• Four Hundred Monitor, February 1

  February 1, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  We’re just a month into 2023, and we can already see a lot of action from IBM. Our Top Stories this week all revolve around IBM activity, some of which is good, and some of which less so. (Layoffs are never good news, but especially so in the current economy.) But like we said, there is lots of good happening, both in and around the industry. Check out the Calendar below, which is becoming loaded with new events, so be sure to take a look. You will notice that the virtual option appears to be here to stay, and is …

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• 2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 4

  February 1, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are still getting predictions coming in from the IBM i community, and so we have extended this to 2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 4, even though we are now into February and technically the Prediction Season is unofficially over. You can’t really say “Happy New Year!” starting today, either, not with Punxsutawney Phil coming out of the ground to prognosticate about the short term winter/spring weather tomorrow.

  Several people from modernization tool maker and cloud provider Fresche Solutions piped up with their predictions. Marcel Sarrasin, newly appointed as chief services officer and general manager of the transformation business at …

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• Power Systems Did Indeed Grow Revenues Last Year

  January 30, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in September, when Blue Blue took a huge write-off to offload some of its pension and retirement burdens to an independent third party, it posted a pretty hefty $3.21 billion net loss. But IBM’s underlying business was functioning about as well as it could under the circumstances and it was reasonably profitable and looking ahead to pretty good Power10 and System z16 upgrade cycles. We forecast that IBM would actually grow revenues for Power Systems for 2022, and according to our model, IBM indeed has done it.

  And by a much larger margin than the company has grown overall, …

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• The IBM Power Trap: Three Mistakes That Leave You Stuck

  January 30, 2023 Jason Hardy

  IBM Power has long been known as a stable, reliable hardware platform and as a result companies have leveraged it to run their most critical business applications. For many, it has become so ingrained in their business that they would never choose to migrate away from it.

  But for some, IBM Power has become a trap from which they can’t escape. This is not a malicious trap that suddenly jumps up and grabs you but rather a trap that is triggered by a series of decisions made over time with each compounded by the previous. So, what are these decisions …

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• Big Blue Decrees Its 2023 IBM Champions

  January 30, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM this year celebrates a bumper crop of IBM Champions, those technology experts who also display “extraordinary advocacy” for IBM products. In total, there are 839 IBM Champions hailing from 60 countries around the world, while in our little neck of the IT wood, there are about 90 members from the global IBM i community who gained the honor.

  IBM launched the IBM Champions program in 2008 as a way to honor IBM customers and business partners who not only are subject matter experts but who also are active in the community. Today, there are 11 categories for the IBM …

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• As I See It: The Good, the Bad, And The Mistaken

  January 30, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Writing a comprehensive history of IT would prove daunting if not impossible. The milestones are well documented, but not the steps between. From the legions of unsung programmers who developed the systems we take for granted, to the effects of social media that are both private and collective, IT is a complex swirl of the good, the bad, and the mistaken.

  Since hindsight lends itself to clarity (albeit flavored with arrogance), let’s start with the mistaken. The grandest of all IT prediction fails belongs to none other than IBM’s legendary Thomas Watson. Back in 1943 he opined that, “There is …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 5

  January 30, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Here’s a question for you: Are you using encryption to download software fixes from IBM? You may not know, and worse yet, you may not know how to figure that out. This is important because as we warned you last fall, IBM’s Electronic Fix Distribution and Fix Central systems will end support for unencrypted fix downloads starting on February 15 of this year.

  That gives you two weeks and a day to figure it out. And this document from IBM helps you figure it out and tells you what to do.

  Aside from this, it has been pretty quiet in …

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• N2i Gains Traction Among IBM i Newbies

  January 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The YiPS made a big push to inject youth into the IBM i community over a decade ago. But when the youthful vigor ran low, members of the community regrouped, re-energized, and rebranded into a new group called New to IBM i (N2i). And judging from N2i’s recent success, the group has hit on something.

  N2i has its roots in the YiPS, according to Marina Schwenk, who was a YiPS member back in the day and now is active in COMMON and the WMCPA. But there’s a crucial difference between N2i and YIPS, she says.

  “The group that we’re …

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• Realizing The Promise Of Cross Platform Development With VS Code

  January 25, 2023 Jeff Tickner

  An integrated development environment is like a tractor or a truck, or indeed any other kind of tool. There are farmers who want a tractor from John Deere or Ford or Massey-Ferguson, contractors who want a Ford or Dodge or GMC truck, and carpenters and electricians who use Dewalt or Milwaukee Electric or Makita cordless tools.

  No matter the choice of tools, ultimately these blue collar workers are going to farm and build things, and the choice of tool should not interfere with that effort. White collar – or far more likely no collar T shirt – programmers are no …

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• 2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 3

  January 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Security. Cloud. AI. The IBM i installed base moves with the general IT tide, which makes these hot topics for all. But what about specific IBM i things, like the availability of IBM i jobs and the difficulty in finding a good RPG developer? These are topics we are tackling in our third – and final – round of 2023 predictions.

  Bob Langieri, the IBM i recruiter who owns Excel Technical Services, has his pulse on the IBM i job situation, particularly in his Southern California region. 2023 looks to be a mixed bag, job-wise, he says.

  “In the …

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