Networking

Taking Mobile Applications and Data Security Seriously

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:00:15 +0100

Mobile applications need to be secured. It's not a question of "if" but "when" attacks will occur. Written by Madan Divaker Today, many organizations are rushing to build mobile applications and mobile websites to gain a competitive advantage within their industry. The rate and speed at which applications are being pushed into the marketplace is phenomenal and is only increasing with the explosion of mobile devices. Traditional businesses have been forced to think outside of the box to leverage...

XPages: Domino Development Goes Mobile and Beyond

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:00:15 +0100

Are you looking to extend your legacy Domino applications to mobile? XPages-enabled applications just may be your rapid mobile development and deployment solution. Written by Steve Pitcher XPages is a web and mobile development platform enabling users to access and interact with IBM Notes and Domino data (and other data sources) using a cleaner, more modern interface. Although XPages was originally created as a mobile controls project on OpenNTF.org in 2010, XPages mobile support began...

Choosing Business Processes for Mobile Apps

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:00:10 +0100

The objective is to build mobile apps that make it easier for customers and employees to interact with your business. Written by Richard Lancaster Mobile devices have changed the way people consume information, purchase products, and pay bills. They allow users to quickly perform routine tasks from anywhere, including the office, their home, a car, or a coffee shop. Today, companies are using mobile apps to sell products and services to customers and distribute timely information to employees. ...

Mobile Apps: Complicating Collaboration

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 06:00:15 +0100

How your company approaches mobile app development can spell the difference between success and failure. Written by Thomas M. Stockwell Mobile apps extend the boundaries of computing to on-the-go users and workers. They release value to our organizations by enhancing collaboration. Wouldn't it be great if deploying a mobile app were as simple as writing some code and distributing it? Unfortunately, it's not....

Investigating Mobile Development Languages

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:00:15 +0100

If you don't already have a mobile development strategy, you'll need one soon, and one of the first choices you'll need to make is which language to use for development. Written by Joe Pluta Mobile development is the next great wave of development. Like it or not, mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous and your IT strategy is going to have to support them, both for B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2E (Business to Employee) architectures. And the really bad news is that if you're only just now fi...

Mobile Development: SQL in the Browser

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:00:10 +0100

Fast response time is extremely important in the mobile world. Written by Scott Salisbury Mobile computing invites us into a whole new way of thinking. Web-based mobile programming is different for us in that it utilizes the various features of HTML5. One of the really great aspects of HTML5 is that you can run SQL in the browser without any connection to the server: Think airplane mode; think offline storage....

How to Put IBM i Apps on Mobile Devices Without Getting a New Programming Degree

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:00:10 +0100

Learning how may take less time than you think. Written by John Ghrist Editor's Note: This article is a review of a Webcast about Profound Logic Software's suite of application development tools for mobile devices, available free at the MC Press Webcast Center. Mobile devices are fast becoming as ubiquitous in our business lives as they are in our social lives. On the business side, with this flowering of gadgets that ring, buzz, tickle, or play a song in our pockets to announce that someone w...

Mobile Computing and the IBM i

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 06:00:10 +0100

The ability to create great mobile applications for the IBM i presents many very exciting opportunities. Written by Roger Pence It's no secret that mobile computing is hot, hot, hot. But, for you non-believers, consider these numbers:...

Developing Mobile Apps for the IBM i, Part II

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:00:15 +0100

Let's continue our earlier discussion by looking at the Valence Framework, Sencha Touch 2, JavaScript, and RPG. Written by Scott Salisbury In the first installment of this two-part series, I described two of the common approaches used for mobile application development. Before we jump into the depths of the second article, let's review these two important concepts....

Mobile Architectures: Which Way to Go?

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:00:10 +0100

So you think you're ready to go mobile? You may want to take a moment to review your options, because your success will depend on your choice. Written by Joe Pluta Just when you thought it was safe to go mobile! With the advent of HTML5 and its great acceptance within the mobile community, you might have thought that you were going to get to a nice, standardized development strategy. Ha! Silly you! In fact, the mobile landscape has become splintered in the last couple of years with a wh...

Taming the "Wild West" That Is TCP/IP

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 06:00:15 +0100

Are you sure you're properly securing your IP applications? Written by Mike Faust If your IBM i is running TCP/IP, you have a problem. While the availability of IP applications is a blessing in that it gives your company an easy way to access your systems based on a set of defined standards, it also gives hackers an easy way to get into your systems and data using defined standards. Utilizing secure IP connectivity for your Telnet, FTP, and HTTP connectivity can help to curb the problem, but w...

