• NGS Bolsters Excel Integration in New Release

  August 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  As far as legacy IT products go, Excel is right up there. Microsoft launched the spreadsheet tool back in 1985, making it three years older than the venerable IBM AS/400. For companies that run both of those products – well, the IBM i server, anyway – an upgrade of New Generation Software (NGS)’s flagship business intelligence tool will have users singing a happy tune.

  While the IBM midrange server is a bit of a niche platform, Microsoft Excel is about as mainstream as you can get. The software is estimated to be used by 750 million people, or about one …

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• IBM Launches AI-Powered Security Assistant

  August 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM this week launched a new AI-based security tool that’s designed to help security professionals who are deluged by data. Dubbed the IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Assistant, the new offering is based on IBM’s watsonx technology and is available (as the name would suggest) to IBM consulting clients.

  Security professionals are constantly bombarded with alerts to the point where they are overloaded. A recent survey by CybSafe found that more than 25 percent of security professionals say they’re often or always feeling overwhelmed with information, while another 46 percent say they occasionally feel that way. A 2021 survey by Trend Micro …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, August 7

  August 7, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  If you’ve been avoiding the onslaught of news of late, your friendly neighborhood Monitor is back to offer you a sampling of industry specific news to give you a break from all that is happening around the world. Of course, AI remains at the top of our news cycle, and we have an interesting prediction from Gartner on GenAI projects to share in our Top Stories below. But it’s not just all about AI, there is actually a lot happening out there in our ecosystem. Read on for all the latest from around the industry, and don’t miss some additions …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 30

  August 7, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Sometimes, you have to work really hard to try to figure out if you are going to have to do a lot of patching on the systems this week – and then you find out, to your pleasant surprise, that the hardest work you had to do was to find out that you really didn’t have to worry about much. Such is this week.

  Basically, there are just new defective PTFs this week and that is about it.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • None

  PTF Groups …

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• How Polverini Enables End-to-End Testing on IBM i

  August 5, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Testing is one of the most time-consuming and least glamorous parts of software development. But doing it well is important, as the July 19 CrowdStrike outage so potently reminded us. When it comes to ensuring that IBM i programs are thoroughly tested, a relatively new end-to-end testing solution from Polverini & Partners can potentially take some of the drudgery and error out of the process.

  Polverini & Partners recently announced ReplicTest, a new product aimed at automating all aspects of the software testing process on IBM i, including unit testing, acceptance testing, regressing testing, security testing, integration testing, and stress …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Proactive Solutions To Enhance IBM i Cloud Security

  August 5, 2024 Lief Morin

  IBM i systems are known for their reliability and robust security features, like object-level security, comprehensive auditing, and advanced encryption. Although most cloud journeys start out in search of economic efficiencies, enhanced security quickly becomes the primary reason why IBM i organizations choose to migrate to the cloud. So, it’s crucial to identify and remediate IBM i cloud security challenges early (and often) to realize the benefits of improved security operations for your IBM i environment in the cloud.

  A Cloud Computing Recap

  Before we dive into specific security issues, let’s quickly recap what cloud computing is. Essentially, cloud computing …

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• Power Systems Continues Its Slight Upward Trend

  August 5, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is an old saying: No news is good news, and with a slew of medical issues in our family right now, we get that. But what is also true is that good news is good news, and when it comes to the Power Systems business this is – happily surprisingly ­– precisely what is happening.

  The overall IBM business is doing alright as well, which is also good for Big Blue and for the customers that depend upon its systems to do their mission critical computing.

  In the quarter ended in June, Big Blue’s sales were up a smidgen, …

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• As I See It: Sainthood

  August 5, 2024 Victor Rozek

  I’ve been pondering sainthood lately. Not my own, just to be clear, but rather the concept and qualifications for such a venerable designation. The most notable modern-day example would doubtless be Mother Teresa who, after a lifetime of service and sacrifice, was canonized in 2016.

  The Catholic Church holds the franchise for saintly designations with over 10,000, many of whom were martyred for their faith. But it was the newest entrant who caught my attention. His name is Carlo Acutis, and he died in 2006 of acute leukemia at the tender age of 15. I have to admit he beat …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 29

  August 5, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  We know that you were just getting comfortable with a relatively easy summer, CrowdStrike crash excepted if you are one of its customers, and so we have a few security vulnerabilities and PTF patches you need to cope with this week.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM HTTP Server (powered by Apache) for IBM i is vulnerable to HTTP response splitting attacks [CVE-2023-38709, CVE-2024-24795], which you can find out more about at this link. The fixes for this issue, by IBM i release, are as follows:

  IBM i Release	5770-DG1	PTF Number
  7.5			SJ01350
  			SJ01401	
  7.4			SJ01349
  			SJ01400
  7.3			

  …

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• Open Source IBM i Build Tool Now Supports VS Code

  July 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  A new release of the open source iBuild tool now supports VS Code, the developer of the tool recently announced. The new release also now fully supports ILE, which is critical to the future of the IBM i platform, the iBuild creator says.

  iBuild is a free build tool that automates the task of running all of a developer’s RPG source code through the IBM compilers. It’s been in active development for about eight years and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net/projects/ibuild.

  What makes iBuild unique is that it puts instructions on how to build objects into the header of …

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