Timothy Prickett Morgan
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 5
February 8, 2017 Doug Bidwell
For the past nineteen years now, Doug Bidwell, the PTF slinger who owns IBM midrange business partner DLB Systems Associates, has been putting together a guide to help OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops figure out what to patch in their operating systems for midrange gear every week.
For as long as we can remember — and that is not long as we are getting a bit gray or white, depending — we have been publishing Bidwell’s IBM i PTF Guide, and we are thrilled to be getting it back on press and to be incorporating it into the …
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Geared Down, Low Cost Power IBM i Box Rumored
February 6, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
We have been talking for a long time about the impedance mismatch between some IBM i shops in terms of what processing, memory, storage, and I/O capacity they need and what IBM delivers to them with each new generation of Power Systems iron. For many shops, even the smallest machine that Big Blue currently delivers is too much of a box.
This is a testament to the efficiency of the IBM i platform and its integrated relational database management system in that it takes very little iron to get useful work. It also shows that for many customers, transaction processing …
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Guru: Passing Parameters From The Command Line
February 6, 2017 Jon Paris
In my previous “Fundamentals” tips, I discussed the importance of making sure parameters are the correct size and how to correctly handle omitted parameters. In this tip I want to address what has to be the most frequently asked question about parameters.
The most frequently asked parameter question comes in many forms, such as:
- “How do you pass them from the command line?”
- “Why do I see garbage in the back end of my character parameters?”
- “Why are my numeric values passed incorrectly?”
Usually these questions arise when a programmer wants to simplify the testing of a program and does …
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Some Power Systems Tweaks And Sales Withdrawals
February 6, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
We didn’t expect any major announcements from IBM’s Power Systems division here in the first couple of weeks of the year, but the company has made done a bunch of little things that might affect some IBM i shops that you ought to be aware of just the same.
In announcement letter 117-013, which was put out on January 24, IBM made good on its promise to make the new I/O peripherals and memory cards that came out with the midrange Power 850C system announced last year available on the prior generation Power 850 box, which debuted in May …
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See Something, Say Something
February 1, 2017 Larry Bolhuis
Only so many times can you see something and not say something. Time to say something.
Most of you know I spend most of my time working on the most reliable, capable, flexible, and modern business system anywhere. And, of course, that would be IBM i on Power Systems. What you may not know is that I spent time driving a bus. I drove a very large bus with a huge wide bumper backed by an air horn. It was 40-feet long and 11 and a half feet high, weighed 40,000 pounds loaded, and was propelled by a supercharged V8 …
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Power Systems Is Now Cognitive Systems
January 30, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
For as long as we can remember, every couple of years or so IBM has changed the executives that have been in charge of its midrange systems and over a slightly longer term, of maybe five to seven years, it has rebranded or somehow significantly changed the marketing message driving those midrange systems. It looks like 2017 might be a year for both.
In a series of brief internal memos put out by Ginni Rometty, the company’s president, chief executive officer, and chairman, and Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems group, IBM is rejiggering its executive lineup and …
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Guru: Got A Great Idea? Tell IBM!
January 30, 2017 Susan Gantner
People often talk to me at conferences or via email about ways they wish RDi worked differently, or about a built-in function that RPG should have, or about other changes to IBM products that they think would make life better for IBM i developers. Sometimes I agree that they are great ideas and I wish IBM would implement it, too.
Sometimes, even if I do think it’s a good idea, I think there are other more important things to be done before that. Occasionally, I struggle to understand why anyone would want that feature. I suspect many of you have …
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Drilling Down Into IBM’s System Group
January 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It is a new year, and we are all looking forward to a growing economy and some much needed competition for compute in the datacenter as there is a resurgence of interest in the Power processor and a growing probability that ARM server chip makers, particularly Qualcomm and Applied Micro, are going to see some traction this year.
It is with this in mind that we ponder IBM’s fourth quarter financial results, which were announced last Thursday, and more specifically think about what may be in the cards for the Power Systems platform in 2017 and beyond. First, let’s go …
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IBM Gives Power Systems Rebates For Linux Workloads
January 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Big Blue has made no secret whatsoever that it wants to ride the Linux wave up with the Power Systems platform, and its marketeers are doing what they can to sweeten the hardware deals as best they can without adversely affecting the top and bottom line at IBM in general and the Power Systems division in particular to help that Linux cause along.
To be precise, IBM has rolled out another in a line of its “first in location” rebate offerings, which was a common tactic when IBM was trying to sell AS/400 or RS/6000 systems against competitive platforms or …
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A Power Systems Wish List For The Year Ahead
January 18, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It is the beginning of a new year and that means a bunch of different things. First, we are not quite as rested as we would like, but we are also ready to get on with it. It usually means that people are making resolutions to change their own behavior for the better and making prognostications about what may or may not happen in the future.
Sometimes we are not in a mood to prepare or predict, and as this year gets rolling I am in much more of a mood to prescribe. Sometimes, you can’t wait for the future …
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