• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 12

  March 25, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  It’s a pretty quiet week in IBM i PTF Land, which is just want you want as Spring has sprung and we are getting ready for the Easter holiday coming next weekend. So, no security vulnerabilities to report this week, which is a good thing. There are some group PTFs for the current releases and we have added some new links to the IBM i PTF Guide spreadsheet as well.

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

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • DB2 for IBM i
  • SAP support required PTF list for IBM

  …

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• Yet More Announcements On IBM i Software Subscriptions

  March 18, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the past two years, Big Blue has done of lot of things to repackage the IBM i software stack, and even its entry Power Systems machinery, to be consistent with the modern world of utility pricing for IT systems. Many are not thrilled by this, of course, and not just because they are resistant to change. While IBM is bundling in many features and add-ons to the stack for free as it shifts to subscriptions, the core IBM i subscriptions are without question more expensive than buying a perpetual license and paying Software Maintenance over a five, six, or …

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• Raz-Lee Adds Zero-Trust Features To IBM i Firewall

  March 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are looking to implement a zero-trust security posture in their IBM i systems may want to check out Raz-Lee Security. The software company has added micro-segmentation capability to its iSecurity Firewall product, giving IBM i shops another level of control over their networks.

  Zero-trust is one of the more promising methods to secure an internal network these days, as it requires users to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before being granted access to internal applications or data. It has been widely adopted in corporate networks as one aspect of a strong defense, particularly in Windows …

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• The Time Is Now To Get A GenAI Strategy

  March 18, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I was born a little less than a year after IBM launched its venerable System/360 mainframe platform, arguably the first information technology platform ever created and sold at scale. I graduated from college six months after the AS/400 was launched and was the founding editor of this newsletter you are now reading a little more than a year after Silverlake came to market and showed what a real platform could look like.

  I was present during the Unix revolution, the client/server revolution, the commercial Internet revolution, and the big data revolutions, and I was absolutely at the forefront of commercial …

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• Sundry IBM Tape Subsystem Announcements

  March 18, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM has been shipping tape drives and tape libraries based on LTO-9 tape cartridge technology for nearly three years, which is why we think it is odd that last week we saw that the TS2290 machine now has a feature code to attach to IBM i or OS/400 systems.

  In announcement letter AD24-0463, which is pretty terse as these things go, we see that there is a new feature code 9400 for the TS2290 tape drive, also known as the 3580 Model H9S. This appears to be just a feature code to allow for direct attachment of the TS2290 …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 11

  March 18, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  This week in IBM i is sponsored by security vulnerabilities and precious little else. There are three security vulnerabilities that are new that you need to be aware of, so let’s get to it and let you get back to work.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Db2 Web Query for i is vulnerable to a remote attacker bypassing security restrictions or to denial of service, which you can read more about here. The fixes are as follows:

  IBM Db2 Web Query for i 		Release		OS Release
  5733WQX 		2.4.0		7.4 and 7.5
  				SI85982
  				SI85987
  

  Second, we have Security Bulletin: …

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• What the 2024 Marketplace Report Says About IBM i App Dev, Language Use

  March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  What languages, development environments, and tools are IBM i developers currently using to create new applications? How many users are still on SEU? And how are VS Code and Merlin faring among Web-based development tools? Fortra sought to answer those questions with its IBM i Marketplace Survey for 2024, and the results may surprise you.

  In late 2023, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world for the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Survey, which it published in January. You can download the report here.

  For the most part, Fortra asks the same questions every year, which is …

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• Big Blue Goes After Healthcare With Aggressive Power Systems Pricing

  March 13, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We often gently admonish the vendors in the IBM i market that they have to make news to be in the news and also to do something snazzy, like a special promotion or a price cut to get the attention of customers as well as to stimulate a little business for themselves and their partners. IBM is not excepted from this advice, and is actually doing it – at least for customers in the healthcare industry that run their applications on Power Systems iron.

  In announcement letter AD23-0111, dated March 12, IBM has put out a new 24-core Power10 …

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• If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

  March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The information technology industry has a “newness” bias. It always has, and probably always will. But when it comes to the systems for processing business transactions, decision makers need to think carefully about what they’re doing, as ditching “legacy technology” for a shiny new one doesn’t always deliver the promised upgrade.

  The cloud is currently the hot new thing in IT. Even though it’s not necessarily “new,” and not necessarily “a technology” (it is a collection of technologies and a platform and a business model…), business owners are under tremendous pressure to “get to the cloud” by whatever means necessary. …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, March 13

  March 13, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  When Janine Melnitz mutters to herself, “I’ve quit better jobs than this,” she doesn’t actually leave and go find another place to work. (And thank goodness because who would we have called when we need a ghost busted?) While indeed.com offers a list of 10 reasons why you might quit, including feeling dissatisfied with work environment, personal conflicts, and difficult schedule, pre-emptively volunteering before you are cut due to layoffs isn’t one of them. But that’s what IBM is asking employees – mostly in Europe – to do. Layoffs shouldn’t come as a surprise since last year, IBM CEO Arvind …

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