• IBM Global Financing Deals To Push Power E950 And E980 Sales

  September 24, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we have pointed out many times before, Big Blue is not just a creator and manufacturer of technology, but as one of the largest renters and lessors of equipment with vast access to capital and a relatively strong balance sheet, it is also effectively a large bank focused on IT. And more times than not, it takes IBM Global Financing – and the economic might that parent IBM brings to bear – to close the deal, as much as any hardware or software technology does.

  At the moment, IBM is focused on increasing sales of the midrange “Zeppelin” and …

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• UCG Becomes The Guardian Of Contract Management

  June 4, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The small and medium business market for systems has always been larger than the AS/400 and its progeny, and even if the AS/400 loomed larger in decades past, it has been a long time since people in the IBM i market thought that everything can and should be done on the platform. Some applications work just fine running alongside the AS/400 and its integrated database, and other applications are freestanding and complementary.

  Jim Kandrac, the founder and president of UCG Technologies, the IBM i system reseller located outside of Cleveland, Ohio, that is best known for its VAULT400 cloud …

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• Here’s What’s Next for the Enterprise Software World

  May 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Thirty years ago, enterprise resource planning (ERP) was a hot new technology promising to help streamline business processes. While ERP continues to generate billions in revenue, it’s mostly for keeping complicated systems up and running. Now the daughter of the founder of JD Edwards is sharing a bold new vision for how her company, called Nextworld, plans to take enterprise software to the next stage.

  We first got wind of Nextworld venture about a year-and-a-half ago. We knew the Colorado company had big plans and a stream of funding from Kylee McVaney’s father, Ed McVaney. However, since Nextworld was …

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• Keep Your IBM i Baby, Not The Bathwater

  May 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  In the quest to modernize computer systems, some IBM i shops cease being IBM i shops. Wholesale migrations or complete rewrites of applications on different operating systems are sometimes necessary and beneficial, and sometimes they do more harm than good. When King III Solutions set out to enhance its advanced replenishment system, it managed to create a modern Web front-end that resonates with millennials without giving up its rock-solid IBM i back-end.

  Based in Marietta, Georgia, King III Solutions, or K3S, develops software that helps wholesale distributors and retailers better manage their inventory, in part through a collection of …

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• ERP Caught Up In Cloud Updrafts

  April 4, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but ERP software is headed up – into the clouds, that is. That’s according to the latest ERP survey from Panorama Consulting, which says more than four times as many users reported adopting cloud-based or SaaS ERP than deploying on-premise enterprise software.

  A quick look at Panorama Consulting‘s 2018 ERP Survey shows that cloud/software as a service (SaaS) and on-premise deployments of ERP effectively switched from 2017 to 2018. In 2017, the survey found that 67 percent of users reported deploying ERP on premise, while 33 percent reported using SaaS or cloud ERP.

  In 2018, Panorama …

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• TEMBO Bolsters Database Modernization Kit

  March 26, 2018 Alex Woodie

  TEMBO Technology Lab is shipping a new release of its software designed to help IBM i shops modernize their databases for the SQL age. The South African company made mostly minor tweaks to its flagship product, dubbed AO Foundation, which should position the product to do more down the road.

  Since it entered the IBM i discussion in 2012, TEMBO has been building database modernization tools and evangelizing the benefits of the SQL Query Engine (SQE) as the modern, up-to-date database engine that IBM i shops should strive to use, as opposed to the older CQE engine that used DDS …

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• Will Security As A Service Relieve The Pressure On IBM i Shops?

  January 17, 2018 Dan Burger

  Security is all about control. Either you are in control of your data or you are out of control, possibly unaware that security exposure and vulnerabilities exist, and most importantly unable to respond in a coordinated and logical manner. Lack of security acumen and a fear of what a data breach could do to cripple or destroy a business has many companies searching for answers. It gets mentioned often enough by iTech Solutions Group customers that it led to iTech offering security as a service, which helps companies devise a security policy, puts controls in place, and monitors system security …

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• SaaS Meets MSP To Benefit IBM i Development

  March 22, 2017 Dan Burger

  Development environments in IBM i shops have a reputation for clinging to the past. Taking into account all the shops where there is ongoing development, it’s fair to estimate that two-thirds to three-quarters of IBM i users have changed their development techniques very little in the past 25 years. There was little incentive to change during the first 15 years, but during the past ten years and planning for the future things will have to change.

  Software as a service (SaaS) and managed service providers (MSPs) are gathering more attention. SaaS (subscription-based pricing) is becoming more common and MSPs are …

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