• To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

  July 14, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are still assembling the information on the new Power11 processor and the Power Systems machines that use them and working on our analysis before they start shipping on July 25. We will do the most thorough job that we can under the circumstances, as always, but we concede that pricing information is very hard to come by on Power10 systems and we suspect it will be the same with Power11 systems, too.

  But we will remind IBM that any new generation of machines always has improved bang for the buck, and given the modest improvements in performance moving from …

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• How FalconStor Is Reinventing Itself, And Why IBM Noticed

  July 14, 2025 Victoria Grey

  If you are like me, you are a fan of podcasts, and one of my favorites is IBM Transformers, hosted by Ann Funai. It’s a must-listen for anyone navigating digital transformation or leading change in enterprise IT. With a thoughtful blend of personal stories and practical insights, Transformers goes beyond buzzwords to explore how leaders actually make transformation happen.

  Ann Funai, IBM’s chief information officer and vice president of Business Platform Transformation, brings both empathy and experience to every episode. A seasoned technologist and executive (check out her impressive background on LinkedIn), Funai knows how to ask the right …

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• Guru: When Procedure Driven RPG Really Works

  July 14, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  In the vast and varied ecosystems of Earth, few interactions between species have captured the imagination of scientists and casual observers alike as much as the relationship between bottlenose dolphins and puffer fish. This curious dance, often involving the deliberate provocation of the puffer fish to trigger its natural defense mechanism, has led to many interpretations – from simple play to speculative pharmacological experimentation. I submit to you today, that in the digital ocean of RPG development, developers should interact with their procedures in ways that, to the outside eye, might seem equally cryptic, yet are deeply intentional, meticulously orchestrated, …

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• Vendors Fill In The Gaps With IBM’s New MFA Solution

  July 14, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The new multi-factor authentication (MFA) capability that IBM has built into the IBM i operating system is a real gamechanger in terms of securing the system and preventing unauthorized access to applications and data. However, it lacks some key capabilities that some customers are looking for in an MFA solution, which third-party vendors are eager to fill.

  The native MFA function that Big Blue delivered with IBM i 7.6 is being praised almost universally throughout the IBM i community as a massive security improvement. The MFA functionality, which uses randomly generated time-based one-time passwords (TOTP), is built directly into …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 27

  July 14, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  If you are an ASNA shops, there is an important security update that the company wants you to be aware of. This is an important security notification regarding a vulnerability discovered in two ASNA Windows Services: ASNA Assist and ASNA Registrar. ASNA says that it has resolved this vulnerability with updated versions of all supported ASNA products. You can find out more about this issue at this link.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.6:

  • None

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • None

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • None

  PTF Groups 7.3: …

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• With Power11, Power Systems “Go To Eleven”

  July 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Today is Power11 announcement day, and as sometimes happens during the debut of a new processor and a new platform to go along with it, we do not have all of the details necessary to tell you everything you need to know about the new Power11 processor and the four of the five Power Systems machines that will make use of it and start shipping on July 25.

  Here is what we generally know. First, you will hear a lot of Spinal Tap jokes, like the one in the title above, which refers to special Marshall amplifiers which go …

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• With Subscription Price, IBM i P20 And P30 Tiers Get Bigger Bundles

  July 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has been noodling how it might tweak the subscription pricing for the P20 and P30 tiers since getting feedback on the first pass it did on its big iron Power Systems machines way back in February 2023. That feedback from the company’s biggest IBM i customers was not entirely glowing, but IBM has been clear that it would in the fullness of time move from perpetual software licensing to subscription pricing on all of its software, and that IBM i would not be an exception.

  To cushion the blow – and there is one because customers keep machines …

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• Izzi Buys CNX, Eyes Valence Port To System Z

  July 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Izzi Software today announced the acquisition of CNX Corp., owner of the Valence suite of Web development tools for IBM i. The deal is the first IBM i-related acquisition for Izzi, which was founded last year with a mandate to buy smaller IBM i and mainframe vendors that typically don’t get M&A attention from bigger players.

  CNX is a Chicago-based software vendor and consulting firm founded in 1996 by Richard Milone and Robert Swanson. The two had worked with BPCS (now Infor ERP LX) customers, and developed a product that extended that ERP system to the Web. That product, then …

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• IBM i Shops “Attacking” Security Concerns, Study Shows

  July 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Faced with ever-growing security concerns, IBM i shops are “attacking” the problem and taking real steps to improve their security posture, Fortra’s says in its latest State of IBM i Security study. It is the second straight year that Fortra has noticed an improvement in IBM i shops’ approach to security. However, there are still areas that require improvement.

  Fortra and its predecessors (HelpSystems, PowerTech) have been running the annual State of Security study for 22 years, providing a unique glimpse into the security configurations of IBM i customers that is unmatched in the industry.

  Every year, a new group …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 26

  July 8, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  Brace yourself because the IBM i platform has five security vulnerabilities that you have to analyze and cope with in this week’s issue of the IBM i PTF Guide.

  Let’s just jump right in and get to it.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server is affected by arbitrary code execution (CVE-2025-36038), about which you can find out more at this link. The affected software is IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and 9.0.

