Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Yet Another IBM Pricing Scheme For Power MSPs
February 1, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreOne of the problems with hardware is that it is a sunk capital cost to acquire it, which is why financing and now cloud computing, where you lease or rent the capacity in a server or storage array rather than buy it, is popular. But the service providers building Power-based clouds are not always happy to do financing. They want IBM to offer flexible pricing without them having to take the risk.
And so, several times over the past couple of years, Big Blue has offered special pricing for systems software and hardware to managed service providers. In announcement letter
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Big IBM i Shops Get Beefier Memory
February 1, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWhile there is no question that the installed base of OS/400, i5/OS and IBM i machinery in the world–probably something on the order of 150,000 machines–is dominated by small machines with one or two processors and only a couple of cores at most activated, there are still some very, very large customers out there. These companies are driving the performance requirements for Power Systems iron, just like big AIX and Linux shops are doing.
While all of the world gets in a tizzy over in-memory processing, the single-level storage architecture of the System/38’s CPF and the AS/400’s OS/400 make this
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Run VisualAge RPG Applications On 64-bit Windows 7, 8, And 10 Over The LAN
January 26, 2016 Dan Devoe
… Read moreWith assurance of continued support from IBM, we used VisualAge RPG (VARPG) to develop modern business applications. Then IBM pulled the plug on VARPG. Nevertheless, we’ve kept our applications working, and have even managed to find a way to run them under 64-bit Windows from our LAN. Here’s how we did it.
A Little Background
Around a decade ago, we were looking for a way to put a modern interface on our 5250-based applications. We really liked what VisualAge RPG (VARPG) had to offer. We found many reasons to lean toward this solution, but the most enticing ones were
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Power Systems Turns In A Full Year Of Growth
January 25, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThere have been worse years in the Power Systems business than 2015, and in fact, 2014 was one of them. In its latest financial reports, IBM said that that it has turned in four quarters of revenue growth for the Power server unit, no doubt helped by an uptake of Power8 systems as customers do their inevitable upgrades. As the year wound down, IBM was running on its entry and high-end cylinders, the first time in a while when that happened.
IBM Systems, the hardware unit of the company that sells servers and storage and is responsible for operating system
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Where Do Those IBM i Machines Work?
January 18, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWe may live in a big data world, but a lot of the data is not worth the magnetic media it is stored on. This is particularly true when it comes to the IBM i installed base, which used to be more aggressively diced and sliced by the big IT market researchers of the world back it was called the AS/400 and when it had a $14 billion ecosystem across hardware, software, and services.
But we do what we can in a world without much data about our ecosystem, and that is one of the reasons why IT Jungle has
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Throw Away Old Summary Query Techniques
January 12, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreIt’s a new year! Out with the old! In with the new! That exhortation applies not only to everyday life, but also to the ways we write SQL queries. Let me show you two ways we used to have to write summary queries and two new ways that are better.
First, we need a database to query. Here’s a table of customers.
ID Name === ===================== 101 J. Cheever Loophole 102 Otis B. Driftwood 103 Quincy Adams Wagstaff 104 Rufus T. Firefly
And here’s a table of shipments.
ID CUSTOMER ITEM QUANTITY PRICE === ======== ====== ======== ===== 1 102
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Updated RDi Keyboard Shortcuts
January 12, 2016 Susan Gantner
… Read moreI’ve written tips about RSE/RDi keyboard shortcuts several times before. Readers of those tips will know that I created a downloadable list of my favorite keyboard shortcuts. I’ve updated the shortcut card fairly regularly and the most recent edition has recently become available. So if you have previously downloaded my shortcut card and found it useful, you may want to get the latest one here.
This edition of the card includes a few new shortcuts, including a couple that are new for V9.5 of RDi.
The first one is Ctrl+Alt+Q, a new V9.5 shortcut to bring up a dialog
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Software Group Essentially Gone With Steve Mills Retirement
January 11, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe old guard at Big Blue has been gradually retiring over the past several years, and one of the most influential leaders of IBM and one of the more intelligent, successful, and well-spoken of the company’s top brass, retired at the end of 2015. We are talking, of course, about Steve Mills, who ran the Software Group conglomerate for the past decade and a half.
While it may not have been apparent to many of us on the outside, something was brewing during IBM’s reorganization this time last year, where a slew of new executives were given new divisions
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Happy Holidays From IT Jungle
December 9, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe weather may not know it in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but the holiday season will soon be fast upon us and that means it is time to put away the pens and keyboards here at IT Jungle and to spend some time with family and friends.
The Four Hundred has been a part of the IBM midrange community almost as long as the AS/400 and its progeny have been around, and like the AS/400 itself, The Four Hundred has antecedents that have an even longer history. The point is, we have been listening and learning about the IBM
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Happy Holidays From IT Jungle
December 9, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe weather may not know it in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but the holiday season will soon be fast upon us and that means it is time to put away the pens and keyboards here at IT Jungle and to spend some time with family and friends.
The Four Hundred has been a part of the IBM midrange community almost as long as the AS/400 and its progeny have been around, and like the AS/400 itself, The Four Hundred has antecedents that have an even longer history. The point is, we have been listening and learning about the IBM