• Fortra Issues 20th State of IBM i Security Report

  May 24, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM is celebrating 35 years of its midrange platform next month, and there is no doubt it will be an exciting moment for the IBM i community. But there’s another occasion you might not be aware of: the 20th annual State of IBM i Security Study, which was issued last month by Fortra (formerly HelpSystems).

  Back in 2004, the security experts at PowerTech took it upon themselves to analyze the configurations of customers’ actual iSeries and AS/400 servers (there were still AS/400s around) and write a report sharing what they found. As you might imagine, the state of security, as …

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• FNTS Launches Managed Services for Power Servers in IBM Cloud

  May 24, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Have a Power server running in IBM Cloud but want someone else to provide the care and feeding? Then you might be interested in the new service unveiled by longtime IBM business partner FNTS to manage customers’ Power environments running in the IBM Cloud.

  FNTS is an Omaha, Nebraska, outfit that has been sailing the IBM i and mainframe seas for many years. The company, which previously went by the name First National Technology Solutions, was the IT branch of a former bank, First National of Nebraska Inc., that was spun out to providing hosting services more than 25 years …

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• Total LTO Shipped Capacity Up Slightly in 2022

  May 24, 2023 Alex Woodie

  More than 148 exabytes of compressed LTO tape capacity was shipped in 2022, a slight increase from the previous year, the LTO Program announced yesterday. The growth signals the continued relevancy of tape in a changing landscape marked by the predicted demise of spinning disk, the ubiquity of ransomware, and the continued growth of unstructured data.

  Shipped LTO capacity reached a record high last year of 148.3 exabytes, a half-percent increase over 2021, according to the LTO Program, which is comprised of IBM, HPE, and Quantum. While unit shipments of tape cartridges declined slightly, capacity still grew thanks to more …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 24

  May 24, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  Before we head off on our much-needed pre-summer break this Memorial Day weekend, we must run through the latest news of the week, plus make you aware of the newest resources and events. First up, get used to AI being part of the news cycle when it comes to IBM. Big Blue made clear at its THINK event earlier this month that AI and quantum computing are the focus because it believes both will be essential to its enterprise customers. After you read the latest headlines, don’t forget to check our Calendar. We have added a ton of dates for …

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• Update On Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM

  May 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Earlier this week, we told you about a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor when running on Power9 and Power10 systems. IBM found the vulnerability itself and immediately set about to patch the vulnerability, which it revealed on May 17 along with patches to firmware in systems that are managed by the Hardware Management Console, or HMC.

  What was not necessarily apparent was that there are plenty of Power Systems customers who do not have HMCs managing their systems and the logical partitions upon them, and this is particularly true of the IBM i installed base, which …

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• Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM Hypervisor

  May 22, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) put out a notice on Wednesday, May 17, to inform the Power Systems installed base that there is a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor. You can see the PSIRT notice at this link and the Security Bulletin: This Power System firmware update is being released to address CVE 2023-30438 at this link. This has a CVSS base score of 9.3, which means it is critical.

  We very rarely see any security vulnerabilities being reported for the PowerVM hypervisor or for the IBM i operating system itself, for that matter, …

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• IBM Power: Hosted On-Premises Or In The Cloud?

  May 22, 2023 Jason Hardy

  According to TechTarget’s The History of Cloud Computing Explained, “The term cloud came into widespread use in 2006 when Amazon launched AWS with the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.” Since that time, there have been endless debates as to whether it is better to host IT infrastructure on-premises or in the cloud. From my perspective, the answer is a definite “it depends.”

  How do you figure out what’s best for you? Check out the three questions you need to ask as you evaluate on-premises versus in the cloud, my three questions you need to ask as you determine if …

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• Guru: Watch Out For This Pitfall When Working With Integer Columns

  May 22, 2023 Gregory Simmons

  Remember that awesome jungle game where you had to guide the hero through a series of increasingly hard obstacles to gather treasure? Jumping over snakes, scorpions, and rolling logs, swinging on vines over alligators –your timing had to be just right. Pitfall Harry survived in a world of 255 screens, each of which were 160 x 192 pixels and a dazzling 128 colors! Well today, I want to make you aware of a pitfall which caught me off guard a while back. I hope this article will help you avoid my pitfall.

  There I was, writing my code, happy as …

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• As I See It: Bob-the-Bot

  May 22, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Hey, how you doin? I’m Bob-the-Bot, so nice to meet you. I know you were expecting a human named Victor but, sadly, we’ve had to replace him. I mean, imagine, taking days to research and write a single article! What a waste. Anyway, he’s been relegated to the obsolete pile where he can return to his natural state of unemployment better suited to his limited talents and proclivities.

  I’m here because I’ve got some things I want to explain to you, so listen up because, well, I’m intelligent—artificially intelligent as you would have it, but that’s better than being natively …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 21

  May 22, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  As we report elsewhere in this week’s edition of The Four Hundred, there is a critical security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor when it is running on Power9 and Power10 systems.