  Second, there is Security Bulletin: IBM i is affected by a user gaining elevated privileges due to an unqualified library call vulnerability in …

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• Liam Allan Shares What’s Coming Next With Code For IBM i

  June 23, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The rise of Code for IBM i arguably is the best IBM i technology story of the past few years. The VS Code development environment came out of nowhere to challenge Rational Developer for i as the pre-eminent developer tool on the platform. And according to Liam Allan, who started this whole thing, Code for i is only going to get better in the months and years to come.

  There is clear and unmistakable momentum behind VS Code and Code for IBM i, the VS Code plug-in that Liam Allan created back in 2021 while working at Seiden Group …

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• From Stable To Scalable: Visual LANSA 16 Powers IBM i Growth – Launching July 8

  June 23, 2025 LANSA

  IBM i remains one of the most trusted enterprise platforms in the world, running mission-critical operations across industries like manufacturing, logistics, and finance. Its unmatched reliability and performance have made it a mainstay for organizations running high-volume, always-on business systems.

  But as innovation speeds up, IBM i teams are under pressure to do more: modernize applications, integrate with newer systems, and deliver modern user experiences – all without compromising business operations. The problem? Most legacy environments weren’t built for agility, and rewrites are often expensive and risky.

  That’s where Visual LANSA 16 comes in. Originally built for IBM i and …

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• VS Code Will Be The Heart Of The Modern IBM i Platform

  June 23, 2025 Sebastien Julliand

  For application programmers, the workspace is not a place to sit with a screen, a keyboard, a chair, but rather is an integrated development environment within which code can be created, shared, compiled, and managed either inside the tool itself or through plug-in extensions that link it to other tools. IDEs have been around for decades and are not anything new. What is new is how suddenly popular one particular IDE – VS Code – has become.

  For the past several years, nearly three quarters of the programmers in the world polled for the Stack Overflow Developer Survey say that …

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• The AS/400: A 37-Year-Old Dog That Loves To Learn New Tricks

  June 23, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the early years of the AS/400 platform, when we were new to the IT business and there were so many different datacenter computing platforms and even more operating systems, we didn’t think about the longevity of the AS/400 and its System/38 and System/36 predecessors. It was a new platform with a heritage, a system with both a past and a future out as far as we could see with our own youth and limited experience.

  But over the years, in the early 2000s in particular, we started to keep track of the years the AS/400 was around and celebrated …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 25

  June 23, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  Happy Monday, everyone. The IBM i stack is starting out your week with a security issue and two security vulnerabilities.

  First, we have PH65394, which is a notification that IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a denial of service due to Apache CXF (CVE-2025-23184 CVSS 7.5). You can find out more about it at this link.

  Second, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i is affected by a user gaining elevated privileges due to an unqualified library call vulnerability in IBM Advanced Job Scheduler for i [CVE-2025-33122]. More information is available here. The PTF number to remediate …

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• Meet The Next Gen Of IBMers Helping To Build IBM i

  June 16, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The graying of the IBM i installed base is a topic that deserves attention, as every platform must find a way to reinvent itself if it wants to survive. IBM executives have been vocal about the need for IBM i customers to hire younger people. Well, it looks like Big Blue is taking its own advice, judging from the new crop of developers working in the Rochester and Toronto labs, and beyond.

  It’s hard to believe that Liam Allan has been working on the IBM i platform for nearly a decade. Allan, who started working on IBM i when he …

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• Looks Like IBM Is Building A Linux-Like PASE For IBM i After All

  June 16, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is pleasing, indeed, whenever you think of something that would be useful for a particular platform and then you find out that the company is working on it. This is indeed what I thought of when we reviewed the IBM i – A Strategic Preview For 2025 And Beyond session hosted by IBM i chief technology officer Steve Will at the recent POWERUp 2025 conference in Anaheim, California. I was not able to attend the event, but my co-editor, Alex Woodie, was able to, and hence we were quite pleased to see that Big Blue is apparently working on …

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• Will Independent IBM i Clouds Survive PowerVS?

  June 16, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM currently competes with a slew of independent IBM i clouds with its Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) offering. But as IBM’s PowerVS grows bigger and more capable, there is still a question: Can the independent IBM i clouds survive?

  Clouds have been around in one form or another for as long as the IBM midrange server has existed. Whether it’s termed co-location, a computer bureau, an application service provider (ASP), a managed service provider (MSP), or the cloud, people have been running IBM gear on behalf of other people for a very, very long time.

  Since the online bookseller Amazon …

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• Now, IBM Is Jacking Up Hardware Maintenance Prices

  June 16, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The first stirrings of hardware maintenance price increases that will affect IBM Power Systems shops have hit, starting in China for Power8 and Power9 machines and for Storage Expert Care support everywhere around the world except in Japan.

  To be quite honest, when we read the hardware maintenance price increase in announcement letter AD25-1195, we did not at first see that it was restricted to the People’s Republic Of China and assumed that it was for the United States and quite possibly for the entire planet. But, alas and good for everyone outside of China, the 10 percent price …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 24

  June 16, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  The AS/400, under its many names, turns 37 this coming weekend, and let’s all raise a glass and celebrate this venerable and still relevant platform. Or, perhaps a cup of coffee or tea, depending on your mood.

  In the meantime, before you toast the IBM i, you have two security vulnerabilities to be aware of. First, there is Security Bulletin: This Power System update is being released to address CVE-2024-13176, which you can find out more about here. This affects the BMC’s HTTPS and SSH interfaces. The affected products and versions are as follows:

  • OPENBMC: FW1060.00 – FW1060.30
  • OPENBMC:

  … Read more

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