• It’s Time To Get An Offsite Data Protection Strategy

  February 23, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have nothing against tape cartridges, tape drives, and tape libraries large and small. There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping tapes in an underground vault very far away from floods, winds, fire, and cosmic radiation. Which is why tape somewhere around 200 exabytes of LTO tape drive capacity was sold last year, and it is why tape drives and libraries comprise somewhere around 10 percent of the $50 billion to $60 billion of enterprise storage – meaning flash, disk, and tape media devices – sold each year.

  Big Blue invented the IBM 726 tape drive in 1952, which was …

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• Where We Are And Where We Are Headed With AI On IBM i

  February 16, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here we are in 2026, and we have gotten used to GenAI like we did the coronavirus pandemic after it largely ran its course after three years. The difference, of course, is that there is no vaccine for GenAI, especially when a substantial part of the growth in the global economy is coming from enormous capital spending on GenAI hardware and software.

  I have spent a large portion of my career as an IT journalist and analyst tracking high end, large scale, distributed computing in its many forms and have been fascinated by the clever and creative advances in the …

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• IBM Unveils Expert Query To Replace Db2 Web Query

  February 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM’s Technology Expert Labs is launching IBM Database Expert Query for i, a new tool that allows users to create and run reports against the integrated Db2 for i database from the comfort of a Web browser. IBM is positioning Expert Query as a replacement for Db2 Web Query, the business intelligence and analytics tool that it abruptly killed more than two years ago.

  Expert Query was developed over the past year by Technology Expert Labs (formerly Lab Services). We have heard rumblings that Big Blue was gearing up a replacement for the well-liked Db2 Web Query product, and it …

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• Guru: Are Binding Directories A Shortcut Or A Source Of Chaos?

  February 16, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  Ask any IBM i developer about binding directories, and you will usually get one of two reactions: A grateful nod or an eye roll. For some, binding directories are a lifesaver, making compile commands cleaner and projects easier to manage. For others, they are a ticking time bomb, introducing hidden dependencies that come back to haunt you months later.

  I have seen both sides. In fact, one of the worst compile-day disasters I’ve witnessed started with a well-meaning developer adding a single service program to a global binding directory. Suddenly, half the shop’s programs were linking against the wrong version …

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• IBM Takes On The Memory Crunch With New FlashSystem Lineup

  February 16, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a shortage of main memory and flash in the world right now. This is due, in large part, to the explosion in investments in yottascale AI systems that burn tens of gigawatts of juice. Such systems require a huge amount of HBM stacked memory on their GPU and XPU accelerators as well as high performance DRAM and flash in their hosts and truly enormous shared flash storage to serve up datasets.

  The biggest companies buy up most of the DRAM and flash chips a year or more before they are even made, but with demand skyrocketing, the memory …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 7

  February 16, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  First, we wish you all a happy belated Valentine’s Day, which we were thinking about because we put the IBM i PTF Guide together on Saturday.

  Second, there is a new System Planning Tool, Version 6.26.041.0, which is available for download at this link. We also note that the link to the IBM Systems Workload Estimator and the link to the IBM Systems Energy Estimator no longer work and just take you to a generic IT Infrastructure page that is, how shall we say?, not particularly useful.

  And third, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server could provide …

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• IBM Starts Winding Down Power10 System Sales

  February 9, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may be hard to believe it, but the big, bad Power E1080, which is based on the Power10 processor, has been selling since September 2021. The remainder of the Power10 line, including entry and midrange machines, was announced in July 2022. And now, with the Power11 machines announced last July shipping in volume from top to bottom excepting the Power S1112 Mini, which should be coming out soon, and IBM doing build to order for all of its Power11 machines, it only stands to reason that Big Blue would stop selling Power10 iron as soon as …

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• Guru: Service Programs And Activation Groups – Design Decisions That Matter

  February 9, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  If you have been writing service programs for a while, you might treat binding like flipping a light switch: write some code, compile it, bind it, done. It works – until it doesn’t. Behind the scenes, IBM i is doing a lot more than just connecting your program to a library of procedures. And if you’re not paying attention to activation groups and how you structure your service programs, you might be setting yourself up for sluggish performance or debugging nightmares down the road.

  Let’s demystify what is really happening when you bind and why activation groups deserve more of …

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• Strategic Topics To Think About For 2026, Part 1

  February 9, 2026 Philippe Magne

  Longevity is an amazing thing. ARCAD Software has now amassed more than 34 years of expertise centered around everything related to DevSecOps transformations. To start off the new year, I would like to share six strategic ideas that will help shape 2026 in the IBM i market, and beyond it.

  The big new development for ARCAD is our fourth brand, called DISCOVER, which is focused on application intelligence. It’s the newest addition, and it’s very promising. We’re delighted to have convinced more than 25 customers by year 2025, and I think this will evolve significantly this year.

  DISCOVER is all …

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• Shield Gooses Performance Of Nagios Monitoring Tool, Adds AI Reporting

  February 9, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Large IBM i installations that experienced performance issues with older versions of Shield Advanced Solutions’ Nagios monitoring tool will be happy to hear that version 3.0 delivers a 2X to 3X performance boost. The new version, which Shield announced last month, also includes an early release of an integration with ChatGPT that automatically generates reports based on the real-time IBM i server metrics gathered by Nagios.

  Nagios is a very popular open source IT infrastructure monitoring tool that’s been deployed millions of times around the world. It works by constantly pinging targets, which could be anything from server or storage …

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