Developing Mobile Apps for the IBM i, Part I

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:00:15 +0100

Just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there's more than one way to develop mobile apps for the IBM i. Written by Scott Salisbury Everywhere you turn these days, people are talking about mobile applications. There is endless chatter about apps for iPads and iPhones, Android-style phones and tablets, and several flavors of BlackBerry, among others. The race is on to get mobile apps built and deployed as quickly as possible. Every time you look up, someone is saying "There's an app for ...

Benefits of Mobile Document Management

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:00:10 +0100

Don't let the competition get a leg up on you. Written by Brian Smith Document management has gone mobile. Professionals in growing numbers have gained the ability to search, review, sort, and manage their documents from their mobile devices. Here are some of the reasons that businesses across all industries are seeking to make these capabilities available to their employees and why you should too....

Create a Working Simulation of Your Mobile App with Free iRise Studio MX

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:00:10 +0100

If you want to get into mobile application development, there is no easier way to get started than with this new easy-to-use mobile simulation tool. Written by Chris Smith A couple of years ago, I drove from California to New York via Bismarck, North Dakota, and Chicago, Illinois, winding up on the beach at the far eastern tip of Long Island. I'll never forget traveling through Manhattan and negotiating the myriad bridges and complex route changes required to finally get onto the Long Island ...

Power i Forecast: Mobile Technology

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 06:00:15 +0100

The growth in mobile will have a huge impact on business, and IBM has introduced already-mature software and services to accelerate business adoption of mobile technologies. Written by Chris Smith Computer systems have evolved over the past 50 years in the general direction of becoming smaller and less expensive. First, there was the mainframe. Next came the mini- or midrange computer. This was followed by the PC. Each evolution was always less powerful than the one preceding it, but it was "go...

It's Time to Plan for Enterprise Mobility

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:00:15 +0100

Mobile enterprise solutions are on the list of priorities for many CIOs in 2012. Written by Eden Watt Whether the primary focus is to extend your in-house applications to your roaming workforce (B2E) or to interface with customers and prospects (B2C) via mobile devices, or possibly both, the options and considerations are ever-growing. It's no surprise that Gartner's "Top Ten Strategic Technologies for 2012" shows number one and two as "Media Tablets and Beyond" and "Mobile-Centric Applica...

Road Warriors Using Mobile Devices Can Now Sync Up to the IBM i

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:00:10 +0100

LANSA's LongReach app is new, secure, and—best of all—free! Written by Mary Rose Roberts A free native app from LANSA now lets road warriors manage and securely upload and synchronize mobile data from iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices to the IBM i. Dubbed LongReach, the application is installed on smart phones and tablets to support the management and transfer of business data between the devices and i servers....

Building Business Applications for Mobile Devices

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:00:15 +0100

Let's examine what needs to be taken into consideration when designing, developing, and managing business applications for mobile devices. Written by Richard Lancaster These days almost everyone has a mobile device, ranging from iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, or Windows phones to tablets such as Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom, or Samsung Galaxy. How do you design mobile applications, and what tools do developers need? Will the existing methodology for application life cycle management be adeq...

Welcome to HTML5

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:00:10 +0100

Planning to build mobile apps? Then you need to be clear on what HTML5 is and is not. Written by Joe Pluta If you've been even tangentially involved with Web development over the past year or so, you're more than likely familiar with the term "HTML5." Yet HTML5 is surrounded by a whole lot of confusion and misinformation. This quick tip will sort some of it out for you....

Power i Forecast: Cloud-Enabled Video May Be the Icing on the Cake for Unified Communications

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Emerging industry standards and platform and partner integrations make mobile video conferencing across heterogeneous networks a distinct possibility in 2012. Written by Chris Smith The promise of unified communications has been omnipresent for many years, but the missing piece to make it tantalizing to the masses and push its appeal into the category of a "must have" for smaller companies has been video. Today, the video element is being tested for prime time, and companies likely will begin r...

Alpha Five Offers Developers a Chance to Develop Once and Run Anywhere

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:00:10 +0100

A new version of what has become a rapid application development (RAD) environment creates a single app that can run on virtually any platform, including a variety of mobile devices. Written by Chris Smith The demand for mobile applications and the fact that there are multiple SDKs for the different platforms—including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile—is creating significant extra work for developers and IT shops. With most mobile device manufacturers now basing their browsers o...