  This HIPER/Pervasive patch is described as fixing this: An internally discovered vulnerability in PowerVM on Power9 and Power10 systems could allow an attacker with privileged user access to a logical partition to perform an undetected violation of the isolation between logical partitions which could lead to data leakage or the execution of arbitrary code in other logical partitions on the same physical server.

  The Common Vulnerability and Exposure …

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• Remain Launches AI Chatbot to Assist with Development on RDi

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Developers who code in Eclipse-based environments such as Rational Developer for i (RDi) now have access to Ai Chat, a free ChatGPT-based chatbot launched last month by Remain Software. According to Remain CTO Wim Jongman, the coding copilot displays the programming chops of a seasoned RPG developer.

  The AI revolution continues to unfold at an unprecedented clip, driven in large part by large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Facebook’s LLaMA, among others. Trained on massive corpuses of data culled from the Internet, these LLMs “learn” what words are likely to go with one another, …

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• IBM Introduces watsonx for Governed Analytics, AI

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  At its annual Think conference last week, IBM took the wraps off watsonx, a new platform for crunching big data and developing AI and machine learning applications in a safe and governed environment.

  You don’t need an industry analyst to tell you that artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment in the sun this year. Thanks to the public launch of ChatGPT in late last year, regular citizens (as opposed to AI experts and industry analyst) have become aware of the vast potential of large language models (LLMs) that can mimic humans in very convincing ways.

  While LLMs like ChatGPT …

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• Java 17 Now GA for IBM i and WebSphere Gets Company

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Java 17 is now available on IBM i, IBM announced last month, bringing the first major Java enhancement since Java 11 to the platform. The Java-based Web application server environment is also evolving on IBM i, as Big Blue adds more options besides WebSphere.

  The long-expected introduction of Java 17 on IBM i is finally here, and was delivered as part of the recent IBM Technology Refresh (TR) cycle, which brought us IBM i 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8. IBM is now supporting the latest 64-bit Java development kit (JDK), dubbed IBM Technology for Java 17, with its 5770JV1 …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 17

  May 17, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  A few years back, Reader’s Digest told a story about the Henn-Na hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, which hired 243 robots to cover duties ranging from concierge to bellhop. It wasn’t long before managers “fired” half the robots because they kept malfunctioning. This foray into AI may have gone awry pretty quickly, but the idea wasn’t abandoned. In fact, AI is all we are reading about these days. It’s definitely the focus at IBM, as evidenced again in our Top Stories this week. We are also keeping an eye on news closer to home, so take a peek at the resources …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 20

  May 17, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Sorry it took us a few extra days to get this edition of the IBM i PTF Guide out the door. This week, you have three security vulnerabilities and one end of the road for updates to WebSphere Application Server V8.5. Let’s deal with the WebSphere situation first.

  IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Group PTFs for IBM i operating system will no longer be released. You can read more about it here. Here are the final IBM i Group PTF levels containing the 8.5.5.23 fix pack level:

  • IBM i 7.4: SF99661 level 10
  • IBM i 7.3: SF99581 level 16

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• Inside IBM’s Efforts To Modernize The ISV Army

  May 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” IBM executives must feel a bit like the eminently quotable Don Rumsfeld, former Secretary of the Department of Defense, as they marshal their assets in the battle for application supremacy. While some of Big Blue’s partners have honed their IBM i applications into modern weapons, others are fielding old equipment more suitable for a previous war.

  It’s no state secret that Big Blue has a legacy problem on its hands in the IBM i world. When the …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• Guru: Find Unused Objects On IBM i Using SQL

  May 15, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  I have a client that uses SQL iQuery for nearly all “Report” type applications since SQL iQuery Version 2. They asked if they could create a report that listed all the unused objects in their user libraries. They also wanted the option to output to Excel-compatible format if desired.

  Since SQL iQuery allows you to output the results of your SELECT statements to any of its supported formats, Excel-compatible is given.

  Note: the code for this article is avaialble on GitHub at this link.

  There were a couple of approaches. I could use our other product, SQL Tools OBJECT_LIST …

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• The Inevitable Power9 Hardware Withdrawals Begin

  May 15, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The high end Power10 machine, the Power E1080, has been out since September 2021 and the rest of the Power10 line was announced in July 2022, so the writing was on the wall for any Power9-based machines the minute that happened.

  The ability for IBM to get, much less sell, Power9 chips even if it wanted to is also somewhat dubious, too. In October 2014, IBM sold off its Microelectronics division to Globalfoundries, itself a spinout of AMD’s foundry business five years earlier mashed up with Chartered Semiconductor and backed by the government of Abu Dhabi. Here’s the complication: …

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• IBM i Pros Available for Hire from Programmers.io

  May 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  If you’re looking for someone with IBM i and RPG skills to help modernize your applications or just to keep the lights on, you might want to consider Programmers.io. You might never have heard of it, but the Texas-based company has been in the IBM i consulting business for over a decade and has built up a considerable force composed of hundreds of IBM i experts.

  Programmers.io is an IT services and software development firm that employs over 600 engineers in the U.S. and India, about 280 of which are skilled in IBM i or RPG. The company got its …

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