• Remain Bolsters TD/OMS in v16 Release

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rogue or uninformed programmers will be shut out of making negative code changes to their IBM i applications with TD/OMS V16.0 Milestone 1, the inaugural release of the next major version of Remain Software’s IBM i change management software. New dashboards, training, and ChatGPT integrations also grace this new release.

  According to Remain Software CTO Wim Jongman, the new arbitrary code execution protection feature delivered with TD/OMS V16.0 last month was developed in response to customers that were suffering when programmers exploited their freedom to do not-so-smart things with the organization’s IBM i code.

  Sometimes, the freedom is necessary. “For …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 8

  November 8, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  Depending on where you live, you may be struggling this week from the dreaded time change that happened to many of us over the weekend. I, for one, and definitely dragging this week, and it got me wondering: What would happen if clock changes were abolished? We’d reduce schedule disruptions and having to remember which clocks auto-update. Without losing an hour of sleep in March, you’d probably wake up feeling more refreshed and less tired than on that same weekend in past years. Even falling back has an effect as we try to establish a new rhythm and get used …

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• ATS Bolsters Power Cloud, IBM i Data Collection Suite

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  ATS Group announced yesterday that it has expanded its Power Cloud, the IBM Power-based private cloud that offers IBM i, AIX, and Linux runtimes. The company also announced that it has enhanced the IBM i data collection capabilities in Galileo Suite, its collection of IT monitoring and observability.

  ATS Group is an IBM business partner based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The company says it has managed thousands of customer environments in its Power Cloud, which is spread across four geographically separate data centers.

  In a blog post yesterday, the company announced that it has expanded its private cloud offering. The company …

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• Kyndryl Inspects The Modernization Plans Of IBM i And Mainframe Shops

  November 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  What paths are IBM i and mainframe users taking in terms of application modernization and digital transformation, and what sorts of results are those efforts producing? Those are good questions, and they are ones that Kyndryl, the former IBM Global Technology Services arm, provides some answers to in a new report.

  Kyndryl commissioned Coleman Parkes Research to survey 500 IBM i and mainframe shops from around the world about their plans for application modernization and transformation. The survey results form the basis for its appropriately named 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which you can download here. …

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• Thoroughly Modern: How X-Analysis Transforms IBM i Challenges Into Solutions

  November 6, 2023 Ray Everhart

  All the modernization conversations I have had over the years with IBM i clients seem to have one common theme: velocity. Or the lack of it, to be specific. Over 70 percent of them reportedly have a tough time managing their systems while embracing modernization, driven by valid reasons like a rapidly evolving business landscape, the need to become more agile and efficient as they expand their business, and a considerable number of IBM i staff retiring.

  But the fact remains that they can’t get the changes they need in place fast enough. How do we address this problem in …

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• Power Systems Software Gets Its Updates And Tweaks

  November 6, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It would not be a spring or fall IBM i Technology Refresh cycle if there were not some improvements to the auxiliary systems software that is an adjunct to the Power Systems stack. By which we mean the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC custom edition of the OpenStack cloud controller, the Hardware Management Console, the Cloud Management Console, and the system firmware for the Power iron itself.

  In announcement letter AD23-0498, you will see that all of these have been updated and you will also see how they are all intertwined with each other, cross-supporting their respective updates. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 45

  November 6, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  What is new this week, you ask? Well, in IBM i PTF Land, there is a PTF patch for IBM i 7.2 – yeah, you heard that right – that was released on Halloween day and that addresses a security vulnerability that was made public on October 6 (CVE-2023-40377) relating to IBM Backup, Recovery & Media Services for i. Because of this flaw, the IBM i stack is vulnerable to a local privilege escalation, which is not a good thing.

  The security vulnerability patch is being made available even though IBM i 7.2 was taken off regular Software Maintenance on …

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• IBM, TIBCO Remain Mum on Db2 Web Query Future

  November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

  While Db2 Web Query users are left hanging in the wind without any official way forward to protect their investments in the product, IBM and TIBCO have yet to make any public announcements about how to support these IBM i customers moving forward.

  IBM shocked the midrange last month when it announced the sudden end of life of Db2 Web Query, the IBM i-based analytics tool that was largely based on an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version of the WebFOCUS product originally developed by Information Builders and now owned by TIBCO.

  The October 10 announcement – the same day …

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• Skytap and Precisely in Azure HA Hookup

  November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Skytap customers running on IBM i servers in Microsoft Azure data centers can now utilize MIMIX high availability software from Precisely (formerly Vision Solutions) as a result of a partnership the two vendors unveiled this month. Customers also get access to consumption-based pricing in the Azure Marketplace as a result of the new deal.

  While Azure and all public clouds are predominantly composed of standard Intel servers, Skytap has developed a specialty of integrating non-standard computing environments, like IBM i, with public cloud infrastructure.

  The Seattle, Washington-based company has an agreement with Microsoft to manage IBM Power servers running IBM …

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• Spooky New Security Vulns Lurking on IBM i

  November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Halloween has come and gone, but the scares will stick around for a while for IBM i administrators, who have been given more than a dozen fixes by IBM to address some pretty serious security vulnerabilities recently revealed in the heart of the operating system, including in spooky old friends Java and OpenSSL.

  On October 27, IBM issued a security bulletin for two CVEs, including CVE-2023-40685 and CVE-2023-40686, which describe two separate but related security flaws in the Management Central component of IBM i Navigator in IBM i versions 7.2 through 7.5.

  The first privilege escalation vulnerability, CVE-2023-40685, could …

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