Power i Forecast: Networking

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:00:15 +0100

New technologies, capacity challenges, and security threats put network managers at the center of one of the most challenging roles in IT. Written by Chris Smith As with many areas of IT, network technology is evolving at a rapid pace. New networking initiatives extend from foundational technologies to a host of emerging ones, involving the full spectrum of routing, switching, WAN management, unified communications, LANs, wireless, network systems management and administration, mobility, and, o...

Use a Single Framework to Support Mobile Apps on Different Platforms

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 06:00:10 +0100

Embarcadero's newly updated visual development environment could simplify both mobile and Web development. Written by Chris Smith One of the attendees in the IBM i track of the ZendCon conference last month expressed frustration in building PHP Web applications when it came to mastering elements handled by JavaScript, HTML, CSS3, and other art forms. Using various tools, frameworks, and IDEs allowed his team back home to get just so far, he said. Then things started to slow down. I realized tha...

Power i Forecast: Thin Clients and Virtual Desktops

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Despite longtime promises that virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) is ready for broad adoption, companies have been wary of moving too quickly into uncharted waters. Written by Chris Smith The concept of a virtual desktop has been gaining appeal among technology managers for the past several years, but for various reasons virtual desktops haven't been broadly adopted. Recent advances in technology, along with the advent of cloud computing and a faster Internet, have finally come together t...

Cool Things: Free, Open-Source TN5250J

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:00:15 +0100

It's true! You can have 5250 emulation for the Mac and Linux (and Windows too)! Written by Mike Faust As an avid Mac user, one of my primary challenges when switching from a Windows-based PC to a Mac is finding a suitable replacement for the Client Access default Telnet client. While many commercial Telnet client products are available for the Mac, one open-source option caught my attention. In this tip, I'd like to spend some time reviewing the TN5250J project and what it has to offer....

Power i Forecast: Smartphones and Mobile Apps, Part II

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Industry leaders give developers and IT managers their best advice on questions surrounding network access by mobile devices. Written by Chris Smith Mobile devices and applications seem to be sweeping the world and are presenting special challenges—and rewards—for developers. As users come to expect access to corporate networks and applications from their mobile devices, developers will be tasked with weighing in on how their companies should approach this challenge....

Power i Forecast: Smartphones and Mobile Apps, Part I

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Industry leaders weigh in on questions surrounding deployment of mobile devices and applications within the enterprise. Written by Chris Smith The world is going mobile, and chances are that everyone reading this article has a smartphone, and probably has—or is planning to get—a tablet computer, be it an iPad, Android, Windows 7, or BlackBerry device. The implications for enterprise computing are, if not enormous, at least extremely significant. No IT manager or chief technology office...

IBM i Is Going Mobile!

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Take advantage of tablet-based devices in a System i world. Written by Mike Faust According to a USA Today article from December of 2010, 21 million tablet PCs were sold in 2010. Most of those sales were as a result of Apple's introduction of the iPad. Tablet devices like the Apple iPad are often thought of as high-tech "toys" used for simple tasks like playing games, sending email, Web surfing, or maybe watching a movie or listening to music. But the real power of these devices that's often ov...

TechTip: SuperPutty, the Enhanced PuTTY SSH Client GUI

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 06:00:15 +0100

Using SuperPutty as a window manager for the PuTTY SSH client allows for SSH, Telnet, and SCP support on Windows. Written by Max Hetrick The PuTTY client has been providing terminal emulation for SSH and Telnet support for a little over 10 years now. PuTTY provides Windows a program to connect to the command line of Linux and UNIX machines. With a few other programs like PSCP, Pageant, and PuTTYgen, you can also gain file copy and SSH key support very easily....

Go Wireless! Take Control from Anywhere at Any Time!

Mon, 09 May 2011 06:00:15 +0100

So you really want to be able to phone it in to your IBM i? This article explains the how and how much of mobile IBM i development. Written by Joe Pluta We're in the throes of a revolution, one that I think took many of us by surprise. Yes, people have been using cell phones for a long time, and quite a few have figured out how to use first-generation smart devices such as BlackBerries as true business appliances. But the meteoric rise of the iPhone has fundamentally transformed the Web user in...

Power i Forecast: Wireless

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:00:15 +0100

How will the proliferation of wireless devices impact enterprise network infrastructures? Written by Chris Smith With the large number of mobile devices, including smart phones and wireless tablet computers, about to hit the market this spring and the move toward accessing enterprise applications from mobile devices accelerating, we wondered how IT departments were planning to handle the inevitable requests from users to access the corporate network. Many of the companies we contacted were not ...

