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An integral part of nearly any supply chain is the warehouse. Enterprises stockpile goods until they're needed to fill orders, whether that action takes place the same day or within […]

Software Configuration Management (SCM) is an aspect of application development that touches on a wide variety of activities. SCM solutions can include tools for manually or automatically dealing with some […]

BEING ABLE TO MOVE FILES AROUND between PCs and the iSeries, or between multiple iSeries systems, gives many enterprises time-saving flexibility that's indispensable. Assisting in that singular but sometimes complicated […]

THE DEFINITION OF E-COMMERCE (EC) HAS changed significantly over the past decade. Originally, EC simply meant EDI and was purely about business-to-business (B2B) transactions. As the influence of the Internet […]

Barcodes and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are the two major means by which enterprises dealing in moving goods from one place to another enable themselves to identify those goods […]

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing,' is a jazz song lyric that applies to the System i in the area of performance. Even the largest […]

Distribution applications, generally speaking, are software solutions that help enterprises that perform the middle role between manufacturing companies and retailers. This may be fulfilled by a single entity or a […]

Because information is so vital to any enterprise, particularly in today's business climate, it follows that controlling that information flow can also be important. In particular, it can be critical […]

It's nearly always a daunting task to go back to try to analyze any program's source code, particularly if you weren't the developer who wrote that application originally. But when […]

HUMAN RESOURCES--IT'S NOT JUST payroll anymore,' could be the motto of nearly every company that produces this application type. Applications that calculate payroll, funnel deductions to various levels of government […]

NOT A MONTH GOES BY WITHOUT A REPORT of some company disclosing the loss of unencrypted backup data, resulting in the exposure of personal information for thousands of individuals. Chances […]

THE INCREASED PRESSURE FOR 24-HOUR uptime in operations at many enterprises makes finding time to preserve databases that can change every second a challenge. One answer is data replication solutions […]

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) COVERS A wide range of products, from query tools through executive information systems to full-blown online analytical processing (OLAP) engines. One key to selecting the right BI […]

CONTENT MANAGEMENT IS A TERM THAT potentially incorporates a wide range of product types on the System i, including those defined as belonging to the document-management, imaging, forms-processing, computer output […]

Sometimes half the battle of software development is understanding how the applications you already have in place really work. This knowledge can be difficult to achieve, particularly if software was […]

Information flow is critical to smooth business operations, so products that facilitate that process often have an intrinsic value that goes beyond actual features and functions. Both of this month's […]

NO BUSINESS CAN GET BY WITHOUT paying its bills. Despite the many electronic commerce methods available, a majority of companies still pay their suppliers and other creditors via check. This […]

Back in 1961, Arthur C. Clarke coined the phrase, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' Because he's a well-known science-fiction writer, for most of us, Clarke's words bring […]

The need to protect enterprise data from interception and misuse, or unauthorized change, becomes more acute every day. The best way to protect data is by encrypting it so unauthorized […]

It's hard to think of a function more central to business operations than accounting. As much as anything, accounting needs originally drove computerization of business operations, and remain critical today. […]

One bane of the maintenance programmer's existence is the difficult task of making sense of all the interrelationships between application programs, databases, and other system objects. It can be painful […]

One vital aspect of business resilience is the ability to mirror a copy of what's on your System i to another System i machine. One product that can provide this […]

For the System i, it's not too great an exaggeration to say that databases are at the heart of some of the greatest services the platform provides to the enterprises […]

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an application type that is sometimes regrettably vague. Some define it as anything that has to do with selling something to a customer, which covers […]

Last fall, Zend Technologies, Inc., and IBM jointly announced the availability of the PHP language on the System i. PHP is an open-source scripting language that developers can embed in […]

Particularly since the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other laws and regulations, the concepts of compliance and security have become tightly intertwined in system managers' minds and seem to become […]

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation has created some new faces in IT departments, namely those of the SOX auditors. And just as the addition of even one person to any team […]

As databases grow more ubiquitous, so does the importance of keeping those databases well-tuned so application activity and ad hoc user querying keep systems from slowing to a crawl. An […]

Converting legacy System i applications to run on the web as part of an e-business operation can be a daunting task. RPG isn't all that web-friendly and there are many […]

One of the most daunting aspects of keeping on top of System i security is the sheer number of directions from which trouble can come. Threats to system security are […]

If you asked, you'd probably be hard-pressed to find anyone who held an opinion that was anything other than that the IBM midrange computer market has changed drastically over the […]

TWO OF THE MOST FORMIDABLE BARRIERS to providing a good business intelligence (BI) system are the sheer size of the undertaking for most enterprises and the fact that so much […]

ONE OF THE CHALLENGES OF BUILDING new applications is the imperfection of human communications. Users forget to mention important details an application requires to get the job done, developers overlook […]

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) IS A complex net of interrelated tasks, the intricacies of which can seem to grow exponentially with the size of the enterprise. For business concerns based […]

IN MANY ENTERPRISES, SCHEDULING APPLICATION batch jobs is complicated by competing demands for prompt end-user access to information and the need to segregate resource-intensive job runs from times when there […]

WHEN AN ENTERPRISE USES MULTIPLE servers, making the best use of available resources and keeping track of system workloads efficiently can become complicated. The challenges are compounded when that group […]

MORE DATA TO BACK UP WITHIN SHRINKING time windows and protecting backup data from unauthorized access or outright theft are parallel problems facing many IT organizations. One iSeries enterprise found […]

GET THAT ON THE WEB' SEEMS TO BE THE mantra for iSeries applications and data everywhere lately. One of the ways to accomplish moving RPG apps to the Web is […]

KEEPING AN EYE ON HOW WELL YOUR enterprise is complying with security policies that support Sarbanes-Oxley and other auditing regulations can get complicated if more than one server is involved. […]

Marty Greenberg, a senior analyst at American Refining Group (AMG), used DRV Technologies, Inc.'s SpoolFlex to make life better for his company's sales department. In 2004, the company needed a […]

If You Feel Totally Confident That Your system security policies are ready for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and seeming scads of other new and […]

SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES THAT SUPPLY GOODS to other businesses or consumers understand that their supply chain operations are all-important. Solutions that may have been adequate in the past are unacceptable today. […]

AUTOMATING SYSTEM OPERATIONS BRINGS to mind time savings such as freeing operations people for other work and cutting down on human error. Less often considered are savings from automation of […]

Probably one of the most popular types of software among end users across all industries is file transfer utilities. Although there are many ways to electronically move files from one […]

The assertion that modernizing your applications is a better investment than replacing them outright recently gained a little more credibility in the mainframe world. I suspect that's likely true for […]

In early November, IBM unveiled a $5 billion deal to purchase business intelligence (BI) tool vendor Cognos. It's part of a more general recognition in the wider IT market that […]

I'm sure we're all somewhat familiar with the software release process. Even if you're a member of the rare enterprise that uses all custom-built software applications, keeping up with the […]

I have a gripe, and I'm wondering how many people out there share it with me. My gripe is that there are a surprising number of product-vendor websites that make […]

Valid Technologies recently upgraded its Valid Secure System Authentication (VSSA) solution to V2R3. VSSA is currently the only user authentication product for the System i that uses biometrics, a general […]

Press releases about interesting IT related studies cross my desk constantly. Some of them raise interesting issues, particularly when several studies point to dramatically different problems. Four recent ones form […]