• Izzi Throws Retiring IBM i Software Company Founders A Lifeline

  February 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Founders of smaller IBM i and System z software vendors who are looking to sell their companies before they retire may want to check out a new venture called Izzi Software. In an interview with IT Jungle, the executives heading the startup explain that it has a mandate to spend millions of private equity dollars on acquiring midrange and mainframe ISVs that have solid products and businesses, but may not be big enough to attract M&A attention from bigger firms.

  It’s no secret that the IBM i and System z communities tend toward the older side of the age …

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• IBM Power On Track To Get Above $2 Billion A Year

  February 3, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s stock price is kissing $260 a share, and this is a level that, adjusted for stock splits, the company has not seen since before it ran up on the rocks in the early 1990s as its mainframe business and AS/400 business all shrank at the same time that RISC/Unix systems and X86 gear in the datacenter took off. What’s going on?

  Well, here is the deal: IBM has customers using its Power and z servers for mission-critical back office systems, and a lot of the customers using its IBM i, AIX, Linux, and z/OS platforms are going to be …

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• What Do IBM i Shops Use To Write Applications These Days?

  February 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to languages and tools for developing applications on IBM i, there are a ton of options available for customers. Thanks to the PASE runtime, a variety of open source languages and runtimes have been brought to the platform, not to mention the time-tested ILE technologies from IBM. But what do IBM i shops actually use to write new apps? For answers, we look to Fortra’s 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey results.

  Fortra recently released the results for the 11th installment of its IBM i Marketplace Survey, which is based on surveys it conducted in late 2025 …

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• Does Your IT Budget Reflect The World At Large?

  February 3, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, numbers are so large they become almost meaningless. If I say $1 trillion or $5 trillion to you, do you really have a sense of it except relatively to some other number in the same order of magnitude? You can feel the change, but you can’t feel the actual magnitude of the actual number?

  It is with this in mind that we turn to the latest forecasts for IT spending from Gartner, which shows a slight acceleration in the rate of spending increase from 2024 to 2025, but ironically, shows the absolute figures for IT spending in those two …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 5

  February 3, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to February! Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter after being awakened from his slumber and seeing his shadow in the western Pennylvania town that is the adjective of the groundhog’s formal name. But, then again, don’t be too upset about the lingering winter. This furry prognosticator is only right 39 percent of the time, which is a little bit worse than flipping a coin.

  Frankly, the best supercomputers in the world can’t predict the weather, either, because the conditions are changing faster than the models. . . so there is that.

  We can predict with near …

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• Cybersecurity Still Top IBM i Concern, But AI And Others Are Creeping Up

  January 27, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Fortra last week formally released its 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey results, which marks the start of the second decade of analysis into the IBM i community. In the closely watched Top Concerns component, there were minor changes in the top four items, led by cybersecurity for the ninth straight year. But what’s notable in 2025 is that there’s movement at the bottom of the list, indicating heightened interest in items such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

  IBM i users from around the world took Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Survey in late 2024 – 250 of them …

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• A Year From Now, Most Power9 Systems Bite The Rust

  January 27, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For whatever reason, there are lots of IBM announcements that are not released through IBM’s normal announcement channels. While participating in the 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey webinar, I came to find out that an announcement for the sunsetting of technical support for selected Power9 systems was actually released last year. We had been expecting it around now, and it doesn’t take effect until a year from now, so whew! No harm, no foul.

  As it turns out, this announcement was made back on September 12, 2024, through a PDF posting on Big Blue’s Systems support portal. You have to …

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• 2025 IBM i Predictions, Part Three

  January 27, 2025 Alex Woodie

  What will happen this year in the little neck of the IT wood that we call the IBM i community? It’s hard to say for sure, but one thing is certain: It sure a lot of fun guessing what might happen or what could happen! And who knows? Some of these predictions may actually come true.

  After 20 years with IBM i software vendor PKS Software, Heidi Schmidt has seen a thing or two in the midrange. There have been many ups and downs over the years, and a wide array of names. But Schmidt is bullish that the …

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• As I See It: The Forgotten Ones

  January 27, 2025 Victor Rozek

  It was the old black-and-white photo that first captured my attention: A woman standing next to a stack of thick folders containing green-bar printer paper that stretched from the floor to just above her head. In the photo she is smiling and appears to be balancing the unsteady tower. The year is 1969, the woman is Margaret Hamilton, and she has good reason to smile.

  Eight years prior, she worked at the MIT Lincoln Lab, a research and development facility funded by the Department of Defense. There, she worked on something called the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project. MIT was …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Numbers 3 And 4

  January 27, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  We are finally getting back into synch between The Four Hundred and the IBM i PTF Guide, and with this week’s issue numbers 3 and 4, you will be all caught up.

  In Number 3, dated January 18, we note that IBM has put out the latest service pack 950.D0 for system firmware levels VL950, VM950, and VH950, which you can read all about here. The updates are available for the following Power9 machines:

  • Power System S914 (9009-41G)
  • Power System E950 (9040-MR9)
  • Power System E980 (9080-M9S)
  • Power System H922 (9223-22H)
  • Power System H922 (9223-22S)
  • Power System H924 (9223-42H)

  …

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