Bitzer Mobile Breaks New Ground Providing Mobile Device Access to Enterprise Applications

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:00:05 +0100

The company offers everything from provisioning to data wipe, but the question remains: How well will it work on legacy systems? Written by Chris Smith The promise of deploying native applications to mobile devices recently has inspired a number of developers to turn their attention to this challenge. With the small size of mobile device displays, screen scraping is a less than optimum solution. One young company started by a former IBMer believes it has a simple and highly effective solution t...

Wi-Fi Security: Filling in Hole196

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:00:15 +0100

The last sentence on page 196 of the 802.11 spec creates a furor. Written by Thomas M. Stockwell Wi-Fi has a long history of security vulnerabilities and resulting fixes. WEP, TKIP, WPA, and the current standard of WPA2 have brought the technology closer to being secure. Indeed, the pervasiveness of Wi-Fi has changed everything—from how we design computer networks, to where we enjoy our coffee breaks, to how we buy and read our books. Travel in any foreign land, and the first question you'll ...

Technology Focus: You Don't Need a PhD to Deploy on PDAs

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:00:05 +0100

Despite the near ubiquity of wireless devices, third-party products that help mobile users communicate with System i applications remain limited in number. Written by John Ghrist Your experience may vary, but it seems that the proliferation of mobile telephones is becoming so commonplace that a growing number of people are dropping residential landlines for personal use. On the business side of life, while enterprises obviously can't be relinquishing their telephone directory listings with...

Virtualization: Where It Is and Where It's Going

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:00:15 +0100

Server, storage, and network virtualization increase flexibility, mask complexity, and reduce costs for IT departments. Written by Joel Klebanoff Virtualization is getting to be long in the tooth, at least in terms of the accelerated universe in which IT now operates. Nonetheless, the term is still somewhat confusing. That's not surprising because there isn't just one variety. Thus, when someone tries to talk to you about or sell you virtualization, your first question should be, "Which type?"...

VPNs: A Head-to-Head Comparison

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:00:15 +0100

PPTP, L2TP, IPSec, or SSL…what's a company to do? Written by Laura Ubelhor Today, we often connect remotely to perform the same tasks we used to do onsite. The rapid acceptance and growth of the Internet has played a major role in organizations extending private networks. Now, organizations are creating and using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to provide access to network users whenever and wherever needed....

For the Next Generation Comes a Newer, Faster USB Standard

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:00:05 +0100

For the non-gamers in the crowd, however, USB 2.0 may be good enough. Written by Chris Smith There is a distinct downside to being a cheapskate: one is always buying technology that is behind the power curve. Just once in my life, I'm going to go and buy a computer with the fastest processor available just for the sheer thrill of knowing what it feels like to have the best....

Will IBM i Access for Windows Support Windows 7?

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:00:05 +0100

Users who jumped in and upgraded to Vista may now have a leg up on those who held off and relied so long on XP. Written by Chris Smith Oh my gosh—people are starting to get the itch. They're starting to get the Windows 7 itch as the October 22 date approaches for the release of Windows 7 on new computers and in shrink-wrapped boxes. The anxiety is starting to ripple through the IBM i world. What everyone is starting to ask is—will Client Access work with Windows 7 or are users going to be l...

Tell Your Life's Story with Network Diagramming Software

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:00:05 +0100

The question is, were you born with--or without--talent? By Chris Smith Since your life is inextricably intertwined with the enterprise network, isn't it true that if you created a diagram of the network it would be almost the same thing as telling your life story? Of course it would! Besides, then you would have something to show the missus and the rug rats to explain what it is that you actually do all day long. A network diagram could be the very proof you need to show you really exist...

Will WiFi Finally Mark the End of the Desktop Workstation?

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:00:05 +0100

As wireless networks proliferate, will traditional desktop workstations be relegated to the same fate as the daisy wheel printer? By Joe Pluta I've been on the road lately doing a bit of consulting, and I've noticed a trend: More and more of my clients have moved partially or entirely to laptops for their developers. This is in direct contrast to what I saw just a couple of years back, when companies seemed to be moving toward more powerful desktops, especially with multiple monitors....

RFID: Winning Technology at the 2008 Olympics and Across the Globe

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:00:05 +0100

One of big winners of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was RFID technology, which is also increasingly winning commercial applications around the world. By Sheldon R. Reich Last month, the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, captured an Olympic medal for Jamaica when he ran the 100-meter dash in less than 10 seconds. That's stunningly fast. But did you know that before Bolt reached the finish line you could have scanned over 100 garments with a handheld RFID reader? That is one of the key findings in a ...