to remake existing IBM i apps into sleek and powerful programs that will run businesses for decades to come.
That Redbook is almost complete. According to sources in the IBM i community, we’ll soon get
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Dropping Soon: IBM’s Big Application Modernization Redbook
February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie
… Read moreLast year in Rochester, before the Polar Vortex swooped down and turned vast stretches of the Upper Midwest into arctic tundra, IBM convened a meeting of the minds like no other. Big Blue flew in dozens of IBM i modernization experts from all over the world to work on a forthcoming Redbook, with the idea of putting down on paper a complete guide for how to remake existing IBM i apps into sleek and powerful programs that will run businesses for decades to come.
That Redbook is almost complete. According to sources in the IBM i community, we’ll soon get
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Modernizing the RPG Reputation
February 19, 2008 Dan Burger
… Read moreRPG development is not what it appears to be. Or maybe it is. There are at least two ways to look at it, and whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on where you sit and perhaps what you are sitting on. For some people it’s like sitting on a comfortable old sofa. They don’t want to get up. For others, it’s more like sitting on a tack. They don’t stay seated for very long and they have a lot to say.
What it is and what it isn’t is the subject of many truths, half-truths, and
