• IBM i Delivers Sizable Benefits, Forrester Consulting Reports

  June 7, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have firsthand knowledge of the positive characteristics of the platform relative to industry-standard X86 servers. We often hear anecdotes about the platform and share them with you through these pages. But IBM would like to get beyond mere anecdotes and get to some hard numbers on the IBM i advantage. That’s when it turns to Forrester Consulting.

  According to Forrester Consulting’s latest Total Economic Impact (TEI) report, a typical IBM i customer can expect to save about $2.6 million over three years as a result of the IBM i platform’s uptime, productivity, and efficiency. The report, …

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• SBOMs Will Come to IBM i, Eventually

  June 7, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The Biden Administration’s push to make software bills of material (SBOMs) mandatory may not be moving ahead as quickly as hoped. But the SBOM requirement is still marching ahead for federal agencies and the vendors who supply them with software – running on IBM i or any other platform – with a major self-attestation deadline.

  The federal government’s SBOM push began back in 2018, when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA), an agency within the Department of Commerce, spearheaded SBOM work with private-sector partners in an attempt to get better visibility into security vulnerabilities.

  The SBOM movement got a …

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• IBM i Backup Provider Storagepipe Snapped Up By Thrive

  June 7, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Storagepipe, a Toronto, Ontario-based provider of backup and recovery services for IBM i and other platforms, has been acquired by Thrive, a Massachusetts-based outsourcing company that provides a range of cloud-based IT services.

  Storagepipe has been backing up IBM i servers since it was founded back in 2001. Back in 2015, the last time we checked in with them, the company was utilizing an appliance-based approach to backing up IBM i servers, and any other Windows or Linux servers that customers wanted backed up.

  The backup would be pushed to the Storagepipe appliance, which would then replicate the backup off-site …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 7

  June 7, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  Artificial intelligence is getting a bad rap these days, and IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna isn’t happy about it. In fact, he says the recent reporting that quoted him as saying that IBM could replace 7,800 workers with AI software was incorrect, and his comments were taken out of context. Of course, that doesn’t explain why IBM recently paused hiring for “replaceable” roles. You can read more about what Krishna is saying about AI now in our Top Story below. Our Calendar is continuing to grow so be sure to check in about the latest learning opportunities.

  Top Stories From Around

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 23

  June 7, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  It’s a little more quiet in this issue of the IBM i PTF Guide than it was last time, which is a good thing and which ran on Monday. We will start off with two more security vulnerabilities, one with Rational Developer for i and the other for the WebSphere Application Server Liberty edition.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Rational Developer for i is vulnerable to attacker obtaining sensitive information due to Java string processing in IBM Toolbox for Java (CVE-2022-43928), which you can find out more about here. Here are the affected releases:

  Affected Product(s)				Version(s)
  IBM 

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• Power10 Boosts NVM-Express Flash Performance

  June 5, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are always on the lookout for any performance tests that show the benefits of adding flash storage to Power Systems iron, and we found some recently in an NVM-Express flash drive deep drive given by Douglas Gibb’s the I/O product manager for the Power Systems line at IBM during the POWERUp 2023 conference in Denver.

  The presentation that Gibbs gave went through all of the ins and outs of flash storage on Power Systems, including those that use the NVM-Express protocol over the PCI-Express peripheral bus, which offers a direct link between the operating system and the flash storage …

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• Fortra Completes Postmortem Of GoAnywhere Vulnerability

  June 5, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Security firm Fortra recently published an analysis of the zero-day vulnerability that impacted its GoAnywhere MFT customers earlier this year and committed itself to “continuous improvement.” Meanwhile, an analysis shows that dozens of organizations continue to run unpatched and exposed versions of GoAnywhere months after the flaw was discovered and patches became available.

  Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) first became aware of the remote code injection exploit vulnerability in its GoAnywhere managed file transfer (MFT) product on January 30, as we previously reported, and quietly alerted customers on February 1. The company says it immediately shut down the hosted version of …

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• Guru: Binding Directory Entries

  June 5, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  I assume you’ve heard about *BNDDIR (Binding Directory) objects introduced circa 1994 with OS/400 V3R2. The infamous QC2LE binding directory is used by a huge number of RPG applications to access C runtime and unblocked MI functions such as system cvthc, cpybytes, and matmatr. You have probably seen RPG IV source code with the BNDDIR(‘QC2LE’) keyword on the header specification.

  I was one of the first developers outside of IBM to use Binding Directories for my own code. When I go back and look at my own RPG IV code created prior to mid-2007, well over 90 percent of it …

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• How Does Your Infrastructure Spending Stack Up To The World?

  June 5, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As IT analysts, as well as IT journalists, we believe that the economic questions of how many widgets consumed, how much revenue and profit do they generate, and how fast are markets changing and evolving as new widgets come and old widgets go are just as important as the feeds, speeds, slots, and watts of any particular widgetry.

  That is why we have always looked at both sets of IT data over time, to get a 3-D feel for the market and its flows of hardware, software, and services across workloads. It is very rare when one of the market …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 22

  June 5, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome back after the Memorial Day holiday, and our thanks to all who have served and who currently serve.

  There is a slew of security issues that you need to deal with on the IBM i platform. So let’s get to it.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to exposing sensitive information due to flaws and configurations (CVE-2023-30441), which you can find out more about here. The vulnerability can be fixed by applying the latest Java Group PTF.  Releases 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 of IBM i will …

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• 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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